Well that does not really contra dict what I said. Python and perl have the same object model. Python is hidden from the user and perl's is exposed. (like Lua).
IN my college physics labs they gave us bad equipment on purpose so that we could learn how to make sensitive measurements with crappy gear. At the time I thought this as insane. But later in graduate school I learned no this was sheer genius, since all I was ever doing was trying to make a measurement that was just a bit beyond the (theoretical) capability of existing equipment. One had to have a really good grip on how to do error models, and how to remove noise, and how to tweak uncertainty principles to get gains in places you want while giving up things you don't care about.
When I learned languages, like basic, I was always trying to write other languages in that language. e.g. bootstrapping a pascal interpreter.
and now I get to my seemingly crazy reccomendation. I understand python and java today because I leanrned Perl first. with Perl, object oriented programming is the equivalent of the visible man. Everything from inheritance, to how attributes are indexed to how the heirarchy of subclass method resolution is traced is at your disposal to tweak.
it's the "visible man" on languages.
turns out python objects are just a subset of perl's object method. Under the hood they work identically. i.e. pythons __dir__ is the same as a blessed hash in perl. python's slots are the same as a blessed array in perl. You just don't get to see them in action in python but they are there lurking underneath.
So if you really want to understand object oriented programming. use perl. it's not a good language to write huge object oriented programs in. But it makes you see how all the magic works and how tou can change the magic to do some really great things.
and that will bake you a good scientist. otherwise learning one language well just makes you a good programmer.
groovy seems like the ideal language for me. Or at least that's my superficial impression. But it seems like it can seemlessly gain speed by implementing the slow bits into JAVA with very little pain. Or am I mistaken.
I can't actually make any use of groovy however till it catches up with scipy and mayavi.mlab in python. When is that going to happen?
Ultimately what I want is an interpreted language that can be compiled. So for example, in python one rarely actually uses the introspective ability to modify ones self, or even takes advantage of duck typing. instead one usually calls functions with the same type arguments and so forth. So if one just had the ability to switch off the dynamic typing and self-modifying capabilities so that one could compile it it sure would be one sweet language.
I'm wondering if groovy had the same faults or if it's easier to compile it.
I think I'd rather have people say "look, I have no idea how to do this right, I think we should bring somebody in," than try to cookbook their way through it using tools or techniques they really don't understand. I've seen a lot of really ugly and insecure setups come out of the latter school of thought.
Sure in a perfect world. But most folks have budgets and existing staff. You can't just decide to hire or even contract something on that budget.
it gets slightly easier when you are talking about corporate budgets. Then it's just overhead. But when your corporation uses "project" based budgets then you have hard limits.
It may all average out in the end but in any given year you have to do what you planned on budgeting. So youhave to either work with what you have or... go with options that are more easily budgeted.
Nicely said. I use macs for that very reason since I need Unix and I have to be my own IT guy a lot of the time. It's hard to find a budget to retain a good Linux sys admin. They tend to go away if they are really good!
Additionally, what happens is that when you do have a sys admin who'se good, you still run into problems that are beyond his ability from time to time. He might be a whiz at getting your disk server talking to 400 nodes at the same time, but then along comes some problem, like setting up an in-company DNS or VPN, and he's not really sure how to do it. He can crack some books and try to learn on the job, but both you and he will never be sure he got it perfectly right? Did he turn off the default passwords, or close the all the right ports. Did he root squash things just right.
with microsoft and IBM and Apple, if they define your configuration then you know that when the next storm blows in, and you have to make some big new non-routine change, it will never be over the head of your current sys-admin because they will tell him all the surprises or send a patch that does it all. With linux it's a lot of Lore and reading the last post in some outdated forum to find the magic solution.
Well yeah. that's what I was saying. You buy cause it has a low cost of use (that can be mental as well) to get powerful stuff. If you just want low cost of use but no power, buy an Apple II.
Apple probably hired pystar to create a weak but precedent setting test case they could smash.
