I doubt that the Congressional Republicans can agree among themselves what they want to do with running the government. They haven't been able to do that under Obama for eight years. As a moderate conservative, I expect some bloodletting between the different factions.
That's true, but it hardly means "Trump can't do squat".
Take this case: Trump can simply direct the FCC not to enforce net neutrality, the same way Obama directed the DEA not to enforce federal marijuana laws in states that chose to legalize.
As commander-in-chief of the armed forces Trump has very direct control over what the US military does. He could, for example, just announce that he would not order them to act in accordance with the requirements of the NATO alliance treaties. Poof, NATO is basically gone, even though the US still technically has an obligation to comply. And of course we've basically given the president carte blanche to declare and prosecute wars. Congress can deny funding, eventually, but that still leaves a lot of leeway. Oh, and Trump will have The Button and there's not a damned thing anyone could do to stop him from pressing it whenever he wanted, short of Congress pre-emptively legislating that the system be dismantled (and if Trump commanded the armed forces not to comply?).
On trade, the president can't set arbitrary tariffs, but he can arbitrarily set 15% tariffs for up to 90 days on whatever he wants, and he can just keep rotating those tariffs around. Or he could even direct the coast guard to simply stop incoming vessels and order them out of US waters. That would be a violation of international laws and trade treaties alike, but nothing could actually stop him from doing it, other than the refusal of the Coast Guard to carry the orders out. Maybe they'd stand up to him, dunno.
I could go on. Just think about every federal agency and about what kinds of orders a president could give them, keeping in mind that while the orders can't be to do anything illegal, they can be to do anything at all that is legal, regardless of the agency's intended mission, and ordering them to simply sit on their hands is almost always legal.
The bottom line is that our system is a presidential system, not a prime ministerial system. A president is actually not that far from a constitutional monarch in power, with the one enormous exception that it's not a lifetime job. Prime ministers are considerably more limited because they're subject to recall by parliament. Congress can have all the votes of "no confidence" it wants, the president is the president. They have to impeach him and they have to try him if they want him out... something that has never been done so there's a pretty heavy historical weight of precedent behind it. And the Republicans are *not* going to hand that sort of victory to the Democrats.
No, Trump can do one hell of a lot, regardless of what Congress wants. I'm not saying he will, but don't think he couldn't.
You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist.
Live and learn. Thank you. Of course, if you do disable it, Android uninstalls any and all updates for it, meaning that if you ever change your mind, the updates need to be downloaded and installed again. With luck, that will be one, big cumulative update, instead of having to do them all, one after the other.
Yes, it will be a single update, and no bigger than it has to be. Worst case, that first update is a download of an entirely new APK.
The one and only reason that Google can claim this is because every Android device comes with Chrome installed and you can't remove it.
You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist. Settings -> Apps -> Chrome -> Disable. You'll get a warning that disabling it may break other apps, but if you have another browser installed, and some app does get broken by Chrome being missing, that app is buggy and you should complain to the app vendor. The whole idea of "intents" is to allow apps to depend on one another without being tightly coupled.
Sure, you can install Firefox or some other browser instead, but even if you never ever use Chrome, it will still be there, wasting bandwidth on updates that will never get used
If you disable it, it will never be updated.
And, even if you select another browser as your default, you'll still get asked which browser to use every time you click on a link in an email, with Chrome selected instead of whatever you've picked as your default. (And, the checkbox to make it the default will also be checked.)
Umm, no. Your OEM messed something up if after you've set a different default it continues offering Chrome. And in any case, it can't be offered if you disabled it.
Also, Google is claiming *active* installs, meaning they're measuring installs that actually do get used, so none of what you said actually has any bearing on the article.
Of course, Chrome undoubtedly gets a boost on mobile by already being there, just as IE does on Windows. In both cases lots and lots of users never bother getting anything else. This is probably more true on Android than on Windows these days just because IE was so bad for so long that a lot of users got trained that the first thing you do on a new Windows machine is download Chrome and delete the IE icon. Since Chrome is actually a pretty decent browser on Android, that hasn't happened.
I wonder how much these geniuses spent to work out yet another statement of the bleeding obvious?
Meh. Lots of what is "bleeding obvious" turns out to be untrue. It's worth doing a study to check whether or not what seems obvious is actually the case.
The human body needs a few hours rest at least once every 24 hours. This is the time to safely charge these devices that maintain that charge for as least as long as you do, if not longer.
Bah.
