Another would be a none of the above vote where anyone on the ballot couldn’t run again in that cycle election. It’s been said that then we wouldn’t be able to elect anyone but I bet after the professionals were kicked to the curb some local businessman or history teacher or some other such regular person that talked common sense would be voted in.

They may be less pleased with their local dynamic duo of U.S. senators: I always knew my late aunt to be laid back and easy going. Except in one instance: she really, really, really, really did not like her state’s junior senator of the time.

Who knew Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had so much potential as an industrial abrasive?

First thing Franco did when he took over Spain is to give each farmer [peasant?] a pair of breeding pigs. Spain very quickly self sufficient in food.

This video was done forty years after the fact? Those persons active at the time of the war seem to be quite well-dress and well-nourished, without a whole lot of animosity of rabid ideology. Time heals all and they are all old-timers?

You can already see it with regards to the media–When I was a kid, the conventional wisdom was “If they printed it, it must be true…”. Now? More of the people I talk to are looking at the papers or newscasts and going “Huh… Can’t spot the lies; they’re getting better at hiding ‘em…”. Little old ladies used to watch Walter Cronkite like he was Moses come down from the mountain; can you think of a single news “personality” out there today who has similar automatic credibility?

Things are changing, and I just don’t know where they’re going to go.

Otherwise, cultivate your good feelings regarding UN hegemony refracted through Chinese power.

The parallels between Franco and Pinochet are… Interesting. Both were high-ranking military officers who faced imminent left-wing tyranny, and dealt with that relatively humanely, as opposed to the paths taken by their far more socialist exemplars in other parts of the world. Mussolini might have managed to fall into company with them, but he fell for Hitler’s siren song.

Something to be said, I think, for Franco and Pinochet’s performance, compared to varied other dictators, most of whom were on the left end of the conventional political spectrum. Franco was far to the right of Hitler, with his religiousity and support for the Catholic church, and I think you can make a case for him being an actual positive influence on Spain–As was Pinochet on Chile

Personally, I have a high opinion of Franco. Given the situation Spain was in, I think we can agree that he piloted on probably the best possible path given the likely options available. We don’t have to think he was a saint to think he was better than the alternatives.

The bipolar world is going to reach a point where the McCains and the Schiffs have utterly discredited themselves, with the center majority. When that happens, we’re probably going to see the death of one or both political parties, and something else arise. The last time this sort of disconnect between the establishment of the parties and the voting public happened, we wound up losing the Whigs, gaining the Republicans, and having a Civil War. Something similar ain’t out of the question today.