So.....that happened (3 Viewers)

[Alc]

It's actually one reason I keep multiple, compartmentalized online identities. This is actually the only place where I go by Frothingslosh, and I'm pretty paranoid these days about anything being able to be linked back to my actual identity.

I do the same. Too many nuts out there today plus I once had someone get into my email and ebay accounts, then set up an ad selling HDTVs. They were careful to move all of my own emails into a new folder, so guess they were going to do it for a short time, then return things to the way they were and I'd have been none the wiser (I was on vacation when they did it and only checked my email by chance).

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I don't propose to speak for Colin, but the last time I remember him posting anything, his attitude was that of someone withdrawing from the world. He denied my interpretation that he was suffering from clinical depression. I wish him well.

As to the Trump/Clinton situation, this is the second time in my life that I could not vote FOR a candidate with clear conscience, and had to treat my vote as being AGAINST the candidate I liked less. It is a sad commentary, yet in a way perfectly in line with the American viewpoint, that we were faced with a clear but unpleasant choice, and somehow chose the lesser of two evils.

To be clear, NEITHER candidate is high on my list. I wouldn't have minded Carly Fiorina, but she dropped out too early to make a difference. Given the choices, I picked "the Donald" because his transgressions are public and he is totally transparent. Clinton, on the other hand, plays everything so close to the vest that you never know the wheels within wheels and the deals within deals. The FBI e-mail stuff is a case where there is at least the APPEARANCE of special treatment.

I'm not a lawyer but I had to know about certain laws because my job involved record-keeping with the Federal government - Dept. of Defense to be exact. I had to take yearly refresher courses on that topic. HRC violated the Federal Records Management act, the National Secrets Act, and the Privacy Act (at a minimum.) I don't know if she violated HIPAA but will cut her some slack on that one only because the Secretary of State rarely gets involved with health records. However, if any personnel health records DID make it to her private server, then add HIPAA to the list. Deleting 30,000 e-mails from a server that was used by State Dept. officials? According to the Federal Records Management act, there is a chance that each ONE of those mails was potentially a part of the Federal Record (a concept that says, if you did something on behalf of the USA, the paper trail is something you cannot delete for several years after the cause for that mail no longer is relevant.) In the case of deletion, there is also the chance that the Freedom of Information act may have been violated.

If I had been managing a government server and deleted e-mails that way, I would have been charged with a low-level felony worth US$5000-$10000 and a six-month stint in the slammer - per e-mail. But punish HRC? Oh, no... she's SPECIAL.

A lot of people don't remember the Whitewater scandals that reverberated with WJC when HE became president. But every time someone tried to bring that up, it somehow got suppressed because the Clintons have a way of MAKING things go away.

Trump is a joke that the American people played on themselves - but HRC would have been the TRAGEDY that would have led this country to bankruptcy when she started spending money that we didn't have. She would have provided the perfect opportunity to use that line: The failure of socialist governments occurs when they run out of someone else's money to spend.

I would hope that the ACLU is able to keep up with the idiocy they will face.

 

[Frothingslosh]

In my opinion, the choice was between More of the Same and a pathologically lying, racist, homophobic, anti-American con-man currently facing 73 counts of fraud (and over 4,000 in his lifetime to-date) with the emotional maturity of a particularly unruly toddler and who plans on doing his level best to reverse the entire Civil Rights movement (both for LGBT and black people), undoing decades of effort in getting climate change under control, restricting the 1st, 5th, and 14th amendments as far as humanly possible (he is on-record opposing freedom of the press, due process, and birthright citizenship), has allegedly pressed for the use of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and is now being proven to have had an ongoing relationship with a hostile power throughout the campaign.

Clinton would have simply kept things going like they are - the ultra-rich slowly acquiring more and more power and money, the gradual weakening of the common man, and slow but sure progress toward treating minorities as actual human beings.

