Yes, that utterly astonishing ~2/3rds of all USians who accepted the notion that Iraq was involved in 9/11. It shook my faith in everything from Christian decency to the laws of statistics; apparently we live in Bizarro Lake Woebegon, where much more than half of the population is below average.
Fear can make people easily manipulated, and most of the country was very afraid after 9/11. My biggest problem with the Bush Administration? That that did everything they could (and still do) to keep that fear alive and build on it. That alone has to be one of the more despicable acts of any public official in recent years. It has certainly led to its share of further despicable acts.
This is the only fair way of doing it IMO which is why the vast majority of Western nations implement something similar.
It is not so clear here. To many, "fair" means you get what you pay for, not that the rich pay for the health care of the middle class and the middle class pay for the health care of the poor. I am not saying I totally agree, but that is one prevalent viewpoint. Everyone wants universal health care in principal, but nobody wants to be the one "writing out the check". How it will be paid for and managed are the major concerns in implementing something like this.
I also believe that any universal health care system that is created MUST be made mandatory for all elected government officials and their families. None of this "social security plan for the rest of you, our own superior plan for us" crap we have now. Congress needs to "eat it's own dog food" just as I need to "use fewer quotation marks" when I "post on slashdot"
Anything other than free healthcare and education for all is a right wing policy.
You are confusing "free" with "taxpayer supported". Free is an illusion generated by people who don't get economics.
Take a long hard look at the US federal government, do you really think that bureaucracy would manage health care better than it is now? I freely admit that it is totally screwed in the US now, and heading for a meltdown soon. I am not convinced that our federal government completely taking it over will make it better. They don't exactly have the best track record with huge programs...
The Democrats have a pretty wide range of candidates across the political spectrum. You are not going to to convince me that Pelosi and Kennedy are conservative.
If they could care less, it means that they care about the issue. From your following sentences, what you meant to say was "most conservatives I know couldn't care less about.."
CRAP! that is one of MY pet peeves and I committed it.:(
Irregardless, and for all intensive purposes, you get my point though right?:)
I still call myself a Republican because I am. It's Bush's "New Aged GOP" that should stop calling themselves Republicans because they aren't.
Only when the rest of the party stops going along with the intentional mass insanity that has infected the Whitehouse will I call myself a Republican. Until that happens I can only assume the whole party leadership is behind it.
Everytime you hear of Bush & Co. invading our personal liberties, remember that it was both the Democrats and the Republicans who passed the legislation allowing him to do so. The Republicans voted their conscience, however poorly formed it might be, while the Democrats simply betrayed both their principles and their constituents.
I disagree. Not about the Democrats betraying their principles and their constituents (they did), but that the Republicans did not. The Republicans did the same thing the Democrats did, they voted against their constituents out of fear, out of ignorance, and out of the desire to appear to be "doing something". The Republican party I know opposed Clinton and Gore's Clipper Chip initiative on the grounds that it violated personal privacy (Hell, ASHCROFT led that opposition, I still cannot get over that). They opposed the government's heavy handed reactions to Ruby Ridge and Waco. For them to now champion absolute executive power and total federal police/military control in the name of safety is widely diverged from the Republicans of the early 90s that won Congress.
Both parties betrayed us, I however respect the Democrats for at least recognizing it and attempting to fix it, the Republicans have settled on simply using fear to avoid changing their minds or admitting they made a mistake. Or they really believe the Patriot Act keeps us safe and will never be abused. Those ones are too stupid to hold office.
The primary difference between a Republican and a Democrat is that a Republican votes according to the principles which got him elected, where a Democrat doesn't care how he votes, as long as he can blame the Republicans should something go wrong.
You could easily replace the words "Republicans" and "Democrat" in what you just said with the words "Majority party" and "minority party". We've seen this before.
This really means nothing. The Republicans are still running both the House and the Senate; they can always count on their "Democrat friends" to vote Republican.
Not necessarily. Prior to this election, the Democrats needed to cozy up to Republicans if they wanted to get anything done. Compromise and trading favors was their only option. That is no longer the case.
