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US population ~ 300 million. / 2 = 150 million

150 million / 29 ~= 5.17 million

Do you really believe the average population of the top 29 cities in the US is above 5 million? Because the data doesn't support that belief, not even close. Only one city in the entire USA has over 5 million population, the rest have significantly (many a full significant digit) less.

Perceived corruption http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html USA ranks 20th.

20th! Damnit W and K Street need to work harder then. I'm pretty sure they were shooting for #1. :D

Americans, you have lost your aspirations.

Want some goals to aspire to?
Perceived corruption http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html USA ranks 20th.
Press freedom http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=824) US ranks 31st.
Privacy http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-559597 , got beaten by Philipines.

It would be a good idea to learn what an exaggeration is.

And it's not really an exaggeration... the 2004 election had a turnout of 122 million, and there are currently 1236 posts on this thread (more than any other Slashdot post I've seen in a while)... doing the math, log_1236 (122 million) = 2.62, thus an exponential amount.

While I'm sure Taiwan is crap country to live in, like you said. There does appear to be 145 countries more corrupt than Taiwan: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html It's leaders are not listed in the top 10 heads of state and it doesn't even get a mention in the Forbes most corrupt countries feature

However, because of people like you live there, I'll second that call to skip Taiwan. ;-)

I'm not advocating that the world be modeled after German governance, nor adopt all its laws. To suggest so is ridiculous. Nevertheless, to dismiss an analysis by Mr. Schaar out of hand just because he is from Germany, well-versed in the intricacies of data protection (it's his job), and an expert in the field (it's his job and he's well-recognized in that capacity), is equally patently ridiculous. The rights afforded to German citizens w.r.t. data protection are of a higher base level than those afforded to US citizens by law, as per right now. That is still beside the point, however, since it does not affect intellectual discourse about the issue, and neither can one seriously claim that Mr. Schaar has no idea what he is talking about and thus his testimony or advice not be heard.
I'm also not advocating the German system of government to be the best thing since sliced bread. It's not. It may not be the best in the world, it is definitely not the worst, but you brought up comparing it to other, "freer" (sic) systems, so that's what we arrived at.

Certainly, the German government screws up. Politicians have a knack for screwing up. Things get fixed, and hopefully the result will be better than what was before. I don't believe the US has a monopoly on that particular front (nor has that particular mechanism been working over there, recently, IMHO).

Yes, I have lived in the US for a while, though as you probably have guessed, I am native to Germany (and currently live there). As for where I get those numbers from ... Voter participation is a matter of public record. A quick google-search gives us http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html for the US, http://www.bpb.de/wissen/C11SZM,,0,Wahlbeteiligung_nach_Altersgruppen_1953_%96_2002.html for Germany (on the federal level). Personally I consider it a duty of any citizen of my country to vote come election day, even if that means going out of your way to accomplish such; that's been my upbringing. I'm sad to say that over the past few decades the trend is declining a bit, but a 50% participation is unheard of.
As for participation in the political process in everday life ... I wouldn't compare vigorousness in general, since I can base it only on my surroundings, and that's, by definition, anecdotal. I know politics comes up a lot in conversation here and rarely have I seen talking-point conversations I've been privy to in the US (i.e. Democratic talking point vs. Republican talking point ad infinitum without any discussion taking place); not all of them were that way, of course, but a lot of political discourse was structured in that manner. In any case, political discourse is not dead here, and I assume it's not dead in the US, either (even in the College crowd, though more often than not, Steward and Colbert are cited rather than newspapers; I love those two guys for their satire is exquisite, though :)

Politics lives from controversy. The current US system during the primaries is a great theatralical production, but the often-touted "let's talk issues" is a talking point, nothing more. It's telling that politicians have to preface their statements about issues with a statement that they are about to talk about issues and not personal shortcomings of their opponents, rather than present a political platform they stand on and let that speak for them.

I find it interesting that you seem to consider low voter turnout a good thing, and the reason given for it. By the time that ballot would be cast, sure, a lot of "controversial" choices are weeded out (namely anybody not openly touting their Christianity, anybody without either huge coffers or the backing of one of the two (TWO!) parties, anybody the common Joe would not want to drink a beer with some time, etc).
In any case, the turnouts for the primaries are not looking parti

When the last presidential election was decided 50.7% (Bush) to 48.3% (Kerry) and the one before that was 47.87% (Bush) to 48.38% (Gore), you have about half (or more) of the population that doesn't want the person who's in the White House to be there. If that's not a recipe for a victim mentality I don't know what is. Truthfully, I just see it as being a reason to get rid of the electoral college. It was necessary before technology allowed us to quickly tabulate votes from each state but I just don't see the need for it in the 21st century. My 2004 election percentage information was taken from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922901.html and the 2000 information is from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html.

