Sorry if I wasn't clear; it was Romney's advisors that pushed him to lie, though he is a deft lier. What frustrates me is that the Romney campaign ran with a strategy of "the truth doesn't matter." They seem to have made a deal with the press where they would constantly retract statements made my Romney moments after he made them, so it's not really lying it's "mis-speaking" or whatever. They clearly articulated their goal of running hard-right to win the primary and then wiping the slate clean for the general, but they went so far beyond that and just started outright lying about verifiable facts on camera.
I don't agree that the republican party is filled with looneys, only that they are feeling empowered. Of course, it will become the party of looneys if they don't squelch the insanity and let sane republicans have a voice so that we can go back to benefiting from hearing at least two sides of every issue. Right now we hear the liberal version, which is a close approximation of reality with their own spin and then the conservative version, which is completely detached from the reality outside of the bubble that the fringe of the right wing lives in. (And no one else even gets a say because there are only two major parties.)
Well said. I am an independent, but I end up voting democratic in national elections just to stop the right-wing crazies from getting control. I want people like Reagan and H.W. Bush back at the helm of the GOP so that I feel like I actually have a reasonable choice and not an ultimatum.
It is easy to look back now and say that they are both good people with the best interests of the country in mind, and that is probably true. But elections and candidates are not mirror images and there are not two equal sides; this election was Dreams From My Father versus No Apology. After John McCain corrected an audience member that called Obama an Arab, the response from the electorate was a net negative; Obama supporters were mad about the comment and McCain supporters were mad that he looked "weak." That was the exact moment that truth-telling became a liability in the eyes of political advisers and name-calling whisper campaigns came back into fashion.
This year, the Romney campaign decided that intellectual honesty and demonstrable facts are no longer important in presidential politics and almost managed to win the White House with that strategy. All politicians lie at times, to various degrees, often by omission, but the Romney campaign correctly observed that the resulting sound bites are a net positive, e.g., the first debate.
Neither man is Hitler, but during the post mortem, which will be all about demographic shifts, business cycles, and the "ground game," everyone will pretend not to notice Romney's flaming pants. Nixon would have been embarrassed by the GOP campaign this year (including all the talk about "legitimate" rape and the complete abandonment of science and observation.) And it's our fault because, over the next four years, we will let the Obama administration lie to us and equivocate over everything from regulatory reform to drone strikes while FOX News tries to drum up another faux scandal. People will put their partisan blinders back on and pretend that it's ok when "our guy" lies--and besides, Romney was so much worse.
I'm happy to see Obama back in office and I'm relieved that there won't be a republican in the White House to acquiesce to this bat-shit crazy House, but I don't buy the argument that Romney would have done a good job as president; he would have tried, but he is a self-obsessed moral relativist that is too comfortable with lying to be the figurehead of (what is still) the most powerful nation on Earth. He further damaged political discourse, further legitimized the fringe, ultra-right-wing of the party, and did nothing to discourage the hate-filled name calling to which you refer. Childish name-calling serves no purpose and denigrating the president just further polarizes the country, but lies are lies and we shouldn't be afraid to call Obama out on them and hold his administration accountable when they will inevitably start oozing from the White House.
Sure the evidence is mixed -- like why was there such a huge boom after WWII when the government was repaying so much debt? But there is no conclusive evidence that macroeconomics is wrong, and there is inconclusive evidence that it does work. Such is the murky world of economics.
That is really still Keynesian. Contrary to what Free Market purists would like you to believe, Keynesian isn't socialism. The core idea (as I understand it; I am not an economist) is that the government is the only entity capable of spending during a slowdown in the private sector; it is the idea that it is better to pay a man to dig a hole and pay another to fill it in than to let capital stagnate in corporate coffers during economic uncertainty. This idea is sometimes called the velocity of capital; the economy is driven by consumer spending, and consumers need paychecks to spend. The flip side, which has proven difficult to implement because it is so politically unpopular, but which is absolutely necessary, is that the government pay off its debt when the private sector is booming. The only time this actually happened was after WWII, when taxes skyrocketed in order to pay off the debt incurred by the war. But the private sector was growing so rapidly--thanks largely to the huge buildup of industrial might paid for by government debt during the war--that the tax increases didn't even put a dent in the growth. Once the WWII debt was (mostly) wiped out, government spending stayed high, but taxes came down, because people don't want to pay taxes, but they want social security and medicare, and politicians get elected by giving people what they want. California is a microcosm of this phenomenon and has highlighted the danger of implementing only half of the Keynesian prescription; increasing expenditures and decreasing revenues.
The GOP has abused Keynesian theories masterfully via their "two Santa Clause" approach to budgets; when they are in power, they explode the debt and the deficit (look it up if you don't believe me), giving people what they want--low taxes and increased government spending. Once a Democrat takes office, Republicans in Congress suddenly become obsessed with debt and deficit; tax and spend! tax and spend! The master stroke of this brilliant play is to then equate Keynesianism with government spending and campaign against the Democrat on a platform of getting us out of this mess with tax cuts that will surely stimulate the economy, claiming that the problem is too many regulations and not enough tax cuts (i.e., the confidence fairy). Case in point; Romney offering 20% across the board tax cuts. But don't worry, the confidence fairy, who will surely grow the economy once a trusted conservative business leader is back in office, will take care of everything left over from the magic loopholes. He articulates this plan, which will explode both the debt and the deficit, while simultaneously beating up Obama over debt and a catastrophic budget handed to him by the last Republican. It is truly amazing how well this messaging works; Obama has cut the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars and passed one of the biggest middle-class tax-cuts in US history, but "everyone knows" that he has been terrible for the economy because he's a Democrat, Democrats are Keynesian, and Keynesians are socialists because they blindly support unfettered government spending and high taxes.
PS There are very legitimate arguments over regulations, taxes, government spending, debts and deficits. But they are not being articulated by either major party.
I would add to that the absurdity of calling an authorization to make interest payments on existing debt a "debt ceiling;" running around disingenuously claiming that authorizing Obama to pay interest on debt incurred by Bush was "increasing the debt;" using that straw man to bully Congress into the "sequester;" voting for it--i.e., Paul Ryan; and then blaming Obama for supporting a "massive cut in defense spending." Where the f--k was the liberal media during that festival of intellectual dishonesty and outright lying?
Do you KNOW people that have been screwed by inheriting over-valued property? Federal taxes aside, the state can still take a big bite, Prop 13 or not. I'm sorry to break it to you, but laws aren't air-tight and not everything on the Internet is true--you can chose to believe me or blogs about how the law is supposed to be applied. If you can afford a team of CPAs and lawyers, then you can certainly take advantage of all the loopholes, gift and family exemptions, etc. to keep wealth in a wealthy family. I hate to shatter your unwavering faith in egalitarianism and the application of well-meaning laws, but unfortunately for poor people it works more like winning the lottery.
