OT: Tired of Winning?

Americans never saw a war they didn't like that someone else would have to fight. How in the world would Real America collect their welfare payments and diabetes medication during a a civil war, anyway.

No, you're smoking something illegal. The US is *NOT* a direct democracy. Never was - intentionally so.

You can't read, either. It seems to be a common affliction of lefties.

Not very bright, either.

You misspelled "riots" but even you're not that stupid (intentional misstatement - a.k.a. lie)

Absolutely clueless (but that's known by all)

Nothing is rapidly eroding, and the Constitution continues to work well, better than ever in fact. Amendments have improved it over the years, except for #18 of course.

What we have now is an excess of hysteria and neurosis. It will pass.

Sixteen and seventeen were pretty bad for the country. At least eighteen was corrected.

I doubt it, as long as the conditions that allow for massive numbers of snowflakes exists.

People think nothing will change, and it always does.

The biggest clear and present danger for Americans is the near 40% obesity rate

Well, duh, it applies for each round of voting. So, you might "win the battle but lose the war" so to speak.

Whatever the case, it's clear that those in non-"swing" states have approximately zero representation. So, that's a thing... :(

They're already coming along. Like I said, some states are already doing it. Petition your legislature to support it!

Tim

Quantum leaps into a new range of power densities are unlikely. The current developments concentrate on using nanotechnology to make better behaved el ectrodes, and seem well on the way to being usefully better tahn what we ha ve got.

Going from a good idea to a large factory producing lots of batteries invol ves investing a lot of capital, and the investors are going to walk away wi th most of the money.

The more practial point about electric cars is that we aren't going to run out of sunlight, and every new source of oil is harder, and more expensive to exploit than the last one. We'll never run out, but oil is eventually go ing to be too expensive to burn as fuel. I won't go into the probelms of bu rning even more fossil carbon for fuel - Cursitor Doom is too brain-damaged to get his head around that.

John Larkin doesn't think much of the recent EE graduates he has interviewed, so they don't seem to be any great competitons for liberal arts graduates, even if they have had what ought to have been a more practical and relevant education.

Formal logic is pretty straightforward. Trivial or not, you clearly didn't actually master the subject, so your claim that it was trivial is more an admission of incompetence than a criticism of the subject.

It was 43% in 1992, and Bush/Quayle got 37.3% of the popular vote. The Republicans could have complaimed as muchas thye liked, and they'd have been laughed at.

Jebb Bush's antic in Florida did turn out to be crucial. The Republican purging of the electoral rolls before the election got rid of a whole lot of Democratic voters for reasons that didn't stand up to even superficial examination.

Why should they? The rigging of the electoral rolls started long before the presidential election, and was obvious to anybody who looked into it.

Coming from Tom Del Rosso who reliably shoots form the hip into his own feet, this has a substantial ironic content. If Tom Del Rosso could think clearly enough to be aware of what he was saying, he'd be a liar, rather than an idiot.

Ask any Republican.

She is part of the American political system, which was set up to be corrupt by the founding tax evaders, and has stayed that way.

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Solar farms (mostly) and windmills. They'll cost mney to build, but they wi ll generate electricity more cheaply than burning fossil carbon, because if you make a lot more them, the manufacturing cost halves for each tenfold e xpansion of mnaufacturing volume, and the US will need a hundred times more than it has now.

Sadly for krw, it's good enough already, and getting progressively better.

Krw doesn't seem to have learned any new facts since about 1985, and really isn't capable of recognising that technology has advanced since then.

rote:

ctoral college is the big mistake of the Constitution and should be fixed. I was debating this at a bar with a bunch of salesmen after a trade show a nd one was particularly adamant that the rural people needed to be protecte d from the votes of the city people and so the electoral college would do t hat (I don't recall the exact rationale but something like that). I asked him why he thought the votes of the rural people should count more than the votes of the city people... no answer.

es of segments of the country than to others. The only fair way to apporti on the votes is one voter, one vote. Everything else is a farce.

small states do not have their rights over run by the big states.

two senators regardless of its size.

