If you think of them as a criminal organization, then you need to consider whether it's better to have all the criminals working for one boss, or to have a bunch of different bosses, who while they may sometimes work together spend a lot of time fighting one another. It seems to me that with a number of different bosses, the time they spend attacking one another is time they're not attacking everyone else.
I know Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he sabotaged the case against Microsoft, but it still rankles that he was lauded for being such a crass sellout.
That does beg the question of whether there's anything vaguely pro-copyright that would deserve higher than a 2? Although, I have seen pro-copyright posts with scores higher than 2. On the other hand something anti-MAFIAA is generally going to be rabble-rousing*. Frankly, I think there is no community moderation system that can prevent popular opinions from getting up moderated. I'm not sure that even makes sense as a criteria.
* The recent behaviour of the MAFIAA has shown a great propensity for perpetrating evil against some of Slashdot's primary demographics. They are unpopular here for very good reasons, that's not groupthink. Groupthink requires a failure to evaluate alternative ideas. It's not groupthink when the alternatives are honestly evaluated and found lacking.
Discussion on/. is hopeless in my experience. Not due to the lack of intelligence, but due to the abuse of it.
Then why do you post here?
Every time I have been pointed at some "absolute proof" that Slashdot has a terrible moderation system, I find that it's actually working as intended. The people who complain about it are blind to the fact that their posts often deserve to be moderated down. Harsh but true. The last time this happened, I was pointed to a poorly written, barely comprehensible post where the author (the same person who was complaining about how unfair the system was) claimed that environmentalists were all mass murderers because (in his opinion) they would kill 90% of the human population given the chance. The poster was under the impression that this was a well-known fact and obviously true, but the "Slashdot overlords" were attempting to censor him.
Young earth creationist arguments may get modded down, but frankly, I have a hard time seeing any reason they should be moderated up. To a great many people, creationism is nonsense because is flies in the face of anthropology, geology, and biology. Claiming that there is a god, and that he created the universe is fine, but you shouldn't really expect the average Slashdot moderator to believe in Last Tuesdayism.
Climate Change can't possibly be science, it fails one of the most basic tenets in that it isn't falsifiable.
Well, yeah. Since climate change is literally changes in the climate, any change is part of climate change. Climate change isn't falsifiable because it's an area of study, not a theory. There are theories in climate change and those theories are individually falsifiable. As for the models, events have fallen within the predicted bounds of the IPCC climate models for the last 30 years, since they started publishing the climate models. That a definite area of falsifiability for climate change predictions, but strangely enough despite decades of opposition, events are still falling within the model's predictions.
Frankly, it looks like you don't understand even the basics of climate change, nor do you want to. It's obviously much more fun to ridicule something you don't understand.
Climate may change but right now we're driving the climate, not the sun. While it has been warmer, it hasn't been warmer for a very long time. Usually the climate changes slower than the pace we're driving it at, warming too fast will lead to problems for a planet full of people, crop yields are rising slower than they should be because of climate change, which means food prices are going up not just because of the rising price of oil, but also because that oil is producing less food than it should.
I hate to break this to you but the nomenclature wasn't shifted. Climate change is the generic term for changes in the climate, global warming is the climate change that's happening right now.
Slashdot car analogy: It's like your claiming that "they" changed the name of the Taurus to Ford so that it wouldn't be associated with bulls. The Ford Taurus has always been a Ford. Global warming has always been an instance of climate change.
I highly doubt that Britian was supposed to get drier because of global warming, being surrounded by water they're far more likely to get wetter.
I also doubt that anyone credible would make that claim. A quick search revealed that some U.K. newspapers were predicting in 2000 that it would get too warm for snow, not too dry.
You don't seem to understand some basics of economics. Government spending stimulates the economy and because of taxes, money spent by the government often comes back to the government in revenue. Stimulus spending can and does prevent the worsening of the economy. The idea being that by limiting the worst of the damage caused by a recession the economy can recover faster and generate more wealth.
You don't spend your way out of debt or deficit, you run a deficit temporarily during a recession to retain employment. Remember with welfare and unemployment the government is already on the hook for expenses when people lose their jobs. So to a certain point the government is faced with either paying people to do work, or paying people who aren't working. Properly spent, recessionary stimulus spending is also spent on projects that should get done anyway like building infrastructure. Thus there's a triple benefit from borrowing money for stimulus spending: less unemployment, discounted construction costs, and improved infrastructure.
