Slashdot Mirror
McCain, Clinton Win New Hampshire
Well the title says it. I figured some of you guys might be interested in the results of New Hampshire. Next week is Michigan, where I live. Somehow I don't expect any of the campaigns to ring me up.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Michigan was stripped of its delegates because the state Dem party moved up the primary without the blessing of the DNC. The candidates have already agreed not to spend any time there. On the republican side: If McCain can beat Romney in MI, Romney will be against the ropes and will likely have to consider withdrawing from the race, as it'd be an embarressing defeat.
That's right: Clinton took 9 delegates and Obama took 9 delegates in NH. Edwards took the remaining 4.
This was not a popular election. It's about the delegates. How the press could report this as anything other than a tie is beyond me.
There's no shame in second place in a Democratic primary. So long as you take 15% of the vote, you get delgates, and you are not a "loser" by any stretch of the imagination. Especially in such a tiny state. It takes over 2000 delegates to be nominated.
And don't forget, Democrats have "super delegates," that are unpledged, to spoil a close race towards the Will of The Party, regardless of what the popular vote says.
Here's a good look at it: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/02/delegate.explainer/index.html
But all the major news outlets cover our civic process like it was a soap opera. The primary reporting is just incompetent and wrong, if not bloody-minded lying.
--
Toro
States allocating pledged delegates to date:
Iowa, Wyoming (GOP), New Hampshire
Republican Delegates (1,191 needed to win nomination)
Candidate Delegates
Rudy Giuliani 0
Mike Huckabee 31
Duncan Hunter 1
John McCain 7
Ron Paul 0
Mitt Romney 29
Fred Thompson 3
Total 71
Democratic Delegates (2,026 needed to win nomination)
Candidate Delegates
Hillary Clinton 24
John Edwards 18
Mike Gravel 0
Dennis Kucinich 0
Barack Obama 25
Bill Richardson 0
Total 67
WAAAAAYY too early to tell...we almost have to wait til Super Tuesday, because none of the front-runners are even halfway out.
Because it is not part of the Constitution, not part of the official process.
Our two ruling parties have so taken over our process that what they do is effectively the process. We hold multimillion dollar conventions to select the candidates on the taxpayer's dime, and they are really just functions of the two parties. Minority leader, majority leader, minority/majority whip, etc., all just a power structure within our government invented by the two parties, yet they get paid more, get a bigger staff, etc. The only legitimate one is the House Speaker.
The electoral college is peculiar to us because of our original situation. It is designed for the now unfortunately antiquated idea that the individual states are sovereign and have only created a federal government for their common defense and other things best managed as a group, such as coining money and international relations.
But we don't try to export our way of democracy. Notice that Iraq and Afghanistan have parliamentary systems.
I highly suggest that everyone have a look at votebyissue.org. I consider voting to be my civic duty, and so I spent about an hour on Saturday reading through the blurbs and checking off boxes. The results were surprising. Before taking the quiz, I considered Edwards to be my top choice, followed by Obama. Surprise, surprise-- Clinton and Kucinich were actually better aligned with my views (although Edwards was still on top). Ron Paul was the only Republican to make it into the "positive points" column, and I apparently despise Tancredo. Obama ended up being dead last for Democrats; just about tied with Ron Paul.
BTW, if you don't agree or disagree with a blurb, leave the checkbox blank. The software takes this into account at the end. The instructions were not clear on this. After I had my tallies, I formulated a simple tally system-- +1 point if I agreed, -1 point if I disagreed, and -.5 if I did not answer. I did not answer if I thought the candidate was being purposefully vague.
This is worth your time, and much more time-efficient than trawling through the fluff on the candidates' websites.
Personally, I am for dismantling the federal govt. more towards what it was Constitutionally designed to be. The bloated, self-serving, overreaching, intrusive behemoth that it has become is something I and many (I think) would like to see reigned in.....and have it more like the founders of the country envisioned.
I kinda like the freedoms that used to come with the US....and the choices of lifestyle presented by letting local and state govts rule based on the needs and wants of the people that occupy them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
...when he pointed out that the price of a barrel of oil in gold is the same as it was in 1992. Everyone can understand that...
That's a coincidence.
The price of oil happened to be low in 1992, and the price of gold was recovering from its massive collapse in the early 80's. They both happen to be really high now. It's a coincidence. You could find such coincidences for any two commodities.
Someone just went back and found a particular point when the price of oil to gold happened to be the same as they were in 2007. You are mistaken to think that this entails that the price of oil to gold has been historically stable, which it isn't, an obvious falsehood that this bogus point had obviously been intended to imply.
Think of it this way: Is Ron Paul trying to say that the price of oil would not have been going up over the past few years if we were using gold-backed dollars rather than fiat dollars? In order for that to be true, wouldn't the change in the price of oil have to be explained by inflation in the fiat dollar? Now, the price of oil is around four times what it was in 1992. Has there been fourfold inflation in the US dollar since 1992?
No, there hasn't. None of this adds up. It's not just a little wrong in the details, it's utterly off-base from the start. The next time anyone tries to peddle any of this gold standard stuff to you, use your head and maybe even google.