Yesterday I would have said Obama would be more likely, but today my assumptions about Assad have been completely overturned, so I guess he's more likely to go.

Better question: are the Thaksinites influenced by Marxism? And will the Democrat party ever be able to win an election on their own merits?

Germany took longer then almost any other European nation to unite and I don't really understand why. I get the other big 19th century nation, Italy, as France and Austria spend centuries tugging at it like a ragdoll. But Germany didn't have that, and had an overarching government in the HRE. Why didn't it ever pull itself together and unify like France or even arguably Poland did?

Edit: I guess this technically shouldn't be here as it isn't US history, but I'm not sure where else it would go.

[. When America’s top justices signed off on the decision, corporations were guaranteed some of the same constitutional rights assigned to the American public.]

I wish them the best.  Full story here, excerpt below.

Seattle resident Angela Vogel was given state permission to proceed with a planned wedding after officials in King County, Washington this week signed off on a marriage license between the beautiful bride-to-be and one Mr. Corporate Person: a one-and-a-half-month-old corporation established earlier this year. Jeff Reifman, a Seattle-based technologist and writer, is listed on Corporate Person’s official papers as its registered agent.

...

Reifman is behind an initiative in Seattle that, if passed, would strike down the corporate personhood guarantees created under last year’s Supreme Court ruling between Citizens United and Federal Election Commission. When America’s top justices signed off on the decision, corporations were guaranteed some of the same constitutional rights assigned to the American public.

Hasn't that been the case since the Guilded Age?

Personally I say it lawn-jev-it-tea.

One of the rumors is that the defense minister and deputy were killed by someone on the inside (possibly one of their own security guards), because the thinking is that it would have taken someone on the inside to get that close to them.

I don't see how it could be otherwise.  It has inside job written all over it.

Question of the day: does Assad A. take his chances in Damascus, B. retreat to Lattakia and prepare to continue the fight on friendly ground, or C. take the next flight to Moscow and call it quits?

I doubt he leaves Damascus. Any authority he still has rests on his government being the legitimate government of Syria. The moment he leaves the capital the stream of defections becomes a flood. I doubt he changes policy now, all he has to do is soldier on, slowly culling the opposition with aid from the Russians. The status quo isn't a killer for him yet.

Well, less then one day later it turns out I'm completely wrong. NPR is now reporting that he's fled Damascus. I had no idea the rebels were doing this well. I kinda thought it was a fluke.

Glad to see somebody paying attention to the poor forgotten Ruthenians.

Yeah, but it's probably less efficient than simply airdropping a trillion dollars over major US cities. 

That sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. First off, a literal airdrop would be extremely inefficient and probably cause riots and violence as people try desperately to get money falling from the sky. Even if this is metaphorical, it wouldn't work that well. Giving people small amounts of money consistently over a long time can work, but any large lump sums would be terrible for the same reason that half of the people who win the lottery end up worse off than when they started--unless people are used to having large amounts of money, most won't have any idea how to manage it properly. It's a side effect of being poor, unfortunately; large amounts in your bank account are foreign concepts that you're used to seeing go away out of necessity. This conditioned response drives people to spend that money in reckless ways. While that might boost the economy temporarily, it's not going to do much good in the long run.

Not to mention the inflationary effect.

One of the rumors is that the defense minister and deputy were killed by someone on the inside (possibly one of their own security guards), because the thinking is that it would have taken someone on the inside to get that close to them.

I don't see how it could be otherwise.  It has inside job written all over it.

Question of the day: does Assad A. take his chances in Damascus, B. retreat to Lattakia and prepare to continue the fight on friendly ground, or C. take the next flight to Moscow and call it quits?

I doubt he leaves Damascus. Any authority he still has rests on his government being the legitimate government of Syria. The moment he leaves the capital the stream of defections becomes a flood. I doubt he changes policy now, all he has to do is soldier on, slowly culling the opposition with aid from the Russians. The status quo isn't a killer for him yet.

Biden isn't an exciting or interesting speaker and is far too prone to spontaneous foot-in-mouth incidents. I don't see why you think he'd be a master great debater. Sure, he'd probably beat Pawlenty, but Ryan would out-statistic him, Portman out-stature him, and Jindal....well who knows about him, but no matter who it is it probably won't be a blowout.

