Of course it's partisan. SoS Brunner is a Democrat, so the Republicans are forced to take the other side of the debate (that the machines aren't perfect, big whoop).
The best thing about the "nothing is perfect argument" is that these machines didn't do the most important thing that they are supposed to do. I mean, I can understand some problems with UI designs or touch screen calibration, but there is no excuse for failing to properly tabulate votes. Did all their programmers miss the day in class where they taught the increment operator?
To use a car analogy, these machines are the equivalent of a bunch of cars that won't start. The Republicans' answer is to talk about how great the AC works.
Making copies is copyright infringement. However if you have a "good reason" to be making copies, you are free via fair use provisions. You can check with any of our esteemed copyright lawyers who post here.
Now, in practice you can make as many private copies as you want because no one would ever know you're making the copies, but it's still illegal. Distribution is just the easy way to get caught. This is similar to drug offenses. Most people don't get arrested for growing weed in their basement. They get arrested for attempting to distribute.
There are so many goods and services that don't exist in free markets, yet so many people that pretend they do.
Free market theory only works when there's an actual free market (ie. preconditions for the theory to be true are met).
Hell, communism works just fine when the preconditions are met. A lot of the assumptions are simply false which is why it doesn't work according to theory IRL. It's the same with capitalism. There'd be no such thing as a market failure nor would there have been a housing bubble if capitalism worked as advertised. It certainly works "good enough", but not as advertised.
That assumes his opponent wouldn't have voted for it anyway.
People do not base their votes on such trivial issues, and until a critical mass does, all you'll be doing is voting against the incumbent every two years.
And even if your Senator voted against this bill, I can guarantee you it wasn't for the same reason you opposed it.
Then what could I do that wouldn't rationally maximize my utility? No matter what I did I could always claim it maximized my utility.
The "utility" assumption begs the question. If I do anything it must be because I expect it to maximize my utility. Why is this? Because I'm a rational being. How do you know I'm a rational being? Because it'd be irrational to be otherwise.
Thank you for the data. I assume it's correct since you took the time to post it.
If we were short on apples, would you go around beaking off that we can't plant ourselves out of an apple crisis?
Oil isn't a renewable, so this doesn't work as a scenario. Even if it did, planting more and more apples doesn't matter if what we plant doesn't keep up with demand. We're going to have to start looking at alternatives to apples. Planting more apples decreases incentives to switch away from apples as a "fuel source".
A better analogy is that we have a finite amount of apples, but we've only picked the "low lying fruit". You're saying we need to invest more in labor and capital to pick the apples that are left. The problem with this is that going hog wild on picking apples leaves us with less apples later on. We need more apples later on so that the transition from apples to, let's say pomegranates, isn't so harsh.
If oil prices weren't so volatile and if we didn't depend so much on oil, I'd be demanding we restrict access to oil so that we can get on the road to renewables. The longer we hold on to the fiction that we can continue to use oil indefinitely, the harder it's going to be to switch to alternative forms of energy.
I don't have a problem with drilling for more oil from first principles. By all means, lets do it! But we need to be investing the proceeds from that drilling into reducing our dependence on all oil.
Gas needs to stay high so that we can move away from oil. People will have to pay the cost, and they won't like it. But I guarantee they'll like it a lot more than when there is nowhere else to drill and we still haven't made any moves to alternatives.
In the previous Senate, Democrats did the same thing Republicans are doing now.
Not to this extent. More cloture motions have been filed in this Congress than in any other. Sixty votes is almost standard procedure anymore. Lieberman votes like a Republican half the time, so the Democrats don't even have much of a majority of which to speak.
Face it, how you look at an obstructionist minority depends on which side of the fence you're on.
Of course. That is why I congratulated you and your party (I assume you identify as a Republican) on being such good obstructionists. That is your job as the minority party.
