If you think the Tea Party or OWS is radical, you do not understand what radical means. I mean radical - Bolsheviks and Brownshirts engaging in street wars.
welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars
is a very tired meme. The federal government spends most of its money on defense, interest, and income transfers, of which Social Security and Medicare are by far the largest. The red states get the defense dollars because the South has warm weather year-round and the West has cheap land for bombing ranges and secrecy. The red states get income transfers because, well, they're full of retirees (and, to a lesser extent, poor people).
If you want a properly indexed graph, check out this, which is the net flow of federal dollars as a percentage of each state's GDP over the past 20 years. Notice that the three mega-reds are West Virginia (poor whites), Mississippi (poor blacks), and New Mexico (poor Indians), and that there's a lot of red down the Eastern Seaboard, where the Northeast retirees go, and in the Mountain West, where the California retirees go.
Are you suggesting that means-testing Social Security and Medicare is on the table for the Democratic Party? Because I'd totally be on board with that. Hell, if the Democrats are going to become fiscally responsible, I'll become one. I'm tired of the Jesus freaks in the R column anyway.
Please explain how you can interpret this as indicating "a couple percentage points" difference. For the lazy:
2012: D+16
2008:D+17
2004:D+8
2000:D+5
1996:D+13
Hell, let's compare it to Mississippi (same website), which I think we can all agree is a quintessential red state.
2012:R+11
2008:R+13
2004:R+20
2000:R+17
1996:R+5
In short, WA is ignored because there is essentially zero chance it will go R in a national election (regardless of its Congressional delegation's composition). Are you being deliberately obtuse?
The FPTP system is designed to create a two-party state, not the Constitution, which has no such requirement. I should perhaps have made the distinction clearer.
Where do you shop for food? Where do you eat, if and when you eat out? Who provides the telecommunications services you need? How far away is the nearest plumber, electrician, or hospital? In a large city, you have a huge variety of choices on most of these. In a rural area, such simple things as choice of cell phone provider usually boil down to a monopoly because only one carrier has service at your house. You most assuredly depend on your local economy.
Unfortunately, there's not enough money. The Republicans won't raise taxes and the Democrats won't cut spending, and so we'll march along until people quit loaning money to us. I assume we'll just inflate our way out of the problem, eventually, because stealing everyone's savings is both easier and less obvious than jacking up taxes into the stratosphere while cutting services to the bone.
No, they rarely campaign in states that always vote the same way, large or small. They campaign like maniacs in NH and IA because they're early, and they campaign like hell in the major swing states - ask anyone from Ohio.
Your geographical location matters quite a bit to your local economy. As an extreme example, Telluride and Ouray, Colorado, are only about ten miles apart, but try getting from one to the other in the middle of winter and see how long it takes...
There are only two parties and they are almost identical
Which is to say: the American Constitution is structured in such a way that the only way to increase your party's strength is to drive relentlessly to the center of the electorate. It is not without its problems, but it also curbs radical notions - the US has had Progressives and Know-Nothings, but very few Communists or Brownshirts.
You mean the UK that has been tortured by separatist movements in Ireland and Scotland, separate legal systems in Scotland vs the rest, different state churches, and the like? The UK is an amalgam of historical details that works very well because people have gotten used to its oddities over centuries.
We live in a country where being asked to show identification in order to vote is considered beyond the pale, as is the simple expedient of dipping a finger in ink when you have done so. (I am aware that this is not how much vote fraud occurs - fraud generally being wholesale rather than retail - but it has a significant effect on the perceived legitimacy of the vote.)
The key insight of the US federal structure as originally embodied in the Constitution was that every constituency deserves a hearing - the people are represented in the House, the states are represented in the Senate, and the President is elected by whatever means the States appoint - they can be more or less democratic in the selection of electors. A necessary consequence of the first-past-the-post system with specific electoral districts used in the US is that it is designed to produce a two-party state. Third parties have to influence one of them. Yes, third parties matter less here. On the other hand, it relentlessly forces both parties' platforms to the center of the electorate, strongly curbing radical influence.
