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Tauto: You kidding,I'll just go behind the building but will need to keep an eye out for the muggers and back stabbers.
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hedwards: Don't forget the police, you don't want to wind up on the kiddie diddlier list, do you?
This is a no go zone for the police that's why there is so many wannabe cops in here.
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Inauguration day is over and the feeling seems to be if at all it was a rather feeble historic moment. The bitching about the lower size of the cheering crowd compared to the popular predecessor was just pathetic. The lying about the alleged lying of the bad, bad press (which was actually telling the truth) was even worse.

But it only reinforces what I feel the whole time, that I cannot understand how anyone could ever vote for Trump. I just never saw him as president material. Cruz or someone else I may have understood but Trump just ever was a no go for me. It's like me and Trump voters come from different planets.

Now let's see how the other plans are going.
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Trilarion: Inauguration day is over and the feeling seems to be if at all it was a rather feeble historic moment. The bitching about the lower size of the cheering crowd compared to the popular predecessor was just pathetic. The lying about the alleged lying of the bad, bad press (which was actually telling the truth) was even worse.

But it only reinforces what I feel the whole time, that I cannot understand how anyone could ever vote for Trump. I just never saw him as president material. Cruz or someone else I may have understood but Trump just ever was a no go for me. It's like me and Trump voters come from different planets.

Now let's see how the other plans are going.
Congratulations. Now you feel what communists felt, when Soviet Union collapsed.
Welcome to the 21st century.
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Trilarion: But it only reinforces what I feel the whole time, that I cannot understand how anyone could ever vote for Trump. I just never saw him as president material. Cruz or someone else I may have understood but Trump just ever was a no go for me. It's like me and Trump voters come from different planets.
As a German, it's normal that you see people like Bepe Grillo as an alien when in the next elections, you'll only have the choice between Merkel and Martin Schulz for the chancellorship ;)
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Trilarion: But it only reinforces what I feel the whole time, that I cannot understand how anyone could ever vote for Trump. I just never saw him as president material. Cruz or someone else I may have understood but Trump just ever was a no go for me. It's like me and Trump voters come from different planets.
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catpower1980: As a German, it's normal that you see people like Bepe Grillo as an alien when in the next elections, you'll only have the choice between Merkel and Martin Schulz for the chancellorship ;)
I specifically meant Trump as someone I would never even dream of voting for, but we have now right wing populists too as in all the other countries. So there is more choice, only the top candidates of the right wing party in Germany are a bit ludicrous. One of them gave a speech lately and it was an x-double minus performance, so bad I don't even know where to start.
Trumps choice of FCC chairman seemed very shady to me first, but this forbes article seems to say he's pro net neutrality : http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#2f0716184c7f
If he is indeed pro NN and a good person for the job, then that seems consistent with Trump's pulling out of the TPP, both of which seem pro-freedom and anti-large corporations to me. Then again, I don't know what Trump HAS done in other fields so he might be sucking corporate dick elsewhere.
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Shadowstalker16: Trumps choice of FCC chairman seemed very shady to me first, but this forbes article seems to say he's pro net neutrality : http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#2f0716184c7f
If he is indeed pro NN and a good person for the job, then that seems consistent with Trump's pulling out of the TPP, both of which seem pro-freedom and anti-large corporations to me. Then again, I don't know what Trump HAS done in other fields so he might be sucking corporate dick elsewhere.
I don't really see how Ajit Pai is pro-net neutrality. The guy used to be a lawyer for Verizon, which was IIRC against net neutrality and he came out rather heavily against the regulations instated 2 years ago to enforce net neutrality. He stated that there were far too many regulations at the FCC. The article seems to state he says he agrees with the basic principles behind net neutrality, not net neutrality as we currently know it.

What I think "agreeing with the basics behind net neutrality" means is: "I agree that ISPs giving "premium customers" an advantage is evil, but government regulations preventing that behavior is an even bigger evil". In practice, that would mean the major ISPs would be let off the leash under the assumption that the free market would encourage them to do the right thing instead.

