Right now, women have all reproductive rights and choices (abortion) while men only have responsibilities (18 years of child support).
Say you have 17 year old fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and both of them conceive with their respective girlfriend/boyfriend. You can tell your girl that legally she has the right to
Have an abortion without the father's knowledge or permission
Give the baby up for adoption without the father's knowledge or permission
Raise the baby in secret and never tell the father
Raise the baby in secret, and then go after the father for child support years later when he has no chance of gaining custody
Whereas your conversation with your son will go more like this:
Sorry son, but 9 months of her life trumps 18 years of your life
Your only "right" was the right not to have sex, now deal with the consequences (though this never applies to the woman for some reason)
You can spend a vast sum of money suing for custody if 1-4 above don't happen
The Male Pill will finally give men the same control over conception that women have, if not the same rights & choices after conception happens.
Public schools almost universally spend more per child than private schools. The absolute amounts are different, but if you look at spending in the same geographic areas, then you'll see that public schools spend 10-20% more.
Then I'd like to see the qualitative and quantitative studies showing these private schools costing less money while providing the same level of services. Public schools can't refuse students, but there's nothing stopping a private school from refusing admission to physically or mentally disable students, or those with learning disabilities (ADD or dyslexia), thus saving a ton of money right off the bat.
And you still haven't answered the issue that millions of parents will not be able to send their children to school - something that is in the best interest of the biggest self-centered elitists on the planet, like Gover Norquist. How do you plan on maintaining a competitive workforce and a sizable middle class to buy whatever products your business makes when the nation's 95%+ literacy rate goes away?
No, seriously, put down the Hatorade. Say you move to a new town and find yourself having problems with allergies, so you get some over-the-counter medicine on your way to work. But it turns out that you are one of the few people who have a strong negative reaction to Sudafed, and you crash into another car on way to work. Should you have your drivers liscence permanently revoked because you are a "proven threat to other cars and pedestrians and have no business driving"? Of course not, it means you shouldn't take any more Sudafed.
Same with this lady with her severe reaction to medication.
First, if you think Slashdot is some right-wing website you haven't been here too long.
No, this isn't Redstate. But if you think this site isn't crawling with wingnuts, you haven't been here very long. Just look at the uprates for this story - the vast majority are for ones trashing teachers and teachers unions.
Many of us are sensitive to this issue because if you are on a tech website you generally care about your education more.
No more than the average type bear. And you probably learned more on your own about computers than you did in K-12.
Second, you obviously didn't read the article.
Nah, he probably did, only he managed to catch the overwhelming bias of it.
The article features only one side of the story
The plural of anecdote is not data - it's not like there are horrible workers who keep their jobs at private companies
The teachers union just voted to strike to make sure class sizes aren't increased as the state's receiving federal dollars. And what do you know, immediately after that a conservative paper prints a story to whip up anti-teacher's union sentiment. Huh, interesting.
And you could have a documented case where a teacher basically encouraged a kid to commit suicide and that still couldn't get the person fired.
It's called due process. Just because most workers in the U.S. don't have it doesn't mean we should tear down those who do. If the accusation is substantiated, of course the teacher should be canned. But if it's true and the teacher *isn't* canned see point #2 above. I worked at an anti-union shop that employed an ex-Navy guy who happened to be a degrading chauvinist. He was reported multiple times, but only received a talking to - even after he told a woman "I'd like to rape the shit out of you" - because he was buddies with the boss. Does that mean that private companies only exist to shield workers from harassment lawsuits?
Well, let's see...here's some of the anti-teacher, anti-union, right-wing libertarian groupthink BS the parent was talking about
Fixed that for you.
Teachers make a lot less money because they work a lot less then a regular 9 to 5 guy (Assuming they work 8-10 hour days, which not all do, some HS instructors probably put in a 10 hour day on a regular basis)
Hmm, why don't you try spending 8 hours a day acting as a babysitter for 35 brats while trying to drill some math and english into their heads, then spend hours more grading home work and see if you think it's working "a lot less" than someone who just puts in 8 hours a day.
they still end up with 18-20 weeks off a year.
