Is Alan Grayson winning the polls for District 8 in Florida? I will be very sadpants if he disappears, he's one of the few Democrat trolls in the government.

satyreyes wrote:

And if I can explain the parallels between this election and the Apocalypse Arc?  Then Saionji will fap for you!

Student Council President Obama Kiryuu, faced with frequent allegations concerning his origin (is he from France? is he even his parents' son??), must battle for his party's position of power against the rising tide of The Curry Party (no Republican affiliation). Though he passed a historic health care bill, meant to provide assistance to all those impacted by pregnancy, the clap, or syphilis after sleeping with him, Republicans destroyed the value of the bill before passage, and it now does not cover pregnancy, the clap, or men. The President is held largely at fault for this.

RNC Chairman Akio Steele vacations in the Pacific, driving his jet in circles above glittering island jewels that have absolutely no bearing on the elections--lest he say something that bolsters the Democrat's chances, like 'We were wrong and this hooker's teeth are sharp.'

MEANWHILE, RNC Chairman Akio Steele's alter-ego, Ends of the Glenn Beck, holds a rally in Washington, DC, attended by all his minions of substance, by which of course we mean 'fatness' and 'eagerness to vote for idiots'. He swears The One True Dios speaks to him directly through The Lincoln Memorial and says that if Hitler is allowed to Nazi the election, everyone is Goering to Auschwitz, just like in the Mayan calendar. The event is attended by ten trillion voters, and five human beings.

Secretary of State Kyouichi Clinton, still reeling from her humiliating defeat to Obama Kiryuu in everything ever, repeatedly smacks Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas upside their heads, but they just won't seem to see sense. She will attempt a more reasoned approach next month, but will probably just get frustrated and smack them again.

Federal Reserve Chairman Miki Bernanke is completely ineffectual.

Despite her comparative position of power and 'talent', both of which tend to be spent on fighting pointless battles, House Speaker Nancy Arisugawa continues to be way less popular and cool than Nanami Palin. Her wardrobe is also cheaper.

....what do I win, again?

Giovanna wrote:

MEANWHILE, RNC Chairman Akio Steele's alter-ego, Ends of the Glenn Beck, holds a rally in Washington, DC, attended by all his minions of substance, by which of course we mean 'fatness' and 'eagerness to vote for idiots'. He swears The One True Dios speaks to him directly through The Lincoln Memorial and says that if Hitler is allowed to Nazi the election, everyone is Goering to Auschwitz, just like in the Mayan calendar. The event is attended by ten trillion voters, and five human beings.

Ends of the Glenn Beck. Oh god I can't stop laughing. I don't know why its so funny.

Giovanna wrote:

SKU politics

satyreyes wrote:

Meg Whitman information

I guess her own campaign site is the best I can do. If she actually had a record of political actions it would be so much easier to really know where she stands. Of course, if she had such a record, Jerry Brown would be using it to his advantage (just like how Whitman is using Brown's track record to her advantage).

Oh Fiorina. If my dad's (an HP employee) complaints about her are even half-true, I wouldn't vote for her. (Well, I'd have to be an eligible voter first, my the sentiment still stands.)

LA Times link was very helpful. Thanks

I've been looking forward to voting in the Florida Senate race in November.  That race has been interesting all year as a result of the retirement of its previous holder, Republican Mel Martinez.  Allow me to synopsize.  Our candidates:





Three-way races are generally not common in American politics, but Florida's Senate race has been three-way for some time now.  Charlie Crist is the (reasonably popular) governor of Florida; he was elected as a moderate Republican.  He was planning to run for Senate as a Republican, but then the whole Tea Party deal came along.  Marco Rubio is a very conservative Republican, and when he announced he'd be running in the Republican primary, the Tea Party turned out to have a boner for him.  It rapidly became clear that Crist didn't stand a chance against Rubio in the primary, so Crist left the Republican Party to run as an independent in the general election.

Meanwhile, everyone knew who the Democratic nominee was going to be: Jeff Greene, a real estate tycoon from Palm Beach.  But to everyone's astonishment, underdog Kendrick Meek, a U.S. Representative from Miami, won the nomination on the strength of a strong grass-roots campaign combined with low turnout.  This owed partly to the fact that no one really liked Jeff Greene and everyone knew he didn't stand a chance in the general election.  Meek, by contrast, was a bit of an unknown; he'd be underfunded, since he doesn't have billions of his own money to toss around, but maybe he'd turn out to be electable.

