Tag: 2016 Elections

It’s Time to End the Electoral College

NOTE:  Please forgive today’s posts…they may be few and short….for today is my day to be poked, probed, goosed et al by my doctors and you would think with all that abuse at least I could get a kiss….but NO!…..just a bill.

I intended to post this before the election but decided that if the conversation is going to move forward it will be after this election…but I am NOT optimistic….plus this is my final post on the subject of the EC.(and the peasants dance)

Without the electoral college then we might have a Pres. Clinton….for as of this writing appears to have won the popular vote….the very thought sends a chill up my spine…..

There is loads of rhetoric this election as it has been in ones before of a rigged system…..I will agree that the system is rigged but I see as the electoral college as the problem not some bullshit about voter fraud…..

Before I go any further let me help the reader understand how the Electoral College works…..before you can hate something it would be a good idea to know what it actually is…..

Source: The Economist explains: How does America’s electoral college work? | The Economist

I recently was contacted by a group that wanted me to write a short piece about the possibility of eliminating the electoral college which got me to thinking about something that I had not considered in a couple of years…..

Source: Can The Electoral College Be Killed? – In Saner Thought

I have been calling for the destruction of the electoral college for 40 years….maybe this election will make my voice amplify……

Gallup has asked the question since 1944, and a majority has always supported an end to the Electoral College, ranging from 80 percent in 1968 to 63 percent in 2013.

Raise your hand if you think that the president of the United States should be elected by the popular vote. Ah, it looks like most of you do. Hands down and know that you’re not alone.

In fact, poll after poll, for quite some time, has shown that most Americans would like to replace the Electoral College delegate system with the popular vote – one person, one vote and the candidate with the most votes wins. Gallup has asked the question since 1944, and a majority has always supported an end to the Electoral College, ranging from 80 percent in 1968 to 63 percent in 2013. And not surprisingly, 70 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds are anxious to end the undemocratic practice of voting for electors who, in turn, vote for the president.

Source: It’s Time to End the Electoral College – LA Progressive

Maybe after the disaster that is the 2016 election is over the American people will see the need to the elimination of the rigged electoral college….

Time for the voter to be put in charge of the circus we call elections.

But sadly the media and the 2 parties are in control…they will not allow the electoral college go away……the media needs it to drive the agenda of swing states that drives the media coverage and the parties will not allow it because they would lose control of the system and the people would once again be in charge….all of this does not bode well for the disappearance of the electoral college……

After this election, 2016, the conversation will once again arise about the electoral college…..a conversation we need but like most other conversations it will be mostly talk with little action.

Source: The Electoral College Is Hated by Many. So Why Does It Endure? – The New York Times

We can piss and moan forever about this……until the American people realize just how screwed they are it will continue to distort American democracy…….

The election commentary now filling the Internet seems distinctly out of touch. Many analysts are castigating Hillary Clinton for all the things she did wrong, her failure to connect with white workers in the Rust Belt, her inability to sufficiently rally blacks, and so on. Or they’re criticizing the American people for falling for a racist, sexist know-nothing like Donald Trump.

But these critics are ignoring the elephant in the parlor. The simple fact is that Americans didn’t elect Trump. An ancient relic known as the Electoral College did. For better or worse, a plurality of the people voted for Hillary Clinton.

Source: How Electoral College Cheats Democracy – Consortiumnews

Thoughts?

Should We Rid Our Society Of The Electoral College?

The short answer for me is…..YES!

I was recently contacted about writing some articles about the electoral college…I originally declined since I am not an expert on the subject….but the more I thought about it I decided that something needs to be done…..

Apparently Trump won the electoral college and Clinton won the popular vote by some 1+ million votes…..with that has come the call for the elimination of the electoral college…..

Every four years, the Electoral College creeps back into the lives of American voters. In some presidential elections, the strange, indirect system used to select the next U.S. president can feel like a formality that doesn’t seem to matter much.

In other elections, it matters very much indeed. This is one of those years.

On Nov. 8, Donald Trump surpassed the necessary electoral votes to become the nation’s president-elect. But if you look at the popular vote, which is the direct number of votes cast, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by about 1 million votes.

