(BiM)–The Chronicles

I think all of us are frustrated with partisanship. Even the politicians themselves are sick of it.

In light of the this anti-partisanship attitude, many people have stop aligning themselves with political party. I hear many liberals say, I’m independent or Libertarian, because they are dissatisfied with the Democratic party. Likewise many conservatives are questioning whether the Republican party has their values at heart. I also feel that now, many people align themselves with the party that is, in their minds “the lesser of the two evils” as opposed to the greater of two good.

So when Californians registered to vote this primary, many of them decided to not register themselves as a member of either party.

THIS PRO-NONPARTISAN MOVE WAS A BIG MISTAKE. If a Californian wants to vote for someone in the primary, they should to align themselves with a political party. It’s something not explicitly mentioned on the registration form. As a result about 94000 Los Angeles voters didn’t get to vote for a presidential candidate on Super Tuesday.

This scenario happened to many Californian outside of LA as well. One of my close friends didn’t get to vote for Hillary because he registered as “Decline to State.”

The problem was wide spread through out my native Stanford campus. Many people that wanted to vote for a certain candidate felt that they couldn’t because they hadn’t registered as a Democrat of Republican.

This is not true. I found out that “Declining To State” doe not mean declining to vote. Californians that decline to state can still vote for Democratic candidates. They just have to ask for a democratic ballot when they arrive at the voting booth.

For many Californians this news came too late. 100,000’s of Californians’ votes were not counted and its shameful.

Well, next time you vote, make sure to align yourself with a party, even if it’s painful.

According a BBC article Chad’s Prime Minister, Nouradine Delwa Kassire Koumakoye has declared that Chad can take no more refugees.

Considering that Chad is the one of the poorest countries in Africa, I have to sympathize. However, for the Sudanese refugees in Chad this serves as more bad news.

Meanwhile the UN is just BEGINNING to address the conflict. After about 4 years the UN is responding to grass roots efforts launched by people inside and outside Darfur. For years people have labeled the Sudanese conflict a “genocide.” This is in part because the instigators of the conflict, known of the Janjaweed, are killing in the name of “ethnic cleansing.”

This conflict started as a civil war. A drought in Sudan, made the country unstable. Lines between ethnic groups grew deeper and the government became fearful of its own people. Rebellion ensued and a civil war was rage. That changed when the president of Sudan gave the Janjaweed his blessing. With this new power, the government supported Janjaweed have changed their objectives from killing to anti-government rebels to burning villages to the ground and raping women in an effort to “racial purify” Sudan.

The UN has been hesitant to label this conflict a “genocide.” If they were, the UN would be forced to do something that the UN doesn’t do very often: take a stance and take action. Unlike leaders like Barrack Obama and Collin Powell, the UN has remained indifferent to conflict until recently. Last summer the UN announced that it would start making a plans to accumulate a peace-keeping force to go into Sudan. This is, on many levels, pathetic but then again we are talking about the UN.

Now why the UN has had this change of heart I don’t know. I’m not sure if the UN has finally decided that Darfur is a genocide or not (I haven’t looked that up) but it’s a step in the right direction… sort of. I’m not sure if military force, at this point in time, would be of much help. The conflict has been going on for so long that the line between innocent and guilty might be so blurry that the military personnel would be ineffective.

Other critics of UN have suggested a different solution. Some critics suggest that we should stop the flow of weapons into Sudan. Most of the weapons in the Sudanese conflict are not Sudanese made, but Chinese made. Many grass root organizations have pressured investors to stop investing in Chinese companies that export weapons. These organizations hope that Chinese corporations will stop sending guns to Sudan if put under enough economic pressure.

Other methods of stopping the gun-flow would involve border control. If this route were taken, the UN would have to use military force to patrol the borders. Both, gun-halting tactics sound time costly. However, if these tactics are used effectively, they would slow the violence.

Other grass roots organization have been trying to help by donating money to Sudanese refugee camps. This a kind gesture but it only heels the symptoms of the conflict not the cause. If we want to really help Chad and the Sudanese refugees, the conflict in Sudan must come to an end.

In the end, the conflict will have to be resolved. The Janjaweed will either run out of people to kill of the some form of intervention will stop the violence. Which path we choose is not clear, however, one thing is clear. The Sudanese will eventually have to stop the conflict themselves. Though the UN and grassroots effort can loan help the Sudanese conflict is government started conflict. Until the government is rectified the killing will most likely continue.

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P.S.
If you have any links to organizations that are doing something about the Darfur Genocide, please send them to me.

Obama won Nebraska, Louisiana, Washington, Maine, and the Virgin Islands today. This means that the race for delegates is tighter than ever.

Right now Obama, supposedly, has more delegates than Clinton. But when you count super delegates, Clinton is up by 25-60 delegates. According to StarTribune.com Obama has 1070 and Clinton has 1095. Those figures include the super delegates. Other sources put Clinton between 1095-1125 delegate and Obama as low as 1039 and as high as 1087 delegates.

In order to secure the nomination, a candidate need 2025 delegates.

