I don't know how many of you heard about this, but about a week ago when there were all the film clips about John Kerry and John Edwards hugging and stuff, there were alot of things on the late night shows making fun of them and whatnot. Playing love songs in the background.

John Kerry's reply

"I saw the shows, and I don't know about you, but I thought we made a great couple."

John Kerry, in a recent public appearance was stating similarities between he and his running mate.

"His name is John. My name is John. He is a lawyer. I am a lawyer. He was named People Magazine's sexies politician of the year.... I read People Magazine."

I don't know about you guys, but I love this kind of stuff. Especially when people consider Kerry to be a stiff. I think it's really funny stuff.

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I resent that.

Haha, that was somewhat funny.

Anyways, I can see the "discussion" and flaming which is nearly inevitable for threads like this. Even though they don't have anything to do with the... yeah.

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<landfish> FastGamerr > Satan

Heheh...yeah Kerry's always made light of a lot of situations, and I would say more, but I fear enciting the flames of d00m.

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There is no signature

Edwards brings the 'pulse' to the campaign

Yeah I'll shut up now

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ZGPC

The world needs funny politicans.

Like Silvio Berlusconi.

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<landfish> FastGamerr > Satan

Amusing.

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Drugs & Stupidity, Tons of it.

Nice to see a politician that actually has a sense of humor.

I...must of have missed something.

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If public vote was important in presidential elections, I might've considered voting for him.

I was under the impression that public vote is important.. You know, considering, when the public votes more for one guy, he usually wins.

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I resent that.

Uh... no.

The Electoral College determines the president, not the public vote. It's kind of like chain-effect voting. We vote for representatives, they vote for the president. Our presidential votes are basically just statistics.

On a related vote, it's funny to see MTV pushing this voting thing for the president.

[This message has been edited by DogSRoOL (edited July 18, 2004).]

Good to see ole' Lurch saying something funny.

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Ω of 14

<3 this site: http://www.heptune.com/preslist.html

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[Blue Mink Bifocals !] [fsck -Rf /world/usr/] [<!-- kalimonster -->] [Capite Terram]
"That's why we had to beat you with tennis rackets".
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

Everyone knows that members of the Skull and bones society will make it to office. Here comes Bush again!

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*

Guess who else was in Skull and Bones...

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"Our hero chucks a few rocks..."

I dunno, but I had a feeling someone else was...
whatever
*runs off to the Illuminati*

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*

Yep, Kerry. And oddly enough, his wife's ex-husband was as well.


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Truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Forum Rules

Wait a minute, our representatives do not vote for president. We do. We vote, and based on who wins the particular state, the president gets electoral votes. Note that I said the person with the most votes usually wins, not always.

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I resent that.

No, the electoral college CAN use our votes as a GUIDE. They are in no way required to vote based on our votes. The popular vote is exactly that, a vote to see who is more popular with the people.

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Truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Forum Rules

...right, so let's vote for Kerry because he's funny!!!

I'm glad most of you are too young to vote anyway.


Anyway, as far as votes counting and stuff, what it basically comes to is that we are not a democracy, we are a democratic *republic. Hence the stuff about Electoral college and whatnot. We have many democratic elements, but we are by definition a republic. Meh.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

It is idiotic to think that the electoral college is not going to vote the will of the people in the modern day (when it matters). George Bush won the states required to have the narrowest of electoral victories. All of those electors cast their votes representative of the will of the voters. I do know of at least one Democrat elector that did not vote for Gore but that was irrelevant anyway since he had lost the election. The quote above that explains Presidents who have won without the popular vote is flawed with regards to Bush (at least). The Supreme Court didn't decide the election. They put a stop to illegal recounts. Little known fact is that all subsequent recounts (done after the debacle) have determined that Bush won (by only about 500 votes!). Another interesting fact: the last president to receive over 50% of the vote was George H.W. Bush.

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Have you forgotten ...

I wasn't suggesting voting for him based on his sense of humor. I was simply stating that he said a few funny things in the past week or so. And everyone accuses him of being a stiff, and maybe they're wrong. I didn't say that's a good basis for which to vote for him.

Then again, it's like Dave Chappelle said.

"I'd vote for Clinton again if I could. Not based on his politics though, based on his personality."

Personality goes a long way toward whether you think a politician is on the level. Vis a vi, W has the personality of a small child. Stumbles with big words, confuses similar words, laughs at anything, says things that he doesn't think through, and leaps into conflicts without thinking it through first.

Is that the man you want to lead your country? People talk about how it's unfair to judge bush based on his speaking ability. How so? You can tell alot about someone by the way they speak in public.

