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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."
What your saying is that McCain has an outside shot?
The point is that the fabric of US democracy lies on the will of these electors. and Obama is one less procedure away from being president.
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.
This is news for nerds because the difference between the way things are expected to work and the way they are actually implemented is a nerd interest.
The fact that this something that happens regularly every four years doesn't mean it isn't news. If that were the case, then we would not see stories with titles like "The worst/best/most/least ____ of 2008" in the upcoming weeks.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ron Paul FTW! All kidding aside, it doesn't matter if Obama's mother was a British citizen or McCain was born in Panama. You're a natural born citizen if A) you're born on U.S. soil (Obama was born in Hawaii), or if you're born to an American citizen (McCain's parents were both US Citizens), so it was a moot point.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The article is crap, but you got the reasons reversed. It definitely matters, but it's not news. The leader of one of the largest and most influential countries in the world is being replaced, and that matters. If something strange had happened it would be news, as it is we're just seeing the electoral system do the same thing it always does.
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.
Actually, that's probably the best way to do it, is have the electoral college be proportional to within its own state. I've never been a fan of the straight popular vote for President - it really takes away from the rural states and some of their voice in government, and places without major population center needs to have its voice heard. Yeah, it may mean their vote "counts more," but direct democracy, particularly when dealing with such a large population who is getting more and more uneducated about politics, and who is apt to fall for some of the semi-demogoguery from both sides (Obama's campaign to the masses was woefully short on substance, and about all anyone on the street was able to say was "change.")
Frankly, what I would like to see, and what has even LESS chance to get set in than getting rid of the electoral college, is a test that must be taken when one votes that has basic principles of civics.
obama sneezes at
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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!
Do we see posts on who is the new PM of Iraq, the new Pope is, or howabout what Obama had for breakfast?
That's a negative little ducky.
Unless there is an upset or irrational event on such an "important" event, the mechanics of the US political infrastructure do not matter.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I don't agree with you. You should be modded down.
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
>>>a little doubt in the power of democracy. a fuck up
(1) That's because they recalled that a previous Democracy in Athens had killed one of mankind's greatest thinkers, Socrates, simply because they didn't like him. They did not want the right to life to be taken-away by a simple 50% +1 vote.
(2) It's no more fucked-up then how the European Union operates - ya know, a Union of States where States elect ministers to the Council, not the people. You need to understand history, because in 1786 we were not a single nation - we were 13 indepentent nations coming together as an EU-type organization. Hence an election organized by States, not people.
(3) Hence we a Republic of 50 States, where LAW reigns and protects the individual, not a democracy where the majority squashes the individual underfoot.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Scientists who analyzed the mucus from the tissue President-Elect Obama used during the sneeze have determined that Obama is suffering from a rare strain of an interspecies-infecting influenza virus. The fate of the human race remains undetermined.
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(2) Obama may have been born in Southeast Asia, and therefore not a natural born citizen.
Everything I have seen indicates that Obama was born in Hawaii. Got anything to back up your claim?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
By what definition should Al Gore have "rightfully" been President after the 2000 election? If the U.S. Supreme Court had not stepped in, the Florida legislature would have appointed electors to represent Florida that would have voted for George W. Bush. If those electors were not seated, the election would have gone to Congress to be decided. Congress would have chosen George W. Bush.
As for the "popular vote", California alone chose not to count more absentee ballots than the difference in the reported national vote totals between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The reason that California (and many other states) did not count all of the absentee ballots was because for California, the remaining absentee ballots were fewer than the difference in the vote total for California.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You do realise that the main reasons for adopting an electoral college system were practical? Specifically, that communicating the results, let alone running a single co-ordinated election, took a very long time (with only horses), and that the union was newly formed so the states still didn't trust each other or the federal goverment?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I remember during the 2000 election fiasco, I was watching some news call in show. A woman said that Gore had an unfair advantage, because he was a career politician and probably knew about this electoral college stuff, while she was sure Bush didn't. She apparently had never heard of it.
It doesn't hurt to remind people of the bizarre way that the US Presidential election works.
Incorrect. Barack Hussein Obama was, indeed, born in Hawaii 2 years after Hawaii achieved statehood. Read all about it on Snopes. Say what you will, but Barb and Dave are usually pretty good about scoping out all the facts.
My blog
believe me, if you don't like the present situation, remember, it gets worse as you go up the chain of replacements. You've got a person who can strategically do the least harm atm, let's keep it that way..
Remember, it's not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you...
