The US isn't just an example, it's the actual place where the Vermont Yankee plant is located. If you ignore that fact and wrap your argument in idealistic generalities, your argument makes perfect sense. I agree, renewables can work. They work in other places; Germany is farther north than Vermont and manages to get plenty of solar electrical generation capacity. There's no reason to suspect that the United States wouldn't get a significant portion of its electricity from solar. But then you look at the numbers and realize, no, in reality the United States doesn't get a significant portion of its electricity from solar. It could, but it doesn't.
The naive reasoning that you propose just doesn't correspond to reality. If you consider reality to be an excuse, that's fine. But it's still reality, and you're still subject to it just as much as I am. For reasons beyond my comprehension, electrical capacity in this country doesn't come from renewables. It doesn't matter if it can come from renewables if it in fact doesn't.
Now, that's not to say that it won't. But in this case, I feel that past performance is indicative of future results. If you feel that the US will embrace renewables for electrical generation some time in the foreseeable future, I can't conclusively demonstrate to you that it won't. But if I were a gambling man, I'd definitely take the opposite side of that bet. As much as I agree that it could happen, I'm fairly confident that it won't.
That being said, I find it unfortunate that they're shutting down Vermont Yankee without plans in place for a replacement nuclear plant. In a country that gets an overwhelming majority of its electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear power, I fear that it's more likely than not that this shortfall in capacity will be made up with more burning of fossil fuels. As much as it sucks, as much as it makes no sense, as much as it's inexcusable, that's just the reality we find ourselves in.
The collander thing is clearly a faux religion, intended to make a mockery of human tendencies by ironically embracing the very thing it mocks.
A religious parody based upon the mockery of other religions, imo, is small-minded, and does nothing.
If you think Pastafarianism is just small-minded mockery, you're missing the point. It's not intended to be.
The reality is that the US government offers preferential treatment to individuals based on religious beliefs. The DMV has an official "no hats" policy that prohibits headwear of any kind in official drivers license photographs. Naturally, this would mean that Jews have to remove their yarmulkes/kippas, Sikhs have to remove their turbans, and so on. However, that's not what actually happens. Individuals that claim belief in one of the mainstream religions are allowed to break this "no hats" policy on the grounds of religious freedom. Note, professed belief is sufficient; despite being an atheist, I can walk into a DMV and get my license photo taken with a yarmulke with no questions asked. Nobody will grill me about whether or not I'm a legitimate Jew, or if Judaism is a legitimate faith. If the DMV takes the religion-friendly stance of allowing exceptions to the "no hats" policy on the grounds of religious expression, then it legally cannot discriminate between different faiths. If you allow someone to wear a turban in their license photo solely because they claim to be a Sikh, then legally you have no grounds to deny a self-described Pastafarian the right to wear a colander.
If this seems silly or pedantic to you, then I would argue that it is you who are suffering from small-mindedness. Discrimination against atheists is very real, and very widely accepted. Atheists are tired of being second class citizens, and this colander issue is a great way of raising awareness about the issue without "offending" the theists among us (to whatever extent that is possible, since many theists find the very idea of atheism offensive).
I'd say I sidestepped your point more than I missed it; I was just taking the opportunity to spread Green Party awareness.
However, you bring up a good point. Is there, realistically speaking, another alternative when it comes to base load power?
Here's a breakdown of where our electricity came from in 2012.
Coal, gas, and nuclear account for roughly 86% of our electrical production. While it's entirely possible to phase out the 19% we get from nuclear and replace it with renewables, how likely is that to happen, realistically? Renewables made up 5% of our electrical generation last year (roughly 2/3 wind, 1/3 biomass, negligible solar and geothermal). You're talking about increasing that capacity fivefold. Fivefold!
While I think we all agree that real renewables are "better" than nuclear, in the ideal sense, but pragmatists among us do honestly see it as a contest between nuclear and fossil fuels. We're not trying to disingenuously ignore renewables, and we don't see anything inherently wrong with them. We just don't think it's happening, because, well, it's not happening. It could happen, but it's not. Instead, people are burning coal and gas. So while yes, it's true that we could shut down nuke plants and build up wind farms, that's not what's happening. It might happen in Vermont, and that would be great. However, looking at the breakdown detailed above, combined with the ridiculously low prices of natural gas, I can see how some might see that as a bit of a gamble.
