Thursday 11-6-08

517, 617, 916, 107, 651, 331, 815, 467, 123, 607

111, 189, 145, 7135, 1356, 2456, 5660, 5361, 6170

When Journalism Turns Personal

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 6, 2008; 7:26 AM

 

When Bob Schieffer was growing up in Fort Worth, black people were allowed to visit the city parks and the zoo one day a year. "I did not shake hands with a black person until I was in the U.S. Air Force -- not because I didn't want to, but because they lived on one side of town and I lived on the other side," the CBS newsman says.

As a son of the segregated South, Schieffer depicted Barack Obama's victory Tuesday as "a momentous time in American history . . . I just thought it was more than an election." And he had plenty of company. On television, on Web sites, in newspapers--with such headlines as The Washington Post's "Obama Makes History" and the Wall Street Journal's "Obama Sweeps to Historic Victory"--the media are awash in superlatives.

Some conservatives say news organizations went overboard for ideological reasons. The media cast the choice between Obama and John McCain as "a referendum on the goodness of America," MSNBC commentator Tucker Carlson says. "I just resent the implication that America is a better country if it voted for Barack Obama. . . . That's a slur on people who voted against Obama. I think the press dropped its pretense of objectivity on this campaign a while ago."

Separating the personal from the political is far from easy when an African-American wins the White House for the first time in the country's 220-year history. Juan Williams, a National Public Radio commentator, choked up on Fox News Tuesday night.

It was once "unthinkable," he says, that he would even be on television. "When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, there were no black writers at the New York Times, New York Post or Daily News."

But in the black community, Williams says he "gets beat up because I treat Obama as a politician as opposed to the rock star image.People think you should be a fan"

Roland Martin, a Chicago radio host, teared up on CNN when Obama was projected the winner.

"I said a small prayer," he says. "I began to think of black soldiers returning from war who were lynched," he says. "I thought of hearing the cries of ancestors breaking the chains of slavery. I thought, my God, nearly 400 years of what black folks have endured."

Moments later, "I thought of being able to look my nine nieces and four nephews in the eye and say with absolute certainty, 'Yes, you could be president of the United States.' And I began to cry again."

But it was not just black commentators who seemed to respond emotionally. CNN's David Gergen quoted Martin Luther King. NBC's David Gregory declared that "the ultimate color line has now been crossed." Did they get carried away? As co-host of MSNBC's coverage, Keith Olbermann compared Obama's election to landing a man on the moon. "I think our excitement at the imminent history matched the nation's," Olbermann says, adding that "the tone was appropriate throughout." Even McCain supporters, he says, recognized that "this was a milestone in world history. Turns out the public was in the tank for Obama."

George Stephanopoulos, ABC's chief Washington correspondent, says journalists had to "honor" what Obama had accomplished. "Reporting on and praising an achievement honestly doesn't have to be partisan, and I don't think it was," he says. Had Republican Colin Powell run in 1996 "and become the first African-American president, you would have felt the magnitude of the moment in the coverage."

Fox News pounded Obama in recent weeks over his past contacts with onetime terrorist William Ayers, former preacher Jeremiah Wright and the community group ACORN. But anchor Brit Hume told viewers that Obama's winning personality had blunted the criticism.

"One reason the attacks on him didn't stick, despite some radical elements in his background," Hume says, "is that it just didn't fit with a man who is extremely charming and appealing, who resounded with reasonableness and a certain eloquent mildness."

Asked about the drumbeat of Fox criticism, Hume says that he does not speak for the network but that "we were not wrong to go there," given Obama's meager public record. He contrasts that with what he calls soft treatment by the mainstream media.

"The appeal of the man, the wariness of Republicans in power in Washington, a general sympathy with elements of his agenda, a sense of history--all of that combined to create an atmosphere in which a lot of journalists didn't look at him in the same way they would look at any other candidate."Although studies have shown that McCain drew far more negative coverage than Obama as his campaign faltered, most journalists maintain that they were fair to both sides. "There's nobody in American politics that I know better, or admire more, than John McCain," Schieffer says.

