Dr. Frank's What's-it

Have there been any riots? Not ot my knowledge. So some people have been ungracious in defeat. Is that surprising. Of course it's not good is half the country thinks the other half are idiots, but I see no evidence that this is the case. Can we please just wait a week before we declare civil war?

Also, anybody who thinks it should be the government's job to protect the sanctity of anything is not necessarily a "moron" or "idiot", but I don't have a problem with "fools" being thrown around.

Ugh....I agree with Norm. There were record numbers of voters turning out for this election and the democrats got smug. Then when the large turnout turned out to not be in their favor, it was sour grapes from there. I doubt that if Kerry won, any staunch Republicans would be saying that everyone other than themselves and their followers are idiots, fools, rednecks etc.... Okay, maybe Limbaugh, but are there any more vocal or greater sore/poor losers than the far-left Democrats? Geez, all this is degrading to their own intelligence. :( The voters have spoke, like it or not, live with it.

Who are the liberal elite?

I've been checking the point/counterpoint boards to find some clue as to who voted for what and why. A lot of people who voted for Bush are claiming that his reelection is revenge against the liberal elitists who have been shoving our ideals down their throats for years.

I voted for Kerry because on an issue by issue basis, I found that I agreed with him about 80% of the time, as opposed to the .03% of the time that I agreed with GB.

I get the impression that those who voted for Bush, did it, not based on foreign or economical issues, but what they call moral values i.e. hot man on man action and abortions disgust them, and since that's all Democrats believe in, they had to vote Republican. Blame the smear campaigns. I watched that Stolen Honor movie on PAX and for a minute, even I thought Kerry was a B-Hole. Then I remembered, "Oh yeah, he really is a war hero".

The Republican party is supposed to be about limited government (less personal intrusion) and fiscal responsibility. I totally get that, but that's not what they've been giving us. Instead, they're running record deficits while trying to limit certain freedoms such as abortion rights and gay marriage (rights they never really had, I guess).

As a liberal elitist, my view is pretty simple. If it doesn't affect me directly, why should it bother me what other people do? I don't know many homosexuals, but that doesn't mean I don't want them to be happy. Let 'em marry. I don't really like the idea of abortion, but I'll also never have to deal with that so it's really none of my business. I don't see it as a pro-choice issue. That choice has already been made. I see it as a pro-safety issue. If a woman has made up her mind that she can't handle having that baby, she's going to get an abortion. I'd at least like to see that she has it done by a qualified doctor in a safe setting.

There's also this whole issue of indecency on the airwaves, but come on people, there are plenty of other TV and radio stations to choose from. This should be the least of our worries, but for some reason, it ain't.

Tim
IL, USA

Tim, you make sense and very good points. You wouldn't be a "liberal" by the uber-liberals (Moore,Springsteen,Fonda,the Baldwin clan) standards. I think "liberal" has a negative connotation associated with it these days due to the uber-liberal Hollywood types. You could just be lumped into the democratic supporter category. I voted for Kerry even though I thought the guy was lying about having a "plan" and his wife was queen-bitch herself because of the trend of economic prosperity after an economic downswing following a war and a Republican holding the chief-office. I thought all along that Bush was the more sincere of the two.

Tim said:
I get the impression that those who voted for Bush, did it, not based on foreign or economical issues, but what they call moral values i.e. hot man on man action and abortions disgust them,

I'm all like:
First of all, I would assume half of your impression is correct considering the exit poll data shows that roughly 17% of all voters voted for Bush and thought the most important issue was Moral Issues(tm).

Secondly, I think the reason that people (such as Dr. Frank) claim that there is a high level of elitism among liberals is because of people making assumptions like the one you've made above. You kind of imply that all Bush supporters are one dimensional beings that don't really contemplate multiple variables when making decisions.

But I agree with you, hot man on man action is awesome.

I think we all can agree that exit poll data isn't a very reliable source of information.

Fan, you're absolutely right. I trapped myself by trying to throw in a stupid joke, but I think you get the gist of it. Maybe what I was trying to get at is that there can be a fine line between what we call morals and what we call intolerance. I like to think I'm a very tolerant person, but I'll still throw a Southern yokel joke or a gay joke in there. And when you can mix the two...well, there's comedy gold in there somewhere, even if I can't strike it.