Given the monumental waste of money and innocent lives in Iraq
Many honestly believed that this was critical to the war on terror. Now we know better, the problem I have with the Republicans is that they refuse to admit they were wrong (or fooled) and hang on to any flimsy Iraq/Terrorism link and justification they can. Nobody wants to admit they were wrong. But that is ok, we just told them.
fleecing of the treasury for corporate crony interests
This is not a party issue, this is a political issue. The Republicans are in the cross-hairs now because they are in power but the Democrats are just as bad when they are in power. Neither party will ever change this, it is their gravy train. They will only point out when the other party does it.
routine battering of the constitution
Again, this is a function of who is in power, not which party they belong to. Not long ago the Democrats (Clinton & Gore spearheading) were pushing for Clipper as a way to spy on all Americans and prevent anyone from having privacy and cryptography. The Republicans (oddly led by Ashcroft) fought it on the grounds that we needed privacy from an overbearing government that wanted to spy on all of us. The party in power always wants to have more power (in their minds, to better do their job and protect us) and the minority party is always concerned about to much Federal power and the privacy of citizens.
staggering deficit just for starters
There is no excuse for that, they are just jackasses when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Thus we see many conservatives staying home or voting for the opposition to send a message.
I find it hard to agree that the republicans want whats best for the greater good.
They really believe that they need to win in Iraq to keep us safe (probably true, but not going in to begin with would have likely been safer). They really believe they need NSA spying, torture, and the removal of all those pesky "civil rights for suspected terrorists" in order to keep us safe. We are at WAR dammit, against an insane enemy who wants to kill us all, extreme measures must be taken.
Of course they are wrong, and the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Fortunately we just told them they are wrong, interesting to see if they get the message.
Nobody (well maybe Cheney, that guy seems to be pure evil sometimes), rubbing their hands together, cackling like Mr Burns about their plans to destroy the country. They feel they are doing the right thing, and as a country we were agreeing for a while. However as more information surfaced we adjusted our views and opinion accordingly (as people should do when learning new things and/or situations change), the Whitehouse did not. They buried their heads in the said and demanded we stay the course. This election is the logical result of that idiocy.
...will not be pleased if the only thing to come out of the House in the next two years is a bunch of investigations and impeachment hearings. (ha, you thought I was going to say something abuot overlords, didn't you?)
This may be the only way to keep Congress from passing stupid laws and making things worse (which seems to be their primary function anymore).
BTW - can you really call Liberman a Democrat now? I mean he votes with the Republicans and the national Democrats gave him the finger earlier this year.
Over ONE ISSUE. Liberman is still very much a Democrat, he just happens to support Bush on Iraq. It will be interesting to see if he breaks from the party line more now that he no longer answers to them. I don't agree with Joe on many issues (Iraq being one of them) but I would love to see more people in congress in his position (not beholden to his party masters).
I used to call myself a Republican, and if the party ever comes back from the fiscally irresponsible, gay marriage obsessed, party with their heads in the sand over Iraq party they have turned into, I'll come back.
Having said that, you are spot on. This IS good for the country. And this is actually good for the Republican party because it kicks them in the ass and shows them how far they have gone. I (personally) believe it is also good for the Democratic party as well (who I would probably have belonged to 3 or 4 decades ago). The gains they made were from moderate Democrats, not the raving liberals who seem to have directed the party for a while now. It is high time people realize that real people have views across the board, making them average out as moderate. Few people fall perfectly party line along the hard left or hard right.
As an ex-Republican (Bush created a lot of us) who still leans conservative at least on economic issues, this is no surprise to me. What is interesting to me is that a party that includes some pretty intelligent people seems to primarily target idiots in their rhetoric.
For example, most conservatives I know could care less about gay marriage. It is not a huge issue for me, I find myself being for it. I have no reason to oppose it so it just seems fair. Yet Rove and co. keep making this a cornerstone of their "get out the vote" campaign. The Christian fundamentalists do not have enough numbers that you need only focus on them to win, especially when it comes out that your own party might be covering up for a gay (the horror!) teen-predator who inexplicably held a co-chairmanship in the "missing and exploited children caucus". That probably did not play well in the bible belt.