I don't plug my Pixel XL in when I go to bed and it's actually really nice not to have to. I don't have any wires (or charging pads) cluttering my nightstand and I don't have to think about it. I also don't have to worry about my phone being "tethered" when I blearily pick it up to shut off the alarm. Thanks to pretty good battery life (I get close to two full days on a full charge) and fast charging, I really only plug my phone in when I get in the car. My phone gets connected to power when I place it in the dock in the car, and thanks to fast charging if I drive 30-60 minutes per day (which I almost always do), my phone never gets below about 60%. I almost never think about battery any more.
Why do I prefer that over plugging it in at night? The cleaner nightstand and not having to struggle with a wire when I'm half asleep are parts but it's mostly because I now charge my phone when it's convenient for me, not when the phone dictates.. I'm not constrained by needing large blocks of charging time, or even making sure that I charge every day. The combination of bigger battery and fast charging provides that freedom.
It is incredibly naive of Google to trust that third parties will follow the USB-C standard if there is money to be made in not following it.
Google has been doing this for several years now, and understands quite well what the incentives are and how the OEMs play the game.
If it is important enough to worry about then Google should be implementing measures to ensure that it will not work unless they follow the USB-C standard.
Not necessary. Right now the CDD is just saying STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, which Google knows perfectly well OEMs will ignore. That's why the CDD also added the warning that it might be REQUIRED in the future. The OEMs understand fully that when Google says "might" in this sort of context, they have to read it as "will", meaning the OEMs had better get on board with USB-C fast charging right now even though Google is giving them a little latitude to make the transition by not requiring it now.
Also, there's no need for Google to actually test all of the devices even after they make it a hard requirement. Plenty of people out there are capable of doing the tests, and if Google discovers that some OEM is claiming CDD compliance for a device that isn't compliant -- and Google will find out -- they can simply deny that OEM the right to use Google's trademarks or install Google's proprietary apps... including the Google Play Store app. That's a big stick and not one that OEMs can ignore.
If you bring up the topic of the homosexuality-pedophilia link to perform a thorough rebuttal, you're not giving weight or credence to that position
If you bring it up in order to perform a rebuttal, true. However, if you bring it up because that's a widely-held belief (from one side of the debate, but without empirical evidence) and then present the rebuttal because that's another widely-held belief (from the other side, which has empirical evidence) then you've written a balanced article.
As for values, there are actually real facts and solid points behind that, as well. A society should tolerate homosexuality as it does heterosexuality because tolerance is, from a scientific standpoint, a mature defense mechanism.
I never said otherwise. My point about debates which are purely value questions didn't include homosexuality, at least in modern societies.
Abortion has a lot of real facts surrounding it, as well, most notably [a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with the value that pro-lifers place on a fetus]
You're just missing the lifers' point in a detailed manner, trying to reason your way around their position and find a reductio ad absurdum counterargument to what isn't really their position. You can't actually refute it until you understand it, and when you understand it you'll know you can't refute it because it's fundamental, axiomatic, definitional. If you really want to understand the pro-life view you should study it, but the basic definition in question is that human life begins at conception. That imposes no duty to continual sex, so your reductio ad absurdum argument falls flat.
Magical thinking is a criteria for schizophrenia-spectrum psychiatric disorders.
You've never actually read from the DSM-IV, I see. It's clearly explained in the preface, and restated in many of the detailed disorder descriptions, that a diagnosis only applies when the behavior results in impaired ability to function in life, which is, of course, relative to a nominal "standard range of ability" to function, which is itself rather broad. I assume that by "magical thinking" in this context you're referring to religious belief. Since the majority of the human race engages in such magical thinking, it pretty much defines the standard range of ability.
So, that statement is really just "nyah, nyah, they're stoopid" dressed up in fancy words, with absolutely no more content than that behind it, but considerably more condescension. My takeaway: You're not only an asshole, you're a snobbish asshole who thinks he can cleverly insult people with words they won't understand.
But, hey, I'm an asshole too, sometimes. I won't hold it against you, except when I'm being an asshole.
It only looked like he had a chance to people who were completely incorrect in their interpretation of the race. He never actually had a chance.
Both the polls and the feeling on the ground in Utah disagreed with you a few weeks. But of course the polls were all sorts of wrong, and "feeling" is a very localized phenomenon and often misleading. Still, what else would you go on?
The virtual wall I had in mind was actually stricter enforcement on verification of correct documentation for employment, and harsher penalties for Americans who employ illegal aliens, not anything at the border itself. But that's just my idea, I don't pretend to have any idea what goes on in Trump's head (for which I think I'm grateful).
You're just debating the definition of "worst", which I'll grant isn't outright clear. As the leader of the world's only superpower Dubya had much greater scope for damage than Jackson did back when the US was barely out of the colonial stage and any one of several nations could have stomped us if they'd decided to spend what it took. But adjusting for scope, I think Jackson was worse. Dubya was stupid, but Jackson was stupid and mean.
