In Hindsight, Kerry Says He'd Still Vote for War

Danny: the electors are chosen by the candidates. Thus, while they may not be legally bound to vote for their appointed candidate, candidates are going to pick their electors very carefully. There's not too much liklihood they'll vote the other way.

I agree with the rest of what you say about the electoral college.

KMO: The Democrats are not going to committ to electoral reform. And if they made such a promise, they could not keep it unless they had a super-majority to pass a Constitutional amendment.

Someone else suggested Nader should drop out in return for a cabinet post. That idea makes a lot more sense, except that Nader views the Democratic party as so utterly corrupt and sold-out that he wants no part of it. He believes the system is rotten and nothing short of a new party can fix it. If you agree with that, and you like Nader, you should vote for him. If you think that there's something to be gained by electing one or the other of the big-party candidates, you should vote for him.

Rather than blaming Nader for throwing the election to Bush, and rather than blaming the voters for apathy, blame the Democrats for lackluster candidates, and dull campaigns, and not getting their own core supporters to the polls.

 

Half of the states have laws requiring the electors to vote for their candidate.

And as for electoral reform...it's not happening. Constitutional amendments happen in the exact same form as the electoral college and the senate: they give more power to smaller states. So in other words, a fair number of those smaller states would have to say: "Yes! Strip us of power!" That's just not going to happen.

The founders didn't want a democracy, they wanted a republic, and the Constitution pretty strongly entrenches that idea at the core, even if we've been chipping away at it for some time now.

 

well, ok, but as you know, you only need one more vote than the other guys have like, let's see, how about the vote of the most qualified person for the supreme court....clarence thomas who voted for daddy's little boy, W.

 

I think it was made pretty clear that McCain is campaigning for Bush because they agree on a majority of the issues. He's not a closet liberal by any stretch of the imagination; Democrats should really stop being "disappointed" in him. He simply enjoys tweaking the establishment and speaking his mind.

McCain has said in the past that he was furious with Kerry for his comments in the 60s and 70s. But after working together on the POW-MIA commission, he got over it. Since he's such a straight talker, we can probably take that at face value. If not, then you'd also have to doubt how much he "supports George W. Bush for re-election."

 

The devaluation of the concepts of "good" and "evil" by leftist intellectuals is symptomatic of the decline of the West.

I have read Orwell. I didn't care for Animal Farm, but 1984 is a tremendous book.

Remember the poor censor who was imprisoned for leaving the word "God" in a poem (Tennyson?, Burns?) he was editing? Doesn't sound like the Right to me.

Newspeak has no word for "evil."

1984 had nothing to do with the United States and everything to do with the Soviet Union and the dictatorial, paranoid communism it practiced.

 

You made a half dozen points that don't really make sense or have anything to do with anything.

Are you honestly comfortable giving everyone on Earth a 1 word label? Everyone is either Good or Evil, with no grey area? Really?

God was inserted into the Pledge during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Get over it.

1984 HAD nothing to do with the US. The point is that elements of our once open society are beginning to resemble the closed society of 1984 and the Soviet Union.

 

Actual bumper sticker:

Vote Cuthulu

Why settle for the
lesser of two evils.

 

God has always been on the money, and the House of Representatives has a Chaplain and does a prayer before every opening session. On the positive side there, guest chaplains do regularly visit and they can't ask people to pray for Jesus or any specific diety other than the generic God. On the negative side, in my year working off the floor and hearing many an opening prayer, I heard only Christians and Jews represented. No Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Unitarians, and whatever else.

Of course, I personally am for removing this practice...just pointing it out.

 

Are you comfortable with a society that cannot discern good and evil, where everything is grey?

I'll try to narrow down my point: the virulent Bush-hatred so prevalent now, and likely to propel Kerry into the oval office, is a kind of Stockholm Syndrome variant. Rather than blame the actual wrong-doers - in this case, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11/01, the blame is transferred to the authority figures of the time, in this case the Bush administration.

Similar to the not too uncommon situation where the police shoot and kill a bank or convenience store robber in a standoff, only to themselves become the bad guys to a segment of the population that identifies with the criminals. We then hear statements like this: "they could have shot the gun out of his hand - they didn't have to kill him."

Thank God the insane concept of a "more sensitive war..." wasn't conceived during the nineteen-forties. One can only hope the candidate that proposes this absurdity will be rejected.

 

First of all, Bush has also used the word "sensitive" to describe how we should conduct a war.

