America was founded as a federalist country. Rome was a Republic, we are a Democratic Republic. The bicameral system was created to hold the nation together. It also does not favor small states, all states get 2 senators. Senators represent states not people.
In fact, the Senate originally was elected by the state legislatures, usually after being appointed by a governor. The Senate is designed to represent states, and not to be proportional. It prevents the government from being abusive to small states. It also exist so that power is divided up. The senate approves appointments and treaties, the house initiates the budget. Representatives in the house often vote party line, in the senate, a single senator can filibuster a debate and people quite frequently vote against their party and there is little structure so it isn't majority take all.
It was rather dissappointing to see that clinton was the only one to say anything about her plans for the country in regard to space exploration.
In the YouTube depate Tancredo mentioned that he wouldn't try for Mars simply because the USA does not have the money. I kinda wish Tancredo, Keys, and Hunter were mentioned.
1st off hand counting is slow, subject to human error, and of course human corruption. Second do you mean someone should write down who they would vote for? I have sloppy hand writing. The only thing one should hand write on a ballot is a write-in vote. 3rd the hand recount in Florida was pretty much a huge problem, with charges of corruption, and it ran way behind schedule.
Why not just use a bubble sheet? A Second Grader can typically figure out how to use one of these on a standardized test and machines can be programmed to read this with essentially perfect accuracy as long as you fill in the bubble completely using a standard number 2 pencil (which could be provided by the voting place). Something might have to be done about write in candidates and for visually impaired but how hard is that? A write in could simply be done like:
For President I vote for:
1. George Bush
2. John Kerry
3. Ralph Nader
4. I wish to write in a vote for ____________ (write name in blank and fill in bubble)
A second grader could fill this out and if someone wrote in a candidate their ballot would simply be read manually by an election worker. The counting machine could simply beep to inform the election worker. As for the blind and visually impaired, large print and braille versions could be available. Now for blind and visually impaired people doing write ins, they might need the assistance of an election worker. Of course absentee ballots are still the easiest. I vote absentee in the primaries and local elections. I poll in State/Federal. I live in Colorado BTW, so maybe I will write to a state legislator about this.
How can you be so sure that the mathematical entities inside your beige box computer are not self-aware? How can you know that they don't scream when you shut the computer off and are not reborn when you grant them electrical current the next morning?
Any self respecting mathematical entity would prefer a better computer. Mine sucks.
Do you really know that you are anything different than a little sim in a simulated world, or a self-aware mathematical entity in a mathematical universe?
And the funny part is, I have seen people drinking capachinos from starbucks and drinking aquafina and bitching about the price of gas at the same time lets see here
Bottling water:
1. Take hose with running water, put it in bottle.
2. Put cap on bottle.
Sell for something around $5 a gallon.
Capachino
1. Make coffee
2. Pour milk in coffee.
3. Put whipped cream in coffee.
Sell for like $10 a gallon.
Gas
1. Locate gas in ground using pricey equipment.
2. Drill hole deep into ground.
3. Attach pump to hole, risk of fire exist when pump is running.
4. Store oil in huge tank in hostile country
5. Put oil on expensive ship with stuff to prevent it from breaking/catching fire
6. Ship oil across world.
7. Spend money to refine oil.
8. Deal with miles of red tape.
9. Put gas into expensive truck with pricey safety features to keep truck from catching fire.
10. Put gas in gas station, spend money to buy safety devices to protect customers from causing explosions, station must also make a small percentage of money.
Sell for about $3 a gallon. Be investigated repeatedly by government for excessively high prices.
My conclusion, investigate Starbucks and Aquafina, ignore ExxonMobile and BP.
Try as I might, I couldn't locate any examples of prominent conservative media personalities that support the principle of the free press.
Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh (or however it's spelled), Glenn Beck, and pretty much every single other conservative talk radio host cried out quite loudly when Democrats drafted legislation to reenact the "fairness doctrine" a censorship law that would essentially ban them from presenting their opinions. It sounds like they were defenders of free press in this case. Come to think of it, Ronald Reagan, a very conservative president was the one who convinced congress to pass a law repealing this censorship law.
