Fruit has both a culinary AND scientific meaning. Culinary, it is a sweet part of the plant that is almost always a botanical fruit, but that does not imply that a botanical fruit is also a culinary fruit. Scientifically, milkweed pods, cotton pods, and those little helicopters that fall from maple trees are fruits.
OK, I can understand the idea that the terms used by cooks and the terms used by botanists can have different definitions that shouldn't be conflated with eachother. But what about from the standpoint of a nutritionist? Given that fruits and vegetables are often considered different food groups, if I eat a serving of tomato does it count toward my recommended daily servings of fruits or my recommended daily servings of vegetables?
I'm just clarifying that the only reason we allow it is the US is a profoundly racist country.
Of course! Obviously it's because they're dirty yellow slant-eyed chinks! There is absolutely no fucking way that we're just lazy, selfish bastards who, acting in our own greedy self-interest, have decided that we want the benefits of cheap goods without the negatives of polluted air and water. Nope, if they were white we'd live with the more expensive goods and be happy for it. We're only letting them poison themselves because we hate all the fucking gook bastards and want them to suffer and die.
Yeah, I'm sure there's some racism towards the Chinese out there, and some people might not care about the issue because of it, but to jump straight on racism as the one and only true reason, especially when plain old greed and avarice fit the bill, is just ridiculous.
The whole Green Dam (or was it River) of China's blocking a website.
Yeah, it's Green Dam. The software controls the flow of information in the same way that a real dam controls the flow of water in a river. The name makes special sense when you remember the Three Gorges Dam, which the Chinese government finished a few years ago to control the seasonal flooding on the Yangtze River. I might imagine that they view the flood of information resulting from an uncensored Internet to be analogous to those yearly inundations which have, in the past, caused billions of dollars in damages and killed thousands of people.
But, as long as you tax a corporation, they should be able to represent themselves. And their donations and influence should be in proportion to the amount they are taxed.
So you're saying that, if corporations are taxed, then they should be represented in our government, much like regular persons are represented via the voting process? Here's my problem with your logic: Corporations are not natural persons but legal fictions. They only exist in order to pool resources and create legal barriers between the property of the corporation and the property of its owners for the purpose of liability. The corporation does not have any will of its own, its decisions being made by its owners. Since through this process the corporation essentially represents its owners, and the owners are already represented via the voting process, by giving the corporation representation in government you are giving the owners greater representation than non-owners.
But the migration to speeding cameras would. You need data along two points and to time it.
Or, you know, a radar gun.
...he's talking about blocking individuals from social networks, not blocking the social networks themselves.
Blocking individuals from social networks is still stupid, since it removes a source of intel about what the rioters are planning. Besides, it's not like they wouldn't find other ways of communicating if they couldn't get on Twitter.
After the US defaults the Tea Party is planning to blame Obama.
Let them try. Everyone knows that it's the Republicans and Tea Party who coupled the debt ceiling issue to the deficit issue, and they're the ones who refused to raise the debt ceiling limit to begin with. Sure, the negotiations on the issue(s) might sour you on Obama if you're opposed to tax increases for the "job creators", but in that case you're probably already against him to begin with. Even with some Republicans supporting the idea of decoupling the debt ceiling and deficit it's largely right wingers blocking those efforts. If they think they're going to fool the majority of America into blaming this on the President then the only ones they're fooling are themselves.
The money that a government worker receives from government is already collected by the government, so it does not make sense for government to collect that, just to give it away, just to collect it again.
Just because it "does not make sense" doesn't mean they couldn't do it that way anyway. You're acting like not only is it government policy not to make their employees pay income tax, but that making them pay income tax would somehow violate some fundamental law of nature or something of the sort. I think you're underestimating the love that accountants and bureaucrats have for paperwork, process, and accounting.
Furthermore, it actually does make sense. That government worker might have a second job, or they might a spouse who also has a job with whom they jointly file. Add to that income any other sources of income they might have made throughout the year, and that extra income might put them into a higher tax bracket. If that puts them into a higher bracket that would entitle the government to keep a larger cut of their withheld wages. I think it goes without saying that the government wants all the money it can get.
I'd also like to take the time to note that both the Federal government and many State governments collect income taxes, and that they do so separately from each other. Even if your "why would they collect money they already have" argument made sense, each level of government would pay the applicable income taxes to the other levels. Federal workers would still pay State taxes, State workers would still pay Federal taxes, and local workers would pay both, since they are all separate entities who collect their own separate taxes and pay their own employees out of the separate coffers filled by these taxes.
Presumably, given your attitudes on government employees and the sound of your general political beliefs, I'd be willing to bet you view government as some sort of horribly inefficient money burning engine. If this is the case then why do you have such a hard time believing that they'd go through the seemingly inefficient and convoluted process of collecting tax money from the general populace, paying their employees with a portion of that money, withholding some portion of that pay, and then refunding some further portion of that come April? And shouldn't someone like you be happy if you are right, that the government just bypasses the whole inefficient passing-money-back-and-forth bit, and just skips straight to reducing worker pay by the amount they'd be taxed anyway?
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
