WI immigration

The vast majority of Americans agree that our immigration system is broken. Those attempting to come to the country legally find themselves wrapped in endless paperwork and bureaucracy and, as a result, far too many continue to arrive in the United States unauthorized. Consequently, it is estimated that more than 11 million immigrants are currently living undocumented and without legal status in the United States. Our broken immigration system is unable to efficiently and adequately serve those who seek to play by the rules, and as a result, it indirectly rewards those who break them. It is clear that our current immigration system is not working, and we deserve better. There are deeply held views on all sides of this issue, and rightly so. We are a nation of immigrants and people continue to flock to our country in pursuit of the American Dream. Unfortunately, the current system is failing both hardworking Americans and prospective immigrants – including those who are desperately seeking to be reunited with their families. We can no longer afford to neglect our broken immigration process. The Census Bureau assumes net immigration – meaning legal and illegal – will total 68 million immigrants by 2050. The non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies points out that these future immigrants plus their descendants will add an estimated 96 million residents to the U.S. population, accounting for three-fourths of our population growth from 2010 to 2050. A modernized and fully functioning system will maximize efficiency for all immigrants seeking to come to our country, reward those that have abided by the law and ensure that, in the future, respect for the rule of law yields the best outcome for those seeking to immigrate to America, and seek to resolve the problems that have led to the breakdown of our current immigration system. There is no doubt that an overhaul of our ineffective immigration system is long overdue and the time for a solution is now. In order to resolve the issues of our immigration system, several areas of immigration policy must be addressed. I will continue to work toward finding common sense solutions to repair the process and implementing reforms that will prevent a future breakdown of the system. This requires a multi-faceted approach that addresses stronger security to curb illegal immigration, modernization of our immigration laws, and respect for the rule of law in addressing the complex challenge of the undocumented population. First, I hope that with better border protection, we will be able to stem the flow of illegal immigration and restore the rule of law. We must ensure that our law enforcement officials have access to the resources, including technology and manpower, needed to enforce currently enacted immigration laws and protect our borders to help stop the smuggling of drugs, arms, and humans. Second, we need an employee verification system that allows employers to easily and accurately verify an employee’s legal status in a timely manner. The faulty and cumbersome verification process we currently have continues to provide incentives for the use of fraudulent documents and puts many at risk of identity theft. It is needed to not only to provide employers with a safe haven, but to ensure that illegal immigration does not undermine the status and wages of those workers who come to our country on a valid visa. To do this, an employee’s information must be safe from identity theft. Next, any system must be accurate and secure. A verification tool that is easily fabricated will not provide the assurance required that employers are not unintentionally employing illegal aliens. Lastly, a verification tool must be immediate. It can cause great disruption and difficulties in the employment process if employers and potential employees cannot get the documentation they need from the government. We must ensure that verification occurs immediately, and that employees are able to work and receive their paychecks. In addition to securing our borders and protecting employers and U.S. citizens from identity theft with a reliable employee verification system, I believe that any reforms to immigration policies should include expanding access to visas for seasonal and temporary labor. Wisconsin, for example, relies on seasonal labor for agriculture and other industries, but due to a lack of seasonal H-2B visas, some Wisconsin businesses face annual labor shortfalls. Additionally, I believe a temporary guest worker program is one component of reform that could help us gain greater control of immigration. Providing a way to legally link employers with immigrant workers and building a streamlined, safe, and efficient visa process will provide businesses with needed workers and relieve pressure on the borders. We must also seek to ensure that the most highly qualified foreign graduates of American universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields have adequate opportunity to remain in the United States and enter the workforce here. Many of the world’s best students receive their education in America. We could boost economic growth, create jobs, increase our competitiveness, and spur innovation by making it possible for U.S. employers to more easily hire foreign graduates of American universities in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. This way, these graduates apply their American education here in the United States, rather than take their American education to our foreign competitors. Over the past ten years, growth