I can get 25,000 people to sign a petition that the world is flat and that everyone should be required to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes. Yes, that is one petition that says both of those.
A milion people willing to click to support an idea is still less than 1% of the U.S. population. For an online poll 100,000 is very reasonable.
The easiest way to explain the only muskets existed argument is understanding that, at a fundamental level you are likely using the exact same argument yourself.
The Constitution only says "arms", it doesn't mention anything about "guns" or "small arms". There was simply no distinguishing at the time between nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, large bombs and flintlock muskets. Of course the reason for this was they didn't exist. The big weapons of the day, cannons, were expensive and required a crew to operate, and really were only useful under particular circumstances.
Now of course, because of the nature of these arms, *most* (not all) people say the Constitution doesn't apply to those, so the government CAN make laws regarding possession of those types of arms. So unless you are one of the very few who think we call all have weaponized Anthrax, the only real disagreement is which arms are covered and which are not.
That doesn’t mean you *CAN’T* think it ought to apply to guns, but you are still deciding which “arms” are legitimately covered by the Constituion.
The OP on this topic is 100% right. Basically concealed, especially cheap, weapons pretty much the worst type of weapon in existence. They pretty much exist to kill humans in an urban setting,
We really would be better off with no handguns. I can imagine a lunatic using a handgun instead of a rifle if he couldn't get a rifle, but I think most criminals would have a much harder time carrying around an assault rifle.
There is a flaw in your information. Number of guns have increased, but there are fewer gun owners, each owner just has more guns on average. It is more accurate to say that liberals believe that fewer armed persons results in fewer homicides, those trend in fact do match.
The ethical part isn't about using a loophole available, it is about preventing it from being fixed.
We know about the problem and solutions are available (if you think it is a problem). The ethics come in when corporations use their power to protect favored loopholes that do net damage to the country even if they benefit themselves.
For example the majority can use their voting power to deny rights to a minority, but depending on the situation we would likely consider it unethical to do so. In the very same manner rich or powerful interests can likewise get laws passed that help only themselves, but we would also consider this unethical in many cases.
There is absolutely no value in having random people review things. Criticism isn't a democratic principle.
Reviews are only valid from people that maintain that as their profession. There is a level of experience that comes with reviewing and editing that can't be achieved casually. Even many professional critics don't have this skills.
In each field, there are only a few peoples opinions that matter. The rest can be determined by demographic sampling.
Eh, how does that even work? I don't doubt reviewers are better at understanding the why's of liking something, but I can tell if I like a meal or book all on my own.
Of course if the book makes factual claims, you need someone familiar with the facts to help review that.
Like all review systems, ratings are probably only valid once you get a certain number of reviews (do 2 five star reviews even make sense? if that books is that good why only 2 reviews). Sadly at the end of the day, for consumers the number of books sold is probably your first best indicator. Then and only THEN should you read the reviews in detail and that is only to find if the book is your cup of tea. I know this seems bad for authors who are trying to get their first big break, but books can be a big time commitment to read so you can’t waste your time on bad stories. You will never find the next big thing, but the reality is there are too many *great* things you have not read.
You are trying to answer the profoundly wrong question. More or less no one now or ever has expected or demanded a totally egalitarian society. Some few have maybe dreamed of it, but no one has demanded it. Even in communist countries there was no real expectation that every member of society would get exactly the same thing, more of the case that there was an attempt (unsuccessful) to prevent anyone from falling too low.
The issue is if you don't stand up for yourself you will get walked over.
Consider "Right to Work" as a simple example, it is NOT the case that these laws repealed some requirement that all unions contract be exclusive by law. Those exclusivity terms were negotiated between two free groups. Instead these laws scratch out, by government fiat, parts of existing contracts and make it illegal for two parties to agree these terms. Why if you are free to join with another person and start a company, should you not be free to join with another person and start a Union
I have a great deal of faith in people to take care of themselves given the chance. The basic problem is there is a deliberate attempt to prevent people from being able to stand up for themselves. Let’s start by removing those barriers and see what happens.
Do you have any idea the tons of additional weight guard rails would add to ship of that size? Even the death ray has to be in an unshielded corridor to save weight and cost. Look, when you do the math you can't even afford armored grills over exhaust ports.
