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Green Party Candidate David Cobb Answers Your Questions
Switching (Score:5, Interesting) by MikeMack (788889)
If I was a Republican or Democrat, what would you say to me to make me switch to the Green Party?
The Green Party offers both Republicans and Democrats the true essence of what each of their parties should be. For Republicans, the Greens offer true conservatism, which means keeping the government out of your personal business, out of your bedroom and out of your library. A true conservative would never support the so-called "Patriot Act;" nor would a true patriot for that matter. A true political conservative would recognize that public resources, such as forests, parks and oceans, should be conserved for use and enjoyment by future generations.
For Democrats, Greens are the party which champions what Democrats used to: support for working people and people of color and protection of the environment.
Both Democrats and Republicans don't represent the people of this country, they represent the transnational corporations who line their pockets and make their election to public office possible.
How do you avoid corruption? (Score:5, Interesting) by kwiqsilver (585008)
It's commonly accepted that power corrupts politicians. The Greens are always speaking out against politicians who sell favors to their corporate buddies or other special interests. But the Green party also espouses a system where the government strictly regulates most industry. How do you propose to have such strong government controlled regulation, without falling victim to the corruption inherent in a bureaucratic system?
The bureaucratic system may well be corrupt but what we really need to address is the corruption in the White House and in Congress-that's who makes the laws and the decisions which support the transnational corporate empire. The halls of Congress are filled with lobbyists representing the international profiteers who play Congress like puppets on strings. Although, I suppose, instead of strings it's campaign contributions which make the puppets dance.
If we take the private money out of our public elections and away from our public officials, we'll go a long way in addressing corruption and ensuring that we truly have a government by the people. We also need to strengthen public meeting laws so Dick Cheney and Enron can never again meet in private to determine the energy needs of this country. We also have to stop the revolving door between industry, Congress and the White House. There have to be much tighter restrictions on public servants going over to private industry.
Here goes again (Score:5, Insightful) by MORTAR_COMBAT! (589963)
I'll ask the same questions I posed to the Libertarian candidate:
Would you approve of, and what would you think would be the results of, the following election reforms:
1. Abolition of electoral college, president is elected by simple popular vote.
The Electoral College is an historical, anti-democratic and racist anachronism which needs to be abolished. If you're wondering why it is racist, remember that when it was created, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person to determine representation, yet they couldn't vote. Therefore, slave states had greater representation in the Electoral College-as if counting any human being as a portion of person wasn't insulting enough.
However, replacing the Electoral College with what you call a "simple popular vote" really doesn't go far enough. We need to replace it with Instant Runoff Voting to ensure that the winner of the popular vote wins with a majority of that vote. Instant Runoff Voting is a voting system, used to elect the mayor of London, the president of Ireland and many office-holders in Australia, which allows you to rank candidates in order of preference. If someone wins a majority of first choice votes, the election is over. If no one wins in the first round, the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated and a runoff is held instantly taking into account the second choice votes of people who voted for the eliminated candidates.
Instant Runoff Voting will be used in San Francisco this November and a number of other cities and counties have approved of using it or are considering doing so. Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV, solves the perceived "spoiler" problem because you can vote for all the candidates you like; you don't have to make a lesser-evil choice. I encourage people to learn more about IRV at Center for Voting and Democracy.
2. Federal mandate that electoral votes from a state be split proportional to the popular vote within that state. (e.g. if California splits 60-40 Kerry-Bush, then their electoral votes are split 60-40 as well). This helps move away from the very brittle "all or nothing" electoral system, where as few as 1 fraudulent or defrauded vote can change the outcome of the national election for president.
I believe we should move rapidly towards Instant Runoff Voting, as outlined above, rather than tinker with an anachronistic relic.
3. Constitutional amendment granting naturalised citizens the eligibility to run for president or vice president. This would allow for the 2008 ticket for the new political party, C.O.P. (Cast Of Predator) to field Arnold Schwartzeneggar and Jesse Venutra as their presidential ticket.
Democracy should be as inclusive as possible. While I don't necessarily find myself opposed to this proposed amendment, I believe there are much more profound and necessary reforms, such as Instant Runoff Voting and proportional representation, where we should focus our energy and attention.
Our country is made up of immigrants. Your place of birth should not disqualify someone from serving as president or vice president.
Lastly a question: is the democratic system as instituted in the United States hopelessly mired in a two-party stranglehold, leaving corporate interest in defacto charge of the discussion? Is legal election reform necessary, or even possible?
Election reform is absolutely necessary, it is possible and we are being successful in changing our system for the better. Instant Runoff Voting is part of the equation. So are open and unrestricted debates, free media for candidates on the public airwaves which we own, less burdensome access to the ballot, proportional representation and public financing of campaigns. A number of states, including Maine, Massachusetts and Arizona, have been successful in implementing campaign finance reform.
We also have to strike right at the heart of the corporate empire and rescind the human rights which have mistakenly been conferred on corporations.
Voting Rights for Noncitizens? (Score:5, Interesting)by anzha (138288)
Thank you for your time. Recently in San Francisco, Matt Gonzalez, a popular local Green Party politico, has been pushing for the ability for noncitizens to vote in some of the local elections. While there are other places that offer this long before SF, it seems as though this erodes the differences between having citizenship or not. Rather than expanding the franchise this way, why not work to streamline the process for getting citizenship and encourage people to seek it?
Can you expound and explain a bit on your stance on this?
Matt Gonzalez has championed the ability of non-citizens who have kids in school to be able to vote in School Board elections. This makes sense and we should support it.
I would like to see the process streamlined so that undocumented workers, who are here and are paying taxes and contributing to our society, can obtain citizenship more simply and easily. We have to remember that we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, with, of course, the exception of the Native people of this continent.
Mainstream Perception (Score:5, Interesting) by Locky (608008)
The Green Party is best known for its progressive policies on the environment, however its other policies are often shrouded by this, most people not knowing where the Green Party stands on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.
What do you think might be the best approach to educate the masses about the rest of Green Party polices?
Greens work both within and outside of the electoral system for genuine democracy, social and racial justice, a healthy environment and for peace and non-violence. We have to march both in the streets and into the ballot box. If we do one and not the other, we won't be successful. All great social movements have used this approach.
Greens believe in freedom and privacy. We support same-sex marriage and reproductive choice.
Copyright and Digital Law (Score:5, Interesting) by Nick Fury (624480)
Obviously we here at slashdot are a bit on the techie side. I know that I have personally watched my rights being taken away from me over the past few years. Mainly my right to fair use. Under current law it is illegal to watch CSS encoded DVDs under Linux or any other Open Source operating system. What are you and your party's feelings on loosening certain restrictions to make the act of fair use a right again.
Also, on the concept of intellectual property and copyright laws. What are your party's and your feelings on the current trend of extending the length of copyright terms? Do you have any plans to reverse the current trend or perhaps to set the lengths back to their original terms?
Nick, first let's look at what the Green Party's platform says about open source: copyrights:
"10. The Green Party supports protection of software (free or proprietary) by means of the copyright. We strongly oppose granting of software patents. Mathematical algorithms are discovered, not invented, by humans; therefore, they are not patentable. The overwhelming majority of software patents cover algorithms and should never have been awarded, or they cover message formats of some kind, which are essentially arbitrary. Format patents only exist to restrain competition, and the harm falls disproportionately on programmers who work independently or for the smallest employers."
Greens favor information flows that come from the grassroots and empower the grassroots. Excellent examples include free/open-source software, open document formats, and the Creative Commons Licenses. We recognize that creativity and productiveness do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, most innovations build on earlier innovations. Creators and producers should be entitled to seek financial compensation for their work - or not, as they choose - but to wall their work off from public access for unreasonable lengths of time is, well, unreasonable.
For most of the history of the US Patents and Copyrights Office, most patent applications were denied. Most "inventions" didn't meet the triple test of being novel, useful/valuable, and not obvious to "someone skilled in the art." Patents that were granted lasted 12 years which was considered to be a third of an invention's useful life. Today, the patent office rubber stamps just about anything. We don't need a new policy, we need the old policy. Let's give standing to all stakeholders to challenge and strike down mistaken or overly broad patents, or patents granted despite the existence of prior art. (Besides genetic patents being a particularly vile abuse of corporate power, genes are, by definition, prior art. We oppose the genetic modification of organisms, as well, but that's another topic.) There's also a place for an eminent domain process for striking down a patent when there is an overriding public interest, as in the case of absurdly overpriced life-saving drugs.
In copyrights, as in patents, we favor not a new policy, but a return to the original, which provided for protection for 20 years.
If we get the general principle right, we won't need a special policy for protecting proprietary digital artworks or people's right to make fair use copies of them. But we do need a prohibition on abusive license agreements. The case law striking down "shrink wrap licenses" should be legislated. A valid contract provides an equal exchange of value: It's not all prohibitions on one party while the other party has no obligations and retains all rights. It shouldn't be legal for Microsoft, for example, to license its OS for use on only one particular CPU. That is, you shouldn't have to buy a new copy of XP when you upgrade your motherboard. When you buy a movie on DVD you should be allowed to play it on any DVD player, and when you buy a copy of an OS you should be allowed to run it on all your computers. This should be a natural result of a more general prohibition on unfair contracts.
I am happy to say that our website is open source (Plone/Zope, running on BSD).
Three Contentious Technologies (Score:5, Interesting) by rumblin'rabbit (711865)
Here are three technologies which environmental groups have generally been opposed to, but which have undergone major advancements in recent years: * Nuclear energy. * High-temperature garbage incineration. * Genetically modified foods.
All of these technologies have drawbacks, but they also have many advantages over the alternatives. Nuclear energy does not produce greenhouse gases, incineration destroys toxic chemicals and does not require land fill, and GM foods can greatly reduce the amounts of pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, or water needed to grow food.
What is the Green Parties' stance on these, and do you see them changing their stance in the near future?
Greens have moved beyond a lesser-evil approach to politics as well as to the issues you describe above. I cannot under any circumstances accept nuclear power and genetically modified foods as a healthy alternative. There are such simpler and more sensible ways to approach these issues. We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy. We could replace nuclear power-and coal and other dirty forms of producing power-with the abundance of solar energy which shines on our country. Wind turbines, like the one I visited in Nebraska recently, are also part of the solution.
Food was grown by humankind for an awfully long time and rather successfully before the advent of pesticides and herbicides. We don't need that poison on our foods, on our soil or in our water supplies. And we don't need Frankenfood either.
As to our shortage of landfill space, we need to increase recycling and require manufacturers to take material back if it is not completely recyclable or biodegradable.
Drug Reform (Score:5, Interesting) by L3on (610722)
What is your stance on the use of medical-marijana? What do you think can be done to change the way in which the war on drugs in America is being fought, either legalizing/decriminalizing and taxing or otherwise?
Furthermore, How will you deal with our budget deficit and reform the GOP's relentless tax cuts and the Democratic Party's exorbanent spending?
Marijuana has been declared by an Administrative Judge for the FDA as one of the safest therapeutic substances known. I fully support the right of physicians and patients to use what they deem best for treatment.
The "war on drugs" is racist and an insult to all Americans. This "war" has incarcerated people of color at a much higher rate than white people. It has resulted in senseless attacks on innocent people and on our Constitution. We have to treat drug addiction as a health problem, not as a crime.
The main contributing factor to our national deficit is the world's largest military budget. The Green Party supports closing overseas military bases and reducing the military budget by 50% over ten years.
Single Payer Healthcare (Score:4, Interesting) by Coryoth (254751)
You often point out that pretty much every developed western country except the US has some form of single payer healthcare, and I think it is a valid issue, worth dicussing. However, having lived in a few countries that operate such a system I have generally found the governments involved to be having difficulties sustaining the system.
"The dilemma amounts to this: as medical science continues to advance, and as we in general live longer and longer, the amount of things that can be done continues to expand, along with the costs involved with any new technologically advanced treatments. Because of this, the costs of providing complete healthcare continue to expand at a rate faster than we can pay for. With healthcare, if something is possible, people tend to demand that it be done, even if we do not have the resources to do it.
Complete provision of healthcare simply isn't a sustainable practice as the costs are not proportionally bound by population (and hence very roughly speaking, government income), but instead by the ever expanding limits of medical science.
How do you intend to deal with this dilemma? Do you only plan to provide single payer healthcare for core and emergency services only? Do you intend to allow a parallel private health system to provide the more expensive treatments?
The basic point of single payer is that it is cheaper to administer and also that the cost of pharmaceuticals are lower as a result of bulk purchase. It is true what you say, the costs of medical care will increase in all countries as a result of innovation. However, empirical evidence shows that they will increase far less in countries that employ single payer. The best example is that of Canada and the U.S. When Canada enacted single payer their health care costs were the same percent of GDP as the U.S. Now, some 30 years later, they spend 8.9% while we spend close to15% of GDP. They spend much less in Canada on health care while treatment outcomes are similar overall in both countries.
Besides, we could pay for lifelong health care for every citizen in this country, along with college tuition for everyone who wanted to attend universities, if we stopped waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan and cut 50% from the biggest and most bloated military budget in the history of our planet. We could also do a much better job of focusing on preventative measures and take special care of infants and pregnant women, thereby ensuring a healthier start to life and reducing costs later on.
We are not opposed to allowing a private system to offer services not covered by a public system, such as Canada does. However, it is our intention to offer a comprehensive health care system which includes outpatient, inpatient, medication, dental, mental health and long term care, as research shows that this is both the most efficient and effective means for delivering health care to our population.
Viable Third-parties (Score:5, Interesting) by thewiz (24994)
Mr. Cobb, What do you believe is necessary for your party or any other to become a viable third party in American elections? Even though George Washington warned against having a partisan political system in his farewell speech, America seems to have developed a two-party system that forces third-parties out of the political process.
Also, what do you think of the Democratic and Republican parties shift away from what's good for America toward what is good for their respective parties and the businesses / people that support them while leaving the majority of Americans out?.
The need for a viable third party-or a second one, given the similarities between the two old establishment parties-is obvious and dire. We need a viable political alternative because thousands of innocent civilians and hundreds of young American kids have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a viable political alternative because we are the only industrialized nation which doesn't provide health care for its citizens. We need a viable political alternative because our country is addicted to fossil fuel and will literally kill to sustain this addiction. We need an alternative because both of the old parties support the expensive and failed "war on drugs." We need an alternative because they are more intent on building prisons than schools; because they conspired to pass the unconstitutional civil liberty-threatening "Patriot" Act and because we need to develop a solar-based economy and create family wage jobs.
We need a viable political alternative because we need to manufacture democracy here at home before we can export it.
We don't have a "two party system" so much as we have an electoral system which favors two center-right political parties. And those two parties have done everything in their power to maintain their power and eliminate, ridicule and harass the competition.
To establish viable political alternatives, we first have to create a genuine democracy. Let's remember that this country was founded by rich, white landowners for their benefit. Our founders did not create a democracy. "The people" did not-and still don't-elect the president or the judiciary. Only the House of Representatives was elected by the people when this country was founded and those people were not women or people of color or the poor.
Our democracy is evolving and we still have a long ways to go. We need to get private money out of public elections and public policy. We can't have Enron and Dick Cheney's friends writing our energy policies in secret. We need to open up the whole process including how we make decisions on who will represent us. We need to have presidential debates open to all candidates on enough ballots to win the presidency. We need to address our voter participation rates which are among the lowest of any democracy.
I'm glad to see that we are making inroads with Instant Runoff Voting which will be used this fall in San Francisco's city elections. Instant Runoff Voting is a voting method which eliminates the perceived "spoiler" problem and ensures that the winner of an election has the support of a majority of voters. Our last three presidential elections were won with less than a majority vote. Instant Runoff Voting solves this problem and allows you to vote your hopes instead of your fears.
Most democracies use proportional representation to elect their legislatures. Countries which use proportional representation have a much broader representation of political parties and also have greater representation by women and higher voter turnout.
Of course, first a party has to get on the ballot in the first place and here again, the U.S. is light years behind the rest of the world. The United States is the only country where someone has to comply with 51 different and separate requirements to run for national office.
We also have to address the corporate control of the media. It's gotten to the point where, literally, a handful of companies control everything most people see and hear on the radio, on television and in the movies. We, the people, need to reclaim our public airwaves and we need to support our local, grassroots broadcasters.
Green activists are working on all these issues and, with San Francisco as just one example, we are succeeding, even if success is often incremental and not as quick as we would like. These issues also provide an opportunity to work in coalition with other political parties, concerned citizens and "good government" organizations.
To address your other question, I'm not sure that the two old parties actually ever represented the people. As long as there have been powerful, monied interests in this country, they have had their servants in Washington, D.C.
The Green Party is beholden to no one except the people. That, above all else, is what makes us unique.
All politics is local (Score:5, Insightful) by Quixote (154172)
In the words of Tip O'Neill, "All politics is local".
What is this desire to aim directly for the Whitehouse? Why not pool resources and fight the local battles? By aiming for the presidency (and ignoring the local politics), you are setting yourselves up for a fall. We all know that in a 2-party system, rigged the way it is, your chances of winning the Whitehouse are somewhere between 0.00 and 0.000. Then why waste the resources on this race?
How many members of Congress do you have? How many locally elected officials does the Green Party have? How many judicial appointees do you have? See the pattern here?
Maybe this isn't a question as much as a rant, but if you feel like, please answer why you are wasting the time and effort on a run for the Whitehouse, when the same resources, applied at local levels, would yield immensely more benefit.
I'm glad you asked this question because many people are not aware of the fact that the Greens have elected hundreds of local officials all across this country, including Green judges. We have elected city and county councilors, school board members, soil and water conservation board members, mayors and members of state legislatures. And that's just in this country. The Green Party is an international movement and around the world we have elected members to over two dozen national legislatures and parliaments. We haven't yet elected a member of congress in this country but we will. We are getting bigger, stronger and better organized in each election cycle. We are the fastest growing political party in America.
One of the reasons why we are the fastest growing party in America is because we participate in presidential elections. Like it or not, much of the nation-indeed the world-focuses on our presidential election. One of the main reasons I'm running is to continue to build the Green Party; to register more Green voters and especially to support local candidates. Running a national and a multitude of local races are not mutually exclusive endeavors. They are actually symbiotic and each enforces and supports the other.
Obvious answer (Score:5, Funny) by RickyRay (73033)
Obviously with the current unpopularity of Bush and Kerry the final vote is down to either you or Ralph Nader. What decisive advantages do you feel you have over Nader that make you more likely to win the presidency? ;-)
Thank you for the vote of confidence, but I am a realist and realize that until there are some significant changes in this country-especially how we conduct presidential elections, including campaign finance reform, Instant Runoff Voting and free use of the public airwaves, the chances of a Green winning the presidency are somewhat remote. I do believe, however, that we will be successful in time.
In this election, the Cobb-LaMarche campaign is the only campaign which supports a genuine, progressive agenda for change and which will continue building a movement beyond Election Day. Greens are in this for the long haul. What we are trying to accomplish is greater than any one candidate or any single election. People who want to invest in a long-term movement for peace, for social and racial justice, for grassroots democracy and for a sustainable economy and environment should vote Green.
We are the party of peace, we are the party of hope and we are the party of America's future.
As if the two major parties are going to let that happen.
The Green Party offers both Republicans and Democrats the true essence of what each of their parties should be.
...
Greens believe in freedom and privacy. We support same-sex marriage and reproductive choice.
Thanks for the honest answer. As a Republican, I feel this is not what my party should be.
"For Democrats, Greens are the party which champions what Democrats used to: support for working people and people of color and protection of the environment."
In my book, this is why I can't stand neither the Democrats nor the Greens. Libertarians have a much better sense of what equality really means, not overcompensation by creating two wrongs.
slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person to determine representation
What else would you describe this as being, unless of course you also want to include women in the definition of slavery?
Is it easy being Green?
Sincerely,
Letter
I have to ask, in San Fransciso is Instant runnoff voting being used for just the local elections, or will it be used for the presidential race as well?
It would be VERY interesting to see how the presidental votes come out in that race, you could very likly see a 3rd party winning or atleast getting a lot of support.
looks like someone didn't get the memo!
No, it does keep minorities out of winning anything. If Barack Obama were to run as a third-party candidate, even with his strong following with the African American community, and in many whites' minds, it wouldn't do much, as he would carry very few states and likely receive no electoral votes.
Food was grown by humankind for an awfully long time and rather successfully without pesticides or herbicides
....but not for anything like as many people. Who is to die if the crops fail from something that a herbicide or pesticide could prevent ? Betch it ain't Americans. It'll be the poor bloody Indians or Africans. And "Green" America will do what then ?
Steve
Here, I've highlighted the important words for you.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Yes it was a long time ago true, but its not true anymore. Either way the slave count was most important in the taxation and the representation in congress. The North wanted the slaves to be taxed as full persons (remember the feds taxes a state based on population back then, no individual federal tax) but to not to be full people for counting representative. Obviously the south wanted it the other way. So a comprimise was reached. Either way it wasn't just about blacks there were non black slaves, so to say the electoral college is racist is a bit of a stretch, maybe say it had ties to slavery.
And this is different than the white 3rd party canadites how?
Solar power and wind turbines have their own environmental problems (e.g. taking up lots of space and requiring lots of raw materials if scaled up to the point of making a significant dent in US energy needs). Nuclear power is actually more environmentally benign if the political problem of waste disposal (and, yes, it is a political, not a technical, problem) can be solved.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
"Under any circumstances"??? So Fusion power is out, too? Or any future nuclear power that solved the waste issues?
And, of course, we know that genetically modified foods are by definition unhealthy. And nice "Frankenfood" reference later on.
There are such simpler and more sensible ways to approach these issues. We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy.
No. Conservation will never work; our power needs will continue to increase, and I have no problem with that. I don't want to live back in the dark ages again, sorry.
He's just another anti-science nut.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Our country is made up of immigrants. Your place of birth should not disqualify someone from serving as president or vice president.
We have to remember that we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, with, of course, the exception of the Native people of this continent.
Which is sad, because so many Native American Tribes support many of the goals of the Green Party- living with the land and on the land, not changing the land, is a traiditon in many Native American religions- and the Green Party would do well to remember that TRADIDITON is supported by CULTURE and WHERE YOU GREW UP. Those who grow up in an area are far more likely to be environmentally aware- especially of population growth related problems- than those who came from elsewhere.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
And don't lecture me about "voting your conscience". I voted for Nader in 2000, and would proudly do it again. Hell, I'd vote for Nader in 2004 if it were obvious that Kerry would win the election and get President Bush out of the office. But in a tight race like that, we can't afford that chance.
If a house is burning down, first you put out the fire. Voting third party this year is like redesigning the house while it's still on fire. Kerry will need every vote he can get.
WTF!!!!! Do your saying the oppression of 3rd parties is racist!! WOW.. Just WOW!
The first two answers led me to consider this man. Fortunately for me, I kept reading.
The point where I exceeded my sanity was his harping on the need for a true democracy. In one paragraph he harps on racism and in the next the need for a true democracy. (Care to take a true democratic vote on civil rights in 1860 America?) He think that conservation can substitute for Nuclear power. (Do the math; not unless you're willing to watch everyone's standard of living plummet).
In short this candidate is just as much a politician as the others. Full of symbols that have more to do with adherence to ideology than with solutions to real problems.
Thanks for running, thanks for answering the questions. But your symbols don't appeal to me.
There needs to be a much easier way of voting people out of office. Voting them out of office of mayor, member of congress, or the president himself.
As of now, they can reisntate the draft like the want to, introduce draconian Big Brother type laws, punish pirates as terrorists, etc, and nothing can be done about it.
But what if a few people got voted out of office for it? That'd change their minds!
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Pity, I was rather interested in why the Green party (or many people for that matter) are so heavily against genetically modified foods. I was hoping for something a little more insightful than name-calling.
Indeed, why not just say non-whites?
How does either use of term declare to the world that I am not a racist?
From my point of view, in this context, purely differentiating is a racist stance, and the lack of confidence in the persons own ability to use descriptive words such as black etc. only cements my opinion that the person is a racist.
Overcompensatino of race, underprotection of the country.
What I'm seeing here are two things. Reverse-racism (instead of discriminating against those who happen to have darker skin tones, discriminate against everyone who does not to make up for it) rather than treating everyone the same, and leaving it at that, and secondly, reducing military budget by 50% over 10 years doesn't seem correct.
Let me explain...I don't like the idea of us policing the rest of the world. For the most part I would like to see each nation take care of itself where possible. That said, there is generally a large reason most countries won't screw with the US. The US doesn't get scared off or back down, we come roaring back.
Now, if we close all of our overseas bases of operation, and we get attacked, where does that leave us? I mean, unless the Canadians or Mexicans finally decide they've had enough of us, we won't have an operational foot to stand on.
