Slashdot Mirror
Barack Obama Retains US Presidency
Fox News, NBC, and CNN have called the U.S. election for incumbent Barack Obama. Of the so-called 'battleground states,' Obama carried Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, which, along with all of the solidly Democrat-leaning states, was enough to push him beyond the 270 required for victory. You can check this chart to see the full list of states that have currently been called, and by which news networks. The NY Times has an excellent interactive map showing all election results updated in real time, as does CNN. It's currently projected that the Republicans will retain control of the House of Representatives, and the Democrats will retain control of the Senate.
No more
Not sure whether I consider that a good thing or not; but at least somebody did something about the health care problems the USA has and maybe the conservatives will work a little bit with him now to improve it, rather than just chanting to repeal it like some kind of mantra.
that happened faster than expected
Don't worry, Republican friends, Mitt will just claim he wasn't actually running for President anyway.
16,000,000,000,000 and counting.
Queue the butthurt. least its only 4 more years.
Now that the results are definitive, and Obama is no longer accountable to the right, he can get down to the business of getting rid of all the guns (yes Tea Party, I'm looking @ you).
Tweedledum lost !
But is there any difference ?
I mean, Democrooks are as bad as the Republicrooks - and both are there to fleece the people and to ensure that their power is not challenged by the people.
The Bill of Rights be damned.
The Constitution also be damned.
As long as Washington D.C. is under the control of Demo-Republicrooks, they will continue to allow this charade to continue.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
And we are guaranteed four more years of the SOS.. *sigh*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Through an amendment, or through the National Vote project.
I hope the plans and values of his 2nd term really do help grow the country and the world.
Obama or Romney, whoever gets elected, get rid of the Electoral College.
Hear, hear.
God bless America. Or flying Spaghetti monster. Or random evolutionary processes. At least it wasn't that mutant.
Now, we have to:
1. Declare a national holiday so all can vote on a day off to eliminate the lines.
2. Get rid of the electoral college.
3. Get Congress to override Citizen United.
4. Take the money out of the electoral system.
Zero cooperation.
Obama is still president.
Meanwhile, going by the last results I saw, it looks like the House and Senate are going to retain their respective majorities. (Yes, I know that's not official yet, just going by the results so far)
So... at least 2 more years of gridlock. yay.
Romney could probably have gotten the Republican nomination fair-and-square, and if he had done it that way a bunch of people wouldn't have been alienated and abandoned the Republican party. Instead his people cheated blatantly and publicly and drove away, not just a few hundred thousand hardcore Ron Paul supporters, but a bunch of non-Paulite Rs. He lost FAR more than the margin by which he lost some key states in the general election.
The behavior of his people in the primary/caucus period proved they couldn't be trusted with government power. So they got what they deserved. And I'm proud to have been a part of it.
Take that, Neocons!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
All I know is that Colorado looks to be passing Amendment 64 (as is Washington.. Oregon doesn't seem to be on the train). Here's a tip, start buying stock in lighting, security fencing, and organic soils.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
The electoral college is fine. The problem is the Winner Takes All system. The founding fathers never intended that.
Then try scrolling down to the "Niggers win again" comment by AC
The Americans will hit the fiscal cliff in January.
At that state they will equal Greece in their fiscal situation.
Under Bush the national deficit rose to an average of $400 billion/year
which was bad -- Obama during his regime raised it to $1,400
billion/year -- 4 more years -- is this a good thing?
This will collapse the global economy and push us into a depression.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
we are f***ed.
Buddy can you spare a dime
Hi down there,
We Canadians would happily trade you 1 Stephen Harper for either of your presidential candidates (prefer Obama SVP).
Anyway, congratulations & good luck...
Obama may not be perfect, but at least he doesn't wear magic underpants. I don't think america's reputation would recover if they handed control of their nuclear arsenal over to _that_ particular flavour of crazy.
Hey, don't knock magic undies. I traded an excellent sword for my +7 Knickers of Protection, Levitation, and Seduction.
Only problem is that they can only provide two benefits at a time, so I have to avoid some of the obvious things that come to mind.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I want to rid this country of insurance. Go Canadian style. As much hype from the republicans you'd think this country was in ruins. Despite paying more for my insurance now I'm glad to know that I won't be refused coverage due to a pre-existing condition.
However the system still royally sucks. Health care should be like education. You can't opt out of paying your fair share. I'd even be in favor of ensuring a minimum level of food and housing security for all citizens and tax paying residents.
What I don't agree with are social security numbers, license plates, drivers licenses, or government run programs. Hospitals should be non-profit entities that are regulated and bill the government for services provided. The same should be true of drug companies and research. I'm against private research although any profits gained should be determined and regulated.
Are you serious??!?!?? Of all the things to criticize about Mitt Romney you chose underwear? How is that even relevant. Go after his foreign policy or his lack of information on how he would carry out his Economic plans, but your comment is just plain stupid and ignorant.
What, is this your first day?
Learn to love Alaska
Don't worry, with the Republicans expanding their House control, nothing will happen for four years.
Bring on SOPA again. This time it will pass.
Then you'll see a huge difference.
Putting weapons of mass destruction in the hands of anyone who thinks they get their orders from a 'invisible friend in the sky' is a bad idea, no matter who that person is. The closer they consider themselves to their invisible friend, the more dangerous they are. Someone who bases a decision on logic and reason is a far safer choice.
So nothing has changed. Looking forward to the next four years of partisanship!
Were you watching news and the maps constantly ... There was a moment that a big shaped "L" of color red ... Was it a prophesy of Republicans to have their big L (because of the red states shaping that letter) in the middle of the country? ... curiosities that will follow us forever!
Romney would have won if we didn't have the electoral college (according to the popular vote), sooo...
So its the person's religion, like JFK of believing that the pope was God's ambassador on earth and that having a peace of bread/eucharist is the body of Christ. Well I knew the indian/chinese hack would prevail. Some districts they perform the recount of the paper ballots story may be different. Anyway well the arsenal will go to 300 under the new Obama, so Regan's/Rosavelt's policy of walk quietly and carry a big stick should be on the way of the doto. This country will be more like a third world country and China won they have their puppet in, works for India until it goes up more.
If you look at the numbers, there are quite a few counties in Ohio and FL that haven't come in yet. FL is probably good for Obama, but OH is really still a question mark right now.
83% reporting
difference: 26k votes
http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enrpublic/f?p=212:41:535976335870203::NO::P41_REGION,P41_RACE_CODE:Statewide,PR
20:47 PDT
Are you serious??!?!?? Of all the things to criticize about Mitt Romney you chose underwear? How is that even relevant. Go after his foreign policy or his lack of information on how he would carry out his Economic plans, but your comment is just plain stupid and ignorant.
A cynic might also ask how "magic underwear" is any different from the things more popular religions claim.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The 'free world" is an exoplanet, still waiting to be discovered.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Dewey Beats Truman"
Good News:
No more campaign ads!
Bad News:
Unemployment rate rises due to loss of campaign ad market.
I guess they can announce they are going to layoff 123,000 people now that the election is over.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/at-white-house-request-lockheed-martin-drops-plan-to-issue-layoff-notices/
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Oh well. I guess I'll go watch Fox News slip into a channel-wide suicidal depression.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If they can't beat Obama in this economy, with his results, they really need to stare at their navels and figure out why people hate them so much. They can start with GWB, one of the worst presidents in history, move on to what they think of rape, and then figure how much they need the religious nutjobs that forms their so called base. Their anti-science, anti-women BS is driving the country away from them.
I'll admit I voted for Rmoney. Not because I like that finger in the wind flip flopper, but I think Obama's policies are disastrous.
Just because he doesn't wear "magic underpants" doesn't mean he won't bomb the shit out of every brown person he can with his "wonderfully successful" drone attack program that he touts as "precision strikes"... And I don't give two shits what the slashdot crowd thinks, he murdered two American citizens in Yemen. The President doesn't get to decide who lives and dies...
Welcome to the new world...
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Please, let's stop pretending that Bush started anything.
1) He started the invasion of Iraq.
2) He started torture as official US policy.
His predecessors were hardly any better.
After World War 2, the USA convicted several Japanese soldiers of water boarding American and Allied prisoners of war. The US government hanged them for that crime.
George W. Bush will forever be known as the President who first sanctioned torture in the USA.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Deficit is not the same thing as debt... look it up
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
but Barak Obama is the same way (maybe not as religious, but still religious). So the only thing you can say about the person starting this thread is that they were purposely trolling.
Lots of people disagree. Bush was the one who got tens of thousands of Americans killed for a pointless war in Iraq.
The republicans got Clinton impeached for getting a blowjob in the Oval Office and then lying about it.
Tell me one of these is not worse then the other. Bush was a madman who screwed up this country far more then any other president in recent history, including Nixon. And that Nixon asshole was a dirtyhanded SOB.
ACA is a bridge to a other system at least in part
The health care problems in the usa are to big to fix at one time and there is room to change ACA or to use it while working on a better over all idea.
I'm wondering at what point Obama will take responsibility for his presidency. The first one, and now the second.
I voted for Kodos.
The free world has just been helped. Meaning "free" as in "free from christian fundamentalists/jihadists".
Thank God that God is only an idea in people's head.
Wow, pretty much the most bigoted comment I've ever seen on Slashdot.
You must be new here. I'd type that in all caps if I could, but the regex based overlord won't let me.
Mitts strategy was to rely on moderate Republicans (who vote for the party and what it ideally stands for, even if it falls short) and appease the far right, in an effort to push him over the line. Essentially playing the numbers game (Hey, it made him rich!).
The Republicans didn't bother trying to engage broader America. This is now proven to be a loser move (and demographics are against this). So: Is the Republican party going to move towards the centre or go further right? A reagan-esque war is about to happen in the GOP.
...Thankyou American voting public.
No, he just wants to turn this country into Europe. BTW, Socialism has failed every time it's been tried. Magic underwear is far less offensive than socialism to me.
It'd really be nice if /.'ers actually thought beyond the code/net. Of course lack of social skills is why most of us are in this job. I just happen to be one of the exceptions. ;)
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
Given Obama's terrible record concerning civil liberties and due process (e.g. indefinite detention of American citizens, domain seizures without a trial, a White House sponsored deal with ISPs to disconnect people accused of infringement, significant expansion of presidential powers in the name of fighting terrorism), what does this mean for the future of America? Would Romney really have been any worse?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Congrats Obama on your win, I am starting up my outsourcing consulting firm tomorrow. There is no possible way I could fail, it is going to be like taking candy from a baby convincing employers to do away with those high overhead expensive US employees.
I'm sure people remember where it was when Bush took office in Jan 2001. I'm sure people remember Iraq and pallets of US$100 bills which "disappeared, 4000+ Americans dead and a 2 trillion US$+ cost. I'm sure people remember the 2007-2008 crash. I'm sure people remember 9/11 which was on George Bush's watch. The US Deficit is a product of republicans and George Bush. They took 8 years to destroy the US. It will take more than 4, maybe 6, maybe 8 years to turn the time. Luckily Obama won. Mittens would have just turned around the good Obama and the democrats have done over the last 4 years and returned the US to it's downward spiral into oblivion. I'm not an Obama fan, but as always in US elections it's the lesser of 2 evils.
Nixon won in 1972. Watergate was an issue before and after the election.
Obama won in 2012. Benghazi is an issue before and after the election.
It's SO much better to have it in the hands of a man who intentionally let his ambassador die and lied about what happened and why.
My, my. You sure don't get out much. Obviously Faux news has rotted your brain. Hopefully you have your tin foil hat on for protection.
The Democrats can finally come up with a budget as required by law and pass it without Republicans being able to do anything about it.
Oh, wait. The Democrats have had a majority and were able to do this over the past four years. What? They never submitted a budget?
I guess I can return all those canned goods I'd stocked up on...
George W. Bush will forever be known as the President who first sanctioned torture in the USA.
And we are the first generation to give it *our* full consent and approval. We could have voted him out, but we didn't. There's no reason to believe Gore wouldn't have done the same thing under the same circumstances. Both were/are evil. And besides, we have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. At worse, Bush brought it out into full daylight. Making it public policy does not mean he was the first to put it into practice.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You're all good with Mormonism? Ok...
Would you consider it irrelevant if he were a Scientologist? Xenu, E-meters, etc.? Not cRaZy enough? ok...
How about if he was a Heaven's gate member? Killing themselves to ride on a UFO...
How about a Satanist? Yeah, I really want a Satanist's finger on the button. Hmm. No.
Tell us, please, where you draw the line on cRaZy.
Because for me, after looking into Mormonism... that's pretty damned crazy -- right up there with the above.
Christianity too... but there's one thing about Christianity... at least it's a nationally shared bewilderment, and I can at *least* snuggle with the idea that the candidate is just pandering, and actually has a scientific worldview instead of just more crazy. Also, we've had a string of Christian presidents, and the worst they've done is nuke a couple cities, murder the occasional US citizen, crush our rights and the constitution, involve us in a bunch of unjustified wars, and lie like rugs, repeatably and dependably. So yeah, Christians are nucking futs, but...
I don't want to step up to even more crazy.
Obama hasn't won yet. He needs Ohio and so far, Romney is in the lead with 75% of the vote counted. Not sure why everyone is claiming its over
it happens every 4 years, no big deal. wish the people that get upset about what the republocrats are doing would quit assuming the other republocrats were the solution. we've given them both plenty of chances, and they've both sucked hard and long.
-Lod
And I'm sure they remember the 50%, adjusted for inflation, that the US debt has increased under Obama to this point. Well, you'll have four more years to put two and two together.
Otherwise we'd never have been certain that 93% of people voted Obama and the other 88% voted Romney.
Yeah, Clinton with his 3.5% unemployment, 3 years of balanced budgets and 8 years averaging 3.7% GDP growth really sucked. I'm glad those days are gone.
[/sarcasm]
No they did not. Water boarding was listed as activities supporting torture but none of them were convicted for water boarding anyone. You will not find one charge of water boarding against any of the japs or germans convicted of post facto laws
Can't help but think about this particular piece during elections. Thank you Brian. http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/08/26/episode-455-self-fulfilling-stupidity/
He's as good a person as any. Go cover up your women's faces and leave us alone.
Socialism? Are you kidding? Both major parties are sliding head-long into fascism, not socialism. Methinks you need to read up what socialism really is. Maybe you should actually read what Karl Marx said about capitalism. I think you'll be hard-pressed to disagree with his observations about capitalism, though he was dead wrong about what would happen because of it.
I think you'll have better mileage with the birther argument than the socialism one.
ACA is a bridge to a other system at least in part
Ah, yes, never let a crisis go to waste. Especially, if you went through the trouble of manufacturing it in the first place.
The health care problems in the usa are to big to fix at one time and there is room to change ACA or to use it while working on a better over all idea.
They threw a couple thousand pages (plus the 17,000+ pages of associated regulation from the regulators who cover this law) of crap on top of that problem and made it more intractable than it was.
You should look at where the term magic underpants came from. The person who coined the term actually said that in order for Obama to not being wearing them, we would have to believe he is a liar. He also said it was a shame that he like Obama because he was a liar.
So lets see, magic underpants or convinced someone is a liar. It sure is a predicament.
But still pretty crap.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Florida.
Fox News, Fox News.
Today, I trust Fox News.
I saw it in the NY Times and the Washington Post.
Yet, I had to countercheck it with Fox News.
