posted
Well, this is the BIG election. Ask anyone on either side of the debate. They'll tell you that the hinge of fate will swing one way or the other based on who we select as president. This is IMPORTANT, they'll tell you.
Chances are that it could be. Looking back over US history, was there ever an election where they weren't telling us that this time it wasn't deathly important?
Currently, both sides are doing their bit of fearmongering. The Republicans have hired guns out there telling us that if we don't re-elect Bush, that the terrorists will be breathing down the back of our necks again. And at some point, someone will point to the scenes of the school in Russia and say "If we aren't careful, someday those might be your children trapped in their school with Muslim terrorists."
But on the other side, the Dems have let the fringe groups be their chicken littles, screaming that you can hear the faint marching of booted feet as the Facists take control. That those who are different will be herded up and have their rights taken away (and deep down, don't we all feel that we're "different" from the normal folk).
Fear and loathing sewed about helter skelter by both sides. If you re-elect Bush, you'll be guaranteeing more war and atrocities, and when you get sick, no one will be there to take care of you. If you elect Kerry, the homosexuals will raise your children for you and you won't be able to practice Christianity within your own homes.
I'm going to step out of the pathway now, so as not to be run over by either party's bandwagon. I'm going to say something that's going to tick some people off. Bush, Kerry, it just isn't going to matter. Whichever one gets elected will just be the next scapegoat for our Congress and the political machines behind it.
Bush, like his father, has been the target for any unpopular legislation that has come down the pipe recently. He did sign the Patriot Act, yes. He did send the troops to Iraq, without a doubt. He did advise and then sign the bill for the poorly conceived tax payback. But each of those measures, no matter how bad they were, successfully made it through the House and the Senate. And it wasn't just Republicans voting for it. I believe his opponents in the election both voted in favor of each of the measures.
Hey, if Congress hadn't passed the measures or ceeded him the power, he would have had it.
Clinton, didn't get the free ride, either. He constantly caught Hell for his actions, and it is amazing how much really rough stuff got through Congressn while he was busy wrestling with Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment that followed.
And Bush, Sr. on the "no new taxes" pledge, well... Congress had to vote that in.
But look at Congress, and the churning office of the presidency. While the presidential office has turned over again and again (by Constitutional design and campaigning), most of the Congressmen and Senators serving us, have been holding down their same seats for a decade or more, two decades in many cases. Heck, Strom Thurmond, who bowed out just a while back was able to cast Congressional votes on both the start of World War II and for post-9/11 America...
Ted Kennedy, for all his supposed drunken buffoonery and marital infedility, has held onto a Senator's seat (and the seats of many of their aide's ) through how many different presidencies now? And there are old time Republicans out there too, working their wonders as well. Heck, how many Republican Congressmen rode in on the "Contract with America" and got to stay in office after they whole-heartedly broke that contract?
I say, in closing, that your choice for President (or National Scapegoat) has nowhere near the true importance of who you vote for as Congressmen (and Congresswomen) and Senators for your home state.
Turn the bums out. It's time to change the linens, these are far too soiled for us to lay our national bodies on any longer.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I take some comfort in the knowledge that Russ Feingold is one of the few senators who's had the courage to at least abstain from popular measures, even if he lacked the courage to vote against 'em.
posted
So true. If only we had fresh blood in congress and in the White House. I want someone different. I don't want any more canidates associated with groups and politicians from the past. I want some old lady who just decided to run for congress. Or some young man or woman determinded to change things and are still a bit wide eyed and innocent....
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Yep, that just might make the difference. It seems that the same stuff we've been pounding on throughout my life hasn't gotten much better yet. Sure, "they"'ve worked on it, but they haven't accomplished as much as they should have.
For the two big political parties, the presidency is the prize, but Congress is the powerbase.
And truthfully, how often do you know which way your representatives in Congress actually vote? They may bang the drum at the rhythm you like, but do their deeds actually represent you and yours?
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Sara, it doesn't matter even that much when it comes to the Supreme Court. Even the minority party in Congress can hold up a nomination for as long as they really want to.