I'm not sure if Trump could really be called anti-large corporations to begin with. Not only has he been appointing corporate execs left and right for government positions, but he's the exec of a large corporation himself. He's not gonna do anything that negatively affects his company's bottom line.
Post edited January 25, 2017 by Erpy
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Shadowstalker16: Trumps choice of FCC chairman seemed very shady to me first, but this forbes article seems to say he's pro net neutrality : http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#2f0716184c7f
If he is indeed pro NN and a good person for the job, then that seems consistent with Trump's pulling out of the TPP, both of which seem pro-freedom and anti-large corporations to me. Then again, I don't know what Trump HAS done in other fields so he might be sucking corporate dick elsewhere.
No, Shadow, Mr. Paias is opposed to NN and voted against it in 2015. Thankfull,y NN will be repealed entirely. Get the Gov the F* out. From 1995-2015 no net neutrality and internet speeds increased, cost decreased and freedom of speech grew.

NN reverses all of that, as seen with Twitter, facebook censoring speech. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix want NN because it means they can eliminate all smaller startups.

Netflix uses 25 percent of all the internet traffic in the US and pays the same amount as a Mom and Pop bakery to deliver content. That makes no sense. Could you imagine if Amazon delivered all their stuff on a truck on toll roads and paid $1.25 to use the toll road all day with 20,000 trucks for $1.25 and a car with a family of four paid $1.25 to travel it once. How is that fair? How is that neutral?

Use more, pay more. That is the way it works. Use more electricity, pay more, use more water, pay more.
NN has so many bad provisions and also has says the gov regulate the net like a water and electricity utility. BS to that. To hell with NN and I am glad it is going to be obliterated. Get the Gov the F* out of the internet.
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Shadowstalker16: Trumps choice of FCC chairman seemed very shady to me first, but this forbes article seems to say he's pro net neutrality : http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#2f0716184c7f
If he is indeed pro NN and a good person for the job, then that seems consistent with Trump's pulling out of the TPP, both of which seem pro-freedom and anti-large corporations to me. Then again, I don't know what Trump HAS done in other fields so he might be sucking corporate dick elsewhere.
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MajicMan: No, Shadow, Mr. Paias is opposed to NN and voted against it in 2015. Thankfull,y NN will be repealed entirely. Get the Gov the F* out. From 1995-2015 no net neutrality and internet speeds increased, cost decreased and freedom of speech grew.

NN reverses all of that, as seen with Twitter, facebook censoring speech. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix want NN because it means they can eliminate all smaller startups.

Netflix uses 25 percent of all the internet traffic in the US and pays the same amount as a Mom and Pop bakery to deliver content. That makes no sense. Could you imagine if Amazon delivered all their stuff on a truck on toll roads and paid $1.25 to use the toll road all day with 20,000 trucks for $1.25 and a car with a family of four paid $1.25 to travel it once. How is that fair? How is that neutral?

Use more, pay more. That is the way it works. Use more electricity, pay more, use more water, pay more.
NN has so many bad provisions and also has says the gov regulate the net like a water and electricity utility. BS to that. To hell with NN and I am glad it is going to be obliterated. Get the Gov the F* out of the internet.
But is there a relation between increasing internet speed and NN? Aren't internet speeds going up all the time anyway? Even in the US where there isn't government regulation, isn't there competition to offer more speed at lesser price already?