Newspapers gave Obama his due, with huge headlines and generally laudatory editorials, but the front pages quickly focused on the challenges facing the president-elect.

The New York Times said Obama, with "no real executive experience," now faces "the responsibility of prosecuting two wars, protecting the nation from terrorist threat and stitching back together a shredded economy." The Post said no new president had faced such difficulties "since Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated at the depths of the Great Depression." The Los Angeles Times questioned whether Obama will govern as "too much of the ambitious liberal" or "too much the cautious mediator" who "risks losing the energy and idealism that attracted millions to his candidacy."

Demand for Wednesday morning's papers was unusually high in several cities. The Post, for instance, sold out and decided to print 150,000 commemorative editions for afternoon distribution.

We'll discuss the political arguments about the election in a moment, but these are some juicy excerpts from the campaign trail, part of  Newsweek'squadrennial behind-the-scenes book project:

"While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family--clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

"According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent 'tens of thousands' more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as 'Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.' "

And: "At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd."

No  wonder  they loved her.

But not any more. Unnamed McCain aides tell Fox's Carl Cameron that Palin didn't know which countries were in NATO; the essence of NAFTA, or that Africa was a continent, not a country. She refused interview prep before the Katie sitdown, Cameron reports, and later threw "tantrums" and was so "nasty" that she reduced some staffers to tears. It's getting brutal.

Transition speculation is under way, and the floating of  Caroline Kennedy's name as a possible ambassador to the U.N. prompts the inspired New York Post headline: "BAMELOT."

Why did Obama win, and what does it mean?

Politico's  John Harris and Jim VandeHei  see nothing less than an earthquake:

"For most of the past 30 years, since the dawn of the Reagan Era, conservatives have held the momentum in American politics. Even the Clinton years were shaped -- and constrained -- by conservative ideas (work requirements for welfare, the Defense of Marriage Act) and conservative rhetoric ('the era of Big Government is over'). Republicans rode this wave to win the presidency five of seven times since 1980, and to dominate Congress for a dozen years after 1994. Now the wave has crashed, breaking the back of the modern Republican Party in the process.

"Obama's victory and the second straight election to award big gains to congressional Democrats showed that the 2006 election was not, as Karl Rove and others argued at the time, a flukish result that reflected isolated scandals in the headlines at the time. Republicans lost their reform mantle. Voters who wanted change voted for Obama 89 percent to 9 percent. They lost their decisive edge on national security. They even lost the battle over taxes."

McCain confidant Mark Salter tells  Roger Simon: "I do believe and will never be dissuaded otherwise that the media had their thumb on the scale. Maybe if the media had been fair, we still would have lost. But there were two different standards of scrutiny for us and Obama."

National Review  wonders whether Obama is a closet righty:

"All Americans should be glad that a black American has been able to make it to the presidency, and hope that President-elect Barack Obama's time in office will redound to the country's long-term benefit. We wish the outcome of yesterday's elections had been different . . .

"Yet the public has not embraced many of the central aspects of liberalism. President-elect Barack Obama's record and positions put him well to the left of any president in the last four decades. But to judge from his campaign, he is a man who wants to cut taxes, defend an individual right to own guns, take a hard line on terrorists in Pakistan, reduce the abortion rate, allow people to keep their health-care plans, and keep trade free. The polls suggest that he was wise to run in this fashion: They show that the public remains as skeptical about federal activism and social liberalism as they have been for years. The public has, however, clearly rejected the Republican party in its present configuration."

Rush Limbaugh  strikes a defiant chord:

"We're being told here today by the wizards of smart on our side, 'We need to be gracious in defeat.' My answer to that is, 'Screw defeat! Screw this whole notion that we have to sit around and try to show these people that we're the nice people, that they don't think that we are.' . . . We gotta be honest with ourselves about why we lost this battle . . . And the core of the problem is that the Republican Party (for some inexplicable reason that I don't care about now) decided to abandon conservatism."

