You forgot the prestigious research universities, a few of which I have supported with tuition funds.
Doesn't seem like it. Of course not. That would involve thinking on your part, and not showing up to suddenly claim I've rewritten your posts.
Agreed. But even to take baby steps, these issues have to reach a wider audience and become part of their conscience. Whereas so much time and energy is wasted on hating Bush, at least some of that can be redirected towards finding better methods to achieve ideals.
That is soooooo true. I'm guilty as any non-Republican of getting on the "I hate Bush" bandwagon. While Bush certainly deserves my disdain, many politicians deserve it as well (Dems and Reeps), and hating Bush isn't doing me any good, and is a waste of time. We (Dems, independants, Libertarians, Greens, general moderates) have to think about solutions, rather than the problem(s) (and Bush is only a part of the those problems). It's been mentioned on this thread and others, but what we need is a true moderate party. Or more moderates in the Dem and Reep parties. The old hardline liberal Democratic policies aren't working, nor is a majority of Americans willing to to accept them. Same goes with the far right of the Republican party - I've been reading articles about how there is a forth coming fight for idealogical control of the Republican party between neo cons, moderates, and traditional conservatives. Anyway, I've been reading a lot of good ideas on this thread, bot guys on both sides of the spectrum.
Um, Canute, that was my whole point. The Times? The Times of Judith Miller and Whitewater? It is to laugh.
nicephoras has a good point, but nice, it's also true that there are many things we could be doing better. Somewhat thread drift, but what the hell. When I've got a couple million to spend, I'm gonna try to develop neighborhoods with very small lots (1/10 of an acre or less), but a big common area within each block. Sunset curfews except special occasions, of course. Just tell your kids to go into the back yard, and through the hedges, and be done with it.
Academia is obviously left, in the relevant fields. But they don't generate ideas for partisan political campaigns, so they're no good.
That won't happen unless we take redistricting out of the hands of state legislatures and put it in the hands of nonpartisan commissions. The spread of powerful PCs gives legislatures too much information, so that there ain't no competitive races. Seriously, there were 435 house races, and 33 or 34 senate races. Which body had more close races? Here in North Carolina, I cannot imagine any of our Congressmen getting beaten by a challenge from the other party. The only way an NC Congressman can lose is by a challenge from the left (for Dems) and right (for GOPs) wing of their party. Somewhat the same story in the state legislative races. From the beginning, pols are learning that moderation gets you beat, extremism makes you safe.
If this election has accomplished one thing, it has given self-congratulatory, overblown-sense-of-self moderate Repubs a soapbox to lecture Liberals about ideals. Except we're not the ones who sold our soul to the devil. Or more specifically, Karl Rove. If I had a dollar for every piece written "to the Dems" about how to win the Red-State vote (almost all of which suggest we toss ideals), I'd be in the top 1% of US income earners, and would have benefitted from Bush's tax cut. But I still wouldn't have voted for Bush.
As I said - this is not a national issue. What would work for Manhattan would fail miserably in Texas. Same as gun control, something I hope Democrats will eventually realize. Its a foolish man who tries to separate a drunk Segroves from his assault weapons.
Respectfully, your years as an A-student does NOT trump the truth that kids who do not have at-home parents do NOT do as well as kids who do. I recently saw a study that also showed latchkey kids doing well. However, the survey was so flawed in demographics as to be laughable. One obvious qualifier is that there are kids who are more intellectually gifted than others and will overcome disadvantages that the less gifted do not. However, when you blow away all the PC crap that has been sold to parents about how great day care is for parents who selfishly put careers ahead of raising children, you get kids who do better when there is a parent at home as opposed to latchkey. Yes, I know "career" parents don't like to hear this. They would rather have their 2 BMWs than 2 Saturns so they insist they must both have a "real" job but this is all BS and is another part of what the "Values voter" was talking about last Tuesday. Family values includes parents caring enough about their children that they do not outsource the parenting of those children to the institutional day care center down the street.
OK. Let me say it this way. There are plenty of kids who struggle in school whose parents have no either no job or work only part time, drawing all or most of their support from welfare, who have plenty of time to spend with their kids but CHOOSE not to do so. Many of these kids are from homes where only one parent is involved with the other not playing a role at all. The result is kids who fail. The parents just don't give a damn and no amount of money will fix it. The kids just chose the wrong parents. Don't even try to say it is not true because both my wife and I have seen it for over 2 decades.
Sigh. Most parents who work two jobs do it to provide for their kids, not to buy a second BMW. And if neither you nor bojendyk has statistics, why should either you be trusted? You have your homespun gosh golly gee aren't parents so much better stuff, but at the end of the day, its about quality, not quantity. If parents don't care about their kids but spend plenty of time at home, its not going to help.
I hang on to mine pretty tightly, too, especially when the booze kicks in. No politician in Texas would ever dare mention anything about gun control. He could have the best ideas in the world and might be able to fix everything, but he'll get .05% of the vote because folks just don't want to give up their firearms.