Source: Critics Work To Get Rid Of The Electoral College : NPR

I am sure that the Trump supporters will be fine with the results…but would they if the shoe was on the other foot…..more stuff about a “rigged election” would be flying all over the internet, especially those blogs.

Personally, I have written several times during several elections that the college needs to go away and that the popular vote should be the only decider of an election…..

I have a couple of reasons….why I do not like the electoral college…..

1. The person a majority of Americans favor may not win.
Certain smaller states have a larger percentage of Electoral College votes than their percentage of population of the United States. This is because the minimum number of Electoral College votes for a state is three. Some consider this to not be democratic.

2. It’s complicated and dissuades people from voting.
A popular vote is a simple majority, but the Electoral College consists of redistributing votes every 10 years because of population changes and electing delegates. There are many more steps involved, which may give citizens the feeling that their vote does not matter, encouraging them to stay home instead of visiting the ballot box on election days, according to the U.S. Election Atlas.

3. Small states and swing states get more power.
One man does not equal one vote. California’s 55 Electoral College votes mean there are 705,454 people per vote while there are only 194,717 people for each of Wyoming’s three electoral votes.

I believe that the electoral college cheats democracy completely……

The election commentary now filling the Internet seems distinctly out of touch. Many analysts are castigating Hillary Clinton for all the things she did wrong, her failure to connect with white workers in the Rust Belt, her inability to sufficiently rally blacks, and so on. Or they’re criticizing the American people for falling for a racist, sexist know-nothing like Donald Trump.

But these critics are ignoring the elephant in the parlor. The simple fact is that Americans didn’t elect Trump. An ancient relic known as the Electoral College did. For better or worse, a plurality of the people voted for Hillary Clinton.

Source: How Electoral College Cheats Democracy – Consortiumnews

My dislike has nothing to do with this election…..(contrary to popular belief….I did not care who won the damn thing….NOTHING was gonna change) I have been a verbal critic for decades….only difference now is that people are starting to see what I have been preaching about and have seen the need to eliminate this dinosaur from the 18th century.

Please bear with me….there is one more piece I need to write in this mini-series and it will be done and you can think about who is going to win “Dancing With The Stars”…..

The System IS Rigged!

So far the only thing positive, to my mind, that has come up of this past election is the renewed interests on the Electoral College.

My personal opinion, in case you have missed it, is that it should go…..I have been calling for its elimination for 30+ years….few listened then….but they seem to be caring a bit more these days.

This is a piece that explains the EC and the 2016 election…..

Donald Trump was right: the system is rigged! But it is rigged for the Republicans, not the Democrats, for conservatives, not progressives. And the result is the election of an extreme racist, misogynist authoritarian who may change the course of U.S. and even world history.

Source: The System IS Rigged!—The Electoral College and the 2016 Election | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

The question has been asked….if Clinton had won the election would we be having this conversation?  my answer is…..probably not the Dems are just looking for an excuse…but of us Lefties saw this problem coming even before this election or the one in 2000.

Will they listen this time?

Closing Thought–30Nov16

Fake News Update………..

I recently wrote about the presence of fake news especially during this last election….(a reminder)…

Media distrust and Fake News…… This past election illustrated just how much social media can play in the election of a president…. Take Facebook for instance…..on a personal…

Source: Closing Thought–18Nov16 – In Saner Thought

Since that was written more info about these sites has come to light…..

Some of the anti-Hillary Clinton news stories that popped up in your social media feeds during the election campaign may have been put there by Russia. That’s the conclusion of independent propaganda research group PropOrNot, which provided its report to the Washington Post. PropOrNot found more than 200 websites, including RT and Sputnik, published Russian propaganda during the election campaign that was read by 15 million Americans. The stories—reportedly the work of “thousands of botnets, teams of paid human ‘trolls,’ and networks of websites and social-media accounts,” per the Post—were then viewed an estimated 213 million times on Facebook.

An earlier study identified a similar campaign conducted by “organized hordes of trolls,” per the Verge. The propaganda campaign “was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” says PropOrNot’s executive director. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign … It worked.” What the RT had to say in an email to the Post: “RT adamantly rejects these claims.” (Mark Zuckerberg maintains fake news didn’t impact the election.)

This appears to be the way of the future…..news consumers need to be vigilant or be stupider than they are today.

