I don't know what elections were like in the Soviet Union way back when but here is an interesting article on the way they are now https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/russian-elections-follow-soviet-tradition-180316202457460.html
Interesting in the way the commissars know Putin would win in a fair election, but figuratively stuff the ballot boxes anyway just to get a good turnout. Kind of the way we used to do in Chicago. And speaking of stuffing ballot boxes isn't it outrageous the way Trump is calling to stop counting ballots in Florida before all the votes are in, many of them from the armed forces, and speaking of the armed forces, isn't it disgraceful how he dodged the WW I memorial? Though I hear that stiff rubber rain boats can chafe a sensitive bone spur.
It turns out that my voting no on all the judges paid out after all. One of the bad apples didn't get reelected and my vote was one of those that sank his ship. Two little lines connected for Uncle Ken, a giant step towards good government for the good people of Chicagoland.
Well maybe not a giant step, likely a lot of bad apples still got through. That whole system of voting for all the judges is a bad apple itself. A better system would be to vote for people who appoint them, then the appointees might be careful who they appoint lest they themselves get voted against,.
Further down the ballot I voted, like Beagles, for people I never heard of running for offices I didn't know existed, the only difference being I voted dem where he voted rep. Something wrong with the current system right there. In the OBHP system there would just be names. I could easily consult some sort of web page or paper or Youtube-esque video that would give me some info on all the candidates. I think most voters would do that, would prefer that to all those insane mailers that stuff the mailbox and commercials that clog the airways. I wonder if the candidates were allowed one single campaign commercial. Would they fill them with crap the way they do the many they air now?
What is this about free medical care being available if the veteran is poor enough? I thought all veterans were eligible for VA care?
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Monday, November 12, 2018
Nyet!
I think all the Russian premiers during the Soviet era were ultimately canned by the party except for Stalin, who died in office. The people only got to vote on their local leaders, who then elected district leaders, who then elected provincial leaders, who then elected national leaders. There may have been more steps in the process, but you get the idea. There was only one candidate on the ballot, and the people got to vote either "yes" or "no". If the "no" votes won, the party would nominate another candidate and hold the election all over again. That seldom happened because the citizens were more or less forced to vote. Well, not exactly forced, let's say "strongly encouraged". Factories were shut down and the employees were marched through the snow to the polling place on election day, which couldn't have been lots of fun for them. If they voted the candidate down, they would just have to march through the snow again to vote for somebody that probably wasn't a whole lot different than the one they rejected. (I don't remember where I learned this, probably in school.)
In our system, it's just the opposite. We get to vote on numerous candidates, many of whom I've never heard of, for numerous offices, many of which I'm not sure exactly what their job is. If it wasn't for political parties, I don't know how I would decide who to vote for, except for the President, the Governor, and maybe Congress. Many people can't even name their congressmen, much less the members of the Wayne State Board of Regents. (I'm not making this up, there really is such a thing in Michigan.) Within the last few years, Michigan passed a law that eliminated straight party voting. The law was overturned by a court, then reinstated on an appeal, and ultimately overturned by ballot initiative. I think the law was stupid myself. People said that they did it to discourage Blacks from voting, but I'm sure that lots of White people vote straight party too. Whatever were they thinking?
I'm with Uncle Ken on the TV advertising. I listen to most of them once, and hit the "mute" button every time they come on after that. I think you'd have a hard time banning or restricting that, though, because of freedom of speech issues. What they might be able ban is those annoying robo calls. I think any freedom of speech issues might be over ruled by right of privacy issues. Calling me on the phone is not the same thing as broadcasting something on public media.
I get an extra 20 or 25 dollars in my Social Security check because of my veteran status. I could get free medical care if I was poor, and I could have gone to college on the GI bill, but I didn't.
In our system, it's just the opposite. We get to vote on numerous candidates, many of whom I've never heard of, for numerous offices, many of which I'm not sure exactly what their job is. If it wasn't for political parties, I don't know how I would decide who to vote for, except for the President, the Governor, and maybe Congress. Many people can't even name their congressmen, much less the members of the Wayne State Board of Regents. (I'm not making this up, there really is such a thing in Michigan.) Within the last few years, Michigan passed a law that eliminated straight party voting. The law was overturned by a court, then reinstated on an appeal, and ultimately overturned by ballot initiative. I think the law was stupid myself. People said that they did it to discourage Blacks from voting, but I'm sure that lots of White people vote straight party too. Whatever were they thinking?