You bring up another good point though, that I was making a generalization about all Bush supporters. Life is more complex than that. Many people voted for Bush for many different reasons. I do think that a certain amount of the stereotypical anti-gay, anti-abortion vote certainly helped tip the election his way. Even if it was only one percent of the vote, that was one percent that he got that Kerry didn't.

I work with some of these people so I know they're real. Good folks, but they voted for Bush simply because they thought he could end abortion. I know because they told me so. They're not one dimensional voters, but they cast a one dimensional vote.

It's unfortunate that there are many people that will vote strictly for one belief that they hold so strongly that it blocks everything else out. The big ones are obviously for/against guns, and abortion and for some reason this year, gay marriage.

It would be nice if we could just agree that neither guns nor abortion will ever be illegal (though I'm not so sure anymore after some of the articles I've read over the past two days)and there will always be gay couples that deserve similar rights as straight couples, so let's try to find other reasons to accept or reject a candidate...like whether or not he looks French.

Did I do it again?

To expand on Zaphod, it's not just that exit polls are unreliable, it's that the one that everyone is using to say "Moral Values" was numero uno, is totally screwed up.

"Moral Values" got 22% because it's such a vague, catch-all category that it could mean anything from Gay marriage to Being mad that Bush lied. Why didn't they split it up into sub-categories (Gay marriage, abortion, etc)? Well, perhaps so they could get their 22% and therefore call Bush voters stupid theocrats.

Meanwhile, "Iraq" and "war on terror" *were* considered separate categories, which split the National Security crowd down the middle. Add those two together and you get 34% listing (drumroll) "Something National Security-related" as their #1 issue.

Ok?

So this whole "Moral Values was #1" jazz is bogus. It's COMPLETELY an artifact of the way the question was constructed, and nothing more.

Don't forget that the exit poles had Dan Rather all giddy when they showed a Kerry victory by a margin of %60-40%. This data came from a company that was hired to replace the last two companies who were supposedly incompetent in the last election. The new exit-pole company was admitting flawed data due to the time of day and abundance of women that were polled before the ballots had even began to be counted. I see the exit-polls should exit (stage right even) for good. CNN headlines the next day read "Egg on the face of the exit-pollers.....again"

Blixa - Do you know of a site where I can find a copy of the exit poll cards? I'd like to fill one out and see how they might catagorize me.

As I understand it, they're not allowed to just ask you, "Who'd ya vote for". There are a bunch of vague questions that only they can translate into a likely result.

I got in a pretty serious confrontation with a guy who couldn't believe that I, a huge NASCAR fan (not the all-important Dad though), would back Kerry. He couldn't accept that, even though I love to watch all those pretty cars running in a circle, that had nothing to do with my views on taxes, social security, medicare, the deficit, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan etc...

For those that don't watch racing, there actually was a car with a "Vote for Bush" paint scheme at the last couple of events. What do you think would happen if a football player wrote that on his jersey?

Tim

I'll leave for a while since I'm cluttering up this discussion with nonsense at the moment.

I should - Leave the thinking to the smart people.

Blixa said:
Why didn't they split it up into sub-categories (Gay marriage, abortion, etc)? Well, perhaps so they could get their 22% and therefore call Bush voters stupid theocrats.

I'm like:
Wow, now there's a conspiracy theory that makes me wanna bust out my tinfoil hat.

Also, considering the war in Iraq and the "war on terrorism" are completely unrelated topics, it would make sense for them to list them as seperate options. Maybe they could have also incorporated hitler and communism and dubbed it "bad things that could happen that involve america."

It's funny how many conservatives and liberals seem to agree on this: it wasn't gay marriage that elected Bush. Those polls are crap.

Like Paul Freedman at Slate says, it was terrorism more than anything. Bush was trusted to deal with it more than Kerry. That's the bottom line. Yeah, there's great resentment of bicoastal cultural elitism in Middle America, but the attitude towards the WoT is part of that. Neither alternative of Mooreonified denial or the "nuanced/sensitive/fantasy-internationalist/law enforcement" approach resonated well.

And, of course, it's difficult to get people whom you hold in contempt (and who realize it) to vote for you.

