My reasoning was, House seats after this month's election, 234-201R. Every one of those seats was voted on this month. That's a pretty fair margin of 33 out of 435, or 7.6%R. I'll give you that if you look at the aggregate House vote, it actually went the other way: 57,350,592-57,125,465D, which is 0.2%D.
Presidentially, we have 332-206D electoral votes. That's a margin of 126 out of 538, or 23.4%D. And we have 64,498,468-60,298,998D popular votes, or a margin of 4,199,470 out of 124,797,466, which is 3.4%D. All most people look at is the popular vote, even though it does not matter at all for electing the President.
I don't happen to buy the concept of "safe" seats. It sounds too much like hubris to me, and at the same time an overanalytical way of evaluating an election. I also find a disquieting parallel with the USSR system where every single office was formally made safe for the only allowed party; the Communist Party. They even disallowed factions within the single party.
I'm probably in the minority in this view.
There are a lot of ways of looking at it, but one fact remains. The electorate had its say, and we are still divided.
No, as a matter of fact he actually doesn't have the authority to raise taxes. It doesn't matter how many times you claim otherwise. If the taxes do automatically go up, it will be because of a process enacted into law last term by Congress and the President. He couldn't stop that process on his own authority, and he won't be triggering that process on his own authority. Do you understand?
I give the President more credit than that. He wants the government to get together and implement the details of spending and taxation by intelligent policy, not by letting arbitrary automatic hammers that nobody really thinks are intelligently conceived come down. Obama definitely does not want a large middle class tax hike, but that's what the hammer stands to saddle him with.
I think the Republicans want the same thing, and of course their idea of the details of the policy to implement are widely divergent from the President's, and even from each other's.
The cruel part is that neither side is engaging in meaningful debate or willing to enter into any joint decision process. Both are playing a cynical game of not answering the phone, hoping that when the hammer comes down, the other side will get the blame for the devastation. I think both sides will end up sharing the blame, and the rage may be a lot more than either expects.
That's if they have not already all secretly agreed to compromise on December 31.
You said Obama was elected because he "promised to increase taxes". He can't make that promise except cynically, because he doesn't have the AUTHORITY to implement it. I rather doubt he did make that promise. I expect he promised to work toward getting tax increases approved. Fine. So far, he has expended close to zero political capital toward that end.
You really are "not sure what my point is" about the Presidential and the House results taken together? I generally disengage when somebody starts to cast a discussion into a series of "points". I'll go against my better judgement and try to explain the statement to you. The same electorate who went to the polls and gave Obama a narrow edge in the popular vote also gave Republicans a more substantial edge retained in the House. Which action constitutes a mandate? Could it possibly be that they want Obama to continue smiling, uttering platitudes, handing out mosly inconsequential candy that doesn't cost much, and not starting any new major wars, and at the same time they want the Representatives to dig their heels in and basically stop anything else changing? Because that's what it looks like.
Yes, the Representatives are not a single unit. So? They are 435 individual units, and every single one of those units stands for re-election every two years. The races are just as competitive as the electorate wants them to be. If you think you can explain the results away by gerrymandering, I'm not buying it. You can't wave away the validity of the results that easily. There have been huge changes in the House overnight in the past; notable 1994. That election it went from 258-176D to 230-204R. Gerrymandering is as old as the hills, but it didn't "work" that time.
Um, there is a little detail you may have missed. The President doesn't have the AUTHORITY to change the tax structure. Congress does; yet - gee - the same electorate returned who returned Obama also returned a Republican majority in the all important House of Representatives.
And who created the Federal Reserve monstrosity? That's right, Congress. It was in structure an ordinary act of Congress (though in its details and effect an extraordinarily bad one). Don't tell me they now "have very little choice". What Congress has done, Congress can modify or undo.
Vital, down-and-dirty national spending and revenue decisions have been put off for GENERATIONS. We are staring doom in the face. Can salvation be found solely in science spending? Of course not. But does every single budget item and all tax policies and rates need to be on the table and without any sacred cows? HELL YES. And then the specific choices should be wise ones.
Without firm specifics at hand, I still feel very confident that there is 3% of utterly useless fat that could be trimmed from science funding. That's all we're talking about here.
P.S. - I admit that I see no sign whatsoever that seriously addressing the general situation is anywhere near the radar of the fools leading the nation - fools that WE installed. Profound differences over what needs to be done exist. FINE. OF COURSE they exist. But these losers won't even engage. That represents the most disgusting, reprehensible behavior which is possible to imagine.