in STEM jobs was three times the rate as non-STEM jobs, and these occupations are projected to grow more than twice as fast through 2018. American employers have expressed concern regarding the availability of high-skilled STEM workers and have urged reform of the visa system to help them fill these empty positions. Nevertheless, in order to ensure the career prospects of graduating American STEM students are not diminished, any legislation should require employers seeking to sponsor foreign STEM graduates to first complete labor certification. Labor certification protects U.S. workers and the U.S. labor market by ensuring that foreign workers seeking immigrant visa classifications are not displacing equally qualified U.S. workers. We must also streamline the system in a way that allows for efficiency, ensures fairness, and considers family unification, but simultaneously ensures our employers can access the labor and skilled workers needed to run their businesses. Immigration legislation must include a fair and reasonable way to address the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States, of which over seven million are employed, contributing members of our economy. This includes finding a way forward for the “DREAMers” – unauthorized immigrants that came to the United States as children through no fault of their own, grew up in our country, and are now seeking to pursue an advanced degree in America or enlist in our military and become contributing adult members of our society. In addition, the current backlog for family-sponsored visas is so vast that it could take up to 11.5 years for the visa to be processed. The lengthy waiting periods for visa consideration often induce desperate family members to break the law and enter the country illegally in order to be reunified with their family members in the United States. Improving this process, expanding the work-based system, and creating a functional avenue of access will help to stem the flow of illegal immigration moving forward. I will continue to advocate for common sense reforms to our broken system that for far too long has been failing Americans and those seeking to legally immigrate to our country to pursue the American Dream. I have long been supportive of efforts to reform our immigration policies in a comprehensive, responsible, and methodical way, with each step building on the last. Effective immigration reforms must include strong border security provisions, an enforceable guest worker program, a secure employee verification system, and fair and workable provisions to address the unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S., as well as the lengthy backlog of those waiting for their visas to be processed. In the past, I have supported initiatives that would have accomplished these goals, and I will continue to do so as my colleagues and I consider legislation in the 113th Congress.

Wisconsin budget

Southern Wisconsin’s families continue to work hard to make ends meet in an uncertain economy. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin as of February 2013 is high at 7.2 percent, while the national unemployment rate is 7.6 percent. As the economy struggles, much focus has been on increasing taxes to address our deficit and our debt. These tax increases would hit job creators, like those small manufacturers located in industrial parks in our communities, and hard-working families. Our local manufacturers and families are already forced to live under the strains of the current difficult economy. Asking them to pay more will hurt our local communities. What the federal government needs to do is stop spending too much. It simply can no longer afford to spend money that it doesn’t have and take out more loans to pay for that spending. Preventing tax increases on 98 percent of taxpayers On January 2, 2013, taxpayers faced tax increases and automatic across-the-board spending cuts that were schedule to take effect as a result of last summer’s debate about raising our nation’s debt ceiling. These spending cuts, known as sequestration, would have resulted in a 10 percent reduction in Department of Defense programs and an 8 percent reduction in certain domestic federal government programs. These tax increases and automatic cuts in federal spending were referred to as the “fiscal cliff.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, going over the fiscal cliff would have substantially reduced the deficit; however, this restrain would have also reduced our nation's economic growth from 4.4 percent to negative 0.5 percent in 2013, putting us at risk of another recession. Fortunately, there was bipartisan consensus that action needed to be taken. Recognizing the importance of acting to prevent the expiration of current tax rates, the House passed H.R. 8, the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, by a bipartisan vote of 257 to 167—with my support—on January 1, 2013. H.R. 8 prevented a tax rate increase on 98 percent of taxpayers and made these lower tax rates permanent so they would not expire again. H.R. 8 also makes permanent 97 percent of the tax relief provisions for small businesses enacted in 2001 and 2003. Without Congressional action to address this issue, the American people would have been hit with a $4.4 trillion tax increase; instead revenues will increase by $600 billion. In the end, the choice presented to Member of Congress was to either raise taxes by $4.4 trillion or by $600 billion—I voted for the latter. This bill also delays the Fiscal Year 2013 sequestration for