Re: Fighting terrorists.

"Do you really think you can just blow the piss out of them? All of them?"
- Dr Logan, Day of the Dead

Certainly, part of fighting the war on terror is destroying the people who come after us, but I believe, though may be wrong, that in order to win the war on terror, we need to eliminate as many of their reasons for wanting to hurt us as possible.

That doesn't mean rollover like a bunch of pussies and completely withdraw from the mideast. We can't do that. My Subaru needs gas. It also doesn't mean we should drop bombs first and ask questions later.

For every father that's killed by an American bomb, there's a son who will want to exact revenge upon us.

I sort of liked the internationalist/law enforcement idea.

We probably lack the resources to invade all of the 60 countries that Al Qaida have scattered off to. A little help from some neighboring countries would be much welcome.

JB said:

"That doesn't mean rollover like a bunch of pussies and completely withdraw from the mideast.... It also doesn't mean we should drop bombs first and ask questions later."

Exactly. Like everything, there's no black and white, clear-cut answer to this. I think people felt secure voting for George because he had still come up with one. Kerry was very wishy-washy and non-specific, the reason for which I think is a mixture of two things. The first is the Democratic Party’s inexplicable strategy to walk the fence and try to bring in a few Republican voters rather than coming out as liberals and acting like liberals. The second is that he didn’t really have a specific plan to get out of Iraq because we’ve already taken a bite of the shit sandwich and it’s too late to spit it out.

As for “the left,” I’m pretty sick of the term. I’m a liberal. I’m liberal as fuck. I’m not ashamed of it, and I don’t feel like I have to be, no matter how many brick throwers end up on the front pages of newspapers, or how many Susan Sarandens go on TV and make us look like assholes, or how many people confuse criticizing the government with being unpatriotic. I agree with some of the stuff those people say, and some of it I don’t. Whatever. I think there’s a much more conservative bias in the news anyway. From my point of view that’s true. I guess it depends on your vantage point.

CF

fan was all.. so then I went:

The point is that how one decides to split up "issues" is arbitrary. And some "issues" are broad and vague, some aren't, and some "issues" are really subsets of other, larger "issues". This leads to statistically suspect results when you create a list ask people to rank them.

Are you really disputing this?

No, I don't think the pollsters added Moral Values "because" they wanted to get this result. I think they added it because this was an election involving George W. Bush and they figured "Moral Values" would figure in there somewhere, so they better add it to the list. It's still a pointlessly vague category.

I understand that you think "Iraq" and "war on terror" are unrelated issues. Others don't. Such people, when taking this poll, being forced to choose one or the other, would therefore split their answer. That's what I'm saying. (And BTW you don't get to say "But they're WRONG to think they're related!" This is a *poll*)

I'd like to add that the result "Moral Values #1" everyone is pointing to and jumping up and down about was of very little significance. The answer Moral Values got a WHOPPING 22%!! WOW!!!1 All of 22% of people picked it! Now, this was a multiple-choice question with 7 possible responses. If they'd chosen *randomly* then each would have gotten 14%. Pointing at the figure 22% and then saying "see? Moral Values was the MAIN ISSUE!!!" is really quite moronic.

BTW you also don't know who the "Moral Values" people voted for. A majority of them could have been Kerry voters for all you or I know. The survey that was reported asked *all* voters, not just Bush voters, what their main issue was. Why couldn't a *Kerry* voter have picked "Moral Values" because Bush is dishonest? Seems likely to me.

But yes, let's all jump to wild-ass conclusions based on one near-meaningless, over-interpreted, shoddily-constructed exit poll. It's much more convenient to just be able to say Bush won cuz of gay marriage.

I voted for Bush entirely on the basis of Supreme Court appointments. I seem to be the only one.

Your problem is your inabiity to distinguish between random "contempt for fellow citizens" and rightful contempt for sheer ignorance, even from our fellow citizens.

It is nothing less than the DUTY of every citizen to have contempt for ignorant and irresponsible views and agendas.

Probably 80% of the people who continued to support George W. Bush for President, under the circumstances, are either 1) objectively ignorant of the facts, 2) racist, 3) religious fanatics, 4) more concerned with Israel's security than the future of the United States, or 5) or have a financial stake (legitimate or otherwise) in the outcome. Period.

