BHS

This report from the Campaign Finance Institute for the 2004 election season suggests the trend is the opposite of what you're saying.

I love it. The Republicans win, the Dems scream "FRAUD!". The Republicans lose, and crickets supply the soundtrack. It flies right over your head that, even by your own description, the lack of purported election malfeasance is entirely contingent on Democratic electoral success. Meaning that it's far more likely that Democrats were poor losers than that Republicans committed fraud. But believe whatever makes you happy. This line of reasoning reminds me of the 90's, when according to the Dems, every disagreement was caused by "Republican partisanship" and every agreement was "non-partisan", because the meme at the time was that partisanship was wrong. Get it? Partisan=wrong : Republicans pushing Republican agenda = partisan (wrong) : Republicans agreeing with Clinton = non-partisan (non-wrong). Heads I win, tails you lose.

My understanding is that, we're it not for district gerrymandering, the sweep would have been even bigger. I'm talking a 1994 style blowout. Well, the Dems hold the majority of governorships now, so I'm thinking that at least some of those Republican gerrymanders will be "corrected" within the next few years. Assuming the Dems aren't happy with the status quo - gerrymandering ends up creating safe seats for your opponents as well as yourself. And guys like Alcee Hastings need safe seats, what with him being an unreconstructed bribe-taking criminal and all.

True. Who cares about Jefferson? Did he get back in? Did he even run? Your last paragraph is key, and I believe you're reiterating my point. The Dem's win had more to do with discontent with the administration's performance then it did with anything the Dems themselves did. The election was the Republicans' to lose. In 2004 it was the same situation - the Dems ran on a "we're not Bush" platform but concern about terrorism and the importance of winning the war vastly overshadowed any other mistakes that the voting public may have perceived, and so the Republicans won. In the intervening two years an Iraqi government has formed, American troops have been shifted into a support role on many missions, and a war-weariness has set in on the American public. At the same time, Bushco and the Republican Congress have stepped in shit pies with nearly every step: from controversial Supreme Court nominations (but especially Harriet Myers), to Dubai Ports, to the illegal immigration embroglio, to defending William Jefferson's dishonourable conduct, to rolling over and playing guilty-as-charged in La Cage Au Foley, to playing down the great economic numbers. All of which and more are neatly summed up by Glenn Reynolds as "unforced errors". I mean, the Terri Schiavo thing (remember that?) was an ethical dog's breakfast, but to have that incident create the only truly pressing piece of legislation passed in the last term is ridiculous. Together, these two developments spelt the end of the Republican Congress. Without the unforced errors things may very well have gone the other way.

Oh, okay. I've been away, eh? That one slid past me. I wouldn't call them the fringe. I'd call them the majority, in that Nancy is a perfect example of the species. Perhaps "whacko" is an uncalled for perjorative. I can't support that kind of talk - I spend less time here these days but I'm not keen to be banned when the next culling occurs. (Like the Stargate Atlantis reference? Too much?)

Were we watching the same election? A bare majority of seats in the House switched sides in the one that I watched. You'd think the change would have been larger if a large majority were involved.

Yeah. Now it's time to get down to truly important business, like enshrining Al Gore's apocalyptic ecological views into the Constitution, or something. But not in a fearmongering way.

Man, you've really got that bone in your teeth. Or should I say strawman? What are you talking about BD? Everyone, Dems and Repubs alike, are linking Rumsfeld's retirement to the election result, and the more liberal Dems in particular are calling both a "victory" vis-a-vis their long-held opposition to the Bush administration and to the war in Iraq. I think August's analysis is correct. As I've stated on other threads there are plenty of other reasons why the Republicans lost their majorities. Turning the next two years into a Bush witch hunt will be a satisfying excercise in revenge politics but it will ultimately hurt the Dems at the polls in future elections. (Not leastly because they won't be able to exact any sort of revenge that will satisfy the angry people currently howling for it, which makes the whole strategy a mandate-waster.)