Talking about a nail biting race. We’re probably going to have to wait until may before we know who the democratic candidate is.

For those that are not familiar with the term “mehr” it’s an internet slang term. Usually when something is “mehr” or “mer” it indicates that that object is not very good.

When you say that the movie “Ghost Rider” was mehr your saying that it was not very good, but at the same time not horrible. mehr means purgatory-esque or limbo-ish or just mediocre. From what I gather the republican are feeling this way.

Why? McCain. The media has been making McCain out to be the winner of the republican nomination. At the same time, many republicans think that McCain is not conservative enough. He’s not the person that republican are excited to rally around. he’s not the most motivating Republican. For these reason the republican think McCain is “mehr.”

This suggest that that many republican were hoping that Mitt Romney would win the primary. So why hasn’t Mitt Romney won?

I have two hypotheses. The first has to do with America itself, the other has to do with the “Nader” effect.

Right now, America is a little weary of the republican party. The 2006 election is proof of that. Many people blame the republican party for the Iraq war, the economy and for other various problems that affect the world today. Since conservatism is linked with the republican party, people link conservatism, or at least neo-conservatism, with these problems (And believe me, I personally link neo-conservatism with these problems). So it makes since that common people that call themselves republicans would flock to a kind of, but not completely conservative candidate. This is only my speculation.

The second reason why Mitt Romney is no longer in the running is Mike Huckabee. The parallel between 2000 and the 2008 primary is striking. McCain, Romney, and Huckabee resemble Bush, Gore, and Nader respectively. This creates the “Nader” effect. In this situation you have two main candidates and one lesser candidate. Though most people vote for the main candidate a few vote for the lesser candidate and this tips the scale in favor of one of the main candidates.

For example let’s look at the 2000 election. Most people that voted for Nader would have probably preferred Al Gore to George W. Bush. Had Nader not been running for president, many exports speculate that Gore would have won the election (by a larger margin than he already did). But because they voted for Nader, Gore lost these votes. Thus Nader indirectly benefited George Bush.

Some think the same is happening to Mitt Romney. The “exports” believe that people who voted for Huckabee would rather see Mitt Romney be President than McCain win the primary. But because Huckabee chases of beating McCain are small, a vote for Huckabee benefits McCain.

For these two reason many believe the McCain is winning. And because he’s winning, the republican are feeling kind of mehr.

Oh well, maybe they should have nominated Ron Paul instead.

I’m only 19 years old. I have a high school education and I’m working on a college education. So, for obvious reasons I don’t know how all of America’s Political system works

This election is teaching me more about the bull shit that is American Government. Because the race for the democratic primary is so close new reporters have been talking about delegates. Before this race I had no idea what a delegate was, or that they existed.

So what is a delegate and why should we give a fuck? Basically, which ever candidate gets the most delegates, gets the nomination.

Clinton has 872 delegates and Obama has 793. The delegates are obviously loosely based on how many votes that candidate receives but like the electoral college there is a gap between the citizens and the powerful system.

So if the people don’t determine that amount of delegates a candidate gets… what does.

As an MSNBC article mentions counts delegates “is both an art and a science, and the task can be can annoyingly open to interpretation.” A.K.A.: bullshit.

The system involves counting votes and weighing county lines and making educated guess about district lines. In the end it’s a mess.

Let’s look at California. California has 370 delegates. 129 of those votes are based who wins the whole state

For instance if a candidate A got 54% of California’s vote they’d get 129 * .54 delegates or 70 delegates.

But what about the other 241 delegates. It’s not so simple. These delegates are divided based upon county and congressional district lines. You see votes are counted in country but divided by districts. In most case a country hold one congressional district, but this is not always the case.

Some counties could hold multiple districts. So it’s possible that candidate A won the majority of votes, but that candidate B won the most districts. Finding out what’s what is difficult.

Worst yet some district are in two counties this is rare, but still, who’s ingenious idea was that?

What does all this mess mean? It means that the numbers can vary and sometimes (like Obama, Clinton and Utah), a candidate might win a state but get less delegates than their opponent. Weird.

But wait, there’s still more bullshit: super bullshit in fact. Not only do candidates have to fight for delegates, they have to fight for Super delegates. Thought picking delegate was difficult? Wait until you learn the cryptic methods used to allot super delegates.

Super Delegates are actually people and they can change their mind. It’s get really confusing, because people are confusing.

And as if that wasn’t enough, candidates drop out of the race. These means some delegates are up in the air after their supported candidate leaves. What do we do with these orphan delegates? The answer is not very clear.

And let’s not begin to talk about caucuses. They are just as confusing as the delegate system.

Even after crunching these numbers and doing all this work, the numbers don’t matter. A delegate is a person and they can vote for whomever they please. This means that your vote only helps approximates delegate counts, it does not determine the next presidential candidate.

So, at the end of the day, should we just stop voting? the answer is No. You vote might not count for much, but knowing that you voting is a good feeling. And let’s face it those “I voted” Sticker are neat!