Uhh, you do realize that if the Republican party didn't want to count minority votes, it was probably a bad idea for them to have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right?
Political parties in this country mean nothing. Forty years ago, the Democrats were very much the more racist of the two parties.
I watched the debate, and neither candidate seems to want to scale down government spending: Obama wouldn't admit to wanting to cut anything, and McCain paid some very unconvincing lip service to the idea. Why are we stuck with choosing between two candidates that both want to increase the scope and cost of the federal government?
Sure, I can't be sure my vote is counted in our present system. But adding any additional, subjective layer to the system would probably make it even less likely that my vote is counted. I think the best solution would be to create a voting system where there is zero possibility of ambiguity when counting the votes. Some sort of verification that would allow the ballot to remain secret would also be nice. Unfortunately, I don't really see any of our dear leaders jumping onto that any time soon.
And as far as the exit polls go, I sort of doubt that they're more accurate than the election itself. This has been hashed out since they started polling for the primaries over a year ago, but I'd like to remind you that people may be more prejudiced against certain factors (age, race, and sex all come up in this cycle) in the privacy of the voting booth than they are when being interviewed by a pollster.
My view is that the population in question is the official tally of the vote: all the votes cast minus those that are discarded. It could be due to an imperfect detection mechanism or the voter failing to fill out the ballot correctly.
However, in our system, when the election's over it's over. There's no provision for a revote if the result is too close. If you introduce subjective processes such as "determining voter intent" it is no longer even a population or a sample and concepts such as margins of error don't even begin to apply.
There is no statistical margin of error in an election since the sum of the ballots is the population in question. All polls that come before an election are an estimation of what that population will be and come from a sampling of eligible voters.
Someone (I don't have the needed skills) should make a website that correlates information on campaign donations from opensecrets with voting records of public officials. This was obviously bought by IP-industry lobbyists, and I think that if the general public could see this corruption more easily it would be a lot easier to root out.
I did a bunch of drugs throughout high school and college. If you can name a drug, I ingested it. Do I have ideas that DARPA would like? Sure. Do I have a degree in nuclear physics? Yep. Do I have a history that bars me from any such job? Unfortunately, yes,
I'm done caring. There were decent candidates on both sides in the primaries, and they were both ignored and discarded by the media before the first vote had been cast. Obama or McCain, who cares? Things will still be exactly the same.
Not at all. I'm still going to vote. I intend to vote for the most viable third-party candidate in my state in November. I believe that the only way out of this political mess is to have more than two viable parties.
But the pragmatist in me knows that my vote is infinitesimal. Whichever candidate wins this election, my paycheck will still be raped. My long-term plan is to save up a bit of money and move elsewhere as soon as I can.
Accountability should have happened years ago. The makeup of Congress hasn't changed since January '07. If the Democrats waited until now, the it is just an empty gesture. Nothing will come of this.
Nah. Being more involved with the process just ends up meaning that I'd piss away more money or time on people that want to fuck me over.
There is a wicked bad positive-feedback loop going on in our government (money->influence->power->money...), and it won't get resolved until external forces reset our system. There's no stopping it. It's best to move to another country and wait it out.
After the 2006 election, Nancy Pelosi's first action as Speaker of the House was to take impeachment off the table. Why would she do that when the vast majority of the Democratic base clearly wanted it? Because, even if it had succeeded, it would have hurt the Democrats' chances in 2008. The first interest of the Democrats was to ensure that they remained in power, or solidified their grip on power. An obligation to the Constitution and their constituents was a second priority. And before anyone thinks I'm taking sides here, I'll say that both major parties do this.
Why are they doing it now, when Bush has only seven months left in office rather than a year and a half ago? Election year theater.
And that's why I cringe when people say "We really need to get the Democrats the White House and majorities Congress in 2008" or something to that effect. They have no interest in you, the country, or anything but power and money.
Kucinich is an exception among them. We need more like him, but he is an anomaly.
I make about half that, but I have no kids and no SO, so life is relatively cheap. In Orange County, what I make is barely enough to get by. 100k sounds like a lot, but if you live anywhere where earning 100k is possible, it is not.
