Quote from: Jackalope;231117Because I am more sympathetic to misguided idealists than opportunistic demagogues.

The problem is that you think there is a sharp line between the two and are making assumptions about which is which that are not necessarily correct.  

Quote from: Jackalope;231117Because, at the end of the day, I find for-profit demagoguery on behalf of the ruling elite that is occurring right now far more troublesome to democracy than I find the actions of one misguided and widely discredited revolutionary group from thirty years ago.

What makes you think that the right-wing talk show hosts are doing what they are doing simply for profit or on behalf of some ruling elite?  What makes you think that they aren't ever bit as sincere about what they say and believe as Bill Ayers and that their motives aren't as good as his?  You say that you've spend a lot of time listening to and reading books by right-wing talk show hosts but there seems to be a lot you are missing.  

As fir Ayers, he doesn't seem to have suffered all that much for his cause.  After all, the reason why Barack Obama held a fund raiser in Ayers house was that it was a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood.  Should I use his economic comfort and the money he made off of writing a book about being a fugitive as evidence that his revolutionary activity was also ultimately for-profit demagoguery?

Quote from: Jackalope;231117See, I get what Bill Ayers thought he was doing.  He thought he was fighting a  fascist government that was murdering people, both at home and abroad, for unconscionable reasons.  Was he right?  Hard to say.

And that's exactly the problem.  You are sympathetic to Ayers so you give him a pass.  What you fail to consider is that many if not most of the right wing pundits that you are calling for-profit demagogues believe that they are fighting cultural and governmental trends that will ruin the country and (especially in the case of their resistance to pragmatic and effective military and national security measures) may get thousands of more Americans killed.  

And it's not simply the ruling elite that they are worried that America will be ruined for.  The Iraqi people will pay the biggest cost for failure in Japan.  Working class and middle class Americans are who have been murdered by terrorists.  And it's the poor who have been trapped in generation after generation of poverty by a welfare system that has incentives that make people dependent on the government and destroy the nuclear family.  Conservatives do care about poor people and the middle class.  They simply don't think that the best way to help them is to follow in the path of the barbarians that sacked Rome, redistributing wealth from rich to poor but destroying the means to create wealth and the capacity to maintain a high standard of living in the process.

I presume you think all of that is just demagoguery designed to fool poor people into preserving the lifestyle of the ruling elite but class mobility is a big part of the conservative message and more than a few of those "for-profit demagogues" started from fairly humble beginnings and made their own opportunities.

In many ways, the conservative message mirrors the argument about games that make sure that every choice the players have is fun and that the player-characters can never fail unless the players want them to versus games that require the players to work for their success and make meaningful choices.  The right wants equality of opportunity and objective rules while the left wants equality of outcome.  And wanting equality of outcome is no more noble nor an ideal solution for real life than it is in role-playing design, for much the same reasons.  But in role-playing, there is no cost to encouraging players to not be concerned about the consequences of their choices because things will always turn out for them in the end but in the real world, there is a very clear cost to encouraging people to not consider the consequences and costs of their actions.

Quote from: Jackalope;231117Ultimately, I think he was wrong, not because the government wasn't what he thoiught it was (it was), but because I think the key to achieving progressive goals is peaceful resistance and civil disobedience, but I can understand how Ayers -- watching the government shoot protestors, turn dogs on them, spy on them -- could come to believe that violence was the answer.

And if conservatives believe that liberals and the government are what they claim they are, then can't you also detach yourself enough from your own political biases to understand how they might come to believe that provocative oratory is the answer?  And can't you even find yourself understanding Timothy McVeigh?  Didn't he fancy himself a revolutionary?  Didn't Charlie Manson?

Quote from: Jackalope;231117But what is Coulter doing?  If she's serious, she's insane.

No.  She simply believes that liberals are ruining the country.  You'll find the same claims coming out of the left, particularly involving the religious right (A Handmaid's Tale, anyone?).  Is she any less sane claiming that liberals are going to destroy America than liberals are believing conservatives are going to bring about a theocracy?  That's the paranoia that democracy causes in people at both ends of the political spectrum.  If you wind up in the minority and the other side gains full control, the extremes on both sides imagine them destroying America, turning it into the worst examples they can draw from out of history.

