Funny how the most fascist leader in US history, the one most likely to turn it into a dictatorship EVER - is also the least qualified person to ever be elected.
Your mythology about the founding fathers is flat out wrong. Their expertise in governance was utterly unmatched. They were all extremely well educated experts in the field. Highly trained in philosophy and history - they studied all the best ideas about how to create a government, how to fix the flaws that had caused previous attempts at democracy to fail and how to make it all work before they tried... and they STILL got it completely wrong. So wrong that they destroyed everything they had created up to that point and started over to produce the constitutional republic you now know (a process which, by the way, was entirely illegal). The second time they made an absolutely crucial correction: they made the constitution a living document - that could be changed. Hamilton believed it should be altered by a convention no less than every 20 years - to remove amendments that no longer worked (the second ahem) and add ones that were needed to address problems they hadn't forseen. Basically originalist judges are a contradiction in terms because if there is one thing that NONE of the founding fathers intended it was for their intentions to be treated as important - ever again. They wanted the constitution to be updated all the time - to reflect the society of the day, their vision was for a constitution that by now should have had nothing left of their words but the fucking preamble.
Well he was chained and beheaded post-mortem but the point stands. Anyway - he is hardly a person worth following. He ruthlessly persecuted people based on their religion, disbanded parliament and basically became a dictator whose reign paved the way for the return of monarchy....and suddenly I understand why the GP described Trump as the Cromwell of our time..
It's more than that - even those people didn't show up without knowing what to do. They were all highly educated people who had studied politics, philosophy and history in great detail and based their ideas on having learned. They may not have thought of government service as a long-term job - but they most certainly considered it a job for which you needed to be qualified and trained - and it was one they were highly qualified and trained for. Franklin was a journalist and a scholar of philosophy. Jefferson and Washington were both experts in philosophy and history. These were highly trained and educated people who prepared for the job of governance by gaining suitable knowledge first. Before they tried to invent a new kind of country - they first learned about all the many ideas about how countries could work and chose what they believed to be the best attributes from them.
Historically very few people entered politics as a lifelong career - even today. Most politicians start running for office only after having a previous career - usually (but not inevitable) in a field where they get a chance to learn politics. Many politicians are former journalists or lawyers for just that reason. But there are plenty of other professionals in congress- quite a few doctors for example. Generally people trained in a profession who want to go into politics would start running small too - they'd run for city council, then mayor, later perhaps governor - and congress or senate only when they've actually learned a thing or two about governance at the small scale. The only real chance is that now they tend to stay there for an extended period, partly because their experience is valuable. Of course there are downsides too - but they aren't inevitable. The US didn't have term limits on the presidency until the mid-20th century after FDR won 4 terms in a row (and would probably have won a 5th if he hadn't died). But you'd be VERY hard pressed to argue that he was dictatorial or abused his power despite holding it for so long - a large chunk of which was amid a war during which martial law powers were available. Even then he used very little of them - enough to temporarily take over a bunch of factories to make weapons for the war, that's about it.
It's ironic that the same people who complained Obama didn't have enough experience 'community organiser with only one year in the senate' now elected a man with none whatsoever - and of course they gave him Obama credit for being a professor of constitutional law at Harvard (which I would consider an imminently suitable qualification for president and so would the founding fathers).
Yet Multics wasn't portable and when both Honeywell stopped making the hardware it basically died.
>Writing operating systems in high-level languages was common by the time UNIX came along But writing them portably was not - Unix's single greatest contribution was proving that you can write a portable operating system, every aspect of it's design contributes to that - not just writing it in a high level language but breaking it down into a group of loosely coupled tiny programs that communicated using a simple (the simplest possible in fact) interface, treating everything as the simplest object (a file) - the whole thing was fundamentally designed for portability. Pre PDP-11 port versions were experiments with the idea, it wasn't unix until it was written in C.
Yeah... that's what they said about Hitler and Musolini and Franco.
It's what the people who put fascist dictators in place always think they are doing. You can recognize fascism by a number of key traits and Trump meets all of them:
1: Cult of tradition. All fascists claim to want to bring back a lost golden age where things were better. Trump's campaign slogan is textbook fascism. 2: Rejection of modernism (a direct result of 1): Trump has repeatedly rejected the values of the modern world and espoused primitivist ideals. Modernity means inclusivity and tolerance and all the things he called 'political correctness'. 3: Irrationalism: Trump is frequently self-contradictory (which is irrational), and constantly espouses anti-enlightenment ideas (also irrational) and never cared about the truthfulness or even possibility of his claims - all irrational things to do. 4: Syncretism: taking thoughts from all sorts of ideologies and espousing them even when those ideologies oppose or contradict each other. See for example Trump selling himself as a friend of the working man while simultaneously being an enemy of the (large part of) the working class that are not white. 5: Dissagreement not allowed: If you have different views you're a traitor and a criminal. He even threatened to jail his political opponent. 6: Built on social frustration: all fascist movements are built on social frustration, and always the frustration of the middle class (who was Trump's main base ? Middle class whites who earn more than 70-thousand a yea but aren't in the wealthy class eitherr). All fascist movements harnass the anger of a frustrated middle class and redirects and anger that should be targetting the rich (a la Sanders) into an anger that insteads target the poor below them (a la Trump). This works even better when the poor is a different colour. 7: Nationalism: all fascist movements are intensely nationalistic, it's an appeal to the lowest common denominator. People without a clear sense of identity are told their only real identity is the country they were all born in, and that this accident of birth is grounds for a feeling of supremacy. 8: That the enemy is extraordinarily powerful and a massive threat to their wellbeing, but AT THE SAME TIME that the enemy is weak and easily defeated. Look at Trump again - in the same speech he could describe Islamic terrorism as a grave existential threat that could eradicate America and then declare how he will defeat them all really quickly. This contradictory view exists in all fascist ideologies - it has to. People don't support a war unless they feel threatened, but they also don't support the wannabe dictator unless they are convinced he can defeat the threat. 9: Pacifism is harboring the enemy. Opposition to war is warmongering and treachery. Trump accused Hillary and Obama of creating ISIS by not being aggressive enough in Iraq, of harboring ISIS by not putting boots on the ground to fight them. There is no room for tactical considerations in the fascist thinking. You are either for war or against the country. 10: A claim to being anti-elites while being elitist at the same time: Trump's campaign was built on the idea that Muslims and Mexican are inferior people "they don't send their best", that whites are elite above them. In true fascist style, the dictator himself is the ultimate elite. Trump used the words "I am the best" or "I have the best" in practically every sentence. Being the "best" is the prime elitism of the fascist dictator. The elite among elites. Who claims to be anti-elite as an excuse to purge those who would oppose him. 11: Selective populism: nobody can deny that there was plenty of populism in Trump's campaign - but it was a carefully worded populism. It wasn't taking care of EVERYBODY - it was taking care only of ourselves. A welfare state - but not for 'the other', just for 'us'. Fascists around the world and throughout history has made that argument. That we can give better welfare and entitlements to 'our people' if we don'
A flagrantly false argument. Firstly the increase in debt under Obama is the lowest since Carter (yes, really - every president from Reagan onward ran up more debt than Obama). Secondly most of the debt increase under Obama didn't actually happen under Obama. Bush Jr. had this weird calculus where war spending wasn't counted in the budget -he kept both his wars off the books. So their increase in the debt was there but never acknowledge. Obama acknowledge it, put it in the regular budget and counted the debt for it. This created a massive jump in the official debt figure early in his administration but it wasn't money HE borrowed, it was money Bush borrowed and didn't count.
