Wait, so after all the NSA bullshit, he was caught by Canada? Oh, the irony.
Welllll, maybe...
Do you remember the recent stories about the DEA and "parallel construction," where the DEA was getting phone records from the NSA and then using them to identify suspects from which they could reverse engineer a false "lead" to let the police just happen to find other incriminating evidence to build a case on?
I'm not saying that's clearly what happened here, but as others have pointed out, it's a distinct possibility given that drugs are involved.
I think we're more picking over definitions here than an actual perception of where the parties sit, so since you've laid out where you're coming from, I'll do the same, and we can part as some of the few people in this article to have had a back-and-forth without convincing ourselves the other is an idiot.:-)
If Sollard meant to say that there's no middle in American politics anymore, I would agree to that, but characterizing the Democrats as the "far left" is disingenuous, since it portrays them as just as far from a reasonable, centrist stance as the Republicans.
I think people today have completely forgotten what the "far left" used to look like in American politics and have no conception of what it's *really* like when you go to countries where Communist parties actually get votes. It's a disservice to history, and it plays into the false equivalency that both sides are just as bad as each other. This is clearly not the case to anyone looking outside the narrow blinders of the current status quo to the greater global and historical perspective. Context matters more than just the horse race to me.
It also lets them test stuff that the US would get too much crap for deploying in the field... safe in the knowledge that the blame falls on someone else.
If you don't like the Wikipedia's nice presentation, then you can get the same numbers from the secretary of state's office. Across all elections, Democrats had a solid lead, but only took 5 of 18 seats. The 12th district was the only closely contested seat, with the 1st and 2nd being the most blatantly packed (majority minority districts around Philadelphia).
Also for your perusal. Ohio (51% R 47% D vote, 12 R & 4 D seats; 51%->75%) Michigan (46% R 51% D, 9 R & 5 D seats; 46%->64%) North Carolina (49% R 51% D, 9 R & 4 D seats; 49%->69%) Florida (of course) (52% R 46% D, 17 R & 10 D seats; 52%->63%). Illinois (Democrat example) (40% R 57%D, 6 R & 12 D seats; 57%->66%).
All of these are states in which partisan bodies (e.g. legislatures or governors) draw the district lines. Also, you can find the popular vote totals in the box at the top right on the main page for the 2012 House election.
Why is not funding a massively expensive piece of legislation a bad thing?
Because it is law now. The process for overturning this law is supposed to be that you debate it on its merits, pass it in both the House and the Senate, and then either get the President to sign or get a 2/3 majority to override him. But they can't do that, because they don't have enough popular support for this to either take the Presidency or to take 2/3 of both houses, so they're taking hostages which is horribly unethical.
And besides, your car analogy is flawed because Congress can, at any time, raise its purchasing power by raising taxes. That's the main reason the budget is red right now. (That, economic collapse hitting revenues due to the banks destroying the economy, and unfunded wars.) We paid down a much larger debt after WW2 through high taxes, and the economy boomed during this period. The notion that high taxes + high expenses = economic death is simply not supported by history.
The federal government should not be spending almost 40% of our GDP every year. That's insane.
There's no magic number there. A good number of governments spend way more than we do as a measure of GDP (without spending such a huge chunk on the military) and are financially stable, with higher rates of happiness and health. e.g. Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Germany, etc. (To be fair, that list also includes a number of countries with...issues like Greece, Italy, Cuba, etc.) Spending less is no real indicator in either direction either.
The US position relative to the rest of the globe is irrelevant in this discussion. What is relevant is the relative positions of the parties compared to each other in American politics.
How about the positions of the parties relative to themselves at other times in American history? Liberal Democrats today would be conservative Republicans in the 1960s. You want to read an eye opener? Go back and read The Republican Party Platform of 1960 and compare it to the 2012 GOP Platform. Much of today's Republican Party is still present in the party of 1960, but there's a lot in there that has been carved off of the party and rejected as "liberal." Here's some gems from the 1960 platform:
"To this end [opposing the Soviets] we will continue to support and strengthen the United Nations as an instrument for peace, for international cooperation, and for the advancement of the fundamental freedoms and humane interests of mankind."
"Our mutual security program of economic help and technical assistance; the Development Loan Fund, the Inter-American Bank, the International Development Association and the Food for Peace Program, which create the conditions for progress in less-developed countries; our leadership in international efforts to help children, eliminate pestilence and disease and aid refugeesâ"these are programs wise in concept and generous in purpose. We mean to continue in support of them."
"Republican policy firmly supports the right of employers and unions freely to enter into agreements providing for the union shop and other forms of union security as authorized by the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947 (the Taft-Hartley Act )."
"Republican action has given to millions of American working men and women new or expanded protection and benefits, such as: Increased federal minimum wage; Extended coverage of unemployment insurance and the payment of additional temporary benefits provided in 1958-59; Improvement of veterans' re-employment rights; Extension of federal workman's compensation coverage and increase of benefits..."
"Congress should submit a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for women."
