Wow, that's some furious backpedalling you're doing now.
So, in conclusion, the original poster said something snarky that wasn't what Bush said. You responded with a snarky comment that said Bush said something else that he didn't actually say.
There has to be a humane way to document these people, treat them as human beings, and let them contribute worthwhileness to society. Except that most of them don't want that, either. They want to go home to Mexico for the holidays, FOR THREE FUCKING MONTHS...they want to come and go without papers, they don't want their children immunized, etc. UH NO. You live here, you play by OUR rules. But we have to set those rules first.
You honestly think people who will risk getting dumped in the desert in Arizona with no water (oh yeah, and paying someone their life savings plus probably money they borrowed to do it) wouldn't jump at the chance of being able to live here legally if they only had to have their kids immunized and carry papers and (though this seems silly) not be allowed to leave the country for some period of time? I'm sure you can find some who fit that description, but for most that would be paradise.
It's a lot harder to get a good picture of things when you boil it all down to one number. It's simply not recognizing the fact that almost every election year is different and multi-faceted. I'm going to assume you would consider 1994 congressional elections in which the Republicans gained 54 house seats to be significant? Again, the entire house was up for grabs. But let's use your metric.
1994: Republicans win 230 seats, Democrats win 204 seats. 2006: Republicans win 203 seats, Democrats win 232 seats. (the above is assuming that of the 10 seats still not called will fall to those who are currently ahead)
It's pretty easy to do the math just at a glance? You see how the Dems won MORE races in 2006 than the Republicans did in 1994? So, by your metric, this election was an even more clear message to the GOP than the 1994 election was to the Democrats, right?
FYI, on the above I had to make some assumtions on those last 10 races. Even if I assume all 10 go to Republicans, that still makes only 206 to the Republicans and 229 to the Democrats. This changes it to be a 52.64% victory for Democrats compared to the 52.87% victory for the GOP in 1994.
Hopefully, you realize what a silly metric it was.
More telling is just how one-sided and widespread the victory was. Not only did the Democrats gain control of the House, quite probably the Senate, the governorships, and they switched the control of the state legislatures form 20 GOP, 19 Dem, 10 divided to 23 Dem, 16 GOP and 10 divided.
The only across the board win is the passing of all the gay marriage bans in states that were unlikely to ever allow gay marriage to begin with. Additionally, this takes a great GOP turnout booster out of play for the 2008 presidential election.
Read the following for more historical changes this election. Phrases like "first time since 1994" or even "first time since 1922" abound.
All of this when one to two years ago, EVERYONE was predicting the Democrats would complete flounder through the next election, hoping only not to shrink their minorities any more than they already were.
If you still can't figure out that these results are one of those most significant in the last quarter century or so, it's because you actively don't want to.
For House seats in midterm elections in a presidents sixth year:
1958: Eisenhower--Republicans lost 48 seats 1974: Ford--Republicans lost 48 seats (after Nixon resigned due to Watergate) 1986: Reagan--Republicans lost 5 seats 1998: Clinton--Democrats gained 5 seats
So really, it seems as if a lot of these statistics based on elections going back to when people still rode horses, had never seen or heard their candidate speak, couldn't read about their voting record, and owned slaves just might not be as relevant any more.
I would also like to see the same analysis done for Senate seats. Not that it will mean that much, either.
But I'm a little confused, since you just posted the quote without actually addressing the points. Are you saying this supports your claim?:
He actually said that he would not ask Rumsfeld to step down and that Rumsfeld would have the job as long as he wanted it, but nice try though.
Because I don't see either of those two things in there. You could infer them, but I think it's much more logical to infer that he wasn't expecting Rumsfeld to resign (or expecting to ask him to resign).
Of course, with the stuff he said in his press conference today (did you watch that?), he cast it as being something he's been working on for a while. He talks like he had Gates lined up and had had some talks with Rumsfeld about resigning, but hadn't finalized it yet. Still, I think his plan was to shelve this if the election results went better for them. But we'll never know what's really going on in his mind.
