I agree that we are in a war. I don't agree with everything else you said.
Although the economy could ALWAYS be better, I think it is doing pretty well, especially considering the massive economic hit we took when two of our biggest centers of industry were destroyed on September 11. Plus, the economy started tanking pretty quickly after the end of the Clinton administration; far too quickly for that to be the result of any actions by Bush. Nothing about the crash of the dot-com boom, for example, can be blamed on President Bush.
As for civil liberties, I've actually read the Patriot Act, and I just don't believe it's the piece of demon-writing that its critics try to inflate it into. You may disagree with me, but let's debate the merits, not just proclaim that our civil liberties have vanished overnight. Besides, both candidates for President supported the Patriot Act - check and see, John Kerry voted for it. (Now, maybe he voted for it before he voted against it, but...)
As for the war, we were attacked. We had been attacked before; even those specific targets had been attacked before. The actions we took as a nation in response to those attacks did not work to reduce the threat; it continued to grow unabated (note that I do not fault President Clinton for what proved to be ineffective responses; the harm caused by the first WTC bombing, the Cole attack, and the various embassy bombings, while evidence of a growing problem, did not inflict enough harm on the country to support a war even if it were justified).
And no, I do not in any way believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 (nor has President Bush or his administration ever said so). But I do believe he was a force of instability in a dangerously unstable region. He, like the Taliban, thumbed his nose at the international community and its very legitimate responses to his past and on-going horrific actions. His army routinely fired on United States pilots patrolling the No-Fly zones imposed by the United Nations itself.
For a very long time, the U.S. did not respond in any significant and effective way to any of this. Frankly, the time for the 2nd Iraq war was when he first threw out the weapons inspectors. But everybody said no, let's try diplomacy. And it didn't work. Saddam did not become more civilized. He did not accept that he had lost Kuwait and lost the support of the civilized world. He continued to try to hide his actions until the very precipice of war. And even then his final "cooperation" with the inspectors was reluctant and not 100% forthcoming. Allowing him to continue in power would have only emboldened other nations to act as he did, with little fear of serious repercussions.
Finally, not only do I agree with President Bush in the determination he has shown, I don't believe that Senator Kerry even knows what he would do at this point. I truly do not know whether he would remove the troops from Iraq within 6 months, or if he would leave them there for 3 or 4 more years. I don't know whether he would continue to provide the funds to rebuild the infrastructure we destroyed in the war, or whether he would yank them back to fund more social programs here. The latter, in my opinion, would be disatrous because it would leave us in that part of the region as having done a lot of damage and then cut and run before repairing it.
So, in a nutshell, that's why I support President Bush.
In the first place, the Supreme Court has ruled on STATE law ever since it was founded. This is because the federal constitution itself proclaims that it is a higher authority than state law.
It is this authority that led the Supreme Court to overrule STATE laws that: established racial discrimination; prohibited birth control distribution; promoted religion in schools; and (among many, many others) prohibited abortions.
So I'm not sure what in the world you are talking about when you claim the Republicans have used the federal supreme court to rule on state law.
As for filibuster being written into the Constitution, that's just not true. Neither the word nor the concept is set forth in the Constitution. It is found in the Senate rules which were adopted pursuant to the authority of the Constitution, but those rules, like all actions of the legislative or executive branches of government, cannot overrule specific provisions of the Constitution.
During the Clinton administration, Republicans didn't filibuster judicial nominees. They didn't have to. As the party in control of the Senate for most of Clinton's tenure, they could prevent nominees from having committee hearings or floor votes by controlling the schedule. Same result, but very different process.
That you should register to vote whether you are a Democrat OR a Republican (or any other party for that matter). I support President Bush and disagree with most of what the previous poster believes about him, but I absolutely agree that every single eligible person should register and vote. And if you don't vote and you don't like the outcome of the election, keep your mouth shut and don't whine about it after the fact.
Well, I would agree with you to the extent that you say we need to blame all the jerks on both side. The problem is that whether you consider someone a jerk can depend largely on whether you agree with them or not.
As for the left being dehumanized, first I would ask what "acts and attitudes" leave the left feeling cornered, beleaugered, and marginalized. Next, I would ask whether if that is really so it might be because the left has gone very far to the left and has become very much out of touch with mainstream society for good reason.
