The right has been pushing (hard) a meme of ACORn as some nebulous shadowy vote fraud organization. While this idea was already tenuous given the obvious chiba inspired stunts like registering Mickey Mouse and the starting line up of famous sports teams, it certainly isn't helped by things like this:
The head of a voter registration group hired by the California Republican Party was arrested over the weekend for allegedly lying about his address in the state in order to vote illegally, the office of California's secretary of state announced Sunday.
Mark Anthony Jacoby, the owner of a signature-gathering firm called Young Political Majors, was taken into custody by Ontario police just after midnight Saturday and booked with a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.
Jacoby allegedly registered himself at his childhood home in Los Angeles, even though he no longer lives there. It is voter fraud to register if ineligible and perjury to provide false information on a voter registration card. Jacoby was charged with two counts of each relating to his 2006 and 2007 registration.
I'm assuming Mr. Jacoby wasn't "mostly" living elsewhere due to vocational convenience. The writer really did a nice job, the article doesn't explicitly mention if his parents still live at his childhood home. If he doesn't live in the district he votes in at all, then him voting there is tantamount to me voting in Shelby, Ohio just to help strike down any issues looking to improve their town.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
Neither ACORN nor its employees have been found guilty of, or even charged with, casting fraudulent votes. What a McCain-Palin Web ad calls "voter fraud" is actually voter registration fraud. Several ACORN canvassers have been found guilty of faking registration forms and others are being investigated. But the evidence that has surfaced so far shows they faked forms to get paid for work they didn’t do, not to stuff ballot boxes.
is voter registration fraud. You first have to have the false identities on the books before you can utilize them come election day.
Personally, I favor making it illegal for these types of organizations to even exist. Why do we need voter registration organizations, and especially why do we need partisan voter registration organizations?
If people want to vote, let them fill out and turn in their own registration materials. There is no need to allow these mass registration organizations to exist when they are so obviously open to fraud and corruption ... neither of which serves the public good.
At the very least let's make some penalties with teeth for turning in false registrations. How about a minimum of 1 year in jail and a mandatory $10,000 fine for each occurance (to apply to both the people who run the organization, the organization itself, and the specific canvasser in question)? That should improve the accuracy rate.
Oh, and let us make it illegal to pay someone (to be interpretted broadly as in providing any type of compensation or services in kind) to gather registrations.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
...and not a very common one. According to the Justice Department, most voter fraud convictions involved vote-buying schemes hatched by local politicians.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
the career Democratic operatives in the Justice Department don't prosecute voter fraud cases which go against Democrats. I think there was a flap a while back about firing people over this ... :)
So, citing the predominant conviction rates is particularly telling if these crimes are even being prosecuted.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed! -4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4
These Rupublicans balked at going after these voter fraud cases because they knew these were weak or perhaps even bogus cases, and they knew it would have been wrong to cave to political pressure in pursuing them.
GoRight's talking about a conspiracy theory put forward to rationalize why when the GOP has the control of the government everything turns into sh*t. Because they can never be at fault and thus cannot be responsible for anythihng bad that happens there must be some nefarious force working underground to thwart their best efforts.
...are intimidating their bosses, the Republican U.S. Attorneys, into dropping these voter fraud cases with terrorist threats of harm to their families. For their crimes, these career Democrat operatives receive secret payments from a clandestine slush fund set up jointly by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama.
Personally, I favor making it illegal for these types of organizations to even exist. Why do we need voter registration organizations, and especially why do we need partisan voter registration organizations?
We need them because a bunch of Americans have done everything they could to socially/politically/economically marginalize certain communities in this country. People aren't born knowing how to participate in a society -- they need to be shown how the institutions works (and shown that they can trust those institutions). If no-one in their community can teach those lessons, then it is up to "outsiders" to show them how to participate.
Other than that, ACORN isn't "partisan" in the sense of being affiliated with a party, though they do make endorsements, IIRC. If the get non-profit tax status, then they probably have limits on what they can do to promote the candidate.
Finally, I don't see how helping people register to vote is any different than any other political activism.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
First-Time Voters The federal Help America Vote Act mandates that all states require identification from first-time voters who registered to vote by mail and did not provide verification of their identification with their mail-in voter registration.
Blanket Voter ID Twenty-four states have broader voter identification requirements than what HAVA mandates. In these states, all voters are asked to show identification prior to voting. Seven of these states specify that voters must show a photo ID; the other seventeen states accept additional forms of identification that do not necessarily include a photo (Table 1 ). In no state is a voter who cannot produce identification turned away from the polls—all states have some sort of recourse for voters without identification to cast a vote. However, in Georgia and Indiana, voters without ID vote a provisional ballot, and must return to election officials within a few days and show a photo ID in order for their ballots to be counted. For specifics on what forms of identification are acceptable and the options available to voters who cannot present identification, see Table 2 .
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
How about a minimum of 1 year in jail and a mandatory $10,000 fine for each occurance (to apply to both the people who run the organization, the organization itself, and the specific canvasser in question)?
They say that they are required to turn in all registration forms that they recieve. I'm not familiar with the law, but it makes sense that they would be. Imagine if someone went to a neighborhood, set up a registration table, and then threw away all of the registration forms.
Come election day, all of those people would not be registered and wouldn't be able to vote. That'd be a BIG mess...much bigger than having some false forms submitted.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Imagine if someone went to a neighborhood, set up a registration table, and then threw away all of the registration forms.
Or told people they had to mark their party affiliation on the registration card and then threw away all of the Republican or Democratic registrations. That is exactly why every card is supposed to be turned in. The BoE is supposed to check the registrations, not private citizens.
If you don't turn in a completed registration card in Ohio, you are guilty of a 1st degree misdemeanor .
I never broke the law; I am the law! -- George W. Bush Judge Dredd I'm listening to...
Oh, and let us make it illegal to pay someone (to be interpretted broadly as in providing any type of compensation or services in kind) to gather registrations.
Its already unconstitutional to ban paid signature gatherers (which is the only route you can go for ballot measures -- you don't get ~500,000 signatures through volunteers). This would seem to be a similar case.
I never broke the law; I am the law! -- George W. Bush Judge Dredd I'm listening to...
Anyone paid to register voters has to take a class and register with the state in Ohio. They also have to sign an affirmation saying they followed the relevant laws.
Senecavirus was discovered by scientists at biotech company Neotropix several years ago and was initially thought to be nothing more than a laboratory contaminant. However, the company quickly revealed it to be a pathogen, now thought to have originated in cows or pigs. Senecavirus does not infect healthy human cells, but the Neotropix researchers discovered that intriguingly it can infect certain solid tumour cells, such as small cell lung cancer, the most common form of lung cancer. This discovery raised the interesting possibility of using the virus either to kill cancer cells directly with the virus while leaving healthy tissues unaffected.
Neotropix researchers have demonstrated that in laboratory and animal studies the virus demonstrates cancer-killing specificity that is 10,000 times higher than that seen with traditional chemotherapy drugs. Moreover, it has no overt toxicity. The company has thus spent some time developing the "oncolytic" virus as an anticancer agent and is currently conducting early phase clinical trials in patients with lung cancer. "SVV-001 is the first naturally occurring non-pathogenic picornavirus shown to mediate selective cytotoxicity towards tumour cells with neuroendocrine cancer features," the team says.
However, an improved understanding of the viral mode of action would only come through better insights into its structure, which is where Reddy and colleagues come in. He and his Scripps Research team turned to X-ray diffraction to determine the Senecavirus crystal structure at 2.3Å resolution with support from the US National Institutes of Health.
Partisan media (e.g., Rush and his many imitators, Air America, echo chamber blogs of left, right, and other) are turning people into zombies quickly enough. We've even got some evidence of that here on SC, courtesy of RW and GR, who undoubtedly O.D. daily on that kind of rubbish.
The whole post is well worth reading (as usual for Larison), but that term really jumped out at me as a very good description of the jingoism we've had to tolerate for a long time now from conservatives.
It *is* vulgar to treat national symbols as religious icons which must be shown ultimate deference. While that vulgarity is hardly unique to america, it is particularly offensive when the very symbols being used to proselytize were in fact meant as symbols of freedom of thought and expression.
Meanwhile, the Republican ticket's emphasis on Joe the plumber -- the Ohio man who challenged Obama on his tax plan and who McCain and running mate Sarah Palin are trying to turn into a symbol -- is not paying huge dividends, according to the poll.
While 68 percent of Ohio respondents said they recognized Joe the plumber, only 6 percent said that Joe's story will make them more likely to vote for McCain. An additional 4 percent said the tale made them more likely to vote for Obama; and 85 percent were not affected. In Missouri, where 80 percent had heard of the plumber, 8 percent said they were more likely to vote McCain, 3 percent more likely to vote Obama, and 86 percent said they were not affected by his story.
The Ohio poll was conducted Thursday through Sunday, and the Missouri survey was conducted Friday through Sunday, and both have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
“I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I’m not being falsely humble with you. I think I can be value added, but this guy has it,” the Senate Foreign Relations chairman said of Obama. “This guy has it. But he’s gonna need your help. Because I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?’ We’re gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I’m asking you now, I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us.