My point is that you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Silicon Valley is a tremendous bastion of free enterprise creating fortunes for otherwise ordinary people. This disrupts the otherwise monolithic progress of the entrenchment of old money, and for that the sacrifice of the charm of the Santa Clara valley is profoundly to be forgiven.
Silicon Valley creates fortunes for "otherwise ordinary people" at the expense of many other ordinary people. A handful of people get rich and thousands of others are forced into exile. The rest are forced into the service industry to cater to the sea of people moving there for a few years to make money and then leaving. So while many people get rich and prosper as many, if not more, are robbed of their livelihoods, their quality of life is dramatically reduced, and no one gives a shit because "that's progress." It's just redistributing and concentrating wealth by shifting from agriculture and manufacturing to hi-tech. It happens in one form or another all over the world (e.g., in Hawaii where they locals all work at restaurants and hotels now), but the scale of it in Silicon Valley is unprecedented.
Congratulations on beating cancer--I happen to love gluten personally--but you are talking in the abstract about something very personal to myself, my family, and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others. I have almost 100 years of family history in the Bay Area and it's all been paved over by "progress" and "free enterprise."
Prop 13 was passed because of growing problems with the distorted housing markets in the Bay Area and Southern California in the 70's, which was when a lot of the storied tech companies in the Bay were building like crazy, driving up the value of all the orchards and dairy farms. If you have ever visited IBM in Almaden, which now sits on a nature preserve, that is what a lot of the Bay was starting to look like in the 70's; high-tech facilities sitting in the middle of a field. By the 90's, Prop 13 was practically all you heard about during elections because the state saw it as a huge loss of revenue, but it allowed old people (i.e., voters) to stay in their homes on a fixed income as real estate developers pushed further and further out to satisfy the growing demand for sub-urban homes.
It all depends on where you live and for how long. If you were unlucky, taxes or the cost of living forced you off of your land before it was really valuable. If you lucky, you got to stick around until the offers became irresistible, at which point your either sold or borrowed against the increased value and developed it yourself. Still others were forced off of land that was standing in the way of extremely lucrative real estate development either through loopholes in Prop 13 or just shady political moves (i.e., ridiculous fines, or enforcing impossible-to-meet codes). The point is that, at the end of the day, people were forced to move because it was just too expensive to stick around and, contrary to what we like to tell ourselves, not a lot of them got rich in the processes. And yah, Prop 13 should prevent that from happening on paper, but it doesn't always.
The Bay wasn't always a booming metropolis; not that long ago it was still small-town politics. A relative of mine build a house in the late 50's with a lovely view on a piece of property that was totally worthless. They hadn't even run sewer lines out from the city yet and roads weren't paved. Fast forward 30 years when a Silicon Valley millionaire decided he liked the view and wanted to buy that property and the agacent property to build a big-ass house. My relative said no, so the millionaire started putting pressure on the city to squeeze whatever taxes were due (i.e., Prop 13 is not relavent), levy fines, etc. My relative stuck around, so the millionaire decided to buy the property in front of the house, build something to obstruct the view and then, when my relative's land was worthless, buy them out... or, he would generously buy up the land now, and avoid the whole trouble. Ok, long story short, the whole thing turned into a real small-town political battle that we eventually won by getting the city to re-zone the land in front of the house to prevent the millionaire from building. Fast forward another 20 years and that beautiful vista now has a giant mansion blocking part of the view because some Google billionaire (or Apple, I can't keep track) bought off the city to re-re-zone land a little bit further away to allow him to build a lovely little weekend retreat that blocks the view of at least five houses that have been there for 40-50 years. It also violates numerous building codes that said billionaire was given special exemption to, and they allowed him to put a fence up that blocks access to what used to be a local fishing spot.
Now my relative's house is literally worth 1,000 times what it was in the 50's; yah, Prop 13 helps a bit, but there is an "annual adjustment" clause that allows that increase to be felt in state taxes. You're just going to have to take my word for this, but if that relative dies and allows the house to pass in a will, Prop 13 will not provide tax shelter and the kids will be forced to sell simply by virtue of the fact that there is a line of billionaires around the block willing to pay twice what it is worth to bulldoze it and build an even bigger penis than his other billionaire buddies. Now my relative had to hire a bunch of lawyers to refinance the house, use that money to set up a blind trust, pass bits of it to different family members through tax-exempt gifts, blah, blah, blah, mountains of paperwork and thousands of dollars in legal fees and taxes, all so that a bunch of farmers aren't forced to sell off a house that they built 50 years ago.
Why do you think Prop 13 was proposed in the first place? This was already a pervasive problem in the late 70's (which is when a lot of the dairy farmers were being bought out to develop residential real estate). And that little clause "plus annual adjustments" is applied very differently depending on where your house is (i.e., if you are standing in the way of a lucrative development deal).
That "free" money is great if you are mid-life, with kids, but not so great on a fixed income when your property taxes go through the room. Or when you inherit the houes that your father built only to find out that you owe taxes on the inflated value, forcing you to sell it just to cover the inheritance tax. Many people were displaced by the absurd real estate bubble created by Silicon Valley. They were given the choice of refinancing and paying higher taxes or selling and moving far, far away where housing prices aren't so high. That is why, in the 90's, those "Native Since XXXX" bumper stickers became so popular in Oregon and why Oregonians started using the term "Californian" derisively.
Lures are not the same thing as flies. California used to have some of the best fly fishing in the country until it became a fad for rich people as a way of getting out of the office and enjoying Nature. They ruined the sport by treating it like an amusement park. I'm not looking down you for buying flies, I'm expressing my frustration that people like me now have to make a living selling flies to you because everything is expensive thanks to the economic microcosm created by the influx of money into Silicon Valley. Let's see how you feel when you have to start making composite board tables for your neighbor because he wants some hand-crafted furniture that looks just like what he's used to.
Smug and entitled? Smug because I can't afford to live anywhere near where I grew up because I chose a career outside of the tech industry? Entitled to what, being displaced from my home? Are you implying that it is a feeling of entitlement to want to stay near your family? No, it's all the transplants that move to the Bay Area for a job in Silicon Valley that are smug and entitled. They think their shit smells like roses because everyone that didn't move there to work for Google has had to make a living catering to them. They should have to pay a tax for ruining my home that subsidizes my mortgage payment, just like the oil companies in Alaska. This is gentrification on a massive scale that displaced orchards, dairy farms, cattle ranches; population-wise it is as if the entire state of Iowa was turned into a hipster neighborhood in Brooklyn.
I'm sorry if I get a little angry reading about some Australian that moved to Silicon Valley and found it lacked the moral center she was looking for in her career. At least she got to go back to Australia to decompress and re-evaluate. Where do I go to get away from the people that took over my home? It just rubs me the wrong way to read a whole threat about peoples' problems with the nuances of an industry without any recognition that that industry overwhelmed and displaced the people and culture that used to define the Bay Area.
I don't deny that capitalism or even corporatism can drive innovation, but if you want examples, computer science is not the best place to get them. The feeling I get is that groundbreaking innovations are usually publicly funded while incremental innovations are made by corporations.
