Amazon wants to sell kindle devices. They're more effective at locking people into Amazon's ecosystem. Not providing their video content on stock Android gives them a big lever to push people to pick up the Kindle if they're considering their tablet choices. If Kindle weren't selling, I quite expect that they'd provide an instant video app for Android; there's no obvious technical reason why they couldn't.

... until you realize that net neutrality rules/laws would be prohibited here as well. It's not well-intentioned, he's just found a great sounding way to spin giving the store away to the telcos. Oh, and the DMCA stuff would likely be considered intellectual property rather than internet law, so I'd quite expect that it'd not be covered here. Always look for the money.

It's not BS, it's actually called Duverger's law:

Duverger's law is a principle which asserts that a plurality rule election system tends to favor a two-party system.

The wikipedia article specifically notes Canada and explains why there are more than 2 parties at the national level:

In the case of Canada, the highly regionalised parties are evident in province-by-province examination: while the multiparty system can be seen in the Canadian House of Commons, many of the provinces' elections are dominated by two-party systems. Quebec, for instance, is driven mainly by the separatist Parti Quebecois and the centre-left Liberal Party, while in Saskatchewan, it is the left-wing New Democratic Party and the centre-right Saskatchewan Party (a coalition of those affiliated with the Conservative and Liberal Parties). Unlike in the United States, where the two major parties are organized and unified at the federal, state and local level, Canada's federal and provincial parties generally operate as separate organizations.

So, Canada's a bit of an exception due to strong(er) regionalism, but first-past-the-post voting will tend toward two parties as the stable configuration.

I've had both and would heartily recommend the Logitech.

Ron Paul libertarians are marginalized because they don't have the numbers for any significant electoral clout. They're committed, vocal, and active, but there aren't that many of them and they've not shown the ability to actually get people elected and that's ultimately what it comes down to. teabaggers, for all of their faults, can win primaries for their candidates and even get them elected (in republican districts). So, teabaggers are quite relevant in the republican party. The reason that they've not gotten what they want though is more that their message is quite toxic outside of the republican party.

The thing is that I don't suspect that the broad coalition parties that we have actually change things as much as one might presume. Were multiple parties actually workable in the US, libertarians would likely win a smallish number of seats in the legislature but wouldn't likely wield much influence. teabaggers would be comprised of what's currently the hardest core of the republican base, and would dominate the south, as they largely do now, and would be a fairly sizable right-wing block.

Third parties in the US don't work. With the way that we vote, 2 parties are the only stable configuration. That's not some grand conspiracy on the part of said parties, it's just the dynamics of the system. The result of that is that the each of the 2 parties have historically themselves been fairly broad coalitions who align around general principals. So, we might not have a Green party as such, but people with those views would be welcome in the Democratic coalition, for instance.

The way to foment change in this system is to push the major party most aligned with you in the direction that you'd like it to go. You do that by getting more candidates who agree with you to run and win. If your cause(es) are really that popular, then it shouldn't be so hard with a lot of work and focus. Third parties are an excellent way to make sure that this doesn't happen. In short, you win by taking over the party that's most closely aligned with your values.

The republican party is an excellent recent example for this actually. The teabaggers rebellion didn't run third party candidates, they ran in party primaries and started knocking out incumbents. The remainder of the party saw this in action and moved fairly quickly to align with the insurgent faction out of simple self-interest. The result was that the party shifted rather significantly to the right to accommodate them which meant that they ended up getting much of what they wanted.

s/million/billion/g
Minor difference.

So, in short, they're Democrats? You outline a passel of issues that would fall into the mainstream of the Democratic party, with a few outliers, but almost none align with the republican party of today.

The federal gas tax (a whopping 18.4 cents/gallon) goes to the highway trust fund to pay for highway construction and maintenance, so if enough people move onto alternative energy vehicles, we'll have to find another mechanism to pay for said roads. It's hardly some sort of nefarious plot.

The statutory rate in the US is 35% and is high when compared to other industrialized countries, but pretty much no-one pays that. The effective corporate tax rate in the US is closer to 27% due to various loopholes and deductions, which is right about average. All that Obama was talking about doing was eliminating the loopholes/deductions and dropping the statutory rate to keep it revenue neutral. The "highest in the world" line sounds good, but is hugely misleading.

I agree that the "negotiation" was incompetently handled, but while conservative Democrats were themselves causing trouble, the focus was on making the bill (sufficiently) bi-partisan. That's what the whole "gang of six" (3 dems, 3 reps) charade was about. Since the lineage of the proposal was essentially republican (heck, it's nearly identical to the 1993 republican plan), it wouldn't have been unreasonable to presume that with some concessions that it could garner republican support. Of course, these are hardly normal times.

Now, it's possible that if this bill failed, we'd get a saner revamp of our healtcare system, but I don't see any evidence that might happen. This bill was just about the least that one could do which had a chance to impact things.

Finally, they're real treasury bonds, and like all treasury bonds, the money that they're purchased with is used by the government when they're purchased. That's hardly some sort of nefarious scheme; it's how all bonds work. They get paid back, with interest, over time. Now, since we control the SS administration, we could presumably give the bonds to the treasury or some such, but it'd still be a transfer of real assets. Of course, that'd be the blatent theft of trillions of dollars that were expressly paid by workers into the program, so I guess that it's important that said workers are properly misinformed so they don't notice.

That would be bad, but alas the bonds are real ones that pay interest and everything. The Social Security administration even has a FAQ and everything that cover this, though that'd take actually looking for yourself and perhaps not listening so much to people who're seeking to mislead you.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html

The entire watered-down bill was a result of a year long attempt at good-faith negotiation with republicans. That, of course, was a repeated exercise in futility where the republicans would demand concessions, get said concessions and then move the goal posts. All the while, they used their media mouth-pieces to scare and misinform the public about the bill ("death panels, anyone?") to drive down it's public support.. Once it became apparent that republicans were negotiating in bad-faith, the bill had to further be hacked up to be able to be passed under reconcilliation, which was required to get past the de-facto 60 vote requirement that republican abuse of the filibuster created. So, I think that it's fair to say that the GOP had more than a little to do with the compromised bill.

Buying treasury bonds doesn't count as saving? Should they just stuff the Social Security surplus under the world's largest mattress?

I'd say that it's more logical to assume that the insurance corporations are acting as the sociopathic "persons" that they are. They want to make more money and see an opportunity to do so and thus are. For them, there's the added benefit that our generally worthless press coverage will muddy the waters enough that they'll able to blame the rate increases on the ACA, and so add pressure (along with the industry's prodigious lobbying dollars) to repeal the parts of the law that might cut into their profits. It's a win-win! (well, aside from society which loses, but some "persons" are more equal than others of course)

I have one and agree with this. It's really cool, but it's so dangerous that I don't break it out much at all. I went to the beach earlier this year and it was pretty cool to use it over the water. Back home, there's a non-trivial risk that I'll hit someone/something if I use it much outdoors.