A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy. *** If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value? *** If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic? *** Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Too Funny
From Instapundit, who said, "That was a fine bit of Alinsky-style guerrilla politics by State Sen. Brian Kelsey."
Martin, The Dems jammed it down our throats, remember? The population is against it, remember? The premises are all lies, remember?
There is no need to hope for its failure, it will, in fact fail, and the Dems will try to put nationalized, single payer into its place. You don't have to believe this forecast; but just sit back and watch what they do. ObamaCare is an illegitimate rape of the American people, by Obama and his crony-government.
It will, in fact, fail, whether due to incompetence (probable) or by design (possible). The messiahs are not omnipotent, it turns out. In fact they are not even potent. They are merely wannabe elitists who are not even elite.
I meant to add that this debacle will go down in history as a warning of what happens when know-nothing elitists get power, even in a democracy. China and Russia and North Korea and Cuba should have been enough warning, but no. Now we have Obama as a domestic warning.
Warnings often go unheeded. We'll have to see to what degree their class warfare turns in their favor.
BTW Martin, What is it that set you off? Sebilius deserves that little jibe. Even by Democrat standards, she failed, and the Dems are seemingly pissed at her for it (at least outwardly, maybe it's all show, who knows...).
There will be many Administration Dems who will be called before Congress soon, and some will be indicted. Sebelius is not a criminal, just an incompetent crony player. She will fade away soon. The others will not.
Martin, Since all you seem to care about is that there just be one political party so that there is no politics, would you choose the Democrats for that party? No evil opposition to hold them back? If so, why?
B.A. in Political Science and Master of Business Administration - I'm pretty sure she has no ideas about Web site design, but pretty sure she knows what a "dummy" is, from the look on her face. All you need to know when in power is how to issue commands, like Pharoah of old: "So let it be written, so let it be done." Someone obviously didn't get the message, 'cause it was written but it wasn't done. I'm only surprised that we the taxpayers only got stuck for about $500 million. The IRS Tax System Modernization program cost $2.5-6.5 BILLION (depending on who was doing the estimate), without ever going "live."
Jeez Stan, weren't you saying the other day that the two party system of politics is evil because the Left is evil and there must be no compromise with the Left because only the Right has principles? And that you'd rather the government be shut down then compromise. Martin seem to want an end to the "sports fan" "my side" new style of politics and I don't think you are being fair to him.
I don't want one political party. I want multiple VIABLE parties. And that will never happen as long as winner-take-all voting is in place. WTA voting naturally leads to an entrenched double-party system.
Everyone, left and right, hates the choices we have every voting cycle. I hear from every one that they have to choose the lesser of two evils. The reason behind that is the voting method we use.
Arkansas Rain, I said the two party system is necessary because of the existence of Leftist class war totalitarianism; there has to be a counter force, or the messiah class will oppress both the Victim Class and the Oppressor Class.
And I said that compromise with such people leads only to their goal(s). There is never a single synthesis, because every synthesis/compromise is the new thesis from which another antithesis will drag out a new, ever leftward, synthesis/compromise.
The compromisers are the "useful idiots" of the Leftist march toward total control.
Martin, Explain how a six-party (or however many) would work, in order to prevent single party takeover, or multi-party coalitions which take over. The Left is already a coalition of unions, Victim Categories and various messiah groups. The Right frequently sees third party failures, such as Ross Perot and even Ron Paul who might as well be a third party. The Libertarians and the Constitution Party are usually on the ballot here. What a waste of a vote they are...
Power is in numbers. Coalitions are inevitable unless they are forbidden somehow, and I don't see how they can be stopped since they could be secret coalitions. (Well except to the NSA, of course).
Maybe you have workable ideas. So how would it work?
I'm not an expert. All I know is that other countries have propotional voting, rather than first-past-the-post, and this supports multiple parties. It stops gerrymandering. It stops strategic voting.
I am fed up with strategic voting. And two parties. When Christian conservatives have to vote for a Mormon because he is the lesser of two evils, something is deadly wrong.
Martin, you are considering looking at what other countries do? Heresy! You are not a real American! ;)
Seriously though, in Canada we do have a multi-party system and it's not much better. I think there are more pros than cons, so overal it's better than just 2 party, but it's been a mess over the past decade...
