Well i had said for the first time we could expect a profit and you were letting me know historically we have made one. But it is still wonderful.
Umm string, i guess you have never herd question time have youPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/podcast/QUESTIONREPS.xml download one of them and see what you think To be honest canda does it better than we do, no questions without notice oh BTW those have been edited to remove the 1000's of points of order and insults that run though question time
I may be wrong. My information comes from listening to a Canadian and a British reporter talk about the difference between reporting on their elections and US elections. Both sited the fact that the "place to be" (and not just because of our size) is the USA. This was due to the fact that their elections, while newsworthy, were nothing compared to the craziness of the US electoral system. This may not be true down under. If not, then Oz seems to be the exception to the more sedate nature of most Westminster Systems. ~String
in general our elections seem to be less personal (because the focus is more on the parties) but not less dirty Futher more question time is a daily occurance in the parliment and one which not many people are impressed by. The term "kindergarten" gets thrown around alot by the media and there right. Even a former libral member came out AGAINST question time in its current form. He wanted us to move to the Candian system where there are no questions without notice and that SEEMS to get more thought out questions and answers rather than just daily point scoring. The senate is in GENERAL more sedate than the house i will say
Note: We do get PM's questions here in the States. I usually look for the British version, but sometimes I catch the snooze-fest that is Canadian PM's Questions and sometimes I catch the treat of the Australian version. This, and you can quote me on this, is the greatest gift of the Westminster System, and I would happily love an amendment to the US Constitution that requires the president to have to stand before a joint session of Congress once a month, for no less than one hour, to engage in "President's Questions." Something, like: "Once each month, the President and four of his cabinet officers, except the Vice President who shall be kept away from the Capital for security purposes, shall stand before the Congress for no less than 90 minutes for the purpose of answering questions by the members of both houses. The Speaker of the House shall, in the fairest manner possible, which manner shall have been previously established by Congress, chose individual members to question the President and his cabinet on any matter of concern. "The President may, for the purpose of conducting official business and upon writing the Congress no less than two days prior, be excused from the from the questioning and another date shall be chosen by the Congress. If a majority of both Houses of the Congress shall deny the President's request, He shall attend at their request." ~String
could work for you in that format but it certainly doesnt work properly here at the moment. You get hardly any "would the minster please update the house on the earthquake in china" and more "your out of touch" "point of order, YOUR out of touch" ect. The difference is that in our parliments its the "obama" and "McCain" (just a representation) facing eachother across the table everyday.
AFAIK the way the deal is structured the US is not actually buying the mortgages, and is not guaranteed to get its money back even if a large fraction are kept and met. None of that is in the bailout as passed, AFAIK. What did I miss ?
To Heal the Sickness: The kindest, most dangerous cut Yes and no. To wit: It's a political theory, a sales theory. The idea is to control the message. Over the years, various sales techniques have accustomed the people to certain relationships. While salespeople and politicians enjoyed some manner of success over the years with this sort of behavior, the flip side is that the people have come, to a certain degree, to expect it. So what happens is easy enough to imagine. Pretend for a moment that I'm the candidate. Let's even invent a fantastic life story from here out to justify it. Imagine that one day I publish my novel, write a couple of movies, get famous, whatever. Something that puts me in the public eye. Okay, that way, I have the whole of my 35 years behind me. Now then, potential "personal" issues: • I spent the first 35 years of my life as an abstract nobody. • I smoke pot, think it should be legal. • I enjoy some risqué sex. • I'm sympathetic to Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists. Just for starters, and not counting whatever is in the novel or movies. Now, not all of those things are, in the public eye, admirable. In fact, none of them are. However, think of the things I could try to explain. I have sympathy for and some understanding of single parenthood. I can tell people a little bit about how mental illness affects productivity and social interaction. I can explain some things about what's wrong with the drug war. I can get utterly "cosmic" in my philosophical waxings. I can talk about sex from both ends of the stick, so to speak. I can explain my take on marriage and relationships. I can try to make clear to people why they shouldn't be afraid of Communism and Socialism, but also explain to the leftists why nobody wants to take them seriously. I don't think any of these things are necessarily bad. In fact, having grown up as an Asian American in a hostile, white-bred exurb, and having spent years at least partially closeted, I can tell people something about the effects of bigotry. Not all of it will be original, of course. Plenty have come before me and tried to make the point. But the people .... Imagine, first, the right wing of the blogosphere. Consider the headlines that would come from a press led around by the nose by Matt Drudge. Remember that we spent forty million dollars investigating a blowjob, and an angry preacher in the middle of the country gets more press than a fucking war. Wars, economic crises, taxes, abortion ... these things the people seem able to grasp and deal with. And while