Why an Electoral College

Newstimes

Much ado is being made on the left that Clinton has won the popular vote 64.863 million to 62.507 million.  But...we are a Republic not a Democracy, take a look at the map above, Clinton also only won 20 of 50 states. Throw in the other candidates votes and in actuality 69.829 million people didn't vote for Clinton.

There is a reason we are not a pure democracy, from Federalist Paper 10 by James Madison:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths...

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. 

         Federalist 10. 

Clinton won the Northeast Megalopolis (Washington Boston Corridor) and the Western Megalopolis (Los Angeles to Seattle Corridor), Illinois, Colorado, and New Mexico went Clinton predominately by virtue of Chicago, Denver, and Albuquerque.

Nevada is even stranger... having gone to Clinton when she won only 2 of 17 counties in the state.  Clark County (Las Vegas) and Washoe County (Reno) MAP

The electoral college has functioned exactly as it was intended to function, to diminish the effect of a majority faction, in this case the predominately urban faction as illustrated in the map above. 

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.   

For those of you that wish to abolish the electoral college, keep in mind that it requires an amendment to the constitution approved by 38 of the states.  That means, you need to convince 18 of those red states above to consent to be ruled by New York and Los Angeles.

Have fun. 

Secretary of State

According to the Infotainment-Media Complex, these are the men on President-elect Trump's short list for Secretary of State:

Rudy Giuliani
John Bolton
Mitt Romney
David Petraeus

I list them in order of my preference, from worst to best.

I don't know why Giuliani is even on the list...

John Bolton is a belligerent neocon with a temperament unsuitable for the greatest nation's top diplomat.

Mitt Romney would be a great Secretary of State. As a bonus, he could clean out Foggy Bottom, revitalize and reorganize it. His foreign contacts are many, he's a smart man, and he would represent us well on the world stage.  The only downside would be if he went into the job with intentions of forging his own path and clashing with the president.

David Petraeus is my choice. Yes, he was prosecuted for intentionally mishandling classified information, and yes, he cheated on his wife.  He has paid his price and mended his marriage. I believe in redemption and second chances, especially for someone with unique talents that our nation needs.

What do you think?

Also, please feel free to comment on other Trump picks or rumored candidates for other posts

Wringing Hands and Gnashing Teeth

Photo: Elibeck

The Clinton campaign held out little hope of success in any of the three states, and said it had seen no “actionable evidence” of vote hacking that might taint the results or otherwise provide new grounds for challenging Donald J. Trump’s victory.

The Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day. As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on election day. As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.

New York Times 

Jill Stein - The new "Chad" hanging around an American election.
Jill Stein - Struggling for relevancy in the face of unmitigated loss.

Don't worry, for all you candidates that aren't Donald Trump - Here's your participation trophy:

 

Trump Acquires White House in Hostile Takeover

Chidiukwu.com

Rick Danker explains how Trump did it.

"He made an all-in bet on the notion that people won't be told by their elites what to do, an idea long respected in American politics but never tested on the scale of a presidential campaign."

The article also answered my question, How did Trump read the discontent in the country so accurately and way before anyone else? How did he outperform all other politicians--once they caught on--in addressing this discontent?

"For years, he had maintained an open-door policy at Trump Tower for Republicans, hearing out everyone from fellow presidential aspirant Rick Santorum to CEO-turned-senator David Perdue about where the country needed to go and how Democrats could be beaten.

He paid a staffer to listen to talk radio to find out what issues people were calling about.

Backstage at events, he was known to quietly ask everyday workers about their lives and their jobs. Trump's populism wasn't a stance; it was an informed point of view."

Based on that, President-elect Trump...

"... wove his issues into a siren call that the system-the media, the Democratic donors, the branches of government connected to special interests-was rigged."

Or, as Trump's top strategist Steve Bannon put it,

"Elites have taken all the upside for themselves and pushed the downside to the working- and middle-class Americans."

Trump asked voters for once-in-a-lifetime permission to blow up the modern American political superstructure and get back to basics. As Bannon said, "This is not the French Revolution. They destroyed the basic institutions of their society and changed their form of government. What Trump represents is a restoration-a restoration of true American capitalism and a revolution against state-sponsored socialism."

