Maybe give each person a certain limited number of votes, so they'd have to spend them wisely. Five seems reasonable.
You seem to have confused voting with moderating:-)
But seriously, you'd get as many votes as there are candidates for a particular position on the ballot which you are casting. In primary elections you'd get to vote "yes" or "no" on any and all candidates for which you are allowed to vote--apparently some states allow independants to vote in primaries and others restrict you to the primary of the party in which you are registered--and in the general election you get to vote "fer 'em" or "again 'em" on each candidate on the ballot.
Of course I'd really like to see government get out of the primary election business altogether and let each party decide for itself at its own expense and in whatever manner they choose to implement who to nominate to run under their banner in the general election, but then I'm heartily sick of both major parties and would like to see them dissolve into bitter, squabbling factions with no real power. Then we could start new parties with different names and no legacies.
If you had been handed a copy of the Patriot Act when the bill was introduced, would you have had time to read it cover to cover before it was voted on?
If so, would you have had time to do anything else, like eat, sleep, read any other pending legislation, attend any committee meetings, consult legal counsel to make sure that you didn't misunderstand any of the provisions of the Patriot Act, especially the ones that made changes in other laws so that you have to go look up and read all of all of them to understand exactly what's going on, etc?
Would you have been sure that what you read was exactly what got passed and signed into law?
I'm also pulling for some combination of Al Gore, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd as cabinet members.
Why would we want to throw away Biden and Dodd's experience and seniority in the Senate, not to mention the risk of Republicans being elected to their vacated seats, the way John Edwards screwed us over with Richard Burr?
I'm tired of voting "against" someone, I'd really like to vote "for" someone...
I know the feeling. I'm tired of voting with one hand and holding my nose with the other. But I think part of the problem is that we really don't get to vote against anyone.
If I had my way we could vote either for or against all of the candidates. Each one's "no" votes would be subtracted from their "yes" votes, and they'd be ranked accordingly, except that if they all wind up with non-positive totals the winner isn't the one closest to +1, no one is (except the voters:-), a new election (or primary) would be scheduled and none of the previous candidates would be eligible to run.
Under that system you could have voted for both Perot and George H.W. Bush and against Clinton, which would have kept Perot from being a spoiler in that race, and in 2000 you could have voted for both Nader and Gore and against everyone else, or for both Buchanan and Shrub and against everyone else, and the outcome in Florida would have probably been a lot more clear.
Well, not really, I've already got enough to spare, I just found a comment appended to the original Village Voice article that I considered worth reproducing here.
texastoxic on Thu Jan 17, 2008, 02:15, says: This is truly incredible, but perhaps predictable. The administration and the appointed EPA administrator Johnson have shown no interest in protecting the public health. The EPA has ignored the public health, and proposed keeping particulate standards at current levels rather than reducing to improve the health of Americans. Better to keep the money flowing out of the pockets of the public for over the counter medications, physicians, hospitals, health plans, insurance, and taxes for those that don't have insurance but require treatment, and into corporations that can fund campaigns of coucilmembers, mayors, and... how about that, could be presidents. Just keep the public unaware of the toxic, hazardous and poisonous elements and compounds that industrial point sources pump into the air and your future is assured.
Unfortunately, those pesky researchers and public health groups like the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, American Thoracic Society, American Pediatiatrics Association, World Health Organization, etc. continue to identify the true toxic terrorists that cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the US, and millions around the world. Spitzer in testimony to congress testified that particulates, pollutants from industrial point sources allowed by EPA ignoring new source review would cause the premature deaths of more New Yorkers every year than did 9/11 in that one event.
Monitors in the control of the police or homeland security, great idea... we see they did a great job of analyzing and warning residents and workers of the toxics that were in the air around the WTC. Honest data of the air on the ground would have resulted in personal protection of thousands that are now afflicted, or healthy now will realize the consequences later. That's right, homeland security, the EPA, and the mayor's office neglected to tell the responders and remediators about those unmeasured toxics--so, the police and the fire departments should have monitors to get honest information they can use themselves.
