Wisconsin Legislator: Being a single mother constitutes child abuse

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Or we could get rid of all of them and just go right to a nice, clean dictatorship. Or maybe a monarchy.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The downside to that is that if the party selection procedure is corrupt as hell, then there are going to be significant political problems down the road.  Once a certain party gets entrenched in a region, someone with sufficient influence over the selection process can then make sure their political buddies get safe seats.

Not that there aren't problems with other selection systems, of course, but that is a notable downside to our current system.  It ensures a core group of "professional politicians", usually with a similar ideological outlook, can have an outsized impact on the political system.

In the end that doesn't seem all that different from the current situation in the US... with the exception of a few like this nut from Wisconsin or Dennis from Cleveland. Sure sometimes an individual kicks up a storm and gets their way, like McCain and the Gang of Four or Olympia Snowe... but the victories were tiny and they're all gone now. Most of the politicians follow the party line. Most of the powers in the party are familiar (like GWB's boys or Obama's). I can't really think of a situation where the professional politicians were KO'd by an individual... at least not since the Bull Moose party.

The one advantage I've seen is that the parties here seem to shun the more crazy members because one crazy individual can taint the whole party. You don't give the rabid religious nut with diarrhea of the mouth a position, because it will get shit all over the whole party.

Good and bad on both sides I agree... I'd just never really considered it before.

This change in location has seriously poked some holes in my head

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/wisconsin-senator-who-introduced-anti-single-parent-bill-says-women-trained-lie-about-planne

Grothman: There's been a huge change over the last 30 years and a lot of that change has been the choice of the women. There's a reason why in the 50s and the 60s you had less than ten percent of the births illegitimate, and now we're over 40 percent. It's not that there weren't abusive men in the 40s or there was a problem with child support. It is the popular culture, led by the social service professions, who are saying...

Colmes: Well tell me what you would change.

Grothman: I think the first thing we do is that we should educate women that this is a mistake.

Colmes: You think women need to be educated, are they not smart enough on their own?

Grothman: They do have to be educated, because right now the culture encourages a single motherhood lifestyle.

Colmes: You think women choose to be single moms...

Grothman: Oh absolutely

Colmes: You think women want to have homes without fathers? You think women look to the opportunity to have to raise kids and not be able to get work because they have to stay home and take care of the kids. Women want to do this?

Grothman: I think a lot of women are adopting the single motherhood lifestyle because the government creates a situation in which it is almost preferred.

....

Colmes: According to data published in USA Today, at least four in ten pregnancies in every state are unwanted or mistimed. According to the analysis that was released last May, more than half of pregnancies in 29 states and the District of Columbia were unintended, 38 to 50 percent were unintended in the remaining states. This mitigates against the argument that women are purposefully wanting to have kids. Their unintended for the most part. They're unintended pregnancies, which is the argument for health care services and birth control for women.

Grothman: I think you undersell these women.

Colmes: Undersell them?

Grothman: Undersell them. I think when you have an epidemic of this great proportion, people are not so dumb that it's surprising when they get pregnant. I think people are trained to say that 'this is a surprise to me,' because there's still enough of a stigma that they're supposed to say this.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

More politicians = less consensus.

I leave that up to you whether that is a good or bad thing.

In my personal book, it's a good thing, no matter how I look at it.  In the 21st century, inefficiency is your only defense against tyranny.

Only problem there is that the executive is efficient to the point of making "efficiency" a sinister sounding word.

What the hell does that have to do with what I said?  The president isn't the system.

Just that the law as written is much less a tool for tyranny than the actual executing part. If assassinating U.S. citizens was a task that 535 people all had to reach a consensus on, it'd be much less likely to occur than having it sit in the hands of one person. Maybe it's time for a 50 president panel with no "decider". I'm well with you that inefficiency's about the last shot we have.