They can often believe you've taken a slip road (off ramp) when you haven't, and vice versa, before correcting. But to believe you're on a road you are simply passing over is a big fuck up.

This happens to me all the time with Google Maps on Android.

I don't think a massive shift toward socialism would help much actually. It's not just the parents' wealth (or lack thereof) that's the problem, it's their culture and attitude towards education. Poor people generally don't believe that much in it; my mother was always told by her family that education is a waste of time and that a woman needs to get married at 16 and start having babies. Forcibly redistributing wealth to people like that isn't going to change their attitudes towards education. These things can be changed through well-funded education systems that seek to overcome parents' bad attitudes, but it takes generations, and the US has been going backwards for a long time.

It's called self-segregation. If you lump everyone together, the good parents are basically going to be fighting against the bad parents and their bad kids, and the overall quality of education is going to be mediocre at best, and that's IF the good parents put in a Herculean effort to fix things. Even then, their power is very limited by the political school boards, and by state and federal laws and funding. There's only so much a bunch of concerned parents can do.

However, if they take their kids out of the school and put them into a private school, they have far more say. The private school isn't answerable to stupid government requirements like NCLB, and private schools compete with each other. If one school sucks, you can leave it and put your kids in a competing school that's better-run. And since private schools don't have to deal with bad parents and bad kids, they have a much easier time of providing a good education.

It doesn't matter. Even if this system produces better results, it still restricts citizens' freedoms beyond what should be acceptable in a free society.

I fully support public education funded by taxes that everyone pays, and I believe that American system in particular is in a very sorry state to a large extent because of the way it is funded - it should really be funded predominantly on state level from income taxes, and better at that (even if this means higher taxes). But the state has absolutely no business telling people that they can't run a private school, so long as that school conforms to all the minimum requirements set forth for public schools.

(In a similar vein, a single-payer public healthcare system is good, but restrictions on private healthcare providers are evil.)

In some places it is great. In some places it is a horror show.

I went to both public and private school growing up and had a pretty good experience in both. That said, the schools I went to were top quality.

I've been to private (and Catholic) schools, and public schools in both good and bad areas. The public schools in good areas aren't too bad, though they aren't good at dealing with bullies as has been pointed out in the media many times since Columbine. The public schools in the bad areas are terrible, not so much because of the kids, but because of the terrible teachers. Good teachers don't want to teach at the schools in poor areas. And teachers' unions make it so they can't get rid of really bad ones. Private schools don't have most of these problems; problem children are expelled and bad teachers are generally not hired, and there's no unions.

But rebel victory (implied by overthrowing Assad) would not really lead to a balkanized Syria. It would, more likely, lead to a unified Sunni Syria (which, I have to say, will complicate things for Iran even so).

Balkanized Syria would actually imply supporting either side to just an extent that's necessary to prompt splintering the country. Something that Assad has actually already talked about at some point (Shia/Christians/Druze get most of the shore, Sunni get the rest of it).

Spending money on a bullshit "green" scams does not benefit mankind either. Green energy with Democrats in power is like defense with Republicans in power, a buzzword to facilitate transfer of taxpayer money to private hands.

That's why, if you want it really secure, you leverage their own security.

Hack an NSA/TLA network, and store your encrypted data right alongside of their data.

You could hide your data on Obama's Blackberry servers, or on Gen. Alexander's, Valerie Jarret's, or Clapper's machines.

For extra happy-fun-time, make sure to include some CP, bestiality, and snuff films in separate files/folders, and then out them publicly. Sauce for the gander. :)

The US government has by their own actions declared a de-facto no-rules, no-laws, screw-the-Constitution, all-out cyber-war...not only against every other government including supposed US "allies", but their own citizens as well. History teaches that the dues incurred for such hubris always get paid.

Strat

Germans were crushed by and large by the USSR. If you look at number of troops fielded against Allies in Italy and France, and casualties, it's all really secondary to Stalingrad and Kursk.

Allied (mainly American) support in terms of supply was important to the Soviets in 1941-42, when their own industrial base was largely overrun and in shambles. By the end of the war, though, it was recovered to beyond its original (already very impressive) scale, and kept growing steadily. Look at the numbers of small arms, tanks and planes produced in the USSR in 1943-45, and compare to US and Germany; you'll be surprised. Certainly by 45, Soviets could get along just fine without lend lease.

It is a similar story with casualties. Most of that 1:2 disparity comes from the first two years of the war, when Soviets were getting steamrolled; the proportion then was actually far worse. But by 1944, it was already 1:1, and by 1945 the steamroller was in full reverse. Not surprising, given that purges in 1939-41 have decimated the Soviet officer corps, and it took a lot of bitter combat experience to grow the replacement - but by '44 it was there, lots of experienced, battle hardened commanders, and Stalin had put politruks on a leash, too.

So no, the USSR was not out of breath by '45. Quite the opposite, it had its war machine cranked out to full steam, and still considerable manpower resource with a lot of combat experience. Not enough to keep fighting an extended offensive for much longer, which is why Stalin stopped at Berlin. But certainly enough to stop any new invasion of its territory in its tracks.

What makes you think that US could have successfully fought a war, far away from its borders, against an army that just wiped the floor with the single strongest military in Europe? Keeping in mind that what you propose requires not just victory (as in opponent admitting defeat and surrendering), but complete takeover and occupation of Soviet territory. Also remember that the bulk of Soviet war industry by that time was at the Urals, and Allies had no bombers that could reliably get that far to destroy it, which was possible with Germany.

Look at the casualties of Axis forces in WW2, and note where they were inflicted. Once you do the math, you'll realize that 2/3 of all Axis dead (this includes Japan!) died on the Eastern Front in Europe, fighting Soviets.

Why is it a desirable goal?

They won't (well, except for rebels in Syria).

Just look at the polls. The majority of people in UK and France are against participating in any military action against Syria. UK Parliament has just voted to not participate. Heck, even Syria's immediate neighbors are not all too happy about any potential strikes.

Why imagine it when it actually existed? It was WW1. For that matter, most uses of chemical weapons in Iran-Iraq war were on the battlefield against enemy soldiers, as well.

Yes, using chemical weapons in a middle of a populated city guarantees civilian casualties. But then so do sufficiently powerful bombs, which didn't stop NATO from using them in Belgrade in 1998.

Bullshit. Chemical weapons were used more against military targets than they were against civilians, from WW1 to Iran-Iraq War. And they were plenty effective in both cases. Heck, we now have unclassified CIA files where they openly admit that the use of poison gas by Saddam was responsible for many of his successes against Iran.