The US electoral system inherently favours a two-party system. Don't like it? Push for electoral reform.
Really? With 50 separate states you should be able to start local parties such as "The Texas Independence party" or "The New York First party" etc. elected to local city and state level legislatures it may take 5 to 10 years, but getting smallish local parties elected to local government and then (eventually, maybe another 5 to 10 years) to state government looks feasible. Once such a party has established itself in a particular state, then perhaps the people of the state would trust them enough to put them in congress.
The reason I suggest this is because it happens here in the UK, we have both Scots and Welsh Nationalists in Parliament (in Northern Ireland they have their own parties for other reasons). Indeed, in close votes the they can hold the balance of power. Labour relied on the votes of a Northern Irish party with 9 seats to get 42 days detention without trial through the commons* despite having won an overall majority of 64 at the last general election.
Of course the way a third party could form at federal level very quickly was if some existing members of congress just decided to form a new party. This has also happened here in the form of the "gang of four" creating the Social democrat party.
Finally my lazy fellow Australians will get off their bums and implement SSL on their websites, like I already have.
Please CmdrTaco, can you set slashdot up so it actually responds to an https request with something that is encrypted? Sites such as wikipedia, wikileaks and technocrat already do it, why not slashdot?
I seem to be able to get https access to/. However it might be a subscriber only feature; Not that I use it much.
I didn't say "no taxes", so that is a lie and mis characterization of anything I believe.
I also didn't say "no laws" either. Again, a lie and a mis-characterization of anything I believe.
If I mis-characterised what you meant, then I apologise. However you dis say "INCOME REDISTRIBUTION is STEALING". By definition, taxes redistribute income and so to me, you implied that taxes were "stealing". I assume that you don't condone theft of any sort.
And Somalia is no different than Washington DC now, the Robber Barons and thugs run things.
I'm not American, nor do I particularly like the current American government but until you have every petty thug and warlord for themselves and whilst the rule of law remains in place consider yourself much better off than you would be in Somalia.
Paradise for me would be if everyone stayed out of MY business and my pocketbook. The moment you're interested in MY business, you give me permission to check everything about your business. And the moment you think you have rights to my pocketbook (see 5th Amendment), then I have rights to yours.
That is the problem with liberals, they want it applied to everyone ELSE.
I too wish for a smaller government, indeed that's what I thought liberalism was all about. How it became a smear word, I don't know. But you seemed to go further and appeared to call for the abolition of taxation. That I could not agree with; I'm a liberal in the classic sense, not an anarcho-capitalist. Indeed (probably because I'm British), my American counterparts would probably label me socialist as I believe heathcare and education are services as essential as the police and fire brigade*, so deserve to be funded out of general taxation.
*sick, uneducated workers are not conducive to a working economy.
Fine. You stop paying taxes, and we'll stop you using anything that they've paid for. You can say goodbye to using the roads, police force and firefighters to start with, you won't be able to call for help from anyone else either, both the Internet and telephone system were either started up by government funds, or at the very least have had significant government investment. Hell I'll pay for your one way ticket to Somalia, there's no taxes or laws there. It should be paradise for you.
And a vote for Obama is a vote for socialism to the extreme.
I think that you'll find that Obama is centre right; these are socialists. Besides it seems to me that when you have a president as far to the right as GWB nationalising your banking system, the left would sit back and watch happily, not campaign on a slogan of "change".
Or (here in the UK) for purchasing anything over the value of £100, as if said purchase is in any way faulty the credit card company is just as liable as the retailer and\or manufacturer. Buy a broken computer\fridge\TV etc.? Sue the credit card company for your money back, and let them find out who was at fault for the broken goods, it's not your problem (Yay for British consumer protection laws).
It's the same the world over, the only part of government that does it's job well is the one the citizens wish would fail miserably.
Seriously, the IRS, or HMRC here in the UK, would track down Osama bin laden if owed them a penny. Unfortunately, it seems he must file his tax returns on time...