It may surprise, but national finances are not the same as an individual person's finances.
In the last 35 years of global warming, the sun has shown a slight cooling trend. Sun and climate have been going in opposite directions. In the past century, the Sun can explain some of the increase in global temperatures, but a relatively small amount.
It may be even simpler than that. I have a friend who graduated with a degree in business and his biggest complaint was that all the business theory courses taught that the goal of a manager was to maximize revenues, minimize costs and leave before the department you were running crashed and burned. They taught that medium and long term thinking was for suckers who couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't get promoted. The basic principle was always maximize profits for the current quarter and never worry about the future.
To that world-view, training is always a waste because it should only benefit your successor. A successor who is also a potential competitor for promotions. It's much better to leave a swath of destruction in your wake while noting all the short-term successes on your resume. That way you look good and other people look worse.
Conservatives have the reverse problem, they tend to see taxation in infinitely flexible terms. They think cutting taxes will somehow raise more money, as if because rates went down, people are suddenly more willing to part with their money. Life is way more complicated than that.
Wealth doesn't flee unless it has someplace to go. Businesses may spend more. People may actually hire more when taxes are higher. Unintended consequences can be quite complex and counter-intuitive on both sides.
If business taxes are levied on profits then when taxes are high, expenses are effectively subsidized by the taxes the business would have paid on it's profits. If you would lose 33% of your dollar anyway, it's effectively the same as having the cost reduced by 33%. Thus growing your business may be more attractive than distributing dividends to the owners or bonuses to the executives. This is particularly true if capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than dividends and bonuses. And of course, if employee wages are an expense then profit taxes effectively subsidize employment.
I suspect it's an attempt to impose a "gas tax" equivalent on vehicles which do not use gas. The government does need to consider how they're going to fund the roads as electric vehicles begin to replace gasoline vehicles.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that there's a reason why they're looking to replace the retail tax. One alternative is to increase taxes on electricity, but while that would be much easier to implement, I'm not sure it's actually better.
The Conservatives almost didn't get a majority. A final hours shift in voting was what propelled them to a majority. That's not media bias, everyone was expecting them to get the most seats. Heck, even the conservative media in Canada thought it was unlikely that they'd win a majority in the last week before the election. Voters from the Liberal party moved to the Conservatives to stop the NDP from forming a government. And they did that because they expected the Conservatives wouldn't win a majority of the seats. That last minute shift combined with vote splitting on the left was enough to give the Conservative party a majority. The scale of victory was a surprise to everyone, including the Conservative party. So that's a case of accurate reporting, not bias.
Ok, let start with some basics. You don't seem to understand the difference between omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing). "[A]ll powerful omnipotent" is redundant because omnipotent literally means all powerful. Now assuming that a being is omniscient (and therefore knows everything) then that being knows what you need and what you want before you begin praying for it. Thus the act of praying itself is also redundant, it would already know what was happening, what you wanted, and whether it was a good idea to interfere. It doesn't need you to communicate with it at all. It already knows what you're going to pray.
What you don't seem to understand is that arguing that prayer can help resolve any real situation is arguing that this being wants you to perform arbitrary acts of flattery or supplication before it will intervene. Those arbitrary acts could be anything. As I said and you either failed to understand, an omniscient being doesn't need to hear your prayers. It already knows everything, therefore you are praying not to inform this being of what you want, but rather praying to appease it or bribe it into action. And if you knew it worked, you'd damn do whatever crazy things it wanted you to do, even talking into a hair dryer. Why? Maybe it likes that, maybe talking into hair dryers amuses your god. Why doesn't even really matter. That's the point. It's an arbitrary act of supplication.
Do you understand now?
If you are required to pray to an omnipotent and omniscient god to incite him to intercede then the requirement for prayer is arbitrary and can be substituted with any other arbitrary requirement(s). You rebel against the idea of talking into a hair dryer because you think it's silly, which is the point. By definition, an omnipotent and omniscient god has no need for your prayers.