Is a Trump Presidency Good News for the Military-Industrial Complex?

During the campaign Mr. Trump made all sorts of promises……the one that I was impressed with was his unswerving commitment to “draining the swamp” of elites and his non-interventionists rhetoric….

I was hoping that his disdain for the M-IC elites would help put the US on new footing in international affairs…

Now that he was won the election and started naming his cabinet my enthusiasm is waning……he seems to be embracing the very people that he bad mouthed all through his campaign……

As with so much of what Donald Trump has said in recent months, his positions on Pentagon spending are, to be polite, a bundle of contradictions. Early signs suggest, however, that those contradictions are likely to resolve themselves in favor of the usual suspects: the arms industry and its various supporters and hangers-on in the government, as well as Washington’s labyrinthine world of think-tank policymakers and lobbyists. Of course, to quote Yogi Berra at this strange moment: it ain’t over till it’s over. Eager as The Donald may be to pump vast sums into a Pentagon already spending your tax dollars at a near-record pace, there will be significant real-world obstacles to any such plans.

Let’s start with a baseline look at the Pentagon’s finances at this moment. At $600 billion-plus per year, the government is already spending more money on the Pentagon than it did at the peak of the massive military buildup President Ronald Reagan initiated in the 1980s. In fact, despite what you might imagine, the Obama administration has pumped more tax dollars into the military in its two terms than did George W. Bush. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the U.S. currently spends four times what China does and 10 times what the Russians sink into their military.

Source: Is a Trump Presidency Good News for the Military-Industrial Complex?

For all Trump’s disdain for the “elites”….not to mention all of it by Right wing turds….they, the elites, seem to be falling in line with Mr. Trump……

The swamp that was suppose to be drained….seems to be getting a bit more crowded as the days go by……

One last question….is Trump’s phone secure?  I mean he thinks that Twitter is better than sliced bread….is it secure?  What else does he do on that phone?

Why Democrats Lost

How many of my readers have been lured out of the lairs to partake in annual ritual of “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday”?

Since the voting ended and Trump was declared the winner…how many times have you heard some pundit trying to explain the results?  A desperate attempt at an explanation……yawn!  My thought is…you had a crappy candidate.

Well how about one more reason?

The Democrats lost because they fielded a candidate whose personal negatives were too high, whose image as a thoroughly establishment candidate was out of tune with too many people, people seeking change at almost any price.

Source: Why Democrats Lost – LA Progressive

That is enough of the excuses…..Dems lost….get a grip!

A small update…..

Nope…..Just Kidding

Lock her up!  Lock her up!  Applause!  Applause!

Remember those chants at the Trump rallies as voting day approached?

Guess what you suckers?

In an early October debate, Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton that “if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.” The former has come to pass, but the latter apparently won’t, at least according to former campaign manager/senior adviser to Trump transition team Kellyanne Conway.

While appearing on MSNBC’sMorning Joe, Conway had this to say: “I think when the President-elect, who’s also the head of your party … tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content” to the GOP. Continued Conway, “Look, I think he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them.”

Looks like yet another “promise” down the drain…..I never thought he would carry it put but I bet there are plenty of the basket that did…..because he was a man of his word……

Conservatives expressed feelings of betrayal on Tuesday after a top advisor to President-elect Donald Trump said that the incoming administration would decline to pursue a criminal case against former rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s decision not to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue Clinton for allegedly mishandling classified information, confirmed by top advisor Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday morning, is the first major break the president-elect has had with his diehard fans and could strain the relationship.

Conservative critics were livid.

Source: Right expresses betrayal as Trump backs off Clinton probe | TheHill

Yet another broken promise….how many more will it take before the Right removes its head from his ass?

Can he keep at this unfettered support if he keeps breaking his campaign pledges?

American Nationalism Returns

This election has brought the term “nationalism” back into the civic discourse…..nut then we need to ask….by what definition is this term being used?

We could drop back into history about 75 years ago and work from there to determine the true meaning of the word…..or not…

I read an interesting take on this subject in the National Review….you guys remember the magazine right?  In case the answer is NO then let me help….it is a conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, Jr…any bells now?

In electing Donald Trump, voters have rebelled against the rule of a transnational elite.

