Most Bush supporters have very little idea what he stands for. Polls show most of them believe he supports the Kyoto limits on greenhouse gases, is concerned about the deficit, would increase taxes on the wealthiest, wants healthcare coverage for all americans, etc. Most of them believe WMDs were FOUND in Iraq, and that Saddam had something to do with 9/11.
I'm not sure what particular brand of crack you're smoking, but it is clearly potent. This little rant of yours proves the point I've been making about this election for the last two days. The reason Democrats had their collective ass handed to them 2 November is that they have no idea who the Republicans are, let alone what they think or why they think it.
What you say is all true, and well said, but you must also examine the other perspective. Of the 10.5 million voter increase over the 2000 election, bush got roughly 9 million more votes. Kerry got roughly 4.5 million more than Gore. SOURCE
What this basically means is that yeah, we (the nation in general, not a particular party) got out a lot more vote, but the increase in Bush's popular vote count absorbs most of that new vote above and beyond his numbers last election.
Kerry's increase over Gore's numbers has two components. First, his 4.5 million vote increase gets 1.5 million left over after you take Bush's votes out of the new voter total. The remainder of Kerry's bump over Gore's numbers seems to have come from the third-party contingent. Most of the third party vote went to Nader last cycle to the tune of about 3 million votes and this year those same people probably voted Kerry out of the "At least he might beat bush" mentality. You know there were lots of those folks out there. We certainly saw enough of them on/. this past year.
I think my analysis is probably fairly accurate given the conspicuous absence of nader voters this year. If that's the case, then the "new voters" broke nealry 9 to 1 bush. So Yeah... the margin was 52/48, but for the first time in 12 years the third parties were nowhere to be seen and came in at "nearly one percent" instead of the 3% of 2000. If my analysis is anywhere near correct regarding the new voters, that would have been a 52/45 split had the third parties made even a respectable showing. So yeah. That's pretty darn respectable and indicates that the people did speak loudly for Bush. Getting 9 million new voters out to the polls to vote for you is outstanding. When was the last time a Democrat ever increased their margin from 47.8% (yeah, I guess we'll make do with this guy) to 52% (Heck yeah! Give us more of that guy!) by absorbing almost the entire block of new voters?
Clinton increased his margin by a good percentage in the only election this past 20 years to actually see a drop in voter turnout. (republicans stayed home) He only got an additional 2.5 million votes his second term but increased his margin by 6% with 8.8 million less voters than the '92 election. To find a democrat who's made a showing like Bush's you have to go back at least to the forties. Maybe farther back than that since FDR was a fluke.
It's not that hard to find republicans who've done things like what bush has done. You have four examples after world war two. The lesson to be learned here is that while the democrats might have gotten lucky once or twice, conservative politics resonates with the majority of this country.
Ike, 2 terms. Increased popularity second term. Kennedy barely wins over Nixon, Johnson takes Kennedy's second term in a landslide (first lucky postwar democrat riding public sympathy for Kennedy into office) Nixon, two terms with massive popularity increase second term. Nixon gets the boot and nobody'll touch Ford with a ten foot pole. Carter, the second lucky postwar democrat can't scrape up a second term against the powerhouse of Regan after riding public distaste for Nixon into office. Even with hatred for nixon as high as it was, Carter barely got 50% of the vote. Regan's success was phenominal and anyone who denies it need only look at the blue/red map of the US from his reelection bid to see just how popular he was. Bush (HW) is somewhat of an anomoly being the only post-war republican to not get re-elected. You can thank Perot for that. Clinton never got half the popular vote. Being the third lucky postwar democrat, he had Perot running defense for him and won a second term without ever scoring 50% of the popular vote. He eeked out 49% when 9 million republicans stayed home out of disgust that Perot was going to spoil it for them anyway.
So yeah. It's worth noting that Bush did really well in his second election.
The reason republicans are saying this is to reinforce the point that W has a "legitimate mandate" this time. Remember all that talk about him being an illegitimate president back in 2000 because he didn't win the popular vote? This is to controll the attack that you know will be coming from the left as they position themselves to deny his agenda. This is presidential politics. You gotta understand the game at hand.
