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House Majority Leader Defeated In Primary
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in United States political history, the House Majority Leader has been defeated in his primary election. Long time Republican congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated by 10 percentage points in the Virginia primary by Republican Tea Party challenger Dave Brat. This shocking defeat is likely to upset the political balance of power in the United States for years to come."
Republican voting base has gone full bat shit, the party won't last much longer now.
Open primaries allow this sort of thing to happen. If you think about it, it isn't really fair, but we allow it in a lot of states, so this sort of thing should be expected.
signed up as republicans and voted for Brat so that in the real election they can defeat him by painting him as a loon
What with the insane situation we have at the border right now...
Say what you will about our immigration policy... say what you will about the politics... it looks very bad for people supporting amnesty right now simply because there looks to be a free for all at the border.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
For this piece of flamebait to get frontpaged...
This will most likely lead to a Democrat victory in the general election.
This government is ineffective, and seems to be more about getting things for themselves than their constituents. They use the taxes we give them to spy on us and arm our police forces with tanks rather than give us nationalized healthcare. They take bribes from special interest groups. We need new blood in politics.
Republicans gave the Tea Party a voice in hopes they could polarize the uneducated and ignorant section of society to back up their causes, by invoking the bible, the flag, and the Constitution.
Now the Tea Party folks are thinking on their own and resisting pro-business, pro-spying, pro-immigration, anti-poor viewpoints that mainstream Republicans want.
As usual, thanks for nothing, Republicans.
many more upsets to come
The Tea Party may be taking all the credit for this, but the reality is is far more grim than any political insider is willing to admit: this has been the most unpopular Congress since the Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-49.
And if anyone paid attention to history, what happened then is what will happen this time, too. The incumbents are in the crosshairs.
Reports of the Tea Party's death are greatly exaggerated.
My only qualm is it's been hijacked well beyond its initial namesake cause of shrinking the bloated spending into almost every old Republican grievance.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I don't know the rules in Virginia, but can't he run as a third-party candidate in the general election, just like Lieberman did?
im all for getting rid of establishment republicans and replacing them with libertarians and te party members. Just as im all for getting rid of establishment democrats and replacing them with greenies
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The first thing he failed at was immigration. He was wanting H-1Bs on one end, amnesty on the other. People in the US who are barely scraping by are tired of having to compete in both skilled and entry level jobs by unfair competition.
Then there is gun control. The Dems are making a lot of bills, from demanding ankle bracelets of concealed carry holders, to vague mental health standards... Which mean nobody would qualify. Eric stepped on his base by jumping on the knee jerk bandwagon, and people showed their opinion about his actions.
It is sad to see the nation lurch rightward, but the will of the people is there. Stop illegal immigration, stop trying to antagonize legal gun owners. Turn around and piss on the people that elected you, expect not to have a job.
Anti-incumbent sentiment is running extremely high
I will believe that when I see greater than 50% turnover in congress. The media polls are full of it. If the approval ratings were so low, we wouldn't see a 95% reelection rate. It's that simple.
By the way, switching back and forth between democrat and republican (which includes Tea Party, as they are simply republicans on meth. Their entire gag is to scare people away from alternative parties and to make all the resistance look crazy like the Las Vegas shooter) does not count as voting the incumbents out. You have to vote both factions of the party out of office for it to mean something.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I know, things like...lower taxes and then leaving everyone else alone.. WHAT LOONS! Or did you not have any idea what the Taxed Enough Already party was complaining about?
but... i can honestly say. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. :)
I will believe it when I see it. Money talks, and a good PR campaign can turn a psychopath into someone holier than $DEITY.
In the past, congresscritters had to survive on merit. Now, no matter what they can do, a couple million dollars can right -any- wrong.
-ANY- wrong, period.
Republicans are falling victim to their own success redistricting. The result is safe districts where the nominee has no need for independent voters to win in the general election. The party nomination effectively becomes the election and in these, candidates are much more vulnerable to small groups of highly motivated, very vocal and very involved fringe groups, then they would be in general elections. Democrats engage in this behavior as well but for better of for worst, they are not as good at gerrymandering when they get the chance.
This may mean it is easier for a democrat to win the general election. Although Virginia has many conservative voters I doubt that the majority of voters are looned out enough to elect a tea party candidate to congress. And frankly that is exactly what the tea party is. The are a bunch of naive and under educated fools with absurd beliefs. They can not even define what really bothers them. It is rather simple in fact. Over the decades our law makers have passed so many laws that react and interact with other laws that the power of the vote or the ability to pass new, better, laws is impeded. This leaves them with the feeling that their vote is meaningless. One one feels that one's vote has no meaning then the next leap of logic is to call the government some sort of corrupt dictatorship filled with power hungry monsters just itching to take your civil liberties away. Look at the number of nuts who have used the word treason to apply to President Obama. At least half of that caused by the president not being snow white in color.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/06/eric-cantor-dave-brat-what-happened
I love it how the free-market economist won a primary and now the Republicans are freaking out. Showing their true colors - not the hype they spout to fool ordinary small-government Americans.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
you're literally advocating dragging our entire system of government to a grinding halt.... forever... well played anarchist, well played.
This Congress actually did less than the do-nothing Congress. Least productive in US history.
This is interesting news, but what is of interest to nerds about it that wouldn't be of interest to anyone?
Am I missing something here or is Slashdot being stupid about story selection again?
Please remove the "News for Nerds" tag line from your name. You're no better than Yahoo! or CNN at this point.
The one saving grace of this site has been that it stayed focused on tech and science and things that actually DID matter to nerds. Either the standard for "nerd" has dropped significantly in the almost 20 years I've been reading this site, or the new owners are hungry for stories and don't really give a crap about screwing with the formula that Rob used to make this place a success.
Sad.
"I don't think software should necessarily be free
Dewey defeats Truman?
It's almost like a significant part of the electorate are pissed off enough to actually get out of their chairs and vote?
(Of course, it didn't hurt that the Republicans are, in fact, the minority party of the US, that the 'angered mobs' are on his side of the aisle splitting their already-smaller vote, and Democrats gleefully helped as much as they could.)
And while I know the mass media likes to characterize the Tea Party as a bunch of right-wing whacko racists (coincidentally parroting the Left's talking points, of course), the FACT of the Tea Party is that its founding impetus came solely and simply from people sick and tired of unconstrained government spending coming out of their own piggy banks.
These aren't (necessarily) the sort of strawmen angry libertarians that they're portrayed to be - they recognize that taxes are a necessary part of civilization and having government to some degree is an intrinsic good. But when that government is unconstrained and irresponsible, eventually people get angry.
Likely, though, this 'revolt' will only empower the Democrats, as they are the party in power and most are willing to rationalize anything to accept/continue that status. They wouldn't jeopardize that just to protest, even if they agreed.
-Styopa
Most incumbents get reelected even when Congress's approval ratings overall are low, however, because people's approval ratings of their own Congresspeople are almost always considerably higher. People generally think Congress sucks, but they usually blame it on everyone else's Representatives.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
federally yes that is what I want and what everyone should want. the federal government should not be doing anything but the bare minimum as intended. Leave the power in the hands of the states and local governments
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You can be positive that K Street and its myriad of lobbying firms will be more than happy to employ him.
I totally agree.
They came over from another country and then rewrote the laws so they could stay. That's just illegal no matter how you think of it.
It's really time the Europeans go back to Europe.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Congress' approval is always low, people tend to hate Congress as a while but like their representatives.
In the U.S. House now. What will they do when Israel calls?
It's admittedly a very high hurdle, but I suspect that Brat will manage to be an even worse asshole than Cantor.
Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for helping a private organization decide who -won't- run in the general election. All it does is reduce the number of options for the voter. They should ALL be running in the general election. Let them debate it out and fight it out.
Primaries don't benefit anybody except the incumbents.
Republicans were able to stand up and beat a Washington insider in a primary in a safe seat. Will Democrats ever be able to do that? Or are Democrat incumbents in safe seats guaranteed lifetime reelection?
Vote gridlock! It's the best we can do.
The real danger is when ether party gets the executive and both houses of congress. That's basically, always a disaster.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Subject apropos.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
A pure political story, with absolutely no geek angle whatsoever, has no place here. It brings in a lot of page hits, and a lot of comments from politically-frothy Slashdot posters, but long-term it rather undermines the credibility of the site.
... Have to do with technology and related topics?
I know, things like...lower taxes and then leaving everyone else alone.. WHAT LOONS!
If they actually wanted to leave people alone, they'd be passable. But how many politicians (of any party) support (or supported) none of the following: free speech zones, the drug war, the Iraq war, the war in Afghanistan, the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, unfettered border searches, DUI checkpoints, stop-and-frisk, draconian copyright laws, the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping in general, the vague and useless war on terror, censorship (of the FCC obscenity variety, or similar), etc.
This shocking defeat is likely to upset the political balance of power in the United States for years to come.
That is a pile of crap. They are all in cahoots.