Shut...down...EVERYTHING.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
1) Technically all the questions to those in Kenya about Barrack Obama, have neglected to specify Jr or Sr. Since him and his father share an identical name, its impossible to know which one they are talking about.
2) Minors can not give up their citizenship. And parents can't give up their minor's citizenship.
You take the first step, and then maybe I'll give up my gun in an urban environment. Post a sign on your apartment window that says "I believe in gun control. There are no firearms in this residence." The availability of firearms is a general, not specific deterrent. However if you let folks know of your views of how the world should be, then perhaps we can see how well it works out for you.
Good luck.
p.s. You might also help your cause by learning when to use capital letters. It really helps the reader determine when your next sentence begins, and also conveys a sense of pride in authorship.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Yeah, but on Digg 99% of the comments consist of something along the lines of "LOL PWNED!" That's not really the audience of users I trust to decide what is important and what isn't.
The most popular story on Digg right now isn't even a story. It's some asshole's comic, entitled "Stupid TV! Be more helpful!"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Mr. Hopey Changey is filling his cabinet with storied Washington insiders.
Why not? That's what I'd do, if I wanted to get anything done. The last president to fill most of his staff with Washington outsiders was Jimmy Carter; while he is underrated as a President, this decision cost him a lot of effectiveness. The last major initiative headed by a Washington outsider was the Clinton's health plan. Not knowing how national politics worked wasn't exactly an asset.
Ronald Reagan was, in terms of getting his policy initiatives acted upon, one of the most successful presidents in modern history. His administration was staffed largely by Nixon admiinstration veterans, former congressmen, and scions of old political families. The few outsiders in his administration were either at departments he wanted to fail (Education). The only exception was Attorney General, a position he preferred to fill with old, loyal California cronies.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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
The popular vote doesn't matter. The president is not elected by the people. He's elected by the states, through their electors. By the rules of our political game, deciding the president by the popular vote makes as much sense as deciding a football game by most offensive yards gained.
If you want to change the rules, start with your state. Your state decides who will represent it in the electoral college, and can pick them however it wants. After enough states have switched to a proportional system, you're more likely to get support for changing the constitution to eliminate the undue influence of the smaller states.
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).
You can't really say that. Both candidates ran campaigns which took into account the electoral college. Their strategies would have been vastly different with a popular vote. You wouldn't see both candidates ignore California and New York. Even though both are strongly Democratic, each contains more Republicans than Iowa.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
You've posted this same exact comment before, haven't you? I know I've seen it. I'm not criticizing, just curious because I know I've read it.
The United States doesn't acknowledge renouncing your citizenship when you go through a foreign nations naturalization process that has renunciation as part of its oath. USA's naturalization oath also calls for giving up any other citizenship... but other countries ignore it just like we ignore theirs. The only way to lose your USA citizenship is to go to an embassy and formally renounce it or commit treason.
While you can technically have multiple citizenships. When your in USA controlled territory the only one that matters to them is the USA one, any other is irrelevant.
The Goal: A long simple life filled with many complex toys.
Dude, you can't even get your conspiracy theories right... Obama was born in Hawaii, but since his father was a centaur, he's ineligible to be President.
Personally, I suspect pudge is behind this one, since he wrote a rant last night about how nobody at all covered this, and how the news companies that did screwed up by calling it "official".
Suddenly, slashdot has an article about the "unofficial" electoral college results. What a coincidence?
Metal is stronger than ice, since we make boats out of metal instead of ice. At room temperature, ice will melt faster than metal. And yet, the Titanic sank because of a supposedly iceberg. And no word on this from the government... Also, if you take the word "TITANIC" and you remove the letters T, I, and T, and then you add the letters C, O, S, P, R, and Y, then it spells conspiracy. Coincidence???
Theory conspiracist will always be the same... And "what a coincidence?" doesn't make much sense. Are you asking a question or not?
Titanic stuff taken from Maddox.
Of Code And Men
then there's the issue of him enrolling in a school in Indonesia, at a time when Indonesian citizenship was required to do so, and no dual citizenship was available. To become an Indonesian citizen, he (his mother, actually) would have to renounce his US citizenship.
Or his mother falsified his citizenship status on his school application. I find that to be more likely. In fact I'd bet mother's everywhere do that sort of thing every day to give their precious spawn a better chance.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
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 Urban tendency is to blame objects for acts degenerates commit. This avoids any uncomfortable questions about the sick culture in the most violent American cities.