"Strengthened federal enforcement powers in combatting water pollution and additional resources for research and demonstration projects. Federal grants for the construction of waste disposal plants should be made only when they make an identifiable contribution to clearing up polluted streams."
"Federal authority to identify, after appropriate hearings, air pollution problems and to recommend proposed solutions."
"Immigration has been reduced to the point where it does not provide the stimulus to growth that it should, nor are we fulfilling our obligation as a haven for the oppressed. Republican conscience and Republican policy require that... the annual number of immigrants we accept be at least doubled."
These are all positions that would have Tea Party nuts screaming to unseat them in a primary challenge. The GOP has taken a hard shift to the right of center, and they've dragged the Democrats behind them by framing and controlling the debate and by shedding moderates by labeling them as liberals.
Lastly, and perhaps most topically on the subject of the debt.
"In order of priority, federal revenues should be used: first, to meet the needs of national security; second, to fulfill the legitimate and urgent needs of the nation that cannot be met by the States, local governments or private action; third, to pay down on the national debt in good times; finally, to improve our tax structure."
It seems like our current GOP has a different set of priorities: 4,1,3,2. Well, with the furloughs hitting defense contracts and late pay for servicemen and their families, perhaps it should be 4,3,1,2.
All the Constitution mandates is that the house choose their Speaker. The Speaker technically doesn't even have to be a member of the House, though Congress always has chosen a member. There are no roles or powers specified directly in the Constitution, though Congress has always had the power to set its own parliamentary procedures, which is where all the power of the Speaker truly comes from.
Kind of like the filibuster -- not in the Constitution but within the power of the Senate to limit itself in that way.
And yes, it really is a grotesque misuse of an office the founders did not anticipate having the partisan role that it has today because of their general blindspot for the development of political parties in the US and belief that the government would be more of a "gentleman's" club.
Well okay, maybe "misuse" is a misnomer, since the office near really even had much of a use until it became a partisan tool. It's still a largely anti-democratic device that is yet another thing ruining political compromise in favor of winner-take-all politics.
And if you notice, The house actually changed position to try and compromise but the senate didn't. Neither party is innocent in this. Both are equally guilty.
So, if I walked up to you on the street and said, "Give me $100, or I'll punch your kid in the face," and then later compromised to, "Okay, only $20 not to punch your kid in the face," would you be equally guilty for not taking the second option?
You cannot start with an unreasonable position, "compromise" to a less unreasonable position, and then blame the other party as "equally guilty." Taking a hostage and threatening a wide chunk of the economy is not considered starting from a reasonable position no matter what your demands are.
It's only the threat of default that puts us at risk over the debt, and it's the Republicans who manufactured that threat long, long before the debt itself would have. We held a LOT more debt relative to GDP after WW2 than we do now, and we paid down 2/3 of that quite easily while expanding federal programs the whole time.
The only reason our debt is this high compared to GDP is the Republicans unwillingness to raise taxes, and the only reason people are worried we may not be able to pay it back is because of Republicans using it as a hostage in political negotiations. Obama is the first Democratic President to preside over a rise in the debt over his full term, that is almost solely the fault of the Republican obsession with tax cutting, as is the rise over every Republican president's term since Reagan.
Are government employees really ""workers?"" They're not actually producing value. In fact, I would call them leeches, not workers.
Is the marketing department at your company useless leeches? The accounting department? The legal department? The janitors or any security guards you might have? Is all of management useless? Would you even have a company if it was nothing but the supposed "productive" people?
The government provides essential services. The labeling of these people as "non-essential" is a disservice to the many people who keep us safe from harm and who provide the basic infrastructure and coordination that make allow businesses to operate smoothly.
We're looking at a shutdown of all federal loans for new houses as well as farm loans, a halt to food for impoverished children outside of schools nor for pregnant women (a harvest to be reaped over a generation), a halt to all of our science programs (including the CDC's monitoring of outbreaks and administration of flu shots), no more work or food safety inspections except in emergencies, no FTC or SEC oversight of our wonderfully trustworthy financial sector, and a nearly paralyzed court system if this goes on for more the two weeks. I bet towns near national parks are just so happy at what this is going to do to their tourism revenues.
Oh, and you're also cheering asking all of our soldiers sticking their neck on the line for America getting their paychecks delayed and half their civilian support getting furloughed. (Yeah, those are government employees too, didn't you know?) Plus, if things aren't resolves in 2-3 weeks, no more disability checks or pension payments for the people who sacrificed for our country.
Plus, shutting off the money to programs doesn't shut off the need for businesses to comply with them. No more permitting by the EPA, the DOE, the FCC, or the BATFE. No E-Verify for businesses looking to check the immigration status of new hires (and a hiring freeze).
So yeah. Cheer this on, you nihilistic twit. Just watch how well business does without the government in place if this lasts more than two weeks. And if we default on our debt obligations because Republicans shot all of their hostages, you can kiss every last bit of recovery since 2007 goodbye.
The House is gerrymandered. It does not accurately represent the will of the people, but rather represents the cumulative will of the parties in control of the states. If I remember correctly, between 95% and 98% of Congressional seats are predetermined by gerrymandering.