Finally, I would suggest you go back and look at some of the criticisms against the right 20 years ago and continuing to today. According to popular impression, fueled by Democratic leaders, right-wingers are cruel, heartless, and care little for the poor or minorities. If you are in favor of "Reaganomics", you don't just have a different opinion about the best way to make the entire society better, you are against the poor and want to hurt them. If you were against massive funding increases for social programs during the Clinton or Reagan era, you weren't just arguing about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of those programs to improve people's lives, you were arguing against helping the poor and disenfranchised.
My proposal to stop this vicious cycle is that each side shut up about the other's extremes. Democratic leaders stop fanning the flames by lumping all Republicans in with religious zealots (or suggesting that all those with religious views are zealots), and Republican leaders stop lumping all Democrats in with Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand (which would be easier to do if the Democrats didn't choose to show them off with such prominence). We'll each police our own houses.
And we won't use this as an excuse to avoid any debate on difficult issues such as gay marriage and abortion, but to make sure that such debate is as civil and respectful of the other side as possible.
Marbury v. Madison held that the courts had the power to rule on the constitutionality of actions of the other branches of government when those actions properly came before the court for their enforcement (actually, Chief Justice Marshall was remarkably clever because what he found unconstitutional was a law granting particular powers to the court itself, so he grabbed greater power for the court by refusing to accept lesser power).
The case did not say that the Supreme Court was the only one of the three branches of government entitled to decide the constitutionality of laws or other government actions. And in fact the court has generally worked hard to stay out of the internal affairs of the other branches of government. I strongly suspect that, if a lawsuit was filed over a judicial appointment under such circumstances, the court would decide that, since there was a certification from the President of the Senate that the Senate had confirmed the nominee, and the president had in fact appointed that nominee, then that's the end of the question for them. It's Congress' job to regulate itself, not the Court's.
It's not that the Republicans couldn't get 9 of the 49 Democratic Senators to vote for most of these nominees given an up or down vote, it's that the Democrats are preventing such a vote entirely. It's one thing for a Senator to cross party lines to vote for a bill or a nomination, it's entirely different when they cross party lines on what to most people is an obscure procedural motion to limit debate. No Senator with any substantial number of Hispanic voters in his state would dare go on record to vote against confirming Miguel Estrada, but if that same Senator can hide his vote behind procedural technicalities, he'll go with his party most every time.
Not really... The Democrats have used this tactic to prevent votes on perfectly decent judges like Ken Pickering, about whom many, many lies have been told, and Miguel Estrada, who posed to great a potential to become a Supreme Court Justice to be allowed to get his foot in the door.
Since he couldn't remove the justices he didn't like, he tried to ram through legislation which would have increased the size of the court beyond 9, and would have thus effectively stripped the opposing judges of their power to block him. When he had vacancies to fill, he did what all presidents try to do, fill them with judges he hopes will do the things he wants.
What, like it's the evil political parties who are responsible for the divisions within this country? If they behaved this would all suddenly be a magic utopia where everybody agrees and loves each other?
There is still much more which unites us than divides us as a country. But there are real differences which wind up being reflected in the elections system. Abortion which you mention is one of those. There are deeply held believes on this issue by vast groups of citizens on both sides of the political aisle. That's not going to go away any time soon.
Rabid leftists love to demonize Republicans in general and the "Christian Right" in particular as religious zealots, simple-minded people who can't possibly think clearly enough to be taken seriously. The right thinks those leftists are selfish immoral hedonists who care only for their own pleasure. Both points of view are divisive.
Having different values and beliefs, and having those reflected in our elections, is not a bad thing. What's bad is the dehumanizing of our opponents on either side. And I have to tell you, in this election so far, it's the left who has dehumanized the right far more. Just scroll through these comments and read some of the anti-religious postings.
If that were true, the appointments of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush would have been much different. Both have faced lengthy delays of their judicial appointments and have lost difficult nomination battles over political appointments.
Interesting, that's not at all what you said in your original post:
Clearly, Senator Frist is trying to subvert the super majority requirement written into the Constitution.
Guess I'm not the only one to use the word "clear". But in my case I'm supported by the text of the Constitution, not vague appeals to its "spirit".