I think you've failed on your basic logic. The issue is that praying is no less rational than talking to him through your hair dryer. Then there's the whole thing about why anyone would need to pray to him to do something good int he first place? Is he incapable of understanding that there's a problem? Or incapable of acting if it's not prayed for first? Is he a pray-in miracle line where the miracles that receive the most prayers happen? Is Texas on hold until Japan gets miraculous cleaned up?
Actually, I've heard it more convincingly argued that it's the side effect of a "don't get eaten by the leopards" gene. Essentially we have genes that allow us to jump to conclusions on incomplete evidence. For example, these genes might have once allowed us to jump to the conclusion that the reason those bushes over there are rustling is because a leopard is getting ready to pounce. Considering natural selection, the people with the gene who incorrectly guessed that there was a leopard faced a much lower penalty than the people without it who incorrectly guessed that there wasn't one. Thus natural selection promoted the ability to believe in things we couldn't see. Replace the leopard with God and the bushes with the sky and you can easily see how the tendency to believe in one might lead to the tendency to believe in the other.
I couldn't tell you whether it's true or not, but it is an interesting thought exercise.
"Spread the wealth" isn't actually a secret (or not-secret) socialist phrase. It's amazing how worked up some people get over a president actually wanting the bottom 99% of Americans to get a larger piece of the pie than the 65% they currently get. Currently the American system is acting as a giant wealth transfer, from the middle class to the wealthiest 1% of the country. The top 10% of wealthiest Americans control more than 70% of the wealth in the country, with the bottom 90% get less than 30%.
The real definition of socialist revolves around The People owning the methods of production. Do you see Obama talking about nationalizing Wal-Mart, Exxon, or Chevron? No? Then that's a big clue that he's not a socialist. The only possible way you could realistically call Obama a socialist is for purchasing General Motors and Chrysler stock to prevent them from collapsing, and that would be a very big stretch considering it was limited to two companies and an emergency action to prevent the jobless rising even higher than it did. Plus, normally when a company actually get nationalized, the government doesn't bother with paying for the company.
My point? Obama is no more a socialist than Ronald Reagan was.
If you really believe all that, how come when tested about well-established facts on current events, the audiences of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert tend to score almost twice as high as the Fox News audience? Why are the Fox News viewers so much less informed about current events? I think most of the time when Stewart takes something out of context, his audience gets that it's taken out of context. It is the punchline, and if you didn't get it you probably wouldn't keep watching.
Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, Fox News actually does more things that can be made fun of? Of course, part of that is simply the fact that 75% of their programming is actually "opinion" and not news. That right there is fertile ground for mocking a news channel. Then again, the Fox News people seem to have some of the shortest memories on TV. Sometimes vehemently opposing something they adored unconditionally a few months earlier. It's also the most watched of the news networks and the only right wing populist news network. There are many reasons why it may get more of Stewart's attention, the thing that endears Stewart to many of his viewers is that he isn't afraid to criticize politicians or news of any political stripe. The impression I get from Fox News is that every news story has to be examined first for the proper political spin before it is aired.
Did you stop to think that maybe Bush's re-election should have been greeted with scowls? He did wrap the United States' economy around a tree, after all. We can't expect reporters to be emotionless robots, after all. But we should expect them to be truthful and honest. Many of the differences in coverage come from actual differences in events. Obama tried to limit the tax cuts to the middle class (which would have mitigated the revenue loss), that's why he gets different coverage from Bush who thought (and probably still does) that the lion's share of the cuts going to the rich was actually good thing. I don't remember anyone saying high oil prices were Bush's fault for being to close to oil companies, although I do remember people blaming them on the little war that he started in the middle east and that may have actually contributed to the price.
Actually, in my opinion, on many, many occasions, the so-called liberal media was probably far too easy on Bush during his terms. He did do great damage to the United States, and the media often blindly repeated official government propaganda. It's certainly possible that you may be seeing bias where you expect to see it, while ignoring the cases where the bias went the other way. It's called confirmation bias, and it's a very easy trap to fall into.
The retribution aspect makes sense if you consider that the religions in question are devoted to recruiting and controlling people. Some people respond to the carrot well, some people respond to the stick well. Therefore for a religion to be more successful than it's competitors it must have both carrot and stick. Unfortunately, logical and reason tends to much less important than how well a religion recruits people and keeps them entangled. That's because a logical and reasonable religion that isn't sticky dies out, while a illogical and unreasonable religion that is sticky will prosper despite it's other flaws.