I'm still trying to figure out your real motive in persistently undermining centrist and moderate views, which you deliberately miscategorize as "leftist" or "liberal," apparently in favor of the alternative - a clearly danger and radical agenda advocated by the Bush regime.

'''''''''But their contempt for their fellow-citizens or (as the case may be) the citizens of another democracy, and that one of the world's greatest, tells its own story."'''''''''

Well, Aryamehr, now at least I know what my problem is. The words in the passage weren't mine but rather those of Norman Geras, which I quoted because I thought they raised an intriguing and relevant point. (He's a lefty academic, btw.)

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but your view that all but one fifth of the 51% of the people who voted for one of the two options in the election are inarguably and irredeemably stupid, rapacious, and/or evil doesn't sound all that moderate to me. As other commenters have pointed out, people have complicated reasons for deciding to vote the way they do. I can certainly think of reasons beyond those you list for having failed to be persuaded by the Kerry campaign. Those who want to explain the election by complaining about the venality of the electorate are barking up the wrong tree, or so it seems to me. And when they do it in an irritating, suggestive, or amusing way, I think it's fair to point it out.

I don't remember values being a major issue in either campaign. I heard that 17% of those voting for Bush cited "values" as their reason for voting for him in natinonal exit polling, but I can't quote the source. Maybe that's the reason that is pulling in the biggest numbers, but that still means 83% of them were voting for him for some other reason. Anyway, its values that everyone wants to talk about.

And if values ARE the single biggest reason almost 60 million Americans voted for Bush (as the hype would suggest), I want to know where those Americans got the idea that is why should vote for him, because I really missed that one. I listen to a lot talk radio, both NPR and right winger stuff, and watched a fair amount of TV including all three debates and heard tons of speeches by both candidates. I guess I just missed this whole values thing.

And now its everywhere. If anyone has an explanation for this phenomena, I'd like to hear it.

I dunno, just seems weird to me.

I think a lot of that just comes from a gut-level feeling that he's a "good guy." Like he's a regular person. A Washington outsider (which is a joke). Et cetera. That's why my parents voted for him. Every Republican happens to seem like a good guy to them, though.

The only other two people I know voted for him did so because, respectively (1) he's pro-life and (2) Kerry won't "nuke that place, kill every one of those motherfuckers and turn Iraq into a parking lot." So there's a random sampling of your Bush voters. Maybe it’s just the crowd I hang around, though.

CF

If 58 million people or more vote for an evident moron, what else can they be themselves than morons?
couldn't of said better myself
i really can not fully convey my disappointment in America right now.

The only positive to come out of this is that in 2008, Cheney should be constitutionally barred from running for president, having already served two full terms running the country.

Here's my take on why so many cited vallues as their biggest issue. I didn't vote because I'm not a citizen, and I'm not sure if I'd have voted if I had a chance, but that's another story.

I personally want to live in a temporarily delayed but still very probable near future where stem-cells are casually harvested from embryos for medicinal purposes as much as I want to feast on human flesh. That's to say, not at all. It's not the same as donating blood or kidney (and even blood extraction would be morally wrong if a person is compelled to "donate"), it's more akin to killing a human being to harvest its heart. But embryos don't have will (because we don't give them a chance to mature) so we can do whatever we want with them? Or they will stay frozen or get destroyed anyway so why not use them for some good? Following that reasoning, we could argue that we should use harvest body organs from children in Africa, because they can't decide for themselves and many will soon die of starvation anyway.

To borrow an argument from Michael Moore (when he asks the politicians to send their children to Iraq), everyone who supports the embryonic stem-cell research should ask themselves this question: if you had Alzheimer's or any other disease treatable by stem-cells, would you be willing to use your own biological material (sperm or eggs) to create the embryos and stem-cells necessary for the treatment? It may sound stupid to some, but if I did that, I'd feel like I was in a very real sense devouring, if not my children, at least my potential children.