DC should never have been given EC votes; it should have (mostly) been given back to Maryland. The people mostly don't live in the key Federal building areas, and so the idiotic idea of DC statehood wouldn't matter - they'd be citizens of Maryland.
Messiness aside, you have to live there for this to be an effective solution. If it's in the bad part of town, you don't want to live there... I love my guns and I keep one in the car almost all the time, but I don't want to live in the kind of neighborhood where you have to have your gun on you all the time.
There is a property in my home town whose walls are painted (outside the concertina-lined fence) with the message "DANGER: GUARD DOG WILL KILL". And several skull-and-crossbones for the illiterate. Game over, man, game over.
Under common law systems, both sides' advocates present their strongest case. A jury (usually) is called upon to render a verdict on matters of fact, while the trial judge adjudicates matters of law. Under civil law systems, AFAICT, the judge generally acts as the trier of law and fact, while the attorneys' roles as "officers of the court" is a bit more prominent. In practice, I'm not sure how much distinction there really is other than methodology.
Presumably they have partners with shotguns... a twelve gauge filled with bird shot should do the job nicely. Actually thought about this a little while and the easiest way to make sure you get a radiator pipe is to fire from an angle, maybe 20 degrees in front of the other vehicle... which should be fairly easy to do.
If Renault didn't modify it or approve the kit used to do so, then why was a Renault engineer trying to troubleshoot the beast instead of the guy who did? And why haven't we read of the arrest of the idiot who disabled the failsafes? Look, I understand that throttle/brake might get screwed up, but it doesn't even have a transmission lever? I was responding to:
In Europe we rarely use neutral in an automatic, it's either drive or park, so in panic mode I can see somebody not wanting to use a control they've never used before
In which it was suggested that it's believable that someone wouldn't try to put it in neutral.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think urban poverty and racism are ugly, you have never seen the rural version of either.
If you think the Tea Party or OWS is radical, you do not understand what radical means. I mean radical - Bolsheviks and Brownshirts engaging in street wars.
welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars
is a very tired meme. The federal government spends most of its money on defense, interest, and income transfers, of which Social Security and Medicare are by far the largest. The red states get the defense dollars because the South has warm weather year-round and the West has cheap land for bombing ranges and secrecy. The red states get income transfers because, well, they're full of retirees (and, to a lesser extent, poor people).
If you want a properly indexed graph, check out this, which is the net flow of federal dollars as a percentage of each state's GDP over the past 20 years. Notice that the three mega-reds are West Virginia (poor whites), Mississippi (poor blacks), and New Mexico (poor Indians), and that there's a lot of red down the Eastern Seaboard, where the Northeast retirees go, and in the Mountain West, where the California retirees go.
Are you suggesting that means-testing Social Security and Medicare is on the table for the Democratic Party? Because I'd totally be on board with that. Hell, if the Democrats are going to become fiscally responsible, I'll become one. I'm tired of the Jesus freaks in the R column anyway.
Hell, let's compare it to Mississippi (same website), which I think we can all agree is a quintessential red state.
In short, WA is ignored because there is essentially zero chance it will go R in a national election (regardless of its Congressional delegation's composition). Are you being deliberately obtuse?
The FPTP system is designed to create a two-party state, not the Constitution, which has no such requirement. I should perhaps have made the distinction clearer.
Where do you shop for food? Where do you eat, if and when you eat out? Who provides the telecommunications services you need? How far away is the nearest plumber, electrician, or hospital? In a large city, you have a huge variety of choices on most of these. In a rural area, such simple things as choice of cell phone provider usually boil down to a monopoly because only one carrier has service at your house. You most assuredly depend on your local economy.
