Elections – Page 9 – RAnt(hony)-ings

2008 Election Gear

From the guy who brought us the definitive political argument:

Keeping the Political Colors Straight

…we now have the definitive political tickets. J. Michael Straczynski has struck, once again.

I’ll put my money on G’kar/Lando, myself, although the Zathrus/Zathrus ticket does have the definitive plus of being totally incomprehensible on all subjects, making it impossible to pin them down when they contradict themselves (unlike certain Democrat frontrunners)

I personally would prefer a ticket that made sense in today’s world, the need to address global warming, the need to stop profiteering by weapons manufacturers and the sales of our weapons to other countries, but I’ll take a good fictional coupling in the meantime:

The first slate is Londo/G’Kar (or, for those who wish to be contrary, G’Kar/Londo is also available.) They bring a combination of military training, a love of freedom, and sartorial excellences. They are also excellent public speakers and true patriots who put their people ahead of their own interests. Should the electorate find themselves not happy with the slate as elected, whoever is in second position will gladly assassinate the other in order to bring about a referendum.
Similarly, the ticket of Zathras and Zathras promises the best in crisis management at a difficult time for our nation. Their wisdom is inscrutable (also incomprehensible), their dedication to detail is almost frightening, and in times of economic belt-tightening by electing one Zathras you elect all Zathras, nine for the price of the One.
And a weary nation sighs its relief….
Cafepress – The Joe Store via Archive.org

Either ticket stands more of a chance of being elected than any of the slate of candidates offered up by the Republicans (and that includes unfortunately, Ron Paul, whose yard sign is currently visible in my front yard) which makes this election more of a yawner than most.

Postscript

I have since decided that Ron Paul was not worthy of my support back in 2008, no matter how lukewarm it had been even then. Anyone who was a Republican and now runs third party is suspect, in my opinion. They are retreads, not capable of getting the support they need, even in an opposition party. That should say something to the average voter, and I think it does. That is why third parties remain third parties and why the major parties took center stage ages ago. They generally promote the ideas that a majority of the population demands, or they fail to win elections. Should fail to win, at any rate.

Rigging the Beauty Pageant?

I read an excellent opinion piece today (Paul Krugman: “Fearing Fear Itself”) on why none of the front runners amongst the Republican candidates stands a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the next election:

…Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.
Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.
Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”
—
Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk. Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretz’s rants are, if anything, saner than some of what we’ve been hearing from some of Mr. Giuliani’s rivals.
—
Most Americans have now regained their balance. But the Republican base, which lapped up the administration’s rhetoric about the axis of evil and the war on terror, remains infected by the fear the Bushies stirred up…
Opinion | Fearing Fear Itself – The New York Times

Only Ron Paul stands a chance of winning against the Democrats this time around, and he’s rapidly being shown the door by the core of the Republican party, who don’t want to hear that their fears are baseless.

This is shaping up like all of the other Presidential elections that I’ve witnessed. I don’t know why anyone pays attention to this stuff anymore. The throwing of the election by one party or the other, by offering up a candidate that only the core of the party would ever vote for (gun-controlling Mondale, socialist snoopy Dukakis, dead fish Dole, wooden Gore, lying Kerry) and with third party candidates excluded from real participation, they essentially hand the election to the other major party. With the exceptions of the elections of 1980 and 1996, there was never any question in my mind who was going to win.

…and I really don’t want to hear about irregularities in the statistical ties that have dominated the 21st century elections. I’m well aware of the problems, they just aren’t relevant to the candidates chosen by the dominant parties, and the purposes behind their choice.

In all the other elections it seemed clear to me that the opposition party had chosen a candidate that was guaranteed to loose. It’s not as hard as you might imagine, to do this. The average Joe wants to vote for a winner (don’t ask me why that is, but I’ve talked to enough people, and seen enough data to know this is true) and the primaries can be reasonably easy to manipulate by excluding unwanted candidates and orchestrating media exposure (as was done to last elections Democratic favorite) so as to show your favored candidate as winning early enough to start the landslide.

This is clearly shaping up to be a handover election (no matter what Ol’ Joey, the Republican mouthpiece has to say about it) which is why the Democratic candidates feel secure enough to tell us all about their expensive and invasive social programs in advance (programs that the Republican front runners strangely feel the urge to parrot, albeit to a lesser extent) so that the election, when it occurs, will be a mandate for handing healthcare (and possibly control of the internet) over to the federal government.

