14 Comments

1. 

   acilius

    /  October 24, 2008

   That guy was a Republican judge, and he did his party a great service at the same time he did his country a grievous disservice. His mugging for the camera gave the impression that it was extremely difficult to interpret the punch cards, when for the most part they were quite easy to figure out. I wish we still had punch cards- then there was something available to recount.

2. 

   cymast

    /  October 24, 2008

   Bingo!

   (The affirmative exclamation, not the dog/game/song.)

3. 

   acilius

    /  October 24, 2008

   The dog/ game/ song is barking right now. That’s the dog’s song when he sights game.

4. 

   cymast

    /  October 25, 2008

   I feel like you wrote that just for me.

5. 

   acilius

    /  October 26, 2008

   It doesn’t come close to the thing you came up with about “The Romans brought leeks to Wales/ The Greeks brought romance to males,” but I can try.

6. 

   cymast

    /  October 26, 2008

   I somehow knew you would like that . .

   The article, at first glance, seems to describe a prostitution of evidence of election fraud, but the more I think about it, the more fitting the prostitution seems.

7. 

   acilius

    /  October 27, 2008

   It’s hard to imagine either the Democrats or the Republicans surviving if they didn’t have the other party to use as a bogeyman to scare voters. Either one could vanish and be replaced by NAMBLA or the KKK and they’d go right on getting the same votes. “Sure, I don’t like NAMBLA’s platform of sodomizing little boys- but look at the Democrats!” “Hey, sure the KKK is a terrorist gang- but we can’t let the Republicans keep the White House!”

8. 

   cymast

    /  October 27, 2008

   Or they’ll be so galvanized for their candidate that they’ll deliberately jump ship when their candidate isn’t nominated:

   http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/

   That’s why I think we should do away with party names, and instead vote on issues.

9. 

   acilius

    /  October 28, 2008

   I don’t think we should vote on issues. Issues can be whipped up out of thin air. I think we really need a system with more direct involvement by citizens and less power delegated to magnates in faraway capitals.

10. 

    cymast

     /  October 28, 2008

    Well, issues already are “whipped up out of thin air,” but I still think we should vote on them, and not on candidates. I also think the office of the Presidency- as we know it- is a cumbersome and dangerous relic.

11. 

    acilius

     /  October 28, 2008

    I strongly agree with you about the Presidency. It is the single most destructive institution in the world. I can’t believe there isn’t a mass movement demanding its immediate abolition.

12. 

    cymast

     /  October 28, 2008

    My guess is people think of the office of the Presidency as apple pie. To replace it with something more logical and modern would be “un-American.” And just try telling “Americans” the Stars and Stripes are just pieces of cloth!

13. 

    acilius

     /  October 28, 2008

    The presidency does have a symbolic power that an executive council or other rational system wouldn’t have, and that’s precisely why the presidency is so ruinous. We have such a celebrity culture to start with that when we vest huge powers in a super-celebrity the public falls into a kind of trance. It becomes difficult to get a hearing for even the most obvious objections or the most urgent questions when Mr President and his crowd all point in the same direction.

14. 

    believer1

     /  November 1, 2008

    I am surprized at how hard it can be use a magnifying glass ar times.