You've either misunderstood my point or polecat's. He was talking about "the communication age" suggesting that the division into smaller political units is an artifact strictly of the difficulty of governing over long distances, and that with rapid travel and instant communications they're now obsolete. I pointed out (since Presidential elections are what is on-topic for this thread) that in this particular case that wasn't a consideration at all. Since you seem to agree with this, I'm afraid I don't see your point.
And you don't get to tell people what they can and cannot say. That's a very childish attitude.
To the grandparent, perhaps you should stop telling us to "open our minds" as if we haven't considered what you're saying and rejected it with intelligent thought?
I'd love to, as soon as I see some evidence of it. So far, all I've been presented with is dogma. You've given me both dogma and an anecdote, which is little better. I'm asking you to think critically.
"Feudal system?" Show me a serf legally bound to the estate he was born on and I'll believe you.
Perhaps what you're trying to say is that the States as political units are obsolete. I disagree: small political units are the essence of self-determination. Large, monolithic governments cannot make allowances for local conditions or the local will of the people; this was part of the reason for the failure of the Soviet Union. In any event, this would be a draconian change to our system necessitating a virtual rewrite of the Consitution. I doubt you'll find much support for such an undertaking.
You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the electoral college was put into place because a direct popular vote would have been impractical. That had nothing to do with it at all. See my reply to an earlier post in this thread for a link to the Federalist Paper discussing Presidential elections.
Wrong. Get a dictionary and look up "majority". Then flip to "plurality".
Fine. "Plurality" then. The point stands.
It's not clear-cut at all. We can never accurately know the beliefs of another person- we can only try to infer those beliefs from their actions. And if there existed important motives to act contrary to belief, then one must admit the question is not easy to solve.
If the writers of the Constitution had wanted a system for direct popular election of the President, they'd have put one in place. They didn't. This isn't a case where their motivation was a mystery; it was spelled out. It's ironic that even though the framework of the process that was devised is still in place, much of the rationale for it has been subverted.
Honestly, if you haven't even read The Federalist Papers your civics education is incomplete.
Appeal to tradition is rhetorically invalid.
No, it's logically invalid. Tradition is appealed to in rhetoric all the time, and it often works. However, since I didn't do that, I have no idea what you're talking about here.
No, it isn't. The burden is on advocates of unequal political privilege to defend their position. It is the inherently less tenable side, for that is the cause of elitists, royalists, and dictators.
The electoral college is about "unequal political privilege"? That's not something you can just state unsupported and expect to be taken seriously. You're plainly not taking the trouble to question your assumptions. Open your mind and make an honest attempt to understand our electoral system and why it was put into place before you venture to discuss this topic again.
Arguably it did. These days the Congress, with Supreme Court backing, tends to view the Constitution as a proscriptive document and assume that they're allowed to pass laws on any subject just so long as they're not specifically forbidden to do so.
However, a plain-English reading of Article I Sections 8 and 9 suggests otherwise. Section 8 enumerates Congress' powers; Section 9 places specific limits on those powers. Nowhere in either of these sections do we find Congress authorized to regulate the sale of alcoholic beverages, or any other intoxicating substance. They might prohibit their import or transportation across State lines, but that's it. The 18th Amendment was therefore necessary if alcohol was to be prohibited everywhere.
Perhaps Congress could have simply passed a law against it. But you could probably bet that any judge that law came before would use anything, even an "antiquated" view of Constitutional law, to strike it down if it would keep him from his Cognac nightcap.
Although the 18th Amendment was foolish, it wasn't an abuse. The Constitution was amended in that case fair and square. I don't know enough about the issue to evaulate the objections to the legality of the 16th Amdendment, but if they're true then it's a serious abuse indeed. (It's also possible the 17th Amendment is invalid by the "equal suffrage" clause of Article V.)
It also wasn't Constitutional amendment through drastic re-interpretation, as some activist jugdes are wont to perform. That, to the extent it actually happens, is also a serious abuse.
It's only "whacky" if you assume that a majority of the popular vote ought to decide the election. Plainly, the Founding Fathers thought otherwise. Did you know there's not even a Consitutional requirement for a popular vote in Presidential elections? The States are free to assign them by whatever means they want. They were actually chosen by the legislatures in a few States in the early days.
Here's a question: Why do you think a President ought to be chosen by popular vote?
I'm sure your instinct will be to tell me that I'm asking that question the wrong way around. That's a sign that you've been thoroughly indoctrinated. Make an effort to cast aside your assumptions and try to build a case for chosing a President by a simple majority. If you're honest about it, you'll find it surprisingly difficult.
