President may in fact be CNC, but here's the kicker, congress has the "Power of the Purse" and actually once used it, refusing to pay an entire carrier group if they didn't come back to home port. I forget when, but it was in High School Contemporary History class when I learned that.

Dude, China, communist? Sorry it's free market there, for quite a while. Totalitarian regime, sure, but in communism there is no private ownership of much of anything (a la Cuba). Buddy of mine just spend 2 years over there helping set up an American company to open plants there. It's complex, but essentially they had to buy stock in an existing Chinese (privately owned) company, and after a while were allowed to buy it completely. Sure, there were some tight regulations regarding the transfer of money and who owned what throughout the course of the buyout, but they were private businesses, doing business. China isn't very communist

Sometimes those people going to a check cashing place have to have that money right then and there. For example, a poor person's car breaks down, they need a part, they have no savings (they are poor, remember), and if their car doesn't work, they can't get to work (for whatever reason, it happens), so if they don't go to work, they lose their job. They literally do not have a choice to make, either take a loan at an absurdly high interest rate, or get fired, have no car and no way to get a car that runs. Not much of a choice that. You are correct, in that sometimes (hell maybe a lot of times) people could wait for one more check, but if it's a choice of "lose your job" or "get taken by an industry set up to rob you blind", which are you going to do?

quick, someone call whoever that Sofia person is and get this AC a knobjob, it's our only hope

Yeah, like a backyard with a privacy fence!

What you talkin about Willis?

I think the rationale is that it is somehow "harder" to pull a lot of data through a phone. Why they think this is beyond me, While it may be true that most people don't use their phone as their primary web-surfing device, I know some people who don't have computers, and use their phones exclusively. And with the power of phones these days, I think the rationale is shot to hell

And, oddly enough, Carl Sagan helped me rediscover my spirituality. Interestingly, I don't think the minister at my church wear a tie, I know he didn't when I found the church on my birthday (is Unitarian, so we're a different breed of religious altogether). I can only hope that all this end times shit stops 22DEC2012.

Now I wish I hadn't posted in this thread, you'd soooo get mod points for that one. I like the way you used their own code against them, that was awesome (cuz Jesus hated a hypocrite worst of all)

Dude, you owe me a new keyboard "infiltration by Satanists and Freemasons". A) Satan is a hebrew word, it means enemy. B) Freemasons != Satanists. C) Oh shit you were being serious, ok then. The modern Church of Satan members probably could give 2 shits about the Catholic Church and what they get up to. Also, I KNOW the Freemasons couldn't give less of a fuck about Catholics if they wanted too. The bad blood between them has been from the Catholics (something about never keeping a secret from your priest, I dunno, it's a pretty weak argument) towards the Masons. The Masons would really like to just be left to their own ritual work and mysticism, and be left to donate their time and money to charitable works (yup, Shriner's Hospitals, man how evil, they help severely burned and crippled children). I woulda modded you down, but felt this was a better way of dealing with your paranoia, maybe you'll take off the hat and come back down to earth.

Actually they've had little gizmos on the front forks of bikes for years to allow brakes on the handlebars of those bmx stunt bikes. The cable connects to an upper ring on the fork and then that connects via bearings to a lower ring. The cable from the handle pulls the upper ring, which then pulls up the lower ring, pulling the cables that run from that to the brakes themselves. I was like 10 when I first saw them, so they've been around for a few decades at least.

An interesting thought, about the illegal search thing, but I think the reasons used in US Law for dispensing with any evidence 'from a poisoned tree' so to speak has more to do with uncertainty about the validity of said evidence. Not to say the evidence will be tainted or invalid, but that if the officer could not be arsed to follow the book to obtain the evidence in the first place, the chain of evidence is tainted from the onset. Better to let 100 guilty men go free type of thing.

The history of the plants (sorry mcgrew if I'm stealing your thunder) is such that the EPA came into existence because the court system COULD NOT handle it with any type of reasonable justice to those wronged. If you dump toxins into a river, you're not just polluting the part of the river that touches my property, you're polluting the river all the way down. And if everyone is doing it, who do you sue? Everyone? And even if you go that route, come up with a monetary figure for destroying the ecosystem that we all rely on for food. And, even if you could, we'd have to hire more people in the courts to accommodate the literal explosion in cases. Ideally we wouldn't need the EPA, ideally companies and people would choose not to pollute, and know for a fact that what they put into the environment isn't harmful. This is, however not an ideal world, and as such when it's ideals versus reality, the reality will win, every time.

That was something that always bothered me too, the blurring of what rich is. It seems to me that if those making a few million a year running a business can't 'afford' for their personal income taxes going up a few percent, then a whole bunch of their employees should be getting pay raises. To put it another way: if "I need more money because I can't afford to pay my bills" gets met with "your personal financial troubles are not MY responsibility" then the same could be said to them. After all, I was able to raise a family on 45k a year without any government aid (well until the economy tanked and I had to take a lower paying job)

Sure, planes may be right out, perhaps shipping too, but trucking? No way. I don't know how much more efficient it would be, but what about a system like they use in diesel locomotives, and in ships (engine turns generator, electricity from generator turns wheels). IIRC someone in Oklahoma started refitting cars with a similar system, Neil Young was one of his first customers (classic Lincoln, I think), claimed it got 100 miles to the gallon. Can't be arsed with a link right now, but this is slashdot, I'm sure someone can find it.