Recent Political Change May Positively Affect GA

"Jim Macklin" writes:

There are 1.5 BILLION Muslims on the planet. If only 1/10
of 1% are violent terrorists, it is still 1 million, 500
thousand.

The figure is probably closer to one in a million. There are only a
few thousand Muslim terrorists in the world.

Surveys have put the number as high as 10-25% of
the Muslims supporting the terrorists.

Support comes in many forms; simply being sympathetic to the cause of
a terrorist is not the same as being a terrorist.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:31:12 GMT, Matt Whiting wrote:

So it is not possible to vote "white" (as it is called here)?
means: a valid vote, but without voting anybody?

What is the purpose of that?


Expressing your opinion. That's pretty much the point of the
whole voting thing.

You can express the "do nothing" opinion by staying home. I can see
this if they are just voting to maintain their registration to vote in
future elections. However, as a political statement, it is pretty much
a waste of time. Not voting at all sends nearly the same message.

at least here the percentage on how many seats go to which party is
determined on the quote of votes based on the total given votes.
If you don't vote you indirectly support the party with the most votes,
because then the percentage calculation is in their favour (and is bad for
the smaller parties). Voting without actually giving one party a vote
expresses that you are interested in the democratic process itself but that
you are generally disappointed in choices given to you. And you don't
indirectly support the party with the most votes (see above).

but here we have more than 2 or 3 parties to chose from and the election
system itself is more direct voting.

Matt

#m
--
Enemy Combatant http://itsnotallbad.com/

On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 13:59:43 -0800, Sylvain wrote:

You are unfortunately right in saying that voting 'none of the above' is
a waste of time, since it is not counted differently but it certainly
ought to be.

see my other post. at least here it makes a difference.

--Sylvain

#m
--
Enemy Combatant http://itsnotallbad.com/

On 10 Nov 2006 13:05:40 -0800, Jay Honeck wrote:

It is to weep.

true. but for different reasons.

#m
--
Enemy Combatant http://itsnotallbad.com/

On 10 Nov 2006 14:29:25 -0800, Jay Honeck wrote:

except that these voters' votes can be recounted if need be, since
they did leave a verifiable paper trace unlike *your* vote...

The touch screen computer printed a hard copy of my vote, which was
verified by the operator.

so the operator checked after every single vote?

so he knew what you voted. nice.

but did he show you the print and ask you to verify that you voted for X or
Y? how will you know? are do you simply _trust_ the machine?

#m
--
Enemy Combatant http://itsnotallbad.com/

Martin Hotze schrieb:

but here we have more than 2 or 3 parties to chose from and the election
system itself is more direct voting.

Actually, this doesn't matter. Here where I live, there was recently an
election with only *one* candidate. Everybody thought that this election
was pretty much a joke. But the majority of the voters didn't just stay
at home, but rather voted "blank", resulting in this only candidate not
being elected. Sometimes, democracy actually works.

Stefan

Recently, Jim Macklin posted:

There are 1.5 BILLION Muslims on the planet. If only 1/10
of 1% are violent terrorists, it is still 1 million, 500
thousand. Surveys have put the number as high as 10-25% of
the Muslims supporting the terrorists.

There is no basis for thinking that "1/10 of 1% of the world's Muslim
population are violent terrorists", if one considers that by far the
largest portion of the world's Muslims are not in the Middle East or from
countries that are in conflict with the US. This kind of generalization is
counter-productive to the effort to deal with those people that are
terrorists, Muslim or otherwise.

Neil

On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:20:22 +0100, Stefan wrote:

But the majority of the voters didn't just stay
at home, but rather voted "blank", resulting in this only candidate not
being elected. Sometimes, democracy actually works.

hmmm. With only one candidate thre would only be one vote required. Except
the voting system requires something like "more than 50% of all votes". But
IMHO this is a rather unusual voting system. Mostly it is "highest
percentage of all votes".

Stefan

#m
--
Enemy Combatant http://itsnotallbad.com/

Don Tabor wrote:
On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:17:27 GMT, "Super Dave"
wrote:

We got into this war with attacks on NY and DC. What is your
evidence that Bush was responsible for those attacks?


No, we got into the Afghanistan war due to the attacks on NY and DC. Iraq
was the result of stupidity on the part of our fearless leaders, and the
stupidity of the populace that supports those leaders.


So, our attack on D-Day was unjustified because Normandy did not bomb
Pearl Harbor?

