Belated answer to Brian's post.
 

I suppose I’ll incur some wrath from the mods for this, but since the thread I was planning on posting this in is now locked, I’ll just post it here. Hope no one minds the length too much, but I felt pretty strongly about it. I looked through the other two threads and didn’t see it answered this directly, so hopefully it shouldn’t be too redundant...


Yes, yes, mocking Christians is great fun (I’m agnostic, myself). But given that the majority of Americans profess religious beliefs of one sort or another, and this is supposed to be a representative democracy (or republic, for the pedants), it’s hardly shocking that one of the main presidential candidates would do so as well. Kerry supposedly does as well, but I get the impression he doesn’t take his as seriously.

If Bush really thought his election was preordained by God and had nothing to do with the actual voters, why exactly was he flying around to every state in the union over the past year trying to convince people to vote for him? He would have just hung out at his ranch, if you were correct.


Where in the HOLY FUCK did you get this? Michael Moore’s website? Frankly, I think you have a lot of nerve complaining about people who don’t bother to become informed after putting up this sort of exaggerated nonsense. The average unemployment rate for the first three quarters of this year is 5.6% (the current rate is around 5.4%). The highest it’s ever been during Bush’s presidency was in June 2003 when it reached 6.3% (still hardly terrible) before beginning a steady decline to the current point.

Here’s a graph I generated from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics website (it’s adjusted to smooth out seasonal variations, but the unadjusted data, which is what I’ve been quoting, follows the same pattern, just more messily). Y-axis is unemployment percentage:

http://img108.exs.cx/img108/9540/unemployment_adj.gif

You can go check the numbers yourself if you think I’m just being some sort of Partisan Hack™. As you can see, the unemployment rate around the turn of the millennium was not the lowest we’ve ever had (it was quite low, but that’s not what you fucking wrote), and the current one is hardly the worst since the 30’s- it was higher as recently as 1994 (6.1%, and incidentally, during the Clinton presidency). It went as high as 10% during parts of ’82 and ’83. The average for ’75 was around 8.5%. I repeat- the current yearly average is 5.6%, and employment is usually higher in the last quarter than the rest of the year, which will bring that number still lower.

And if you want to look at a different metric than pure unemployment, fine. Our per capita GDP is the third-highest in the world. The total GDP in adjusted dollars is still trending upwards, even if it’s not moving as fast as in the late 90’s. I can’t directly link the chart for that last one because it’s dynamically-generated, but you can find the data at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis website.

Let’s try household earnings. The median household income (a better measure than the average in some ways, since it doesn’t get thrown off as much by disproportionate income at the higher levels), was $43,318 in 2003, which is about where it’s been since 1997 (in adjusted dollars, of course), and higher than it was for the decade previous. The average has followed a similar pattern, and although income for the lowest fifth of households has in fact dropped a bit, which is troubling, it’s still higher than it’s been for most of the past two decades.

The pages I got the data off of (income statistics are handled by the Census Bureau) are here:

Median Income – Go down halfway to get to the section for adjusted dollars, which are the only useful measure.

Mean(average) Income – Ditto, halfway down.


I’m sorry to ruin your nice apoplectic rant with inconvenient facts, but there it is.

Of course, the idea that the president is directly responsible for the state of the economy is fairly specious to begin with, given its dependance on things like the foreign market, private business decisions, demographic shifts, etc. etc. which are out of any administration’s hands. A lot of the economic growth during the Clinton years, for instance, was being pushed along by the tech sector which was massively overvalued at the time, leading to a nice little collapse right as Bush took office (the pre-millennium frenzy of computer upgrades prompted by Y2k resulting in a post-millennium buying slump didn’t help matters either). But even if we accept the ridiculous premise that the president and his administration alone determine the economy, Bush seems to have done a pretty decent job by historical standards. Hardly the unmitigated economic disaster you seem to be convinced we’re in the middle of.


Continued in Part II! Same Bat-time, same Bat... er, thread.

