Phi for All

Conservatism in the US has been on the rise since just after WWII, and I think we're seeing, at its apex, the Tea Party emerging as the most extremist arm of that movement. I think what started as a group that protested the taxing of non-diet soda in NY state as an unfair burden to those who don't abuse their carbonated beverage privileges has been commandeered by corporate concerns aimed at furthering models that offer the most profit while doing little to grow the economy. What used to be the backbone of the country, the commerce of ingenuity and prosperity to promote the general welfare, has been stripped of integrity and forced to pillage our national future in the name of profit disguised as freedom. To borrow from the Firefly world, the corporate Reavers are wearing the flesh masks of those we thought we used to know, and if we don't stop them soon, they're going to rape us to death, eat us and sew our skins into their clothing. And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order.

Secret Service determines what's needed for the security of those it protects, so this is a non-issue for anyone trying to bash a single president. Every president gives the Secret Service fits every time they want to leave the White House. All those motorcades you see, the buses, Air Force One, any time any president needs to go somewhere it costs a fortune in security measures. This is not an issue where Obama has been any better or any worse than any other president, so if you don't remove this from your repertoire of Obama/Liberal/Other-Misunderstood-Things bashing, you're just feeding the propaganda machine. Seriously, if you want some support on subjects where Obama hasn't done enough, go after his lack of inspiration while in office, after such an inspirational campaign to get there. There were so many times when he should have addressed the nation about what he was up against, and called on us to urge our representatives to help pull the nation back together. Obama focused on policy and partisan bridge-building when the GOP was dead set against his getting re-elected, to the point where they wouldn't even support him on issues they should have. For goodness sake, rigney, the Republicans shot down H.R. 466 (Wounded Veteran Job Security Act), a bill that would have protected the jobs of veterans who have to take time off work to treat a service-related disability (and that's not the only bill for veterans they blocked). The Republicans shot down H.R. 515 (Radioactive Import Deterrence Act), which keeps businesses from bringing low-level nuclear waste from other countries into the US (wtf?!). The Republicans shot down H.R. 1029 (Alien Smuggling and Terrorism Prevention Act), a bill that would make it tougher to enter the US illegally and impose stricter penalties and better border enforcement (and yet they still blame Obama for lax immigration policy). The Republicans shot down H.R. 1110 and H. R. 1258 (PHONE Act and Truth in Caller ID Act), bills that would make it a crime to spoof the caller ID number for the purposes of commercial transactions aimed at defrauding the person being called (I get calls like this at least once a month, from people who show up on caller ID as a business telling me my "account" is in jeopardy, and if I could just verify the account number and PIN...). The list goes on and on, good and smart and effective legislation stonewalled just because it came from a source that would have made Obama look good, something the GOP has been trying to avoid ever since Obama took office and Rush Limbaugh cried, "I hope Obama fails!" Obama should have personally let the public know what was happening instead of trying to build bridges with a bunch of wet noodles.

Wilson Microwave Systems is a trademark name taken out by CINCINNATI MICROWAVE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. Maybe that will improve your search chances.

It's fairly typical that your argument ignores all the detail I've tried to put in my posts and simply reduces me to being confident in the Democratic party. I think I've made it quite clear that I see them, by far, as the lesser of two evils in a two party election. Do I agree with everything the Dems do? No, but I completely disagree with what Romney/Ryan want to do regarding most issues. To me, the Dems need more time to undo the horror of the Bush years. Romney/Ryan will just bring them crashing back, with even more special interest emphasis. And again, I think your argument against "liberal politicians" is simply rhetoric. You're being fooled by those with special interests into believing that people are either liberal or conservative about everything, or that those definitions are even worthy of being applied to issues with the level of nuance we see these days. There are some fantastic social programs in effect currently, some that many Republicans and Democrats support wholeheartedly, and also some that are ineffective and need reform or dismantling altogether, but they all get called "welfare" and suddenly it becomes a liberal issue. It's like conservative belief that the media has a liberal bias. The media has a commercial bias, and a need to get people to understand what they mean with the fewest, shortest words possible, words that will keep consumers from changing channels. The media only cares what you think liberal and conservative mean, what it means to their viewers, and since they mean completely different things to everyone, those definitions are worse than meaningless; they're misleading and divisive and don't serve to explain anything. Well, we all knew auto industry bailouts was a powderkeg issue, damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't. But your argument fails to take into account the poor leadership GM has, and thus the mistakes it has made. I hope you aren't falling into the trap of blaming Obama for how the company is being run. Obama already has a demanding job we're paying him to do. I know the AFL-CIO pulled some projected funds from all federal campaigns way back in June. It supposedly wasn't to snub Obama, it was to direct that money into their own infrastructure and advocacy programs. Perhaps you could link us to the news story you're talking about. Heilige Mutter Gottes, rigney, do your research before you puke up this crap! The buses belong to the Secret Service, and they have about a 10-year lifespan, so yes, if the Republicans win this fall, they'll get to use the buses. It's a protect-the-President kind of thing, not a liberal thing or Obama thing. And you don't want to go down the road that leads to presidential vacations, because you'll lose. Obama has spent 1/3 the time on vacation that Bush II did in his first term, and 1/2 the time Reagan did in his first term. Once again, you should check the facts before regurgitating the junk you hear from a single source.