So we don't have to liberate you - for now...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
The electoral college math was obvious months ago. Responsible media outlets (e.g., the PBS Newshour) crunched the electoral college numbers long ago and were honest about how difficult it would be for Romney to run the table with all the swing states. Many mainstream commercial news outlets ignored the reality of the electoral votes, invented a story arc that Romney somehow dominated the first debate but Obama came back, and failed to cover demographic shifts that made an Obama victory obvious. This helped them keep people interested and sell more advertisements, but became so excessive that it bordered on delusional. Now Fox News is orchestrating a debate where embarrassingly Rove is insisting that the race isn't over rather than admit that he was completely wrong.
Watch that first debate again; it is one of the best televised presidential debates ever. It was policy-rich, even-tempered, and didn't feature any distracting, bogus, irrelevant attacks from either side. Lehrer took the high road and didn't throw any red meat question about the 47% out there and focused on real issues. The press loathed that there was no gotcha moment. They replay debate clips from previous elections highlighting sighs and watch-checking vs. policy issues and in the midst of insisting that Obama "lost" the first debate, can't produce a single clip to demonstrate that it was anything less than an even debate from both sides.
The country deserves better, more honest press coverage. There is objective data here: this was not a close race by the electoral college and some people said so long ago. Any outlets that selectively highlighted popular vote polls vs. electoral college math to deceive their audience should suffer appropriate reductions in viewership/readership.
No they did not. Water boarding was listed as activities supporting torture but none of them were convicted for water boarding anyone. You will not find one charge of water boarding against any of the japs or germans convicted of post facto laws
I'm not sure if you are arguing some technicality (such as the technique being referred to as "water torture" rather than "water boarding" at the time, despite being the same practice)... but in any case, Politifact disagrees with you.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Now now.. You don't actually believe that. Like Biden said, they didn't know. They aren't on top of things, no one told them.
Fuck, you act like the commander in chief- the head of the government is supposed to know about these things. Besides, even if they did, it was Bush's fault, he's the one who let 9/11 happen which then required them to pay attention to the calendar and give extra support to these places.
Winner tonight: Federal Reserve reckless money printing.
A man with a talent for cooking the books. Eh, whatever, the irrational hate is strong amongst the moderators, so screw it, Bush is the 'worst ever', worse even than Andrew Johnson. sheesh!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Maine and Washington (and possibly Maryland) legalized gay marriage. Minnesota had a referendum to ban it, results still inconclusive.
Massachusetts, Washington and Arkansas (and probably Colorado) legalized marijuana. Montana "reformed medical marijuana". Oregon had a referendum to legalize, which failed.
The Massachusetts assisted-suicide referendum is still undecided, but seems to have failed from early numbers
Florida rejected a referendum to limit "Obamacare" ("prevents penalties for not purchasing health care coverage in order to comply with federal health care reforms"), but Alabama approved a similar referendum. That will probably lead to the Supreme Court as a states-rights conflict.
California had a referendum to ban the death penalty, which failed.
Finally, Puerto Rico had a referendum to decide whether to pursue statehood, leave the union, or to remain a non-state commonwealth. While this could be one of the biggest actual changes of the election, I can't find any results as of yet.
...the following things to happen within the next 12-18 months
- $8-10 per gallon gasoline combined with shortages
- electric bills to nearly double
- natural gas and heating oil bills to nearly double
- widespread shortages of critical medicine drugs commonly used in hospitals and emergency clinics (already happening now)
- widespread early retiring of doctors and nurses creatng sudden shortages of medical professionals (already happening now)
- what little bank commercial credit is available now to dry up completely
- doubling of the number of people on food stamps
- prices of durable manufactured goods doubling followed by the factories closing due to nobody buying these durable goods
- signs of the start of double-digit inflation
- sudden rise of unemployment as the pissed-off conservatives close down their businesses and "go Galt"
- lots of other serious problems caused by a population even far more deeply divided than ever before
- the government doing even less to help the situation, but rather doing more to hurt it
Can you say Telecom explosion? Clinton prospered because our ability communicate went supernova.
Good-bye
And take a look at the ones that are graphs, with the X axis as time annotated with presidencies and senate majorities.
You people keep losing for a reason.
He doesn't need Ohio.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
I am a solid liberal, but some of the finest times in my life is having a serious discussion with an intelligent conservative. But tonight, William F. Buckley is rolling over in his grave. The economy is weak. A shallow analysis says Obama should have been voted out. But you didn't deliver.
Because the Right in the U.S.A. has been taken over by shrill blind ideological fanatics and well, frankly, the stupid. So the only guy who could maneuver from the primaries, where the truly crackpot rightwing idiots held power, to the general elections, was an empty vapid lying suit like Romney.
The pendulum swings left and right in this country, your time will come again. But the only way you are going to get there, Republicans, is to use your brain. Stop pandering to the loud shrill dumb voices on the right. Cut them out, excise them, ignore them, marginalize them as they deserve, because they are a liability, not a strength. And thereby be a serious power again. Otherwise, you collapsed tonight, and you will continue to collapse, until you come to grips with the raging Randroids, hatemongers, and assorted narrow minded morons on your side of the fence.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of stupid moronic liberals as well.
But the difference is, they don't hold the power in the Democratic party for now.
Yours,
one happy elated American liberal tonight
The path of lies, empty suits, vile sources of cash, and fearmongering was repudiated, soundly.
All is good in the world.
I sleep the deep happy sleep of the mightily vindicated tonight.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Water boarding was listed as one of several activities that they called torture but never was water boarding along considered torture. Politicfact references the MTFE but gets confused as to what torture was. Water boarding alone was not enough to charge and convict someone, they needed several of the activities listed before any of the soldiers were charged for torture. We charged them for a pattern of behavior, not a specific act. We also did so in a post facto way (read unconstitutional) which the justification of it became not charging for the acts but the behavior which somehow made it exempt or something.
They kept the Japanese trials a military tribunal because the only Judge on the Supreme court willing to participate in the Nuremberg trials didn't even have a law degree and he later wrote back about how wrong it was.
Neither of them has cheated on his wife like these "successful," progessive and/or beloved presidents:
Thomas Jefferson
James Garfield*
Warren Harding*
Franklin Roosevelt*
John Kennedy*
Lyndon Johnson
Bill Clinton
* of them died in office...
He not only has the clear lead in Ohio, but also Nevada, Colorado, and Virginia. It's not even going to be close.
I just watched Karl Rove argue with Fox's results analyst about how calling a state early hurt the team, the "news"caster who introduced them refered to it as cage match 2012. I know whos pocket fox is in but they usually refer to it openly.
Did the fact that marijuana legalization was on the ballot favor Obama? It's projected to win. I would think that many who would otherwise not have voted turned out for that, and voted for Obama.
Oh, bummer :(
There's no use arguing with these kids. Apparently they think we used to keep our prisoners in 5 star hotels during Korea and Vietnam and other adventures in Central/South America.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I still had the same dial up, cable, and telephone services before and after ... the celphone whores happened in the early 2000's. ie post Clinton
...and telecom happened because of the internet going mainstream.
That happened because of lowering PC prices relative to income.
Turtles all the way down.
If he couldn't even win the primaries without voter fraud, he couldn't score the close win he did.
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Amazing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf
The FIRST act of Obama now, should be to detect and prosecute the voter fraud. All that 'I pressed Romeny and the tick went to Obama' nonsense aside. When you have a detectable algorithmic trend in voting and that algorithm is only showing the trend on Central Tabulator voting machines, then you have fraud.
You need to prosecute it. There needs to be prison time for the fraudsters, and I'd like to see a complete return to pen and paper voting. If the Republicans truly believe there is fraud, and are not just making false claims to cover their asses, then they should cooperate in getting rid of these unaccountable machines from the voting system.
You can't have detectable fraud in the vote and continue to believe in it.
Yep. Thanks, Al Gore!
I think it would be fitting for a black man to defeat the last Republican to hold nationwide office, for the GOP to collapse, and for a 3rd party to emerge. The 3rd party should have some Libertarian characteristics, tempered with the common sense required to form a larger party. GOP would eventually become something you read about in the history books like Whigs or Federalists. For me, the Republican party is DONE for a very long time. I've become a GWB Democrat the way my parents were FDR Democrats. The interesting thing about that is that I've been repulsed into the Democratic Party as opposed to being drawn into it as my parents were. They didn't vote GOP until Reagan, so it's not etched in stone; but GOP is fixed in my brain as the party of GWB, and it will take a long time to remove that stain. I didn't vote for Obama or the Democrats so much as I voted to make sure that the organization behind Romney didn't get the executive power again so quickly. I kept waiting for somebody in the media to say "It's the military-industrial complex, stupid". I'm sure I'm not the only one that sees it that way. Maybe people don't have the guts to say it? I was hoping that Obama would call that out in his first innaugural address. It would have been historic--Ike warning us on the way out, Obama repudiating it on the way in. Alas, it was not to be. He has never repudiated it, but at least he has drawn down forces and isn't planning to blow up the debt even further with a lot of weapons we don't need.
...that if the President unilaterally decides to have me secretly shot and disposed of, it will be a Democrat doing it and not a Republican.
This space available.
The initial popular vote tally will make the race look closer on election night than it really is. This is because some Western states, such as Washington and Ohio do a large portion (41%) of their vote by mail, and because the polls close later on the West Coast, which means that popular vote will not be tallied until way after a candidate is projected to win. In 2008, Obama was projected to win when the popular vote count was 50-50 — he ended up with 53.6 percent of the vote, which is an enormous difference. You can read about it here. http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/109533/the-popular-vote-nightmare
You had a choice: http://www.jillstein.org/issues
"FINANCIAL REFORM
* Break up the oversized banks that are "too big to fail," starting with Bank of America.
* Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
* End bailouts for the financial elite and use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
* Bring monetary policy under democratic control by prohibiting private banks from creating money, thus restoring government's Constitutional authority.
* Let pension funds be managed by boards controlled by workers, not corporate managers.
* Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
* Require banks to use honest bookkeeping so that toxic assets cannot be hidden or sold to unsuspecting persons.
* Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
* Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means nationalizing the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and placing them under a Federal Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
* Establish federal, state, and municipal publicly-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities and focus on helping people, not enriching themselves."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Due to the Republican Congress's Deregulation of the Telecom Industry
How can believing in any sort of sky wizard not be fair game? since it is pretty much an admission that logic and judgement escape you.
George W. Bush will forever be known as the President who first sanctioned torture in the USA.
Absolutely, yes. And Obama was definitely the lesser evil in this election
But Obama will be forever known as the President who first sanctioned mass assassinations (in a semi-official way). Even if Obama did not start the practice, he (to my knowledge) is the first to openly brag about the success of the drone attacks, while arguing in court that the program is too secret to admit its existence.
If you think you know better, post a rebuttal instead of modding this down.
I'm sure people remember where it was when Bush took office in Jan 2001. I'm sure people remember Iraq and pallets of US$100 bills which "disappeared, 4000+ Americans dead and a 2 trillion US$+ cost. I'm sure people remember the 2007-2008 crash. I'm sure people remember 9/11 which was on George Bush's watch. The US Deficit is a product of republicans and George Bush. They took 8 years to destroy the US. It will take more than 4, maybe 6, maybe 8 years to turn the time. Luckily Obama won. Mittens would have just turned around the good Obama and the democrats have done over the last 4 years and returned the US to it's downward spiral into oblivion. I'm not an Obama fan, but as always in US elections it's the lesser of 2 evils.
I have often found myself half-hoping that the Republicans would win big and get another eight years to finish running the country into the ground. Apparently that's what it's going to take to make the American public Wake TF Up and see the Republicans for what they are instead of what they claim to be.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There, there... poor dumb-ass. ;o(
ACA is a bridge to a other system at least in part
Actually it's what's left of what might have been a decent system, if the Democrats hadn't compromised on issue after issue to secure Republican votes. (And then the Republicans didn't vote for it anyway. I fear and detest them, but I don't call them stupid.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I spent some time watching the Intrade prediction market. The market in the presidential race was extremely distorted. There seemed to be some loss-eating Red whales holding the line at just under 70% for Obama while the polls remained open.
The individual state markets were far more sane, converging to 90% certainty in most of the swing states long before the mainstream media maps. They often went against established voting margins, factoring in the nature of the precincts reporting and yet to report.
States with mixed urban/rural populations usually swung toward Obama as more polls reported. Urban polling stations have more votes and take longer to count. The exception was Ohio which had a big margin for Obama in the pre-voting, but went much closer on the day.
Not only did Nate Silver predict the outcome, but the biggest spike on his graph appears to be the outcome obtained (20% probability assigned to the simulation result where Obama wins with 332 electoral votes).
I don't know, maybe literacy in math ain't such a bad thing, after all.
After World War 2, the USA convicted several Japanese soldiers of water boarding American and Allied prisoners of war. The US government hanged them for that crime.
US justice consistently ruled waterboarding a crime from the time of the Spanish-American War until this century. We have convicted foreign troops for doing it to ours, our own troops for doing it to foreigners, and even civilian law enforcement agents for doing it to criminals or suspected criminals.
But no one has the political courage to slap a President and Vice President in prison for it. We'll impeach a president for lying about an illicit blowjob, but not for authorizing war crimes.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'll admit I voted for Rmoney. Not because I like that finger in the wind flip flopper, but I think Obama's policies are disastrous.
Do you really think Romney's policies would have been less disastrous? Did you think that Romney would be able to shake off the control of nutjob right-wing Republicans as President? Or has that question not entered your consideration?
(I am honestly curious)
Wow. A bigoted post gets rated as insightful on slashdot these days?
> Bush is the 'worst ever', worse even than Andrew
> Johnson. sheesh!
Worst ever? No.
Worst in living memory? Probably not.
Worst in my own lifetime? Most definitely. And that probably applies to the majority of the /. readership.
Imagine all the people...
Bush was a madman who screwed up this country far more then any other president in recent history
No, IMO he was a witless tool who let his handlers screw the country up.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, basically because it's over.
I'll concede that. Between all the discourse on legitimate rape, obamacare and the Libyan ambassador it seems that many people have glossed over the fact that both of these men subscribe to patently fraudulent belief systems. It doesn't matter that Obama is moderate in his faith, he is still the president of the most powerful nation in the world in the 21st century and his life is framed in medieval nonsense.
Even a casual dig into mormonism reveals it's nature as a poorly written fiction thrown together by either a master con or a madman.
I despair to doubt that anyone handed that much power is capable of divorcing their political goals from their religious delusions, if they have any.
You can see shades of this even in my nation's (Australia) government. Our prime minister is an unmarried, childless atheist who has an out & proud lesbian as a senior cabinet minister yet still refuses to support same-sex marriage on the grounds that this country's culture is based on biblical structures. The drivel that the other guy believes is even worse.
but but but... he got a blowjob from a chunky-butt!
SCANDALOUS.
Oh please. I have no use for Romney, but I'm sick of all the anti-Mormon bigotry. Most people have rituals that sound silly to some other people. Don't make ignorant fun of theirs and they won't make fun of yours.
Interesting that the least divided state in this election was Utah with 75% of votes going to Romney.
We are collectively kinda surprised it was a contest at all with all the genuinely looney retoric from 1 particular side. \
Seriously though, on /. normally this kind of batshit insane drivel would be enough to right out ignore someone but as soon as it's politics magical thinking suddenly becomes ok.
Dear Red States,
Ha ha ha ha. Sucks to be you right now. How are those guns and religion doing for you now?