I suppose that's a essentially memetic survival of the fitest.
Are you aware that the article that prompted action against the Journal in question also prompted more than two thirds of the journal's editors to resign including it's chief editor because the owners tried to block a retraction of the article after it was published. The journal had to be restructured to give the chief editor final say on all articles to be published, because the article was published on the say-so of one individual editor. Furthermore, the follow up investigation revealed that the editor who published the anti-global warming paper did so against the recommendation of all three of the peer reviewers for the article. In essence a single editor took it upon himself to publish an article over the objections of his peers and his reviewers, while hiding the fact that it had failed to pass peer review.
In other words, the article that was published was badly flawed and actually should never have been published, it diminished the credibility of the journal that published and and embarrassed the employees of the journal to the point where most of them quit rather than be associated with it any more. Or to put it bluntly, the scientists at the CRU were totally and completely right when they decided that they should have nothing further to do with the journal. In the science world, reputation is important. A journal that prints deeply and obviously flawed articles loses it's reputation and it's credibility, and no one wants to be the person propping a disreputable journal up.
He may care about getting re-elected but he only cares about the around 40% that he needs to get a majority. He doesn't really care much if a majority of Canadians disagree with him, as long as the 40% he needs to get elected are with him on the issue. So he's only responsive to a specific section of the public.
What I think you want is "Preferential Balloting", which is the generalized term that includes Instant Run Off Voting and other methods like Condorcet Voting. Condorcet is more complicated but seems to have fewer failings than IRV does.
And I'm for preferential balloting as well, plus I'd also like to see a binding "None-of-the-above" option. If none of the above wins, then a by-election should be at the earliest opportunity and all of the losers from the previous election should be barred from running in the by-election. That way we can guarantee our elected representatives are better than nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think of them as a criminal organization, then you need to consider whether it's better to have all the criminals working for one boss, or to have a bunch of different bosses, who while they may sometimes work together spend a lot of time fighting one another. It seems to me that with a number of different bosses, the time they spend attacking one another is time they're not attacking everyone else.
I know Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he sabotaged the case against Microsoft, but it still rankles that he was lauded for being such a crass sellout.
That does beg the question of whether there's anything vaguely pro-copyright that would deserve higher than a 2? Although, I have seen pro-copyright posts with scores higher than 2. On the other hand something anti-MAFIAA is generally going to be rabble-rousing*. Frankly, I think there is no community moderation system that can prevent popular opinions from getting up moderated. I'm not sure that even makes sense as a criteria.
* The recent behaviour of the MAFIAA has shown a great propensity for perpetrating evil against some of Slashdot's primary demographics. They are unpopular here for very good reasons, that's not groupthink. Groupthink requires a failure to evaluate alternative ideas. It's not groupthink when the alternatives are honestly evaluated and found lacking.
Discussion on /. is hopeless in my experience. Not due to the lack of intelligence, but due to the abuse of it.
Then why do you post here?
Every time I have been pointed at some "absolute proof" that Slashdot has a terrible moderation system, I find that it's actually working as intended. The people who complain about it are blind to the fact that their posts often deserve to be moderated down. Harsh but true. The last time this happened, I was pointed to a poorly written, barely comprehensible post where the author (the same person who was complaining about how unfair the system was) claimed that environmentalists were all mass murderers because (in his opinion) they would kill 90% of the human population given the chance. The poster was under the impression that this was a well-known fact and obviously true, but the "Slashdot overlords" were attempting to censor him.
Young earth creationist arguments may get modded down, but frankly, I have a hard time seeing any reason they should be moderated up. To a great many people, creationism is nonsense because is flies in the face of anthropology, geology, and biology. Claiming that there is a god, and that he created the universe is fine, but you shouldn't really expect the average Slashdot moderator to believe in Last Tuesdayism.
Climate Change can't possibly be science, it fails one of the most basic tenets in that it isn't falsifiable.
