Slashdot Mirror

Is parent and idiot or ignorant? You be the judge. I'm guessing both.

The Irish famine was caused by capitalism as practiced by the British.

One of the most basic, and effective, techniques of persuasion is demonstrating that others have done it.

When someone is contemplating suicide, being exposed to stories of people committing suicide will strengthen their resolve to do so. You sound like someone who should be educated enough to know this.

So skimming through such images probably did not make her depressed, but it probably did help push her over the edge.

I have no doubt she was depressed. It is rather unfortunate that her parents, who presumably see her every day, seemed to not notice the problem.

This is just another version of the "Helter Skelter" defense, or Judas Priest being sued because two teenagers https://www.nytimes.com/1990/0... or akid killing himeself, and aomehow Ozzy Ozbourne was responsible. https://www.history.com/this-d... .

Yes, I am educated. But Judas Priest, or Ozzy Ozbourne, or Instagram didn't cause those people to commit suicide, and the Beatles didn't make Charles Manson and his followers kill Sharon Tate and the others. They didn't, even if the people looked at images or listened to music.

I am educated enough to understand that people in grieving might very often look for some blame target, especially if they might have had something to do with the original problem or were in denial of it.

People commit suicide without looking at images on Instagram, or listen to Judas Priest or Black Sabbath music. Why do they do this? Often because they are depressed. No need for those three bogeymen.

I might give the concept a little more credence if normal person was driven to suicide. But that's almost certainly never going to be shown.

Want a better idea? How about in the interests of preventing more suicides in young teens, the parents interview with psychologists to see what they might have missed, or ignored, or just wrote off to "a phase". Then compiling everything to see what they might make sense of. One thing is for certain. These people had a daughter with a mental illness, a daughter who was very likely to kill herself even is she never looked at instagram. I graduated high school long before the internet, and we had some folks who committed suicide. Blaming outside things for internal family issues will seldom solve anything. And its so much better if parents can quietly get their troubled offspring good treatment than going through official channels. And we do want less teenagers to be killing themselves, wouldn't you agree?

The link you posted appears to have some facts comparing Vietnam to Mexico but then leaps to the illogical conclusion that it is the result of "culture and genetics."

I could see making the argument that it's at least partly due to "culture", but I don't believe it's "genetics" especially given the genetic diversity in places like Mexico which had a caste system based on "race". In paintings they often portrayed 16 different classes of people based upon how "pure" their Spanish roots are.

But to some Americans, they're all just "Mexicans" even when they come from Honduras, Guatemala or even Texas. I'm not convinced it's cultural especially given the large number of "Mexicans" who have lived in the US for generations.

And we have people like Tucker Carlson saying they will make America "dirtier". It's racist nonsense in my opinion.

Comparing Facebook to the attitudes of "Christian clergymen" is interesting but in the past the Church, particularly the Vatican, wielded so much power they were much more like the government. They didn't just excommunicate people. Often they would banish them, imprison them or even torture them and burn them at the stake.

I do think FB has too much power but it is the people who give it to them and no one is forced to submit to them as many were forced to do by "Christian clergymen" of the past.

And let's just refresh our memories on what happened to scientists like Galileo.

“We order that by a public edict the book of Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure; and as a salutary penance We enjoin on thee that for the space of three years thou shalt recite once a week the Seven Penitential Psalms.” And then he spent the rest of his life (nearly a decade) either in prison or under house arrest.

Fortunately, all Facebook can do is kick people off their platform. When they start arresting people for their beliefs your comparison will be applicable.

What's your source on this "long history"?

Well I can think of one example. In 1986 the US bombed Libya. One building that was hit was the French Embassy in Tripoli. The French had refused to allow US bombers to traverse their airspace from bases in England that forced the US planes to fly an additional 2600 nautical miles around France to get to Libya. It was understood/suspected right at the time that this was an "accident" with plausible deniability.

I hate to reply to an AC offering a simplistic world view, but this was interesting enough to Google. https://www.history.com/topics... I don't think we can say anything definitive though as there were too many moving parts. Honest people who are out of a job and desperate don't usually turn to violent crime right away. The first beg and borrow and then do petty crimes like stealing or falsely claiming disability. It usually takes a stint in prison to turn them into what we normally think of as hardened criminals.

We are all part African because that is were we originated. Yet if I claim to be an African American the liberals would be very offended. Elizabeth Warren has Native American Blood in the same way Aldolf Hitler has Jewish ancestry.

