> that there is a special second polling day for registered republicans
Ha, ha. Yes, this is an old joke. Oddly, only Democrats have been known to complain about it, let alone fall for it.
> Remember this special day is for registered republicans > only, democrats and independents must vote tomorrow.
Alas, I have already voted (absentee, this time), so I cannot avail myself of your kind offer. We will be only too happy to arrange the same thing for your side, next election.
> Unlike the whiners and non-competatives, I WANT to pay more. I > WANT to pay down the debt. It's the responsible, non-selfish, > thing to do.
You are allowed to pay more than the minimum, and I am pretty sure that there is a line item on Form 1040 to use; there certainly is to contribute to the Commonwealth equivalent on my state tax form.
If it is not on the 1040, I am certain that the instructions contain a pointer to whatever form you need.
> And it's striking that Washington was the ONLY president who was not part of a political party
Only formally. His actions were obviously those of a confirmed Federalist.
> (wiki tells me Tyler was expelled from his party, so > that's technically another one, but that's a strange > event and from wiki anyway).
John Tyler was expelled from the Northern branch of the Democratic Party for becoming a Confederate Member of *their* House, but this occurred long after his Presidency ended.
Note, I never said that Wikipedia is *always* to be disbelieved.
You also said "we would ultimately prefer that" (emphasis mine).
Prove your it, else be shown Democratic (or farther left) plant that you seem to be.
Republicans -don't- believe that everyone should have the right to vote
Yes. Newborns and toddlers will be unfairly influenced by their parents. Convicted felons have proven themselves unable to meet the demands of citizenship, and should be glad that we longer use outlawry. The retarded and insane are obviously not fit for voting. Otherwise, any sane free adult should be capable of handling the franchise.
Which of those do you want voting? The too young, major criminals, or nutcases?
I always go back to the democratic foundations of ancient Athenian Greece where it was one vote per citizen and there was true debate in the town forum and citizens voted on potsherds with the mark of the person they wanted. Simple and effective.
Voting on potsherds (ostrakon) was for something else. I will let you guess what.
The voting population of Attika never exceeded 200,000 out of about one million, and probably never reached 150,000. That is well exceeded by any US Representative's district. Also, try getting the total population of Alaska, or any other one House member state, to meet in one place. Attika could do it because it was the size of a medium-sized US county, and had lots of women, slaves, and resident foreigners to keep the place running while the Assembly met.
As I've heard it, the thinking was that electors would be able to change their minds to reflect the best interests of the nation if upon coming to washington they realized the citizenry had been duped and the candidate was bad. In modern times, this has not really happened.
The Electoral "College" never meets anywhere; electors from each state meet somewhere IN that state to vote, and then the results are passed up, probably to the Secretary Of State, or perhaps originally to the Speaker Of The House.
The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Origin_of_name) has a different interpretation than the one I remembered from gradeschool: that the electoral college was supposed to merely nominate canidates for congress to choose, because the forefathers didn't realize elections would come down to two canidates, meaning someone would always get the majority.
Well, this is clearly nonsense, as they never did that, and given that all the Signers of the Constitution *knew* that Washington would be elected, never would have, even from the start. Further proof that Vox Wikipedia Non Est Vox Dei.
> While you're at it, could you please fix--kill off, that is--the two-party system?
You don't want that. You want to kill off those who would vote for either of the two parties (assuming that you REALLY don't want to kill off just one of the two).
Face it, if you get two small parties who agree enough, they merge, eventually producing just two or three, and all the weighted/repeated voting schemes in the world then produce the exact result as now. The only way to avoid that is to elect one of the losers, not the winner, so that some parties must act as "spoilers" for others.
The USA has had a one party system at times, and a couple parties arose, which then merged back into the Democratic party or among themselves to reform a variation of the Federalist/Whig/Republican Party. There are lots of small parties claiming to be the "third" party, but none gets much traction for long, and they stay as jokes for the major parties and Jay Leno. The states without such usually are places where they fell below the point that their presence would have mattered in the first place.
