http://www.manchester.ac.uk/…

Speaking ahead of the lecture, Dr Alex Belenky, a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center of Engineering Systems Fundamentals and author of the book ‘How America Chooses Its Presidents’, said: “Under a certain composition of Congress to be sworn in January 2009, a tie in the 2008 Electoral College may result in a constitutional crisis in the form of an election stalemate, making the US Supreme Court intervention in the 2008 presidential election inevitable.

“Contrary to widely publicised beliefs of the Electoral College opponents, making the nationwide popular vote a decisive factor in determining the election outcome doesn’t require the elimination of the Electoral College.

“Slightly modified election rules would let the country elect a US President with a mandate from both the nation and the individual states and would make all the states ‘battleground’ in election campaigns while keeping the Electoral College as a backup.

Dr Belenky, who holds a PhD in systems analysis and applied mathematics, will tell an audience in The School of Mathematics that in Presidential elections held from 1948 to 2004, only 16.072% to 21.103% of all voting voters could have elected a President under the Electoral College system, and the modified election rules eliminate such election outcomes.

“Numerous publications in the national and international media bear evidence that reporters often offer incomplete and sometimes incorrect information about the system of electing a President in the US.

Moreover, lack of understanding of both the origins and the quantitative features of Electoral College, especially the way it works in close elections, causes some reporters abroad even to question whether the existing rules of US presidential elections are democratic.”

No, they aren’t democratic nor are they supposed to be. The fact we use the Electoral College shows you that it’s a republican form of election and not democratic. A constitutional republic. If they can’t figure out the difference between a republic and a democracy they should go back to school. If they are substituting the work “democracy” for “republic” they should quit misleading people. I agree there are issues with the election of the POTUS but then again I see issues with the entire federal government. If we roll it back to its original function the Electoral College will make a lot more sense.

Ahmadinejad to OPEC: Dump weak dollar

Speaking at a ceremony to open the 29th ministerial meeting of the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his proposal made about six months ago in a rare summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s heads of states.

“The fall in the value of US dollar is one of the pressing problems of the world today,” warned the Iranian president at the conference in Isfahan on Tuesday.

He further expressed concern over the adverse effect of the dollar depreciation on the international community, especially energy exporting countries through increasing the price of commodities like wheat, rice and oilseeds.

Ahmadinejad said he warned six months ago in the summit conference in Riyadh that there were many indications pointing to continued fall in the value of the greenback.

“And we see that this continues to happen and the resources and wealth of OPEC member countries have been hugely damaged.

“I again repeat my previous proposal; we should have a basket of different international hard currencies as the basis or the member countries should come up and produce a new hard currency for petroleum contracts,” he stressed.

“They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad said earlier after the close of the summit in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

As I recall Iraq was threatening to trade in Euro’s before the US government invaded. Given all the threatening maneuvers the Bush administration has been making you’d think Ahmadinejad would be less boisterous.

Record prices have prompted a slew of bills to curtail the role of investors, but traders say they could backfire:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Fed up with soaring oil prices and a chorus of people blaming Wall Street speculators, Congress is considering a host of rules aimed at limiting the inflow of investor money into oil contracts.

But oil traders urge caution. While more disclosure is a good thing, they say making it harder for speculators to invest in oil futures could have the opposite effect intended, and send prices higher.

In light of oil’s phenomenal climb from under $50 a barrel to nearly $140 in less than 18 months - and the public belief that Wall Street traders were behind the rise - Congress is awash in bills that attempt to limit the role of speculators. Several have bipartisan support and could soon become law.

“In two days, the price of oil rose $16,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., at a joint hearing of two Senate panels on oil speculation Tuesday. “Did I miss something, was there some war in the Middle East?”

Read More…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

Writes Stephen Fairfax: “Today on page A5 of the War Street Journal, the FDIC has a full-page ad. They have the gall to display a $100,000 Series 1934 Gold Certificate, with the words ‘One Hundred Thousand Dollars in Gold’ plainly visible.

“Of course, the FDIC has never paid an atom of gold to any depositor, and was created as part of the gigantic theft and fraud associated with FDR’s gold confiscation. Wikipedia reports that it is still illegal for private citizens to own the gold certificate whose image leads the FDIC propaganda.”

Things like this make it seem more plausible that some of the many conspiracies surrounding the Federal Reserve are true.

http://www.cbsnews.com/…

Calling it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country,” John McCain ripped into the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Guantanamo detainees access to civilian trials for the second day in a row. “We’re now going to have the courts flooded with so-called “habeas corpus suits” against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material,” McCain said. “Our first obligation is the safety and security of this nation and the men and women who defend it. This decision will harm our ability to do that.”

The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 yesterday that enemy combatants can challenge their detention at Guantanamo Bay in U.S. courts, instead of military tribunals. It was a decision welcomed by McCain’s rival. “The Court’s decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo - yet another failed policy supported by John McCain,” Barack Obama said. “This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.”

At a town hall meeting here today, McCain sought to use Obama’s embrace of the decision against him. “Sen. Obama applauds this decision and he supports it,” McCain said. “I argue against it and will do what I can to at least narrow down some of the wide open aspects of this Supreme Court decision.”

He shows how much of a warmonger he is yet again. He doesn’t want to give these individuals one of the most fundamental rights in western and common law, habeas corpus. He wants the government to be able to just lock people up indefiently with no charges brought up in front of their peers. Why? Likely because he knows it will show that this war on terror is a farse and that many of these men held have done nothing to harm US subjects. This and the last warmonger info to come out should be more than enough to discredit this man and keep him from being dog catcher let alone president.