Not being offensive doesn't mean we can't be sufficiently defensive. I believe we can fix our deficit without signficantly reducing our defensive stances.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If you kept reading the paragraph, you would have seen his argument:
"If you're wondering why it is racist, remember that when it was created, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person to determine representation, yet they couldn't vote. Therefore, slave states had greater representation in the Electoral College-as if counting any human being as a portion of person wasn't insulting enough"
By the way, the name is Dumas...
--- You are unique, just like everyone else...
...but Florida proved one thing, you can't trust most voters to understand complex design dystems. You're just replacing one problem with another if you swap the electoral college for IRV.
Mr. Cobb also fails to address the issue the EC solves, that of representation for the states with smaller population centers. For all its flaws, the EC forces candidates to deal with issues in smaller states. Going to a proportional voting system or eliminating the EC altogether is going to disenfranchise these states and the people who live there.
Oooh, you lost me at "I'm a colossal dumbass." People who use the word "racist" when there is absolutely no racial argument to be made whatsoever--not even an obviously specious one--are not worth our time or attention.
Well, one could argue plausibly that, because the Electoral College gives greater representation to rural areas than urban ones, that it is unfairly biased towards whites simply because few people of color live in rural areas.
Further, one could argue plausibly that since most states have a winner-takes-all approach to electing Electoral College representatives, that their systems are unfairly biased towards "the majority", which is in many cases white European descendants.
I have no interest in defending these claim, but you could make them. One does not need to have poll taxes or segregated waiting rooms to have racism.
Now I know why I am not going to vote green. I was interested at first at an Alternative to the republicrats, but I see that they are a bit fundamental for me. Major points are they want to stay insular, close military bases. I also dont agree with the "Single Player Healthcare", as I remember from our friend michael moore there's much more violence in the US, maybe that causes our cost of healthcare to increase.. or not but that my "empirical" evidence on the subject. I really think that saying Nuclear Energy is not viable is a bit out there, but if we can produce wind/solar power cheap and produce a lot of it that would be great. I am still unsure who im going to vote for, it really doesn't matter though I live in California and Kerry has already won. I do support his "instant runoff voting" but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Huh? Equality as in: "You're stupid, sick, handicapped, lazy or environmentally conscious and therefore you should be treated like shit by the dog-eat-dog, profit-hounding winners with a can-do attitude like us"?
Hey, wake up already! It's OK to be lazy (the truly lazy will always be in a minority), stupid, sick, handicapped and politically conscious and to be supported by tax money. It's the primary function of a society to guarantee the welfare of the weak - not to guarantee free trade or maximum profit for you "winners".
I vote for Greens because they've got a pretty centrist - at least in a European context - fiscal policy and very liberal social agenda (drugs, sex, immigration and religion).
The owls are not what they seem
A little definition of anachronism:-
One that is out of its proper or chronological order, especially a person or practice that belongs to an earlier time
Well at least the greens don't flip-flop. Pretty much opposed to all technology (do you know how many toxic byproducts are created when they produced the computer you are sitting in front of?) and opposed to any source of energy; if the greens had their way we'd all be living in trees eating acorns.
The big question I have for the greens is how can they claim to be for freedom when their policies would strip so much of it away.. i.e. property freedoms (can't buy cars certain, can't shop at walmart), freedom of speech (can't voice your opinion if it's a currently unpopular one that may be found offensive by one group or another), freedoms of whom to associate with (you can no longer form an association to pool resources for a project larger than one person, commonly called a corporation), freedoms of due process, the list goes on...
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
"I cannot under any circumstances accept nuclear power and genetically modified foods as a healthy alternative."
*Any* circumstances? How very dogmatic. The only difference between this guy and a hard-core, right-wing, religious fundamentalist is his choice of religious doctrine. The Greens can tolerate no dissent in these areas... dissent is heresy!
Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
Please read the story again. Mr Cobb clearly stated that the electoral college's foundation is in the slave era and owes to the fact that slaves could not vote but were counted as 3/5ths of a person for voting purposes; the electoral college addressed the counting of vote-ineligible population by assigning "electors" to represent the weighted populations.
>>Oooh, you lost me at "I'm a colossal dumbass."
I must have missed the line where Mr Cobb said "Twirlip of the Mists is a collosal dumbass". What specifically do you find offensive about his position?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Would someone please explain to me why, in 2004, the color of your skin matter?
when he said Frankenfood. That's such a scare tatic move. Like Bush invoking 9/11 all the time.
It's simple: When minorities abuse substances, they tend to do higher doses, and do it outdoors more frequently. Some guy laying on his floor listening to Bob Dylan isn't likely to get busted. A guy on the street on PCP causing trouble is bound to make the news. (Rodney King anyone? He now lives in my home town - LOL.) "Past research shows that African American adolescents and adults experience substance-related problems at higher levels than those of White adolescents and adults, but their rates of substance use are similar if not lower than those of Whites." http://www.health.ufl.edu/shcc/cadrc/pdf/alc19.pdf
Oh, but there is! Did you even read what he wrote? The idea was that by using an electoral college system, you kill the extreme minorities' votes - namely blacks, immigrants, and slaves. This is a cause-effect thing, where x is the cause and the electoral college is the effect - not the other way around.
There are a lot of things that were actually racist at the time, but are not inherently racist. The 1914 Harrison anti-drug act was one of them, as was the disenfranchisement that occurred in Florida, as was - although not necessarily is - the electoral college.
Now, saying that something was racist isn't the same as saying that something is racist, but it sure does hint at a huge flaw in its inception. The Harrison act might do a lot of good in keeping heroin and crack-cocaine illegal, but what reason do we still have for keeping marijuana illegal but that at one point in time a lot of blacks and Mexicans used it? How is marijuana any different than alcohol? I can tell you that the most obvious cause of death resulting from alcohol is car-related fatalities, and I can also tell you that driving while stoned is a hell of a lot safer than driving while drink. And the lung cancer thing doesn't apply, considering cigarette smokes ingest a lot more smoke for the amount that they smoke and cigarettes are actually physically - and psychologically - addictive, as opposed to marijuana which is only mildly psychologically addictive.
Anyway, the whole marijuana thing was just a really round-about way of showing you that even if the causes might not be apparent, there are a lot of things that were originally racist, even if we cannot conceive of them today. Sure, a lot of people through around the word "racist" when it's not even remotely relevant, but in this case, it is.
I was sort of on the fence about the Green Party, but now I've made up my mind. I will never, ever, EVER vote for you guys, and as I make a significant amount of money, and donate it when I feel appropriate, let me say this:
The next 20 poor, powerless slobs that you whip up into a frenzy to vote to confiscate my ends to justify their means will be effectively countered by my donations to both mainstream parties.
Put that in your racist, egalitarian, Europe-loving, (medical marijuana|crack) pipe, and smoke it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Ralph Nader, you are in love with Bush.
Com'mon Ralph, I know your shy, but we can all tell its true. Don't blush Ralph. If that's how you really feel, then go on Ralph! It's ok, there's nothing to be ashamed about! Just go out and tell him about your love! There's no point beating around the... Oh, well, you get my point. Make a website, "RalphLovesGeorge.com" or something. Anything! Just make sure to keep it a personal matter between you and your crush, that adorable Dubya.
That way, you can get ass-fucked by Bush, instead of the rest of us.
How many times did this guy call something racist?
And way get people to take you seriously by using the term Frankenfood. That's right up there with a supposed tech expert spelling Microsoft with a $
I'd love to see what this guy has to say regarding the production methods for solar panels and the waste material that comes from those processes as oppose to nuclear power.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
...since most states have a winner-takes-all approach to electing Electoral College representatives, that their systems are unfairly biased towards "the majority", which is in many cases white European descendants.
As far as I know, democracies are always biased toward the majority. If they weren't, it wouldn't be a democracy.
I suppose we could normalize votes between minorities and majorities. But what are you goint to do when every election gets normalized to a tie?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Food was grown by humankind for an awfully long time and rather successfully before the advent of pesticides and herbicide
Yeah, and a lot of people also fucking died from food shortages, which pesticides have helped prevent.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
I can go along with a lot of what the Green party stands for. In fact, most 3rd parties get closer to representing my political views than the Democratic or Republican Parties. But going through the Green Party platform, I came across their concept of a maximum wage.
Yes, that's right, they are proposing a MAXIMUM wage in addition to a minimum one. Any money you make above and beyond 10 times the minimum wage is taken away from you (taxed at 100%).
Eh? Isn't this political suicide? That's such a monumentally horrible idea that it taints every other position they have!
And no, I'm not complaining because I make more than that (~$200,000/yr since their proposed minimum wage is $10/hr) because I don't come close... but I'd like to think that someday, somehow I might. But if I knew that it would all be taken away from me... yeesh!
I too agree with many of the values espoused by the Green party. But I cannot agree with the irrational idea that we should eliminate genetically modified foods and nuclear power--two technologies which America can adopt with great benefit to both society AND to those who develop the technology. The position that we cannot patent genes is unfounded since those modifications were not just copied from nature, but actually analyzed, modified and inserted through expensive techniques. This idea is akin to outlawing drugs because the carbon, oxygen and nitrogen atoms present in the molecule were already discovered and present in nature in similar structures.
I'm sorry, but these extreme positions in an attempt to sound environmentalist are too much for me to justify voting for a party that otherwise has legitimate ideas for our society.
So it was racist THEN.
Where is the proof that it is racist NOW. Certinaly black voters are no longer counted by partials any more.
If Barack Obama were to run as a third-party candidate ... it wouldn't do much, as he would carry very few states and likely receive no electoral votes.
Umm, maybe he wouldn't get any electorial votes because at 41 he's too young to run for president.
While we're on race, compare the Clinton's, the self-styled "first black president", cabinet with GWB's.
What do you think of a Guiliani / Powell GOP ticket in 2008?
For Democrats, Greens are the party which champions what Democrats used to: support for working people and people of color and protection of the environment.
What exactly are "working people?"
To me, the implication here is that a person with a shitty, manual-labor job is a "working person," but, e.g., a highly successful, obscenely rich, white-collar worker is not. The implication is because someone is rich, they must not have earned it, they don't REALLY "work" for it, and therefore it is OK if we take more of it to help out "the working people."
Am I way off base here? Why use such a loaded term as "working people."
I am a programmer, I make a nice living. Am I a working person? How much money do I have to start making a year before I'm not considered "a working person" by the Green party?
If I sell my company and earn many millions of dollars due to my ingenuity, skill, hard work, and intelligence, I no longer have to work. Yet I earned the money fair-and-square. I am no longer a "working person," does that mean the Green Party is now against me?
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
It's fine to oppose nuclear energy or genetic engineering as an informed choice, but he should be prepared to change his mind when presented with rational evidence. I would love to have this guy as a senator to throw a wrench into Bush'es oil drilling plans, for example. But a president must be able to make a decision against his own beliefs if that's the right thing to do.
By this logic, the first ammednment is racist too, because when it was passed, slaves didn't have free speech.
The 5th ammendment is likewise racist, because when it was passed slaves did not have the right to avoid testifying against themselves.
Finally, the comment "as if counting any human being as a portion of person wasn't insulting enough" displays ignorance of history: the slave-holding south *WANTED* slaves to count as full people, because it would give the slave-holders a greater say in national politics, but the slaves themselves would still be property. Abolitionists, and northern liberals pushed for less (even zero) counting of slaves - it's bad enough to enslave people, but then to count their population in order to give the slaveholders more power? Unbeleivable!
You don't like the electoral college? Fine. Say so. Personally, I think it's a final check on potential extremist movements. ...but reasonable folks can disagree.
Don't try to bolster your argument, though, by throwing in some ad hoc reference to "racism".
Given that Kerry and Bush agree on so much, isn't voting for Kerry kind of like throwing lower octane gas on the flames?
If you don't lie what is hapenning in this country today, and you vote for Kerry or Bush it is you who are throwing your vote away.
Badnarik said it best: If you vote for the "lesser" of two evils, and your guy wins, you've still got evil.
"How is that better than 'colored people'?"
I think Cobb's purpose is to find some all-inclusive way to describe people who are not white. 'Colored people' is simply an outdated way of describing black people, and it's considered offensive by many, since it was generally used in a derogatory way in the days of Jim Crow. To me, 'non-white' carries some connotation of exclusivity, where 'people of color' is artful and inclusive.
But maybe someone else can suggest a better alternative...
Instant Runoff Voting will be used in San Francisco this November and a number of other cities and counties have approved of using it or are considering doing so. Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV, solves the perceived "spoiler" problem because you can vote for all the candidates you like; you don't have to make a lesser-evil choice. I encourage people to learn more about IRV at Center for Voting and Democracy.
...even with IRV.
IRV does NOT solve all of our voting problems. In fact, as long as you have more than two candidates, there isn't really a good way to elect one. Every method we've thought of so far has major issues. For instance, IRV solves the spoiler problem as long as the spoiler only gets a small percentage of the vote. But as they start to get a larger share of the electorate, the spoiler problem comes back!
The best voting method I've seen is Condorcet voting. But even that isn't perfect.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Oooh, you lost me at "I'm a colossal dumbass." People who use the word "racist" when there is absolutely no racial argument to be made whatsoever--not even an obviously specious one--are not worth our time or attention.
I take the same stance, but this is an argument made by many and is not without merit (at least, if I'm reading him correctly).
I think that the issue that he has is not so much with the Electoral College per se (as it might exist in a vacuum) as the existing electoral system (which in common parlance gets associated with the Electoral College).
And there *are* racially-biased policies involved with our existing voting system. Specifically, Southern states generally restrict sufferage of those jailed for felonies (of which many -- and perhaps most; I'm not familiar with the details involved -- are drug-related and overwhelmingly black).
This is pretty much a Republican dirty trick, as most of those people would otherwise vote Democrat. I'm sure that Democrats have plenty of their own dirty tricks to try to suppress Republican votes. This one tends to get a lot of interest from third party candidates because it's tied in with other controversial topics like the War on Drugs and racism.
May we never see th
First of all thanks for the responses. I think I have a better understanding of where the Green party stands. Though I don't agree with all of your points, I would certainly like to see more Green party politics in the elections.
One point I strongly disagree with is the idea that drug laws or the electoral college is racist. Some people are racist yes, but institutions and laws are just that.
Now like you, I strongly disagree with the current drug laws; however, wheither or not you agree with a law, don't break it and you won't go to jail for it.
Its very politically incorrect to say but I'm going to say it anyway. People of color tend to be poor and poor people commit more crimes. Should we change our laws because certain groups of people cannot control themselves and be responsible for their actions?
As for the Electoral College, the idea is so that a rural person's vote counts as much as a person in an urban area. Otherwise we'd have the policies of New York City for the whole nation which are probably not right for a farming community in South Dakota. Instant Runoff voting doesn't exactly do that. Possibly a combination of the two. Anyway, I digress: the point is the EC doesn't count slaves as 3/5 of a person now. How are they still being racist? That's like saying that because I used to be a little kid that couldn't tie my own shoes that I'm still a little kid that can't tie my shoes (even though I learned to tie them sometime ago).
Not the say the EC is perfect. One change that I would like to see is for the EC votes to be proportional to how the state voted. For instance in Florida instead of awarding all the votes to one candidate half should have gone to Bush and the other half to Gore. That way all voters in large states that have a broad range of political opinions have a say in the process.
The Anti-Blog
exactly why i vote republican. republicans aren't racist, for the larger majority of them. this is a common misconception among democrats and others. after all, it was the republican party (not the dixiecrats) that has stood up for african americans and other races all along, but i'm focusing on african americans here. somewhere in the 70's this switched, despite the republican party standing up for their civil rights in the 60's. and because the republican budget isn't going to give handouts to the non-working (white, black, hispanic, doesnt matter), everyone looks at them as racist. it doesn't make sense. but regardless, that's why i don't support affirmative action, because it is the definition of reverse discrimination. even my african american roommate thinks that affirmative action is racist.
My daughter says I'm orange, so I guess I qualify...
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Could you please provide some kind of proof for your accusation?
For an awfully long time people would cross bread food producing plants to isolate desirable traits. This is called genetic manipulation and is no different then geneticly altered food.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
what i found peculiar about that particular choice of phrases: what about other minorities? there are after all other minorities who cannot be meaningfully described by skin coloration, such as jews and muslims (or even some christians!); minorities whose minority status is a function of genetics, such as women; minorities whose minority status is a function of other factors entirely, such as gays/lesbians and the transgendered (no consensus on whether being gay is strictly genetic or strictly learned).
now, given the nature of his responses, it's pretty clear that mr. cobb probably includes all of those minorities as well, but i found it a surprising omission.
ed
Read a book on linguistics sometime.
People of color
How is that better than 'colored people'?
It isn't. And neither one is bad. Those terms are not derogatory, and are not meant to be derogatory. I think people just started to think that any term used for black people was a racial slur. Now people don't like when you use the term black.
Mark my words, in ten years the term African American will no longer be acceptable because of this senseless process.
A term is only derogatory if it is meant in an insulting or hurtful way.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
You only have to be 35 on the date of inauguration to run for president. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I can tell you that the most obvious cause of death resulting from alcohol is car-related fatalities, and I can also tell you that driving while stoned is a hell of a lot safer than driving while drink.
Ummm... no... it's not.
Don't get me wrong, the war on drugs is completely fucked up, but under NO circumstances would I argue that driving stoned is safer than driving drunk. I'd argue more along the lines of "just as safe when driving, and (much) safer when not driving."
Like it or not, weed impares your judgment, making it a bad choice for driving. This is actually a large reason I support de-criminilization. If kids (and adults, for that matter) could smoke in safe places (back yard, in home, marijuana bars, etc), they wouldn't have to drive to avoid the law.
Anybody that's ever smoked more than once will tell you that it's a much safer substance than alcohol.
Think about it... when's the last time you saw an angry stoner?
How about an angry drunk?
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
Generally on-the-mark Green Party candidate makes the following error:
:)
A valid contract provides an equal exchange of value: It's not all prohibitions on one party while the other party has no obligations and retains all rights. It shouldn't be legal for Microsoft, for example, to license its OS for use on only one particular CPU. That is, you shouldn't have to buy a new copy of XP when you upgrade your motherboard. When you buy a movie on DVD you should be allowed to play it on any DVD player, and when you buy a copy of an OS you should be allowed to run it on all your computers. This should be a natural result of a more general prohibition on unfair contracts.
IANAL Yet -- but I am in Contracts and will tell you that David is speaking about a bargained-for exchange. There needs to be an equitable exchange in order for a contract to be enforceable. This means that I can't secure a contract by offering to give you a house in exchange for a penny. The courts will see that as a gift, since clearly I didn't actually WANT the penny, I just wanted to give you a house as a gift under the cover of a binding contract.
In order for David to make the claim that a Microsoft license agreement fails bargained-for exchange, you need to determine that the agreement as presented is not what was actually bargained for. I think he'd have a tough case. In exchange for being prevented from installing the software on multiple computers and the other terms of the license agreement, and whatever fee Microsoft wants to charge, you get to use their software. Somehow you'd have to show that one of those elements fails the peppercorn test -- do you not actually want the software and just wanted to give up your rights and money to Microsoft? Probably not. Did Microsoft really just want to give you the software, and doesn't really care about the money and the removal of your rights? Hah.
So, I'm sorry to say that on this ground at least a license agreement seems like a valid bargained-for exchange contract.
(Anyone who already is a lawyer, or further along in their studies than I, please chime in -- I'd like to know if anything I said is wrong)
America HAD Instant Run Off Voting, but it quickly became a joke. Remember Aaron Burr? You see, the position of Vice President originally existed only as a sop to give the party that comes second in the election. Pretty much, the office has no formal power except in cases of ties in the Senate, which made it the most boring job evar until we started letting the VP run aspects of the bureaucracy more recently.
Anyhow, in the original system, each elector in the electoral college got two votes. The winner got the Presidency, the second place got the VP slot. Well, after Jefferson did his term as VP for his then-rival Adams, the two parties figured out a way around the system pretty quickly: Run two candidates. Dahn, dahn, dum!
(And if you don't think that it would happen again in any system bigger than a city council, you're deluded.)
Well, running two candidates was a really great idea and it worked. It worked too well though, and Jefferson and his man for the VP slot, Aaron Burr, tied. So, they should have just had one Burr person abstain to give Jefferson the nod, but suddenly Burr decides to try a power play and grab the top spot for himself, since by pure electors count, he and Jefferson were dead even. Well, this pissed everyone off and there was a lot of fighting and wrangling, but in the end, Jefferson took the Presidency, Burr went nuts and killed Alexander Hamilton, and we passed an amendment specifying that VP and President be elected separately.
Moral of the Story?
For positions of power, parties will generate as many hacks as it takes to fill all available slots. Even if we specify that the candidates have to be from a different party, we'll just end up with a "four" party system: Republicans, RepublicansB, Democrats, and DemocratsB. IRV is a pipe dream.
The Green Party supports closing overseas military bases and reducing the military budget by 50% over ten years.
Ok, americans have been whipped into a fervor of fear cby the current administration, and the past 10 administrations have done nothing but fuel the hate for americans worldwide.
Doing what he says above is plain suicide. If we were a peaceful nation that was generally liked (Canada or Japan for example) I certianly could see this and support that ideal.
But doing that now and within the next 25 years is suicide. A better plan is to start with FREEZING military spending and start spending time and money repairing the absolute mess we have made in the world in regards to global ideas and attitudes towards the USA and USAians. (Americans cover Canadians through Chileans. If you live in the American Continents guess what, you're an American, I refuse to lump our good friends north and south of us into the huge hate-pile that is towards Americans.)
What is needed is a campain to the rest of this planet of "oops! sorry! we did wrong, how can we fix it?"
Maybe after 10 years of that we might be liked again.
It's sad that in order to travel abroad safely our company tells us to travel and buy Canadian things, and to informa ANYONE that asks that you are Canadian and to never EVER admit that you are American or from the USA.
because it Strengthens the Duopoly. Even tho smaller Parties gain better numbers, they lose the Spoiler effect, the only thing that forces officeholders to adress their concerns.
Greeens and Libertarians should work out an alliance based on their areas of agreement, and win some elections. the areas where they do not overlap on policy are not something that's changeable in the medium term anyhow. End the War, dismantle the Police State and the Drugwar, and compete on the est in subsequent elections.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Democracy should be as inclusive as possible. Our country is made up of immigrants. Your place of birth should not disqualify someone from serving as president or vice president.
Actually, our current specification for President is quite immigrant friendly. Remember, this was put into place because, as it is in the UK's house of Lords, your title, or seat, is handed down from father to son.
Regardless of what you do, you can never be elected to this house. But the US system is different, it says that regardless of the heritage of your father, so long as your are born here in the US (to insure you have no title and or allegiance to another country) - you can hold the highest office. It is actually quite profound once you realize why it is the way it is.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
And yet he accuses something/someone of being racist in nearly response.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Racist!
(sarcasm)
As far as I know, there's only one race of people: humans. When did people start coloring themselves? I talked once with a female stripper that confided in me that she loved to roll around in paint, then roll onto large sheets of paper as a form of artistic expression. I never got a private viewing, mind you, but she sure was a person of color.
I guess it still bugs me to see an arbitrary line of division between "white people" and "everyone else". Apart from the chaffing, it is rather intellectually amusing that people (even green ones) can still think along those lines.
The penal system can't hold all the people that do it. Fill in your own blank.
There was a case in the UK of the Spastic Society having to change their name to Scope, due to the connotations the word spastic was having.
This seemed pretty senseless to me, and so I took upon myself to prove the pointlessness of the act by using the word Scope in a negative fashion(where once I would call someone a spastic, I would now use the word scope).
Unfortunately, it never seemed to catch on.
OK, you have a good POINT (c:
--- You are unique, just like everyone else...
I would like to see the process streamlined so that undocumented workers, who are here and are paying taxes and contributing to our society, can obtain citizenship more simply and easily.
As an immigrant myself, I hate it when politicians seem to think people who broke the law and sneaked in illegally should have an easy free ride while people who legally go through proper channels have to submit themselves to the CIA, FBI and INS background checks, financial probes, demeaning interviews, and treated like a criminal and get to pay several thousand dollars to do so. Why bother going through the legal immigration process when you can sneak in and get everyone bending over backwards to get you a driving license, housing, free healthcare, fast tracked citizenship etc.
ahem.... look at chart one at this link
l d. php
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-US-wor
After you cut your spending in HALF, you STILL have the most powerful military in the world. In addition to the fact that nukes sort of make a conventional military only good for invading things rather than homeland defence.
I am freakin sick of american militarism, look in the mirror it's a disgrace. You used to be isolationist... you did that from an isolationist starting point, you can do it again, no need for a standing military of the capacity you currently have.