Some analysts, says the New Republic's  John Judis, are wrongly looking at Obama's win through the prism of the Carter and Clinton presidencies:

"Both Carter and Clinton did misjudge the mood of the country. They tried unsuccessfully to govern a country from the center-left that was moving to the right (in Carter's case) or that was only just beginning to move leftward (in Clinton's case), and were rebuked by the voters.

"But Obama is taking office under dramatically different circumstances. His election is the culmination of a Democratic realignment that began in the '90s, was held in abeyance by September 11, and had resumed in the 2006 election.

"This realignment is predicated on a change in political demography and geography. Groups that had been disproportionately Republican have become disproportionately Democratic; and red states like Virginia have become blue . . .

"The country is definitely no longer "America the conservative." And with the Republican Party and big business identified with a potentially disastrous downturn, it could become over the next four years "America the liberal." That's what makes this election fundamentally different from 1976 or 1992. That's what makes this election fundamentally different from 1976 or 1992. Unlike Carter and Clinton, Obama will be taking office with the wind at his back rather than in his face."

But  Fred Barnes  makes a very different argument in the WSJ:

"In the Carter and Clinton eras, there were dozens of moderate and conservative Democrats in Congress, a disproportionate number of them committee chairs. Now the Democratic majorities in both houses are composed almost uniformly of liberals. Those few who aren't, including the tiny but heralded gang of moderates elected to the House in 2006, usually knuckle under on liberal issues. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bosses them around like hired help."

I don't discount the impact of the moderate Dems elected in '06 and this year, and besides, the Republicans have also moved to the right. Both parties colluded in redistricting that allowed their most ideological members to easily win reelection time and again.

How did a previously obscure state senator with a funny name pull it off? Atlantic's  Marc Ambinder  has some highlights:

"--The exit polls demographics tell a story of an expansion of the Democratic-leaning electorate by Obama; he did much better with Kerry than Hispanics; he grew the ranks of younger voters; he grew the African American vote; he did a bit better among white voters, but still lost working class whites by nearly 20 points. Obama won among new voters by more than 30 points.

"-- Obama is a once-in-a-generation candidate, a brilliant communicator in an age of communication. Cool and consistent under pressure. He grew over the course of two years into a candidate voters believed was ready to be president. The right candidate at the right moment. The most un-Bush of any of the Democratic candidates.

"-- The financial crisis, and the candidates' response to it. Probably the crucial moment for both campaigns . . . Voters seemed to prefer Obama's steadiness to McCain's suspended campaign . . .

"-- Sarah Palin. Polling shows that she drove some voters away from Sen. McCain and to Barack Obama. Voters judged her to be too inexperienced to be president. Also, instead of appealing to independents, she became a polarizing figure. ALSO -- her persona highlighted McCain's age and health since she could have taken over. ALSO -- her selection killed the 'inexperience' argument against Obama."

At Hot Air, though,  Ed Morrissey  says Obama's win is less impressive than advertised:

"In 2004, Bush beat John Kerry by winning 62.04 million votes. In 2008, Obama won 62.443 million, a gain of only 400,000. In 2004, Kerry garnered 59.028 million votes; John McCain only got 55.386 million. That means this election saw 3.24 million fewer votes than four years ago. Far from being more energized, the nation appeared to be more apathetic . . .

"John McCain and the GOP didn't get their turnout in this race. They lost almost seven million voters from 2004, a rather stunning number . . . Did they stay home, or did significant numbers of them defect to Obama? I'm guessing the former. The GOP demoralized their base by acting like Democrats for too many years, and the winds of 'change' proved too dispiriting this time around . . .

"Bush is a particularly disliked incumbent. The Republican Party lost its soul when it launched its K Street Project, and the spendfest of 2001-6 only made that more clear. If the GOP wants to win 60 million votes in future national elections, it has to stand for something other than being Democrat Lite."

To heck with demographic analyses.  Tina Brown  has a more literary interpretation:

"This has been an election full of magic. White Magic that only the black man from everywhere and nowhere could perform. Even his adored grandmother dying on the eve of the victory had a mythic feeling of completion to it in a candidacy full of signs and symbols. Remember the three-point basketball shot when he played with the soldiers in Kuwait? It's as if Obama is the prince who lifts the curse in a fairy story, a curse that began eight years ago with an election wrenched away from the rightful winner and begetting as a consequence the wrathful visitation of tragedy and wars and hurricanes and economic collapse . . .