Corruption anyone? Of course this is a cyclical thing and I fully expect the Republicans will probably regain Congress in a few election cycles after the Democrats turn out to be just a corrupt. And the cycle will go on and on because corruption is not a party issue, it is a requirement for office in DC.
Then you have Iraq, the elephant in the room that none of the Republican commentators wanted to touch (no pun intended). Again, you would have to be a totally uninformed moron to think that everything is going great and we need to "stay the course", yet that has been the message for years, flying in the face of reality (with its well known liberal bias;)
But the most ridiculous thing to me has to be the "listen to mommy and daddy you stupid little children" approach the Republicans have taken in warning us what would happen if the Democrats win. Probably plays well to those who only get their information from Rush/Hannity/etc., but for those of us who are not spoon fed our beliefs by paid mouthpieces it is insulting. "The terrorists are cheering the Democrats on", "The Democrats want us to lose", "If the Democrats win, we will lose the war on terror", "The future of civilization rests in the balance of the election" Give me a break, both parties are pro-America and want the best for us, they just differ on how to get there. To suggest otherwise is fear-mongering of the worst kind.
Then you have the issue of how far Republicans have come from the "94 take over" years. Go back and re-read the "Contract With America", it is chock full of some really good stuff that I could really get behind. However, it is as far from the Republican party as you can get.
A good number of us are not religious/social conservative fanatics (or as I like to say, Shiite Christians), but that seems to be all the Republicans are targeting. Many of us ARE fiscally conservative and you will not find a more fiscally irresponsible government that the Republican controlled federal government of yesterday. Almost none of us are willing to join Bush's delusion regarding Iraq anymore. The WMD scam, the clueless management on the part of Rumsfeld, and the "la la la, I can't hear you" approach Bush takes to any news that is not positive has clearly taken its toll.
Personally, I hope the Democrats take the Senate for a clean Congressional sweep. I still disagree with many of their positions, but more important that that is my belief that checks and balances between the two branches of government is preferable to a mono-culture.
A government made up of one party cannot be anything but bad news. At a minimum, vote for the candidates that will oppose the majority party in the Whitehouse (or if voting for a president, vote for the president who will oppose congress).
It looks like they addressed the sticky problem of having a husband/boss/union demanding you vote a certain way then verifying it. Check it out before freaking out over this scenario.
However they solved the wrong problem. The problem is not that a solution like this did not exist, the problem is that the government does not want it. We cannot even get Diebold to print out a paper trail or get their software certified legally (they sneak around and use uncertified patches at the last minute).
The real problem is this stupid obsession we have over knowing the results of the election NOW. We want to go to bed knowing who won (although that did not go so well in 2000), and damn everything else. If we could just wait a day or so and let paper ballots be counted we would not have these issues. Sure paper ballots could be miscounted but there are more eyeballs, and it would certainly be harder to pull off a massive fraud like what would be trivial with today's Diebold machines. But (1) we want results now, and we want computers involved because we KNOW those cannot be wrong and (2) the government seems to like this idea of unverifiable votes.
Really, I don't know why any US companies can do business with China.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say "money".
They have the largest population of any country in the world, and they are rapidly developing (at least in industry if not socially, although that seems to be slowly happening as well).
So cheap labor, over a billion potential customers, and and a stable (albeit evil) government.
Finkployd
Re:It's the all encompassing .com that's the probl
on
Utube Sues YouTube
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· Score: 1
I understand the most recent versions of browsers have this new "bookmarking" features.
In a few years, there may even be a way to "search" the web.
So yes I'm being unnecessarily snarky (shut up firefox spellchecker, it IS a real word), but my point is that the minor inconvenience people may have typing a few extra keys (the horror) would be far outweighed by having a logical naming system that is not begging for abuse like the current one does.
I think it's pretty obvious we're diluting our gene pool with a bunch of shit (the rise of nearsightedness seems like an obvious one to me), a huge number of diseases have their symptoms treated without the problem being fixed. When these people have kids.. they're just perpetuating the decline.
Depends on how you look at it. Yes, as someone who is nearsighted I would probably be dead as a caveman (well, maybe not, I'm only 20/50 but say I was 20/100 or something) because I would lack the basic skills necessary to find food and protect myself (ie, the ability to see prey and predators from a distance).
