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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."
Except the media will just paint it as a left or right interest group to prevent breaking the 2 party mold.
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.
Cavernous ideological divide? What a load of crap. All the noise-making about how we need "moderate" candidates is asinine and misguided; the biggest things the two parties always work together on are favoritism towards big banks and wall street, and belligerent interventionist foreign policy. These are the two things that are the most damaging to our country - we create enemies abroad through militarism, and impoverish the middle class at home through inflationary policies which favor only the too-big-to-fail banks. "Moderate" candidates would continue these same policies, except would pay Romney-esque, slippery, two-faced lip service on social issues like gay marriage and abortion.
The kind of moderacy that results from the intersection of Republican and Democratic interests is worse than either brand of party extremism. Any kind of compromise that can be made between them will result in less liberty, higher taxes, fewer benefits, and greater warfare.
What cavernous divide? There is a divide in rhetoric to be sure, and an emotional divide (*), but in terms actual policy differences between the GOP of GWB and the Obama administration, they're like siamese twins.
(*) I'm not sure how to characterize this -- I think of the people who despise "rednecks" and those that despise "hippies" -- they have a visceral hate for each other but it has nothing to do with policies apparently, because the Obama administration is indistinguishable from that of GWB. Hence, the somewhat obscure term of "emotional divide".
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Are they implying that they're centrist between the Democrats and Republicans? The rest of the world is watching American politics with some bemusement (and some worry) because there's really no left or centre in American politics. Both of your parties drift to the right ideologically compared to most other nations with open democracies. I see very little practical room between your two parties that would advance your nation forward in a healthy, productive, or sustainable manner.
A political party with out a defined political stance collecting money for non-existent political candidates?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
http://www.alternet.org/news/153412/secretive_millionaires_funding_online_primary_for_'independent'_white_house_run
Americans Elect's board is primarily staffed by the far right. This is simply an effort to split the liberal vote. Go look it up; it's pretty easy to find that Americans Elect's board alone makes it untrustworthy.
Not that finding the center between Dems and Republicans is worthwhile anyhow.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Just because it's not one of the other two, major parties, or one of the several minor parties, doesn't make it "a credible, nonpartisan ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to the growing problems America's current political leadership seems unwilling or unable to tackle." It makes it a different party, which is by definition partisan.
And practically every party claims to offer only "a credible ticket that pushes alternative centrist solutions to blah blah blah".
This new party might have something to offer. But painting it as a non-partisan effort is lying.
But what else do you expect from a party organized by the 1%? How about calling itself non-partisan while organizing itself as a party:
You can expect secrecy and total control by its directing board:
So it defines itself as a party to get on the ballot, but with a legal invention to fund itself as a "social welfare org" to keep its donors secret. It is known, however, that its $5M seed money came from a hedge funder. Its founding board has people who were Bush's EPA Director and previous FBI and CIA directors, among similar backgrounds.
Note that I am not saying that's any different from the other parties. In fact, I'm saying it's not any different.
--
make install -not war
There is a myth that the Democrats and Republicans are on the ends of some primitive spectrum, and that "moderates" are somewhere in between. This is false. Check out Glenn Greenwald's piece on Obama (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/27/vote-obama-centrist-republican), one of the many commentators pointing out that Obama is a Republican in almost all ways. The "real" Republicans have to go off the edge in order to distance themselves from Obama. I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
I want decent healthcare reform, an end to foreign wars, everyone paying their fair share of taxes, a level playing field in the business world so capitalism can do what it does best. Neither the D's nor the R's support this.
There is no political party in America that represents my beliefs.
Dilute! Dilute! OK!
because the Obama administration is indistinguishable from that of GWB
This is the kind of irresponsible and unsubstantiated exaggeration that was responsible for people voting for Nader in 2000 with the result of Bush getting into office.
Can you list 10 policies that are identical between the Obama and Bush administrations? If you can't, all you have is an unsubstantiated opinion written with an air of authority.
In the mean time check out this web site for President Obama's record. With each item ask yourself if Bush or any Republican would have done the same:
http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/
Pro-Corporate Power.
