I'd expand on #2. No Child Left Behind was bad, but it's been replaced by Race To The Top which, somehow, is even worse. They've created a set of standards called Common Core that need to be implemented nation-wide. I'll grant that the idea of nation-wide standards isn't a bad one, but the execution of the idea is horrible. To make sure students are "properly learning", they are tested again and again and again. The tests are written by Pearson and other big businesses who are paid a lot to give and score these. There is no accountability for the scores either. Nobody (not even teachers) is allowed to see the questions and the tests are destroyed after grading. In New York State's first round of testing, only 30% of kids passed.
Don't worry if the kids don't pass, though. Pearson can sell them textbooks, can sell teachers courses to improve their teaching, and much more. So not only does Pearson make money from the government paying them to give the tests, they make more money the more kids do poorly on said tests.
Like you said, teacher's jobs are tied to test scores but teachers are also told what to teach the kids and when and how. They MUST follow the Common Core curriculum which (at least in my kids' school) winds up meaning no more social studies, history, etc. It's all math, English, and some science. Everything else is "folded" into those subjects. By which they mean the questions the kids need to answer will mention a historical even so that counts as history. Kind of like how eating a cookie with a fruit jelly filling counts as eating a fresh fruit, right?
Now, I said nobody's allowed to see them which, of course, means that some questions have been leaked and they tend to show just how idiotic the questions were. For example:
Amber baked 120 cookies to give to 5 friends. She wants to put the same number of cookies in each bad. Which of the following can she use to find how many cookies to put in each bag? A. (5 X 20) + (5 X 4) B (5 x 10) + (5 x 8) C (5 X 60) + (5 X 2) D (5 X 15) + (5 X 5)
Now I get that the above is trying to test factoring, but when you think "how do I split 120 cookies into 5 bags" you tend to use division (e.g. 120/5 = 24), NOT factoring.
The end result is that big companies are getting richer and our kids are only learning how to answer test questions the way that big business has told them to. No different thinking allowed or you fail.
Charter schools (run by businesses but funded from public school dollars) are exempt from many standardized tests also. So when the governor of New York recently called for the "death penalty" on public schools who don't raise their standardized test scores, he might as well have come out and said "let's have more charter schools." Of course Charter schools also can pick and choose which students get accepted. So children with any kind of special needs won't be accepted. This begs the question of what would happen to those kids (my oldest is one of those) if all the public schools were shut in favor of charter schools. (We can't afford private school.)
And it doesn't help that an entire major political party and many of those that support them (glances towards the right) constantly talks down "those intellectuals" and science. If you listen to them talk, science and learning are horrible, horrible things and should be avoided at all cost lest they corrupt your very soul. What do you think the country would be like if we all listened to them? Hint: It won't be "the great country we were in the past." (Neither the rose-colored-glasses-everything-was-wonderful past nor the realistic-pretty-good-but-far-from-perfect past.)
Except not for the reasons that the Republicans wanted to delay it for a year. They wanted the delay so they could rally support to kill it completely. They're tried this about 42 times already and failed (plus a Supreme Court decision upholding it) but they have a good feeling about #43.
Even if this story were true (which I have my doubts) but the audio was some localized dubbing, it would be very good news. The BBC has audio from all of the missing episodes. All they would need to do is strip out the localized dubbing, overlay the audio they have, and match it up to the video. It might not be 100% perfect, but they could get it good enough for fans to enjoy the lost episodes again.
It's sort of like when I saw Voltron on Netflix. I remembered loving that show back when I was a kid. So I played the first episode to relive the wonderful days of my youth. Only I was suddenly watching a show riddled with plot holes (I give some leeway for kids cartoons, but these were huge), bad character motivation, and really cheesy lines. It was horrible. I don't know if the first few episodes were just always that bad and it got better or if my memory of their quality has been "enhanced" by being a kid at the time. Either way, I'd prefer to remember the good Voltron times and not the horrible show that I've since realized it was.
