Why support democracy? Why bother with all the rhetoric, if, when your side loses, you conclude that the people who voted are idiots? If you're going to beleive in the merits of democracy you can't decry the other side and say they're stupid and that the people who voted for them should have thought better; just realize that two different views on government were presented and american citizens chose the ones they wanted.
If you lost the election, it's not because the voters are dumb or because the other side cheated; it's because you didn't have the message supported by the majority of the american people. When you lose and blame the voters instead of yourself, you denigrate the democratic process and reveal your contempt for those who simply disagree with you. If you live in a democracy and your opinion is a minority opinion you have to accept that it's not going anywhere and that's nobody's fault but yours for choosing to live in a democracy and having a minority opinion.
You're putting words into the original author's mouth. The parent never said anything about an intelligence test or that foolish people should be legally prevented from making a vote. That's something I absolutely agree with. I think you make a terrible decision as a human being to participate in a process that you really don't understand, but I definately don't think anyone should legally prevent people from voting on account of 'intelligence.' His statement wasn't a call for legal action to prevent people who don't know what's going on from voting, it was a call to people to stop encouraging everyone to go out and vote. That's something I totally agree with.
That being said, I really don't understand how anyone can possibly claim that getting a bunch of ignorant people to participate in the political process helps anything. I firmly beleive that this world would be a lot better if fewer people voted.
Consider all of the stupid aggravating crap that politicans say and do. Consider all of those stupid attack ads and assinine twisting of records and the way they embellish what they've accomplished while trying to make it look like the other guy is worse than a murderer/rapist. You've got to realize why they do that - it's becuase there are so many people voting who don't pay attention to the issues and are persuaded to vote based on the assinine messages that the politicans send out. If we would stop encouraging mouth breathing morons to vote, the politicans wouldn't have any reason to do all of that bullshit.
Consider this hypothetical situation - there's about 30% of the population that pays close attention to what goes on in politics. And those two groups are more or less evenly divided between two sides. If you're a political candidate in that situation, you're never going to win anything by appealing to the small percentage of the population that actually votes. The only way you can win is by crafting a policy platform that sounds good to people who never bother to vote. You also need to reach out to those people and get your message to them, which means you need a lot of money. So the fact that there are large numbers of uninformed people weilding a lot of power immediately leads to the monetary corrpution of politics, and the creation political policies that are designed not to make sense or work but to appeal to individuals who, by their very nature, don't understand the workings of government.
I am not calling for intelligence tests or restrictions on voting, because I'm no fool myself and I realize how those would easily be abused. I just think If we'd get rid of this idiotic national idea that nonparticipation is bad, and instead everybody agreed that it was better for uniformed people not to vote, that things would work out better for our great country.
Your post highlights the intellectual chasm between my side yours. Your side says that terrorism isn't that big of a deal; there are other things more imporant that we should deal with. My side says we are in a fight for our very lives and we must view this conflict as an all out war.
You say there isn't much we can to do keep another attack from happening but that things we're doing will provoke another attack. I say that no matter what we do, they're going to want to attack us; it's best for us to kill them first. The war on terror is all about killing. As long as the rate at terrorists are killed (either by themselves or by our forces) exceeds the rate at which they are created, their total numbers decrease and our situation improves. It's a grisly calculus of blood and violence, but the derivatives will be in our favor if we keep bush in power.
Ahem. Allow me to demonstrate to you chaps my fine-tuned statisical methode for calculating the electature of the united states presidentiary - because as we all well know, a correlation implies causation, especially when we have a data set of such magnitudinous proportions...
I personally didn't take the article as anything that was meant to be remotely serious - I figured it was just some people having fun and saying 'hey, look at this neat thing' - is that so wrong? I seriously doubt there is anyone who thinks this actually means something, but everybody's pounced on this story as if someone suggested that installing linux causes bad breath - it's obviously meant to serve as a little bit of humor to lighten to overly virtriolic political atmosohere. Let's not go crazy over it...
You missed the point of my post. I wasn't saying that the palenstinians were like Tom - I was saying Bin Laden is. I dont' care what the other arab countries offered the Israelis; it's not about them - it's about bin laden, and he's clearly stated that unless we stand by and let israel get destroyed, that counts as us being unfairly on israel's side and is therefore justification for him attacking us.
As for your statement that "George Bush is bin Laden's wet dream," I can only conclude that your obvious hatred for the man has blinded your ability to think clearly. Bill Clinton was offered Bin Laden by the sudanese on two occaisions, but he still turned him down because he figured we didn't have enough evidence to convict the man. You say that W has divided the free world, but you're dead wrong about that. True, he has strained relations between certain free countries, but it's not as if france is now working with al-qaeda because they're mad at us, and it's not as if the addition of french troops into Iraq would really help matters one way or the other. As for the idea that Iraq is a 'shooting gallery,' if that's the case then why are so many terrorists attacking Iraqis and not americans? It's because the absolute last thing those people want is a free, democratic iraq.
Kerry, on the other hand, wouldn't pursue nearly as aggreesive a strategy as George W Bush, and only delusional bush haters beleive otherwise. The man wants to treat terrorism as a law enforcement operation, exactly the same way clinton did it. He'd try to rely on the UN and sanctions to accomplish only what brute force can. He'll look for an exit in Iraq, rather than a path to victory, and he'd waste resources on a foolish goose chase of bin laden as opposed to crushing the grunts of al-qaeda. There is no doubt in my mind that the election of kerry as president would be greeted with as much celebration and joy in the middle east as the fall of the twin towers brought.
I want you to consider this situation very carefully:
You have two children, fred and tom. You make them a pie and set it on the table, then leave to take care of some buisness. Fred says they should share the pie. Tom asserts that he should have the whole pie. They get into a fight. When you get back into the room, you ask them what they're fighting about, and they both try to explain their situation. What do you do?
If you do the fair thing and say they should share the pie, Tom accuses you of always taking Fred's side. Taking an 'even handed' approach to this problem is the wrong thing to do; Tom is a prick and any attempt to see his point of view is pointless and stupid.