We had four "major" parties in the 1860 election, by 1868 we were back to the exact same two as ran in 1856. We had NO parties at the start, yet it quickly coalesced into just two big parties. Alas for you, it appears that two is the bottom of the "energy" slope, not ten, so people shift parties rather than make new ones (e.g., see the original definition of "neocon", which was Reagan Democrats who later changed registrations, like Jeanne Fitzpatrick, while retaining a belief in Wilsonian Intervention For Their Own Good).
> though it would be nice if it were somewhat easier > to find people who speak a foreign language fluently.)
Travel to NY, NY, where there are over 1 million Russians, and used to be more Yiddish speakers than the current total population of Israel. Or, to most Indian reservations. Or to Louisiana to find some Cajun French, or Hawaii to talk to its natives.
BTW, I think that you could, until recently, go to either Canada or Mexico without a passport, as well, although it would be needed if you wanted embassy help (bailed out of the Tijuana jail, frex). That would get you another couple European languages, and who knows how many Indian ones (sorry, but if Russell Means wants it American Indian, who am I to disagree?).
> As noted above, the driver's license is something > whole categories of people don't have (the Amish, > the blind, Native Americans living on the reservations, > many married people from the older generation who > never saw the point in having multiple cars and > multiple drivers per family,...),
Or live in a city with good bus, subway, and/or taxi service. I had a coworker who didn't get his driver's license until in his forties, amazingly enough.
Anyway, I think that the idea is that we can register people accurately enough in large enough numbers, using another mechanism. Which idea, any discussion of people evading the consequences of drunk driving will disabuse you of. It is like suggesting that one cannot get weapons in prison; violation pays off too well and the checking is too easy.
As opposed to Democrats, who believe that everyone's vote should count (as long as they vote the right way, and then, ideally, count several times). They, therefore, like registration as long as it does not involve extensive checking or purging the rolls as people die or move, because it lets us shuttle people around to vote in multiple precincts as multiple people, either imaginary, moved, or dead.
> Except only males have to register for the draft.
And only some. I, for example, never had to, as did men born a couple years earlier or a few months later.
We will ignore burned draft card records, for now, and that once you aged out of eligibility a lot of draft boards just chucked your records as too much work to keep.
> I feel it's largely due to the nature that all > Americans are subject to two major governments > at all times - state and federal.
You forget county and local. Also that US Representative Districts and state government districts do not follow town boundaries (so as to allow for one-man/one-vote in theory, and gerrymandering by both parties in practice).
We can ignore other juristictions for now, to avoid appalling Europeans with the idea of sewerage districts, school districts, water districts, etc., none of which necessarily align, since they do not affect voting.
> The act creating social security specifically stated that the SSN would not become a form of identification.
You could also have several, and separate accounts. Plus, at one time many people "shared" a number, as a wallet company had included a sample one, shortly after they were introduced, and many buyers just assumed that it was their number.
Plus, it is a lousy form of identification. Mine has one signature, from years ago, and no picture, let alone fingerprints/retinal scans, tricorder readings/whatever.
> I've NEVER heard accents quite like that before.
I heard that stiff an accent from a couple substitute teachers, growing up. It took me two days to figure out what one meant when she said "Rid up your desks, then get your wraps." Thank god she didn't tell us to warshup, first:-)
> > we will ignore that "American accent" is like saying "European accent" > > Irrelevant, given my use of an indefinite article.
In that case, given that Hugh Laurie supposedly comes from Oxford, he likely would do a bang-on Boston Brahmin accent, since that is supposedly quite close to Oxfordian.
> Why - is there some compelling reason why a Doctor should be able to do a really bad American accent?
Maybe because none of the others could do a decent one (we will ignore that "American accent" is like saying "European accent" - compare Boston Irish like Ted Kennedy to Boston Brahmin [no good examples left in politics, but there WERE when I was growing up] to Willie Nelson to Surfer-speak/ValleyGirl to William F. Buckley to the "customers at Pants'N'At" on the WDVE-FM Pittsburgh drive-time radio skit)?