But if embryonic stem-cell research is outlawed, then abortion should also be banned altogether? If the politicians were consistent, yes. Tim's pro-safety argument for abortion seems somewhat silly. Well, how about pro-safety for serial killers? We see that they do their serial killing anyways, so why not make it more convenient so that they won't have to spend their entire lives in jail which could of course be more wisely spent in more serial killings? Some will say: "Common, this is insulting to people who have or perform abortions!" So? Even serial killers would probably like to be called avant-garde artists or something.

It all comes down to whether these embryos are really human beings. To use another analogy, those who don't see anything morally wrong in destroying embryos are like freed slaves who don't care about what happens to their brothers and sisters who are still enslaved and even become slavemasters themselves. In a society with a legalized abortion, every unborn human being is left at the mercy of "matured" individuals who so value life and freedom and happiness for themselves, but not for the embryos who don't even look like humans and "are not like us."

If you find all of this just incoherent ranting of a pro-life lunatic, at least you now have a little more insight into how our deranged minds work. I personally don't understand how pro-choice vegetarians' and frutarians' minds work, so if anyone is willing to enlighten me, I'm all ears. As for W, he should cut down a little on wars and armaments and gun-in-every-house policies, do a little more of "love thy enemies" and maybe we will really begin to have a society that promotes culture of life.

Thanks Mao. Though I don't agree with much of what you said, at least I see where you're coming from.

I appreciate that you seem to care about life even after it's exited the womb. Many people who are against abortion are pro-death penalty and often aren't really concerned about gun violence and war. That disgusts me.

I was going into this long-ass tangent about how it's possible that we were blessed with scientific discovery because we're supposed to provide ourselves with longer, fuller lives, but then I thought better of it. I mean, if a chemical treatment for a life threatening illnesses is acceptable, why not a biological treatment? Instead, I'll end with a sick joke that I just made up.

I believe that life begins after a child takes its first steps. That gives you a good year or so after it's "born" to decide whether or not you really want it.

Okay, I'm not done.

Quick hypothetical: If we could steal the identity from a single-celled organism, such as an amoeba, and manipulate it to react for us the way a stem-cell does, would that make it okay? Is it strictly the sperm and egg part that makes it wrong or is it the toying with life part?

Please don't tell me how that could never work. I ain't no biologist (I'm barely a high-school graduate) and I'm not really concerned with the logistics of my theory, just the morality.

Alright so I live in Canada where not supporting gay marriage and government paid abortions is considered uber-conservative. The reason these "moral issues" had such a voice is that its clear the "liberal elite" has no intent of stopping. It almost makes me think it was the conservatives who did their homework on this. Do liberal believe in freedom and the government staying out of the bedroom? Hell no. Look at other nations you fucking Democrat! Don't you always brag about how you do that anyway, and call Republicans a make up shit like the Republican party is actually the Ethnocentric Redneck Party! I'm sitting here in Canada and gays are getting married left and right which is fine be me. I also pay for abortions-on-demand. That's right my compassionate, **intelligent, liberal representatives have deemed that in order to promote freedom of what we do in our bedrooms we should pay for each other's abortions. Just fucking great, something about it leaves my Catholic conscience a little unsettled. I'm not an goddamn conservative but what you "liberal", "non-morons" are missing is that from experience we can say that your agenda is just as bad. You also impose moral values, what you are doing IS whining and bellyaching and just being a sore loser. If you have a problem with the results than take your quams with democracy. Learn a lesson from other nations, I know you don't give a fuck but just try. America is the greatest country in the world and you could forge a new liberal era where its not the same lame-ass, inspired by a movement preoccupied with lsd and heroin, bullshit.
-Sam

Well, my personal opinion is that we need to build a time machine so that we can go back to the 60's and have all the hippies executed, thus taking modern American liberalism out of the hands of a bunch of people that think they are smarter than everyone else. And yes, Sammy, I could give a crap about "values" but those that complain the most about people voting on them DO have their own set of values that they want to impose on everyone. And they ARE sore losers who don't have the ability to truly see anyone's viewpoint but their own. Yeah, there are people like that on both sides of the political spectrum, but its especially funny because PC empathy has been one of the hallmarks of modern liberalism in my lifetime, and now they are showing very little ability to understand anyone but themselves. (Although, I think political correctness is dying, maybe that brilliant liberal ability to see only shades of gray and all points of view is dying too?)