Well, yeah. Since climate change is literally changes in the climate, any change is part of climate change. Climate change isn't falsifiable because it's an area of study, not a theory. There are theories in climate change and those theories are individually falsifiable. As for the models, events have fallen within the predicted bounds of the IPCC climate models for the last 30 years, since they started publishing the climate models. That a definite area of falsifiability for climate change predictions, but strangely enough despite decades of opposition, events are still falling within the model's predictions.
Frankly, it looks like you don't understand even the basics of climate change, nor do you want to. It's obviously much more fun to ridicule something you don't understand.
Climate may change but right now we're driving the climate, not the sun. While it has been warmer, it hasn't been warmer for a very long time. Usually the climate changes slower than the pace we're driving it at, warming too fast will lead to problems for a planet full of people, crop yields are rising slower than they should be because of climate change, which means food prices are going up not just because of the rising price of oil, but also because that oil is producing less food than it should.
I hate to break this to you but the nomenclature wasn't shifted. Climate change is the generic term for changes in the climate, global warming is the climate change that's happening right now.
Slashdot car analogy: It's like your claiming that "they" changed the name of the Taurus to Ford so that it wouldn't be associated with bulls. The Ford Taurus has always been a Ford. Global warming has always been an instance of climate change.
I highly doubt that Britian was supposed to get drier because of global warming, being surrounded by water they're far more likely to get wetter.
I also doubt that anyone credible would make that claim. A quick search revealed that some U.K. newspapers were predicting in 2000 that it would get too warm for snow, not too dry.
You don't seem to understand some basics of economics. Government spending stimulates the economy and because of taxes, money spent by the government often comes back to the government in revenue. Stimulus spending can and does prevent the worsening of the economy. The idea being that by limiting the worst of the damage caused by a recession the economy can recover faster and generate more wealth.
You don't spend your way out of debt or deficit, you run a deficit temporarily during a recession to retain employment. Remember with welfare and unemployment the government is already on the hook for expenses when people lose their jobs. So to a certain point the government is faced with either paying people to do work, or paying people who aren't working. Properly spent, recessionary stimulus spending is also spent on projects that should get done anyway like building infrastructure. Thus there's a triple benefit from borrowing money for stimulus spending: less unemployment, discounted construction costs, and improved infrastructure.
It may surprise, but national finances are not the same as an individual person's finances.
You keep telling yourself that. I think you don't want to see anyone doing anything, so you don't.
It's not the sun:
In the last 35 years of global warming, the sun has shown a slight cooling trend. Sun and climate have been going in opposite directions. In the past century, the Sun can explain some of the increase in global temperatures, but a relatively small amount.
It may be even simpler than that. I have a friend who graduated with a degree in business and his biggest complaint was that all the business theory courses taught that the goal of a manager was to maximize revenues, minimize costs and leave before the department you were running crashed and burned. They taught that medium and long term thinking was for suckers who couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't get promoted. The basic principle was always maximize profits for the current quarter and never worry about the future.
To that world-view, training is always a waste because it should only benefit your successor. A successor who is also a potential competitor for promotions. It's much better to leave a swath of destruction in your wake while noting all the short-term successes on your resume. That way you look good and other people look worse.
Conservatives have the reverse problem, they tend to see taxation in infinitely flexible terms. They think cutting taxes will somehow raise more money, as if because rates went down, people are suddenly more willing to part with their money. Life is way more complicated than that.
Wealth doesn't flee unless it has someplace to go. Businesses may spend more. People may actually hire more when taxes are higher. Unintended consequences can be quite complex and counter-intuitive on both sides.
If business taxes are levied on profits then when taxes are high, expenses are effectively subsidized by the taxes the business would have paid on it's profits. If you would lose 33% of your dollar anyway, it's effectively the same as having the cost reduced by 33%. Thus growing your business may be more attractive than distributing dividends to the owners or bonuses to the executives. This is particularly true if capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than dividends and bonuses. And of course, if employee wages are an expense then profit taxes effectively subsidize employment.
I suspect it's an attempt to impose a "gas tax" equivalent on vehicles which do not use gas. The government does need to consider how they're going to fund the roads as electric vehicles begin to replace gasoline vehicles.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that there's a reason why they're looking to replace the retail tax. One alternative is to increase taxes on electricity, but while that would be much easier to implement, I'm not sure it's actually better.