Many conservative talk radio and conservative political talk show host also grant people who they don't necessarily agree with time on their shows to express their views. Rush's show has become somewhat of a forum for liberals and conservatives alike to call in and express their thoughts, and even though Rush will argue with liberals he usually will let them speak pretty openly (he shuts them off if they start ranting, but that is because they waist time, and he did randomly perform "call abortions" in the past but that was to make a statement.) Bill O'Reilly has had hundreds of Democratic strategist on his show. Whenever someone on the left wing says something outragious he may go after them, but he will usually invite them on to the show to explain themselves (he does this with people on the right too, such as Ann Coulter, who has appeared several times.) Sometimes the people he invites on will show up (Al Sharpton, a few Democratic politicians, and Michael Moore, though Moore pretty much ran off tail between his legs and said he won't go back), though many on the left simply won't go and explain themselves (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and left wing TV people such as Rosie O'Donald). O'Reilly is happy to have people on who disagree with him. That sounds like protecting free press and ensuring all viewpoints get out.
Oh and lets not forget President Bush. He is a conservative who is a big supporter of free press. He recently honored the founder of the C-SPAN network for giving people a politically neutral network with which they could observe their government and during C-SPAN's call in shows the general public can call in and share their views (many will even call in and express their dislike of the president). I'm not certain, but I think Bush also said he would veto any new version of the fairness doctrine.
Only in recent years have so many people been emulating earlier consoles and arcade games on their home PCs, with pretty faithful representation of the original experience.
Not just PCs dude. the origional Xbox could be modded as a wonderful emulator and playing with real controllers rocks. The Wii has emulators for sale. I see the consoles as being golden age 2.0 of emulation.
Mine has a mere 512, I might up it to 1 GB, but I will wait at least till I get a new NIC. My old one broke. I can run Kubuntu with Beryl (using an embeded intel graphics card) and play games just fine.
Such a finely developed sense of civic duty you have there. Jury duty may well be a pain in the arse but it's a hard won right for accused that people in trouble with the law in most other parts of the world would find an amazing gift.
Yes, I'd say an ipod is worth considerably more than a vote is today. It shouldn't be; but here we are.
Statistically, in national elections for the president a vote is not all that valuable. In a nation with millions of people it is unlikely one vote will decide anything. True, Florida was one very narrowly but that is extreamly rare. Your vote in the primaries is louder. The nation is roughly 1/3 GOP, 1/3 Dem, and 1/3 Independant. Independants can't vote in most primaries since they are partisan, but I believe only about 1/3 of partisan voters vote in primaries. So thus your vote is statistically more important there. In State Senate and Governor Elections your vote is louder than in Presidential Ones. In small states that only have a few representatives or one representative, your vote is about in line with that of Senator or Governor, but in larger states it is more influential as you cover a smaller area. Votes for State Legislature members are also louder since many don't really bother with those. Voting in local elections is important as (unless you live in a huge city like New York or Chicago) your vote is fairly powerful. Attend town hall meetings as you can usually get them to listen to you. You want to really be pollically influential, volunteer on campaigns (or maybe even run for city council).
Keep in mind with voting, your opinion is statistically unimportant, but millions like you hold voice.
Split the country? Looks like we could be headed that way.