While I admit that Vermont might just be hippie enough to swap nuclear for renewables, I think that generally speaking, when a nuke plant closes in this country, that generating capacity is replaced by a fossil fuel burner.
And no, they're not just opposed to old-school nuclear:
We oppose the development and use of new nuclear reactors, plutonium (MOX) fuel, nuclear fuel reprocessing, nuclear fusion, uranium enrichment, and the manufacturing of new plutonium pits for a new generation of nuclear weapons.
So that pretty much rules out fast breeder reactors that would mitigate (if not outright eliminate) nuclear waste storage issues. I still vote for them because they don't accept campaign contributions from corporate persons, but they really do suck ass when it comes to nuclear power.
I'm glad to hear that. Here at EWR, unfortunately, it still looks like the rejects from the McDonalds drive-thru are running the show. Here's to hoping that TSA rolls out non-gangsta employees on the East coast also in the near future (although I'll really miss the irony of getting an enhanced pat-down from someone that looks like he's smuggled his share of contraband).
Regarding the role of the TSA, I agree that their job is to ensure security (in theory, at least), not enforce drug policy. However, unless they're personally checking that there isn't a package of high explosives hidden in the bushel of pot that they're waving through, they're not exactly doing a great job.
I read the fine article, and I came to a different conclusion than you. Just curious: in what was he behaving like a wise-ass punk in front of the scanner and again in front of the pat-down? I thought his behavior was surprisingly calm, and I'd find it challenging to handle myself as well as he did were I to find myself in a similar situation. Thankfully enough, I'm white, so that's unlikely to happen.
I was responding to the claim that a Brit and a Finn have nothing in common beyond treaties between their governments. If you think it is true that a lot of people in Europe share a lot of basic values, then I'd imagine you can see why I take issue with this claim. I, personally, think that people in general share a lot of basic values, regardless of nationality.
Regarding nationalism, a nation is defined as a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory. Nationalism is rooted in the idea of a distinct national identity, in denying commonalities and highlighting differences between people. Nationalism need not be as extreme as claims of national superiority, and claims of mere distinctness are sufficient.
The original claim regarding Brits and Finns was, to me, especially absurd. I feel that a Wall Street banker and a cannibal in Papua New Guinea have more in common than not, so I find it especially absurd that people from relatively similar backgrounds can have "nothing in common" aside from government treaties. This mentality is not new, and it's nearly universal in reach. People are always dying to draw a line between "us" and "them" (both figuratively and literally), whether it makes sense or not.
The idea that a Brit has more in common with a Finn than a collection of treaties their respective governments signed is just wrong.
I know, right? I mean, it's not like they both drink water, breathe air, or have over 99% of their genetic material in common.
Thank you Mr. Nationalism. For fuck's sake, your two European strawmen have the same skin color, read the same books, and worship the same god. But rah rah, everyone is unique, every country is distinct, and every nation is special.
It's called an Explanation of Benefits (EOB). Every insurance company does this, by law.
They're arguing that the data in these EOBs isn't easily accessible. They must be generated by hand on typewriters, I'd imagine.
I still don't see what's stopping them from running these EOBs through a scanner with OCR prior to mailing them out, and then simply tallying the out-of-pocket expenses this way. Something about COBOL and mainframes preventing them from buying a shitty netbook and a consumer-grade optical scanner.
If you voted for Obama or Romney because you honestly thought they best represented your interests, then I fully support you for doing so.
I didn't vote for Ron Paul because, while I felt he would be much better for me, personally, than either of the two major parties' candidates, he still wasn't the candidate that best represented my interests. I voted for Jill Stein simply because I felt confident that she would best represent my interests as a corporeal person, since her party does not accept campaign contributions from corporate sponsors. All this despite the Green party's backwards and irrational anti-nuclear stance.
I'm not saying that I think Jill Stein should have won. Or that Ron Paul should have won. I'm not saying that everyone should vote like me.
I'm saying that people ought to vote for who they think best represents their interests. You didn't vote for Ron Paul not because he was unelectable, but because you didn't feel your interests were best represented by him. Good on you. You suspect the vast majority of the voting public falls into this same category. I suspect that that's entirely possible, but I'm not quite as bold as you. I think it's also possible that the opposite is true. People are quite ignorant in general, but especially so in this country. I'd imagine there's a large number of people that are totally unaware of third party candidates and their platforms, solely because they're unelectable. Why bother learning who Jill Stein is or what the Green party stands for if she's not going to win anyway? Why waste your time studying political issues just to throw away your vote?