If you didn't vote for Clinton then effectively you voted for Trump whether or not he actually got your vote.
Not true for McMullin voters in Utah. It looked like he had a real shot at getting the state's electoral votes. Then if all the other cards fell the right way that could have left no Electoral College winner and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives might have picked him over Trump, because the Republican party really isn't comfortable with him (for the obvious reason that he's not really a Republican and could well blacken the party's name, or even rip it apart -- of course picking McMullin might have done that last bit).
Anyway, long odds, but it could have happened. And Clinton wasn't going to get Utah's votes no matter what happened.
There was also a good reason for voting for Gary Johnson. Thanks to the level of dislike for Trump and Clinton, he got more nationwide support than third party candidates have seen in a while, and if he'd reached the 5% mark (it looks like he only got about 1%, so big miss) it would have given the Libertarian party federal funding for the next go-round. Could that have made the Libertarians a contender in 2020? Highly unlikely, but it would have given them a much larger place at the table, perhaps including representation in the debates. This was a particularly good option for libertarian-leaning people who live in states where the overall outcome was a foregone conclusion. The same could apply to other candidates for other parties, though it's pretty rare that one gets even as many votes as Johnson did.
In other words "crimes". Those are just two the categories of crimes under Common Law. Both were mentioned in the constitution because in the terminology of the day to say only "crimes" might have been misunderstood to include only "High Crimes", now more commonly called felonies in the United states. So "Misdemeanors" was added to clarify that the president can be impeached for lesser crimes as well.
and then does something that is a High Crime and Misdemeanor
Nowhere does it say that the crime must have been committed after taking office. Trump may have to be impeached so he can be prosecuted for several possible felonies related to Trump University. Or if the felonies have a statute of limitations that's short enough and he can avoid impeachment, maybe he'll be able to use his presidency to avoid prosecution entirely. Or perhaps the prosecution will have to wait until after he leaves office. Or maybe he didn't commit any crimes, though from what I can see that's unlikely.
I should note here that Clinton may also be up for prosecution for her handling of email, so it's not like the other option was much better in that respect.
The plan is to cut off Mexico's foreign aid and use that money to pay for it. Which is frankly a good plan, Mexico is so corrupt the foreign aid just goes into someone's pocket.
If that's the plan, someone forgot how to do math (not Trump's strong suit, I'll grant). Foreign aid to Mexico is only in the neighborhood of $500M per year. Even at Trump's $10B-$12B estimated construction cost it would take 20-24 years of Mexican foreign aid to pay for the wall. More realistic estimates put that at 50 years. And that, of course, completely neglects ongoing maintenance, which real engineers estimate at another billion or so per year. If you need two years of revenue to cover one year of operations, you've got trouble.
Come to think of it, that does sound like a lot of Trump's past business operations, except you can't just file bankruptcy when the problem becomes too obvious to ignore. Well, you *can*, but it's a really, really bad idea.
Stopping wetbacks is actually easy. A worker identification program that works and heavy fines for hiring beaners. Just like all of the EU has. Syrian refugees in Germany just can't find any kind of work without papers.
Oh, absolutely. It's always been easy, we've just never actually wanted to do it. Dems want a path for illegals to acquire citizenship, because they know most of them will vote D. Reps love having the campaign issue too much to ever actually solve it.
The opposite of self-destructive, seeing as EU membership long term means the UK would have ceased to exist as anything other than a "region" in the history books. The only guarantee of the UK existing 100 years from now is it being a politically independent state.
You should go tell Virginians that Virginia no longer exists.
The ultimate outcome of this might be interesting if it doesn't result in the total destruction of the Republic, as some are predicting.
That is exactly my position as well. Electing Trump is like dropping your entire net worth on the craps table and rolling the dice. It could turn out great... or not, and it's not what smart money does.
I wouldn't get too whipped up about that. People are inclined to think of the President as a single person when in fact a presidency involves an entire team of people. There are plenty of highly talented, experienced people available to work for Trump to produce a highly successful term in office.
Except that almost ALL experienced, talented people (from all parts of the political spectrum) have rejected Trump. His foreign policy and economic advisor list is less a "whos who", and more of a "Who? No really, who is that person".
And given Trump's disdain for "experts" (including politicizing the Federal Reserve), I doubt he'd take any advice well (or talented people would subject themselves to his whims). After all, he has "good" instincts for this stuff, and has shown he does not take criticism/questioning well.
Very well stated, and more concisely than I'd have managed.