two months, giving Congress the opportunity to focus the nation’s attention on the fact that we are spending more money than we have. While not perfect, I supported H.R. 8 because this legislation prevents tax increases on 98 percent of taxpayers, or 114 million households, and delays the automatic across-the-board cuts to our armed forces and key priorities. The House had already passed legislation to prevent tax increases for every American family, and it is unfortunate that President Obama insisted on taking more from hardworking taxpayers. In addition, the House also passed legislation to replace the sequester with reasonable spending reductions, such as stopping fraud by eliminating government slush funds, putting an end to bailouts, and reducing waste and duplicative programs. Regrettably, the Senate failed to take action on this alternative to sequestration. Despite my concerns with other provisions in the bill, I commend my colleagues for limiting the damage as much as possible. At a time when families and small businesses are facing high gas prices and overall increases in the cost of living, the last thing taxpayers need right now or in the future is a tax increase. Now, we must return our attention to the real problem: Washington’s out-of-control spending. This reckless spending drives the debt. And this debt is hurting the economy today. Unless the President gets serious about tackling spending, Americans will face a debt crisis—one that will threaten our most vulnerable in particular. I am hopeful the President will come around and agree to meaningful spending cuts and reforms which are critical if we are going to avert the debt crisis and get the economy growing. I have introduced several budgets that would get government spending under control and will continue putting forth my detailed solution in the upcoming budget this year. The Debt Ceiling and Sequestration On December 26, 2012, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to congressional leaders warning that the national debt would reach its limit of $16.394 trillion on December 31, 2012. Accordingly, the federal debt did reach this limit on December 31, and the Treasury has since implemented “extraordinary measures” to meet federal payments for the immediate future. On January 14, 2013, Secretary Geithner sent an additional letter to House Speaker John Boehner, stating that the Treasury currently expects these extraordinary measures to exhaust as soon as mid-February, and urging further action from Congress and the President to ensure that the U.S. does not default on its financial obligations. Our debt is the product of massive spending increases that occurred under many Presidents and many Congresses over many years, but that does not mean we should or can continue on this unsustainable course. To tackle these fiscal challenges, we need real leadership, meaning a commitment to pay off the debt and balance the budget, and real solutions, rather than empty promises and speeches. The most important issue in this debate is not whether we should raise the debt limit, but instead how we can address our out of control government spending and start reducing our annual deficits and overall national debt. In the coming months, Congress will debate the best ways to address the debt ceiling and avoid across-the-board sequester cuts, which will now go into effect on March 1, 2013, unless action is taken to replace them. In this debate, we must return our attention to the real problem: out-of-control spending. Washington’s reckless spending drives the debt and this debt is hurting the economy today. We’ll never get our debt under control unless we tackle its main drivers: spending money we don’t have. Unless we get at the heart of the problem, Americans will face a debt crisis – one that will threaten our most vulnerable in particular – and it is our responsibility to prevent such a crisis. I remain hopeful that leaders can rise to meet our generation's greatest challenge with specific solutions and responsible budgets. I will keep advancing solutions that deal directly with the drivers of the debt, help get our economy back on track, and ensure future generations a shot at the American Dream. The President’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 At a time when strong leadership is needed in the White House, last year, President Obama proposed budget that, in the words of The Washington Post, "falls short." Failing to heed the warnings of economists and the concerns of our fellow Americans, the President's budget accelerates our country down the path to bankruptcy. The House voted on President Obama's budget proposal for FY2013, and unanimously rejected it by a vote of 0 – 414, a clear indication that Republicans and Democrats alike did not believe the President put forth a credible plan to address America's challenges. No Budget, No Pay Act of 2013 Looking ahead to the President’s budget proposal for FY 2014, on January 14, 2013, the White House announced that it will not meet the statutory deadline of submitting its budget proposal to Congress by February 4. The President has only met this deadline once since taking office. This, combined with the Senate’s refusal to comply with the statutory requirement to pass a budget for nearly 4 years, is a true failure of leadership. To bring these failures to an end, the House passed H.R. 325, the No Budget, No Pay Act of 2013 by a vote of 285 to 144. This legislation allows the Treasury to borrow to only pay its bills coming due until May 18, 2013. At the end of that