Well, Xerox may not have benefited from Parc, but U.S. companies certainly did. If anything I would have used this to support the position that Parc like activities end up benefiting society in general and are big risks for companies but good activities for governments. I am sure some foreign companies benefited also, but there is no question being closer to the innovation (and speaking the same language) helps a society get more of the benefit.
Were you around in the 70-80’s when Japan was going to take over the world? I am sure the Chinese might like to dominate the world economically, but that doesn’t mean they will. China isn’t that well run compared to most of their immediate neighbors, they are just big and have a lot of people. Same goes for India. Is the U.S. better than Denmark because it is larger? Sure we are more “powerful”, but I am not sure we are better run.
In this case don’t lose sight of the fact that the Chinese gave money to the U.S. owners/investors, it was investors who reaped the windfall from government grant, not the Chinese. I suppose you could argue that A123 had some secret technology that all the U.S. buyers were fools to pass on, but how likely is that really? If A123’s technology was that far ahead, I doubt they would have sold for so little, more likely a case of the Chinese being in the position of having to buy the technological scraps from the table yet again.
You can get pretty far along by copying, but at the end of the day you are always one step behind (at least) until you are the innovator. But innovation of this kind is expensive and frankly very hard work. That is why Japan had such high growth rates, right up to the point where they had caught up. Then, once they had to put the money, time and effort into innovating, suddenly their growth rates flattened out and became more like those of the rest of the 1st world. Also they suddenly realized that patents need protection across borders. And are we really worse off in any way because Japan joined the first world? I don’t think so.
Don’t let fear of China or another country stop us from doing the right thing. Just like Parc, it is the basic research and experimentation that our innovation and technology is built on. That is where our Government should focus its efforts. This is a call to action, not a dismissing of the government’s role in society. Just with an understanding that different tools are needed for different jobs.
Public money is best spent on things private companies can't/won't do.
The best long term thing Government can do to help the country is finance research and education that form the building blocks for new companies. By comparison there are boat loads of investment dollars floating around in the private sector, the Government has no special way of knowing who the winners will be over private investors and the dollars are less needed there anyway. Financing companies is much riskier always, I guess I can see floating a loan to an established company in a crisis, but that is about it.
Republicans and, worse yet, Democrats both have become overly hypnotized with the power of "Private Enterprise". But people who run private companies are still just people. Better for Government to refocus on what is does well and assure plentiful funding for that. So if you really want to help produce electric cars, put out money for research at Universities and have open contracts for US manufacturers to sell the Government electric cars.
The basic problem is college pricing is becoming a commodity, the cost of tuition is being justified on future earnings. It shouldn't be a surprise that advanced education is less of a bargain when you set tuition rates based on what a student can earn when they get out, the rate of return on investment becomes less.
I think the social mistake we are making here is that educated people help society beyond what they earn for themselves, outside of business school anyway. By and large if you are being trained to be an employee (STEM, Teaching, Social Work) more or less by definition you are providing more value to society than you are being paid, your employer calls that profit BTW. Thus it must be understood that education benefits society normally more than it benefits a specific individual and society has a responsibility to educate its members. This situation is similar to that of basic research, society (government) can and should spend money on basic research knowing full well it will be businesses who develop the advances and make profit with the help of the recruited scientists and engineers who helped develop the advance on government money to start with.
Also it is true that if you have an internet connection, the only thing between you and anything you want to know is yourself, well OK and your life commitments.
All Government bonds, including those owed to SSI, are considered part of the Debt (well, if you are going with the $14 trillion number). The only way to pay off the debt is to buy back the bonds and when you lower the deficit you will by definition be selling less bonds to all customers, including SSI. So the trust fund was used to "fund" the deficit, but it never changed the apparent size of the deficit. One consequence of this is that paying less benefits doesn’t lower the debt or deficit in any way. It DOES allow us to more easily continue to fund the deficit however with the net result of lowering taxes.
If you don’t like looking at SSI as separate, that is fine, but then you need to cut that debt number nearly in half.
