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My high school did compulsory community service, and I helped organize the program. Some students saw it as drudgery, but for others it was a really great experience. Personally I like it, although I don't see how this falls under the category of "socialism"

The FY2009 projected budget deficit is $482 billion. The FY2009 DOD budget (without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) is $515 billion. Sorry, you're wrong.

Yes, and in the grand tradition of such Democrats as Zell Miller, he delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention and trashed the Democratic nominee. But hey, I guess the Democrats should just give him a bye on that one, eh?

He's still registered as a Democrat. He just ran as an independent for the senate after he didn't get the nomination.

...but they can't marry the person they love, or even visit them in the hospital. So no, they don't have exactly the same rights. Why does their lover's gender matter? Yes, however much of the funding for Prop 8 came from out-of-state: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/28/BA7E12038R.DTL&type=politics

Well apparently you haven't been paying attention for the past 8 years. We went from a nearly balanced budget to a nearly trillion dollar budget deficit. This comes after Bush gave huge tax breaks to the super-rich, not to mention saddling the government with defense spending topping one trillion dollars a year. Want to spend more? You can't cut taxes at the same time.

Anyone suggesting that we can't decrease US military spending without taking away bullets, body armor, paychecks, etc. from soldiers is full of sh*t. The Pentagon is a big black hole we pour hundreds of billions of dollars into and they can't even tell us where it's going. It's the only federal department exempt from auditing. I'd be happy if we could just audit the Pentagon. If they could actually get their horrible accounting practices cleaned up, I foresee being able to drastically reduce their budget without directly affecting soldiers.

Yes, that seems like the best solution. Well, this is certainly interesting. Some are claiming that LDS's support of Prop 8 violates their tax exempt status: http://lds501c3.wordpress.com/

Okay, seriously Pangloss, back the f**k up The 2007 farm bill covers a $288 billion over the course of five years. I'll just defer to Wikipedia on the Defense Department: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States Seriously, these don't even compare. One TRILLION dollars in a year, that's: $1,000,000,000,000 in ONE YEAR versus: $2,880,000,000 over FIVE YEARS (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_U.S._Farm_Bill) What are you talking about? Please defend your position, which is completely incongruent with the facts. America is set to spend twice as much on "defense" as the rest of the world combined

My honest opinion of the situation is that Lieberman basically stabbed the entire Democratic party in the back. I have absolutely zero sympathy for him. He f**ked them over and whatever recourse the Democrats desire to take is entirely deserved. They call it "politics" for a reason, and Lieberman played his cards badly. He bet on the losing horse. He has absolutely no reason to expect any favors. Now's the time he should expect the reciprocity coming him. Now it's time for him to bow out and take a graceful exit. Considering what the Republicans have done to this country over the past eight years, do you really expect the Democrats should cut him any slack?

Well, Nate Silver of 538's final prediction is 348.6 electoral votes for Obama (as he uses a probabilistic model). The most likely outcome according to his model is that Obama will win all states won by John Kerry in 2004, in addition to Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, while narrowly losing Missouri and Indiana, which would make for a 353-185 win for Obama. Karl Rove projects Obama will lose North Carolina, for a 338-200 win. I'm guessing one of these two projections is correct. And neither were right... Obama won Indiana, which 538 predicted a 30% chance of, but neither rove nor 538 picked Well, the final results are in... Obama wins 364-173 which is more than 538's projections

I don't think an online voting system is practical at this point. If you're worried about people hacking the vote now...

I would love to see the Pentagon audited regularly. Right now they're the only federal department exempt from auditing. It's not for reasons of secrecy or protection of confidential projects. Rather the Pentagon's accounting system is both antiquated and byzantine. That said over the years they've accumulated trillions of dollars in spending they can't account for. Unifying the command structure would certainly be a great step forward in helping the Pentagon be accountable.

Try http://winpwn.com

I guess I'm one of those crazy people who thinks the electoral college is antiquated and needs to be abolished

I watch plenty of TV, I just watch it on the Internet as opposed to through a dedicated Pay TV system. I listen to Pandora on my iPhone over the 3G network here.

I don't know about you guys, but I think for the most part that liberals have moved to new media sources and don't much listen to the radio. I say this as someone who's involved in radio broadcasting. I love the radio, but most liberals these days are probably either getting their political banter from TV or the Internet. There's a reason conservatives dominate talk radio: conservatives are the ones who still listen to talk radio. I mean, seriously, The Savage Nation has something like 5X as many listeners as Rachel Maddow's show on Air America...

Obama has an awesome plan for reducing the deficit. It's called: collect more tax revenue.

Obama has set up a web site for the "Office of the President Elect" http://change.gov I've got to say, I really love how much Obama works the Internet and electronic communications.

You are aware the electoral college is just a formality at this point, right?

Her underlying argument was that a progressive tax structure is unfair. Her father makes more money, therefore he gets "penalized" by paying a higher percentage of his income as taxes. The response to that is simple: he's not being "penalized" in the way that someone making less money but paying a higher percentage of their income would pay. When you raise taxes on the upper class, can they not make rent? Do they have to choose between paying rent and utilities versus eating? Do they worry about destroying their credit because they can't pay their credit cards? Do they worry about losing a house because they can't pay their mortgage? I'm really sick of affluent wingnuts using the word "unfair" in regard to taxation. Know what's unfair? A member of a gay couple not being able to visit their spouse in a hospital. That is unfair. But being in a higher income bracket in America, especially under Bush? UNFAIR?! Are you kidding me? She's a wingnut first because she can't conceive any rationale for a progressive tax structure, secondly for comparing an upper class person being in a higher tax bracket to being a slave, someone who is effectively imprisoned and receives only room and board for their labor typically alongside brutal abuse, and third for making John McCain look like a liberal moonbat.

Yeah it's probably about time we put Palin behind us, but I just couldn't help but bring this up, sorry: http://www.newsweek.com/id/167581 :-( !!!!! POOR PALIN !!!!! :-(

Let me just say that I was downtown last night and it felt a lot like this:

On the 2G iPhone it's just a software hack, so you can restore it to a pristine factory state by doing a factory restore with iTunes. There's no firmware hacking/unlocking involved.

There's been some discussion about this, however I felt it deserved its own thread. California passed a ballot initiative which amends their state constitution specifically to exempt same-sex couples from being recognized as married. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008) Some questions to consider: 1) What are the moral ramifications of granting homosexual couples different rights than heterosexual couples? 2) What do you think about a group of out-of-state mormons initiating an amendment to the constitution of a state they don't even live in? 3) What ramifications do you think this amendment has under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution? Can state constitutions specifically state that they will not honor a particular legal status bestowed upon people from another state under which specific provisions are granted by state law? Does this amendment violate the US constitution? Personally, I am disgusted by the passage of this amendment. This amendment discriminates against a particular set of people. I wonder how mormons would feel about an amendment to California's constitution which states that no mormons can be married.