If you can survive listening to more than one of his shows nowadays, then you are either previously brain-damaged, or are seeking to become so. He was tolerable and even somewhat balanced in his early days, but then he went off the deep end and into whatever he is now.

Actually, that isn't how it turns out at all: there is no "ghetto" established, as the laws that the prevailing governing body passes will apply to the entire incorporated area (city, county, state, whatever). The key difference is that without the gerrymandering, there will be no voice in that governing body to represent the extreme minority's interests at all. So it's actually anti-segregationist, since it gives the minority a stronger voice than they would have otherwise.

Of course, that's if gerrymandering is done with the public's good in mind. More often, unfortunately, it's used just to strengthen a particular candidate's party. And that party's interests are more often solely the interests of the party itself, and not the citizens of the district the party claims to represent.

On the whole, "interacting" via message boards is about as productive for education as typing with mittens on is for coding. Online courseware can provide students with reference materials and enlightening prose, the enhancement that comes with direct, rapid-fire human interaction is missing.

This is why medical, law, and engineering schools heavily promote study groups where you appear IN PERSON to interact with your classmates. The nuance of the spoken word, and the nonlinearity of conversation, adds a powerful dimension to the student's internalization of the material in ways you just cannot duplicate with words on a screen or paper.

Somewhat yes, but mostly no.

There are still very high barriers to using warrantless-wiretap as legal evidence to support a charge. Just having a recording doesn't automatically mean you'll get to use it in Court, by far, warrantless or otherwise.

In addition, you should take some satisfaction in realizing that those who voted for this extension are themselves not exempt from it, AND they are mostly former lawyers who, because they are now politicians, probably have lots of skeletons in their closet that they would prefer stayed there. That the measure would pass therefore suggests that it's of little consequence in the big legal picture. Which is true.

But it makes great political hay in front of the right audience.

Not in wireless spectrum, especially if you are not the only radio. Far from it, actually.

"Unintentionally"? Surely you jest. There's nothing "unintentional" about it: those deprived are statistically likely to vote Democrat (*).

And guess who is pushing to "reduce voter fraud" via these initiatives? Republicans.

(*) - And you would be too, if you had ever lived poor for more than a few days. The dog-eat-dog Republican vision sounds great, until you wake up a dog.

I'm a small business owner (C corp), and have taken responsibility for my financial well-being for almost two decades: my personal business is my sole source of income. Romney/Ryan would be a disaster for us.

Think it through. Health insurance is my largest line-item expense, and along with income security e.g. the ability to identify and win productive business contracts so that I can meet payroll is the greatest impediment to my hiring of additional workers. Romney/Ryan would do damage on both fronts, first by rolling back Obamacare and therefore making health insurance companies even more powerful than they already are, and by increasing unemployment via a chaotic and substantial reduction in government payrolls.

Larger companies, with established and deep credit, cash flows and contracts, could probably weather the storm for a couple years. I could survive maybe six months without an income to support myself and family. And then what? Limited unemployment benefits for me, and stupid policies that somehow magically "create jobs" while at the same time actively eliminating them.

In addition to being a small business owner, I have family members in the medical profession. So I can see several different sides to the situation. None of them look very promising if Romney/Ryan get a chance to implement their policies.

Citations please. From both of you preferably, but definitely from the guy with the limited vocabulary.

My theory is that they DO know what would happen, i.e. literal implementation of dog-eat-dog. We all say that we want that rugged individualism--- but for everyone but ourselves. Paul brings that too close to reality.

Paul has some good ideas, but take a look at Somalia to see how well they work once implemented on a national scale. Hint: not very well.

Face it, large groups of people need SOME structure and definition to which its members can then subscribe. Libertarianism rejects that reality.

I wonder if he plays golf with North Korea's ruler, too? There's a smackdown I'd pay money to see.

Because you aren't the presentation that such a cure would be appropriate for. But since autism is a spectrum disorder, and still a fairly general diagnosis at that, your specific presentation doesn't generalize to the affected population. Heck, we don't even define that population very concisely yet.