Quote from: Jackalope;231117My mother -- a dyed in the wool liberal -- may be a bit daft in her politics, but she's hardly a traitor.  She shouldn't be considered a valid target, but she could have easily been in that church -- she goes to a very liberal Episcopalian church.  But Coulter would have you believe that because my mom is going to vote for Obama, and voted for Clinton, that she should be Guatamno?

And plenty of conservatives that I know as well as plenty of right-wing pundits are hardly racists or shills for the ruling elite nor are they indifferent to the suffering of the poor, yet that's what you and others characterize them as.  Perhaps you haven't noticed the environmental terrorism from groups like ELF or the Unibomber.  Do you really think that will all of the talk of destroying the planet coming out of the environmentalist movement that it couldn't create a new generation of Ted Kaczynskis and Bill Ayers?  How about the churches burned in Norway as a result of anti-Christian bigotry connected to black metal music?  All good clean fun?  Shouldn't everyone be toning down the rhetoric and the talk about this group or that ruining the world?

Of courswe you don't much like the idea of your mother being the target of some crazed follower of Ann Coulter but is your mother any less deserving of death than the innocent victims (and potential victims) of the Weather Underground or those killed on 9/11?  Had your mother died in an act of terrorism, how would you feel if someone told you that she wasn't really innocent and deserved her fate?  Would any political beliefs justify that for you?

Again, your problem here seems to be more personal than a matter of principle.  So long as the bomb or gun is pointed at an innocent person that you don't know, you are less troubled by it than if it's pointed at an innocent person that you do know.  You don't mind Churchill calling 3,000 strangers "little Eichmanns" but I suspect you would be mighty annoyed if your mother were dead in a terrorist incident and some loony college professor said the same about her.  You don't might Bill Ayers and/or his friends firebombing someone's house with children inside or blowing up a military dance because you can't imagine yourself or someone you love being the target of the attempt.

Quote from: Jackalope;231117Or is she joking?  If she's joking, that's deplorable.  That's calling for violence against others for...a joke?  Calling for violence because you genuinely believe that real freedom is at stake is one thing

What makes you think that she doesn't genuinely believe that real freedom is at stake?  And does that really make a difference?

Quote from: Jackalope;231117But it does seem to mean that you are willing to step up and defend them or excuse them, which is exactly what you are complaining people on the right do with Coulter, Limbaugh, and others.

I'm not defending Coulter.  What I'd like is you to be consistent in your application of morality.  I agree that when Coulter says things that sound an awful lot like a justification to murder innocent people that it's reckless, over the line, and she should be held responsible for it if someone acts on it.  What I'm complaining about is that you are painting all right-wing pundits with the same brush whether they deserve it or not (e.g., calling Rush Limbaugh a racist -- on what grounds exactly?) and I'm explaining why people on the right do find Coulter funny, make excuses for her, or give her a pass without themselves being evil or really wanting to harm innocent people.  They are simply a lot like you.  They can see where she's coming from, has some sympathy for her cause, and excuse her extremism because she's basically one of them, just like you've shown sympathy for and made excuses for Bill Ayers and Ward Churchill.  The people defending Coulter are simply a lot like you.  If making excuses for Ann Coulter makes them bad people, then making excuses for Bill Ayes and Ward Churchill makes you a bad person.  

Quote from: Jackalope;231117This is so facile it defies credibility.

Most of the other people here seem to have no trouble following along.

Quote from: Jackalope;231117What this tells you is that I sympathetic to revolutionary groups operating from idealistic (if confused) motives, and not sympathetic to fascist shills who take a corporate paycheck to rail against harmless working class folk like my mom.

No, what it tells me is that you are so blinded by your own political biases that you can't imagine that the opposition considers themselves just as idealistic and considers your side just as fascist as you consider them.  And if you think the paycheck and money makes a difference, I'd suggest taking a look at how Bill Ayers lives and how much Michael Moore, Al Frankin, and other left-wing pundits make shilling their politics to working class folks who they never actually seem to help.  And while I doubt she's intentionally targeting working class liberals like your mother, viewing your mother as a naive yet harmful tool of the left is really little different than the way you've been characterizing the right or how Obama characterized working class voters who vote Republican by calling them bitter, paranoid, superstitious, and xenophobic.  It's all an attempt to explain why poor people would be stupid enough to vote against their own best interests, which both left and right think that they serve.

