No it's not. Forcing people to buy insurance and telling them what kind they have to buy is not acceptable in a free country. You have no right to tell me that I must buy insurance and the form that insurance should take. You don't know my situation, my finances, my morals, etc. Why is it that Liberals can't stand systems that don't centralize control and take away the freedom to choose?
The parties in our system aren't "monolithic entities", they're the fucking hegemony personified.
You are wrong. How many Democrats in the House broke ranks on Health Care? How many broke ranks on gun control? How many Republicans broke ranks with Bush on immigration reform?
You'll find a lot more people willing to buck the party leadership in the US system than you will in proportional/parliamentary systems. In those systems breaking ranks with the leadership will often get you booted out of the party. Political parties in the United States have no control over who can join them or remain a member.
Unless you plan to make illegal immigration a capital crime, you will not stop it no matter how well you enforce the laws.
You don't attack the immigrant, you attack the employer that's breaking the laws by hiring him. Make it more expensive to hire illegal labor than legal labor and business will stop doing so.
Besides, you misunderstand me. I'm pro-immigration. My Libertarian inclination is for nearly unfettered immigration. I say that we should let them all in legally as long as they aren't a terrorist or criminal. My only issue is with the hypocrisy of our existing laws and the lack of enforcement thereof. It's not fair to the people who come here legally and it enables our political class to duck a much needed public debate on the issue.
If you are running rsync's that need to be active 24/7/365 then you should probably have a commercial connection and my earlier point is moot. As far as personal use goes I've yet to see the application that I can't run on a 10mbit/s connection.
But have you not noticed how you can only buy the most popular-selling books, magazines, music, DVDs, etc. in the superstores?
Well, duh. The superstores are general stores. They don't have the shelf space to stock every conceivable title or product. That's why you go to a real book/clothing/electronics/whatever store.
they stock the high profit, high volume sales items with a strategy to force consumers to just buy those items they stock.
You aren't forced to do anything as a consumer unless you are too lazy to look for alternatives. Heck, this is the information age -- you can be lazy and shop at the same time if you have a computer, internet connection and credit card.....
That isn't likely to happen. Wal-Mart's niche is cheap disposable crap. People who are willing to pay more money for a quality product will always have some place else to go. Wal-Mart might manage to kill K-Mart one of these days but they aren't likely to kill Men's Warehouse. They might kill Aldis but they'll never touch Wegmans. They cater to different market segments.
Actually I've found that Verizon can compete with T-Mobile on a per-minute cost basis now that T-Mobile ditched their MyFaves program. I wanted to switch back to T-Mobile when my Verizon contract ran out and discovered that I would need twice as many minutes to match my existing service with Verizon, thanks to the discontinuation of MyFaves. The service would have wound up costing about the same (actually more because I get a discount on Verizon through work) so what's the point of going with the network that has less coverage?
I loved T-Mobile when I had them but I'm not going to pay the same amount of money for less coverage.
I'm not familiar with Australia but independents typically decide most US elections, except for those in heavily blue or red states. Why do you think that politicians always move to the center after primary season is over?
Somehow I doubt Wal-Mart is going to drive AT&T and Verizon out of the wireless marketplace.....
Besides, the criticism that you've made applies more to Barnes and Noble than Wal-Mart. I've not personally observed Wal-Mart raising their prices after driving the competition away. I did observe Barnes and Noble jack up all their prices shortly after the last independent book store in my home town closed up shop.
They are using T-Mobile's network. It'll be fine in major cities and utter crap in the countryside. Around these parts T-Mobile is useless if you venture more than two or three miles off the interstate.....
Accordingly we should expect to see people migrating to where the economic opportunity happens to be
Which is why we need to take that economic opportunity away from them unless they play by our rules. Ergo, enforcement of the existing employment laws.
Help Mexico build up its economy and the problem will go away
It's not our job to help Mexico build up its economy.
The only principle a political party has is the accumulation of power. Political parties exist for the specific reason of concreting power and evading the checks and balances built into our political system. In any event, your solution is looking for a problem. There's nothing stopping you from voting for third party candidates. Don't blame me if you decide to vote strategically rather than voting your conscience.
Neither one of those problems justifies taking away my right to decide whom I want to associate with. I have a moral and religious objection to the way insurance companies do business. Who the hell are you to compel me to associate with them?
Virtually every product available today depends directly or indirectly on oil or oil derived products. Gasoline, fertilizer, plastics, diesel, lubricants, fabrics and many more are all produced from oil.
With the exception of fabrics you haven't named a single product that I can't live without, albeit with varying degrees of difficulty. There are also fabrics (hemp comes to mind) that don't rely on oil.
If you have the means to do so and choose not to then you are an idiot.