The same is true of the Israeli/Palenstinian conflict. What do you mean by 'an even handed approach?' It seems to me that saying there should be a palestinian state and an israeli state peacefully coexisiting is reasonably even handed - and that's exactly what bush has called for. George W. Bush is the first american president to call for a two-state solution, and he's also the first american president to pressure the israelis to withdraw from occupied territories without an agreement from the palestinians - something the israelis just voted to do. Bin laden doesn't given a damn about that - in his mind, the israelis don't have a right to live, so the only 'fair' solution in his mind is to let all of the arab countries gang up on israel and wipe them off the face of the earth. He states this clearly in his letter to america:
The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.
Notice that he doesn't call for peacefull coexistence for israel, he calls for its outright destruction - so in his mind, if all of the arab countries in the middle east simultaneously invaded israel, if we did anyting to try and help the israelis out, we'd be acting unfairly.
If you think he doesn't hate us for our freedom, you really need to read the rest of the letter he wrote to the united states. He outlines just why he's making war on us. It's not just our 'support' for israel, it's our way of government:
You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.
It's right there - plain as day. Because we don't follow Islamic law and instead decided to craft our own constitution, we are evil. Read on:
Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?
You mean to tell me that guy isn't nuts?
That said, I certaintly agree that he's not stupid. It's quite obvious what he's trying to do in this latest video - he knows he's getting his ass handed to him and he wants to call it quits. Notice that in his letter he warns that he's going to kick our asses, whereas in this lastest video he tell us that if we leave him alone, he'll leave us alone. Yeah. Right. He's purposely using the same sort of rhetoric bandied about by the leftists in this country in hopes of persuading americans that he's right. Consider the reaction of CryoFan to this same article - he says that Bin Laden Makes m
When a U.S. airstrike accidentally kills an iraqi civilian that's a tragedy but it's something that happens in war. When insurgents use car bombs to blow up lines of Iraqi men whose only crime was wanting to help defend their country from terrorist scum, that's a war crime. It's a god-damned shame that too many liberals here on slashdot are quick to see the first act as evil while they dismiss second act as the justified response of a man when his country is invaded.
I know how much you liberals love to hate George W. Bush. Imagine if he cheats his way into power this election and starts executing people who disagree with them. Are you seriously telling me you're going to be mad if the europeans decide they're going to liberate you? That when the EU decides to eliminate the american government and install a real democracy, you guys wouldn't shit your pants with joy knowing that your hated dictator has been deposed? You seriously mean to tell me that instead of working to help secure the newly formed american democracy, you'd decide to kill anyone working with the europeans? Of course you wouldn't, and you know it. If the shoe was on the other foot and you'd been living under the iron grip of a dictator for all these years, you'd be incredibly happy that you were going to have your freedom, and you'd be pissed at those insurgents who were fighting the good men who came to free you. Of course you wouldn't be happy about it when a misplaced EU bomb killed a family member of yours, but i'm sure you wouldn't then decide to capture and decapitate european charity workers.
Please pull your heads out of your collective asses and realize that there is a fight going on, between good people who are fighting for democracy and self determination, and barbians whose goal is to kill anyone who will not submit to their vision of worldwide islamic theocracy.
Those fighting the coalition in Iraq right now are not oppressed Iraqis trying to liberate themselves by foreign oppression, they are evil men whose goal is destroy freedom around the world. I know this may sound naive and stupid when I call men evil, but there's something seriously wrong with you if you don't see people who would intentionally kill civilians and decapitate charity workers as anything but evil. If they really cared so much about iraqi freedom, why would they continually attack the Iraqis who are signing up with the iraqi national guard? Just this past week there were 49 members of the nascent Iraqi Guard were murdered. You mean to tell me that murdering men who were trying to protect your country is something a concerned citizen should do? If you're so blind that you can't see these cowards as anything but victims of United States agression, I hope to god you are never given any power.
So the flat out endoresments of John Kerry by the likes of Yassir Arafat and Mohamad Mathahir don't mean nearly as much as the pseudo-endorsment bush received from putin and the iranian mullahs?
No one with the intelligence of an eggplant woould do X
Most likely, bush has at least the intelligence of an eggplant.
Therefore, i find it very unlikely that bush would do such a thing.
The whole point of my post was that there were two distinct possibilities:
Bush is really incredily stupid
Bush honestly thought there was a threat.
I was just pointing out that, to me, the second possibility seemed far more likely than the first to me.
You say evil doesn't come into it - I don't see how anyone could make the case that lying in order to get the country to go to war for your own personal benefit wouldn't be one of the worst things a leader could ever do.
Can we please, just for a few minutes, remove our tinfoil bodysuits and think??
So, Bush lied to the american public in order to get us to to go war. Why would he do that? For political advantage? That's maybe a plausible theory, so let's think about it. He got a rise in the polls after septh 11th, so maybe he wanted to take us to war in Iraq as a way to keep his approval numbers up, and maybe just line the pockets of his corporate cronies. At first glance, this sounds plausible. That's how you can explain the president's willingness to wage a war in Iraq - it's close to afghanistan, right? And those terrorists were arabs. He thinks that should be enough to convice the average shmuck american. Then when you consider that we know we could crush the Iraqi army easly, he can spew a bunch of feel-good rhetoric: we're ridding the world of a dangerous tyrant and liberating the iraqi people. As an added bonus, he can give the contracts for getting all of that iraqi oil to his corporate buddies. It sounds like a decent plan.
Now, please, think critically about that for a second. The hypothesis is that bush's desire for going to war was based on purely political (and perhaps montary) reasons - so that he could get a boost in the poll numbers. A few big questions should present themselves:
Bin Laden: What about catching Bin Laden? Wouldn't catching him bring bush a massive boost in the polls? If you're after poll boosts, going into iraq is a decent way to do it, but why not put all of your effort into catching that guy alive? You could drag his trial out for months, and then hang him for 3,000 counts of murder during the democratic national convention.