I'm with Uncle Ken on the TV advertising. I listen to most of them once, and hit the "mute" button every time they come on after that. I think you'd have a hard time banning or restricting that, though, because of freedom of speech issues. What they might be able ban is those annoying robo calls. I think any freedom of speech issues might be over ruled by right of privacy issues. Calling me on the phone is not the same thing as broadcasting something on public media.
I get an extra 20 or 25 dollars in my Social Security check because of my veteran status. I could get free medical care if I was poor, and I could have gone to college on the GI bill, but I didn't.
not many parties, ONE party
The communist party is exactly what I was thinking of when I thought of the One Party. Surely within the communist parties there are guys who, within that restricted range, are more to the right or to the left, they must have some informal coalitions, but those would be fine, It seems like they are mostly ceremonial in nature. How often do you see any commie leader in trouble because their party voted against them? Another big problem is that you have to be a commie to join.
In Uncle Ken's One Big Happy Party (OBHP) anybody could join, probably you would have to be a citizen. You would have to sign something agreeing to not form a formal party. The language of that could be tricky, but lest's say it's doable. All elections would be like primaries, anybody could run, though maybe you would need petitions to keep the ballots from being too big. One advantage would be that you would have to articulate your ideas and programs more clearly, you couldn't just say vote for me because of my party because everybody would be a member of the same party, I kind of like that voting system where you vote for your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd candidate and they get respectively like 5, 3, and 1 point, and the guy with the most points win. People would have to raise money on their own, they would get no OBHP money. The elections would be limited to a certain amount of time like I believer the British are, or were. There would be official forums where the candidates would lay out their agenda., some tv shows where all candidates would appear, but no commercials like we see now. Do the dawgs see any changes they want to make on my system?
The reason the green and libertarian parties don't get many votes is that most people don't like their agendas. Some of their ideas, legal pot, and a clean environment may be popular, but the way to move them into actualization is to have them adopted by a major party, just as the dems took the 40 hour week from the progressives and made it their own.
It may or may not be relevant, but I'm reminded of a quote by the late, great, Charles Bukowski when he said “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
I think Mr Bukowski is stealing from WB Yeats' The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity, but probably many said something similar before him.. I always thought it was a weakness of the liberals against the commies and the hard rightists who have no doubts. But if you think a lot about things you are bound to have doubts, just the nature of the universe.
Happy Veterans day guys. By the way do either of the dawgs get benefits from the VA?
In Uncle Ken's One Big Happy Party (OBHP) anybody could join, probably you would have to be a citizen. You would have to sign something agreeing to not form a formal party. The language of that could be tricky, but lest's say it's doable. All elections would be like primaries, anybody could run, though maybe you would need petitions to keep the ballots from being too big. One advantage would be that you would have to articulate your ideas and programs more clearly, you couldn't just say vote for me because of my party because everybody would be a member of the same party, I kind of like that voting system where you vote for your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd candidate and they get respectively like 5, 3, and 1 point, and the guy with the most points win. People would have to raise money on their own, they would get no OBHP money. The elections would be limited to a certain amount of time like I believer the British are, or were. There would be official forums where the candidates would lay out their agenda., some tv shows where all candidates would appear, but no commercials like we see now. Do the dawgs see any changes they want to make on my system?
The reason the green and libertarian parties don't get many votes is that most people don't like their agendas. Some of their ideas, legal pot, and a clean environment may be popular, but the way to move them into actualization is to have them adopted by a major party, just as the dems took the 40 hour week from the progressives and made it their own.
It may or may not be relevant, but I'm reminded of a quote by the late, great, Charles Bukowski when he said “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
I think Mr Bukowski is stealing from WB Yeats' The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity, but probably many said something similar before him.. I always thought it was a weakness of the liberals against the commies and the hard rightists who have no doubts. But if you think a lot about things you are bound to have doubts, just the nature of the universe.
