AlanS

I haven't watched a full game of football, since I was in high school. The Super Bowl is usually a great time to go for a drive on empty streets or shopping in empty stores. (My sport is soccer and team is USMNT, and San Jose Earthquakes) This time the plan was for my daughter and me, to meet my son for dinner at a normally busy restaurant. When he called, to ask that we delay an hour - he was watching but I guess expected a blow-out - I checked the internet to see the score. It was 33-32. I watched from that point. Saw the last touchdown, and the sack of Brady. What I saw I have to admit was a good game. As someone that hasn't seen the game in a while, I need to say that I think it has changed for the worst. First I don't like teams playing on artificial turf, if you don't get dirty playing the game your not trying hard enough. And second what is it with the catch rule on the last touchdown? I'm still as soccer fan first, but unfortunately will need to wait 5 years before seeing the World Cup, since I'm not watching a World Cup without the US.

Russia's fake elections are going to be in March, and Putin needs to try to scare the people that think they deserve freedom of speech in the mean time. Alexei Navalny was arrested yet again. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/police-raid-russian-opposition-leaders-hq-protests-arise-52661737

I'm full in favor of solar panel + batteries would want it on every house where it makes sense. I would alter the design of the grid to better handle homes being a generator of power during the day, and force utility companies to stop penalizing solar. But being realistic, solar isn't going to work as a main source of power for anyone that lives where it snows. The moment it snows, or leaves cover your panels, or your neighbor's tree or clouds block the sun your panels are not generating power. Solar will never realistically be the main source of energy - within this century at least - and if we are going to meaningfully reduce CO2 emissions to stop global warming, we need to do it now. Not start 100 years from now.

Coal and Solar are two very different types of energy generation. You comment implies that you can just replace coal with solar. You cannot. Coal is base power generation and should be replaced by zero carbon emitting nuclear power plants, but instead are being replaced by marginally better natural gas plants. Natural gas energy plants do expel less CO2, but it takes fracking to make it cheap enough to be a replacement for coal. Putting a tariff on solar panels (many of them subsidized by the Chinese govt.) does improve the position of solar panel manufacturing Tesla's (Solar City) division. I think this is a good thing. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/trump-solar-tariffs-manufacturing-renaissance#gs.KXR7k58 And the argument that Trump is just doing this to boost coal isn't that clear case your initial post on this thread pretends it is.

The designer that put a 'destroy everything' button next to a door open button needs a slap. They found the person responsible. See picture.

She is qualified, and so are many other people. We need to stop limiting our choices to career politicians.

So do you think only Republican's gerrymander, or they are some how better at it than Democrat? Gerrymandering is a bipartisan effort and we are going to need non-partisan minded citizens to fight it. Can Math Detect Gerrymandering? http://video.unctv.org/video/3005331288/ Reforming our democracy will start with fighting gerrymandering, preventing closed party primaries and allowing for ranked voting of the type that ensures the candidate that is most representative of the voters' wins, instead of forcing voter make a choice between the lesser of the two evils provided by the two party system. In this modern era, I think we should scrap the party system in favor making candidates state how they would vote on certain issues and let the voters find that candidate that would vote the most like them. Without a tribal party affiliation they will be free to vote more like their district instead of being a rubber stamp for their party.

Actually we should not put nuclear and coal into the same category. Nuclear power has zero carbon emissions, while coal expels the most CO2 per unit of energy created of any fuel. We need to build more nuclear power plants and close all the coal plants. CO2 changing the climate is a scientific fact. However, the rate of change is exaggerated by many politicians with an economic agenda. From what I've read we might have some summers with no ice at the north pole starting by 2040 and up to 3 feet of ocean rise by 2100. Which some people misinterpret as "natural climate change". It isn't. What we are doing now is setting the ball rolling for a massive change in the climate that will take place over the next 1,000 years that once started will be impossible to stop. Even with computer modeling we don't fully understand all the feedback effects, which might make the changes faster or slow, BUT it will not change the end result. If you look 1,000 year out.... 3 feet in ocean rise turn into 30 or 50 feet (maybe 100 or 200 feet even) and the entire state of Florida and all the coastal cities disappears, the ocean becomes acidic, killing all of the coral reefs and the ecosystem it supports. Animals can move, but forest cannot. Forests burn and not be replaced. This won't affect people so much, we will adjust. ... But what it will do is create a man-made mass extinction event which will compare equally to what killed the dinosaurs. We as individuals that live out lives of less than 100 year will not perceive it, but on a geological time-scale it would happen in the blink of an eye and it will be our generation that is the cause.