I never really thought of it before you put it that way, but isn't it ironic that the House and the Senate have completely flipped their roles? The Senate is actually more representative of the will of the public ever since they were swapped to election by the people of an entire state, while the House is more representative of the will of the states, since it's subject to gerrymandering by the state government.
Democracies are "Majority Rule" again WE ARE A REPUBLIC. That's why it takes 2/3 votes to pass things and make them stick. 51% doesn't cut it, and all the ACA got was 51%. That is why it is still being stalled and picked apart. As it should be.
I really don't think you understand how the legislative branch works. A 2/3 vote is only required to override a presidential veto (both houses), to approve a Constitutional amendment to be sent to the states to ratify (both houses), to ratify a treaty (Senate), to declare the President incapacitated and allow the Vice President to act in his place for 21 days under the 25th Amendment (both houses), and to remove someone from office federal office after a majority impeaches them (House). Additionally, as a matter of parliamentary procedure (not Constitutional law), the Senate requires a 3/5 majority to vote for cloture and end a filibuster.
Beyond that, ALL votes in BOTH houses are a simple majority.
51% does in fact cut it. (Or 60-39 in the Senate and 219-212 in the House. But I digress.) If it didn't, we wouldn't even be having this discussion right now, because it would have never been law in the first place.
The only reason it's still being contested is because a minority has a very outsized voice through a combination of gerrymandering giving the Republicans a 242-193 edge despite them losing the popular vote by 1% and the Speaker's use of the "majority of the majority" rule to prevent bills that a majority of Congress would approve going forward unless a majority of his party is behind it.
There's a very big difference between ensuring that the voice of a minority is heard and can have influence and letting a minority run roughshod over the rest of the country. The Republicans lost on Obamacare. They've lost 43 times on it now, and the forefathers certainly did not envision a minority holding the entire government hostage until they got their way.
Unbelievable. I really can't understand this reasoning. You ADMIT that the government is incompetent in how they spend the public's money ('while not providing any healthcare") while wanting to take a well working health care system and dismantle it and give it to the government to control! This is just insane thinking.
It's very simple. The "incompetence" is not in the government spending money -- it's the government spending that money in the private sector rather than managing it itself.
The problem is that we don't have a true public healthcare system nor a true private one. We have a hybrid public-private healthcare system, with all the greed of a profit-seeking private insurance and healthcare sector welded to the low competition of a publicly-backed system and captive market, with all the inefficiencies of both multiplied. We have the worst of both worlds.
Going pure private sector won't help, because healthcare simply isn't a competitive free market and cannot be. Even if they had all the data, people simply do not seek care based on lowest cost, and the system cannot optimize itself to that end without that. Worse, the information asymmetry between providers and customers is horrible compared to something like auto dealerships Customers simply aren't qualified to know ahead of time whether they will get the best service for the lowest price.. (Do I really need that expensive CAT scan? How am I supposed to know?) Finally, customers are often not free to act with full rational capacity when the lives of themselves and their family are on the line. Time constraints, stress, etc. all compound the lack of available data with the inability to assess it properly. The end result is pretty much the opposite of what economists expect as the underpinnings of a free market.
Our system has one additional complications from its current worst of both worlds status of having people kept out of the decision-making process of their healthcare combined with the profit motive. Healthcare providers are unable (and unwilling in most cases) to provide a price sheet for their services up front, making competitive shopping impossible. That's for the insurers to handle, not the plebeians. Without customer input and without government regulation, this results in wild swings in costs for similar services as well as perverse incentives to charge the most to people without insurance instead of to the people who can most afford it. Fixing this would require regulation even without public use of funds.
So the only other real alternative is to swing the other way and eliminate the profit-seeking motive as a source of inefficiency. Also, a unified payer system would drastically cut down administrative costs. If the government was paying for all care, then the justification for most damages in malpractice lawsuits would drop sharply, reducing liability costs. Redundant services could be streamlined. Hospital costs could be brought in-line instead of varying wildly from facility to facility.
With public health as a greater priority than profits, programs to focus on wellness instead of recovery could be brought into focus. We would no longer have the terrible costs of people waiting until they end up in the emergency room because they gambled that they'd get better first. We wouldn't have the constant drag on the economy of the working poor working through their illnesses rather than getting treatment when it's cheapest and most effective because they're afraid of the costs.
And if you don't believe this, then just look at the numbers. Other countries spend far less of their GDP (with far less GDP per capita to begin with!) than we do, and they live longer. By having a national healthcare system, they spend sometimes half to a third of what we pay and often live 1-5 years longer. What exactly are we paying for, except a misguided principle that puts a mirage of economic liberty (which simply doesn't exist in healthcare) over human lives?
I was under the impression it could be extracted from natural gas, which is made up of elements. The way they extract methane and propane from it. You are aware that we can get hydrogen and oxygen from water?
Okay, let's walk through this. Natural gas is a combination of a number of separate gasses, each molecules composed of different atoms/elements, with methane (CH3) as the primary component.