LESSONS LEARNED

You don't need a "Get out the Vote" machine if your voters are motivated by your message

The "Experts" are mostly bullshitting touts

If Trump can do it, so can a Dem candidate in 2020. If GOP moralists try to mount a revanchist campaign to claw back social gains won for gays and transgendered, they will give the Dems an opening. The same outcome will happen if a Trump presidency unleashes the dark forces of racism, misogyny and hatred progressives spent so much energy screaming about during the campaign.

Dems will refocus on the heartland and neglect their base in the big cities. Their support there is so deep they can afford to do it. The vast majority of those deep blue populations will never vote for a Republican. They worst they can do is stay home. In California, the Dems could still take the state even if three-million stayed home. In New York, 1.5 million Democrat could sit it out and the Democrat candidate would still win that state.

Exception: Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Madison, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are critical for Dems in 2020. Also Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando and Miami in Florida. The Democrats will flood the zone in those cities. That is how they take back those states Trump flipped.

The Democrat party will learn from Trump's unprecedented success and will do a good job adapting their strategy. All political victories are transitory.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Alice's Restaurant

For some reason, a Thanksgiving tradition.

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude is a Feeling

Thanksgiving is an Act

Brave Little Surrender Monkey

Photo: Chris huh

"This Paris agreement... is irreversible, no one can get out of it," said Hollande during a speech in the southwest of France.

Bwah ha ha ha ha!

Well Bub, that's what happens when you let a President ratify an agreement rather than the US Senate.  What you have is an executive agreement... an agreement easily rescinded by the next executive.

Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a carbon tax on American-made goods if President-elect Donald Trump pulls out of the climate accord.

How do you say it in French? Oh yeah:


                                   Va te faire foutre

The Press: Trumpled and Scorned

The Infotainment Media Complex shat itself on election night, but Trump already owned them by then. Candidate Trump caused them to finally unmask themselves and reveal the Infotainment Media Complex to be the multi-horned, medusa-headed progressive propaganda outlet we all knew it was.

Salena Zito offered this pithy insight:

"When he makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."

"No matter how crazy this election seems, it's less crazy than the condition of our country," Thiel said. " [...] "It is not a lack of judgment that leads Americans to vote for Trump; we are voting for Trump because we judge the leadership of our country to have failed."(Weekly Standard)

Trump broke the Media's Back

The press is not silenced, but El Donaldo did drive them to such hysterics that they wrecked their vocal chords. The rumbly respectability of a Walter Kronkite or Tom Brokaw has been replaced by the hysterical quacking of Donald Duck. 

People still hear them, but don't believe them or take them seriously, and if Trump does not destroy the United States and the world like the press warned us he would, their credibility will be totally shot. 

The Infotainment Media Complex has painted themselves into a spider-infested corner. Their power to propagandize the nation is shattered. Dems can still rely on them to rally the faithful on the left, but not ordinary Americans in the broad middle.

But wait! There's more!

Can You Hear Me Now? President Trump takes Dead Aim

President-elect Donald Trump exploded at media bigs in an off-the-record Trump Tower powow on Monday, sources told The Post.

"It was like a f-ing firing squad," said one source.

"Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed....

"The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down," the source added. NY Post

Progessives will shriek about how "Dangerous" it is for a President-elect to excoriate the press like that, but President Trump is speaking for the 70% of Americans who despise and mistrust the press. He gave them the bashing the richly deserve, and we enjoy it vicariously through him.

Too bad there's no video of the event...

The Trumpening has driven the Left Mad

A psychologist has written a very long and quite exhaustive refutation of the progressive anti-Trump hysteria. You can read it here: Slate Star Codex: You are Still Crying Wolf

After knocking down every kook theory and unhinged accusation, he concludes. And he speaks for all of us normal people watching the rioting, safe space thumb-sucking, diaper rash rants, media meltdowns and hyper-hysteria heebee jeebees:

Why am I harping on this?

I work in mental health. So far I have had two patients express Trump-related suicidal ideation. One of them ended up in the emergency room, although luckily both of them are now safe and well. I have heard secondhand of several more. 

Stop making people suicidal. Stop telling people they’re going to be killed. Stop terrifying children. Stop giving racism free advertising. Stop trying to convince Americans that all the other Americans hate them. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Robert E. Heller performs a similar, more concise service in his essay, Trump's Triumph, explained. The real reason the left is going crazy is because their worldview is shattered. As one of their propagandists said, they cried wolf one too many times.

And here is where we find the essential key to understanding why Trump really won. For decades, Republicans have largely conceded to false assertions that the left holds the moral high ground. This cycle, that changed. Donald Trump, who is unaccustomed to conceding anything, did not go quietly into that good night.

