Because I Have NO Life
Taken from Patrick's Place.
1. Considering your political views now versus seven years ago, do you think they have changed or remained the same?
Remained the same. I still have the same stance on all of the major issues. I'm just a bit more disillusioned now that everything I predicted 7 years ago has come to pass under the Bush regime.
2. Should a president be allowed to run for a third term?
No. I once thought third terms were a good idea. After all, if he's doing a good job, why not? Now, I see why giving any one person an unlimited number of terms could lead to trouble.
3. Do you think a president would be able to accomplish more if he could only be elected to a single term?
I don't know. It would certainly keep them from using the first term as a four-year campaign for the second.
4. Take the quiz: Which political group most agrees with you?
I got "Liberal". Quelle suprise!
5. Can you imagine ever running for office?
I've thought about it, but I think it would be the rare place in America that would elect me.
6. Let’s suppose that you were a candidate, and that you found some real dirt that no one else knew about your opponent. If that candidate started a negative campaign against you, how tempted would you be to use that information?
If it was actually relevant to the office, I'd be all over it. Otherwise, I think I'd turned down the chance to go negative.
posted by Melinda @ 5:19 PM
9 Comments:
Given that the liberal candidates would be just fine with allowing that infernal Iraqi dictator his life still in power, I think conservatives had the better idea. The world needs a policeman and we got drafted by virtue of our being the one most others are jealous of. I'm not sure the Eastern soil is fertile for democracy, but at least it's a nice ideal to strive for.
The liberals ought to go follow us like Robespierre, reading with fellow parisian students in universities on Cicero's orations [as Desmoulins said in his papers, Cicero was a cause of the French Revolution that liberated the people and gave the ideas of a "declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen"]. It was a liberal idea to think that people, and not divinely-placed kings, had the power. Yet the liberals do not seem to want to spread the ideas of that liberty that previous liberals in France wanted to do [and did, when they declared Haiti free and sent troops to free the slaves there].
No, we liberals are simply too astute to believe that democracy could ever be spread by force. Freedom must be won from the ground up not imposed by a foreign power that has its own interests first and foremost in mind.
Find for me, if you will, a single example of a successful democracy created through foreign invasion and occupation, especially one as disastrously managed as this one.
What about the invasion of Italy, that swept the dictatorship of Mussolini away in favor of a republic? Admittedly not the best run of states, with all the Italian corruption and all, but it did reestablish democracy. Not to mention Germany, after the invasion of which we never saw another Reich.
But today's Democrats may split their vote: if Clinton and Obama are too rough on each other then a spoiler could rise up as a voter third choice. Same for Romney and Guiliani. That was how Julius Caesar won the election as Pontifex Maximus over Q. Lutatius Catulus and C. Servilius Vatia. And how the young P. Licinius Crassus won over two older esteemed men who had already been elected consul.
Reestablish is a very different word from create, Donald. And remember, we were able to successfully reestablish democracy in those countries b/c we kept most mid and low level functionaries in their positions and used the nations' defeated militaries to help rebuild. Following our invasion of Iraq, we removed the functionaries from their positions and disbanded the army, making a successful rebuilding of that country and the establishment of successful democracy highly improbable if not impossible. Currently, the nation's ministries are run by rival ethnic militias who use the power of government to massacre their "enemies" within Iraq and American troops are stuck refereeing a civil war.
I wish the spoiler were probable rather than just remotely possible. I'm a fan of Kucinich.
In the case of Italy, I should not have said "reestablish" at all, as the monarchy stood when Italy became a nation under Victor Emmanuel II; befor that Italy was fragmented republics and kingdoms of Venice, Savoy, Sicily, Papal States, et al. Not exactly democratic, in spite of 1848. And Japan only got the vote after we ordered them to at gun-barrel; until then, the Emperor talked with the Gods every day without question in a land of no popular democracy. We drafted their constitution and told them what to do, and what not to do. And they haven't taken China anymore.
Given that Iraq owed existance to Britain's rewarding of rebels against the Ottomans, I'm suprised we didnt try to persuade the locals to split the country into three zones: Kurds, Sunni and Shia. The Kurds want to be left alone in the north, and Sunni and Shia haven't gotten along since the times of teh Prophet. With the sole exception of western crusading expeditions. It seems a simple idea.
Richardson may get headway as an executive with real time spent dealing with immigration. But I see a lot of unpopularity on anything short of kicking out the illegals. Even Richardson's attempts to keep them working here at jobs Americans wouldn't want [like cleaning toilets] doesnt win people over.
But then when the English landed in Virginia in 1620 they didn't ask permission from the natives to settle either.
Rush Limbaugh used a Bill Belichick [New England Patriots coach] example today: coach showed players a tape of a horse race, and stopped the tape 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 through, asking his team which horse would win each time. Then he said it was meaningless to try to guess, since the winner would only be determined at the finish, so they should go play all 4 quarters and finish the game. Las Vegas could go out of business if anybody hears about this.
Donald,
The Japanese Diet was formed in 1889. The post-war occupation government decided to honor pre-war Japanese political structures (minus the emperor), so they simply shifted greater power to the Diet and universalized suffrage. (Remember, the United States didn't have universal sufferage by law until 1920 and in practice until the 1960's.)
Italy had partial sufferage under the Statuto Albertino starting in 1848 and universal male sufferage by 1913. The pre-WWI Italian government was very much like England's with the monarchy having a bit more power. However, the Statuto Albertino limited the king's power:
"The King alone has executive power. He is the supreme head of the state, commands all the armed forces by sea and land, makes treaties of peace, of alliance, of commerce, but giving notice of them to the two Houses as far as national interest permit. Treaties which demand any financial burden, or which would alter territoral boundaries of the state, shall not have any effect until the two Houses have consented to them."
The 1946 shift to the republican form of government continued a trend towards liberal democracy that was well on its way before being interrupted by WWI, the collapse of the Italian economy and the subsequent rise of fascism. The election which led to the establishment of the Italian republic was negotiated entirely between rival Italian factions NOT by order of an occupying power.
Both Italy and Japan had democratically elected institutions prior to the war that could be maintained and/or reestablished and built upon. Iraq had NO history of democratic institutions.
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As for who will win, I'm not hopeful. IF.. big IF... Iraq ends up a functional democracy, it will be when the Iraqi people rise up and take down the people currently running their government.
As for the 3-way split, Turkey's already made it clear that an independent Kurdistan would mean war!
As for predicting outcomes, NONSENSE! I've predicted quite a few outcomes that the guys with Ph.D.'s said weren't going to happen or "couldn't be determined." Most of the time, people just don't want to face the more difficult realities/ possibilities and so screw up on their predicting.
Hey,
she was an ex-gf of mine. We are friends now.
I had yet to meet another person aware of the statue of Carlo Alberto passed in 1848 until you.... and the gods curse me by not putting such knowledge in the mind of a woman i can date.
AS a royalist I forgot about the Statuto Albertino, rung out of King Carlo Alberto of Sardinia and kept by his son Victor Emmanuel II on the latter's accession to the throne of a unified Italy.
No worries, Donald. Just find a woman you can date and I'll give her an IQ transplant. haha
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