People constantly belittling others for voting third party only perpetuates this situation. The reason third party candidates don't get elected is, quite simply, that people don't vote for them. One of the most often repeated explanations for this is that "they have no chance at winning". However, the basis for this claim is that people don't vote for them. If that's not an obvious example of circular reasoning to you, then I'm not sure what else to say.
I don't think people ought to line up and vote for "my candidate". I don't think "my candidate" is right for everyone. I don't think "my candidate" ought to win if the majority of the country feels that he/she wouldn't best represent their interests. I'm not trying to convince people to vote against their interests.
I'm merely pointing out that the two major parties represent the interests of their corporate sponsors, despite their claims that they represent your interests.
In some sense, I agree with your final claim. If everyone that didn't vote for a third party candidate solely because they knew they wouldn't win had instead stood up for their interests and voted third party, it's extremely unlikely (statistically impossible) that a third party candidate would have won anyway. However, it would have resulted in third party candidates getting considerably more exposure in the media. It would have led others to realize that there are alternatives to the two parties currently running the show. It would have galvanized support among the apathetic 42.5% of the voting public that couldn't even be bothered to get off their asses to vote. It would have ended, once and for all, the fictional claim that third party candidates can't get votes.
To be clear, third party candidates can get votes. They don't get votes for countless reasons. One reason is because they don't best represent the interests of voters, which is an entirely valid point. Other reasons are because people don't think they can win, or people don't take them seriously, or people are ignorant of their existence or their platform. These reasons are bullshit, and they stem from the notion that you should take your expectations of how other people will vote into consideration when you head to the polls, instead of focusing on yourself and how your candidate of choice will serve you.
You see that word "if" at the start of the statement you're quoting?
I didn't think I needed to explicitly add:
"But they don't. So it's not."
You seem to have a defiant attitude here, but I'm not actually seeing you disagree with anything I've said. I understand that in reality people do vote based on how they expect everyone else to vote, for the most part. I never claimed otherwise. I'm saying that such behavior results in voting that doesn't accurately reflect the will of the people and almost defeats the point of having elections. I'm lamenting the fact that this is the case. You don't need to "correct me" by telling me that people vote based on their perception of others. That's something we both agree is happening. The only difference is that you're okay with it, and I'm complaining about it.
Also, I'd like to add that in the 2012 election, a third party could have claimed up to 42.5% of the total vote without taking a single vote from any other party, since your two favorite parties agree that turnout was somewhere around 57.5%.
You're oversimplifying things, while at the same time expanding the discussion to include irrelevant points.
With polls, for instance, the public is more likely to indicate support for a person who is described by the operator as one of the "leading candidates". There's no reason to suspect that this increased support stems from actually hearing the words "leading candidate" spoken orally. It wouldn't be much of a leap of logic to suspect that, in general, people are more likely to support a person who is believed to be a leading candidate. This seems to support my position more than it supports yours, in that it would explain why people are reluctant to support (either in polls or in actual elections) a candidate that is not perceived to be "leading". This is consistent with your own position, even.
If people voted for their own preferences instead of concerning themselves with how other people will vote (which is all you're doing when you bring up whether or not someone has any realistic hope of winning), the world would be a better place. But, from what I understand, that might let the wrong lizard win.
Without ranked voting, a vote for a 3rd party candidate is effectively a vote against BOTH established parties.
If you ask me, that's the only moral course of action available.
Unless, of course, you've fallen for the illusion that the republicrats are actually two substantially different parties, and that one of them has your interests at heart.
I'm a myFitnessPal user as well, and I'm very much in the same boat that you're in.
Very rarely did the barcode feature come in handy, and entering meals made from scratch is rather annoying.
You have to look up each ingredient in myFitnessPal's database and enter in the quantity manually. Unless, of course, you prefer to simply create a new entry in their database for whatever food/ingredient you're working with. It's a bit cumbersome when you just want to know the stats for an avocado and myFitnessPal has 20 different entries for avocado, some wildly different than others (for the same serving size).
When you're in this situation, things can go one of three ways:
1) You stop using myFitnessPal because it's annoying and time consuming.
2) You keep using myFitnessPal and spend a lot of time itemizing your diet.
