You are glossing over a very important aspect in your analysis.
Prior to the sexual revolution, people were still having sex young. In the last couple of hundred years you can find plenty of marriages between 13 and 14 year olds, and there have been babies out of wedlock since the dawn of time. Nothing has changed there, ever. Puberty tells you when it's time to have sex, and any restriction on that is social in nature, and NEW from a historical standpoint. No one ever expected young people at the HEIGHT of their sexual drive to abstain. They just got married young.
The age people have had sex at has not changed, only our social standard of "childhood", and sadly it does not match the biological reality.
As for the pregnancy rates, people REPORT pregnancies now. They used to send their little daughter off to a "retreat" during the visible years of pregnancy, put it up for adoption, and bring her back when she wasn't going to shame the family again. Immense pressure was placed on young women to be ashamed of any sexual urge. You don't believe me? Ask your older aunts how it went.
As humans, who have sexual urges, we should be learning how to manage them as safely as possible. Suppression and shame serve only to screw up the minds of our young and consequently the rest of society. I'd feel less strongly if the "abstinence" people weren't also against MASTURBATION, the only TRULY safe sexual release available!!!
Anyway. Sex ed is not wrong. Society changed around it. People do not have the shame they used to have, and from where I sit, that is a good thing. Sure a few pregnancies may occur because of that; I think that's a hell of a lot better than the endless psychologocial terrorism the bible thumpers and people long past their sexual prime try to pass off as "normal" to an otherwise healthy human being.
I see this $1000 number a lot lately. does *anyone* know a middle class family that saved that much from the tax credit? Every single person I know got $300 or less. Perhaps they are not considered "middle class".
My grandmother and I both had similar experiences in an older dodge caravan, actually. I'm not saying they are defective, I'm saying a car malfunction that can cause out of control acceleration is not impossible.
I'm with you. That's why I don't vote major party. I just get tired of people pretending that republican candidates actually believe that rhetoric they toss around about leaving more money in your pocket. They only believe it if you own a weapons and munitions company.
I think something is up with that purpoted "bush education spending increase" though. I have several friends in education in different areas of the country and all their schools are looking at cutbacks. Not scientific of course, just my gut feeling.
Well apparently your choices are spend way too much here at home without making sure the programs work, or spending way too much on bombs and guns and prisons and knowing the programs don't work.
I'd rather see my money go to poor people than rich people, that's for sure.
Maybe because it's pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to hit 15% in a preliminary poll unless you happen to be a member of one of the two ruling parties?
Jesse Ventura shows however that in a 3 way race, you can rise from below that staggerringly high marker to win an election. From a good Debate, no less.
Ross Perot was on track to be a serious contender for the presidency when he ran the first time. He would not have met the CPD's criteria either.
15% is way, way, way too high.
AFAICT there are only two fair ways to do debates. 1. if you are on enough ballots to theoretically win the presidency, you are in. 2. widespread polling of who the people want to see in the debate.. not who they would necessarily vote for on Nov 2, but who they would like to see in the debate.
You are happy with a duopoly, apparently. The silent majority of this country who no longer vote because they have realized nothing in this system represents them, and that all they are fed from presidential candidates is bullshit stacked on crap do not agree. At the very least including more candidates in the debates stands a chance of raising voting participation rates.
Saying GEE IF YOU WANT MORE THAN TWO WE HAVE TO INCLUDE ALL OF THEM is simply stupid, simplistic, and shows you have no idea whatsoever what the words "healthy democracy" means, nor do you care. I care. This is not abstract theoretical stuff. It's simple, practical and real; a two party system that shuts out all other voices hurts us all.
It's not weird. Republicans (not conservatives, but that's what we call conservatives here) oppose abortion and stem cell research, just like the christian right. Republicans talk about "family values", prefer punishment to treatment, show a willingness to leglislate morality, and frequently stand up for christian interests.
The two are solidly in bed with each other. No surprise the bible belt is solidly "red".
