You can't have forgotten all the "Incompetence by Gregiore's office cost the state millions" ads followed by the equally dubious "I made the state billions with the Tobacco lawsuit, for the children, by the way, I like farms" ads.
No, I just think that if this is the best you've got as examples of "attack ads," it only helps prove me right.
do you honestly feel that the people we elect are the best for the job?
In the case of Reagan, I think so. In the case of W, the jury is still out (I wouldn't think he is the best for the job looking at resumes or abilities, but OTOH, he might turn out to be the perfect leader for the time we are in; ask me again in 20 years).
But largely, no, I don't think they are always, or most often, the best. And I don't think that's ever been the case. I think Washington was the best for the job, but not Adams or Jefferson, for example.
And to the extent the problem today may be worse, I would tend to find fault with the larger issues of mass media, not the political parties.
the parties themselves are weaker than they were for most of US history.
The party *leadership* is relatively weak, yes. But I don't know that parties are weaker, they may just be manifesting their strength in different, less centralized, ways.
A civil war certainly should count as a catastrophic failure of a system
You're saying a civil war was caused by having political parties? It's the opposite, the same factors causing the war also caused political factions which manifested as parties.
Issue-oriented? Is that what call-and-response attack ads are now?
I don't think you saw those in the WA governor race.
The fact is they advocated denying the votes that were legally made in a timely fashion
They opposed including them in the recount, because that is what the Secretary of State said, and what they thought the law said. They did not oppose including them in the initial count.
and they simultaniously sought to have votes that were legally made in a less than timely fashion counted.
I know of no examples of this, except for maybe overseas ballots, and then only because King County sent them weeks too late.
The vast majority of American presidents would not be able to get elected today.
That's not evidence anything is broken or degraded. Clinton and Bush probably couldn't have been elected 100 years ago, yet most people can agree that at least one of them is a pretty good President. And I am sure you can think of many of those "vast majority" of Presidents who could not get elected today who never deserved to be elected in the first place.
No, it's been two parties. There were short periods, such as before the Civil War, where one party declined while another gained power. First the Republican-Democrats and Federalists declined while the Democrats and Whigs gained power, in the early 19th century. Then the Whigs declined while the Republicans gained power. But apart from those short transitions, it's always been two parties in control.
That's also not to say a third party candidate never had a chance at the Presidency: Roosevelt nearly pulled it off in 1912. But he was like Perot: the party had no power in Congress, just a charismatic leader.
I think we're talking about two different things. The Republicans certainly did complain about the Democrats and their fishy behavior: continually finding new votes, trying to bend the rules (such as getting a list of provisional voters, which federal law prohibits), and such.
And certainly, the rhetoric was heated on both sides: the Republicans called on Gregoire to concede, and the Democrats responded in kind. Then when the results flipped, so did their rhetoric.
I was unhappy with the GOP rhetoric (and as a result I joined the unsuccessful opposition to Chris Vance's re-election as party chair), but I thought you were implying the Republicans were trying to deny legal votes at the time, which I have no knowledge of. They may have disagreed about which votes should count, but that's different. Yes, Larry Phillips' vote was questioned, but so what? The Secretary of State said no new votes should be included in the recount, and his vote was not included. The issue went before a court to be decided, and they were included. I don't see this is as a big deal either way; when you said such votes "should have been counted," that is an interpretation of an apparently unclear law, that even Sam Reed wasn't sure about, which is why it went to court.
I started the article and handed it off to timothy, who then forgot to change the ownership to himself. And as I've edited hundreds of stories on Slashdot, I am not that mysterious...
Basically all the politicians are rich white men. They got their wealth from inheritance.
One of the people in this race was a woman, and the other was a lower class guy who worked his way through college.
Washington in his farewell address warned of political parties and named them one of three things that could break the American system. And guess what...they are.
We've had two-party rule since Washington left office. If it hasn't "broken" the American system in the last 200+ years, what makes you think it will happen now?
We're the ones who let this happen and what more most people voting don't vote based on issues.
Actually, this was one of the most issues-oriented campaigns in many years in WA. It focused primarily on the size of the government budget and taxation.
Well, no, they didn't. They said the law should be followed. Which is exactly what they are saying now.
It's the Democrats who have changed their tune, previously saying the law should be bent to count every vote, and then once they took the lead, said the law should be followed strictly.
At least half of those "felon voters" who shouldn't have voted were juveniles when they were found guilty, and thus never had their voting rights stripped. Many of the others had their rights restored after serving their sentences.