I lived in Alaska when there were only 3 state troopers that patrolled the long stretches of highway between Anchorage, Fairbanks and Valdez in three trans am camaros, a red one, a white one, and a blue one. People weren't getting in so much trouble then. Now there has to be at least a thousand troopers armed to the hilt, ready for war all over the place.
The long reach of proactivity has long since ended those peaceable times.
A CNBC commentator suggested that since the VA primary was an open primary results showed that the Democrats put the Tea Party guy over the top. We'll see in November if the Democratic candidate beats him. The same thing is happening in the Republican Colorado governor primary. The Dems are putting out ads for an ultra right wing republican candidate to insure a November victory for the current moderate Democratic Governor.
Ain't politics fun!
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
In the CA system, (which is a great idea) there are not separate, closed party nomination elections.
There is a primary, and the top two candidates run in the general election. Therefore, if, hypothetically Democrats voted for a right-wing-nut in mass, the wing-nut and a Republican will be in the general election, not an outcome a Democrat would prefer.
In practice, when people have their actually favored candidate on the ballot and are able to vote for them, they do.
The primary purpose of the top-two election system is to change the nature of the candidates who decide to run and think they can win.
It's an approximation to ranked preference voting.
I have no problem with this. Even though you would say my politics are on the Left part of the spectrum, I believe there is more of a chance of finding common cause with Tea Party people than with the Republican establishment. I've noticed a marked change in the way the Tea Party types talk about capitalism, crony capitalism, corporate power and the military. If the Tea Party decimates the establishment GOP that have been pushing neo-conservative foreign policy and neo-liberal economic policy (Austrian school), it can only be a good thing.
Citizens that are ready to get out into the street I can deal with. Politicians who are prepared to turn the keys of government over to corporate interests, I cannot. I've heard Tea Party types saying some of the same things about corporatism that you'd hear coming out of the Occupy movement. The cultural stuff doesn't matter, because ultimately, those issues (say, gay marriage) are going to be decided by society as a whole. The Tea Party can holler all they want, but if people start accepting gay marriage, it's going to happen, and by all accounts and polls, it's happening. Same with other issues. Women's rights? Good luck trying to convince women to go back to being subservient to men.
Of course, I have a problem with some of the racism and gun fetishism, but even that is starting to shift. The percentage of families in the US who own guns has gone down steadily since the beginning of the 2nd Amendment movement in the '80s.
But the mainstream GOP, the ones that loved creating the Surveillance State under Bush and (despite what they say) love it under Obama, are just evil. They will continue to promote the upward redistribution of wealth and the aggressive foreign policy that has exploded since the 1980s. They're the ones blew up the economy with deregulation. They're the ones dreamed up the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. They're the ones ready to attack Iran and do Israel's bidding.
Plus, despite the rhetoric, they support the policies of Barack Obama who (and I say this as someone on the Left) has been a wolf in sheep's clothing for corporatism, surveillance, and concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a very few.
I will enjoy watching the collapse of the Party of Reagan. And (again, despite the rhetoric), the Tea Party is anything BUT the Party of Reagan. They have some hagiographic image of Ronald Reagan that does not match reality. That's OK, let them have their mythology.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This looks like a secondary effect coming from an order-of-magnitude increase in interpersonal communication speed. Where in the past you might have to call an in-person meeting or conference call with many people, an individual can now communicate in a richer, distributed, asynchronous way with anyone who's marginally interested in considering your message.
With the communication landscape changed and resource access barrier lower, unless an incumbent uses their greater political and financial resources to improve their leverage in the new communication landscape, that area will be a more level playing field, and if you don't accommodate for that, the odds significantly change.
It seems like established institutions and scenarios that have a large part of their foundation on communication -- e.g., publishers, politicians, market pricing -- are going to see a lot more of these sorts of never-before-in-history kinds of disruptions. Things that don't depend on human-speed communication so much, such as hard sciences, construction, farming, will see changes, but maybe not quite as rug-pulled-out-from-under-you disruptively.
After a grueling 5 seconds of googling...
... Sigmon found a denialist site. Good job! The parlor trick he used to get to this misleading conclusion is explained here.
Or make them like an episode of American Ninja and have them run an obstacle course. Now THAT would be worth funding by the taxpayers.
Get out and Vote......out the incumbents!!! ON BOTH SIDES. It's time for us to reset and get back on track with people who want to actually do their job.
States and local governments are significantly more dysfunctional and corrupt in most cases. Federal employees are much smarter than state and local employees, though frustrated by exceptionally vexatious rules.
Dear God.
I used to know this guy. It took me a little while for it to register, but the goofy grin confirms it: this is the same doofus I went to college with. The college is a haven for Republican Calvinism (i.e. God chooses certain people to be successful), steeped in the worship of capitalism (God's invisible hand rewarding hard work). (The Amway/Blackwater dynasty are major donors.) I didn't know Dave well (sorry, no damaging stories to tell), but he was active in student government, and struck me as a classic empty suit: superficially charming with an upper-middle-class sense of entitlement. Not stupid, but not a deep thinker, the sort who doesn't question the values he was taught as a child... because they've always worked for him. (One of the key ways I differ from him.) I should've known he'd run for Congress someday.
I'm sorry.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
federally yes that is what I want and what everyone should want. the federal government should not be doing anything but the bare minimum as intended. Leave the power in the hands of the states and local governments
State governments are largely redundant at this point. They are also largely inefficient, ineffective, and corrupt (yes, even in comparison to the federal government, cue the jokes). If it was feasible to do, I would strongly advocate complete removal of state governments.
What advantage does a fragmented government have over a centralized national government? It does not, in practice, seem to reduce corruption, efficiency, or tyranny. The primary thing that this structure effectively maintains is cultural homogeneity in particular areas, which, to me, is not a positive thing.
I'm glad Cantor lost, just out of spite. He ran the meanist, ugliest, lyingest, dirty campaign I've ever seen. Running attack ads left and right which were outright lying, just because he could because Bratt didn't have the money to run opposing ads. Cantor was known for not appearing at town halls, snubbing the VCDL and other local conservative groups, and generally treating his own constituents and elections as a nuisance - like a ruling class elite. Apparently, on the day of the election, Cantor was in Washington bragging about how he out-spend Bratt 50-1 in order to crush him to prevent future primary contestants.
He has got a Masters of Science .... in real estate development! It that is what passes for science in the US, God help it.
That's the previous Congress, the 112th. They were the least productive (in terms of the number of bills passed) in the 60 years that we have been keeping track of that. The 113th Congress has another 7 months or so remaining, but they aren't exactly looking a whole lot better.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Assuming "being productive" is passing laws.
Doing nothing might be the best thing.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
always go to m.slashdot.org, which redirects to classic.slashdot.org - nuff said.
Why, because shit gets done?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I completely blame my representative (Lamar Smith) for how screwed up Congress is as he's one of the worst ones, but unfortunately not enough people in my gerrymandered all to hell district agree with me and keep reelecting that idiot.
At the risk of Godwinizing the discussion... that's probably what those who voted for the NSDAP party thought too, out with the Old Guard and in with the New Blood.
This guy may be "new blood", but he's still running on the ticket and with the approval of the Tea Party. Read his biography on Wikipedia, and be careful what you wish for.
removing state governments would be the WORST thing in the world to happen to america. I dont want some paper pushers in washington telling me how to live my life. I want the people I live with and me agreeing on how to live our lives. Thats what this country was founded on. Im sorry but if you REALLY feel this way, you are unamerican, and not unamerican in the way politicians use it but unamerican as in you dont believe in the ideals what what make america great
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
^^
This.
The two party chain needs to be broken, but if we can get enough upset like this in both parties and actually start getting reps who represent the PEOPLE the need to break the chain is a bit less.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
it appears that classic.slashdot.org isn't working either, it immediately redirects to beta
even if you click the "give me classic you fucktards" link, which takes you to
slashdot.org/?nobeta=1
only gets you out of the beta until you click the first story link
Okay slashdot, enough is enough - your fucking beta sucks blue whale, the largest mammal to ever live within Terra's oceans.
Just kill the beta program and be done with it - you failed - worse than Windows Vista and Windows 8 combined.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
yes, but its much easier to elect new local goverment to move a few towns over or a state over. if we all lived under federal rule, what options do i have? its not that easy to up and move to another country.
federal employees "smarter" than locals? by what measurement??? because I can tell you the opposite is true in many number of real world scenarios.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I noticed that the government of the US and Russia both seem to operate solely by Presidential decree these days.
No actually, I think fresh members regardless of ideology would serve the country better. You could put brand new socialists and tea party members in office, and they would work together to compromise. The reason we don't have that now is because each member is deeply rooted in an interconnected web of corruption and elite affiliation.
Our congressman need to be changed like underwear. Often!
Life is not for the lazy.
