Mood: lazy
Now Playing: Packers-Panthers
Topic: Politics
Zell Miller responds to his critics.
Posted by Dean
at 9:09 PM CDT
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"Mention the names of John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to historians, and they will tell you that these are some of our greatest presidents.It went on to describe Bush and The Patriot Act. I admit I haven't studied it much (yet). I know the ACLU is against it, which, of course, is a plus for it :^).
"Mention the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798; the revocation during the Civil War of the writ of habeas corpus, which protects Americans from false imprisonment; the Palmer raids of 1918, which swept up scores of political dissidents; and the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and those same historians will tell you that these acts constitute some of the worst assaults on American liberty."
"In Nye County, Nev., last week, one of the new, highly touted electronic-voting devices bought to replace discredited old-technology machines malfunctioned. When the polls closed in the state primary election, it refused to display the results, threatening to disenfranchise everyone who'd used it.The "pro" opinion contends that e-voting works.
"Fortunately, there was a backup. For every vote cast electronically, there was a paper trail, a printout that could be manually counted so no one's vote would be lost.
"About 30% of the nation will be voting electronically this November, up from 13% in the disputed 2000 election that set off a wave of voting reform. But for the vast majority, there's no way of checking whether the devices worked accurately. Nevada is the only state with paper backup for every machine. For millions of votes cast on most of the 100,000 new devices in other jurisdictions, there will be none."
"Now we are told that two consecutive incident-free elections, one in Florida, the other in Nevada, are not enough to alleviate the concerns about electronic voting....I've commented on current e-voting trends and concerns here and here.
"DRE machines have become scapegoats for every election woe, from misplaced disks to power plugs switched off. In a well-administered election with formal processes and well-trained poll workers, e-voting works, and it works much better than the technologies it is replacing."
"Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard has become an issue in the presidential campaign as the candidates spar over who would make the best commander in chief. Supporters of Democratic nominee John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran, have criticized Bush for serving stateside in the National Guard."Doesn't the AP have this backwards? Isn't it Kerry's Vietnam record that has been under attack lately?
"The Pentagon and Bush's campaign have claimed for months that all records detailing his fighter pilot career have been made public, but defense officials said they found two dozen new records detailing his training and flight logs after The Associated Press filed a lawsuit and submitted new requests under the public records law."One wonders if the AP has filed a lawsuit and submitted requests for Kerry's records.
"Teenagers who watch a lot of television with sexual content are twice as likely to engage in intercourse than those who watch few such programs, according to a study published today.Strongest evidence yet. Admittedly not proof but strong evidence that what we watch influences our thinking. And, after all, isn't that why advertisers spend big bucks?
The study covered 1,792 adolescents aged 12 to 17 who were quizzed on viewing habits and sexual activity and then surveyed again a year later. Both regular and cable television were included.
"This is the strongest evidence yet that the sexual content of television programs encourages adolescents to initiate sexual intercourse and other sexual activities," said Rebecca Collins, a psychologist at the RAND Corporation who headed the study."
"The RAND study identified other factors that increased the likelihood that adolescents would initiate sexual intercourse, including: being older, having older friends, getting lower grades, engaging in rule-breaking such as skipping class, and sensation-seeking.Parental involvement has the result of the teens being less likely to have sex.
Adolescents were less likely to initiate sexual intercourse if their parents monitored their activities, if their parents had more education, if they lived with both parents, if their parents did not approve of them having sexual relations, if they were religious, and if they were in good mental health. Adolescents with these characteristics also were less likely to see sex on television, but television viewing was related to sexual behavior even after these differences were taken into account."
"A key period of sexual exploration and development occurs during adolescence. During this time, individuals begin to consider which sexual behaviors are enjoyable, moral, and appropriate for their age group. Many teens become sexually active during this period; currently, 46% of high school students in the United States have had sexual intercourse. Although intercourse among youths is common, most sexually active teens wish they had waited longer to have sex, which suggests that sex is occurring before youths are prepared for its consequences. Additional evidence of this is provided by public health data. Each year, 1 case of a sexually transmitted disease (STD) is diagnosed for every 4 sexually active teens in the United States, and the US rate of teen pregnancy is among the highest of all industrialized countries. Unplanned pregnancies and STDs are more common among those who begin sexual activity earlier."Waiting for to initiate sex is not a bad thing.
"Anthropologists have stepped into a hornets' nest, revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia.Crikey!
Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it.
She said there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific Coast of America."
"A German teenager set himself up for an easy arrest when he offered to sell marijuana to guests at a party full of off-duty policeman"
"The average U.S. motorist spends 46 hours each year or nearly two full days stuck in rush-hour traffic jams."Consequently,
"Motorists wasted 5.7 billion gallons of fuel idling in traffic, the study showed."Makes me glad I'm close enough to walk to work.
Four (?) years of "recession?" I don't think you're too young to remember the late 70's and early 80's. Double digit unemployment and inflation. Compared to that era this is a boom. Just as my parents thought that it did not compare to the Great Depression. We have been used to the boom of the 90's, and so this looks serious.
This goes into the whole question I'm trying to explore--how much does a President, or Congress for that matter, influence an economy. Certainly events do. If you recall the stock indices plummeted after 9/11. The airlines' ridership went into free fall, something I don't think they've completely recovered from.
Recessions are tracked by an organization called NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research).
This is what was reported by Money magazine:"The group also said the economy might have been able to avoid a recession without the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, which all but shut down the economy for several days and has had a lasting impact on tourism, the airline industry and other businesses.They have also concluded that the recession ended in Nov., 2001:
'The attacks clearly deepened the contraction and may have been an important factor in turning the episode into a recession,' said a statement from the private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.""In determining that a trough occurred in November 2001, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. Rather, the committee determined only that the recession ended and a recovery began in that month. A recession is a period of falling economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. The trough marks the end of the declining phase and the start of the rising phase of the business cycle. Economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of an expansion, and it sometimes remains so well into the expansion."If you take the traditional definition of recession as two successive quarters of declining GDP, we were never in a recession.
"An overweight plastic surgeon performed liposuction on himself on camera to promote the potential use of stem cells that can be harvested in such operations."From what I understand adult stem cells such as excess fat (where can I sign up?) is much more promising for finding cures than embryonic stem cells and using adult stem cells doesn't have the controversy embryonic stem cells do.