Your prediction about outcome of Super Tuesday

Buzsaw writes:

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John McCain, the pseudo Republican.

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BWAHAHAHAHA!Where did this silly idea come from that McCain was something other than a dyed-in-the-wool, hard-line conservative?The man was tortured but when Bush told him to back off the anti-torture bill, he did.He hasn't met an anti-choice bill he didn't like.His voting record puts him firmly in the pro-corporate/anti-union/anti-environment/anti-arts camp. He was in favor for the disastrous tax cuts, seems to think that there is some truth to the long-discredited idea that tax cuts raise revenue, and is against equality for all citizens regardless of sexual orientation.He wants to keep us in Iraq for 100 years.Over his tenure, he has had a 90% approval rating from the John Birch society, 80% from the Traditional Values Coaltion, 100% from the Concerned Women of America, and 100% from the Eagle Forum.He thinks No Child Left Behind has been a good thing and that Baghdad is one of the safest places you can be.He voted against health insurance for children and for spying on Americans. He voted for infringement on free speech by supporting a Constitutional amendment against burning the flag, for Alito, for Roberts, for Bolton, and for the $40B gutting of educational funding.He voted for the disastrous extension of NAFTA to Central America, for the disastrous bankruptcy bill, and against the right of the people to form class-action suits at the State level.In this past year, he has voted with the Republican block 88% of the time. The average Republican only votes 80% of the time with the party.Do I need to remind you of his flip-flopping with regard to evangelicals? He called Falwell a stain on the American landscape and then immediately took it back in order to keep the religious right vote.This idea that McCain is some sort of "maverick" or "independent" or "libertarian" who can "stand up" to the conservatives is nothing more than a media invention. The fact that he voted to increase the minimum wage is hardly a sign that he's "bipartisan."McCain's a conservative. One of the most conservative candidates out there.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Taz writes:

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Saying that there is no such thing as race is like saying there is no such thing as color. After all, where does red ends and orange begins?

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But color is arbitrary. There is no reason why we have distinct color terms for "red" and "orange" and, in fact, there are some languages that don't make that distinction.In English, for example, we have a separate term for "pink" to distinguish it from "red" and yet we don't have a term for the similar lightening of "blue." It doesn't mean we can't talk about it...it's just that we don't see it as a distinct color from "blue." In order to describe it, we add descriptive terms to "blue" ("baby," "sky," "pale," etc.) or start comparing it to other objects that have a distinctive hue ("turquoise," "aqua," "topaz," etc.)"Race" is a culturally defined concept just as color is. Now, the morphological traits of the human body are a bit more discrete than color, it is the aggregate collection that we tend to define as "race" and there is no particular reason why certain traits necessarily go together. They simply happen to have collected together due to reproductive isolation among various populations.But, I do agree with you that it is ludicrous not to notice that these traits have collected. A bit of doublethink going on, I know, but it's important to note that what we call "race" is a socially constructed distinction, not a genetic one. And by recognizing that, we hopefully understand that it's just a collection of morphology and doesn't mean anything beyond that.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

molbiogirl writes:

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40% in the superdelegate's hands? WTF?

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Actually, only about 20% of the Democratic delegate count is in the hands of superdelegates. They exist for very specific reasons in an attempt to get the people who are the most active in the party to take part in the selection of the nominee. That is, primaries don't actually vote for the nominee any more than the general presidential election actually votes for the candidate. Instead, you are voting for a delegate and the delegate will be the one who casts the vote for the nominee.But for someone of importance in the party to be a delegate in the normal election process would require that he run against his own constituency. Thus, we have people who have actually run in elections and won their seats against not only other Democrats in the primary process but against Republicans in the general election being put in a poor position when it comes time to be active within their own party. By taking them out of the primary process and making them "superdelegates," they can bring their experience in actually running and winning a campaign to bear.That's the rationale behind it whether one agrees with it or not. The Democratic party (like most other parties) used to have backroom methods of selecting nominees but then shifted to a primary system in order to open it up. In the early 80s, it was felt that the most successful Democrats, the ones who had won elections, were not participating enough and a system was devised to get them involved.Now, even if we were to eliminate the superdelegates, your vote is fairly diluted with the delegate method if there is proportional representation as the Democratic party uses. Because the number of delegates for your particular district is so small, it requires a nominee to get much more than 50% of the vote in order to get more delegates than another candidate in order to get more delegates.That is, if your district has only four delegates, then you can win with two-thirds of the vote but you're still only going to get two delegates while your opponent, with one-third of the vote, will get the other two. It's not enough to simply win...you have to win decisively.Compare this to the Republican primary method which has no superdelegates and a winner-take-all process.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Double post...sorry.Edited by Rrhain, : Double post.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.