@Honeybaked... I was trying to avoid discussing this. I use general terms because if you use certain terms too often you get labeled a radical or an anti-patriot. Hit me up on Steam or Xfire, CymTyr - We'll talk there.

Anybody can file the paperwork to be a primary candidate in any political election. For some positions, they need to collect the required number of signatures. For other positions, typically local, they need merely declare by the filing deadline to have their name on the ballot. If you meet the age and residency requirements, you could run for public office and I could vote for you (if I lived in your district, town, country, whatever, depending on what you were running for)

And furthermore, the political parties are not foreign countries or secret underground societies... they are national organizations, with state and local branches, regulated by public disclosure rules, and open to any citizen.

I forget who said it first, but "decisions are made by those who show up." The President appoints Supreme Court Justices as a Constitutional duty and would continue to do so even if a Constitutional Amendment were passed that abolished the EC and replaced it with direct election. An amendment, of course, is the only way that would be possible... and while I would support it, I'm not entirely convinced it is essential to the future of the Republic or anything.

But we are no longer a disparate collection of 13 little nation states where there were fewer inter-dependencies and communication was restricted to the speed of a horse's gallop, which is what we were in a de facto sense under the Articles of Confederation. As a modern nation, where every community is interconnected in significant ways, and mass media has replaced the town crier, I think the people are better served by speaking as one voice, rather than 50 voices... and we are better served if every voice is equal. Under the EC, the smaller states actually have more sway than the bigger ones, which is what allows the rare situation where a majority of EC votes can go to a winner of a minority of popular votes... as happened in 2000, regardless of whether of not one believes Bush actually carried Florida.

But that is an academic argument as without an amendment, the EC is the law. At the risk of sounding pedantic, they absolutely mean what I said they mean. Legally speaking, term limits are, as you say, restrictions on the number of terms a citizen may hold an office in a lifetime. Incidentally, the President's term limit is not two terms. It's actually 10 years to account for a President who takes over in another President's term.

However, many states have instituted term limits. 36 states have term limits for governors and 15 have term limits for legislators.

In 1995, in a 5-4 decision (U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton), the US Supreme Court ruled states cannot impose term limits upon federal Representatives or Senators, despite a Republican lead attempt to do just that. This is a good thing. If you live in a state that had federal term limits, your state is at a disadvantage to other states whose representatives are able to achieve the seniority necessary to hold chair positions on meaningful House and Senate committees. Essentially, you'd strip your elected official of the power to most effectively lobby for the needs of your own state.

However, while not a legally enforced term limit in the sense you mean, elections do represent the ability of the people not only to propel a candidate into office, but also to extract one from office. In this sense, elections make every office holder "term limited" by the will of the electorate... and that has always been the argument of those who oppose term limits.

I would only oppose term limits that didn't effect all members of the House or Senate equally. I would not be opposed to a uniform term limit, if that is what the people want... but frankly, if that is what the people want, then more of them ought to quite being pussies and show up to vote.

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And predcon, I don't think you are right. FDR served 4 terms and died in office. Although it was absolutely because FDR served 4 terms (well, 3 terms and 1 year). Harry Truman established the Hoover Commission who drafted the language and it was ratified in February of 1951.

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Sorry to be so long winded as this really isn't about Wiki Leaks... But it is history and politics... two topics I am almost as interested in as gaming :-)

That's some scary stuff with the montioring, to be sure...but concentration camps? Aren't thos against certain laws? I thought people held under the pattriot act were placed in Cuba/etc.

P.S. This is agent Sipawitz, Department of Homoland Insecurity......we need you to come with us plz. Your words have been logged and you will be transfered to a non diclosed location within the hour. Don't bother buying curtains or a dog, they will prove to be of no use against us....there WILL be consequences, and they will never be the same.

It's okay, the US is becoming more and more like a shit pool each day.

DOH you weren't supposed to quote me before I edited it. We've had concentration camps as long as the country's been alive. Do some research on where Hitler got his ideas for how to contain the Jews, radical Germans, and other people he locked up during WW2.

