Pangloss

Slipstream windmills? (moves a bit farther away from the aptly named ecoli)

It's almost as much fun as two wrongs making a right, Bascule. You aren't supporting systems that offer a paper trail. You're supporting systems that give receipts to voters. You're intelligent enough to know the difference, and we're intelligent enough want something a bit more substantive than Democrat voter complaints = truth and Republican voter complaints = lies.

I don't really see what you're getting at.

I have almost as many concerns about the pharmaceutical industry as I do about the insurance industry. Corrupt might not be the right word for it; it might be more accurate to say that the problems are systemic and extend beyond the companies themselves, to the way our healthcare industry works.

Oh yeah great point about Lieberman -- surely a sign of the power of the moderate middle if I've ever seen one. Of course it didn't help the way out-of-state, extremist liberals campagined for Lamont. As a voter that would've irked me to no end.

... that she has to win again in two years! (chuckle) I don't think I've ever heard anyone put it quite that way before. Cute.

Well if we were all THAT conservative then we would have put Katherine Harris in the Senate yesterday. Also the E. Clay Shaw loss in 22 is one of the two or three HUGE defeats for Republicans yesterday. Shaw had 13 terms in the House AND they just got through redistricting him for protection (so much for the power of gerrymandering!). But yeah, it's a generally conservative state. No surprise there.

I watched the press conference while eating lunch today (had to struggle to keep it down amidst all the hypocrisy). But aside from the Rumsfeld business, it seemed like there was something funky going on. I couldn't quite pin it down, but the whole explanation of the timing of the event seemed messed.

What happened yesterday was a moderate mandate. It was a mandate from the people who actually matter. Republicans stayed in power so long because they made a big tent and kept people like me under it. They lost power when they forgot about us. This election PROVED that no matter how great your "get out the vote" efforts for your base, if you can't swing the middle then you will lose. That's absolutely as it should be. It's not MY fault that 70-80% of the country votes solid-block party, it's THEIRS. They deserve their own frustration -- they earn it every time they "vote". People like me run this country -- people with open minds and a better perspective on the big picture. WE decide what's best for the closed-minded, the ideological, the rage-filled haters. Yesterday was a good day for people like us, not for people like Nancy Pelosi or Al Franken.

I agree. In fact not only is that a great example of where open source would be beneficial, it's also a great example of a place where open source would be educational. The lay citizenry does not understand how you can have something be completely open like that and still be secure -- there is a major disconnect in comprehension there, and that would be a great thing to straighten out in people's minds.

Here's a better question: How can you know that WITH a paper trail?

Sure, but this is all beside the point. It's not about whether voting is secure, it's about what kind of material the demogogues and the mass media have available to chew on. The issue has never actually been disenfranchisement. Oh sure, there are always a few cases of mixups or errors. As I said above, those actually happened far more under paper ballots than electronic systems. But almost without exception, both before and after the change from paper to electronic, people (a) are able to vote, and (b) have their votes counted. Case in point -- my ballot box was lost in a warehouse for four hours in 2000 just because a delivery truck went to the wrong location. You should have seen the hoopla -- media everywhere, helicopters flying around overhead, the whole nine yards. But they turned up just fine, seals unbroken, move along folks, nothing to see here. Oh but wait, one party said, maybe the ballots were tampered with! Oh you mean our party carried the district? NEVER MIND! In short, there IS no STANDING voting problem -- it exists ONLY in the media. That's not to say that there aren't valid concerns about electronic balloting. It's just that nobody has any intention of doing anything about that, anywhere. The entire focus is on a problem that is both entirely believed to exist, and which absolutely does not.

Just as many intelligent conservatives feel that the New York Post and Wall Street Journal and Washington Times are "sane as well as justly partisan". (shrug) Of course. From your perspective, when they're matching your ideological worldview they're being "rational," "fair," "intellectual," and "reasonable." When they aren't, then they aren't. Perfectly understandable that you feel that way.

You're not actually making two wrongs a right, are you? No question about it. CNN also has to be placed in the partisan category these days as well, especially in the wake of its recent "Broken Government" series. Just because a source is biased doesn't mean it's not authoritative and informative. The Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are all biased, and they are also the three primary sources for virtually all news reporting in the United States. Every newsroom in the country wakes up in the morning and checks those three papers to see what THEY should be reporting today. Such is the way of modern news.

And by the way, if you live in the United States, for goodness sake, get out there and vote today, you lazy bums!

There are many things wrong with paper ballots, including (especially) the IQ levels of many voters. Remember, it was problems with paper ballots that lead to this wave of electronic voting. The problems just need to be solved, end of story. The systems may never be 100% secure, but a combination of reasonable security and a paper trail should be sufficient to allay most of the concerns (reasonable and otherwise).

There's nothing wrong with them endorsing whomever they feel like endorsing. What would be wrong would be giving them credit for objectivity in news reporting. I give them credit for being open about their bias. I give them scorn for pretending that it's something that it is not. I agree that they didn't decide not to endorse any Republicans because they don't like Republicans -- that would be too easy. They didn't endorse any Republicans because they couldn't find any Republicans that follow their ideology. It's not a case of partisan bigotry. It's a case of insular stupidity.

