Comments Posted By Sheila
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PLANS FOR IRAQ OFFENSIVE CO-OPTS THE ISG
Sadly, I agree. It's too little, too late. Twenty thousand troops is not that big a number to make a decisive difference. And it's also too much like Vietnam in that you can gain territory one day and lose it the next. The time to make a difference was right after the war, when we should have dazzled them with our competence, as we did after World War II in Japan. But even if we did make some gains after a push by twenty thousand, then what? They don't have more electrity, more safety, more money, more anything than they did when they were ruled by one of the world's most vicious dictators. This must be one of the biggest wasted opportunities in the history of the world. It is an almost immeasurable tragedy.
Comment Posted By Sheila On 16.11.2006 @ 07:45
THE SLAUGHTER OF THE MODERATES
It seems to me that one of the problems for us this year was that we seemed to have abandoned too many of our core principles.
1. Big spending/big government. We are now drastically more in debt than ever.
2. Abandonment of the military. We are sending our soldiers off to Iraq and not providing them with adequate armor and other supplies when they are there, and when they return wounded, they are not given proper support. I read an article about how huge numbers of soldiers' wives are on food stamps and have to go to soup kitchens to get food while their husbands are in Iraq. Not to put to fine a point on it, but WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? And under those circumstances, would you want to send your noble, idealistic child to fight in that war as it is being run now?
3. We are not standing up for individual liberties. We have always stood for the right of the individual, as in the right to own guns to protect ourselves. But now it's OUR party that wants to give up the right for people to have privacy in their own homes. When did we become such freaking cowards over one terrorist attack? It was a terrible thing, but just as I'll protect my right to own a gun, I want to protect my right to make a phone call to my doctor without having the government know all the gory details!
Comment Posted By Sheila On 12.11.2006 @ 08:53
To those who believe in the traditional rationale for the EC (such as we are a republic, with the president chosen by states, not people):
How about keeping the EC but scrapping the winner-take-all distribution of electoral votes? Maine and Nebraska currently award each district's one vote to the winner of that district, with the two senatorial votes going as a special reward to the statewide popular winner. It has the merit of awarding EVs with more proportionality. It's more democratic than the current system because all voters are competing to put their guy over the top in districts of equal population density. The two senatorial votes DO give extra power to rural voters, but less than they now enjoy. A flaw to this idea is the vulnerability to gerrymandering, not to mention fraud. Currently in most states the fraudsters must swing the entire state popular vote to effect the electoral vote count but in Maine and Nebraska you can steal one district and swing that one vote. In 2000 it was certainly feasible that Nader could have carried a single district in one of those states, had he wished to concentrate on it -- opening the possibility of a tie in the electoral college. But some kinds of fraud and gerrymandering would be mitigated by containing the damage to a single district. You would no longer be able to steal, say, the most populated county and then carry the state.
The other suggestion would be proportional awarding of electoral votes. Get 20% of the of statewide vote, and walk away with 20% of the EVs. Small states still get a boost based on the two senatorial votes.
I haven't done any of this math so I have no idea who'd benefit but that's irrelevant, right? The question behind all of this is, who should be picking the president: the states or the people?
And most Americans have been brought up to believe that this is a democracy so would probably say the people.
Comment Posted By Sheila On 30.08.2006 @ 15:11
