It's stupid to add up the hypothetical American lives saved by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and balance them against the actual dead except as fiction.
At risk of sounding completely ignorant, why? Evaluating actions based on their reasonably-foreseeable consequences is one of those fundamental things that we're supposed to do with our brains. If I'm at the top of the Empire State Building and I see a man about to throw a bunch of billiard balls over the side, are you saying I should let him do it because the damage I do to him by tackling him is real and sure and the damage that those balls will do to persons and property a thousand feet below is hypothetical?
Dav2.718
CHip: if I understand you correctly, your argument is not (as Teresa's original argument was) that Bush's polling 9% in DC intrinsically means anything, it's that Bush's numbers in '04 did not increase at the same pace with his numbers in the rest of the country, thereby indicating that DC voters were, relatively speaking, less satisfied with Bush than were other areas of the country. (This would, if true, tend to support Teresa's larger contention that those in areas that had to pay attention to how Bush handled terrorism were Not Pleased with said handling.)
I went back and looked at Bush's percentage of the popular vote state-by-state in 2000 and 2004. I had Excel calculate both the simple change in popular vote percentage and what that change was as a percentage of his 2000 percentage. That's not a particularly clear sentence...let's try a (fictional) example. In the state of North Weeble in 2000, Bush got 31% of the popular vote. In 2004, he got 34% of the popular vote. The raw percentage change was 3%. The increase figured as a percentage of that 31% he got in 2000 is 9.7%. I hope that's clear....
Anyway, I generated numbers for all 50 states (plus DC) and for the nation as a whole. Nationally, Bush's popular vote percentage increased from 47.87% to 50.75%, a raw increase of 2.88% and an "adjusted" increase of 6.02%. Adjusted increases ranged from Vermont's -4.67% to Rhode Island's 21.22%. DC's adjusted increase was 4.36%, the 28th highest increase. It's significantly below the mean, but only a bit below the median.
I am not a statistician. Those numbers might mean something real about how relatively satisfied or dissatisfied DC voters were with Bush's handling of terrorism or they might not. It's also entirely possible that I've generated numbers that intrinsically lack any meaning and that there's some other operation I should have performed on the raw numbers. That said, there's nothing I've seen so far that leads me to believe there's anything significant there. I am, however, perfectly willing to be wrong.
Anyone?
Dav2.718
Marilee said:
David, you and Derek both missed the fact that DC wasn't attacked, the Pentagon is solidly in Virginia.
I wasn't the one who brought up DC as an example of an attacked area. (And, honestly, I think you could argue that the citizens of DC were well aware of where Flight 93 was likely headed.)
CHip said:
David and Derek: Rove & Co. managed to dig up ~5,000,000 people who were enough impressed by Bush to vote for his second term after staying home (or even voting Democratic) for his first. Why were almost none of those in the areas actually hit by terrorism?
Bush votes in DC in 2004 were up 17% from 2000. During roughly the same time period, (2000-2003; I cannot find any newer population data for DC proper), DC's population dropped by nearly 2%. Pardon me if I'm not seeing repudiation of Bush's policies and record in that.
Now, if you dig a little deeper, you see that that 17% increase represents a grand total of 3183 voters, and that the Kerry vote was 18% higher than the Gore vote...which means what? It means that voting patterns in DC in 2004 were pretty much exactly like voting patterns in DC in 2000, except that (as was the case nationwide) a significantly larger percentage of the population actually voted. Remember, I'm not trying to make a point with the numbers here; I'm saying that the numbers don't support point-making.
Things may be different in the NYC numbers; I'd be interested in seeing them.
Dav2.718
I did check to make sure that no one had posted a comment saying what I was going to say...apparently just before Derek's comment hit.
*sigh*
Dav2.718
For instance, in the areas actually attacked on 9/11, Manhattan and Washington D.C., Bush polled 16% and 11%. We’re natural targets, so we have to pay attention to this stuff. And since we do, we notice that when it comes to real homeland security, Bush has been the worst Preznit in American history.
Attempting to draw any conclusion from Bush not polling well in DC is, at a minimum, Rather Silly. Historically, Republicans poll very poorly in DC. Going back to 1964, the best a Republican has ever done was Nixon in 1972, getting 21.5% of the popular vote. No Republican has polled above 10% since Bush Sr. got 14.3% in '88, and W's 9.34% in the 2004 election is actually an increase over the 8.95% he got in 2000. In short, there's nothing there to draw any conclusions from. (Source for all numbers: Dave Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections.)
Disclaimers:
I don't have polling data for NYC so I make no statement about how meaningful that number is.
I make no statement as to the validity of the overall argument or how much I do or do not agree with the sentiments expressed.
Dav2.718
By the time you retire, there’ll be nothing left in the Social Security retirement fund.
It’s untrue, of course; but for those who aren’t aware that it’s untrue, it’s profoundly frightening.
Is there a source you can toss my way for the "of course"? So far as I'm aware, the Social Security Trust Fund is nothing but government bonds that will have to be redeemed with my tax money down the line when they come due. Thus, all having the trust fund does is cause the money to come from my income tax instead of my FICA. With the boomers retiring and driving the wage-earner-to-retiree ratio down to something like 2.5 to 1 over the next few decades, I don't see how the system won't implode.
Raising the retirement age or cutting benefits might do it, but that would take a major shift in voter demographics. Of course, this might happen. Millennials/Gen Y seem to be more politically aware and active, and from my own admittedly limited observation, they don't believe in the survival of Social Security. (I'm involved with a social group of about 40 more-or-less fannish folks, ranging in age from 17 to 35 and going across the political spectrum from a Naderite to some Dean supporters all the way to a few folks who think Bush is doing a good job. Social Security came up a few months ago, and not a single one of us expects to see a dime from Social Security. Not one. We're resigned to paying into it because the older folks bought into it in good faith, but as a group, we want out.)
The rest of your article, I agree with. Whether the reason for it is real or not, the breach of trust is real, and yeah, it's a problem.
Dav2.718
I average somewhere around 100 spam messages per day. Over the past six months, I've seen SpamAssassin's effectiveness on my mail drop from around 80% to maybe 50%. So last week, we moved off SpamAssassin and on to DSPAM. I fed it about 5000 old "good" messages and about 250 spam messages, and turned it loose. Just based on that, it started catching about two-thirds of my spam. Over the past ten days, I've forwarded back to it another couple hundred messages it's missed. As of yesterday, it's catching 85% of my spam, and there has not been one single false positive.
Dav2.718
A good friend of mine is planning on voting for Bush right now on the grounds that his stupid ideas are less likely to make it past Congress and the courts than are Kerry's stupid ideas. This is at least plausible; the wild-card factor for me is that the next President is likely to be appointing one or two Supreme Court justices. Other damage can be fixed quickly; bad Supremes are a long-term Bad Thing.
Before this year, I'd never even considered the possibility of voting for a Democrat for President.... *sigh*
Dav2.718
Per cnn.com, he's apologized for the word choice:
"It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms.
"I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live.
"But, as one who grew up on the receiving end of insensitive remarks, I should have chosen my words better."
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 1 |
| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 8 |
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