Run In With Mr. Edwards

Tom S. wrote:

the five states with significant
vote frauds; Wisc., Minn, Penn, NW, Oregon and possibly Iowa.

Never heard of this but I did see a story on the news last night that
apparently there are tens of thousands of people registered to vote in
both Florida and New York, presumably snowbirds. There is a feeding
frenzy on now to see if they voted twice in 2000. If so this is very
bad news for the democrats.

"Aviv Hod" wrote in
message ...
Pete, you're assuming that having a third, fourth, or more parties would
be good for politics.

Yes, that's true.

Having been born in a country that has a
notoriously fractured political structure, with 50+ parties running for
parliment and a good dozen or so well represented, I can attest to the
fact that multi-party politics serves only to benefit the fringe
fanatics by making them more important than they really are because they
are necessary for coalition building. What you end up with is an
incredibly unstable government that is always under the threat of
breaking apart.

Well, I never thought of it that way. That said, under a change like what I
proposed, a third party would still not get into office unless they had the
majority vote. It just makes it easier for the people to express their true
desire, rather than always having to choose between things like "the lesser
of two evils" and "voting one's heart".

Also, while I readily admit that the US government is not nearly in as great
a state of distraction as the Israeli government, I'll also suggest that
there are other very significant factors at work in Israel that are unlikely
to ever be an issue here. Maybe we can "handle it" even as another country
could not.

[...]
Having said that, the beauty of the current system is that it has NO
basis in law. There ARE other parties, they DO get on ballots, and
there have been plenty of precedents for third party or no party
candidates being elected into office.

Not in any election that really matters. A primary party candidate would
have to really go off the deep end to open up things for an independent, or
the office would have to be uncontested.

[...]
I find it unhelpful to complain about the "system" when what we're
really talking about is current voting patterns. Those can be changed
if the message has wide merit and appeal.

I disagree. An independent or secondary party candidate would have to spend
several orders of magnitude more money than the primary candidates just to
even have a hope of competing. Equal spending isn't going to do it, and
there's not even the finances available for equal spending. The current
system completely locks out third parties, even when they have a serious,
viable platform.

I will repeat my previous observation: when one party is funding another
party just to screw a third party, there's something wrong.

Pete

"Tom Fleischman" wrote in message
rthlink.net...
Aren't you forgetting Mr. Perot, in two of the last three elections?

I don't recall Perot having nearly enough votes to have been able to be
blamed for making a difference in the election.

In the most recent Presidential election, the actual number of votes cast
were actually *greater* for the loser, with the electoral college system
causing the difference in outcome. It's unusual for elections to be that
close, allowing a third party to shift the results.

Pete

In the most recent Presidential election, the actual number of votes cast
were actually *greater* for the loser, with the electoral college system
causing the difference in outcome. It's unusual for election

Actually not ALL the votes in ALL the states were EVEN counted......so who even
knows who got the popular vote....not that it really matters....given the
electorial system...and if you think the electorial system is a crock, then you
should think the house vs senate is as well, because they have the same basic
premise....

There are IIRC several states that only count until its "obvious" who wins the
state....then they stop counting...so those uncounted numbers never show up in
the popular count vote...

take care

BLLLL

H.P. wrote:

Your points are well taken but if AOPA and other lobbying groups hope to
limit product liability any further for GA, a democrat, in general, and a
"trial" lawyer, in particular, are not likely to be proponents of product
liability reform.

Take a look at Ashcroft's statements before joining the Bush administration.
He was rabidly biased towards state's rights. Since joining the Bush
administration, he's taken a very federalist view.

I've no idea what prompted this change. Is he burying his own opinions in
favor of those of his boss (not unreasonable)? Did something actually
change his mind?

Bush himself was against nation-building and strongly in favor of free
trade.

I mention these because it's not always clear what will happen when someone
is put in charge.

- Andrew

"Martin Hotze" wrote in message
...
does this only happen at national level or also on state or county (or
even
community) level? are there no independent/liberal/green/... mayors or
other important people in the US?

Generally speaking, the more important a race is, the less likely someone
not from the two primary parties will win. At the lowest level (municipal
elections), races are (almost?) always non-partisan, so all sorts of folks
could get office. But they have little more influence than deciding things
like how many sidewalks to build, and who in the city pays for them.

As far as I know, there's no "Liberal" party. Perhaps you meant
"Libertarian"?

Pete

"Tom S." wrote:

His entire military career was a fake and a setup (posed pictures and
recreated video footage), not to mention the fact he was a backshooting
murderer.

That doesn't matter. The key question is: did he inhale?

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.

Peter Duniho wrote:

"Tom Fleischman" wrote in message
rthlink.net...
Aren't you forgetting Mr. Perot, in two of the last three elections?

I don't recall Perot having nearly enough votes to have been able to be
blamed for making a difference in the election.

I recall the media (paper and radio) in this area claiming that Bush, Sr. would
almost certainly have won if Perot had not been running. NPR in particular assumed
that most of the people who voted for Perot would have voted Republican had Perot
dropped out.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.

Newps wrote in message ...
Malcolm Teas wrote:

He let Mueller airport in Austin close without comment.
Since then there's a lack of a good GA airport in central TX.

That was the last one, there's no place to land in central Texas anymore?

You'd have to check w/ someone who actually still lives there. I move
away because of work. But, there's Lakeway, Bergstrom, and San Marcos
as well as Georgetown. The latter two can be far from most of the
people there and perhaps a little small. The first is rather small
and private, the second is large and can be expensive - it's more
geared for corp fliers, not GA.

Last I heard they were trying to figure out a good replacement for
Mueller. I also heard the abandoned runway was used for an emergency
landing this summer. So, it's still there.

-Malcolm Teas

Martin Hotze wrote:

does this only happen at national level or also on state or county (or even
community) level? are there no independent/liberal/green/... mayors or other
important people in the US?

I've seen a few 3rd-party candidates for local offices here in New Jersey. I've not
seen one win election in my area, but sometimes they do run for office.

With the possibilities for income from graft, the local offices here are frequently
hotly contested. In the last election, the hottest contest by far was for a
Middletown council seat. The son of one of the NJ legislators wants to get a variance
to allow him to build a massive set of commercial businesses (he calls it a "Town
Center") sort of like a spread-out mall and the council opposes it. So he had his
daddy working hard to get one of the councilwomen deposed. As it turns out, it almost
cost his daddy his office.

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.