Huck, Obama surging in Iowa

Not ready for bedtime either.

Interesting article about Fred Thompson (remember him?):

(don't add www)

campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2RhN2UwMWRlMjRjOThjNDM3NGMxMzFmMzFkNGY2MTA=

Iowa increasinlgy seems like a bad joke. These people picked Pat Robertson; doesn't that mean anything? And some folks have noticed-

Hitchens-

http://slate.com/id/2181008

WSJ-

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110011061

Keep Hope (Arkansas) Alive!
(One way or another)

Iowa increasinlgy seems like a bad joke. These people picked Pat Robertson; doesn't that mean anything? And some folks have noticed-

I grew up in Iowa. In fact, I specifically grew up in Ames, Iowa, the epicenter of all the fuss and excitement. I, too, find the importance given to Iowa to be laughable. Ames is a radically liberal town. Not as bad as San Francisco, but it's liberal Democratic heaven, from what I recall and have read. Republican bad. Democratic good. Conservative bad. Liberal good. That's the local mantra.

IIRC, in the fall following my graduation from high school (1970), returning students came to the first day of school to find the U.S. flag taken down and replaced by a "Peace sign" flag.

Here's a Website devoted to Ames from my time period:

wesselphoto.com/ar/index.html

Check out the various sets of photos. :) (No, I'm not in any of them, but I could have been!)

Mr. Huckabee has no plans for universal health care so far as I can tell. This means he will not get my vote.

I fear that this requirement applies to all Republicans, all of whom seem to adhere to the "I've Got Mine Too Bad For Everyone Else" school of thought.

Good Christians all.

Even if Huckleberry should win in Iowa, he hasn't got the money to be competitive anywhere else, so he'll end up like Garry Hart in 1984, barring some unforseen idiocy on the part of the other candidates. Iowa is an entertaining side show unless a candidate totally self-destructs like Mad Howard did four years ago.

The Republican mainstream would finally have a Sister Souljah moment with the theocons and say publicly what they've been saying privately for two decades: the theocons are a drain on the party.>

Translation: those religious nuts embarrass us.

The thing is, the theocons haven't been a drain on the party, but the life of it. Funny how no one mentions hard-core seculars being a drain on the Democratic party; there are a significant number of Christians who would vote Democratic on economic issues, if only the party didn't disdain their traditional moral and social values. Thomas Frank wrote a whole book about these people, "What's the Matter With Kansas?", in which he accused these working-and-middle-class folks of voting against their economic interests for reasons he thought stupid (e.g., abortion, gay marriage). But these are not stupid reasons to people who value the sacredness of unborn life and traditional marriage over economic gain. If the Democrats were to abandon their social liberalism, or at least practice big-tent politics, they'd gain a significant number of votes. Those seculibs, man, are such a drain on the Democratic party.

When the majority of high-dollar health-care problems and solutions in this country are self-caused by diet or lack thereof, or lack of exercise, or smoking or drinking

Hi Eric. Please supply data to support the idea that "the majority" of health problems in this country are "self-caused." Don't forget to document how breast cancer is my fault, as is the mental illness of my son. (His fault? My fault? Be sure to be clear on this.) And the prostate cancer of my father in law. And the arthritis my sister suffers from. All our fault, so too bad for us, huh. And Rod's son? This is his fault too? What bad people we all must b e.

Good luck not getting sick. If you do get sick it's undoubtedly your fault, so too bad for you. Why do I discern that you are younger than 40?

The thing that will, I fervently hope, defeat every Republican in sight, is the perception that what Republicans stand for is, "I've Got Mine And If You Don't Too Bad For You." An attitude beautifully illustrated, in all its ugly living color, by Eric's last post.

Eric isn't sick (yet) and is undoubtedly insured. (So far. Until he gets sick or is laid off.) So, it follows that if you get sick or if Rod's son needs medical care, or if my son does, well, it must be our fault. We're not as virtuous as Eric is, undoubtedly, and so we're on our own. And if we don't have the money to pay for medical care and aren't lucky enough to be insured by our employers? Well, this too is undoubtedly our fault too, so too bad for us. And too bad for our kids. So sad too bad.

