Everyone has been telling me that they saw my face on Rachel Maddow’s show, but what’s more interesting are all the other faces. I haven’t seen the show myself (we don’t get MSNBC on our local cable), but I’ve been sent the screen cap:
That’s our local Indivisible group which met for the first time earlier this week. The meeting was held at the public library, not on campus, and while there’s a healthy leavening of university faculty and staff, there was also a solid turnout from community people who are already thoroughly disgusted with the Trumpian regime. We’re already making plans to throw the rascals out. Keep that in mind when “flyover country” is dismissed as a uniform red mass.
You should read the Indivisible guide — it’s full of good advice to keep the pressure on our representatives in congress.
Awesome, PZ! But I’m worried that you won’t talk to us little people anymore, what with your newly rarefied status, and all. /s
The picture reveals the truth. Look at who is dead center of the photo: it’s not me. It’s Mary. I’m just the homely lump at her side.
I would’ve said the centre was a 50/50 split between Mary and the guy with the black shirt.
Hmmm… I can’t see you PZ. There aren’t any homely lumps in that picture.
We had our chance to keep the rascals out, in the first place. We lost. Are we now to assume the mantle which the Republicans wore out into shredded threads for these last 8 solid years? Do we now consider their reactions to Obama’s promotion, their subsequent behaviors regarding Obama’s policies, and their characterizations of both His, his Wife’s and his Children’s appearances, persons and motives, to have been legitimate, acceptable, patriotic, rational, logical and worthy of emulation? Were they any less convinced that Obama’s Administration would destroy the United States, Burn the Constitution, install Martial Law, and turn Our Country over to Foreign Powers?
That would be a valid comparison, rickeyemiller, if it were a valid comparison. Trump is nothing like Obama (well, he is bipedal). We’re not resisting him because he’s orange, it’s because he’s completely unfit to hold office. He’s dangerously unhinged.
Rule of thumb for dealing with a con man. The con man will always say, trust me, and what I say, as everybody else is untrustworthy or wrong. Only I have the solutions. First time I heard that from Trump, I didn’t believe anything he said, and still don’t. Anybody who supports Trump has been conned, played for a rube to be fleeced.
Have you compared the things that they objected to about Obama and the things that we object to about Trump?
Also, did anyone notice that trump lost the popular vote? Has anyone officially investigated the electoral fraud used to prevent people from exercising their right to vote or from being counted? Have we done a nationwide examination of the abomination known as partisan gerrymandering? All these things and more interfered with our efforts to “keep the rascals out.”
It’s the ones that knew what they were doing when accepting Drumpf that are the really dangerous ones.
Just before Trump was elected, so many Americans were saying they were moving to Canada that I was joking that we’d better start getting the refugee camps ready.
Emerson Manitoba has just opened its emergency hall for the first wave of refugees. They all seem to be refugee applicants in the USA who had not yet been approved and are making a run for it.
I don’t blame them.
As I recently responded to one of those “you guys are behaving just like the Republicans back in 2008” types, people were worried that Obama was going to take their guns and turn America into a Communist state because his opponents said he was going to; we’re worried about Trump taking our civil rights and turning America into a dictatorship because he said he’s going to. See the difference?
I am just a simple English man, toothickfor university was the name of my school .
But can someone explain to me how this electoral college lark works .
If i was to go into a polling station what would a voting slip look like in am American election .
Many thanks .
PS ,don’t t know if it has reached the American media ,but the snatch snatcher will not be asked to address Parliament when he visits in June.
You can see all of the clips from Rachel’s show at: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
I don’t have cable and watch her show via the net all of the time, this way.
davidc1 @13: The Electoral College was conceived as part of the “checks and balances” package that was supposed to ensure that the Federal Government wouldn’t end up doing anything horribly bad. Specifically, the stated purpose of the Electoral College was to ensure that the voters wouldn’t put a complete shitshow in the office of the Presidency.
In the years since the Constitution was ratified, the EC has become largely ceremonial, as the Electors have pretty much rubber-stamped the popular vote in most cases. Unfortunate, as the Angry Cheeto is pretty much the living, breathing, bullshitting embodiment of everything the Electoral College was supposed to prevent from taking office as the President.
sez rickeyemiller @5: “Were [the Republicans] any less convinced that Obama’s Administration would destroy the United States, Burn the Constitution, install Martial Law, and turn Our Country over to Foreign Powers?”
Perhaps the right wing was sincerely convinced that Obama would do all those things. But well-founded concerns are rather different from concerns founded on delusion and/or hostile propaganda, are they not, rickeyemiller? Do you think there was as much hard evidence of Obama’s willingness to do all those things, as there is of Trump’s willingness to do all those things?
Don’t get too excited up there – Maddow also gave a shout-out to False Noise alum Greta van Susteren, for crysake.
davidc1 @ # 13: … can someone explain to me how this electoral college lark works .
The United States of America, as the name implies, was created as a federation of nominally independent states, a little bit like the United Nations. Much as tiny nations have the same vote in the UN General Assembly as do the giants, the system was set up to preserve the states’ power, not a direct republic. So the EC provides for election state by state, with each getting the same number of votes as it has in its Congressional delegation.
