As a European all I can say from someone sitting on the outside is that in your rigged two party system one of the candidates (the "blue" puppet) was so fucking awful that the slightly less awful candidate (the "red" puppet) romped home.

There's some truth to that. They both had the highest negatives in history... it was definitely all about who was "less bad".

American politics is worse than anything I've seen from any so called banana republic. An utterly fixed system where you get to choose between two tightly controlled establishment puppets. No choice. No democracy. It's like being given the choice between being punched in the face or kicked i the balls.

And you just lost whatever sense you were making before. Trump an establishment puppet? Are you kidding me? The establishment in both parties absolutely hates him. On the Republican side we had 17 candidates to pick from in the primary, and ALL of the Republican establishment candidates lost big. In the end, it came down to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, who were by far the most establishment-hated candidates that I've ever seen run in a primary.

If you want to rephrase your charge of "tightly controlled establishment puppets" to refer only to the Democrats, then I'll give you that, because after the DNC email hacks we found out that they did, in fact, rig the primary contest to make sure Hilary won and Bernie lost (though the fact that he got as far as he did, even in the face of their treachery, shows they don't have as much control as they thought). But yeah, end result on the Democrat side was that their establishment got the candidate they wanted, and when taken to court about it, they argued that as a party they have no legal requirement to select their candidates in any particular way, and that it would be perfectly legal for them to go back to using old boys clubs in the back room with cigars to pick the candidate. A tacit admission that they can rig the process as much as they want. But only one party rigged it, not both.

Just face facts. Your "blue" puppet "candidate" was just fucking god awful ! Stop crying and get one with life. Stop trying to make excuses. Russia didn't win the election. The election was "lost" because of your fucking awful puppet !

And now you are back to making sense again. We all know that's why she lost, and the funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that's the only reason you won't find in her new book, "What Happened."

It's OK for Sheldon Adelson, Koch brothers and such to throw millions in on their PACs and hold auditions for GOP candidates, that's just free speech, no subversion of democracy there.

Not to mention the untold amounts of money that Hungarian George Soros has dumped into all kinds of election groups. He spent a LOT more than $100,000. But yeah, no subversion there either. Let's get the microscope out and do a super thorough search of the Russian flee and ignore all the elephants running around...

Realistically, it's probably far to early to tell how the two parties will align themselves in 2024 to make that claim.

I think the main point is that as the left continues to concentrate themselves more and more in a few very large urban areas, the electoral college will likely skew against them. Remember, every state gets two senators (and two electoral votes) regardless of size, so continued left wing migration into Silicon Valley, the Northwest and the Northeast does not help them to win national elections. To win, you generally have to have a national coalition of states, and they are getting more and more regional, at least at the moment.

But I do agree with you it's way too early to make any predictions of victory in 2024, because regardless of the map advantages, in the end it still usually comes down to the candidate, and candidates on either side can blow it.

In reality, various Russian state organizations spent a lot of money to influence the US election and probably succeeded.

Maybe, but why is it assumed that that money only went one way? Even if Russia tried to collude with Trump, they didn't do it for Trump. They did it for Russia. Because it's in Russia's best interest to have the person in power have a favorable opinion of Russia, because that benefits Russia in a whole host of ways.

That being the case, what seems a lot more likely is that Russia would play the field, offering dirt on the other candidate to each campaign, pretending they liked that person and sucking up to them, etc. Ordinarily, given the fact that the two campaigns absolutely do not talk to each other or share information, there would be very little risk to this. They wouldn't talk to each other, and would never realize Russia was saying the same sorts of things to both. I think this scenario is particularly likely given the fact that no one, at any time, thought Trump was going to win, and every poll had him way down. Why would Russia only spend it's time and money sucking up to the Trump campaign, when all the signs said they would be dealing with Hilary?

And I know some will respond saying, "but Hillary isn't an authoritarian who would cooperate with the evil Russians, whereas Trump is a dictator who would sell us out!" Hillary was the author of Obama's "Russian Reset", and she absolutely has shown a willingness to go along to get along with Russia, so again, there's no reason to believe Russia wouldn't play the field with her as well. My big concern about the Mueller investigation is that they seem only interested in Trump, not in trying to discover the full scope of the truth, at least if you can believe what's printed in the press these days.

