Political BS
Mar. 20th, 2012 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In honor of today's political circus in Illinois:
Understanding the GOP
Understanding the Democrats
No apologies to the loud mouthed and empty headed partisans. Minor apologies to those who already saw me declare most of this on Twitter.
Understanding the GOP
- Anything that puts more money in the rich man's pockets is good.
- Birth control is bad. It lowers the supply of serfs, wage slaves and cannon fodder.
- Mittens, Newt, and San[c]torum don't seem to stand for anything so much as they just stand against things (and each other.)
- If it doesn't work, cut taxes on the rich. If it still doesn't work, cut taxes on the rich.
- The environment matters... except when it cuts into the profit margin.
- Science is too hard to understand, so it must be a lie.
- Our popularity ratings are down. Quick, let's start a war and wave the flag harder.
- Anything goes as long as it has the word "family" in the title.
Understanding the Democrats
- We're short on imagination and vision, but proud of our traditions. Ruts-R-Us.
- If it doesn't work, throw money at it. If it still doesn't work, throw more money at it.
- Obama doesn't need to stand for anything. He got this far without standing up for his 2008 promises, so why add more?
- There is no victory without compromise. Let's compromise everything and call it a victory.
- Accounting is too hard to understand, so it must be a lie.
- Our popularity ratings are down. Quick, hand out some more money.
- Anything goes as long as it has the word "family" in the title.
- Almost anything goes if it calls itself "Homeland Security" because that's too dangerous to criticize.
No apologies to the loud mouthed and empty headed partisans. Minor apologies to those who already saw me declare most of this on Twitter.
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Date: 2012-03-20 11:28 pm (UTC)*snrk*
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Date: 2012-03-21 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 08:33 am (UTC)I remember the enormous hope I felt in 1997 when finally 18+ years or Tory dominion came to an end.
I remember the bitter dissapointment I felt when it become painfully obvious that they were exactly the same.
I no longer vote for a candidate expecting him/her or his/her party to do anything to promote an environment in which people from the middle to lower quartile are encouraged to build better lives for themselves and their community. I simply vote for the least objectionable; cross my fingers, and hope for the best.
ALL parties are so busy rolling the clock back 150 years that they barely notice out contempt for them. In our case quite literally.
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Date: 2012-03-21 10:58 am (UTC)Those who live by the sound bite die by the sound bite, it seems.
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Date: 2012-03-21 11:05 am (UTC)People tend to do counter-intuitive things because they are frightened. They feel that crossing their fingers and hoping for the best is the easiest way forward.
http://youtu.be/8Zxxrw7PwVQ
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Date: 2012-03-21 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-03-21 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-21 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-22 10:12 am (UTC)AV is slightly better than "the person who gets the most votes wins" in that instead of two-party rule, it leads to "one party plus a coalition of two minor parties, the latter of which becomes almost a party in its own right". Australia's results are the prime example: you have Labour (first party) and NatLibs (second coalition) - and the NatLibs are seriously considering mergers.
From the voters' point of view, AV is not unequivocally better than "most votes wins". Unlike the latter, and unlike simpler solutions, it has a weird looking-glass effect where, sometimes, moving a candidate higher in your ranking can make him lose, and moving him lower can make him win. It can fail to elect the candidate that would win a two-candidate runoff against every other candidate (granted, so can "most votes wins"). Finally, unlike "most votes wins", it requires extensive logistics; either all of a constituency's ballots have to be transferred to a central counting location for that constituency, or the center and more local areas have to communicate back and forth between each round of the count.
There can be good reasons to reject AV, then. It's a shame the Liberal Democrats didn't get a referendum on what they really wanted -- proportional representation. Now, that could have made a difference.
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Date: 2012-03-22 10:40 am (UTC)