If the USA is a family, some family. Go to Europe, you folks stranded for life in the flyover. We don't have to live this way. The rest of the industrialized West, EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY, has got the picture. Only American Yahoos stranded on the North American Continent don't get it.

No one who takes the "I've Got Mine" position will get my vote. I've got mine, in fact. We have a huge income, and we're insured to the eyes. No problems here. But pushing everyone else off the edge, well, it just isn't right.

Susan:

Please read what I wrote. I said the majority of high-dollar health-care problems and solutions.

quote: "Touche. Now, if there was a shred of evidence to support it. I actually don't think there are a lot of votes to be gained by Democrats sacrificing civil rights and individual liberty. And there isn't much evidence that there are large number of social conservatives who would switch allegiances to the Democrats. Social conservatives--especially the pro-life absolutists--are more likely to join a far-right third party than be willing to make compromises likely to feel comfortable with Democrats' support for civil rights and individual liberty."

Well, Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio's article "Our secularist democratic party" does document how the disproportionate influence that secularist have on the Democratic party since 1972 has played a large part in shaping the Democrats' ideology, which has in turned alienated many conservative religious voters, who now are basically ex-Democrats or come from the family's of ex-Democrats, as is the case for me.
If you haven't read the article (a bit long, but a good read), it can be found here:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_2002_Fall/ai_91972733/pg_1

They also may an interesting point about the media doesn't cover the influence of secularists on the Democratic party the same it does the influence of religious voters on the Republican party.

Money quote on that issue: "Media elites are no doubt aware of American religiosity and implicitly understand the political ramifications of characterizing the Democrats as the partisan home of secularism. Perhaps it is for this reason more than any other that we do not hear in election-night analyses and postmortems that Democratic candidates have shorn up their base among the unchurched, atheists, and agnostics, in addition to the ritualistic accounts and warnings about how well Republicans are doing with evangelicals or the Christian Right.

Anyway, actually, I think you are right that Democrats might not gain much by attempting to appeal to religious conservatives. They might well gain in the long run if they abandoned their support for abortion (I would define the Democrats as supporting the opposite of civil rights with things like abortion, but I digress), but in the short run they would lose the secularists they depend on for part of their base, and the religious voters distrust the Democrats too much to come back to them in the short run.
So it seems the Democrats are stuck with the secularists and the Republicans with religious voters. Numerically speaking, religious voters outnumber secularists by a wide margin. Heck, Evangelicals alone are something like one-third of the population. The idea that the Republicans could win by abandoning religious voters is thus absurd. Democrats would stand a better chance by abandoning secularists, especially as they have had such a lousy record of winning presidential elections since 1972. A record of 3-9 generally gets coaches fired in most sports. But they would have to be willing to suffer at the polls in the short run and run off much of their leadership which above all else cares about issues related to the sexual revolution. They might also have to get serious about the interests of working-class and lower-middle class folks for a change instead of just paying lip service.
I don't see any of that happening. The New Deal coalition died a long time ago. Conservative religious folks aren't come back to the party of FDR, and the leadership of the Democratic party today doesn't really care about the concerns that drove said coalition in the first place.

rr

Those seculibs, man, are such a drain on the Democratic party.

I get your point, Rod, but I must disagree.

Until the boomers die out, it's going to be seculib heaven in America, and the theocons are a political loser. Not to mention how terrible a political friend theocons are. For example, Bush is the most theocon president in memory, losing a lot of political capital to be so, and yet theocons still aren't happy.

Born '46-'64, boomers will vote until 2020-2040. While they did convert to conservative on fiscal issues once they made their own piles (natch!), they will certainly never repent and convert to theocon in their old age...40 million abortions is not enough legacy for them, they gotta have more.

Besides, when Social Security/Medicare go bust and boomers vote for taxes to retire in style, get ready for fiscal issues to dominate. It's going to be an age/class/money political game more than a culture war. Theocons will be isolated until the boomers start to die off.

Think about it the political war brewing. The old will be wealthy, white, politically active, and very powerful. They will not hesitate to screw their kids (and the economy) via taxes. Their kids will be angry, more racially diverse, much poorer, and much more concerned with voting their pocketbook as the boomers clean them out. Social issues will have to take a back seat.

But around 2040, the boomers mostly dead, the seculibs will have pretty much shrunk to a feeble minority. America will be almost half minority, and the political parties will dump the seculibs like a hot stone. But until then, it's the seculib's time to shine!

