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Post by Yaw on Jan 22, 2004 1:03:34 GMT -5
Figure this discussion is going to happen sooner or later, so we may as well get it started. As the election season heats up in America, here's your chance to voice your opinion on Bush, the Democratic candidates, and the third parties, and their respective campaigns. What have you agreed with? What lies have you caught? What made you want to kick in your television?
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Post by nonny on Jan 22, 2004 9:37:17 GMT -5
Well I know that most of you dislike bush here and I am in the minority of likeing bush. But, if i could vote I would vote for bush.
And statistic wise(right word/spelling) Bush has a big chance of being re-elected becouse only once or twice(can't remeber which) has a president not served two terms.
But I have two question for the non-bush poeple.
Do you believe the ads that say bush is the next Hitler?
Also there is a kid at my public school that wears a shirt that says "Fuck you and your daddy" with a picture of bush, I know it is an expression of freedom but my school doesn't allow profanity on cloths, and considering it is a public school do you think he should get introuble becouse he hasn't yet? j/w
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Post by Yaw on Jan 22, 2004 15:11:43 GMT -5
nonbeliever Easy one first. Your particular politics do not excuse breaches of school policy, so long as said policy is reasonable. A prohibition on swearing is generally accepted in schools, hence this kid shouldn't escape discipline simply because the swearing is targetting Bush. So yes, the shirt should stay out of school. (Since it's bound to be asked, an example of an unreasonable school policy would be the school board who, a few years ago, insisted that a Jewish Star of David should not be worn in school as it could be misinterpreted as a gang symbol. As long as you don't contravene the First Amendment, the policy is fine. And the swearing doesn't quite contravene the First Amendment -- I don't see there being a prohibition on expressing an anti-Bush stance, but a prohibition on inappropriate ways of expressing that stance.) nonbeliever Well, there were two ads that made the comparision. Only one I've heard details about, so we'll deal with that one. It didn't exactly say that Bush is the next Hitler. The creator of the advertisement posted on a message board here, and stated in part That's not really saying that Bush is the next Hitler. It is saying that Bush is governing using tactics which are Fascist (Fascism is a political philosophy that has extreme nationalism and strong corporate involvement in government as some of its properties -- it is not necessarily anti-Semitic) in nature. Of course, invoking Hitler to make the point is bound to be a contentious issue, and there's some question as to whether the ad itself made the point it was reportedly trying to make effectively. You're naturally welcome to judge for yourself; the advertisement is available in Quicktime format here. Worth noting on this issue is the absolute hypocrisy on the part of the people at FOX News spreading around the outrage over the Hitler commercials. While Moveon.org has apologized quickly and removed the offending ads from its site, FOX sister paper The New York Post published an opinion piece comparing Howard Dean to Hitler's propagandist Josef Goebbels. See Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting for a good synopsis, as well as links to the offending article.
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Post by Supremor on Jan 22, 2004 15:51:52 GMT -5
See, this is where, I say I just don't get your elections.
In England, yes we have people on the BBC, stating their manifesto and declaring what they want to do, what's worng with the opposition ect. But we never have commercial ads, infact I believe there's a ban on it.
How can a truly democratic system allow different parties to get more or less coverage, depending on how many ads they can afford to put on the tele.
Well, all I can say is that comparing George Bush to Hitler, or any of his policies to Facist ones, is not a very scrupulous way to conduct politics. It is the duty of political parties to state what is wrong with current governement and what they will do about it. Any 'Hitler' invoking is meaningless and ad hominem, rather than constructive.
I really have a bee in my bonnet(hope that's understood in America) with people using stupid comparisons to people or events that have no use, except to cause fear and paranoia in the public.
Take this book: Animal rights- human wrongs by Vernon Coleman.
I'm sure the writer has a valid opinion and I'm not going to discuss it here, but he tries to compare farmers, to those operating the gas chambers in the holocaust. Now I find this extremely offensive, that this man is invoking the holocaust to use for his own devices. On top of this I'm Jewish, and am not in the mood for bigots who want to use the slaughtering of my family as a bargoning chip.