More seriously, one can claim pystar is somehow a good value or something but this takes sheer cognative dissonance since it's impossibly far from the truth.
THat is to say, if you are buying an apple it's either for aethetics, ease of use for grandma or the volunteers at your non-profit, or compatibility, or the relatively low cost of tech support, set up, and training.
Now let's think about this. Does pystar meet any of those features? uh.... No. not one. they are loud, highly idiosyncratic, hard to keep updated, and a support nightmare, and many softwares and hardware devices won't work.
What's the market? cheapness? well certainly not at the low end. And at the high end--well it you want performance and dont care about comptibility then get a PC or a linux machine?
it's the OJ simpson defense: it does not fit.
But Apples implication that it's just a loss leader. Shove anything out the door so you can get a foot in the door makes a lot more sense.
It's reality TV from the fuuuuuuture. I can haaardly wait.
Episode 1: It begins with a street fight between the Adamas and the Capule--I mean Capricas. They try to marry off the young future commander adama but is turned down for not being gay enough for Baltar's grandfather.
Yes yes, it's the Jets versus the Sharks-with-lasers. And a cylon officer Krupke tries to keep the peace.
Jebeezus, how many people know what the hell we're talking about! Funny thing is, it's 90% of all TV.
...Of course you have a valid Windows XP or vista Lic but given were talking about a payment service here, the small cost of obtaining any old windows lic if you don't already have one is not really an issue.
You are wrong; that 'license' is exactly the issue. Why should I have to pay for, install, and maintain another OS, to use a video on-demand service that I already payfor? Is it because they were too lazy and stupid to implement it using an open standard? Or because the mpaa is forcing them too?
Why should you have to buy a computer to watch netflix on demand when you are already paying for it? Why should you pay for an internet connection when you are already paying netflix? Why should you pay for a big screen to watch it on when you are already paying netflix for the DVDs?
Why should you pay for a stove, to cook the hamburger you just bought? Why should you pay for a furnace to heat your house after you already paid for utility?
Good golly man. you pay lots to get the media, food, temperature to be in the form you want to use them in. Grow up.
I've been watching Netflix on my Intel (mac) for months now. I just run VirtualBox with windows installed. Works great. Works with Linux too. Of course you have a valid Windows XP or vista Lic but given were talking about a payment service here, the small cost of obtaining any old windows lic if you don't already have one is not really an issue.
The author tries to conclude it was not the network (offering no reasons) ans was the browser's "page load speed".
But this is mentally ill. The page load too 1.5 minutes versus 30 seconds. SO is he trying to say it took the apple iphone 1 minute to render the page?
this is absolutely illogial. Of course it's the network. They did not even check to see if the iphone was on a 2G or 3G network.
Tmobiles 3g network is teeny tiny in the US. SO in the few places it exists it's not very popular. Hence the network is less subscribed than AT&T. So for now when you can get service, it may be faster service.
Garbage isn't the problem.. the problem is that we have millions of copies of the same data. Think of the 50gb of video games you may have installed.. 10 million people have the same games as you. Music? Unless you performed it yourself or it's sub-underground, chances are millions of people each have multiple copies of it. The anime you've torrented has 10,000 downloads..
No, see.. actually I'm just keeping a back up for the RIAA in case they lose their copy. PLus I keep it all transcoded to the next generation formats at no charge. And on top of that it's forward deployed for easy re-distribution without bottlenecking their servers. I even paythe lectric bill on the disks and internet connection. So copies are a good thing.
First off Germany has a relatively simple ballot, its only complex because it's evaluated in a complicated way. The US to begin with is large with diverse kinds of governing bodies, and has far far far far more elected offices. So comparing it to German elections is silly.
Second Pvote is not 500 lines. it's 500 lines sitting on top of hundreds of thousands of lines of interpreter code, device drivers, and the tens of millions of lines of Linux.
Third writing a voting system, while non trivial, is not the hard part.