Not that we don’t have some real decisions ahead. Let me give you a hint, when granny finally squares off with the military, granny is gonna win. The cards are in her favor and until the SSI fund actually runs out, everyone else gets the short stick.
Of course politicians on both sides love to play smoke an mirror with this.
Well, I think if you could show you were doing parody you would be fine but...
If you translated the tweet and re-tweeted you would potentially be guilty of giving "assistance" or a terrorist organization for your actions as a translations service.
There is a case where an NGO went to meet with people affiliated groups our country considers terrorist to teach them peaceful means of conflict resolution and tactics. Basically they wanted to show them that there were peaceful ways to get what they wanted. Our government arrested them for providing support to a terrorist organization. I don't know that they spent any time in jail, but no assistance laws don't usually have a common sense clause.
Glad for the comments, but to be clear I am only talking about the next 2 years. Count the total votes, they were very close and if states had proportional allotment of electors, Romney may well have won. An R win IS in the cards for the midterms (I voted D btw). What’s more, don’t forget everyone in the House was up for reelection AND R maintained control during a “Democratic Victory”. This election was NOT, I repeat, NOT decisive either way. Thus there is no reason to suppose short term changes.
I do think the dynamic has changed since eliminating Obama is no longer even a question (unless some tries to impeach him...I hope not), so everyone will be sneakier about how they avoid compromise, but still will avoid it. But another dynamic is that since R now still controls the house, they don’t have to filibuster ever last thing to stop laws they don’t like, they can just modify them to make the unpalatable and vice versa
OTOH, in years 3-4 the Republicans do need to start making inroads into some, ANY, minority demographic or they will be in for a long dry spell going forward. But again I don’t think you will see that effect until after the midterms.
Sadly, the short term problem is that obstructionism will at least appear to work in the next 2 years. 2 years from now, the voters who were willing to wait 4 - 6 hours in line to vote for Obama won't be willing to stick it out for a midterm. And one guess on the social groups that had to wait 4 hours to vote. The Democrats will lose many of their gains in the last election and the hardline (Tea Party) Republicans will conclude that their no surrender tactics are working and further that the reason they lost 2012 is because the party selected a wishy-washy conservative in Romney.
I am sad to say my prediction is very minimal compromise in the short term and further purges of moderates, especially moderate Republicans, for the next 4 years. Eventually the Republicans will have to change course, they just can’t/won’t that soon.
VBM FTW! Seriously, it is the best and you should demand it in your state. Especially if you have to wait 45+ min. Gives me a chance to sit in front of my computer and look up each and every item in detail as I am voting, and afterwards I am done! Properly done it can be every bit as reliable as in person systems, though election day still *should* be a holiday.
Agreed - "on offer" - but I wonder if Obama was all like, "I'm gonna come to Washington and kick. some. ass!" and then he found out that reality is different from idealism. Maybe it'll be different the second time around, and he'll actually deliver on the "change" promise, now that he doesn't have to worry about re-election. One can hope.
Well, it isn't just Obama in this equation. Not only does he not have to worry about being reelected, but also that the opposition in Congress doesn't have to worry about him being reelected. Now Congress just needs to worry about being reelected themselves. It is a substancial change in dynamics no matter who wins.
It is a cop out to say defining the problem is the first step in addressing it? The issue is more about news organizations understanding where they actually have a value added contribution, and also understanding that their relationship to the public and the news makers has drastically changed. For example, maybe you don’t need to send very many journalists to another country to report on an uprising when rebels can tweet and send videos themselves, or ex-pats can, and the government in power too! You might say, why should we trust all these tweets from another country? I reply we can’t, but reporters are sometimes bias or wrong, just now we have thousands to check each other against.
A second question is, what specific social services do you want news services to provide? While I see a concentration of tradition big box media in few hands, with overall contraction, I also see people getting their message out through more sources and in a more direct way than ever. Are we sure we are focusing on the right problem. How specific can we get about services we want the media to provide that we are losing?
Look at this another way, in the past if the media did perform a hatch job on someone, there were good odds they would be unable to get their message out. Now they can give their own message out in their own words. The very attention given to someone to criticize them will drive people to hear their side of the story. I don’t think YouTube as a forum for communication is a fad in any way. It is the high tech equivalent of speaking in the public square where everyone in the village can hear you.