"Now can we please not risk any more catastrophes by letting this administration stick around? Just scrap the transition and let President Obama clean house right away like the Brits do at Number 10 Downing Street? In the country of my birth, the Prime Minister kisses the Queen's hand and he's in and the loser is on the way out with no time to make off with the silver."

So much for the constitutional niceties.

• NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Republicans Ponder Path to Renewal After Party Suffers a Harsh Setback

By GREG HITT, STEPHANIE SIMON and NICK TIMIRAOS

 

Jogger runs with rabid fox on her arm

 

PRESCOTT, Ariz. - Authorities in Arizona say a jogger attacked by a rabid fox ran a mile with the animal's jaws clamped on her arm and then drove herself to a hospital.

The Yavapai County sheriff's office said the woman told deputies she was on a trail near Prescott on Monday when the fox attacked and bit her foot.

She said she grabbed the fox by the neck when it went for her leg but it bit her arm.

The woman wanted the animal tested for rabies so she ran a mile to her car with the fox still biting her arm, then pried it off and tossed it in her trunk and drove to the Prescott hospital.

The sheriff's office says the fox later bit an animal control officer. He and the woman are both receiving rabies vaccinations.

Around world, Obama victory sparks cheers

In concert halls and ballrooms, in plazas and at beach parties, people across the globe hailed Barack Obama’s election as a stroke for racial equality and voiced hopes his presidency would herald a balanced, less confrontational America.

Throngs crowded before TVs or listened to blaring radios for the latest updates. In Sydney, Australians filled a hotel ballroom; in Rio, Brazilians partied on the beach. In the town of Obama in Japan, dancers cheered in delight when their namesake’s victory was declared.

Observers — many in countries where the idea of a minority being elected leader is unthinkable — expressed amazement and satisfaction that the United States could overcome centuries of racial strife and elect an African-American as president.

“It shows that America truly is a diverse, multicultural society where the color of your skin really does not matter,” said Jason Ge, an international relations student at Peking University in China.

In an interconnected world where people in its farthest reaches could monitor the presidential race blow-by-blow, many observers echoed Obama’s own mantra as they struggled to put into words their sense that his election marked an important turning point.

“I really think this is going to change the world,” said Akihiko Mukohama, 34, the lead singer of a band that traveled to Obama, Japan, to perform at a promotional event for the president-elect. He wore an “I Love Obama” T-shirt.

Many acknowledged that — for better or worse — America’s economic, military and cultural might made the election globally important.

'Dare to dream'
Nelson Mandela, an international symbol of racial reconciliation and hope, was among the many around the world to congratulate Obama on his victory. South Africa's first black president said the election of America's first was a symbol of hope.

In a letter of congratulations released by his office Wednesday, Mandela said the Democrat's victory demonstrated that anyone can "dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place."

 

Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his anti-apartheid struggle, and was elected president in the first all-race elections in 1994. He retired from politics after serving one five-year term.

 

The 90-year-old Mandela has increasingly withdrawn from public life, but has remained a respected figure in South Africa and beyond.

A slew of current leaders sent their congratulations to the president-elect, which is usual in the wake of such a victory. What marked a difference this election, however, was a thread of urgency that ran through the messages pouring in from around the world.

"Senator Obama's message of hope is not just for America's future, it is also a message of hope for the world as well. A world which is now in many respects fearful for its future," said Kevin Rudd, Australia's Prime Minister.

Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, called on Obama to address the current international crisis.

"We need a new deal for a new world. I sincerely hope that with the leadership of President Obama, the United States of America will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal. For the benefit of our societies, for the benefit of the world," he said.

 

More international cooperation?
On streets around the world, people celebrated and mourned the results of the American election.

Australian Phil Keeling was plastered head-to-toe in a red, white and blue outfit with both Obama and McCain buttons as he crowded into a hotel ballroom in downtown Sydney, Australia to watch election results on two giant TV screens.

