September 21, 2004
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The Chain Store Parties
An analogy I’ve read a couple places: We’re dealing with the Wal*Mart (Republican) and the Target (Democrat) parties.
I like it. Ironically, I avoid both as much stores as possible, although I find myself more willing to drop in to a Target once in a great while. In general though, I prefer smaller, independent stores.
I must admit though, there is a great grill that apparently one can get at Sam’s Club.
Fuck ‘em!Bush missed the deadline to get on the ballot in Florida this year. They decided it was ridiculous to refuse the incumbent candidate over a couple days. Sometimes we do allow common sense to take precedence over the letter of the law.
Minnesota has taken a different tack.
Apparently, there is a law on the books from the 50′s which lawmakers thought they repealed in the 90′s but apparently didn’t. It basically states that if a party doesn’t have at least one candidate get at least 10% of the general vote during the primary, all their candidates get wiped from the general ballot.
Our recent primary was (I believe) the lowest attended in history, and to my knowledge, the Independence Party didn’t have any significant competitions for their slot on the ballot. Unsurprisingly, no one in the party got 10% of the general vote.
Our (Republican) Secretary of State sent a query to our (Democratic) Attorney General, and they agreed that the 50′s law was still in force, and that it should be applied.
Therefore, barring a quick intervention by some judges, every Independence candidate will be removed from the ballot.
Now, I do believe in enforcing laws or removing them. This one should have been removed. People THOUGHT it was removed. The fact that it exists and ever existed is indicative of the long sustained efforts by the major parties to keep other parties off the ballot.
Knowing that this law exists, has remained in force, and is being enforced, is the final straw. As long as this law remains in effect, I will not vote for any Democratic or Republican candidates. Not locally, not statewide, not nationally.
Fuck ‘em!
For more information, read Featherly.
Vigilantism vs International DemocracyThe following is a response to this post by Mitch Berg’s Shot In The Dark. He basically uses the analogy of a bunch of neighbors getting together to run some thugs out of town as an implied support of our invasion of Iraq.
To understand my response, you should read his post. Ironically, I used the same basic analogy a while back to oppose the invasion of Iraq.
It seems to me that to abandon law for vigilantism is a dangerous precedent. Unchecked, it naturally devolves into gangsterism and rule by the strongest war lord.
Granted, if that war lord is a nice guy, it might not be so bad, but it is still rather undemocratic.
A large part of the reason the government, and by extension the police force, was put into place was to prevent that from happening. If they’re not doing their jobs, they need to be motivated or replaced.
This can range from a threatening petition, to planning to vote them out, to civil disobedience such as withholding funds and services, to overthrow/ignoring them and replacing them with a new government.
By fixing the government and having the fixed government do what they’re supposed to do, such make sure neighbors don’t terrorize the neighborhood and outsiders don’t come in and invade your homes, one maintains the rule of law and principles of democracy (providing the fixed government is democratic in nature).
By simply ignoring the government and resorting to gangsterism, law and democracy go out the window, and it becomes rule by he with the strongest arm.
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Law and Democracy generally take somewhat longer than simply doing what you want right now, but the end result is typically quite a bit more stable.
Check it out, there has been a bit of interesting discussion.
Duck.From Daily Rotten’s feed: New weapons are destined for Iraq. We’ve seen the microwave “pain guns” for crowd control for some time now. I don’t particularly care for them as they seem likely to eventually be used to crush peaceful dissent as well as violent dissent.
However, what scares me far more is the auto firing machine guns. I’ve known about remote-verified robotic auto-fire and auto-threat detecting technology for a while. The “auto threat detecting” was concerning enough, but they were typically envisioned as being placed on fixed mounts. At least then people could know to avoid the area. Now they’re talking about putting them on moving vehicles. Just how good their software is now matters a whole lot more.
the article at the telegraph
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let them label you as they may.”
– Mark Twain
Comments (5)
Nice peice
I see your point with the vigilantism vs. international democracy post, the problem is that we aren’t dealing with democracy on the other side, we’re dealing with evil. And the UN (and “international law”) could be relevant and important if only it didn’t prove itself to be so corrupt and biased– so who is the US supposed to ok the invasion with? Germany? (Yikes) France? (YIKES) Russia (YIKES YIKES!) Truth is, many nations DID support the invasion (although naysayers would argue that all of these nations did it for various selfish reasons). But it doesn’t mean that the invasion was vigilantism when international approval would have been completely impossible due to veto power of corrupt and rotten nations who need a reality check as they themselves have been or will soon be dealing with international terror. Obviously the whole situation is far from perfect. But my Iraqi friends now have the opportunity to track down family members whose lives they feared for and in some cases, they’re finding bodies-not victims of the US invasion but of Sadaam’s insanity. I just can’t can’t look at the Iraq situation and say “poor Iraqi’s, what will they possibly do now that sadaam’s gone??” I know it’s a slippery slope because we can’t go around using any means to get a positive end result. But rebuilding a country takes a great deal of time and there are many growing pains. We can’t panic yet, I don’t think it would be a realistic evaluation of the situation.
I like the Fuck um, idea.
Chanicanuck : Be sure to read the comments that evolved in the post the vigilantism vs democracy originated from.
Some of the things you mention are directly addressed:
http://www.shotinthedark.info/archives/004042.html
My comments are made under the name “Jason Goray”
Excellent blog!
Hey, where is Strangeblackcat?
Tell him to get blogging!