When the last presidential election was decided 50.7% (Bush) to 48.3% (Kerry) and the one before that was 47.87% (Bush) to 48.38% (Gore), you have about half (or more) of the population that doesn't want the person who's in the White House to be there. If that's not a recipe for a victim mentality I don't know what is. Truthfully, I just see it as being a reason to get rid of the electoral college. It was necessary before technology allowed us to quickly tabulate votes from each state but I just don't see the need for it in the 21st century. My 2004 election percentage information was taken from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922901.html and the 2000 information is from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html.

Well, perhaps it's worth noting that in 1932 only about 33 million people voted in the Presidential election, while in 2004 the figure was closer to 110 million. Takes a bigger organization, with more layers, to reach four times as many people.

More importantly, in the 1930s many people tended to get their voting patterns from local organizations that more or less owned their vote, e.g. unions and "machines." FDR worried quite a bit about keeping the "machine" and union boss vote. Harry Truman was selected as his veep in part to get that vote (Truman was widely understood to be the protege of the Pendergast Kansas City machine). He more or less dumped his much more intellectual (and socialist) former veep Henry Wallace, who was more in tune with him (and arguably the country) on the "issues."

So the amount of actual true personal interaction required -- which might usefully be deployed to change someone's mind, whose vote wasn't already "owned" -- was pretty modest in the 30s. To put it another way, there were a lot fewer voters who had the option to vote as they pleased, and it took a lot less personal effort to reach them. You'd really only need to reach the bosses, the key players, those who could tell fleets of other people how to vote.

Today's elections are far more direct candidate-to-citizen appeals. Machines and union endorsements hardly matter at all; people tend to make up their own minds independently, and directly from what they see and hear on the tube. To reach 110 million voters directly requires, indeed, a massive, tightly controlled communications heirarchy. And, not surprisingly, the average amount of personal time the candidate can give to each of 110 million totally independent voters is measured in microseconds.

Since first release, I heard it was something like another million or so this year. Here's a slightly out of date chart from the RIAA themselves on some albums that are defintiely still selling very well:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0151020.html

Actually, even though educated people do tend to have fewer children than average, the premise of the movie is false. IQ test scores have continued to rise steadily over the past century. People are really becoming smarted and more educated, on average.

Keep in mind that many casual cross generational comparisons are completely invalid. Often times people may compare, say, suburban schools of the 1950s to inner city schools of today. Or merely ignore high historic drop out rates of those eras (see for example: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779196.html). Going back even farther, a common mistake people make in comparing the modern era to, say, the 19th century or earlier is that people tend to compare the AVERAGE of today to the ELITES of the past (e.g. the landed nobility or the gentry, which were the sorts of characters who tended to have books written about them most often at the time, thus the common error in using them as a point of comparison to the modern era, but were a comparatively tiny fraction of the populace).

The movie was quite entertaining regardless. Though it's fascinating how resistant people are to the idea that the world may actually be becoming a better place over time.

Well, the Mac is on TV, but it is most definitely _not_ an alternative. Jobs would have to let it be legally installable on whitebox hardware first. We're not just talking about letting Dell and HP make and sell Mac OS pre-installed boxes. Your local integrator has to be able to install it, without too many hurdles, and at a cost that leaves him some profit.

Apple won't allow OS X to be installed on beige box clones, at one tyme Apple did allow Mac clones but Apple lost more in lost hardware sales than they made in the sales of Mac OS licenses.. If the local integrator would make money then Apple would loose money. Apple isn't just a software company, Apple also makes and sales hardware. All to together Apple is a systems integrator, Apple just make things that work, the hardware and software work well together. And that totally ignores Microsoft. MS has already shown what it will do to those it views as competitors.

One relief I could think of that might not be unreasonable for a court to order when a company continues to behave like Microsoft. Strip them of all their patents and bar them from obtaining more patents until their market presence drops below 50%. (Trade one monopoly for another.)

What could be done to MS is to have it's Corporate Charter revoked. Corporations were originally granted charters if the corporation served the Public good. Once a corporation did not serve the public or common good it's charter could be revoked. The first corporate charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company in 1602 by the government in the Netherlands. Corporate charters allowed those who invested in the corporation to limit liability to just what they paid for for the stocks they owned.