However this is not the caveman days, and to succeed today, peak physical condition is generally not as much of a requirement as a well functioning brain. So over time, this species is getting a lot smarter, and a lot less physically fit, but what does it matter? That IS natural selection, important attributes flourish, unimportant ones do not.
If an all out nuclear war drops us back into the stone age, then yes the vast majority of us will not be hardy enough to survive (nor will most posses the skills necessary to survive without a walmart). So then there will be massive diebacks, and natural selection will continue to work as always under these new requirements.
Basically, Stephen Hawking is a pretty good example of this. He would be a total liability to any stone age tribe and would be long dead by now if he lived in that scenario. As it stands now, I do not consider it a bad thing that we live in a period of time where he is able to contribute to society and not be a liability.
Do you have examples of this hypocrisy prior to Bush and Clinton? Many people, including myself, feel like the Republican party has changed drastically recently, including in the area of privacy and personal liberty.
I agree with this, but I believe it is because in recent history the republican party gained control of the government. Prior to the mid 90s, they had a very long dry spell where the Democrats controlled congress, so even when there was a Republican president, there was checks on power. It was easy to stir up fear about an overpowering, spying government when they were not the ones doing the spying and amassing the power. Contrast their reactions of the Clinton actions at Waco and Ruby ridge vs. today. Back then the feds were jack booted thugs out to grab power and stomp on the little guy. Now if you do not support every single thing the feds do, you are unpatriotic.
The sad part of this is that the Republican party's position on personal liberty and privacy was all just so much hot air designed to appeal to the masses, just as the Democrats position today is. The truth of the matter is that both sides feel that THEY are the ones who should be doing the spying, and curtailing liberties they find troublesome to make it easier to govern the population. They only fear it when it is that evil other party doing it.
This goes back further than the 90s vs today, but that provides the most significant 180 on the part of both parties regarding their views on domestic spying, federal power, etc. I'll dig up more examples tomorrow, right now it is time for bed.
"The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it." U.S. Senator James Exon
You are not buying a copy of OS X. You almost NEVER buy software, you buy a license to run it under the restrictions that they spell out. Sucks that it works this way but it does.
Bad Tech laws are one of those few issues that seem to really cross party lines and ideologies. When it comes to privacy remember one thing, both sides do not want you to have it, but the minority party will always come out in favor of it. \
Example: When Clinton and Gore were busy pushing the Clipper initiative and trying to make sure all digital communications encryption had a government accessible back door to aid in spying, John Ashcroft was one of the most vocal opponents coming down on the side of personal privacy, freedom from government spying, etc. Now that Bush feels that everyone he unilaterally (and incontestably) declares a "terrorist" should be under constant surveillance, the Democrats suddenly pretend to care about government oversight on spying and everyone's personal privacy.
Hatch was the author of the Induce Act, which certainly seems right in line (and a logical followup) to the Clinton supported and signed DMCA.
There are certainly issues in America where your opinion easily points to one party over another, but not this one. By and large they both suck, are technologically incompetent, and totally bought and sold to their masters (be it Hollywood, BSA, RIAA, etc). I don't think you can call one position "Democrat", or "Republican", or "Conservative", or "Liberal".
Nothing is going to get better as long as there is no accountability.
We agree. For the record I tend to vote in whatever direction will keep opposite parties in control of Congress and the Executive branch. Seems to be the best I can do.
As for the Clipper Chip, that was more of an NSA and Louis Freeh obsession than a Clinton administration initiative.
Let's not forget the Gore was a strong proponent and heavily campaigned for it. Clinton not as much but he certainly was in favor of it.
The principal proponent of Clipper is currently part of the Bush Administration.
Who was that? I cannot remember and my copy of "Electronic Privacy Papers" is packed right now.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that utterly astonishing ~2/3rds of all USians who accepted the notion that Iraq was involved in 9/11. It shook my faith in everything from Christian decency to the laws of statistics; apparently we live in Bizarro Lake Woebegon, where much more than half of the population is below average.