He signed the contract. He knew the terms going into it. He is actually very lucky since voice actors are pretty easy to find and have low standards for compensation. His role in this game will get him all kinds of work he would not have gotten otherwise.
And his voice is not an integral part of the game. Any halfway competent voice actor would have sufficed. The real stars are the programmers and designers.
Well, think about this, during every fission in a nuclear reactor, about 5% of the energy released goes into neutrinos. And if you were wondering, antineutrinos (as far as we're concerned here) behave the same way as normal neutrinos.
But the focus on Megan's case raises two questions: (a) whether it is fair to invoke Megan in the name of passing the laws
No. In fact, no one invoking the safety of children in this manner should ever be able to legislate on any topic. Anyone making any sort of "Think of the children"-based argument should be immediately considered to have lost the debate. The fact that they have to resort to such scaremongering is evidence enough that their position has no merit.
and (b) whether the laws are a good idea in general.
No. This girl was obviously too much of an emo. Her parents should have realized this and not let her on the Internet. This was a failure of parenting. Our freedom of speech should not be infringed upon simply because some parent isn't capable of the job.
...did you expect these shrewd men and women to bite the very hand that feeds them?
The whole point of the lifetime appointment of judges to the Supreme Court is that they wouldn't have to be beholden to whichever powers appointed them. Scalia, Alito, and Thomas could have a change of heart and become flag-burning, dope-smoking, abortion-promoting hippies, and there's really nothing that could be done to punish them. I think they can be impeached by Congress, but that isn't really common.
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Uhh, you do realize that if the Republican party didn't want to count minority votes, it was probably a bad idea for them to have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right?
Political parties in this country mean nothing. Forty years ago, the Democrats were very much the more racist of the two parties.
I watched the debate, and neither candidate seems to want to scale down government spending: Obama wouldn't admit to wanting to cut anything, and McCain paid some very unconvincing lip service to the idea. Why are we stuck with choosing between two candidates that both want to increase the scope and cost of the federal government?
Sure, I can't be sure my vote is counted in our present system. But adding any additional, subjective layer to the system would probably make it even less likely that my vote is counted. I think the best solution would be to create a voting system where there is zero possibility of ambiguity when counting the votes. Some sort of verification that would allow the ballot to remain secret would also be nice. Unfortunately, I don't really see any of our dear leaders jumping onto that any time soon.
And as far as the exit polls go, I sort of doubt that they're more accurate than the election itself. This has been hashed out since they started polling for the primaries over a year ago, but I'd like to remind you that people may be more prejudiced against certain factors (age, race, and sex all come up in this cycle) in the privacy of the voting booth than they are when being interviewed by a pollster.
My view is that the population in question is the official tally of the vote: all the votes cast minus those that are discarded. It could be due to an imperfect detection mechanism or the voter failing to fill out the ballot correctly.
However, in our system, when the election's over it's over. There's no provision for a revote if the result is too close. If you introduce subjective processes such as "determining voter intent" it is no longer even a population or a sample and concepts such as margins of error don't even begin to apply.
So there is no margin of error.
The ballots cast and counted are the population itself. The margins of error just exist in the informal polls the precede it.
There is no statistical margin of error in an election since the sum of the ballots is the population in question. All polls that come before an election are an estimation of what that population will be and come from a sampling of eligible voters.
You should know that.
How many nerd points do I loose?
Since you misspelled "lose", you get a credit of one nerd point and come out even.
As long as the laws are so huge, most senators probably ask their staff "is this a good law or not and give me the gist of it".
I have no doubt this happens, but I have to wonder exactly what we pay these guys for if they can't even be bothered to read legislation.
Someone (I don't have the needed skills) should make a website that correlates information on campaign donations from opensecrets with voting records of public officials. This was obviously bought by IP-industry lobbyists, and I think that if the general public could see this corruption more easily it would be a lot easier to root out.
I did a bunch of drugs throughout high school and college. If you can name a drug, I ingested it. Do I have ideas that DARPA would like? Sure. Do I have a degree in nuclear physics? Yep. Do I have a history that bars me from any such job? Unfortunately, yes,
I'm done caring. There were decent candidates on both sides in the primaries, and they were both ignored and discarded by the media before the first vote had been cast. Obama or McCain, who cares? Things will still be exactly the same.
