Political Opinion Megathread Dump

[Lukipela]

Seeing as I'm getting slightly bored with the Us election, howsabout that Ahern Bleeding Star? Do you think he took bribes?

[Eth]

  Well, I just voted today in Oregon's primary election.  I spent a good hour, last night, talking Rachel into voting for Obama.  Whew!  That was a close one!

  Oh, and that stuff about Hillary's campaign debt?  I was wrong about that.  It would be illegal for Obama's campaign to donate more than ~$2000 to her campaign. 

[Bleeding Star]

Lukipela says:
Seeing as I'm getting slightly bored with the Us election, howsabout that Ahern Bleeding Star? Do you think he took bribes?

Ah, shit, I don't follow Irish politics. Consensus seems to be that he's guilty, but I think people are losing interest now that he's stepped down.

[Dabir]

Greetings from Britain, home to the mot multicultural city in the world, London! In Stoke, however, it's a different story. The regional Labour party there is doing so badly that the (97% white and mostly working-class, so unlikely to vote Conservative or Lib Dem) population is now on the brink of electing - gasp! - the BNP. That's the British Nationalist Party. Not to be confused with the SNP, the Scottish National Party, which wants independance from England (England's closest equivalent is the Europe-hating UK Independence party), the BNP is now shorthand for racists. Propaganda example:
"Stoke in 1930s: [Picture of Stoke in 1930s, all church and happy women chatting over fences]
Stoke in 2012 if Labour stays in power: [picture of four Muslim women in niqabs giving two fingers to the camera, in front of a background of mosques etc.]
*insert messages about housing for immigrants being prioritised over housing for natives (lie)*"

[Eth]

  How dreadful.  Sounds like America.   

[Lukipela]

the BNP is really a plight upon your land. I find it fascinating that a lot of you folks are anti Europe enough to vote for those madmen.

[Eth]

Blight, Luki, a blight upon their land. 

[Dabir]

Not necessarily anti-Europe, that's Ukip. But let's face it, Labour hasn't exactly been doing a good job of it. Recently the incumbent Labour Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was voted out and replaced with this man, the remarkable bicycle-loving Boris Johnson. It's just another step in the steady slide into chaos that, coupled with a shocking rate of data loss through mislaying of disks, led then-acting-leader of the Liberal Ineffectual Democrat party Vince Cable to describe Gordon Brown as having made a "remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean." I'm sure you've all heard of both these notable figures. Vince Cable seemed to rather enjoy being acting leader.

The Lib Dems themselves have been particularly unlucky recently. Up until two years ago the leader was Charles Kennedy, and they were doing rather well, except Charlie, as everyone knew, was a drunk. He didn't admit it though, and we all loved him anyway. However, when he declared that he was a "recovering alchoholic", he was given the boot, the sack and the push (officially he resigned), and was replaced with the aging Sir Menzies (MING-iss) Campbell. Campbell lasted a year, and the next leadership contest was between Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg. These two men had almost identical policies, beliefs and backgrounds. At the time I predicted Nick Clegg, on the basis that his name was easier to remember. Lo and behold, Clegg became the new leader. The Conservative party has had more rapid successive changes of leadership, but not yet one that read like some sort of send-up of their internal politics as much as Clegg vs Huhne.

[Eth]

  Well, the American primaries are essentially over now, and let me just say that they were the best I have ever experienced!  The Republicans fielded a carful of clowns, absolute clowns!  They self-destructed, one after another, until finally, John McCain was left, swaying slightly, with a dazed expression on his wrinkled gob. 

  Meanwhile, the Democrats had a field of absolute brilliance: Edwards, Obama, Clinton, Richardson... and our own clown, Kucinich.  They battled it out 'till the very end, energizing each state in the union as the lines of battle were drawn again and again.  The party's infrastructure is looking fine, mighty fine. 

  All in all, very exciting, very entertaining, and it's looking very good for the Democratic Party.  I feel reasonably confident that we can take the White House, and extremely confident that we will increase our leads in the House and Senate. 

[Lukipela]

So now that Obama has been in charge for a while, what does our american brethren think? Change, or just the same old? On the international level he's done quite well, opening up for contacts with Iran and gently chiding us lazy europeans for our "We will not place any of our NATO combat troops in any dangerous area ever" stance. He even managed to diplomatically tell the Turks that they committed genocide on the Armenians without anyone getting too upset.

But I know very little about internal american politics? Is there change? Free health care? More taxes? How do you guys feel about your new president?

[fossaman]

The area where I live is getting about 4000 new jobs because of this stimulus nonsense. So that'll be good.

