brewster wrote:
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ianmac47 wrote:
Across party platforms, liberal or conservative, I legitimately believe the greatest threat our nation faces is an ignorant electorate.

Okay, I need to buy you drink. Ignorance has been a bug of mine for years. Here's my favorite newspaper clipping (ca. 1993), and my lens with which to view anything the American Public says or believes.

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This just in: Earth revolves around sun!

CHICAGO (AP) More than 450 years after Copernicus proved the Earth revolves around the sun, millions of adult Americans seem to think it?s the other way around, a researcher reported yesterday. On very basic ideas, vast numbers of Americans are scientifically illiterate," said Jon Miller of Northern Illinois University, who conducted a nationwide survey for the National Science Foundation. In the July telephone survey of 2041 adults 18 or older, people were asked about 75 questions testing their knowledge of basic science. Miller said. Asked whether the Earth goes around the sun or the sun around the Earth, 21 percent replied incorrectly. Seven percent said they didn?t know. Of the 72 percent who answered correctly, 45 percent said it takes one year for the Earth to orbit the sun, 17 percent said one day, 2 percent said one month and 9 percent didn?t know. The responses indicate that about 55 percent of adult Americans, or some 94 million people, don?t know that the Earth revolves around the sun once a year, Miller said.

Forget millionaires, maybe we should restrict public office to Jeopardy winners. At least they'd probably know recent US policy on Libya.

CatDog wrote:
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borisp wrote:
Funny how so many people believe this - and not one of you can find a single example.

For example, my recollection is quite different. My memory is - Obama plainly refused to even consider a compromise. Republicans were given a choice of either signing up for Obama's agenda, or taking a hike. And, when I make a claim like this, - I do have things to support it. Consider the infamous "I won" story. Note the date, - not a week past after the coronation.

yo dude


you're #OOPS#in nuts

Quote:

You asked me to show you speech codes that liberals create - and I showed you TONS of those speech codes. They exist, they are plentiful, they are everywhere - and it can't be denied.

you showed me a TON of speech codes that onservatives created, which aren't even speech codes but codes of conduct.

La_Verdad wrote:
When I make a major, life-altering decision, I usually rely on research and ideas that are a little more current than the 18th century.

I also try to base my decision on something more than jingoistic propaganda (I'd argue that Australia is more truly capitalist than the U.S. - it's like a big Texas just with an even stranger accent), but to each his own, I guess.

Why would I leave? More to the point, why would you suggest I move to a socialist country? You are not one of them (sic) people who just reflexively attack (an) other's positions without knowing what they are, no?

I have neither argued against nor for your views, just made the observation that you are clearly a frustrated, unhappy person.

ianmac47 wrote:
Across party platforms, liberal or conservative, I legitimately believe the greatest threat our nation faces is an ignorant electorate.

This just in: Earth revolves around sun!

CHICAGO (AP) More than 450 years after Copernicus proved the Earth revolves around the sun, millions of adult Americans seem to think it?s the other way around, a researcher reported yesterday. On very basic ideas, vast numbers of Americans are scientifically illiterate," said Jon Miller of Northern Illinois University, who conducted a nationwide survey for the National Science Foundation. In the July telephone survey of 2041 adults 18 or older, people were asked about 75 questions testing their knowledge of basic science. Miller said. Asked whether the Earth goes around the sun or the sun around the Earth, 21 percent replied incorrectly. Seven percent said they didn?t know. Of the 72 percent who answered correctly, 45 percent said it takes one year for the Earth to orbit the sun, 17 percent said one day, 2 percent said one month and 9 percent didn?t know. The responses indicate that about 55 percent of adult Americans, or some 94 million people, don?t know that the Earth revolves around the sun once a year, Miller said.

brewster wrote:
ianmac47 wrote:
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caj11 wrote:
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Whatever you say Brewster, you manage to shoot me down on this board every time I post. Have we met before? Did I cut you off at an intersection or something?

If you read my post, I said that I would like to think that rich people should not be the only ones running for office, but running for office IS very expensive, and consequently, the candidates end up kowtowing to the special interest groups (like real estate developers) that pay for the funding of the campaigns. I'd like a mayor of Jersey City that can't be bought - doesn't mean he or she needs to be rich - but it is likely that's they way it would happen. Just my observation.

Oh, and the 1%/99% thing is a total myth in case you didn't know. I don't belong to either group because neither group really exists. While the gap between rich and poor may be extremely wide now, the United States is more complicated than the 1%/99% nonsense that the protestors are constantly chanting about.

First of all, you do belong to either the 1% or the 99%; that would be out of 100% and if you are a human citizen living in the United States, you are in one side or the other out of that 100% (Hint: if you are posting on this message board, you aren't in the 1%).