And if you're going to say "Well Clinton was a liar! Kerry is a liar!" And that's the only reason they don't seem like bush does in public... well... fine... if they're liars at least we would think that there were WMDs in iraq. They would have made something up. That's what the government is supposed to do when they screw up! LIE! They're not supposed to fumble their hands and shrug their shoulders like this mickey mouse administration we have now. LIE TO ME! Make me think your adept! Don't make me sit here and say "wow... I mean... What an idiot." Lie to me! Make me think you're on top of things.

The fact is, Bush is a bad leader, and a worse politician.

Thank you for throwing my topic into the wasteland that is a flame war.

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I resent that.

the electoral college should be gotten rid of, imo.

with modern technology that lets us talk to someone around the world in as much time it takes for an electrical signal to travel through a wire or bounce off a satellite, everyone's vote should count and votes could be (and are) processed in hours.

We no longer need delegates to vote for us on our behalf. Back in the 1700's - 1800s, it would have taken forever to gather everyones votes and get them to washington dc to be counted, so a proxy system was necessary. now, its obsolete.

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I have found that you can transform your character solely by the power of belief: as you believe yourself to be, so you shall become over time.

[This message has been edited by Pagewizard_YKS (edited July 18, 2004).]

Have fun trying to change a system people practically worship.

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WAITER: Here’s your green salad, sir.
ANAKIN: What? You fool, I told you NO CROUTONS! Aaaaaaargh!

No. Here. Gore won. Or Bush. It's hard to say, since the election was rife with corruption.

Okay, so the point is that if improperly cast ballots were interpretted, Gore might have won? Like I said and your link plainly states, Bush won.

Page, I used to think as you do of the electoral system. I used the Florida debacle as an excuse to educate myself further on the system. I came to the conclusion that is vital in our country to keeping elections honest. Especially when you consider all of the illegal voting that takes place.

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Have you forgotten ...

See voting should be one of those things where whoever gets the most votes wins. That's the idea.

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I figure that one day I'll either be famous, or in prison. But I guess if I'm going to prison, I should probably try to do something that would make me famous anyway.

Incorrect. The system was actually put in place *NOT* because we didnt have the technology, but because many of the founding fathers did not entirely trust the people. The electoral college is in place to override the people in case they are stupid.

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Ω of 14

oS: The candidates are picked by the party machines. The electors are picked by the party machines. If a party machine is stupid and runs Hitler and hundreds of millions of people are stupid and vote for Hitler, the party machine can easily find 535 people who will elect Hitler.

The electoral college is useless.

That would indicate that it failed in 2000.

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I figure that one day I'll either be famous, or in prison. But I guess if I'm going to prison, I should probably try to do something that would make me famous anyway.

Uh, that doesn't mean Page doesn't have a valid point. It WOULD have been extremely difficult to collect and process everyone's votes back then. In fact, it sounds like a much more logical reason for the existance of the electoral college than your reason, which you no doubt found in some second-rate history textbook somewhere.

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Have a good one,
Freelancer

Most states, if not all, require all the electoral votes to go to the winner of the state

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

The Electoral College is not contradictory to the person with the most votes winning. Generally the person with the most votes is still going to win. As I said, the electoral college is vital to keeping elections honest. Why do you think these third world countries that simply count ballots and the most votes wins have so much corruption? Sure the candidates are usually even worse than ours but it's because the system is so easy to abuse.

At least in our system if some ballot tampering manages to occur the effects of it are halted by the fact that the maximum benefit are the electoral votes of each state. Not a net gain of raw votes.

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Have you forgotten ...

Not necessarily, Wookie. In battleground states the electoral college system actually rewards fraud to a degree a popular vote would not. For example, Gore lost the election by around 500 to -200 votes, but won the popular vote by over half a million. So, is it more difficult to fake a. few votes or b. many votes?

Why do we have the electoral college, again?

So that states with small populations (ie: Idaho, Montana, Alaska, etc...) would have a larger role in elections.

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Roach - Caught in the war of hemispheres.
0 of 14.

That is, they would gain disproportionate voting power. My vote would be worth more than three times its current value if I moved to Wyoming. It's not justifiable.

Based on that logic, people who never speak in public (like me) either have no personality or are dead.

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For a healty meal, eat mashed potatoes, peas, and catloaf.
"Massassi's cuttin' into my free time, man."

Valuable Life Lesson: Frog + Potato Gun = Blindness

Wrong. You're not a politician are you? And therefore you're not required to speak in public. Since we don't get to speak with our politicians in private, we don't get to judge them based on private conversations.

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I figure that one day I'll either be famous, or in prison. But I guess if I'm going to prison, I should probably try to do something that would make me famous anyway.

The flip side is that all the candidate has to do is win New England and California and he's home free.


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