Donald Trump’s election is above all else a rebellion of the voters against identity politics enforced by political correctness, and it opens the way to a new politics of moderate levels of immigration, patriotic assimilation, and, in foreign policy, the defense of U.S. sovereignty. In the past few months, Trump put together a winning electoral coalition that stressed the unity and common interests of all Americans across the full spectrum of policy, from immigration to diplomacy.
Because of Trump’s electoral success, this combination of policies rooted in the national interest and patriotism has suddenly begun to sound like common sense. That was not so only yesterday, when political correctness made it hard even to examine such ideas as “multiculturalism.” In February, David Gelernter stated that the “havoc” that political correctness “has wreaked for 40 years [has been made] worse by the flat refusal of most serious Republicans to confront it.” Indeed, he noted, “only Trump has the common sense to mention the elephant in the room. Naturally he is winning.” Defeating political correctness — or, in positive terms, expanding real freedom of speech — made it possible to raise other issues that worried the voters but that a bland bipartisan consensus pushed to the sidelines.

Source: Donald Trump’s Win: American Nationalism Returns | National Review

 

The Myth Of The Women’s Vote

During the campaign of 2016 the public was bombarded almost daily about the women’s vote…..how Trump had lost them and they were the way forward for Hillary….

All those polls were a bit off…..as they always are….only this time the public was more gullible than in the past.

This is a good op-ed on the myth of the women’s vote……

Among the clichés that deserve to be thrown out after the recent presidential election in the US is the idea of “women’s vote.”
It may seem surprising that only 54 percent of the female electorate voted for Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominated for president by a major party. But while gender is a strong marker for how Americans think about certain issues, it is not the best predictor of how they will vote. It turns out that female candidates do not face a single gender gap, but rather multiple gender gaps.

Source: The myth of the women’s vote | Arab News

According to all the surveys Hillary had all the major demographics…..women….Latinos….Asians…..Blacks……Millennials and yet she had her ass handed to her by Mr. Trump……at least in the Electoral College….and that is where it counts (more on that in a later post)……

Is There Anything Positive?

Is there anything positive about President-elect Trump?

Trump has started pulling back from some of his more iconic pledges during the campaign….but that matters not to his supporters because he was elected and they will justify each and every lie told to them….

I have a friend that he knew that I had a positive reaction to some of Trump’s foreign policy statements but he wanted to know if there was anything else I could say was a positive note….at this early stage of him being the president….

Well yes there is.

He has stated that TPP would was terrible deal for the American people and that he would work to see that it was not implemented…..

With the election of Donald Trump this week, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is effectively dead, Reuters reports. The 12-country trade agreement was signed last year after more than five years of negotiations. Championed by President Obama, it was supposed to be part of his legacy. Then the tide turned. Republicans, who had largely supported the TPP, nominated Trump, who called it a “disaster” and “rape of our country.” Even Hillary Clinton, who had supported the TPP while secretary of state, disowned it during the campaign, according to NPR. The Wall Street Journal reports the Obama administration had hoped to get it approved by Congress with the help of a Democratic Senate and incoming President Clinton. Neither of those things happened, dealing Obama a “bitter defeat.”

Leaders of both parties in Congress now say they won’t bring the TPP forward for a vote before Obama leaves office. It will be up to Trump to decide what to do with it, and the president elect has already stated his preference for renegotiating NAFTA and limiting imports. The TPP was set to be the biggest trade agreement in more than a decade. It got rid of many tariffs, set standards for intellectual property rights, and more. By excluding China, it was supposed to balance that country’s growing power in the region. China is likely to now pursue its own trade agreements in the region, possibly to the detriment of US influence.

I was opposed of this thing from the beginning and if he holds true to the rhetoric then that will be a positive thing……

He has also said that he wanted to re-instate Glass-Steagall…..I am waiting for word of this before I comment…..

Another country has decided to bow out of this horrible deal…….Vietnam

Vietnam has decided not to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with the trade deal’s future uncertain under incoming US President Donald Trump.- “The United States has announced it is suspending the submission of TPP to the parliament so there are not sufficient conditions for Vietnam to submit its proposal for ratification,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told the National Assembly, according to Reuters.

from RT: 

Is this a dead issue?