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Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President
At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."
Okay kids - let's add some more!
and your doubt will be fruitful and hav a point
otherwise, you still need to believe in democracy
churchill: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
rural voters don't deserve to have more rights than urban voters, which is exactly what you are asking for, no matter how you frame it, and it is still wrong. any, ANY disproportionate influence leads to injustice and abuse of power
for example: guns. i grew up rural, and i live urban now. i shot shotguns in the swamp behind the house with my granddaddy, a mile from our nearest neighbor, at gamebird and targets. i understand the need for your own form of protection when the police are half an hour away
now, living in an urban environment, i see the other side of guns. guns are not only tools of virtue. they are frequently tools of mayhem. guns are not always in the hands of those who intend good, nor is there some magic wand which can tell who should or should not have a gun. such that in an urban environment, it makes sense to let the police be armed, and everyone else to have suppressed gun ownership. it simply cuts down on needless death
and, as a side issue: no, arming only the police is not a formula for fascism. in fact, it is those who appeal to visceral force, who appeal to the gun, who are more likely fodder for embryonic fascist movements, not the police. really, read your history. random guys in the country is not a protection from fascism, it is the soil in which fascism grows
back to the larger point: gon control is the approach to guns as it exists in europe. europe is mostly urban (and yet still grapples with the disproportionate power their rural farmers still wield, to the detriment of free trade agreements). meanwhile, the usa has been mostly rural throughout its history, but is shifting to majority urban in recent years. therefore, it is natural that attitudes towards guns will shift from a rural attitude to an urban attitude, and we will experience a watershed moment in the coming decades against gun ownership
and it is simply a rural versus urban dynamic. currently, there are people dying in urban centers for the sake of a rural legal approach to gun ownership. in the future, there will be people dying in rural areas for the sake of an urban approach to gun ownership. its the majority deciding the legal approach. and either rural, or urban folk, suffer for the benefit of the other. for those of you want to keep your guns, urban blood is on your hands. for those of you who wish to curtail guns, rural blood will be on your hands. simple as that really
personally it would be ideal if you could own a gun in the country, but not in the city. but this is nearly impossible to enforce
again, let me get this absolutely clear to you: for the sake of the current (flawed) interpretation of the second amendment, there are needless deaths every day in urban settings. right now, for the disproportionate influence of rural people, urban people die
the second amendment referred to posses in the countryside against native americans and british and french colonial forces. its completely taken out of historical context in reference to modern gun ownership needs, really. i don't know why the second amendment is so depended upon as a some sort of supporter of the rural right to have guns. are you the minutemen? the second amendment does not support the current context in which gun ownership is used
i look forward to the day when a few rural folks die for having their gun rights curtailed, rather then the status quo we have today, in which a lot of urban folks die for the sake of irresponsible gun ownership
gun rights is a hardcore rural versus urban dynamic, with lots of needless death in the balance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Obama planned his first public appearance since his presidential victory for Friday -- a meeting with economic advisers to discuss the nation's financial woes that Americans listed as their top concern on Election Day. Obama plans to talk to the news media Friday afternoon following the meeting, aides said. He and his wife, Michelle, will visit the White House on Monday at President Bush's invitation, aides said. http://kingpahat.blogspot.com/
I love the bat-shit crazies who think that dual-citizenship can bar someone from being president. With that logic, the UK can prevent everyone from being president, by declaring all US citizens are UK citizens as well. Idiots.
editted and worked over though:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1021887&cid=25678743
people give me flak for this, i do it alot. but i don't understand what their problem is, there's no such thing as self-plagiarism. if the remark is applicable to the subject matter, which it is, what's the problem?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
as much as the thought of the inequality of the ec has I can not bring myself to support moving the US to they tyranny off the majority if but for one small slice of our world that i was shown by jay leno.
jay leno runs that Great American Pop Quiz every once in a while. it's neat to see what most normal americans right off the street of nyc do and do not know. when the average american knows who teddy roosevelt was, knows who's faces are carved into mount rushmore, who knows why the south tried to leave the union, when the average american knows all that with out needing to wrack their brain then i'll agree that the ec has gone the way of the dodo.
until someone can prove that the common man has the intelligence and the great concern to educate themselves properly on what is going on in the world so they can make an informed decision as to who to chose for president then i am all for the ec. i would prefer it if there were more "faithless" among them to be honest.
~z
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