Really ? Johnson ? The one guy running who was even dumber than Trump ? Whose knowledge of foreign affairs (the single largest power and responsibility of the president) was completely non-existent. Who tried to downplay that with "I can't bomb them if I don't know where they are" (something that never stopped Bush) and who proposed the most regressive taxplan in world history ?
The man would have literally starved half of America to death by making food unaffordable. People SHOULD have not voted for him because he is an idiot but as voting for Trump shows - that doesn't stop people - but they DID smartly avoid voting for him because they like food. Boy do Americans love food.
Actually looking at both this story and that appointment shows you the true Trump. You cannot trust anything he says because he says whatever he thinks you want to hear. Trust what he does - his actions reveal a rapist, racist con-man who doesn't give a fuck about consequences. Why would he care about climate change ? He is 70 years old, he won't live to see the worst of it. So why let it stand in the way of personal enrichment.
You think he will stop the Dakota line from trampling over the rights of the native americans whose land is being destroyed without their consent to build it ? Even Hillary and Obama have been weak on it... but Trump - he'll send in the big guns to make SURE the line gets built... because he is a major investor in the line.
The president should not be a businessman, by definition it means he has incentives that WILL go against the rights of citizens.
It's interesting how these people think... yet they overlook all the most obvious clues. The very first thing Musolini and Hitler did when they got into power was to take out the labour unions, the very next thing was to take out the socialists.
Remind me again... which party is opposed to *all* socialism and hates labour unions ?
“I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” - Franklin Delano Rooseveldt (you know - the president who actually fought a war with fascists). That is what happened here. Trumpism meets every requirement for the definition of a fascist movement. http://www.nybooks.com/article... He meets them in spades.
And as for his flip-flopping, that's actually a standard practise with fascists, Terry Pratchett described it another way: "You told them a lie and when it was no longer useful you told them a different lie and told them they were progressing on the path to wisdom and they followed believing that at the center of all the lies they would find truth. And little by little they accept the unacceptable" - Guards, Guards.
Apparently - in America competence and experience is now actually a disqualifier for holding office. Nobody wants to vote for the "washington insiders"... an odd sentiment you do not find in any other field. Seriously when did you ever hear anybody say "I am having a heart attack -please get me anybody who is NOT a doctor !"
>It was like they were all super villains not a bunch of terrorists that have been waterboarded all over the place and probably can't even think straight anymore.
Considering all these people are held without trial - NONE of them are terrorists. In the free world people are innocent until proven guilty and not a single Gitmo inmate has been proven guilty of anything, including terrorism.
The problem with closing Gitmo was what to do with the inmates. If you bring them onshore you have to give them trials. Some (perhaps many) will not make bail, many would be convicted - that means they have to be housed as prisoners afterward, the others you have to release.
That creates a double problem. No congressman wanted to have a bunch of convicted ex-gitmo terrorists in the prisons in his state. Nobody wanted his prisons to be housing the awaiting-trial ones, and nobody wanted the released ones living in their state. Since the whole damn congress went NIMBY about it - Obama had nowhere to put the people in Gitmo - which made closing it basically impossible.
Now if congress wasn't completely obstructionist this may have been possible to work around. For example one may have sent a tribunal of judges to the Island to hold public trials there - with JAG lawyers prosecuting using whatever evidence they were holding them on. The judges would have a grand-jury style trial and then you only release the ones who are found innocent and the rest are already in jail. It would mean exploiting the "not America" loophole of Bush one last time to get around the bail laws but at least you could have gotten the innocent ones out and been able to say nobody is held without trial. That wouldn't be a 'closure' of Gitmo but it would have been a huge improvement and probably an acceptable compromise - unfortunately, not one Obama could take without congressional approval.
No. Just because you value the field of their contributions more, does not mean that her contribution to her field was any less - or even that the field is any less important. And it's not your decision to make. If you want to choose who gets presidential medals of freedom - run for president.
Portability was a factor but not nearly on the level you describe - note how operating systems remained in machine code right until the end of the 1960s and nobody tried to write one in a compiled language until Kernighan and Ritchie. Consider also the language that Hopper created: Cobol. A language that remains universally hated by programmers, second only to BASIC in horribleness for a trained coder - yet it was incredibly successful. It was written to look like the kind of forms that business executives filled in regularly and to make it possible for them to write their own code. That never actually happened very much -but it did get executives to start seeing the value in programming and COBOL became a major industry. To this day there are giant systems at many corporations (especially banks) that are written in COBOL and programmers who can work the language (and stomach it) get paid very high salaries (not least because so few are willing to learn it - most of us would rather earn less than have to fill in forms designed for burocrats to write an algorithm).