Yeah, I know there are generalizations there, and no I don't want a bunch of people dead (the time machine part should tell you I'm just fooling). But as far as generalizations go, here's a good example of what I'm talking about. Go over to dailykos. The guys in charge of the blog are pretty reasonable, rational people. Liberals, that, if they were the type I'd associated with my whole life, I'd still probably be one. Now, delve into the comments and get a taste of hatred and ignorance. That IS liberal elitism in action. Now, I know you can find such things over on the other side, too. But when you take what a liberal claims to stand for...such behavior is utterly, disgustingly hypocritical.

I respect the liberal perspective, but I don't respect being called a moron. And its hard to respect someone who thinks I'm a moron because of the way I voted, but I'll try to anyway...that's just me.

You've misquoted me, Frank.

I said, among other things, Bush voters were "ignorant of the facts" - not "inarguably and irredeemably stupid." There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity.

As for being "rapacious, and/or evil," I didn't use those words either.

Although "rapacious" does accurately describe a certain contingent of Bush supporters, like those corporations clamouring for "tort reform" (which undermines the ability of judges and juries to decide damages even in cases where the corporation is incontestably liable) or the Christian rednecks who wants to annihilate any country that has Arabs, Muslims, turbans, or hairy olive-skinned people to get "pay back" for 9/11. "Rapacious" is a very proper word to describe those elements.

As far as "evil" goes, I didn't use that word either.

But again, it doesn't seem like much of an open question as to whether advocacy of domestic plunder, murderous foreign policy, religious ultra-nationalism, and (overt or covert) racism are good or not.

To ignore all of those shortcomings of Bush and most of his supporters and to instead focus on the relatively innocuous shortcomings of John Kerry doesn't sound all that moderate to me.

Someone who doesn't clearly realize the greater evil is either dumb or has an agenda, and I don't think you're dumb.

OK, Arya, I see what you're saying. Your positions on a variety of issues are so clearly and obviously the correct ones that only venality or ignorance could account for the fact that anyone might disagree with you on any of them. I feel the same way. It's a lonely road.

Oh, I see.

It's closed-minded to be opposed to closed-mindedness.

And it's open-minded to give closed-mindedness the benefit of the doubt.

Put the logic of liberalism on its head, and use it to attack liberalism.

"You can't ASSUME the other guy is a ethno-centric religious nut JUST because he explicitly advocates a Christian holy war against all Arabs and Arab-looking people. It's soooo much more COMPLEX."

Notwithstanding that there are other complex factors involved which are neither here nor there, it's still not wrong to point out the obvious.

Ockham's Razor.

It's not some rich, grandiose political philosophy that leads most people, particularly in the poorest, least educated states with long histories of racism, to support Bush.

It's a more simple reason:

Lots of people are ignorant and / or believe false information.

Same for those who aren't dumb but who have an agenda for this country that is objectionable, such as: inserting religion into politics, protecting the rich from civil liability, bankrupting the federal government to hinder its ability to enforce the law against the rich, restricting the civil liberties of those they arbitrarily suspect are treasonous, committing fraud to trick the public into supporting a financially lucrative war, etc.

Easy answer:

Lots of people do bad things on purpose, if it means they can get theirs.

Now if pointing out this self-evident truth suddenly makes me the bad guy, fine.

Well, Ockham, it was never my intention to attack "liberalism," whatever that may mean these days.

Here's my point: over 51% of the voting citizens of this country, almost 60 million people, disagreed with you about who would make a better president. I'm not saying that that makes you wrong. But I find your analysis (that they voted the way they did solely because of ignorance or ill-will) less than persuasive, impassioned though it may be. As you point out, John Kerry had some minor shortcomings. But he also had a great big major one: he lost by almost five million votes. If the Democrats are going to rehabilitate themselves as a viable national party, they're going to have to figure out a way to appeal to at least some of these people. The confident assertion that Blue Staters vote the way they do because of superior intelligence, education, knowledge, and ethics may make us all feel better, but it's not a good first step. And the "they're all morons" line which seems to be taking hold in certain quarters is worse: it's poison. Though it can also be kind of funny and ironic. That's the beauty of it in a way.

