Would you like to show me the massively *OBVIOUS* conflict of interest there? Please do, back what you are saying up.
Yawn. First, you might want to get a little more reputable source yourself, Sparky. Secondly, that he gives money to charity is completely irrelevant to the question of it being a conflict of interest. Chief Justice John Roberts set a good example on how to handle conflicts of interest by recusing himself in a case because he had previously ruled on the same suit as an appellate judge. As opposed to Scalia, who set a bad example by *not* recusing himself when he'd earlier said "I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy".
If you think the Democrats and the Republicans are opposed 180 degrees, then I feel sorry for you.
On a large amount of issues, yes they are. Even without the benefit of hindsight, Nader was a total, complete fool for insisting there would be no difference between a Gore presidency and a Bush presidency.
Unfortunately, people who can't try to make a point without calling other people "idiots" and "trolls" aren't likely
Too bad you are wrong. Again. It's not an ad hominem when it's true. Nobody knew that Bush was going to take a running dive into fascism territory, but everyone should have known what a good corporate, bible beating toady Bush was going to be. See above. Nader also claimed that even if Bush won, the backlash would be so great as to make the cost worthwhile. History has proven him to be a complete idiot, as well as anyone who still backs this failed nonsense.
aren't likely to a) know what they're talking about, or b) listen to what anybody else has to say. The Democrats do not support the "majority" of the Greens' platform and if you think they do, then you obviously aren't paying attention.
Considering that McCain and Guilani are the front runners, how is electing a Republican the "worst-possible-outcome"?
Charges of flip flopping are so old and automatic that they should generally be dismissed, but with McCain, they're actually true. He's changed positions inside of a minute. As for Giuliani, he is simply unelectable. On one hand, he's said that he, as president, has the authority to throw people in prison indefinitely with no lawyer or hearing. On the other, he has had messy, public divorces, favors gun control, and publicly financed abortions, which I don't know if any of the Dem candidates are currently advocating.
Some Democrats and some Republicans are principled, others are whores. It would be no different if the Greens or the Libertarians became competitive parties. This is why all the bitching about the "two party system" is a red herring: it's not the party, it's the candidate you are voting for.
Which is why you need to vote for a minor party. I can guarantee to you that they'll get to changing things.
Countries with strong multiple parties have just as much corruption as we do, but they also have a lot more gridlock so nothing gets done. Parties are irrelevant, you need to vote for principled candidates.
The sad thing is that the Democrats, instead of actually listening to all the voters they've disenfranchised, seem to treat "What are you going to do, vote Republican?" as a policy platform.
No, this is why the Greens were idiots: rather than get involved in the party that already supported the majority of their platform, they instead became purity trolls and threw the election to the party 180 degrees opposed to most of that platform. That's not principled, that is idiocy.
"Blogosphere" is one of those awful dot-bomb era buzzwords, bandied about by marketdroids and the press to make them look cool and informed about the Internet.
And by bloggers who take themselves a little too seriously.
Would that qualify as a "Massively Obvious Conflicts of Interest that flew right over your head"?
No, it means you are a jackass with yet another stupid analogy. Al Gore isn't forcing anyone to use carbon credits, which is completely irrelevant to the subject of Halliburton's no-bid contracts. Taxpayers had no choice in paying into Cheney's stock portfolio.
OK, as a bleeding heart liberal, I'll say it. The Democratic party sucks their own big donkey balls. I'll take McCain, even though I disagree with him on several issues, over Hillary any day.
Then I'll say you're a liar. No liberal, bleeding heart or otherwise, is going to pick a pro-escalation, flip-flopping, hard boiled sell-out conservative over any Democrat currently running for office. It's just not going to happen.
I think it's just that people like seeing conspiracies where they can, rather than rational thought.
Or seeing Massively Obvious Conflicts of Interest that flew right over your head. What would have been the response from Republicans and the press if Al Gore was the immediate past CEO of Halliburton (and still held large amounts of stock in the company) when it was getting said no-bid contracts?
The conservatives swept into power in 1994 with the promise of reform -- look what happened.
