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Happy Birthday Scott (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xkot)!
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I have to admit I haven't seen any of the Republican Convention. I didn't watch much of the Dems' either. Once there was a time where real backroom deals were made, and candidates were chosen and things weren't scripted. Delegates changed votes and platforms didn't come in prefab Hardie Siding planks. People listened, and debated. Now they follow "strategery" of hired guns paid to tell you what the party's opinion should be.
Political conventions were useful when there was only three television networks, politicians couldn't travel the country in a lear jet, and a blog was just a misspelling of log. The days where regions would have different presidential candidates and the whole thing would be resolved at a coming together of the delegates is gone. Kerry can be in Iowa one day, and South Carolina the next, then off to California. Across the country we knew who he was. Heck, we knew his competitors as well.
Speakers no longer dissent, they just brush past the differences in carefully worded tones, made to match the theme of the night. The firebrands are gone, in favor of packaging, and slickness. Concerned with the president's spending? no one here will address it. Still miffed that we went to war on a whiff of evidence? The war is a glorious exercise of our freedom! Our message doesn't have to make sense! Just be patriotic and the sheep will follow.
Millions of dollars are being spent on this infomercial. I expect the candidate to come out in a loud sweater and convince me that the war is both a floor wax and a dessert topping. If you gave money to either political party, do you think your money was well spent putting on these shows? Couldn't you have done more by purchasing time on Comedy Central at 4 am, right between the get rich real estate scheme and the incredibly effective exercise device being exposed by an out of work bodybuilder? Come on, Arnold could have moved directly from on presentation to another.
People should stop giving money to these parties when they mismanage their funds like this. More money is being put into the gullets of large contributors than goes to a local candidate, where the support could really be used. There's a definite lack of new blood in these parties because they don't encourage it. Hence we get politicians from old political families continuing to pop up, again and again, fat with the money that supported their fathers. We're slowly building a political class, and we have only ourselves to blame.
The road goes on forever, and the party never ends.
xkot)! ------------------------------------
I have to admit I haven't seen any of the Republican Convention. I didn't watch much of the Dems' either. Once there was a time where real backroom deals were made, and candidates were chosen and things weren't scripted. Delegates changed votes and platforms didn't come in prefab Hardie Siding planks. People listened, and debated. Now they follow "strategery" of hired guns paid to tell you what the party's opinion should be.
Political conventions were useful when there was only three television networks, politicians couldn't travel the country in a lear jet, and a blog was just a misspelling of log. The days where regions would have different presidential candidates and the whole thing would be resolved at a coming together of the delegates is gone. Kerry can be in Iowa one day, and South Carolina the next, then off to California. Across the country we knew who he was. Heck, we knew his competitors as well.
Speakers no longer dissent, they just brush past the differences in carefully worded tones, made to match the theme of the night. The firebrands are gone, in favor of packaging, and slickness. Concerned with the president's spending? no one here will address it. Still miffed that we went to war on a whiff of evidence? The war is a glorious exercise of our freedom! Our message doesn't have to make sense! Just be patriotic and the sheep will follow.
Millions of dollars are being spent on this infomercial. I expect the candidate to come out in a loud sweater and convince me that the war is both a floor wax and a dessert topping. If you gave money to either political party, do you think your money was well spent putting on these shows? Couldn't you have done more by purchasing time on Comedy Central at 4 am, right between the get rich real estate scheme and the incredibly effective exercise device being exposed by an out of work bodybuilder? Come on, Arnold could have moved directly from on presentation to another.
People should stop giving money to these parties when they mismanage their funds like this. More money is being put into the gullets of large contributors than goes to a local candidate, where the support could really be used. There's a definite lack of new blood in these parties because they don't encourage it. Hence we get politicians from old political families continuing to pop up, again and again, fat with the money that supported their fathers. We're slowly building a political class, and we have only ourselves to blame.
The road goes on forever, and the party never ends.
