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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."
And the point of this story is...?
Slow news day?
How is this newsworthy? "United States electoral process proceeds as planned! In other news, sun rises. Film at 11."
here come the 0bamabots.
What your saying is that McCain has an outside shot?
Why is this piece of tripe on Slashdot? You can read this stuff all you want on CNN.com or any other "news" channel. I thought Slashdot was "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
This doesn't matter.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
A while ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I had to take the piss.
So all is left is to clear up the right wing conspiracy theories about Oboma's birth origin. (However McCain was born in Panama so I am not sure who would be left...)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Lots was made about Sarah Palin being on the Republican ticket. In 1972, Roger MacBride--a faithless Republican elector from Virginia--decided that he could not in good conscience vote for Nixon. He cast his vote for John Hospers & Tonie Nathan on the Libertarian ticket, marking the first time a woman had ever received an electoral vote.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
they still had a little aristocratic doubt in the back of their minds, and put this ridiculous electoral college system in place. an arostocratic hedge. a little doubt in the power of democracy. a fuck up
al gore should have rightfully been president of the united states in 2000, and for all that you can accuse al gore of potentially screwing up (what, too much environmental regulation?), there's nothing he could have done to the usa as bad as what gw bush did. our economy, our international image, our own faith in our govt to protect our freedoms, torture, preemptive war, etc
of course, i understand in reality the chance of getting rid of the ec is incredibly difficult, its too entrenched. but maybe at least we can, on a state by state basis, convince the states that ec votes should be awarded proportional to popular vote, like maine and nebraska do now (i think). so texas will suddenly cough up a bunch of democratic votes, but so will new york suddenly cough up some republican votes. isn't it necessary that we star thinking less partisan? is it fair to people in austin that texas is viewed as a republican block? is it fair to people in upstate new york that new york is viewed as a democratic block? don't these people's voices deserve equal share in the vote for president?
of course, if texas passed such a law, but not new york, or new york passed such a law, but not texas, this obviously skews results for republicans or democrats. in which case, you'd still need to make sure the key swing states that traditionally, now, deliver breadbaskets of electoral votes for one party or another, all start delivering proportionally on the same presidential election, so it would have ot happen in one 4 year span
incredibly difficult still, but doable. and do we another gw bush presidency to convince you it needs to be done?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What your saying is that McCain has an outside shot?
Judging by some red-neck rants on Christian blogs he is not the only person who might have a shot at the president elect.
Okay kids - let's add some more!
Seriously, could we get any more fawning over President-elect Obama? I don't recall Slashdot carrying this level of minutiae for either of the prior Bush terms.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There are instances in history where the electoral college went against the will of the people. This would be news in that instance. Otherwise it's just business as usual.
Mr. Hopey Changey is filling his cabinet with storied Washington insiders.
Woo hoo.
Can't wait to see how when we're having problems two years from now the Obamabots figure out ways to blame McChimpyHallibushHitlerCheney anyway.
Get this: Obama didn't inherit any problems. He turned off online contribution credit card validation and recording, sleazed his way to $300 million in contributions, and BOUGHT EVERY DAMN PROBLEM HE WILL FACE
Maybe bush will declare martial law, and then when this space station breaks away from earth, and destroys our whole fleet by employing cybernetically altered telepaths, he'll turn the earth's defense grid against the earth, and it will be up to Obama to save us all by destroying all the platforms before they can create a scorched earth scenario... ...or...
Maybe he'll just be another elected official, like all the previous presidents, and isn't really an evil puppet as some people have tried to fantasize...
Wouldn't it be something if bush was just a normal guy?
--Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com
The real reason:
By the end of the day, you'll see hundreds of posts to this thread. Many rants about Bush. Comments about the evangelical Christians and their agenda. Comments about bailouts. Etc...
This will draw many many eyeballs to advertisements and clicks. The end of the quarter is coming up and they need try to make the numbers. Even then, I'm sure there's going to be layoffs at Slashdot next year, too. Then, we'll really see the dupes!
So, what you're saying is that this is just 1 more way that my vote doesn't count?
Listen, I understand the whole 'idiots can't be trusted to vote' thing, but the system is just one step short of only letting the rich vote. (I don't actually agree with the idiots thing, but I understand it.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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
Would there have to be a special election? ....?
