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ooby writes "MSNBC reports that Bush and Kerry plan to shoot off a million or so emails to their closest friends. By using the Internet to distribute ads, presidential candidates believe they can reach more people using less money. I guess that's why they wrote that loophole in that awesome new spam law."
Yet another reason to vote LIBERTARIAN!
Why would I want to vote for a party that manages to combine the worst elements of both the Democrats and Republicans?
Hey! The primaries aren't over yet! Quit picking who's electable and who's not! Kerry and Bush are not the only possible candidates for President! It's exactly this kind of coverage, when you don't even think you are doing it, that contributes to the elitism of politics. You want to support the little guy, the average joe, give him a voice! Don't just assume that people will nominate Kerry because he's winning! Dammit, I expected better of you /. editors.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I was gonna vote for Bush anyway. www.protestwarrior.com If you're a conservative you'll like it. If you're a liberal, you might just learn a thing or two.
"That's not how democracy works. Democracy has ALWAYS been about trying to effect change through your vote."
No, democracy has always been the quest, by those who desire power, for an effective means to influence 'vote spending patterns'.
Advertising substantially overlaps with this; advertising for commodities etc is all about influencing 'cash spending patterns'.
Democracy is, today, Advertising.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Problem is all the third parties tend to operate on the fringes and don't have a prayer of pulling together enough votes to win. I often dream of a realignment of American parties like this:
- Put all the wealthy, executives, corporate special interests and establishment politicians in one party, lets call it the Aristocratic party. They deserve each other.
- Put all the ordinary working people in the other party, lets call it the Ordinary Joe and Jane party.
The aristocrats would have an advantage since they control all the wealth, the traditional media and the big corporations.
The ordinary Joe party would have a vast advantage at the ballot box because there are a whole lot more ordinary people than there are elitist aristocrats. They would use the Internet to communicate and defeat corporate control of the traditional media.
- The ordinary joe party would take what used to be a Republican mantra until they actually gained power, keep the size of government to a bare and essential minimum. The only twist would be to usurp the Democratic/Progressive mantra which is make the wealthy pay for it. Part of this would be to completely eliminate the staggering sums the government spends on pork. The dreaded pork laden Ombudsmen bill and farm subsidies would never again grace the halls of congress.
- The convoluted tax code would be abolished in favor of a simple and progressive tax to prevent concentration of wealth in the hands of a few corporations and wealthy families and to make tax accountants an endangered species. The ordinary joe party would no longer try to encourage or discourage behavior with a million gimmicky tax breaks.
- Maintain a military just big enough for defense instead of spending the ridiculous sums we spend on our current aggresive and offensive military, sums as great or greater than the rest of the world combined.
- Provide universal health care coverage for the simple reason that people shouldn't die or be bankrupted because they can't afford health insurance. Its also becoming obvious that our for profit medical, insurance and drug companies are going to bleed our country white if they are left unchecked.
- Keep just enough CIA/NSA to watch for foreign dangers but keep them from spying domesticly or toppling governments to install ruthless dictators.
- The FBI could stay around to bust criminals but it would not be used as a tool to rob people of their basic constitutional rights.
- Provide seed money for science, research, space but always strive to keep the work out of the hands of corrupt big corporations and bureaucracies.
- Then you have all the thorny wedge issues like abortion, equal rights and affirmative action. The ordinary joes would have to agree to disagree on all those. It would be a color blind party. Everyone's welcome but no group is courted based on ethnicity. The only caveat is we would strive to keep government from interfering in or dictating peoples private lives. We would be against discrimination but would not be for affirmative action. We would have to tolerate but not encourage abortion. Gays would have the right to civil unions but perhaps not marriages to avoid treading on the religious.
- Our education system is broken. How do fix it though. Presumably find a model past or present that works and implement it. Encourage free thinking in children but also make sure they don't come out of the system stupid.
- As for free trade and globalization, well how do you solve that one. Best I can think of is to be fore free trade but when a place like China stacks the deck in their favor you level the playing field.
@de_machina
Nice troll, idiot. And, of course, stupid moderators didn't RTFA to realize that the entire block of text right in the center of your post is lifted straight from the article.
I ask, are you too stupid to be creative, or are you really just so fucking pathetic that this is the best troll you can come up with? At least be amusing... christ you trolls suck these days.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!