Slashdot Mirror

It's definitely amusing. The ticket for "change" is the ticket with two current US Senators. No governors, no mayors, not even congressmen, but the ivory tower of the Senate.

Current polls show the Democrat congress' approval rating hanging around 22%. That's right, lower than the President's meager approval of 28-30%. The Obama campaign may want to check its confidence of victory at the door. Picking Biden from the 22% barrel may not be the wisest decision.

It's definitely amusing. The ticket for "change" is the ticket with two current US Senators. No governors, no mayors, not even congressmen, but the ivory tower of the Senate.

Current polls show the Democrat congress' approval rating hanging around 22%. That's right, lower than the President's meager approval of 28-30%. The Obama campaign may want to check its confidence of victory at the door. Picking Biden from the 22% barrel may not be the wisest decision.

This site does summaries of public opinion polls -- though I don't know if they have internal biases.

From the most recent poll on their abortion page, only 10% of people believe it should be illegal in all circumstances, and the rest believe it should be available under certain restraints.

From their guns page (Quinnipac poll): 54% support increased controls on guns -- though the overwhelming majority oppose gun control at the constitutional amendment level

The death penalty thing I screwed up on -- most people support it but there are problems depending on how you word the question.

Of course, the big issue with ALL polls is how you ask the question -- you can get almost any result you want with the right wording...

"A couple years back"? His ratings have been in the low thirties for years.

Kennedy wasn't a great president. His administration supported MLK only when it was forced to by public opinion. He continued the idiotic tradition of using the CIA to subvert foreign government, though he may have changed his mind on that after the Bay of Pigs. And thankfully, he was intelligent enough to empathize with the Russian position on missile placement. If Reagan or Bush had been in the White House at that point, their idiotic cowboy attitude could very well have destroyed the planet.

Either way, his foreign policy is not that different from the PNAC cabal. When it suits the US for political or financial gain, send in the troops, but back in those days it barely required a pretext. But when it came down to it, he left every option on the table, including the most effective one: diplomacy.

I guess you could say that the embargo started out as a Democratic conspiracy, and when Republicans started following the same foreign policy for their own reasons, it continued. America could learn quite a few things from Cuba, not only in regards to their health care system, but also in the ways that they survived peak oil after the collapse of the Soviet Union - the first industrial society to do so, as far as I know.

As recent polls show, a majority of Americans hate Fidel even though they believe Cuba will remain the same without him, the result of decades of character assassination trying to undermine his government. They also favor restoration of diplomatic relations, which means very little to the politicians still in charge. Cuba represents independence from American influence to the whole of Latin America, and it's only 90 miles from Key West. Punishing their society for refusing to let our corporations into their market is far more important than anything else, especially the freedom and prosperity of the average Cuban citizen.

I'm totally done with the Democrats now.

I used to vote for democrats exclusively

No, I have never voted for a Republican -- and I doubt I ever will

So going back to my original statement that there is a chunk of the electorate that automatically votes Democrat (you used to be one of them), there is a chunk that automatically votes Republican, and there is a chunk that bases their votes on the issues (which you now seem to be a member of, though taking both Democrats and Republicans "off the table" suggests otherwise). That last chunk is the only group in play in the general election. Clearly during the primaries, the other two groups demand the most attention. Of course complicating things during the primaries is that middle group again, who can often instigate mischief (that is usually my approach since often there is one candidate in the "other" party that terrifies me more so than there is a candidate in the party that I plan to vote for excites me).

As to figuring out what the "50th percentile positions" would be, that's pretty easy. Just listen to what both the candidates are saying now -- their polling has told them what that position is. Stay in Iraq until the country is stable (Obama is tacking to this position as I write this), ban so-called partial birth (aka late term) abortions (Obama is also tacking "to the middle" on this one http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/07/obama_backs_late_abortions_on.html, do not privatize social security (McCain is moving to the center, coming out against it now), ending the off-shore drilling ban (McCain has boldly jumped to this position after being staunchly opposed http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/16/AR2008061602731.html). I didn't look up what they are saying about the mortgage crisis, the so-called Bush tax cuts or Global Warming, but rest assured, whatever they are saying is what the polls say most people *in the middle group* believe (today). And remember, that distinction (in the middle group) is crucial because, as I've said multiple times, the other two groups are basically "in the bag".