Second, you are a special interest. I am a special interest. Everyone is a #OOPS#ing special interest. When you form a group to advocate for more parks, you've have formed a special interest interested in more parks. One Jersey City is a special interest interested in better government. The Jersey City Brew Club is a special interest interested in beer. People who like pizza are a special interest as are vegetarians, vegans, dog owners, Chinese restaurant owners, parents, seniors, ect.ect. A "special interest" isn't just the people you don't like.

Also, when you said: "I'd like a mayor of Jersey City that can't be bought - doesn't mean he or she needs to be rich - but it is likely that's they way it would happen. Just my observation," you are actually stating an opinion. To have observed a rich mayor of Jersey City that couldn't be bought, we would have actually had to have had a rich mayor who couldn't be bought.

Finally, I leave you to ponder this proverb: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Bravo Ian! We may not agree on all, but we agree on not suffering those who don't think through what they're saying. Caj, it's nothing personal, It's just that if you post an opinion on a open message board, expect people to poke holes in it if they can. You're obviously not a nut like Boris, but just need either a thicker skin or tighter arguments.

And if you "don't believe the 1% exists" you're not paying attention. I have several 1% relatives, and trust me, we live in different versions of America and Earth, even those who are more like Buffet than Trump. "classless society" is one of the Big Lies In America. "Free Market" is another.

caj11 wrote:
Quote:

Whatever you say Brewster, you manage to shoot me down on this board every time I post. Have we met before? Did I cut you off at an intersection or something?

If you read my post, I said that I would like to think that rich people should not be the only ones running for office, but running for office IS very expensive, and consequently, the candidates end up kowtowing to the special interest groups (like real estate developers) that pay for the funding of the campaigns. I'd like a mayor of Jersey City that can't be bought - doesn't mean he or she needs to be rich - but it is likely that's they way it would happen. Just my observation.

Oh, and the 1%/99% thing is a total myth in case you didn't know. I don't belong to either group because neither group really exists. While the gap between rich and poor may be extremely wide now, the United States is more complicated than the 1%/99% nonsense that the protestors are constantly chanting about.

First of all, you do belong to either the 1% or the 99%; that would be out of 100% and if you are a human citizen living in the United States, you are in one side or the other out of that 100% (Hint: if you are posting on this message board, you aren't in the 1%).

Second, you are a special interest. I am a special interest. Everyone is a #OOPS#ing special interest. When you form a group to advocate for more parks, you've have formed a special interest interested in more parks. One Jersey City is a special interest interested in better government. The Jersey City Brew Club is a special interest interested in beer. People who like pizza are a special interest as are vegetarians, vegans, dog owners, Chinese restaurant owners, parents, seniors, ect.ect. A "special interest" isn't just the people you don't like.

Also, when you said: "I'd like a mayor of Jersey City that can't be bought - doesn't mean he or she needs to be rich - but it is likely that's they way it would happen. Just my observation," you are actually stating an opinion. To have observed a rich mayor of Jersey City that couldn't be bought, we would have actually had to have had a rich mayor who couldn't be bought.

Finally, I leave you to ponder this proverb: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

borisp wrote:
Funny how so many people believe this - and not one of you can find a single example.

For example, my recollection is quite different. My memory is - Obama plainly refused to even consider a compromise. Republicans were given a choice of either signing up for Obama's agenda, or taking a hike. And, when I make a claim like this, - I do have things to support it. Consider the infamous "I won" story. Note the date, - not a week past after the coronation.

You asked me to show you speech codes that liberals create - and I showed you TONS of those speech codes. They exist, they are plentiful, they are everywhere - and it can't be denied.

borisp wrote:
Quote:

La_Verdad wrote:
If you are to be believed - and I have strong doubts - you chose to come here from some part of the former Soviet Union. You had 200-something other options, yet you chose here. You sound miserable. Perhaps you should reconsider.

May I ask - what are your doubts based on? You are not one of them people who just reflexively attack other's verasity without any real reason, no?

As for why I chose this country - simple. Because of the two obscure documents. One is called a "Declaration of Independence", and it proclaims, as a Founding Principle of this country that the only legitimate work for a government is to secure the rights of the people. Another is called "Constitution" and it restricts the power of the government to an enumerated few items, and very sternly says that there are no other powers.

Yes, yes, I know, lots of people disregard those documents, - but even than, this country is still so much more free than all others. So, when I decided that I don't want to build socialism - I left and went to live in the most capitalist country in the world.

Now, my question: why don't you do the same? Like why not go live in a socialist country, if socialism is much to your liking? This way everybody will have what they want, no?

La_Verdad wrote:
If you are to be believed - and I have strong doubts - you chose to come here from some part of the former Soviet Union. You had 200-something other options, yet you chose here. You sound miserable. Perhaps you should reconsider.

CatDog wrote:
Also, half of those listed are private colleges, and most of the public ones are from states with a history of Republican state congresses (Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, Kentucky...)
In fact, the only ones I saw that weren't Republican states ... A lot of these summaries are just outright misreadings of the guidelines, but I won't get into that.

CatDog wrote:
one last thing, Catholic institutions are private and can therefore do whatever the hell they want, and there are laws protecting nurses/doctors who feel religiously opposed to abortion.

ianmac47 wrote:
If a Catholic hospital wants to deny abortions, that's fine as long as they also give up their license to practice medicine.

brewster wrote:
Quote:

borisp wrote:
Would you be willing to provide an example of Obama building a consensus with Republicans? No need to give a lot of them - one would be enough. Let's look at the best one.

He tried, but there's no consensus building with people who won't compromise at all, and have vowed that their top priority as legislators is to deny you a 2nd term rather than solve the country's problems.

caj11 wrote:
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brewster wrote:
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caj11 wrote:
Back to the original topic at hand, the party that the mayor of Jersey City belongs to does not matter to me.

What we need is a mayor that can't be bought - i.e., doesn't need to developers' money to fund their campaigns or constantly offered to them at a certain diner up on the hill where there was an FBI sting that implicated several public officials (but not Healy, unfortunately).

Yes, lets give in to being completely and explicitly ruled by the 1%, rather than indirectly as we are now. What you're saying is since we are destined to be ruled by millionaires one way or another, by electing a millionaire we save a step in the process, since traditionally JC Mayors became millionaires while IN office.

We now return to the concept of "noblesse oblige", where we hope the despot is a good one not a bad one. I don't think the plan will work, half of congress is millionaires and they're still for sale pretty cheap.

Whatever you say Brewster, you manage to shoot me down on this board every time I post. Have we met before? Did I cut you off at an intersection or something?

If you read my post, I said that I would like to think that rich people should not be the only ones running for office, but running for office IS very expensive, and consequently, the candidates end up kowtowing to the special interest groups (like real estate developers) that pay for the funding of the campaigns. I'd like a mayor of Jersey City that can't be bought - doesn't mean he or she needs to be rich - but it is likely that's they way it would happen. Just my observation.

Oh, and the 1%/99% thing is a total myth in case you didn't know. I don't belong to either group because neither group really exists. While the gap between rich and poor may be extremely wide now, the United States is more complicated than the 1%/99% nonsense that the protestors are constantly chanting about.

brewster wrote:
Quote:

caj11 wrote:
Back to the original topic at hand, the party that the mayor of Jersey City belongs to does not matter to me.

What we need is a mayor that can't be bought - i.e., doesn't need to developers' money to fund their campaigns or constantly offered to them at a certain diner up on the hill where there was an FBI sting that implicated several public officials (but not Healy, unfortunately).

Yes, lets give in to being completely and explicitly ruled by the 1%, rather than indirectly as we are now. What you're saying is since we are destined to be ruled by millionaires one way or another, by electing a millionaire we save a step in the process, since traditionally JC Mayors became millionaires while IN office.

We now return to the concept of "noblesse oblige", where we hope the despot is a good one not a bad one. I don't think the plan will work, half of congress is millionaires and they're still for sale pretty cheap.

caj11 wrote:
Back to the original topic at hand, the party that the mayor of Jersey City belongs to does not matter to me.

What we need is a mayor that can't be bought - i.e., doesn't need to developers' money to fund their campaigns or constantly offered to them at a certain diner up on the hill where there was an FBI sting that implicated several public officials (but not Healy, unfortunately).

ianmac47 wrote:
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brewster wrote:
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borisp wrote:
Would you be willing to provide an example of Obama building a consensus with Republicans? No need to give a lot of them - one would be enough. Let's look at the best one.

He tried, but there's no consensus building with people who won't compromise at all, and have vowed that their top priority as legislators is to deny you a 2nd term rather than solve the country's problems.

"9 parts spending cuts to 1 part revenue?"...."NO!".

Yes, but he also presented compromised agendas. Instead of starting from a position of "this is what I want," he started from a position of "this is something we might agree on" and then the Republicans negotiated from there. The net result was alienating the liberal democrats who refused to support waterdown nonsense and still losing to the Republicans.

It was like he went into a market looking to negotiate the price of a pound of apples, offered full asking price, and then let the Republicans negotiate and bargain higher than the listed price.

brewster wrote:
Quote:

borisp wrote:
Would you be willing to provide an example of Obama building a consensus with Republicans? No need to give a lot of them - one would be enough. Let's look at the best one.

He tried, but there's no consensus building with people who won't compromise at all, and have vowed that their top priority as legislators is to deny you a 2nd term rather than solve the country's problems.