Not Exactly...... What I am getting at is we have a Supreme Court for a reason right. Did the Supreme Court ever hear a case on whether or not slavery should be allowed? The only case I see is the Dred Scott case where they didn't decide on slavery necessarily but did decide that he was not a citizen and thus could not sue in Federal Court. So your argument doesn't necessarily hold any water.

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0816089.html

"surface temperatures of 150+ degrees F during summer days"
Your post loses much credibility when you pluck ridiculous figures out of the air and use them to make an argument.

Given the hottest temperature ever recorded in the United States is 56.7 degrees celsius (134.1 degrees fahrenheit) I find it impossible to believe this small part of America regularly gets temperatures of above 65.6 degrees celsius (150F).

As an aside I find it not so amazing that these rocks move about, but that similar phenomenon doesn't seem to happen elsewhere in deserts where you get similar extremes of temperatures, rock types, and often windy weather. Let's hope Google earth kicks into action and someone observes this phenomenon soon.

By:

"And "fairness" has very little to do in politics. Laws are typically broken by the powers."

do you mean that Chechnya, Beslan, political murders to the point of terrorizing every independent journalist, are Business as usual ?

Also Russia is 121th at the transparency index it seems remarkably low:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html

even a 50% tax on the ultra rich won't solve the nation's debt problems

You are right. South Korea being in South East Asia is unheard of. Here is the map of Asia. South Korea is in the east despite the south in South Korea.

By the numbers, NYU students aren't appreciably less dedicated than the rest of us. At least they demanded something of value for their unvote! Lots of us skip elections all the time and we receive nothing in return.

66 - percentage of NYU students who would trade one vote for a ~$140,000 scholarship
50 - percentage of NYU students who would trade ALL votes for $1,000,000
45 - percentage of eligible voters who traded their 2004 vote for nothing (i.e., they didn't vote)
20 - percentage of NYU students who would trade one vote for a $300 iPod

There are two things TFA could have done, but didn't, to provide some newsworthy insight: (1) what percentage of NYU students who actually voted in the last election would trade a vote for money? (2) What price is a non-voter's non-vote worth to them? That is, how much would it take to get non-voters to vote?

Remember the Amendment 25 of the Constitution succession rules will make Dick Cheney President if we impeach Bush first. http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am1 If the worst "evil" twin in this administration is Cheney then they need to remove Cheney first before we remove Bush. However this will be mute in a year since the elections will be done by then we have a new President-elect. However I would like to be a witness to a full impeachment, conviction and sentencing of a sitting President and Vice President for what they have done. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton where impeached but got acquitted by the Senate and Nixon resigned before he got beyond the impeachment hearings. http://www.infoplease.com/spot/impeach.html The best quote here is "Out from the frying pan into the fire" if we inpeach Bush first.

Breaking and on-the-books law is absolutely not a requirement for an impeachment. Abuse of power and misconduct in office are grounds for impeachment. Lying about intelligence, under oath or otherwise, in order to bamboozle the country into an unnecessary war is grounds for impeachment. Please refer to the history of impeachment, and the overwhelming consensus of constitutional scholars for what is an impeachable offense.

What would you do if you had to pay a sales tax of 40%?

What would you do if you had to pay import duties of 100%?

What would you do if you had to pay a total of 70 (seventy) different taxes to city, state, and federal government on a single product?

This is what happens when public servants can retire after, in some cases, eight years of "work", with full pay. Getting promotions and raises after retiring. Brazil is the paradise of public servants. Everyone I know is trying to get a job as a public servant. I know of people who have gone through five years of college to get a job as a street sweeper.

That's why the Transparency International organization states that "Some of the countries that have a significantly worse rating since 2005 include Brazil,".

If only we would shoot all public servants in the street, Brazil could be the richest country in the world, but, unfortunately, too many people are greedy, and too many Brazilians allow this situation to continue because they themselves want to get a public job...

See? More paranoia.

If the stakes were that high, I'd think more than 50% of the population would show up to vote for our president.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html

Furthermore, you're saying you can't trust the same people who are voting. What's next, banning cell phone cameras from voting booths? I mean, your "boss" might make you take a cell phone picture of your votes. No matter what you do, there's always potential for abuse.

Again though, I'm not saying paper receipts are necessary. I'm arguing that they're not going to ruin an election.

