"If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country, because the people who tend not to vote are young; they're lower income; they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups; and they're often the folks who are -- they're scratching and climbing to get into the middle class."
So that's his sentiment. More voters -- no matter that they have less than low-information and can't be bothered to vote except at gunpoint -- make for a better democracy.
#3
So he 'knows' the majority of the people 'really' want what he wants, but they don't bother to vote for concgresscritters? Because they're not 'legitimate"? Because not everyone voted for them, or because they don't agree with Champ?
Does he also walk the corridors of the White House, talking to the portraits?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/26/2015 7:44 Comments ||
Top||
#4
As noted before, dictators and other tyrants have votes, plebiscites that get 98+ percent of the vote.
Ultimately, it's not the ballots in the box that count. It's what Lincoln phrased as the 'willingness to give the last full measure of devotion'. Then that disappears, so do governments.
#7
If everyone was forced to vote the young college students who can't be bothered might actually research the issues and might be less liberal in the way they voted.
#8
And if the Pubs were smart and everyone was forced to vote they'd just have a bunch of pro-pot rallies in the weeks before election day and all those previous non-voters might get really confused.
[DAWN] DEATH row confessions, like beads of sweat, reek of fear. It is natural for any human being, faced with the prospect of execution, to unburden his or her soul before catching up with it lighter in the hereafter.
Dr Samuel Johnson once said: "When a man knows that he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." The MQM activist Saulat Mirza has been on death row since his conviction in 1999 for the murder of Shahid Hamid, the managing director of KESC -- as K-Electric was then known ---- in 1997. Saulat has had not a fortnight but 15 years to concentrate his mind wonderfully. With less than a few hours left to live, though, he decided to divulge confidences that would otherwise have been interred with him.
His revelations are incendiary. They involve alleged complicity of the MQM chief Altaf Hussain ...think of the head of the Barzini clan, only in Urdu... and the sitting governor of Sindh Ishratul Ibad in that murder. Saulat Mirza intended that his self-serving distribution of culpability would have the same terminal effect on the MQM leadership that director general Federal Security Force Masood Mahmood's did when he turned approver and claimed that he had received orders to murder Ahmed Raza Kasuri from prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent... . Bhutto died on the gallows for the death of Kasuri's father; Masood Mahmood died in the anonymity of a US witness protection programme.
The president granted Saulat a reprieve just hours before the time of his execution, presumably to encourage him to reveal more. The government then decided otherwise. It asked for a second black warrant, which has been granted. Saulat now faces the gallows again. Like all condemned prisoners, he will be offered a last supper. Who knows what that meal will comprise?
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2015 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[11123 views]
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1. “Let's do it!” (The Inspiration for Nike's Famous Slogan)—Gary Gilmore, 1976
2. James French has been credited with these famous last words before his death by electric chair: "How's this for a headline? “French Fries”, 1966
3. "Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.” (Spoken by G. Appel Before Being Executed by Electric Chair), 1928.
4.“Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you're screwing around!” (Spoken by Carl Panzram, 1930.
[DAWN] THE night before celebrations of Pakistain Day, March 23, news began to spread on Twitter that Pak internet users were not being able to access WordPress, arguably the world's most popular and widely used free blogging and publishing platform and content management system. Thousands of Paks use WordPress to host their blogs, and many software developers use WordPress tools to create websites as part of their business activities.
Quickly, users began to speculate that the Pakistain Telecommunications Authority (PTA) had blocked WordPress blogs for reasons of "security" relating to Pakistain Day, and that the threat was so grave it couldn't even be elucidated. Instead of clarifying their position, PTA claimed they had not blocked WordPress, even though customers of several major ISPs posted screenshots of the block page they got on their browsers when attempting to access the main WordPress site. The move was seemingly reversed within two days, but there's no guarantee it can't happen again in the future.
Pakistain's internet users are still sore from the YouTube ban, which is now three years old. The government just last month stated that YouTube was to remain blocked "indefinitely" because experts had failed to find a way to filter out "blasphemous" content. People have found ways to get around the ban by using VPNs, or virtual private networks, which disguise a Pak IP and allow access to material the government deems too 'offensive' for them to view.
But this regressive way of dealing with information in the digital age, by blocking and censoring it completely, has offended many internet users who resent this infringement on their right to access other, valuable information that YouTube provides -- chemistry lectures, religious talks, children's educational programmes. And the short interruption to WordPress was a sharp reminder that Pak citizens' digital rights are not guaranteed.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/26/2015 00:00 ||
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[11126 views]
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
"If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country, because the people who tend not to vote are young; they're lower income; they're skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups; and they're often the folks who are -- they're scratching and climbing to get into the middle class."
