Until this business with Virginia and Pennsylvania, I would have welcomed a change from the unit rule to the Congressional-district method (don't call it proportional) of choosing Presidential electors. I hadn't realized just how skewed the outcome could be.

I really need to put up the exact wording for my system of objective districting. If someone (nudge, nudge) then publicizes it, Democratic legislators in every state will have something to work from. What I have is specifically written as an amendment to the Colorado constitution, so citations of articles and sections would need to be changed. Moreover, coastal states would have to insert some provision for determining whether a waterway makes two counties non-adjacent.

The Congressional-district method of choosing Presidential electors is the easiest way of getting away from the unit rule (the rule that all electoral votes in the state go to one candidate), because so far as I know (based on my experience in Colorado), that's already how the individual electors are chosen.

Each party has meetings for each district of each type in every election year for the respective office. At the Congressional district meetings, the delegates choose the party's candidate for that district, and in years divisible by 4, they also choose a Presidential elector. Then at the state party convention, the delegates choose the other two electors that the state is entitled to by Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. It doesn't have to be done this way, but it's the easiest way to let people in every part of the state have equal input.

Of course, if each state simply chose how to allocate the votes directly, rather than choosing people who then cast the votes, the unit rule could be avoided in any number of ways, one of which was put on the ballot in Colorado in 2000 or 2004 (I forget which).

Hello Tom,

It is so hard to get people to understand the true nature of these "Republicans", and the extent that they have tried to manipulate and steal control of this country for their own gain. It is getting harder and harder now too; I used to listen to KPOJ in Portland and it is no longer on the air. Almost simultaneously with the elcetion of President Obama to his second term, it was replaced with a Fox (no less) Sports talk station.

I will do all that I can; I try to talk on Facebook about the need to keep informed, and question not only Republicans and their leadership, but to keep an eye on the Democrats also, but it seems that less and less people are engaged. It is so sad that only Clinton and Obama have been able to keep control of the whitehouse for more than 4 years. How can we get people more informed and involved?.

Kend, let's play a game. I call it the republican game.

You be the democrat, and I'll be the republican.

I sneak up behind you and drive my humvee over you. Then I roll down the window and yell, "Blame y'self! Good golly willikers, would you just get up and quit feeling sorry for yourself?"

Then, when you try to get up, I run over you again, and I yell, "Hey! You're embarrassing yourself down there. Would you get up on your own two feet, or are you going to lay there until the government gives you a handout? Why, if I was as lazy as you, I would never have been able to afford this humvee."

Then I run over you again. And then I yell, "Great gibbering fascists! You dented my bumper! I blame you for that!"

Wasn't that fun? Let's play it over and over and over and over and over and over, for thirty years. Then you will be able to answer your own question; you will know why democrats have not yet been able to fix the problems that republicans have caused.

Quote ken ware: "What does Afghanistan have that Bush wanted so bad, that would prompt him to kill 3,000 people and destroy the Towers and almost the Pentagon?"

Another was that Afghanistan was harboring Usama bin Laden and Al Qaida, who had, they believed, been behind some Embassy bombings and the bombing of the USS Cole... The Khobar Towers bombing in Dharan, Saudi Arabia...etc. And then there was the rift between Saddam Husein, who had threatened little Bush's daddy and threatened to get off the dollars for oil standard (would have been very terrible for the US..and other OPEC nations are considering just that..wrecking the US economy and superiority and ability to get other countries to pay for America's wars..like China).

And it wasn't just Bush anyway...it was the same forces that now controls Obama...it was the plutocratic forces behind him who wanted control of Middle East oil and a way to squeeze 90% of Americans out of their wealth..increased taxes to the lower classes and destroy social programs. It facilitated the cover up of decades of criminal business practices...took away people's liberties and freedoms and any say in bringing these criminals to justice. Justice?..9/11 destroyed that.

Just like Peal Harbor...where FDR needed a way to break the American people out of their refusal to go along with going to war.. so they followed the McCollum plan to push Japan to attack us. The plan was to antagonize Japan to the breaking point that they really had little other choice but to attack. In effect, the US declared war on Japan first but using antagonist actions that could be more covert than an all out declaration of war. Japan was also trying to expand it's influences and control over that part of the world..Operation Golden Lily (sacking of the far east), Nanking beheadings, Manchurian Biological warfare experimentation...was much to be concerned about. But what was it that really made Japan such an aggressive country? What was the root of the problem? You probably know...being the history buff you are. Why do school kids shoot other kids in school? The feeling that they've been excluded, ostracized, made fun of, treated unfairly, made to feel inferior, pushed into a corner by arrogant bullies. And when you finally do fight back, say with an AK-47 and you manage to kill a lot more than just the original bullies, you are deemed a wacko...which you probably are by now anyway. So why does our system create such wackos to begin with? Maybe we should start questioning and reforming our system that creates wackos.