By the way, I stumbled across a really good site when looking for links for this post: http://www.pollingreport.com/index.html

Republicans get voted in, usually, on Conservative principles and then betray those principles once they hit DC. Conservatives aren't forgiving of their representatives that do this. In the 2006 election, they let their representatives lose.

Oh, give it a rest. When Bush strode into office and was flying high, he was the second coming of Reagan. When his Norquistian policies bore bitter fruit, suddenly No True Conservative could be so unpopular.

In reality, that mandate to end the war was not the case. Congress could have cut funding to the war, and if the mandate were true, would have suffered little backlash from it.

They could have cut funding. They would have enjoyed popular support for doing so. Reasons why they didn't range from (at the cynical end of things) that Democrats are just as bloodthirsty a party of warmongers seeking global dominion as Republicans, or (at the less cynical end) Democrats are so inexplicably scared out of their wits whenever a Republican threatens to call them unpatriotic that they can't help but give the opposing party everything they asked for and more, or maybe they're just as out of touch with the people of this country as you are. (See following paragraph.)

Most people support the war

"Do you favor or oppose the U.S. war in Iraq?" As of about two weeks ago, the war's approval rating is only slightly north of the President's, and is hovering around the proportion of Americans who think that Saddam Hussein personally plotted the 9/11 attacks.

The war is not popular, and has not been for some time now. I can't imagine how you got the idea that the majority of Americans think the war was a good idea.

(Oh, and the war certainly was the defining issue of the 2006 elections.)

Yes, this works okay presently, but long-term outlook isn't so good. Bush is now beating Nixon for worst approval ratings during his term. A recent LATimes/Bloomberg poll put him at 23%, which edges out Nixon's worst at 24%. Will the publics dislike of Bush transfer to other Republicans? We'll find out this November.

Just figured I'd add a little facts to the discussion:
http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm#Evolution

"the republican party is headed for serious trouble if they don't win the next presidential election, which there is every indication that they will not?"

Oh you must be referring to Bush's 28% approval rating. Of course, Congress' approval rating is even lower at 16%. Which party runs Congress now?

Maybe you're referring to Obama's overwhelming popularity. Of course, he just lost 8 of the last 15 primary states, including the big ones of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Or maybe you're referring to Independent voters supporting Obama. Of course, those numbers have dropped the past two months to be even with McCain.

I know what you must mean, the racial unity of everyone voting for him. Of course, 90+% of blacks voted for Obama, and more whites voted for Clinton. It's shocking to see the same racial divide among democrats that democrats accuse republicans of having. Maybe they'll stop taking the black vote for granted now. Probably not.

Every indication? Take a second look beyond the media headlines.

"What should the United States do in Iraq: withdraw all troops as soon as possible, or, set a timetable to withdraw troops gradually, or, keep troops in Iraq as long as needed?"

Withdraw all troops 22%
Set a timetable 48
Keep troops as needed 28
DK/NA 3

Only 28% are in favor of keeping troops there as long as needed. Clearly your assumption that people saying they wanted to withdraw some troops, also wanted to keep the rest there as long as needed, was wrong. Also in this summary of surveys, when asked the even more simple question of whether they approved of the war, 67% flat out said no. And that's in a survey that contains your exact question (with the same percentages, but attributed to CNN, are you sure you aren't mixing up your surveys?).

The majority of Americans want to end the war. Not by waiting until we "win", but by ceasing this endeavor that a majority of Americans think was a bad idea in the first place. From the same link "Looking back, do you think the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, or should the U.S. have stayed out?", 37% yes 57% no. "In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?", 63% yes, 36% no.

I'll probably get modded down for speaking an inconvenient truth to the uninformed anti-war crowd here at slashdot. But hey, silencing me doesn't change the facts on the ground that the "surge" appears to have achieved its goals at this time.

If you're modded down, it certainly won't be because you are informed and speaking the truth. Nobody who is informed would claim that a majority of Americans want to continue the war until it is "won". Hell, more than half of Americans don't even think victory is even possible ("Do you think the U.S. goal of achieving victory in Iraq is still possible, or not?", 53% no, 40% yes).