I am just sick of it. All you right wing american fuck-tards go "the UN is pushing us around"..... The pentagon spends the UN's YEARLY budget every THIRTY TWO HOURS.
The "war on drugs" is racist and an insult to all Americans. This "war" has incarcerated people of color at a much higher rate than white people. It has resulted in senseless attacks on innocent people and on our Constitution. We have to treat drug addiction as a health problem, not as a crime. That is just a dumb comment. I am addicted to tobacco. Should americas or my BCBS pay for it. Hell no, it is an addiction. That means I am doing this to myself. I am trying my hardest to quit. But show someone else pay for my weakness, no.
As far as the war on drug being racist, I would say that is pretty stupid. That is like saying hockey is racist. Racist, is a term you cannot just throw around. I have heard this comment many times, I think BET is racist, I think Rainbow Coalition is racist, I think I could point at a lot of things and say they are racist but that does not make it true.Dont spread FUD....seems no one learns this lesson. Unless this guy has talked to some judges, juries, and lawyers and they all said they are racist...well then maybe we could say that.
I am independent, but if this is what the green party believes, to hell with ya. I dont need any parnoid party with delsuions. I am voting for dubya this year....I would vote for kerry before I would vote against him....that joker cracks me the hell up...
Deserving got nothing to do with it.....shuffle
I didn't notice this when posting the questions, but isn't the one about copyright a little misleading?
Under current law it is illegal to watch CSS encoded DVDs under Linux or any other Open Source operating system.
To be fair, any Linux software developer has as much ability as a software developer for Windows or OS X to license the CSS decoder and write a DVD viewing application for Linux. The difference between Linux and Windows and OS X is that no company has stepped-up to do so.
I mean, people using Linux get so upset over this issue all the time... so how come not a SINGLE person or company to date has just licensed the technology and make the damned DVD player? It can't be THAT hard, could it?
Comment of the year
Is that what we are calling people from Canada now?
It's not just the south that blocks the right to vote for felons. Of the 50 states, 48 of them block voting by inmates; 33 block voting by those on parole; and 28 block voting by those on probation. It's a very wide-spread practice, and I think justified -- the whole point of a sentence is to punish someone by removing that person's freedoms.
Now, whether the voting rights should be returned after a person has completed a sentence is another matter entirely. Personally, I'm in favor of restoration of most rights once a sentence is complete, voting among them.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
In case you haven't noticed, the give-a-shit-meter for Rhode Island is permanently pegged at zero.
There are states, and there are states with big numbers of votes. If you aren't one of the big states, you don't get visited or campaigned: you're just "a democratic state" or "a republican state".
1: We're counting on the 3 votes from East Elbona.
2: Bitch better have my money!
Notice the similarity?
Our country is made up of immigrants. Your place of birth should not disqualify someone from serving as president or vice president.
This is why he will not get my vote.
I am a decendent of immigrants to the US. Certainly there have been multiple non-native US citizens that could meet the qualifications for a good US president but I have a foundational principle that I feel at the core of my being: if you want to lead the entire nation I demand your blood in the soil from birth to know where your loyalties are rooted.
Speak truth to power.
I don't like the idea of us policing the rest of the world.
An imperial garrison is not a police force.
His rational behind calling the Electoral College racist is interesting. Because of the 3/4 person formula, slave states got more electoral votes.
But this also applies to the number of representatives in Congress! Is Cobb saying that we have a racist Congress because there are too many members? Wow! Talk about taking quotas to the extreme!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I really enjoyed reading this enterview. I agree with most of what Mr. Coob says. If I were an american I would probably vote on him.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
The world ends for more and more American soldiers and their families each month because we are in Iraq. President Bush put us in Iraq.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Republicans can't be very smart if they can't bother to use capital letters.
My neighbor has the same great answers to these questions. Unfortunately his and David Cobb's chances of becoming President and putting these thoughts into action are about the same (i.e. zero)
We have to change the election system for all this to matter.
We don't need another form of energy? We can just conserve and we will have enough?
I can see the power company becoming like the Soup Nazi now and saying "No Power for YOU!" when you want turn on a light.
Come on now, give us specifics. Given that your power use in the U.S. has gone up almost EVERY single year for the last few decades, how much would we have to "conserve". What you are really saying is that the U.S. citizens should go with significantly less electricity than they do now. I would like to see some specifics on what our current rate of power is, and how you would mandate this conservation. Ahhh there is government getting involved in our life with another mandate/law. It looks like the Green Party isn't exactly about less government regulations....
Also on our election process. Your suggested voteing method would also be racest. It would descriminate against white rural americans. The exact places you are trying to protect. Places like most of middle America. In your system someone could win NewYork, California, Chicago and perhaps a few other States/Cities and win the election. A candidate wouldn't give a rats ass about Montana, Indiana, Ohio, etc. They do now. Granted they care more about California than Ohio, but in our current system Ohio is currently getting some serious attention. So when the people of California and New York (and the city of Chicago) use up all their natural resources and want to put their trash in say.... Montana, Montana will little say. Yes they would stop it for a short while, but when the national election took place they would have almost no say. This is exactly why we have the current system. It is also exactly why each state has a number of congressmen set to their population, but have TWO senators. It does give those with more people a little more power, but balances it out in the senate.
Lastly I would like to know:
At what point the green party considers a unborn child to be a citizen?
If you believe that North Koria is a serious threat to the U.S. and you have exhausted all diplomatic processes, would you use force to remove that threat?
In the current war in Iraq, what would be your plan? What would you consider a successful ending?
Would you raise taxes on any Americans? Would you lower them? What is your view of a flat tax?
What is your view on schools and businesses being forced to hire/admit certain races of people.
What is your view of software development being done in India and sent to the U.S.? What is your view of free trade?
Would you increase or decrease the size of our armed services?
Given the Greens party view of the environment. One can assume that if elected you would impose significantly higher EPA standards. Those companies are currently moving some of their work to Mexico because of their lack of an EPA. How would you solve this problem?
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
... as was the disenfranchisement that occurred in Florida...
Say it enough and it will become true. Not one person has been identified as being "disenfranchised", no matter how hard they (many groups) tried.
Where is the all-important evidence?
Wasn't the electoral college created by the constitution, which is in the late 1700's? The 3/5 compromise wasn't until much later.
"Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee." --Bender
This quote smacks of party politics. No party should champian "people of color." Is black a color? Is white a color? How about yellow-brown? Or red-brown? Saying "I support blacks" is just as racist as saying "I hate blacks" simply by the nature that you are separating them into a group. Equality does not mean adjusting the scales to be even - it means getting rid of the scale entirely.
The democrats say that too. And the republicans. It's easy for a party who is outside the system to say that, but what is the plan for doing it?
I said the same thing last week. Someone from Slashdot corrected me. IRV is worse than our current system - the problems are subtle to see but very significant. Here is why. I didn't believe it until I read it.
This is a naive response. You can't just say "okay, let's replace all the state election systems and change all the state constitutions all at once, and forget the steps that get us there." This country's system is an anachronistic relic. Good call there. But you must tinker with it until you get what you want.
One common thread amongs the smaller party replies is that they are often ideologically good, but realistically bad. I heard a Green party spokesperson on NPR say that if the Green party wins, they will immediately withdraw all troops from Iraq and apologize. That's beautiful, but it would also plunge Iraq into civil war, cause the UN to hate us even more, and kill millions of Iraqis. Great in concept, but unrealistic. We need people who realize that politics is compromise, and that small steps are what move us forward.
This is the most political of all the answers. "Undocumented workers" is a nice way to say criminals who illegally tresspassed, dodged or lied to border police, and/or forged identities to get here. They are criminals and should be sent home. There are people who wait patiently for work visas for years to get into the US. But since the illegal immigrants have gotten good enough at forging IDs to vote, they are now a constituent base and must be appealed to.
50% of my coworkers are immigrants, and I respect every one of them. I went for lunch today, and I was served by immigrants. I respect every one of these people from IT professionals to minimum-wage workers. But it is really scary when we decide that we need to give voting rights to people who shouldn't even be allowed to walk the streets. I really hope it is just some massive trick to have them all come out, admit it, and ship them home. What's the unemployment rate right now?
Just so everyone understand where I am coming from, I am an independent who voted for Greens, Libertarians, Democrats, and Republicans. I look at candidate's qualifications first, and the party has no bearing on my decision. I'm not anti-green, I merely question some of these responses. I do fear that some of these Green part
It's worth keeping in mind that the only legitimate (afaict) role of the electoral college is actually to psuedo-normalize votes by giving less weight to heavily-populated but like-minded urban areas, relative to the less-populated areas, such as the farming Midwest. There are good reasons to do this, for instance the welfare of the country depends on the farmers as much as on the people who don't really care about the farmers. It would obviously be a bad thing for a politician to win the country by catering to the multimillion $ population centers and financing his promises by raping the farmers to oblivion.
However, Cobb's argument here is basically just a repeated endorsement of Instant Runoff voting. If a state is 60% party X and 40% party Y, and it has, say, 5 seats in the EC, it's intuitively appealing to give 3 of those seats to X and 2 to Y. As it stands, X gets all of them. This is confusing, because the EC is supposed to act (if it is legitimate at all) as an intermediary between the people and the FedGov.
The need for a better voting algorithm is obvious, but Instant Run-off Voting (IRV) isn't it. IRV is a particular voting algorithm that produces some unpredicatable (to the voter) results. There are much better methods available, such as approval voting and the Condorcet method.
IRV is little more than a snappy name covering bad math. It makes a lousy poster-child for the movement to adopt an alternative voting method. How bad is the math on IRV? Under certain circumstances, you can benefit your candidate less by ranking him highest than if you had ranked him lower. That is not a result we want adopted. That's actually worse than the current situation where if you cast your single vote for your true favorite, the candidate you dislike most may win.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Iraq is a whole other kettle of fish...
-sam
I was just here, where did I go?
"Mathematical algorithms are discovered, not invented"
I'm strongly opposed to software patents, but this statement just makes no sense to me. Proofs are discovered. Algorithms are invented, surely?
Whoops, my bad. I spoke too quickly. It's been quite a few years since high school US history.
"Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee." --Bender
At least the raw materials used for solar and wind power can be reused and replaced over time.
Nuclear is just another form of non-renewable energy source, like coal, oil and natural gas. Once it's gone, it's gone and we'll be even more S.O.L.'d than before, given our current increasing rate of energy use.
IMNSHO, the only place nuclear makes any sense is in space, where a few thousand years to decay doesn't matter so much and the space between stars is dark.
--The more you know, the less you know.
Yep that is why the Republican National Convention was the white-ist convention anyone has ever seen. You Republican yanks really do live in a fantasy land where true is false and false is true.
But what are you goint to do when every election gets normalized to a tie?
Co-operate instead of fighting? Or does that sound too un-American?
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Damn, you are stupid.
No, I think what he meant was that because slave states had greater representation in the Electoral College, their (presumably racist) opinions held more sway.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I'm extremely disappointed, and frankly rather suprised, that there weren't any questions concerning foreign policy that made it through. I certainly think that's one of the most relevant issues facing any candidate today.
In any case, from his comments about halving the defense budget and a couple statements about Iraq and Afghanistan, I have to assume his policy tends toward rather extreme isolationism. Is there anyone out there more familiar with the Greens who can clarify?
If that is their position, I have to say that this is a party I can never support. We as Americans are members of the world's sole remaining superpower. We have the ability to wield that power as a force of good in the world, and to stop evil men and regimes from doing evil things. Those that would prefer us to sit tight between our oceans and ignore atrocities around the globe, I not only refuse to tolerate, but condemn.
There is no worse evil than the apathy of good men.
Women aren't a minority.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
He said it is a racist (among other things) anachronism. Note the word "anachronism". The point is that the Electoral College system was created, in part, to prop up the racist slave institutions of the south. Since nobody is interested in doing that anymore, at least one intended function of the Electoral College is anachronistic.
It is too bad that all these years since President Clinton tried to explain it to y'all, many conservatives don't understand that it really does depend on what your definition of "is" is.
The Electoral College "is" a racist anachronism. That doesn't mean that it functions to enforce/abet racism today (although it might, and maybe Mr. Cobb thinks so -- but his followup discussion suggests that this is NOT what he was getting at).
there were non black slaves
Were there white slaves? Where? I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I'm unaware of it. The Constitution doesn't actually refer to slaves, it refers to "free Persons" and "all other Persons". To my knowledge, "all other Persons" was never interpreted to included indentured servants, but I don't know that for a fact. I've never even given it any thought.
And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee ...
So yes, they get extra help -- because they're poor, not because they're white. Same as the others -- get help because they're poor, not because they are of color.
Except that you are overlooking the entire issue of affirmative action, what it is and why these people support it. Their mindset is that the only poor people that matter are hispanics and blacks, and similarly in doing so they also manage to insinuate that all black or hispanic people are poor. I would imagine that minorities would take offense at this, but I guess nobody wants to turn down handouts. You can't deny that many schools and companies still use race as a factor in admissions or hiring. They get away with it because they are perceived to be helping "the poor" but all they are really doing is creating another injustice based on a racist logical fallacy.
Moreover, you can't even label it as "assisting minorities" because as it turns out Asians do not meet this "poor" stereotype so they are conveniently left out. Yet another gaping hole in their claim that anybody but the white Christian male deserves this assistance.
Equal should mean equal in the eyes of the law.
This is pretty decent. I actually agree with all of the candidate's statements, with a few caveats:
... a number of campaign issues.
:) Nor do I like it when alternatives are suggested which are neither cleaner nor more economically viable than nuclear (such as solar power).
1) Lay off the "racist" stuff a bit. I mean, there's no doubt that there are a number of racist institutions in your country (I'm Canadian myself), but I rather suspect that belaboring the point so much does more harm than good. I'd make it a single campaign issue instead of weaving it into
2) Generating electricity from solar energy is far more polluting than nuclear energy. The chemicals and energy expended to produce solar cells are obscene. It's really quite disgusting. You can still use solar to heat water for home use and such, but generating electricity from it is currently no-win and won't be viable (from a net-energy standpoint) for decades to come (and there are companies which are betting their future on it - the sooner they get it done, the better off they'll be, but even they don't delude themselves into thinking it'll happen *soon*).
Wind power is great, at least when care is taken not to dramatically change weather patterns. It's pretty local in nature, unfortunately, and I haven't seen any math showing that it's a viable energy source for the entirety of your country.
That leaves, pretty much, hydro as the only viable renewable energy source available within the forseeable future. Unfortunately, hydro power itself is extremely traumatic to the local environment.
Nuclear, however, is very clean. It's cleaner than all known energy sources excepting wind power and possibly hydro power (depending on how you define "clean" - hydro power destroys entire ecosystems). The *only* problems with nuclear power are its nonrenewable nature and the toxic waste it creates. The nonrenewable nature of the power is obviously something to consider; the known sources of nuclear fuel could only support modern usage levels for a few hundred years (I think I saw an estimate which said up to a thousand or so, but I can't find it any more). That's enough time to support high industry while we come up with something better though. The toxic waste is largely a marketing worry. Did you know that oil companies probably supported Green Peace's anti-nuclear movement? Go ahead and search for papers written on it, they're out there. There are natural systems in America and elsewhere which have kept things far more mobile than nuclear waste (like, say, water and life) contained for tens of millions of years. There are *truly* viable systems available for storage of nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years - long enough for them to be totally harmless by the time the containment systems fail and the (now non-toxic) waste is released into the ecosystem.
As you can gather, I don't like seeing unsubstantiated fearmongering when it comes to energy sources
3) This relates to the nuclear power thing in that I believe they're both based on FUD. Or perhaps more correctly, upon unsubstantiated fears or maybe even a bit of moral extremism. What's the third thing? Genetic modification of life forms. I don't think we should be doing it lightly, and at this point we *certainly* shouldn't be doing it outside of the laboratory, but to espouse a position that is "against" a *science* smacks of near-religious extremism.
In summary: if I were down in the US there, I might vote for the Green party. It's still not a real clincher, because the three points outlined above indicate some level of nonrational extremism that's a bit scary. NEVER "oppose" an action or a science or a school of thought - just oppose the consequences. ie: instead of ruling out "nuclear power", rule out "brain-numblingly stupid levels of pollution". Keep minds open to how the problems you actually want to solve (polution in this example) *can* be solved. In the case of GM food, the only way it'll ever be safe is if it's
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Consider also that many European groups consider themselves to be minorities -- Italians and the Irish seem to be particularly vocal about this -- and they fall into the Caucasian level.
And at what genetic level does one become a minority? One black ancestor six generations ago may have little influence on your current genetics, but does it make you black?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Sounds good to me, but why not do this at the same time as fighting corruption in the rest of the government? It's an age-old logical/rhetorical fallacy to cast things as either/or when they're not. "Well, I'd sure it would be great if the US gov used more free software, but we've got to concentrate on health care!" Huh?
There's an old political joke "sometimes the Republicans lose, and sometimes the Democrats lose, but the bureaucrats always win".
What is the Green dodging when he refuses to agree that corruption in the bureaucracy should be dealth with?
-that's who makes the laws and the decisions which support the transnational corporate empire. Actually, Congress votes on, and the President signs, legislation that *enables* various bureaus to pass the detailed legislation. Do you think Congress specifies how many acres of BLM land are open to cattle, or how the feds should pay farmers not to grow food, or how the bidding works for military projects? No! Congress leaves all of those details to others...and, as we all know "the devil is in the details". Saying otherwise is refusing to acknowledge how government works.
Oh, yeah, one more thing "transnational corporate empire" ?!? Another "WTF" moment.
Resolved:
- I do not vote for people who wear tinfoil hats
- I do not vote for people who call dollars "federal reserve fiat currency"
- I do not vote for people who complain about Jewish bankers
- I do not vote for people who have - even once in their life - used the phrase "transnational corporate empire".
You want to be considered a serious candidate? Then put down the "Free Mumia!" level rhetoric.The halls of Congress are filled with lobbyists representing the international profiteers who play Congress like puppets on strings.
Yep. And when the Greens control how every single acre of land is used, and you need a permit and special dispensation to spread DEET on yourself before going on a hike, all the lobbyists are going to pack up and move to Canada?
I should beleive that...what?
If we take the private money out of our public elections and away from our public officials, we'll go a long way in addressing corruption and ensuring that we truly have a government by the people.
Donations to political parties aren't a sign of corruption, they're a sign that government has power. How many of you are worried about crypto rights, free software, etc., and have given money to the EFF? How many of you have a candidate you think is dangerous, and have given money to the other guy, to help him get elected?
Saying "money is the problem" ignores the fact that people have differing views, that each of us wants some politician to win some race and some other politician to lose, and that we sometimes give money to help make this happen.
When money is outlawed, do you think that folks will stop trying to influence elections? No! It just moves into backrooms. Look at the last round of campaign finance reform we had - now instead of folks just donating to their favorite candidates, we've got a proliferation of seperate groups, all running attack ads. I can't get too upset about lots of free speech myself, but my point is that political speech sees censorship as damage and routes around it. You can't stop it. Thinking you can is naive.
We also have to stop the revolving door between industry, Congress and the White House.
It sounds nice, but tell me how you're going to implement it? The "once you work for government you may never work for private business again" rule?
There have to be much tighter restrictions on public servants going over to private industry.
Again, sounds great, but it also sounds like this politician hasn't actually thought any of this through.
...the only legitimate (afaict) role of the electoral college is actually to psuedo-normalize votes...
This is confusing, because the EC is supposed to act (if it is legitimate at all) as an intermediary between the people and the FedGov.
Additionally, the electoral college exists to secure States' rights. I think you're expressing how you think our representation should be. Many people like the idea of direct (or as direct as possible) representation. When in fact, it is the State that actually votes. This was done on purpose. And in the wide scope of history, it makes sense. States reserve the right to cast their votes however they want. Two states do have somewhat of a split between their electoral votes. And any other state could do so if it so chose.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
The Electoral College is an historical, anti-democratic and racist anachronism which needs to be abolished. If you're wondering why it is racist, remember that when it was created, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person to determine representation, yet they couldn't vote. Therefore, slave states had greater representation in the Electoral College-as if counting any human being as a portion of person wasn't insulting enough.
Ok this guy doesn't even know what he is talking about. All blacks can vote, and they can sway the popular vote towards either party. There is no racism here. The electorial college was created not to be racist, but because the founding fathers didn't think citizens were smart enough or informed enough to vote for someone. So they needed some insurance so that the popular person wouldn't necessarily be elected, but the candidate who was supported by the elite and learned would. While I agree the electorial college should be abolished, I don't think it is racist. If anything, it is biased towards the two parties. Third parties don't stand a chance as long as the electorial college exists.
The "war on drugs" is racist and an insult to all Americans. This "war" has incarcerated people of color at a much higher rate than white people. It has resulted in senseless attacks on innocent people and on our Constitution. We have to treat drug addiction as a health problem, not as a crime.
Is there something in African American DNA that forces them to use illegal drugs? If not, then how are anti-drug policies racist? The law says that it is illegal to use drugs, so how exactly are these people innocent? It is an addiction, but did someone force them to take their first hit? And were they unaware it was illegal when they did so? I guess the Greens don't believe in personal responsibility.
Greens have moved beyond a lesser-evil approach to politics as well as to the issues you describe above. I cannot under any circumstances accept nuclear power and genetically modified foods as a healthy alternative. There are such simpler and more sensible ways to approach these issues. We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy. We could replace nuclear power-and coal and other dirty forms of producing power-with the abundance of solar energy which shines on our country. Wind turbines, like the one I visited in Nebraska recently, are also part of the solution.
So he ignores the fact that the latest advances in nuclear power make it a safer alternative? So he wants to use windmills and solar power? They aren't economical, efficient enough, don't produce enough power for large-scale needs, and there are many issues to work out. How many birds does a nuclear power plant kill? And talking about conservation? So which is it...freedom and personal choice, or government-mandated energy conservation?
//m
It was a successful livestock feed. One food manufacturer illegally took Starlink (which they were *not* supposed to put into human food) and put it into human food. This is the same as putting anything else that isn't legal to put into human food in there. Beyond that, there have never been any medical problems caused by Starlink, nor to my knowledge does anyone have any serious concerns theories that Starlink would cause medical problems. As a matter of fact, at the time that the one food manufacturer misused Starlink, Starlink was waiting for approval for use in human food.
The only concern that Starlink raised (and I'm not trying to minimize it) is that a food vendor improperly used something not approved for human consumption in food intended for humans. That is certainly not a genetically-enhanced-food-specific problem.
Frankly, I think that people affected by European agricultural interests (which don't want the predominantly US-based genetic engineering industry to dominant them), which have run PR campaigns against genetically-enhanced food. People were quite scared of GE food by the time that Starlink rolled around, and GE opponents simply used Starlink as a rallying point for abuses of GE. Really, though, Starlink wasn't a particularly nasty case.
May we never see th
The solution to eliminate corruption in government is not to increase the size of the government and hope it does a good job.
He says that he opposes government interference in out lives (when it comes to sexuality etc.) but at the same time he wants the government to be bigger and regulate businesses more. For example, how will he make sure that there are no GM foods? Obviously, he wants to increase government regulations about food manufacturers. This will lead to a bigger bureaucracy and more corruption, not less.
Also, he ignores various truths like (a) nuclear energy is actually safer than the alternatives and more cost effective (b) genetically modified foods are just as safe as (or safer than) organic foods and so on.
None of these three parties tackle the issue of bloated government and how to hold the individual to be above the state.
All your favorite sites in one place!
He has some good points. Some not so hot in fact quite chilly ones too. But he's more knowledgeable and friendlier than Bush, Kerry , or anyone in their retinues, to Slashdot (that is if Slashdot asked them for comments, I didn't catch the outcome on that).
My family's always been "Republican" but I'm quite fed up with the achievements such as they are of the Bush family, and I agree with much of what the poster says. I also cannot forgive Bush for what he did to Colin Powell, the only high U.S. official I remember being fiercely impressed with.
But I don't think he's going to be able to get all those things rammed down Congress' throat if he wins. My immediate problems are: overuse of the word racist in a written comment, no question elimination of nuclear power, slash of the military soon after 9/11 and oh, does he remember N. Korea threatening nuclear war? That last one bugs me a bit since I think he was saying he would turn the city I am currently in (Tokyo) into a sea of fire or some such (again). I think his stance requires realistic alternatives (or some kind of proof.. links?) to say that solar power can save us all, etc. Also I'd like to hear about his position on Burt Rutan's crew and space exploration in general. And how about info about how to handle the food and water shortage (water is here, food will be too when GM is theoretically outlawed). Unfortunately the comments come across as a sweeping, charismatic work of fiction which are well scaled for mayoral elections perhaps but not for solving all of our massive intertwined problems. I think his ideas on health, law, freedom, schools, and voting are all interesting and should at least be carried in the NY Times as-is so people can see what the contenders have to say. Should be good for the Greens to have to defend what they say (and they are probably better at it overseas already..)