And the only chance either party would have of getting a replacement Justice through quickly and with little question is to pick such an unknown milquetoast that there would be nothing to debate, deliberate and delay on.
No character is spotless enough to be completely clean of the mud either party can throw. Both parties prefer to shy away from wisdom as a Justice's main attribute, preferring instead subservience.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
We can agree to disagree on the likelihood of a President and affiliated Congress being able to push through a desired SC justice. I'm cool with that.
If the opportunity to find out were to come up, I'd be elsewhere anyway.
[ September 03, 2004, 12:02 PM: Message edited by: Sara Sasse ]
Posts: 2919 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Sopwith: the minority party can but it won't in most cases. Holding back judge appointments, no matter how reasonably, almost always results in bad political spin. If a Supreme Court Justice the Dems can't stand gets nominated, the Dems won't fight more than a month and a half.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Sacrificing freedom for the illusion of security seems to be the Republican party line. I was listening to the Wisconsin Ideas Network, and hearing one of the republican campaign strategists talk all about it this morning as I was driving about the state, failing to find the needle in the freakin' haystack that was the site of the day's job interview.
"If we want to be safe, we're going to have to give up our liberty, I mean, liberties, or at least some of them as the situation demands"
What ever happened to dying for liberty? Why are people dying for the liberty of another country (*cough*BS*cough*) and then so willing to give it up at home? Since when have we gone from a nation of brave souls to a nation that cowers under the covers afraid of the monster under our beds, and the remote possibility that Habib down the street will drop a load of anthrax in our laundry machine when we aren't looking?
The fact is, you are more likely to die from inadequate healthcare, or heart disease, or a car accident, or from SIDS than you are to die from a domestic terror attack. The odds of that in 2001 (the year of 9-11) were 1 in 100,000.
It's amazing how afraid we have allowed ourselves to become. OH NOS! ORANGE THREAT!!!
OH NOS!!! ELEVATED FROM ORANGE TO RED!!! ITS GONNA HAPPEN!!
Mushroom clouds everywhere! Mass hysteria! Hunderds of thousands will die!
When did we become so stupid, so hopelessely group-minded that we allowed a few people in power to strike fear into our hearts and change what is essentially the most American qualities of our culture?
"The only thing to fear is fear itself"
Wasn't that said by someone that was a pretty smart guy? Doesn't that ring true today?
The culture of fear in America must change. The current administration wants you to be afraid. You can see the pattern in their policies. You can see *why* they want you to be afraid. Frightened populations do not ask questions when their rights are bled off.
4 more years of this, and who knows what will be next. Who knows what advances in civil rights will be wiped away. Who is to say how many rights the accused will retain. Who is to say if even our core freedoms - speech, religion, assembly, etc - will still be ours if this hyper neo-conservative fiscally rediculous party is allowed 4 more years to run roughshod over the true ideals of America?
posted
Wasn't someone just mentioning the super-extremist comments made by both sides? I would say that the fear of losing all our rights because of electing Bush to a second term would fall under extremism and fear. If you really want to get rid of the culture of fear, dont use the irrational fear of in four years nobody will be able to speak their minds or else Dick Cheney's secret police will lock them up to do so. It seems rather circular to replace one irrational fear with another don't you think?
quote: Wasn't someone just mentioning the super-extremist comments made by both sides? I would say that the fear of losing all our rights because of electing Bush to a second term would fall under extremism and fear. If you really want to get rid of the culture of fear, dont use the irrational fear of in four years nobody will be able to speak their minds or else Dick Cheney's secret police will lock them up to do so. It seems rather circular to replace one irrational fear with another don't you think?
posted
Although I must say, that's probably the funniest slippery slope argument I've seen in a while wyrm.
"Some kid had a bumper sticker than implied he wanted to kill the president. His crackpot neighbor reported him to the secret service. SO the agents showed up one day and asked him a couple questions, then they went away. SO as you can see, electing George Bush again will completely negate the constitution."
