It also had a bit to do with LBJ's "Great Nation" and Democrats (with many Republicans) pushing for things like the Civil Rights Act. In fact, if not for that, the "Southern Strategy" would likely never have happened, it was an explicit attempt to capture recently disenfranchised Southern Democrats who had been essentially kicked out of the party.
Except you don't get the same thing. Many games come with things like maps, manuals, etc. Pirates don't get those. Actual buyers are not subject to lawsuits or criminal charges. Pirates are. Owning a legitimate copy of a game often gives an inherent sense of righteousness that non-sociopaths tend to find appealling. Pirated copies do not. Legally purchased software doesn't (usually) come with malware or otherwise compromise the system on which it runs. Pirated software is notorious for doing just that.
The simple fact that game sales happen in a world where piracy is trivial even for technologically unsophisticated users is pretty good proof that there is more than a simple comparison of initial purchase price at play. To the extent that legitimate purchases become *harder* to use and make than piracy, and as they become *more likely* to cause virus and other malware infections, and as the benefits such as they are are further eroded and mitigated by the publishers themselves, then legal purchases become even less appealing compared to piracy.
Basically, they're taking everything about buying a game that isn't shit compared to piracy, and fixing that small oversight by making sure it really is. It's not just cutting off the nose to spite the face, it's blowing the face off with a shotgun because another face resembles it.
Because Starship Troopers is mind-blowingly fascist, and in Heinlein's dystopic utopia Libertarians, Communists, Anarchists, Socialists, and any -ists not 100% on board with the military police state's program of compulsory service and unfettered expansion will be summarily executed for treason?
"DoD cutbacks" also do not involve spending less money at the present or at any time in the future, and virtually always involve spending even more. The word "cutback" merely implies that the estimate of how much more money will be spent *might* be less than a previous estimate. It is also of note that all estimates are lower than what is actually spent, sometimes by a mere 5%-10%, often by an order of magnitude or more.
When the military talks of cutbacks, it is akin to a 4-pack a day smoker promising that they will only smoke 4.5 packs per day next year rather than their originally intended 5, and that if they do smoke 5 packs a day they'll look into light or ultra-light variants, and that if they actually smoke 6 packs a day they will seriously consider smoking a cheaper or generic brand at least 5% of the time.
Or, to use a car metaphor, military cutbacks are the equivalent of taking a job that is 1 mile closer to home to save on gas, then buying a Hummer and moving 10 miles farther away. The savings from the commute to the new job compared to the new job are, technically, an improvement over the situation you would have had otherwise, but the net effect is still that you spend a lot more money on your commute.
So if everybody owns the land, we are enslaved, but if individuals own all the land we are not... right. Freedom is slavery, up is down, libertarianism isn't batshit insane stupidity. I'm not sure how I really feel about this little game.
"How many nations do you honestly think would still want to trade with us after we did that? Huh?"
Probably most. Government debt is not at all the same thing as private debt, and the latter is what fuels international trade, not the former. The military might have a harder time purchasing weapons, but that's about it from a direct foreign trade perspective.
"And how do you think the loss of that trade would affect American jobs?"
Given that we are a net importer of goods, it would likely create some new ones if our foreign trade were to slow or stop. It would likely suck for dock workers, though.
If the Federal Government were to default on the debt, the real problem would be that the vast majority of that debt is owned by Americans and US corporations, primarily as an extremely low-risk hedge investment. Banks will often use deposits to purchase government debt expressly because it earns them modest interest and does not endanger their customers' non-investment funds. Defaulting would seriously hurt investors who do the right thing and diversify into low-risk options precisely because they don't want to risk losing everything in a downturn. Ideally, government bonds are a safer place to keep money than a buried coffee can.
That's sort of an odd situation, too, because the major debate was originally an intra-Democrat one, which is difficult to explain in the context of modern political discourse (such as it is...), and because it largely resulted in mass defections to the Republican Party by the losing side. Strom Thurmond spent most of his political life a Republican, despite the fact that he was previously a major leader of the Democratic Party. Most people see where the politicians on each side wound up, observe that their affiliations make sense in the context of the modern political landscape, and it never even crosses their minds that the situation might be even more complicated than it first appears.
"Christ, again with the gay marriage shit. Is it REALLY that fucking important..."
