"Technically, there were no political parties at the time of the Constitutional Convention."
No, there were no national political parties, mostly because national politics under the Articles of Confederation weren't worth a party's time. Vitriolic partisanship was alive and well at the state level, even after they no longer had to put up with the House of Commons. The Electoral College and the election of U. S. Senators by the state legislatures as opposed to the people directly were ideas evoked (among other reasons) to specifically keep party politics out of the national government, at least in a direct fashion.
"Andrew Jackson secured 41% of the popular vote and John Quincy Adams had 30%. Neither candidate secured a majority of the electoral vote"
So? Why should the Adams supporters have been all but forced to vote for Jackson, or vice versa?
"and the under the Constitution, the vote moved to the House in which each state had one vote to cast."
If an individual voter wants to take that risk, why should they not be allowed to take it?
"Adams won the presidency and the lesson learned was the parties needed to get down to one candidate for the whole party across the whole nation to insure the vote would never go to the house again."
Whose interests are being served by this? The peoples', or the parties'?
"Imagine if the old rule was still in effect today- the temptation for a radical liberal or reactionary conservative to assasinate the President and turn over the White House to the opposition party would be enormous!"
Charles Guiteau shot and killed (Republican) President James Garfield apparently because he felt (Republican) Vice President Chester A. Arthur was more "conservative."
At any rate, back to my original point, if the electors were free to choose someone who wan't a party favorite, would such a reactionary get anywhere near the White House to begin with?
"People in WW2 made sacrifices. But not the "soldiers" of today, who only fight in small pussy turf wars that are little more than an adventure vacation."
Are those killed in "pussy turf wars" any less dead than those killed in WWII? Does the DoD have Miracle Max stashed away somewhere?
"The military budget for the USA tops all the other countries in the top 10 spending category COMBINED!"
Much like the US budget in general. Go figure!
Defense spending by the national government in the US still pales in comparison to spending on Social Security, Medicare and other "wellfare" programs.
"As far as I recall not even 10% of the military budget is equal to what is used on the schooling system."
Spending on schools is not the job of the national government. It's called "federalism."
"The purpose of the military is to protect the local country from invasion from other countries and their armies."
No, the purpose of the military is to kill people and break things. Why they do it is for the civillian authority to decide.
If anything, what you just described is a local millitia.
"The Americans have 20000 nuclear bombs, no one is going to invade them, no one is even going to get close to invading and occupying them."
Cut-and-past time!
If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is
controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing...but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how -- or why -- he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people -- 'older and wiser heads,' as they say -- supply the control. Which is as it should be.
--Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers.
"There is some twisted little defect in the American culture that makes their young people actually want to go into dangerous combat situations on the other side of the world and expose themselves to discomfort, death, and dismemberment against people that they have never even heard of."
You seem to imply that they want to do this "just for the fun of it."
"But since they have so much powerful weaponry, no one wants to just take them aside for a little chat and suggest that they should just 'chill'"
Where, when and why they use those weaponry is not their own decision.
"they don't have any real enemies that are dangerous enough for them to require this kind of behavior."
If al Qaeda doesn't fit that description, who does?
If you were satisfied in hearing nothing but songs you have, by definition, already heard before, you probably wouldn't have a satellite subscription to begin with.
"I figure the $10 / mo plus the price of the satellite receiver just isn't worth it in comparison."
Try listening to satellite radio a little before making that judgment call.
You know what, you're all wrong. A pox on both your houses.
The Electoral College isn't about states' rights or urban vs. rural half so much as it is about the fact that 100,000,000 voters can't all have a fill-in-the-blank ballot. The idea is that the people would have the ability to pick other people local to them and easy to access, who in turn would have the ability to literally vote for whomever the elector pleases, party primaries be damned.
The parties didn't like that, since it means they only have direct power over the House of Representatives (at the time). Instead they acted at the state level to all but eliminate the electors ability to exercise free will, guaranteeing the parties' importance in the presidential election by limiting both the electors' and the voters' choices on the ballot.
Back in 2000, how many of us watched our favorite candidates lose out in the primary phase? Why are we prevented from voting for such a candidate in November anyway? Answer: it would be inconvenient for the parties. After all, who would use them to funnel money if campaign finances barely mattered at all (what good are attack ads when the people making the decision aren't limted to only 2 or 20 or 200 candidates?)
Think about it: The Electoral College is made up of people, not "chairs" or "votes" or any other euphamism you can think of for "numbers." So analyzing it based on the numbers is rather silly.
Of course, the Electoral College hasn't been used as designed for about 200 years now. Kinda hard to argue about its effectiveness.
(Mental note: must find time to put together "None of the above" slate for November.)
You have it backwards: They're offering insurance because they're that sure they're right. If they were worried they were wrong, then they'd be worried about having to actually pay claims and wouldn't be so willing to offer the insurance.
Slashdot Mirror
Not quite. Shakespeare is in the public domain, which I'm sure the "Left Behind" series will never see.
"Buy Brazilian Tech."
Yeah, because everybody speaks Portugese.
Yeah, but what happens if/when you break up?
"I want my records^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgames back!"
"Technically, there were no political parties at the time of the Constitutional Convention."
No, there were no national political parties, mostly because national politics under the Articles of Confederation weren't worth a party's time. Vitriolic partisanship was alive and well at the state level, even after they no longer had to put up with the House of Commons. The Electoral College and the election of U. S. Senators by the state legislatures as opposed to the people directly were ideas evoked (among other reasons) to specifically keep party politics out of the national government, at least in a direct fashion.
