OF COURSE STILL FRIENDS!  (Yelling across states.)  Agreeing to disagree on politics is a good thing for friendships!

Satan, why keep electing just the servants?
Satan, because it's time to stop settling for the lesser of evils.
Satan, because Congress already cooperates with him.

AHHH, my son has asked me - who would Jesus pick?
I said he would be smart enough to stay out of politics!
to that he said - Well the pope is speaking up against the war in Iraq but that is okay....

dogbrain - I do not disagree actually - not about the  voting for him - but your last post that we are all dealing with him now.

I think Jesus would come back, look around, and head back to Heaven.  After a long consultation with Dad, they would start over.  

Obama.  None of the candidates really appeals to me at all (they are all so slimy!), but he is the lesser evil.  I would have liked to vote for Dennis Kucinich, but he doesn't stand a chance in the election.    I really liked his policies.

I like Dennis Kucinich, too.  He really got in hot water when he admitted that he had seen a UFO.  My husband says he is obviously smart as his wife is a stunner!
I think that ROn PAul would make a good VP with Obama.  not gonna happen but think it would be good.

at first, I was like |:

but then, I 'd

Actually, quite the opposite: only about 30% of Californians are registered Republicans (one of them being my brother). California has been won by the Democrats for the past four elections, and it almost certainly going to them this year as well.

I am not a Democrat, but I am planning on voting for whoever the Democratic nominee is because their environmental policies are much stronger (which is what I am most concerned about).

Obama.  Global Warming is the most important issue for me, and Clinton and Obama are the only viable candidates with decent environmental policies.  I support Obama because he wants to make government more transparent, and has a short but strong record of doing so.

I think we would all agree on who is the best candidate on autism issues:  none of the above

I want NOTA on all ballots.

But then everyone would vote NOTA and we'd all have to suffer through more of BW's reign of terror (pun intended) while we round up more candidates and try again.  Who knows, we might never find a candidate that enough of the country can agree on to get elected.

California is interesting ground, politically; in many ways they're almost a political thermometer for the country- except that they're always one step ahead, so political trends in California often predict nationwide trends in later years.  They also have a wacky mix of very "conservative" trends and very "liberal" trends.

In Norway we never have just two important candidates, not really candidates either - rather a bunch of different political parties with their representatives.

Please point out wherein I stated that NOTA meant the incumbent got to keep the seat.  NOTA means NOTA, and we already have a law that keeps the current president from staying in office.  There are ways around NOTA winning.

And if you think our current president has a "reign of terror", you are ignorant of what constitutes a "reign of terror".

Norway has a western European system based on the gradual devolution of executive powers of a hereditary monarch to elected officials who ostensibly are "advisors" to said monarch but actually hold the real power.  You hever elect a head of state because yours inherits the job.  We, on the other hand, eliminated our monarchy's jurisdiction over us and needed a replacement executive power.

The original intent of the presidential election process was to be so distant from the people as a whole and the USA be so fractured and disunited that most elections would be decided in a parliamentery fashion, through the House of Representatives.  It was believed that there would never been sufficient coalescence of any cross-regional parties.  New England would never ally with New York/Pennsylvania/New Jersey, who would never ally with the states to be out west, and the south would never ally with anybody on anything.  The idea of trans-state, actual national parties was something that never occurred to the Founders.

They envisioned presidential elections almost never producing majorities, the Electoral College usually going into deadlock, and the matter usually being decided by the House of Representatives.  They believed that Americans were too belligerent and fractious to ever work together enough to routinely elect presidents.