The Pitters' Place

aels wrote:I know a left-wing Brexiteer who voted Leave because fuck the system, maaaaan, and she liked this post today and I'm going to have to unfriend her:

"President Trump. It's both brilliant and scary.
Brilliant because it confirms that the mainstream -- the political class, the media, the academy, celebrities, all of whom lined up loudly and slavishly behind Hillary -- can no longer shape the political world to their tastes. Their political and moral remit is severely diminished, and not before time. Brilliant because it will traumatise all the people who deserve to be traumatised: the politicos and observers and campaigners who have conspired in the profound moral disorientation and weakening of the white working class and other sections of society to such an extent that those people found themselves with no political voice -- they were "health problems" and "moral crises" to be fixed, not political citizens to be listened to -- other than the megaphone of Trump. Brilliant because sneering, dehumanising political elites find it so unbrilliant.
And it's scary because it shows that while the rules of all the old politics are over, and the authority of the old establishment waned and probably dead, nothing real or substantial has replaced it. That the answer to the brilliant question "They shouldn't rule us anymore, so who should?" is "Donald Trump" is both sad and tragic. And it's largely the fault of the left. Instead of providing some shape and colour to people's stirring feeling of exhaustion and dislike for the political establishment, they lined up behind the establishment, desperate to prop it up for another four years, even praising it as progressive and good, sounding utterly mad in the process. What turncoats. What uncritical footsoldiers for a dying breed of political authority. President Trump is their fault. When you see them crying today -- and they are literally crying -- do not comfort them. They deserve this pain."

Like, no, fucko, I know you want to tear down the system etc etc but the people who are going to be hurt by Trump are the people already suffering - the vulnerable, who you claim to represent. She believes in chemtrails too.

You can't tear down the system in one vote anyway. the system has been built over the course of a thousand years. it has roots in laws that have existed since the longbow was the weapon of choice. you think a simple vote for the Green Party is going to undo all that and tomorrow it'll be a utopian wet dream? these lefty dreamers just piss me the fuck off. Oh noez, we have to vote the lesser of two evils, life is so unfair...Of course it fucking is, suck it up, because there are a shittonne of people worse off than you and, just because you might be able to afford to throw away a vote on a 3rd party, or spoil your voting slip, doesn't mean millions of other people can. It's like all those Brexit idiots who went for the protest vote, or the idiots in our election who chose to support the Libs / Greens / UKIP rather than just get behind Labour to actually help the poor. Instead we get stuck with the Tories and, even worse, the Tories during fucking Brexit.

I've unfriended her so I'll never get to hear any more of her hot political takes, womp womp.

If it turns out that she does manage to overthrow capitalism, I'll feel like such a ninny.

As I was sort of expecting, it seems she lost not because turnout from Republicans are way up, but because Dems were way down. Trump got less than Romney, but Clinton got less than Obama by a bigger margin. The votes are still being counted so this margin may shrink.

Yeah, I don't really know what to say now. I still feel light-headed and euphoric and dizzy. This must be what existentialists talk about when they talk about radical freedom or whatever. Where you just feel... unmoored. Unshackled. Like some of the basic societal bonds which constrict all our minds have been thrown off. And you have, like, a whole new world. A weird alternative world where absolutely nothing fucking matters at all.

I mean, we're all going to suffer because of Trump but I am so fucking sorry for you and everyone else who is going to have to live in Trump's America.

Thank you. And you as well and everyone else who has to live through Brexit. I don't really know what it's like over there.

But I'm not going to have to live in Trump's America because I am fucking leaving here as soon as I possibly can. People say that but I actually am. I am done. So fucking done. Done with this country and everyone who lives here. Let your stupid empire crumble just as long as I can watch it from a safe distance.

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/11/09/her ... eve-today/

This gives me hope: "...it is not only that these things have been ratified by our nation that grieve us; all this hatred, fear, racism, bigotry, and intolerance—it's knowing that these things have been amen-ed by our neighbors, our families, our friends, those we work with and worship alongside. That is the most horrific thing of all. We now know how close this is."

It's what I was hoping for. This is how change starts.

Derived Absurdity wrote:I just said nuclear apocalypse, dude. Doesn't that count?

But no. The only bright side is that the Clinton dynasty is now thankfully dead. Dead, never to return.

An actual response: there's some talk that many states are actually taking concrete, drastic action to finally end the electoral college because of this. Supposedly. So... there's that. Whoop-die do.

