Absolutely right!  This is the primary problem in our country and in fact the West in general.  It's where I was going with the whole technology thing.  As televisions became more prominent in households, books and reading became much less so over time.  People cared more about what happened on Leave it to Beaver or Charles in Charge or Lost than national and world afairs.  If the news wanted to stay profitable, they had to give the people a reason to tune in.  They had to compete. 

I wonder if the emergence and prominence of the internet will change things for the better.  Now someone can read any article by almost any newspaper with relatively little effort.  The world is changing but will people become more informed from the internet or will the internet evolve into the mindless drivel (with a few exceptions) that is television.  I guess it has the interactive aspect going for it.  At least one can put their thoughts down and bounce them off other people and have them challenged.  This at least is a good thing. 

My one plea to people who don't care enough to try and learn what you can about the "issues" is to stay home on election day.  If you don't care enough to learn about the world, why would you care enough to vote to affect it?  Stay home...  I'm sure something good will be on TV. 

Locus Coeruleus (9/8/2008)

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Ask the Canadians jerm....

The Conservatives now fill 127 of the 308 seats in Parliament. The Liberals have 95, Bloc Quebecois 48, the New Democrats 30 and the Greens have one seat. Three seats are held by independents, and four are vacant.

Canadian Prime Minister Dissolves Parliament

Electoral legislation that Harper helped enact after he came to power in 2006 fixed the date for the next election in October 2009, but a loophole allows the prime minister to ask the governor general to dissolve Parliament.

The October 14 election will be Canada's third ballot in four years.

Must be nice to have such a flexible system!!!!

If you like it... well tough .  I think that is a major flaw with the parlimentary system, and then made worse by multiple parties.  Do they ever get anything done?  Like I've said, the more parties you have the less efficient government is.  Whether that's a good thing or not is the question I suppose.  It's a spectrum.  On the one side you have authoritarianism with one party and on the other you have pure democracy which is inefficient.  It's like in a Dgame when everyone has to vote on something, we never get past the first hundred turns but when we set up a dictatorship, things move along nicely... unless there's some other glitch in the system.  Anyway, I'm not advocating a single party dictatorship because in reality there is a significant loss of freedom.  Two parties give us choices yet don't bog us down in us going a hundred different directions.  There's only two directions to choose from.

Not sure how serious you are but I'll respond as though it were serious.  With rights come responsibilities.  If you are not responsible to know what you are voting for, you shouldn't vote.  Not saying you should have your right to vote taken away, just that you shouldn't excercise that right.  We've become so preocupied with rights that we've forgotten our responsibilities. 

Lowest public approval rate of a Congress EVER and still getting lower.