Fear more years
Oct. 25th, 2004 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsNo, no news today. If you want to look up the attempt by the Pentagon to cover up the loss of 350,000 kilos of extremely efficient chemical explosives, you can go to Google News or Reuters or whatever.
I'm just tired. Goddess, the stress level in my house is high enough these days without the election being on our minds, the constant fear that the chimp is going to win and we'll be facing... what?
Four years from now, Bush's supreme court will have overturned Roe v. Wade and affirmed Bowers v. Hardwick: abortion will be illegal, and homosexual activities inside one's own home will be felonious conduct. The inclusionary doctrine of the Bill of Rights will be overturned and state governments will be free to adopt state religions, ban speech they deem offensive, the whole litany. Meanwhile, within the federal government, fiscal policy will be made in secret by corporations and social policy will pander to a concrete religious base that maintains intolerance *is* a holy tenant.
Of course, with Kerry, the whole DRM thing will continue, and there's no promise that student's right to use the GPL, which the Democratic Senator from Microsoft has tried to ban before, will survive four years with either party. His health care plan scares the gizzard outta me.
I'm a big believer in mixed government. Kerry is only up on Bush by 4% in Washington as of the latest polling rounds, which sucks because if it had been bigger I'd've voted for Badnarik. Omaha wants to discourage me from voting for Badnarik anyway because she's dismayed by the platform entry that states he'd bring the troops home immediately; well, that's a consequences of principles and principle number one is that the United States government has no business getting involved in foreign adventures that are not explicitly defensive. And I doubt things in Iraq could get "much worse" than they are now.
But I guess I'm voting for Kerry. I'm going to vote for a Democrat (and wash my hands afterward) because, well, malevolence, malfeasance, incompetence, and a disconnection from reality have been the hallmarks of the current administration.
Jim Hightower once commented that "If the Gods had wanted us to vote they would have given us candidates." Well, the Gods gave us something worse: an anti-candidate, compared to whom anything else on offer is preferable.
I'm just tired. Goddess, the stress level in my house is high enough these days without the election being on our minds, the constant fear that the chimp is going to win and we'll be facing... what?
Four years from now, Bush's supreme court will have overturned Roe v. Wade and affirmed Bowers v. Hardwick: abortion will be illegal, and homosexual activities inside one's own home will be felonious conduct. The inclusionary doctrine of the Bill of Rights will be overturned and state governments will be free to adopt state religions, ban speech they deem offensive, the whole litany. Meanwhile, within the federal government, fiscal policy will be made in secret by corporations and social policy will pander to a concrete religious base that maintains intolerance *is* a holy tenant.
Of course, with Kerry, the whole DRM thing will continue, and there's no promise that student's right to use the GPL, which the Democratic Senator from Microsoft has tried to ban before, will survive four years with either party. His health care plan scares the gizzard outta me.
I'm a big believer in mixed government. Kerry is only up on Bush by 4% in Washington as of the latest polling rounds, which sucks because if it had been bigger I'd've voted for Badnarik. Omaha wants to discourage me from voting for Badnarik anyway because she's dismayed by the platform entry that states he'd bring the troops home immediately; well, that's a consequences of principles and principle number one is that the United States government has no business getting involved in foreign adventures that are not explicitly defensive. And I doubt things in Iraq could get "much worse" than they are now.
But I guess I'm voting for Kerry. I'm going to vote for a Democrat (and wash my hands afterward) because, well, malevolence, malfeasance, incompetence, and a disconnection from reality have been the hallmarks of the current administration.
Jim Hightower once commented that "If the Gods had wanted us to vote they would have given us candidates." Well, the Gods gave us something worse: an anti-candidate, compared to whom anything else on offer is preferable.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-25 01:21 pm (UTC)I am a bunch of others up here argued over this and came up with how we would change things.
1) Make the President elected by popular vote. Up until recently the Senators were elected by Electoral vote, but that was changed when the technology of tabulating votes became advanced enough to tabulate all the votes in a small enough timeframe to be feasible. The method we came up with was a weighted runoff vote where people voting would list in order of prefence the candidates running (up to X number...we really didn't try and determine the total number of slots) and would be allowed to leave slots blank. The candidate with the highest number of vote points in total would be the winner.
2) Official Debates in this country are held by a "Debate Comission" which currently only allows the Democratic and Republican party candidates to have debates. Make this commission be required to give equal debate time to any party that gets a x% votes or registered voters. (x% = some percentage like 3-5%)
I would also like to see a few more checks & balances on the president. One thought was to go back to the method of having the Presidency a Triumvirate (with 3 "presidents") of the top three candidates running in an election and make all decisions have to be ratified by at least two of the members.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-25 03:35 pm (UTC)As it stands now, winning California, New York and Texas only gets you half-way to the presidency. Winning the seven most populous states: the big three, Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Pennsylvania, only gets 209 votes. The winning number is 270.
There are 218 million people of voting age.
A majority is 109,000,001 people. That's the adult population of California, NY, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania, with 3.3 million from elsewhere.
Five states completely deciding for the rest of the country is hardly fair.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-25 06:03 pm (UTC)If you look at it from another perspective, in a popular election you are getting your say as much as any other person in this country. Your vote would count as much as any other person's in the US. We aren't voting for any particular state's agenda, we are voting on a national issue and therefore any one person's vote should count as much as any other's regardless of where they live.
Under the electoral system, since you live in a smaller state, your vote has more weight behind it due the difference in the number of votes needed in your state to "gain" an elector.
One person's vote should never count more than another person's vote. Personally anything else is unjust and unethical.