Pangloss

Barr actually caused quite a stir amongst Libertarian Party members with his run. A lot of them felt that he wasn't a true libertarian, and given his eight years as a Republican congressman it's not hard to see why. Some of them split off and formed a group called the "Boston Tea Party" (motto: "Time to party like it's 1773!" <lol>). I read this interesting Associated Press article on it last night that you all might enjoy: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gknDqKmsQbVwTQR7pSXdBy0-KdagD94600B00

I'd need to see the math on that. Deductions are removals from your taxable income, not straight-out returns via check. They tend to sound large but when you put them down on paper they can be quite small. If you run across any analysis on this please pass it along.

Olbermann was a "JA" when he was a deadpan comedic sports reader for ESPN. How he made the transition to mainstream journalism (such as it is) is still beyond me. The surprising thing is, some journalists really are neutral and consider that an important aspect of their profession. It's not as if they don't have opinions or that they don't vote, it's just that they consider it important to maintain objectivity in order to avoid bias in their reporting. Unfortunately these journalists are difficult to identify (or more accurately, for everyone to agree with such identification), and perhaps even more unfortunately, seem to be a dying breed. The news industry has now fully embraced the concept of reporter-slash-analyst.

More news came out on this today. Apparently Obama has interceded and asked Reid to keep Lieberman in the caucus. This is quite revealing of Obama's character, because Lieberman essentially stabbed Obama in the back during the campaign. When Lieberman was running in that tight race to get himself re-elected, he asked Obama to come and campaign for him, and Obama did that. But then Lieberman turned around and attacked him in a very personal way on the campaign trail, questioning his readiness. I think that says a lot about his willingness to stand behind what he said last week. Can we set hatred and partisanship aside and run this country together? Yes we can. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/10/politics/politico/thecrypt/main4591108.shtml

Odd to see this here, considering how much time I spend talking and teaching about this subject in other places (I spent all night tonight showing students how to write C# code for Torque applications, but they kept drifting over to the 360 to play the Mirror's Edge demo). Yeah the demo is something else. I like it's interesting combination of special combat moves and first-person perspective, which is rare (most shooters are weapon-focused), and I like the idea of avoiding combat, focusing on disarm moves, etc. It's interesting. Also uses as its theme a cool song by Swedish musician Lisa Miskovsky. I'm actually looking forward to quite a few games this fall -- I've been spending time recently in Little Big Planet (amazing game).

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately even with the qualification it still sounds a lot steeper than 10 bills. According to this 2006 US Census report, there are about 17 million undergrad students in the US, which would be $68 billion if all of them tapped in (why wouldn't they?). That's a lot of money to take off the "income" side of the books right now, though I'd still probably sign off on it myself. http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p20-559.pdf (warning: PDF) Swansont, why would you assume that it will replace existing deductions? I don't see why it would, and there's no indication that it would (that I'm aware of).

If they actually mean "tax credit". I have a nagging suspicion any time I hear those words that what the politician actually means is "deduction". That is what they say, but these definitions are sometimes confused in common parlance and I have not seen it clarified by anyone in the Obama camp in interviews, etc. If you run across anything like that please pass it along. If it is "credit" then it is a massive amount of money, btw. I don't know how many high school + college students there are in this country, but it's a pretty honkin' huge number. That'd be up in bailout territory.

We've been talking in another thread about the passage in three states of laws banning gay marriage. One of the interesting reasons being discussed in the media and amongst analysts is the idea that the passage happened as a result of large minority turnout -- specifically African American voters. They may have been 96% in favor of Obama, but 70% of them also voted against gay marriage. In one sense they saved Democrats, putting their man in office at the most critical moment ever. But in so doing they also helped deal a severe blow to a major progressive cause. And that is not the only issue they differ with politically correct progressives on. What I'm wondering today is: Did Democrats get the message? And how will they respond? Will these new voters get a seat at the table, or will they be asked to chill out and don't muss their pretty little 'fro's over real issues? This is, in my opinion, a fascinating example of how the political left in this country is not "all one thing". Gloria Steinem can come on Oprah and talk about how the election of Obama is national referendum on all fronts of the progressive movement, and Bill Maher can talk about "the right tribe" winning and all that, but the truth of the matter is that Democrats are just as diverse and eclectic as Republicans have been, if not more so. If anything this election, with Democrats capturing the big-tent moderates, increases that stress, and it will be interesting to see how Democrats deal with that. When Republicans had their "mandate" they traded it in for major progress on such fronts as Terri Schiavo, creationism and prayer in public schools. What will Democrats do? Will this become an opportunity to get the guns, demolish the nuclear power plants and put a condom, some KY gell, and a guide to safe drug use in the hands of every 10 year old? Or will they listen to the concerns of their newest voters? What do you think?

I think ultimately Obama may be the best thing that ever happened to "Reagan Republicans". His success will allow them to shed themselves of the cement boots of the christian right and give them the potential of returning to the ability to provide of level voice of reason and sanity amidst the hubbub of emotional and often faith-based conflicts that often arise from the left. And best of all he doesn't even have to do that by failing and giving them an opening. He can do that through cooperation -- listening to their concerns and sitting with them at the table. He can do it by showing us the true value of opposing viewpoints, which is not conflict, but clarity. line[/hr] Did you all catch Paul Begala on Bill Maher's show Friday night? He had an amusing insertion to the subject line of this thread: "... and 100% of Democrats...". (lol)

I'm not so concerned with the "why" as I am with the "how".

Too bad that's not how electoral college representatives are actually chosen. But I agree with iNow, and I think we should be educating the public, not putting our heads back down in the sand. The horse is out of the barn, doG, and letting politicians have free reign hasn't produced more responsible politicians.