Second, comparisons of this war on terror to WWII are totally inappropriate. Read my earlier post and try to understand: Kerry isn't talking about playing nice with the terrorists, he's talking about being sensitive towards the people who aren't terrorists yet BUT could go either way.

Along these lines, its a credit to the US that we haven't blown up that temple that Sadr is hiding in. This is what Kerry and Bush BOTH mean by being "sensitive." Its not being soft, its just plain common sense not to alienate people unnecessarily.

 

SunTzu, I'm afraid you're being pulled in by a troll.

-m.

 

Yeah, I noticed that, hence the shorter-than-usual responses from me. Thx for pointing it out though : )

It occured to me that he was more or less parotting what I assume Rush Limbaugh says everyday. Believe it or not, most of what I've written are my original thoughts (I love history, and very nearly got a history degree just for the hell of it).

 

Not a troll - those are my honest opinions. Nothing to do with Rush - I don't listen to radio during the daytime, being a 8 to 5 type working person.

Interesting - you justify Kerry's use of "sensitive war" by claiming that Bush has used the term also. Just 'cause Bush may have said it doesn't mean it's correct - he's not the Pope. If ever there was an oxymoron, "sensitive war" is it.

You are correct in pointing out that there are vast differences between the war on terror and WW2. Yet there are similarities, too. If one discounts that the American president is "the voice of evil," as I do, then it is rather clear that this war, the war between militant Islam and the West, is a war much more polarized than other post WW2 conflicts, such as Vietnam. Nazism vs. democracy = evil vs. good, militant Islam vs. democracy = evil vs. good. There is also the common thread of anti-semitism (a feature of the Party in Orwel's 1984, too - anyone who has read the book will recall Emmanuel Goldstein, Enemy of the People, subject of the two minute hate.) To my way of thinking, perhaps not shared by everyone on this forum, religious fanatics who crash passenger aircraft into office buildings fit the common definition of "evil," much more completely than does president Bush.

That's pretty much my entire point. If you don't agree, think it's derivative, whatever, so be it.

 

The problem is that to many outsiders it doesn't look so much like "militant Islam" versus "democracy" as "the western Imperialists" versus "any Arab country that doesn't have a government that does what the US says".

Do you really think the US government is interested in promoting democracy? Look at how they're trying to destabilise democratically elected governments that don't do their bidding like Venezuela while propping up dictatorships they can "do business with" like Saudi Arabia. The sheer hypocrisy is astounding.

And what about Pakistan? A leader installed by a military coup who is suddenly the US government's best friend, despite being involved in selling nuclear technology to all-comers. Something Iraq was accused of but has never been proven.

The problem is that the US is just far too powerful. An elephant in a china shop may believe it's "good" but it can still do massive damage while chasing the "evil" wasp that just stung it.

And the damage being done now by the US lashing out after 1 terrorist incident is vastly out of proportion to the original event. And it's doing nothing to prevent similar things happening in the future.

The US is even doing everything it can to prevent global WMD restriction treaties coming into force. Why? Because they rather like having the world's largest WMD stockpile. Sigh.

Of course the loonies who fly passenger planes into buildings are evil. But does that somehow grant the US a free pass to kill 5 times that number in a country that had NOTHING to do with it? How can that not be described as evil? What would YOU think if Russia started bombing the US because some Canadian terrorists had bombed the Kremlin?

 

I agree with everything that KMO said (thanks, you saved me 10 minutes there : )

I don't think the President is the Voice of Evil. I think this President is the Voice of Stupidity, and that every President since FDR has been the voice of hypocrisy, not necessarily because the men in office were hypocrites themselves, but because the power and reach of the United States demanded a level of flexible thinking and policy making. How else could the arsenel of democracy help arm the most powerful communist regime on the planet?

"Sensitive war" is not an oxymoron if you've spent ANY time studying the history of warfare. The concept of total war has come and gone over the centuries, and hasn't always been a smashing success. You can STILL find people, TODAY, right this very minute, in the deep South of the United States, who are bitter about Sherman's march to the sea. That was 140 years ago. And that wasn't particularly sensitive of Sherman.

I think you and all of Kerry's critics misunderstand what he means by a "sensitive war." He doesn't mean we should play nice with the terrorists. He means we shouldn't unnecessarily piss off ordinary people aroudn the world for no reason and no material gain. Don't bash a perfectly viable strategy just because the word sensitive doesn't mesh with your testosterone driven world view.