The government also forced the sharing of innovations in computer/information technology in exchange for funding and monopoly rights. It is almost impossible to find a real break-through innovation that was not the direct result of public financing or some sort of forced sharing of results. Markets are brilliant at finding short-term solutions and amorally deriving answers to hard questions. They are terrible at long-term planning or "out of left field" innovation because it requires too much unquantifiable risk and long-term funding without tangible results. The order of operations has for the entire modern era has always been to let the public assume the risk of creating new ideas (because it can dilute the risk) and then let the private sector refine those ideas into a consumable product (because the profit motive works so well at it).
Have you ever been to Silicon Valley? I live here and can tell you that the answer is "no". SV is not like Detroit with 3 companies that make up the economy, it's pretty much everything you can think of dealing with technology. Why do you rate such a massive amount of technological knowledge on 2 companies in the valley? For instance, Rambus is here as well as every other company designing computer memory. All of the companies designing switching equipment are here also. That's right, Ericsson (formerly Redback and Entrisphere also), Brocade, Cisco, AT&T are all here designing and building the switching equipment for your phones, PCs, servers, and more. Apple is here, as is Dell, HP, Oracle, IBM, and countless others that design and build everything from PDAs to massive servers. Yes, all designed and developed in SV as well as most of the software you use to run on them.
Okay, piss and moan about Google's lack of morals. Why not also pay attention to the products and services they provide for "FREE" to cynical douche bags like the author of TFA? Don't like Google for their morals, simple answer is don't use their products and tell others the same. That's how the free market works you know, we have the power as consumers to either keep companies in business or put them under in time.
And look, I'm as cynical as the rest (maybe more) when it comes to Government. You can check my post history if you have doubts. But companies are not the same (at least currently in the US) as the Government. People still have power in the market, but you have to be smart enough to use the power you have.
So the answer again is "No", you obviously have no idea what Silicon Valley is or does to make such an ignorant argument. Come visit sometime, surprisingly most of the people you meet here are very courteous and helpful. I will warn you to keep the arrogant attitudes at home though, pricks are frowned upon here and it's a very big place.. easy to get lost if you get my meaning.
Like my parents and three of my grandparents, I was born in "Silicon Valley." My family has had a front-row seat to the transformation of the South Bay from orchards to technology companies and I have watched the Silicon Valley culture completely takeover and displace the existing culture. If you happen to be in a profession that benefits from Silicon Valley, then good for you, you get to stick around and watch Silicon Valley subsume everything that was great about the Bay Area; that unique mix of red neck farmers, libertarian outdoorsmen, and hippies. Of course if, like my family, you happen to be blue collar and your sleepy little town lies within commuting distance of Cupertino or downtown SF then you get to watch rich assholes from out of state move in and buy every house in sight for ten times what its worth. They wait like vultures until someone who probably built their house when they came back from WWII drops dead and, when the children can't afford the taxes on the inflated real estate, they generously step in to buy the house, which they promptly tear down or remodel into a walled fortress. Your close-knit neighborhood, surrounded by oak trees and poppies where you used to wander with impunity..? Yah, that's now an up-scale area with high fences and manicured yards; everything else is an over-grown mess because everyone is too important to pitch in and trim back the brush on weekends.
I remember when stores were still closed on Sundays in San Jose because they were all small, locally-owned businesses. There was a small, local grocery store near my grandparents' old house--which they were forced to sell when they retired because of the skyrocketing cost of living and property values--that I used to buy candy at after school. I visited a couple of years ago and was happy to see that it was still standing. I was, however, enraged to find that it had become a "specialty market," selling gluten free bullshit and $10 loaves of "artisan bread" to the owners of the expensive German car
Nah, he's just saying that to get elected. He'll say anything he thinks you want to hear, in order to get elected. Take Obamacare, perfect example. He says he'll repeal it, but he knows the Democrats will cock-block him in the Senate if he tries to do that. He actually likes Obamacare. It's HIS FUCKING HEALTHCARE PLAN! But he knows a lot of people hate the idea that the might be required to act responsibly (many of them while claiming to be Republicans) and so he says that to get elected. He'll get elected, not be able to get the votes to repeal it, throw up his hands and say he tried.
If Romney is elected I predict he'll be a mildly ineffective leader, probably start an unfunded war in Iran, and spent most of his time being blocked by the Democrats in the Senate. If Obama is elected I predict he'll be a mildly ineffective leader, possibly start an unfunded war in Iran and spend most of his time being blocked by the Republicans in the Senate.
That is what scares me about Romney. He seems to want to be president just so he can be president--like he's going down his bucket list: 1) Start a family, check 2) Make hundreds of millions of dollars, check 3) Govern a state, check, 4) Become POTUS _____.
I know 12 years ago is an eternity to the American electorate, but doesn't anyone remember Bush? He wanted to be president just to be president. He wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps. He got into office by promising to cut taxes, offsetting the revenue losses by "deregulating" and through "free trade." He was going to be the first "CEO president." But when he got into office, he had accomplished his goal: to be president. He wasn't really that interested in policy, so his cabinet just walked all over him. Sure, he liked getting on camera and acting tough, but about half-way through his second term he realized that being a "hands off" president is a great way to ruin your legacy--but it was too late. Six years of rubber-stamping whatever nonsense came out of the swarm of neocons running the White House ruined his presidency and the economy.
Obama struggled with the same thing when he took office, with people like Larry Summers trying to push him around. But Obama wanted to be president to accomplish policy goals, so he pushed back and took control of his cabinet. His biggest mistake was probably focusing too much on pushing legislation--though arguably trying to work with the republicans in Congress was just as big of a mistake.
Romney looks to me just like Bush did in 2000; he wants to be president so badly he will say or do anything to achieve that goal. But I'm afraid that he has no real policy goals--he just wants to live in the White House and bask in his own ego. Can anyone actually name one policy goal that he hasn't changed his mind on at least three times? Even his 20% tax cut was a new invention, meant to pander to dumb voters and rich people. Health care? He's now adamantly opposed to his own health care plan... He has surrounded himself with people from the W administration, who are going to walk all over him if he becomes president because they have actual agendas and long-term policy goals. Romney 2012 is Bush 2000 all over again.
What matters is that they take energy and store it in a convenient, portable form. We have many millions of machines which run on petrol, and replacing all those machines with equivalents which run on batteries would require a huge consumption of energy. So there's merit in keeping them going.
Also, this process can take energy for example in periods of strong wind when there's a surplus of 'green' energy, and store it for periods of calm. My home is entirely wind-powered and consequently I have a huge bank of lead-acid batteries as energy storage for calm weather - they aren't very efficient, but they do what's needed. If this 'air (plus electricity) to fuel' process is at least as efficient as a lead acid battery, it's a win.
Yah, doesn't anyone remember the "hydrogen economy?" Although completely misunderstood by the media, the idea was to store and transport energy via hydrogen. But it was a stupid idea. I like the one in TFA and this one better because they don't require converting internal combustion machines to electric.