I suspect the only way you can call Bush a conservative is if you define "conservative" as "arrogant, narrow minded, bible thumping belligerent moron".
Unfortunately, rather than the actual definition of conservative which you have described rather adeptly, the above seems to be more about what the "conservative" movement has been about for the last couple of decades.
If they could weed out the religious nuts pushing for the Rapture, the conservatives might have my vote. As it is, they can burn in their hells where they are undoubtably going.
1. you can watch everyone's standard of living "plummet" via conservation and reduction, or you can watch it plummet when the oil supplies are disrupted, or you can watch it plummet the next time we have a nuclear disaster.. and we will. The entire point of the ecomovement is that we have a right to live well... we do NOT have a right to be gluttons and just get whatever we want when we want it and screw the consequences.
That is a childish point of view, and it's one that will demonstrate its consequences sometime in the next couple of years when the supply and demand ratio for oil tips against demand's favor and our economy plunges into depression. Let me know how your standard of living is then. I
2. So a true democratic vote may not have been BETTER in the 1860's... of course you gloss over the checks and balances we'd have in a 3 armed government even if we did have true democracy in election of our leaders, unless you advocate dissolution of the supremem court, and the Greens do not... but it certainly wouldn't have been WORSE.
people have a right to be heard. There also needs to be a damper in effect to prevent mob rule. That damper is called the constitution, and it is enforced by the supreme court. Beyond that the only thing our current system is set up for is to entice small states to join our union. As a resident of a small state, I can tell you it doesn't get us any extra notice, and there is no reason why my vote should be worth more to this country than someone who lives in new york city or california.
that in no way suggests that they couldn't raise some questions the big boys are not wanting to talk about right now and that SHOULD be talked about for the good of our nation or at least the level of awareness of our populace.
Third party platforms have been co-opted by the big boys since day one. This is a good thing and shows that third parties can influence things even without winning elections.
Of course it only works if they are heard. Can't have that or you might end up with a "jesse ventura" situation.
If you can read the "Memorandum of Understanding" and think this is anything but a farce, I'm sorry, pull down your underwear so you can get a look at what's going on here. It's not just the exclusion of third party candidates that is the problem... though that is a problem... another HUGE problem is this is a whitewashed cakewalk which allows the candidates to do nothing but spit sound bites for 90 minutes.
They can't even cross examine each other. I don't know what planet you come from, but I for one would much prefer to see the candidates, you know, DEBATE.
I largely agree, but I think you are glossing over voting fraud. Sure, once it's on paper, it's hard to screw with it.
Of course, that piece of paper could be generated by fake people, or "dead" people, or what have you. Fraud is not only possible but happening in every election cycle. How big is it? Hard to say.
Frankly I think the time is coming where we are going to have to choose between anonymous voting and secure voting.
However people who spout this act like you can't tamper with physical records. You can. Physical records are not secure.
The question is not can elections be secure. They cannot. The question is HOW SECURE can they be, and while we may not be there yet, it is certainly possible down the road that a fully electronic method could be made AS secure as leafs of paper in boxes in someone's basement, IMHO
I have learned the hard way many times you never trash anything you might ever want to see again. Consequently I save every single new business email, personal email, mailing list email that I may ever want to refer to again, etc. Toss them in the correct folders and I can find them quickly again, ever though I am still using POS OE instead of working up a custom database solution which would admittedly serve me much better.
I have over a gig of emails stored (including attachments). I expect this to continue to grow.
Compared to a large, swing, winner take all state yes.
That however is no different than it is now; colorado would still be completely ignored compared to those states unless it too were evenly split. However if a candidate had a chance to grab a vote or two or three more, it would get *some* attention.
In short, basically, if your state is hardcore one way or the other it would be better off *right now* doing proportional representation in terms of the attention it would receive. If the state as a whole are split it's better off keeping the allotment going in one chunk.
