Re: VOTE!

[Burt Munro]

A question for everyone who voted today....  I won't begin to get into the political aspects of who you voted for or why....  But - what did you experience today?  Long lines?  Longer than you've ever seen?

Just curious if all the talk I'm hearing about record numbers voting is consistant across the country.

My particular case is that I live in a St. Louis suburb and voted at 8:45 this morning.  I was number 231 to vote at my precinct.  I remember past elections (not necessarily national election years) where I  voted at 6:30pm and was number 250 to vote.  I only had to wait about 10 minutes to get in this morning.  Local reports mention waits as long as 1/2 hour in some precincts.

Regardless of your political views - please remember how very fortunate we are to live in a country where we have the freedom to vote for the candidate of our choice in an honest, manageable election that is held without fear of being assaulted for our beliefs.

Here's hoping that we do not see a repeat of 2000 where it took the Supreme Court to finally render a verdict on the winner, months after election day.

Rick

[AZ-MilleR]

I waited in line an hour and half in AZ to vote.  I was there at 6:00AM.  My wife went later in the day and waited 2.5 hours to vote.

[Super Dave]

SD---  I have a question for ya.  JK was a laywer and won his case. He did his job; but how is that situation any diff from all the people that sued MickyDs becasue their kids got fat. The parents should have controled their kids eating habits Passing the buck then and now nothings changed

Recognize that I'm on that side of the issue...

Where's the common sense?  Feed your kids MD, etc...all the time.  Your fault not MD, etc.

Vaccines...yeah, nothings perfect.  

I expect that some well made motorcycles pop because of manufacturers defects too.  It's part of the roll of the dice.

If you're a moron and do something stupid, fine.  Even then, I'm not sure too many people are worth the millions of dollars that some lawsuits "award" to the survivors.

I think that used to be called a tragedy.

We can make anyone "responsible" for anything.

If I teach someone some new racing skills, they get so hooked on racing that they loose their job and go bankrupt...

Is that my fault?

That's why I had to incorporate.

That cost $750 right out of the box in lawyers fees.  Accounting, etc.

[tzracer]

I find the entire vaccine topic very ironic. A vaccine gives you a version of the disease you are vaccinating against. This causes your body to build up immunity to the disease. Therefore when you encounter the disease, your body is already able to fight it, thereby preventing it from affecting you. The draw back is due to the fact the vaccine actually has a version of the disease in it, a small number of those vaccinated will contract the disease from the vaccination. AFAIK there is no way around this.

[Lowe119]

I was told that the virus in the vaccine is dead and cannot give you the flu virus. I was told the illness some feel after the shot is from your immune system getting weaker while it develops the antibodies.....

That is what I was told from my military healthcare specialists  ::) :)

[r1owner]

Vote

Yes, but only if you actually understand the value of what you're doing.  Voting because you should or you like or dislike someone...

Stupid.

And with that....

The major pharmaceutical companies in the US provided almost 90% of the
nations flu vaccine at one time. They did this despite a very low profit
margin for the product. Basically, they were doing us a favor. In the
late
80's a man from North Carolina who had received the vaccine got the flu.

 
The   strain he caught was one of the strains in that years vaccine made
by a US   company. What did he do? He sued and he won. He was awarded
almost $5 million! After that case was appealed and lost, most US
pharmaceutical companies stopped making the vaccine.
 
The liability out weighed the profit   margin. Since UK and Canadian
laws prohibit such frivolous law suits UK and Canadian companies began
selling the vaccine in the US.
 
By the way...the lawyer that represented the man in the flu shot law
suit was a young ambulance chaser by the name of John Edwards.

Sorry SD, that story is B.S.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_flu_shots.htm

Someone earlier said about the Dems blindly following what Kerry said.  I find that to be more true of a Republican supporter.

The fact is both candidates stretched the truth a lot during the campaign.

But to say that Edwards did that (sued for the flu vaccine) without checking the facts is something I would expect Cheney or O'Lielly to do.

To say that Kerry's healthcare plan was socialized medicine is also crazy!  At least he had a plan that would extend coverage to people who had no chance to get any at all.  

What was Bush's plan?  Oh yeah, that's right, create a tax shelter to put money in for unexpected medical emergencies.  Sure, the people that can't afford to pay a healthcare premium at all now, can sock away all that extra money into one of those accounts.  ::)

[Jeff]

Someone earlier said about the Dems blindly following what Kerry said.  I find that to be more true of a Republican supporter.

I would personally say that I see it from both sides.  The problem is too much information...  Or rather, too many sources.  Everyone is slanted, and you get their spin on the facts.  Not to mention that the entire political process is flawed to the point of being a marketing campaign.  People have all these avenues for information (TV/Radio/Newspaper/web/word of mouth) and far more often than not, they are incorrect or are not telling the 'whole' story...

The label throwing and bashing has been interesting in many of my forums, email lists and personal encounters. "all you damned left wing..." "leave it to the GOP" etc etc...  This is disturbing to me.

I don't think *ALL* of either party is wrong/corrupt/etc, and likewise, I don't necessarily agree with everything my "party" represents.

At this rate, our kids will be soon be reciting "two nations, one under God, one under....."

It truly is disturbing...

[Dawn]

Some of the militant actions that were taken by certain supporters were very disheartning.  The stealing of signs, slashing of tires, and displaying anti-_______ on buildings without permission was very, very low....

I hope that never happens again.