There's this thing called the internet, it's new. You can go to a "website" and post videos of your own debates. You may not reach all the population but you could reach a good portion of it. A Youtube account and some quality production equipment could get you "underground" debates by the 3rd party's. They could even talk about real issues. Gasp! If people care about what they debate at some point they could not be ignored. Could you imagine a write in candidate winning the presidency. You can keep claiming the system is against you or try to do something about it. As other posters have said don't play by their rules.
You mean like this? Yah, that had a huge impact on the race!
You see, there is this demographic called "old people" that almost single handedly decides national elections. Together with "low-information voters" they literally will decide this election via the so-called swing states. These two groups of people watch TV. For many of them, the debates will be the first time they see the two candidates talk about issues, which is why Romney was able to swing the polls by almost 10 points in a single debate. If you think a video on a "website" can do that, then I have a bridge to sell you.
An on-line video certainly will reach a good portion of the population, but 99% of that audience will be people who are already aware of third-party candidates and their issues and will vote third-party if they are in a safe state. No matter how hard to close your eyes and click your heels together, polls are moved by micro-targeted ad buys in carefully selected voting precincts, not by driving traffic to a website. Third party candidates are systematically excluded from the machinery that underpins this process, from media coverage to fund-raising to state election laws. If the reality were otherwise, you would be unable to escape Romney and Obama ads on the Internet; personally I see more ads for cloud storage solutions.
You hit the nail on the head. I don't agree with the entire Green Party platform, but their candidate was ARRESTED for trying to get into the debate. Why wasn't she (or any of the other 3rd party candidates) included? Because they are not high enough in the polls. Why aren't they polling well? I expect it's because they cannot get media coverage for love nor money.
The whole damn political system is owned, rigged, and horribly corrupted. But because the worst of the corruption is legal, we're supposed to turn a blind eye to it.
The polling threshold is set at 15%, which would have excluded all third-party candidates for the last hundred years. The debates used to be run by the League of Women Voters, who kept them open, transparent, and honest, and who set a reasonable threshold for third-party candidates, such as being on enough state ballots to be able to theoretically win.
Ever since Bush I stumbled at a town hall debate in 1992, the "town hall" debate format switched to pre-screened questions with no followups because the handlers fear letting their candidates out of their hermetically sealed rhetorical bubble. These days, they negotiate a contract that explicitly bars third-party candidates with the "Commission on Presidential Debates," which is chaired by party hacks-turned-lobbyists and funded by private corporations.
Bush I let Perot into the debate because his campaign thought that Perot would steal votes from Clinton, who didn't want him in. When the opposite happened, Clinton suddenly welcomed Perot into the debate. They even struck a deal to schedule one of the debates during a baseball game because neither side wanted to draw a big audience to the debate because it was too unpredictable. Now, third-party candidates are seen as wild cards, and are systemically excluded from the debates exactly because they might do something unexpected, put one of the major party candidates on the spot, or otherwise disrupt the carefully-choreographed kabuki theater that is presidential politics.
How many republican primary debates where there? 27? 28? So why only three presidential debates? Why no third parties? Why no spontaneity? It blows my mind how effectively campaigns manage to limit every discussion to the recitation of talking points, focus-grouped spin, and how effectively they manage exclude new ideas and substantive arguments.
The title really should read "thousands of fundamentalist Muslims." Christian fundamentalists are constantly boycotting and protesting this or that in an effort to punish companies for not loving their version of Jesus enough, but we would never generalize them as the ~3/4 of Americans that self-identify as Christians. The idiots protesting Google over a Youtube video are culturally stuck in the past and refuse to accept that the world is changing, just like Christian conservatives.
'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'
I don't really know what "religious hatred" means; hatred stemming from your own religious beliefs, or directed at a particular religious belief? And since when are we intolerant of thoughts and emotions? Last I checked, we already had plenty of laws against violent acts stemming from hatred.
'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.'
Ah, I see, so we have to limit freedom of expression so as not to provoke people who are looking for an excuse for provocation. How about this instead; I will tolerate your fundamentalist religious nonsense and hold my tongue when you tell me that I'm going to Hell or are an infidel, or that Jesus loves me anyway, or whatever and in exchange--oh, wait there is no bargaining with crazy people. Ok, new plan: we all get to say whatever we want because everyone should be secure enough with their own beliefs to espouse them in a deliberate and rational manner and to welcome criticisms in kind. And if a handful of people do do something violent in the name of the flying spaghetti monster, let us not lump in all the millions of non-violent pastafarians and instead just blame the nut-jobs for their actions and not validate them by listening to what they have to say.
As far as I have read, the coordinated 9/11 stuff was just with respect to the attacks on the embassies. A lot of the protesting was the result of that "movie trailer" being hyped on some jingoistic satellite channels that are apparently the Arab equivalent of FOX News, which made it easy to (deliberately) conflate the two events.
I'm still surprised Obama didn't pick up on this at the first debate: Either Romney's proposed tax cut reduces revenue, or it's not really something that can legitimately be called a "tax cut", because -$5 trillion+$5 trillion=0. My guess on what he's going to go after for "loopholes" is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which creates a sort of "negative tax" for people who earn less than the federal poverty line. In other words, it's the policy that creates the semi-mythical "freeloading" 47%.
That is a nice, succinct way of putting it; that revenue-neutral isn't really a tax cut because +$5 million - $5 million = 0. I struggle with trying to explain what nonsense Romney/Ryan's tax plan is in very simple terms, but you put it nicely. Obama could turn to him and say "So, your 'tax cut' is revenue neutral? Then, by definition it is nothing more than income redistribution." And then watch Quantum Romney reply with his perplexing argument about closing loopholes so that "more of peoples' income is subject to tax" but that he isn't raising anyone's taxes.
There is an ocean of difference between a tech company like Google and a pharmaceutical company. The latter openly seeks to offload expensive and time-consuming research to academia. Scientific research (particularly in Medicine and Chemistry) is just too time consuming, expensive, and risky for the short-term mentality of publicly-traded companies. And just because the founders still "control" a company, that does not mean that they are immune to share-holder pressure. The board can force a CEO out if they deem the CEO's actions detrimental to shareholder value, no matter who the CEO is.
You won't read anything about Biden not being engaged tomorrow. So far he's making Ryan look like an amateur and he's not letting Ryan get away with lying.
Biden is crushing it.
Don't worry, in a few hours the punditocracy will be lampooning Biden for smiling too much, or the wrong way, or having the wrong facial expression; anything to avoid addressing the actual content of the debate. The press is either at your feet or your throat and as the polls shift towards Romney, so will the press. They hate fact-checking politicians because it can cost them access, but they also hate transcribing lies, so instead they'll talk about Paul Ryan's hair or the performance of the moderator.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry if I wasn't clear; it was Romney's advisors that pushed him to lie, though he is a deft lier. What frustrates me is that the Romney campaign ran with a strategy of "the truth doesn't matter." They seem to have made a deal with the press where they would constantly retract statements made my Romney moments after he made them, so it's not really lying it's "mis-speaking" or whatever. They clearly articulated their goal of running hard-right to win the primary and then wiping the slate clean for the general, but they went so far beyond that and just started outright lying about verifiable facts on camera.