Timing: If you're going to war in Iraq, when's the best time to do it? We know it'll be a relatively quick victory. The first gulf war only lasted a hundred days, so even if you guess it'll take you three times as long, you're still under a year. We went in march of 2003, so that means the war would be over in march of 2004, before the heat of the election season. Why would you want to go in then? If the war goes well and you get a quick victory, it's over before the election even matters and the boost in the polls could easily wear off. If it drags on longer, you're in an even worse situation, because you could be accused of mismanaging the war. That's the last thing you want - a rising body count as the election day creeps closer and closer, with no end to the war in sight. If you really want political advantage, you'd drag out the pre-war negotiation period untill july 2004, when you decide that we've had enough negotiations. That way, no one can acuse you of rushing to war - you can spend a year planning for all sorts of contingency scenarios, pleading for more help from allies, and sending in more 'inspections' just to claim that saddam wouldn't cooperate. When election time rolls around, you'll be in the thick of fighting, and hopefully there'll be footage on TV of the american forces kicking butt, interspersed with big ads featuing you standing in front of a flag.
WMD: Why would you make up a reason for going to war? It's not as if your republican supporters wouldn't back you all the way, regardless of your reasoning for going to war. All you've got to do is say that we've given saddam enough time to abide by his resolutions, and he's not cooperating. Your loyalists will support you no matter what, those damned liberals will oppose you no matter what, and anyone dumb enough to support the president just because we're currently at war isn't going to need much convincing. Inventing a reason to go to war only invites intense criticism when it's found out that the reason is completely false. When you consider this in tandem with the timing issue, it makes even less sense. If you know there is no threat posed by WMD, why do you invade 20+ months before the election, when there will have been plenty of time for you to find those WMD
You're dead right on this - I really just can't fathom how they managed to come up with a tree-growth algorithm that takes 15% of the processor speed - all you'd have to do is just one small subtraction calculation whenever you load a scene. Whenever you're about to enter a new area, you load up all of the trees, calculate how old they are based on their born on date, and then put the necessary model into the scene. When you're loading stuff of a disc the processor isn't doing a lot since you're just waiting for the data to come in, so it seems to me that this feature really could have been implemented.
Notice that few have bothered to ask what was on those documents that the democrats were writing. Those documents contained plenty of evidence that the democrats were stalling appointment of judges for purely political reasons, in order to appease certain special interest groups. One memo in particular said that they wanted to make sure Estrada didn't get a federal judgeship "because he is a latino." Anyone attempting to bring up what was in the documents was instantly rebutted, being told that since the documents were illegitamately obtained, it doesn't matter what was in them.
That's all well and good, until you look at what's going on in the deal with CBS - They're saying that, yeah, maybe those documents were falsified, but that's not important - what's important is what the documents said. In other words, It's not ok to use illegitamately obtained documents to criticize the democrats, but it's perfectly OK to used forged documents to criticize republicans.
So the gap between the rich and the poor grows - so what? Suppose you earn $10,000 a year and I earn $100,000 year, working for the same company. The boss comes in and says that due to increased sales, you and I both get a raise. I'm now making $10,000,000 a year, while you make $100,000 a year. You used to be earning 1/10 of what I made, but now it's 1/100th. The gap between us got bigger, but so what ? You're still a hell of a lot better off than you were. Does it affect you, in any way, shape or form, how much money I make? No! All that matters if how much you make and what you can buy with that money.
The 'gap' is probably the best example of class-warfare claptrap that's being spread about by economic naysayers. The fact is that any 'gap' is irrelevant, as long as everyone is getting better, which they are. Even the poorest of the poor have cell phones, air conditioning, automobiles, refridgerators, color TV's and 2000 calorie diets. They don't have to worry about dying of typhus, malaria, diptheria, diaherra, the flu, measles, mumps, smallpox, or rubela. A man can work just 40 hours and a week and easily support himself. Roman Emperors couldn't possiblly have imagined the life of luxury that the poorest of americans enjoys.
So yes, the gap between rich and poor has been growing. Does it matter? Not at all.
Two consecutive quarters of negative growth consitute a recession. That's what the term means, and so there isn't anthing inaccurate about saying that the small recession we had ended years ago, even if the job situation is sucky right now
As for the current lack of jobs and the patchy situation of a lot of americans, you can take it one of two ways.
You can take it as a sign that the U.S. economy is falling apart
Or, you can view it as a low point in an otherwise unstoppable march of progress.
I choose the second option. Make fun of him all you want, but Schwarzenegger said it best - don't be a girlie-man economist. It used to be that germany and japan were going to crush our economies and that all americans were poor.
Then, in the early 90's, many americans bought into the idea that NAFTA was a terrible peice of legislation that was going to send all of our jobs to mexico. There's never going to be a shortage of pessimists and naysayers claiming that now things are different - now, this time our economy is in trouble unless the government can do something to stop it.
They're wrong. They've always been wrong, and they will always be wrong. Don't buy into the pessimism and anti-trade rhetoric out there. If you've lost your job due to oursourcing, of course that sucks. But no one ever accomplished anything by being pessimistic and complaining about their situation. Get out there and look for a job - any job. Don't tell yourself that you can't find one or that there aren't any - negative predictions are self-fulfilling. It's far better to be foolishly optimistic about your situation than needlessly pessimisstic.
The US economy is an incredbily powerfull beast that has brought incredible wealth to millions of people. It's not going to stop working over night. Current trade situations are a result of an economy out of equilbrium. It'll adjust itself, and then we'll be back on track and new jobs will be created and we'll all be wealthier- you'll see.
I don't get how you can possible see the ability to villifiy or deify an political or corporate institution as a good. The propensity of geeks to claim that they're being opressed by evil entities makes us sound completely absurd. And it sure as hell doesn't help further the nature of political discourse in the country - it just leads to partisan yelling and bickering. There are already too many people who see the republicans as evil and the democrats as good, and vice versa. Is it that hard to beleive that all the political parties want what they feel is best for the country?
I grew up in a republican family and I used to beleive that the democrats were evil. Why not - everything they did made no sense to my young mind. I immediately disregarded anyone who tried to say that the republicans were doing something bad or stupid - obviously this person didn't know anything. It was only my incredibly strong desire to ask 'why' about everything I observe that led me to the current realization that I've got: The democrats think their way of running the country is the best, while the republicans think their way is best. They both like the country and they both want america to be better off; they just disagree on how to accomplish that.
