Fair enough though I hope you realize that very few people care about this at all.
There seems to be a prejudice by some people using Android Devices that if its not an iDevice, it must be garbage.
There are really good Android devices but there are enough really bad ones to generate some snobbery by those who don't know any better. A huge number of Android phones are cheaply made Me Too devices that don't work very well, are poorly made, never get updated, and are comparatively a pain in the butt to use. Apple's iOS devices have their flaws to be sure but even the worst of them are still pretty solid devices. Far more variability in the Android world.
From my experience if it does use iOS, its garbage, as I can't get it to integreate with the rest of my network infrastructure the way I can with Android Devices.
How so? If you bought some Android specific hardware that might make sense but it's not hard to get iPhones to play nice with most setups unless you just can't be bothered. Perhaps you've tied yourself too tightly to Google's ecosystem?
A way to fix this would be Android Phones that cosmetically look like iPhones. Or having the option to put Android on an iPhone.
How would making a Android phone that looks like an iPhone fix any network integration issues? What would be the point of that? You're talking about aesthetics, not function.
Convex. The main surface of the screen is still flat, but the edges wrap around, so instead of a bezel, you have additional touchscreen area. At least that's how it works on a Samsung Galaxy Edge. You get an extra row of icons down the side of the phone.
Maybe it works great in practice but that sounds like it would be super annoying as well as causing issues protecting the screen from damage. I can easily envision accidentally pushing "buttons" all the time. This happens enough and damage to the device might become intentional rather than accidental. Maybe it's great but this sounds like a "solution" in search of a problem.
Because it's risky, takes years and takes expertise that Apple doesn't have.
Apple doesn't have to have the expertise. They just play the role of interested investor. They have enough money they can easily hire expertise should they need some. They don't even have to actually own them to cause their competition a lot of discomfort. Just invest in companies working on the tech and get some special deals in return.
There are only a few foundries that CAN produce what Apple wants.
Exactly. So why not buy them up or make a "strategic investment" if they don't want to actually own them outright? Get what they need made and ensure that companies that want to use OLED displays for phones have to kiss Apple's ring first. Not saying this would be good for us as end users (it wouldn't) but Apple would be foolish to not seriously consider something like this.
There have been several speculations that Apple hasn't built phones with OLED screens because nobody can make enough of them...
Which raises the question why Apple isn't investing like hell in building and possibly owning capacity that they can then monopolize? If I were Tim Cook I'd be funneling some of those billions in reserve cash towards owning and/or controlling production capacity in OLED manufacturing in some fashion. The only reason I can think of that this wouldn't make sense is just that the profit margins might be too thin if they can't corner the market.
How much does it cost to integrate all these transaction processors, in both programmer wages and cost of hardware on which to test?
Who cares? It's a problem the company building the shopping cart should have to solve basically once. And that company is rarely the merchant themselves. There might be some transaction fees involved but so what? There already are such fees every time you use a credit card and people clearly don't care about that. The alternative is tons of lost sales and customer irritation at a terrible shopping experience. The question isn't what it will cost, the question is why aren't they already spending the money to fix the problem?
Companies that don't get the importance of providing a great mobile shopping experience are going to get eaten alive by companies that do understand this. If they aren't already investing heavily in solving the problem they're going to wish like hell they had in a the near future when Amazon and the rest who do get it bludgeon them to death.
I keep seeing companies trying to make curved screens and I really don't get why. I don't see any obvious tangible way this would improve the utility of my phone. It was a useless "feature" in HDTVs and I see no reason why it would be any more useful in my phone. Does anyone have any idea why I should want a curved screen? What tangible and meaningful benefits would one provide? It seems like needless complication with no compensating benefit.
For the most part this is correct. Amazon has a pretty useful mobile app. Apple does a pretty good job too. eBay and Starbucks seem to have a clue. Probably a few others but most mobile purchasing apps and website just suck sour frog ass. They're just terrible. Terrible at finding products, terrible at communicating information, inconvenient to pay for them, and badly designed in general. So guess which ones get the majority of my money when I am using my phone?