Between the InBloom data collection, Common Core being implemented in such a way that the quality of education is declining fast, the high stakes testing in New York last school year which only 30% of students passed and which was administered by Pearson without any independent oversight whatsoever, and the governor of New York saying that public schools should be closed if they don't raise said test scores, I really fear for my kids' education. Right now, the teachers are being forced to use curriculum that they haven't designed and can't modify for individual students' strengths and weaknesses. Instead, they need to do what the book says when the book says to do it. They need to teach only what's going to be on the Pearson tests or else their kids will do poorly and then their jobs will be at risk. All in the name of getting "more data" on how our schools are performing. I feel like this is a really bad Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle joke where they're destroying the schools by attempting to measure them.
The problem with that is: What happens if the user wants to try Android, try Windows, and then decide which one to keep? Of course, you could give the user the option to boot into either OS in "trial mode" (keeping the other OS), but that complicates things.
Besides, wouldn't the draw of a dual boot phone be that you can get apps for Android or Windows? (So long as you boot into the other OS, of course.) Deleting one OS on boot seems to take that advantage away. You might as well have the carrier prep the phone for you with your preferred OS. Of course, then this wouldn't let Microsoft count Android phone sales as Windows phone sales simply because Windows is a completely unused OS install on the phone.
The problem with having a dual boot phone is that phones typically have limited storage space. If you want to dual boot a PC with Linux and Windows, you can stick in another hard drive to add a terabyte or two more storage. Phones, on the other hand, only have a small amount of space. My phone (a Droid Bionic) has 16GB of storage. It's a bit old, though. Newer phones come with at least 32GB of storage. Of this, some is allocated for the OS.
If you want to have two operating systems on the same phone you have two options:
1) Have the user storage area (for apps, photos, videos, etc) be smaller. Some people will buy your phone because "it runs Windows AND Android" but word will quickly spread about the fact that this means you can't install as many apps or take as many photos as a normal Android only phone (or Windows only phone for that matter).
2) Add more memory to the phone. This will allow you to compensate for the second operating system, but it will also raise the price of the phone. Users will need to decide whether the increased cost is really worth it.
Yes, you can use MicroSD cards to increase the space, but that's an added cost to the user. Telling the user that they just bought this more expensive dual-boot phone and now they need to buy another card to get the same user-storage space as that person who bought the cheaper single-OS phone is a losing proposition.
It is far less important to know that the War of 1812 was in 1812 than to know what it was about.
Sadly, teaching to the test means that students will know neither. History isn't high on the list of tested subjects. English and math are. So they push English and math and ignore everything else. At best, they claim to teach those other subjects by working them into the occasional an English/math question.
And if you need help raising the test scores, the private company can sell you textbooks, and sessions for teachers, and sessions for kids, and sessions for administrators, and test-prep materials, etc. Thus the big business gets richer as do the politicians that get lobbied by the big business to focus more education on testing.
Here in NY we've given Pearson $4 million to give overly difficult tests to our kids. The result? 30% passing rate. To which the governor threatened to shut down schools who don't raise their scores. (He actually called it a "death penalty for schools.")
The quirk here is that charter schools and private schools are exempt from the testing. So if public schools are closed for not meeting ridiculous standards, more charter schools will be opened. Charter schools are run by businesses and - although they take public money - act more like private schools in that they can decide who attends. If your kids has ANY special needs at all, they can find themselves kicked out or rejected. So you'll wind up with the "haves" (students whose parents can afford private schools or who get into charter schools) and the "have nots" (students with special needs who are herded into the poorly funded remains of the public school system).
Right now there's a big push for "analytics" in the form of testing, testing, and more testing. We "need" the tests (they say) to make sure students are performing up to par. Then, to make sure teachers have an incentive to raise scores, the teachers' jobs or salaries are put on the line. (If you don't raise your scores consistently, bye-bye! No, we don't care that you teach special ed and your kids don't do well on tests.) All this does is heap piles of anxiety on students, make teachers teach to the test, drive good teachers from the profession, and decrease the quality of education all around.