That's not how the Constitution is amended. The most any state can do is what maine and Nebraska have already done - set up the system so that each legislative district selects one elector rather than all electors being decided by which candidate wins the entire state. Under this system, whoever wins the state still wins the two electoral votes coinciding with Senate seats, but the other candidate could still win a few electoral votes from that state by winning one or more legislative districts. So, in the simplest case would be a state like Maine with only two U.S. legislative districts. If Trump had won one of those two districts and Hillary had won the other while Trump won the state as a whole then Trump would have won three votes in maine and Hillary would have won one.

Elections really should just be a count of who got the most votes.

Seen this joke a few times on facebook now:

Donald Trump wins US Presidency on the 9th of November. 9/11 will go down in as the darkest day in american history.


All this time we've been telling America, it's 11/9. Well played, America. Well played.

Lol

What are the chances of this? https://www.change.org/p/electoral-coll ... ecember-19

Also http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/colu ... olumn.html

Well, as we all know, online petitions are generally super successful at changing things.

But whatever. I signed it. It was probably more consequential than my actual vote.

Shaun King has been compiling incidents of hate (scroll down a bit):
http://www.twitter.com/ShaunKing

People painting swastikas on walls and chanting Heil Hitler. Dozens of incidents of Muslims being attacked, robbed, hijabs pulled off; someone tied a rope around a black doll's neck and hung it; increases in sexual assault and men grabbing women by the genitals and saying they can do that because Trump did; Mexican kid beaten up and told they'll all be deported soon; Mexican girl's dorm room raided with a note about building the wall; Asians demanded to say if they speak English and told to go back to China (and in NYC, at that); black people told to go to the back of the bus and start picking their slave numbers...

My family will be visiting the US in April next year and I'm already worried. Can't imagine how much worse it is for all of you living there.

People complaining about the electoral college really need to stop. There is very little chance that anything would have changed if Presidents were elected by popular vote. Under the current system the Trump campaign knew they had to win enough states with enough electoral votes regardless of the margin of victory. So they reacted accordingly the last few weeks of the election and Trump concentrated on the swing states where he had a chance to win but no guarantee of winning. The strategy worked. If the popular vote method were used they would have simply used a different strategy of campaigning even more in the largest states they knew they were going to win, Texas and Georgia, to increase their margin of victory in those states. There is no reason to think that, under a different system, everyone involved would have acted and reacted the same as they did under the electoral college system, it's almost impossible that any such thing would have happened. Trump played the game by the rules as they are currently set. Things like these petitions are trying to change the rules after the fact. It's like hitting a Royal Flush and then being told "No, we're going to change the rules now and a Royal Flush is the lowest ranking hand. That's called cheating. Trump won, Hillary lost, now we all have to deal with it.

I don't know how this works. You clearly seem to. But the petition claims that the "Electors" are perfectly able, legally, to vote for Clinton if they wish against their states' votes. Even in the cases where that is "not allowed", according to the petition, it seems they only have to pay a small fine, which apparently means it's not against the law. I'm researching it and there seems to be no constitutional provision/amendment or federal or state law that prevents "Electors" from voting against their states. So this is also the system as it is now, it seems to me; it doesn't seem to be trying to change the rules after the fact, it's using the rules as they are. If that seems unfair, it's also "unfair" for some inbred fucktard in Florida to have his vote count more than someone in California or whatever just because of some arcane bullshit from the 18th century.

And if Presidents were elected by popular vote, Trump would have changed his strategy, but so would Clinton. I still doubt she would have lost.

The laws concerning faithless electors vary by state. Hpwever, what the petition seems to miss is the fact that these electors were pledged to that candidate BEFORE the election. Electors pledged to Clinton are all die-hard Democrats, those pledged to Trump are all die-hard Republicans. They don't just switch parties, that is simply never going to happen. In the past, when there have been faithless electors (which have never changed the outcome of any election) they have always voted for someone else of the same party or general political ideology. The only electoral votes ever "won" by a Libertarian candidate happened in 1972 when elector Roger MacBride of Virginia cast his vote for the Libertarian candidates instead of Nixon/Agnew. Interestingly enough, there is some question about why MacBride was even chosen as Republican elector considering he was practically raised by Rose Wilder (one of the founders of modern American Libertarianism and the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder). Only a few years later, MacBride would go on to be one of the producers of Little House on the Prairie, a fictionalized account of Laura Ingalls' childhood and millions of viewers never realized they were being subjected to Libertarian propoganda on a weekly basis. But such instances are rare, and as i said, never effect the outcome. The most likely scenario is that a few Republican electors vote for a Cruz/Kasich ticket or a few Democrat electors vote for a Sanders/Warren ticket. Republicans voting for Hillary is just not going to happen.