I am studying the British government in school. It sounds like the UK is far more partisan than we are. This is because in the UK there is no divided government, since the parlament elects the executive (the Prime Minister) and everyone pretty much votes party line. Here in the States about 1/3 of our citizens are not registered with a party and even most dems or reps will occasionally vote against their party. Same with members of congress. The Senate in particular promotes independance (the majority leader of the senate has little control when compared with the speaker of the House. The Senate was designed to allow individualism with Senators (a 6 year term separating them from constantly campaigning to be reelected, filibustering allows 1 to stand in the way of 99, and there is little formal structure on Senate leadership.) Even the House of Reps isn't that partisan compared with parliament. There are occasional representatives (such as Ron Paul) who frequently do not side with their party. In the UK people tend to vote for parties rather than candidates. A Labour party member will almost always vote Labour, a Conservative will almost always vote Conservative, a Liberal Democrat will almost always vote that way both in parliament and with British Citizens. In fact if members of the majority party are not voting the way the Prime Minister wants he will attach votes of confidence to bills, if the bill fails it is considered a vote of no confidence. Why would a PM do something that could potentially cost him his seat? Because if a new PM comes in, he likely will call an election (which can be done at any time, but must be done at least every 5 years) and the independent thinkers could loose their seats if they don't win. Does this tear the UK apart? Not really, but people don't talk about what party they are part of as openly. A child may never learn his parents party, you can't look up someone's party, and a married person may not even know the party of their spouse. The USA is not nearly as partisan as the UK. Here you have plenty of bipartisan work by comparison, and we also frequently end up with divided government (where one party has control of either the Presidency, Senate, or House, and another has control of the other two). In the UK divided government means the Prime Minister will be removed via a vote of No Confidence. If government is divided it forces the two parties to hammer out a solution. True the US electoral college does squash third parties, but people like Perot and Nader can influence elections, and they can run on single issues that the main parties don't want to discuss. Small single issue candidates exist elsewhere too such as in the Primaries (In the GOP Tancredo is running on the platform of Illegal Immigration to force the GOP to discuss the topic. The GOP doesn't want to risk alienating its base by being soft on illegals, but it doesn't want to piss off the businesses that support it so it must walk a fine line. Tancredo has heated up an already hot issue and kept it on the surface.
A true socialist believes in universal healthcare, a minimum wage that you can support a family on, maximum working week, state funded education for everyone, unions (not US style unions), equality, taxing the rich to support the poor.
No, not even hillary.
We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. ~Hillary Clinton.
I certainly think the free-market has failed. ~Hillary Clinton
It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few...and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. ~Hillary Clinton
Socialistic enough for ya?
No? This fits the taxing the rich to support the poor. As for universal healthcare, Hillary tried to force that little shitwad down our throats during her husbands presidency. We have universal education. In fact there are European nations with more privatized education than us, some of them have vouchers. Hillary has wanted to raise the minimum wage to a "livable wage" or at least that is her word for this bullshit. We haven't got a formal maximum workweek but we have overtime. We have got Unions, they just are not competitive any more. Also socialist DO NOT support equality, why is there such a massive lack of equality in collectivist countries? They claim they support equality but why does collectivism always seem to widen the gap between rich and poor.
The french LIKE their huge goverment system.
So they elected a president who promised to cut back on their government why? (not just small cut backs, big, massive ones.)
IF the US has a problem (IF, it is kinda like saying, Oh Bill Gates is no longer number 1, he is in trouble, I would like to have his troubles) it is that its two party system has resulted in people having a choice between a moderate right winger who leans a bit to the left and a moderate right winger who leans a bit to the right. The end result is that whichever you pick, you get a compromise candidate who is always a rightwinger trying to appeal to both leftish right wingers and right wing right wingers.
Our parties are far weaker in structure her. Members of congress (especially Senators but plenty of representatives, the Senate allows for individual actions such as filibustering to let 1 stand in the way of 99 and lacks formal structure but even the House has less party line voting than in your average parliament.) vote against party all the time. Liberman supports the war and was thrown out of the Democratic Party for it, Ron Paul is essentially a Libertarian but is registered as a Republican and strongly opposes the war, the whole Gang of 14 consisting of 7 Dems and 7 GOP members worked together to stop their parties. The 7 Dems stopped their party from filibustering Bush's Supreme Court nominees and the 7 GOP members stopped their party from using the Nuclear Option to prevent debate. In Europe most people always vote for their party and most are registered to one (or at least in the UK). In the USA, 1/3 or so of the population is independent and people frequently vote for members of the other party.
That doesn't leave a lot of room for trying a new direction. The dems can't go to the center, for fear of alienating the right wing, and the republicans can't go to far too the right for fear of alienating the moderates on their side.
