j_b

they can't and shouldn't make their own dietary decisions.

sorry pal but the clown and the play rooms were not thought up to draw in adults. Can you say a 5 year old knows the difference or care about healthy versus not healthy? Where is free will in that? You'd probably restrict how much explicit sex they could watch but you would not mind one bit if your kid sat in front of McD ads all day long, go figure.

I thought it was done as well until DFA started trawling for Goat.

well, first it was meant as a joke but why don't you oblige me and explain why my statement is revealing of not believing in personal freedom. Don't you enjoy the freedom of choosing between McD, DQ, BK, etc ... wow! what diversity of choice (twisted fries, straight fries, curly fries, fries with green goop, fries with white goop, etc ...). You are right man! I am all for the freedom to choose what kind of fries you'll have today, tomorrow, the day after, and on ... but perhaps we should discuss another food group: the hamburger. Now, you have the small, the medium, the big, the huge, with or without cheese, bacon and any other stuff you can imagine. Wow! I am floundering under so much freedom of choice.

are you saying that what matters is getting an answer, any answer, and not what the answer is? or is it that McD is the answer to a greasy fix?

but will it sort out whether eating at McD is the appropriate response to an inner, fundamental want?

no, of course not but it is the official reason given ("they are an imminent danger"). agreed, I was just making fun of the discourse coming from the other side. The difference is probably due to different geopolitics (arab world is not the asian world, and our chances of getting away with it cleanly/swiftly in Korea would be virtually nil)

I agree with you. I just thought that having 2 different policies based on some people being stupid enough to lob one while others were not, quite revealing about our logic toward Iraq.

so what makes others stupid enough to lob one? I can already see what's going on inside the white house: this one .... stupid, that one .... ah, ok not stupid, etc .... Or is it that I am missing some subtlety in your thinking?

So she is the queen of the Ross Lake drainage. I have not been there recently but I doubt it. It rained up to ~7000' late last week (and buckets), then it got plastered by some colder stuff but not much of it. So it does not sound good. And skiing probably sucks as well (or alternatively this could be classic cascade skiing: rain runnels that have a wavelength a significant fraction of ski length .... yuum!)

the climb may remain quite thin in el nino years. If the cascades are usually too low by a 1000' to be a mecca for winter climbing, what does it mean about warm, low snow years? But perhaps Colonial gets his share no matter what.

I am not laying claim to anyone. Note, that since nobody can claim ~65% of potential voters, noone has a mandate to dictate policy unilaterally. Is there anything else that is unclear about this? as far as your weak attempts at portraying anyone as an enemy of democracy if they don't agree that Chavez should go, it's disgraceful. What do you think would have happened to the oil workers in the good ol' USA?

didn't you read my post? I didn't say it is lack of access. I say that whatever the reason for not voting does not fundamentally change the issue of legitimacy and special interest group dictating policy. You may vote him out of office next term but the damage to the environment, internal security, our image abroad, etc ... will take a lot more than voting him out of office to fix. Have you ever heard about the balance of power in government?

sigh. since when ours not being a parliamentary democracy is a good excuse for small interest groups dictating policy to the majority?

ah yes! the lamo argument of people chosing not to vote. It may be difficult for you to understand but I am going to say it once nonetheless. Whatever the reason for not voting may be, poor roads and lots of rain on election day, population disenfranchised from the political process (and often for good reasons), people drunk on hamburger and cable tv, etc ... In the end, the bottom line is: this society does not give itself the means to have a large fraction of its population going to the box, which results in specific social/interest groups controlling policy. So one last time since it apparently did not sink in: 18% of the potential vote is no mandate for radically changing policy. Until more people participate to the political process anyone wanting to make policy unilaterally (and against the will of the population at large) is going far beyond any legitimacy conveyed by the current level of participation. and yes you are right, Reagan was elected by approx. 25% of the voting age population so it was far from the landslide the media claimed it was.

listen, you can attempt to rationalize all you want. All that one needs to know is: 18% of the potential vote is not a mandate for radical policy changes, especially when there are good reasons to think most people disagree.

huh? all right, it's settled then: Bush's constituency is 18% of the voting age population. Only someone with very low standards of what constitutes an acceptable form of democracy, could think such poor representativity legitimizes policies that are obviously taken against the wishes of the majority.

ok fine, we have established Clinton did not govern with an absolute majority. Did he use his relative majority to push through policies that were hugely unpopular? no, as you yourself conceeded. All of this points for a balance in the exercise of power especially whenever democracy is not legitimized by an absolute majority. This is sorely lacking today.

I am not sure where you learned that having a representative democracy and a republic of states meant that politicians could do whatever they fancied irrespective of the desires of their constituancies. I guess next time you wrap yourself in the flag and talk about democracy you better explain what you mean.

funny how your conception of democracy is convoluted, not that I am surprised at all.

can you name major politicy rollbacks taken by say Clinton that went against the majority of public opinion?

I did not go that far, although it seems like a debatable point. Yet it seems clear the very low turnout does not confer legitimacy to concentrate power in the executive branch to orchestrate systematic policy rollbacks or make major policy decision that still divide the nation (in spite of a media campaign attempting to ensure a concensus).

In turn, I have no need to qualify what you are. Everyone here is fully aware of it.

yes and in the process he forgot to mention that winning a political contest with significantly less than 50% participation cannot confer any legitimacy to perform rollbacks and take decisions in spite of public opinion. These are truly the policies wanted by a minority.