Listen here meow.

I'm willing to bet the number of women who give birth greatly exceeds the number of men who give birth, and given the fact that the world's population continues to grow, a phenomenal number of babies are being created every day. Why are you angry about this?

You know what? I've got my convictions for sure, but to hell with the original disagreement. I've been up all night watching over my youngest daughter; she spiked a 103F fever about 12 hours ago out of nowhere, and I rushed her to the ER with my wife as soon as she called me at the office. Your last comment hits home with me in terms of examining where I can do better on some things, and I apologize for my original profanity. Email sometime if you like.

The extrajudicial killing of an American citizen is absolutely an impeachable offense. I don't care if you don't like that, it doesn't change reality. Reference previous notes regarding our political climate for why nothing is likely to be done about it in the near future. Republicans are just as much to blame for this as any Democrat.

That's hilarious. First off, Big Oil is a big problem. The practice (and it is very real) of essentially handing petroleum interests billions of USD worth of tax breaks/incentives/whatever-people-want-to-call-it-these-days is phenomenally poor policy. Second, global warming is a fact. I've never said it isn't, merely asked people running around screaming about whatever the flavor of the week pulp media talking heads are spouting off about to slow down and examine all available sources of information before adopting alarmist positions concerning outcomes and what's needed over say the next decade. That's a pretty far cry from being a global warming denier. I'd also be delighted if people would spend a little more time talking about kids starving under bridges instead of cozying up to debates on things they somehow find easier to talk about. I suppose you'd have to have reading comprehension skills to understand this, though. By the way, what's your carbon footprint, big guy?

Bitcoin, along with other novel developments in cryptocurrencies, is an interesting thing to think about and play with. I certainly do. I also care about other currencies, namely several examples that are by definition fiat. Again, you're probably just skimming some text and thinking "oh boy, I bet I can use this against him!" It didn't work out for you.

Actually, my favorite language as a kid was C. Naturally, I played around with various BASIC dialects as well, but even with those there were things you simply couldn't do without what amounted to ASM routines expressed in hex, so I had to deal with that as well. It's amazing what kids can do when their parents don't artificially limit them. Speaking of kids...

I moved out of my dad's house at 17. We couldn't get along back then, partially due to some older family history and partially due to problems between my stepmother and I at the time. Long story short, I've been working since then, and took my first professional programming position in Atlanta doing telecommunications coding for the platforms that drove VRU/IVR systems for BofA, SunTrust, etc when I was 18. It paid about 70K at the time. You're correct that I'm 32 now, and I'm happily married with a couple of beautiful kids. My total personal income is six figures, which permits my wife to stay at home with our children without us having to worry about money, which is nice. Incidentally, my military service was in the Navy, where I decided to walk away from a nice paying IT career and cut my income by about 60% in my mid twenties to serve my nation. What would you know about that?

For that matter, and I guess this goes back to the earlier points regarding the fossil fuels bit, I've spent quite a bit of time trying to help in local communities with things like volunteering at homeless shelters and other work. We have millions of people living in poverty in this nation, but folks like you are absolutely okay with yammering on about things that may or may not be an immediate issue for a hundred years. Have you ever held an infant that hadn't eaten for three days because his mom was homeless? I have, and it's not pretty. I guess it's too much to ask that people put some serious effort into looking at the problems we have right now in our society. It requires work and genuinely giving a shit about others instead of just saying you do, and many people don't generally seem terribly interested in either.

I know your type. You like to try to put people into nice little cliche boxes when they stand up to your idiocy. You're having serious trouble understanding how someone can possibly fail to view politics as the usual "favorite sports team" deal, and you're having an awfully hard time dealing with being called out on your games and cowardice. In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter if you carry on being an idiot? I suppose it doesn't. The bigger problem hits when it's a hundred million people walking around in virtually complete apathy, happy with their little notions about how simple things are and becoming increasingly willing to ignore massive civil liberties abuses because it isn't affecting them at the moment. You have a choice in that. Maybe you'll change.

If you're still interested in continuing this discussion, let's take it off list, since it's already horribly offtopic. You can reach me at philip.paradis@gmail.com.

You're right, I'm not a lawyer. Oddly enough, however, I happen to have been party to face to face conversations with more than one assembly of attorneys discussing this very matter, and the consensus was strongly that the actions we're discussing are in fact illegal. Perhaps you haven't heard of the Due Process Clause; the actions under discussion absolutely represent arbitrary denial of the right to life and liberty.

This hasn't been challenged successfully because our political climate, which you're apparently in the habit of aggressively condoning, makes such a challenge prohibitively difficult at present. Justice Department rulings are also immensely different from court rulings as well, but if you think for one moment our courts are immune to the influence of the administration, you're a bigger fool than I thought. The shit Holder has managed to get away with is appalling in its breadth, rivaled perhaps only by some of his predecessors in terms of mass infringement upon civil liberties (Patriot Act, creation of the TSA, etc). I suppose that's okay with you, though, since you aren't directly impacted by it in ways resembling a cruise missile converting your body into red mist. More on that in a bit.

