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I forgot to post this a while ago: Tim Hawkins and the "homeschool family". Prairie Home Sausage is kind of funny - and has a picture of a really neat merry-go-round.
Lastly, being in NH during the presidential primary has been annoying. Apparently, phone calls have gotten cheap enough that most of the candidates have been calling. Some of them, most notable Obama and Clinton, like to call multiple times just to make sure that we have heard of them. Obama's volunteers were surprised that they weren't the first to call, since they had printed out lists (and call from all over the country), so it is strange that they would have sent out duplicate lists. Clinton's supporters said that the computer just calls every number in order, and each phone doesn't talk to each other, so it was quite likely that I would get called within five minutes from the same office.
I don't know if that should be filed under persistence or incompetence.
I thanked the Huckabee supporters at the polling place for not calling, I think only Huckabee and Paul didn't call us. (as a side-note, that means I get to stick to my mom's statement that she gives the callers - that she won't vote for anyone who calls, particularly after 10PM (that was Obama). Unfortunately for mom, McCain did call once, but she is going to vote for him even though he called.
One of the Clinton supporters that I talked to on the phone didn't apologize at all for calling three times in the same hour because, "what do you expect - if you're going to have the first primary, you should expect it". I pointed out that we have always had the first primary, and it hasn't ever been this bad before. The Concord Monitor had a number of letters to the editor about it this year. I expect that NH (at least) will push for an expanded do-not-call list to include the politicians too, which would be really nice.
Not at all. What I'm saying is that our society is currently predisposed to being unhappy. Most of us have so little exposure to real hardship that our happiness threshold is impossibly high. Put us down for a year in North Korea -- or Kenya -- and we'll find ourselves thrilled with our government at its worst. (It may only take a month; I say a year because it sometimes takes living somewhere, rather than being a tourist, to reveal problems, and because I know someone who was invited to visit North Korea and came back thinking it's a wonderful country and all the stories of repression and famine are lies.)
I doubt the "supermajority" is really all that unhappy. If you ask me if I'm happy with President Bush (or Congress), I'm likely to start listing all the things I don't like about him, but that doesn't mean I'd like to trade him in for any of the other offerings. Or anyone else I know, for that matter.
What's more, even if all those people are genuinely unhappy with the current leadership, they're certainly not unhappy for the same reasons, so I'm not sure any change would get you the majority you're looking for.
So yes, I agree that getting half of Americans to say they're happy with the government is probably impossible. We're hard to satisfy, and we like to complain. What's more, the effect of dissatisfaction will always be multiplied, because unhappiness sells news stories as sex sells new cars.
Americans aren't unhappy with their consumer choices. Just their political ones. And omplaining about stuff is entirely different than saying you "don't approve" at all.
And I'm willing to trade virutally any congressperson or the president for Peter. So in 2004, my approval ballot would have been:
[X] Peter
[ ] Jon
[X] Noah
[ ] Bush
[ ] Kerry
I think Peter's approval rating would have been higher than Bush's is right now.
I seriously doubt it. And I have great respect for Peter and would probably vote for him, too. I wouldn't vote for either Jon or Noah because I wouldn't wish that job on my family. (Sorry, Kelly.)
However, I do agree that the election process is terribly flawed, though by that I mean not the voting but the whole media sound bite thing, the fact that candidates apparently need to spend oceans of money doing nothing productive, the apparent need to appeal to the country's consumer instincts, and the drive to get everyone to vote with no equivalent attempt to get anyone to vote knowledgeably and intelligently. Really. I have a friend who works hard for his party and truly believes that everyone should be voting, including new-born babies and probably illegal immigrants. This is extreme, but symptomatic of the problem.
The "anyone but X" syndrome applies not only to standing leaders. Bush would still have been highest on my approval ballot simply because all the others in the field would have been a lot lower. Peter wasn't running.