OK, I had to break this up into two posts because it went over the character limit. That’s the second board this has happened to me on. I think it must mean I’m... what’s the term? Oh yeah, an overly verbose bastard ;)



Certainly, there is an undercurrent of fear and worry in American society right now. But unprecedented? Oh, of course, it’s nothing like early WWII, when everyone thought the Japanese were going to invade California any day. Or the Cold War, when schoolchildren practiced hiding under their desks in case of nuklear (that one’s just for you) fallout. You do have a point in that a lot of the current climate could be attributed to the dire warnings and constantly-changing threat levels of the intelligence community (particularly the color system, which seems like it would be useful internally for government agencies, but serves no purpose for the public other than to fray their nerves). Still, call me crazy, but I think part of that fear just might have something to do with the fact that terrorists did, in fact, kill thousands of people in one of the largest cities in the world and over 100 more in the very heart of our defense apparatus, an event which (unless you believe some of the wackier conspiracy theories floating around) the president himself had nothing to do with.

The idea that there is more warfare going on right now than at any time in American history is too stupid to dignify with a response.


This is the part of your post I have the real problem with. You claim later that it was only targeted towards people who had voted for Bush simply because he was Republican. But that’s not what you said. The first line of the post is addressed “Dear Moderate, Reasonable Republicans,”. There is no designation of only “party-line voters”, thus implying that anyone who is a reasonable Republican and voted for Bush was doing so only out of party loyalty.

I’ll repeat that- what you assumed, essentially, was that no one could possibly weigh the candidates and come to the conclusion on their own that Bush best represents their interests. Therefore, they must have just been voting the party line. There can be no other explanation.

You claim in the second post that this was motivated by a non-partisan desire to see people be more informed, but I find that hard to believe. Would you have made the exact same post in reverse if Kerry had won? Let’s not insult both our intelligences by pretending so. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me. But from my point of view, you just told half your readers that their votes shouldn’t count because they voted differently than you did, and thus couldn’t have put any sort of thought into it.


Interesting how you assume for all conservative voters what their interests are, and take it upon yourself to tell them that the party doesn’t represent them. I thought you wanted people to make up their own minds? Besides, they didn’t need to think that the party represented their interests perfectly, just better than the party of the other guy.


Quite frankly, unless this is supposed to be some sort of intentionally-overblown Dr. Oxford-style parody of political diatribes, I can only assume that you wrote this quickly out of frustration and anger without bothering to think too much about it. You have pretty consistently come off as being more intelligent than this post implies, so I can’t think of any other explanation.

I respect the fact that you left this post up on the front page even after making a much more reasonable second one, but the two seem to be at odds with each other. The first is a partisan tirade against Bush full of gross exaggerations and ridiculous assumptions (although stripped of the invectives, it might be said to have an actual point, it’s overshadowed by the sheer amount of nonsense). The second is just an exhortation to be informed and reasonable when making political decisions, something I agree with. However, if you really wanted to be consistent with the principles outlined in the second post you never would have written the first.

And that’s my $.02.


(Just for the record, not that it should matter given the quality [or lack thereof] of the post I’m arguing about, I’m not a Bush supporter, I’m an independent. The fact that he’s willing to engage in preemptive war on anything other than a definite and immanent threat is quite reason enough for me *not* to vote for him. That doesn’t mean I enjoy seeing people I normally respect spouting silly hyperbole because they’re disappointed with an election result, and then trying to cover it up by saying they were just trying to provoke political interest.)


EDIT: Oh yeah, I’ve been posting this a lot recently, and it seems quite appropriate here: The esteemed Dr. Oxford explains to us ignorant yanks the upcoming Second American Civil War! Before being indignant at anything on that page, please note the url of the site it’s on and maybe read some of the other articles. Yes, exactly.

We have been through this in a few threads allready...So perhaps it would be better if you'd just check those...Ok? I'm atleast not gonna participate in any of these conversations anymore (As in conversations which involve politics in anyway). They are making me sick.

People always presume anyone opposing Bush is "uninformed" and listening to "That liberal bullshit", when it's pretty clear most Bush supporters, unfortunately, can't give a decent reason for their candidate either.

is it just me, or did all of the evidence he presented support Brian's thesis?

and what he means by unprecedented is the fact that we don't have a clear idea of who the enemy is. Bush is using terrorists as an excuse to attack Iraq. Why are we focusing on guarding the CEOs of oil companies over there more than we're focusing on getting our jobs done?