Fear can make people easily manipulated, and most of the country was very afraid after 9/11. My biggest problem with the Bush Administration? That that did everything they could (and still do) to keep that fear alive and build on it. That alone has to be one of the more despicable acts of any public official in recent years. It has certainly led to its share of further despicable acts.
Finkployd
This is the only fair way of doing it IMO which is why the vast majority of Western nations implement something similar.
It is not so clear here. To many, "fair" means you get what you pay for, not that the rich pay for the health care of the middle class and the middle class pay for the health care of the poor. I am not saying I totally agree, but that is one prevalent viewpoint. Everyone wants universal health care in principal, but nobody wants to be the one "writing out the check". How it will be paid for and managed are the major concerns in implementing something like this.
I also believe that any universal health care system that is created MUST be made mandatory for all elected government officials and their families. None of this "social security plan for the rest of you, our own superior plan for us" crap we have now. Congress needs to "eat it's own dog food" just as I need to "use fewer quotation marks" when I "post on slashdot"
Finkployd
Anything other than free healthcare and education for all is a right wing policy.
You are confusing "free" with "taxpayer supported". Free is an illusion generated by people who don't get economics.
Take a long hard look at the US federal government, do you really think that bureaucracy would manage health care better than it is now? I freely admit that it is totally screwed in the US now, and heading for a meltdown soon. I am not convinced that our federal government completely taking it over will make it better. They don't exactly have the best track record with huge programs...
Finkployd
The Democrats have a pretty wide range of candidates across the political spectrum. You are not going to to convince me that Pelosi and Kennedy are conservative.
Finkployd
If they could care less, it means that they care about the issue. From your following sentences, what you meant to say was "most conservatives I know couldn't care less about.."
:(
:)
CRAP! that is one of MY pet peeves and I committed it.
Irregardless, and for all intensive purposes, you get my point though right?
Finkployd
I still call myself a Republican because I am. It's Bush's "New Aged GOP" that should stop calling themselves Republicans because they aren't.
Only when the rest of the party stops going along with the intentional mass insanity that has infected the Whitehouse will I call myself a Republican. Until that happens I can only assume the whole party leadership is behind it.
Finkployd
My apologies, I intended no offense. I was actually plagiarizing a Jim Gaffigan gag, so can we just call it a "botched joke"? :)
I agree with that, although I am mad at you if only because your city brought us Rendell (I'm in Pittsburgh). :)
Finkployd
Everytime you hear of Bush & Co. invading our personal liberties, remember that it was both the Democrats and the Republicans who passed the legislation allowing him to do so. The Republicans voted their conscience, however poorly formed it might be, while the Democrats simply betrayed both their principles and their constituents.
I disagree. Not about the Democrats betraying their principles and their constituents (they did), but that the Republicans did not. The Republicans did the same thing the Democrats did, they voted against their constituents out of fear, out of ignorance, and out of the desire to appear to be "doing something". The Republican party I know opposed Clinton and Gore's Clipper Chip initiative on the grounds that it violated personal privacy (Hell, ASHCROFT led that opposition, I still cannot get over that). They opposed the government's heavy handed reactions to Ruby Ridge and Waco. For them to now champion absolute executive power and total federal police/military control in the name of safety is widely diverged from the Republicans of the early 90s that won Congress.
Both parties betrayed us, I however respect the Democrats for at least recognizing it and attempting to fix it, the Republicans have settled on simply using fear to avoid changing their minds or admitting they made a mistake. Or they really believe the Patriot Act keeps us safe and will never be abused. Those ones are too stupid to hold office.
The primary difference between a Republican and a Democrat is that a Republican votes according to the principles which got him elected, where a Democrat doesn't care how he votes, as long as he can blame the Republicans should something go wrong.
You could easily replace the words "Republicans" and "Democrat" in what you just said with the words "Majority party" and "minority party". We've seen this before.
This really means nothing. The Republicans are still running both the House and the Senate; they can always count on their "Democrat friends" to vote Republican.
Not necessarily. Prior to this election, the Democrats needed to cozy up to Republicans if they wanted to get anything done. Compromise and trading favors was their only option. That is no longer the case.