Quote from: Jackalope;231117But you're right John, at the end of the day, my problem isn't with people murdering their political enemies, because at the end of the day I'm a realist and I know that tree of liberty is soaked in an awful lot of innocent people's blood.

Looking at history, you'll notice that the blood of revolutions rarely waters the tree of liberty and that America was lucky to have leaders who valued liberty rather than power.  Few countries are lucky enough to have a George Washington and more often than not, revolutions wind up producing a Robespierre, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot which is why it's silly to romanticize them.  If egalitarian democratic governments sprang forth like dandelions from the ashes of toppled despots, then wouldn't Iraq be a paradise by now?

Quote from: Jackalope;231117But keep it up John, keep pretending that a confused revolutionary is the exact same thing as a demagogic hate-monger.  Keep pretending the there is no difference between the violence used by the oppressed against the oppressor and the violence used by the oppressor against the oppressed.

What I can see that you can't is that Coulter and other right wing pundits believe that their cause is every bit as noble as Ayers believes his cause was and if you can excuse Ayers as being "confused" or mistaken, then you should excuse them as well.  But because of your own political bias, you simply can't imagine how anyone could reconcile right-wing politics with caring for the working class or poor.  As such, I suspect you make the same mistake that many liberals make and assume that poor and working class people who vote Republican are simply too stupid to know what's good for them.

Quote from: Jackalope;231117All you are illustrating is how completely out of whack your own moral compass is.

When I start making excuses for right-wing murderers like the guy who shot up this church and when I start defending people who claim that Timothy McVeigh's victims deserved their fate because they worked for the government is the day that my moral compass will be as out of whack as yours is.  There is no excuse for the buy who murdered two people in the church.  There is no excuse for what Timothy McVeigh did.  There is no excuse for what the Weather Underground did.  There is no excuse for what Ward Churchill said.  There is no excuse for Ann Coulter wishing that Timothy McVeigh had targeted the New York Times building.  The politics behind it or their intent is irrelevant.

Quote from: Jackalope;231128That's fucking idiotic.

You know what REALLY lets types like Coulter paint all liberals as Weatherman-supporting, Black Panther-supporting, revolutionary Marxists (ie 'traitors')?

Uh, dude, you've been defending Ward Churchill, The Weathermen, and the Black Panthers because as a liberal you have sympathy for their cause.  That makes you a walking talking case study of Ann Coulter's stereotype.  It's no wonder you take her rhetoric personally.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231180Wikipedia tells us of the USA and its forests - and checks elsewhere online and in my own book collection more or less match this - that,

The problem is that when I looked at those figures, including graphs that I found that break the forestation acreage down by region, those estimates seem to be based on the assumption that the forestation that was present when Europeans settled in a particular region was the natural forestation before Europeans arrived in North America.  The point about the Native Americans and the beavers is that there was a significant change in the landscape of North America caused by the widespread death of Native Americans through European diseases that preceded European settlement and by the destruction of beavers at the hands of a small number of European hunters that preceded European settlement and I think the evidence suggests that the forestation acreage increased before European settlers arrived and it's difficult to imagine how it couldn't have.  Estimates of how much of North America was forested are a lot like estimates of how many Native Americans there were before Europeans arrived.  There is a lot of guessing involved because nobody was keeping records.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231180And searching around elsewhere I find a current concern of environmentalists is that while trees are being planted in the US, it's monocultures for plantation, rather than polycultures which will be left as they are. Your mixed forest has a lot more biodiversity and can store a lot more carbon than a bunch of pines in nice straight rows destined for paper pulp... Plus the forests are getting fragmented. 100 forests of 1 square mile each are a different thing to 1 forest of 100 square miles, they've much less biodiversity and resilience against natural threats.

That's a legitimate line of argument but it doesn't invalidate what Limbaugh said.  And if you look at the quotes about Native American forest burnings and beaver landscape modification, you'll find quotes talking about, "open forests or forest in a mosaic with prairie patches," which is exactly the sort of "fragmentation" that environmentalists are arguing is abnormal and harmful.  Again, the question goes back to what you want to consider normal for the United States.  Were the centuries of burnings by Native Americans a natural part of the United States ecosystem?  Were the watersheds damed up by beavers?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231180The beaver stuff is a load of old bollocks.

