Some people regard the Republicans as being more salvagable than the Democrats. That is to say: with a libertarian bent, the Republicans need to lose the neo-cons and the uber-religious right and they become much more in line with what we're looking for.
You hit the nail right square on the head. Many are the times that I've lamented the hostile takeover of the Republican Party by the religious right. Often have I railed against the assumption by the United States of the role of Global Police.
I'm a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, whose party was the ancestor of the modern Democratic Party. Unfortunately, over the years they've apparently forgotten his famous quote, "The government is best which governs least."
Based on what data? The polling data seems to be not only poorly reported, but in many cases the samples are poorly-selected (e.g., ignoring cellphone users, etc.).
I watch www.electoral-vote.com, which reports that Bush is currently ahead 57% to 40% - a comfortable lead. While it's possible that the cellphone-only people are statistically significant in numbers, they aren't likely to be numerous enough to overcome a 17% advantage in a state with a population of 8.5 million.
I sincerely hope that you're correct in your assumption about the spread between the two candidates in your area, but honestly... can you afford to be wrong?
It's possible that Kerry might somehow take Georgia, but it'd be a sucker's bet. At the end of the day, no matter who wins, I will have cast my vote for the person whom I believe to be the best candidate. And that's the best anyone can do.
Actually, I'm not a "Big-L" Libertarian. I'm mainly a conservative with some libertarian leanings. I do, however, think some sort of "everybody is covered" health care plan might possibly be a good thing if done right, but it'd be a very bad thing if done wrong, and I have full faith in the ability of government to do things wrong.
You made a good point in your post, and indeed I had not fully considered that approach previously, though I had touched on it a time or two. I voted for Bush in 2000 when he was still a moderate conservative, and have been gravely disappointed in him as a President - his administration has shown itself to be neither moderate nor conservative. There's no way I can in good conscience vote for the (arguably) most liberal Democrat in the US Senate, and voting for Bush again would just be choosing the (just barely) lesser of two evils (IMHO at least, and I try to respect the views of others who think that Kerry is the best thing since sliced bread and that Bush is evil incarnate).
The state I live in is a shoe-in for Bush anyway, so I figured why not just vote my conscience, and let the chips fall where they may? Isn't that the cornerstone of representative democracy in the first place?
<soliloquy mode="wistful">If only Bush hadn't given up the high road after 9/11 and used it as an excuse to shred the Bill of Rights, and if only he hadn't stupidly gotten the US mired in a two-front war, and if only he hadn't run up a huge deficit, and if only he hadn't turned out to be intent on shoving his religious ideas down everyone's throat...</soliloquy>
If these ballots were misplaced due to error or accident, the individuals responsible should be sacked. If they were 'misplaced' (wink-wink nudge-nudge) on purpose, the individuals responsible should be sacked and jailed. And regardless of whether they're ever found, this should be investigated with all zeal and vigor.
I don't care if the votes are mostly for Democrats or Republicans - no partisans on either side should ever be able to get away with this sort of thing (assuming the votes were intentionally 'misplaced').
I plan to vote for Badnarik this year, mainly because I live in Georgia, a state Bush is pretty much guaranteed to win. If it looked close, I'd be voting for Bush. If there were no Libertarian candidate on the ballot here, I'd vote for Bush. Given that it's a certainty that either Bush or Kerry will win the Presidency, I'd rather have Bush - though the choice between the two of them is akin to the choice between having a root canal without anesthesia and having my toenails pulled out with pliers. Even though one could say I'm rooting for Bush, I want him to win fair and square, not through cheating.
The Contour ShuttlePro is nicer. My stepdad, a retired cinematographer and photographer, is into video editing and uses one on his PC. All the buttons and the wheel itself are programmable and so forth. Definitely worth the ~$100US price tag IMHO, if you're constantly editing video. It should be quite nice for gaming as well, though I haven't tried it for that yet.
