Of course, the second people started talking about using this district-based system, the Democrats started whining, because they knew this would cost them around 20-25 electoral votes that they currently don't have to work for.
And rightfully so. There have been recent attempts here in California to make our electoral votes be distributed proportionally instead of all or nothing. Naturally this was proposed by the Republicans since they would then get 20 or 25 electoral votes they currently have no chance at. Obviously this would unfairly handicap the Democrats since they would still get 0% of the electoral votes from big Republican states like Texas.
On the other hand, I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system, and no surprise the Democrats in California's legislature sponsored the bill which has been passed by both houses. All we need is for Schwarzenegger to sign it.
BTW, it certainly is funny that people are for the electoral system saying without it small states would be ignored. I don't follow how small states being ignored is worse then our current system where big states like Californa, NY, and Texas get ignored. Isn't more people being ignored worse then less people being ignored? Small states shouldn't be ignored, but the attention they get should be proportional to their population.
That would probably be on the grounds of looking at how the size of government changes under Republicans.
And as for "defense", that's what they call it but there is nothing defensive about most of the budget. The American people largely don't benefit from those expenditures, the defense contractors do. If we were only spending the money needed to defend ourselves, we wouldn't need to nearly outspend the rest of the world put together.
And when looking at the budget charts on the page keep in mind that much of the defense spending is not included in the budget so the gifts to Halliburton are larger then they appear.
I don't follow, how does the electoral system prevent a corrupt metropolitan government from impacting the national election? In your example, with the electoral system they just need to control enough votes to swing the states popular vote to 51%. That automatically sends 100% of the electoral votes to their candidate. That's much more influence then they would have in a national popular vote.
People always like to bring up the original intent of the system while forgetting that our current electoral system bears no resemblance to how it originally operated. These days it is nothing more than a broken popular vote where some citizens are counted more than others. That's inexcusable in a democratic nation.
I have a feeling that The Daily Show will survive through a Democratic presidency, but the Colbert Report will not.
Why would you think that? O'Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh are in their element with a Democratic president. There will still be plenty of extremism to mock.
The problem with balance is this: name one popular, over the top liberal pundit. I don't know of anyone who comes anywhere near the extremism of O'Reilly, Hannity, or Glenn Beck. Considering Stewart is primarily satirizing cable news networks that doesn't leave them much to satirize on the left.
That said, I do remember at least a few times when John got in a well deserved jab at the Democratic leadership.
Colbert is actually lampooning Republican pundits, not Republicans in general. Considering his source material, I think it's safe to say he's never come close to going over the top.
* true hot plugging - it's NOT ok to have to hunt for some crazy "safely remove" option before it's safe to unplug.
I only ever use "safely remove" for USB drives, I've never had a problem with just yanking out other random USB devices. I don't think anything can be done about having to unmount your drives first. As it is now USB supports hot swapping the drives fine without unmounting first. I mean it won't damage the device, but what do you expect them to do with the data you were halfway through copying?
One anecdote doesn't mean anything, but if you want to play that game the guy in Canada who beheaded the kid sitting next to him on the bus and ate parts of the body was clearly not a vegetarian.
I certainly am a different kind of vegan, I eat meat.
Sure there are some areas where land can be used for cattle that can not be used for other crops, but they aren't common enough that it could be a sustainable means of production at the rate meat is currently consumed.
If people would cut back their meat consumption to the level where we could eliminate the massive factory farms that would be a huge win in my book. That's not going to happen any time soon however.
Living close also saves money, for instance you don't need to pay for gas and you spend less time in the car and more time with your family and friends.
Are you forgetting that the meat you raise needs to be fed? Guess what it gets fed with? That's right plants. The same plants that could have been fed directly to vegetarians. Of course if you feed it to the cows first they waste the food by standing around farting methane for a few years.
Try reading up on trophic levels. Every additional step in the food chain represents about a 90% loss of efficiency, so the benefits of vegetarianism are far from negligible.
The practices may be uncommon at this time, but I assure you that all of the vegetarians I know are completely normal humans. Anyone can do it.
And for those who don't have the willpower to completely cut out meat from their diets (such as myself) eating less meat is always an option. It is really unnatural the amount of meat the average American eats anyway.
But if a news program is covering a mediocre fireworks display, and they add in some CGI fireworks and report that it was the greatest display ever created, that is a serious breach of integrity.
The Olympics opening ceremony was an entertainment program, since when do such programs get criticized for using visual effects? Even when the news is doing a report on entertainment they are not required to note every effect used. These CGI fireworks are a complete non-story.
I'm sure I'm younger then you think but all the dictionaries I've seen for looking up characters still use the radical-stroke order system. These are all current Chinese-English dictionaries (like this one), however I can't say how purely Chinese dictionaries are ordered. I'm curious, what sort of methods are more common for looking up characters?
Yeah, that's actually one very good reason for using only stoke counts. It is very simple to explain.
I'm still a beginner at Chinese, so those structural input methods are way out of my league. I've tried them a few times in the past but didn't get anywhere with it.
Cool, first on the list is my girlfriends home town. I like the idea of free public transit, too bad it's pretty rare. It seems like it would make things much more efficient not having to verify each riders fare.
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And rightfully so. There have been recent attempts here in California to make our electoral votes be distributed proportionally instead of all or nothing. Naturally this was proposed by the Republicans since they would then get 20 or 25 electoral votes they currently have no chance at. Obviously this would unfairly handicap the Democrats since they would still get 0% of the electoral votes from big Republican states like Texas.
