The confusion most people seem to have is that there is not "the election." There are fifty-one of them, because the citizens of each state are voting to determine who their state wants to be president.
Of course, when you phrase is that way, it's a lot harder to be outraged about it.
I'll grant you premature retirement is not a good thing (though it can be, if the buyout is attractive enough) and changes the equation. That said, I stand behind my point. If the knowledge in your head doesn't exist elsewhere, you can make decent extra income in retirement. If you were FORCED out of that job by a stupid company despite having irreplaceable knowledge, you can charge them an asshole tax.
One of our technical sales guys is retiring next year. He already has multiple contracts lined up for his consultancy (with us and some of our customers). We'd be happier if he wasn't leaving at all, but he has city miles on him and old age is a bitch.
In a lot of industries, retired people are brought back for niche knowledge, and get double the rate they made as an employee.
Let's do some quick math, shall we?
2x former salary rate/hour - 90% former hours - medical/dental benefits + Obamacare = less than what you made before.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up corporate abuse.
You're being disingenuous here. The reality is that retirees don't want a 40-60 hour work week--they're fucking retired. They don't mind (in fact, many really enjoy) getting paid a multiple of their former hourly rate to consult on projects for a few hours a week or month. If you work in the right industry / for the right company, it's even part of your retirement planning (that you'll have x additional income due to the 500 hours a year you plan to invoice your previous employer / their customers).
People in this role aren't burger flippers. They're people with valuable domain knowledge that hasn't been picked up by their replacement. Generally speaking, i's win-win for everyone except people like you that are bitching about the man keeping them down.
Though you appear to decry use of derogatory nicknames, it is among the rhetorical tactics of the apparent President-elect.* During his campaign, he used such a nickname for each of his opponents: Low-Energy Jeb, Little Marco, 1 for 38 Kasich, Lyin' Ted (which some of his supporters attempted to reclaim as Lion Ted), and Crooked Hillary. Now watch leftards turn the practice back at "One-Term Donald".
* Faithless electors could yet keep Mr. Trump from officially becoming President-elect on December 19. There are eight so far.
There is actually one, not eight. The seven people who already were not going to vote for Trump (because they're pledged to Hillary) don't count.
That said, "One Term Donald" sounds like a great nickname. Here's hoping.
And here again we see the goddamn problem. You're presented with a fair argument, outlined in easy-to-reply-to numbers, and your only response is "bu-bu-but Hillary lol."
That's a human thing, not a conservative thing. Ask almost anybody about the horrible thing that $PERSON_THEY_SUPPORT did, and the answer is almost ALWAYS going to be, "but $OTHER_GUY did the same thing!" Ask them about something they personally did, and they'll complain about something you did. It comes down to education (or lack thereof) and emotion--most people cannot think critically anymore, have no desire to do so, and allow their emotions to rule their arguments.
Conservatives used to make serious arguments, sometimes reasonable, sometimes specious. Not anymore. What the fuck happened?
Again, same problem on both sides. The arguments on the conservative side are largely devolving into conspiracy theories, while the arguments on the liberal side these days largely consist of repeating the words "you racist, misogynist, fuck!" over and over.
I'm not being entirely fair--there are quite a few people on both sides that still make really good arguments. But their numbers are relatively small, and their signal is being lost in the sea of noise. The conservative thinkers appear to be letting this go because their side is (currently) "winning." The liberal thinkers appear to be letting this go because if they open their mouths, they'll be ripped apart by the shrieking hordes of SJWs.
Apple supports their devices a heck of a lot longer than Android has done so far
Actually, there's no company called "Android" so that comment doesn't even make sense.
Substitute "all OEMs producing hardware running Android" and it's still true. We're about to move from being a 100% Android shop to a 100% IOS shop, and that's one of the main reasons.
The Android philosophy is 100% superior to Apple ("Whatever meets your needs" vs "Walled Garden") but the execution has been piss poor.
Snarking aside, I'm not especially educated on this topic... if you can find a date for this rule (I personally cannot) I'd love to see it so I can learn more.
Whether the issue comes before the court or not is moot--this isn't a judicial precedent, this is a rule as to how US courts behave. It's ambiguous whether or not Scalia was alive or not at the time this rule was codified--apparently, the Court transmits the rules to Congress "by May 1st" of the year they go into effect, and the rules can take effect no earlier than December 1st of that year. Since Scalia died in February, it's more likely than not this happened after his death.
It doesn't appear so. The article is poorly written and very short on detail, but this looks like a change to the federal rules of criminal procedure, which are controlled directly by the Supreme Court. Congress CAN challenge these rules (the fact that the court has the ability to make these rules at all is a power delegated to them by the congress) but it typically does not. The president apparently has no say unless the congress acts.
Yet the Democrats voted for it as well. That is how it passed. There is no "side" here.
Republicans have controlled congress since 2010.
The article is incredibly short on detail, but it appears this is the result of changes to the federal rules of criminal procedure, which are made directly by the Supreme Court pursuant to an act passed in 1934 granting them that power. The court, last I checked, was a Supremely partisan (pun intended) 4-4 mix, but they seem to agree on this. While it's true that the congress could have stopped those rules, I don't believe it's something that commonly happens, partisan rhetoric aside.
That's a reasonable position, and quite true in many cases (our recent push for marijuana legalization is a good example). However, I'm not sure "grab them by the pussy" rises to that level of moral ambiguity. "Rape the girl while your state trooper bodyguard makes sure no one disturbs you" probably has issues, as well.
While they may be womanizers, they do so with consenting adults (alt-right lies about Clinton notwithstanding)
So the idea that Bill Clinton lost his license to practice law for obstructing justice and perjuring himself during a sexual harassment lawsuit is just a lie?
Not that I think that gives Trump a pass, FWIW. "Everybody is doing it" isn't a valid excuse for wrongdoing.
wow it's almost like depression or other types of mental illness can make people do things that aren't rational.
fucking dipshit.
Mental health issues are not the easiest thing to wrap your head around (especially if you're of a generation that was taught to rub dirt on it/walk it off in response to any injury, physical, mental, or emotional). If you haven't lived through it, or had a family member/close friend live through it, it's likely you just can't comprehend what some stranger is going through.
Just because someone is ignorant doesn't make them a dipshit (unless they're willfully so). Indeed, the AC was expressing empathy in general for the guy who tried to kill himself, rather than the disdain that you appear to be trying to respond to.
At this point, I think it's our only hope to avoid a complete disaster.
I've gotta say, that if a massive Constitutional crisis doesn't rise to the level of "complete disaster" in your lexicon, I have no desire to see what would. Your scenario likely ends with arms being taken up by one side or another (followed by the others).
better yet a constitutional amendment to completely reform elections, mandating some type of range or approval voting process instead of First Past the Post.
We can't even get a plurality to agree on whether the sky is blue and you want a complete overhaul of the election process (which will require overwhelming approval--2/3rds of the congress, and 3/4ths of the states) before we can put this one behind us? This is just plain unrealistic.
Umm, you realize we needed to make nuclear power plants *before* we could make the bombs, right? Granted they were designed specifically to enrich the natural fissiles into weapons-grade isotopes, but the reactors still came first.
The first time electricity was generated from a nuclear reactor was in 1951.
I had the same thought about install... I can't imagine PV panels being installed by three guys on a roof slamming pneumatic nailers down as fast as humanly possible.
FWIW, ignorance is not something to be worn on your sleeve with pride (unless you're just trolling, in which case you've done a great job).
In the event you're not just trolling masterfully, and require education, there IS no "national popular vote" for the US presidency, because there is not one election, but rather fifty-one elections. One of the (admittedly quirky) checks and balances in our system which is designed to help keep large states from running roughshod over small states. Strictly speaking, there doesn't need to be a popular election at all. Each state can appoint its electors in the manner it sees fit. All of them, today, choose to do so by popular vote, but there's nothing that keeps, say, Oregon from deciding tomorrow that from now on, they're going to have the legislature do it, or draw lots, or read goat entrails, or whatever.
Even in the reddest of states like Texas, there are areas of Democrat support. If you had a PR system for selecting electors, and winner take all was removed, Texas would still have elected mainly, probably even overwhelmingly electors for Trump, but Clinton would have actually got some votes. You can't just simply declare that in such a variant situation that the election would have gone the same way.