Trump, on the other hand, wants to ratchet us back to the 1950's, has neither respect for nor knowledge about government, checks and balances, and the limits of presidential power, has already named one of the most extreme climate-change deniers alive to head the EPA, and looks to be naming as head of Homeland Security a man who claims that peaceful protests are illegal and unconstitutional and that protesters need to be destroyed. His actions are ALREADY causing a spike in hate crimes, and it will just get worse with time, because there is no way in hell that the man who reads Mein Kampf daily (as per one of his exes) and has a proven history of discrimination against blacks will EVER push for a crackdown on hate crimes. On top of that, the instant any foreign power refuses to do precisely what he orders them to do, the shit is going to hit the fan. The man is GOING to start a war and get a hell of a lot of people killed. And even if he doesn't, he's going to push through every single thing the ultra-right-wing Tea Party wants. He's for complete deregulation and utterly unrestricted capitalism like it was when the rail, steel, and oil barons effectively ran the nation and everyone else were basically serfs, and that is precisely what the Tea Party is after (well, that and removing women's rights to control of their own bodies).

I mean, seriously: the man has so little self-control that they had to take his Twitter account away from him at the end of the campaign to keep him from screwing things up. And based on last night, he's already back to acting like a toddler on Twitter.

So given the choice between an allegedly-corrupt woman who has been the target of a coordinated slander and libel campaign for twenty-five years and an autocratic narcissist who is a clear and present danger to not only the US but possibly the world, I'm afraid I'll go with the choice likely get fewer people killed and cause less misery world-wide.

 

[Alc]

Having the luxury of not being in the US, it's genuinely interesting to hear the differing views in the last two posts. Quite disappointing, though, that neither were exactly along the lines of 'He/She is great and that's why I voted for him/her' and more 'I think he/she is terrible, but the other one is worse'.

If I were eligible to vote in the US, I don't know that my conscience would have let me vote for either, but then choosing not to act is an act in itself.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Honesetly, both of us voted AGAINST a candidate rather than for one.

That's the kind of election this was.

 

[Alc]

So, ignoring for a moment the actual personality of the man elected, what impact is this going to have on the country?

Will he unite the Republicans? Many didn't like him beforehand.
Will be unite the country (once the initial protests calm down)?
What will be his advantages?
What will be his disadvantages?
Will a left-wing group be formed to prove something nonsensical about him? (a la the birther movement for Obama)

 

[Frothingslosh]

So, ignoring for a moment the actual personality of the man elected, what impact is this going to have on the country?

Will he unite the Republicans? Many didn't like him beforehand.

I think there's going to be a split, but it won't really matter. It was the Bush-era Republicans who opposed him, and they're basically in the middle of the right wing politically. The problem is that it's the ultra-right-wing Tea Party and its offshoots who are in control of the GOP today, and they are even more extreme than Trump. So effectively, he's going to get along with the party perfectly, even if individual Republicans continue to oppose him.

Will be unite the country (once the initial protests calm down)?

Oh hell no. The man campaigned on a platform of hate and persecution, and liberals and progressives will NEVER accept that. I expect that the nation will be even more divided than it was with the Right's complete rejection of Obama and everything he did.

What will be his advantages?

With the GOP in control of the entire government, he's going to have carte blanche to do whatever his little black heart desires. Honestly, the only check on him is going to be Justice Kennedy, and it typically takes years for cases to reach SCOTUS. If Ginsberg keels over, then there will be nothing stopping him at all.

What will be his disadvantages?

I expect he will face a TON of opposition from democratic nations world-wide. He's going to damage America's prestige and reputation even more than Bush did, and I expect he will get no cooperation at all except, POSSIBLY, from Russia. (Hell, just this morning I was reading articles about European NATO nations already starting to make plans for defending Europe without American support.) I also think he's in for a rude awakening when he tries to either 'renegotiate' or straight-up cancel America's debts.