Further, your entire post is pretty much negated by the facts- that crime, and armed crime, go up whenever a gun ban is introduced.
Why? Lawful people follow the law, criminals don't, advantage: criminals. It's really, really, simple, and I don't see why so many folks have a hard time grasping this repeatedly demonstrated phenomenon.
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.
Again, rural people don't guy to gun violence, urban people do. The 'irresponsible gun ownership' occurs in the urban environment, because you allow a subculture of entitlement, selfishness and shortsightedness to flourish there, AND the cities with the worst crime have banned guns, making honest people easy targets for criminals.
You have amoral degenerates running around your cities that you refuse to deal with. That is your problem. Not guns.
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.
Simple fact: Take away the electoral college, and the influence of small states is irrelevant. There is no way they would sign off on that change, and there is no way they would have joined the union without it.
Maine, by splitting their electoral vote to the popular vote, has made themselves irrelevant in campaigning. Most contests are close- within a few percentage points. To get an extra electoral vote in Maine, you'd need to swing an additional >10% of the vote your way.
This would take a massive campaigning effort- if it was even possible- for one additional vote.
Easier to ignore the state instead and get your half, or half +1. States that follow your idea make themselves irrelevant to the campaign and can safely be ignored.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The structure of a government body or an electoral process is a technology. These are artifacts that are designed to meet certain requirements. There are rich fields of mathematics describing what it and is not possible, and various designs (such as proportional representation or approval voting) which represent different tradeoffs between incompatible ends.
The electoral college is a case in point. The original idea was to moderate public passions by filtering them through elected representatives from each state. However once you do that, you are presented with a problem: under such a system, residents of less populous states would, in effect, have no say in an election that was entirely determined by a few large states. So they tweaked the weight of each state's vote to provide what, at the time, amounted to an equalization of power between residents of different states (as well as ensuring that no drastic measures were taken at the Federal level which would damage economies dependent on slave importation).
Of course, this leads to the "old lady who swallowed the fly" scenario: while ensuring equalization of influence between states of different sizes, it creates severe imbalances of influence between safe states and battleground states.
And that's a hallmark of an engineering problem: you can't have everything because fixes in one place create problems in other places.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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
What does majority have to do with it? In a popular-vote race, you can win with a plurality.
Actually, the head of the Hawaii Department of Health confirmed on October 31 that Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, saying that she has "personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."
It HAS been investigated, and it HAS been resolved.
The head of the Hawaii Department of Health confirmed on October 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu, saying that she has "personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."
In addition, just a few days ago the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case brought against Obama regarding his citizenship.
It's over. Quit bringing it up.
Chicago. Detroit. DC. Poorer cities with high crime rates. New York is a relatively wealthy city - you're distancing the historical root of crime - poverty - and blaming it on inanimate objects and better police protection, which New York can afford. You want to restrict the freedom of the law-abiding needlessly, even within cities.
Conceal-carry states are relatively poorer than their neighbors and have relatively lower crime rates than states with more restrictive gun rights. You don't pay attention to what works and what doesn't in gun control. You ignore the matter that gun owners - particularly those with conceal-carry permits - don't commit crimes and want to punish them for something they aren't doing.
If you seriously think that discussing how the electoral college works makes someone a democratic party hack, you are the single most butthurt partisan I've ever seen. So what, for the next 4-8 years, every time someone mentions anything having to do with the office of the president, they're a Democratic party hack? Waaaaaaa!!!!!!
I love how everyone insists that THEIR version of Authoritarianism is really the One and True Freedom.
Freeedom is great! Just don't be doing anything that I don't like.
and he might make the best president ever, but I'm a stickler for following the rules to the letter, and I am not one of those liberal 'the end justifies the means' types.
So let me guess, you're a compliance officer at your job?
I like what you're getting at, I really do, but the big problem with it is that it's been (almost) doen like that before, with horrid results.
Here's the thing; whenever you posit a change of laws, how the law will have positive effects should be your SECONDARY (not primary) point of interest. Your PRIMARY point of interest needs to be "how could this law be abused", and under THAT standard, your testing turns out to be a REALLY BAD idea. It's not that the principle isn't sound, it's that the possible (likely?) implementation of that principle is damaging to the civil rights of our citizens.
SCOTUS refused to hear the because they agreed that the lower court's ruling that the plaintiff lacked standing was correct. They did not rule on the merits of the case.
Again, just clarifying, not agreeing with the nutjobs ;)
Learn about Photography Basics.