Debating whether to commit a crime or not is almost immoral in itself.
Surely that depends on the law you are breaking. If the law is immoral or unethical, then it would be immoral not to at least debate breaking it (I'm not saying that is the case here; just being a pedant).
Obama is "US liberal". From his views, he would seem to be a bit right of the Canadian conservative party. Our liberal party probably falls into "pinko commies" on the US spectrum and the NDP likely falls clear off the left edge.
I heard this quote on the radio the other day: "in the US congress, Socialist is an insult, in the European Parliament it's the name of the second biggest grouping"
I think that neatly sums up how far to the right the US center ground is compared to Europe & Canada.
I don't like speed limits. I'm perfectly capable of safely driving at a speed that exceeds the limits that government has set. Yet, because some people can't handle it, I have to drive at posted speeds!
To be a pedant for a moment, speed limits aren't there because some people "can't handle" higher speeds, they're there so that if you hit someone (even if it's their fault) you're less lightly to kill them. At least that's the rational(sp?) here in the UK.
Evolution, on the other hand, to arrive at an interpretation that supports evolution, can only get there by starting with a bias: namely, a non-theistic worldview.
Here you are wrong, I have holy scripture that can beinterprited to support evolution. It just so happens that it's a different religion that yours. The Wikipedia article is a good place to start if you want a broader view on how Hinduism sits with evolution.
I don't know how much of this really works the way he described it, but this seems to be a very good reason to introduce id cards...
The National ID register is going to cost (IIRC) 4.5 billion pounds at the governments estimate. The LSE estimates 19 Billion. The type of fraud you describe actually makes up the smallest proportion of benefit fraud that the UK suffers from, most of it is just done by people lying. If they are trying to stop that form of benefit fraud with these cards, they have chosen the least cost effective way of doing so, and this card gives no other benefits that I can see.
full disclosure: I'm a fully paid up member of no2id
I agree, that's why I (as explained in my previous post) use a 2 dimensional representation, using one dimension for economics and the second for social issues. It still doesn't cover everything, but works much better than simple left\right. Follow the link in my previous post for more details on how it works.
I like to think of left\right issues in purely economic terms; social issues etc. I think of on an authoritarian\libertarian scale. I copied the idea from thePolitical compass.
1 A shuttle mission costs about $450M. If India can get to the moon for $7.7M we should outsource the whole space program
2 Question: It India rigged this for sub-orbital flight would in be able to carry a nuclear payload? Do we need to be (re)starting the cold war on THREE fronts? Russia, China (also launching) and now India.
Firstly, as about a million posts have pointed out it's closer to $77 not $7.7. Secondly, India is a parliamentary democracy and long term rival of China, if anything we* should support and bolster their efforts as a counterweight to the Chinese.
*By we I mean the West in general; also full disclosure, although I was born in the UK my ancestry is Indian, so I may have personal biases.
I live in the UK; I can assure you that he's actually a centrist, It's just that centre ground of US politics is so far to the right (compared to global politics), that anyone who expresses even the mildest left leaning thoughts is labeled a socialist over there. When he starts campaigning for nationalisation of major industries, then he'll be a socialist.
It's not "interfering" in US internal affairs, but self-preservation. What happens in the USA has a direct impact on my wallet.
Yes, and I'm sure YOU would be oh-so-receptive to those in the US trying to influence British politics... after all, your economy has an effect on our wallets as well.
Actually, if an American\German\French\Russian etc. person suggested that I vote Tory\Labour\Lib-dem, I'd take their views on board just as much as I would take on board those of another Brit; infact probably more so because afterall, most people here vote for a political party just because their families always have, somone from another country taking an interest probably has a better grip of the issues than somone who'd vote for a sheep with a red\blue\yellow rosette.
Of course it doesn't help that my own government has also mismanaged what little power it had, but I'm not taking the blame for mistakes made by the American electorate.
Your government, and private company had a lot more power than you give them credit for. You didn't have to keep your stocks in US banks while all this was going on. Your banks didn't have to go and buy up sub-prime debt.
