Obama is about as far left as we have ever seen in a candidate

you saying you are independent, and supporting obama as much as you do is so lol it's not even funny

I want to add that Obama is also very far right

Consider that he is getting more Wall Street money than McCain.

this is true

I dont make near 250k, but i still believe in reaganomics to a point. And i think McCain did an awful job defending it. Not explaining how Obama's plan will cause businesses to cut jobs, how inflation will be, .... he should be comparing this plan to the Carter years at every possible opportunity and i have not seen him do it once

The only good thing about the electoral college is it does make minority votes mean more.

Extreme unrealistic example: A president says when he becomes president, all protestants wouldnt have to pay taxes, and everyone else makes up for it (yes i know this is impossible etc). This man could theoretically win a popular vote and not an electoral vote.

I agree, the idea of electors at this point is silly -- the idea then was also that the avg american was too dumb to vote for president, so they should vote for electors to do it for them. The avg american is still too dumb to vote for president, but since electors vote for whoever their state votes for, the whole idea is pretty silly nowadays

On the Left and the Right

What does it even mean to say someone is left or right? Is it just one's stance on abortion?

Is it possible to be a "lefty" and think that abortion in all trimesters should be banned? Could a communist believe that? Of course a communist could, and everyone agrees that communists are lefties. But if a communist banned abortions in all circumstances would that make him a fascist? One definition (my preferred definition) of fascism is that its the marriage between the state and the corporation.

Its pretty damn hard to argue that the state and the corporation aren't in bed together right now ****ing each others brains out, amirite? And its true that Obama is receiving more Wall St. money than McCain. His foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski ffs- one of the original CFR and Tri-Lat people. So connected to David Rockefeller et al that its not really funny at all.

So none of this means anything though because Obama wants to re-distribute the wealth. Obama wants to rob from the rich and give to the poor, right? Wrong. How can anybody believe this? What sort of fantasy world would a person live in if they thought Wall St and the corporate media would support him if Obama's plan was to redistribute wealth?

In the real world real candidates with real ideas about helping people get treated by the media like Ron Paul got treated by the media- ignored, bashed, marginalized, ignored some more, etc.

i've been told i hate america and myself, and now that i'm drinking the kool-aid and am not, in fact, an independent

entirely based on my support of a single candidate, and without any substantive argument for any of those statements

yes, this is truly a fine politics thread indeed

MT,

I apologize for insinuating that you are a kool-aid drinker.

I have however made substantive arguments that kool-aid is being drunk- just not necessarily by you.

Actually, the idea was that whole classes of Americans were too dumb to vote for president (blacks, women, poor people), but the people who could vote wanted to be able to cast their votes for them. If you have a normal election, only the people who are actually permitted to vote count. But if you count congressional districts (which are based on both voting and non-voting population), you can count people without giving them the franchise. This is why the Three-Fifths Compromise was so important: it was about how many extra votes Southerners would get for having slaves.

The fact that the guy that gets the most votes can lose is pretty funny.

MT,

You are not really an independent imo.

I mean.. you are as much as everyone says they are. But everyone lies when they say it. Maybe not intentionally.. but almost no one is really independent.

I'm registered independent but have never voted for a democrat presidential candidate.

That will be true until at least 2012.

I don't mean anything personal.. and its not a bad thing.. but you are as independent as I am. Which is maybe independent with a strong lean to one party. That doesn't mean I will always vote party line.. I almost never vote party line. But trying to sell it as independent is intellectually dishonest. And everyone does it.

agree with chim

i am not a conservative, i like to call myself a libertatian

but if you are asking me if im a republican, democrat, or independent, id obv have to say republican

This is quite tough to say and would probably require at the very least a tldr post if not a book or two.

I think if you just say liberal or conservative with no other context then it's going to be about social issues like abortion and gay marriage. With social(ly) in front it is the same I guess.