Unfortunately, there's not enough money. The Republicans won't raise taxes and the Democrats won't cut spending, and so we'll march along until people quit loaning money to us. I assume we'll just inflate our way out of the problem, eventually, because stealing everyone's savings is both easier and less obvious than jacking up taxes into the stratosphere while cutting services to the bone.
rarely if ever campaign in larger states
No, they rarely campaign in states that always vote the same way, large or small. They campaign like maniacs in NH and IA because they're early, and they campaign like hell in the major swing states - ask anyone from Ohio.
Your geographical location matters quite a bit to your local economy. As an extreme example, Telluride and Ouray, Colorado, are only about ten miles apart, but try getting from one to the other in the middle of winter and see how long it takes...
There are only two parties and they are almost identical
Which is to say: the American Constitution is structured in such a way that the only way to increase your party's strength is to drive relentlessly to the center of the electorate. It is not without its problems, but it also curbs radical notions - the US has had Progressives and Know-Nothings, but very few Communists or Brownshirts.
You mean the UK that has been tortured by separatist movements in Ireland and Scotland, separate legal systems in Scotland vs the rest, different state churches, and the like? The UK is an amalgam of historical details that works very well because people have gotten used to its oddities over centuries.
We live in a country where being asked to show identification in order to vote is considered beyond the pale, as is the simple expedient of dipping a finger in ink when you have done so. (I am aware that this is not how much vote fraud occurs - fraud generally being wholesale rather than retail - but it has a significant effect on the perceived legitimacy of the vote.)
The key insight of the US federal structure as originally embodied in the Constitution was that every constituency deserves a hearing - the people are represented in the House, the states are represented in the Senate, and the President is elected by whatever means the States appoint - they can be more or less democratic in the selection of electors. A necessary consequence of the first-past-the-post system with specific electoral districts used in the US is that it is designed to produce a two-party state. Third parties have to influence one of them. Yes, third parties matter less here. On the other hand, it relentlessly forces both parties' platforms to the center of the electorate, strongly curbing radical influence.
DC should never have been given EC votes; it should have (mostly) been given back to Maryland. The people mostly don't live in the key Federal building areas, and so the idiotic idea of DC statehood wouldn't matter - they'd be citizens of Maryland.
Messiness aside, you have to live there for this to be an effective solution. If it's in the bad part of town, you don't want to live there... I love my guns and I keep one in the car almost all the time, but I don't want to live in the kind of neighborhood where you have to have your gun on you all the time.
As one business owner in my hometown did, paint the phrase "GUARD DOG WILL KILL" on the walls. I don't even know if he had a dog, but it worked...
There is a property in my home town whose walls are painted (outside the concertina-lined fence) with the message "DANGER: GUARD DOG WILL KILL". And several skull-and-crossbones for the illiterate. Game over, man, game over.
Sorry, clicked submit too early. If no claim of 5A protection can be denied, doesn't that pretty much mean that a subpoena is absolutely meaningless?
So you contend that only a blanket immunity for all possible crimes, past, present, and future, can pierce the veil of a claimed 5A silence?
Oh, look, it's -1 Disagree in spades! Love you, guys!
And a grant of immunity from prosecution for conspiracy would eliminate that privilege, no?
Under common law systems, both sides' advocates present their strongest case. A jury (usually) is called upon to render a verdict on matters of fact, while the trial judge adjudicates matters of law. Under civil law systems, AFAICT, the judge generally acts as the trier of law and fact, while the attorneys' roles as "officers of the court" is a bit more prominent. In practice, I'm not sure how much distinction there really is other than methodology.
Not, I think, actually a right under French law. And the innocent person lacks such a right even in the US.
Presumably they have partners with shotguns... a twelve gauge filled with bird shot should do the job nicely. Actually thought about this a little while and the easiest way to make sure you get a radiator pipe is to fire from an angle, maybe 20 degrees in front of the other vehicle... which should be fairly easy to do.
In Europe we rarely use neutral in an automatic, it's either drive or park, so in panic mode I can see somebody not wanting to use a control they've never used before
In which it was suggested that it's believable that someone wouldn't try to put it in neutral.