Go review the MN election. Without the ACORN distortions, Franken loses.
I'd be interested in it too. The problem is that what rises to the necessary level of proof legally is different than what we can figure out ourselves as common sense. Watching the ACORN leaders twist and turn as they are assaulted by their right wing critics makes it clear that ACORN is hiding a lot. They are tap dancing like crazy not just on the "'Hogate 2009" but on their voter signup practices. When it smells like poo, it probably is.
Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as condescending. I was actually trying to be sort of friendly ...
Go ahead, counter them if they are trivial arguments. Explain to me why it's OK to enslave me for 5 months a year.
I liked neither. However, the current Messiah's performance is guarnteeing that I am going to do something I have not done in literally decades - vote a straight, blind R ticket for the next several elections. I'd even take Gingrich-Palin over what we have now. (And I almost NEVER vote for a Republican.)
Read "The Mismeasure of Man" by Stephen Jay Gould, and I think you'll reconsider that suggestion. The *only* thing that IQ can be scientifically demonstrated to measure is performance on IQ tests. Nonetheless, it's been used in the past as a justification for some horrific acts of discrimination. Among other things, such discrimination resulted in perhaps millions of deaths in the first half of the 20th century, when vast numbers of people attempting to flee the carnage of WWII, and the destruction by deliberate famine of the Russian peasant class under Stalin[*], were not permitted to enter the United States because of harsh quotas imposed by the Immigration Restriction Act of
1924, which severely limited the immigration of the supposedly congenitally intellectually "inferior" eastern and southern Europeans.
[*] "I Chose Freedom" by Viktor Kravchenko is a compelling eyewitness account of the horrors of Stalinist Russia. [Scribner, New York, 1946]
And where might you propose they GET this education?
Anything short of source documents is pure partisan spin and commercial crap.
What do you suggest people do -- what most Americans do -- read NOTHING BUT things that support their partisan pre-conceived ideas of the world (aka "Confirmation Bias")?
What good does that do?
You might want to readdress that to Keith, I did not say that.
And I'm saying no such thing. I'm saying that denying the essential correctness of the Founders' ideas because they happened to live at a time slavery was "normal", really misses the genius of their contribution. The fact is that ALL Americans today are victims of slavery in some sense. We are all paying the bitter harvest of this most evil of practices. But if we not place this in context by also admiring the 99% that was right about our founders we end up beating ourselves up needlessly and thereby miss the essence of American exceptionalism. i.e. We start to take the modern political left seriously rather than heaping the scorn upon it, so richly deserved...
Again, I ask: Where is the similar level of outrage against the Islamists that are this very day buying African slaves? Why is there no hue and cry directed against the Somalis and Mauretanians for their slaving? If Jefferson, Madison, et al were wrong for not immediately stopping slavery after less than 300 years of Western presence in the New World, why are you not also up in arms about the Barbary Barbarians that predated them by several hundred years and continued the practice another hundred thereafter? Methinks there is political agenda here ...
I think those steps should include ensuring that the ill-educated and uninformed do not participate in the election process _at all_. Those conditions are, after all, fairly readily cured -- and with education compulsory through the age of sixteen, and publicly funded, there's little excuse for not acquiring at least a minimal understanding of how our economic and political systems work.
Note "_at all_" in the above: an even more important consideration than preventing those who are ignorant of our economic and political systems from voting is preventing them from holding office!
No problem, Morris, and I respect your opinion in particular.
My contention is still that it is a direct result of this (idealistic) concept that has, demonstrably and observably, insured the very _absence_ of a well-educated and well-informed electorate.
Looking around, it is difficult to surmise otherwise?
Don't point that question at me, Man! It's loaded :-)
[and very much akin to me asking whether or not you've stopped beating your wife yet.....]
I wonder how I made it through eight years of GWB without ever calling him some horrid media-propagated nickname, despite having been repulsed by virtually everything he ever did as the Leader of the Free world.
And why those who -- generally -- claim to love this country "more than all others," and have respect for its institutions feel so compelled to act like kids when it comes to politicians they dislike?
Chosen One? Messiah? Socialism? Communism? Black president shining Palin's shoes??
Nobody who ever invokes terms like that ... should ever wonder why others pay NO attention to politics.
It's because that sort of behavior -- regardless of which side is using it -- repulses sensible folk.
Now ... to help re-frame your question ....
Why should you pay taxes?
