I agree the entire thing was a massive failure on the part of Florida's board of elections, and the courts handled it poorly, too, I think. Here we are still arguing about what the "real" will of the voters was 12 years later...
The federal government should be completely out of making decisions about abortion completely. For the same reasons, the state governments should be completely out of making decisions about abortion completely.
Anyone who would assert that reproductive rights should be governed by anyone but the owner of the reproductive system isn't interested in liberty in any way shape or form.
You're including BOTH reproductive systems involved, then, right?
I know it seems like it should be a simple issue, but I don't think it is. It would be nice if unplanned pregnancy was always treated like it was in the movie Juno, but it's not, and there are simply conflicts. Abortion is traumatic for the women involved, and few understand just how traumatic it is before they actually go through it.
I agree with you that strict government rules are invariably wrong-headed on this issue either way, but irresponsible "owners" of many things can present dangers and burdens for their community. Just as if you own land you can't just go dumping any old toxic chemical into the streams running through it because it will poison your neighbor's land, you're expected to avoid creating babies with fetal alcohol syndrome that can't control their own violent outbursts.
That article is really mostly spin, and while it claims to support your contention, the actual studies don't. The one specific counting method that they claim does was not one that any of the registrars would have used, not the method allowed by the Florida SCOTUS, and would never have even come into play in any official count no matter what. The spin article doesn't even bother to mention that the specific method that found more votes for Gore gave him a win by only 3 votes. That's so close that the exact same method used a second time would just as likely come out in favor of Bush anyway.
This is an interesting academic discussion, but entirely irrelevant to the process. The Iowa caucus vote is non-binding, so it's really just more of a suggestion. Think of it as a big straw poll.
The actual result that came out of Iowa is a 3-way tie. Romney, Santorum, and Ron Paul each got 6 delegates.
The department was created via legislation and is under Congressional oversight.
That's kind of true. The "Congressional oversight" is seriously lacking, because the Board is actually funded and and ruled by the Federal Reserve, not congress, which is one problem. The other is that all other regulatory boards of the type are headed by a group of commissioners, not a single man, who is unelected and only held accountable to the Federal Reserve, which is mostly accountable to no one and conducts much of its business in secret.
Being a libertarian who would assert government power over reproductive rights is a bit hypocritical.
Not at all. He hasn't really advocated such a thing, only that the Federal government should be completely out of making decisions about abortion completely, but states have authority to do so. There's nothing hypocritical about that. If you want to be picky about it, you'll have to figure out how a person in the womb can be deprived of life without due process, but as soon as they exit the womb they get those protections, even though they are just as easy to kill or allow to die.
I'm not trying to get into a debate about this, I can see the viewpoint on both sides and there are too many issues and too many people that can only see part of it. I think I'm like most people in that I would like to see abortion as a procedure that is legal, safe, and very rare. I don't know how we get there, but I think screaming at each other about "killing babies" and "enslaving women as incubators" is not going to do it. Which is why I think getting the Federal government out of the issue entirely is a good idea.
Bingo. Politiicans know practically nothing about anything other than getting re-elected, which is why most Western nations are just about bankrupt right now.
Once you understand that then politicians become very easy to train. They respond as reliably as Pavlov's dogs to the right positive and negative reinforcement. You can do it with money, or you can do it with grassroots. Grassroots is more work, and there has been far to much complacency by the constituent population of late, which is why money is winning so often. But it doesn't have to be like that. Very small amounts of money and an informed, involved, and organized group can actually do it better.
Groups like Demand Progress, Campaign for Liberty, Fight for the Future, EFF Activism, and many other groups (even the 9/12 Project is mobilizing on this) understand that dynamic. They know how to apply pressure, and most of them also know how to follow up during election time to back up their promises.
And that's why things like the DISCLOSE act (and other efforts sold as "campaign finance") are so popular in Congress but despised by grassroots activists. They don't really take money out of politics, they serve to enhance the role of money and make things really difficult for small issue-advocacy groups. Especially when it comes time to remind voters of all the bad things the incumbents voted for while in office.
Because people are waking up to the issues in Washington, more and more people are finally starting to get involved. The politicians don't like that, because it can cause bad press (negative reinforcement), challenges during elections (negative reinforcement), and other bad consequences.
Don't blame politicians for behaving that way - they don't have souls.