Go ahead, be in a city with a for-real air raid siren going off. Then, have that happen a couple of times a day for weeks. See how it affects your psyche.
The Germans tried that with Britain in 1940. It didn't have the desired effect. It had rather the opposite effect. Then within two years the British tried it with Germany using vastly more force. It still didn't have the effect of turning the German people decisively against the prosecution of the war. It made their life a living hell, but they didn't revolt or go crazy. Do I have to explain about North Vietnam? Or Iraq 1991? Or Iraq 2003?
Under air attack a population doesn't have an easy time of it. But terror? I don't think that's quite the right word. Try fatalism, dogged resolve, bitter thirst for revenge, maybe hate.
None of this means I think think any of the missile attacks against Israel have been anywhere near that level.
There will be a version with onboard Ethernet, and they are trying to promote use of thunderbolt, just like Apple is.
I'll probably get one of the model with built-in Ethernet and put a system together - coukd be fun to play with.
Do we know this or do we only suppose this? It would be very encouraging! I have a thing for minis. I used to have the original Mac Mini but it crapped out completely before too long (this was helped by me throwing it against concrete blocks in a fit when probably it only had a dead hard drive). Until it died I liked it a lot. When they changed the design and started toying with power sucking, overheating GPUs and brought 110VAC directly into the unit and made the footprint much too big, I lost pretty much all interest. Words cannot express how stupid it was to move the power supply into the main case.
I tried a number of Aopen minis; same size as the original Mac Mini. The best IMO was the MP945. Mine still works. Thermally and acoustically (and those are the hard parts that amateurs always blunder on) it was a grand slam home run. Separate power brick (standard specs, too!), check. Real DVI-I connector, check; no stupid HDMI. Enough front and rear USBs, check (barely). Unfortunately the ancient GMA950 video was not up to full HD streaming, at least not on linux. But a truly fine mini desktop or mini light server.
Subsequent Aopens dropped the ball badly. My GP7A with the NVidia video hit a home run for HD streaming, but thermally it was getting closer to the edge, and acoustically it was just a flat out noisy bastard. A repulsive little jet engine.
The MP67 actually looks like it might be the one, but I don't haven't had the $ to try it since the bottom dropped out of my personal economy. I would definitely demand that it be upgraded to Ivy Bridge anyway.
Advancing technology has stepped up to the plate now, and the Intel with the ultra low power version of Ivy Bridge and HD4000 video is the flat out right answer which can be a fully capable mini desktop AND mini server AND HD streaming. Screw games. They are just not on my radar.
I LOVE the idea of this thing. I LOVE the size. I LOVE most of the choices and tradeoffs. i love the external power brick - and big fat Bronx cheer to Apple for abandoning that and bringing 110VAC right into their latest minis. Really stupid, Apple. But so sorry... 1) No ethernet = HUGE FAIL 2) No USB3 and not enough USB's = HUGE FAIL These are absolute showstoppers. Fix these and this thing is the answer to my prayers. I'll accept up to 1" more width and depth to get them.
Until then, it's not even close to making me abandon my Aopen Mini.
..are a shitty concept, as attackers have enormous compute resources these days, combined with sophisticated dictionary attack software. $100 from a creditcard can buy you serious compute power on AWS.
Perhaps you're not very good at statistical analysis, or you just haven't gotten the message. Yeah, they're not a magic bullet. You have to pick a decent one. But you can remember a HELL OF A LOT more entropy in the form of a phrase than you can in the form of a nonsense character string.
Of course you don't KNOW they are using a "good" passphrase. You don't know they haven't written down a password, either. Like icebike says, maybe you have a magic solution that works with no brain or discipline required. Let's hear it, genius. Yeah, I guess I just insulted an anonymous idiot.
The conservative media doesn't report the news anymore. They take statements out of context and generate their own version of news. Weren't you here during the last election season?;-)
The liberal media doesn't report the news anymore. They take statements out of context and generate their own version of news. Weren't you here during the last election season?;-)
OK, now we've both got that out of our systems, how about we refuse to be gamed by the system with its false left-right divide which is only for show as they both grind away our rights and our wealth?
On this topic, a certain Frenchman is foremost in my mind. He's arrogant and reckless childlike asshole who isn't nearly as smart as he likes to think he is. His half assed "innovations" are leading the project down a bad path, and I get the sense they won't realize what happened for quite some time and when they do, they'll have to redo things that have just been redone, at great cost in manpower and project confidence.