Yeah, with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker you know the House will be free from nasty, shrieking ideology. I predict two years of legislative gridlock, during which none of the liberal agenda gets implemented. Just so you know ahead of time. So don't blame poor Nancy.

Just thought I'd revive this post, because it answers questions BD has been posting in the Joe Lieberman thread.

This item hasn't gotten much notice in the regular media, so I'm not 100% convinced of it's accuracy. Maybe a member here can enlighten us all as to the validity of this Drudge Report item: Gore's UN Presentation If it's true that Gore has taken to linking Global Warming to other activist causes without any sort of varifiable scientific connection (other than, you know, that people exhale CO2) how long can it be before the genius behind An Inconvenient Truth is heaved over the side by his eco co-religionists? I mean, isn't it their argument that they have the hard science on their side?

The author of the review article isn't saying the American model is the most successful, only that it isn't less successful than the model that the authors of the study seem to be most in favour of. The whole point of the review article was to point out that the results of the study can be read to make a case contrary to what the authors of the study had intended.

I would say isolated statistics about percentage of income also mean nothing. There are many services the poor receive in places like Sweden or Finland that poor in the US simply go without (access to quality healthcare and education come to mind). The net result is the standard of living for the poor in Sweden is likely much higher than the standard of living for the poor in the US even if the amount of income they receive the same amount of income relative to others. Good points all. I would like to see another study comparing life expectancy (in particular) between the poorest ten percent of Finns and Americans, since it's a relatively easy statistics to calculate accurately and isn't prone to manipulation about "quality of life" variables that biased researchers might introduce into their studies.

I've been monitoring this thread for a couple of days but I haven't had time to respond. Sue me. You haven't been on this forum for very long and I'm sure you haven't read many of my posts, so you won't know that I wasn't trying to set a trap for anyone. I'm genuinely interested in how some of my leftier friends here would react to this article. Nice to meet you too. I see from reading some of your posting history that you've already managed to piss Kimmy off. That's pretty impressive, given that you've only been here for what, a month (?) and she's probably the most imperturbable and centrist of those who defend Republican policy points. (I don't even know that it's fair to call her right wing). Good work. As to your question about relative percentages of economies, I think one of the points made in the article is that one of the preliminary adjustments made by the authors of the study balances the economies so as to make the later comparisons more feasible. Maybe I misread that, and I was hoping that someone more critical of right-wing cynicism toward left-wing studies would point out how this adjustment was not what the author said it was. Hence the point of this thread and my non-trap intention in creating it. (Sorry for the grammar issues but it's like quarter after seven in the morning and I still can't see straight.)

TCS Daily Article I came across this article today and my first thought on reading it was, "I wonder how the lefties at Maple Leaf would counter this argument". The argument being put forward is that since the real income of the poorest 10% of Americans is equal to the income of the poorest 10% of Swedes and Finns that America doesn't need to make any changes to it's public policies vis-a-vis social spending. Being a lackey for big capitalism I of course by into everything this guy is saying and can't think of any negatives, so I'm throwing it out there for you guys and gals to chew away on. Enjoy. Here's a sample:

As much as I doubt it will happen, August, it's still an amusing scenario. The Republicans could run Joe Lieberman against Feingold and still win.

I had individual responses written for all three sentences and lost them. I'm too tired to rewrite them all. It just pisses me off sometimes. Suffice it to say that I disagree and that my post the you are responding to still stands unrebutted in my estimation. I've added bolding to the phrase that interests me most here. Just what values are you speaking of? Your wording suggests a 1984-ish "'tis now and always has been" view of what the Democratic party stands for. I strenuously disagree. When Joe Lieberman was a young man (and no doubt forming his political views) the Democrats were the party of war. Before the 1960's the Democrats were also the party of racial segregation. Before the 1990s the concept of RINOs and DINOs didn't exist, because there were hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives in both parties. Saying that the highly charged partisan leftism that has taken over the Democratic Party since the failures of the 2000, 2002 and 2004 elections, is representative of the party's broader history, is ridiculous. In another post, you replied to Shady's statement that Lieberman's record is highly liberal by attacking him for the support he's currently receiving from conservatives, the foreshadowing of which appears above. Which, dude, is a total red herring that doesn't challenge the fact of his established liberal bona fides one iota. I'm sure that as an independant candidate he'll take support from wherever he can get it, but no one (including Bill Kristol) is naive enough to think that the company he keeps during a time of duress will affect his voting demeanor once he's back in office. And that's assuming he doesn't explicitly disavow any such support during the campaign. In post #11 of this thread August said: The eventuality has come to pass, but I think otherwise that August was correct. Lieberman will be re-elected.