Saying that one group is evil and one group is good certaintly isn't going to help the different political groups in america start to rationally consider their differences and debate the benefits of policy- all it does is promote fighting. Do you honeslty think you're going to convince republicans to seiriously consider the libertarian point of view if you go and tell them the republican party is evil? Likewise, saying that the democratic party is evil will only further their desire to prevent the democrats from coming to power, no matter what.
The libertarian party already has an ill-deserved reputation for being a bunch of kooks. Saying that that the the major parties are 'evil' really isn't going to help matters. I used to consider myself a republican. Now I consider myself a libertarian conservative. I didn't change my stance because of someone convincing me that my former beleifs were evil. I changed my opinions because of rational thought about the implications and effects of government policy. If you want to get more people to seriously consider the libertarian party, you're not going to help yourself by telling them that their current beleifs are just evil. You need to get them to stop and consider the motives and ideals behind the politics and consider the real world ramifications of the ideas of the libertarian party.
Oops. I made a mistake on the CNN numbers. 'Google search for nader on cnn' yielded 10,900 results, although the ratio I have posted is the correct value.
I'm not really sure why the numbers for abc are so low, but in any case it's quite obvious that your claim was flat out wrong, and that you didn't bother to do a little research before you made it. I'm so sick of this situation whereby any sort of kook theory or idea that says the republicans/foxnews/haliburton are all up to no good is instantly beleived by the leftists in this country, without regard to any evidence or fact. Yet when someone tries to cliam that al-qaeda was in cahoots with iraq, suddenly you guys get interested in the scientific method again and demand some evidence.
Unless you're now going to jump to another kook theory that foxnews is covering nader so much more than the other guys because they want nader to win, you're going to have to retract your statement and admit you were wrong, or at least that fox news isn't as biased as MSNBC or CBS.
The difference between republicans and democrats, with respect to race issues, is most clearly illustrated by the Miguel Estrada issue. The democrats wanted to deny Estrada a judgeship not only because he was conservative, but because he was a latino. The republicans don't give a damn about the color of a person's skin - they'll give anyone who's qualified a position, so long as they deserve it. Has anyone appointed more minorities to meaningful positions than bush?
The democrats, on the other hand, claim to be the party that represents the will of minorities, but then they'll criticize any minority who happens to vote republican. They derogatorily sneer at black republicans. The last thing they want is more qualified minority republicans in big name positions because it will mean that they might actually have to fight for the minority vote instead of just assumign they'll get it by drumming up racial fears and associating bush with burning churches. The democrats aren't complaning that republicans don't welcome minorities; they're complaining that republicans don't welcome liberals.
People at large seem to lack important estimation skills. In my observation, people seem to consider a billion, million, and trillion more or less the same. In a December 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter estimated the U.S. Budget deficit at 6.4 quadrillion dollars. To anyone with an actual understanding of such a number, that figure is completely ludicrous - but it went unoticed by the editors.
We need increased numerical literacy - so that people understand just how much money 1 million vs. 10 million vs 100 million etc etc actually is. I'm sick of hearing someone say 'are you aware that we spend $x billion dollars a year on thing y?' and then expect me to be outraged or surprised. They just think that 'billion' sounds like a lot - but would they have the same response if it were $x*100 million, or $x*10 billion?
Don't count on it Indeed
on
They Killed Ken!
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· Score: 5, Informative
Everyone should RTFA here - big time. This whole thing is based on something that showed up on this 'TV Week' website, and the company is not confirming the story...
Everyone keeps overlooking the most important part of just why we have an electoral college. It's because our country was founded as a republic - not a democracy. You won't see anything in the constitution about a popular vote, because that's not how the founding fathers wanted the president to be elected. They envisioned a system whereby electors, chosen by the invidual states, would vote for president. They hated the idea of political parties and abhorred the idea that a 'gentleman' should campaign for political office.
The system that they devised was very clever, and based upon models that had worked historically. They decided not to have congress or state legislatures elect a president sice such a method would surely result in partisan bickering or presidents selected by just a few large states without regard to the intrest of others. Instead, they decided to have this college of electors, who hopefully would be the wisest men in the states which they represented, and would choose whom they thought was the best president, without considering anything like political party.
Unfortunately, if you look at what we've got now, I think you'd be hard pressed to make the case that great men like Washington and Jefferson wouldn't be downright pissed at our sorry system of national political parties selecting two men who pander to the various special interest groups that hold out their hands to the government for help. Now we've got people whining that the electoral college 'doesn't work' and that we should move to some other system. Why is that that we can't realize our problem is that we aren't following the constitutional model?
Look at the situation we've got now - it's as if the states are invisible. All the real power to do anything resides with the federal government, and that government is giving itself more and more power. The ability to control health insurance, the ability to regulate what you can and cannot say during a political debate, the ability to pay for your school and your medicine, and to dictate who can hire whom and for what reasons - all of those things are or will soon be under federal jurisdiction. Can you name your state senator or representative? When was the last time a piece of state legistlation or a decision by your state's supreme court made you happy/pissed? Such a situation is certainly not what our founding fathers had envisioned. Let's face it - we're no longer the republic of independent states that our forefathers hoped for - we're just 'America', and progressing our way towards a national socialist democracy.
What's the solution ? It's not too difficult, really.
First, stop giving so much power to the federal government. The real power to do anything should belong with the states. That means reducing the scope and role of the federal government so that it does very little other than keep us safe. We need to end things like social security, medicare, medicaid, federal funding for education, federal subsidies for any producer of any product, and federal grants or aid to any sort of company or corporation, for any reason.
Second, learn to leave everyone else alone, and to start seeing your state government as the most important form of government. Imagine this: New York is more or less a socialst state, with cradle-to-the-grave welfare, health care for all citizens, free eduction for everyone from kindergarten through college, zero tolerance for racism, sexism or homophobia, and strict environmental cleanliness laws. Meanwhile, Texas has no form of welfare whatsoever. There are no laws restricting firearms ownership, low taxes, and little government interference with buisness decisions. Abortion and sodomy are illegal, and every day schools start off with a prayer. Conservatives who live in Texas will be very happy, as will liberals who live in New York. If you dont like the political atmosphere where you live, move somewhere that suits your fancy for you.