You're also forgetting this election could very well be decided by one electoral vote.
You can speak of general elections all you want but I don't see the point you are trying to make. Maine is not a split state. It has rarely gone republican, as you've illustrated, and It will most definitely not go republican this time. The only activity here is whether or not the republicans get one vote from one district in maine. It hasn't gotten us much attention, but it's gotten us more than we usually get.
First off, if 90% of our country lived in two states, they should have more of a say in what we do. Our forefathers had to entice small states to join the union. We don't have to deal with that now, and having a 'rural tyranny' instead of an 'urban tyranny' is not an improvement.
Secondly, the whole idea of the electoral college does one thing and one thing only; it focused candidate attention on where they can pick up electoral votes, instead of what matters to the country as a whole. How strange both candidates are ballhooing about issues related to floridian retirement communities, eh? Joe blow in texas isn't being heard at all this time around.
Third, the whole large vs small state thing cannot be fixed without giving rural states undue power relative to their representative populations anymore. 3 million votes or 4 electoral college votes don't really matter to Maine as far as how much attention we'll receive in a national election... unless of course, we become a true swing state and the election is close enough for 4 electoral votes to matter.
The political climate our founding fathers had to deal with has changed. We don't need a carrot to keep small states in the union. The c continuing disenfranchisement of huge swathes of our voting populace... evident very strongly in the fact that half of our country doesn't even bother to vote anymore because it really doesn't matter at all.... is not worth the trade off.
You compared risk and reward in your example. I was pointing out that the "battleground" in Maine was not really for 3 votes, but more for just one in the contested district. As that district is split and the other is most assuredly not split, the statewide majority is fairly certain at this time.
In any case, more to your point, think of it this way. If colorado were a "split" opinion state, both candidates would campaign there in order to get all the votes in a winner-take-all contest. If colorado is NOT split, the candidates have no impetus to go there in a winner take all situation as the outcome is already pretty certain.
However they still have impetus to go for a few votes with a split-vote arrangement, no matter whether the state is evenly split or not. They always stand a chance to increase their own share of the electoral pie there by at least a few votes, even if they know the state is 70-30 against them.
The ONLY difference really is that if colorado is a "battleground" state and is evenly split in public opinion, it won't get as much attention as it would in a winner-take-all contest as the candidates don't have the promise of a fat payout for a swing of a few percentage points. In any other circumstance, it should receive more attention than it would otherwise, by using a proportional allotment situation, because a swing of a few percentage points can actually create benefit for any candidate.
That's not entirely true. Statewide it's not likely that maine will go republican in this election, at least AFAIK southern maine is strongly liberal and has a much larger population than northern maine.
I don't believe we are actually a battleground STATE. We simply have a battleground district, our more northern half could go either way, with its one vote and one vote only.
and I thought the same thing, that good, at least it's more fair to us the voters, but now the candidates really won't give a shit any more.
However, that isn't the case. Instead they focus on the districts that are in question, which may exist where the state as a whole's stance may be more sure one way or another.
Districts that are not in question are no better or worse off than they were before.
Re:And this is an issue because?
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"ideological or ignorant" or perhaps first-hand experience of factories being relocated and jobs being outsourced? How about if he just THINKS something and pledges to look at something, and it's something I want looked at???
Whoever is elected had better be able to utilize experts and a cabinet. however they also need to be able to cry bullshit. The inability to do, the sheer lack of knowledge enough to stand with your cabinet as peers, is what has allowed this country to do what it has for the last several years.
A strong leader can work in areas where their knowledge isn't strong. And he can describe the process of doing so. Superhuman, no, rare, yes.
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how the hell did you get away with 4.4k in taxes on 60-70k income???? (pre child credit)
I was at 20k and paid that. Apparently I'm doing something wrong....
You are glossing over a very important aspect in your analysis.
