Originally Posted by Boredpayne

Err....what? Stalin's famine, according to OFFICIAL records, killed somewhere between 5 and 10 million. His gulags killed about the same amount, not to mention the assassinations by his secret department: the NKVD, and the toll from conscripted soldiers forced to be in the most dangerous areas along with the deserters who were instantly shot. And of course one also has to include the death toll from their invasion, pillaging, and looting of much of Poland.
Estimates for the death toll from Stalinist Russia reach up to sixty million.

Stalin was also an ally with Hitler until he attacked them.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Further sources: Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR by Otto Pohl.
http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=8yo...page&q&f=false
Your ideas about Abraham Lincoln are also false, and so are Agentmax's: He rose to president promoting the end of slavery, and a cluster of states immediately seceded as a result.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham...use_Divided.22

You may want to actually make sure you are right before calling someone else a retard.

Originally Posted by sham

Almost 1000 percent sure that Abraham Lincoln initially during his campaign promised to keep slavery in the southern states. At the time, the governor of South Carolina sent a letter to him, stating that they would secede. The rest followed, because they did not believe Lincoln. When he was elected though, he had no choice but to abolish slavery.

Wikipedia:

"Initially, Lincoln expected to bring about the eventual extinction of slavery by ... but he did not consider himself one; he did not call for the immediate end of slavery ... his party, as there were some who wanted the immediate abolition of slavery."

Originally Posted by Hyde

Oh look, you forgot the entire platform Lincoln was running on existed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...election,_1860

Abraham Lincoln often expressed moral opposition to slavery in both public and private.[1] Initially, Lincoln expected to bring about the eventual extinction of slavery by stopping its further expansion into any U.S. territory, and by proposing compensated emancipation (an offer Congress applied to Washington, D.C) in his early presidency. Lincoln stood by the Republican Party platform in 1860, which stated that slavery should not be allowed to expand into any more territories. Lincoln believed that the extension of slavery in the South, Mid-west, and Western lands would inhibit "free labor on free soil". In the 1850's, Lincoln was politically attacked as an abolitionist, but he did not consider himself one; he did not call for the immediate end of slavery everywhere in the U.S. until the proposed 13th Amendment became part of his party platform for the 1864 election.[2]

Originally Posted by sham

Wikipedia:

"Initially, Lincoln expected to bring about the eventual extinction of slavery by ... but he did not consider himself one; he did not call for the immediate end of slavery ... his party, as there were some who wanted the immediate abolition of slavery."

Originally Posted by sham

Wikipedia isn't always right.

Originally Posted by Hamster

So long as we have a megashit electoral vote system we're probably never going to break out of a two-party race.

Originally Posted by Wik

lets talk about this

Why should the electoral college be kept in place? It was implemented by the founding fathers to prevent everybody from electing their town hero. Now that we have modern communication media people are more informed about the candidates and we could be left to our own devices.

Imagine the wonderful environmentally friendly place America would be if Al Gore had been elected by the popular vote ( which he won) instead of George Bush ( who won the electoral vote) in the 200 elections. Maybe the entire world wouldn't hate us right now

Originally Posted by sham

I wouldn't be surprised if the context I used was not correct, for wikipedia is notorious for being incorrect.

Originally Posted by sham

It just happened to be that I am almost sure that quote is correct.

Originally Posted by sham

I wouldn't call myself a hypocrite.

Originally Posted by sham

Only problem is, to get rid of that amendment, the nation would need the approval of 2/3 of all states.

Originally Posted by sham

The tiny states with low population would almost mean nothing, and the race would basically just be popular states.

Originally Posted by Boredpayne

You deliberately took that quote completely out of context: he still wanted to end slavery, all the quote said is that it would be over time, not immediately. Next time please actually cite your source, and don't cut out random sections of text to support your position. This is the full quote:


All this says is that at the start of his political career he hoped to slowly extinguish slavery, instead of ending it at the exact time he was elected.

He declared himself to be completely against slavery in 1854 in a highly public speech, 10 YEARS before becoming president.

Hyde, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, except to throw a vaguely meaningful sentence and a link at me that in no way contradicts what I've said.