“There’s a chance the image of the U.S. may change dramatically, and it’s nice to be part of it,” he said. He refused to say which candidate he preferred. Around him, Australians and Americans stood under a cloud of red, white and blue balloons and snacked on American treats like mini hamburgers and hot dogs.

Hopes were also high among many critical of President Bush’s policies that an Obama victory would herald a more inclusive, internationally cooperative U.S. approach. Many cited the Iraq war as the type of blunder Obama was unlikely to repeat.

At a party in Rio de Janeiro, where Brazilians and Americans watched the returns, a 33-year-old music producer said an Obama win would show that “Americans have learned something from the bad experiences of the Bush administration.

“Choosing Obama is a great opportunity for Americans to show the world they can change, be humble and learn from their mistakes, which were not small,” said Zanna, who uses only one name.

Watching with rapt attention
Umang Khosla, a senior marketing manager in Mumbai, India, with a multinational shipping company, said Obama would be widely welcomed after Bush, who he said “was hated the world over.”

“With Obama, the world will see the Americans as having more sense, being more receptive to change,” Khosla said on his way to work. “If Obama even remotely changes things, perceptions will change.”

Obama’s victory capped a campaign that many millions around the world had watched with rapt attention.

In Germany, where more than 200,000 people flocked to see Obama this summer as he burnished his foreign policy credentials during a trip to the Middle East and Europe, the U.s. election dominated television ticker crawls, newspaper headlines and Web sites.

Obama-mania
Obama-mania was evident not only across Europe but also in much of the Islamic world, where Muslims expressed hope that the Democrat would seek compromise rather than confrontation.

The Bush administration alienated Muslims with its treatment of prisoners at its detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and of inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison — human rights violations also condemned worldwide.

Nizar al-Kortas, a columnist for Kuwait’s Al-Anbaa newspaper, saw an Obama victory as “a historic step to change the image of the arrogant American administration.”

 

Yet McCain had enjoyed a strong current of support in Israel, where he was perceived as tougher on Iran than Obama. Taking a cigarette break on a Jerusalem street corner, bank employee Leah Nizri, 53, favored McCain.

“He’s too young,” she said of Obama. “I think that especially in a situation of a world recession, where things are so unclear in the world, McCain would be better than Obama.”

'Mere promises'
Not everyone expected Obama to follow through on his promise to change U.S. policies. In Iraq, where the Bush government ignited a war in 2003 that has yet to end, some were skeptical of American intentions in the Middle East.

“I think Obama’s victory will do nothing for the Iraqi issue nor for the Palestinian issue,” said Muneer Jamal, a Baghdad resident. “I think all the promises Obama made during the campaign will remain mere promises.”

Still, many around the world found Obama’s international roots — his father was Kenyan, and he lived four years in Indonesia as a child — compelling and attractive.

Afghan Civilians Reported Killed in U.S. Airstrike

Wednesday 11-5-08

220, 135, 297, 155, 189, 145, 338, 418

309, 888, 057, 260, 111, 800, 900

1000, 1100, 1200, 1111

5555, 8888

7777

 

Palin votes in Alaska - doesn’t reveal if she voted for Stevens By Jimmy Orr  |  11.04.08 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin cast her vote early this morning in chilly Wasilla, Alaska, where the temperature was hovering in the low teens. Arm-in-arm with husband Todd, Palin told reporters after casting her vote that she was ready to begin working tomorrow if elected. “Now tomorrow, I hope, I pray, I believe that I’ll be able to wake up as Vice President-elect, and be able to get to work in a transition mode with the President-elect, John McCain, so anxious to get to work for the American people,” she told reporters after casting her vote. “We have a very optimistic, very confident view of what’s going to happen today. So glad to get to be home in Wasilla, to cast this vote, because forever I’m gonna be Sarah from Alaska, and it’s an honor to get to be here with my friends and family,” she added. Ted Stevens Palin was not only casting a vote in the presidential contest but for U.S. Senate, where Senator Ted Stevens, recently convicted of seven felonies, is up for re-election. Did Palin for vote for him? We’ll never know. “I am also exercising my right to privacy and I don’t have to tell anybody who I vote for, nobody does, and that’s really cool about America also,” she told reporters. History making As for the significance of the 2008 election, Palin said no matter who wins it means progress for the country. “I do recognize this is an historical event … barriers of course being removed and glass ceilings being shattered, again, as the representation on both tickets will show,” she said. Mocha moose Fittingly, Palin visited a local coffee shop called the Mocha Moose after voting and was asked about her political future if she wasn’t triumphant tonight. “You know if there is a role in national politics it won’t be so much partisan,” she said. “My efforts have always been here in the state of Alaska to get everybody to unite and work together to progress this state. It certainly would be a uniter type of role.”