The possible benefit they're looking for is to have a bunch of people harrassing the republican delegates. Remember when 'Bruce Almighty' came out, and there was that big flap because Bruce's beeper showed 'God's' phone number, and a bunch of idiots called up the number and asked for God? I'm sure that's the intended goal - if a bunch of kooks have start calling your house or driving by and spooking you out, most likely it'll give you second thoughts about participating in the GOP convention again.
That said, I don't think this reflects badly on anbody except the people who posted those addresses - I'm sure if the same thing were done by a republican group, you'd have a bunch of nuts calling to pester the democrat convention goers. It just makes the indymedia people look like a bunch of jerks
If there's anything I'm sick of in this country it's people acting like their party has a monopoly on good virtues, good values, and the truth. Is it that unlikely that the vast majority of us really do love this country, and that we just disagree on how it should be run?
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Why support democracy? Why bother with all the rhetoric, if, when your side loses, you conclude that the people who voted are idiots? If you're going to beleive in the merits of democracy you can't decry the other side and say they're stupid and that the people who voted for them should have thought better; just realize that two different views on government were presented and american citizens chose the ones they wanted.
If you lost the election, it's not because the voters are dumb or because the other side cheated; it's because you didn't have the message supported by the majority of the american people. When you lose and blame the voters instead of yourself, you denigrate the democratic process and reveal your contempt for those who simply disagree with you. If you live in a democracy and your opinion is a minority opinion you have to accept that it's not going anywhere and that's nobody's fault but yours for choosing to live in a democracy and having a minority opinion.
You're putting words into the original author's mouth. The parent never said anything about an intelligence test or that foolish people should be legally prevented from making a vote. That's something I absolutely agree with. I think you make a terrible decision as a human being to participate in a process that you really don't understand, but I definately don't think anyone should legally prevent people from voting on account of 'intelligence.' His statement wasn't a call for legal action to prevent people who don't know what's going on from voting, it was a call to people to stop encouraging everyone to go out and vote. That's something I totally agree with.
That being said, I really don't understand how anyone can possibly claim that getting a bunch of ignorant people to participate in the political process helps anything. I firmly beleive that this world would be a lot better if fewer people voted.
Consider all of the stupid aggravating crap that politicans say and do. Consider all of those stupid attack ads and assinine twisting of records and the way they embellish what they've accomplished while trying to make it look like the other guy is worse than a murderer/rapist. You've got to realize why they do that - it's becuase there are so many people voting who don't pay attention to the issues and are persuaded to vote based on the assinine messages that the politicans send out. If we would stop encouraging mouth breathing morons to vote, the politicans wouldn't have any reason to do all of that bullshit.
Consider this hypothetical situation - there's about 30% of the population that pays close attention to what goes on in politics. And those two groups are more or less evenly divided between two sides. If you're a political candidate in that situation, you're never going to win anything by appealing to the small percentage of the population that actually votes. The only way you can win is by crafting a policy platform that sounds good to people who never bother to vote. You also need to reach out to those people and get your message to them, which means you need a lot of money. So the fact that there are large numbers of uninformed people weilding a lot of power immediately leads to the monetary corrpution of politics, and the creation political policies that are designed not to make sense or work but to appeal to individuals who, by their very nature, don't understand the workings of government.
I am not calling for intelligence tests or restrictions on voting, because I'm no fool myself and I realize how those would easily be abused. I just think If we'd get rid of this idiotic national idea that nonparticipation is bad, and instead everybody agreed that it was better for uniformed people not to vote, that things would work out better for our great country.
Your post highlights the intellectual chasm between my side yours. Your side says that terrorism isn't that big of a deal; there are other things more imporant that we should deal with. My side says we are in a fight for our very lives and we must view this conflict as an all out war.
You say there isn't much we can to do keep another attack from happening but that things we're doing will provoke another attack. I say that no matter what we do, they're going to want to attack us; it's best for us to kill them first. The war on terror is all about killing. As long as the rate at terrorists are killed (either by themselves or by our forces) exceeds the rate at which they are created, their total numbers decrease and our situation improves. It's a grisly calculus of blood and violence, but the derivatives will be in our favor if we keep bush in power.
It was confirmed that half of all americans earn less than the median income...
Seriously, how is this news? Even rigorously scientific polls are highly suspect, so how does a nonscientific poll merit anything other than an nod?
Ahem. Allow me to demonstrate to you chaps my fine-tuned statisical methode for calculating the electature of the united states presidentiary - because as we all well know, a correlation implies causation, especially when we have a data set of such magnitudinous proportions ...
I personally didn't take the article as anything that was meant to be remotely serious - I figured it was just some people having fun and saying 'hey, look at this neat thing' - is that so wrong? I seriously doubt there is anyone who thinks this actually means something, but everybody's pounced on this story as if someone suggested that installing linux causes bad breath - it's obviously meant to serve as a little bit of humor to lighten to overly virtriolic political atmosohere. Let's not go crazy over it...
You missed the point of my post. I wasn't saying that the palenstinians were like Tom - I was saying Bin Laden is. I dont' care what the other arab countries offered the Israelis; it's not about them - it's about bin laden, and he's clearly stated that unless we stand by and let israel get destroyed, that counts as us being unfairly on israel's side and is therefore justification for him attacking us.
As for your statement that "George Bush is bin Laden's wet dream," I can only conclude that your obvious hatred for the man has blinded your ability to think clearly. Bill Clinton was offered Bin Laden by the sudanese on two occaisions, but he still turned him down because he figured we didn't have enough evidence to convict the man. You say that W has divided the free world, but you're dead wrong about that. True, he has strained relations between certain free countries, but it's not as if france is now working with al-qaeda because they're mad at us, and it's not as if the addition of french troops into Iraq would really help matters one way or the other. As for the idea that Iraq is a 'shooting gallery,' if that's the case then why are so many terrorists attacking Iraqis and not americans? It's because the absolute last thing those people want is a free, democratic iraq.