Are you pulling this out of your ass or do you have an actual source? I've pored over the news reports and I find that the only real quote from that question is "Both those men are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them". Everyone else paraphrases him to say he wanted Rumsfeld to stay until the end of the presidency. I'm guessing it went along the lines of:
Reporter: Will you ask Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld to resign before the end of your presidency? Bush: No. and then later Bush: Both those men are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them.
But it's only a guess. Until there's an actual transcript, no one can say anything as definitive as you did.
I note that in today's press conference, Bush never said anything like "Rumsfeld only left because he wanted to and not because I wanted him to."
Personally, I believe Bush was truthful in his answer at the time. He really didn't plan on asking Rumsfeld to leave. He honestly thought the Republicans weren't going to lose quite so badly. I can see how he thought that, as it was a very tough election to call. I wish he would be honest and admit that the election results were the reason Rumsfeld is leaving. I mean, would it be so bad to change your mind based on the will of the people?
I think it's understandable. You're talking about averages, but not every election is average. A year or two ago, this election had all the markers to indicate it would be below average or even an outlier. Speaking of statistics, another well known pattern is that a first term president's party loses seats in his first midterm election. Didn't happen with Bush. And even though it happened with Clinton, the Republicans had a right to grandstand due to the above-average size of their victory. Also, polls typically show voters in midterm election site local and state issues as being the drivers of their vote. In this election, it was national.
So I think the stage was set for this election to be below average and possibly even an outlier. Who knows what would have happen without the taint of Abramoff and with DeLay still in the driver's seat. The last-minute Foley scandal did't help, either. But just because it was the 6 year midterm doesn't mean it was inevitable that a not-widely-known-to-be-gay Republican would end up in a scandal for behavior bordering on pedophilia.
Even with all this, a lot of the races Democrats won were squeakers. In some, they were aided by a Libertarian third party that might have thrown the vote.
So I think it's quite remarkable.
As far as winning with dignity, I've never seen that happen on either side. Sure didn't happen in 2004 or 2002.
The funny thing about political statistics is that there are a near-infinite number to pick from. You chose "6th year midterm means ruling party loses seats in house and senate." But there are numerous variations on that. What is the statistic for "6th year midterm with president, house and senate controlled by the same party"? Or "6th year midterm during wartime"? Or how about both? Or other factors? And that's just the start conditions. There are plenty of variations for outcomes: a) presidents party loses seats in house OR senate, b) presidents party loses seats in house AND senate, c) presidents party loses CONTROL of house OR senate, d) presidents party loses CONTROL of house AND senate, e) presidents party loses a majority of the governorships, f) presidents party loses a majority of control in state legislatures, g) any combination of the above or a dozen other measures. It just goes on and on.
Without actually taking more into account than a very simple statistic, it's about as pertinent as using the winner of the Superbowl to guess the political outcome, or figuring out if a Star Trek movie will suck by which number it is. Human beings are programmed to search for patterns. It's too bad when those patterns make us stop paying attention to the actual details which make each situation unique.
While you (not necessarily the submitter but any voter) may be an "uninformed" voter, there's very little likelyhood that you have heard none of the advertising. Therefore, you will have a slight bias towards voting for the candidate with the most advertising money. You may also tend to be biased towards the incumbent. And usually, the two are the same candidate.
So I would say if the only information you have is from advertisements then you should not vote.
Right. And most of them have laws to force employers to pay overtime pay for any hours worked over 40 in a week. So that'll never be a problem, either.;)
Because business interests have a large influence on our democracy. Civics aside, they don't want to give people the day off for voting because they never want to give them the day off. Secondarily, it's a generally held belief that lower income people are more likely to vote Democrat. This may or may not be true, but the fact that a lot of people believe it still drives their strategy. If you are voting Republican, you are more likely (though not guaranteed) to be in the group that can take a few hours off of work. So according to this belief, the Republicans have nothing to gain by making it easier to vote and tend to block it (sometimes to the point of absurdity by making statements about people who can't do this or that as not "deserving" the vote). And according to this belief, the Democrats have everything to gain and try to make it easier to vote (sometimes to the point of absurdity by making voter fraud easier).