Free coffee, donuts and sex toys just the ticket this Election Day

BY HELEN KENNEDY 
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, November 4th 2008, 3:22 PM

Doing your civic duty not enough? Participating in a historic election just not going to get you off the couch?

There are a bunch of other inducements to vote Tuesday.

RELATED:  MILLIONS WAIT TO VOTE FOR OBAMA, McCAIN

VOTE:  WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN?

Voters can eat well around town today - and even get some free naughty toys.

• Coffee:  Starbucks  is giving out free small coffees to anyone who says they voted.
• Ice Cream:  Ben and Jerry's  will give you a free scoop between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
• Donuts:  Krispy Kreme  will give you a red-white-and-blue-sprinkled star shaped donut if you are wearing an "I voted" sticker.
• Cheesecake:  In  Chicago,  Eli's Cheesecake Company  is handing out free slices to voters. But even if you don't live in the Windy City you can get a free 6-inch Original Pain Cheesecake with the purchase of a 9-inch cheesecake at their website -  www.elicheesecake.com. Use promo code VOTE8.
• Tunes:  Rock the Vote  will give you eight free MP3s to download if you pledge to vote at  www.rockthevote.com/pledge.
• Duds:  Trina Turk boutiques  in the  Meatpacking District  or Hell's Kitchen will give you a 20% discount on up to three items if you have an "I Voted."  www.trinaturk.com/
• More clothes:  French Connection  will give you 15% off purchases today.
• Chicken:  Chick-fil-A  restaurants in  New Jersey  will give you a free chicken sandwich.
• Tacos:  California Taco is giving out free tacos, though sadly there are no outlets in  New York.
• Sex toys:  Babeland locations in SoHo, the Lower East Side and  Carroll Gardens  will give men a free $20 "Maverick" (get it?) penis sleeve. Women get a free $15 silver bullet mini-vibrator.
  "Because that's what our country needs right now: a magical solution to difficult problems," the website says.  www.babeland.com/

Food for out of towners: Shane's Rib Shacks is giving out whole meals of three chicken tenders, fries and a drink; the  Chattanooga Hot Dog Company  is giving out weiners andTodd Conner's pub in  Baltimore  is even giving out free beer.

I am obsessed with Barack Obama and to prove it, when I am questioned, I block NBey6. It's okay, konane. I didn't think you would get so touchy, but I knew someone would. Wow, I quess I am "Joe The Plumber" too.

 

^_^

Plumber Joe Gets Off Ticket -- Holy Toledo!

Posted Nov 4th 2008  3:25AM  by  TMZ Staff

So Joe the Plumber got off on a speeding ticket last week -- but the Toledo PD's rationale for letting him is just plain weird.

Samuel J. Wurzelbacher was going 50 mph in a 35 mph zone -- late for a McCain rally perhaps? -- in a Dodge Durango, but when he was stopped, he was given a verbal warning rather than a ticket because a citation could have had "negative repercussions to the department and city as a whole."

It isn't the first time Toledo PD has acted strangely about Joe the P -- the chief said last week a member of the department was disciplined for snooping on Joe's address.

Electoral College Decides President, Not Popular Vote 

On Dec. 15, the electors will meet in each state to cast their ballots.