The hard part is twofold 1) creating a viable bussiness model for it's distribution, component agregation, certification, and service it.
2) designing a voting PROCESS so that you don't have to trust the third parties that build or maintain these or the people that operate them. Things have to be transparently secure.
Now the OVC system OPen voting Consortium has had a python based system for years. it's open source too. But more importantly it is designed so we dont' have to trust the programmers (it produces an intermediate paper ballot and physically separates the vote selection hardware from the vote counting hardware ---just as optical scan does.) And it has a well thought out and viable bussiness model that will allow for it's practical distribution and maintainence.
That is what the world needs. so if you want to help. Donate to OVC. They are struggling right now not because they can't write code, but because they have to win acceptance at the state level before any company is going to start marketing the system.
OVC has a very clever bussiness model in which the software is free and open, but companies support it's development through fees paid to certify their OEM component based systems as compliant with the OVC standards.
Ha! At the end of the day your internet connection does have to come to your house and somebody has to install it and the ISPs router in that state. Either the installation company (e.g. Qwest, SBC, Comcast) or the ISP if different have people paid on salary working in your state.
As a condition of doing bussiness the State can have it block or re-route IP addresses as a condition of the ISP doing bussiness in the state.
One can quibble about how the ISPs will be able to block dynamic changes in host IPs, but look if each hour the ISP does a DNS lookup on the domain name then blocks the resolved IP it wil be plenty effective.
That leaves the gambling sites to rely on Proxies, TOR, or constantly changing domain names, all of which will effectively gut their clientele.
The ultimate weapon for the state in this case is that state can legally declare all gambling debts unenforcable. If they allow cost recovery from VISA or Paypal, the gambling sites may not only find they can't do bussiness in Kentucky but that from VISA's point of view they can't do bussiness at all with VISA.
Given the latter death threat I suspect there's going to be cooperation on this at some level.
All engineered to standards that don't even exist yet.
Even as a Mac user/developer this makes me cringe. Ewww...
There's at least two things they are referring to.
1) Snow Leopard will support OpenCL. You might say well so what, eventually my Dell will to, after all that's what Open means. True, but look at the architecture in the macs. They elimiated the Northbridge and the Bus chips. The CPU now connects directly to the GPU.
If you have ever tried to program an NVIDIA GPU for computational work you know that the slow step is shuttling the data back to the CPU. So having OpenCL with an insanley fast bus means that standard is going to actually be useful.
2) the Open HD video connector. on the new macs, running H264 high def has dropped processor utilization from 100% to 20%, presumbaly because of the NVIDIA chip. So now streaming HD is going to be a reality and will actually exist for the mac world. And TVs that support the Open HD are becoming available.
For give me if I don't know my chinese numerology but I've heard that 7 is a lucky number in china and people like to see multiple repetitions of the number.
The word "Windows" is seven letters long so that makes it 77.
As stupid as that sounds, I'm sure MS is looking to China as a much easier place to grow than battling for marginal market share in the saturated western market.
Actually the debt realtive to the GDP went down which is all that matters.
In the same sense as your mortgage not being a worry because house prices are going up?
No not even close. the GDP is not just some abstractly valued thing it's the income. so it's more like your income rising, which is exactly how you qualify for a larger loan.
Bush and collegues came into office promising to implement Grover Norquists ideas for contracting govenrment. The graphic phrase most often used was they would have to "strangle it in the bathtub" which was Norquist's shorthand for meaning that to reduce spending they had to basically remove govenement agencies and kill off revenue.
Fast forward we have years of the biggest govenement expansion ever. Some bandy the word "socialist" over the bailout. But actually that misses the big picture.
Suppose your goal was to move the governement more towards a corporatist outlook and to really strangle spending how could you do this.
You do it with debt. This 700 billion will be paralytic both in crippling elective goverment spending as well as it's ability to raise future debt. Oddly It does not actually go on the books as debt even but it is a liability.
