I've never been fond of the relativist point of view. So, frankly, I would say no.
According to the consensus view of the world, the Democrats are less right wing than the Republicans, and that's probably the most accurate view point.
1) Obama's suggestion to kill the American coal industry was pretty much the same as McCain's suggestion to kill the American coal industry, which McCain tried to get passed in Congress.
2) Internal reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic "have said that their reporting does not support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship"
So, you see, the problem here is that there was nothing to report on. William Ayers is now a social justice advocate and a professor at the University of Illinois. He's not some fugitive from justice like the Republican talking points try to make him out to be.
I'm kind of surprised that he didn't say the comparison was unfair because, after all, Pol Pot has executive experience and is therefore clearly the superior candidate.
Biden claims Americans were huddled around televisions watching the president during the Great Depression and nobody mocks him for it.
He's not mocked for it for a couple of reasons:
1) Frankly, most Americans wouldn't realize that he made a mistake until it was pointed out to them.
2) He is essentially correct, replace TV with Radio and the larger picture he was painting is correct.
3) Compared with the endless bumbling of Bush Junior, it certainly seems like a small mistake.
The difference is that Biden made a mistake on a minor detail in a story he was telling, while Palin, by her own admission, didn't know what the big picture was. That is a critical difference.
So why would people want to buy Windows "Vista with a Different Name"?
I think you missed the point that people hate Vista, they don't want a Vista clone that is exactly the same as it.
Frankly, I don't care about "Improved Startup Time" and "Increased Battery Life" and if you're not using a laptop, you likely don't either. If the rest of the operating system is as sluggish and bloated as Vista, Microsoft is just going to shoot themselves in the other foot.
You interfere with the free market, force banks to make loans to people who clearly can't afford it just so they can meet some loans-to-minorities quota, and this is what you get.
False.
75% of the sub prime loans your are referring to were under no obligation, federal or otherwise to do so. They were made by unregulated organizations that resold the mortgages for a quick profit.
In fact, the limited regulation that required these loans be made tended to make the borrowers less like to go bankrupt because the oversight prevented extortionate interest rates.
This was a free market problem, not a government regulation problem (unless you want to argue that there wasn't enough government regulation).
Counting positive and negative references by the media to candidates might not be a very good way to evaluate bias.
After all, those references might be based on some inherent qualities of the candidates. Unless, of course, you happen to believe that all candidates are inherently equally good?
Frankly, time spent of creationism is time not spent on teaching science. The difference between you and me? I know evolution is theory that best explains the facts, and I know Intelligent Design is simply a smoke and mirrors act to confuse people enough that they don't know what to believe. I don't think Intelligent Design or the people who promote it, have any interest in educating people. And frankly, I think no small number of it's advocates would consider less time spent on science to be a good thing, in itself.
Frankly, I don't trust that truth will always win out over lies, because it doesn't always win. Quite often, the best thing isn't the most popular.
Care to cite this? I'm extremely skeptical of this.
It's rarely explicitly spelled out because it makes the person saying it look horrible, but it's a general feature of Evangelical belief. You might try "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience" by Ronald J. Sider for something more in depth on the attitude.
Again, if science is correct it will withstand the attacks from the religious. The way that people would have it here would be more of a run and hide mentality.
It's not a "run and hide" issue. It's a "We've already been over this before. Many times, in fact" issue. Science class is for teaching science, not magic.
Of course, I'm not sure where you get your impression that your society has an "inability to graduate students with the ability to read a mortgage statement". I assume you're referring to the mortgage crisis, which is as likely to be about people not planning for the future, not understand interest rates (particularly on credit cards), or most likely, not understanding that a housing bubble can't go in indefinitely. The credit crisis has a lot more to do with compromised rating agencies than anything else. Or not understanding that you shouldn't trust anyone with a financial conflict of interest on financial matters.
That's actually not Intelligent Design. Evolution is ok with there being a God, it just says the world wasn't created the way it is now.
Creationism says everything was created as it is about 6000 years ago over the course of the 7 days. Intelligent Design says it was created a few thousands years ago over the course of more than 6 and less than 8 days (see it's different and not Creationism!).
