I think Palin did a decent job. Expectations were set sooooo low for her that it was impossible for her not to look good. And what the McCain campaign needs is a kind, happy, upbeat face to balance out McCains old, wrinkly, boringness. She did what she needed to do for the campaign.
So...
I didn't mean to sound too elitist with my comment about people preferring simpler answers, and I certainly don't mean to imply that a wrong simple answer always wins out over a correct complex answer - it's just that, well, especially in an uncertain situation, people will tend to prefer the simplest explanation.
I'm not saying people are dumb or anything, it's just cognitively speaking, the brain takes a lot of shortcuts in analyzing data (it has to in order to process the huge amounts of data we receive constantly), and sometimes it can reach an incorrect conclusion because of those shortcuts. But basically, at the end of the day, the information that sticks is the information that takes advantage of those shortcuts - the brain spends less time digesting the information, and it's easily connected with data already stored in our brains (and the more connections a piece of information has to other pieces of information, the easier it is to remember that piece of information).
Okay, sorry for the rambling, just trying to explain that I wasn't trying to be insulting or anything, just making a psychological observation.
Phattonez wrote:Can you give any specific examples?
Well, I have my opinions, but for evidence the best summination I can offer comes from the New York Times
Within minutes [after 9/11], Mr. Cheney was directing the government’s response to an attack that was still under way. Within weeks, he was overseeing the surveillance program that tracked suspected terrorist communications into and out of the United States without warrants. Within months, he and his staff, guided by a loyal aide, David S. Addington, were championing the reinterpretation of the rules of war so that they could detain “enemy combatants” and interrogate them at secret detention facilities run by the C.I.A. around the world.
It was Mr. Cheney and his staff who helped shape the rules under which members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda were denied some of the core rights of the Geneva Conventions and would be tried by “military commissions” at Guant�namo Bay — if they faced trial at all.
...
...
There is little question that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney still share the goal of expanding the power of the presidency: legislation they have sent to Congress would essentially allow them to set the rules of evidence, define interrogation techniques and intercept domestic communications as they have for the past five years.
It may be two years old, but I still believe the generalities it lays down hold today.
...however, lets not discuss this here. This is So..., we shouldn't treat it like Think Tank.
rock_nog wrote:I didn't mean to sound too elitist with my comment about people preferring simpler answers, and I certainly don't mean to imply that a wrong simple answer always wins out over a correct complex answer - it's just that, well, especially in an uncertain situation, people will tend to prefer the simplest explanation.
Ahhh...Occam's razor. Reminds me of Contact with Jodi Foster and Matthew Machonahy. Good times.
Occam's Razor is definitly one of my unofficial mottos.
Yeah, sorry Amaster, I meant you; it can be easy to mix you two up sometimes.
Occam's razor is a good principle but I'm not sure it's really applicable to the first part of rock nog's post (the part you quoted, phattonez). It makes a lot more sense to put that after his second paragraph. In which case I agree.
It was really the first part of that quote that it was directed to, but I guess the whole quote would have worked.
I'd like to point out that almost 20% of phattonez's posts are made in this thread. That's almost 1 in every 5 😮
You gotta do something about your So... addiction, man.
Only one cure: 1000 posts in "So...", 109 posts away.
Coincidentally, I have almost 1/5 of the posts in this thread.
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of confirmation bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Sorry, I should've remembered that word sooner. Though in this case, it's not so much people looking for information that supports what they already believe, but more, they're looking for information that relates to their own thoughts and experiences. It's like - you're less likely to trust an answer to a question if the answer is counterintuitive. I mean, think of relativity or quantum mechanics - part of the reason they're so difficult to understand at first is because they fly in the face of what we experience as reality.
I still haven't read through the debate, but I've heard this floating around:
Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.
The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.
Who wants to be constitutional scholar for the day and tell me what's wrong with that?
If what I'm about to say is what you're thinking, it's nitpicky and not even clear that Biden was wrong. It looks very much to me like he misspoke, which, btw, Palin does as well.
Article II deals with the executive branch, not Article I. BUT, the line that establishes the role for the VP to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate and specifically says he has no other voting (legislative) power IS in Article I. So he was probably thinking of that, and then mashed it together with the VP being in the executive department.
If you read the federalist papers, and/or Madison's notes on the Constitutional Convention, it's very clear that the VP is part of the executive branch.