But you end up with a bunch of senators, but only one president.

to change the senate too.

Not necessarily.

It has been mathematically demonstrated that a completely fair voting syste m is impossible.

one vote one voter, then Delaware would have no senators. And that would n ot be one vote one voter either.

s that the president is elected by the majority of the states, not the majo rity of voters.

And why is that a good thing? Alexander Hamilton claimed that it would serv e as a barrier to demagogues who got a large popular vote. Trump fits the d emagogue pattern perfectly, and the electoral college didn't throw him out, as they clearly should have done.

The history if presidents who got the job without winning the popular vote isn't impressive - Lincoln's claim that you can't fool all the people all t he time stands up better than Hamiloton's claim for the electoral college.

The well-off people who did the drafting didn't see themselves as one of th e perils. Pity about that.

They did a more or less adequate job. Everybody who has faced the same prob lems since then has opted for rather different solutions. The separation of the executive from the legislature was ingenious, but doens't work well en ough for anybody else to have copied it. The electoral college was a mistak e.

Peace isn'nt the absence of conflict, it's the absence of armed conflict. I t's still a much better environment in which to get things done.

As the US demonstates, having a bunch of people running around letting off guns from time to time is dangerous and distracting.

as two senators regardless of its size.

And your point is?

ve to change the senate too.

The Senate is not one voter , one vote. My vote for a senator has more wei ght than a vote for a senator from say New York or California. So if you a re changing the system to have each vote equal , you are going to have to c hange the Senate too.

tem is impossible.

e one vote one voter, then Delaware would have no senators. And that would not be one vote one voter either.

res that the president is elected by the majority of the states, not the ma jority of voters.

rve as a barrier to demagogues who got a large popular vote. Trump fits the demagogue pattern perfectly, and the electoral college didn't throw him ou t, as they clearly should have done.

It is a good thing because it encourages the President to act for all state s. It does not ensure that, but it does encourage.

e isn't impressive - Lincoln's claim that you can't fool all the people all the time stands up better than Hamiloton's claim for the electoral college .

Some of the Presidents that won the popular vote are not very impressive. So what is your point?

Dan , Earth

has two senators regardless of its size.

The senate ends up with a bunch of senators, some of whom will probably be nutters. They won't be a majority, and if they were they couldn't cooperate .

You can survive a coupe of Trump-like senators.Jim Inhofe comes to mind.

There's only one president, and you should be more careful about how you ch oose him.

have to change the senate too.

eight than a vote for a senator from say New York or California. So if you are changing the system to have each vote equal , you are going to have to change the Senate too.

The problem isn't getting exactly equal votes for everybody. It's getting a system that works.

ystem is impossible.

ere one vote one voter, then Delaware would have no senators. And that wou ld not be one vote one voter either.

sures that the president is elected by the majority of the states, not the majority of voters.

serve as a barrier to demagogues who got a large popular vote. Trump fits t he demagogue pattern perfectly, and the electoral college didn't throw him out, as they clearly should have done.

tes.

Twaddle. Once they are elected, they do what to the most influential groups want, and the most influential groups in US politics are industry lobbyist s.

ote isn't impressive - Lincoln's claim that you can't fool all the people a ll the time stands up better than Hamiloton's claim for the electoral colle ge.

So what is your point?

The five minority presidents are consistently unimpressive. Dubbya was diab olical, and Trump looks worse (though he does seem to be less effective tha n Dubbya was).

There are lot more ( 40 ?) presidents that got a popular majority and while there is a distribution in competence and effectiveness, the mean and medi an does seem quite a bit higher than Dubbya ever managed, or Trump looks li ke achieving.

-- Bill Sloman, Sydney

t a gut feel? "

Read it somewhere, can't find it now but I did find this :

Cheaper than diesel.