Why don't Americans worry about substantial shit like the fact China is kicking you ass six ways to Sunday, and you can't even control your own border

You DO realize, of course, that Adolf Hitler DOES have Jewish Ancestry. A fact that he jealously (and understandably) guarded.

https://www.history.com/news/s...

Also, apparently it's considered humane to euthanize mice with CO2? I'd think that'd cause painful asphyxiation.

It depends on the air mixture. Inhaling a dense cloud of CO2 results in immediate unconsciousness followed by death.

This phenomenon has been documented as it happened to a village by a lake where tons of CO2 spewed out from a lakebed and killed many people by the lake. The people who suffered were the ones who survived but were still exposed as it caused them to cough until they bled.

The US government did try to force them to assimilate. They forcibly took children from their families and made them attend boarding schools that forbade the culture which they came from.
https://www.history.com/news/h...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

American assistance to the government of the Republic of Viet Name to repel the war of aggression waged by the brutal communist regime in the North and their puppets in the South was completely justified. The vile Viet Cong were heartless murderers oppressing the people using terrorism and mass murder as a deliberate strategy.

Just the tip of the ice berg:
Mass graves discovered in Hue
The Viet Cong Committed Atrocities, Too (Dak Son)

After the lying, murderous communist hegemons of the North violated the peace treaty, invaded and conquered the South, tens or hundreds of thousands of people fled the vicious treatment of the North.

Viet Nam, like China, is prospering today largely because they are moving away from Marxist economics.

Iraq is far better off without Saddam in power. Saddam's dead enders and Jihadis are responsible for the vast majority of people killed in Iraq.

Your understanding of both recent events and history is terribly distorted.

Since then, [Trump's tariffs] many economists have publicly disagreed that raising tariffs so sharply will improve the economy, as Trump asserts it will. In particular, experts have pointed to the failure of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in June 1930, to protect U.S. industries with tariff increases.

The same same holds for the US entering WWI and WWII. It wasn't until 1917 that the US declared war on Germany after trade with Britain was disrupted, US citizens killed and American ships sunk. Entering WWII only happened after Pearl Harbour.

Check your facts

"On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel"...From https://www.history.com/topics...

The Cold War had in fact started a few years prior. "The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945."...From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Let's hope it turns out better than the fabulous agreement Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter worked out. Actually, that one was fabulous for North Korea, they got a few hundred million dollars and didn't give up anything in return.

If he really wants to build 5000 cars a month, there will HAVE to be some crazy network of conveyors, they'll be making about 250 cars a day.

LOL. "250 cars a day" was achieved over 100 years ago without automation or crazy networks of conveyors.

For example: By 1914, the moving assembly line made it possible to produce thousands of [Ford Model T] cars every week

The Pinkertons were the first Secret Service. They are who protected Abraham Lincoln. My 6th Great Grand uncle was a Pinkerton for Lincoln. He was called his "coat man" as he carried Lincolns Shawl whenever Lincoln went out on government business.

Famous picture of Major Alan Pinkteron and General John McClernand at a Union camp in Sharpsburg, Maryland in 1862.

https://www.history.com/topics...

Governments fear nothing. If any "educated" electorate dares raise its ugly working head, a violent and merciless crackdown will ensue and special laws will be enacted. Because, "terrorism" and "security". You can't be very smart while dead.

The Frech Revolution and Comunist Revolution says Hi! Of course we can always bring up the American Revolution as well.

Basically "Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" usually quite violently.

but why school shootings started only 20 years ago

School shootings go back a lot longer than 20 years.

https://www.history.com/this-d...

Clinton *was* impeached.

http://www.history.com/this-da...

Words mean things.

That's mis-characterization. It was MANDATED to be played by the end of WWII yes, but it was already being played regularly. It really started in 1918 - http://www.history.com/news/wh...

It wasn't even officially the national anthem until 1931...

But are other things the equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre?

The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a bullshit statement from a bullshit case because of a bullshit law.

Holmes used his statement to justify the imprisonment of draft dissenters during world war one in clear contradiction of the first amendment which even he admitted, eventually. I will say it again, this is bad law, and anyone who wants to have a serious discussion about free speak should not utter it in polite company.

That being said, yeah the quality of advertising and accuracy of advertisers statements is something to look at. It does seem like many sites allow these snake oil salesmen to set up shop on their doorstep through frames or whatever. And they want to keep their reputation while blaming the advertisers without admitting responsibility for letting them in. Shame on them, they own the site, police the content.

Before you quote a "White House spokesman" as evidence, maybe you should give us a date in the past eight months when a "White House spokesman" has not told a lie. Seriously. just one date - one - where there was not a lie from the White House, and I will rule your absurd claim as admissible

Done.