I don't agree that the republican party is filled with looneys, only that they are feeling empowered. Of course, it will become the party of looneys if they don't squelch the insanity and let sane republicans have a voice so that we can go back to benefiting from hearing at least two sides of every issue. Right now we hear the liberal version, which is a close approximation of reality with their own spin and then the conservative version, which is completely detached from the reality outside of the bubble that the fringe of the right wing lives in. (And no one else even gets a say because there are only two major parties.)
All at once, or in installments? Ten boxes at once is too much, even if you share it with your Camry, and donuts don't keep.
Well said. I am an independent, but I end up voting democratic in national elections just to stop the right-wing crazies from getting control. I want people like Reagan and H.W. Bush back at the helm of the GOP so that I feel like I actually have a reasonable choice and not an ultimatum.
It is easy to look back now and say that they are both good people with the best interests of the country in mind, and that is probably true. But elections and candidates are not mirror images and there are not two equal sides; this election was Dreams From My Father versus No Apology. After John McCain corrected an audience member that called Obama an Arab, the response from the electorate was a net negative; Obama supporters were mad about the comment and McCain supporters were mad that he looked "weak." That was the exact moment that truth-telling became a liability in the eyes of political advisers and name-calling whisper campaigns came back into fashion.
This year, the Romney campaign decided that intellectual honesty and demonstrable facts are no longer important in presidential politics and almost managed to win the White House with that strategy. All politicians lie at times, to various degrees, often by omission, but the Romney campaign correctly observed that the resulting sound bites are a net positive, e.g., the first debate.
Neither man is Hitler, but during the post mortem, which will be all about demographic shifts, business cycles, and the "ground game," everyone will pretend not to notice Romney's flaming pants. Nixon would have been embarrassed by the GOP campaign this year (including all the talk about "legitimate" rape and the complete abandonment of science and observation.) And it's our fault because, over the next four years, we will let the Obama administration lie to us and equivocate over everything from regulatory reform to drone strikes while FOX News tries to drum up another faux scandal. People will put their partisan blinders back on and pretend that it's ok when "our guy" lies--and besides, Romney was so much worse.
I'm happy to see Obama back in office and I'm relieved that there won't be a republican in the White House to acquiesce to this bat-shit crazy House, but I don't buy the argument that Romney would have done a good job as president; he would have tried, but he is a self-obsessed moral relativist that is too comfortable with lying to be the figurehead of (what is still) the most powerful nation on Earth. He further damaged political discourse, further legitimized the fringe, ultra-right-wing of the party, and did nothing to discourage the hate-filled name calling to which you refer. Childish name-calling serves no purpose and denigrating the president just further polarizes the country, but lies are lies and we shouldn't be afraid to call Obama out on them and hold his administration accountable when they will inevitably start oozing from the White House.
Sure the evidence is mixed -- like why was there such a huge boom after WWII when the government was repaying so much debt? But there is no conclusive evidence that macroeconomics is wrong, and there is inconclusive evidence that it does work. Such is the murky world of economics.
That is really still Keynesian. Contrary to what Free Market purists would like you to believe, Keynesian isn't socialism. The core idea (as I understand it; I am not an economist) is that the government is the only entity capable of spending during a slowdown in the private sector; it is the idea that it is better to pay a man to dig a hole and pay another to fill it in than to let capital stagnate in corporate coffers during economic uncertainty. This idea is sometimes called the velocity of capital; the economy is driven by consumer spending, and consumers need paychecks to spend. The flip side, which has proven difficult to implement because it is so politically unpopular, but which is absolutely necessary, is that the government pay off its debt when the private sector is booming. The only time this actually happened was after WWII, when taxes skyrocketed in order to pay off the debt incurred by the war. But the private sector was growing so rapidly--thanks largely to the huge buildup of industrial might paid for by government debt during the war--that the tax increases didn't even put a dent in the growth. Once the WWII debt was (mostly) wiped out, government spending stayed high, but taxes came down, because people don't want to pay taxes, but they want social security and medicare, and politicians get elected by giving people what they want. California is a microcosm of this phenomenon and has highlighted the danger of implementing only half of the Keynesian prescription; increasing expenditures and decreasing revenues.
The GOP has abused Keynesian theories masterfully via their "two Santa Clause" approach to budgets; when they are in power, they explode the debt and the deficit (look it up if you don't believe me), giving people what they want--low taxes and increased government spending. Once a Democrat takes office, Republicans in Congress suddenly become obsessed with debt and deficit; tax and spend! tax and spend! The master stroke of this brilliant play is to then equate Keynesianism with government spending and campaign against the Democrat on a platform of getting us out of this mess with tax cuts that will surely stimulate the economy, claiming that the problem is too many regulations and not enough tax cuts (i.e., the confidence fairy). Case in point; Romney offering 20% across the board tax cuts. But don't worry, the confidence fairy, who will surely grow the economy once a trusted conservative business leader is back in office, will take care of everything left over from the magic loopholes. He articulates this plan, which will explode both the debt and the deficit, while simultaneously beating up Obama over debt and a catastrophic budget handed to him by the last Republican. It is truly amazing how well this messaging works; Obama has cut the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars and passed one of the biggest middle-class tax-cuts in US history, but "everyone knows" that he has been terrible for the economy because he's a Democrat, Democrats are Keynesian, and Keynesians are socialists because they blindly support unfettered government spending and high taxes.
PS There are very legitimate arguments over regulations, taxes, government spending, debts and deficits. But they are not being articulated by either major party.
I would add to that the absurdity of calling an authorization to make interest payments on existing debt a "debt ceiling;" running around disingenuously claiming that authorizing Obama to pay interest on debt incurred by Bush was "increasing the debt;" using that straw man to bully Congress into the "sequester;" voting for it--i.e., Paul Ryan; and then blaming Obama for supporting a "massive cut in defense spending." Where the f--k was the liberal media during that festival of intellectual dishonesty and outright lying?
Do you KNOW people that have been screwed by inheriting over-valued property? Federal taxes aside, the state can still take a big bite, Prop 13 or not. I'm sorry to break it to you, but laws aren't air-tight and not everything on the Internet is true--you can chose to believe me or blogs about how the law is supposed to be applied. If you can afford a team of CPAs and lawyers, then you can certainly take advantage of all the loopholes, gift and family exemptions, etc. to keep wealth in a wealthy family. I hate to shatter your unwavering faith in egalitarianism and the application of well-meaning laws, but unfortunately for poor people it works more like winning the lottery.
My point is that you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Silicon Valley is a tremendous bastion of free enterprise creating fortunes for otherwise ordinary people. This disrupts the otherwise monolithic progress of the entrenchment of old money, and for that the sacrifice of the charm of the Santa Clara valley is profoundly to be forgiven.