I see your point, but the primary concern is that if you could pay more for toll roads, those who could pay would pay more to use it exclusively, focing those who could pay less to use a dirt path. We don't have guarantee from the ISPs about what they'll do. They can increase access speed and offer that to those who can pay more, or they could keep their current maximum access speed and overcharge on every level now that that maximum is up for auction.
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Trilarion: The lying about the alleged lying of the bad, bad press (which was actually telling the truth) was even worse.
Here is the problem with this... the media fucking spun this big time. Spicer got run over about something he was ultimately correct about. He said there was a tweet that framed the crowd size as smaller than it was, as far as I know he never specified which tweet. During the campaign the media would regularly take close up pictures to make Hillary's crowd look bigger (when she had only a few hundred people) and to make Trump's look smaller when he had about 10,000 people show up. This happened a lot and was easily proven. So I'm willing to believe this may have happened. He then gave some statics that they were wrongly given and he corrected himself 2 days later, saying it was not intentional. It happens.

But then comes the part that is really fucked up. He said essentially something like "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe". What did the media do? Some of them reported he said "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period" cutting off part of the quote and then contributed it to crowd sizes. Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know "around the globe" would include tv ratings and other ways of watching (computers, tablets, phones...). Even if we take only what data has been released... it pretty much was the biggest watched inauguration ever. Trumps inauguration broke streaming records according to tech crunch which doesn't even include all the data from every place where the event could be streamed. One just had to add that to the tv ratings.

The biased media spun it and the left took it at face value and crucified him as lying... alternative facts were the real facts. He called them out on this on Monday's press conference, reading his direct quote and they still kept spinning it.

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Trilarion: But it only reinforces what I feel the whole time, that I cannot understand how anyone could ever vote for Trump. I just never saw him as president material. Cruz or someone else I may have understood but Trump just ever was a no go for me. It's like me and Trump voters come from different planets.

Now let's see how the other plans are going.
I dislike Cruz way more than Trump. I can understand how someone can dislike Trump, I didn't like him either for the longest time. I slowly changed as I got more involved and started looking at him and Hilary. Hilary was the bigger of the two evils if you ask me, when you actually looked at the things NOT being reported by the media.

Now sure Trump is a bit of a lose cannon, and I have no doubt he is going to say controversial shit every week... but he is doing what he has pledged to do and is getting shit done rather quickly, even if you disagree with his policies. I don't really care what he says... as long as he sticks to his polices (some/most of which I can agree on) then he is fine with me.

Honestly after this election and all the of the crap I have seen coming from the liberal media and the liberal left... I'm not sure if I could vote for a democrat after this. They would have to make some drastic ideological changes and drop identity politics for me to vote for them.
Post edited January 26, 2017 by BKGaming
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MajicMan:
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Shadowstalker16: But is there a relation between increasing internet speed and NN? Aren't internet speeds going up all the time anyway? Even in the US where there isn't government regulation, isn't there competition to offer more speed at lesser price already?
You already answered your question right here, This IS THE POINT. the internet was a technology that moved too fast for the government to crush it early. As you also noted, and what I pointed out, the FREE MARKET of the Internet proved that adding gov has no benefit at all. It is undeniable fact, speed has increased, access has increased, price has decreased, free speech grew and you have competition from telcos, cable cos, and other ISPs. Why make it a monopoly and regulate it like a utility? So gov has domination over it, that is it.

As far as paying tolls, yeah, that is how toll roads work. People willing to pay for the road pay the toll, those unwilling to pay the toll take streets with more traffic. It's also the fairest tax in the world. Those who use the road the most spend the most on it. Here in Florida, we have no state income tax. We have toll roads in Orlando and Miami. It is great, it ensure tourists who use the roads pay for it. We also have a hotel tax and car rental tax for the state. Y'all use a ton of our resources so you pay your share too, and we have no state income tax. But we keep our beaches great and our cities clean.

Also, no content delivery has the same price. Mail anything and the price will depend on size, weight, destination, speed or delivery and importance. Mail a 10 pound baby gift certified overnight 6,000 miles to another country, or mail your local water bill, they are not the same price. All content is not the same.
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MajicMan: You already answered your question right here, This IS THE POINT. the internet was a technology that moved too fast for the government to crush it early. As you also noted, and what I pointed out, the FREE MARKET of the Internet proved that adding gov has no benefit at all. It is undeniable fact, speed has increased, access has increased, price has decreased, free speech grew and you have competition from telcos, cable cos, and other ISPs. Why make it a monopoly and regulate it like a utility? So gov has domination over it, that is it.