* The Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) is far from the only species of gorilla - the Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei gorilla), Eastern Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) and Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla beringei dielhi) take the total gorilla population up to around 150,000 - still not great, and still needing our utmost attention, but nowhere near as endangered as you make them out to be.

* The biggest threat to the Gorilla population is not humans, it's the Ebola virus, which has decimated Western Lowland Gorilla populations and in fact continues to do so, according to most wildlife and conservation organizations.

* The population of mountain gorillas, according to the World Wildlife Fund, is actually increasing from it's dire state.

All true believers break their eggs at the convenient end.

And that is the cover story.

It is a good cover story, too: it covers a host of different possibilities from a low level mistake in putting the missiles on the wrong plane to "disappearing" a few surgical tactical nukes for covert operations.

That latter is especially bothersome since those nukes were "mistakenly" flown to one of the staging areas for ordinance being shipped to the Persian Gulf arena.

Perhaps my faith in Air Force Officer Training School is misplaced, but I find it hard to believe that the officer in charge of mounting those missiles could have been so slipshod with inspections and paperwork that he would not have caught this kind of error. And I find it equally hard to believe that the bomber pilot would not have noticed the error during his preflight inspection. That this "mistake" happened despite the training of both of these officers, and a number of other Air Force personnel, is absurd.

It kind of makes me wonder how many tactical nukes that have been listed as decommissioned are actually perfectly functional in some out of sight location, like maybe Diego Garcia.

By popular vote, he lost in 2000, I know, he won the electoral vote, but almost 500,000 people more voted for Gore than him. That hardly sounds like consent of the people. And please, don't accuse me of whining. You made the assertion that it was the consent of the people that made him president. (source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html )

I leave it to statisticians to work out the correlation, at first glance it certainly looks like a strong correlation to me. I mean, P members Cyprus at 37. on the list, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan at 142. On the other hand, P member Libya at place 106 on the list voted NO, as did China at 70.

Sweden was ranked #6 in the 2006 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. Perhaps they wouldn't do so well next year.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html

he initially promised to destroy those (in)famous WMDs within 12 months, for example, but still had them in 1997 and some remnants were even found in 2003-4.

Nothing was found. There were no weapons.

I wonder, if you worked for the Iraqi government... Let me roast your lying stomach on the burning rays of facts:

1997 The UN disarmament commission concludes that Iraq has continued to conceal information on biological and chemical weapons and missiles (Oct 23). Iraq expels American members of the UN inspection team (Nov. 13).

And then:

Jan. 16, 2003 UN inspectors discover 11 undeclared empty chemical warheads in Iraq.

And then, post-invastion:

Since 2003 Coalitions forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.

Didn't you just post: "Nothing was found"? Oops...

We now proceed to the cold void darkness of your knowledge of Economics:

What triggered the invasion was the decision Saddam made in 2000 to stop using the US dollar as a reserve currency. The whole US economy is based on the US dollar being the world reserve currency and that status was threatened by Saddam.

Khmm, it does not even puzzle you, what we were objecting to before 2000, huh? I don't just mean the battles of 1991, but also those later Clinton-style operations... But, whatever, the truth remains is that as long as that euro (or yen) currency remains freely convertible into dollars, we don't really care. As long as those Kuwaitis and Saudis continue to spend their earnings (in whatever currency) investing in our companies, on our planes and automobiles, we don't care. And even if they chose to Japanese electronics or a Mercedes — that's fine too. As long as nothing threatens the free markets, America will prosper along with the better part of humanity.

It is now threatened by Iran and Venezuela... Expect "regime change" of some sort in both countries fairly soon. Coup, revolution, civil war or perhaps even invasion.

Both are rather overdue for regime change. If you dislike Bush, you should abhor Chavez. But to "earn" an invasion, they have to be messing (or threatening to mess) with the neighbors militarily. Iran does, and may, indeed, get it... Chavez tried to (help FARC), but stopped years ago and now confines himself to domestic matters — such as removing term-limits on (his) Presidency...

he initially promised to destroy those (in)famous WMDs within 12 months, for example, but still had them in 1997 and some remnants were even found in 2003-4.

Nothing was found. There were no weapons.

I wonder, if you worked for the Iraqi government... Let me roast your lying stomach on the burning rays of facts:

1997 The UN disarmament commission concludes that Iraq has continued to conceal information on biological and chemical weapons and missiles (Oct 23). Iraq expels American members of the UN inspection team (Nov. 13).

And then:

Jan. 16, 2003 UN inspectors discover 11 undeclared empty chemical warheads in Iraq.