"There is no evidence of any chaos operations here. While turnout was up in every part of the district, the increase lagged in the most Democratic neighborhoods, with the City of Richmond up 22 percent compared to Republican strongholds like Goochland County which jumped 28 percent. Plus, Democrats have slim hopes of winning the district, which leans heavily Republican, this fall. Cantor is all but certain to abide by voters’ wishes and the state party has already blessed Brat’s candidacy. The incentive for mischief was low. And with a 10-point margin of victory, any disingenuous Democrats would be strictly background noise."
What advantage does a fragmented government have over a centralized national government? It does not, in practice, seem to reduce corruption, efficiency, or tyranny. The primary thing that this structure effectively maintains is cultural homogeneity in particular areas, which, to me, is not a positive thing.
but to specifically answer this question. Numerous things. For one, do you NOT see whats going on with the NSA? I for one do not want the government spying on americans. it should not be done. If we didnt have state governemnts to fight the federal government on this issue, they would simply tell us too bad.
Fragmentation in government is good for other reasons as well. Different people believe differently as such there SHOULD be a choice for americans on how they want to live. People who live in washington and never leave washington have no idea what people in the dakotas or texas or NY need or want. I dont want them deciding for me how to live
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I recognize an attempt at sarcasm. But I see this primary upset as a less electable Republican defeating a more electable Republican, making it less of a challenge for the Democratic candidate to win the general.
"The thing is amnesty has nothing to do with border security."
Complete and utter bullshit. Even the rumor of amnesty is enough to send hundred of thousands (if not millions) of illegal aliens pouring into the country.
The Obama Administration has refused to secure the border because they view amnesty as a way to turn illegal aliens into Democratic voters.
Even that isn't entirely remote, if he plays his cards right. We had something similar happen in Alaska back in 2010 when the incumbent Lisa Murkowski lost the primary to the Tea Party favorite Joe Miller. She went on to win as a write-in candidate with something like a 40% margin, because it didn't take long for the more crazy extreme side of Joe Miller to show up and public opinion of him quickly flipped.
I'm not an American so just out of curiosity: What is a write-in candidate? ....and: Why is somebody who looses a primary election held by a political party banned by law from running as an independent? What ever ones opinion of sore losers may be, passing laws against them running as independents seems a bit anti-democratic to me. In my country we occasionally get a splinter candidate running as an independent. Usually this is after a disagreement in one of the mainstream parties where somebody is dissatisfied about being bumped down to the bottom of the elction list in local elections or because they were sidelined for a parliamentary seat (i.e. because of party internal backstabbing). Recently, for example, this has been common in right wing parties whose leaders are EU skeptic and have been keen to prevent any EU friendly party members from gaining parliementary seats. Some of these independents have even been known to get elected because they were simply put more competent than the nimrod that the party bosses helped to win the primary. So far nobody has even considered passing laws against such independents.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
.... a review with praise in Common Dreams, a self-identified "Progressive" website, about the surprise winner in Virginia's Republican primary:
http://www.commondreams.org/vi...
"... Republican Dave Brat, a college economics professors who spoke about GOP hypocrisy and railed against Wall Street greed, unseated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary challenge.
âoeAll of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.â ... Thatâ(TM)s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor ....
The national media is buzzing about Bratâ(TM)s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons...."
-----
The media will talk about anything except the real problem
...the Republican establishment is.
Also, trying reading something beyond the usual left-wing circle jerking (i.e., Mother Jones) if you actually want to know what real Republicans think.
This. I don't care what party you believe in or how you were raised, the simple fact is that anyone involved in NSA spying needs to go. They've sold the internet, the greatest communication device ever created, down the tubes. (No pun intended.) Anyone that is looking out for a corporation instead of you needs to go. Anyone playing dirty politics instead of solving problems needs to go.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
great link with great commentary
ron paul, his son I believe may support parts of some of those but your point stands
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Most of our problems are coming from radicalized, inexperienced freshmen (or nearly so) Congressmen.
This is just going to make things worse. Your dream of more "upsets" will be a nightmare. And your response will continue to be "vote them all out!"
One day, Americans will learn their history. One day. Maybe before their political choices destroy the country's economy and future.
Can we get rid of more establishment, statist douchebags? (R), (D), or anywhere in between...these career politicians are poison.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
The reason you see a 95% retention rate, even when anti-Congress sentiment is high is because:
"*MY* Congresscritter is doing good. It's all those other assholes that are the problem."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
IMHO they went bat shit *decades ago*
now there is just litterally too many victims of oligarchy for WASP's to be used as a serfdom
it's a "critical mass" or "tipping point" kind of deal where it's a certainty b/c the GOP's policies are not sustainable
my question is: what next?
eventually Republicans will evolve beyond being the psychotic slaves of the aristocracy...
I think oligarchs will move away from the US to maintain their revenue streams...the US is full of money but there are much easier populations to manipulate at macro-levels
I believe the Democrats and Republicans will re-polarize around economic issues re-framed to cut out all the GOP's bullshit since post-WWII
Things in the USA will get better, but we'll see ***whole countries*** being "gentrified" like neighborhoods in SF
Thank you Dave Raggett
I cannot vote for the guys that run the House Committee on this or the Senate Leader on that unless they came from my State.
So if we centralize all the power in the Federal government, we are basically ceding all of our ability to vote for our interests.
What you suggest is insane.
Isn't a shame that the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling allowed Cantor to outspend Brat 20:1 and buy the election.
Oh, wait...
What do you mean? Greens and Libertarians have a lot in common, especially their support of Federalism in the sense of giving control back to state and local jurisdictions and strong support for civil liberties. A Green/Libertarian coalition (where they agreed to disagree on taxes) could be a valuable and strong counter to the authoritarian Democrat/Republican coalition.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
i wasn't aware that there was an election yesterday. I did not see any news articles about the June 10 primary. Uh...come on news media, get your act together! Even the local government website didn't mention the elections. I wanted to vote too.
also, Dave is a brat. lol Just kidding.
Exactly, SHIT gets done. Not in the crapper ether.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
atory xkcd
Oh yeah, this is just shocking.
Obviously, the patriot act, banker looting and lawlessness of executive authority and lawlessness in general is now going to be fixed.
What a steaming pile of BS.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Fuck Beta?
I am now registered multiple times in preparation for the next election - so I'll be casting approx 40 ballots in various districts. At least I learned something useful from the Buffoon in Chief...
...courtesy of xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1127/ .
Passing laws, repealing laws, tweaking laws, engaging in long term strategy discussion, forming committees to get thing done beyond the terms of the respective backers...
It's about time we elected Americans who are willing to stand up and defend the common people against Obama's destructive agenda.
For one, do you NOT see whats going on with the NSA? I for one do not want the government spying on americans. it should not be done. If we didnt have state governemnts to fight the federal government on this issue, they would simply tell us too bad.
I assume that is a rhetorical question, so I will answer it with one of my own: what has yours, mine, or ANY state government done to "fight the federal government" on the NSA surveillance issue? The answer is absolutely nothing.
I understand why states were originally somewhat autonomous, and I certainly understand the ideals behind limiting centralized government, but I am not an idealist, I am a realist and a pragmatist. At this point in our civilization the idea of the states limiting the centralization of our government is a sham. The state governments provide, in most cases, very little value at astronomical cost.
Different people believe differently as such there SHOULD be a choice for americans on how they want to live. People who live in washington and never leave washington have no idea what people in the dakotas or texas or NY need or want. I dont want them deciding for me how to live
But you are okay with the politicians that make up your state legislature and executive branch deciding for you how to live? If you think the people who work in your state government have your best interest at heart, you are being rather shockingly naïve.
All Americans should have the same freedom to choose how they live their lives, regardless of which state they happen to live in. The dramatic variance in state law on a plethora of topics is burdensome to say the least, and in many cases abusive. Eradicating state governments would merely cause all of the philosophical groups who currently maintain a regional majority to live under laws that are decided (in theory, because democracy) by the national majority. This is how all philosophical (usually cultural) minority groups live right now.
Hey... Citation was requested... I provided. No idea to whom the website belongs. It very well may be a 'denialist' site... but the author of the article seems to clearly and honestly outline the important details and scope of the data presented. Indeed, one of the longer time-scale graphs shows a warming trend... The author doesn't appear to DENY this. He simply exhibits the data from this particular source and indeed the data shows no warming trend for the last ~17 years. He also observes that the longer-scale actual OBSERVED warming trend is significantly less than the IPCC 1990 PREDICTED trend... even significantly less than the low-end of their predictions. Right this moment - the global warming appears to have leveled-off. These are simply facts... no parlor tricks here. In fact the author states that the warming could crank right back up next year.
state governments are because we're not all one people or one regions. for example, contiguous US vs alaska and hawaii. smaller entities can be more nimble and responsive than larger entities.
Most of our problems are coming from radicalized, inexperienced freshmen (or nearly so) Congressmen.
This is just going to make things worse. Your dream of more "upsets" will be a nightmare. And your response will continue to be "vote them all out!"