period of time, the debt limit would be increased by the amount that was borrowed to pay the government’s bills until May 18, 2013. It also requires both houses of Congress to pass a budget as stipulated by federal law. Under this bill, if either the House or Senate fail to pass a budget, its members’ pay will be withheld. H.R. 325 is currently pending in the Senate. I voted in favor of this bill because every family sets a budget to pay its bills. Congress should do the same. The House will comply with the budget law and we will not consider another debt-ceiling increase unless the Senate passes a budget. The House will not just keep raising the debt ceiling either. We need to take this opportunity to make a down payment on our debt reduction and point our country in the right direction. Path to Prosperity House Republicans have pledged to lead where the President has failed. The budget advanced by the House of Representatives on March 29, 2012 helps spur job creation today, stops spending money the government does not have, and lifts the crushing burden of debt. The Path to Prosperity cuts more than $5 trillion in spending from the President's budget over the next 10 years, putting the budget on the path to balance and the economy on the path to prosperity. Specifically, the budget: Restores Economic Freedom – The Path to Prosperity fosters a better environment for private-sector job creation by lifting the debt-fueled uncertainty and advancing pro-growth tax reforms. Changes Washington’s Culture of Spending – The budget stops Washington from spending money it does not have on government programs that do not work. It locks in spending cuts with enforceable spending controls. Strengthens Health and Retirement Security – The budget puts an end to empty promises from Washington, offering instead real security through real reforms. The framework established in this budget ensures no disruptions to existing health and retirement benefit programs for those beneficiaries who have organized their retirements around them, while at the same time building stronger programs that future beneficiaries can count on when they retire. Provides for the Common Defense – With American men and women in uniform currently engaged with a fierce enemy and dealing with emerging threats around the world, this budget takes several steps to ensure that national security remains the Federal government’s top priority, including the rejection of proposals to make thoughtless, across-the-board cuts in funding for national defense. Lifts the Crushing Burden of Debt – The budget tackles the existential threat posed by rapidly growing government and debt, applying the nation’s timeless principles to this generation’s greatest challenge. It ensures that the next generation inherits a stronger, more prosperous America. It is unconscionable to leave the next generation with a crushing burden of debt and a nation in decline. The choice of two futures presented in the House-passed FY2013 budget is premised on the wisdom of the American people to build a prosperous future for themselves and for future Americans to come. Today, America is struggling — these are tough times and people are rightfully anxious about the future. But as the challenge grows, so does the opportunity to restore America's promise and prosperity. This budget recommits the federal government to the security of every American citizen's natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, while fostering an environment for economic growth and private-sector job creation. This year, I will put forward a budget that meets the statutory deadlines and carries out these priorities.

Song of Ice and fire book review

Tags: George R R Martin To say I’ve arrived late to the George R R Martin party would be an understatement. At their height, I think it’s fair to say these books were as popular as it’s possible to be without crossing out of the genre audience like Harry Potter or (eventually) Ender’s Game did. Fourteen years after the first book, A Game of Thrones, and almost five years since the most recent volume A Feast for Crows was published these are still very popular books. This is really a two-for-one epic, in that by reading it you experience not only the epic storyline, but also participate (albeit as a bit player) in Martin’s epic struggle to actually complete the series. The series is well over a million words in length already, but even more words have been written about it online, so I will dispense with both the plot summary and the recap of Martin’s authorial adventure and instead relate my experience coming to these books in 2010.
I’ll begin by answering the most obvious question: given that I obviously read a fair amount of fantasy, why haven’t I read these before? Some people who had read a lot of my reviews will know that I almost always wait until series are finished before starting them. Although this was prompted in part by lapsed series that never paid off (Chtorr for example), the main concern was time. Whenever a series tells a continuous story, I don’t feel like I’m getting the full effect of the later books unless the preceding stories are fresh on my mind. This led to me reading the first book in a series, then the first book again before the second, then the first two before the third, and so forth. For trilogies this was barely acceptable but as I only have a limited time for reading it becomes quite inefficient for longer series. So I swore off incomplete series right about the time that A Game of Thrones was soaring in popularity.