The existence of the electoral college implies that the federal government is a creation of the states. The federal government is a creation of the PEOPLE.
Regardless of the outcome of this election, I would have still wanted the electoral college to be abolished.
No... The federal government is a creation of the states. You want it to be a creation of the people. This indicates that you don't understand the original intent, not that the current situation is flawed.
Actually, in French "toilette" has always meant the same thing; it's English where the word toilet shift meaning to refer to a specific bathroom fixture instead of the original meaning it had when we stole it from the French language.
Just to be clear on a couple of points, first off, yes I do wear a helmet. You are correct that I mostly don't hear other cars around me just like I don't expect them to hear me over their car sterios (see other thread in this story about stupid car sterios.) With the exception of emergency vehicles with their sirens, sound is not meant to be a primary means of alerting other drivers to your presence. That's why your light is on all the time (or headlights on half the time in a car) while the horn has a momentary-on switch.
Second, I don't have disdain for non-helmeted Harley riders. I have disdain for the idiots who rip past my house drunk and blowing stop signs with pipes loud enough to wake up my daughter who sleeps at the back of the house. The fact that these imbeciles also do not wear helmets just drives home the point that they do not have loud pipes as a safety precaution. They have loud pipes because they think it's cool that everyone can hear their bike. The whole notion that loud pipes play any noticeable part in motorcycle safety in any way is ridiculous to the extreme.
Personally I think all speed bumps should be removed. Anybody that drives around a school or shopping mall parking lot at a high speed is a moron, and should be heavily fined, along with the morons blasting the radio on rural streets at night. Also I think that dogs that are outside and bark all night should be simply killed, if they are repeat offenders.
That's all very smart and enlightened sounding, but misses a very important point. There _ARE_ morons in the world. Removing the speed bump won't make someone say "Hey... Driving fast here makes me a moron! I shouldn't do it." No... By definition, a moron does not know that (s)he is one. Therefore, if you remove the speed bump and don't force the morons (whom you just _KNOW_ are there) to slow down, you end up having little kids getting hurt. The speed bump isn't there for the benefit or ammusement of the driver, but for the safety of the pedestrian.
Well then you simply weren't around the right place at the right time. I've been pulled over in both a 4 cylinder mustang and an 8 cylinder nova for having a "missing or malfunctioning exhaust system" (ie: too loud)
In neither case was the cost of a new exhaust system less than the value of the car.:)
Next time all the morons with Harleys leave the bar at 2AM and rip down my street, blowing the stop sign and not wearing helmets, I'll remember that they're only waking up my kid for their own safety. I call bullshit.
Worried about your safety while riding? Do what I do. Watch other drivers like a freaking hawk. Be alert at a truly paranoid level. The only way to be safe on a bike is to ride as though you understand that other drivers may not see you. If that big-ass light on the front of your bike isn't helping them see you, loud pipes aren't going to either. In case you never noticed, the "protective blanket of sound" you are generating with your loud pipes is mostly behind you where it doesn't do you any bloody good. If you are going to rebut that you do ride paranoid and still think the pipes help protect you, then you don't ride paranoid enough because you're still hoping that some fool in a car will be paying attention to his five senses and notice you.
In addition to the above, do loud pipes help you hear other vehicles on the road? No? How can that be? I thought your only concern was safety. Could it be something else?
I have been riding for 11 years, and and I firmly believe that loud pipes are simply penis extensions.
Pardon me, Mr. Coward (+1, Insightful), but if "manufacturing is no longer done in this country", what is that giant red blob surrounding the Great Lakes? Likewise, what is all that red doing in or near silicon valley?
/me mutters: "... not done in this country... sheesh..."
Yup. That sounds likke old seventies GM cruise control alright. I had both a Caprice Classic and a Trans Am from the late seventies and they both had the same kind of flaws. They were of a slightly different type, though, where the only control for the cruise system was a single push button on the turn signal stalk. That T/A, man... Push the cruise control button from a dead stop and it would quite literally suck the pedal to the floor and the acceleration would throw you back in your seat. The deal with my two cars, and probably your Cadillac, is that the cruise control in those cars was vacuum operated. The cruise control would go absolutely berzerk if there was a vacuum leak. In my T/A the previous owner actually hooked the vacuum up to ported instead of unported (or vice versa) when installing the new carb and intake. If your wife's caddy had so much as a cracked vacuum hose I can totally understand this happening.