The sad part is that the general lack of paper trail isn't really Diebold's fault. It's the fault of the elected officials that did not require it. And it's the fault of the people who voted for them. Companies tend to be amoral and uninterested in anything but the bottom line. If it's cheaper to not build in a paper trail, that's the choice they are going to pick.
Of course, the counterargument is that they've screwed this up so badly that there may be some major blowback. We'll see how that pans out.
Until touchscreen technology gets some major improvements in usability and reliability, I don't know why it's used at all. It's just not ready for it. There's an argument that's it's more "intuitive". I agree. But not until these problems are fixed. I don't know about other security/reliability issues, but the wheel machines by eSlate aren't bad. I wouldn't say they are as intuitive as an optical scan form, though.
Just finished casting my vote the old fashioned way - filling in the little ovals with a pen. Strangely enough, my state gets one of the highest ratings for doing voting the right way in all of the different categories.
Okay, so there is a machine, the one that scans the ballot. But that's a pretty low complexity technology and had quite a lot of testing before it was ever used for elections.
I don't personally fear big electronic vote conspiracies - yet. I think it's feasible and is a major issue that needs to be addressed. But at this point I think it would be hard to rig the machines because they're just so unreliable to begin with. As a country, we have put this issue WAY to far down on the priority scale.
My preferred solution to "the internet" would be to nix the non-country specific TLDs. No.com, no.net, no.org. And definitely no.biz,.info, etc. etc. etc. All you should have at the top level is country codes. Then the question of who should manage/control "the internet" goes away. Each country sets rules for its TLD, just like it sets rules for its own country. If you want something more than that, feel free to use good old fashioned diplomacy to make treaties.
The non-country TLDs stopped making sense around the time the words "the web" or "internet" first showed up on a sitcom.
You, sir, are a godsend. With this information about Fan Death in hand, I finally have a good counterexample every time I get lectured for not waiting a half hour to swim after eating.
In addition to what everyone else has said about making your own WMV codec, there's one other big PITA. Once you spent all those manhours and finally get a working (though possibly just as illegal as a downloaded) version, MS has probably already added two or three new revs that your codec doesn't cover.
Again, I don't really think that proves anything about the security and effectiveness of the vote. All it proves is a lot of people find it more convenient. I would think internet voting would be incredibly popular, too.
90% of washington now votes by absentee ballot, so we've got to be doing something right.
So in these other places where 90% vote with the new voting machines, they have to be doing something right, too? I don't think your premise is related to your conclusion.
If you don't work for MBNA, you need to stop watching so many ads. Every time you mentioned shopsafe (three times), you phrased it as "ShopSafe from MBNA". That kind of talk is only done by advertisers.
At least in the US. I think releasing it in Japan has more to do with the fact that the Japanese will buy just about any new piece of technology, just to keep up with the Joneses. Well, whoever the "Joneses" are in Japanese...
Why buy a separate DVD player when my console can do it already?
Because with console based dvd players, you're going to get one or more of the following: a) bad GUI b) bad remote controller setup (unless you shell out almost enough extra cash to by a compact dvd player) c) inferior playback quality d) less hackability (region free, PAL->NTSC, etc.)
I know what you're talking about. But considering the Japanese technophilia, most Japanese will probably also have a portable dvd player and a laptop that plays dvds by this point.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that's some furious backpedalling you're doing now.
So, in conclusion, the original poster said something snarky that wasn't what Bush said. You responded with a snarky comment that said Bush said something else that he didn't actually say.
Kudos to you.