But I’m sure this only raises a further question: why read them now? There are again a couple reasons. The first came when HBO greenlit a TV adaptation of A Game of Thrones. I’m one of those people who goes out of their way to read a novel before its screen adaptation, and I was definitely interested in the HBO series, which struck me as at last the appropriate way to adapt a complicated novel: spending a whole season on it instead of cramming into a movie or even miniseries. Then there was the increasing chance that the series would never in any case be finished. It has grown in projected books faster than Martin has written them, and cruelly Martin himself ages at the same rate as the rest of us regardless of how quickly the series moves forward. Who knows whether he will live to finish it? Even if he does, while I’m considerably younger than Martin, nothing is certain in life and I might not make it that long either. Tolkien founded the modern fantasy genre with a trilogy he said was about death, so I guess it’s only fitting that series like this one and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time have themselves unwittingly become grim memento mori for authors and fans alike.
But the final straw was the feeling that I had already read A Song of Ice and Fire by reading other books. Just as Tolkien spawned countless imitators, Martin is widely credited with sparking a flood of hard-edged, cynical fantasy, and I’ve read my fair share of it. For instance, Wikipedia cites no less than four prominent authors as being heavily influenced and although I wouldn’t call myself extremely well-read I’ve already read all four (Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Steven Erikson, and R Scott Bakker). I’ve also read Glen Cook, whose Black Company books are thought to have influenced Martin, and indeed this influence was probably the reason Cook has remained prominent enough for me to seek out his work. I even make comparisons to Martin’s work when reviewing fantasy on this site. Well, not his work itself, but to perceptions of it at least. This is starting to get ridiculous, I told myself. My first real contact with epic fantasy was reading Lord of the Rings, after all. Wasn’t I grateful that I hadn’t first waded through imitators like David Eddings, Robert Jordan, and Tad Williams that, whatever their actual quality, fall short of Tolkien’s masterpiece?
So I started reading A Game of Thrones for the first time in the position of someone who had never read the series before but thought he had a pretty good idea what it was like. I knew nothing about the plot or characters for I had avoided all such details knowing I would eventually read the books, but from countless asides in conversations with friends and reviews of other books, I primarily associated two attributes with Martin’s work: First, an unromantic approach to fantasy that emphasized intrigue and realism over magic and elevated prose. Second, the implacable and ruthless slaughter of major characters. Beyond that, while I’d heard some criticisms of Martin’s prose and the decision to split the fourth book into A Feast for Crows and an as-yet unpublished fifth book, the overall extremely positive reception of the series made me expect an exciting, even addicting, set of books.
Having now finished the extant series, I can say that despite this apparently detailed foreknowledge, the series Martin wrote was quite a bit different than the one I had expected to read.
Let’s start with the gritty realism. It’s not Martin’s fault, but here my exposure to later writers has probably completely changed my reaction from what it would have been had I read the series as it came out. Plenty of authors have tried to imitate Tolkien’s archaic yet evocative style, yet no one has come close to equaling it. It was reasonable for me to suppose that Martin’s realistic style would work the same way. Reasonable, but wrong, and obviously so in hindsight. Tolkien’s work hasn’t been matched because he was uniquely suited both in temperament and profession to write the way he did. Throwing out the excesses of epic fantasy in favor of gritty realism is not nearly so challenging. In fact, it’s easier than trying to stay the course. It’s no surprise then that Martin’s work was not the apogee of this trend but just another stop along the way. Compared to Joe Abercrombie, just to pick one name out of probably a dozen, Martin seems like a hopeless romantic. It’s interesting that these days the people impressed with Martin’s grit and realism are the people writing about the HBO series (“It’s like the Sopranos in Middle-earth”), since when it comes to epic fantasy in television and movies Lord of the Rings is still very recent and the natural benchmark.
Then there’s the character slaughter. For me, the textbook case of this is in the film Serenity. Before that film I have to admit I thought of killing characters as cool and subversive, but afterward I started thinking about how a work of fiction has an unwritten contract with the audience. In some modes, I decided, killing a character might be an effective move while in others it is a betrayal of audience expectations. The fact is, A Song of Ice and Fire does indeed kill off characters, a great deal of them. But contrary to my expectations, I argue that it does not, in fact, kill off major characters. Rather, the reader is understandably mistaken about who is a major character and who is not, for reasons I will get into at length in a moment. So while it’s true there’s a lot more death in Martin’s series than in most fantasy (including many, like Tolkien’s, where theoretically lots of blood is shed yet almost no named characters die), it didn’t nearly live up to its reputation in this respect either, although that’s nothing to be ashamed of.
