Because it's more than one issue. For years the GOP has been mostly about guns, gays and God, but that doesn't work up here. There's not much social conservativism to be had and the GOP is going way out of it's way to field people that are popular to the far right, but pretty much repellant to everybody else.

In WA, we don't really have the kind of far right that they do in much of the rest of the country, so it tends to chase them into the hands of the liberals. It's been nearly 20 years since the GOP fielded somebody with any hope of winning the state and they're getting worse and worse. Dole had a chance, but he wasn't different enough from Clinton to get votes. He was also the last Presidential candidate to take the state seriously.

That's because the GOP nominated somebody that was completely incompetent and even our conservatives realized that to be the case. Rossi took nearly half of the votes during the 2005 governor's race and Reagan won the state back in the '80s. Not to mention the typically tighter Senatorial campaigns.

The GOP goes to great lengths to piss off the folks of the state, that's why it was so lopsided. If they actually tried to win the state, they might well have done it. But, as it is, the candidates don't bother to show up at all and with the slight liberal lean, you end up with election after election of Democrats being elected.

I take it you don't understand what a democratic republic is. Those people you're referring to aren't politicians, they're appointed to carry out the policies that we voted for when we voted for the President and the congress. Apart from the secretaries, most of them work through multiple administrations and carry out the priorities of the President of the time.

And how do you explain states like WA that get ignored despite having only a couple percentage points difference between the parties?

It's one thing to ignore states where you have half the supporters and another to ignore states where you're basically within the margin of error to being with because you have a better likelihood of winning based upon the small state bonus.

Seriously, do some research, the electoral college is an all or nothing proposition by and large at the state level. It's always better to win a state than to lose it and winning a large state is always preferable to winning a small state.

What you fail to comprehend is that the expected value of a half dozen small states is larger than it would be for a state which had the same population.

The GP is wrong though. Of all the offices that we have, it's just the President where we don't directly vote. Ever since the early 20th century when the constitution was changed to require the direct election of Senators we've been more democracy than republic.

If you want to be technical about it, we're a democratic-republic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic

I guess it's 12 votes now, I forgot about the census. Still the expected value of the state is lower than rafting together several small states.

And your point is? I live in a state with 11 electoral votes and Presidential candidates almost never bother to campaign here, even though we're approximately 51% Democrats and 49% Republicans. The reason being that with the winner take all system that's in most states, they either get all the votes or none of the votes.

Now, if they choose to go for 4 small states, they can lose one and still come ahead if they lost WA state. Which is sort of the point, the risk to reward ratio is better if you go for the small states than the large states. It gets even worse if you're talking about a state that's reliably red or blue in which case there's no point at all in campaigning there.

That's the point and each one of those small states gets an extra 2 electors in the Presidential election. They also get an equal say in the Senate regardless of how many people are in the state. Which is definitely an undue weight on the political process.

But, they are radical, they refuse to accept any tax hikes as a part of the package and are mostly focused on eliminating benefits to those that can't defend themselves. That's deeply radical.

And liberals being the biggest hate group is just the sort of ignorance that makes people think of the TP as being extremists. Go do some research, then come back and try to explain why the TP should be taken seriously. They're literally more interested in cutting off their own noses to spite their face than solving any of the many problems the US has.

The problem is the small state bonus. In 2000 Bush wouldn't have won without the extra votes that small states get beyond what they're populations justify. Candidates for President rarely if ever campaign in larger states because we have less pull than the smaller states do.

What's worse, is that these same states that are sparsely populated also tend to be welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars. All while fighting to eliminate programs that are necessary to keep the urban decay to a minimum.

It's not security by obscurity, I really wish this meme would die, seeing as so many people are misapplying it. This is one thing that you can do to make it more expensive to try and crack your systems. It's not the only thing that you should be doing and calling one technique security by obscurity when you can easily figure out which port it is, really just conveys ignorance about what you're talking about.

Anything you can do that makes it inconvenient to try and crack your system is going to help a bit.

You're supposed to downshift towards Neutral until you're slowed enough or the engine seizes up. It's not great, but you do get some stopping power like that and the engine isn't contributing as much. Whereas cutting the engine gives up the stopping power that comes from moving the pistons against the pressure in the cylinders.

Plus, I don't think that Electronic Stability Control functions without a running engine. Which means that you're in more danger turning the engine off than leaving it on, provided you haven't already downshifted into Neutral. Anyways, once you do downshift into neutral, the engine isn't connected to the wheels and as such, you also give up the use of both the power brakes and the power steering without gaining anything.

It's the acronym from the typical order of the gears on an automatic transmission transmission. Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, 1st. Forwhatever reason 2nd gear and any other ones that one can choose are left out. And overdrive is new enough not to have been included. It's just a way of quickly remembering how many clicks you need to get to a given gear.

Report them, that's probably not legal and definitely not safe. Around here you have to be seizure free for at least 6 months before they'll give you your license back. Assuming that the state finds out about it. They'll probably hate you, but you'd be doing them and everybody else on the road a favor.