One day, Americans will learn their history. One day. Maybe before their political choices destroy the country's economy and future.
No, what we want are congressmen for life who have learned how the game is played! Folks captured by the system, who have learned to go along to get along, Folks who have never worked in the public sector. Folks who realize that the interests of campaign donors and winning the next election are more important than any principles they arrived in Washington in. Folks who arrive without lots of assets and somehow become multi-millionaires over a career of fairly low paid (for lawyers that is) "public service". Yep, that is what we need!
Not sure about whether this new guy is better for his district (or the country) than Cantor or not, but really, I like to see the bums of either party thrown out a occasionally. It is good to remind them that they work for us, not vice-versa...
This, but only because of rampant gerrymandering.
"Just find me enough people that like me, and call that my district. I don't care if they're spread out all over creation. Just draw a line around everyone who voted for me last time, and call it done."
Politicians have been, for years, systematically altering their districts so that their particular flavor of nutjob are all in the same district. Be it birthers, gun nuts, 9/11 conspiracy folks, or whatever. Pick your favorite flavor, wrangle up enough people, wherever they may be, and reelections will take care of themselves. We can sprinkle the sane/moderate people around so that their votes are barely heard. Certainly not enough to cause a ruckus
The real problem, however, is just now starting to surface. If you wrangle up enough staunch believers of any one type in a particular area, a crazier candidate will surface and take advantage of that. We no longer get anyone with a hint of "moderate" in a general election, because they get destroyed in the Primaries by someone even crazier than they are.
This signature is false.
removing state governments would be the WORST thing in the world to happen to america.
Hyperbole.
I dont want some paper pushers in washington telling me how to live my life. I want the people I live with and me agreeing on how to live our lives.
Why do you make the distinction between "paper pushers" in washing or in your own states capital? Perhaps you are under the illusion that they are more interested in your personal needs and desires - only naïveté will lead down that path. California contains 38 million people. How responsive do you think the California state government is and/or can be to the individual needs of their residents? I would prefer nobody tell me how to live my life, but that's not the way the world works.
When the US was founded, the population is estimated to have been 2.5 million people total. This is less than the current population of Chicago. We are now over 300 million. There is no longer any personal representation anywhere, except perhaps in small municipal or county government situations.
Thats what this country was founded on. Im sorry but if you REALLY feel this way, you are unamerican, and not unamerican in the way politicians use it but unamerican as in you dont believe in the ideals what what make america great
I do not believe in separatism, xenophobia, nepotism, bureaucracy or corruption. If you REALLY feel that these are the ideals that make America great, I'd prefer that you move somewhere else, and leave America to myself and others who love it.
state governments are because we're not all one people or one regions. for example, contiguous US vs alaska and hawaii. smaller entities can be more nimble and responsive than larger entities.
Yes because state governments, in reality, are so much more nimble and responsive...
But thank you for the informative bit about US geography.
That one thing is not ideal does not mean your alternative is better.
>No, what we want are congressmen for life who have learned how the game is played! Folks captured by the system, who have learned to go along to get along,
Yes, that is what we want. It produces sane, popular (or at least noncontroversial) legislation and functional government that can respond to changing conditions effectively.
>Folks who have never worked in the public sector.
Private sector experience is irrelevant. The only purpose it serves is that bragging about it signals the business elite that you're their man.
> Folks who realize that the interests of campaign donors and winning the next election are more important than any principles they arrived in Washington in
I suppose you don't see the irony here. You want to teach politicians that winning the next election isn't as important as principles by...voting them out of office. You also do not understand that principled men range from Adolf Hitler to Ghandi. Electing a bunch of strongly principled politicians with differing views leads to gridlock and disaster.
As a Virginian (and now as a Marylander), I don't consider it any of my business who represents people in say, California.
This is asinine. The 100 US Senators and 435 members of the US House each have an equal vote in their respective chambers on all federal legislation. So long as you as a Virginian (and now as a Marylander) are subject to federal law, then each and every of those Congressmen have a direct vote on the laws that you are obligated to follow. Just because only 2 of the 100 US Senators will return your call doesn't mean that the other 98 aren't your business. They are United States senators, not California state senators. They write your laws; they're your business.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
If we have too many laws then repealing the outdated ones, or revising them, or consolidating them into some kind of code that the average person can interpret, these things would be useful and the right thing to do for a congress which has nothing else on its plate. This congress is not in that situation. Going to work and not just doing nothing productive but actually preventing others from doing anything useful, that is inexcusable.
We don't repeal laws. Every year there are more laws than the previous year.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I would be interested in what the voter/incumbent ratio is in those other democracies. I would be interested in their taxation model, and their services model. I would be interested if their leaders are directly elected or elector-elected. Obviously your two Senators cannot do everything that needs to get done, so are they going to appoint people to handle the local details? We would end up with massive cronyism with 6 years to wait to get rid of them...if we could.
I think the local governments are incompetent and poor because the lions share of the tax money is going to the Federal government. We could afford and feel entitled to the best people in our local governments if they were the ones controlling the dispersment of tax revenues. Last I heard, the pentagon could not account for a trillion dollars. Thats a lot of schools, hospitals, roads, and jobs that were lost.
This shocking defeat is likely to upset the political balance of power in the United States for years to come
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The surprising bit here is that it is on a smaller scale than some we have seen before. Remember the 2000 election? Look at the states where Nader had more votes than Bush's margin of victory. Now look at the political advertising in that state, particularly the ads for Nader. Most likely you will find those ads were paid for by the GOP, aiming to draw democratic voters away from Gore.
Ahh, how we miss those simple times...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
> register as a Republican just before the
> primary so you could vote
In most states that means you have established a "prior relationship" and therefore can't complain about them contacting you in the future.
Be prepared to welcome the fund-raising and electioneering snail mail and robot phone calls forever afterward.
Whichever party you affiliate with.
I am surprised this hasn't been highlighted more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/06/11/eric-cantor-was-a-friend-of-the-nsa-the-guy-who-beat-him-hates-it/
Shouldn't we be cheering more loudly?
One of the fundamentally dishonest things that conservatives do when this topics comes up is mention George Soros. But nothing compares to the Koch brothers, and conservative money in general:
http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/...
It's not 2 sides of the same coin when you compare the amount of money, although neither side is likely to offer reform on this matter.
With any luck, your State Congressman will be there long enough to control a powerful committee like Ways and Means.
Think Robert Byrd.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Oh I dunno how about Joe Lieberman, former Vice Presidential candidate ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_primary,_Connecticut_United_States_Senate_election,_2006#Primary_election
If CT had a "sore loser" law like VA does, he would not have been able to appear on the ballot, and likely would have lost as a write-in candidate.
Yes, I completely blame your representative as well.
That one shouldn't have been AC.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
That he was the first house majority leader defeated in a PRIMARY, he isn't the first sitting speaker to be defeated from that position. Democrat Tom Foley lost his house majority seat in 1994 Democrat Tom Daschle lost his senate majority seat in 2004 Personally, I don't care the party, but anyone that is over 70 years old, and has spent "a lifetime" in politics needs to removed. They quit becoming politicians of their respective states, and simply become politicians of lobbyist & special interest groups. Another reason the 17th amendment needs to be repealed! The states should be put back in charge of electing the members of the senate to return equal branches of government & allowing the states to have a say in what goes on in DC. The president is the chief executive officer, the house is the house of the people, giving the people a say in DC, and the senate, in accordance to the constitution, was suppose to have appointed senators from the legislators in the states, to give the states a bit of say so, in DC.
Libertarian != Atheist
Libertarian != Unlimited Open Borders in favor of Amnesty
In fact, many Libertarians will tell you that open borders are incompatible with a welfare state.
And I hear this puts the former republican stronghold district in play for the democrats now. Plus a tremendous loss of seniority and political power for the republicans will be gone so spending in Virginia is likely to drop significantly.
This district is strongly Republican, nothing's "in play". Your list missed one very important "wedge" issue, amnesty for illegal aliens. Cantor's support for that was deeply unpopular, just as amnesty generally is across the country.
I'm an independent with increasingly strong liberal tendencies since 2004. But I'm not sure if I'm really growing more liberal or if the republicans are simply moving rightward away from the middle.
You should work on converting your "liberal" tendencies to "libertarian" tendencies. The liberal/progressive direction in this country is clearly towards huge government, oppression, socialism, and a grim future. What we need is a strong dose of freedom and capitalism, the things that made America great in the first place.
I'm pretty optimistic things will take a turn for the better in 2016. At least we won't have to keep enduring the endless abuses of power from 0bama. Perhaps he'll even finally be impeached in the meantime!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
PRIMARY elections are for the purpose of letting party members select the candidate that will be their "champion" in the November elections (where all the registered voters do indeed get to vote. This modern idiocy of "open primaries" is as destructive and dishonest as letting the management of the Yankees shove their noses into the headquarters of the Red Sox to "help" the Red Sox choose their players.
