What are those punched out holes in the passport or does nobody know at this point? I did find it weird how the bodies were pretty much all in tact and the passports that were being shown around looked pristine. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy there but it was surprising to me.

It is a good thing that there aren't other states close to New York that these businesses can choose to locate themselves in. 

:-)

(Reuters) - First came the loud explosion that made buildings rattle: then it started raining bodies.

One of the corpses fell through the rickety roof of Irina Tipunova's house in this sleepy village, just after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 exploded high over eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists are fighting government forces.

"There was a howling noise and everything started to rattle. Then objects started falling out of the sky," the 65-year-old pensioner said in front of her grey-brick home.

"And then I heard a roar and she landed in the kitchen, the roof was broken," she said, showing the gaping hole made by the body when it came through the ceiling of the kitchen in an extension to the house.

The dead woman's naked body was still lying inside the house, next to a bed.

About 100 meters (330 feet) from Tipunova's home, dozens more dead bodies lay in the wheat fields where the airliner came down on Thursday, killing all 298 people on board.

Malaysia Airlines is to refund fares for passengers no longer wishing to travel on the carrier, Sky News has confirmed.

Previously booked passengers due to fly up to and including July 25 can seek a refund without incurring any penalty.

The decision comes amid a wave of concern following the downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine.

It is unclear how many passengers will cancel their flights.

Nevertheless, the refund will further harm the perception of the carrier both for passengers and investors.

Shares in Malaysia Airlines closed down more than 10% on Friday.

The Kuala Lumpur-listed company saw its stock fall more than 17% at one point before easing prior to the market close.

"Perception-wise it really hits home - It's very challenging. It's very difficult to fight against negative perception," Maybank aviation analyst Mohshin Aziz said.

"I can't comprehend of anything they can do to save themselves."

It’s probably not true that a frog will allow itself to be boiled alive if only the heat is raised slowly enough, but it’s an irresistible image nonetheless.

However, the anti-borders forces — on the left and the right — have counted on such passivity among the public to incrementally erode the American people’s ability to decide who gets to move here from abroad. They have devised endless opportunities to appeal deportation decisions, prevented the implementation of needed control measures, pushed relentlessly to pierce numerical caps, and created strong incentives against government functionaries saying “no” to those who want to come. The motto over the doorway of the immigration office might as well be “It ain’t over til the alien wins.”

President Obama has turned up the heat over the past five years. Using “prosecutorial discretion” as a pretext, he has exempted the vast majority of illegal aliens from the consequences of their actions. He has formally amnestied — without legislative authorization — more than a half-million illegal immigrants who claim to have come here before age 16. He is signaling that sometime this year he will unilaterally, and illegally, amnesty half or more of the roughly 12 million illegal aliens now living in the United States.

Women have been catching on to bitcoin a lot more in the last year or so.

Wow, and giving a discount to BTC paying customers is exactly what will give people an incentive to buy some BTC in the first place!  This is setting a great example for other companies to follow!

Is Rand a drug prohibitionist ? Cause USA have an insane prison population...

Rand Paul eyes tech-oriented donors, geeks in Bay Area

Rand Paul goes hunting in San Francisco starting Thursday for two things Democrats usually expect to have locked up in the Golden State: rich technology donors and computer geeks game to leave their jobs to work on a White House campaign.

Focusing on a libertarian sliver of the Bay Area’s tech crowd, the Kentucky Republican hopes the three-day trip can tap into a powerful resource that could boost his fundraising skills, message delivery and voter turnout — potent technology tools that were a crucial component in President Barack Obama’s two general election victories.

But Paul also has a more lofty agenda — using his strongly held views on National Security Agency surveillance, Internet privacy and free markets to broaden the traditional GOP coalition — and perhaps even persuade California voters to turn their state red for the first time since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

“I think it has to be someone with the right message, but I think there’s room for us out there,” Paul said in an interview where he called on Republicans to “run a 50-state strategy.”

...

Rand Paul: The Republican Candidate Whom Young Non-Republicans Fear the Least

By David Weigel
JULY 17

The new Quinnipiac poll out of Colorado and new NBC/Marist poll out of Iowa should please Democrats only for the residual pain they might cause Dick Cheney. In Colorado, Rand Paul performs absolutely the best against Hillary Clinton, among any of the 2016 Republicans—he leads her 46–43, and has led consistently since the pollster started trial heats last year. In Iowa, Paul is the only Republican who leads Clinton (within the margin of error), 44–44.

This is the summer of Rand Paul; in a way, all of 2014 has been a summer of Rand Paul. No Republican gets more positive coverage. Reporters (myself included) love to cover a politician who riffs with so little dependence on talking points. Readers click on anything Paul-related, which is among the reasons why Paul's criminal justice reform bill co-sponsored with Sen. Cory Booker got universally happy write-ups, from NPR to Politico. (The big news from Politico's Paul/Booker event was that the men took a selfie together.)

Where does Paul's support come from? The Quinnipiac poll, which offers up its crosstabs, finds that Paul is marginally more popular than other Republicans across most age groups. But he's far more popular among voters under 30. He wins them by 7 points; Chris Christie wins them by 4, Jeb Bush loses them by 4, Mike Huckabee loses them by 7. That's a small mound of evidence for the theory that Paul's "liberty movement" politics, his identification with privacy and drug law reform, etc., cracks the millennial voter code.

...

Rand Paul is right where he wants to be in the 2016 race

By Aaron Blake
July 17

Watch any NBA or NFL draft, and you will quickly grow nauseous at all the allusions to a particular player's "upside." This little word (which we're not sure actually exists in nature) refers to someone who might be a little undervalued and probably won't excel -- but has all the tools to become a superstar.

In the 2016 Republican presidential race, that player/candidate is Rand Paul.

There is little that surprises in the two new polls of the 2016 Iowa and New Hampshire presidential primaries from NBC News and Marist College. In both states, Hillary Rodham Clinton leads Joe Biden by 50-plus points, and the GOP field is a cluttered mess that is nearly impossible to make heads or tails of.

But dig a little deeper, and you see Paul's potential. Moreso than any other candidate, Paul seems to have real paths to victory in both states -- something that has never happened before. It's far too early to say with any certainty what will happen (and we can't emphasize the limited value of early polling enough) but the potential is clearly there.

For a few reasons:

...

In a theoretical 100% free market Immigrants should add value.

However we're not in anything close to a 100% free market. In any situation in which people are getting out from the government more than they're putting in, then clearly immigrants remove value. Which, by definition is true, because the government is borrowing money. However, its especially true for those illegal immigrants who don't pay taxes.

Even in an "almost free market", and if all immigrants paid taxes, a percentage-based tax rate with government aid provided to the poor would mean that poor immigrants would detract, not add, value.

Is Spike TV a big deal in the US?