Kerry, on the other hand, wouldn't pursue nearly as aggreesive a strategy as George W Bush, and only delusional bush haters beleive otherwise. The man wants to treat terrorism as a law enforcement operation, exactly the same way clinton did it. He'd try to rely on the UN and sanctions to accomplish only what brute force can. He'll look for an exit in Iraq, rather than a path to victory, and he'd waste resources on a foolish goose chase of bin laden as opposed to crushing the grunts of al-qaeda. There is no doubt in my mind that the election of kerry as president would be greeted with as much celebration and joy in the middle east as the fall of the twin towers brought.
I want you to consider this situation very carefully:
You have two children, fred and tom. You make them a pie and set it on the table, then leave to take care of some buisness. Fred says they should share the pie. Tom asserts that he should have the whole pie. They get into a fight. When you get back into the room, you ask them what they're fighting about, and they both try to explain their situation. What do you do?
If you do the fair thing and say they should share the pie, Tom accuses you of always taking Fred's side. Taking an 'even handed' approach to this problem is the wrong thing to do; Tom is a prick and any attempt to see his point of view is pointless and stupid.
The same is true of the Israeli/Palenstinian conflict. What do you mean by 'an even handed approach?' It seems to me that saying there should be a palestinian state and an israeli state peacefully coexisiting is reasonably even handed - and that's exactly what bush has called for. George W. Bush is the first american president to call for a two-state solution, and he's also the first american president to pressure the israelis to withdraw from occupied territories without an agreement from the palestinians - something the israelis just voted to do. Bin laden doesn't given a damn about that - in his mind, the israelis don't have a right to live, so the only 'fair' solution in his mind is to let all of the arab countries gang up on israel and wipe them off the face of the earth. He states this clearly in his letter to america:
The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.
Notice that he doesn't call for peacefull coexistence for israel, he calls for its outright destruction - so in his mind, if all of the arab countries in the middle east simultaneously invaded israel, if we did anyting to try and help the israelis out, we'd be acting unfairly.
If you think he doesn't hate us for our freedom, you really need to read the rest of the letter he wrote to the united states. He outlines just why he's making war on us. It's not just our 'support' for israel, it's our way of government:
You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.
It's right there - plain as day. Because we don't follow Islamic law and instead decided to craft our own constitution, we are evil. Read on:
Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?
You mean to tell me that guy isn't nuts?
That said, I certaintly agree that he's not stupid. It's quite obvious what he's trying to do in this latest video - he knows he's getting his ass handed to him and he wants to call it quits. Notice that in his letter he warns that he's going to kick our asses, whereas in this lastest video he tell us that if we leave him alone, he'll leave us alone. Yeah. Right. He's purposely using the same sort of rhetoric bandied about by the leftists in this country in hopes of persuading americans that he's right. Consider the reaction of CryoFan to this same article - he says that Bin Laden Makes m
When a U.S. airstrike accidentally kills an iraqi civilian that's a tragedy but it's something that happens in war. When insurgents use car bombs to blow up lines of Iraqi men whose only crime was wanting to help defend their country from terrorist scum, that's a war crime. It's a god-damned shame that too many liberals here on slashdot are quick to see the first act as evil while they dismiss second act as the justified response of a man when his country is invaded.
I know how much you liberals love to hate George W. Bush. Imagine if he cheats his way into power this election and starts executing people who disagree with them. Are you seriously telling me you're going to be mad if the europeans decide they're going to liberate you? That when the EU decides to eliminate the american government and install a real democracy, you guys wouldn't shit your pants with joy knowing that your hated dictator has been deposed? You seriously mean to tell me that instead of working to help secure the newly formed american democracy, you'd decide to kill anyone working with the europeans? Of course you wouldn't, and you know it. If the shoe was on the other foot and you'd been living under the iron grip of a dictator for all these years, you'd be incredibly happy that you were going to have your freedom, and you'd be pissed at those insurgents who were fighting the good men who came to free you. Of course you wouldn't be happy about it when a misplaced EU bomb killed a family member of yours, but i'm sure you wouldn't then decide to capture and decapitate european charity workers.
Please pull your heads out of your collective asses and realize that there is a fight going on, between good people who are fighting for democracy and self determination, and barbians whose goal is to kill anyone who will not submit to their vision of worldwide islamic theocracy.
Those fighting the coalition in Iraq right now are not oppressed Iraqis trying to liberate themselves by foreign oppression, they are evil men whose goal is destroy freedom around the world. I know this may sound naive and stupid when I call men evil, but there's something seriously wrong with you if you don't see people who would intentionally kill civilians and decapitate charity workers as anything but evil. If they really cared so much about iraqi freedom, why would they continually attack the Iraqis who are signing up with the iraqi national guard? Just this past week there were 49 members of the nascent Iraqi Guard were murdered. You mean to tell me that murdering men who were trying to protect your country is something a concerned citizen should do? If you're so blind that you can't see these cowards as anything but victims of United States agression, I hope to god you are never given any power.
So the flat out endoresments of John Kerry by the likes of Yassir Arafat and Mohamad Mathahir don't mean nearly as much as the pseudo-endorsment bush received from putin and the iranian mullahs?
You've sort of gotten it.
Except, my argument was of the form:
X Would be horrendously stupid
No one with the intelligence of an eggplant woould do X
Most likely, bush has at least the intelligence of an eggplant.
Therefore, i find it very unlikely that bush would do such a thing.
The whole point of my post was that there were two distinct possibilities:
- Bush is really incredily stupid
- Bush honestly thought there was a threat.
I was just pointing out that, to me, the second possibility seemed far more likely than the first to me.You say evil doesn't come into it - I don't see how anyone could make the case that lying in order to get the country to go to war for your own personal benefit wouldn't be one of the worst things a leader could ever do.
Can we please, just for a few minutes, remove our tinfoil bodysuits and think??