And if your argument is that Art.II,Sec.2,Clause 2 allows Congress to impose a supermajority requirement for appointments of all judges below the Supreme Court, that could conceivably be a valid argument given the language. But the clause says that the President shall appoint those lesser officers "whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law". It is in fact quite clear that Senate Rules are not "Law", the requirements for passing which are stated in Article I, Section 7, Clause 2. So even if Congress could impose a supermajority by virtue of II,2,2, one house of Congress acting alone could not do so.
I would hope a student of Chief Justice Marshall's namesake would think just a bit more rigorously and less partisan about such an important issue.
What supermajority requirement in the Constitution? Here's what Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution says:
Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
It clearly says that he must have a 2/3 majority for treaties, but not for other confirmations. The Constitutional requirement is that an ordinary majority (51) has the power to confirm a president's judicial nomination. The Senate, by allowing routine filibusters on judicial nominations, is using its internal rules to circumvent the requirements of the Constitution.
You might go back and study a little bit of political history. Each officer of the federal government takes an oath to uphold the constitution. The president, vice-president, every member of Congress all take this oath. They all have their own responsibility to decide whether what they do, vote for, or sign is in accordance with their own understanding of the Constitution. The Supreme Court winds up getting the final say on issues, but that doesn't relieve the responsibility on the other participants in the system to make their own judgments, too.
And the Supreme Court regularly uses a concept it developed many years ago: "the political question" doctrine, which simply says that some issues are so intertwined with, say, the internal operations of Congress, that for it to get involved would be tantamount to improper interference of one branch of government on the other. The Supreme Court would probably duck the question on these grounds.
As opposed to John Kerry's strategy, where he merely allows demonstrable liars like Michael Moore to sit with former presidents during his own convention. If you're going to be a Kerry supporter and criticize Bush for not bashing the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, you need to also call on Sen. Kerry to bash Michael Moore, George Soros, and the others on the far left who make up the most insane tin-foil-hat lies about President Bush.
Did you watch any of the Democratic National Convention? Sen. John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry made the entire convention about his service in Vietnam. His comrades who support him all spoke, they stood with him on the platform. The campaign bio-pic played before his speech was all about his service in the war, and included much of the battle re-creations that Kerry himself filmed. His speech was all about his service in Vietnam. Very little about issues, nothing about his 20-year voting record in the Senate. Nothing about the massive accusations of war crimes he made in the years following his service. He's got no one to blame for bringing up Vietnam except himself.
Actually, we've been mostly screaming and hollering at each other the whole time. I mean, 2 of the founding fathers dueled with each other for goodness sake! (Hamilton and Burr, for the untutored) Historically, the individuals in the mass public pick a side and stick with it. The swing voters, as always, really make the difference in outcome. The public focuses very little on the details of particular issues.
The slogan against one candidate years back was "Ma, Ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!" This was a reference to the alleged illegitimate child of the candidate.
The "good old days" just weren't that good. We only think they were because thankfully it's mostly the pleasant events which survive in our cultural memories.
If you're talking about interstate speeds in major cities during rush hour. Frankly, the interstate highway system within cities is a good example of the inefficencies of government action. Any European will tell you that one reason the U.S. has not developed good mass transit is because our government has chosen to subsidize cars, not busses and subways (except in a few major metropolitan areas). Every free interstate road is a subsidy to car owners, which makes it cheaper for them to commute to work by car rather than by bus or train. It also encourages urban sprawl rather than consolidation of neighborhoods.
The free interstate system has also helped make 18-wheelers more profitable to distribute goods across country than trains or boats. Do you really think that's a good thing?
I'm not saying I'm against the interstate system or that every road should be a toll road. I'm just pointing out that the interstate highway system may not be the best poster boy in favor of government intervention in the marketplace.
I agree that we don't have widespread super-broadband because there's no profit in it in many places. And in some places, a government-run community based fiber system has worked - for now. But government intervention has the tendency of freezing the marketplace and ending the competition for new technologies.
Your cable modem rate would be much higher or may never have come about were it not for the phone companies offering DSL (and vice versa). Both competitors in that situation were willing to absorb large capital costs in order to make sure the other guy didn't get a jump on them.