If you accept that evolution happens, then you don't fall into either the Creationist or Intelligent Design camps, even if you believe that a God created evolution. When Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species" he thought that God had created evolution.
I think you fail to understand the basic reason why the creationism versus evolution debate exists. It's really about science and cause and effect. Evolution has, for better or worse, been identified as a "weak point" in science.
Evangelicals want to attack it, to make students skeptical about science in general. They want to move towards a magical world view where cause and effect are not necessarily linked. Why would a person be interested in balancing a check book, if they literally believe that "God will provide " for them? I mean all they have to do is pray hard enough and eventually they'll be rich too. Or at least that's what a lot of evangelical churches are teaching. They teach that poor people weren't pious or good enough, because obviously if they were, God would have provided for them.
You'd better think long and hard about whether you want rational or magical people, because that's the root of science versus religion.
Actually, you are making no statement at all when you don't vote. It's like you sit there and say nothing. Nobody cares if you don't vote. Nobody.
Your First Amendment right means the government can't shut you up. That doesn't mean the rest of us have to listen to your whining about something you chose to do nothing about.
If you want to change the system, vote for anyone except a Democrat or Republican. Any time another party looks like it might be competitive it will scare both parties into better behavior.
Personally, I think McCain needs to lose this election, and lose it in a big way. The Republican party needs to learn the big lesson here, that you can't run a country by hating half of it's people.
If violence is at it's lowest level since United States troops arrived, maybe it's actually time to leave? Turn over the reins to the Iraqi government and slowly begin moving troops out of the country, say one or two divisions a month for the next 16 months?
To most people, the moment captured by that image is more than just the end of a mission. It captures the deep failure of Bush and his cronies to understand the obvious.
The image might not be "fair", but the rhetoric that the government was spewing at the time was that the war in Iraq was over, and there would be nothing else interesting to see there. It's not so much a gaffe as a deliberate attempt to deceive the citizens of the United States.
It just seems that Bush and company figure that if they told people the war was over and they believed it, then for all intents and purposes it would be over. It's a sort of magical thinking that seems to flow from Bush and his cronies. That appearances, not reality, are what is truly important.
This ties directly back to McCain because he appears to be of the same temperament as Bush and appears to be inheriting Bush's advisors. That combination is not a comforting thought. I don't think you want another 4 (or 8) years of a president who is insulated from reality the way Bush has been.
Are you familiar with the terms "economy of scales" and "purchasing power"?
Now, what will happen is that groups will have to form (providing the insurance carriers will let them) that have their own groups. They're need to do this because an individual customer faced with a insurance corporation is a small fry, he can pay the price or go someplace else. In the micro scale his decision means nothing. The pricing power rests in the hands of the insurance companies. Healthy competition and ease of mobility would drive these down, so barriers will be in place to prevent that.
To get equally sweet deals you'll need to be a member of some kind of organization that provides a insurance plans to it's members. Engineers, Doctors, and other professionals will do quite well, as will unionized labour groups. They have members and they're become more relevant and more desirable when they organize good insurance deals for their members. Office workers... Well they're gonna mostly be screwed unless they start forming their own trade organizations. There would be quite a lot of incentive to do so, since individual plans tend to be so much more expensive than group plans.
If we limit the number of voters, each voter can demand a larger bribe! That was your point right? Or was that smarter voters, would demand better bribes? Or maybe you meant they'd want proof that the bribes would actually be paid?
I think I'm just not getting exactly why you think smart people being bribed is better than dumb people being bribed.
Well according to CNN, it was 431 times the average pay in 2004 and CEO pay has been increasing at a rate that exceeds the average pay rate of employees. So it's likely quite a bit higher by now.
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I've never been fond of the relativist point of view. So, frankly, I would say no.
According to the consensus view of the world, the Democrats are less right wing than the Republicans, and that's probably the most accurate view point.
There's perfectly good reasons for this:
1) Obama's suggestion to kill the American coal industry was pretty much the same as McCain's suggestion to kill the American coal industry, which McCain tried to get passed in Congress.