Will a left-wing group be formed to prove something nonsensical about him? (a la the birther movement for Obama)

With the man currently facing up to 73 counts of fraud, a history including 4000 fraud and discrimination investigations, repeated bankruptcies, his being on record bragging about sexual assault, repeated calls for the restriction or even elimination of rights granted by the Constitution, his status as the only presidential candidate in modern history not to release his tax records, his history of defrauding every business he contracts with, and his blatant hostility to minorities and Muslims, there is literally zero need for Liberals to make something up along the lines of birtherism. Recent Russian announcements that they were in contact with him throughout the campaign simply add to all the valid reasons for opposition.

 

[Vassago]

The Democrats lost the election, the Republicans didn't win. It's that simple. They chose the candidate that represented more of the same without bringing any new ideas to the table. People don't want more of the same. It alienated enough people.

Sanders would have been the candidate for them that represented change. He would have won. All the polls agreed with that, not just some, all. Instead, the superdelegates went against him because they didn't want change, ignoring what the people wanted. When you ignore the people. you lose.

They failed their supporters, and failed the election.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Vassago, you've got it absolutely right. HRC and several other candidates were all choices that allowed government infrastructure to remain status quo whereas DJT represents a major shake-up in which established bureaucrats could lose their jobs and have to >gasp< actually WORK for a living.

It all comes back to that old aphorism: When a government economist says we have an "acceptable level of unemployment" it means HE still has HIS job. And DJT is making a lot of people worry about the coming "unacceptable level of unemployment."

Frothy, old chum, I think we can agree to disagree on which is worse, but you said it yourself. HRC represented stagnation, DJT represented change - and given the number of years that government has been stagnated in its thinking, it probably took a political tsunami to force even the slightest change.

I think we in the USA are targets of the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

 

[Frothingslosh]

So last weekend:

• One of my friends, an Arab-American who was born and grew up here, whose grandparents moved to the US from Afghanistan in the early 50s, was informed by a Trump supporter that the Trump voter couldn't WAIT until Trump 'eliminate[d] your 13% of the surplus population'.
• A black friend of mine had her car spray-painted with 'GO HOME NIGGER' as well as 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN'.
• A lesbian friend of mine was told that now that Trump won, they're firing up the ovens for 'abominations like you'.

This is what the election of Trump is bringing us.

 

[Alc]

So last weekend:

• One of my friends, an Arab-American who was born and grew up here, whose grandparents moved to the US from Afghanistan in the early 50s, was informed by a Trump supporter that the Trump voter couldn't WAIT until Trump 'eliminate[d] your 13% of the surplus population'.
• A black friend of mine had her car spray-painted with 'GO HOME NIGGER' as well as 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN'.
• A lesbian friend of mine was told that now that Trump won, they're firing up the ovens for 'abominations like you'.

This is what the election of Trump is bringing us.

It was always going to be an undesirable side-effect:
https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei...white+supremacist+rallies+since+trump+elected

Naming Steve Bannon as a strategist isn't going to help dispel the idea that the incoming government isn't exactly going to be trying to move race relations forward.

 

[Frothingslosh]

It was always going to be an undesirable side-effect:
https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei...white+supremacist+rallies+since+trump+elected

Naming Steve Bannon as a strategist isn't going to help dispel the idea that the incoming government isn't exactly going to be trying to move race relations forward.

Honestly, those of us who understood that this was going to happen were warning people even before the election happened, but the problem is that while a large minority of his voters are flat-out racists, the rest deluded themselves into thinking 'Oh, this will never happen' or 'The ACLU will prevent that'.

Now that second group, in large part, seems to be arguing that these events are all faked (and, to be fair, at least one last week was). They swear that the people they know would *NEVER* do that, or that the articles are false because they're set in calm, quiet neighborhoods where things like that never happen.

