There's really only one "smart" thing I want my TV to do and that is have a buffer. If it could just buffer 30 minutes of video I'd be incredibly happy. All the streamers have shitty interfaces that lag and there's only one solution I have found that really works and that's Tivo. Even though Tivo supports Netflix, Hulu, Amazon ,etc. each one of these services has their own quirks and button functions and none are close to being as good as Tivo when it comes to UI. I'd pay a lot to be able to have the Tivo responsiveness and UI for all video and that means buffering the video at the set.

Why this hasn't been done yet baffles me.

The underlying problem is the way our republic is structured. The first past the post system prevents a multiplicity of parties and views that must cooperate with each other to get things done. As it's set up now the two political parties have become more polarized over the decades and now the republicans are not only openly hostile and destructive but even uttering the word compromise in any way that is not derisive as a sure fired way to lose a primary. They've been locked in to their extremism.

In a modern Parliamentary system coupled with proportional representation people are forced to work together. Working together is a good thing. Finding common ground and focusing on that is better than focusing on wedge issues at the expense of everything else.

Also the republican focus on election rigging has to stop and reporters need to stop with the false equivalency. You can't sit there and pretend all the crazy shit republicans say isn't crazy and is just a matter of opinion that is as equally valid as any other opinion. The press has allowed the republicans cow them into refraining from fact checking by constantly calling them liberal. The press needs to wake the fuck up and quit being bullied by people who lie and say crazy shit like, "global warming isn't real" or "contraceptives are murder". You're not helping when you let people make false claims without pointing out the claim is false.

Politicians can have their own opinions but they can't have their own facts.

Removal of ""useless"" codons WILL change gene expression and cause huge problems which are not able to be predicted.

Yet.

At some point we will be able to not only predict what genes will do, we will be able to optimize our genetic code and harden it.

This SCOTUS nomination obstuctism? The obviously broken Legislative Branch?
Yeah, about that: Democrats, liberals, progressives, undecideds and undeclareds, EVERYBODY who stayed home and handed the House and Senate to extremist lunatics? Those people are just as much to blame for the mess we find ourselves in as the Republicans currently clogging up Congress like constipated turds in Mitch McConnell's lower instestine.

Maybe more so.

This shouldn't be a surprise. The Tea Party fanatics TOLD us what they intended. They intended to drown government in the bathtub. They intended to stymie the President, and therefore the will of the majority of Americans, at every turn. They fully intended to cut off their own noses if necessary in order to spite their own faces, they'd claw out their own eyes if that's what it takes. They SAID so.

And liberals stayed home. They stayed home because they were "dissappointed" with Obama. Boo hoo. We didn't get everything we wanted. What's the point? And the extremists took first the House and then the Senate.
And so here we are.
And so here we are and the folks who are now throwing shit at each other are the same damned people who stayed home the last time and pretend like they aren't part of the problem. Democrats who say they won't vote if Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders isn't the nom? Those people are, right now, giving the non-functional GOP Legislature a thumbs up. Those people are giving a pass to Scalia's empty chair. And when I say this same thing in various places on social media - as I just did on Twitter - there's always at least one guy who moans, Why should I have to vote for the lesser of two evils instead of the guy I actually support and identify with? Why? It shouldn't be that way!

Yeah.
You know what? Grow up. That's life. There's an endless list of things that shouldn't be the way they are. We shouldn't have hungry people in nation that throws food away. We shouldn't have sick people in a nation that spends 20% of its budget on its military. The only superpower in the world shouldn't be arguing about whether or not it should educate its young. We shouldn't have homeless people. We should have colonies on the moon and mars and be halfway to Alpha Centari by now. We should have a legislature made up of reasoned adults who are willing to compromise for the good of not only the nation but the entire world.
Should be? Don't be a fucking child.

Welcome to reality.
If you're getting everything you want, you're not living in a democracy.
If you're getting everything your way, you're NOT living in a democracy.
Even under the best of circumstances, it's NEVER going to be everything you want it to be.
But it's the best you're going to get.
If you want a better nation, be better citizens.

Who said anything about Bernie being less trustworthy than Hillary? There are certain skills you need to have to be president. Does Bernie have them? Some, sure. But Hillary has better skills and skills that are more critical to being an effective president. What good is having Bernie as president if he can't get anything done? Also keep in mind that consistency is not necessarily a good thing. If you are unable to adjust to the wishes of the people you represent but you're still consistent, is that a good thing? I'd say no. In a representative government you need politicians who fulfill the will of the majority of voters. That's their job. You also want someone who can change their mind when presented with new facts and experiences.