This leaves the most important issue. Is this the masterpiece of modern fantasy literature that it’s made out to be? No, not even close. I’m genuinely disappointed about this. Like anyone, I sometimes start reading a book or watching a film with some bias one direction or another (for instance, all the hype made me go into The Matrix looking for a fight, so while I didn’t think it was very good, a lot of that reaction is probably my fault), but in this case I was definitely hoping to love these books. For years I’ve checked up on Martin’s progress hoping he’d hurry up and finish so I could find out what the fuss was about. I thought there was a great chance I’d love it, along with certainly some fairly small chance that I’d hate it, or at least strongly dislike it.
I never expected to end up saying: Well, I guess it’s not bad. It’s okay.
The highlight is probably the worldbuilding. Tolkien and his imitators have emphasized the landscapes of their fantasy worlds. Even the Thomas Convenant series, which seemed at first glance like a rejection of everything Tolkien brought to the genre, spent a lot of its time (and won a lot of its fans, I suspect) on landscapes. Although there are some maps to be found of Westeros and its surrounding countries, Martin’s efforts in geographical construction and detail are merely adequate. Instead, more than any author I can recall, he has constructed a social landscape. Looking now at a map of Westeros, the names of cities, rivers, and castles bring to mind the characters who live in or near them. I can’t really tell you anything about what Casterly Rock looks like, for example, but just mentioning it evokes the wealth of detail that Martin has invested in the Lannister family and the twists and turns of their fortunes. The Lannisters are perhaps the series’ most prominent family, but by the end of the fourth book well over a dozen noble families have been sketched out in impressive detail. The variety in personality, character, and history is impressive and gives Martin’s Westeros a different and possibly greater sense of solidity than the traditional naturalistic approach.
The other aspects of the world are considerably weaker. The society seems reasonable enough, but various references to the ancient past ask us to believe that technology levels have been roughly unchanged for thousands of years, and further that not just one but almost every society is historically self-aware of their progression throughout this time. Each of the four seasons lasts for years, but after the first book it is hardly mentioned and I frankly almost forgot about it. Agriculture and economic planning don’t seem to be any different from generic feudal despite this massive climatological difference.
Although initially confined to a few children, the series rapidly expands to encompass a large set of viewpoint characters, and this works better than in most pluralistic narratives, probably because Martin is more willing to kill off minor characters and thus prevent his cast from becoming too unwieldy at least until the fourth book. After a seemingly good guy/bad guy approach, Martin shades in a surprising degree of nuance as the series progresses. That Tyrion would be a fan favorite character was obvious from the start, but I was particularly impressed by the handling of Jaime Lannister. Not every character is a success, to be sure (if I never read anything more from Cersei’s viewpoint I won’t complain) but I don’t have many complaints with the characterization. Except for the youngest, the Stark children all act about five years older than they actually are, but that’s par for the course (I’m looking at you, Ender’s Game).
Then there’s the plot. Ah, the plot. Goodness. Where to begin?
I think most of the series’ fans would point at the plot as being its strength. I can see why they might like it, but I’m going to call it a disaster. Oh, it’s not an unmitigated failure, but a tragic one, for there’s a good story somewhere in all this quicksand trying to claw its way out. It pulls the reader in, keeps them going through the four massive books that have been published so far, and amounts to nothing. To understand this, think about just what it is this series is about.
You see, in the prologue of A Game of Thrones, some throwaway characters venture past a great wall to patrol the wilderness of the far north. For millennia, we learn, the Night’s Watch has manned this wall against evil, but for long centuries this threat has been dormant, the people shielded by the wall have become decadent, and the Watch is now too weak to reliably stand against bandits, much less a terrifying supernatural evil. But now there are signs that evil might be stirring! Kill the throwaways and bam, cut to chapter one. I think it’s safe to call this an extremely conventional way to begin a fantasy novel. The ur-epic fantasy, Lord of the Rings begins with the shadow of the past stirring once more, and its Mordor was once carefully guarded before its watchers became lax. Since then thousands of fantasy books have begun this way, and I have read dozens of them, as have most of Martin’s audience. But I don’t think any of those books took Martin’s approach to developing this story in the rest of the first book: never mention it again in any way.
