But if you must vote, vote for Nader.
Posts Tagged ‘politics’
President Nobody
Posted: 17 April 2008 in UncategorizedTags: politics, presidential election, ralph nader, voting
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The babe with the Power
Posted: 27 March 2008 in UncategorizedTags: despair, disillusionment, elections, george r r martin, hope, obama, politics, power, presidential election, riddles, ron paul, sentiment classification
Names unnamed, sources unsourced, a CMU professor told me the other day that the best way to identify the party affiliation of political blogs is to find out who the blogger talks about all the time. Republicans spend their time, not bolstering their own candidates, but denegrating the Democrats. Ditto the Democrats. This is perhaps true on average, but you will undoubtedly find counterexamples the instant you start looking. So what about blogs that are leftist that criticize Democrats and Republicans? I suppose there are the right-wing counterparts, but I avoid those since I suspect they are mostly crackpot cults, white-power activists, and warmongers. Or Ron Paul supporters.
Which leads me to my next point. Ron Paul supporters got really motivated this primary season. It was at first inspiring, followed by slightly disturbing. The last time I saw that kind of fanaticism in white suburban males was when Star Wars Episode 1 came out. And like after Episode 1, their hopes were left like fish to die washed up on the rocks of failure beneath an unyielding sun. The so-called revolution did not come. Nor could it.
Next comes the Obamagasm. He talks a pretty talk, but like all mainstream candidates he has sacrificed a number of his ideals. While a little guy in Chicago, Obama met with the Arab community to discuss the issue of Palestinian liberation. Now he has cozied up to America’s client-state, Israel in an effort to improve his electability. I’m trying to rid myself of the feeling that “a candidate has to stick to one position for his entire career or else he has lost his integrity.” It’s just not human to do that and would represent a serious character flaw if the guy in the next cubicle did it. So why must politicians? Pre-Iraq War I was a Republican, but as I grew older and learned new things, that stance has shifted wildly. Shouldn’t I forgive such wishy-washyness in candidates? One might say it is important for a candidate to know himself, which I clearly did not, but new data comes along and sometimes you just have to change.
Every election of importance since 9/11 brings me to an eventual state of despair. Think of the lines of power in a political system. George R. R. Martin, my favorite fantasy author, has a great illustration in one of his books (which I will now present from memory, so consider this a semi-direct quotation with noise). The Master of Whisperers comes to the newly minted Hand of the King (the guy who does the day-to-day running of the kingdom) and presents him this riddle (paraphrased): “A rich man, a priest, a king, and a soldier are all in a room. The rich man says, kill them and I will give you half of all my wealth. The priest says, kill them in the name of the gods. The king says, kill them in the name of your king. Who does he kill?” The Hand in the story ponders the question, which has no answer (or rather, too many). It depends on the soldier. Who has the power? The man with the sword is nobody.
In a democratic society, are we the man with the sword? What is our allegiance? Are we greedy and side with the rich man, or pious and side with the priest? Are we loyal subjects and obey the king? Who taught us that each of these figures (and feel free to add your own) has power over us? Are these teachers the ones with the real power? Or are they just the front for the people with the real power? Where do the lines lead or is it just a jumbled graph that leads nowhere and everywhere? Maybe the power is an emergent behavior of the system — Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Either way, can we ever hope to change it?
Meh Tuesday
Posted: 5 February 2008 in UncategorizedTags: corporate media, friends, politics, presidential election, super tuesday
My longtime friend over at the Wrathful Dove has an excellent post today on the lack of superness in this so-called Super Tuesday, and I wanted to give it a plug. Here is a brief excerpt that I thought sheds light on the charade that we call “elections” in America:
I was reading the “issues” section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Sunday where there was an entire article devoted to comparing the musical selections of the candidates to see what exciting insights this exercise might provide. The same article also subtly observed the importance of selecting a candidate who seems likely to win in November, effectively reducing elections down to the horse race terms in which it is often framed in the corporate media.