With every "new" air-headed "reform" of our election system our politics have actually gotten worse. For example: the "campaign finance reform" that weakened the parties (in the name of eliminating the "smoke-filled back rooms") stupidly led to the rise of "super PACs" and 3rd-party ads that allow candidates to sling mud like never before while keeping their hands clean. The famous "McCaind-Feingold" reforms ended-up completely eliminating all limits on presidential campaigns (as
Mr. McCain who'd co-authored that law stayed under the limits in 2008 and his opponent Mr Obama blew right through them without any consequences to become the first $1Billion+ campaign). NO post-Obama candidate will ever again limit his/her spending.
All this does it put a reichwingnut on the GOP ticket.
Emboldened, Brat will keep opening his mouth which will ultimately scare the heck out of the general populous.. opening the door for a DNC win.
Well played tea-bags, well played.
He's against illegal immigration. As in, criminals entering the country illegally and working in the country illegally.
The overwhelmingly-democrat state jammed-through the new system (hoping it would rig all future elections and give them an even stronger one-party rule) and now most voters here do not even understand how it works. They even had the audacity to put their little university campaign "reform" experiment idea onto the ballot to get the voters to be the ones to pass it (they knew the GOP was so weak here it would not mount any effective opposition). The voters approved it because it was called "reform" (at a time of voter disgust) and there was nobody arguing against it.
First, they eliminated citizen-run initiatives from the June elections (hoping this would energize their liberla base to show-up more relaibly in Novembers.
Then, they pushed this "fairer" system of everybody votes in the unified primary and the top-two (no matter their party) are the candidates in November... except for some offices where if somebody crosses 50% in June they do NOT face a November ballot.
Now things are TRULY messed-up. Democrats had a VERY low turnout last week and in a majority-Dem district the top 2 vote getters (who will be the only ones on the ballot there this Nov) are obscure Republicans who probably only ran in that Dem district as a bar bet. We had other races resolved beyond the 50% line (therefore no Nov vote) with very few Dems even having turned-out to vote; they'll be surprised when they go to the polls in Nov and find some offices already resolved. The establishment GOP that helped the Democrats import millions of hispanics in the 90s thus turning the state permanently blue have given up - they've got no idea of how to ever win a major vote again and therefore have no agenda .... which MIGHT sound good to Democrats, but it's really NOT. It means there's no "moderate" Republican wing with any valid voter base with whom reasonable Dems might have dealt. It also means that the more rabid liberals have no check on their power because there's no minority with enough power to hold them accountable - so we ave the odd situation of "governor moonbeam" trying to coax his even-more loony associates to slow down the spending (about like Mitt Romney trying to urge Donald Trump to get in-touch with "the commoners")
OneAhead found an Alamist site Good Job! Especially the data that ends 7 years ago.
First: "Give me your tired, your poor, your labored masses yearning to be free" is NOT an American slogan... it's a phrase the on a statue (Lady Liberty) that the French gave to the U.S. - We're under no obligation to allow ourselved to be destroyed by rampant lawlessness, nor are we required to absorb all the poor of the world.
Second: When all those earlier waves of immigrants came to America there were several VITAL differences:
1. At Ellis Island, every new immigrant was checked and if he or she was not in good health and able to work and be self-sufficient then he or she went right back onto the ship for a trip back to whence they came - entry forbidden.
2. We did not have a complex high-tech hospital system that was required by law to treat all patients regardless of their ability to pay. These days, if a sick or pregnant illegal comes in, they get free healthcare and nobody even tries to make them pay (since they are known to be poor). A middle-class American with the same medical needs will get the same care... and then be hounded and driven into bankruptcy payaing BOTH for his care and the care of the illegals.
3. We did not have food stamps, "obama phones", WIC, EIC, etc that take tax dollars from citizens and funnel them to the poor.
4. We did not have "anchor babies" ... the judges had not yet made the screwed-up decision to pretend that the constitutional amendment that made black slaves into citizens NOW must be interpreted to mean anybody who can have a kid in the US is suddenly the parent of a US Citizen (one who is instantly destitute and in need of LOTS of aid - and who will eventually need to be allowed to bring in relatives (vhain migration))
5. We had a vast, largely unpopulated nation with far more good jobs than we had poeple to fill them... as a result, even with huge waves of immigration middle-America saw ever-rising wages.
6. We had not yet had the court ruling that forced the government to educate all children (INCLUDING illegals) at taxpayer expense
7. We did not yet have a class of politicians willing to flagrantly violate their oaths and the laws-on-the-books in order to NOT deport, and NOT penalize illegals for things like illegally entering, identity theft, etc and willing to buy their support with subsidies ranging from "child tax credits" (given even to those not paying taxes) to "in-state tuition" which favors illegal alien children from Mexico over US citizen tax payers who are from another state.
The reason Americans have such incredible reelection rates, given the least popular congress in history, is gerrymandering. That is the practice of elected politicians deciding exactly who is going to be allowed to vote for them next time around. A change of the guard is going to be nie impossible in many districts because they are always going to vote Republican or Democrat. At the primary level you've got Republicans trying to out crazy each other to keep their jobs and Democrats clumping in the center. Even if you do get a 'change of the guard' through primaries your newly elected officials are likely to be even worse than the old ones.
I'm afraid revolution is your only chance at an effective, responsible government. But don't feel bad, I'm pretty sure most western democracies are in the same boat.
I have heard this.
Is there actual evidence for this? Which Tea Party members of Congress have introduced legislation or policy which significantly reduces financial profits of corporate supporters of Republican leadership?
They've passed budgets every year, various tax reforms, efforts to improve healthcare, student loans, international trade, LOTS of things (not just Obamacare repeals) but Harry Reid (D-NV) who runs the Senate just shoves them into his desk drawer and never schedules any votes on them to shield Obama and Democrat senators from any tough choices or accountability. Every bill Reid blocks that would be popular with the public (like school choice) saves Democrats from having to either vote for the bill (hakin voters happy but outraging a vital part of the liberal base, like teachers unions) or vote against it and explain to the voters that they cannot have popular things because the Democrat base won't tolerate it.
As to your anti-imcumbent idea.... not so much. As in all previous cycles the vast majority of incumbents are easily winning re-election. Cantor made himself the ideal candidate for a trouncing by flaunting his hostility to his own base (the dude went to a Gearge Soros funded Anti-TEA Party junket, and repeatedly said he was for amnesty while in DC but told his base (via mailings) that he was opposed)
As explained in the link in my previous post (did you even read it?), if you take a set of data that fluctuates noisily but has an long-term upwards trend, you truncate it carefully so that the beginning of your truncated subset falls near a high point in the random fluctuations, and you use that to deny the upwards trend, then you are using a trick called "cherry-picking". You can argue you're presenting "simply facts", but it's dishonest. Watt's also dishonest is failing to declare a rather blatant conflict of interest.
Also, your own post contains contradictions. You're saying "...OBSERVED warming trend is significantly less than the IPCC 1990 PREDICTED..." (implying there is still a warming trend), and then you're saying "it has leveled off". Only one of them can be true, and it's the first one. There is still a warming trend, and yes, it's lower than the low-end 1990 predictions. Scientists have been debating over why that is for a while now. Heat getting trapped in the depths of the pacific ocean seems to be gaining traction as the most prevalent hypothesis, which is worrisome because once this finite heat reservoir is saturated, the heating will pick up with a vengeance. More info here, here, here and here (the 3 first links are all discussing the study in the 4th; I'll let you pick which source you like best).
The Republicans are far less "church-oriented" today than the Democrats were in 1980.
Democrats in 1980 were against gays in the military, gay marriage, and so-on. On nearly EVERY "religious" position the modern GOP is to the LEFT of the 1980 Democrats (the sole exception being abortion, where the GOP has always been on the pro-life side and the Dems have been pro-choice since the 60's). The modern GOP is hardly better on fiscal issues - it's FAR more tax-and-spend than even the Democrats of 1980 (seriously... READ some actual budget numbers sometime and compare to all the 1980 federal tax and spend arguments).
There are many Republicans today who are fine with gay marriage and gays in the military (things NO Republican could have supported in 1990)
You guys who keep citing DNC "talking points" about the leftward-moving GOP as having moved "far to the right" are a complete JOKE to anybody with a brain and ANY recollection of recent history.
There's a constant lunatic drumbeat on Slashdot by idiots who got all their group-think from the artificial bubble-world of academia, Kos, HuffPo, and Comedy Central where it's obvious that "citizens united" made it so evil rich corporations and millionares can buy any election. The left hammers that accusation because they are outraged that the courts have finally enabled other groups to compete with the giant Democrat-aligned labor unions in the funneling of vast piles of campaign cash.... where they'd had no competition for decades.
Group-think, as nearly always, turns out to be false. I'm not surprised but apparently SOME are by the idea that PEOPLE vote and cash does not.