@Rohan, is it better to know that it's becoming more of a shit pool, or would you rather not have that knowledge? I'm curious.

I thought he got that from magical communist hobgoblins from the center of the earth or something. I know about the jap internment camps....

P.S. Why did you edit all that out? U scurred? Should I be too? 0.o

BRB getting a FUCKING DOG.

P.P.S. I saw it luckily before you edited it, and saved it. I save ALOT of stuff from here, for uh "entertainment and research purposes"...yeah, that's about right. :)

P.P.P.S There's a HUGE DIFFERENCE(imo) between political prisoner prisons/etc and mass exterminations camps ala the hitler camps and the terminator fiction death camps. Still, I don't thinkt a world will ever exist without them in some form....maybe we could make them like minimum security prisons though, but that's as good as they'll get.

I enjoy good discussion, it's just that I didn't feel this thread was the proper place for all of that.

Well, it is a political ramble and this is a political thread.....plus making another thread might be seen as spamming by some here. I liked it. You make some good points. Not all of em but some.

I can't hit on all of 'em ;) Glad you enjoyed it for the 2 minutes it was up.

It's trite to say decisions are made by those who show up. How many congressmen don't belong to the two major parties? How many presidents in the last 100 years did not? Sure you may be able to get on your local city council. If you want on the city council of a big city you'll need funds to campaign.

You cannot just "get on" the ballot for anything more than inconsequential local positions nor can you force the media to publicize your views for free in the form of debates and op-ed pieces, as the two major parties receive in addition to funding.

You cannot just get a party nomination for any significant office unless you actually agree with most of the platform for the party.

And suppose you can go it alone, Ross Perot style, but without the money. How many people will "throw their vote away" by voting for a third party. It's a stupid sentiment but it's been successfully incubated in the minds of a huge majority of voters: "The other guy got in because I voted third party." so we end up with a never ending parade of assholes that don't represent our interests at all.

So you want to know why I don't vote? Because my vote, quite literally, doesn't matter. Compare US voter turn out with European voter turn out some time. They're way different (as in their lows are nearly double our highs) and muse on why that is.

You did good though, pal. Be proude.

Well, there's Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is a socialist... and perhaps the smartest guy on the Hill. If you think local positions are inconsequential, then your fundamental view of politics is wrong. All meaningful politics is local. And local politics is where most of those serving in office start. Well, if you are going to run under a party's banner, you should probably agree with the party's platform. And parties nominate who they are told to nominate by you. Any citizen can run and win.

Is it hard? Yes. Is the starting line equal for all? No. Do you wanna band-aid and juice box? Life ain't fair. Karl Marx was right. The strong do prey on the weak and the classes do struggle against each other. Be part of the solution or stay home.

And what is the problem? Do you want a multi party system with endless streams of minority coalitions and years of chaotic gridlock? The founders didn't invent Democrats and Republicans but when they built the blueprint they absolutely knew they were developing a two party system.

We have a two party system because issues deserve vigorous debate. Ross Perot sat on a 6 billion dollar fortune and failed to establish a lasting coalition or to win the office. Money ain't everything.

Look, I vote the straight Democratic ticket up and down the line. I'm a partisan. I'm a team player. I'm a member. And I'm just a shade hypocritical because frankly the Democrats are not true liberals... they are centrists who lean left, but the damned Green Party has all the organizational talent of a room full of kittens, so I tow the line.

But Alan Grayson sure as hell represented my interests. Bernie Sanders does. Sherrod Brown does. Al Frankin definitely does. I could list names for days. If you think politicians are strictly there to play golf and take bribes, you are watching too much Fox or reading too much fiction.

But I never, nor should anyone, say that a vote of conscience is a vote thrown away. Ralph Nader did not lose the election for Al Gore. It was Al Gore who lost his own election. It was Al Gore who failed to carry his home state and who foolishly distanced himself from Bill Clinton (who still had over 70% approval ratings at the time). Florida never mattered. Had Gore won his own state of Tennessee, hanging chads would never have been a national punch line.