Fuzzwood has been suspended for three days for a particularly vulgar post in violation of Section 2.1a of the rules.

Science has very specific terminology for a very good reason. As has been mentioned, you can't use the word "evolve" in this way because it doesn't meaningfully describe the mechanism involved. It's like the problem scientists have with people misusing the word "theory" to mean "the half-baked idea I got this morning while waiting for the shower water to warm up". Please don't make the mistake of redefining something and then finding problems with it based on your redefinition. You should be able to see by now where that road will lead.

I think it's what Darth Vader was the Dark Lord of.

No, I began to feel it starting with Reagan's trickle-down, and just got fed up during Bush II. The first seemed more of an oratory, but the latter was far more anal. And here is what you quoted. On that note, quite likely we have nothing more to discuss. If you'll note the time-stamps at the bottom of the actual posts, I quoted what you wrote at 8:46 am MDT, but you edited it 7 minutes later at 8:53 am MDT. Unlike you though, I'm not implying you did it maliciously.

But these are the very things that you seem to support with your arguments. The health insurance idea is just my opinion, of course. By offering a competitive government-backed (read "taxpayer-backed") health insurance, we let the market decide which is best, and with the least amount of change to the healthcare system as a whole. My point is that anything progressive that's suggested gets shot down by people with your point of view as "bringing our nation to an end". It seems very simple to me, for instance, that we should adjust our tax structure back to the level it was when we were prosperous. Same with regulations that protected the consumers, citizens and businesses alike. Businesses still did very well under those regs, and the vast majority of the people did better also. Your arguments are very vague, waving your hands at some kind of evil liberalism without any cogent examples of why it's evil. And then you bring up the extreme views of others, saying you agree with them, but when pressed you put your hands in the air and claim they aren't your words. I can see why Romney is your guy, both of your overall stances suffer when people bother to check the facts.

We could set things right. We could reform our politics, end special interests and reform campaign financing, remove the waste from government programs while strengthening the ones that work, start a national health insurance program that allows doctors to be doctors who put health above the dollar, put regulations back that protect our economy from relentless business models, tax the top and the corporations at the rate they were taxed when the USA was at it's most prosperous all around, and bring some integrity back into our representative government. The real problem, rigney, is going to be convincing people who hold your point of view that we're not "bringing our nation to an end" as we're setting things right.

! Moderator Note I'm going to move this over to Computer Science from Engineering and see if we can get some more replies.

With Cajun accents, you be polin' a whole otha pirogue, cher.

This incident happened over 50 years ago. I don't consider it to have happened in "such modern times". Testing and standards were different back then.

The deeper voice part is untrue. There are many movies with examples of southern US accents, but I think you're better off googling "southern US accent" and then filtering for videos. And the accent is discernibly different by southern state. North Carolinians sound different than Texans.

Pedal comes from the Latin pedis, meaning "foot", and kangaroos have two of them on the ends of their legs, thus making them bipedal. Their forelimbs are considered arms equipped with hand-like paws. That crawl-walking they do to move short distances actually involves their tails as well. They balance on tail and forelimbs like a tripod and then move their feet forward.

! Moderator Note Please note that this is a discussion forum. If this is a drive-by wall o' text copy/paste rant, it will be removed. If you wish to stay and discuss your ideas, per the rules you agreed to when you joined, it will be allowed to remain, as will you.

In discussion here, we've never been able to come up with scientifically meaningful supportive evidence of God, much less proof. Proof seems impossible.

Why do you think these forces oppose each other? Do you have such a device? Can you explain it or show some experiments? Do you have any evidence to support this statement? It will take 500 years to do what, exactly?

Ultimately, to me, Romney represents corporate models that have learned to profit from manipulating the government in ways that don't promote the general welfare. I don't think General Electric has any products that represent the kind of ROI they got when they spent $84.4M lobbying for tax breaks that saved them $8.4B. Helping make businesses wealthy at the expense of tax revenue is NOT my idea of free market capitalism at its best. In 1955, corporate taxes were 27.3% of federal revenue. In 2010, they were a mere 8.9%, yet they continue to get Republicans like Romney to scream about overtaxation of "the job creators". I guess if you strangle education long enough, you get people dumb enough to believe anything. And of course there's the integrity issue. "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth" is not the mantra for how I want to be represented in my government. I was born a moderate, progressive Eisenhower Republican, and what the right wing has done to that proud party makes me sick.

If you saw one under your car tire, you'd still say, "What the heck is... oh, it's a tennis ball."

Depends on how finely shredded they are. At some measurable level I'm sure they would.

I could do it. If they're still considered tennis balls after being shredded.

My point is that "in control" sort of assumes we're the puppetmasters, working in a sort of ex vivo kind of way to engineer the evolution of other species, rather than simply being part of nature and the natural pressures that affect such mechanisms. Does that make sense? We're a part of the evolution of every life form on the planet, as they are in ours.

Do you mean "geyser", the jet of water from a hot spring? Is this for homework?

Evolutionarily speaking, are pandas worth conserving? I think the question itself assumes that we're controlling evolution rather than simply being part of its mechanism. Whatever the panda is doing to keep itself alive to reproduce (including being worthy of the help or harm humans can bring) will continue to work until it doesn't.