And have half your customers leave because "your favorite" happens not to coincidentally match theirs.
Did you give it a moment's thought? Vendors don't just have to work with one transaction processor. If they used ApplePay, Android Pay, and Paypal they could easily cover most of the popular options. Visa, Amazon, etc wouldn't be hard either. Companies that can't be bothered to give their customers options to make buying easy will lose sales and rightly so.
And I didn't even get in to what a cluster**** it is to actually search for products on many mobile devices. Lots of companies are seriously clueless about how to make a website work well on mobile.
But your use of "stuck" as well as "needlessly annoying and/or difficult" implies that there's something wrong with the "shopping cart" model. What has obsoleted it?
There is nothing wrong with the shopping cart concept per-se. The problem is that most of them are terribly clumsy even on a desktop computer. On a mobile device they are nigh unusable. Especially if it is with a company you do not regularly do business with. I should almost NEVER have to enter my home address, shipping address, or payment info to make a purchase on my phone or tablet. Guest purchases should be almost as easy as purchases with companies you regularly do business with. Shockingly few companies really grasp this concept.
But a lot of people don't want to spend time creating an account with a merchant to which they do not foresee returning.
Agreed. So companies should partner with a transaction processor so that they do not have make a new account for a one time purchase. If I have an iPhone I've already got a business relationship with Apple so I'd be fine with merchant's offering ApplePay. Or Amazon's equivalent. Or Google's. Or... you get the point. Pick your favorite among the various top 10 or so options. Visa, MC, Amex, Discover, etc should be making this as easy as possible. I have ZERO interest in creating a new account for every bloody merchant out there. Make the transaction easy and give me a reason to want to come back to your store if you want recurring business from me.
I think its possible to get people to buy on their phones but it has to be seamless and typing into web forms is not desirable.
Agreed. The only companies I've seen get mobile purchasing to a good approximation of right are Amazon, Apple and Starbucks. Pretty much every other mobile purchasing experience I've had has been needlessly annoying and/or difficult. There may be a few others doing it well that I haven't dealt with but most seem to be stuck in the 1990s with their purchasing "experience" and shopping carts.
91% of the profits share, would be fine, if they also had 91% of the market share, sadly they have ~40% of the market share.
Why is that sad? Not all customers are equally profitable. Companies that presume otherwise usually find themselves in a bankruptcy court rather quickly.
So either their product is more expensive than their competitors, or they have massive efficiencies that their competitors don't... (or some combination).
Apple phones ARE relatively expensive. This has never been a debate. Obviously most people that buy them find them to be good value for the money. The fact that they charge more than some others is irrelevant. If a company cannot sell something for enough money to make a profit then it is an indisputable fact that people don't value what they are selling.
And yes Apple does realize some cost efficiencies from their size which few others in their market can match.
You DO NOT want the company you are buying things from to make record profits.
As long as I'm getting what I consider good value for money I don't care at all if they are making a big profit. The only way Apple or any company makes a big profit is if people like what they are getting for the price. If it wasn't worth the price then they would be forced to charge less. Apple products are a completely discretionary purchase.
It means that they are taking a higher percentage of your money than any of their competitors.
Which is irrelevant if I am getting a higher value for my money as well. Obviously a lot of people think Apple gives better value for the money than the alternatives. You don't have to agree with them for yourself but that doesn't mean they are wrong.
But, like walking through Las Vegas... all that show and money to blow on things comes from one source... people like you paying over the odds for their products.
Clearly people don't find that to be a problem. Yes Vegas wasn't built on winners but people keep coming so obviously they feel they are getting good value for what they spend. If it's not your thing then do something else and I assure you nobody will care or think less of you for it.
MPH ? Why not Avoidupois system insteand ? Or maybe ancient egyptian mesurement system.
You must be new here. The US not using the metric system has been discussed ad-nauseum here on Slashdot for many years. While most of us would like the US to go metric it's not going to change any time soon so I suggest you get over it. Most of the readership on Slashdot is in the US so most of us are perfectly comfortable with MPH as a unit. Those who aren't used to mph as a unit are mostly smart enough to handle the conversion. Roughly 0-60mph = 0-100kph.