2) Internal reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic "have said that their reporting does not support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship"
So, you see, the problem here is that there was nothing to report on. William Ayers is now a social justice advocate and a professor at the University of Illinois. He's not some fugitive from justice like the Republican talking points try to make him out to be.
I'm kind of surprised that he didn't say the comparison was unfair because, after all, Pol Pot has executive experience and is therefore clearly the superior candidate.
Biden claims Americans were huddled around televisions watching the president during the Great Depression and nobody mocks him for it.
He's not mocked for it for a couple of reasons:
1) Frankly, most Americans wouldn't realize that he made a mistake until it was pointed out to them.
2) He is essentially correct, replace TV with Radio and the larger picture he was painting is correct.
3) Compared with the endless bumbling of Bush Junior, it certainly seems like a small mistake.
The difference is that Biden made a mistake on a minor detail in a story he was telling, while Palin, by her own admission, didn't know what the big picture was. That is a critical difference.
...
So why would people want to buy Windows "Vista with a Different Name"?
I think you missed the point that people hate Vista, they don't want a Vista clone that is exactly the same as it.
Frankly, I don't care about "Improved Startup Time" and "Increased Battery Life" and if you're not using a laptop, you likely don't either. If the rest of the operating system is as sluggish and bloated as Vista, Microsoft is just going to shoot themselves in the other foot.
You interfere with the free market, force banks to make loans to people who clearly can't afford it just so they can meet some loans-to-minorities quota, and this is what you get.
False.
75% of the sub prime loans your are referring to were under no obligation, federal or otherwise to do so. They were made by unregulated organizations that resold the mortgages for a quick profit.
In fact, the limited regulation that required these loans be made tended to make the borrowers less like to go bankrupt because the oversight prevented extortionate interest rates.
This was a free market problem, not a government regulation problem (unless you want to argue that there wasn't enough government regulation).
Counting positive and negative references by the media to candidates might not be a very good way to evaluate bias.
After all, those references might be based on some inherent qualities of the candidates. Unless, of course, you happen to believe that all candidates are inherently equally good?
And what is wrong with that?
Nothing. Just pointing out that Evolution and Faith don't have to be in conflict.
Darwin did eventually become an atheist, but it was the tragedy of his daughter's death, not the theory of evolution that drove him there.
I don't he's hiding anything, it took me 2 seconds to find it with google:
3.8 GPA ---Columbia Poly Sci major with a specialty in international relations.
4.0 GPA with high honors. ---Harvard Law
Frankly, time spent of creationism is time not spent on teaching science. The difference between you and me? I know evolution is theory that best explains the facts, and I know Intelligent Design is simply a smoke and mirrors act to confuse people enough that they don't know what to believe. I don't think Intelligent Design or the people who promote it, have any interest in educating people. And frankly, I think no small number of it's advocates would consider less time spent on science to be a good thing, in itself.
Frankly, I don't trust that truth will always win out over lies, because it doesn't always win. Quite often, the best thing isn't the most popular.
Care to cite this? I'm extremely skeptical of this.
It's rarely explicitly spelled out because it makes the person saying it look horrible, but it's a general feature of Evangelical belief. You might try "The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience" by Ronald J. Sider for something more in depth on the attitude.
Again, if science is correct it will withstand the attacks from the religious. The way that people would have it here would be more of a run and hide mentality.
It's not a "run and hide" issue. It's a "We've already been over this before. Many times, in fact" issue. Science class is for teaching science, not magic.
Of course, I'm not sure where you get your impression that your society has an "inability to graduate students with the ability to read a mortgage statement". I assume you're referring to the mortgage crisis, which is as likely to be about people not planning for the future, not understand interest rates (particularly on credit cards), or most likely, not understanding that a housing bubble can't go in indefinitely. The credit crisis has a lot more to do with compromised rating agencies than anything else. Or not understanding that you shouldn't trust anyone with a financial conflict of interest on financial matters.
Oh, a false dichotomy! You must be as clever as you are honest.
That's actually not Intelligent Design. Evolution is ok with there being a God, it just says the world wasn't created the way it is now.
