Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: GreedyTop GAH!! just noticed what you'd actually typed... Yeah, it's easy to miss. Did you by any chance see that Osama poster which says "I'm still free, how about you?" quote:
(smartass) Thank you. I pride myself on the intellectual capacity of my rear end. quote:
('sok, Ilike you anyway, although this MAY jeapordize my adoration of you LOL) Oy. Does this mean my aspirations of world domination may have to be put on hold? Really, though, from a short term perspective, I'd prefer a dem, but from a long term perspective, I would prefer a rep. The reason is simple enough: the next term will be rough, and the payoff from any cleanup isn't going to be clear until the term after that. Accordingly, if the dems win this time, people will remember a crap term with the dems, and then elect a rep again. If the reps don't fumble the ball, they get the benefits of the work the dems did, along with whatever they themselves did, with most of the payoff toward the end of the term, leading to another term. In the end, people will then remember two comparatively good rep terms, one bad dem term, and two good rep terms. That's a fair bit of momentum right there. Better to let the reps eat their own shit, and then have the dems clean it up. Now, I know some would like to put a lot of stock in the voters, but experience seems to indicate it may in fact be as simple as that rough sketch. If so, then the rest of the world will have to deal with more of the same that they have been getting these past two terms. With the already established trend of science and technology becoming increasingly localized to China and India, that is not so good. I mean, with the current airport security (I don't know of too many people in technology fields that are willing to visit the US if they don't have to), a lot of major conferences can't even consider the US a viable place to host a conference, the effects of which will be felt strongly in the longer term. I know security is one field where the US is falling dangerously far behind, for instance. And culturally speaking, I think the growing gap between the US and the rest of the world could be bridged a bit by a more liberal government. Heck, while your people are dying on foreign soil, you're debating whether or not to continue state discrimination against homosexuals, for instance. That may seem natural over there, what with Lewinsky overshadowing Clinton and all, but failing to realize that such things are the least of your worries is fairly symptomatic of a culture that has failed to keep up with the times. It may seem a bit unthinkable today, but the US wouldn't be the first empire to fall on account of a culture that stagnated. Anyway, just some tired thoughts at 10am before bed, so I hope you will forgive the simplistic reasoning. Health, al-Aswad.
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"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way. We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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