Agreed. If we could trust that we would have genuinely anonymous vehicle size/weight/type counting for such purposes, that would be fine, but I'm pleased that we both know the government would never stop at that.

I drink protein shakes as one or more of my meals on a regular basis. I keep a tub of protein handy, and I am more likely to have a whey shake for breakfast or dinner than an actual meal.

Sometimes, I have an actual meal but limit the portions substantially so that I can meet my macros by having a few scoops of whey instead. Pretty healthy and easy to meet your goals.

To the OP who remarked that people don't eat meal sticks, MREs are extremely common -- people who spend any extended amount of time outdoors or in inhospitable climes (ever been on a long and arduous climb or hike?), military personnel on the field, and folks who have traveled to exotic locales all eat MREs, which are nothing more than glorified "meal sticks".

In addition, any reasonably fit athlete will consume some pretty tasteless food in the form of protein shakes and other healthy "meals". Sure, they have flavor, but that's only to mask what would otherwise be absolutely unpalatable. And after a while, you even start associating some flavors negatively (after 4 years of having a vanilla whey shake with peanut butter and banana, I am staying far, far away from the combination for a long time to come).

They're at least as reliable as anything coming out of the NSA's publicity arm, the past four administrations, and various other elements of the government. Sure, there are good agencies here and there, but the norm is corruption.

If a thief breaks into my house or steals my car, I'll take the same position I take towards the NSA. That the only course of action is to take the necessary measures to ensure it stops. In the thief's case, locking him up generally works for the term of incarceration. In the NSA's case, ending the program is a nice step, but ending the NSA would be better. You can't fix an organization that is so deeply corrupted. If the agency's functions are necessary, start a new one from the ground up, with none of the same people and with no remnants of the old one remaining.

I think we could probably just say this across the board in our government...

Sex is defined by chromosomes. Gender is defined by a combination of nature and nurture. What does it mean to be the best male or female you can be, without looking to society?

True, but freedom says they should be allowed to be married if they wish (whether or not government recognizes that, or any other marriages, is a separate question).

"Classic liberalism" is, by today's standards, conservatism.

No. He is talking about how the progressivism movement began, which have little to do with "opportunity" and are mostly about fairly extreme socialism.

Again, that was the explicit point of the beginning of the movement: to end slavery.

False. It is. All claims that it isn't are pure fiction. It was created by the government, it is regulated by the government, it's within the Executive Branch, its leadership is appointed by the President, and so on.

You mean other than the massive regulation over it by the federal government. And whether the federal government exercises control over the Fed, is irrespective of whether it is a part of the federal government ... which it is.

Unless the federal government wants them to do something else, in which case it has all power to step in and mandate it.

Thanks for proving the point: the federal government was deeply involved in all of those decisions you're referring to.

Oh, I agree, it works up until you get disappeared. Falsehoods can still run afoul of various laws, while increasting the pool of difficult to access, trace, and/or decrypt data is completely legal.

Sure, but every data point they have to search through and store is that much more hassle for them. especially if you encrypt it, since they seem to target that without discrimination.

See, if you'd just get a job with an NSA contractor, you could get it from PRISM! And they are delightful. What the NSA doesn't know (until I hit submit) is that I used a little cornstarch to turn the cooking liquid into a gravy and served it over mashed potatoes and added a side of steamed broccoli. Maryland is going to smell good once they find this one...

Even with what he did, he'd have got away with it today. What Nixon did is basically nothing at all compared to today's political espionage between our factions.

Redeveloping things was necessary with Vista/7 to handle newer hardware and concepts, but the problem was they threw out half the baby with the bathwater when they significantly changed the main interfaces. There was no reason to mess with that when people were happy with it. I'm not even sure what they thought they were trying to beat by doing so.

how about DevNull? If they do a search into the name, I think they will find that there is nothing there.