Helium gas is one of those gasses in geological sources of natural gas. It is created by the process of radioactive decay, which splits heavier elements into lighter elements, often including helium as a byproduct. As a noble gas it does not form stable molecules with other atoms outside of extreme conditions.
It is not the byproduct of a chemical reaction, like the methane released by landfills. No amount of processing of landfill waste will generate helium. It is effectively a non-renewable resource since its method of generation is extremely slow.
Don't be so naive. This is nothing but a lobbyist-funded ploy to undercut helium as an alternative to America's strategic hot air reserve (aka Congress).
The pipes have always been compatible with the blind.
And even more compatible with the deaf. Zing!
(I kid, I kid. I lived for a couple of years near a church were bagpipers practiced and used to open the windows to hear them every Wednesday. I really miss that, even though they only ever practiced the same 3-4 songs.)
Customer Support, Quality, User Interface Design and Application Development. Those are the four things that Apple does right.
...and good industrial design. Our *five*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as customer support, quality.... I'll come in again.
I once had a part that required me to count 47 measures of rests before beginning, and I'm pretty sure I could still play my part in Ode to Joy. I consider myself lucky, the percussionists had to hum the main melodies as they played for their tests.
Heh. Reminds me of the time in high school when I had to play "Also Spake Zarathustra," which starts with several measures of a single low note and periodic timpani drumming before the rest of the band kicks in. The low, long note was to be played by the tubas, but I was the only one in our small band, so no stops for breath for eight slow measures.
The weeks of practice before the concert were a source of joy and mockery for the rest of the band as I had to train up my lung capacity to do it, and I usually ended up beet red from effectively holding my breath / trying to squeeze every last bit of it out of my body for over a minute. Even better, I had to try to stuff as much in air in my lungs as I could before the first note, so I was pretty red and semi-bugeyed from the beginning too. I felt like that guy at the end of "Big Trouble in Little China."
At work, I can't really watch video, so could someone explain how a blind musician reads braille while playing the piano or most other instruments? Aren't both hands occupied?
(Please, no mods to me. Give them to the people who answer.)
No, it's not like blaming the victim. It's like shutting the fence gate from your back yard to the alley. If you're too damn lazy to understand how to shut the gate on your computer, you need to quit putting sensitive information on it or attaching peripherals that provide sensitive information... Computers are not toys, and people need to quit treating them like they are.
I think you have the wrong parallel. This is more like blaming someone whose brake lines get cut because they picked up the wrong girl at a bar for not checking their car out first before driving it every time. Or maybe it's more like blaming the parents of kids killed in school shootings for not home-schooling them and keeping them wrapped up in bulletproof vests whenever they go out.
We're not expected to have to defend ourselves against every determined attacker from every angle. That's part of why we have police and a court system -- to keep us from having to live in fear of anyone more skilled at offense than we are at defense. The very mark of rule of law is that don't blame those who acted in good faith for the acts of those who do not. Every time some self-centered prick blames the weak for being weaker than they are, they excuse the strong for being predatory. May you never be on the other end of that stick.
Right right. But they're lives aren't ruined. . they will continue to live their lives...
Who the hell are you to decide that? These women have been violated. He left at least one in tears. They have had their sense of security in their own home stripped from them. They will never be able to trust their computer again and use it in a way that the rest of us all get to take for granted. He has exerted a cruel power over their lives that will leave them harmed for years if not for life.
If you've never had your home invaded or never been raped and never have known anyone who has, you probably don't understand how long the effects of this will linger.
So, why is his suffering the only one that's valid? You seem all too dismissive of what he's done to those women in your sympathy for him. One might draw unfortunate conclusions about your values towards women if you keep dismissing sexual blackmail as just some childish prank that he deserves only to be mildly scolded for and told not to do it again.
Look, I would like a more reform-oriented judicial system, but we are not going to get there by treating people who did something like he did as harmless scamps. There needs to be punishment. There needs to be consequences. There also needs to be counseling, reformation, and an attempt to help him integrate back into society when he's done, but the lack thereof is no excuse to claim that he doesn't deserve the punishment for the very serious crime he has committed multiple times and with no indication that he'd stop if he hadn't been caught.
Afaict in the days of the Playstation and early playstation 2 games... left stick and DPAD were usually equivalent since the game could not rely on the stick being present but i've noticed in more recent games i've played... this is no longer the case. You have to use the left stick for movement and the DPAD is either unused or used as extra function buttons.
If i'm going to be forced to use the left stick for movement then i'd rather have it in the primary position.
That's lazy design by companies coding for the Xbox first. Yes, if you design a game for the Xbox controller, then the Xbox controller is going to be superior for it. I'd rather see cross-platform games designed for cross-platform use.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, so after all the NSA bullshit, he was caught by Canada? Oh, the irony.
Welllll, maybe...
Do you remember the recent stories about the DEA and "parallel construction," where the DEA was getting phone records from the NSA and then using them to identify suspects from which they could reverse engineer a false "lead" to let the police just happen to find other incriminating evidence to build a case on?
