Which is crap because the Democrats control half of Congress and the Presidency, if anything, the Republicans should still have to do what the Democrats want.
Not so much as you might think. The Democrats control the Senate. Barely, last I checked. Which means that a filibuster is pretty easy to manage. Easier than it was before this election, anyway. Which means the Democrats have to at least compromise with the Republicans (and "compromise" doesn't mean "We'll let you do meaningless amendments to a Bill you don't want at all").
By the same token, the Republicans will have to work with the Democrats, since the Senate can block anything the House does that is blatantly against their (the Senate's) ideals.
Plus, of course, Obama can wield the veto-pen. Though I expect that if he spends too much time vetoing things, he'll find himself not very electable in 2012.
Oh, that's such a cop-out answer. The health insurance companies signed onto Obama's health care reform for two reasons:
1) To stop the bleeding, as young people discontinued coverage in record numbers during the recession,
2) To prevent the Democrats from pushing universal health care, which was overwhelmingly popular with the base and even with the majority of Americans before the great Fox News smear campaign last year.
You conveniently overlook one reason they were for it: the requirement in law that you buy their product, whether you needed/wanted it or not.
So you don't care if someone's motivation for killing is self-defense?
Note that "killing" is not necessarily synonymous with "murder". Or with manslaughter.
In some places, if you kill someone in self-defense, you'll be charged with murder. And usually not convicted.
In other places, the police will take your statement, cart off the body, and that's the end of it.
Though in both cases above, a DA up for reelection who thinks that getting tough makes him more likely to win his next election can turn self-defense into murder on a whim.
IIRC the statistic for the Shuttle is a 1 in 100 chance of catastrophic failure. It makes sense to send cargo up on a rocket and humans via aircraft.
The Russian Soyuz modules are the most popular manned spacecraft because they are (relatively) cheap, very reliable and give the crew a good chance of survival if things go wrong.
Note, for reference, that the Shuttle has had two loss of crew accidents in its history, while the "very reliable" Soyuz has had only two loss of crew accidents in its history.
Note also that there have been more Shuttle flights than Soyuz flights.
Notice how both parties have usually voted down the party line in congress even when the candidates previously said their stances are.
And yet, Obamacare was passed. And a couple of stimulus packages. And a couple of Supremes. Etc, etc.
Note that the above could NOT have happened without Republican votes, since the Repubs could have maintained a filibuster if they'd voted as a bloc all the time. Or even most of the time.
This was also mostly true when the Repubs had majorities in both Houses - they seldom had enough votes to block a filibuster by the Dems, yet the Dems could seldom find the votes to maintain a filibuster.
In other words, the Parties' voting records aren't as lock-step as you seem to believe. Yes, the Parties tend to attract more or less like-minded people, so they vote together a lot. But not the way they do in a Parliamentary system, where the Parties pretty much tell their members how to vote and the members vote that way.
Proportional representation clearly is the best way to get 3rd party candidates and political turnover over any other system that has been tried.
Proportional Representation assumes that you're voting for a Political Party. We don't actually do that in the USA. We cast votes for individuals.
Proportional Representation also assumes that all members of a Political Party vote as a bloc. We don't actually have that condition here. People elected as Democrats can vote with the Republicans if they wish, and vice versa.
In other words, it's not the panacea you seem to think it is.
Violent crime as a whole has been dropping fairly steadily for about 2-3 decades. Despite the "We are less safe," hysteria from the media we are actually more safe. Violent crime levels have trended downward. Not every year, not every place, but you look at the over all trend and it has been on a decline for a good bit. Well guess what? That neatly maps with the rise in videogame popularity. In 2-3 decades they went from things only geeks played to something everyone does.
Oddly enough, firearm ownership has also increased pretty steadily (not every year, not every place) in the USA during that period.
And, as you say, the violent crime rate has been dropping....
Didn't we just have a story last week [slashdot.org] that showed how false that is? If they can't accurately predict the consequences of their decisions on the field of politics, which they should be experts at, how can you expect them to make good judgments about anything?
I fully expect the Supreme Court to declare software as mechanical, not speech, which would allow it to be banned just like realistic toy guns. Obviously the wrong decision, but you can't count on the Supreme Court to make the obviously right ruling. Remember, these are the best lawyers in the country. They can find a way to twist the law (and reality) to fit their argument, instead of the other way around.
It's interesting that you think that corporations do not have a Right to Free Speech when it comes to politics, but that corporations DO have a Right to Free Speech when it comes to publishing games/movies/whatever.
Which is it? If they shouldn't have Free Speech Rights in one realm, they shouldn't have them in another.
Contrariwise, if they SHOULD have Free Speech Rights in one realm, then it follows that they SHOULD have it in any other...
Or are you kidding yourself that when we're talking about making video games we're not talking about corporations?
