Pangloss

No! They weren't agreed-to! Why do people see it that way? The people putting the election up imposed their will on the people of the states of Florida and Michigan. We had no say in the matter whatsoever. This isn't about what Hillary wants or what Obama wants. Their opinions are irrelevent. Any impact this situation might or might not have on the delegate count is irrelevent. The Democratic National Committee, acting in collusion with the Democratic Presidential candidates, deliberately and directly disenfranchised tens of millions of American voters for no other reason than the fact that it would have reduced their central authority. Not in 1967. In 2007. Not in 2000. In 2007. And yet people see this as a matter of Presidential race results! Incredible! Not saying you're wrong in observing this, by the way. You're absolutely right on point -- that's exactly what's happening, and exactly why nobody is doing anything about it. They simply don't see it for what it really is.

So we have to both agree? Interesting that you didn't raise that point when you were proposing taking my hard-earned money out of my pocket.

I don't think so, I think a primary vote is just as important as a general election vote. Why wouldn't it be? And sure, you can make the argument that it's "their" primary, and we're just helping "them" decide which candidate to field, but frankly the national parties usurp at least some of their autonomy when they act in a collusive and exclusionary manner as they do towards independents and third parties. I'll happily support taking some of that independence away in the courts.

Lol, good one there. /agree

They're not "symbolic", they're real votes cast by real people who want to have a real influence -- the ONLY influence they will receive prior to the general election -- on the outcome. How is that ANY different from the vote I cast in November of 2000? Want proof? How about the fact that this was one of the largest primary turnouts on the Democratic side that we've ever had? Given the heavy Clinton weighting of that vote, that doesn't exactly jive with the Obama-uber-alles media frenzy, now does it? The hypocrisy stems from the specificality of who's performing the action. The Democrats *officially* -- as a party, represented before the Supreme Court itself -- said that the individual right to vote is paramount above all other concerns. Now they're the ones who have taken it away, solely because if they don't, they lose power. Why wouldn't that be hypocritical? What else could it possibly be?

We should eventually move this into Pseudoscience and Speculations, IMO.

She showed up in Florida yesterday to thank voters in person. And raise money, of course. <cof> This interesting opinion piece at US News suggests how the Clinton campaign will go about attempting to get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated at the convention, and what the Dean-lead national party will do to stop it. http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2008/1/30/a-redo-for-florida-democrats.html It also mentions something I hadn't heard before, which is that Florida and Michigan could still hold caucuses and use that process to legally award delegate to the convention that would be seated under the current agreement. This would, in effect, cause these two states to have a second go at a primary election, complete with campaigning and everything. Obviously this would happen after Feb 5th, but if the delegate difference between Clinton and Obama is less than 210 and/or 156 after next Tuesday, I wouldn't be surprised if Florida and Michigan tried to throw together something like that. People said the same thing in 2000, btw. Recounts won't be as accurate (thanks to fallen chads, etc). Oddly enough, that didn't seem to resonate with Democrats at the time, when the beneficiary was a big corporate oil-man Republican. Go figure.

I generally agree with that, although I thought it interesting that the ONE phone call I got regarding the Democratic primary (buried amidst dozens of calls from Giuliani, McCain and Romney) was for Barack Obama. Apparently the calls were made by supporters. And this quote from official Obama spokesperson Bill Burton, posted on Obama's web site a couple of hours ago, is interesting: (source) She said Florida delegates don't count for anything? Then what did Obama say by signing the same agreement? Pfft. I know spin when I hear it.

I know I've been kinda ranting about the Florida primary situation, so I apologize in advance for bringing it up once again, but I just thought you guys might appreciate a humorous side note about it. These are the stickers they gave out today to all Florida primary voters:

And I'm still waiting to see actual evidence -- not mere statistical suggestions -- that banning these animals constitutes increased safety. This isn't seatbelts or airbags, it's genocide based on apathy, ignorance and a complete misunderstanding of the relationship of statistics and actual, cause-and-effect science. Once the "final pit-bull solution" is achieved, the safety nazis will then proceed to demonize and then eliminate the next-most-dangerous animal, then the next-most-dangerous one after that. That's not even a slippery slope argument, folks -- it's what you're actually proposing. You're simply picking the top of the list and calling it dangerous, because it's at the top of the list. This entire argument, and the embarassing fact of its embracement by ostensibly intelligent and logical individuals who claim an interest in science and scientific reasoning, is a perfect example of exactly what's wrong with our litigious and terrified society. If it's not "dangerous dogs" it's "humans cause global warming" or "you must use this drug immediately or you will die" (followed next week by "you must stop using this drug immediately or you will die"). You folks go right on telling each other that you're right, because, after all, you have statistics. What could possibly go wrong?

Light, for sure. Really brings out the asparagus and eggplant.

Wow, I didn't know that about creationism being taught in Serbia. That's a shame. (No wonder Bush is so popular there!)

Why you youngun! When I was your age, we had to walk 80 miles to the polls, and it was uphill BOTH WAYS!!!

iNow, there's no question Obama made a strategic choice regarding Florida. He was far behind Hillary in the polls here and this was long before his early primary successes. Supporting the "agreement" allowed him to narrow his focus at a time that date-shortening was making that difficult. The agreement worked in his favor. Each of the candidate had reasons for supporting the agreement that made sense at the time. Some of them turned out to be wrong. But every Democratic candidate made a choice on this issue. All it would have taken to bust up the agreement and re-enfranchise every Florida and Michigan voter would have been for ONE candidate -- say, a candidate for change? -- to say no. That's politics. It's a game, no doubt about it. But this time the game was played at the direct expense of millions of people's ability to even cast a vote. So if this thing gets challenged later on, Obama is no innocent victim here.