It just sounds like as it is, if/when he actually entered office it would be like a sandbag dropping on his shoulders when the reality of it all hit him. Might overcome it with a stellar team, haven't heard anything about them, maybe it's the conspiracy (maybe real but come on)? Finally this is the most brainpower I want to expend on a candidate who himself does not in fact seem to intend to win this election. Heck with him!
Well I figure my absentee vote will go to Kerry as he is the lesser of two evils, and in the current voting system that will help get Bush out of office more than voting for anyone else would. Sounds like the Greens are based on loftiness and ignorance, plus a few really ingenious ideas which it would be nice for one of the major parties to pick up. Too bad, I'd be ten times more impressed if they could get someone well known and respected to run. Of course they couldn't pay a successful CEO.. hmm are these guys even interested in capitalism? Only game in town for now, it seems to work to a point. Maybe they should ask Soros? Oh never mind. How about if all the contenders joined together? Nader as President, this guy as VP, Soros as Secretary of State or something, etc. Or maybe Kerry should listen to all these guys' rhetoric, steal a few lines, get a massage to loosen up, and have a real showdown with Bush that gets him the vote of both intelligent and unintelligent Americans. Doesn't seem he's doing too well on either side.
Here's another suggestion.. how about somebody making a realistic, convincing suggestion for a world government? (Not one ruled solely by U.S.' superpower military force). Come to think of it, slashdot has more science fiction lovers I would expect than any other audience for a political discussion, people are therefore you might think a little more imaginative or open to freewheeling discussions along these lines. I'm curious about what people would say if asked to imagine the ideal world society for the 21st century, and sketch out in anecdotes what the U.S. would be like in such a world. Aside from say the nanotechnology of 50-100 years from now, how ought the world look by the end of the Century, and what are the key features necessary in the U.S. to approach it, so that we can have the ideal society of the future today. 'Course someone is just going to ask for free movies and mp3z..
I can understand and agree with that, but the Green is arguing that the electoral college - currently - is still racist.
This is silly.
What the Electoral College is is slightly anti-direct-democracy.
Which makes sense, when you realize that the US was formed as sort of a UN or EU in North America - an organization *above* state level. Note that in the rest of the world "state" means government / nation. Spain is a state. France is a state. 200 yrs ago New York was a state, with it's own currency and defense, and so was Rhode Island.
The E.C. was a method to give each state somewhat equal power, just as Spain, France, and Iceland each have somewhat equal power in the UN.
"I'm not racist, some of my best friends are black." So says the RACIST Republicans.
Sorry, but all respect disappeared the moment he used the term frankenfood. He rattled on and on about current policies being racist, but then he turns to GM food and suddenly drops to the level of a 5 year old by calling it names. This is almost always the sign of someone feabily assaulting something they don't understand and have just been convinced they are not supposed to like it.
I'm not saying I'm for or against GM food, but a candidate for the presidency of the united states could have produced a more intelligent argument aginst it than just calling it "frankenfood"
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Great, by doing that they will have plenty of time to stay in our financial affairs, bank accounts, financial transactions, and gun safes. They talk about things like having not just a minimum wage, but also a maximum wage. Basically, to enforce their financial plans will require law enforcement powers that may be even worse than what they say they want to get rid of. I sympathize strongly with their ideals but it ultimately sounds like they want to create their own police state, like somehow having a police state will protect workers and minorities. They tried that once. It was called a "dictatorship of the proletariat". It sounded like a great idea but pretty soon there were mountains of bodies of people they "saved". It's the old logic of "we had to burn the village in order to save it."
Rich blacks and hispanics don't need any help to get into college. They just need to go to school and not fuck around. Affirmitive action apologists believe that this underrepresentation is due to socio-economic status, therefore it does end up being tied to poverty.
- Spurious reference to Rodney King.
- Whites are a minority in the state that featured the Rodney King beating.
- Cites study of blacks as representative of minorities.
What a bunch of racist bullshit.Obviously it must be more then that, because he used the word 'is'. The word 'is' is in the present tense, not the past tense.
The only other possibilities if his English is crappy, or he believes in time travel.
well, seeing as how vast swaths of the south were african americans, id have to say that a true one-person one-vote secret ballot system back then would have landed an anti-slavery person in the white house.
of course it would have been impossible, because under corporate oligarchy (which slavery was just a form of), all elections are shams controlled by elites.
Who is to die if the crops fail from something that a herbicide or pesticide could prevent ? Betch it ain't Americans. It'll be the poor bloody Indians or Africans. And "Green" America will do what then?
America will actually have farms grow food.
Currently we pay them to not grow food, to keep prices higher so we can import it for cheaper wages... thus screwing the farmers in a slow death.
Also, people might get a bag of chips instead of the BIG GRAB of chips and save about seventy pounds off of themselves.
Small independent American farmers will actually be able to feed their children when the price that has been deflated below survival wages actually climbs to the point of a sustainable economy, instead of the global predatory farming practices that have happened today.
Just look at the Thunderdome wasteland Europe has become for going against genetically modified foods... those poor bastards are starving to death!
We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy.
This man is out of touch with reality. I'd love it if the American people were less addicted to energy consumption, but they are, and that's not going to change. Never, in the course of human history, has a society reduced it's consumption rate without a catastrophic change coming first. (i.e. plague, war wiping it out, etc.) Making policy based on hopes that human nature will change is a fool's errand.
Do you have any chance in hell of being elected?
Let me answer for him: NO.
Does he have a chance at getting votes? YES.
Would these votes otherwise go to Kerry, in most cases? YES.
Could this cause Kerry to lose by a small margin? YES.
Maybe we should look over what happened in 2000 with Gore and Ralph Nader. <obligatory deleted>
Going to Instant Runoff effectively ends the debate for a decade, setting back any chance to enact a proportional system.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
What? This doesn't represent your actual views? Now you know how a Green might feel after reading your comment.
10 out of 10 Terrorists agree - Anybody but Bush in 2004
Nice sig... but yer kidding, right? The REAL terrorists LOVE the fact that Bush went off and attacked Iraq... which has no connection to Al Qaeda, 9/11, the Cole bombing, etc, etc... and has completely ignored them, leaving them free to plot their next attack on us.
Now, if we close all of our overseas bases of operation, and we get attacked, where does that leave us?
... and you have the utter gall to think that this has no force? What the hell do you think a nuclear aircraft carrier IS, anyway? It sure as fuck isn't a DEFENSIVE weapon; carriers are meant to bring an entire air force to other nations in the world and attack them.
You've paid hundreds of billions of dollars for a nuclear navy, with many carrier groups holding the finest naval aviators in the world, with nuclear power plants that allow them to cruise for years
The 20th Century was filled with examples of American ships offshore of other people's countries, bombarding targets inland. Get a sense of perspective, Ace.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
So when Christian Republicans say that inter-racial marriage is wrong and a sin they are NOT being racist!?
We have too many freeloaders. There are many who are fully capable, who are *LAZY*.
There aren't as many as you seem to think.
My wife manages a regional welfare-to-work program. She deals with welfare recipients *every day.* Her job: get them off the dole, and into the workforce. She experiences *every day* the reason *most* people are on welfare.
The system is stacked against them.
Most of the people she helps *want* to be independent. Many have come on poor times because of lost jobs, or poor seasonal work performance. (What's the difference between a fisherman and a large pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.) We live in a country where 10% of the population controls 50% of the wealth, but only pays 28% of the taxes. We live in a country with a 3% unemployment rate.
How are these people you call lazy supposed to get a toehold in a world like this?
There are some that are truly lazy, and expect a hand-out. But these are few. Very few. Within a population of 50,000, there are 3 that she claims, "Even Jesus hates."
A captialistic society is dog-eat-dog, and it makes everyone better for it.
What's your evidence for this? I see a lot of Randian rhetoric, but very little evidence. In fact, the evidence I *do* see suggests that those in power will do everything they can to retain and increase power. Without government regulation (or at least government oversight), those in control will destroy potential competitors *before* they become competitors.
I am well-off, and I'd prefer *not* to live in a dog-eat-dog world. I think everyone would be better off if we realized we were all in this together, and only through kindness, cooperation, and good intentions will we come out the other end a sane and good society. I don't put my faith in some vague "market," or in well-debunked and overly-simplicistic views of economic theory.
The market looks out for the market, not people. And I don't give a fuck about the market. I care about people.
Granted, I doubt many people share that point of view, and many people would exploit anything vaguely innocent for their own profit. But there you go.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The half of the comments which isn't critisizing him because of saying certain words like "racist" (which is nearly as 3vil as "nazi" in germany, i suppose) or "frankenfood" is mocking around because him opposing nuclear power and asking you to save energy.
Well, ok, to you it seems as if nuclear power is the non-plus-ultra energy source (i'm talking of fission based reactors, fusion of course is nice and clean) and should be pushed to release the country of his thirst for oil. But have you ever thought of uran/plutionium being a limited resource (as i may mention, to me it seems as if most americans don't consider any resource as limited, but however), just like oil? It may be an alternative now but it's in no way suitable as an all time energy source.
Regenerative sources like sun, wind, bio-mass... are the only long term way (except a fusion technology were waiting for since 1960 or so) to have our society survive!
And please don't start commenting on how Americans need the 24 barrels of oil per year to survive. Since Americans have the highest oil/head/year ratio in the whole world there have to be some ways to save energy which don't conflict the American Way. (Like turning off the air condition which makes your buildings big refrigerators and sitting inside without a jacket, for example)
~AnonymousCoward
I don't support most of the ideas of the Green Party.
That being said, at least I can respect the Green Party for sticking to their principles. They seem well meaning at least.
Unlike the Democrats, the Green Party is an actual left-leaning party, rather than a slightly less-right-leaning party than the Republicans.
The Democrats pretend to champion the little guy, but they are just as sold out as the Republicans.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
How many people reading this discussion think that more informed and varied comments are being made here than in actual government? Perhaps the government should be replaced with SlashCode, with (Score:5, Insightful) comments being considered newly passed laws :P
On a personal level, I was born in Korea (RoK) at the age of 2, and moved to the United States, I hold no allegiance or title to another country, no more than say my native born Korean friend. Now not that I'm going to run for president, but why should he be allowed to run while I cannot?
IRV is also a bad idea, albeit less bad than FPTP in some respects.
Why is the Green party so fixated on IRV? It's especially bizarre that a 3rd party would intentionally pretend that there are only two choices for a voting system.Say it enough and it will become true. Not one person has been identified as being "disenfranchised", no matter how hard they (many groups) tried.
Where is the all-important evidence?
Saddam - Usama link.... say it enough times... and it's still a lie. But apparently Bush convinced himself they're the same when he "misspoke" their names during the debate... hehe
All I have to say is: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!
But the whole part of removing rights from felons is punishment for the crime they committed.
Instead of letting felons vote and affect the political system why not put more effort into preventing felons?
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Every year is going to be an important election year, every race is going to be a tight race. If your principles aren't worth standing up for at the most crucial time to make them known, I guess your principles aren't worth much.
The most important heritage I can pass on to my family, my community, and my country is to try to stand up for what's right regardless of the cost. Maybe I lose, but I can sleep at night and live with myself the next day. Your definition of "right" may differ completely from mine, and that's OK - I encourage you to make a stand, too. America is not made stronger by wishy-washy citizens playing it "safe". It would have been "safe" to stay subject to Britain in 1776, too.
It's never the wrong time to vote for your beliefs.
Constitutionally Correct
totalitarianism is a problem because it allows people to act in manners contradictory to human welfare.
Lack of Privacy is a problem because it means the wrongdoings of society may be used to justify punishing an individual for his/her differences of opinion.
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
NAIL ---> HEAD
This is exactly the kind of policy that our government needs to embrace, rather than swinging from one end to the other and ballooning the budget in the meantime.
I long for these policies and party that will embrace them, but sadly neither the GOP or the Democrats seem to be in touch with reality.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
The first is his ability to state a fact such as: The electoral College having a 3/5ths rule
Which is of course true. But the problem is he draws a completely unrelated conclusion: The electoral College is racist
That makes about as much sense as saying: Black people picked cotton
And then concluding that cotton, or those who wear it are racist. The conclusion is not even remotely supported by the argument.
Example 2 of this: The war on drugs is racist b/c more coloreds (is that really the PC term?) are incarcerated.
Ok, well it could be that or the fact that more colored people are violating the law. I guess that the war on business executives doing illegal things is also racist since more whites are imprisoned in the fighting of that war.
I won't even get started on the innaccuracies and stupidities dealing with his stance on Nuclear power or GM foods....
Scary...
I would probably vote for Bush if I felt I was wasting my vote by voting for a 3rd party.
Kerry will just be "more of the same" if he gets elected, because he's a politician.
Chances are you won't be *the* single deciding vote that gives Kerry the edge over Bush, therefore voting for Kerry is just as much a waste of a vote as voting 3rd party.
I think the 2 party system breeds corruption (Bush and Kerry are both deceitful to the US public) and I will cast my vote for a 3rd party just to try and help get the ball rolling for political reform. The more votes the 3rd parties get, the more viable they become.
>A true political conservative would recognize that public resources, such as
>forests, parks and oceans, should be conserved for use and enjoyment by
>future generations.
Is it just me or is this statement completely wrong? Oo Conservative w.r.t. politics and government would mean the government shouldn't own these things, that it should leave them alone and let the people do with them as they will (which, like it or not, in many cases will be exploit it or sell it to someone who will). Having the government get involved and force these resources to be used a certain way is the exact opposite of political conservatism and more like socialism/"big government"/etc..
For Republicans, the Greens offer true conservatism, which means keeping the government out of your personal business, out of your bedroom and out of your library.
.but because they anticipated people like Nixon and McCarthy.
Actually.. this is called Liberalism. He is talking about social liberalism, not 'true conservativism'. How do we know this? Because the line about 'keeping the government out of your personal business' means your daily life, not if you actually own a business. If you are an entrepreneur, and want to start a business... taxes and more regulation await. This is not the nature of 'true conservativism'. (If anyone disagrees with that last statement, please inform me where these new government programs and environmental legislation come from)
The Greens are always speaking out against politicians who sell favors to their corporate buddies or other special interests. But the Green party also espouses a system where the government strictly regulates most industry.
The bureaucratic system may well be corrupt but what we really need to address is the corruption in the White House and in Congress-that's who makes the laws and the decisions which support the transnational corporate empire
This is, singularly, the biggest problem with the Green party and its platform. The candidate completely dodges it by setting up a false premise: That it is magically just the people there now that are corrupt, and once we ride these institutions of them, we'll be better. Oh, and also.. no one else will ever come along in the future to abuse these powers, trust us. That is the one issue Greens fail to understand about government, particularly the US government as it is set up. You can not just address the problems of now, but you must guard against the problems of the future. The founding fathers were offered chance at extreme executive power, but they did not take it... not because they were corrupt, they knew they would not be...
I am saddened by the fact that the candidate dodged what is the central problem with the Green party. It shows why participation in this 'movement' in its national form is mainly limited to college students and other young people who have not themselves thought this through.
We have to remember that we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, with, of course, the exception of the Native people of this continent.
Although I don't disagree with the candidates point... his argument for it shows the lack of critical thinking skills that I am mentioning.... Just because we are the children of immigrants does not mean we can not restrict immigration... why? Because the US is different than it was when past immigration took place. This might be hard to grasp.. but imagine if a hypothetical famine ravaged the US... would we be out of line to not allow immigration (presumably to keep our population from growing and stressing food supply), of course not. (Granted, people might not want to come here in the case presented, but it is mainly suggested for example, not plausibility). In keeping with the 'my ancestors did X, therefore I can't rightly stop someone from doing X'... does the candidate think it would be out of line for Germany to sanction Sundan for committing Genocide?
We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy.
This is a dodge: Let me rephrase
Q Nuclear power has made great advances in safety and is not as bad for the environment as most other things we do today... should we support it?
A If we conserved power we could eliminate the need for nuclear power
What the hell is the relation? We'll always need power, and if nuclear is the safest, and most practical, and best for the environment... should we use it? The candidate completely dodges that issue.
We could replace nuclear power-and coal
Every second answer contained the word "racist"... if all he can do is play the race card, what good is he as a Green party representitive?
As a Texan, I hear a lot of people voicing the same sentiment that you have above. I strongly disagree that Democratic votes in Texas are unimportant.
The Republican party generates tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions in Texas. Because the GOP assumes a win in Texas, it is free to spend all those funds in the battleground states at the national, state, and county race levels. That's why you don't see a bunch of campaign commercials on TV in Texas. By rolling over and letting the GOP have Texas, you are making it difficult for Democratic candidates to win in the local races as well as making it difficult for them to win in the battleground states.
Your vote in Texas also serves to backfire the recent redistricting on the GOP. Austin, for example, now is split into three different districts. We have 50,000 newly-registered voters in Travis County. If the Democratic voters show up in force in Travis County, then these three districts could all go with Democratic Congressional wins.
While we're on the topic of the GOP agenda for Texas, you might want to review the 2004 Texas GOP Party Platform. Here are some interesting objectives:
In terms of the emphasis on English in the last two items, note that none of the people on the platform draft committee have hispanic names.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
To quote Penn & Teller, this guy's an "Elitist asshole" (pardon the light profanity)
Right, we supposedy don't need GE food. And people who live along the shrinking green belt along the Nile river couldn't use rice that needs less water to grow, and farmers in India don't need disease and pest resistant crops.
I'm as scientifically conservative as anyone, and I understand GE is pretty scary. However, the one argument I don't see out of the anti-GE crop bunch is HARD SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. Show me the studies that proove GE crops are dangerous. Anyone?
The anti-GM hysteria reminds me of the early luddites who hated electricity. They were afraid it would leak out of the sockets and slowly kill you, among other crackpot ideas. New != bad.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Name them. All the ones I've ever seen brought up have been addressed. AFAIK, Condorcet is completely strategy-free - voting honestly is the best way to get the results you want.
Constitutionally Correct
Well, yes, legally one need only be 35. But Kennedy at 43 was the youngest and he got plenty of flack for being even that young. A 35yo doesn't have a chance, practically speaking, and a 41yo would have a very hard time of it.
Now, if we close all of our overseas bases of operation, and we get attacked, where does that leave us?
If we closed all our overseas bases, we would still have the most powerful military in the world. Our finest military victories in the past were not made possible because of overstretched occupying forces in dozens of countries all over the place.
On top of this, I think you would find that the number of enemies our country faces will drop dramatically if we were to pull out our occupying forces. Our current problems with terrorists are a direct by-product of our military interventions in the Middle East, for example. There are many free countries on this planet that do not stir up hatred in the world to the degree that we do. Policy changes like this will go a huge way toward closing that gap.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
Hey, I never said it was safe. But if you're going to compare the effects of alcohol on driving ability (really the only way that someone can instantaneously die and kill people from alcohol) with the effects of marijuana on driving ability, marijuana is much safer. Safer...not safe.
Sounds like Platonism to me. While I do agree with patent reform, I disagree that the claims of Platonism are fact. What evidence do you have to support your party's claim that mathematical algorithms are discovered and not invented?
This a common belief, but it's not correct. It would be if, for example, Texas allocated its electoral votes by giving 3 votes to Houston, 2 votes to Dallas, 2 votes to San Antonio, 1 vote each to Austin, El Paso, and Fort Worth, and a big ol' 24-vote block to the rest of the state. But we don't. Both cities and rural areas get lumped into the same electoral district.
Perhaps you meant to say that it benefits small-population states, but it doesn't. The near-universal use of a winner-take-all system benefits large states more than small states. And furthermore, the huge built-in bias towards "swing states" overwhelms any bias based on population. And all of the 3-vote states are "decided" this time, so they don't matter at all.
Every ballot that was thrown out (where the voter intended to vote for one candidate, that is) was a disenfranchised voter, dumbass.
Soylent Green, anyone?
Anyone who thinks the electoral college is going to be done away with needs a big phat reality check. This is something that will require a Constitutional amendment to change, which requires 2/3 approval of the House and Senate. Such a measure may clear the House, but the Senate, where the small states have as much say as the big states, will likely reject is since it would weaken their power. At least 25 states would end up being losers under this change, more than enough to block passage in the Senate.
Even if, by some miracle, it passes the Senate, it still has to be approved by 38 state legislatures, and usually amendments sunset in 7-10 years. Chances are that it would languish and die.
The Electoral College was designed the same as the Congress, to protect the smaller states from the larger states. I am loathe to upset this balance.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
"I am happy to say that our website is open source (Plone/Zope, running on BSD)."
. vote cobb.org
hmmm, how did everyone miss the important point
http://www.votecobb.org/ - switched from freebsd (Release 4) to linux (debian) and back to freebsd (Release 4)
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www
FreeBSD Zope/(Zope 2.7.0, python 2.3.3, freebsd4) ZServer/1.1 Plone/2.0.3 6-Sep-2004
Linux Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Debian GNU/Linux PHP/4.1.2 mod_perl/1.26 15-May-2004
Linux Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Debian GNU/Linux PHP/4.1.2 mod_perl/1.26 13-Mar-2004
FreeBSD Zope/(Zope 2.6.1 (source release, python 2.1, linux2), python 2.1.3, freebsd4) ZServer/1.1b1
fuck politics, Richard Stallman - for new direction, Dictator of America! (even solaris has seen the 'light')
(seriously, i support all these progressive ideas and cant wait for real change in america... but for now, let's get the warmonger bitch out of the white house!!!
I noticed he ducked my question about corruption in a bureaucray and turned it into an attack on our corrupt elected officials.
There's no public money in Chinese elections, but they've had serious problems with corruption recently. The USSR had massive corruption before the collapse.
I also don't see how a party that supposedly supports freedom can say they'd restrict you from spending money on a political ad, which is a blatent violation of our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press.
The only logical way to end corruption is to remove the decision making from the hands of government employees. If the government can't give subsidies to its favorite industries (because somebody in Congress finally reads the Constitution), there would be no motivation to bribe the officials.
Under the green system, as a candidate, you'd get all your campaign money from the government (meaning higher taxes, and forcing people to pay for campaigns they don't care for). Of course if the Department of Campaigning decides that you don't have enough support to run a full campaign they can restrict how much money they give you...so much for the Green party supporting an open, free election process.
This post is VERY insightful. The idea that genetically modified foods are in some way fundamentally unsafe, wrong, or whathaveyou is, IMHO, without merit.
The truth is that we've been doing genetic manipulation on our crops for hundreds, probably thousands, of years; a cow, tomato, or watermellon that we consume today is about the most unnatural thing i could think of to eat. Unless one goes out and kills his/her own food from the great outdoors (not much of an option for those of us living in a city (unless we kill people, which i don't view as natural either)) he/she's is probably consuming solely frankenfoods already.
I don't think anyone is argueing for irresponsibly adding random genes to things, however i don't see many arguements against, Yellow Rice for instance, where its harm outweighs its benefit...
The monopolistic and imperial actions of multi-national ag companies is one thing, the desire to make foods better are another.
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
It is rather interesting that most of the people asking him questions, as well as Mr. Cobb himself don't know this rather BASIC fact of our country. I guess noone here took Civics in High School.
The USA is NOT a Democracy, it is a Representative Republic. The Founding Fathers were opposed to Democracy because of such things as the 'Tyranny of the Masses'. Remember that in a Democracy the Minority has NO Rights and NO Representation. Which is also why we have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights.
Before you all go and criticize the electorial college, you should first understand it. Getting rid of it would probably benifit Mr. Cobb's party, which is why he opposes it obviously. But it would disenfranchise a majority of the States.
Without the Electorial College, everyone who doesn't live in places like New York and California no longer counts in the presidential election. States like Oregon would never see a candidate, nor would the candidates care about those states at all. They would be rendered meaningless in the election.
At least the greens have a real plan to accomplish x goal. You can get a finite grasp of where they are coming from. Then you can make an informed decision on their platform from there. I only have one request of all politicians. Can we please stop referring to our soldiers as kids? They are so far from being kids it sounds silly to say. Alright I'm done.
First off, I'm not American so you may wonder why I'm posting this. For my own stress relief, I guess ;) But I'm sure it might hold true for others, too.
I'm becoming increasingly disappointed with the major political parties. I'm a liberal (so Lib Dem in the UK, and I guess Green Party across the pond), and up to:
"I am happy to say that our website is open source (Plone/Zope, running on BSD)."
I was extremely interested by what David Cobb was saying.
However, he then threw in:
"And we don't need Frankenfood either."
I realise that may well be the party's views but why do the Green party have to take such a stubborn, un-scientific approach to issues such as these?