Power steering and braking is provided by a cylinder of fluid. You've got enough for probably 4 or 5 hard 'full brake' depressions and at least 3 or 4 good wheel cranks.
Shutting down the car forces it into a 'reboot' of the system. Shifting it into neutral while the engine is at full power is a good way to blow it.
Downshifting the car is fine, but all thats going to do is blow out your clutch or tranny- remember,if the pedal is fully depressed it's probably redlined at 6500 RPM ....
Pop the hood and kill the battery. (probably would need bolt cutters from the police).
Your understanding of auto mechanics is... um... extraordinary. How the bloody hell did this get moderated "insightful?"
Or wet grass, or just an untied shoelace when trying to walk the bike through a 3 point turn, or a kickstand that sinks on thin asphalt, or... I've laid down my fair share of bikes including some that were way too big for me at the time. My last two close calls were from forgetting to take my new front disk lock off and the back tire kicking out to the right on wet grass, and some loose gravel that just happened to be in the right place just as I was shifting coming out of a curve. One of those saves was me being a complete idiot and getting lucky, and the other was a testament to experience. You're absolutely right. It's not a question of if. It's when.
That is perfectly normal. Power steering is almost always a belt-driven hydraulic pump assisting an otherwise horribly heavy steering system that can be used indefinately without the assistance. Power brakes, on the other hand, are almost always vacuum assisted with a vacuum reservoir to give a few extra assisted stops after engine failure. While unassisted steering in a power steering system is hard but doable, unassisted braking with a power assisted brake system is very very difficult.
Well, a lot of times the redline is there to keep you from exceeding the duty of the valve springs. Redline and the springs end up losing their memory then they start to develop float. You may have all the power in the world at the top end of the tach, but if your valve springs aren't up to the task, the redline needs to stay put.
Manuals are just FAR superior to automatics in every way possible.
Except for shift point consistency when an inexperienced racer is at the wheel. When I first started draging my T/A (6spd) I was cutting low 14s. Now I'm in the high 12s. With an auto I would have started out with solid low 13s and stayed there. That's the one and only place where autos shine. The shift takes place at the exact point you want _every_time_. If you're new to the sport and trying to hit your dial-in, you probably want an auto. Of course, then you have to admit to being a sheep coveting wuss who probably can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
BTW... Just a little background, I drive 40 miles into the Chicago Loop every day. Before I had my 6-spd T/A I had a 5-spd Rx7. Learned to drive in a 3-on-the-tree Rambler. I've done my fair share of time in autos and they just irritate me. I hate it when I have to wait for some goofy vacuum solenoid or computer to decide when it wants to shift. I want my car to shift when _I_ think the time is right, not some computer programer.
The risk for an incident involving a car is much higher than that involving an airplane because most people's exposure to cars is far higher than airplanes. I interact with cars as a driver, passenger, or pedestrian every day. I might fly, as a passenger in an airplane, once or twice a year.
I notice that you included pedestrian in your assesment of risk from automobiles. This is interesting. I assume you mean that you are exposed to the risk anytime an automobile is operating in your environment without something like a building standing between you and it.
If the above is correct, than aren't you forgetting to calculate the exposure to risk from every airplane that flies overhead? (I've seen enough stories about Cessnas falling out of the sky and landing in people's living rooms.) Aren't you also forgetting to include the exposure you endure when working in your office in a large building in, say, Manhattan?
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Most Bush supporters have very little idea what he stands for. Polls show most of them believe he supports the Kyoto limits on greenhouse gases, is concerned about the deficit, would increase taxes on the wealthiest, wants healthcare coverage for all americans, etc. Most of them believe WMDs were FOUND in Iraq, and that Saddam had something to do with 9/11.