There has to be a humane way to document these people, treat them as human beings, and let them contribute worthwhileness to society. Except that most of them don't want that, either. They want to go home to Mexico for the holidays, FOR THREE FUCKING MONTHS...they want to come and go without papers, they don't want their children immunized, etc. UH NO. You live here, you play by OUR rules. But we have to set those rules first.
You honestly think people who will risk getting dumped in the desert in Arizona with no water (oh yeah, and paying someone their life savings plus probably money they borrowed to do it) wouldn't jump at the chance of being able to live here legally if they only had to have their kids immunized and carry papers and (though this seems silly) not be allowed to leave the country for some period of time? I'm sure you can find some who fit that description, but for most that would be paradise.
It's a lot harder to get a good picture of things when you boil it all down to one number. It's simply not recognizing the fact that almost every election year is different and multi-faceted. I'm going to assume you would consider 1994 congressional elections in which the Republicans gained 54 house seats to be significant? Again, the entire house was up for grabs. But let's use your metric.
6 39441
1994: Republicans win 230 seats, Democrats win 204 seats.
2006: Republicans win 203 seats, Democrats win 232 seats.
(the above is assuming that of the 10 seats still not called will fall to those who are currently ahead)
It's pretty easy to do the math just at a glance? You see how the Dems won MORE races in 2006 than the Republicans did in 1994? So, by your metric, this election was an even more clear message to the GOP than the 1994 election was to the Democrats, right?
FYI, on the above I had to make some assumtions on those last 10 races. Even if I assume all 10 go to Republicans, that still makes only 206 to the Republicans and 229 to the Democrats. This changes it to be a 52.64% victory for Democrats compared to the 52.87% victory for the GOP in 1994.
Hopefully, you realize what a silly metric it was.
More telling is just how one-sided and widespread the victory was. Not only did the Democrats gain control of the House, quite probably the Senate, the governorships, and they switched the control of the state legislatures form 20 GOP, 19 Dem, 10 divided to 23 Dem, 16 GOP and 10 divided.
The only across the board win is the passing of all the gay marriage bans in states that were unlikely to ever allow gay marriage to begin with. Additionally, this takes a great GOP turnout booster out of play for the 2008 presidential election.
Read the following for more historical changes this election. Phrases like "first time since 1994" or even "first time since 1922" abound.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2
All of this when one to two years ago, EVERYONE was predicting the Democrats would complete flounder through the next election, hoping only not to shrink their minorities any more than they already were.
If you still can't figure out that these results are one of those most significant in the last quarter century or so, it's because you actively don't want to.
Right, that's what I was alluding too. ;)
Speaking of statistics, I found an interesting link:
p hp
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/011008.
For House seats in midterm elections in a presidents sixth year:
1958: Eisenhower--Republicans lost 48 seats
1974: Ford--Republicans lost 48 seats (after Nixon resigned due to Watergate)
1986: Reagan--Republicans lost 5 seats
1998: Clinton--Democrats gained 5 seats
So really, it seems as if a lot of these statistics based on elections going back to when people still rode horses, had never seen or heard their candidate speak, couldn't read about their voting record, and owned slaves just might not be as relevant any more.
I would also like to see the same analysis done for Senate seats. Not that it will mean that much, either.
Ah, very good research!
But I'm a little confused, since you just posted the quote without actually addressing the points. Are you saying this supports your claim?:
He actually said that he would not ask Rumsfeld to step down and that Rumsfeld would have the job as long as he wanted it, but nice try though.
Because I don't see either of those two things in there. You could infer them, but I think it's much more logical to infer that he wasn't expecting Rumsfeld to resign (or expecting to ask him to resign).
Of course, with the stuff he said in his press conference today (did you watch that?), he cast it as being something he's been working on for a while. He talks like he had Gates lined up and had had some talks with Rumsfeld about resigning, but hadn't finalized it yet. Still, I think his plan was to shelve this if the election results went better for them. But we'll never know what's really going on in his mind.