The only goal the surge has achieved is a temporary lull in violence, mostly isolated to Baghdad, that is not sustainable. The major goals of the surge, which was to create an environment in which resolution of Iraqs many political problems could be achieved, failed miserably. As was amply demonstrated just over a month ago, the main reason violence dropped was because al Sadr voluntarily told his militia to stand down, and our deals made with Sunni militias to get them on our side fighting al Qaeda*. When the government decided it wanted to kick Sadr out, well the violence flared right up again and all those extra troops were for naught and it took a deal brokered by Iran to stop the fighting.

Anyone who knows anything about counter-insurgency would have expected the surge to "work" by decreas

Time to put the kool-aid down. The Democrats in congress have a lower approval rating than president Bush. That statement alone speaks volumes. How bad do you have to be to be WORSE then Bush? Keep 'U-Rah, Rah'-ing for the Democrats. Apparently you don't think Bush has destroyed the country enough.

Suffice it to say, you should stop playing sports with politics and start caring about actual issues and not your favorite team.

Time to put the kool-aid down. The Democrats in congress have a lower approval rating than president Bush. That statement alone speaks volumes. How bad do you have to be to be WORSE then Bush? Keep 'U-Rah, Rah'-ing for the Democrats. Apparently you don't think Bush has destroyed the country enough.

Suffice it to say, you should stop playing sports with politics and start caring about actual issues and not your favorite team.

People have been executed, and then it was found that others had committed the murders.

Here's a poll that has some interesting stats.

More than 2/3 of those who answered said they believed in the death penalty. At the same time, 95% believe that, at least sometimes, an innocent person is convicted of murder. Most believe that people who are innocent have been executed within the last 5 years of the survey (2006).

Just do a search on how many people have had their convictions reversed because of DNA evidence decades later ... statistically, it's a certainty that at least some of those who received the death penalty would have been similarly exonerated. Here's a list of wrongful convictions in Canada. Here's 200 people who have been wrongfully convicted in California in the last 20 years - some of them sentenced to death.

Even judges agree that innocents have been executed

"In the past decade, substantial evidence has emerged to demonstrate that innocent individuals are sentenced to death, and undoubtedly executed, much more often than previously understood," the judge, Mark L. Wolf of Federal District Court in Boston, wrote in a decision allowing a capital case to proceed to trial.

The judge isn't denying it happens - he's saying it probably happens more often than we think. That's pretty damning.

So, if it is murder to kill someone who is innocent, the executioner is a murderer, to use the judge's words, "more often than previously understood."

They won't listen. Remember that these are the hardcore 30% that keep approving of Bush's job. Even though he and his administration have been lying and distorting the truth for some time now. They won't read the links that show his illegal activities such as unprecedented overturning of the EPA.

These same people would vote for Bush again. With all the evidence out there, it makes you wonder, doesn't it?

It isn't just that evolution is more logical than Creation, it's that it's backed up by empirical evidence, produces testable predictions, and *gasp* is actual science. I don't know what your definition of creation is, but it's generally accepted to mean that God created man, as opposed to man having evolved. If you think nothing that has been empirically proven is in dispute by creationists, you really need to get out more. A majority of the US population doesn't believe in evolution. 53% of the US population thinks the world is less than 6000 years old. I wouldn't call that a "dispute over small portions". Either you're completely ignorant about what this whole debate has been about or you're just being willfully dishonest.

Are you even aware of the history of the debate? Scopes trial, etc.? If you think that it's science that has been trying to infringe on religion and not the other way around, again you're either completely ignorant or willfully dishonest. It's far from just some fringe minority that is fighting against the science education of their children. If you think Dover, PA and Georgia are insignificant or that Kansas was the only state where people were lobbying for Intelligent Design in the science classroom, you're sorely mistaken. Read up on some history.

