U.S. Elections.........

[MrMacphisto]

Isn't it great when a president that has over $200 million in his campaign for re-election still gets sympathy from the common man or woman? I find it rather amusing that this corporate puppet has any support from the average citizen, but alas, the uninformed are great in number.

The electoral college is indeed a crock of utter shit. Sure, it was great as a bait for smaller states to join the union, but keeping such a stupid system around is basically making the statement that each Wyoming citizen is proportionately worth more than each New Yorker. Of course, when you combine this obvious fallacy with how a presidential candidate gets an entire state's electoral votes when he gets only at least 51% of its votes, any observant individuals will note that America is neither a democracy nor a republic. The plutocratic state of affairs in the U.S. become more apparent when you think about how much each candidate is bought by special interests and how the media is being bought by malevolent bastards like Rupert Murdoch.

By the way, Red Indian, America definitely has its share of intellectual poseurs, but I would guess that a country that still has a figurehead monarchy and enough old money families to put someone like Margaret Thatcher in power has more than a few intelligentsia wannabes as well....

One last thing though... The fact that Tony Blair has to face a bunch of angry old wankers every night is not only impressive, but damn amusing! Parliament is about the only entertaining programming that C-Span offers, and boy is it....

 

[red indian]

More questions.........

......Jo Belle, do try and read my posts a little more carefully. What I am trying to say is that the party that is out of power does not seem to me to get a very good platform during its time out of office to get its policies across to the electorate. This has nothing to do with me "not giving them credit" what I,m saying is they dont get ENOUGH credit as a result of your electoral system.

When exactly does the president have to "confront the other party as a whole on a regular basis"? how often does he visit congress or the senate and face questions from the elected members? apart from "The state of the union address" how many times has this president visited the two houses?


MrMacphisto...."the uninformed are great in number" How do you like your words Mac? over easy or sunny side up? either way you need to eat some! old money families had nothing to do with putting Margret Thatcher in to power, she was thoroughly detested by them. She was a lowly grocers daughter with no pedigree, hell bent on breaking up the old boys network of comfortable fat cartels.

 

[Daumantas]

red, I think you are at least partially correct. There is no formal system in the United States for allowing the party out of power access to the system. And it is unfairly skewed to the party in power. For example, the President is followed by the news media simply because he is the President; therefore he can create news, and draw attention to his side of any issue, simply by taking a trip somewhere with the knowledge that his trip will be reported by the media (this is why George W. keeps showing up on aircraft carriers and such).

The House and Senate minority leaders function as de facto critics of the party in power, but it's somewhat hit or miss. A lot quite frankly depends on whether the minority leader has the cojones to stand up to the President. Tom Daschle, the current Senate minority leader, ain't real swift in the cojones department. This is why Howard Dean created such a big splash last year; not so much because he's the first choice among Democrats for President as because the Democrats were thrilled to have somebody actually willing to come out and criticize Bush and ACT like an opposition party, the way you're supposed to in a democracy.

 

[kis123]

Okay, here's a dumb question:

what the heck does Dubya stand for????????????

 

[MrMacphisto]

Red...

As far as the Thatcher thing goes, I spoke with a Labor Party Welshman about it, and he would strongly disagree with you. If I'm not mistaken, most of what Thatcher did to England can be compared to what Reagan did to America: let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

 

[MrMacphisto]

Dubya stands for Walker.... George Walker Bush, Jr.

 

[kis123]

Thank you MrMacphisto.......

 

[Knox The Hatter]

Yes, I agree...there's nothing like watching the PM's questions on C-SPAN. It's refreshing to watch the banter back and forth, the loose laughter, the impromptu remarks. By comparison, the conduct in the House of Representatives is pompous, flatulent, sanctimonious, and sometimes even boring (the biggest sin of all).
The opposition in the Commons has what is known as a 'Shadow Government'. For every cabinet post, the opposition has an MP following everything going on, so that if, say, Labour loses the next election, the Shadow Government gets to step into each post the very next day with no transition.
Wow, what a concept!

 

[Knox The Hatter]

No "Junior", MacPhisto. Just George Walker Bush. Dad's George Herbert Walker Bush...

 

[red indian]

Blimey Mac!!!!......

...."a labour party welshman".....thats someone who is so far to the left he is off the highway! he is never going to admit that a conservative priminister did anything good for her country. Thatchers assualt on the absurd power weilded by the labour unions in the seventies and eighties is one of the main reasons we now have the worlds fourth largest economy. If your pals labour party unions had got their way the U.K. would have ended up in the Soviet block.

That platitude about "the rich getting richer....." is rubbish, we now have a welfare state and national health system that is the envy of many countries. We now rival Germany for third spot of world economies.So....yes....you are mistaken.

 

[MrMacphisto]

Knox... I have to admit... the Junior thing is a joke on my part. I like to refer to Dubya as Junior because he reminds me of a slower version of his father (and the whole King George concept makes II or Junior a perfect namesake)....

Red, I'll admit that the Welshman is obviously a very liberal individual. Being a liberal, I found myself a conservative by comparison, but nonetheless... I see what you mean about the economic strength of England. However, isn't it kind of apples to oranges comparing England to Germany? Germany is far more socialist than England, and England is far less socialist than most of Western Europe in the first place. So, what I'm saying is... England will seem more productive in numbers, but for example, if the EU goes through with that idea of economically unifying France and Germany, those two countries together will be more "productive" than England and even the U.S.

Sometimes, how you measure productivity is more of the question than the statistics themselves. What would you consider more important, Red? Productivity or overall quality of life? Countries like Canada and Norway regularly surpass the U.S. and England in quality of life as measured by the HDI (the Human Life Development Index), which is an internationally recognized survey of how each country fares overall (by comparing things like homicide, literacy, fertility, infant mortality, poverty, and education). I'm not sure how Canada compares to England in socialist policies, but I know for a fact that Norway is far more socialist than England. The connection I see here to the Thatcher issue is this: Labor unions are definitely a pain in the ass concerning economic productivity, but if you break them completely, corporations fill in the power vacuum. When corporations gain even more power than they already have, what do you think happens to the rights of the worker and of the consumer? It seems like a balance has to be managed between unions and corporations. Perhaps, the unions had too much power before Thatcher, but she has allowed corporations to gain too much power....

 

[BigJim]

Not being confrontational Jim, but where do you get these facts? I'm just curious.


Jo, hates most politicians, but votes with her fingers crossed.

Ah, so this is the question you were waiting for me to answer? Sorry Jo, work got in the way. Too many damned e-mails from the TMF auto-bot... lol

This particular gem was from Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. I despised the stunt he pulled at the awards ceremony. Like flag-burning I thought it was cheap, boring and tacky. But I still pay attention to all sources, even when they strike me as being twats.

 

[BigJim]

Okay, here's a dumb question:

what the heck does Dubya stand for????????????

So called because of the man's own hillarious speech impediment. He pronounces his middle initial that way.