On what planet? Teachers don't start and stop working at the same time students start and stop going to school. Try more like 1-2 months, and how many good paying jobs are you going to find that will hire for that length of time?
Next, teachers earn a lot less, because well, they attract a lot of folks with a lot less talent.
Because you get what you pay for. You can't expect people who spent 4-6 years in school, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt to put in 60+ hour weeks and do a top job for $30k a year.
Finally, teachers make a lot less because there's a union.
I suppose you could see it that way, if you're an idiot. Steven Spielberg, Kobe Bryant and Tom Hanks are members of unions. So they must make less money than you do, right? Right?
The obvious point is that the plural of anecdote is not data. Even an idiot could have seen that.
If you honestly think, we would ever actually cut education funding in this country
It happens all the time, and far more so now with state budget crunches across the country. Staff are laid off, programs are cut and costs are pushed onto students.
People support teachers, people just don't support bad teachers - and there are plenty of them and they are impossible to fire.
Nonsense. There is nothing about unions that prevents workers from being fired for cause. Nothing. You ever work for a non-union company? Then no doubt you saw incompetent slackers that couldn't be fired because they were the boss's friend, nephew, or went to the same frat. Did you also run around whining how horrible all businesses are? I bet not.
Of course, other than advocating for smaller class sizes, more funding for students, opposing Intelligent Design, etc.
Hating on unions is understandable if you're a business owner. A union might prevent you from earning 500 times as much as your average employee, and that would be terrible. However, if you're not a business owner, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Uh huh. And how much are you willing to have your taxes raised so a school district has the capacity to move students to other schools after you close one? As opposed to the somewhat smaller cost of bringing in a new principal.
So the real problem wasn't the teacher's union, but that the problem worker was buddies with the boss. Good thing that never happens in union-free businesses.
Oh? I worked at a private anti-union shop that would fire a labor organizer faster than Wal-Mart. There was an ex-Navy guy who worked there, who was an actual chauvinist pig of feminist legend. He was reported a dozen times for sexist remarks that would have gotten me fired in a second, but he was buddies with management. Once he went to far as to tell a young lady "I'd love to rape the shit out of you".
He was never fired, only given a "talking to". Therefore, private business is wrong, and we should get rid of all private businesses.
This is seriously a mystery for some people? It's because they work for the government. They get away with being "bad" teachers because there's no motivation not to be bad teachers.
There's nothing about unions that prevent people from being fired with cause. And the reason why you can't fire a teacher with the snap of a finger is because no issue is more political than children. You don't want teachers being fired because they gave a failing grade to the child of a Respected Community Leader.
If the government is going to have anything to do with education (which it shouldn't) there should be a voucher system where the government pays for schooling, but the actual schooling is provided by privately run schools. It's no big surprise to anybody that the people most against voucher systems are the teachers unions, filled with bad teachers.
Aww, aren't you just a cute, short sighted elitist who can't see past his own nose. You can't have a sizable middle class WITHOUT public schools, because not everyone can pony up $10,000 a year to send their kids to private school.
I'm not gonna be some MSM conspiracy kook here, but seriously - you really think that 48% or whatever of Americans are anti-intellectual xenophobic racist apes? Citation needed!
There are a lot of people left in the Republican party who are a whole lot closer to those old time conservatives than you think, and if they don't get noticed, it's only partly their own fault and largely the media's fault.
If they are, they're staying put because of inertia and party loyalty only. Today's Democrats are more conservative than Nixon.
although at least the left-leaning media does focus on their own moderates once in a while.
The HuffPo is a drop in the media ocean.
it's that they somehow get branded as the fringe element. Maybe the Dems are just better at branding?
The GOP has done it's own job branding itself as a batch of insane idiots.
and Cheney isn't as diabolical
Other than planning warrantless wiretapping *before* 911.
Obama's overdoing the spending
Only in the Treasury department. The stimulus was short a good $2 trillion.
overdoing the apologies
Such as?
and proving to be far less centralist/consensus building/corruption free than his words promised
Hardly. When he first came into office, he put bipartisanship ahead of legislation, and look where it got him - only three votes and only in the Senate. Obama's been far too accommodating to the right wing.