I've provided my sources, Kyle, and I can provide plenty more.  The last site I quoted was the National Wildlife Federation.  I suppose you want to argue that they are right-wing shills for the logging industry, right?  Anyone who knows anything about Native Americans and beavers knows that both had a substantial impact on the environment of the United States before European settlers arrived and that both worked to reduce the amount of land that would otherwise be covered in forests.

I know talking about Native Americans and beavers deforesting North America sounds absurd, which is why I've explained the point in detail with sources.  Do you need more sources?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231180I dunno what that has to do with some right-wing loon murdering people, though. This seems like some stupid competition of, "your extremists are crazier than our extremists", which is of course bollocks.

If you'll notice, I started this thread saying that right-wing extremists should be held accountable if they provoke violence and didn't automatically let the right off of the hook for this guy.  My problem is with the idea that the right is uniquely or significantly more dangerous than the left in this regard.  Extremists who wish death upon innocents, argue that innocents are valid targets for murder, and who provoke violence in the name of politics are a problem regardless of which side they are on.  Once you start making excuses for the extremists on your side, don't feign surprise when the other side does the same thing.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231180US domestic politics is a bit silly, really. I hope you guys get to become a proper democracy again soon, with most people voting and none of their votes being "mislaid", more than two factions of the same party to choose from, and so on.

The reason why the American system isn't changing is that most people are really pretty happy with it and how things are run.  Those people don't get involved in animated political discussions on the Internet so it's easy to miss them.

Quote from: John Morrow;231322What makes you think that the right-wing talk show hosts are doing what they are doing simply for profit or on behalf of some ruling elite?  What makes you think that they aren't ever bit as sincere about what they say and believe as Bill Ayers and that their motives aren't as good as his?  You say that you've spend a lot of time listening to and reading books by right-wing talk show hosts but there seems to be a lot you are missing.
...
No.  She simply believes that liberals are ruining the country.  You'll find the same claims coming out of the left, particularly involving the religious right (A Handmaid's Tale, anyone?).  Is she any less sane claiming that liberals are going to destroy America than liberals are believing conservatives are going to bring about a theocracy?  That's the paranoia that democracy causes in people at both ends of the political spectrum.  If you wind up in the minority and the other side gains full control, the extremes on both sides imagine them destroying America, turning it into the worst examples they can draw from out of history.
...
What makes you think that she doesn't genuinely believe that real freedom is at stake?  And does that really make a difference?
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I'm not defending Coulter.

Quote from: John Morrow;229352Then I don't think you understand Coulter.  She's intentionally adopting the attitude and tactics of the nutty left to espouse right-wing viewpoints.

Shut the fuck up, you duplicitous, disingenuous, lying sack of weasel shit.

Quote from: John Morrow;231329The reason why the American system isn't changing is that most people are really pretty happy with it and how things are run.  Those people don't get involved in animated political discussions on the Internet so it's easy to miss them.

There's a difference between "happy with" and "is apathetic about" or or "has given up on" or "has too much day-to-day shit to worry about to think about the big picture".

I mean, just look at the voter figures. Surely one measure of people's faith in a system is their participation in it? Would you say people were happy with a local school if most people didn't enroll their kids there, even though there was no other school? If people are happy with the system, why don't they participate in it? It's only a piece of paper every couple of years. That's not "happy", that's "indifferent". Passive.

Talking to Americans, seems like the Supreme Court-decided Presidential election, plus the utter federal failure to save or rebuild the poor parts of an entire US city, these have made a lot of people essentially give up on their federal government. "Who gives a shit. Let's go shopping."

Quote from: Jackalope;231334Shut the fuck up, you duplicitous, disingenuous, lying sack of weasel shit.

Small thing: Excessive cussing tends to gradually lessen the impact or shock value of the words used.

Also, in some arguments the person that uses cusswords first or repetitively is probably the loser of the argument or has gotten too emotional about it.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Jackalope;231269If you wnat to draw comparisons between violent left-wing extremists and violent right-wing extremists, we can (there was the guy who tried to blow up the Olympics for example, and all those abortion clinics).

You'll notice that Eric Rudolph is in jail (where he belongs), no mainstream right-wing pundits, writers, or politicians defend him, and he's not holding fundraisers in his house for John McCain.  You'll also note that I'm not excusing his behavior or saying that I find his behavior understandable.

Quote from: Jackalope;231269But Coulter, Hannity, Limbuagh, et al. are not murderers, they are not criminals, and really, they are not extremists.  They are paid entertainers who promote hatred, sow discord, and encourage polarization for ratings and profit.