Could you possibly state plainly and precisely what you mean. For Christ's sake, man, you are posting anonymously. Why be coy? Give us an allegation we can check.
OK, yes, using civilians as human shields is a war crime, and more, it is a reprehensible and cynical act that should be condemned universally in the strongest possible terms.
Having said that, I think you'll find that killing the human shields as a predictable effect of engaging these cowards in a certain way is emphatically NOT automatically "OK" as a consequence. There is always going to be collateral damage in armed conflict, but the bar for exercising due care in combat under such conditions is high. Even "smart" weapons kill innocents. They are much better than "dumb" weapons, but a ground operation where you only engage those who individually offer armed resistance is "better".
And yes, if I were a member of the public and these cowards started hiding amongst my family and those of my neighbors and fellows, I would consider either fleeing or organizing community action to "discourage" these cowards from following that policy, even engaging them with force. But asking this of peaceful civilians is asking an AWFUL LOT. I don't know how much effort Israel expends to warn civilians in specific areas of impending action, so I can't really speak to specifics in the present case.
The Egyptian Muslim Bros. would/will never lose an election, and would/will never have to blatantly and publicly deny the outcome of one. They would just (1) keep pandering to the baser instincts of the voters, just like a certain other, unnamed, political party always does, and (2) pre-rig the elections, again just like the aforementioned unnamed party. The only way they ever lose is if they commit physical suicide, like the Nazis, or political suicide, like the Communists in the USSR.
This has nothing to do with whether you think they are a positive or negative force. It's just reality. Call it the political survival instinct and political lust for power, that they share with pretty much every other dominant political force around the world. Some "democracies" put on a big show with two dominant parties handing off the reins to each other periodically.
Something to think about, since it appears you haven't: and what if an Assad attack against Israel pulls in Egypt and throws all the Palestinians into full all out war mode. Hmmmm? How about if I throw in the "I" word (Iran)? Not to mention pretty much every other state in the region.
It doesn't have to work out "brilliantly". All it has to do is start the fire. It's entirely thinkable that first the rebellion against Assad would call a cease-fire for the duration so they can divert their own wrath against Israel. Then it's thinkable that Assad could come out of it the hero of the Muslim world for setting the spark that ends with Israel annihilated.
This is not 1948, 1956, or 1967. It's not even 1974, which was much more of a draw. In every one of those instances, Israel would have been annihilated but for outside logistical assistance. Sheer force of overwhelming numbers, baby. It worked for the USSR against the military machine of the Third Reich. Who would support Israel logistically in a new all-out conflict? The United States of Broke, Defeated America? With President Obama as commander in chief? Sorry; just no.
That particular problem can only be addressed constitutionally, and would break new ground for some constitutions such as the US one, which does not even mention the word "party" in the context of "political party". Here is another thought. One party is clearly not enough; two have come to represent a false divide; yet 1,000 may be confidently predicted to be too many. So I am somewhat afraid of what I might wish for in this vein.
It's not only that existing parties are jealous of new ones. They are jealous of each other. In the US each party spends most of its time tearing down the other, and very little time propounding specifically what its own agenda is.
Actually, it has nothing whatsoever to do with parties. In fact it is a deliberate end run around parties gaming the system. What I described is hiring professional aggregate voters to exercise your proxy to further ends THEY formulate and to which you subscribe. It effectively renders such considerations as how a candidate parts their hair, the tone of their voice, whether their spouse is attractive and personable - inoperative, since the professional aggregate voters' only purpose, to which they will be held to account, is to consider real ISSUES.
There may be real objections to the proposal, but an objection founded on "we already have a structure in place to accomplish this" is not one that has any basis. It sounded to me like "it's called a political party" was claiming this. At heart I see parties as the enemy of a good and fair selection and governing process. However...
I do like your Liquid Democracy pointer. Sounds like it is quite similar in principle to the proposal, but at a different level in the process. Maybe more practical to implement. It would be great to harness parties for good.
Moded down by imbeciles. Reposted so those who are actually interested in following the thread can see it. We can play this game all day, imbecile mods.