The Ford Foundation - Chairman of the Board of Trustees is also the CEO of the World Wildlife Fund. Other board members include the Director of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University and the Senior Consultant for Diversity and Excellence at the University of California at Riverside. The President of the Ford Foundation has stated, on the Ford Foundation website, "We share the same basic values as the ACLU."
The Rockefeller Foundation is pretty similar, with board members that include the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the President and CEO of the California Community Foundation, and so forth.
The fact that you don't think of them as bastions of liberal ideology is more indicative of the amount of thinking (and research) you do, and less indicative of their (publicly stated) goals and positions.
So, as you and the parent poster have observed, there's certainly no shortage of vitriol on either side this time around.
It's a shame when both sides of a political contest are incapable of constructive debate, or even of keeping it to the level of name-calling. When did my fellow Americans lose their ability to support their political candidates without resorting to sophomoric attacs on their opponents?
Democrats were only accused of doing this by the Republicans and only laptops (the easiest and most valuable hardware to steal) were taken, quickly from an office where they were plainly visible from the street.
And can we assume that the Washington Post will assign a modern-day Woodward and Bernstein to investigate and report on this and the other breakins? I thought not.
Engaging in vandalism against Bush offices by teenagers is not quite as bad as tearing up valid registrations.
So it's only bad when your crimes benefit Republicans?
Criminally negligent op-ed pieces do not facts make.
Fact: liberals burned swastikas into lawns that had Bush-Cheney signs. Or is it only voter intimidation when Republicans do it? Or is it only a hate crime when the KKK burns a cross in a black family's yard?
Accusing a group of committing illegal activities with no evidence is a typical Republican tactic.
Yeah, only the republicans ever falsely accuse their opponents of committing illegal activities.
Press releases aimed at creating a non-existant scandal and failing are pretty weak as a source.
Finally, defrauding a company by making up fake voter registrations to earn more money in a $9 per hour job is not making people think they are registered when they are not.
And shooting someone is not stabbing them. Either way, it's murder. And either way, it's voter registration fraud. Or is it, once again, only bad when it's a Republican who does it?
Take off your DNC-issue blinders, and maybe you'll see that both sides engage in all sorts of nefarious activities to make sure their side wins. Nothing to see here, move along.
Oops, my bad, was thinking of every other team they've played this season..
If you weren't being such an asshat, I wouldn't point out that the Panthers are the only team the Packers have beaten this year, nor that the Packers are at the BOTTOM of the NFC North just like the Redskins are at the bottom of the NFC East, but since you are, I will.
God Damnyankee Packers fans, only capable of posting as Anonymous Cowards. Have you recovered yet from last weekend, when the real men from Tennessee rode through and handed you your ass on a plate?
Actually, anytime a police officer asks you for your identification, you are required to show it. Failure to do so is a criminal offense according to (at least) the State of Nevada and the US Supreme Court.
It's easy for the government to keep tabs on you through your driver's license thanks to all the "sobriety checkpoints" you see around here, where the police stop everyone travelling along a certain street, demanding to see their driver's licenses. These checkpoints are also fishing expeditions with drug-sniffing dogs engaging in what amounts to warrantless searches of every car that passes through the checkpoint. And if you see the checkpoint and turn around, you are pulled over anyway.
Bah, 113 is nothing. I've hit 120mph in a 1991 Nissan Sentra many times (121mph is impossible because the rev limiter kicks in at 120mph).
When I was a teenager, I had a 1978 Camaro with a 350 small-block (5.7L in today's parlance), bored.030 over to 355ci, 650cfm Holley carburetor, Crane solid-lifter cam with 306 degrees advertised duration, and 10.5:1 compression. The speedometer only went to 135mph so I don't know exactly how fast I got it to, but it took a lot of slowing down to get back down to 135mph.
My dad's 1963 Corvette roadster had a speedometer that went to 160mph, but the end of the cable twisted off when that speed was exceeded...
