both obama's and hillary's "people" are predicting that the candidacy willl be resolved on june 3rd, the last primary day.

i think not.

2 days before then, on june 1st, puerto rico votes, and awards 55 delegates. the june 3rd primaries (south dakota and montana) only serve up 31 delegates between them, and the race ISNT coming down to the last 31 delegates. it will be decided by puerto rico instead

another way to think of this is that (to the democratic puppet masters) puerto rico is approximately twice as important as montana and south dakota combined.

who will the puerto ricans be voting for? i'll give you two guesses, and the first one doesn't count if its for hillary. i could be wrong, but i'm betting the politics of racial identity theft win out over other factors.

so how comfortable are you with having your fate decided by puerto ricans who ARENT united states citizens? and who are barred by law from voting in the actual presidential election?

i'm looking at YOU, retired floridians. and YOU, detroit auto workers. your votes don't count at all.

i know, i know . . . florida and michigan legislatures, in a rare bipartisan effort, had the temerity to believe that the votes of their elected officials should prevail over the machinations of unelected democratic party puppet masters concerning the dates of the primaries. just goes to show you - democracy ain't all its cracked up to be, at least in the minds of those who believe that unelected superdelegates and caribbean voters are more important that actual US voters.

this is the "butterfly ballot of 2008" . . . the present rules seemed like a good idea when they were put in place by democratic party bosses, but now that the results aren't satisfactory, there's twisting and shouting.

personally, i have to believe that somehow, somewhere, someone will pull some strings to undo ALL the primaries, not just florida and michigan, and al gore will emerge as the "consensus candidate" by acclamation, since hillary and obama backers are so worked up neither side would support the other candidate when push comes to shove.

al gore in 2008. he's the last hope of the democratic party.

...to find out they're not citizens.

all people born in P.R. are US citizens by birth.

The reason that PuertoRicans cannot now vote in US elections is because the political legal structure of that island is defined as a "COMMONWEALTH" and not defined/ratified as a "STATE OF THE UNION".

That has many times been attempted through various body politics, but the fact of the matter is that economically Puerto Rico could not support the heavy state taxes it would have to pay as a State of the Union.

Additionally, PR taxes offset US taxes...and so many other distinctions.

Somewhere around 1898 Puerto Rico was bouth/won from Spain as part of the Spanish American War...or something like that,.

All Puerto Ricans can travel freely back and forth to the US without need of a VISA. Also, all men are equally able to volunteer into the US Armed Forces and each year one individual can be appointed to one of the Armed Forces Academies.

So?

Would you please stop letting facts get in the way of a good rant...

Trying to out-puppet the puppet masters?

or checkmark or whatever it is we do these days.

Nominated not by a consensus of Party members but by some big muckety muck pulling some strings? Sounds an awful lot like the "machinations of unelected democratic party puppet masters" at work to me. I guess as long as they're acting in the public good...

Yea, that won't piss anybody off, I'm sure. You little ladies and colored folk have had your fun, now it's time for the grownups to nominate a white guy and get on with it. Then we'll have 50% of the Hillaries and 30% of the Obamas staying home and Al Gore will get crushed again.

Besides, isn't he some sort of Global Warming Nut? What kind of agenda do you envision?

all they (puerto ricans) have to do is check wikipedia <link> if they're confused about whether or not they're US citizens.

they're not.

they're citizens of the commonwealth of puerto rico, which is a US protectorate, and they CANNOT vote in the presidential election.

only citizens can vote in the presidential election.

they don't have senators or representatives in congress either.

glad i could straighten out your confusion, dino-guy

Or did you not read the article you linked to?

Because PR is not a state, residents can't vote in federal elections. However, should they become a resident of a state, voilà - they can vote.

The only question is, if you can't vote if you are from a Commonwealth, how come skeppy gets a vote?

* from wiki article.

read the effing article - it says:

"The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican Secretary of Justice determined that the Puerto Rican citizenship exists and was recognized in the Constitution of Puerto Rico."

"Puerto Rico is an “unincorporated territory” of the United States which according to the United States Supreme Court is “a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States.”

"United States federal law is applicable to Puerto Rico, even though Puerto Rico is not a state of the American Union and has no voting representative in the United States Congress."

"Under the Constitution of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico is described as a 'Commonwealth' . . . Puerto Ricans are statutory U.S. citizens, but since Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory and not a U.S. state, the U.S. Constitution does not enfranchise U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico."

in a nutshell . . . if you're a "real" citizen you can vote for president. if you live in a US territory, you can't. when we allow puerto ricans to vote in political primaries, it is, by its very nature, a distortion of the poltiical balance, because they cannot subsequently vote in the national election - which was sum of my top post.

why do you persist in pretenting to be dumber than you are? puerto ricans CANT vote for president, but they CAN vote in the democratic primary.

end of story.

puerto ricans are "statutory citzens", not "citizens by birth".

you're the only one who got the irony in my post.

the party bigshots are scared to death that if either hillary or obama wins (but mostly hillary) that half the party will feel that they got screwed, and that the result was not fair.

so they are, in fact, looking for a face-saving exit strategy, which (if it does end up with a "consensus by acclimation" alternative, like al gore) will be even less democratic or representative of the will of the voters.

checkmark to lono for reading comprehension and the ability to detect satire and irony.

bomb them, require them to follow federal law, and meet their efforts to obtain statehood with scorn. Ya know, I'm fine for letting people with a genuine interest in the political process of the nation that occupies them vote.

are naturalized citizens statutory?

Lots of people who are citizens aren't allowed to vote for U.S. President--convicted felons, minors, people of diminished capacity, just to name three. Being allowed to vote for a particular office is not how citizenship is decided.