Monitors located by the EPA are not sited to reflect the contribution of any industrial point source, or the toxics of any particular residential area; they are sited to give regional data. Virtually all studies have shown that the real exposure of residents is far above those regional values. Very inconvenient, better to take those monitors out of circulation and only let the police control them. Good, honest information is considered a weapon by Homeland Security and their stooges, truly incredible... but, predictable.
The best monitors are humans. The nose, thorax, lungs are very sensitive instruments, monitors of toxic, hazardous and poisonous materials in the air. The body's defense mechanisms do as good a job as possible while the particulates and gases assault human systems to do their damage on adults, children, elders, and those to be born. There is no safe level of particulates less than 2.5 microns, there is no safe level of lead, mercury, magnesium, cadmium, arsenic, etc., there is no safe level of ozone. These elements and compounds, waste products from coal and crude oil combustion ejected into the public airshed will damage downwind human lungs, hearts, and brains.
Human systems try to stop the particulates entering. You can see the effects of these particulates and gases on your family and neighbors on occassion. Some sneeze or cought to rid their systems, some suffer more heavily when toxic plumes and clouds enter their space. The nose is a monitor in itself, larger particles get stuck causing congestion, then are very often removed manually, and smaller material caught deeper is moved up the mucilatory elevator and ejected (to tissue, not out car windows onto
UL certification is basically "it won't start a fire or electrocute anyone, even if it breaks down", not "the audio distortion is guaranteed to be less than x and the picture quality is at least y ", or "the measurement readout is guaranteed to be off by no more than.01 %".
In no way should the above be mistaken for any lack of respect on my part for the valuable and important service provided by Underwriters Laboratories.
BTW, if a device has a UL sticker or symbol on the line cord and/or plug, that just means that the cord and/or plug passed testing. Make sure the device itself is certified.
Just because a circuit breaker is certified and it physically fits into a certified breaker panel does not guarantee that the combination of the two has been certified, and if it hasn't been, then it's not in compliance with the National Electrical Code. Make sure that you don't give your insurance company a loophole (or yourself a nasty case of "smoldering embers where the house used to be").
The kind of "certification" to which the poster way back up the page referred is more along the lines of National Institute of Standards and Technology calibration.
How do you figure out whether to blame Earthlink or Covad? Does Covad offer their own internet accounts? If not, are they planning to anytime soon? Like soon enough that they want to make Earthlink subscribers think about switching ISPs?
--insert bitter remarks about Sprint/Embarq, 1500 feet from a switching station and it was years before DSL was available, here--
If the evidence is aquired in some illegal way, that that must be punished
It is punished. The state is prohibited from profiting from their illegal actions. That means that the police and prosecuters wind up looking bad when they don't get a conviction which they could have gotten if they had obtained the evidence legally, and somebody higher up in the food chain tears a strip off of their hides for screwing up like that and wasting time and resources. Any other punishment would not be sufficient to deter the government from "cheating".
It is necessary that the rights of the accused be vigorously protected in order to try to keep the playing field as level as possible in the face of the government's vastly greater powers and resources, and the only way to protect the rights of those who are accused but are actually innocent is to protect the rights of every accused person.
Somewhere along the line I've gotten the impression that The Constitution never refers to people but always to "the people", i.e., the populace in general, and that when it references individuals it says "persons". I'm not sure exactly which way this pushes the Second Ammendment, though.
Anyway, shorter the wavelengths more data you can pack in one bandwidth.
Bandwidth isn't a unit of measurement, it's something which is measured (in Hertz, i.e., cycles per second). As your other replier mentioned, 20 MegaHertz is 20 MegaHertz, whether it starts at 700 MHz or at 2.5 GHz.
Wavelength, or its inverse, frequency, affects stuff like how far a usable signal travels, whether it gets blocked by pine trees or brick walls, whether it follows the curvature of the earth or bounces off one of the upper layers of the atmosphere, is subject to interference from natural (not man-made) causes, etc.
That idea is so devious I'm ashamed that it never occurred to me. Now if only the new channel 69 could be "Channel 69" all those old television sets would suddenly be in great demand.:-)
The Constitution may prohibit a standing army, but I don't remember anything in there prohibiting government-owned arsenals or saying that the government can't have all the stuff an army will need already purchased and ready to go in case the need to raise an army should arise.