Listen to this guy: http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/31816.htm

For all his flaws, he knows what he's talking about.

No one is saying the "stupids" and the "greedmongers" were 100% of Bush supporters in 2004.

But in an election that was decided by 1% of total voters, at the very least, the "stupids" and the "greedmongers" made the difference in determining the election outcome.

But for them, the United States, and thus the world, would be facing a completely different direction.

This does not conflict with Bill Clinton's point.

The Republicans were better at manipulating the "stupids" and "greedmongers" towards their agenda this time, and the Democrats, if they expect to stay in business, should probably reassess their strategy to win over more "stupids" and "greedmongers" the next time around.

Agreed.

None of that changes the fact that the "stupids" are stupid and that the "greedmongers" are greedmongers, and that more of them voted for Bush than Kerry, and that this made the difference in the election and changed the future of the world for the worse.

So they deserve blame.

And sure there's plenty of blame to go around.

But seems to me the "stupids" and "greedmongers" - those who voted for Bush and directly caused the outcome - deserve more blame than the conscientious and reasonable, whose apparent greatest fault was their failure to enlighten or trick more ignorant people into joining their side.

Arya:

'No one is saying the "stupids" and the "greedmongers" were 100% of Bush supporters in 2004.'

Actually, that *is* what I thought you meant by: "someone who doesn't clearly realize the greater evil is either dumb or has an agenda." (And by "an agenda" I took you to mean, as per the list in your original comment: a racist/fundamentalist/Jewish/money-grubbing agenda.) I hadn't realized there was a third, unmentioned, less culpable, category for Bush supporters to fall under. Forgive me. (I will say that most of the dim-witted and greedy people I know did vote for Kerry - but that's mostly because of where I live, I think. I've never actually met a Bush supporter myself.)

Anyway, here's to The Conscientious and The Reasonable.

Addendum: re-reading your original comment, I realize that your position is in fact not that 100% of Bush supporters are stupid or unscrupulous, but that only 80% are. Sorry.

Do you really believe that? Frozen embryos are not sentient beings. Maybe they will be someday, but maybe my sperm will be someday, too. I still don’t feel bad about using birth control so I don’t contribute to the over-population of the planet and bring a person into the world that I’m not able to financially support. I find medical animal testing to be somewhat immoral in a way, but I think it’s necessary and contributes to a much greater good. Surely you can see the greater good in stem cell research.

I also think you’re looking at abortion in a wrongheaded way. First off, I don’t think as many people as you think are going around having unprotected sex and saying “well, if I get pregnant I can just have an abortion. No big deal.” Secondly, my wife and I had a child when she was 19 and I was 17 because she didn’t believe in having an abortion and I agreed with her. That was only an option because we had a support system around us for childcare and financial help. Many women who get pregnant are not so lucky, and their kids are forced to grow up in poverty and violence, become emotionally crippled and often quite literally unable to contribute to society in a productive way by no fault of their own. I value suffering more than life, and I don’t think that the world needs more human beings just so they can grow up in abject poverty.

So shouldn’t people just use birth control instead? Sure, but should a child have to pay the price for the rest of his or her life just because of that fuck-up on the part of the parents? I don’t think so. It’s the lesser of two evils.

CF

Oops. My post was in reference to Mao's remark:
"Following that reasoning, we could argue that we should use harvest body organs from children in Africa, because they can't decide for themselves and many will soon die of starvation anyway."

From the NY Times article mentioned above.

**Clinton said Hispanic voters tilted to Bush because of terrorism fears, as did suburban "soccer moms," who Clinton said turned into "the security moms of 2004."**

I believe what Bill Clinton meant to say was "stupid soccer moms and greedmongering Hispanics."

Also mentioned in Clinton's speech was his belief that Osama's late appearance helped Bush. Really? That seems so wrong. Bin Laden even mentioned in his speech the fact that GWB just sat there in that classroom for seven minutes after the second plane had struck.