“There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don’t know about that decision’,” Biden continued. “Because if you think the decision is sound when they’re made, which I believe you will when they’re made, they’re not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they’re popular, they’re probably not sound.”
I certainly hope that Biden has forgotten a lot about foreign policy, such as:
Biden’s vote to cut off support to South Vietnam in 1975;
Biden’s support for the removal of the Shah of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini;
Biden’s opposition to Ronald Reagan’s military build-up;
Biden’s opposition to SDI that helped win the Cold War;
Biden’s support for the communist Sandanistas in Nicaragua;
Biden’s opposition to the First Gulf War;
Biden’s idea to send $200 million to Iran after 9/11;
Biden’s support for the Second Gulf War (if you’re a Dem);
Biden has been wrong on virtually every major foreign policy issue of the last 35 years (see more here and here ). So, if the foreign policy decisions that Obama and Biden make seem wrong — it’s probably because they are.
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
Biden’s opposition to SDI that helped win the Cold War;
Are you implying that the Soviets collapsed because they started spending too much on their military industrial complex? Can you imagine how much debris would be around if the Soviets tried knocking down the US Star Wars satellites, say good by satellite TV.
Biden’s support for the communist Sandanistas [sic] in Nicaragua;
McCain accepted the endorsement of a man that helped armed Contra death squads. Saying the Sandinista government would be worse than the Contras is like saying Shaq is too tall, lets put in Yao Ming.
Biden’s support for the Second Gulf War (if you’re a Dem);
You mean "Biden's handing over the stick to Bush and not trying to take it away after his State of the Union Address"
Also, if Biden is bad, then what is Palin?
What's next, a Bengals fan claims the Browns are bad?
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
I really don't think the republicans have any room to cast stone on foreign policy.
Whose actions led to the rise of Saddam? (GOP)
Whose actions led to the rise of the Ayatollah? (GOP)
Whose actions led to the rise of Noriega? (GOP)
The republican party has done a hell of a lot to manufacture enemies for the US around the world. I'm inclined to view their evaluation of foreign policy as completely counter to reality.
Biden was absolutely right to oppose Reagan's policy on the Sandinistas. I'm not sure how much of this history you know, but consider what was going on in Nicaraguan politics at the time: the Sandinistas had overthrown an oppressive autocratic regime that was supported by U.S. dollars, and Reagan responded by throwing millions of dollars into counterrevolutionary armies.
There's plenty to criticize in how the Sandinistas operated - don't get me wrong. But Reagan wasn't concerned with human rights: he was waging a pretty one-dimensional battle against anything that looked communist. Which means that Reagan sided with a oppressive dictatorship, and used U.S. money to prop it up.
So props to Biden for opposing Reagan on that issue. I would have, too.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
what we did in southeast asia and the middle east- clung to the worst dictators in an attempt to stop communism. Tyranny in the name of democracy. How charming. How self defeating...
We manufactured so many of our enemies it isn't even funny. We really are our own worst enemies, in that sense.
Just a note re: the Sandinistas, after they lost but before they left, they ripped off the country in what they call there "la pinata" (meaning like a pinata at a childrens party that a kid smashes and all the candy falls out and all the kids scramble to grab it). These guys who claimed to be on the side of the poor ripped off the second (or perhaps first) poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. I was in Nicaragua as part of a delegation of election observers in 1996 and I asked a Sandinista spokesperson about that, and all he could say was that by Latin American standards it wasn't particularly bad. Hah! Some revolutionary!
and I also have problems with the way they shut down the free flow of information during the 80s, justifying it against the war they were fighting. Nobody messes with free speech and gets my vote of approval.
But RW's claim is based on something different: Biden voted against Reagan's request to fund the Contras. All things considered, the Sandanistas were nowhere near as dictatorial or oppressive as the regime they replaced, and sending U.S. money to fund a military opposition was evil on every conceivable level. So as far as that goes, ... points to Biden for having the clarity to see through Reagan's cynical foreign policy.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
The sandinistas were not angels by any stretch of the imagination. But neither were they so bad that the US needed to illegally meddle in the country to undermine them. In fact by latin american standards (yeah, I know) they weren't bad at all. Granted I'd very much like to shoot higher than that, but I think attacking the sandinistas for only being better and not a *lot* better would be the very definition of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
The contras, whom we backed, were god d$mn monsters. Figures.
I think attacking the sandinistas for only being better and not a *lot* better would be the very definition of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
What is "the good" in that picture? Is that the argument that they didn't offer more freedom than many other Latin American governments but at least provided free education, healthcare, land "reform", etc.?
along with their willingness to abide by the political results of the election that threw them out of power. They did some good stuff and some bad stuff. That alone puts them well ahead of about 90% of latin american leaders, sadly.
The election they lost was in 1990, so I think you have your chronology a bit screwed up, unless your assumption is that their willingness to leave power in 1990 proves that they would have been willing to leave power had they lost the 1984 elections or elections at some other prior point while we were supporting the contras. That would be an assumption I would not share.
As for the Sandinistas being arguably better than many dictatorships in Latin America at the time, I still wouldn't refer to them as "the good" as you did.
sending U.S. money to fund a military opposition was evil on every conceivable level.
I consider that an overstatement. I think reasonable people could believe that there were some non-evil purposes.
One non-evil rationale could be to prevent the spread of Marxism and Soviet in Central America -- and more broadly Latin America, including South America, the Caribbean and Mexico -- as part of the Cold War chess game to prevent a shift in balance of power, avoid having to divert military resources away from other key regions/spots in the world. Another purpose related to the above in an indirect manner was to maintain America's world image as at least the Soviet's equal, and hopefully its superior, in terms of overall power, again as part of the chess game (you want allies, potential allies, and adversaries [including the Soviets] all to view you as powerful in terms of both capability and willingness to use power, not as a power on the decline who is losing chess pieces all over the globe -- Central America, Africa, etc.). As a note, the Sandinistas were building and seeking to build a military capability that would substantially alter the balance of power in Central America (although obviously not vis a vis the U.S.), which could have had adverse direct and indirect (via image) consequences for the U.S. Yes, there's some chicken and egg there, but my recollection of my impression (how's that for a phrase?) is that the Sandinista buildup efforts were not justified by the threat from the contras or even by the likelihood of an American invasion.
Another could be the belief that there is more chance of a right wing dictatorship evolving into something of a liberal democracy (or even being overthrown by democratic forces) than a Marxist system, due to the latters closer involvement in the day-to-day affairs of citizens through rationing, "block committees" (the Sandinistas created "Sandinista Defense Committees" modeled after the Cuban "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution"). Bear in mind that this was long before people could imagine Eastern Europe and the Russians overcoming the grip of their totalitarian governments. In fact, it to the best of my recollection, up to that point no Soviet-style system had ever been overthrown or ever evolved into anything even remotely resembling a liberal democracy, whereas right-wing dictatorships had.
I'm not suggesting that it's by any means clear that our support of the contras (particularly after the 1984/1985 Boland Amendment, but even before) was justified, only to point out that, IMHO, your statement goes too far. Yes, there are legitimate arguments that our policy was wrong, most notably the argument that we had no right to essentially create a rebel force. But it's not unreasonable to have seen legitimate American interests in supporting the contras, whether or not one concluded overall that the policy was justified and wise. And I don't consider it unreasonable even for one to have favored that policy (until the 1984/1985 Boland Amendment was enacted, after which our support became illegal, and I mean under U.S. law, not international law).
One other note, there is a common misconception that the contras were mostly former Somoza National Guardsmen. They were not. Although the leadership were indeed primarily Somocista (some of the political leaders weren't, but even some of them quit over time), the rank and file were primarily peasants (campesinos), many of whom resented the Sandinistas' heavy-handed land policies.
To be clear, I respect the point of view that our policy was wrong. Personally, I have mixed feelings about it and don't consider it an easy call, but I'm not suggesting everyone should see it as such.
I commend you for trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but at best it seems to me that the Reagan administration was guilty of putting ideology over body count, which in my mind is a pretty unforgivable sin. If nothing else the placement of ideology over human lives is a criticism often thrown at communist movements (and a fair one, considering their history).
And that was pretty much Reagan's strategy, opposing the Sandinistas on the grounds that they were part of a spread of communism that was absolutely unacceptable, regardless of the costs. But it's one thing to make that kind of decision from an office in another country for another nation, while that U.S.-backed regime is massacring its own people. And while you make a good point about perceived American interests, I have to wonder what kind of American interests morally justify funding the assassination of dozens of the FSLN leaders. The politest thing that could be said about our policy is that it was insanely hypocritical.
Heh, the shining city on the hill.
We face a similar problem in Pakistan, by the way, supporting the last regime that any so-called liberal democracy should back. And we have similarly ideological reasons for doing so, regardless of the cost in human lives.
So I respect that you're trying to give some benefit of the doubt here, but what you're describing aren't reasons, they're rationalizations over a mounting body count. That's why I use the word "evil", though I do understand why you think it's too strong.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
the Reagan administration was guilty of putting ideology over body count, which in my mind is a pretty unforgivable sin.
Can you flesh out what you mean by "ideology"? Isn't ideology in general, and in this case in particular, ultimately all/mostly about the quality of people's lives, as well as possibly their safety? And if you agree that it is, why do you see it as inherently an "unforgivable sin" to seek to advance an ideology even at the cost of some lives (speaking generically, not about the particulars of this case, if you are making a statement of general principle)?