And also, one thing I liked about Kerry was his plan to get out of the Middle East- Put our resources into finding a new energy source besides oil and switch over to that. For example, Hydrogen Fuel Cells. After that, we can cut off contact with the Middle East completely. No more terrorists, no more oil wars, just a bunch of religious nuts trying to kill each other.

The only reason terrorists attack us is because they can't return to their old fundamentalist values with American influence all over the place. They believe that we're corrupting their younger generation and sending them on a path to hell. Now, I don't know about you, but if I thought my kid was going to face that fate (and I was still religious), I would try and stop it.

It has nothing to do with freedom. it has nothing to do with indiscriminate hate. It's plain and simple influence of culture. They don't want it. Bush would have you believe that they're evil and have no respect for life- They're commiting suicide for their cause. Would you be saying the same thing about american soldiers during the american revolution? maybe if you were British.

All it comes down it is Ol' Dubya using the terrorists as an excuse to do things that he couldn't do before 9/11. If that's not the greatest spit to the face that you can do to the victims of that tragedy, then I don't know what is. Where the hell does he get off using the bodies of the dead and fallen to further his own ends?

Look at his uemployment chart. From 1993-2000, it was dropping. then, after 2000 (i.e., when Bush was elected) it started rising again.

And, also, aren't things like labor unions, new technologies, better schools, etc. supposed to effect unemployment rates?

Also, look at the beginning of the chart. It doesn't go back to the depression. In fact, it's showing a RISE since the depression. The beginning part of the chart, the one in the depression, is actually LOWER than our current unemployment rate.

This just shows what happens when you hail to the chimp. (nice little simpsons referrence for ya)

BTW, the worst party bias that I've seen is in the conservative party. It always seems to me that they're the most ignorant, ludicrous gaggle of rejected televangelists I've ever seen.

But anyway, that might just be because I live in Texas. lol

I think the main thing this election proved is the need for a revamping of the 2 party system, if the best the republicans can find is an extremist right wing religious fanatic nutjob and the best the democrats can find is an extreamist socialist nut job, it's time to establish something for the sane people with moderate views in this country.

It mightbe good to note that that graph you posted only shows people who are drawing unemployment. It doesn't include people who have been out of work too long to be able to get unemployment checks anymore.

Now Drakolan, please do not use terms like "fanatic", "socialist" and "nut job". It tends to look much like flamebait.

Yes, this election was between two rather poor candidates. Yes, it showed flaws in the two party system. But the reason they're extremist is because the people who decide on the candidates are too. Bush is a social extremist -- that's why he was selected to be the Republican candidate. If we had three, four, or five parties, we would still have horrible, horrible choices. The difference is, there would NEVER be a majority vote. It's not the two-party system that needs to be revamped; it's the parties themselves. Remember, not everything is black and white. "Bush in war for oil!" is painting it black like you wouldn't believe.

Our system is, nonetheless, a rather good system, and it will stand for a while more.

But so does the original post. Please spare me the LOLOLOL IM JUS RESPONDIGN 2 BRIANS INSLUTS 2!!!! argument -- my point is that I think we've had enough people who seem to think saying "fuck" a lot is a valid form of reasonable discussion.

He may have said offensive things, but then again he is now in the middle of a country with a dictator of whom, I would be astonished, if he could be proud to be of the country anymore. I am ashamed of Ralph Klein, but I am voting against him anyways, so thats not the issue at hand. There was a small chance of hope someone had that an intelligent voter would help get the country off of the train headed towards the solid wall, and in a safer direction.

He is not the only one with angry comments to make, but how can you be hypocritical and accuse him of making bad commends when you yourself make even worse ones about him?

At least he was brave enough to stand up and speak out against 51 percent of you, knowing that he might very well lose comic fanbase AND book sales, personally I see his reaction as pure and very well done, and when I have available resources I am even MORE interested in purchasing his book. Anyone with enough intelligence to write a witty speech as he has to have written an intriguing novel.

Back to the topic at hand though, call it what you will, why dont you look at it as if it were an editorial? It is PERSONAL opinion, yes we know you guys love Bush, its your personal choice, in MY opinion the wrong choice but it is still your choice. There is nothing you can do about it, deal with it. If it is such an issue about someone being upset that the country he was born and raised in is going to hell then obviously Americans do NOT support freedom of speech, considering every time this freedom is used you rip the person apart for it.