The only difference between Republicans in Congress in 1994 and Republicans in Congress today are broken promises of term limits. That's it. Republicans 1994, then as now, wanted to gain more power for their party while killing the opposition. Republicans, then as now, wanted to slash spending on social services while making large cuts in income taxes and repealing capital gains and estate taxes. Republicans, then as now are willing to make mountains out of molehills (Whitewater, Pelosi One) and molehills out of mountains (prosecutor purge, Gingrich's book deal). The conservative story will be not that their philosophy is complete and utter failure (you elect people who hate government and are then surprised when that government fails?), but that DC corrupted the class of 94.
I guarantee the same corruption and shit will happen once the democrats are in power because this cycle is endless.
Hardly. You need a sense of proportion. Nixon would have been impeached for what he did, yet Bush and his neocon cabal make Tricky Dick look like a pipsqueak. But even if you managed to find a Democrat as much of a corrupt authoritarian asshole as Bush is, you're forgetting two things. First, Democrats don't band together the way Republicans do. Congressman William Jefferson was found with bribe money in his freezer. House Democrats responded by striping him of his committee assignments and seniority. Tom Delay faced rebukes from the House ethics committee and indictment from a D.A. in Texas. The House GOP responded by neutering the ethics committee and changing the rules to allow Delay to keep his spot as Majority Leader.
Secondly, the press is far more harsh to Democrats than to Republicans. They are so afraid to be hit with the "biased liberal media" tag that they go easy on Republicans day in and day out, while failing to do basic fact checking on stories on Democrats. Take for example, the recent "Pelosi One" and "Pelosi in Syria" stories, taken straight from RNC talking points. Two seconds of fact checking would show that Pelosi did not demand a "luxurious plane", and that Laura Bush flies in the same model of aircraft. Why should the person 2nd in line for the presidency have a lesser plane than the first lady? And two seconds of fact checking also would have shown that many Republicans in Congress have gone to Syria, in fact some were on the exact same trip as the Speaker. And if there are no negative stories to be had, the media is quite happy to Make Shit Up, as Gore found out in 2000.
Dean's problems were 1) the media didn't like him 2) he was not the establishment candidate and 3) primaries are decided in the first few states. First the media: it loves to caricature people, and it caricatured Dean as angry and "too liberal to win", despite the fact that he was was a pro-gun, pro-death penalty fiscal conservative.
Second, he wasn't the Establishment Candidate, which brings money, support, and more money. The same thing happened to McCain in 2000 - the GOP establishment went with his opponent, despite the fact that McCain was far more charismatic, the press loved him, and he took New Hampshire with a large lead.
Lastly, the primaries: they are all but decided in the first five states. Sometimes in the first two, Iowa and New Hampshire. In a democracy, it is atrocious that less than a handful of states decide a primary, and the last 30-40 states are completely irrelevant. Again, the same thing happened to McCain in 2000 as happened to Dean in 2004, even though McCain did win New Hampshire.
bnetween the two parties. unless it's the Iraq war (which many democrats voted for by the way), name one substantial difference between the two parties.
Trade, estate taxes, income taxes, workers rights, stem cell research, wiretapping, abortion, separation of church & state, corruption, the environment, getting a blowjob an impeachable offense for one but shredding large parts of the Constitution not for the other. And so on, and so on.
don't give a crap about the social security/medicare atom bombs
Hardly. And the reason we have budgetary bombs is because of reckless Republican tax cutting, most of which goes to those who don't need them.
the republicans screwed up the war on terror, the democrats won't even fight it.
Are you talking about Democrats fighting terrorism or fighting the Bush administrations boneheaded policies? Either way, you sir, are full of shit.
If Tipper Gore's moralizing means all Democrats are moralizing prudes, then all Republicans are gay because of Mark Foley and Ken Mehlman. And for every Dem prude you can name, I can name 10 Republican prudes. Hell, it's half their base. Here's a few off the top of my head: Powell, Ashcroft, Santorum, Fallwell, Dobson, Robertson, Bennet, Coburn, Hatch, Brownback.
It is my strong belief that we need to abolish the two-party system as it stands.