That WOULD leave Laurie out, since he does a decent, if non-specific, one, which really surprised me. Most British actors consider themselves to have succeeded when they do a (bad) Southern accent, or a ridiculous attempt at NY/NJ accent, and stop at that. Olivier stunk every time he tried, for instance. We won't talk about Bennie Hill.
Insurance compaines make their money by selling a service they don't intend to deliver, or deliver only part of.
Odd. I have never had any problems with mine, despite occasional expensive treatments. Maybe you, or those that told you this, should quit getting insurance from companies that only charge $100 per month for a family for full coverage, and then deny everything, to only an idiot's surprise.
I live in a country that has both Govt health care and private. However, the private insurers have no say in what treatment is given that is and should be the decision of the treating doctor.
It always amazes me that in the US accountants are allowed to decide a patients treatment.
Accountants don't decide in the USA, but when you cannot pay you have to depend on the generosity of either your doctors or your neighbors. Accountants DO decide in Canada, by denying treatments deemed too expensive, causing Canadian doctors and Canadian patients to come here; fortunately, the doctors tend to stay and enrich us. I know of two in my circle of acquaintances (well, one insists that he is a Newfoundlander, not Canadian, but that's like people claiming to be Texicans, now), and they claim that they know a growing number of others.
If you are not Canadian (or Newfoundlander:-), the process may still apply, but I haven't enough knowledge of your case.
At core his defenses and counterclaim raise a profoundly conceptual question: Is the law just the grind of a statutory machine to be carried out by judge and jury as cogs in the machine, or do judge and jury claim the right and duty and power of constitution and conscience to do justice?
The jury can decide the law sucks and needs to die, and command such.
Actually, they cannot. They can say that a particular defendant is not guilty, and the weight of the evidence then implies whether or not Jury Nullification has occurred *in*that*case*alone*. The classic example is when someone is found innocent of murder for a mercy killing; there is no way that the jury can state that laws against killing are wrong, or affect the law on the books, just the one application.
We allow a jury to preside over civil and criminal cases because it allows a random assortment of ordinary people to make judgment on the law. The people have spoken, the law sucks, remove it, end of story.
Since the jury makes no statements except guilt or innocence, and an occasional plea for a light sentence, they cannot state that the law is anything, even if they believe it. Juries are NOT considered to be competent to decide questions of law, only fact. The judge can rule that a law is unconstitutional, but the plaintiff can appeal that ruling to a higher court and have it reversed. Even if the plaintiff doesn't appeal, or does and does not get the finding reversed, that is binding only for the first judge's court. Other judges may use it as precedence or not, as they choose, until the appellate levels start making it binding upon their lower courts by their rulings.
Thus, juries may find as many defendants of RIAA cases to be not guilty as they like, but the law remains in force until a judge (not J. Random Professor) rules it unconstitutional, and the appeals courts agree.
> Whoa, hold on. It's that easy to game the system? No checking social numbers or anything?
Not everyone has them, and it discourages minority voters to require them, even when free. At least, according to the party that you Europeans like. I imagine they would complain even if we tried to use the Iraqi solution of an indelible ink mark when one votes.
> With the simple use of absentee ballots, they quickly become voter fraud.
That is just ridiculous. The Chicago Machine and Tammany Hall were able to carry out large scale fraud without absentee ballots. For instance, Chicago bums were instructed to let their hair grow long and not to shave either mustache or beard, so that they could vote at the each precinct several times, trimming one part each time, until they were clean-shaven and bald at the end of the day.
Absentee ballots just make it easier, if you already have the registration fraud. Without registration fraud, you have to guarantee that the voters that you fake will not turn up. Hence, the graveyards all voted Democratic in Chicago.
> Does something like this throw the Big Crunch (and cyclical universe by extension) out the window?