Prior to the sexual revolution, people were still having sex young. In the last couple of hundred years you can find plenty of marriages between 13 and 14 year olds, and there have been babies out of wedlock since the dawn of time. Nothing has changed there, ever. Puberty tells you when it's time to have sex, and any restriction on that is social in nature, and NEW from a historical standpoint. No one ever expected young people at the HEIGHT of their sexual drive to abstain. They just got married young.
The age people have had sex at has not changed, only our social standard of "childhood", and sadly it does not match the biological reality.
As for the pregnancy rates, people REPORT pregnancies now. They used to send their little daughter off to a "retreat" during the visible years of pregnancy, put it up for adoption, and bring her back when she wasn't going to shame the family again. Immense pressure was placed on young women to be ashamed of any sexual urge. You don't believe me? Ask your older aunts how it went.
As humans, who have sexual urges, we should be learning how to manage them as safely as possible. Suppression and shame serve only to screw up the minds of our young and consequently the rest of society. I'd feel less strongly if the "abstinence" people weren't also against MASTURBATION, the only TRULY safe sexual release available!!!
Anyway. Sex ed is not wrong. Society changed around it. People do not have the shame they used to have, and from where I sit, that is a good thing. Sure a few pregnancies may occur because of that; I think that's a hell of a lot better than the endless psychologocial terrorism the bible thumpers and people long past their sexual prime try to pass off as "normal" to an otherwise healthy human being.
Go fuck yourself. With a condom, of course.
I see this $1000 number a lot lately. does *anyone* know a middle class family that saved that much from the tax credit? Every single person I know got $300 or less. Perhaps they are not considered "middle class".
My grandmother and I both had similar experiences in an older dodge caravan, actually. I'm not saying they are defective, I'm saying a car malfunction that can cause out of control acceleration is not impossible.
I'm with you. That's why I don't vote major party. I just get tired of people pretending that republican candidates actually believe that rhetoric they toss around about leaving more money in your pocket. They only believe it if you own a weapons and munitions company.
I think something is up with that purpoted "bush education spending increase" though. I have several friends in education in different areas of the country and all their schools are looking at cutbacks. Not scientific of course, just my gut feeling.
Well apparently your choices are spend way too much here at home without making sure the programs work, or spending way too much on bombs and guns and prisons and knowing the programs don't work.
I'd rather see my money go to poor people than rich people, that's for sure.
why they weren't eligable?
Maybe because it's pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to hit 15% in a preliminary poll unless you happen to be a member of one of the two ruling parties?
Jesse Ventura shows however that in a 3 way race, you can rise from below that staggerringly high marker to win an election. From a good Debate, no less.
Ross Perot was on track to be a serious contender for the presidency when he ran the first time. He would not have met the CPD's criteria either.
15% is way, way, way too high.
AFAICT there are only two fair ways to do debates. 1. if you are on enough ballots to theoretically win the presidency, you are in. 2. widespread polling of who the people want to see in the debate.. not who they would necessarily vote for on Nov 2, but who they would like to see in the debate.
You are happy with a duopoly, apparently. The silent majority of this country who no longer vote because they have realized nothing in this system represents them, and that all they are fed from presidential candidates is bullshit stacked on crap do not agree. At the very least including more candidates in the debates stands a chance of raising voting participation rates.
Saying GEE IF YOU WANT MORE THAN TWO WE HAVE TO INCLUDE ALL OF THEM is simply stupid, simplistic, and shows you have no idea whatsoever what the words "healthy democracy" means, nor do you care. I care. This is not abstract theoretical stuff. It's simple, practical and real; a two party system that shuts out all other voices hurts us all.
It's not weird. Republicans (not conservatives, but that's what we call conservatives here) oppose abortion and stem cell research, just like the christian right. Republicans talk about "family values", prefer punishment to treatment, show a willingness to leglislate morality, and frequently stand up for christian interests.
The two are solidly in bed with each other. No surprise the bible belt is solidly "red".