People who bitch about the "two party system" act is if you only have two choices, which is far from the case. You always have choices; there's dozen serious presidential candidates for the 08 election. You have primaries, like last year in Connecticut. And the next two most prominent third parties are nutters. The Greens attacked a man that lined with most of their platform, throwing an election to a man who is pretty much 180 degrees opposed to everything the Greens believe in. And the Libertarian philosophy might work fine in small hamlets, but would be an absolute disaster in a nation of 300 million people.
If you can blame anyone, blame our federal government, who has shown little interest in protecting American industries.
I blame the American car companies for not making vehicles that people want to buy, and the corporate practice of rewarding executive failure with multi-million dollar bonuses.
Yawn. Apple does offer significant discounts for bulk and education purposes. Especially when good, cheap publicity is involved. As for "more capable", they don't need radio tuners in school, and students also don't need to be walking around with voice recorders that will be used to record embarrassing conversations to post them on Myspace.
It's only free if your time is worthless. NIN is releasing a new album later this month, and I have every intention of buying the cd. But I want it now.:) So I've tried to download it, with little success. Incomplete songs, poor quality songs, and especially fake songs are a PITA to deal with. Compare that to staying another hour or two at work and buying the genuine, high quality article.
Another point I'd like to make is that the vast majority of college students couldn't afford to purchase even a fraction of their music collections anyway - making no difference to the record store. They don't have the money, and are likely to be maxed out on consumer debt the way it is.
This sounds somewhat apologist; your argument seems to rest on the unstated implication that songs with twice the bitrate are worth something like twice the price.
30% more isn't twice the price, shithead. They're also DRM free.
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Touche, and an example I agree with. However, following clear, unbiased election law as those Dems did isn't "dirty tricks".
Would you like to show me the massively *OBVIOUS* conflict of interest there? Please do, back what you are saying up.
Yawn. First, you might want to get a little more reputable source yourself, Sparky. Secondly, that he gives money to charity is completely irrelevant to the question of it being a conflict of interest. Chief Justice John Roberts set a good example on how to handle conflicts of interest by recusing himself in a case because he had previously ruled on the same suit as an appellate judge. As opposed to Scalia, who set a bad example by *not* recusing himself when he'd earlier said "I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy".
If you think the Democrats and the Republicans are opposed 180 degrees, then I feel sorry for you.
On a large amount of issues, yes they are. Even without the benefit of hindsight, Nader was a total, complete fool for insisting there would be no difference between a Gore presidency and a Bush presidency.
Unfortunately, people who can't try to make a point without calling other people "idiots" and "trolls" aren't likely
Too bad you are wrong. Again. It's not an ad hominem when it's true. Nobody knew that Bush was going to take a running dive into fascism territory, but everyone should have known what a good corporate, bible beating toady Bush was going to be. See above. Nader also claimed that even if Bush won, the backlash would be so great as to make the cost worthwhile. History has proven him to be a complete idiot, as well as anyone who still backs this failed nonsense.
aren't likely to a) know what they're talking about, or b) listen to what anybody else has to say. The Democrats do not support the "majority" of the Greens' platform and if you think they do, then you obviously aren't paying attention.
What is obvious is that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
Considering that McCain and Guilani are the front runners, how is electing a Republican the "worst-possible-outcome"?
Charges of flip flopping are so old and automatic that they should generally be dismissed, but with McCain, they're actually true. He's changed positions inside of a minute. As for Giuliani, he is simply unelectable. On one hand, he's said that he, as president, has the authority to throw people in prison indefinitely with no lawyer or hearing. On the other, he has had messy, public divorces, favors gun control, and publicly financed abortions, which I don't know if any of the Dem candidates are currently advocating.
Some Democrats and some Republicans are principled, others are whores. It would be no different if the Greens or the Libertarians became competitive parties. This is why all the bitching about the "two party system" is a red herring: it's not the party, it's the candidate you are voting for.
but it wasn't so long ago that Perot lost elder Bush the election
:)
That's the CW, but Clinton would have most likely won a head to head contest with Bush.
A traditional Republican voter casting a 3rd party vote is certainly not handing the Republicans a vote... but that should go without saying
True, but as of yet there is no serious third party to split up the god, gun nut & free market jihad.
