However, I think Hillary Clinton is capable of more directed change than Obama. But I suppose we’ll see. I’m just convinced that, even if elected, Obama will never measure up to the expectations he has set for himself.

Maybe Obama would pursue a more sensible diplomacy but I believe Hillary would, too. But a “less confrontational politics, and a more compassionate society here at home?” I don’t know that either candidate is capable of that–or anyone, for that matter. How do you legislate that, exactly? Well, it obviously shouldn’t be legislated–but that’s my point. How do you get people to be more compassionate or less confrontational? And how does that make more jobs, provide for the poor and elderly, or solve the immigration controversy? Moms and Dads should teach compassion and how to handle confrontation. I have parents, and I want something different in our next president.

Since Sean has conclusively debunked the idea that low-entropy states can ever arise from high-entropy states by means of a fluctuation, the present government can only have evolved from better governments in the past. Ergo, Sean believes that Reagan was better than Bush senior, who in turn was better than Clinton, etc. All that remains is to explain the utter perfection of George Washington.

This is the argument that creationist use against evolution. You aren’t a closet creationist are you Required?

The point is the life and human societies use available free energy to locally reduce entropy at the cost of increasing it overall. Hence global warming.

but I think we should be careful when changing the fundamental structure of how our economy runs, because there are far more ways it could get worse than get better.

We rapidly change the ‘fundamental structure’ of how our whole world runs. If we fail to adjust our economical and political systems to it, the outcome is worsening through doing nothing. The alternative is to slow down change. Best,

B.

The reason I side with liberals, even on economic issues, is because I see conservatives as those advocating for this kind of dangerous change. Our country was most prosperous under a better-funded government with higher taxes and greater regulatory power. The changes during the Bush administration take us away from that, and Republicans are pushing for more. This is happening at a time when we should be pushing in the other direction, because the ‘experiment’ of the 50s-60s showed that overall well-being was increasing as we moved in that direction. On the other hand, Democrats seem pushing for policies that aren’t even “centrist” in that they don’t even fully restore taxation levels of the recent past. The most dangerous proposal on the table is public health care, which most of us support because we believe the social value to be worth any possibility for economic damage.

upshot is that crying for change is nothing but a tautology. so actually putting change into the rhetoric can be a sign of contact with reality and therefore rather positive as such. or can you imagine kim yong il crying out for change?

I think a better comparison with politics are Nash equilibrium points and a system that is driven/damped into some sort of strange attractor basin around these Nash points. The two main Nash equilibrium points are Democraps and Republithugs. The driving force that drives the ball around the basin of attraction is money, and the Fourier expansion of frequencies of this driving force look a lot like WallStreet.

Though seriously we need a serious change of the guard, and Obama looks like the best bet at this point. I was originally for Kucinich, but so much for that.

There has been one remarkable thing about GW Bush. I dislike hearing him, and I dislike seeing images of him. The two together is simply too horrible, and as a result I never watch the TV new programs — and that is a blessing. Thank you GW Bush for that small favor, but it fails to make up for the rest of your horrors.

Lawrence B. Crowell