Right now, there is a lot of competition to find new ways to set up high-speed connections. The cable companies, the phone companies, the electricity companies, cell phone and other wireless provider companies -- all these guys are hard at work looking for new technical solutions. If suddenly everybody has a government subsidized, decent speed pipe going into the home, all that competition will slow down or end and we may miss out on even better technologies that might come down the pipe later.
Look how long the phone service monopoly kept us stuck on 1920s-era technology services. Then France leap-frogged us by setting up Minitel service, but their adoption of Minitel by a government monopoly kept them out of the early stages of BBS and internet growth.
But that's not the problem at all. During the telecom/dot boom, companies were laying fiber left and right. The last reports I read suggested that something like only 10% of it was "lit", while the rest was "dark", not being actively used.
The cross-country spanning fiber is laid. There's plenty of fiber going in to most communities. The problem is the "last mile" of getting it to the home. What's holding us up is companies figuring out how to profit from installing it that last mile from the central distribution point to your home. Will you be willing to pay more for your cable service for all the new features that a fiber-optic pipe to your house will offer? I doubt it. Will you pay more for your dsl or cable-modem connection for 10 or 100 times the speed, or will you decide that your current speed is preferable to an extra $20 or $50 per month?
Well, I was half right. "Viruses" is in fact good English. You are correct that "virii" is not good Latin, and I thank you for calling my attention to it. A quick Google search discovered the following comprehensive discussion on the subject:
The article did NOT say anything close to what the poster says. Yes, it finds that emotional responses stem from the amygdala. Wow, nobody knew that before... Wikipedia on the amygdala
In fact, the article said:
Consider this possibility: the scientists do an exhaustive survey and it turns out that liberal brains have, on average, more active amygdalas than conservative ones.
In other words, the writers at the NYTimes have guessed that some study that might be conducted in the future might find a difference between the amygdala of Republicans and Democrats.
Yes, the article says that the UCLA study found that the best predictor, in brain scans of volunteers, of the volunteer's political party was amygdala activity levels. But the NYTimes article says nothing about how strong a correlation there was, how many subjects were tested, whether a host of variables (such as socio-economic class, age, etc.) were accounted for. It could have a correlation of.51 and be the best predictor, but that wouldn't be a very strong correlation at all.
This is how pseudo-science and junk statistics start. A year from now, liberals will be referring to this past study as having "proved" that conservatives are heartless, and conservatives will cite it for proving that liberals are cowards. Why is this worthy of discussion?
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I agree that we are in a war. I don't agree with everything else you said.
Although the economy could ALWAYS be better, I think it is doing pretty well, especially considering the massive economic hit we took when two of our biggest centers of industry were destroyed on September 11. Plus, the economy started tanking pretty quickly after the end of the Clinton administration; far too quickly for that to be the result of any actions by Bush. Nothing about the crash of the dot-com boom, for example, can be blamed on President Bush.
As for civil liberties, I've actually read the Patriot Act, and I just don't believe it's the piece of demon-writing that its critics try to inflate it into. You may disagree with me, but let's debate the merits, not just proclaim that our civil liberties have vanished overnight. Besides, both candidates for President supported the Patriot Act - check and see, John Kerry voted for it. (Now, maybe he voted for it before he voted against it, but...)
As for the war, we were attacked. We had been attacked before; even those specific targets had been attacked before. The actions we took as a nation in response to those attacks did not work to reduce the threat; it continued to grow unabated (note that I do not fault President Clinton for what proved to be ineffective responses; the harm caused by the first WTC bombing, the Cole attack, and the various embassy bombings, while evidence of a growing problem, did not inflict enough harm on the country to support a war even if it were justified).
And no, I do not in any way believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 (nor has President Bush or his administration ever said so). But I do believe he was a force of instability in a dangerously unstable region. He, like the Taliban, thumbed his nose at the international community and its very legitimate responses to his past and on-going horrific actions. His army routinely fired on United States pilots patrolling the No-Fly zones imposed by the United Nations itself.
