Posts by Idiot Savant
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Oh Idiot, I'm afraid that we of the global Jewish lobby have been poisoning your bagels with addictive mind control drugs for some time now.
I thought that was mayonaise?
And sorry, but mind-control lasers are just cooler. Though how a laser is supposed to control the mind (other than by, say, threatening to boil it in your skull) is an interesting question.
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Yes he can -- but if those views include paranoid Jew-baiting can I point, laugh, and ask whether he'd care to explain how the RSA and the management of the Auckland War Memorial Museum are part of the Jewish Guilt Machine?
Mind-control lasers. Definitely mind-control lasers. Nothing else could explain people acting in an ordinary, decent manner. Or my sudden craving for bagels.
And to cross threads, public dislike of the National Front is clearly a consequence of Jewish Mind Control, rather than people just thinking they're fuckwits.
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Mormons regard Polynesians as being amongst the alleged Chosen. I wonder how that sits with Kyle.
However it sits with him, his return to racism doesn't sit well with his (soon to be ex-) wife.
Girls just don't like racists, it seems.
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And on the topic of getting outraged this kind of thing completely infuriates me. The reaction, not the teacher's behaviour. I thought we were well past the time when teachers were required to be chaste spinsters, devoid of any and all sexuality.
Yeah, right. "Good character" is interpreted according to the lowest / most prurient common denominator.
You know, we still force them to take a Royalist oath to show they're not communists like that evil Hatty Weitzel (who BTW went on to a long and distinguished career as a teacher - in Australia)
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State Governors (tend to) appoint temporary replacement Representatives, and Senators following death or resignation...
Which would make the answer "Gubernatorial" then, I guess.
But really, "fish" is more appropriate.
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Graeme, you're being logical. Wrong approach for Friday afternoon. Someone is bound to come up with teh answer.
The answer is "fish". Because its as irrelevant to the US Senate as state governors are to Congress.
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I know my history too.
But not everyone else does - and I think its important to point out the company you are keeping.
Rather, I'm simply settling on a higher level of unfairness than you are prepared to allow.
And, with your preference for no electoral lifeboat, a higher level than we have in practice at present.
But hey, can't let the hoi polloi have a say.
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Of course the elephant in the room here is that there's another path to representation which is lower - organise geographically and get elected in a seat.
Sure. But I think the answer to unfairness is to minimise, rather than maximise it. Or, to use Graeme's example above, to give both kids an icecream.
As for the barrier being reasonable, once upon a time people exactly like you thought the same about the property qualification and the ban on women voting. Giving the poor a voice would be "unhealthy for the polity" (why, it might lead to them demanding education and healthcare and worker's rights); women were "dangerous and biddable". The "reasonable" position was to exclude rather than include, and to deny the fundamental moral equality on which democracy rests.
I look forward to relegating your position to the dustbin of history with its predecessors.
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Under all proposals I've heard/read for MMP the people rule - but all contain a judgement about how the people can rule. It's representative democracy after all. We have all sorts of rules in place about how that representation can occur.
Indeed. But you quite explicitly think that there are some people who just shouldn't be represented. And that is simply undemocratic.
Either we're all worthy of democratic representation, or none are. Whose side are you on?
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James: again, your language betrays you. What is "unhealthy for the polity" is up to the voters. If you consider small parties "dangerous and biddable", then by all means, don't vote for them. But it is fundamentally illegitimate to try and stack the system to stop people from doing so - which is what you are advocating.
To give a particularly pertinant example, a little more than a hundred years ago the powers-that-be thought that the ancestors of the present Labour Party were "unhealthy for the polity". Fortunately for our democracy, their attempt to stack the system - the removal of runoff voting - failed. Unfortunately, their undemocratic mindset has lived on, and has now colonised their once-victims.