Voters' affection for him sprang from the same well as Abraham Lincoln's for Ulysses Grant: He fights!

Instead of silence when accused of racism, Trump pointed out that leftist do-gooders have subjected black America to horrifying inner city rates of both crime and poverty, trapped their kids in appallingly bad schools, and driven unemployment rates among their youth into the stratosphere.

Instead of meekness when accused of xenophobia, Trump insisted that "sanctuary cities" are madness when they demonstrably result in the release of caught criminals who continue to victimize innocents. Instead of conceding by lack of response that he is misogynist, he highlighted his opponent blithely receiving millions of dollars from foreigners from countries that forbid women to drive and stone rape victims. And then he put a smart, accomplished woman in charge of his successful campaign.

Trump won because many millions of people are very, very tired of the moral condescension of people who mistakenly believe that they are incapable of being wrong on fundamental moral questions - despite the relative ease of demonstrating the absurdity of that belief.

And if the left clings to that same smugness going forward, then its losing streak is just beginning.

Trump's America: Seven Days, Seven Victories

Edmund Kozak has written an uplifting article: Bored Yet? Trump already winning for America

Go read it. It will make you happy.

Here are the seven "wins" Kozak cites:

* Stock market is up (remember the dire warnings from the left that it would crash if Trump won?)

* Senate Majority Leader: TPP is dead

* EU Trade Commissioner: TTIP has essentially been abandoned.

* Canada, Mexico "open to talking about" NAFTA

* Threat of war receding: Trump and Putin agreed "on the absolutely unsatisfactory state of bilateral relations" and agreed to move "to normalize relations and pursue constructive cooperation on the broadest possible range of issues."

* NYU strikes a blow for anti-PC free speech

* "Department of Veterans Affairs sent a letter to Congress informing it that controversial plans to pay for transgender veterans' gender reassignment surgeries had been abandoned."

What do you see as positives stemming from our election of Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States?

Leonard Cohen 1934-2016

I thought you said Sit-In

Students at UMASS Amherst are staging a "Shit-In" protest to demand more gender neutral bathrooms.

Somebody wake up Michigan

Hello Michigan!  It's been a week since the election, all 83 counties have reported their results, and while I can understand dotting your "I"s and crossing your "T"s, just call it already, as someone famous once said "What difference does it make"?

The Cabinet

Lots of names are being bandied about potential picks for a Trump cabinet.

Of the names I've heard for State I have to say Bolton would be my choice, if not that then Ambassador to the UN.

Kelly Ayotte would be an interesting choice for Defense, although she is a tad young.

I'm going to guess that AG goes to either Christie or Giuliani  with whoever is left over getting Commerce.

I'm also going to guess that Flynn gets the DNI or National Security Advisor position rather than Defense.

Hopefully he'll spring a few surprises.

The funniest I've heard is Arpaio for Homeland, not ever going to happen, I don't think he'd ever get confirmed (and rightfully so), but it would be a great big middle finger to the left.

What do you think? Care to make some predictions?

Recovering Inkaholics? The Addiction to Point and Laugh Liberalism

The Trumpening has left the The Infotainment Media Complex stunned and gob-stopped. Their view of reality shattered when Trump passed 270 electoral votes, thanks to Wisconsin *Blue Progressive Wisconsin!* I know how they feel and I sympathize.  I was stunned in 2008 when the "impossible" happened: My fellow Americans chose a Muslim-named street activist from Chicago over a conservative-lite war hero.

Such events are bracing, and the mentally-healthy adjust their view of reality based upon them. Defiant leftists who are mentally-unstable are crying foul. What hurts the worse, a burning coal up their arrogant arses, is that President-Elect Trump bludgeoned them with their own cudgels:

"Trump had a way of taking to Twitter and could literally change the narrative because he had such a large following,"

"It's organized digital bullying,"

"In this way, you have untruths and falsehoods that transit through our media ecosystem and become a tidal wave."

"It became possible for him to construct an alternate narrative, I would say an alternate reality," he said.

This final whine emanating from the progressive hive was the most ironic:

"The health of democracy depends on people being exposed to both sides of an issue" 

Indeed. And had the Infotainment Media Complex done that, people wouldn't have had to seek out "alternate realities"

Trumpled by Reality

While most in the Infotainment Media Complex--who get it so wrong, so often--arrogantly march on, some in the press are in a defensive crouch, worrying a Dictator Trump will exact his revenge.