Sincerely,
Blue States
p.s. - Please keep the money to pay for another one of our disasters flowing. Thanks.
the above comment is exhibit A of the kind of shrill blind fanatic that you need to lose in order to win again
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The electoral college is necessary to balance power between large and small states. Civics education in this country is going down the pooper.
I think you're confusing the Senate with the Electoral College. The distribution of electors by state within the electoral college is determined by each state's population. So no, it does not keep any kind of "balance" between large and small states. What it does is keep control of the federal government directly at the State level. The States get to choose who is President of the US, and thus they get to decide what method to use to represent the popular vote of their citizens. A couple states (Maine and Nebraska) are more "democratic" than others, in that they split their electoral votes by district, thus it is possible for some of the state's votes to go to one candidate, and some to go to another.
But the spirit of the electoral college is simply that of the union of separate States into a federal government. When is the last time you, personally, got to vote on ANYTHING to do with the federal government? Never. However, the representatives you elected for your state and congressional district do get to vote. The electoral college is in this same spirit, in that we "elect" individuals to represent us at the federal level.
So why is the electoral college separate from, say, the House of Representatives (IE why doesn't the house decide the president since we chose them to represent us already, and they are even allocated by population just like the electors)? To maintain proper separation of the 3 parts of our government. The electoral college is unique and independent of the legislative and judicial branches, as it should be to maintain balance of power.
Not that I'm an advocate of the electoral system as it stands, but I can see how the concept applies to a union of individual states. Personally, I'm tired of feeling that my vote doesn't count, because it was trumped by urban voters in a few areas of dense population 400 miles from where I live. They have different needs, concerns, demographics, etc, and are not representative of those who live in my region of the state, yet only their voice is heard when it comes to electing a president.
Better known as 318230.
No Clinton prospered because your ability to communicate went supernova and the government didn't go out of their way to fuck things up.
Sometimes the mark of good presidency is that they manage to just let the boom go without some boneheaded idea to make insane amounts of money regulating it. Just look at the way Australia rode it's communication supernova. We privatised the biggest government run business screwing the country over for years to come generating a monopoly which was powerful enough to without thought be the first in the world to introduce broadband usage caps.
That's pretty much the crux of the problem. The only reason I voted for Rmoney was because Obama is a disaster. I'm not saying Rmoney would have been better, but he hadn't yet been given a chance to muck things up.
The problem is, no matter which major party gets in, the country loses.
Can you put two and two together looking at this graph?
(Numbers and graph Courtesy of the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities).
Without the electoral system our current state of voting would require days or maybe weeks of tallying up all this garbage.
I can't for the life of me figure out why voting equipment and ballots etc. aren't a sanctioned standard equipment set.
If anybody feels like a cheap laugh, here is the Mitt Romney chat room:
http://mittromneycentral.com/community/chat/
Prepare yourself for unimaginable levels of stupidity.
because I'm no American. But I'm SO happy for the world of Mr Obama reelection.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The Republican Party didn't change, the voting demographs have. That's the key.
Women and minorities carried Obama for the win. Break that down further and you have the poor and rich voting for him. The middle class just got pushed out further. Come next election, the conservative platform will be all but dead. Eight years from now, I expect the socialists vs communist party to be fighting it out. "Middle class? What's that?" They will be asking.
Does he run Linux ?
I don't buy that argument at all. While Clinton did a LOT better than Bush (both 41 and 43), GDP growth in the 50's and 60's beats the pants off Clinton's numbers. And they did it while paying off the debt from WWII and rebuilding Europe with the Marshall plan and building the interstate system and fighting the commies in Korea and Vietnam and going to the moon.
And most importantly, they did it without a "telecom explosion". They also did it without artificially low interest rates and easy credit fueling a housing bubble. Telecommunications is certainly a significant part of the economy but it just doesn't hold a candle to housing, and housing is where Clinton got a lot of his pop.
George W. Bush will forever be known as the President who first sanctioned torture in the USA.
Yeah, and Clinton will be forever known for redefining what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to sex. I mean after all, we have an entire generation of cock-sucking 12-year old little whores to thank for his definition of "sexual relations".
Somehow I see that issue as a hell of a lot larger impact than a tiny aspect of war that was likely going on regardless, sanctioned or not. (hint: CIA does not stand for "Choir boys In Action")
I think you're deluded. The public knows what the Republicans are, and they like that. You think people are basically good and reasonably logical, and if shown the facts will change their opinions. This is demonstrably false for most people, they're basically emotional and tribalistic, and will do or believe almost anything to stay a part of their chosen tribe/social group. The fear of ostracism is often stronger than the fear of death (witness soliders dying for their country) and changing the chosen tribe of a person is very, very difficult.
The same applies for most other groups of people.
Not a sentence!
Do you really think Romney's policies would have been less disastrous?
I do. Part of the problem was simply the Obama administration's callous pursuit of ideological goals during a recession, resulting in great costs and uncertainty to the US and the people who employ people. Romney would have had to do something about the economic climate and the destructive and constitutionally adventuresome regulations coming out of the federal government (such as the EPA's bizarre court tricks). Obama as a reelected, lame duck president, doesn't have to care what sort of mess he leaves for us.
That's why I said 'anyone'. I was still modded 'troll' though, which is strange, as I really didn't think many would disagree that basing decisions on logic and reason was a good idea.
Reminder of W's 48 screw-ups:
http://econ-ecoff.blogspot.com/2012/04/bushs-screw-ups-reminder.html
Table-ized A.I.
Worry about your own damn onions.
George W. Bush will forever be known as the President who first sanctioned torture in the USA.
Don't worry, Obama will be the first president who sanctioned his own private kill list and suspended various parts of the constitution by executive fiat.
Well, I guess the US should enjoy the ride into Greece. Don't come running to Canada when shit hits the fan.
Om, nomnomnom...
I think Obama's policies are disastrous too, but I didn't vote for Romney or Obama.
Not a sentence!
My conspiracy is that there is a conspiracy to convince us that there are conspiracies. After all, since people regularly get convicted of conspiracy, and only nutters believe that conspiracies exist, then it must be a conspiracy by our elected officials to have enacted laws against these imaginary conspiracies as well as judges and juries to convince us that conspiracies actually do exist.
By that logic, one could say that the Reagan Boom was caused by the PC revolution. Spreadsheets, dBASE, WordStar, etc. greatly reduced the cost of common business computing. (Reagan also ran up dangerous deficits, which may have acted in a Keynesian way to further boost the economy, even after the recession ended, which Keynes was against.)
Table-ized A.I.
It is no longer a United States. Time for our half the nation to SECEDE.
It hasn't been united since Clinton was in power
Actually more people voted for Romney than Obama but a stupid undemocratic system gave Obama the victory.
I think it's time to drop the current system and go to direct votes like in most other democratic countries. This would open up for more parties and for both sides of the Republican party to get their representatives in the running for President.
On another note, prepare for four more years of growing deficit and businesses going out of business, leading to ever more unemployment.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Computing_and_Communication_Act_of_1991
It's probably just a coincidence that the guy that wrote the bill that gave funding for the "seed" of the internet was Vice President at the time of its explosive growth.
And you think these factions will create better policies?
Good god.. if more people like you actually voted for someone different, the suits in political office would actually take notice. Third parties don't have to *win* to be heard... you approach 15% of the vote, and that carries a ton of weight.. even if you lose.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Since when did the US become a centrally-planned economy where the president controls these things? Netscape going public and the subsequent boom in technology had the largest affect on the numbers you state. The president didn't have a damned thing to do with it.
Anyone think congress will get their shiat together to avoid this mess? Me neither. So Obama gets to preside over another recession.
Looks like we are awarded with four more years of the same joker who was for NDAA before he was against it.
I hope everyone who voted for Obama is super duper happy....remember kids somewhere on earth there be radio controlled aircraft pooing payloads on "suspects" subject to zeero point zeero due process and for which operators of said aircraft have no responsibility to those injured or killed by virtue of having been unfortunate enough to be in the vicitinity or misidentified.
If some foreign country started sending remote control planes into your airspace and killing your citizens in your country even if some significant portion of those targets were mean smelly evil people...what percentage of your population would harbor hatred twoard the foreign country? My ignorant suspicion a lot more than the percentage Obama won by.
Romney wanted peace ... remember his world peace speech in the last debate... preceded only by his full support for continued Obama use of his video game drone army against flesh and blood in real life.
I wish I could be excited about the guy I voted for winning.
The fact that there is a platform for this kind of drivel is why the world is in trouble.
Technology has empowered looney-talk.
A third party vote is better than a vote for someone who compromises your ideals. I don't care what anybody says about that.
Let's face it. Who agrees to a policy of funding the military with an extra 2-3 trillion dollars and tax breaks for the rich in a time of recession.
It's a good experiment though. Now we really do know that red neck states would accept anything given an unfavorable enough alternative.
And Gary Johnson didn't get near the 5% he hoped for. I'm not overly optimistic about the future.
i think most people get confused because most socialist governments ended up becoming fascist.....
Lock that damned Norquist creep out this time. It's hard to compromise when law-makers are signing a Non-Compromise contract.
Table-ized A.I.
| No, he just wants to turn this country into Europe
And that is bad... why? Yes, there are some countries that have issues because they lied about their ability to fulfill the stability criteria for the euro but in general Europe has lower working times, better health care, better social care, better public transport, usually does not start wars every other five years, does not abduct/torture/kill people in foreign countries they dislike, have less religions fanatism, have a wider political spetrum and not just a two-party-system, courts who don't endorse everything the government comes up with for their Three Letter Agencies (European countries usually have fewer of those as well)... yes, you can also enumerate bad things about Europe.
You have no idea at all what socialism actually is - but if this is your socialism, I'd take it everytime over whatever you have.
Seemingly /. has a problem handling a post when its parent was deleted...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
At least Nixon could count (see my previous post concerning national budgets)! What did he do so wrong that deserved impeachment? Lost an eighteen minute bootleg! That's almost worse than sticking your dick in an intern's mouth!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I did not vote for a presidential candidate.
Why? Because my state is so far gone that my voice would be lost.
Why? Because the Democrats can't understand that government jobs do not contribute to the economy. That you can't spend your way out of a deficit. That taxes on the wealthy also hurt the middle class.
Why? Because the Republicans can't understand that pandering to the religious right alienates everyone else. That women don't like be second class citizens. That cutting social programs hurts the middle class as well.
Why? Because neither Obama or Romney will be able to change the real problems in Washington DC.
What are the problems in Washington DC? Corruption. Cronyism. Politicians more interested in making other politicians look bad instead of doing what is best for America. Senators and Reps that think it is more important to control the house or senate then it is to control the debt. You cannot destroy your economy by regulation and hope to grow it at the same time. "A government of the people, by the people, for the people" can only exist if the concerns of people, not corporations and banks, are heard by the government.
which has been around for a lot longer than Obama, and which you apparently just woke up to!
I knew a Ruling Party douchebag was going to get the figurehead gig. It doesn't really matter which one it was.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Now thanks to the Affordable Healthcare Act, I can get my sex change operation paid for by all of the people who hate me, woo hoo, I mean, tee hee!
"" (apparently Slashdot doesn't like Unicode. FIX IT, ASSHOLES!)
Translation: "Good morning, America, can I interest you in a set of Chinese language tapes?"
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
While we're talking about firsts, I believe George W. Bush was the first President to start a war and not raise any taxes to cover war spending.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
One side won, the other lost.
A ping-pong duopoly, with essentially identical beliefs, and just a bit of a disagreement on how to rip off the plebs.
Democracy, it ain't.
Fucking hell, the Republicans have become so delusional they're channeling Jefferson Davis. As I recall, didn't your party refuse that particular invitation and end up going to war to preserve a united United States?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"You can fool all the people some of the time, you can some of the people all the time, and those are pretty good odds."
Poker According to Maverick
http://www.amazon.com/Poker-According-Maverick-Bret/dp/B000BHSG62
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Hey, moron, wake up!
1) He started the invasion of Iraq.
Sorry, but we were already "at war"... the original gulf war never "ended", it simply stopped with a cease-fire that had terms. Saddam the violated those terms over and over again for the next dozen years... each and every violation was, by both international law and by tradition, justification to resume shooting but the US did not resume shooting. When the US intelligence folks told Bush that Saddam was headed back towards WMDs (which unlike most tyrants, he actually had a track record of using on his own civilians) THAT was finally enough to get Bush to pull the trigger. It might never have come to that if Clinton had pulled the trigger in a smaller way over the earlier violations (not blaming Clinton here, just saying that with a guy like Saddam an earlier and smaller spanking might have stopped the behavior that later seemed much worse)
2) He started torture as official US policy.
Ummmm... waterboarding, as done by the US, is unpleasant, but not torture. My proof:
1. Journalists ran out and payed people to do it to them so they could write sexy sensationalist anti-Bush propaganda pieces. When's the last time a journalist payed to have his arm ripped off, his eyes gouged-out, burning bamboo shoots rammed under his nails, and electrodes hooked to his privates? OK... I'll accept that some journalists in San Fran might go for the glowing, buzzing privates...but the rest still stands ;-)
2. American trainers have long waterboarded (in the same way) certain of our own troops (the ones whose specialties make them more likely to be caught and actually tortured) as part of their training. After all his lefty rhetoric, Obama did not prosecute any of Bush's people for this and did not hand them over to any phony "international courts" precisely because after he got into office his own people had to tell him how many of our own military trainers, SEALs etc would have to be prosecuted under such a precedent.
After World War 2, the USA convicted several Japanese soldiers of water boarding American and Allied prisoners of war
More lefty propaganda that works really well among the ignorant but collapses when actually examined. What the Japanese army did in WWII was different from what the US did with a handful of terrorists and more-importantly was used to sanitize the real horrors of what the guilty Japanese soldiers had been up to. In the aftermath of WWII with so many hurting at home over the deaths of their loved ones, there was a real desire in US government circles to play-down the true atrocities perpetrated in captured Americans. At the time, at the urging of men like MacArthur, the U.S. government wanted to rehabilitate the image of the average Japanese person in the eyes of the average American (a strategy that worked well and has benefitted the populations of both nations for decades). This rehabilitation would not have worked well with high-profile war crimes proceedings underway for the real horrors which included canibalization of American POWs by their captors, and use of POWs as "test subjects" in both chemical and biological weapons tests. Sentencing a thug for his waterboarding activities was more-palatable than sentencing him for eating a downed American pilot...
Yeah, Green only got 0.3% of the vote.
Learn to love Alaska
You think people are basically good and reasonably logical, and if shown the facts will change their opinions. This is demonstrably false for most people, they're basically emotional and tribalistic, and will do or believe almost anything to stay a part of their chosen tribe/social group.
It also helps to have scapegoats, like unions, government employees or teachers.
Good. If only because each new US president considers it his sacred duty to wage war against some unfortunate small country in order to get his name into the history books. So we are spared one more war for the next few years.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Here's to four more years of FUCK ALL!
Because once you go black... you never go back.
All of Europe is sighing in relief as Obama is re-elected. Germany, France, UK, Italy , Russia, Belgium, The Netherlands,and so on will rather welcome 'socialist' Obama (again) who will support US job creations instead of Romney's foreign-friendly economic reforms at the cost of "Global Ignorance" as we call it.
The 2004 Red/Blue split perfectly mapped the welfare states-- slightly different than today but still largely holds true:
RED STATES ARE WELFARE STATES
I think they should get their wish and lose our big gov money we keep sending them then we can get a tax break from all that money leaving our states and going to their states... Then just watch them all turn blue. The Blue states deserve and earned every penny of disaster aid support they are getting and then some.