Creationism says everything was created as it is about 6000 years ago over the course of the 7 days. Intelligent Design says it was created a few thousands years ago over the course of more than 6 and less than 8 days (see it's different and not Creationism!).
If you accept that evolution happens, then you don't fall into either the Creationist or Intelligent Design camps, even if you believe that a God created evolution. When Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species" he thought that God had created evolution.
I think you fail to understand the basic reason why the creationism versus evolution debate exists. It's really about science and cause and effect. Evolution has, for better or worse, been identified as a "weak point" in science.
Evangelicals want to attack it, to make students skeptical about science in general. They want to move towards a magical world view where cause and effect are not necessarily linked. Why would a person be interested in balancing a check book, if they literally believe that "God will provide " for them? I mean all they have to do is pray hard enough and eventually they'll be rich too. Or at least that's what a lot of evangelical churches are teaching. They teach that poor people weren't pious or good enough, because obviously if they were, God would have provided for them.
You'd better think long and hard about whether you want rational or magical people, because that's the root of science versus religion.
Not voting is like not using your voice. It says nothing.
Actually, you are making no statement at all when you don't vote. It's like you sit there and say nothing. Nobody cares if you don't vote. Nobody.
Your First Amendment right means the government can't shut you up. That doesn't mean the rest of us have to listen to your whining about something you chose to do nothing about.
If you want to change the system, vote for anyone except a Democrat or Republican. Any time another party looks like it might be competitive it will scare both parties into better behavior.
Personally, I think McCain needs to lose this election, and lose it in a big way. The Republican party needs to learn the big lesson here, that you can't run a country by hating half of it's people.
According to Rene Descartes:
"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has"
If violence is at it's lowest level since United States troops arrived, maybe it's actually time to leave? Turn over the reins to the Iraqi government and slowly begin moving troops out of the country, say one or two divisions a month for the next 16 months?
To most people, the moment captured by that image is more than just the end of a mission. It captures the deep failure of Bush and his cronies to understand the obvious.
The image might not be "fair", but the rhetoric that the government was spewing at the time was that the war in Iraq was over, and there would be nothing else interesting to see there. It's not so much a gaffe as a deliberate attempt to deceive the citizens of the United States.
It just seems that Bush and company figure that if they told people the war was over and they believed it, then for all intents and purposes it would be over. It's a sort of magical thinking that seems to flow from Bush and his cronies. That appearances, not reality, are what is truly important.
This ties directly back to McCain because he appears to be of the same temperament as Bush and appears to be inheriting Bush's advisors. That combination is not a comforting thought. I don't think you want another 4 (or 8) years of a president who is insulated from reality the way Bush has been.
That may have come off overly harsh but I think you missed the point.
There's a lot of infrastructure required to give someone the opportunity to live.
Are you familiar with the terms "economy of scales" and "purchasing power"?
Now, what will happen is that groups will have to form (providing the insurance carriers will let them) that have their own groups. They're need to do this because an individual customer faced with a insurance corporation is a small fry, he can pay the price or go someplace else. In the micro scale his decision means nothing. The pricing power rests in the hands of the insurance companies. Healthy competition and ease of mobility would drive these down, so barriers will be in place to prevent that.
To get equally sweet deals you'll need to be a member of some kind of organization that provides a insurance plans to it's members. Engineers, Doctors, and other professionals will do quite well, as will unionized labour groups. They have members and they're become more relevant and more desirable when they organize good insurance deals for their members. Office workers... Well they're gonna mostly be screwed unless they start forming their own trade organizations. There would be quite a lot of incentive to do so, since individual plans tend to be so much more expensive than group plans.
How many opportunities does the man born in a gutter and bereft of education get?
Oh, I see your point, now.
If we limit the number of voters, each voter can demand a larger bribe! That was your point right? Or was that smarter voters, would demand better bribes? Or maybe you meant they'd want proof that the bribes would actually be paid?
I think I'm just not getting exactly why you think smart people being bribed is better than dumb people being bribed.
Well according to CNN, it was 431 times the average pay in 2004 and CEO pay has been increasing at a rate that exceeds the average pay rate of employees. So it's likely quite a bit higher by now.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/26/news/economy/ceo_pay/index.htm