As far as paying tolls, yeah, that is how toll roads work. People willing to pay for the road pay the toll, those unwilling to pay the toll take streets with more traffic. It's also the fairest tax in the world. Those who use the road the most spend the most on it. Here in Florida, we have no state income tax. We have toll roads in Orlando and Miami. It is great, it ensure tourists who use the roads pay for it. We also have a hotel tax and car rental tax for the state. Y'all use a ton of our resources so you pay your share too, and we have no state income tax. But we keep our beaches great and our cities clean.

Also, no content delivery has the same price. Mail anything and the price will depend on size, weight, destination, speed or delivery and importance. Mail a 10 pound baby gift certified overnight 6,000 miles to another country, or mail your local water bill, they are not the same price. All content is not the same.
Typical "free market" hooey that ignores the fact that monopolies are *never* a good thing. The notion that giant corporations should be allowed to police themselves is just as wrongheaded as allowing government to police itself. If "big government" is bad -- and it is -- so too is "big corporation", because in both cases you have unaccountable and unwieldy hierarchies that are completely antithetical to civil liberties such as free speech.
Post edited January 26, 2017 by richlind33
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MajicMan: You already answered your question right here, This IS THE POINT. the internet was a technology that moved too fast for the government to crush it early. As you also noted, and what I pointed out, the FREE MARKET of the Internet proved that adding gov has no benefit at all. It is undeniable fact, speed has increased, access has increased, price has decreased, free speech grew and you have competition from telcos, cable cos, and other ISPs. Why make it a monopoly and regulate it like a utility? So gov has domination over it, that is it.

As far as paying tolls, yeah, that is how toll roads work. People willing to pay for the road pay the toll, those unwilling to pay the toll take streets with more traffic. It's also the fairest tax in the world. Those who use the road the most spend the most on it. Here in Florida, we have no state income tax. We have toll roads in Orlando and Miami. It is great, it ensure tourists who use the roads pay for it. We also have a hotel tax and car rental tax for the state. Y'all use a ton of our resources so you pay your share too, and we have no state income tax. But we keep our beaches great and our cities clean.

Also, no content delivery has the same price. Mail anything and the price will depend on size, weight, destination, speed or delivery and importance. Mail a 10 pound baby gift certified overnight 6,000 miles to another country, or mail your local water bill, they are not the same price. All content is not the same.
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richlind33: Typical "free market" hooey that ignores the fact that monopolies are *never* a good thing. The notion that giant corporations should be allowed to police themselves is just as wrongheaded as allowing government to police itself. If "big government" is bad -- and it is -- so too is "big corporation", because in both cases you have unaccountable and unwieldy hierarchies that are completely antithetical to civil liberties such as free speech.
Free market hooey? We don't have monopolies right now because of the free market. Hence how AOL came and went. It is why so much competition exists for the internet. Also, take a look at who supported NN. Google, Netflix, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Ebay, Level 3, Yahoo, Linkdin, Foursquare. Real tiny companies.

gee they supported NN because it helped smaller companies, start ups, new businesses and competition. Seriously, wake up.

Business is always accountable. A business has to survive everyday. Sears is going to be gone, so is KMart. Woolworth bit the dust ages ago, A&P was the first billion dollar company, and larger than Walmart in its prime adjusted for population and inflation - gone.

As for your free speech argument, yeah, which is why (always from the left) facebook, twitter keep censoring truth and banning accounts. So now Gab has come along to challenge twitter because it allows free speech. You think we need gov to silence our speech like in Europe? Or what the Canadian gov is proposing? Hell No!

And fast lane options are awesome. Just like choosing shipments. Do I want 2-day, 3-day or 5-day delivery. How important is it too me? How much will I pay? At least I have the option. How awesome would it be if GoG competing with Steam bought fast-lane download, Steam gets throttled some but my GOG games download super fast. It adds competition.