And even if some day the loans and options they are buying pay off, it's accomplished the tow key goals.
1) strangling it in the bathtub. There cannot be any socialist expansion during Obama because there simply is no way to finance it either with direct revenue or borrowing.
2) a movement towards corporatism. The Government will rise and fall with the value of the companies it holds options in. What's good for the US really is what's good for AIG and JPmorgan, and the rest. Even the people admisistering the hen house in both the SEC and Treasury came from Goldmann Sachs.
The 1930's was when Corporatism was invented and the country practicing it, italy, was consider a miracle. the rest of the world was reeling in the depression. Senators and congressmen hailed the Moussilini miracle and went on fact finding missions to figure out how to import this here. Adolf Hitler was swept into power in part by nationalism that awoke in the aftermath of WWI but also because he too offered the fascist miracle for germany.
THe trains did run on time. THe auobahns emerged. It was spring time for hitler and germany too.
SO we now have an odd time in the US. We are backing our way into fascism. We have all the ingredient. Cheney and his patriot acts have created police powers that are unprecendented in our history of civil liberties. Even our allies like britain have gone to a surveliance society and now ponder 2 days detenciton with charges.
THe second fork of facism is corporatism where the state manages for the good of the corporations and vica versa. (the reason corproatism was such a miracle was precisely because of the vica versa. The people were really better off in the rising economy of italy).
So while hitler managed to once and for all kill the term "facism" at one time, it's potential for being an ecomomic engine was admired.
I note I'm not triggering Godwins law here because I'm not comparing my oponent to Hitler. Instead I'm saying that we are indeed backing into something that is facism in everything but name only, both the good and the bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Well that does not really contra dict what I said. Python and perl have the same object model. Python is hidden from the user and perl's is exposed. (like Lua).
IN my college physics labs they gave us bad equipment on purpose so that we could learn how to make sensitive measurements with crappy gear. At the time I thought this as insane. But later in graduate school I learned no this was sheer genius, since all I was ever doing was trying to make a measurement that was just a bit beyond the (theoretical) capability of existing equipment. One had to have a really good grip on how to do error models, and how to remove noise, and how to tweak uncertainty principles to get gains in places you want while giving up things you don't care about.
When I learned languages, like basic, I was always trying to write other languages in that language. e.g. bootstrapping a pascal interpreter.
and now I get to my seemingly crazy reccomendation. I understand python and java today because I leanrned Perl first. with Perl, object oriented programming is the equivalent of the visible man. Everything from inheritance, to how attributes are indexed to how the heirarchy of subclass method resolution is traced is at your disposal to tweak.
it's the "visible man" on languages.
turns out python objects are just a subset of perl's object method. Under the hood they work identically. i.e. pythons __dir__ is the same as a blessed hash in perl. python's slots are the same as a blessed array in perl. You just don't get to see them in action in python but they are there lurking underneath.
So if you really want to understand object oriented programming. use perl. it's not a good language to write huge object oriented programs in. But it makes you see how all the magic works and how tou can change the magic to do some really great things.
and that will bake you a good scientist. otherwise learning one language well just makes you a good programmer.
groovy seems like the ideal language for me. Or at least that's my superficial impression. But it seems like it can seemlessly gain speed by implementing the slow bits into JAVA with very little pain. Or am I mistaken.
I can't actually make any use of groovy however till it catches up with scipy and mayavi.mlab in python. When is that going to happen?
Ultimately what I want is an interpreted language that can be compiled. So for example, in python one rarely actually uses the introspective ability to modify ones self, or even takes advantage of duck typing. instead one usually calls functions with the same type arguments and so forth. So if one just had the ability to switch off the dynamic typing and self-modifying capabilities so that one could compile it it sure would be one sweet language.
I'm wondering if groovy had the same faults or if it's easier to compile it.
That doesn't seem like a feature to me.