That's an interesting point. Of course, Andrew Young says it's actually okay that Wal-Mart is driving mom-and-pop stores out of business, because (paraphrasing) those are the stores that were always keeping the black man down & out. (Which promptly cost him his consulting position with Wal-Mart.) But you're right, we pay a price for convenience in the form of cultural homogenization. It's an interesting question as to whether breaking down those national barriers would have an adverse impact on that. It depends on what's actually causing those market forces to act one way or the other. Is an area "quaint" or is it "blighted"? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

But listen, I don't want to degenerate into a tit-for-tat or last-wording thing here. I respect your opinion on it a lot more now than I did earlier in the conversation, and I appreciate where you're coming from with it. I think we probably have some common ground here in that we both understand the need for unity as well as the need for patience in diplomacy.

I don't think I'm lacking in ability to make a rational conclusion. Some things are more important than human life. The question isn't whether one can say whether 600,000 is a bigger number than 200,000. The question is whether the world is willing to stand up for what it SAYS it believes, or if it will instead spout idle threats and then chose to sit on its transfatty, ever-growing duff and do nothing. And remember, this is no idle problem. This is what you want us to do about North Korea and Iran -- bluff and bluster and insist (right out in the open!) that nobody ever be allowed back it up. That's great if your total involvement in world affairs is to simply shift blame from one international entity and never be in the wrong yourself. But for actually solving problems? Not so much.

And there we will have to agree to disagree, because I think the moment you say "no more invasions", you will always lose. There's a reason Saddam dodged and avoided UN inspections for umpteen years. Non-compliance is a valid reason for enforcement, regardless of the actual existence of WMDs. It can't not be a valid reason, or you will never have compliance under any circumstances. It just wasn't a sufficient reason here.

You're both as mired in ideological non-sequiturs as the US is in Iraq. The US gives a lower percentage of GDP, but since its GDP is so high it ends up being a higher total amount. And as I said above, I reject the phrase "military aggression" as applied to the United States. Anybody who leaps to that excuse is either pushing or following an agenda. You're smart enough to know better than that. I don't think either of your arguments are served by using those numbers, though. Why can't it be true that BOTH (a) the United States is a generous nation, AND (b) the United States could be much more generous?

We already are doing it, every time a KFC opens anywhere between Algeria and Kuala Lumpur. We just need to follow-up on our commercial "towing" at the cultural and diplomatic levels. The problem isn't that Muslims want to live in the dark ages (the Muslim world we want to embrace already condemns Taliban Statue Destruction Squads). The problem is that they don't know how to handle the stress and turmoil that comes with massive social and economic change (who does?). So they get mad, somebody trots out a Koran, and the next thing you know young men are blowing themselves up, not because they think their religion is being subverted, but (ultimately) because they can't afford a Big Mac.

K, that was my position so we agree. Not that I (nor, I'm sure, you either) LIKED what Saddam was doing, but it was not appropriate for us to intervene without the agreement of the majority of the free world. The more appropriate and responsible action would have been to take our time, and continue to apply consistent and patient pressure over the long haul. And frankly, as an American, I don't feel like it was my problem. Saddam wasn't responsible for 9/11, he wasn't an imminent threat, and he was being actively monitored with international cooperation (corrupt though it may have been; that problem could have been solved as well). Well the Turks aren't real happy about that, and there may be some trouble there over the long term. But for the moment they seem to be cooperating. I don't agree with the principle here. There are times with fighting is necessary, and freedom is worth fighting for. In fact one could argue that freedom MUST be fought for (in various ways that don't necessarily include violence), or it means nothing. To that end, "attacking" can be helpful. You've already cited examples of this such as Kuwait/Gulf War I. I reject the premise that Americans attack out of preference. I don't agree that the precedents exist, I don't agree that the international community has an accurate understanding of the American psyche (any more than we have of theirs) in this area, and I resent the fact that opinions like these seemed to be formed primarily on an image of Americans born out of 17,000 action movies. You have a valid point, but it's just not as one-sided a picture as you paint it to be. I agree that we need to understand the Muslim world better -- you're absolutely right. Then we need to destroy it, because it is not compatible with the future course of humanity. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting killing people, conquering nations, subverting races or even dismantling religions. What I'm talking about is usually phrased more politely as "winning hearts and minds". But I am suggesting that we, the stronger and more successful western world (NOT the US acting alone), decide what's best for humanity, and then we proceed to accomplish our goals. And since it is apparent that we can no longer "live and let live", because they will not let us do so, we will instead have to drag them along with us, kicking and screaming though they may be. Are you ready for that? Because it's what you want just as much as it is what I want, and I can assure you that it's going to cost you every bit as much as it is going to cost me. There will be no islands of solicitude like New Zealand in that "new world order" -- BANK on it. EVERYONE will be involved.

Because short-term communist planning worked out so well for the Soviet Union....