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Post by Yaw on Jan 22, 2004 23:32:10 GMT -5
Well, I'm Canadian. I just pay attention because the US happens to be geographically close (and because ambassador Paul Cellucci insists on using this fact to attempt to change Canadian federal policy). For background on this issue, the independent organization MoveOn.org sponsored a contest called "Bush in 30 Seconds", which accepted submissions of 30-second advertisements highlighting some aspect of the Bush administration's wrongdoing. All submissions were placed on the website for public display, and were narrowed down through random voting. MoveOn.org promised to get the winning ad on television. Two of the submissions happened to compare Bush to Hitler. Neither did well in the voting, and neither was a finalist. It was the mere presence of these submissions that got some people irate. MoveOn.org apologized as soon as the controversy erupted, and removed the commercials. In short, the comparison was not done by the political opposition to Bush, nor was it done by MoveOn.org itself. It just happened to run a contest that got a couple of off-the-wall submissions. I agree that policies should stand or fall on their own merits, instead of on the basis of their reflection of the policies of others. Comparisons may be valid, dependent on how relevant they are. The "Sound Familiar?" ad, at least in terms of what it was trying to say, did make valid comparisons -- some of Bush's policies are certainly Fascist in a political sense. (Remember that there were other Fascist governments, such as Franco's in Spain.) This does not mean, however, that such a comparison is instructive. Certainly, Nazi Germany carries enough additional baggage that comparisons with it are likely to evoke images of genocide or upcoming genocide, which are not relevant here (although Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp that contravenes the Geneva Conventions, it is not in any way a death camp). Making the comparison to Hitler substitutes factual content for emotional content, and is hence erroneous. The creator of the ad would have done better had he focused on one Fascistic policy and its impact on America. He ought to have known that his message would be overshadowed by its presentation in a negative way.
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Post by nonny on Jan 23, 2004 0:09:42 GMT -5
See i agree with what you said about the shirt, but other things not so much, but i don't like debating politics on this board or in this chat room becouse i get ganged up on, so i don't think i'm gonna say anything else.
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Post by Yaw on Jan 27, 2004 17:07:13 GMT -5
For the sake of interest, AOL-Time has an online survey comparing your positions on various issues to those of the presidential candidates (all the Democrats running and Bush). Results are given as a percentage in terms of how well your answers match with a given platform. It's at PresidentMatch.com. I'd be interested to see people's results, and comments on the survey. My results are: Kucinich - 100% Sharpton - 86% Kerry - 82% Dean - 80% Clark - 77% Edwards - 75% Lieberman - 66% Bush - 5% But then again, I'm Canadian and can't vote in the US.
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Ginnsu
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 47
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Post by Ginnsu on Jan 28, 2004 0:49:04 GMT -5
Kucinich Score: 100% Kerry Score: 91% Sharpton Score: 89% Edwards Score: 83% Clark Score: 82% Dean Score: 80% Lieberman Score: 71% Bush Score: 17%
I'm not sure if I mis-undertsood some questions or not, but the scores seem about right anyways. Some of the statements were confusing though.
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Post by nonny on Jan 28, 2004 1:02:32 GMT -5
I'm not positive i did the right one.
Resluts with both parties Kerry-100 Edwards-99 Lieberman- 97 Clark- 89 Kucinich- 87 Bush- 83 Dean- 82 Sharpton- 74
Results with Repulican Bush- 100
Results with Democrat Kerry-100 Edwards-99 Lieberman- 97 Clark- 89 Kucinich- 87 Dean- 82 Sharpton- 74
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tamara
Broken-in Plebe
Posts: 96
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Post by tamara on Jan 28, 2004 12:29:17 GMT -5