Yes, Clinton did exactly that. It would be funny, if it weren't so tragic, that the same press that's so eager to trumpet the lack of WMD's in Iraq are absolutely silent on the lack of evidence for genocide or ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Doesn't anyone remember there were supposed to have been 100,000 victims? Hasn't anyone asked why they haven't been found?
Not to say there hasn't been an ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The Albanians, our good friends, have been successful in clearing large swaths of it of Serbs, and apparently no amount of dynamite is too much to blow up villages and valuable Serbian cultural sites. Places we're theoretically protecting.
But no one's going Clinton on this. It's Bush who's the sole bad guy.
He doesn't look "paralyzed" to me. I'm not going to download the video on my dialup connection, but there are plenty of stills and they very plainly show him interacting with the class. He gives every appearance of wanting the planned event to continue as if everything were normal. His remark to the press when they asked him about it inside the school -- again, according to the website hosting the video -- suggests strongly he was avoiding giving those in the school a scare.
This was arguably the wrong decision and I'm not disputing that. But it's a far cry from the parent post's "paralyzed." And according to the school's principal, Bush's demeanor at the time "helped us get through a very difficult day."
The assumption seems to be that had Bush lept into action immediately, something would have gone differently that day. I breathlessly await a description of how.
Having a federal voting system vary from one state to another is lunacy, plain and simple.
How can any American be allowed to be so ignorant of his own country's civil processses? The press doesn't help, of course, since it promotes its own agenda, and persuant to that constantly throws the phrase "Federal election" around.
But get this: THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FEDERAL ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES. There are Federal laws and regulations, all Constitutionally mandated, that dictate to whom the franchise must be extended and when the elections must take place. But the Federal government conducts NO elections by itself. All elections for Federal offices are STATE elections, run by the States for the purpose of electing a State delegation to some Federal body. It might be for one of the Houses of Congress, or it might be for Electors whose job it is to choose the President. These are offices that benefit the State, and it's up to the States to elect them. Not the Federal government.
You're believing Michael Moore about this, aren't you? This is one of his many lies. Witnesses on the spot have a different story.
On the other hand, Kerry said of himself that when he learned of the attacks, he sat frozen for over a half hour. (This was on the 8 July Larry King Live interview.) Even if we were to believe that Bush froze, it was for no more than 7 minutes.
Well, the reputation of her era aside, it's pretty clear that the Old Queen really liked her man and probably couldn't imagine that a woman could ever prefer another woman. I mean, how many kids did they have?
Bear in mind that most of this activity took place when she looked like this and none at all when she looked like this.
Anyway, I'm sure she found the idea of male homosexuality to be far more plausible than female.
And since I'm already being modded down for the simple act of disagreeing with your forcefully, I should point out that the NC in RNC and DNC, in this context, stand for "National Convention", not "National Committee". In other words, these aren't the people in the "smoke-filled room" that are being exposed here. It's the guys on the convention floor with the funny hats and noisemakers.
The party national committees have members, not delegates, and (if you RTFA) there aren't 1600 of them. You're right that they generally set the agendas for the parties. But that's not what this is about. Pay better attention next time.
For the greatest part, however, they know months in advance how the charade is going to play out.
What, like in 2000? Yeah, right.
Well, right now you're modded "Insightful", so at least one mod shares your knee-jerk tinfoil-hat mindset. That doesn't mean you have any actual insight, however. It's easy to be cynical. When you're cynical you can just lean back in your chair, lick the orange stuff from your Cheetoes off your fingers, and sneer at everything. Doing something to effect real change is much more difficult.
To the extent that the "major parties" get preferential treatment under US election law, I actually don't disagree with you. However, the fact remains that convention delegates are *not* government officials, are generally *not* public figures, and so retain the same rights of privacy as anyone else. Yourself included, even if you chose to attend a convention as a delegate for some reason.
So, yes, people with that kind of power over the politicians who will spend 60+% of your hard-earned cash every year should be publicly accessible.
You'll find that delegates have relatively little power. At least for the first ballot, they have no choice as to how to cast their votes under the current primary system. Their individual identities are therefore as relevant as those of the Electors who actually vote for the President. At least the Electors' duty is Constitutionally mandated! And seriously, is there any doubt about who they're going to nominate? If there wasn't for the Democrats, where there was more than one candidate in the primary field, how can there be for the Republicans?
Incidentally, tax freedom day this year was April 11, representing rather less than 60% of your income.
So please, let's not pander to the racists *AND* reduce what pathetically little security the current system provides.
Anyone who talks like this should be avoiding racist stereotypes himself. For example, you should not assume that all al-Quaeda members are Middle-easterners. They're not, no more than all Muslims are. Remember John Walker, the "American Taliban"? Right now al-Quaeda is busy recruiting all sorts of guys like that. Meanwhile, 99.999% of all olive skinned, dark haired, brown eyed men aren't terrorists at all. No, racial profiling is not the answer. Not because the target race can disguise itself, but because the target race doesn't necessarily represent the real target!
And just because Hitler didn't know what "Aryan" meant doesn't mean you ought to be using that word the same way he did. Real Aryans are people like Persians or Romani. Ironically, that last, otherwise known as Gypsies, was among the people Hitler targeted in his death camps. The one thing Aryans generally are not is blond haired and blue eyed.
It's easy to complain that doctors don't treat patients "holistically", but mistakes in this area are unforgivable. You can thank our legal system for that. As a result, doctors dare not treat patients for conditions outside their specialized areas of expertise. Not if they want to stay in practice, that is.
You'll find that doctors generally have little say in who comes to them. In extreme cases they will refuse further treatment, but usually they make a good-faithg effort to treat a patient for the complaints they bring forward. But when a patient refuses necessary tests, refuses to acknowledge true causes for her complaints, and possibly even refuses a suggestion for psychiatric treatment -- what can a doctor do but throw up his hands over it?
It's easy to be cynical from where you sit, of course, but if you ever knew any actual doctors personally you'd know that by and large they'd be perfectly happy never to see another hypochondriac again. But they dare not turn them away just on the off-chance it's something real this time. You can thank our legal system for that too.
Assuming that's true, and that by "mental" you mean having mental health difficulties,
Well stop assuming. You've obviously never met anyone like this. I know several, and I'll second BoldAC's opinion.
No one is claiming that there's some serious, or even identifiable, mental health issue in these people. But they do tend to be more than a little high-strung.
Actually, there are many other, better and more precise ways, of putting it; ways I would expect a health care professional to use.
You would only cite the DSM if you were making a proper diagnosis. BoldAC isn't doing that. He has merely made an observation as to a certain personality type. Surely he's as free to do that as anyone else. MDs are allowed to be human beings too, you know.
In any event, allergists to not diagnose psychiatric conditions any more than an psychiatrist ought to be diagnosing allergies.
That was so subtle I almost didn't get it. Hee! To judge from the moderation I seem to have stepped on someone's toes. I weep for my sin!
My own vote for Worst Movie EVAR happens to have been an MST3K victim, but I knew it sucked long before they got their paws on it. It was partly filmed on the site of the Ren Faire where I was working. The Faire ran on weekends only, so they filmed during the week while it was closed. Quest of the Delta Knights! Some of my friends got jobs as extras in it, including one to whom I had passed on one of my old costumes. So while my costume has a few minutes of screen time here, I personally don't. Somehow I can't find it in me to be too sorry about that. Lord, it sucked. How they ever got David Warner to play two different roles in it I'll never know. He must have been really hard up for the rent that month or something.
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And you don't get to tell people what they can and cannot say. That's a very childish attitude.
I'd love to, as soon as I see some evidence of it. So far, all I've been presented with is dogma. You've given me both dogma and an anecdote, which is little better. I'm asking you to think critically.
Perhaps what you're trying to say is that the States as political units are obsolete. I disagree: small political units are the essence of self-determination. Large, monolithic governments cannot make allowances for local conditions or the local will of the people; this was part of the reason for the failure of the Soviet Union. In any event, this would be a draconian change to our system necessitating a virtual rewrite of the Consitution. I doubt you'll find much support for such an undertaking.
You seem to be laboring under the assumption that the electoral college was put into place because a direct popular vote would have been impractical. That had nothing to do with it at all. See my reply to an earlier post in this thread for a link to the Federalist Paper discussing Presidential elections.
Fine. "Plurality" then. The point stands.
It's not clear-cut at all. We can never accurately know the beliefs of another person- we can only try to infer those beliefs from their actions. And if there existed important motives to act contrary to belief, then one must admit the question is not easy to solve.
If the writers of the Constitution had wanted a system for direct popular election of the President, they'd have put one in place. They didn't. This isn't a case where their motivation was a mystery; it was spelled out. It's ironic that even though the framework of the process that was devised is still in place, much of the rationale for it has been subverted.