The Big Crunch has been "out the window" for some time, now. The current expectation is of a Big Rip, when the expansion of the Universe, which is apparently proceeding faster as time goes on, becomes so great that, first, all the galaxies outside of the local group will be receding too fast to be seen. Some months later, the Local Group will rip apart from the expansion, leaving just the Milky Way and its gravitationally bound galaxies. Shortly after, the galaxy will be receding and rip apart, leaving just the Solar System with a coal-black sky. But don't feel bad about that, because a few days later, the Solar System will be ripped apart by the expansion, and so on, at faster rates, until even composite elementary particles like hadrons will rip into a quark or gluon per whatever, effectively per Universe.
Slashdot Mirror
> that there is a special second polling day for registered republicans
Ha, ha. Yes, this is an old joke. Oddly, only Democrats have been known to complain about it, let alone fall for it.
> Remember this special day is for registered republicans
> only, democrats and independents must vote tomorrow.
Alas, I have already voted (absentee, this time), so I cannot avail myself of your kind offer. We will be only too happy to arrange the same thing for your side, next election.
> Unlike the whiners and non-competatives, I WANT to pay more. I
> WANT to pay down the debt. It's the responsible, non-selfish,
> thing to do.
You are allowed to pay more than the minimum, and I am pretty sure that there is a line item on Form 1040 to use; there certainly is to contribute to the Commonwealth equivalent on my state tax form.
If it is not on the 1040, I am certain that the instructions contain a pointer to whatever form you need.
> And it's striking that Washington was the ONLY president who was not part of a political party
Only formally. His actions were obviously those of a confirmed Federalist.
> (wiki tells me Tyler was expelled from his party, so
> that's technically another one, but that's a strange
> event and from wiki anyway).
John Tyler was expelled from the Northern branch of the Democratic Party for becoming a Confederate Member of *their* House, but this occurred long after his Presidency ended.
Note, I never said that Wikipedia is *always* to be disbelieved.
Prove your it, else be shown Democratic (or farther left) plant that you seem to be.
Yes. Newborns and toddlers will be unfairly influenced by their parents. Convicted felons have proven themselves unable to meet the demands of citizenship, and should be glad that we longer use outlawry. The retarded and insane are obviously not fit for voting. Otherwise, any sane free adult should be capable of handling the franchise.
Which of those do you want voting? The too young, major criminals, or nutcases?
> who for all intents and purposes WAS the modern day Jesus Christ
Well, THAT is a bit extreme. Perhaps he might accept John The Baptist, or else one of the Maccabees.
> You know... the party that SUPPORTED SLAVERY???
Not to mention electing the ex-KKK senator from West Virginia
Voting on potsherds (ostrakon) was for something else. I will let you guess what.
The voting population of Attika never exceeded 200,000 out of about one million, and probably never reached 150,000. That is well exceeded by any US Representative's district. Also, try getting the total population of Alaska, or any other one House member state, to meet in one place. Attika could do it because it was the size of a medium-sized US county, and had lots of women, slaves, and resident foreigners to keep the place running while the Assembly met.
The Electoral "College" never meets anywhere; electors from each state meet somewhere IN that state to vote, and then the results are passed up, probably to the Secretary Of State, or perhaps originally to the Speaker Of The House.
Well, this is clearly nonsense, as they never did that, and given that all the Signers of the Constitution *knew* that Washington would be elected, never would have, even from the start. Further proof that Vox Wikipedia Non Est Vox Dei.
> While you're at it, could you please fix--kill off, that is--the two-party system?
You don't want that. You want to kill off those who would vote for either of the two parties (assuming that you REALLY don't want to kill off just one of the two).
Face it, if you get two small parties who agree enough, they merge, eventually producing just two or three, and all the weighted/repeated voting schemes in the world then produce the exact result as now. The only way to avoid that is to elect one of the losers, not the winner, so that some parties must act as "spoilers" for others.
The USA has had a one party system at times, and a couple parties arose, which then merged back into the Democratic party or among themselves to reform a variation of the Federalist/Whig/Republican Party. There are lots of small parties claiming to be the "third" party, but none gets much traction for long, and they stay as jokes for the major parties and Jay Leno. The states without such usually are places where they fell below the point that their presence would have mattered in the first place.