The main 2 problems both arise when the opinions are too divided across the country and the vote gets split too much: 1) Minority governments get elected, which is why there were federal elections in 2004-06-08-11. 2) A majority government can get elected with only 40% of the vote, which is what we have now.
So when the vote is too divided, either the government falls too quickly to be productive because they cannot get along with other parties, or they do end up with a majority anyway, which defies the concept of multi-party and piss off the 60% of the people who did not vote for it.
Moreover, if you go by province, it's even worse. At the last election, people from Québec voted at 16% for the Conservative that are now in power with a majority government. 16!! How do you think people in QC like the multi-party system? Compare that to the US: even Utah or Wymoning, the 2 states who voted the most against Obama still voted no less than 25% for Obama. And it jumps pretty quickly to the 30+ as you go up the list...
So what happens in reality is that there is a lot of strategic voting and not so much collaboration between the parties. In theory, you are right Martin, they could all work together and it would make more sense. People would vote for the party they like the best and count on them to support the issues they care about. They would then need to find other parties that agree with them on certain issues and these allies may change from time to time. In reality though, it's more of a battle for whoever gets the majority and that's it. The stupid NDP and Liberal parties for instance, who are both 'Liberal' parties from the outside, are not willing to form a coalition pre-election. Together, they got almost as many seats as the Conservatives and 49% of the vote, almost 10% more than the Conservatives, but no, they won't combine before elections, they are like emos kids and goth kids who think they are different yet so similar.
According to Wiki, Martin is right: "After an election, the party with the most elected representatives usually becomes the governing party. The leader of this party becomes the Prime Minister of Canada and chooses people (usually MPs of his or her party) to head the various government departments. The party with the second largest number of MPs is called the "Official Opposition". All the elected candidates have a seat in the House of Commons, where they vote on draft legislation (called "bills") and thus have an influence on government policy."
Of course, it is Wiki, but this seems to be uncontroversial so is probably not hacked...
Oh I see, you were not just talking about 'multiple VIABLE parties', which Canada does have, but also about 'proportional voting', which is lacking; I only discussed the first point, my bad.
In Canada, a lot of people would agree with you too Martin then. The party in power now would have received only 40% of the seats instead of their current majority.
I don't see how it would avoid the issues I listed above though since the government would always be a minority government, not being able to accumulate 50% of the vote. Basically, the idea of a 'Prime Minister', or 'President' or 'Ruling party' would need to be removed so that each issue is discussed independently and voted on by all every time.
Note that 1 big difference in Canada too is that we don't vote for the Prime Minister. The party with the most seats decides who the Prime Minister is. So in the US for example, the Republicans would currently have the President since they control the house.
The US system is corrupted by big money, from Wall Street and Banks to undocumented foreigners, such as the Saudis and other tycoons.
If funding were to be audited and limited to small personal contributions (say less than $500), and attack ads were outlawed along with outside PAC ads and funding, it might be more conducive to third party activity.
There are always unintended consequences, especially where political power is concerned. The idea of post-term compensation for politicians, such as plush jobs, speaking contracts, book deals, special foundations and all the other cash corruptions would also have to be eliminated. Audits of expenditures would help, but secret slush funds would be created, if not already there.
That would put the Clintons out of business - their entire existence is in raising mo money. It would have stultified Obama's non-transparent funding from overseas.
I just thought of a way around it: Soros could just up and give $500 to every illegal alien (undocumented voter), and swamp his candidate with cash that way.
Lying robocalls from the Left: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/05/revealed-obama-campaign-bundler-helping-fund-libertarian-in-tight-va-gubernatorial-race/
Undercover stooge from the Left poses as "Libertarian" to split the vote: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/11/05/two-acts-of-fraud-may-hand-mcauliffe-the-keys-to-virginia/
@Stan: yeah, saw that coming in the Virginia race about a week or so back, when it came to light who has been funneling money to him - and what some of his more 'unique' ideas were.
22 comments:
Yes! Let's root for Romneycare to fail! That way the Dems lose politically and we WIN!
It's about CRUSHING your opponent and WINNING!