Right, because not being able to make your own Mickey Mouse cartoons is a giant threat to democracy. Keep things in perspective people.
How about this for perspective: Copyright laws are a government-enforced monopoly. The compensation to the public for granting that monopoly is after providing monopoly-based profit opportunities for the creator, the monopoly ends and the works are available to everyone to use for creating new work. So it's like a mortgage. Payments for 30 years means you own the house and the payments end. This is like the government deciding that you EXISTING mortgage (remember, the agreement for those works already existed) will instead last 60 years, and you don't get to own your house until then. Who profits? Banks.
This is the same situation. The government has STOLEN those works from the American people, and told the profit-earners that they can continue to receive payment for another 40 years. That could be billions or even trillions of dollars redistributed from the poor and working class to the wealthy.
It doesn't matter that they are not in the machine before elections. They will be five minutes after they say their inauguration pledge. Stop wasting time on looking for the non-existent perfect politician for the office and use that free time on making sure that those imperfect politicians who got elected do their job properly.
Well the only way to do that is to be able to influence either elections or politicians' fundraising. So you might as well learn how to do that, then when you tell them how to vote, they'll have to capitulate.
The earth is warming dramatically relative to the rates that took place in the past
While that's true of typical rates of change, the current warming is far from historically unique. There are many instances of rapid climate change with no anthropogenic causes.
the only credible explanation so far put forward to explain it is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Maybe. Certainly every other theory or explanation is marginalized. But I think calling them "not credible" is a little extreme. Lots of scientists' theories have been deemed "not credible" by the mainstream academic for years before they were proven correct.
an increase which happens to coincide almost precisely with the observed warming and the expected warming
Not as well as closely as you would like to suggest (certainly not "precisely"). If it were, climate changes would be easier to predict. None of that is to say that human activity in general has no affect on the climate. It certainly has a contribution. How significant it is, and whether resources should be dedicated to trying to reverse the warming vs. mitigating the harm to humans from the change is very much up for debate.
According to Webster's the first known use of the term was 1909, so I'll take your word about the focus of early studies in the discipline.
I'm not "trapped" by my ideology - it's ideologues like you that have used climate change to justify political implementations of their own vision of world governance that have poisoned the discussions of climate studies.
If it's a strawman (or several), it's only because you didn't bother to make your point, and I was forced to interpret what you were trying to say.
Ice cores, etc. are not just data collection techniques, though, there is plenty of research using those techniques that does not involve the creation of models, for example simply correlating high atmospheric CO2 levels to temperature.
Well that certainly take some work, especially figuring out the algorithms needed to sync the various data sources, correcting for real vs. C14 dating, etc. And, yes, I'll stipulate that it involves research, with tools other than climate models. Not really very specific to the goals of climatology, though, which should be to create a theory that produces verifiable predictions, like all real scientific endeavors.
If you are going to make the extraordinary claim that significantly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration in the air will not cause warming, then it's up to you to prove such a remarkable claim.
Wow you're going to fall back on that? And you accused ME of creating strawmen!!!
That sounds like a newly made-up splinter denomination to me. In fact, they pretty much admit right there that they made it up in order to promote climate change. I guess they felt like the actual scientists that have expertise in geology just weren't following the script.
What are you trying to claim, here? That climatologists do NOT work with computer models? That they make predictions without any modeling? Sure, they collect data - you can't build a computer model without SOME real-world data to build it from.
What an outrageous claim! What "primary research" are you referring to? Temperature readings? Ice cores? Tree rings? That's used for the modelling, but it's just data collection, not "research".
Nuclear and solar is going to take a LONG time to replace all the coal power plants, especially with the massive opposition to nuclear from quarters that include the current administration.
The only really massive change that needs to happen is people need to drive smaller vehicles, for shorter duration.
That's the end to suburban or at least anything resembling rural living.
Commuter / personal vehicle travel is actually a pretty small factor in CO2 emissions. It fact it appears that The major ones are coal power plants and freight transportation. Moving all that freight around is going to be even more critical as population densities grow and distances between them are greater. Stop moving those trucks and it only takes about 2 weeks before people in urban areas are going hungry.