We had four "major" parties in the 1860 election, by 1868 we were back to the exact same two as ran in 1856. We had NO parties at the start, yet it quickly coalesced into just two big parties. Alas for you, it appears that two is the bottom of the "energy" slope, not ten, so people shift parties rather than make new ones (e.g., see the original definition of "neocon", which was Reagan Democrats who later changed registrations, like Jeanne Fitzpatrick, while retaining a belief in Wilsonian Intervention For Their Own Good).
> though it would be nice if it were somewhat easier
> to find people who speak a foreign language fluently.)
Travel to NY, NY, where there are over 1 million Russians, and used to be more Yiddish speakers than the current total population of Israel. Or, to most Indian reservations. Or to Louisiana to find some Cajun French, or Hawaii to talk to its natives.
BTW, I think that you could, until recently, go to either Canada or Mexico without a passport, as well, although it would be needed if you wanted embassy help (bailed out of the Tijuana jail, frex). That would get you another couple European languages, and who knows how many Indian ones (sorry, but if Russell Means wants it American Indian, who am I to disagree?).
> As noted above, the driver's license is something ...),
> whole categories of people don't have (the Amish,
> the blind, Native Americans living on the reservations,
> many married people from the older generation who
> never saw the point in having multiple cars and
> multiple drivers per family,
Or live in a city with good bus, subway, and/or taxi service. I had a coworker who didn't get his driver's license until in his forties, amazingly enough.
Anyway, I think that the idea is that we can register people accurately enough in large enough numbers, using another mechanism. Which idea, any discussion of people evading the consequences of drunk driving will disabuse you of. It is like suggesting that one cannot get weapons in prison; violation pays off too well and the checking is too easy.
As opposed to Democrats, who believe that everyone's vote should count (as long as they vote the right way, and then, ideally, count several times). They, therefore, like registration as long as it does not involve extensive checking or purging the rolls as people die or move, because it lets us shuttle people around to vote in multiple precincts as multiple people, either imaginary, moved, or dead.
> Except only males have to register for the draft.
And only some. I, for example, never had to, as did men born a couple years earlier or a few months later.
We will ignore burned draft card records, for now, and that once you aged out of eligibility a lot of draft boards just chucked your records as too much work to keep.
> I feel it's largely due to the nature that all
> Americans are subject to two major governments
> at all times - state and federal.
You forget county and local. Also that US Representative Districts and state government districts do not follow town boundaries (so as to allow for one-man/one-vote in theory, and gerrymandering by both parties in practice).
We can ignore other juristictions for now, to avoid appalling Europeans with the idea of sewerage districts, school districts, water districts, etc., none of which necessarily align, since they do not affect voting.
> The act creating social security specifically stated that the SSN would not become a form of identification.
You could also have several, and separate accounts. Plus, at one time many people "shared" a number, as a wallet company had included a sample one, shortly after they were introduced, and many buyers just assumed that it was their number.
Plus, it is a lousy form of identification. Mine has one signature, from years ago, and no picture, let alone fingerprints/retinal scans, tricorder readings/whatever.
> CO2 is less toxic, but NOBODY fails to recognize an ammonia leak.
Just put in the CO2 what they put in ethane (aka, natural gas) or propane to give them a detectable odor.
> I've NEVER heard accents quite like that before.
I heard that stiff an accent from a couple substitute teachers, growing up. It took me two days to figure out what one meant when she said "Rid up your desks, then get your wraps." Thank god she didn't tell us to warshup, first :-)
> > we will ignore that "American accent" is like saying "European accent"
>
> Irrelevant, given my use of an indefinite article.
In that case, given that Hugh Laurie supposedly comes from Oxford, he likely would do a bang-on Boston Brahmin accent, since that is supposedly quite close to Oxfordian.
> And MTV owns Harmonix. All you kids buying Rock Band and
> related DLC are shoveling money straight into their coffers.
And you think that will *dissuade* them?
> Why - is there some compelling reason why a Doctor should be able to do a really bad American accent?