Good point, Will.

Susan: If you think it's difficult to sue a doctor or hospital for malpractice these days with private health insurance, or to sue a health insurance company or HMO for coverage or a procedure they don't want to give you, wait until the government provides all the doctors and is "responsible" for all the health care a person does or does not receive or is allowed or not allowed to receive. You ... can ... kiss ... your ... ability ... to ... get ... justice ... good-bye.

M_David, please look at the historical growth of the national debt. The kids have been screwed several times over already.

M_David: You need to take more than a two-dimensional view of Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/etc.

I'm assuming you are forty-two or younger and not part of that despised generation, but you will, nevertheless, benefit from those programs. They are almost universally credited with raising the elderly as a group from poverty and dependence upon family for support during their last years. No Social Security/Medicare and Grandpa will be moving in with you and the kids will have to share a bedroom and bath. His illnesses and hospitalizations will be your responsibility and his health insurance premiums - assuming you can afford health insurance premiums for someone over sixty-five - will be astronomical. (Remember: today's premiums are based upon the expectation of Medicare/Medicaid being the primary carrier.) And even if he is healthy today, remember the odds are that his expenses will double or triple during his last years.

Or, I suppose, you can kick the old geezer to the curb. After all, what good is he now that the expense of upkeep exceeds the expectation of return?

Re: my earlier comments about lifestyle being responsible for high-dollar health care costs:

wcbstv.com/business/corporations.combat.obesity.2.621317.html

Companies Rewarding Workers' Healthy Habits
Workers Get Cash For Eating Better, Having Kids Eat Healthy
By Alexis Christoforous

NEW YORK (CBS) ― How's this for incentive to stick to your new year's resolutions: cold hard cash. Many companies are offering a little extra in your paycheck to help you shed the pounds.

Not only does Stefanie Chiras' company pay her to develop computer memory sub-systems, but a little extra to eat right.

"Having work sponsor it makes you kind of feel like someone is buying into It," said Chiras. "And then certainly the cash at the end of the day is an incentive."

Chiras works for IBM. She gets an additional $150 in her paycheck for tracking her eating habits online and losing weight.

"When I reach for that next unhealthy thing, I think, oh, but I have to log it in to the tool."

IBM launched its voluntary wellness incentive program four years ago – handing each employee up to $300 a year for completing healthy eating, exercise and preventative care programs.

Health care bills for corporate America are skyrocketing. Each year, IBM spends about $2 billion globally, and obese workers are driving up the cost.

Researchers say offering cash incentives to employees is actually a low cost way to motivate them to cut out the fat and get on the treadmill.

Eric Finkelstein, author 'The Fattening of America' said "It is essentially costless for the firm. If nobody loses any weight, then they don't spend any money."

So many IBM employees have lost weight, stopped smoking or otherwise improved their health that the company has paid out $130 million but it's saving about three times as much.

This year, IBM also plans to give workers money if their children develop healthier eating habits.

Dr. Paul Grundy, the Director of Strategic Initiatives at IBM told CBS "frankly speaking we don't know why everybody wouldn't do this because it really does make a great deal of sense."

Chiras credits the company policy with getting her back into shape after having a baby a year and a half ago. She says she'll spend some of her extra cash to take her daughter on her first trip to the zoo.

As part of it's wellness program, most IBM medical options cover routine preventive services at 100% if it's done 'in-network'.

Eric, just to take one example of many, catastrophic birth defects can cause very "high dollar" health care expenses. As can hereditary neurological conditions like Huntington's. As can various cancers, not all of which can be tied to behavioral factors - indeed, most of them cannot. As can Type I diabetes, another inherited condition which usually strikes small children, and which generates huge expenses over a lifetime.

There is no question that better living habits make for better health in general. But it's just plain wrong to contend that if everybody stopped smoking, drinking and eating too much, and got more exercise, that no one would incur catastrophic medical expenses. Or to contend that anytime anyone gets sick and incurs very high-dollar expenses, well, it's probably their fault anyway, and Eric shouldn't have to help pay for it. That kind of reasoning will get you only until you or someone you love becomes seriously and expensively ill.

Very Republican of you, though, so far as I can tell.