"Andrew Jackson secured 41% of the popular vote and John Quincy Adams had 30%. Neither candidate secured a majority of the electoral vote"
So? Why should the Adams supporters have been all but forced to vote for Jackson, or vice versa?
"and the under the Constitution, the vote moved to the House in which each state had one vote to cast."
If an individual voter wants to take that risk, why should they not be allowed to take it?
"Adams won the presidency and the lesson learned was the parties needed to get down to one candidate for the whole party across the whole nation to insure the vote would never go to the house again."
Whose interests are being served by this? The peoples', or the parties'?
"Imagine if the old rule was still in effect today- the temptation for a radical liberal or reactionary conservative to assasinate the President and turn over the White House to the opposition party would be enormous!"
Charles Guiteau shot and killed (Republican) President James Garfield apparently because he felt (Republican) Vice President Chester A. Arthur was more "conservative."
At any rate, back to my original point, if the electors were free to choose someone who wan't a party favorite, would such a reactionary get anywhere near the White House to begin with?
"Where does the Al Qaeda thing fit with the Iraq war?"
They came in when the parent said "they don't any real enemies."
But even then I don't think the actions of al Qaeda are justification to use stratiegic nuclear weapons on anybody.
"The simple fact is that, while Diebold does indeed care about producing accurate voting results,"
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
"Star Trek: Attack of the Boring Vulcan Ambassador Clones!"
Meesa is now a starship captain!
Wait... if she's "backwards compatible," does that mean she's still sleeping with her ex-boyfriends?
"People in WW2 made sacrifices. But not the "soldiers" of today, who only fight in small pussy turf wars that are little more than an adventure vacation."
Are those killed in "pussy turf wars" any less dead than those killed in WWII? Does the DoD have Miracle Max stashed away somewhere?
"The military budget for the USA tops all the other countries in the top 10 spending category COMBINED!"
Much like the US budget in general. Go figure!
Defense spending by the national government in the US still pales in comparison to spending on Social Security, Medicare and other "wellfare" programs.
"As far as I recall not even 10% of the military budget is equal to what is used on the schooling system."
Spending on schools is not the job of the national government. It's called "federalism."
No, the purpose of the military is to kill people and break things. Why they do it is for the civillian authority to decide.
If anything, what you just described is a local millitia.
"The Americans have 20000 nuclear bombs, no one is going to invade them, no one is even going to get close to invading and occupying them."
Cut-and-past time!--Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers.
"There is some twisted little defect in the American culture that makes their young people actually want to go into dangerous combat situations on the other side of the world and expose themselves to discomfort, death, and dismemberment against people that they have never even heard of."
You seem to imply that they want to do this "just for the fun of it."
"But since they have so much powerful weaponry, no one wants to just take them aside for a little chat and suggest that they should just 'chill'"
Where, when and why they use those weaponry is not their own decision.
"they don't have any real enemies that are dangerous enough for them to require this kind of behavior."
If al Qaeda doesn't fit that description, who does?
If you were satisfied in hearing nothing but songs you have, by definition, already heard before, you probably wouldn't have a satellite subscription to begin with.
"I figure the $10 / mo plus the price of the satellite receiver just isn't worth it in comparison."
Try listening to satellite radio a little before making that judgment call.
You know what, you're all wrong. A pox on both your houses.
The Electoral College isn't about states' rights or urban vs. rural half so much as it is about the fact that 100,000,000 voters can't all have a fill-in-the-blank ballot. The idea is that the people would have the ability to pick other people local to them and easy to access, who in turn would have the ability to literally vote for whomever the elector pleases, party primaries be damned.
The parties didn't like that, since it means they only have direct power over the House of Representatives (at the time). Instead they acted at the state level to all but eliminate the electors ability to exercise free will, guaranteeing the parties' importance in the presidential election by limiting both the electors' and the voters' choices on the ballot.
Back in 2000, how many of us watched our favorite candidates lose out in the primary phase? Why are we prevented from voting for such a candidate in November anyway? Answer: it would be inconvenient for the parties. After all, who would use them to funnel money if campaign finances barely mattered at all (what good are attack ads when the people making the decision aren't limted to only 2 or 20 or 200 candidates?)
Think about it: The Electoral College is made up of people, not "chairs" or "votes" or any other euphamism you can think of for "numbers." So analyzing it based on the numbers is rather silly.
Of course, the Electoral College hasn't been used as designed for about 200 years now. Kinda hard to argue about its effectiveness.
(Mental note: must find time to put together "None of the above" slate for November.)
No, she's just... she's kinda straightening that picture.
"They traditionally do it through a popular vote, but can do it any way they like."
Not quite. If they give it over to popular vote, they have to keep in mind the Fourteenth Amendment, which is how Florida got into so much hot water.
I think he pretty much covered that with the "What about me in Denmark?" bit.
Yeah, I figure internet2 should work just fine until AOL discovers it.
I'd say around 13.5 station wagons' worth.
"imagine the DDoS power from a group of infected Windows boxes."
You must be new here. The only imagining that goes on here is about Beowulf clusters.
"Al-Kitty?"
You're not mangling your Arabic-to-English transilteration enough. It would probably look more like "al Qiddy"
WHY!?!?!
Hey, at least the publisher isn't relying on the customers to write bug fixes!
Oh, wait...
I was going to say "This is why I play console games," but then I remembered BG&E...
You have it backwards: They're offering insurance because they're that sure they're right. If they were worried they were wrong, then they'd be worried about having to actually pay claims and wouldn't be so willing to offer the insurance.
Essentially they're trying to call SCO's bluff.
But if you're not having sex anyway, what's there to worry about?