Yes, I'd place my trust in the mechanics of science over some claimed word of some imaginary god. The fact that you live in a civilized society and utilize the fruits of those mechanics of science every day shows that implicitly you do as well.p. There's no arguing with someone like you. If you're irrational enough to believe the crap that you're trying to put forth, then no amount of rational argument or evidence is going to change your mind, especially since you obviously don't even understand the mechanics of science that you want to rail against, since you are looking for "conclusive proof" for a scientific theory.

How do I figure, I figure because it was on the news, being reported by mainstream media, talked about by candidates and so on.

The media has presented polls. ABC, CBS, USA Today, and others show consistent support for stem cell research.

The reason for denying embryonic stem cell research funding is the same as right to life anti abortion arguments, it kills life.

As before: not all embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of embryos. And, in the case where embryos are destroyed anyway (such as in vitro fertilization), why not put them to use? For this reason, many against abortion are in favor of stem cell research, including Orrin Hatch and prominent catholics.

Aren't we at war? Doest that involve plenty of killing and plenty of tax dollars?

And you point is what exactly? People rationalize things however they want. Someone saying they don't want to murder or kill innocent life might not see war as innocent. But it doesn't matter to me. I never said I was prowar and anti stem cell.

Right. What you said was that the voting U.S. public was somehow "against killing" and that stem cell funding policy matched this. But that argument doesn't hold water from polling or from inconsistent policy.

I personally object to it because of how close it is to raising people just to haves parts form them in the name of helping others. It would suck 200 years from now to find out that your new born baby is going to be harvested in order to provide a healthy heart for your 140 year old grandpa and no body thinks twice about it.

It sounds as if we both hope that neither one of us will be around in 200 years to find out. I never liked this "slippery slope" argument & can't understand how you live your life that way. One can contrive to make any situation seem to lead to Utopia or to Hell.

There was funding of science well before the government got involved with it.

Government has been funding science for a very long time. Ancient science was driven by agricultural and accounting needs of the state. Pre-enlightenment patronage often came from political and religious leaders. Yes, science has also had a history of self-funding. But I think that commercial funding comes later than either of these other sources (I can't think of anything significant before the industrial revolution).

A good majority of the science that made the world as we know it today was funded by sources other then the government.

If you mean that it came from both the government & other sources of funding, I might agree. If you would contend that most advances had no governmental funding, I'd definitely disagree. A lot of progress is made from militaristic funding. Cryptography and other mathematics; thermodynamics (from cannons); nuclear and other energy research; computing and networking...

Science needs to be communicated to the public so that other researchers can test it and build on it. In commercially-funded research, this rarely happens--everything becomes a trade secret. The vast number of papers in science journals are government funded. Just look at the authors and the acknowledgements to see this. I think many scientists would agree with you that these journals can afford to be more open in-general, but all national labs and funding agencies have a system for internal reports that (assuming that nothing needs to be classified) the public has access to. Preprint and self-archiving is fairly

While I don't doubt this poll, I question the usefulness of most of these polls when trying to judge how Americans will go in an election.

The reason is that roughly 1/3 of voters just pull the "Republican" lever and another 1/3 just pull the "Democrat" lever. The remaining 1/3 is what usually decides the election, and the poll does not necessarily reflect these people's opinion.

The Senate only passed 27 bills this year. The house passed many more bills but business is different and a passage of a bill might mean cloture or the changing of a rule.

All in all, pretty dismal.

30% is still better than Congress right now. There's room to slide.

"Congress and others protested its apparent use as an unauthorized citizen tracking database."

Meanwhile, Congressional approval ratings drop to 18%.

Raise your hand if you thought your congressman would listen to you.

I didn't, but largely because they're not supposed to. At least not if "listen to you" means "vote the way of the majority opinion of his constituents." We are not a democracy. We do not vote on issues. We elect people who vote on issues for us. If we want those votes to be bound to the majority will, let's just scrap the system and do a straight vote of all Americans. Or hell, I suppose a telephone survey of 1,200 random respondents would suffice so long as the results were more than 4 percentage points or so apart.

Like I said, we vote for people who vote on issues. The key part of that is: we vote for people. If we are displeased with how we are being represented, it is our duty to VOTE, first and foremost, and to vote in people we think will do a better job. If we fail to do so, I'm not going to blame the politicians. The reason they take big money from lobbyists and vote against your wishes is because they can. They can because they aren't being held responsible by those constituents.