Most of my money hasn't been in US stocks; however every market in the world has fallen, UK, Europe and Asia have all gone down as well; and actually, they did "have" to buy sub-prime debt, as it was split up and sold mixed up with AAA debt. No one realised that they were buying sub-prime until it was too late. That's the whole problem, we still don't know where the sub-prime debt is, so no one's lending to anyone just in case they don't get their money back. All because US banks thought it'd be a good idea to lend to people with no money (afterall, house prices never go down...).
In many ways I agree with what you've posted, however I live in the UK; you've probably heard the saying "when the US sneezes, the world catches a cold". Well what do you think happens to us when the US has 'flu?
Of course it doesn't help that my own government has also mismanaged what little power it had, but I'm not taking the blame for mistakes made by the American electorate.
Now do some of the more insular slashdotters out there understand why the rest of the world has an opinion on who should be the next president? It's not "interfering" in US internal affairs, but self-preservation. What happens in the USA has a direct impact on my wallet. I've seen parts of my savings shrink* because of US subprime mortgages. Thanks for the great choice of presidents\congresses guys.
/end rant
*having said that; if you've got cash, now's a good time to buy if you can afford to wait a year or two to get profits.
Tell that to Darwin, who the Anglican Church just now apologized to. Where were the critics that said "science is compatible with religion and spirituality" when the fathers of modern science were all discredited or killed for their beliefs
Or perhaps tell that to the farther of modern genetics, Gregor mendel. Oh, wait! He was a religious man, a priest, no less. Science and religion can easily live side by side, and have done for hundreds of years.
Slashdot Mirror
The US electoral system inherently favours a two-party system. Don't like it? Push for electoral reform.
Really? With 50 separate states you should be able to start local parties such as "The Texas Independence party" or "The New York First party" etc. elected to local city and state level legislatures it may take 5 to 10 years, but getting smallish local parties elected to local government and then (eventually, maybe another 5 to 10 years) to state government looks feasible. Once such a party has established itself in a particular state, then perhaps the people of the state would trust them enough to put them in congress.
The reason I suggest this is because it happens here in the UK, we have both Scots and Welsh Nationalists in Parliament (in Northern Ireland they have their own parties for other reasons). Indeed, in close votes the they can hold the balance of power. Labour relied on the votes of a Northern Irish party with 9 seats to get 42 days detention without trial through the commons* despite having won an overall majority of 64 at the last general election.
Of course the way a third party could form at federal level very quickly was if some existing members of congress just decided to form a new party. This has also happened here in the form of the "gang of four" creating the Social democrat party.
Finally my lazy fellow Australians will get off their bums and implement SSL on their websites, like I already have.
Please CmdrTaco, can you set slashdot up so it actually responds to an https request with something that is encrypted? Sites such as wikipedia, wikileaks and technocrat already do it, why not slashdot?
I seem to be able to get https access to /. However it might be a subscriber only feature; Not that I use it much.
I didn't say "no taxes", so that is a lie and mis characterization of anything I believe.
I also didn't say "no laws" either. Again, a lie and a mis-characterization of anything I believe.
If I mis-characterised what you meant, then I apologise. However you dis say "INCOME REDISTRIBUTION is STEALING". By definition, taxes redistribute income and so to me, you implied that taxes were "stealing". I assume that you don't condone theft of any sort.
And Somalia is no different than Washington DC now, the Robber Barons and thugs run things.
I'm not American, nor do I particularly like the current American government but until you have every petty thug and warlord for themselves and whilst the rule of law remains in place consider yourself much better off than you would be in Somalia.
Paradise for me would be if everyone stayed out of MY business and my pocketbook. The moment you're interested in MY business, you give me permission to check everything about your business. And the moment you think you have rights to my pocketbook (see 5th Amendment), then I have rights to yours.
That is the problem with liberals, they want it applied to everyone ELSE.