I don't see how people's votes are counting more than someone else's. California has 55 electoral votes while Florida has 29, a ratio of 1.9, the current population ratio between those two states is 1.9. In fact, without rounding off the current division of electors actually favors Democratic California over Republican Florida. The only states that are helped to any significant amount are the states with the minimum of three electors - Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming, and even there the "benefit" is negligible, made even more negligible by the fact that those are five predominantly Republican states vs. two that generally favor democrats so a net of only three states currently receive a total of nine electors favoring Republicans when the number of electors is only skewed slightly in their favor to begin with. It's a non-issue. If Congress is lobbied enough to send the states a Constitutional amendment to change the current system then so be it. Until such time the system works as it was intended to work - not a pure democracy but a representative republic. We don't elect Presidents based on a majority of the popular vote. If we did then Bill Clinton would have faced run-off elections twice and may have never been elected the first time. I get that people aren't happy that Trump is the President-elect. I'm not happy but it was decided months ago that I wasn't going to be happy.

EDIT:

And if Presidents were elected by popular vote, Trump would have changed his strategy, but so would Clinton. I still doubt she would have lost.

I'm not sure how any claim can be made one way or the other when the popular vote difference is about one-quarter of one percent.

Rioting in Portland, Oregon: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... for_f.html

The comments suck.

Anakin McFly wrote:Rioting in Portland, Oregon: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... for_f.html

The comments suck.

Thanks Obama.

also now my birthday (Nov 8) will forever be known as the day America fell. Thanks, Trump.

CashRules wrote:I don't see how people's votes are counting more than someone else's. California has 55 electoral votes while Florida has 29, a ratio of 1.9, the current population ratio between those two states is 1.9. In fact, without rounding off the current division of electors actually favors Democratic California over Republican Florida. The only states that are helped to any significant amount are the states with the minimum of three electors - Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming, and even there the "benefit" is negligible, made even more negligible by the fact that those are five predominantly Republican states vs. two that generally favor democrats so a net of only three states currently receive a total of nine electors favoring Republicans when the number of electors is only skewed slightly in their favor to begin with. It's a non-issue.

Doesn't the electoral college in general give slightly more weight to votes from anyone in a state with less-than-average population, while giving slightly less weight to votes from anyone in a state with higher-than-average population? I'm not sure why that doesn't hold for California vs Florida, but the number of votes each state has should be whatever their population percentage would normally be, plus a flat 2. So if state A has x votes, and state B has twice the population of State A, then State B be should have (x-2)*2 + 2, or 2x-2 votes.

Anakin McFly wrote:also now my birthday (Nov 8) will forever be known as the day America fell. Thanks, Trump.

Aw, I missed your birthday! I'm sorry! Happy birthday!

Gendo wrote:

CashRules wrote:I don't see how people's votes are counting more than someone else's. California has 55 electoral votes while Florida has 29, a ratio of 1.9, the current population ratio between those two states is 1.9. In fact, without rounding off the current division of electors actually favors Democratic California over Republican Florida. The only states that are helped to any significant amount are the states with the minimum of three electors - Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming, and even there the "benefit" is negligible, made even more negligible by the fact that those are five predominantly Republican states vs. two that generally favor democrats so a net of only three states currently receive a total of nine electors favoring Republicans when the number of electors is only skewed slightly in their favor to begin with. It's a non-issue.

Doesn't the electoral college in general give slightly more weight to votes from anyone in a state with less-than-average population, while giving slightly less weight to votes from anyone in a state with higher-than-average population? I'm not sure why that doesn't hold for California vs Florida, but the number of votes each state has should be whatever their population percentage would normally be, plus a flat 2. So if state A has x votes, and state B has twice the population of State A, then State B be should have (x-2)*2 + 2, or 2x-2 votes.

It doesn't hold for California vs. Florida because of rounding. A state can't have a fractional number of U.S. Representatives so some states are going to be favored over others. Currently California happens to be slightly favored over Florida. That may change with the 2020 Census. Yes, the +2 effect does favor small states but even then the U.S. population is so large that the effect is minimal.

@aels

Lol: http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/donald ... 1788862854

Yeah, that article is certainly on-point. Donald Trump most definitely doesn't want to hold the most powerful, high-profile office in the entire world. That just wouldn't be part of his character.

Oh, he definitely wants it. But for the glory and validation, not the actual work.