So, Bush lied to the american public in order to get us to to go war. Why would he do that? For political advantage? That's maybe a plausible theory, so let's think about it. He got a rise in the polls after septh 11th, so maybe he wanted to take us to war in Iraq as a way to keep his approval numbers up, and maybe just line the pockets of his corporate cronies. At first glance, this sounds plausible. That's how you can explain the president's willingness to wage a war in Iraq - it's close to afghanistan, right? And those terrorists were arabs. He thinks that should be enough to convice the average shmuck american. Then when you consider that we know we could crush the Iraqi army easly, he can spew a bunch of feel-good rhetoric: we're ridding the world of a dangerous tyrant and liberating the iraqi people. As an added bonus, he can give the contracts for getting all of that iraqi oil to his corporate buddies. It sounds like a decent plan.
Now, please, think critically about that for a second. The hypothesis is that bush's desire for going to war was based on purely political (and perhaps montary) reasons - so that he could get a boost in the poll numbers. A few big questions should present themselves:
You're dead right on this - I really just can't fathom how they managed to come up with a tree-growth algorithm that takes 15% of the processor speed - all you'd have to do is just one small subtraction calculation whenever you load a scene. Whenever you're about to enter a new area, you load up all of the trees, calculate how old they are based on their born on date, and then put the necessary model into the scene. When you're loading stuff of a disc the processor isn't doing a lot since you're just waiting for the data to come in, so it seems to me that this feature really could have been implemented.
Notice that few have bothered to ask what was on those documents that the democrats were writing. Those documents contained plenty of evidence that the democrats were stalling appointment of judges for purely political reasons, in order to appease certain special interest groups. One memo in particular said that they wanted to make sure Estrada didn't get a federal judgeship "because he is a latino." Anyone attempting to bring up what was in the documents was instantly rebutted, being told that since the documents were illegitamately obtained, it doesn't matter what was in them.
That's all well and good, until you look at what's going on in the deal with CBS - They're saying that, yeah, maybe those documents were falsified, but that's not important - what's important is what the documents said. In other words, It's not ok to use illegitamately obtained documents to criticize the democrats, but it's perfectly OK to used forged documents to criticize republicans.
So the gap between the rich and the poor grows - so what? Suppose you earn $10,000 a year and I earn $100,000 year, working for the same company. The boss comes in and says that due to increased sales, you and I both get a raise. I'm now making $10,000,000 a year, while you make $100,000 a year. You used to be earning 1/10 of what I made, but now it's 1/100th. The gap between us got bigger, but so what ? You're still a hell of a lot better off than you were. Does it affect you, in any way, shape or form, how much money I make? No! All that matters if how much you make and what you can buy with that money.
The 'gap' is probably the best example of class-warfare claptrap that's being spread about by economic naysayers. The fact is that any 'gap' is irrelevant, as long as everyone is getting better, which they are. Even the poorest of the poor have cell phones, air conditioning, automobiles, refridgerators, color TV's and 2000 calorie diets. They don't have to worry about dying of typhus, malaria, diptheria, diaherra, the flu, measles, mumps, smallpox, or rubela. A man can work just 40 hours and a week and easily support himself. Roman Emperors couldn't possiblly have imagined the life of luxury that the poorest of americans enjoys.
So yes, the gap between rich and poor has been growing. Does it matter? Not at all.
"Two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP is commonly taken to be a recession. "
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110004305
Two consecutive quarters of negative growth consitute a recession. That's what the term means, and so there isn't anthing inaccurate about saying that the small recession we had ended years ago, even if the job situation is sucky right now
As for the current lack of jobs and the patchy situation of a lot of americans, you can take it one of two ways.
I choose the second option. Make fun of him all you want, but Schwarzenegger said it best - don't be a girlie-man economist. It used to be that germany and japan were going to crush our economies and that all americans were poor. Then, in the early 90's, many americans bought into the idea that NAFTA was a terrible peice of legislation that was going to send all of our jobs to mexico. There's never going to be a shortage of pessimists and naysayers claiming that now things are different - now, this time our economy is in trouble unless the government can do something to stop it.
They're wrong. They've always been wrong, and they will always be wrong. Don't buy into the pessimism and anti-trade rhetoric out there. If you've lost your job due to oursourcing, of course that sucks. But no one ever accomplished anything by being pessimistic and complaining about their situation. Get out there and look for a job - any job. Don't tell yourself that you can't find one or that there aren't any - negative predictions are self-fulfilling. It's far better to be foolishly optimistic about your situation than needlessly pessimisstic.
The US economy is an incredbily powerfull beast that has brought incredible wealth to millions of people. It's not going to stop working over night. Current trade situations are a result of an economy out of equilbrium. It'll adjust itself, and then we'll be back on track and new jobs will be created and we'll all be wealthier- you'll see.
I don't get how you can possible see the ability to villifiy or deify an political or corporate institution as a good. The propensity of geeks to claim that they're being opressed by evil entities makes us sound completely absurd. And it sure as hell doesn't help further the nature of political discourse in the country - it just leads to partisan yelling and bickering. There are already too many people who see the republicans as evil and the democrats as good, and vice versa. Is it that hard to beleive that all the political parties want what they feel is best for the country?
I grew up in a republican family and I used to beleive that the democrats were evil. Why not - everything they did made no sense to my young mind. I immediately disregarded anyone who tried to say that the republicans were doing something bad or stupid - obviously this person didn't know anything. It was only my incredibly strong desire to ask 'why' about everything I observe that led me to the current realization that I've got: The democrats think their way of running the country is the best, while the republicans think their way is best. They both like the country and they both want america to be better off; they just disagree on how to accomplish that.
Saying that one group is evil and one group is good certaintly isn't going to help the different political groups in america start to rationally consider their differences and debate the benefits of policy- all it does is promote fighting. Do you honeslty think you're going to convince republicans to seiriously consider the libertarian point of view if you go and tell them the republican party is evil? Likewise, saying that the democratic party is evil will only further their desire to prevent the democrats from coming to power, no matter what.
The libertarian party already has an ill-deserved reputation for being a bunch of kooks. Saying that that the the major parties are 'evil' really isn't going to help matters. I used to consider myself a republican. Now I consider myself a libertarian conservative. I didn't change my stance because of someone convincing me that my former beleifs were evil. I changed my opinions because of rational thought about the implications and effects of government policy. If you want to get more people to seriously consider the libertarian party, you're not going to help yourself by telling them that their current beleifs are just evil. You need to get them to stop and consider the motives and ideals behind the politics and consider the real world ramifications of the ideas of the libertarian party.