Because you believe that they don't really believe in what they are saying, right?  Apparently you don't know much about Rush Limbaugh's early history or where he got his political beliefs from.  Let's put it this way, he was quite a failure before he became a success and his right wing views came before the ratings and profits.

Quote from: Jackalope;231269So trying to justify the tone and substance of the average right-wing media personality by pointing to fringe whackos and former fringe whackos on the left is ludicrous.  It's comparing apples and oranges.  I really can't believe that people can make these arguments and not feel stupid presenting them.

Arguing that right-wing pundits are not sincere in their beliefs because they are well paid to express them but left-wing radicals who fight for the working class yet aren't from the working class nor do they live working class lives are sincere in their beliefs is a byproduct of the biased lens through which you look at them.

Quote from: Jackalope;231334Shut the fuck up, you duplicitous, disingenuous, lying sack of weasel shit.

Perhaps you should ask your therapist why this discussion is pushing your buttons.

You do grasp the distinction between explaining and defending, right?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231336Talking to Americans, seems like the Supreme Court-decided Presidential election, plus the utter federal failure to save or rebuild the poor parts of an entire US city, these have made a lot of people essentially give up on their federal government. "Who gives a shit. Let's go shopping."

And I would argue that any American that believes the Supreme Court decided the 2000 election or that the problems with the poor parts of American cities are caused by too little Federal attention or spending or is the fault of Republicans doesn't really grasp either issue very well.

The Supreme Court decision that stopped the selective recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court was a 7-2 decision, not a 5-4 decision, that such a selective recount was unconstitutional.  Here is how Wikipedia summarizes it:

   In a per curiam decision, by a 7-2 vote, the Court in Bush v. Gore held that the Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. By a 5-4 vote, the Court held that no alternative method could be established within the time limits set by the State of Florida. Three of the concurring justices also asserted that the Florida Supreme Court had violated Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the Constitution, by misinterpreting Florida election law that had been enacted by the Florida Legislature.

(Those famed "conservatives" Breyer and Souter were the other 2 justices who agreed that the Florida Supreme Court's recount method was unconstitutional.)

The claim is that the US Supreme Court's conservatives were biased in favor of Bush but it ignores the bias shown by the liberals on the Florida Supreme Court for Gore (cherry-picking the recounts, the bit declared unconstitutional, to try to give Gore a win).  The decision was to stop the continued recounting (and I have little doubt it would have gone on again and again until the "right" answer was generated -- a Gore win of course) and to let the current count stand.  That count is was decided the election and of the many recounts using various criteria carried out by the press after the decision, Bush won in almost every case.  And more importantly, if the US Supreme Court had let the Florida Supreme Court decision stand and there had been no shenanigans or additional recounts, Bush still would have won:

   In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted.

So the Supreme Court didn't decide the election.  They stopped the circus that the Florida Supreme Court was engaged in to find a way to make Gore win the election.  If you don't buy that then let me ask you this.  If Gore had won under the selective recount plan ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, would people be complaining that the Florida Supreme Court had decided the election?

If you want to shift the discussion to voter fraud and irregularities in the Florida vote, I'd be happy to talk about how Democrats steal elections and may have tried to steal the 2000 election, but of course the mainstream media isn't interested in the voter fraud that occurs so frequently and overtly in Democrat controlled cities that people openly joke about it ("Vote early and vote often.", "The dead vote.", and the old standby, "Late reporting.").

So if the 2000 election disheartened people, you can blame the mainstream media and Gore sycophants who simply can't accept that Bush really did win Florida and Gore wasn't entitled to win.

As for the US cities, the Federal government can fix what's wrong with them.  If anything, it caused what's wrong with them by destroying the black family.  The Klan couldn't have come up with a better plan to condemn most African Americans to poverty than the federal welfare programs that has pushed the unwed birth rate to 90% in some American cities and produces 30 year-old grandmothers and has young black men claiming that criminal behavior and thuggery is part of their "culture".  "Civil rights" groups have also made it all but impossible to separate out the bad guys and gangs from poor people by overturning laws prohibiting loitering, vagrancy, and keeping criminals out of public housing projects.

