Archimedinejad: And now about that lever...


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Drunken Idaho
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Post by Drunken Idaho »

I say, be proud of your ignorance of all extraneous expanded universe Star Wars characters. Lucas does not need more idiots buying into his franchise. Although, I suppose IG-88 did have a brief appearance in Empire.
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A Thing of Eternity
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I'm not that much of an SW fan. I enjoy the movies, but they're not too many notches above ST on the SF charts IMO. It's entertaining, and moving at points, a good work of art yes, a good work of science fiction no - not when compared to the rest of the genre.
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Post by GamePlayer »

SW is good, but it's no Dune.
Trek is garbage.
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Post by moreh_yeladim »

In other Middle-Eastern news, the Israeli election results are mostly in!

1.Kadima/Likud -- these two have roughly the same amount of Knesset seats each (29/27 last I checked). While the count hasn't actually finished, the two parties and PM candidates (Kadima's Tzipi Livni and Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu) have already started chucking "fuck you" gestures to each other. Anyone familiar with Israeli bargaining methods will recognize this as the first step of coalition negotiations, with both PM candidates claiming to want to build a centrist coalition.
3.Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), led by Avigdor "Racist Bastard" Lieberman. A hard-right-wing nationalist party devoted to not negotiating with Arabs except for definite gain. While I don't object to hard-line Zionism on principle (never expect to get someone to give up their homeland by chucking shitty bombs at them), unfortunately most of Yisrael Beiteinu are just huge, Israeli-style a-holes who may well take every opportunity to enact racist legislation against Israeli Arabs and piss off the Palestinian Arabs. This from a party founded to be the party of Soviet immigrants, some of whom aren't even really Jewish and feel little to no connection to the nation of Israel.
4.Labour-Meimad, led by Ehud Barak. Pretty much the mainstream leftist and social-democratic party of Israel. They currently claim that they will sit in opposition on the Knesset instead of joining a coalition government, as they refuse to share any coalition with Yisrael Beiteinu. I can't blame them. Supposedly the primary dovish party since the Meretz-Yachad Party is popularly known as the party that will give away the whole country to the Arabs, but Livni has at times said things more dovish than Labour-Meimad does.

Personally I'm hoping that either Livni or Netanyahu manages to actually form a centrist coalition, pushing Yisrael Beiteinu to the edges or even the opposition. There are enough small parties around that they could do it. Then maybe they could get around to the business of A) acknowledging that Hamas governs in Gaza and working with that, B) actually governing Israel instead of flying around trying to be diplomatic (something Israelis are congenitally incapable of), and C) maybe giving the country enough of a peaceful period for its economy to stabilize.

If I had actually had a vote this election (which I don't, due to not having Israeli citizenship yet), I would have protest-voted for the tiny little Hetz (yeah, חץ, them) party: a secular-Zionist, centrist, liberal party known for their anti-corruption stances and derived from the once-proud Shinui party.
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Drunken Idaho
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Post by Drunken Idaho »

Sounds vaguely familiar...
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A Thing of Eternity
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Baraka Bryan wrote:
Drunken Idaho wrote:Sounds vaguely familiar...
lol... there's a big difference between a state with 30 parties running in an election and a dozen or more getting seats and a country with only 4 parties in a legislature. to have a functional government in Israel, they need coalitions. we don't here.
Oh we don't do we? :wink:
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A Thing of Eternity
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Baraka Bryan wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Baraka Bryan wrote:
Drunken Idaho wrote:Sounds vaguely familiar...
lol... there's a big difference between a state with 30 parties running in an election and a dozen or more getting seats and a country with only 4 parties in a legislature. to have a functional government in Israel, they need coalitions. we don't here.
Oh we don't do we? :wink:

nope... power in our country is concentrated in the hands of 2 large parties enough to get along without one :P the proposed coalition was unpopular with most liberals and a good chunk of NDPers too. the only party membership that had high support for it was the bloq... wonder why :roll:
I'm just bugging you, I was moderately against the coalition myself. :lol: I really don't give a shit, our "democracy" is just a very loose aproximation of real democracy (pretty pathetic version of even parlimental democracy IMO), so I've stopped expecting it to function other than in the occasional sweeping averaging of opinions. Doesn't mean I'll stop voting, but I'm starting to get past the idea that the "will of the people" has much to do with our government.
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Post by SandRider »

and so the awakenings begin ....
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Freakzilla
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Post by Freakzilla »

We have a republic, as Ben Franklin said, "if we can keep her."

Do you think a true democracy would be better? Sometimes mob rule is not what's best.
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A Thing of Eternity
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Freakzilla wrote:We have a republic, as Ben Franklin said, "if we can keep her."

Do you think a true democracy would be better? Sometimes mob rule is not what's best.
No, I don't, and I agree that sometimes the people want the wrong thing (cough, often). I don't really want more democracy per-say, just more accurate democracy. I'd like to be able to vote for a slightly more capitalist economy and human rights with the same vote - but that's not on the ballot. I can't get smaller government without getting Christian values, and that makes me sad.
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Freakzilla
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Post by Freakzilla »

Originally Congressional Senators were supposed to be appointed by the State Legislatures, I think we lost a serious balance of power when that was changed to a popular vote.

Big Federal Government is bad, mmmmmkay?

Oh yeah, only white, male land owners should be able to vote, too.

:wink:
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SandRider
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Post by SandRider »

damn, finally something we can both agree on.
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I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know
how to fully interact with people.
~ "Spice Grandson" (Bryon Merrit) 08 June 2008
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Drunken Idaho
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Post by Drunken Idaho »

A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:We have a republic, as Ben Franklin said, "if we can keep her."