I too wish for a smaller government, indeed that's what I thought liberalism was all about. How it became a smear word, I don't know. But you seemed to go further and appeared to call for the abolition of taxation. That I could not agree with; I'm a liberal in the classic sense, not an anarcho-capitalist. Indeed (probably because I'm British), my American counterparts would probably label me socialist as I believe heathcare and education are services as essential as the police and fire brigade*, so deserve to be funded out of general taxation.
*sick, uneducated workers are not conducive to a working economy.
INCOME REDISTRIBUTION is STEALING,
Fine. You stop paying taxes, and we'll stop you using anything that they've paid for. You can say goodbye to using the roads, police force and firefighters to start with, you won't be able to call for help from anyone else either, both the Internet and telephone system were either started up by government funds, or at the very least have had significant government investment. Hell I'll pay for your one way ticket to Somalia, there's no taxes or laws there. It should be paradise for you.
And a vote for Obama is a vote for socialism to the extreme.
I think that you'll find that Obama is centre right; these are socialists. Besides it seems to me that when you have a president as far to the right as GWB nationalising your banking system, the left would sit back and watch happily, not campaign on a slogan of "change".
Or (here in the UK) for purchasing anything over the value of £100, as if said purchase is in any way faulty the credit card company is just as liable as the retailer and\or manufacturer. Buy a broken computer\fridge\TV etc.? Sue the credit card company for your money back, and let them find out who was at fault for the broken goods, it's not your problem (Yay for British consumer protection laws).
It's the same the world over, the only part of government that does it's job well is the one the citizens wish would fail miserably.
Seriously, the IRS, or HMRC here in the UK, would track down Osama bin laden if owed them a penny. Unfortunately, it seems he must file his tax returns on time...
Debating whether to commit a crime or not is almost immoral in itself.
Surely that depends on the law you are breaking. If the law is immoral or unethical, then it would be immoral not to at least debate breaking it (I'm not saying that is the case here; just being a pedant).
Obama is "US liberal". From his views, he would seem to be a bit right of the Canadian conservative party. Our liberal party probably falls into "pinko commies" on the US spectrum and the NDP likely falls clear off the left edge.
I heard this quote on the radio the other day: "in the US congress, Socialist is an insult, in the European Parliament it's the name of the second biggest grouping"
I think that neatly sums up how far to the right the US center ground is compared to Europe & Canada.
I think you've been whooooooshed
PS. I'm not even American and I know that NPR is national public radio.
I don't like speed limits. I'm perfectly capable of safely driving at a speed that exceeds the limits that government has set. Yet, because some people can't handle it, I have to drive at posted speeds!
To be a pedant for a moment, speed limits aren't there because some people "can't handle" higher speeds, they're there so that if you hit someone (even if it's their fault) you're less lightly to kill them. At least that's the rational(sp?) here in the UK.
Why do we take the notion that space exploration and colonization is desirable as granted?
because (admittedly in a few billion years from now) one day our sun will die, and if we're not off this planet by then, our species will die with it.
Evolution, on the other hand, to arrive at an interpretation that supports evolution, can only get there by starting with a bias: namely, a non-theistic worldview.
Here you are wrong, I have holy scripture that can beinterprited to support evolution. It just so happens that it's a different religion that yours. The Wikipedia article is a good place to start if you want a broader view on how Hinduism sits with evolution.
The unions should start trying to gain footholds in other countries, and should be actively trying to expand their bases.
They are, here's their website
what's the problem with a having a document saying that you are number #123456 ?
The problem is that I am not a number!
I don't know how much of this really works the way he described it, but this seems to be a very good reason to introduce id cards...
The National ID register is going to cost (IIRC) 4.5 billion pounds at the governments estimate. The LSE estimates 19 Billion. The type of fraud you describe actually makes up the smallest proportion of benefit fraud that the UK suffers from, most of it is just done by people lying. If they are trying to stop that form of benefit fraud with these cards, they have chosen the least cost effective way of doing so, and this card gives no other benefits that I can see.
full disclosure: I'm a fully paid up member of no2id
I agree, that's why I (as explained in my previous post) use a 2 dimensional representation, using one dimension for economics and the second for social issues. It still doesn't cover everything, but works much better than simple left\right. Follow the link in my previous post for more details on how it works.