And maybe the market is changing on its own. I understand public media and talk radio/blogs are doing better than ever. People are already naturally gravitating to in depth (biased or not) interpretation over simple facts.
Media today has a real challenge, a real challenge of change.
The entire news business is having trouble because their previous position as the gatekeepers to news is and will now always be lost to them. More or less every rule and instinct they have learned during their careers is now out of sync with the reality of how the Internet works. They aren't bad, they just don't understand the way forward. That is why they wrongly attack the search engines, they understand their gatekeeper position is lost, but they don't really know how to cope yet. To an extent search engines really are the successors to a newspaper. A newspaper was an attempt to put information "valuable" to the public in a form that could be distributed. Because of time and paper limitations it was necessary for actual people to make decisions about the best way to distribute this information.
But today, any entity or person, business or private, can now easily communicate directly to the public in a way they choose. We don't really need reporters to tell us "today the President’s spokesman said..." when we can read it ourselves online on www.whitehouse.gov. The public is now in control of what information they want to learn more about AND everyone now has an option of providing their own story in their own words (biased or not!). This did not exist before in any practical or sensible way, other than in "small towns" where everyone knew everyone's business anyway.
There is, and will probably always be, a need for ethically trained people to attempt to disentangle truth from fiction. For example the moderator at the second presidential debate and fact checking sites are the most simple examples. I am afraid I don’t have the answers, but I know why we can’t go back.
Too many Taliban have died at the hands of the Pakistani military in too many conflicts to really make the case that Pakistan supports them. Yes I have heard, like everyone else, that the Pakistani Intelligence agencies are providing (some?) Taliban with weapons. But while I don't know all the details of who is allied with who and don't know who to trust, I do know that the Pakistani war against the Taliban is real.
Thus again I say, the Pakistanis are NOT ok with 14 year old girls being shot for web posts and I see no evidence to the contrary.
That is already happening! Didn't you hear of the 14 year old girl who got shot in the face because she was intolerant to the nice people of the Taliban. The Taliban, those nice people who only try to spread the religion of tolerance and respect? That shall teach her a lesson! Huh?
Weird kind of mind-set those people have... Shooting a 14 year old girl from point-blank, no problems... Making a film...mmmmnot so cool. Pffff.. medieval hatebeards.
Uh huh.... So the way Pakistanis showed they were OK with this was by arresting those who did it and publicly protesting the attack and praying for the girl’s health. The basic problem you, and most Westerners have is that you don’t understand that the Taliban represents the views of Pakistanis the way Terry Jones and skinheads represent the views of the U.S.
Make no mistake, the Pakistanis and worldwide Muslims have a different world view than you. But your views of them are easily and narrow minded and bigoted as their views of you
I heard a comment on the radio to the effect that much of the controversial speech we allow in America really would be illegal in much of the world. I support our laws, but it is useful to understand that we are the odd man out. There is no harm in explaining this to the world.
FYI, I do support our laws, as a practical matter too many of these anti-hate speech laws don’t prevent hate speech, they just only allow government sanctioned hate speech.
Carriers are great against countries that don't have the kinds of weapons needed to sink them. Kind of a duh, but to put it another way, every country isn't China and Russia.
There are serious concerns however about how long they would last against a major world power. The questions is not do we need any (yes) but how many we need. If we are just going to use them to project power against weaker nations, we don't need that many. With subs and planes we can deny the ocean to the enemy it many cases, but would carriers in any substantial way assure our continued use of the oceans? Does having carrier groups assure our troop transports and weapons shipments will reach their goal? If the carrier is having a hard time defending itself how will it defend needed shipping? How many airstrikes will a carrier group get against China? Sadly once again I suspect if we ever find out, it will be the hard way.
Should we for example focus more on existing air bases throughout the world? Could we ship troops and weapons underwater escorted by subs with airplanes hunting air ASW? Maybe we should start thinking outside the box a little and hedge our bets.
Slashdot Mirror
I can get 25,000 people to sign a petition that the world is flat and that everyone should be required to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes. Yes, that is one petition that says both of those.
