Hehehe careful, he might call you a fascist like he did me! I was thinking something along the same lines though, but not something like a poll test...those are usually used for exclusionary reasons. I was thinking something more in line with a community gesture. I don't mind people having a vote that aren't necessarily smart in areas. What I find a problem is that most people do not vote. In fact, the lowest voting demographic are the lowest earners: the lowest 20% earners have a 36.4% turn out. Those people are basically under represented in democracy. There are many reasons why this is the case, but the most important reasons is that it doesn't hold much value in peoples minds. I have come to imagine that this is because it is "free", and something free has little value in your mind. After the wheels of the government have been spinning for so long, I think there is a complacence that comes over the voting population.

If you look at this data, it doesn't look good. Voter turn out from 1824 - 2008 has been on a jumpy decline. And even at its best, at 75% or so, that is still not a majority vote when a vote is achieved (50% of 75% = 37.5%). My idea was to have some sort of event, some sort of right of passage if you will so that not voting would seem like you wasted that old time back in the past and add as an extra motivation factor in fighting against government corruption. Also, it takes the arbitrary nature of birth out of the equations, and only people willing to make a small sacrifice would get those extra set of rights that we all take for granted now.

This is all just a thought experiment at this point, I think it has a lot of merit though, the same with your idea as well. As with any, there are pitfalls and things that you don't anticipate. Most assuredly, my system wasn't to exclude poor people, in fact, in the example I was drawing from, the poor people had the highest voter turn out...for the rich it wasn't worth the time to earn the right to vote. Then again, wealth shouldn't have anything to do with your right structure, only that persons commitment to be a good citizen, however he chooses to do so.


In reply to this comment by sillma:
I would test peoples knowledge of politics, finance and such to see if they're capable of understanding what they're voting for, I'd expect around 5-10% of the population to pass it. After heavy studying of course.

Do what I do: grow a beard. Trim it once a week with a beard trimmer. Take the trimming attachment off to put a line on your neck and cheeks, then use it to shave the stubble above the cheek lines and below the neck line. Stubble will still be left behind, but hey, you have a beard. It's expected. Being clean shaven is for suckers.

I wouldn't trim my beard at all except I don't want to look like Osama bin Laden. Makes some people jumpy.

Stupid jumpy guy.

When I lived in Beirut, the hardest thing for me to get used to was the way people behaved when driving a car. It was as though the horn was an acceptable substitute for the brakes. A colleague of mine explained, "Everyone drives as though the street was a gift from his father." It turns out, though, that a lot of the horn use was very short taps letting pedestrians know that there was a car behind them (people walked in the road often because of very narrow or obstructed sidewalks), or to warn people that a car was coming when approaching a blind intersection (narrow roads, no traffic lights). The first couple of months there I was really jumpy, I heard horns and always thought I was going to be hit by a cab. Eventually I came to appreciate it and understand it as a courtesy of sorts. Now I'm back in Brooklyn biking around and I get annoyed that cars DON'T give me a tap or two before passing me.

On the other hand, Beirut is the only place that I've ever been honked at as a pedestrian by guy driving on the sidewalk telling me to get the hell out of his way.

>> ^spoco2:

Man, that is one SHITTY video player... no comment on the video, which was ok, but man, they need to get them a new player... or... hang on... just use youtube.

I didn't see any major problems with this player, although I agree that plain ol' youtube would be better. Comedy Central videos with the Daily Show or Colbert have been very bad for me recently though -- small resolution and picture size jumps, and occasional compression corruption that makes the whole video go to stuttering jumpy blocks.

Also:
" Useless as tits on a boar"
"Cant tell shit from shinola"
"He got knocked flatter then a popcorn fart"

I've heard most of these except "Tight as a dicks hat band"???? How and when am I gonna slip that into conversation??