I like to think of left\right issues in purely economic terms; social issues etc. I think of on an authoritarian\libertarian scale. I copied the idea from thePolitical compass.
Guess what, those working only 40 hours a day won't get anywhere.
Well, that all depends on where you want to go. Here in the UK\Europe, we think that 48 hours is more than enough. Most people work less.
1 A shuttle mission costs about $450M. If India can get to the moon for $7.7M we should outsource the whole space program 2 Question: It India rigged this for sub-orbital flight would in be able to carry a nuclear payload? Do we need to be (re)starting the cold war on THREE fronts? Russia, China (also launching) and now India.
Firstly, as about a million posts have pointed out it's closer to $77 not $7.7. Secondly, India is a parliamentary democracy and long term rival of China, if anything we* should support and bolster their efforts as a counterweight to the Chinese.
*By we I mean the West in general; also full disclosure, although I was born in the UK my ancestry is Indian, so I may have personal biases.
Obama is a socialist.
I live in the UK; I can assure you that he's actually a centrist, It's just that centre ground of US politics is so far to the right (compared to global politics), that anyone who expresses even the mildest left leaning thoughts is labeled a socialist over there. When he starts campaigning for nationalisation of major industries, then he'll be a socialist.
suit yourself, moron.
Way to miss his point.
Yes, and I'm sure YOU would be oh-so-receptive to those in the US trying to influence British politics... after all, your economy has an effect on our wallets as well.
Actually, if an American\German\French\Russian etc. person suggested that I vote Tory\Labour\Lib-dem, I'd take their views on board just as much as I would take on board those of another Brit; infact probably more so because afterall, most people here vote for a political party just because their families always have, somone from another country taking an interest probably has a better grip of the issues than somone who'd vote for a sheep with a red\blue\yellow rosette.
Of course it doesn't help that my own government has also mismanaged what little power it had, but I'm not taking the blame for mistakes made by the American electorate.
Your government, and private company had a lot more power than you give them credit for. You didn't have to keep your stocks in US banks while all this was going on. Your banks didn't have to go and buy up sub-prime debt.
Most of my money hasn't been in US stocks; however every market in the world has fallen, UK, Europe and Asia have all gone down as well; and actually, they did "have" to buy sub-prime debt, as it was split up and sold mixed up with AAA debt. No one realised that they were buying sub-prime until it was too late. That's the whole problem, we still don't know where the sub-prime debt is, so no one's lending to anyone just in case they don't get their money back. All because US banks thought it'd be a good idea to lend to people with no money (afterall, house prices never go down...).
In many ways I agree with what you've posted, however I live in the UK; you've probably heard the saying "when the US sneezes, the world catches a cold". Well what do you think happens to us when the US has 'flu?
/end rant
Of course it doesn't help that my own government has also mismanaged what little power it had, but I'm not taking the blame for mistakes made by the American electorate.
Now do some of the more insular slashdotters out there understand why the rest of the world has an opinion on who should be the next president? It's not "interfering" in US internal affairs, but self-preservation. What happens in the USA has a direct impact on my wallet. I've seen parts of my savings shrink* because of US subprime mortgages. Thanks for the great choice of presidents\congresses guys.
*having said that; if you've got cash, now's a good time to buy if you can afford to wait a year or two to get profits.
Tell that to Darwin, who the Anglican Church just now apologized to. Where were the critics that said "science is compatible with religion and spirituality" when the fathers of modern science were all discredited or killed for their beliefs
Or perhaps tell that to the farther of modern genetics, Gregor mendel. Oh, wait! He was a religious man, a priest, no less. Science and religion can easily live side by side, and have done for hundreds of years.