I'm not saying that's clearly what happened here, but as others have pointed out, it's a distinct possibility given that drugs are involved.
I think we're more picking over definitions here than an actual perception of where the parties sit, so since you've laid out where you're coming from, I'll do the same, and we can part as some of the few people in this article to have had a back-and-forth without convincing ourselves the other is an idiot. :-)
If Sollard meant to say that there's no middle in American politics anymore, I would agree to that, but characterizing the Democrats as the "far left" is disingenuous, since it portrays them as just as far from a reasonable, centrist stance as the Republicans.
I think people today have completely forgotten what the "far left" used to look like in American politics and have no conception of what it's *really* like when you go to countries where Communist parties actually get votes. It's a disservice to history, and it plays into the false equivalency that both sides are just as bad as each other. This is clearly not the case to anyone looking outside the narrow blinders of the current status quo to the greater global and historical perspective. Context matters more than just the horse race to me.
Anyway, that's what got my hackles up.
It also lets them test stuff that the US would get too much crap for deploying in the field ... safe in the knowledge that the blame falls on someone else.
Yeah, how's that theory working out, post 9/11?
The US House of Representatives elections in Pennsylvannia, 2012.
If you don't like the Wikipedia's nice presentation, then you can get the same numbers from the secretary of state's office. Across all elections, Democrats had a solid lead, but only took 5 of 18 seats. The 12th district was the only closely contested seat, with the 1st and 2nd being the most blatantly packed (majority minority districts around Philadelphia).
Also for your perusal.
Ohio (51% R 47% D vote, 12 R & 4 D seats; 51%->75%)
Michigan (46% R 51% D, 9 R & 5 D seats; 46%->64%)
North Carolina (49% R 51% D, 9 R & 4 D seats; 49%->69%)
Florida (of course) (52% R 46% D, 17 R & 10 D seats; 52%->63%).
Illinois (Democrat example) (40% R 57%D, 6 R & 12 D seats; 57%->66%).
All of these are states in which partisan bodies (e.g. legislatures or governors) draw the district lines. Also, you can find the popular vote totals in the box at the top right on the main page for the 2012 House election.
Why is not funding a massively expensive piece of legislation a bad thing?
Because it is law now. The process for overturning this law is supposed to be that you debate it on its merits, pass it in both the House and the Senate, and then either get the President to sign or get a 2/3 majority to override him. But they can't do that, because they don't have enough popular support for this to either take the Presidency or to take 2/3 of both houses, so they're taking hostages which is horribly unethical.
And besides, your car analogy is flawed because Congress can, at any time, raise its purchasing power by raising taxes. That's the main reason the budget is red right now. (That, economic collapse hitting revenues due to the banks destroying the economy, and unfunded wars.) We paid down a much larger debt after WW2 through high taxes, and the economy boomed during this period. The notion that high taxes + high expenses = economic death is simply not supported by history.
The federal government should not be spending almost 40% of our GDP every year. That's insane.
There's no magic number there. A good number of governments spend way more than we do as a measure of GDP (without spending such a huge chunk on the military) and are financially stable, with higher rates of happiness and health. e.g. Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Germany, etc. (To be fair, that list also includes a number of countries with ...issues like Greece, Italy, Cuba, etc.) Spending less is no real indicator in either direction either.
It's what they do with the money that matters.
The US position relative to the rest of the globe is irrelevant in this discussion. What is relevant is the relative positions of the parties compared to each other in American politics.
How about the positions of the parties relative to themselves at other times in American history? Liberal Democrats today would be conservative Republicans in the 1960s. You want to read an eye opener? Go back and read The Republican Party Platform of 1960 and compare it to the 2012 GOP Platform. Much of today's Republican Party is still present in the party of 1960, but there's a lot in there that has been carved off of the party and rejected as "liberal." Here's some gems from the 1960 platform:
"To this end [opposing the Soviets] we will continue to support and strengthen the United Nations as an instrument for peace, for international cooperation, and for the advancement of the fundamental freedoms and humane interests of mankind."
"Our mutual security program of economic help and technical assistance; the Development Loan Fund, the Inter-American Bank, the International Development Association and the Food for Peace Program, which create the conditions for progress in less-developed countries; our leadership in international efforts to help children, eliminate pestilence and disease and aid refugeesâ"these are programs wise in concept and generous in purpose. We mean to continue in support of them."
"Republican policy firmly supports the right of employers and unions freely to enter into agreements providing for the union shop and other forms of union security as authorized by the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947 (the Taft-Hartley Act )."
"Republican action has given to millions of American working men and women new or expanded protection and benefits, such as: Increased federal minimum wage; Extended coverage of unemployment insurance and the payment of additional temporary benefits provided in 1958-59; Improvement of veterans' re-employment rights; Extension of federal workman's compensation coverage and increase of benefits..."
"Congress should submit a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for women."