Finkployd
Given the monumental waste of money and innocent lives in Iraq
Many honestly believed that this was critical to the war on terror. Now we know better, the problem I have with the Republicans is that they refuse to admit they were wrong (or fooled) and hang on to any flimsy Iraq/Terrorism link and justification they can. Nobody wants to admit they were wrong. But that is ok, we just told them.
fleecing of the treasury for corporate crony interests
This is not a party issue, this is a political issue. The Republicans are in the cross-hairs now because they are in power but the Democrats are just as bad when they are in power. Neither party will ever change this, it is their gravy train. They will only point out when the other party does it.
routine battering of the constitution
Again, this is a function of who is in power, not which party they belong to. Not long ago the Democrats (Clinton & Gore spearheading) were pushing for Clipper as a way to spy on all Americans and prevent anyone from having privacy and cryptography. The Republicans (oddly led by Ashcroft) fought it on the grounds that we needed privacy from an overbearing government that wanted to spy on all of us.
The party in power always wants to have more power (in their minds, to better do their job and protect us) and the minority party is always concerned about to much Federal power and the privacy of citizens.
staggering deficit just for starters
There is no excuse for that, they are just jackasses when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Thus we see many conservatives staying home or voting for the opposition to send a message.
I find it hard to agree that the republicans want whats best for the greater good.
They really believe that they need to win in Iraq to keep us safe (probably true, but not going in to begin with would have likely been safer). They really believe they need NSA spying, torture, and the removal of all those pesky "civil rights for suspected terrorists" in order to keep us safe. We are at WAR dammit, against an insane enemy who wants to kill us all, extreme measures must be taken.
Of course they are wrong, and the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Fortunately we just told them they are wrong, interesting to see if they get the message.
Nobody (well maybe Cheney, that guy seems to be pure evil sometimes), rubbing their hands together, cackling like Mr Burns about their plans to destroy the country. They feel they are doing the right thing, and as a country we were agreeing for a while. However as more information surfaced we adjusted our views and opinion accordingly (as people should do when learning new things and/or situations change), the Whitehouse did not. They buried their heads in the said and demanded we stay the course. This election is the logical result of that idiocy.
Finkployd
...will not be pleased if the only thing to come out of the House in the next two years is a bunch of investigations and impeachment hearings. (ha, you thought I was going to say something abuot overlords, didn't you?)
This may be the only way to keep Congress from passing stupid laws and making things worse (which seems to be their primary function anymore).
BTW - can you really call Liberman a Democrat now? I mean he votes with the Republicans and the national Democrats gave him the finger earlier this year.
Over ONE ISSUE. Liberman is still very much a Democrat, he just happens to support Bush on Iraq. It will be interesting to see if he breaks from the party line more now that he no longer answers to them. I don't agree with Joe on many issues (Iraq being one of them) but I would love to see more people in congress in his position (not beholden to his party masters).
Finkployd
I used to call myself a Republican, and if the party ever comes back from the fiscally irresponsible, gay marriage obsessed, party with their heads in the sand over Iraq party they have turned into, I'll come back.
Having said that, you are spot on. This IS good for the country. And this is actually good for the Republican party because it kicks them in the ass and shows them how far they have gone. I (personally) believe it is also good for the Democratic party as well (who I would probably have belonged to 3 or 4 decades ago). The gains they made were from moderate Democrats, not the raving liberals who seem to have directed the party for a while now. It is high time people realize that real people have views across the board, making them average out as moderate. Few people fall perfectly party line along the hard left or hard right.
Finkployd
As an ex-Republican (Bush created a lot of us) who still leans conservative at least on economic issues, this is no surprise to me. What is interesting to me is that a party that includes some pretty intelligent people seems to primarily target idiots in their rhetoric.
;)
For example, most conservatives I know could care less about gay marriage. It is not a huge issue for me, I find myself being for it. I have no reason to oppose it so it just seems fair. Yet Rove and co. keep making this a cornerstone of their "get out the vote" campaign. The Christian fundamentalists do not have enough numbers that you need only focus on them to win, especially when it comes out that your own party might be covering up for a gay (the horror!) teen-predator who inexplicably held a co-chairmanship in the "missing and exploited children caucus". That probably did not play well in the bible belt.