Presumably, customs/border officials could look at the number when you enter/leave the country or the continent
On the other hand, distinguishing between private and public road usage would looks to be impossible without additional equipment.
Not really. You'll build the cost into your contract if you're smart, if not, you'd better start getting smarter.
Speaking as a Canadian:
The Conservatives almost didn't get a majority. A final hours shift in voting was what propelled them to a majority. That's not media bias, everyone was expecting them to get the most seats. Heck, even the conservative media in Canada thought it was unlikely that they'd win a majority in the last week before the election. Voters from the Liberal party moved to the Conservatives to stop the NDP from forming a government. And they did that because they expected the Conservatives wouldn't win a majority of the seats. That last minute shift combined with vote splitting on the left was enough to give the Conservative party a majority. The scale of victory was a surprise to everyone, including the Conservative party. So that's a case of accurate reporting, not bias.
Ok, let start with some basics. You don't seem to understand the difference between omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing). "[A]ll powerful omnipotent" is redundant because omnipotent literally means all powerful. Now assuming that a being is omniscient (and therefore knows everything) then that being knows what you need and what you want before you begin praying for it. Thus the act of praying itself is also redundant, it would already know what was happening, what you wanted, and whether it was a good idea to interfere. It doesn't need you to communicate with it at all. It already knows what you're going to pray.
What you don't seem to understand is that arguing that prayer can help resolve any real situation is arguing that this being wants you to perform arbitrary acts of flattery or supplication before it will intervene. Those arbitrary acts could be anything. As I said and you either failed to understand, an omniscient being doesn't need to hear your prayers. It already knows everything, therefore you are praying not to inform this being of what you want, but rather praying to appease it or bribe it into action. And if you knew it worked, you'd damn do whatever crazy things it wanted you to do, even talking into a hair dryer. Why? Maybe it likes that, maybe talking into hair dryers amuses your god. Why doesn't even really matter. That's the point. It's an arbitrary act of supplication.
Do you understand now?
If you are required to pray to an omnipotent and omniscient god to incite him to intercede then the requirement for prayer is arbitrary and can be substituted with any other arbitrary requirement(s). You rebel against the idea of talking into a hair dryer because you think it's silly, which is the point. By definition, an omnipotent and omniscient god has no need for your prayers.
I think you've failed on your basic logic. The issue is that praying is no less rational than talking to him through your hair dryer. Then there's the whole thing about why anyone would need to pray to him to do something good int he first place? Is he incapable of understanding that there's a problem? Or incapable of acting if it's not prayed for first? Is he a pray-in miracle line where the miracles that receive the most prayers happen? Is Texas on hold until Japan gets miraculous cleaned up?
Inquiring minds want to know!
Actually, I've heard it more convincingly argued that it's the side effect of a "don't get eaten by the leopards" gene. Essentially we have genes that allow us to jump to conclusions on incomplete evidence. For example, these genes might have once allowed us to jump to the conclusion that the reason those bushes over there are rustling is because a leopard is getting ready to pounce. Considering natural selection, the people with the gene who incorrectly guessed that there was a leopard faced a much lower penalty than the people without it who incorrectly guessed that there wasn't one. Thus natural selection promoted the ability to believe in things we couldn't see. Replace the leopard with God and the bushes with the sky and you can easily see how the tendency to believe in one might lead to the tendency to believe in the other.
I couldn't tell you whether it's true or not, but it is an interesting thought exercise.
"Spread the wealth" isn't actually a secret (or not-secret) socialist phrase. It's amazing how worked up some people get over a president actually wanting the bottom 99% of Americans to get a larger piece of the pie than the 65% they currently get. Currently the American system is acting as a giant wealth transfer, from the middle class to the wealthiest 1% of the country. The top 10% of wealthiest Americans control more than 70% of the wealth in the country, with the bottom 90% get less than 30%.
The real definition of socialist revolves around The People owning the methods of production. Do you see Obama talking about nationalizing Wal-Mart, Exxon, or Chevron? No? Then that's a big clue that he's not a socialist. The only possible way you could realistically call Obama a socialist is for purchasing General Motors and Chrysler stock to prevent them from collapsing, and that would be a very big stretch considering it was limited to two companies and an emergency action to prevent the jobless rising even higher than it did. Plus, normally when a company actually get nationalized, the government doesn't bother with paying for the company.