People are being terrorized, some even assaulted, and yet from the Trumpstaffel the overwhelming response seems to be 'That's almost all lies, and the rest were caused because you ingrates are protesting'. These are, mind you, the same people who think that:

• having the VP who once made it a felony to apply for a marriage license for a same-sex marriage running the change-over
• nominating a sheriff who has argued that protestors are traitors and should be, and I quote, "destroyed"
• and the having founder of a blatantly racist conspiracy site as the 'chief advisor' of a POTUS who keeps Mein Kampf at his bedside, only refers to black people as all being uneducated and living in abject poverty, describes Mexicans as 'criminals' and 'rapists', has called for forcing Muslims to wear identifying badges, has claimed that the Muslims who aren't terrorists themselves all know who the terrorists are and are conspiring to help them

...doesn't mean anything, and that those who are upset are just overreacting because we lost. (They also like to claim that the People Have Spoken, which is rather bitterly ironic, since Trump *LOST* the popular vote.)

Let's not forget that Trump is also STILL arguing that the rights of the press to report the news should be restricted so they can't say anything negative about him, that he straight-up opposes the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship, and that his statements and nominations appear that instead of just pulling out of the Paris Accords, he plans on stripping every environmental protection he possibly can while pushing the dirtiest forms of energy he can as hard as he can.

Oh, and let's not forget Newt Gingrich calling for the reinstatement of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

So yeah, I saw every last bit of this coming, but it does not make watching my nation slide into some cross between 1950's (pre-Civil Rights) America and a dash of Nazi Germany any easier to stomach.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The saving grace in all of this is that the senate is close enough to being in balance that the filibuster is still a viable Democratic strategy.

I saw some interesting commentaries on-line over the weekend about the electoral college and those petitions to have the electors ignore their individual states' popular votes and instead vote for the candidate who got the most votes (which would be HRC this year). The problem is that people forget this phrase - "the tyranny of the majority" - when they talk about the problems with the electoral college. But the electoral college is like a filter that prevents the bias of the heavily populated urban megaplexes that would take resources away from lesser populated states.

In a nation built on the concept of compromise, the tyranny of the majority can't be allowed to prevail. If it did, it would allow reinstatement of slavery, revocation of women's suffrage, and a few other things that probably would cause citizens to get REALLY up in arms about the inequities and political atrocities.

One writer even went so far as to compare a "true democratic election" - i.e. purely based on popular vote uncorrected by region - to result in a world like that of the "Hunger Games" series - where the fat cats in the capitol city have it all except for the shaft, because the shaft is reserved for citizens in those less populated areas - and I do NOT mean "mine shaft."

As idiotic as it seems, the electoral college prevents railroad jobs most of the time. Just remember that the ACA was ram-rodded during a time when Democrats had both houses and the White House, and it has significantly contributed to our national debt. Obama took a country that was actually paying down some of its outstanding debt and DOUBLED that debt. The fat-cat mentality will go the way that Greece went a couple of years ago. I don't like Trump but we had to try to clear house. Otherwise, we will do as the Romans did and make ourselves vulnerable to the barbarians at the gate.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Actually, the ACA was passed only with GOP support. They could have kiled it at any time, but chose not to because the opposition was proving too unpopular; instead, they wrote in some of the more ridiculous requirements as a way to force it to self-destruct.

If you would go back and look at the actual numbers, when Obama took office, we were in the middle of an economic near-collapse with the debt spiraling completely out of control and with the biggest national deficit in history. No, I'm afraid you've mistaken it with the Clinton hand-off to Bush - THAT was when we were paying down the national debt, a situation Bush promptly reversed. The truth of the matter, which can easily be seen should you simply choose to look elsewhere than Fox for your news, is that Obama was significantly CUT the budget deficit from the Bush years, and the only reason it hasn't been cut further or even removed entirely is the ongoing agreement among the GOP that *NOTHING* Democrats tried was to pass, regardless of how much damage was done to the nation.

Funny how conservatives push the electoral college as the protection against big city misrule whenever it benefits them. The checks and balances system is placed into GOVERNMENT to prevent tyrrany by the majority; claiming that it applies to elections is merely sophistry and rationalization. The election for POTUS is the *ONLY* election that is NOT based on majority of the population; in fact there is no inherent protection created by a state giving ALL of its votes to whoever wins the *POPULAR* election in that state, especially as those votes are primarily determined BY that population. Results like this year basically come from rounding errors, because the electoral college is never quite in line with the population distribution.