Of course US cities have been rebuilding the poor parts of cities (here is an article from 2000 about New Jersey) and moving poor people into suburbs and other neighborhoods.  As this article that I referenced a while back points out, the pilot program that was selective in who was chosen worked pretty well but the mass market version has been simply moving the same problems around.  It also illustrates that if you simply move all of the people (or put them in different houses), that's not going to improve things for the poor people unless you take the opportunity to weed out those who don't want to be helped and the criminals and thugs.  The solution to helping poor people it to permit government to exclude the criminals and thugs and keep them away from the nice people and people who really want to be helped but guess who fights those ideas (hint: not the poor people themselves and not Republicans)?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231336the utter federal failure to save or rebuild the poor parts of an entire US city, these have made a lot of people essentially give up on their federal government. "Who gives a shit. Let's go shopping."

A lot of Americans don't think it's the federal government's job to do that - which as a Brit I had difficulty understanding.

Quote from: John Morrow;231361And I would argue that any American that believes the Supreme Court decided the 2000 election or that the problems with the poor parts of American cities are caused by too little Federal attention or spending or is the fault of Republicans doesn't really grasp either issue very well.

"If you disagree with me, it's just because you're ignorant. If you were well-educated then you'd agree with me."

Yeah, rightyo. There's not really much anyone can say to that, since if they demonstrate knowledge of the situation and still disagree with you, you can just say, "ah, but you didn't read the right things." And so it goes.

By the way, by "rebuilding poor parts" of cities I meant specifically New Orleans. The well-off part's being rebuilt, the poor (black) part is being left to rot. Which is ironic given that many of the poor people were held at gunpoint to prevent their leaving. Hold 'em in when they want to leave, hold 'em out when they want to return.

Quote from: S'monA lot of Americans don't think it's the federal government's job to do that - which as a Brit I had difficulty understanding.

I had difficulty understanding it as a human being. Federal, state, local, whatever - someone has to rebuild the fucking thing. Preferably they don't cut funding to the programmes which protect the city from disasters so that it's not destroyed in the first place, but if you do fuck it up and it's destroyed, well then rebuild it. That's what we pay taxes for in democratic countries, not to spend hundreds of billions destroying another country, but to spend tens of billions rebuilding our own.

Less time ought to be spent inciting extremists to murder people, and more time building wealth and social justice in your own country. The USA has really declined from what it was. You used to have people like Jefferson, Lincoln, Rosa Parks, MLK, Eisenhower - people who believed in something and helped make it happen. Now you get people like Anne Coulter and Michael Moore. Sad stuff. Back in the 1930s and the 1890s in both Depressions you had people marching on city hall, shooting landlords trying to evict them. Back in the 1950s you had blacks marching for their human rights. Even in the 1970s you had a President, all he did was have some secret agents snoop through the rival party's offices and people were ready to hang the fucker. Now you've got another Depression coming, your President lies to the country and leads you into a war of aggression, has his agencies spy on the whole fucking country, detains people without charge or trial for years on end, and... everyone's watching tv.

What the fuck happened to the USA? You really ought to get off your arses. As an Australian looking at the US, it's like having some friend who used to have a great job, a wonderful wife and kid, some hobbies he loved, who contributed to the community and was kind to all - and then he whirls out of control, gets addicted to gambling and pisses it all away, now he's unemployed, divorced, never sees his kid, and occasionally mugs people.

It's fucking sad, is what it is.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231402"If you disagree with me, it's just because you're ignorant. If you were well-educated then you'd agree with me."

No. My point is that the certainty with which people claim that Gore should have won Florida is not supported by the facts.  It's possible that had the election been perfect and the count had been perfect that Gore would have won.  It's also possible that Bush would have won because there are also irregularities that could have worked against Bush.  The reality is that the election fell within the margin of error such that the margin of victory was smaller than the number of irregularities present in the vote.  

The problem with the claim that the US Supreme Court decided the election (the specific claim that you made) is that even if the US Supreme Court has let the Florida Supreme Court decision stand, the analysis by mainstream US newspapers show that Bush still would have won.  And by almost every other recount criteria tried by people who analyzed the vote after the fact shows that Bush would have won the recounts.  So the only way Gore would have won the recount battle was if the Florida Supreme Court kept allowing recounts shopping for the magic criteria that would allow Gore to win and then stopped the recount when Gore got his win.  How would that have been more fair than what happened?