And as for this particular case, Reagan obviously felt it was very important that liberal democratic "ideology" defeat "communist" "ideology", but held that view because he believed people would be better off under political systems based on liberal democratic ideology than under Soviet-style "Marxism", and even if (and I don't know if this is the case or not, and probably not) he thought that peoples would be no better off (even in the future) if we supported and sustained right-wing dictatorships than they would be under "Marxism", he clearly thought that fighting the Cold War was a means of defending the liberty of those nations that did have liberal democracies or the prospect for such systems, which in itself is a noble goal, whether or not that end justfies the means in this case.
what you're describing aren't reasons, they're rationalizations over a mounting body count.
No, they are reasons. See my paragraph above. I don't see how "a mounting body count" necessarily trumps all other considerations as a matter of general principle or why that would so clearly be the case in this case that "reasons" can be dismissed as mere "rationalizations".
refers to any set of principles lumped into a system, which can be helpful in developing a general set of plans for action, and dangerous whenever we adhere to that system regardless of its real-world effects.
For the sake of discussion, let's eliminate the extreme side of this argument: Does adherence to an ideology justify any action whatsoever? I think we can all agree - No - if only because we can probably think of actions so extreme that no larger goal justifies them. The question then becomes, what level of sacrifice is acceptable? (Although that in itself is really two questions: self-sacrifice is one thing, demanding sacrifice of unwilling third parties is another. In fact the demanded sacrifice of unwilling third parties is the essence of liberal democracy's complain against communist regimes, and with good reason.)
So this is my contention: Reagan not only crossed the line of acceptable sacrifice (of unwilling third parties, no less), but he did it knowingly, cynically, and with full awareness of the results. The actions he took to meet his goals were not only unethical (which one can justify with reasons), but also immoral (which is where one resorts to rationalizations).
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
"refers to any set of principles lumped into a system, which can be helpful in developing a general set of plans for action, and dangerous whenever we adhere to that system regardless of its real-world effects." Ultimately what real word effects you think are harmful, and what is dangerous, have to be based on your ideology, so you can't really come to a decision of what's right without ideology. You can't say you're just for what's best for people, because ultimately that in itself is an ideology and you have to have an opinion of what's best for people.
to complete relativism there. I agree that an ideology can rationalize (and I insist on using that word) the consequences of any actions, but that's precisely my criticism: unless we're willing to say that there are no moral absolutes, then we're forced to recognize that no ideology can justify any action whatsoever in pursuit of its goals. If we ARE willing to say that there are no moral absolutes, then we might as well not be having this conversation, because - as Dostoevsky once skewered - "everything is permitted." In other words, it'd be completely arbitrary whether you're Mother Theresa or Josef Stalin. I'd prefer not to be that relativistic. :)
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
What do you mean by "moral absolutes"? If you're refering to deontological ethics/morality, then yes, there are no moral absolutes. There is no action that is inherently moral or immoral. Consequentialism is the only framework for morality that makes any sense to me. What makes an act moral or immoral is the intended consequences (provided adequate consideration has been given to the likely/potential consequences), meaning likely and potential benefits, harms and risks.
If, on the other hand, you just mean that there are some ideologies that are immoral in that they disregard moral considerations (e.g., that all that matters is the benefit of one's own people, period) and/or are based on principles and objectives that are virtually inescapabley immoral (e.g., that the Jews must be eliminated), than pretty much by definition, such ideologies are immoral.
is that Reagan's administration allowed their own personal ideology trump the ideology of the position they accepted and swore to uphold. that is their "stop the communists at all costs" trumped "defend the constitution."
dangerous whenever we adhere to that system regardless of its real-world effects.
Well, of course, blindly adhering to any general principle or rule of thumb regardless of real-world effects is irresponsible, immoral, and often counterproductive as well.
I must ask my questions again, though, since you still seem to treat "ideology" as some abstract notion, perhaps with only some emotional benefit to those applying it or perhaps as some (perhaps lazy or reckless) short-cut to policy or "general sets of plans for action", as opposed to a guide for policy objectives, strategy and decisions aimed at improving peoples lives, and you then weigh this abstract notion against adverse "real-world effects" such as people getting killed.
So I ask again:
Isn't ideology in general, and in this case in particular, ultimately all/mostly about the quality of people's lives, as well as possibly their safety? And if you agree that it is, why do you see it as inherently an "unforgivable sin" to seek to advance an ideology even at the cost of some lives (speaking generically, not about the particulars of this case, if you are making a statement of general principle)
Regarding:
The question then becomes, what level of sacrifice is acceptable?
I think you're on the right track, since I view the morality of all decisions as a function of anticipated consequences (provided that the decider has devoted adequate consideration to this calculus given the potential consequences), although again I must point out that the extended question is "What level of sacrifice (and demanded of whom) is acceptable relative to the alternative set of likely/potential consequences -- i.e., harms and benefits to people (and animals)" So again, let's not treat the rationale (not rationalization, but rationale) of seeking to defeat a political system (and alliances) that one considers very harmful to people (Soviet-style Marxism and global Soviet influence and alliances in this case) as merely some abstract notion to be weighed against "real" sacrifices required to pursue that objective.
Although that in itself is really two questions: self-sacrifice is one thing, demanding sacrifice of unwilling third parties is another.
Absolutely, with one very important note: If a president is sets a policy that he thinks will prevent substantial harm or risk to the well-being of 250 million people/citizens in his country, and if this policy is expected to impose sacrifice on others elsewhere, it cannot be said that this president is demanding sacrifice of others for one's benefit (as if the benefit were to accrue to only the president personally); the moral calculus relating to the policy decision considers the balance of likely/potential harm to those "others" vs. the likely/potential harm to the 250 million people. If the intended beneficiaries extend beyond one's own country and include hundreds of millions elsewhere as well (e.g., liberal democracies and prospective liberal democracies throughout the world at the time), then the interests of those people as well must be factored in, even if none of those people, either, are among those who will be made to sacrifice under the policy intended to benefit them.
Having said the above, yes, there is a difference between a president of one country choosing to harm the people of another country for the benefit of his own (which, as a reminder, may or may not be how Reagan saw support of the contras, and probably was not), particularly with regard to military action or support thereof. One difference is that such a practice often causes a breakdown in international order that has its own adverse consequences. But the other difference is that, although in theory a moral calculation can view the interests of one of own's own citizens as equal to the interests of some "foreigner", in practice, there is a strong tendency for those in power to either consciously or subconsciously weigh the interests of their own people over the interests of others (some would argue that this is, in fact, an obligation, although I'm not contending that here).
As for the semantic discussion/debate re: "reasons" vs. "rationalizations", I'll leave that aside, at least for now, because I don't think it's central to our discussion and it might get more tedious than it's worth.
SHOULD Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats take full control of Congress, next year will see a real legislative attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine - and to diminish conservatives' influence on broadcast radio, the one medium they dominate.
Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn't seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan's FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats - including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore - strongly support the idea of mandating "fairness."
The airwaves belong to the people in total. The government is completely within their rights to require equal air time. Now cable (and satellite) a different matter and I'd be more inclined to agree with you there.
Besides if it's a level playing field shouldn't the right do just fine? Marketplace of ideas, right? Uh, right?
Don't tell me conservativism only stands a chance when it can shut out opposing view points by owning the media outlets...
Ultimately there does have to be decisions of which one's get aired and which one's don't. If the Government is the one making that decision I think it leads to pretty free speech. While I don't think capitalism allocate airtime is a perfect way to do it, I think it may be best, and is certainly better than giving the government that power. Having the media have to clear what ideas it propogates through the government seems like a real threat to democracy regardless of the reason for doing so.
of a two party system- there basically are only two major views.
Why would it be better to let those with money control what gets said? They, unlike the government, have absolutely no culpability to the people as a whole. I think letting the rich determine what gets said is a far greater threat to democracy- after all the rich by simple virtue of their wealth have already shown the value money above civic duty. What reason do such people have not to control the news such that it benefits them?
"Why would it be better to let those with money control what gets said? They, unlike the government, have absolutely no culpability to the people as a whole. I think letting the rich determine what gets said is a far greater threat to democracy- after all the rich by simple virtue of their wealth have already shown the value money above civic duty. What reason do such people have not to control the news such that it benefits them?"
The rich are motivated to give what the people as a whole want, by the fact that they want people to listen to their advertisements and buy their products. As far as I know, commercial programing is pretty ratings controlled - in other words it is controlled not by what the sponsor personally wants people to see or hear, but by what the viewers want to see or hear. Now it's true that a rich guy could buy up a bunch of air, and just air whatever views he wanted regardless of ratings or what people wanted to hear, but since sponsors generally want people to stay tuned and listen to their advertisements they're not generally going to do that. Therefore, the capitalistic system seems to have the end result of people generally hearing or watching want they want to, it's not perfect, but there is a direct correlation between what viewers want and what they get.