Beauty pageants disguised as good government (election is just a popularity contest, after all) It might be more interesting if the candidates weren’t so old and wrinkly.

… And if the designated winner wasn’t transparently obvious.

Postscript

I don’t know who this guy is trying to fool here. Gore should have won in 2000. Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett did a judicial end-run that should have been flagged as out of bounds. Texas’ insane love of sports made Bush II look like a juggernaut from a Texas perspective. From a national perspective, Al Gore was still the sane choice and possibly could have been the winner had the recount been allowed to finish before the decision was made.

However, Obama was clearly going to win in 2008. That much is true.

Why the Democrats are NOT a Viable Opposition to the Administration

Watch the three minute video, then read on.

Ralph Nader: “Things Are a Lot Worse than We Thought!” – Published on Oct 11, 2007

If they refuse to act because they believe this is true, then it is pointless to support any sitting democrat. But if you look at it from the opposite perspective, Bush is on a mission from God. Do you really think he’ll let those godless Democrats get in his way?

Anyway.

On Digg this video has lead to a series of observations about the meaning of Nader’s comments, and flames against Nader for ruining the election, not once but twice, by being a candidate and costing the Democrats the election (never mind that the same can be said of the Libertarian candidates as well from the Republican side of the duopoly, and that the only solution to this problem is to negate the possibility of free and fair elections in the US) and the usual mindless support for the next successor to the duopoly’s undisturbed rule of the US since Lincoln brought the Republicans to power in 1860.

Comments like this one:

“At least Obama’s staying the fuck out of Iran and has taken nuclear weapons off the table”

This is obviously his first election experience. Nothing the candidate says has any bearing on what the elected President does. Go back and review the election promises of every candidate who became President, and you’ll understand.

I realize that this is not popularly understood, but the President is one man. There are thousands of people who work at the Federal level, who were there before the President gets elected, and will be there after he leaves. They set policy, which the elected President is expected to endorse, to some degree.

All of the modern Presidents (since at least Hoover) have had the majority of their agendas set for them by the conditions of the government and the world at the time they take office. It will take a maverick to change the course even in the slightest degree. There’s only one maverick running as a candidate at the moment, and he’s a Republican.

Keeping the Political Colors Straight

Getting dizzy listening to party politics these days? Are you ready for the ramp up to election day, just a few short months away? I don’t know about you, but the pointlessness of 9/10ths of all political arguments reminds me of a scene from an episode of Babylon 5 “Geometry of Shadows”. The following is from a synopsis of it:

One purple and one green carries mark of leadership. He who takes leader cloth is leader. He who takes green is Green, and follows Green leader. He who takes purple is Purple, and follows Purple leader.
Full synopsis, Lurker’s guide episode entry

Green vs. Purple Youtube playlist

So when you hear people yelling about anything political,which involves most everything these days what with the expansion of gov’t, Just remember: “Who takes green, is green, follows green leader.” It’s just that simple.

Postscript

I truncated the quote from the synopsis. It originally had the whole scene in it. I didn’t need the whole scene to communicate the important point, just that one quote. I also added video clips since they are available as I type this. Hopefully they will be available in the future.

What I want to know is, why did I think that it was cool to contract government into gov’t? I’ve corrected that display of linguistic fetishism pretty much everywhere else I’ve run across it on the blog, but I left that one here simply as a reminder of this fact: the stuff you think is cool today? It probably won’t be cool tomorrow.

This image is making the rounds now, has been making the rounds for the last few years. If you think you have to follow the leader when it comes to party politics, you are as dumb as the Drazi are in that episode of B5. You don’t have to follow the leader. If your party leadership is demonstrably insane, you do not have to be insane with them. Heaven help you if you still support Donald Trump. You have no other recourse than counseling or suicide. Take your pick.

…now, if Dick and Jane (or whatever their names are) are smart enough to know when their party has gone off the reservation, good on them. It don’t mean I have make friends with Donald Trump’s Nazi buddies to be an emotional adult. I stopped being amused by lighthearted political camaraderie when half of the structurally encoded two-party system that runs the United States today turned stark raving nuts and elected someone whose single goal was attempting to destroy the federal government. That someone is currently Donald Trump, but unless the party changes it could be some other nutjob because there are dozens of them waiting to destroy the United States.

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The comparison between Babylon 5’s Drazi conundrum and modern politics got extremely un-funny after Donald Trump became president. However, it has made the choice of which side to vote for an issue of crystal-clear logic. We have that going for us, I guess.