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You seem to have confused voting with moderating :-)
But seriously, you'd get as many votes as there are candidates for a particular position on the ballot which you are casting. In primary elections you'd get to vote "yes" or "no" on any and all candidates for which you are allowed to vote--apparently some states allow independants to vote in primaries and others restrict you to the primary of the party in which you are registered--and in the general election you get to vote "fer 'em" or "again 'em" on each candidate on the ballot.
Of course I'd really like to see government get out of the primary election business altogether and let each party decide for itself at its own expense and in whatever manner they choose to implement who to nominate to run under their banner in the general election, but then I'm heartily sick of both major parties and would like to see them dissolve into bitter, squabbling factions with no real power. Then we could start new parties with different names and no legacies.
If so, would you have had time to do anything else, like eat, sleep, read any other pending legislation, attend any committee meetings, consult legal counsel to make sure that you didn't misunderstand any of the provisions of the Patriot Act, especially the ones that made changes in other laws so that you have to go look up and read all of all of them to understand exactly what's going on, etc?
Would you have been sure that what you read was exactly what got passed and signed into law?
Does that line of thinking mean that we can blame the first World Trade Center bombing on George H.W. Bush?
Why would we want to throw away Biden and Dodd's experience and seniority in the Senate, not to mention the risk of Republicans being elected to their vacated seats, the way John Edwards screwed us over with Richard Burr?
Or just refer to her as Lady McBubba and eliminate any possible confusion.
Just out of curiousity, to which home state do you refer?
I know the feeling. I'm tired of voting with one hand and holding my nose with the other. But I think part of the problem is that we really don't get to vote against anyone.
If I had my way we could vote either for or against all of the candidates. Each one's "no" votes would be subtracted from their "yes" votes, and they'd be ranked accordingly, except that if they all wind up with non-positive totals the winner isn't the one closest to +1, no one is (except the voters :-), a new election (or primary) would be scheduled and none of the previous candidates would be eligible to run.
Under that system you could have voted for both Perot and George H.W. Bush and against Clinton, which would have kept Perot from being a spoiler in that race, and in 2000 you could have voted for both Nader and Gore and against everyone else, or for both Buchanan and Shrub and against everyone else, and the outcome in Florida would have probably been a lot more clear.
So you've been online since that meant using Morse Code?
Well I know that both cause internal discomfort leading to noxious fumes and leave a bitter aftertaste, but does MS use rice too?
Probably because so much of what gets passed off as patriotism is actually jingoism and chauvanism.
texastoxic on Thu Jan 17, 2008, 02:15, says: ... how about that, could be presidents. Just keep the public unaware of the toxic, hazardous and poisonous elements and compounds that industrial point sources pump into the air and your future is assured.
... we see they did a great job of analyzing and warning residents and workers of the toxics that were in the air around the WTC. Honest data of the air on the ground would have resulted in personal protection of thousands that are now afflicted, or healthy now will realize the consequences later. That's right, homeland security, the EPA, and the mayor's office neglected to tell the responders and remediators about those unmeasured toxics--so, the police and the fire departments should have monitors to get honest information they can use themselves.
... but, predictable.
This is truly incredible, but perhaps predictable. The administration and the appointed EPA administrator Johnson have shown no interest in protecting the public health. The EPA has ignored the public health, and proposed keeping particulate standards at current levels rather than reducing to improve the health of Americans. Better to keep the money flowing out of the pockets of the public for over the counter medications, physicians, hospitals, health plans, insurance, and taxes for those that don't have insurance but require treatment, and into corporations that can fund campaigns of coucilmembers, mayors, and
Unfortunately, those pesky researchers and public health groups like the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, American Thoracic Society, American Pediatiatrics Association, World Health Organization, etc. continue to identify the true toxic terrorists that cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the US, and millions around the world. Spitzer in testimony to congress testified that particulates, pollutants from industrial point sources allowed by EPA ignoring new source review would cause the premature deaths of more New Yorkers every year than did 9/11 in that one event.