On the other hand, I support the national popular vote system where states agree to continue with the current system until states with more than half of the electoral votes are signed on. This is the only fair way to implement a proportional system, and no surprise the Democrats in California's legislature sponsored the bill which has been passed by both houses. All we need is for Schwarzenegger to sign it.
BTW, it certainly is funny that people are for the electoral system saying without it small states would be ignored. I don't follow how small states being ignored is worse then our current system where big states like Californa, NY, and Texas get ignored. Isn't more people being ignored worse then less people being ignored? Small states shouldn't be ignored, but the attention they get should be proportional to their population.
Wow, that's an interesting perspective you have, from some far away universe where the media are the fawning shills of the Democrats.
Here in Earth United States all the media are owned by large corporations that have a vested interest in Republicans running things.
That would probably be on the grounds of looking at how the size of government changes under Republicans.
And as for "defense", that's what they call it but there is nothing defensive about most of the budget. The American people largely don't benefit from those expenditures, the defense contractors do. If we were only spending the money needed to defend ourselves, we wouldn't need to nearly outspend the rest of the world put together.
And when looking at the budget charts on the page keep in mind that much of the defense spending is not included in the budget so the gifts to Halliburton are larger then they appear.
I don't follow, how does the electoral system prevent a corrupt metropolitan government from impacting the national election? In your example, with the electoral system they just need to control enough votes to swing the states popular vote to 51%. That automatically sends 100% of the electoral votes to their candidate. That's much more influence then they would have in a national popular vote.
People always like to bring up the original intent of the system while forgetting that our current electoral system bears no resemblance to how it originally operated. These days it is nothing more than a broken popular vote where some citizens are counted more than others. That's inexcusable in a democratic nation.
That's the problem. Sure he leans liberal, but we're looking for rabid, foaming at the mouth extremism. He's not it.
I'm going to assume that's a joke since it makes no sense otherwise.
Why would you think that? O'Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh are in their element with a Democratic president. There will still be plenty of extremism to mock.
The problem with balance is this: name one popular, over the top liberal pundit. I don't know of anyone who comes anywhere near the extremism of O'Reilly, Hannity, or Glenn Beck. Considering Stewart is primarily satirizing cable news networks that doesn't leave them much to satirize on the left.
That said, I do remember at least a few times when John got in a well deserved jab at the Democratic leadership.
Colbert is actually lampooning Republican pundits, not Republicans in general. Considering his source material, I think it's safe to say he's never come close to going over the top.
Considering the ratings for The 1/2 Hour New Hour, it would seem the lack of humor isn't just in your mind.
I only ever use "safely remove" for USB drives, I've never had a problem with just yanking out other random USB devices. I don't think anything can be done about having to unmount your drives first. As it is now USB supports hot swapping the drives fine without unmounting first. I mean it won't damage the device, but what do you expect them to do with the data you were halfway through copying?
Comparing it to a massive slum with immigrants in dilapidated shanties everywhere you look.
I live there, so I can say you're full of shit.
One anecdote doesn't mean anything, but if you want to play that game the guy in Canada who beheaded the kid sitting next to him on the bus and ate parts of the body was clearly not a vegetarian.
I've actually seen dry ice at some supermarkets here. At least it says dry ice on the bin in the front, I've never actually tried to buy it though.
I certainly am a different kind of vegan, I eat meat.
Sure there are some areas where land can be used for cattle that can not be used for other crops, but they aren't common enough that it could be a sustainable means of production at the rate meat is currently consumed.
If people would cut back their meat consumption to the level where we could eliminate the massive factory farms that would be a huge win in my book. That's not going to happen any time soon however.
Living close also saves money, for instance you don't need to pay for gas and you spend less time in the car and more time with your family and friends.
Are you forgetting that the meat you raise needs to be fed? Guess what it gets fed with? That's right plants. The same plants that could have been fed directly to vegetarians. Of course if you feed it to the cows first they waste the food by standing around farting methane for a few years.
Try reading up on trophic levels. Every additional step in the food chain represents about a 90% loss of efficiency, so the benefits of vegetarianism are far from negligible.
The practices may be uncommon at this time, but I assure you that all of the vegetarians I know are completely normal humans. Anyone can do it.
And for those who don't have the willpower to completely cut out meat from their diets (such as myself) eating less meat is always an option. It is really unnatural the amount of meat the average American eats anyway.
Maybe, but that's not what happened.
The Olympics opening ceremony was an entertainment program, since when do such programs get criticized for using visual effects? Even when the news is doing a report on entertainment they are not required to note every effect used. These CGI fireworks are a complete non-story.
I'm sure I'm younger then you think but all the dictionaries I've seen for looking up characters still use the radical-stroke order system. These are all current Chinese-English dictionaries (like this one), however I can't say how purely Chinese dictionaries are ordered. I'm curious, what sort of methods are more common for looking up characters?
Yeah, that's actually one very good reason for using only stoke counts. It is very simple to explain.
I'm still a beginner at Chinese, so those structural input methods are way out of my league. I've tried them a few times in the past but didn't get anywhere with it.
Cool, first on the list is my girlfriends home town. I like the idea of free public transit, too bad it's pretty rare. It seems like it would make things much more efficient not having to verify each riders fare.
The other countries are kinda like the Washington Generals, we just need them there so America can show of their skills.