Every state has two Senators, plus at least one member of the House of Representatives, so each has at least three. The Census done every ten years leads to a re-allotment of the 435 voting members of the house; for example, I live in heavily populated Florida, which now has 27 Representatives and 29 electoral votes; each number will rise a bit after the 2020 census (unless some catastrophe reduces our population).
Though it’s not in the Constitution, almost all states cast their votes as a bloc, so all our votes in ’16 went to the Trumpster, never mind that 51% of us voted for Somebody Else. This in particular means that voters in low-population states have disproportionate influence, since they have fewer voters per elector (& per Senator). So, HRC’s 63M votes last year lost to DJT’s 60M, because he carried more rural states.
The last time a minority-vote candidate got the prize (GWBush in ’00), a newly-elected Democratic Senator from a very populous state vowed to introduce a constitutional amendment to create direct presidential elections. Yet another promise neglected; I like to imagine former Senator Clinton thinks back on it and kicks her own butt hard, every day, forever.
To clarify my # 17: that penultimate ‘graf should say, “… so all Florida’s votes in ’16 went to the Trumpster, never mind that 51% of us voted for Somebody Else.”
(We won’t get rid of Hillary-bashing in a hundred years, won’t we?)
The whole circus you see on C-SPAN or CNN, it’s literally just that, circus. The political machinations we see on the news are but the tip of the iceberg, the big, important decisions are made in smoky backrooms.
In other words, your entire political system is the Chinese Communist Party, only you’ve got two of them.
Do you seriously believe the Rethugs would give up the Electoral College right after they used it to install a minory-vote braindead puppet who rubber-stamped their every whim? I really hope you’re not that naive. Hillary isn’t to blame for this at all.
applehead @ # 19: We won’t get rid of Hillary-bashing in a hundred years, won’t we?
Hey, just bring back the dead and healed the wounded and re-house the refugees from her exciting adventures in Honduras and Syria and Libya (oh, and from her Senatorial support of open warfare against Iraq and Palestine), and bygones –> bygones! She’ll be just another corrupt corporate Democrat, hooray!
… your entire political system is the Chinese Communist Party, only you’ve got two of them.
I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that the CCP makes less of a fuss about smoke-free rooms.
Hillary isn’t to blame for this at all.
Other than for running such an inept, 1%-friendly/progressive-voter-hostile, gimme-gimme status-quo-forever campaign, and never even trying to follow through on what would have been her most important positive political contribution, well damn, not at all, not at all.
One person, more than anyone else, could have prevented the Trump presidency – and she FAILED.
No, the electoral college failed to back up the popular vote.
I don’t know what she could have done to satisfy you Hillary Haters. Nothing is my guess. You trashed her as much as Trump did. You are the reason Trump is president.
@ #6 greg hilliard: Thanks Greg! Reading, rereading and rereading your comments, looking and staring at each phrase and sentence in their turns, may have revealed the essence of my internal dismay which has been eluding me. (“We are Resisting.” I’ll chew on that awhile and see what comes out.) Be that as it may be; Notice your honestly held assertions are self-evident, satisfying, and comfortably expressed? But you are right. It is true. He is dangerous. He is insane. He has zero qualifications to hold the office of President. How can anyone fail to see these? Our expressions of resistance are totally acceptable, rational, and well formulated. He is nothing like our candidate, except human. (We are nothing like them, except human.)
Nerd … @ # 21: …the electoral college failed to back up the popular vote.
The EC worked more or less as intended, and followed the rules (mostly).
You are the reason Trump is president.
I voted, and (think I) persuaded others to vote, for HRC. I even went to considerable difficulty to get a yard sign despite the best efforts of her appalling local campaign committee (who rented an office, and sometimes occupied it as long as two hours in a week).
Have you considered directing your venom towards those who didn’t vote, or maybe even those who voted for the Thing Under the Yellow Implant?
@ #8 Saad: Thanks Saad! I may have missed a few cogent contrasts in the bustle between here and there. The objections we have about Trump are well founded, understandable and justified. The objections they had about her/Obama are/were unfounded, unsupported and baseless. Oh! Well, that smooth’s a wrinkle. But how do you suppose 1/2 the adult US population could, for 8 solid years (going on 9, now), hold such an array of objections that were so totally, so clearly, not based on fact, unsupported, ungrounded, unwarranted, and unrealistic? (With that kind of control, you could put on a pretty big circus. You could really get the Lions Roaring, the Tigers Slashing, the Leopards Racing, the Grizzlies Growling, the Snakes Hissing, the Rhinos Goring, the Sheep Bleating, the Goats Cheating, and the Bulls Snorting. With a well sized tent, the Elephants and Mules would join right in.)
@ #9 jamiejag: Thanks jamiejag! “All these things and more” Much of these are “a wash” across the board, in the end. Each side has members that perform the same actions, so they tend to cancel out in the totals. However, the propagated fear about these things CAN be and IS used to captivate the imaginations and motivate the minds of prepared segments of US society. I won’t charge for it this time, but asking a really rich guy to run as a third party to split one of the tickets, does it outright or gets it close enough to maneuver the chosen party into the seat. All the rest is rumblin’ the cloud.