He seems to have analysed, with a fair amount of care, most of the other issues but here seems to jump to a personal, biased conclusion, which I say largely because of his willingness to stereotype GM foods with the label of 'Frankenfood'.
Does he realise the majority of drugs people take (such as aspirin) are genetically modified? Does he not take his FrankenPainkillers?
How frustrating to see such an open-minded party with a large amount of sensible opinions polarise people who want to support them by taking stubborn, and (in my opinion and research) subjective rather than objective views on certain issues? I guess that I can understand the logic (and mostly agree with it) in most of his [party's] views but to see such an unfounded, illogical position is frustrating.
A lot of people say to just find the party you agree with most but I feel quite strongly about certain issues, such as GM food, and I don't think I could vote for a party with such an obvious unwillingness to actually look at the facts in this case, even if I agree with everything else they say.
Manta
One of the reasons why we are the fastest growing party in America is because we participate in presidential elections.
A single-person party that suckers another person into joining has a 100% growth rate. How about that being the reason why the Green party is the "fastest growing party in America."
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Simply repeating his statement doesn't explain his statement.
The question is, why is this a "racist" practice? Is it the fact that slaves couldn't vote part? Is it counting a slave as 3/5 of a person? Is it also a "sexist" practice as well? Women couldn't vote either.
That actually is the real question. By knowing that answer we will have all the facts neccessary to make a decision. If the electoral college is racist and sexist. Then the problem is not allowing slaves and women to vote. If the electoral college is simply racist then it is counting a slave as 3/5 of a person. Please answer that so we can all be educated.
Now a little historical background.
The reason for counting slaves as 3/5 of a person actually goes back to "no taxation without representation". You see the "good" "politically correct" and racially integrated Northern boys (whom we shall call Damn Yankees for the remainder of this post) wanted the "bad" "racist" slave owning Southern boys (whom we shall call White Trash for the remainder of this post) to pay their "fair share" of taxes. Back in the good old days, federal taxes were paid based on state population not individual income. The Damn Yankees felt that slaves should be counted as full people (because they are people after all), at least for tax purposes. For the purposes of representation in the federal government, however, the Damn Yankees felt that slaves did not count, (them being property and all). The White Trash however felt that slaves should not count at all for tax purposes. If anything they should be a deduction, amortized over the lifetime of the slave, say 22 years or so. These two views (North thinking slaves are people when they have to pay, but not when they can receive and South thinking they are just good farm equipment) needed to be argued out and a "good" compromise reached. The White Trash would pay their "fair share" by measuring their population for tax purposes by using the formula (non-slave * 1 + slave * 0.60), in exchange they would be allocated Congressmen and Senators using the same allocation (Electoral college numbers being the number of Congressmen + 2 Senators every state has). This was a "great" compromise because neither side then had to argue over whether slaves should be considered as (White Trash preferred) not-equal or (Damn Yankee preferred) almost equal.
The electoral college itself is not racist any more than the entire United States is. As a country we went through a disgraceful period of time. I don't understand how "decent folk", as most Southerners are, could stand for slavery. I also don't understand how the Northerners could stand for it either but they did. In fact, most historical research shows that slavery was not portrayed any different in North or South during those times. The reason slavery did not thrive in the North was because the work in the North wasn't as well suited for slave labor. Plantation work fit the workflow pattern better. The civil war was actually fought for State Rights, not slavery. We rewrite history now so We (the United States) feel better. We fought that evil South (ignoring the fact that We includes the south) and We won. We (the United States) won, and We (The State of insert your state) lost.
Now We (the United States), instead of feeling better about our civil war thing, should stand up and fight slavery. That is the only way to truly show repentance as a country. Fight the enslavement of our African brothers. Kick the crud out of the Sudan and all the other Islamic "racist" countries! http://www.iabolish.com/default.htm
actually they're not under represented in colleges. In many cases they are over represented.
So much for that piece of bull.
this party ever getting into office. Be prepared to bend over, spread your legs and kiss this country good bye.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Yes, because comparing ourselves to a monarchal system from 200 years ago is a great way to make progress.
Despite what the current state of american public schooling may lead you to believe, there have been quite a few new systems of democracy since we separated ourselves from Jolly Old England. It just *might* be possible we could learn something from some of them.
There were also awfully fewer PEOPLE to feed for an awfully long time. Regardless of the need for public health education to slow global population growth, that fact is that more people means a greater need for food. Now you've got several ways to approach this problem. 1) Do nothing to increase food production, allowing people (hint: we're talking poor folks, not the Dick Cheney's of the world) to starve. 2) Farm more land, requiring destruction of the environments currently occupying that land. This option can obviously only be used for a certain amount of time before we've clear-cut all arable land in the world. 3) Increase the productivity of the land we already have. Since we have been farming for an "awfully long time", I think it's fair to say that we've done pretty much all we can on this one if we forego the use of modern science. Which leaves options 1 and 2, and eventually just option 1.
(Side note: I don't know if it's because production costs are higher or because organic farmers are in a fair wage program, but I can observe at my local grocery store that organic foods are more expensive than the alternatives. Raising the cost of food ought to have obvious consequences for the world's poor, see option 1 above.)
Ever hear of labor unions? It was economic policy that caused all the minorities to support democrats. Its true the republicans freed the slaves, but that was social policy in the 1860s. Labor union support allowed the democratic party to grow in the 1950s and still grows. This is why the republicans need the religious right vote: To counter balance the union labor vote.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
> States reserve the right to cast their votes however they want.
Isn't that a strange right to have? I mean, wouldn't you be up in arms if the FedGov reserved the right to cast its votes however it chose? I don't understand any non-anachronistic purpose for giving such a right to a state. (In the past, it was possibly the only way to tally votes at all.)
I am saying that you may be right, that I'm trying to reinterpret the EC to fit my whim. However, if you could give me some "grand plan" of states' rights of which casting votes "however they want" is a logical part, I'd be better convinced.
Finally, what do you mean by "And any other state could do so if it so chose"? I don't get that at all. The sentence before that one seems to be a statistical hack also, analogous to saying that the Law of Large Numbers will do the 60/40 dividing in my original post implicitly. That may be true, some/most of the time. But why bother with that, when you can get a better approximation by just divvying the seats intra-state as well as inter-state?
It's a very wide-spread practice, and I think justified -- the whole point of a sentence is to punish someone by removing that person's freedoms.
My take is that:
* Voting is a civil *duty*. There are freedoms that can be removed in the name of punishment that largely make an inmate's life less pleasant without impacting our ability to obtain feedback from the citizenry. We remove freedoms for pragmatic reasons -- I don't see a pragmatic justification for removing sufferage from criminals.
* Felons are probably people *most* likely to have a complaint about what's going on.
* Much of our Constitutional infrastructure is designed around producing a robust government that can't easily fall prey to massive abuse. Having legislators be able to define what is a felony *and* preventing felons from being able to elect legislators produces a very troublesome feedback loop -- exactly the sort of thing that checks-and-balances are supposed to avoid.
* A major benefit of democracy (the reason we keep claiming that democracies are stable) is that a democracy provides a way for elements to voice themselves *without* resorting to violence. It's a safety valve -- it makes people not just feel exploited by a leadership. I can't think of any place that this is more urgently needed than with felons.
May we never see th
That's right, you agree to give your vote to a democrat who promises to vote for your candidate.
But what proof do you have that they will?
Considering how much Democrates and Kerry tell lies, do you REALLY think that they are going to throw their vote away on a third party candidate when they are hiring lawyers to get those same candidates off the ballot?
ONLY A FOOL DOES IRV!! CAUSE NO DEM is going to ACTUALLY CAST THE VOTE THEY PROMISED!!
Alberto Fujimoris tm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/705482.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
I'll have a guess and say _any_ color other than white. Since when did white stop being a color? I lean more toward Libertarian, though I do agree with a lot of what the Green's have to say. However, the Green party's racism against white people or "people of no color", makes me never willing to vote for them or help their cause (even though I agree with a lot of their positions).
I just don't understand the logic behind saying it is wrong to be racist against "people of color" but it is OK to be racist against "people of no color". To me the ultimate form of racism is showing favorites to "people of color". Racism is racism and not just white against black. As a white man I have had many black people be racist toward me just because of my skin color. I guess the Green party thinks that is OK or they look the other way?
I really want to see more parties in the presidential election, especially the Libertarians. However, it is hard to justify the Green party when they have very good positions on many current issues and then are way-out-in-left-field with things like Nuclear energy and racism against whites and favortism for blacks.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Don't forget that there's also a certain amount of subconcious racism that happens in our culture. For example, there was a study done in the last year or two where identical resumes were submitted to companies. One resume would have traditionally white names and one would have traditionally black names. The white name resumes received much greater responses than the black name ones. I think you'd find that a similar study using asian names would probably not get the same differential.
It's a matter of economics but it is also a matter of cultural heritage and perceptions. Economics is something realtively simple to solve, but the cultural heritage will take decades of effort to deal with. I'm not saying that affirmative action is a good solution, but we have to be honest about the fact that it's not just about economics.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
There is a reason people like David Cobb aren't taken seriously.
It's not because they have values they won't prostitute out to corporate interests for the financial support they need to run.
It's because the America isn't going to be limited to watching TV 2 hours a day, take a paycut to pay for reparation checks, and be caught with our pants down militarily after another terrorist attack.
Do you think the average American is going to turn off his PC, trade in his big screen TV for a smaller unit, just to rationalize your parties line of environmental conservatism? Christ, if bandwidth was ever an issue, the Green Party would have us all on 33.6k so the bandwidth could go to people who "need" it. From his answers, it would probably be whatever minority we've oppressed that they feel like giving free handouts to.
If his view of America is the white man's burden coupled with Amish-esque environmental conservatism, all under the guise of fighting the eeeeeevil racist (because let's face it, anything that isn't black or hispanic is racist, even abstract business models) corporations count me out. And 290,000,000+ with me.
Of all the things Cobb says (many well out of the realm of reality) this one sticks out the most. When I worked with the greens in 2000, in Chicago no less, there were maybe 1 "person of color" per 100 (or more) white, educated yuppies/hipsters like myself. I suggest the greens reach out to the minority communities like the Democrats have instead of just using them as rhetorical fodder. We ignored them with our Nader work in Chicago, focusing mostly on the wealthier north side and avoiding the "scary" south side. Needless to say I dont help the greens anymore and Nader's run (along with Cobbs to a lesser extent) are dangerous in a cycle where the GOP incumbant is highly undesirable to say the least. Running a war of disaster and a deficit disaster should translate to less third-party activity, not more. Then again, I'm more pragmatic than idealist.
That's the real problem with the far left. First off, they have excellent ideas like universal healthcare, universal education, etc which are moderate views in europe (to be fair) but then relveal some ugly neo-luddite beliefs, extremist anti-animal testing beliefs, etc.
This hodgepodge of various platforms sounds good on paper like a hypothetical libertarian party that wasnt just a front from extremist Republicans or theocrats, but in reality they are free to gather every marginalized view and call it a "platform." They can court geeks with software patents without a plan for real reform. They can court people of color by saying stuff like "true democracy" without addressing what a "people's vote" in the south right now would mean for civil rights, gay rights, religious rights, etc. Checks and balances are needed. Arguably, there is room for a people's veto on the federal level, but they dont mention this.
>Libertarians have a much better sense of what equality really means
The libertarian fad is much worse than what the greens are doing. At least the greens come from a real progressive tradition. The libertarian parties in the US consists of a lot of extremist Republicans, lassize fair economic types who believe removing minimum wage means mcdonalds will pay you 15 dollars an hour to cook burgers, religious nuts, chronic third party voters, "ownership society" nuts, etc.
I really wish a lot of the "I'm all for liberty" crowd would see that the ACLU has been doing this for decades and 90% of the time undos mistakes done by Republicans. Is hated by Republicans and is considered a Democratic organization. In other words, the Democrats have been fighting the liberty fight for quite some time but the under 30 crowd considers them too "mainstream" or even worse "no different than the other party" thus this sudden love affair with the 3rd parties. In an election cycle where we have the most important presidential vote in a long time, its time to think hard about what the democrats have done, historically, and what they can do without throwing your vote away. (I am a long time member and donator of the ACLU. I put my money where my mouth is two or three times a year. If people really cared about libery the ACLU would have 50 million members not 400k)
I applaud Cobb's "safe state" method of encouraging people in swing states not to vote for him. He's doing the right things, but once past your hot-button issue you'll find lots of stuff you may not like about the greens, libs, etc.
Do you have any idea how the U.S. presidential election system works? I'd dismiss you as a troll but you're currently modded at 3, so I hope some actual facts will help here.
Electoral vote result in 2000: Bush 271, Gore 266, no vote 1 (one Gore elector withheld in protest)
Electoral votes from Florida in 2000: 25
Official Bush margin of victory in Florida: less than 0.1%
Nader votes in Florida: 1.6%
Likewise in New Hampshire: 4 EVs, Bush margin of victory 1.3%, Nader votes 3.9%.
Please consider researching your facts before making unfounded accusations!
This is by far the worst Q&A session yet. Half of the responses are canned boilerplate one-liners. "Transnational corporations", "Cheney and Enron", et al. This candidate offers no answers, just plattitudes and boogey men to blame for the worlds problems. The Green party? They use class warfare and divisive rhetoric to try to isolate vulnerable groups and influence them.
Thanks for clarifying your original post. I had interpreted it to mean that you don't think voting in Texas is important. Clearly you recognize that's not the case.
I also agree that I'd like to see more a more liberal bend to the Democratic party. I'd like to see a national discussion of decriminalizing victimless drug crimes (possession, manufacturing, distribution), for instance.
Unfortunately, there are so many disenfranchised voters like yourself who aren't showing up to vote, it's not politically viable for the Democratic party to reach out to us. They have to craft their appeal to the people who are actually voting, and largely that's the old folks and the SUV moms you mentioned -- the middle-of-the-roaders. Think about this- if I run for city council as a radical anarchist, will I win? No. Because other anarchists don't believe the candidates share their agenda. So it presents a chicken-and-the-egg problem. And that's what the national Democratic party faces.
What you are doing, voting for the Green Party it sounds like, does send a valuable message. It tells the Democratic party operatives that there is a valid liberal voting block and that they can woo those voters by adopting a more liberal platform. So I encourage you to go out to the polls on November 2nd and drag all your like-minded Texan friends with you.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I would be a Green, but the push for IRV is the wrong solution to the right problem. The problem of forming a government that expresses the will of the people throught voting is a hard one (see Florida, 2000). I don't have the answer, but IRV isn't it.
Both him and Badnarick have said things so amazingly stupid as to make me not want to support them at all(Badnarick claiming that literacy was better 100 years ago than it is now), and now this:
Food was grown by humankind for an awfully long time and rather successfully before the advent of pesticides and herbicides. We don't need that poison on our foods, on our soil or in our water supplies. And we don't need Frankenfood either.
Being a green you would have thought he would have heard about the green revolution part of which includes pesticides. Farming is much better today than it was, "thousands of years ago" in part because farmers can now kill insects which used to devour fields. In fact, most, if not all of the famines of the 20th century were not because there wasn't enough food, it's because the corrupt governments in those land would not allow food to be distributed. I'm not claiming that pesticides are a great and wonderful thing, and their use certainly needs to be limited and alternatives researched, but saying that we don't need them because people grew food for thousands of years before them is just plain dumb.
Is it too much to ask that a presidential candidate change his ideology to match the facts instead of trying to change the facts to match the ideology?
Monstar L
Electionmethods.org supports the Condorcet method. Aside from being the creation of a Frenchman, Condorcet suffers from a huge flaw - it forces voter sentiment into a bell curve. The result is that while voters may overwhelmingly support a given candidate, the election will go to the candidate which inspires the least amount of displeasure. It is also more mathematically complex than current majority rules voting, so an electorate already unhappy with how the candidate they didn't vote for actually won, this system will make it appear to the entire electorate that an 'invisible hand' is guiding the election.
John Kerry "I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages" Don't blame me, he said it.
Actually didn't he read it from the writings of another person? (i.e. he was reading the accounts of another, not reciting his own first-hand account.)
MORTAR COMBAT!
Granted, he didn't run for the office until he was older than Kennedy, but he was the youngest president we've had yet.
Actually I hope more and more people vote third party, we need it as a country, no matter what party, vote for who you feel is most inline with your views. Get out of the cycle of electablity and any body but him. Make a real stand! If you don't all the questioning of 'third' party candidates, and all their ideas are in vain, because you just go out and vote for the person most likley to win or who isn't the person in office.
The only difference I see is age. At a certain age, killing is legal, after some arbitrary age, it is not. Seems rather strange to me.
I used to be pro choice when I was younger, that's before I held a very tiny preemie in my hands and really thought about it. I cannot in good conscious just dismiss such a life as arbitrary "tissue".
Well, I'd say they could be okay in local offices, and possibly state offices (I know I've previously posted rants about how things that would be insane to attempt at a Federal level in the U.S. - e.g. Government-run health care - that might work on a smaller scale when run indepedently by individual States.).
What we really need at a federal level, in my opinion, is genuine diversity[1], not "the one true party" of any variety, nor of course the "two true parties" that we have now. Given that, it'd be nice to have enough Greens - AND Libertarians AND even one or two of the groups I'd consider to be extremist whackos - in the House and Senate to make their ideas heard and have some influence on the process.
Like all political ideologies I've seen, the Greens have their share of serious problems that'd make them a disaster if they won complete control of the country (in my opinion, for the Greens it's their head-in-the-sand FUD about new technologies that they happen to be scared of [controlled genetic modification of organisms, nuclear fission - and fusion? Or is fusion somehow magically safe to them while fission is not?] and the naive notion that you can fix the abuses of power that corporate legal entities are prone to by concentrating authority further into an even bigger corporate legal entity e.g. the US Federal Government...Obviously these opinions are debatable, but they're mine...), but I'd still like to see their faction, among others, have more official political influence in the workings of the US Federal government.
[1]- I mean REAL diversity, of opinions, experience, and attitudes. I find the tendency of political organizations to dumb the concept down to "different skin colors" (as if everyone with the same skin color thinks the same way!) offensively racist....
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I would certainly never be an apologist for the House of Lords, it is undemocratic and should be replaced by a democratically elected chamber. However, your characterisation of it is no longer accurate. The Lords is now populated primarily by Life Peers. These are people who have been appointed non-heriditary peerages by elected politicians. Many are appointed for services to political parties, but there are also many eminent members who have been appointed for their contribution to society: scientists, industrialists, etc. The honour does not pass to their children. Also, as far as I am aware, there is no restriction on who can be appointed (although there was talk recently of them preventing convicted criminals from sitting in the Lords).
The Lords is a chamber of cronyism, but it is not quite as bad as you imply.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
people of color does not just talk about black folk. it refers to asians, arabs, blacks, hispanics, native americans, aborigines, Pacific islanders, basically, anyone who is not a white european,
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
But he said it. That's all that's important in a sound bite.
Kind of like the comment about voting for non-citizens, which makes no general sense. Makes anyone sound like a nut-job. However, allowing non-citizen parents of public-school childern to vote for the school board does make sense.
If you're a republican and are worried about all those illegal immigrants voting an Hispanic onto the school board, I suggest you re-form your thoughts. Imagine a family comes over from Englad or Germany for a job in an international firm located in the states. They have visas, they pay taxes. They cart the kids to soccer games (okay, don't hold soccer against them). Should they get a vote to determine who is on the school board for their kids?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Under Condorcet, voters are forced to assign an arbitrary value to a candidate. First, second, third and so on. So while I want Bush (R), and wouldn't mind Badnarik (L), I'd not want to see Kerry (D) and would rather have my testicles removed than see Cobb (G) get in to any position of power higher than the post office janitor. But, in such a ballot, My vote would simply be
1. Bush
2. Badnarik
3. Kerry
4. Cobb
In terms of weighted value, this would artificially inflate the value of the lesser candidates on my ballot. The only choice I have is to not even vote for Kerry or Cobb. Under current rules, that would invalidate my ballot. If the laws were changed to allow incomplete ballots to be counted (so called Algore ballots), then you run into the next problem: Condorcet values effectively nullify candidates who enjoy strong support, giving greater weighted values to minor party candidates who enjoy broad yet moderate or even low levels of support.
In short, Condorcet voting forces voter sentiment into an inverse bell curve function, the net result of which it that strongly supported candidates are marginalized and candidates which energize enough of the electorate, or simply fail to offend them, are placed in the middle.
If you cannot accept this on theoretical constructs, then you can build a condorcet engine. You make four artificial candidates. Assign chaotically random votes to a ballot and then tabulate the results. Most often what happens is a near draw between all four candidates, but under chaotic conditions governed by rules of cellular automata (which probably requires higher math than your average bear has taken), the most popular candidates will lose handily to the least popular candidate.
The final and most obvious strike with condorcet is that it lacks transparency. People already have a inherent distrust of the voting system because they didn't know or understand the effect of the electoral college. A condorcet system would completely disenfranchise the electorate. This is the solution you offer to voter disaffection? Sounds to me killing the patient to cure the disease.
Abolishing the Electoral College is NOT a good idea. The Electoral College is what forces candidates to hear the issues facing the ENTIRE country and not just the centers of population. Without the Electoral College only the issues facing the most populous metropolitan cities of the country would grace the ears of the candidates. There would be no concern for the issues of rural areas, as there would not be enough votes there to carry any political clout. The electoral college ensures that less populous states still have a voice on the national stage. People who want to abolish the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote have not thought through the consequences of such a change. It would be a horrible thing for our nation.
Why is it that our long history without pesticides makes them unimportant, but our long history without cancer therapy makes it vital (replace with any other medical attention beyond mild anestesia (booze, tree bark)?
I would like an honest respons from and Green party member.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Look, all that banning abortions and gay marriges will do is force homosexuals to have children out of wedlock. Sound like republican family values to you? i didn't think so.
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Theorems are discovered. There is a certain famous theorem that says that there are no integer solutions for x^n + y^n = z^n for n > 2. That theorem was discovered, not invented. However, the proof of that theorem was a work of human creativity and thus could (should) be protected.
I also disagree that algorithms shouldn't be patented. An algorithm is a method of computing a certain result: there are other equivalent algorithms that may be more or less efficient, competing products could use one of these.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
You're looking at it wrong.
8 people want A...but 12 (a majority) think he's the worst!
7 people want B...but 13 (a majority) think he's the worst!
From this perspective, how could you let either A or B win?
The "trick" is to redefine what "winner" means. Simply "getting more votes than anyone else" is too weak a definition. A real winner ought to be able to beat every other candidate in a head-to-head race, right? If it's just the winner against any loser, the winner should always win - this make sense. Armed with this definition, look at the preferences again.
8 people prefer A to B.
8 people prefer A to C.
12 people prefer B to A.
13 people prefer B to C.
7 people prefer C to A.
7 people prefer C to B.
Thus if you compare B to every other candidate, B always wins! Clearly, B is the real winner here. Even though the smallest bloc supports him fully, you could say the "average voter satisfaction" is higher with B than with either of the others. Do you want a majority stuck with someone they don't want at all, or with someone they can tolerate (at least). I think it is more important to satisfy a clear majority than to cater to a large minority (which is what a plurality is).
Constitutionally Correct
His FIRST reference was to better conservation, and I heartily agree. There's still a ton of things people can do to reduce over all "need" for more energy. We still make brand new homes with dismal levels of insulation for example. These homes "pass inspection", they pass "building codes" and are granted long term mortgages. Nuts! Merely by a few legislative efforts, then following through with the better engineering that is now on the market, nothing really all that radical, just more common sense than anything else, society could greatly benefit, we really don't need more power plants, nuclear or otherwise, at least in the numbers I have seen bandied about.
I used to be in the alternative energy biz, primarily with retrofitting homes to be more energy efficient. We used to do before and after infra red pictures of the homes, as you can really see were the problem areas are that way, and it's a nice show and tell for the customer asd well. Typically, the "before" pictures showed a huge waste of energy, you could see it (by the temp and therefore the color differences around the home) leaking out all over. We would re-seal windows, their framing, and the doors and jams, pipes coming into the home,any leaky trim pieces, add additional plexi windows to the inside of normal windows, etc, a few more tricks, then take new pictures. An amazing difference. Every customer loved what we did. I had one effort we were really tickled with, it was in the summer, the people had air conditioning. After our "treatment", they called us up a few days later, freaked out, they wondered why in the middle of summer (80s I think outside, been a long time now, memory is hazy but call it in the 80s) their air conditioner hadn't come on for a day and a half! They were used to it cycling on and off constantly. It was still cool inside, they just thought it was "broken"! HAHAHAHA!
Donations to political parties aren't a sign of corruption, they're a sign that government has power.
You skirted the true solution right there:
Donations and corruption exist because the government has power. Reduce the government's power, you reduce the corruption. Unfortunately, Cobb doesn't want to reduce government power, but simply shift it from regulating personal relations to regulating business to the point of strangulation.
