Many economists disagree with you on that.

Actually the stimulus package helped, but it was not enough to fix everything in two years.

Obama didn't wait two years. In 2008, Bush passed tarp. In 2009, Obama passed his own stimulus package consisting of tax cuts and infrastructure programs. By then, the GOP was crapping their pants in fear of the newly discovered national debt. So, should he have passed another stimulus in 2010? If he had, it would have been nothing more than a massive tax cut, which would have exacerbated the debt ceiling debate.

But never enough to break the constant stream of kneejerk filibusters.

Exactly. Jack Daniels is being nice to this guy because they don't have a leg to stand on. They can either threaten to sue and hope that the legal costs intimidate the publisher into submission, or try to work with the other guy.

But that isn't the greatest risk. You're still more likely to be killed by a lifetime of movie theater popcorn, or by a car wreck on the way home. (I am staying out of the gun-control argument. This is notable because it is flashy. Had it been common, we would have either stopped going to movies, found a way to make it uncommon, or learned to accept it by now)

</pedant>

You make a convincing argument. I can agree with you in the case of non-swing states.

So why don't you vote for yourself every election? By your logic, the only question you should be asking yourself is "is there anybody I'd rather see in office". There is a difference between voting systems. Our current system was not designed to work well with third party candidates. Others are.

I have to say that with all the emphasis on "voter suppression" or "voter fraud prevention" this election, and the partisan BS that comes with the past few years, I don't know if I trust the current batch to change the system. We would need every provision and every aspect of the system to be monitored by at least one non-partisan non-profit third party with no political agenda.

  I think we would have an easier time finding a flock of benevolent mind-readers to remotely sense the majority of public opinion while riding through town on a pack of domesticated unicorns.

I wish I had the mod points for you. I just wish that we had a system that didn't center around false dichotomies. One where the voter has the freedom to vote for the guy he really wants without wasting his vote.

(As an example), I am still cursing mozilla and other new web browsers for the way they are keeping their UIs in a constant state of flux. Things like moving the home icon, making the status bar something that only appears if you hover over a link for 2 seconds, and just making everything look different from what it was 2 years ago. That sucks when you have to provide tech support for idiots who don't know if they're using netscape navigator or Internet Explorer 9.

And in Linux, I have found that there are plenty of GUI tools that I never bothered to learn, specifically because the Redhat version is different from the Debian version, and possibly the newer Redhat version is different from the older Redhat version.

So, yes, keep the G-d damned command-line in every version of every operating system, because I want to spend my study time learning new things, not just learning how to do the same old things in different versions of Windows/Linux.

And, no, I'm not going to make the argument for CLI reliability (that it never mangles your settings in such a way that you have to try again), or flexibility (that it's the only decent way to do scripting). Others have done a much better job than I could, in that area.

It doesn't matter. Nobody has any intention of doing that. When a company pollutes an area, often its' biggest supporters are the people living in that area. They're just happy to have jobs. And if this ever get to disastrous levels, what are the odds that reparations will be paid to those who lost everything? What are the odds that this will be paid for by taxes/fines on the people who benefited most from causing the problem?

Or would it make such development worthwhile? Alternate energies and new technologies have an uphill climb because they are having to fight against a well-established system with infrastructure and political clout on their side. If we had a reasonable system in place to require people to reduce emissions, then people would adopt newer technologies, the businesses that supply those technologies would grow, and they would have more money to research cheaper, more efficient production.

That is a problem. It's hard for us to tell some third world country "now that we got ours, the rules are changing"

Funny, but a better analogy would be:

Scientists: A global disaster may be looming. We can stop it, but we'll need to reduce our CO2 emissions. If we start now, it may mean driving smaller cars, planting more trees, and finding small ways to reduce our carbon footprint.

Exxon: bullshit! There's no global warming.

GMC: Introducing the new GMC ShitKicker! It's 2 megatons of bad ass! Just imagine yourself driving this thing down the freeway, confederate flags flapping in the wind...That'll show those hippies.

The people: I like shiny big trucks. Can you add three DVD players and a built-in vibrator?

=====
40 years later
=====
Scientists: We need to reduce our CO2 emissions.

Exxon: It'll need sacrifices. Higher fuel prices. Higher cost of manufactured goods, and fewer cheap imports. You'll need to travel less, buy a smaller car. A lot of you'll be laid off because industry thrives on cheap energy. You'll have to stop eating so much meat. But it's the only way to prevent disaster...Er... Lets just do nothing and chance it.

The People: We're going to go with the second guy.

FTFY.

Why wait? even if they don't triple, I'm pretty sure the GOP will spend the next ten years blaming every rate increase, no matter the size or cause, on ObamaCare.