Finally, your self-serving argument that liberals and city-dwellers should get fewer votes because they live in cities is, to be quite honest, one of the most idiotic, self-serving, anti-American lines of bullshit I ever ever had the misfortune to encounter in my 45 years on this planet. It throws out the entire concept of 'one person, one vote' for the belief that people who disagree with you don't get the same voice as you, and anyone throwing it around either doesn't know or doesn't care about democracy, merely staying in power. It's a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that the population as a whole, including the majority who are moderates, currently tend to prefer liberal ideas to conservative ones. It's taking the easy way out - rather than adapt and take stances more in line with what the average American wants, you'll just take the easier, unethical way and disenfranchise those who disagree with you. Rather than combat the *FACT* that higher education - which is the case in urban areas - strongly correlates to a more liberal stance, you'll just make sure peoplle with whom you disagree don't have a say in their own government.

*ANY* American - and that specifically includes you after that 'argument' - who argues that someone deserves less of a vote simply because they live in a city or other liberal-tending area is doing nothing but showing that they actually don't care about fair elections and the integrity of the democratic process, but rather are only interested in retaining their own power no matter what. That is a fascist, totalitarian argument utterly at odds with what it means to live in a Democratic society and it has no business being waved around the States.

So where should I send your Nazi flag?

 

[Frothingslosh]

And for the record, I thought the electoral college was a stupid idea in modern society back when I learned about it in high school, in the days *BEFORE* two of the last three presidents won their office against the will of the people.

ETA: The entire point of the electoral college was NOT to prevent tyranny of the minority by the majority - that was behind the checks and balances system instead - but rather the following:

1. To get some sort of realistic vote count in the days when counting of the popular vote was logistically impossible and even reporting votes to Washington would take weeks due to travel time, and
2. Because the founding fathers believed that only an educated, informed electorate could be trusted to govern wisely

Point 1 no longer applies due to modern technology, and point 2 was rendered moot the day that each state decided to award their electoral votes to whomever won the popular vote in that state. In fact, since the political reversal of the 60's, the GOP has done everything in its power to *PREVENT* the education of the electorate, and the rise of anti-intellectualism in American culture, especially in the last two decades, has only exacerbated the problem. In a nutshell, however, your GOP doesn't WANT the electorate to be educated, because then they might think for themselves. And as I pointed out previously, education has a direct correlation to liberalism, meaning an educated electorate would force the GOP to change, and, as we all know, change is anathema to conservatives, and thus to the GOP.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Okay, now that I'm not so pissed off (I have been seeing the whole 'liberals don't deserve as many votes because cities' BS all over the place this week), let me elaborate on Doc's 'argument' that allowing a candidate - *ANY* candidate - to steal the Presidential election is somehow a method of preventing 'tyranny of minority by the majority'.

For our non-Americans, the word 'tyranny' has some very important overtones, taking us right back to the start of the American Revolution and our revolt against King George, who was absolutely becoming a tyrant where the colonies were concerned. And for many of us, the 'patriotism' flag brings up the need and desire to protect and advance our nation in any way possible, and few things wave that flag harder than the word 'tyranny'. That means that any discussion where it comes up is going to get intense.

Now, the whole 'tyranny of the minority by the majority' phrase apparently comes from John Adams, although I can't find any indication of its use precisely as it is used today. What I did find was this (from A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Vol. 3 ), :

If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations... And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of history... To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to exercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen... In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies...