It started a land use issue in the west. This type of ranching was legal 30 years ago, then slowly they federal government forced ranchers off of federal lands. But it morphed into something else from there. This Frontline episode talks about it. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/american-patriot-inside-the-armed-uprising-against-the-federal-government/

The biggest threat to mankind isn't one country. It is all of us and how we think. It is that our brains evolved from primates and we seek safety (emotional and identity) in tribal groups. Within the safety of these tribal identities (whether it is racial, religious, or political affiliation) we create simplified world views, and only pay attention to facts that confirm our biases. Also within these tribal identities, we lose empathy for people we perceive to be in different groups. (And you can see that on this message board very clearly). I think this video states the problem nicely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQAZIyjNLsk

Bill are you trying to deny that places like Molenbeek, Belgium exist? I don't get the point of this thread. This CNN article is about why Europe will have more of an issue with terrorist than the U.S. And one of them - as pointed out at the end of this linked article - is places like Molenbeek, Belgium. http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/24/politics/europe-terror-ash-carter-isis/index.html

PBS News Hour Story: To this Russian-American community, Russia has become a political scapegoat https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/to-this-russian-american-community-russia-has-become-a-political-scapegoat

Merry Christmas Ron.

Very relevant for our next election. Google will only show news from sites that are honest about their country of origin. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/google-won-apos-t-show-203300968.html

Not Obama, or the federal govt. but California is using dubious claims about cell phones causing cancer to tell people to keep them out of thier pockets. Really? https://www.yahoo.com/tech/california-advises-against-keeping-phone-190200089.html Plenty of scientist have debunked these claims and yet this myth persists, and now it is being promoted by a California agency.

Russia will have a so called presidential election on March 18th, 2018. It seems Putin has used the levers of corruption within that society so effectively that the out come isn't in doubt. (I mean after all if you have had the same leader for the past 18 years are you anything less than a dictatorship?) Here is a list of candidates. Instead of leting the best in Russia run, it seems only candidates that let Putin look good will be allowed to run, to give an appears of elections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_2018#Free_access Vladimir Zhirinovsky - the fascist candidate Gennady Zyuganov - the communist candidate The "A Just Russia" Party seems to the most legit, but it's most likely candidate, Sergey Mironov, might refuse to run. They will decide at the end of December.

This from Bloomberg.... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/russian-breach-of-39-states-threatens-future-u-s-elections In summary, they have information on about 15 million voters and three years to think about what to do with it before the next election.

We live in world where everyone wants everything right now. The Russkies were able to interfere because many elections ( at every level ) are done via computer. Heaven for the hackers. Here in Oregon, all elections are by paper ballot that you mail in. No going to a polling location, there are none. While the ballots here are counted via electronics, we do have the paper ballots that can be recounted manually if necessary. If you want to get rid of the Russkies medling, get rid of the computer voting. Is it really that hard to get a pen out & check a box or two? Jerry Baumchen I think the problem goes deeper than just not voting via computers and only worrying about the count being wrong. If the goal is to create chaos, all they need to do it corrupt the voter registration rolls and flood the system with fake information just before election day to make completing a count impossible. Worse than having the wrong person elected, would be to have no person elected because the system was flooded with fake information. Russia for example compromised the voter registration rolls in Oregon, and by some estimates has the names, addresses and social security numbers of 15 million voters. What could they do with that information in the next election cycle? https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15791744/russia-election-39-states-hack-putin-trump-sessions Paper ballots are good, but mail-in might be a problem. What if 15 million mail-in ballots show up with stamps from out of state, but valid names and addresses? It might be better to revert back to voting in person at neighborhood locations. Here is a list of states know to be targeted. Another part of this problem is our voter registration rolls are done at the county level, and many county governments don't have people knowledgeable in cyber security. But at the same time, voter registration is done online and vulnerable to hacking and thus compromising the underlying database.

Ranked Choice" primary election. I agree with this completely. For the presidential primary I would also prefer it be national and done in several rounds. First stage eliminate the bottom half with ranked voting, then proceed from there. I don't think you could design a worse presidential primary process that we have currently. Each state taking only one swipe at voting with the early states (demographically un-representative) having the most influence over the result. And "super delegates" ... WTF?

