Who should be the next president?

Oil hit $100 today, the dollar is in the pits and falling, our foreign policy is in disarray, America is spending money it doesn't have, and NW Ohio is in recession. Who or what can help us recover? We are part of the national economy, but we seem to be bearing an inordinate amount of the load.

We banned the dancing girls and tobacco. That doesn't seem to help. We have seen layoffs at our automotive plants and that sure doesn't help. Do any of the national candidates for president have any answers?

Romney could care less about Americans...especially the physically handicap...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY6UTnS6Z-A...see the truth.

illustrates the main problem with our voting system in the US: Limited choice.

I vote for none of the above. I don't like any of them. What's worse is that I can't vote against any of the candidates, nor can I vote my order of preference. For instance, I certainly don't want Hitlery, yet I can't vote against Hitlery.

Also, I can't vote my choice. For instance, if my first choice for president is HistoryMike's dog Can Raider and my second choice is Ron Paul, I can't express that at the ballot box, and I should be able to. If by some chicanery Can Raider losses, then I want to see Paul in office.

Of course, if we wanted a real election, we'd get rid of the electoral college.

I never understood the electoral college - it's been explained, and explained, etc. I fail to see why they can't just put the candidates names on the ballot, and let the voters VOTE, and the top 2 or 3 who get the most votes, are the ones who are the front runners for president. Then do it again - let the people vote for one or the other & whoever gets the most votes, WINS. Why is the election process made so complicated?

I never got the EC either. They should take the popular vote and then make the #1 the President and the #2 the Vice President. It would certainly make for an interesting combo.

The reason we have the Electoral College is so large states don't over run our national elections such as New York, California, Texas, and Florida. If there was no electoral college, candidates would only campaign in the large states and ignore the issues in the smaller states. These 4 states are in the top 20 economies of the world.

Another way to look at it, candidates would ignore rural and suburban issues while pandering to large cities.

Most importantly, the electoral college maintains a separation of powers issue and does not let a president declare a national mandate to over rule the other branches of government. Think Hugo Chavez, China, and Russia.

Anyway, I'm voting for Thompson. He kicked butt in Die Harder, plus he has a hot wife.

Any particular reason as to why Romney is listed twice? (One choice for each side of his mouth? )

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If Obama doesn't lead out of the gate then look for Bloomberg to unleash a few hundred million from his deep pockets and test the waters.

Interesting to note that Bloomberg plans to attend the national unity meeting in Norman OK next week:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/29/AR200712...

Not so fast, Froggy. The US electoral college was designed to protect the country from a worthless president. I'll wait for the laughter to subside…

The founding fathers were afraid that the general populace of the US was so stupid, insipid, dull, ignorant and oblivious to high moral standards that they would be likely to elect a president they could easily identify with, and that shared their most cherished values: Greed, whiskey and fast women. Literacy was optional. By contrast, the founding fathers felt that the elected president should be very well educated and have high moral standards, but would not necessarily be popular or famous, or even good looking. Hence the electoral college. The great unwashed actually votes for an elector who promises to vote for the chosen candidate. The elector then casts a single ballot at his or her own discretion for the president. An elector can be faithless and cast their vote for a different candidate, and this has happened several times. Moreover, the number of electors is determined by a State's population. Each State has their own method for choosing their electors.

I read BrassMonkey's post, and I hope he's kidding. I tend to think he is, but I'm not sure. Anyway, the point here is that the winner of a State's electoral votes gets all the votes for that State. Think about that for a minute. Since California is so big, in order to win the election a future President must win California, and to do that the candidate must only get 51% of the electoral votes, but he gets credit for all the votes in CA. So, if we removed the electoral college, less populated States would get more attention from the candidates and we'd see better service and a better campaign.

Finally, this is the same system that has provided us with such notables as Nixon, Bush, Bush, and Clinton. The US is dead broke. Our economy is a shambles and the environment is suffering. The great lakes are being poisoned by pollution and drained to support river traffic and to turn desert into marginal farm land, golf courses and condominiums. No end to the military action in the middle East is in sight.

I think it's time to change the system.

Someone told me that Ron Paul does not believe in evolution. This would probably prevent me from voting for him. Otherwise, I like most of his stances.

has turned you into quite the radical, eh, MadJacko?

You just wait until you live in a country - ah, make that State. State! - where you have to pay State income tax, property tax, death tax and tax tax BUT you receive some small service or value in exchange for your greenbacks. It makes a difference to your outlook, even if the snow is depressing. Anyway, thanks for the compliment.

I don't know what Ron Paul's stand on evolution is, but I think he's the lessor of evils here. At least the good Mr. Paul believes in freedom and will pull the troops out of Iraq.

For anyone that may be interested, msn.com or msnbc has a very cool matrix, where it gives you information about each candidate and you rank your agreement or disagreement with their stance. It made me find out that, while I agree with some of Paul's ideas, and some of Huckabee's etc. I am (as of now) going to vote for neither because I have chosen a new candidate based on this matrix. Go over to msn.com and check it out.