And then, post-invastion:

Since 2003 Coalitions forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.

Didn't you just post: "Nothing was found"? Oops...

We now proceed to the cold void darkness of your knowledge of Economics:

What triggered the invasion was the decision Saddam made in 2000 to stop using the US dollar as a reserve currency. The whole US economy is based on the US dollar being the world reserve currency and that status was threatened by Saddam.

Khmm, it does not even puzzle you, what we were objecting to before 2000, huh? I don't just mean the battles of 1991, but also those later Clinton-style operations... But, whatever, the truth remains is that as long as that euro (or yen) currency remains freely convertible into dollars, we don't really care. As long as those Kuwaitis and Saudis continue to spend their earnings (in whatever currency) investing in our companies, on our planes and automobiles, we don't care. And even if they chose to Japanese electronics or a Mercedes — that's fine too. As long as nothing threatens the free markets, America will prosper along with the better part of humanity.

It is now threatened by Iran and Venezuela... Expect "regime change" of some sort in both countries fairly soon. Coup, revolution, civil war or perhaps even invasion.

Both are rather overdue for regime change. If you dislike Bush, you should abhor Chavez. But to "earn" an invasion, they have to be messing (or threatening to mess) with the neighbors militarily. Iran does, and may, indeed, get it... Chavez tried to (help FARC), but stopped years ago and now confines himself to domestic matters — such as removing term-limits on (his) Presidency...

Our advertising dollar is every bit as useful to you as an American one.

Actually your dollar is still worth less than ours...

Montreal's metropolitan area has a population of 3.6 million people.

You don't know much about urban sprawl in America. You can take most of the populations here and triple them. While it says LA has only 3.8 million people, the LA metropolitan area has almost 13 million. That's 3 times as many people, and the per capita income for LA is $35,1881 American dollars while Montreal's is only $28,595 in your funny-money.

Yeah, but the 50% figure is utterly ridiculous. It is a number made up from an advocacy group dedicated to convincing people in Canada that the government is wasting our money. The "Canadian Taxpayers Federation" can hardly be called an advocate of honest or even relatively sane statistical data.

Here are a few references which show that the Canadian tax burden, while somewhat higher than the US, is nowhere near 50%...

http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/ prb05107-e.htm#figure2
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922307.html
http://www.worldwide-tax.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_ world

In the last election, 54.3% of the voters in California went for Kerry, while 44.4% went for Bush (source); in terms of votes cast, it was 6,745,485 for Kerry, and 5,509,826 for Bush (with some sliver for other candidates), which means that Kerry took 1,235,659 more votes than Bush. New York was a little more emphatically for Kerry, giving him 58.4% (4,314,280 votes) to Bush's 40.1% (2,962,567); still, this was a difference of 1,351,713 votes, which wasn't that much more than the difference in CA. Texas was almost a mirror image of New York, giving 61.1% to Bush and 38.2% to Kerry (4,526,917 Bush votes - 2,832,704 Kerry votes = 1,694,213 margin for Bush). Taking the three states together, the total difference was 893,159 votes, in favor of Kerry. This is about 0.7% of the total votes cast nationwide for Bush or Kerry in that election. I think it is highly unlikely that campaigning exclusively in those states would have changed the numbers by more than a few percentage points either way. Besides, if concentrating on those states and "promising them the moon" would influence votes by a greater degree, what you would have is both major candidates doing the same thing in the same states; their efforts would offset each other. Meanwhile, the rest of the country would be watching this, and possibly become so annoyed with the major candidates that they might decide to follow someone else; I don't think the major candidates could afford to ignore the less populous states even to the extent that they already do.

The reason those big states have as much influence as they do on the elections now is that the EC is a winner-take-all deal (with the exception of Maine and one other small state, IIRC). It doesn't matter whether a candidate wins 50.001% to 49.999% or 90% to 10%; the electoral votes are the same. Take away the EC, and the 40-45% of the voters in the populous states who disagree with the majority there would actually have some say in the election.

As for the Founders, I am aware of the debates on those issues. If their lives depended on it (I take it you're assuming that the failure to form the U.S. as we know it would have threatened their lives; I'm not quite sure how, as the Revolutionary War was long past by the time of the Constitutional Convention, and it wouldn't have been profitable for Britain to try to reconquer us by that time, as far as I can see), that has no bearing on whether their answer was the best possible one. They were human beings, just like us. I have a suspicion that if they could have been given a glimpse of the future, they might have made some different choices than they did.

