That political meme
Jan. 5th, 2008 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyesetzI suppose I should join ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xolo and loganberrybunny in this meme. It's interesting that Google shows only two examples of it in their index.
2008 Presidential Candidates: I don't like any of them. They're all either "stay the course toward ruin" or "no chance of winning". I like Clinton because I think she's lying about having buried the hatchet with Big Pharma, but I dislike the idea that I should vote for someone because I *don't* believe what she says about her plans. I like Paul because he actually has real moral values that he sticks to even when they're politically inconvenient, but he is a racist sexist pig and the American "king for 4 years" model means that racism and sexism would become more socially acceptable during a Paul presidency. Edwards has Fascist leanings (his kowtowing to Israeli donors was just wrong) but it's possible that I would be least dissatisfied with his administration.
Party: I don't like any of them. They're all either imperialist or no-chance-of-winning. This is an unfortunate result of the two-party system that George Washington never wanted, which makes politics into a ball game where both sides use the same tactics and the winner is a near-random choice—and the laws that come out of it are a near-random side effect of which side happened to score a goal on which play.
Abortion: The claim that this has anything to do with fœtal personhood is a just a cover story. Abortion is all about subjugation of women and really nothing else. The standard test for this is to ask a "pro lifer" whether he would rather save an unborn fœtus or a real 2 year-old child. By any reasonable standard the 2-yo is more valuable, yet the stereotypical response is to save the unborn because it is still "perfect" and unsullied by reality.
Affirmative Action: It's unAmerican. Of course, America does many unAmerican things (since its choices are unsullied by reality) and IMHO affirmative action does not make the Top Ten list of "bad ideas that should have been discarded a long time ago".
Alternative Fuels: Ethanol is a bad idea. It creates yet another use for grain, which the world can't grow enough of as it is. Why not build a giant spaceship to scoop up some atmosphere from Jupiter and bring it back to Earth so we can burn it as fuel? "Egregious violation of carbon-neutral principles", certainly, but could it be cost-effective?
Capital Punishment: In general this is a bad idea, because it creates a moral equivalence between the State and the criminal. But America is a bloodthirsty country and some capital crimes need to be on the books in order for Yanks to feel good about their government. Why not make it a capital crime to violate your oath of political office? Then yank the penalty from "lower offenses" like merely murdering someone. Assigning the highest punishment to oath-violation could have a positive effect on American patriotism, so of course it'll never happen.
Censorship: There are many kinds of censorship. Perhaps the worst, and the US is full of it, is censoring your own writing because of what others might say. Another kind is government-imposed censorship of major media outlets that broadcast slightly-offensive things like Janet Jackson's aureola; this is done mainly as a distraction from the horrible things the government would rather not talk about. Yet another kind is direct censorship of citizens talking about the horrible things that their government is doing "in their name"; eventually this turns into mass disappearances of anyone who might potentially stand in the way of the Powers That Be. So I'm against it.
Cuba: Only in South Florida is this still a live issue. It is a leftover of the Domino Theory of Communist aggression and yet another example of the Official Washington's refusal to allow reality to interfere with their political games.
Current Administration (Bush/Cheney): Bush is a mass murderer, who deliberately decided on multiple occasions to let the people of Iraq and New Orleans die because political game-points mattered more to him than their lives. Cheney outed a CIA agent. Both of these are capital crimes when committed by the "little people". But I expect that those two will both get off scot-free.
Education: My children are home-schooled.
Electoral College: A leftover from a time when the Pony Express was the fastest mode of communication.
Flag Burning: Another example of censorship done to distract from the true evils being perpetrated.
Foreign Policy: The US has always been an imperialist power. Born on the sword, it lives by the sword, and someday will die on it. Nixon's policy of attacking any country that sells oil in other than US dollars has finally died (Iran is openly selling oil for Euros and getting away with it), but Paul's proposal to switch the dollar back from oil standard to gold standard won't help anything. The genie is too big for its bottle now.
Free Trade: Protectionism is bad; it causes manufacturers to become lazy and uninventive.
Gay Rights: Gay-hatred belongs in George Orwell's 1984 under the "Two Minutes Hate" ritual. What about Atheist rights? What about Communist rights during McCarthyism? The problem isn't individual groups of deviants and their rights, but the general idea that there needs to be some underclass onto which the proles can project their hatred of the aristocracy.