The deficit is the bleeding. The rate of blood loss. The debt is the pool of blood on the ground. The cumulative AMOUNT of blood lost. You fixate on the stream of blood gushing out if you like. I'll look at the pool on the ground. That's what counts. The guy can lose a half a liter or even a liter of blood in a great scary rush and his body can still recover on its own if the rush is stopped at that point. When the loss hits two liters, the guy is in danger of dying unless he gets a prompt transfusion. There is no transfusion for nations. When the debt gets too colossal, about all you can do is hyper-inflate it away. It's still X number of trillion dollars, but if you want you can make that the price of an ice cream cone. But then you've got other problems (Weimar Republic, anyone?).
An aside. Federal budgets are reckoned in these moronic things called Fiscal Years just to confuse people. They run from October 1 to September 30. FY 2013 ENDS on September 30, 2012. It BEGINS on October 1, 2011. It works out that FY X is for practical purposes pretty much calendar year X. It's just offset by minus three months. OK...
The following are deficits in billions of constant 1983 dollars. What year you pick doesn't matter. What matters is that you compare apples with apples.
Bush: FY2001 75 FY2002 234 FY2003 302 FY2004 315 FY2005 283 FY2006 285 FY2007 241 FY2008 472 Total contribution to debt 2207 = 276 per year
Obama: FY2009 879 FY2010 758 FY2011 550 FY2012 535 Total contribution to debt 2722 = 681 per year
The pool of blood belongs more to Obama than Bush, though neither one is a fiscal winner. And it's going to belong a lot more to Obama by the time the next four years passes and the two can be compared on an equivalent eight year basis.
Now, FY2009 (and 2001) don't really belong completely to their Presidents, because the budgets were passed during the term of the previous incumbent. OTOH, though the incoming Presidents could not have vetoed them, have could have changed them within 4-5 months, so they own them to a certain extent. Another monkey wrench is that the last two Bush years were with a Democrat Congress, so that awful last year is to an extent up for grabs.
My personal opinion? Neither guy and neither party is a winner. Bush left Obama an awful mess, but Obama hasn't cleaned it up with appropriate vigor, either. If you ask me about these two clunkers together, they have been a colossal unmitigated disaster for the American people. But you know what? The 200+ year bubble that was the American economy was due to burst anyway. And Congress gets at least half the blame. Some would say the House gets ALL the blame. Not a single dime can be spent that isn't appropriated by the House.
Re-read - for comprehension this time. They are very important components of REAL inflation (not the fake published inflation figures) - just as I stated.
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My reasoning was, House seats after this month's election, 234-201R. Every one of those seats was voted on this month. That's a pretty fair margin of 33 out of 435, or 7.6%R. I'll give you that if you look at the aggregate House vote, it actually went the other way: 57,350,592-57,125,465D, which is 0.2%D.
Presidentially, we have 332-206D electoral votes. That's a margin of 126 out of 538, or 23.4%D. And we have 64,498,468-60,298,998D popular votes, or a margin of 4,199,470 out of 124,797,466, which is 3.4%D. All most people look at is the popular vote, even though it does not matter at all for electing the President.
I don't happen to buy the concept of "safe" seats. It sounds too much like hubris to me, and at the same time an overanalytical way of evaluating an election. I also find a disquieting parallel with the USSR system where every single office was formally made safe for the only allowed party; the Communist Party. They even disallowed factions within the single party.
I'm probably in the minority in this view.
There are a lot of ways of looking at it, but one fact remains. The electorate had its say, and we are still divided.
Have I given any indication whatsoever that I might believe that? Um, that's a no, since you ask.
No, as a matter of fact he actually doesn't have the authority to raise taxes. It doesn't matter how many times you claim otherwise. If the taxes do automatically go up, it will be because of a process enacted into law last term by Congress and the President. He couldn't stop that process on his own authority, and he won't be triggering that process on his own authority. Do you understand?
I give the President more credit than that. He wants the government to get together and implement the details of spending and taxation by intelligent policy, not by letting arbitrary automatic hammers that nobody really thinks are intelligently conceived come down. Obama definitely does not want a large middle class tax hike, but that's what the hammer stands to saddle him with.
I think the Republicans want the same thing, and of course their idea of the details of the policy to implement are widely divergent from the President's, and even from each other's.
The cruel part is that neither side is engaging in meaningful debate or willing to enter into any joint decision process. Both are playing a cynical game of not answering the phone, hoping that when the hammer comes down, the other side will get the blame for the devastation. I think both sides will end up sharing the blame, and the rage may be a lot more than either expects.
