Yeah, I won't say racism is completely dead, but I do think it's often blown way out of proportion and gone to as the default motivation for the dislike of any minority figure. We all know politics itself provides more than enough reason for vitriolic hate, lies, conspiracy theories, and the like. Identifying racism in such a situation is like listening carefully to figure out if anyone near you is tapping their foot when you're surrounded by jackhammers tearing up the road.

Obama's a Muslim who wasn't born in the US, wants to turn America into a socialist nation, and doesn't mind if Israel is wiped off the map. Bush was secretly behind 9-11 in order to get the support to invade Iraq for its oil. Bill Clinton was a rapist who sold out to the Chinese for campaign funds. I don't really see any noticeable difference in how they're treated by their opponents that would indicate racism was a significant factor.

I'm up for a discounted phone in June. I'm hoping I can lock in two more years of unlimited before this change goes live. At the prices they currently charge for data, I'll switch to a feature phone and carry around my old smartphone in wifi mode before I switch to one of their limited plans.

There's no rule that they can't let you keep the number. It's just not required. That said, I believe it's up to you current carrier to agree to release your number to the new carrier, and we all know how accommodating companies can be about helping you switch to their competitor. Maybe your old carrier gets high marks for customer service, or someone didn't notice it wasn't a local port and gave the green light anyway. Not everyone will be so fortunate.

Actually, this is only partly true. The ability to keep your number is regulated by the government in the Wireless Local Number Portability. However, as the name might suggest, it's only applies if you're living in the right area code for your cell phone. I don't have that option because I moved across state lines but didn't want to change my number. If I switch carriers, I lose my number.

Registered republican here. I'm not particularly fond of Romney, but I'd decided a long way back that if Ron Paul won the nomination, I wouldn't just vote for a third party, I would vote for Obama. Ron Paul has ideas that are just too extreme for my tastes, and I strikes me as the type that would fight tooth and nail to get his ideas through, whatever the consequences.

I'm sorry, but as long as he keeps calling for the likes of a return to the gold standard, I simply don't trust him in a position of power.

As glad as I am we got rid of CFCs, it's actually a bit of a funny story where things went from there. The replacement chemicals for CFCs are greenhouses gasses over 4,000 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901817.html

Sure, Sony has done plenty to legitimately earn the scorn of its customers. Still, I myself am one of those who would readily spend money for the right Sony product. I've bought exactly four pieces of hardware from Sony. The PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP. I don't regret any of those purchases, and I fully expect to buy the PS4 when it comes out. I'll probably get the PS Vita eventually as well.

There are two reasons I won't shy away from those purchases. First, I can hardly imagine a feasible scenario where I would withhold money from a company as punishment for a past action. Perhaps in protest an ongoing action such as "I won't buy anything from this company until they stop donating money to terrorist organization X every month." Other than that, I'll take how trustworthy I consider a company into consideration, but ultimately choose the option that provides me the greatest benefit.

There are games exclusive to Sony's system that more than justify buying those gaming consoles in my eyes. It doesn't hurt that I don't believe I've ever actually been harmed by any of Sony's actions, which makes it easier to take a logical rather than emotional approach.

The second reason I'll buy from them is that, whatever laws are in place, I don't consider a corporation a person. Kaz Hirai became the new President and CEO of Sony two weeks ago. What kind of turnover have other executives had? Who was actually responsible for the decisions you loathe, and how many of them even still work for Sony?

I believe the quote from Juan Williams you're looking for is the following:

It may be a bit pedantic, but that statement is definitely not racist. You can argue it's bigoted, but I wouldn't say it's racist at all. Muslim is not a race, and if you take his statement at face value, it's not even Muslims that make him nervous. Only Muslims that choose to wear Muslim garb on a plane. Not to mention that saying he gets worried and nervous doesn't seem to me as if it should be very controversial at all. Even the claim about identifying primarily as Muslims is still just presented as what's going through his mind when he sees them.

I'll admit to not having the whole context around the statement, but from what I see he never claimed any of those thoughts were fair to the person in question. It speaks of an instinctive response that could speak as much of the culture of country and the nature of what our mass media exposes us to that it would have become an instinctive reaction. Nor is such a statement without merit in discussion.

If that sort of reaction is normal, perhaps we need to rethink how the topic is presented in the media. Or maybe that information would actually be appreciated by Muslims who might not even have considered how their choice of clothing could influence people's first impression of them. They would still have the right to choose to wear that garb, but perhaps for some of them, it isn't important and they want to avoid it. Regardless, I think discussion of this level should be encouraged rather than squelched.

I don't think they'll delay it, as that would be a bit too irresponsible. The individual mandate goes into effect in 2014, and the longer businesses are unsure of which way it will go, the worse off we are. Uncertainty is almost never good for encouraging businesses to hire. The court wants to make their decision and give congress and the president as much time as possible to try to pass new laws to save the bill.