-Mike

Er... Your dad was wrong (Link to the Top 10 Least Corrupt Countries in the World).

"I'm not aware of any significant/recent examples of $COUNTRY's government being inept or corrupt, therefore it must be a beacon of hope in the world."

Fair enough if you want to think that, but I still disagree. NZ rates first equal on last year's Transparency International Corruption Perceptions index.

We definitely have immature politicians, including ones who act badly, try to cover things up, and whatever else, but the design of the system makes covering things up hard to do. If journalists, opposition politicians, or random people on the street, suspect politicians or government entities of something, there are lots of avenues for them to seek further information.

Government entities are required (by law) to provide any information requested of them by a citizen, unless they can specifically justify why it shouldn't be provided... and then they have to convince an ombudsman that it's justified. (Here's a more complete discussion in a Sydney Morning Herald journalist's weblog.) The whole environment leads to government departments that have an entire culture of transparency, and of publication whenever possible rather than withholding information whenever possible, because it's just a whole lot easier that way. It also means that politicians who try to manipulate the system don't tend to stay around very long.

But yeah, if it's revealed one day that New Zealand has a closed an corrupt national government, I'll be happy to withdraw my statement.

In the calculation below I often take the most near numbers, since there are many unknown it does not need to be precise.

One need to calculate the number of gallon sold in hot weather, and multiply by 1.2% of 3$ cents.
Taking this fuel consumption in gallon US 2002 for passenger car motor vehicule there was 75000 million gallon and for all motor 167000 million gallon over 2002 (likely more now). Taking ALL motor, 167000 million gallon, and assuming a constant consumption over the year (not true but bear with me) that is 450 million gallons per day. Since most people buy their fuel during day time (at least here around...) I will asumme 100% was bought during the day to simplify. So for EVERY hot day we have roughly 450 million gallon per day bought. But in reality this is for the whole US but not all state will have a very hot temperature. Looking at the population of california, texas and a few other hot state, I come to a population estimate of roughly 70 million people (texas 29M+california 36M+ a few southern bordering 5M). Naturally this is likely to be a bit of an overestimate but I do not went to write a thesis, so unless somebody has better numbers... OK so the proportion is 70/299=~24%. So the fuel consumption for those people per hot day will be 24% of 457 =roughly 105 million gallon per day
. If there is a difference of 1.2% in volume, that means consummer paid 0.036$ too much at 3$ per gallon. This means for oil company a benefice per hot day, for ALL oil company taken together : 3,7 million dollars. Now I do not know the reparition per company, but assuming saomebody knows the % that could be done. repartition.

Still for each individual the loss of 0.036$ might not be that big, but the oil market per HOT day seems to get a few millions dollar, with maybe as much as 30 hot days per years, that would make roughly 100 million dollar. Multiply by 60 years. Sum mount rreaaaallly quick. This is not a BIG sum, but this ain't small chump either.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenceo1.html

How does winning a district vs winning actual votes matter? Isn't the person elected the one who won the most votes?

Yes. In that district.

Imagine that you have two parties, Red and Blue, running for control of a ten-seat legislature. Now imagine that 61% of the general population votes for Red and 39% votes for Blue. Here's how you divide up the districts to let Blue control the legislature in spite of Red having the popular vote:

Totals State-Wide -- 39,000 Blues; 61,000 Reds
Districts 1-4 -- No Blues; 10,000 Reds each.
Districts 6-10 -- 6,500 Blues; 3,500 Reds each.

The end result is that just over 3/5 of the population votes for Red, but 3/5 of the seats go to Blue. Blue has a solid majority to press their agenda despite the fact that the majority of people in the state sympathize with Red.

In the real world, this is the reason why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 required southern states that had a history of racial discrimination to have their districting plans reviewed to prevent attempts to marginalize the black vote. What you could do is make districts with a 90%+ black population and then spread out the remaining black vote within safe, white-dominated districts. This ensures that the white majority could never be threatened by the election of more than a handful of black politicians. Gerrymandering is a very real issue, and it's why Congress has only a handful of incumbents defeated each election cycle outside of major times of political unrest like 1994 and 2006. Gerrymandering makes sure that the voters are matched to the incumbent.

Gerrymandering also allows for victories at the state level to be translated into victories at the national level. Read about the 2003 Texas redistricting effort for more detail.

