Both parties have "acceptable" and "unacceptable" ideological points from the POV of the middle. This is, frankly, to be expected. A centrist coalition that rejects the weirdness on both ends is, alas, an unstable beast. A more natural, "low energy" formation is two parties staked out on either side of the middle, pandering to outliers while selling the more acceptable points and technocratic decisions to the middle. Hence my oft repeated claim that all politicians are liars to a greater or lesser extent as a matter of need and job description. A pol or party that told the truth all the time would consign itself to permanent defeat, because there is no way to form a majority (or even a significant plurality) without fudging things so that some electors think you're acting in their interests when you're not quite doing so.

You and I are seperated sometimes by a common language.

What I think you are still missing is the "details of their agenda." I really don't think they exist as priorities. Instead they are the result of the typical and despicable pork barrel politics.

You are bringing a laundry list mentality to a Ten Commandments style approach to politics. The former won't help you understand the latter.

Going back, I continue to find superb little bits here and there, in addition to the primary thesis. This (for example) is very nicely phrased and entirely true:

I also love the phrase: the embarrasing spectacle of a Democratic Congress. True, but far better than the alternative.

Cheers!

I was Matthew G. on Tacitus.org (and IRL). I decided to start fresh on this site.

mush on their ends of the spectrum, a lot of poorly informed people -- and many of them, like some of those in center, are pretty clueless.

I think his hard core partisan was a generic jibe, not necessarily applying the tag to you. You aren't hard core; just quite firmly canted... :)

...but uninformed and disengaged people can be found all along the political spectrum. It's human nature; no one can stay informed and engaged with everything and some people choose to leave politics to others.

As for the objects of Republicans' and Democrats' deceit, I believe those people are called "likely voters". =)

BTW, I meant "hardcore partisan" as a generic label, not a specific one for you. I respected the posting rules on the old site, and I'll try to do the same on this one. Ideas are fair game, commenters are not.

being forced to play an instrument might make you hate playing one but I doubt it would make you hate music.

In fact, years later I took up the guitar and forced the rest of the house to listen to my strangled attempts at heavy metal :)

Of course there's forcing and forcing. I was forced to do the violin and forced to go to school and forced to do a whole load of other things I didn't like, but not in a bad way.

Too many Democrats in Washington are comfortable playing the "Washington Generals" to the GOP "Globetrotters" -- It's a good gig with steady pay, no real conflict and even if not in power, the Democratic leadership types can still get top restaurant reservations.

Big picture, its all bad for America. Both parties.

I agree with your agreement

Multiple H-bomb terrorism is existential. A few A-bombs? Nah.

Of course, making sure Russia secures loose nuclear material and not washing our hands of responsibility for North Korea would better prevent nuclear terror than what we are doing.

.

It's built on assumptions just like his example was, distinctions between rational actors with full or partial information are inportant to both. Polysci has a much smaller set of statistics to test them on (biggest problem with political science, guess how many times Ken has read someone's case studies for their "why wars start" theory that tried to apply it to WWI). But it's a reasonable assertion that the more ignorant the middle is, the worse choices they'll make. Our middle is pretty good actually IMO although they whiffed picking Bush over Gore, I can't blame them for 68 and 72, the elections that demolished the old left, and you shouldn't blame them for the well-deserved whipping your party's gonna take in a few weeks.

To you, and the other people criticizing the premises of the social sciences yet again:

It's a *model*, meant to facilitate conceiving a problem but not to account for every possible nuance (which would be impossible) - any decent political scientist will be the first to recognize its limitations regarding actually mapping it to reality, and actually the bulk of many papers and books address these concerns. I didn't get into that here because I wanted to just make a brief comment to point out something I thought relevant.

No naivete here, and the math is actually quite interesting if you want to follow it. But again, it is a model, and those who employ it freely acknowledge that even the math does not necessarily make the model externally valid (that is generalizable), but only internally so.

Please, to you and the other people pursuing this argument, stop prejudging things. Try reading an academic article and you'll see that there are no political scientists wandering around saying "We have the formula to answer every social problem! PEOPLE ARE NUMBERS!". We're just trying to apply the best tools we can to what we acknowledge are very difficult problems. The difficulty, however, doesn't make it not worth trying.