Globalization: Needs restraint. To some extent the new multinational corporations behave as did the emperors of old, crushing anyone who gets in their way.
Gun Control: Guns are lethal weapons, like automobiles. They should be treated similarly. If you kill someone with a car, the gov't lets you keep the car but takes away your gun. That's not right!
Healthcare: HillaryCare. When proposed it seemed like a ridiculous invasion of privacy, but after everything that's happened since it doesn't seem so bad anymore.
Illegal Immigration: Copy Canada. They're doing just fine with massive levels of immigration (20% of the population wasn't born here). The problem with illegal immigration isn't the immigrants, it's the illegality. Get rid of it. It's only there in order to create an underclass of persons with no rights. The recent attempt to withhold US citizenship from children of illegals was a blatant attempt to create a legal precedent for "inherited guilt".
Marijuana Legalization: Can't do anything about it until Big Pharma gets seriously whacked. If you read Al Gore's speeches (quick summary), it is clear that Big Pharma is the only enemy he is too afraid of to even mention by name.
Media Bias: Big Media has more in common with Big Everything Else than with their readers, while individual reporters tend to be liberal because that's typically the sort of person who chooses journalism as a career. In good times those biases cancel each other out. These days are not good times.
Minimum Wage: The USA doesn't really have one. Restaurant waiters are exempt. Illegals are exempt. White-collar workers are exempt. That's millions of people who are "exempt" from a rule that is supposed to apply to all.
Outsourcing: A fad that is dying down now that the corporate executives have started to realize that the cost savings is mostly illusory. Yes, a Chinese computer programmer is much cheaper than an American, but (due to cultural differences) also less creative and much less willing to tell you that what you're asking for is not what you need.
Right to Die: Physicians should not kill people. Helping people to die should be a separate profession.
School Prayer: A political diversion, like flag-burning and censorship.
Separation of Church & State: The Founders knew all too well that a coalition of capitalists+clergy+politicans makes for a nasty imperial government. The Founders tried to prevent America from becoming such a place. They failed.
Social Security: Get rid of it and just give the oldsters Welfare without requiring them to go look for work every week. Nobody believes the old crock "it's your money because SSI payments are like buying an annuity". Most people under 40 don't actually expect that Social Security will still be there for them, so the government should stop lying and admit that it won't be.
Stem Cell Research: The ban is a diversion, like school prayer and flag-burning.
Supreme Court: Fire the lot of them. Do a public-opinion poll of "who is the most respectable person in the land?" Install the top nine contenders as the new court. Hey, it's not as crazy as sending a spaceship to Jupiter!
Taxes: The idea that Canadian taxes are higher than in the States is just an accounting glitch, because things like "health insurance" are considered a tax here but not there. Hopefully 2007 will be the last time that I will have to give tax money to support the Imperial Army.
The Constitution: Asxolo says, "the written Constitution was discarded in 1861." America needs a new one, or at least some major amendments to put teeth back into the old one (e.g., death penalties for oath-violators).
Unions: I don't like them. Perhaps the original idea was good, but as unions get larger, they start acting like just another kind of management, so their interests are more aligned with the employer's than the union workers'.
United Nations: A failed attempt at a world government, failing for much the same reasons as the League of Nations did. Should be replaced by something with more teeth, perhaps like Canada's "notwithstanding clause".
War in Iraq: I still agree with the 26% of Americans who, in a poll before the war started, stated their belief that the war was a misuse of the resources of the United States to settle what was basically a family quarrel between Hussein and the Bushes.
Welfare: Would work a lot better if Americans could get it into their heads that the *purpose* of Welfare is to pay unemployable people to stay home. As Welfare has been cut back, the number of beggars in the street has increased. Just pay the beggars to stay home! We can certainly afford that and get much more benefit from it (nicer experience walking down the street) than from paying Halliburton to kill random Iraqis.