Monitors in the control of the police or homeland security, great idea
Monitors located by the EPA are not sited to reflect the contribution of any industrial point source, or the toxics of any particular residential area; they are sited to give regional data. Virtually all studies have shown that the real exposure of residents is far above those regional values. Very inconvenient, better to take those monitors out of circulation and only let the police control them. Good, honest information is considered a weapon by Homeland Security and their stooges, truly incredible
The best monitors are humans. The nose, thorax, lungs are very sensitive instruments, monitors of toxic, hazardous and poisonous materials in the air. The body's defense mechanisms do as good a job as possible while the particulates and gases assault human systems to do their damage on adults, children, elders, and those to be born. There is no safe level of particulates less than 2.5 microns, there is no safe level of lead, mercury, magnesium, cadmium, arsenic, etc., there is no safe level of ozone. These elements and compounds, waste products from coal and crude oil combustion ejected into the public airshed will damage downwind human lungs, hearts, and brains.
Human systems try to stop the particulates entering. You can see the effects of these particulates and gases on your family and neighbors on occassion. Some sneeze or cought to rid their systems, some suffer more heavily when toxic plumes and clouds enter their space. The nose is a monitor in itself, larger particles get stuck causing congestion, then are very often removed manually, and smaller material caught deeper is moved up the mucilatory elevator and ejected (to tissue, not out car windows onto
In no way should the above be mistaken for any lack of respect on my part for the valuable and important service provided by Underwriters Laboratories.
BTW, if a device has a UL sticker or symbol on the line cord and/or plug, that just means that the cord and/or plug passed testing. Make sure the device itself is certified.
Just because a circuit breaker is certified and it physically fits into a certified breaker panel does not guarantee that the combination of the two has been certified, and if it hasn't been, then it's not in compliance with the National Electrical Code. Make sure that you don't give your insurance company a loophole (or yourself a nasty case of "smoldering embers where the house used to be").
The kind of "certification" to which the poster way back up the page referred is more along the lines of National Institute of Standards and Technology calibration.
--insert bitter remarks about Sprint/Embarq, 1500 feet from a switching station and it was years before DSL was available, here--
Of course not. It's like a bunch of station wagons full of quarter-inch tapes hurtling down the highway.
...and somehow crossed a German language dictionary into it. It took the better part of 2 months to figure out how to remove it.Well, at least that's not as long as it took to get them out of Paris. :-)
I'm not saying to take them away from the military but do civilians really need them?
It is punished. The state is prohibited from profiting from their illegal actions. That means that the police and prosecuters wind up looking bad when they don't get a conviction which they could have gotten if they had obtained the evidence legally, and somebody higher up in the food chain tears a strip off of their hides for screwing up like that and wasting time and resources. Any other punishment would not be sufficient to deter the government from "cheating".
It is necessary that the rights of the accused be vigorously protected in order to try to keep the playing field as level as possible in the face of the government's vastly greater powers and resources, and the only way to protect the rights of those who are accused but are actually innocent is to protect the rights of every accused person.
Only the verb should be "xerograph", as the process is known as xerography.
Somewhere along the line I've gotten the impression that The Constitution never refers to people but always to "the people", i.e., the populace in general, and that when it references individuals it says "persons". I'm not sure exactly which way this pushes the Second Ammendment, though.
Bandwidth isn't a unit of measurement, it's something which is measured (in Hertz, i.e., cycles per second). As your other replier mentioned, 20 MegaHertz is 20 MegaHertz, whether it starts at 700 MHz or at 2.5 GHz.
Wavelength, or its inverse, frequency, affects stuff like how far a usable signal travels, whether it gets blocked by pine trees or brick walls, whether it follows the curvature of the earth or bounces off one of the upper layers of the atmosphere, is subject to interference from natural (not man-made) causes, etc.
The software is supposed to work for you and not the other way around. Isn't there an option to turn off the spellchecker?
I've always been a bit leery of people who own weapons for religious reasons.
:-)
That idea is so devious I'm ashamed that it never occurred to me. Now if only the new channel 69 could be "Channel 69" all those old television sets would suddenly be in great demand. :-)
The Constitution may prohibit a standing army, but I don't remember anything in there prohibiting government-owned arsenals or saying that the government can't have all the stuff an army will need already purchased and ready to go in case the need to raise an army should arise.
Well, for the time being at least, we still outnumber them. That should help level the playing field somewhat.