... because then you could vote your conscience this November instead of just your feet. But since you insist on your separation from the US - indeed, you seem rather proud of it - I'm afraid your worries will count for nought.

I mean, think of how many more liberal congressmen there'd be on Capitol Hill if Canada was a state.

I now pronounce you husband and wife. We'll just backdate the wedding license to 1971.

>> The GOP has done this for years; the Alaska-firsters have simply cottoned on to it.

The way the game works is that you find something (better yet, a bunch of somethings) "wrong" to complain about, and blame all your troubles and woes on it/them. Then you build a base of supporters who agree, and bully others who don't. <<

In "The Music Man" Robert Preston does just that with the 'Trouble in River City' number.

You argue for both sides of the coin. In one paragraph you justify (poorly) secession; in the next you call for federal term limits which, by definition, would negate any supposed need for secession.

Have you considered politics? The governorship of Alaska may open up soon.

>> "But because of an arcane system that was invented over 200 years earlier to protect slavery ..."

Not quite. Some of the the Constitutional Convention wanted the president elected by popular vote; James Madison notably favored this. Many who distrusted "the people" wanted wanted Congress to do the job. But that would have risked making the president a creature of Congress, which would have violated the checks and balances system they sought.

The electoral college was, thus, a compromise. A poorly thought out compromise, true, but one which isn't going away.

>> That's just not right. It's a mockery of the idea of free and fair elections. Why is where a citizen lives more important than how they vote for a person that is supposed to serve the entire nation? <<

It's not entirely a unique situation. In parliamentary governments like Canada or the UK, the executive is within the legislature; ergo, the legislature doubles as the electoral college. Here in the US, the executive is separate from the legislature; ergo, he/she is chosen by a separate, one-issue-one-vote legislature called the electoral college.

>> The main reason we still have the "electoral college" idiocy is that both major parties are terrified of trying to win a national direct election. All their strategies and experience are geared to the current system, and they'd have to start over. Very risky. <<

Again, not quite. In 48 states the state Dems and GOP play the winner-take-all game, by which they take all of a state's electors for the minimal price of the statewide popular majority. This has the additional benefit of squeezing out third parties, which always cut into the second-place party far more than into the winner. This is what made the Florida Recount of 2000 the fiasco which it became.

Maine and Nebraska choose their electors the same as they do senators and congressmen - only two statewide, the rest by district. If Florida had this in 2000 then only three electors would have been on the line instead of 25 -- when Bush needed 24 to win.

So its perfectly understandable that the Dems and GOP never call for electoral reform - they're doing just fine without it. What disgusts me is that the media never say a word about it, either. Miami Herald, are you there?

>> I despise the the anti-intellectual appeal of GWB, Sarah Palin and their like - I simply can't fathom someone who would rather vote for the dude they drink beer with over the very smartest, most humane, most forward-thinking person they've ever known. <<

Bush, Palin and their like have mastered The Common Touch (some call it the Con Game), something which no Democrat since Bill Clinton has done. They have a gift for making Mr. & Mrs. Average feel he and she can relate to them personally -- as others have remarked, "as though you could have a beer with Bush." And they probably could, during election season anyway. But the one key to this trick is to never let The Averages feel you're lording over it somehow ... whether smarter, richer, prettier or some combo which the Averages 1) already know they will never enjoy and, 2) assume you must already have, otherwise you wouldn't be running for office. To let them know you think you're smarter/richer/prettier than they are - i.e., talk down to them - is ballot box poison. A fatal way of doing this is to be seen doing something which the voters, the media and even you, the candidate yourself, know just isn't you, whether it's sharing a beer, bowling or riding a tank. The Dems keep repeating this mistake again and again, developing an image of haughty and clumsy elitism.

>> I will finish by making one final random point: does no one think that the US would be better served by a shorter electoral season? Surely the democratic process is damaged by these two-year, impossibly expensive, too long to follow presidential campaigns. We in Canada are also gearing up for an election...Parliament was dissolved on Sunday (which kicks off our election cycle), and we'll vote on October 14. 5 whole weeks...whirlwind, but there's still time to find out where people stand (assuming they'll give interviews, unlike some other politicians I could mention). <<

First, this is a presidential election, not a parliamentary one. Yes, most presidential elections around the world don't take this long but so what? The party whips here have very little influence over what in Canada are termed "backbenchers."

