Hey - don't accuse me of not buying into shiny labels! Didn't you know that when Obama is elected the skies will open , a choir of angels will sing, and all overweight computer political geeks will be accosted on the streets by gorgeous women with high IQ's wearing old Star Trek/Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon outfits!

It's on the web, it must be true man!

IT'S ALL TRUE MAN! I WANT IT TO BE TRUE!

Okay, I don't care so much about the sky and the angels, but the last part is 100% TRUE!!!!!

Jonnan

Thanks, nice to see some humar brought to this politcal threads.

What humor?

Jonnan

Sure they can--just not well at all in a democratic political context. I've been to several academic seminars and many cocktail gatherings where we had great arguments about myths, but institutional rules or in-group social norms prevented any serious mishaps.

What I'm asking for is more effort on all our parts to try to keep the "mythological" parts of our political positions amongst fellow myth-believers and try to converse with the "unbelievers" in terms that are as specific and respectful as possible.

I suppose I should confess that I've come to this sentiment in no small part because when I get going in the right context, I can be pretty darned vicious about political stuff. I've got verbal skills that get out of hand if I don't take care, and I tend to care too much about a wide range of abstractions.

But I started my formal study of politics with Robert Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism, and quickly found Emma Goldman to be a great American hero (she so annoyed her chosen nation's government that she was exiled to the early Soviet Union, which also exiled her, leaving her in limbo until her death finally persuaded the US to let her back in). Several years later, a combo of Plato, Aristotle, and Robert Dahl led me to a conversion experience. Now, I'm a small-d democrat whose top bumper-sticker reason for being a big-d Democrat is Lyndon Johnson's line about how a big-tent party is better because it's nicer to be on the inside pissing out than it is to be on the outside pissing in. Being a serious convert to democracy means you gotta work hard to respect your fellows, most especially when you want to chase them out of the forum with big sticks.

Serious converts to democracy need to figure out that people are still morons even after you let them vote for who's going to be the moron in charge.  The difference between a monarchy and a democracy isn't the quality of leadership, just who's to blame for putting them there.  When things go to hell, the population has only itself to blame, as opposed to genetics.  Which is why liberals will rot in hell before accepting that the mortgage problem is their fault.

Alternatively, Conservatives can live in an economy they've deregulated all to hell, and *still* not accept responsibility for their actions.

Jonnan

One word, ACORN.

The fractional reserve banking system needs to be done away with or at least highly restricted and national governments need to stop using privately owned for profit central banks! Hell the whole system needs to be dumped. There is no reason for a sovereign government to have to pay interest on the money it creates and spends.

How's this "conservative?" Seems like straight-up anarchist talk to me. I used to say pretty similar things, and I still have a strong basic distaste for state power that's probably the main reason I'm trying to understand your take better than I think I do.

The basic point of my conversion was when I accepted both a notion that on the whole, over time, most people tend to be decent to one another *and* that we're still primitive enough that some groups will organize to use violence against others. Because I believe large human populations tend to produce gangs, mafias, and armed corporations, I want to have the biggest, baddest gangs (militaries and police departments) all beholden to democratic governments.

Do you think anyone from the "other side" will be persuaded, or that you will at least have an intelligent debate when you have an arrogant,  presumptuous, or insulting attitude like that?

I did laught a little at that one. 

Ah, the great and extraordinary problem of voter fraud!

Let's see what the DOJ has to say about this epidemic!

Most recent press release is from March, talking about public corruption across the united states, and helpfully provides that from 2001 to 2006 we have initiated an average of 1,149 corruption cases/year (979 convictions) among the various districts, with another 61/yr (55 convictionsat the office of Public Integrity.

In contrast, from 2002 to 2006, the DOJ initiated 148 voter fraud cases, with 102 convictions - not per year, but total. That is to say, over a five year period, the total cases brought (Nevermind convictions) was less than the margin between Al Gore and George Bush in Florida, and with a worse conviction rate than any other corruption problem.

Now, that's not to say that Acorn shouldn't be held accountable when they were lax and didn't follow the rules for signing up voters - but they are being held accountable for that.

So lets not exagerate the scope of this 'epidemic'.

Jonnan

According to ABC News, the day after we all bailed out AIG, its board all went on a $500,000 trip to a resort and played golf.

I suppose I don't need to say who paid the bill.