Luckily, you didn't catch my own math error...
Cubic miles to cubic km requires multiplying by four, NOT dividing by same.;)
Oddly, enough, my own off-the-cuff estimate (using my approximations), gave me 6x 10^24 kg. Largely as a result of me rounding up on density, rather than down, since I knew my approximations tended to understate volume somewhat.
Note that in general, I agree with you conceptually. I just disagree on just how/what to simplify....
And I think that is the key thing - Americans don't believe in their country. To me the squabbles over interstate commerce and the collection of sales tax vs self reporting of use tax are one indication of that.
We believe in the country.
We also believe in the Constitution. Which has imposes fairly strict limits on what the Federal government can do (note that those limits are routinely ignored since FDR was President).
The USA was set up so the primary laws are at the State level - the Feds just handle the things at the interfaces between the States and the rest of the world - the military, tariffs, navigable waterways, money, that sort of thing. The stuff people are mostly concerned with - murders, robberies, fire protection, etc. are dealt with at the State level.
It may not have been improvised in the field; but chain, grape, and canister shot were all(at least in naval contexts) widely used and available well before the civil war. I'm not terribly familiar with the conflict; but it would be totally unsurprising if some field guns being used in an anti-infantry role were firing assorted unpleasant payloads other than solid round shot.
Grapeshot and canister were certainly use in field artillery of the time. Chainshot was an anti-rigging shot, and thus pretty much useless on a conventional battlefield - amazing how seldom you found ships' masts to shoot down at Gettysburg, for instance.
That said, the suggestion that grapeshot and canister were especially worse than roundshot shows a common misperception of the effect of roundshot, which was horribly damaging to anyone it hit. And if done right, any individual roundshot hit far more than one person.
One of the big reasons Iraq and Afghanistan are such a mess is because the US Army was still set up to fight Germany and Japan.
One of the big reasons Iraq and Afghanistan are such messes is that the American public isn't willing to put up with our soldiers actually killing people.
Note that in WW2 we bombed factories, cities, that sort of thing. We killed the best part of half a million people firebombing Tokyo, for instance. Public reaction? "Do it again!"
Now, we get vilified if we wound someone who isn't actually shooting at us at the moment he was wounded.
Different Rules of Engagement...if we'd fought Germany and Japan under current ROE, they'd own the world....
and English profiency is required for Citizenship.
Wrong. And you should thank your lucky stars that knowledge of the actual Citizenship requirements isn't a requirement.
Well, naturalized citizens must demonstrate a working knowledge of English. Except for those with some disability preventing same, and older people (who, presumably, have a harder time learning a new language).
She said the weapons they used on the soldiers at the time also helped to crank up the barbarism, with soldiers often loading chains, nails, and anything else they could find into cannons when they ran out of shells.
This is not so likely to be historically correct as one might suppose. Fact is, what they fired out of cannons back then wasn't loose powder and shot, but a single bag containing powder and a cannonball. In other words, if you don't have any cannonballs (not shells), then you've got no powder to shoot nails and chains.
Sure we already knew about anesthesia, but good luck finding any in a muddy field hospital in the middle of TN with a battle going on.
Ether was used more than you might suppose in the Civil War. At least by the Union, who could afford to make the stuff and had the wherewithal to deliver it in quantity to their armies.
Troops and doctors on both sides simply didn't realize it was gonna be such a hideous war, believing it would be a "gentlemen's conflict" like the revolutionary war.
Anyone who believed in 1861 that the Revolutionary War was a "gentlemen's conflict" was so deluded about history that he can be excused for thinking that the Civil War was going to be one. Alas, history doesn't agree about the nature of the Revolutionary War.
Note, for reference, that the people who tended to think in terms of "gentelmen's war" were mostly Southern aristocrats. Most of the soldiers on both sides weren't able to kid themselves that standing on a battlefield with 30,000+ other people trying to kill you was going to be a friendly sort of affair.
a muddy field hospital in the middle of TN with a battle going on
Oddly enough, I had a great-great-grandfather in just such a situation. Battle of Franklin, in fact.
Given the fast pace of communication today proper spelling and grammar, not to mention construction of your arguments logically, is simply cost prohibitive.
That would certainly explain why there are so many bad arguments being made to support a variety of ideas these days - it's too much trouble to logically construct arguments...
Useful hint: a quick response that includes bad grammar and lack of a logically constructed argument doesn't do much to support your side of an argument - it mostly makes your side look like the side of the ignoramuses...
Nice theory, but practice showed another use: to destroy so much of the enemy that fighting becomes pointless - especially with the threat of more nukes coming.
Umm, no.
Please note that in the two uses of nuclear weapons in warfare, the intimidating part wasn't that we were destroying Japanese cities - we'd done that for years already with conventional weapons (in face, we caused more casualties and did more damage in the firebomb raids on Tokyo than we did in both atomic bombings).