I've been reading about the genocides of the Khmer Rouge and Western support of that government, which as a Chinese client opposed the Russians, and it made me think: what do you all think are some of the worst actions, human-rights wise, done by the west in the name of Anti-Communism?

If he was going to do something he would have made a much stronger attempt to keep Kadima in the fold. Israeli governments almost always try to have grand coalitions before battle.

2 Watts
1 Huckabee

Well, after just two months Kadima is out again: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/9406961/Israels-largest-party-walks-out-of-Benjamin-Netanyahus-coalition.html

With Netanyahu having only cancelled an early election because of Kadima getting in, will he call an election now? Also, will this help Kadima survive or will Lapid's party benefit?

If we're doing since 1945:

Thatcher
Macmillan
Cameron
Blair (For Belfast, ending Clause IV and devolution)
Attlee (If he had been a bit more like FDR and a bit less...socialist he'd be much higher)
 

As I said in the other thread, most people here haven't heard of it and those that have believe it was just a matter of some ex-employee trying to get back at their old boss out of a case of sour grapes. Then again, what I've been hearing might be a bit biased, as Jennifer Carrol came from not too far from where I live and is very well loved around here. Either way, this story hasn't gotten out of the politically inclined circles yet.

I see that some areas are extremely moist. Mmmmm yeah.

Like the phallic Florida.

Ignoring the moist joke, we're only out of it because we took on Beryl/Debbie.

Dewhurst lies closer to my politics, but Cruz is tempting as a younger rising star. Probably Dewhurst, but I won't cry a river when Cruz wins.

So many people underestimate the benefits of being in the customs union. Non-Briton, stay.

Also, every thread could do with a bit more Yes, Minister.

Apple
Obama- 41%
Romney- 33%

Microsoft
Romney- 40%
Obama- 33%

Is this election turning into one of those "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC ads?"

I feel much better when I forget about Hungary. What's happening there is so heartbreaking that living with the thought is just impossible.

So it's really awful there, then? Is it Greek levels of far-right insanity? I'd like more info.

Consider this a mostly uninformed and short summary, but I believe what happened is that the Hungarian right was elected in a landslide few years ago and have since been whittling away the independence of the judiciary and press, making the country an all around less democratic place. The biggest problem with that, is that the fastest growing potential rival (Jobbik) is WORSE, being a sort of ultra-nationalist, Hungary-for-the-Hungarians, almost neo-nazi party. So, with the only options being frying pan or fire, people aren't too hopeful about the political future there.

Everyone I've talked to about it either hadn't heard of it or believed that it was just an angry ex-employee trying to get revenge on his former boss. Its not really a big story yet.

So, apparently my support for humanitarian interventions and acceptance of general scientific consensus means my best candidate is Barack Obama, but if I don't like him its ok because he only beat Gary Johnson 83-81. I don't think any quiz where they can end up within 2 points of each other has any merit whatsoever.

Well, duh, that goes without saying that they'd support such an effort. But there's two problems with that. First, illegal voters are not as prominent as most people think (illegal immigrants are too busy keeping their heads down and trying to avoid being caught, for one). Second, most people don't know that the "purging illegals from voter lists" is code for "making voter ID laws so stringent that anyone who might vote Democratic can't, based on the criteria of the voter IDs".

For example, some voter ID requirements force you to have a driver's license as a possible ID. But what if you live in the city and have never gotten a driver's license because you don't need one? That hurts minority voters (most of whom vote Democratic), because a lot them live in the city.

On the other hand, in some states, the new Voter ID laws let you use a gun license as ID. And guess who gun owners usually vote for?

I was talking to my supervisor of elections who was one of the people to start the illegal voters removal push about it; according to him the main reason for the push in the first place was that some group somewhere in South Florida (I forgot who it was to be honest) wasn't getting proper information and was registering everyone they could get their hands on with the result being that 30000 people who weren't qualified to vote had gotten onto the rolls. Its just spiraled out of control since then.

Thought we should have one of these. The Libyans are having a "Public National Conference" election tomorrow, which seems to be similar to the Egyptian constitutional assembly election a few months ago.  Also, some of the Benghazites who want a more federal system are calling for boycotts.
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/07/06/libya-election.html

It also sounds like the government thats most likely is made up of the MB aligned Freedom and Construction party and that of secularist former PM Jibril:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9379022/Libya-elections-Muslim-Brotherhood-set-to-lead-government.html