Which is why you need to vote for a minor party. I can guarantee to you that they'll get to changing things.
Countries with strong multiple parties have just as much corruption as we do, but they also have a lot more gridlock so nothing gets done. Parties are irrelevant, you need to vote for principled candidates.
Tell that to Ralph Nader. Democrats used all sorts of dirty tricks and filed lawsuits to keep them off the ballots for the 2004 elections.
Since when has following the law been a dirty trick?
The sad thing is that the Democrats, instead of actually listening to all the voters they've disenfranchised, seem to treat "What are you going to do, vote Republican?" as a policy platform.
No, this is why the Greens were idiots: rather than get involved in the party that already supported the majority of their platform, they instead became purity trolls and threw the election to the party 180 degrees opposed to most of that platform. That's not principled, that is idiocy.
"Blogosphere" is one of those awful dot-bomb era buzzwords, bandied about by marketdroids and the press to make them look cool and informed about the Internet.
And by bloggers who take themselves a little too seriously.
Would that qualify as a "Massively Obvious Conflicts of Interest that flew right over your head"?
No, it means you are a jackass with yet another stupid analogy. Al Gore isn't forcing anyone to use carbon credits, which is completely irrelevant to the subject of Halliburton's no-bid contracts. Taxpayers had no choice in paying into Cheney's stock portfolio.
OK, as a bleeding heart liberal, I'll say it. The Democratic party sucks their own big donkey balls. I'll take McCain, even though I disagree with him on several issues, over Hillary any day.
Then I'll say you're a liar. No liberal, bleeding heart or otherwise, is going to pick a pro-escalation, flip-flopping, hard boiled sell-out conservative over any Democrat currently running for office. It's just not going to happen.
Heh. Glad I friended you so you still pop up over the troll mods. :)
I think it's just that people like seeing conspiracies where they can, rather than rational thought.
Or seeing Massively Obvious Conflicts of Interest that flew right over your head. What would have been the response from Republicans and the press if Al Gore was the immediate past CEO of Halliburton (and still held large amounts of stock in the company) when it was getting said no-bid contracts?
If you vote dem to end the war, you also get minimum wage, tobacco and transfat prohibitionists, inconvenient truths, and equal rights rehash.
Your point is? That's a great package.
The conservatives swept into power in 1994 with the promise of reform -- look what happened.
The only difference between Republicans in Congress in 1994 and Republicans in Congress today are broken promises of term limits. That's it. Republicans 1994, then as now, wanted to gain more power for their party while killing the opposition. Republicans, then as now, wanted to slash spending on social services while making large cuts in income taxes and repealing capital gains and estate taxes. Republicans, then as now are willing to make mountains out of molehills (Whitewater, Pelosi One) and molehills out of mountains (prosecutor purge, Gingrich's book deal). The conservative story will be not that their philosophy is complete and utter failure (you elect people who hate government and are then surprised when that government fails?), but that DC corrupted the class of 94.
I guarantee the same corruption and shit will happen once the democrats are in power because this cycle is endless.
Hardly. You need a sense of proportion. Nixon would have been impeached for what he did, yet Bush and his neocon cabal make Tricky Dick look like a pipsqueak. But even if you managed to find a Democrat as much of a corrupt authoritarian asshole as Bush is, you're forgetting two things. First, Democrats don't band together the way Republicans do. Congressman William Jefferson was found with bribe money in his freezer. House Democrats responded by striping him of his committee assignments and seniority. Tom Delay faced rebukes from the House ethics committee and indictment from a D.A. in Texas. The House GOP responded by neutering the ethics committee and changing the rules to allow Delay to keep his spot as Majority Leader.
Secondly, the press is far more harsh to Democrats than to Republicans. They are so afraid to be hit with the "biased liberal media" tag that they go easy on Republicans day in and day out, while failing to do basic fact checking on stories on Democrats. Take for example, the recent "Pelosi One" and "Pelosi in Syria" stories, taken straight from RNC talking points. Two seconds of fact checking would show that Pelosi did not demand a "luxurious plane", and that Laura Bush flies in the same model of aircraft. Why should the person 2nd in line for the presidency have a lesser plane than the first lady? And two seconds of fact checking also would have shown that many Republicans in Congress have gone to Syria, in fact some were on the exact same trip as the Speaker. And if there are no negative stories to be had, the media is quite happy to Make Shit Up, as Gore found out in 2000.