And as the laws in all 50 states declare it a privileged, my point still stands.
Wasn't arguing that your conclusion was invalid. Merely that your interpretation of how the law works was incorrect. For the most part the Constitution basically assumes Citizens have rights and it enumerates ways in which it restricts the government's ability to limit these rights. The 9th amendment also says in essence that rights may exist even when not enumerated. If you think that is unimportant then you are wrong. In principle driving could be considered a right even though as you properly point out we do not currently consider it one.
Thanks for being a pedantic ass, despite the fact you're still wrong.
First, I don't know where I was sufficiently rude to you to justify you calling me an ass but you are not a very nice person for doing so. Second, I am absolutely NOT wrong about anything I said. The Constitution IS mute on the subject of driving. If you want to call that pedantic fine but none of it is wrong.
What about them? Believe it or not operating your phone in a moving vehicle wasn't an option for close to 100 years. It's only in the last 30 that it has become a thing. I assure you that the passengers would survive without their smartphone fix for the duration of the drive. I spent most of my early driving years without any sort of mobile phone and not coincidentally 100% of us were not killed by people playing with their phones.
The solution here is rather simple. It's called real fucking punishment for the people hurting or killing other humans on the road in incidents where distracted driving was clearly the cause.
If you want to see how effective this is you merely need to look at drunk driving laws. It would have some effect but it wouldn't eliminate the problem. It also doesn't bring back to life the people that were killed by those who chose to behave irresponsibly.
The only solution that would actually work would be to basically restrict ALL phones in a car that is determined to be driving on a road automatically with no user option to override. This is technologically feasible. Yes this is an (overly?) harsh solution but realistically it's the only thing that would actually work. Depending on people to do it voluntarily is wishful thinking and demonstrably doesn't work. Depending on after the fact punishment doesn't bring back to life the people who were killed.
...between being the driver and passenger's device device?
It won't be able to know. There is no practical means I'm aware of to make the distinction. The only solution would be to disable all devices on that vehicle while it is in motion since there is no means to actually tell the difference.
Technically, nothing in the constitution gives you any right to drive
You have that backwards. Nothing in the constitution denies you the right to drive. The Constitution is mute on the subject of driving and anything it is mute about is left to the States and the citizens to decide for themselves.
Think of it as Evolution in Action. Those who use their apps while driving, will tend to remove themselves from the gene pool. ..
Except that they tend to remove other people from the gene pool who weren't dumb enough to play with their phone at the same time. So the gene pool is not improved because it has the same net number of dumb asses as before the accident.
Then respect the conservatives' that the budget won't cover all that, but we CAN afford to do A, B, and C.
Baloney. The conservatives NEVER argue to cut the things that actually matter from the budget. They just borrow the money instead of raising taxes but are just as irresponsible. Conservatives NEVER bring up cutting social security, medicare/medicaid, or the defense budget which together account for about 3/4 of the federal budget. Any politician that claims to be about fiscal responsibility who doesn't talk about how they are going to cut the defense budget or medicare is lying through their teeth about what the budget will cover. They are unwilling to make the hard choices and cut the programs that matter.
You could cut every cent of every program except for medicare, medicaid, defense and social security and you STILL couldn't balance the budget. So anyone who talks about "cutting pork" without discussing those four programs is full of shit about being fiscally responsible.
I have observed that liberals tend to be idealists, conservatives realists.
Complete nonsense. Conservatives aren't realists at all. They just have different ideals than the liberals but they at least as unrealistic if not more so. Many conservative ideals are not grounded in pragmatism at all. Evidence supported by data seems to be unknown to a good portion of them. Many conservative ideals come straight out of religious dogma which has no basis in objective reality.
I'm not saying they are necessarily better or worse but to pretend that conservatives are more "realists" than liberals is just ridiculous. They are nothing of the sort as a general proposition
Bernie Sanders' supporter here. I didn't vote on Nov. 8th, because I simply couldn't back a lobbyist like Clinton.