Lesson for Mr Cantor, who spent more money on steak dinners for supporters than his (victorious) competitor spent on his entire campaign: "Thus endeth the lesson"
Actually, research suggests that once you have enough basic funds to get yourself on the radar, more doesn't make much difference at all. The biggest factor in swaying elections is the candidate's personal attractiveness. Mostly visual.
We're not breeding at the replacement rate. No first world country does.
Which means the only way these first world economies will survive in the future (say 50 years from now) is . . . immigration.
It started out as "Freedom Works", a group against crony capitalism and scot-free bailouts for bankers without responsibility or prosecution.
I was on the list. The messages then started getting weirder and more aggressively right wing and hysterical in ways distinct from its original purpose. I dug around and found it was Dick Armey who was responsible for the hijacking. It was intentional and by a powerful insider. I removed my name from their list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Armey
that's all that an ignorant bigot needs. Well, that and hate.
Actually demographics in that district have been shifting towards democrats for quite a while and Cantor's winning edge in the general election against the democrats has been dropping.
58%, 59%, 63%, 76%, 69%(the first year he won office).
Extending the trend - it looks like Cantor "would" have won by about 55/45 against a hypothetical democrat. Brak seems more likely to get votes over 50% but under 52%. That's a really close race. Which means after thinking about it more, I'm more sure that the district is in play now.
And the state as a whole elected a democratic senator for the first time in decades in 2008 by a 60% margin and then relected him in 2012. So the state is apparently drifting left.
I think Brak has a reasonable chance. But I also think the Tea Party may have just won the primary but lost the election.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Not having money isn't (necessarily) equivalent to believing in not spending it. I don't know his stance one way or the other -- but before I buy that he's the poster child, I need to see his stances.
"From what I've heard about him, he's also very libertarian leaning." Ummm... maybe you haven't noticed, but the vast majority of his backing was from the (local, not national) Tea Party, most prominently radio personality Laura Ingraham. These folks, most decidedly including Brat, *ARE* the social conservatives.
But I do believe you are correct. Both from polling, fivethirtyeight.com, and my general impression, it seems that the Tea Party victories are largely the result of involved, angry, old, white voters. It will be *very* interesting to see what happens over the next, say, 15 years.
$100 million is real money in *presidential* politics -- certainly not in a House campaign that the smart money had as an easy win for a major figure. Go do some Googling -- according to 538, Cantor spent slightly north of *one* million.
Way more than just new laws -- it's also forcing judicial and cabinet positions to go empty for as long as possible, to prevent responsiveness to urgent needs such as military action or disaster response, to compromising on a budget, etc. and so on.
I continue to believe the madness of the Tea Party is due to the lack of party discipline. Can you imagine the Republican Party running on a unified Tea Party platform?
What's the solution to health care? Vote against Obamacare hundreds of times and then shutdown the government.
What's the solution to illegal immigration? Build a fence then maybe deport everyone?
What to do about global warming? All the scientists are wrong so dig more coal.
The problem with the system is they don't have to deal with reality. Their Obamacare shenanigans are a perfect example. An obvious question to their current approach is "ok, you somehow accomplish a repeal, then what?". But because the party couldn't lock into an alternative plan even if they wanted to, there's no alternative approach to evaluate. As a result they never have to answer the question and can just claim the alternative will fix everything. The AGW denialism is a side effect of this. They're so used to bad populist arguments that an elite opinion from scientists is hard to swallow.
Without party discipline only hyper-partisans bother with the individual arguments and they're the ones who choose the candidates. If you want the parties to reflect voters then you need to enforce strong discipline. When that happens the Democrats and Republicans will need to choose one cohesive platform to market to the country as a whole. Do that and you'll have a platform that's reasonable and well thought out. Keep the current system and they still vote as a block, the block just ends up being run by nuts like the Tea Party and Fox News.
I stole this Sig
Term limits are bad. So are age limits; agism is just simply bigotry!
I used to like the idea but I've grown up since that time. The reality is that an entrenched corrupt crook is not alone; they have a large network of corruption supporting them. If you give them the boot, the network puts up a replacement; there never is a shortage of corrupt selfish lawyers! Then you have gerrymandering of house seats which has kept that from being democratic (as in democracy) for quite some time; you can't fix that with limits - any nutcase or idiot can get in for life until they break a law and then leave "to spend time with family. Michele Bachmann being a recent example.
On the other hand, you have great politicians who are reasonable honest or at least good at supporting their voters and those people are RARE especially in today's broken system. They shouldn't be lost when you are lucky enough to find one - despite that; some powerful people won't take it and these types end up in "accidents" or are just assassinated. So even without a term limit, if they are extremely effective and popular (assuming the voting system works, they'll be populist) they have a good chance of getting killed by the corrupt before retirement. Bad luck does them in as well-- you could be perfect but if you have a rare disaster and you didn't stock up on gear you shouldn't ever need to buy...
As far as all the other issues... those should be addressed in other areas. Trying to fix everything with 1 policy is a foolish move - you can't make term limit policy solve all the other problems.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
That would be the definition of best-ever Congress, then.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Hey... Citation was requested... I provided.
A citation was requested, but you did not provide any citation worthy of consideration.
No idea to whom the website belongs.
It doesn't matter to whom the website belongs. What matters is whether the citation is either to a recognised (eg ISI listed) peer reviewed journal appropriate to the subject matter, or to some similar source of data carrying due authority and credibility. I mean a citation to someone's slashdot comment, for instance, would hardly be admissible would it?
Right this moment - the global warming appears to have leveled-off. These are simply facts... no parlor tricks here.
Just for a quick check throw the yearly anomalies (here's the GISSTEMP data) into R and see if the slope is flat. Here ... I'll make it easy for you to get stared (but do improve on this and double check my numbers for the likely transcription error %-) ) :
year <- c(1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013)
anom <- c(33, 46, 62, 41, 41, 53, 62, 61, 52, 67, 60, 63, 50, 60, 67, 55, 58, 61)
Then plot it and draw a line of fit. (For interest you can check the correlation using cor(year, anom).)
plot(year, anom)
fit <- lm(anom ~ year)
abline(fit)
Does that even look flat to you?!
Now given that this is part of a curve which is showing an unequivocal rise over the last 50 years, let alone the entire record, please devise a test to demonstrate that these 18 years show any significant "levelling off" of the long-term trend. And then get back to me with the code. Hell no, get back to the scientific community, with your code ... fame awaits you!
The real question you ought to ask however, is what relevance so short a period (15, 16, 17 or even 18 years) has to data which is not only extremely noisy, but is known to be subject to multi-decadal cycles? If someone asks you to look at climate data over a period of less than at least half a century ... grab your wallet tightly!
Facts? No parlor tricks? Having examined the data for yourself, do you still believe that?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Well, the primary evidence is that Cantor was a very powerful, well-established (13 years in congress) lockstep republican, someone in an excellent position to get things done for Virginia citizens (presuming they are republican things, of course), someone one step (one that was seen as inevitable) from Speaker of the House, which is 2nd in line for succession to the presidency, and Virginia just replaced him with a fringe candidate who has no power to do anything for Virginia citizens, seems to be roundly clueless (humorously, in answer to the question "whether there should be a minimum wage", Brat responded "I don’t have a well-crafted response on that one"), will be a junior member in anything he manages to get attached to, and further, is likely to be marginalized to the committee for painting parking spots.
So... either the Virginia electorate is batshit crazy, bottom-feeder stupid, or... the replacement was intended to disenfranchise the republican side of Virginia politics.
I don't think they're crazy. I don't think they're stupid. That leaves an intentional, well thought out move. But from the republican POV, that cannot be. Hence,the move is being made by some other force. There is only one other force: the democrats. And is there an advantage for them? Are you kidding? Unseating the speaker of the house?
I'd say the evidence is pretty compelling.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The reason Americans have such incredible reelection rates, given the least popular congress in history, is gerrymandering. That is the practice of elected politicians deciding exactly who is going to be allowed to vote for them next time around.
Oh, please. There are laws against that, which is why in my state we never resort to those tricks.
While some laws are better left un-passed (PATRIOT Act, etc.), some laws really do need to be passed. For example, the US Federal Government needs a budget. The country needs to not default on its debt. Judges and other appointments need to be filled. Veterans need to be treated.
dom
Eric Cantor believed as you do. Outspending his opponent twenty to one wasn't enough though. Care to revise and extend your remarks?
p.s. So are you AC by choice or banned like me?
But it wasn't. And the idiots who think "government is the problem" when the economy and middle class are having problems like they did are the ones to blame.
We have so many problems in this country because of right-wingers, right-wing propaganda media, and libertarians I don't even know where to start.
I'd like to quote the great philosopher Nelson Muntz, who so eloquently said:
HA HA!!
Republican Party hacks are hereby on notice that the conservatives you depend on to get elected can and will remove you from office if you displease us.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Don't forget about the massive amount of drugs. Birth control, antidepressants and other crap passes through the system untouched and fully active.
Why would they want to? Even after the purge of the so-called "Blue Dogs" in recent years, Democrats haven't drunken the Kool-Aid in anywhere near the same way that the Tea Party folks have.