I've heard the "the system is rigged in favor of the two major parties!" excuses. There's a fair bit of validity about that, but I don't think it is the problem at all. The major problem is that not enough of us vote. But the secondary problem is that we don't make changes. I believe that nationally, the rate of retention for Congressmen (ie, those who are re-elected) is around 90%. Even in our "big vote for change" election of 2006, 30 seats changed hands in the House and 6 in the Senate. 36 seats changed out of 468 up for election, for a rate of change of 7.7%. That puts the retention rate nearly 92%* in an election trumpeted as calling for change.

One would assume that if we were really as disgusted as we say we are with our politicians, that we would see much greater rates of turnover--even if they just flip back and forth between the two major parties due to the "rigged system."

Yes, the system plays a part; yes, voter apathy plays a part (though blame yourself for that, not the politicians); yes, other things play a part--but the bottom line is we're not nearly as disgusted as we should be, or as we say we are. How seriously are they supposed to take our supposed disgust when we give them a 26% approval / 61% disapproval rating but retain the incumbent 90% of the time?**

Congressmen want to keep their seats. Right now the best way for them to do so is to screw you a moderate amount, take a lot of money from corporations to buy air time and leaflet mailings and such, and get re-elected with around 9-to-1 odds. Really the only danger is if they accidentally screw you just a bit more than you're prepared to accept. You want that to change? Hold them accountable. Once they see that all the corporate donations in the world won't save their jobs if they don't represent their constituents, they'll come around. Of that I have no doubt.

* It's not quite this, necessarily, because some seats had incumbents not running again and sometimes there was a challenge within the part, but I'm too lazy to look up all this information and this figure is near enough for the sake of argument.

** It actually reminds me of a West Wing quote (the polling data may be made up or may be real, I'm not sure, but the point is still valid): "68% [of Americans] think we give too much in foreign aid, and 59% think it should be cut." A scene unfolds as follows:

Will: You like that stat.

Josh: I do.

Will: Why?

Josh: Because 9% think it's too high and shouldn't be cut. 9% of respondents could not fully get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for "I have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."

actually according to current polls- he is in the minority

I found that number a little weird too. I looked around and found this site, which collects approval ratings polls from various sources. According to them, you're about right, the lowest rating they have on there is 26% (from a Newsweek poll in June). The polls for last month range from 26-34%.

Polls and statistics are of course not totally accurate or anything, so I could imagine that somewhere there was a recent poll that gave an approval rating of only 18%. Maybe it was a regional poll?

Ahh, Repubican style "democracy".

Well yes, because a guy polling at 1 percent is little more than white noise in the debate.

Not even the opposition charges that he isn't legitimate.

Complaining about it would only make them look like whiners. Is this the best you can do?

He is widely popular from polls, as well as the many elections he's won.

What the FUCK are you talking about? What drugs are you on, and where can I get some? Bush's job approval ratings are in the toilet and actually reducing the number of people willing to identify themselves as Republicans.

Now, when you come back to reality and join the big parade, perhaps you could explain who told you that shit, and why you believed them.

BTW those were the top three hits on "bush approval rating". Perhaps you should learn how to use google.

Hopefully, there's been enough of this sort of political idiocy to get the American public - who appear to view this as an important issue - to demand candidates who are committed to actual regulatory action instead of empty promises of voluntary reduction.

I don't think I'll hold my breath, however, since the next election will paid for by the same industries who write our environmental policy.

And what about those fuckers who think islam is a religion of hatred and violence and kill and/or wrongfully imprison hundreds?

America voted Bush in. The first time because he was a friendly likable guy and the Lewinsky scandal scoured them on Clinton/Gore.

He won the second time because they felt he was protecting them from danger and wanted to give him a chance to win the war. Bush won. Both times. Get over it.

In 2008 you'll have a shot at the White House again, and it'll be be your election to lose.

Hmmm, very interesting numbers, so religion is very important for 55%, but only 28% go to church each week. That makes at least 27% of all Americans hypocrites or liars. Interesting indeed....

