Niels

This is entirely correct. If we go to the Wikipedia list of current and former fascist movements listed by country, we find the following line of text: Followed by links to 4 separate list articles. From those, we can see that active groups exist in Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and in fact, most countries on earth.

I assume the Nazi parties reference is to Svoboda with its super-scary 6 of 450 seats and zero members of the government leadership? Of course, Russia is a much more civilized place than Ukraine. They only keep statues of Stalin around (and of course, he would never have been responsible for the most deaths of any leader during the 20th century). Stalin was basically so nice to everyone, they rewarded him with a permanent position in the national necropolis. And while that far-right nationalist Svoboda party tars Ukraine as a bunch of Nazis by getting 4.7% of the vote, Russia's far-right nationalist LDPR party shows that Russia is a much more civilized place by only getting 11.7% of the vote.

What do people think of the new Star Wars trailer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngElkyQ6Rhs Unlike the first one for this film, it does a pretty good job of instilling excitement for the film. It also seems to have been designed to hit nostalgia buttons pretty effectively, so maybe that opinion is not universal. One element that is interesting is that in what sounds like Luke narrating, he says that his father "has" a strong connection to the force, which given the events in episode VI would seem to be impossible.

Please consider not being so incorrect: Batista was driven from Cuba on January 1, 1959. JFK didn't assume the presidency until 1961. Now maybe the Bay of Pigs Invasion could have been successful given different levels of support or different circumstances, but Cuba was lost way before the Kennedy administration even began. As for the rest of your commentary on Lincoln, I'll just remind you of an earlier statement of yours: Presumably this means that tearing up the Constitution and laying waste to half the country are conservative values now, since it would be intellectually inconsistent to call them liberalism? If that's what you'd like your thesis to be, that's fine I suppose, though I will let you know that I don't subscribe to this notion.

I assume this is an unfunny John Wilkes Booth joke or something. I haven't been having this back-and-forth because I want to claim Lincoln as some sort of uber-Progressive champion; I've been having it because I objected to the assertion that all of Lincoln's actions and deeds fit into a box labelled "conservative" and specifically, an even smaller box of "Early 21st century American conservative." Doing so is, as I've tried to show, incorrect, and also, diminishes the man that Lincoln was. Lincoln succeeded in holding the Union together because he was open to ideas about how the war could best be waged, and although idealistic in many ways, he did not let these overwhelm the need to take pragmatic action based on a combination of personal thoughts and advisement by trusted members of his administration. He was willing to take risks, try new paths when the old ways of doing things proved insufficient (as in the case of the introduction of the income tax). He wasn't just a mindless automaton pulling a conservative policy lever over and over again until victory was achieved. He was, as often the case, an interesting and complicated man, personally, publicly, and politically.

Yes, war costs money, and taxes often have to be raised to cover it. But Lincoln did not choose a flat tax or just a consumption tax - he chose a consumption tax AND a progressive income tax. Given all other options, he chose the exact kind of tax that is now labelled as liberal. Lincoln chose a progressive tax because poor people were drafted to fight it. You can't force people to fight the war and then force the same people to pay for it. Rich people were able to pay a $300.00 fee to avoid conscription. It was pretty screwed up back then. That still doesn't explain why a progressive income tax was chosen. Raising custom duties would also have been more taxing on the rich than the poor, and was a traditional method of collecting revenue prior to the Civil War. Ditto with the sale of war bonds, used to finance the War of 1812. Such methods would also not have ultimately been deemed unconstitutional. Do you have a source for this claim that Lincoln was trying to avoid overwhelming the draftable poor by excluding them from the income tax? Even if we accept it, wanting to not tax the poor because they could be drafted does not force one to choose a progressive income tax with two (and following revision in 1864, three) increasing tax rates. Just as easy would have been a flat tax on any income above some cutoff. Or alternatively, apply a flat rate to everyone except those actually soldiering - a concept today called the Military Pay Exclusion for Combat Zone Service.

Yes, war costs money, and taxes often have to be raised to cover it. But Lincoln did not choose a flat tax or just a consumption tax - he chose a consumption tax AND a progressive income tax. Given all other options, he chose the exact kind of tax that is now labelled as liberal.

