Who is a Democrat and who is a Republican?

[morphball]

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You do understand that voting for a 3rd party may be non-optimal in any current election, but serves as a meta-game vote for future elections?

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meta-game analysis only works with observent game participants. Good luck finding that here in the old ol' U S of A.

[nicky g]

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Ignore matrix. First hes a chef whos worked with the greats in Europe, but insisted that salt lowers the boiling point of water, now hes a former statistics professor who doesnt have a clue about statistics.

Hes a liar and a troll.

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You people are hilarious. The person who used to be a statistics professor is Greg Palast, the author of the quote matrix gave and put in italics to distinguish, complete with a link to the source at the bottom. For all your amazing arrogance you can't even read.

[The once and future king]

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Voting is irrational.

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Is there an arguement to be made that anti statists etc etc should allways vote against the incumbent/and or dominant political party of the moment. From your position the last thing you want is a radical Republicrat in controll of both houses with a massive mandate from the people in terms of public vote. Then we are talking optimum state intrusion time.

If no one party can gain controll of the political system and the government is changing every 5 years then this would seem like the optimal scenario for libertarians etc.

There would seem to be tactical reasons for libertarians and others of the same ilk to still vote.

[matrix]

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Ignore matrix. First hes a chef whos worked with the greats in Europe, but insisted that salt lowers the boiling point of water, now hes a former statistics professor who doesnt have a clue about statistics.

Hes a liar and a troll.

[/ QUOTE ]

rofl - it's great the way that people like Copernicus bash me at almost every available opportunity without actually making any argument counter to the points I am making - as though killing the messenger or sticking your fingers in your ears somehow nullifies the message.

For the record I am NOT an economics professor - nor have I ever claimed to be one - I suggest you learn to read correctly - perhaps even read the source article I linked to get a better view of the bigger picture before jumping to any conclusions....

I am a chef who (incorrectly) thought that salt lowered the boiling point of water (I am not a chemistry major either [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]) - I have since changed my opinion on that now that I have better information on which to base my opinion.

I have worked with several "named" chefs I wouldn't say they are/were all "greats" in and around London - I have never worked in Europe outside of the UK, but I refuse to namedrop.

I would ask for Copernicus not to post juvenile personal attacks - and insist that he apologises for calling me a liar and a troll - as far as I am aware it's policy on twoplustwo not to post personal attacks, perhaps he hasn't read the FAQ, but IIRC Copernicus has me on ignore anyway so it would be a waste of time and bandwidth.

[matrix]

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Your data and/or source is incorrect concerning the votes cast by people of color. That level of consipracy is impossible to pull off.

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I beg to differ.

My source is accurate - I hold Greg Palast in very high regard as an investigative journalist as do many other people.

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You obviously know nothing about basic statistics and I feel sorry for any students you allegedly attempted to teach.

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I hope you never try teaching anyone how to read - I would feel sorry for any students you might allegedly attempt to teach.

[HINT: try reading the complete source article of which the text I posted in italics was a direct quote from.]

For your edification here is another quote from Mr Palasts website complete with accompanying link to complete source article (I'll put this all in italics so that people reading this who have more than an ounce of common sense will be able to tell easily that these words are quoted and not my own)

In the 2004 election, over THREE MILLION voters were challenged at the polls. No one had seen anything like it since the era of Jim Crow and burning crosses. In 2004, voters were told their registrations had been purged or that their addresses were “suspect.”

Denied the right to the regular voting booths, these challenged voters were given “provisional” ballots. Over a million of these provisional ballots (1,090,729 of them) were tossed in the electoral dumpster uncounted.

Funny thing about those ballots. About 88% were cast by minority voters.

This isn’t a number dropped on me from a black helicopter. They come from the raw data of the US Election Assistance Commission in Washington, DC.

At the heart of the GOP’s mass challenge of voters were what the party’s top brass called, “caging lists” — secret files of hundreds of thousands of voters, almost every one from a Black-majority voting precinct.

When our investigations team, working for BBC TV, got our hands on these confidential files in October 2004, the Republicans told us the voters listed were their potential “donors.” Really? The sheets included pages of men from homeless shelters in Florida.

Donor lists, my ass. Every expert told us, these were “challenge lists,” meant to stop these Black voters from casting ballots.

When these “caged” voters arrived at the polls in November 2004, they found their registrations missing, their right to vote blocked or their absentee ballots rejected because their addresses were supposedly “fraudulent.”

Why didn’t the GOP honchos ‘fess up to challenging these allegedly illegal voters? Because targeting voters of color is AGAINST THE LAW. The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Act says you can’t go after groups of voters if you choose your targets based on race. Given that almost all the voters on the GOP hit list are Black, the illegal racial profiling is beyond even Karl Rove’s ability to come up with an alibi.

The Republicans target Black folk not because they don’t like the color of their skin. They don’t like the color of their vote: Democrat. For that reason, the GOP included on its hit list Jewish retirement homes in Florida. Apparently, the GOP was also gunning for the Elderly of Zion.

These so-called “fraudulent” voters, in fact, were not fraudulent at all. Page after page, as we’ve previously reported, are Black soldiers sent overseas. The Bush campaign used their absence from their US homes to accuse them of voting from false addresses.

Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the Voting Rights law, they have found a way to keep using their expensively obtained “caging” lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy. - source

[Copernicus]

I dont read matrix' posts. I was responding to one that said he was a stats professor.

[epdaws]

Write-in vote for libertarian.

[LadyWrestler]

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I am sure Democrats and Republicans are guilty of vote rigging and statistically they probably cancel each other out.

Your data and/or source is incorrect concerning the votes cast by people of color. That level of consipracy is impossible to pull off.

The ability pull off a consipracy is inversely proportional to the number of people involved in the conspiracy.

Statistical reporting can easily be skewed by biased sampling, level of calculation, error of measurement, and <font color="blue">political agenda</font>.

If you really knew how statistics work you would not be throwing out a precise number such as 88% without including an error range.

Also, you cannot extrapolate the non-count vote with any degree of confidence for the next two elections based only on data since 2000.

You obviously know nothing about basic statistics and I feel sorry for any students you allegedly attempted to teach.

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In this case, trust me, blue is the best answer. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Cyrus]

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I feel sorry for any students you allegedly attempted to teach.

[/ QUOTE ] If he was indeed a teacher, you'd have to apologize. Now that you realized he is not, what are you supposed to do ?

[BadBoyBenny]

If I did vote (I don't and think it is a waste of time), I would vote for gridlock in all national elections. This country usually does best when Congress is controlled by one party and the presidency by the other.