You guys don't get it. ALL politicians are bad. They're ALL beholding to special interests . . . including Obama. My favorite political bumper sticker of all time is: "Vote NO on incumbent!" As far as I am concerned, you DON'T need government "experience" to run this country. Look at all the bungling we've endured between Bill Clinton's 8-year fiasco and George Bush's leadership void. You could fill congress with average, middle class citizens and you'd get better government than we've had from "career" politicians. I would rather see a plumber running against a dentist for President! I also think the Parliamentary system of democracy is much better representation for the public than our two-party (winning party dictatorship) design here in the US. I'm actually writing a story right now called "Dictatorship by 51%" in which one party (The Constitutionalists) gains control of all three major branches of government. They use their vote to impose extreme rules on society without regard for the needs or desires of the minority (49%) party. It leads to domestic terrorism as 49% of Americans have NO real voice in their government and fight back. As far as Obama versus McCain . . . it's simple for me. I don't want either party controlling ALL of government. They can not be trusted. Democrats control the Legislature so I will vote for McCain. If the Republicans were in control of congress, I would vote Obama. Balance of power is far more important than any other issue.
I agree. American two-party democracy isn't really democracy. It's like any other dictatorship, except you get to choose your imperious leader every four years. Just out of curiousity, is it possible for congress to force an early election at all, with a vote of no confidence or something?
Well, congress can impeach the president, which would force an early election, but its never been done so far. It almost happen to Nixon and Clinton but Nixon resigned and the charges were dropped against Clinton.
Hmmm. So effectively, if you have congress under the control of one party, and the White House under the control of the other, you basically have nothing being done in government (given the respective veto powers) for four years? Whereas if both are under the control of one party, you have basically a dictatorship? My God! How can you even pretend this is democracy??
Aside from impeachment (which would only be successful for high crimes and treason), there is no way to have a "vote of no confidence" and remove the President from power. The pathetic truth here is my fellow Americans are ignorant. When our founding fathers designed our government, they envisioned multiple parties that would give and take on issues in order that the vast majority of citizens would enjoy meaningful representation in government. This novel and well intentioned philosophy of governing deteriorated into a terrible two-party gridlock system where career politicians refuse to compromise, or far more frightening, one party in power bastardizes "democracy" into a dictatorship by 51%. Vote NO on incumbent! And YES, I'd rather see the US led by a house-wife from Alaska than ANY of the other three career politicians that are running for Pres/V-pres. If Russia acts up, she could tell them to go stand in a corner until their behavior improves. PMS and "the button" ought to put the fear of God in anyone who challenges her! LOL The REAL problem with our system is the fact that we have "career" politicians in government. By the very nature of their lifetime commitment, they are courted by special interests and often put their own financial needs/greed above the true needs of the country. Most have sold their political souls to the highest bidders. None of them are honest . . . hence, my feeling about getting rid of ALL incumbents. Start over! Only this time, put a one or two term limit on ALL national political positions. And make it cumulative so they can't jump from one "house" of government to another. Let ordinary citizens run the country and we'll be okay.
Do you mean impeachment? If so, there isn't a new election. If a president is impeached then the VP takes over. If both it follows a consecutive chain of succession. I know Congressmen and Judges can also be impeached but its much rarer (Congress won't impeach itself, and they choose judges so its unlike for a judge to need impeaching). If you want to read up on our Impeachment procedures Wikipedia has an acceptable overview: Impeachment in the United States. The line of succession for President of the US can be found here: United States Presidential Line of Succession. It goes President -> Vice President -> Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi, now that's a disaster!). It follows a full line of sixteen past that but we've never need to go past VP. NaCl, I will agree. Its like the South Park episode. Only certain kinds of people can suck up enough to make it all the way to president. But, there's always choosing the lesser of two evils (Not much of a choice but its better than nothing). Unfortunately more that two parties only creates more gridlock. What we need is bipartisanship or the destruction of political parties in general. Having more than two means we create situations where power is so spread out among groups with differing opinions and agendas nothing gets done (Heck we have that right now). Frankly US politics are far to polorized. Democrates will vote for anything with a democrates name on it and against anything with a republicans name on it and vice versa. With both parties at odds for no reason other than party we get nothing done. Unfortunatly theres little we can do about it. The system will eventually work itself out but who know show long that will be.