Keep in mind that while it's not the result of gerrymandering, George W. Bush beat Al Gore in 2000 despite losing the popular vote because most of the states he won were low population states which are given disproportionate voting strength in the electoral college. The composition of a district and its resulting voting power and voting biases is *extremely* important to the actual outcome of an election.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html
First, the Johann Gutenberg High School shooting was 5 years ago.
Second, nothing I've read on this particular shooting ever linked it to video games. He was expelled from school.

>Don't we have rising illiteracy
Not that I know of. China's illiteracy is falling, but is still pretty bad compared to ours.

>crime-ridden cities
Yes, just like in China, though our government is much more transparent about the statistics.

>corrupt politicians
If you actually think that politicians in China are less corrupt than the US, you need some education

>rapacious corporations
You mean more rapacious than the Chinese companies putting antifreeze in medicine to save a buck?

>wars we don't believe in killing bucketloads of civilians?
Wars *you* don't believe in, in which citizens are mostly killed by the people we're fighting. China will keep up the pacifist rhetoric until the day it "reassimilates" Taiwan, and the international community won't do much about it since they have tacitly accepted the bullsh*t explanation that Taiwan belonged to the Communists all along (they just had to wait 60 years to gain military superiority to enforce that belief).

>Who are we to say that our way of life is better?
We're free to say just that--or the opposite--and that's exactly why our way of life is better. For all the overheated liberal rhetoric, no one in this country goes to jail for speaking out against the government. No one's website is blocked for posting evidence of politically uncomfortable truths.

*Note to the pedantic. The word "controul" is a misspelling that's in the original document. Yes, the US Constitution, the Supreme Law of our Land, has misspellings.

Actually it is a correct spelling. Like other spellings used, controul is an archaic spelling. Elsewhere "chuse" is used whereas now it's spelled as "choose".

That is how the 2000 election really was stolen

The only thing about the 2000 election that every American should be ashamed about is the fact that there was only a 51% turnout. For all those Democrats that want to scream, yell, and pull their hair (even after re-count after re-count and investigation after investigation) they should be pointing figure as themselves if they didn't vote.

51% is not a very good number. It's shameful. That's not enough to determine who the majority of the country really wanted (not even going into how Gore won the popular vote). What America needs is an invigoration in voting. It's shameful that the French can turn out 85% of their votes and feel that their country is falling apart if only 74% turn out while one of our most controversial elections, the 2004 re-election of Bush, his previously 'stolen' election and the controversy of the Iraq war, could only muster a 55% turnout.

The problem? Too many people feel politics are corrupt. Why vote for candidate A or B when you cannot believe what A or B say is true? Maybe you believe in the Democratic or Republican mantra, but you cannot believe that the candidate for those parties reflect that feeling. Republicans political leaders are spending Democrats, Democrat political leaders are more concerned about their own image and hating 'the enemy' (see Republicans) than actually passing sensible laws and legislation for the people. Both parties are stuff pork into each bill. It doesn't matter if it's the Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere or subsidies for Spinach growers and Peanut farmers in a war bill to buy votes.

What there's a real need for right now is a 3rd party. A party that will better represent the people of America. One that's not Gung Ho on starting controversial wars and nation building, particularly without a plan of action or cultural understanding of the region. Also, a party that's not going to try and sabotage a war and try to LOOSE it just because they disagreed with starting it and that they feel the person who started it "cheated them" and "isn't playing fair" because he "stole" the 2000 election. (Sadly, I voted for and really wanted Gore to win. Even sadder I voted for Kerry and I didn't even like the guy and trusted him less)

So, lets get a 3rd party. Lets get smaller government. We don't need people poking their noses in everything we do. We don't need the government telling someone they cannot smoke a joint if it helps them feel better with their terminal disease and we don't need people passing laws telling us what we can or cannot eat. Knowledge is power, I support laws that informs the consumer but I'm not crazy enough to start passing laws forbidding them from making the choice once they've informed.

I support the freedom of religion. I respect peoples individual faiths, but I hate having a faith pushed on me. If people want an abortion, let them have one. If they cannot make up their mind fast enough, then they should finish what they started and put it up for adoption (I'm against partial birth abortion). Likewise, if you're against gay marriage, fine. I respect that. But don't force your believes on others. Don't worry, it won't be a 'religious' wedding that will get your church smote by the big 'G' (unless your religion accepts it). But I won't stop gays from legal marriage. We don't need the government telling us what we can and cannot do. After all, we have the freedom of religion. If a 'religion' appears that accepts gay marriage, then who are we to go against the founding principles of our country? If you don't like it, don't do it.