Nothing you said contradicts anything I said. Yes, Reagan's policies were often very bad. I expect Trump's to be worse. But Reagan was able to pull people together, and nothing Trump has shown us so far indicates that he can.
based on the description of her actions by Dir Comey, Deliberate Security compromise, both fall under the espionage act, and so Treason, while a little excessive isn't that far off
Yes, it is quite far off. The US Constitution provides the legal definition of treason in the United States, and her handling of email did not constitute intentionally giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Further, as of yet the FBI has not found evidence of criminal mishandling of classified information. Many thought they were just whitewashing it at the direction of the Obama administration, but that became completely unbelievable with the Oct. 28th letter. The timing of that was so incredibly damning that either the FBI was actually deliberately trying to sink her candidacy but didn't have enough to really do it, or -- by far the most likely possibility -- they have been playing it completely straight right down the line and didn't have anything solid to show that she had committed a crime, but that there was enough evidence that they had to keep investigating and were legally required to inform Congress of that fact. In which case we still don't know whether there was any crime or not... but we know they weren't shielding her, because their actions buried her.
There's a strong tendency on/. to believe that government employees do what they do out of various ulterior and nefarious motives, but from everything I've ever seen that's simply not true in the common case. They're mostly good people doing their jobs as they understand them.
she's still a felon a hundred or so times over
As is Trump. Sexual assault, rape, mail fraud and wire fraud at least (the latter two from the Trump University business). Plus I'll bet that if full information were to come out about his shady business practices you'd find even more... and probably tax evasion, too.
The thing to keep in mind about Clinton v Trump with respect to criminal behavior is that she has been in the public eye and being heavily scrutinized for decades. Trump hasn't, and has had tremendous amounts of money with which to silence accusers; his past is littered with out-of-court settlements with non-disclosure agreements. I don't think Clinton is honest or trustworthy, and she's clearly skated close to the edge of the law many times, but heavy scrutiny has failed to actually find anything indictable. Were Trump subjected to the same degree of scrutiny for the same period of time I'm quite certain he would have been indicted.
But I'm willing to compromise and agree that they're both damned crooks. And both self-aggrandizing narcissists. But Clinton knows something about governing, and she's a thinker and a calculator -- to a fault, perhaps. Trump shoots from the hip and damn the consequences. He's basically said he'll pull out of NATO and any number of other important international agreements. His approach to trade is going to drive us into another recession. He does not believe in racial or gender equality, which may have tremendous negative impacts domestically.
Clinton wouldn't really change the status quo, we'd continue doing much as we have been internationally. She'd be more interventionist than Obama, but less than Bush. Probably about the same as Bill. I think that's too much, but the radical isolationism Trump proposes will create chaos and economic destruction, particularly since his personality is so chaotic that he'll randomly violate his own plans. His populist anti-globalization, anti-trade screed plays well to large numbers of voters, but the strong consensus among economists (who rarely agree about anything!) is that protectionism hurts rather than helps.
And then there's the nuclear issue. The report that he believes we should be using our nukes more actively is unconfirmed, but does anyone really doubt it? Is there anything about that that doesn't fit the rest of his personality like a hand in a glove? The history of nuclear weapons on this pl
America picked the far lesser evil. Trump is a loudmouthed blowhard with morals on par with Bill Clinton, but he's not a felon waiting to be prosecuted.
Wait, what? Yes he is. Yes he absolutely is. He is a willful repeat felon and he has bragged about the fact that he can get away with his felonies. And it's not just repeated sexual assault: he's also a rapist, unless you actually don't believe his ex-wife's account. I, for one, find it perfectly believable. Of course, he wasn't convicted of rape in that case, because in that jurisdiction it was impossible to rape one's own wife. But anyone who hides behind that is definitely a rapist, or only not a rapist for lack of opportunity.
Don't forget all of his crooked business dealings. There are almost certainly some felonies in there, too.
It seriously felt like a sports event where only loud drunk people with painted stomachs were allowed in; no room for rational discussion when you're busy throwing eggs at the away team's bus.
Oh, damn that's just too perfect. I'm going to steal that.
And if that article is correct, God help us because if the real issues were exactly what we were talking about -- racial equality vs white supremacy, gender equality vs blatant sexism, thoughtful interaction with the world vs metaphorically mooning them, reasoned politics vs physical violence etc. etc.... we voted for belly painting and egg throwing and drunk "locker room banter".
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I doubt that the Congressional Republicans can agree among themselves what they want to do with running the government. They haven't been able to do that under Obama for eight years. As a moderate conservative, I expect some bloodletting between the different factions.
That's true, but it hardly means "Trump can't do squat".
Take this case: Trump can simply direct the FCC not to enforce net neutrality, the same way Obama directed the DEA not to enforce federal marijuana laws in states that chose to legalize.
