Post by The PeelerOn Mon, 22 Oct 2018 06:55:36 -0700, serbian bitch Razovic, the resident
psychopath of sci and scj and Usenet's famous sexual cripple, making an ass
Post by r***@TheWor1d.comPost by The JewsMEANWHILE: Mr. Ejercito and his human American family are
seeing the sights, enjoying the fresh air, and generally
having fun, while I'm stuck masturbating in my basement!
Cheers!
I love when you repeat back what I tell you, as if you actually
understood it!
But yep, thats about the size of it!
LOL
In yiddish, you vant I should write ?
Try ENGLISH first, dreckserb Razovic!
The mangina only speaks pedophile.
Jeff Jacoby shares his thoughts.
http://view.email.bostonglobe.com/?qs=24545cfa76b6eec175e70e986d4ca6135491bfd9000da818a02660eb50f191367266617a3ea3b2f1804e686c9d4730e97d9ca492a50afe289baf9f3e03801968628aa73d119c73397cfd58989a2ff183d710e9c892e9f041
The Boston Globe
Arguable - with Jeff Jacoby
Monday, October 22, 2018
Why it's OK not to vote
With the midterm elections just a couple of weeks away, there has been a lot
of attention focused on the high level of public interest, and on the
expectation by both major parties that there will be a surge in voter
turnout.
“Voter Turnout Could Hit 50-Year Record For Midterm Elections” proclaimed
the headline on an NPR story last Thursday:
The 2018 elections could see the highest turnout for a midterm since the
mid-1960s, another time of cultural and social upheaval.
“It's probably going to be a turnout rate that most people have never
experienced in their lives for a midterm election,” Michael McDonald, a
professor at the University of Florida who studies turnout and maintains a
turnout database, told NPR.
McDonald is predicting that 45% to 50% of eligible voters will cast a
ballot. That would be a level not seen since 1970, when 47% of voters turned
out, or 1966, when a record 49% turned out in a midterm. . . .
On average since World War II, only about 40% of Americans eligible to vote
cast a ballot in midterms. That's 30% lower than presidential elections. In
2014, a record low 36% cast a ballot, the lowest in 70 years.
The Wall Street Journal, reporting on the results of its latest opinion
survey, similarly found that more of the electorate is chomping at the bit,
with voter interest unusually high on both sides of the partisan divide:
“It’s a barnburner,” Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster who conducted the survey
with Democrat Fred Yang, said of the surge of voter interest. “There’s a
switch that’s been flipped. . . . They are engaging in the campaign and the
process.”
In the aftermath of the bitter confirmation fight over Supreme Court Justice
Brett Kavanaugh, Republicans have closed the once-large gap between their
voters’ and Democrats’ interest in the election. Now, 68% of Republican
voters and 72% of Democrats say they are very interested in the election —
the highest recorded for either party by the survey in a midterm election.
Also helping Republicans is a rise in President Trump’s job-approval rating
to 47%, the highest mark of his time in office, with 49% disapproving his
performance. . . .
Yang said the poll results include signs that the widely predicted “blue
wave” of Democratic gains in the House in 2018 now is running into a
“riptide of uncertainty [that] has been created with a surge of Republican
intensity.”
Although Democrats are preferred in the national poll overall, their
advantage has vanished in the House districts that matter most. In districts
rated as the most competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, the
parties are dead even on the question of which one should control Congress.
Bottom line: More voters than usual are expected to cast ballots in this
year’s election, but no one knows for sure whether that will give Democrats
or Republicans more reasons to celebrate when the votes are counted.
Now, I am a confirmed, lifelong voter. I turn out for every election to cast
my ballot, even when the outcome of the elections I care about are not in
doubt — which, since I live in ultra-blue Brookline, Mass., is just about
always. In a column some years ago, I described taking my child to the
polling place with me, and attempted to explain why I vote even if the
results are invariably a foregone conclusion:
For some, voting is simply a civic obligation — something a responsible
citizen does, like paying taxes or showing up for jury duty, because society
depends on it. Others genuinely enjoy the experience of voting. Election Day
is meaningful to them for its communitarian power to bring together citizens
of every rank as equals in an ancient secular ceremony. Still others, caught
up in the thrill of a close election, want to be a part of the action.
I decided that the real reason I vote is to express my civic faith — faith
that we still live under a government of the people, by the people, and for
the people. And faith that, even with all the cynicism, corruption, and
sourness of our public discourse, our democratic republic still functions
and our political rights are intact.
