Rock band tells India's youth "to shut up and vote..."

Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ) has been roped in to stir the urban youth to vote by Tata Tea-sponsored 'Jaago Re (Wake up)! One Billion Votes' campaign and Bangalore-based NGO Janaagraha.

The rock-band campaign to 'wake up' the youth is called Shut Up and Vote.

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'It's interesting how some good folks in the blogosphere are already dishing out their cynicism and quasi-intellectual gibber about the campaign and its effectiveness,' the band says in its blog TAAQin.

'They yap about India and China, about the economy and their parsimony, about the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, about Padma Shris and Padma Laxmi. But hey, just for a minute, get off that high horse and do something people.' Full story...

See also:

1. Indian author Chetan Bhaga tells youngsters: enjoy life and don't worry about failure.
2. Hotel Taj: Icon Of Whose India ? (must-read)
3. If voting is a civic duty, how about NOT voting?
4. When Hollywood makes you feel guilty for not voting...
5. Voting is stupid ...

It doesn't matter who gets elected, says Lew Rockwell, the State always wins...

What we've seen in the last week is the state at work – and by the state, I do not mean a particular set of leaders. If we watch carefully, we can gain insight into what the state is and why our fundamental problem extends far above and below the political party system. 

The moment is complicated by the upcoming election, so some people are distracted by the circus of McCain vs. Obama and all the characters associated with that silly little battle. What they are looking at is really the veneer. It is a covering designed to prevent you from seeing what the state is and why it matters.

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The U.S. has never hosted a personal state. The president was always to be the manager and overseer of a tiny state that ruled with the permission of the people and the lower orders of government: the people and government are one, and this would serve as a check on power. Of course this was a mistake, a reflection of the naïveté of the classical liberal position. 

In time, the U.S. took on all the features of an impersonal nation state. It developed a permanent bureaucracy, especially after the tragic end of the "spoils system." It developed a money machine and monopolized and created its own currency. It began to host its own unelected military that was a "professional" fighting force and not a citizen militia. It became home to a million hangers-on who made the state their careers and their source of economic security. Full story...

See also:

• Berlusconi: so what's new? Same old shit!!
• The Japanese are not fools...
• Voting is stupid ...
• I Don't Vote, says George Carlin...
• Please vote for me...(Must see)
  

Politics Brings Out the Fools in Nearly All of Us...

Here's a letter that (Donald J. Boudreaux) sent today to the Washington Post:

George Will is correct: most of Barack Obama's economic ideas are idiotic ("Little Rhetoric Riding Hood," August 24). But, along with many of John McCain's equally moronic ideas, they sell big-time - which is the very reason these candidates persistently deliver such preposterous lines.

Washington is no less diligent than is Hollywood at satisfying the public's demand for heroic adventures, epic fantasies, and fairy tales. Each production stars supercilious superstars portraying characters boasting magical powers and godly goodness.

The only difference between Hollywood and Washington is that, while audiences understand Hollywood's leading men and women to be acting, this same ability to distinguish fantasy from fact disappears when the executive producer is Uncle Sam.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

Source

See also:

• Berlusconi: so what's new? Same old shit!!
• Voting is stupid ...
• I Don't Vote, says George Carlin...
• Please vote for me...(Must see)

Obama and McCain: two names for more of the same...

On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, voters across the United States will take to the polls in hopes of determining their political and economic futures. Fat chance. The two major party candidates are so close in terms of policy positions that only a two-party system could produce two "opposition" candidates so nearly identical to one another. Both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama advocate managed, rather than free, international trade, although each candidate's rhetoric is expertly designed to appeal to his respective political base. Both candidates voted to again canonize Big Brother government by reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act in 2006. Both accept as a given the productivity-discouraging fractional slavery of the federal income tax. As best-selling author and historian Tom Woods snidely remarked in a speech on September 5, 

On taxes, the Democrat favors a top income tax rate of 39.5 per cent and the Republican favors a top rate of 35 per cent. Well ain't democracy grand? We get to debate a whole four and a half percentage points. We'd better spread this system around the world!

And indeed, both candidates seem poised to continue spreading away, with each man supporting the expansion of the United States' global hegemony, already enforced by the troops manning the more than 800 U.S. military installations in 140+ countries around the world.  More...

See also:

1. It doesn't matter who gets elected, says Lew Rockwell...
2. The Japanese are not fools...
3. Voting is stupid ...
4. I Don't Vote, says George Carlin...

Voting is stupid ...

American kids "elect" Barack Obama overwhelmingly!!!

It's official. At least for the kids! The Scholastic Presidential Election Poll results are in: Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama won with 57 percent of the vote, to 39 percent for Republican nominee Senator John McCain.

The poll was open to kids from grades 1 to 12 in Scholastic News and Junior Scholastic magazines. Almost 250,000 (a quarter of a million) kids voted by paper ballot or online at www.scholastic.com/news. The poll closed on October 10.

Since 1940, the results of the student vote have mirrored the outcome of the general election all but twice: In 1948, kids voted for Thomas E. Dewey over Harry S. Truman. In 1960, more students voted for Richard M. Nixon than for John F. Kennedy. In 2000, a majority of student voters chose George W. Bush, mirroring the Electoral College result, but not the result of the popular vote.  More...

See also:

• The Japanese are not fools...
• Please vote for me...(Must see)
• Voting is stupid ...
• I Don't Vote, says George Carlin...
• Obama and students in a Bronx high school...

Infinite arrogance, infinite incompetence...

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Nothing works, government-wise. Ponder health care, if you can stand it. One approach to keeping people alive and healthy is national health care, which many countries, such as France, have and it works. It’s because grown-ups run it. Or you can have private health care, which the US had and, though it was way overpriced and unwieldy, strangled by paperwork and corruption, more or less worked, sort of.So the gummint comes up with Obamacare, that doesn’t work at all. The feds can’t even write the freaking computer program. Yes, here in the world’s greatest technological power. We ought to contract the software to Guatemala, which couldn’t do it either but would cost less.

The War on Drugs, another disaster. A half century, billions of dollars, countless stupid laws, Mexico a war zone. Result? Every drug known to man, woman, or hermaphrodite is for sale at great prices in every high school in America. Another triumph of private enterprise over governmental regulartion. If Washington tried to provide free drugs, it couldn’t come close. No one would be able to get so much as an aspirin.

Race relations. Another charred ruin. Better than a half century into the Great Society, huge numbers of blacks live trapped in urban Bantustans, Newark, Detroit, Birmingham, Philadelphia, barely literate if at all, unemployed and unemployable, bastardy almost universal, utterly dependent on federal charity, without the slightest hope that any of this will change. If Washington had deliberately tried to make a greater mess, it couldn’t have.

Open borders. Another train wreck started, stage-managed, and supported by Washington. The merest glance at the outside world would show that mixing immiscible peoples regularly results in strife, division, decline and, often, civil war. Coming to a theater near you. Merry Christmas. Full story...

Related posts:

1. Trust in governments slides to record low amid U.S. spy programs...
2. America’s police state: Worse than communist North Korea?
3. Aaron Swartz - SOPA and the day we fight back...
4. US the biggest threat to world peace in 2013 – poll...
5. A tale of two leaders...
6. Europe is slowly strangling the life out of national democracy...
7. Fury with MPs is main reason for not voting...
8. Swiss government is the most trusted worldwide...