Trump is challenging the legitimacy of traditional media at a time of low public standing and great financial stress for the industry, especially newspapers. In September, a Gallup poll found that just 32 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media, the lowest level in the poll’s history.

Recovering Inkaholics?

But that's not worth wasting time on. I don't want a rightwing press, I don't want a libertarian press--I want an agnostic press, a skeptical press, a press that gets to know the big, wide, diverse world outside its cozy group-think bubble.

Here are a few refreshing and stunning bursts of healthy self-examination from some of the scribblers on the left. Both articles are worth a full reading:

This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.

There’s been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from “heroin country” that read like reports from colonial administrators checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption that Trump voters are backward... (Will Rahn -- Unbearable Smugness of the Press)

"The Deplorables Got the Last Laugh"

Let's Face it: Liberals helped stoke the rage that elected Donald Trump

You can believe that half the country is racist if you want, and there’s no question that there’s an undercurrent of anger in Trump’s stunning rise. But that anger isn’t directed at any individual ethnic group. It’s more inchoate than that.

It’s rage at institutions that people believe have failed them forever. It’s rage at an economy that doesn’t work for ordinary folks. It’s rage at a cultural milieu that perceives too many non-coastal Americans as buffoons. It’s rage at the aftermath of a financial crisis and Great Recession, in which the gap between winners and losers just grew larger, and the two-tiered system of justice paraded on full display. It’s rage at an elite class that people feel is lined up against them. (New Republic - David Dayen)

Trumpled Myths, Shattered Shibboleths

President Trump can help us along our path of seeing reality as it really is by proving just how hysterically wrong the progressive alarums and ahoogah horns of calamity were.

* Fairy Tale #1, "The markets will crash!" has already fallen.

The credibility of nut-filled progressive screamers will fall further when...

- Trump fails to grow a Hitler mustache and start shoving Jews into ovens.

- No footage appears of Trump's stormtroopers dragging poor immigrants from their homes and marching them to the border

- America's Muslims and LGBTQ continue to enjoy the best life available to them anywhere on the planet, and anti-Muslim and anti-gay pogroms fail to materialize

Trump has a real opportunity to show America and the world just how wrong the hysterical leftwing lying liars and the progressive scare-mongers are. Add is some healthy self-examination and self-adjustment by the press, and perhaps we can restore some sanity to society.

Related:
NBC News: Trump did better with blacks and Hispanics than Romney
PEW: Election Results by Race, Gender, Education
CBS: Exit Polls--How Trump Won

Clinton Blames Comey

She just don't get it!

Some do:

Too many of my progressive friends seem to have forgotten how to make actual arguments, and have become expert instead at condemnation, derision and mockery. On issue after issue, they’re very good at explaining why no one could oppose their policy positions except for the basest of motives. As to those positions themselves, they are too often announced with a zealous solemnity suggesting that their views are Holy Writ -- and those who disagree are cast into the outer political darkness. In short, the left has lately been dripping with hubris, which in classic literature always portends a fall. Stephen Carter - Bloomberg

In a party in which “white privilege” was pro forma disparagement, those who were both white and without it grew furious that the elites with such privilege massaged the allegation to provide cover for their own entitlement. Victor Davis Hanson - Hoover Institute ~ Stanford

CHILL

Quit Your Whingeing

You have no one to blame but yourselves running corruption incarnate as your candidate, a feeling I think expressed quite loudly the other day by many of my fellow Americans. Frankly I'd have voted for Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein if that was what was necessary to keep Clinton out of the Oval office.

#NotMyPresident

Got news for you, he's as much your President as Obama has been our President for the past eight years.  Get Over It... if it makes you little snowflakes happy we'll send Hillary a Participation Trophy.

Anti-Trump Protests.  Really? What are you protesting? The choice of your fellow Americans?  Have at it, frankly we don't give care. While I respect your right to assemble and protest I'm not paying any more attention to you than I would a child throwing a tantrum.

Yes, Clinton has at the moment a slight lead in the popular vote between her and Trump of about 200,000 votes, but we don't elect presidents by popular vote and you have the same proportional representation in the electoral college that you have in the legislatures.  As it stands right now Hillary Clinton has 59,814,018 votes... but 65,685,400 didn't vote for Clinton.  Clearly the majority didn't want Clinton, so quit your whingeing.