Including the political right not to vote.
With all due respect to the League of Women Voters, generations of civics
teachers, and numberless finger-wagging editorials and public-service
announcements admonishing Americans to vote, I reject the notion that voter
turnout is the preeminent measure of our democratic health.
It is commonly claimed that Americans have a civic duty to vote, and that
citizens who don’t vote have not behaved responsibly. But that’s not true.
Millions of Americans choose not to vote for eminently sensible reasons —
because they have no interest in politics and public policy, or because they
aren’t following the election campaign and know nothing about the
candidates, or because it is immaterial to them how any given race turns
out. I am all for an informed citizenry. But for citizens who aren’t
informed, not casting a vote is entirely responsible.
Pressuring people to turn out on Election Day to take part in an election
that doesn’t matter to them is short-sighted and obnoxious. We don’t
pressure people to make uninformed investment or health-care decisions. Why
treat voting with any less respect?
The Washington Post last week dispatched reporters to Montgomery County,
Tenn., where voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election was just 42%,
far lower than the national voter turnout rate of 61 percent. The story
quoted Austin Blatey, a 25-year-old call center employee who said he didn’t
vote in 2012 or 2016, and doesn’t plan to vote this year either.
“I just don’t feel I can change politics. Or, if I could help change it, I’d
just be voting for someone whose solutions I don’t agree with.”
He continued: “For every one thing I like about a politician, there are 10
things I don’t like. Take Trump. I like his tax cuts but then he’s jacking
up the deficit . . . it’s trading off one evil for another. . . . I’ll just
stay at home and not have my blood pressure raised.”
Blatey’s choice isn’t the one I make — I turn out to vote even though I
realize my vote will change nothing — but I don’t see why anyone should
criticize him. He has an absolute right to vote, but absolutely no
obligation to do so. We don’t scold people for failing to exercise their
freedom of speech just because they don’t write letters to the editor or
march in protests. We don’t hector non-churchgoers about their “civic duty”
to worship. By the same token, the right not to cast a ballot is essential
to a meaningful franchise.
More from the Post story:
Montgomery County residents offered a list of reasons: The state mostly has
been controlled by Republicans for years, so many right-leaning nonvoters
say their chosen candidate doesn’t need their support to win and
left-leaners say their candidate will never win. Both sides ask the same
question: Why bother?
Others said they don’t care about politics — often citing its nastiness —
and don’t want to pick a side. And still others said they just can’t get
excited about the candidates on the ballot.
“I just think that it’s a waste of my time,” said Leo Meeks, 39, a lifelong
Clarksvillian who majored in political science in college but hasn’t voted
in at least eight years. . . .
Logan Russell, an 18-year-old college student studying music, said that once
he is done with school, he will deeply research candidates and vote — but he’s
not willing to make the investment of time now.
“I’d be one person versus millions who probably have spent less time
thinking about their vote than I have,” Russell said. “We make
point-zero-infinite percentage difference. I can do more by spending that
time helping a friend out. I mean, really, that’s helping their life more
than voting for somebody who may or may not be pressured into voting for
something I may or may not like.” . . .
Dozens of students said that they plan to vote in the midterm elections this
fall — but few could name any of the statewide candidates, even those in the
contested Senate race between Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Democrat
Phil Bredesen, the state’s governor from 2003 to 2011. Many others said they
have no plans to vote.
“I would rather not vote in something I don’t know about,” a freshman
nursing major said as she had lunch with classmates. “If I voted, I would
probably just vote however my parents voted.”
Another young woman at her table agreed: “I’m not into politics.”
For the sake of argument, let’s agree that in an ideal word, citizens would
make it their business to be politically aware and informed, and would vote
carefully and wisely each Election Day. But in our less-than-ideal world,
who serves the public interest better — the uninformed voter who blindly
casts a ballot in a race he or she knows nothing about, or the uninformed
voter who simply stays home?
The Pew Research Center released results last week from a new poll on voter
awareness and engagement. Among its findings was a familiar one: Young
adults are the least informed cohort in the electorate. Among voters under
30, a whopping 60% say “they know little or nothing about the candidates
running for Congress in their district.” If most of that 60% decides to sit
out the election next month, why should any logical observer complain?
Opting out of voting is, in effect, opting to let voters who care more or
know more about an election make your choice for you. There is nothing wrong
with that.
