How about a truly national election?

election;"As we enter of the home stretch of the quadrennial horse race known as the presidential election, it's time to remember that this is an election for the president of the United States of America - all 50 states, not an election for the president of the Swing States of America. As debate waxes in Washington for constitutional amendments against same-sex marriages and flag desecration, wouldn't it be novel for our lawmakers to consider a measure that would enhance the very democratic institution they were elected to protect? All summer and now through autumn we will witness John Kerry and John Edwards, the Democratic Party candidates, and incumbents George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the Republican candidates, take their campaigns to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other states where polls indicate the election could go either way. With more than 1- month of campaigning remaining until November 2, many voters' participation in the election process has already been relegated to the sidelines. National issues of concern that should drive a presidential election now take a back seat to parochial issues involving individual swing states that could tip the election results to one of the candidates in the Electoral College. It is unfortunate that as election campaigns become ever more sophisticated, politicians and their advisors recognize the uselessness of campaigning in states where the outcome is already a faith accompli. The only time Idaho sees a presidential candidate is when they're on vacation, or have lost directions to California or Nevada. Presidential candidates have abandoned their national campaigns for the more pragmatic tactic of winning enough states to secure victory in the Electoral College - and who can blame them? The Electoral College trumps the popular vote, big time. Candidates in this day and age have the ability to transmit their messages across the country at the same time they sequester themselves in the states that have heavy representation in the Electoral College. But they don't. A direct election of the president, counting votes from Maine to Florida to California - and even Idaho - would even take some of the wind out of third-party candidacy if voters nationwide found their ballot had strength outside their state borders. If we are to consider constitutional amendments, then we should look at dumping the archaic Electoral College system of electing a president. That would re-enfranchise millions of voters throughout the nation. It would reinvigorate voter participation nationally. Democratic voters in die-hard Republican states, such as Idaho and Utah, and Republican voters in Democratic stronghold such as Massachusetts and New York would see their individual votes take on new strength in a truly national election."

Yes...This would be nice in a make believe world, if it ever happened. But why would they want to do something that would make it better for the American people? As far as I am concerned the only time you even see these good-ole-boys is when they want something from you...Right! So why should we let them take our Vote so easy, I say make them work for it in every state not just the ones they think are imporantat...

Teenager shoplifts winning lottery ticket, but finds crime doesn't pay

sfgate;"A Swedish teenager who shoplifted a winning lottery ticket that could be worth as much as $1 million has discovered the truth in that old adage 'crime doesn't pay'. The 15-year-old boy stole the scrape-off lottery ticket from a grocery store outside the northeastern Swedish town of Oernskoeldsvik last week, local media reported Tuesday. When he went home and scraped the ticket, he discovered it contained a winning combination worth as much as $1 million. Store manager Patrik Nygren, however, recognized the teenager from surveillance tapes that caught him stealing the ticket and went to his home to reclaim it. The boy handed the winning ticket over and Nygren gave it to police after reporting the theft, the newspaper Oernsoeldsviks Allehanda said. Nygren could not be reached for comment. But he told Oernskoeldsvik Allehanda he would contact a lawyer to see if he could claim the winning ticket for himself. However, state-owned Svenska Spel, which runs government lotteries in Sweden, said neither the boy nor Nygren will get the payoff. "Legally, we own the ticket until someone buys it, scrapes it and wins," Svenska Spel's spokesman Claes Tellman said Tuesday. "In this case, that hasn't happened." The winning lottery ticket, which cost $3.30, contained three clover symbols, which means the buyer would get to participate in another scrape-off broadcast on national TV every weekend. The winner is guaranteed a payoff of at least $1,330 a month for 10 years, but could receive as much as $3,330 a month for 25 years. The odds of getting a ticket with the three clovers is about one in 3 million, Tellman said. "This is an incredible case," Tellman said. "The probability of him stealing that ticket is extremely low." Police would not release the boy's name due to his age, and it was not immediately clear whether he would face charges."

Damn!! Wouldn't you know it!! The one Big Fat-Winner!! And its the one the the kids Stole..LOL I think I would of went out and searched the parking-lots for one someone threw away and said here's your Ticket You know they say crime don't pay...I know that's wrong, But It's that how your luck just seems these days...LOL

