Reveilled

I used to have a bullet point version and a much more detailed and clearer long version on another forum, but their server broke, and I lost it forever. But generally the purpose of two elected chambers is not to have differing political views in them, but to balance one aspect of the state with another. In the case of the US, one chamber has representatives elected according to population, and so more populous states have greater representation than smaller ones, while the other chamber has two representatives for every state, to ensure that the needs of smaller states are not ignored by larger states. If California, New York, Florida and a few other populous states all started electing Fascists, they might gain a majority in the House since they get the most representatives, but in the Senate that trend toward electing Fascists could be easily dwarfed by smaller, less populated, but more numerous states electing (small-d) democrats. It would only take a trend towards electing fascists in about ten states to make a fascist House of Representatives, but it would take the same trend in 26 states to make a fascist Senate (and visa-versa; roughtly ten democratic states could keep the house democratic in the face of about 40 fascist ones). Thus the trend towards electing fascists is reflected in both houses, but doesn't have the same effect.

The song For Tomorrow, by Blur, reminds me of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, as I had the song playing on repeat 1 while I read most of the second book.

No, no, you're misunderstanding. The Chief Executive only has a casting vote in matters of exectutive public spending. The Chief Executive has no say in formulating laws, in preparing the budget, or in approving either. She also has no say in public spending unless two departments who need to exchange resources cannot agree on the manner in which it is done. So if the Health Minister can't agree with the Public Safety minister on how many ambulances should be available in Manchester for 999 calls, then the Chief Executive has the casting vote. If they can agree and compromise on it, then the Chief Executive doesn't even have a vote. The inability of two members of the executive to agree on interdepartmental issues is the only circumstance in which the Chief Executive is actually involved in wielding any power, barring the emergency situation. Also, I don't believe I used the term Senate to refer to the lower Chamber before that last post. "

Sorry, I don't see how your second point follows from the first. The people in the Midlands come out saying they don't want to increase taxes to fund education, therefore they shouldn't have a say in how their taxes are spent? Personally, I think the sytem I'm proposing does just that. The highest job in the land is the one that ensures the transparency of the executive branch, and the members of the upper legislature are accountable to their constituents instead of their parties. The only thing that I think is harder is for a politician to make decisions, but I wouldn't say that's a bad thing. Look at how easy it is for Tony Blair's decisions to pass straight into law with little chance of obstruction. Hell no. It's more of a political belief than a view on the structure of government, but I'm a firm believe in binding the institutions of government down with the chains of a constitution. Yes, but I'd consider such designations to be rather arbitrary. For instance, in my system, the upper chamber doesn't make laws, and instead takes the place of of the executive in approving laws, and the executive has a different function in handling public spending. The upper and lower chambers might be part of one "body", but they have such different functions and purposes that to call them one body is rather misleading. Under my system, power would be balanced between the Upper Chamber, Lower Chamber and the Judiciary. As I said before, the Judiciary isn't important to the basics of the system I'm proposing. That doesn't mean I'm advocating doing away with the judiciary branch of government, only that it can take a form which doesn't interfere with the principle on which the rest of the government is based. The Judiciary could be elected, appointed by the Chief Executive or the Lower Chamber, and it could decide on constitutionality of laws either on the basis of whether it is forbidden by the constitution or whether it is expressly permitted by the constitution. It could have five members, ten, twenty-five, whatever. The Judiciary would still function as a chack and balance against the legislature, but the exact manner in which it does this isn't hugely important to the main idea of the structure of this government. So were one imposing my system on, say, the US Government, one would have to remodel the legislature and executive according to the system, but the Supreme Court could retain its structure relatively intact, because I don't have any particularly unusual plan on how the judiciary would be structured. the Judiciary can just be like any other boring old Judiciary.

I have: Chrono Trigger Final Fantasy VII Europa Universallis 2 Victoria The last two aren't really coundrtracks, though, just a lot of period classical music that comes with the game that can be played by the game or in a music program. But this thread reminds me of part of a song... Final Fantasy has awesome music, And that is probly why it always gets remixed! I always buy the soundtrack to each game, Oh it is the only thing that I will listen to, Oh sure one day it may drive me insane, You may think that I'm a fool, Well I'm here to say "Screw you!"