Not at all. I'm still going to vote. I intend to vote for the most viable third-party candidate in my state in November. I believe that the only way out of this political mess is to have more than two viable parties.
But the pragmatist in me knows that my vote is infinitesimal. Whichever candidate wins this election, my paycheck will still be raped. My long-term plan is to save up a bit of money and move elsewhere as soon as I can.
Accountability should have happened years ago. The makeup of Congress hasn't changed since January '07. If the Democrats waited until now, the it is just an empty gesture. Nothing will come of this.
Nah. Being more involved with the process just ends up meaning that I'd piss away more money or time on people that want to fuck me over.
There is a wicked bad positive-feedback loop going on in our government (money->influence->power->money...), and it won't get resolved until external forces reset our system. There's no stopping it. It's best to move to another country and wait it out.
After the 2006 election, Nancy Pelosi's first action as Speaker of the House was to take impeachment off the table. Why would she do that when the vast majority of the Democratic base clearly wanted it? Because, even if it had succeeded, it would have hurt the Democrats' chances in 2008. The first interest of the Democrats was to ensure that they remained in power, or solidified their grip on power. An obligation to the Constitution and their constituents was a second priority. And before anyone thinks I'm taking sides here, I'll say that both major parties do this.
Why are they doing it now, when Bush has only seven months left in office rather than a year and a half ago? Election year theater.
And that's why I cringe when people say "We really need to get the Democrats the White House and majorities Congress in 2008" or something to that effect. They have no interest in you, the country, or anything but power and money.
Kucinich is an exception among them. We need more like him, but he is an anomaly.
Obama won't have us out of Iraq by 2013. Sorry.
I make about half that, but I have no kids and no SO, so life is relatively cheap. In Orange County, what I make is barely enough to get by. 100k sounds like a lot, but if you live anywhere where earning 100k is possible, it is not.
He signed the contract. He knew the terms going into it. He is actually very lucky since voice actors are pretty easy to find and have low standards for compensation. His role in this game will get him all kinds of work he would not have gotten otherwise.
And his voice is not an integral part of the game. Any halfway competent voice actor would have sufficed. The real stars are the programmers and designers.
If we had been able to build out nuclear power like we should have, electric and other alternative vehicles would have caught on long ago.
But, due to their efforts, we are still choking on coal smoke and burning gas in our vehicles.
Mining and enrichment could theoretically be carbon-free if you used clean nuclear power as the power source.
Well, think about this, during every fission in a nuclear reactor, about 5% of the energy released goes into neutrinos. And if you were wondering, antineutrinos (as far as we're concerned here) behave the same way as normal neutrinos.
Clinton lied, babies died because for a while there we couldn't think of a blowjob without Linda Tripp's face.
Clinton lied, and people died.
He attacked Iraq to "wag the dog" on the Lewinski scandal. You can believe that, or you can believe his stated motive:
"Saddam (Hussein) must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons," Clinton said.
For the record, I think both Clinton and Bush are dicks, but I can't sit idly by while you parrot incorrect slogans.
But the focus on Megan's case raises two questions: (a) whether it is fair to invoke Megan in the name of passing the laws
No. In fact, no one invoking the safety of children in this manner should ever be able to legislate on any topic. Anyone making any sort of "Think of the children"-based argument should be immediately considered to have lost the debate. The fact that they have to resort to such scaremongering is evidence enough that their position has no merit.
and (b) whether the laws are a good idea in general.
No. This girl was obviously too much of an emo. Her parents should have realized this and not let her on the Internet. This was a failure of parenting. Our freedom of speech should not be infringed upon simply because some parent isn't capable of the job.
...did you expect these shrewd men and women to bite the very hand that feeds them?
The whole point of the lifetime appointment of judges to the Supreme Court is that they wouldn't have to be beholden to whichever powers appointed them. Scalia, Alito, and Thomas could have a change of heart and become flag-burning, dope-smoking, abortion-promoting hippies, and there's really nothing that could be done to punish them. I think they can be impeached by Congress, but that isn't really common.