Now, in the 2000 presidential election, Democrat Al Gore almost certainly lost the state of Florida because Green Party candidate Ralph Nader siphoned off votes running to Gore's left.  Based on that example, you might think that Meek would have a strong chance in this election; Rubio and Crist should split the Republican vote while all the Democrats vote for Meek, and that should be that.  As it turns out, there are several problems with this theory.

- In general, Republicans hate Charlie Crist.  This is understandable.  Crist and President Obama shared a widely publicized hug during a joint appearance in early 2009, when Crist announced his support for the stimulus plan the Senate had just passed.  Since then, Republicans have soured on Obama, and just about everyone has soured on the stimulus.  Because of this, and a few other conservative sins, Crist is not a very effective Republican spoiler.

- In general, independents and Democrats do not hate Charlie Crist.  This is also understandable.  Crist's issue positions have been exceptionally hard to pin down; Rubio's campaign site has a running feature, "Can't Trust Charlie," that (often correctly) tracks Crist's flip-flops on issues in advance of elections.  Crist has changed his mind about offshore drilling (from anti- to pro-), gay adoption (from anti- to maybe), and Don't Ask, Don't Tell (from pro- to maybe).  It's honestly hard to figure out if he's conservative, moderate, or just unprincipled, but a lot of people in the center and left seem to feel he's much better than the archconservative Rubio.

- In general, independents have not heard of Kendrick Meek.  The Rubio-Crist storyline has dominated the election season, and Meek seems to have been crowded out.  His four-term record in Congress has been thoroughly unexceptional; he has voted the Democratic party line on just about every issue.  (You can see his voting record here; it's nice to be able to see how our politicians have actually voted.)  This cycle, it's hard to get elected in a swing state like Florida as a party-line Democrat, and that's if people know who you are.

So voters at the moment seem to be falling into the following sets:
- Conservative Republicans, voting almost uniformly for Rubio.
- Liberal Democrats, mostly voting for Meek.
- Moderate Democrats who figure Meek can't get elected, splitting their vote between Meek and Crist.
- Moderate Republicans, splitting their vote between Rubio and Crist.
- Centrists and independents who don't know who Meek is or find him too liberal, splitting their vote between Rubio and Crist.

As a result, the polls have seemed to gravitate towards Rubio 40-Crist 30-Meek 20.  The race has felt less interesting lately because this pattern has become settled and it looks like Rubio is heading for a win.  What's more, I'm not in love with any of these candidates.  Rubio is a complete nonstarter with me; he's a huge social conservative, and I can't really bring myself to vote for anyone who thinks gay people should have fewer rights than I do.  But I don't like Crist or Meek either.  The more I learn about Crist, the more I think he's a political opportunist whose agenda is getting elected, and all his beliefs are negotiable if he can get elected by believing something else.  I don't want to vote for someone like that -- yet he's been a reasonably effective governor.  Meek has shown no particular spine.  He votes for every spending bill that crosses his desk.  The only weird vote he's cast from a partisan perspective is his aye vote for a 2003 Constitutional amendment banning the desecration of the flag, and that vote alone just about disqualifies him for me.  (He voted nay on the same amendment in 2006, though, which is just confusing.)  On the other hand, he's the only candidate who has consistently been in favor of gay rights.

So once again, I don't know who I'm voting for.  It's looking like my least favorite candidate is going to win no matter who I vote for, so I may end up voting for someone else entirely, or not voting at all.  (My usual rule is that I only vote for a candidate who I think should win; if there is no candidate like that, so be it.)  I hope these three will have a meaningful debate at some point.  Their only debate so far was on immigration, which is an issue where there's nothing new for anyone to say and there wasn't a lot of daylight between Crist and Meek.  I'd like one of these gentlemen to say something that convinces me they've got some courage -- on behalf of ideals I actually agree with -- and are worth voting for!

RNC Chairman Akio Steele's alter-ego, Ends of the Glenn Beck, holds a rally in Washington, DC

So I was kind of just skimming until I got to this, and sat there sipping my coffee for a moment feeling really afraid and confused.

Then I went back and, yanno, read things, but it was a scary six seconds or so.

satyreyes wrote:

Clusterfuck in Florida

I don't understand how there can be so many colleges in Florida and so many gay people in Florida and..

