um, your 2000 votes have the party with more votes losing, damn, thats why every nation should use proportional representation

^Our country is steeped in history with the electoral college. I don't think it will ever be abolished.

Yes, that's due do a little something we have here called the Electoral College... basically each state has certain # of delegates, and the candidate who has the most votes in the state receives that state's delegate votes. So it's well possible that a candidate with the most number of overall votes (the popular vote) can still lose if he doesn't pick up enough states, which is exactly what happened in the 2000 election (as well as a couple of other elections many years ago)

The reason why 2000 became such a controversy is because it came down to one state: Florida, and after a long and drawn out legal battle and several recounts the state was finally awarded to Bush, thus giving him enough Electoral Votes to win the presidency.

It ain't perfect but it works well compared to alot of other nations who don't have such a system and are notorius for rigging elections *cough* Cuba and Venezuela *cough*

Um, the reason 2000 was a controversy is that a majority of US voters chose Gore, not Bush - but our 18th century electoral system turned the loser into the victor. I didn't vote for Gore myself, but the Electoral College is, without question, a barbarous relic, which should be replaced with a direct vote.

As for the election - I'm registered in Illinois, so my vote doesn't matter - Obama will win overwhelmingly here. Don't know who I'll vote for, but it sure as heck won't be for The Manchurian Candidate, a.k.a. McCain. Maybe the Greens, if they're running a national candidate.

Obama is a smart guy and a savvy politician, and is almost sure to win the election. But here are the massive challenges America faces:

1. The US health care system is broken - we have the highest costs but our healthcare outcomes are among the worst in the industrial world (#36 in infant mortality, #42 in life expectancy). Why? No universal health coverage. Fat profits for insurance companies, bankrupcty and misery for everyone else.

2. Our mass media is broken - five giant corporations own the US mass media, period. They lied us into the war on Iraq and couldn't give a rat's ass about democracy. Fat profits for those corporations, crappy media for everyone else.

3. Our foreign policy is broken - we spend close to $1 trillion a year on the world's largest war machine, despite the fact that we have no significant military enemies anywhere in the world. (China has a small military and no force projection capacity. India and Russia are democracies with small, defensive militaries. North Korea has no oil and couldn't invade a beach resort.) Fat profits for the military-industrial complex, waste and wars for everyone else.

4. Our electoral system is broken - the Electoral College is deeply undemocratic, and the first-past-the-post system is a lousy way to represent the popular will, which is why all of Eastern Europe adopted systems of proportional representation. Even if you get elected in the US, $3 billion in campaign donations and corporate lobbyists make political change almost impossible. Fat profits for corporate lobbyists, lousy legislation for everyone else.

5. Our housing market is broken - Fannie and Freddie Mae are about to be nationalized. Fat profits for the investment bankers who sold bogus mortgage securities, huge losses for the public till.

6. Our energy economy is broken - high gas prices means the middle class can no longer afford the driving, heating and cooling costs of suburban sprawl, while the Federal government has done almost nothing to jumpstart the use of wind, solar and renewable energy. Fat profits for constructional moguls, oil companies and Detroit, but horrendous long-term costs for everyone else.

7. Our distribution of wealth is broken - a tiny bunch of rich people (1% of the population) have gotten fabulously wealthy, while the vast middle-class majority has seen their real wages fall and their debts skyrocket. Fat City for the rich, hard times for everyone else.

8. We're dependent on the Bank of China and the EU to lend us $800 billion per year, just to keep our economy going (what the economists call our current account deficit).

Well that and Blackwell kinda rigged Ohio... or was that 2004?  Either way, everyone was rather pissed at Ken Blackwell.  Then the jackass tried to run for Govoner.

Well unless you are part of the top 0.5% who have heavily benefitted from the Bush administration's biggest tax cuts, which have cost almost three times as much as the war in Iraq if you actually look at the numbers, then you are seriously misinformed. 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_080123_economic_woes_a_resu.htm

Fears of "Socialism" and "Communism" are exactly the kind of fear tactics that the Republicans love you to buy into, because it is the same fear tactics that the backward rednecks, evangelicals, and even a lot of easily swayed independent voters buy into.

And in a lot of ways the "socialist" countries you are lambasting have their shit much more together than we do.  Look at how we rank in terms of health care.  At least we beat Cuba, by two spots...