Susan: Again you mistreat and exaggerate my comments and create a straw man which you then set alight. I never said or contended that healthier and more responsible living would end all problems, nor did I say that all high-dollar health care costs were due to lifestyle choices. Please read what's written before you respond, and please respond to what a person writes, not to what you misrepresent them to have written. Sheesh!

so it's over. I can't wait for all the delicious political fun. Start with forty steady years of declining social capital, calcuate in the Bowling Alone effect, note all the broken families and the 70% working mothers today (versus 30% back in '70s) that are now needed to prop up our economy at the expense of future generations. Note the schools, the sucide rates, the school shootings. Then toss in a dash of peak oil, note the aging, wealthy, unrepentant yet politically powerful boomer class...and Woo Hoo! It's party time. Grab a beer and enjoy the show.

Which is why I need to hurry on getting a goo dchunk of land and building that off-grid house.

Charles,

Like any analogy, mine admittedly breaks down... but I have to ask you, how many times in history did a group of humans refrain from doing something because they would be hurting themselves in the process?

It's like the statistics of fatal automobile accidents: one may have a very small chance of being in one, but it only takes one accident to make one 100% dead. :-(

OK, Eric, this is your exact quote:

When the majority of high-dollar health-care problems and solutions in this country are self-caused by diet or lack thereof, or lack of exercise, or smoking or drinking, then I don't see why not wanting to make everyone pay to bail out every Tom, Dick and Harry for their unwise lifelong lifestyle decisions makes a person not a "good Christian." Didn't St. Paul say something about reaping what one sows?

1. Is this true, right off the bat? Are the majority of high-dollar health-care problems "self-caused"? Your authority for that statement? I listed a number of "high-dollar" health-care problems which are certainly NOT "self-caused," and I could list many more. Where did you get this "majority" number?

2. Not even everyone who develops, say, heart disease does so as a result of unwise lifestyle decisions. There are powerful hereditary factors at work as well. Remember Jim Fixx, the big deal runner, who dropped dead of heart disease in his 40's? So, how do you propose to tell who gets, say, heart disease from "unwise" decisions and who gets it from other factors?

3. You seem to be proposing that we not "bail out" those who are to blame for their own situation. But, wouldn't you have to be able to tell which people these were? You can't just sort by disease, as demonstrated in #2 above. How would you make this distinction?

4. Your statement implies, however, that since (according to you) the "majority" of "high-dollar" health care problems arise from personal fault of some kind, that we should just not have social programs for health care AT ALL. That way we're punishing those bad unwise people for sure. If you don't mean this, please refer back to #3.

All these possible positions are quite easy to take so long as you personally have a lot of money and/or you and everyone you love is well. Your position is hard on people who either have little money and/or get sick.

How Republican of you.

How gracious of you.

Just one thing to add, M_David: I was born in 1956. ;-D

... wait, two things: the AARP has been working very hard for several years to commercialize and marginalize itself. Your point about their political clout is well taken, but the jury is still out on whether it will continue.

The "Our secularist democratic party" has some data, but I don't think it fully supports the point they're trying to make. It's persuasive in making the point that there's a "secularist" group on the left which is as politically fringe as the amorphous "religious fundamentalists"; it fails to argue, though, that they have anything like comparable power and influence in their parties, something it just vaguely assumes.

The "fundamentalist" faction has always had more power in their party than the "secularist" faction in the democratic party - there's a telling bit at the end as to why:
"In a national poll conducted in March 2002 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, more than half of the respondents expressed unfavorable feelings toward "nonbelievers," almost twice the number that felt unfavorably toward the "Christian conservative movement."" The same thing shows up in polls all the time - deep distrust of the non-religious, which is how they essentially define secularist. The article tries a bit to spin this as showing that the influence is hidden to avoid political problems; I think it primarily shows that the same kind of influence isn't there.

Admittedly, as is showing up in this election, the religious right's influence has always been stronger in rhetoric (and pandering) than in practice, but given the vast gap in pandering that's not saying much. Republicans *fight* for the endorsements of Falwell and Robertson; the equivalent "secularist" doesn't even exist, as best as I can tell; and if one did, the Democrats would run away.