I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle
Fat chance, and that's with Obama making some moronic picks from a strategic perspective: Napolitano for DHS, when she was probably the only Democrat in Arizona capable of beating McCain next year. And he picked Sebelius over Howard Dean, eliminating the best chance of having a Democratic senator from Kansas for the first time in 70+ years.
forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle (which I think will be healthy).
The filibuster is great, as long as it means the senators are breaking out the cots and the phonebooks. The current, painless filibuster needs to go.
I'm definitely pro-small government
Wanting a small government for the sake of a small government is as sensible as wanting a big government for the sake of a big government.
I think most Americans are for their own comfort - when the economy is chugging along, that means pro-big-business (Republican)
Except of course that you want Democrats at both times though.
And my point is that the media should be digging at least a little bit below the stage persona
Too bad our media sucks so bad. They're obsessed with glittering trivialities, reporting he said/she said while leaving out the facts, and covering up their support of the Iraq war.
Which is precisely what the Tea Parties are about... and why the left feels the need to belittle them. They're afraid that the real GOP (not the imposters that have taken over for the last decade) will rise up again.
Afraid? In your dreams. The tea baggers are belittled because they are frikkin morons. Obama and the Democrats just gave them the biggest federal tax cut of their lives, and they're out protesting him? And where were their concerns about federal spending when Reagan was inventing the multi-trillion dollar national debt and Bush was pushing it to $10 trillion?
It's the long forgotten about base standing up demanding to be heard.
Somehow I doubt the Democrats are quaking in their boots.
And the Democrats see the world with rose colored glasses that hide all their sins.
I suppose you could say that, if you happen to like firing howitzers inside of glass houses.
Or did they not do all of the above and far far worse to Joseph Lieberman.
Oh? Barack Obama helped to save Lieberman's ass in 2006 by campaigning for him during his re-election bid. Care to remind us how Lieberman repaid Obama's favor last fall?
What is there to be puzzled about. The right wing jingoistic conservative from 20 years would be a lefty today. If the Republican party keeps on it's current path, even Cheney will be a "lefty" in another 20 years. Nixon would be a veritable anarchist in today's GOP.
The way it's presented in some places -- like this one -- the US is an extreme right-wing country.
It is compared to the rest of western nations.
If we've got the various governments of the US confiscating an estimated "30.8% of the nation's income for 2008" [Wikipedia] and providing food, housing, education, pensions, and medicine to millions of people, is that really an extreme ultra-capitalist system?
If extreme superficiality is your cup of tea, sure. Otherwise, no. In Europe, no one loses their house because they have an accident or get cancer. In Europe, if bankers loot the economy, at least they aren't paying a paltry 15% tax rate while they do so. In Europe, people don't commonly finish school with $100,000 in student loans for a masters degree because the government picks up far more of the tab.
You don't see Canada's right wing president conducting mass warrantless wiretapping not just on normal citizens, but members of the press and other politicians.
In Australia or New Zealand, you don't find the government insisting it has the right to lock anyone up indefinitely without warrants, trials or attorneys.
And of course, you have to go to third world dictatorships to find governments that openly insist they have the right to torture people.
Please do. Today's Democrats are to the right of Nixon.
We haven't shifted to the right. We've shifted dramatically to the left. Only naivety and lack of education and knowledge would allow someone to think otherwise. (Or the major media outlets such as NBC, CNN, NY Times which are 90% staffed by liberals and conjures the term extreme right.)
As is usually the case, take the opposite of the wingnut viewpoint and you have reality.
What I would like to see passed are term limits for ALL elected officials. Maybe even a term limit for the Supreme Court. Or maybe not a limit, maybe make their appointment last 12 years and then they're done.
Term limits are like drinking Drano for an ulcer: not only is it the wrong cure for the disease, it will make your problem worse. Because if you limit the length of time a politician serves in office, he'll be thinking about his next career. And what's going to set him up for a better job in the future: serving the people or selling them out to special interests? Every congressman is going to be a mini Duke Cunningham or Ted Stevens.
A much better solution to the issue of corruption would be to federally finance 100% of federal campaigns (don't have to whore yourself out for money), raise congressional pay to a million dollars a year (eliminating most of the incentive for graft) and have a strong, independent ethics panel to investigate shenanigans (no more Delays or Murthas).