I'm sorry if someone else posted this sentiment (I admittedly skipped a couple pages). I don't often post here (I'm usually content to wile away slow days at work reading everyone else's soccer opinions) but this political discussion to me is framed far off of what this election actually was. The simple fact of the matter is that Bush ran a right wing campaign on fear of the war on terrorism, on stem cell research, and on gay marriage (helped by initiatives by republicans in 11 states), to motivate his base and bring out the conservatives to vote for him. And Kerry tailed him. He failed to motivate the people who really wanted to vote for Kerry. He failed to stand up to Bush on the war (54% of the country then thought was a mistake in polls taken before the DNC, an event where 95% of the delegates were against the war in Iraq). He failed to take a strong stand for gays and lesbians ("I, too, am opposed to gay marriage" but "I oppose a constitutional amendment." Kerry's getting his wish. States are deciding to ban it.) Bush played to his base. Kerry tried to pick off parts of Bush's and failed. You run a right wing campaign, you lose to a right winger. What I think those of us who stand opposed to Bush have to ask is, do the Democrats really stand opposed to Bush and his policies? I might have said yes before this election, but the debates showed what they really are. A business party who wants to be the Republicans, and wants to do it on the backs of people who have traditionally supported them. Why did VOTERS in this election overwhelmingly say the moral issues were the top priority for them? Because what else was there to choose from? The war positions were basically the same. Neither proposed specific differences in plan about the economy. And Bush used social issues to get out the vote amongst conservatives. So to the ideal of helping the poor. To me, it's not about helping the poor, it's about paying people what they're worth (which I can't imagine anyone, conservative or republican would argue with). I earn $8 an hour as an office assistant in Maryland which is nearly the poverty line for a family of four. That's why most of the people who were on welfare when Clinton "ended it as we know it" HAD JOBS AT THE TIME. I can only imagine what it would be like to support a child with no benefits and $8/hr. Is it about taxing the rich? Taxing the rich would only be necessary because we do the same amount of work and get paid disparate incomes. Others in my office do far more than my boss who earns nearly 5 times what I earn. What does he do? He owns a business and spends the majority of his time in a house in North Carolina. Labor laws in this country are insane. The average american works 50 hours a week. That's what's wrong, and that's something neither of the parties talk about. That's what helps the poor. Paying them what they're worth. Do I hate Bush? Yeah, but the Democrats are a pathetic excuse for an opposition. How do you lose to a president with an approval rating hovering around 50%? Neither party will help them (or perhaps soon to be, me). Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work.
Exactly. But Olympia Snow and Lincoln Chafee aren't campaigning on trying to reimpose Christian law on the Union. You have to selectively target a lot of issues, on a state by state basis. Gun control is one such issue. I don't know why rednecks love guns, but they do. They don't understand why I think more than two showers per week should be mandatory. We may not have to, or want to, live with each other. But we can still vote for the same candidate for President.
Well, I consider myself to be pretty "Pro-Shower", and we love guns because, well, we like things that make loud noises, which goes a long way towards explaining the popularity of fireworks and NASCAR in the South, as well.
Good to hear. Yes, NASCAR........cars that go in a circle for hours........as I said, we may not have to live together, but the stupidity of motorsports should not deter us from getting those votes.
I take it the "stupidity of motorsports" includes Monster Truck rallys, yes? Because I am so with you on that one..... There you go: have the Dems add a ban on Monster Truck rallys to the platform in 2008 and you've swung my vote right there. I also will come along if you ban SUV's for anyone who never actually goes off-road. Why the people in this country don't understand that you can get just as much stuff in a station wagon, wagons get better gas mileage, and they are easier to control is beyond me.
You are right of course. It IS about "quality". But that term has become much abused. For many parents it now means they must have all this stuff so they now justify 2 out-of-the-house careers. The fact is, the kids don't care about all that stuff. They just want a parent there. Call it homespun if you want but all the teachers I know will tell you the same thing: by the second week of school they can tell you, with very few errors, which kids have parents actively involved in their kid's education and which ones don't. Single parent households are the worst, followed by families where both work. The kids who do the best in school come from 2-parent families where at least 1 parent is home when the kids get home, or soon after. There are expections but they are rare. Long way from the thread title but is where a good part of the election was won, or lost.
Dave, you've got the MSM cheering for you everyday; if that's not PR, I don't know what is. I think you might be interested in this from the PPI: http://www.ppionline.org/documents/Politics_of_Evasion.pdf - I think this may be one of their "one or two good albums". You'll quickly note that it was written in 1989, but the first 4 pages could have been written this year. It seems that Dems listened back then and thus a "centrist" from the DLC was nominated in 1992. Also interesting to note is that President Clinton's successes came from co-opting GOP ideas, not pursuing liberal ones. Indeed, the best thing that ever happened to his presidency was the Republican sweep in 1994.
Clinton wasn't a liberal, or at least didn't campaign as one, that's why he won. If you guy's still haven't figured that out, you'll be in the wilderness for a while.