Would Bush/Cheney stay in office until
The Speaker becomes President only a sitting President and VP are taken out?
Is this documented anywhere?
BTW, my question in no way hopes that such an event occur.
Get real, there is more slant here than on Digg at times. At least on Digg its mostly the users.
Normally I have politics unchecked but somehow my settings got forked.
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
The Capital is the city, Capitol is the actual building. They were not all in their Capitol buildings. It should say Capitals, since they were in their capital city.
we're talking about the presidential vote, the electoral college. hello?
we're not talking about execution by vote. this isn't a science fiction convention
can you keep your emotional propaganda in your pants please?
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/
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
Someone please explain that sentence to me, because to me it sounds like: "In the US, driving you car on the sidewalks is allowed -- in fact you'll go to jail in most states if you do so."
Ah, rednecks. All of those Sunday sermons they attended, for all of those years. "Turn the other cheek", "love thy neighbour" etc. And yet they want to shoot a black president. How Christian of them. If, of course, by "Christian", you mean "moron-tastic". Actually, try that substitution in other situations too. IT works well.
i'm glad you can spin scenarios where this is not true. and? supposition is not fact
the official record is al gore won the popular vote. please, show us contingencies and if-then conditions where this is not true. it doesn't mean anything
meanwhile, we also have the factual record of the abyssmal gw bush administration. can you tell me with a straight face al gore would have invaded iraq?
we need to remove the electoral college, to prevent another a gw bush: gw bush was not the democratic will of the american people, according to factual record (not your suppositions). yet he took the white house, and we paid dearly for this idiotic anachronistic tweak on our popular will called the ec
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Like most of the news articles on this, the date for counting the votes is wrong. It is January 8 - see House Joint Resolution 100.
Isn't that an EXACT Cut and Paste job trotted out by you and several other slashdot posters EVERY TIME an Obama story is raised here?
And, yes, the Pope DID get a lot of news even on slashdot.
And this story, such as it is, is not about Obama's breakfast repast.
Not include the first few presidents of the USA?
Either they were presidents or not.
Muslim Overlord.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
but it is an excellent point, and i thank you for it
yet another reason to get rid of the ec: its as outdated anachronism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was taught that it was because no one wanted to beat Washington's electoral record, but it is far more likely that Plumer simply did not like Monroe or his policies.
Posting with out proof reading since 2001.
as soon as we had a president "elected" who didn't actually win the popular vote.
Guess not.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
no? what's wrong with you?
then you need to put a sign on every door in your house saying "gun in here" or "gun not in here" to guide criminals, for being the inadequately enthusiastic gun owner you profess to be
have i successfully dismantled your bullshit propaganda about the a sign on my window yet?
think of an urban environment as a large house. on the street corners, are police. they are the guns that i need to keep me safe from crime. the gun is in safe, responsible, vigilant (and awake) hands. that it is in his hands, and not in my apartment, is the same as your gun being in your bedroom, but not your kitchen
see how that works?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/prespop.htm
educate yourself, then open your ignorant hole
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He still has not releases his college records and birth certificate. He may still have dual citizenship or he may have been born in Kenya. He refuses to prove otherwise. Maybe this will take effect in the trustee's decisions?
How does have to do with anything people who read slash dot would even care about?
In 1972, Tonie Nathan became the first woman to receive an Electoral College vote (for Vice President).
She was the 1972 Libertarian VP candidate, on the ticket with John Hospers. Roger MacBride, a "faithless" Republican elector from Virginia, refused to vote for Richard Nixon, and cast the vote for Hospers and Nathan.
the popular vote is all that should matter
everything you said is 100% correct, in a bogus system. which renders your points pointless
i don't know why you think its important to lecture me on the facts of the status quo, when the whole issue here is the status quo is wrong
i get it. i get everything you said. i got it before you said it
do you get it that the way things work is wrong? or at least that that is the fucking subject matter?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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
What? Did I miss hearing about that campaign promise? Do we get to choose? (I wouldn't mind a new Madone, Barack.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
so you go with what the ec decides, and you wind up convincing people that they are helpless cogs in a machine, their vote doesn't matter, its card tricks and fuzzy math, democracy is a joke
or you go with the tiniest perturbation in popular will, thereby convincing people they better damn well vote in the next election since every little vote counts so much, thereby reinstilling faith in democracy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
along with better health care, that i'd rather live in europe
i live in new york city. low gun ownership, low crime. strong police. my crime rate is probably lower than where you live. what crime we do have is bought in from states with weak gun control laws. the solution: fix those broken states and their bad laws
you are so pigheaded, blind, and propagandized on the issue of guns you are perfectly happy with mountains of needless urban deaths. for what? so you can go hunting on the weekend?