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

Do you even read the news at all?  The only reason Congress voted on whether or not to attack Iraq was because the Bush Admnistration (at the time enjoying approval ratings in the 70 to 80+ range) inundated them with information on why they should attack Iraq.  Their information was exaggerated as best, and many of it was outright lies that simply ignored the great deal of intelligence they had which countered their claims.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002645321_normdicks25m.html

The Bush administration has accused some members of Congress of rewriting history by claiming the president misled Americans about the reasons for going to war. Congress, the administration says, saw the same intelligence and agreed Iraq was a threat.

But Dicks says the intelligence was "doctored." And he says the White House didn't plan for and deploy enough troops for the growing insurgency.

(See, I post links, because just because I say something doesn't make it true).

You make some good points there, but allow me to throw my 2 cents into some of your comments...

#1... Ever hear of the phrase "There's no such thing as a free lunch?" Well there's no such thing as free healthcare either... oh sure id love half my wages going to the gov't to run a healtcare system, because the gov't is so great at running things... they can't even keep a restaurant afloat without having to privatize it.

#2.. And whose fault is that? If we had journalists that did their jobs instead of towing party lines and trying to push their own personal agenda, then maybe people would trust them again... 75% of the people believe the media is unfair and not always truthful in this country... IMO that's too low, it should be 100%

#3... Its true we spend alot more than we should, especially in foreign aid where most countries just squander the money and then complain when things go wrong and their gov'ts are in shambles... but that doesn't mean we should give a pass to nations like China, Russia and Iran who are consistantly hostile to US interests and regional neighbors.

#4... The electoral system serves a purpose in that it gives representation to the smaller states with low populations... without it ever single election would be decided by the 2 coasts and big cities... no one would even bother to campaign in rural or small town America.

#5.. Again whose fault is that? I didn't realize the gov't was responsible for the consumers' poor judgement with money... It's called living within your means, not taking out ridiculous loans and mortgages so you can keep up with the Jones' and buy a McMansion that costs a fortune to maintain as well.

#6... Shoulda thought of fixing it for the past 30 years, when thanks to all kinds of regulations and BS environmental policies we more than tripled our dependance on foreign oil and energy instead of upgrading our own infrastructure and creating more refineries and power plants... and again when the hell did it become the government's job to kickstart an energy program? Especially one based on wind and solar energy that wouldn't make a dent in our current energy needs and demands.

#7... Our distribution of wealth is broken.... well that shows your true colors now doesn't it? Who's talking about distributing wealth? And when the fuck did the USA instate that Marxist idea? You're in the wrong country my friend... wealth here in America isn't distributed... it's EARNED!!! It's not the job of productive and successful people to provide social services for the people in this country who would rather sit home and collect their welfare checks than do something with themselves and actually get a job and add to the economic growth.

#8... No argument here, it's fun watching national landmarks like the Chrystler Building getting bought up by Asian and Middle Eastern oil and financial conglomerates. But again, its our fault for not doing anything sooner to reduce our dependance on foreing energy and finances, and instead just riding all those bubbles throughout the 90's. Now that everything's gone bust, everyone's pointing the finger at each other, and big businesses and politicians alike have no one but themselves to blame.

I'd also like to add another thing that has made our energy crisis even worse than it needs to be... and that is Global Warming. Or rather, the alarmist organizations and political groups behind all the GlowBull Worming hysteria... Oh no our ice caps are melting, we're gonna be under 100 ft of water in 10 years, all the species are gonna go extinct.... the temperature has risen 0.5 degrees!!! Too bad the truth has been slowly making its way out as real scientists continue to disprove Al Gore's and the global warming media's talking points, and the real reason behind the whole "Green" movement is what you said in #7... the distribution of wealth. They want to take a certain percentage of all developed nations GDPs and distribute it to developing nations, all the while crippling our economy even further. There's a reason why Clinton didn't sign on to the Kyoto Socialist Protocol back in '98. Its goal and the Green movement's goal is to create a one government body that controls the world's wealth and dirstributes it accordingly... sorry but that's just not gonna happen, not as long as we remain an independant nation and have leaders who aren't full subscribers to the Marx and Mao way of life.

@akuma587... you know what's really funny about that list?

People in America are always hearing from the left, especially people like Michael Moore, about how amazing the heath care system in Canada is...

but according to your list, they're only 7 spots above the evil healthcare nightmare that is the USA.... hell they barely managed to crack the top 30!

Hell, even Israel, a nation under constant rocket attacks and suicide bomber watches, has better health care than our friendly neighbors to the north!

And France and Italy's economies are just humming along now aren't they? Italy is in worse shape than we are, and that's saying something.

I'd vote Obama if i was American. He looks like the kind of guy you would have home for dinner