Silicon Valley creates fortunes for "otherwise ordinary people" at the expense of many other ordinary people. A handful of people get rich and thousands of others are forced into exile. The rest are forced into the service industry to cater to the sea of people moving there for a few years to make money and then leaving. So while many people get rich and prosper as many, if not more, are robbed of their livelihoods, their quality of life is dramatically reduced, and no one gives a shit because "that's progress." It's just redistributing and concentrating wealth by shifting from agriculture and manufacturing to hi-tech. It happens in one form or another all over the world (e.g., in Hawaii where they locals all work at restaurants and hotels now), but the scale of it in Silicon Valley is unprecedented.
Congratulations on beating cancer--I happen to love gluten personally--but you are talking in the abstract about something very personal to myself, my family, and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others. I have almost 100 years of family history in the Bay Area and it's all been paved over by "progress" and "free enterprise."
Prop 13 was passed because of growing problems with the distorted housing markets in the Bay Area and Southern California in the 70's, which was when a lot of the storied tech companies in the Bay were building like crazy, driving up the value of all the orchards and dairy farms. If you have ever visited IBM in Almaden, which now sits on a nature preserve, that is what a lot of the Bay was starting to look like in the 70's; high-tech facilities sitting in the middle of a field. By the 90's, Prop 13 was practically all you heard about during elections because the state saw it as a huge loss of revenue, but it allowed old people (i.e., voters) to stay in their homes on a fixed income as real estate developers pushed further and further out to satisfy the growing demand for sub-urban homes.
It all depends on where you live and for how long. If you were unlucky, taxes or the cost of living forced you off of your land before it was really valuable. If you lucky, you got to stick around until the offers became irresistible, at which point your either sold or borrowed against the increased value and developed it yourself. Still others were forced off of land that was standing in the way of extremely lucrative real estate development either through loopholes in Prop 13 or just shady political moves (i.e., ridiculous fines, or enforcing impossible-to-meet codes). The point is that, at the end of the day, people were forced to move because it was just too expensive to stick around and, contrary to what we like to tell ourselves, not a lot of them got rich in the processes. And yah, Prop 13 should prevent that from happening on paper, but it doesn't always.
The Bay wasn't always a booming metropolis; not that long ago it was still small-town politics. A relative of mine build a house in the late 50's with a lovely view on a piece of property that was totally worthless. They hadn't even run sewer lines out from the city yet and roads weren't paved. Fast forward 30 years when a Silicon Valley millionaire decided he liked the view and wanted to buy that property and the agacent property to build a big-ass house. My relative said no, so the millionaire started putting pressure on the city to squeeze whatever taxes were due (i.e., Prop 13 is not relavent), levy fines, etc. My relative stuck around, so the millionaire decided to buy the property in front of the house, build something to obstruct the view and then, when my relative's land was worthless, buy them out... or, he would generously buy up the land now, and avoid the whole trouble. Ok, long story short, the whole thing turned into a real small-town political battle that we eventually won by getting the city to re-zone the land in front of the house to prevent the millionaire from building. Fast forward another 20 years and that beautiful vista now has a giant mansion blocking part of the view because some Google billionaire (or Apple, I can't keep track) bought off the city to re-re-zone land a little bit further away to allow him to build a lovely little weekend retreat that blocks the view of at least five houses that have been there for 40-50 years. It also violates numerous building codes that said billionaire was given special exemption to, and they allowed him to put a fence up that blocks access to what used to be a local fishing spot.
Now my relative's house is literally worth 1,000 times what it was in the 50's; yah, Prop 13 helps a bit, but there is an "annual adjustment" clause that allows that increase to be felt in state taxes. You're just going to have to take my word for this, but if that relative dies and allows the house to pass in a will, Prop 13 will not provide tax shelter and the kids will be forced to sell simply by virtue of the fact that there is a line of billionaires around the block willing to pay twice what it is worth to bulldoze it and build an even bigger penis than his other billionaire buddies. Now my relative had to hire a bunch of lawyers to refinance the house, use that money to set up a blind trust, pass bits of it to different family members through tax-exempt gifts, blah, blah, blah, mountains of paperwork and thousands of dollars in legal fees and taxes, all so that a bunch of farmers aren't forced to sell off a house that they built 50 years ago.
Why do you think Prop 13 was proposed in the first place? This was already a pervasive problem in the late 70's (which is when a lot of the dairy farmers were being bought out to develop residential real estate). And that little clause "plus annual adjustments" is applied very differently depending on where your house is (i.e., if you are standing in the way of a lucrative development deal).
That "free" money is great if you are mid-life, with kids, but not so great on a fixed income when your property taxes go through the room. Or when you inherit the houes that your father built only to find out that you owe taxes on the inflated value, forcing you to sell it just to cover the inheritance tax. Many people were displaced by the absurd real estate bubble created by Silicon Valley. They were given the choice of refinancing and paying higher taxes or selling and moving far, far away where housing prices aren't so high. That is why, in the 90's, those "Native Since XXXX" bumper stickers became so popular in Oregon and why Oregonians started using the term "Californian" derisively.
Lures are not the same thing as flies. California used to have some of the best fly fishing in the country until it became a fad for rich people as a way of getting out of the office and enjoying Nature. They ruined the sport by treating it like an amusement park. I'm not looking down you for buying flies, I'm expressing my frustration that people like me now have to make a living selling flies to you because everything is expensive thanks to the economic microcosm created by the influx of money into Silicon Valley. Let's see how you feel when you have to start making composite board tables for your neighbor because he wants some hand-crafted furniture that looks just like what he's used to.
Smug and entitled? Smug because I can't afford to live anywhere near where I grew up because I chose a career outside of the tech industry? Entitled to what, being displaced from my home? Are you implying that it is a feeling of entitlement to want to stay near your family? No, it's all the transplants that move to the Bay Area for a job in Silicon Valley that are smug and entitled. They think their shit smells like roses because everyone that didn't move there to work for Google has had to make a living catering to them. They should have to pay a tax for ruining my home that subsidizes my mortgage payment, just like the oil companies in Alaska. This is gentrification on a massive scale that displaced orchards, dairy farms, cattle ranches; population-wise it is as if the entire state of Iowa was turned into a hipster neighborhood in Brooklyn.
I'm sorry if I get a little angry reading about some Australian that moved to Silicon Valley and found it lacked the moral center she was looking for in her career. At least she got to go back to Australia to decompress and re-evaluate. Where do I go to get away from the people that took over my home? It just rubs me the wrong way to read a whole threat about peoples' problems with the nuances of an industry without any recognition that that industry overwhelmed and displaced the people and culture that used to define the Bay Area.
I don't deny that capitalism or even corporatism can drive innovation, but if you want examples, computer science is not the best place to get them. The feeling I get is that groundbreaking innovations are usually publicly funded while incremental innovations are made by corporations.