Obama is a f'ing idiot and deserves to be put in chains.
Politifact??????
OH, I get it... if a Democrat-run website says "Bush == Evil" then it must be so...
Try spending some serious time reading source documents in the national archives, as I have done, next time when you want to play history professor.
And a surplus when he left.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
We'll impeach a president for lying about an illicit blowjob, but not for authorizing war crimes.
History will reflect poorly on Republicans for that one. Clinton was impeached for telling the truth under a silly definition by a judge.
But for explicitly illegal things (contra-arms deals, torture, assassinations, etc.), no sanctions against anyone.
Learn to love Alaska
Democrats are crooks.
Republicans are evil.
They will both kill your for a dollar but the Democrats won't rape you first then skin you and steal your kids.
Read up on the antics Republicans went through to stop people from voting, 7 hour queues? There are countries just coming out of war that have this sorted better.
Even top economic newspapers said people should vote for Obama because Romney just lied to much and his economic policies made no sense.
People joke about choosing the lesser of two evils but that is still a difference. With a democrat, there is always a chance he will do something decent by accident. With a republican, that will NEVER ever happen.
The funny thing seems to be that Romney as Governor was pretty moderate but got persuaded/forced by the extremist to change his tune and it lost him the election. If you look at the states Romney won in, those are exactly the states no EU person should ever go to, redneck states all and you might think you are right-wing in the EU but you are NOTHING compared to a moderate Texan.
The republicans basically tried to win the election on abortion, gay rights and drugs. These are things the extremists care about but not if it is a choice between their job and something that doesn't affect them. Two states even voted for legal recreational drug use. This puts two American states miles ahead of the most liberal EU countries. That is... well... republican attitudes couldn't be father removed from the voter on the street.
Oh yeah, they also objected to Obama bailing out the car industry because you know, creating jobs, that is something that the voter really hates... and they seriously thought they had a chance in Ohio were Obama basically rebooted the economy?
That it is even so close shows that many Americans would cut of their nose to spite their face. "Oh I hate gays so much I will vote for the guy who hates my guts and thinks I am a leech and should go and die already."
No matter how bad things are under the democrats, the only certainty in the universe is that under the republicans it will be worse.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The election is over. Thank goodness!
Right now, about 1/2 the country is celebrating...and the other half of the country is not so happy. I fall into the "not so happy" camp.
But now there is a choice for everyone:
1) The happy folks can vent their prejudicial views of Romney, his supporters, his religion, his background...or you can put that aside and get to the task of trying to sort out this country's problems. If you think the information you were given about Romney was completely accurate...you are sorely naive.
2) The not so happy folks can vent their prejudicial views of Obama, his supporters, his background, his programs, the electoral college system, your view that he is "Satan's child", or whatever other silliness you want to engage in...or you can put that aside and get to the task of trying to sort out this country's problems. If you think the information you were given about President Obama was completely accurate...you too are sorely naive.
The election is over, and Americans now have a chance to show their quality...
1) We can try to HONESTLY work together to solve some of our serious problems...or we can have petty partisan obstructionism to the detriment of us all. Obstructionism isn't a strategy...it is childishness.
2) We can spend the next four years spitting and cursing at one another, bellyaching about how the right or wrong man was elected...or we can put that aside as the system we all agreed to in this country and again get down to the task of solving problems.
3) We can immediately start working on how to derail the other political party 4 years from now...or we can actually come together and show the greatness that America has always had...the ability to look past the surface and the mundane and to tackle the larger issues.
Four years ago I didn't vote for Obama...but I still had tears in my eyes (good tears) when I saw something I thought I'd never see in my lifetime...the USA elected an African American to be President. Let me be clear. I thought it was a defining moment in the history of the US that despite all of our struggles against racism in the US, we had reached the point where an African American could be elected President. By no means are we done with the work of getting rid of racism...but a milestone was reached, and I was glad to be alive to see it.
This year, I didn't vote for him either. I don't think he is the devil, and neither do I think Romney is a nut case. I just felt, in my analysis, that Romney was the better candidate. The voting system now tells us that Obama will have another 4 years.
All I will say is this: It is my belief that for the sake of America, the best thing people can do now is as follows:
1) For those who did not vote for President Obama, he is now your President and mine. You can choose to try to obstruct everything he does just on the basis of the fact that *he* proposed it...or you can show your quality and support him. "Support" doesn't mean accept whatever he says without question. It means engage in meaningful discussion and work...even COMPROMISE...to find solutions. If you work the next 4 years with the single-minded (and childish) goal of thwarting everything he tries to do just because he's not YOUR candidate, the I'd say that the bigger problem lies with YOU.
2) For those who did vote for President Obama, you too have a chance to show your quality. You can choose to take this opportunity to vent your personal prejudices, do your "end zone dance" in the face of your fellow Americans, and belittle anyone who doesn't think or vote the same way you do...or...you can realize that Democracy works, that there is still almost 50% of the country who did not vote for our President, and that it is in the best interest of everyone to put this election behind us (FINALLY!) and get down to the work of solving problems. Even for you, compromise is still going to be the order of the day if we want
Wasn't Mitt a lowly missionary...in Paris? lol
Almost right. I believe he was in the missionary position with Paris Hilton.
But then, everyone with a brain knows that Romney's economic plans were a disaster waiting to happen. http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/free_market_defenders_agree_vote_obama/
When both the Financial Times and The economist support a (worst ever) socialist for US president over a republican candidate with a business background, then you know said republicans plans must be truly bad. It is not like these newspapers drank the koolaid, they are very reluctant to endorse Obama are sad to do it but they have no choice. Romney would be just to all destructive to tolerate as president.
But hey, you know more about economy then two leading newspapers.
Admit it, you just supported the republicans in thinking their anti-science and hatred of all human beings policies won them your vote. Because they know their economic policies were crap, that is why they kept flip flopping on it. This election wasn't about the economy for the republicans, it was about saving the south from civil rights. And you voted for them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It doesn't matter which rich pale skinned right wing corporatist wins, they are pretty much indistinguishable: http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012
It is the same math that says you can lower taxes, increase military spending and still reduce debt.
You are just one of the silly 99% who don't get it. Neither do those lefties at the The Economist or The Financial Times.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Speaking of acronyms, Obama's initials are BHO
Because it's special pleading to say that the sky wizard or magic underwear belief is such a special wrong belief that it should override any other concerns. Magic underwear is an incredibly harmless superstition.
That or an admission that you believe the other candidates are never wrong / have no weird beliefs. Which would itself be an admission that logic and judgement escape you.
As it happens, the particular sky wizard Romney follows has particular demands which Romney also seems to follow, and THOSE demands are asinine and a good reason not to vote for him. Not the magic underwear thing.
how is this news for geeks?
ukraine elactions last week,, heard not a peep --- stay on target people
aside from,, thank god possibly no new wars for 4/5 years, then surprised americans at the world taking offence this is no news for most readers on a geek site
So why are the tax cuts not eliminated?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Democracy has little to do with elections.
Election is a monarchic or rather an aristocratic process, historically it is the method by which peers of the realm select one among themselves to rule as king. The ancient greeks who defined the very word 'democracy' held no election for public offices, they only had elections for the top military mandates and IIRC Socrates explicitly lambasted elections as being aristocratic in nature. Compare that to the fact that all the main european monarchic dynasties of the middle-age started with an election: Pepin the short was elected king of the Franks, establishing the Carolingian dynasty that assumed the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, Hughes Capet was elected king of France and founded the long Capetian dynasty of french kings. Conrad of Franconia was elected king and basically established the kingdom of Germany, Arnulf of Carinthia was elected king of eastern Francia (which covered pretty much the whole of eastern Europe), etc. In most of eastern Europe, kings succceeded each other through election, for centuries. Even the title of emperor of the Holy Germanic Empire was attributed through election (with quite the same campaigning, mudslinging and corruption going on as in nowaday's elections).
Democracy stands for 'the people themselves manage the institutions and hold the final authority', whereas an election means pretty much the opposite, as it's a method for choosing one person to manage institutions himself and hold that public power and authority over everyone else.
Like most of your contemporaries you have no clear idea of what democracy actually looks and feels like, my guess is you most probably aren't familiar with concepts such a emergence and legal polycentrism, or their foremost place in the history of civilisation.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
A bridge to an even more horrible system?
Health care problems are mostly due to high costs. The only thing in Obamacare to control costs is denial of services.
Obamacare, the system that was voted in without a single one of the senators actually reading any of it, bypassing the normal voting rules because it wasn't a tax bill. "We have to vote for it so we can find out what's in it".
If Obamacare isn't a tax, why does it need the 16,000 additional IRS agents recently hired specifically to enforce it?
Obamacare was passed with an estimated $900 billion 10 year operating cost and we would be taxed an average of 1/6 of our earnings. The estimated costs are already three times higher (and still rising), so doesn't that mean they will need three times higher tax rates to fund it?
Obama stated that under his plan, older people should just be given aspirin instead of medical treatment no matter how healthy they were otherwise. At what age do you feel that "older people" should be refused life saving medical treatment.
Many hospitals and doctors are refusing to accept medicare patients because of lousy payment rates. Obama has, by "executive privilege", diverted more than $700 billion from medicare to his Obamacare plan. Will that make more hospitals and doctors accept medicare patients?
It forces Catholic institutions to pass out condoms, against their moral beliefs, with a "we'll just pretend that isn't happening" decision by Obama. Don't you feel better now, since Obama can change a religions basic tenets by executive order?
At least it brings the US one step closer to true Socialism. "Punish those who work hard, reward those who don't", or something close to that.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Christopher Hitchens, who was very much a neo-conservative, once though that waterboarding isn't torture. He changed his mind after a short test.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808
If they can't beat Obama in this economy, with his results, they really need to stare at their navels and figure out why people hate them so much.
A mystery? No.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And this time US citizens also gave their full consent and approval to a lot of new things that did this government. So they could enhance and extend those laws knowing that is something wanted by the population. Fasten your seat belt.
Yeah, Clinton with his 3.5% unemployment, 3 years of balanced budgets and 8 years averaging 3.7% GDP growth really sucked. I'm glad those days are gone.
[/sarcasm]
Yes but Clinton had non-penetrative sex with someone who wasn't his wife. So the Bible says he will go to hell.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Big Bird is safe now.
Can you say Telecom explosion? Clinton prospered because our ability communicate went supernova.
That's "ability to communicate". Are you making some satirical point that is over my head, or are you just illiterate?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Really? I'd heard of it well before the 2008 election...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sticking your dick in a willing intern's mouth is not a crime, unlike organising a burglary, genius.
Clinton only got in trouble because the ridiculous puritanism of the religious right in America meant he had to lie about a trivial indiscretion.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
why all the latest polls tried to make it look like a neck-and-neck race. Some kind of selection bias, or was there an agenda behind this? Serious sources such as the 538 blog have long predicted a clear victory for Obama, which seems to be the actual outcome.
Socialism, Fascism, Nazism all of these are subsets of the same ideology: collectivism, and collectivism resides on the idea of central planning, anti-humanism and anti-capitalism.
For example as the silly idea of international socialism lost its support in pre WWI Germany, the ultra right and ultra left Socialists combined their efforts and took hold of the ideas based on the common notion of national dictatorial socialism.
Socialism requires dictatorial power to be implemented, the French socialists knew it, the Russian socialists knew it. International socialism doesn't work at all within any particular country, because fundamentally socialism "for others" is not what people are looking for. Some worker in UK doesn't want to subsidize some farmer in India. That's why you see all of the forms of: National Democratic Parties across the West. Note the word National. As in protectionist and isolationist, and this is a necessity for a socialist or a fascist or a nazi, because collectivists are all anti-competitive capitalism, they are anti-individualism and thus they must not allow competition in the market, which searches for efficiencies.
Collectivism is based on the ideology if equality of outcomes and to achieve this, collectivist governments must abolish the Rule of Law that treats people equally without looking at their specific circumstances.
To implement 'equal outcomes' different people must be treated differently, otherwise outcomes will not be equal. The top earners have more of their earnings confiscated by that system than the bottom earners, the businesses are regulated to eliminate competition among workers, who simply sell their labour and time. All of the laws are aimed not at equality of opportunity but at equality of outcomes, and this is promoted by the tyranny of the mob - democracy.
Democracy is the key that opens the Pandora Box, because democracy allows the mob, the lowest common denominator to dominate the elections, voting for the politicians who promise more and more discriminatory treatment of individuals, to steal from some to subsidize the rest.
When any form of collectivism and democracy are mixed together, the only question becomes: what will they use as the final instrument to implement the ideology of equal outcomes? And this is where forms of nationalistic socialism (like fascism and nazism) win over any type of liberal international form of socialism (which cannot work for the reasons mentioned earlier).
That's why you see what you see in America, a mix of liberal socialism (among the ideologues) and fascism (among the elite, because that's the most effective way to implement the collectivist goals).
MY OTHER COMMENTS
he murdered two American citizens in Yemen
Just like he murdered an Afghan citizen (Osama bin Laden) in Pakistan. Murder is murder irrespective of nationality. If you can justify killing OBL you can equally well justify killing some of his lieutenants who happen to be US citizens.
This is regardless of whether the idea of killing OBL was right or not. I'm just saying that there is no logical reason to approve of one and not the other.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Congratulations to the real winners of last nights race: Nate Silver, Sam Wang, Intrade and all the other "Quants" (statisticians) who never characterized this election as "close" or a "tossup," but stuck to their Bayesian models predicting Obama as a heavy favorite. If their predictions were wrong, they would be looking for new jobs today, but the hiney hobbit pundits who characterized these brilliant nerds as "effeminate UnAmerican eggheads" will pathetically deflect responsibility for their own failed predictions this morning--but the nerds know the score. Science works bitches.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
I'm stunned at how long the elections race lasted and how much money it cost. What a waste. Ironically, corporations and the rich are willing to spend millions on lobbying governments and funding candidates in the election, but they're not willing to pay taxes in the US to help the country. America is a plutocracy, pure and simple. My simpleton view of things.
Meanwhile, the UK started to adopt democracy in 1832, and if anything has improved in the last few years. I notice no increase in "mob rule". If anything, the chief proponent of mob rule - Rupert Murdoch - has rather lost influence recently.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If you thought the SCOTUS was going to be a reasonable check against the power of the other branches, just wait 4 years, when Obama will have appointed fully 5 of the 9 justices.
With the GOP losing more ground in the Senate, it will be harder to moderate those appointments as well.
There's also the issue that he no longer needs to run for re-election, and can now get a move on to being "flexible."
All bets are off, now. Game over.
I'll admit I voted for Rmoney.
Interesting typo! I'm not Sigmund Freud, but...
I think I found where all the LP flock reside: On SLASHDOT. The mere concoction that Obama is a jerk and criminal or that the Dems and GOP are the same or virtually the same tells me this sophist parlor of misfit toys will forver find solace amidst their idiot buddies who fight over IT domination between Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, etc. Grow up children.
Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos.
As he's just called for a revolution on twitter, couldn't he be arrested as a potential terrorist and locked up in Guantanamo Bay for a few years?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you cut spending, you have to cut social programs. If you think you can keep your social programs yet also cut spending, you are looking for a solution that does not exist.