many of them, as individuals, could probably enjoy a philosophical fancy in a stoned-up haze, something happens when the people act and react as a group. My point is that if you go too far off message, people panic. Did you notice, in the Reverend Wright controversy, that what mattered is that he used the words, "God damn America"? Utterly absent from that debacle was any consideration of what those words mean. What is their context? Is the context accurate? Doesn't matter. He said, "God damn America", and nobody is supposed to say that except the terrorists, god damn it. There is no justifiable context, no reason to be found in history, no possible meaning other than whatever scares the holy living fuck out of people. At least, that's how it goes. For my part, if a guy who served his country so well and faithfully that the life of the President of the United States of America was placed in his trust—and a black man, in 1966, at that—turns up one day forty years later delivering an angry sermon about the sins of America, I, for one, am curious at the story there. Why would anyone not be curious? Is it the same as Sarah Palin's white preacher saying God will reach out his hand against America for its sins? Is it the same as a Hagee or Falwell saying 9/11 was God's retribution against American sins? Maybe. After all, it might have absolutely nothing to do with decades of betrayal, nothing at all to do with how blacks have been treated between 1966 and today. Still, though, that question was verboten in the rhetorical fracas surrounding Reverend Wright. And that's what the salesmen fear. Or drugs. They do it that way in Britain, too. Bill Clinton didn't inhale. Some British MP tried drugs once, didn't like it, and never tried anything else again. Fucking bullshit! And we know it. Where's the candidate who says, "Did I do drugs? My God, man. Ever do knife hits on glass paddles with a bell in a half-gallon bong? Fuckin' thought my brain was gonna explode!" Or, "What's that? Sex? Drugs? Come on, dude. Ever tried to fuck on mushrooms? Nearly impossible! I never thought a penis and vagina could be so goddamn funny!" And, yeah. After we all stop laughing, maybe the candidate could explain why he never did heroin, or how he never understood why people thought cocaine was so goddamn cool. "And don't get me wrong," he would say. "Cocaine is evil shit. I never did like it, but I kept doing it until one day I realized I had to fucking stop." And the crowd would look upon him, part in puzzlement, and part in awe. "I was one of the lucky ones," he would say. "I managed to get out before I buried myself with it. And not everyone is so lucky. Not everyone has the chance to step back and say, 'What am I doing?' Not everyone keeps their head above water, or that close to the surface." And then he could look out over the crowd and, in a solemn voice, explain, "Do you realize that in order to get treatment, the first thing these people need to do is confess to crimes including felonies? And we wonder why they're not piling in for treatment in droves." He could talk about how, when he told his mother that his girlfriend was pregnant, she said, "Oh, son!" in a horrified voice. How it took everyone more than a mere heartbeat to come to terms with the fact. And how everyone, once they woke up and recognized that this was a real thing happening, rallied 'round the child to make sure that this one, when she made it to the world, knew she was loved. And the headlines the next day? "Drug-crazed orgy spawns illegitimate love-child! Candidate's mother heartbroken!" And the people would respond as you might imagine. We did, after all, spend forty million dollars investigating a blowjob. Wars, abortion, economy and taxes, these things we can handle. Children out of wedlock? Buggery? Technicolor waking dreams fostered in a sweet-smelling haze? Yes, the politicians and the salesmen got their way. But now even they can't be human. It will overload the body politic, short-circuit the collective conscience. So they follow the script. Stay on message. Ladle out the talking points like soup for the underprivileged. And maybe some of them hate themselves every moment that they do. We'd be lucky if that was true, because one day one of them just might throw the bullshit to the wind and take a chance. But there's always so much at stake, and especially now, when that notion is so true, can we really blame them if they quake with fear at the monster they have so painstakingly fashioned? There is no anesthesia for the operation. Removing this cancer from American society will hurt people to the core. Even the smart ones are afraid to admit to themselves how badly they have been duped. And those less gifted with perspective will simply resent the implication that they aren't the smartest thing under the sun. Nobody wants to be the first to cut. In agony, the people will destroy the hand that seeks to heal. So even those with the best of intentions, who look beyond greed and power, who truly want to serve and heal our society ... even those are afraid.
McCain apparently did not read the bail-out bill he voted on a few days ago, because that bill allows the government to buy mortgages. I don't think he was very clear on the pricing of the mortgages. Below is the opinion on the debate from The New Republic: http://www.tnr.com/
I really don't like either of them to start with. That being said I watched some of the talks and, as was already mentioned, found them both avoiding answering the questions I heard asked directly and carefully dancing around those questions with misdirecting ways as usual. I then turned off the channel I was viewing them on and watched my science channel instead. To bad they don't answer the questions directly instead of always finding ways to avoid them.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I am hearing that Republicans are very upset with McCain's performance last night. Some of them are upset that he did not get more into the smear stuff they have been pushing in their rallies. Personally, I think it was wise for him to avoid that stuff as it is fundamentally untrue and the press would have quickly debunked it and then where would he be...worse off than where he is now.