but i'm not a coward. i'm an american. i'm not going to run off to europe. i will stay here and fight for what is right, and fight to curtail gun rights, and defeat the pigheaded and blind like you, defeat you and your ignorance
its all demographics. as the usa skews more urban, gun rights will be curtailed
your days are numbered. your approach to "justice" is a historical anachronism
enjoy your lock on the law while it last. it won't last
gun ownership is not a way to protect you from crime. gun ownership is a way to put a hole in your foot. strong police: that's the path to low crime
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Many people, who have not carefully pondered the elctoral college system consider it an anachronism.
And it's true some of it's purposes, such as not requiringing candidates to make the perilous journey to all the states and to prevent religious institutions from swaying direct democratic vote have lost their original purposes. And indeed those aspects are gone. The electors are bound democraticly not by the legislative branch as was the norm.
But it's remaining features are of great interest to nerds. It's a very clever optimization problem with a very clever robust solution.
Some people think that the president should be chosen by a popular vote. But instead the design of the college is intended to optimize a different criteria. It's purpose is to choose the person who is best able to govern and is the most broadly representative, not the most popular.
here's the three central challenges it is addressing.
1) Whenever two candidates are sufficiently close in the popular vote as to both be highly popular, the best choice is not the one that eeks out a few extra votes, but rather the one that gathers the votes from the most geographically diverse base. The states form an excellent proxy for diversity.
2) the president is the man who must follow the will of the legislative branch. Like it or not we have a union formed around a senate which has a large small state bias. If you dislike the small state bias, then you should complain about the senate not the electoral college. The president has to work with the senate after he's elected so it makes a lot of sense to give the presidentially election a minor small state bias.
this 2=extra elector bias is quite small but insures that desiderata 1 and 2 are carried out.
3) the third function of the EC system is population normalization. The president is president of all the people, not just the ones that voted or even the ones that voted for for him. He's even the president of the ones that can't vote. (felons, children, women, and slaves all counted towards the population count since the begining). Thus no matter how many people cast votes, the total effect of tose votes is viewed as a sampling of the TOTAL population of the state. So the vote's effect is renormalized to the total state population by the EC system. Even if one person voted in CA, they get 45 electors.
As an example, in the last election, the turnout in Alaska was quite small for whatever reason. but they still get the full electoral count.
The real problem with the EC system is not that it does not perfectly track the popular vote--it's not trying to be an approximation of that criteria. It's really trying to bias the choice to someone who is both popular and diversely popular.
the real reason the EC system has some difficulties is the silly winner-take-all process.
instead of eliminating it here's a suggestion. remove the winner take-all division of electors. instead, take the top-two vote-getters and approtion the electors between them in each state according to the state's popular votes. Award a 2-elector bonus to the overall vote-getter.
this preserves the renormalization, the small state bias, and the diversity bonus. But it removes all the problems.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
1. IF absentee ballots were counted THEN gw bush would win the popular vote in 2000
verdict: maybe. maybe not. we'll never know. but its not a record of fact. maybe if i eat unicorns i'll fart rainbows. who knows? who cares? its all conjecture
2. IF the ec college were abolished THEN al gore would be president in 2000 and the usa would never have invaded iraq
verdict: about as certain as me farting after eating refried beans. pretty fucking solid fact
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
wat http://www.reddit.com/user/circletimessquare/
i'll grant you all of your pluses, and a few more conjectures if you like. now listen to my one big fat negative, and understand that your pluses are outweighed by an order of magnitude:
it weakens faith in democracy. if my vote doesn't matter, because i'm a democrat in texas or a republican in new york, why vote? why consider my government to be a representative of my will?
a democracy is strong because it manufactures legitimacy. if the people believe the government acts in their interests, then there is social stability, and therefore happiness and prosperity.