Agree. IMO there are elected representatives who recognize the danger. But partisanship, or tribalism takes precedent. For better or worse they are aligning with trump to move legislation ahead. A related story: http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/363060-missing-big-picture-in-flynn-plea-trump-team-crippled-american-diplomatic The media is focusing on Russian interference in the general election against Hillary Clinton via wikileaks, but I think there is an additional layer to the story which isn't getting the investigation it needs, and that is Russian interference into the presidential primary elections too. Clinton isn't the only politician Putin doesn't like. He also doesn't like Marco Rubio and John McCain. I am aware of cases when Putin's St. Petersburg troll-farm went against McCain, and am also aware they they tried to infiltrate Marco Rubio's campaign (just like Clinton's) before the primaries. What I would like to know is how active was the troll farm against presidential candidates during the primary process. Now that we know some of the accounts from Twitter and Facebook you would think someone could look into that too. I think our presidential primary process sucks and it is way more vulnerable to Putin/Russian manipulation than the general election, simply because they are smaller elections where swinging 5% fewer primary voters creates early results that effects who stays and who drops out of the presidential primary. If there is a place for Putin to influence the election it is the early primaries. I think we need to change how the presidential primaries are done for many reasons, and the opportunity for Putin to use cyber-warfare create chaos is one of them. This is a pretty good article on the subject. It is from July 2016, before the general election. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-paranoia-inducing-purpose-of-russian-hacks

I think they got just the result they were looking for which is to sow confusion and create infighting and thereby sully our reputation on the international scene. We have half the country trying to ban people because of their religion, that's enough for terrorist recruiters to work with. Russia did get the result they were looking for tactically, and they will continue to sow divisions and chaos unless we in the west (republican, democrat, conservative, centrist and liberal) don't wise up and see the bigger threat. They can inflict deeper wounds to our democracy in the future. I'm most concerned with how deeply Russian linked hacker got into our election computers. The got the full voter rolls in more than half the states and if they wanted could have corrupted them just before the elections. This is a story that isn't getting the attention it deserves! We need to know the full truth how Trump interacted with Russia and all the links, etc. But just as important we need to understand the process and machinery Putin uses tried to influence elections in democratic countries, to be inoculated from it in the future. I personally feel it would be better for this country for trump to lose the next election fair and square to a centrist non-controversial candidate by an informed electorate, rather than have this investigation the result in a divisive impeachment of the president. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-would-impeach-trump-at-our-peril/2017/09/25/71c6f4aa-a21f-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html?utm_term=.42849fc79e02 If we proceed down an impeachment path while not bother fixing the flaws in our election systems, we are open to more hacking on election night in the future to the point where hacking could cause the result of a divisive campaign to truly be in doubt. This should be ringing alarm bells, but I get the sense that republicans and democrats are so intent in sticking it to each other that they don't see the bigger threat to all of us.

Nick Harding interview on NPR's Fresh Air. Interesting discussion about Trump and Russia with some new information I've not seen before. This journalist seems very credible to me. https://www.npr.org/2017/11/21/565654507/journalist-investigating-trump-and-russia-says-full-picture-is-one-of-collusion One interesting point is while Russia's attempt to influence this election might have tactically been a success, since they got the candidate they wanted, it has been a strategic failure, since sanctions have not been removed. The key question is now that the truth is coming out about Russia's attempt to influence elections, will they keep trying it. This is the most disturbing part about this story. I see republicans and democrats so intent on attacking each other that they forget their is a larger enemy looming in the shadows.

5 ISIS fighters fleeing the battle zone were arrested near the Syrian boarder city of al-Tanf. This is what they had on them. An indication of those trying to return might be smuggling weapons with them.

Donna Brazile considered replacing Clinton with Biden. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-report-brazile-says-she-considered-replacing-clinton-with-biden I didn't know she had this power.

The problem in this primary was there were too many mentally sane choices that cancelled each other out, leaving only one possibly mentally insane pick standing at the end. In the Iowa poll there were 12 candidates. Rubio for example was at 23.1% and Trump was at 24.3%. In New Hampshire Kasich, Bush and Rubio all cancelled each other out with 16, 11 and 10% of the vote while Trump was in lower 30s%. (I contend those three would attract the same type of voter, and exclude Trump in a ranked vote.) In South Carolina Trump got 32% of the votes but 100% of the delegates. By the time the primary got to California, it was all over with Trump getting a consistent 30% of primary voters. It was done. So nobody in California has any influence in either parties primary. This all has a corrupting and polarizing influence on the presidential primary. I don't think the final choice represents a consensus of what the entire nation wants. If you do a national "ranked voting" presidential primary, where people can rank many candidates I think you get to a more sane result. We now live in a world of internet and social media, not of horse and bug with only the local newspaper for your news. It is time to move on and upgrade our election processes.