The intimidating part was that it only took one bomber to do what used to take 1000 bombers. Note that since we had 1000+ bombers, if we'd not had the nukes, we'd still have wrecked Japan.
Note also that, oddly enough, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared quite a bit of the horrors of war by the Atom bombs - General Arnold wrote in his autobiography that he had to make sure that several Japanese cities were placed off-limits for conventional bombing so that we could better evaluate the effects of the A-bomb on an undamaged city.
So they are claiming to be able to predict the unpredictable? I want absolute proof of their claims.
No, they're claiming that they can do post-event (that means after the fact, if it's not obvious) analysis of an earthquake or other unpredictable event, and then predict the entirely predictable tsunami caused by same.
I guess the ACLU was unsuccessful in setting up a branch office.
The same thing is going to happen in the US, ACLU or not. The bills are already written. They are just waiting for another 9/11 to they can ram them through.
That's another one that had absolutely no chance of going off. H-bomb, which means it's not a gun-type weapon, which means dropping it from a great height without arming the device results in a big hunk of metal falling out of the sky.
About as likely to be a nuclear explosion as if they'd dropped a volkswagon...
Slashdot Mirror
Contrary to popular rumour, there were NO "balanced budgets" during the Clinton years.
EVERY year that Clinton was in office, the National Debt increased. Yes, it increased LESS in the last couple years. But it still increased.
An increasing Debt implies a budget that wasn't balanced. Or one that played bookkeeping tricks to look balanced.
Not so much as you might think. The Democrats control the Senate. Barely, last I checked. Which means that a filibuster is pretty easy to manage. Easier than it was before this election, anyway. Which means the Democrats have to at least compromise with the Republicans (and "compromise" doesn't mean "We'll let you do meaningless amendments to a Bill you don't want at all").
By the same token, the Republicans will have to work with the Democrats, since the Senate can block anything the House does that is blatantly against their (the Senate's) ideals.
Plus, of course, Obama can wield the veto-pen. Though I expect that if he spends too much time vetoing things, he'll find himself not very electable in 2012.
You conveniently overlook one reason they were for it: the requirement in law that you buy their product, whether you needed/wanted it or not.
Yeah, Lord knows we don't want them adding new categories of crimes.
Next thing you know, we'll have "sex crimes" and "violent crimes" and "victimless crimes" and such nonsense....
Note that "killing" is not necessarily synonymous with "murder". Or with manslaughter.
In some places, if you kill someone in self-defense, you'll be charged with murder. And usually not convicted.
In other places, the police will take your statement, cart off the body, and that's the end of it.
Though in both cases above, a DA up for reelection who thinks that getting tough makes him more likely to win his next election can turn self-defense into murder on a whim.
Note, for reference, that the Shuttle has had two loss of crew accidents in its history, while the "very reliable" Soyuz has had only two loss of crew accidents in its history.
Note also that there have been more Shuttle flights than Soyuz flights.
And yet, Obamacare was passed. And a couple of stimulus packages. And a couple of Supremes. Etc, etc.
Note that the above could NOT have happened without Republican votes, since the Repubs could have maintained a filibuster if they'd voted as a bloc all the time. Or even most of the time.
This was also mostly true when the Repubs had majorities in both Houses - they seldom had enough votes to block a filibuster by the Dems, yet the Dems could seldom find the votes to maintain a filibuster.
In other words, the Parties' voting records aren't as lock-step as you seem to believe. Yes, the Parties tend to attract more or less like-minded people, so they vote together a lot. But not the way they do in a Parliamentary system, where the Parties pretty much tell their members how to vote and the members vote that way.
Proportional Representation assumes that you're voting for a Political Party. We don't actually do that in the USA. We cast votes for individuals.
Proportional Representation also assumes that all members of a Political Party vote as a bloc. We don't actually have that condition here. People elected as Democrats can vote with the Republicans if they wish, and vice versa.
In other words, it's not the panacea you seem to think it is.
Oddly enough, firearm ownership has also increased pretty steadily (not every year, not every place) in the USA during that period.
And, as you say, the violent crime rate has been dropping....
It's interesting that you think that corporations do not have a Right to Free Speech when it comes to politics, but that corporations DO have a Right to Free Speech when it comes to publishing games/movies/whatever.
Which is it? If they shouldn't have Free Speech Rights in one realm, they shouldn't have them in another.
Contrariwise, if they SHOULD have Free Speech Rights in one realm, then it follows that they SHOULD have it in any other...
Or are you kidding yourself that when we're talking about making video games we're not talking about corporations?
Luckily, you didn't catch my own math error... Cubic miles to cubic km requires multiplying by four, NOT dividing by same. ;)
Oddly, enough, my own off-the-cuff estimate (using my approximations), gave me 6x 10^24 kg. Largely as a result of me rounding up on density, rather than down, since I knew my approximations tended to understate volume somewhat.