to the extent that people dislike what their government does, if they believe that there is some "medicine" in the system which warps their will, meaning their will has not been adequately and fully expressed, they ar eunhappy, there is social instability, we all suffer for that
all of your "pluses" of the ec are aristocratic instincts of your own. you don't trust the popular will. which means you yourself have anti-democratic impulses. which means you are part of the problem
other strong-arm governments depend upon force to impose the will of an aristocracy, a "special" class, onto the will of the majority. this of course creates injustice and unhappiness
you need to reexamine your instincts. you are flawed, because you don't trust the will of the people. the will of the people is infallible, because there is no way you can morally or intellectually stand apart from the people and judge them, because there is no morally or intellectually valid point of view that stands apart from the people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
flattered that someone puts all the effort in though
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i actually favor a county-by-county approach. in new york state, guns should be illegal in manhattan, but should be legal in herkimer county in the adirondacks
of course, it would be impossible to enforce, so it doesn't matter
either rural folks have to suffer for the sake of urban folks, or urban folks have to suffer for the sake of rural folks. there are a lot more urban folks, and more and more every day. therefore, rural folks need to suffer for the sake of urban folks. currently, the opposite is true, and there are hundreds of deaths every year due to that injustice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
stupid.
Read radical news here
read your history friend. random assholes with guns in the countryside is not a protection from fascism. random assholes with guns in the countryside is the soil in which embryonic fascist movements grow
fascism is all about force. depending upon a gun, registering in your mind a gun as a solution to a problem before you is the same root mental impulse as fascism
a gun on everyone's side is not the foundation of republic the respects your rights. a gun on everyone's side is simply gang and mafia warfare. of course, in the times of our founding fathers, almost everyone had a gun, because there were hostile native americans and french roaming around, and you lived in the middle of a wilderness
but conteomporary civic life is not like that those times. a gun in contemporary civic life is unnecessary at best, and an enemy of your freedoms at worst
arm the police, task them to protect us from crime. that they are going to be used to repress your freedoms in a fascist state is just as much reality as a bunch of mountain men are going to come down and protect us from the rise of hitler. if we are going to become a fascist state, gun ownership is not going to protect us from that, and more likely, in the more enthusiastic gun ownership circles, is where you will find the crucible of that fascism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, my parents ran up against this. 8 years ago, my dad at least for some reason went to the caucus for bush. (I have no idea why.. he *finally* figured out bush is crap about 2 years ago. My mom started voting 3rd-party straight away.) They picked bush, despite religious loons who packed the place to pick like pat robinson. Time to pick an elector! Oh guess what, the religious types had someone they were SURE would be great in the electoral college. Well, a few overheard them talking, they were in fact intending to send an elector and then have them vote for Robinson *anyway*, and throw out the caucus-chosen agenda and bring the religious-nut-prepicked agenda with them instead (this agenda is essentially to decide what the "official" party line is). Once they lost the elector vote and it became time to then vote on the actual agenda the religious nuts all left, they were NOT interest in trying proper voting, once they found they couldn't subvert it they left.
which is why i fight gun ownership, as the curtailment on our freedom that it is
i am motivated by the same principles as you. the difference between you and me is that gun ownership in your mind is joined at the hip with freedom. this is an absurdity
not all limits to your freedom are imposed by the state. drug addiction is a form of slavery. fear in urban communities by gun toting thugs is a form of slavery
the gun is a tool of slavery much more than it is a tool of freedom
that in your mind, gun ownership is so tightly wound up with the notion of freedom, is outright wrong, and sad
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The first dark-skinned, inexperienced, black-power Leftist is almost in charge! I think I'll feint!
Really folks...voting for someone _because_ of his skin color without asking questions is just as stupid as voting _against_ him without asking questions.
We were pretty good; 4-6% growth, you can barely find a jalopy on the roads, Walmarts everywhere were full and unless you live in a place the Liberals controlled (Detroit, LA, NYC) chances are you didn't know anyone out of work.
But change is good. Does everyone remember where the Unemployment Office is? Everyone take your seats for the Jimmy Carter express!
(People: civics are important, even when they're not made by Honda.)
LA, NYC, and other large metro areas already ban concealed carry so there aren't any gun-totting cowboys walking around at high-noon looking for someone to shoot. The urban people dying at the wrong end of a barrel are not dying from legally owned firearms, but by criminals who use the weapons illegally. Banning guns in the country will not disarm such criminals- and this fact disproves your entire argument. It is an interesting concept- rural vs urban, but is incorrect. The right to self-defense is a philosophical one and not a geographical one.