The government also forced the sharing of innovations in computer/information technology in exchange for funding and monopoly rights. It is almost impossible to find a real break-through innovation that was not the direct result of public financing or some sort of forced sharing of results. Markets are brilliant at finding short-term solutions and amorally deriving answers to hard questions. They are terrible at long-term planning or "out of left field" innovation because it requires too much unquantifiable risk and long-term funding without tangible results. The order of operations has for the entire modern era has always been to let the public assume the risk of creating new ideas (because it can dilute the risk) and then let the private sector refine those ideas into a consumable product (because the profit motive works so well at it).
Have you ever been to Silicon Valley? I live here and can tell you that the answer is "no". SV is not like Detroit with 3 companies that make up the economy, it's pretty much everything you can think of dealing with technology. Why do you rate such a massive amount of technological knowledge on 2 companies in the valley? For instance, Rambus is here as well as every other company designing computer memory. All of the companies designing switching equipment are here also. That's right, Ericsson (formerly Redback and Entrisphere also), Brocade, Cisco, AT&T are all here designing and building the switching equipment for your phones, PCs, servers, and more. Apple is here, as is Dell, HP, Oracle, IBM, and countless others that design and build everything from PDAs to massive servers. Yes, all designed and developed in SV as well as most of the software you use to run on them.
Okay, piss and moan about Google's lack of morals. Why not also pay attention to the products and services they provide for "FREE" to cynical douche bags like the author of TFA? Don't like Google for their morals, simple answer is don't use their products and tell others the same. That's how the free market works you know, we have the power as consumers to either keep companies in business or put them under in time.
And look, I'm as cynical as the rest (maybe more) when it comes to Government. You can check my post history if you have doubts. But companies are not the same (at least currently in the US) as the Government. People still have power in the market, but you have to be smart enough to use the power you have.
So the answer again is "No", you obviously have no idea what Silicon Valley is or does to make such an ignorant argument. Come visit sometime, surprisingly most of the people you meet here are very courteous and helpful. I will warn you to keep the arrogant attitudes at home though, pricks are frowned upon here and it's a very big place.. easy to get lost if you get my meaning.
Like my parents and three of my grandparents, I was born in "Silicon Valley." My family has had a front-row seat to the transformation of the South Bay from orchards to technology companies and I have watched the Silicon Valley culture completely takeover and displace the existing culture. If you happen to be in a profession that benefits from Silicon Valley, then good for you, you get to stick around and watch Silicon Valley subsume everything that was great about the Bay Area; that unique mix of red neck farmers, libertarian outdoorsmen, and hippies. Of course if, like my family, you happen to be blue collar and your sleepy little town lies within commuting distance of Cupertino or downtown SF then you get to watch rich assholes from out of state move in and buy every house in sight for ten times what its worth. They wait like vultures until someone who probably built their house when they came back from WWII drops dead and, when the children can't afford the taxes on the inflated real estate, they generously step in to buy the house, which they promptly tear down or remodel into a walled fortress. Your close-knit neighborhood, surrounded by oak trees and poppies where you used to wander with impunity..? Yah, that's now an up-scale area with high fences and manicured yards; everything else is an over-grown mess because everyone is too important to pitch in and trim back the brush on weekends.
I remember when stores were still closed on Sundays in San Jose because they were all small, locally-owned businesses. There was a small, local grocery store near my grandparents' old house--which they were forced to sell when they retired because of the skyrocketing cost of living and property values--that I used to buy candy at after school. I visited a couple of years ago and was happy to see that it was still standing. I was, however, enraged to find that it had become a "specialty market," selling gluten free bullshit and $10 loaves of "artisan bread" to the owners of the expensive German car
Nah, he's just saying that to get elected. He'll say anything he thinks you want to hear, in order to get elected. Take Obamacare, perfect example. He says he'll repeal it, but he knows the Democrats will cock-block him in the Senate if he tries to do that. He actually likes Obamacare. It's HIS FUCKING HEALTHCARE PLAN! But he knows a lot of people hate the idea that the might be required to act responsibly (many of them while claiming to be Republicans) and so he says that to get elected. He'll get elected, not be able to get the votes to repeal it, throw up his hands and say he tried.
If Romney is elected I predict he'll be a mildly ineffective leader, probably start an unfunded war in Iran, and spent most of his time being blocked by the Democrats in the Senate. If Obama is elected I predict he'll be a mildly ineffective leader, possibly start an unfunded war in Iran and spend most of his time being blocked by the Republicans in the Senate.
That is what scares me about Romney. He seems to want to be president just so he can be president--like he's going down his bucket list: 1) Start a family, check 2) Make hundreds of millions of dollars, check 3) Govern a state, check, 4) Become POTUS _____ .
I know 12 years ago is an eternity to the American electorate, but doesn't anyone remember Bush? He wanted to be president just to be president. He wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps. He got into office by promising to cut taxes, offsetting the revenue losses by "deregulating" and through "free trade." He was going to be the first "CEO president." But when he got into office, he had accomplished his goal: to be president. He wasn't really that interested in policy, so his cabinet just walked all over him. Sure, he liked getting on camera and acting tough, but about half-way through his second term he realized that being a "hands off" president is a great way to ruin your legacy--but it was too late. Six years of rubber-stamping whatever nonsense came out of the swarm of neocons running the White House ruined his presidency and the economy.
Obama struggled with the same thing when he took office, with people like Larry Summers trying to push him around. But Obama wanted to be president to accomplish policy goals, so he pushed back and took control of his cabinet. His biggest mistake was probably focusing too much on pushing legislation--though arguably trying to work with the republicans in Congress was just as big of a mistake.
Romney looks to me just like Bush did in 2000; he wants to be president so badly he will say or do anything to achieve that goal. But I'm afraid that he has no real policy goals--he just wants to live in the White House and bask in his own ego. Can anyone actually name one policy goal that he hasn't changed his mind on at least three times? Even his 20% tax cut was a new invention, meant to pander to dumb voters and rich people. Health care? He's now adamantly opposed to his own health care plan... He has surrounded himself with people from the W administration, who are going to walk all over him if he becomes president because they have actual agendas and long-term policy goals. Romney 2012 is Bush 2000 all over again.
What matters is that they take energy and store it in a convenient, portable form. We have many millions of machines which run on petrol, and replacing all those machines with equivalents which run on batteries would require a huge consumption of energy. So there's merit in keeping them going.
Also, this process can take energy for example in periods of strong wind when there's a surplus of 'green' energy, and store it for periods of calm. My home is entirely wind-powered and consequently I have a huge bank of lead-acid batteries as energy storage for calm weather - they aren't very efficient, but they do what's needed. If this 'air (plus electricity) to fuel' process is at least as efficient as a lead acid battery, it's a win.
Yah, doesn't anyone remember the "hydrogen economy?" Although completely misunderstood by the media, the idea was to store and transport energy via hydrogen. But it was a stupid idea. I like the one in TFA and this one better because they don't require converting internal combustion machines to electric.