Maybe because none of the others could do a decent one (we will ignore that "American accent" is like saying "European accent" - compare Boston Irish like Ted Kennedy to Boston Brahmin [no good examples left in politics, but there WERE when I was growing up] to Willie Nelson to Surfer-speak/ValleyGirl to William F. Buckley to the "customers at Pants'N'At" on the WDVE-FM Pittsburgh drive-time radio skit)?
That WOULD leave Laurie out, since he does a decent, if non-specific, one, which really surprised me. Most British actors consider themselves to have succeeded when they do a (bad) Southern accent, or a ridiculous attempt at NY/NJ accent, and stop at that. Olivier stunk every time he tried, for instance. We won't talk about Bennie Hill.
Odd. I have never had any problems with mine, despite occasional expensive treatments. Maybe you, or those that told you this, should quit getting insurance from companies that only charge $100 per month for a family for full coverage, and then deny everything, to only an idiot's surprise.
Accountants don't decide in the USA, but when you cannot pay you have to depend on the generosity of either your doctors or your neighbors. Accountants DO decide in Canada, by denying treatments deemed too expensive, causing Canadian doctors and Canadian patients to come here; fortunately, the doctors tend to stay and enrich us. I know of two in my circle of acquaintances (well, one insists that he is a Newfoundlander, not Canadian, but that's like people claiming to be Texicans, now), and they claim that they know a growing number of others.
If you are not Canadian (or Newfoundlander :-), the process may still apply, but I haven't enough knowledge of your case.
Actually, they cannot. They can say that a particular defendant is not guilty, and the weight of the evidence then implies whether or not Jury Nullification has occurred *in*that*case*alone*. The classic example is when someone is found innocent of murder for a mercy killing; there is no way that the jury can state that laws against killing are wrong, or affect the law on the books, just the one application.
Since the jury makes no statements except guilt or innocence, and an occasional plea for a light sentence, they cannot state that the law is anything, even if they believe it. Juries are NOT considered to be competent to decide questions of law, only fact. The judge can rule that a law is unconstitutional, but the plaintiff can appeal that ruling to a higher court and have it reversed. Even if the plaintiff doesn't appeal, or does and does not get the finding reversed, that is binding only for the first judge's court. Other judges may use it as precedence or not, as they choose, until the appellate levels start making it binding upon their lower courts by their rulings.
Thus, juries may find as many defendants of RIAA cases to be not guilty as they like, but the law remains in force until a judge (not J. Random Professor) rules it unconstitutional, and the appeals courts agree.
Not everyone has them, and it discourages minority voters to require them, even when free. At least, according to the party that you Europeans like. I imagine they would complain even if we tried to use the Iraqi solution of an indelible ink mark when one votes.
> With the simple use of absentee ballots, they quickly become voter fraud.
That is just ridiculous. The Chicago Machine and Tammany Hall were able to carry out large scale fraud without absentee ballots. For instance, Chicago bums were instructed to let their hair grow long and not to shave either mustache or beard, so that they could vote at the each precinct several times, trimming one part each time, until they were clean-shaven and bald at the end of the day.
Absentee ballots just make it easier, if you already have the registration fraud. Without registration fraud, you have to guarantee that the voters that you fake will not turn up. Hence, the graveyards all voted Democratic in Chicago.
> (beyond the ones that James Tobias Kirk sex'd up) That's James Tiberius Kirk, AC.
> Does something like this throw the Big Crunch (and cyclical universe by extension) out the window?
The Big Crunch has been "out the window" for some time, now. The current expectation is of a Big Rip, when the expansion of the Universe, which is apparently proceeding faster as time goes on, becomes so great that, first, all the galaxies outside of the local group will be receding too fast to be seen. Some months later, the Local Group will rip apart from the expansion, leaving just the Milky Way and its gravitationally bound galaxies. Shortly after, the galaxy will be receding and rip apart, leaving just the Solar System with a coal-black sky. But don't feel bad about that, because a few days later, the Solar System will be ripped apart by the expansion, and so on, at faster rates, until even composite elementary particles like hadrons will rip into a quark or gluon per whatever, effectively per Universe.
Well, doesn't THAT brighten up your day?