Um...that would only work if each politician was a carbon copy of everybody else in the party. They are still responsible to the people who vote them into their places, and if they don't satisfy they can be replaced.
Haha! Yes!!! That's awesome NaCl! Put a PMSing woman in charge, and no one will ever dare to piss you off
Will they? Or are they only voted for (and thus judged) on the basis of what party they belong to? That's the impression I get of American politics. People are either republican or democrats, and that is the way they vote, no matter what. That's largely the problem with British politics. I think that MPs should act in the best interests of their constituents, but most just toe the party line. And as a result, people vote by party loyalties, rather than looking at the people they're voting for. Basically, the problem with democracy is that people are doing it wrong. The concept of democracy assumes people are smart enough to understand it and do it right. Unfortunately, that is often not the case.
Well I didn't mean specifically impeachment... In the UK, parliament can have a vote of no confidence in the prime minister (and thus the current government). If the vote is passed, parliament is immediately dissolved, and a general election is called.
I agree. In theory the three branches of the US government are a good idea, but large political parties have really screwed thing up.
That describes about 75% of US voters. Your dead on Banzai. Its a major problem and unfortunatly the growing number of independents doesn't reflect a change but rather, republicans saying I'm not a republican but I usually vote for them. Like I said. US poltics are too polorized.
Has that ever happened? I can't really think of any situation where parliment would want to effectivly fire itself. That's what it sounds like you're saying at least. Could you explain some more?
It has happened a number of times (eleven, if I remember correctly), the first being after the British defeat at Yorktown in the American War of Independence, and the latest being in 1979. Basically what it does is put all seats in the parliament up for vote. An opposition would call a vote of no confidence in order to potentially trigger an election, where they could win more seats, and potentially take control of government (as happened in 1979, when a motion of no confidence was passed by one vote, against PM James Callaghan, and Maggie Thatcher's conservative party won the resulting election).
All political parties should be OUTLAWED! The only requirement to run for office should be proof of citizenship and not approval by party bosses or a demand for agreement with a specified party platform. Let each citizen speak honestly about his/her personal values and their philosophy of governing. Limit campaign contributions to some extremely low (attainable for most) amount and prohibit PACs (Political Action Committees). Of course, all elected positions should be limited to a maximum of two terms to prevent career politicians. And, all government should be in session no more than 6 months out of any year so that citizen-politicians could continue working closely at home with their constituents. In today's communication-age, it would be easy to recall government into active session to deal with any emergency. Our US government is broken. It needs to be fixed but it can't be repaired by the very infestation that is causing the problem - career politicians. We, the people, need to impose our will on our dysfunctional system and change it . . . radically!
There's really nothing wrong with the system. There is no such thing as the perfect solution. All political systems have positives and negatives. The negatives of a democracy is its dependent on the people understanding the system. Democracy is pretty much people choosing their dictators (in the words of Mel Gibson, "Trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away."). Its great that you can choose your leaders but because the system is so dependent on voter participation it can fail if the the people aren't very attentive. Now, we can destroy the political parties but that essentially leaves us with an Anarchic election system. We need party organization to give order to the system and make it easier for voters to understand. The easier the system is to understand and participate in, the higher the voter turn out. Without parties is essentially independents all around and raising campaign funds becomes more troublesome than it already is and there will be a lot more chaos in shifting through all the candidates. Voter turn out drops, and few people participate in the system, still people not being represented. Besides, destroy the parties won't eliminate career politicians. It'll just destroy the organization through which they associate with one another. All political systems look good on paper, but they all have their flaws. We can live with the flaws and move on or demonize them. No matter what system we use there will be a flaw.