I won't comment on alternate systems like instant runoff, but the above is what I am talking about. Yes, Clinton would have gotten electoral votes in Texas (in places like cosmopolitan Houston and especially liberal Austin) but she would have lost many more than that in upstate New York, northern (other than the SF bay) and eastern California, Washington, Oregon, etc. Look at the "vote by county" map for the last few decades, and you'll see that neither (Bill) Clinton nor Obama would have been elected under a proportional EV system. You don't have to take my word for it or speculate, you can actually look at the data--it's not even close.
Proportionally allocating electors (i.e. a system like Maine's) would result in Republic landslide victories. Take a look at the electoral map, there are more red states than blue states, and the blue states have higher populations. You'd be giving the democrats handfuls of electoral votes in places like TN, and trading that for dozens in places like NY and CA.
I tend to support Republicans more than Democrats, but I'm not in favor of changing the balance of power like that. It would be disastrous for the nation.
correction: the useless fucking flyover state 'americans' voted based on bullshit that trump shoveled to them.
they ate it up and were 'useful idiots' to him.
I'm ashamed of the US. 100% totally ashamed. but maybe its good that we fully hit bottom. after that, you can only go upwards.
Correction: the people you're talking about are tired of being treated like useless fucking flyover states that don't matter.
When Trump made his "what do you have to lose?" pitch to the inner cities, I'm pretty sure that the rust belt heard him loud and clear despite not being who he was talking to. If the democrats are not careful, they'll eventually lose the inner cities in the same way (seriously, when unarmed black people are getting shot in those notorious Republican strongholds of NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, LA, etc, it's hard to make the pitch that "we're on YOUR side.")
Slashdot Mirror
The confusion most people seem to have is that there is not "the election." There are fifty-one of them, because the citizens of each state are voting to determine who their state wants to be president.
Of course, when you phrase is that way, it's a lot harder to be outraged about it.
I'll grant you premature retirement is not a good thing (though it can be, if the buyout is attractive enough) and changes the equation. That said, I stand behind my point. If the knowledge in your head doesn't exist elsewhere, you can make decent extra income in retirement. If you were FORCED out of that job by a stupid company despite having irreplaceable knowledge, you can charge them an asshole tax.
One of our technical sales guys is retiring next year. He already has multiple contracts lined up for his consultancy (with us and some of our customers). We'd be happier if he wasn't leaving at all, but he has city miles on him and old age is a bitch.
In a lot of industries, retired people are brought back for niche knowledge, and get double the rate they made as an employee.
Let's do some quick math, shall we?
2x former salary rate/hour - 90% former hours - medical/dental benefits + Obamacare = less than what you made before.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up corporate abuse.
You're being disingenuous here. The reality is that retirees don't want a 40-60 hour work week--they're fucking retired. They don't mind (in fact, many really enjoy) getting paid a multiple of their former hourly rate to consult on projects for a few hours a week or month. If you work in the right industry / for the right company, it's even part of your retirement planning (that you'll have x additional income due to the 500 hours a year you plan to invoice your previous employer / their customers).
People in this role aren't burger flippers. They're people with valuable domain knowledge that hasn't been picked up by their replacement. Generally speaking, i's win-win for everyone except people like you that are bitching about the man keeping them down.
Though you appear to decry use of derogatory nicknames, it is among the rhetorical tactics of the apparent President-elect.* During his campaign, he used such a nickname for each of his opponents: Low-Energy Jeb, Little Marco, 1 for 38 Kasich, Lyin' Ted (which some of his supporters attempted to reclaim as Lion Ted), and Crooked Hillary. Now watch leftards turn the practice back at "One-Term Donald".
* Faithless electors could yet keep Mr. Trump from officially becoming President-elect on December 19. There are eight so far.
There is actually one, not eight. The seven people who already were not going to vote for Trump (because they're pledged to Hillary) don't count.
That said, "One Term Donald" sounds like a great nickname. Here's hoping.
And here again we see the goddamn problem. You're presented with a fair argument, outlined in easy-to-reply-to numbers, and your only response is "bu-bu-but Hillary lol."
That's a human thing, not a conservative thing. Ask almost anybody about the horrible thing that $PERSON_THEY_SUPPORT did, and the answer is almost ALWAYS going to be, "but $OTHER_GUY did the same thing!" Ask them about something they personally did, and they'll complain about something you did. It comes down to education (or lack thereof) and emotion--most people cannot think critically anymore, have no desire to do so, and allow their emotions to rule their arguments.
Conservatives used to make serious arguments, sometimes reasonable, sometimes specious. Not anymore. What the fuck happened?
Again, same problem on both sides. The arguments on the conservative side are largely devolving into conspiracy theories, while the arguments on the liberal side these days largely consist of repeating the words "you racist, misogynist, fuck!" over and over.
I'm not being entirely fair--there are quite a few people on both sides that still make really good arguments. But their numbers are relatively small, and their signal is being lost in the sea of noise. The conservative thinkers appear to be letting this go because their side is (currently) "winning." The liberal thinkers appear to be letting this go because if they open their mouths, they'll be ripped apart by the shrieking hordes of SJWs.
Yawn. It's not censorship
Yet another person who believes "censorship" means "first amendment violation." This is absolutely censorship, though it's "acceptable" because:
you're playing in their yard, and you are free to start a competitor if it seems like they overstep.
They're perfectly free to censor their content, it's their house.
And the first loon to cry censorship is an ignorant ass
I won't call you an ass, but you are the ignorant party here. That's not something to be proud of.
Apple supports their devices a heck of a lot longer than Android has done so far
Actually, there's no company called "Android" so that comment doesn't even make sense.
Substitute "all OEMs producing hardware running Android" and it's still true. We're about to move from being a 100% Android shop to a 100% IOS shop, and that's one of the main reasons.
The Android philosophy is 100% superior to Apple ("Whatever meets your needs" vs "Walled Garden") but the execution has been piss poor.
You will find that he was not.
Are we playing madlibs?
Snarking aside, I'm not especially educated on this topic... if you can find a date for this rule (I personally cannot) I'd love to see it so I can learn more.
Whether the issue comes before the court or not is moot--this isn't a judicial precedent, this is a rule as to how US courts behave. It's ambiguous whether or not Scalia was alive or not at the time this rule was codified--apparently, the Court transmits the rules to Congress "by May 1st" of the year they go into effect, and the rules can take effect no earlier than December 1st of that year. Since Scalia died in February, it's more likely than not this happened after his death.
Except, couldn't Obama veto it?
It doesn't appear so. The article is poorly written and very short on detail, but this looks like a change to the federal rules of criminal procedure, which are controlled directly by the Supreme Court. Congress CAN challenge these rules (the fact that the court has the ability to make these rules at all is a power delegated to them by the congress) but it typically does not. The president apparently has no say unless the congress acts.
Republicans have controlled congress since 2010.
The article is incredibly short on detail, but it appears this is the result of changes to the federal rules of criminal procedure, which are made directly by the Supreme Court pursuant to an act passed in 1934 granting them that power. The court, last I checked, was a Supremely partisan (pun intended) 4-4 mix, but they seem to agree on this. While it's true that the congress could have stopped those rules, I don't believe it's something that commonly happens, partisan rhetoric aside.
if everyone is doing it. Maybe it is not wrong.
That's a reasonable position, and quite true in many cases (our recent push for marijuana legalization is a good example). However, I'm not sure "grab them by the pussy" rises to that level of moral ambiguity. "Rape the girl while your state trooper bodyguard makes sure no one disturbs you" probably has issues, as well.
While they may be womanizers, they do so with consenting adults (alt-right lies about Clinton notwithstanding)
So the idea that Bill Clinton lost his license to practice law for obstructing justice and perjuring himself during a sexual harassment lawsuit is just a lie?
Not that I think that gives Trump a pass, FWIW. "Everybody is doing it" isn't a valid excuse for wrongdoing.
wow it's almost like depression or other types of mental illness can make people do things that aren't rational.
fucking dipshit.
Mental health issues are not the easiest thing to wrap your head around (especially if you're of a generation that was taught to rub dirt on it/walk it off in response to any injury, physical, mental, or emotional). If you haven't lived through it, or had a family member/close friend live through it, it's likely you just can't comprehend what some stranger is going through.
Just because someone is ignorant doesn't make them a dipshit (unless they're willfully so). Indeed, the AC was expressing empathy in general for the guy who tried to kill himself, rather than the disdain that you appear to be trying to respond to.