One solution for ossification would be to gradually require incumbents to get a larger percentage of the vote. This would allow good, popular politicians to keep serving (i.e. Dorgan and Fiengold) while kicking out losers like Specter, Lieberman and Bunning. I've never heard of anyone trying this, ever, so who knows how it would work in practice.
Not when it's possible to have a republic without a democracy.
Take some aspirin for your head and re-read what I wrote. It was the gov't that decided that the Volt would be DOA because of the price, not the market.
I'm afraid aspirin isn't going to help much, as I read your article and couldn't find any harsh criticism of the Volt, much less "DOA". The comments were muted, such as:
"Additionally, while the Chevy Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short-term.... GM is at least one generation behind Toyota on advanced, "green" powertrain development. In an attempt to leapfrog Toyota, GM has devoted significant resources to the Chevy Volt. While the Volt holds promise, it is currently projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable."
...which seems entirely reasonable, as the Volt will be competing with cars like the nth generation Prius and the Civic Hybrid, both of which cost $22,000 and get 45+ miles to the gallon. But the article also talks about
The Obama administration believes in the long term necessity and prospects of plug-in vehicles. They are offering financial support because they recognize that the cost of batteries as well as other system components must come down substantially for the vehicles to be commercially successful.
Hell, if I had the money, I'd be happy to pay the $100K+ for a Tesla!
Something else we can agree on. Just as soon as I win that Powerball...
We're getting there on electric cars, but the gov't is planning on forcing the issue now. Are they also going to subsidize the needed electric infrastructure upgrades? What about battery technology? Planning on invading Chile and Bolivia for lithium supplies?
What I don't understand is why no one is talking about slapping on solar cells on EV's or plug in hybrids. If it extends your range in sunny states like Arizona, why not? And million of Americans don't have offstreet parking or garages where they can plug their cars in, so might as well let them charge up if they have to park on the side of the road. I'm sure there are some technical hurdles, but that hasn't been a deterrent to EV development.
Slashdot Mirror
Right now, women have all reproductive rights and choices (abortion) while men only have responsibilities (18 years of child support).
Say you have 17 year old fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and both of them conceive with their respective girlfriend/boyfriend. You can tell your girl that legally she has the right to
Whereas your conversation with your son will go more like this:
The Male Pill will finally give men the same control over conception that women have, if not the same rights & choices after conception happens.
No, the point is to go ahead and skip Apple's products without all the whining and waling.
Public schools almost universally spend more per child than private schools. The absolute amounts are different, but if you look at spending in the same geographic areas, then you'll see that public schools spend 10-20% more.
Then I'd like to see the qualitative and quantitative studies showing these private schools costing less money while providing the same level of services. Public schools can't refuse students, but there's nothing stopping a private school from refusing admission to physically or mentally disable students, or those with learning disabilities (ADD or dyslexia), thus saving a ton of money right off the bat.
And you still haven't answered the issue that millions of parents will not be able to send their children to school - something that is in the best interest of the biggest self-centered elitists on the planet, like Gover Norquist. How do you plan on maintaining a competitive workforce and a sizable middle class to buy whatever products your business makes when the nation's 95%+ literacy rate goes away?
No, seriously, put down the Hatorade. Say you move to a new town and find yourself having problems with allergies, so you get some over-the-counter medicine on your way to work. But it turns out that you are one of the few people who have a strong negative reaction to Sudafed, and you crash into another car on way to work. Should you have your drivers liscence permanently revoked because you are a "proven threat to other cars and pedestrians and have no business driving"? Of course not, it means you shouldn't take any more Sudafed.
Same with this lady with her severe reaction to medication.
You shouldn't ask for a citation unless it's actually hard to find.
You have that backwards. It's not your job to prove other people's points for them. That's just being lazy.
Yes, we are truly unreasonable when we are uncomfortable with teachers WHO THREATEN STUDENTS WITH SHARP OBJECTS. Jesus Frickin' Christ.
She had a negative reaction to medication, so put down the Hatorade.
If an entire state of millions of people wants teachers to be sunday school advisers, who are we to stop them?
