Not an expert, but it seems that Congress is very content with a three-way tie/stalemate because the only political office term limit is for POTUS. Therefore even if Reps/Sens don't like the current President, they only have to bide their time. Individual congressmen/women can get away with almost anything ... there is no oversight... no job description apart from getting re-elected. You don't even have to toe the party line all that much, and you get to rub elbows with people with money.
Yes, there are some elected folk actively trying to help their electorate (vs. their financial backers), but they are probably in the minority at this point. Can't find the study, but someone somewhere did a regression analysis on Congressional voting behavior vs. campaign platform (i.e., promises to electorate/voting public) and campaign financiers/lobbyists (promises to the moneyed few.) The R2 was 0.00 as in completely random for campaign platform, and about 0.10 (which while not a slam-dunk is still significant) for the financial backers. This type of analysis can be done routinely these days because Congressional voting data, meetings/appointments, campaign speeches, etc. are all on record. By performing and publicizing such analyses on a regular basis USians can make their Reps accountable. The tools are available.
Oh -- and here's an interesting analysis of differences in large-$ political contributions for Rep vs. Dem parties in the US.
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/06/26/1pct_of_the_1pct_polarization/
]]>(Clue: it's by someone taking violent issue with the assertion that "Comedy shouldn't require courage".)
]]>And see how much shit descends on your head.
]]>The spiked article seems rather short on evidence and long on insinuation and "some people" stuff.
]]>Which she does identify some leftists/ progressives.
]]>(append "ish" to my name at gmail.com and it ought to work.)
Halt certainly isn't the Lady as a venerable terror, but I'm glad the impression is there. (And I would never dare try to write One-Eye; Cook is a remarkable stylist and I haven't got his particular ear for dialog.)
The first book I wrote, the goal was to start off like a generic fantasy and slowly have it get stranger and stranger, because if it started off as strange as it ended up that would never work. Various persons kindly informed me that it had got stranger, that part worked.
In a lot of ways I'm now trying to do that with a series; maybe that will work!
The artillery in The March North are prototypes; subsequent versions will hopefully continue nifty.
(Much of Commonweal #4 is about the person who gets sent off to document red shot production after they have to give up studying magic because their brain got lit on fire.)
]]>Video is in many ways a terrible medium for conveying information. It is an excellent medium for conveying emotion. There are days I think TV news should be outlawed because of the damage it does to the body politic. But then go watch the video of Murrow at Buchenwald -- it would take 10,000 words to do the job he does in 3 minutes.
The other time TV shine is when there actually is live news that is important and developing quickly. There were a couple of times during my time in TV when we literally saved lives. I'm proud of that. There are a lot more times we did live reports because it helps ratings.
Also, no one is more aware of the problems and limits of TV news than those of us who work in the trenches. I spent a lot of time fighting to make our shows just a little smarter, a little more relevant, a little less full of s**t. Sometimes I won. More often....
]]>Yeah, rights for everyone EXCEPT brown women who must get back into their religious ghettoes, because "we" can then shout out about how horrible the "western imperialists" are. Crap. Either we have Universal Human Rights, or we don't - you don't get to pick & choose.
]]>In A Succession of Bad Days it becomes clear that Halt is... really quite different from the Lady, yes. But in The March North this is less clear: I can imagine the Lady terrifying a [censored for obvious reasons] in just the same way. :)
It's definitely getting much stranger! Although, good grief, Blossom already gave the world something about as powerful as middling-big nukes in The March North!
]]>Thank you!
And yay! getting stranger.
The March North really is meant to be the easy on-ramp to a bunch of stories about militant egalitarians who aren't setting out to conquer hell (where they happen to live) because conquest is antithetical to the ideals of peace.
And then I ran into "what does a consciously rationalist sex-positive atheist egalitarian culture use for swears?" and the narrator turned out to be a bit odder than I had expected. And then Halt wandered in out of the dark, looking quite pleased with themselves. So I do wonder if I've got to a good place between "strange enough" and "too strange", but it looks like I've managed so far.
The Experimental Battery isn't going to lead to bigger bangs, as such; it's going to lead to having to figure out how to apply lessons learned and getting the kit into series production, that is, can people who aren't Blossom make this? reliably? at all? at reasonable expense?
(And only about 40 TJ; fairly teeny as nukes go. Also fairly teeny as traditional wizard-war energy releases go in the setting, there's a reason for the outbreaks of geological discontinuity. But compact and sudden and surprising.)
]]>Smart OP, much love.
]]>On the same page, Sophie is surprised that she doesn't recognize the species of a moth. But Wikipedia says that there are 180,000 species of Lepidoptera, which is way beyond the human memory threshold. I suppose this makes sense if she's surprised that it's not a Californian species, but she seems to be thinking that she ought to be able to (a) identify what species it is and (b) use that to figure out her geographic location.
Neither of those stopped me reading further, so they're not major issues. They're just things that stuck in my memory.
]]>Touched.
Glad to be of some small merit, a life saved and all that.
~
Comment: it is naive to assume that a narrative isn't being sculpted; it's also naive to assume you're the best in the business if your (non-hidden) competition is weak.
The candle that burns brightest burns half as long [Youtube: music: 2:23]
~
@OP (if she is still aware of this thread): Ecofantasy?!?
You're on the list!
(It's a good list, the reading kind)
]]>