In my opinion, filibusters should be reserved for legislation that one believes to be unconstitutional. They should not be used for leverage nor for stopping the appointment of judges. Unfortunately, these are not the rules of the Senate and these rules require 67 votes to change.
People aren't quite as dumb as clueless as some think.
I've had people ask me why Congress can't just give everyone a $1,000,000 bill, which would make us millionaires and consequently all rich. It'd eliminate poverty overnight. Maybe I just know a lot of stupid people. I recall the late George Carlin (paraphrased):
Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are even dumber than that!
Well the free market is "working". Buyer and seller are finding a price that they agree is fair. Don't like the price of gas? Quit driving to work...and now we see why the free market is "not working".
Where people decided to live and work as well as what kind of automobiles they would buy was done with the assumption that fuel costs would be negligible. This assumption is no longer valid and consequently people are a little upset that something which used to be true is not anymore. To further exacerbate the problem, fuel costs went up much more quickly than anyone could adjust their lifestyle to compensate.
What alternative to drilling is project to return more, faster?
The sabre rattling in Iran is causing oil to go up. Keeping our nose out of their business would drop oil prices quickly. Simply reducing our oil consumption would keep prices down as well.
Both of these can be done immediately, and we would see relief immediately.
The whole thing was done to protest the Democrats' plan of adjourning the Congress so that there would be no more calls on the House floor to open up oil expoloration, something that, despite your opinion on the matter, the public overwhelmingly supports.
The public is wrong. The price of crack has gone up and instead of trying to get off, they're demanding increased supply.
The motion to adjourn passed? Of course it did. Right along party lines.
Yeah, that tends to happen in the House, where the majority tends to do whatever it wants. In the Senate, the minority has more rights. And your party has played the Senate rules and Harry Reid like a fiddle. Seriously and with no sarcasm, well done. If the Democrats had 1% of the balls your guys have, we'd have never been in Iraq. THAT would have kept oil prices down.
What's the approval rating of Congress now? 9 percent?
Mostly because the Democrats promised all sorts legislation on which they couldn't deliver. Again, your party has done a good job of using the Senate rules to keep popular Democratic bills from getting passed. Republicans know most people don't care (or even know) about cloture motions or other arcane parliamentary procedures. All your average person knows is that Democrats promised they'd fix everything the Republicans screwed up and they're not doing it.
The Democrats "Dogma Du Jour" is you people are just going to have to do with less and pay more for it. I'll take our position over yours all day long.
I wish they had the balls to say that. The American people need to be told the score without any fluff. The age of cheap oil is over and it's going to take some sacrifice to get our economy switched over to renewables. We can't drill our way out of this even if we wanted to. India and China took our advice and liberalized their economies which made them a competitor for the same oil we are using.
Tell people you are drilling and yeah, the oil won't enter the stream for 10, 15 years but the speculative properties alone will drop crude by another $20 or $40, easy.
That is, and I'd hope you agree, completely irrational.
If you were an oil trader and knew that if we started drilling today and that oil wouldn't get used for another 10 years, why in God's name would that affect your bidding on contracts for September delivery?
Not bringing up votes on bills that the Speaker doesn't like is very standard practice and has gone on for decades.
Any bill can be brought to the floor by 1/2 of the House via a discharge petition. Republicans apparently don't have the votes to bring the bill to the floor over the objections of the Speaker.
Oil production comes out, generally speaking in a bell curve. We'd still be on the left-hand side of that curve.
As Jamie pointed out, the DOE has already said that any drilling would have a negligible effect on prices. Ceasing the sabre rattling in Iran would reduce oil prices quite a bit more than new drilling.
We're talking about adding a few drops of water to the ocean here. Oil is a global market and therefore goes to whomever is the highest bidder. Oil prices are going to continue to rise until we can figure out more efficient ways of using it. Of course, most Americans believe having cheap, personal transportation is a birthright, so it's going to be a lot harder to wean us off the idea that a 30-mile commute with no one else in the vehicle is standard.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you should find a house within walking distance of your job.