From a Google quickie :

"The average price people in the U.S. pay for electricity is about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. (Context: A typical U.S. household uses about 908 kWh a month of electricity.) But there's huge variation from state to state.Oct

It hasn't gone up all that much.

Then :

"The average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline in the US over the past two years was $2.35/gallon. Using 15,000 miles as the average amount of mil es a person will drive in a year, the annual cost of gasoline for the avera ge car will be about $1,400 per year, using the average cost of gasoline in the US from 2015 through 2016. "

and

"The average cost of electricity in the US is 12 cents per kWh. Therefore, the average person driving the average EV 15,000 miles per year pays about $540.00 per year to charge it." _____

I'm thinking what I read before said 500 and not 5.00. Those damn little do ts. Still, $ 500 is cheap, by fried the truck driver takes me for the ride sometimes if I'm available. I remember him stopping twice for fuel just goi ng from Ohio to New York, and each time it was more than that. I could call him if you want. It was from Oberlin, OH to upstate NY 5 miles from the Ve rmont border.

Thing to remember about trucks is that once thy get there they have to get back. return trips are rare. In some truck stops they have a video screen t hat displays some loads so people can get a return load but that is a hit a nd miss. The ones that get return loads are probably the bigger companies l ike JB Hunt. With decent logistics it can work.

Trucking is important and the government with their taxes and bullshit regu lations make it much more expensive. It cost about $ 30,000 to haul a dozen boat trailers up there. That adds almost $ 3,000 to the cost of each. They were for 27', no doubt they could fit more of the smaller ones on a load.

Everything you own came in on a truck, including your truck. The only excep tions are locally raised food and a very few other things.

(in fact my $ 60 !!! pizza came in on a truck from Chicago last week)

crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure, and arbitrary arrest and d etention of U.S. citizens."

Well Chavez is dead not. Also after the US kidnapped him and all that shit I wouldn't blame them for being suspicious of gringos. But that shit starte d after Hugo Chavez Frias had died.

""The Venezuelan State Department advises to reconsider travel to the United States due to crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure, and arbitrary arrest and detention of Venezuelan citizens."

I believe it, and I bet other countries are the same.

Another willing moment for the US and its international relations, which mu st be Trump's fault because it happened years before he had anything to do with governing, was that Ecuador offered to give US politicians a lesson in human rights and came very close to saying f*ck off altogether. The USAF f orced down their Presidential plane to get at Assange who has never set foo t in the US. Where I come from that is an act of war.

Suffice it to say South America's attitude towards the US is not likely to change anytime soon.

anies competing in the battery market for any one to "own" the technology. "

The cost is a big factor. One of the articles I linked I think mentioned $

ivalent of the gas tank. That electricity still needs to be made. "

They will have to go with nukes. Let the French do it, they seem to know wh at they're doing. In the end, there will be the old spent batteries ad radi oactive waste to deal with, but much less CO2 overall, and that is just off the top of my haed. If you ever sat in a traffic jam though, think of eaCH of those cars, even the efficient ones are burning something which creates CO2, and each one, even at idle burns enough of it to need a radiator or i t would burn up. An electric car can just run the motor off. Unfortunately, no matter what, A/C is going to cost power. I don't know what voltage thos e batteries are but it is surely more than 12 volts, so A/C will be a bit m ore efficient.

There is another possibility, the spent batteries will probably still work, but not well enough for a car. What about overnight solar power ? It would be nice to be able to charge the car with solar but most people want to dr ive during the day so that doesn't really work. Event then, we are not talk ing about a few panels on the roof to do it, more like a small solar farm I would think, unless you want it to take a week to charge the car.

There are always problems with emergent technologies. You know I thought of regenerative braking. Maybe not first but I did think about it. However I have not thought about implementing it. I might be able to kludge something together but it takes a real engineer to do it right. I am just a decent h ack.

Chavez is dead NOW

How's that for a typo ?