Now, note that he's referring to CONSTITUTIONAL protections, not the disenfranchisement of the majority. In fact, those protections, while lacking from the original US Constitution, were added in the Bill of Rights (for our non-American readers, Amendments 1 through 10), and amended several times since. To be specific:

• 1st: Freedom of the Press, Speech, Religion, and Assembly
• 2nd: Right to bear arms
• 3rd: Prevents mandatory quartering of soldiers in private residences during peacetime
• 4th: Prohibition of unreasonable search and seizures, mandates search warrants based on probable cause determined by a judge or magistrate
• 5th: Creates rules for indictment and eminent domain, mandates due process, prevents self-incrimination, prevents double jeopardy
• 6th: Provides rights to fair and speedy trial, to trial by jury, to confront your accuser, and your right to legal representation
• 7th: Provides right to trial by jury in certain civil proceedings
• 8th: Prohibits excessive fines and bail, prohibits cruel and unusual punishment
• 9th: Protects all other rights not expressly stated in the Constitution
• 13th: Abolishes slavery in the US and territories it controls
• 14th: Defines citizenship, lays out how House seats are apportioned, protects voting rights of men, prohibits creation of any law which abridges the privilege or immunities of citizens, again guarantees due process, states that all citizens are due equal protection regardless of how they became citizens
• 15th: Bars disenfranchisement based on race, color, or 'previous condition of servitude'
• 19th: Bars disenfranchisement based on gender
• 24th: Bars disenfranchisement based on non-payment of poll tax or any other tax
• 26th: Lowers minimum voting age from 21 to 18

In addition, there have been multiple laws enacted to defend the minority, such as the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the recent decision that marriage is a right independent of sexual orientation, and all sorts of other anti-discrimination laws.

THOSE are the protections against tyranny of the minority. The argument that there should be any conceivable situation where the elected President should be the one who won the SECOND-most votes, on the other hand, is not only not included anywhere in the Constitution, but it flies in direct violation of spirit of the entire document.

Yes, they created the Electoral College because they needed a reasonable way to handle voting in the 18th Century, and in part because they wanted an INFORMED electorate, not just the 'unwashed masses' voting. That was, however, in a day and age where education was still restricted to the upper classes, when there was no possible way for the general population to be informed on the issues facing the nation.

That situation no longer exists today. Not only are we easily capable of counting a nation-wide general vote within hours (save when someone *cough*Michigan*cough* drops the ball), but every citizen in America has the opportunity to become informed on national issues. The problem now is that too many politicians want easily-led automatons for voters, not an informed electorate (and while the GOP is ADAMANTLY against the concept of an educated electorate, too many Democrats are just as bad in that regard).

So now the GOP spin doctors, in order to defend the minority election of Donald Trump, are busily spinning the tale that 'liberal votes need to be minimized because most of the square miles in America are conservative', the dishonest and partisan are busy spreading it, and the gullible are imbibing and repeating it without even TRYING to engage their brain.

The fact of the matter is that 'Liberal votes should count less because cities' - and that is PRECISELY what Doc meant - is a direct attack on the very concept of Democracy. It is a blatant, cynical ploy trying to defend the indefensible disenfranchisement of anyone who disagrees with him, and is yet another step toward the fascism that Donald Trump and the GOP so ardently desire.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The fact of the matter is that 'Liberal votes should count less because cities' - and that is PRECISELY what Doc meant - is a direct attack on the very concept of Democracy. It is a blatant, cynical ploy trying to defend the indefensible disenfranchisement of anyone who disagrees with him, and is yet another step toward the fascism that Donald Trump and the GOP so ardently desire.

Frothy, you are nice guy, so I will simply say that I respectfully disagree. More specifically, the "direct attack on the very concept of Democracy" is variable in meaning, depending on how you define democracy in this context. "In numbers there is strength" has always been a valid concern, and in this election we see again that there is a situation involving strength of numbers. But the appearance of entrenchment and its incumbent negative connotations is what caused the tidal wave for Trump.

Let's be honest, I don't like the Donald either. But my choices were HRC (status quo and more spending) or DJT (change) or a smattering of 3rd-party candidates, none of whom had a snowball's chance in Hell of making it through. If HRC had won, what remained to enact change would have been a new Constitutional Convention to make radical changes, or armed insurrection (and no thanks, NOT advocating that solution).

