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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."
Saying "it's hopeless" only guarantees that it will remain hopeless.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
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.
"The Media" didn't create the 2-party system, our Constitution did, because we have winner-takes-all elections instead of proportional representation.
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.
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..."
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.
"Extrajudicial, secret, targeted assassinations, you can believe in!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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
The problem being that the corporations who own capitol hill benefit from the current system, and own the media outlets. They will try as hard as they can to keep things exactly the way they are.
So what? I don't understand what's wrong with you Yanquis these days. On the one hand, you're arguably the most powerful nation on Earth. On the other, you're the most defeatist too.
The Internet opened up information transfer vectors to the masses even more than Gutenberg did. So use it! "The Media" is no longer just ABC, NBC, CBS, and the NY Times.
Case in point, Reddit is strategizing on the how, and which, politicos to try to unseat/replace with anti-SOPA/PIPA candidates. The last I heard, it was getting a lot of traction (for the record, I'm not a "redditor"). With the advent of "crowd-sourcing", it could concievably make a difference. All you need is one success, and they'll start to sit up and listen next time.
"Social Networking" is the de jour buzz-phrase of the decade. Do you really believe it's a toothless dragon, after it's ignited the Arab Spring?!?
Another case in point: a candidate for the CA governorship with the most bucks behind her lost once the electorate learned of her two facedness. Money is not all powerful! Stand up on your hind legs, FFS! Leverage all this neat stuff at your disposal. Get all your friends involved, and get them to get their friends involved, and just maybe you can effect real change(tm).
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
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/
If it helps with the spam problem, I'm willing to give it a shot.
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'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!
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
Don't know about Nixon, but as a European I can tell you right now that your two parties would be categorised as right wing (Democrats) and far right (Republicans) over here. Certainly neither are left wing.
Listen to my latest album here
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.
I think many are like me...slightly liberal on the social side, and slightly conservative on the fiscal side.
I'm not sure how many are with me on shrinking the Federal govt both in power and money...but I get the feeling I'm far from being alone on that one too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.