Who do you think should be elected in 2008?

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by The Telcontarion

The wicked will be erased from the face of the earth:

Obadiah 1:18
"And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken it."

Ah, yeah. Remind me not to hand the WhiteHouse to the NRA and their pawns, will ya? Religious zealots with weapons make me nervous.

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by The Telcontarion

Obadiah 1:18
"And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the LORD hath spoken it."

Stubble?

The lord doesn't like it if you don't shave regularly?

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

Stubble?

The lord doesn't like it if you don't shave regularly?

Hard to keep up with the Lord's dress code. From Burkas to that mixed fibers thing in Levitcus, he's worse than "What not to wear".

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I got a little carried away and calculated that 9.2 trillion dollars could be used to buy enough Lamborghini Murciélagos to park end to end from Seattle, WA to Miami, FL 31 times.

Sounds like the Bush/Cheney energy policy. By cutting the taxes on the rich we can wipe out the deficit and realize every Americans right to have a ridiculously expensive gas guzzling foreign sports car!

Originally Posted by The Telcontarion

As Ron Paul himself says,

"This Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked."

And it will not be televised.

[hectorberlioz]

Am I being blinded by my dislike of Huckabee or what?

He took a good bag of delegates over the weekend. The anti-McCain train didn't stop when Romney dropped out...and Huck is benefitting greatly. It has to be admitted though, that Huck --nor Romney-- was or is really a 'favorite'. It's just that McCain inspires so much backlash.

But McCain will be the nominee, no doubt about it. The real question is: if Mac loses this November, who is 2012's heir apparent, Huck or Mitt?

I predicted to my younger brother this morning that Mitt will probably drive up to Michigan, become a resident, and run for governor. Dean Barnett at The Weekly Standard (who has known Romney since 1994) wonders if Romney will even bother with politics ever again, thinking he might just prefer the world of pure business.

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

The real question is: if Mac loses this November, who is 2012's heir apparent, Huck or Mitt?

I think Mitt has the better chance, though he should have stayed the candidate he was when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. A more or less center-leaning republican, economically conservative (at least in the current republican sense, which really isn't conservative, but I posted that earlier) that's not too adamant about legislating morality.

That's basically McCain's platform and, if Romney had run on it, he would be winning big now. His problem is that he switched at such a late point in his political career.

Huck is charismatic, but the combination of his somewhat liberal economic past and his somewhat extreme views (i.e. legislating the bible), simply won't hold up in a general election. Possibly, if he became McCain's VP, he'd have the time and name to make a run at it when McCain is done, but I don't see him as a VP choice for McCain.

If it ends up being eight years of democrat, it may very well be someone completely out of the picture that takes over the republican party.

[Lief Erikson]

Though I voted for McCain, I do feel happy for Mike Huckabee . He's doing a very good job at campaigning, and I sympathize with him, though I still would prefer McCain's leadership.

[GrayMouser]

Funny stuff happening in the Washington State Republican caucus. The state chairman announced that McCain had won, even though only 87% of the votes had been counted and McCain was only 2% ahead. The chair said that he had "calculated" that Huckabee couldn't possibly win, even though it's been shown that he could have had no idea where those uncounted votes were coming in from.

Huckabee has sent in the lawyers and demanded a recount, which the chairman agreed to, but refused to allow any observers in to watch.

Other problems as well:

In Snohomish County, caucus leaders say they also noticed the sign-up sheets did not match the final delegates at all.

Saturday night, Washington state Republican Party chair Luke Esser declared McCain the winner. But KING 5 has learned that there's no way the party could have known the delegate preferences from Snohomish County, because that county never reported delegate results, instead relying solely on those sign-up sheets.

"And we had already explained to them that we would not have that information for a couple of days," said Modrell. "I haven't talked to them. I have no idea what they did with our numbers. They obviously would not be able to use those numbers as a comparison with the rest of the counties."

"So we're challenging those results. We want a fair election up there and we're just not sure we had one," said Huckabee.

http://www.king5.com/topstories/stor...kabee_disputes

According to our records (and I would strongly suggest other people with information check this against their data), the first report came in at roughly 9:30 PM eastern. With 16% of the vote, McCain ahead 27% to 26%.

Then at 10:15 PM, with 37% of the vote in, Huckabee moves ahead 26% to 23%.

Then there was an hour delay until the next update. That comes shortly after 11:15 PM, with 78% counted, McCain has moved ahead -- 25.4% to 23.8%.

Then there's another delay of an hour and twenty minutes. Shortly after 12:35, they get to 83% of the vote and now it's McCain 25.6% and Huckabee 23.8%.

The next update comes at 1:30 AM eastern. By this time they've counted a whopping 4% more of the vote. And with 87% reporting, it's McCain 25.5% to 23.7%.

