Village Voice nails it.

[elfs]

Scott Brown Wins Mass. Race, Giving GOP 41-59 Majority in the Senate

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yaknow, that's just WRONG. That's not a majority, that's just loss of the ability to railroad shit (word chosen carefully). The GOP can't do shit either without DNC help.

It is ALL a pack of organic fertilizer, toxic waste, and it stinks so badly you can smell it out here. Upwind.

Unscroo'em. I'm working on fixing stuff *right here*.

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

And they've railroaded absolutely nothing with a super-majority. It's epic fail.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

That's what totally boggles me. They had the majority in '06, they pissed it away. They had the super-majority last year. What did we get? Exactly squat.

But the truthiness of it is, "They" have all five hunnert an' thutty eight of'em, more or less, and the drama between the elephants and the asses is just so much make-believe. Epic fail, indeed. Won't get fooled again.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

I've often advocated for a quality-control mechanism on ballots, so that the voters can call the entire ballot garbage.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

The Aussies have one; if "none of the above" wins, the whole slate is DQ'ed and somebody else gets to run. Wish to heck we had that!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Ok, now I'm jealous.

That's pretty much what I've been suggesting now, for years, to anyone who'd listen.

I never realized that any nation had actually implemented it.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Note to self - stop reading commentary on news blogs.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

+1! The signal to noise ratio looks like your icon.

There's *one* place outside LJ/DW I've found that the comments are worth it anymore. Scalzi.

Ahhh

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

I love gridlock.

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Re: Ahhh

[(Anonymous)]

Serious question: Why?

Re: Ahhh

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

All government can do is restrict freedom. That's why we created and empowered it, after all, though the original idea was to restrict only the freedom to interfere with the rights of others.

Today, the government does far more than that. It imposes upon us ideals and pragmatic goals determined by a very limited number of political leaders who have little concern for our individual interests. They say (and may well believe) that they seek to maximize our collective welfare, but in practical terms, they harm us both individually and collectively.

So the less they can do, the better.

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Re: Ahhh

[(Anonymous)]

Government does restrict the actions of those who would infringe upon our rights. But, it also deals with fire prevention, disease control, national defense, food and product safety, and a whole host of other sorts of regulation and oversight which we have in place precisely because we've seen what happens when we don't have such systems in place... and we didn't much like the results.

Do you really think we'd all be better off if there were no government (which seems to me to be exactly what you are asking for when you cheer gridlock)? Wouldn't that end up being what we see in Somalia?

I just don't see the benefit to be accrued by saying "No" to anything the government tries to do. The government isn't composed of space aliens trying to take us over... is is composed of us... our fathers and mothers, our sisters and brothers, our fellow citizens.

Re: Ahhh

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Didn't I just get done saying that government, and its basic function of restricting freedom, can serve a useful purpose? I'm hardly a freaking anarchist.

But I can tell the difference betweeen public-safety functions such as those you mentioned and bloated counterproductive bureaucracies that have never, will never, and logically can't achieve their stated goals.

The US government long ago moved beyond public-safety functions into these inappropriate activities, so at this point, the more gridlock impeding the further expansion of the government's powers, the better.

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