Dean's problems were 1) the media didn't like him 2) he was not the establishment candidate and 3) primaries are decided in the first few states. First the media: it loves to caricature people, and it caricatured Dean as angry and "too liberal to win", despite the fact that he was was a pro-gun, pro-death penalty fiscal conservative.
Second, he wasn't the Establishment Candidate, which brings money, support, and more money. The same thing happened to McCain in 2000 - the GOP establishment went with his opponent, despite the fact that McCain was far more charismatic, the press loved him, and he took New Hampshire with a large lead.
Lastly, the primaries: they are all but decided in the first five states. Sometimes in the first two, Iowa and New Hampshire. In a democracy, it is atrocious that less than a handful of states decide a primary, and the last 30-40 states are completely irrelevant. Again, the same thing happened to McCain in 2000 as happened to Dean in 2004, even though McCain did win New Hampshire.
bnetween the two parties. unless it's the Iraq war (which many democrats voted for by the way), name one substantial difference between the two parties.
Trade, estate taxes, income taxes, workers rights, stem cell research, wiretapping, abortion, separation of church & state, corruption, the environment, getting a blowjob an impeachable offense for one but shredding large parts of the Constitution not for the other. And so on, and so on.
don't give a crap about the social security/medicare atom bombs
Hardly. And the reason we have budgetary bombs is because of reckless Republican tax cutting, most of which goes to those who don't need them.
the republicans screwed up the war on terror, the democrats won't even fight it.
Are you talking about Democrats fighting terrorism or fighting the Bush administrations boneheaded policies? Either way, you sir, are full of shit.
If Tipper Gore's moralizing means all Democrats are moralizing prudes, then all Republicans are gay because of Mark Foley and Ken Mehlman. And for every Dem prude you can name, I can name 10 Republican prudes. Hell, it's half their base. Here's a few off the top of my head: Powell, Ashcroft, Santorum, Fallwell, Dobson, Robertson, Bennet, Coburn, Hatch, Brownback.
It is my strong belief that we need to abolish the two-party system as it stands.
People who bitch about the "two party system" act is if you only have two choices, which is far from the case. You always have choices; there's dozen serious presidential candidates for the 08 election. You have primaries, like last year in Connecticut. And the next two most prominent third parties are nutters. The Greens attacked a man that lined with most of their platform, throwing an election to a man who is pretty much 180 degrees opposed to everything the Greens believe in. And the Libertarian philosophy might work fine in small hamlets, but would be an absolute disaster in a nation of 300 million people.
If you can blame anyone, blame our federal government, who has shown little interest in protecting American industries.
I blame the American car companies for not making vehicles that people want to buy, and the corporate practice of rewarding executive failure with multi-million dollar bonuses.
Yawn. Apple does offer significant discounts for bulk and education purposes. Especially when good, cheap publicity is involved. As for "more capable", they don't need radio tuners in school, and students also don't need to be walking around with voice recorders that will be used to record embarrassing conversations to post them on Myspace.
I must disagree.
:) So I've tried to download it, with little success. Incomplete songs, poor quality songs, and especially fake songs are a PITA to deal with. Compare that to staying another hour or two at work and buying the genuine, high quality article.
Ditto.
Downloaded music is free.
It's only free if your time is worthless. NIN is releasing a new album later this month, and I have every intention of buying the cd. But I want it now.
Another point I'd like to make is that the vast majority of college students couldn't afford to purchase even a fraction of their music collections anyway - making no difference to the record store. They don't have the money, and are likely to be maxed out on consumer debt the way it is.
This sounds somewhat apologist; your argument seems to rest on the unstated implication that songs with twice the bitrate are worth something like twice the price.
30% more isn't twice the price, shithead. They're also DRM free.
Unless you go cheapass, warranties on memory and hard drives will be at least as long as Apple's extended care.