That's false. Some of them did turn out to be juveniles, yes, but it was not "at least half." Not even close.
Someone is challenging the votes of around 15,000 voters on the grounds that they are illegal immigrants.
I've never heard this, and if true, it has absolutely nothing to do with the GOP or Rossi. I met with the state GOP chairman last week, and we talked about the case, and it is in no way based on illegal aliens.
Yes, some people will be fooled by it. But it's still the dumbest April Fool's joke I've seen in a long time. First, because many nations base their economy largely on the Internet, like, oh, India and the U.S. And even if you are so far left you think the U.S. wants to stifle all free speech... since when has the current U.S. administration been seriously hurt by the Internet? They follow MS' lead, embrace and extend.
And worst of all, the UN has no authority to get rid of the Internet. None. The votes of the General Assembly have no force of law.
I know it is probably not even worth rebutting this "joke" but it is just so bad. The person who wrote it should be forbidden from ever telling a joke again.
Scalia is a far right conservative and is very reliable in that. The cases where he has voted what you consider "liberal" have been consistent with his conservative views
How does that make me wrong? Conservatism works on more than one axis. The other poster was making the court out to always act on left vs. right. If that were true, you would not see Scalia with Stevens and against Souter and Rehnquist. I agree he is consistent, which is my point: that he is consistent in his own views and decisions, but not on the simple left vs. right axis that the other poster was claiming.
He is in many ways a partisan hack (though not necessarily always a shill for the Bush administration, just a shill for his particular brand of conservatism)
So to be true and consistent to your principles is to be a partisan hack, even though partisan means party and by your own admission he is not speaking for a party, and by this definition every other justice is also a partisan hack? That makes no sense, sorry for you.
I do not consider that situation was dealt with appropriately.
What would have been appropriate?
I would like to restate that to say that the wanted to act, regardless of evidence, and was willing to act unilaterally.
"Regardless of evidence" is opinion. We could talk for a long long time about the reasons why the U.S. went to war. As to willingness to act unilaterally: yes, of course. This is a given, in all situations. The U.S. is and should always be willing to act unilaterally when its own security interests are at stake.
Any President not willing to act unilaterally in defense of U.S. security interests is not fit to be President, because he would not be upholding the Constitution, which gives him the obligation to defend the nation. Clinton acted unilaterally when he bombed Baghdad in 1998; Bush never acted so unilaterally.
The question is not willingness to act unilaterally. The question is whether the war itself was justified, unilaterally or not.
They remove oversight and accountability. The inevitable result is a abuse. Witness Abu Ghraib, witness the entire Iraq invasion mess.
Wow. How do you figure that, since it was discovered and investigated by the Pentagon months before the media caught wind of it, and shortly after it took place?
Not that they couldn't have better oversight: my main complaint with the situation was lack of communication to Congress. But to say this situation resulted in abuse isn't credible when the situation was dealt with swiftly and appropriately.
In the case of Iraq the US wanted to act unilaterally, without the oversight and accountability of the UN and the rest of the world.
The U.S. did not act unilaterally, of course, and if they had wanted to do so they never would have spent half a year at the UN trying to gain support, they would have simply invaded.
The point was that you said the court will rule as it "always [does]", "[t]he democrats on one side, the republicans on the other." I showed that it does not always rule in this manner, and once I did, you decided to try to show that *gasp* people on the right like Scalia. That Scalia is a favorite justice of people on the right, and Stevens of those on the left, was never disputed, and is beside the point.
Even if one is to include the Six Nations as a government and not a treaty organization, I don't see how it qualifies as a democracy. Each nation on its own was not, by our standards today, democratic. They didn't each have a vote for who would be chief or any such thing. On the very small level, they were democratic, but the higher you got, the less democratic it became. You could say they were a democratic culture, but not that the nation/nations were democratic.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't have forgotten all the "Incompetence by Gregiore's office cost the state millions" ads followed by the equally dubious "I made the state billions with the Tobacco lawsuit, for the children, by the way, I like farms" ads.
No, I just think that if this is the best you've got as examples of "attack ads," it only helps prove me right.
do you honestly feel that the people we elect are the best for the job?
In the case of Reagan, I think so. In the case of W, the jury is still out (I wouldn't think he is the best for the job looking at resumes or abilities, but OTOH, he might turn out to be the perfect leader for the time we are in; ask me again in 20 years).