Are you pulling this out of your ass or do you have an actual source? I've pored over the news reports and I find that the only real quote from that question is "Both those men are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them". Everyone else paraphrases him to say he wanted Rumsfeld to stay until the end of the presidency. I'm guessing it went along the lines of:
l ?sPage=fnc.politics/youdecide2006
Reporter: Will you ask Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld to resign before the end of your presidency?
Bush: No.
and then later
Bush: Both those men are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them.
But it's only a guess. Until there's an actual transcript, no one can say anything as definitive as you did.
And just in case you want a fair and balanced report:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,226963,00.htm
I note that in today's press conference, Bush never said anything like "Rumsfeld only left because he wanted to and not because I wanted him to."
Personally, I believe Bush was truthful in his answer at the time . He really didn't plan on asking Rumsfeld to leave. He honestly thought the Republicans weren't going to lose quite so badly. I can see how he thought that, as it was a very tough election to call. I wish he would be honest and admit that the election results were the reason Rumsfeld is leaving. I mean, would it be so bad to change your mind based on the will of the people?
I think it's understandable. You're talking about averages, but not every election is average. A year or two ago, this election had all the markers to indicate it would be below average or even an outlier. Speaking of statistics, another well known pattern is that a first term president's party loses seats in his first midterm election. Didn't happen with Bush. And even though it happened with Clinton, the Republicans had a right to grandstand due to the above-average size of their victory. Also, polls typically show voters in midterm election site local and state issues as being the drivers of their vote. In this election, it was national.
So I think the stage was set for this election to be below average and possibly even an outlier. Who knows what would have happen without the taint of Abramoff and with DeLay still in the driver's seat. The last-minute Foley scandal did't help, either. But just because it was the 6 year midterm doesn't mean it was inevitable that a not-widely-known-to-be-gay Republican would end up in a scandal for behavior bordering on pedophilia.
Even with all this, a lot of the races Democrats won were squeakers. In some, they were aided by a Libertarian third party that might have thrown the vote.
So I think it's quite remarkable.
As far as winning with dignity, I've never seen that happen on either side. Sure didn't happen in 2004 or 2002.
The funny thing about political statistics is that there are a near-infinite number to pick from. You chose "6th year midterm means ruling party loses seats in house and senate." But there are numerous variations on that. What is the statistic for "6th year midterm with president, house and senate controlled by the same party"? Or "6th year midterm during wartime"? Or how about both? Or other factors? And that's just the start conditions. There are plenty of variations for outcomes: a) presidents party loses seats in house OR senate, b) presidents party loses seats in house AND senate, c) presidents party loses CONTROL of house OR senate, d) presidents party loses CONTROL of house AND senate, e) presidents party loses a majority of the governorships, f) presidents party loses a majority of control in state legislatures, g) any combination of the above or a dozen other measures. It just goes on and on.
Without actually taking more into account than a very simple statistic, it's about as pertinent as using the winner of the Superbowl to guess the political outcome, or figuring out if a Star Trek movie will suck by which number it is. Human beings are programmed to search for patterns. It's too bad when those patterns make us stop paying attention to the actual details which make each situation unique.
While you (not necessarily the submitter but any voter) may be an "uninformed" voter, there's very little likelyhood that you have heard none of the advertising. Therefore, you will have a slight bias towards voting for the candidate with the most advertising money. You may also tend to be biased towards the incumbent. And usually, the two are the same candidate.
So I would say if the only information you have is from advertisements then you should not vote.
Right. And most of them have laws to force employers to pay overtime pay for any hours worked over 40 in a week. So that'll never be a problem, either. ;)
Why don't we get the day off.