I think you missed the point. This was a specific factory built by a specific company that got $58 million in state funds for building their plant, then abruptly went bankrupt and closed the factory. You can argue a lot about what energy types or industries should or should not get taxpayer support (if any at all), but you can't argue that the money in this case was completely wasted. I don't know much of the history, but it probably had less to do with solar energy than with the state out-bidding other states with subsidies to attract the company to build there.
You might as well start calling them the "Ministry of Food and Drugs", because that's what they are. They have been working exclusively for Big Pharma and Big Ag for many years now, and try to hide that by claiming everything they do is for "consumer protection". That couldn't be further from the truth.
There is a long list of abuses by the FDA the illustrate this point. Raids of farming co-opts, seizures of organic and raw milk farmers, banning of agricultural products that compete with pharmaceuticals (research the history of red yeast rice and Lipitor for a particularly egregious example), lots and lots of "minor" regulations that are squeezing out small and family farmers in favor of corporate chemical farming.
The only thing surprising about this decision is that they didn't come up with something to claim that antibiotics are good and not using them dangerous, and suggest that meat from farms NOT using antibiotics should be taken off the market.
They don't point to research of climatologists to show the earth has always experienced climate change, they point to the research of geologists. Climatologists mostly work with computer models.
Right, we'll just pack up all the farmers whose lands have become inarable and ship them down to Antarctica to start their lives over, while simultaneously rebuilding every supply chain in the world. That'll certainly be less of an inconvenience than replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs!
Wait - is that all we have to do - replace all the incandescent bulbs with CFLs? Awesome, that's great. And here I thought we had to end suburban and rural living, stop all personal transportation other than bicycles, electric car sharing, and high speed trains, revert 80% of the land to wilderness, stop eating meat more than once a week, and implement a global carbon tax to fund 3rd world countries to implement the same policies.
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I agree the entire thing was a massive failure on the part of Florida's board of elections, and the courts handled it poorly, too, I think. Here we are still arguing about what the "real" will of the voters was 12 years later...
The federal government should be completely out of making decisions about abortion completely. For the same reasons, the state governments should be completely out of making decisions about abortion completely.
Anyone who would assert that reproductive rights should be governed by anyone but the owner of the reproductive system isn't interested in liberty in any way shape or form.
You're including BOTH reproductive systems involved, then, right?
I know it seems like it should be a simple issue, but I don't think it is. It would be nice if unplanned pregnancy was always treated like it was in the movie Juno, but it's not, and there are simply conflicts. Abortion is traumatic for the women involved, and few understand just how traumatic it is before they actually go through it.
I agree with you that strict government rules are invariably wrong-headed on this issue either way, but irresponsible "owners" of many things can present dangers and burdens for their community. Just as if you own land you can't just go dumping any old toxic chemical into the streams running through it because it will poison your neighbor's land, you're expected to avoid creating babies with fetal alcohol syndrome that can't control their own violent outbursts.
That article is really mostly spin, and while it claims to support your contention, the actual studies don't. The one specific counting method that they claim does was not one that any of the registrars would have used, not the method allowed by the Florida SCOTUS, and would never have even come into play in any official count no matter what. The spin article doesn't even bother to mention that the specific method that found more votes for Gore gave him a win by only 3 votes. That's so close that the exact same method used a second time would just as likely come out in favor of Bush anyway.
This is an interesting academic discussion, but entirely irrelevant to the process. The Iowa caucus vote is non-binding, so it's really just more of a suggestion. Think of it as a big straw poll.
The actual result that came out of Iowa is a 3-way tie. Romney, Santorum, and Ron Paul each got 6 delegates.
The department was created via legislation and is under Congressional oversight.
That's kind of true. The "Congressional oversight" is seriously lacking, because the Board is actually funded and and ruled by the Federal Reserve, not congress, which is one problem. The other is that all other regulatory boards of the type are headed by a group of commissioners, not a single man, who is unelected and only held accountable to the Federal Reserve, which is mostly accountable to no one and conducts much of its business in secret.
Being a libertarian who would assert government power over reproductive rights is a bit hypocritical.
Not at all. He hasn't really advocated such a thing, only that the Federal government should be completely out of making decisions about abortion completely, but states have authority to do so. There's nothing hypocritical about that. If you want to be picky about it, you'll have to figure out how a person in the womb can be deprived of life without due process, but as soon as they exit the womb they get those protections, even though they are just as easy to kill or allow to die.