Bush's big mistake was to not trust the American people with the truth
about this war from the beginning, choosing instead to tout a
simplistic justification for the war, the possibility of Saddam Husein
developing nuclear weapons, instead of laying out the real strategy
and trusting the people to understand.

Or maybe he realized that most people would think this "real strategy" was
even crazier.

We are not at war with Iraq or Afghanistan, we are at war with
Islamofascism. This is an asymmetric war, and the primary problem in
this sort of war is to get the enemy to engage on terms under which we
can win.

British had the same problem. Darn Americans just wouldn't stand up
in a line to get shot at.

Their ultimate goal is to unify Islam under a restored Caliphate and
proceed on their god given mission of world domination. A bit
grandiose for a culture that represents 20% of the world's population
but couldn't produce a turbojet engine if their lives depended on it,
but none-the-less, that is where they eventually want to go.

Won't they have to share the world with the commies?

Their short term goal is to unify the Arabian Peninsula and Central
Asia by driving the West out and leaving the Western friendly regimes
like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia open to conquest and future use as
economic weapons of intimidation.

Did they publish a manifesto? I really only believe in conspiracies that
have a really rousing manifesto.

Their strategy is to subject us to an endless sequence of 9/11 and
Madrid type attacks until we acquiesce and stand aside while they take
control of a large part of the world petroleum supply by force.

Won't they have trouble running the refineries if they can't produce a
turbojet engine?

Simply driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan would do no good. The
leaders would simply relocate to Iran and Iraq and other havens while
their troops simply melted away into the tribal areas of Pakistan
until we left. Quite simply, they could afford to lose Afghanistan for
a decade or so, and they are patient.

This part turned out to be true. Killing lots of people in Afghanistan
didn't seem to help much. Why that means that killing more people in
more places would be better is unclear.

So, we had to take the war some place they could not afford to lose.
Iraq filled that bill in both location and population. A capitalist,
secular and self-governing Iraq in the middle of the feudal Islamic
world was intolerable, and its success would have spread to
neighboring countries as the miracle of the rule of law and capitalism
raised the Iraqi standard of living beyond anything Islam has to
offer. They had to come out and fight or their strategy would be
defeated. That is why we went to Iraq, to make them meet us in the
kind of war we can win.

You really don't see anything wrong with waging war on a country that
was no threat to you at all just so you could gather some jihadis in
one spot so you could blow them up? You don't think our track record
in setting up peaceful puppet governments since WWII makes this rosy
outcome a tad far-fetched?

This war has not been well managed. We are simply too civilized to do
what is expected in that part of the world. Al-Sadr and his militia
should have been utterly wiped out at the first instance of resistance
early in the occupation. Likewise, Falujah should have been flattened.
Those would have seemed harsh initally, but in the long run, lives
would have been saved and the new government would have been
stabilized.

And we would have "won" in Vietnam if we had only bombed them back to
the stone age. Why oh why do they hate us?

Now, if we leave in defeat, they are back on their game plan and we
can expect more 9/11's until we withdraw completely and let them have
Kuwait and SA. I don't think we have the unity now to prevail.

So you're saying that if we leave Kuwait and SA we _won't_ have more
911's? Excellent advice.

That is the price of underestimating the ability of the American
people to understand the big picture. Had bush laid all this out in
the first place, explained the stakes and the strategy from the
beginning instead of all the lawyer talk about UN resolutions and
other foolishness used to justify an unspoken strategic plan, I
believe the people would have stood by the plan as long as it takes.
No, I am afraid we will withdraw and let them build strength until my
children and grandchildren are forced to choose between Sharia and
nuclear war.

Or perhaps we could have debated that war is serious business and he
better think again if he thinks we're going to slaughter innocent lives
because he's got some racist paranoid delusion that all muslims are
out to get us and it's us or them.

Don

--
Don Poitras

So, now the "operator" (presumably a person) knows how you voted? (how
else to verify?). Or do you mean that the operator verified that a
piece of paper came out? (did you verify what was on that piece of paper?)

He "knows" how I voted the same way that the election officials "know"
how I voted with the paper ballots. Or did you think they can't look
at those, too?

Of course, they're "x's" on a piece of paper that must be lined up with
a template in order to interpret what they mean. All he did was
verify that it printed out. He didn't look at it in an attempt to see
how I voted.

Not that it matters -- he has no idea who I am, or how many times I've
voted. Until mandatory IDs are required to vote, the system is an
utter sham.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"