Happy Veterans day guys. By the way do either of the dawgs get benefits from the VA?
Sunday, November 11, 2018
The Lesser of Three Evils
We had a saying back in my Libertarian days, "This country doesn't need a third party, what it needs is a second party." That's because it didn't seem to matter which party was in office because they both had almost the same agenda. I like it better now that there is a discernable difference. I think what happened was the two major parties made an effort to assimilate people from the extreme left and right to keep them out of the third parties. Then Trump came along and managed to piss off people from both sides. The Libertarians got three percent of the vote in 2016, which is at least three times what they usually get. I think the only reason the third parties didn't do better than that is a lot of people wanted to vote against either Trump or Hillary, and the most effective way to have their vote matter was to vote for the opposite major party. The only reason I voted for the Libertarian presidential candidate was that I didn't like either Trump or Hillary and, this way, I got to vote against both of them at once.
I think the difference between the current caravan and the others is that this one is much larger and more determined. Say what you want about Trump, but he has done more to control illegal immigration than any president I can think of. If I had known that he was actually do it instead of just talk about it, I might have voted for him myself.
11/11
Of course a single party is unlikely to come about or to last very long.
Except in countries that are still Communist; those are the only nations that have a single party system to the best of my knowledge. Orwell's 1984 also had a single party, but that's a work of fiction...or is it?
I still like the idea of having more than two parties to choose from, and we do but the smaller parties never get any traction. All the money flows to either the Democrats or the Republicans and the lesser heard voices are never funded to the extent they should be. The Greens and the Libertarians don't have a chance and we're at a point where the big guys seem to want to put the interests of the Party before the best interests of the country. There is a reluctance for many congressmen to cross the aisle and compromise to make decisions and I don't know why that is. It would be a ballsy move for the reasonable congressmen of both parties to drop out and form a new third party but I'm not holding my breath.
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I just checked my news app, and it seems the Caravan is still on track.
Indeed it is but I think Uncle Ken is correct in pointing out that it's a big deal because Trump is making so much of it. There have been caravans before and they seemed to have been dealt with without any high drama but I could be wrong. What is strange is that Trump hasn't said much recently about that caravan but he is not known for his long attention span unless it involves Hillary, Obama, or the 2016 election.
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Happy Veterans Day to Mr. Beagles although I don't think "happy" is the right word. I've always liked this holiday the best because it's the only holiday that I've ever earned.
Except in countries that are still Communist; those are the only nations that have a single party system to the best of my knowledge. Orwell's 1984 also had a single party, but that's a work of fiction...or is it?
I still like the idea of having more than two parties to choose from, and we do but the smaller parties never get any traction. All the money flows to either the Democrats or the Republicans and the lesser heard voices are never funded to the extent they should be. The Greens and the Libertarians don't have a chance and we're at a point where the big guys seem to want to put the interests of the Party before the best interests of the country. There is a reluctance for many congressmen to cross the aisle and compromise to make decisions and I don't know why that is. It would be a ballsy move for the reasonable congressmen of both parties to drop out and form a new third party but I'm not holding my breath.
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I just checked my news app, and it seems the Caravan is still on track.
Indeed it is but I think Uncle Ken is correct in pointing out that it's a big deal because Trump is making so much of it. There have been caravans before and they seemed to have been dealt with without any high drama but I could be wrong. What is strange is that Trump hasn't said much recently about that caravan but he is not known for his long attention span unless it involves Hillary, Obama, or the 2016 election.
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Happy Veterans Day to Mr. Beagles although I don't think "happy" is the right word. I've always liked this holiday the best because it's the only holiday that I've ever earned.
Friday, November 9, 2018
Wrong Again
I have scanned through all four gospels, and it appears that Jesus never said the thing that I said he said. Maybe it was another Biblical character, or maybe it was Shakespeare, but I'm pretty sure that somebody said it and that I didn't just make it up.