Why can't they actually have a proper debate, where they have as many hours as they need to make their points? This debate was actually worse than the last one.
The debate should have been a total open hall format, no screened questions. In that format, I think that McCain would have done even better. As Buffalo Roam said earlier, "he did say my friends too many times" is toatlly true, but Barack Obama said 'change' even more. An interesting pattern I have observed in Obaba is when he is in a hole, he always goes back to slandering Pres Bush when he doesn't have anything else to say.
A roundup of righty reactions, all seem to condemn McCain's performance: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/obamas-win.html#more
Interestingly, BBC thought that McCain won the first debate and lost the second one. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7658313.stm
Format and "facts" I wonder at the format of the debates. The campaigns spend much effort hammering out the details of how each debate should be presented. Quite clearly, the structure of the debate hampered Obama, and while, in the end, McCain seemed more comfortable in the 2+1 restricted format, I think he, too, would benefit from something a bit looser. What about a debate in which the moderator asks the opening question, each candidate gives a three minute response, and then the structure devolves from there? Perhaps the moderator then would ask a follow-up and allow two-minute responses, and after that a series of one-minute rebuttals in which the moderator decides the question itself has been left behind and either awards a final rebuttal period to one candidate to even up the time, or, if it is already even, closes off the question. Instead of asking for additional time to respond, the candidates would incorporate those responses into later rebuttals. It would be easy enough to do: "Much like when the Senator said ...." In the end, each phase would probably close up after two rebuttals each, something along the lines of fourteen minutes spent on a question. And, of course, the candidates would inevitably run over at each opportunity, but it wouldn't be a big deal; the point is to get them talking beyond their prepared points, to force them to respond directly to one another. Sure, we might only hear four or five questions throughout the ninety minutes, but we would have slightly better odds of getting something substantial out of them. Besides, there's no need to limit the debate to ninety minutes. Let them go on for four hours, or until one of them falls over. Another way to do it would be to have the candidates present a detailed plan of some part of their campaign; health insurance, for instance. And then, for the debate proper, let them go at one another about those presentations. In any case, a two-minute answer and one-minute rebuttal for each candidate is only sufficient to guarantee that the people will hear nothing new. And on that note, let us also consider the number of debates. On the one hand, it is curious, on the surface, why Obama did not accept McCain's proposal for more debates. However, this is a common political strategy in the United States. Typically, it is the challenger who wants more debates, and the incumbent who refuses. As there is no actual incumbent in this race, though, the conventional wisdom is that the weaker candidate, the underdog, will want more opportunities to come after the stronger or favored. But while anybody could have seen why Kerry wanted more chances for Bush to put his foot in his mouth, it appears so far that having more debates would play against the Republicans. Palin captivated some Republicans, and her "chick factor", while evident even among Democrats and liberals, doesn't seem to be helping much in terms of winning new votes for the campaign. McCain, for his part, is disappointing his Republican colleagues. Obama may have done the Republicans a favor in refusing more debates, especially in a heavily-constrained town hall format. While my initial impression of the debate would have given it to McCain—entirely on the basis of presentation style—two problems emerge in consideration of the town hall format: It appears that McCain fed us a remarkably larger helping of distortions and lies; and it would seem, in the wake of this debate, that the people aren't having it. On the "facts": • The Los Angeles Times notes more and greater inaccuracies in John McCain's performance, including taxes (personal, business, and history), Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. LAT's primary complaint about Obama's presentation was the size of the Iraqi surplus. • FactCheck.org seems more critical of McCain's presentation than Obama's. The Republcian candidate's inaccuracies were more numerous and substantial. • Nonetheless, 324 or so voters at Wired.com's Threat Level think Obama told the biggest whoppers, presently by a score of 52/47%.____________________ Notes: Levey, Noam N. "Fact-checking the candidates". Los Angeles Times. October 8, 2008. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-factcheck8-2008oct08,0,4017424,full.story Jackson, Brooks et al. "FactChecking Debate No. 2". FactCheck.org. October 8, 2008. http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_2.html Stirland, Sarah Lai. "Bloggers Fact-Check Prez Candidates". Threat Level. October 7, 2008. (Viewed October 8, 2008). http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/bloggers-fact-c.html
One of McCain's strategy appeared to be to attack Obama putting him into defensive positions several times (I only saw the first half or so). What I am wondering is whether this strategy really helps. From what I have seen in the press mostly the partisans on either side press for those kind of attacks. In fact, one of the criticisms on the republican side was that McCain did not attack Obama directly enough (also implicated by some of posters in this forum). However, those have already made up their mind who they are going to vote for. And now the question: can swing voters really be convinced just by attacking the other side's policies (or personality or whatever?). I assume there is a reason why they did not decide yet and I would assume that portraying one's own strategies e.g. to overcome the financial crisis in more detail would appeal more rather than just saying what won't work (that is, the other party's suggestion, of course).