I'm not trying to get into a debate about this, I can see the viewpoint on both sides and there are too many issues and too many people that can only see part of it. I think I'm like most people in that I would like to see abortion as a procedure that is legal, safe, and very rare. I don't know how we get there, but I think screaming at each other about "killing babies" and "enslaving women as incubators" is not going to do it. Which is why I think getting the Federal government out of the issue entirely is a good idea.
Actually, the USA is a representative dictatorship.
And eventually they were counted, in their entirety, and the winner was not the person who was certified by the state.
I don't know where you get your information, but according to a study by the Miami Herald and USA Today and another by the National Opinion Research Center found that Bush would have still won if the vote count had proceeded and SCOTUS not intervened.
Bingo. Politiicans know practically nothing about anything other than getting re-elected, which is why most Western nations are just about bankrupt right now.
Once you understand that then politicians become very easy to train. They respond as reliably as Pavlov's dogs to the right positive and negative reinforcement. You can do it with money, or you can do it with grassroots. Grassroots is more work, and there has been far to much complacency by the constituent population of late, which is why money is winning so often. But it doesn't have to be like that. Very small amounts of money and an informed, involved, and organized group can actually do it better.
Groups like Demand Progress, Campaign for Liberty, Fight for the Future, EFF Activism, and many other groups (even the 9/12 Project is mobilizing on this) understand that dynamic. They know how to apply pressure, and most of them also know how to follow up during election time to back up their promises.
And that's why things like the DISCLOSE act (and other efforts sold as "campaign finance") are so popular in Congress but despised by grassroots activists. They don't really take money out of politics, they serve to enhance the role of money and make things really difficult for small issue-advocacy groups. Especially when it comes time to remind voters of all the bad things the incumbents voted for while in office.
Because people are waking up to the issues in Washington, more and more people are finally starting to get involved. The politicians don't like that, because it can cause bad press (negative reinforcement), challenges during elections (negative reinforcement), and other bad consequences.
Don't blame politicians for behaving that way - they don't have souls.
Well judging by the bulk of comments (and moderation) here on /., I think it's pretty clear that as a group they sure as hell aren't libertarians.
Nice strawmen you've constructed in that post.
I didn't construct it, I just responded to it. Maybe you're replying to the wrong post?
Because people are looking for actual opinions from developers, not market-speak from commercial marketers. I mean, mod_mono?? Really???? LOL!
Right, because not being able to make your own Mickey Mouse cartoons is a giant threat to democracy. Keep things in perspective people.
How about this for perspective: Copyright laws are a government-enforced monopoly. The compensation to the public for granting that monopoly is after providing monopoly-based profit opportunities for the creator, the monopoly ends and the works are available to everyone to use for creating new work. So it's like a mortgage. Payments for 30 years means you own the house and the payments end. This is like the government deciding that you EXISTING mortgage (remember, the agreement for those works already existed) will instead last 60 years, and you don't get to own your house until then. Who profits? Banks.
This is the same situation. The government has STOLEN those works from the American people, and told the profit-earners that they can continue to receive payment for another 40 years. That could be billions or even trillions of dollars redistributed from the poor and working class to the wealthy.
It doesn't matter that they are not in the machine before elections. They will be five minutes after they say their inauguration pledge. Stop wasting time on looking for the non-existent perfect politician for the office and use that free time on making sure that those imperfect politicians who got elected do their job properly.
Well the only way to do that is to be able to influence either elections or politicians' fundraising. So you might as well learn how to do that, then when you tell them how to vote, they'll have to capitulate.
The earth is warming dramatically relative to the rates that took place in the past
While that's true of typical rates of change, the current warming is far from historically unique. There are many instances of rapid climate change with no anthropogenic causes.
the only credible explanation so far put forward to explain it is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
Maybe. Certainly every other theory or explanation is marginalized. But I think calling them "not credible" is a little extreme. Lots of scientists' theories have been deemed "not credible" by the mainstream academic for years before they were proven correct.
an increase which happens to coincide almost precisely with the observed warming and the expected warming
Not as well as closely as you would like to suggest (certainly not "precisely"). If it were, climate changes would be easier to predict. None of that is to say that human activity in general has no affect on the climate. It certainly has a contribution. How significant it is, and whether resources should be dedicated to trying to reverse the warming vs. mitigating the harm to humans from the change is very much up for debate.