So just to summarize here's basically how this works. We start out with McCain ahead. Huckabee jumps ahead with a 3% margin with almost 40% of the vote counted. Then everything slows waaaaay down. And we don't see anything else until about 40% more of the votes been counted and McCain is back in the lead. Things then proceed a glacial pace with Huckabee a little less than 2 percentage points back until 9% more of the vote is counted. And then they decide to declare McCain the winner. Not quite as cut and dry as the conclusion of a Scooby-Doo episode. But pretty close.

And it turns out that Chairman Esser is a protege of McCain's State Campaign Chairman, writing in his resignation letter to his former boss "… Rest assured that I will always be available if I can ever be helpful to you.”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Payback time?

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Caucuses are a weird way to run a railroad. Ours are tomorrow, I can't wait.

[brownjenkins]

I remember reading an article way back talking about how the US election system would never meet the same standards we require of other countries when we monitor for free and fair elections.

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

I remember reading an article way back talking about how the US election system would never meet the same standards we require of other countries when we monitor for free and fair elections.

That's because state chairman are so pernickety about their jobs.

Something's gotta be done...but on the other hand, I kinda like this unpredictability. It throws the candidates off balance and makes them work harder.

[hectorberlioz]

oops, wrong thread

[Earniel]

Voting fraud involving republicans, well, well...

Why is it actually that all those caucuses are days apart? Wouldn't it make more sense to do it all on the same day? Somehow it doesn't strike me as fair that people can vote sooner or later than others, and candidates can drop out before some people can even vote. Or is that just not physically possible with so many states and large populations?

[Jonathan]

Why not? The member states of EU didn't go to the ballots on the same day when they voted on the new constitution. I guess there are some benefits of not having caucuses at the same time, at least in the smaller states.

I think there's a law in Iowa that strictly reads that Iowa should vote first, before all the other states. That means the candidates have time to let the relatively small populace get to know them quite well. If every state had voted on the same day, the people of Iowa wouldn't have been able to "socialise" with the candidates that way at all.

[brownjenkins]

I'd rather see everyone vote at once so people would be forced to make their own decisions, as opposed to following trends. We spend much too much time on the election process as it is, as opposed to governing.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Why not? The member states of EU didn't go to the ballots on the same day when they voted on the new constitution. I guess there are some benefits of not having caucuses at the same time, at least in the smaller states.

I think there's a law in Iowa that strictly reads that Iowa should vote first, before all the other states. That means the candidates have time to let the relatively small populace get to know them quite well. If every state had voted on the same day, the people of Iowa wouldn't have been able to "socialise" with the candidates that way at all.

And they don't bother.

Obama's trip here was big partly because NO candidates ever visit before the primaries, and darn few before the general election. The caucuses tomorrow are the first step in deciding who goes to the state convention in April, where we winnow it down further to pick the delegates for the national. Our district will send a few, each other district will send a few. They'll be proportional to the vote in the district. Prospective delegates have to declare before the voting.

The voting business is also with the national committees of each party. That's why no Dems ran in Florida...because they had no permission to move their primary up, and no one really knows if their delegates will be seated at the convention. No Candidate wants to risk PO ing the national committee.

I think it's hard for most people (in the US and out of it) to appreciate how important Federalism is, here. Everything looks like "The USA" from a distance, but state and regional identity is still VERY strong.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

I think it's hard for most people (in the US and out of it) to appreciate how important Federalism is, here. Everything looks like "The USA" from a distance, but state and regional identity is still VERY strong.

Oh, that's very true. People over here are aware that every state has their own laws but they still forget about it and considers the US to be "just one country" rather than a federation of states.

Often I'm kind enough to remind them

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Do you think the EU will eventually result in the same issue, abroad.

Okay, many US citizens just have "here there be dragons" outside their city limits, but that's true everywhere.

But do you think there will be a more Pan-European identity, in the future? I know I have NO idea where the currency adoption issue is, for example. I'd have a pocket full of play money in every port, as it stands now.

Oh, I wanted to add. A few years ago, I was chatting with some folks on-line and one woman asked if we'd decided if we would vote for Hillary, or not. I said, "Don't you live in, like, Arizona? Hillary is running for the Senate in New York. Only people who live in New York have her on the ballot." Then I searched her out her OWN ballot.

Sometimes even people here are confused.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by brownjenkins

I'd rather see everyone vote at once so people would be forced to make their own decisions,

You can't force people to make their own decisions.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Why not? The member states of EU didn't go to the ballots on the same day when they voted on the new constitution. I guess there are some benefits of not having caucuses at the same time, at least in the smaller states.

I don't think you can compare the two that way. One is about electing politicians into office, the other is about adopting specified legislation. Besides, only a few countries in the EU decided to even let the populace vote about the constitution, in others the government just decided on their own.

I'm sure there are benefits to the current system (after all, why have it otherwise? ) but I don't know which, that's why I'm asking.