American politics; faith and secularism, NaNaWriMo and Gaming

[tcpip]

The new leader of the United States is wasting no time; with a number of the most troubling laws (restriction on stem cell research, oil drilling in the wilderness) being slated for veto when he actually takes office. Perhaps in time a federal intervention on same sex marriage will also occur given the results of Proposition 8 in California et al. lederhosen provides a list of the organisations sponsoring the constitutional revision (now longer available on google cache), which indicates a hefty number of conservative and fundamentalist Christian organisations - once again determined to inflict their notions of sacredness unto others in secular law. slit takes up the problems related to race baiting in the referedum in an intelligent and future-orientated manner.

Going back in posting history, I've found the post when I last did NaNaWriMo; which incidentally was the time when I'd been given the 'OK' to do a game based on Greg Costikyan's Barbarian Kings. Now, two years later, I find that I that I'm working on the game as NaNaWriMo (now at twenty five thousand words) and the novel (only a third completed after being abandoned in early 2007) is being double-checked by the good phoebe82 who seems to know something about the region. In other gaming-related news, I'm being interviewed by a NZ gaming 'blog, played Middle-Earth Role Playing on Friday, and continued the RuneQuest Prax story on Sunday.

Comments

[cluebyfour.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's much further damage that either Bush or Congress could cause post-election. Sometimes Congress would get away with voting itself a nice little raise before adjourning, but another amendment put paid to that practice (by not allowing the raise to take effect until after the next election). Bush can't really do much either--any executive order he'd sign could be reversed by Obama. All he can really do is pardon people convicted of Federal crimes.

I'd think you'd run into diminishing returns by shortening it further. As it is, the new President has about 10 weeks to assume control of the executive, form his Cabinet, make appointments, etc. That's a hell of a lot of work, especially when transitioning from a two-term administration.

Maybe it's a general flaw in two-party systems--the winning party in the election is doing all of the transition work, whereas in parliamentary democracies where coalition governments are common, the load is spread out a bit. That is, perhaps you're not replacing everyone each time an administration changes like we do.