Corruption anyone? Of course this is a cyclical thing and I fully expect the Republicans will probably regain Congress in a few election cycles after the Democrats turn out to be just a corrupt. And the cycle will go on and on because corruption is not a party issue, it is a requirement for office in DC.
Then you have Iraq, the elephant in the room that none of the Republican commentators wanted to touch (no pun intended). Again, you would have to be a totally uninformed moron to think that everything is going great and we need to "stay the course", yet that has been the message for years, flying in the face of reality (with its well known liberal bias
But the most ridiculous thing to me has to be the "listen to mommy and daddy you stupid little children" approach the Republicans have taken in warning us what would happen if the Democrats win. Probably plays well to those who only get their information from Rush/Hannity/etc., but for those of us who are not spoon fed our beliefs by paid mouthpieces it is insulting. "The terrorists are cheering the Democrats on", "The Democrats want us to lose", "If the Democrats win, we will lose the war on terror", "The future of civilization rests in the balance of the election"
Give me a break, both parties are pro-America and want the best for us, they just differ on how to get there. To suggest otherwise is fear-mongering of the worst kind.
Then you have the issue of how far Republicans have come from the "94 take over" years. Go back and re-read the "Contract With America", it is chock full of some really good stuff that I could really get behind. However, it is as far from the Republican party as you can get.
A good number of us are not religious/social conservative fanatics (or as I like to say, Shiite Christians), but that seems to be all the Republicans are targeting. Many of us ARE fiscally conservative and you will not find a more fiscally irresponsible government that the Republican controlled federal government of yesterday. Almost none of us are willing to join Bush's delusion regarding Iraq anymore. The WMD scam, the clueless management on the part of Rumsfeld, and the "la la la, I can't hear you" approach Bush takes to any news that is not positive has clearly taken its toll.
Personally, I hope the Democrats take the Senate for a clean Congressional sweep. I still disagree with many of their positions, but more important that that is my belief that checks and balances between the two branches of government is preferable to a mono-culture.
I am Finkployd, and I approve this message
A government made up of one party cannot be anything but bad news. At a minimum, vote for the candidates that will oppose the majority party in the Whitehouse (or if voting for a president, vote for the president who will oppose congress).
Finkployd
That number is also growing, not declining.
Finkployd
It looks like they addressed the sticky problem of having a husband/boss/union demanding you vote a certain way then verifying it. Check it out before freaking out over this scenario.
However they solved the wrong problem. The problem is not that a solution like this did not exist, the problem is that the government does not want it. We cannot even get Diebold to print out a paper trail or get their software certified legally (they sneak around and use uncertified patches at the last minute).
The real problem is this stupid obsession we have over knowing the results of the election NOW. We want to go to bed knowing who won (although that did not go so well in 2000), and damn everything else. If we could just wait a day or so and let paper ballots be counted we would not have these issues. Sure paper ballots could be miscounted but there are more eyeballs, and it would certainly be harder to pull off a massive fraud like what would be trivial with today's Diebold machines. But (1) we want results now, and we want computers involved because we KNOW those cannot be wrong and (2) the government seems to like this idea of unverifiable votes.
Finkployd
You just KNOW Unions will be doing this.
Probably some churches too.
Finkployd
Really, I don't know why any US companies can do business with China.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say "money".
They have the largest population of any country in the world, and they are rapidly developing (at least in industry if not socially, although that seems to be slowly happening as well).
So cheap labor, over a billion potential customers, and and a stable (albeit evil) government.
Finkployd
I understand the most recent versions of browsers have this new "bookmarking" features.
In a few years, there may even be a way to "search" the web.
So yes I'm being unnecessarily snarky (shut up firefox spellchecker, it IS a real word), but my point is that the minor inconvenience people may have typing a few extra keys (the horror) would be far outweighed by having a logical naming system that is not begging for abuse like the current one does.
Finkployd
I think it's pretty obvious we're diluting our gene pool with a bunch of shit (the rise of nearsightedness seems like an obvious one to me), a huge number of diseases have their symptoms treated without the problem being fixed. When these people have kids.. they're just perpetuating the decline.