But at least we'll have metrics for analyzing performance.
Sadly, Common Core is being implemented here in New York in a horrible way. First, they paid Pearson $4 million to run these extremely difficult exams. Then, the results same in: Only 30% of students passed. (Some of the failing students were kids who did very well on previous tests. It was almost designed to make students look horrible.) They called it a "benchmark" but also began calling for the "death penalty" for public schools who don't raise their test scores.
How do you raise your test scores? By only teaching students what will be on the next round of testing. We're not teaching students to learn, we're teaching them to pass tests.
There's a group of parents rebelling (my wife and I are among them). We refused to let our oldest son take the tests and will refuse any other tests like this. Meanwhile, state education commissioner John King is of the opinion that students should be forced to take the tests whether parents like it or not. Some students have already been threatened if they refuse.
I like the idea of nation-wide standards, but Common Core (at least how it's been implemented in New York) is just making my kids hate school, not making them love learning.
Don't worry, I'll just jump in my TARDIS and get a copy from 3025. Of course, if I bring a copy back from the future, am I breaking copyright laws by possessing a copy when it's still under copyright? Man, time travel makes things messy!
It didn't cover relativity, but I highly recommend Year Zero by Rob Reid. It's a wonderful tale of what happens when aliens pirate our music like crazy and then discover our copyright laws and decide they want to abide by them. Hilarious and insightful all at the same time.
I'm going to file a patent for a method for randomizing all options when deciding what you want in a baby. Just pick an egg at random, mix in a bunch of sperm, and you get a Random Baby. Don't worry about license fees, though. I'm not greedy. Anyone who uses this method will only need to pay me $1. What's that? This is so broad that it covers natural conception? Well, waddaya know. Now pay up!
One dollar per baby born times about 4 million babies born every year in the US = instant retirement!
I think that, if I could magically change only one aspect of US politics, politicians being allowed to redraw their own district lines so easily would be what I'd change. The dominant group uses it to either spread opposition across multiple districts (ensuring that it never reaches a high enough percentage to threaten their candidates) or bunches them all in one district (giving that one up but making sure that the rest go with their party).
As the district lines get more and more convoluted, Congress doesn't need to worry about their job: there's a 90% retention rate even with only a 10% or so approval rating. Imagine if your boss only had 10% confidence that you could do your job but you still had a 90% chance of keeping your job. It definitely wouldn't encourage you to improve your performance.
Among other things, without that self-ensured job security, turnover would make it a lot harder for lobbyists to get "pet Congressfolk."
Ranked Funny here but I've seen religious folks say that and completely believe it. Were you to post it to a forum filled with ultra-religious folks, it would get ranked Insightful and would be followed with comment after comment saying how this definitely proves how science is wrong because it changes while religion is right because it doesn't change at all ever*.
* Ignore all those times over the centuries when religion has changed. Those never happened. Not at all. Everything's always been the way it is right now. Saying different is heresy!
The problem isn't so much that a freak occurrence would lead to a government of factions unable to work together but that third parties would be prevented from rising up to challenge the major parties. I actually think that a "factions government" would be for the best. Initially, I wondered if one faction would do what happened now and shut down the government, but each faction should be small enough that the others would be able to ignore them and continue on. Instead, we've got a faction within the GOP which is bending the entire party to their will and thus shutting down the government unless their demands are met.
What would realistically happen, though, wouldn't be the election of a government of factions, but the rise of one or more third parties. As they got more popular, though, the Democrats and Republicans would work together to re-write the rules to make it harder for those third parties to gain prominence. If there's anything that brings out the bipartisan spirit in Washington, it's some upstart group who thinks they can eat at the table that the Democrats and Republicans gorge themselves at.