Anyway, the VP does have extra-constitutional powers that have evolved over time, but that's in his role as a party leader, and not established by any formal power or document.
From Article One, Section 3, "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate"
That kinds of goes against "The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us."
No, like I said, the founding fathers were very explicit about the fact that being president of the Senate ONLY means he gets to vote in tie breaking situations, and not that he is part of the legislative branch. The prevailing thought of the time was that to have an official holding stations in more than one branch would be disastrous. The reasoning the convention delegates gave the VP the presidency of the senate/the tie-breaking vote is because if they had given that to any other senator, he would not be allowed to vote in other situations, and they saw this as depriving a state of one representative in all situations that didn't require tie-breaking (this is paraphrasing from James Madison's notes, which I read like three days ago...).
You will note that the VPs only constitutional duty in the legislature is to cast a tie-breaking vote. That is exactly what Biden said.
There has always been a tradition that the VP does not seek to influence legislation at any stage, except to cast that vote. Even though he can handle basic procedural matters, that is usually not even the case - that's why there is a senate president pro tempore
Yes, but Biden said that "The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney . . ." The Constitution is very clear that the VP is the president of the Senate, although historically that hasn't really meant much. But Cheney is a part of the Senate, and the Constitution lays it out clearly.
Okay, I guess it's partly semantics, but I would still say he isn't part of the legislative branch (because of the reasons I stated above).
However it's not even worth it to try and bother defending Biden's statements, it's not like he hasn't said anything ludicruously factually inaccurate before (e.g. talking about President FDR going on TV in 1929... two things wrong with that)
My two favorites from Biden are that he was in the middle of gunfire while in Iraq and that his plane or helicopter that he was riding in had to make an emergency landing because they were being shot at. The emergency landing was because of weather.
Btw, Icey, I really do agree with you, the VP really isn't a part of the legislative branch, but to say that it's "a bizarre notion invented by Cheney" is unrealistic.
phattonez wrote:
but to say that it's "a bizarre notion invented by Cheney" is unrealistic.
Oh yeah, I agree. Expansion of VP duties has been going on for a long time before Cheney, he's just consolidated some of those gains.
Did we scare people off from so? I hope not. Remember - if this discussion is not interesting to you, you could always randomly start talking about pizza. That's how this thread works 😛
...Pizza! Pizza is good. Yeah...yeah, had some mediocre frozen pepperoni last night.
Also, anyone who was kinda interested in that haunted house stuff I was talking about a few weeks ago; I'll have some photos later today.
Aww crap - I just realized that it's the weekend, and I haven't made any plans. Damnit, now I don't know what to do with this weekend.
Play Zelda Classic? that IS why you visit this forum right? 😉
rock_nog wrote:Aww crap - I just realized that it's the weekend, and I haven't made any plans. Damnit, now I don't know what to do with this weekend.
You could learn to love baseball. This weekend could be unprecedented in the playoffs. There are 4 series going on right now, and we could have 4 sweeps in the first round. The Cubs, who haven't won a World Series in 100 years may get swept in the first round by the Dodgers, the Phillies may sweep the Brewers who have never won the World Series (and this is their first time in the playoffs since 1982), the Rays may sweep the White Sox (this is the Rays first time in the playoffs), and the Red Sox may sweep the Angels once again, making it 12 straight postseason losses for the Angels against the Red Sox.
Ugh, watching sports... *groan*. I just can't do it.
How about sleep instead?
My problem is I am so interested in so many things, that it is a challenge just to choose what to do. I can't understand a person who can't think of anything to do with their life.
See, that's how I always end up in this situation. I have a large list of things I would like to do, but I dunno, I guess I get a little ADD and any time I start on one project or activity or whatever, I get to thinking maybe I should be doing something else instead. So in the end, it's impossible for me to reach any kind of real decision, because no matter what I'm doing, I'm distracted by the thought of doing something else.
I've got me whole weekend planned out. Homework, homework, and more homework. I hate homework!
Today I have to go shopping for my mom. Fun fun. Then I think tonight I might work on ZQuest for a change. I was browsing the ZC forums yesterday and I got a little inspired to work on something.
mighty_darknut wrote:Today I have to go shopping for my mom. Fun fun. Then I think tonight I might work on ZQuest for a change. I was browsing the ZC forums yesterday and I got a little inspired to work on something.
Inspiration is a nasty mistress. You'll want to start and then you'll never even finish a dungeon.