Civil Liberties are always important. They don't become irrelevant just because there are other problems in the world. Iran appears to be developing nuclear weapons; surely that is a more pressing concern than dealing with corruption that has been the largely acceptable status quo for almost 30 years?
"Come to terms with it already; you`re NEVER going to have a candidate who meets you on every single view you have."
Probably not. I don't think it's so unreasonable to expect agreement on a few areas, though.
"Get a little perspective already. Gay folks should be thankful if they can`t get legally married. You know how many straight folks would give their right thumb for that?"
Har har har. Hilarious. You should do the Catskills.
The problem, of course, is that your hypothetical scenario is nonsense, thus making your point moot (valid or not). Indeed, a cyncial person might even suggest you gave an intentionally inane example just to beat on a strawman in order to deflect any potential criticism of or competition against your own ideology. Of course, that would be a pretty serious accusation of intellectual fraud...
Anyway, assuming that you were making your argument in good faith, you picked an extremely problematic set of careers. Brain surgeons are in extremely limited supply, with only a tiny segment of the population possessing both the physical and mental qualities required to perform that work. Furthermore, it is an extremely prestigious line of work, the sort of thing elementary school children naively aspire to be with no consideration of the work and competition required to get there. Sanitation engineers, by contrast, hold no such prestigious place in our collective psyche. It sounds an awful lot like a job nobody would ever willingly do (which is probably an unfair assumption about their work) and which is of little consequence (which is absolutely untrue, sanitation is an extremely important field which saves untold numbers of lives and prevents all manner of pestilence).
Of course, the unspoken problem with your hypothetical is that it ignores the fact the same thing happens in a capitalist system, just by slightly different means. In a capitalist system, would-be brain surgeons find that the cost of training for that profession is too high, or that they are not qualified, or that they do not possess the necessary skills, and are then kicked into some other field. Often, they spend a good amount of time and money reaching that point, which encumbers both them and the economy at large for little or no gain. You may weigh the indignity of being told "no" at the outset against the cost of learning "no" after significant investment to determine which you consider to be worse, you cannot ignore either for the sake of rhetoric.
"socialism was exactly what we had there: state ownership of the means of production"
One minor nit to pick... that's not socialism. Socialism has very little to do with who owns the means of production or capital. Socialism describes a system in which states provide varying levels of service and economic remuneration to citizens in lieu of markets. Communism is concerned with ownership of the means of production, and it is not the same thing; hence two different terms, if they were indeed identical in form and function, there would be no need to differentiate them.
As for the correlation between "socialism" and totalitarianism... would you classify the Scandinavian states as particularly totalitarian? Most of Europe, really, is socialist to a greater or lesser extent. Most are pretty solidly non-totalitarian in comparison to a state like Singapore, which offers economic freedom virtually unmatched anywhere else. It's only a strong correlation if you choose to look only at data points which show that, ignoring all others.
Such stations will not appear unless and until they have a reason to do so. The only reason that works is because they can profit from it. They cannot profit from it until there is a critical mass of EVs with compatible batteries on the road.
Chicken and egg.
If the government wanted to do something useful, they could actually mandate a standard battery interface and physical dimensions. Doing so would force competing manufacturers to use compatible parts, prevent the use of proprietary interfaces for the sole purpose of generating spurious revenues (a la printer cartridges) and create an ecosystem where competition actually means something. Of course people would bitch about it, call it socialism, call it fascism and rail against "Big Government interference in the Free Market" but the fact is it would be the right thing to do. Also, they already did that with gasoline pumps, and nobody seems to care.
The candidate most-likely needs to suspend their gainful employment while campaigning, but they certainly need to continue eating and paying their bills: the campaign can grant them funds for this purpose. The campaign needs staff, and the candidate is free to hire whomever they want at a fairly high pay rate, so close family members often wind up with swanky jobs doing very little work (chief inspector of hands to kiss and babies to shake). Campaign events are often held at costly and far-flung venues, travel and accommodations are paid for by the campaign. This is also true if the candidate elects to take a trip to Europe in order to "gain foreign policy experience" by visiting the beautiful beaches and casinos of Monaco. The candidate can sell their own "professional services" to the campaign, perhaps obfuscated through some other corporate entity, and thus generate income by doing things they would have done regardless.