Second, parliamentary governments are executive-within-the-legislature, so the legislature doubles as an electoral college. In the US, the executive is separate from the legislature and, hence, is chosen by a separate legislature called the Electoral College, which has no party whips at all.

Third, most of the two-year hoopla are intra-party contests, not the election itself. They're the logical consequences of campaign reforms beginning with the '68 meltdown in Chicago when the Democratic party bosses chose Hubert Humphrey, ignoring the results of the 10 state primaries which favored Eugene McCarthy after RFK was murdered. Since then, the party bosses in the smoke filled room have given way to the state primaries all over the country.

Also, after Watergate Congress feared (needlessly, as it turned out) that campaign contributions from one source would buy that one contributor undue influence. Since then, contributions are limited to $2,000 per person max. But, thanks to Yankee ingenuity and organization, campaign contributions come from all over and are now funneled through this or that political action committee. Thus, undue influence isn't bought by one person but by networks of people. You tell me which is worse.

When you think about it, it's not all that different from any political party jockeying except that Americans, being Americans, like to flaunt their democracy. Vulgar displays to some, maybe, but otherwise not all that different.

All this takes time as well as money, which is why all the hoopla. Know of a shorter way to go about it? I'm listening.

Ever wonder why there's no draft? Bush & Co. learned the lesson from their misspent college days: take away the draft, the student opposition goes away. Use volunteers from America's disadvantaged poor, who never take up radical politics no matter how hard Uncle Sam leans on them. McCain will follow this same prescription as will his fellow Republicans in Congress

Although both were part of the Spencer family and thus conspicuously inbred, Diana Spencer wasn't a descendant [note the spelling] of Georgiana Spencer. They were merely distant cousins, several times removed.

Eight years after the Florida Fiasco of 2000, people still obsess about hanging chads, butterfly ballots and Diebold voting machines. Not once does anyone in the media examine the real cause of the insanity – the Electoral College. It may be that the E.C. is too intangible to put a finger on without think about it first, which is how the Big Two Parties like it. But is that an excuse?

I won’t go over the history of the Electoral College – read "The Presidential Game" by Richard McCormick for that – but there’s one little feature which amplified the 2000 recount into the hysteria which it became. Some people call it the “unit rule;” I call it “winner-take-all.”

Thanks to a loophole in the Constitution, forty-eight state legislatures and the District of Columbia allow their electors to be chosen “at-large;” i.e., statewide. You and I don’t vote for one or the other party’s candidate but for one or the other party’s package of electors who will, in turn, vote for their party’s candidate. In plain terms, both the Democrats and Republicans have fixed the system whereby they bet to win all of a state’s electors by winning the minimal popular majority. This has the added benefit of shutting out any third party. This is why the Democrats never demanded electoral reform during the 2000 Fiasco. Recounts? By all means (insert joke here) !! But reform? … those Florida crickets really chirp, don’t they?

Maine and Nebraska do it differently. They choose their electors the same as they do their senators and representatives – only two at-large and the rest by local district. If Florida did this in 2000 then any recount would have had only three electors at stake – one from Palm Beach and the two statewides. Bush would have received only 14 Florida electors instead of all 25. He needed 24 to win.

Think about it.

I can understand why the Democrats and Republicans keep silent about it. Their job is to win by any means possible. But why haven’t the media or the bloggers spoken up about it? Are you there, Miami Herald?

"If the pattern of history holds, the Fourth Republic of the United States will last ... to 2076."

Looks like the Tricentennial will be nicknamed the "Trycentennial" or "Trialcentennial" by pundits and hack comics as mediocre as this post. ;-)

'"Make no heroes," my father said'

- The voice of Ghanima from the Oral History, as quoted in 'God-Emperor of Dune' by Frank Herbert.

Shrub will be out in six weeks and, besides, he'll just pardon everyone he knows including himself.

Wouldn't "timidity" or even "timor" have sufficed?

This would never be a lead story outside Illinois if Obama's name wasn't tangentally connected to it. But let's face it - the real game here is "what did Obama know and when did he know it?" The media will play that game ad nauseam, and the conspiracy addicts will play it ad infinitum.

Of course that blog is called "the Clothes That Got Me Laid." If it was called "What I Wore Which Got Me Laid" there'd be only one answer:

a smile.