A milion people willing to click to support an idea is still less than 1% of the U.S. population. For an online poll 100,000 is very reasonable.
The easiest way to explain the only muskets existed argument is understanding that, at a fundamental level you are likely using the exact same argument yourself.
The Constitution only says "arms", it doesn't mention anything about "guns" or "small arms". There was simply no distinguishing at the time between nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, large bombs and flintlock muskets. Of course the reason for this was they didn't exist. The big weapons of the day, cannons, were expensive and required a crew to operate, and really were only useful under particular circumstances.
Now of course, because of the nature of these arms, *most* (not all) people say the Constitution doesn't apply to those, so the government CAN make laws regarding possession of those types of arms. So unless you are one of the very few who think we call all have weaponized Anthrax, the only real disagreement is which arms are covered and which are not.
That doesn’t mean you *CAN’T* think it ought to apply to guns, but you are still deciding which “arms” are legitimately covered by the Constituion.
The OP on this topic is 100% right. Basically concealed, especially cheap, weapons pretty much the worst type of weapon in existence. They pretty much exist to kill humans in an urban setting,
We really would be better off with no handguns. I can imagine a lunatic using a handgun instead of a rifle if he couldn't get a rifle, but I think most criminals would have a much harder time carrying around an assault rifle.
I have felt this way for about 20 years.
What utter BS. If crime against non gun owners in that area skyrockets let me know, otherwise I can only laugh at your mock outrage.
There is a flaw in your information. Number of guns have increased, but there are fewer gun owners, each owner just has more guns on average. It is more accurate to say that liberals believe that fewer armed persons results in fewer homicides, those trend in fact do match.
You should ask if they contributed to the Presidential election fund. If so, they paid more taxes than required.
The ethical part isn't about using a loophole available, it is about preventing it from being fixed.
We know about the problem and solutions are available (if you think it is a problem). The ethics come in when corporations use their power to protect favored loopholes that do net damage to the country even if they benefit themselves.
For example the majority can use their voting power to deny rights to a minority, but depending on the situation we would likely consider it unethical to do so. In the very same manner rich or powerful interests can likewise get laws passed that help only themselves, but we would also consider this unethical in many cases.
Of course not everyone things this a problem.
There is absolutely no value in having random people review things. Criticism isn't a democratic principle.
Reviews are only valid from people that maintain that as their profession. There is a level of experience that comes with reviewing and editing that can't be achieved casually. Even many professional critics don't have this skills.
In each field, there are only a few peoples opinions that matter. The rest can be determined by demographic sampling.
Eh, how does that even work? I don't doubt reviewers are better at understanding the why's of liking something, but I can tell if I like a meal or book all on my own.
Of course if the book makes factual claims, you need someone familiar with the facts to help review that.
Like all review systems, ratings are probably only valid once you get a certain number of reviews (do 2 five star reviews even make sense? if that books is that good why only 2 reviews). Sadly at the end of the day, for consumers the number of books sold is probably your first best indicator. Then and only THEN should you read the reviews in detail and that is only to find if the book is your cup of tea. I know this seems bad for authors who are trying to get their first big break, but books can be a big time commitment to read so you can’t waste your time on bad stories. You will never find the next big thing, but the reality is there are too many *great* things you have not read.
You are trying to answer the profoundly wrong question. More or less no one now or ever has expected or demanded a totally egalitarian society. Some few have maybe dreamed of it, but no one has demanded it. Even in communist countries there was no real expectation that every member of society would get exactly the same thing, more of the case that there was an attempt (unsuccessful) to prevent anyone from falling too low.
The issue is if you don't stand up for yourself you will get walked over.
Consider "Right to Work" as a simple example, it is NOT the case that these laws repealed some requirement that all unions contract be exclusive by law. Those exclusivity terms were negotiated between two free groups. Instead these laws scratch out, by government fiat, parts of existing contracts and make it illegal for two parties to agree these terms. Why if you are free to join with another person and start a company, should you not be free to join with another person and start a Union
I have a great deal of faith in people to take care of themselves given the chance. The basic problem is there is a deliberate attempt to prevent people from being able to stand up for themselves. Let’s start by removing those barriers and see what happens.
