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Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Problems in selection of a Country's Leader; Democracy No Different

Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

This morning, NBC surprised me with the Today Show's  host, Savannah Guthrie,  hitting the nail on the head as to why Trump is so willing to be friends with Russia.  It's to Trump's detriment that Putin, heaven forbid, would admit to fixing the election in his favor.  Trump wants to know that he won the presidency fair and square; wouldn't you if you were running?  Our USA president doesn't win by a simple popular vote.  We have the electoral college as part of the deal.  It's not a secret.  Hillary knew this.  Trump, being a 3rd wheel in the race and not a Party Republican member, planned his campaign with its inclusion.  Hillary didn't.  A successful fix by Russia would mean that he hadn't deserved the position; that Hillary would have been president. 
                                                     
Some of Republican contenders for Presidency
Trump won out of the 17 who had thrown their hat into the ring

 Trump was the dark horse that won the race, leaving some people aghast!  Both parties were not prepared to handle it.  They're still suffering.  
                                                     
Obama and Brennan
Savannah had been talking with John Brennan, who once had been charged with being a Communist, a Jihadist lover, who of all things had been our CIA Director under Obama from 2013-2017.  Wouldn't this also reflect on Brennan's job as well?  This would also show that under Obama's watch, our electoral devices were faulty, and he had done nothing to watch over this important issue.   Our FBI can not prove meddling by Russia and Russia denies any meddling.  Right now, the Communist, Putin and the Democratic Republican, Trump, are getting along with each other.  For opposing big and powerful countries, that's quite a feather in their caps.  it's lasting longer than the cease fires between Israel and Gaza which only lasted an hour or two.                                     

Maybe both our countries will escape an atom bomb attack this year.  

So just how our different countries of the world select their leaders and which way is the best?  Is our democracy the best way to select our leader if the selection can be rigged?  How about the other ways? Royalty?  Communism?  Socialism? Are their outcomes different?  How about open borders and no countries?  How would that work?  How is Nationalism better than none at all?  
                                                           
A Prime Minister; Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel
A very Democratic country with many political parties involved in election

Similar to English Democracy
The only Jewish state in the world: born in 1948

  

Six or Seven thousand years ago, a clan leader would come about, usually a strong male, a father figure.  Defense and the lives of the clan would have been the most important issue.  Such a system would have been an inherited position with a royal family developing.  Pharaohs and kings came out of this.   It should show that the leader would be not only strong but clever as well, able to deal with decisions.  We saw kings of city-states develop, and finally kings of empires.  Rome suffered greatly under leaders such as Nero who fiddled while his city burned.  
                                                                                 
Democrat

The USA's democracy has a political party promoting their nominee, and we usually have but 2 or 3 parties involved.  The parties stand for certain values they deem important, that are covering different aspects of life so are competitive.  The problem is with the voter, and all citizens are able to vote.  

Do they know what the persons are all about?  Why did they select this person?  Here's where the parties come into play.  They work on swaying the voters and will use lots of money to do it.  The general public is made up of people knowing their own minds and have strong opinions and other people who know nothing but are easily swayed.  We've had comedians doing TV shows walking about the public arena asking easy questions about our government and they show up idiots knowing nothing.  It gives one the shudders to think they might have to power to change the history of our lives with their blind decisions in voting.  


Egypt's Morsi, also head of the Muslim Brotherhood, took in Syrian refugees planning on their vote in exchange for their refuge, but his government caught on and put him in jail.  Has this become a new way for leaders to gain votes?  Bring in despondent refugees who will go along with paying back such favors?  


                                                                             
The final tally with the electoral college vote was 304 votes for Trump and 227 votes for Clinton. The two Republican renegades were from Texas, while Clinton lost pledged votes from Hawaii, Maine and Washington.  It was the largest number of individual defections by electors in a U.S. presidential election — but not enough to change the outcome.  