"Strengthened federal enforcement powers in combatting water pollution and additional resources for research and demonstration projects. Federal grants for the construction of waste disposal plants should be made only when they make an identifiable contribution to clearing up polluted streams."
"Federal authority to identify, after appropriate hearings, air pollution problems and to recommend proposed solutions."
"Immigration has been reduced to the point where it does not provide the stimulus to growth that it should, nor are we fulfilling our obligation as a haven for the oppressed. Republican conscience and Republican policy require that ... the annual number of immigrants we accept be at least doubled."
These are all positions that would have Tea Party nuts screaming to unseat them in a primary challenge. The GOP has taken a hard shift to the right of center, and they've dragged the Democrats behind them by framing and controlling the debate and by shedding moderates by labeling them as liberals.
Lastly, and perhaps most topically on the subject of the debt.
"In order of priority, federal revenues should be used: first, to meet the needs of national security; second, to fulfill the legitimate and urgent needs of the nation that cannot be met by the States, local governments or private action; third, to pay down on the national debt in good times; finally, to improve our tax structure."
It seems like our current GOP has a different set of priorities: 4,1,3,2. Well, with the furloughs hitting defense contracts and late pay for servicemen and their families, perhaps it should be 4,3,1,2.
All the Constitution mandates is that the house choose their Speaker. The Speaker technically doesn't even have to be a member of the House, though Congress always has chosen a member. There are no roles or powers specified directly in the Constitution, though Congress has always had the power to set its own parliamentary procedures, which is where all the power of the Speaker truly comes from.
Kind of like the filibuster -- not in the Constitution but within the power of the Senate to limit itself in that way.
And yes, it really is a grotesque misuse of an office the founders did not anticipate having the partisan role that it has today because of their general blindspot for the development of political parties in the US and belief that the government would be more of a "gentleman's" club.
Well okay, maybe "misuse" is a misnomer, since the office near really even had much of a use until it became a partisan tool. It's still a largely anti-democratic device that is yet another thing ruining political compromise in favor of winner-take-all politics.
And if you notice, The house actually changed position to try and compromise but the senate didn't. Neither party is innocent in this. Both are equally guilty.
So, if I walked up to you on the street and said, "Give me $100, or I'll punch your kid in the face," and then later compromised to, "Okay, only $20 not to punch your kid in the face," would you be equally guilty for not taking the second option?
You cannot start with an unreasonable position, "compromise" to a less unreasonable position, and then blame the other party as "equally guilty." Taking a hostage and threatening a wide chunk of the economy is not considered starting from a reasonable position no matter what your demands are.
It's only the threat of default that puts us at risk over the debt, and it's the Republicans who manufactured that threat long, long before the debt itself would have. We held a LOT more debt relative to GDP after WW2 than we do now, and we paid down 2/3 of that quite easily while expanding federal programs the whole time.
The only reason our debt is this high compared to GDP is the Republicans unwillingness to raise taxes, and the only reason people are worried we may not be able to pay it back is because of Republicans using it as a hostage in political negotiations. Obama is the first Democratic President to preside over a rise in the debt over his full term, that is almost solely the fault of the Republican obsession with tax cutting, as is the rise over every Republican president's term since Reagan.
Are government employees really ""workers?"" They're not actually producing value. In fact, I would call them leeches, not workers.
Is the marketing department at your company useless leeches? The accounting department? The legal department? The janitors or any security guards you might have? Is all of management useless? Would you even have a company if it was nothing but the supposed "productive" people?
The government provides essential services. The labeling of these people as "non-essential" is a disservice to the many people who keep us safe from harm and who provide the basic infrastructure and coordination that make allow businesses to operate smoothly.
We're looking at a shutdown of all federal loans for new houses as well as farm loans, a halt to food for impoverished children outside of schools nor for pregnant women (a harvest to be reaped over a generation), a halt to all of our science programs (including the CDC's monitoring of outbreaks and administration of flu shots), no more work or food safety inspections except in emergencies, no FTC or SEC oversight of our wonderfully trustworthy financial sector, and a nearly paralyzed court system if this goes on for more the two weeks. I bet towns near national parks are just so happy at what this is going to do to their tourism revenues.
Oh, and you're also cheering asking all of our soldiers sticking their neck on the line for America getting their paychecks delayed and half their civilian support getting furloughed. (Yeah, those are government employees too, didn't you know?) Plus, if things aren't resolves in 2-3 weeks, no more disability checks or pension payments for the people who sacrificed for our country.
Plus, shutting off the money to programs doesn't shut off the need for businesses to comply with them. No more permitting by the EPA, the DOE, the FCC, or the BATFE. No E-Verify for businesses looking to check the immigration status of new hires (and a hiring freeze).
So yeah. Cheer this on, you nihilistic twit. Just watch how well business does without the government in place if this lasts more than two weeks. And if we default on our debt obligations because Republicans shot all of their hostages, you can kiss every last bit of recovery since 2007 goodbye.
The House is gerrymandered. It does not accurately represent the will of the people, but rather represents the cumulative will of the parties in control of the states. If I remember correctly, between 95% and 98% of Congressional seats are predetermined by gerrymandering.