As commander-in-chief of the armed forces Trump has very direct control over what the US military does. He could, for example, just announce that he would not order them to act in accordance with the requirements of the NATO alliance treaties. Poof, NATO is basically gone, even though the US still technically has an obligation to comply. And of course we've basically given the president carte blanche to declare and prosecute wars. Congress can deny funding, eventually, but that still leaves a lot of leeway. Oh, and Trump will have The Button and there's not a damned thing anyone could do to stop him from pressing it whenever he wanted, short of Congress pre-emptively legislating that the system be dismantled (and if Trump commanded the armed forces not to comply?).
On trade, the president can't set arbitrary tariffs, but he can arbitrarily set 15% tariffs for up to 90 days on whatever he wants, and he can just keep rotating those tariffs around. Or he could even direct the coast guard to simply stop incoming vessels and order them out of US waters. That would be a violation of international laws and trade treaties alike, but nothing could actually stop him from doing it, other than the refusal of the Coast Guard to carry the orders out. Maybe they'd stand up to him, dunno.
I could go on. Just think about every federal agency and about what kinds of orders a president could give them, keeping in mind that while the orders can't be to do anything illegal, they can be to do anything at all that is legal, regardless of the agency's intended mission, and ordering them to simply sit on their hands is almost always legal.
The bottom line is that our system is a presidential system, not a prime ministerial system. A president is actually not that far from a constitutional monarch in power, with the one enormous exception that it's not a lifetime job. Prime ministers are considerably more limited because they're subject to recall by parliament. Congress can have all the votes of "no confidence" it wants, the president is the president. They have to impeach him and they have to try him if they want him out... something that has never been done so there's a pretty heavy historical weight of precedent behind it. And the Republicans are *not* going to hand that sort of victory to the Democrats.
No, Trump can do one hell of a lot, regardless of what Congress wants. I'm not saying he will, but don't think he couldn't.
You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist. Live and learn. Thank you. Of course, if you do disable it, Android uninstalls any and all updates for it, meaning that if you ever change your mind, the updates need to be downloaded and installed again. With luck, that will be one, big cumulative update, instead of having to do them all, one after the other.
Yes, it will be a single update, and no bigger than it has to be. Worst case, that first update is a download of an entirely new APK.
The one and only reason that Google can claim this is because every Android device comes with Chrome installed and you can't remove it.
You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist. Settings -> Apps -> Chrome -> Disable. You'll get a warning that disabling it may break other apps, but if you have another browser installed, and some app does get broken by Chrome being missing, that app is buggy and you should complain to the app vendor. The whole idea of "intents" is to allow apps to depend on one another without being tightly coupled.
Sure, you can install Firefox or some other browser instead, but even if you never ever use Chrome, it will still be there, wasting bandwidth on updates that will never get used
If you disable it, it will never be updated.
And, even if you select another browser as your default, you'll still get asked which browser to use every time you click on a link in an email, with Chrome selected instead of whatever you've picked as your default. (And, the checkbox to make it the default will also be checked.)
Umm, no. Your OEM messed something up if after you've set a different default it continues offering Chrome. And in any case, it can't be offered if you disabled it.
Also, Google is claiming *active* installs, meaning they're measuring installs that actually do get used, so none of what you said actually has any bearing on the article.
Of course, Chrome undoubtedly gets a boost on mobile by already being there, just as IE does on Windows. In both cases lots and lots of users never bother getting anything else. This is probably more true on Android than on Windows these days just because IE was so bad for so long that a lot of users got trained that the first thing you do on a new Windows machine is download Chrome and delete the IE icon. Since Chrome is actually a pretty decent browser on Android, that hasn't happened.
I wonder how much these geniuses spent to work out yet another statement of the bleeding obvious?
Meh. Lots of what is "bleeding obvious" turns out to be untrue. It's worth doing a study to check whether or not what seems obvious is actually the case.
The human body needs a few hours rest at least once every 24 hours. This is the time to safely charge these devices that maintain that charge for as least as long as you do, if not longer.
Bah.
I don't plug my Pixel XL in when I go to bed and it's actually really nice not to have to. I don't have any wires (or charging pads) cluttering my nightstand and I don't have to think about it. I also don't have to worry about my phone being "tethered" when I blearily pick it up to shut off the alarm. Thanks to pretty good battery life (I get close to two full days on a full charge) and fast charging, I really only plug my phone in when I get in the car. My phone gets connected to power when I place it in the dock in the car, and thanks to fast charging if I drive 30-60 minutes per day (which I almost always do), my phone never gets below about 60%. I almost never think about battery any more.