I'm not sure what particular brand of crack you're smoking, but it is clearly potent. This little rant of yours proves the point I've been making about this election for the last two days. The reason Democrats had their collective ass handed to them 2 November is that they have no idea who the Republicans are, let alone what they think or why they think it.
What you say is all true, and well said, but you must also examine the other perspective. Of the 10.5 million voter increase over the 2000 election, bush got roughly 9 million more votes. Kerry got roughly 4.5 million more than Gore. SOURCE
/. this past year.
What this basically means is that yeah, we (the nation in general, not a particular party) got out a lot more vote, but the increase in Bush's popular vote count absorbs most of that new vote above and beyond his numbers last election.
Kerry's increase over Gore's numbers has two components. First, his 4.5 million vote increase gets 1.5 million left over after you take Bush's votes out of the new voter total. The remainder of Kerry's bump over Gore's numbers seems to have come from the third-party contingent. Most of the third party vote went to Nader last cycle to the tune of about 3 million votes and this year those same people probably voted Kerry out of the "At least he might beat bush" mentality. You know there were lots of those folks out there. We certainly saw enough of them on
I think my analysis is probably fairly accurate given the conspicuous absence of nader voters this year. If that's the case, then the "new voters" broke nealry 9 to 1 bush. So Yeah... the margin was 52/48, but for the first time in 12 years the third parties were nowhere to be seen and came in at "nearly one percent" instead of the 3% of 2000. If my analysis is anywhere near correct regarding the new voters, that would have been a 52/45 split had the third parties made even a respectable showing. So yeah. That's pretty darn respectable and indicates that the people did speak loudly for Bush. Getting 9 million new voters out to the polls to vote for you is outstanding. When was the last time a Democrat ever increased their margin from 47.8% (yeah, I guess we'll make do with this guy) to 52% (Heck yeah! Give us more of that guy!) by absorbing almost the entire block of new voters?
Clinton increased his margin by a good percentage in the only election this past 20 years to actually see a drop in voter turnout. (republicans stayed home) He only got an additional 2.5 million votes his second term but increased his margin by 6% with 8.8 million less voters than the '92 election. To find a democrat who's made a showing like Bush's you have to go back at least to the forties. Maybe farther back than that since FDR was a fluke.
It's not that hard to find republicans who've done things like what bush has done. You have four examples after world war two. The lesson to be learned here is that while the democrats might have gotten lucky once or twice, conservative politics resonates with the majority of this country.
Ike, 2 terms. Increased popularity second term. Kennedy barely wins over Nixon, Johnson takes Kennedy's second term in a landslide (first lucky postwar democrat riding public sympathy for Kennedy into office) Nixon, two terms with massive popularity increase second term. Nixon gets the boot and nobody'll touch Ford with a ten foot pole. Carter, the second lucky postwar democrat can't scrape up a second term against the powerhouse of Regan after riding public distaste for Nixon into office. Even with hatred for nixon as high as it was, Carter barely got 50% of the vote. Regan's success was phenominal and anyone who denies it need only look at the blue/red map of the US from his reelection bid to see just how popular he was. Bush (HW) is somewhat of an anomoly being the only post-war republican to not get re-elected. You can thank Perot for that. Clinton never got half the popular vote. Being the third lucky postwar democrat, he had Perot running defense for him and won a second term without ever scoring 50% of the popular vote. He eeked out 49% when 9 million republicans stayed home out of disgust that Perot was going to spoil it for them anyway.
So yeah. It's worth noting that Bush did really well in his second election.
The reason republicans are saying this is to reinforce the point that W has a "legitimate mandate" this time. Remember all that talk about him being an illegitimate president back in 2000 because he didn't win the popular vote? This is to controll the attack that you know will be coming from the left as they position themselves to deny his agenda. This is presidential politics. You gotta understand the game at hand.
The existence of the electoral college implies that the federal government is a creation of the states. The federal government is a creation of the PEOPLE.
Regardless of the outcome of this election, I would have still wanted the electoral college to be abolished.
No... The federal government is a creation of the states. You want it to be a creation of the people. This indicates that you don't understand the original intent, not that the current situation is flawed.
