[quote=R.D. Silverman;130560]What happens if one of the candidates dies from a heart attack the day before the election? The day of the election? etc.[/quote]If it's a primary election, there's time to substitute: often the spouse of the deceased will take over that role.

If it's the November election, then I guess we get to witness another demonstration of the Founding Fathers' perspicacity :smile:, as electors pledged to the recently-departed candidate get to exercise their judgement in voting for the best alternative -- if we haven't yet legislated this human link out of the procedure, and if there aren't already state laws covering this, that is. Some states do have laws covering at least some of these cases -- Ohio's ([URL]http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3505[/URL]) seem to me (IANAL) to depend on the political party to designate replacements for the deceased candidates.

"Our Racist, Sexist Selves" - New York Times Opinion piece by Nicholas D. Kristof([URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/opinion/06kristof.html?em&ex=1207713600&en=cee1db633094044e&ei=5087%0A"]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/opinion/06kristof.html?em&ex=1207713600&en=cee1db633094044e&ei=5087%0A[/URL])

[quote]...

The unconscious is playing a political role this year, for the evidence is overwhelming that most Americans have unconscious biases both against blacks and against women in executive roles.

At first glance, it may seem that Barack Obama would face a stronger impediment than Hillary Clinton. ...

Yet racism may also be easier to override than sexism. ...

But biases are not immutable. Research subjects who were asked to think of a strong woman then showed less implicit bias about men and women. And students exposed to a large number of female professors also experienced a reduction in gender stereotypes.

So maybe the impact of this presidential contest won’t be measured just in national policies, but also in progress in the deepest recesses of our own minds.[/quote]

[QUOTE=cheesehead;131000]"Our Racist, Sexist Selves" [/QUOTE]
Go Condi for VP?

[quote=ewmayer;130487]You mean the right honorable Mr. Mugabe? Last I heard they were still furiously at work at the govt printing office, printing up ballots with his named marked on them to make up the election-day shortfall. They actually had to stop printing money for the day in order to do this, so this also serves as an inflation-fighting measure - a win-win for the Zimbabwean people. The perspicacity and humility of their dear leader never ceases to amaze.[/quote]
If only things were that simple:smile:

Zimbabwe threatened by arms shortage!
 

Meanwhile, a large shipment of Chinese arms to the Zimbabwean govt appears to be imperiled by unnamed "technical difficulties":

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23zimbabwe.html?ref=world[/url]
[quote]Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said at a press briefing in Beijing that the shipment was part of “normal military trade” between Zimbabwe and China and called on other nations not to politicize the issue. But acknowledging the resistance to the shipment, she said China was considering shipping the arms back to China.[/quote]
That's right, how dare other countries "politicize" a strictly nonpolitical issue like the shipping of arms to a brutal, illegitimate regime? But whaddya expect ... these are many of the same countries who unfairly "politicized" the 1936 olympics, and who have been busily "politicizing" the genocide in Darfur, which is a strictly internal matter of the Sudanese government.

Now, the Chinese govt calling the Dalai Lama a terrorist and orchestrating anti-French protests in which demonstrators called Napoleon a "pervert" and Joan of Arc a "prostitute" ... strictly apolitical, that.

A Mancunian take on the U.S. Presidential Race
 

...courtesy of "Get Fuzzy":

[quote=ewmayer;126936]
[quote=Prime95;126849]
The two candidates have roughly identical positions on the major issues.[/quote]
Except for one that's turning out to be a real biggie: Hillary unashamedly proposed a sure-to-be-disastrous bailout plan for people with underwater mortgages.[/quote]Plus their recent gasoline-tax disagreement in which Hillary (and McCain) chose the vote-buying route by endorsing a gas-tax holiday during the summer, whereas Obama rightly points out the lack of economic sense in that proposal.

(And there is practically [U]no[/U] support in Congress for putting such a gas-tax holiday into law! Any introduced McCain-Clinton gas-tax holiday bill would die quickly, which is why M & C haven't demonstrated that otherwise very practical way (i.e., actually introducing such a bill) of showing their sincerity right now.)

So Obama has again shown me that he has a more sensible outlook on financial/economic matters than Hillary. If Hillary were to be elected, I'd have to start griping about her too-far-left policies in that regard (to show you all that I really am closer to centrist than leftist). I've been fearing that Obama would also be too leftist for my liking, so it's slightly reassuring to hear him spout such economic sensibility.

- - - - -

(BTW, does anyone else have my problem of automatically visualizing the conservative-liberal spectrum with conservativism on my left and liberalism on my right, instead of aligning itself the other way in accordance with the standard terminology? See -- I even wrote it that way: "conservative-liberal", not "liberal-conservative".

(Yes, I know (or think I know) that the left-right terminology originated in Parliament when the libs [I]were[/I] on the Speaker's left and the cons were on the Speaker's right.))

Another article about Hillary's five campaigning mistakes. This author has made some different flub-choices than were listed in the similar-theme article I mentioned a while ago, though they both start with the same one:

[URL]http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080508/us_time/thefivemistakesclintonmade[/URL]

[quote=cheesehead;133058]Another article about Hillary's five campaigning mistakes. This author has made some different flub-choices than were listed in the similar-theme article I mentioned a while ago, though they both start with the same one:

[URL]http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080508/us_time/thefivemistakesclintonmade[/URL][/quote]
#2 is truly shocking... How could they not know the basic rules of the "game"??

[quote=tallguy;133174]#2 is truly shocking... How could they not know the basic rules of the "game"??[/quote]I'm not sure I trust the article's author on that particular point, the most far-fetched one. She (Karen Tumulty) attributes it to: "Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game."

In one sentence, Tumulty says, "As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates." I'm wondering: maybe Clinton's team thought she'd be such an overwhelming favorite in California. with no significant opponent, that even with the apportioning rules she'd pick up [I]practically[/I] all of the 370. Think about it: if there's only one overwhelmingly favorite front-runner (see Mistake #1), then she'll win almost universally in every district. It's only because Obama was such a strong opponent that the delegates wound up splitting so evenly.

Or maybe Tumulty misunderstood or overlooked some details of what Mark Penn actually said, or Penn didn't communicate all the details to Tumulty, so her summary of Penn is oversimplified.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;133225]Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game.[/QUOTE]

Isn't that also the George Bush criteria for picking advisors?