About that chicks thing, if you will check my post "Slim Pickings" of 11/4/18 you will see that it was I who first tracked down that Esquire article and reported that I was unable to access it. My sister doesn't remember it and Uncle Ken doesn't remember it, and they are the only people I know who ever participated in a protest demonstration, so maybe it never happened, but I didn't make that up either. I didn't have a TV in those days, so I must have either read about it somewhere or somebody told me about it. When I brought it up, comparing it to the current practice of illegal immigrants bringing their women and children with them, I didn't expect to have to defend my statement. I thought it was common knowledge, but apparently it is not. I was surprised that there is so little mention of it on the internet. I do think that the You Tube video is worth a look though. The poet lady just rattled it off like she didn't think anybody would challenge it. Of course the poem might be a work of fiction, but that could be said about almost anything you hear or read or see on TV these days. It's like that old army saying (origin unknown), "Don't believe anything you hear and half of what you see."
I just checked my news app, and it seems the Caravan is still on track.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBPvole?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
About that chicks thing, if you will check my post "Slim Pickings" of 11/4/18 you will see that it was I who first tracked down that Esquire article and reported that I was unable to access it. My sister doesn't remember it and Uncle Ken doesn't remember it, and they are the only people I know who ever participated in a protest demonstration, so maybe it never happened, but I didn't make that up either. I didn't have a TV in those days, so I must have either read about it somewhere or somebody told me about it. When I brought it up, comparing it to the current practice of illegal immigrants bringing their women and children with them, I didn't expect to have to defend my statement. I thought it was common knowledge, but apparently it is not. I was surprised that there is so little mention of it on the internet. I do think that the You Tube video is worth a look though. The poet lady just rattled it off like she didn't think anybody would challenge it. Of course the poem might be a work of fiction, but that could be said about almost anything you hear or read or see on TV these days. It's like that old army saying (origin unknown), "Don't believe anything you hear and half of what you see."
I just checked my news app, and it seems the Caravan is still on track.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBPvole?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Down in front
I like to take a break from this forum once in a while, not only for the sake of my own sanity but also to avoid getting sucked into prolonged and meaningless discussions. This whole "chicks up front" business, for instance. Despite Uncles Ken's assertions, it was indeed a "thing," not a big one but a thing nonetheless; a cover story of a major national magazine made it so. You are free to think otherwise.
And that caravan business? Too much we don't really know but it seems to me that it is less of an invasion than a somewhat cohesive group of gatecrashers who are unlikely to be armed and dangerous. I expect a measured and restrained response when they do show up at the border but with Trump at the helm any predictions would be futile.
That's the thing about Trump, his complete unpredictability and his capacity to flip 180 degrees on any issue at a moment's notice. He deserves a little credit, though, in that he has made us painfully aware of some of the shortcomings of our political system. I don't think there is any loophole that he hasn't examined thoroughly and is willing to exploit. Despite any investigations and legal proceedings, what do you suppose will happen when the eventual court cases against him get appealed all the way to the Supreme Court? He could very well walk away unscathed, as loathsome as that idea may be, and remain the Black Swan of American politics.
It may or may not be relevant, but I'm reminded of a quote by the late, great, Charles Bukowski when he said “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
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And to help me keep things on an even keel here's a video of a guy serenading his cattle with a trombone.
And that caravan business? Too much we don't really know but it seems to me that it is less of an invasion than a somewhat cohesive group of gatecrashers who are unlikely to be armed and dangerous. I expect a measured and restrained response when they do show up at the border but with Trump at the helm any predictions would be futile.
That's the thing about Trump, his complete unpredictability and his capacity to flip 180 degrees on any issue at a moment's notice. He deserves a little credit, though, in that he has made us painfully aware of some of the shortcomings of our political system. I don't think there is any loophole that he hasn't examined thoroughly and is willing to exploit. Despite any investigations and legal proceedings, what do you suppose will happen when the eventual court cases against him get appealed all the way to the Supreme Court? He could very well walk away unscathed, as loathsome as that idea may be, and remain the Black Swan of American politics.
It may or may not be relevant, but I'm reminded of a quote by the late, great, Charles Bukowski when he said “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
-----
And to help me keep things on an even keel here's a video of a guy serenading his cattle with a trombone.
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