These elections are a sham and an obscene circus.
Every four years the American public gets to select its master-in-chief from a narrow field of candidates who fiercely compete and debate within a very narrow range so as to give the illusion of choice and dialog while keeping the true options fixed to those acceptable and profitable to corporate America.
Check out his blog for the rest of the post.
The Crowd Thins
Posted: 30 January 2008 in UncategorizedTags: clinton, edwards, epic fail, giuliani, mccain, obama, politics, presidential election, romney
Well, Edwards is all set to announce he is dropping out of the democratic race and Ghouliani has withdrawn from the republican side. Of the mainstream democrat candidates, Edwards was the least likely to become corporate lapdog of the year. He had some unfortunate things against him, which made me less than meh about his bid, but I would have preferred him to Clinton or Obama. My prediction is Obama will take it. As for the Republicans, I was terribly wrong about McCain’s prospects. Which evil would be worse? McCain or Romney in the White House? I must say, though, I am so, so glad that Ghouliani was a miserable failure. If he had been made president, the world would have been a much darker place.
At this point, no one is heading to the White House that I support. I refuse to support the lesser of two evils and so will almost certainly be voting Green as a protest.
And then there were… umpteen
Posted: 22 January 2008 in UncategorizedTags: fred thompson, giuliani, law and order, mccain, politics, presidential election
Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race for president. I liked him on Law and Order, not so much as a presidential candidate. Now he can go back to doing something he’s relatively good at. I’d feel more secure if Ghouliani dropped out (kudos for the name). His continued presence gives me shivers. He’s probably waiting for McCain to screw up and drive the electorate into his arms.
Tales from the Oligarchy
Posted: 20 January 2008 in UncategorizedTags: big corporations, corporate media, iraq war, kucinich, media, politics, presidential election
There is a fine line between conspiracy theory and reasonable deduction. Most would agree it is insane to believe that a group of elite men have existed since before the founding of the United States with the purpose of ruling the world from secret. Most would agree that it is insane to believe that 9/11 was staged by people in the US government. But there are all these little coincidences out there that hint at something deeper going on. When we place them all side by side it seems almost reasonable to believe in the conspiracy theory, but the problem is that we have access to a limited set of the data. If we sampled from the distribution of coincidences again, we might come to a completely different conclusion. This is part of the difference between believing in a conspiracy theory and coming to a reasonable conclusion from the facts.
So consider these “coincidences” [source]:
- The owner of MSNBC and NBC is General Electric, who also owns Raytheon
- Raytheon is a defense contractor
- General Electric has a vested stake in Yucca Mountain
- GE and its affiliates have contributed to the main democratic contenders (Clinton, Obama, Edwards)
- GE and its affiliate employees have individually contributed nearly $70,000 to those candidates
- NBC has consistently excluded Kucinich from presidential debates
- Kucinich opposes the War in Iraq and opening Yucca Mountain
In the latest presidential debate, NBC stated its criteria for selecting candidates was being ranked in the top four. Since Bill Richardson exited the race, much to my pleasure, Kucinich was now in the top four. NBC extended him an invitation only to rescind it two days later. Kucinich sued on violation of contract and won. NBC appealed and Kucinich lost. NBC claimed their first amendment rights were infringed by being forced to include Kucinich. Corporations have first amendment rights?
So is it right to conclude from these series of “coincidences” that NBC and its corporate masters have conspired to affect the election by removing from consideration candidates who would not be financially beneficial to them? Or is it a reasonable deduction to conclude from the facts that GE has a vested interest in making sure candidates who will support their goals are given media attention, which translates directly into votes? If you will not agree with that, then surely you must agree that by excluding Kucinich, they materially affect the distribution of votes in the election.