Not that it matters much, but this canard about only Indonesian citizens enrolling in schools in Indonesia is complete crap and is further evidence of just how morally bankrupt the entire "controversy" is.
I not only happen to live right across the straits from Indonesia [1], I also keep going there for short-trips, one as recently as two weeks back. Many of my colleagues, including my immediate boss, are Indonesian, as are many friends; many more grew up as ex-pats in Jakarta, in ways similar to Obama did in the 60's. Take it from me; you dont need to be Indonesian to attend a school there. It is a piece of absolute and complete rubbish that should insult anybody's intelligence.
On further googling: Perhaps you meant to talk about this piece of excrement, the true extent of whose stench is only apparent when you realize that Obama attended a public school that's colloquially called as SDN Besuki, and not a Catholic school named after St Francis of Assisi in Bahasa Indonesia (that's Indonesia's national language, in case you were wondering).
[1] - I mean that in a reality-based, non-Palin-isque sense; yes, Indonesia is just across the Straits of Malacca, some 45 min away by boat. I can, indeed, see Indonesia on a clear day and sometimes receive Indonesian mobile network while I'm in my own room.
More than mere navel gazing.
When questions about his birth appeared, he published a scanned copy of his Certificate of Live Birth on his website. FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com both show copies of it.
For purposes of proving birth, it is accepted by all other states and the federal government as proof. You can use it to get a passport.
When requesting proof of birth, the State of Hawaii, like many other states, does not send someone down to the archives to photocopy old records. Instead, the State of Hawaii will look up the data, print out a certificate, put a seal on it, and put a stamped signature. The COLB is a short form copy that does not have all the details of the long form original like the hospital. Because some individuals are not born in a hospital, the short form copy lists only those fields which are relevant to all births like "Place of Birth".
To be clear, Obama's team has never claimed that the COLB was his original birth certificate only that it was an official copy of his birth certificate. As for possessing an original birth certificate, many people do not have theirs. They may have been lost over the years. For most people, when you request a copy from your state, most likely the state will print out a copy as Hawaii as done here.
Both the seal and the signature appear on the back of the form which was not scanned. The seal is raised and would not easily appear on a scan anyways. Viewing the document at an angle, you can see the seal. Factcheck.org has seen the COLB and has taken other pictures.
Most government signatures for documents like this are not hand signatures; they are stamped signatures.
The look of birth certificates varies from state to state and in some cases, county to county. The COLB presented by Obama is the same form as any other COLB from Hawaii.
The COLB lists the Place of Birth. In Obama's case, it lists "Honolulu".
Starting in 1982, the State of Hawaii allowed parents to register their children who were born elsewhere as an secondary means of proof just like a passport proves citizenship in lieu of a Certificate of Naturalization or a birth certificate. However, the COLB would not deviate the Place of Birth from the original birth certificate. If a child was not born in Hawaii, the COLB would list their Place of Birth as some place other than "Hawaii". This registration was not an option for Obama's mother as he was born in 1961.
Obama's campaign says blacking out the numbers was a cautionary move just in case the number was security sensitive just like you would not post a SSN online. As it turns out, it was not. FactCheck shows the number.
A datestamp on the jpeg can mean anything like
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Which still have a 10 min response time. To simulate the effects of 10 min where every second matters, stare at a clock for the next 10 min and count every second that passes.
Well, Pudge is a moron then.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
PS - I voted for Nader asshole.
Good for you, nice choice. Picking (what I would consider) a good candidate doesn't seem to have helped the partisan pain I mention above. (If you point out where I called you a Republican, I'll graciously concede). The fact that the discussion we SHOULD be having is about a process instantly makes it better than half of the things slashdot has been posting to the frontpage lately.
Nerds call getting someone to tell them their password 'social engineering', well, a nerd that can get someone to hand them a list of IBM board member and department head passwords would be a script kiddie compared to the social hackery which is the U.S. electoral system. Your obvious animosity aside, the topic is "appropriate" reading for slashdot.
Another thing, this is CmdrTaco's BLOG. Don't like the topic, start your own blog (or, more likely, make your current one not suck). Simple, no?
P.S. Not everyone who calls you out on off-topic whining is an asshole, but in this case you actually got it right. I -AM- an asshole, and I'm good at it. You on the other hand are a whiny little douche who would rather cry about something they don't like than to spend the mental effort it takes to discuss the topic at hand. Your post added nothing of value to the topic at hand, and did nothing but show everyone what kind of spoiled child you are. Pathetic and worthless.