Why do the states get the power to elect the president? Why don't the people have that power?
Because there are multiple forces in opposition in the design of our government, and that particular power was given to the states?
"Check and balances." Remember those?
At this point, I think it's our only hope to avoid a complete disaster.
I've gotta say, that if a massive Constitutional crisis doesn't rise to the level of "complete disaster" in your lexicon, I have no desire to see what would. Your scenario likely ends with arms being taken up by one side or another (followed by the others).
better yet a constitutional amendment to completely reform elections, mandating some type of range or approval voting process instead of First Past the Post.
We can't even get a plurality to agree on whether the sky is blue and you want a complete overhaul of the election process (which will require overwhelming approval--2/3rds of the congress, and 3/4ths of the states) before we can put this one behind us? This is just plain unrealistic.
That's 200 watts of thermal power, not electrical power.
Here is the first electricity producing nuclear reactor.
Umm, you realize we needed to make nuclear power plants *before* we could make the bombs, right? Granted they were designed specifically to enrich the natural fissiles into weapons-grade isotopes, but the reactors still came first.
The first time electricity was generated from a nuclear reactor was in 1951.
I had the same thought about install... I can't imagine PV panels being installed by three guys on a roof slamming pneumatic nailers down as fast as humanly possible.
Then that's one fewer Rich American Called Larry Ellison that we have to worry about.
Oh god, you mean there's more than one rich asshole named Larry Ellison? One was more than enough!
FWIW, ignorance is not something to be worn on your sleeve with pride (unless you're just trolling, in which case you've done a great job).
In the event you're not just trolling masterfully, and require education, there IS no "national popular vote" for the US presidency, because there is not one election, but rather fifty-one elections. One of the (admittedly quirky) checks and balances in our system which is designed to help keep large states from running roughshod over small states. Strictly speaking, there doesn't need to be a popular election at all. Each state can appoint its electors in the manner it sees fit. All of them, today, choose to do so by popular vote, but there's nothing that keeps, say, Oregon from deciding tomorrow that from now on, they're going to have the legislature do it, or draw lots, or read goat entrails, or whatever.
Even in the reddest of states like Texas, there are areas of Democrat support. If you had a PR system for selecting electors, and winner take all was removed, Texas would still have elected mainly, probably even overwhelmingly electors for Trump, but Clinton would have actually got some votes. You can't just simply declare that in such a variant situation that the election would have gone the same way.
I won't comment on alternate systems like instant runoff, but the above is what I am talking about. Yes, Clinton would have gotten electoral votes in Texas (in places like cosmopolitan Houston and especially liberal Austin) but she would have lost many more than that in upstate New York, northern (other than the SF bay) and eastern California, Washington, Oregon, etc. Look at the "vote by county" map for the last few decades, and you'll see that neither (Bill) Clinton nor Obama would have been elected under a proportional EV system. You don't have to take my word for it or speculate, you can actually look at the data--it's not even close.
Proportionally allocating electors (i.e. a system like Maine's) would result in Republic landslide victories. Take a look at the electoral map, there are more red states than blue states, and the blue states have higher populations. You'd be giving the democrats handfuls of electoral votes in places like TN, and trading that for dozens in places like NY and CA.
I tend to support Republicans more than Democrats, but I'm not in favor of changing the balance of power like that. It would be disastrous for the nation.
Why the hell would you put a pagefile in a ramdisk? "Yo dawg, I heard you love pages?"
correction: the useless fucking flyover state 'americans' voted based on bullshit that trump shoveled to them.
they ate it up and were 'useful idiots' to him.
I'm ashamed of the US. 100% totally ashamed. but maybe its good that we fully hit bottom. after that, you can only go upwards.
Correction: the people you're talking about are tired of being treated like useless fucking flyover states that don't matter.
When Trump made his "what do you have to lose?" pitch to the inner cities, I'm pretty sure that the rust belt heard him loud and clear despite not being who he was talking to. If the democrats are not careful, they'll eventually lose the inner cities in the same way (seriously, when unarmed black people are getting shot in those notorious Republican strongholds of NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, LA, etc, it's hard to make the pitch that "we're on YOUR side.")