I'm glad you see your condition as a positive one, and I sincerely hope that those around you also view your condition positively (and I use the term "condition" here with some hesitation, only because I don't know a better term and truly don't mean to be pejorative). But I know kids with the diagnosis who I'm not sure share your feeling---if they are even that aware. And their caregivers are greatly affected by their condition as well. Even something that just significantly improves their condition, without curing it, would improve everyone's lives immensely.

And at the rate of increase of Autism-related diagnoses without anything resembling a cure on the horizon, we don't have to continue much farther before society as a whole must plan for accommodations. Many children with the diagnosis will need intensive, life-long supervision. Think Alzheimers, but over many, many more years.

This. Precisely.

All of your examples are far from supportive of your position, and indeed are not even anti-capitalistic. You seem to be confusing the notion of "capitalism" with "anarchy", and you seem to be seeking the latter. (Look to Somalia if you need a quick anarchy hit, their system is fully up and running).

All the rules that you cite are ones that every business in the USA must follow, except for some common-sense exceptions. So those rules cannot be anti-capitalistic, because EVERY business must follow them uniformly. Thus, the rules are simply the implementation of reality.

The citizens of the USA have decided that we want generally safe products, generally truthful advertising, and general conformance to our tax obligations. The organizations you are maligning exist simply to implement those mandates. Are they perfect? No. But they are far from the evil, winged monkeys of doom that you seem to think they are.

Speaking as an actual businessman who owns and runs my own, incorporated (C) entity, I can confirm that there are a lot of rules to follow. But once you understand them, they all make sense and are pretty predictable. And since everyone else must follow them too, their cost of compliance isn't material because it's the same cost for everyone.

Pretty boring, actually, but reality tends to be like that.

Ok now I call bullshit. I don't think you have any experience with what you are talking about.

In over a decade of doing business, I have never had any government agencies "come looking" for me.

It's true that your Small Business Administration reference shows that corporate activities are regulated here in the USA. As they are everywhere--- and the overwhelming majority of those regulations are well-reasoned. Taking the length of the list of regulations out of context, as you have done, is a nonsense attempt to make a point that is genuinely unsupportable.

Would I like less paperwork? Sure. But my impression, after reading many of the regulations themselves, is that removing them would create opportunities for abuse that would ultimately destroy markets and opportunities as businesses, looking out for their own self-interests, took advantage. The individual rules as they exist today might not let YOU gain significant, unstable advantage--- but they prevent your competition from doing likewise. Which they would then use to stomp, starve, or litigate you out of existence even if your products were objectively better than theirs.

I'll let you in on a little secret: just having the objectively best product isn't enough to run a successful business. By far. A lot of those other necessary things are coded in the SBA regulations and elsewhere---they create a setting where businesses that truly do everything right can thrive.

Maybe you thought you had an objectively best product, yet failed at it as a business? That's hardly the market's fault.

Most Americans follow a live-and-let-live philosophy. We do have a few very vocal minority groups who wish to impose their codes of morality on the rest of us, however. But I wouldn't suggest that the majority of our 350M+ population are attempting that unless you are prepared to bring citations.

Most Americans surveyed DO in fact believe that our system is better than many others. They also believe that is is far from perfect, though we disagree on where the areas are that need improvement---and what those improvements should be.

It is true that America's consumer-driven economy benefits us, and large segments of the rest of the world.

As far as the size of our national debt, remember that we are a nation of 350+M people and the most productive economy in human history in both total and per-capita terms. As a percentage of our GDP, our national debt is much smaller than a typical American household's. And smaller than many other first-world households, too. It isn't unusual for an American to borrow 300% of their annual income in the form of a mortgage, for example; the USA's debt is roughly one tenth of that, at interest rates that make the money nearly free.

Granted, "a few trillions of dollars" is an astoundingly-large number. But without context, the number is meaningless. You have a few trillion cells in your body, for example, and several trillion sub-atomic particles pass through your person every second (coming from the Sun and elsewhere, but I digress). So what?

Actually, ordinary Americans seem interested to hear when our government does wrong. But they don't want to hear hyperbole: Faux News has pretty much saturated our ability to listen to that crap. But bring a well-researched, reasoned, and relevant example, and we're more likely than not to listen.