That's rediculous because it's the businesses that have most money combined with a concentrated agenda. Government would probably be more corrupt if he had his way.
The only party that seems to get that basic truth is the Libertarians.
And yes...we were using contreception...I guess ' the pill' has a much higher failure rate than is rated, either that or we were extremely fertile.
At least it rules over what we have.
Don't deny first aid to a bleeding trauma victim because there's a nicer hospital down the street.
Make sure to point out that PLURALITY VOTING SUCKS way worse than IRV first. Then maybe go on to encourage other, better preference voting methods.
You can use natural methods to control plagues. Chemical pesticides are not needed.
We don't need GM food because we don't understand how they will influence the environment and right now, without them in most of the world, we could manage to feed everybody.
You make it appear like without GM technology we would starve, when in reality many countries have been self suficient for donkey years without GM patented nonsense.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am happy to say that our website is open source (Plone/Zope, running on BSD).
:-P
NetCraft confirms it - the Green party is dying
amen, brother!
His statement is philosophically supportable, if that's what you are asking. There are both theological and philosophical systems where ideas are considered to be something with an independent and real existence of their own; they exist independently of us.
I think the notion that ideas are either created or destroyed by individuals would be pretty well impossible under such a system (unless ideas are considered to be created by an omniscient supreme being). Similarly, a conjunction of several ideas (an algorithm, or even just a machine design) couldn't really be considered to be created by us, I think.
You can argue whether "creation" and "invention" of ideas is really the same thing, of course. And I think that's the key; I suspect that if you treat them the same, nothing could really be considered patentable. So at the end of the day, the notion of "invention" might be totally arbitrary.
I dunno.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Your tax example is bunk. The fair comparison is of wage earners. The top 5% of the wage earners pay more than 50% of all the taxes.
t ml
http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincometable.h
If the numbers retrieved from the IRS are not correct then what is?
If reasonable guys like this are electible, how the heck did you yanks come up with GWB as president?
I think the confusion may be in whether the candidate is referring to "literacy" in the absolute sense (i.e. "how many people can read [at all]") versus what I presume Badnarik meant, which would be the quality or "amount" of literacy in the average reader (i.e. "how many people know the difference between "loose" and "lose"..." - or "reads at the '3rd grade level'" or whatnot).
In that case, I tend to agree - while the proportion of people in the U.S. who can read anything at all is quite possibly substantially higher than it was in 1904, the average amount of reading comprehension in the typical person who can read at all does seem to be pretty low these days.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Show me one example of a nuclear plant that is not a money sink.
It is that simple.
In the meantime I have solar heating in my house (UK, that place with *cloudy* weather) and don't miss the gas guzzling system I had.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If the software is closed source how would you know that it had used a patented algorithm anyway? Patents should be for marketable products only and described from use cases. Just have 'copyrights' on everything.
Hello Cruel World
Two words: US Supreme Court.
OK, they were more than two, but what the heck.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...solar. Ever hear of solar troughs or heliostats? Look em up, interesting tech, for sale now. No silicon wafers needed. No need for armed guards and surface to air missiles either, to protect them. That's part of the problem with nuclear energy now, and it can't be ignored. If it wasn't dangerous, it wouldn't need triple containment vessels and shifts of guards, etc. Nuclear power makes "hot", that's it, that's what it boils down to. We can get "hot" other places with much less risk. Granted, at TODAYS prices it might be somewhat cheaper, but that's today, tonmorrow? No one knows, stuff happens, things change... Say some goombah gets off a lucky shot with an actual decent attack missile at a nuke plant. I know they can withstand a small plane crashing into them, but a cruise missile or icbm designed to penetrate concrete, etc? Or some plant gets raided by a few dozen serious attackers who have sophisticated weapons?
It could happen, then what? Downwind might be bad news for a long time......
The other good thing about solar (and wind) is that anyone can OWN it, you don't need to be megacorp, it's not just limited to the same billionaire energy monopolies. ain't it time joe user got a chance at that? Going all nukes means you will always be forced into shipping them billionaires a check forever and ever, with no guarantees of pricing. Last I looked, anyone you as joe homeowner can't get a 10 year contract on pricing for juice, you pay what it costs or..no juice. No competition using the energy monopolies as the only source.
The scaling with solar & wind is great, from tiny run-a-single appliance size to industrial / commercial sizes, and everything in between.
To ME it's like the early days of personal computers, back then, only large businesses had computers, big, heavy, expensive, arcane to operate. Now, anyone can get one and do all sorts of stuff, and you can OWN it. And it's only taken roughly 20 years for it to become so common as to be normal in most homes. Personal Energy (I will now coin an acronym, call it PE) needs the same efforts. And it's because the early adopters of personal computers actually went and DID it, ignoring the naysaysers who said it wasn't practical, cost too much, would never work, mainframes were it, the only way to do it, and yada yada yada, same thing we hear now about "energy". They didn't wait for some pie in the sky period in the future when "someone" or "the government" would do it for them.
I'm a geek, I use juice, I want to *own* it, not just accept some lifelong juice "lease" from some billionaire down the other end of the wire. He's got enough of my money now, thankew. Time to move on to something a little more competitive and cheaper and safer, something people can actually own, IMO.
Remember rabbits?
The furry creatures were taken to Australia and the destroyed many crops and became a real plague (because the unintended consequences of taking an species and dropping it without warning somewhere else is a dangerous exercise).
If we can't foresee what a creature we think we know can do the the environment, what qualifies us to understand the complexities of letting genetically modified organisms out in the wild?
We are playing with fire, and we need a moratory until we find a safe harbour where to run if things get out of control (Mars?) or simply discard the technology as to dangerous to be used safely.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm not suggesting you are not a true-blue American. But you could make a case for legal status in the RoK. I, on the other hand, have absolutely no legal standing in another country. I think we could argue the gray area all day, which is why its so much easier to keep the naturalization requirement in the constitution. It draws a line in the sand. I also find it funny that no one argues the 35 year age limit which is much more arbitrary.
Good point. But I still think I have the more solid argument.
Peace Out.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
When does life start exactly?
I dont think pro choicers are arguing that fetuses are not alive. It isn't so simple.
If the fetuses was an alien infection implanted via airborn spores, would you say abortion is wrong?
The question should be "when does human life start?".
Or more in legal terms, at what point does a fetus become a person? But even that is a trivialization.
Seeing as there is no scientific argument to extend the point of becoming a person all the back to the moment of conception, banning abortion is a religious issue.
If you argue that a person is created at conception on some type of scientific grounds, then it is only a matter of lack of technology that we dont classify every single cell of the human body to be a person. Having a biopsy would be murder.
Does a fetus have the right to life? Does that right to life include the right to infringe on the mothers right to life, liberty, privacy and security of person (including self defence). How much infringement is permissible?
Fetuses do not have a right to life because nothing in law gives fetuses a right to life. Mothers do have a well established right to self defence.
If fetuses are persons, they could still be aborted out of self defence. But even if fetuses are granted a right to life, that does not automatically mean abortion must be prohibited.
The bottom line is that a fetus causes harm to the mother. If a human being has a right to protect themselves from harm why should that right be abrogated when the source of harm is a fetus?
And if the fetus was the result of rape or incest, as opposed to consentual sex. Why does *rape/incest* caused fetus have fewer rights than the fetus resulting from consentual sex. Neither fetus was a party to the original rape or sex and neither fetus is more or less blaimworthy.
Or do you feel the woman is more blaimworthy if she consents to sex?
We know that sex is immoral. They told us so in church.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Always pretending to hate Europe when in reality are envious for lacking the style, panache and free thinking that has shaped most of humanity (for good or worst).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... is that people that decide, by means of their informed free will, to become USians, are not to be trusted, because the could be hiding malevolous intents.
When are you going to move forward to the XXI century where global travel is a fact of life and borders are becomming more and more porous?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I would like to see the process streamlined so that undocumented workers, who are here and are paying taxes and contributing to our society, can obtain citizenship more simply and easily.
"Undocumented workers" is a euphemism for those that have crossed into the US illegally. Crossing the border without proper authorization or a valid claim for refugee status is illegal.
Growing up in Texas, and apparently in construction, Cobb must have seen the number of illegals employed by the industry, which is far more now than what it was. California alone has some two million illegal immigrants costing the California government $5.5 billion in medical, education, welfare, and criminal costs, and we get only a tiny fraction of that (a few hundred million dollars) in compensation from the federal government. That's two million out of 35 million -- or about 5% of the state.
We have to remember that we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, with, of course, the exception of the Native people of this continent.
The vast majority of the immigration that built up the US in the late 1800s and first two-thirds or so of the 1900s was legal. They were largely screened for health issues; how many illegal immigrants arriving now have hepatitis, or tuberculosis? How many of them have criminal backgrounds?
Three million a year get past the border patrol, according to a recent Time magazine article. Some of them are found and deported, and still others will leave on their own, but the majority will stay and attempt to find work and place their kids in school. This means that the lowest rungs of the ladder -- where teens and the unskilled find employment -- are taken by those that will work under the table for less money. It's a corruption of the government and the companies that this continues at the pace that it does.
A few are going to get in almost no matter what we do. We could build a 100m tall wall on the border and inspect every ship, boat, car, truck, and plane, and someone will find a way to sneak some people in. But the current rate cannot be sustained, and Mr. Cobb's idea of basically granting an amnesty on those here now will just lead to more arriving, just as happened after Reagan's ill-advised amnesty.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I want to like the Greens. I really do. I am not registered with any party, and from time to time I consider registering as a member of the Green Party. But then I read stuff like these interview answers. Is this guy from Mars?.
As to our shortage of landfill space, we need to increase recycling and require manufacturers to take material back if it is not completely recyclable or biodegradable..
Require manufacturers to take material back? Did the Greens happen to notice when most of the manufacturing in this country moved overseas to find cheaper labor costs and less environmental regulation over the last 30 years? I think it's a great idea to protect our environment more, but the inevitable outcome is more businesses moving overseas. Environmental regulation must be accompanied by policies focused on absorbing those who lose their jobs as a result. (And I don't mean putting them on welfare).
Food was grown by humankind for an awfully long time and rather successfully before the advent of pesticides and herbicides. We don't need that poison on our foods, on our soil or in our water supplies. And we don't need Frankenfood either.
As someone else has pointed out, the reason we use modern farming technologies is to produce more food with the same (or less) amount of land. Changing the structure of our farming industry has more to do with changing the kinds of foods we eat than changing government policies. As for "Frankenfoods," I have yet to see any sound science to convince me that genetically engineered or modified foods are Bad(TM) or Good(TM). Until I do, I view blanket claims that such foods are Bad(TM) with deep suspicion.
Marijuana has been declared by an Administrative Judge for the FDA as one of the safest therapeutic substances known.
Who cares what an administrative law judge said? First of all, from a legal persepective, an administrative law judge's decision has zero precedential value beyond the applicable case. Second, who the heck was this administrative law judge and how did he reach this conclusion? Was he a scientist who conducted peer-reviewed experiments? Was he an expert who based his conclusion on a metastudy? Or was he just some bureaucrat sitting in some windowless room in some huge federal building somewhere in D.C.? Don't be fooled by the rhetoric, administrative judges are not part of the judicial system, and they are not necessarily truly impartial.
The "war on drugs" is racist and an insult to all Americans. This "war" has incarcerated people of color at a much higher rate than white people. It has resulted in senseless attacks on innocent people and on our Constitution. We have to treat drug addiction as a health problem, not as a crime.
Although drug addiction is a health problem, the drug laws don't put people in jail for being addicts. It's the people who traffic in illegal narcotics and get caught who end up in jail. The idea behind making certain narcotics illegal is that the best way to keep people from becoming addicted is to limit their access to the narcotics in the first place. In general, I recognize that the "war on drugs" has done a pretty piss-poor job of achieving this goal. But that's an argument for reforming the way we fight the war on drugs, not for scrapping the war entirely.
The Green Party supports closing overseas military bases and reducing the military budget by 50% over ten years.
This comment smacks of isolationism. We cannot protect our country, meaning our homeland or our interests throughout the globe, if we do not remain engaged with the world at large. Maybe we can drastically reduce our defense budget by cutting back on useless or out-dated ideas (missile defense system, anyone?), but we should not scale back our military in such a way that it would hamper our ability to respond to threats anywhere in the world in a rapid fashion. If anything, we need to increase the size of our armed forces, because we are currently overex
If MP3 decoding is patented and you are marketing an MP3 player, then presumably, you are using (or violating) someones patent surely...
Virtually all closed source (and open source, believe it or not) patent usage (and violations) can be deteceted by merely paying attention to what the program does.
yeah, then I might start cheering for the Arizona Cardinals.
Scientific theory suggests that the "Native" people of the Americas are descended from immigrants who crossed the Bering Sea land bridge about the time of the last ice age (10,000 years ago). Mr. Cobb, where do you believe that the Native people came from?
Also, do you believe that a person should be treated by the government as a unique individual, irrespective of their ancestry? Or, do you believe that the government should give special preferences to a person based solely upon his or her ancestry?
I seem to remember an old joke on this very concept...
"If elected, I will work to fund and create large packs of bioengineered wolves which will be released into major urban areas."
I can see the reasons for those objections: under the current setup both atomic power and genetic engineering are accidents waiting to happen. Some fission power plants in the US have operated up to 25 years before the *first* safety inspection, that's just plain stupid. But the problem is not with fission itself, but simply with the way fission power plants are regulated and administered. Fission power can be perfectly safe (I'll continue to advocate for fusion research, but I'll take fission in the meantime), it just isn't now.
The same thing goes for genetic engineering, I do not trust a for profit corporation to voluntarially take the necessary safety precautions. Safety and testing cost money, and Monsanto (or whoever) would much rather use that money for a fat bonus to its bloated CEO's. But, just as with fission, the problem is not the technology, but its implementation. Greater enforced transparency, government oversight, mandated testing, etc can make genetic engineering perfectly safe.
I'd vote Cobb for president if I thought he had a chance (and, considering I live in Texas, where the Electoral College's winner take all insanity will throw my vote away, I might vote Cobb anyway), but I'd feel a lot more comfortable voting Cobb if the Greens didn't have that nasty streak of neo-luddite-ism.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
You are quite brutal sir, stramen als have feelings.
Responsible Greens in general do not want you stop using your car. But surely most people and soccer mums don't need inneficient gas guzzlers that can hardly move but burn fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow (who knows, thanks to this people maybe there is not) and that transpport most of the time one person.
As for not buying in Walmart or your freedom of speech, frankly you can not be serious.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No. Search google for that quote, it was Kerry talking about Kerry on a tv show 3-5 days before his statements before congress.
Well, aside from barring immigrants, yes.
My experience with immigrants who seek out involvement in politics is that they generally aren't beholden to some foreign country. They're interested in contributing something here. I don't know--might have something to do with living in Toronto. A shade less than 60% of the city's population are first-generation immigrants, and another 20% are second-generation. (I'm part of the 21% who fall into the 'other' category.) Barring new immigrants from some political offices would seem silly, since they're more than half the voters around here.
Several of our Prime Ministers were born overseas. The most recent foreign-born PM was John Turner, who served in 1984. Our Governor General is the most powerful person in Canada, Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces, able to dissolve Parliament and call elections, empowered to refuse to sign any bill into law. The post is largely ceremonial now, but still legally essential--and it's filled by a woman born in Hong Kong. She came to Canada as a refugee during WWII.
~Idarubicin
GOogle for the damn quote, it ain't that fscking hard. He did say it, and he was talking about him self.
Believe it or not, he did give other talks about the subject other than the one before congress.
"And we don't need Frankenfood either."
I realise that may well be the party's views but why do the Green party have to take such a stubborn, un-scientific approach to issues such as these?
How's this for a poll topic?
"Word or Phrase that should rightly disqualify any political candidate for consideration if uttered or written in any serious context by the candidate?"
Additional suggestions?....
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
How were you born at the age of 2?
The grandparent post scared me. Nice rebutal.
----
This concludes our transmission to Oceania.
Depends how you slice up the numbers. Check this very different chart based on basically the same data. Both sources are extremely biased, and it shows in both results.
Yup. Granted that it seems the more "privileged" one's job is, the more opportunity to be a slacker may exist (it's much easier for a member of upper management to sit around doing nothing and getting paid for it than an assembly-line worker, whose lack of productivity is more immediately noticeable), that doesn't mean that "white collar" jobs can't be hard work just because they involve less manual labor. If I dig a ditch with a spoon instead of a shovel, does that mean I'm a "harder worker", or just an idiot?...
See also point #2 of my .sig ...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Google doesn't show any authoritative source, only a few right-wing sites like freerepublic, etc.
seriously, post a link, I'll read it.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I once took a course on the biology of populations (at U.T. Austin). Here's what I remember about the risks of GM crops.
(1) GM crops are cloned plants, started from seed (genetically identical, or genetically common).
(2) Use of clone crops reduces genetic diversity in field crops.
(3) As a clone, each plant in the crop is vulnerable to the same adversities. I.E. the same frost, same pest, same flood, same drought, same nutrient deficiency, same disease, etc, can now affect each plant in the crop in the same way.
(4) This puts all the genetic eggs into one basket.
(5) A "natural" field of non-GM crops is genetically diverse, resulting in a reduced likelihood of the same adversity erradicating the whole crop.
(6) Pollen contamination -- GM pollen can sometimes hybridize with natural strains of plants, meaning that the natural strain of wild plant is no longer 100% natural, and could potentially fall victim to the same vulnerabilities as the original GM crop.
(7) Diversity is the mother of evolution. Diversity enforces the likelihood that some, or all, strains of a crop will survive a given drought, disease, pestilence, etc. Natural strains of crops are the product of thousands of years of crop evolution, AND those strains have enough diversity to continue evolving. Man is not competent to know how or why these diverse crops are suited to survival -- i.e. we just dont know why they are a decent batch of "good survivers." So man's genetic strain might help ALOT against one particular pest in the short term, but in the long run there's no telling what beneficial traits we've cloned out of the crop. Using a full diversity of strains therefore assists a crop species' long term viability -- and expanding the use of single-strain GM crops is what I'd call a VERY BAD IDEA, in the long run, and possibly even in the short run, because there's no telling what "stealthy survivor traits" we've unwittingly removed from the population. So if an iceberg melts and releases some harmful spore that was frozen 3000 years ago, the diverse crops still have a genetic memory, and some of them "know" how to survive.
(8) Seed dependency -- once a farmer's bought into GM seeds, he's dependent on a corporation to provide each year's single-strain seeds. In "ye olden days", he could simply store some genetically diverse seeds from the year before.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
...so long as your are born here in the US (to insure you have no title and or allegiance to another country) - you can hold the highest office.
How does being born in the US insure (or *ensure*, which is what I think you meant) that a person has no allegiance to any other country? Couldn't a child, born in the US to immigrant parents, be raised with a greater sense of loyalty to "the mother country" than to the US?
In fact, a person born to foreign parents while on holiday in the US becomes a US citizen, and remains one even if the family goes back to their native country and raises the child there. And that foreign-raised US citizen can become eligible to run for the presidency by moving to the US, living here for at least 14 years, and reaching the age of 35.
On the other hand, couldn't even someone born to and raised by American parents decide to switch allegiances to some other country or culture, like Johnny Depp or that young man who left his native California to join the Taliban?
The immediate, off the cuff example, being John Walker Lindh seems to have far less allegiance to the US than someone like Aaaaahnold.
How on earth does being born in the US necessarily mean that you're guaranteed to not have allegiance elsewhere? What about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg while we're at it. They were both born in New York City, after all. Doesn't seem to have kept them all that loyal, once some cash was waved in their faces.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Hah! Why is every one on the offensive against this poor guy? He is talking to us directly, at least. You can imagine the number of fuck-ups Kerry or Bush would have if they didn't have thousands of staff workers to help them avoid any possible conflicts and miniscule errors that would piss people off in such a way as this. Cut the guy some slack, atleast he's not full of shit.
I'm pretty sure since I became a US citizen, I have no more legal standing than you would in RoK. I'm not a dual-citizen, if that helps.
Oops - I forgot to add one item to the summary:
* GMO is not necessarily (perhaps even not frequently?) related to improving the quality of the resulting food; it often implements a tie-in to a specific chemical manufacturer. Monsanto is a big name here.
You're correct, the system overall doesn't in any way serve rural areas. But the Electoral college, and the Senate, were *intended* to give rural areas a boost, to prevent their interests from being totally lost and the country being ruled exclusively to suit citydwellers. Which is how it turned out despite that effort, of course, but that was the thought.
But to argue, as Cobb and the grandparent poster seem to, that attempting to protect the interest of rural folks is 'racist' is really, I think, a reductio ad absurdum of the whole concept of majoritarian democracy. It always boils down to the oppression of the minority by the majority, and that the worship of democracy these days has reached the fever pitch where any attempt to reign in the power of the majority is met with cries of 'racism' or other slur words really speaks volumes about the bankruptcy of the entire concept.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I read it in a quaint text file written on a dead tree. Linky link.
But, a bit of googling did help me find a related study (sorry for the PDF).
All's true that is mistrusted
Take a look at Maine's system and then contact your state legislators. The votes are assigned to the winner of each congressional district with the overall winner of the state's popular vote pickup up the last two. For instance, a candidate wins CD-1 and CD-2, but loses CD-3. He gets 55% of the total vote. He grabs 4 electoral votes, the "loser" gets 1. The "winner-take-all" system gets thunked, the states get to keep their power, and it doesn't (literally) take an act of Congress to get it passed.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Food was grown by humankind for an awfully long time and rather successfully before the advent of pesticides and herbicides. We don't need that poison on our foods, on our soil or in our water supplies. And we don't need Frankenfood either.
How big was the population in the time before we had those chemicals? How well-fed were the people? How much of the food was spoiled or contaminated by natural agents, making it impossible or harmful to consume? What makes you think you can make those changes and maintain the current levels of production?
As for "Frankenfood"... please. Forget about name-calling and slogans, and bring in the science about why you think GM food is so dangerous. Fear-mongering is just pointless, not to mention pathetic.
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
People are *better* able to feed themselves with traditional farming
This doesn't scale. Remember the industrial revolution? Took place because of mechanization and automation in the farming industry, thereby freeing people from the task of feeding themselves and allowing them to work on other things--like building SpaceShipOne. Think Burt would have had the time to draw up the blueprints if he'd been spending his time plowing his field behind an ox? Sure it takes more energy to farm running a combine, but it only takes a couple of people to work an enormous field, feeding not only themselves but a good sized town as well. There's more to efficiency than just caloric input.
The nuclear part of a nuclear power station heats high pressure coolant (ultra pure water) which is then used to create steam either directly in a BWR or through a water-water heat exchanger in a PWR. This steam is then passed through a turbine to generate electricity. The steam is cooled and then recirculated. This coolant loop is known as the primary loop and it is constantly recirculated at a rate of up to 100,000 gallons per minute.
Outside of the nuclear source of heat the plants are operationally identical to fossil plants w.r.t the steam turbines, condensation towers, etc.
The waste comes from the spent nuclear fuel assemblies which burn out over time and need to be replaced periodically during a refueling outtage. Every refueling outtage generates approximately 60-90 tons of waste which is a very small amount compared to the amount of ash and CO2 produced in a fossil plant.
Why WOULD anybody vote for a green? Maybe the Green Party would set American energy policy moving in a direction that eradicated greed-driven war in arab lands. Maybe it would result in fewer corporate billboards and fewer public advertisements. Maybe it would result in feasible cars that dont make any noise, and run on electricity. Maybe it would result in the homeless being taken care of, and in all Americans basic health needs being met. Maybe it would reduce noise pollution, environmental pollution, oil drilling, deforestation, suburban sprawl, etc. Maybe it would restore democracy to our country, and remove corporations (and their money) from the electoral process. Maybe it would reduce our taxes -- it would certainly reduce the % of taxes devoted to developing weapons, and reduce the amount devoted to teaching young men to kill for money.
In short, maybe a green president would make our country a wonderful place to live, and encourage the rest of the world to love it, too.
OK? Thanks for reading.
-Sam
PS:
From the guy complaining about use of the term "frankenfood" (which is a biased term, but does not preclude thought), to the guy ridiculing the (admittedly silly) term "people of color". I have one thing to say to you: is that all you had to say? Why did you even post? And I can't forget the troll academically talking about the green party trying to "sell its symbol, just like all the others" and then caressing his ego by claiming to be above it. And then the 20 offtopic posts about the Libertarian Party (who already had their own slashdot article, just a day or two ago).