I think you missed the point -- he's saying (and I agree) that the right is using the phrase "forced altruism" as a spin tactic. It's not a matter of altruism. I think it's a matter of whether these kids will be indoctrinated into a culture of service. I think that's a positive thing in general, showing kids how they can go about contributing to their country. I buy the high school thing, but I stop short at the college level. They should become volunteers at that point, though I would support some limited degree of required service if they are receiving federal grants and low-interest loans.

We'll allow unions that make sense (mainly because they don't hurt anyone), and deny the ones that don't (like incest or minors or polygamy). There will be a logical and legal basis for doing this, because that's how we do things in this country. Q.E.D.

And last I checked we still use it.................. (Tanjit, now bascule has you and I doing it!!!)

We aren't. We're establishing law, not ruling by public opinion. There is no mob rule being discussed here.

Slavery in the United States was outlawed by the 14th Amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Good post, Skye. I pretty much agree with all of your points there, and I think that illustrates the complexity of the problems. In general the newest programs are vastly more successful at efficiency and generalized design goals than their predecessors. But costs have gone up and while it does look like we might get enough F-35s, it doesn't look like we will have enough F-22s. I'm a big believer in low cost and emphasis on functionality over gee-whizbang. But the discussions I participate in over these issues, which involve engineers, defense analysts and defense media specialists, focus very intensely on specific details, and those discussions can be absolutely fascinating. They look at such details, for example, as whether a VTOL attack craft is as "efficient" as a non-VTOL attack craft, and what that means in terms of specific capabilities. What I suspect is that in the end we will have to make capability sacrifices in order to save costs. Specific features of our military will be lost, but we're going to have to learn how to be okay with that and not trump it up into some sort of conservative, anti-Obama straw man about 'weakening our military', because that (a) won't be fair, and (b) the reasons we need to do these things are not Obama's fault. We also need to remain extremely broad-minded about capabilities -- losing some of them may be okay because of coverage in other areas. The recent improvements in aerial drones being a prime example -- hovering around areas for many hours unnoticed, dropping bombs as needed, etc.

No, the numbers support what I said. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/06/report-08-turnout-same-or-only-slightly-higher-than-04/

I think those are perfectly reasonable points. I also think it's perfectly reasonable to have the chief executive determined by a popular vote. There are pros and cons to each side.

Can you cite a reference? I shouldn't have to. There is not one single country in the western world that meets the classical Greek definition of Democracy, but they're all called "democracies" in casual usage. I'm afraid you're just not going to find a lot of purchase here for your electoral college argument. You should take comfort in the fact that people read it and found it interesting, and move on.

Phi, you realize that command of armed forces is already centralized, don't you? Procurement is also centralized. For that matter, so is the stating of needs and requirements. What you're talking about ultimately is the mind-set of separate services, and my point there I think is significant, that those needs are based in reality -- what a ship captain needs is physically different from what an Air Force Base commander needs. So long as that's the case you're going to have different opinions on what equipment should be purchased. Just to give an example of that, the Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22 Raptor aircraft (envisioned as our main attack and air superiority weapons of the next generation, respectively) are being pursued in a completely different manner from the previous generations of weapons. Currently we have large deployments of aging F-15s and F-16s in the Air Force, and F/A-18 Hornets in the Navy and Marines. These aircraft are all operating well past their life expectancies and will not last much longer (except for the Super Hornets, which are good for a little while yet). (The Navy did a stellar job of main-lining its air superiority requirements under the aegis of the Hornet -- so great that it can now only attack ground targets within 900 miles of the carrier, instead of the 3000+ that it was capable of before. But we did get some advantages -- safer decks, faster launch-and-recovery, better cost efficiency, etc. These trade-offs are important to recognize.) Anyway, the F-35, or Joint Strike Fighter, is an interesting example to follow in terms of centralization. The Air Force had one set of requirements, the Navy had another, and the Marines a third. This would seem on the surface to be an example of what you're talking about -- inter-service rivalry. But that's not what it is. The Navy needs beefier landing gear to support carrier landings -- that cuts into the payload and range that the Air Force needs because it doesn't have carrier decks to get it close to the action. And don't even get me started on the Marines and their VTOL ideas. And these are just a couple of examples out of hundreds of major differences in requirements. The result has been endless delays and re-engineering going back twenty years now. And every time the requirements change the costs fly upwards. Any money we could possibly have saved by unifying the JSF has long since been lost in the quagmire of meeting disparate requirements. And even worse, because costs have gone so high, Congress has cut back on the number of F-22s and F-35s that will be purchased. But the 15s, 16s and 18s aren't getting any younger. So soon we will have a quarter of the planes covering the same needs at greater cost. Wow, what a success! My ultimate point here is that these things are more complicated than they seem.

Dems did show up for this election. This time I guess the far right figured it wasn't worth it. If anything I think that shows that the far right still (unfortunately) carries a lot of weight in this country. Had they turned out in full force McCain could have won the election, but that doesn't matter to them because McCain is not the person they wanted. I think that's a GOOD thing. Let the extremists stay home and let the open-minded, persuadable, intelligent and objective moderates run the country.

"We got spirit, 'yes we can', we got power, we're the man!"

I highly recommend not learning VBScript. Even Microsoft has abandoned it in favor of JavaScript, which is now behind every single aspect of client-side development under the aegis of ASP.NET. They've announced that it will not be developed further. That having been said, it is still used in legacy ASP and of course in supporting Windows Server installations. I would start here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t0aew7h6.aspx

I wonder if that includes the 20% of Republican voters who didn't bother to turn out for this election and in so doing handed the win to Obama. That's what I love about moderate candidates. Keeps the zealots at home where they belong.