I'm not sure you understand how approval voting works. there is no "highest" on an approval ballot. I also don't think you understand the strategy a rational voter would employ, namely to ask oneself 1) if the frontrunners are sufficiently different for you to have a preference, to pick one and 2) to vote for anyone else that you'd actually like in a positive way. And if you really don't want anyone listed at all, you can write Peter in and say you approve of him. You could also turn in an empty ballot, have it registered that you hate all the candidates, and have that actually mean something. Right now your ballot just gets tossed if you do that. I don't see how you can't think that would actually be an improvement both in terms of practical results and in terms of a voter's ability to 'send a message'.
Or if you concede that approval voting would be better but you don't see it improving things enough to make any difference, I don't see how you can claim to *know* it won't.
I don't understand your sample ballot. Can you explain why you picked Peter and Noah, and not Bush, Jon or Kerry? (I want to know why I didn't get your vote after all...)
I don't approve of your stance on scruffy beards :-P
And I flat out don't approve of Kerry or Bush because they're both creeps.
You're right, I haven't studied alternative voting systems, mostly because I'm pretty happy with what we have now. (Note: the voting system, not the candidates nor the campaigning.) But I wonder if any of them would help with my current dilemma. In a few days I must vote in the Democratic presidential primary. Should I (1) vote for the candidate I think would be best (or least bad), or (2) vote for the candidate I think most likely to lose to the Republican nominee -- assuming the Republicans come up with someone I find less objectionable than any of the Democratic candidates, or (3) thumb my nose at the DNC for disenfranchising my state (they're still sore about 2000) and vote for someone who hasn't a chance anyway, or (4) give it up and move to New Hampshire, which can have an early primary without being stripped of its votes, and where I could vote in the primary of my choice without having to pretend to align myself with any particular party?
It's hard for me to contribute well to the discussion because my primary voting experience is the Swiss one. Very rarely do we have votes with a single winner: most our executive bodies have multiple members. From what I hear it will change in Basel and we will vote for the "Stadtpräsident" in a popular vote - the city parliament just chose the "Stadtpräsident" for the last time. In this case I suspect we'll have a two-round runoff system, which we usually have in such situations. That said, I'm unsure of how much actual power is attached to the job, because the "Stadtpräsident" is chosen as primus inter pares of the five city council members. I think we have a general aversion to having a single guy at the top.
My US voting experience is a little more jaded: vote for whichever candidate you like in the presidential election, watch Virginia vote Republican yet again, and watch your electoral representative vote for someone you don't like (unless you happen to like the Republican candidate). If you vote in Virginia, you just laugh at all the media noise about overseas ballots. Winchester and Grundy win, anytime. Even worse for primaries: I don't get to vote at all. So right now, during primary time, I don't really care. I just complain. ;-)
If you're in FL, which I'm guessing from your post, and if it doesn't actually matter because of internal DNC bs, then you should vote for whichever candidate you like best without regard to strategy. This is because all you can do with your vote is send a message. If your primary actually counted, you should for the least evil person, unless they're all so bad to you that you just stay home.
If you are actually happy with plurality voting, I think you really ought to spend some time reading about voting methods on wikipedia. Check out their tennessee example. It shows how for example, an alternative which is the most hated among over 60% of the population can win with plurality voting.
It strikes me that voting to select the person who is most likely to lose to the other party, while technically allowed within the system, certainly isn't how it is supposed to work.
True, but sometimes it's the only way one's vote counts. Stephan reminded me that we've been blessed to be living where party affiliations don't determine elections. Offices -- local, state, and federal -- will go to either Republicans or Democrats depending on the candidates. But growing up in Main Line Philadelphia I found that the outcome of the general election was usually determined by the Republican primary. Then when we lived in New York, and especially Massachusetts, it was the Democratic Party that had iron control.
As you can see, I don't believe in party allegiance -- how could I, my own party having betrayed me in so many areas? -- but in registering as one thinks most practical. That's why New Hampshire's rules sound attractive to me. I could not only freely declare myself Independent but could also vote in whichever primary I thought most important.