iNow

Why does money determine who becomes president of the United States instead of ability, vision, and leadership?

If you disagree with my opening premise, that’s fine, but I am opening this thread with that as a maxim, so please do treat it as a given.

Money, or more accurately, the ability to raise lots of it, determines the final list of 2 or 3 from which the citizenry can choose when entering the ballot box.

On several occasions and for too many years, when I have arrived at the local high school or community college to place my vote, I have felt disheartened knowing that I was not choosing the best person for the job, but I was instead choosing from the lesser of two evils which had been presented me.

There will never be a perfect candidate, I concede that. There are too many individual differences across the US populace for one human being to satisfy the desires of all with a voting card. We all have different backgrounds, different hopes, different desires… to which no one human can completely cater. However, I know we can, and must, do better.

There are a lot of points above about which we could haggle and polarize, but really what I’m most curious about as I post this is… Why does money determine who becomes president of the United States instead of ability, vision, and leadership? Then, as a follow-up… why do we let it?

To put it in perspective:

What an easy graphic. Thanks! Where'd you get it?

The moon is in orbit, so it is accelerating constantly, and keeps missing the earth as it falls...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit#Understanding_orbits

Well, thanks. I sort of was hoping to help the OP since only post #2 touched on this part of their question. I see I was just being lazy, and have found another source also:

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/sciencekids/gravity.html

Gravity is also the reason why the moon (and satellites) orbit the earth and why we orbit the sun. But then why doesn't the moon crash into the earth? The moon is, in fact, constantly falling towards earth, it is just that it keeps missing. With an initial motion along the path of the orbit, the moon can continually fall towards earth without ever reaching it. This is illustrated on the right in the above diagram, where a cannon is shown firing a cannonball. If the speed of the cannonball is too slow it will crash into the earth. If the speed is too fast, the cannonball will escape the gravitational attraction of the earth. But, if the speed is just right, then the cannon ball will continually fall towards the earth, but never reach it -- it will orbit the earth.

Fact 1.

Mass is a measure of how much matter is in an object. On earth, mass and weight are effectively the same thing.

Fact 2.

The earth's mass is approximately 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg (13,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lb).

 

Fact 3.

Gravity is an attractive force between any two objects in the universe. The force attracting any two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and is inversely proportional to the squared distance between them. Below, the gravitational attraction is stronger for the right-most pair of objects because they are more massive and closer together.

Sciman, hopefully this has answered your question. If not, feel free to ask more. Enjoy mate.

I guess we all need a target for our anger and hatred.

Thank goodness for politicians.

To the OPs point, since they do attract each other, how come they don't just smash into one another? Is it something to do with their velocity in another direction, or around the Sun?

It is in perfect synch with the logic above that I am able to support my strong contention that it is unicorn farts which cause erections in leprechauns.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

And what impact do these ideas have that makes him "one of the world's greatest scientists of all time"? I think you are either very ignorant of science or have a very warped sense of what is important.

I agree with the tone of your post, but might suggest that his importance as a person is directly intensified by the danger imposed by the mindset against which he argues. Basically, irrational belief and the creationist crowd are so detrimental to life's survival in the long-term that those who stand up against it become immediately more important. I'm not sure this was the intent of 1veedo, but it's my stance on the topic. Sometimes the most important people are the ones who battle back the things dangerous to us all. This does not, however, make them the best *scientists.*

Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.

You didn't have a choice asking if I thought Arms dealers, Al quaeda, Saudia Arabia and our highest office are all the same people!

I think your point is well articulated in this "disturbingly" humorous clip from the Daily Show:

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=91998

Or as Presidents of the United States.

See, I thought that too, but that's why I added, "...if they're good."

when i woke up this morning, my midtorso is as red as a tomato, my belly and my backside too. also, there are white spots randomly distributed as if these areas have been left out by blood. Last night, i drank more than usual. I don't know if it might be related. do you have an explaination about this?

Well, the most likely explanation is that you were drinking, and went outside with your friend to be at one with nature. However, while outside, you got bitten by a bug, so went inside to find some bug spray. You did not have any OFF, so covered yourself in RAID instead. You went back outside, drunk out of your gourd by this point, and started howling at the moon. When you looked down, you noticed your skin was turning red from the RAID, and you... being drunk... mistakenly interpreted this to mean that you got a moonburn. Your friend, who was also drunk and failed both his classes in physics and chemistry, remembered that cooling the skin with ice would help, but didn't trust his memory (since he'd failed so many test questions), and instead decided the best thing to do was heat the skin. He went inside and got the kerosene heater, then convinced you to lay on it for 10 minutes on each side, like a burger on a grill. You, being drunk, laid there sipping another margarita and got burned in addition to the reaction your skin had to the application of RAID. Shortly thereafter, your parents came home and found you laying on the heater and freaked out. They had decided that this was too far, and drastic measurs were required. They threw you into the car, drove you to the liquor store, and bought a bottle full of tequila. They took you home and forced you to drink the whole thing to teach you a lesson about how bad alcohol is. Your dad drank with you though, figuring it was silly to waste a good bottle of tequila on teaching his child about the dangers of alcohol, and he, being an angry drunk, got mad and started yelling, slapping you with a flat palm across the belly and back, breaking the blood vessels at the surface of your skink as he did so. Fortunately, he soon realized how stupid it was to beat you and promptly stopped, but only after you smacked him in the head with the frying pan and threatened to chop off his testicles with the meat cleaver. You both passed out on the floor, and your mother put you to bed at 4am. Then, you woke up this morning and saw your red skin, but couldn't remember how it had happened.