Je ne parle pas francais?
I'm actually having a decent time as of late.
I love my home state, in spite of all of its faults. I don't think I could leave even if I wanted to, except Alaska. That place rocks.
Zing!
Of course it's partisan. SoS Brunner is a Democrat, so the Republicans are forced to take the other side of the debate (that the machines aren't perfect, big whoop).
The best thing about the "nothing is perfect argument" is that these machines didn't do the most important thing that they are supposed to do. I mean, I can understand some problems with UI designs or touch screen calibration, but there is no excuse for failing to properly tabulate votes. Did all their programmers miss the day in class where they taught the increment operator?
To use a car analogy, these machines are the equivalent of a bunch of cars that won't start. The Republicans' answer is to talk about how great the AC works.
Actually you are wrong as well.
Making copies is copyright infringement. However if you have a "good reason" to be making copies, you are free via fair use provisions. You can check with any of our esteemed copyright lawyers who post here.
Now, in practice you can make as many private copies as you want because no one would ever know you're making the copies, but it's still illegal. Distribution is just the easy way to get caught. This is similar to drug offenses. Most people don't get arrested for growing weed in their basement. They get arrested for attempting to distribute.
There are so many goods and services that don't exist in free markets, yet so many people that pretend they do.
Free market theory only works when there's an actual free market (ie. preconditions for the theory to be true are met).
Hell, communism works just fine when the preconditions are met. A lot of the assumptions are simply false which is why it doesn't work according to theory IRL. It's the same with capitalism. There'd be no such thing as a market failure nor would there have been a housing bubble if capitalism worked as advertised. It certainly works "good enough", but not as advertised.
I read it the same way you do, but perhaps there is case law that Farmer Tim knows about that I don't.
That assumes his opponent wouldn't have voted for it anyway.
People do not base their votes on such trivial issues, and until a critical mass does, all you'll be doing is voting against the incumbent every two years.
And even if your Senator voted against this bill, I can guarantee you it wasn't for the same reason you opposed it.
Yes, all that and even if it wasn't, an MP3 would certainly be a derivative work of the CD.
Then what could I do that wouldn't rationally maximize my utility? No matter what I did I could always claim it maximized my utility.
The "utility" assumption begs the question. If I do anything it must be because I expect it to maximize my utility. Why is this? Because I'm a rational being. How do you know I'm a rational being? Because it'd be irrational to be otherwise.
Thank you for the data. I assume it's correct since you took the time to post it.
Oil isn't a renewable, so this doesn't work as a scenario. Even if it did, planting more and more apples doesn't matter if what we plant doesn't keep up with demand. We're going to have to start looking at alternatives to apples. Planting more apples decreases incentives to switch away from apples as a "fuel source".
A better analogy is that we have a finite amount of apples, but we've only picked the "low lying fruit". You're saying we need to invest more in labor and capital to pick the apples that are left. The problem with this is that going hog wild on picking apples leaves us with less apples later on. We need more apples later on so that the transition from apples to, let's say pomegranates, isn't so harsh.
If oil prices weren't so volatile and if we didn't depend so much on oil, I'd be demanding we restrict access to oil so that we can get on the road to renewables. The longer we hold on to the fiction that we can continue to use oil indefinitely, the harder it's going to be to switch to alternative forms of energy.
I don't have a problem with drilling for more oil from first principles. By all means, lets do it! But we need to be investing the proceeds from that drilling into reducing our dependence on all oil.
Gas needs to stay high so that we can move away from oil. People will have to pay the cost, and they won't like it. But I guarantee they'll like it a lot more than when there is nowhere else to drill and we still haven't made any moves to alternatives.
Not to this extent. More cloture motions have been filed in this Congress than in any other. Sixty votes is almost standard procedure anymore. Lieberman votes like a Republican half the time, so the Democrats don't even have much of a majority of which to speak.
Of course. That is why I congratulated you and your party (I assume you identify as a Republican) on being such good obstructionists. That is your job as the minority party.
In my opinion, filibusters should be reserved for legislation that one believes to be unconstitutional. They should not be used for leverage nor for stopping the appointment of judges. Unfortunately, these are not the rules of the Senate and these rules require 67 votes to change.
I've had people ask me why Congress can't just give everyone a $1,000,000 bill, which would make us millionaires and consequently all rich. It'd eliminate poverty overnight. Maybe I just know a lot of stupid people. I recall the late George Carlin (paraphrased):
Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are even dumber than that!
We'll just have to disagree on the rest.
True.
LOL
By a negligible amount.
And now we've come full circle.
Well the free market is "working". Buyer and seller are finding a price that they agree is fair. Don't like the price of gas? Quit driving to work...and now we see why the free market is "not working".
Where people decided to live and work as well as what kind of automobiles they would buy was done with the assumption that fuel costs would be negligible. This assumption is no longer valid and consequently people are a little upset that something which used to be true is not anymore. To further exacerbate the problem, fuel costs went up much more quickly than anyone could adjust their lifestyle to compensate.
I defer to you.
Ask your father-in-law how long it would take for the drill to hit the ground in ANWR if Congress opened it up for drilling today.
I'll wait.
So people aren't rational utility maximizers? There goes a good deal of free market theory.
Well most speculation isn't 5 or 6 years in the future. It's done a few months ahead.
If Congress said "drill wherever you want" right now, we would see exactly 0 barrels of that oil this year.
The sabre rattling in Iran is causing oil to go up. Keeping our nose out of their business would drop oil prices quickly. Simply reducing our oil consumption would keep prices down as well.
Both of these can be done immediately, and we would see relief immediately.
The public is wrong. The price of crack has gone up and instead of trying to get off, they're demanding increased supply.
Yeah, that tends to happen in the House, where the majority tends to do whatever it wants. In the Senate, the minority has more rights. And your party has played the Senate rules and Harry Reid like a fiddle. Seriously and with no sarcasm, well done. If the Democrats had 1% of the balls your guys have, we'd have never been in Iraq. THAT would have kept oil prices down.
Mostly because the Democrats promised all sorts legislation on which they couldn't deliver. Again, your party has done a good job of using the Senate rules to keep popular Democratic bills from getting passed. Republicans know most people don't care (or even know) about cloture motions or other arcane parliamentary procedures. All your average person knows is that Democrats promised they'd fix everything the Republicans screwed up and they're not doing it.
I wish they had the balls to say that. The American people need to be told the score without any fluff. The age of cheap oil is over and it's going to take some sacrifice to get our economy switched over to renewables. We can't drill our way out of this even if we wanted to. India and China took our advice and liberalized their economies which made them a competitor for the same oil we are using.
Second.
That is, and I'd hope you agree, completely irrational.
If you were an oil trader and knew that if we started drilling today and that oil wouldn't get used for another 10 years, why in God's name would that affect your bidding on contracts for September delivery?
Not bringing up votes on bills that the Speaker doesn't like is very standard practice and has gone on for decades.
Any bill can be brought to the floor by 1/2 of the House via a discharge petition. Republicans apparently don't have the votes to bring the bill to the floor over the objections of the Speaker.
Oil production comes out, generally speaking in a bell curve. We'd still be on the left-hand side of that curve.
As Jamie pointed out, the DOE has already said that any drilling would have a negligible effect on prices. Ceasing the sabre rattling in Iran would reduce oil prices quite a bit more than new drilling.
We're talking about adding a few drops of water to the ocean here. Oil is a global market and therefore goes to whomever is the highest bidder. Oil prices are going to continue to rise until we can figure out more efficient ways of using it. Of course, most Americans believe having cheap, personal transportation is a birthright, so it's going to be a lot harder to wean us off the idea that a 30-mile commute with no one else in the vehicle is standard.