Oh wait, nevermind.

This kinda relates to what you're talking about azure--I'm not sure that forced voting is exactly better, though I do feel that voting in a democratic country should be viewed as a duty, not a right. But I do think that if people were required to vote, there'd be a decent shift to the left in our country. A lot of the notorious non-voters in this country are people who would likely vote left. Namely, the youth vote Stewart's always beaking at for being lazy. Would they be more informed voters than the guy in Montana terrified that OBAMA GUN TAKE MAH GUNS? Probably not. They're going to vote the buzz issues. You one of the 508734857368754 bazillion 'bisexuals' on college campuses? You're gonna vote left. You hate war because your favorite musician does? You're going to vote left.

The problem here is twofold. One, not enough people vote. The decisions in this country are made on behalf of a staggeringly low percentage of the population that bothers to vote at all, AND, frankly, they're not informed. Forced voting would give us a more accurate portrait of the outlook of people in the country, which I guess is the point, but it wouldn't necessarily improve the overall IQ of our government, since forced voters aren't going to pay attention to the information.

The only cure I can see for this situation is forced electoral literacy. When you go to the booth, you have to read a summary of the voting record/opinions of each candidate before you vote, and you have to answer questions about the reading before you do so. Kinda of like CE credits for nurses. The problems here, obviously, are enormous. Like that the average person reads at the 7th or 8th grade reading level. Further, '21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."' (This is an even bigger problem in health care, especially for nurses, who are expected to explain things to, say, elders, for whom 80% of prescription labels and care teaching comes across as gibbledigok.)

In theory, a functional democratic system requires an informed voter pool that represents the country at large. Not 'this season Republicans are mad and Democrats are bored, so one will vote and the other won't.' We don't have that, but I don't actually see how you could enforce that on such a large scale.

PS/unrelatedish. You new college students enjoy your tax credits and low Stafford loan rates. I got the Bush batch, which means MY STUDENT LOAN APR IS DOUBLE WHAT MY BROTHERS PAYING ON A FUCKING CAR LOAN. Fuck.

Oh if you got that impression, I should have been more clear! I don't think a smart voter base would necessarily lean left. A larger one, yes, because the democratic base isn't energized right now, but a smarter one may lean right too. There are a lot of theoretically right-wing stances I agree with...some would make me vote that way if I thought they'd be followed through on. But Republicans haven't campaigned or practiced those stances since like...ten decades ago, so I basically vote social issues, which have a slightly, slightly better chance of getting changed, IMO.

I'm not gonna lie, if some fruitcake said I WANT TO FUNNEL THE ENTIRE DEFENSE BUDGET INTO POPULATING THE MOON AND LANDING ON MARS, I'd vote for them. At this rate, the gays aren't going to get anywhere anyway.

I feel the same way though. Why DO I vote? You know, I dunno. Because I feel like I earn whining rights that way. Wouldn't a 'fuck off these all suck' option on the ballot be interesting though? If you don't win a majority over 'none of the above', you don't get the office.

There'd be no government.

satyreyes wrote:

According to Wikipedia, Greece, Spain, France, Ukraine, and Colombia all do the same thing, except in their case it actually matters.

In the Spanish case, that's not quite accurate. There's always the option of blank voting* and nule voting**, which are the options for those who want to vote but don't like any candidate (and which usually amount to a 1% - 5% of the total), but there's not a real "none of the above" slot. I don't think it would get much use, though, since there is quite a number of different parties to choose from, plus people feel these options are useless. (For the record, Portuguese writer José Saramago has a novel, Seeing, which actually revolves around an election were the majority of voters cast blank ballots and government declares war to these voters; it's next on my reading list).

* Voting with an empty envelope. These votes get eventually added to the winning party.
** Putting an incorrectly marked paper into the envelope.

Satyreyes, thank you for this thread! As in 2008, I'm sure it's going to be fun to follow the Congress election through the IRG members' eyes.

This may be slightly off-topic, but it's still about politics on some level, so I'm going to propose it anyway.

satyreyes wrote:

which in turn is exactly the reason I'm a registered independent in the first place.

This got me to thinking. I wonder if you were feeling up to it - with your adeptness at all things politics - if you'd care to explain the difference between Independent and Unaffiliated voters in the USA. Your statement above is what made me think of it.