Because it's not fair to abandon American kids born to troglodyte parents in a troglodyte state.
First, if you think Slashdot is some right-wing website you haven't been here too long.
No, this isn't Redstate. But if you think this site isn't crawling with wingnuts, you haven't been here very long. Just look at the uprates for this story - the vast majority are for ones trashing teachers and teachers unions.
Many of us are sensitive to this issue because if you are on a tech website you generally care about your education more.
No more than the average type bear. And you probably learned more on your own about computers than you did in K-12.
Second, you obviously didn't read the article.
Nah, he probably did, only he managed to catch the overwhelming bias of it.
And you could have a documented case where a teacher basically encouraged a kid to commit suicide and that still couldn't get the person fired.
It's called due process. Just because most workers in the U.S. don't have it doesn't mean we should tear down those who do. If the accusation is substantiated, of course the teacher should be canned. But if it's true and the teacher *isn't* canned see point #2 above. I worked at an anti-union shop that employed an ex-Navy guy who happened to be a degrading chauvinist. He was reported multiple times, but only received a talking to - even after he told a woman "I'd like to rape the shit out of you" - because he was buddies with the boss. Does that mean that private companies only exist to shield workers from harassment lawsuits?
Well, let's see...here's some of the anti-teacher, anti-union, right-wing libertarian groupthink BS the parent was talking about
Fixed that for you.
Teachers make a lot less money because they work a lot less then a regular 9 to 5 guy (Assuming they work 8-10 hour days, which not all do, some HS instructors probably put in a 10 hour day on a regular basis)
Hmm, why don't you try spending 8 hours a day acting as a babysitter for 35 brats while trying to drill some math and english into their heads, then spend hours more grading home work and see if you think it's working "a lot less" than someone who just puts in 8 hours a day.
they still end up with 18-20 weeks off a year.
On what planet? Teachers don't start and stop working at the same time students start and stop going to school. Try more like 1-2 months, and how many good paying jobs are you going to find that will hire for that length of time?
Next, teachers earn a lot less, because well, they attract a lot of folks with a lot less talent.
Because you get what you pay for. You can't expect people who spent 4-6 years in school, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt to put in 60+ hour weeks and do a top job for $30k a year.
Finally, teachers make a lot less because there's a union.
I suppose you could see it that way, if you're an idiot. Steven Spielberg, Kobe Bryant and Tom Hanks are members of unions. So they must make less money than you do, right? Right?
I just got back into my seat from laughing at the absolute naiveté if not idiocy of that remark.
The obvious point is that the plural of anecdote is not data. Even an idiot could have seen that.
If you honestly think, we would ever actually cut education funding in this country
It happens all the time, and far more so now with state budget crunches across the country. Staff are laid off, programs are cut and costs are pushed onto students.
People support teachers, people just don't support bad teachers - and there are plenty of them and they are impossible to fire.
Nonsense. There is nothing about unions that prevents workers from being fired for cause. Nothing. You ever work for a non-union company? Then no doubt you saw incompetent slackers that couldn't be fired because they were the boss's friend, nephew, or went to the same frat. Did you also run around whining how horrible all businesses are? I bet not.
Of course, other than advocating for smaller class sizes, more funding for students, opposing Intelligent Design, etc.
Hating on unions is understandable if you're a business owner. A union might prevent you from earning 500 times as much as your average employee, and that would be terrible. However, if you're not a business owner, you're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Uh huh. And how much are you willing to have your taxes raised so a school district has the capacity to move students to other schools after you close one? As opposed to the somewhat smaller cost of bringing in a new principal.
So the real problem wasn't the teacher's union, but that the problem worker was buddies with the boss. Good thing that never happens in union-free businesses.
Unions are the cause of this insanity.
Oh? I worked at a private anti-union shop that would fire a labor organizer faster than Wal-Mart. There was an ex-Navy guy who worked there, who was an actual chauvinist pig of feminist legend. He was reported a dozen times for sexist remarks that would have gotten me fired in a second, but he was buddies with management. Once he went to far as to tell a young lady "I'd love to rape the shit out of you".
He was never fired, only given a "talking to". Therefore, private business is wrong, and we should get rid of all private businesses.