Why do I prefer that over plugging it in at night? The cleaner nightstand and not having to struggle with a wire when I'm half asleep are parts but it's mostly because I now charge my phone when it's convenient for me, not when the phone dictates.. I'm not constrained by needing large blocks of charging time, or even making sure that I charge every day. The combination of bigger battery and fast charging provides that freedom.
Fast charging is a Good Thing.
It is incredibly naive of Google to trust that third parties will follow the USB-C standard if there is money to be made in not following it.
Google has been doing this for several years now, and understands quite well what the incentives are and how the OEMs play the game.
If it is important enough to worry about then Google should be implementing measures to ensure that it will not work unless they follow the USB-C standard.
Not necessary. Right now the CDD is just saying STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, which Google knows perfectly well OEMs will ignore. That's why the CDD also added the warning that it might be REQUIRED in the future. The OEMs understand fully that when Google says "might" in this sort of context, they have to read it as "will", meaning the OEMs had better get on board with USB-C fast charging right now even though Google is giving them a little latitude to make the transition by not requiring it now.
Also, there's no need for Google to actually test all of the devices even after they make it a hard requirement. Plenty of people out there are capable of doing the tests, and if Google discovers that some OEM is claiming CDD compliance for a device that isn't compliant -- and Google will find out -- they can simply deny that OEM the right to use Google's trademarks or install Google's proprietary apps... including the Google Play Store app. That's a big stick and not one that OEMs can ignore.
If you bring up the topic of the homosexuality-pedophilia link to perform a thorough rebuttal, you're not giving weight or credence to that position
If you bring it up in order to perform a rebuttal, true. However, if you bring it up because that's a widely-held belief (from one side of the debate, but without empirical evidence) and then present the rebuttal because that's another widely-held belief (from the other side, which has empirical evidence) then you've written a balanced article.
As for values, there are actually real facts and solid points behind that, as well. A society should tolerate homosexuality as it does heterosexuality because tolerance is, from a scientific standpoint, a mature defense mechanism.
I never said otherwise. My point about debates which are purely value questions didn't include homosexuality, at least in modern societies.
Abortion has a lot of real facts surrounding it, as well, most notably [a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with the value that pro-lifers place on a fetus]
You're just missing the lifers' point in a detailed manner, trying to reason your way around their position and find a reductio ad absurdum counterargument to what isn't really their position. You can't actually refute it until you understand it, and when you understand it you'll know you can't refute it because it's fundamental, axiomatic, definitional. If you really want to understand the pro-life view you should study it, but the basic definition in question is that human life begins at conception. That imposes no duty to continual sex, so your reductio ad absurdum argument falls flat.
Magical thinking is a criteria for schizophrenia-spectrum psychiatric disorders.
You've never actually read from the DSM-IV, I see. It's clearly explained in the preface, and restated in many of the detailed disorder descriptions, that a diagnosis only applies when the behavior results in impaired ability to function in life, which is, of course, relative to a nominal "standard range of ability" to function, which is itself rather broad. I assume that by "magical thinking" in this context you're referring to religious belief. Since the majority of the human race engages in such magical thinking, it pretty much defines the standard range of ability.
So, that statement is really just "nyah, nyah, they're stoopid" dressed up in fancy words, with absolutely no more content than that behind it, but considerably more condescension. My takeaway: You're not only an asshole, you're a snobbish asshole who thinks he can cleverly insult people with words they won't understand.
But, hey, I'm an asshole too, sometimes. I won't hold it against you, except when I'm being an asshole.
It only looked like he had a chance to people who were completely incorrect in their interpretation of the race. He never actually had a chance.
Both the polls and the feeling on the ground in Utah disagreed with you a few weeks. But of course the polls were all sorts of wrong, and "feeling" is a very localized phenomenon and often misleading. Still, what else would you go on?
Well, I hope you enjoy your new president.
Actually, I hope we all do. I don't expect it, though.
The virtual wall I had in mind was actually stricter enforcement on verification of correct documentation for employment, and harsher penalties for Americans who employ illegal aliens, not anything at the border itself. But that's just my idea, I don't pretend to have any idea what goes on in Trump's head (for which I think I'm grateful).
You're just debating the definition of "worst", which I'll grant isn't outright clear. As the leader of the world's only superpower Dubya had much greater scope for damage than Jackson did back when the US was barely out of the colonial stage and any one of several nations could have stomped us if they'd decided to spend what it took. But adjusting for scope, I think Jackson was worse. Dubya was stupid, but Jackson was stupid and mean.
Ah, you're right. I googled it just before I posted; not sure how I got such a bad number. The latest value I find is 3.23% for Johnson.
If you didn't vote for Clinton then effectively you voted for Trump whether or not he actually got your vote.
