h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Two?!? We should be so lucky. Did the city shutdown? Lol.

Two?!? We should be so lucky. Did the city shutdown? Lol.

My apologies if this posts twice, I keep getting "service not available" errors.

NP it is pretty annoying isn't it.

Lil - that was a great post. I've been arguing around here for awhile, and that was a great explanation of what I guess would be called real-politik.

Amen about the second term of shrub...there won't be anything left to rebuild if he gets to have his way with the environment & the government for 4 uninhibited years.

Thanks, dave. To exchange a compliment, I'm impressed by the way you're researching the topic. I wish more Americans would do that before the time comes to vote.

The best thing I've heard so far on this thread is that Carter has, it's hoped, persuaded Nader not to run. Last time, the GOP actually ran pro-Nader ads in some states in order to deliberately bleed the Democrats of swing votes.

Lil, you're right. It's an uphill battle for any dem that gets in office now. I don't know how any dem is going to be able to force things through, although I have a feeling that a lot of republicans will lose their seats this year simply because GOP=Shrub for so many people.

There's nothing on Nader's website, anyway.

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it... than to vote fore something I don't want and end up with that."

Discuss

It's already happening. Because the state primaries are all at different times, candidates that I like have already dropped out, and I don't know that it fits the whole "democracy" (yes, I know, it's really republicanism, but you know what I mean) ideal for New Hampshire and Michigan to decide which candidates California or Montana can vote for.

Thank you too lil. I like to get numbers and data...this can be a blessing and a curse. Actually, going back to that website about the funding, President bush current has $980,000 in lobbyist ("other") funding. But as a percentage, this is very low for him, b/c he has such a huge amount of funding ($200 million?).

I've often thought there has to be a fairer way to run primaries and caucuses than have it all start in New Hampshire and Iowa (neither of which is very representative of the country as a whole for either party). Perhaps if each election cycle the order of primaries was randomly jumbled, so different states get the chance to be first...

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it... than to vote fore something I don't want and end up with that."


I know what I don't want to happen; I don't want the Bush administration returned to office. But I think that is not what you mean. Who, by the way, are you quoting?

We all seem to be agreeing that the republic's electoral system is somewhat broken. This means that you have to use your vote strategically rather than idealistically. And to illustrate that, I need only point at all the well-meaning people who voted for Nader. They voted for something they wanted and didn't get it. Not only did they not get it but they crippled the chances of the candidate who would have done far, far less to the environment and the UN and all.

Thus they voted for what they didn't want. p and not-p.

We really have to get beyond this like-dislike thing for individual candidates and look at the APPARATUS that is going to run the country, and the ideology that will drive the apparatus. Over in the salon, Styx said Heinz is better than Halliburton, and I believe he has a point.

Personally, I am seeing that we may end up voting for something we don't particularly want to happen (Kerry, who is an ok candidate, but I have certain issues with) in order to fend off something we don't want to happen even more (four more Shrub filled years). This does not necessarily make me happy as it becomes a lose or lose worse scenario with very little winning in sight.

Bryce, I love your idea of rotating primaries. It would certainly take care of some of the issues built into the current system, such as location bias. Run for office. I'll vote for ya.

Right not sure who the quote orginates from... told it at uni. But I will try to find out.

What I am getting at is the sort of Max Weber ideas of two rationallities, Zvet and Wert Rationale, instrumental and conscience (allthough possibly not in that order... again I cannot rmember)

Be serious, Gw7en ! You could never vote for a right-wing fanatic like me !

How about regional primaries?

Weberian ideas are much out of vogue in my field, but I think they're still popular in the social sciences...

That said, for me, Weber is too binary. It's rare that politics are as black and white as Weber believed, and I think he failed to take into account the exchange of ideas. Much like Wallerstein failed to see that metropole and periphery relationships actually flowed both ways. There's something vaguely Whiggish about both.

MR, all of that went over my head. Could you explain some of the terms you just used and who the people are that you referred to?

Yes, please do.

Max Weber and Immanuel Wallerstein. Weber wrote a book (and I can never remember the exact title) about the Protestant work ethic and capitalism, and Wallerstein wrote about world systems.

Weber's basic argument is that capitalism and protestantism go hand in hand, under the assuption that hard work, not God's grace, get you the good stuff both here and in the afterlife (it's not that spiritual, but you get the idea)

And Wallerstein believed that imperialism was marked by a one-way flow of culture from the metropole (London, for example) to the peripheries (the British colonies).

Both men are a bit too black and white in their thinking. In History, we tend to put them in with the structuralist thinkers (think Marx) and the Whigs (typically British historians), who think that history is teleological. Meaning that all of the past leads up to this moment. Basically, they're all terribly deterministic.

cool post MR. How non-deterministic do historians get, and what do they do in that extreme?