That's if they have not already all secretly agreed to compromise on December 31.
You said Obama was elected because he "promised to increase taxes". He can't make that promise except cynically, because he doesn't have the AUTHORITY to implement it. I rather doubt he did make that promise. I expect he promised to work toward getting tax increases approved. Fine. So far, he has expended close to zero political capital toward that end.
You really are "not sure what my point is" about the Presidential and the House results taken together? I generally disengage when somebody starts to cast a discussion into a series of "points". I'll go against my better judgement and try to explain the statement to you. The same electorate who went to the polls and gave Obama a narrow edge in the popular vote also gave Republicans a more substantial edge retained in the House. Which action constitutes a mandate? Could it possibly be that they want Obama to continue smiling, uttering platitudes, handing out mosly inconsequential candy that doesn't cost much, and not starting any new major wars, and at the same time they want the Representatives to dig their heels in and basically stop anything else changing? Because that's what it looks like.
Yes, the Representatives are not a single unit. So? They are 435 individual units, and every single one of those units stands for re-election every two years. The races are just as competitive as the electorate wants them to be. If you think you can explain the results away by gerrymandering, I'm not buying it. You can't wave away the validity of the results that easily. There have been huge changes in the House overnight in the past; notable 1994. That election it went from 258-176D to 230-204R. Gerrymandering is as old as the hills, but it didn't "work" that time.
Um, there is a little detail you may have missed. The President doesn't have the AUTHORITY to change the tax structure. Congress does; yet - gee - the same electorate returned who returned Obama also returned a Republican majority in the all important House of Representatives.
And who created the Federal Reserve monstrosity? That's right, Congress. It was in structure an ordinary act of Congress (though in its details and effect an extraordinarily bad one). Don't tell me they now "have very little choice". What Congress has done, Congress can modify or undo.
Vital, down-and-dirty national spending and revenue decisions have been put off for GENERATIONS. We are staring doom in the face. Can salvation be found solely in science spending? Of course not. But does every single budget item and all tax policies and rates need to be on the table and without any sacred cows? HELL YES. And then the specific choices should be wise ones.
Without firm specifics at hand, I still feel very confident that there is 3% of utterly useless fat that could be trimmed from science funding. That's all we're talking about here.
P.S. - I admit that I see no sign whatsoever that seriously addressing the general situation is anywhere near the radar of the fools leading the nation - fools that WE installed. Profound differences over what needs to be done exist. FINE. OF COURSE they exist. But these losers won't even engage. That represents the most disgusting, reprehensible behavior which is possible to imagine.
For some definition of "actively". E17 has been in development since the year 2000. I mean WTF?!
I'm not criticizing the team. I mean I think it's only a couple of guys and they do great work.
How do you read that into it? Are you high? Just for the record, NO, it's not OK. By ANYBODY.
The Germans tried that with Britain in 1940. It didn't have the desired effect. It had rather the opposite effect. Then within two years the British tried it with Germany using vastly more force. It still didn't have the effect of turning the German people decisively against the prosecution of the war. It made their life a living hell, but they didn't revolt or go crazy. Do I have to explain about North Vietnam? Or Iraq 1991? Or Iraq 2003?
Under air attack a population doesn't have an easy time of it. But terror? I don't think that's quite the right word. Try fatalism, dogged resolve, bitter thirst for revenge, maybe hate.
None of this means I think think any of the missile attacks against Israel have been anywhere near that level.
There will be a version with onboard Ethernet, and they are trying to promote use of thunderbolt, just like Apple is.
I'll probably get one of the model with built-in Ethernet and put a system together - coukd be fun to play with.
Do we know this or do we only suppose this? It would be very encouraging! I have a thing for minis. I used to have the original Mac Mini but it crapped out completely before too long (this was helped by me throwing it against concrete blocks in a fit when probably it only had a dead hard drive). Until it died I liked it a lot. When they changed the design and started toying with power sucking, overheating GPUs and brought 110VAC directly into the unit and made the footprint much too big, I lost pretty much all interest. Words cannot express how stupid it was to move the power supply into the main case.
I tried a number of Aopen minis; same size as the original Mac Mini. The best IMO was the MP945. Mine still works. Thermally and acoustically (and those are the hard parts that amateurs always blunder on) it was a grand slam home run. Separate power brick (standard specs, too!), check. Real DVI-I connector, check; no stupid HDMI. Enough front and rear USBs, check (barely). Unfortunately the ancient GMA950 video was not up to full HD streaming, at least not on linux. But a truly fine mini desktop or mini light server.