According to Webster's the first known use of the term was 1909, so I'll take your word about the focus of early studies in the discipline.
I'm not "trapped" by my ideology - it's ideologues like you that have used climate change to justify political implementations of their own vision of world governance that have poisoned the discussions of climate studies.
If it's a strawman (or several), it's only because you didn't bother to make your point, and I was forced to interpret what you were trying to say.
Ice cores, etc. are not just data collection techniques, though, there is plenty of research using those techniques that does not involve the creation of models, for example simply correlating high atmospheric CO2 levels to temperature.
Well that certainly take some work, especially figuring out the algorithms needed to sync the various data sources, correcting for real vs. C14 dating, etc. And, yes, I'll stipulate that it involves research, with tools other than climate models. Not really very specific to the goals of climatology, though, which should be to create a theory that produces verifiable predictions, like all real scientific endeavors.
If you are going to make the extraordinary claim that significantly increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration in the air will not cause warming, then it's up to you to prove such a remarkable claim.
Wow you're going to fall back on that? And you accused ME of creating strawmen!!!
They don't point to research of climatologists to show the earth has always experienced climate change, they point to the research of geologists.
Apparently you have never heard of paleoclimatology.
That sounds like a newly made-up splinter denomination to me. In fact, they pretty much admit right there that they made it up in order to promote climate change. I guess they felt like the actual scientists that have expertise in geology just weren't following the script.
Nope. Read the primary research.
What are you trying to claim, here? That climatologists do NOT work with computer models? That they make predictions without any modeling? Sure, they collect data - you can't build a computer model without SOME real-world data to build it from.
What an outrageous claim! What "primary research" are you referring to? Temperature readings? Ice cores? Tree rings? That's used for the modelling, but it's just data collection, not "research".
Nuclear and solar is going to take a LONG time to replace all the coal power plants, especially with the massive opposition to nuclear from quarters that include the current administration.
The only really massive change that needs to happen is people need to drive smaller vehicles, for shorter duration.
That's the end to suburban or at least anything resembling rural living.
Commuter / personal vehicle travel is actually a pretty small factor in CO2 emissions. It fact it appears that The major ones are coal power plants and freight transportation. Moving all that freight around is going to be even more critical as population densities grow and distances between them are greater. Stop moving those trucks and it only takes about 2 weeks before people in urban areas are going hungry.
I think you missed the point. This was a specific factory built by a specific company that got $58 million in state funds for building their plant, then abruptly went bankrupt and closed the factory. You can argue a lot about what energy types or industries should or should not get taxpayer support (if any at all), but you can't argue that the money in this case was completely wasted. I don't know much of the history, but it probably had less to do with solar energy than with the state out-bidding other states with subsidies to attract the company to build there.
You might as well start calling them the "Ministry of Food and Drugs", because that's what they are. They have been working exclusively for Big Pharma and Big Ag for many years now, and try to hide that by claiming everything they do is for "consumer protection". That couldn't be further from the truth.
There is a long list of abuses by the FDA the illustrate this point. Raids of farming co-opts, seizures of organic and raw milk farmers, banning of agricultural products that compete with pharmaceuticals (research the history of red yeast rice and Lipitor for a particularly egregious example), lots and lots of "minor" regulations that are squeezing out small and family farmers in favor of corporate chemical farming.
The only thing surprising about this decision is that they didn't come up with something to claim that antibiotics are good and not using them dangerous, and suggest that meat from farms NOT using antibiotics should be taken off the market.
They don't point to research of climatologists to show the earth has always experienced climate change, they point to the research of geologists. Climatologists mostly work with computer models.
Right, we'll just pack up all the farmers whose lands have become inarable and ship them down to Antarctica to start their lives over, while simultaneously rebuilding every supply chain in the world. That'll certainly be less of an inconvenience than replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs!
Wait - is that all we have to do - replace all the incandescent bulbs with CFLs? Awesome, that's great. And here I thought we had to end suburban and rural living, stop all personal transportation other than bicycles, electric car sharing, and high speed trains, revert 80% of the land to wilderness, stop eating meat more than once a week, and implement a global carbon tax to fund 3rd world countries to implement the same policies.
I sure am glad you found a simpler solution!
So they're using the same strategy as the proponents of "Intelligent Design"?