This is seriously a mystery for some people? It's because they work for the government. They get away with being "bad" teachers because there's no motivation not to be bad teachers.
There's nothing about unions that prevent people from being fired with cause. And the reason why you can't fire a teacher with the snap of a finger is because no issue is more political than children. You don't want teachers being fired because they gave a failing grade to the child of a Respected Community Leader.
If the government is going to have anything to do with education (which it shouldn't) there should be a voucher system where the government pays for schooling, but the actual schooling is provided by privately run schools. It's no big surprise to anybody that the people most against voucher systems are the teachers unions, filled with bad teachers.
Aww, aren't you just a cute, short sighted elitist who can't see past his own nose. You can't have a sizable middle class WITHOUT public schools, because not everyone can pony up $10,000 a year to send their kids to private school.
Distinction without a difference.
The difference is so huge that Ray Charles could see it from a mile away with his naked eyes. And he's blind.
And dead.
He's been perfectly obvious as to what he's talking about, and perfectly correct.
You can argue that Stardock uses permissive DRM. You can't argue that they don't use DRM if there's any product activation or authentication.
Oh, heaven forbid that people dare to have an opinion about how they spend their money in America.
I'm not gonna be some MSM conspiracy kook here, but seriously - you really think that 48% or whatever of Americans are anti-intellectual xenophobic racist apes? Citation needed!
Why else would they vote for the most incompetent flip flopper in politics?
There are a lot of people left in the Republican party who are a whole lot closer to those old time conservatives than you think, and if they don't get noticed, it's only partly their own fault and largely the media's fault.
If they are, they're staying put because of inertia and party loyalty only. Today's Democrats are more conservative than Nixon.
although at least the left-leaning media does focus on their own moderates once in a while.
The HuffPo is a drop in the media ocean.
it's that they somehow get branded as the fringe element. Maybe the Dems are just better at branding?
The GOP has done it's own job branding itself as a batch of insane idiots.
and Cheney isn't as diabolical
Other than planning warrantless wiretapping *before* 911.
Obama's overdoing the spending
Only in the Treasury department. The stimulus was short a good $2 trillion.
overdoing the apologies
Such as?
and proving to be far less centralist/consensus building/corruption free than his words promised
Hardly. When he first came into office, he put bipartisanship ahead of legislation, and look where it got him - only three votes and only in the Senate. Obama's been far too accommodating to the right wing.
I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle
Fat chance, and that's with Obama making some moronic picks from a strategic perspective: Napolitano for DHS, when she was probably the only Democrat in Arizona capable of beating McCain next year. And he picked Sebelius over Howard Dean, eliminating the best chance of having a Democratic senator from Kansas for the first time in 70+ years.
forecast the filibuster will be back next election cycle (which I think will be healthy).
The filibuster is great, as long as it means the senators are breaking out the cots and the phonebooks. The current, painless filibuster needs to go.
I'm definitely pro-small government
Wanting a small government for the sake of a small government is as sensible as wanting a big government for the sake of a big government.
I think most Americans are for their own comfort - when the economy is chugging along, that means pro-big-business (Republican)
Except of course that you want Democrats at both times though.
And my point is that the media should be digging at least a little bit below the stage persona
Too bad our media sucks so bad. They're obsessed with glittering trivialities, reporting he said/she said while leaving out the facts, and covering up their support of the Iraq war.
Which is precisely what the Tea Parties are about... and why the left feels the need to belittle them. They're afraid that the real GOP (not the imposters that have taken over for the last decade) will rise up again.
Afraid? In your dreams. The tea baggers are belittled because they are frikkin morons. Obama and the Democrats just gave them the biggest federal tax cut of their lives, and they're out protesting him? And where were their concerns about federal spending when Reagan was inventing the multi-trillion dollar national debt and Bush was pushing it to $10 trillion?
It's the long forgotten about base standing up demanding to be heard.
Somehow I doubt the Democrats are quaking in their boots.
And the Democrats see the world with rose colored glasses that hide all their sins.
I suppose you could say that, if you happen to like firing howitzers inside of glass houses.
Or did they not do all of the above and far far worse to Joseph Lieberman.