Wiretapping: Bush is spying on everyone because he has the same mindset as the East German Communists. Ultimately the attempt at a Panopticon must fail because there is simply too much data and not enough processing power in the world to extract useful information from it.
xolo and loganberrybunny in this meme. It's interesting that Google shows only two examples of it in their index.2008 Presidential Candidates: I don't like any of them. They're all either "stay the course toward ruin" or "no chance of winning". I like Clinton because I think she's lying about having buried the hatchet with Big Pharma, but I dislike the idea that I should vote for someone because I *don't* believe what she says about her plans. I like Paul because he actually has real moral values that he sticks to even when they're politically inconvenient, but he is a racist sexist pig and the American "king for 4 years" model means that racism and sexism would become more socially acceptable during a Paul presidency. Edwards has Fascist leanings (his kowtowing to Israeli donors was just wrong) but it's possible that I would be least dissatisfied with his administration.
Party: I don't like any of them. They're all either imperialist or no-chance-of-winning. This is an unfortunate result of the two-party system that George Washington never wanted, which makes politics into a ball game where both sides use the same tactics and the winner is a near-random choice—and the laws that come out of it are a near-random side effect of which side happened to score a goal on which play.
Abortion: The claim that this has anything to do with fœtal personhood is a just a cover story. Abortion is all about subjugation of women and really nothing else. The standard test for this is to ask a "pro lifer" whether he would rather save an unborn fœtus or a real 2 year-old child. By any reasonable standard the 2-yo is more valuable, yet the stereotypical response is to save the unborn because it is still "perfect" and unsullied by reality.
Affirmative Action: It's unAmerican. Of course, America does many unAmerican things (since its choices are unsullied by reality) and IMHO affirmative action does not make the Top Ten list of "bad ideas that should have been discarded a long time ago".
Alternative Fuels: Ethanol is a bad idea. It creates yet another use for grain, which the world can't grow enough of as it is. Why not build a giant spaceship to scoop up some atmosphere from Jupiter and bring it back to Earth so we can burn it as fuel? "Egregious violation of carbon-neutral principles", certainly, but could it be cost-effective?
Capital Punishment: In general this is a bad idea, because it creates a moral equivalence between the State and the criminal. But America is a bloodthirsty country and some capital crimes need to be on the books in order for Yanks to feel good about their government. Why not make it a capital crime to violate your oath of political office? Then yank the penalty from "lower offenses" like merely murdering someone. Assigning the highest punishment to oath-violation could have a positive effect on American patriotism, so of course it'll never happen.
Censorship: There are many kinds of censorship. Perhaps the worst, and the US is full of it, is censoring your own writing because of what others might say. Another kind is government-imposed censorship of major media outlets that broadcast slightly-offensive things like Janet Jackson's aureola; this is done mainly as a distraction from the horrible things the government would rather not talk about. Yet another kind is direct censorship of citizens talking about the horrible things that their government is doing "in their name"; eventually this turns into mass disappearances of anyone who might potentially stand in the way of the Powers That Be. So I'm against it.
Cuba: Only in South Florida is this still a live issue. It is a leftover of the Domino Theory of Communist aggression and yet another example of the Official Washington's refusal to allow reality to interfere with their political games.
Current Administration (Bush/Cheney): Bush is a mass murderer, who deliberately decided on multiple occasions to let the people of Iraq and New Orleans die because political game-points mattered more to him than their lives. Cheney outed a CIA agent. Both of these are capital crimes when committed by the "little people". But I expect that those two will both get off scot-free.
Education: My children are home-schooled.
Electoral College: A leftover from a time when the Pony Express was the fastest mode of communication.
Flag Burning: Another example of censorship done to distract from the true evils being perpetrated.
Foreign Policy: The US has always been an imperialist power. Born on the sword, it lives by the sword, and someday will die on it. Nixon's policy of attacking any country that sells oil in other than US dollars has finally died (Iran is openly selling oil for Euros and getting away with it), but Paul's proposal to switch the dollar back from oil standard to gold standard won't help anything. The genie is too big for its bottle now.
Free Trade: Protectionism is bad; it causes manufacturers to become lazy and uninventive.
Gay Rights: Gay-hatred belongs in George Orwell's 1984 under the "Two Minutes Hate" ritual. What about Atheist rights? What about Communist rights during McCarthyism? The problem isn't individual groups of deviants and their rights, but the general idea that there needs to be some underclass onto which the proles can project their hatred of the aristocracy.
Globalization: Needs restraint. To some extent the new multinational corporations behave as did the emperors of old, crushing anyone who gets in their way.