For a very long time, the U.S. did not respond in any significant and effective way to any of this. Frankly, the time for the 2nd Iraq war was when he first threw out the weapons inspectors. But everybody said no, let's try diplomacy. And it didn't work. Saddam did not become more civilized. He did not accept that he had lost Kuwait and lost the support of the civilized world. He continued to try to hide his actions until the very precipice of war. And even then his final "cooperation" with the inspectors was reluctant and not 100% forthcoming. Allowing him to continue in power would have only emboldened other nations to act as he did, with little fear of serious repercussions.
Finally, not only do I agree with President Bush in the determination he has shown, I don't believe that Senator Kerry even knows what he would do at this point. I truly do not know whether he would remove the troops from Iraq within 6 months, or if he would leave them there for 3 or 4 more years. I don't know whether he would continue to provide the funds to rebuild the infrastructure we destroyed in the war, or whether he would yank them back to fund more social programs here. The latter, in my opinion, would be disatrous because it would leave us in that part of the region as having done a lot of damage and then cut and run before repairing it.
So, in a nutshell, that's why I support President Bush.
In the first place, the Supreme Court has ruled on STATE law ever since it was founded. This is because the federal constitution itself proclaims that it is a higher authority than state law.
It is this authority that led the Supreme Court to overrule STATE laws that: established racial discrimination; prohibited birth control distribution; promoted religion in schools; and (among many, many others) prohibited abortions.
So I'm not sure what in the world you are talking about when you claim the Republicans have used the federal supreme court to rule on state law.
As for filibuster being written into the Constitution, that's just not true. Neither the word nor the concept is set forth in the Constitution. It is found in the Senate rules which were adopted pursuant to the authority of the Constitution, but those rules, like all actions of the legislative or executive branches of government, cannot overrule specific provisions of the Constitution.
During the Clinton administration, Republicans didn't filibuster judicial nominees. They didn't have to. As the party in control of the Senate for most of Clinton's tenure, they could prevent nominees from having committee hearings or floor votes by controlling the schedule. Same result, but very different process.
That you should register to vote whether you are a Democrat OR a Republican (or any other party for that matter). I support President Bush and disagree with most of what the previous poster believes about him, but I absolutely agree that every single eligible person should register and vote. And if you don't vote and you don't like the outcome of the election, keep your mouth shut and don't whine about it after the fact.
Well, I would agree with you to the extent that you say we need to blame all the jerks on both side. The problem is that whether you consider someone a jerk can depend largely on whether you agree with them or not.
As for the left being dehumanized, first I would ask what "acts and attitudes" leave the left feeling cornered, beleaugered, and marginalized. Next, I would ask whether if that is really so it might be because the left has gone very far to the left and has become very much out of touch with mainstream society for good reason.
Finally, I would suggest you go back and look at some of the criticisms against the right 20 years ago and continuing to today. According to popular impression, fueled by Democratic leaders, right-wingers are cruel, heartless, and care little for the poor or minorities. If you are in favor of "Reaganomics", you don't just have a different opinion about the best way to make the entire society better, you are against the poor and want to hurt them. If you were against massive funding increases for social programs during the Clinton or Reagan era, you weren't just arguing about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of those programs to improve people's lives, you were arguing against helping the poor and disenfranchised.
My proposal to stop this vicious cycle is that each side shut up about the other's extremes. Democratic leaders stop fanning the flames by lumping all Republicans in with religious zealots (or suggesting that all those with religious views are zealots), and Republican leaders stop lumping all Democrats in with Michael Moore and Barbara Streisand (which would be easier to do if the Democrats didn't choose to show them off with such prominence). We'll each police our own houses.
And we won't use this as an excuse to avoid any debate on difficult issues such as gay marriage and abortion, but to make sure that such debate is as civil and respectful of the other side as possible.
Marbury v. Madison held that the courts had the power to rule on the constitutionality of actions of the other branches of government when those actions properly came before the court for their enforcement (actually, Chief Justice Marshall was remarkably clever because what he found unconstitutional was a law granting particular powers to the court itself, so he grabbed greater power for the court by refusing to accept lesser power).
The case did not say that the Supreme Court was the only one of the three branches of government entitled to decide the constitutionality of laws or other government actions. And in fact the court has generally worked hard to stay out of the internal affairs of the other branches of government. I strongly suspect that, if a lawsuit was filed over a judicial appointment under such circumstances, the court would decide that, since there was a certification from the President of the Senate that the Senate had confirmed the nominee, and the president had in fact appointed that nominee, then that's the end of the question for them. It's Congress' job to regulate itself, not the Court's.