Many US actions against Arab nations have a long history of being antagonistic against them and when they try to fight back, in any way they can, the US finds a way to break their American citizens out of their anti-war sentiments. They create a false flag...everything from throwing down a red carpet for these 20 so-called 'hijackers' to get into the country (only the last 'hijacker' was stopped by a border control agent who wouldn't 'play the game' as set down by his chain of command). Training them at flight schools. Having a military exercise including the scenario of the WTC towers and the Pentagon being hit by hijacked planes (this is done so that the confusion would be enough to make those who aren't in on the actual attack think it was just a drill).

Ken, you must speak Arabic fluently. How else would you have understood what Usama bin Laden was saying about 9/11? Usama bin Laden also had many doubles...how do you know that the one that you heard was the real one? How do you know that what he said was what you were told he said? There are very easy ways to dub in voices in videos as well. How can we really believe anything that these organizations like the CIA, NSA, or even the military has to present in the way of evidence when they have the ability to create any audio/visual presentation they want. I mean if they can fake a picture of Oswald standing and holding a rifle they can certainly fake a voice saying anything in Arabic, even if one can understand Arabic, and most certainly can mis-translate what is being said. Millions of frightened, xenophobic Americans are more than willing to believe what they are told he said.

If our country was willing to sacrifice the many, many more deaths by sending troops over to die in the Middle East then why would anyone doubt that these same people would sacrifice several thousand people in a false flag operation? What they got was, to them, well worth the sacrifice...to them...but not to our country..to the rest of us.

And there is even the remote possibility that the US has been playing a grand chess game from the very beginning in order to control the world's oil. Their plan: create the illusion that there are 'terrorist operations' that go around bombing embassies, ships, and barracks, etc... that reinforces their propaganda that we have to be afraid, very afraid of 'terrorists'...especially Radical Muslim terrorists. This all creates the fears and hatreds in the world's subjects...especially American subjects...that, and the grand finale of bringing the WTC towers down, and hitting the Pentagon, as a final statement as to why we needed to invade the Middle East allowed for the eventual unprovoked and illegal invasion and control of the Middle East oil fields.

I understand the right of the people to protect themselves against unjust government control. But what about the fact that these guns are in the mean time turned against fellow citizens? What is your solution for that fact, in light of your recommending high ownership of military weapons to 'protect' citizens? The people's right to uphold their democratic principles thru battle level ballistic weapons should be contained within citizens' militia, and not within private ownership. No private gun owner should need or own the ballistic capacity to take out crowds of private citizens in a sweep of sprayed ammunition.

KEYLAWK, Where are you from???
No disrespect to you as a person, but I find your perspective sophmoric, even down right idiotic!
Please share your confidence...How does President Obamney have your communities best intrests at heart.

Please explain how/why you think Obamney is not serving a plutocrate agenda?

David Abbott,
Your naivete is showing! "...But he is not as bad a corporatist as Bush/Chenny were or as bad as Romney Ryan would have been...But there is still a chance that Obama will be more proactive in doing what he said he would do."

You too funny!!

I listen to your show just about every day and would love to hear you interview an economist that has an alternative view of our monetary system. Her name is Stephanie Kelton. She is an Assistant Professor at UMKC and blogs at New Economic Perspectives. She, along with others at the school and elsewhere promote a school of thought referred to as Modern Monetary Theory. Basically, it is a new way to look at money and government debt. I recently attended a presentation she made to the Financial Planners Association and was very pleased to see many shaking their heads in agreement as she explained how our monetary system works. I assure you, her explanation is easy to understand and your audience would be very receptive. If I were to sum up Modern Monetary Theory (or MMT) in a few sentences I would go to a colleague of Stephanie Kelton who developed the theory;

"Federal government spending is in no case

operationally constrained by revenues, meaning

that there is no “solvency risk.” In other words,

the federal government can always make any and all

payments in its own currency, no matter how large

the deficit is, or how few taxes it collects" ~ Warren Mosler, Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy

The important underpinning of this is that the U.S. is a sovereign currency that acts like we are on the gold standard when we are not. Stephanie Kelton is an excellent proponent of this and will bring a perspective to our economic system that will change the conversation. Her blog is New Economic Perspectives and on twitter she is known as @deficitowl Please, please, please, have her on your show. I promise you will not regret it.

I think not. I think that with determined, with strong leadership, the President has staked out his vision and the Republicans as political wing of the uber class never let us forget theirs, I expect some achievement these first two years of his second term but most will occur in 24 months when Americans send a majority of Dems to the House and a super majority to the Senate. Then will he cement his legacy and set the stage for the unprecedented election of the next Democratic President of the United States. I can wait.

We need to actually prepare for a peaceful revolution, so the people can eventually, ceremoniously, withdraw their consent from a corrupt and obsolete government and economic system, after first accomplishing a talking thru of an alternative set of institutions, complete with an alternative economic system based on respecting full human dignity, transparency, sustainability.

I propose we push for a government in waiting to conduct such a new national narrative, with folks onboard like Thom Hartmann, Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, Chris Hedges, Jim HIghtower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Melissa Harris-Perry, . . .

We need to rescue our culture from the commercial mentality which is inherently lacking in morality, and aim for a moral, rational, and just social order.

Revolution by discussion and articulation, the next step for Occupy.