When preceded by fiscally or economically it's more complicated because you have both taxes and spending. I think most people who claim to be fiscal conservatives for example would be highly opposed to huge cuts in military spending (IMO this is probably close to 100% for people who say they are economically conservative but who do not claim to be libertarian). I guess without context if you hear "fiscally conservative" or liberal then it probably has something to do with how progressive the person thinks taxes should be.

agree with jared
im a fiscal conservative who is relatively liberal on most social issues

Can chim or mets explain to me precisely what purpose it serves to identify everyone as a Democrat or Republican based solely on who they tend to vote for?

If that's the standard we're applying here, then yeah, I'm a Democrat. I don't see how that tells you a whole hell of a lot about my political views though.

Especially since it's not like I get a lot of options, living in Madison; other than two Presidential races, two Senate races, and two Governor races, the rest are either Democrats unopposed, Democrats versus Greens, or Democrats versus Republican sacrificial lambs. So again, I don't see any particularly usefulness to using that metric rather than... you know, actually delving down into things a bit deeper.

It's just kind of a worthless metric, imo, particularly if someone has good reasons for rejecting the label it generates. This applies to mets as much as to me -- saying he's a "Republican" is pretty deceptive when he's more of a libertarian, and probably doesn't want to be associated with the Religious Right wing of the party.

The Standard of Living Bubble (and why its about to go pop)

Nouriel Roubini: I fear the worst is yet to come
Times of London article about a NYU professor who has been saying the economy was going to collapse for over a year. I've been saying this this too for quite a while.

Pentagon Wants Packs of Robots to Detect "Non-Cooperative Humans"


Perhaps a better question then is: how is the center defined and why is it defined the way that it is?

This website (or maybe a prior version):
http://www.politicalcompass.org/prin...1.50&soc=-4.97
was one of the first things i can ever remember using on the tinterweb, and makes a 2-d distinction - socially liberal vs authoritarian and economically left/right. I guess this is better than simple left/right, but even then, reducing one's views to a simple sport on a graph is always a bit reductive, since i might rate 'medium' on a set of scales because i don't care at all about abortion/guns/sex/drugs, or because i'm storngly pro gun- and drug- control and anti sex- and abortion- regulations, or vice versa.

Anyway, there are a few other versions with shorter questions, and all seem to portray me as slightly anti-business, strongly anti-authoritarian.

Roubini's good. Marc Faber's better. You can probably dig out the barrons' round tables which has faber in most years, but he's an awesome read. It's easy to be right after the event, somewhat harder to be right before the event, but what impresses me the most is the people who actually backed their conviction with their savings, and reap the rewards.

Also, there have been a lot of keynesian quotes dug out of the woodwork of late, but i 'm surprised that the following (churchill?) quote has not been seen, which i think is probably the most apposite description of the moment:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

A bit less top-down and a bit more bottom up - the political parties tend to pitch themselves where they will find as much support as they can (i.e. roughly where (they think that) most people's views are, and the centre gets defined as between those positions.

I have voted for four different parties and some independent candidates so I'd say I'm pretty independant.
I have never voted for a party I wanted to win always for the least evil, the last couple of elections I have voided my ballot which I'll keep doing.
I also own the party programms from two federal elections ago for all German parties that competed (something like 50 total) and read them all. Some are pretty funny, some are well written, I especially enjoyed reading the superleft and superright ones.

That's crazy. I thought the 8 in Canada was excessive

I have spoilt my ballot twice, and voted once (to (unsuccessfully) try to prevent the victory of a pretty nasty piece of work) in the three general elections I have had a vote in. I lean towards one of the three major parties in the uk, but would consider voting for any of them, or a minor party, should i view it the best vote.

The local elections throw up some pretty amusing characters. The last local mayoral election i had a vote in included a communist, an old woman whose principal policy appeared to be removing all road/parking laws in the borough and a sexy green amongst a plethora of others. iirc i voted communist.

proportional representation FDemocraticGridlock?

Kokiri's link should be this to take the test

here is how i ended up


not sure it is really the best test for this, i found some of the questions ridiculous but tried answering them as best as i could

as far as this year, pretty much proof that all the candidates are very similar

got that from that site too. not sure how it's relevant, but it is mildly interesting

That quiz is very bad: