Gorgon

Tripple post. You don't see those often.

Work test

Work test

Work test

And Diamond dust can be manufactured, for not a huge ammount of money. You don't need to file bits off diamonds.

I'm not smart and I think they're hilarious.

Why is the bear being obnoxious social comedy.

what the, don't you live in the city, and didn't Al Gore personally dig down cables for the information super highway internets.

I didn't know my up was so crappy. Still, 10 mps is plenty.

Are you joking here? The "dem injun's got whats they deserved" line of thinking went obsolete quite awhile ago. Indian reservations have been making huge strides in the US, and they are using old fashioned capitalism to do it. Seriously, that is how the textbooks are written right now, that is how the state education standards read, and that is how young folks are learning. So I'm not sure where your myth is persisting. Well what else would they 'use'. Capitalism is not an ideology, it's the way the world works. Play along or get left behind. PS : LoF doesn't really believe his own position, he's arguing it for laughs, in case you missed the news.

Maybe we care more about the president and cabinet because they set the agenda on foreign policy, and we aren't as interested in the day to day business of legislation in the house. One small party getting disproportionate influence because they are needed to form a majority is one possible result of a broad spectrum of parties, but ultimately what it teaches all parties is the need for cooperation, for seeking new alliances to break the stalemate. A government will typically contain ministers from several different parties. This is healthier, I think, than cleaving political division down the middle and in effect saying 'stand on this side of the line or the other'.

Another thing which is unfortunate is the creation of two political powerhouses rather than a full compliment of parties across the political spectrum, resulting in polarization. The Democrats and the Republicans are like the Jedi and the Sith (I'll let you each decide which is which), there is little gray side when it comes to the debate.

The party chooses whomever comes out the stronger after the primaries, I thought you meant running as a third party candidate. They are mostly remarkable for being able to siphon off votes from the 'real' candidates and affect the outcome.

I firmly believe in proportional representation, I don't think the federal system is better or more suited to the US, but fundamental political organization doesn't change overnight, or maybe at all, without a revolution or some such, so it doesn't really matter.

'There are other places where a candidate has virtually no chance if he's not selected by the party to run on the ballot' When was the last time an independent won the presidency in the US.

I didn't compare the electoral college with Chavez, we were discussing democracy and non democratic practices. Chavez's power grab is an entirely unrelated topic within the same realm.

Is the CMOS chip replaceable, as in it pops out and can be refitted ?. Just a general question.

I know you just spent a post explaining how America isn't exactly a democracy, but the way you chose your president is decidedly undemocratic. Not only do you discard the mandates (electoral votes) of the losing side ,which are supposed to represent voter influence, you give those mandates to the enemy. So if a state has been 60% democratic for the last decade, it is a defacto democratic stronghold where republican influence, on the presidential level, is nonexistent. It's not so much one man one vote, but one man 2 votes one place, and 0 in another. Does it really matter that much where you live, and are the differences between the states in cultural and political tradition so great as to make this necessary. I know everything to do with the constitution and its organization of the political system is a holy cow in the US and will continue in its antiquated state indefinitely, but still.

This doesn't really have anything to do with denying people a serivice, however, drug users and their problem children are first on the list of 'undeserving poor', and I'll wager there are a lot of those in these intervention programmes. Of course it's staggeringly invasive, but this demographic doesn't have a lot in the way of political clout, so, they have to put up with more than anyone else.

I believe the official term is yobs and chavs.

Cool

That's a really interesting study in how to conduct a coup using media staged events and confusion. Certainly looks sophisticated enough to be a CIA job, only they aren't supposed to be doing that kinda stuff anymore. It's interesting to note that while it was a militarist coup, the army didn't fall behind them completely, in the end information spread faster than their disinformation. It's not so easy to create your own reality through control of the media anymore. Whatever people might say.

I agree, nothing good can come of revolutions, just look at the US.

Well he is right of middle from a European perspective, all American presidents since maybe FDR have been, that part is all true. Certainly not a socialist anyway.

Obama is not nearly so good as you think. He has lied (a lot) over the course of his career, and his politics are best described as center-right or far-right. Guantanamo Bay is getting worse, he's stepping up the war in Afghanistan (where our "ally" is a brutal, fundamentalist, misogynistic regime) and the list goes on and on. I could continue, going in depth on his policies towards homosexuals, suspects' rights, big business, labor, et cetera, but I think you get the idea. He is only a leftist from the bizarre American viewpoint, and that viewpoint is a complex product of myriad social factors, most notable of which is the fact that whoever is the lefter candidate is assumed to be a leftist. From your link He stressed the mistreatment did not appear to be directed from above, but was an initiative undertaken by frustrated U.S. army and navy jailers on the ground. As for Afghanistan, price of doing business, do you propose fighting the Taliban there without propping up the regime ?. In foreign policy national interests always trump civil rights. Always has, always will.