The electoral college was created to " reflect the political realities associated with accommodating the institution of slavery into our electoral system. Under a direct election system, the southern states would be at a significant disadvantage because their slaves could not vote. Through the Electoral College and the Three-Fifths Compromise, however, partially counting the slaves when determining the number of presidential electors allowed southern states to rival the electoral power of their northern brethren." So they had 2 opposing ways of life that accommodated each other this way. 
 
Donald Trump,
our 45th President
with grandson

                                                             
Bernie and Hillary,
the 2 Democrats running

Everyone expected Clinton to win; at least the pundits were saying this.  it was like  a baseball game.  Trump surprised everyone and won.  The Democrats have not gotten over the shock and probably never will.  They thought Clinton was in the bag.  She thought so, too.  She stumbled and didn't make  a home run.  This happened enough times to change the tide for many:   Benghazi,  Israel; jobs were a few of the reasons going on after 8 years of a Democrat Obama.  

                                                                          
Our statue of Liberty
A gift from France 1886

The 2000 election was not the first time a candidate won the popular vote but lost the election. It has happened four times in our nation’s history:  It was: Jackson to Adams;  Tilden to Hayes;  Cleveland to Harrison; and Gore to Bush.  Electoral votes protects us from a large state becoming the way the whole USA must go.  It gives the little states a say in the Democracy.  Otherwise, we'd have to all behave like a state such as California or New York.                                       
Madison, our 4th president (1809-1817)
from Virginia a Democratic Republican
b: 3/16/1751-d: 6/28/1836

James Madison, "was never in favor of our current system for electing the president, one in which nearly all states award their electoral votes to the statewide popular vote winner. " Father of the Constitution James Madison referred to “the inconvenience of democracy,”  He ultimately backed a constitutional amendment to prohibit this practice.  Madison believed, along with his contemporaries, that the great danger to popular government is faction (a selfish or contentious group) Madison's contributions to the American Republic are best summarized by his lifelong dedication to the principles of freedom and responsibility.  The destiny of republican government, Madison believed, is staked on the vigilance of the American people to tend "the sacred fire of liberty.”  James Madison attended what is now Princeton.


"The 1787 version was when George Washington *1789-1797) was president  of the United States that covered just 13 eastern seaboard states from Maine to Georgia. (Maine, by the way, was then part of Massachusetts and didn’t become a separate state until 1820.)
The differences and distances between the 13 states were much bigger deals than they are today, despite the enormous growth of the United States. There was no national media by which the people of New England would come to know about the political leaders of the Deep South, or vice versa. There was no tradition of campaigning for office; in fact powerful norms banned overt office-seeking. (This business of presidential candidates running around the country begging for votes dates back roughly to the 1890s with Cleveland in 1893, a New York Democrat and McKinley, in 1897 an Ohio Republican.)"                              
A book about President, V President candidates
Most interesting.  How many read this?
Did it change opinions?  Sway anyone?  
Today we have radio, TV, books, magazines, newspapers, all  receiving money from the parties and causing voters to be swayed.  How facts are written and spoken are meant to sway people into THEIR position.  Some must ignore it all and choose by eeni-meeni-minie-mo...or by looks that appeal. Even some newspaper reporters have been bitten by this landslide of taking sides and seem to have altered their goal in life of accurate and unswayed writings.   The hope is that common sense will prevail.  Rarely do you find  a person really digging into facts to make  a voter aware of possibilities of their future.  This has been given to the pundits of TV who also are humans full of their own opinions.  What it comes down to are the producers who then have their opinions and pay the writers and speakers.  Whew!  Maybe a king was a much easier way at that!  No choice; you just take pot luck with his children.       
                    

Resource:  7/17/18 Today Show with Samantha Guthrie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_presidential_candidates,_2016
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/06/israel-very-democratic-society-knesset.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/01/john-brennan-for-cia-chief-headache-for.html
https://www.vox.com/cards/benghazi-ambassador-stevens-attack/benghazi-basics
https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/10/why-constitution-s-framers-didn-t-want-us-directly-elect-president
https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/presidential-election-facts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty







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