I don't agree with most of what George Bush does, but I do not think that electing him or Kerry will mean the downfall of our civilization.
posted
Now I'm really curious about whether or not that kid actually knew anything about politics at all?
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I'm not sure that narrowing it down to that time frame gives an accurate probability. Would it be just as accurate to say that your odds of dying from a terrorist attack were 1 in 100,000 on September 11th, 2001? Does that apply to me now, since it is no longer 9-11-04?
Someone who understands probability better than me (ie everyone) can think about this...I'm pretty positive I don't understand all the ins and outs.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
This is something I heard on a radio show recently. Why would a person have to sign some sort of paper stating that they do indeed support Bush in order to attend one of his speeches? Why should a person get kicked out of a Bush event for having a Kerry sticker. Is that right? Isn't that contrary to democracy somehow?
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Thank you syn, that was a much better example than the one above. Even though I still don't think it matters, your constitutional rights will still be in place four years from now no matter who is elected (unless J. Edgar Hoover comes back from the dead and wins the presidency, then things may get a little dicey), but I appreciate the fact that at least your argument made more sense.
I am in such a snarky mood today that I think I will have to stop posting now. Enjoy your weekend everyone, and all my prayers go with our Florida Hatrackers, get out if you need to, stay indoors if you don't get out. Play a board game and be safe all of you.
posted
Syn, the Daily Show did a great send up of this a few weeks ago. They even showed a copy of one such form used in New Mexico, I think. Very funny stuff. Kerry noted in his visit to the DS that he doesn't require this, of course. The one I am still surprised that didn't get the full DS treatment was the addled "plant" in the Columbus Q&A with Bush a month ago. Bush jumped the script and started responding to questions the "random" person hadn't asked yet. Funny stuff. A friend of mine is working for the Republicans and has volunteered at events and even HE is surprised at how controlled the audience and show is at these things. They have tons of plants so that even if people get in who are there to protest, they can chime in with a "four more years!" yell if someone starts asking tough questions. Intense. As people say, Bush and his people are master's of the media.
Do you really think someone with the intent to harm a politian is gonna advertise it on a BUMPER STICKER? Did the agents really need to make him hand over said bumper sticker? And what about agents going to people and questioning them on their protest activities? Do they REALLY think that an agent asking them if they intend violence that they would say "Uh, YEAH! I'm gonna commit murder and cause mayhem!" People that have yet to cause harm or violence?
Posts: 986 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Dude, if the agents didn't check out possible threats to the president, they wouldn't be doing their jobs. Did they cart him off to jail? Did they tell him to vote for Bush or die? The worst thing they did was take the sticker.
All it says is that the kid was reported for having a threatening bumper sticker. Does anything say that they knew it was basically harmless before they got there?
It's treason to threaten the President's life or encourage other people to do so. There are people who's job it is to make sure those people don't get away with it. They SHOULD check things out that seem suspicious.
Truth is, he didn't get in trouble for the sticker. At most he was scared. Yeah, you're gonna be scared if an agent wants to talk to you, but that doesn't mean the guy shouldn't do his job.
Again I say: The worst thing they did was take the sticker.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I'm not sure that narrowing it down to that time frame gives an accurate probability. Would it be just as accurate to say that your odds of dying from a terrorist attack were 1 in 100,000 on September 11th, 2001? Does that apply to me now, since it is no longer 9-11-04?
Someone who understands probability better than me (ie everyone) can think about this...I'm pretty positive I don't understand all the ins and outs.
Tricky question, this. I think it is reasonably clear that you cannot use a single terrorist attack to calculate probabilities, particularly a spectacular one like the Twin Towers. Also, you cannot calculate probability as (dead from terrorists) / (population) because you do not know how many of the living people are going to die from terrorism in the future.
I think the correct way to do this would be as follows : Add up the number of terrorist dead over a fairly long period, say ten years. I have no idea what this would come to for the ten years just past, but let's take 10000 as a ballpark figure that's easy to work with. Divide by the total number of people who died in the same period; again, I have no idea what it is, but say 1 million for ease of calculation. This gives the chance of your death, when it comes, being from a terrorist attack. For the (obviously wrong) numbers I've chosen here, that would be one in a hundred. Multiply by the chance of your dying tomorrow, obtainable from any actuary, and you have your chance of dying in a terrorist attack tomorrow.
To recap : Given some dead person, the chance that he died from terrorist attack is (terrorist-dead) / (total-dead) over some long period. The chance that you will be a dead person tomorrow is (dead-chance); therefore, the chance that you will die of a terrorist attack tomorrow is (terrorist-dead times dead-chance) / (total-dead).
However, I have been cheating; or more accurately, I haven't used all the information available. The people who died in the Twin Towers attack were not a representative cross-section of American society; they were largely young, upper-middle-class professionals, and we can reasonably assume that most terrorist victims are going to be in the same general strata of society. That changes the numbers; you can't integrate over the entire American population, you should look at your own demographic group. Two examples :
Let's assume you are in the target group, ie the approximate demographic of the Twin Towers victims. Then (terrorist_dead) remains about the same, say 90% of what it used to be. (Again I'm making up plausible numbers; exact answers are left as an exercise for the student). (total_dead), however, goes drastically down, since most dead people are old. Likewise, (dead-chance) decreases considerably, but not by quite as much. In sum, then, your chance of being killed in a terrorist attack goes up.
Next, let's assume you are a Nebraskas farmer. I think it's fairly safe to assume that no such have been killed in terrorist attacks in the past ten years. (terrorist_dead), therefore, is zero; so is your chance of being killed in a terrorist attack. This, of course, illustrates the dangers of relying on statistics : In this case, we just don't have enough data to assign a meaningful number. If we wait and take data for a hundred years - assuming of course that the terrorist incidence remains constant in that time, which is patently ridiculous - we could calculate a probability. As it is, we can only set an upper limit to the probability, a highly technical procedure I won't go into here, this being the start of a weekend. The answer is therefore of the form "The probability is less than 10^-y to 95% confidence level."
I haven't mentioned the uncertainties in the calculation; to a first approximation, they are the square root of (terrorist-dead), multiplied by (dead-chance) and divided by (total-dead). This is a good approximation because the uncertainties in (dead-chance) and (total-dead) are much smaller than in (terrorist-dead). However, if you specify your demographic sufficiently sharply, all the numbers become much more uncertain. This has the twin effect of making the formula for the uncertainty vastly complex, and reducing the usefulness of the calculation. In general, though, you should be safe as long as (terrorist-dead) in your demographics is above a few hundred.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
This is sort of on topic, but am I wrong in thinking that the quanity of new jobs doesn't matter, but quality does? For example, if you get 1,000,000 new McDonalds or Walmart jobs, is that really a big deal? A friend of mine told me her friend has been working at McDonalds for 6 years and still only earns 6.75 an hour! Before taxes! Average rent is around 5 dollars. Even if she is working full time, she'd still have trouble making ends meet on her own. Walmart and McDonalds, unlike my job, does not have occasional raises. My job sucks, but we get a periodic raise and increased benefits as well as Sunday overtime. Manufacturing jobs pay a lot more money and probably have benefits. It WOULD be a big thing if more of those jobs were increasing. Are they? Or, are most of the high quality jobs being outsourced?
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I believe it has already been demonstrated somewhere on Hatrack that the manufacturing jobs are not being lost to outsourcing (if by that you mean being exported)--whoever posted that, please step forward.
IMHO, any increase in jobs is good news, even if it is not enough in and of itself--it indicates that increased business is being done. Sooner or later, high-quality jobs will begin appearing in greater numbers.
By the way--can anyone who understands macro-economics explain something to me? It seems to me that stock prices tend to both reflect and influence attitudes on the economy, making them self-fulfilling prophecies. That is, if people believe business is booming, they'll invest, and business will boom. If they hear that the bottom is dropping out, they'll sell, and the bottom will drop out. If that's the case, what good do stock reports do us?
quote: It seems to me that stock prices tend to both reflect and influence attitudes on the economy, making them self-fulfilling prophecies.