I suspect the only way you can call Bush a conservative is if you define "conservative" as "arrogant, narrow minded, bible thumping belligerent moron".
Unfortunately, rather than the actual definition of conservative which you have described rather adeptly, the above seems to be more about what the "conservative" movement has been about for the last couple of decades.
If they could weed out the religious nuts pushing for the Rapture, the conservatives might have my vote. As it is, they can burn in their hells where they are undoubtably going.
1. you can watch everyone's standard of living "plummet" via conservation and reduction, or you can watch it plummet when the oil supplies are disrupted, or you can watch it plummet the next time we have a nuclear disaster.. and we will. The entire point of the ecomovement is that we have a right to live well... we do NOT have a right to be gluttons and just get whatever we want when we want it and screw the consequences.
That is a childish point of view, and it's one that will demonstrate its consequences sometime in the next couple of years when the supply and demand ratio for oil tips against demand's favor and our economy plunges into depression. Let me know how your standard of living is then. I
2. So a true democratic vote may not have been BETTER in the 1860's... of course you gloss over the checks and balances we'd have in a 3 armed government even if we did have true democracy in election of our leaders, unless you advocate dissolution of the supremem court, and the Greens do not... but it certainly wouldn't have been WORSE.
people have a right to be heard. There also needs to be a damper in effect to prevent mob rule. That damper is called the constitution, and it is enforced by the supreme court. Beyond that the only thing our current system is set up for is to entice small states to join our union. As a resident of a small state, I can tell you it doesn't get us any extra notice, and there is no reason why my vote should be worth more to this country than someone who lives in new york city or california.
that in no way suggests that they couldn't raise some questions the big boys are not wanting to talk about right now and that SHOULD be talked about for the good of our nation or at least the level of awareness of our populace.
Third party platforms have been co-opted by the big boys since day one. This is a good thing and shows that third parties can influence things even without winning elections.
Of course it only works if they are heard. Can't have that or you might end up with a "jesse ventura" situation.
If you can read the "Memorandum of Understanding" and think this is anything but a farce, I'm sorry, pull down your underwear so you can get a look at what's going on here. It's not just the exclusion of third party candidates that is the problem... though that is a problem... another HUGE problem is this is a whitewashed cakewalk which allows the candidates to do nothing but spit sound bites for 90 minutes.
They can't even cross examine each other. I don't know what planet you come from, but I for one would much prefer to see the candidates, you know, DEBATE.
I largely agree, but I think you are glossing over voting fraud. Sure, once it's on paper, it's hard to screw with it.
Of course, that piece of paper could be generated by fake people, or "dead" people, or what have you. Fraud is not only possible but happening in every election cycle. How big is it? Hard to say.
Frankly I think the time is coming where we are going to have to choose between anonymous voting and secure voting.
I certainly agree, *at this time*.
we have dead people voting in every election, and you're telling me it's hard to influence an election?
maybe. I'm not so convinced.
Not allowing it to progress at all, since if it ever did become reasonably secure and easy to access, things they would be changing pretty quickly....
for now, perhaps.
However people who spout this act like you can't tamper with physical records. You can. Physical records are not secure.
The question is not can elections be secure. They cannot. The question is HOW SECURE can they be, and while we may not be there yet, it is certainly possible down the road that a fully electronic method could be made AS secure as leafs of paper in boxes in someone's basement, IMHO
I have learned the hard way many times you never trash anything you might ever want to see again. Consequently I save every single new business email, personal email, mailing list email that I may ever want to refer to again, etc. Toss them in the correct folders and I can find them quickly again, ever though I am still using POS OE instead of working up a custom database solution which would admittedly serve me much better.
I have over a gig of emails stored (including attachments). I expect this to continue to grow.
Compared to a large, swing, winner take all state yes.
That however is no different than it is now; colorado would still be completely ignored compared to those states unless it too were evenly split. However if a candidate had a chance to grab a vote or two or three more, it would get *some* attention.