The electoral college still functions correctly today despite your statements (though I might actually not oppose the revocation of that state-winner-take-all rule). To me, the electoral college is the (im)moral equivalent of an electronic low-pass filter that shields you from "hot spots" and yields a more geographically average result. "Voting block" politics is wrong no matter when it happens, and the tactics that I abhor are those attempts by the two major parties to fragment the country into "one-of-only-two-possible-sizes-fits-all" classification.

This country was built on compromise, not polarization. While I don't care for the craziness that it would bring about, I really WOULD like it if the two major parties were forced to split into various sub-factions that then would have to form coalitions to get things done. The whole point of the checks and balances concept is to PREVENT hasty decisions unless it was clear to all that haste was needed. (E.g. the declaration of war on Japan the day after Pearl Harbor.)

 

[The_Doc_Man]

By the way, those other laws you mentioned that were enacted to protect against the tyranny of the majority were LAWS, not constitutional amendments - so they can be trashed at any time. The fact that they have not been revoked means that folks have come to understand how important they are. I'm betting that while it might change, the ACA won't be fully repealed. It might get altered - and don't tell me it doesn't need help in its current form - but the retirement-age voters will notify their Congresspersons very quickly if someone starts to step on senior toes.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Outstanding refutation of the whole 'liberals should get fewer votes because cities' idiocy:

Sorry to dredge this back up, but your main point ("no reason to visit anywhere but LA, New York, Houston, and Chicago") is just objectively untrue.

I'm working off of simple google searches for my sources, but there are 153,000,000 people registered to vote. Half of this being required to vote means one would need 76,500,000 to win.

Wikipedia has a list of the populations of each American city, ranked. I'll take the projected figure, as it is almost always higher. It would take the top 50 cities, added together, to get you to somewhere near 60% of the votes needed to win your 76,500,000.

Two large points:
1) this is assuming that everyone is voting in unison. 100% of voters in the city vote for one person.

2) I'm using total population of cities, not just voting population. So I'm assuming even children, non-citizens, and felons are voting here.

Even with those MASSIVE assumptions, even the top 50 largest cities would get you just over halfway to the majority needed to win.

The whole notion that popular vote would mean a few cities would control the country is just flat out wrong and needs to be dropped. There are a lot more important issues to discuss when it comes to the electoral college. This is the low-hanging fruit.

From THIS COMMENT on a Facebook discussion.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I assume that I am the lying, bigoted POS to which Frothingslosh refers? It is regrettable that he feels that way, but it isn't the first time I've faced a terrible decision and had someone walk away from me because I dared to admit that I saw many different sides of the issue and had a tough choice.

Many years ago in Louisiana, we had a governor's race between Edwin Edwards and David Duke. I admitted to a gay friend that I had a terrible moment of hesitation about which one to vote for, and that I had to resolve it by deciding by choosing which one I wanted to vote against. She was incensed that I would even have considered voting for Duke - and in truth, I did NOT vote for him. I voted for the known crook rather than the known bigot. Didn't matter that I came to the same decision she did. I just hadn't made the decision with HER logic and therefore must have been an untrustworthy fool - by her standards. Didn't talk to her again for years (her choice, not mine). It took a death in her family for us to get back together again and smooth out the wrinkles.

If it happens that Frothy has blocked me, fine. I just happen to think that the whole point of having elections is that sometimes we DO disagree on paths and principles. In this case, he and I have disagreed.

Frothy, you are a good guy in so many ways but I can't allow you to use a bully's method to get me to admit that I'm wrong. First, because the USA is a melting pot of MANY viewpoints and opinions, not all of which will align; and second, I stopped paying attention to bullying methods a long time ago. If you see this and choose to keep me on your blocked list, fine. I'm not going anywhere just because you disagree with me. YOU didn't go anywhere when Murderboy and a few others raised a ruckus in the religiously oriented threads. Would you expect me to be any different?

If Frothy really has blocked me and won't see this, I ask others to NOT attempt to change his mind. I respect his beliefs and his anger and therefore will not ask him to be untrue to himself.