3) You keep using myFitnessPal and end up discovering some surprisingly low-calorie nutritious meals that are actually delicious, which you find yourself making very regularly
My own experience was a bit of 2) followed by mostly 3). I prefer deliciousness over variety, so I eat a variant of BLT for dinner almost every day. Since I eat it so regularly, it's already in my myFitnessPal cache, and re-entering it is only a couple taps on my phone. Of course entering it for the first time was a huge chore, but now it really isn't that bad at all.
Basically, if what you ate yesterday is what you frequently eat, myFitnessPal will only steal an hour of your life once. All subsequent days with these meals will only take you a minute or two to log. If, on the other hand, your diet varies quite a bit, you'll likely find little use for myFitnessPal unless you're truly obsessed with your health or you have a life with lots and lots and lots of leisure time.
For me, it works. It really opened my eyes to problem areas in my diet (who knew Dogfish Head IPAs had so many god damn calories?!) and helped me identify meals that I really enjoy that are exceptionally nutritious and low in calories. It allowed me to target some low-hanging fruit and lose 20 pounds in 6 months. I've since stopped using it, but have taken away a number of lessons in staying healthy.
According to wikipedia, economic mobility is the ability of an individual, family or some other group to improve (or lower) their economic status—usually measured in income. Economic mobility is often measured by movement between income quintiles. Economic mobility may be considered a type of social mobility, which is often measured in change in income.
Of particular interest to you would be the section that claims:
In recent years several large studies have found that vertical inter-generational mobility is lower in the United States than in most developed countries.[11] A 1996 paper by Daniel P. McMurrer, Isabel V. Sawhill found "mobility rates seem to be quite similar across countries."[12] However a more recent paper (2007) found a person's parents is a great deal more predictive of their own income in the United States than other countries.[5] The United States had about 1/3 the ratio of mobility of Denmark and less than half that of Canada, Finland and Norway.[1] France, Germany, Sweden, also had higher mobility, with only the United Kingdom being less mobile.[1]
Economic mobility in developing nations (such as those in Africa) is thought to be limited by both historical and global economic factors.[13] Economic mobility is everywere correlated with income and wealth inequality.[14][15]
Don't worry, this small blurb is peppered with no fewer than five citations. We're anxiously awaiting your "lots of examples", as long as they're not anecdotes like "my cousin Jeb won the lottery."
I would not want to live in your world, where apparently there is no distinction between law and corruption (or at least, no preference on your part?)
I don't see passage of ex post facto legislation that remedies the disparity in wealth distribution as "corruption", but I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree there.
So you want more of our underclass in prison or growing up in a slum with no father at home, more foreigners being blown to bits abroad, and more analysts trawling through databases gathered without warrant? Glad we got that out of the way then. It seems we just disagree on fundamentals.
Because those are the only things funded by the federal government. I'm glad we're having an earnest discussion here, and not resorting to disingenuous rhetoric.
Can you truly be so dense or are you just trolling? A rich person has no need of income because they have wealth. If you tax income they will simply quit paying themselves so much.
Why will rich people simply quit paying themselves so much? For that matter, why are they currently paying themselves so much? You seem to be contradicting yourself, saying simultaneously that the wealthy don't need income, but that they choose to have income nonetheless, but would choose to forego income simply to avoid funding the society they live in. Perhaps you're right, and the wealthy are indeed paying themselves but not receiving any income. Perhaps you're right, and the wealthy have no need of income because either they have infinite wealth that they can keep spending without ever exhausting, or they simply have zero spending. Perhaps you're right, and contradiction is no longer a valid form of logical proof.
So you expect the instruments of force which the super-elites control, to act forcefully and violently against them? Breathtaking.
The super-elites controlled the instruments of force in 18th century France as well. The ensuing revolution was indeed breathtaking.
History shows that the ones hanging from lampposts are the wealthy that insist on leeching every last penny from their host societies, not the poor that inevitably tire of the starvation and misery.
In any case, you seem to be admitting that you'd deny the government money just for the sake of denying the government money. Phrased another way, if someone were to offer to simply write the IRS a check for some sum of money simply as a charity, you'd try to talk them out of it. Perhaps you get your jollies by denying others some wealth, but I have faith that you're not representative of mankind as a whole.
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The US isn't just an example, it's the actual place where the Vermont Yankee plant is located. If you ignore that fact and wrap your argument in idealistic generalities, your argument makes perfect sense. I agree, renewables can work. They work in other places; Germany is farther north than Vermont and manages to get plenty of solar electrical generation capacity. There's no reason to suspect that the United States wouldn't get a significant portion of its electricity from solar. But then you look at the numbers and realize, no, in reality the United States doesn't get a significant portion of its electricity from solar. It could, but it doesn't.
