I think the 20 percent refers to not 20 percent of felons, but 20 percent of the total black male population in some states.
I stand (well, sit at my computer) to be corrected.
Seconded. People who didn’t know anything about Giuliani before 9/11 don’t know what we had to put up with from him: humorless, pig-headed, never admits he’s wrong, facist “do as I say, dammit!” tendencies. He scares the poo out of me.
Jesus, how can you trust the decision-making processes of a man who had that awful comb-over for so many years?!
Well, it appears I misread it. Why you keep reading the posts of a moron, though, I’ll never understand.
I didn’t actually mean to imply that there are yet more categories of people to whom the vote should be extended. There are plenty of other ways of making our government more democratic.
How about a serious push to nuke gerrymandering? Choose a random computer algorithm for chopping up states into chunks of roughly equal numbers of people in them.
How about a serious push to ending winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes and going with proportional representation?
I’d like to hear some serious thoughtfully considered suggestions for how government could involve me (as a citizen, not as a politician, I’m aware that I could run for the Assembly or something) … in the name of democracy the best they can do is let me cast a vote for which jerkoff I’d like to make my political decisions for me until next election cycle?
Think of things. Be constantly looking for ways to make the decision-making process more participatory and less of an oligarchy.
To add to the anti-Guiliani bandwagon, I’d like to remind people that the other reason he was planning to resign before 9/11 (Which was a move being gleefully welcomed by NYCers prior to the way he stood up after the attack.) was that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now, it’s quite possible for a man to live a long and healthy life with that diagnosis, but it’s another reason that I believe that Mr. Guiliani isn’t the best possible candidate to be nominated.
Alas, I don’t have anyone positive to mention. I’m just hoping that one major party, or the other, will nominate someone I can support without having to hold my nose.
Think we could exhume Barry Goldwater? Even a Zombarry Goldwater would be better than what’s running so far.
Might I suggest a class in statistics?
I’ve never understood the “I’ll never vote for a XXXXX” attitude when it comes to voting for President. When both parties have selected their candidates, I chose the one I like best/think will do the best job running the country/looking out for what I consider important, and then I vote for him (or her). Once the primaries are over and the candidates are selected, why should party matter at all to an intelligent voter? 
It matters in who controls the Congress. If Bush had been a Democrat, he could not have been the walking fiasco that he has become. The Congress would have provided some adult supervision. There is a lot to be said for having the executive and legislative branches in different parties. Given a choice of equivalent candidates for president, I’d vote for the guy representing the minority party in Congress.
When i saw your comment, i immediately went back and found the thread where, a few weeks ago, D_Odds gave a link to this article.
You have to click through an ad to read the whole thing, but it really is worth it.
Because party-affiliation is not a randomly allocated label? As imprecise as the binary system may be, many people’s political beliefs are consistently aligned with the (supposed) beliefs of one party more than the other. If you are a solid Republican, it is very likely that a Democratic candidate will not share your beliefs; after all, if he did share your beliefs, he would be a Republican. I don’t understand how intelligent voters can pretend that party-affiliation has nothing to do with the beliefs a candidate has.
The rejoinder to this is usually along the lines of “I’ll vote for anyone if they get the job done.” However, if you strongly favor one party, that party’s method for getting the job done is (in general) how you believe the job should be done - that’s why you favor that party.
Why would you vote for a XXXXX when XXXXXs have organized themselves together on the basis of principles that you believe are entirely wrongheaded?
I do not want to see any Republicans carrying the title “Commander in Chief” for awhile, no matter WHO’S in Congress. And I’d really like to see some limits set on what the Commander in Chief can do. Who knows what “police actions” the Chimp in Chief and his neocon handlers are cooking up for the next two years?
Yeah, I covered that 2 hours and 43 minutes before your post. May I suggest a class in reading threads before pouncing. :rolleyes:
Yeah yeah yeah. I ever so totally don’t want to see “more of the same” in the Oval Office. Out. Out. OUT. I voted your stupid dangerous ass out in '04, I just didn’t have the backing of quite enough folks in Ohio.
So why would I seriously consider a presidential candidate who’s a Republican?
• Because the Democrats are not just automatically entitled to my vote, dammit. The Democratic candidate needs to work for it. I do have somewhere else I could go. Well, I would if the goddam Republicans would field a viable candidate. The Republicans seem hell-bent on making sure the Democrats actually can count on my vote. Phooey.
• If the hypothetical Republican candidate hasn’t the chance of a snowball in hell of capturing any support from the likes of me, that candidate is going to work on capturing support from folks more likely to vote Republican. But the Republican party attitude and platform are not such that I could not get enthused. (At least until the last couple decades, which I keep trying to think of as an anomaly). Economic responsibility, not deepening our federal debt. A general tendency to abstract out some general rules and then apply them pretty evenly, or when that would lead to viscerally-determinable bad outcomes, to rethink the general rules . Government by and for those who distrust government: damn, what’s not to like? And a repudiation of Band-Aid redistribution schemes as amelioration for the problems with the market economy, a repudiation of socialism in specific.
• Because electoral politics is a dialogue, one of the few we’ve got going where I actually get to play a role. I’m just one person, so when I say “maybe” instead of “no way in hell” to the Republican Party, it means virtually nothing, but by sharing my sentiments, if I’m able to influence some similar-minded people to think “maybe”, it has more of a ripple. Perhaps the response to that is the Democratic Party moving to accomodate those concerns, or perhaps the response is the Republican Party accomodating on the other, dealbreaker concerns. Right now the Democrats are singing the praises of balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility. Don’t you figure this is happening because of the number of voices saying “Like where you’re at on social issues but like the Republicans better on fiscal responsibility”?
Even though I probably have a much higher opinion of the Dems than you do, I understand your dilemma, and share it to some extent. Some days it seems we might as well rename our parties Frying Pan and Fire. Still, as another poster has pointed out, there are substantive policy differences between parties, and if you pay attention to those rather than the qualities of individual candidates, you have a better shot at getting the results you want from government, rathe than trying to divine who is the better man through all the smoke and mirrors Washington tends to project on that topic.
If the Republicans were really smart, they’d nominate Bill Clinton. Seeing him run against Hillary in '08 would be worth the price of admission alone… 
“Bill Clinton is the best Republican President we ever had.” --Michael Moore