kansas

by Lex Rex  http://theinvisiblehand.typepad.com 

Barack Obama is making good on one of his campaign promises: Close GITMO, or Camp Justice. President Barack Hussein Obama signed an Executive Order that will close GITMO within a year. The Obama administration is looking at three military prisons — in Kansas (LEAVENWORTH), California and South Carolina — along with the civilian Supermax prison in Colorado as potential sites for the Guantanamo detainees. HOWEVER, Kansas does not want the detainees, President Obama's decision to close the Gitmo prison leaves an important question unanswered: where do they go now? Some have suggested they be transferred to Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., but both Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback oppose this proposal. READ FULL STORY and also in June this was also reported by THE SWAMP

In fact HOUSE REPUBLICANS have introduced a bill, to NO DETAINEES on USA SOIL, Read Full Story

SO WHAT TO DO WITH THE POOR OLD GITMO DETAINEES, well lets start the ADOPT A GITMO DETAINEE PROGRAM, this way any liberal or any person who feels the urge to express their love and compassion can adopt a DETAINEE. In fact a promotion video has already been produced:

"ADOPT A GITMO DETAINEE" WITH LOVE BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

I am sure all the detainee's will find an excellent home, but if you want to be considered as a Dad or Mom for one of the GITMO detainees, please write a letter explaining why you can provide a good and loving home for the Detainee and mail it to: 

President Barack Hussein ObamaADOPT A GITMO DETAINEE PROGRAM1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUEWASHINGTON D.C. 20500  YOU MIGHT BE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE Khalid Sheik Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah living under your roof.-LEX REX  http://theinvisiblehand.typepad.com

On thenextright.com, there were a series of blogs talking about the importance of the states in the Big Ten Conference. After reading that series, having time to reflect, and the commencing of the shortest general election campaign in history, I felt that it would be appropriate to point out another conference: The states in the Big 12 Conference.

I am not doing this blog series to put down the Big Ten (though I’m not sure I’d want to be a math major from the 11-team league), but I am doing this to show that the Big 12 states will play a central role in the 2008 Presidential Election. I should also point out that there are a number of reasons that the Big 12 may be overlooked in favor of its sister conference to the east.
 

1. The Big 12 is made up of smaller media markets compared to the Big 10. The five biggest media markets in the Big Ten are Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Cleveland, and St. Louis. The ones in the Big 12 are Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, St. Louis, Denver, and Kansas City. The St. Louis-area is included twice because it sits on the border of Big Ten state Illinois and Big 12 state Missouri.

    

2. The volume of electoral votes in Big 12 states is largely concentrated in one state. Outside of Texas (three of the six largest Big 12 cities are in Texas), no other Big 12 state has 12 or more electoral votes. The Big Ten region has four states with more than 12 electoral votes. Of course, the larger pot gets the most attention.
    

In short, the size of the composition of voters from the two regions draws large attention to the Big Ten and away from the Big 12. However, size isn’t the only thing that matters. Consider that George W. Bush, on his way to 286 electoral votes in 2004 won every Big 12 state. While the race came down to Ohio, imagine what his chances would have been if he had lost Iowa and Colorado. Take away Missouri as well as Iowa and Colorado and John Kerry is President.

Also, consider that the last time that a Democrat won three of the seven states was Bill Clinton in 1992. Clinton won 370 electoral votes and won Colorado, Iowa, and Missouri. Meanwhile, the last time that a Democrat swept the Big 12 states was in 1964 with Lyndon Johnson’s landslide win over Barry Goldwater. In short, the Big 12 is an important hold for Republicans and a chance to win an election for Democrats.

The states that make up the region are Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. As of today, it appears that Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas are likely to go for John McCain. For the purposes of this blog series, I want to focus in the coming days on the three swing states from this group: Colorado, Iowa, and Missouri.