Pangloss

Force? What force?

That article doesn't say that she was a target, it says that she got hit trying to go around protesters who were being sprayed. But hey, never let the truth get in the way of a good hate-on. Not to change the subject or anything, but your article does point out how those "peaceful protesters" were using violence and criminal behavior to get people to listen to them when they say how violent and criminal Republicans are. "Peace activists" my lilly-white a@@.

I bet. Last week it was all glorious-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel thanks to the DNC, so this week it'll be all darkness-and-gloom, I'm sure.

No, Biden's a good man and has a lot of useful foreign policy experience. Palin has her strengths as well; I'm not putting them down. My point is that it's all about the show; they diversify their tickets racially and genderally (if I can invent a word). The two campaigns are focused on minutiae, which is understandable given the fact that they've turned this country and its elections into partisan grudge-matches. But they might as well be debating hair styles for all the substance this amounts to. I agree with what ecoli said above. And I'm starting to feel like I'm supporting a candidate who is wasting my time, just because his other supporters think it's THAT important to knock the other guys out and bury them for all eternity.

They both picked stereotypes so obvious I could hear every screenwriter in Hollywood groaning from all the way here in South Florida. Doh, I get it now, you're talking about the merits of the information and teaching methods, not the merits of the students. I guess that was a little dense of me, sorry about that. I should've picked up on it, especially after CDarwin's post. My bad. Yes I agree with those points.

We're not talking about science, we're talking about education. You said that education should be based on merit, which does make sense in some circumstances, I'm just confused how it relates in the case of sex education. Shouldn't that be the same for everyone? I assume you didn't mean to suggest that only better students get the full information, and less-meritorious students get inferior information, so I guess I'm just not clear on what you meant. And if sex education should not be based on merit, then what should it be based on? Clearly it cannot be dismissed with a simple "always give it to them at age x", where x is the politically correct age of the day. Would you agree? And if it's not going to be based on age, then what should it be based on? Currently it is based on parental consent, i.e. the age at which the parents think it necessary, up to a certain point which varies by state (usually middle or high school), at which point the state informs the child of certain approved facts and control methods in a mandatory fashion. Which in my view is not a problem and doesn't require changing. But I don't know, for some reason religious zealots on both sides feel the need to sling epithets related to the issue at one another. I'm just not sure exactly why.

What does that have to do with merit?

Sex education should be about merit? Intriguing!

No evidence has emerged that genocide (or any kind of mass murder) was taking place. Are you suggesting that it's better to kill the other guy than to wait and see if he kills you? This is your idea of sound foreign policy? Er, what is it you dislike about American foreign policy again? I could have sworn it was the idea of military action over diplomacy, which seems to be what you are advocating here.

With mom holding the gun! I agree that this is a problem. Parents are caught in the middle because society requires parents to be responsible for their children but then frequently undermines their efforts in many ways. And everyone has a biased point of view based on their personal experience. Frankly I don't consider the typical 18-24 year old single person qualified to decide what sex education should consist of in public schools -- they tend to dismiss the subject as trivial, wish they'd been allowed to start earlier, and/or forget that children mature at different ages. On the other hand, parents with extreme religious views may decide that no education is best, which is stupid as well. And I think there's a valid point to be made that when it's done poorly there's a cost to society, not just to parents and their children. But if we're going to dictate the finer points of parenting, while at the same time refusing to back that up in the classroom or law books, and hold parents accountable when their children fail, then at some point you wonder if parents will start questioning whether it's worth the hassle.

Oof. Well, I can understand where he's coming from, and I think there's a point to be made about conservatives and misleading sex ed, but that point breaks down at the individual level. You can't make a "poster child" for that one, because regardless of what sex ed programs exist you still have the possibility of an individual getting pregnant. Sure, she might have been saved by sex ed programs, or she might not have. You just don't know.

This sudden move into the national spotlight must be rough on their 17-year-old daughter, who is reportedly five months pregnant. I'm sure that'll get a lot of play in the blogosphere, especially since the daughter is beautiful and her picture is out there. Talk about circumstances compounding a mistake!

