Topic: Ron Paul
Note to RNC: 5 + 4 != 5 As I was educated before No Child Left Behind, I got a modicum of math education.by Beatnik
(libertarian)
Thursday, September 4, 2008
To the Republican Party in all its manifestations:
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not evil, but ignorant.
You have to realize that there are over a million people in this country now who aren't voting in fear this time. We have a completely free media at our disposal, called the internet, and over the last eighteen months, it has shown us more information and dissenting ideas about what is going on in the world than any of Amerika's official news outlets can manage.
You should probably also realize that the Americans who are interested in reading the headlines from other countries in order to get a balanced view of things, are cut from a different cloth than the party faithful. Most of us are voracious readers. Most of us have occupations that involve numbers.
Personally, it is currently my lot in life to maintain and create financial reporting computer programs. It's what I do for forty hours a week. In several computer languages, the symbol "!=" is used to mean "does not equal", since there is no single keyboard key for the sign we used in middle school algebra.
I am not alone. The people who are abandoning the Republican party are incredibly tech savvy. We are the people who tell you which button puts the cup holder back in your computer.
So it should come as no surprise to you that your incapacity for simple addition did not go unnoticed last night.
I very clearly heard the Alaska delegation call five votes for Ron Paul. I very clearly heard the Oregon delegation call four votes for Ron Paul. And I very clearly heard the total number of votes for Ron Paul called out as five votes.
5 + 4 != 5
Perhaps I heard incorrectly. I've only ever managed sixteen thousand lines of computer program code in one go, so I may not be remembering it correctly, either.
Today I see that there are more votes which may have been cast for him while I was away from the RNC web feed, and several votes which were suppressed by individual delegations and never called out.
When Palin fever subsides and McCain loses, the Republican Party will do some debriefing to find out why.
You will probably blame party disunity. You may blame third party candidates for stealing votes. You're definitely going to blame Paul for disrupting everything with his "obey the rules" crazy talk.
What you likely will not do is realize that there are enough of us in this nation to assert the following notion:
YOU MAY NOT HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS UNTIL YOU LEARN SIMPLE ARITHMETIC.
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I see that many Paul supporters don\\\'t understand how the conventions work. The voice vote was symbolic. All of the votes where turned in as paper forms prior to this evening, this is how the States knew when to start passing to give the honor to Arizona to put McCain over the top.
Once all the official delegates are counted, each State committee delegate is allowed to change his or her vote. It is often tradition, when there is such a large landslide for one candidate, that the State committee members vote to unanomously change their vote to all support the winner in a show of solidarity.
For example, if XX state has 40 delegates. If the initial pledge delegates where distributed 37 to McCain, 2 to Paul, 1 to Romeny, that is the first count. Then, for the final tally, that State\\\'s delegation all gets together and votes to give all their delegates to the winning candidate. If, for example, the two Paul delegates either didn\\\'t show up because they went to the Rally for the Republic or they voted to switch, then their votes also go to McCain.
The fact is, 95% of primary voters rejected Paul. There are consiquences to that. There are also consiquences to Paul holding a \\\'counter rally\\\'. The voices that could have stood up and tried to yell for Paul where not there.
Oh, and about the person yelling to put Paul\\\'s name into nomination at the beginning, only State chairs can. This rule keeps chaos from guests, cleaning folks, or other non-elected people from causing problems. If no States had enough Paul delegates to be able to vote for the State chair (which they didn\\\'t), they would not have an official voice to put his name into nomination.
But many still didn't show up, they where at various parties or protests. If Paul delegates where there, they gave up their votes, simple as that. Don't blame the RNC, gripe to your delegates for not raising enough of a stink (albeit, it would make no difference as Paul only got around 5% of the vote nationwide.)
And the GOP promised to add the 4 Oklahoma votes after the fact that 'by error' weren't noted during the state by state vote.... My understanding is that the total is 19 when you put those together.