You have that right. Bear in mind that by doing so you gave your vote to someone else and they used it to elect Trump. In essence you voted for Trump whether or not you meant to. If that wasn't the outcome you desired then perhaps next time you'll suck it up and vote.
Instead of complaining, next time choose the right candidate at the Democratic primaries.
So because your favorite candidate didn't get the nomination you acted like a child and refused to participate further. Very mature.
The president has control over the economy but not in the sense of controlling it year to year.
The president generally speaking has very, very little direct control over the economy. Even indirectly he doesn't really control much. Congress controls the budget, the Federal Reserve controls the money supply. All the president can do is direct the treasury, work on trade policy and foreign relations and a few other minor levers but if the economy goes in the tank there isn't much the president can do about it.
However, the push to expand the national debt will effect the U.S. economy greatly in coming years. In effect, the U.S. borrowed against future prosperity.
Congress controls the budget not the president. If we are spending beyond our means that is 100% the fault of Congress.
People who make arguments like that point to the early century dictatorships like Germany or Italy, without considering that neither of those countries had any real democratic tradition, like the US has had for two centuries with our republic.
Ask some black people how well that has worked out for them for most of our history. How about the Japanese American citizens during WWII? Just because we have a tradition of democracy doesn't mean our leaders can't do a bunch of really awful things to a lot of people.
The Republican establishment loathes Trump.
So what? Trump has promised to give them a lot of what they want and as long as he does they will swallow their distaste and get on with doing whatever cartoon villainy they intended. They're promising to take away health insurance from millions, they are promising to restrict reproductive rights of women, they are promising to restrict the rights of workers to organize, they are promising to increase an already outrageously oversize military and surveillance state, they are promising to deport millions of people. Trump agrees with them on all of that. Hard to see where there is going to be any real friction.
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I'd prefer an unlocked bootloader.
Fair enough though I hope you realize that very few people care about this at all.
There seems to be a prejudice by some people using Android Devices that if its not an iDevice, it must be garbage.
There are really good Android devices but there are enough really bad ones to generate some snobbery by those who don't know any better. A huge number of Android phones are cheaply made Me Too devices that don't work very well, are poorly made, never get updated, and are comparatively a pain in the butt to use. Apple's iOS devices have their flaws to be sure but even the worst of them are still pretty solid devices. Far more variability in the Android world.
From my experience if it does use iOS, its garbage, as I can't get it to integreate with the rest of my network infrastructure the way I can with Android Devices.
How so? If you bought some Android specific hardware that might make sense but it's not hard to get iPhones to play nice with most setups unless you just can't be bothered. Perhaps you've tied yourself too tightly to Google's ecosystem?
A way to fix this would be Android Phones that cosmetically look like iPhones. Or having the option to put Android on an iPhone.
How would making a Android phone that looks like an iPhone fix any network integration issues? What would be the point of that? You're talking about aesthetics, not function.
Convex. The main surface of the screen is still flat, but the edges wrap around, so instead of a bezel, you have additional touchscreen area. At least that's how it works on a Samsung Galaxy Edge. You get an extra row of icons down the side of the phone.
Maybe it works great in practice but that sounds like it would be super annoying as well as causing issues protecting the screen from damage. I can easily envision accidentally pushing "buttons" all the time. This happens enough and damage to the device might become intentional rather than accidental. Maybe it's great but this sounds like a "solution" in search of a problem.
Because it's risky, takes years and takes expertise that Apple doesn't have.
Apple doesn't have to have the expertise. They just play the role of interested investor. They have enough money they can easily hire expertise should they need some. They don't even have to actually own them to cause their competition a lot of discomfort. Just invest in companies working on the tech and get some special deals in return.
There are only a few foundries that CAN produce what Apple wants.
Exactly. So why not buy them up or make a "strategic investment" if they don't want to actually own them outright? Get what they need made and ensure that companies that want to use OLED displays for phones have to kiss Apple's ring first. Not saying this would be good for us as end users (it wouldn't) but Apple would be foolish to not seriously consider something like this.