Not true for McMullin voters in Utah. It looked like he had a real shot at getting the state's electoral votes. Then if all the other cards fell the right way that could have left no Electoral College winner and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives might have picked him over Trump, because the Republican party really isn't comfortable with him (for the obvious reason that he's not really a Republican and could well blacken the party's name, or even rip it apart -- of course picking McMullin might have done that last bit).
Anyway, long odds, but it could have happened. And Clinton wasn't going to get Utah's votes no matter what happened.
There was also a good reason for voting for Gary Johnson. Thanks to the level of dislike for Trump and Clinton, he got more nationwide support than third party candidates have seen in a while, and if he'd reached the 5% mark (it looks like he only got about 1%, so big miss) it would have given the Libertarian party federal funding for the next go-round. Could that have made the Libertarians a contender in 2020? Highly unlikely, but it would have given them a much larger place at the table, perhaps including representation in the debates. This was a particularly good option for libertarian-leaning people who live in states where the overall outcome was a foregone conclusion. The same could apply to other candidates for other parties, though it's pretty rare that one gets even as many votes as Johnson did.
High Crimes and Misdemeanors
In other words "crimes". Those are just two the categories of crimes under Common Law. Both were mentioned in the constitution because in the terminology of the day to say only "crimes" might have been misunderstood to include only "High Crimes", now more commonly called felonies in the United states. So "Misdemeanors" was added to clarify that the president can be impeached for lesser crimes as well.
and then does something that is a High Crime and Misdemeanor
Nowhere does it say that the crime must have been committed after taking office. Trump may have to be impeached so he can be prosecuted for several possible felonies related to Trump University. Or if the felonies have a statute of limitations that's short enough and he can avoid impeachment, maybe he'll be able to use his presidency to avoid prosecution entirely. Or perhaps the prosecution will have to wait until after he leaves office. Or maybe he didn't commit any crimes, though from what I can see that's unlikely.
I should note here that Clinton may also be up for prosecution for her handling of email, so it's not like the other option was much better in that respect.
But not the power, since ICANN is now completely outside the jurisdiction of the US government
Because the Internet is nothing but DNS? I don't think so.
Republicans couldn't stand it that W was the worst president ever.
Actually, I think that title goes to Andrew Jackson. Trump may take it from him, though.
The plan is to cut off Mexico's foreign aid and use that money to pay for it. Which is frankly a good plan, Mexico is so corrupt the foreign aid just goes into someone's pocket.
If that's the plan, someone forgot how to do math (not Trump's strong suit, I'll grant). Foreign aid to Mexico is only in the neighborhood of $500M per year. Even at Trump's $10B-$12B estimated construction cost it would take 20-24 years of Mexican foreign aid to pay for the wall. More realistic estimates put that at 50 years. And that, of course, completely neglects ongoing maintenance, which real engineers estimate at another billion or so per year. If you need two years of revenue to cover one year of operations, you've got trouble.
Come to think of it, that does sound like a lot of Trump's past business operations, except you can't just file bankruptcy when the problem becomes too obvious to ignore. Well, you *can*, but it's a really, really bad idea.
Stopping wetbacks is actually easy. A worker identification program that works and heavy fines for hiring beaners. Just like all of the EU has. Syrian refugees in Germany just can't find any kind of work without papers.
Oh, absolutely. It's always been easy, we've just never actually wanted to do it. Dems want a path for illegals to acquire citizenship, because they know most of them will vote D. Reps love having the campaign issue too much to ever actually solve it.
The opposite of self-destructive, seeing as EU membership long term means the UK would have ceased to exist as anything other than a "region" in the history books. The only guarantee of the UK existing 100 years from now is it being a politically independent state.
You should go tell Virginians that Virginia no longer exists.
The ultimate outcome of this might be interesting if it doesn't result in the total destruction of the Republic, as some are predicting.
That is exactly my position as well. Electing Trump is like dropping your entire net worth on the craps table and rolling the dice. It could turn out great... or not, and it's not what smart money does.
I wouldn't get too whipped up about that. People are inclined to think of the President as a single person when in fact a presidency involves an entire team of people. There are plenty of highly talented, experienced people available to work for Trump to produce a highly successful term in office.
Except that almost ALL experienced, talented people (from all parts of the political spectrum) have rejected Trump. His foreign policy and economic advisor list is less a "whos who", and more of a "Who? No really, who is that person". And given Trump's disdain for "experts" (including politicizing the Federal Reserve), I doubt he'd take any advice well (or talented people would subject themselves to his whims). After all, he has "good" instincts for this stuff, and has shown he does not take criticism/questioning well.
Very well stated, and more concisely than I'd have managed.
