Yes. And I try to support politicians who support policies I approve of. But I have no illusions that they necessarily have any great commitment to them beyond their function in getting them reelected.

Exactly. If they fixed the issue, they would have nothing to make noise about. Immigration policy is the classic example.

Nor do they care. It is all about what the electorate, which knows even less, thinks about the idea.

What! Illegal aliens!! Does ICE know about this!

Unfortunately, real "Bhuddists" are not that non-violent. See the persecution of Moslems in Burma or the Sri Lankan civil war (not there were not plenty of atrocities on both sides of that one) for recent examples. Religion in general is all about I am right and everyone who does not agree with me is not only wrong but evil. It can be used to justify nearly anything.

And if the Congress was actually doing their job, that might work.

Perhaps, but it is not clear that the reactor can in fact extract the necessary elements and, in any case, manufacturing a working solar panel from the raw materials would require a major factory that could not be taken there. As I said, it could be done, but the cost/value argument seems not to suggest any reason to actually do it.

Yes. Doing some back of the envelope calculations, I get yield at 100% efficiency of about 4 tons of oxygen an hour. Even more reasonable assumptions would be about 1 ton an hour, which sounds feasible. I am less certain about the feasibility of shipping that many solar panels to the moon and setting them all up, before you could get the operation going. It could be done, but is it really a useful way to spend resources?

Mostly the attacks on people changing their position are aimed at stopping them from doing so and thereby supporting the position they have found reason to abandon. Politicians often support positions they know are wrong, for their own profit. Checking the evidence is always a good idea but is not always practical. If the US says that the Chinese are secretly planning to invade Taiwan, for example, how could anyone expect to check. They presumably have access to sources that we do not.

There are levels. People may make wrong statements that they believe to be true. People may also make wrong statements that they know to be wrong, that is something altogether different. One is being honestly mistaken and can happen to anyone. The other is lying. The great problem that I see in modern society, is that when someone changes their position on something, because they have new information, they are accused of waffling or wavering. Stupidly clinging to an old position that you took in good faith and now know is wrong is just as bad as lying about it intentionally.

Sorry, but no one had reported being scammed either themselves or a family member? The truth is that law enforcement is too busy chasing minor drug dealers and jaywalkers and is paying little attention to computer crime, which is a gigantic problem and which funds places like North Korea.

Why was it necessary for a bunch of internet pranksters to do this? Where was law enforcement, while all of this was going on? They couldn't manage a simple sting of their own?

All the other people who are insured by the companies being defrauded are the victims. Their insurance costs will increase to help cover the payments that the insurance company makes to the fraudsters. There is a simple solution; stop offering insurance coverage to people visiting Everest. The world would be a better place if thousands of people did not go up there leaving waste and destruction.

True. But one generally creates the other. If citizens are not afraid of their government, the government has nothing to fear from them. They still need to watch the military and the entrenched bureaucracy.

The Russians have always been afraid of their government, with good reason. The secret police in Russia go back to Ivan the Terrible in the fifteen hundreds. The government has always been some sort of monarchy or dictatorship. They have only the illusion of voting and democracy, and no tradition to tell them it should be different. And do not tell me it is the same everywhere. In the US we do have real choices, sometimes both bad but real. It is our own fault if we keep electing crooks and idiots.