bascule

Something tells me when they're talking about the "ever-growing Washington bureaucracy" and an "unprecedented expansion of power" they're not talking about the Department of Education...

This cracked me up I didn't get to see any of the protests firsthand, but I live in a little communist nexus isolated in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It will be interesting to see if there are higher levels of "tax protesters" (i.e. people who "protest" by not paying taxes) this year and how the government reacts to them. If you don't pay your taxes you should go to jail. Note that US tax rates are at a historic low (for all but the wealthiest Americans) thanks to Obama's tax cuts. This is understandable given we're in a depression but as soon as the economy starts to recover I would hope Obama does start raising taxes.

Yes, the effect does not appear particularly dramatic with the scales set the way the junk science graph did, and with a 5 year average omitted the data is more difficult to interpret due to the levels of noise. When placed in the context of a longer time period the effect is much more dramatic:

Not so long as they ultimately respect that they are a member of the United States of America and bound by the Constitution and federal law. In that regard, they aren't sovereign... they are a member state of a sovereign nation. This isn't the Articles of Confederation, after all.

Personally I'm a Ruby fan. I like languages with a purely expression-based grammar (like Lisp). Python breaks things apart into expressions and statements, which is a bit weird and very imperative-feeling to me. Ruby also has these things called "blocks" which are basically syntactic sugar for passing an anonymous function as an argument to another. They're completely awesome, but something you really have to use to "get".

I'm unclear on what they mean by expanding national government... do they mean the bailout? Where exactly is this growth occurring? Bush added a whole new federal department which seems to be largely useless and you didn't see them threatening secession then. The government is spending a lot of money, sure, and it has seized financial institutions and now controls them. Does that really count as government expansion? It certainly isn't expansion for expansion's sake... it was "expansion" to prevent the financial sector from collapsing. Even then, it's not as if AIG has become a government entity... the government itself didn't get larger as a result. I'm also completely unclear on how they feel their tenth amendment rights are being violated. California has legalized medical marijuana, and as a result Bush stepped up DEA raids of medical marijuana clubs. For something like that, I could see how a state could feel its 10th amendment rights are being violated. Is anything like that going in in Texas? I'm not sure what, specifically, the Texans are referring to. I just can't help but interpret this as "we don't like what's going on in Washington so we're going to assert our own soverignty"

You appear to be correct, this is Obama's budget.. He's a designer, it looks like: http://wallstats.com/about/

That is not the case, and we've been over this before. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget#Total_spending Mandatory spending is not "entitlement spending," and we've been over that before as well (same post, same thread). Entitlement programs are a subset of mandatory spending. $260 billion of the mandatory spending is interest on the national debt. That's not entitlement spending. This infographic is not for Obama's proposed 2010 budget. It is for the 2009 budget.

http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/12227/ With Democrats in power for a little over 11 weeks, and apparently irate over the "federal budget mess and other problems", Texas has decided it's time to "draw the line against the sand" against those tyrants in Washington. I'm a bit confused as to what exactly they're so angry about. They're asserting tenth amendment rights, but against what? The fact that the President is no longer a Republican? It practically sounds as if they're threatening secession... Perhaps the oddest part of this all is that the "ever-growing Washington bureaucracy" was massively expanded under Bush, who also brought about an "unprecedented expansion of power" at the cost of "individual rights", but they didn't care about that, ostensibly because it was done by a Republican. This could get interesting. Meanwhile in Texas... a city councilman is arrested for saying something the mayor doesn't like?

(And note: when I talk about Republicans usurping the Tea Party movement, I'm not talking about Ron Paul. Ron Paul is a libertarian with an R next to his name) Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedNow that they are no longer in power, Republican pundits are starting to question the case for comprehensive government action against domestic terrorism now that the US government is investigating right wing extremist groups. Yeah, antiterrorism is great until you're considered a potential terrorist there, eh? To take a line from Glenn Greenwald, it seems conservatives have a newfound appreciation for terrorist rights, and are now against the government protecting the homeland from terrorists.

Here's a rather informative infographic: http://www.wallstats.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/WallStatsDATlarge.jpg Spending is up 10%, while revenue is only up 7% Defense tops spending again, followed by social security and medicare

Agreed. I've only read the Eye of the World, but I grew rather quickly to dislike Robert Jordan and his bombastic writing style. I'm sure most of his fans screamed "NOOO!" when he died but what were they expecting? Did they think he'd actually finish it before he died?