For those of you leaning towards Huckabee, you gotta read the following letter from a conservative Republican in Arkansas. Doesn't seem like the governor has much support in his home state:

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/33391ddb-ed1f-4bc3-9d19-cdca6181d5d4

And speaking of political analysis that hurts, just be happy you aren't a theocon. I'm one of them, and our future is pretty grim for the next 10-20 years. Enjoy it!

Well, the areligious or nonchurched/nonaffiliated and nonsectarian proportion of the population increasing 10% in 10 years looks like a trend rather than a blip.

Democrats would stand a better chance by abandoning secularists, especially as they have had such a lousy record of winning presidential elections since 1972. A record of 3-9 generally gets coaches fired in most sports.

From 1932-1964, Republicans were 2-6 and that 2 were accounted for by the fairly moderate Ike. Across the ~75-77 year historical cycle in American politics that splits roughly into halves dominated by liberals and conservatives respectively, a split of 10 vs 11 is hardly bad. (And who knows, Hillary will probably break down moderate Republican resistance should she get elected, making a second term easy for her to win. :-) )

But they would have to be willing to suffer at the polls in the short run and run off much of their leadership which above all else cares about issues related to the sexual revolution.

No, it's about incremental breakdown of the crumbling system of rigid social class/castes/categories. As a country we broke down the corresponding political rights/privileges divisions from 1865 to 1940 or so. (Mostly.) 1941-2020ish is about disputing and breaking down the divisions of social rights/privileges.

2020ish- 2100ish is presumably about corresponding development in economic rights/privileges.

Constitutionally, they're successive realizations of the promises/guarantees of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.

They might also have to get serious about the interests of working-class and lower-middle class folks for a change instead of just paying lip service.

Well, if those voters truly prioritized economic rights, they'd not have voted so many Republicans in on the basis of social issues and killing more Commies and Arabs.

Every vote for Republicans based on abortion or obsessively hating "terrorists"/Latinos/whoever has been and is a vote permitting continued economic predation on the lower classes' wealth. They know it. They do it anyway.

I don't see any of that happening. The New Deal coalition died a long time ago. Conservative religious folks aren't come back to the party of FDR, and the leadership of the Democratic party today doesn't really care about the concerns that drove said coalition in the first place.

In 1972 the Democratic Party changed roles and became the party that sides with or is ambivalent toward Modernity. During the Seventies the Republican Party became the anti-Modernity coalition.

There's a lot of nostagic and vain hope among the slowly dying out conservative Democrats that there's a going back to the safely pre-Modern cocoon of around 1960 or even 1964. It's not going to happen, but they account for that funny shrinking (now down to 15-17%, but in the Nineties around 30%) proportion of selfidentifying Democrats that has reliably voted Republican in national elections.

The American media has found American conservative religious movements so much more interesting than the secularists because they seemed so out of place. And from the start, a source of apparent social and intellectual regression in a country that was so convinced of itself being a member of the First World set in the 1950s and 1960s. In roughly 1968, despite all the supposed love of all things white and western European by American conservatives, western Europe and the US went different ways.

Western Europe began its road forward to post-Christianity then, sticking with the core European value of rigorous thought, e.g. focus on science as collective endeavor and value, and liberal economic, social and political integration as the necessary solution to its large scale problems. With that has come abandonment of exclusive theism and rigid religionisms. That is now slowly expanding southward and eastward, just as the EU itself, and looks to spread beyond it. It has certainly arrived on the American coasts and Canada, as well.

In the Seventies and Eighties the US, in contrast, had a slow reactionary eruption of pre-Enlightenment European religious thinking ('conservative Christianity') with its anti-scientific occultisms and Agrarian Age, at root pre-Christian pagan, values/mores/beliefs. For all the fervent American conservatives' talk of keeping the US a model Western European society, they have actually revealed and expanded a popular cultural disconnection. The Iraq thang has now likewise revealed a progressive disconnecting of American and European elites- Colonial Era commonalities are breaking down, Cold War and older debts are mostly paid off.