How is the parent comment a -1? Apparently Liberals are suppressing speech they disagree with again...

That they're already withholding the ads from the public is suspect.

Exactly. These were PUBLIC ads ostensibly purchased by Russians, that were shown to voters. Why is it we can't release them to anyone but Robert Mueller and maybe a select few congressman, when they were already public? What's the big secret here?

If NBC claimed they found out some of the ads they showed on TV during the election were paid for by Russians, but then wouldn't show them to us due to "privacy" concerns (when they'd already been plastered on TV), would you buy it? Why does anyone buy it when facebook says ads that were plastered on their site are too private to see?

Perhaps there should be a mandatory high school class covering how much college costs, the actual cost when interest and minimum payments are made, and average earning potential of various degrees (gender studies vs engineering, for example). And a little education on how permanent student loan debt is would be nice too: it survives bankruptcy, and is near impossible to get "forgiven" with processes politicians keep talking about.

I completely agree, but it should be combined into a class that also teaches Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University program. So many of our debt and financial problems would go away overnight if everyone had to take just a one semester course teaching those two items.

Indeed the UK which recently tripled university tuition costs to 9,000 pounds/year is now having trouble recruiting maths and physics teachers because people with those degrees are going into finance and industry where they can earn enough to pay off their loans.

That's not a valid argument for making college free. All that example shows is one of two things:

1. Your college costs too much, and maybe you should be looking into what is driving the prices up (if it's anything like the US, probably way too many administrators compared to teachers).
2. You don't pay your math and physics teachers what they are worth, in which case you should pay them more so that you are competitive. We have that problem in most of the US because teachers unions force schools into contracts that pay people by time in the job, with no differentiation for harder degrees or special skills like math and physics. Maybe the UK is similar, but regardless, you need to pay people a competitive wage, not make college free. If you don't, they'll get a free math degree off of your taxpayers and continue to take jobs in finance and industry. They aren't taking those jobs *just* to pay off their loans, they're taking them because they pay more period.

Nothing gets fixed by more government involvement and making everything "free".

A better educated population benefits society as a whole. So those who don't attend university benefit when other do - they get better doctors, better engineers designing and building their infrastructure and so on.

That's a nice sounding little statement from an emotional perspective, but is unlikely to be true. Someone who is paying for their education is likely to work harder, so as not to waste their money, which will lead to them becoming better educated. And someone who has no desire for more learning after high school is unlikely to spend their money on college. On the other hand, make it "free" and then all those same people who may not be interested in learning will start going, because who doesn't want a four year party free from parents and working a real job? Just because more people show up, doesn't mean "society is better educated" (and given the insanity going on right now at places like Mizzou and Yale, where students are calling for repealing the first ammendment, having safe spaces, etc, I'd argue society is becoming less educated at college, but that's a topic for another day).

The part of the role of government is the pooling and allocation of resources.

Unless you are a communist like Marx or Lenin, that is not the role of government. Government's role is to keep us free and preserve our rights, including our core rights of life, liberty and property. Taking people's property away by force to redistribute it and spend it how the government deems "best" is most assuredly not a valid role of government, especially under the US constitution.

It wasn't that long ago that nobody needed a professional degree, even for a lot of occupations we would assume were necessary.

College degrees still ought not to be necessary, but the problem is that our public schools have so dumbed down what is expected of high schoolers, and so many schools are failing, that the high school diploma tells you nothing about the student anymore. And there are other problems. My sister is a high school teacher and she's constantly getting yelled at by parents because she gives kids the grade they deserve rather than the high grade parents think their special snowflake should get. She doesn't willingly change any grades, but has been forced by the administration to do so before, and other teachers are also more willing to change grades. And if you think parents are unwilling to accept low grades, just imagine how unwilling they are to accept kids being held back or not graduating. That no longer happens at all. Kids don't get held back, and they are basically guaranteed to graduate at age 18 regardless of performance or achievement.

In the face of all that, a high school degree has become fairly meaningless. You have no idea if the GPA was earned or modified, you have no idea if they learned anything, or even if they truly met the requirements to graduate. In my opinion that's why a college degree is now required for jobs that don't need it: employers still trust that if you fail in college you will generally be kicked out, whereas an 18 year old at a sixth grade reading and math level will probably still graduate from many of our public schools.

