Amazing.
Consecutive sentences.
McCain: “Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame; it’s time to fix the problem.”
I mean even forget the larger point that he was the one who swooped into Washington, Batman-like, making a big friggin’ deal about going there to get shit done when in fact all he did was sit at a table and be noncommittal and not deliver whatever magic pixie dust he thought would make it all better. Forget he went from “NO DEBATE UNTIL THERE’S A DEAL” to “Okay, we can debate because there’s a framework for cooperation” to “you guys better all get back to work because you didn’t fix it yet” in under a week.
I mean just look at the consecutive sentences. “I blame Obama. This is not the time to blame people.” Amazing.
October 1st, 2008 11:54
Yeah, but at least this “trick” seems to have cost McCain pretty dearly — he’s dropped pretty dramatically in the polls from nearly every polling organization (there’s still a lot of time before the election, though).
It should be noted, though, that both of them want the “billionaire bailout.” Both will cause continuation of the situation that leads to malinvestment — artificially-low interest rates and the inflationary printing of currency. They’re both pretty much for taking from Main Street and giving to Wall Street.
October 1st, 2008 15:22
If I head the terms “Main Street” and “Wall Street” one more time I’m gonna deck someone.
Frankly I’m not surprised there isn’t more uproar over stuff like this because there are people like my aunt who are still back on “Obama’s a terrorist” and “if a black man wins I’ll give up my citizenship.” I can only hope.
October 2nd, 2008 05:35
You know, there seems to be a lot of people in the same boat as Mikki’s aunt, and it really makes me think about the point of democracy with regard to profoundly stupid, bigoted people. Honestly… I don’t get it.
The hope seems to be something like “well, maybe enough intelligent people will vote and it’ll offset all the stupid people”, but if that’s the case, then why not just let intelligent people make the decisions? Why must it always be this constant struggle to prevail over the weakest-minded and most bigoted and least informed? Are all those people supposed to somehow “moderate” intelligent decision-making, as though being intelligent somehow strips a person of a conscience?
I guess I just don’t quite get why we place so much value on decisions made by ignorant people that, when they all gather together and make stupid or misinformed decisions together, we consider it fair governance, nearly beyond reproach.
I’m not saying stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, necessarily; my point is more that people who understand, for instance, science should have a much greater say in what science does than people who have absolutely no clue and refuse to educate themselves. The idea that some idiot who thinks that science means “what me and the people I hang around with all agree sounds the best and least conflicting with the Bible” has just as much say about what’s taught in a science class as… erm… scientists… is absolutely infuriating.
I’d rather have an intelligent doctor helping me with healthcare decisions than one who was given the position just because everyone deserves to be given an equal say on everything.
Please, Mikki, kidnap your aunt and keep her chained up until after election day. She obviously has no fucking clue what civilization means, and belongs just as much in a voting booth as she does doing neurosurgery.
I guess the solution would be to give people who are better informed and demonstrate a stronger comprehension of the issues proportionally more votes than those who are ill-informed shitheads who are going to vote against Obama because he’s black and his name sounds vaguely terroristy.
Ahh, would that we lived in a society that didn’t celebrate ignorance but rather abhorred it.
October 2nd, 2008 05:39
By the way, if my opinion on the subject makes me a monster, then I’m a monster. I guess I’d just rather have a dictatorship that made intelligent, rational decisions and didn’t oppress its people than a democracy that did. There’s more to freedom than just the governmental decision-making process.
‘Course, it’s not like our leadership is necessarily completely representational, either, but that’s another story and goddamn if I haven’t barfed out a wall of text here already.
October 2nd, 2008 07:02
I think the general idea behind democracy isn’t that the smart people will hopefully outweigh the stupid (and I’d argue that’s never really been true anywhere in history), but more that whatever the prevailing belief is at the time is correct because that’s what the majority believe. Slavery being a good example. As horrific as it was, there were reasons to keep it at the time. Mainly that the south wouldn’t get on board with this whole new country thing if it was off the table. So we kept it and hoped that eventually popular opinion would turn and it would be done away with. Yay us. However we don’t always do what’s right. It’s essentially just putting way too much faith in humanity. But then we were blessed with the Constitution, and it was supposed to protect us from crap like this. But if you just ignore the rule of law then it doesn’t apply.
The problem really is that people get complacent. We were all Enlightened, and now we’re used to it. No one cares anymore and we end up with large chunks of the populace wondering why they need to bother teaching even basic algebra in high school. Try explaining to them sometime that it’s because we’re fending off another Dark Ages. They’ll look at you like you’re crazy, I know because they do it to me.
Going back to any sort of system without checks and balances would quickly take a turn for the worse aswell. You can never trust such consolidated power. As much as people like to complain that our government can’t get anything done (like with this whole bailout plan mess) it’s the apparent lack of doing that is what’s awesome about our system. We can argue and go back and forth on an issue and hopefully the right thing will happen. When it moves quickly we get things like the Patriot Act.
That’s what’s pissing me off about the news this past week or so. Everyone’s on there bitching because this bill isn’t being passed but their ignoring the fact that it’s congress doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. All this talk about a vacuum of leadership, people are thinking for themselves instead of moving lockstep with whoever their fearless leader of the week is. This guy on Today was actually bitching about the fact that members of the House are listening to their constituants! This is the way our government works, and I for one am lapping it up.
And if Matt Lauer and the rest of them get on there one more time and tell me that people are against this because they’re afraid, and don’t undertsand how it’s only for our benefit, and we’re all upset because the government used words like “fatcats,” I’m gonna scream. The insult to our collective intelligence is appalling.
Yes, I know, I contradicted myself a bit on the stupidity issue. And I know, tl;dr.
October 2nd, 2008 13:52
Smart people have their own ways of being stupid. Sometimes the doofuses are more sensible– my standard example is the Clinton impeachment, where the educated classes got themselves into a tizzy and the country as a whole snickered but didn’t think it was an impeachment offense.
In the case of the bailout, there are lots of stupid reasons to oppose it; there are also some perfectly good ones. Paulson should be trusted about as far as you can kick a piano, and the latest bill has been loaded up with crap that will probably continue to bite us for years.
It’d be more sensible to pass a stopgap measure– no more than is needed for the next four months– and then let the new administration start from scratch.
October 3rd, 2008 22:27
Well, there’s kind of a difference between people intelligent or otherwise who make stupid decisions, or intelligent decisions that have ultimately stupid outcomes that may or may not have been easily foreseeable, or decisions that may on the surface appear intelligent but are ultimately misguided or specious… and “hurr, niggers” or “hurr, Muslims!”
Nobody will ever be able to convince me that freedom begins and ends in a voting booth, and I think that sometimes we need to curtail “one man, one vote” if three hundred million men with three hundred million votes are going to use their power to oppress the myriad other freedoms we have beyond voting. Sure, perhaps there’s some damage done to freedom in that some people get their votes taken away, but the overall outcome is ultimately beneficial to humanity.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’d rather lose an amount of democracy to gain or preserve other freedoms for all individuals than lose those freedoms for all individuals to preserve democracy. And fuck, it’s not like our current system of democracy gives an equal amount of power to every individual anyway. All this is is modifying the filter in a more sensible way.
October 4th, 2008 01:16
Dude! You’re on the road to enlightenment! ;)
Democracy does not equal freedom; it’s closer to mob rule.