Recent posts

#1

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Tamas - Today at 03:19:58 PM

Concentrating power just concentrates power - you concentrate power in a few hands with no checks in balances to fight the rich and suddenly you have created your own enemy.

Checks and balances are annoying when your guy is being checked and balanced but the best system invented so far to maintain a democracy.

Where are the checks and balances to which you refer? Sounds great in theory - it's in practice that it starts crumbling.  Take the US as the most recent tragic example.

Sure but no matter what system you build (and this is in reply to Sheilbh as well), anything beyond sheer physical coercion requires the consent of the ruled and the powerful to accept the rules.

First stop is the ones in power agreeing implicitly not to use their power to diminish other branches of power. If they try those other branches should push back before it is too late. Failing that, the electorate should step in to stop those efforts.

Obviously if all those steps fail then the system fails but this is not something you can remedy except by giving up and just going straight for your preferred form of autocracy.

Again, that is a very American centric view if the world. A parliamentary system does have competing branches of government.  The flaw in the US system is it did create competing branches and hoped each branch would be a check on the others. 

The Parliament system encourages cooperation.  For a third time (because you keep ignoring this point) a non confidence vote, like a budget vote, means there is a new general election.  That tends to focus the mind on what compromises are possible.

It also gives a lot of power to back benchers if someone like Trump (or Vance) were to arise.

A parlamentiary as opposed to presidential democracy is better no argument there, but just from my limited knowledge I can raise Hungary as a parlamentiary democracy that has failed. It even had a very modern two-rounds election system which was far superior to something like the British first past the post nonsense but once an actor like Orban got a constitutional majority it all went to hell.

#2

Off the Record / Re: Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-2...

Last post by Tamas - Today at 03:16:17 PM

Do you think that is conceiveable?!

Seriously what kind of a comment is that, if we are only allowed to comment on speculate on things that we have the most detailed understanding of of anyone on the planet, there won't be much left to discuss.

#3

Gaming HQ / Re: Elite: Dangerous

Last post by Tamas - Today at 03:14:05 PM

What a bummer.

The system I chose to colonise has a good number of planets but all of them are ice ones with two exceptions, a gas giant with ammonia-based life and a planet close to the sun made one third of metals. The plan was to build around and on the latter figuring that's gotta give a nice bonus to some extraction bases.

The coloniser ship when it arrived parked around one moon of a twin-moon formation orbiting one of the gas giants. I thought whatever I will just build up the metal planet afterwards.

I grind out this first outpost, just to realise when trying to select a second site that the metal planet is too unstable for construction.

Goddamit.

Kicked off a planetary industrial port construction on the moon orbited by the outpost, but FFS it needs even more materials than the outpost, plus of course it needs to be hauled to the surface. Yeah, I prpbamly won't bother.

What I should do instead is save up 5 billion credits for a fleet carrier so I can load that up with the build materials and then at least I would only need to haul from orbit.

With the time I have available to play I recon I can buy that thing in a few years. :p

#4

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by The Brain - Today at 02:50:53 PM

We shall see if the Republicans bother to repeal the 13th amendment or decide just to ignore it.

#5

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Admiral Yi - Today at 02:45:53 PM

Nothing ever happened to the politicians and crooked cops for all the terrible things they did during the Civil Rights era.

Mississippi Burning makes me think otherwise.

#6

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by PJL - Today at 02:42:37 PM

Law and justice mean nothing when the criminals and crimes are popular. Nothing ever happened to the politicians and crooked cops for all the terrible things they did during the Civil Rights era.

If that is the case, then the law is at fault, not the criminals. If people are okay with what they did, then it should be decriminalised. At the end of the day, the legal system is there to serve to the populace. It's why when the left celebrate legal victories in certain cases, it's more of a pyrrhic victory than they think they realise.

#7

Off the Record / Re: Israel-Hamas War 2023

Last post by Admiral Yi - Today at 02:32:29 PM

Clearly Greta Thunberg needs to chant from the river to the sea some more.
Like the previous dozen times.
They obviously have to do it again.  Next time it'll definitely work and Hamas will stop killing Palestinians by sheer moral force.

#8

Off the Record / Re: Israel-Hamas War 2023

Last post by Josquius - Today at 02:24:44 PM

Clearly Israel didn't bomb Gaza enough.
Just like the previous dozen times.
They obviously have to do it again. Next time it'll definitely work and they'll beat Hamas by levelling Gaza.

#9

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Valmy - Today at 02:09:04 PM

Considering the outrage and accusations of corruption with the weak sauce shit we did to hold Trump and the Jan 6 criminals accountable, I am highly doubtful anything will be done to get justice for the crimes of the current regime.

Law and justice mean nothing when the criminals and crimes are popular. Nothing ever happened to the politicians and crooked cops for all the terrible things they did during the Civil Rights era.

#10

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Josquius - Today at 01:54:20 PM

Another day, another story that under normal circumstances would be a massive scandal

https://newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-a-us-citizen-and-a-veteran-ice?utm_campaign=post