Well, unless we're extensively trained in "foco-theory" warfare, we have no choice. Correction, two choices
In the USA, we're not really a democracy. We're a representative republic. A true democracy would = mob rule. Sometimes in the House of Representatives it seems that way. Things got even more screwed up when they started electing members of the senate through popular vote years ago. As so often seems, there is often the feeling of voting for 'the lesser of two evils.' Heck, I'm old enough to have voted for Ross Perot, twice. Not because I thought that he would've been the best man running, but because I knew he'd shake things up. It'd have been a governmentally disastrous 4 years...but he'd have, I felt, shook things up enough to have gotten many of the bums and corruption exposed and at least some of it run out of DC. Plus, a strong third party would make a difference in politics here in the USA. McCain's choice is a strong choice, I believe. I don't believe calling her 'inexperienced' will work...look at Obama. His 'depth of experience' isn't exactly earth shattering. He really hasn't done much of note to distinguish himself. I am sure Hillary isn't really happy with McCain's choice, but she was out foxed by Obama. She didn't have an endgame beyond Super Tuesday, and she underestimated the impact of caucus vs primary elections. And let's face it, she is not popular...and folks in her party bolted at the chance to get someone else. George Bush is unpopular for three reasons: Democrats hate him (so that's about 40% of the country) Some Republications are dissatisfied because he isn't conservative enough (15%) Some Republicans are dissatisfied because his policies didn't go far enough (10%) Independents probably lean against him (10%)...thus his 25% rating. The additional thing is that in general the media does not like Bush and goes all out when things go wrong or bad, but when things go well, or marginally well, it's maybe mentioned once, but not pounded in. Year after year, that sinks in to those who only pay attention once in while...the, Oh, guess Bush screwed up again, syndrome. Case in point: No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Early on after the war they hauled/flew out Uranium and the UN put up a fuss. In the news for a day and forgotten. Recently they hauled out over 500 tons of yellow cake uranium. Mentioned for a few days. But that is also the administration’s fault. And the news is reported that nothing even resembling weapons of mass destruction was found in Iraq. Even so, Bush's rating is better than congress ratings (that were down to 9%). Same deal. Republicans will hate all the democratic Senate and House do. And the Democrats are unhappy that the House and Senate are not doing what they said they would do to get into office. Not fighting Bush hard enough. And it is being discovered that the democrats are back to running the House and Senate as they did before the mid 1990s, and have ignored how they said they'd be bi-partisan. As far as the global warming...I would argue against man made global warming. The other planets such as Mars have heated up similarly to earth. I don't think the little rovers have done all that. Plus, the temperature has not really risen in going on a decade. And there are flaws in the computer models to estimate future temperatures. They keep patching them and patching them and patching them. It's become a political and not a scientific issue. Guess, I covered many things mentioned in this thread. Obama would be doing so much better if he hadn't reverted to what he apparently is, a real politician, switching positions from the primaries in an effort to win votes for the general election. And picking an old school, long time politician. No 'change' reflected in that. I really believe that it's going to be close. There are 'battleground' states that will drag it one way or the other. Hillary did much better in them than Obama, which makes me wonder how well he will do in them. But McCain still has an uphill battle, although his VP pick has leveled that hill's steepness more than a bit. McCain has to win virtually all of the close states, which makes it tough, unless he can press Obama elsewhere. Terry
I'm just worried that one of the candidates will pull off the "complete disregard of public vote" trick like they did with Al Gore and Bush. Technically Al Gore won, but still failed to gained the presidency because of electoral college vote. Which means that a few dozen organization leaders have more say than a good million americans. Here's to NOT-voting for Bush but still making him President, Cheers.
I think that's one of the clearest and most accurate summaries of the situation, Terry. And very well put. I don't really have much to ask, I just wanted to say that. I do feel that American politics (at least) have become very gimicky- "the first black president", "the first female president", "the first female vice president", etc. No one seems to pay any attention to policy, which I think is the important thing. In America this isn't really my concern, but the same thing has happened here. Politicians hide behind green credentials and the issue of global warming, and people fail to see that they have no policies worth noting. Add to that, the fact that there is very little any of them are willing to do to combat global warming, and the whole thing seems a charade.
We can argue about the Bush Gore voting fiasco all we want but would you have prefered the two of them to be in court for a year arguing over who should be president? The bottom line is that the votes weren't counted in time for the election and thus did not count. Its painful and sad that so many were disregarded and unheard, but most of the time life isn't fair and anyone who says it is a liar. The Supreme Court made the right decision in ordering the recount stopped. If they hadn't who knows what chaos would have ensued. A dysfuntional president is better than no president. Very nice Terry. I agree with Banzai that was excellently put together and a great analysis of the current political climate going into the 08 election. Very true and very sad.
Which was precisely what the Founders intended. They didn't trust the populace, nor the common man. They wanted a smaller group of educated individuals to hold greater power than the mass of democracy. This is why we're a republic in the first place, instead of a pure democracy. Now, you can still dislike it, but you can't claim that it shows the system is broken. The system did what it was designed to do. The question is, do we like the design?