The Dems did go to our center with Bill Clinton, but now they are going further left? The trick doesn't work with the GOP, because the GOP tends to have a more stable base (the GOP's base consist of many older people and older people turn out far better than younger ones. People tend to get more conservative as they age. People younger than 30 rarely seem to bother voting, and more younger people are liberal, a generalization but you get the idea.
From a EU perspective it is often very hard to spot the differen
I think the congressional Democrat's numbers are low because they have completely failed to rein in the Bush administration,
Then why is the Bush Administration's Approval rating higher than Congress?
All the Democrats have to do is not allocate funds for Iraq which takes a simple majority and then the troops come home.
If I were Bush I would simply veto the federal budget and veto every single bill congress passes until I get a war bill, it has been done with other presidents. If congress doesn't pass a budget the Federal Government essentially shuts down until it does.
A. single handedly pushing authorization for torture which was done entirely by his office and his aides
B. single handedly pushing authorization of illegal spying on American citizens without a warrant also lead out of his office
Congress has investigated both of these, they found in neither case was there anything that they could impeach Bush or Cheney for. I repeat for those of you who are slow, no crime was committed according to congressional investigations.
Those are both slam dunk grounds for impeachment because they are both clearly illegal, unpopular, unnecessary and were just plain stupid.
Unpopular, unnecessary and just plain stupid are not grounds for impeachment, only illegal is. In this case since it failed to meet the illegal criteria for articles of impeachment it would fail. You might get the house to prosecute, but the Senate will not convict without a crime.
The democrats should be harping non-stop on the fact that congressional republicans are blocking them on getting troops out of Iraq.
They spent the first few months in office renaming post offices, spending a large amount of time passing a resolution that essentially just was bitching at Bush but not doing anything. They still have yet to pass a budget not because Bush has vetoed it (in fact, President Bush has used very few vetoes compared to most modern day presidents.). If they don't pass a budget the federal government shuts down, so this is serious (though the war would still be funded thanks to the Feed and Forge Act). They promised to be bipartisan and respect the GOP and compromise with them, they clearly broke that promise, abusing House Rules Committee and not passing any real reforms. The GOP predictably began filibustering bills in the Senate because they were not given any consent and were not allowed to express their opinions.
Oh and if Democrats truly wanted to help end the Iraq war, passing a resolution condemning an Ottoman Empire genocide that took place 80 years ago while President Bush is in a very sensitive negotiation with Turkey over the PKK. This has insulted and angered Turkey, one of our closest allies and this WWI era genocide was brought up purely to anger the Turkish people. Of course this high moral standard comes from the same congress that refused to condemn a full page personal attack by a hate group calling a high ranking US general in Iraq a traitor for a report that only gave a semi-positive view of the troop surge BEFORE HE EVEN RELEASED THE REPORT. This General is not a politician, he has a very honorable career, and he mentioned quite clearly that the Iraqi Government is not performing well and the Iraqi troops, while improving, have a long way to go. Of course, this is the same congress as the one that promptly had the Senate Majority Leader issue a letter calling for a popular radio talk show host to be fired because (according to Reid) he said that soldiers that disliked the war were phony soldiers (that was a lie, Rush actually said that a former member of the army who was kicked out of boot camp and never had been to Iraq claimed to be an Iraq War Veteran who was against the war was called a phony soldier by Rush. Rush sold the "fire Rush" letter and donated the proceeds to a charity that helps the troops and their families, and he matched the money made by the donation with his own money, this wasn't a publicity stunt, he had donated to that charity in the past. Pelosi claimed she would clean up corruption yet she promptly tried to nominate a man found with thousands of dollars in bribes in his freezer to chair a committee instead of doing the honest thing and trying to get him expelled from congress.
There are only two promises I know of that they kept. The first is they promised to raise the minimum wage, which while I disagree with them on this (I feel that we generally do not need a minimum wage) they did uphold this promise if I remember correctly. The second thing they promised to do is not to attack the executive or try to dismantle the executive branch with impeachments. At least they kept two promises.
What is the point of this long complaint, I just wanted to stress how ridiculously bad this congress has been. Bush has been far from perfect, and the previous Republican Congress spend money quicker than Democrats but this is far worse. I predict that congresses approval will eventually fall into single digits.