I have the right to be an idiot if I so choose. I'm in my 20s and healthy. My most likely source of expensive medical bills is an automobile accident and I've already got insurance for that.
Right. I'm sure that would have fixed everything. If only the Dutch had come to the rescue everything would be fine...
Don't be an idiot. I didn't say it would have fixed everything. It just would have been better than doing nothing. They rejected those skimmers because of EPA regulations that prohibited the discharge of the small amount of oil they couldn't collect back into the ocean. Apparently it's more logical to leave 100% of the oil in the ocean than it is to collect >90% of it and return the rest.
No they aren't. They concentrate too much power in the hands of the party leadership.
you can then choose the party of your like rather than voting for the "lesser evil", for example, someone who actually -wants- green politics can vote for a green party rather than having to appeal to the democrats/republicans.
The Bush/Cheney campaign wasn't the one that tried to cherry pick which districts got recounts. There's only one person that deserves the credit (or blame) for electing GWB. His name is Al Gore.
I'll take Judaical review over "proportional" representation any day of the week. Proportional representation gives too much power to political parties. Political parties under such systems tend to be much more monolithic entities than they are in the United States.
Why can the DHS and the rest of the government spend so much money on fences and stuff but don't strike at the root of illegal immigration: The fact that legal immigration is full of problems.
That's not the root of illegal immigration. The root of illegal immigration is the lack of enforcement of employment law. Make it impossible for illegal immigrants to work and the problem will solve itself without a fence.
The Courts aren't perfect (Gonzales v. Raich and Kelo v. New London come to mind) but Judaical review is a better system than most other nations have.....
Yeah, I really started to lose respect for Bush when he signed Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act into law. Thankfully we now have a Democrat in office and Democrats would never sign such hateful legislation.
Good luck buying oil from those who have not profited from the Iraq war.
I can choose whether or not I buy oil. Thanks to Obama I will not be able to choose whether or not I buy health insurance, at least not until SCOTUS strikes down that portion of his "reform" legislation.
The BP oil spill has affected hundreds of acres of US land.
Perhaps that could have mitigated if the White House had accepted the offer of skimming skips from the Dutch?
Slashdot Mirror
No it's not. Forcing people to buy insurance and telling them what kind they have to buy is not acceptable in a free country. You have no right to tell me that I must buy insurance and the form that insurance should take. You don't know my situation, my finances, my morals, etc. Why is it that Liberals can't stand systems that don't centralize control and take away the freedom to choose?
The parties in our system aren't "monolithic entities", they're the fucking hegemony personified.
You are wrong. How many Democrats in the House broke ranks on Health Care? How many broke ranks on gun control? How many Republicans broke ranks with Bush on immigration reform?
You'll find a lot more people willing to buck the party leadership in the US system than you will in proportional/parliamentary systems. In those systems breaking ranks with the leadership will often get you booted out of the party. Political parties in the United States have no control over who can join them or remain a member.
Unless you plan to make illegal immigration a capital crime, you will not stop it no matter how well you enforce the laws.
You don't attack the immigrant, you attack the employer that's breaking the laws by hiring him. Make it more expensive to hire illegal labor than legal labor and business will stop doing so.
Besides, you misunderstand me. I'm pro-immigration. My Libertarian inclination is for nearly unfettered immigration. I say that we should let them all in legally as long as they aren't a terrorist or criminal. My only issue is with the hypocrisy of our existing laws and the lack of enforcement thereof. It's not fair to the people who come here legally and it enables our political class to duck a much needed public debate on the issue.
If you are running rsync's that need to be active 24/7/365 then you should probably have a commercial connection and my earlier point is moot. As far as personal use goes I've yet to see the application that I can't run on a 10mbit/s connection.
But have you not noticed how you can only buy the most popular-selling books, magazines, music, DVDs, etc. in the superstores?
Well, duh. The superstores are general stores. They don't have the shelf space to stock every conceivable title or product. That's why you go to a real book/clothing/electronics/whatever store.
they stock the high profit, high volume sales items with a strategy to force consumers to just buy those items they stock.
You aren't forced to do anything as a consumer unless you are too lazy to look for alternatives. Heck, this is the information age -- you can be lazy and shop at the same time if you have a computer, internet connection and credit card.....
That isn't likely to happen. Wal-Mart's niche is cheap disposable crap. People who are willing to pay more money for a quality product will always have some place else to go. Wal-Mart might manage to kill K-Mart one of these days but they aren't likely to kill Men's Warehouse. They might kill Aldis but they'll never touch Wegmans. They cater to different market segments.
Actually I've found that Verizon can compete with T-Mobile on a per-minute cost basis now that T-Mobile ditched their MyFaves program. I wanted to switch back to T-Mobile when my Verizon contract ran out and discovered that I would need twice as many minutes to match my existing service with Verizon, thanks to the discontinuation of MyFaves. The service would have wound up costing about the same (actually more because I get a discount on Verizon through work) so what's the point of going with the network that has less coverage?
I loved T-Mobile when I had them but I'm not going to pay the same amount of money for less coverage.
I'm not familiar with Australia but independents typically decide most US elections, except for those in heavily blue or red states. Why do you think that politicians always move to the center after primary season is over?
Somehow I doubt Wal-Mart is going to drive AT&T and Verizon out of the wireless marketplace.....
Besides, the criticism that you've made applies more to Barnes and Noble than Wal-Mart. I've not personally observed Wal-Mart raising their prices after driving the competition away. I did observe Barnes and Noble jack up all their prices shortly after the last independent book store in my home town closed up shop.
I wonder what the coverage is like
They are using T-Mobile's network. It'll be fine in major cities and utter crap in the countryside. Around these parts T-Mobile is useless if you venture more than two or three miles off the interstate.....
Accordingly we should expect to see people migrating to where the economic opportunity happens to be
Which is why we need to take that economic opportunity away from them unless they play by our rules. Ergo, enforcement of the existing employment laws.
Help Mexico build up its economy and the problem will go away
It's not our job to help Mexico build up its economy.
I do my share of telecommuting. Works just fine on my 10mbit/s connection that costs $30/mo.
The only principle a political party has is the accumulation of power. Political parties exist for the specific reason of concreting power and evading the checks and balances built into our political system. In any event, your solution is looking for a problem. There's nothing stopping you from voting for third party candidates. Don't blame me if you decide to vote strategically rather than voting your conscience.
Neither one of those problems justifies taking away my right to decide whom I want to associate with. I have a moral and religious objection to the way insurance companies do business. Who the hell are you to compel me to associate with them?
Virtually every product available today depends directly or indirectly on oil or oil derived products. Gasoline, fertilizer, plastics, diesel, lubricants, fabrics and many more are all produced from oil.
With the exception of fabrics you haven't named a single product that I can't live without, albeit with varying degrees of difficulty. There are also fabrics (hemp comes to mind) that don't rely on oil.
If you have the means to do so and choose not to then you are an idiot.
I have the right to be an idiot if I so choose. I'm in my 20s and healthy. My most likely source of expensive medical bills is an automobile accident and I've already got insurance for that.
Right. I'm sure that would have fixed everything. If only the Dutch had come to the rescue everything would be fine...
Don't be an idiot. I didn't say it would have fixed everything. It just would have been better than doing nothing. They rejected those skimmers because of EPA regulations that prohibited the discharge of the small amount of oil they couldn't collect back into the ocean. Apparently it's more logical to leave 100% of the oil in the ocean than it is to collect >90% of it and return the rest.
Monolithic entities are a good thing
No they aren't. They concentrate too much power in the hands of the party leadership.
you can then choose the party of your like rather than voting for the "lesser evil", for example, someone who actually -wants- green politics can vote for a green party rather than having to appeal to the democrats/republicans.
Nothing is stopping you from doing that now.
The Bush/Cheney campaign wasn't the one that tried to cherry pick which districts got recounts. There's only one person that deserves the credit (or blame) for electing GWB. His name is Al Gore.
You mean like Al Quada and the Taliban?
I'll take Judaical review over "proportional" representation any day of the week. Proportional representation gives too much power to political parties. Political parties under such systems tend to be much more monolithic entities than they are in the United States.
Why can the DHS and the rest of the government spend so much money on fences and stuff but don't strike at the root of illegal immigration: The fact that legal immigration is full of problems.
That's not the root of illegal immigration. The root of illegal immigration is the lack of enforcement of employment law. Make it impossible for illegal immigrants to work and the problem will solve itself without a fence.
That wasn't really the administration, as much as it was inherent silliness in Florida's electoral procedures.
FTFY
The Courts aren't perfect (Gonzales v. Raich and Kelo v. New London come to mind) but Judaical review is a better system than most other nations have.....
stripping of the rights of LGBTs
Yeah, I really started to lose respect for Bush when he signed Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act into law. Thankfully we now have a Democrat in office and Democrats would never sign such hateful legislation.
Good luck buying oil from those who have not profited from the Iraq war.
I can choose whether or not I buy oil. Thanks to Obama I will not be able to choose whether or not I buy health insurance, at least not until SCOTUS strikes down that portion of his "reform" legislation.
The BP oil spill has affected hundreds of acres of US land.
Perhaps that could have mitigated if the White House had accepted the offer of skimming skips from the Dutch?
They almost never rule in favor of freedom.
Otis McDonald would probably disagree with you there.....