All of this on US freeways. Nashville to Chattanooga (~130 miles with a mountain in between) in an hour is fun, BTW:)
sometimes running Cat5 all across the house can be the most obnoxious thing you'll ever do
Or you could do what I did - install one or more RJ-45 jacks in every room you might ever want to setup a computer in, connected to a patch panel in a rack enclosure in the "study" (read: "room where my 3 computers are setup").
Half a day of crawling around under the house with a flashlight and a roll of Cat5e, a few surface-mount junction boxes and keystone-style jacks, a punchdown tool, and an extra-long drill bit is all it took. I never have to string the stuff from room to room and create a trip hazard again. I did have to cut my first excursion under the house very short so I could run to the store for some spider-killing spray stuff;-)
I even have an RJ-45 jack in my toolshed, with the network cable running through buried conduit to the house *grin*
If you decide to do this, I suggest stuffing a little steel wool into the holes where the wires go through the floor - helps keep the nasty crawly things under the house from getting in the house.
George W. Bush has been quite a disappointment. I voted for him in 2000 and am still undecided as to whether I'll vote for him this year. My problem is that while Bush has proven himself a lackluster president, I'm even less comfortable about the prospects of Kerry being president. What we need is a moderate conservative (IMHO of course). By moderate conservative, I mean someone who believes in these things:
Fiscal responsibility (lower spending, no budget deficit)
Non-involvement in foreign entanglements
Free-market economics (with sensible, limited regulations, of course, to help prevent abuses).
Individual liberty and the attendant individual responsibility
Gradual deliberation when making any changes, to limit the disruption wrought by them.
The need for a strong but defensive military (we could cut our military spending by at least half and still meet this requirement, I believe).
Neither Kerry nor Bush is a moderate, and neither is a true conservative, but Bush is the closer of the two. However, perhaps 4 years of Kerry would serve as a wake-up call to the Republican Party and in 2008 we could get a decent moderate conservative as President. I'm not holding my breath for that, though.
The problem with US politics, at least on the national level, is that in order to get the nomination of either of the two parties that matter, one has to be something of an extremist. To get the Democratic nomination, you've got to be in bed with Greenpeace and the labor unions. To get the Republican nomination, you've got to be in bed with the CEOs' Club and the religious right. The result of this is that it's damned near impossible to get a moderate in office, of either party.
Let's not forget the underemployed...
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In 2000 I was employed by an engineering firm's IT department, making $15.00/hour (decent wages in the Southeast, and that was starting pay). Company-paid health insurance with dental and vision plan, a decent amount of paid vacation, and a generous 401k plan went along with the job.
Fast forward to 2004. I'm working in a menial factory job, making $8.00/hour, no health insurance, no paid vacation, working through a temp agency. If I get hired on permanently at the plant, I've already been told there will not be a raise involved for at least a year, and the payroll deduction for health insurance is about 15% of my gross pay. The plant recently lifted a 2-year freeze on raises and gave its permanent employees a 3% raise. Inflation is currently running about 5-6%, so the net effect of that 3% raise is that the employees are making a bit less than they were before the raise freeze. In the same plant meeting in which the raise was announced, they announced yet another record month for production and sales, and also informed the permanent employees that their health insurance costs were going up yet again. Yay. Meanwhile the company executives are buying new luxury autos and boats and swimming pools. Gee, thanks for that 3% raise. Oh, wait, I don't even get that because I'm one of the ~40% of the plant employees who work through a temp agency and thus don't get raises or insurance or vacation pay.
How do I make ends meet? I do small home improvement jobs on the weekends. Anyone want their kitchen remodelled in the Chattanooga area?
According to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, the closest thing to your definition of "science" is definition number 3:
Especially, such knowledge when it relates to the physical world and its phenomena, the nature, constitution, and forces of matter, the qualities and functions of living tissues, etc.; -- called also natural science, and physical science.
Definitions 1 and 2 are:
Knowledge; knowledge of principles and causes; ascertained truth of facts.
and
Accumulated and established knowledge, which has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general truths or the operation of general laws; knowledge classified and made available in work, life, or the search for truth; comprehensive, profound, or philosophical knowledge.