COBOL's problems aside - it's design does show one absolutely clear intention: user-friendliness. One could argue that trying to make programming userfriendly by analogy to burocracy was a wrong way to approach it, but you can't argue that, that was the intention. Hopper was clearly trying for userfriendliness and in that regard was way ahead of her time. She was also involved in numerous other groundbreaking things. My critique of COBOL should in no way be read as disparaging to it's creator - on the contrary, it was a major breakthrough and while COBOL itself was a terrible language the concept of a compiler that could turn a human-readable text into code would change computing forever. Portability was just one of the many advantages that came out of it. Hopper definitely belongs in the same class as Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing as one of the principle drivers of the computing revolution.
>I thought the argument was to eliminate all carbon based fuels and so I used fuel oil and other liquid fuel as an example and/or how to address one aspect of the problem. That wasn't the discussion - though it is the goal, in the case of cars - I already told you how to do that. Use electric. An electric car on fossil fuel grids is already a good 60% less carbon being used (because electric engines are far more efficient than internal combustion engines so you get a lot more miles from the same carbon) but the ideal is to charge an electric car from a non-carbon-based generator.
>That is either a vary narrow definition of a renewable fuel or you have just told the entire fuel ethanol and bio-diesel industries that they do not exist. Neither of those are renewable, and they don't help with the actual task very much either. The only thing those industries has ever done is to make food more expensive. They are not a good thing. Now the fact that they are made from current plants mean they are probably close to carbon neutral (though I suspect the processes of making them into fuel throw that off) - but they are simply not a very practical solution. Not least because it's using potential food to fuel cars. That said- they do work very well, and countries like Brazil has switched over almost entirely. There is no evidence that they are bad for cars.
>Sell this alternative as a means to run small campsite generators That's already being done. Hell people are powering their homes with renewables. The initial investment is absolutely worth the cost - and will only get cheaper.
>As infrastructure and technology develops move up to municipal power Again: this is already being done. But it's happening much slower than simplistic economics would predict because the municipalities already invested billions in existing fossil fuel infrastructures (sunk cost fallacy) and the companies that supply and run that infrastructure would rather bribe politicians than lose the revenue.
> The US federal government can't say a whole lot about the fuels a city burns Indeed, and where the voters have sufficient influence - they move happens much faster. This is why Burlington is on 100% renewable energy.
>well I doubt that they can buy them all off You underestimate how much money they are willing to spend, to protect what they already have - and you greatly overestimate how expensive politicians are. The only ones they can't buy off are the ones who sincerely refuse to sell - this is an incredibly rare (but not non-existent) attribute in politicians. Then again - lots of countries are doing this, where voters are less easily swayed by propaganda than in the US (where you can make voters do anything if you talk about God - the rest of the world is a lot less religious). Denmark is ahead of schedule to be on 100% renewables in 15 years.
>They need fuel to produce that electricity No. They don't. Many use fuel - but all you need it energy and energy doesn't always come in the form of fuel. Indeed renewable energy can be generally defined as energy that does not come in the form of fuel.
> dismissing my argument because you fail to see the analogy You're making a stupid argument. More-over you're apparently expecting me to believe that fossil fuel companies are all run by idiots. They spend a fortune on lobbying and propaganda - this is not a secret, it's widely reported fact, billions get pumped into it. Are you telling me they are investing all that money in propaganda if they aren't getting (or at least expecting) a return on their investment ? You're seriously expecting me to believe that fossil fuel companies are bad at making money ? So bad they would keep throwing good money after bad on an investment that wasn't paying off. They keep funding all that propaganda because it IS paying off.
Because this isn't dice. It's more like roulette - except the board is the size of the solar system, there are hundreds of millions of balls on it (we don't even know exactly how many), we can't see most of the board and there are magnets under some of the numbers that actually attract the balls to them and the magnets aren't all the same strength. We're not discussing IF a ball will land on 16, it's a certainty that it will - balls have landed there before and will land there again. You're trying to make estimates of when it will happen next - and we simply cannot do so. The solar system is chaos theory in action (indeed chaos theory originated from the repeated failed attempts to predict the future state of the solar system) - it simply does not lend itself to that type of prediction, the prediction horizon for asteroids is just too short, and since we're not even *looking* at most of them - we can't know anything about them.
Einstein once famously said that it's impossible to win at roulette without cheating the board, he was referring to the fact that maths and statistics cannot give you useful probabilities for that kind of system. You can win at blackjab by being good at counting, you can't do that with roulette. The only system that works for roulette is to measure the ball speed repeatedly and calculate it for that specific throw - and even then it tells you nothing about the next throw - and we're talking about a board with hundreds of millions of balls (that even collide with each other sometimes) travelling at thousands of miles per hour, with deceleration so slow we can't measure it... that mostly we aren't even looking at.
So the whole time we were talking about power production - and when you lose the argument you suddenly switch the topic vehicle fuel - which is ironic because there the alternative is already on the market, new companies are investing in it and the current companies ARE already investing in it as well - and have vehicles using it. The alternative for vehicles is electricity.
There is no such thing as a renewable fuel for an internal combustion engine - the very concept would violate the law of conservation of energy and the law of conservation of mass. What you can do is use an electric car and charge it from renewable sources.
But we were never talking about vehicles - which are unique among fossil fuels, we were discussing electricity production.
You sir, are a dishonest debater who tries to shift goalposts and change topics when you lose and hope people won't notice.
>I just don't understand how any oil company lobbying can prevent an alternative from appearing That's why it hasn't - oil companies couldn't prevent electric cars from appearing. Right now the upfront costs is still counting against them. Though they cost less than comparable cars over their lifetime (and that's WITHOUT counting externalities) - people still balk at the upfront cost. But then, cars are not energy sources - they are energy CONSUMERS. We were discussing power plants.
I gave numbers for South Africa - for large scale plants, not home solar (which has very different pricing) and not American.
Here is one of several studies on the topic: http://www.dailymaverick.co.za... This one done by the CSIR - the Center for Scientific Investigation and Research, probably the premier hard science organisation in South Africa - it's about equivalent to the USA's NSF. Note that though the CSIR is government funded -their findings actually harm the case by the government for investing in nuclear and coal, which strongly suggests it's not biased - since if they were biased they would want to defend that decision (which is making a lot of corrupt government officials very rich).