Curseman, eat bananas, you need more humor.  You also suck at picking quotes, because I have way more offensive ones than that, not to mention serious ones.

This falls into the magical fairy land category. 

First point, and this is categorically true and irrefutable without outright lying, private, for profit industry, without fail, does a better job in the long run at any and all tasks.

Second point, the fractional reserve banking system is the only way to maintain fluidity in the markets that we know of.  The flow of money is not constant, even with food down to the small portion that it is, staggered planting seasons with multiple shifts due to modern fertilization, a vastly more diversified economy, you will still have regular needs for expansion and contraction.

Yeah, it allows this sort of thing to happen, but your choice isn't between crash or no crash.  Your choice is between a stable economy between crashes, or one long string of problems the entire time.  What needs to be done is to minimize the ability to create bad debt, to propogate investments in something that doesn't exist.  This is what Jonnan fails to realize, it's not the ability to invest to the degrees that they have, it's what they've been investing in.

Look at the qualities of leadership over the last couple thousand years in monarchies in Europe, the dictators in Africa and South America, and then compare those leaders to our own presidents.  There have been some seriously badass presidential picks amongst the dregs of idiots and tyrants.

Democracy is not the perfect system, it's a system based on self determination.  We pick the fuckheads in power, instead of a military wing or genetics.  Many of them have still been fuckheads.  This fits my being conservative because as a conservative, I want the government to have as little influence in my life as possible without devolving to anarchy.  The more power government has, the more damage it can do when a fuckhead is in charge, as they are much of the time.  The last two presidents have both done considerable damage to us with government power.  Liberals like their regulations and government power because they guard against bad behavior and poor choices, but the people writing those regulations are just as imperfect as the idiots they're designed to protect.  The health care industry is a prime example of why regulations should exist in minimal levels, the absurd costs of insurance and care both can be chalked up to regulations for a significant percentage.

Your premise is true.  Anarchists have this retarded idea that, somehow, the fuckhead in power is only a fuckhead because he has power, and life would be better if there were no structure.  It's not a power structure that makes people do stupid shit, people do stupid shit because people are stupid shits.  Arguing over the internet for instance, consumately qualifies every last one of us as a stupid shit.

Jonnan, I said ACORN, not voter fraud.  You do know ACORN isn't specifically for voter registration right?

Fannie and Freddie are the buyers that make it possible for companies to give bad mortgages without going under, ACORN is the group that blackmails mainstream banks into joining the practice and accounts for a significant percentage of the subprime block.  When banks aren't meeting their quotas, which means doing the opposite of what they did before the GSE's, underlending to poor areas through discrimination, ACORN sues them, pickets their businesses, and makes it less expensive to make those bad loans than it is to fight them over the issue.  Funding compliments of Clinton.

Ok, I'm not really knowledgeable about economics or financial stuff, so let me ask kind of an innocent question, might even sound naive. Please though, before you completely shoot down my idea, give it some thought.

Why is our economy not based on our collective ability to produce? Instead, our economy is based on an abstract concept called money. If you have a stack of lumber, hammer and nails, you can build a house. If all you have is a stack of $20's you're gonna freeze your ass off.

Let me make an analogy. If you're driving down a narrow road with a couple friends, and come to a huge rock in the road, you and your friends would get out of the car, push from one side of the rock and move it off the road.

Instead, the way our economy works, because of the intense competitive need to have `money', is that we, collectivley as workers, get up everyday, and, as a society, we are all standing and pushing from opposite sides of the rock.

If we're all under the same flag, why aren't we working together to make sure everyone has everything they need, just like you and your friends helping each other to move the rock off the road?

I know we need a means of universal trade, but the whole rat race concept of charging more and more money for stuff that is basically a necessity just gets ridiculous.

As a previous poster pointed out, there is actually too much housing. Too many contractors. And there's people living in the street and in shelters. What sense can this possibly make?

How can we expect hundreds of millions of people to work 40-60+ hours a week producing stuff and providing services, when we have automation and technology coming out of our ears? What are we going to do 100 years from now when robotics becomes even more common place?

So these are my thoughts, please give them some thought, maybe expand on them. It seems to me we as a society need to seriously reassess our approach to the everday workaday concept, so we can move into the automation and technology age without having to end up killing each other in a massive sea of anarchy ala Thunderdome and Mad Max,.