People need to take personal responsibility for themselves, and that is all there is to it. 49% of all households in the US are dependent upon one government social program or another. It's no wonder we have reached the perpetual welfare state.
The Republicans can pander to the religious folks all they want. The 1st Amendment is not going anywhere, and thus the separation clause is not going anywhere. The GOP also does not believe that women are second class citizens. You are simply drinking the kool-aid on that one.
The problem is that not enough voters are smart enough to understand that there are protections against what they fear in the GOP, and they are easily influenced by a silver-tongued snake-oil salesman.
Thanks to Al Gore
Then why are all the economic indicators going up?
You can always tell good legislation when they back load all of the big affects to happen after the next election.
While a lot of the benefits of the ACA have already been put in place the fun stuff that actually puts the strains on business (and is what is making companies across the US switch people from full time employees to part time and drop their health plans altogether) doesn't kick in until this year or next.
But of course the 800,000 jobs the CBO predicted would be lost because of the ACA is just a 'rounding error' according to Obama's team
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Because they know more maths then they are showing.
They usually base those calls on exit polls combined with prelim counts. The urban areas are the slowest to turn in their counts, so lets say prelim results are in from rural areas, and the exit polls were accurate in thos areas. If the exit polls show that the urban areas favorite Obama heavily, then you can incorporate those results and get a different answer then what you would expect to see without the exit polls.
Either way it looks like they were accurate in retrospect.
Not sure what your so wound up over, even if Obama hadn't won Ohio he still would of had a large majority in electoral votes.
They voted *against* Obama, period. Saying he was a Muslim and not an American citizen was just their 'modern' way of shouting "Nig*er!"
The only hope the US has is that the old-school, lily white race quickly shuffles off their demographic mortal coil - and that the grandkids once and for all reject unvarnished racism.
Liar
Chase J. Nielsen, one of the U.S. airmen who flew in the Doolittle raid following the attack on Pearl Harbor, was subjected to waterboarding by his Japanese captors.[114] At their trial for war crimes following the war, he testified "Well, I was put on my back on the floor with my arms and legs stretched out, one guard holding each limb. The towel was wrapped around my face and put across my face and water poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start over again... I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death."[35] The United States hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war.[9]
Why is who won the presidency in n00b country on a website for geeks?
http://hardcorelinux.blogspot.in/2011/10/here-is-solution-for-wests-financial.html
I can see Greece from my house. That's where we're headed. First, people will become more addicted to getting their "Obama money." Then, the masses will revolt when their government handout gets trimmed. As Margaret Thatcher observed, " The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend." We will get there much sooner with Obama in charge.
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
Wait, the election was YESTERDAY?
No wonder the polling place was closed...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Without considering the winner, this election spells trouble for the USA.
First, the population is clearly split down the middle over values, which means constant infighting and that a large segment of the population will always be disappointed and possibly look to secede. We've had this problem before. The values of the hives (dense cities) seem to clash with the values of the suburbs and rural areas.
Second, the major issues of our time went un-addressed because they are too difficult to bring up in a campaign. There is still no plan to balance the budget, which will require cutting either entitlements (50% of budget; Dems stronghold) or the military (25% of budget; Republican stronghold). We still have problems with corruption, the economy and a hostile world that's getting more armed and dangerous by the day.
Third, non-issues dominated the campaign. The media makes a big deal of these "unjust wars," but from a broader foreign policy perspective they exist to check (1) rising middle eastern radicalism, generally by reducing the technological level of those nations to keep them neutered, and then bringing them into our global capitalist economy, a strategy that worked in Viet Nam and South Korea; and (2) Russian and Chinese designs on theater domination in Europe and the Middle East, using Russian oil as a carrot and new militarism as a stick. Further, while abortion and gay marriage are important in their own right, they're not the most important problems we face or anything close. They're flag-waving issues.
Finally, what makes me queasy is that this ultimately came down to a contest between identities. Some people "see themselves" as one side or the other, and it's usually from a self of class standing or social and cultural identity. This makes these elections more of a battle of demographics than anything else, which is going to ensure class conflict, ethnic conflict, gender conflict and other forms of highly divisive politics.
I don't need to look at the election results to see that these pervasive problems are cracking the USA and Europe. The USA is trending toward where it was in 1861, a nation divided. The EU is falling apart in much of a similar way, with the central states wanting a more federal union and others wanting to break away.
It seems to me that our inability to talk honestly about our political motivations ensures demagoguery and therefore continued fracturing of the electorate and ongoing internal hostility. This means that we do not act as nations, but as large committees that can never take decision action, and it leaves us wide open for these empires to be replaced by rising powers in the East.
... Go read a book.
At least when he was in office, there were stronger regulations keeping the telecomms more honest and more fair.
He did have a good economy going, which helped a lot, but ignoring the changes that caused the down turn under Bush's administration isn't fair at all.
Was it well known in 2004? I don't remember. Anyway, what is sickening is that much of America didn't just accept it, they cheered for it. Either because "those people" deserved it, or in some "24" fantasy of torture saving the world.
I doubt that's even remotely true. Regardless, one gives up the protection of citizenship when giving material support to our enemies. These killings happened on the battlefield.
Given that the median voter is a Gimmiedat - non-Asian minorities and single, white female sluts voting for government largess, it's no surprise that Obama won.
Fortunately, as an entrepreneur and a member of the top one percent, I can always lay off all my employees and live comfortably while disposing of my wealth faster than the Leviathan can seize it, instead of creating businesses, employment, and actual tax paying entities.
I think I'll do that. It sucks to be Leviathan, because it could have gotten far, far more money if it had not been a bastard.
Hopefully decisions like mine will hasten the coming economic and social collapse.
Had a candidate ran and lost and we could dismiss it with "at least he doesn't wear a turbin" there would be a riot here and you'd be modded troll. Just goes to show where the real tolerence lies around here.
And this isn't to question Islam but more about who does and does not get a pass. Just like when they asked Mittens about wearing these underwear to bed. Had a Jew been asked the same about his yamaka we'd never hear the end of it. We'd be told that anyone who even thought the thought was a racist. When the Democrats do it? It's just good fun and a clean jab, right?
We want proportional representation and instant runoff because they are mathematically more fair: they represent people's view's better. Vox populi, vox Dei. They also are somewhat more populist* in effect, although that should not be surprising.
Out of the available options, first-past-the-post (simple plurality) is actually the least fair method.
*The opposite of populism is elitism, and what that has to do with US politics is left as an exercise to the reader.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Given that Mr. Romney has pretty much the same set of advisers as Bush the Younger used I think the argument that he would have had better policies is very doubtful.
We are talking about a President who gave us a massive tax cut in wartime. Sorry, but that doesn't work on ANY planet. Simply the economics of that sort of action are going to be a disaster. Which they were.
The 12 year old little whores you speak of were barely even born yet when Clinton was president. Plus, virtually nobody puts cock in their mouth unless they think it's a good idea. Second, why are these concerned parents letting their little innocent flowers watch the news when it contained such shocking material? Third, even if the president went around ranting about how awesome cocksucking is, why do they think their kid is going to listen to him rather than their own moral teachings? If they had raised their kids the way they imagine they did, their kids would simply shake their heads at the "immorality" of it all.
Well they/we had something even better than the telecom boom, they had worldwide devastation of any economic competition. Who are our primary competitors economically and how were they fairing after WWII? They were all rubble and some didn't even have their own government.
I give that generation credit, but they didn't do it in a vacuum.
Socialism, Fascism, Nazism all of these are subsets of the same ideology: collectivism, and collectivism resides on the idea of central planning, anti-humanism and anti-capitalism.
In other words, desirable things for smart thinking individuals.
A smart thinking individual would rather be able to centrally plan everything than letting things go as they "naturally" will. I mean, he's smart right? So obviously if he was in charge, everything would be better.
A smart thinking individual would rather not be tied down by humanism. If you can't treat human beings like objects just like your machines and other capital, it just makes it harder to get things done.
A smart thinking individual would also hate capitalism, since capitalism demands enforcement of property rights even to people who obviously are too idiotic to own any capital. It'd be better to just confiscate capital from them so the smart thinking individual can put the resources into better use.
Socialism requires dictatorial power to be implemented
Which is what makes it a superior system to many others by default. The alternative would be democracy, but most people are stupid so a letting them democratically decide anything is a horrible idea. Instead of having the masses of idiots bicker amongst each other with no real solution coming forth, having a smart dictator calling all the shots is much more efficient.
Collectivism is based on the ideology if equality of outcomes and to achieve this, collectivist governments must abolish the Rule of Law that treats people equally without looking at their specific circumstances.
Again a good thing. Rule of Law is inefficient, and ultimately stupid. Every law is corruption. The law has to prove itself over and over to justify its existence, because anything that is passed CAN be corruption even if it is not originally intended or used as such
So it's a good thing to abolish the Rule of Law. It's a good thing to treat people differently. It's a good thing to look at specific circumstances.
All of the laws are aimed not at equality of opportunity but at equality of outcomes
Yes, outcomes like "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness". Just what the Founding Fathers ordered.
and this is promoted by the tyranny of the mob - democracy.
No, it doesn't need democracy. The US for example is a Republic.
That's why you see what you see in America, a mix of liberal socialism (among the ideologues) and fascism (among the elite, because that's the most effective way to implement the collectivist goals).
Which is a good thing. What would be horrible is if we see America be tainted by the stupidity of libertarianism.
Seriously, thank Al Gore. All the techies are very clear that he was the geeky guy in government who made sure that they had the funding and support they needed to create the Internet.
I am officially gone from
Just the south and central parts of the US.
I'd like to give a big shout-out to the white trash morons
in North Carolina who stole the Obama campaign signs
from the roadside repeatedly :
FUCK YOU, you redneck losers.
The flaw is a human one.
*FDIC can be good thing, and it can be abused.
*Monetary policy under democratic control would definitely be abused by the people getting elected-- "sure we'll have a bit of inflation if it means the economy keeps doing well so I get re-elected...and a bit more...and a bit more..."
*Pension funds managed by boards controlled by the workers, what happens when the majority of workers are older retiring soon and pass reforms to raid the coffers leaving the youngins high and dry?
Rest of that stuff is pretty good though, specifically
-Glass-Steagall
-un-suspension of mark-to-market accounting ("require banks to use honest bookkeeping")
-pretty much everything else you listed
Actually, the Democrats had to compromise to get the votes within themselves. There was no expected votes from Republicans, except maybe Senator Snowe. Senator Nelson was bought out by the Cornhusker kickback, which was removed in the reconciliation process anyways.
Obama voters, I blame you that Jill Stein didn't win. Romney, (and Johnson) voters are innocent by virtue of their ignorance. But you who voted for Obama should have known better.
legalize pot
The American democracy has spiraled into a political event horizon with zero-sum economics. Subsequent elections will simply increase the effect of redistributing from one group of people to a more populous (larger voting set) with inflationary and economically harmful effects. Is there a safe place?
If they can't beat Obama in this economy, with his results, they really need to stare at their navels and figure out why people hate them so much. They can start with GWB, one of the worst presidents in history, move on to what they think of rape, and then figure how much they need the religious nutjobs that forms their so called base. Their anti-science, anti-women BS is driving the country away from them.
I'll admit I voted for Rmoney. Not because I like that finger in the wind flip flopper, but I think Obama's policies are disastrous.
If you knew all of this, why did you vote that way? That's what I don't understand about Republicans...
(I'm unaffiliated)
switch people from full time employees to part time has been going on for years.
at least now they can buy a plan outside of the work place at a good rate under the ACA and no more mcdonalds mini med joke care plans.
It forces Catholic institutions to pass out condoms, against their moral beliefs, with a "we'll just pretend that isn't happening" decision by Obama. Don't you feel better now, since Obama can change a religions basic tenets by executive order?
why should your job be able to control your health-care plan???? Your plan should be under your control.
Grover Norquist.
To expand somewhat, particularly if you haven't heard of him (I don't know how closely you follow the bizarre inanities of US politics), Grover Norquist is a conservative lobbyist and activist who has, through means I haven't particularly explored, managed to convince enough of America that taxes are, in and of themselves, bad, that it's nearly impossible for a Republican to get elected without signing his pledge. This pledge effectively states that those signing it will never ever raise taxes, and seems to be getting interpreted lately as meaning they will never do anything that increases the share of revenue the government collects.
This idea, that taxes are the source of all our government's financial problems, has now been sold to a huge proportion of America, whose grasp of math apparently extends to, "Taxes are money that I pay out of my pocket. I like having more money in my pocket. These people are telling me that not only will I be happier if I'm paying less taxes, we'll all be better off if we pay less taxes and the government gets shrunk!"
Unfortunately, particularly in times of crisis, people want simple answers to their problems. The answer, "Well, if everyone making more than some very low yearly income pays a little more, and we make the very rich pay a lot more, we can do a lot better for everyone because of this, that, and the other," just doesn't have the same appeal as, "We can fix everything in America by letting you keep more of your money!"
This, of course, becomes even more true when you look at the effect the very rich can have on the landscape, because they are able to essentially buy public opinion for their ideas (not even getting into their ability to actually buy legislation for their ideas). Furthermore, America has a special vulnerability to their blandishments due to our historical culture of "rugged individualism" and whatnot: there's still a strong streak in American culture that believes that not only does everyone have a right to the fruits of their own labours, but everyone in America has a real chance to somehow become very rich themselves (see some politician this past election cycle boldlyand utterly falsely proclaiming that "we are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves"). And people who believe that they will, someday Real Soon Now, be rich themselves, do not want to see there being serious restrictions on the rich or attempts to steal away their hard-earned money, because "That's gonna be me someday, and I wanna keep all my money for myself!"
tl;dr version: People are stupid, especially about money and what it means for a society.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The single most telling thing about Romney is that he was our Governor - I live in Massachusetts - and he lost the vote by 61% to 37%. His administration was a disaster, no matter what claims he or his publicists made, and we pretty much hate him.
Not believing in or respecting the separation of church and state is another problem, made worse because he's Mormon. But that's beside the point.
I see you can't. Who mixes opportunity cost of revenue not taken and spending on the same graph except to be deceptive? "Non-partisan groups" with partisan axes to grind.
That yellow was spent on something. It didn't magically burn up, leaving IOUs. And of course as the other replier noted, why are those tax cuts still there, if they're so harmful? Where's Medicare on that graph? It's all Booshes fault, right?
If you can't get those taxes back, then there's another solution. Don't spend it.
Without actually reading the source material, it sounds like you might be technically right, but I'm not sure it refutes the OPs point (never mind that it only even tries to refute one of his points).
So you needed a pattern of behaviour? So if you applied the thumb screws or waterboarded, no hanging, but if you did both together, hanged? That somehow excuses introducing the practice of waterboarding?
We are talking about a President who gave us a massive tax cut in wartime.
Compared to a president who tried to impose massive environmental restrictions in the middle of the biggest recession since the Great Depression?
Simply the economics of that sort of action are going to be a disaster.
Heh.
Indeed, it's all those millions of liberal farmers.
You mean all the ones who plan on going John Galt in the 2013 growing season?
I know he is supposed to be a leftist democrat, however if any politician up here ever gave such a speech I would assume them a right wingnut from the Canadian Heritage Party (christran right wing party in the west). Basically loony toons that get no votes.
And this guy was your "normal" guy... The differences between Canada and the US couldn't be more stark.
I have no doubt that our PM is likely more religious than many of our previous PM's, however likely they most that would be said about it might be "yes I believe in god, and that is a private affair for myself and my family".
Either we are more secular, or more private... either way religion has little if any role in our politics. The day ANY party starts a sermon, is the day they forever lose my vote.
Here's to the pigs.
Care to elaborate on how Marx was wrong? Most of his predictions about what would happen because of capitalism seem to have come true. Pure capitalism destroyed itself, usually violently, and was replaced by mixed economies.
Me thinks you should read up on fascism if you think that's where we are headed. You clearly don't understand the meaning of the word.
Here's what it comes down to - they pinned their hope on getting ALL the old white men to vote for them. Fuck the minorities, fuck the youth, fuck the women, fuck the fags. The problem is, there just aren't enough old white men left, and over the next 4 years it's going to get worse. So they're either going to have to massively change directions, pissing off their current base, or keep on losing as they become more & more irrelevant. It's going to be interesting to watch as the sane wing tries to convert the rabid xenophobe misogynist racist wing...
A second term president has no real reason to care about the public since they can't be elected again. Things that would have been a factor in trying to gain that second term no longer apply. They can try to do anything and everything they feel like doing without the possibility of serious repercussions.
Expect even more unpopular, unsupported and unsustainable things coming out of the White House in the form of Executive Orders that bypass the entire legislative process.
". And I don't give two shits what the slashdot crowd thinks, "
How closed minded.
"The President doesn't get to decide who lives and dies..."
See: EVERY FUCKING WAR.
Drone strike are very effective. And attacking the country, telling other people how to attack the country, and being in a tent with people plotting to attack the country and helping those people make you a legitimate target. Did didn't order men to creep into his home and murder home.
You should read the legal writing on it.
Of course you don't care, because you don't think.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And this is why we've been on the same two party system for about 150 years.
I'll make fun of all of them, there stupid, show weak thinking, and infect society with flawed logic.
Mormonism is a horrid cult. Many of then regularly violate the law but still maintain their not for profit status.
And I don't make ignorant fun. It's far better to understand the religion and then make fun because I like to watch them squirm in a vain attempt to make series of logical thoughts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"What is truly scary is...this is it folks, this is the BEST the parties have to offer. Kinda sad isn't it?"
Obama may be no Bill Clinton, but with a less Obstructionist opposition he could have done a lot of good the last four years. How do you deal with a party that says we will not negotiate on anything and will go to the wall on every issue regardless of the consequences?
What's insanely scary is the leadership of the Right has just said this morning that they have no intention of trying to compromise AT ALL PERIOD for the next four year. They said it is 100% on Obama to come to them. What the fuck McConnell?
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/11/07/McConnell-stiff-arms-Obama-Senate-Dems/UPI-55861352214084/
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Obama already had the 47%. He only needed another 3. Romney only had 1%. He had to get another 49 to win. Obama had an unfair advantage!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
A liberal agenda that will result in 1) higher taxes, 2) increased spending, 3) increased national debt, 4) subsidies for bad behavior, and 5) pandering to special interests.
They would have been cheaper, as long as he was prevented from cutting taxes.
" Not a poor man in the bunch"
Poor people make bad governments. History shows us that over and over.
The guys who pulled together the U.S. in 1776 and 1783 did a damned fin job.
Making fun of ritual clothing isn't ignorant?
Every cultural group has criminals. Italians, Irish, Jews, Blacks, all famous for their gangsters. (My dad used to complain that gangster movies never showed Jewish gangsters, a slight upon our proud Jewish heritage.) The Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts include pedophiles. I dunno what affiliations you have, but I'll bet I could guilt you by association if I wanted to.
I'm an atheist. If I were a bigoted atheist, I could dismiss all religions as cults. But I'm not a bigot. You certainly are.
The founding fathers anticipated political parties; in fact its baked into the constitution.
And? it takes a week to get an accurate count of votes. So what?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just for the record- it wasn't the right wing extremists that dictated Romney's views (we were very content with Ron Paul and all of his consistent, constitutional goodness).
It was the Republican leadership, which shares the same views as the Democratic leadership, which told him what to say. Notice that Romney and Obama were identical in terms of a balanced budget plan (neither had one), foreign policy (keep intervening!) and civil liberties (Lock people up without trial? Sure!)
How did the other candidates do? I know a lot of people were writing in Ron Paul, what are the results of that? How many voted for Gary Johnson? He was first on the list, and was in at least 48 states, so I expect he got well over his desired 5%
Four more years of our President on Jay Leno and the rest of the talk show circuit.
I don't think anything that has been done has actually added any significant safety.
How about ending our presence in Iraq? Do you think that has anything to do with your safety? It does. Allow me to explain.
Check out this wiki page. Give it a good once-over, then let's talk about the contents.
You'll find that a good base number for civilian deaths in Iraq is a little over 100,000. That seems to be the average agreed upon number. We'll go with the AP number, 110,600 deaths. AP is reliable, and it's a decent average for the most conservative estimates for loss of life. Now note the time period. "March 2003 to April 2009." That's 6 years and one month. Are you with me so far?
On 9/11, the terrorist attacks accounted for the loss of 2,977 lives. Now let's look at those numbers and see what they mean.
110600 / 2977 is 37.15. So what that means is that we have killed 37 times more civilians than the 9/11 attackers did. The 9/11 victims and the civilians in Iraq are alike - all innocent people that did not deserve to die.
March 2003 to April 2009 is a period spanning 6 years and 1 month. That's 73 months. And 73 / 37.15 is 1.96. That's almost exactly two months. That means that what we've done to Iraq is like a 9/11 style attack every two months for over six years. Remember how pissed off we were after 9/11? Imagine that every two months for six years running.
110,000 families missing a loved one. A child they raised, a mother they loved, a father that will never come home. 110,000 families that have a good solid reason to absolutely poisonously passionately hate our guts.
Still feel safe? It took only 19 guys to carry out the 9/11 attacks.
My point is that it absolutely matters who is President. Decisions will be made that will affect your safety directly. You need someone at the helm that makes good decisions.
It matters. A lot.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I agree with you, but pulling out of other countries isn't something that US citizens traded freedom for. Things like the TSA and warrantless wiretapping are.
... the Republican will do it more often.
... will waterboard you before he has you shot and disposed.
Colorado legalizes marihuana, Maine passed same sex marriage, welfare on the rise. Maybe I'm just old fashion, but I guess that's what the people want.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
So now the 47% has flipped and more Americans are on the dole than are paying.
Nice.
So...no more giving to charities. Go talk to Obama, he has my money.
No more contributing to relief efforts if the disaster is in a Blue State. Let the eat FEMA amd fuck'm. Your house destroyed in the Hurricane and you are homeless and freezing and FEMA ain't doing shit for you....OWN IT Bitches! That's your guy partying it up in Chicago while you freeze your ass off...LOL!
It's now all about me and my family.
Homeless dude on the corner? Fuck'm.
Fans for the poor for their unconditioned homes? Too tuff. Go sit in the local creek or get Obama to help you out.
Food drives? Forget it! Food stamps are available to cats and dogs so surely you can get them.
So all you Blue Staters, don't come to me for help because I'll slam the door right in your fucking face. (which you folks seem to do already...hear about the women who needed help during the storm and had a guy shut the door in her face and subsequently her two kids die?...Yeah...Blue Staters...they've been looking out for themselves only for a long time)
It forces Catholic institutions to pass out condoms, against their moral beliefs
That's not even close to true and you know it.
Rule of Law is the Constitution, the only Document that all must agree and ratify together as People in order to have a form of government in the first place, without the Constitution there are no legitimate politicians that could legislate anything. Actually it was wrong for the Founders not to set very specific and very hard limits on what the Congress could legislate on, but any law that comes out of the government once the Constitution is ratified is suspect.
I don't think that it was the "GDP growth" sucking that got Clinton knocked out.
a) No. They don't, the Constitution is pretty clear about standards necessary to convict for treason.
b) They didn't all happen on the battlefield.
c) The administration has been in court defending it's right to assassinate journalists on equal footing with terrorists, after an injunction was obtained to prevent exactly that.
Did the Founding Fathers intend for there to be so many exceptions to the plainly written rules in the Constitution?
Who cares what the founding fathers intended? These are the same people who declared "all men are created equal" while not giving equality to blacks or women or indians. They weren't a bunch of infallible holy wise men. We face situations today that they could not possibly have envisioned. There were no weapons of mass destruction, global communications systems, airplanes, railroads, computers or automobiles. There was no industrial scale pollution like we currently face and climate change was not a concern. Energy policies in those days concerned how much oats to feed your horse. The world is different and the laws that govern it must necessarily be different.
Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with your premise (that the constitution has been rather abused in many places) but worrying about what the founding fathers thought is absurd. It just doesn't make logical sense to worry about what a bunch of guys who died 200 years ago might have thought.
Colorado and Washington passed marijuana legalization for recreational use.
Maybe now we'll give up the fig leaf of "medical" marijuana. It's amazing how many previously healthy people suddenly developed conditions that could only be treated by smoking weed. I don't care if people want to smoke weed but for almost all of them claiming it was for medical purposes was nothing more than an end run around the law.
That Was The Week That Was [TW3]
The Republican platform: "Life Begins at Rape" falters and . . . . .
Female voters in Indiana and Missouri discover their brain and vote properly --- for a change!
Massachusetts' voters rediscover their brain and vote for Prof. Elizabeth Warren over that random slitch, Scott-what's-his-face!
Wisconsin voters finally use their brain and voted the intelligent, desirable dyke over that whackjob, Tommy "all Americans should be microchipped" Thompson!
Hallelujah ! !
Magic Underwear Guy Loses
Willard Mitt Romney's career as a tax dodging, draft dodging, queen of debt creation evidently didn't impress enough members of the electorate. Apparently Romney's prime example of business acumen: putting a poor dog in a cage atop a speeding car and watching him crap over the car's windows didn't impress enough voters either.
The Challenge
An offer of a $1 million prize to Linda McMahon to wrestle Donald Trump in a "Stomp the Trump's Rump" exhibition match. (Maybe NYC Mayor "Elizabeth Warren is a socialist" Bloomberg will put up the prize money?)
The lesson of the very close popular vote?
Un-privatize the national voting process --- centralize it --- and hire the McDonald's Corporation to expedite it --- if they can do fast food, then fast and efficient voting should be a real cinch for them!
Nineteen woman senators? It's a good start . . . . .
Running unopposed, President Robomney exceeded all expections by winning with nearly 100% of the popular vote.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Bush was the one who got tens of thousands of Americans killed
Not to let him off the hook, but your numbers are way high.
Just another day in Paradise
Good thing Gore invented the Interweb. How do you suppose things would have looked w/o the bubble? And I don't mean to let Bush off the hook, but we can't blame him for the housing bubble, just like we can't give credit to Clinton for this one.
Just another day in Paradise
We are witnesses to the suicide of the United States of America, and the end of freedom and Western Civilization.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
the republican party will shrink the middle class and increase the poor. which means less spending and less business and a weaker country
strengthen the social safety nets, and the middle class grows, and the poor shrink, and there is more spending, and more business, and a strong economy
it's not that complicated
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah. The CIA hired out some special forces to terminate one of their operators.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/24198
Of course, this was the decoy, the original having been decommissioned somewhat earlier, at an inconvenient time to influence the conflict over Pipelineistan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0Z96IIQyVe0
I LOVE Operation Treadstone.
Nice how there was no independent forensic examination of the cadaver. But I guess anybody who asks for science here is the moral equivalent of a "birther".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
To the immature jackasses who modded the parent Flamebait, shame on you. Naive, maybe for Slashdot, but spot on for his assessment of the GP's (Pdoink) post. Take your food fight back to high school, and leave the serious debate to the adults please.
Just another day in Paradise
Can you put two and two together looking at this graph?
(Numbers and graph Courtesy of the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities).
The bad thing about the right's ideological radicalization over the past decade is that there is no such as thing as "non-partisan" anymore. Anyone who puts forth numbers, facts, arguments, etc, against them is automatically part of the liberal media conspiracy.
The example of the hour, of course, is the right's attack on Nate Silver. To be fair, Nate did support Obama in this election, but his analysis was based on raw number crunching, not wishful thinking (like these eight conservative pundits who predicted a Romney win), which is why he was able to correctly predict the outcome of all 50 states (assuming no FL surprises). Meanwhile, the Red States guys were predicting a 3.5% win for Mitt the day before election. (Not to mention their hilarious exit poll that favored Mitt 5.4% with a 1.44% margin of error!)
They just stripped away all statistical corrections that professional polling organizations normally use in order to get the result they want even when the underlying reality was completely different . Now that the cold light of day has shown them wrong, we'll see if an apology, methodology change, or indeed any indication of humility or self-growth is forthcoming, but I'm not holding my breath.
Unfortunately, most complex things (global warming, taxation policy, etc.) aren't resolved simply and quickly like this polling "controversy". Right-wing ideologues will continue to manufacture misinformation and attack anyone who disagrees with them, and because of that: truth is dead, in a sense. (This can apply to left-wing ideologues too, but it's right-wing ideologicalization that has been more prevalent over the past decade.)
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
If you equate simulated drowning with filling a person's stomach with water and beating it with bamboo sticks until it bursts as anything approximately equivalent then you have no grasp of reality.
I bet you did. i bet you heard everything before it was ever associated with anything bad with a certain person.
...and the internet happened because of the National Information Infrastructure bill... ...which was proposed by, written by, and championed by Al Gore.
See, Clinton wasn't responsible for the boom in the late 90's. It was an entirely different Democrat!
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
and imagine this, if /. moderators were moderating the Founders, when they set up the Constitution the way it was done, they would have moderated it as 'Flamebait' or 'Troll' or 'Overrated' in their infinite wisdom, because they would disagree with the founding principles of the Republic as opposed to Democracy
You could hardly be more wrong if you tried.
For one, you were most likely moderated down by a slashdot user with moderator points, not a slashdot moderator per se. The slashdot moderators almost never moderate comments unless something especially egregious is brought to their attention.
Second, you were moderated "flamebait" and "troll" because you are being intentionally confrontational and rude towards others. You are going out of your way to try to start a fight, which meets the definitions of troll and flamebait provided by slashdot quite nicely.
Third, your comment was not yet moderated "overrated" - though it should be, due to the fact that it contains factual distortions. You really should read up on US history and US government before you try lecturing slashdot readers about it. Just because you watched a youtube video on it does not make you in any way an expert on the subject.
"The only two things that differentiate America from the rest of the world are the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and an almost fanatical devotion to the gun."
But the key here is that a US citizen should get due process. Even John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" guy, got due process. He was indicted by a Federal grand jury. He ACTUALLY took up arms against the United States and trained with the Taliban and was captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield (his unit even surrendered!), and he got a trial that wasn't a military commission.
Meanwhile, Awlaki never actually took up arms against the US. The most they can claim is he gave speeches that were probably protected by the First Amendment. You want to claim he is guilty of being a traitor, that he has committed treason against his country? Show the evidence in a court room (I recall something about treason in the Constitution and some other stuff about witnesses and overt acts...). You don't just get to blow up people who are not on a battlefield and not actively engaged in hostilities.
And for that matter, Alwaki's son, Abdulrahman, was a 16 year old American Citizen. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki committed no crimes and did not plot war against the US, yet he was summarily executed by drone strike. How the fuck do you defend killing a minor just because his father was an alleged terrorist who was never even tried or convicted of any crime?
:(){
lol.. Yes, they used a pattern of behavior. and the importance of it which seems you lost completely is that the single act was never claimed to be torture by the MTFE as was stated. If you water boarded someone, it wasn't torture and wasn't prosecuted unless you pulled fingernails off or inserted bamboo shoots under them and beat the prisoner. They did not trial anyone for water boarding, or any other single offense as torture.
Whether water boarding is or is not torture is not what under consideration here. Its whether or not people were trialed and convicted of water boarding. The saying is wrong and inaccurate. John McCain was wrong and inaccurate, politifact is wrong and inaccurate and anyone who repeats the myth is wrong and inaccurate. At no time in US history was anyone connected with the tribunals in the gar east or Nuremberg trials ever charged or convicted of water boarding.
Its like saying Obama isn't the real president because he swore to the wrong oath and ignoring the reality that he did swear the right oath. If you are going to use incorrect information for an argument, prepare for the truth. Now, water boarding may very well be torture, but we certainly didn't charge and prosecute an enemy for it.
It's not just me:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22magic+underpants%22+%22magic+underwear%22&hl=en&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A01%2F01%2F1990%2Ccd_max%3A01%2F01%2F2008
If this reuse of "magic underpants" was so well-known that it left the term tainted forever I'd think it wouldn't be so obscure...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think you're deluded. The public knows what the Republicans are, and they like that.
I disagree. Most people think the Republican party is about social and fiscal conservatism, and traditional values. But if you watch what they do when they have power, it's obvious that they're just the plutocrat party.
People like what they *think* the Republicans are. But the plutocrats are just exploiting the knee jerks of bigots (Southern strategy, new Southwestern strategy) and people who want to force their religion on everyone else. They talk a lot and throw them a bone now and then, but don't ever act in a way that suggests that they actually give a shit.
Before the 2006 election, leaders of the religious right were complaining that they have been bringing lots of votes to the table and getting very little to show for it, even though Republicans had had full control of the government for the past 5+ years.
*That* is what Republican posturing is all about: get the votes by fair means or foul, then run the country into the ground for the short-term interests of the rich.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The problem with +7 Knickers of Seduction is what happens when you remove them?
Never mind, I had just hit "submit" when I figured it out. Just pull a "Weird Science" and wear them on your head.
As living in a "lean blue" state, I chose to vote Democratic nationally. I shudder to think of the GOP getting a majority in the Senate.
Although I am also fed up with Democrats as well. That's why in local elections, I have begun voting Libertarian. They stand more of a chance locally than nationally, and everyone always says that the way to get a third party going is from the local level first, up through to the state level and then national.
I think in the future, Libertarian is going to start taking off. The reason being that there's a lot of Republicans who want to be rid of the social conservative issues and a lot of Democrats who want to be rid of fiscally liberal issues.
:(){
Presidents have so little effect on the economy it is generally not measurable, but we like to believe otherwise.
listen to what the american people just said with their vote
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Very good post. I would add that neither Obama or Romney would make any bit of difference.
The majority of those 110K deaths were NOT at the hands of American or coalition troops, but at the ends of their own countrymen.
Maryland has joined the compact. I predict they will stay with it until the popular vote goes Republican one year.
Maryland is not remotely a battleground state - our presidential numbers are reliably Democratic + 10%. So sending our electors to vote for a Republican candidate because of a relatively obscure law/compact will obviously be understood by the voters...
NOT.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Two points.
1) Do you think that makes us any less responsible? If you were to bomb Kansas halfway to hell and remove their infrastructure, destroy their food and water distribution the same thing would happen. It wouldn't be the fault of the people living there. It would be the fault of the people dropping the bombs.
2) Let's say you are right though, and let's say the number is hugely inflated. Let's say we are only directly responsible for one tenth the number. That still means we've done 37/10=3.7 times worse to them than 9/11.
No. We don't get out of it that easily by saying crime went up and therefore we aren't responsible. We are.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Do you really think Romney's policies would have been less disastrous? Did you think that Romney would be able to shake off the control of nutjob right-wing Republicans as President? Or has that question not entered your consideration?
(I am honestly curious)
If you were honestly curious, you would phrase your question in such a way that did not risk insulting the OP's political values. Now, yes your question is valid. The Republican party is dysfunctional and some of that may bleed into a Republican Presidency, certainly, but your tone might as well say "I think you're a f#$**@! moron and I've considered this grand question that I'm about to ask you because I don't think it would ever enter your insufficient f@*(#*&($! moronic brain"
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a Republican and a conservative. I am told constantly by leftists that my party affiliation makes me an intolerant backwards thinking religious zealot nutjob, and I'm sick of it. So here I'll call you out. Your question is rather intolerant of the OP's views and if we want to get anywhere in this country, rhetoric like this has to stop from BOTH sides: The intolerant backwards thinking religious zealot nutjobs, and the people who label them as such because their views are different. Both are equally intolerant.
And no, the irony is not lost on me that this post will be submitted by "Anonymous Coward." I hope you enjoy that too.
Obviously it makes a difference in general who is president. The point being argued is that the particular two candidates we got aren't likely to be that much different.
Back in 2008 I certainly thought and hoped Obama would be a big change from Bush, but it seemed like nothing changed. He continued or expanded Bush's policies of warrantless wiretapping, the Bush tax cuts, increasing executive powers (in often-unconstitutional ways, such as the war in Libya remaining unauthorized by congress), continuing the war on drugs, etc. The Wall Street "reform" bill was the smallest imaginable response to the horrendous behavior of the financial firms. Troop deployments were not immediately decreased but merely shifted around. There was that new "insurance care" bill, but if Romney had won his presidential bid in 2008, isn't it possible, even likely, that we would have ended up with something similar from him?
You mention Iraq--we hope neither candidate would start another war the way Bush did, but do we really know they wouldn't? And Obama didn't really bring peace to Iraq, did he?
Saying you're going to pray for someone is a condescending put-down and dismissal. It's saying you're ignorant and misguided and can't help yourself so I'll ask my invisible magical friend to fix you.
It's all that and more if the person being "prayed for" is religious in any way - it's also a threat of witchcraft, invoking (fictional but still scary to a believer) divine powers.
If you want some glimmer of understanding about how non-christian but still religious people feel about being "prayed for" by christians, consider how a christian would feel about the following "blessing": 'May Satan bless you, keep you safe in his arms, and guide you to wisdom"
I'm an atheist so I'm not worried by the witchcraft elements (it's just superstitious mumbo-jumbo), but I'm still offended by the condescension of people offering to "pray for me". smarmy self-righteous fucks.
Wow, you sure are smug. But you are an idiot.
Circletimessquare was not replying to GodfatherofSoul's comment. Go back and look again. Or are you too smug?
lol.. I bet you are right.. I didn't say you were wrong. But I will say the most popular use of it does so in claiming Obama is a liar and that is why certain people like him- because he's a liar.
I agree. Not being sarcastic.
Along these lines there is a report that up to 3300 people have been killed by our drone attacks in Pakistan, while only 41 were the intended Al Qaeda targets. This is another situation that could blowback on us.
Who said anything about treason?
I do not want to worry everyone, but the trends in the USA political system seem to indicate:
1) Passage of laws Stalin, Mao even HITLER would have a wet dream if he could pass the Patriot and NDAA acts.
They just recently passed, and will take time to "execute" fully. Anyone paying attention to the news knows, there are not 1 billion terrorists in the world.
There are people like me though and others that track what this political system is doing and it is buying Ammo for domestic use on a scale totally unprecedented in USA history. What exactly the government is going to be doing with that much sniper and hollow point bullets I can't be sure since it is for domestic government institutions.
So I will let history be the judge and suggest you all have something to worry about that is more important and it has nothing to do with the president.
You better pay attention to the banks who are funding these purchases, particularly the Federal Reserve.
2) We all know that for a civilization to function, you can't have corruption on a scale that we have seen in the past 10 years in military conflicts being authorized Constitutionally illegal, by an arguable dictator. (i.e. Bush and Obama have authorized actions clearly illegally with regards to military deployment.). Destruction of the confidence of trade and monetary stability by Paulson, Corzine and others that have stolen my money and others, stand up in front of Congress on Public Television and with a straight face declare they have no idea what happened to hundreds of billions of dollars.
You know there is a reason why the entire Stock Market is 85% machine trades now. You either have to be a crook or a fool to participate unless you have inside knowledge or can get permission to break the law and steal money without penalty.
3) A populace in the USA now mainly based on dependence who have thrown away the freedoms and liberties many people died for and are laying in graves, in exchange for slavery of a welfare check and food stamps for "safety".
I can't believe people would not attempt to destroy those who put them there rather than being held on a leash for a food stamp debit card and welfare check. It would seem this political two party system has chains of gold for everyone to wear. The destruction this is having on the future of the country is heart breaking. Millions of people who will never ever consider any possibility other than what their government handlers will tell them what is possible.
The government has stolen billions and given it to corporations to move and build factories anywhere, just as long as they are not here, paid for by you the tax payer. The American response?
Who Cares, just give us our Welfare Check and Food Stamp Card. Not a single attempt to move against this government even while whole cities lie in ruins.
Like a frog in a pot slowly being cooked, people sit idle and watch as the dead lie in graves for nothing and a future of slavery.
Safety will be a key concern, of course for the ruling class, but not for any of the hundreds of millions who will sit in abjec poverty as this trend continues to fulfill a future of complete and utter repression of the human spirit.
You know I have a great interest in history. One of my interests is the MAYAN's, when at the height of the MAYAN civilization 800 A.D. or so Europe was gripped in the Dark Ages the MAYAN city states were at their apex and began experimenting with an industrial age inventing materials science which yielded concrete, advances tools harder than steel.
They too succumbed to tyranny and butchery and finally destruction of all of their culture. They stopped, they stopped exploring science, they stopped exploring mathematics, they stopped exploring engineering. The result? The ruling class used fear and declared we cannot keep you safe from hunger unless we sacrifice hundreds of people to the Gods. We can keep you safe from hunger, if you give us all your sons, daughters for sacrifice
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
As The Economist put it, the takeaway lesson for future Repub candidates is: if someone asks you about rape, (a) you're against it, and (b) then stop talking.
You fucked up, but kudos to you.
If you don't know why these tax cuts are still there you obviously did not pay any attention.
In the last crisis a lot of money indeed "burned up" as the credit supply and hence money in circulation shrunk (M3).
Econ 101.
Macroeconomics != Microeconomics
Opportunity cost makes only sense in the latter context. Most of the yellow wasn't spend but saved or put into investment vehicles, and had therefore very limited stimulus effect. If you want to stimulate the economy with tax cuts you have to tailor them to the lower income segment where the incentive for additional consumption is much higher. The Bush tax cuts on the other hand are structured exactly the other way around.
Indeed, the winger comments further up the thread unfortunately illustrate your point.
rofl!
Somebody forgot to take their meds again....
Opportunity cost makes only sense in the latter context. Most of the yellow wasn't spend but saved or put into investment vehicles, and had therefore very limited stimulus effect. If you want to stimulate the economy with tax cuts you have to tailor them to the lower income segment where the incentive for additional consumption is much higher. The Bush tax cuts on the other hand are structured exactly the other way around.
Economic activity != good for us. The big problem with investment is not that it has limited stimulus effect, but that it has an even weaker targeting effect than encouraging consumption. At least with consumption, you can encourage one round of spending mostly in your target region before the money flees to better places.
Against that, you have to weigh that investment goes directly into the future. There is profound long term impact that doesn't happen with consumption. The consumer just gets something now while the person selling them the goods or services in question also has little reason to make any long term changes. The spurt from the consumption is going away after all.
The Bush tax cuts on the other hand are structured exactly the other way around.
Sounds good then. To work properly IMHO, they would need in conjunction increased incentives to invest in the US rather than other places.
Mod this person Secretary of the Interior.
Just one simple counter example: One of the best 'domestic investment' over the last five years was gold. Worked like a charm for me.
You'd need massive capital controls to direct investment the way you envision. Freedom it ain't. I rather pay higher taxes but retain my economic liberty to invest my money the way I see fit. Apparently your mileage varies.
Not to mention leaving the White House just before the bubble burst.
Yes, you make a good point on third parties. I like the "No Confidence" option idea you outline. However, here is another alternative, basically doing something like the Tea Party did in moving the Republicans more rightward, but for the Democrats moving leftward/Green/other(basic income?), from sociologist G. William Domhoff:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_egalitarians.html
===
So what should egalitarian activists do in terms of future elections if and when the issues, circumstances, and candidates seem right? First, they should form Egalitarian Democratic Clubs. That gives them an organizational base as well as a distinctive new social identity within the structural pathway to government that is labeled "the Democratic Party." Forming such clubs makes it possible for activists to maintain their sense of separatism and purity while at the same time allowing them to compete within the Democratic Party. There are numerous precedents for such clubs within the party, including liberal and reform clubs in the past, and the conservative Democratic Leadership Council at the present time.
This strategy of forging a separate social identity is also followed by members of the right wing within the Republican Party. By joining organizations like the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, they can define themselves as Christians who have to work out of necessity within the debased confines of the Republican Party. That is, they think of themselves as Christians first and Republicans second, and that is what egalitarians should do: identify themselves primarily as egalitarians and only secondarily as Democrats.
After forming Egalitarian Democrat Clubs, egalitarian activists should find people to run in selected Democratic primaries from precinct to president. They should not simply support eager candidates who come to them with the hope of turning them into campaign workers. They have to create candidates of their own who already are committed to the egalitarian movement and to its alternative economic vision of planning through the market. The candidates have to be responsible to the clubs, or else the candidates naturally will look out for their own self interest and careers. They should focus on winning on the basis of the program, and make no personal criticisms of their Democratic rivals. Personal attacks on mainstream politicians are a mistake, a self-made trap, for egalitarian insurgents.
In talking about the program, the candidates actually do much more than explain what egalitarians stand for. By discussing such issues as increasing inequality and the abandonment of fairness, and then placing the blame for these conditions on the corporate-conservative coalition and the Republican Party, they help to explain to fellow members of the movement who is "us" and who is "them." They help to create a sense of "we-ness," a new collective identity. As candidates who present a positive program and attack those who oppose it, they are serving as "entrepreneurs of identity," an important part of the job description for any spokesperson in a new social movement.
====
Some issue I have with the Greens, BTW, even though I though voting Green made sense as a protest vote where I lived (e.g. I have problems with a push for "full employment" instead of a "basic income", or a push for expanding schooling instead of better supporting self-education and homeschooling, or an implicit push for population limits in various ways versus moving into space habitats, etc.):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3227495&cid=41864225
Even in the case of Obama as president, such Egalitarian Democratic clubs could be useful in the sense of, as Ralph Nader cites, "Make me do it" regarding progressive change, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said to reformers:
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/15-0
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
3 yrs of balanced budgets with the Republicans holding the purse strings. Hmmmm.... That's my hope for the Obama second term.
Don't forget their not so subtle racism that they continuously reinforce but refuse to acknowledge or fix which drives away what should be natural coalition partners for them, like socially conservative chunks of black and hispanic minorities.
You'd need massive capital controls to direct investment the way you envision.
I'd say rather their absence. The more you try to control people and keep their stuff, the harder they try to leave. I believe the US would keep more capital just by being a better place to start a business and employ people. But that would mean that the people who are employed would need to make some sacrifice in the process.
Who cares? The simple fact is when we had good times, we got a balanced budget for once instead of starting some random war or shitting tax breaks on people who dont need them. You can say whatever you want but the budget was balanced, despite the republican narrative of democrats bankrupting the country, blah blah blah.
