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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 107 responses total. |
twenex
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response 54 of 107:
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Feb 2 16:37 UTC 2006 |
And I quote:
#49 of 53: by Sindi Keesan (keesan) on Thu, Feb 2, 2006 (15:57):
Look what happened during the last two democratic elections for the President
of the USA. There are many ways to rig an election, and also to bamboozle
the voters, some of whom have mental ages of about 5.
#50 of 53: by Nathan Harmon (nharmon) on Thu, Feb 2, 2006 (16:08):
Yeah, and look at the two before those.
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nharmon
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response 55 of 107:
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Feb 2 16:47 UTC 2006 |
And from that you conclude my meaning was that Bush was better than Clinton?
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twenex
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response 56 of 107:
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Feb 2 16:47 UTC 2006 |
Wasn't it?
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marcvh
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response 57 of 107:
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Feb 2 16:52 UTC 2006 |
I took that your meaning was that the elections of 1992 and 1996 were
less well conducted (in the sense of having irregularities and not
producing a clear result) than the elections of 2000 and 2004. What I'm
not sure is where that comes from. The 1996 election did have the odd
influence of Perot as a possible spoiler, and a relatively low turnout,
but I certainly don't see that as remotely similar to what happened in
2000.
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nharmon
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response 58 of 107:
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Feb 2 17:09 UTC 2006 |
Re 56: No, it wasn't. My meaning was that you could look at those for
more ways to rig an election.
Re 57: Certainly they were conducted better, but that doesn't mean you
couldn't look at them if you wanted to find ways to rig elections. ;)
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twenex
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response 59 of 107:
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Feb 2 17:11 UTC 2006 |
Well, it doesn't apply anyway.
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marcvh
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response 60 of 107:
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Feb 2 17:17 UTC 2006 |
Do you have any factual basis for your claim that rigging took place in
those elections? The conventional wisdom is that there wasn't much,
probably because there wasn't much motive (the results weren't close
enough that rigging could have changed the outcome.)
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nharmon
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response 61 of 107:
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Feb 2 17:35 UTC 2006 |
I think it was 1992 or 1996 where we learned how much power the media
has in shaping elections. For example, if the media reports that
candidate A is favored over candidate B, then more of candidate B's
supporters will go out and vote (and maybe less of candidate A's because
they thought they had already won). Again, like Marc said, the rigging
didn't change the outcome of the election, but if I were to rig an
election it would start with getting the media on board.
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marcvh
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response 62 of 107:
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Feb 2 17:45 UTC 2006 |
Apparently you have your own personal definition of "rig" which is not
the same as mine. Persuading people to vote, or not vote, is not
"rigging." Willfully doing so by using deception is not ethical but it
is not "rigging."
If the media were to make a report like "A new law has been passed
making it illegal for Hispanics to vote, and any person who shows up at
a polling place who looks Hispanic will be forcibly deported to Mexico
even if he's a full US citizen" then that could rise to the level of
"rigging," I guess. But normally "rigging" means things like stuffing
ballot boxes, "accidentally" losing the voter registrations from certain
areas, accepting votes from people who are no longer living in the area
(or at all) and so on.
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rcurl
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response 63 of 107:
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Feb 2 17:50 UTC 2006 |
Rigging also includes gerrymandering, such as DeLay promoted did in Texas
to give the Republicans an increased representation in Congress.
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richard
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response 64 of 107:
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Feb 2 20:57 UTC 2006 |
re #52 how can Hamas be expected to join the community of world leaders when
Bush and co. won't recognize Palestine as its own country? They'll join the
world community when Bush refers to them in a State of the Union as the nation
of Palestine. Not before.
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nharmon
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response 65 of 107:
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Feb 2 21:00 UTC 2006 |
I thought Bush already recognized Palestine as its own country.
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kingjon
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response 66 of 107:
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Feb 2 21:06 UTC 2006 |
Re #64: Palestine *isn't* its own country. If it were to become one it would be
by the grace of the Israeli government, since Israel owns the land by (most
recently) right of conquest in a self-defensive war. The thing is that
Palestinian leaders (always) demand to be treated like heads of state; I see no
reason to requiring them to act like it if you're going to eventually treat
them like it whether they are or not.
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klg
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response 67 of 107:
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Feb 3 17:21 UTC 2006 |
There is no country of Palestine. The land the PA claims is not owned
by any country. It was to be a country under the UN partition plan,
but the Arabs refused to agree to the plan, so after Israel won its
first war, Judea/Samaria came under Jordanian administration and Gaza
came under Egyptian administration. Then, in 1967 those areas were
lost by the Arabs and have since been under Israeli administration -
not ownership. Israel attempted to give the land to the PA in 2000,
but Arafat refused the offer.
It is idiotic for anyone to say that Palestine is a country if it does
not have any land on which to be a country. (In fact, the people the
PA purports to represent have NEVER had any county/land.) But, that's
RW, for you.
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rcurl
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response 68 of 107:
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Feb 3 17:31 UTC 2006 |
Doesn't the "Road Map" have Palestine nationhood as the final result?
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klg
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response 69 of 107:
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Feb 3 17:33 UTC 2006 |
Yeah. But the Arabs still haven't gotten to the on-ramp, let alone
reached the final negotiations stage.
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nharmon
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response 70 of 107:
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Feb 3 17:33 UTC 2006 |
Re: 68. That was my understanding.