I always thought that would have made the best smear ad. To run the footage of Bush reading along to My Pet Goat with a clock running in the corner of the screen and a voiceover saying something like, "This is your commander in chief, your wartime president, taking action after the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil". I know I stole that from Michael Moore, but it's absolutely true. People are always saying that Bush's reaction on 9/11 was the greatest moment of his first term, but that's absolutely wrong. Like most of you, I was glued to CNN, waiting for updates and I remember how he flew around in Air Force One all day, landed once to make a quick speech, then flew around some more. We didn't really see much of him until the 12th or 13th. When we needed him most, to say something like, "I want fighters in the air immediately and get me Rumsfeld on the phone now", he just sat there and read. He failed us.

Another thing: Are you really allowed to call yourself a wartime president, when you created the war that seemingly nobody else wanted? That takes balls. Presidential balls, I guess.

Going back to the original subject - Here are a couple of quotes from both sides.

My cousin - "I hope a bunch of those 18-24 year olds that registered, but didn't bother to show up at the polls get drafted and killed in Iraq. Maybe some more of them will vote in '08 then."

This is what my brother-in-law said when I asked him about the cost of the Iraq war (1,000+ American lives, 15,000 Iraqi lives and a whole lot of money (200 billion gets thrown around a lot, but I don't know how accurate that is) - "I don't give a fuck about those sand-niggers. They came after us first."

It's true that if you hear, "The war on terror in Iraq", enough times, you'll believe it.

Well, a sand-nigger's a sand-nigger right?

CF

PS - Your brother-in-law's an asshole.

A coworker did say to me regarding the civilian death total, "Yeah, well most of them are terrorists, anyway."

By the way, I work at the United States Secret Service. You're in good hands America.

In this case, they're both assholes. One for not having any compassion for Iraqi civilians, the other for wanting 18-24 year old Americans to die to make his point.

Very true, Tim.

CF

Tim:

I sure hope that was only a sick joke. As for the question, I don't see any problem with adult stem-cell research as you don't kill a whole adult person to extract stem-cells, so I don't see any problem with manipulating amoeba cells if it can benefit human beings. But that's probably impossible, as human DNA is so much more complicated than amoeba's DNA. Practically that would be bioalchemy: turning steel into gold.

Chris Fabulous:

First, let me say that I'm glad and I'm sure you are even more glad that you didn't abort your child.

It may be an exaggeration but I wouldn't write it if I didn't believe it. I don't believe in mercy killings of human beings. Should we nuke Somalia to alleviate their suffering? How about collective nuclear suicide to end all our problems and suffering once for all: empty universe is a universe without evil. No sane person would advocate that. If a single mother couldn't support her newly born child financially, would she act ethically if she murdered it? So how is abortion different? We are not omniscient so that we would know if killing an unborn child would do more good than evil (even if the act itself was morally neutral).

As for stem-cell discussion, I'll give you that frozen embryos aren't sentient, but a fetus is sentient within 3 weeks after conception. What about my Michael Moore question? Would you agree to let your sperm be used to fertilaze eggs from which stem-cells would be derived for your hypothetical treatment? This may sound like dystopian science fiction, but if embryonic stem-cells proved feasable for medicine production, it's probable that you wouldn't need to do it, but people in third world countries would be turned into biological machines, creating life so that it could be destroyed for the benefit of the rich western society.

Would anyone of you let a loved one's dead body be used for car crash testing (instead of mechanical dummies) or for helmet testing (where they attach a helmet at throw bodies from heights)? Call me superstitious, but I wouldn't. We show more respect at the end of human lives (when people are already dead) than at the beginning (when people, however tiny, are still alive).

I'm sure that you won't change your point of view, but I just wanted to show how one issue could trump all other issues. If Kerry happened to be pro-life and Bush pro-choice and pro-stem-cell-research, I'm sure many liberals would vote for Bush even if they believed that his economic and foreign policy was disastrous. Or to take a historical example, it was the correct choice to vote for Abraham Lincoln (a Republican and anti-slaver) even though the country would be more economically strong with slavery intact.

Mao,

I can see your point, but I think that killing a fetus is different than killing a fully developed person. I think our definitions of "sentient" might differ, as well. Oh well. Stalemate, as usual.

CF

I would allow my sperm to be used. Absolutely.

I would allow my sperm to be used. Absolutely. Anybody need some sperm?...Anybody?

Not because I'm so sure I'm right and your wrong, Mao, but because I truly don't care about the rights of embryos.