Do you have any idea the tons of additional weight guard rails would add to ship of that size? Even the death ray has to be in an unshielded corridor to save weight and cost. Look, when you do the math you can't even afford armored grills over exhaust ports.
Well, Xerox may not have benefited from Parc, but U.S. companies certainly did. If anything I would have used this to support the position that Parc like activities end up benefiting society in general and are big risks for companies but good activities for governments. I am sure some foreign companies benefited also, but there is no question being closer to the innovation (and speaking the same language) helps a society get more of the benefit.
Were you around in the 70-80’s when Japan was going to take over the world? I am sure the Chinese might like to dominate the world economically, but that doesn’t mean they will. China isn’t that well run compared to most of their immediate neighbors, they are just big and have a lot of people. Same goes for India. Is the U.S. better than Denmark because it is larger? Sure we are more “powerful”, but I am not sure we are better run.
In this case don’t lose sight of the fact that the Chinese gave money to the U.S. owners/investors, it was investors who reaped the windfall from government grant, not the Chinese. I suppose you could argue that A123 had some secret technology that all the U.S. buyers were fools to pass on, but how likely is that really? If A123’s technology was that far ahead, I doubt they would have sold for so little, more likely a case of the Chinese being in the position of having to buy the technological scraps from the table yet again.
You can get pretty far along by copying, but at the end of the day you are always one step behind (at least) until you are the innovator. But innovation of this kind is expensive and frankly very hard work. That is why Japan had such high growth rates, right up to the point where they had caught up. Then, once they had to put the money, time and effort into innovating, suddenly their growth rates flattened out and became more like those of the rest of the 1st world. Also they suddenly realized that patents need protection across borders. And are we really worse off in any way because Japan joined the first world? I don’t think so.
Don’t let fear of China or another country stop us from doing the right thing. Just like Parc, it is the basic research and experimentation that our innovation and technology is built on. That is where our Government should focus its efforts. This is a call to action, not a dismissing of the government’s role in society. Just with an understanding that different tools are needed for different jobs.
Public money is best spent on things private companies can't/won't do.
The best long term thing Government can do to help the country is finance research and education that form the building blocks for new companies. By comparison there are boat loads of investment dollars floating around in the private sector, the Government has no special way of knowing who the winners will be over private investors and the dollars are less needed there anyway. Financing companies is much riskier always, I guess I can see floating a loan to an established company in a crisis, but that is about it.
Republicans and, worse yet, Democrats both have become overly hypnotized with the power of "Private Enterprise". But people who run private companies are still just people. Better for Government to refocus on what is does well and assure plentiful funding for that. So if you really want to help produce electric cars, put out money for research at Universities and have open contracts for US manufacturers to sell the Government electric cars.
The basic problem is college pricing is becoming a commodity, the cost of tuition is being justified on future earnings. It shouldn't be a surprise that advanced education is less of a bargain when you set tuition rates based on what a student can earn when they get out, the rate of return on investment becomes less.
I think the social mistake we are making here is that educated people help society beyond what they earn for themselves, outside of business school anyway. By and large if you are being trained to be an employee (STEM, Teaching, Social Work) more or less by definition you are providing more value to society than you are being paid, your employer calls that profit BTW. Thus it must be understood that education benefits society normally more than it benefits a specific individual and society has a responsibility to educate its members. This situation is similar to that of basic research, society (government) can and should spend money on basic research knowing full well it will be businesses who develop the advances and make profit with the help of the recruited scientists and engineers who helped develop the advance on government money to start with.
Also it is true that if you have an internet connection, the only thing between you and anything you want to know is yourself, well OK and your life commitments.
All Government bonds, including those owed to SSI, are considered part of the Debt (well, if you are going with the $14 trillion number). The only way to pay off the debt is to buy back the bonds and when you lower the deficit you will by definition be selling less bonds to all customers, including SSI. So the trust fund was used to "fund" the deficit, but it never changed the apparent size of the deficit. One consequence of this is that paying less benefits doesn’t lower the debt or deficit in any way. It DOES allow us to more easily continue to fund the deficit however with the net result of lowering taxes.
