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Lessig Campaign and the Change Congress Movement
GoldenShale wrote a follow up to last week's discussion about Lessig running for congress. He writes "Larry Lessig has created a Lessig08 website, and it looks like he is getting serious about running for congress. In his introduction video he proposes the creation of a national "Change Congress" movement which would try to limit the influence of money in the electoral and legislative processes. Having a technologically savvy representative and a clear intellectual leader to head this kind of movement is exactly what we need to counter the last 8 years of corporate dominance in government."
8 years? Corporations have been exhibiting control over the legislature for much more than the past 8 years... One only has to look at the copyright act extensions to see that.
Intellectuals make terrible politicians. You need a wheeling-dealing sort, not a thinker.
Anyway, the only way to change the game is to play it - if the congress is run by corporate types, then you need to become a corporate type to change congress. Revolution happens, but it's pretty rare - and frankly I don't think that Lessig has it in him.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Not to mention that when you try and "limit the influence of money" you will run into First Amendment problems. I'll agree that money in DC is contributing to corruption. However, the answer is not to limit the money; it's to punish the corruption.
Any time we allow our fundamental rights to be legislated away, we lose...
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
... heh? Did Y2K reset your counter??????
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
I actually disagree here. I think Europeans have taken the high ground in this. The only reason we are in Iraq is oil. The President, intentionally, is a seat to make peace and forge trade agreements... not to make war. The only role the President plays in war is to lead the armies when Congress votes it necessary to go to war. Other than that, the President's job is to kiss as much ass as possible.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
This gets modded Insightful?
Well, look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_force_in_Iraq A lot of European countries have troops in Afghanistan.
Sorry for not fighting all your ill-concieved wars.
Read, refresh, repeat.
I think you're confusing the concept of "allies" with the concept of "vassal states". Allies aren't there to help you start wars of aggression, they're to help defend you if you're aggressed against.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
You know why we were able to bail them out? Because we didn't have our military spread to the four corners of the Earth trying to police the world. We were able to mobilize a fairly nimble economy into producing TONS of goods and support. All that is vanishing increasingly with more and more Socialist policies and our stretched budget.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
As to what the difference to the USA is, in case you have forgotten you were involved in a cold war with the USSR. The USA and Europe provided a counterbalancing force to the USSR and China. How long do you think the USA would have lasted if the USSR, Europe and China had been allies? US involvement in Europe, as in South-East Asia in the last century was all about national security.
[1] Yes, unlikely, I know.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In high school, back in the 90's, as I watched politics, I made a fundamental observation about politics. You have third party candidates and independent politicians try to make a run for the Presidency every couple of election cycles, and they never get anywhere. Why? Because they *have no base of support*. Even if the third party/independent candidate did manage to win the presidency, it would be, to a certain extent, meaningless, because the other parties would still control Congress, and a President can't do much without congress (which is as it ought to be; the Constitution sets out a government where the parliament is the primary branch, and the executive branch is fundamentally supposed to be the servant of Congress, carrying out the will of the People).
You won't overcome the republicans or democrats in one big presidential election. Never gonna happen. If you want to make any progress, you will have to build from the bottom up. Start getting candidates into local and state positions, and build on a track record of good governance at the local and state level to leverage your party into the House and the Senate. Once you have enough support in the House and Senate (at least 1/3rd of each), and are nationally known as a party people like and trust, then you are in an excellent position to run a Presidential candidate as a true, meaningful alternative to the two establisment parties.
Otherwise, your just a flash in the pan.
And once the radioactive cloud drifts over your midwest and destroyes the agriculture there, you'll feel really stupid for doing so.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Europe is anti-america because it's the devil. It shows that, while lefty politics are failing all over the globe, policies to the extreme right, and extreme liberty amongst citizens largely holding the Christian faith is a working, stable state structure.
I think Europe is anti-American solely because of what they perceive to be American militarism. I think Europe is so scarred from the World Wars that anything that smacks of a risk of a war terrifies them. And, I think that is understandable. Everyone in Europe, especially Germany, has a family member that was killed on the Eastern Front. Everyone in Europe has families tales of occupation, the bombings, the postwar starvations, the homelessness. They have had enough war to last for generations and they see us as fools for seemingly seeking it out.
This is my sig.
The only reason we are in Iraq is oil.
Actually, the reason we are in Iraq is that for over a decade, Saddam Hussein flaunted and refused to comply with the terms of an armistice he himself had signed.
And then he added to that by doing far too good a job blustering and trying to convince people that he had an active WMD program - so good a job that the Russians, French, Germans, Spanish, Chinese, and even the Swiss thought he did still have it going. Why was he doing it? Because it was the only thing keeping Iran off his ass. Problem? He fooled everyone else too, and his history scared the crap out of people that he'd lob a nuke towards someone (Turkey, Israel, Kuwait, Iran) that he considered an "enemy" and touch off even more crap.
We're in Iraq today because the Middle East is ruled by a bunch of fucktards who use a 7th-century religion to justify barbarity and evil, towards each other just as much as towards the "dar al-harb" they profess to hate.
Last time I checked, it was the US government which tried to convince those countries that Iraq had WMD, and they used a significant amount of fake or exaggerated 'evidence' to do so. Look up Colin Powell's address to the UN, for example.
Europeans opposed the invasion of Iraq because they didn't let themselves be fooled by that. If the US had had a case, most Europeans would have supported the invasion.