The naive reasoning that you propose just doesn't correspond to reality. If you consider reality to be an excuse, that's fine. But it's still reality, and you're still subject to it just as much as I am. For reasons beyond my comprehension, electrical capacity in this country doesn't come from renewables. It doesn't matter if it can come from renewables if it in fact doesn't.
Now, that's not to say that it won't. But in this case, I feel that past performance is indicative of future results. If you feel that the US will embrace renewables for electrical generation some time in the foreseeable future, I can't conclusively demonstrate to you that it won't. But if I were a gambling man, I'd definitely take the opposite side of that bet. As much as I agree that it could happen, I'm fairly confident that it won't.
That being said, I find it unfortunate that they're shutting down Vermont Yankee without plans in place for a replacement nuclear plant. In a country that gets an overwhelming majority of its electricity from fossil fuels and nuclear power, I fear that it's more likely than not that this shortfall in capacity will be made up with more burning of fossil fuels. As much as it sucks, as much as it makes no sense, as much as it's inexcusable, that's just the reality we find ourselves in.
The collander thing is clearly a faux religion, intended to make a mockery of human tendencies by ironically embracing the very thing it mocks. A religious parody based upon the mockery of other religions, imo, is small-minded, and does nothing.
If you think Pastafarianism is just small-minded mockery, you're missing the point. It's not intended to be.
The reality is that the US government offers preferential treatment to individuals based on religious beliefs. The DMV has an official "no hats" policy that prohibits headwear of any kind in official drivers license photographs. Naturally, this would mean that Jews have to remove their yarmulkes/kippas, Sikhs have to remove their turbans, and so on. However, that's not what actually happens. Individuals that claim belief in one of the mainstream religions are allowed to break this "no hats" policy on the grounds of religious freedom. Note, professed belief is sufficient; despite being an atheist, I can walk into a DMV and get my license photo taken with a yarmulke with no questions asked. Nobody will grill me about whether or not I'm a legitimate Jew, or if Judaism is a legitimate faith. If the DMV takes the religion-friendly stance of allowing exceptions to the "no hats" policy on the grounds of religious expression, then it legally cannot discriminate between different faiths. If you allow someone to wear a turban in their license photo solely because they claim to be a Sikh, then legally you have no grounds to deny a self-described Pastafarian the right to wear a colander.
If this seems silly or pedantic to you, then I would argue that it is you who are suffering from small-mindedness. Discrimination against atheists is very real, and very widely accepted. Atheists are tired of being second class citizens, and this colander issue is a great way of raising awareness about the issue without "offending" the theists among us (to whatever extent that is possible, since many theists find the very idea of atheism offensive).
I'd say I sidestepped your point more than I missed it; I was just taking the opportunity to spread Green Party awareness.
However, you bring up a good point. Is there, realistically speaking, another alternative when it comes to base load power?
Here's a breakdown of where our electricity came from in 2012.
Coal, gas, and nuclear account for roughly 86% of our electrical production. While it's entirely possible to phase out the 19% we get from nuclear and replace it with renewables, how likely is that to happen, realistically? Renewables made up 5% of our electrical generation last year (roughly 2/3 wind, 1/3 biomass, negligible solar and geothermal). You're talking about increasing that capacity fivefold. Fivefold!
While I think we all agree that real renewables are "better" than nuclear, in the ideal sense, but pragmatists among us do honestly see it as a contest between nuclear and fossil fuels. We're not trying to disingenuously ignore renewables, and we don't see anything inherently wrong with them. We just don't think it's happening, because, well, it's not happening. It could happen, but it's not. Instead, people are burning coal and gas. So while yes, it's true that we could shut down nuke plants and build up wind farms, that's not what's happening. It might happen in Vermont, and that would be great. However, looking at the breakdown detailed above, combined with the ridiculously low prices of natural gas, I can see how some might see that as a bit of a gamble.
While I admit that Vermont might just be hippie enough to swap nuclear for renewables, I think that generally speaking, when a nuke plant closes in this country, that generating capacity is replaced by a fossil fuel burner.
And no, they're not just opposed to old-school nuclear:
We oppose the development and use of new nuclear reactors, plutonium (MOX) fuel, nuclear fuel reprocessing, nuclear fusion, uranium enrichment, and the manufacturing of new plutonium pits for a new generation of nuclear weapons.