I'd guess that Computer Science is a valid term for the area of study it is used to describe. By the same token, Mathematics are a science, though I'd be hesitant to use the term "Social Science" or "Marketing Science." The areas of study you describe are what I would call by one of the two terms mentioned in Webster's - Natural Science or Physical Science.
In any case, you and I are both being pedantic and we should really get out more:-P
the jerk factor... someone could probably break into my basement windows. But, firstly, they'd have a heck of a time and would have to break some glass, and secondly, there's large furniture/shelves/objects in front of them... the chances of them coming in through those windows safely is very small. If they break in and break their neck, you only have to call authorities to dispose of the body.
And don't forget to call a good attorney to defend you against the inevitable lawsuit from the scumbag criminal's bereaved family. Welcome to the US of A. Land of the free. Home of the litigious.
Until there is more than one, and you can have a group of internets (weird to even say), there will be only one Internet
Actually, there are many internets. The Internet, however, is the largest of them, and indeed consists mainly of smaller, connected internets.
There's only one White House, but using this same logic, we should now call it simply the white house.
But...but...there's a white house right across the street from me! And another just down the road! There's definitely more than one. Agreed, however; we shouldn't be calling the one currently occupied by the former governor of Texas "the white house" any more than we should be calling the global, public internet "the internet"
You've obviously never been in business in the US. When a company buys something for resale or as components to assemble into an item for resale, they do no pay sales tax on it. Only the final sale to the end consumer is taxed. This is why you see contractors at the hardware store giving their sales tax ID number to the clerk - the sales tax is thus not charged by the hardware store based on the price the contractor pays, but rather by the contractor based on the price his customer pays.
My F-150 weighs exactly 812 pounds more than a 2004 Jetta (3982 pounds curb weight vs. 3170 pounds curb weight). At 50 miles per hour, my truck has a momentum of 291880.6 Pounds-Feet/Seconds. That Jetta has a momentum of 232361 Pounds-Feet/Seconds, or about 4/5 the momentum of my pickup truck.
For comparison, the 2004 Cadillac Sedan DeVille has a curb weight of exactly 4 pounds less than my pickup truck.
The 2004 Ford Crown Victoria LX weighs 75 pounds more than my truck.
The 2003 Mercedes SL500 weighs 86 pounds more than my truck.
The 2003 Mercedes SL600 weighs 519 pounds more than my truck.
The 2004 Acura TL weighs 593 pounds more than my truck.
The 2001 BMW 528i wagon weighs a whopping 710 pounds more than my truck.
The 2004 Acura RL is lighter than my truck - by 89 pounds.
Granted, my truck has a much higher GVWR, but that's because it's built for the purpose of hauling cargo. Its empty weight is no more or less than a mid-sized or full-sized passenger car (and far less than many small sports cars - see above). Still concerning yourself with my big, heavy truck? Or should the average joe not be allowed to haul anything that won't fit in the back seat of a volkswagen?
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I'm a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, whose party was the ancestor of the modern Democratic Party. Unfortunately, over the years they've apparently forgotten his famous quote, "The government is best which governs least."
You made a good point in your post, and indeed I had not fully considered that approach previously, though I had touched on it a time or two. I voted for Bush in 2000 when he was still a moderate conservative, and have been gravely disappointed in him as a President - his administration has shown itself to be neither moderate nor conservative. There's no way I can in good conscience vote for the (arguably) most liberal Democrat in the US Senate, and voting for Bush again would just be choosing the (just barely) lesser of two evils (IMHO at least, and I try to respect the views of others who think that Kerry is the best thing since sliced bread and that Bush is evil incarnate).
The state I live in is a shoe-in for Bush anyway, so I figured why not just vote my conscience, and let the chips fall where they may? Isn't that the cornerstone of representative democracy in the first place?