Perhaps you need to consider a bit further

At Least Once a Week - 28%
Almost Every Week - 14%
About Once a Month -14%
Total attending church once a month or more 56%

Or perhaps many people who regard monthly church attendance to be sufficient for their very important religion.

This is absolute proof that the minority voice controls the world.

All this article does is beg us to continue living in fear of some invisible and nonexistent moral majority.

The "moral majority" religious in USA are neither a minority nor nonexistant. The question "How important would you say religion is in your own life: very important, fairly important, or not very important?" got 55% very important, 29% fairly important.

To their credit, Polling Report actually shows the full text of the polls. Because the reality is that I could conduct a poll that turned any of the numbers you cited upside down. It's all in the wording and the details ("Do you think it's OK for people to savagely club furry baby seals?" vs. "Should the government interfere with indigenous peoples' traditional family-oriented hunter-gatherer lifestyle?"). That's a lame one but you get the idea.

That's not to say that polls and surveys are useless, just that our media's interpretation and reporting of them usually is. Proper interpretation requires precision, and our MSM is not equipped to deal with that. And that pisses me off. The MSM may or may not be biased left or right, but what's far worse is that they tend to be biased toward vapidity and bad logic.

• 53-39 pro-choice
• about 60% for universal health care (and years ago)
• 50-37 for stem cell research
• 57-35 favor the environment over economic growth
• 54% favor stricter gun control laws
• 49-43 favor affirmative action
• 56-39 are against privatization of Social Security (various questions, same overall picture)
• 60% favor withdrawal from Iraq in six months

Before I start, let me just say:

- I'm not a registered Democrat, but rather I vote for the people I best identify with. Right now, the Republican party has strayed pretty far from my own views.

- I served in the U.S. military and I have nothing against the troops, or the proper use of them as needed for the defense and security of this nation.

Now, on to your points:

The only definite thing I am hearing from their camp is the desire to repeal the tax breaks, but it was those tax breaks that got the economy back on its feet.

Please cite your sources.

Republicans love to tout this methodology but the simple fact is that uncontrolled deficit spending is BAD for the economy except in the very short term. I don't have a problem with tax cuts IF Congress matches those tax cuts with spending cuts. Neither major party does that, however. They fear losing votes when they have to make a cut in someone's pet project or program for their state.

Yes the Clinton administration had faults but it proved you can maintain a strong economy while avoiding a deficit. Granted, part of this was due to availability of the line-item veto, but the administration was fiscally responsible.

I don't really care if the Democrats want to repeal tax breaks or if they actually man up and cut spending. Either way, balancing the budget is better than continuing to live in fantasy-land.

When it comes to the war, they say to pull out the troops, but I have not really heard a coherent plan for how to achieve a solid ending for the war in Iraq.

The Iraq War Part 2 is a war we shouldn't have been involved with in the first place. I don't see the need for a "coherent plan". There is no solid ending. We've seen it before in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union saw it in Afghanistan. You can't impose your will on religious zealots in a land where they live there and you have no desire to. Get the troops home and let Iraqis sort out how they want to run their country. It's what they want. It's what most of the world wants. And it's what oh... 60+ percent of the U.S. citizens want. Not to mention, getting out of Iraq would save around 170 million dollars a day, keeping that economy on its feet like you mentioned.

What is their plan for dealing with terrorism going forward? What is their plan for solving the border problems with Mexico?

Post 9/11 resources should have been and should still be spent going after the source(s) of the attack, which were not Iraqi. Not to mention, U.S. troops being committed in Iraq has emboldened Iran and North Korea, and generally weakened U.S. leverage in matters of foreign policy. I would like to see enhanced focus on Afghanistan and homeland security, rather than Iraq.

I'm not a Democratic candidate, but it's really not difficult to offer alternatives to the rhetoric the Republicans are feeding this nation right now.

blah blah blah.

You may not agree to their views, or his, but you have to respect their rights to voice their opinion and not be made to participate in what they consider murder.

IMO, there are a few problems with your assessment here.