I do find it interesting that they could have crafted it to have almost the same effect while having almost no chance of being declared unconstitutional. Raise taxes on everyone by the amount the fee for not buying health insurance would have been. Anyone who buys health insurance gets a credit on their taxes equal to that amount. Those with earnings low enough that they would have avoided the mandate also avoid the tax in this scenario.

The effect is virtually identical, but it's clearly within congress's power. Of course they took the path they did because raising taxes on the middle class is all but political suicide so it was unlikely to have made it through congress. So they picked their path, and now they have to deal with a congress even less likely to pass a tax increase than the one back when they first made the choice.

PS - My prediction is that the individual mandate is declared unconstitutional. They'll also decide that the parts requiring insurance companies to accept people regardless of preexisting conditions and charge the same amount will be struck as not being able to stand without the mandate. The rest of the law will be left as is.

Oregon Republican Representative Greg Walden responded to Perlmutter during the floor debate by saying:

I'm not so naive as to take his reasoning at face value, but neither am I so cynical as to assume it's a lie outright. The one thing the text does show me is that I don't know enough about how things currently stand or how the amendment is worded to make an informed decision on whether I would have supported it or not.

Because I don't generally take to boycotts or activism against corporations. When I buy something I ask myself two questions.

1. Do I think the value of this object is greater than the money I'm paying for it.

2. Is there a more cost efficient way to get the same value.

My Sony purchases over my life have been limited to a PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP (and of course related software.) At least for those four items, I don't regret my purchases in the least. I definitely got my money's worth. To be honest, it's pure speculation that I wouldn't feel the same way most people here do if I'd actually been harmed by the company.

I don't listen to music, so I had no impact from the rootkit fiasco. I never had any intention to put Linux on my PS3. Even for the hacking, I'd used a one off password that wasn't reused anywhere else, and didn't have any desire to use the PSN while it was down. So I basically got free games out of the deal without paying any cost.

Interesting if true. I'm big on letting people ruin their own lives if they want to. My largest concerns are how it affects people who choose not to take the drugs, and how many children are able to get their hands on them. So I would want to see some very detailed studies, not just on usage numbers, but on how their used as well. Along the lines of alcohol. We know that making it illegal didn't stop consumption, but would people be less likely to drive drunk if even getting caught having consumed alcohol would get you thrown in prison?

I have the same concerns for items such as LSD. If it became legalized, would people be more likely to consume it in public places, while driving, or at other times where they would be more of a danger to others? Would they be more likely to spike food/drink with drugs because they think it's funny? I don't know the answers to these questions, and I'm not implying the answer is likely yes. If everything looks good, I would happily support full legalization.

Maybe we could even take advantage of human nature for a little drug social engineering too. Legalize everything except marijuana. Make it legal to grow and sell in the US to keep down organized crime and drug cartels, but illegal to smoke. Even that can just be a misdemeanor with maybe a fine and community service, but leaving it just edgy enough that kids will tend to favor marijuana as a recreational drug and thus do less damage to themselves than with other options.

There's some truth to the breaking down issue. However, I would think the blame for that falls more in the hands of the universities for not planning ahead if they did have such issues. It's much the same as any piece of hardware. It's not evil to stop producing it. Yeah there were no more new units being made that could replace the ones they originally had. At least there were tens of millions of them out in the wild already. If they hadn't bought enough to last the life of their project prior to change, they should have stocked up once it was announced to make sure there wouldn't be a shortage.

If I recall correctly, the PS3 Slim consoles were announced to not support linux even before they came out and well before the firmware update that removed it from older units. There would have been plenty in store shelves they could have bought up. Granted many university professors might not stay up-to-date on the latest video game news. Still, I'd really like to hear the details of a university that actually was harmed by this prior calling Sony out for it.

You have a lot of things you can be angry at Sony at, but I doubt the universities cared about the removal. How many of them that were using PS3 clusters needed them to access the PSN or play the latest games? You could continue to use linux as long as you wanted if you didn't care about these features.

I find it hard to consider lawsuits a miniscule part of the problem, have a look at the following link if you disagree. http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/dec10/advocacy2.asp

I would like to highlight the following part in particular.

I don't know the details about the Texas case in particular, but the very article that gave these numbers mentions Texas and some of the benefits that occurred from the legislative changes. There are other explanations why it wouldn't make a dent in the rate of inflation other than the overall cost being miniscule. It's possible Texas had another area of cost that grew faster than other states and countered the effect. It's also possible that despite the change, doctors didn't change their practice of defensive medicine. Perhaps out of habit, lack of knowledge of the changes, or the changes being too small. I don't know enough to say.

Your criticism of the fraud claim is much more deserved. The examples I gave were small and tended to focus only on the side of the little guy when fraud can also include things such as doctors, hospitals, and the like making fraudulent charges against insurance. I'm sure there are countless ways fraud occurs I haven't even thought of, much less mentioned. Overall though, the matter is far from a joke. The NPR estimated the cost of fraud in the US system at $60 billion to $600 billion a year. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/08/cost-medical-fraud-could-pay-health-care-reform