I never really thought of it before you put it that way, but isn't it ironic that the House and the Senate have completely flipped their roles? The Senate is actually more representative of the will of the public ever since they were swapped to election by the people of an entire state, while the House is more representative of the will of the states, since it's subject to gerrymandering by the state government.
What a completely screwed up series of events...
Democracies are "Majority Rule" again WE ARE A REPUBLIC. That's why it takes 2/3 votes to pass things and make them stick. 51% doesn't cut it, and all the ACA got was 51%. That is why it is still being stalled and picked apart. As it should be.
I really don't think you understand how the legislative branch works. A 2/3 vote is only required to override a presidential veto (both houses), to approve a Constitutional amendment to be sent to the states to ratify (both houses), to ratify a treaty (Senate), to declare the President incapacitated and allow the Vice President to act in his place for 21 days under the 25th Amendment (both houses), and to remove someone from office federal office after a majority impeaches them (House). Additionally, as a matter of parliamentary procedure (not Constitutional law), the Senate requires a 3/5 majority to vote for cloture and end a filibuster.
Beyond that, ALL votes in BOTH houses are a simple majority.
51% does in fact cut it. (Or 60-39 in the Senate and 219-212 in the House. But I digress.) If it didn't, we wouldn't even be having this discussion right now, because it would have never been law in the first place.
The only reason it's still being contested is because a minority has a very outsized voice through a combination of gerrymandering giving the Republicans a 242-193 edge despite them losing the popular vote by 1% and the Speaker's use of the "majority of the majority" rule to prevent bills that a majority of Congress would approve going forward unless a majority of his party is behind it.
There's a very big difference between ensuring that the voice of a minority is heard and can have influence and letting a minority run roughshod over the rest of the country. The Republicans lost on Obamacare. They've lost 43 times on it now, and the forefathers certainly did not envision a minority holding the entire government hostage until they got their way.
Unbelievable. I really can't understand this reasoning. You ADMIT that the government is incompetent in how they spend the public's money ('while not providing any healthcare") while wanting to take a well working health care system and dismantle it and give it to the government to control! This is just insane thinking.
It's very simple. The "incompetence" is not in the government spending money -- it's the government spending that money in the private sector rather than managing it itself.
The problem is that we don't have a true public healthcare system nor a true private one. We have a hybrid public-private healthcare system, with all the greed of a profit-seeking private insurance and healthcare sector welded to the low competition of a publicly-backed system and captive market, with all the inefficiencies of both multiplied. We have the worst of both worlds.
Going pure private sector won't help, because healthcare simply isn't a competitive free market and cannot be. Even if they had all the data, people simply do not seek care based on lowest cost, and the system cannot optimize itself to that end without that. Worse, the information asymmetry between providers and customers is horrible compared to something like auto dealerships Customers simply aren't qualified to know ahead of time whether they will get the best service for the lowest price.. (Do I really need that expensive CAT scan? How am I supposed to know?) Finally, customers are often not free to act with full rational capacity when the lives of themselves and their family are on the line. Time constraints, stress, etc. all compound the lack of available data with the inability to assess it properly. The end result is pretty much the opposite of what economists expect as the underpinnings of a free market.
Our system has one additional complications from its current worst of both worlds status of having people kept out of the decision-making process of their healthcare combined with the profit motive. Healthcare providers are unable (and unwilling in most cases) to provide a price sheet for their services up front, making competitive shopping impossible. That's for the insurers to handle, not the plebeians. Without customer input and without government regulation, this results in wild swings in costs for similar services as well as perverse incentives to charge the most to people without insurance instead of to the people who can most afford it. Fixing this would require regulation even without public use of funds.
So the only other real alternative is to swing the other way and eliminate the profit-seeking motive as a source of inefficiency. Also, a unified payer system would drastically cut down administrative costs. If the government was paying for all care, then the justification for most damages in malpractice lawsuits would drop sharply, reducing liability costs. Redundant services could be streamlined. Hospital costs could be brought in-line instead of varying wildly from facility to facility.
With public health as a greater priority than profits, programs to focus on wellness instead of recovery could be brought into focus. We would no longer have the terrible costs of people waiting until they end up in the emergency room because they gambled that they'd get better first. We wouldn't have the constant drag on the economy of the working poor working through their illnesses rather than getting treatment when it's cheapest and most effective because they're afraid of the costs.
And if you don't believe this, then just look at the numbers. Other countries spend far less of their GDP (with far less GDP per capita to begin with!) than we do, and they live longer. By having a national healthcare system, they spend sometimes half to a third of what we pay and often live 1-5 years longer. What exactly are we paying for, except a misguided principle that puts a mirage of economic liberty (which simply doesn't exist in healthcare) over human lives?
I was under the impression it could be extracted from natural gas, which is made up of elements. The way they extract methane and propane from it. You are aware that we can get hydrogen and oxygen from water?
Okay, let's walk through this. Natural gas is a combination of a number of separate gasses, each molecules composed of different atoms/elements, with methane (CH3) as the primary component.