Honestly, if you haven't even read The Federalist Papers your civics education is incomplete.
Appeal to tradition is rhetorically invalid.
No, it's logically invalid. Tradition is appealed to in rhetoric all the time, and it often works. However, since I didn't do that, I have no idea what you're talking about here.
No, it isn't. The burden is on advocates of unequal political privilege to defend their position. It is the inherently less tenable side, for that is the cause of elitists, royalists, and dictators.
The electoral college is about "unequal political privilege"? That's not something you can just state unsupported and expect to be taken seriously. You're plainly not taking the trouble to question your assumptions. Open your mind and make an honest attempt to understand our electoral system and why it was put into place before you venture to discuss this topic again.
Arguably it did. These days the Congress, with Supreme Court backing, tends to view the Constitution as a proscriptive document and assume that they're allowed to pass laws on any subject just so long as they're not specifically forbidden to do so.
However, a plain-English reading of Article I Sections 8 and 9 suggests otherwise. Section 8 enumerates Congress' powers; Section 9 places specific limits on those powers. Nowhere in either of these sections do we find Congress authorized to regulate the sale of alcoholic beverages, or any other intoxicating substance. They might prohibit their import or transportation across State lines, but that's it. The 18th Amendment was therefore necessary if alcohol was to be prohibited everywhere.
Perhaps Congress could have simply passed a law against it. But you could probably bet that any judge that law came before would use anything, even an "antiquated" view of Constitutional law, to strike it down if it would keep him from his Cognac nightcap.
Although the 18th Amendment was foolish, it wasn't an abuse. The Constitution was amended in that case fair and square. I don't know enough about the issue to evaulate the objections to the legality of the 16th Amdendment, but if they're true then it's a serious abuse indeed. (It's also possible the 17th Amendment is invalid by the "equal suffrage" clause of Article V.)
It also wasn't Constitutional amendment through drastic re-interpretation, as some activist jugdes are wont to perform. That, to the extent it actually happens, is also a serious abuse.
Here's a question: Why do you think a President ought to be chosen by popular vote?
I'm sure your instinct will be to tell me that I'm asking that question the wrong way around. That's a sign that you've been thoroughly indoctrinated. Make an effort to cast aside your assumptions and try to build a case for chosing a President by a simple majority. If you're honest about it, you'll find it surprisingly difficult.
Not to say there hasn't been an ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. The Albanians, our good friends, have been successful in clearing large swaths of it of Serbs, and apparently no amount of dynamite is too much to blow up villages and valuable Serbian cultural sites. Places we're theoretically protecting.
But no one's going Clinton on this. It's Bush who's the sole bad guy.
This was arguably the wrong decision and I'm not disputing that. But it's a far cry from the parent post's "paralyzed." And according to the school's principal, Bush's demeanor at the time "helped us get through a very difficult day."
The assumption seems to be that had Bush lept into action immediately, something would have gone differently that day. I breathlessly await a description of how.
I guess the famous Athenian Democracy really wasn't then, huh?
How can any American be allowed to be so ignorant of his own country's civil processses? The press doesn't help, of course, since it promotes its own agenda, and persuant to that constantly throws the phrase "Federal election" around.
But get this: THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FEDERAL ELECTION IN THE UNITED STATES. There are Federal laws and regulations, all Constitutionally mandated, that dictate to whom the franchise must be extended and when the elections must take place. But the Federal government conducts NO elections by itself. All elections for Federal offices are STATE elections, run by the States for the purpose of electing a State delegation to some Federal body. It might be for one of the Houses of Congress, or it might be for Electors whose job it is to choose the President. These are offices that benefit the State, and it's up to the States to elect them. Not the Federal government.
You're believing Michael Moore about this, aren't you? This is one of his many lies. Witnesses on the spot have a different story.
On the other hand, Kerry said of himself that when he learned of the attacks, he sat frozen for over a half hour. (This was on the 8 July Larry King Live interview.) Even if we were to believe that Bush froze, it was for no more than 7 minutes.
Good thing it wasn't Kerry on the spot then, huh?
Damn straight!
It's all about running out to Fry's every week like a fucking lemming!
Dear God, I've used all of these. Why the hell am I still programming?
Bear in mind that most of this activity took place when she looked like this and none at all when she looked like this.
Anyway, I'm sure she found the idea of male homosexuality to be far more plausible than female.
Billy Idol never bore more than a passing resemblence to a real person.