I think that correlation would be much weaker if government beareaucrats controlled the airwaves. There's so many issues, that representives would not need to please the people on the one issue of what's put on the airwaves. Besides government beareaucrats would really be in charge of the airwaves, they would have a connection to the elected representative, but the connection would be weak. Therefore, there would be little reason for the bereaucrats ( and plenty of reason to protect the power of the government which employed them.) to please the people, and the airwaves wouldn't really belong to the people. I think allowing government control of the airwaves would be allowing the fox to guard the chicken coop.
Its a sad fact of life that people don't always want what they need.
So you have a choice you either allow them to wallow in self destructive habits or you provide what they need. When talking about a singular individual habit then I'm content to let the individual self destruct, but here we're talking about something critical to the function of this nation. In a democracy the electorate needs to have accurate information about candidates, proposals, and situations.
They may not want to, they may prefer to listen to blowhards rant. But that's not what they actually need.
Therefore, the capitalistic system seems to have the end result of people generally hearing or watching want they want to, it's not perfect, but there is a direct correlation between what viewers want and what they get.
And if the kids get to vote on dinner you have icecream every night. But that's less than ideal. :)
I think allowing government control of the airwaves would be allowing the fox to guard the chicken coop.
Either way there's a canine guarding the hen house. The question is if you want the dog with a leash (government) or the feral fox (private corporations). The first may have the same instincts as the latter but it is far better trained to serve and far more closely constrained than the latter, at least in a liberal democracy.
So you have a choice you either allow them to wallow in self destructive habits or you provide what they need.
I don't mind allowing people to wallow in self-destructive habits if we provide them with adequate tools to get them out of their rut. This is why I support direct payments of cash money instead of food stamps and the like[1]. We should give you the tools to do what you need to survive, but only if you are smart with what you do with those tools. If you can't make rent this month because you blew a bunch of your money on Communique to place, perhaps you don't deserve a place to live.
I'm of the opinion that we don't give people the proper tools to help themselves out (ie. you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you have no boots). When we do, I'll start sounding like one of those heartless conservatives.
[1] This is not true for dependent children. They should get direct aid through food, clothing, etc. as to minimize the damage poor parenting would cause on a direct cash payment system.
I never broke the law; I am the law! -- George W. Bush Judge Dredd I'm listening to...
However, who decides what the people need, if not the people. Isn't the idea of democracy kind of that the people are the best deciders of what to get, and if they don't get what the need well that's there fault - they still get what the chose to get. True the minority has to suffer with the majorities bad decision - but what's the alternative?
but we have an implicit acknowledgement in our system of government that we cannot operate on a purely majority rules basis. We have aspects of the law which require supermajorities (and sometimes a great deal more than that) to change, for instance.
That's why we have a government- the people sometimes need to be reigned in. The public airwaves should provide objective information whenever possible. In matters of reasonable contention it should provide balanced information.
People can (and some undoubtedly will) flee to satellite and cable where they may glut themselves on sugared hostility, but at least a nourishing alternative was made available. Right now there's very little in the way of healthy food for the mind in the people's spectrum.
If want they want is hyper-partisan non-sense, they should get hyper-partisan non-sense. It's true that there does have to be checks on the majority, but that doesn't mean for the governemnt to give control of an issue to a minority, because how is the issue any safer in the hands of a minority than a majority? Sometimes the government must keep an issue out of the hands of government - such a religion or free speech, but that doesn't mean their putting the issue into the hands of a minority. In the case of the Airwaves, someone has to control it, you seem to trust government bereaucracy, and while I don't entirely trust the people, I think it makes more sense than having anyone else control the airwaves.
Since I am coming from the premise of " the people should control the airwaves", the question becomes how best can this be accomplished - as they obviously cannot do so directly. As I've explained I think commercial radio does a better job of it than what turning it over to a bereaucrat would, however, there may still be better ideas.
with your premise that the people have a right to the airwaves. They do, but it is a collective right, not an individual one; The good of the collective whole must be used to determine the extent of that right, not the sdesires of the individual.
Sometimes the government must keep an issue out of the hands of government - such a religion or free speech, but that doesn't mean their putting the issue into the hands of a minority.
We'll lets examine that a bit more. It is true that Government must stay out of the realm of creating an official religion but at the same time it is very much government's role to protect any religious congregation from outright attack by another. It's not like the FBI can;t investigate a church bombing. So in this case let's imagine that you had people who were quite able and had demonstrated the will to buy up every square foot of land to prevent anyone building a synogogue. In such a case I think the government has to intervene. That's simply not right. There is a finite amount of land to the US and it shouldn;t be held hostage to the prejudices of the super-wealthy.
"The good of the collective whole must be used to determine the extent of that right, not the sdesires of the individual." I tend to agree, but who get's to determine the good of the collective whole, it seems to me that since people generally act in their self interest it would best be decided by the collective people - in other words as democratically as possible, now of course commercial control of the radios doesn't provide perfect democratic control of the airwaves, but as I've explained I think it's better in that way than handing it over to government bereaucrats.
"We'll lets examine that a bit more. It is true that Government must stay out of the realm of creating an official religion but at the same time it is very much government's role to protect any religious congregation from outright attack by another. It's not like the FBI can;t investigate a church bombing. So in this case let's imagine that you had people who were quite able and had demonstrated the will to buy up every square foot of land to prevent anyone building a synogogue. In such a case I think the government has to intervene. That's simply not right. There is a finite amount of land to the US and it shouldn;t be held hostage to the prejudices of the super-wealthy."
Interesting hypothetical that I'd never really thought about. I guess I think ultimately the government has to provide folks with a safety net, so that those who are truly working as hard as is reasonably possible have their needs met. I thinking such a safety probably needs to provide enough money to acess ( or just direct acess) to land and housing that they could reasonably function.
Also if people are putting an unneccessary burden on religous practice, just for the sake of putting a burden on it, I think the government has a right to step in. OTOH if say the Catholic church has more money than the Baptist church and is able to buy a church that the Baptist would have bought, I don't think it's the government's role to enter into the fray - if the government tried to make everything fair they would undoubtly choose favorites - same if the government is in charge of policing ideology on the airwaves.
A formatting tip. When quoting, just highlight the quote and click the quotation mark button above the comment field and the quote will appear in a blue box
I just haven't gotten use to using it yet. I think this may be the coolest comment making processor I've seen on a blog. Make's it nice for people like me who know nothing about HTML.
I wish I had more time to discuss this, because I do think it's a good conversation, but it's getting pretty technical and my time is limited this month. We can come back to it later if you like but I just don't have the time and mental energy right now.
It seems to me that some comedy definitely leans left would they be forced to make fun of both sides equally. I'd love to see if SNL was forced to treat Dems the same as Republicans.
One would be to only try and balance specifically editorial content. Entertainment (which you could specify as fiction, as opposed to real world or satire of real people) could be excluded. Alternatively you could use a system of polling to measure percieved bias of a station in total including everything (entertainment, editorial, news). Probably a bunch more potential mehtods that aren't coming to mind.
sometimes SNL is real world satire (for instance when they do skits about Palin) but not when doing stuff like the coneheads. Hence they'd have the choice of continuing to do political work or of not.
The Obama campaign must be thinking "Damnit, we've kept Joe's mouth pretty much under control so far, but it sounds like it's broken its leash". Obama is ahead and lookin' good per the polls (and money and ground game), and their biggest threat now is saying something really stupid. Enter Biden:
"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking"
"Remember I said it standing here. if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough -- I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen."
Hey Joe, way to worry people about an otherwise avoidable national security threat that you say will surely come if Obama is elected. Nice goin'.
Of course, Obama can hardly talk. How in the world does a candidate who has the key objective of avoiding being painted as too far to the left and as a tax and spend liberal utter a phrase like "spread the wealth around" in expressing his policy objectives and philosophy?? I realize it's hard to campaign all the time and not ever slip up, but that is Major League stupid (politically, I mean).
If somehow McCain pulls off a victory, that bonehead comment by Biden, and to some extent that bonehead comment by Obama, and the susequent clever exploitation by the McCain campaign of the opportunities provided by those comments, may have been the turning points. I'm not saying McCain is likely to win (it's still substantially less than 50% likely), but if he does, although many will suspect closet racism and the "Bradley effect", it may actually be those mistakes in the final weeks that cost Obama-Biden the election.
Again, how incredibly stupid. The McCain campaign is trying to paint Obama as dangerously inexperienced on national security and a stereotypical liberal tax & spender, and what do Obama and Biden do, when they are sitting on a big lead in the polls, a better ground force and a huge money advantage, and when all they have to do is not say something really stupid? Obama hands them a gift on national security and Biden hands them a gift on tax & spend.
I say again: Major League stupid.
For what it's worth though, points for (probable) honesty to them both. I say "stupid", though, because I don't think straight talk is their primary objective (winning is), and Obama could have handled the question from "Joe" honestly and clearly without using such a damaging and exploitable phrase, and Biden had no reason for his comment other than his big mouth and uncontrollable desire to sound insightful.
I keep seeing people in the blogosphere referring to what "538 says". I guess I'll have to find out who the hell this guy/gal is and why people seem to be attaching credibility to him/her.
