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Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

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Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

Kepler said:
That's how I used to think until I started actually meeting the "idiots." From up close:

1. The members themselves are usually ciphers and hood ornaments -- methods of collecting contributions and votes. There are a few truly decisive people: the president, a half dozen cabinet positions (although undersecretaries are usually the real leaders), a half dozen committee chairs. The other folks you see on CSPAN are fungibles.

2. The senior staff make all the work-a-day decisions and most of the important ones. When "vacancies" occur (the polite Beltway expression to describe death, retirement, or, worse, losing an election) senior staff with influence and experience land other jobs or join executive agencies, so the knowledge base stays intact. Senior staff are very, very smart -- top 1% in the top 1% of schools smart -- and very, very savvy -- shiv in your back if you mess with them savvy. They effectively are the government, affiliation matters less to them than contacts, and ideology is viewed as a game for keeping the rubes in line.

3. "Politicals," usually campaign staff or relatives of big donors, are given impressive titles with zero policymaking power. They disappear immediately after a vacancy because they never had any capital or knowledge to begin with.

Those are the rules of the game as it's really played, and they likely have been ever since direct election of Senators, if not before. The process makes the members look more idiotic than they really are, probably, but their distribution of intelligence is likely identical with their constituents.
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Repeal the 17th Amendment!
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

WeWantMore said:
Pshaw. That's not even the craziest Amendment issue on their minds.

A new 13th Amendment?
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Further prrof that Iowa sucks!

And repeal the 17th Amendment...great idea in theory until you realize you will have a bunch of money/power hungry party politicians in charge of electing more money/power hungry party politicians. Seriously, people think that is a good idea?
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

Handyman said:
Further prrof that Iowa sucks!

And repeal the 17th Amendment...great idea in theory until you realize you will have a bunch of money/power hungry party politicians in charge of electing more money/power hungry party politicians. Seriously, people think that is a good idea?
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Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. So while I agree with you, I still understand where the frustration comes from, when you have an idiotic populace electing idiots.
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

unofan said:
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. So while I agree with you, I still understand where the frustration comes from, when you have an idiotic populace electing idiots.
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Oh no doubt, like I said in theory it would be perfect. The problem is in practice corruption will take hold and it will be swift and it will be terrible.

I am sure MinnFan will be in here any minute though to tell us how this will work! ;)
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

unofan said:
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. So while I agree with you, I still understand where the frustration comes from, when you have an idiotic populace electing idiots.
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An idiotic population, I take it, that you do not belong to?
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

As long as we're reviving old amendments...

The Ludlow Amendment was a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States which called for a national referendum on any declaration of war by Congress, except in cases when the United States had been attacked first. Representative Louis Ludlow (D-Indiana) introduced the amendment several times between 1935 and 1940. Supporters argued that ordinary people, who were called upon to fight and die during wartime, should have a direct vote on their country's involvement in military conflicts.
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Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

Meh.

Which war (or miltary police action) would the US population have voted against at the time the decision(s) was/were made? I can't think of any, in part because the strategy of the politicians in favor of the war (or even just resigned to it) always whip the populace into a frenzy anyway, even when the population doesn't have a direct vote. If the populace DID have a direct vote, the rhetoric would be even more dialed up, not down, so I'm not sure this would change or help anything.
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

LynahFan said:
Meh.

Which war (or miltary police action) would the US population have voted against at the time the decision(s) was/were made? I can't think of any, in part because the strategy of the politicians in favor of the war (or even just resigned to it) always whip the populace into a frenzy anyway, even when the population doesn't have a direct vote. If the populace DID have a direct vote, the rhetoric would be even more dialed up, not down, so I'm not sure this would change or help anything.
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I'd revise the amendment that any war has to be re-approved annually by referendum. That would have nipped Vietnam and Iraq in the bud right there.
 
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Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

Kepler said:
I'd revise the amendment that any war has to be re-approved annually by referendum. That would have nipped Vietnam and Iraq in the bud right there.
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And if you vote for it, you or your kids have to fight it.
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

Red Cloud said:
And now we arrive at the crux of the issue - I'm not the problem, everyone else is.
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Not everyone else. Just the idiots who make up 70-80% of the population.

I'd be all for requiring people to take the federal civil service exam or the citizenship exam in order to be able to vote. Notwithstanding the historical racial baggage attached to such a proposal, preventing people who don't know or even care to know what the 3 branches of government are from voting doesn't exactly strike me as unfair.
 
Re: Obama XIII: It's all Bush's fault.

unofan said:
Not everyone else. Just the idiots who make up 70-80% of the population.
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Which, as we've already determined just by asking you, is a percentage of the population which you do not belong to.

Waitaminute... if you ask around, though, you'll be hard pressed to find someone who's a member of that 70-80% of the population, but they'll swear it exists.

Is anyone here part of that percentage? Remember, no one can possibly know best other than yourself, so let's go with self-identification only.

Like I said - that's the problem. 70-80% of population are idiots, but YOU aren't. Of course you aren't.

I'd be all for requiring people to take the federal civil service exam or the citizenship exam in order to be able to vote. Notwithstanding the historical racial baggage attached to such a proposal, preventing people who don't know what the 3 branches of government are from voting doesn't exactly strike me as unfair.
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Does it strike you as elitist?
 
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