Most of the die-hard "radicals" of the left find Obama to be milquetoast at best and are more impassioned by the likes of Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren. But they still voted for Obama in '12 because the Tea Party was the alternative.
It's gotten to the point that the only real definition of a Democrat is "not a Teabagger." So why go after "Washington insiders" for its own sake when said insiders are doing things like keeping the Civil Rights Act on the books and not defaulting on federal debts?
What that tells me is that the voters are the assholes. Naturally the politician will follow suit to win an election. We know that people like Feinstein, Boxer, Hatch, McCain, Cruz, etc, etc. are assholes. But what kind of asshole does a person have to be to vote for them and give them a lifetime career in this business? They are people who are only looking for a piece of the pie. I do not sympathize with them in any way. In fact they illustrate all that is wrong with majority rule.
I'm glad to see this guy thrown out, but it won't amount to a hill of beans with the replacement being the same thing on steroids. Game changer? Only if both democrats and republicans are tossed out en masse.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Yes, that is what we want. It produces sane, popular (or at least noncontroversial) legislation and functional government that can respond to changing conditions effectively.
We've already seen that all it produces is a bunch of scumbags who want to violate the constitution and people's fundamental liberties.
Also, wishing for an elite ruling class doesn't seem very principled to me.
Electing a bunch of strongly principled politicians with differing views leads to gridlock and disaster.
Good. As we've seen, all the government wants to do is infringe upon our rights (TSA, NSA, free speech zones, protest permits, constitution-free zones, stop-and-frisk, etc.). That would not be a disaster.
What we have right now is a system that encourages the violation of our individual liberties, or 'compromises' them away; I'd rather have gridlock.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I think can sum up your position as "Things the left-wingers and left wing propaganda" tell you you want passed.
See how I can marginalize your position like you did mine?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
gays. lots of complaining about gays.
uh.
oh, yeah, there is a democrat president, that came up.
hmm.
no socialism, but don't touch the socialism they already enjoy.
uh.
femacampdronesthirdtermdictatoremptysuiteBENGAZI
Dude. Chill. Sounds like you've done considerable research on the subject and I salute you for that. I wouldn't consider myself a 'climate scientist'... or even a statistician, but we have a saying where I'm from: "Figures don't lie but liars will figure." Yes, indeed, no doubt, I do not argue against that there has been a warming trend. But I've seen these long-term plots now in quite a few places here or there...from different sources... they all seem to be in basic agreement. One doesn't have to be a genius or perform all kinds of complicated mathematical analysis plotting trends to see that YES, the global temperature rise has indeed leveled off for the past 15-17ish years. This should not even be arguable... but it means just that and only that. Anybody with any kind of sense knows that we're only talking about 15ish years out of a much longer time scale. You can plot long-term trends all you want and you'd be correct, mathematically! It still doesn't negate the FACT that there hasn't been any observed warming recently. The only thing that continues to show a warming trend at this point is your imaginary plot... which doesn't match up with reality. This 'statistical noise', if it continues, will be knocking on the door of 'trend' in the not too distant future... so I guess we'll see.
I fully understand the argument of the article to which you linked... and i'll let it stand on its own merits. I'll only address your assertion that my own commentary contained contradictions: Bull-crap. It would appear so if you are conflating the 2 different data sets as representing the same thing... (short-term vs. long-term)... they don't. The short-term data indeed shows zero warming trend for the past 15-17ish years. FACT. Not arguable. The long-term data does... even though the recent observed data points don't match up with what the trend says they should be... there is still an upward trend. The point is... We've got quite a few more years of actual data from when the IPCC first published its report (and model predictions)... The data shows their models weren't just wrong... they were HORRIBLY wrong - way, way overestimated. That doesn't mean there won't be any more warming in the future... it just means that the long-term trend plot (at present) is nowhere near where they said it would be at this point in time. In other words - the models considered where we are right now to be way outside of the realm of possibility... therefore one should carefully consider how much faith one invests in these models' ability to predict the future.
So many people think the Tea Party is something special.
Some people get together to form a political party and get backing from rich and influential donors
and corporations and call themselves Democrats, er, Republican, er, the Tea Party!...yeah, that's
it! But to set themselves apart, they wrap themselves in an American Flag and spout patriotic words.
Naturally, people don't want to be considered "unpatriotic", so they flock to this "new" political party
like it's something unique...all the while the donors are pulling the strings and making policy behind
closed doors.
Boy, I'm impressed. :-P
As a foreigner, let me just say that I find it completely insane that you guys use public funds to run elections to decide the preferred candidate for a private political party. Do you just not get how ludicrous that is?
If a party is having trouble picking between two candidates in a district, let them run the poll. Make the voting criteria whatever you want, registered members only... or let people come off the street to vote... I don't give a fuck. But pay for it and organise it yourself :V
> We've already seen that all it produces is a bunch of scumbags who want to violate the constitution and people's fundamental liberties.
Putting aside your historical ignorance, and blinders that are letting you mistake the fruits of the past decade for those of another three, you're a fool if you think replacing your Congressmen with people like this guy is going to improve the situation.
> Also, wishing for an elite ruling class doesn't seem very principled to me.
I didn't say anything about a ruling class, unless you think that legislative experience and ruling class amount to the same thing. The one advocating for a plutocratic ruling class is you. You simply don't realize that it is the inevitable consequence of your beliefs.
> Good. As we've seen, all the government wants to do is infringe upon our rights (TSA, NSA, free speech zones, protest permits, constitution-free zones, stop-and-frisk, etc.). That would not be a disaster.
You are a fool if you think that's all the government has been up to or all that it does. We're the strongest country in the world economically, politically, and militarily in large part because of the excellent work done by the U.S. federal government. That morons and radicals have been doing their damndest to destabilize a functional system for the past few decades does not detract from that - much of the good work goes rolling on through inertia and the fact that most government employees are not directly impacted by the policy changes dictated by elections. The US economy has undergone immense suffering since 2007 precisely because of anti-government idiots like yourself who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Let me tell you something buddy. The US federal government directly reflects the will of the votes. The US federal government is of the people and by the people. You are the problem. You can shout and scream and blame the government all you want, but the problem is you and your neighbors.
> What we have right now is a system that encourages the violation of our individual liberties, or 'compromises' them away; I'd rather have gridlock.
Despite all the paranaoia and hyperbole, we are freer now than we have ever been in this country. Grow up and get some perspective. "Gridlock" will serve only to bring this country down. If "freedom" means dysfunctional and ineffective government to you, save the rest of us the trouble and move to a third world country.
Actually I'm quite proud of my MN state government who recently went through and culled a lot of old laws. We need more of that. Programmers go back and optimize all the time, the law is just as complex, and the whole thing needs to be reviewed from time to time to ensure it works as expected.
http://www.twincities.com/loca...
Putting aside your historical ignorance, and blinders that are letting you mistake the fruits of the past decade for those of another three, you're a fool if you think replacing your Congressmen with people like this guy is going to improve the situation.
I don't, and nor am I historically ignorant. This guy is an idiot; I never said I liked him.
I didn't say anything about a ruling class, unless you think that legislative experience and ruling class amount to the same thing.
When you only let in select people based on arbitrary standards, then you're going to end up with career politicians without principles; that's the status quo.
You are a fool if you think that's all the government has been up to or all that it does. We're the strongest country in the world economically, politically, and militarily in large part because of the excellent work done by the U.S. federal government.
The economy and power matter far less to me than freedom. I have to commend them on their excellent ability to start pointless wars, though.
You are the problem.
You have no idea who I vote for, fool. I don't vote for either Republicans or Democrats, because they're worthless scumbags. I vote on principle. I vote for third party candidates who don't want to violate the constitution or our fundamental liberties.
Despite all the paranaoia and hyperbole, we are freer now than we have ever been in this country. Grow up and get some perspective.
No, you get some perspective. I can name of dozens of serious constitutional and rights violations occurring at this very minute. If what you care about is the economy and bullying other countries with military might, then you are shallow.
"The land of the free and the home of the brave" values freedom above all else. The fact that we're supposedly 'freer' than before is irrelevant, because the logic of "X is better than Y, so X is good!" is nonsensical; better != good, and our situation is still far from good.
If "freedom" means dysfunctional and ineffective government to you, save the rest of us the trouble and move to a third world country.
The government is very effective at infringing upon our individual liberties. Instead of oppressing select groups, they're now mainly trying to oppress everyone. Freedom, to me, means that the government isn't violating our fundamental liberties and the constitution. The political elite are doing just that right now. I think displacing them would be helpful, but not with people like this guy.
The reason we have things like the TSA, the Patriot Act, free speech zones, the NSA's spying, etc. is because we don't have enough people who stick to their principles. If having such people means gridlock, then I'm willing to make that 'sacrifice', and since freedom is what is important, you'd be a fool not to do the same.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Tea Party may be taking all the credit for this, but the reality is is far more grim than any political insider is willing to admit: this has been the most unpopular Congress since the Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-49.
