Niall is a witty poster on plastic.com and I've mirrored one of his posts here before. Below are his thoughts on the future of the U.S.
Well, Kerry has conceded, so let's do the math.
The Naderites of this election turned out to be the gay marriage advocates, who single-handedly brought conservative Christians to the voting booths in droves. The Democratic Party will duly take note of this fact. So don't expect the Dems to throw themselves into any more gay lifestyle enhancement issues any time soon. Which means that gay marriage zealots have not just shot themselves in the foot, but everyone else as well.
The Republicans have swept all of the Federal institutions (Presidency, Senate, House), and we will soon be living with the Scalia Supreme Court. This means three things.
First, the Republicans now constitute the political center, not "the Right".
Second, all meaningful political debate — which is to say, any political debate that has a chance of resulting in legislation or action — will now be taking place within the Republican party. The Democrats are completely marginalized — again. Which means in turn that...
Third, Republican predominance will only sharpen the internal divisions within their party, and bring them out into the open. The deficit hawks, the anti-neocon Republicans, are going to start vying for real power. And Bush may actually want to support them now, as a way of distancing himself from the disasters of his first term.
This means that the real political struggle will be between the Schwarzenegger Republicans — the pragmatic fiscal conservatives who hate the Religious Right — and the Mel Gibson Republicans — the wide-eyed religious wackos and Israel-firster neocon zombies. Between Terminator and Braveheart.
Which leads to an interesting dilemma. Is it worth it to continue to support the Democrats? Or would social change be better served by supporting the Terminators against the Bravehearts? Were the Log Cabin Republicans right all along?
It's a tantalizing question.
-Niall
Read the original thread and comment there
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John Zogby of Zogby Polls gained some fame predicting that the 2000 presidential election was going to be close; all the other major polls had predicted a 10 point win for Bush instead
“I asked one question the Saturday before the election in 2000. I called my call center in Utica and said, ‘Put this in the poll: “You live in the land of Oz, and the candidates are the Tin Man, who’s all brains and no heart, and the Scarecrow, who’s all heart and no brains. Who would you vote for?”’ The next day, I called Utica and said, ‘Whaddaya got?’ They said, ‘Well we’ve got Gore—,’ I said, ‘I don’t care about Gore. What’s Oz?’ It was 46.2 for the Tin Man and 46.2 for the Scarecrow. It was right there that I knew I wasn’t going to know what was going to happen. But I asked this question again two weeks ago and the Tin Man led by ten points.”Zogby doesn't care about being scientific, he cares about being right.
Read The New Yorker Article.
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From the World Prison Population List
- More than 8.75 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world. About half of
these are in the following three countries: United States (1.96m), Russia (0.92m) or China (1.43m).- The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 686 per 100,000
of the national population, followed by the Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554),
Kazakhstan (522), Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bahamas (447), Suriname (437) and
Dominica (420).- However, more than three-fifths of countries (62.5%) have rates below 150 per 100,000. (The
United Kingdom's rate of 139 per 100,000 of the national population places it above the midpoint
in the World List; it is now the highest among countries of the European Union.)
The Wall Street Journal raises its right hand and says, "America's poor are better off than the average European." Unfortunately, I bet that their usage of "capita" doesn't count prisoners.
Prison life in America stinks as well: U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them. Inmates have ended up with broken jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, burn scars—not to mention psychological scars and emotional pain. Some have died.
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LiquidDemocracy - PoundPython Wiki
There is a lot fuss over the Administration lying about there being WMD in Iraq. Then was this small blip on the radar when it was quoted that Paul Wolfowitz said that the real reason for going to war was to remove troops from Saudi Arabia, but that they settled on the WMD argument because it was more sellable.
I don't think that the whole Iraqi War was based on completely evil intentions... I actually think that there was a genuine motive within the Administration to do good. And the main good was probably removing these troops from Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately the benefits of these troop removals is fairly understated.
After 9/11 there was all this talk about "why do they hate us" and then the immediate hatred of those who said things like that. Well, at the top of the reasons why they, as in al-Qaeda, hated us was because there were troops stationed in the Islamic Holy Land. So by removing the troops from Saudi Arabia, America is removing a major motivation for terrorist attacks.
(Troops were there in the first place to monitor Iraq and were a byproduct of the 1st Iraqi War which had international support)
The reason the Administration couldn't be upfront with this objective is for a couple of reasons:
(1) The assumption that Americans couldn't comprehend such a thing
(2) Americans wouldn't support a war to "appease" terrorists
(3) Abroad, America would look like it was appeasing and less like a wild boar whose prerogatives had to be obeyed out of fear.
(1) I think this assumption is at least partially wrong. Americans are a lot smarter than they were 50 or 100 years ago. More people read the newspapers, watch TV, and read the Internet. I think the informed American public could have handled this logic
(2) This has always been tricky. You HAVE to ask "why do they hate us" but they're right, you can't appease terrorists. But heck, what's the difference? If I slap a police officer in the face until he pulls a gun on me, shouldn't I stop giving him reason to hate me out of fear for protecting my life. So in other words, if there is something truly unfair about our foreign policy that makes a terrorist response acceptable, then I think our foreign policy should be changed. On the other hand, if you're too quick with that then you get terrorists lowering the bar as to what is appropriate situations to respond terroristically. Also, according to Machiavelli, in a choice between being feared and being loved, one should choose being feared. In interpersonal relations, I find this specious, but in Realpolitick, I get a feeling it still works. Look at France, we have saved their ass time and time again but they don't and won't owe us anything. Heck, some would say they have belligerence toward us.
(3) Yeah, you don't want to give the impression that America can be pushed around. On the other hand, you don't also don't want to give another terrible impression that America has no credibility and that it can't be trusted with power.
So, it looks like all three points could be valid in both directions. However, with a defense department that wants to expand, with big corporations hungry for oil contracts, and a president determined as any other president to get himself re-elected, you get a selective bias in favor of the position we made.
My end personal feeling is that I think the Iraqi War did more good than harm. An authoritarian, abusive dictator was removed from harm. Troops were removed from Saudi Arabia and therefore we're safer from terrorists who used that as a primary motivation. Our credibility abroad, though, has gone down the tubes. It's hard to tell whether this act was also done to make everybody else in the world stop thinking that they can intervene in America's actions. America is the one that has to worry the most about it's security and so why should other countries try to tell us how to run our business esp. when Iraq is not very deserving other other countries love to begin with.
Now, as for the Administration lying and abusing common sense rights and practices, that I think is not acceptable. I know that it was important to motivate and unite the country, but I think that the Administration is stooping too low by inventing reasons to go to War rather than mining reasons that are already there. So far, we haven't found ANYTHING in there that shows some significant effort for WMD research.
What the heck am I saying. Who cares about this crap anyways. I'm just another nobody blogger spouting my opinions. Oh well, at least I wanted to understand for myself my position in this matter, and maybe the confused might benefit from this analysis. *shrug*