Everyone needs to understand this political code word.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Check my sig. Here, I'll link to it again: http://nothingchanged.org/
I haven't added in Obama's recent enshrinement in statute of indefinite due process free detention, which I consider "worse than Bush", but when I do, the scorecard will be:
Worse than Bush: 8
Same as Bush: 10
Better than Bush: 1
Worse than Bush, but not Obama's fault: 1
Better than Bush, but not Obama's accomplishment: 1
Can't make a fair comparison: 1
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
it can best be summed up by the phrase "Screw the poor!". With a few exceptions (Alan Grayson & Barney Frank) a Democrat is just a Republican that isn't very good at it. BTW, this comes from a card carrying Dem. My theory is at least their Rhetoric isn't openly hostile to me. Anyway, you want change in this country? Do something about racism and Homophobia. That's what the 1% use to divide and conqueror the rest of us.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You need to remove one of your examples:
I usually try to avoid thinking that 3 year old stories are news, and this link on your site:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/guantanamo.order/index.html is way outdated.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/07/obama-guantanamo-trials_n_832451.html
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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!
Before the current Right-wing machine took over the Republican party (people like Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, and the neocons), there used to be moderate Republicans, nicer than Nixon and farther left than Barry Goldwater. People like my mom, who care about good government, want fiscal responsibility but aren't scared of taxation if it goes to worthwhile programs, think that you shouldn't start wars just to keep defense contractors in business, and think that the job of religion in politics should be to tell politicians to be honest and to care about the poor. They've pretty much all been kicked out of the party, and she didn't vote for either Dubya Bush or his father, and she was really annoyed when Christine "Not A Witch" O'Donnell beat moderate Mike Castle for the Republican nomination in Delaware.
The most traditional Republican presidential candidate at the moment is Jon Huntsman. He's too far right for me, and too far right to really call a moderate, but he's not part of the right-wing crazy machine, and thinks that the fact that evolution and climate change are real is more important than what voting blocks they attract or what corporate donors would be affected by laws about them (which is to say, "he doesn't have a chance of getting the nomination.") Ron Paul's not far-right, but he's a radical, not a moderate. Romney's relatively moderate, but he's doing deals with the machine, and if you look at the current Republican debating process, it's really a circus designed to convince the right-wing voters that they'll have to pick Romney to beat Obama. (Donald Trump was the comedy warm-up act, and Gingrich is the biggest of the clowns, as well as being personally opportunistic, but a lot of the process was Perry replacing Bachmann and still being an obvious non-starter.)
Will Americans Elect end up attracting more Republicans than Democrats? Probably not, but at least it's an interesting experiment in politics, and it might end up being as influential as Joe Trippi's online organizing for Howard Dean, which led the way for Obama's broad-based campaign. Alternatively, it could end up like a mirror to Ross Perot's campaign, which attracted enough Republicans to give Bill Clinton the election, and then fizzled out because Perot wouldn't let go of it and let it grow into a bottom-up party.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Rove/Norquist machine that brought Dubya Bush to power has always been aggressively polarizing. You're either with them or you're an anti-American pinko liberal socialist commie community-organizer-lover, and they got a lot of Republicans to buy in to it and a lot of politically inactive right-wingers to get active or at least to watch Fox News and throw popcorn at the TV set when Democrats' pictures are on. The fact that the ideology isn't philosophically based, adjusts to whatever's useful for creating partisan antagonism this week, and contains lots of messages from their corporate sponsors ("Drill, Baby, Drill!") doesn't mean it's not ideological or divisive. Look at the attacks on Nancy Pelosi - the fundamental reason for attacking her was that she was the lead Democrat in the House, even though she wouldn't have been elected Speaker if she'd been a radical.
And yes, both major parties believe in favoritism to big banks, deficit spending, the military-industrial complex, the drug war and the prison system that profits from it, and an increasingly invasive surveillance state, but that doesn't mean that "moderate" candidates agree with that - it means that "compromise" candidates do.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Centrist"? Don't make me laugh! The "left" in today's Amercian establishment politics is to the right of RIchard Milhouse Nixon.
Once at a Burger King not too long ago I wanted French fries. They came in three sizes. Medium, Large, and Extra Large. I asked for a Small and the lady at the window promptly informed me that they sell no such thing. I had to request "the smallest size of fries that you will sell me" and she informed me that it would be a Medium.
I am trained in math and know this to be bunk. But I bought the damn Medium fries anyway.
So, my point is that Centrist would be The Middle of whatever happens to lie at the extremes. Wherever they happen to be at the moment regardless of any labels people wish to attach. And as such, I think it's a good idea. Listening to my government argue and bicker while people who want to work continue to get foreclosed on and thrown out of their homes isn't getting us anywhere.
A little Centrist compromise and bridge building is what this country needs. I hope this scares the crap out of the establishment. This fighting is not what We The People want. We want our government to work for US, not for the party fringe whackos.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.