The only other argument I've seen is that irregularities should have been counted for Gore and that would have put the courts into the business of guessing what the voter really meant as opposed to what's reflected on their ballot.  Can you craft a criteria that gives Gore a win by claiming that some percentage of spoiled ballots belonged to Gore?  Sure.  And you can also craft criteria and percentages that gives Bush the win.  The only way you can get a clear Gore win out of that is if you include all of the claims of lost Gore votes and ignore all of the claims for lost Bush votes.  In other words, if you start from the assumption that Gore was supposed to win.

If your argument is less that Gore should have won and more that US elections should be more precise and controlled, I'll agree with that.  But then your complaint isn't that the US Supreme Court decided the 2000 election (which implies the assumption that they decided it wrongly or against the will of the voters) and the real problem was the irregularities and imprecise voting methods.

The bigger problem for democracy in the US, as I've said in the past, comes from legislative and congressional redistricting, where both parties create "safe districts" where one party or the other is almost guaranteed to win.  That's why there are so few competitive House races.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231402Yeah, rightyo. There's not really much anyone can say to that, since if they demonstrate knowledge of the situation and still disagree with you, you can just say, "ah, but you didn't read the right things." And so it goes.

No, that's how you actually debate an issue rather than claiming that it's an incontrovertible fact beyond debate.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231402By the way, by "rebuilding poor parts" of cities I meant specifically New Orleans. The well-off part's being rebuilt, the poor (black) part is being left to rot. Which is ironic given that many of the poor people were held at gunpoint to prevent their leaving. Hold 'em in when they want to leave, hold 'em out when they want to return.

If you meant "New Orleans", then why didn't you say "New Orleans"?

The residents of New Orleans were asked to evacuate before the hurricane arrived.  Do you have a source for the claim that they were held at gunpoint to prevent them from leaving?  And who exactly do you think was holding them in or out and why?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231402I had difficulty understanding it as a human being. Federal, state, local, whatever - someone has to rebuild the fucking thing.

Why should anyone rebuild a part of a city that is below sea level and will just be wiped out yet again the next time a major hurricane hits the area?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231402Preferably they don't cut funding to the programmes which protect the city from disasters so that it's not destroyed in the first place, but if you do fuck it up and it's destroyed, well then rebuild it. That's what we pay taxes for in democratic countries, not to spend hundreds of billions destroying another country, but to spend tens of billions rebuilding our own.

No, I don't think my tax dollars or anyone else's tax dollars should be spent to make it easier for people to live in a disaster waiting to happen.  The parts of New Orleans that were flooded are already below sea level, they are continuing to sink even lower, and they can't possibly be protected from a direct hit from a large hurricane.  In other parts of the United States, they've been pushing people to move out of flood zones.  Why shouldn't they do the same in New Orleans?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231402What the fuck happened to the USA?

In the threads about how awful knife violence is in the UK, plenty of people blamed the press for sowing fear and making things sound far worse than they really are.  I suggest that people apply the same amount of skepticism concerning alarmist stories from the US press about how awful things are here.  As horrible as Katrina was, it killed about 2,500 people if you count the missing.  That pales in comparison to the 15,000 mostly elderly people killed by the 2003 heat wave in France alone.

Quote from: S'mon;231399A lot of Americans don't think it's the federal government's job to do that - which as a Brit I had difficulty understanding.

I do think it's the Federal Governments job to help keep Americans from dying during or after a natural disaster.  I don't think it's the Federal Government's job to keep rebuilding houses that are destroyed during natural disasters in places where those natural disasters are inevitable and will happen again and again.

Unless they're white people, of course. Good white Republicans - their part of the city gets rebuilt. I mean, those poor black people all vote Democrat, anyway, so fuck 'em, right Morrow?

Don't be deliberately obtuse. You know about the bridge incident. You know about a kid taking a bus full of people from the stadium and being turned back by the cops. You know this shit - you just want us to bring it up so you can argue it all point-by-point, quibbling over meaningless details, David Irving-style. Fuck that.

You've got all the classic deliberately blind spots of the fanatic - being pedantic, arguing semantics, your favoured side always has excuses for its misdeeds, your disfavoured side has none. If you'd been born a Sunni you'd be in the Taliban. Let's thank God you were born an American, so all you can do is quibble on the internet.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;231402It's fucking sad, is what it is.

Maybe because its not as bad as you think it is. You don't live here, so how do you know?

Ah, yes, the Intertubes. Then it MUST be true!

Perspective. Have some.