I love Bernie and have since the 90's, but I don't think he would move the ball forward as much as Hillary will.

Insisting on purity is as short sighted as declaring you will never punt on 4th down. It ultimately means you lose.

If you choose not to vote, you are making a choice to let the zombie horde make decisions for you.

You've been told not to trust her by the media since 1992. How long have you been politically aware? She's not being indicted for the same thing that Colin Powell and Condi Rice did.

Spending more money on polling is a good thing when it's your job to represent your constituents. You need to know what they think in order to do their bidding. That's what representational government is all about.

It's interesting that you bring up Citizens United. You do realize that it was the hit piece against her made by "Citizens United" during the 2008 election that brought that case to the SCOTUS, right? I'm pretty sure she would be thrilled to run that decision back, if she had the chance, which she won't because she'll be president, not the SCOTUS.

The Koch candidate was Scott Walker.

I'll grant you that is a good solution. However, they had a patient bleeding out on the operating table. That is not the time to decide to do multiple organ transplants. It was all about the urgency of the situation. As a followup they absolutely should have broken up the banks and thrown some bankers in prison

I'm somewhat ambivalent about big banks. On one hand they can be a stabilizing force. CAN BE. The larger a bank is, the more of a threat to national security it becomes. This is the framing I would like to see with regard to big banks. You want to get a lot bigger? OK, more regulation and oversight because you are dangerous like nukes. That's the deal, otherwise it's time to downsize. And along those same lines, try to make regulations less onerous the smaller you are, within reason of course.

Kasich only pretends to be sane.

Hillary-cesspool-of-lies-and-skeletons-Clinton

This is why Bernie is going to lose. The Bernie Bros are over the top in their vitriol and turn off the swing voters he will need.


People who engage in hyperbole are worse than Hitler.

If you can't tell the difference, either you're not paying attention or you like to buy into the false equivalency of "they're both as bad".

Democrats try to work together for progress republicans try to destroy.

Let me put it to you in a different way. During the Iran deal who was it that wanted to go to war and who wanted to build peace? The conservatives in the US, Israel and Iran all wanted to go to war. The liberals wanted to build a lasting peace. If you took all the conservatives in the world and put them together they would start killing each other. If you did that with all the liberals, they would try to build a society.

That in a nutshell is the difference. Conservatives are a "fuck you, I've got mine" mentality whereas liberals are more of a "we're all in the together, let's make it work" mentality.

What's stopping them is a fundamental flaw in the focus of the party. The republican party at its core is there to push the agenda of the rich. In order to do that they need to convince the poor and uneducated to vote against their best interests. Republicans can't win by being honest so they have to use the subterfuge of abortion, coded racism, xenophobia, gun rights paranoia to get elected. Over the years they have stoked the fears and stupidity and have created a voting horde of zombies. This worked very well for a while but now you have rich people like the Koch brothers who would rather have direct control of the Zombie horde. So the Koch's have a political apparatus that is at least three times the size of the political apparatus of the republican party. You have other players also trying to take direct control of the Zombies.

Now the other problem is side of the problem is that of "decent candidates". The problem here again lies at the root of the purpose of the republican party... to further the goals of the rich. Republicans tend to pick(draft) candidates from business who they think will win an election. These candidates for the most part have no history of public service and often don't understand the role of government or how it works. They just take their orders, copy the legislation that was given to them by some PAC and repeat talking points. Democrats, on the other hand, generally have to work their way up doing real community service. The outlook is completely different. You have to demonstrate that you can and have worked hard for the working man in order to be a democrat on the national stage. Remember all the derisive comments about how Obama was a community organizer (like that's a bad thing?)? That's because the republicans don't see the US as a team or a community where helping each other out is valuable. It's more of a "fuck you, I've got mine" mentality rather than a serious problem solving mindset.

Now there are still a few old school republicans in the senate who take their responsibilities seriously but they are being replaced with the new and improved scorched earth republicans. The house? It only has a majority of republicans because of cheating, AKA gerrymandering. The republicans can't win fair elections so they try their best to disenfranchise voters, gerrymander districts , cut voting hours so working class people have a hard time voting, etc...

Trump is interesting because he's stealing the zombie horde from the Koch's, et al. He's tapped into that lizard brain that Fox News, Limaugh, etc.. have been grooming for decades. They original owners of the zombie horde are pissed, but there's not a lot they can do about it.