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These people are injecting disinformation alongside unsubstantiated invective and vitriol into the public discourse. What they're saying should be denounced by anyone wishing to have a reasonable debate on the issues. Above all else whenever complaints are made about these people the response should not be "the left is just as bad". You do this to a certain extent but I've seen far more stringent reactions from others (who admonished the town hall crashing theatrics by noting a few case instances of Democrats doing shady things at town halls)

I have to agree with Mokele on this. Where's the left's equivalent of Michael Savage? Glenn Beck? When did liberals show up to a George W. Bush event touting AR-15s?

Anything done without bipartisan cooperation is doomed to piss off moderates? I seem to recall Republicans remaining in power for 3 years after the invasion of Iraq.

Actually, quite the opposite is true. It's possible to formally prove that certain programs are correct, using techniques like model checking, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_methods#Automated_proof

So much for that spirit of bipartisan cooperation: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/health/policy/19repubs.html?_r=4&hp The Democrats seem to be sick of dealing with Republican opposition to healthcare reform, and are set to go it alone. My opinion is: about time! What do you think?

Hi Username! That's a creative Username. Are you familiar with biocentrism? Also: this is not a physics-related topic, sorry.

There is a place to discuss climate science/atmospheric science presently: the "Ecology and the Environment" subforum of Biology... because climatology is a biological science, right? Err...

I think the Obama Joker is pretty cool. Whatever tard put Socialist on it is, well, a tard. That doesn't even make sense? The fact the original creator took flak for it is absurd.

I think if the previous administration did one thing well it was keeping everyone on point, down to repeating the same soundbytes of rhetoric. Obama's not doing that, and this has thrown the press for a loop. Perhaps after 8 years of getting the same line from every member of the administration the press have grown accustomed to it and don't know how to react.

Yes, an interesting question, but the larger one is: could this actually be group leadership in action, as opposed to the GOP's "this is the party line, everyone must speak it" approach? Could the Obama administration actually let different members speak candidly about their own ideas? That would rule! The press shouldn't rebuke this. They should embrace it as the single greatest thing that has happened to presidential politics in the past decade.

FWIW, so does Obama: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/17/health.care/ The media seem to go nuts over any little thing nowadays, perhaps because they're used to the previous administration having all officials "on point", regardless of whether their points were total BS. Members of the Obama administration seem to present a certain degree of individuality, even when talking to the media, and whenever that happens a sh*tstorm ensues. I'm starting to wonder if the British approach to media (i.e. BBC) is a better way to go than our corporate-controlled, ADD, can't tell their heads from their ass approach we have here in America.

Assault rifles? What's wrong with these people... (EDIT: okay, I actually read the article, and FWIW the AR-15 semi-auto is technically not an assault rifle, but the point still stands)

I'm going to guess: no. It would be nice to hear back one way or the other.

The world will not end in 2012, according to Neil Degrasse Tyson

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pistol-packing-protester-causes-worry-about-obamas-safety/article1248726/ I'm all for the right to peaceably carry weapons, but I really have to say that taking a gun to a protest is in bad form. I'm also concerned that this person is literally up in arms about healthcare reform. Why does he feel so passionately about it that he feels he needs to imply that there's some tyrants who need to be killed for the sake of liberty?

There's no reason you can't construct a computer out of 7400 chips, although it probably wouldn't be a very good computer. Many "systems on a chip" and microcontrollers provide an entire self-contained computer on a single chip.

I suppose on the flip side I should mention there's some quality liberal-slanted humor coming out of The Daily Show, and I suppose more interestingly it has substance, like Glenn Beck vs. Glenn Beck on healthcare:

You might see if Spybot can detect and remove the particular piece of malware that is troubling you.

Short answer: yes.

It's a comic. Grow a sense of humor. Let me get this straight, you accuse me of making an "invalid, partisan comparison" (which I did vicariously through a comic strip, itself intended to be facetious) then you immediately follow it up with an invalid, partisan comparison (except serious)? You should try harder. While I'm at it, let me take a shot at this one for real this time: Perhaps people are happy with the progress made on this front. We have a president committed to a scheduled withdrawal instead of one clamoring about how he's going to keep the troops there indefinitely. I still don't see how that compares to Republicans who sat on their hands while Bush drove us from a budget surplus to record deficits and economic ruin, then decided to start complaining only after a Democrat was elected president.

Personally I would love to see the CBO projections decomposed into the relative costs of the four entitlements of the Medicare program so we can properly ascertain which ones are most problematic. If anyone can find such a graph I'd love to see it.

Sorry, I couldn't resist:

I think it's rather telling there were no contemporaneous teabagger-esque protests directed at TARP, but as soon as Obama wants to provide government money to rebuild infrastructure and business through the stimulus the teabaggers came crawling out of the woodwork. In another telling incident, Penn & Teller, two Cato Institute libertarians I'm otherwise a huge fan of, recently did an episode of their show Bullsh*t! on taxes, and while discussing TARP threw up a picture of Obama and Biden. Somehow Obama's name has retroactively ended up on TARP even in the minds of otherwise highly rational conservative libertarians who would normally have many bones to pick with the GOP.

It's interesting you're capable of making an account with the same name as an existing users and have "like" 25 proxies you can use, but you weren't smart enough to duplicate iNow's avatar. We now return to your regularly scheduled thread.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090816/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_overhaul Bowing to GOP pressure, Obama is now signaling its willingness to drop the government run healthcare option entirely, purusing health insurance cooperatives. Needless to say I'm not too happy about this. Here I was hoping for a substantive change in healthcare which could potentially lead to a cheaper healthcare system for all Americans. Instead we're just getting more of the same. I can't imagine this will reflect very well on Obama's popularity either. With total control of the White House and Congress, Democrats are now capitulating to the Republicans. They've been given the chance to bring real change to America and they're foregoing it entirely. Le sigh.