I wouldn't stand by and allow a citizen to be told they should be ashamed of their vote... be it for the leftist Nader or the ring wing Buchanan... just because they voted outside the system. Voting outside the system is what over the long haul changes parties. We are watching it happen to the Republicans by way of the Tea Party today. I know why it is... but most folks don't like the answer.

Government is the instrument through which the people can assert their will.

Democracy is hard and to keep it you have to want it. It isn't going to stand on its own. If most Americans have time to vote on bullshit amateur pop star contests or gossip about who's gonna win on Survivor, then they have time to sack up and pay attention to their government, which controls the purse strings that put cops on the beat, firemen on the truck, teachers in the schools, and workers on the roads.

If they are too damn stupid to show up and participate, then they get the government they deserve and to hell with their bitching when it all goes bad. (and it is getting ready to go really bad)

It's hard and it takes work and it is complicated and it is frustrating and there is no such thing as instant gratification in government... but the idea that we are all powerless and they are all corrupt and none of it matters is bullshit. It's lazy, dangerous, and unforgivable. We didn't became a great nation through apathy and won't stay one long if we succumb to apathy.

Okay, he's one guy, my point was there's a maybe a dozen people on the hill at any one time that aren't part of the two major parties. That is crap-all, effectively these guys can't do much that one of the major parties doesn't already support because the other parties contain 98% of the votes.

They are inconsequential for what I'm talking about. No local position decides if you go to war, whether we get a national healthcare system, whether Medicare gets cut, whether ACTA or the DMCA passes, whether the drug war continues, whether the TSA can grope your junk, whether you can ever get off the no fly list, or any other number of incredibly important things. Can you change things in your small area? Sure, and some of them might even be nice, but don't mistake that for you having a voice in our behemoth of a federal government.

We have a two party system because the two major parties want it that way and the electoral college perpetuates it as well as the simplistic voting method we follow for other government elections. There is vigorous debate in France even though they have way more than two parties.

My assertion is that you are deluding yourself if you think you are part of the solution to these and the other problems I mentioned by getting out and voting and signing worthless internet petitions. This delusion actually exacerbates the problem. Instead of being part of the solution, I submit that the simplistic and trite response you offer (which mirrors what most would say) is actually screwing the rest of us that want actual change.

Yeah but you know who he is, can you name 5 candidates for the last presidential election from any minor parties without looking them up?

Saying money isn't everything is trite and avoids the problem, you need money to run for any office, even in medium sized towns.

You know even signature collection is a big business, a lot of those people collecting them don't believe in it, they're getting paid for it.

I agree that a vote for what you actually want is not thrown away. Until a substantial portion of the voting public not only believes this but is willing to act on said belief it remains academic and the original issue remains. You yourself remain a Democrat while noting they don't represent you. The Dems are actually extremely conservative by the political standards of many first world countries.
You missed my point even though I spelled it out. Many who do not vote do have the time to do so, they are neither apathetic nor stupid, they can merely believe that the system does not allow them to effect change. Sadly, they are mostly correct.

I will continue to bitch even if I do not vote. Voting does not bestow some magical license to bitch and it's egotistical to think that "every vote matters", actually the way voting works on most of the USA individual votes don't matter in many, many important cases. Do you know what the acceptable error rate is for voting? Do you know what the error rate is for those stupid voting machines? Does your vote matter in Chicago where the dead still vote? Gerrymandering just exacerbates the above problem and makes it 10 times worse (in addition to really screwing up running for those local positions that you seem to think are there for the taking).

I am in the united states navy, I also have extremely harsh words for wiki leaks. We all know the all forms of government LARGE and SMALL are corrupt. If you dislike America and support wikileaks then please go live in another country as we do not want you here. If you believe America to be a shit hole and you do nothing about it to change it but bitch then I feel you have no right to do so. Go live in the middle east and I bet you would come crawling back to "shithole" America.

The world is larger than the US. Having said that, its kind of unfair of Wikileaks to concentrate so much on the US. US is not the most democratic state there is but others are equally bad or worse. My guess is, because the US are seen to be the biggest boy in class, they are under special observation from everybody. Every failure weighs trice.

Greetings to the united states navy.