Depends on how you look at it. Yes, as someone who is nearsighted I would probably be dead as a caveman (well, maybe not, I'm only 20/50 but say I was 20/100 or something) because I would lack the basic skills necessary to find food and protect myself (ie, the ability to see prey and predators from a distance).
However this is not the caveman days, and to succeed today, peak physical condition is generally not as much of a requirement as a well functioning brain. So over time, this species is getting a lot smarter, and a lot less physically fit, but what does it matter? That IS natural selection, important attributes flourish, unimportant ones do not.
If an all out nuclear war drops us back into the stone age, then yes the vast majority of us will not be hardy enough to survive (nor will most posses the skills necessary to survive without a walmart). So then there will be massive diebacks, and natural selection will continue to work as always under these new requirements.
Basically, Stephen Hawking is a pretty good example of this. He would be a total liability to any stone age tribe and would be long dead by now if he lived in that scenario. As it stands now, I do not consider it a bad thing that we live in a period of time where he is able to contribute to society and not be a liability.
Finkployd
Do you have examples of this hypocrisy prior to Bush and Clinton? Many people, including myself, feel like the Republican party has changed drastically recently, including in the area of privacy and personal liberty.
I agree with this, but I believe it is because in recent history the republican party gained control of the government. Prior to the mid 90s, they had a very long dry spell where the Democrats controlled congress, so even when there was a Republican president, there was checks on power. It was easy to stir up fear about an overpowering, spying government when they were not the ones doing the spying and amassing the power. Contrast their reactions of the Clinton actions at Waco and Ruby ridge vs. today. Back then the feds were jack booted thugs out to grab power and stomp on the little guy. Now if you do not support every single thing the feds do, you are unpatriotic.
The sad part of this is that the Republican party's position on personal liberty and privacy was all just so much hot air designed to appeal to the masses, just as the Democrats position today is. The truth of the matter is that both sides feel that THEY are the ones who should be doing the spying, and curtailing liberties they find troublesome to make it easier to govern the population. They only fear it when it is that evil other party doing it.
This goes back further than the 90s vs today, but that provides the most significant 180 on the part of both parties regarding their views on domestic spying, federal power, etc. I'll dig up more examples tomorrow, right now it is time for bed.
Finkployd
"The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it."
U.S. Senator James Exon
You are not buying a copy of OS X. You almost NEVER buy software, you buy a license to run it under the restrictions that they spell out. Sucks that it works this way but it does.
Bad Tech laws are one of those few issues that seem to really cross party lines and ideologies. When it comes to privacy remember one thing, both sides do not want you to have it, but the minority party will always come out in favor of it. \
Example: When Clinton and Gore were busy pushing the Clipper initiative and trying to make sure all digital communications encryption had a government accessible back door to aid in spying, John Ashcroft was one of the most vocal opponents coming down on the side of personal privacy, freedom from government spying, etc. Now that Bush feels that everyone he unilaterally (and incontestably) declares a "terrorist" should be under constant surveillance, the Democrats suddenly pretend to care about government oversight on spying and everyone's personal privacy.
Hatch was the author of the Induce Act, which certainly seems right in line (and a logical followup) to the Clinton supported and signed DMCA.
There are certainly issues in America where your opinion easily points to one party over another, but not this one. By and large they both suck, are technologically incompetent, and totally bought and sold to their masters (be it Hollywood, BSA, RIAA, etc). I don't think you can call one position "Democrat", or "Republican", or "Conservative", or "Liberal".
Finkployd
Nothing is going to get better as long as there is no accountability.
We agree. For the record I tend to vote in whatever direction will keep opposite parties in control of Congress and the Executive branch. Seems to be the best I can do.
As for the Clipper Chip, that was more of an NSA and Louis Freeh obsession than a Clinton administration initiative.
Let's not forget the Gore was a strong proponent and heavily campaigned for it. Clinton not as much but he certainly was in favor of it.
The principal proponent of Clipper is currently part of the Bush Administration.
Who was that? I cannot remember and my copy of "Electronic Privacy Papers" is packed right now.
Finkployd