Nothing you said contradicts anything I said. Yes, Reagan's policies were often very bad. I expect Trump's to be worse. But Reagan was able to pull people together, and nothing Trump has shown us so far indicates that he can.
based on the description of her actions by Dir Comey, Deliberate Security compromise, both fall under the espionage act, and so Treason, while a little excessive isn't that far off
Yes, it is quite far off. The US Constitution provides the legal definition of treason in the United States, and her handling of email did not constitute intentionally giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Further, as of yet the FBI has not found evidence of criminal mishandling of classified information. Many thought they were just whitewashing it at the direction of the Obama administration, but that became completely unbelievable with the Oct. 28th letter. The timing of that was so incredibly damning that either the FBI was actually deliberately trying to sink her candidacy but didn't have enough to really do it, or -- by far the most likely possibility -- they have been playing it completely straight right down the line and didn't have anything solid to show that she had committed a crime, but that there was enough evidence that they had to keep investigating and were legally required to inform Congress of that fact. In which case we still don't know whether there was any crime or not... but we know they weren't shielding her, because their actions buried her.
There's a strong tendency on /. to believe that government employees do what they do out of various ulterior and nefarious motives, but from everything I've ever seen that's simply not true in the common case. They're mostly good people doing their jobs as they understand them.
she's still a felon a hundred or so times over
As is Trump. Sexual assault, rape, mail fraud and wire fraud at least (the latter two from the Trump University business). Plus I'll bet that if full information were to come out about his shady business practices you'd find even more... and probably tax evasion, too.
The thing to keep in mind about Clinton v Trump with respect to criminal behavior is that she has been in the public eye and being heavily scrutinized for decades. Trump hasn't, and has had tremendous amounts of money with which to silence accusers; his past is littered with out-of-court settlements with non-disclosure agreements. I don't think Clinton is honest or trustworthy, and she's clearly skated close to the edge of the law many times, but heavy scrutiny has failed to actually find anything indictable. Were Trump subjected to the same degree of scrutiny for the same period of time I'm quite certain he would have been indicted.
But I'm willing to compromise and agree that they're both damned crooks. And both self-aggrandizing narcissists. But Clinton knows something about governing, and she's a thinker and a calculator -- to a fault, perhaps. Trump shoots from the hip and damn the consequences. He's basically said he'll pull out of NATO and any number of other important international agreements. His approach to trade is going to drive us into another recession. He does not believe in racial or gender equality, which may have tremendous negative impacts domestically.
Clinton wouldn't really change the status quo, we'd continue doing much as we have been internationally. She'd be more interventionist than Obama, but less than Bush. Probably about the same as Bill. I think that's too much, but the radical isolationism Trump proposes will create chaos and economic destruction, particularly since his personality is so chaotic that he'll randomly violate his own plans. His populist anti-globalization, anti-trade screed plays well to large numbers of voters, but the strong consensus among economists (who rarely agree about anything!) is that protectionism hurts rather than helps.
And then there's the nuclear issue. The report that he believes we should be using our nukes more actively is unconfirmed, but does anyone really doubt it? Is there anything about that that doesn't fit the rest of his personality like a hand in a glove? The history of nuclear weapons on this pl
America picked the far lesser evil. Trump is a loudmouthed blowhard with morals on par with Bill Clinton, but he's not a felon waiting to be prosecuted.
Wait, what? Yes he is. Yes he absolutely is. He is a willful repeat felon and he has bragged about the fact that he can get away with his felonies. And it's not just repeated sexual assault: he's also a rapist, unless you actually don't believe his ex-wife's account. I, for one, find it perfectly believable. Of course, he wasn't convicted of rape in that case, because in that jurisdiction it was impossible to rape one's own wife. But anyone who hides behind that is definitely a rapist, or only not a rapist for lack of opportunity.
Don't forget all of his crooked business dealings. There are almost certainly some felonies in there, too.
So when Trump's policies fail, it will be the work of those shameful Democrats somehow.
He may be stuck blaming it on the Republicans, since they'll have control of both houses. I'm sure he can manage that, though.
It seriously felt like a sports event where only loud drunk people with painted stomachs were allowed in; no room for rational discussion when you're busy throwing eggs at the away team's bus.
Oh, damn that's just too perfect. I'm going to steal that.
OTOH, check out this lengthy argument that this campaign actually was about the real issues: http://www.slate.com/articles/...
And if that article is correct, God help us because if the real issues were exactly what we were talking about -- racial equality vs white supremacy, gender equality vs blatant sexism, thoughtful interaction with the world vs metaphorically mooning them, reasoned politics vs physical violence etc. etc. ... we voted for belly painting and egg throwing and drunk "locker room banter".