The most capitalist countries in the world have risen to the top. The most government have sunk to the bottom. USA or Cuba?

Japan, UK, Australia or USSR, Venezuela, Argentina?

South Korea or North Korea?
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Shadowstalker16: Trumps choice of FCC chairman seemed very shady to me first, but this forbes article seems to say he's pro net neutrality : http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2017/01/24/why-is-the-media-smearing-new-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-as-the-enemy-of-net-neutrality/#2f0716184c7f
If he is indeed pro NN and a good person for the job, then that seems consistent with Trump's pulling out of the TPP, both of which seem pro-freedom and anti-large corporations to me. Then again, I don't know what Trump HAS done in other fields so he might be sucking corporate dick elsewhere.
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Erpy: I don't really see how Ajit Pai is pro-net neutrality. The guy used to be a lawyer for Verizon, which was IIRC against net neutrality and he came out rather heavily against the regulations instated 2 years ago to enforce net neutrality. He stated that there were far too many regulations at the FCC. The article seems to state he says he agrees with the basic principles behind net neutrality, not net neutrality as we currently know it.

What I think "agreeing with the basics behind net neutrality" means is: "I agree that ISPs giving "premium customers" an advantage is evil, but government regulations preventing that behavior is an even bigger evil". In practice, that would mean the major ISPs would be let off the leash under the assumption that the free market would encourage them to do the right thing instead.

I'm not sure if Trump could really be called anti-large corporations to begin with. Not only has he been appointing corporate execs left and right for government positions, but he's the exec of a large corporation himself. He's not gonna do anything that negatively affects his company's bottom line.
Damn, didn't see this reply this morning.
Yeah he seems to be a supporter in principle only, and where the principle is defined quite vaguely itself. He is in the ''NN (as we know it) is interventionism'' camp and that might not be ideal. AFAIK the last chair was also a former lobbyist type, but NN at least stood during his term. Hopefully it stands in this guy's as well.
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DaCostaBR: Yes, it is a dismissal of the discussion because saying "they are sore losers" doesn't refute the opponent's argument, it just attacks the other side that's trying to discuss.

We already know how hard it is to change the system, but that's not the point, first of all we need to discuss the merits of the system itself before and whether or not it should be changed and that's what we've tried with the discussion here. And we know how the Electoral College is made in way to appease small states but it does so at the expense of voter equality and proportional representation.

As for the system of world government you propose, for as unrepresentative as it may be, I prefer it to the alternative you propose, because it would still be more representative than minority rule.
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Yaykill123: The electoral college exists as a check and balance of states versus the federal government. It is an intrinsic part of how the US government works. It is the check that exists on the executive branch. The check that exists on the legislative branch is the Senate. The check that exists on the judicial branch are the state courts. Remove the electoral college and you may as well remove the Senate and state courts. The system exists so that the minority does not become so oppressed that it incites rebellion.

Having the farmers that feed the rest of the population rise up is generally a bad thing for the country involved.
It also helps deal with voter fraud.


I think the EC is a good thing...However, one could make a case for rejiggering with the EC because originally only land owners could vote.



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Lin545: Putin likes Trump because Trump is established and individual leader, where Clinton is simply a wicked bloodthirsty witch.
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timppu: Thanks for confirming my suspicion that they indeed seem to admire each other.

I find it ironic how Russia still harps about "fighting the fascists", when Russian society itself fits nowadays quite easily the definitions of fascism, e.g. how Umberto Eco defined it.

In Europe Russia for some reason seems to want to finance and promote the movements and organizations that can be considered more fascist in their nature. The logic says this is simply because these movements are nationalistic and hence critical of EU, which Russia doesn't want to get more integrated and powerful either.
I can't speak for Trump liking Putin, but I believe Putin likes Trump because he sees Trump as his best chance of the US leaving NATO.