That's the problem when someone says "But a strong enough third party would FORCE the Democrats and Republicans to change their platforms/behavior." It ignores how power-obsessed the Democrat/Republican parties are and that THEY make the rules for how politics works. A third party won't magically spring up with 57% of the vote. It'll start small. Perot did very well but got under 20%. So the Democrats and Republicans worked together... to essentially ban third parties. They can exist but rules are put in place making it hard for them to take off. If, in the next election, another third party made a strong showing, you can bet that more rules would be put into place to knock the third party down. At best, the Democrats and/or Republicans might make some token effort to address the reason for the third party's rise, but only enough to quiet people down a bit and make them forget about voting third party.
Like I said in another thread: When a guy with Middle Eastern ancestry takes hostages and threatens people unless his demands are met, it's called terrorism. When a group of politicians in suits takes the government hostage and threatens people's livelihoods unless their demands are met, it's called politics.
What's sadder isn't the 80 or so Republicans that are "representing" their districts (which actually do consist of people opposed to Obamacare), but Boehner who can't see that this is a minority of Republicans and is bending the entire party to their will. He could easily ignore them (let them rant and rave all they want) and work to pass a bill. He can even say "We don't like Obamacare but sadly we don't have the votes right now to repeal/delay it" to somewhat appease the more radical factions. John McCain said this and much as I have problems with the man, he's right there. You want to oppose the law? That's fine. That's your prerogative. But at some point you need to accept that you can't take action against it right now and move on. You can keep working to drum up more support for your side and launch another attack on the bill later, but shutting down the entire government because you don't like something but don't have the support to repeal it is going too far.
Sadly, the GOP alternative is "The free market solution which we have and which has no problems whatsoever." When you point out the problems, they ignore you and assume that since THEY have enough money to afford health insurance or get government health care by virtue of being a member of Congress, nobody else has problems ever.
Now that I mention it, all of those Congress folks who say how government run health care is evil and we should go free market... Are any of them waiving their Congressional health care in favor of purchasing their own health care plans? I'd think they were being hypocritical if they didn't.
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I'd expand on #2. No Child Left Behind was bad, but it's been replaced by Race To The Top which, somehow, is even worse. They've created a set of standards called Common Core that need to be implemented nation-wide. I'll grant that the idea of nation-wide standards isn't a bad one, but the execution of the idea is horrible. To make sure students are "properly learning", they are tested again and again and again. The tests are written by Pearson and other big businesses who are paid a lot to give and score these. There is no accountability for the scores either. Nobody (not even teachers) is allowed to see the questions and the tests are destroyed after grading. In New York State's first round of testing, only 30% of kids passed.
Don't worry if the kids don't pass, though. Pearson can sell them textbooks, can sell teachers courses to improve their teaching, and much more. So not only does Pearson make money from the government paying them to give the tests, they make more money the more kids do poorly on said tests.
Like you said, teacher's jobs are tied to test scores but teachers are also told what to teach the kids and when and how. They MUST follow the Common Core curriculum which (at least in my kids' school) winds up meaning no more social studies, history, etc. It's all math, English, and some science. Everything else is "folded" into those subjects. By which they mean the questions the kids need to answer will mention a historical even so that counts as history. Kind of like how eating a cookie with a fruit jelly filling counts as eating a fresh fruit, right?
Now, I said nobody's allowed to see them which, of course, means that some questions have been leaked and they tend to show just how idiotic the questions were. For example:
Amber baked 120 cookies to give to 5 friends. She wants to put the same number of cookies in each bad. Which of the following can she use to find how many cookies to put in each bag?
A. (5 X 20) + (5 X 4)
B (5 x 10) + (5 x 8)
C (5 X 60) + (5 X 2)
D (5 X 15) + (5 X 5)
Now I get that the above is trying to test factoring, but when you think "how do I split 120 cookies into 5 bags" you tend to use division (e.g. 120/5 = 24), NOT factoring.
The end result is that big companies are getting richer and our kids are only learning how to answer test questions the way that big business has told them to. No different thinking allowed or you fail.