It's not that the Republicans couldn't get 9 of the 49 Democratic Senators to vote for most of these nominees given an up or down vote, it's that the Democrats are preventing such a vote entirely. It's one thing for a Senator to cross party lines to vote for a bill or a nomination, it's entirely different when they cross party lines on what to most people is an obscure procedural motion to limit debate. No Senator with any substantial number of Hispanic voters in his state would dare go on record to vote against confirming Miguel Estrada, but if that same Senator can hide his vote behind procedural technicalities, he'll go with his party most every time.
Not really... The Democrats have used this tactic to prevent votes on perfectly decent judges like Ken Pickering, about whom many, many lies have been told, and Miguel Estrada, who posed to great a potential to become a Supreme Court Justice to be allowed to get his foot in the door.
Since he couldn't remove the justices he didn't like, he tried to ram through legislation which would have increased the size of the court beyond 9, and would have thus effectively stripped the opposing judges of their power to block him. When he had vacancies to fill, he did what all presidents try to do, fill them with judges he hopes will do the things he wants.
What, like it's the evil political parties who are responsible for the divisions within this country? If they behaved this would all suddenly be a magic utopia where everybody agrees and loves each other?
There is still much more which unites us than divides us as a country. But there are real differences which wind up being reflected in the elections system. Abortion which you mention is one of those. There are deeply held believes on this issue by vast groups of citizens on both sides of the political aisle. That's not going to go away any time soon.
Rabid leftists love to demonize Republicans in general and the "Christian Right" in particular as religious zealots, simple-minded people who can't possibly think clearly enough to be taken seriously. The right thinks those leftists are selfish immoral hedonists who care only for their own pleasure. Both points of view are divisive.
Having different values and beliefs, and having those reflected in our elections, is not a bad thing. What's bad is the dehumanizing of our opponents on either side. And I have to tell you, in this election so far, it's the left who has dehumanized the right far more. Just scroll through these comments and read some of the anti-religious postings.
If that were true, the appointments of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush would have been much different. Both have faced lengthy delays of their judicial appointments and have lost difficult nomination battles over political appointments.
And if your argument is that Art.II,Sec.2,Clause 2 allows Congress to impose a supermajority requirement for appointments of all judges below the Supreme Court, that could conceivably be a valid argument given the language. But the clause says that the President shall appoint those lesser officers "whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law". It is in fact quite clear that Senate Rules are not "Law", the requirements for passing which are stated in Article I, Section 7, Clause 2. So even if Congress could impose a supermajority by virtue of II,2,2, one house of Congress acting alone could not do so.
I would hope a student of Chief Justice Marshall's namesake would think just a bit more rigorously and less partisan about such an important issue.
No, then nobody would ever be confirmed.
You might go back and study a little bit of political history. Each officer of the federal government takes an oath to uphold the constitution. The president, vice-president, every member of Congress all take this oath. They all have their own responsibility to decide whether what they do, vote for, or sign is in accordance with their own understanding of the Constitution. The Supreme Court winds up getting the final say on issues, but that doesn't relieve the responsibility on the other participants in the system to make their own judgments, too.
And the Supreme Court regularly uses a concept it developed many years ago: "the political question" doctrine, which simply says that some issues are so intertwined with, say, the internal operations of Congress, that for it to get involved would be tantamount to improper interference of one branch of government on the other. The Supreme Court would probably duck the question on these grounds.
As opposed to John Kerry's strategy, where he merely allows demonstrable liars like Michael Moore to sit with former presidents during his own convention. If you're going to be a Kerry supporter and criticize Bush for not bashing the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, you need to also call on Sen. Kerry to bash Michael Moore, George Soros, and the others on the far left who make up the most insane tin-foil-hat lies about President Bush.
Did you watch any of the Democratic National Convention? Sen. John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry made the entire convention about his service in Vietnam. His comrades who support him all spoke, they stood with him on the platform. The campaign bio-pic played before his speech was all about his service in the war, and included much of the battle re-creations that Kerry himself filmed. His speech was all about his service in Vietnam. Very little about issues, nothing about his 20-year voting record in the Senate. Nothing about the massive accusations of war crimes he made in the years following his service. He's got no one to blame for bringing up Vietnam except himself.