This way to the Egress

Photo: Dennis Brown

Just a friendly reminder to all those that pledged to leave if Trump was elected President.

Well it's after midnight here in Colorado and the New York Times is predicting a better than 95% chance of Trump winning with 308 electoral votes, so we'll go with that for the time being:

What are you doing here?

Photo: Tom Arthur

GO VOTE

If you've already voted and just want to bitch, have at it. 

After the dust settles...

It Doesn't Matter

If You Win or Lose

It's How You

Play the Game

Think about that for a moment.  Tomorrow is the 2016 election, does the outcome really matter? Or is how the game was played more important?

The game, was played badly, by both sides.  What are the repercussions of that going to be? 

Faith in institutions has crumbled, do the results really matter?  If Clinton wins vast swaths of the electorate are going to believe the fix was in.  The same can be said if Trump wins.

How is each side going to view the other after this is all over? Unless one side or the other wins in an overwhelming landslide sweeping the White House, House, and Senate, the battle lines have been formed, the troops arrayed.  After the dust of the initial clash clears there is going to be a long and ugly time of trench warfare ahead.

Forget who wins or loses, what do you think the next four years are going to hold politically? 

"Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred and Schizophrenia"

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

-- George Orwell

22.Qf6+!

Photo: Roland Scheicher

 22.Qf6+! was the sacrifice move in what is known in chess circles as "the immortal game" between Anderssen and Kieseritzky in 1851.

Yesterday Ducky offered us a "valid Trump support profile", to that I will reply that a valid Trump support profile is anyone who does not want Hillary Rodham Corruption as the President of These United States.

At this point you've probably managed to put 2 and 22.Qf6+! together and come to the realization that yes, I have voted against Clinton, I won't say who I voted for as it ought to be obvious, but let us just say it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and leave it at that.  It seriously causes me to question FPTP (First Past The Post) voting.

I am, I would like to think, what you would call a serious voter, for example my wife and I actually read all 17 judicial performance reviews of the judges on our ballot for retention. (In Colorado Judges are appointed, face a retention vote two years later and every four years thereafter).  I can honestly say that I did not consider political affiliation in my decision on any of them, I can also honestly say that my wife and I are the exception rather than the rule.

There are some serious problems with voting in America and I'm not talking about the bull that either Trump or Clinton are spreading.  The average American voter is apathetic regarding the political decisions given to them, or perhaps I should just simply call them pathetic.  If the majority of Americans made their football picks the same way as they vote they'd be making their decisions based on who had the prettier uniform or the coolest emblem.  Yes, sadly most Americans spend more intellectual capital on their football pool than the general election.

Most of the people who come here and post are passionate about their beliefs, more so than the common man.  They may sometimes get lazy and regurgitate other people's talking points, but most can also put forth a rational argument defending their beliefs, for that they ought to be commended.  Make no mistake, most who come here and post are also the exception rather than the rule.

SF likens voting for Trump as throwing a Molotov cocktail, I disagree... voting for Trump is voting against Clinton, sacrificing a piece now for the bigger picture, for the end game.  Trump is a Molotov cocktail that's going to go out as soon as you throw it, the flames quenched by all the Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate that aren't Trump.

I voted and I'm pissed about it.

Nothing Better to Do

Congress designates American Bison as our national mammal.  Well actually they did it last spring but it only became official yesterday.  You all know our national bird, the Bald Eagle but did you know our national flower is the Rose, the Oak is our national tree, there is a bill to proclaim the Striped Bass our national fish, and petitions to make the Rattlesnake our national reptile and the American Bullfrog our national amphibian.

I don't have much to say.

Headline: Polls are rigged, claims Clinton as she slips behind Trump in the ABC/Washington Post Poll.   ROFLMAO

Non-partisan joke...or is it a bi-partisan joke?  

One thing we know is that come next year we're going to have a sexual harasser in the White House, we just don't know if he's going to be in the East Wing or the West Wing.

All I can say is that this election cycle has given me a greater appreciation of monarchy.

Well, there is only a week left... what are your current predictions?

I'm gonna bet on green and throw it to the House.



 

Dia de Muertos

The Day of the Dead festival runs from October 31 through November 2nd.  November 1 is generally referred to as Día de los Inocentes ("Day of the Innocents") but also as Día de los Angelitos ("Day of the Little Angels"); November 2 is referred to as Día de los Muertos or Día de los Difuntos ("Day of the Dead").