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za... That's another study, by an independent research organisation with no ties to either government or industry.
Home solar, where viable is significantly cheaper than coal for consumers anyway. In fact the price difference (at least here in South Africa) is so massive that you can BORROW the money to install it, and 7 years later borrow MORE money to replace the batteries - and STILL pay less than if you had used coal all along - since the monthly repayments and interest will be less than the cost of the same amount of coal power. My dad is an electrical engineer specialising in project planning and finance - he does these sort of calculations for a living, for very wealthy customers who would sue his company into bankruptcy if they lost money by following his advice.
>Why would people vote in politicians who are likely to do things that are contrary to their own interests?
Ask that of the 47% who just voted in Donald Trump. The odds of him doing anything that benefits them are between zero and none. The odds of him using the presidency as his own personal piggy bank are about 100% - he has already begun and he isn't even inaugurated yet. People vote for all sorts of reasons - and regularly vote against their own interests. Hell haven't you noticed that the republican party (the party of ending welfare) is the strongest in the states where the most people require welfare to live ? And that welfare receivers are overwhelmingly republican (white welfare receivers anyway) ? People often vote against their own interests - or they simply don't agree with you about what is in their best interest, or they think another interest is more urgent. You could call them wrong to think that, but it's not something that will ever change.
>If, as you say, Australian politicians ended up enacting legislation that was unpopular enough to destroy their careers, why were the Australian people stupid enough to elect them in the first place? For starters ? They had no idea the politicians were going to do that. The laws were passed by a conservative government - who had nothing of the kind in their platform and no intention of doing so when they were elected. They were passed after a mass shooting (the last one Australia has ever had by the way) when the politicians, in light of the tragedy, felt they had a duty they had not previous considered. So whether you consider gun control in the voters interest or not (I do by the way), they believed they were acting in the best interest of the voters, enough voters disagreed to destroy some careers. Those voters were probably wrong - or at the very least- have come to believe they were wrong themselves, because in the subsequent election - although those careers were destroyed, politicians running on a platform of repealing the law couldn't get elected either. They punished the politicians for doing something unpopular - but they didn't want to have it undone either.
> Although thegarbz seems to be refuting the example anyway. thegarbz said nothing that contradicted what I said, he just thought he did.
>Blaming politicians is just another excuse for not taking responsibility. So politicians are automatically blameless ? Taking responsibility does not mean politicians are not responsible for what they do in office. You can choose who you vote for - but you can't force them to do what they said they will after wards. The best you can do is not vote for them again. Whether that is a deterrent depends entirely on whether they consider another term to be worth more or less than what they want to do.
>So, the people that are in energy to make money would rather lobby Congress to keep out competing energy sources than just invest in them? When they already have billions invested in current technology and infrastructure ? Of course. And not congress so much - local and state governments mostly - since they are the ones making the purchases. They would be morons NOT to.
> Perhaps you think that the people with the "newer better" energy sources are not in it for the money? I never said that, sure they are, that doesn't mean they are competing on an even playing field however.
>As if they are developing these energy sources only out of the goodness of their hearts. Don't project your issues onto me. I am sure renewable energy companies want to make money. I never suggested anything else.
>The only thing I can think of that can keep the profiteers from investing in a new energy source that would be cheaper and greener is that the "greenies" have some sort of monopoly on this technology but they would rather do without the investment of the profit seekers because there is some sort of ideological disparity keeping the "greenies" from taking their money. In that case it's not the profiteers keeping this technology from us but the "greenies" that would rather see the world burn than take their "dirty" money.
Your lack of imagination does not represent the limits of the real world. Nobody wants to see billions they've invested into something suddenly stop yielding new revenues and have to reinvest in something else. It's like you think fossil fuel companies either don't want to get rich or don't know how to (hint: throwing billions of dollars away is not a good way to get rich). Of course as renewables get ever cheaper - the decision becomes less and less sensible, but sadly even the best businessmen tend to suffer from the sunk-cost fallacy.
>Why would the government play along with this? Because the US has made bribing politicians completely legal - and it happens everywhere else too.
> Don't they have an inherent interest in clean air and water? The elites never pay their share of the externalities. They never live in the poluted neighbourhoods, they never drink the poluted water. They have no interest in protecting the plebs.They do have an interest in getting nice big campaign checks from the companies though.
>This sounds like the conspiracy theory that the big auto makers are sitting on technology for fuel efficient vehicles but keep it to themselves out of some profit motive. That just does not add up since that profit only lasts so long as no one else figures it out, after which they will be left with nothing as everyone switches once the technology is revealed. The greater profit is to bring this technology to market as quickly as possible because of the billions of people on this planet every single one would choose the cheaper product if all else is equal.
Again - you're reading things I never wrote or suggested. Your fantasies about my argument do not represent actual weaknesses in my argument.
>These profiteers are spending money on lobbying the government to keep cheap energy from the government? And the government is playing along? When both could just as easily profit more by bringing this technology to market? If you honestly believe this then I think you've been off your meds. You need your head checked and your dosage adjusted. No - they can NOT just as easily profit by bringing it to market. It would mean putting their own current profitable investments out of business. Nobody likes to do that. Nobody who has invested billions into something wants to just throw it away and stop earning revenues when something better comes along -it's much easier to try and block the something better with lobbying and propaganda. Cheaper and more profitable too.
The profits you can protect by keeping renewables out exceed what you can make from investing in them if you're a fossil fuel company - because keeping them out
I considered that one - though I'm not sure it qualifies. He made a tactical political sacrifice but it didn't cost him his career and secured his legacy. The party lost out, but it had enough support in the north at the time to be a worthwhile trade-off.
I'm not diminishing that factor - giving up the south greatly reduced the democrats power in congress to this day, greatly reduced the number of times they would later take the white house. Pretty much doomed Hubert Humphrey's chance of succeeding Johnson. It was a major sacrifice for a nobel goal. But it wasn't quite personal. The real pain wouldn't be felt by Johnson himself.
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Funny how the most fascist leader in US history, the one most likely to turn it into a dictatorship EVER - is also the least qualified person to ever be elected.