>> ^youdiejoe:
very familiar with the 10lbs in a 5lb saying, I always thought it was a southern saying like these other fab ones:
"you hit the nail on the head"
"wide open as a paper sack"
"nervous as a whore in church"
"jumpy as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs"
"tight as dick's hat band"
"six of one, half a dozen of the other"

very familiar with the 10lbs in a 5lb saying, I always thought it was a southern saying like these other fab ones:

"you hit the nail on the head"

"wide open as a paper sack"

"nervous as a whore in church"

"jumpy as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs"

"tight as dick's hat band"

"six of one, half a dozen of the other"

also this:
http://lifehacker.com/5585217/what-caffeine-actually-does-to-your-brain

more or less the article says that caffeine doesn't improve brain activity, only speeds it up. therefore you are less ability in an difficult error prone situation. Unless you are an expert at detecting errors that is.

for example, how hard is it to drive in an unknown city when you are "jumpy"
You make a wrong turn and you are fukt. IMHO this is an excellent example you need to give me credit if you use it. copyright 2010 marinara spaghettificus.

If I lived in Philly, I'd be a bit jumpy to use the taser too.

The video for this is very jumpy, I tried a few times. This link should work better. And then it's getting a promote from me. Great new album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otY1sfvELXQ

Yeah I'm in Ireland!

Man, I was a news junkie for years, I picked it up from my grandfather. I was one of those guys who sat and watched BBC News 24, all day long, changing over to the ITV news to see their take on the same stories. All I ever watched on TV was News and Star Trek.

I remember the exact moment when BBC News started to change and go the way of American news. It was in 2003, when David Kelly, the british UN weapons expert was found dead in a forest near his home. Just a couple of days previous, I had watched the entire live 2 hour cross examination of David Kelly in front of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, as he completely tore holes in the dossier that the UK government had put forward claiming that Saddam had WMD. I had been following the whole story in impeccable detail, online, on TV, bookmarking everything I could, and I had been looking forward to seeing David Kelly appear in front of the committee.

Anyone who watched it live was completely blown away by it, it couldn't have been any more dramatic. The government totally shot themselves in the foot. That night on the news, the BBC got stuck right into Tony Blair and the UK government and they continued to do so for the next couple of days, exposing all the lies about the Iraq war. It seemed finally that we were going to get the whole truth, and David Kelly was the key to the whole thing.

Then David Kelly was found dead, an alleged suicide. The same day the government went on the offensive against the BBC, people in the BBC were sacked over the next few weeks, government mouthpieces started appearing on all the TV news programmes shouting down presenters and acting very very strange indeed.

That is the exact moment when it changed. The BBC started becoming very very dumbed down very very quickly. Reports on the Israel/Palestine conflict became very watered down, that was when I really knew that the government had gagged the BBC (also happened in the 80s when Thatcher was in power during the Falklands war). The only decent reports were hour long specials broadcast at 1am or 2am, the normal daily news became a joke. Even the presenters were changed.

Within a year, the ITV News (Independent TV news in the UK), which had been reporting very consistently about the whole debacle ceased broadcasting.

Now the House of Lords - very little of what goes on in there is ever covered on the news. To see it you have to watch the live broadcasts on the Parliament channel (which I don't get any more cos I cancelled my cable a few months ago). It's where law is made, the house of commons is the showpiece for the public. All the stuff they decide in the commons has to go to the Lords where it is actually discussed at a very high level of detail and intelligence before it can be made law. The Lords also recommend what the UK prime minister should be saying to foreign presidents during state visits, a good example was when Blair was going to Russia and the Lords wanted him to confront the Russians about old KGB type activity rearing its head again - fascinating stuff, not a bit of it was ever on the normal news.

The Lords are probably the most well versed people on the history of Europe you could possibly meet. It is an education watching them debate sensibly and intelligently without all the pomp and drama you get on the TV news. They have bloodlines going way way back, they are soaked in the history of Britain and Europe. (Tony Blair near the end of his term even made moves to get rid of the Lords altogether when he wanted to get his 48 days detention without trial bill passed into law, the BBC actually started running hit pieces on the Lords, another sign that the BBC had changed)

Anyway, the point is, the Lords are a bit jumpy about stuff like this, and I'm sure it won't have gotten past them. Someone will have raised it for discussion. Obama making speeches in Israel about fighting extremism is very dangerous for Britain because I have watched discussions about the oppression of Palestine in the Lords and how delicately it has to be handled because the UK is an ally of the US which is an ally of Israel. Following that up with an event reminiscent of a British coronation more than a US presidential acceptance speech will really be ringing alarm bells.

I hope you're following my line of thinking, I'm brainstorming it all right out in full flow...