There have been several speculations that Apple hasn't built phones with OLED screens because nobody can make enough of them...
Which raises the question why Apple isn't investing like hell in building and possibly owning capacity that they can then monopolize? If I were Tim Cook I'd be funneling some of those billions in reserve cash towards owning and/or controlling production capacity in OLED manufacturing in some fashion. The only reason I can think of that this wouldn't make sense is just that the profit margins might be too thin if they can't corner the market.
How much does it cost to integrate all these transaction processors, in both programmer wages and cost of hardware on which to test?
Who cares? It's a problem the company building the shopping cart should have to solve basically once. And that company is rarely the merchant themselves. There might be some transaction fees involved but so what? There already are such fees every time you use a credit card and people clearly don't care about that. The alternative is tons of lost sales and customer irritation at a terrible shopping experience. The question isn't what it will cost, the question is why aren't they already spending the money to fix the problem?
Companies that don't get the importance of providing a great mobile shopping experience are going to get eaten alive by companies that do understand this. If they aren't already investing heavily in solving the problem they're going to wish like hell they had in a the near future when Amazon and the rest who do get it bludgeon them to death.
I keep seeing companies trying to make curved screens and I really don't get why. I don't see any obvious tangible way this would improve the utility of my phone. It was a useless "feature" in HDTVs and I see no reason why it would be any more useful in my phone. Does anyone have any idea why I should want a curved screen? What tangible and meaningful benefits would one provide? It seems like needless complication with no compensating benefit.
Maybe everyone else's mobile app sucks?
For the most part this is correct. Amazon has a pretty useful mobile app. Apple does a pretty good job too. eBay and Starbucks seem to have a clue. Probably a few others but most mobile purchasing apps and website just suck sour frog ass. They're just terrible. Terrible at finding products, terrible at communicating information, inconvenient to pay for them, and badly designed in general. So guess which ones get the majority of my money when I am using my phone?
This. I don't trust my smartphone at all. I won't do anything more critical than surf facebook on it.
It's adorable that you honestly believe your PC to be somehow more secure, particularly if it runs Windows.
And have half your customers leave because "your favorite" happens not to coincidentally match theirs.
Did you give it a moment's thought? Vendors don't just have to work with one transaction processor. If they used ApplePay, Android Pay, and Paypal they could easily cover most of the popular options. Visa, Amazon, etc wouldn't be hard either. Companies that can't be bothered to give their customers options to make buying easy will lose sales and rightly so.
And I didn't even get in to what a cluster**** it is to actually search for products on many mobile devices. Lots of companies are seriously clueless about how to make a website work well on mobile.
But your use of "stuck" as well as "needlessly annoying and/or difficult" implies that there's something wrong with the "shopping cart" model. What has obsoleted it?
There is nothing wrong with the shopping cart concept per-se. The problem is that most of them are terribly clumsy even on a desktop computer. On a mobile device they are nigh unusable. Especially if it is with a company you do not regularly do business with. I should almost NEVER have to enter my home address, shipping address, or payment info to make a purchase on my phone or tablet. Guest purchases should be almost as easy as purchases with companies you regularly do business with. Shockingly few companies really grasp this concept.
But a lot of people don't want to spend time creating an account with a merchant to which they do not foresee returning.
Agreed. So companies should partner with a transaction processor so that they do not have make a new account for a one time purchase. If I have an iPhone I've already got a business relationship with Apple so I'd be fine with merchant's offering ApplePay. Or Amazon's equivalent. Or Google's. Or... you get the point. Pick your favorite among the various top 10 or so options. Visa, MC, Amex, Discover, etc should be making this as easy as possible. I have ZERO interest in creating a new account for every bloody merchant out there. Make the transaction easy and give me a reason to want to come back to your store if you want recurring business from me.
I think its possible to get people to buy on their phones but it has to be seamless and typing into web forms is not desirable.