 

 

Greensboro, NC -- Voters will cast their ballots Tuesday for the next president, but the another group of voters will actually make the decision official in December.

The president is not chosen by a nation-wide popular vote. A group of electors, called the electoral college, chooses the president based on the votes in each state.

The electoral college is made of 538 citizens. A candidate needs 270 votes to win the election.

On Dec. 15, the electors will meet in each state to cast their ballots.

North Carolina has 15 electors. The number of electoral votes allotted to each state corresponds to the number of Representatives and Senators that each state sends to Congress.

Electoral votes are awarded on a winner-takes-all basis 48 of the 50 states, including North Carolina. The Electoral College process is part of the original design of the United States Constitution.

North Carolina's 15 electors are picked by the winning party. They are usually party loyalists. They are supposed to cast their vote to reflect the state's winner. There is, however, no federal law enforcing that.

In North Carolina, an unfaithful elector is replaced and fined $500 and his or her vote is canceled.

John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University, said this country's electoral college concept dates back to the 1700s. He said the reasoning was that Congress would not be making the decision and neither would the people as a whole who might not be well-informed.

He said people argue the electoral college still serves a purpose. He said it forces the candidates to get to know the issues of a state in a way they might not be able to do if the country selected a president based on a national popular vote.

It is possible that a candidate would win the presidential race by earning the most electoral votes, but not the popular vote. The most recent example was the 2000 election in which George Bush received fewer popular votes than Al Gore, but received the majority of electoral votes.

To read details about the electoral college process and why the United States uses it,  click here.

Tuesday 11-4-08

274, 874, 189, 145, 174, 273, 275, 774, 974, 873

875, 188, 180, 089, 289, 000, 1894, 1454, 2447

Sexually Charged TV Might Raise Risk of Teen Pregnancy

By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter
Monday, November 3, 2008; 12:00 AM

 

MONDAY, Nov. 3 (HealthDay News) -- New research suggests that teens who spend the most time watching sexually charged television shows are twice as likely to become pregnant or impregnate someone else.

The findings, reported in the November issue ofPediatrics, don't prove that sexy programming leads directly to pregnancy.

Still, parents should pay close attention to what their kids watch, said study author Anita Chandra, a researcher with Rand Corp.

"Not a lot of content on TV talks about the potential negative consequences of sex," Chandra said. "Characters engage in sexual talk or activity, give positive attributes to sex, and there's little discussion about the risks and contraceptive use."

As a result, she said, kids might become interested in sex without realizing the potential pitfalls.

Previous research has linked the watching of sexually charged TV programs to sexual activity in teens, Chandra said. The new study aimed to look for a possible link to teen pregnancy.

About one in every three girls in the United States gets pregnant before age 20, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2006, more than 435,000 infants were born to mothers aged 15 to 19, and more than 80 percent of the births were estimated to have been unintended.

Federal statistics show that while the pregnancy and birth rates have declined by about a third among girls and women in that age group since 1991, birth rates in that group actually grew in 2006.

In the new study, researchers surveyed 2,003 children aged 12 to 17 in 2001, and then followed up with many of them in 2002 and 2004.

Researchers narrowed down the teens surveyed to those who were sexually active. After adjusting the survey results to take into account factors like race and parents' education, they found that those who watched the most sexual programming were still twice as likely to have gotten pregnant or gotten someone else pregnant since the start of the survey, compared to those who watched the least of that kind of programming.

The researchers declined to mention the TV shows that they considered to be sexually charged. Disclosing the shows would divert attention "from our core message that this kind of programming can have an impact on teen health, including pregnancy risk," Chandra stressed.

Overall, 14 percent of those in the survey reported getting pregnant or impregnating someone else after they were first interviewed.

The findings "add to the growing body of evidence that what children see on screen affects their behavior in real life," said Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington who studies kids and television.

"We know that children imitate the behavior they see on screen, and that makes these results much more credible," he said.

Still, it's possible that there's some other reason for the findings, he said, adding that "no one can be positive that there isn't some other explanation."

More information

Learn more about teen pregnancy from the  U.S. National Institutes of Health.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:  November 3, 2008