All right, that’s a slight exaggeration, but not by much. He spends more time on Daenerys, a young princess in exile who must overcome all manner of obstacles both internal and external before she can start walking down the road toward reclaiming her throne, but this well-worn storyline is also strictly a sideline item. The second book, A Clash of Kings, even spends a little time on a King who is increasingly led down dark paths by a foreign sorceress, but this too gets only a little space in the ongoing story. Any one of these stories, properly developed, would be enough for a fantasy novel and probably an entire trilogy. Incorporating them all would definitely make for a lively fantasy series. Mind you, anyone who has read a reasonable amount of fantasy can sketch out roughly how these stories will evolve. For example, although a few people sound the alarm most deny the existence of the ancient evil despite increasingly clear evidence, then it sweeps down and everyone is very sorry they didn’t listen earlier, and it seems like it is too late and all civilization will perish, but just at the bleakest moment some enterprising individuals manage to win an unlikely victory. Despite his reputation as an innovator, Martin doesn’t appear to be deviating from the standard storyline here. Yet by the end of the fourth book, after 1.3 million words and nine years, the ancient evil has only just begun to sweep anywhere, and the other plotlines are even further behind. And no wonder: I don’t know how much of all those words went into developing them but I think fifteen percent would be a very generous guess.
Instead, most of the series has been devoted to the titular game of thrones as countless nobles struggle for power in Westeros. Unlike the plotlines I just described, this main thread does not follow normal conventions. It is almost completely without structure. Events happen one after another without any kind of cohesion. It’s not that they don’t make sense…everything seems fairly logical and Martin proves to be a very inventive spinner of intrigue and conspiracy. Yet this all proceeds outside of the narrative structure that has characterized western literature for centuries. There is no development, there is no sense of progression of any kind, there is no climax. It’s the plot equivalent of someone banging an endless series of chords, each unrelated to the next, on a piano. Now I readily admit to being far more interested in the way stories are constructed than the average reader, but I think this has many important downsides even for those who aren’t consciously aware of the dissonance.
What was immediately noticeable to readers of the first book in 1996 was the way they had no idea what was coming next. Why should they? Long experience has taught us how plots work in almost all fiction, but here was a book that was resolute in ignoring these conventions. To be sure, the immediate result is a fairly refreshing feeling of suspense. But these narrative conventions exist for a reason. Although A Feast for Crows has other shortcomings, I think one of the biggest reasons it wasn’t as well received as the first three books was that without a sense of where the narrative is going, the reader doesn’t feel any momentum. Since there’s no plotline developing and advancing towards a climax, the reader realizes there’s no reason why the intrigue surrounding the throne of Westeros can’t go on indefinitely. And if the plot goes on indefinitely, then the individual events are completely deprived of meaning. In particular, one realizes that the characters can’t win any victory that won’t just be undone by further events two hundred pages later, so why bother rooting for them at all? When all is said and done, whoever is left standing in the ruins of Westeros will be swept aside by Daenerys and Jon Snow as they confront the evil out of the north, so isn’t this something of a waste of time?
Incidentally, I believe this was also how Martin got the reputation as a killer of main characters. Floating in a vacuum of story, readers latched on to what they assumed were main characters only to have them unexpectedly swept aside. Initially, Eddard Stark and his son Robb seemed like central characters, yet with the benefit of hindsight even from a position only halfway through the series, it’s obvious they are bit players. In a typically sized fantasy novel, they’d have a page or two of screen time. In fact, the actual main characters of the story, like Daenerys, are just as bulletproof as any normal story’s protagonists.
The unpredictable and unstructured nature of the central plotline has a literal realism to it and I’m tempted to see it as a bold artistic statement on Martin’s part, but alas all the evidence points to this being an unintended effect. This was originally supposed to be a trilogy, after all, but has defied every prediction its own author made regarding its eventual length and publication schedule. Martin surely was writing a conventional fantasy novel about an ancient evil and an exiled princess but somehow got distracted by what probably was summed up in some original one page outline in about one sentence (“Westeros monarchy weakened by infighting and succession problems”). Having fallen in love with what was supposed to be a bit of window dressing, he has continually expanded its role within the series even though it threatens to completely drown out what the series was supposed to be about in the first place. Is it any wonder that he has suffered from the contemporary genre’s most famous case of writer’s block? I’m sure that long ago he planned what would happen to Daenerys and the Night’s Watch, but now he feels obligated to give equal time to characters like Brienne who are likable yet serve little purpose to the central narrative and are instead dragged through increasingly arbitrary make-work scenes to keep them available for some later bit of relevance.
