I thought I must have misheard Obama referring to Venezuela as a "rogue state", but now that transcripts are online I see he did actually say this. ("That means that we, as one of the biggest consumers of oil -- 25 percent of the world's oil -- have to have an energy strategy not just to deal with Russia, but to deal with many of the rogue states we've talked about, Iran, Venezuela.")
Sometimes I'm glad I can't vote in this election.
I still don't see how "Work to keep Nader off the ballot in your state" translates into anything other than "To ensure your favored candidate wins, work to deny others the chance to vote for their favored candidate".
As John Chu (80) says, a first-past-the-post race with more than two candidates always risks an unrepresentative result. I wonder, then, if anyone here would take the anti-Nader position to its logical conclusion and argue that all such races should be legally limited to two candidates? It's inconsistent to object to Nader but not to, say, Ross Perot, or a possible Ron Paul bid.
In an election where A defeats B by a margin of n, any group of non-B-voters greater than n can be accused with equal justice of "having cost B the election". It doesn't matter if they stayed home, sat on the fence for a while and ended up voting A, or voted for C even though they preferred B to A. Those are all legitimate choices, and the democratically minded should be glad to see voters getting such choices, not trying to withhold them.
Greg: I agree with you that a Condorcet method would be preferable to the current system, of course. That's exactly why I think more third-party candidates should be running: the two-party system will never change until they do. I care about that more than I care about who wins the current election.
I don't agree that "third party candidates can take votes from the two primary candidates". Voters can give them their votes, or not. If they are not to have that choice, the Constitution should say explicitly that only the two large parties may run presidential candidates. The whole premise of democracy is that people are capable of informed decisions, and to deny them the chance to make those decisions is undemocratic.
Trying to keep a candidate off the ballot because he might hurt yours hardly strikes me as a very democratic thing to do.
I'm largely apolitical myself, and not a US citizen anyway, but I think if the country is ever to move beyond a two-party system (which is only twice as nice as a one-party system), it needs many more Naders running on all sides of the spectrum. Shouldn't everyone who's mad at Nader for losing Gore the 2000 election be much madder at the electoral system that made it possible for him to do so?
Xopher: the dual in Hebrew (though it's unproductive) can be thought of as a special case of the plural: adjectives accompanying dual nouns are themselves in the plural form, not the dual; and the dual ending looks like a slight elaboration on the plural one, just as in Tuomo's invented language. So I don't find it implausible at all.
The guy is Finnish, but that doesn't give him any particular insight into the dual number as Finnish doesn't have it. (Or gender, either, even in pronouns.) As for the dual being a special case of the plural or not - I'd say that's up to him as demiurge, no?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2008 | 4 |
| 2006 | 2 |
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