Facebook

Or at least be subjected to an invasive scan and a waiting period first...

One tough cookie...

It's not too late...

There's lots of talk today about how Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump took the Electoral College. Many are viewing this as a failure of the EC based system. However, that exists for the good reason that it does provide some voice to sparsely populated areas of the country that otherwise would be completely dominated by the large metro areas. A better solution would be "preference voting", with the added advantage that states could enact this individually without the need for any Constitutional changes. Preference voting could have impacted the outcomes in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or any other state where no candidate won more than 50% of the vote. Although it's uncertain the outcome would have been different, it would have been fairer, and would have assured that a majority of the voters preferred the winning candidate over the next closest rival. It also makes 3rd party voting more useful because voters can opt for 3rd party candidates without inadvertently enabling the election of someone they didn't want. In preference voting, rather than just choosing who you want to elect, you rank all the candidates in order of preference. So one voter might choose (Johnson, Trump, Clinton, Stein) while another might choose (Stein, Johnson, Clinton, Trump). In the initial count, if no candidate gets 50%, then the last place candidate is eliminated, and those votes get added to the next choices of those voters. So for our example voters above, if Stein gets tossed in round one, Johnson picks up a vote in round 2. Then if Johnson goes in the next round, Trump and Clinton each pick up a vote in round 3. This process repeats until someone has an actual majority. To pick on Pennsylvania, Trump was about 72k votes shy of 50%, while Clinton was short 140k. There were just under 213k 3rd party votes cast in that state last night. Would reassigning those 213k votes have benefited Clinton or Trump? We'll never know. Under the current system those 213k voters were effectively silenced... and that benefits no one.

Karma's a bitch - "Crowd chants 'you lie' at Joe Wilson's town hall." http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/328249-gop-rep-met-with-shouts-of-you-lie-at-town-hall-meeting

This is an actual poll on GOP.com asking what you think of Trump's performance on a scale of Okay to Great... because Col.Snowflake can't handle the truth!

A lot of people seemed shocked by Trump's apparent endorsement of Pelosi as Speaker, but we need to be thinking of this like TV. Trump and the GOP have been grooming Pelosi as the uber-villain for a long time. There's no drama in fighting a faceless evil, and she is the personification of the Dem controlled House. The House that will be blamed for everything that doesn't come up roses straight through 2020. From Trump's perspective Meryl Streep just accepted the lead antagonist role in his movie. Of course he's thrilled.

#DontKnowWhoNeedsToHearThisBut

1. The Motel 6 2. The El Royale ('Good' Times at) 3. Trump National Doral 4. Chuck-E-Cheese 5. Holiday Inn Express 6. Dollywood 7. Overlook Hotel (Heeeere's Vladimir!) 8. Dave and Busters 9. Roach Motel 10. The Love Shack (a little old place) 11. No-Tell Motel 12. The Olive Garden off I-495

This Trump tweet doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that he's thought this all the way through.

Tonight, Trump gives one of his "speeches" in Miami. I'm sure the stable genius with the very good brain will be careful to convey the balance of moral responsibility for ordering an assassination against the larger good of the death of a man responsible for killing 100s of US citizens. He'll doubtless appeal to the more rational voices in Iran to let the escalation end here. His somber, conciliatory, but firm tones will make clear the gravity of the... Oh who the hell am I kidding? He's gonna dance on Soleimani's grave and taunt Iran with threats of destruction. He's gonna claim (yet again) that only he can get us out of situations he has created. I know how much he likes his name on things. This is Trump's War.

It's not entirely surprising that #Trump's GOP still trusts him. But this sets up a dynamic that has an unclear result. What happens if Trump declares the US "open" again, but only red states/communities follow his advice? Do blue state gov's have to enforce state borders to maintain isolation/containment of #Coronavirus? Will rural (red) areas of blue states revolt? Will urban (blue) enclaves in red states try to isolate at the city or county level? Might we even see higher death rates by class (WWC), religion (evangelicals), or party (GOP) if, based on Trump's advice, Covid-19 is just allowed to burn through parts of the population? This has the potential to divide the country in ways and with costs previously unimagined.

If the plan from day 1 was #DamnTheTorpedoes then we should have been open all along. To make this the strategy now means we locked down and tanked the economy for nothing. This is the #WorstOfBothWorlds plan. #StableGenius my ass.

#TrumpDictatorship #TVPresident

Checks out...

It's important to appreciate how unmoored from reality many Trump supporters are. This is a bananapants crazy conspiracy theory, and they are all-in. Even if Trump loses, re-anchoring these folks to a blue sky/green grass Earth is gonna be a long and painful journey.

Keep mind that ND is sparsely populated and is basically practicing the WH's "herd immunity" strategy. This death rate would even higher in urban areas. #OhTheHumanity

VoA has always had a sorta pro-Am propaganda mission. What's different is reporting the truth to societies limited to state media propaganda used to be considered pro-American. Not any more.

My great-grandchildren when my kids are trying to explain 2021 to them in 40 years...