Do you think a true democracy would be better? Sometimes mob rule is not what's best.
No, I don't, and I agree that sometimes the people want the wrong thing (cough, often). I don't really want more democracy per-say, just more accurate democracy. I'd like to be able to vote for a slightly more capitalist economy and human rights with the same vote - but that's not on the ballot. I can't get smaller government without getting Christian values, and that makes me sad.
Huh? If a majority of the people want the "wrong thing" then who's to say what the "wrong thing" is? That's the beginning of dictatorship, in my opinion.

Though I'll agree with you that smaller gov seems to go hand-in-hand with Christian or "small-town" values. In fact, That's one of my major beefs with most conservative parties. I can't ignore the fact that they exploit the entire Christian population to get votes. IE Bush saying that God wanted him to go into Iraq (what would Jesus bomb? :roll:)... But I guess someone was going to take advantage of such a giant mass of retards. I think it's pretty pathetic.

I'm reminded of a great segment from the Daily Show, in which his correspondents are going around asking republicans to define "small-town values." The results were pretty hilarious. I tried to find the clip, but was semi-successful in that I found it, but could not view it due to my Canadian residency. Here it is for all you Yanks, however:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index ... -team-ever

Sorry, my Canadian fellows, but I can't find this damned clip anywhere that we can view it. There are IP-masking programs out there that you can download to get around that.

If anyone can help clear up what small-town values really mean, I'd appreciate it, because so far as I can tell it's just a lame term conservative politicians use to get votes from small-town folk.
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Freakzilla
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Post by Freakzilla »

If the majority of people in my house want ice cream for dinner, that doesn't make it right.
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Drunken Idaho
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Post by Drunken Idaho »

Freakzilla wrote:If the majority of people in my house want ice cream for dinner, that doesn't make it right.
You fascist dictator!!! :P

But households are not democracies. Father knows best, right?
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Freakzilla
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Post by Freakzilla »

Drunken Idaho wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:If the majority of people in my house want ice cream for dinner, that doesn't make it right.
You fascist dictator!!! :P

But households are not democracies. Father knows best, right?
That's right.

But I hope you see my point. I don't think the general population is intelligent as my children, I don't want their majority ruling my life.

Most citizens may want free college and healthcare but that doesn't mean it is necessarily best for the country.

Daddy still has to pay for all those goodies eventually.
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A Thing of Eternity
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Drunken Idaho wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:We have a republic, as Ben Franklin said, "if we can keep her."

Do you think a true democracy would be better? Sometimes mob rule is not what's best.
No, I don't, and I agree that sometimes the people want the wrong thing (cough, often). I don't really want more democracy per-say, just more accurate democracy. I'd like to be able to vote for a slightly more capitalist economy and human rights with the same vote - but that's not on the ballot. I can't get smaller government without getting Christian values, and that makes me sad.
Huh? If a majority of the people want the "wrong thing" then who's to say what the "wrong thing" is? That's the beginning of dictatorship, in my opinion.

Though I'll agree with you that smaller gov seems to go hand-in-hand with Christian or "small-town" values. In fact, That's one of my major beefs with most conservative parties. I can't ignore the fact that they exploit the entire Christian population to get votes. IE Bush saying that God wanted him to go into Iraq (what would Jesus bomb? :roll:)... But I guess someone was going to take advantage of such a giant mass of retards. I think it's pretty pathetic.
No no, I agree with you, but "who says what's wrong if the majority says it's right?" I DO. The majority of Christian Europe was anti-Semitic for the last 1400 years or so (see, school is teaching me something useful :wink: ) but that's still wrong. The majority of people in California are apparently against gay marriage, doesn't make that right. There has to be some kind of balance between giving the masses roughly what they want, while protecting whoever ends up in the minority from those masses.

Who decides what's right? Whoever wins, I guess.
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A Thing of Eternity
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Baraka Bryan wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:We have a republic, as Ben Franklin said, "if we can keep her."

Do you think a true democracy would be better? Sometimes mob rule is not what's best.
No, I don't, and I agree that sometimes the people want the wrong thing (cough, often). I don't really want more democracy per-say, just more accurate democracy. I'd like to be able to vote for a slightly more capitalist economy and human rights with the same vote - but that's not on the ballot. I can't get smaller government without getting Christian values, and that makes me sad.
true democracy is one-citizen-one-vote on all issues... obviously we need representatives... the question is how we choose them. I'm actually a proponent of proportional representation, despite the fact that my party is one that benefits from the single-member-plurality system, though in Canada with so many parties generating a decent proportion of support, it would lead to an incredibly fractured parliament, and without mandatory voting, it wouldn't exactly be representative (seeing as we only had 59% turnout in October :? )
I really have no valid opinion between rep. by pop. and what we have now (forgot the term temporarily), so I don't worry about that facet too much. I agree, true democracy would just take up too much time, plus most people don't know what they hell they're talking about anyways.

I think mandatory voting is the way to go BUT, there must be a "fuck you, you all suck/ I have no idea" option on the ballot. I would absolutely LOVE to see this get put into law. LOVE to.

EDIT: My main issue is just that the parties come with too much baggage, and none of them are both moral and responsible in my opinion. I think we need an entirely new system of voting that is NOT party based. I have some ideas, but nothing solid yet.
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A Thing of Eternity
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I think next election I might just do a write-in: Obama. :wink: :wink:
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