Friday, November 7, 2008

A Little Political Foofaraw

I'm not a political person. I have, as you know, many opinions but I don't follow politics like I should. Hell, I get most of my news from The Daily Show and Boston Legal.

Here's some opinions, nonetheless...

I was joking with Dave that since Sarah Palin was in the spotlight so much and some of the idiot things that came out of her mouth, I wondered whether she'd even be re-elected as Governor of Alaska! He reminded me of the fact that Alaskans just re-elected a convicted felon to the Senate. Now, I'm no genius and I say idiot things all the time but I'm a bit baffled by this. Isn't it illegal for convicted felons to vote? Then shouldn't it be even more illegal for them to be elected to office? (See, idiot things - "more illegal"?? Is that like more pregnant or more dead? sigh) And if it's illegal for felons to vote, how can he even do his job as a Senator as? I mean, isn't a huge part of being a Senator voting on things on a national level?

Here's another thing I don't get and this applies to Congress as a whole, not just Ted Stevens, but he's an excellent example. I think there should be a limit to the amount of times someone can get re-elected to Congress. I don't think people should be able to be re-elected until they DIE. Ted Stevens is 84 and according to Wikipedia's article about him, he's been a Senator for 40 years!! WTF? This may be age-ist but I don't want people driving a car past 80, much less driving our country. Strom Thurmond left office at age 100, after having been in office over 47 years! Both of those men have/had been in office longer then I've been alive. Again, maybe I'm being age-ist but I feel there's something wrong with that.

I also feel that when you have someone so firmly entrenched, they get complaisant, set in their ways, and lazy. I don't want a quick turnaround, because you need some training and experience in the position to be really effective. I think 10 years, 12 max, should be plenty. And don't even get me started on the BS that is their self-voted lifetime pay and health benefits. Again, I say - WTF?

And speaking of term limits, let's go presidential. Have y'all read The Daily Show's book called America? I highly recommend it. Despite being a great laugh, it's got some very interesting points in there (and I'm not talking about the naked pic's of the Supreme Court). One piece (I believe it's a Stephen Colbert contribution) talks about how the President of the United States spends 2 years being president, then another 2 years trying to get re-elected. I'd never thought about it like that before I read this piece but it's sadly and entirely true. I think one 6 year term, no repeats, should suffice.

I also like the way Canada does it. The link is to the Harlot's description of how they manage their Prime Minister position - it's at the bottom of that post in the PPS. I think that makes the most sense of any political process I've ever heard.

In our town, we had 3 bonds on the ballot that didn't get passed. 2 were for more schools - so we could stop this year-round nonsense and have enough schools to accommodate the children in this state. The third was for a bigger, better library.

OK, our library is pretty good and maybe we don't really need a whole cultural center in our smallish town. But we definitely need those extra schools. I heard people say things like, "Doesn't matter to me, my kids go to private school" and "I don't even have kids! What do I care?" Here's the scoop - these kids that "don't effect" you are citizens in your community. If they don't have proper schools and great places to hang out after school, they will be hooligans and grow up to be bad citizens. I can't believe people don't get that.

Trying to pay more attention to politics, Ruth!


Tammy said...

Would you believe there is actually no law preventing a felon of serving in the Senate?! Really.

And a big YES to term limits. I agree it shouldn't be a career.

Have a good one!

Nell said...

And we wonder why the rest of the world looks at us like we're idiots!