<soliloquy mode="wistful">If only Bush hadn't given up the high road after 9/11 and used it as an excuse to shred the Bill of Rights, and if only he hadn't stupidly gotten the US mired in a two-front war, and if only he hadn't run up a huge deficit, and if only he hadn't turned out to be intent on shoving his religious ideas down everyone's throat...</soliloquy>
I don't care if the votes are mostly for Democrats or Republicans - no partisans on either side should ever be able to get away with this sort of thing (assuming the votes were intentionally 'misplaced').
I plan to vote for Badnarik this year, mainly because I live in Georgia, a state Bush is pretty much guaranteed to win. If it looked close, I'd be voting for Bush. If there were no Libertarian candidate on the ballot here, I'd vote for Bush. Given that it's a certainty that either Bush or Kerry will win the Presidency, I'd rather have Bush - though the choice between the two of them is akin to the choice between having a root canal without anesthesia and having my toenails pulled out with pliers. Even though one could say I'm rooting for Bush, I want him to win fair and square, not through cheating.
The Contour ShuttlePro is nicer. My stepdad, a retired cinematographer and photographer, is into video editing and uses one on his PC. All the buttons and the wheel itself are programmable and so forth. Definitely worth the ~$100US price tag IMHO, if you're constantly editing video. It should be quite nice for gaming as well, though I haven't tried it for that yet.
The Ford Foundation - Chairman of the Board of Trustees is also the CEO of the World Wildlife Fund. Other board members include the Director of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University and the Senior Consultant for Diversity and Excellence at the University of California at Riverside. The President of the Ford Foundation has stated, on the Ford Foundation website, "We share the same basic values as the ACLU."
The Rockefeller Foundation is pretty similar, with board members that include the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the President and CEO of the California Community Foundation, and so forth.
The fact that you don't think of them as bastions of liberal ideology is more indicative of the amount of thinking (and research) you do, and less indicative of their (publicly stated) goals and positions.
It's a shame when both sides of a political contest are incapable of constructive debate, or even of keeping it to the level of name-calling. When did my fellow Americans lose their ability to support their political candidates without resorting to sophomoric attacs on their opponents?
Take off your DNC-issue blinders, and maybe you'll see that both sides engage in all sorts of nefarious activities to make sure their side wins. Nothing to see here, move along.
Yeah, it's not like the Democrats ever engage in criminal activities aimed at defrauding and intimidating their way into office.
If you weren't being such an asshat, I wouldn't point out that the Panthers are the only team the Packers have beaten this year, nor that the Packers are at the BOTTOM of the NFC North just like the Redskins are at the bottom of the NFC East, but since you are, I will.
God Damnyankee Packers fans, only capable of posting as Anonymous Cowards. Have you recovered yet from last weekend, when the real men from Tennessee rode through and handed you your ass on a plate?
It's easy for the government to keep tabs on you through your driver's license thanks to all the "sobriety checkpoints" you see around here, where the police stop everyone travelling along a certain street, demanding to see their driver's licenses. These checkpoints are also fishing expeditions with drug-sniffing dogs engaging in what amounts to warrantless searches of every car that passes through the checkpoint. And if you see the checkpoint and turn around, you are pulled over anyway.
Kind of like the major-party presidential candidates.
When I was a teenager, I had a 1978 Camaro with a 350 small-block (5.7L in today's parlance), bored .030 over to 355ci, 650cfm Holley carburetor, Crane solid-lifter cam with 306 degrees advertised duration, and 10.5:1 compression. The speedometer only went to 135mph so I don't know exactly how fast I got it to, but it took a lot of slowing down to get back down to 135mph.
My dad's 1963 Corvette roadster had a speedometer that went to 160mph, but the end of the cable twisted off when that speed was exceeded...