Actually, we've been mostly screaming and hollering at each other the whole time. I mean, 2 of the founding fathers dueled with each other for goodness sake! (Hamilton and Burr, for the untutored) Historically, the individuals in the mass public pick a side and stick with it. The swing voters, as always, really make the difference in outcome. The public focuses very little on the details of particular issues.
The slogan against one candidate years back was "Ma, Ma, where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!" This was a reference to the alleged illegitimate child of the candidate.
The "good old days" just weren't that good. We only think they were because thankfully it's mostly the pleasant events which survive in our cultural memories.
If you're talking about interstate speeds in major cities during rush hour. Frankly, the interstate highway system within cities is a good example of the inefficencies of government action. Any European will tell you that one reason the U.S. has not developed good mass transit is because our government has chosen to subsidize cars, not busses and subways (except in a few major metropolitan areas). Every free interstate road is a subsidy to car owners, which makes it cheaper for them to commute to work by car rather than by bus or train. It also encourages urban sprawl rather than consolidation of neighborhoods.
The free interstate system has also helped make 18-wheelers more profitable to distribute goods across country than trains or boats. Do you really think that's a good thing?
I'm not saying I'm against the interstate system or that every road should be a toll road. I'm just pointing out that the interstate highway system may not be the best poster boy in favor of government intervention in the marketplace.
I agree that we don't have widespread super-broadband because there's no profit in it in many places. And in some places, a government-run community based fiber system has worked - for now. But government intervention has the tendency of freezing the marketplace and ending the competition for new technologies.
Your cable modem rate would be much higher or may never have come about were it not for the phone companies offering DSL (and vice versa). Both competitors in that situation were willing to absorb large capital costs in order to make sure the other guy didn't get a jump on them.
Right now, there is a lot of competition to find new ways to set up high-speed connections. The cable companies, the phone companies, the electricity companies, cell phone and other wireless provider companies -- all these guys are hard at work looking for new technical solutions. If suddenly everybody has a government subsidized, decent speed pipe going into the home, all that competition will slow down or end and we may miss out on even better technologies that might come down the pipe later.
Look how long the phone service monopoly kept us stuck on 1920s-era technology services. Then France leap-frogged us by setting up Minitel service, but their adoption of Minitel by a government monopoly kept them out of the early stages of BBS and internet growth.
But that's not the problem at all. During the telecom/dot boom, companies were laying fiber left and right. The last reports I read suggested that something like only 10% of it was "lit", while the rest was "dark", not being actively used.
The cross-country spanning fiber is laid. There's plenty of fiber going in to most communities. The problem is the "last mile" of getting it to the home. What's holding us up is companies figuring out how to profit from installing it that last mile from the central distribution point to your home. Will you be willing to pay more for your cable service for all the new features that a fiber-optic pipe to your house will offer? I doubt it. Will you pay more for your dsl or cable-modem connection for 10 or 100 times the speed, or will you decide that your current speed is preferable to an extra $20 or $50 per month?
CmdrTaco didn't want to give away his new scheme to get back subscription points so he could resell them, so he had to post as AC.
Well, I was half right. "Viruses" is in fact good English. You are correct that "virii" is not good Latin, and I thank you for calling my attention to it. A quick Google search discovered the following comprehensive discussion on the subject:
What's the Plural of Virus?"
"Viruses" is pure English. "Virii" would be pure Latin.
In fact, the article said: In other words, the writers at the NYTimes have guessed that some study that might be conducted in the future might find a difference between the amygdala of Republicans and Democrats.
Yes, the article says that the UCLA study found that the best predictor, in brain scans of volunteers, of the volunteer's political party was amygdala activity levels. But the NYTimes article says nothing about how strong a correlation there was, how many subjects were tested, whether a host of variables (such as socio-economic class, age, etc.) were accounted for. It could have a correlation of
This is how pseudo-science and junk statistics start. A year from now, liberals will be referring to this past study as having "proved" that conservatives are heartless, and conservatives will cite it for proving that liberals are cowards. Why is this worthy of discussion?