PS - The way folks try to argue in favor of models having relevance is generally by anecdotally relating them to situations, such as this one. And I do happen to think that the continuum-of-stances model is a decent way of understanding this "violin case" perspective (which by the way is a model of sorts as well, just without the numbers). Rather than assume I'm declaring it to be an infallible model of infinite explanatory power (which I'm not), try responding to that *specific* assertion.

Yet in the proper hands, the violin has potential for emotional expression that exceeds nearly any other musical instrument I am aware of.

And I have never, ever bowed a single note.

= = =

That said, no parent has truly lived until they have heard their child practice "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" with a decidedly Jewish interpretation mostly due to an inability to not play flat.

A tradition dies when the last practicioner is dead. We are pretty far from that with the violin. Ask the Chinese, who manufacture them by the thousands.

It isn't very important that they are not a source of income for all but the very best players. This was always so. Mozart died broke, and he did much more than merely play the violin.

As for me, I turns out I discovered that the instrument provides a very different feedback than the piano. When I tried it, the cat scratches I achieved sounded horrible. But then I figured out the right pressure and speed for bowing, and I must say it is worth a try if you have any affinity for music at all. It's addictive.

"dominate theme" was also good.

that caused me to stumble was hard ball.

Triggered a repressed memory :-)

1. Appoint conservative judges to the bench.
2. Have the government grow at a slower rate than the economy (you will have to make exceptions during an armed conflict). The general concept of subordination isn't a bad place to start.
3. Understand that in this effort the other side isn't going to play by your rules. Thus, don't allow third parties to dictate your rules.

John Kerry immediately comes to mind. Maybe if the Dems had put together a plan and run with it, we would be having an entirely different conversation.

But since they have been silent, does that not constitute consent?

It was primarily the Democrats who have argued over the NSA wiretapping of foreign terrorists. Democratic leaders knew about the Presidents program and said nothing until the story was illegally revealed in the newspapers. Why didn't the Democrats make an issue of the program when they attended meetings at the White House where they were told of the programs existence? I will tell you why. They didn't because it wasn't politically expedient at the time. And really they probably had no problem with it. Of course once the program was outed it was time to jump on the political band wagon and act like you knew nothing about it. How pathetic. The NSA wiretapping program is useful and has helped save lives. I understand the debate is over how it is done and judicial review and such and such. The issue here is about wiretapping foreign terrorists talking to Americans. To even argue over an issue that involves possibly listening to UBL just seems well...ignorant. How about, in bad taste.

The Democrats, and a few Republicans, attempted to stop tough interrogation tactics for big league terrorists. This is not only foolish, it is absolutely irresponsible, how about arrogantly, and pardon the slight, stupid. We are not talking about putting people on the rack, or cutting fingers off, or causing death or organ failure. We are talking about tactics we use on our own soldiers in training. However, there are some who think stripping a man naked and making him stand and listen to the Red Hot Chilly Peppers for hours on end is torture. That is silly and makes you look silly to believe that. Luckily they lost that debate. But again the Democrats support no tough tactics at all. That is not the mind set of people who know how or can win against terrorists.

The Democrats want to allow terrorists to be put on trial as if they where US citizens with all the rights of you and me. Not only is this wrong, it is expensive and dangerous. Military tribunals ensure the integrity of intelligence sources and can operate much faster and more efficiently. If we were to use public courts we run the risk of the government dropping their case to protect sources. We would be forced to release people that are trying to kill us. I believe we can give them a fair trial and preserve some form of due process at the same time. However, enemies of the state do not deserve the same rights as US citizens.

I do not believe Democrats couldn’t protect the country but they need to stop taking foolish positions simply because its contrary to Bush’s position. I fear the Democrats will become so caught up in left wing civil liberties debates that they will forget that the preservation of the innocent should come first, even if we have to give up some liberties to do that.

This is a reasonable position. Most Americans agree, as they have with the President’s wiretap program and his coercive tough interrogation tactics for terrorists. The Democrats were simply on the wrong side in both debates.

If the Democrats had had their way, or they eventually, foolishly, reverse what Bush has put in place, then yes, I think a price will be paid by some Americans who become, literally, casualties of this foolish thinking.

By the way I don't think all Democrats disagree with the President on the above issues. I do know for a fact that some Democrats on Capitol Hill privately support the President on these issues but remain out of the debate for political reasons. So I guess there is hope.

We shall see.