The only reason the Reagan tax cut didn't destroy the country was because "read my lips" George HW Bush re-raised the top bracket and stabilized revenue vis-a-vis borrowing.

That account surplus ignores debt repayment. The debt is there. They default and they can't borrow money again until the debt is paid. Look at Argentina, it's been a decade and they haven't been able to borrow a dime on the international markets and they are 3 or 4 times the size of Greece with substantial natural resources to export. Now that the Chinese economy is slowing down (and reducing resource imports) they are under immense pressure.

Ask yourself this, what would happen to an economy if you could no longer purchase oil, gas or any other petroleum product because you can't borrow the money to buy it. This is what Argentina is deathly afraid of right now and Greece should be terrified.

The fed didn't borrow money. They printed it and used their newly printed money to purchase government debt. Other than that glaring and idiotic mistake everything else you said was wrong.

Default is a credit death sentence. Please understand, sovereign countries can NOT declare bankruptcy and refuse to pay. The debt has to be paid unless you can get the creditors to be magnanimous and forgive a portion of it. Otherwise, until you pay it back you will be bared from all credit. Greece has already gotten their "haircut". They will have to pay back every dime or they will never borrow money again unless they can get the ECB or IMF to agree to another haircut which isn't going to happen.

You should see what default did to Argentina. It destroyed the country and it continues to wreck havoc on the economy a decade later. Small countries like Greece have to borrow money because they generally import most of their products and obtain most of their foreign currency through tourism. If you shut of debt they will be unable to purchase anything on the foreign market without first obtaining equivalent amounts of foreign currency first. Even with a very strong tourism industry and positive cash flows from the tourism this will be very painful for every single Greek.

Sovereign countries cannot just decide not to pay debts. There is not bankruptcy. Greece has one choice, here, pay the money or default on payment and pay the money later after suffering for several decades. There aren't other options in this world.

Which is the reason there was recently a story about a photographer that claimed copyright on a photograph that a monkey took of itself using the photographers camera. There was no copyright on the photograph because the one that took the photo isn't eligible for copyright.

Just as in this case, even if the school owns the camera, the paper and all the developing gear the student still owns the copyright. The only possible way the school could even hope to claim copyright would be by declaring that the student was doing work for hire. Needless to say the courts aren't going to look on that line of thought very highly given the lack of paycheck and the compulsory nature of school.

We aren't inventing better idiots. Designers continually fail by underestimating the ingenuity of idiots.

Don't think anyone would be stupid enough to plug it in backwards and pound it in with a hammer? You've just underestimated the idiot.

Designers and engineers are generally too logical to see all the failure paths that someone could take because they don't make the assumption that it will be installed upside down or with a hammer. It's the simple illogical design processes that prevent these extreme events, such as making the part fit in only one direction (sizing the part such that it cant physically fit or be connected) or such as USB C making it fit either direction. These design strategies appear to make the design illogical or more expensive for no logical reason so they aren't implemented by the logical engineer/designer. But these illogical processes are how you prevent the ingenuity of idiots from getting the better of you.

Didn't work very well, the first half the thread is discussing emacs.

Assuming any politician would be either susceptible to or even acknowledge a connection or hypocrisy in position is beyond foolish. They will take the position that nanny state is bad while in the same breath calling for drug regulation. The hypocrisy or incoherency of the position is irrelevant and always has been because the average American is perfectly happy with a nanny state government as long as it is only nanny'ing issues they want such as what (or who) people do in their bedroom and what substances they injest.

If you believe the corruption level is anywhere near as bad you simply don't remember the previous senate. Most local and state governments in all but the biggest states are inherently corrupt, with developers and other wealthy connected in direct control and lining their own pockets. Most of the smaller states legislatures don't even meet but for a few weeks a year. Senate seats were handed to the politically connected, most of the senators were there simply to get money and were held to account by no one at all.

At least now they are accountable to voters, before they were accountable to no one. Quid quo pro was so common it could have been the senate motto. Now the senate is at least accountable to the people and the seats are open elections to the entire state electorate rather than gerrymandered seats like the house. As such the senate actually has a better chance of being representative of their state than the representatives are.

Microwave is also line of sight, which means a tower and amplifier every 10 miles minimum. You know that problem with a curved planet where you microwave is straight line.

You seem to think Republicans are against the nanny state. This is a common misconception, they favor a Nanny state just like the democrats, the only difference is which issues they want to Nanny.

Doesn't matter if they do have the money, money doesn't make someone republican otherwise you need to have a talk with all those lifetime democratic wealthy Jews in New York. The problem for the republican party is the millennial generation is the most ethnically diverse generation in American history and the republican party is currently actively hostile to that diversity.

His vanilla reference was to race not as you implied. The white majority will disappear with the millennials, all races will become minorities. The largest demographic of this group is latinos, with a significant number of mixed ethnic background. The republican party is actively hostile to both groups. The latino's in particular are mostly conservative Catholics but they are being driven in waves to the democrats.

Until the republican party exorcises the racist arm of the party they adopted when they engaged their southern strategy they are looking at a future of rapidly declining potential voters as the most ethnically diverse generation in American history ages. I personally don't see the republicans tossing the racists out until long after they've declined to irrelevance.

99.9999% of the "dead" people that vote weren't dead when they voted. They die in between the vote and when someone gets their panties in a wad. There are a few bogus votes out there, jackasses that go vote for their dead parent, etc. It's not even statistically significant.

But I take conciliation in the fact that all these voter ID laws are going to do serious damage to the republican party once the bulk of the voting block (currently the average age is about 65) looses their driver licenses. It probably won't be a decade before these voter ID laws start directly hurting Republican party voting because grandma and grandpa no longer have drivers licenses and don't have the ID necessary to vote.

The tea party you speak of died with the Koch funded Tea Party Express took over. The tea party 2.0 now cares very much about social conservative issues.