Representative government has become joke this day and age.

With the communication infrastructure and technology we have available, we are perfectly capable of self governance, even at the state level.

I am getting one of these bumper stickers

We were intended to have citizen representatives, not career politicians. We need term limits.

We have a term limit for POTUS. And Romney's never held federal office.

There is no reason to have the United States the size it is. 545 (Congress plus prez plus Supreme) to rule or represent 310 million is impossible. We'd need about 10,150 Congressmen to match the constituents per rep in the first Congress. It is just easier to break it up; it is bankrupt anyway and its currency is worth less than the large rolls of toilet paper you can get at Costco.

And scratchier.

We'll see how hopeless things are.

If people can't even kick the Creep out of Clackamas County the country is doomed.

But hey, Conrad Black is out of prison!

That scratchy toilet paper remains the reserve currency of the world. For now.

It should be replaced, eventually.

There are several unknowns: what will replace it? Why? Will it be convertible into precious metal?

Possible contenders: The Yuan? A new Deutsche Mark (or downsized Euro)? The Brazilian Real? The Aussie or Loonie?
The Ruble or Rupee?

Will the Chinese continue to buy Treasury bonds yielding less than the rate of inflation. Imagine how they'll feel when a few days of FX losses exceed the interest they'll collect for THE YEAR.

There is no affordable way to hedge that risk: they just have to find a way to reinvest dollars into hard assets rather than debt instruments.

Chinese investors just bought AMC Theaters; based on the Chinese gov't's investment prowess in T-bills that was probably the exclusive theater for both "John Carter" and "Battleship".

And scratchier.

Only the 1% would know that.

Although I wouldn't.

Are conventions old fashioned now and passe?
Remember the days when the nominee for the party wasn't decided until the convention and states voted for certain ones and had platforms they advocated for?

The False Left Right Paradigm

Hurry everyone, step right up! Get a Harvard lawyer or get a Harvard lawyer.

One of them even has a biz school diploma, just like W.

let's seee....

Strait-laced, Bible-schooled business magnate family man who chopped off some kid's hair in a prep-school hazing incident and later strapped the dog in his kennel to the roof of the car on a family trip, or...

Someone schooled in critical race theory and the identity politics of a leftist black liberation theology Chicago church...who believed he was entitled to admission to Columbia and Yale d/t proportion of melanin in his dermal cells, (and admissions officials at said institutions agreed), even though his ancestors were never brought here as slaves and he grew up in an entirely middle class setting...who ultimately believed he was entitled to the presidency (and voters agreed).

Such choices.

No contest. The stain of slavery has been lifted, so can't we Just vote this humbug out, now?

"The stain of slavery has been lifted, so can't we Just vote this humbug out, now?"

Wow. Just... wow.

I believe that I'll vote for a third party!

Clinamen wrote: "Are conventions old fashioned now and passe? Remember the days when the nominee for the party wasn't decided until the convention and states voted for certain ones and had platforms they advocated for?"

I remember. I think we saw more candidates coming down to the wire -- with greater legitimate state participation on the conventions -- because it wasn't necessary to raise a campaign chest larger than the treasury of a small country in order to compete.

The humor satirists like Russell Baker used to direct at the process was more about the same tired multiple candidates being trotted out cycle after cycle. I recall one column, in particular, where a voter went into a political haberdashery and wanted something new (I think that year it was "The Gene - McCarthy") and the proprietor sneered at him and tried to stuff him into a Humphrey.

Still, there were differences and Goldwater Republicans (for example) were nothing like the mainstream Republicans of today . . .

Let me guess what "wow" means.

"Wow" means that if a person believes that:-
1)Obama has proved himself unqualified for the presidency, and,
2) that he ascended to the presidency in the first place because a critical proportion of Americans felt guilty about racism and slavery and wanted to prove, once and for all, that melanin is welcome, or at least irrelevant......

....then that person who believes that must be racist. Or worthy of ostracism. Or something bad, at any rate.

Ack, God, spare me. I still agree to this day, with what Colin Powell said when he endorsed Obama in 2008, that he was a "transformational candidate". Now, Mr Powell declines to endorse Obama for 2012. And just as I voted for transformation in 2008, I will decline to support the current president in 2012. Tranformation happened, some very good, some very bad, and some of us now just want to move on, and leave identity politics in the dust.

who else is running and where can I get one of thiese bumper snickers?

I don't think you're a racist. I wouldn't try to extrapolate an entire person's worldview from a few lines, as you tried to do.

But I think you have to make some HUGE assumptions to propose that people voted for Obama because they feel guilty about slavery. Did Obama pull 70 percent of the Hispanic vote because of liberal guilt? That's what "wow" means, and the fact that you assumed I was implying you're a racist says much more about you than it does about me.

If you do not support obama then you are a racists.
Better to be unemployed and homeless than a racist.

Obama won by a 3% margin, if my memory serves me. No question in my mind that more than that percent of Americans voted for him to expiate the sin of slavery. I think about 60-70% of the country is white, so roughly 5% of whites would equate to about 3% of the overall population, if my math skills are still working at this early hour. Would 5% of whites have voted for Obama to psychologically banish the shackles of the past?

Highly possible, nay, almost certain that 5% of whites suffer from such liberal guilt pathologies, or sensibilities, or, or...inverted prejudices, or whatever.

Aw, gee, Gaye, nevermind your pop psychoanalysis of a mass of over 200,000,000 people -- your mafh doesn't figure. For starters, there's millions of eligible people who aren't registered to vote, and couldn't care less. Secondly, in 2008, one per cent less non-Hispanic white people voted than in Nov. 2004, while the rate for "Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics" increased by about 4%.

For more details see http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p20-562.pdf and http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

Meanwhile, the photo above is very revealing and would be fun to have some amateur Sherlock Holmes types describe for us -- for amusement only.

I know several people who voted for Obama last time that won't do so again. Mostly white or hispanic, they definitely bought into the "first black President" hype.

Obama's energy policy failures are on display every time we fill the tank. If he wins a second term, I'll buy a Honda Civic. I can't afford to move to Canada.

Being proud of electing our first black president and voting for the better candidate are not mutually exclusive. (And neither one of them equates to assuaging guilt over slavery.) Have some of you forgotten Sarah Palin? How many percentage points do you want to assign to the "anyone but Palin" contingent?

The bit about Obama's supposedly failed energy policies being the cause of the price of gas has been debunked too many times to count, Mister Tee. Obama's got plenty of faulty policy to legitimately critique.

Mojo, I was talking about voters, not non-voters. It's ok, I get tired at 1.30 AM too.

So, rephrase: I believe at least 5% of white ***voters*** voted for Obama to make psychological reparations for slavery. This is my strongly held opinion, with which you are of course free to disagree, at any hour of the morning.

And lest you forget, the shrill accusations of racism are all over the media in response to any criticism of Obama. The Tea Party even selected Herman Cain as their delegate to get their message and platform across while simultaneously insulating themselves against charges of racism, So, pop psychology notwithstanding, race is the conversational substrata of the 2012 election, like it or not. Not, in my case.

Whoa! You make too many baseless assumptions, Gaye. For example, many people are shift workers. Many people are physically disabled and have different wake-sleep patterns, etc., etc., etc. 1:30am doesn't mean I was "tired," although I'm tired of this and your passive-aggressive horsehooey and transferrences now. You're welcome to the last word here, too, whether you feel compelled or not. Good luck. Adieu.

Passive-aggressive comfort food for the weary:

http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/2010/10/25/park-on-my-privates-again-no/

It's appointing Monsanto to control food so that obesogens will continue to be available, while Amish cheese is busted, and 65-year-olds are "lost in the system" for 10 days, with minimal clothing in sub-50 degree cells with sewage rolling in (Rawsome Foods.

It's a 5th-year engineering student held without food, water, or sanitary facilities, by a Southern California DEA, who forgot about him. He's suing for the near kidney failure and the days in the ICU, but good luck to him with that.

It's killing willy-nilly and then being surprised that the off-shore natives do not like that.

It's the new NDAA official death czar.

It's making the first amendment unavailable to farmers, even when Harvard studies back up the health value of their crops, while insisting that atrazine, banned in many places, is just fine.

It's allowing the Too-Bigs to take more and more, including dumping so much into the IMF as one of his early presidential acts.

I knew he was going to do stuff like this. How could anybody not see the double set of promises Obama made? You just had to look at his donors. That's why I voted for Cynthia McKinney in the last general and why I registered R so I could vote for Ron Paul.

The R convention is not over 'til it's over, and even then, Gary Johnson is on the ballot in 50 states.

At some point, people just have to vote against being mugged.