Subsequent Aopens dropped the ball badly. My GP7A with the NVidia video hit a home run for HD streaming, but thermally it was getting closer to the edge, and acoustically it was just a flat out noisy bastard. A repulsive little jet engine.
The MP67 actually looks like it might be the one, but I don't haven't had the $ to try it since the bottom dropped out of my personal economy. I would definitely demand that it be upgraded to Ivy Bridge anyway.
Advancing technology has stepped up to the plate now, and the Intel with the ultra low power version of Ivy Bridge and HD4000 video is the flat out right answer which can be a fully capable mini desktop AND mini server AND HD streaming. Screw games. They are just not on my radar.
I LOVE the idea of this thing. I LOVE the size. I LOVE most of the choices and tradeoffs. i love the external power brick - and big fat Bronx cheer to Apple for abandoning that and bringing 110VAC right into their latest minis. Really stupid, Apple.
But so sorry...
1) No ethernet = HUGE FAIL
2) No USB3 and not enough USB's = HUGE FAIL
These are absolute showstoppers. Fix these and this thing is the answer to my prayers. I'll accept up to 1" more width and depth to get them.
Until then, it's not even close to making me abandon my Aopen Mini.
Fail. Try again.
Perhaps you're not very good at statistical analysis, or you just haven't gotten the message. Yeah, they're not a magic bullet. You have to pick a decent one. But you can remember a HELL OF A LOT more entropy in the form of a phrase than you can in the form of a nonsense character string.
Of course you don't KNOW they are using a "good" passphrase. You don't know they haven't written down a password, either. Like icebike says, maybe you have a magic solution that works with no brain or discipline required. Let's hear it, genius. Yeah, I guess I just insulted an anonymous idiot.
The liberal media doesn't report the news anymore. They take statements out of context and generate their own version of news. Weren't you here during the last election season? ;-)
OK, now we've both got that out of our systems, how about we refuse to be gamed by the system with its false left-right divide which is only for show as they both grind away our rights and our wealth?
Could you possibly state plainly and precisely what you mean. For Christ's sake, man, you are posting anonymously. Why be coy? Give us an allegation we can check.
OK, yes, using civilians as human shields is a war crime, and more, it is a reprehensible and cynical act that should be condemned universally in the strongest possible terms.
Having said that, I think you'll find that killing the human shields as a predictable effect of engaging these cowards in a certain way is emphatically NOT automatically "OK" as a consequence. There is always going to be collateral damage in armed conflict, but the bar for exercising due care in combat under such conditions is high. Even "smart" weapons kill innocents. They are much better than "dumb" weapons, but a ground operation where you only engage those who individually offer armed resistance is "better".
And yes, if I were a member of the public and these cowards started hiding amongst my family and those of my neighbors and fellows, I would consider either fleeing or organizing community action to "discourage" these cowards from following that policy, even engaging them with force. But asking this of peaceful civilians is asking an AWFUL LOT. I don't know how much effort Israel expends to warn civilians in specific areas of impending action, so I can't really speak to specifics in the present case.
The Egyptian Muslim Bros. would/will never lose an election, and would/will never have to blatantly and publicly deny the outcome of one. They would just (1) keep pandering to the baser instincts of the voters, just like a certain other, unnamed, political party always does, and (2) pre-rig the elections, again just like the aforementioned unnamed party. The only way they ever lose is if they commit physical suicide, like the Nazis, or political suicide, like the Communists in the USSR.
This has nothing to do with whether you think they are a positive or negative force. It's just reality. Call it the political survival instinct and political lust for power, that they share with pretty much every other dominant political force around the world. Some "democracies" put on a big show with two dominant parties handing off the reins to each other periodically.
Something to think about, since it appears you haven't: and what if an Assad attack against Israel pulls in Egypt and throws all the Palestinians into full all out war mode. Hmmmm? How about if I throw in the "I" word (Iran)? Not to mention pretty much every other state in the region.
It doesn't have to work out "brilliantly". All it has to do is start the fire. It's entirely thinkable that first the rebellion against Assad would call a cease-fire for the duration so they can divert their own wrath against Israel. Then it's thinkable that Assad could come out of it the hero of the Muslim world for setting the spark that ends with Israel annihilated.