Ugh, do they actually call it that? Yeesh, that's almost as bad as the Democrats' "Rapid Response Team". I get those friggin emails every day myself. Actually I get stupid emails from both parties now, always clamoring about how evil the other side is.

I can't say that I agree at all with that part, though. Warming heats the oceans. Warmer waters feed the storms. That feeding makes the storms more intense. We stop the warming, the oceans cool, and the storms lose power. We are in agreement. Frequency and intensity of hurricanes may decrease with a lowering of emissions. On the contrary, it's a good thread; I think I've participated in it myself. And there's nothing wrong with a little cross-post advertising. Unusually so. A quick look on the other side of Florida at Hannah's meandering path will show you a more common scenario of our current level of tropical storm predictability. But it's not a criticism -- the forecasting has seemed to improve quite a lot just in the last ten years or so that I've been following it. There may be something to your point about weaker storms being less predictable. It would make sense; they're more susceptible to sheering and steering.

Well we could go back and forth with various articles pro and con, but I think we can short-circuit that argument and come to a consensus ourselves, which is that there may be a link, and that the science seems to be developing very rapidly in the direction of a link. Just a couple of years ago nobody would dare suggest a link, but now quite a number of scientists make the connection. And I think we can also agree that hurricanes would exist without global warming, and solving global warming won't stop them from being potentially every bit as intense as they are today. According to this article, impact on intensity is either 'trivial' or '6-8%', depending on whom you ask. So clearly it would be a bad idea for us to use hurricanes to play political games, trying to get everyone on board with doing something about GW. It would be a major disservice to people living in coastal regions. At the very least we need to be clear that it's a bad idea to just ditch the SUV and hope the next hurricane will be weaker. There's a lot of serious work to be done on preparedness, emergency response and predictability. (Which, as I say, is a point I think we can all agree on.)

Well, remember there's no link between hurricanes and global warming at this time, but yes, I'm sure a lot of people will see it that way. I'm actually okay with hurricane events helping to spur interesting in global warming if it means more funding for studying hurricanes, but even if we solve global warming hurricanes will still happen, and so will the human tragedy that so often follows in their wake. The real focus should be on preparation, emergency response, and improved predictability. IMO all three of those things have improved immeasurably in the last 10-15 years, though some of that was fought by the Bush administration prior to Katrina, with tragic results. Getting back to the subject of the thread for a moment, it looks like Gustav sped up rapidly in the gulf and will hit much earlier and probably weaker than thought. Republicans have canceled the first day of their convention (which I thought was a little odd coming on Labor Day anyway), and will start on Tuesday. With Gustav missing a direct hit on New Orleans and being weaker than expected, and with all the preparation in terms of evacuation, etc, Republicans may tout this as a victory. Unfortunately the reality here is that the preparations undertaken in New Orleans this week were extremely inefficient and vastly expensive. In short, they were not the kind of long-term preparations that coastal communities need to undertake so that they are actually prepared for hurricanes year after year. They were the kind of preparations undertaken when you don't want another public relations disaster on your hands, and it's not your money you're spending. (sigh)

Well certainly forcing people to vote for between two authorized parties is scarcely better than forcing them to vote for one authorized party. That would not be democracy. But even if you allow people to "actively abstain", just the requirement to vote itself would be a violation of a freedom.