In short, basically, if your state is hardcore one way or the other it would be better off *right now* doing proportional representation in terms of the attention it would receive. If the state as a whole are split it's better off keeping the allotment going in one chunk.
You're also forgetting this election could very well be decided by one electoral vote.
You can speak of general elections all you want but I don't see the point you are trying to make. Maine is not a split state. It has rarely gone republican, as you've illustrated, and It will most definitely not go republican this time. The only activity here is whether or not the republicans get one vote from one district in maine. It hasn't gotten us much attention, but it's gotten us more than we usually get.
I'm so tired of this arguement.
First off, if 90% of our country lived in two states, they should have more of a say in what we do. Our forefathers had to entice small states to join the union. We don't have to deal with that now, and having a 'rural tyranny' instead of an 'urban tyranny' is not an improvement.
Secondly, the whole idea of the electoral college does one thing and one thing only; it focused candidate attention on where they can pick up electoral votes, instead of what matters to the country as a whole. How strange both candidates are ballhooing about issues related to floridian retirement communities, eh? Joe blow in texas isn't being heard at all this time around.
Third, the whole large vs small state thing cannot be fixed without giving rural states undue power relative to their representative populations anymore. 3 million votes or 4 electoral college votes don't really matter to Maine as far as how much attention we'll receive in a national election... unless of course, we become a true swing state and the election is close enough for 4 electoral votes to matter.
The political climate our founding fathers had to deal with has changed. We don't need a carrot to keep small states in the union. The c continuing disenfranchisement of huge swathes of our voting populace... evident very strongly in the fact that half of our country doesn't even bother to vote anymore because it really doesn't matter at all.... is not worth the trade off.
You compared risk and reward in your example. I was pointing out that the "battleground" in Maine was not really for 3 votes, but more for just one in the contested district. As that district is split and the other is most assuredly not split, the statewide majority is fairly certain at this time.
In any case, more to your point, think of it this way. If colorado were a "split" opinion state, both candidates would campaign there in order to get all the votes in a winner-take-all contest. If colorado is NOT split, the candidates have no impetus to go there in a winner take all situation as the outcome is already pretty certain.
However they still have impetus to go for a few votes with a split-vote arrangement, no matter whether the state is evenly split or not. They always stand a chance to increase their own share of the electoral pie there by at least a few votes, even if they know the state is 70-30 against them.
The ONLY difference really is that if colorado is a "battleground" state and is evenly split in public opinion, it won't get as much attention as it would in a winner-take-all contest as the candidates don't have the promise of a fat payout for a swing of a few percentage points. In any other circumstance, it should receive more attention than it would otherwise, by using a proportional allotment situation, because a swing of a few percentage points can actually create benefit for any candidate.
That's not entirely true. Statewide it's not likely that maine will go republican in this election, at least AFAIK southern maine is strongly liberal and has a much larger population than northern maine.
I don't believe we are actually a battleground STATE. We simply have a battleground district, our more northern half could go either way, with its one vote and one vote only.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but that's how I'm seeing it.
and I thought the same thing, that good, at least it's more fair to us the voters, but now the candidates really won't give a shit any more.
However, that isn't the case. Instead they focus on the districts that are in question, which may exist where the state as a whole's stance may be more sure one way or another.
Districts that are not in question are no better or worse off than they were before.
"ideological or ignorant" or perhaps first-hand experience of factories being relocated and jobs being outsourced? How about if he just THINKS something and pledges to look at something, and it's something I want looked at???
Whoever is elected had better be able to utilize experts and a cabinet. however they also need to be able to cry bullshit. The inability to do, the sheer lack of knowledge enough to stand with your cabinet as peers, is what has allowed this country to do what it has for the last several years.
A strong leader can work in areas where their knowledge isn't strong. And he can describe the process of doing so. Superhuman, no, rare, yes.
so back to the question... how many elections will they have to lose to "spoilers" before they realize they are committing suicide already?