bud

are you comparing right wingers to people with down syndrome? you're right though.. people with ideological agendas and who discriminate against entire classes, should learn from u.s. right wingers/neo-cons, who are generally very classy people.

it's sometimes tough to hear the truth. it's okay. some are able to get past the denial stage. i have a hard time not agreeing with the research done in the article Hudson posted after seeing what some of the posters on this forum write.

an average canadian consume 26 teaspoons a day. it's usually refined sugar that is consumed, which is high in fructose. fructose turns into liver fat which prevent the liver from processing insulin properly. this leads to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.

no black people are involved in the case, so i don't understand why you believe the judge's race is a factor.

"ya, we spy... but it's not so bad." argus: "it's not so bad!" "snowden should be tried for treason" argus: "snowden should be tried for treason!"

here is another one of your errors in trying to describe and compare bitcoin. not many people trade gold for services. you can't just instantly pay someone by clicking a button, without any bank fees, with gold or other currencies. the bitcoin stays in your own wallet and if you do choose to, you can keep at an exchange. the rate of usage and growth continues to climb. we're early in the life of bitcoin. no amount of bitterness and disdain for something new and different will change the fact that bitcoin usage is growing at a high rate, in a consistent matter.

the reason they should be concerned is very easy. people will not need to use banks to hold their money and make different kinds of transactions. no more interest and no more bank fees to collect. one of the beauties of bitcoin is that it can skip the traditional middle men or start using other middle men, instead of banks.

one of the reasons saddam was attacked was because he threatened to change the currency (link 1, link 2, link 3) he was selling his oil in. same with ghaddafi (link). overstock.com's addition of bitcoin as a method of payment was a great success. in the first day that they introduced bitcoin, they had 840 orders that totaled over $130,000 if converted to the dollar. overall, bitcoin usage has increased by over 75% in the second half of 2013. when someone uses bitcoin, they don't use other currency. this is a concern for many banks, since they're losing a piece of the pie with the increasing popularity and usage of bitcoin. to say banks have no reason to worry does not make sense when you look at the numbers.

you make it sound like their hands are tied and they're unable to get information on people legally. there already is a path in obtaining information on individuals. that path requires an oversight so no one steps out of boundary. what the NSA is doing is side-stepping the rules and law that was already set in place. they are breaking the law. not only that, but they're giving information on their citizens to a foreign country. i understand you're okay with that, because this foreign country is israel, but i'm sure most people would not be happy to know that this raw information is being passed onto a foreign country.

you have a narrow-minded look at the consequences of the government collecting this information.

right. there is no evidence. only made up government documents from the government which clearly show otherwise. documents that the NSA or obama have never denied. it's a good idea to know the basics about a topic before trying to argue for a side.

why is your outrage towards snowden and not the people who are stealing our data, without our consent and giving them away to a foreign country? what's wrong with you?

not sure where you're trying to go with this. what has happened is that the u.s. government has given israel raw intelligence of american citizens (and only to isreal - no other country) without receiving the same in return. 'exchanging' would constitute receiving raw intelligence of israeli citizens in return. essentially, the u.s. government is not only taking away people's rights to privacy by secretly collecting their communication information, but they're volunteering this information to a foreign country. so every point you've tried to make in the initial comments that i responded to were untrue, because you can never focus hard enough to read what you're responding to. instead, what you end up doing is sharing all the incoherent and unfocused thoughts in your head and then throwing your hands up in the air when someone shows the patience to respond to your comments, showing how you're unable to debate and focus on any subject.

it looks like that you have no clue, rue. there was no "exchange". it would help if you would read the information and links you are responding to so you wouldn't need to be corrected every time you make a post. phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis. i have no time to spoon feed you, rue. make the effort to educate yourself on the information you want to make comments on.

according to the information, no other country has received this raw intelligence data but israel. why is israel, a foreign country, so special in the eyes of the u.s. government that its willing to give away raw personal information of americans (and others around the world that they have information from)? the nsa and whoever is signing off people's personal information to a foreign country should be tried for treason.