Right on the money man. Sometimes it seems that these politicians are using the facade of "making history" like the first black president and such instead of facing the real problems in todays complex diplomacy. War The Iraq War is still being fought to the point of failure, in almost no way can a conventional army unroot an in-depth guerrilla group. Russia attempted to fight the same type of war and was put to shame that their overwhelming might couldn't handle a war where ANY civilian can be a potential killer regardless of gender or age. The fact of the matter is we can't win the war. Period. Anyone with the slightest idea of what the Geneva Conventions are will know that our troops can't fire their weapons unless they get shot first. Last time I checked, not many survive if they are shot first. The media is not covering important aspects of the war that the public should know. Private military companies like Blackwater are fielding mercenaries at high prices from our government, and the system works somewhat like this: Mercenaries are given half of the money right off the bat, going into battle with equipment and such from their own paychecks. Then after they complete said objectives the second half is transferred to their account. The thing is, the second half of their pay can't be given because U.S money is "legal-tender" which means it isn't backed by gold. Therefore almost useless. If we are to pull-out of Iraq (which most if not all of the American people want) we will be in debt upwards of trillions of dollars. The U.S does not show any signs of bringing back our troops and other countries have reported seeing U.S military buildup in Iran. Soon enough, we'll be liberating the entire bloody middle east without our consent or simply the capability of retreating because of the costs owed. Economy Global warming is technically unexplained to complete certainty of the problem. Drilling into Alaska is corroding the Earth and no highly efficient fossil fuels besides E 85 ethanol have been produced as a counter to the problem. Hybrid vehicles only halve the pollution problem individually. Gas prices are ridiculous, with Californians paying almost 5-6 bucks a gallon and for what? Speculative Prices. The most idiotic idea of the century. Basically it all sums up to this: Gas prices should be significantly LOWER right now, but "Speculative Prices" means that the prices of todays gas are what speculators think it is going to be in the future. So instead of paying $2.48 your paying $3.59 because somebody thinks it will cost that much in 2015. Nice job government, you've done it again. I don't even want to get started with Foreign Policy.
Normally, I let stuff like this slide to avoid starting a flame war but I just can't let this go. This statement is not supported by facts. The Iraq war has seen barely 4,100 US Military casualties. For a war like this (One that is nearly five years old), that is phemominal. Considering insurgents have taken more than fpour times that in casualties of their own, the "we're not winning" arguement just doesn't work anymore. The Iraq military is about a year away from meeting all US Army requirements to take over defending their own country, maybe less. The War in a military sense, has been won. Insurgent attacks are dropping, the iraq government is getting on its feet, and soon the countries own army will be handling things (This is not to say it is a political or moral victory, but in a military sense, the war has been won). This is not how Blackwater operates. Mercenaries are illegal via the Geneva convention and the term Mercenary does not fit what Blackwater does. Contractors are banned from Combat service and the contractors of Blackwater only carry weapons (on rare occasions), for personnel defense. Blackwater is better described as a police force for hire (Not soldiers for hire). THe US contracts them to run security in places where they are cheaper than deploying US Army or USMC personnel. They're no more than a company of Bodyguards really. They are not mercenaries, we do not pay them to fight the war. No offense but that makes no sense. I'm pretty sure Iran would declare war on us if our troops were inside their borders. Your economic arguement also seems flawed but I'm not going to get into it as I personnally only understand basic economic principles (I'm working on it).
Not at all mate! I don't consider you pointing out what you believe as a "flame", i'd rather that then someone come up and say "Nice friggin Copy Paste job". Besides, at least some of us think. Half the kids in my high school can't keep up a political argument if it costs them their college tuition. Your completely right on this one, in terms of the military we have won. But the war has been dragged on for purposes other than the liberation of Iraq. Blackwater are ex-Special Forces paid to train Iraq police forces, that is right. But they also serve as a reserve group and effective fighting force IF they are directly confronted. Since the Iraq war is based around the guerrilla tactics they use, the Blackwater members have faced many a situation in which they were directly confronted and had to use force. They have also been blamed (sadly) for unjust collateral damage by some media. They do although, have weapons carried commonly, and are even producing more effective killing/self defence weapons such as the BW 15 Rifle for the reasons afforementioned. Military buildup on the Iranian border, not inside Iran. Iran has already threatened to declare war on us and Russian intelligence has also reported an abnormal amount of troops/vehicles on its borders for a "peace-keeping patrol".