If you don’t like looking at SSI as separate, that is fine, but then you need to cut that debt number nearly in half.
Not that we don’t have some real decisions ahead. Let me give you a hint, when granny finally squares off with the military, granny is gonna win. The cards are in her favor and until the SSI fund actually runs out, everyone else gets the short stick.
Of course politicians on both sides love to play smoke an mirror with this.
Well, I think if you could show you were doing parody you would be fine but...
If you translated the tweet and re-tweeted you would potentially be guilty of giving "assistance" or a terrorist organization for your actions as a translations service.
There is a case where an NGO went to meet with people affiliated groups our country considers terrorist to teach them peaceful means of conflict resolution and tactics. Basically they wanted to show them that there were peaceful ways to get what they wanted. Our government arrested them for providing support to a terrorist organization. I don't know that they spent any time in jail, but no assistance laws don't usually have a common sense clause.
Glad for the comments, but to be clear I am only talking about the next 2 years. Count the total votes, they were very close and if states had proportional allotment of electors, Romney may well have won. An R win IS in the cards for the midterms (I voted D btw). What’s more, don’t forget everyone in the House was up for reelection AND R maintained control during a “Democratic Victory”. This election was NOT, I repeat, NOT decisive either way. Thus there is no reason to suppose short term changes.
I do think the dynamic has changed since eliminating Obama is no longer even a question (unless some tries to impeach him...I hope not), so everyone will be sneakier about how they avoid compromise, but still will avoid it. But another dynamic is that since R now still controls the house, they don’t have to filibuster ever last thing to stop laws they don’t like, they can just modify them to make the unpalatable and vice versa
OTOH, in years 3-4 the Republicans do need to start making inroads into some, ANY, minority demographic or they will be in for a long dry spell going forward. But again I don’t think you will see that effect until after the midterms.
Sadly, the short term problem is that obstructionism will at least appear to work in the next 2 years. 2 years from now, the voters who were willing to wait 4 - 6 hours in line to vote for Obama won't be willing to stick it out for a midterm. And one guess on the social groups that had to wait 4 hours to vote. The Democrats will lose many of their gains in the last election and the hardline (Tea Party) Republicans will conclude that their no surrender tactics are working and further that the reason they lost 2012 is because the party selected a wishy-washy conservative in Romney.
I am sad to say my prediction is very minimal compromise in the short term and further purges of moderates, especially moderate Republicans, for the next 4 years. Eventually the Republicans will have to change course, they just can’t/won’t that soon.
Buckle up, we are in for a bumpy ride.
VBM FTW! Seriously, it is the best and you should demand it in your state. Especially if you have to wait 45+ min. Gives me a chance to sit in front of my computer and look up each and every item in detail as I am voting, and afterwards I am done! Properly done it can be every bit as reliable as in person systems, though election day still *should* be a holiday.
Agreed - "on offer" - but I wonder if Obama was all like, "I'm gonna come to Washington and kick. some. ass!" and then he found out that reality is different from idealism. Maybe it'll be different the second time around, and he'll actually deliver on the "change" promise, now that he doesn't have to worry about re-election. One can hope.
Well, it isn't just Obama in this equation. Not only does he not have to worry about being reelected, but also that the opposition in Congress doesn't have to worry about him being reelected. Now Congress just needs to worry about being reelected themselves. It is a substancial change in dynamics no matter who wins.
It is a cop out to say defining the problem is the first step in addressing it? The issue is more about news organizations understanding where they actually have a value added contribution, and also understanding that their relationship to the public and the news makers has drastically changed. For example, maybe you don’t need to send very many journalists to another country to report on an uprising when rebels can tweet and send videos themselves, or ex-pats can, and the government in power too! You might say, why should we trust all these tweets from another country? I reply we can’t, but reporters are sometimes bias or wrong, just now we have thousands to check each other against.
A second question is, what specific social services do you want news services to provide? While I see a concentration of tradition big box media in few hands, with overall contraction, I also see people getting their message out through more sources and in a more direct way than ever. Are we sure we are focusing on the right problem. How specific can we get about services we want the media to provide that we are losing?