Charter schools (run by businesses but funded from public school dollars) are exempt from many standardized tests also. So when the governor of New York recently called for the "death penalty" on public schools who don't raise their standardized test scores, he might as well have come out and said "let's have more charter schools." Of course Charter schools also can pick and choose which students get accepted. So children with any kind of special needs won't be accepted. This begs the question of what would happen to those kids (my oldest is one of those) if all the public schools were shut in favor of charter schools. (We can't afford private school.)
And it doesn't help that an entire major political party and many of those that support them (glances towards the right) constantly talks down "those intellectuals" and science. If you listen to them talk, science and learning are horrible, horrible things and should be avoided at all cost lest they corrupt your very soul. What do you think the country would be like if we all listened to them? Hint: It won't be "the great country we were in the past." (Neither the rose-colored-glasses-everything-was-wonderful past nor the realistic-pretty-good-but-far-from-perfect past.)
Except not for the reasons that the Republicans wanted to delay it for a year. They wanted the delay so they could rally support to kill it completely. They're tried this about 42 times already and failed (plus a Supreme Court decision upholding it) but they have a good feeling about #43.
Even if this story were true (which I have my doubts) but the audio was some localized dubbing, it would be very good news. The BBC has audio from all of the missing episodes. All they would need to do is strip out the localized dubbing, overlay the audio they have, and match it up to the video. It might not be 100% perfect, but they could get it good enough for fans to enjoy the lost episodes again.
It's sort of like when I saw Voltron on Netflix. I remembered loving that show back when I was a kid. So I played the first episode to relive the wonderful days of my youth. Only I was suddenly watching a show riddled with plot holes (I give some leeway for kids cartoons, but these were huge), bad character motivation, and really cheesy lines. It was horrible. I don't know if the first few episodes were just always that bad and it got better or if my memory of their quality has been "enhanced" by being a kid at the time. Either way, I'd prefer to remember the good Voltron times and not the horrible show that I've since realized it was.
... For very sarcastic definitions of fun.
Between the InBloom data collection, Common Core being implemented in such a way that the quality of education is declining fast, the high stakes testing in New York last school year which only 30% of students passed and which was administered by Pearson without any independent oversight whatsoever, and the governor of New York saying that public schools should be closed if they don't raise said test scores, I really fear for my kids' education. Right now, the teachers are being forced to use curriculum that they haven't designed and can't modify for individual students' strengths and weaknesses. Instead, they need to do what the book says when the book says to do it. They need to teach only what's going to be on the Pearson tests or else their kids will do poorly and then their jobs will be at risk. All in the name of getting "more data" on how our schools are performing. I feel like this is a really bad Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle joke where they're destroying the schools by attempting to measure them.
The problem with that is: What happens if the user wants to try Android, try Windows, and then decide which one to keep? Of course, you could give the user the option to boot into either OS in "trial mode" (keeping the other OS), but that complicates things.
Besides, wouldn't the draw of a dual boot phone be that you can get apps for Android or Windows? (So long as you boot into the other OS, of course.) Deleting one OS on boot seems to take that advantage away. You might as well have the carrier prep the phone for you with your preferred OS. Of course, then this wouldn't let Microsoft count Android phone sales as Windows phone sales simply because Windows is a completely unused OS install on the phone.
The problem with having a dual boot phone is that phones typically have limited storage space. If you want to dual boot a PC with Linux and Windows, you can stick in another hard drive to add a terabyte or two more storage. Phones, on the other hand, only have a small amount of space. My phone (a Droid Bionic) has 16GB of storage. It's a bit old, though. Newer phones come with at least 32GB of storage. Of this, some is allocated for the OS.
If you want to have two operating systems on the same phone you have two options:
1) Have the user storage area (for apps, photos, videos, etc) be smaller. Some people will buy your phone because "it runs Windows AND Android" but word will quickly spread about the fact that this means you can't install as many apps or take as many photos as a normal Android only phone (or Windows only phone for that matter).
2) Add more memory to the phone. This will allow you to compensate for the second operating system, but it will also raise the price of the phone. Users will need to decide whether the increased cost is really worth it.