Bring on the blood diamonds! Who the fuck cares who gets abused! Money is the only thing worth consideration.
The UN is sort of established for this reason. All that would happen if Yahoo didn't cooperate is that they would be firewalled, and their Chinese Employees would likely be jailed.
If some moron told me to install an entire office program (A sluggish one that cloned the one I already have, at that), I would email his boss and ask for the correct file format. It's common sense. IF you abuse your position to have people install redundant software, you probably won't be in that position for very long. It's like sending your files in Spanish..doc is the format of business.
Or you could just request an RTF. Rich text seems to work well on both. Abiword is also good with RTF so it is a good choice, it is what I use.
Imagine what would happen if lawyers were limited to a maximum total income of $100,000 per annum.
A maximum wage is always a bad idea. Imagine you hire a lawyer and he says "well, I don't care if I win this case or not, as I already reached my wage limit". We're better off reforming lawsuits than setting up a maximum wage.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, the Senate originally was elected by the state legislatures, usually after being appointed by a governor. The Senate is designed to represent states, and not to be proportional. It prevents the government from being abusive to small states. It also exist so that power is divided up. The senate approves appointments and treaties, the house initiates the budget. Representatives in the house often vote party line, in the senate, a single senator can filibuster a debate and people quite frequently vote against their party and there is little structure so it isn't majority take all.
Bottling water:
1. Take hose with running water, put it in bottle.
2. Put cap on bottle.
Sell for something around $5 a gallon.
Capachino
1. Make coffee
2. Pour milk in coffee.
3. Put whipped cream in coffee.
Sell for like $10 a gallon.
Gas
1. Locate gas in ground using pricey equipment.
2. Drill hole deep into ground.
3. Attach pump to hole, risk of fire exist when pump is running.
4. Store oil in huge tank in hostile country
5. Put oil on expensive ship with stuff to prevent it from breaking/catching fire
6. Ship oil across world.
7. Spend money to refine oil.
8. Deal with miles of red tape.
9. Put gas into expensive truck with pricey safety features to keep truck from catching fire.
10. Put gas in gas station, spend money to buy safety devices to protect customers from causing explosions, station must also make a small percentage of money.
Sell for about $3 a gallon. Be investigated repeatedly by government for excessively high prices.
My conclusion, investigate Starbucks and Aquafina, ignore ExxonMobile and BP.
Many conservative talk radio and conservative political talk show host also grant people who they don't necessarily agree with time on their shows to express their views. Rush's show has become somewhat of a forum for liberals and conservatives alike to call in and express their thoughts, and even though Rush will argue with liberals he usually will let them speak pretty openly (he shuts them off if they start ranting, but that is because they waist time, and he did randomly perform "call abortions" in the past but that was to make a statement.) Bill O'Reilly has had hundreds of Democratic strategist on his show. Whenever someone on the left wing says something outragious he may go after them, but he will usually invite them on to the show to explain themselves (he does this with people on the right too, such as Ann Coulter, who has appeared several times.) Sometimes the people he invites on will show up (Al Sharpton, a few Democratic politicians, and Michael Moore, though Moore pretty much ran off tail between his legs and said he won't go back), though many on the left simply won't go and explain themselves (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and left wing TV people such as Rosie O'Donald). O'Reilly is happy to have people on who disagree with him. That sounds like protecting free press and ensuring all viewpoints get out.
Oh and lets not forget President Bush. He is a conservative who is a big supporter of free press. He recently honored the founder of the C-SPAN network for giving people a politically neutral network with which they could observe their government and during C-SPAN's call in shows the general public can call in and share their views (many will even call in and express their dislike of the president). I'm not certain, but I think Bush also said he would veto any new version of the fairness doctrine.
Mine has a mere 512, I might up it to 1 GB, but I will wait at least till I get a new NIC. My old one broke. I can run Kubuntu with Beryl (using an embeded intel graphics card) and play games just fine.
Poor Gary, he was pwned
Keep in mind with voting, your opinion is statistically unimportant, but millions like you hold voice.
/me flips this article off.