Sigh. Abraham Lincoln signed the first progressive income tax in the United States into law in 1862. We get that you're a Republican, we get that you're conservative. It just seems really odd that you think that the Republican Party is, and always has been, the conservative party in the United States, when that is demonstrably not true. In 1912 and 1924, left-wing Republicans broke from the rest of the party to create temporary Progressive parties; these ran to the left of Republicans, and Democrats at the time. The 1960 Republican Party platform makes use of the words "Liberal" and "Progressive" in favorable light: There's nothing wrong with being a conservative, but the brand loyalty (and yes, the parties are just brands that constantly re-invent themselves) seems unwarranted. Yes, once the Democratic Party was associated with support for slavery and Jim Crow; now neither party holds that space. Once the Republican Party was in favor of isolationism, but, as evidenced by both Republican and Democratic administrations engaging in foreign uses of the military since the 1940s, this is also not a position held by either group any more.

DOMA may have been signed by Bill Clinton (who has since repudiated it), but since 2002, 11 attempts have been made to introduce an amendment to the Constitution banning same-sex marriage. Of those 11 attempts, 10 were made by Republican politicians. Does this tell you anything?

I agree that the potential Republican challengers are less well known, but they do have their own issues with popularity, as shown in this chart. Hillary's polling is not that strong, but at least compared to all so-far announced Republican challengers, her (Favorable rating) - (Unfavorable rating) > 0 My understanding is that Dr. Ben Carson will be announcing his candidacy next month, and unlike the Republicans announced so far, this inequality is also true for him. He seems to have a compelling life story, though like VP Biden, has a tendency to say gaffe-like things. Has also made some statements indicating less-than-full support for gun rights in the past. Will be interesting to see how he holds up with additional attention.

Choose your poll aggregation, and you'll see what the preponderance of the evidence is: RealClearPolitics Wikipedia Polling 18 months away is meaningless. The only thing substantial about it right now is Hillary is running as an unopposed Democrat and cannot get passed the 50% mark against anyone. That tells you something. I'm not sure how to parse this statement: is the polling meaningless, or is it meaningful (because Hillary is <50%)?

Choose your poll aggregation, and you'll see what the preponderance of the evidence is: RealClearPolitics Wikipedia

Potentially true regarding early announcements, but I think we're at about the average time when announcements of candidacies are made. As outlined in this FiveThirtyEight post, for both parties going back to the 1970s, the average announcement date was ~300 days before the Iowa Caucuses. Since those have been scheduled for February 1, 2016, 300 days prior to the caucuses is April 7, 2015, which is to say, now! Therefore does not seem unusual that the four major announcements we've had so far have been bracketed by March 23rd (Cruz) and April 13th (Rubio).

As of today, realistic candidates: Hillary Clinton (D-NY) Ted Cruz (R-TX) Rand Paul (R-KY) Less ... ahem ... likely ... candidates do exist, including the wonderfully named Vermin Supreme, who hopefully will revive his 2012 platform, which included: 1) A free pony for every American 2) Zombie apocalypse awareness education 3) Federal funding for time travel research

Unfortunately getting redress through lawsuits later is not always possible, cheap, or effective. Reporting on those that fought civil forfeiture backs this up: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/they-fought-the-law-who-won/

True that Nate was not the author. Nate himself has however written a related piece on the prevalence of self-identified libertarians and those who, without using that label, hold libertarian thoughts. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/there-are-few-libertarians-but-many-americans-have-libertarian-views/ He is however, like Harry, skeptical of Sen. Paul's chances, saying:

Nate Silver & Co. are not convinced that Rand Paul will be able to retain his father's followers while simultaneously expanding his appear to other segments of the GOP primary electorate as would actually be required to win the nomination: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/rand-paul-is-losing-his-fathers-base/

It's amazing how much more informative his show is than almost anything else on television despite ostensibly being a comedy show.

That's fine - it was just really strange to bring up where she was born as if it was actually important regarding your disagreements with her political actions. Even if we subscribed to the notion that people were inherently biased in favor of where they lived while 0-4 years old, it would have been subtle support for Iran as it existed under the Pahlavi dynasty (i.e. the place where women's suffrage and non-Muslim rights were introduced over the complaints of the imams, where the Ayatollah Khomenei was exiled from for 15 years, and the Shia clergy had been stripped of their control over family law), which is to say, not modern Iran.

Sigh. Please explain how being born in Shiraz in 1956, and moving to the UK in 1961 made her or her family responsible for the 1979 Iranian Revolution. That is what I meant by "through no fault of their own", because you would not be upset over her personal origin if the Shah's family was still running the country.