But largely, no, I don't think they are always, or most often, the best. And I don't think that's ever been the case. I think Washington was the best for the job, but not Adams or Jefferson, for example.
And to the extent the problem today may be worse, I would tend to find fault with the larger issues of mass media, not the political parties.
the parties themselves are weaker than they were for most of US history.
The party *leadership* is relatively weak, yes. But I don't know that parties are weaker, they may just be manifesting their strength in different, less centralized, ways.
A civil war certainly should count as a catastrophic failure of a system
You're saying a civil war was caused by having political parties? It's the opposite, the same factors causing the war also caused political factions which manifested as parties.
Issue-oriented? Is that what call-and-response attack ads are now?
I don't think you saw those in the WA governor race.
The fact is they advocated denying the votes that were legally made in a timely fashion
They opposed including them in the recount, because that is what the Secretary of State said, and what they thought the law said. They did not oppose including them in the initial count.
and they simultaniously sought to have votes that were legally made in a less than timely fashion counted.
I know of no examples of this, except for maybe overseas ballots, and then only because King County sent them weeks too late.
The vast majority of American presidents would not be able to get elected today.
That's not evidence anything is broken or degraded. Clinton and Bush probably couldn't have been elected 100 years ago, yet most people can agree that at least one of them is a pretty good President. And I am sure you can think of many of those "vast majority" of Presidents who could not get elected today who never deserved to be elected in the first place.
In the span of so few generations, so much has been lost.
Such as?
No, it's been two parties. There were short periods, such as before the Civil War, where one party declined while another gained power. First the Republican-Democrats and Federalists declined while the Democrats and Whigs gained power, in the early 19th century. Then the Whigs declined while the Republicans gained power. But apart from those short transitions, it's always been two parties in control.
That's also not to say a third party candidate never had a chance at the Presidency: Roosevelt nearly pulled it off in 1912. But he was like Perot: the party had no power in Congress, just a charismatic leader.
I think we're talking about two different things. The Republicans certainly did complain about the Democrats and their fishy behavior: continually finding new votes, trying to bend the rules (such as getting a list of provisional voters, which federal law prohibits), and such.
And certainly, the rhetoric was heated on both sides: the Republicans called on Gregoire to concede, and the Democrats responded in kind. Then when the results flipped, so did their rhetoric.
I was unhappy with the GOP rhetoric (and as a result I joined the unsuccessful opposition to Chris Vance's re-election as party chair), but I thought you were implying the Republicans were trying to deny legal votes at the time, which I have no knowledge of. They may have disagreed about which votes should count, but that's different. Yes, Larry Phillips' vote was questioned, but so what? The Secretary of State said no new votes should be included in the recount, and his vote was not included. The issue went before a court to be decided, and they were included. I don't see this is as a big deal either way; when you said such votes "should have been counted," that is an interpretation of an apparently unclear law, that even Sam Reed wasn't sure about, which is why it went to court.
I started the article and handed it off to timothy, who then forgot to change the ownership to himself. And as I've edited hundreds of stories on Slashdot, I am not that mysterious ...
Basically all the politicians are rich white men. They got their wealth from inheritance.
...
One of the people in this race was a woman, and the other was a lower class guy who worked his way through college.
Washington in his farewell address warned of political parties and named them one of three things that could break the American system. And guess what...they are.
We've had two-party rule since Washington left office. If it hasn't "broken" the American system in the last 200+ years, what makes you think it will happen now?
We're the ones who let this happen and what more most people voting don't vote based on issues.
Actually, this was one of the most issues-oriented campaigns in many years in WA. It focused primarily on the size of the government budget and taxation.
But hey, don't let me dispel your illusions
Well, no, they didn't. They said the law should be followed. Which is exactly what they are saying now.
It's the Democrats who have changed their tune, previously saying the law should be bent to count every vote, and then once they took the lead, said the law should be followed strictly.
This has nothing to do with recounts. This is about challenging the result and having a new election, not recounting the past election.
At least half of those "felon voters" who shouldn't have voted were juveniles when they were found guilty, and thus never had their voting rights stripped. Many of the others had their rights restored after serving their sentences.
That's false. Some of them did turn out to be juveniles, yes, but it was not "at least half." Not even close.
Someone is challenging the votes of around 15,000 voters on the grounds that they are illegal immigrants.
I've never heard this, and if true, it has absolutely nothing to do with the GOP or Rossi. I met with the state GOP chairman last week, and we talked about the case, and it is in no way based on illegal aliens.
Nice try, though.