Yes, you can use MicroSD cards to increase the space, but that's an added cost to the user. Telling the user that they just bought this more expensive dual-boot phone and now they need to buy another card to get the same user-storage space as that person who bought the cheaper single-OS phone is a losing proposition.
Sadly, teaching to the test means that students will know neither. History isn't high on the list of tested subjects. English and math are. So they push English and math and ignore everything else. At best, they claim to teach those other subjects by working them into the occasional an English/math question.
And if you need help raising the test scores, the private company can sell you textbooks, and sessions for teachers, and sessions for kids, and sessions for administrators, and test-prep materials, etc. Thus the big business gets richer as do the politicians that get lobbied by the big business to focus more education on testing.
Here in NY we've given Pearson $4 million to give overly difficult tests to our kids. The result? 30% passing rate. To which the governor threatened to shut down schools who don't raise their scores. (He actually called it a "death penalty for schools.")
The quirk here is that charter schools and private schools are exempt from the testing. So if public schools are closed for not meeting ridiculous standards, more charter schools will be opened. Charter schools are run by businesses and - although they take public money - act more like private schools in that they can decide who attends. If your kids has ANY special needs at all, they can find themselves kicked out or rejected. So you'll wind up with the "haves" (students whose parents can afford private schools or who get into charter schools) and the "have nots" (students with special needs who are herded into the poorly funded remains of the public school system).
Here! Here!
Right now there's a big push for "analytics" in the form of testing, testing, and more testing. We "need" the tests (they say) to make sure students are performing up to par. Then, to make sure teachers have an incentive to raise scores, the teachers' jobs or salaries are put on the line. (If you don't raise your scores consistently, bye-bye! No, we don't care that you teach special ed and your kids don't do well on tests.) All this does is heap piles of anxiety on students, make teachers teach to the test, drive good teachers from the profession, and decrease the quality of education all around.
But at least we'll have metrics for analyzing performance.
Sadly, Common Core is being implemented here in New York in a horrible way. First, they paid Pearson $4 million to run these extremely difficult exams. Then, the results same in: Only 30% of students passed. (Some of the failing students were kids who did very well on previous tests. It was almost designed to make students look horrible.) They called it a "benchmark" but also began calling for the "death penalty" for public schools who don't raise their test scores.
How do you raise your test scores? By only teaching students what will be on the next round of testing. We're not teaching students to learn, we're teaching them to pass tests.
There's a group of parents rebelling (my wife and I are among them). We refused to let our oldest son take the tests and will refuse any other tests like this. Meanwhile, state education commissioner John King is of the opinion that students should be forced to take the tests whether parents like it or not. Some students have already been threatened if they refuse.
I like the idea of nation-wide standards, but Common Core (at least how it's been implemented in New York) is just making my kids hate school, not making them love learning.
Don't worry, I'll just jump in my TARDIS and get a copy from 3025. Of course, if I bring a copy back from the future, am I breaking copyright laws by possessing a copy when it's still under copyright? Man, time travel makes things messy!
It didn't cover relativity, but I highly recommend Year Zero by Rob Reid. It's a wonderful tale of what happens when aliens pirate our music like crazy and then discover our copyright laws and decide they want to abide by them. Hilarious and insightful all at the same time.
I'm going to file a patent for a method for randomizing all options when deciding what you want in a baby. Just pick an egg at random, mix in a bunch of sperm, and you get a Random Baby. Don't worry about license fees, though. I'm not greedy. Anyone who uses this method will only need to pay me $1. What's that? This is so broad that it covers natural conception? Well, waddaya know. Now pay up!
One dollar per baby born times about 4 million babies born every year in the US = instant retirement!
Oh yeah? Well I don't agree with that!
*reads comments agreeing*
Well, maybe it's a little true.... for some people.
*reads more agreeing comments*
Yes! I agree 100%!!!! This = Truth!