Beyond that, even politicians who don't abuse their campaign funds are still beholden to donors. If they stop getting money, they stop getting elected, and then they stop getting a salary. Ipso facto, profit motive.
Good thing open source governance has absolutely nothing to do with mob rule. And BTW, representative democracy *is* mob rule. Have a look at how GW Bush managed to start a war in Iraq. He used the power of demagoguery to rile up the mob.
How is "open source governance" *less* like mob rule? Please elaborate. You're certainly right that Bush, and countless other democraticallt elected leaders, used demagoguery to great effect... but that still doesn't constitute mob rule: there were no angry mobs demanding Bush bomb Iraq until he convinced people it was a good idea. Had he failed to do so, the "mob" would likely have objected to attacking a random country without provocation. He may have manipulated the populace into supporting his actions, but that is absolutely not the same as allowing the mob to dictate those actions.
The average person is smart enough to not vote because they know it is utterly meaningless. All you get is one chance every four years to chose between two corrupt idiots. If participation in government actually had some meaning, I would expect a lot more people to actually take advantage of it.
Absolute BS. The "average American" doesn't vote because the "average American" can't be bothered and has no idea what's going on around them anyway. A lot of people consider themselves to be completely apolitical. If taking part in the political process was a waste of time and effort, why would so many successful, intelligent people bother with it? You've been told it's meaningless to convince you not to bother fighting the status quo. Congratulations: you have surrendered your rights and abdicated your responsibilities in exchange for fraudulent self-righteousness. Enjoy your consensual disenfranchisement. I hope you're fucking happy.
Oh, and just FYI, elections happen far more often than once every four years. Hell, Federal elections alone occur every two years. State and local elections frequently cause many localities to hold elections on an annual basis, sometimes even more often than that. You might be shocked to learn that the politician with the *least* direct influence on your life is actually the president. For all of the hullabaloo about that position, a city counselor or selectman is almost certainly going to have greater impact on your daily life. Legislators, federal and state, are incredibly important, and yet most Americans, even those who consider themselves to be politically astute, have no fucking clue who it is that represents them. I have to believe that you're in that boat as well, since you don't even know how often they are elected.
Who the fuck are you talking about? "You people?" I suppose you mean "dirty hippies," right? That's a great rhetorical tool: lump all your opponents together and identify them by the worst qualities of each.
While I find his insinuation that you are an OWSer to be more than a little condescending and prejudicial (of both you, who has not expressed any affiliation with them, and of that movement, who are not, I believe, nearly so ill-informed or apathetic or ineffectual as he implies or you appear to be), I should also point out that you have made an extrapolation from his words that, while possibly correct, is not entirely logical or fair. It's pretty sad that this is the only thing you've said I can even remotely agree with.
Sounds an awful lot like cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Beyond that, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans came up with a bill that made them all happy and was approved by an overwhelming margin (iirc, it was veto-proof coming out of the Senate). House Republicans are the only ones who have a problem with the bill as approved by the Senate, they're welcome to vote against it, but the blame lies squarely on them for refusing to deal with reality as it is and insisting that it needs to be otherwise.
For what it's worth, I don't really read the Economist's articles on strictly economic issues. I realize that sounds pretty strange, being as that is their actual forte, but I mostly read their political coverage (specifically the Democracy In America blog, which is largely written by Americans). I do not agree with all of their premises or conclusions, but they do a pretty decent job of covering facts clearly, accurately and with a minimum of hyperbolic BS.
I don't frequent either of the other sites you mention, but I may check them out.
Regardless, I think my point still stands regarding the quality of their reader comments. Whether or not you agree with their positions, any given article is liable to have a collection of comments which are well-enough written and researched to surpass the editorial pages of many newspapers. It probably doesn't hurt that many of the posters there are, sadly, more qualified to write on the subjects than many of the "journalists" who actually *do* write such editorial pages. To be sure there are a number of comments which are not so great, but compared to the dreck to be found on most sites, even those are a relative joy.
Why would the networks do that? What is their incentive to make the ads louder if the advertisers are not, in some way, coercing them to do so? If I'm NBC, I won't crank up the volume on a Coca-Cola ad just because I can, because doing so is a waste of my time and resources, especially since I know full well viewers don't like it and may decide to watch another program if I do so. Assuming at least moderate competence for everyone involved, your explanation simply doesn't make sense: you're claiming that the only party with any incentive whatsoever to do something is not responsible for doing so, while another party that has natural incentive to do the opposite is doing it instead. That's just crazy talk.