You don't know what I am replying to? If you forget, you can try that little "Parent" link like a good little user.
Yes, some people will be fooled by it. But it's still the dumbest April Fool's joke I've seen in a long time. First, because many nations base their economy largely on the Internet, like, oh, India and the U.S. And even if you are so far left you think the U.S. wants to stifle all free speech ... since when has the current U.S. administration been seriously hurt by the Internet? They follow MS' lead, embrace and extend.
And worst of all, the UN has no authority to get rid of the Internet. None. The votes of the General Assembly have no force of law.
I know it is probably not even worth rebutting this "joke" but it is just so bad. The person who wrote it should be forbidden from ever telling a joke again.
Maybe we can get the UN to vote on it.
Scalia is a far right conservative and is very reliable in that. The cases where he has voted what you consider "liberal" have been consistent with his conservative views
How does that make me wrong? Conservatism works on more than one axis. The other poster was making the court out to always act on left vs. right. If that were true, you would not see Scalia with Stevens and against Souter and Rehnquist. I agree he is consistent, which is my point: that he is consistent in his own views and decisions, but not on the simple left vs. right axis that the other poster was claiming.
He is in many ways a partisan hack (though not necessarily always a shill for the Bush administration, just a shill for his particular brand of conservatism)
So to be true and consistent to your principles is to be a partisan hack, even though partisan means party and by your own admission he is not speaking for a party, and by this definition every other justice is also a partisan hack? That makes no sense, sorry for you.
I don't see how you can possibly not argue that he is not a republican.
I don't see how you can possibly argue I said he is not a Republican. Read again.
This is the first I've heard of that. Link please.
Do you remember when the Abu Ghraib story broke? It was April 28, 2004. General Taguba finished his infamous report two months before that.
See the timeline.
I do not consider that situation was dealt with appropriately.
What would have been appropriate?
I would like to restate that to say that the wanted to act, regardless of evidence, and was willing to act unilaterally.
"Regardless of evidence" is opinion. We could talk for a long long time about the reasons why the U.S. went to war. As to willingness to act unilaterally: yes, of course. This is a given, in all situations. The U.S. is and should always be willing to act unilaterally when its own security interests are at stake.
Any President not willing to act unilaterally in defense of U.S. security interests is not fit to be President, because he would not be upholding the Constitution, which gives him the obligation to defend the nation. Clinton acted unilaterally when he bombed Baghdad in 1998; Bush never acted so unilaterally.
The question is not willingness to act unilaterally. The question is whether the war itself was justified, unilaterally or not.
They remove oversight and accountability. The inevitable result is a abuse. Witness Abu Ghraib, witness the entire Iraq invasion mess.
Wow. How do you figure that, since it was discovered and investigated by the Pentagon months before the media caught wind of it, and shortly after it took place?
Not that they couldn't have better oversight: my main complaint with the situation was lack of communication to Congress. But to say this situation resulted in abuse isn't credible when the situation was dealt with swiftly and appropriately.
In the case of Iraq the US wanted to act unilaterally, without the oversight and accountability of the UN and the rest of the world.
The U.S. did not act unilaterally, of course, and if they had wanted to do so they never would have spent half a year at the UN trying to gain support, they would have simply invaded.
In other words, you're just making stuff up.
The point was that you said the court will rule as it "always [does]", "[t]he democrats on one side, the republicans on the other." I showed that it does not always rule in this manner, and once I did, you decided to try to show that *gasp* people on the right like Scalia. That Scalia is a favorite justice of people on the right, and Stevens of those on the left, was never disputed, and is beside the point.
What is his batting average though?
You said that his average was 1.000. You said he was entirely reliable, that you know how it will turn out.
You are attempting to move the goalposts.
Sure once or twice he may go against the grain but it's rare.
No, it's not. It happens quite a bit. You don't know what you're talking about, as you've already demonstrated.
Even if one is to include the Six Nations as a government and not a treaty organization, I don't see how it qualifies as a democracy. Each nation on its own was not, by our standards today, democratic. They didn't each have a vote for who would be chief or any such thing. On the very small level, they were democratic, but the higher you got, the less democratic it became. You could say they were a democratic culture, but not that the nation/nations were democratic.
When bush appoints his judge(s) you can be sure they will go strictly by the republican party line.
Nonsense. Scalia is Bush's -- and every conservative's -- favorite judge, and I gave you two examples where he went agaisnt the Republican party line.
he could say "no,"
Thanks.