Because business interests have a large influence on our democracy. Civics aside, they don't want to give people the day off for voting because they never want to give them the day off. Secondarily, it's a generally held belief that lower income people are more likely to vote Democrat. This may or may not be true, but the fact that a lot of people believe it still drives their strategy. If you are voting Republican, you are more likely (though not guaranteed) to be in the group that can take a few hours off of work. So according to this belief, the Republicans have nothing to gain by making it easier to vote and tend to block it (sometimes to the point of absurdity by making statements about people who can't do this or that as not "deserving" the vote). And according to this belief, the Democrats have everything to gain and try to make it easier to vote (sometimes to the point of absurdity by making voter fraud easier).
The sad part is that the general lack of paper trail isn't really Diebold's fault. It's the fault of the elected officials that did not require it. And it's the fault of the people who voted for them. Companies tend to be amoral and uninterested in anything but the bottom line. If it's cheaper to not build in a paper trail, that's the choice they are going to pick.
Of course, the counterargument is that they've screwed this up so badly that there may be some major blowback. We'll see how that pans out.
Until touchscreen technology gets some major improvements in usability and reliability, I don't know why it's used at all. It's just not ready for it. There's an argument that's it's more "intuitive". I agree. But not until these problems are fixed. I don't know about other security/reliability issues, but the wheel machines by eSlate aren't bad. I wouldn't say they are as intuitive as an optical scan form, though.
Just finished casting my vote the old fashioned way - filling in the little ovals with a pen. Strangely enough, my state gets one of the highest ratings for doing voting the right way in all of the different categories.
Okay, so there is a machine, the one that scans the ballot. But that's a pretty low complexity technology and had quite a lot of testing before it was ever used for elections.
I don't personally fear big electronic vote conspiracies - yet. I think it's feasible and is a major issue that needs to be addressed. But at this point I think it would be hard to rig the machines because they're just so unreliable to begin with. As a country, we have put this issue WAY to far down on the priority scale.
My preferred solution to "the internet" would be to nix the non-country specific TLDs. No .com, no .net, no .org. And definitely no .biz, .info, etc. etc. etc. All you should have at the top level is country codes. Then the question of who should manage/control "the internet" goes away. Each country sets rules for its TLD, just like it sets rules for its own country. If you want something more than that, feel free to use good old fashioned diplomacy to make treaties.
The non-country TLDs stopped making sense around the time the words "the web" or "internet" first showed up on a sitcom.
...be sure to identify yourself when you distribute trojans!
You, sir, are a godsend. With this information about Fan Death in hand, I finally have a good counterexample every time I get lectured for not waiting a half hour to swim after eating.
In addition to what everyone else has said about making your own WMV codec, there's one other big PITA. Once you spent all those manhours and finally get a working (though possibly just as illegal as a downloaded) version, MS has probably already added two or three new revs that your codec doesn't cover.
Again, I don't really think that proves anything about the security and effectiveness of the vote. All it proves is a lot of people find it more convenient. I would think internet voting would be incredibly popular, too.
90% of washington now votes by absentee ballot, so we've got to be doing something right.
So in these other places where 90% vote with the new voting machines, they have to be doing something right, too? I don't think your premise is related to your conclusion.
If you don't work for MBNA, you need to stop watching so many ads. Every time you mentioned shopsafe (three times), you phrased it as "ShopSafe from MBNA". That kind of talk is only done by advertisers.
The point is, you're an anomaly. ;)
At least in the US. I think releasing it in Japan has more to do with the fact that the Japanese will buy just about any new piece of technology, just to keep up with the Joneses. Well, whoever the "Joneses" are in Japanese...
Why buy a separate DVD player when my console can do it already?
Because with console based dvd players, you're going to get one or more of the following:
a) bad GUI
b) bad remote controller setup (unless you shell out almost enough extra cash to by a compact dvd player)
c) inferior playback quality
d) less hackability (region free, PAL->NTSC, etc.)
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=music+ video&search=Search
And lets not forget the lip syncing. Oh wait, let's do...
I know what you're talking about. But considering the Japanese technophilia, most Japanese will probably also have a portable dvd player and a laptop that plays dvds by this point.