"Last night's roll call certainly lacked the drama of the Democrats' version last week, but a notable thing happened at the end. As I was trying to listen through each state's cheering delegation, I noticed a ghost of primaries past reemerging. Texas congressman Ron Paul, who placed second in the Nevada and Montana caucuses, and created a huge following on the internet, received a few delegate votes. Two from West Virginia, four from Washington, four from Oregon. And Alaska, where Palin is the governor, was listed with five delegate votes for Paul. That actually put him in second place, ahead of Mitt Romney's two delegate votes.
Romney spoke before Palin Wednesday night, and Paul, who held his own convention in nearby Minneapolis, did not exactly receive a warm welcome from the Republicans earlier in the week. On Tuesday, Paul told CNN that as a Republican congressman he "should have a pass to the floor, but they said, 'Your pass will be at the gate, and we'll pick it up when you leave, and you can't take anybody with you.' "
At the end of the roll call, a motion passed to make John McCain the nominee by acclamation. But I'm sure Paul will take his 15 official votes with him, as well as more than ten thousand people who bought tickets to his "Rally for the Republic" convention. Something tells me we haven't heard the last of the Ron Paul Revolution. "
Posted By: Dee Ann Guzman
Date: 2008-09-04 13:05:47
Here's some symbolism for you! Last night was a symbol of lost liberty! Last night was a symbol of how those who have power keep power! Don't patronize me! I was a delegate in my state! I saw for myself the tricks and outright lying that made SURE that the State Chair was McCain favorable. Places like Montana, where rules were changed to allow only the party leaders to vote in the caucus, or how about Nevada where they just shut down the whole convention to tow the party line. If indeed the politics of Ron Paul was so lunatic, then why not give him a fair hearing like every other loser in the primaries? Let him have the floor, if he is just a nutcase. That couldn't happen though. Why? Because then Republicans might just redevelop a memory. They might just start asking questions about their nominee. Instead a sitting Congressman was treated abominably! Because the republicans no longer believe in the republic. Give me a break! Last night was the epitome of a campaign which used every dirty trick in the book including manipulated press propaganda to keep power!
However, nobody won last night! Why? Because, everybody is going to lose when Old McBama(Old McBama had a farm, eyeyo, and on his farm he had some starving proletariet slaves, eyeyo...) gets into office. The masses, what was the number you used, 95%, were uninformed. They were uninformed because those in power wanted them uninformed.
Even so, I sincerely believe we will have an Obama presidency. You cannot alienate so much of your base as a republican candidate and win the presidency. In case you haven't noticed, republicans have less registered than democrats. It takes all of our base and a good portion of undecideds to beat the Democrats. However, I, and people like me, are going to vote against those who lied to us! Read the 1984 republican party platform. We have been lied to, and we ain't takin it anymore!
Also, I know for a fact that at LEAST 6 Paul national delegates were chosen to go to the RNC. I know because I voted for them at the Minnesota CD5 convention. When Tim (Rino) Pawlenty called the vote-count, no Paul votes were counted.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-09-05 04:46:27
I loved the line, "We are the people who tell you which button puts the cup holder back in your computer." It's an old joke, but it's a good one. Republican conservative leaders don't really understand the computer-savvy generation.
Republican conservatives demonstrated this week that they don't really understand what's going on in this country. If they did, they wouldn't be so concerned with trying to fudge the vote to make it look like McCain won by more than he did. They'd be much more concerned about a more serious problem...the public support that is slowly ebbing away from their party.
It's an amazing thing. The Republicans need Ron Paul supporters in order to win. They always have, and they always will. So how do they try to win the support of Ron Paul supporters? By sneering at them, and then by pandering to them!
What would happen if Ron Paul supporters refused to vote Republican? I'll tell you what would happen...it would deal a severe blow to the party of "talk the talk but don't walk the walk."
There is also a lot of doubt as to whether Republican leaders will really learn from their mistakes when McCain loses in November. Personally, I'm not betting on it.
In the 1960s, the cliche was, "Don't trust anyone over 30." Today, the cliche is becoming, "Don't trust anyone who doesn't understand anything about computers."
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