I love picking nits. I didn't see a reply to this post, so I'm posting one now. The $100,000.00 in question was a court-ordered retroactive payment for child support above and beyond that which was already being paid. What wasn't given was the period of time to which this retroactive payment applied. The article only mentions retroactive payments being limited to a three-year period by the Supreme Court's decision. I'm going to guess that the period of retroactivity for this particular case was a similar length of time. $100,000.00 over three years means missed monthly payments of $2777.78 above and beyond established child support payments. That is a sizeable increase in monthly payments, and it leads me to suspect that the father's income (and commensurate montly support payment obligations) were already quite high. In that light, I find it hard to believe that junior was "doing without" in any meaningful sense, and so I have to respectfully disagree with the sentiment expressed in your last sentence. (I know this doesn't apply to you but it reminds me of people who complained about Bush's tax cuts by noting that the wealthiest payers would be receiving credit equivalent to the price of a new Lexus. Completely lacking from these complaints, in a very logically disconnected way, was the acknowledgement that the price of a new Lexus made up only a small fraction of what the wealthiest taxpayers shell out every year in taxes. Everything is relative.)

Not necessarily. I don't really think of this as a left-right issue at all. I'm a full-blown NDPer, and I'm all for the "three strikes and you're out" approach. In fact, where child-rape is involved, that sounds like two strikes too many. Here, here.

August; Lamont is ahead by 10 points. Care to revise your last prediction?

Ghandi was a unique individual. There isn't a world leader like him anywhere in the world today. It isn't reasonable to expect a man of his calibre to magically appear and save Iraq, when no other country can claim to have a man like him either. Also, Ghandi's legacy is not a non-violent nation, despite his best intentions. Indira Ghandi was assasinated by her own seperatist bodyguard. Her son was also assasinated. There are still incidents of intra-religious mob violence leading to numerous fatalities. All this, decades after independance and Pakistani secession. Saddam Hussein has been out of power for a scant three years. Again, it's unreasonable to expect perfection in Iraq when even the best intentions in other nations yield imperfect results with more than 10 times the amount of time for reconciliation. I'm afraid I'd have to disagree about him being the "Father of Indian Democracy". He was the spiritual leader of the independance movement, but he wasn't a member of any political party nor was he involved in the nuts and bolts creation of the Indian system of government. The Wikipedia entry about the Indian political system leads me to believe it was created to imitate both the British and American systems of government, while Ghandi is cited as being, at most, philosophically influential. I don't know what points of yours I've skipped over. I went back and reread the relevant posts. Please reiterate what you'd like me to respond to.

machinations: I worked on a reply to your post all afternoon (on and off) and when I previewed what I had written the forum ate my post. I'll have to try again later.

Right back atcha.

Since this statement is so important to you that you've made the effort to bold it, I'll write a seperate post for it specifically. Name one (1) democracy that didn't come into being as a result of war. Athens. And to clarify, forcing democracy on another people does not work. Revolutionary wars are often successful, but not wars initiated by a foreign power with the intention of installing democracy. Thats called 'colonialism'. So, India's not a democracy?

I was doing my usual rounds among the blogs and came across this interesting development, and I thought back to this post. I discovered this morning that the "Goddamn piece of paper" myth has been more or less debunked, as well as a number of other myths about Bush, all of which appear to have had a site called Capitol Hill Blue as there source: http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/003880.html (I've supplied the link for posterity only. There's a lot of reading there, a lot of links, and a lot of backstory.)