What do people who live in Washington, DC and Puerto Rico have in common? Both are American citizens, yet they have no representation in Congress. Howard Wolfson said with a straight face on Hardball last week that Puerto Rico's votes ought to matter when the superdelegates make their choice between Hillary and Obama. Most people would argue that this makes no sense, since Puerto Rico has zero electoral votes in November. Puerto Rico is not a state, but rather a self-governing commonwealth in association with the United States. Their chief of State is the President of the United States, who they have no say in the general election.

The funky thing is that they no have a say in the nominations, because the parties have decided to let them have some. With Puerto Rico's special position, the Democrats treat Puerto Rico just as a state, giving them 63 delegates. The Republicans gave Puerto Rico 23 delegates.

DC, on the other hand, does have 3 electoral votes in the election, even though it is not a state. It is given these votes due to the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution. Like Puerto Rico, it also plays a role in the nomination process. Still, both DC and Puerto Rico have no representation in Congress. Why not?

I think this is ridiculous. The idea is 1 man, 1 vote. People in DC deserve to be represented just as much as the people in Montana. Many point to the fact that the founders did not want the district to have voting rights, and they are correct. Still, this is archaic and the founders today would be for DC voting rights. DC has went from a town of just government to a full fledged city.

The argument that Puerto Rico ought not have a representation in Congress is easier. All one has to do is point at the tax loopholes that Puerto Rico enjoys. Still, I come back with one simple number: 1,225. That is the number of soldiers who have died while serving for the US. Puerto Rico sends more than the average per capita into battle, yet they can't vote? I find this absurd.

My Republican friends don't want to give these guys voting rights because they are solid Democrat areas. This is true. I say, who cares? I am a huge partisan but I will not be a partisan and the expense of disenfranchisement. The beauty of the country is that just about every of age citizen gets the right to be represented. Why is this not true of the great Puerto Ricans and the people of DC. I find it  a tragedy.

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While rightfully all of the focus was on the Democratic Race yesterday, Republicans voted as well. The nominee, John McCain picked up 73.99% of the vote. Also on the ballot were Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul and Alan Keyes.

Remember Keyes? He ran for President in 1996 and he ran again in 2008, though no one noticed. He even got invited to one debate in Iowa. Keyes picked up just over 13,000 votes in the primary last night, good for 2 delegates to the convention. North Carolina is complete proportional representation.

Thus, Keyes now has 2 delegates at the convention, which is more than the 1 more than the front runner of most of 2007, Rudy Giuliani, got this whole race, where he spent over 50 million.

Props to Keyes and Slops to Rudy!

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Bobby Jindal is the popular governor of Louisiana. He is probably my number one pick for John McCain's Vice President.  Why? Well there are many reasons.

First, he is not a white male. I think this will be important as the democrats will be throwing up a non-white male. Jindal is very popular in Louisiana, which I don't want to be the next to knock Louisiana, but if they love him, everyone will cause they are typically considered racist down there.

Second, he is a Southern Governor. You need a Governor, someone with executive experience. This has always been the strongest region to pull a VP choice from. While Louisiana is already a solid republican state, it really helps with the whole region.

Third, he is young. He is only 36, and shows a clear contrast to McCain.

Fourth, he has experience. How does a 36 yr old man have experience? Well, he was a congressman and he is a governor. So really he time is short, but he has dipped his toes in the water.

Fifth, he is a solid social conservative. He is as solid as possible on abortion, gay marriage and embryonic stem cells.

Sixth, he is a solid economic conservative as well.

Jindal is just the type of man I want backing up John McCain, he is a contrast to McCain, and he is consistent and can be trusted through thick and thin. He is the kind of man I would want behind me. He lacks the baggage that Huckabee and Romney would bring to the table.

The biggest liability is my fourth point, that experience.  The democrats will try to take away the Obama  experience problem by pointing to the inexperience of Jindal. I think you can counter with young and experienced, as has both executive and legislative experience.

Right now, Jindal is my #1 pick. I also really like Sarah Palin as well for the pick. Mike Huckabee has very interesting strengths as well, but there are some huge glaring weaknesses. The commonly thrown around names of Pawlenty or Sanford may work as well. Portman I dont think works to well and I am very opposed to Romney.

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On Feb. 21st, I declared Barack Obama the winner of the Democratic nomination. I did this my looking at the Delegate numbers. Now, for the first time over the past few days, I think I may have called this race just a bit too premature. Why, because I now think Hillary does have a path to the nomination. Now before you go too crazy, let me give you a sports analogy in order to maybe give it some perspective. Obama is up 3-0 a best of 7 basketball series and Clinton is down 15 at halftime of the 4th game. Impossible for Clinton to win? No. Highly unprobable, yes.

First thing to get clear for you non junkies. After all the primaries are over, Clinton will be down in elected delegates. Neither Clinton or Obama will have the necessary number of Delegates in order to clinch the nomination without the support of the unelected delegates, better known as "superdelegates"

So how will Clinton, who will be down in elected delegates, get enough delegates from the superdlegates in order to pass Obama? Well, the first thing is that Clinton needs to get Obama's lead within 100 in terms of elected delegates. As of today, Clinton is down 150 elected delegates. She needs to win Indiana huge, lost North Carolina by 2 or less Tuesday. After that, I think her dig gains will come from Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. I think she needs to win Kentucky by 25 in order to have a chance at this one. Polls right now show her up 35. I expect that to close, but she needs a butt kicking of butt kicking.

Why does she need this? She needs to make the case that Barack Obama can not get the white working man vote. If she is able to do this, she may be able to get the party to pick her over Obama. It would be crazy, but it still is possible. So, this is in fact still a race.

Thants being said, here are my Predictions: NC- Obama by 4; Indiana- Clinton by 8

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Today is my birthday! It is, the first Birthday where I will not be getting a call from my mother. I have been thinking about her a lot more than normal the past few weeks. When I hit these milestones, I often look back. What I love about blogging so much is that I have a history of what I was thinking at certain points of my life. The precursor to this blog was my livejournal, which for those who want to go down memory lane can see at http://niczone.livejournal.com I started blogging at the beginning of 2005 and I found this memorable post of an event I forgot about until I stumbled upon it, and it is reposted below:




I hope you all are able to be surprised once and a while, and I hope you have a way of remembering it. This is the beauty of writing.

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BP produced record profits this last quarter as was reported today in their earnings call (I follow BP closely because I own BP stock, and you all can follow what I own on the “Stocks” portion of this site). Big Oil is being blamed for the crisis at least in part due to these record profits. This is nonsense. Gas Prices are rising because of our supply problem, not the Big Oil companies. They are making record profits because of this ever rising price, but that is not from their own doing. More people in the world need energy, and we can’t supply it.

 

First, we need to find a patchwork of alternative fuels that will make us energy independent. We should be looking at solar, nuclear, natural gas, coal, geothermal, hydroelectric and any other way that is possible. As Bush said in his press conference today, there is no magic wand. The democrats don’t want to hurt the environment, and will not allow a new refinery to be built. It is ridiculous that no refineries have been build in the US in like 30 years. McCain and Clinton have this idea that is like just giving another fix to a junkie. Having a gas tax holiday is not the worst idea, but it really gets us nowhere.

 

Also, our government seems to love Ethanol too much. Why are we burning our food for oil? It’s a dumb idea that is killing food prices and not solving our problem. We need to be building refineries, drilling in ANWR (which we can do now without hurting the environment), and exploring these alternatives by giving tax credits to people who use research and use them. What we should not being doing is forcing oil companies to take their profits and invest in research. That is absurd and hurts everyone.    

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