Oh, and personally, I'd put it at around 25% and not nearly as low as 5%, considering any possible wild cards: major gaffes by Obama/Biden, some "October/November surprise" or new, effective tactic by the McCain campaign (e.g., some new mud they get to stick somehow), the potential for a "Bradley effect", and of course, some degree of chance (McCain winning all or nearly all the toss-up states) or some common error in polling (e.g., common erroneous assumption factored into sampling, weighting, who is a "likely" voter, etc.) that turns out to have overstated Obama's numbers vs. McCain.
I don't give up on my team. Afterall, I didn't give up hope on the Broncos untill the bitter ( and I do mean bitter) end last night - well okay not quite. -:)
Assuming that it is ~5% right now and assuming it doesn't change that still means 1/20 times McCain would win so there's no reason for you to give up, if you think a McCain victory is best. That's not great odds but it's far ffrom impossible.
538 is a polling aggragate site that sprung up this year. In addition to just aggragating the polls they also run 10,000 simulations a day to estimate a win percentage (the number I mentioned above). The owner is a democrat but his analysis is generally regarded as the best available. You can also look at realclearpolitics and pollster (right leaning and left leaning ownership, respectively, but both good). You can also look at the intrade kinds of places to get a sense of the market view (last I checked they had McCain at 16% ) if you like.
Comments :
Not helping the ACORN theme
The right has been pushing (hard) a meme of ACORn as some nebulous shadowy vote fraud organization. While this idea was already tenuous given the obvious chiba inspired stunts like registering Mickey Mouse and the starting line up of famous sports teams, it certainly isn't helped by things like this:
elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/20/republican-voter-registration-chief-arrested-fraud-california/
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Its still likely fraud.
I'm assuming Mr. Jacoby wasn't "mostly" living elsewhere due to vocational convenience. The writer really did a nice job, the article doesn't explicitly mention if his parents still live at his childhood home. If he doesn't live in the district he votes in at all, then him voting there is tantamount to me voting in Shelby, Ohio
just to help strike down any issues looking to improve their town.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
FYI Factcheck isn't buying the ACORN narrative either
www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/acorn_accusations.html
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
The first step to voter fraud ...
is voter registration fraud. You first have to have the false identities on the books before you can utilize them come election day.
Personally, I favor making it illegal for these types of organizations to even exist. Why do we need voter registration organizations, and especially why do we need partisan voter registration organizations?
If people want to vote, let them fill out and turn in their own registration materials. There is no need to allow these mass registration organizations to exist when they are so obviously open to fraud and corruption ... neither of which serves the public good.
At the very least let's make some penalties with teeth for turning in false registrations. How about a minimum of 1 year in jail and a mandatory $10,000 fine for each occurance (to apply to both the people who run the organization, the organization itself, and the specific canvasser in question)? That should improve the accuracy rate.
Oh, and let us make it illegal to pay someone (to be interpretted broadly as in providing any type of compensation or services in kind) to gather registrations.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4That should be "a" first step to voter fraud...
...and not a very common one. According to the Justice Department, most voter fraud convictions involved vote-buying schemes
hatched by local politicians.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
And that would be because ...
the career Democratic operatives in the Justice Department don't prosecute voter fraud cases which go against Democrats. I think there was a flap a while back about firing people over this ... :)
So, citing the predominant conviction rates is particularly telling if these crimes are even being prosecuted.
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4OK
I guess if what you mean by "career Democratic operatives" is "Bush appointees" then yes, there was a flap a while back.
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
Lies
Those were Republicans that refused to prosecute the specious voter-fraud cases that Rove and company pressured them to pursue for political reasons.
Todd Graves, US Attorney from Kansas City, whose resignation was demanded after he refused to sign off on a Justice lawsuit involving the state's voter rolls
: Republican 
.
John McKay, US Attorney from Washington, who was fired for failure to convene a federal grand jury to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the race
: Republican.
David Iglesias, US Attorney from New Mexico, who was fired in part for dissatisfaction with his pursuit of voter fraud cases
: Republican.
Need I go on?
These Rupublicans balked at going after these voter fraud cases because they knew these were weak or perhaps even bogus cases, and they knew it would have been wrong to cave to political pressure in pursuing them.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
I think
GoRight's talking about a conspiracy theory put forward to rationalize why when the GOP has the control of the government everything turns into sh*t. Because they can never be at fault and thus cannot be responsible for anythihng bad that happens there must be some nefarious force working underground to thwart their best efforts.
Sic semper tyrannis
So, perhaps these "career Democrat operatives"...
...are intimidating their bosses, the Republican U.S. Attorneys, into dropping these voter fraud cases with terrorist threats of harm to their families. For their crimes, these career Democrat operatives receive secret payments from a clandestine slush fund set up jointly by Bill Ayers and Barack Obama.
skymutt: accept no substitutes!
let's keep them marginalized
We need them because a bunch of Americans have done everything they could to socially/politically/economically marginalize certain communities in this country. People aren't born knowing how to participate in a society -- they need to be shown how the institutions works (and shown that they can trust those institutions). If no-one in their community can teach those lessons, then it is up to "outsiders" to show them how to participate.
Other than that, ACORN isn't "partisan" in the sense of being affiliated with a party, though they do make endorsements, IIRC. If the get non-profit tax status, then they probably have limits on what they can do to promote the candidate.
Finally, I don't see how helping people register to vote is any different than any other political activism.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Voter registration fraud: so what?
The voter identification laws
are strict enough to make registration fraud irellevant:
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
ACORN is required to turn in those registration forms
They say that they are required to turn in all registration forms that they recieve. I'm not familiar with the law, but it makes sense that they would be. Imagine if someone went to a neighborhood, set up a registration table, and then threw away all of the registration forms.
Come election day, all of those people would not be registered and wouldn't be able to vote. That'd be a BIG mess...much bigger than having some false forms submitted.
In my expert opinion, you should do what I tell you to do.
Or worse
Or told people they had to mark their party affiliation on the registration card and then threw away all of the Republican or Democratic registrations. That is exactly why every card is supposed to be turned in. The BoE is supposed to check the registrations, not private citizens.
If you don't turn in a completed registration card in Ohio, you are guilty of a 1st degree misdemeanor
.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Might be unconstitutional
Its already unconstitutional to ban paid signature gatherers (which is the only route you can go for ballot measures -- you don't get ~500,000 signatures through volunteers). This would seem to be a similar case.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
I should add
Anyone paid to register voters has to take a class and register with the state in Ohio. They also have to sign an affirmation saying they followed the relevant laws.
See 3503.29
.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Anti-cancer virus imaged
http://www.spectroscopynow.com/coi/cda/detail.cda?id=19633&type=Feature&chId=8&page=1
pic:
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Cool pics.
I'm for it, as long as it doesn't end up mutating, killing 80% of the population and turning the rest into zombies.
I might be MORE for it
if it did. :)
I'm sick of waiting for the zombipocalpyse. I've got a pudao and I damn well want to use it!
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Partisan media (e.g., Rush
Partisan media (e.g., Rush and his many imitators, Air America, echo chamber blogs of left, right, and other) are turning people into zombies quickly enough. We've even got some evidence of that here on SC, courtesy of RW and GR, who undoubtedly O.D. daily on that kind of rubbish.
"vulgar americanism"
Daniel Larison uses the term in his post on the Powell endorsement here:
www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/10/20/endorsements-and-excuses/
The whole post is well worth reading (as usual for Larison), but that term really jumped out at me as a very good description of the jingoism we've had to tolerate for a long time now from conservatives.
It *is* vulgar to treat national symbols as religious icons which must be shown ultimate deference. While that vulgarity is hardly unique to america, it is particularly offensive when the very symbols being used to proselytize were in fact meant as symbols of freedom of thought and expression.
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Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
I am firmly in the majority (for once)
in my total indifference to "joe the plumber."
www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/10/obama_leads_in_7.html
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
hey, is anyone using the email notification feature
under the comments, and is it working?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
I'm not using it
but I could give it a test spin if you like.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
hehe it works
When you replied I got an email that you replied! Sweet. That is a neat feature.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Let me understand this, Obama picked Biden for his FP exp?
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
LOL
Are you implying that the Soviets collapsed because they started spending too much on their military industrial complex? Can you imagine how much debris would be around if the Soviets tried knocking down the US Star Wars satellites, say good by satellite TV.
McCain accepted the endorsement of a man that helped armed Contra death squads. Saying the Sandinista government would be worse than the Contras is like saying Shaq is too tall, lets put in Yao Ming.
You mean "Biden's handing over the stick to Bush and not trying to take it away after his State of the Union Address"
Also, if Biden is bad, then what is Palin?
What's next, a Bengals fan claims the Browns are bad?
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
In all honesty
I really don't think the republicans have any room to cast stone on foreign policy.
Whose actions led to the rise of Saddam? (GOP)
Whose actions led to the rise of the Ayatollah? (GOP)
Whose actions led to the rise of Noriega? (GOP)
The republican party has done a hell of a lot to manufacture enemies for the US around the world. I'm inclined to view their evaluation of foreign policy as completely counter to reality.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
re: Biden and the Sandinistas
Biden was absolutely right to oppose Reagan's policy on the Sandinistas. I'm not sure how much of this history you know, but consider what was going on in Nicaraguan politics at the time: the Sandinistas had overthrown an oppressive autocratic regime that was supported by U.S. dollars, and Reagan responded by throwing millions of dollars into counterrevolutionary armies.