Oops. I made a mistake on the CNN numbers. 'Google search for nader on cnn' yielded 10,900 results, although the ratio I have posted is the correct value.
I really doubt if you do, but let's evaluate the validity of your claim that FOX news doesn't cover the other, less popular candidates.
Google search for nader on fox news: 292 Results
Google search for bush on fox news: 15000 Results.
Fox's Nader/Bush Ratio : 0.0915
Google search for nader on cnn: 2,290 Results
Google search for bush on cnn: 211,000 Results.
Cnn's Nader/Bush Ratio : 0.0517
Google search for nader on msn: 4,660 Results
Google search for bush on msn: 126,000 Results.
Msn's Nader/Bush Ratio : 0.037
Google search for nader on cbs: 527 Results
Google search for bush on cbs: 58,900 Results.
CBS's Nader/Bush Ratio : 0.00895
Google search for nader on abc: 37 Results
Google search for bush on abc: 1,190 Results.
ABC's Nader/Bush Ratio : 0.0311
I'm not really sure why the numbers for abc are so low, but in any case it's quite obvious that your claim was flat out wrong, and that you didn't bother to do a little research before you made it. I'm so sick of this situation whereby any sort of kook theory or idea that says the republicans/foxnews/haliburton are all up to no good is instantly beleived by the leftists in this country, without regard to any evidence or fact. Yet when someone tries to cliam that al-qaeda was in cahoots with iraq, suddenly you guys get interested in the scientific method again and demand some evidence.
Unless you're now going to jump to another kook theory that foxnews is covering nader so much more than the other guys because they want nader to win, you're going to have to retract your statement and admit you were wrong, or at least that fox news isn't as biased as MSNBC or CBS.
The difference between republicans and democrats, with respect to race issues, is most clearly illustrated by the Miguel Estrada issue. The democrats wanted to deny Estrada a judgeship not only because he was conservative, but because he was a latino. The republicans don't give a damn about the color of a person's skin - they'll give anyone who's qualified a position, so long as they deserve it. Has anyone appointed more minorities to meaningful positions than bush?
The democrats, on the other hand, claim to be the party that represents the will of minorities, but then they'll criticize any minority who happens to vote republican. They derogatorily sneer at black republicans. The last thing they want is more qualified minority republicans in big name positions because it will mean that they might actually have to fight for the minority vote instead of just assumign they'll get it by drumming up racial fears and associating bush with burning churches. The democrats aren't complaning that republicans don't welcome minorities; they're complaining that republicans don't welcome liberals.
People at large seem to lack important estimation skills. In my observation, people seem to consider a billion, million, and trillion more or less the same. In a December 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter estimated the U.S. Budget deficit at 6.4 quadrillion dollars. To anyone with an actual understanding of such a number, that figure is completely ludicrous - but it went unoticed by the editors.
We need increased numerical literacy - so that people understand just how much money 1 million vs. 10 million vs 100 million etc etc actually is. I'm sick of hearing someone say 'are you aware that we spend $x billion dollars a year on thing y?' and then expect me to be outraged or surprised. They just think that 'billion' sounds like a lot - but would they have the same response if it were $x*100 million, or $x*10 billion?
Everyone should RTFA here - big time. This whole thing is based on something that showed up on this 'TV Week' website, and the company is not confirming the story...
Everyone keeps overlooking the most important part of just why we have an electoral college. It's because our country was founded as a republic - not a democracy. You won't see anything in the constitution about a popular vote, because that's not how the founding fathers wanted the president to be elected. They envisioned a system whereby electors, chosen by the invidual states, would vote for president. They hated the idea of political parties and abhorred the idea that a 'gentleman' should campaign for political office.
The system that they devised was very clever, and based upon models that had worked historically. They decided not to have congress or state legislatures elect a president sice such a method would surely result in partisan bickering or presidents selected by just a few large states without regard to the intrest of others. Instead, they decided to have this college of electors, who hopefully would be the wisest men in the states which they represented, and would choose whom they thought was the best president, without considering anything like political party.
Unfortunately, if you look at what we've got now, I think you'd be hard pressed to make the case that great men like Washington and Jefferson wouldn't be downright pissed at our sorry system of national political parties selecting two men who pander to the various special interest groups that hold out their hands to the government for help. Now we've got people whining that the electoral college 'doesn't work' and that we should move to some other system. Why is that that we can't realize our problem is that we aren't following the constitutional model?
Look at the situation we've got now - it's as if the states are invisible. All the real power to do anything resides with the federal government, and that government is giving itself more and more power. The ability to control health insurance, the ability to regulate what you can and cannot say during a political debate, the ability to pay for your school and your medicine, and to dictate who can hire whom and for what reasons - all of those things are or will soon be under federal jurisdiction. Can you name your state senator or representative? When was the last time a piece of state legistlation or a decision by your state's supreme court made you happy/pissed? Such a situation is certainly not what our founding fathers had envisioned. Let's face it - we're no longer the republic of independent states that our forefathers hoped for - we're just 'America', and progressing our way towards a national socialist democracy.
What's the solution ? It's not too difficult, really.
The
The possible benefit they're looking for is to have a bunch of people harrassing the republican delegates. Remember when 'Bruce Almighty' came out, and there was that big flap because Bruce's beeper showed 'God's' phone number, and a bunch of idiots called up the number and asked for God? I'm sure that's the intended goal - if a bunch of kooks have start calling your house or driving by and spooking you out, most likely it'll give you second thoughts about participating in the GOP convention again.
That said, I don't think this reflects badly on anbody except the people who posted those addresses - I'm sure if the same thing were done by a republican group, you'd have a bunch of nuts calling to pester the democrat convention goers. It just makes the indymedia people look like a bunch of jerks
If there's anything I'm sick of in this country it's people acting like their party has a monopoly on good virtues, good values, and the truth. Is it that unlikely that the vast majority of us really do love this country, and that we just disagree on how it should be run?