Here in Connecticut, I don't think us voters can register as an "Independent" (though candidates for office can), and when I registered to vote six years ago, I did not choose a party. Thus, for Connecticut records, I am "Unaffiliated". This doesn't make me a "swing" voter or an "undecided" though, as I know exactly where I stand on social and financial issues, for the most part. It's not that I don't identify with one party a million times more than the other, but I choose not to register as a Democrat because of things like Joe Lieberman. It's a double-edged sword, though, since in my state we have closed primaries, and as such I am not allowed to vote in those since even though I vote Democratic, I am not a registered Democrat.

Neither you nor I have party affiliation, yet our voting registration is different. It's a subtle difference, but I wonder if you think it's worth explaining to our international contingent (and even anyone here in the USA who is perplexed by the state to state differences in voting registration).

I switched from Independent to Democrat a couple years ago, only because Florida doesn't have open primaries. Functionally, I'm independent. And I would rather vote Tea Party than for a Democrat that's anti-gay marriage.

That said, I'm a bit more conniving a voter than satyr. I will usually vote the lesser of the most likely evils rather than the candidate I truly like. The problem I'm having here is Alex Sink is basically a Republican with a D after her name. Even if she's elected, she's not going to contribute to Democratic cohesiveness or a movement to improve Democratic control over the political process. She'll just be another 'Democrat', and another good reason they should get things done, but don't. At least if a Republican wins, no one can say the Democrats should have had one more vote than they did. They're not going to have one in Sink on any of the important issues, anyway.

And really, I'd be shocked out of my skin if she wins anyway. So maybe I'll just vote my heart, too. I like a lot of what Arth has to say, though I disagree about immigration. Frankly, we need more young, working age people putting money into the system. Overpopulation isn't our problem right now, the distribution is. We have too many old people for the young people whose money will support them into the next few decades.

I'm moving to Canada by marriage. FAGGAYHOMOSEXUALOMG marriage. I think once my status is approved, I'm going to send someone, somewhere, a nice little letter saying 'Hay you know how you folks just LOVE nurses? Well, lost one. Work on that.' Gay marriage/issues has always felt to me like something that should pretty much resolve itself by the time I'm 30. That's looking increasingly unlikely and frankly? That terrifies me. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever want to move back to the US. Immigration is a difficult choice to make, it's a raging pain in the butt and frankly, large chunks of any given population can't do it--it's expensive, and you can't just move somewhere because you like it better. I know this is a horrible idea, but I wonder what would happen if all borders opened for a month based on overall idealogical compatibility. The US would be left a rotting festering mess of completely apeshit conservative nutjobs, and half of this forum would move to Canada or pretty much any random European country. Every country has its problems, and socialism isn't always the answer, but seriously. Gay marriage? That's a question in our society. Even abortion I can understand seeing the need for careful and informed debate about...but being anti-gay marriage is like saying 'I'm not a fan of running water.' Sure, you can say that, but you sound like a barbarian.

satyreyes wrote:

Canada?  You can be put in jail for hate speech, and I don't trust the courts to decide what hate speech is.

Well... that could be a problem if you were thinking about seriously hating on someone, but I can't think of any time I've ever actually worried about it. I just looked it up and it doesn't seem like a line anyone but an idiot would cross anyway-- it's in reference to wide dissemination of discriminatory messages based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc., and while I don't trust the courts much either, its pretty clear that unless you're building white power websites or you happen to be Ann Coulter, you're probably not gonna run into it.

More worrying is are the instances of people with viewpoints counter to Canada's official actions regarding Afghanistan being barred from entering the country. Those, however, don't fall under hate speech; they fall under national security, apparently. Whatever, Canada.

To be honest, I barely notice my government most of the time. Ever heard the parable of King Log and King Stork? Yeah, Canada has King Log. It's pretty okay.

satyreyes wrote:

Free speech

Point taken, and to be honest, I agree on most counts-- but I don't want to derail this into an argument over a law I do fundamentally disagree with. My point was more that the law in question shouldn't keep you from thinking that Canada is a great place to live; every country has its issues, and comparatively speaking, Canada seems to have far less than the states. We're even decriminalizing prostitution (something I've felt strongly about for years). Hell, if this gets tied up in appeals, I might even start voting.