Other than that, though, I have yet to see changes that directly affect my life.

[Eth]

  I'm a heckuva lot less miserable and paranoid all the time, I can tell you that.  There have been positive moves on the budgetary front, but I doubt I'll see any direct impact for another year.  We're waiting on a bill making it easier for employees to unionize, and some sort of better health care policy.  Health care costs are completely out of control.  I've been stuck in the same dead-end job for nine years because I daren't leave the employer-provided health insurance.  I would love to be able to be self-employed at get decent insurance, but that's almost impossible now.  Hopefully we'll see some movement on that front soon. 

  Also, it's been very amusing watching the Republican party go completely insane over the last few months.  They have completely lost the faith of the voters, and have no idea how to get it back, and most of the moderates have fled the party, so all that's left is a bunch of right-wing nutjobs, for the most part.  They claim that Obama is some sort of cross between Stalin, Hitler, and King George III.  All because he wants to raise taxes on the top 10% of income-earners by like 3% or something.  It's awesome.

[Dragon]

Well seeing as South Africa has it's elections next Wednesday and this is the political megadump thread it's like a match made in heaven.  Not that I particularly like politics or politicians, but this is shaping up to be one of the more "exciting" elections.  The outcome is a given - the ANC will win and Jacob Zuma will be president - however it's how the other parties place that will be interesting.  

The foremost question is will the ANC retain a 2/3s majority and constitution changing power.  And if so will Zuma change the constitution so he (the president) can't be prosecuted.  And that is a worrying question because the ANC solemnly promised that they will not touch the constitution (and have not) because that would be the first step on the road to becoming a banana republic.

Unfortunately with the recent division in the ANC and the subsequent splitting from party of COPE, a lot of the intelligent ANC party members have left - which is not surprising when you consider that firing the countries president, Thabo Mbeki, months before he had to step down for a personal vendetta is a childish and stupid thing to do.  COPE was formed too close to election time and don't look like they've managed to amass a significant amount of support although nobody can really say until after the election.  Sadly it looks like the more savvy (sane?) ANC party members have really just removed themselves from the running.

Then there's the DA who're the opposition party, only that's all they do - they oppose.  Regardless of whether or not a bill is a good idea they'll oppose it.  But they are slowly gaining support as people become disenchanted with the ANCs lack of delivery of basic services, housing and jobs.

Previously voting was more of a census than a decision based on political manifestos.  Generally (painting everyone with a bit of a broad brush) blacks vote for the ANC (African National Congress) unless they're Zulu in which case they vote for the IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party).  Whites vote for the DA (Democratic Alliance) and small towns will vote for fringe parties like the VF (Freedom Front), the ID (Independent Democrats) and the ACDP (African Christian Democratic Party).

This time round COPE puts a spanner in the works because they should also be an appealing black party but the ANCs been running a dirty and borderline illegal campaign against them so it's really difficult to tell how they'll do.

All of that said if you want to find out who you would be voting for (by manifesto) you can check out vote 2009.  It's kind of funny in a sad way how completely ignored the party manifestos are.  Apparently I should be voting for both the IFP and the VF despite the fact they're wildly different parties.  Hopefully this means they're stopping the name calling and have grown up enough to deal with real political problems.

It's gonna be a wild ride 

[Lukipela]

Hey, thanks for taking the time to write all that out! I know next to nothing about South African politics, so that was really interesting. Wasn't the ousted president Mbeki one of those HIV deniers as well? I've only heard of him in connection with Zimbabwe, where he seems to have been doing some sort of mediating.

Also, there's something wrong with that poll. Or maybe your parties really don't differ at all?



Anyhow, I consistently picked option number 2 and it tells me that ANC is 50% on board with my policy, COPE is 42% on board with it and DA is 42% on board with it.

[Bleeding Star]

Interesting comments indeed. I did the poll (worked in Firefox but not in IE)

Apparently I'm an ID supporter (is that good? Or am I some kind of crazy racist?), but I must say that that is a really badly designed questionaire.

For Q12:
Despite all the campaigns, HIV is still spreading like wildfire. What can prevent further HIV infections?
   It can only be prevented through sexual abstinence and fidelity
   Ask the church to help
   Implement a "comprehensive HIV and AIDS Strategy"
   Implement an "aggressive prevention campaign"
   Give every government department an AIDS Directorate
   Implement a "Comprehensive National Plan of Action"

I'm not in agreement with options a) or b), but the rest are political gibberish. So...?

I was also interested to know if the vote2009 website is politically neutral. As a non-south african I don't have the context to make a lot of these judgements. Were the scorpions really the good guys (as Q2 strongly implies)?