Remember the gullibility test

[thinkingaboutit]

79 and am in the top 5%.

'You're a true free thinker and a person who is well informed about the reality in which you live. Although you may have been easily manipulated earlier in life, you eventually gained lucidity and developed a healthy sense of skepticism that you now automatically apply to your observations and experiences. You are endlessly curious about human behavior and the nature of the universe, and you have one or more lifestyle habits that most people would consider odd or unusual. You are not only of very high intelligence, you are also extremely creative in one or more areas (music, art, software development, inventing, etc.)'

Flattery will get them everywhere.

 

[Furcifer]

88- Free Thinker

Apparently I took the Red Pill and started kicking agent butt the same day. Good Times.

 

[kimota]

People who eat non-organic beef are often eating secondhand chicken feces.

What about people who eat fruits and vegetables that come from plants fed with organic fertilizers?

...insect-derived food coloring. Aside from the gross factor...

What about other cultures that knowingly eat ENTIRE insects? Double ewwwey, gross-me-out?

I think I'll start reducing my gullibility by NOT clicking the advertisements for books and websites at the bottom of that page. See, I'm becoming more independent already!

 

[Mobyseven]

Sure:

Wikipedia's page on the Fed

Federal Reserve official FAQs

Basically, the board running it is a government group, but the member banks are private. However, it's the board that sets the monetary policy, so the control is really with the government.

The Fed's control over the money supply isn't quite as direct as some of the woos make it seem. A lot of their policy affects the money supply through indirect impacts on the banks' (all banks, not just the member banks) ability to profitably make loans.

Thankye!

Ah, my figures I had were underinflated. I had 1 million american casulties, 2 million Japanese. (I once had to do a running debate if droping the atomic boms really saved lives in Japan. Long debate, too.)

Regardless. he is right in ONE sense. The US is not a Democracy. It is a Democratic Republic. (yes, I know, weak, but I'm glad my semantics caught it.)

Well, actually it isn't. It's a constitutional republic.

It really depends on how you're using the word "democracy". I'll concede that it has historically been used by many people to refer specifically to a direct democracy, so in that specific sense, yes, it is a constitutional republic and not a democracy (with the 'direct' implied).

However, democracy has a broader meaning too, one that covers a number of different political systems that are all related by the fact that they are governed ultimately "by the people". When using this broader meaning, a republic can be defined in terms of a type of democracy - off the top of my head, a liberal representative democracy with a strong constitutional basis.

It was this meaning of "democracy" I had in mind when I answered that question, because the alternate meaning (direct democracy) is so narrow that it renders basically all democratic countries (by the broader meaning) as undemocratic.