Subaru wrote:
For now, we just can protest. But the real force that can give him a wake up call, his own people, are still either too busy being hypnotized into his charade of "lets solve world issues US-style" or thinking that only when reelection comes they will voice out their opinion. The moment to act, dare I say, Americans, is now. Go out on the street. Send mail. Just voice your discomfort. :)
I'm completely in favor of what Bush is doing. To hell with appeasement and Clinton-style policies; Clinton took every foreign threat that came along and punted it down the road for his successor to deal with. He ignored repeated terrorist attacks (leading to 9/11), appeased Kim Jong-Il by giving him valuable resources in exchange for empty promises (leading to North Korea now having nuclear weapons), sold missile guidance technology to the Chinese, and was responsible for the debacle in Somalia (not the fact that 18 soldiers died, but that we immediately pulled out of the country after that, leading to such people as Osama bin Laden viewing the U.S. military as a "paper tiger" that would run as soon as it took casualties).
If the U.S. has to suffer 9/11-style casualties to earn the world's "sympathy," and refrain from doing anything about it in order to
keep that sympathy, then the rest of the world can take their sympathy and
shove it.
As for popular vote vs. electoral college vote, the electoral college exists so that states with small populations aren't
completely swamped out by larger states as far as the importance of their vote goes. If not for the electoral college, states like Montana would have a negligible impact on elections; as it is, their impact is still small, but is noticable.