TWO MORE REALLY STUPID IDEAS

THE COLORADO ELECTORAL COLLEGE INITIATIVE IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF THE FUN THIS YEAR

In Colorado, they will vote this time on whether to continue with the winner-take-all electoral system. The ballot initiative would allow Colorado to apportion its electoral votes among the candidates instead of using the traditional system. This may or may not be Constitutional, and threatens to disrupt the election, especially if the vote is as close as many expect.

The group opposing the measure is called "Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea." I like that.

But it's not the stupidest idea abroad in the world concerning our election. Here's two more:

The Associated Press is reporting that the Guardian of London (that's a newspaper, by the way) is giving its readers the names and addresses of Clark County, Ohio voters not affiliated with a party. With this information, the paper wants them to send letters to Americans, stressing how important the US elections are to Britons. Presumably, these letters will also give us dumb Americans the information we need to truly understand how we should be voting.

I've about had it with foreigners telling us what to do.

Europe is quaking in fear of what the American Cowboy might do in his next term. They're afraid he'll talk tough to the terrorists some more and they might have to quell uprisings in the huge and hostile Arab populations they stupidly allowed to proliferate in the past decades. They haven't been this hysterically perturbed since the Cold War, when they expressed their extreme fear of the Reagan Administration by having puppet shows and pouring blood on the ground at military installations.

Who cares?

John Kerry continuously refers to our "allies"--by which he means "people who hate us and think we are plotting with the Jews to take over the world." At the same time, he denigrates the "coalition of the bribed"--by which he means "nations who have sent men, money and arms to help us in the war in Iraq." He seems to think we should admire and emulate nations like France and Germany, but he fails to focus very clearly on what those countries are like.

The fact is that, while Kerry carps about our 5.4% unemployment rate, at least ours can be attributed to a slowly recovering economy. The socialist tendencies of those nations have given them both a semi-permanent unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent. People in France work less than those in any other industrialized nation. And I don't even want to talk about their military histories. I don't feel like laughing that hard.

The other part of this story I find disturbing (the second stupid idea, in case you're counting) is that the paper paid $25 for the voter rolls. The county officials say that anyone can buy the list and do whatever they like with the information.

WHAT?

The database that you HAVE to appear in, in order to exercise your CONSTITUTIONAL right to VOTE is for SALE?

I'm not sure which of these I find more disturbing--the presumption of a foreign media to meddle in a US election, or the gall of a state government to require your information and then sell it to anyone who wants it.

The whole thing is very, very disturbing.