You people have been telling us for eight years how awful it is that we went from a surplus to a deficit and how it's all Bush's fault. Isn't that issue important anymore?

Right, which puts you and Obama in the position of supporting an agreement by an American political party and its candidates that disenfranchised tens of millions of American voters. Don't think that card won't be played here, guy. If the final delegate count puts Obama ahead by less than the difference that Florida and Michigan would make, it will be the biggest election story since 2000. And considering the moral position taken by Democrats at that time, their position here is HIGHLY hypocritical. And frankly the disenfranchisement of millions of American voters is more important than a gentleman's agreement between candidates and the cronies and good-old-boys running a national political party.

In my defense, I was responding specifically to the point he raised on the issue of road/bridge repair in the interview -- I didn't just bring it up out of the blue. But I agree with what you're saying there, and that was clearly the point he was trying to make. I didn't mean to suggest that he was saying we should spend $9bil/mon on road and bridge repair. Yes, that's my concern. He talks so much about where we need to be spending money, and the ways he's talking about are not ways that improve income, so that means cutting spending, which he doesn't talk about. Not that he's any worse than any other candidate in this regard, but he's supposed to be the candidate for change, and I intend to hold him to that label. Spending more while taking in less, and doing so to appease certain segments of the population, isn't change at all -- it's absolutely business as usual.

I do the same thing, on the "conservative" side, so I know what you mean. I think a LOT of people used to carefully set aside their initial reactions, and have stopped doing so because of the media. We've forgotten how to do it and why it's important, at the very time when we should be pushing for EVERYONE to behave that way. Yes, definitely, that happens to me quite often. I respond or raise an issue and find myself ideologically niched, and responded-to on that basis, before I can utter a second sentence. It also can invade a discussion by surprise. I find myself having to be careful using examples in the classroom lest I give the impression that I am fully aligned with either the left or the right. On a more positive note, I think improving my own awareness of this problem has helped me to stop from prejudging other people based on similar remarks. When I hear somebody talk about universal healthcare I stop myself from assuming they're a liberal. If I hear people talking about "defending our borders" I stop myself from assuming they're conservative. That sort of thing. But it requires a concious effort, which suggests that it should come as no surprise that other people aren't doing this. (shrug)

And as I predicted in this forum a couple of weeks ago, Hillary stated late this week that she wants to see the banned Florida delegates returned to the pool. That would be, of course, because she leads in Florida polling. Obama, unsurprisingly, wants the agreement adhered-to.

I watched it, as George S. is a regular for me. I thought he did a good interview there although I thought George was a little soft on him, even going so far as to partially answer his own question with regard to the conflict with the Clintons. But the issues questions were fairly on-point. The infrastructure issue remains important although I think perhaps not as important as we were led to believe a few months ago. The bridge collapse in Minnesota had nothing to do with failed repairs -- it was faulty construction when it was built. Funny how that never gets reported, but they were all gung-ho to tell us how the collapsed showed a need for emergency spending on that issue. We do need to put money (a LOT of money) into infrastructure, but we can do that well within earnings. The last thing we want is for an Obama presidency to turn out to be a debt ballooning that would make Ronald Reagan blush. That's not CHANGE, that's MORE OF THE SAME.

I ate that up.

Subject corrected for obvious and embarassing grammatical error.

I think we have a new official troll to sic iNow on. I don't know why people come here to talk and never listen. Seems counter to the purpose of "discussion". And yet we see time and time again people who come in here and immediately start setting everyone straight on some issue or another. No sense of community, no sense of communication, no interest in common ground, just "shut up and listen". Invariably they're set-upon by long-time members who are more annoyed with the newcomer's rush to judgement than with anything they're actually saying, and then they wonder aloud why they've been set upon and insist that it's the community's fault, not theirs.

Why are you ignoring the rest of my response? There is value in analysis even if the bias cannot be fully determined, because you can analyze the methods used and determine whether they were appropriate and whether the results are enlightening (or not). If you're on this forum to preach that logic and reason can never be applied under any circumstances, I really think you've come to the wrong place.

Right, but each issue has a localized political spin to it. I think what happens most of the time is like what you said with global warming -- the truth rises to the top, which is then interpretted through the readers localized political bias and/or personal desires, and then seen as "liberal" or "conservative" or whatnot. In a larger sense this is what gets us into trouble all the time, this notion that an observation of reality can constitute a political bias. I don't think typical citizens are really to blame for this (not that anyone was really suggesting such), they're just responding to the rhetoric of ideologues and partisans in a way that has become comfortable and familiar. That's part of it, yes, but there's also partisanship amongst users on Wikipedia. How could there not be? They're human beings. And we know this to be the case, because Wiki has responded to it. The vandalism cases that forced Wiki to start locking pages have often (clearly) been ideological in nature (e.g. George Bush, Karl Rove, etc). And that surely ties in with the general leftward trend amongst tech-savvy teens, who also trend "vandal", for lack of a better term. Perhaps the conservatives are forgetting (or not noticing) that "liberal" pages are vandalized too. But I think it might be interesting to do an analysis of the list of protected pages (see here) and see how many of them are "liberal" and how many are "conservative", at least in terms of general perceptions. Of course in many cases it would be difficult to objectively determine this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are far more conservative-oriented pages under protection than liberal-oriented pages. For example, George Bush is locked, but Nancy Pelosi is not. Danny Glover is not. Rush Limbaugh is locked, but Al Franken is not. But Barack Obama is locked (I think all the candidates are). It's clearly not a universal trend or a vast left-wing conspiracy. (grin)