Archive for the ‘Elections’ Category
Moderate voters tough for both McCain and Obama to win
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008The AP reports that self-described "moderate" voters will be hard for both McCain and Obama to win in this presidential election. It reminds me of the line from Brian on "Family Guy": "Undecided voters are the biggest idiots on the planet."
Inside the Statolatrist mind
Saturday, June 21st, 2008In New Scientist magazine, Owen Flanagan reviews the book The Political Mind by George Lakoff. Flanagan provides a surprising and refreshing non-Statolatrist perspective on science and politics in this review, but that might be typical in New Scientist—it certainly isn't in primary scientific journals. Flanagan is especially skeptical of this ...
Francois Tremblay: Agorism, not political action
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008Francois Tremblay wrote an excellent open letter to all Libertarians, and that's with a capital L, meaning the ones who think of themselves as members of the Libertarian Party and act mainly to promote LP candidates. Typically capital-L Libertarians are minarchists who believe in the Constitution or some such. This ...
Libertarian Party nomination
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008Link-and-run time: I agree with pretty much every word of this post by Roderick Long, who, despite his agorist commitments, endorses anarcho-capitalist Mary Ruwart for the LP nomination.
Hillary and Obama differ on economics
Monday, May 5th, 2008So claims David Leonhardt of the New York Times. Well, obviously that is completely stupid. He writes, For all the similarities between the two Democrats, there is also a core thematic difference between them. Mrs. Clinton tends to favor narrowly focused programs, like the gas-tax holiday, that speak to specific voter ...
Democracy disgraced
Friday, April 25th, 2008After the debate in Philadelphia between Obama and Hillary, ABC moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson were widely and harshly criticized for the way they ran the debate; specifically, the questions they spent the first 45 minutes on. Viewers, writers, and Obama's camp complained that voters did not hear anything ...
Obama’s wrong and so are (some of) his critics
Sunday, April 13th, 2008Barack Obama created a little stir with two of his speeches recently, at least among those of us who still haven't been bewitched by his ostentatious oratory. First, in San Francisco, he said, "So it's not surprising then that [when voters] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or ...
The Great Depression, the current recession, and the importance of your vote
Sunday, April 13th, 2008If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. —Emma Goldman Many comparisons have been made, at least by Austro-libertarian economists, of the Great Depression to the current inflationary recession. The reason the two periods are compared is that both recessions were caused by the same things: the Federal Reserve and ...
Dilbert on nonvoting
Monday, March 10th, 2008I was perusing Francois Tremblay's blag and was delighted to find this post, consisting entirely of a Dilbert comic on nonvoting that Wally Conger posted. (By the way, at first I assumed that whoever first uploaded this comic got it from February 16 (my birthday) of the 2008 Dilbert page-a-day ...
Election results leaked early by Diebold
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Ahh, how the Onion speaks (closer to) the truth more often than our traditional "news" outlets! Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early. Money quote: "This country is based on the fantasy that the government is the voice of the people."
Honesty and evil
Monday, February 11th, 2008Some recent exchanges with my roommate prompted this post. I have given up writing very critical things about my close friends without their knowledge, so I am not here to secretly lambaste her. Luckily, I don't even think anything very critical of her, so I abstain from criticizing her out ...
Obama’s landslide in Georgia
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008I think the reason Barack Obama won the Georgia primary so handily is because Georgia and presumably a lot of the rest of the south is vehemently anti-Hillary. I wasn't surprised Obama won South Carolina so handily. I think a lot of voters, even loyal Democrats, whether they really knew ...
Republicans are idiots
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008On CNN just now, as one of their pundits was breaking down the Georgia votes this Super Tuesday and reporting on some of the exit poll survey statistics, he said that in Georgia and in previous states, Republican voters who identified themselves as dissatisfied with President Bush largely voted for ...
Dave Barry on the presidential nomination system
Sunday, January 27th, 2008The libertarianish humor columnist hasn't lost anything in his semi-retirement. Then again, maybe he is doing as Will Rogers did and "just watching the government and reporting the facts": On Tuesday, millions of Florida voters will head for the polls. Being Floridians, many of them will become confused and drive into ...