Look at this another way, in the past if the media did perform a hatch job on someone, there were good odds they would be unable to get their message out. Now they can give their own message out in their own words. The very attention given to someone to criticize them will drive people to hear their side of the story. I don’t think YouTube as a forum for communication is a fad in any way. It is the high tech equivalent of speaking in the public square where everyone in the village can hear you.
And maybe the market is changing on its own. I understand public media and talk radio/blogs are doing better than ever. People are already naturally gravitating to in depth (biased or not) interpretation over simple facts.
Media today has a real challenge, a real challenge of change.
The entire news business is having trouble because their previous position as the gatekeepers to news is and will now always be lost to them. More or less every rule and instinct they have learned during their careers is now out of sync with the reality of how the Internet works. They aren't bad, they just don't understand the way forward. That is why they wrongly attack the search engines, they understand their gatekeeper position is lost, but they don't really know how to cope yet. To an extent search engines really are the successors to a newspaper. A newspaper was an attempt to put information "valuable" to the public in a form that could be distributed. Because of time and paper limitations it was necessary for actual people to make decisions about the best way to distribute this information.
But today, any entity or person, business or private, can now easily communicate directly to the public in a way they choose. We don't really need reporters to tell us "today the President’s spokesman said..." when we can read it ourselves online on www.whitehouse.gov. The public is now in control of what information they want to learn more about AND everyone now has an option of providing their own story in their own words (biased or not!). This did not exist before in any practical or sensible way, other than in "small towns" where everyone knew everyone's business anyway.
There is, and will probably always be, a need for ethically trained people to attempt to disentangle truth from fiction. For example the moderator at the second presidential debate and fact checking sites are the most simple examples. I am afraid I don’t have the answers, but I know why we can’t go back.
Too many Taliban have died at the hands of the Pakistani military in too many conflicts to really make the case that Pakistan supports them. Yes I have heard, like everyone else, that the Pakistani Intelligence agencies are providing (some?) Taliban with weapons. But while I don't know all the details of who is allied with who and don't know who to trust, I do know that the Pakistani war against the Taliban is real.
Thus again I say, the Pakistanis are NOT ok with 14 year old girls being shot for web posts and I see no evidence to the contrary.
That is already happening! Didn't you hear of the 14 year old girl who got shot in the face because she was intolerant to the nice people of the Taliban. The Taliban, those nice people who only try to spread the religion of tolerance and respect? That shall teach her a lesson! Huh?
Weird kind of mind-set those people have... Shooting a 14 year old girl from point-blank, no problems... Making a film...mmmmnot so cool.
Pffff.. medieval hatebeards.
Uh huh.... So the way Pakistanis showed they were OK with this was by arresting those who did it and publicly protesting the attack and praying for the girl’s health. The basic problem you, and most Westerners have is that you don’t understand that the Taliban represents the views of Pakistanis the way Terry Jones and skinheads represent the views of the U.S.
Make no mistake, the Pakistanis and worldwide Muslims have a different world view than you. But your views of them are easily and narrow minded and bigoted as their views of you
I heard a comment on the radio to the effect that much of the controversial speech we allow in America really would be illegal in much of the world. I support our laws, but it is useful to understand that we are the odd man out. There is no harm in explaining this to the world.
FYI, I do support our laws, as a practical matter too many of these anti-hate speech laws don’t prevent hate speech, they just only allow government sanctioned hate speech.
Carriers are great against countries that don't have the kinds of weapons needed to sink them. Kind of a duh, but to put it another way, every country isn't China and Russia.
There are serious concerns however about how long they would last against a major world power. The questions is not do we need any (yes) but how many we need. If we are just going to use them to project power against weaker nations, we don't need that many. With subs and planes we can deny the ocean to the enemy it many cases, but would carriers in any substantial way assure our continued use of the oceans? Does having carrier groups assure our troop transports and weapons shipments will reach their goal? If the carrier is having a hard time defending itself how will it defend needed shipping? How many airstrikes will a carrier group get against China? Sadly once again I suspect if we ever find out, it will be the hard way.
Should we for example focus more on existing air bases throughout the world? Could we ship troops and weapons underwater escorted by subs with airplanes hunting air ASW? Maybe we should start thinking outside the box a little and hedge our bets.