And yet they want to shoot a black president.
Well of course - he's a black muslim terr'ist - think about it:
1. Obama is black, Jesus was white.
2. Obama is muslim, Jesus was Christian.
3. Obama is a terr'ist, Jesus preached love of thy fellow man.
Isn't it obvious to you that Obama is the modern-day antichrist?!?!
If you had the chance to go back in time and kill Hitler, wouldn't you take it? This is really no different!
your observations are spot on... in a rural land, where the law is too far away to matter
in an urban environment, there's something called POLICE
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>
I would argue that the electoral college is designed that way because it's the states that elect the president, not the people. Remember, there was a real wariness about the federal government in general, probably more so than today. Nobody wanted the federal government to do anything exiting, like levy taxes on everyone.
Thus, the electoral college. The electors vote for the president, and those electors in turn are elected by the populace of the states. Those voters were essentially vetted by the states, since the electors were appointed by the current party structure(s)...and the voters, of course, had to pass certain criteria to vote.
It's yet another check. It hasn't really been used, but that doesn't mean it should be taken away.
If you see California and New York as a problem, then splitting the electoral vote of a state would be a solution. That would hurt the Democrats tremendously, so it won't happen; it would essentially marginalize all the cities.
The EC really works fine, for the most part. There's only been what, one issue in the last few hundred years, and that's hardly a reason to revise anything.
"Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President"
Now if he can just clear that pesky 'American Citizenship' requirement.
AFAIK, McCain's citizenship was initially also questioned, but was resolved within a week when the McCain campaign released all relevant documents. Sadly, the Obama campaign has refused to do so, I genuinely don't know why. They don't want to credit the wingnuts with a response? True, I could understand that, but when there remain a number of valid questions about Obama's claimed citizenship, I'd hope that everyone would want to put these questions to rest ASAP:
- According to Obama's Kenyan Grandmother, and the Kenyan government, he was born in Kenya. Multiple other sources point to two different Hawaiian hospitals, and the campaign-supplied certificate has serious questions as to its provenance.
- The circumstances of his mother's precise status (wherever he happened to be born) and her ability to legally transfer citizenship to her son based on the law at the time of his birth, are certainly muddled.
- Subsequent questions of his claimed citizenship also shadow the discussion: what was his own claimed citizenship while he attended Harvard? When he traveled to Pakistan in 1981, he is recorded as having an Indonesian passport...a country which didn't allow dual citizenship.
And for those who'll aggressively mod me down 'troll' because they disagree, censorship != winning a debate. As Harvey Krumpet might point out: "fakt 48: fakts still exist even if they are ignored "
-Styopa
either rural folks have to suffer for the sake of urban folks, or urban folks have to suffer for the sake of rural folks. there are a lot more urban folks, and more and more every day. therefore, rural folks need to suffer for the sake of urban folks.
So, what you're saying, then, is that you support the tyranny of the majority?
So much for your "Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie". The majority of us don't want to see it, so stop production. Immediately. You Filipinos will just have to suffer for the sake of the rest of us, so that we don't have to suffer through your crappy movie.
Oh, touched a nerve, did I? Good. Tyranny of the majority is never a good thing. Learn to live with, nay, even *love* your freedom.
In short, being *more free* is worth a little bloodshed. If the truth be told, I'd spill a little myself, to keep my freedoms, and the freedoms of my loved ones. Would you?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
She can parachute her in. :-)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Love it.
That is all.
But Jesus was a black jew who kicked a bunch of money-lender's asses...
One thing about this whole Obama citizenship debate that bothers me - how the *hell* do we even wind up in a situation where, *after* the election, someone is questioning eligibility? In order to run for President, you have to register your candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, or something, don' you? Why aren't candidates required to prove eligibility as a requirement to even *be in the election*?
We should not have a system where it's even remotely possible that someone could be elected when they aren't eligible.
That said, there really is no question that Obama is a natural citizen. After all, we know who his mother and grandmother are, and we know they are natural born citizens. By definition, if either of your parents are US citizens, you are a natural born citizen. Unless you don't think the woman he claims as his mother really is his mother.
The thing about a faithless elector - unless the election is so close that you can actually change it, there's no point to switching your ballot. If the guy you are voting against anyway is still going to be president, all you've done is slapped the President of the United States in the face and ticked off all of his partisans. Not a good place to be, I'm pretty sure. If you were able to change the outcome of your election, you better fear for your very life, because you will have made about 49 percent of the nation very, very angry. And according to the Supreme Court's recent ruling, we are a nation where the 2nd Amendment gives an individual right to bear arms.
That has far more to do with a corrupt and dishonest media than it does with democracy or our electoral system (or even the two parties). If the media actually covered the other candidates, or allowed them to participate in the media moderated and sponsored debates, people would know about them.
Actually, we don't have a true democracy here (thank goodness). We have a federal republic with checks and balances. And that's very fortunate, because democracy in its pure form is simply mob rule. We have some checks on the majority to keep it from just running rampant over minorities, which does technically break with pure democracy but is a very good idea. Ultimately, of course, at the end of the day super-majorities do have the ultimate say, because that's better than a king, but fortunately we do not have a pure democracy.
Now, if you are trying to claim that the will of the people is not properly represented within the system we currently have, I call bull and demand that you provide some evidence. Yes, our government is pretty terrible at the moment (and I think will be even worse when the new congress and administration come in), but it isn't because the government isn't reflecting us. Rather, it is because the government reflects us that it is so terrible. We as a society are becoming a bunch of lazy, uneducated, entitlement people who think we have a right to everything without actually working hard at learning and producing. We, as a society, don't bother to learn anything about economics, government (especially how ours is supposed to work), foreign affairs or anything else. Then we go to the polls and vote based on our ignorance (usually for whoever "looks presidential" or "will fix our lives" or "promised us X").
No, the sad fact is, our government is a VERY good reflection of what we are becoming as a society and a nation. Does congress look like a whiny, clueless island of misfit toys? Yes, but so do we.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Maybe I am just ignorant... But, why in the world do we even need an extra layer of complexity called the "electoral college"?
I honestly do not see the need for it. Everyone casted their vote. They picked Obama. He is the next president.
I can only justify the need for another round of voting, only if the average Joe's vote didn't count.
I wish to see the ban the electoral college except under the condition of death of a candidate or other unlikely happenings that cause the popular vote winning party not to be able to serve. I mean, most US citizens are educated enough to make their own decision and the voting systems are pretty much reliable (sort of), so the electoral college is unneeded except in those rare instances.
Minnesota does not allow this to happen after problems in the 2004 election. https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=208.08&year=2008 http://web.archive.org/web/20041217034158/http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5134791.html
The 20th Amendment lays out the process, though it may be argued that it's been modified by the 25th. However, the 25th doesn't specifically mention President-elect and VP-elect situations at all, only sitting officials.
Basically, in such a hypothetical situation, Congress gets to pick the successors, with a 2/3 vote probably being required.
The latest gimmick from the moveon.org folks is not to abolish the Electoral College (since the institution has proven quite resilient against such attacks), but rather to change state laws to join a compact that requires that the state's electoral vote be given to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of the vote in that state.
A handful of liberal states have already passed such laws.
I will be laughing myself silly at the next election won by a conservative (it isn't a question of "if", it is of "when", just as it is for liberal election victories) when an ultra-liberal state ends up giving its votes to that conservative because they joined this silly compact.
That, too, is not a question of "if", but rather of "when". Conservative-voting states are not likely to join this compact, so the only states that will have their people's vote overruled will be liberal-voting states.
Or, as I often put it, our representatives are far more representative than we'd like to admin.
It must have been posted here because Twitter won him the election.
The 14'th amendment was was created to be an option.
Arg, that's 'admit', not 'admin'. I hate typos.
The original wording the US Constitution stated the nominee with the most votes became the President. The person with the second highest vote count became the Vice President. That would make McCain the VP. This rule was eventually over-written in an Ammendment.
But... wouldn't that be interesting?
Look, I don't understand why it even matters to anyone.
Let's for a moment assume that due to some technicality - a misplaced paper, some obscure law, or other omission - Obama is actually not a lawful US citizen. However, what does it really changed? He had lived as one for all his adult life. He was successfully elected to the U.S. Senate as such, and served a term there. No legalistic trickery can change the fact that, for any purpose that matters, he is American.