I think that, if I could magically change only one aspect of US politics, politicians being allowed to redraw their own district lines so easily would be what I'd change. The dominant group uses it to either spread opposition across multiple districts (ensuring that it never reaches a high enough percentage to threaten their candidates) or bunches them all in one district (giving that one up but making sure that the rest go with their party).
As the district lines get more and more convoluted, Congress doesn't need to worry about their job: there's a 90% retention rate even with only a 10% or so approval rating. Imagine if your boss only had 10% confidence that you could do your job but you still had a 90% chance of keeping your job. It definitely wouldn't encourage you to improve your performance.
Among other things, without that self-ensured job security, turnover would make it a lot harder for lobbyists to get "pet Congressfolk."
Ranked Funny here but I've seen religious folks say that and completely believe it. Were you to post it to a forum filled with ultra-religious folks, it would get ranked Insightful and would be followed with comment after comment saying how this definitely proves how science is wrong because it changes while religion is right because it doesn't change at all ever*.
* Ignore all those times over the centuries when religion has changed. Those never happened. Not at all. Everything's always been the way it is right now. Saying different is heresy!
The problem isn't so much that a freak occurrence would lead to a government of factions unable to work together but that third parties would be prevented from rising up to challenge the major parties. I actually think that a "factions government" would be for the best. Initially, I wondered if one faction would do what happened now and shut down the government, but each faction should be small enough that the others would be able to ignore them and continue on. Instead, we've got a faction within the GOP which is bending the entire party to their will and thus shutting down the government unless their demands are met.
What would realistically happen, though, wouldn't be the election of a government of factions, but the rise of one or more third parties. As they got more popular, though, the Democrats and Republicans would work together to re-write the rules to make it harder for those third parties to gain prominence. If there's anything that brings out the bipartisan spirit in Washington, it's some upstart group who thinks they can eat at the table that the Democrats and Republicans gorge themselves at.
That's the problem when someone says "But a strong enough third party would FORCE the Democrats and Republicans to change their platforms/behavior." It ignores how power-obsessed the Democrat/Republican parties are and that THEY make the rules for how politics works. A third party won't magically spring up with 57% of the vote. It'll start small. Perot did very well but got under 20%. So the Democrats and Republicans worked together... to essentially ban third parties. They can exist but rules are put in place making it hard for them to take off. If, in the next election, another third party made a strong showing, you can bet that more rules would be put into place to knock the third party down. At best, the Democrats and/or Republicans might make some token effort to address the reason for the third party's rise, but only enough to quiet people down a bit and make them forget about voting third party.
Like I said in another thread: When a guy with Middle Eastern ancestry takes hostages and threatens people unless his demands are met, it's called terrorism. When a group of politicians in suits takes the government hostage and threatens people's livelihoods unless their demands are met, it's called politics.
What's sadder isn't the 80 or so Republicans that are "representing" their districts (which actually do consist of people opposed to Obamacare), but Boehner who can't see that this is a minority of Republicans and is bending the entire party to their will. He could easily ignore them (let them rant and rave all they want) and work to pass a bill. He can even say "We don't like Obamacare but sadly we don't have the votes right now to repeal/delay it" to somewhat appease the more radical factions. John McCain said this and much as I have problems with the man, he's right there. You want to oppose the law? That's fine. That's your prerogative. But at some point you need to accept that you can't take action against it right now and move on. You can keep working to drum up more support for your side and launch another attack on the bill later, but shutting down the entire government because you don't like something but don't have the support to repeal it is going too far.
Sadly, the GOP alternative is "The free market solution which we have and which has no problems whatsoever." When you point out the problems, they ignore you and assume that since THEY have enough money to afford health insurance or get government health care by virtue of being a member of Congress, nobody else has problems ever.
Now that I mention it, all of those Congress folks who say how government run health care is evil and we should go free market... Are any of them waiving their Congressional health care in favor of purchasing their own health care plans? I'd think they were being hypocritical if they didn't.
You know what this means? The Nestene Consciousness is probably living there with its army of Autons. Someone call the Doctor!