I am somewhat on the fence in posting this, because it is some rather obvious fodder for partisan comment, but frankly it's just too interesting a political story. What I'm referring to, for the benefit of our friends overseas who may not have heard (?), is that a major hurricane, about the same strength (possibly even stronger) of the now-infamous Hurricane Katrina, is barreling down on New Orleans. And it's due to hit just as the Republican convention is getting underway in Minnesota. In fact it's expected to make landfall at almost the exact moment that President Bush is scheduled to give his speech. No. Really. The irony here is astounding. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was a political turning point for the present administration -- an shocking exposure of weakness and failure that even staunch conservatives didn't feel traitorous in complaining about. For another one to appear just as the Republican convention gets under way, reminding us all of Katrina, well heck, Michael Moore and Spike Lee couldn't have scripted it better if they'd tried. If I were prone to anthropomorphism I'd have to wonder if Mother Nature were weighing in for Obama! Unsurprisingly, Republican organizers are in a mad scramble to see if they can postpone the convention (Bush has already told the press he is likely to postpone). The problems with postponement are legion -- everything from delegates with already-purchased plane tickets to major facilities with scheduling conflicts in upcoming weeks. I have a feeling they can't postpone this thing even if they want to. Any postponed convention would likely be a pale shadow of the planned one. And we're not just whistlin' Dixie, here. The post-convention poll bump is a well-known phenom. We'd be looking at a situation where the candidates went from a statistical tie to a massive Obama advantage due solely to his post-convention bump and McCain's lack of one. The numbers are that significant. And the conventions were particularly late this time around -- we're only two months from election day. I'm just amazed by the whole thing, from the irony of the timing to the untenable position Republican planners suddenly find themselves in. What do you all think? (edit: Amusingly, just as I posted this, a feeder band from Gustav knocked out my power.)

I know, I'm just playing out the scenarios here. Many on the left are trying to portray Obama as having significant experience when compared with Palin. I think that's a mistake in strategy, for the reasons expressed above. I don't disrespect the opinion, though; in fact I share it. I disagree, or perhaps more accurately I think any comparison is ultimately pointless. What the selection does show us is how little regard both parties now have for the experience issue -- so little that it's been sacrificed on the altar of victoria-uber-alles. Frankly, in my opinion, neither party is acting maturely or responsibly enough to be selecting our next president. As john5746 says, "outside the beltway doesn't need to be dumbing down". But that's exactly what's happening. IMO all we can do is hang on for the ride and hope we put someone in charge who can inject a little sense and sensibility back into things. With apologies to Jane Austen, of course.

Opinions have been expressed, and I'd rather not repeat page one of the thread. Let's move on, please.

Okay, but you say that as if that's a lot of experience for Obama. It isn't a lot of experience, it isn't executive experience, and just saying it plays right into an obvious hypocrisy reaction.

Well Obama has ten years' legislative experience, versus Palin's 10 years executive experience. I think a state governor is roughly comparable to a state senator in some respects, and Obama has a little more experience at that level, but he is running for the head of the executive branch. I don't know, I can see how some will see it as a wash and others will see an advantage to Palin. One thing about it that's interesting is that the selection of Palin renders McCain's attacks based on experience somewhat more difficult to wield. Not only is the argument seemingly hypocritical given the selection of Palin, but it drags the debate down to a level of detail that most people won't be interested in. Sometimes when that happens to an argument it loses traction. McCain may have undermined one of his best weapons.

Well it must have gone okay, all the precincts reported in and our new governor Hu Jintao says everything went just fin-... er... wait....

Actually I think anyone who finds Obama's resume light should also find Palin's light. And Palin isn't running for president. I guess I'm glad I'm not basing my decision on the experience issue. Wait, what? Are you saying Obama's saying cocaine and similar drug use shouldn't be illegal? I don't believe that to be the case, unless this is one of your "read between the lines" deals. According to OnTheIssues.org, he favored a bill to require chemical resellers to regularly certify that they weren't using or selling methamphetamine components. According to this article he's talked about setting up a DEA office in New Orleans to fight the War on Drugs in the region. A position which drew criticism because (a) the DEA already had an office there, and (b) it lead to StopTheDrugs.org to declare him the worst Democratic candidate on the subject. And he's talked a lot on the stump about expanding the Drug Court concept, which, while considered by Democrats to be a more humane and responsible (root-causes oriented) way to fight the battle, is still very much an enforcement issue. Hell, Obama's not even in favor of lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. So, uh, when did he say it shouldn't be illegal? I must have missed that one. Unless I'm just misunderstanding you.

Sure, actually Rasmussen just released a new report repeating the July figures on Wednesday. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/congressional_performance/congressional_performance I don't entirely disagree with your point above, and I'm sure many people are angry with the Bush administration. I just think it's a mistake to see people as flocking to Democrats.