Most people don't want ads, eh? I disagree, and I believe that the proof is in the relatively low number of people willing to directly pay for media rather than allow media to be paid for by advertising. Simply put, less people are willing to pay for HBO than are willing to watch ads on network stations.
Personally, I don't mind ads all that much. Ad-supported media is an all-around winning proposition: producers are rewarded for creating content people want to watch, consumers are provided content at substantially lower direct cost, and advertisers get the opportunity to make their pitches to a strongly self-selected audience (which provides better demographic, economic and geographic targeting than more generalized advertising, such as billboards). For anyone mature enough to understand that creating good content is a labor and capital intensive process, it's hard to imagine a more equitable system for supporting "free" content.
That said, I fully support the aims of this regulation and sincerely hope that it has precisely the desired effect. The fact I do not begrudge content producers/distributors and advertisers their ability to make money is not the same as believing it is acceptable for them to abuse the arrangement. If advertisers want me to pay attention to their ads, they should make them more interesting, not more loud.
I'm from Western Massachusetts, and lived in Buffalo for about two years, and I don't remember anyone regularly using "the" to prefix highway numbers. Nobody uses non-numeric highway names, and they seemingly exist for no purpose other than vanity. For example, where I live we have route 202, which is also named "The Daniel Shay Highway", but nobody would ever call it anything but "202" unless they are highly pretentious.
In any event, I normally say things like "take 90 (or I-90) west" or "it's right off 116". I suppose that might confuse non-drivers or non-locals, but most people seem perfectly able to understand what I'm saying.
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It also had a bit to do with LBJ's "Great Nation" and Democrats (with many Republicans) pushing for things like the Civil Rights Act. In fact, if not for that, the "Southern Strategy" would likely never have happened, it was an explicit attempt to capture recently disenfranchised Southern Democrats who had been essentially kicked out of the party.
Except you don't get the same thing. Many games come with things like maps, manuals, etc. Pirates don't get those. Actual buyers are not subject to lawsuits or criminal charges. Pirates are. Owning a legitimate copy of a game often gives an inherent sense of righteousness that non-sociopaths tend to find appealling. Pirated copies do not. Legally purchased software doesn't (usually) come with malware or otherwise compromise the system on which it runs. Pirated software is notorious for doing just that.
The simple fact that game sales happen in a world where piracy is trivial even for technologically unsophisticated users is pretty good proof that there is more than a simple comparison of initial purchase price at play. To the extent that legitimate purchases become *harder* to use and make than piracy, and as they become *more likely* to cause virus and other malware infections, and as the benefits such as they are are further eroded and mitigated by the publishers themselves, then legal purchases become even less appealing compared to piracy.
Basically, they're taking everything about buying a game that isn't shit compared to piracy, and fixing that small oversight by making sure it really is. It's not just cutting off the nose to spite the face, it's blowing the face off with a shotgun because another face resembles it.
Because Starship Troopers is mind-blowingly fascist, and in Heinlein's dystopic utopia Libertarians, Communists, Anarchists, Socialists, and any -ists not 100% on board with the military police state's program of compulsory service and unfettered expansion will be summarily executed for treason?
That is where you were going, right?
He's no likeable in Boston, either, Red Sox Nation likes him because of what he did on the field, and politely ignores him while he's off it.
"DoD cutbacks" also do not involve spending less money at the present or at any time in the future, and virtually always involve spending even more. The word "cutback" merely implies that the estimate of how much more money will be spent *might* be less than a previous estimate. It is also of note that all estimates are lower than what is actually spent, sometimes by a mere 5%-10%, often by an order of magnitude or more.
When the military talks of cutbacks, it is akin to a 4-pack a day smoker promising that they will only smoke 4.5 packs per day next year rather than their originally intended 5, and that if they do smoke 5 packs a day they'll look into light or ultra-light variants, and that if they actually smoke 6 packs a day they will seriously consider smoking a cheaper or generic brand at least 5% of the time.