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tod
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response 71 of 107:
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Feb 3 17:40 UTC 2006 |
That's okay though..blame the Jews cuz the Arabs can't agree on which dictator
works best for Palestine.
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klg
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response 72 of 107:
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Feb 3 17:45 UTC 2006 |
re: 43 - Surprise - Curl is a liar. According to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, the increase in the US labor force during the term of
President Bush has been as follows. (I added the approx 2005 # based
on other BLS reports) When do we get the apology?:
http://www.bls.gov/fls/flslforc.pdf
Table 2. Civilian Labor Force, Employment, and Unemployment
Approximating U.S. Concepts, 1960-2004
Civilian Labor Force (thousands)
United
Year States
2001 143,734
2002 144,863
2003 146,510
2004 147,401
2005 149,000
chng 5,166
This is a far cry from Curl's 9.6 million!!
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nharmon
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response 73 of 107:
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Feb 3 18:33 UTC 2006 |
5,166 is in thousands, so it is 5,166,000. About half of Curl's 9.6
million, but still within an order of magnitude.
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marcvh
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response 74 of 107:
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Feb 3 18:52 UTC 2006 |
In #43, Rane didn't say that the labor force grew by 9.6 million. He
said that it would have had to grow by 9.6 million in order to keep up
with population growth.
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johnnie
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response 75 of 107:
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Feb 3 20:11 UTC 2006 |
That's about right. Roughly speaking, it takes 150,000 new jobs per
month to keep up with population growth. Table 1 ["Civilian Working
Age Population"] in the report klg references demonstrates this
(actually, it seems to indicate the 150K figure is a bit low). 150K
times 12 months in a year equals 1.8million times Bush's 5 years in
office (Jan 01 - Jan 06) equals 9million. Note that Bush crowed about
creating 4.6million jobs over 2.5 years, a rate that just barely keeps
pace with population growth.
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klg
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response 76 of 107:
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Feb 3 20:22 UTC 2006 |
VH is correct. Which makes Curl's lie even worse. How do you increase
employment by 9.6M "just to keep pace" if the labor force grew only by
5.6M??
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tod
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response 77 of 107:
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Feb 3 20:34 UTC 2006 |
The labor force grew by less than 2.5 million. GW didn't take into account
all the job loss from his economy crash in 2001. 2.5 million burger flippers
can't be wrong!
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rcurl
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response 78 of 107:
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Feb 7 06:39 UTC 2006 |
Addiction
February 6, 2006
By now, President Bush's wildly irresponsible remarks on energy in
his state of the union speech may have already vanished down the memory
hole, but the damage will linger on. "America is addicted to oil," Mr.
Bush began, failing to mention that underlying this addiction was a
living arrangement that required people to drive their cars incessantly.
A clueless public will continue to believe that "the best way to break
this addiction is through technology . . ." and that "we must also
change how we power our automobiles."
Mr. Bush recommended ethanol. As one wag put it after the speech:
"America's heroin is oil, and ethanol will be our methadone." The
expectation will still be that everybody must drive incessantly.
It is hard to believe that Mr. Bush does not know the truth of the
situation, or that some of the clever people around him who run his
brain do not know it, namely that ethanol and all other bio-fuels are
net energy losers, that they require more energy to grow and process
them than they produce in the end, and that the energy "inputs" required
to do this are none other than oil and natural gas, the same fuels we
already run engines on.
The president also said that "breakthroughs on this and other new
technologies will help us reach another great goal, to replace more than
75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."
In point of fact, our oil imports from anywhere on the planet will
be reduced by more than 75 percent because by that time worldwide oil
depletion will be advanced to its terminal stage, and nobody will have
any oil left to export -- assuming that the industrial nations have not
ravaged each other by then in a war to control the diminishing supply of
oil.
The key to the stupidity evinced by Mr. Bush's speech is the
assumption that we ought to keep living the way we do in America, that
we can keep running the interstate highway system, WalMart, and Walt
Disney World on some other basis besides fossil fuels. The public
probably wishes that this were so, but it isn't a service to pander to
their wishes instead of addressing the mandates of reality. And reality
is telling us something very different. Reality is saying that the life
of incessant motoring is a suicidal fiasco, and if we don't learn to
inhabit the terrain of North America differently, a lot of us are going
die, either in war, or by starvation when oil-and-gas-based farming
craps out, or in civil violence proceeding from failed economic
expectations.
I hate to keep harping on this, but Mr. Bush could have announced
a major effort to restore the American railroad system. It would have
been a major political coup. It would have a huge impact on our oil use.
The public would benefit from it tremendously. And it would have put
thousands of people to work on something really meaningful. Unlike trips
to Mars and experiments in cold fusion, railroads are something we
already know how to do, and the tracks are lying out there waiting to be
fixed. But the reigning delusions of Hollywood and Las Vegas prevent us
from thinking realistically about these things. We're only into wishing
for grand slam home runs and five-hundred-million-dollar lottery
jackpots. Anything less than that makes us feel like losers.
Meanwhile, the official Democratic Party response to Mr. Bush's
fucking nonsense was the stupendous fatuousness of newly-elected
Virginia Governor Tim Kaine's rebuttal, a saccharine gruel of platitudes
and panderings that made me want to shoot members of my own party on
sight.
History will look back in wonder and nausea at the twitterings of
these idiots as the world they pretended to run lurched into darkness.
James Kunstler
Read a well-written intro to the problem of "peak oil" here
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php Yahoo! Groups Links
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