All of this on US freeways. Nashville to Chattanooga (~130 miles with a mountain in between) in an hour is fun, BTW :)
Half a day of crawling around under the house with a flashlight and a roll of Cat5e, a few surface-mount junction boxes and keystone-style jacks, a punchdown tool, and an extra-long drill bit is all it took. I never have to string the stuff from room to room and create a trip hazard again. I did have to cut my first excursion under the house very short so I could run to the store for some spider-killing spray stuff ;-)
I even have an RJ-45 jack in my toolshed, with the network cable running through buried conduit to the house *grin*
If you decide to do this, I suggest stuffing a little steel wool into the holes where the wires go through the floor - helps keep the nasty crawly things under the house from getting in the house.
- Fiscal responsibility (lower spending, no budget deficit)
- Non-involvement in foreign entanglements
- Free-market economics (with sensible, limited regulations, of course, to help prevent abuses).
- Individual liberty and the attendant individual responsibility
- Gradual deliberation when making any changes, to limit the disruption wrought by them.
- The need for a strong but defensive military (we could cut our military spending by at least half and still meet this requirement, I believe).
Neither Kerry nor Bush is a moderate, and neither is a true conservative, but Bush is the closer of the two. However, perhaps 4 years of Kerry would serve as a wake-up call to the Republican Party and in 2008 we could get a decent moderate conservative as President. I'm not holding my breath for that, though.The problem with US politics, at least on the national level, is that in order to get the nomination of either of the two parties that matter, one has to be something of an extremist. To get the Democratic nomination, you've got to be in bed with Greenpeace and the labor unions. To get the Republican nomination, you've got to be in bed with the CEOs' Club and the religious right. The result of this is that it's damned near impossible to get a moderate in office, of either party.
Fast forward to 2004. I'm working in a menial factory job, making $8.00/hour, no health insurance, no paid vacation, working through a temp agency. If I get hired on permanently at the plant, I've already been told there will not be a raise involved for at least a year, and the payroll deduction for health insurance is about 15% of my gross pay. The plant recently lifted a 2-year freeze on raises and gave its permanent employees a 3% raise. Inflation is currently running about 5-6%, so the net effect of that 3% raise is that the employees are making a bit less than they were before the raise freeze. In the same plant meeting in which the raise was announced, they announced yet another record month for production and sales, and also informed the permanent employees that their health insurance costs were going up yet again. Yay. Meanwhile the company executives are buying new luxury autos and boats and swimming pools. Gee, thanks for that 3% raise. Oh, wait, I don't even get that because I'm one of the ~40% of the plant employees who work through a temp agency and thus don't get raises or insurance or vacation pay.
How do I make ends meet? I do small home improvement jobs on the weekends. Anyone want their kitchen remodelled in the Chattanooga area?
In any case, you and I are both being pedantic and we should really get out more :-P
that's different from the current system how?
How about just doing away with tenure altogether? It's just an obsolete caste system anyway.
You've obviously never been in business in the US. When a company buys something for resale or as components to assemble into an item for resale, they do no pay sales tax on it. Only the final sale to the end consumer is taxed. This is why you see contractors at the hardware store giving their sales tax ID number to the clerk - the sales tax is thus not charged by the hardware store based on the price the contractor pays, but rather by the contractor based on the price his customer pays.
For comparison, the 2004 Cadillac Sedan DeVille has a curb weight of exactly 4 pounds less than my pickup truck.
The 2004 Ford Crown Victoria LX weighs 75 pounds more than my truck.
The 2003 Mercedes SL500 weighs 86 pounds more than my truck.
The 2003 Mercedes SL600 weighs 519 pounds more than my truck.
The 2004 Acura TL weighs 593 pounds more than my truck.
The 2001 BMW 528i wagon weighs a whopping 710 pounds more than my truck.
The 2004 Acura RL is lighter than my truck - by 89 pounds.
Granted, my truck has a much higher GVWR, but that's because it's built for the purpose of hauling cargo. Its empty weight is no more or less than a mid-sized or full-sized passenger car (and far less than many small sports cars - see above). Still concerning yourself with my big, heavy truck? Or should the average joe not be allowed to haul anything that won't fit in the back seat of a volkswagen?