First of all, a factual error: Mandatory voting as implemented in Brazil does not affect your freedom of expression. Even with electronic voting, the voter has the option of anulling their vote, by selecting the "Annul Vote" option. So, if you refuse to vote for any of the candidates, you still have that option. That clearly indicates a protest vote. The one thing the electronic voting system did away with was the possbility of mistakenly annulling your vote (see Florida elections, 2000).

Second, I disagree that not being forced by law to vote generates better informed voters, necessarily. Again, using GWB as a case study, it seems to me that a lot of his voters were lured by vague things like "Values", or "Tough on Terror". I don't have especific references to that last statement, but it is the impression I have from following political news for the last few years. It seems to me that ellective voting tends to favor well-organized minorities, which simply by voting as one block may outnumber the votes on certain issues, even if the majority of Citizens have a different view on said issues. E.g.: A president is elected in singnificant part based on his positions on issues like Stem Cell Research and Abortion, while polls show that the majority of Americans disagrees with him.

Voting as a legal duty solves the issue above since most people are likely to have an opinion on most things, so vote counts are more likely to reflect the collective mind of the Citizens. And even if they don't have an opinion, they can still abstain by actively annulling their vote. The amount of annulled votes is a valuable statistic that reflects the fraction of the population that thinks the system has failed them. No such assessment can be made from the fraction of the Citizens that just didn't feel like voting that day.

In summary, we disagree on this: the right not to vote because you can't be bothered to do it doesn't mean much to me. But the right to actively abstain from voting by indicating so on a ballot, that to me is as important as voting.

IMO, there are a few problems with your assessment here.

First of all, a factual error: Mandatory voting as implemented in Brazil does not affect your freedom of expression. Even with electronic voting, the voter has the option of anulling their vote, by selecting the "Annul Vote" option. So, if you refuse to vote for any of the candidates, you still have that option. That clearly indicates a protest vote. The one thing the electronic voting system did away with was the possbility of mistakenly annulling your vote (see Florida elections, 2000).

Second, I disagree that not being forced by law to vote generates better informed voters, necessarily. Again, using GWB as a case study, it seems to me that a lot of his voters were lured by vague things like "Values", or "Tough on Terror". I don't have especific references to that last statement, but it is the impression I have from following political news for the last few years. It seems to me that ellective voting tends to favor well-organized minorities, which simply by voting as one block may outnumber the votes on certain issues, even if the majority of Citizens have a different view on said issues. E.g.: A president is elected in singnificant part based on his positions on issues like Stem Cell Research and Abortion, while polls show that the majority of Americans disagrees with him.

Voting as a legal duty solves the issue above since most people are likely to have an opinion on most things, so vote counts are more likely to reflect the collective mind of the Citizens. And even if they don't have an opinion, they can still abstain by actively annulling their vote. The amount of annulled votes is a valuable statistic that reflects the fraction of the population that thinks the system has failed them. No such assessment can be made from the fraction of the Citizens that just didn't feel like voting that day.

In summary, we disagree on this: the right not to vote because you can't be bothered to do it doesn't mean much to me. But the right to actively abstain from voting by indicating so on a ballot, that to me is as important as voting.

Actually, the majority is against abortion, but otherwise, we get your point.
Not true
http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm

This is not true. Where do you pull a figure like that from? Your ass?

Says who? I suspect an honest poll of real-life ordinary Americans would reveal that they want affordable social security, the end of the war in Iraq, sensible energy policies and a range of other things first...

Nice use of the word "honest" there. It guarantees that anytime you see a poll you don't like, you can just say it wasn't "honest" and dismiss it, rather than accept the fact that 86% of Americans believe immigration is a "very serious problem" or "somewhat serious problem". 86%. The country hasn't been the united on something since 9/11.

Usually when people say "I suspect an honest poll of real-life ordinary Americans..." they really mean "Because I'm right and everyone else in the country has the same political agenda as me..."

Not trying to knock you for your agenda, mine is very similar, but you should be aware that most of the time, the rest of the country does not have the same agenda as you do. Consulting a recent poll (below), I see that you're right about the war, but wrong about the other two.

Stolen from Polling Report and modified to make it past the lameness filter:
CBS News Poll May 16-17, 2006. Sample size is 636 adults nationwide. Margin of error plus or minus 4.