Helium gas is one of those gasses in geological sources of natural gas. It is created by the process of radioactive decay, which splits heavier elements into lighter elements, often including helium as a byproduct. As a noble gas it does not form stable molecules with other atoms outside of extreme conditions.
It is not the byproduct of a chemical reaction, like the methane released by landfills. No amount of processing of landfill waste will generate helium. It is effectively a non-renewable resource since its method of generation is extremely slow.
Don't be so naive. This is nothing but a lobbyist-funded ploy to undercut helium as an alternative to America's strategic hot air reserve (aka Congress).
The pipes have always been compatible with the blind.
And even more compatible with the deaf. Zing!
(I kid, I kid. I lived for a couple of years near a church were bagpipers practiced and used to open the windows to hear them every Wednesday. I really miss that, even though they only ever practiced the same 3-4 songs.)
Customer Support, Quality, User Interface Design and Application Development. Those are the four things that Apple does right.
...and good industrial design. Our *five*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as customer support, quality.... I'll come in again.
"In Jobs We Trust"
Not since 2007, unfortunately.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0u8rI0JvaM
The only part of the above link that matters.
I once had a part that required me to count 47 measures of rests before beginning, and I'm pretty sure I could still play my part in Ode to Joy. I consider myself lucky, the percussionists had to hum the main melodies as they played for their tests.
Heh. Reminds me of the time in high school when I had to play "Also Spake Zarathustra," which starts with several measures of a single low note and periodic timpani drumming before the rest of the band kicks in. The low, long note was to be played by the tubas, but I was the only one in our small band, so no stops for breath for eight slow measures.
The weeks of practice before the concert were a source of joy and mockery for the rest of the band as I had to train up my lung capacity to do it, and I usually ended up beet red from effectively holding my breath / trying to squeeze every last bit of it out of my body for over a minute. Even better, I had to try to stuff as much in air in my lungs as I could before the first note, so I was pretty red and semi-bugeyed from the beginning too. I felt like that guy at the end of "Big Trouble in Little China."
Good times.
At work, I can't really watch video, so could someone explain how a blind musician reads braille while playing the piano or most other instruments? Aren't both hands occupied?
(Please, no mods to me. Give them to the people who answer.)
I would guess that the right touchpad can emulate four buttons in the same way the left touchpad emulates a D-pad.
No, it's not like blaming the victim. It's like shutting the fence gate from your back yard to the alley. If you're too damn lazy to understand how to shut the gate on your computer, you need to quit putting sensitive information on it or attaching peripherals that provide sensitive information... Computers are not toys, and people need to quit treating them like they are.
I think you have the wrong parallel. This is more like blaming someone whose brake lines get cut because they picked up the wrong girl at a bar for not checking their car out first before driving it every time. Or maybe it's more like blaming the parents of kids killed in school shootings for not home-schooling them and keeping them wrapped up in bulletproof vests whenever they go out.
We're not expected to have to defend ourselves against every determined attacker from every angle. That's part of why we have police and a court system -- to keep us from having to live in fear of anyone more skilled at offense than we are at defense. The very mark of rule of law is that don't blame those who acted in good faith for the acts of those who do not. Every time some self-centered prick blames the weak for being weaker than they are, they excuse the strong for being predatory. May you never be on the other end of that stick.
Right right. But they're lives aren't ruined. . they will continue to live their lives ...
Who the hell are you to decide that? These women have been violated. He left at least one in tears. They have had their sense of security in their own home stripped from them. They will never be able to trust their computer again and use it in a way that the rest of us all get to take for granted. He has exerted a cruel power over their lives that will leave them harmed for years if not for life.
If you've never had your home invaded or never been raped and never have known anyone who has, you probably don't understand how long the effects of this will linger.
So, why is his suffering the only one that's valid? You seem all too dismissive of what he's done to those women in your sympathy for him. One might draw unfortunate conclusions about your values towards women if you keep dismissing sexual blackmail as just some childish prank that he deserves only to be mildly scolded for and told not to do it again.
Look, I would like a more reform-oriented judicial system, but we are not going to get there by treating people who did something like he did as harmless scamps. There needs to be punishment. There needs to be consequences. There also needs to be counseling, reformation, and an attempt to help him integrate back into society when he's done, but the lack thereof is no excuse to claim that he doesn't deserve the punishment for the very serious crime he has committed multiple times and with no indication that he'd stop if he hadn't been caught.
Afaict in the days of the Playstation and early playstation 2 games ... left stick and DPAD were usually equivalent since the game could not rely on the stick being present but i've noticed in more recent games i've played ... this is no longer the case. You have to use the left stick for movement and the DPAD is either unused or used as extra function buttons.
If i'm going to be forced to use the left stick for movement then i'd rather have it in the primary position.
That's lazy design by companies coding for the Xbox first. Yes, if you design a game for the Xbox controller, then the Xbox controller is going to be superior for it. I'd rather see cross-platform games designed for cross-platform use.