My point? Obama is no more a socialist than Ronald Reagan was.
If you really believe all that, how come when tested about well-established facts on current events, the audiences of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert tend to score almost twice as high as the Fox News audience? Why are the Fox News viewers so much less informed about current events? I think most of the time when Stewart takes something out of context, his audience gets that it's taken out of context. It is the punchline, and if you didn't get it you probably wouldn't keep watching.
Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, Fox News actually does more things that can be made fun of? Of course, part of that is simply the fact that 75% of their programming is actually "opinion" and not news. That right there is fertile ground for mocking a news channel. Then again, the Fox News people seem to have some of the shortest memories on TV. Sometimes vehemently opposing something they adored unconditionally a few months earlier. It's also the most watched of the news networks and the only right wing populist news network. There are many reasons why it may get more of Stewart's attention, the thing that endears Stewart to many of his viewers is that he isn't afraid to criticize politicians or news of any political stripe. The impression I get from Fox News is that every news story has to be examined first for the proper political spin before it is aired.
Did you stop to think that maybe Bush's re-election should have been greeted with scowls? He did wrap the United States' economy around a tree, after all. We can't expect reporters to be emotionless robots, after all. But we should expect them to be truthful and honest. Many of the differences in coverage come from actual differences in events. Obama tried to limit the tax cuts to the middle class (which would have mitigated the revenue loss), that's why he gets different coverage from Bush who thought (and probably still does) that the lion's share of the cuts going to the rich was actually good thing. I don't remember anyone saying high oil prices were Bush's fault for being to close to oil companies, although I do remember people blaming them on the little war that he started in the middle east and that may have actually contributed to the price.
Actually, in my opinion, on many, many occasions, the so-called liberal media was probably far too easy on Bush during his terms. He did do great damage to the United States, and the media often blindly repeated official government propaganda. It's certainly possible that you may be seeing bias where you expect to see it, while ignoring the cases where the bias went the other way. It's called confirmation bias, and it's a very easy trap to fall into.
The retribution aspect makes sense if you consider that the religions in question are devoted to recruiting and controlling people. Some people respond to the carrot well, some people respond to the stick well. Therefore for a religion to be more successful than it's competitors it must have both carrot and stick. Unfortunately, logical and reason tends to much less important than how well a religion recruits people and keeps them entangled. That's because a logical and reasonable religion that isn't sticky dies out, while a illogical and unreasonable religion that is sticky will prosper despite it's other flaws.
I suppose that's a essentially memetic survival of the fitest.
...
Are you aware that the article that prompted action against the Journal in question also prompted more than two thirds of the journal's editors to resign including it's chief editor because the owners tried to block a retraction of the article after it was published. The journal had to be restructured to give the chief editor final say on all articles to be published, because the article was published on the say-so of one individual editor. Furthermore, the follow up investigation revealed that the editor who published the anti-global warming paper did so against the recommendation of all three of the peer reviewers for the article. In essence a single editor took it upon himself to publish an article over the objections of his peers and his reviewers, while hiding the fact that it had failed to pass peer review.
In other words, the article that was published was badly flawed and actually should never have been published, it diminished the credibility of the journal that published and and embarrassed the employees of the journal to the point where most of them quit rather than be associated with it any more. Or to put it bluntly, the scientists at the CRU were totally and completely right when they decided that they should have nothing further to do with the journal. In the science world, reputation is important. A journal that prints deeply and obviously flawed articles loses it's reputation and it's credibility, and no one wants to be the person propping a disreputable journal up.
He may care about getting re-elected but he only cares about the around 40% that he needs to get a majority. He doesn't really care much if a majority of Canadians disagree with him, as long as the 40% he needs to get elected are with him on the issue. So he's only responsive to a specific section of the public.
What I think you want is "Preferential Balloting", which is the generalized term that includes Instant Run Off Voting and other methods like Condorcet Voting. Condorcet is more complicated but seems to have fewer failings than IRV does.
And I'm for preferential balloting as well, plus I'd also like to see a binding "None-of-the-above" option. If none of the above wins, then a by-election should be at the earliest opportunity and all of the losers from the previous election should be barred from running in the by-election. That way we can guarantee our elected representatives are better than nothing.