Score: -1 Trite Insult
I know it's offtopic, but I just thought you should know. I randomly mod you down whenever I have the points. :D
Except that Linus couldn't be on a presidential ballot for the same reason that the Governator can't. :P
Sorry. I know it was intended to be funny, but my tummy still hurts from too much chocolate yesterday.
Actually, in French "toilette" has always meant the same thing; it's English where the word toilet shift meaning to refer to a specific bathroom fixture instead of the original meaning it had when we stole it from the French language.
We didn't steal it. They surrendered it to us.
Just to be clear on a couple of points, first off, yes I do wear a helmet. You are correct that I mostly don't hear other cars around me just like I don't expect them to hear me over their car sterios (see other thread in this story about stupid car sterios.) With the exception of emergency vehicles with their sirens, sound is not meant to be a primary means of alerting other drivers to your presence. That's why your light is on all the time (or headlights on half the time in a car) while the horn has a momentary-on switch.
Second, I don't have disdain for non-helmeted Harley riders. I have disdain for the idiots who rip past my house drunk and blowing stop signs with pipes loud enough to wake up my daughter who sleeps at the back of the house. The fact that these imbeciles also do not wear helmets just drives home the point that they do not have loud pipes as a safety precaution. They have loud pipes because they think it's cool that everyone can hear their bike. The whole notion that loud pipes play any noticeable part in motorcycle safety in any way is ridiculous to the extreme.
Should we all walk around like mindless drones not making a sound, just going to work, doing our job, eat sleep and shit?
We? Um.... No. You? Yes.
Personally I think all speed bumps should be removed. Anybody that drives around a school or shopping mall parking lot at a high speed is a moron, and should be heavily fined, along with the morons blasting the radio on rural streets at night. Also I think that dogs that are outside and bark all night should be simply killed, if they are repeat offenders.
That's all very smart and enlightened sounding, but misses a very important point. There _ARE_ morons in the world. Removing the speed bump won't make someone say "Hey... Driving fast here makes me a moron! I shouldn't do it." No... By definition, a moron does not know that (s)he is one. Therefore, if you remove the speed bump and don't force the morons (whom you just _KNOW_ are there) to slow down, you end up having little kids getting hurt. The speed bump isn't there for the benefit or ammusement of the driver, but for the safety of the pedestrian.
There are very few examples of super loud stereos in cars that are:
Well then you simply weren't around the right place at the right time. I've been pulled over in both a 4 cylinder mustang and an 8 cylinder nova for having a "missing or malfunctioning exhaust system" (ie: too loud)
:)
In neither case was the cost of a new exhaust system less than the value of the car.
Next time all the morons with Harleys leave the bar at 2AM and rip down my street, blowing the stop sign and not wearing helmets, I'll remember that they're only waking up my kid for their own safety. I call bullshit.
Worried about your safety while riding? Do what I do. Watch other drivers like a freaking hawk. Be alert at a truly paranoid level. The only way to be safe on a bike is to ride as though you understand that other drivers may not see you. If that big-ass light on the front of your bike isn't helping them see you, loud pipes aren't going to either. In case you never noticed, the "protective blanket of sound" you are generating with your loud pipes is mostly behind you where it doesn't do you any bloody good. If you are going to rebut that you do ride paranoid and still think the pipes help protect you, then you don't ride paranoid enough because you're still hoping that some fool in a car will be paying attention to his five senses and notice you.
In addition to the above, do loud pipes help you hear other vehicles on the road? No? How can that be? I thought your only concern was safety. Could it be something else?
I have been riding for 11 years, and and I firmly believe that loud pipes are simply penis extensions.
Pardon me, Mr. Coward (+1, Insightful), but if "manufacturing is no longer done in this country", what is that giant red blob surrounding the Great Lakes? Likewise, what is all that red doing in or near silicon valley?
/me mutters: "... not done in this country... sheesh..."