See, the problem comes from too many people owning stocks who don't know the basic stock-owning principal, which is buy low, sell high. If people would follow that rule, they would make money and the economy would stay stable, or at least be better and hold of some of the worst extremes.
But they don't, or they get ahead of themselves or scared, and as a result, things fluctuate more wildly than they have to.
If you consider that, when stock prices are low, it means that throwing your money into the system will help bring them back up, not to mention give you a huge portfolio of stocks that likely have nowhere to go but up, at some point, then everyone would win. But people freak out, and don't realize that the best profit is made long term (depending on the risk, of course) and they grab their money out, even though they have tons less than they started with.
The market fluctuates. It's low sometimes, and high others. People need to have a chunk of their money invested in something very low risk, and stop putting all their money into high risk stuff so that they can keep feeding their families even when the stock prices drop.
edit to add: Likewise, selling high, rather than buying high, theoretically should prevent nonsense like stock market crashes and things. Instead, people think, "The market's going up!" and they keep buying and buying until it reaches a peak and comes smashing down.
posted
"If you consider that, when stock prices are low, it means that throwing your money into the system will help bring them back up, not to mention give you a huge portfolio of stocks that likely have nowhere to go but up, at some point, then everyone would win."
Yes. Because stocks ALWAYS go up. Seriously, PSI, this is the problem with the stock market.
Stocks don't inherently appreciate. Sometimes people pay more for them than they should, but a stock in reality only "goes up" when the company itself produces wealth or stockholders anticipate that the stock will go up further.
The problem is that we have disconnected the second possibility from the first possibility; many stockholders now anticipate other stockholder's anticipation, and buy stock in a company not because they believe that the company will be successful, but because they believe that OTHER stockholders will soon believe that the company will be successful -- or, even worse, that other stockholders will soon believe that other stockholders will soon believe...and so on.
The idea that stocks always go up is inherent to the second concept, but has little to do with actual reality. Stocks go up if the company does well, OR if stockholders artificially inflate the value of the company in the perception of other stockholders.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
And one must also appreciate the efforts of stockbrokers to "churn" the market. The list of litany is long here and one doesn't have to look far back in the newspapers to see the cases of brokers being completely in bed with the companies offering stocks, especially in the IPO field.
Couple that with the rabid purchasing of stocks by babyboomers setting up their retirements and corporations using their own retirement programs to artificially inflate the worth of their own stocks... (***cough*** Enron *** cough *** Coca Cola *** cough).
And remember when your stockbroker only charged commission on sales of your stock? Now you can get an e-trade for one upfront, low fee, on purchase. Oh yeah, and one low fee on sale, too...
We have a more rampant field of day traders and margin purchasers today than there was in 1928... and they didn't have the corporations cooking the books like we do now.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Tom, my point wasn't necessarily that every stock will go up, but that the market will eventually go back up. Of course, a lot of research is needed to determine which stocks are better risks than others.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
No, I don't support them. I'm saying that the things in those articles don't support a slippery-slope "all our civil rights are going away" reaction.
None of that is unique to this administration. Talk to some pro-life activists someday. I'm talking the peaceful ones who go and pray outside abortion clinics, or someone who just wears the feet into the wrong place. This type of harassment is common and goes back through the 90s.
Do I like it? No. Does it mean we live in a police state? No.
posted
"Tom, my point wasn't necessarily that every stock will go up, but that the market will eventually go back up."
Even if we grant that the hypothetical investor, when buying lots of stock when the market is low, happens to buy the stocks that will in fact appreciate following a recovery, it's worth noting that the market does NOT have to eventually go back up. This is only likely if the economy continues to expand, and demographics and current political situations make this less likely than it would have been twenty years ago.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Actually, a stock market index of established companies (which is what people mean when they say "the stock market") should go up. The economy/market is not a closed system, labor is continuously put into the economy/market, increasing the value.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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) through how many different presidencies now? And there are old time Republicans out there too, working their wonders as well. Heck, how many Republican Congressmen rode in on the "Contract with America" and got to stay in office after they whole-heartedly broke that contract?
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