In short, this is another reason NOT to have free college for all, because for most it will become a free four years of partying away from mom and dad, and will probably get just as dumbed as well once it starts being routine for all as high school is today. Then we'll all have to get masters or PhDs to do the things a high school degree once sufficed for.

Shifting the costs is the point here: college students are the ones least able to pay for their own education.

No, shifting the costs is not what you want to do. You want to make the student bear the costs specifically so that they have an incentive to make smart decisions. You want to discourage mass numbers of people from attending college simply to have a four year party and take the easiest or most useless degree they can. Having students be responsible for paying helps to dissuade that (somewhat).

If a student takes a major that is in demand and has a reasonable likelihood of getting a job and a good salary (and that doesn't come from a university charging a ridiculous amount), then they can bear the cost. If not now, then at least sometime after graduation. Some may still take the dumb majors anyway, but then by bearing the cost they will learn and teach their kids. I remember my dad took one of those majors and has never used it in his entire working career. He told me he'd help with my college costs, but only "if you go get a major that involves an actual skill. If you take something dumb like me you can pay 100% of it yourself."

I strongly suspect a lot of millenials (of which I am one) have or are learning about this, and the next generation hopefully will have a lot less people enrolling in these types of majors because of it, assuming we don't bail them all out.

Lol, I'm from Iowa, and wind farms kill a LOT more creatures than nuclear generally does. They are doing way more to wipe out endagered species of eagles than poachers could ever do. Plus, even though they may not blow up, they shut down all the time when the wind doesn't blow. They are a ridiculous source of energy. If you want your eagles to live and don't want everything electrical in your city to shut down every time the wind stops, you'd better find something else.

But like most environmentalists, it's probably better for you to make yourself "feel green" by supporting wind than actually pick something useful or address the massive killings of flying creatures, right?

Plus politicians like the late Teddy Kennedy heavily fight offshore wind turbines because they don't want the turbines cluttering up their views from their coastal mansions, such as the view they had in Hyannis Port at the Kennedy compound. But they have no problem cluttering up our beautiful views all across Iowa. Bunch of hypocrites, all the environmentalists and left wing politicians.

Wind is one of the most expensive forms of energy out there. Way more so than nuclear. My relatives live in rural Iowa literally right next to a windfarm, and you also have the problem that some days when you look out there, not a single turbine is moving. Yep, when the wind doesn't blow, do we just turn everything off? That's another good reason to go nuclear... you need something that works all the time. Wind and solar are no replacement for fossil fuels because they don't work at all times, but nuclear could be.

They're probably already capable of a coast-to-coast autonomous trip - in good weather. What's uncertain is if they can cope with really poor driving conditions.

Lol, exactly. Googles designs its cars in sunny southern California, with programmers who are southern drivers. I for one can't wait to see them attempt to perform in Minneapolis. If the programmers in the South West have programmed the cars to make decisions the way they make decisions when driving (which is a reasonable assumption), then I expect that they will respond like all southern drivers: when the first snowflake appears, they will immediately pull over to the side of the road and wait for the spring thaw!

It seems unlikely that they'll transition from this to true autonomous long distance operation in 3 years.

Plus the whole "machine learning" thing he's counting on to make this work sounds more like a buzzword than any kind of reality. Machines don't learn. We don't even understand how we learn or how our brain works, and we certainly haven't made any serious progress in making a machine "learn". What we have done is come up with better statistical models and the ability to update those models and rulesets, which can allow the car to make better programmatic choices in a larger variety of situations, but really, there's no learning going on. Just humans continuing to refine and fine tune code that handles hard problems. If his humans can get the technology working in three years (which sounds overly optimistic to me too), then great, but it's not like you can just send the car to a driver's ed course and it will "machine learn" how to drive better while in the class.

And I do agree with others who are skeptical that the security implications of this have been worked out. I'm particularly not a fan of a car being able to go long distances without a human in it. I think the range should be limited to a couple blocks for parking convenience purposes, and that's it. Otherwise, you have the possibility of terrorists being able to construct car bombs in rural areas far from the eyes of the law, and then remotely command the cars to drive to populated areas and blow up while they sit undetected in safety somewhere. I don't think the human should necessarily have to be in the driver's seat, but there ought to be someone in the car to prevent these things from becoming autonomous warfare drones.