Or, to use a car metaphor, military cutbacks are the equivalent of taking a job that is 1 mile closer to home to save on gas, then buying a Hummer and moving 10 miles farther away. The savings from the commute to the new job compared to the new job are, technically, an improvement over the situation you would have had otherwise, but the net effect is still that you spend a lot more money on your commute.
Still not clear on blankets, though. Those things are a magical fucking mystery.
So if everybody owns the land, we are enslaved, but if individuals own all the land we are not... right. Freedom is slavery, up is down, libertarianism isn't batshit insane stupidity. I'm not sure how I really feel about this little game.
How's this one:
Judging by their reliability, I suspect Fiat is just that.
I give it a C-, personally.
"How many nations do you honestly think would still want to trade with us after we did that? Huh?"
Probably most. Government debt is not at all the same thing as private debt, and the latter is what fuels international trade, not the former. The military might have a harder time purchasing weapons, but that's about it from a direct foreign trade perspective.
"And how do you think the loss of that trade would affect American jobs?"
Given that we are a net importer of goods, it would likely create some new ones if our foreign trade were to slow or stop. It would likely suck for dock workers, though.
If the Federal Government were to default on the debt, the real problem would be that the vast majority of that debt is owned by Americans and US corporations, primarily as an extremely low-risk hedge investment. Banks will often use deposits to purchase government debt expressly because it earns them modest interest and does not endanger their customers' non-investment funds. Defaulting would seriously hurt investors who do the right thing and diversify into low-risk options precisely because they don't want to risk losing everything in a downturn. Ideally, government bonds are a safer place to keep money than a buried coffee can.
That's sort of an odd situation, too, because the major debate was originally an intra-Democrat one, which is difficult to explain in the context of modern political discourse (such as it is...), and because it largely resulted in mass defections to the Republican Party by the losing side. Strom Thurmond spent most of his political life a Republican, despite the fact that he was previously a major leader of the Democratic Party. Most people see where the politicians on each side wound up, observe that their affiliations make sense in the context of the modern political landscape, and it never even crosses their minds that the situation might be even more complicated than it first appears.
"Christ, again with the gay marriage shit. Is it REALLY that fucking important..."
Civil Liberties are always important. They don't become irrelevant just because there are other problems in the world. Iran appears to be developing nuclear weapons; surely that is a more pressing concern than dealing with corruption that has been the largely acceptable status quo for almost 30 years?
"Come to terms with it already; you`re NEVER going to have a candidate who meets you on every single view you have."
Probably not. I don't think it's so unreasonable to expect agreement on a few areas, though.
"Get a little perspective already. Gay folks should be thankful if they can`t get legally married. You know how many straight folks would give their right thumb for that?"
Har har har. Hilarious. You should do the Catskills.
The problem, of course, is that your hypothetical scenario is nonsense, thus making your point moot (valid or not). Indeed, a cyncial person might even suggest you gave an intentionally inane example just to beat on a strawman in order to deflect any potential criticism of or competition against your own ideology. Of course, that would be a pretty serious accusation of intellectual fraud...
Anyway, assuming that you were making your argument in good faith, you picked an extremely problematic set of careers. Brain surgeons are in extremely limited supply, with only a tiny segment of the population possessing both the physical and mental qualities required to perform that work. Furthermore, it is an extremely prestigious line of work, the sort of thing elementary school children naively aspire to be with no consideration of the work and competition required to get there. Sanitation engineers, by contrast, hold no such prestigious place in our collective psyche. It sounds an awful lot like a job nobody would ever willingly do (which is probably an unfair assumption about their work) and which is of little consequence (which is absolutely untrue, sanitation is an extremely important field which saves untold numbers of lives and prevents all manner of pestilence).
Of course, the unspoken problem with your hypothetical is that it ignores the fact the same thing happens in a capitalist system, just by slightly different means. In a capitalist system, would-be brain surgeons find that the cost of training for that profession is too high, or that they are not qualified, or that they do not possess the necessary skills, and are then kicked into some other field. Often, they spend a good amount of time and money reaching that point, which encumbers both them and the economy at large for little or no gain. You may weigh the indignity of being told "no" at the outset against the cost of learning "no" after significant investment to determine which you consider to be worse, you cannot ignore either for the sake of rhetoric.