So? How the government runs the economy will affect everyone, no matter how much they know about economics, so the people should always be the ones who decide how the economy is run. In any case, one would hope that one would elect an Economist to be the Finance Minister, or at least someone who could learn about economics in a hurry. As to Manifestos, well, that may be how they are supposed to work, but it isn't how they really work. You're always left voting for something you are vehemently opposed to. Yes, a pick 'n' mix government wouldn't run as efficiently, but helping the government to run more smoothly would be the job of the Chief Execitive of the Government, who would report back to the people just what is causing problems in the government. And an inefficient goverment might not be such a bad thing, anyway. If the government just stopped doing anything every once in a while, we might be a bit better off. I mean, things never seem to get worse when parliament isn't in session, do they? I don't think that things are really as interconnected as people like to think, anyway. Obviously, if the executive is full of right-wing privatisers while the lower legislature is a socialist dominated-one, then obviously that government is going to collapse, but I don't think that's very likely to happen. What I see this is being is a lower chamber that effectively runs the government, an upper chamber acting as a check against it on behalf of the individual voters, with the Executive presenting variations on a theme. If the electorate elects a social democratic lower chamber, then the chances are that they are going to elect primarily social democrats to the executive positions. But what the electorate can then do is fine tune the lower chamber's party manifesto to suit their needs. So if the social democratic party promises to increase funding to education while keeping funding for the NHS about the same, the electorate could elect someone in favour of increasing NHS funding to the position of Health Minister, telling the lower chamber that they want to increase health funding, and that they should structure the budget accordingly. Manifestos won't go away under this system, they'll just have their individual parts subject to small changes by the electorate.

French President Sends Message Transcript of an Audio Address by President R

I don't understand, I'm afraid. Why would you need an insta-vote technology for it to work? I don't believe any current independent MPs use such a system to vote for their constituencies' best interests. I don't think it's that hard to judge whether a piece of legislation is in a constituency's best interests. If the lower chamber passes legislation that would lead to the closing of a hospital in an MP's constituency, then he or she votes against it. If it would mean building a new school there, then he or she votes for it. If the lower chamber wants a war, the MP looks at whether there are a lot of demonstrations against it. the MP can also read the letters he gets, and meet with his constituents to discuss issues and such. Anyways, on that note, I'm off to bed.

I'm not saying that the Judiciary isn't important, just that it can take any form that doesn't directly interfere with the principle of the first two parts. Also, I'd point out that not every political system works on the trinity system the US does. Even look at the British system, which is basically a government entirely comprised of a legislature, with an executive branch of extremely limited to no power, and a judiciary that has very little part in actual government. It would have the same number of members as the present representative chamber of whatever state the new system was being imposed on. So it would have the same number of members as the House of Commons, or the House of Representatives, and so on. And no, to be honest, I don't see the difficulty. Perhaps you could explain it to me? As to the party allegiance system removing personal bias, that's my point exactly. You remove personal bias from the arena, but just replace it with party bias. What does an MP do when his constituents are clearly opposed to a piece of legislation, but the whips of the political party he is affiliated with are threatening him with expulsion from the party if he votes against it? If he's been voted in as the Labour MP for Glasgow North, is his chief duty to Labour or to Glasgow North? Look at the Iraq war. It was abundantly clear that the majority of the British people were opposed to the war, and yet despite the fact that we are meant to be a democracy, the people clearly were not in power when the MPs chose to ignore the people who elected them and vote how their political parties told them. The only solution I can see to this problem is one in which there is a legislative chamber with no political parties.

I think one has to be either a bush cronie or a Iraqi power player to actually suggest things. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Maybe I should just try and meet with Tony Blair and ask him to pass along a message for me then.

The system I've always had in my head as the ideal democratic system is this: Executive: All positions within the executive branch are elected individually, to ensure that the majority of opinion on each individual issue is reflected in the government, instead of the party situation which we have at present where you elect a group of policies regardless if you don't like some of them. The leader of the Executive branch has no official powers, and acts as a mediator between the different branches of the executive to help smooth running of the government. However, the leader's main function is effectively that of an investigative journalist. To help ferret out corruption, the leader of the country is the one charged with rooting it out. The leader will give short daily reports and longer weekly ones on the specific workings of the government, what is being debated, what is causing argument, and so on. This serves to keep the electorate informed by someone at the heart of government. The person elected to this position should be chosen for their character and integrity rather than their ideological beliefs. Legislature: There are two houses, a lower chamber elected through proportional representation, and an upper chamber elected through a first-past-the-post system. Members of political parties are not eligible for election to the upper chamber. The lower chamber drafts legislation and votes according to national interests, that is, what the representatives' political parties believe is the way the country should be run. The upper chamber approves legislation, and each representative is required to vote only in the best interests of his or her constituents, and not on the basis of ideology (hence the restriction on political paries). The Judiciary branch is not particularly important to the basic system. The general idea is to keep the government as accountable to its electorate as possible between elections while keeping the level of direct democracy--which is a headache to implement efficiently in lage countries--to a minimum. Maybe I should try and meet with the Iraqi government and propose it. "