I don't care how realistically you try to render it. Real people still don't have hair like this!
The party national committees have members, not delegates, and (if you RTFA) there aren't 1600 of them. You're right that they generally set the agendas for the parties. But that's not what this is about. Pay better attention next time.
What, like in 2000? Yeah, right.
Well, right now you're modded "Insightful", so at least one mod shares your knee-jerk tinfoil-hat mindset. That doesn't mean you have any actual insight, however. It's easy to be cynical. When you're cynical you can just lean back in your chair, lick the orange stuff from your Cheetoes off your fingers, and sneer at everything. Doing something to effect real change is much more difficult.
To the extent that the "major parties" get preferential treatment under US election law, I actually don't disagree with you. However, the fact remains that convention delegates are *not* government officials, are generally *not* public figures, and so retain the same rights of privacy as anyone else. Yourself included, even if you chose to attend a convention as a delegate for some reason.
So, yes, people with that kind of power over the politicians who will spend 60+% of your hard-earned cash every year should be publicly accessible.
You'll find that delegates have relatively little power. At least for the first ballot, they have no choice as to how to cast their votes under the current primary system. Their individual identities are therefore as relevant as those of the Electors who actually vote for the President. At least the Electors' duty is Constitutionally mandated! And seriously, is there any doubt about who they're going to nominate? If there wasn't for the Democrats, where there was more than one candidate in the primary field, how can there be for the Republicans?
Incidentally, tax freedom day this year was April 11, representing rather less than 60% of your income.
Oh, fine! Blame Scotland for every little problem!
Sassanach bastard....
Anyone who talks like this should be avoiding racist stereotypes himself. For example, you should not assume that all al-Quaeda members are Middle-easterners. They're not, no more than all Muslims are. Remember John Walker, the "American Taliban"? Right now al-Quaeda is busy recruiting all sorts of guys like that. Meanwhile, 99.999% of all olive skinned, dark haired, brown eyed men aren't terrorists at all. No, racial profiling is not the answer. Not because the target race can disguise itself, but because the target race doesn't necessarily represent the real target!
And just because Hitler didn't know what "Aryan" meant doesn't mean you ought to be using that word the same way he did. Real Aryans are people like Persians or Romani. Ironically, that last, otherwise known as Gypsies, was among the people Hitler targeted in his death camps. The one thing Aryans generally are not is blond haired and blue eyed.
It's easy to complain that doctors don't treat patients "holistically", but mistakes in this area are unforgivable. You can thank our legal system for that. As a result, doctors dare not treat patients for conditions outside their specialized areas of expertise. Not if they want to stay in practice, that is.
You'll find that doctors generally have little say in who comes to them. In extreme cases they will refuse further treatment, but usually they make a good-faithg effort to treat a patient for the complaints they bring forward. But when a patient refuses necessary tests, refuses to acknowledge true causes for her complaints, and possibly even refuses a suggestion for psychiatric treatment -- what can a doctor do but throw up his hands over it?
It's easy to be cynical from where you sit, of course, but if you ever knew any actual doctors personally you'd know that by and large they'd be perfectly happy never to see another hypochondriac again. But they dare not turn them away just on the off-chance it's something real this time. You can thank our legal system for that too.
Well stop assuming. You've obviously never met anyone like this. I know several, and I'll second BoldAC's opinion.
No one is claiming that there's some serious, or even identifiable, mental health issue in these people. But they do tend to be more than a little high-strung.
Actually, there are many other, better and more precise ways, of putting it; ways I would expect a health care professional to use.
You would only cite the DSM if you were making a proper diagnosis. BoldAC isn't doing that. He has merely made an observation as to a certain personality type. Surely he's as free to do that as anyone else. MDs are allowed to be human beings too, you know.
In any event, allergists to not diagnose psychiatric conditions any more than an psychiatrist ought to be diagnosing allergies.
"I find your lack of cash disturbing..."
My own vote for Worst Movie EVAR happens to have been an MST3K victim, but I knew it sucked long before they got their paws on it. It was partly filmed on the site of the Ren Faire where I was working. The Faire ran on weekends only, so they filmed during the week while it was closed. Quest of the Delta Knights! Some of my friends got jobs as extras in it, including one to whom I had passed on one of my old costumes. So while my costume has a few minutes of screen time here, I personally don't. Somehow I can't find it in me to be too sorry about that. Lord, it sucked. How they ever got David Warner to play two different roles in it I'll never know. He must have been really hard up for the rent that month or something.