To all of you that I just mentioned I say this: Somebody should take away your karma. Your posts were natural 1's and zero's, and nothing should have boosted them any higher. I wanted to read about the Green party, and instead I just read your bullshit posts.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Radioactive waste actually has very short half-lives which is why the waste is so acutely radioactive. Garden variety U238 has a halflife of approximately 4 billion years. The plutonium that results from the various nuclear reactions has a much shorter half life (approximately 25,000 years). Plutonium has other properties that make it unsavory to just have lying around of course.
The more radiotoxic isotopes like Xenon and Iodine are very short lived and also extremelly dangerous, fortunately they burn out completely in a very short period (several months not years or millenia)
One of the largest constituents of nuclear waste is plutonium which itself is suitable for making nuclear fuel. This process is called breeding and all uranium fueled reactors operate at least partially off of this reaction. For instance modern PWR fuel is burned for three 18 month cycles, during the third cycle as much as 30% of the thermal output of a fuel assembly comes from plutonium fissioning.
At the end of the fuel's "useful" life only 1.5% of its energy potential has been developed. We're currently throwing away the rest of that energy because of a political decision that was made in the 70's forbidding the use of reprocessing technologies here in the U.S. due to proliferation concerns. France has been reprocessing their nuclear fuel for decades.
There is an immense amount of energy in the uranium nucleus, all of it within the reach of our current technology (actually within reach of 30 year old technology).
US Electricity production in 2003 was 3800 Billion KWh (=3.8 PWh =13 Quad); 21% nuclear (.76 PWh=2.6). For comparison, hydro was 7%; solar, geothermal, and other alternative sources about 1%.
Total energy consumption, however, is about 100 Quad, once you include all energy use ("petroleum, dry natural gas, coal, net hydro, nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, wood and waste electric power").
Since nuclear energy is used exclusively for electricity generation (neglecting the effect of a few floating cities), it would not be impossible to replace nuclear power with an expanded coal program, especially given the vast proven US coal reserves. However, coal-fired plants have arguably greater drawbacks-- coal ash is radioactive, and burning more coal would release more CO2.
Replacing nuclear power with an expanded alternatives program (wind or solar) would require an order of magnitude increase in generation capacity. It would also result in a cost increase; wind energy costs around .
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Yeah, surely there's no need to know the basic system of government under which you live after high school.
It's Maxey Flats, KY.
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
It's not about telling you what car you can drive. It's about telling you what you aren't allowed to dump into the air that I breathe.
If I happen to like driving a vehicle that strips paint off of the walls of nearby buildings, is that ok? Can they sue me for property damage? Can I sue you for medical bills if you drive a vehicle that produces way too much CO? (That said, I don't think anyone wants to get rid of your Z)
The point is that that justification for its existance is moot.
Wil
wiki
The anti GMO issue is actually backed by good science. Genetic engineering is good science, but it plays almost no part in the debate beyond the creation of the organisms.
A good scientist looks at the whole picture. What happens when the new stronger, better (as far as we know) corn drives the other varieties of corn into extinction*? Now imagine that a new parasite targets that one breed of corn? Monsanto, etc. are the ones practicing bad science. They are creating potential disasters without considering the possible consequences.
The Greens are simply against blindly charging ahead into the field. The problem is with the companies that use the products of that science for their own ends. The "Frankenfood" thing is an attention getter. It gets people to discuss GMOs when they normally wouldn't. It worked, didn't it?
*If you say that this can't happen, consider RoundUp resistant corn in a place that has been bombarded with RoundUp. What's the only species left after the purge?
If so, the next time the vote happens I am definitely voting for them. I pretty much agree with everything he said. It may end up being a wasted vote but at least I will have a clear concious. Liberals are corrupt and the Tories are trying too much to make Canada into the US with killing the health system (granted they want to put more money into our military but come on Canada does NOT need an Aircraft Carrier)
What he means is that each state gets to decide what method it uses to cast its electoral votes. Currently, 48 use a winner-take-all form, while two give two votes to the winner and divide the rest proportionally. There's a measure on the ballot in Colorado to move from winner-take-all to divide the state's 9 votes proportionally, and any other state could introduce similar measures if they so chose.
Someone who actually has the guts to publicly claim that people who want to keep the money they've earned are "greedy".
I love it.
Now, tell us what it's called when you want someone to steal half of your neighbor's money at gunpoint and give it to you? "Fair"?
Plain speaking and blunt language such as yours will help many ideological fence-sitters to see just how twisted Green, Socialist, (USA) Democratic, and other left-wing wacko parties are. Keep up the good work...comrade.
...you convinced me! It's no use for your own juice, might as well wait for government and international corporations to offer me the back yard Mr. Fusion!
%^)
My point of view is, you can have BOTH and sorta slide into energy independence, and help out the R and D along the way by being an early adopter and enthusiast. There's no law says you have to immediately replace your existing grid setup. It's not an immediate either/or situation, yuou can have both. In fact, most of the alternative energy rigs I have seen incorporate the grid, because that's what they started out with. You start with some critical need, something like maybe just enough to power your home office (killer UPS system there), or you living room outlets, or the freezer in the garage, just something. That's what's cool about alternatives, they are immensely scalable and flexible. My own stuff, no way can I run everything, but I can run SOME of everything all the time, and whenever the grid poofs (I live rural, it happens frequently), I still got that "some". And I can add to it as I drop more loot at it. I look at it like upgrading my machine, I don't have to do it all at once, I can buy a better drive, etc, or more ram, etc, and it's an improvement, an upgrade. A properly designed system is like that, it's designed to at first augment what you already have and be upgradeable, and it provides a minimum of guaranteed power that is paid off, you own it, you control it, it's not subject to market shenaingans or political shenanigans.
Anyway, suit yourself, I'm happy with my much less than 8 grand system so far, plan on adding to it occassionaly. I like being a geek and an early adopter of interesting and *useful* technology. I just pick and choose what I like, some guys like fabulously expensive and complex home entertainment systems, or very expensive furniture, or..whatever... I could care less about that stuff, but I like having a good backup of clean power that I control and own outright. Different strokes. I like being part of solutions, in all things. Always been my nature.
And that's just in this country. The Green Party is an international movement and around the world we have elected members to over two dozen national legislatures and parliaments.
I do not htink Americans should be electing those beholen to an "international movement"..
Sorry Trekkies but one cannot lead or govern if all you are doing is protesting. If you start out by saying you will never do anything unpopular to the protest movement, you will never anger radicals then how do you actually keep the government running?
I am taking ethics now. Here's a situation that happened described without names. A woman came to this hospital, a catholic hospital, and it was discovered that her fetus had no brain or brian stem. It could never live a human life. But with the ignorant stance that all fetus are going to be babies, the hospital and her insurance (provided by the same catholic institution) would not perform an abortion. She was forced to carry the lifeless tissue full term. Then it was birthed in the normal mannor. Because of course a baby dying during birth is not baby death or murder.
It is disgusting and I am ashamed to have my name associated with this institution in any way. By forcing their divine command theory ethics on others, those who think themselves moral are in fact acting immorally.
'Choice' can be realative.
Keep your mind open and there's a chance that knowledge will find its way inside.
But the problem is not with fission itself, but simply with the way fission power plants are regulated and administered
Even if the Greens or Libertarians or whatever got in I'd still be nervous without serious reins on both nuclear power and genetic engineering. It may be that the probability of disaster is very low but the possible consequences are very high. Given the historical evidence for humans to make short sighted, selfish and even mean spirited choices I think that extreme controls are needed when the stakes are so high.
With genetically engineered foods I find it unacceptable that labeling is not required. A fundamental tenet of free market capitalism is that high quality information must be available to the economic entities making market choices. Keeping the genetic engineering status of foods hidden from the consumer is to disable the consumer from making a responsible choice.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
On the value of labor: "...I don't care if they earned more money than the programmer, it's still harder work."
Any individual capable of bipedal locomotion and who has functional use of at least one upper appendage is capable of earning a competitive living wage doing "HARD WORK". Yes, subsistence living.[1]
However, programming entails: (I presume) an intelligence level at or above room temperature, the investment of much studying, the cost of the education, and the years of experience and practice. In other words, there are more programmers that could pick fruit than there are fruitpickers that can program. Both are paid exactly what they are worth to their employers.
On the role of Government and how wealth is created: "Rich people are... RICH! What "help" does a multi-millionaire need!?"
Magically, they're "RICH!" Governments can only redistribute wealth or print money. Businesses, run by individuals or corporations, create wealth. And more jobs. For "working people."
On moral judgements: You should be happy that you don't need a government program to have a decent quality of living. And people should feel downright ASHAMED about devoting their lives to the aquisition of wealth. I hope it buys them something to cover up the shallow uselessness they've become.
There was a slogan used the by liberals in the 1970's... "You can't legislate morality". But apparently, you would like to very much. Perhaps I need a Socialist Dictator to keep my earned wealth and to tell me what to do with what he lets me keep. Let's see, who's available? hrm...
[1}Also, wouldn't wanting to have more luxuries (TANSTAAFL) than a fruitpicker could afford mean that fruitpicker ought to be "ASHAMED"?
I'm strongly opposed to software patents
Agreed. Patents are for physical objects and physical processes, not for mental processes or mathematical calculations.
Proofs are discovered. Algorithms are invented, surely?
I'm not sure what distinction you are seeing there. You need to build up steps in exactly the same way to find a proof or an algorithm. It doesn't matter whether you focus on the "build" or on the "find", as far as I can see it is the exact same thing.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
while two give two votes to the winner and divide the rest proportionally.
Actually, the remaining votes are not divided proportionally. They are given to the winner in each House district. So suppose that Candidate A gets 51% of both districts 1 and 2 in NE, and Candidate B gets 49% in A and B and 100% in C (hypothetical, not realistic). Then Candidate A receives 2 votes (1 for A and 1 for B), and Candidate B receives 3 votes (1 for C and 2 for the whole state). As opposed to the system in the other states where Candidate B would get all 5 votes, or your system, where Candidate B would get 4 votes and Candidate A would get 1 vote.
So, you interviewed "most" women who have had abortions before you came to the conclusion that they regret their choice?
I don't believe that a fetus, at least in the first two trimesters is a human being, or "baby" as you put it, in any sense of the word. However, even considering say, a third trimester fetus, or assuming that life begins at conception, I must be rabidly pro-choice.
Why?
Because no laws, save those which restrict abortion allow one person to enter another person's body without consent. Consent to sex != concent for a zygote to implant itself in a woman's uterus, nor concent for a embryo or fetus to stay there.
Hell, in this country, my property rights considered more sacred by the religious reich than a woman's right to choose. In many states, it's perfectly okay to shoot a person who has entered private property without consent. So why all of a sudden is it wrong for a woman to use lethal force to keep another person from entering her body? Does she need a tattoo saying "tresspassers will be shot?" If killing another human being is so damned evil, then why are we allowed to defend ourselves to say, avoid handing out a wallet with maybe $40 in it to a mugger, but NOT able to use lethal force to evict a person from another person's body, especially given the costs (especially to the uninsured) of prenatal care, time off of work (especially for those in shit jobs), hospital costs for childbirth/recovery, even if the resulting infant is given up for adoption? You might as well legalize rape while you're at it.
I'm not sure what distinction you are seeing there. You need to build up steps in exactly the same way to find a proof or an algorithm.
Fair comment. I think another replier drew a better distinction than mine, between algorithms and theorems.
I do think you could make a case, though. An algorithm is a means to a practical end; it gives you a concrete result, like a nicely sorted list or an efficient route plan. A proof doesn't have these external side-effects; you can't do anything after proving a theorem (except possibly prove another theorem) that you couldn't do before. In that sense, they're maybe more like works of art. You can patent a new sprocket frobnifier that happens to looks beautiful, but you can't patent a sculpture that looks a bit like a sprocket frobnifier.
I'll show you a link. He spent all day getting his ass handed to him about his sig: link
It was in missouri. Yep, AC goes on once temps hit the 80s for most folks. I lived there for a coupla years. Midwest and southeast heat, heck, most anyplace east of the big muddy, gets real intense from the humidity in the summer. I live in georgia now and work outside, it cracked 80 today. When I come into the house I literally take my shirt off and hang it on the line, because it's soaked, 80 and high humdity is HOT.
I been outwest a few times, and yep, 80 and low humidity is tolerable. I even remember jogging in southern cal when it was pretty hot, never broke sweat that I recall, or put it more accurately, it probably dried almost instantly, you just feel cooler.
The only AC we have here is a huge oak tree, shades the house. We are an exception to the Ac rule around here, everyone else that I know has an air conditioner and it gets used, starting at the high 70s usually. Me, I can't stand them, and I think it wusses you out, once used to them you are never comfortable except inside someplace or in the car where it's blowing.
Anyway, that was a true story to illustrate a point, the family's electrical bill went dramatically lower (and would stay lower almost forever) with two days of a couple guys labor working on their home and some material. Our work at the time was usually around a 3 or 4 year total payback for most of the customers, then it was free money kept in the wallet every month. You just can't beat not incurring a bill to begin with on "saving" money and increasing comfort. That part is important too, better quality insulation efforts make your home much more liveable, not only mellows out the tem-p extrmes, it makes it quieter and more cozy feeling. Helps keeping dust and dirt and bugs out, too, BTW, again, a great +. And we never even figured out the home expensive appliance savings, wear and tear on the Ac or heat pumps and furnace adds up, too, and none of them are cheap nowadays. It's *something* to go from the unit kicking on every hour or so to once in a day and a half, just with simple common sense conservation measures. And you can do an even better job with new construction.
The concept is called "super insulation" and works most any climate with temp extremes. I first learned about it living in the great white north and making folks be able to actually afford to stay in their homes after fuel oil prices skyrocketed in the 70's. I have personal friends who's winter heating bill became greater than their mortgage, and it happened within a few months time frame, went from "acceptable, just the heating bill" to OMG WTF is this!!!11! AAAKKK!!"
I think people in this nation are too complacent, they get set for a certain standard then something weird happens, lose a job, international tom foolery happens, natural weather extremes, whatever, THEN they start to think of alternatives and solutions. To me that's bass ackwards.. Ask the folks in florida now who couldn't or didn't want to "afford" more-sane construction with rafter tie downs and etc, or they though having a fuel genny was unnecessary, or stored water, etc.. I *bet* you'd find a ton of folks with 40 inch TVs and skiboats who neglected their houses infrastructure in favor of pleasurable pursuits,dropping their loot and interest there, now they got a big pile of busted up crap in the yard to deal with, and everyones insurance goes up. Oh well, learn for history or etc....
Same with the nations "energy" bill, just astounds me we even have these conversations when more-sane useage and application of fairly non exotic and available engineering would solve a lot of the "problems". We really don't have as much of an energy problem as we have an ID 10 T problem, IMO. Humans by and large are just not proactive in a few critical areas, once they get used to easy and cheap living they forget it don't always got to stay that way just because they wish it so....
America and all adopting nations seem to have approached in with very little testing or thought. The Green Party is right to exercise a degree of pragmatic caution; while the world's population is too much of a strain on conventional agricultural techniques, genetically modified food shouldn't be assumed to be the solution just because it might be. According to Choice magazine,
A recent New Scientist report about Argentina's agricultural and environmental crisis holds a worrying lesson for the rest of the world - particularly the developing world - about the impacts of genetically modified food crops.
It says, after eight years of large-scale cropping of Monsanto's ROUNDUP READY soy beans (soy beans genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's herbicide ROUNDUP), damaging and possibly irreversible effects are becoming increasingly evident:
- Weeds resistant to glyphosate (the chemical name of ROUNDUP) have increased in abundance, and farmers have to use stronger herbicides to control them. Agronomists fear glyphosate resistance will transfer to other weed species, creating 'superweeds.'
- GM soy itself is becoming a weed, with stronger and more harmful herbicides needed to control stray plants.
- Farmers growing GM soy are applying more than twice as much herbicide as conventional soy farmers.
- Careless and excessive spraying of a mix of powerful herbicides has killed non-resistant crops on neighbouring farms, also killing and maiming farm animals and causing health problems for humans.
- Soil microbiology has been affected - essential bacteria normally present are declining, and in some places dead weeds lying on the ground don't even rot.
As I said, the issue is much more complex on practical terms than "GM is good and these ideological nutters are getting in the way."
The November election is just for the Board of Supervisors (the combination city/county government that is the local government for San Francisco). It is not for any state or federal office. Check out www.groups.yahoo.com/group/instantrunoff to find more advocates of instant runoff voting.
I must have missed the line where Mr Cobb said "Twirlip of the Mists is a collosal dumbass".
Unclear on the meaning of quotation marks, are we?
I write in my journal
I'm not saying I'm for or against GM food, but a candidate for the presidency of the united states could have produced a more intelligent argument aginst it than just calling it "frankenfood"
Yeah, he could've called it "evil-doers" or "draft-dodgers".
The only thing that irritates *me* about calling it Frankenfood is the high likelihood that the person saying it probably thinks Frankenstein was the Creature and doesn't realize the Creature never had a name! Frankenstein was the Creator.
And unfortunately, he didn't GPL his work.
Like what I said? You might like my music
As a Texan, I found that while I didn't agree with exaclty the same caveats you had with Cobb, I liked pretty much everything else he said. In fact, his response to the copyright/patent question was music to my ears.
I'm going to check out Green a bit more seriously now, and they've just moved up a notch in my eyes. I might well wind up casting my vote his way, here in Texas. ;)
Like what I said? You might like my music
I said "taxes," not "income taxes." And I *was* wrong; 28% is *way* understated. 28% is their tax *rate*. Sorry about that. 2004 numbers are lower than stated, of course.
But here is interesting look at taxes.
I apologize for shooting off my mouth.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It's really bad here in Georgia. If we suddenly switched over to that method, we'd already know the outcome of the vote...the one or two (I forget the number) Democratic strongholds in Atlanta would vote Democrat, and the rest Republican. Of course, I can't really see how it would be worse than the situtuation currently, where we know we're going to vote Republican.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"I would like to see the process streamlined so that undocumented workers, who are here and are paying taxes and contributing to our society, can obtain citizenship more simply and easily."
I don't think providing amnesty for illegal immigrants is a good idea. Telling someone they'll get an edge in obtaining a green card if they come here illegally will only encourage more people to come here illegally. I think the guest worker idea was better since it gave legal status to illegal immigrant workers, but didn't give them any edge in getting a green card over someone trying through legal means.
Vote for Pedro
The stat quoted claims Canada pays much less of their GDP for heathcare under their nationalized system than the US. So who makes up the difference? It's the doctors, nurses, pharmacologists, etc. who pay the cost, through lower salaries dictated by the govt. Of course this also discourages medical research such as developing pharmaceuticals since there is the same risk and less reward. Lower salaries discourage workers, which makes the best people less likely to become doctors and pursue other fields where they can participate in a free market economy, instead of being effectively a govt. worker.
Vote for Pedro
I guess the Greens don't believe in personal responsibility.
I'd like to note that criminalizing individual drug possession and usage in the absence of harm to others is an excellent way to ferret out and imprison those naughty people who don't have any personal responsibility, and are clearly an immediate threat to our society!
We need to continue to create more victimless crimes to keep our society safe from evildoers.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I'm surprised no one mentioned http://fairtax.org/ as far as I can see. It works via consumption tax, and stamps out poverty with giving everyone rebates regardless of income. So those who are below the poverty level may end up with a net income.
Jerusalen, Bogota, Colombia In 1985, a hydroponic project supported by the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) was established in Jerusalen, a community on the outskirts of Bogota, Columbia. Designed by Colombian mechanical engineer, Jorge Zapp, the project used hydroponic growers, made of small containers and discarded wood pallets, placed on rooftops, balconies, stairs, and any available space in the sun. Participants in the project included 130 urban poor families, with 90% of the participants mothers and homemakers. The women earned as much as three times more than their husbands earned in semi-skilled jobs, and provided food from the families from overripe or less than perfect crops. They produced 30 types of vegetables in their hydroponic gardens. The gardens were built of donated or recycled materials including rice bran from a mill, wooden crates from an auto parts shop and recycled polyethylene from commercial flower growers. The costs of setting up each square meter plot was less than $5.00. Pallets were set flat on the roof and the top slats were removed. Plastic sheeting was placed inside and the rice bran was used as media. Hydroponic nutrients were supplied by the funding agency at a cost of about $9.00 per year, or about 2.4 cents a day.
Umm not quite....
Actually, the above comment just perpetuates a common myth. Yields of most food crops are about the same relative to pest and disease losses as they were prior to the introduction of chemical pesticides in the 1940s. In many areas they are lower because the pesticides wiped out many beneficial species, such as pollinators, symbionts and *gasp* predators of the nasties. Then you get adaptive mutation of the pest species making them less susceptible to the pesticides. Oops.
IPM, which is a "sorta green" strategy, gets the producer back toward balance (instead of fighting) with nature and almost always improves the yield and bottom line (chemical treatment is expensive).
Then there's the whole monoculture issue -- and the vulnerability of having Illinois and Iowa planted wall-to-wall with only a couple of types of hybrid corn or soybean. Film at 11, etc.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Farmers have been doing this for years. It's the basis of almost all modern farming techniques, and doesn't always involve a labratory.
Just wondering.
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
You're right, thanks for catching my mistake.
...in a three+ party election which other than a "dictatorship" (an election where there is a voter whose chosen candidate will win the election regardless of how everybody else votes)
This is a theoretical result proved by Gibbard and Satterthwaite which is somewhat similar to Arrow's theorem (which gives other conditions under which an election system must be a dictatorship).
Of course, this isn't to say that there won't be FEWER opportunities for tactical voting under an IRV or Condorcet system than under the current system. On the other hand, to assert that Condorcet is completely strategy-proof (or that IRV is bad just because it allows strategic voting) is foolish.
A new technology exists called permaculture. It is based on the use of modern biology to design self-sustaining, food producing ecosystems. Permaculture can produce more food per unit land than traditional monoculture can with or without artificial chemicals and genetic engineering.
It is true that there were fewer people when we last tried green agriculture on a large scale. But there was also a vastly inferior knowledge of biology and ecology. With modern scientific methods, it can be made to work.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Furthermore, green farming does not mean refusing to use modern technology, it just means refusing to use destructive technologies. See my earlier post about permaculture. With modern technology, we can grow more food without using destructive technologies, if we do it right.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
That's what I'm on about, right on man! One quibble though: don't say "technology is not the answer" around here, you'll get called a luddite faster than you can say "Unibomber." In fact technology is the answer, it's just a different technology from pesticides and GMOs. The relevant technology is permaculture and it's based on biology and ecology. Permaculture is not anti-tech at all, it just uses tech in a smart way.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
But that's a false dilemma, you see. With proper use of technology, implementing techniques based on biology and ecology, we can grow enough food without using pesticides. So you don't have to die of starvation or slow poisoning. How does that choice sound?
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Scaling is overrated. Some things scale well. Agriculture is not one of them. See, for example, the pig shit problem. Pig shit does not scale well.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
The economy of scale applies very well to industrial manufacturing. However, when you apply it to farming, you get problems. The conventional assesment of the costs of modern farming do not usually include environmental damage and soil depletion and so forth. If you include those, the cost, not just in calories but in money, is higher with factory farming.
The solution, as I've pointed out before, is permaculture. With permaculture you can produce surplus food using less land and less labor in the long term than industrial agriculture. This is because permaculture uses modern science and technology to develop self-sustaining food-producing ecosystems. These require little maintanance and produce more food per acre than industrial monoculure.
Permaculture does not scale, but it does allow the population to grow its own food, produce a surplus, and sill have plenty of spare time to work on Space Ship One. Sounds like a pretty good deal, eh?
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I've been a Green Party member my entire life. And I agree with most of your positions. But I also think that your position on nuclear power is idiocy. Nuclear power has never been cleaner than before, and there are viable methods of keeping it safe too. Nuclear power plants can only melt down when they are too big, and they don't have to be. Nuclear waste can also be safely disposed of.
I know that it is an unpopular position in the green party, but nuclear power is green, and I think that you should be brave enough, and intelligent enough,to stand against even your own party on this issue.
Thank you, and you still have my vote, as a faithful supporter of third parties in American politics.
madcapjack
Logic, macros, and more
Why does it have to be the size of a washing machine? Doesn't it just have to be the size of your roof? If you cover your roof with photovoltaic cells and use energy-efficient appliances, you can get by just fine and most of the time produce a serplus to sell back to the grid, especially if you use wind turbines as well for rainy days. Granted the price is still pretty steep, but it pays off in the long term. Solar energy is viable for personal use right now, if you can afford the initial investment.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I strongly suspect the top 5% of the wage earners are being paid by the top 10% of the wealth holders. See, the wealth holders are just that...holders of wealth. They control vast empires of companies, and don't 'earn' hardly anything...the companies earn the money.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It may be true that conservation can't solve the whole problem. But it's nuts to dismiss conservation on these grounds. Even if it can't solve the whole problem, it can make it a lot less severe!