You might be able to make it into a wireless go anywhere thin client for companies.
We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. ~Hillary Clinton.
I certainly think the free-market has failed. ~Hillary Clinton
It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few...and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. ~Hillary Clinton
Socialistic enough for ya?
No? This fits the taxing the rich to support the poor. As for universal healthcare, Hillary tried to force that little shitwad down our throats during her husbands presidency. We have universal education. In fact there are European nations with more privatized education than us, some of them have vouchers. Hillary has wanted to raise the minimum wage to a "livable wage" or at least that is her word for this bullshit. We haven't got a formal maximum workweek but we have overtime. We have got Unions, they just are not competitive any more. Also socialist DO NOT support equality, why is there such a massive lack of equality in collectivist countries? They claim they support equality but why does collectivism always seem to widen the gap between rich and poor.
So they elected a president who promised to cut back on their government why? (not just small cut backs, big, massive ones.)
Our parties are far weaker in structure her. Members of congress (especially Senators but plenty of representatives, the Senate allows for individual actions such as filibustering to let 1 stand in the way of 99 and lacks formal structure but even the House has less party line voting than in your average parliament.) vote against party all the time. Liberman supports the war and was thrown out of the Democratic Party for it, Ron Paul is essentially a Libertarian but is registered as a Republican and strongly opposes the war, the whole Gang of 14 consisting of 7 Dems and 7 GOP members worked together to stop their parties. The 7 Dems stopped their party from filibustering Bush's Supreme Court nominees and the 7 GOP members stopped their party from using the Nuclear Option to prevent debate. In Europe most people always vote for their party and most are registered to one (or at least in the UK). In the USA, 1/3 or so of the population is independent and people frequently vote for members of the other party.
The Dems did go to our center with Bill Clinton, but now they are going further left? The trick doesn't work with the GOP, because the GOP tends to have a more stable base (the GOP's base consist of many older people and older people turn out far better than younger ones. People tend to get more conservative as they age. People younger than 30 rarely seem to bother voting, and more younger people are liberal, a generalization but you get the idea.
Oh and if Democrats truly wanted to help end the Iraq war, passing a resolution condemning an Ottoman Empire genocide that took place 80 years ago while President Bush is in a very sensitive negotiation with Turkey over the PKK. This has insulted and angered Turkey, one of our closest allies and this WWI era genocide was brought up purely to anger the Turkish people. Of course this high moral standard comes from the same congress that refused to condemn a full page personal attack by a hate group calling a high ranking US general in Iraq a traitor for a report that only gave a semi-positive view of the troop surge BEFORE HE EVEN RELEASED THE REPORT. This General is not a politician, he has a very honorable career, and he mentioned quite clearly that the Iraqi Government is not performing well and the Iraqi troops, while improving, have a long way to go. Of course, this is the same congress as the one that promptly had the Senate Majority Leader issue a letter calling for a popular radio talk show host to be fired because (according to Reid) he said that soldiers that disliked the war were phony soldiers (that was a lie, Rush actually said that a former member of the army who was kicked out of boot camp and never had been to Iraq claimed to be an Iraq War Veteran who was against the war was called a phony soldier by Rush. Rush sold the "fire Rush" letter and donated the proceeds to a charity that helps the troops and their families, and he matched the money made by the donation with his own money, this wasn't a publicity stunt, he had donated to that charity in the past. Pelosi claimed she would clean up corruption yet she promptly tried to nominate a man found with thousands of dollars in bribes in his freezer to chair a committee instead of doing the honest thing and trying to get him expelled from congress.
There are only two promises I know of that they kept. The first is they promised to raise the minimum wage, which while I disagree with them on this (I feel that we generally do not need a minimum wage) they did uphold this promise if I remember correctly. The second thing they promised to do is not to attack the executive or try to dismantle the executive branch with impeachments. At least they kept two promises.
What is the point of this long complaint, I just wanted to stress how ridiculously bad this congress has been. Bush has been far from perfect, and the previous Republican Congress spend money quicker than Democrats but this is far worse. I predict that congresses approval will eventually fall into single digits.