The idea that "religionists" (I'm using this word for lack of a better way to describe them) will always outnumber "secularists" because they have more children per capita seems to me to rely on a curiously Lamarckian assumption. Is it not the case that the majority of current "secularists" were raised by more religious parents? It's true that there are some families that have been "secularist" for a couple of generations, but they are far outnumbered by people who were raised to believe, but stopped doing so when they reached adulthood. So it may even turn out that "religionists" who bear lots of children are actually breeding for the benefit of the other side. Not to mention that there are statistics suggesting that the more boys in a family, the more likely some of the younger ones are to be gay. So religious conservatives, by having lots of children, are helping to swell the gay population as well as the secularist ranks.

quote: "So it may even turn out that "religionists" who bear lots of children are actually breeding for the benefit of the other side."

Yes, this is indeed the case. There are some who were raised atheist or non-religious who become religious latter on in life, but probably more leave their religious upbringings for a secular life than vice-versa.
But, assuming religious people continue to have more children than secularists, what happens to the next generation? Those who remain religious continue to have more children than their secular counterparts, including those secularists who were raised religious.
Assuming religious people always have more children than secularists, it's hard to see where all this ends. In the case of secular Europe, however, it seems pretty clear that if secularists get the upper hand in society that said society stops having replacement level birth-rates.

rr

Trends only occur if they have demographic longevity. That's why areligious are merely a blip, they don't seem able to have kids at replacement for whatever reason.

Check the numbers; the secularists are merely a historical curiosity, soon extinct and forgotten.

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers. Yes, the 'areligious' are not selfreplacing fully. Yes, the 'religious' have 2.3+ children per pair of parents.

But: the children of the 'religious' are not 100% concordant with their parents- I personally doubt it's 50% true retention at this point. (There's a widely noted passive intermediate stage that is hard to evaluate.) Furthermore, the children of the 'areligious' have a much lower rate of going over to the 'religious' side. In "intermarriages" I don't see a lot of conversion of spouses or the children splitting 50/50 either- I don't have a strong count, but I have yet to see the 'religious' parent win over the children permanently.

Let me ask you why the Southern Baptist Convention is a numbers dispute now, with the internal critics believing that their numbers show de facto real decline in the past year or two. That's hardly a denomination that can be accused of a low birthrate or shrinkage in the number of churches it has, or softness of leadership. It, or something like it, ought to be the paradigm and core of the ReConversionista you envision. Why is it faltering? Or do you think the future lies in, say, a massive Pentecostal conversion?

How do you propose that universal health care becomes anything more than a rationing of health care for those who are, in some way, worthy?

Okay, I'm going to explain free market capitalism one more time to Republicans, who have somehow failed to grasp it how it works:

Rationing is a result of shortage. If there are X widgets available, and X*2 people who want a widget, there will be rationing. This rationing, unless on something that is physically unobtainable, such as oil was in 1973, will auto-correct itself, as more widgets are manufactured and more businesses go into the widget business.

Medical prices have gone up in an attempt to 'correct' the shortage in the medical industry, but price increases don't fix shortages, they 'manage' them until the shortage can be corrected. But we're not getting the correction, which admittedly would take time to train new doctors and build new facilities. But it's been almost two decades now.

Instead, we're getting an anti-correction, where we already don't have enough but we're constantly having less. Hospitals are still closing, doctors are getting more and more overloaded, wait times are increasing even with less patients because there's even less people providing service. Our level of care is receding!

Now, I will pull out my Big Book of Capitalism and notice that, if the free market is failing, that something is interfering with it.

And, suddenly, I immediately notice a very very interesting fact about the medical industry that no other industry has: They have a middleman that makes more when less services are provided. Hmmmm. Apparently, not only is that having the obvious effect of providing less services than people want, it's actually gotten to the point where it's damaged the medical industry itself.

As long as the insurance industry is between people and health care, there will not be enough health care. Either via government rationing or cost rationing.

Once we get rid of the insurance industry, the market will operate as normal. Of course, while that removes shortages, that doesn't change the fact that medical care is still too expensive for normal people. Other countries have solved this by having the government operate the medical industry, or having the government pay for the medical care in a privately operated industry.

And if you go those routes, you end up with either a quasi-free market or a planned market, which, of course, can result in shortages if there is poor planning. But it seems better than a 'free market' with a middleman who's ultimate goal is that no one ever, under any circumstances, get medical care, or a free market that no one can actually afford to participate in.

For my personal analysis supporting my contention that the electoral college is beyond ridiculous, the numbers don't lie: http://madfedor.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-electoral-college-is-ridiculous.html

;-D