"9 parts spending cuts to 1 part revenue?"...."NO!".

borisp wrote:
Would you be willing to provide an example of Obama building a consensus with Republicans? No need to give a lot of them - one would be enough. Let's look at the best one.

borisp wrote:

Quote:

denying the right to association? what the hell are you talking about?

Like, for example, a Catholic university may want to hire only Catholic personnel. Or a Catholic hospital may want to not offer abortions. You never heard of any liberal fighting against that?

matt07302 wrote:
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borisp wrote:
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CatDog wrote:
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borisp wrote:
And make speech codes on campuses, and deny people's rights to association, and create thought-crimes, and force me to buy products and services I may not want, and prohibit me from making honest transaction with another consenting adult, and demand to take a third of what I produce, and force me to pay for government-sponsored teaching of the ideology I find repulsive, and prohibit me from making medical decisions between me and my doctor (with just 1 exception), and so on and so forth.

speech codes? what speech codes?

Yes. I too am shocked. SHOCKED to find out there are speech codes!
http://thefire.org/code/speechcodereport/

Check out this section of their site - http://thefire.org/spotlight/scotm/
Gives the "Code of the Month"? From here you can see that most of these "speech codes" are actually codes of conduct. Many cover hate speech, sexual harassment and acts that may hurt or endanger other students. Most institutions, colleges, public and private employers have the same sort of guidelines.

borisp wrote:
Quote:

ianmac47 wrote:

Instead of actually legislating, instead of reminding all the freshman Democrats that they won on his coattails, [Obama] tried consensus building with Republicans. And then they burned him.

Would you be willing to provide an example of Obama building a consensus with Republicans? No need to give a lot of them - one would be enough. Let's look at the best one.

Also, just in case, you do know which party controlled Congress and Senate during the first two years of Obama's presidency, right? There is no gotchas in the question, it is just that some people - for some reason, - do not have this knowledge.

borisp wrote:
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CatDog wrote:
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borisp wrote:
And make speech codes on campuses, and deny people's rights to association, and create thought-crimes, and force me to buy products and services I may not want, and prohibit me from making honest transaction with another consenting adult, and demand to take a third of what I produce, and force me to pay for government-sponsored teaching of the ideology I find repulsive, and prohibit me from making medical decisions between me and my doctor (with just 1 exception), and so on and so forth.

speech codes? what speech codes?

Yes. I too am shocked. SHOCKED to find out there are speech codes!
http://thefire.org/code/speechcodereport/

ianmac47 wrote:

Instead of actually legislating, instead of reminding all the freshman Democrats that they won on his coattails, [Obama] tried consensus building with Republicans. And then they burned him.

CatDog wrote:
Quote:

borisp wrote:
And make speech codes on campuses, and deny people's rights to association, and create thought-crimes, and force me to buy products and services I may not want, and prohibit me from making honest transaction with another consenting adult, and demand to take a third of what I produce, and force me to pay for government-sponsored teaching of the ideology I find repulsive, and prohibit me from making medical decisions between me and my doctor (with just 1 exception), and so on and so forth.

speech codes? what speech codes?

denying the right to association? what the hell are you talking about?

thought crimes? Is this a sci-fi movie? I don't know what you're talking about!

prohibiting you from making honest transactions? What does that even mean?

taking a third of what you make? Are you talking about taxes? You mean the tax rates that Republicans set?

Or are you complaining about how we have the lowest taxes right now that we've ever had in our history?

The only thing that makes any sense out of what you say is the "forcing me to buy things" which I guess you're talking about health-care. Funny thing is, a lot of Democrats and liberals don't like that either, and it was originally proposed by Republicans in the 90s.

Br6dR wrote:
I see little difference between Obama and Romney.

brewster wrote:
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Br6dR wrote:
I don't think he's week, I don't think he's indecisive, I don't think he's doing the best he can with a bad hand. I think he's a Reagan Republican who ran as a progressive in 2008.

OBAMA VS WHO???? Would Hillary have been the left's great shining knight? Doubtful, most of the folks criticizing Obama weren't crazy about Bill's centrist policies either. Like it or not Reagan set a course for this country that has pulled the center to the right. To win the presidency you need to win the center, not the wings. The GOP is struggling with this right now in their primaries.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face by abandoning the Dems for a 3rd party isn't the answer, just as voting for Nader wasn't the answer, it just illustrated that there actually WAS a huge difference between the parties. I can't believe GWB's been gone only 3 years and already you people forget the lesson of 2000. Stop comparing our Dem presidents to some mythic ideal and compare them to the opposition. The Liberal that you wish for has been unelectable in the US for half a century.

PS: I voted for Hillary, solely because I thought she was more electable. 4 years of McCain scared the crap out of me.