Are we criticizing people over where they were born now? From Wikipedia, with some emphasis: "Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. ... Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children in Shiraz in 1956, as part of a program where American physicians and agricultural experts sought to help developing countries' health and farming efforts." Do we also hate any other Americans who were born in places that, through no fault of their own, became politically different more than 20 years later (Iran was an ally in 1956)? Or do we just hate people whose parents wanted to make the world a better place by helping kids in foreign countries? If you have political criticisms of a person, pick a better reason for them, and focus on actual policy choices ... you know, the things that supposedly make you upset.

I'm just curious who you think negotiated the deal with Iran. From the US State Department photo, I see the following: Hailong Wu - People's Republic of China Laurent Fabius - France Frank-Walter Steinmeier - Germany Federica Mogherini - European Union Javad Zarif - Iran [not captioned in photo] - Russia Philip Hammond - United Kingdom John Kerry - United States Although not participating in the talks, the other governments on this list have responded: FAVOR - South Korea No official response - Japan (Ministry of Foreign Affairs website lists no statements on the deal) OPPOSE - Israel So from the list of traditional allies, we have 4 countries who participated in the negotiations or favor the announced framework, one no response, and one opposed.

The thing about nuclear weapons is that they're fairly easy to make, as can be seen by the fact that 1940s technology allowed it, and even a 17 y.o. boy scout was able to assemble a sub-critical breeder reactor in his backyard once: http://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/ Ultimately, the US was unable to prevent the USSR or China from developing nuclear weapons (the latter able to do so despite the massive economic disruptions of the Great Leap Forwrd). The world was unable to prevent Pakistan or India from making their own, despite knowing that they hate each other as well. Iran may make speeches about wanting to destroy Israel, and fund groups that attack it, but Pakistan and India have actually gone to war with one another - several times now. Even the hated and internationally sanctioned Apartheid regime in South Africa was able to make their own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction And of course, North Korea, despite a non-functioning economy, sanctions by most of the world, and other hardships, has almost been able to do so too. Ultimately, it seems that the international community doesn't have the power to prevent countries from developing nuclear weapons. Maybe that means the best we can do are treaties that try to have countries use atomic power for peaceful purposes ... I don't know.

This is still destruction of property, but at least when this airline pilot wanted to kill himself by crashing a plane, he just walked into the airport and stole an empty one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Air_Botswana_incident However, in destroying the plane he stole by crashing into two others sitting empty on the tarmac, he destroyed 100% of Air Botswana's fleet, crippling the ability of the airline to transport people around the country.

For Romney not to win the general election the Democrats still have to have a candidate that can beat him. Hillary is about as likable as Nancy Pelosi, and being a woman is not a qualification for President, it's an accident of birth. Mitt Romney is a true leader and Hillary is a true politician. What else they got? Elizabeth Warren? That's right up there with Bernie Sanders and I hope they go with her. It would be McGovern-Mondale-Dukakis all over again. It mostly comes down to who wins Florida and Ohio anyway... the country is so divided. On the other hand, one can look at the polls we do have and see that in Hillary v. Romney, the spread of polls conducted in 2014 were pretty well in favor of Clinton: McClatchy-Marist, 2/4/14-2/9/14: Clinton 53, Romney 44, (Clinton +9) Public Policy Polling, 3/6/14-3/9/14: Clinton 48, Romney 43 (Clinton +5) CNN/ORC, 7/18/14-7/20/14: Clinton 55, Romney 42 (Clinton +13) Quinnipiac University, 11/18/14-11/23/14: Clinton 44, Romney 45 (Romney +1) Bloomberg Politics/Selzer & Co., 12/3/14-12/5/14: Clinton 45, Romney 39 (Clinton +6) McClatchy-Marist, 12/3/14-12/9/14: Clinton 53, Romney 41 (Clinton +12) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2016 These two are well known and so there's probably not any really good reason to think the numbers will be changing based on people getting to know the candidates. Rather they'll be subject to swings in popularity based on perceived competency of campaigning (Romney uncomfortably acting as a folksy common man being an incorrect move) and the general economic conditions of the country, which neither of them can control. In contrast, there are potential candidates like John Kasich (Fox News, 12/7/14-12/9/14: Clinton 53, Kasich 37 (Clinton +16)) who could reasonably expect improvement of their present polling based on becoming more known. People have made claims that polls, particularly this far out, aren't useful, but that position should be taken with caution, lest one end up like Romney/Ryan 2012, so overconfident despite close polls, that a concession speech wasn't even drafted. All above numbers are of course national surveys because that's where we have the best data at the moment, but disregarding the possibility of some massive shift in the dispositions of populations of many states, we know about what to expect from the electoral college given various national vote scenarios: Republican +2%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004 Democratic +4%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012 Democratic +7%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008