USA Elections

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Obama may not be able to fix all the damage the Bush Administration has done but I still voted for him yesterday at early voting.

Who is John McCain

Do you really want a monarchy or are you hoping for the return of INRI.

As a Brit I would like to offer you our royalty as long as you keep them within the bounds of the US mainland and do not allow any broadcast to breach your national borders.

Not some crap ceremonial figurehead like you Brits have. A real monarchy, an autocrat who will exercise political authority and choose a successor. Enlightened despotism ftw!

Here's where I totally disagree - a different administration would have taken seriously the urgent warning in the August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing entitled 'Bin Laden determined to strike in US'. Mention is made in the memo of Bin Laden's people hijacking planes and finishing the job on the Twin Towers, among other targets.

The famously incurious George W. Bush was busy clearing brush in Crawford, Texas at the time, and, anyway, was not that familiar with terrorism, foreign or domestic policy, economics, health care, table manners or English grammar.

Even assuming we knew all that, some kind of disaster would still have happened on 9/11. It would be impossible to tell who the hijackers were until they, in fact, hijacked the planes. If we had fighter coverage to intercept any planes bound for the targets that were actually hit, we would still have lost the planes that were hijacked (since the hijackers were ready to die in standard form for al-qaeda extremists) A tragedy was bound to occur. While we could have reduced the scope of it, we wouldn't have been able to stop it altogether...


That i'll agree with, though...

Well, I'd agree with you except for the part where warnings by flight training businesses had ALSO been ignored - they had reported and identified some of the hijackers as being suspiciously uninterested in learning how to actually land the planes, but only how to get them in the air, and there was a great deal of concern that they were planning to fly them into buildings.

Furthermore, despite enormous amounts of info on these threats, none of our airports were on any kind of alert, and Bush/Cheney did not even have military aircraft close enough to NYC or DC to scramble in time to intercept the hijacked aircraft.

Anything that could have been done to prevent, discourage or reduce the damage from those hijackings was NOT done, which is what happens when an ignorant frat-boy is handed the highest position in the land because a bunch of mushy-headed Republicans wanted to have a beer with him.

Now they are looking forward to having a six-pack with their newest idiotic choice for VP, Mrs. Todd Palin, the woman who lets her husband micro-manage Alaska from his desk in her office. To the average McCain-Palin supporter, going from one beer with George to six beers with Sarah is quite an upgrade.

Could the idiocy in this country stop now, please?

I would prefer Ralph Nader, but maybe Obama will appoint him Secretary of Something.

Some sort of benevolent dictator ? Any examples of that working well.

BTW are you actually serious, its hard to tell?

Sure. Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Alexander I, and Alexander II just from Russia are examples of decent benevolent dictators. Also Frederick II of Prussia and Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden spring to mind.


I think monarchism would be a pretty good governmental system, and it has worked pretty well historically.

Back to the thread topic (well, closer anyways) How come Barr and Nader are the only fringe candidates listed? I would predict that the Constitution Party (Chuck Baldwin) will actually outpoll both the Libertarians and Nader this year, since they've picked up a bunch of discontented former Ron Paulites. There's also Cynthia McKinney. The Libertarians alienated most of their base by nominating Barr, and so I expect them to take a hit this election.

The problem with monarchism is the succession. With a rigid system, especially an 'eldest inherits' one, there's always the possibility that the heir will be an idiot. There's also the accumulation of inbreeding from marriage-treaties with other powers.

For it to work, there would have to be some sort of meritocratic test that, say, ALL the relatives of the current monarch would have to take and pass, and those with grades in the top half would go before some sort of council and have the next monarch chosen from amongst them. Or something. It would be difficult to make it work without nepotism interfering a la GWB.

on the other hand, I've often thought that something like the house of lords is a good idea - some body of decision-makers (but not the only ones) who can take the long view because they don't have to worry about being re-elected.

Yep, and democracy's done a great job of finding competent leaders.


If you want to do that, don't even make it hereditary. Just choose an aristocratic style of government with a meritocratic basis to rank in the aristocracy.


Populism is one of the many reasons why democracy sucks.

Cyanide, I apologize for derailing your thread- I'll fork the topic now.

Well, it would been a hassle to put in *every* candidate....especially when you include all of those extreme far-left socialist parties that barely differ at all. I just chose Nader and Barr, because I figure that they're polling the highest right now. But, I admit, you may have a point about Baldwin. Didn't Ron Paul officially say he's supporting him?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... Candidates

According to that, the 4 third-party candidates that are on the ballot in enough states to theoretically win the election are Baldwin, Barr, McKinney, and Nader. I think that's a good cutoff. Anyone else still running is only running to make a statement (well, technically every 3rd party candidate is running to do that unless they're stupid...)