Standard disclaimer: This is no bashing, just ignorance speaking, but didn't it take quite a while before the one person one vote thing was actually implemented. IIRC black people didn't have a vote or parlamentary representatives pre. 1861 and it was even later before the equal opportunity thing was available to "everybody" ? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> True, but one must remember the political and social attitudes of the time. Everyone seems to have different definitions of democracy. The ancient Athenians invented the concept, yet they restricted the vote to free Athenian males, most "democratic" states pre-late 19th century had restrictions on weath and land ownership for voting, and allowing women to vote didn't happen until well into the 20th century. The definition of what is and isn't a democracy isn't really cut and dry, so whether you choose to accept that the USA was one of the first democratic states depends on how you subjectively choose to define what is and isn't a democracy. Personally, I prefer something that changes with the times. Thus, I would count any otherwise democratic country that denied the vote to women a democracy in the 19th century and before, but wouldn't consider a country that did so in the late 20th to be one. It is best, I think, to judge a person or country by the standards of their time, rather than by the standards of today.

Another goal is to spark a sectarian conflict between the Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in the south (Sunni being hostile now that there fewer numbers mean a power disenfranchisement, Shi'ites jostling for supremacy in their region) and Kurds in the North, which

Okay, bear with me, beause I'm not sure how well I'll be able to describe the topic of this thread. What things remind you of other things that to anyone else would seem completely unrelated, and why are they related to you? For instance, the taste of Orange Milk Chocolate reminds me of the Legend of Zelda on the N64. At face value, they seem to have nothing to do with one another, but back when the game was released, I got it for christmas along with several boxes of chocolate orange pieces, and so I spent almost the entire game eating chocolate orange, and as a result, the taste of chocolate reminds me of the Legend of Zelda whenever I eat it. Understand?

It is worth pointing out that the statue was also draped in the pre-1991 flag of Iraq as well as the American flag. If one were to take the draping of the statue with the stars and stripes as the US claiming Iraq, should one then take the subsequent draping of it in the Iraqi flag as the US giving sovereignty back to Iraq?

Everyone, I'm sure, is familiar with these bible verses: Matthew 6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. 6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do]: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Now, I personally do not believe that the bible is divinely inspired, but I nevertheless think these words to be very true. Do those that wave their flags on the corners of the streets, and proclaim loudly their love of America really love their country? They claim so often that various groups hate America for its freedom, but do they advocate freedom? Or do they want to take it away? I say that the people who wave the Stars and Stripes while wanting to take away the rights of the American citizens are the ones that disrespect the flag. In any case, I believe that too high a priority is placed on the flag and the country. If you asked the Founding Fathers whether it was the Flag of the United States of America and the Republic for which it stands that was more important, or Liberty and Justice for all, I'm sure it's not hard to guess what their answer would be.

Then Unit A's support is cut, and units A, C, and D hold in their positions.

Hmm... Game: Alpha Centauri 2. Hands down. It is a travesty that the best Turn Based Strategy game of all time never did get a sequel. Book: Insurrection, by David Weber and Steve White. They wrote quite a lot of books for the Starfire Universe, but never wrote a specific sequel to the only one I really liked. Film: Can't think of one. All the movies I've liked either got sequels anyway or were one-shot pieces. A sequel to Finding Neverland would be pretty hard to make, after all. I don't suppose I'd mind seeing a sequel to Shaun of the Dead, if they could make it, though.

Well, they could just do what heroin users do and inject the talcum powder the dealer sold them and just pretend that its heroin. "

I know it doesn't make any difference to the actual results, but my order A Ser S A Tri actually falls under rule 8, and is legal, rather than being illegal under rule 9. A Tri was ordered to support, not ordered to move, so it can be supported by a unit that only mentions its province. This is stated more explicitly on page 7, under the first bulletpoint of "Supporting a Unit": "A unit that is ordered to hold, convoy, support, or not ordered at all can recieve support in holding its position".

If by last game I played, you mean the last game I ran on my computer, it would be Europa Universalis 2 (with the Not So Independent Scenario mod). If you mean last game I completed, then that would be Donkey Kong Country 3, on my SNES Emulator.

I don't think I could date a smoker. I'd much prefer a date had a less smelly habit, like cocaine. I mean, jeez, if you're gonna take nicotine, at least make the air nice for everyone else and just inject it. "

The only thing I dislike about smoking is that smoking in public is perfectly legal (or it was, in the case of some places), but you can be arrested for engaging in public bukkake. The hypocrisy of it all!