I vehemently opposed many of Bush's policies, as I oppose many of Obama's. Hell, I didn't even vote for Bush in his second term, realizing fully that I had screwed up the first time. I also served this nation in the military; I suspect your closest recent contact with an armed services uniform would probably have been in a thrift store.

As far as childish games go, you're the one playing them, straight from the start. You simply cannot discuss a matter like an adult and deal with it straight without polluting the discourse with tired old cliches about what some other guy did, or by casting aspersions on someone's views via implied affiliation with an opposing political faction. That makes you a fucking dumbass, and you're an outright coward for lacking the spine to stand up and oppose actions which directly contravene the principles we as a nation are supposed to hold so dear. So, in sum, fuck off again.

No, it's not legal, and AUMF doesn't even apply to this case, regardless of what Eric Holder would like to believe. It's both illegal and horribly wrong, no matter who's doing it. Your willingness to accept such behavior from the president of our nation absolutely disgusts me, and you handily failed the test of whether you could keep yourself from mentioning other politicians with your last sentence. You simply could not maintain focus on the actual issue, and instead attempted to put words in my mouth implying I agreed with the behavior of our last president. Not that it matters, but that's pretty far from the truth.

In short, you're a partisan fool with the depth of a kiddie pool, so fuck off.

You're saying a president authorizing the killing of American citizens without due process isn't deserving of impeachment. Please defend that position, and be sure to consider how you'd feel if you or a family member were the target of such a killing, along with consideration of the consequences for the foundations of what we consider the core of our nation's principles of justice. Let's see if you can just address the issue straight, without any attempt at bringing up other politicians to deflect attention from it. I doubt you'll be able to.

Thanks buddy, now you've got She Don't Use Jelly stuck in my head. Since I have to sleep shortly, I'm probably going to have jacked up dreams. Yes, I'm "old" for this, but damnit, I've earned it. In retort, I'll see your Flaming Lips and raise you a Mexican Radio.

Referring to the DHS as a legitimate member of the intelligence community is beyond laughable. They're effectively a domestic secret police outfit that operates at the behest of the executive branch, and they can't seem to get most of that right, let alone serious intelligence work. The CIA, NSA, and FBI comprise the effective intelligence apparatus of the United States, and with any luck DHS activities will be severely curtailed in coming years. Incidentally, the TSA is a child agency of the DHS.

It's rather unlikely that an individual with diagnosed shellfish allergy, which in some cases is limited in scope but in cases of severe reaction is more frequently quite broad in scope, could reasonably attribute gastric distress following grasshopper (invertebrate) ingestion to psychosomatic causes. Please reference ample documentation of anaphylaxis following ingestion of grasshoppers.

Restaurant menus generally inform customers of the visually identifiable components of a dish. Wait staff in establishments offering seafood, at least those who have been doing their job for more than a couple of days, are generally aware of shellfish allergies and the consequences of consuming such things for customer who are allergic. Wait or kitchen staff who would proceed to simply remove shellfish from the plate served to a customer, and subsequently attempt to serve the same dish again, should be terminated.

No, it seems the GP has a shellfish allergy, which can result in problems ranging from mild discomfort to anaphylactic shock and death. Exposure to the bodily fluids of shellfish can elicit the same response. People with such issues may also exhibit adverse reactions after consuming other invertebrates, such as insects.

He's not getting anything you're trying to say, so you might as well give up on him now.

The course you've set for the future of the planet is by no means set in stone. Loss of our magnetic field is one possible factor in the course, but is not a certainty and there is plenty of discord on the topic. Go ahead and cite recent sources if you're so certain of your position on this, and be sure to look for dissenting views while you're at it.

I never said we don't have a major problem with special interests on the "pro-carbon" side of the aisle getting undeserved benefits; quite to the contrary, I agree with you on that point. That's money that should absolutely be reallocated to better causes. Saying one thing doesn't mean a person believes something entirely different, and you'd do well to take caution before assuming such things, as it tends to make reasonable discussion difficult and may result in your position being taken less seriously than it otherwise would.

The point here is that we have hordes of immediate problems in society that no reasonable person would say he doesn't care about, but that statement of caring rings hollow when it isn't backed by money and action. Instead, we as a society seem to like to adopt elitist, knee-jerk, "favorite sports team" style positions on matters that may be fairly described as extraordinarily difficult to even get agreed quantification on. Meanwhile, kids are living under bridges in our nation's cities, and folks are dropping dead from chronic disease at relatively young ages left and right.

Do you want to carry on with your knee-jerk reactions and stay in your comfortable little bubble, where you can safely think about things on a time scale that ranges from 50 to perhaps hundreds of years or more, or do you want to take a moment to consider that maybe your energy might be better placed somewhere else, some place that might make a different on matters that are killing millions of people right now? Should you choose the former, don't worry, you'll be the company of most of the rest of society. I suppose that's some consolation at least.