So that pretty much rules out fast breeder reactors that would mitigate (if not outright eliminate) nuclear waste storage issues. I still vote for them because they don't accept campaign contributions from corporate persons, but they really do suck ass when it comes to nuclear power.
I'm glad to hear that. Here at EWR, unfortunately, it still looks like the rejects from the McDonalds drive-thru are running the show. Here's to hoping that TSA rolls out non-gangsta employees on the East coast also in the near future (although I'll really miss the irony of getting an enhanced pat-down from someone that looks like he's smuggled his share of contraband).
Regarding the role of the TSA, I agree that their job is to ensure security (in theory, at least), not enforce drug policy. However, unless they're personally checking that there isn't a package of high explosives hidden in the bushel of pot that they're waving through, they're not exactly doing a great job.
There are those who would argue that your country has an existential threat and a power-hungry government.
I read the fine article, and I came to a different conclusion than you. Just curious: in what was he behaving like a wise-ass punk in front of the scanner and again in front of the pat-down? I thought his behavior was surprisingly calm, and I'd find it challenging to handle myself as well as he did were I to find myself in a similar situation. Thankfully enough, I'm white, so that's unlikely to happen.
So you're saying these four TSA agents at LAX are not representative of the others?
I was responding to the claim that a Brit and a Finn have nothing in common beyond treaties between their governments. If you think it is true that a lot of people in Europe share a lot of basic values, then I'd imagine you can see why I take issue with this claim. I, personally, think that people in general share a lot of basic values, regardless of nationality.
Regarding nationalism, a nation is defined as a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory. Nationalism is rooted in the idea of a distinct national identity, in denying commonalities and highlighting differences between people. Nationalism need not be as extreme as claims of national superiority, and claims of mere distinctness are sufficient.
The original claim regarding Brits and Finns was, to me, especially absurd. I feel that a Wall Street banker and a cannibal in Papua New Guinea have more in common than not, so I find it especially absurd that people from relatively similar backgrounds can have "nothing in common" aside from government treaties. This mentality is not new, and it's nearly universal in reach. People are always dying to draw a line between "us" and "them" (both figuratively and literally), whether it makes sense or not.
The idea that a Brit has more in common with a Finn than a collection of treaties their respective governments signed is just wrong.
I know, right? I mean, it's not like they both drink water, breathe air, or have over 99% of their genetic material in common.
Thank you Mr. Nationalism. For fuck's sake, your two European strawmen have the same skin color, read the same books, and worship the same god. But rah rah, everyone is unique, every country is distinct, and every nation is special.
In his defense, he did balance out all the run-ons with the fragment "Wanting to leave a legacy and not to be a burden on the state."
Nitpicking aside, it was a good post. You don't see heartfelt ramblings about love on slashdot very often.
And company stores for those who want to avoid leaving the corporate campus entirely.
It's called an Explanation of Benefits (EOB). Every insurance company does this, by law.
They're arguing that the data in these EOBs isn't easily accessible. They must be generated by hand on typewriters, I'd imagine.
I still don't see what's stopping them from running these EOBs through a scanner with OCR prior to mailing them out, and then simply tallying the out-of-pocket expenses this way. Something about COBOL and mainframes preventing them from buying a shitty netbook and a consumer-grade optical scanner.
If you voted for Obama or Romney because you honestly thought they best represented your interests, then I fully support you for doing so.
I didn't vote for Ron Paul because, while I felt he would be much better for me, personally, than either of the two major parties' candidates, he still wasn't the candidate that best represented my interests. I voted for Jill Stein simply because I felt confident that she would best represent my interests as a corporeal person, since her party does not accept campaign contributions from corporate sponsors. All this despite the Green party's backwards and irrational anti-nuclear stance.
I'm not saying that I think Jill Stein should have won. Or that Ron Paul should have won. I'm not saying that everyone should vote like me.
I'm saying that people ought to vote for who they think best represents their interests. You didn't vote for Ron Paul not because he was unelectable, but because you didn't feel your interests were best represented by him. Good on you. You suspect the vast majority of the voting public falls into this same category. I suspect that that's entirely possible, but I'm not quite as bold as you. I think it's also possible that the opposite is true. People are quite ignorant in general, but especially so in this country. I'd imagine there's a large number of people that are totally unaware of third party candidates and their platforms, solely because they're unelectable. Why bother learning who Jill Stein is or what the Green party stands for if she's not going to win anyway? Why waste your time studying political issues just to throw away your vote?