Gun Control: Guns are lethal weapons, like automobiles. They should be treated similarly. If you kill someone with a car, the gov't lets you keep the car but takes away your gun. That's not right!
Healthcare: HillaryCare. When proposed it seemed like a ridiculous invasion of privacy, but after everything that's happened since it doesn't seem so bad anymore.
Illegal Immigration: Copy Canada. They're doing just fine with massive levels of immigration (20% of the population wasn't born here). The problem with illegal immigration isn't the immigrants, it's the illegality. Get rid of it. It's only there in order to create an underclass of persons with no rights. The recent attempt to withhold US citizenship from children of illegals was a blatant attempt to create a legal precedent for "inherited guilt".
Marijuana Legalization: Can't do anything about it until Big Pharma gets seriously whacked. If you read Al Gore's speeches (quick summary), it is clear that Big Pharma is the only enemy he is too afraid of to even mention by name.
Media Bias: Big Media has more in common with Big Everything Else than with their readers, while individual reporters tend to be liberal because that's typically the sort of person who chooses journalism as a career. In good times those biases cancel each other out. These days are not good times.
Minimum Wage: The USA doesn't really have one. Restaurant waiters are exempt. Illegals are exempt. White-collar workers are exempt. That's millions of people who are "exempt" from a rule that is supposed to apply to all.
Outsourcing: A fad that is dying down now that the corporate executives have started to realize that the cost savings is mostly illusory. Yes, a Chinese computer programmer is much cheaper than an American, but (due to cultural differences) also less creative and much less willing to tell you that what you're asking for is not what you need.
Right to Die: Physicians should not kill people. Helping people to die should be a separate profession.
School Prayer: A political diversion, like flag-burning and censorship.
Separation of Church & State: The Founders knew all too well that a coalition of capitalists+clergy+politicans makes for a nasty imperial government. The Founders tried to prevent America from becoming such a place. They failed.
Social Security: Get rid of it and just give the oldsters Welfare without requiring them to go look for work every week. Nobody believes the old crock "it's your money because SSI payments are like buying an annuity". Most people under 40 don't actually expect that Social Security will still be there for them, so the government should stop lying and admit that it won't be.
Stem Cell Research: The ban is a diversion, like school prayer and flag-burning.
Supreme Court: Fire the lot of them. Do a public-opinion poll of "who is the most respectable person in the land?" Install the top nine contenders as the new court. Hey, it's not as crazy as sending a spaceship to Jupiter!
Taxes: The idea that Canadian taxes are higher than in the States is just an accounting glitch, because things like "health insurance" are considered a tax here but not there. Hopefully 2007 will be the last time that I will have to give tax money to support the Imperial Army.
The Constitution: As
xolo says, "the written Constitution was discarded in 1861." America needs a new one, or at least some major amendments to put teeth back into the old one (e.g., death penalties for oath-violators).Unions: I don't like them. Perhaps the original idea was good, but as unions get larger, they start acting like just another kind of management, so their interests are more aligned with the employer's than the union workers'.
United Nations: A failed attempt at a world government, failing for much the same reasons as the League of Nations did. Should be replaced by something with more teeth, perhaps like Canada's "notwithstanding clause".
War in Iraq: I still agree with the 26% of Americans who, in a poll before the war started, stated their belief that the war was a misuse of the resources of the United States to settle what was basically a family quarrel between Hussein and the Bushes.
Welfare: Would work a lot better if Americans could get it into their heads that the *purpose* of Welfare is to pay unemployable people to stay home. As Welfare has been cut back, the number of beggars in the street has increased. Just pay the beggars to stay home! We can certainly afford that and get much more benefit from it (nicer experience walking down the street) than from paying Halliburton to kill random Iraqis.
Wiretapping: Bush is spying on everyone because he has the same mindset as the East German Communists. Ultimately the attempt at a Panopticon must fail because there is simply too much data and not enough processing power in the world to extract useful information from it.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-06 04:30 pm (UTC)http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3457/dropping_out_of_electoral_college/
Making it work would require a majority of states passing it. States with too much say like Wyoming may be reluctant, and since small states that would lose say tend to vote Republican it could become a political issue.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-06 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-06 09:12 pm (UTC)Looks like it was passed, and vetoed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact