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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[RedKing]

"What I meant was, we couldn't have made my favorite mac and cheese without food stamps. There's just something in that government cheese that you can't find anywhere else..."

[Frumple]

Woah, woah. Hold up. The gov's providing mac and cheese? I guess from schools, maybe, but outside of that? Because damn. To hell with food stamps, gimme' th'mac-dole. What program did these folks exploit to get M&C from the gov' instead of just buying it with tax money?

[RedKing]

No, no, no...they're providing just the cheese. It took that special drive and determination to turn it INTO mac and cheese.

See, you welfare queens want the government to come in and make your mac and cheese for you. A *real* American takes the subsidized cheese and charity macaroni and combines them with the sweat of his brow and the toil of his stirring arm to produce Freedom Mac.

[Duuvian]

I thought I'd leave this here as I didn't see another thread it might go in:

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/5/19/could-this-a-miracleadrughelpmillionsofamericanaddicts.html

Spoiler: From the article (click to show/hide)

Having worked in the drug development industry for over a decade, Skolnick is acutely aware of how expensive clinical trials can be. Clinical trials are messy, as addicts are an unreliable population, and brain medications in general are expensive and tough to develop. Without a pharmaceutical sponsor to fund the studies, no drug stands a chance of making it out of the lab.

And that’s where the challenges lie for ibogaine: As a plant, it can't be patented. And pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to invest in a drug they can’t patent, fearing low returns on investments. Ibogaine's profit potential is also limited by the fact that it only needs to be taken once.

“Drug companies are corporations,” Skolnick told America Tonight. “And [drug development is] a very risky business. And so the returns necessarily have to be high to support that risk.”

Ibogaine’s second strike is that it’s an addiction medication. According to Skolnick, pharmaceutical companies have not traditionally been interested in funding addiction medications because of a long-standing perception that they're not commercially viable.

Mash added that developing drugs for the brain is hard. Much of what happens in an addict’s brain is still unknown territory, and there are only a few companies that are still working on brain drugs. The risky venture requires an investment of at least $2 billion. Pharmaceutical companies haven't traditionally been interested in working with a poor, uninsured and hard-to-reach population like addicts.

And with ibogaine’s Schedule 1 classification, the hallucinogen's potential for abuse adds one more hurdle to use in the U.S.

But Mash says now is the perfect time for ibogaine to break out of obscurity. With public attitudes on medical marijuana shifting and a more open-minded scientific community, there might be a place for ibogaine in modern medicine after all.

[Helgoland]

Ibogaine is awesome. And the abuse potential is close to zero. Goddamn DEA nitwits.
Further information, and some esperience reports.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Time for MSH to give you all interesting polling data.


Americans continue to massively over-report their attendance of religious services, most common among the unaffiliated. A little less than half of all Americans seldom or never attend religious services in reality. (Infographic Version)

A very fabulous LGBT survey. If you're looking for some sort of data on that, it is probably in here. (It even has numbers for the percentage of people who believe AIDS is God's wrath: 14% in 2014, 36% in 1992.)

Speaking of that, approval of adoption by gay couples is now a strong majority, outpacing the acceptance of Same-Sex Marriage. Looks like the predictions of SSM being allowed but adoption being rejected are dead in the water.

The long-standing stranglehold of conservative thought is weakening to a critical point on social issues and to a lesser extent on economic issues. The social one is the critical point, however. While social conservatism has had an expiration date for a while now, it is beginning to look like it might suffer full viability failure in the near future.

And, finally, the most interesting set of data for the time being, the moral acceptability chart. Notable shifts towards acceptance include: Birth Control (90%), Divorce (69%), Sex without Marriage (66%), Children without Marriage (58%), Gay or Lesbian relations (58%), Doctor-assisted Suicide (52%), Abortion (42%), Animal Cloning (32%), Suicide in general (19%), Polygamy (14%), and Human Cloning (13%). Cheating on your spouse remains the most morally opposed item commonly included on these lists, at 7% approval.

[GlyphGryph]

The US house has passed a bill to curtail the ability for the federal government to prosecute medical marijuana in states that allow it.

[FearfulJesuit]

The Seattle City Council has approved a $15 minimum wage.

I'm skeptical, in all honesty. A higher minimum wage would definitely be a good thing, but a lot of it would impact jobs like retail checkout drones who haven't really been seeing the productivity gains of the last few decades, and Seattle is a small area, so businesses will start decamping to nearby municipalities with the standard minimum wage, especially small ones and start-ups. All this will do is give the right more ammo on the minimum wage debate.

[Sergarr]

Notable shifts towards acceptance include:   ...Suicide in general (19%)...

This can't be good.

[Dutchling]

Notable shifts towards acceptance include:   ...Suicide in general (19%)...

This can't be good.

I'm surprised it's that low actually. I thought only Catholics were morally apposed to suicide.

[RedKing]

Notable shifts towards acceptance include:   ...Suicide in general (19%)...

This can't be good.

I don't think it's saying that 19% of people consider suicide a good thing, only that it's not in the "that person is damned to hell for eternity for what they did and deserves no sympathy" mode anymore.

[Descan]

Suicide is a little tricky. On the one hand, I'm all for people having personal autonomy over their lives and bodies, and being able to end your life is the culmination of that. On the other hand, in my personal opinion suicidal thoughts are a sign of some sort of mental imbalance or disorder, or psychological depression of some sort, which should be looked after. And someone who is suicidal may not be in any position to seek the help that would aid in that. So it's a tough call.

This doesn't consider suicide because of pain with no end in sight, of course.

[Criptfeind]

I'm certainly glad to hear that people are slightly less "suicide is totally evil" or whatever. I don't think that society should totally shine on it, but more acceptance to when people do chose it would be nice. I guess that might not be what that statistic is about, but it's a step forward.

[GlyphGryph]

The Seattle City Council has approved a $15 minimum wage.

I'm skeptical, in all honesty. A higher minimum wage would definitely be a good thing, but a lot of it would impact jobs like retail checkout drones who haven't really been seeing the productivity gains of the last few decades, and Seattle is a small area, so businesses will start decamping to nearby municipalities with the standard minimum wage, especially small ones and start-ups. All this will do is give the right more ammo on the minimum wage debate.

I'm honestly not sure how true this is, or if its a bad thing - Businesses that are in the Seattle area are already paying a ton more in rent and other costs for being there, and they've decided its worth it. If they leave, they'll probably be replaced by other businesses that were already looking to move in. A lot of these businesses can't move because Seattle is where their customers are, and most of the rest minimum wage employees make up such a small portion of their costs that this still isn't likely to change.

On the other hand, higher minimum wage means a lot more people working in Seattle are suddenly going to have a disposable income that isn't just living paycheck to paycheck. Businesses in Seattle that aren't stupid are going to take advantage of this, and probably see an uptick in business.

If it was some podunk town with a min-wage factory, yeah, I could see it doing a lot of damage... but not in a place like Seattle, where super cheap labour prices are most definitely NOT one of things that attracts businesses to do business there. Anyone who is that cost-conscious already moved away from Seattle a long time ago.

Also, Seattle startups tend to have salaried employees and partners as their major employees, there will be a minor increase in service costs but honestly I doubt it will change anyone's decision on where to locate.

[Sheb]

While it would probably hurt Seattle less than a one-factory town, it's still going to hurt some because it's easier to move out of Seattle than out of the US for example. I think the pro are going to outweigh the con though.