The only reason to raise this topic that I can see is if one has a personal vendetta against the man. It certainly doesn't hold any place in any reasonable political discussion. In that sense, it's a bit like Godwin's Law - whenever someone raises the issue of Obama's citizenship in a discussion on him, it means that he lacks any substantial arguments, and is automatically disqualified.
1. Obama is black, Jesus was black.
2. Obama is Muslim, Jesus was a Jew.
3. Read some history, Christians have killed many more people than Hitler (Crusades?). And made much less effort to justify it to themselves - actually their justification was simple: if you are not christian, you die.
If Hitler was killed before his time, it is reasonable to assume someone else would have gone down that path. I wont get into how America is going down that path already - we just use $$ instead of bullets.
Now, if you are trying to claim that the will of the people is not properly represented within the system we currently have, I call bull and demand that you provide some evidence.
In other news, Illinois governer attempts to sell the senate seat... the will of the people have been met!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Can we wait until after somebody claiming to be a religious person actually takes a shot at the president-elect before we condemn an entire ethnic group (rednecks) for cultivating an environment which produces our fictional assassin?
Judging by what a more-or-less sensible non-partisan Obama sounds like, and what an incredibly goofy left-wing tool Biden has shown himself to be, I'd say conservative nut-jobs would not only be among the last to shoot at Obama, they'd probably be among the first to take a bullet for him.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The last function is corruption/election rigging firewalling.
Imagine there's a corrupt governor in, oh, let's say Illinois. The governor decides that dead people, dogs, cats, and goldfish need the vote and has decided they all need to make the same choice -- they're very grateful for their suffrage after all. In the electoral college system, the only votes the governor can bring to the table are Illinois, while in a popular system, he could alter the entire outcome through his rigging.
Also, when there's a close election, you only have to do recounts in close states. Florida was a mess, but imagine how much worse a NATIONAL recount would've been. I don't think there's enough gov't officials in the US to supervise that.
Lastly, because of the firewall effect, states can have more independent election processes from other states since, at best, they're only altering the results from their states, not at a national level, which was their right to begin with.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
The proposal is to de facto abolish the electoral college by having states pass laws dictating that their electors votes match the popular vote--meaning that if a state has 100 electors, and the winner gets 60% of the popular vote, then 60 electors vote for the winner and 40 for the loser. It's not the case that all the state electors vote for the winner, giving him or her a unanimous victory in the electoral college.
It's a flawed proposal for several reasons, but it's not a liberal conspiracy. It's an attempt to eliminate the situation where someone wins the popular vote and loses the presidency.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Shoes
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were smart guys. Why did they not choose a government based by the people, of the people and for the people, who chose not to throw shoes at at particular candidate?
And it would be a hoot and a half, with Larry King moderating.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This is NEWS, because I bet a majority of people who, either were NOT taught this, or, while in school, didn't pay attention, don't realize the beauty of the electoral college. By having such a design, this gives states with a low population, a stake in the election. Otherwise, you would only see those running for office, spending all their time in NY, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, California, Texas and a couple other states. USA, contrary to popular belief, is NOT a democracy, but a representative republic. It's more of the checks & balances that the founding fathers put in to our form of government.
Wrong. The proposal, the National Popular Vote, is essentially exactly what GP describes. One might legitimately dispute GPs characterization of which states are likely to pass the proposal, but GPs characterization of what the proposal is.
The early presidents who were not "natural born" were US citizens at the time of the Constitution's adoption.
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer." -Adolf Hitler
"We are one Nation, we are one People." -The One 'leader'
. Pudge is the hero of dumb fat fucks everywhere - in one of his journals he talks about how Obama has the least amount of experience of any candidate in 70 years, obviously forgetting who's in the White House right now.
Bush was a two term governor of a large state before he was elected.
Who is the dumb fat fuck now?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Can we wait until after somebody claiming to be a religious person actually takes a shot at the president-elect before we condemn an entire ethnic group (rednecks) for cultivating an environment which produces our fictional assassin?
I hate to break it to you, but you only have to come to where I currently am to find a fairly large group of people who claim to be religious who would love to take a shot at Obama. I see them pretty much every day here and they aren't exactly quiet about their desires.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
It's tempting to see everything the founding fathers did as wonderfully wise and perfect. But while they were quite amazingly far-sighted, they were also politicians cutting deals to get things done within the partisan realities of the day.
This is not far from the same thing. We just happen to view the deal-cutting through rose-colored glasses because those deals have resulted in one of the most durable and successful democratic nations in history.
And, it is always a good opportunity to review the principles behind those deals. The President was not intended to be a "direct representative of the people." That was the nightmare scenario for the founding fathers as they feared the "mob rule" of direct democracy.
The president today is very much the most powerful and direct representative of the people, but is this a reason to ditch the EC? No, quite the opposite--the stronger the office of the president gets, the more important it is to maintain some abstraction between that office and the mob of direct democracy.
It doesn't ensure the President is "representative of a diverse electorate" - it encourages the opposite; a President who can appeal to a few very narrow key demographics to push them over the top in a handful of states.
This is a common view of people who really only pay attention to the end of elections, where differences are magnified. But by the time a candidate has won a major party primary, all the truly niche or narrowly focused candidates have been weeded out. For example Ron Paul, for all his narrow fanatical support, did not even come close to winning his primary or the general election.
John McCain sought to distinguish himself from Obama by exploiting narrow issues, but that was AFTER he had already established himself as the Republican with the broadest national base of support.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I have co-workers that didn't know there were other candidates for president besides McCain and Obama...
That has far more to do with a corrupt and dishonest media than it does with democracy or our electoral system (or even the two parties). If the media actually covered the other candidates, or allowed them to participate in the media moderated and sponsored debates, people would know about them.
Really?? You guys have never heard of Hillary Clinton?
I think it's more likely that you're only thinking of the presidential election after the conventions. But in reality it started long before. How many major-party candidates were there for president this cycle? 2? No, it was actually over 15. It's just that most of them conceded their defeat well before November 5.
There were 3 televised debates between McCain and Obama. But, in the Democratic Primary alone there were 26 debates, 14 of which were televised on major networks, each with 5-8 participants. Just among the major party candidates there was a broad diversity of opinion from which the nation could choose, and the media covered it. I don't think it's the media's fault that most people ignore the primaries.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Jesus was a Jew.
Not flaming against Christians or Jews, just a correcting.
Obama's paternal grandmother says she witnessed his birth in Kenya. The Kenyan ambassador, Peter Ogego, said his birthplace in Kenya is well known. (Ogego's later attempt to backtrack, by saying he was talking about Obama Sr., is wholly inconsistent with the audio recording.)
To say that Fukino and Onaka have "affirmed Obama was born in Hawaii" is a fabrication. They merely say that "the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record." Tellingly and coyly, they do not say whether the certificate in their vault is of Hawaiian or Kenyan origin.
It would be so simple to lay all this speculation to rest by showing the vault copy to the media. That Obama stubbornly refuses to do so is extremely suspicious.
also, what is his favorite color?
did you copy that from wikipedia? seriously though, very informative, if obscure...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
The Electoral College was something of a necessity back in the day simply because of the lack of advanced communication. You ran in to a big problem of how do all the votes and the information get back to one place. I mean I suppose you could send all the phsyical ballots but that is riddled with problems (like the fact that they'd differ per state) and security risks. Well another option is to just send a guy to say how the people voted. That is more or less what the Electoral College system is. You elect a person who is going to go vote for who you want.
Ok, however that is all rather unnecessary now. We have instant communications. It is rather easy to accurately know how many votes a candidate received and indeed news networks report it all the time.
It is a huge relic, unfortunately I don't think it is going away. Part of the problem is that usually the popular candidate wins, so people just don't care. Had we actually had the Kerry situation, well then maybe people would give a shit. As it is nobody seems to. Heck, most of the Gore supporters just whined about how Bush "Stole" the election rather than concentrating on it as a reason to get rid of the Electoral College.
Since it is in the Constitution and needs an amendment to change, it'll take a lot of popular support before it can happen, and people just don't care. Thus I think we are stuck with it.
Ethnically, not so much in a religious sense. However, today he'd be considered Palestinian, although he was sent to deliver the gospel to the Children of Israel (not the same as the current Israel of today)
A far more likely prospect.
Democrats, bringing a new and exciting level of corruption to the White House!
Switzerland is both a direct democracy *and* a federation, and I don't think it has been ruled by a mob.