Drachefly

This is simply wrong. There is no other way to set economic, or really any political policy than by ideology. Politicians today like to claim that their policies is beyond ideology and solely informed by pragmatical concerns. Their policy is "whatever works", as Tony Blair liked to say.
The problem with this is that a political policy can only be said to work if it achieves a result you want. And what results you want of course depends on your ideology, the values and principles that you hold. Denying that you have an ideology when you are a political actor is merely obscuring the values that underlie your actions. Conservatives, liberals and socialists all have different value systems and therefore want different results. 
Politics always raises questions and they need answers. These questions range from foundational and general, like "what is a good society?" and "how shall we achieve that society", to specific matters of policy. Answering them in a coherent and (nota bene) consistent way requires a system of values, an ideology. Philosophically, you can't consider each issue separately from the rest. Political action requires reasonable justification, and that justification must rest on a rational, coherent and consistent philosophical worldview,

The main direct effect you get from having a bunch of line blockers keeping the first 30000 feet gravity-free is that you no longer have a time limit on operations there - it becomes more like orbit. So, you can use a more efficient rocket. But since this is the first stage, it hardly makes a difference.
But the indirect effects might end up being pretty significant - you are going to have one HECK of a wind kicked up around the edge of the zone. Air will come in the bottom and find that it's suddenly facing much lighter gravity, so it expands upwards; at the top, it conversely suddenly finds that it is much too dense for the altitude it is, and it comes down. I expect this would become stronger over time, up to some limit; it is not clear to me how fast it would be, but it could be a very strong updraft. Maybe instead of firing a first stage rocket at all they let out parachutes and have that accelerate them up to the first 150 mph or something. Only fire up the rockets when you've reached peak upward velocity off of the wind.
… and again that's insignificant. The KE of 150 mph is just not that much compared to orbit.
BUT that's assuming the line blockers have a short range. Why would they? If they're blocking the lines like the name implies, they could cast a long-reaching gravity shadow up from where they are. And the wider the area, the further the shadow. Maybe it all comes back eventually, but you only need to make the region of effect teardrop-shaped (or more extremely, comet-shaped) to give ships a nice long upwards path. The tail would be pointed directly away from the attractive body, so the ship would have to stay above the column… in this case it might end up cheaper to go to Geosynchronous than Low-Earth orbit.
If you don't like that idea, let the line-benders operate much higher. Balloons can operate all the way out to the edge of space. Let them go up 50 km. That would be long enough that maybe a low thrust, high specific-impulse first stage would be a good idea.

I'd like to point out at this point that Donald Trump is NOT reflective of the Republican party. Going after him does not put you on the general-purpose left. It's not just the Washingon Post, here.

EGS Pin Up pictures have been moving in directions I do not find particularly enjoyable.  I know Dan has promised a certain number of these pictures each month depending upon the donations he receives at Patreon.  But I make my donations because I like the stories.
So under the terms of "if you can't say something nice..." I intend to stop commenting on the Pin Up and Sketch Book pictures I do not find appealing or amusing.  Of course I reserve the right to comment on anything sufficiently egregious.
In the meantime, I can only hope that Dan will chose a different reward system in the near future.  Personally, I would like to see more new commentary about old comics.  Looking into the artist's mind while he contemplates his old work is intriguing.

OK, so an idea I just had might still be considered pinup material, it could also be possible sketchbook material along the lines of of the "EGS Soccer team" set.
Since Dan's current patreon funding allows for 2 doubles, would it be possible to get a suggestion of "Sarah and Ashley playing volleyball" as well as "f!Tedd and Heidi playing volleyball" to get 1st and 2nd in the poll with the hopes that Dan would draw them in such a way that you could put the images side by side and have the net in the middle?

That, in itself, is part of the problem, I think.  Why is it a "pinup poll" instead of a "Sketch poll" with pinup options?  I really hope Dan knows some of us would really rather just have regular sketchbooks, instead of all these pinups which, frankly, some of them seem like they'd be better *without* the fanservice element.  Maybe the pinups would win the voting anyway, but I do wish we could have a chance to find out.

The two comics that made me laugh the hardest?
 
From the main story: http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=1737
For Susan's exaggerated angry white eyes and arm-flailing, and Catalina's "I THOUGHT THERE WAS NO COUCH!"
 
And from NP: http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=7
For the gaming market researcher's line in panel three, and the "click" sounds as the focus group guys turn off their, um, joysticks.

My favorite line in the whole series would have to be from http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=282
"I'm too young and too male to be the mother of a seventeen-year-old female me!"

For me the comics where Elliot ask his parents for money for female clothes after being first FV5ed and when he introduces Ellen to them will always have a special place in my heart. 

I have often entertained the fantasy of running for office by shamelessly pandering to the lowest common denominator among the electorate.  Then, upon taking office, launch an aggressive agenda of moderate progressive legislation.
The President Elect executed the first part of that plan flawlessly.