"socialism was exactly what we had there: state ownership of the means of production"
One minor nit to pick... that's not socialism. Socialism has very little to do with who owns the means of production or capital. Socialism describes a system in which states provide varying levels of service and economic remuneration to citizens in lieu of markets. Communism is concerned with ownership of the means of production, and it is not the same thing; hence two different terms, if they were indeed identical in form and function, there would be no need to differentiate them.
As for the correlation between "socialism" and totalitarianism... would you classify the Scandinavian states as particularly totalitarian? Most of Europe, really, is socialist to a greater or lesser extent. Most are pretty solidly non-totalitarian in comparison to a state like Singapore, which offers economic freedom virtually unmatched anywhere else. It's only a strong correlation if you choose to look only at data points which show that, ignoring all others.
Such stations will not appear unless and until they have a reason to do so. The only reason that works is because they can profit from it. They cannot profit from it until there is a critical mass of EVs with compatible batteries on the road.
Chicken and egg.
If the government wanted to do something useful, they could actually mandate a standard battery interface and physical dimensions. Doing so would force competing manufacturers to use compatible parts, prevent the use of proprietary interfaces for the sole purpose of generating spurious revenues (a la printer cartridges) and create an ecosystem where competition actually means something. Of course people would bitch about it, call it socialism, call it fascism and rail against "Big Government interference in the Free Market" but the fact is it would be the right thing to do. Also, they already did that with gasoline pumps, and nobody seems to care.
Are trains and buses unavailable in your area?
The candidate most-likely needs to suspend their gainful employment while campaigning, but they certainly need to continue eating and paying their bills: the campaign can grant them funds for this purpose. The campaign needs staff, and the candidate is free to hire whomever they want at a fairly high pay rate, so close family members often wind up with swanky jobs doing very little work (chief inspector of hands to kiss and babies to shake). Campaign events are often held at costly and far-flung venues, travel and accommodations are paid for by the campaign. This is also true if the candidate elects to take a trip to Europe in order to "gain foreign policy experience" by visiting the beautiful beaches and casinos of Monaco. The candidate can sell their own "professional services" to the campaign, perhaps obfuscated through some other corporate entity, and thus generate income by doing things they would have done regardless.
Beyond that, even politicians who don't abuse their campaign funds are still beholden to donors. If they stop getting money, they stop getting elected, and then they stop getting a salary. Ipso facto, profit motive.
Good thing open source governance has absolutely nothing to do with mob rule. And BTW, representative democracy *is* mob rule. Have a look at how GW Bush managed to start a war in Iraq. He used the power of demagoguery to rile up the mob.
How is "open source governance" *less* like mob rule? Please elaborate. You're certainly right that Bush, and countless other democraticallt elected leaders, used demagoguery to great effect... but that still doesn't constitute mob rule: there were no angry mobs demanding Bush bomb Iraq until he convinced people it was a good idea. Had he failed to do so, the "mob" would likely have objected to attacking a random country without provocation. He may have manipulated the populace into supporting his actions, but that is absolutely not the same as allowing the mob to dictate those actions.
The average person is smart enough to not vote because they know it is utterly meaningless. All you get is one chance every four years to chose between two corrupt idiots. If participation in government actually had some meaning, I would expect a lot more people to actually take advantage of it.
Absolute BS. The "average American" doesn't vote because the "average American" can't be bothered and has no idea what's going on around them anyway. A lot of people consider themselves to be completely apolitical. If taking part in the political process was a waste of time and effort, why would so many successful, intelligent people bother with it? You've been told it's meaningless to convince you not to bother fighting the status quo. Congratulations: you have surrendered your rights and abdicated your responsibilities in exchange for fraudulent self-righteousness. Enjoy your consensual disenfranchisement. I hope you're fucking happy.
Oh, and just FYI, elections happen far more often than once every four years. Hell, Federal elections alone occur every two years. State and local elections frequently cause many localities to hold elections on an annual basis, sometimes even more often than that. You might be shocked to learn that the politician with the *least* direct influence on your life is actually the president. For all of the hullabaloo about that position, a city counselor or selectman is almost certainly going to have greater impact on your daily life. Legislators, federal and state, are incredibly important, and yet most Americans, even those who consider themselves to be politically astute, have no fucking clue who it is that represents them. I have to believe that you're in that boat as well, since you don't even know how often they are elected.