1 Sharpton Score: 100% No way! 2 Kucinich Score: 98% He'll never get the nomination so what's the point?
3 Kerry Score: 92% Maybe
4 Clark Score: 88% Maybe
5 Dean Score: 88% Maybe
6 Lieberman Score: 83% No way 7 Edwards Score: 78% Who is this guy anyway? 8 Bush Score: 22% Yuck
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Post by Maverick on Jan 28, 2004 18:09:57 GMT -5
nonbelievernonny, I hope you won't exclude yourself from political conversations just because you feel like your views are not the views of the majority of the people on this board. From an administrative standpoint, I've done my best to let people know that Atheists Anonymous is politically nuetral. I even pointed this out to a guest poster in this thread who is a conservative atheist. I pointed out the disclaimer I posted just before the war in Iraq that reinforces the political nuetrality of A/Anon. I do recognize, however, that liberal opinions do tend to dominate the political conversations on this message board. Despite that, I want conservative atheists to feel comfortable joining these boards too. Despite what political differences atheists may have, I want both to feel free to express themselves here. So please, if you are inclined, express your thoughts about politics. Here are my results: 1 Kerry Score: 100% 2 Kucinich Score: 96% 3 Sharpton Score: 91% 4 Clark Score: 89% 5 Edwards Score: 85% 6 Dean Score: 85% 7 Lieberman Score: 82% 8 Bush Score: 22%
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Post by Yaw on Jan 28, 2004 19:31:42 GMT -5
nonbeliever What I would encourage (and this goes for everyone) is that you take time to track down information about the issues -- especially those where you either disagreed with the candidate you thought you supported before taking the poll, or didn't know what was being asked. Congress publishes the text of bills they are debating online, and this is an excellent source of truly unbiased information (reading the bill itself instead of going by someone else's analysis). Check out news sources that support both sides. Come to your own opinions. We're as capable of carrying on high level political discourse as we are of carrying on high level theological-related discourse. There's also the advantage that when you do this kind of digging, you're better able to support your own opinions and won't feel like people are ganging up on you. At any rate, what I like about the PresidentMatch quiz is that it forces you to judge each candidate on the issues alone, instead of on your perceptions of them (hence some of the surprises people got, like nonbeliever being closest to Kerry's platform, and tamara closest to Sharpton's). Suddenly what this person will do for you becomes more important than some nebulous idea of whether or not they are likely to be elected (which I think is pretty silly anyway unless it refers to Sharpton or Clark -- everyone else holds or has held elected office, and hence is inherently "electable" ). That's more what politics should be about, really. We should be worrying about policies more than people. Admittedly, Bush is bound to get kicked around a bit on this board due to his support of religion in education and social programs. As seen by some of the results, though, that doesn't seem to be too much of a handicap. To be honest, the quiz is likely to be far more interesting when the primary season is over, as they'll be dropping the other Democratic candidates and adding in the candidates from the third parties. Right now almost everyone here is bound to come out Democrat, which doesn't adequately represent the split in political opinion among the posters here. I want to see the Democrat/Green/Libertarian split.
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Post by Griffey on Jan 28, 2004 20:47:04 GMT -5
Admittedly I don't know much about political issues especially regarding money. And I don't know who the heck half of these people are, save a few... I took the quiz anyway with the stuff I did know, here's what I got in percentages:
Kerry: 100 Kucinich: 96 Sharpton: 96 Clark: 91 Dean: 90 Edwards: 84 Lieberman: 81 Bush: 8
Cool site. It motivated me to like, actually look these people up. Eh.
Regarding nonny, I'm sorry you don't feel like you can express your views here regarding politics. I didn't know you felt this way and it makes me sad, you have interesting views regarding different issues. Keep talking! Please! ;D
And your question, I think this dude should get in trouble because of the f-word, I mean, it is a public school and if profanity is against policy then of course he should not be allowed to wear it. It shouldn't matter if it's pro-Bush or anti-Bush; policy should be applied without bias.
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Post by Hilly on Jan 28, 2004 21:33:55 GMT -5
Glad to see this thread, as I am also Canadian I could do with some brushing up on the American political system. I try to keep informed, and get my info from many sources ranging from Howard Stern to PBS I know as a Atheist, Bush frightens me. 1 Kerry 100% 2 Kucinich 99% 3 Sharpton 98% 4 Clark 88% 5 Dean 86% 6 Liberman 81% 7 Bush 18%
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Post by nonny on Jan 28, 2004 22:17:43 GMT -5
Yeh i guess i can talk about poltics it is just hard like in the chat room, haveing everyone disagreeing, even though i'm four years away form voting i do know a lot about politics. But i could disscuss my views more.
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