People constantly belittling others for voting third party only perpetuates this situation. The reason third party candidates don't get elected is, quite simply, that people don't vote for them. One of the most often repeated explanations for this is that "they have no chance at winning". However, the basis for this claim is that people don't vote for them. If that's not an obvious example of circular reasoning to you, then I'm not sure what else to say.
I don't think people ought to line up and vote for "my candidate". I don't think "my candidate" is right for everyone. I don't think "my candidate" ought to win if the majority of the country feels that he/she wouldn't best represent their interests. I'm not trying to convince people to vote against their interests.
I'm merely pointing out that the two major parties represent the interests of their corporate sponsors, despite their claims that they represent your interests.
In some sense, I agree with your final claim. If everyone that didn't vote for a third party candidate solely because they knew they wouldn't win had instead stood up for their interests and voted third party, it's extremely unlikely (statistically impossible) that a third party candidate would have won anyway. However, it would have resulted in third party candidates getting considerably more exposure in the media. It would have led others to realize that there are alternatives to the two parties currently running the show. It would have galvanized support among the apathetic 42.5% of the voting public that couldn't even be bothered to get off their asses to vote. It would have ended, once and for all, the fictional claim that third party candidates can't get votes.
To be clear, third party candidates can get votes. They don't get votes for countless reasons. One reason is because they don't best represent the interests of voters, which is an entirely valid point. Other reasons are because people don't think they can win, or people don't take them seriously, or people are ignorant of their existence or their platform. These reasons are bullshit, and they stem from the notion that you should take your expectations of how other people will vote into consideration when you head to the polls, instead of focusing on yourself and how your candidate of choice will serve you.
You see that word "if" at the start of the statement you're quoting?
I didn't think I needed to explicitly add:
"But they don't. So it's not."
You seem to have a defiant attitude here, but I'm not actually seeing you disagree with anything I've said. I understand that in reality people do vote based on how they expect everyone else to vote, for the most part. I never claimed otherwise. I'm saying that such behavior results in voting that doesn't accurately reflect the will of the people and almost defeats the point of having elections. I'm lamenting the fact that this is the case. You don't need to "correct me" by telling me that people vote based on their perception of others. That's something we both agree is happening. The only difference is that you're okay with it, and I'm complaining about it.
Also, I'd like to add that in the 2012 election, a third party could have claimed up to 42.5% of the total vote without taking a single vote from any other party, since your two favorite parties agree that turnout was somewhere around 57.5%.
You're oversimplifying things, while at the same time expanding the discussion to include irrelevant points.
With polls, for instance, the public is more likely to indicate support for a person who is described by the operator as one of the "leading candidates". There's no reason to suspect that this increased support stems from actually hearing the words "leading candidate" spoken orally. It wouldn't be much of a leap of logic to suspect that, in general, people are more likely to support a person who is believed to be a leading candidate. This seems to support my position more than it supports yours, in that it would explain why people are reluctant to support (either in polls or in actual elections) a candidate that is not perceived to be "leading". This is consistent with your own position, even.
If people voted for their own preferences instead of concerning themselves with how other people will vote (which is all you're doing when you bring up whether or not someone has any realistic hope of winning), the world would be a better place. But, from what I understand, that might let the wrong lizard win.
Whose votes? Surely you're not suggesting that your individual vote will sway other voters.
Your statement only holds true if you were otherwise going to vote for continued corporate control of our government.
Were you? If so, why?
How the fuck is this insightful?
Without ranked voting, a vote for a 3rd party candidate is effectively a vote against BOTH established parties.
If you ask me, that's the only moral course of action available.
Unless, of course, you've fallen for the illusion that the republicrats are actually two substantially different parties, and that one of them has your interests at heart.
The only reason the distant third candidate has no realistic hope of winning is due to you, personally, and people that share your mentality.
I hope you're satisfied with choosing between two sides of the same coin.
I'm a myFitnessPal user as well, and I'm very much in the same boat that you're in.
Very rarely did the barcode feature come in handy, and entering meals made from scratch is rather annoying.
You have to look up each ingredient in myFitnessPal's database and enter in the quantity manually. Unless, of course, you prefer to simply create a new entry in their database for whatever food/ingredient you're working with. It's a bit cumbersome when you just want to know the stats for an avocado and myFitnessPal has 20 different entries for avocado, some wildly different than others (for the same serving size).
