Rock The Vote!

Hmm... seems to me most democrats are idiots... but both candidates are complete imbeciles in this case. I frankly don't give a shit who wins this election, but I'd just assume something happen to both candidates which prevents them from running and gives someone else a chance... like Alan Keyes.

- Corporations CANNOT contribute to political candidates. It's against federal law, period. They can contribute to political parties, but the parties are prohibited under federal law from using the money to explicitly advocate for the election of specific candidates.

- Targetboy, please do a little research before calling people "fucking morons." Lieberman has talked government regulation of movie/game content. His most prominent Republican ally as far as criticizing the enterainment industry goes, Bill Bennet, says he's against censorship and differs in this respect from the Democrat.

- Icenine, democracy isn't "fuct." Life is better for the overwhelming majority of people in the Democratic West (Europe and the U.S.) than it ever has been. Btw, thx for running Railbait.

anyone notice this guys site has already been toasted?

If I was running for the President of the USA, I'd try to make Cindy Crawford become the Vice President of the USA. Heheh. I'm trying to get rid of the boring political talk, I guess. Heheh.

Oh, and Donkey_Popsicle's post reminds me of the wonderful example of Australia! The Aussies were duped into a gun registration system whereby the names of all gun owners were placed on file with the national government. Then a few years later, as any gun-rights supporter could have predicted, and outright ban followed, with its accompanying confiscation operation. The result? Violent crime has SOARED in Oz. The criminals, it seems, don't care about the gun ban, and aren't giving up their weapons. So while law-abiding citizens disarm themselves, the criminals are allowed the run of the place. Brilliant scheme.

MoNsTeR

GUN

This idea is so fucking lame... ("I'm furious!")

The only good thing about this "YOUR VOTE FOR SALE!" crap is that it MIGHT shed light on the larger scale special interest influence of big business, and bring about campaign finance reform a little faster.

Is there an option on the voting ballet to pick nobody? Now keep in mind I've never voted before. But it just seems to me that if the majority didn't like either of the parties they could vote for neither in which case a new election with new people would occur, albeit a shorter one. And speaking of length why do your elections in the usa carry on for so long? In Canada they're over and done with very quickly. It seems your politicians spend most of their time trying to get elected and hardly any time actually working.

If you want a real democracy write in John Carmack for president 2000!

I want my piece of the pie!

i do not see why people cannot sell their votes? Big corporation basically buys peoples votes.. why can't the small guys get money too?

Some semi-famous ultra-insightful person once said something about like:
"Democracy can only last until the people realize that they can vote themselves funds from the public coffers..." ...then it pretty much degenerates into snatch'n'grab.

for the record, I thought the "fagot" thing was rather amusing ;)
even more so The Kool-Aid Man's OHH YEAH! ;)
reminds me I haven't read Penny Arcade today...

This %vote/%seats concept both intrigues and frightens me. On the one hand, if all 200,000+ LP members went out there and voted LP, the party could maybe get 1 or 2 seats in such a parliament, and there would once again be a voice for freedom in the US. On the other hand, what if that many people go out and vote for Pat The-Neo-Fascist Buchanan? Yikes. Or worse yet, what if the Reform party hadn't broken down yet, and all kinds of people voted for Reform party candidated because of Jesse Ventura and (hehe) Ross Perot, and THEN Pat Buchanan co-opted the whole thing? The instability of party platforms (aside from the LP, that is ;) leads me to believe that such a system wouldn't work too well. Parties would change their ideals on a whim, particularly since they'd need to compromise so often to get things done...

MoNsTeR

Well that didn't work out too well, let's try again:
Capitalism__Mercantilism______________________________________Communism
|-|--------|--------------|---------------------------------------|---|
Not-quite____________________Socialism
Capitalism

Black Jesus hates you all.

I would be hesitant to call the US fascist, because I can't think of one specific group that has the power. Corporations/Media has all the power, and that isn't a narrow selection of people, which is what is associated with fascism.

The whole right/left thing is a bunch of bull anyway. Look at all the issues that have basically bi-partisan support:
- drug prohibition
- censorship
- some form of gun control
- doing something about Social Security other than abolishing it
- meddling in the energy markets (70's crisis anyone? gov't caused it)

Those are just a few off the top of my head. Neither of the Demoblicans nor the Republicrats really favors any amount of individual freedom or personal responsibility, it's all about the big paternalistic state taking care of everything for us, including thinking. Where do they disagree? Little issues, really, like exactly how many billions of dollars to spend on defense (and what a misnomer THAT is), what rights to "allow" gays, just how much the gov't should meddle in women's wombs, exactly when the ATF will beat down all our doors and take our guns, which countries to send the World Police to, that kind of thing.

Look at the World's Smallest Political Quiz
http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html

As much as I love the Quiz, and think it's a much more useful tool for visualizing political ideology than the one-dimensional left/right crap, compare its ideas of right and left with our two big parties. Are the Democrats /really/ all that supportive of the Personal Issues chosen to represent the left? Are the Republicans /really/ all that supportive of the Economic Issues chosen for the right? Here's an interesting exercise, instead of answering the quiz with your opinions, try answering it with Gore's or Bush's, or, best of all, the prevailing policies of the US. The last time I did that I recall the US scoring well under 20P/20E, well into Communist/Fascist territory.

The one thing that truly unifies both parties is their lust for power. ALL government will seek to increase its power over its citizens, and the American people are all too happy to let it have that power.

MoNsTeR

you people are paranoid

the funny thing is, is that people do think that this is there only choice... there's the very evil gw bush, and then the slightly less evil al gore.

there are always alternatives to this, (like Ralph Nader for one), that don't get any recognition because they don't have the blood money to get the attention they need in order to garner enough votes to get them on the televised debates...

unfortunately we will probably end up with DUMB or DUMBER as our president and we can look forward to another 4 years of soundbytes and posturing with almost no change or betterment for the people out there who are not in the top 1% tax bracket....

anyone been watching the girls gymnastic olympic trials? I hope Shannon Miller gets to go because shes da fuckin bomb and shes hot

The main reason why the people didn't watch it or vote was because of the show "Survivor", that's what CBS thinks? Could have been ABC or NBC.

Here in Colorado, the voter turnout for the primaries (which also included several ballot issues) was less than 15% of registered voters, IIRC.

But it's really hard to blame people for not voting, the system is set up to *discourage* voting. The only way I even knew there was voting to be done at all was because I got a few mailings from the campaign to allow another cable company to offer service (damn gov't regulations). There were zero TV ads, zero radio ads, neither the Post nor the News mentioned it was election day on the front page. So I imagine a large contingent didn't vote because they weren't aware they could. Second, the polls close at friggin 7:00! I used to get off of work at 7, so if I had to work on election day I would have had to drive all the way across town during my lunch break, then drive all the way back, and impossible feat to perform in 30 minutes. And the whole polling-place thing is a flawed concept, too. Why can I only vote in one place in the entire city, and why does it have to be close to my home? By running the polls only until 7, and only allowing you to vote in one (often inconvenient) place, the system discourages many from voting simply because of the trouble involved. I had planned to vote in the primary just so I could let that cable company in, but when I got home from an errand I realized it was 7:30 and I was screwed.

So in many aspects, voter apathy is a designed phenomenon...

MoNsTeR