There's plenty to criticize in how the Sandinistas operated - don't get me wrong. But Reagan wasn't concerned with human rights: he was waging a pretty one-dimensional battle against anything that looked communist. Which means that Reagan sided with a oppressive dictatorship, and used U.S. money to prop it up.
So props to Biden for opposing Reagan on that issue. I would have, too.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Which is exactly like
what we did in southeast asia and the middle east- clung to the worst dictators in an attempt to stop communism. Tyranny in the name of democracy. How charming. How self defeating...
We manufactured so many of our enemies it isn't even funny. We really are our own worst enemies, in that sense.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
It pays to remember
That when the Sandinistas has free elections and they lost, there was a peaceful transfer of power. The FSLN then became the official opposition.
Today the FSLN is the largest party in Nicaraguan legislature and they also hold the Presidency.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
Just a note re: the
Just a note re: the Sandinistas, after they lost but before they left, they ripped off the country in what they call there "la pinata" (meaning like a pinata at a childrens party that a kid smashes and all the candy falls out and all the kids scramble to grab it). These guys who claimed to be on the side of the poor ripped off the second (or perhaps first) poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. I was in Nicaragua as part of a delegation of election observers in 1996 and I asked a Sandinista spokesperson about that, and all he could say was that by Latin American standards it wasn't particularly bad. Hah! Some revolutionary!
Certainly not the most ethical group,
and I also have problems with the way they shut down the free flow of information during the 80s, justifying it against the war they were fighting. Nobody messes with free speech and gets my vote of approval.
But RW's claim is based on something different: Biden voted against Reagan's request to fund the Contras. All things considered, the Sandanistas were nowhere near as dictatorial or oppressive as the regime they replaced, and sending U.S. money to fund a military opposition was evil on every conceivable level. So as far as that goes, ... points to Biden for having the clarity to see through Reagan's cynical foreign policy.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Agreed
The sandinistas were not angels by any stretch of the imagination. But neither were they so bad that the US needed to illegally meddle in the country to undermine them. In fact by latin american standards (yeah, I know) they weren't bad at all. Granted I'd very much like to shoot higher than that, but I think attacking the sandinistas for only being better and not a *lot* better would be the very definition of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
The contras, whom we backed, were god d$mn monsters. Figures.
I came. I saw. I posted.
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I think attacking the
What is "the good" in that picture? Is that the argument that they didn't offer more freedom than many other Latin American governments but at least provided free education, healthcare, land "reform", etc.?
Yeah basically
along with their willingness to abide by the political results of the election that threw them out of power. They did some good stuff and some bad stuff. That alone puts them well ahead of about 90% of latin american leaders, sadly.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
The election they lost was in
The election they lost was in 1990, so I think you have your chronology a bit screwed up, unless your assumption is that their willingness to leave power in 1990 proves that they would have been willing to leave power had they lost the 1984 elections or elections at some other prior point while we were supporting the contras. That would be an assumption I would not share.
As for the Sandinistas being arguably better than many dictatorships in Latin America at the time, I still wouldn't refer to them as "the good" as you did.
sending U.S. money to fund a
I consider that an overstatement. I think reasonable people could believe that there were some non-evil purposes.
One non-evil rationale could be to prevent the spread of Marxism and Soviet in Central America -- and more broadly Latin America, including South America, the Caribbean and Mexico -- as part of the Cold War chess game to prevent a shift in balance of power, avoid having to divert military resources away from other key regions/spots in the world. Another purpose related to the above in an indirect manner was to maintain America's world image as at least the Soviet's equal, and hopefully its superior, in terms of overall power, again as part of the chess game (you want allies, potential allies, and adversaries [including the Soviets] all to view you as powerful in terms of both capability and willingness to use power, not as a power on the decline who is losing chess pieces all over the globe -- Central America, Africa, etc.). As a note, the Sandinistas were building and seeking to build a military capability that would substantially alter the balance of power in Central America (although obviously not vis a vis the U.S.), which could have had adverse direct and indirect (via image) consequences for the U.S. Yes, there's some chicken and egg there, but my recollection of my impression (how's that for a phrase?) is that the Sandinista buildup efforts were not justified by the threat from the contras or even by the likelihood of an American invasion.
Another could be the belief that there is more chance of a right wing dictatorship evolving into something of a liberal democracy (or even being overthrown by democratic forces) than a Marxist system, due to the latters closer involvement in the day-to-day affairs of citizens through rationing, "block committees" (the Sandinistas created "Sandinista Defense Committees" modeled after the Cuban "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution"). Bear in mind that this was long before people could imagine Eastern Europe and the Russians overcoming the grip of their totalitarian governments. In fact, it to the best of my recollection, up to that point no Soviet-style system had ever been overthrown or ever evolved into anything even remotely resembling a liberal democracy, whereas right-wing dictatorships had.
I'm not suggesting that it's by any means clear that our support of the contras (particularly after the 1984/1985 Boland Amendment, but even before) was justified, only to point out that, IMHO, your statement goes too far. Yes, there are legitimate arguments that our policy was wrong, most notably the argument that we had no right to essentially create a rebel force. But it's not unreasonable to have seen legitimate American interests in supporting the contras, whether or not one concluded overall that the policy was justified and wise. And I don't consider it unreasonable even for one to have favored that policy (until the 1984/1985 Boland Amendment was enacted, after which our support became illegal, and I mean under U.S. law, not international law).
One other note, there is a common misconception that the contras were mostly former Somoza National Guardsmen. They were not. Although the leadership were indeed primarily Somocista (some of the political leaders weren't, but even some of them quit over time), the rank and file were primarily peasants (campesinos), many of whom resented the Sandinistas' heavy-handed land policies.
To be clear, I respect the point of view that our policy was wrong. Personally, I have mixed feelings about it and don't consider it an easy call, but I'm not suggesting everyone should see it as such.
That's a fair point, and
I commend you for trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but at best it seems to me that the Reagan administration was guilty of putting ideology over body count, which in my mind is a pretty unforgivable sin. If nothing else the placement of ideology over human lives is a criticism often thrown at communist movements (and a fair one, considering their history).
And that was pretty much Reagan's strategy, opposing the Sandinistas on the grounds that they were part of a spread of communism that was absolutely unacceptable, regardless of the costs. But it's one thing to make that kind of decision from an office in another country for another nation, while that U.S.-backed regime is massacring its own people. And while you make a good point about perceived American interests, I have to wonder what kind of American interests morally justify funding the assassination of dozens of the FSLN leaders. The politest thing that could be said about our policy is that it was insanely hypocritical.
Heh, the shining city on the hill.
We face a similar problem in Pakistan, by the way, supporting the last regime that any so-called liberal democracy should back. And we have similarly ideological reasons for doing so, regardless of the cost in human lives.
So I respect that you're trying to give some benefit of the doubt here, but what you're describing aren't reasons, they're rationalizations over a mounting body count. That's why I use the word "evil", though I do understand why you think it's too strong.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
the Reagan administration was
the Reagan administration was guilty of putting ideology over body count, which in my mind is a pretty unforgivable sin.
Can you flesh out what you mean by "ideology"? Isn't ideology in general, and in this case in particular, ultimately all/mostly about the quality of people's lives, as well as possibly their safety? And if you agree that it is, why do you see it as inherently an "unforgivable sin" to seek to advance an ideology even at the cost of some lives (speaking generically, not about the particulars of this case, if you are making a statement of general principle)?
And as for this particular case, Reagan obviously felt it was very important that liberal democratic "ideology" defeat "communist" "ideology", but held that view because he believed people would be better off under political systems based on liberal democratic ideology than under Soviet-style "Marxism", and even if (and I don't know if this is the case or not, and probably not) he thought that peoples would be no better off (even in the future) if we supported and sustained right-wing dictatorships than they would be under "Marxism", he clearly thought that fighting the Cold War was a means of defending the liberty of those nations that did have liberal democracies or the prospect for such systems, which in itself is a noble goal, whether or not that end justfies the means in this case.
No, they are reasons. See my paragraph above. I don't see how "a mounting body count" necessarily trumps all other considerations as a matter of general principle or why that would so clearly be the case in this case that "reasons" can be dismissed as mere "rationalizations".
Ideology
refers to any set of principles lumped into a system, which can be helpful in developing a general set of plans for action, and dangerous whenever we adhere to that system regardless of its real-world effects.
For the sake of discussion, let's eliminate the extreme side of this argument: Does adherence to an ideology justify any action whatsoever? I think we can all agree - No - if only because we can probably think of actions so extreme that no larger goal justifies them. The question then becomes, what level of sacrifice is acceptable? (Although that in itself is really two questions: self-sacrifice is one thing, demanding sacrifice of unwilling third parties is another. In fact the demanded sacrifice of unwilling third parties is the essence of liberal democracy's complain against communist regimes, and with good reason.)
So this is my contention: Reagan not only crossed the line of acceptable sacrifice (of unwilling third parties, no less), but he did it knowingly, cynically, and with full awareness of the results. The actions he took to meet his goals were not only unethical (which one can justify with reasons), but also immoral (which is where one resorts to rationalizations).
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
"refers to any set of
"refers to any set of principles lumped into a system, which can be helpful in developing a general set of plans for action, and dangerous whenever we adhere to that system regardless of its real-world effects." Ultimately what real word effects you think are harmful, and what is dangerous, have to be based on your ideology, so you can't really come to a decision of what's right without ideology. You can't say you're just for what's best for people, because ultimately that in itself is an ideology and you have to have an opinion of what's best for people.
I don't disagree, but you're edging dangerously close
to complete relativism there. I agree that an ideology can rationalize (and I insist on using that word) the consequences of any actions, but that's precisely my criticism: unless we're willing to say that there are no moral absolutes, then we're forced to recognize that no ideology can justify any action whatsoever in pursuit of its goals. If we ARE willing to say that there are no moral absolutes, then we might as well not be having this conversation, because - as Dostoevsky once skewered - "everything is permitted." In other words, it'd be completely arbitrary whether you're Mother Theresa or Josef Stalin. I'd prefer not to be that relativistic. :)
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Just because I think everything is framed by ideology
doesn't mean I do not think tthre are wrong ideologies and correct ideologies.
What do you mean by "moral
What do you mean by "moral absolutes"? If you're refering to deontological ethics/morality, then yes, there are no moral absolutes. There is no action that is inherently moral or immoral. Consequentialism is the only framework for morality that makes any sense to me. What makes an act moral or immoral is the intended consequences (provided adequate consideration has been given to the likely/potential consequences), meaning likely and potential benefits, harms and risks.
If, on the other hand, you just mean that there are some ideologies that are immoral in that they disregard moral considerations (e.g., that all that matters is the benefit of one's own people, period) and/or are based on principles and objectives that are virtually inescapabley immoral (e.g., that the Jews must be eliminated), than pretty much by definition, such ideologies are immoral.
Perhaps a better way to put it
is that Reagan's administration allowed their own personal ideology trump the ideology of the position they accepted and swore to uphold. that is their "stop the communists at all costs" trumped "defend the constitution."
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dangerous whenever we adhere
Well, of course, blindly adhering to any general principle or rule of thumb regardless of real-world effects is irresponsible, immoral, and often counterproductive as well.
I must ask my questions again, though, since you still seem to treat "ideology" as some abstract notion, perhaps with only some emotional benefit to those applying it or perhaps as some (perhaps lazy or reckless) short-cut to policy or "general sets of plans for action", as opposed to a guide for policy objectives, strategy and decisions aimed at improving peoples lives, and you then weigh this abstract notion against adverse "real-world effects" such as people getting killed.
So I ask again:
Regarding:
I think you're on the right track, since I view the morality of all decisions as a function of anticipated consequences (provided that the decider has devoted adequate consideration to this calculus given the potential consequences), although again I must point out that the extended question is "What level of sacrifice (and demanded of whom) is acceptable relative to the alternative set of likely/potential consequences -- i.e., harms and benefits to people (and animals)" So again, let's not treat the rationale (not rationalization, but rationale) of seeking to defeat a political system (and alliances) that one considers very harmful to people (Soviet-style Marxism and global Soviet influence and alliances in this case) as merely some abstract notion to be weighed against "real" sacrifices required to pursue that objective.
Absolutely, with one very important note: If a president is sets a policy that he thinks will prevent substantial harm or risk to the well-being of 250 million people/citizens in his country, and if this policy is expected to impose sacrifice on others elsewhere, it cannot be said that this president is demanding sacrifice of others for one's benefit (as if the benefit were to accrue to only the president personally); the moral calculus relating to the policy decision considers the balance of likely/potential harm to those "others" vs. the likely/potential harm to the 250 million people. If the intended beneficiaries extend beyond one's own country and include hundreds of millions elsewhere as well (e.g., liberal democracies and prospective liberal democracies throughout the world at the time), then the interests of those people as well must be factored in, even if none of those people, either, are among those who will be made to sacrifice under the policy intended to benefit them.
Having said the above, yes, there is a difference between a president of one country choosing to harm the people of another country for the benefit of his own (which, as a reminder, may or may not be how Reagan saw support of the contras, and probably was not), particularly with regard to military action or support thereof. One difference is that such a practice often causes a breakdown in international order that has its own adverse consequences. But the other difference is that, although in theory a moral calculation can view the interests of one of own's own citizens as equal to the interests of some "foreigner", in practice, there is a strong tendency for those in power to either consciously or subconsciously weigh the interests of their own people over the interests of others (some would argue that this is, in fact, an obligation, although I'm not contending that here).
As for the semantic discussion/debate re: "reasons" vs. "rationalizations", I'll leave that aside, at least for now, because I don't think it's central to our discussion and it might get more tedious than it's worth.
DEMS GET SET TO MUZZLE THE RIGHT?
More...
Underlying all arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~M. Friedman
And?
The airwaves belong to the people in total. The government is completely within their rights to require equal air time. Now cable (and satellite) a different matter and I'd be more inclined to agree with you there.
Besides if it's a level playing field shouldn't the right do just fine? Marketplace of ideas, right? Uh, right?
Don't tell me conservativism only stands a chance when it can shut out opposing view points by owning the media outlets...
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The problem is there's so many opposing viewpoints
Ultimately there does have to be decisions of which one's get aired and which one's don't. If the Government is the one making that decision I think it leads to pretty free speech. While I don't think capitalism allocate airtime is a perfect way to do it, I think it may be best, and is certainly better than giving the government that power. Having the media have to clear what ideas it propogates through the government seems like a real threat to democracy regardless of the reason for doing so.
That may be one advantage
of a two party system- there basically are only two major views.
Why would it be better to let those with money control what gets said? They, unlike the government, have absolutely no culpability to the people as a whole. I think letting the rich determine what gets said is a far greater threat to democracy- after all the rich by simple virtue of their wealth have already shown the value money above civic duty. What reason do such people have not to control the news such that it benefits them?
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"Why would it be better to
"Why would it be better to let those with money control what gets said? They, unlike the government, have absolutely no culpability to the people as a whole. I think letting the rich determine what gets said is a far greater threat to democracy- after all the rich by simple virtue of their wealth have already shown the value money above civic duty. What reason do such people have not to control the news such that it benefits them?"
The rich are motivated to give what the people as a whole want, by the fact that they want people to listen to their advertisements and buy their products. As far as I know, commercial programing is pretty ratings controlled - in other words it is controlled not by what the sponsor personally wants people to see or hear, but by what the viewers want to see or hear. Now it's true that a rich guy could buy up a bunch of air, and just air whatever views he wanted regardless of ratings or what people wanted to hear, but since sponsors generally want people to stay tuned and listen to their advertisements they're not generally going to do that. Therefore, the capitalistic system seems to have the end result of people generally hearing or watching want they want to, it's not perfect, but there is a direct correlation between what viewers want and what they get.
I think that correlation would be much weaker if government beareaucrats controlled the airwaves. There's so many issues, that representives would not need to please the people on the one issue of what's put on the airwaves. Besides government beareaucrats would really be in charge of the airwaves, they would have a connection to the elected representative, but the connection would be weak. Therefore, there would be little reason for the bereaucrats ( and plenty of reason to protect the power of the government which employed them.) to please the people, and the airwaves wouldn't really belong to the people. I think allowing government control of the airwaves would be allowing the fox to guard the chicken coop.
What they want vs what they need
Its a sad fact of life that people don't always want what they need.
So you have a choice you either allow them to wallow in self destructive habits or you provide what they need. When talking about a singular individual habit then I'm content to let the individual self destruct, but here we're talking about something critical to the function of this nation. In a democracy the electorate needs to have accurate information about candidates, proposals, and situations.
They may not want to, they may prefer to listen to blowhards rant. But that's not what they actually need.
And if the kids get to vote on dinner you have icecream every night. But that's less than ideal. :)
Either way there's a canine guarding the hen house. The question is if you want the dog with a leash (government) or the feral fox (private corporations). The first may have the same instincts as the latter but it is far better trained to serve and far more closely constrained than the latter, at least in a liberal democracy.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Partial agreement
I don't mind allowing people to wallow in self-destructive habits if we provide them with adequate tools to get them out of their rut. This is why I support direct payments of cash money instead of food stamps and the like[1]. We should give you the tools to do what you need to survive, but only if you are smart with what you do with those tools. If you can't make rent this month because you blew a bunch of your money on Communique
to place, perhaps you don't deserve a place to live.
I'm of the opinion that we don't give people the proper tools to help themselves out (ie. you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you have no boots). When we do, I'll start sounding like one of those heartless conservatives.
[1] This is not true for dependent children. They should get direct aid through food, clothing, etc. as to minimize the damage poor parenting would cause on a direct cash payment system.
I never broke the law; I am the law! --
George W. BushJudge DreddI'm listening to...
However, who decides what the
However, who decides what the people need, if not the people. Isn't the idea of democracy kind of that the people are the best deciders of what to get, and if they don't get what the need well that's there fault - they still get what the chose to get. True the minority has to suffer with the majorities bad decision - but what's the alternative?
Somewhat true
but we have an implicit acknowledgement in our system of government that we cannot operate on a purely majority rules basis. We have aspects of the law which require supermajorities (and sometimes a great deal more than that) to change, for instance.
