Posted on 02/22/2011 6:25:52 PM PST by Stayfrosty
(CNN) - Rahm Emanuel, the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, won the Chicago mayoral election Tuesday, topping the 50% threshold to avoid a run-off vote, CNN projects.
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Amen to that. Do they ever!!
I wonder if the percentages matched the pre-determined vote counts? I mean, we can’t have any allegations of election fraud ....
He was never going to lose it anyway. What Cook County says, goes in IL presidential elections, especially with one of their own in the WH.
Technically, NO!! Chicago mayoral contests have been deemed non-partisan, anyone can run, republicans and democrats on the same ballot, doesn't matter how many of each. If anyone from either party gets 50%+1 vote they win it ... if not, the top 2 vote getters have a runoff to determine the winner.
So Obama is sure to carry Illinois now...
Misleading headline. Sounds almost like there was an actual election.
Surprising. Golisano was never as lefty before.
Mayor For Life. He’ll excel at running a totally corrupt city government.
Welcome to FR!
Chicago was a more honest town when Al Capone ran it.
Well A) I am sick of the radical gays who run this city to the sewer.
B) I really was angry about missing the show and you can't download it on ITunes.
And C) I live in the suburbs but as you know this will affect everything from food prices at White Sox games to taxes in the city.
I was in a goofy mood this morning though. My dad was all angry about it and I told him, "Well dad this is wonderful for Chicago it is going to help our economy!!! He ansered 'what?'" I said, "Just think of all the bathhouses that are going to be seeing a huge surge in business now that we have a mayor who likes to go prancing around naked in public showers bossing people around!"
So that was my sarcastic take on this nightmare.
And like I told you I'm going down to Nashville in June I may not leave. Since we have now Wisconsin Senators and Indiana Senators here I think I may bail Illinois for a Red State. I love Nashville and am getting to the end of my rope with this state.
If I am redistricted to Bobby Rush's district then I am out of here. I am not going to be represented by a black panther who can't complete a coherent sentence.
As it should be in a democracy.
~~~~
Which we’re not. We are a republic.
~~~~~~~~~
*snip*
Granted, most Americans probably believe that the United States is a “democracy” because that’s what they’ve heard all their lives.
But I was stunned that a regular reader of this column would get Franklin’s quote so wrong. Franklin had used the word “republic” without coupling it to the word “democratic,” and the difference between a republic (a government of law) and a democracy (majority rule) is so incredibly important to preserving what liberties we have left that I hope you’ll indulge me in a brief history lesson.
If you remember much from your high school history classes about the founding of this country, you know there was a great deal of controversy about what type of government the newly independent states should create.
The first effort, the Articles of Confederation, was generally regarded as a failure. But what should replace them? Each state sent a group of representatives to meet in Philadelphia and hammer out a new agreement.
The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended, eager to learn what had been produced behind those closed doors.
As the delegates left the building, a Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got?”
With no hesitation, Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Not a democracy, not a democratic republic. But “a republic, if you can keep it.”
Over the past four decades I have recounted this story several hundred times. For many years I traveled the country giving speeches about the threats to this Republic. I always enjoyed the opportunity to talk to high school students when I could wrangle an invitation. When I did, I loved to tell them about the differences between a republic and a democracy.
“A lynch mob is democracy in action,” I would say. “While if you believe someone is innocent until proven guilty, that they deserve their day in court and that a jury of their peers should decide their fate, then you believe in a nation of laws, not just the whims of a mob.”
Another line I used a lot was, “Democracy is five wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. If you were the sheep, which would you rather live in — a republic or a democracy?”
I told them about the importance of “binding men down with the chains of a Constitution.” That this was the only sure way to protect their freedom. And that anyone who wanted to change this republic into a democracy was an enemy of liberty.
A century or two earlier there would have been no need to give such a talk — and no interest if one did. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, every American who could read and write (and probably most of those who couldn’t), knew we were a republic.
The campaign to brainwash us into believing we were a democracy didn’t begin until 100 years ago. Today, if you take a poll of high school or college students, the overwhelming majority will tell you that we are a democracy.
Please don’t dismiss this as a mere quarrel over semantics. Understanding the difference between the two systems of government is absolutely vital. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that our very liberties depend on getting more Americans to realize the importance of this seemingly arcane dispute.
Our Founding Fathers Feared And Hated Democracy
Most high school students who heard me say such a thing were surprised and shocked. They had been taught that the United States was, and had always been, a democracy. That “majority rule” was the fairest of all possible forms of government. Who was this guy to tell them they’d been lied to?
So I quoted what some of our founding fathers had to say. I asked if they had heard of The Federalist Papers — the collection of articles written during the debate over ratifying the new constitution.
In The Federalist, No. 10, James Madison, often referred to as “the father of the Constitution,” had this to say:
… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.
Alexander Hamilton concurred. In a speech he gave in June 1788, urging ratification of the Constitution, he thundered:
The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
Fisher Ames, a member of Congress during the eight years that George Washington was president, wrote an essay called “the Mire of Democracy.” In it, he said that the framers of the Constitution “intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from despotism.”
Yes, our founding fathers were well aware of the differences between a republic and a democracy. They revered the former; but as I said above, they hated and feared the latter.
In view of the founders’ ardent convictions, it is no surprise that you cannot find the word “democracy” anywhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the U.S.
Indeed, the Constitution not only proclaimed that our Federal government should be a republic; it went further and mandated that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/chip-wood/3844-benjamin-franklin-had-it-right
Don’t wear a pro-conservative message, or have a pro-conservative bumper sticker while in Chicago. Rahm and his cronies will find a way to kill you and make it look like an ‘accident’.
Just recalling my state’s motto as a child.
If Chicago elected him they deserve him......
Chicago will just go deeper down into the rat hole.
Carol Mostly Fraud could not get 10% of the vote.
LOL I guess her career is over!
Which is a cowardly shame.
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