Your "Instapundit" link is broken -- it appears to actually be a link to edit this page?
Link to instapundit photo is fixed.
Martin,
The Dems jammed it down our throats, remember? The population is against it, remember? The premises are all lies, remember?
There is no need to hope for its failure, it will, in fact fail, and the Dems will try to put nationalized, single payer into its place. You don't have to believe this forecast; but just sit back and watch what they do. ObamaCare is an illegitimate rape of the American people, by Obama and his crony-government.
It will, in fact, fail, whether due to incompetence (probable) or by design (possible). The messiahs are not omnipotent, it turns out. In fact they are not even potent. They are merely wannabe elitists who are not even elite.
I meant to add that this debacle will go down in history as a warning of what happens when know-nothing elitists get power, even in a democracy. China and Russia and North Korea and Cuba should have been enough warning, but no. Now we have Obama as a domestic warning.
Warnings often go unheeded. We'll have to see to what degree their class warfare turns in their favor.
BTW Martin,
What is it that set you off? Sebilius deserves that little jibe. Even by Democrat standards, she failed, and the Dems are seemingly pissed at her for it (at least outwardly, maybe it's all show, who knows...).
There will be many Administration Dems who will be called before Congress soon, and some will be indicted. Sebelius is not a criminal, just an incompetent crony player. She will fade away soon. The others will not.
Martin,
Since all you seem to care about is that there just be one political party so that there is no politics, would you choose the Democrats for that party? No evil opposition to hold them back? If so, why?
B.A. in Political Science and Master of Business Administration - I'm pretty sure she has no ideas about Web site design, but pretty sure she knows what a "dummy" is, from the look on her face. All you need to know when in power is how to issue commands, like Pharoah of old: "So let it be written, so let it be done." Someone obviously didn't get the message, 'cause it was written but it wasn't done. I'm only surprised that we the taxpayers only got stuck for about $500 million. The IRS Tax System Modernization program cost $2.5-6.5 BILLION (depending on who was doing the estimate), without ever going "live."
Jeez Stan, weren't you saying the other day that the two party system of politics is evil because the Left is evil and there must be no compromise with the Left because only the Right has principles? And that you'd rather the government be shut down then compromise.
Martin seem to want an end to the "sports fan" "my side" new style of politics and I don't think you are being fair to him.
Ah, found the comment I was talking about:
http://atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/quote-of-day.html?showComment=1383396799763#c1412706193083868224
Stan,
I don't want one political party. I want multiple VIABLE parties. And that will never happen as long as winner-take-all voting is in place. WTA voting naturally leads to an entrenched double-party system.
Everyone, left and right, hates the choices we have every voting cycle. I hear from every one that they have to choose the lesser of two evils. The reason behind that is the voting method we use.
Arkansas Rain,
I said the two party system is necessary because of the existence of Leftist class war totalitarianism; there has to be a counter force, or the messiah class will oppress both the Victim Class and the Oppressor Class.
And I said that compromise with such people leads only to their goal(s). There is never a single synthesis, because every synthesis/compromise is the new thesis from which another antithesis will drag out a new, ever leftward, synthesis/compromise.
The compromisers are the "useful idiots" of the Leftist march toward total control.
Martin,
Explain how a six-party (or however many) would work, in order to prevent single party takeover, or multi-party coalitions which take over. The Left is already a coalition of unions, Victim Categories and various messiah groups. The Right frequently sees third party failures, such as Ross Perot and even Ron Paul who might as well be a third party. The Libertarians and the Constitution Party are usually on the ballot here. What a waste of a vote they are...
Power is in numbers. Coalitions are inevitable unless they are forbidden somehow, and I don't see how they can be stopped since they could be secret coalitions. (Well except to the NSA, of course).
Maybe you have workable ideas. So how would it work?
I'm not an expert. All I know is that other countries have propotional voting, rather than first-past-the-post, and this supports multiple parties. It stops gerrymandering. It stops strategic voting.
I am fed up with strategic voting. And two parties. When Christian conservatives have to vote for a Mormon because he is the lesser of two evils, something is deadly wrong.