And if anyone paid attention to history, what happened then is what will happen this time, too. The incumbents are in the crosshairs.
Of course replacing Idjits unwilling to compromise with bigger idjits even less willing to compromise is a good thing for democracy.
I hope Tony Abbot is in his not able to comprehend the written word mode right now as he'd take comfort from the nutters apparently winning.
Wolja Future Tombstone: Shit happened then I died
That is entirely due to the US Senate.
> You have no idea who I vote for, fool. I don't vote for either Republicans or Democrats, because they're worthless scumbags. I vote on principle. I vote for third party candidates who don't want to violate the constitution or our fundamental liberties.
As I said, you are the problem.
> No, you get some perspective. I can name of dozens of serious constitutional and rights violations occurring at this very minute. If what you care about is the economy and bullying other countries with military might, then you are shallow.
The fact remains we are freer now than we have ever been. Anyone who thinks otherwise is totally ignorant of history. The fact is your list of rights violations, while some of them need to be dealt with, in comparison to the past 200 years largely consist of petty bullshit that has nothing to do with liberty, freedom, or the constitution except as crazed Randroids conceive it.
> The government is very effective at infringing upon our individual liberties. Instead of oppressing select groups, they're now mainly trying to oppress everyone.
If you honestly believe one single Congressman is trying to oppress you, you are a moron.
>The reason we have things like the TSA, the Patriot Act, free speech zones, the NSA's spying, etc. is because we don't have enough people who stick to their principles.
TSA: whining that has nothing to do with freedom or the constitution; merely a modern inconvenience that spoiled travelers cry about.
Patriot Act: Not good, worth opposing, but not something to cry about.
Free speech zones: Better than we've ever had it. This is just new terminology for the same shit we've been doing since 1776. The difference is the government no longer feels justified, nor do we cheer them on, when they mow protestors down with bullets. We also don't have a Sedition Act anymore that lets us imprison our political enemies as your precious Founding Fathers did.
NSA spying: Does not actually infringe on any of your rights and has been going on since 1776 in different forms.
If you really think the problem is we don't have "principled" people in elected positions you are so mind-bogglingly earth-quakingly fucking retarded I have no words. I can only hope that one day you'll hit your head in such a way that whatever blood clot is disabling half your brain clears and you can think for yourself.
One final note: your freedom will be meaningless when your policies of gridlock and so-called "liberty" put the economy in the shitter for good. I hope you enjoy your freedom when the price of milk is $20 a gallon and when rioters burn down your house with you in it. I hope you enjoy your freedom when prolonged political deadlock leaves the US as a failed state, and that you don't choke when the tyrants that rise from the ashes have their boot on your throat.
You have freedom, you have more freedom than anyone has ever had in this country, and you would throw it all the fuck away because you have to take your shoes off at the airport. Dumbass.
Dude. Chill. Sounds like you've done considerable research on the subject and I salute you for that.
It is not I who needs to chill. It is you who needs to put aside your emotion (and perhaps tribal affiliation) and examine at the data dispassionately.
Nothing in that post required "considerable research" (though trying proving that there has been any significant levelling off may well). The data is there, I gave you the link, the tools are there, I gave you the link for that as well, you are a geek (I presume): Where's the problem? Have a look. (And I would suggest, should you not want to mislead yourself, to pick as a starting point a year which is neither particularly hotter nor cooler than the trend).
One doesn't have to be a genius or perform all kinds of complicated mathematical analysis plotting trends to see that YES, the global temperature rise has indeed levelled off for the past 15-17ish years.
The temperatures have continued to rise. Yes the rate over the last decade and a half looks lower than the long term rate, however that is a meaningless observation. You would need to perform all kinds of complicated mathematical analysis to prove that the decrease in the rate of warming was in any way significant (giving even the weak statistical meaning to that term).
It still doesn't negate the FACT that there hasn't been any observed warming recently. The only thing that continues to show a warming trend at this point is your imaginary plot... which doesn't match up with reality.
It is a LIE that there hasn't been any observed warming recently. You have simply been misled. As you can clearly see, should you plot the actual data as I suggested, that period gives you a regression line with a positive slope.
However, it is tautological, that selecting from any data set, a number of data points which, given the set's variance, are too small to enable any significant effect to be demonstrated, will result in an inability to demonstrate any significant effect. So it is true that there has been no significant warming over the last decade and a half. But that observation is, as you so aptly put it, a "parlor trick."
Given that there are also various factors which should work against warming operative over that period (solar variation, the El Nino/La Nina cycle) one might even wonder, but for the fact that the period is also too short to show any significant cooling, why temperatures are apparently still increasing.
I have no idea what you are referring to as my "imaginary plot." Do you not understand that the plot I am helping you to draw is the very data you suggest shows a levelling off?
Have a look for yourself. It's not difficult. You only need to download R and run the code you have been given; checking for yourself, that the given anomalies match the actual data; improving on if by reference to the resources which exist for R programming; and thereby become informed.
Put not your faith in disinformation sites!
This 'statistical noise', if it continues, will be knocking on the door of 'trend' in the not too distant future... so I guess we'll see.
There's another question you can ask yourself with R: How many decades of continuous cooling or even just flat-lining temperatures would be required to negate the significance of the long term trend? My guess is, depending on the rate, that 5 to 8 decades should suffice. But that also requires real analysis.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
You're a freedom-hating scumbag; you've made that clear. Move to North Korea, scum, as you clearly don't want to live in "the land of the free."
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As I said, you are the problem.
And you?
The fact remains we are freer now than we have ever been. Anyone who thinks otherwise is totally ignorant of history. The fact is your list of rights violations, while some of them need to be dealt with, in comparison to the past 200 years largely consist of petty bullshit that has nothing to do with liberty, freedom, or the constitution except as crazed Randroids conceive it.
Yes, because blatant violations of the constitution and people's individual liberties are "petty." You've revealed yourself as the freedom hater that you are.
And again, your bullshit logic of "The past was worse, so stop complaining about the present!" is just that: bullshit. If a problem exists (which it does), it needs to be dealt with.
If you honestly believe one single Congressman is trying to oppress you, you are a moron.
The mass violation of the constitution and our individual liberties prove you wrong, you worthless scumbag.
TSA: whining that has nothing to do with freedom or the constitution; merely a modern inconvenience that spoiled travelers cry about.
Patriot Act: Not good, worth opposing, but not something to cry about.
Free speech zones: Better than we've ever had it. This is just new terminology for the same shit we've been doing since 1776. The difference is the government no longer feels justified, nor do we cheer them on, when they mow protestors down with bullets. We also don't have a Sedition Act anymore that lets us imprison our political enemies as your precious Founding Fathers did.
NSA spying: Does not actually infringe on any of your rights and has been going on since 1776 in different forms.
TSA: A violation of the fourth amendment.
Patriot Act: Again, mostly the fourth amendment.
Free speech zones: Blatant violation of the first.
NSA: Again, the fourth.
If you honestly believe that the TSA is merely an "inconvenience," then, again, you are a freedom-hating scumbag. It's a blatant violation of the fourth amendment and people's privacy. There's nothing you can do or link to that will justify having the government in airports searching everyone and forcing them through scanners. Not a single thing. Give up, you worthless authoritarian fuck.
Saying "They did similar things in the past!" doesn't change what these things are: Blatant violations of people's constitutional liberties; violations of the spirit of the constitution. No violation of the highest law of the land is petty; it should always be a huge concern to anyone who wants to live in a free country.
And the fact of the matter is, the type of spying (mass spying on people's communications without valid warrants or anything) the NSA is doing would have been explicitly prohibited had it been used against the founding fathers, like many other things were. So, it's a blatant of the constitution because it so obviously violates its spirit. But even if it didn't (Which it certainly does.), it wouldn't be anything that a truly free country would let happen, as it's an egregious violation of people's fundamental liberties.
Anyway, you've made it abundantly clear that you don't want to live in a free country, and you'll tolerate the government having massive, exploitable powers even though governments throughout history have murdered hundreds of millions of people - including some at the hands of the US government. To call any of these issues petty or to say they're not rights violations is to misunderstand freedom and ignorantly admit that you believe the government is full of perfect little angels who could never abuse anyone or make mistakes, which is something history has disproved many millions of times over. Or maybe you just want a police state to make yourself free safe. Either way, have you thought of moving to North Korea?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Well, color me impressed. Well done Minnesota.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I fully understand the argument of the article to which you linked...
FACT. Not arguable.
WRONG. You did not understand the argument of the article.
The data shows their models weren't just wrong... they were HORRIBLY wrong - way, way overestimated.
Hyperbole much?
therefore one should carefully consider how much faith one invests in these models' ability to predict the future.
That's plain FUD. You could just as well say one cannot invest faith in anything science produces, because our knowledge of science has been proven wrong and refined in the past. Repeatedly.