Spike strips rule. :D
Yup. That sounds likke old seventies GM cruise control alright. I had both a Caprice Classic and a Trans Am from the late seventies and they both had the same kind of flaws. They were of a slightly different type, though, where the only control for the cruise system was a single push button on the turn signal stalk. That T/A, man... Push the cruise control button from a dead stop and it would quite literally suck the pedal to the floor and the acceleration would throw you back in your seat. The deal with my two cars, and probably your Cadillac, is that the cruise control in those cars was vacuum operated. The cruise control would go absolutely berzerk if there was a vacuum leak. In my T/A the previous owner actually hooked the vacuum up to ported instead of unported (or vice versa) when installing the new carb and intake. If your wife's caddy had so much as a cracked vacuum hose I can totally understand this happening.
Power steering and braking is provided by a cylinder of fluid. You've got enough for probably 4 or 5 hard 'full brake' depressions and at least 3 or 4 good wheel cranks.
....
Shutting down the car forces it into a 'reboot' of the system. Shifting it into neutral while the engine is at full power is a good way to blow it.
Downshifting the car is fine, but all thats going to do is blow out your clutch or tranny- remember,if the pedal is fully depressed it's probably redlined at 6500 RPM
Pop the hood and kill the battery. (probably would need bolt cutters from the police).
Your understanding of auto mechanics is... um... extraordinary. How the bloody hell did this get moderated "insightful?"
Or wet grass, or just an untied shoelace when trying to walk the bike through a 3 point turn, or a kickstand that sinks on thin asphalt, or... I've laid down my fair share of bikes including some that were way too big for me at the time. My last two close calls were from forgetting to take my new front disk lock off and the back tire kicking out to the right on wet grass, and some loose gravel that just happened to be in the right place just as I was shifting coming out of a curve. One of those saves was me being a complete idiot and getting lucky, and the other was a testament to experience. You're absolutely right. It's not a question of if. It's when.
That is perfectly normal. Power steering is almost always a belt-driven hydraulic pump assisting an otherwise horribly heavy steering system that can be used indefinately without the assistance. Power brakes, on the other hand, are almost always vacuum assisted with a vacuum reservoir to give a few extra assisted stops after engine failure. While unassisted steering in a power steering system is hard but doable, unassisted braking with a power assisted brake system is very very difficult.
Well, a lot of times the redline is there to keep you from exceeding the duty of the valve springs. Redline and the springs end up losing their memory then they start to develop float. You may have all the power in the world at the top end of the tach, but if your valve springs aren't up to the task, the redline needs to stay put.
Manuals are just FAR superior to automatics in every way possible.
Except for shift point consistency when an inexperienced racer is at the wheel. When I first started draging my T/A (6spd) I was cutting low 14s. Now I'm in the high 12s. With an auto I would have started out with solid low 13s and stayed there. That's the one and only place where autos shine. The shift takes place at the exact point you want _every_time_. If you're new to the sport and trying to hit your dial-in, you probably want an auto. Of course, then you have to admit to being a sheep coveting wuss who probably can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
BTW... Just a little background, I drive 40 miles into the Chicago Loop every day. Before I had my 6-spd T/A I had a 5-spd Rx7. Learned to drive in a 3-on-the-tree Rambler. I've done my fair share of time in autos and they just irritate me. I hate it when I have to wait for some goofy vacuum solenoid or computer to decide when it wants to shift. I want my car to shift when _I_ think the time is right, not some computer programer.
The risk for an incident involving a car is much higher than that involving an airplane because most people's exposure to cars is far higher than airplanes. I interact with cars as a driver, passenger, or pedestrian every day. I might fly, as a passenger in an airplane, once or twice a year.
I notice that you included pedestrian in your assesment of risk from automobiles. This is interesting. I assume you mean that you are exposed to the risk anytime an automobile is operating in your environment without something like a building standing between you and it.
If the above is correct, than aren't you forgetting to calculate the exposure to risk from every airplane that flies overhead? (I've seen enough stories about Cessnas falling out of the sky and landing in people's living rooms.) Aren't you also forgetting to include the exposure you endure when working in your office in a large building in, say, Manhattan?
Let me know when Linux is "production quality" enough to be compared to a GA release of Solaris.
i've never been rooted
;)
That you know of.