When you're in this situation, things can go one of three ways:
1) You stop using myFitnessPal because it's annoying and time consuming.
2) You keep using myFitnessPal and spend a lot of time itemizing your diet.
3) You keep using myFitnessPal and end up discovering some surprisingly low-calorie nutritious meals that are actually delicious, which you find yourself making very regularly
My own experience was a bit of 2) followed by mostly 3). I prefer deliciousness over variety, so I eat a variant of BLT for dinner almost every day. Since I eat it so regularly, it's already in my myFitnessPal cache, and re-entering it is only a couple taps on my phone. Of course entering it for the first time was a huge chore, but now it really isn't that bad at all.
Basically, if what you ate yesterday is what you frequently eat, myFitnessPal will only steal an hour of your life once. All subsequent days with these meals will only take you a minute or two to log. If, on the other hand, your diet varies quite a bit, you'll likely find little use for myFitnessPal unless you're truly obsessed with your health or you have a life with lots and lots and lots of leisure time.
For me, it works. It really opened my eyes to problem areas in my diet (who knew Dogfish Head IPAs had so many god damn calories?!) and helped me identify meals that I really enjoy that are exceptionally nutritious and low in calories. It allowed me to target some low-hanging fruit and lose 20 pounds in 6 months. I've since stopped using it, but have taken away a number of lessons in staying healthy.
Of particular interest to you would be the section that claims:
In recent years several large studies have found that vertical inter-generational mobility is lower in the United States than in most developed countries.[11] A 1996 paper by Daniel P. McMurrer, Isabel V. Sawhill found "mobility rates seem to be quite similar across countries."[12] However a more recent paper (2007) found a person's parents is a great deal more predictive of their own income in the United States than other countries.[5] The United States had about 1/3 the ratio of mobility of Denmark and less than half that of Canada, Finland and Norway.[1] France, Germany, Sweden, also had higher mobility, with only the United Kingdom being less mobile.[1] Economic mobility in developing nations (such as those in Africa) is thought to be limited by both historical and global economic factors.[13] Economic mobility is everywere correlated with income and wealth inequality.[14][15]
Don't worry, this small blurb is peppered with no fewer than five citations. We're anxiously awaiting your "lots of examples", as long as they're not anecdotes like "my cousin Jeb won the lottery."
I like my women like I like my whiskey -- 12 years old and mixed up with coke.
I would not want to live in your world, where apparently there is no distinction between law and corruption (or at least, no preference on your part?)
I don't see passage of ex post facto legislation that remedies the disparity in wealth distribution as "corruption", but I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree there.
So you want more of our underclass in prison or growing up in a slum with no father at home, more foreigners being blown to bits abroad, and more analysts trawling through databases gathered without warrant? Glad we got that out of the way then. It seems we just disagree on fundamentals.
Because those are the only things funded by the federal government. I'm glad we're having an earnest discussion here, and not resorting to disingenuous rhetoric.
Can you truly be so dense or are you just trolling? A rich person has no need of income because they have wealth. If you tax income they will simply quit paying themselves so much.
Why will rich people simply quit paying themselves so much? For that matter, why are they currently paying themselves so much? You seem to be contradicting yourself, saying simultaneously that the wealthy don't need income, but that they choose to have income nonetheless, but would choose to forego income simply to avoid funding the society they live in. Perhaps you're right, and the wealthy are indeed paying themselves but not receiving any income. Perhaps you're right, and the wealthy have no need of income because either they have infinite wealth that they can keep spending without ever exhausting, or they simply have zero spending. Perhaps you're right, and contradiction is no longer a valid form of logical proof.
So you expect the instruments of force which the super-elites control, to act forcefully and violently against them? Breathtaking.
The super-elites controlled the instruments of force in 18th century France as well. The ensuing revolution was indeed breathtaking.
History shows that the ones hanging from lampposts are the wealthy that insist on leeching every last penny from their host societies, not the poor that inevitably tire of the starvation and misery.
In any case, you seem to be admitting that you'd deny the government money just for the sake of denying the government money. Phrased another way, if someone were to offer to simply write the IRS a check for some sum of money simply as a charity, you'd try to talk them out of it. Perhaps you get your jollies by denying others some wealth, but I have faith that you're not representative of mankind as a whole.