Martin, you are considering looking at what other countries do? Heresy! You are not a real American! ;)
Seriously though, in Canada we do have a multi-party system and it's not much better. I think there are more pros than cons, so overal it's better than just 2 party, but it's been a mess over the past decade...
The main 2 problems both arise when the opinions are too divided across the country and the vote gets split too much:
1) Minority governments get elected, which is why there were federal elections in 2004-06-08-11.
2) A majority government can get elected with only 40% of the vote, which is what we have now.
So when the vote is too divided, either the government falls too quickly to be productive because they cannot get along with other parties, or they do end up with a majority anyway, which defies the concept of multi-party and piss off the 60% of the people who did not vote for it.
Moreover, if you go by province, it's even worse. At the last election, people from Québec voted at 16% for the Conservative that are now in power with a majority government. 16!! How do you think people in QC like the multi-party system? Compare that to the US: even Utah or Wymoning, the 2 states who voted the most against Obama still voted no less than 25% for Obama. And it jumps pretty quickly to the 30+ as you go up the list...
So what happens in reality is that there is a lot of strategic voting and not so much collaboration between the parties. In theory, you are right Martin, they could all work together and it would make more sense. People would vote for the party they like the best and count on them to support the issues they care about. They would then need to find other parties that agree with them on certain issues and these allies may change from time to time. In reality though, it's more of a battle for whoever gets the majority and that's it. The stupid NDP and Liberal parties for instance, who are both 'Liberal' parties from the outside, are not willing to form a coalition pre-election. Together, they got almost as many seats as the Conservatives and 49% of the vote, almost 10% more than the Conservatives, but no, they won't combine before elections, they are like emos kids and goth kids who think they are different yet so similar.
Hugo, sorry, but Canada is still winner-take-all.
According to Wiki, Martin is right:
"After an election, the party with the most elected representatives usually becomes the governing party. The leader of this party becomes the Prime Minister of Canada and chooses people (usually MPs of his or her party) to head the various government departments. The party with the second largest number of MPs is called the "Official Opposition". All the elected candidates have a seat in the House of Commons, where they vote on draft legislation (called "bills") and thus have an influence on government policy."
Of course, it is Wiki, but this seems to be uncontroversial so is probably not hacked...
Oh I see, you were not just talking about 'multiple VIABLE parties', which Canada does have, but also about 'proportional voting', which is lacking; I only discussed the first point, my bad.
In Canada, a lot of people would agree with you too Martin then. The party in power now would have received only 40% of the seats instead of their current majority.
I don't see how it would avoid the issues I listed above though since the government would always be a minority government, not being able to accumulate 50% of the vote. Basically, the idea of a 'Prime Minister', or 'President' or 'Ruling party' would need to be removed so that each issue is discussed independently and voted on by all every time.
Note that 1 big difference in Canada too is that we don't vote for the Prime Minister. The party with the most seats decides who the Prime Minister is. So in the US for example, the Republicans would currently have the President since they control the house.
The US system is corrupted by big money, from Wall Street and Banks to undocumented foreigners, such as the Saudis and other tycoons.
If funding were to be audited and limited to small personal contributions (say less than $500), and attack ads were outlawed along with outside PAC ads and funding, it might be more conducive to third party activity.
There are always unintended consequences, especially where political power is concerned. The idea of post-term compensation for politicians, such as plush jobs, speaking contracts, book deals, special foundations and all the other cash corruptions would also have to be eliminated. Audits of expenditures would help, but secret slush funds would be created, if not already there.
That would put the Clintons out of business - their entire existence is in raising mo money. It would have stultified Obama's non-transparent funding from overseas.
I just thought of a way around it: Soros could just up and give $500 to every illegal alien (undocumented voter), and swamp his candidate with cash that way.
Corruption always finds a way.
Here is corruption in action:
Lying robocalls from the Left:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/05/revealed-obama-campaign-bundler-helping-fund-libertarian-in-tight-va-gubernatorial-race/
Undercover stooge from the Left poses as "Libertarian" to split the vote:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/11/05/two-acts-of-fraud-may-hand-mcauliffe-the-keys-to-virginia/
@Stan: yeah, saw that coming in the Virginia race about a week or so back, when it came to light who has been funneling money to him - and what some of his more 'unique' ideas were.
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