Although I’ve been critical, I will defend Martin of one charge frequently lobbed at fantasy authors. I don’t think he’s stretching things out to make more money. The typical pattern for fantasy series is to start out with an exciting and action packed first book and then to become ever more bogged down in extra viewpoint characters and minutiae. Although it’s true A Feast for Crows is somewhat bogged down like this, really Martin deeply invests himself in the minutiae right from the start, and even the fourth book moves at a faster clip than typical doorstop fantasy. Likewise, where typical slow fantasy seems to get stuck always approaching but never reaching some critical point, Martin blasts through critical points all the time. The central plotline is a meat grinder that constantly chews up minor characters, spits them out, then pulls in more. If there’s a record for the fictional work that kills the most named characters then this series is right up there with the Iliad.
I’m glad I read A Song of Ice and Fire but less because of the story itself and more because I find it interesting how unbalanced the story is. On one hand, it’s probably a testament to how a work that does one or two things really well can become extremely popular even if it does other things very poorly. Writing about Wheel of Time, Adam Roberts attributed some of its popularity to “fans who want to know every atom of the imagined world” and I think something similar is at work here. On the other hand, I think that the series’ weaknesses get magnified as the story goes on even if the quality of the books remains constant, leading me to suspect the series will never be again be as popular as it was when A Storm of Swords came out. Unfortunately for Martin, I think the series will only get harder and harder for him to write as he tries to provide some sort of climax and closure that justifies the endless profusion of aimless detail he’s provided so far. I’m even a lot more skeptical that HBO can successfully translate it into an effective television show, although being forced to provide an abridged version might end up being beneficial.
Hopefully I’m wrong and Martin eventually manages to both finish the series and somehow produce a satisfying second half in the process, but I won’t be holding my breath. Fortunately, looking back at the writers bearing Martin’s influence who I mentioned before, it seems like they have each taken something good about the series, amplified it, and then coupled that with a more conventional narrative structure (“conventional narrative” sure sounds like an insult, but that’s why reading Martin has been so helpful…breaking convention is a risky thing). Even if I never read any more of this series (the most likely possibility I’m afraid) I will at least be able to read other books that continue down the trail Martin blazed.

Top animated series

1					Futurama				8.7		1999
2					The Simpsons				8.7		1989
3					South Park				8.9		1997
4					Family Guy				8.4		1999
5					Batman				8.9		1992
6					Tom and Jerry				8.7		1940
7					Archer				8.8		2009
8					X-Men				8.5		1992
9					Rocko's Modern Life				8		1993
10					Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron				8.4		1993
11					Courage the Cowardly Dog				8.3		1999
12					Superman				8.1		1996
13					Beast Wars: Transformers				8		1996
14					Jonny Quest				7.9		1964
15					Spider-Man				8.1		1994
16					Scooby Doo, Where Are You!				7.8		1969
17					The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest				7.7		1996
18					Batman Beyond				7.9		1999
19					The Ren & Stimpy Show				7.5		1991
20					DuckTales				8.1		1987
21					The Transformers				7.9		1984
22					Dexter's Laboratory				7.9		1996
23					Pinky and the Brain				8		1995
24					Darkwing Duck				7.7		1991
25					Thundercats				7.9		1985
26					The Bugs Bunny Show				8.7		1960
27					The Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour				8.5		1985
28					The Flintstones				7.5		1960
29					Space Ghost Coast to Coast				7.9		1994
30					Space Ghost				7.5		1966

P versus NP Problem solved with Ricci Flow

The P vs. NP Problem can be solved with the Ricci Flow.  In fact Ricci Flow is very useful here. LOL




https://web.math.princeton.edu/~rbamler/Ricci-flow-with-surgery.pdf