Lots of people turn to GoF when trying to deal with problems which arise because features do not exist in their given language to address them. The Factory pattern is perhaps the most infamous in Java, and there are some comically bad usage examples to be found, like "Factory Factories": http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/apidocs/org/apache/xmlrpc/server/RequestProcessorFactoryFactory.html?rel=html It's not like the Factory pattern doesn't have its uses. I use it in Ruby, particularly when writing test cases (I use factories to build my fixture data). Java forces you to use it far more often than you should, both because it lacks metaclasses and because it makes you declare constructors as final. Templates can be... ok. Boost tries to do them right. The STL is absolutely horrid. For declarative code generation, which is what templates try to do to a certain extent, I think it's much nicer to use a language with first class metaprogramming. Python certainly has this. Rather than having a wacky "template" language which is its own animal, you can use Python to generate Python. Python is certainly a conceptual playground for a lot of features you haven't been exposed to. I'd suggest experimenting with a functional approach, trying to use features like list comprehensions and map/filter/reduce. Avoid using for loops when you don't have to, for there are better ways! Yes to the latter, however Python has a sequential memory model. There is Stackless Python to address this, but that won't help you scale across multiple CPU cores, and Stackless Python is both slow and not a "first class" Python platform. If you really want to break out of the Java/C++ mold you should try to learn Lisp. You probably won't ever write anything useful in Lisp, but it will change your perspective on programming, and many of the ideas you pick up will translate into languages like Python (or Ruby, or any functional language) I'd suggest downloading PLT Scheme: http://download.plt-scheme.org/drscheme/ And following along with the SICP videos: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ You can just watch the first one, and Abelson will teach you Lisp in about an hour: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/videos/Lecture-1a.mpg Python is another language you can pick up quickly.

I thought Obama did a great job handling this. No Bush-style granstanding, trying to take credit for what the Navy Seals did, although behind the scenes Obama was instrumental. Once it was dealt with, he went straight back to working on the economy. Meanwhile, Republicans like Newt Gingrich were knocking him: "Obama is making a major mistake in not forcefully outlining the rules of civilization for dealing with pirates. We look weak."

FreedomWorks seems to be the main group active in bringing about the entire "tea party" meme, and appears at the top of the list of sponsors of that site: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=FreedomWorks They're part of Citizens for a Sound Economy, which is run by a former Bush counsel, and has been instrumental in helping bolster support for Republican policy (see link) I see this as less a grassroots libertarian awakening and more of Republicans drumming up anti-Democratic support through mouthpiece organizations (source) This video: "I'm not paying taxes anymore. I quit. [...] You've got kids in college? Get them out of college. They're brainwashing them. [...] BURN ALL THE BOOKS! [...] Understand we've got an enemy here. This is not just an election. It's a battle for survival" ...was particularly telling to me. A libertarian shows up to a Glenn Beck 9/12 meeting, and practically gets booed for talking about libertarianism. Then a complete nutjob starts going off about, well, the above quoted items and they eat it up with a spoon. I think, rather than Republicans jumping on the libertarian bandwagon, it's the other way around. Republicans have guised the tea parties in faux libertarianism.

Python has a real, full-featured object model, which includes metaclasses which not only provide a nice API for singletons but are also excellent for reflection. You can define methods in the metaclass which can be invoked in the body of subclasses, allowing you to generate code on-the-fly declaratively. What do you use that for? The same sort of thing you might use the factory pattern for in languages like Java. Rather than creating a FooFactory you can just call a method of the Foo metaclass which builds an appropriate object. Compare this Python pseudocode: obj = Foo.create_from_bar(bar) as opposed to some Java pseudocode: FooFromBarFactory factory = new FooFromBarFactory(bar); Foo obj = factory.newInstance(); The code is both clearer and more concise. Again, having first class syntax for types like maps/dicts makes code dramatically clearer. Shorter code should improve clarity, not diminish it. Perl was a particularly egregious case of overly terse and confusing syntax. However in a discussion about Python it's a red herring. Using more code typically makes programs harder to read and more difficult to maintain. Java programs are typically ridden with tons of boilerplate code because the language lacks the features to abstract it away. Sounds like you would love Lisp. Personally I prefer languages with rich, expressive grammars. I feel they make code both easier to write and read. Aieeeeeeeee! The STL is TERRIBLE! C++ is the only popular language which has to embed a Turing complete functional templating language, because without it the amount of boilerplate code you would have to write would boggle the mind. Templates make the language terribly confusing, and bely an inability to perform real metaprogramming like you can in a language like Python (or Ruby, Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell, and many others) "Throw more code at the problem" is a terrible attitude. Every line of code I write for work is a line I have to maintain. More lines of code means more work for myself. I would rather create as little work for myself as possible. This doesn't have to come at the price of clarity, on the contrary, fewer lines of code should improve clarity in most cases. Your typical program in C++ or Java is going to be full of far more lines of code which don't express a solution to the problem but rather are just thunking around deficiencies of the language. This makes programs harder to read as you have to mentally skip over this code to read the actual solution to the problem. Python gets rid of all the boilerplate. It also has a dynamic type system which further reduces boilerplate needed for type thunking. Dynamic type systems make interfaces less brittle and allow you to preserve backwards compatibility in cases which simply aren't possible with static type systems.