Who the fuck are you talking about? "You people?" I suppose you mean "dirty hippies," right? That's a great rhetorical tool: lump all your opponents together and identify them by the worst qualities of each.
While I find his insinuation that you are an OWSer to be more than a little condescending and prejudicial (of both you, who has not expressed any affiliation with them, and of that movement, who are not, I believe, nearly so ill-informed or apathetic or ineffectual as he implies or you appear to be), I should also point out that you have made an extrapolation from his words that, while possibly correct, is not entirely logical or fair. It's pretty sad that this is the only thing you've said I can even remotely agree with.
Sounds an awful lot like cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Beyond that, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans came up with a bill that made them all happy and was approved by an overwhelming margin (iirc, it was veto-proof coming out of the Senate). House Republicans are the only ones who have a problem with the bill as approved by the Senate, they're welcome to vote against it, but the blame lies squarely on them for refusing to deal with reality as it is and insisting that it needs to be otherwise.
For what it's worth, I don't really read the Economist's articles on strictly economic issues. I realize that sounds pretty strange, being as that is their actual forte, but I mostly read their political coverage (specifically the Democracy In America blog, which is largely written by Americans). I do not agree with all of their premises or conclusions, but they do a pretty decent job of covering facts clearly, accurately and with a minimum of hyperbolic BS.
I don't frequent either of the other sites you mention, but I may check them out.
Regardless, I think my point still stands regarding the quality of their reader comments. Whether or not you agree with their positions, any given article is liable to have a collection of comments which are well-enough written and researched to surpass the editorial pages of many newspapers. It probably doesn't hurt that many of the posters there are, sadly, more qualified to write on the subjects than many of the "journalists" who actually *do* write such editorial pages. To be sure there are a number of comments which are not so great, but compared to the dreck to be found on most sites, even those are a relative joy.
Why would the networks do that? What is their incentive to make the ads louder if the advertisers are not, in some way, coercing them to do so? If I'm NBC, I won't crank up the volume on a Coca-Cola ad just because I can, because doing so is a waste of my time and resources, especially since I know full well viewers don't like it and may decide to watch another program if I do so. Assuming at least moderate competence for everyone involved, your explanation simply doesn't make sense: you're claiming that the only party with any incentive whatsoever to do something is not responsible for doing so, while another party that has natural incentive to do the opposite is doing it instead. That's just crazy talk.
Most people don't want ads, eh? I disagree, and I believe that the proof is in the relatively low number of people willing to directly pay for media rather than allow media to be paid for by advertising. Simply put, less people are willing to pay for HBO than are willing to watch ads on network stations.
Personally, I don't mind ads all that much. Ad-supported media is an all-around winning proposition: producers are rewarded for creating content people want to watch, consumers are provided content at substantially lower direct cost, and advertisers get the opportunity to make their pitches to a strongly self-selected audience (which provides better demographic, economic and geographic targeting than more generalized advertising, such as billboards). For anyone mature enough to understand that creating good content is a labor and capital intensive process, it's hard to imagine a more equitable system for supporting "free" content.
That said, I fully support the aims of this regulation and sincerely hope that it has precisely the desired effect. The fact I do not begrudge content producers/distributors and advertisers their ability to make money is not the same as believing it is acceptable for them to abuse the arrangement. If advertisers want me to pay attention to their ads, they should make them more interesting, not more loud.
"83% of Jefferson quotes are made up on the spot"
"Never trust a man who cites statistics, especially when he's talking about me." - Thomas Jefferson
How about we split the difference and call it contempt of court?
You know, that crime that already exists, and doesn't run afoul of the 8th Amendment?
I'm from Western Massachusetts, and lived in Buffalo for about two years, and I don't remember anyone regularly using "the" to prefix highway numbers. Nobody uses non-numeric highway names, and they seemingly exist for no purpose other than vanity. For example, where I live we have route 202, which is also named "The Daniel Shay Highway", but nobody would ever call it anything but "202" unless they are highly pretentious.
In any event, I normally say things like "take 90 (or I-90) west" or "it's right off 116". I suppose that might confuse non-drivers or non-locals, but most people seem perfectly able to understand what I'm saying.
DING DING DING!
We have a winner!
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