Jump On the Bush Train To Apocalypse -Land

Apocalypse;"This is the great thing about rabid fundamentalism. You really just don't have to give a damn!
Take the environment. I mean, isn't it just a little pointless to care so damn deeply about the air and the soil and the water and the stupid little disposable animals on this silly spinning ball of expendable rock when the Second Coming is imminent and a blood-soaked fire-breathin' Jesus who looks remarkably like Mel Gibson will return very soon to smite the heathens and the gays and the vegetarians and the Francophiles, and who will rescue all those who worship patriarchy and country music and blue-chip oil portfolios? You're goddamn right it is. Look. This much has become clear. Bush is, more than anything else, an extreme fundamentalist Christian. He is widely regarded as the most openly pious and sanctimonious president in modern American history. He actually preaches the GOP screed in evangelical churches across America. He panders so slavishly to the anti-choicers and the Bible-thumpers and the homophobes it makes Jerry Falwell swoon and giggle. And Bush actually says, out loud, that God speaks through him, and that God is on our side we bomb the living crap out of Afghanistan and Iraq and that it is the Almighty's wish that we take control of these angry pip-squeak nations and in so doing kill thousands of civilians and tens of thousands of young Iraqi soldiers, as over a thousands of American soldiers are now dead, over a makeshift cause that never really existed. God wanted it this way, that's why. Bush has called Jesus his "favorite philosopher." He has claimed that the act of being "born-again" saved him from a long, sad life of vaguely homoerotic frat parties and repetitive binge drinking and going AWOL from the National Guard, all so he could turn his full attention to righteously ruining multiple businesses and then making Texas the most murderous and polluted state in the union. But, you know, why stop there? God, of course, isn't just about the current Iraqi war. Bush understands this. Nor is God just about slamming gays or creating nasty, isolationist foreign policy. God is not merely about setting those gul-dang Muslim heathens straight about who is the supreme big-daddy all-powerful mega-righteous SUV-drivin' American-flag-wavin' God and who is just a dimestore wannabe false idol scruffy Allah. Because above all, God is nothing if not all about putting a quick and fiery stop to all this Earthly nonsense ASAP. He is nothing if not all about the coming apocalypse. And He is nothing if not all about saving those who believe, as Bush does, that he is among the chosen to be saved. This is the fundamentalist truth. And this is the BushCo maxim. The End Times provide the ultimate meaning, the final straw, the only thing worth caring about, because it defines the BushCo worldview like nothing else except maybe embarrassing grammar and crushing deficits and a secret craving for gin. You can see it in his sad, vacant eyes: Bush is absolutely convinced that God is a Republican. Why else would He create all those cool M-1 tanks and oil refineries and those neat deer-antler chandeliers? Exactly. Do you see? Do you get it? If not, you haven't been reading nearly enough of those silly pulpy sociopathic gazillion-selling "Left Behind" doomsday books so frighteningly adored by the Christian Right. It's simple, really: The world is gonna end real soon. The End Times are comin'. All the signs are in place -- famine, war, disease, sodomy, fires, hurricanes, Avril Lavigne -- and Bush, by instigating holy wars and inciting more terrorism and burning through the planet's natural resources as fast as humanly possible, is merely hastening the blessedly inevitable. As his fellow fundamentalists say, God bless him. Hey, it explains a lot, this view. It explain how Bush can just smirk and mumble and, with one big, heartless shrug, dismiss the complete lack of WMD and the loss of 1.6 million U.S. jobs and the nation's staggering $422 billion budget deficit. Pay down the national debt? Bah. Planet's going to hell anyway, people. Stock up on nuclear missiles and get yourself an escape pod. Can't afford one? Whatta shame. It surely explains the general GOP hatred of gay marriage, of open-hearted sex, of those wicked, sin-inducing vaginas (that harlot Eve is gonna pay, dammit), of environmentalism, of caring about air quality and water quality and the EPA and organic foods and homeopathic medicine and resource management and the Alaska Wildlife Refuge and the U.N. and any country that doesn't have a McDonald's and a Starbucks and a decent strip club for lonely gin-soaked Republican expats. And it explains not only the outright contempt for any view other than Bush's own, but the willingness to legislate that hatred, codify it, to make it outright illegal to think or feel or love otherwise. Look at it this way: When you have an angry, patriotic God and the red-hot promise of the juicy apocalypse on your side, there is no such thing as a counter-argument. There is no such thing as competition. There is no such thing as giving a damn what anyone else thinks. How else do you explain it? How else can you understand the most aggressive, war-hungry, abusive, nature-loathing, isolationist administration in American history? How else can you explain BushCo's overall "F" grade from every environmental organization in the world? How can you explain his mauling of long-term Social Security planning? The decimation of the idea of universal health care? A pre-emptive, attack-first-ask-questions-never, warmongering policy that creates more anti-U.S. hatred by the minute? How can you explain the fact that every human rights organization on the planet is appalled by Bush's actions? Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib to John Ashcroft to the Patriot Act to gutting funding for international women's health care. Hey, if God had wanted us to care about other viewpoints, He would've made everyone speak English. Can I get a "hell yeah?" This lust for apocalyptica, then, is perhaps the best way we have to at least partially understand the shamelessness of this administration's policies and its blatant disregard for international law, its open hatred of any nation that disagrees with us and the deep, profound concern only for nations that either cower in our God-flexin' presence and/or have resources that Bush's corporate pals are salivating to exploit. And it is the perhaps ultimate explanation for the Right's final cattle call, its bitter war cry of a message, its exact parallel to every pseudo-religious evangelical scam artist on late-night cable TV. Listen, good people of America. If you just send your money to the party and give up all that careful, nuanced thinking, if you just quit questioning our decisions and load up on blind faith, it will all be OK and you can have all the guns and fast food you want and those terrifying gays will leave you alone because BushCo will take care of you and God will reserve your seat on the glory train to salvation. Deal? Praise Jesus! Praise Bush/Cheney! Hallelujah you are saved! Even as we are, you know, doomed......Isn't bogus salvation fun?"

Hope I made you smile, I found this and thought it was worth posting if nothing else it's cute to read. But also makes you think about a few things.... huh?