NOW you're justified in calling me an asshole, douche.
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."
It's a painfully horrible sentence. I think this is what it's trying (unsuccessfully) to say:
"In 26 states, electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state, while the other 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise."
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Do you have evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the State Department and the State of Hawaii?
If you do not, why can't you convince yourself of the weakness of your position?
What rule do you assert has not been "followed to the letter?"
The constructive argument at work here is quite simple:
Obama is a U.S. Citizen.
There is no evidence that this citizenship was conferred artificially.
Therefore Obama is a Natural-Born U.S. Citizen.
The sole authority for these two premises is the State Department, which didn't argue on Berg's behalf. This means there was never anything that Berg could question.
In order to believe that Obama was born in Kenya, one must accept a conspiracy theory that almost rivals anything in the JFK world. State and Federal agencies in on the fraud starting in '61. An ordinary housewife leaving the country and re-entering, with the efficiency and secrecy of the best spies. Several newspapers. The U.S. Senate. The Bush Administration. The RNC *AND* the DNC, and the McCain campaign, several courts and even the U.S. Supreme Court, all in on a coverup to protect the forgers of Obama's birth certificate.
There are people who still believe this, but I wonder why none has gone so far as to accuse the perpetrators of the fraud by bringing a criminal case. Start with the Notary Public whose name appears on the back of the COLB that was posted. Also, right from the beginning, you can name at least two state officials in Hawaii, and probably should name the Governor of Hawaii and possibly the Secretary of State, since all of these people would be actively involved in the fraud.
But I don't see Berg making any criminal accusations, where he would have to go under oath personally and face potentially serious consequences if he has no evidence on which to base the accusations.
Donofrio, on the other hand, claims that Obama was born in Hawaii. It's amusing that some people supported both Berg and Donofrio, even though they make contradictory claims. Then it becomes clear that we are dealing with people who simply oppose Obama, and any vehicle that allows them to voice that opposition is accepted by them.
Or maybe the whole thing is a sham and there is a gigantic conspiracy inside and outside the government to keep it covered up.
Your call. Unless you are in the military, there is no law that says you personally are obligated to "consider the President legally elected." Basically, any action the government takes is subject to redress by you. Good luck.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Jimmy Carter; while he is underrated as a President
I think it's too late to spend your mod points ;)
Chris, I hate to be the one to tell you..
We all lost, I will not get over it.
In a little over 30 days from now...
Things will continue as per the agenda, the war(s) will escalate, you will still not have health care and the new administration will begin to chip away at the freedoms of the citizens of the United States of America where their predecessors left off.
Cheers!
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.
Precisely. I can't believe Snopes made such an obvious mistake.
I can. Read some of their articles on a subject where you know a bit. It can be painful. My main complaint is that they present themselves as authoritative, as though they've done all the research so that you don't have to. At least Wikipedia is honest about its incompleteness.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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.
Barack Obama will be my president, and I reserve the right to criticize all the corrupt, stupid shit he has stated he is going to do. This is a constitutional republic, not a dictatorship.
A child cannot give up his US citizenship by living abroad or renouncing it. His/her parents cannot renounce it either. A US citizen can renounce his citizenship an adult or by other means (but as an adult) Loss of Citizenship (INA 349) covers this.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The case of New York is particularly interesting because premeditated policy decisions may have exported crime to surrounding areas:
Bush was a two term governor of a large state before he was elected.
5 years as the 5th most powerful politician in the state of Texas (Texas constitution gives little power to the state governor). Prior to that, his resume consisted of drinking, skipping out on his Air Guard commitments, and driving companies into the ground in positions he was given by friends of his father. Every accomplishment in Bush's life has come from his last name. If he were George W. Smith, right now he'd be taking orders from a 17 year old assistant manager at a Burger King.
As opposed to Obama, who served 4 years in the U.S. Senate (from the 5th most populous state) and 8 years in the Illinois state senate (from a district with a higher population than the state of Alaska). Prior to that, he went to Columbia, was head of the Harvard law review, graduated magna cum laude, spent 3 years as a community organizer and taught Constitutional law for ten years. Obama earned all his accomplishments through intelligence, skill, and hard work - not based on his last name. Not even Bahgdad Bob would try to claim that Obama has less experience than Bush, much less Sarah Palin. But you do find Republicans doing this on a regular basis - like their wingnut merit badges will be revoked if they stop engaging in eye-popping double standards and situational ethics.
Who is the dumb fat fuck now?
Do you really want me to answer this question?