Note that in general, I agree with you conceptually. I just disagree on just how/what to simplify....
We believe in the country.
We also believe in the Constitution. Which has imposes fairly strict limits on what the Federal government can do (note that those limits are routinely ignored since FDR was President).
The USA was set up so the primary laws are at the State level - the Feds just handle the things at the interfaces between the States and the rest of the world - the military, tariffs, navigable waterways, money, that sort of thing. The stuff people are mostly concerned with - murders, robberies, fire protection, etc. are dealt with at the State level.
Not, especially given that 5000 cubed is a lot closer to 125,000,000,000 than to 75 billion.
Note, as a useful rule of thumb, that a sphere is about half the volume of the cube of the diameter.
Also, that you can approximate the conversion from cubic miles to cubic km by dividing by four.
This isn't necessarily true. More than one Federal Judge has both ignored the law and made up his/her own law to replace the one they ignored.
Note that this wasn't always a bad thing, though it was always a bad precedent to set.
Grapeshot and canister were certainly use in field artillery of the time. Chainshot was an anti-rigging shot, and thus pretty much useless on a conventional battlefield - amazing how seldom you found ships' masts to shoot down at Gettysburg, for instance.
That said, the suggestion that grapeshot and canister were especially worse than roundshot shows a common misperception of the effect of roundshot, which was horribly damaging to anyone it hit. And if done right, any individual roundshot hit far more than one person.
One of the big reasons Iraq and Afghanistan are such messes is that the American public isn't willing to put up with our soldiers actually killing people.
Note that in WW2 we bombed factories, cities, that sort of thing. We killed the best part of half a million people firebombing Tokyo, for instance. Public reaction? "Do it again!"
Now, we get vilified if we wound someone who isn't actually shooting at us at the moment he was wounded.
Different Rules of Engagement...if we'd fought Germany and Japan under current ROE, they'd own the world....
Well, naturalized citizens must demonstrate a working knowledge of English. Except for those with some disability preventing same, and older people (who, presumably, have a harder time learning a new language).
This is not so likely to be historically correct as one might suppose. Fact is, what they fired out of cannons back then wasn't loose powder and shot, but a single bag containing powder and a cannonball. In other words, if you don't have any cannonballs (not shells), then you've got no powder to shoot nails and chains.
Ether was used more than you might suppose in the Civil War. At least by the Union, who could afford to make the stuff and had the wherewithal to deliver it in quantity to their armies.
Anyone who believed in 1861 that the Revolutionary War was a "gentlemen's conflict" was so deluded about history that he can be excused for thinking that the Civil War was going to be one. Alas, history doesn't agree about the nature of the Revolutionary War.
Note, for reference, that the people who tended to think in terms of "gentelmen's war" were mostly Southern aristocrats. Most of the soldiers on both sides weren't able to kid themselves that standing on a battlefield with 30,000+ other people trying to kill you was going to be a friendly sort of affair.
Oddly enough, I had a great-great-grandfather in just such a situation. Battle of Franklin, in fact.
That would certainly explain why there are so many bad arguments being made to support a variety of ideas these days - it's too much trouble to logically construct arguments...
Useful hint: a quick response that includes bad grammar and lack of a logically constructed argument doesn't do much to support your side of an argument - it mostly makes your side look like the side of the ignoramuses...
Once is a typo. Twice is not knowing how to spell the word.
Umm, no.
Please note that in the two uses of nuclear weapons in warfare, the intimidating part wasn't that we were destroying Japanese cities - we'd done that for years already with conventional weapons (in face, we caused more casualties and did more damage in the firebomb raids on Tokyo than we did in both atomic bombings).
The intimidating part was that it only took one bomber to do what used to take 1000 bombers. Note that since we had 1000+ bombers, if we'd not had the nukes, we'd still have wrecked Japan.
Note also that, oddly enough, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared quite a bit of the horrors of war by the Atom bombs - General Arnold wrote in his autobiography that he had to make sure that several Japanese cities were placed off-limits for conventional bombing so that we could better evaluate the effects of the A-bomb on an undamaged city.
No, they're claiming that they can do post-event (that means after the fact, if it's not obvious) analysis of an earthquake or other unpredictable event, and then predict the entirely predictable tsunami caused by same.
The same thing is going to happen in the US, ACLU or not. The bills are already written. They are just waiting for another 9/11 to they can ram them through.
Citation?
That's another one that had absolutely no chance of going off. H-bomb, which means it's not a gun-type weapon, which means dropping it from a great height without arming the device results in a big hunk of metal falling out of the sky.
About as likely to be a nuclear explosion as if they'd dropped a volkswagon...
CSI?