Buzz share correlates with polls
Posted: 7 November 2007 in UncategorizedTags: al gore, buzz, data mining, democrats, edwards, kucinich, nobel turds, politics, polls, presidential election, progressive democrats, wonkosphere
I’ve been following the progress of Wonkosphere and talking about it for a while now [here, here, and here]. If you’re not familiar with Wonkosphere, it’s a website that tracks the buzz generated by candidates on political blogs. It reports buzz as a percentage of the total buzz by conservative, liberal, and independent bloggers. It also reports the tone of the posts, so you get more than just who is being talked about. So it appears that the buzz share is a predicter of national polling results According to Kevin Dooley of Wonkosphere, it’s not the total percentage of buzz share that is predictive of polling results, but the change in buzz share that predicts where national numbers are going. So are blogs affecting politics (as many have suggested) or are they just reflecting social trends?
Kucinich is doing fairly well today with buzz share, coming in at #3 among Democrats. He spiked a few days ago when his UFO comments incited a conservative love fest of crazy-elf-hippy remarks. Democracy for America held the 2008 Pulse Poll to gather data about people’s choice for who should be the 2008 Democratic contender. The results put Kucinich at a fairly decisive #1, beating out the phantom Al Gore (aka Newest Nobel Turd) and John Edwards. DFA consists primarily of Progressive Democrats, though, so you can’t generalize it to the population at large. However, these people tend to be rather vocal and active politically, so they may start to rub off. It’s a daunting task, though, counteracting the media brick-brain effect (i.e. making your brain into a gray brick).
The Bush’s Mental Health
Posted: 31 October 2007 in UncategorizedTags: big corporations, endless war, evil politicians, insanity, iran, iraq war, kucinich, nuclear weapons, politics, presidential election
Dennis Kucinich is not afraid to say the thing many people are wondering. Is Bush freakin nuts? Does he really think World War III is going to break out if Iran gains the knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons? Who are the sides? The middle east versus the rest of the world? Oh and North Korea. Plus a couple countries in Africa so embroiled in their own civil wars, they’d be lucky to send 100 men to fight off this giant.
CNN’s political ticker has this:
“I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush said at a news conference earlier this month.
The Democratic presidential candidate later said he does not consider questioning the Bush’s mental health inappropriate, according [to] the Inquirer’s Web site. [emphasis mine]
I’m about 99.9999% sure that any nuclear weapon Iran acquired would be used for one purpose and one purpose only: deterrence. What Bush is actually saying here is “if you’re interested in avoiding a US invasion of your country, it seems like you ought to be interested in getting a nuclear weapon.” He really can’t see the connection between posturing to overthrow a government and that government’s desire to acquire a nuke to prevent that? This version of diplomacy is like the battered wife who kills her husband in order to escape. Only this husband thinks the wife is going to get a gun and is trying to kill her first.
As usual, Kucinich is the only one brave enough to speak out against this looming evil. The rest are off scrambling around in the dirt for the pennies tossed at them by the corporate patrons. Pelosi can barely look up long enough from the feast of pork-in-a-barrel to notice.
On a side note, I like the CNN editor’s rendering of the bolded sentence above. That’s a direct quote as of 10:00am Eastern time.
Give Kucinich a Hand
Posted: 24 October 2007 in UncategorizedTags: big corporations, democrats, kucinich, media, politics, polls, presidential election, yellow journalism
I received this email today from Dennis Kucinich’s election campaign (below the jump). It’s a quick poll where you choose your top 3 candidates (democratic) for president if you had to vote today. So I voted Kucinich, Gravel, and Edwards. The (optional) reason I gave was that Dennis is the only principled candidate and is neither a warhawk nor a corporate stooge. The only thing wrong with him is that he’s not good for advertising revenue and so mainstream media outlets ignore him completely. Considering the massive load of dung that constitutes 99.9% of NBC, ABC, and CBS, 100% of CNN and 110% of Fox’s news coverage, this probably isn’t such a bad thing. It should give people pause, at least, if the media allowed them to think for themselves for 8 seconds.
And we all know that ain’t gunna happen.
Anyhow, please Kucinich a hand and vote for him in that poll.