I think I'd rather have people say "look, I have no idea how to do this right, I think we should bring somebody in," than try to cookbook their way through it using tools or techniques they really don't understand. I've seen a lot of really ugly and insecure setups come out of the latter school of thought.
Sure in a perfect world. But most folks have budgets and existing staff. You can't just decide to hire or even contract something on that budget.
it gets slightly easier when you are talking about corporate budgets. Then it's just overhead. But when your corporation uses "project" based budgets then you have hard limits.
It may all average out in the end but in any given year you have to do what you planned on budgeting. So youhave to either work with what you have or... go with options that are more easily budgeted.
Nicely said. I use macs for that very reason since I need Unix and I have to be my own IT guy a lot of the time. It's hard to find a budget to retain a good Linux sys admin. They tend to go away if they are really good!
Additionally, what happens is that when you do have a sys admin who'se good, you still run into problems that are beyond his ability from time to time. He might be a whiz at getting your disk server talking to 400 nodes at the same time, but then along comes some problem, like setting up an in-company DNS or VPN, and he's not really sure how to do it. He can crack some books and try to learn on the job, but both you and he will never be sure he got it perfectly right? Did he turn off the default passwords, or close the all the right ports. Did he root squash things just right.
with microsoft and IBM and Apple, if they define your configuration then you know that when the next storm blows in, and you have to make some big new non-routine change, it will never be over the head of your current sys-admin because they will tell him all the surprises or send a patch that does it all. With linux it's a lot of Lore and reading the last post in some outdated forum to find the magic solution.
Well yeah. that's what I was saying. You buy cause it has a low cost of use (that can be mental as well) to get powerful stuff. If you just want low cost of use but no power, buy an Apple II.
Apple probably hired pystar to create a weak but precedent setting test case they could smash.
More seriously,
one can claim pystar is somehow a good value or something but this takes sheer cognative dissonance since it's impossibly far from the truth.
THat is to say, if you are buying an apple it's either for aethetics, ease of use for grandma or the volunteers at your non-profit, or compatibility, or the relatively low cost of tech support, set up, and training.
Now let's think about this. Does pystar meet any of those features? uh.... No. not one. they are loud, highly idiosyncratic, hard to keep updated, and a support nightmare, and many softwares and hardware devices won't work.
What's the market? cheapness? well certainly not at the low end. And at the high end--well it you want performance and dont care about comptibility then get a PC or a linux machine?
it's the OJ simpson defense: it does not fit.
But Apples implication that it's just a loss leader. Shove anything out the door so you can get a foot in the door makes a lot more sense.
Windows market share suddenly drops below 50%
It's reality TV from the fuuuuuuture. I can haaardly wait.
Episode 1: It begins with a street fight between the Adamas and the Capule--I mean Capricas. They try to marry off the young future commander adama but is turned down for not being gay enough for Baltar's grandfather.
Yes yes, it's the Jets versus the Sharks-with-lasers. And a cylon officer Krupke tries to keep the peace.
Jebeezus, how many people know what the hell we're talking about! Funny thing is, it's 90% of all TV.
your sly post cracked me up,
next up buck rodgers. bee dee bee dee bee dee
...Of course you have a valid Windows XP or vista Lic but given were talking about a payment service here, the small cost of obtaining any old windows lic if you don't already have one is not really an issue.
You are wrong; that 'license' is exactly the issue. Why should I have to pay for, install, and maintain another OS, to use a video on-demand service that I already payfor? Is it because they were too lazy and stupid to implement it using an open standard? Or because the mpaa is forcing them too?
Why should you have to buy a computer to watch netflix on demand when you are already paying for it? Why should you pay for an internet connection when you are already paying netflix? Why should you pay for a big screen to watch it on when you are already paying netflix for the DVDs?
Why should you pay for a stove, to cook the hamburger you just bought? Why should you pay for a furnace to heat your house after you already paid for utility?
Good golly man. you pay lots to get the media, food, temperature to be in the form you want to use them in. Grow up.
I've been watching Netflix on my Intel (mac) for months now. I just run VirtualBox with windows installed. Works great. Works with Linux too. Of course you have a valid Windows XP or vista Lic but given were talking about a payment service here, the small cost of obtaining any old windows lic if you don't already have one is not really an issue.
The author tries to conclude it was not the network (offering no reasons) ans was the browser's "page load speed".
But this is mentally ill. The page load too 1.5 minutes versus 30 seconds. SO is he trying to say it took the apple iphone 1 minute to render the page?
this is absolutely illogial. Of course it's the network. They did not even check to see if the iphone was on a 2G or 3G network.
retards.
Tmobiles 3g network is teeny tiny in the US. SO in the few places it exists it's not very popular. Hence the network is less subscribed than AT&T. So for now when you can get service, it may be faster service.
Garbage isn't the problem.. the problem is that we have millions of copies of the same data. Think of the 50gb of video games you may have installed.. 10 million people have the same games as you. Music? Unless you performed it yourself or it's sub-underground, chances are millions of people each have multiple copies of it. The anime you've torrented has 10,000 downloads. .
No, see.. actually I'm just keeping a back up for the RIAA in case they lose their copy. PLus I keep it all transcoded to the next generation formats at no charge. And on top of that it's forward deployed for easy re-distribution without bottlenecking their servers. I even paythe lectric bill on the disks and internet connection. So copies are a good thing.
Open voting consortium
First off Germany has a relatively simple ballot, its only complex because it's evaluated in a complicated way. The US to begin with is large with diverse kinds of governing bodies, and has far far far far more elected offices. So comparing it to German elections is silly.
Second Pvote is not 500 lines. it's 500 lines sitting on top of hundreds of thousands of lines of interpreter code, device drivers, and the tens of millions of lines of Linux.
Third writing a voting system, while non trivial, is not the hard part.
The hard part is twofold
1) creating a viable bussiness model for it's distribution, component agregation, certification, and service it.
2) designing a voting PROCESS so that you don't have to trust the third parties that build or maintain these or the people that operate them. Things have to be transparently secure.
Now the OVC system OPen voting Consortium has had a python based system for years. it's open source too. But more importantly it is designed so we dont' have to trust the programmers (it produces an intermediate paper ballot and physically separates the vote selection hardware from the vote counting hardware ---just as optical scan does.) And it has a well thought out and viable bussiness model that will allow for it's practical distribution and maintainence.
That is what the world needs. so if you want to help. Donate to OVC. They are struggling right now not because they can't write code, but because they have to win acceptance at the state level before any company is going to start marketing the system.
OVC has a very clever bussiness model in which the software is free and open, but companies support it's development through fees paid to certify their OEM component based systems as compliant with the OVC standards.
Some world body should laugh them off.
Ha! At the end of the day your internet connection does have to come to your house and somebody has to install it and the ISPs router in that state. Either the installation company (e.g. Qwest, SBC, Comcast) or the ISP if different have people paid on salary working in your state.
As a condition of doing bussiness the State can have it block or re-route IP addresses as a condition of the ISP doing bussiness in the state.
One can quibble about how the ISPs will be able to block dynamic changes in host IPs, but look if each hour the ISP does a DNS lookup on the domain name then blocks the resolved IP it wil be plenty effective.
That leaves the gambling sites to rely on Proxies, TOR, or constantly changing domain names, all of which will effectively gut their clientele.
The ultimate weapon for the state in this case is that state can legally declare all gambling debts unenforcable. If they allow cost recovery from VISA or Paypal, the gambling sites may not only find they can't do bussiness in Kentucky but that from VISA's point of view they can't do bussiness at all with VISA.
Given the latter death threat I suspect there's going to be cooperation on this at some level.
From Apple's Macbook mini-site:
All engineered to standards that don't even exist yet.
Even as a Mac user/developer this makes me cringe. Ewww...