Your mythology about the founding fathers is flat out wrong. Their expertise in governance was utterly unmatched. They were all extremely well educated experts in the field. Highly trained in philosophy and history - they studied all the best ideas about how to create a government, how to fix the flaws that had caused previous attempts at democracy to fail and how to make it all work before they tried... and they STILL got it completely wrong. So wrong that they destroyed everything they had created up to that point and started over to produce the constitutional republic you now know (a process which, by the way, was entirely illegal). The second time they made an absolutely crucial correction: they made the constitution a living document - that could be changed. Hamilton believed it should be altered by a convention no less than every 20 years - to remove amendments that no longer worked (the second ahem) and add ones that were needed to address problems they hadn't forseen.
Basically originalist judges are a contradiction in terms because if there is one thing that NONE of the founding fathers intended it was for their intentions to be treated as important - ever again. They wanted the constitution to be updated all the time - to reflect the society of the day, their vision was for a constitution that by now should have had nothing left of their words but the fucking preamble.
Well he was chained and beheaded post-mortem but the point stands. Anyway - he is hardly a person worth following. He ruthlessly persecuted people based on their religion, disbanded parliament and basically became a dictator whose reign paved the way for the return of monarchy. ...and suddenly I understand why the GP described Trump as the Cromwell of our time..
It's more than that - even those people didn't show up without knowing what to do. They were all highly educated people who had studied politics, philosophy and history in great detail and based their ideas on having learned. They may not have thought of government service as a long-term job - but they most certainly considered it a job for which you needed to be qualified and trained - and it was one they were highly qualified and trained for. Franklin was a journalist and a scholar of philosophy. Jefferson and Washington were both experts in philosophy and history. These were highly trained and educated people who prepared for the job of governance by gaining suitable knowledge first. Before they tried to invent a new kind of country - they first learned about all the many ideas about how countries could work and chose what they believed to be the best attributes from them.
Historically very few people entered politics as a lifelong career - even today. Most politicians start running for office only after having a previous career - usually (but not inevitable) in a field where they get a chance to learn politics. Many politicians are former journalists or lawyers for just that reason. But there are plenty of other professionals in congress- quite a few doctors for example.
Generally people trained in a profession who want to go into politics would start running small too - they'd run for city council, then mayor, later perhaps governor - and congress or senate only when they've actually learned a thing or two about governance at the small scale. The only real chance is that now they tend to stay there for an extended period, partly because their experience is valuable. Of course there are downsides too - but they aren't inevitable. The US didn't have term limits on the presidency until the mid-20th century after FDR won 4 terms in a row (and would probably have won a 5th if he hadn't died). But you'd be VERY hard pressed to argue that he was dictatorial or abused his power despite holding it for so long - a large chunk of which was amid a war during which martial law powers were available. Even then he used very little of them - enough to temporarily take over a bunch of factories to make weapons for the war, that's about it.
It's ironic that the same people who complained Obama didn't have enough experience 'community organiser with only one year in the senate' now elected a man with none whatsoever - and of course they gave him Obama credit for being a professor of constitutional law at Harvard (which I would consider an imminently suitable qualification for president and so would the founding fathers).
Yet Multics wasn't portable and when both Honeywell stopped making the hardware it basically died.
>Writing operating systems in high-level languages was common by the time UNIX came along
But writing them portably was not - Unix's single greatest contribution was proving that you can write a portable operating system, every aspect of it's design contributes to that - not just writing it in a high level language but breaking it down into a group of loosely coupled tiny programs that communicated using a simple (the simplest possible in fact) interface, treating everything as the simplest object (a file) - the whole thing was fundamentally designed for portability. Pre PDP-11 port versions were experiments with the idea, it wasn't unix until it was written in C.
Yeah... that's what they said about Hitler and Musolini and Franco.
It's what the people who put fascist dictators in place always think they are doing. You can recognize fascism by a number of key traits and Trump meets all of them:
1: Cult of tradition. All fascists claim to want to bring back a lost golden age where things were better. Trump's campaign slogan is textbook fascism.
2: Rejection of modernism (a direct result of 1): Trump has repeatedly rejected the values of the modern world and espoused primitivist ideals. Modernity means inclusivity and tolerance and all the things he called 'political correctness'.
3: Irrationalism: Trump is frequently self-contradictory (which is irrational), and constantly espouses anti-enlightenment ideas (also irrational) and never cared about the truthfulness or even possibility of his claims - all irrational things to do.
4: Syncretism: taking thoughts from all sorts of ideologies and espousing them even when those ideologies oppose or contradict each other. See for example Trump selling himself as a friend of the working man while simultaneously being an enemy of the (large part of) the working class that are not white.
5: Dissagreement not allowed: If you have different views you're a traitor and a criminal. He even threatened to jail his political opponent.
6: Built on social frustration: all fascist movements are built on social frustration, and always the frustration of the middle class (who was Trump's main base ? Middle class whites who earn more than 70-thousand a yea but aren't in the wealthy class eitherr). All fascist movements harnass the anger of a frustrated middle class and redirects and anger that should be targetting the rich (a la Sanders) into an anger that insteads target the poor below them (a la Trump). This works even better when the poor is a different colour.
7: Nationalism: all fascist movements are intensely nationalistic, it's an appeal to the lowest common denominator. People without a clear sense of identity are told their only real identity is the country they were all born in, and that this accident of birth is grounds for a feeling of supremacy.
8: That the enemy is extraordinarily powerful and a massive threat to their wellbeing, but AT THE SAME TIME that the enemy is weak and easily defeated. Look at Trump again - in the same speech he could describe Islamic terrorism as a grave existential threat that could eradicate America and then declare how he will defeat them all really quickly. This contradictory view exists in all fascist ideologies - it has to. People don't support a war unless they feel threatened, but they also don't support the wannabe dictator unless they are convinced he can defeat the threat.
9: Pacifism is harboring the enemy. Opposition to war is warmongering and treachery. Trump accused Hillary and Obama of creating ISIS by not being aggressive enough in Iraq, of harboring ISIS by not putting boots on the ground to fight them. There is no room for tactical considerations in the fascist thinking. You are either for war or against the country.
10: A claim to being anti-elites while being elitist at the same time: Trump's campaign was built on the idea that Muslims and Mexican are inferior people "they don't send their best", that whites are elite above them. In true fascist style, the dictator himself is the ultimate elite. Trump used the words "I am the best" or "I have the best" in practically every sentence. Being the "best" is the prime elitism of the fascist dictator. The elite among elites. Who claims to be anti-elite as an excuse to purge those who would oppose him.
11: Selective populism: nobody can deny that there was plenty of populism in Trump's campaign - but it was a carefully worded populism. It wasn't taking care of EVERYBODY - it was taking care only of ourselves. A welfare state - but not for 'the other', just for 'us'. Fascists around the world and throughout history has made that argument. That we can give better welfare and entitlements to 'our people' if we don'
A flagrantly false argument. Firstly the increase in debt under Obama is the lowest since Carter (yes, really - every president from Reagan onward ran up more debt than Obama).
Secondly most of the debt increase under Obama didn't actually happen under Obama. Bush Jr. had this weird calculus where war spending wasn't counted in the budget -he kept both his wars off the books. So their increase in the debt was there but never acknowledge. Obama acknowledge it, put it in the regular budget and counted the debt for it. This created a massive jump in the official debt figure early in his administration but it wasn't money HE borrowed, it was money Bush borrowed and didn't count.
Really ? Johnson ? The one guy running who was even dumber than Trump ? Whose knowledge of foreign affairs (the single largest power and responsibility of the president) was completely non-existent. Who tried to downplay that with "I can't bomb them if I don't know where they are" (something that never stopped Bush) and who proposed the most regressive taxplan in world history ?
The man would have literally starved half of America to death by making food unaffordable. People SHOULD have not voted for him because he is an idiot but as voting for Trump shows - that doesn't stop people - but they DID smartly avoid voting for him because they like food. Boy do Americans love food.
Actually looking at both this story and that appointment shows you the true Trump. You cannot trust anything he says because he says whatever he thinks you want to hear. Trust what he does - his actions reveal a rapist, racist con-man who doesn't give a fuck about consequences. Why would he care about climate change ? He is 70 years old, he won't live to see the worst of it. So why let it stand in the way of personal enrichment.
You think he will stop the Dakota line from trampling over the rights of the native americans whose land is being destroyed without their consent to build it ? Even Hillary and Obama have been weak on it... but Trump - he'll send in the big guns to make SURE the line gets built... because he is a major investor in the line.
The president should not be a businessman, by definition it means he has incentives that WILL go against the rights of citizens.
It's interesting how these people think... yet they overlook all the most obvious clues. The very first thing Musolini and Hitler did when they got into power was to take out the labour unions, the very next thing was to take out the socialists.
Remind me again... which party is opposed to *all* socialism and hates labour unions ?
Cromwell was (deservedly) executed for treason.
“I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” - Franklin Delano Rooseveldt (you know - the president who actually fought a war with fascists). That is what happened here.
Trumpism meets every requirement for the definition of a fascist movement. http://www.nybooks.com/article... He meets them in spades.
And as for his flip-flopping, that's actually a standard practise with fascists, Terry Pratchett described it another way:
"You told them a lie and when it was no longer useful you told them a different lie and told them they were progressing on the path to wisdom and they followed believing that at the center of all the lies they would find truth. And little by little they accept the unacceptable" - Guards, Guards.
Apparently - in America competence and experience is now actually a disqualifier for holding office. Nobody wants to vote for the "washington insiders"... an odd sentiment you do not find in any other field. Seriously when did you ever hear anybody say "I am having a heart attack -please get me anybody who is NOT a doctor !"
>It was like they were all super villains not a bunch of terrorists that have been waterboarded all over the place and probably can't even think straight anymore.
Considering all these people are held without trial - NONE of them are terrorists. In the free world people are innocent until proven guilty and not a single Gitmo inmate has been proven guilty of anything, including terrorism.
The problem with closing Gitmo was what to do with the inmates. If you bring them onshore you have to give them trials. Some (perhaps many) will not make bail, many would be convicted - that means they have to be housed as prisoners afterward, the others you have to release.
That creates a double problem. No congressman wanted to have a bunch of convicted ex-gitmo terrorists in the prisons in his state. Nobody wanted his prisons to be housing the awaiting-trial ones, and nobody wanted the released ones living in their state.
Since the whole damn congress went NIMBY about it - Obama had nowhere to put the people in Gitmo - which made closing it basically impossible.
Now if congress wasn't completely obstructionist this may have been possible to work around. For example one may have sent a tribunal of judges to the Island to hold public trials there - with JAG lawyers prosecuting using whatever evidence they were holding them on. The judges would have a grand-jury style trial and then you only release the ones who are found innocent and the rest are already in jail. It would mean exploiting the "not America" loophole of Bush one last time to get around the bail laws but at least you could have gotten the innocent ones out and been able to say nobody is held without trial. That wouldn't be a 'closure' of Gitmo but it would have been a huge improvement and probably an acceptable compromise - unfortunately, not one Obama could take without congressional approval.
No. Just because you value the field of their contributions more, does not mean that her contribution to her field was any less - or even that the field is any less important. And it's not your decision to make.
If you want to choose who gets presidential medals of freedom - run for president.
Portability was a factor but not nearly on the level you describe - note how operating systems remained in machine code right until the end of the 1960s and nobody tried to write one in a compiled language until Kernighan and Ritchie. Consider also the language that Hopper created: Cobol. A language that remains universally hated by programmers, second only to BASIC in horribleness for a trained coder - yet it was incredibly successful. It was written to look like the kind of forms that business executives filled in regularly and to make it possible for them to write their own code.
That never actually happened very much -but it did get executives to start seeing the value in programming and COBOL became a major industry. To this day there are giant systems at many corporations (especially banks) that are written in COBOL and programmers who can work the language (and stomach it) get paid very high salaries (not least because so few are willing to learn it - most of us would rather earn less than have to fill in forms designed for burocrats to write an algorithm).
COBOL's problems aside - it's design does show one absolutely clear intention: user-friendliness. One could argue that trying to make programming userfriendly by analogy to burocracy was a wrong way to approach it, but you can't argue that, that was the intention. Hopper was clearly trying for userfriendliness and in that regard was way ahead of her time.
She was also involved in numerous other groundbreaking things. My critique of COBOL should in no way be read as disparaging to it's creator - on the contrary, it was a major breakthrough and while COBOL itself was a terrible language the concept of a compiler that could turn a human-readable text into code would change computing forever. Portability was just one of the many advantages that came out of it. Hopper definitely belongs in the same class as Ada Lovelace or Alan Turing as one of the principle drivers of the computing revolution.
>I thought the argument was to eliminate all carbon based fuels and so I used fuel oil and other liquid fuel as an example and/or how to address one aspect of the problem.
That wasn't the discussion - though it is the goal, in the case of cars - I already told you how to do that. Use electric. An electric car on fossil fuel grids is already a good 60% less carbon being used (because electric engines are far more efficient than internal combustion engines so you get a lot more miles from the same carbon) but the ideal is to charge an electric car from a non-carbon-based generator.
>That is either a vary narrow definition of a renewable fuel or you have just told the entire fuel ethanol and bio-diesel industries that they do not exist.
Neither of those are renewable, and they don't help with the actual task very much either. The only thing those industries has ever done is to make food more expensive. They are not a good thing. Now the fact that they are made from current plants mean they are probably close to carbon neutral (though I suspect the processes of making them into fuel throw that off) - but they are simply not a very practical solution. Not least because it's using potential food to fuel cars. That said- they do work very well, and countries like Brazil has switched over almost entirely. There is no evidence that they are bad for cars.
>Sell this alternative as a means to run small campsite generators
That's already being done. Hell people are powering their homes with renewables. The initial investment is absolutely worth the cost - and will only get cheaper.
>As infrastructure and technology develops move up to municipal power
Again: this is already being done. But it's happening much slower than simplistic economics would predict because the municipalities already invested billions in existing fossil fuel infrastructures (sunk cost fallacy) and the companies that supply and run that infrastructure would rather bribe politicians than lose the revenue.
> The US federal government can't say a whole lot about the fuels a city burns
Indeed, and where the voters have sufficient influence - they move happens much faster. This is why Burlington is on 100% renewable energy.
>well I doubt that they can buy them all off
You underestimate how much money they are willing to spend, to protect what they already have - and you greatly overestimate how expensive politicians are. The only ones they can't buy off are the ones who sincerely refuse to sell - this is an incredibly rare (but not non-existent) attribute in politicians. Then again - lots of countries are doing this, where voters are less easily swayed by propaganda than in the US (where you can make voters do anything if you talk about God - the rest of the world is a lot less religious). Denmark is ahead of schedule to be on 100% renewables in 15 years.
>They need fuel to produce that electricity
No. They don't. Many use fuel - but all you need it energy and energy doesn't always come in the form of fuel. Indeed renewable energy can be generally defined as energy that does not come in the form of fuel.
> dismissing my argument because you fail to see the analogy
You're making a stupid argument. More-over you're apparently expecting me to believe that fossil fuel companies are all run by idiots. They spend a fortune on lobbying and propaganda - this is not a secret, it's widely reported fact, billions get pumped into it. Are you telling me they are investing all that money in propaganda if they aren't getting (or at least expecting) a return on their investment ? You're seriously expecting me to believe that fossil fuel companies are bad at making money ? So bad they would keep throwing good money after bad on an investment that wasn't paying off.
They keep funding all that propaganda because it IS paying off.
Because this isn't dice. It's more like roulette - except the board is the size of the solar system, there are hundreds of millions of balls on it (we don't even know exactly how many), we can't see most of the board and there are magnets under some of the numbers that actually attract the balls to them and the magnets aren't all the same strength.
We're not discussing IF a ball will land on 16, it's a certainty that it will - balls have landed there before and will land there again. You're trying to make estimates of when it will happen next - and we simply cannot do so. The solar system is chaos theory in action (indeed chaos theory originated from the repeated failed attempts to predict the future state of the solar system) - it simply does not lend itself to that type of prediction, the prediction horizon for asteroids is just too short, and since we're not even *looking* at most of them - we can't know anything about them.
Einstein once famously said that it's impossible to win at roulette without cheating the board, he was referring to the fact that maths and statistics cannot give you useful probabilities for that kind of system. You can win at blackjab by being good at counting, you can't do that with roulette. The only system that works for roulette is to measure the ball speed repeatedly and calculate it for that specific throw - and even then it tells you nothing about the next throw - and we're talking about a board with hundreds of millions of balls (that even collide with each other sometimes) travelling at thousands of miles per hour, with deceleration so slow we can't measure it... that mostly we aren't even looking at.
So the whole time we were talking about power production - and when you lose the argument you suddenly switch the topic vehicle fuel - which is ironic because there the alternative is already on the market, new companies are investing in it and the current companies ARE already investing in it as well - and have vehicles using it. The alternative for vehicles is electricity.
There is no such thing as a renewable fuel for an internal combustion engine - the very concept would violate the law of conservation of energy and the law of conservation of mass. What you can do is use an electric car and charge it from renewable sources.
But we were never talking about vehicles - which are unique among fossil fuels, we were discussing electricity production.
You sir, are a dishonest debater who tries to shift goalposts and change topics when you lose and hope people won't notice.
>I just don't understand how any oil company lobbying can prevent an alternative from appearing
That's why it hasn't - oil companies couldn't prevent electric cars from appearing. Right now the upfront costs is still counting against them. Though they cost less than comparable cars over their lifetime (and that's WITHOUT counting externalities) - people still balk at the upfront cost. But then, cars are not energy sources - they are energy CONSUMERS. We were discussing power plants.
I gave numbers for South Africa - for large scale plants, not home solar (which has very different pricing) and not American.
Here is one of several studies on the topic: http://www.dailymaverick.co.za...
This one done by the CSIR - the Center for Scientific Investigation and Research, probably the premier hard science organisation in South Africa - it's about equivalent to the USA's NSF. Note that though the CSIR is government funded -their findings actually harm the case by the government for investing in nuclear and coal, which strongly suggests it's not biased - since if they were biased they would want to defend that decision (which is making a lot of corrupt government officials very rich).
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za...
That's another study, by an independent research organisation with no ties to either government or industry.
Home solar, where viable is significantly cheaper than coal for consumers anyway. In fact the price difference (at least here in South Africa) is so massive that you can BORROW the money to install it, and 7 years later borrow MORE money to replace the batteries - and STILL pay less than if you had used coal all along - since the monthly repayments and interest will be less than the cost of the same amount of coal power. My dad is an electrical engineer specialising in project planning and finance - he does these sort of calculations for a living, for very wealthy customers who would sue his company into bankruptcy if they lost money by following his advice.
>Why would people vote in politicians who are likely to do things that are contrary to their own interests?
Ask that of the 47% who just voted in Donald Trump. The odds of him doing anything that benefits them are between zero and none. The odds of him using the presidency as his own personal piggy bank are about 100% - he has already begun and he isn't even inaugurated yet. People vote for all sorts of reasons - and regularly vote against their own interests. Hell haven't you noticed that the republican party (the party of ending welfare) is the strongest in the states where the most people require welfare to live ? And that welfare receivers are overwhelmingly republican (white welfare receivers anyway) ?
People often vote against their own interests - or they simply don't agree with you about what is in their best interest, or they think another interest is more urgent. You could call them wrong to think that, but it's not something that will ever change.
>If, as you say, Australian politicians ended up enacting legislation that was unpopular enough to destroy their careers, why were the Australian people stupid enough to elect them in the first place?
For starters ? They had no idea the politicians were going to do that. The laws were passed by a conservative government - who had nothing of the kind in their platform and no intention of doing so when they were elected. They were passed after a mass shooting (the last one Australia has ever had by the way) when the politicians, in light of the tragedy, felt they had a duty they had not previous considered.
So whether you consider gun control in the voters interest or not (I do by the way), they believed they were acting in the best interest of the voters, enough voters disagreed to destroy some careers. Those voters were probably wrong - or at the very least- have come to believe they were wrong themselves, because in the subsequent election - although those careers were destroyed, politicians running on a platform of repealing the law couldn't get elected either. They punished the politicians for doing something unpopular - but they didn't want to have it undone either.
> Although thegarbz seems to be refuting the example anyway.
thegarbz said nothing that contradicted what I said, he just thought he did.
>Blaming politicians is just another excuse for not taking responsibility.
So politicians are automatically blameless ? Taking responsibility does not mean politicians are not responsible for what they do in office. You can choose who you vote for - but you can't force them to do what they said they will after wards. The best you can do is not vote for them again. Whether that is a deterrent depends entirely on whether they consider another term to be worth more or less than what they want to do.
Yes, that's what I said. I said the politicians in conservative states were punished. I never said anything at all about the PM.
>So, the people that are in energy to make money would rather lobby Congress to keep out competing energy sources than just invest in them?
When they already have billions invested in current technology and infrastructure ? Of course. And not congress so much - local and state governments mostly - since they are the ones making the purchases. They would be morons NOT to.
> Perhaps you think that the people with the "newer better" energy sources are not in it for the money?
I never said that, sure they are, that doesn't mean they are competing on an even playing field however.
>As if they are developing these energy sources only out of the goodness of their hearts.
Don't project your issues onto me. I am sure renewable energy companies want to make money. I never suggested anything else.
>The only thing I can think of that can keep the profiteers from investing in a new energy source that would be cheaper and greener is that the "greenies" have some sort of monopoly on this technology but they would rather do without the investment of the profit seekers because there is some sort of ideological disparity keeping the "greenies" from taking their money. In that case it's not the profiteers keeping this technology from us but the "greenies" that would rather see the world burn than take their "dirty" money.
Your lack of imagination does not represent the limits of the real world. Nobody wants to see billions they've invested into something suddenly stop yielding new revenues and have to reinvest in something else. It's like you think fossil fuel companies either don't want to get rich or don't know how to (hint: throwing billions of dollars away is not a good way to get rich). Of course as renewables get ever cheaper - the decision becomes less and less sensible, but sadly even the best businessmen tend to suffer from the sunk-cost fallacy.
>Why would the government play along with this?
Because the US has made bribing politicians completely legal - and it happens everywhere else too.
> Don't they have an inherent interest in clean air and water?
The elites never pay their share of the externalities. They never live in the poluted neighbourhoods, they never drink the poluted water. They have no interest in protecting the plebs.They do have an interest in getting nice big campaign checks from the companies though.
>This sounds like the conspiracy theory that the big auto makers are sitting on technology for fuel efficient vehicles but keep it to themselves out of some profit motive. That just does not add up since that profit only lasts so long as no one else figures it out, after which they will be left with nothing as everyone switches once the technology is revealed. The greater profit is to bring this technology to market as quickly as possible because of the billions of people on this planet every single one would choose the cheaper product if all else is equal.
Again - you're reading things I never wrote or suggested. Your fantasies about my argument do not represent actual weaknesses in my argument.
>These profiteers are spending money on lobbying the government to keep cheap energy from the government? And the government is playing along? When both could just as easily profit more by bringing this technology to market? If you honestly believe this then I think you've been off your meds. You need your head checked and your dosage adjusted.
No - they can NOT just as easily profit by bringing it to market. It would mean putting their own current profitable investments out of business. Nobody likes to do that. Nobody who has invested billions into something wants to just throw it away and stop earning revenues when something better comes along -it's much easier to try and block the something better with lobbying and propaganda. Cheaper and more profitable too.
The profits you can protect by keeping renewables out exceed what you can make from investing in them if you're a fossil fuel company - because keeping them out
I considered that one - though I'm not sure it qualifies. He made a tactical political sacrifice but it didn't cost him his career and secured his legacy. The party lost out, but it had enough support in the north at the time to be a worthwhile trade-off.
I'm not diminishing that factor - giving up the south greatly reduced the democrats power in congress to this day, greatly reduced the number of times they would later take the white house. Pretty much doomed Hubert Humphrey's chance of succeeding Johnson. It was a major sacrifice for a nobel goal.
But it wasn't quite personal. The real pain wouldn't be felt by Johnson himself.
I'd call that the mid-level point - and mine what comes after that.