On the other hand, there is something wrong with turning the franchise into
a fetish. The fraction of voters who turn out to vote is not the litmus test
of democratic robustness. We improve nothing by constantly looking for more
ways to wheedle, cajole, and browbeat people into participating in
elections. So feel free to tune out those nagging articles listing the seven
reasons — or the 10 or 50 reasons — why everyone should vote. In a free
country, no one has to vote. Staying home on Election Day is a legitimate
choice. And often the best one.
Who’s against racial preferences? Most of us
Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiffs in the Harvard admissions
lawsuit, make no secret of their goal: They want race-based affirmative
action to be banned in higher education as a violation of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.
Title VI of that law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color,
or national origin in any program or activity that receives government
funds. Since Harvard receives copious amounts of federal funds, its racial
preferences, the plaintiffs argue, should be ruled unlawful. And should
Harvard’s racial quotas and preferences be deemed permissible under Supreme
Court precedents, the plaintiffs advocate that those precedents be
nullified. They urge the Supreme Court to “ overrule any decision holding
that the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore Title VI ever permits the use of
racial preferences to achieve ‘diversity.’”
As a firm believer that discriminating because of race is wrong, I hope that
Judge Allison Burroughs, who is hearing the case in US District Court in
Boston, rules firmly for the plaintiffs. And I hope the plaintiffs prevail
when her ruling, whatever it turns out to be, is appealed.
And if you’re like most Americans, you hope so too.
The news media are covering the lawsuit with ill-disguised disdain for the
plaintiffs’ position, and regularly suggest that Edward Blum, the founder of
Students for Fair Admissions, is an extremist . But there’s nothing out of
the mainstream about the plaintiffs’ view. It is the one most of us hold. If
anyone should be tagged as extremist or provocative in this debate over skin
color and college admissions, it is Harvard and its defenders.
The plain fact is that Americans overwhelmingly oppose racial preferences in
higher education. Of course that has no relevance to the legal proceedings
underway at the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse. But it ought to be reflected
in the way the lawsuit is discussed.
Supporters of admissions policies like Harvard’s make elaborate arguments in
defense of using skin color as a criterion in assembling each year’s
freshman class. I’m sure that most supporters of racial preferences are
sincere, and that they truly believe, as a Boston Globe editorial put it,
that “promoting equality, righting past wrongs, and building a fairer
society” requires letting schools take race into account when picking and
choosing among applicants. But sincere or not, their position is one that
Americans decisively reject.
For years, polls have found clear-cut opposition to race-based affirmative
action.
In September, a survey commissioned by WGBH asked a nationwide sample of
adults whether they agreed or disagreed with Supreme Court rulings that
allowed universities to consider race in admissions. More than 7 out of 10
respondents (72%) disagreed — “including,” WGBH reported, “a majority of
black, Asian, and Hispanic people who responded.” This clearly was not a
result driven by racial animus, since an even larger majority, 86%, agreed
that a diversity of races and ethnicities is desirable on campus. Americans
don’t object to people of other colors. They object to the government (and
the institutions it subsidizes) making decisions about people’s lives on the
basis of their color.
Enjoy reading Arguable? Please tweet the good word to your followers!
A major survey released this month by the liberal organization More In
Common came to a similar conclusion. In a detailed study of polarization and
public opinion in the United States, researchers identified numerous topics
on which left and right tend to see the world very differently. When it came
to race-based affirmative action in higher education, however, they found
that most Americans are united.
Within the narrow slice of Americans the researchers identified as
Progressive Activists (who constitute about 8% of the population), support
for racial preferences in college admissions is quite high. But “the rest of
the country does not hold this view,” More In Common found. Even among the
demographic segment it calls Traditional Liberals (11% of the population),
only a little more than a quarter, or 28%, support racial preferences. In
the aggregate, just 15% of Americans back the use of race, while a
prodigious 85% are opposed.
If anything, polling results suggest that Americans’ rejection of race-based
formulas has been growing more intense over time. In a 2016 Gallup survey,
70% of respondents said that college admissions should be based on merit
only. Asked whether they approved or disapproved of a Supreme Court decision
allowing race to be taken into account when making admissions decisions, 65%
said they disapproved. Four years earlier, a poll of millennials conducted
by Georgetown University and the Public Religion Research Institute found
that 57% of Americans between 18 and 25 were “opposed to racial preferences
playing a role in college admissions or hiring decisions.”
To repeat, popularity doesn’t make a policy correct. But just as journalists
frequently note that there is widespread support for, say, upholding Roe v.
Wade or same-sex marriage, they should acknowledge the widespread public
preference for colorblind admissions on college campuses. And they should
make it clear that it is the higher-education establishment, with its
obsessive pursuit of “diversity” rooted in skin color, which is far removed
from the American mainstream.
Site to see
Amid the internet’s vast ocean of drivel, some websites are alluring islands
of knowledge and discovery. Each week, in “Site to See,” I call attention to
one of these online treasures.
I enjoy time-travel science fiction, and have read no end of novels and
short stories in which people jump back or forward in time. Some of my
favorites include Poul Anderson’s “Time Patrol” series, David Gerrold’s
The Man Who Folded Himself, and Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court.
For anyone who wants to skip the storytelling of time travel and dig instead
into its physics and metaphysics, this week’s Site to See provides an
intriguing introduction. A Time Travel Website [URL:
http://timetravelphilosophy.net/] explores the philosophical and logical
implications of time travel — everything from the “Grandfather Paradox”
(could someone who has traveled to the past kill his own ancestor?) to the
“Double-Occupancy Problem” (how can a time traveler exist at the same time
as his younger or older self?)
The website doesn’t wholly ignore popular culture. A series of animated
timelines diagram the temporal peregrinations in several famous time-travel
movies and TV shows, such as “Looper,” “Dr. Who,” and “Star Trek IV.” One
shortcoming of the site is that there aren’t enough of them. Perhaps more
are in the works.
But the main focus is philosophy and logic, as in this excerpt from the Time
Travel Website’s philosophical analysis of the “Self-Visitation Paradox”:
Suppose that, on Monday at noon, Ted was sitting. The next Friday, Ted time
travels back to Monday at noon and stands while his younger self is sitting.
Can Ted be both sitting and standing? Time traveling seems to have provided
us a way in which he can, though it also seems obvious that a person cannot
be both sitting and standing at the same time. What is going on?
‘Property Compatibilism’
The compatible-properties solution accepts that the sitting and the standing
can occur simultaneously, done by a single person. On this view, the
apparent paradox stems from a failure to recognize that the argument's
conclusion is not contradictory. This failure may stem from the natural
assumption that, if Ted is sitting, then it is not the case that Ted is
standing. But maybe that assumption is only natural because we are so used
to thinking about situations that do not involve time travel. (Notice that
it is also natural to assume that no one can exist before being born, though
that conflicts with the possibility that one could time travel back to a
time before one’s birth.) Thus, the compatible-properties solution asserts
that sitting and standing are not mutually exclusive properties; one person
may do both at one time. While there would be a contradiction if Ted were
both sitting and it were not the case that he was sitting, or standing and
not the case that he was standing, it is not contradictory that Ted is both
sitting and standing. The self-visitation scenario may not be the problem
that it first appeared.
Here is a less dense conundrum to ponder, from the late cosmologist Stephen
Hawking: “If time travel is possible,” he once asked, “where are the
tourists from the future?”
Recommend a website for this feature! Send me the link and a short
description (***@globe.com), and put “Site to See” in the subject
line.
ICYMI
My Sunday column was about the grisly murder of Saudi dissident (and
Washington Post columnist) Jamal Khashoggi. “Once again,” I wrote, “the West
is being taught a lesson it never seems to master for long: Enlightened
despots aren’t enlightened. Any regime that imprisons, tortures, or kills
people because of their opinions is by definition an enemy of the free
world.” For months there has been gushing coverage of the reforms instituted
by Saudi Arabia’s 33-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. But when
change depends on one man’s word, lasting reform is illusory. Saudi Arabia
remains a dictatorship fundamentally opposed to basic human rights — which
means it remains, at bottom, no friend of the United States.
My column last Wednesday commented on Senator Elizabeth Warren and the tiny
dab of Native American ancestry found on her DNA. Warren had claimed,
earlier in her career, to be of Cherokee descent. She allowed herself to be
touted as a “minority” law professor and a “woman of color.” In making such
claims, she was recycling the old racist “one-drop rule,” which held that a
man was black if he had “one drop” of African blood. But black or Indian or
any other identity isn’t determined by DNA. Genetics determine only our
biology, not our culture or the group we feel loyal to or the people with
whom we identify. If Elizabeth Warren were truly Cherokee, everyone would
know it, and her DNA would be irrelevant.
The last line
“Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.” — Back to the Future (1985)
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