There's at least two things they are referring to.
1) Snow Leopard will support OpenCL. You might say well so what, eventually my Dell will to, after all that's what Open means. True, but look at the architecture in the macs. They elimiated the Northbridge and the Bus chips. The CPU now connects directly to the GPU.
If you have ever tried to program an NVIDIA GPU for computational work you know that the slow step is shuttling the data back to the CPU. So having OpenCL with an insanley fast bus means that standard is going to actually be useful.
2) the Open HD video connector.
on the new macs, running H264 high def has dropped processor utilization from 100% to 20%, presumbaly because of the NVIDIA chip. So now streaming HD is going to be a reality and will actually exist for the mac world. And TVs that support the Open HD are becoming available.
8. Just saying "I'm hipper" with confidence. Man that should be hard enough.
No you should use the latin:
8) I'm a Hippo
For give me if I don't know my chinese numerology but I've heard that 7 is a lucky number in china and people like to see multiple repetitions of the number.
The word "Windows" is seven letters long so that makes it 77.
As stupid as that sounds, I'm sure MS is looking to China as a much easier place to grow than battling for marginal market share in the saturated western market.
In the same sense as your mortgage not being a worry because house prices are going up?
No not even close. the GDP is not just some abstractly valued thing it's the income. so it's more like your income rising, which is exactly how you qualify for a larger loan.
Actually the debt realtive to the GDP went down which is all that matters.
Profiling? Sounds painful.
Not if you use a profilactic, and remember boys, if she says "opt out" she means "opt out".
More seriously, anyone who joins a social network wants to be profiled. Isn't that the whole point?
Bush and collegues came into office promising to implement Grover Norquists ideas for contracting govenrment. The graphic phrase most often used was they would have to "strangle it in the bathtub" which was Norquist's shorthand for meaning that to reduce spending they had to basically remove govenement agencies and kill off revenue.
Fast forward we have years of the biggest govenement expansion ever. Some bandy the word "socialist" over the bailout. But actually that misses the big picture.
Suppose your goal was to move the governement more towards a corporatist outlook and to really strangle spending how could you do this.
You do it with debt. This 700 billion will be paralytic both in crippling elective goverment spending as well as it's ability to raise future debt. Oddly It does not actually go on the books as debt even but it is a liability.
And even if some day the loans and options they are buying pay off, it's accomplished the tow key goals.
1) strangling it in the bathtub. There cannot be any socialist expansion during Obama because there simply is no way to finance it either with direct revenue or borrowing.
2) a movement towards corporatism. The Government will rise and fall with the value of the companies it holds options in. What's good for the US really is what's good for AIG and JPmorgan, and the rest. Even the people admisistering the hen house in both the SEC and Treasury came from Goldmann Sachs.
The 1930's was when Corporatism was invented and the country practicing it, italy, was consider a miracle. the rest of the world was reeling in the depression. Senators and congressmen hailed the Moussilini miracle and went on fact finding missions to figure out how to import this here. Adolf Hitler was swept into power in part by nationalism that awoke in the aftermath of WWI but also because he too offered the fascist miracle for germany.
THe trains did run on time. THe auobahns emerged. It was spring time for hitler and germany too.
SO we now have an odd time in the US. We are backing our way into fascism. We have all the ingredient. Cheney and his patriot acts have created police powers that are unprecendented in our history of civil liberties. Even our allies like britain have gone to a surveliance society and now ponder 2 days detenciton with charges.
THe second fork of facism is corporatism where the state manages for the good of the corporations and vica versa. (the reason corproatism was such a miracle was precisely because of the vica versa. The people were really better off in the rising economy of italy).
So while hitler managed to once and for all kill the term "facism" at one time, it's potential for being an ecomomic engine was admired.
I note I'm not triggering Godwins law here because I'm not comparing my oponent to Hitler. Instead I'm saying that we are indeed backing into something that is facism in everything but name only, both the good and the bad.