Not having to import oil from middle eastern countries would be a worthy goal.
That is happening all by itself. And if you live in Europe, there is a good chance you are burning gasoline/diesel that was imported from the US.
There's this thing called the internet, it's new. You can go to a "website" and post videos of your own debates. You may not reach all the population but you could reach a good portion of it. A Youtube account and some quality production equipment could get you "underground" debates by the 3rd party's. They could even talk about real issues. Gasp! If people care about what they debate at some point they could not be ignored. Could you imagine a write in candidate winning the presidency. You can keep claiming the system is against you or try to do something about it. As other posters have said don't play by their rules.
You mean like this? Yah, that had a huge impact on the race!
You see, there is this demographic called "old people" that almost single handedly decides national elections. Together with "low-information voters" they literally will decide this election via the so-called swing states. These two groups of people watch TV. For many of them, the debates will be the first time they see the two candidates talk about issues, which is why Romney was able to swing the polls by almost 10 points in a single debate. If you think a video on a "website" can do that, then I have a bridge to sell you.
An on-line video certainly will reach a good portion of the population, but 99% of that audience will be people who are already aware of third-party candidates and their issues and will vote third-party if they are in a safe state. No matter how hard to close your eyes and click your heels together, polls are moved by micro-targeted ad buys in carefully selected voting precincts, not by driving traffic to a website. Third party candidates are systematically excluded from the machinery that underpins this process, from media coverage to fund-raising to state election laws. If the reality were otherwise, you would be unable to escape Romney and Obama ads on the Internet; personally I see more ads for cloud storage solutions.
I stand corrected! Though it does still excludes very nearly all third-party candidates.
You hit the nail on the head. I don't agree with the entire Green Party platform, but their candidate was ARRESTED for trying to get into the debate. Why wasn't she (or any of the other 3rd party candidates) included? Because they are not high enough in the polls. Why aren't they polling well? I expect it's because they cannot get media coverage for love nor money.
The whole damn political system is owned, rigged, and horribly corrupted. But because the worst of the corruption is legal, we're supposed to turn a blind eye to it.
The polling threshold is set at 15%, which would have excluded all third-party candidates for the last hundred years. The debates used to be run by the League of Women Voters, who kept them open, transparent, and honest, and who set a reasonable threshold for third-party candidates, such as being on enough state ballots to be able to theoretically win.
Ever since Bush I stumbled at a town hall debate in 1992, the "town hall" debate format switched to pre-screened questions with no followups because the handlers fear letting their candidates out of their hermetically sealed rhetorical bubble. These days, they negotiate a contract that explicitly bars third-party candidates with the "Commission on Presidential Debates," which is chaired by party hacks-turned-lobbyists and funded by private corporations.
Bush I let Perot into the debate because his campaign thought that Perot would steal votes from Clinton, who didn't want him in. When the opposite happened, Clinton suddenly welcomed Perot into the debate. They even struck a deal to schedule one of the debates during a baseball game because neither side wanted to draw a big audience to the debate because it was too unpredictable. Now, third-party candidates are seen as wild cards, and are systemically excluded from the debates exactly because they might do something unexpected, put one of the major party candidates on the spot, or otherwise disrupt the carefully-choreographed kabuki theater that is presidential politics.
How many republican primary debates where there? 27? 28? So why only three presidential debates? Why no third parties? Why no spontaneity? It blows my mind how effectively campaigns manage to limit every discussion to the recitation of talking points, focus-grouped spin, and how effectively they manage exclude new ideas and substantive arguments.
The title really should read "thousands of fundamentalist Muslims." Christian fundamentalists are constantly boycotting and protesting this or that in an effort to punish companies for not loving their version of Jesus enough, but we would never generalize them as the ~3/4 of Americans that self-identify as Christians. The idiots protesting Google over a Youtube video are culturally stuck in the past and refuse to accept that the world is changing, just like Christian conservatives.
'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'
I don't really know what "religious hatred" means; hatred stemming from your own religious beliefs, or directed at a particular religious belief? And since when are we intolerant of thoughts and emotions? Last I checked, we already had plenty of laws against violent acts stemming from hatred.
'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.'
Ah, I see, so we have to limit freedom of expression so as not to provoke people who are looking for an excuse for provocation. How about this instead; I will tolerate your fundamentalist religious nonsense and hold my tongue when you tell me that I'm going to Hell or are an infidel, or that Jesus loves me anyway, or whatever and in exchange--oh, wait there is no bargaining with crazy people. Ok, new plan: we all get to say whatever we want because everyone should be secure enough with their own beliefs to espouse them in a deliberate and rational manner and to welcome criticisms in kind. And if a handful of people do do something violent in the name of the flying spaghetti monster, let us not lump in all the millions of non-violent pastafarians and instead just blame the nut-jobs for their actions and not validate them by listening to what they have to say.
As far as I have read, the coordinated 9/11 stuff was just with respect to the attacks on the embassies. A lot of the protesting was the result of that "movie trailer" being hyped on some jingoistic satellite channels that are apparently the Arab equivalent of FOX News, which made it easy to (deliberately) conflate the two events.
I'm still surprised Obama didn't pick up on this at the first debate: Either Romney's proposed tax cut reduces revenue, or it's not really something that can legitimately be called a "tax cut", because -$5 trillion+$5 trillion=0. My guess on what he's going to go after for "loopholes" is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which creates a sort of "negative tax" for people who earn less than the federal poverty line. In other words, it's the policy that creates the semi-mythical "freeloading" 47%.
That is a nice, succinct way of putting it; that revenue-neutral isn't really a tax cut because +$5 million - $5 million = 0. I struggle with trying to explain what nonsense Romney/Ryan's tax plan is in very simple terms, but you put it nicely. Obama could turn to him and say "So, your 'tax cut' is revenue neutral? Then, by definition it is nothing more than income redistribution." And then watch Quantum Romney reply with his perplexing argument about closing loopholes so that "more of peoples' income is subject to tax" but that he isn't raising anyone's taxes.
There is an ocean of difference between a tech company like Google and a pharmaceutical company. The latter openly seeks to offload expensive and time-consuming research to academia. Scientific research (particularly in Medicine and Chemistry) is just too time consuming, expensive, and risky for the short-term mentality of publicly-traded companies. And just because the founders still "control" a company, that does not mean that they are immune to share-holder pressure. The board can force a CEO out if they deem the CEO's actions detrimental to shareholder value, no matter who the CEO is.
You won't read anything about Biden not being engaged tomorrow. So far he's making Ryan look like an amateur and he's not letting Ryan get away with lying.
Biden is crushing it.
Don't worry, in a few hours the punditocracy will be lampooning Biden for smiling too much, or the wrong way, or having the wrong facial expression; anything to avoid addressing the actual content of the debate. The press is either at your feet or your throat and as the polls shift towards Romney, so will the press. They hate fact-checking politicians because it can cost them access, but they also hate transcribing lies, so instead they'll talk about Paul Ryan's hair or the performance of the moderator.