Because the collective good is served -- in some cases, better, and in some cases, worse -- by the collective dollars spent for the 'general welfare --' be it roads, safe cars, safe drinking water, an education system that -- while in need of serious pimping -- is still ranked highly in the world -- police protection, fire protection, libraries, (inadequate) regulation that helps to extinguish Social Darwinism where the strong may pray on the weak, a mighty military, satellite navigation, etc., etc., etc., etc.
[And ... health care. A sick uneducated work force (worse than it is now, I mean) is a one way ticket down on the latter of economic world hegemony for the good old You Ess Of Ayyyy. We WILL be serving cocktails, in flight, however.]
These things cost money.
In aggregate, these things also play a BIG role in the average person's perceptions about why this is The Greatest Place In The World In Which To Live (I like it, but ... would never go that far).
Take away the economic support for those things, and Social Darwinism really takes hold. A quick peek: the item that taxes pay for, and what happens when the wealthy are free from subsidizing it:
-Roads? Hell, I'll buy a Hummer
-Schools? I'll send my kids to private
-Water? I buy bottled
-Pesticides? I buy organic. Let THEM eat DDT
-Banking regulation? Hell, _I_ have an MBA and a high-priced lawyer. F the rest of them
-Police/fire/public safety? I'm RICH and am covered by Sovereign Deed
and on and on and on.
Sounds okay?
Well ... if you're on this ng ... you're likely in the group that's going to be screwed. Enjoy :-) I'll be your cabin-mate, Neil.
I'm actually a hobbyist woodworker, but ... because of a nagging sinus infection ... have had to take a slight break from my two shaker-style mahogany night stands.
I spend little time on this forum because -- like the craft, generally, I'm guessing -- the demographic is painfully narrow.
Again: confirmation bias.
A bunch of people preening around each other, telling each other what they already know, and are desperate to hear again (and again and again).
Challenging our closely-held assumptions ... is a good thing :-)
So is wearing an N95 mask when cutting M&Ts in mahog or dado'ing my baltic birch plywood ;-)
On Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:54:05 -0500, the infamous "J. Clarke" scrawled the following:
I think I could second that! Bwahahahahaha!
But think, if we abolished all the gov't we didn't actually _need_, many additional millions would be out of work. I guess, as they've thought of us, "It's only paeons (gov't workers), so why worry?"
-- It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. -- Garrison Keillor
They tolerated slavery too, does that mean it was a bad idea to end the practice?
Again, bull. People have been bemoaning the supposed decline of the country as long as the country has existed, some folks just seem to enjoy forecasting doom.
Are you capable of speaking in anything but slogans? Your posts are peppered with buzzwords from the rabid-right, can't you function without borrowing their group-speak?
As for your argument, pointing out that other cultures had slavery too, as if that's a valid excuse to continue it in America, is a feeble notion. You've also overlooked that Britain abolished slavery before the United States, and they managed to do it without the U.S. Constitution, imagine that.
There's no shortage of them, politics seems to have attracted that sort as far back as history goes, it didn't begin just forty years ago. However it remains that the crooks and morons being subject to dismissal is a valuable institution, one I wouldn't care to give up.
I have no personal animus towards the current Prez. I have a loathing for almost every policy decision AND contempt for those who worship him as some salvific figure. Hence the term "Messiah".
You lost me already at "collective good". More evil has been done in the name of the "collective" than any other word in human history. It has been used to justify all manner of mischief, oppression, brutality, and horror. So, frankly, I am uninterested in the "collective good."
I'm interested in preserving freedom for as many people and in as large amount as possible. So, by that definition, the only legitimate use of taxation is to fund the defense of liberty from threats both within- and without. Everything else is some form of imbalance of liberty where some pay and some benefit, but the net amount of freedom does not increase (and in fact is decreased from some people).
The answer is: I should happily pay taxes to defend my freedom. (And I do.) I should resist - by all legal and ethical means - to see tax money used for any other purpose because that is stealing.
If voter turnout upward of 85% is a good thing (and I think it is) then I think mandatory voting works. Of course if you don't like the results of some elections and you'd rather certain people stayed home on election day then I see how you'd think it was a bad idea.
Sure, if you didn't mind the $1,000.00 fine applied to your property taxes (or whatever sanction is applied)--be my guest.
Has that happened in Australia, Belgium, Switzerland etc.? No? Then what are you moaning about?
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