My site: Free Nature Pictures
their=there, duh, need another coffee I can see... heh heh heh
actually, I'd like to promote "thare" as a "one size fits all" word based on the context solution.
Same with "yore", eliminate all that other nonsense, the meaning can be different based on context and situation, but the spelling will be universal.
See: Libertarians for Life. Also see some secular arguments against abortion. Folks, you don't have to be a Christian Fundamentalist to oppose abortion.
I think you still underestimate the parallel. I'm not sure I can catagorically state a mathematical identity between theroems and proofs, I can state that in at least many cases they can in fact be equated. An algorithm that garantees some result can often be directly translated into a proof concluding that result, and in many cases a proof of somethign can directly be translated into an algorithm to reach that result.
For example say you start with a mathematical assumption of a generic finite set of elements and certain mathematical assumptions about a well-ordered relation between pairs of elements. You can then select an arbitrary element X from that set and inductively compare it to arbitrary element Y from that set, removing the smaller. Through induction you ultimately reach a single element set containing only X, thus proving any set contains a largets element and that largest element happens to be X. You can then go back to the full set and remove element X and inductively repeat that process, thus proving that any set of element with certain properties possesses a full well ordering, and incidentally producing that well ordering in the process.
If you are familiar with that sort of proof process, and if you happen to be a programmer, then you should easily recognize that that mathematical proof just happens to be a bubble sort. An induction process is effectively a software loop, and a nested induction proof is a nested loop program.
It is easy to prove an identity between any program and some mathematical equation/function. I strongly suspect there is an identity between algorithms and proofs as well. Software patents inevitably equate to patents on math.
But even more absurd than the idea of patenting math, the fact is that any software patent is a patent on a sequence of thoughts. Any software a computer can execute can (slowly) be executed within a brain. So a software patent either claims it is a violation of the law to think certain thoughts, or it more narrowly claims a patent only on the blindingly obvious idea of using a computer merely to speed up that otherwise unpatentable calculation.
I have raised that argument in countless debates with software patent advocates, as follows:
If I in fact preform a demonstration carrying out some simple software patent in my head, were my thoughts prohibited by law? And if not, how can you patent the obvious step of using a computer simply to speed up that calculation?
The question is without fail, ignored the first time I ask it. Either they do not reply, or they reply and ignore it. If they reply and ignore it I repeat the question and state I will continue to repeat it so long as they continue to ignore it. Chuckle. I have yet to have a person reasonably address that question. They just go away, presumably thinking that by ignoring the problem makes them right and that software patents are still a good thing.
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If I in fact preform a demonstration carrying out some simple software patent in my head, were my thoughts prohibited by law?
Yes, would be the obvious answer. Is it wrong, stupid and evil? Sure. But that's certainly the implication of patent law as it stands.
This oddity isn't unique to software patents. If I'm marooned alone on a desert island, and can survive only with the aid of a (patented) sprocket frobnifier I whittled from a piece of driftwood, I'm still breaking the law. Prohibiting actions simply to preserve an artificial monopoly isn't obviously less wrong than prohibiting thoughts in the same cause. If it seems sillier, it's only because it's that much harder to enforce.
All patents are "wrong" in this sense; they reduce the benefits generated by a given invention. It's always a tradeoff between this "wrongness" and the desire to encourage innovation where first-mover advantage alone isn't enough to recoup the cost of research. My problem with software patents is that the tradeoff being made is grossly skewed; empirically, they hinder rather than promote innovation. It's not an objection from first principles. (I wouldn't rule out such an objection, but it would be an objection to patents in general, not software patents in particular.)
Interesting discussion, btw; thanks.
Mathematics is considered a matter of fact, something which cannot be patented.
OK, you *are* missing something. Mathematics is *not* a "matter of fact", it is an abstract (and thus arbitrary) method of conceptualizing objects and relations: a conceptual tool, if you will. An algorithm is an idea that can be expressed mathematically, but it is still an *idea* and cannot be patented. However, a *physical process* which *implements* an algorithm is material; as long as it is "non-obvious" and "useful", it *CAN* be patented. You have confused ideas and objects here.
I see that you are still baffled -- let me explain. Take the cotton gin, patented by Eli Whitney: a rotating wheel which strips the seeds from cotton. Such a device can be expressed in mathematical terms, but that is not an invention. The algorithm for cleaning cotton can be expressed in words, but that is not an invention. The cotton gin itself -- a useful device for cleaning cotton -- can be constructed and used; at the time that it was patented, it was "novel" and "non-obvious to an expert in the field", so it met the test for patentability.
OK, say I develop an algorithm for, say, factoring numbers faster than current methods. I can express it mathematically -- not patentable. I can write down a verbal algorithm for doing it -- also not patentable. But now say I implement it as a software program, where it is used to factor numbers. Useful? Yes. Novel? Yes. Non-obvious to an expert in the field? Yes. Thus: patentable.
The fact that it is an implementation of *an* algorithm is irrelevant: all patented inventions *are*, at some level, because every invention implements a sequential process of some kind, and an algorithm is just a listing of a sequential process.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Hmmm, I guess the foundation and intent of my argument wasn't as clear as I thought. I'll need to work on that for real debates.
>were my thoughts prohibited by law?
Yes, would be the obvious answer. Is it wrong, stupid and evil? Sure.
It is not wrong. It is not stupid. It is not evil.
It is simply invalid. Huge difference, it changes the entire rules of the game.
On any attempt to claim "Yes, those thoughts were prohibited by law" we simply drag it to the Supreme Court and state "Freedom of Thought" is an inherent and implicit prequisite to "Freedom of Speech". Freedom of Thought as a right is self-evident. The notion of laws restricting thought is so patently offensive (pardon the pun) that it should be a slam dunk. At that point any law attempting to restrict thought is be unconstitutional and invalid, rather than merely wrong (and valid), stupid (and valid), evil (and valid), or silly (and valid). A crucial distinction.
If I'm marooned alone on a desert island, and can survive only with the aid of a (patented) sprocket frobnifier I whittled from a piece of driftwood, I'm still breaking the law.
Yes, a bad/stupid/absurd restriction, but still valid law.
The point is that I am entirely sweeping away all arguments on both sides of software patents being good or bad - it's all moot. The law does not issue any software patents because the law simply cannot issue software patents. Any law attempting to do so would be unconstitutional and invalid.
My problem with software patents is that [] they hinder rather than promote innovation.
The moment you raise that argument you've already lost!
You are effectively conceeding that software *is* an invention. As we all know inventions are "property" (snort). To put it as crudely as possible, you have put yourself in the position of claiming you are entitled to steal other people's property simply because you find it inconvient to obey the same law as everyone else.
Of course *I* understand and agree with your argument, but a "noble defender of intellectual PROPERTY rights" is going to view it as the self serving argument of a spoiled brat wannabe theif.
The situation is even worse when some people effectively argue that GPL or other open source software should get some special priviledge to violate patents. That's like arguing pot-smoking unemployed hippies should get some special priviledge to steal other people's food at the supermarket. Chuckle.
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And probably sibling as well, just for the spiteful last paragraph.
;)
1- "USians" is a pretty controversial term. The idea is that "America" is a continent, so the residents of the "United States of America" should not refer to themselves as "American" is behind it. While the term is imperfect, the reason is that the term "America" appears right there in the name of the country. While it's techinically a good point, in practice it's just an excuse for those who dislike Americans to insult them with a little term they coined for the purpose. It's as if I went around in a discussion involving gender relations, and instead of using any reasonable term for females, I constantly referred to them as "The Weaker Sex", and defended it with logic. Sure, I'd be right, what with testosterone and all, but I'm still being a jerk.
2- Americans don't really hate Europe, or pretend to. Most of the conservatives I know dislike the leftish atmosphere of Europe politically, and will usually verbally go after any nation that doesn't jump on whatever war bandwagon is newest. But they don't hate Europe or Europeans, and they still go there on their honeymoons
3- Let's start with the implication that good things only come from Europe. Now, instead of attacking America, go after Africa.
See how that's awful?
If your argument is, as it appears to be, that
then I'm afraid you're going to be shot down long before you get to the Supreme Court. Freedom of speech is not an absolute right, even in the US, which (unusually) does a pretty good job of living up to its hype in this regard. If I read a story to a fee-paying audience, and that story happens to coincide word-for-word with a copyrighted novel, I'm not going to be able to claim free speech as a defence. If I explain the inner mysteries of my employer's trade-secret sprocket frobnification process to a competitor, I'm not going to be able to claim free speech as a defence. If free speech can be trumped by the copyright and trade-secret legs of the IP tripod, what makes you think a court will view patents any differently?
No, I suspect we'll have more luck with a pragmatic argument. As a first principle, people should be able to think, say or do anything they like, and if anyone says otherwise they'd better be able to come up with a compelling argument for a restriction. I don't think that's a tough one to sell. And if your IP troll runs the "incentive to innovate" line, and that line is as demonstrably false as it is for software patents, I think it should be possible to convince people of that.
Try this one on for size: who denied her the choice to have or not have intercourse in the first place?
The real problem with society right now is that no one wants to take responsibility for their actions.
*sigh*.. I know that you misused them, for starters. He didn't call anyone a collosal dumbass. Since quotation marks are notation which show that words were spoken by another. Since you just pulled that out of your ass for emotional effect, I'd say you're the one unclear on the meaning of quotation marks.
Now, I'm going to do something I haven't done before, so bear with me as I'm new to it. You should feel honored, Twirlip, because I'm going to stoop to you level and make up some totally ridiculous crap that never happened, so you can understand why making up bullshit is not a positive or effective method of debate. Also, fellow slashdotters, please note that the following is not true, it is make believe for the purpose of edifying someone who is sorely in need.
Okay, here goes:
Twirlip, you should stop making shit up. Don't you remember that time when you were in fifth grade, and you wanted to be accepted into the popular crowd so you told everyone your daddy is rich when really, he's an alcoholic absentee deadbeat dad? And some people believed you, but when everyone found out after the PTA meeting that your mother hasn't seen him since he ran away to be a skinhead, remember how everyone laughed at you and the teacher wouldn't call on you and you got beat up every day at recess? And Jimmy Bobert stole your shoes and flushed your head in the toilet and all the girls said you had "cooties"? You shouldn't make things up, cause people can smell a lie. Which is why, if you're going to say something that you made up, you should always point out that it's fiction, as I did above. Because telling a story is one thing but having your head up your ass, and coming back with snot-nosed idiocy is just no way to live.
And since I'm sure you'll shrug this whole post off and go back to making shit up and being a whiny bitch, here's a REAL taste of your own medicine:
Twirlip is such a fucktard. He said
Hey, Twirlip, don't get offended, you probably just don't understand what quotes mean. Just get over it.Hey Twirlip, here's a free clue: being an ass-headed liar isn't an endearing quality. So shut the fuck up, okay? No one gives half a shit. Beat it. You're a loser. No one likes you. And you're not smart or cool. Just stop while you're ahead... at least stop before you get even further behind. Don't you get it? You're wrong! You lost! People are laughing at how dumb you are!
This has been a public service announcement to educate a jackassed retard. I'm George W Bush and I approved this message.
There were definatly indentured servents, they didn't count as free Persons. Apparently there were also true slaves who were white for a variety of reasons.
1. Their mother was a slave and their father was a slave owner. The children, even the ones who were very white were used as slaves.
2. They were bought from deptors prison. Sometimes these slaves were "indentured" but often they were slaves for life.
3. Orfans in England, specially the irish were sold as slaves in often brough to America.
While there were many many racist views from the southeners who saw blacks as less than equal. Slaves were free labor, and most, had no moral problem with using any slave of any race to futher thier plantation.
But to argue, as Cobb and the grandparent poster seem to, that attempting to protect the interest of rural folks is 'racist' is really, I think, a reductio ad absurdum of the whole concept of majoritarian democracy.
I was the grandparent poster. As I said, I have interest in defending the claims I listed.
I was merely countering the claim that there "was no racial argument to be made, not even an obviously specious one."
As far as I know, democracies are always biased toward the majority. If they weren't, it wouldn't be a democracy.
I suppose we could normalize votes between minorities and majorities. But what are you goint to do when every election gets normalized to a tie?
You missed my point, which was the winner-takes-all approach which most States use in selecting delegates to the electoral College is biased towards "the majority".
The usual counterexample, to make things crystal clear, is to suppose parties A and B are contesting for seats in a parliament. In every electoral distrinct, A wins 51% of the vote and B 49%. So A gets 100% of the seats with 51% of the vote.
This is an extreme example, but illustrative of the faults of the first-past-the-post system.
There are many faults commonly listed against a proportional-representation system for seats in a parliament. But when the vote is for a single individual (like the president) it would seem to offer many advantages over the first-past-the-post system.
I admit that Freedom of Thought being an inherent prerequisite merely prooves that it is at least as broad as Freedom of Speech. However it does not in any way imply any limitations on Freedom of Thought. It does leave teh question of defining Freedom of Thought, but anyone attempting to argue limitations on it in court is going to sound like a total psycho.
I seriously don't think any judge could stomach the notion of a law prohibiting thought itself. If some lawyer wants to argue the point, go for it. But god help us if the court upholds such a position.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
1. Their mother was a slave and their father was a slave owner. The children, even the ones who were very white were used as slaves.
2. They were bought from deptors prison. Sometimes these slaves were "indentured" but often they were slaves for life.
3. Orfans in England, specially the irish were sold as slaves in often brough to America.
While there were many many racist views from the southeners who saw blacks as less than equal. Slaves were free labor, and most, had no moral problem with using any slave of any race to futher thier plantation.
Do you have any references for this? I know that there were lots of indentured servants, but as I said, I've never read anywhere that they were (or weren't) considered as Free Persons under the terms of the Constitution. Similarly, though I've done quite a bit of reading of Irish history, I've never seen any reference to white Irish people being brought to the US as slaves, rather than as indentured persons -- and there is a huge difference between the two.
Please note that I am not denying your claims, I'm pleading ignorance.
Oh, but one thing I do take issue with is your first point. It is true that "Even the ones who were very white" were used as slaves, but the reason was that they were legally black. I don't take issue with your claim, it's just that this was indeed racism. It was pure, intellectualized, philosophical racism, and led to all sorts of arguments about how much African ancestry you could have without being considered a Negro (as they used to say, "a single drop" of African blood? or maybe one great-grandparent? etc.)
And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee ...
free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years,
So the only remaining question in my mind is, were there any actual slaves who were of indisputable "pure" European ancestry?
And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee ...
Sorry for not offering defense.
m t es t_irish_slave.html
http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.ht
http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/rguides/us/
talking about irish slaves, you can find more googling for irish slaves. Not sure I can backup them being from orphans, that was shooting from the hip I guess but I had heard of American Irish slaves.
Either way while there was a definate racist history of slavery in American. I've always felt it was more a crime of opportunity, just as even now in many third world countries if you are traveling alone you can be abducted and sold into slavery despite your race. The southerners needed labor and generally didn't care where it came from as long as it was cheap. Obviously the social environment encouraged negative thinking of negros so as to protect their own sensabilities. But I am sure many plantation owners took whatever labor they could buy be it Irish, African or even the removal of rights from indentured servants.
For the reasons you talk about, genes should be copyrighted instead of patented.
This idea is akin to outlawing drugs because the carbon, oxygen and nitrogen atoms present in the molecule were already discovered and present in nature in similar structures.
Outlawing drugs? I hope you meant outlawing patenting drugs. Patents are not for patenting chemical formulas but the process leading to production of those structures.
Please dont lace the conversation with 'potential person' The state of the person is whats at issue.
The "state of the person" is not at issue. What is at issue is the morality of abortion and government prohibition of it. You have jumped to a forgone conclusion that a fetus is a person and as a person has more moral weight than a mother who may have chosen to have sex, and now finds her self the unwilling host of a fetus.
I am not "lacing" the conversation with any terms. I am trying to accurately describe what a fetus is without using morally biased terms. I recognize the fact that a fetus may someday be a person. You say a fetus is a person, and I disagree with you. You are not a fetus. I've never had dinner with a fetus and I've never seen any fetuses walking down the street. Fetuses dont look like people they dont act like people and many of them don't even have brains. If you want to put forward that a fetus is a person and you are putting that position forward without any argument or proof, then this debate is going nowhere.
In the alternative, even *if* a fetus is a person (which it is not). If you implant a person in my body, or a person enters my body by any means (sex or otherwise), and I do not want that person in my body, and they will not remove themself peacefully, I have a right to remove that person from my body by force.
Now who is equating sperm and skin cells with an unborn baby? This is an aweful argument, of course a woman might have 10 kids if she does not have this one, that is not the point. We dont kill people based based on the fact their may or may not be more people.
Actually the analogy was that living skin cells in the correct environment have the potential to grow into a person.
But who said anything about killing "people"?
You are putting forward your forgone conclusion. (that a fetus is a person)
But just to be clear, you would rather prevent 10 people from being born, just to save 1 unborn fetus? Why? And if the mother wanted to make that choice, why would you deny her that option?
I don't understand what you are trying to argue.
Don't "we" make sacrifices so that future generations may have better lives?
The baby is there because of a decision the mother made,
The "baby" is not there yet, because the "baby" is still imposing itself on the mothers body against her will. And if she wants to disconnect herself from a "person" (as you say) that is her right.
The mother has a right to change her mind. It IS HER BODY.
I assign non human beings (the ones not conceived) a value of zero, because well they are not human beings.
By your logic, after a fetus is aborted it is no longer a human being, and has a moral weight of 0. Consequently what is the point in government sanctions.
And if you are considering imposing government sanctions to protect FUTURE fetuses... well then..
Future unconceived fetuses are ALSO non-human beings (not yet conceived) and have a moral weight of 0. (by your logic), and there is no passing a law with an aim to protect them.
Your calculus of assigning non-conceived persons a moral weight of 0 and then arbitrarily assigning an embryo the full moral weight of a full blown human being (read: with a life and experiences and social relationships), is arbitrary, and weakons your own position.
We dont kill people based on whats good for society, hitler did that.. WE dont round up the infirmed and kill the because society will benefit from the resources that are freed up, why would this be any different..
1) fetuses are not people. Unless you have some good arguments hidden up your sleeve that you are hiding.
2) "We" do kill people based on what is good for society. In fact that is why "We"" give cops and soldiers weapons.
3) hitler killed people based on hatred and fear, and not based on what was good for society (contrary to what he said. unless you trust hitler).
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
And how can we determine the morality of abortion wihout addressing the staote of what you are aborting?
You are not a fetus.
Im not a baby, todler, of girl either therfore babies, todlers and girls are not people. Language does *not* determine what is or is not a person.
If you implant a person in my body, or a person enters my body by any means (sex or otherwise), and I do not want that person in my body, and they will not remove themself peacefully, I have a right to remove that person from my body by force.
So your right to convenience trumps another persons right to live?
But just to be clear, you would rather prevent 10 people from being born, just to save 1 unborn fetus? Why? And if the mother wanted to make that choice, why would you deny her that option?
No thats not my decision to make and this is by far one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard, what if the woman would have 10 kids *if* she has this one, and no kids if she does not. I dont deny her the right to have as many or as few kids as she wants, what I deny her is the right to kill a kid once the porcess has started.
You are intelligent enough to know the difference between "choice" and government imposed abortion.
Hey your the one who brought out the "wont somebody think of society".
No but it does force unborn children to die.
Unless you resort to a religious argument, the pro-choice position is more moral than the anti-abortion position.
Nothing you have said is anything other than word definitions. The *whole* issues is when does human life begin. My argument is that from conception to death nothing significant changes from one monet to the next (and you agre with that). Your argument boiles down to the dictionary, and the fact you have never had dinner with an unborn baby.
"The "state of the person" is not at issue. What is at issue is the morality of abortion and government prohibition of it."
:how does one pick a specific point in time where abortion becomes ok?
And how can we determine the morality of abortion wihout addressing the staote of what you are aborting?
Because the STATE of what we are aborting is NOT the basis of my argument. And in so far as you maintain there is no difference between a fetus and a fully grown adult human being it is not the basis of your argument either.
Alternatively, if it is the only basis for your argument then your argument fails to prove your position.
Nothing you have said is anything other than word definitions. The *whole* issues is when does human life begin. My argument is that from conception to death nothing significant changes from one monet to the next (and you agre with that). Your argument boiles down to the dictionary, and the fact you have never had dinner with an unborn baby.
The *whole* issue is NOT when does human life begin. My argument does not hinge on establishing that fact. You keep bringing us back to the non-issue. You presume that if you establish that a fetus and a fully grown human being are equivalent that you have proven your position on prohibiting abortion. However I do not challenge you on that basis (even though I disagree with that also).
I conceded for this argument that nothing morally significant changes from 1 moment to the next. Howevever I did not concede that the sum of many insignificant changes is also insignificant, (you took that conclusion unilaterally) nor am I advocating or even discussing "the right to kill". I do not presume any "right to kill". And the right to choose to have an abortion is not dependant on any right to kill.
Moreover, just as you hold that nothing morally significant changes from 1 moment during pregnancy to the next. I challenge you to explain what the significant moral difference is from the moment of conception to the moment immedietly prior to conception. And to explain morally what the significant difference is between that moment and the moment immedietly prior to sex.
I hold that just as there is no "significant" moral difference between the moment of conception after a sperm and egg have joined to form a single cell embryo to the moment immedietly prior.
Nor is there a significant moral difference from the moment after fertilization to the moment prior to implantation in the womb to the moment immedietly after implantation.
Unless you take the position that something morally significant occurs at conception. Which of course you do because of your religion.
Because of your religion something is "morally" created at conception which did not exist immedietly prior to that moment.
Even though a human embryo has absolutely no sensation of existence and no awareness, no social interaction and absolutely nothing significantly different about its state of being from the embryo of a mouse, you give the human embryo moral value equal to a human being, and a mouse embryo less moral value. Perhaps equal to the moral value of a mouse.
The issue you raised is
And I agreed that picking a specific point in time, in favour of another specific point in time, prior to the birth of the fetus is, as you said, problematic.
And because it is problematic you argue that choosing abortion should be prohibited by the state.
My argument in favour of choice stands independant of what specific point in time is considered. I argue that the right to physically seperate your body from someone elses body exists ALL the time.
So your right to convenience trumps another persons right to live?
No it trumps your right to physically attach yourself to my body against my will.
Abortion is not about convenience.
Abortion is about the womans right to choose what may and may not be physically attached to her
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
like the thousands of military absentee ballots that were thrown out because the signature wasn't perfectly in the middle of the sig block?? Or the notary seal wasn't clear enough?
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
God gave us, as his stewards in this world, the authority to administer justice here. Passing laws to protect the innocent and ordering restitution for crimes does make us better than the perpetrator. I doubt that most police/judges/wardens feel vengeance when executing their duties, even if those duties include sentencing someone to death or even throwing the switch.
You are right that this is an issue of love. Where is your love for the innocent, the victims, the ones hurt by these criminals? It is these that God's laws (and man's laws) try to protect. If you love the weak and you love God's laws, you have to be willing to make the hard decisions. You cannot let evil people continue to hurt others again and again and again. That's not love.
I will not call your faith into question. It's clear that we disagree. I don't attempt to justify killing innocents in the name of justice. It happens, very rarely, and is a regrettable and tragic mistake. That you attempt to justify not protecting innocents by abdicating our right to dispense justice is what leaves me perplexed. Should we disband police because there's always a chance the wrong person might be apprehended and convicted?
Constitutionally Correct
My question is, if I lived in such a society, but did not have or even know any children, I might express a sentiment that I do not want *MY* hard earned wages going towards the funding of a penal system that locks up child molesters - they pose no threat to me whatsoever. Furthermore, I might decide to save the thousands of dollars that might be used towards a police force/judicial system, by simply buying a $150 hand gun, carried at my hip at all times.
Bringing me to my question: how would the Libertarian society react to my decision to not contribute funding towards these public projects?
My guess: FORCING me to pay the taxes, by sending MEN WITH GUNS to my house.
Same thing goes with private contracts - supposedly, if I agree to pay someone $2000 to re-roof my house, but then refuse to pay for the work after the fact... something tells me that even in the most elegant of Libertarian societies, I can expect to be parted from my hard earned cash, by FORCE, when... wait for it... that's right... when MEN WITH GUNS come to my front door.
POINT BEING: It's one thing to disagree with things a society feels all members must contribute towards... it's quite another to use FUD-like bulls**t tactics (oh! horrors! i was FORCED to pay my taxes, by FORCE!) - when you do not, in fact, have any plans to change that particular aspect of tax collection whatsoever.
Sorry, my grammar blows.
That should be "Surely after high school there's no need to know the basic system of government under which you live."