To Americans, these events will be soaked in pride, hope and patriotism, there is nothing wrong with that.

But to a British politician or to the Lords who have reign over the politicians, it paints a very different picture. It's one thing when Luther King makes speeches about civil rights in this way, it's another when Obama talks about uniting forces against extremism, and even goes as far as talking about Iranian nukes. That's the language of fear, that's the kicker, that's the alarm bell - and I mean that in the most literal sense, this language of fear is one of the things Winston Churchill warned about in the tomes of books he wrote after WW2, about how the world must avoid the same thing happening again, and how he regretted that Britian didn't move sooner against Germany.

These are very specific things contained in Obama's speeches, and I really don't know what to make of it. I think you should be thankful that at least somebody in American media saw this from a perspective of history. WW2 is very fresh in the minds of people in England, the country is soaked in the history of that war in every town and city and bit of countryside and Obama's words are very potent and a bit scary to be frank in that context.

That's why I say it's all about persepective, and what makes it frightening is that Obama's speechwriters couldn't have made it any more potent in the context of WW2.

Phew.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Are you, as your name implies, from Ireland?

I'm definitely curious on your take as to why the House of Lords would have an objection to what Obama said in Israel, or the fact that he plans on giving a speech to 75,000 campaign volunteers at his nomination (different from inauguration, BTW).

I did a couple searches of BBC News's site, and it seemed to generally be reporting positive reactions in the UK and elsewhere to Obama's trip. Is the UK media as distorted as the US's these days?

Here, there's already a meme forming about how this trip is going to hurt Obama domestically.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
http://politics.videosift.com/video/Obamas-Speech-Something-the-Fuehrer-would-have-done

In regards to this, I think it's important that this stuff be posted, sifted, and discussed. I'm not into posting stuff that I personally believe or subscribe to. I'm quite the opposite, I post stuff because I want to know what people think so I can get a big brainstorm of commentary. I don't know what to make of it, but I have an excellent knowledge of WW2 and whether intentional or not this is resonates with that history and is very dangerous ground for Obama and America to be on.

To be absolutely honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if this and the Israel visit are items for discussion in the House of Lords in the UK.

Is it just me, or is this really jumpy ?

>> ^kulpims:
>> ^calvados:
I was going to upvote this -- important bit of infamous history and cautionary tale that it is -- until that ridiculous editing at the end. "Here, let's loop that part where he gets up and gives a whoop so that it looks like he's fucking the shattered corpse of each person on that destroyed airliner." Very poor taste.

i agree about that silly montage at the end, not necessary. however, the fact remains, those guys got away with mass murder. and ask yourself - what was their fucking business, patroling the iranian waters? defending the interests of some jumpy big oil cowboys who were afraid for their investments and didn't want iraq to loose the 1980-88 war with iran. it was the US war ship that was the agent provocateur in this case, their actions can not be defended in any international court of law. not that any US soldier will ever see the inside of one - you can't sue a stormtrooper, can you?
the russians did the same with a korean airliner for god knows what reason


What does your comment have to do with my comment? Here's two facts: the crew of the USS Vincennes were grossly negligent in this case (you seem to think I'm defending them somehow), and this video uses vulgar and idiotic editing to try and make a point which instead weakens its reportage.

>> ^calvados:
I was going to upvote this -- important bit of infamous history and cautionary tale that it is -- until that ridiculous editing at the end. "Here, let's loop that part where he gets up and gives a whoop so that it looks like he's fucking the shattered corpse of each person on that destroyed airliner." Very poor taste.


i agree about that silly montage at the end, not necessary. however, the fact remains, those guys got away with mass murder. and ask yourself - what was their fucking business, patroling the iranian waters? defending the interests of some jumpy big oil cowboys who were afraid for their investments and didn't want iraq to loose the 1980-88 war with iran. it was the US war ship that was the agent provocateur in this case, their actions can not be defended in any international court of law. not that any US soldier will ever see the inside of one - you can't sue a stormtrooper, can you?
the russians did the same with a korean airliner for god knows what reason

Awwwwww.... like a little Mogwai! My old roommates had a Terrier who was my little buddy, since I worked at home and Bostons need to be around people. He was such a jumpy little wiggler!