Certain sorts of economical decisions. Here's a couple from Danish health services:
Hospitals need to be very clean. This is expensive. So, ways to save money on hygiene have been implemented. One, by having cleaning done by lowest bidder, which inevitably results in corners being cut. Two, if you pack patients more tightly together, there are fewer rooms to keep clean.
Of course, the implementation of these two 'fixes' results in more frequent contagions and infections that have a much easier time of jumping from patient to patient (who definitionally already have lowered or overworked immune systems), which means recovery times have gone through the roof, more patients die and increasing risk of the appearance of superimmune strains of infection that our antibiotics cannot cope with. The amount of extra money spent or lost because of this exceeds the amount of money 'saved' on hygiene by so many factors that it isn't even funny.
Another good one: the epidemics section on the biggest hospital in Copenhagen. It was once set up to handle up to two hundred patients at a time and keep them all in isolation. This was judged too expensive for something that was essentially 'only a precaution'. It was successively cut to a hundred beds, fifty, twenty-five and then eight. It should be noted that expanding the epidemics section again in case of need will be quite time consuming due to not only the special equipment required but also the training of personnel involved.
Therefore, our biggest hospital is quite well set up to handle epidemics as long as it will only involve very small epidemics. Epidemics are small, right?

Lord of the Rings, to my kids. We just met Gandalf the White. Daughter totally saw that coming. She had story-logic-ed that he wasn't really gone.

Lord of the Rings, to my kids. We just met Gandalf the White. Daughter totally saw that coming. She had story-logic-ed that he wasn't really gone.

I agree - it was more of a tossoff 'Can we behave? I'd like to get something out of this'.
SO, for each character in the quiz we'd need a score for each color (positive for a good match, 0 for whatever, negative for a poor match). In format W,G,R,K,U, only with scores instead of letters and no colors, from -9 to +9... Note, each character should have overall the same ability to pull ahead, but they do not need to have the same totals. Not all characters need to have a knockout YES answer in any given question.
Elliot: 9,0,-7,-9,0
Ellen: 2,2,2,2,-7
Tedd: -2,2,2,0,9
Grace: 7,7,-3,-9,0
Sarah: -3,2,5,3,0
Nanase: 2,2,3,-4,2
Justin: 5,-4,0,-3,6
Susan: 3,-5,-5,-5,9
How does that look? Keep in mind we can add some characters who might fit black a bit better...

This reminds me of someone seriously suggesting that a thousand ancient greek warships could stand up to a PT boat with a 20mm cannon and a lot of ammunition.

I suspect that any dramatic revelation that Trump is a con man will accomplish nothing. Who did not already know this?

I don't care about proof values. If you guys blow up the Pharaoh or light him on fire, you are in trouble.

Because he wants to make magic available for everyone, and if magic can (and will) change it's rules to prevent that, then he can never achieve it.

I try to present information from the public record and analysis as I see it.  If I just threw out boilerplate party rhetoric, first it'd be lazy, second I'd get stomped from 10 different sides, and third, I'd just reinforce stereotypes. 
Ehh...why bother with that?  Much better to actually challenge myself and my opponents with my A-game.
Passing the budget hasn't seemed to be a problem.  Anything else...well...nothing is perfect.

RE budget: There was that one government shutdown but the Republicans who did the shutting-down did not fare well.  (As an aside I think that shutdown was as much an internal squabble between Republican old guard elites and new guard populists as it was between Republicans and Democrats)
I think these might be decent posts to bow out of the topic for a few weeks.  While I love a good discussion, I think I might just be twisting the knife right now.
It really isn't the end of the world, just a peaceful transfer of power.

I do not normally comment in person but once again I feel compelled to make an exception.
Whatever other issues of policy may be at hand, I am greatly concerned by the president-elect's apparent intention to disengage from old alliances across the world. NATO in particular has been of obvious importance to my homeland. Denmark is a small nation with little in the way of military power and is situated in a position of immense strategic importance to Russia. NATO has helped ensure a long peace in Europe, one which has lasted most of my lifetime with few interruptions. On such occasions where other nations have attacked the US, my homeland has every time reciprocated by placing forces, planes and naval vessels at the disposal of the US. Also, it is worth noting that the esteemed JML of this forum has served the US in Europe for a number of years and thus aided in extending this peace, for which I owe him my thanks and gratitude.
No alliance lasts forever, of course. But I must confess to feeling strong pangs at the thought of NATO coming apart, not to mention considerable worry at the thought of what Putin and similar strongmen might do to take advantage of it. That other similar detentes around the globe are also in danger does nothing to reassure me, I fear.

 I like that you presented a well-thought-out and to-the-point argument here, highlighting the specific things that Obama did wrong (the Means) as opposed to criticizing his political goals (the Ends).
Inaction in terms of not making new laws can be good, meaning as you have said the maintenance of the status quo. Inaction on must-pass-or-government-shuts-down major appropriation bills however is bad news. The battles over what should be funded and by how much need to be fought during the budget approval process, not after the budget has been approved and major government services are facing being suspended due to their approved funding having not been appropriated.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/rulings/compromise/
137 Examples of compromise over 7 plages. After a while of doing that and having you never compromise thrown in your face and you are gone just plain stop trying. Hell, even Buddha may be upset if his face is hit three times.