"What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" Open-ended

                    Percent
War in Iraq -- 28
Economy/Jobs -- 15
Immigration -- 12
Gas/Heating oil crisis -- 6
Terrorism (general) -- 5
Health care -- 4
Defense/Military -- 3
President Bush -- 3
Other -- 20
Unsure -- 4

Says who? I suspect an honest poll of real-life ordinary Americans would reveal that they want affordable social security, the end of the war in Iraq, sensible energy policies and a range of other things first...

Feel free to browse here to see what Americans think the biggest problems are. War in Iraq, gas prices, immigration are all high on every poll...

"It should be decided by the states. On the national level, our goal is the overturn of Roe Vs. Wade."

Yea and then you are going to push to outlaw it state by state. Don't BS anyone, you would still completely lose it on the subject if its legal any place in the U.S.

"Respecting the sanctity of life does in no way require that one be a pacifist."

Uh ... yes it does. When it comes to wars the number of innocent civilians killed, women, pregnant women, children and babies is always staggering. If you really cared about "innocent" life you would be opposed to war too unless they were really about self defense and in America they seldom ever are about that.

When it comes to guns in America the vast majority of people they kill are "innocent" lives, either in accidents or innocent people being murdered by gun toting criminals. The number of instances for your scenario, where people use guns to successfully defend themselves from attack is tiny. Either you have your gun locked away so your kids can't get it in which case it will probably do you no good if you are suddenly attacked or attacked away from home, or you have a loaded gun under your pillow or your jacket in which case its far more likely to kill someone in your family than an imagined boogie man.

Me personally I think gun law in this country is fine and I really can't see why people like you froth at the mouth over it. Hand guns should be hard to get, hunting rifles and shotguns are pretty easy to own in most states, you could toughen up laws some and I wouldn't care, you could loosen them and I wouldn't care. Its unlikely anyone will ever restrict them to the level places like Japan do, nor is anyone likely to let everyone have them without restriction.

"Women are more pro life than men."

Maybe you could quote a poll or statistic showing that. This is the best unbiased polling I can find on the subject but it doesn't break out men and women. The only women who really matter on the subject are the 1 million plus who get an abortion every year and who are spared an unwanted child or the devastation of their education or career.

The key thing to draw from this vast battery of polls is pro-choice outnumbers pro-life by a wide margin like 51 to 39%. There are really only about 15% who want to completely outlaw abortions, most want them available or available with restrictions. You are in fact in an insignificant minority despite your delusions of grandeur. If people were voting based purely on abortion the Democrats would be winning hands down.

Does anyone believe the bushit?

You are living in a denial fantasyland. Democrats are favored to retake Congress this November by double-digit percentages. Counting only people with an opinion, the most likely voters, they've got about a 25% advantage.

But of course your Republicans, so good at "politics" (lying and stealing into election wins), will still get your vote. Because the total catastrophe they've produced is nothing compared to your Republicans' favorite slogans to say on TV.

http://pollingreport.com/2006.htm

Folks are tired of all the bullshit that's been going on the past 5 years. There is nobody to blame except the party which has made a big deal about how they are in complete control. All of the spin trying to place blame elsewhere merely gets them in deeper. It's political quicksand, and nobody is interested in throwing a rope.


From the poll:

"Would you like to see your representative in Congress be reelected in the next congressional election, or not?"

YES: 57% NO: 25%

You're on.

Folks are tired of all the bullshit that's been going on the past 5 years. There is nobody to blame except the party which has made a big deal about how they are in complete control. All of the spin trying to place blame elsewhere merely gets them in deeper. It's political quicksand, and nobody is interested in throwing a rope.

Regarding the debate, Bush is losing.

Most Americans now think the ban should be dropped and the government should "fund research that would use newly created stem cells obtained from human embryos".

Are you on crack? Warner's approval rating is at 63% and trending up [source]

Bush, in contrast, as an approval rating below 50% [source], lower according to some sources.

Warner would make an excelent candidate - Virginia has the strongest executive branch in the country, giving him a strong background and good experiance. The GOP lacks an obvious successor, unless Cheney quits/drops dead before January 2007.