Who are the organizers? The only one I've been able to find, besides Fox News, Glenn Beck, and his 9/12 project, is Citizens for a Sound Economy: http://mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=395 Former Bush counsel? Sounds like it's being funded and run by a bunch of Republicans.

Learn Python. It provides a much more powerful model for describing most types of problems than C does. C requires you restate your problem in terms the CPU can understand, and "what the CPU can do" is typically an overcomplicated and error-prone model for describing most problems. If you feel Python is too slow, there are still lots of alternatives to C while still affording you high level, declarative descriptions of problems. OCaml is a fast, compiled mixed-paradigm language which is used for all sorts of performance critical modeling. I would recommend learning C after learning a higher level language. I think too many people start out with a language like C and end up with a "C shaped brain" that tries to model every program directly around the Von Neumann architecture. Learning a higher level language (particularly a functional one) will essentially require you relearn everything you know. I started out with a very heavy C background and it took me many years to move on. Nowadays I never write "for" loops (although they have their place in Python) and can't believe I wasted so much time writing them over and over again in C. There are better ways!

The Cuban embargo is painfully outdated. Fidel Castro is an old, dying man. And I'd certainly like to be able to buy Cuban cigars...

Well, in my case I think it's lead me to stop taking the Republicans seriously... in cases like this their position (one which is evidently universally espoused, given those statistics) is entirely based on what's politically expedient given the current political climate, as opposed to trying to govern effectively. Not a single one of them was willing to side with Clinton over the tax increases, but they were quite happy to try to take all the credit for reducing the national debt. I certainly think the Republicans helped with spending cuts towards the end of the Clinton administration, but that's all they can really be credited with regarding the budget surplus. The rest we can attribute to "irrational exuberance" and the tech bubble. While it was unsustainable, it certainly marks the closest America has gotten in recent times to paying down the national debt as opposed to adding to it. All of this would be completely undone by the end of the tech bubble, 9/11, and Bush and his fellow Republican's "spend more, tax less" policies. While we would recover from 9/11, we never recovered from "spend more, tax less"

What about at the end of the '90s? -- And to reiterate: periods of economic growth are great times to combat debt! We went through one following post-9/11 economic recovery, and while it was fueled by bubbles, that didn't stop Bush and his fellow Republicans from not only failing to combat debt, but making debt substantially worse. Virtually every year the debt increased as the economy continued to grow. Rather than using this period of economic growth to fight debt, the Republicans cut taxes for the rich, while starting an unnecessary and expensive war with no exit strategy, and dramatically increasing spending elsewhere. Now all of the sudden there's Johnny-come-lately concern from Republicans over the national debt. I was certainly talking about it when we were racking up what were at the time record deficits amidst a period of economic growth... in 2005 (when the debt topped $8 trillion) and in 2007 (when the debt topped $9 trillion) Unfortunately for the Johnny-come-lately now foaming at the mouth teabagger conservatives, it's too late to fight debt now. We've got to fix the economy first. Your rage over the debt would've been better expressed during growth periods throughout the past decade. Voicing that opinion now is sheer idiocy.

Yes, and Republicans like it when it's proposed by other Republicans and dislike it when it's proposed by Democrats. That's hypocrisy.

That's pretty much what I gathered as well. They have representation, it's just their preferred candidates for representatives lost. So now it's something of "we don't feel like paying taxes because Republicans aren't in power anymore" Glenn Beck "channels" Thomas Paine ...and we have Faux News personalities (one who arguably have mental problems) comparing the Obama Budget to Pearl Harbor. This teabagging meme certainly is hilarious is to watch. "I'm not paying taxes anymore. I quit. [...] You've got kids in college? Get them out of college. They're brainwashing them. [...] BURN ALL THE BOOKS! [...] Understand we've got an enemy here. This is not just an election. It's a battle for survival" Wow. What's wrong with these people? 10 weeks of Democrats in power and they're ready to skip paying taxes. I think Jon Stewart put it best when he said that Republicans are confusing tyranny with losing.

This is an incredibly interesting article: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/04/a-tale-of-two-depressions.html Two economists compare where we are at now to the Great Depression: World Stock Markets: Volume of World Trade: Their conclusion is that we are in a depression, although so far the policy responses have been better than they were during the Great Depression. We also have social programs to ensure people aren't, well, dying as a result of the depression.

From what I understand the increased spending comes largely as a policy response to the financial crisis itself Until we're out of the financial crisis we're going to continue to run record deficits. While they're spending more money, it's hopefully on the right things to stimulate the economy and get tax revenues up again. Paying down the debt we're accruing will depend on getting the economy back on track and having another prosperous period like we did under Clinton.