Who cares if there's not enough evidence about our impact on the environment? Does global warming HAVE to be true to be concerned about it? The fact is, waste is never good. We should all be better at doing too much

Except they aren't becoming more prevalent. Worldwide, there have been around 5 shootings per year, and the number appears to be holding steady, at least for the last decade. I know that's not a very long record to plot a trend, but it's better than nothing.

Gruesome group deaths, when perpetrated by a person, have a huge psychological impact on the general public. The level of fear is vastly disproportionate to the actual threat. 24-hour news outlets intensify this fear by exaggerating the threat. I'm not saying that preparation is a bad thing, but there's no reason to scare people in the process.

First, IANASG (I am not a statistical genius). However, I'm not an idiot either. The US population in 1982 was 231,664,458. If you honestly believe that a survey of 160 students, all likely within the same county and state, accurately represents the views of 240,132,887 children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and senior citizens, then you truly are a fool. "Statistically significant" does not exactly mean that the results are completely accurate. Not to mention the fact that all those surveyed were students - are you going to also tell me that most students share the same views as most adults and senior citizens?

I do not believe that the school system's repeated failure to renew on time is the most important issue here. The disturbing thing is that these educational systems have been forced to generate revenue by leasing portions of the spectrum to corporations. When educational departments are driven to things like this, what message does it send - scream, even - to the people? Right now, I am thinking it is along the lines of:

"We do not give two shits about education for the masses. We would rather funnel all of the money that we receive from taxpaying people into bombs, missiles, tanks, warplanes, weapons of mass destruction, et cetera."

When you take thirty seconds and look up government expenditures, it is actually plain as day. Here are the figures for defense versus education in 2004:

Defense: totalled $456 billion.

Education: totalled $88 billion.

source (warning: there may be some flash nasties at this site, but the figures are likely elsewhere on the 'net as well.)

If that does not anger the average person, I honestly do not know what will. While I was perusing the figures, I thought these two were also rather telling:

Also from 2004, cumulative, the amount that our government took in from taxes:

Individual Income Taxes: totalled $809 billion.

Corporate Income Taxes: totalled $189.4 billion.

I would say that there is a bit of a disparity there. I will leave it up to everyone to draw their own conclusions as to why.

I have four words for you: high crimes and misdemeanors

First three google hits:

From http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A07


What are High Crimes and Misdemeanors?

Bribery and treason are among the least ambiguous reasons meriting impeachment, but the ocean of wrongdoing encompassed by the Constitution's stipulation of high crimes and misdemeanors is vast. Abuse of power and serious misconduct in office fit this category

From http://www.constitution.org/cmt/high_crimes.htm

"the key to understanding [this term] is the word "high". It does not mean "more serious". It refers to those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons, that is, to public officials, those who, because of their official status, are under special obligations that ordinary persons are not under, and which could not be meaningfully applied or justly punished if committed by ordinary persons...

Offenses of this kind survive today in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It recognizes as punishable offenses such things as refusal to obey orders, abuse of authority, dereliction of duty, moral turpitude, and conduct unbecoming. These would not be offenses if committed by a civilian with no official position, but they are offenses which bear on the subject's fitness for the duties he holds, which he is bound by oath or affirmation to perform...

Therefore, the appropriate subject matter for an impeachment and removal proceeding is the full range of offenses against the Constitution and against the rights of persons committed by subordinate officials and their agents which have not been adequately investigated or remedied."

According to http://www.c-span.org/questions/week119.htm

"Lawyers and historians are still arguing about the exact meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors," dividing into three schools of thought about the appropriate definition: (1) serious criminality evidenced by breaking existing law; (2) an abuse of office, and (3) the Alexander Hamilton standard (Federalist 65) of "violation of public trust."

historically, Congress had issued Articles of Impeachment in three broad categories: (1) exceeding the constitutional bounds of the powers of the office; (2) behaving in a manner grossly incompatible with the proper function and purpose of the office; and (3) employing the power of the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain."

Given these definitions, can Bush and Cheney be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors"? Hell yes!

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872964.html

Canada has the world's second largest oil reserve after Saudi Arabia. Why are they importing instead of exporting right now? Because oil is currently dirt cheap, compared to what it will be in 20 years. Canada is just sitting back, watching the world tear itself apart over oil, all the while not sharing what they have.

Watch it, Canada will be the new superpower in a couple decades. That, or we'll just invade them.