That's why we have a government- the people sometimes need to be reigned in. The public airwaves should provide objective information whenever possible. In matters of reasonable contention it should provide balanced information.
People can (and some undoubtedly will) flee to satellite and cable where they may glut themselves on sugared hostility, but at least a nourishing alternative was made available. Right now there's very little in the way of healthy food for the mind in the people's spectrum.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Ultimately the people have a right to the airwaves
If want they want is hyper-partisan non-sense, they should get hyper-partisan non-sense. It's true that there does have to be checks on the majority, but that doesn't mean for the governemnt to give control of an issue to a minority, because how is the issue any safer in the hands of a minority than a majority? Sometimes the government must keep an issue out of the hands of government - such a religion or free speech, but that doesn't mean their putting the issue into the hands of a minority. In the case of the Airwaves, someone has to control it, you seem to trust government bereaucracy, and while I don't entirely trust the people, I think it makes more sense than having anyone else control the airwaves.
Since I am coming from the premise of " the people should control the airwaves", the question becomes how best can this be accomplished - as they obviously cannot do so directly. As I've explained I think commercial radio does a better job of it than what turning it over to a bereaucrat would, however, there may still be better ideas.
I agree and disagree
with your premise that the people have a right to the airwaves. They do, but it is a collective right, not an individual one; The good of the collective whole must be used to determine the extent of that right, not the sdesires of the individual.
We'll lets examine that a bit more. It is true that Government must stay out of the realm of creating an official religion but at the same time it is very much government's role to protect any religious congregation from outright attack by another. It's not like the FBI can;t investigate a church bombing. So in this case let's imagine that you had people who were quite able and had demonstrated the will to buy up every square foot of land to prevent anyone building a synogogue. In such a case I think the government has to intervene. That's simply not right. There is a finite amount of land to the US and it shouldn;t be held hostage to the prejudices of the super-wealthy.
Would you disagree?
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"The good of the collective
"The good of the collective whole must be used to determine the extent of that right, not the sdesires of the individual." I tend to agree, but who get's to determine the good of the collective whole, it seems to me that since people generally act in their self interest it would best be decided by the collective people - in other words as democratically as possible, now of course commercial control of the radios doesn't provide perfect democratic control of the airwaves, but as I've explained I think it's better in that way than handing it over to government bereaucrats.
"We'll lets examine that a bit more. It is true that Government must stay out of the realm of creating an official religion but at the same time it is very much government's role to protect any religious congregation from outright attack by another. It's not like the FBI can;t investigate a church bombing. So in this case let's imagine that you had people who were quite able and had demonstrated the will to buy up every square foot of land to prevent anyone building a synogogue. In such a case I think the government has to intervene. That's simply not right. There is a finite amount of land to the US and it shouldn;t be held hostage to the prejudices of the super-wealthy."
Interesting hypothetical that I'd never really thought about. I guess I think ultimately the government has to provide folks with a safety net, so that those who are truly working as hard as is reasonably possible have their needs met. I thinking such a safety probably needs to provide enough money to acess ( or just direct acess) to land and housing that they could reasonably function.
Also if people are putting an unneccessary burden on religous practice, just for the sake of putting a burden on it, I think the government has a right to step in. OTOH if say the Catholic church has more money than the Baptist church and is able to buy a church that the Baptist would have bought, I don't think it's the government's role to enter into the fray - if the government tried to make everything fair they would undoubtly choose favorites - same if the government is in charge of policing ideology on the airwaves.
John, A formatting tip. When
John,
A formatting tip. When quoting, just highlight the quote and click the quotation mark button above the comment field and the quote will appear in a blue box
It just makes it a little easier on the eyes.
Yeah thanks, I noticed they have that function now
I just haven't gotten use to using it yet. I think this may be the coolest comment making processor I've seen on a blog. Make's it nice for people like me who know nothing about HTML.
I'm sorry, John
I wish I had more time to discuss this, because I do think it's a good conversation, but it's getting pretty technical and my time is limited this month. We can come back to it later if you like but I just don't have the time and mental energy right now.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
As a sidenote what about Comedy
It seems to me that some comedy definitely leans left would they be forced to make fun of both sides equally. I'd love to see if SNL was forced to treat Dems the same as Republicans.
Oh and what about Movies shown on TV
Do they have to be balanced. Imagine the challenge T.V. would face if they tried to balance liberal movies with Conservative movies.
You could go a few different ways
One would be to only try and balance specifically editorial content. Entertainment (which you could specify as fiction, as opposed to real world or satire of real people) could be excluded. Alternatively you could use a system of polling to measure percieved bias of a station in total including everything (entertainment, editorial, news). Probably a bunch more potential mehtods that aren't coming to mind.
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"Entertainment (which you
"Entertainment (which you could specify as fiction, as opposed to real world or satire of real people) could be excluded. "
Talk-radio certainly qualifies as entertainment, but then it is real world satire, but then so is SNL.
SNL
sometimes SNL is real world satire (for instance when they do skits about Palin) but not when doing stuff like the coneheads. Hence they'd have the choice of continuing to do political work or of not.
I came. I saw. I posted.
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such hysterical fear
and negativity coming from the right. It's almost as if your party is bankrupt of ideas.
Really it is going to be okay. The world isn't going to end if democrats get elected.
I'm only half stupid
The Obama campaign must be
The Obama campaign must be thinking "Damnit, we've kept Joe's mouth pretty much under control so far, but it sounds like it's broken its leash". Obama is ahead and lookin' good per the polls (and money and ground game), and their biggest threat now is saying something really stupid. Enter Biden:
Hey Joe, way to worry people about an otherwise avoidable national security threat that you say will surely come if Obama is elected. Nice goin'.
Of course, Obama can hardly talk. How in the world does a candidate who has the key objective of avoiding being painted as too far to the left and as a tax and spend liberal utter a phrase like "spread the wealth around" in expressing his policy objectives and philosophy?? I realize it's hard to campaign all the time and not ever slip up, but that is Major League stupid (politically, I mean).
Let's just hope that BHO or JSM don't die in office.
"Vote Obama and prepare for WWIII"
Even if Biden thinks that upon further reflection, he should really keep that to himself.
In our society, people are rewarded for pretending to be certain about things they're clearly not certain about. -- Sam Harris,
If somehow McCain pulls off a
If somehow McCain pulls off a victory, that bonehead comment by Biden, and to some extent that bonehead comment by Obama, and the susequent clever exploitation by the McCain campaign of the opportunities provided by those comments, may have been the turning points. I'm not saying McCain is likely to win (it's still substantially less than 50% likely), but if he does, although many will suspect closet racism and the "Bradley effect", it may actually be those mistakes in the final weeks that cost Obama-Biden the election.
Again, how incredibly stupid. The McCain campaign is trying to paint Obama as dangerously inexperienced on national security and a stereotypical liberal tax & spender, and what do Obama and Biden do, when they are sitting on a big lead in the polls, a better ground force and a huge money advantage, and when all they have to do is not say something really stupid? Obama hands them a gift on national security and Biden hands them a gift on tax & spend.
I say again: Major League stupid.
For what it's worth though, points for (probable) honesty to them both. I say "stupid", though, because I don't think straight talk is their primary objective (winning is), and Obama could have handled the question from "Joe" honestly and clearly without using such a damaging and exploitable phrase, and Biden had no reason for his comment other than his big mouth and uncontrollable desire to sound insightful.
538 has it at about 5% likely
so yeah, much much less than 50%
I came. I saw. I posted.
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I keep seeing people in the
I keep seeing people in the blogosphere referring to what "538 says". I guess I'll have to find out who the hell this guy/gal is and why people seem to be attaching credibility to him/her.
Oh, and personally, I'd put it at around 25% and not nearly as low as 5%, considering any possible wild cards: major gaffes by Obama/Biden, some "October/November surprise" or new, effective tactic by the McCain campaign (e.g., some new mud they get to stick somehow), the potential for a "Bradley effect", and of course, some degree of chance (McCain winning all or nearly all the toss-up states) or some common error in polling (e.g., common erroneous assumption factored into sampling, weighting, who is a "likely" voter, etc.) that turns out to have overstated Obama's numbers vs. McCain.
Well I still think McCain going to win
I don't give up on my team. Afterall, I didn't give up hope on the Broncos untill the bitter ( and I do mean bitter) end last night - well okay not quite. -:)
Well, you are a person of
Well, you are a person of faith ;-)
Well...
Assuming that it is ~5% right now and assuming it doesn't change that still means 1/20 times McCain would win so there's no reason for you to give up, if you think a McCain victory is best. That's not great odds but it's far ffrom impossible.
I came. I saw. I posted.
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538
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
We are the environment. There is no distinction. What we do to the earth we do to ourselves. —David Suzuki
B rational
538 is a polling aggragate site that sprung up this year. In addition to just aggragating the polls they also run 10,000 simulations a day to estimate a win percentage (the number I mentioned above). The owner is a democrat but his analysis is generally regarded as the best available. You can also look at realclearpolitics and pollster (right leaning and left leaning ownership, respectively, but both good). You can also look at the intrade kinds of places to get a sense of the market view (last I checked they had McCain at 16% ) if you like.
I came. I saw. I posted.
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