Agreed. The only companies I've seen get mobile purchasing to a good approximation of right are Amazon, Apple and Starbucks. Pretty much every other mobile purchasing experience I've had has been needlessly annoying and/or difficult. There may be a few others doing it well that I haven't dealt with but most seem to be stuck in the 1990s with their purchasing "experience" and shopping carts.
91% of the profits share, would be fine, if they also had 91% of the market share, sadly they have ~40% of the market share.
Why is that sad? Not all customers are equally profitable. Companies that presume otherwise usually find themselves in a bankruptcy court rather quickly.
So either their product is more expensive than their competitors, or they have massive efficiencies that their competitors don't... (or some combination).
Apple phones ARE relatively expensive. This has never been a debate. Obviously most people that buy them find them to be good value for the money. The fact that they charge more than some others is irrelevant. If a company cannot sell something for enough money to make a profit then it is an indisputable fact that people don't value what they are selling.
And yes Apple does realize some cost efficiencies from their size which few others in their market can match.
You DO NOT want the company you are buying things from to make record profits.
As long as I'm getting what I consider good value for money I don't care at all if they are making a big profit. The only way Apple or any company makes a big profit is if people like what they are getting for the price. If it wasn't worth the price then they would be forced to charge less. Apple products are a completely discretionary purchase.
It means that they are taking a higher percentage of your money than any of their competitors.
Which is irrelevant if I am getting a higher value for my money as well. Obviously a lot of people think Apple gives better value for the money than the alternatives. You don't have to agree with them for yourself but that doesn't mean they are wrong.
But, like walking through Las Vegas... all that show and money to blow on things comes from one source... people like you paying over the odds for their products.
Clearly people don't find that to be a problem. Yes Vegas wasn't built on winners but people keep coming so obviously they feel they are getting good value for what they spend. If it's not your thing then do something else and I assure you nobody will care or think less of you for it.
MPH ? Why not Avoidupois system insteand ? Or maybe ancient egyptian mesurement system.
You must be new here. The US not using the metric system has been discussed ad-nauseum here on Slashdot for many years. While most of us would like the US to go metric it's not going to change any time soon so I suggest you get over it. Most of the readership on Slashdot is in the US so most of us are perfectly comfortable with MPH as a unit. Those who aren't used to mph as a unit are mostly smart enough to handle the conversion. Roughly 0-60mph = 0-100kph.
And as the laws in all 50 states declare it a privileged, my point still stands.
Wasn't arguing that your conclusion was invalid. Merely that your interpretation of how the law works was incorrect. For the most part the Constitution basically assumes Citizens have rights and it enumerates ways in which it restricts the government's ability to limit these rights. The 9th amendment also says in essence that rights may exist even when not enumerated. If you think that is unimportant then you are wrong. In principle driving could be considered a right even though as you properly point out we do not currently consider it one.
Thanks for being a pedantic ass, despite the fact you're still wrong.
First, I don't know where I was sufficiently rude to you to justify you calling me an ass but you are not a very nice person for doing so. Second, I am absolutely NOT wrong about anything I said. The Constitution IS mute on the subject of driving. If you want to call that pedantic fine but none of it is wrong.
what about the passengers ?
What about them? Believe it or not operating your phone in a moving vehicle wasn't an option for close to 100 years. It's only in the last 30 that it has become a thing. I assure you that the passengers would survive without their smartphone fix for the duration of the drive. I spent most of my early driving years without any sort of mobile phone and not coincidentally 100% of us were not killed by people playing with their phones.
The solution here is rather simple. It's called real fucking punishment for the people hurting or killing other humans on the road in incidents where distracted driving was clearly the cause.
If you want to see how effective this is you merely need to look at drunk driving laws. It would have some effect but it wouldn't eliminate the problem. It also doesn't bring back to life the people that were killed by those who chose to behave irresponsibly.
The only solution that would actually work would be to basically restrict ALL phones in a car that is determined to be driving on a road automatically with no user option to override. This is technologically feasible. Yes this is an (overly?) harsh solution but realistically it's the only thing that would actually work. Depending on people to do it voluntarily is wishful thinking and demonstrably doesn't work. Depending on after the fact punishment doesn't bring back to life the people who were killed.