Thank goodness it's over for another four years   ;D

Dawn

P.S.  Wall street likes it too.   ;)

[r1owner]

I would personally say that I see it from both sides.  The problem is too much information...  Or rather, too many sources.  Everyone is slanted, and you get their spin on the facts.  Not to mention that the entire political process is flawed to the point of being a marketing campaign.  People have all these avenues for information (TV/Radio/Newspaper/web/word of mouth) and far more often than not, they are incorrect or are not telling the 'whole' story...

The label throwing and bashing has been interesting in many of my forums, email lists and personal encounters. "all you damned left wing..." "leave it to the GOP" etc etc...  This is disturbing to me.

I don't think *ALL* of either party is wrong/corrupt/etc, and likewise, I don't necessarily agree with everything my "party" represents.

At this rate, our kids will be soon be reciting "two nations, one under God, one under....."

It truly is disturbing...

I do agree with the statment that neither party is 100% perfect.  There are things I do like about each party.

I also agree that its sad about what's happening with the Pledge of Allegiance. :(

As far as the vehement views on politics... I've talked to a friend here at work and he mentioned something about the fact that since the internet, people can now log on and talk exclusively with people that share the same views.  That tends to make people shortsighted and not very likely to open their mind to another viewpoint like they would have in the past just talking to friends and other people at parties, etc..

Now, I just hope no one takes the polling results to court for the next month or two.

[Jeff]

I think that is why (the internet) the election was so close.  The parties had so much demographic information available to them that they could instantly see where they fell in given areas, and target themselves to that area.  Then follow up to see the results.  

This could all be done near real-time, and they latched onto whatever fear/need/desire the situation dictated.

Problem is....   It's only going to get worse....

[Super Dave]

George Bush was my comander in chief.

A different one was mine...  H W Bush.  Also, Reagan and Clinton.

After 911, most of the world was on our side. Now it is worse than before.

After September 11th, the world was shocked.  On our side...for what?

What were they going to do?  Wait for us (US) again.

When will someone else stand up and do something.  If Bush did not stand up and say something, would another "world leader" have said something?

It took Reagan to call the USSR the "evil empire"...and it took him to tell Gorbachev to "tear down this wall"...I remember that.  And I remember the feeling of that was the first time that anyone really finally pointed to someone outside of East Germany and blamed the wall on what happened in Moscow.

The Israeli's seem to stand up for themselves and there are lots of people that don't like them.  Might be a good thing...

World on our side...

UN resolutions.  Was that enough for you, or do we have other tests?

Thirty nations helping specifically in Iraq.  Yeah, they ain't doing it like we are, but do they have the population or GNP that we do?  No, of course not.  What would you expect of them.

1000's of young soldiers are dying in a war that was unecessary.

Well, actually A thousand.  

Vietnam certainly had more.  

Korea certainly had more.

Do I need to continue?

More Iraqi's have died.

France helped us with our revolution...one that was apparently only supported by approximately a third to the colonists.

My job in the military was to keep Saddam from harming people.

The passive way that Saddam was being appeased wasn't making the world better.  It was just keeping him AND the thugs around him from posing an immediate and direct threat to others around him.  Kind of like putting a body on a grenade.

Al Quida bombed the world trade centers.

Ok, here we go...

This is network marketing, folks.  You've got a higherarch of people with ideas.  You've got people at the top.  You're gonna have Al Quida, Blahblah Jihad, etc.  They all just hate America for supporting Israel or whatever their cause is against something.  So, you go out and recruit some fairly educated individuals that are motivated.  They go out and get some others that aren't so bright.  You train them, get them into thinking that they have a higher purpose and all.  You've got all those pawns there doing the bidding of the higher ups...You don't see bin Laden blowin' himself up.  You don't see Saddam out there doing it.  But Saddam was happy to give a family a "cash award" to a family of a suicide bomber.

If you whack Saddam or bin Laden, you still have an area ripe to get people out blowing themselves up.  

Educate these people that have no hope...hey, they might start reading John Stuard Mill and recognize that some of the stuff they hear and read might just be plain stupid and not worth acknowledging.

There were no WMDs.

Not correct.  For many years there were WMD's, they were found by UN inspectors, and they were destroyed.  In the recent past have any WMD's been found?  No, but that does not mean that they won't be found either.

There was reasonable intellegence, which we all know wasn't very good, which wasn't very good because US intellegence was cut...it takes years to get back into contact with the spooks you need to really work with for good info..., that said there was potental WMD's.  

Everyone recognized that Saddam certainly wanted them.  

You have a military background.

So, you recognized that bio and chem weapons are a bit different, don't you?  It's not like a factory building B29's or anything.  We're talking labs or things to store bits of individual products that would only make the WMD when brought together.  Yeah, you might not find mustard gas, but you might find the ingredants for it.  

I can make an explosive.  I have two ingredants in the house that I would use.  Give me time and my stove and I can make it.  Tada!  SD's WMD...

[Super Dave]

I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL.

AWOL - absent without leave...

Something that would have actually been taken care of under the UCMJ...would have been in a record.  Isn't there.

However, for those of us that have been in the Guard...well, sometimes you need to be places, etc.  Reservists have regular lives too.  

By joining the Texas
Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.

Ok, this was something that people did.  Some went to seminary schools, some joined ROTC (run over to canada), some committed suicide.  Regardless, he was trained in a plane that wasn't even used in the Vietnam theater...so, who's gonna pay to retrain him...

Never once made Honor Roll, but gained admission to Yale.

I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.

I was on the honor roll, never even applied to Yale.  Couldn't afford it either.  I think I had a low C average to at my meager university.