OT: Things to do before the inauguration

[Salty Thumb]

[e-mail] wrote in news: [e-mail]:

A better question is what is more likely to lead to a big brother or animal farm type system -- the kind of people that believe in democracy and the right to vote for an elected government or the kind that oppose monarchy, won't accept the divine right of kings and work to undermine a forcefully installed government? In any case, whatever answer you provide is irrelevant since you probably are clinging to the belief that Bush was popularly elected both times.

So in your opinion, a "free nation" must consist of persons who will willingly and repeatedly cede their authority and income to some persons whom likely they do not know and have never met, whom are not necessarily competent or astute, but merely display trappings of similarity or familiarity while making seductive promises and proclaiming dire warnings, on the premise that the ceded authority and monies, which are redistributed for control amongst the winners' friends, associates and a token few who bear a facade of competence, will somehow trickle down to benefit the voter?

The answer is 'yes' - if you are a shill or yokel who has been conditioned to equate 'democracy' with 'vote'. Welcome to the Information Age.

1215 1776 2005

[Doug Kanter]

"The Handmaid's Tale" is an example of what can happen when religion meddles in government, and has spectacular success in that effort.

Read "Animal Farm" again.

Your leader only won by a few points. I accept the math, but I don't accept your leader's claim that he now has a mandate. Although polls are fishy, two recent ones were interesting. Close to 60% don't think your leaders goals in Iraq will ever come to pass (peaceful democracy, to be specific). Another simultaneous poll said 56% approved of your boy's handling of Iraq. Sounds like two very odd results to coexist side by side.

Correct. Smart people are not a panacea. But one thing's for sure: You don't want an intensely stupid president, with a bunch of very smart sitters managing him and promoting an agenda that's as misguided as the domino theory from the 1960s.

[Doug Kanter]

You are wrong. Post this in rec.boats, and in the subject line, try and snag a visitor called "NOYB". You'll see someone who I'm sure isn't so unusual, who supports the entire policy statement.

[gregpresley]

So let me see, the people in the Ukraine who thought the election there was stolen are idiots, in spite of the fact that international observers unanimously agreed? Is that your idea of "undermining the popularly elected government?" The fact that the opposition candidate was poisoned by dioxin doesn't seem just a tad suspicious to you?

The reality is that democracy by no means assures that the best government is elected - it merely ensures that people who actually vote have earned the right to grumble as loud as they please if their candidates are not elected - and in theory, this keeps things from escalating to the point of revolution. However, this system crumbles unless BOTH sides have absolute confidence in the integrity of the voting system -hence the near-revolution happening in the Ukraine.... Voting "irregularities" on the scale of the last two presidential elections here in the US are well-beyond what should be tolerated in an educated, technologically sophisticated country.Anyone who cares about the success of democracy ought to be busy "undermining" any of the current voting systems across the US which are both arcane and susceptible to wide-spread fraud.

[Swyck]

Maybe I will. Are you saying it was a right wing style takeovers? It has been a few years, but from what I remember it represented a communist/socialist style of government turning ugly. Or more accurately, being unmasked for what it was.

Or are you saying it was the lying and hidden agendas of the so-called leaders that applies to your point? If so, then it would be a more appropriate analogy.

There was no mandate. That I accept. Even if there was, the government should do their best to represent all sides.

As for the polls, they are often fishy, but the examples you quote may not be as odd as they may appear at first. People may approve of an action, because they feel it to be the right thing to do, but may also see that it may not solve the underlying problem. If I lived in a high crime area, I may not feel safer by adding extra locks, but would still feel it's something that needs doing.

The domino theory itself was not what was misguided, as any look at the geo-political maps of the 60s and 70s could show. It was the strategy used to contain it that was flawed, though it did eventually succeed. Unfortunately, we're now dealing with some of the fallout from that.

Swyck

[Swyck]

If the election is fraudulent then the government is not by definition a popularly elected government, as was admitted in the Ukraine.

There have been cries of abuse in the US elections, and some are convinced it was stolen, but they have no evidence of that. They just don't like the results.

Well what is the answer to the current voting systems? Undermining the voting system in an attempt to make it better and undermining the current government just to be spiteful are not the same things.

Sure they should be improved, but I haven't heard many good suggestions as to how to do that. We had hanging chads in '00, and that led to cries for online voting. When that was tried people then said "wait is that really secure and fraud proof?" Well, I don't know that it is but its a little late to bring that question up on election day.

Swyck

[Doug Kanter]

The underlying problem is too ugly to face. It would require that every voter in this country swallow their pride for a moment and admit that our Middle East policy is being guided by a quote from (if I recall what my son was watching one day), The Simpsons: Inside every Iraqi is an American aching to get out. Or some such thing with the same meaning. Same stupid foreign policy that got us mired in the Phillipines over 100 years ago, and Vietnam later.

Fallout? Where do you see the influence of communism? Where did we forget to sweep something up? The young suits who concocted the domino theory claimed that Australia would be speaking Russian if we didn't "manage" Vietnam.

[gregpresley]

Alas, it has been brought up repeatedly since 2000. There are numerous websites referring to it, and numerous hearings, press releases, etc. Here's one for example:

have signed quite a few petitions demanding that something be done about this, but it takes a lot of pressure to move some bureacrats - especially those who are not technologically savvy, and, for the conspiracy-theory minded among us, those who seek to gain by the lack of paper trails and other checks of computer -voting. A grandmother in Seattle has shown repeatedly how easy it is to switch huge volumes of votes at central voting headquarters, where all the precinct results go to one computer, like the PC you are using right now. Some places demanded (and got) paper trail voting machines. But such places were a tiny minority.