If that's not it, but it's related to alcohol, try to remember that alcohol causes dilation in the surface capillaries, and some people have sensitive skin which will react more significantly to this blood vessel dilation than others. I'd guess it's either that or you had an allergic reaction of some sort (either to food or the shirt you were wearing). You might try rubbing on some Benedryl ointment or taking a benedryl tab if you're not going anywhere for the next several hours. Cheers.

I got a tattoo of WHAT... on my WHERE!?!?!

I should have used the word "some." Mea Culpa.

Sad really, since at the heart of being PC is the hope for people to be more kind and empathetic toward one another.

Then again, I didn't read your post. I'm not much into fiction anymore.

EDIT: Okay. I just read your post. You, my friend, are a sexist bigot living in a mental fantasy world, and I suggest that you should perhaps try to better understand your own alternate reality.

If there is a difference then sociology is definitely soft. Sometimes I wonder if a lot of sociology is really a science at all.

Your post hits the nail on the head. If there are, in fact, any differences, then they are entirely subjective. There is no objective difference that makes some areas of study "soft" and others "hard."

Don't mind me, I used to bitch about the same thing when my kung fu friends gave me crap for also doing tai chi. "Let's just say one is "external" and the other is "internal," okay?"

If you want to be a "scientist" then a PhD is the usually expected. What is a MBA?

Masters of Business Administration. They make big bucks, wind up as CEOs, and often on the Board of Directors if they're good.

Well, that wasn't exactly my question, but it's still really an interesting bit of information. I did not know that. Thanks, Lockheed!

First guess? The pressure wave travelling through the air is significantly faster than the fan or wind, so the effect of these aren't noteworthy. Perhaps the sound is somewhat redshifted, but I can't believe a box fan would be strong enough to push back all of the bouncing molecules being carried by that pressure wave at roughly 340 m/s.

Also, the fan and/or wind are not creating a vacuum, so while some air is displaced there is still more than enough to transmit the pressure wave of sound.

This is just a guess though.

Why do terrorists attack us?

I think it has something to do with the viewpoints expressed on shows like Hannity, and the vast masses of people who buy into, support, and act on the nonsense spouted by these shows.

Creationism is terrorism to the scientists.

Can you conceive of any differences between energy described by ingestion of a Red Bull and energy as a property of relative motion (kinetic)? The challenge appears to be your disregard for the agreed upon definition of kinetic energy.

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=kinetic%20energy

Kinetic Energy: The mechanical energy that a body has by virtue of its motion

Despite the overlap, it really is significantly different than something like, "I feel really caffeinated today!!!"

Please tell me you're you're not serious?!?

Janus' post was very clear, articulate, and approachable. Perhaps you could make the same attempt when framing your question in response to him?

Thanks for sharing the useful information, Pioneer, but can you cite the source and give credit where it's due?

EDIT: Never mind --> http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/turpentine/recognition.html

The point being that I seem to be noticing that the world around me is devolving from moder thinking / more knowledge .

Hi John,

It's very possible that these people always existed (the "I don't know, nor do I care to learn" crowd), but that we weren't exposed to them. We tend to group with like minded sorts, so socially the "I don't know, nor do I care to learn" crowd likely wasn't a huge player in your group of friends.

Even on the internet, we tend toward those forums and blogs and news articles that interest us. We avoid those in which we're not interested.

However, it's also possible that there are just more people on the planet now, and there are, in fact, greater numbers of devolved "I don't know, nor do I care to learn" individuals. That would be a tragedy, as their actions impact us all.

Maybe we've been too motivated by our hormones, reproducing with the sexy ones instead of the the forward thinking and bright ones, and we've selected for physical beauty and health instead of stewardship and social responsibility.

I really don't know. It's an interesting point. So, can you elaborate on your theory? Any testible predictions come with it, or is it just an evolving speculation?

Hey, everybody! Look at my new t!ts!

It seems like posters are skewing their definitions of intelligence to better ensure humans can maintain a status of *most* intelligent.

They are promoting this "Institute" and have no intention of discussing anything.

Good catch Phi for All.

Maybe we could instead discuss the evolution of spam, and the evolved motivations which lead to the psychology of a spammer. Just not in this thread, as we'd keep it active for too long by doing so.

With all that fish, why do they love it so much in Hawaii?

Am I the only one who finds it amusingly ironic that the main claim to fame of the proclaimed leader of the "If I can't it or measure it, it doesn't exist" brigade is a philosophical/psychological concept that cannot be seen or measured?

Why do you think it can't be measured?

If we regulated the hunting would you still have a problem

Actually, yes. I express a certain kindness toward animals in general, but love a good steak. Inexplicably, I have this inherent respect for the whale... like they're smart and deserve better. I know it's hypocritical, so hopefully I get some credit for conceding that, but I find the mammalian whale more worthy of protection than the delicious bovine.

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.