So far the US has a very hard time to compete with China. Reducing the American worker to the standing of a Chinese one and hollowing out the US industrial sector seems to me to be a poor way to secure American prosperty and power.
By all accounts my birth country, Germany, is much more competitive with regards to China, and somehow they manage to do this with strong trade unions and a comprehensive wellfare system.
switch people from full time employees to part time has been going on for years.
But you don't usually write legislation that makes that the most attractive move for small to medium companies to make.
The fines the ACA forces on employers who don't provide health care is (this is only applied to companies with more than 50 employees - another incentive to lay people off):
(# of full times employees - 30) * the per employee fine amount
So while part time workers count towards the 50 employee check but are not part of the penalty formula.
By that formula it's extremely attractive for companies to cancel their health care coverage and limit workers hours and reclassify them as part time (which means a lot less income and not just a name change) and because of other penalties, taxes and conditions it's not even necessarily worth their while to hire additional part timers to pick up the slack.
There are already larger companies starting to reclassify their subsidiaries as independent entities to make it easier to minimize their number of full timers for this formula because it just makes financial sense to drop health care for your employees if the cost of the fine is millions less than the cost of care.
End result, the average take home pay goes down, fewer companies provide health care and now workers who previously had health care covered by their employer are now forced to spend even more of their money on buying plans themselves.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
See subject
Just another day in Paradise
Somebody had to win.
Reducing the American worker to the standing of a Chinese one and hollowing out the US industrial sector seems to me to be a poor way to secure American prosperty and power.
I first have a quibble with what you wrote. The US industrial sector has already been hollowed out. What has kept us going industrially is new industry creation. Second, the US worker is already being reduced in standing. It's just being done via inflation and poorly thought out regulations and laws (and large scale underemployment).
By all accounts my birth country, Germany, is much more competitive with regards to China, and somehow they manage to do this with strong trade unions and a comprehensive wellfare system.
They have three things in their favor. First, strong protectionist systems (particularly the regulatory system) and second, they're the best competitors in their protected block. Germany props up its economy with exports to the rest of the EU, especially to the weakest countries like the PIGS. Germany is doing great. Greece, Spain, Italy, etc aren't.
Third, they're getting an economic boost from building up East Germany. Eventually, those trade advantages are going to settle down, then we'll see where Germany goes.
In comparison, how is the US going to do a Germany? It doesn't have a vast protected trade block it can exploit.
You are correct that the PIGS have been a net benefit to Germany, but where its economy shines are in areas that are not at all protected: Cars and machinery. Both items that sell very well in China.
Protectionism in the EU is all about agriculture. Please check your facts at bit more carefully.
As to your contention that new industry creation keeps the US going: While it is true that there is fortunately still great innovation happing, the rate has not been steep enough to compensate for the outsourcing loss to Asia.
Would also like to point out that companies like SpaceX could not exist if the government through NASA wouldn't have artificially created a marked in the first place (very good policy IMHO). And of course there'd be no Internet without the government either, just AOL and Compuserve walled-gardens.
Protectionism in the EU is all about agriculture.
Here are some counterexamples. ISO business and environmental standards are a great counterexample. It's harder to achieve compliance with ISO standards if some of your inputs come from non-certified suppliers. Such standards favor environments where most of the businesses are so certified.
The EU thus gains a substantial trade advantage over countries without widespread ISO certification. For example, I understand China is only recently overcoming this obstacle with large-scale ISO certification in recent years.
There are other certifications like the EU Ecolabel that cover areas which tend to be weaker in the developing world (such as working conditions and degree of pollution).
The EU legal system also has developed a recent habit of fining companies a fraction of their global revenue. That affects global companies more significantly than EU-only businesses since it is possible to incur a large fine on a small side business and can be a big risk for a foreign business trying to enter an EU market.
As to your contention that new industry creation keeps the US going: While it is true that there is fortunately still great innovation happing, the rate has not been steep enough to compensate for the outsourcing loss to Asia.
So you agree that there's a lot more manufacture in the US than there would be in the absence of new industry creation.
Would also like to point out that companies like SpaceX could not exist if the government through NASA wouldn't have artificially created a marked in the first place (very good policy IMHO).
NASA had to be forced to accept private space launch in 1984. It's worth noting here one of the bizarre things about the space age in the US. Namely, the bizarre abandonment of commonly accepted philosophical and economic principles. The first thirty years had a program that had a surprisingly socialist model (with private contractors). But it does go a long ways to explaining the stagnation of space development since the 50s.
And of course there'd be no Internet without the government either, just AOL and Compuserve walled-gardens.
Nonsense. You already gave two examples of walled-gardens that existed in the real world. Instead, what changed things was Metcalfe's Law, namely, that there's more valuable in a single large network for interaction services than in several small disconnected components. Services that could allow you to interact with the people you wanted to interact with, were more valuable than services that prevented you from doing so.
The same forces would have unified any other internet attempt.
"Metcalfe's Law" - just because you call it a law doesn't make it so, especially in economics.
You seem to argue from a libertarian standpoint that assumes that markets naturally blossom and always create the best outcome.
Markets are created by fiat. If there was no government that enforces a level playing field you won't get a libertarian utopia but at best a Mad Max world.
None of the EU regulations that you cite are WTO accepted barriers to free trade. They are simply good governance. Apparently you never saw a regulation that you liked, that's the only explanation I have for arguing against policies like the Ecolabel that are designed to improve working and environmental standards.
From my point of view this doesn't even go far enough. IMHO democratic countries shouldn't have engaged in free trade with communist dictatorships like China to begin with. Free trade should have been the price for democratic reform and compliance with basic human rights. An opportunity squandered. Now the world has to content with an ever less free America in decline and Communist mandarins emasculated to the hilt with economic power and clout.
Well, at least we can agree on one thing:
"So you agree that there's a lot more manufacture in the US than there would be in the absence of new industry creation."
Yes, and the sky is blue in absence of clouds ,and during daytime, unless you happen to be near one of the poles in the winter.
Ya Ya! The ragheads already hated our guts without Iraq. But, you fail to mention that a large portion of those 110,600 civilians killed in Iraq were killed by fellow Iraqis, and other groups in Iraq. The only thing arabs like more than killing Americans is killing arabs. I believe your math and your conclusions need some updating!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
"Metcalfe's Law" - just because you call it a law doesn't make it so, especially in economics.
I called it that because that is its name. It's also worth noting that it actually works in practice and played a significant role in the development of the actual internet. After all, there were walled gardens like AOL and Compuserve and those don't exist any more.
You seem to argue from a libertarian standpoint that assumes that markets naturally blossom and always create the best outcome.
Show us that isn't true first.
None of the EU regulations that you cite are WTO accepted barriers to free trade.
Of course not. The EU is not stupid about signing away its trade barriers. You asked for non-agricultural examples of protectionism and I gave you them. I didn't say they were illegal.
Markets are created by fiat. If there was no government that enforces a level playing field you won't get a libertarian utopia but at best a Mad Max world.
Hawala networks in the Middle East are a counterexample to the claim that the "fiat" has to come from government rather than the market participants.
From my point of view this doesn't even go far enough. IMHO democratic countries shouldn't have engaged in free trade with communist dictatorships like China to begin with. Free trade should have been the price for democratic reform and compliance with basic human rights. An opportunity squandered. Now the world has to content with an ever less free America in decline and Communist mandarins emasculated to the hilt with economic power and clout.
And how would that have helped? My view is that the wealthier China is, the freer it will become. Also, we want their stuff. And the US would have declined anyway, due to the obstacles put in the way of industrial activity. I just don't see the point of your strategy.
"So you agree that there's a lot more manufacture in the US than there would be in the absence of new industry creation."
Yes, and the sky is blue in absence of clouds ,and during daytime, unless you happen to be near one of the poles in the winter.
You know that's not going to stop a slashdot pedant. Too many loopholes left. As to my original assertion, "What has kept us going industrially is new industry creation", I see no reason to correct it.
What's in a name? "Metcalfe's Law" will have a hard time accounting for the fact that Facebook manages to tie people back into a reservation.
"Show us that isn't true first."
Spoken like a true ideologist.
"You asked for non-agricultural examples of protectionism and I gave you them. "
So WTO does not classify it as protectionism but it is nevertheless protectionism because you say so.
Alright then.
Hawala networks are transactional networks (think visa, paypal) not markets (e.g. ebay).
"My view is that the wealthier China is, the freer it will become."
That's a hope not a strategy.
"Also, we want their stuff."
Because the Western world greedily gave them the IP to build marketable stuff. What exactly did they produce that was of any interest before the Western world invested and started outsourcing?
"What has kept us going industrially is new industry creation", I see no reason to correct it.
As well you shouldn't. My point was that it is valid but kinda obvious.
As to the Internet, have you been around when AOL was blanketing everything with their CDs?
The reason these walled gardens went away was the pre-existing Internet that offered interesting content so that these services hooked up to it.
Led to an influx of really unsophisticated users into newsgroups who thought that AOL invented the Internet (fortunately nowadays everybody knows that Al Gore did that :-)
Messed up my italics at the end of my previous post.
Trust you'll sort it out.
What's in a name? "Metcalfe's Law" will have a hard time accounting for the fact that Facebook manages to tie people back into a reservation.
Why? Facebook is Metcalfe's Law in action. What's happened to all the Facebook competitors? It's a pretty big reservation.
"Show us that isn't true first."
Spoken like a true ideologist.
Ideology isn't wanting reasons for why you say things. I can't be bothered to figure out your reasons for why you say things when you can't be bothered to explain them either.
"You asked for non-agricultural examples of protectionism and I gave you them. "
So WTO does not classify it as protectionism but it is nevertheless protectionism because you say so.
It's not WTO's job to classify all forms of protectionism. And as you note, some forms of protectionism aren't recognized as being within the purview of the WTO. But again, you asked for examples and I gave you examples.
Hawala networks are transactional networks (think visa, paypal) not markets (e.g. ebay).
Hawala networks are both transactional networks and markets. They aren't like Paypal because the network isn't owned by a single entity. With Paypal, you have to use Paypal or you can't use the network. With Hawala networks, you can always change brokers. So there's a collection of services being offered by these brokers and a bunch of customers who want to use these services. That's standard market fare.
"My view is that the wealthier China is, the freer it will become."
That's a hope not a strategy.
That's an educated opinion based on observations of what happened to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.
Because the Western world greedily gave them the IP to build marketable stuff. What exactly did they produce that was of any interest before the Western world invested and started outsourcing?
So what? They're producing now.
As to the Internet, have you been around when AOL was blanketing everything with their CDs?
The reason these walled gardens went away was the pre-existing Internet that offered interesting content so that these services hooked up to it.
And these preexisting services were privately created.
"And as you note, some forms of protectionism aren't recognized as being within the purview of the WTO."
I note no such thing. I am pointing out that you cannot just make up your own definition of protectionism. If the WTO is doesn't call it protectionism it is not protectionism.
You cannot just make up your own definition.
You can also not re-write history: The Internet is older than AOL or Compuserve and the interesting content there was user generated (FAQs) or provided and hosted by research agencies such as NASA and CERN (where the web was invented).
And no, Hawala networks are not markets just because they are not owned by one entity. It still just remains a money brokering system.
The tendency of yours to just make up your own "facts" is simply flabbergasting.
If the WTO is doesn't call it protectionism it is not protectionism.
This is an erroneous argument from authority.
You cannot just make up your own definition.
Ok.
Definition of 'Protectionism':
Government actions and policies that restrict or restrain international trade, often done with the intent of protecting local businesses and jobs from foreign competition. Typical methods of protectionism are import tariffs, quotas, subsidies or tax cuts to local businesses and direct state intervention.
They have in mind tariffs and other such things. But regulation that has the effect of inhibiting foreign competition in turn is restricting international trade. Hence, my examples are cases of protectionism just as you requested.
You can also not re-write history: The Internet is older than AOL or Compuserve and the interesting content there was user generated (FAQs) or provided and hosted by research agencies such as NASA and CERN (where the web was invented).
BITNET, UUCPNET, and FIDONET are more examples of private networks. FIDONET is particularly interesting since it is a truly independent part that merged with the internet (well, so is Compuserve and AOL, but apparently those don't count). And most users contributed their content as private citizens or employees of private businesses or non profits.
It always puzzles me how the US government can meddle in the early days of the formation of the internet and inherit credit for everything. Why aren't we blaming academia and associated businesses (like AT&T) instead for the internet? They are the ones who actually made the internet happen.
It always puzzles me how the US government can meddle in the early days of the formation of the internet and inherit credit for everything.
It's not that puzzling. It's the same way most people think of Apple or Microsoft or Google (or even Facebook and Twitter) when it comes to computers, and not Alan Turing or the guy(s) who created the transistor, or the semiconductor, etc that actually make computers possible at all.
You are stretching your own definition of protectionism to the breaking point. Any regulation that a foreign entity does not like fits your description.
I.e. all safety regulations, environmental, health e.g. to regulate smoking.
Taken to this extrem the term becomes completely useless.
As to the role of government in the creation of the Internet, of course the credit goes to the individual scientists. I leave it as an exercise to you to figure out how many of them held jobs at publicly sponsored institutions versus private ones at the time, and in case of the latter where working with public grants. Really not rocket science to figure that out.
Any regulation that a foreign entity does not like fits your description.
No, it doesn't. Making stupid arguments doesn't help your case. I see I've reached the limits of what persuasion can do. Either you'll come some day to see the wisdom of my words, or you'll dwell in ignorance for the rest of your life.
As to the role of government in the creation of the Internet, of course the credit goes to the individual scientists. I leave it as an exercise to you to figure out how many of them held jobs at publicly sponsored institutions versus private ones at the time, and in case of the latter where working with public grants. Really not rocket science to figure that out.
Once again, because there was some government assistance, government gets the credit. However, the thinking person can see that academia helped more than government to create the open standards that make up our internet. And that's further evidence for my original assertion that the internet would be open even in the absence of government support.
Let us also keep in mind that the US government has supported all sorts of walled gardens in its time (eg, PLATO, the AT&T monopoly).
Well, I guess it was only a matter of time until we descend to name calling.
Fortunately, the US electorate is also "too stupid" to see your "wisdom".
I'll happily keep dwelling in my "ignorance" up here in Canada, where good governance as a concept is fortunately not contested.
Anyhow, nice talking to you. Take care.
Fortunately, the US electorate is also "too stupid" to see your "wisdom".
Nothing fortunate about it. I see it as abandoning the rule of law because you get a little free stuff from government.
See, that's the problem. Your first paragraph summarizes precisely how I felt about your comments as well.
Btw, as European only recently having started learning more about US politics, I was not long ago very confused of terms "red states" and "blue states", thinking they would mean the opposite, but from the discussion it soon became clear that blue referred for democrats and red for republicans - what's the story of these colors when every "American" associates "the reds" with "commies"? And right wing extremists most certainly paint democrat party as commie hitler satan puppykitten killers :D
Just a funny odd observation from outsider - who doesn't really see a major left party existing in US, and it's just colors anyway...
PS. Excellent post.
PPS. Never mind the question, I'll just leave it here as (interesting?) observation - the wikipedia article explains the story behind the colors - and that:
Before the 2000 presidential election, the traditional color coding scheme was "Blue for Republican, Red for Democrat,"[2] in line with historical European associations (red was used for left-leaning parties).
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.