This is not 1948, 1956, or 1967. It's not even 1974, which was much more of a draw. In every one of those instances, Israel would have been annihilated but for outside logistical assistance. Sheer force of overwhelming numbers, baby. It worked for the USSR against the military machine of the Third Reich. Who would support Israel logistically in a new all-out conflict? The United States of Broke, Defeated America? With President Obama as commander in chief? Sorry; just no.
No, but it's damn good evidence that it's not being run inefficiently.
That particular problem can only be addressed constitutionally, and would break new ground for some constitutions such as the US one, which does not even mention the word "party" in the context of "political party". Here is another thought. One party is clearly not enough; two have come to represent a false divide; yet 1,000 may be confidently predicted to be too many. So I am somewhat afraid of what I might wish for in this vein.
It's not only that existing parties are jealous of new ones. They are jealous of each other. In the US each party spends most of its time tearing down the other, and very little time propounding specifically what its own agenda is.
Actually, it has nothing whatsoever to do with parties. In fact it is a deliberate end run around parties gaming the system. What I described is hiring professional aggregate voters to exercise your proxy to further ends THEY formulate and to which you subscribe. It effectively renders such considerations as how a candidate parts their hair, the tone of their voice, whether their spouse is attractive and personable - inoperative, since the professional aggregate voters' only purpose, to which they will be held to account, is to consider real ISSUES.
There may be real objections to the proposal, but an objection founded on "we already have a structure in place to accomplish this" is not one that has any basis. It sounded to me like "it's called a political party" was claiming this. At heart I see parties as the enemy of a good and fair selection and governing process. However ...
I do like your Liquid Democracy pointer. Sounds like it is quite similar in principle to the proposal, but at a different level in the process. Maybe more practical to implement. It would be great to harness parties for good.
Moded down by imbeciles. Reposted so those who are actually interested in following the thread can see it. We can play this game all day, imbecile mods.
The deficit is the bleeding. The rate of blood loss. The debt is the pool of blood on the ground. The cumulative AMOUNT of blood lost. You fixate on the stream of blood gushing out if you like. I'll look at the pool on the ground. That's what counts. The guy can lose a half a liter or even a liter of blood in a great scary rush and his body can still recover on its own if the rush is stopped at that point. When the loss hits two liters, the guy is in danger of dying unless he gets a prompt transfusion. There is no transfusion for nations. When the debt gets too colossal, about all you can do is hyper-inflate it away. It's still X number of trillion dollars, but if you want you can make that the price of an ice cream cone. But then you've got other problems (Weimar Republic, anyone?).
An aside. Federal budgets are reckoned in these moronic things called Fiscal Years just to confuse people. They run from October 1 to September 30. FY 2013 ENDS on September 30, 2012. It BEGINS on October 1, 2011. It works out that FY X is for practical purposes pretty much calendar year X. It's just offset by minus three months. OK ...
The following are deficits in billions of constant 1983 dollars. What year you pick doesn't matter. What matters is that you compare apples with apples.
Bush:
FY2001 75
FY2002 234
FY2003 302
FY2004 315
FY2005 283
FY2006 285
FY2007 241
FY2008 472
Total contribution to debt 2207 = 276 per year
Obama:
FY2009 879
FY2010 758
FY2011 550
FY2012 535
Total contribution to debt 2722 = 681 per year
The pool of blood belongs more to Obama than Bush, though neither one is a fiscal winner. And it's going to belong a lot more to Obama by the time the next four years passes and the two can be compared on an equivalent eight year basis.
Now, FY2009 (and 2001) don't really belong completely to their Presidents, because the budgets were passed during the term of the previous incumbent. OTOH, though the incoming Presidents could not have vetoed them, have could have changed them within 4-5 months, so they own them to a certain extent. Another monkey wrench is that the last two Bush years were with a Democrat Congress, so that awful last year is to an extent up for grabs.
My personal opinion? Neither guy and neither party is a winner. Bush left Obama an awful mess, but Obama hasn't cleaned it up with appropriate vigor, either. If you ask me about these two clunkers together, they have been a colossal unmitigated disaster for the American people. But you know what? The 200+ year bubble that was the American economy was due to burst anyway. And Congress gets at least half the blame. Some would say the House gets ALL the blame. Not a single dime can be spent that isn't appropriated by the House.
Reference:
http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html [adelphi.edu]
Re-read - for comprehension this time. They are very important components of REAL inflation (not the fake published inflation figures) - just as I stated.