^^ Yeah, it's looking like Kirk and Quinn right now but both are within the range of changing. Although Kirk is less likely to lose at this point w/o a recount.

---envy---

We don't have early voting here in CT. It's very difficult to get an absentee ballot - you have to be totally unable to get to your polling place (e.g. off at college, traveling on business) during the 14 hours when the polls are open. "I don't wanna get in line to vote at 6am before work" is not a valid excuse.

As it happens, I was nearly 25 years old before I cast a vote in a voting booth. I voted absentee while in college, and my first job out of college required a lot of travel, so I continued to vote absentee. My standby "I Never" challenge was "I've never voted in a voting booth." :p

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The Times is calling CT CD4 for Himes with 41.5% of the vote and 26% of precincts reporting. <scratches head>

EW: You and I are philosophically on completely different ends of the spectrum so this debate is fruitless. Your life experiences and my life experiences are so completely opposite that our basic belief systems will never reach congruence. The statements you make are not in any way consistent with what I have experienced or what I see. Unions elevated the poor into the middle to upper middle class and increased salaries in every sector as a result because other industries/sectors had to compete.

If government is supposed to do nothing, then why do they exist? I don't want to pay all those legislators to do nothing or to maintain the status quo because, quite frankly, the status quo sucks.

Neither branch is more powerful. Both need to be on the same page to get anything done.

ETA: On the plus side, Dingell is now at 50% of the vote so he has a chance still.

ETA (again!): Dingell is ahead 53-47.

Where's a clappy clappy Bravo! emoticon when I need one?

WHOA! Come on Dee, you really don't think that, do you? The writing has been on the wall ( Michigan's economic blight) since the 90's when NAFTA was signed. Michigan had all of their economic eggs in one basket......the manufacturing industry, which had been in decline well before Bush took office. To blame GWB is so....partisan.

I'm glad to have a Republican Governor back in office in MI. Do you really think two penny Jenny Granholm was better than Engler??

The unions intentionally price out the poor from gaining jobs.

Walter E. Williams explains:
Unions also used these same methods to keep lower-wage oppressed minorities away from working in Apartheid South Africa and the United States. The unions have very little concern for the poor. Their only concern is with maintaining jobs. The problem is that because they inflate their compensations so greatly they end up financially endangering the very business that provides them with jobs (see Michigan's situation). Then, they no longer have their jobs nor do the poor.

To maintain order. (well, that's why they were created. I'm not sure that actually happens but to be fair I border on anarchism)

Once it got past that, it failed.

The status quo was created because of those legislators.

You did graduate high school, right?

Congress ultimately holds the most power of the branches. Some may argue the Supreme Court, but I'm not sure that argument holds water.The least Constitutionally powerful is certainly the President. Guess which party has dominated Congress during this horrific downturn?

EW, your opinion and interpretation is not everyone's interpretation.

Can you point out where I said that?

Again, I'm not terribly interested in Republican/Democrat.

I am interested in the logic, which has so far been a failure.

When you make claims like "The unions intentionally price the poor out of work" you're the one failing at logic.

You can argue that this is a side effect, but the goal of unions is to ensure that their workers, many of whom are poor themselves, get paid a liveable wage and are treated fairly.

You might not think they live up to that, and you may find that the negatives outweigh the positives, but they do not intentionally keep poor people from working.

You cannot claim the logical high ground and commit such egregious errors.

Nor accuse someone of failing to graduate high school for not considering one branch to be more powerful than another when in fact what high school teaches is that all are checks and balances on each other. And that is true, YMMV on how that power is used.

Yes, it's okay that you think that.

But that has nothing to do with logical errors.
Yes, it's okay that you think that.

But there are still no logical errors.
High school teaches that the checks and balances are not equal. More properly said, "checks and imbalances". This is simple American Government teaching.

Ascribing a motive to the perceived negative side effect is a logical error. (By misrepresenting the union's position you've created a strawman, you've also appealed to motive rather than addressed the issue.) As is insulting the person rather than addressing the argument. (Appeal to ridicule, ad hominem, etc.)

And no, high school doesn't necessarily teach that. Nor does one have to agree that the checks and balances are unequal, or that power is imbalanced. Power is wielded by the different branches in different manners and in a way that's not easily measured if you look beyond the basics. Different founding fathers wanted different amounts of power in the hands of each branch.

No, I'm ascribing a motive to something the unions have done and expressly do intentionally.(such as in South Africa, where many of their motives were expressed specifically to keep lower income blacks out of the workplace)

If your high school spent any time discussing the Constitution, it did.

Agreed.

But the person who would argue as such has deficient reading abilities. The Constitution isn't a terribly difficult read.

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

These headlines are KILLING me!!!!! I'm srsly CTFU over here.


"Prop 19 Fails to Puff-Puff-Pass."

Bwahahahahahahaha!!!!! :D

I'd use the ROTL smilie but I think PB used enough for one day. :p

Who said GWB??? I said "Bush" to start with. He was the one who refused to tax imports when other countries started to put such high tariffs on our cars that Europeans couldn't afford them. That was when the foreign auto companies started building plants here. Bush 2 did the same with foreign steel and put our steel companies out of business. The nail in the coffin was the de-regulation of the banking industry and the credit freeze in 2008, during GWB.

Michigan had all their economic eggs in one basket for a century. How can you blame Granholm for that? When Engler took over, our state coffers had a huge "rainy day fund" and he spent it all and left the state in debt! Engler instituted Proposal A which totally screwed up our funding for education. After we voted it down twice, he offered up two options, one of which was far WORSE than Prop A so we had to pick Prop A since it was the lesser of two evils. Engler was the worst governor we ever had. He shut down the entire mental health system in the state leaving the chronically mentally ill to live on the streets. Granholm's push for tax breaks for the film industry, her securing of contracts to build alternative energy methods have helped a lot (new car battery factories and wind mill factories opening soon). It takes time for the results to come to fruition.

As for EW: Congress has the capability of more power if they have a high enough majority to override vetoes and block filibusters.

Unions: Compare teachers' salaries in states with strong unions and states with weak unions. Union oriented states pay their teachers more. Compare hourly wages between a grocery store with unionized employees to the grocery store across the street from it with non-union employees. Union employees are above poverty level. Non-union are not. Where do you think our economy would be if all manufacturing jobs paid what they do in China or Mexico?


Dingell pulled it off, and by a 13-14% margin. Those early figures must have been from Ann Arbor. Thank goodness.

Rick Snyder's big thing is "get rid of the Michigan Business Tax". I realize that significant tax breaks can attract business and eventually bring more jobs into the state, thereby increasing the income tax and property tax revenues for the state. However, that will take time. There will be a lag between losing those tax dollars and the long term increase in revenues. What he hasn't told us is where is the money going to come from to continue state operations during that time? Or, what is going to be cut? I can't imagine what else could be cut. I'd like to know how state operations are going to be paid for in the interim.