Slashdot Mirror
New Group Paves Way For 2012 Online Primary
DJRumpy sends this excerpt from CNN:
"Americans Elect, which has raised $22 million so far, is harnessing the power of the Internet to conduct an unprecedented national online primary next spring. If all goes according to plan, the result will be a credible, nonpartisan ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to the growing problems America's current political leadership seems unwilling or unable to tackle. The theory: If you break the stranglehold that more ideologically extreme primary voters and established interests currently have over presidential nominations, you will push Washington to seriously address tough economic and other issues. Even if the group's ticket doesn't win, its impact will force Democrats and Republicans in the nation's capital to start bridging their cavernous ideological divide."
With a majority of adults having some sort of Internet access these days (whether at work, at home or at the library), maybe it's time we start looking into changing the good ol' US of A into a democracy. Get rid of congress and make the legislative branch be truly democratic. At the very least, we'd save a few million a year on taxes going towards salaries and pensions.
You can not institute the reform of a Republic, by instituting the toolset of Facebook.
Fake electronic "Democracy" for a fake, electronic nation. The "ideological divide" is a stage prop, for legerdemain. There is no ideological difference between the parties on supremacy of Financial Capitalists, or on the primacy of American Imperial adventurism.
"Centrist"? Don't make me laugh! The "left" in today's Amercian establishment politics is to the right of RIchard Milhouse Nixon.
The role of the illusory "center" in American political manoeuvrings is to legitimise and institutionalise the digressions from Constitutional rule-of-law, into permanent features that endure beyond vacillations of party dominance and individual administrations.
I am not a Ron Paul advocate. But you can be sure this new, electronic primary will produce nothing that deviates from the progammed discourse - as does Paul, or Nader...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I would love to know what the people who see no 'cavernous ideological divide' are looking for, that the parties look the same to them.
The last 40 or so years have seen some significant shifts. The Democrats have been taken over by those looking for European style socialism. In attempts at moderation, the Republicans lost their focus on small federal government and states rights. Each compromise takes us down the progressive path, so yes you end up with these silly bailouts. There is now a resurgance of Republicans who have had enough and are trying to push back to their small-government roots.
No divide ? One side things the government should provide for everyone, the other that people should provide for themselves. What are you looking for ?
It's much more subtle than that. Did you click the link above? Do you notice how CNN chose a picture of Ross Perot where he looks goofy as hell? MSM wants you to read the term "independent party" and then immediately see a picture of a goofy nut, making it so much easier to discredit the serious need for a non-two-party system.
They did the same thing in 2008 with their election poll. All the candidates had dignified, diplomatic headshots in the poll, except for Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel, who all managed to look like they escaped the loony bin together.
What dishonest whackjob dared to post this???? The hedge fundsters, and private bankster trash, are going to save America????? Kiss my barberously hard all-American a**, you jackholes!!!!! Even the Rothschilds can be found on the list of Americans Elect financial backers, for chrissakes!!!!!!!!!!! Eff off, slime bag credit who posted this nonsense --- go back to wetdreaming about performing sex acts on your fave boyfriend, Thomas Friedman, for chrissakes!
Nixon was not as much of a right-wing extremist as he's often portrayed. He was a skilled manipulator and liar. He was smart enough to see the way that things were going, and he acted as an advocate of those ideas. He knew how to take something like environmentalism, pacifism, and other leftist causes and give them a conservative spin, so that he could walk a centrist road and give lip service to whatever people wanted to hear. Don't like the Vietnam War? No problem. Nixon will end it. Want a strong Asia that can stand up to the Communists? No problem. Nixon isn't going to cut and run -- he's staying until the job is done. Nixon had a promise for every centrist stance, with enough spin that it could mean whatever was necessary at that point. He was a realist. A realist doesn't choose sides in an ideological battle; instead, he courts the middle while chastising the extremists, even though his own sympathies may very well lie with one of the extreme positions. Nixon was an authoritarian centrist, though he certainly was willing to support "states' rights" (and other Conservative talking points), as long as it didn't impede his own power. I think he legitimately believed that he could handle the power and make the best decisions for the country, though history proved that wrong.
Most Democrats are center-right. A few are centrists. The few that actually are on the left usually get vilified as extremists. Certainly, if you're on the far right, the centrists must seem like socialists, and the center-left must seem like communists. However, an actual Marxist would be horrified by the Democrats' policies. Lenin reserved much scorn for social democrats (which are more to the left than the Democratic party), allegedly calling them "useful idiots" (which has been disputed, of course). Lenin thought that social democrats were sissies who couldn't handle Big Ideas and clung to the old ways (capitalism), trying to reform a broken system that couldn't be fixed. I don't share Lenin's views, and I view social democrats very sympathetically. However, it just goes to show that there's always someone so ideologically pure, so unwilling to compromise, that he's willing to dismiss an entire spectrum of opinion. The challenge is to avoid falling into that trap. Thus, if you're a Libertarian, you should recognize that not every Marxist is going to be stark raving mad, and vice versa for the Marxist.
While I have my own opinions on the validity of the test, the Political Compass expresses this rather well. Check out how far the right almost every political party is. Very few can legitimately profess to hold leftist views. This tends to annoy people on the right, who view any amount of regulation to be socialist.
America should be broken up into several countries, with no overbearing power-hungry Federal government to fuck things up.
America used to be like that, with many strong and relatively independent country-like entities called States, with a small and weak Federal government to do those things only a national government can do, like negotiate treaties, provide common defense against foreign aggressors, and control/defend the national borders.. It's how the Constitution was written and how it was until the Civil War/Lincoln, FDR, and Wilson, continuing into the more recent administrations, morphed it into just the opposite and centralized most government power.
Instead of redrawing all the maps, I think it would be simpler and easier to just return the Federal government back to the Constitutionally-limited & weak central government it used to be.
Same effect.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The same way I feel about Ron Paul. I can only agree about 10% of the time with him but I do respect him. I'd rather have him as POTUS than Newt or Mitt. At the least with Paul, I know where he stands and where he will stand.
A Kucinich/Paul ticket would be interesting. Anything those two could agree upon would be good for the country.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
if I could I'd mod the parent up.
I was hoping someone would link that. Here's another shocking analysis: http://goo.gl/VKx8m
So if I understand this correctly, this is not a true popular selection. This is an internet poll, where the slots on the ballot are predetermined, and regardless of who "teh intarnetz" choose, the Candidate Certification Committee makes the actual choice ... all three of who are present members of the Council on Foreign Relations, two of which are recent executives of the RAND corporation, one former director of both CIA and FBI.
I know it sounds tin-foil hatty, but ahh ... damn ... this kinda tastes a little funny.
like the intelligence community executing a very long con, perhaps.