...between being the driver and passenger's device device?
It won't be able to know. There is no practical means I'm aware of to make the distinction. The only solution would be to disable all devices on that vehicle while it is in motion since there is no means to actually tell the difference.
Technically, nothing in the constitution gives you any right to drive
You have that backwards. Nothing in the constitution denies you the right to drive. The Constitution is mute on the subject of driving and anything it is mute about is left to the States and the citizens to decide for themselves.
Think of it as Evolution in Action. Those who use their apps while driving, will tend to remove themselves from the gene pool. . .
Except that they tend to remove other people from the gene pool who weren't dumb enough to play with their phone at the same time. So the gene pool is not improved because it has the same net number of dumb asses as before the accident.
Then respect the conservatives' that the budget won't cover all that, but we CAN afford to do A, B, and C.
Baloney. The conservatives NEVER argue to cut the things that actually matter from the budget. They just borrow the money instead of raising taxes but are just as irresponsible. Conservatives NEVER bring up cutting social security, medicare/medicaid, or the defense budget which together account for about 3/4 of the federal budget. Any politician that claims to be about fiscal responsibility who doesn't talk about how they are going to cut the defense budget or medicare is lying through their teeth about what the budget will cover. They are unwilling to make the hard choices and cut the programs that matter.
You could cut every cent of every program except for medicare, medicaid, defense and social security and you STILL couldn't balance the budget. So anyone who talks about "cutting pork" without discussing those four programs is full of shit about being fiscally responsible.
I have observed that liberals tend to be idealists, conservatives realists.
Complete nonsense. Conservatives aren't realists at all. They just have different ideals than the liberals but they at least as unrealistic if not more so. Many conservative ideals are not grounded in pragmatism at all. Evidence supported by data seems to be unknown to a good portion of them. Many conservative ideals come straight out of religious dogma which has no basis in objective reality.
I'm not saying they are necessarily better or worse but to pretend that conservatives are more "realists" than liberals is just ridiculous. They are nothing of the sort as a general proposition
Bernie Sanders' supporter here. I didn't vote on Nov. 8th, because I simply couldn't back a lobbyist like Clinton.
You have that right. Bear in mind that by doing so you gave your vote to someone else and they used it to elect Trump. In essence you voted for Trump whether or not you meant to. If that wasn't the outcome you desired then perhaps next time you'll suck it up and vote.
Instead of complaining, next time choose the right candidate at the Democratic primaries.
So because your favorite candidate didn't get the nomination you acted like a child and refused to participate further. Very mature.
The president has control over the economy but not in the sense of controlling it year to year.
The president generally speaking has very, very little direct control over the economy. Even indirectly he doesn't really control much. Congress controls the budget, the Federal Reserve controls the money supply. All the president can do is direct the treasury, work on trade policy and foreign relations and a few other minor levers but if the economy goes in the tank there isn't much the president can do about it.
However, the push to expand the national debt will effect the U.S. economy greatly in coming years. In effect, the U.S. borrowed against future prosperity.
Congress controls the budget not the president. If we are spending beyond our means that is 100% the fault of Congress.
People who make arguments like that point to the early century dictatorships like Germany or Italy, without considering that neither of those countries had any real democratic tradition, like the US has had for two centuries with our republic.
Ask some black people how well that has worked out for them for most of our history. How about the Japanese American citizens during WWII? Just because we have a tradition of democracy doesn't mean our leaders can't do a bunch of really awful things to a lot of people.
The Republican establishment loathes Trump.
So what? Trump has promised to give them a lot of what they want and as long as he does they will swallow their distaste and get on with doing whatever cartoon villainy they intended. They're promising to take away health insurance from millions, they are promising to restrict reproductive rights of women, they are promising to restrict the rights of workers to organize, they are promising to increase an already outrageously oversize military and surveillance state, they are promising to deport millions of people. Trump agrees with them on all of that. Hard to see where there is going to be any real friction.