Oh? Barack Obama helped to save Lieberman's ass in 2006 by campaigning for him during his re-election bid. Care to remind us how Lieberman repaid Obama's favor last fall?
I'm puzzled by the Overton Window theory.
What is there to be puzzled about. The right wing jingoistic conservative from 20 years would be a lefty today. If the Republican party keeps on it's current path, even Cheney will be a "lefty" in another 20 years. Nixon would be a veritable anarchist in today's GOP.
The way it's presented in some places -- like this one -- the US is an extreme right-wing country.
It is compared to the rest of western nations.
If we've got the various governments of the US confiscating an estimated "30.8% of the nation's income for 2008" [Wikipedia] and providing food, housing, education, pensions, and medicine to millions of people, is that really an extreme ultra-capitalist system?
If extreme superficiality is your cup of tea, sure. Otherwise, no. In Europe, no one loses their house because they have an accident or get cancer. In Europe, if bankers loot the economy, at least they aren't paying a paltry 15% tax rate while they do so. In Europe, people don't commonly finish school with $100,000 in student loans for a masters degree because the government picks up far more of the tab.
You don't see Canada's right wing president conducting mass warrantless wiretapping not just on normal citizens, but members of the press and other politicians.
In Australia or New Zealand, you don't find the government insisting it has the right to lock anyone up indefinitely without warrants, trials or attorneys.
And of course, you have to go to third world dictatorships to find governments that openly insist they have the right to torture people.
Really...go look at history.
Please do. Today's Democrats are to the right of Nixon.
We haven't shifted to the right. We've shifted dramatically to the left. Only naivety and lack of education and knowledge would allow someone to think otherwise. (Or the major media outlets such as NBC, CNN, NY Times which are 90% staffed by liberals and conjures the term extreme right.)
As is usually the case, take the opposite of the wingnut viewpoint and you have reality.
What I would like to see passed are term limits for ALL elected officials. Maybe even a term limit for the Supreme Court. Or maybe not a limit, maybe make their appointment last 12 years and then they're done.
Term limits are like drinking Drano for an ulcer: not only is it the wrong cure for the disease, it will make your problem worse. Because if you limit the length of time a politician serves in office, he'll be thinking about his next career. And what's going to set him up for a better job in the future: serving the people or selling them out to special interests? Every congressman is going to be a mini Duke Cunningham or Ted Stevens.
A much better solution to the issue of corruption would be to federally finance 100% of federal campaigns (don't have to whore yourself out for money), raise congressional pay to a million dollars a year (eliminating most of the incentive for graft) and have a strong, independent ethics panel to investigate shenanigans (no more Delays or Murthas).
One solution for ossification would be to gradually require incumbents to get a larger percentage of the vote. This would allow good, popular politicians to keep serving (i.e. Dorgan and Fiengold) while kicking out losers like Specter, Lieberman and Bunning. I've never heard of anyone trying this, ever, so who knows how it would work in practice.
And Democratic Republic is redundant
Not when it's possible to have a republic without a democracy.
Take some aspirin for your head and re-read what I wrote. It was the gov't that decided that the Volt would be DOA because of the price, not the market.
I'm afraid aspirin isn't going to help much, as I read your article and couldn't find any harsh criticism of the Volt, much less "DOA". The comments were muted, such as:
...which seems entirely reasonable, as the Volt will be competing with cars like the nth generation Prius and the Civic Hybrid, both of which cost $22,000 and get 45+ miles to the gallon. But the article also talks about
Hell, if I had the money, I'd be happy to pay the $100K+ for a Tesla!
Something else we can agree on. Just as soon as I win that Powerball...
We're getting there on electric cars, but the gov't is planning on forcing the issue now. Are they also going to subsidize the needed electric infrastructure upgrades? What about battery technology? Planning on invading Chile and Bolivia for lithium supplies?
What I don't understand is why no one is talking about slapping on solar cells on EV's or plug in hybrids. If it extends your range in sunny states like Arizona, why not? And million of Americans don't have offstreet parking or garages where they can plug their cars in, so might as well let them charge up if they have to park on the side of the road. I'm sure there are some technical hurdles, but that hasn't been a deterrent to EV development.