Thanksgiving Fact...

Thanksgiving was not always celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. The Continental Congress issued its first Thanksgiving Day proclamation for December 18, 1777... The purpose:

"That at one Time and with one Voice, the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor; and that, together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may join the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favor; and their humble and earnest Supplication that it may please GOD through the Merits of JESUS CHRIST, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance; That it may please him graciously to afford his Blessing on the Governments of these States respectively and prosper the public council of the whole."

Source: WORLD; November 15/22, 2008; page 9.



ALSO... My first and only niece made her appearance at 1:15am on Thanksgiving day! Her name is Evalynn Mae Holland... isn't she beautiful! Look at all that hair!

I wish I totally understood this...

I'm sitting here still awake trying to stay up to find out about Coleman vs. Franken...

But, with this whole presidential thing... I wish I understood why popular vote and electoral votes don't correspond with each other what so ever...
Why does 52% vs. 49% become 338 vs 159 electoral votes?
Seems to me it should be somewhat closer to 258 votes vs 239 votes with those percentages... which would mean neither one would be the winner yet. I just don't get it.
I'm probably more frustrated about it because I'm tired.


AFTER SOME RESEARCH...

Ok, so today I'm working on figuring this whole thing out...
For those of you who are curious, this is how it works...

*The number of electoral votes a state gets equals the number of of the states Congressional delegation. This means: the number of US Senators (which is always 2) PLUS the number of US Representatives.
*Ok, so the current number of US Representatives is 435 - assigned to states proportionate to the population. BUT each state is entitled to at least one representative.
*This means that even sparsely populated states get 3 electoral votes... and California has the most electoral votes at 53 because they have the high test population.
*The District of Columbia gets 3 according to the 23rd Amendment.

So, this seems somewhat fair to me... but I still don't understand why the popular vote percentage and the electoral votes seem off if the number of electoral votes is actually based on the population of the state... oh well, I guess I don't' have to understand.

Ok, so that's my basic understanding 18 hours after the original post.