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, 10/2/2017, #18

The President will be flying to Puerto Rico tomorrow to view the devastation, ...

October 03, 2017, Remarks by President Trump, Luis Muñiz Air National Guard Base, Carolina, Puerto Rico

Here is a bonus! --- Yes, Frederick Douglass did a great job.

Right when I think it is hopeless, my faith is restored! Thanks. It's inspired me to write the blurb below. I look around me, and I see how women are treated in other parts of the world and compare it to these ramblings in this thread and it saddens me. It saddens me because I don't see that the mindset of some of these men are very different from those oppressors in the Middle East. The only difference is that we in the West have experienced the age of Enlightenment and most of us agree that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That includes women. So while all of the haters are spewing their crap, I ask them to look eastward, maybe that is where they belong. Because the West, has other plans and it's called equality. https://www.history.com/topics...

This IS regular police work.

Yes, the police regularly seek overbroad and general warrants, in order to conduct fishing expeditions and draw a large net.

This is not news.

This is NOT a politically motivated investigation at all, but a criminal inquiry into actual crimes.

Yet we don't believe that. I wonder why.

We already have people charged in these cases and the DOJ is doing it's job like it should.

Are they now? We've already documented that the DOJ doesn't always do its job like it should. Has there been an investigation to certify that the DOJ is not misbehaving? Have the numerous complaints made about the handling of the protests been examined?

Your implication that this is a politically motivated investigation is not really valid given the evidence we have. This is not an issue of free speech, but an investigation into obvious crimes.

The crimes aren't obvious, but instead exaggerated hysteria meant to incite panic and outrage while ignoring reality. I've seen worse damage after a sports team loses.

Of course you might think that destruction of property, inciting riots, assault and conspiracy to commit these things should be allowed under the 1st Amendment, but you'd be totally wrong.

Perhaps not. The 1st amendment is rather limited in scope. They are, however, allowed, even required, under the principles of this country. Said rights, of course, being expressed in a variety of forms, and explicitly so in several state constitutions. And given that the US Constitution contains the 10th Amendment, it can hardly be said to be exhaustive in listing the rights of the people.

Given that this sentiment is long-standing, one can hardly expect it to be excluded. But I suspect that you, would instead mindlessly prefer to declare an allegiance to the law, over the rightful. That is sad.

I understand your confusion though, given the last administration's failure to deal with these kinds of crimes for obvious political reasons.

Yes, they were impeded from stopping the Bundy Ranch rioters, and the Malfeur occupiers, because it would have looked bad politically. On the other hand, they were also smart enough to recognize that.

Trump's a dumbass though, and will likely pull a Chicago Seven prosecution.

Apparently he's never cracked a history book to learn the value of conciliation.

He had a chance, he's had numerous chances. He keeps blowing them. Trumpcare. Muslim Ban. The recent events in Virginia.

Are his advisers incompetent, or does he just not listen? Perhaps both.

Yeah.

I'm 71 years old and an eye witness.

To Make America Great Again, we have to tap into the CEO and shareholder desire for asymptotic revenue stream at nanosecond growth rate and use that accumulation of wealth and give back to those at the source.

When money flows in one direction, we have something like Rome:

Even as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from within thanks to a severe financial crisis. Constant wars and overspending had significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had widened the gap between rich and poor. In the hope of avoiding the taxman, many members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside and set up independent fiefdoms. At the same time, the empire was rocked by a labor deficit. Rome’s economy depended on slaves to till its fields and work as craftsmen, and its military might had traditionally provided a fresh influx of conquered peoples to put to work. But when expansion ground to a halt in the second century, Rome’s supply of slaves and other war treasures began to dry up. A further blow came in the fifth century, when the Vandals claimed North Africa and began disrupting the empire’s trade by prowling the Mediterranean as pirates. With its economy faltering and its commercial and agricultural production in decline, the Empire began to lose its grip on Europe.

For the record Oscar Wilde got caught

Since the US can not prosecute people in a foreign land and can not protect people in a foreign land.

The United States Diplomatic Corps disagrees with you. As does the United States Marine Corps. Not to mention the International Military Tribunals.

Your claim about universal law fails basic scrutiny.

No such point was made, you must be confused about international law. And it may surprise you, but there are non-citizens in the US military right now.

Your description of the Federalist papers is absolutely false.

It's entirely true. They are propaganda, and not impartial commentary at all.

They are primarily letters between the founders regarding wording and concepts.

Nope. Instead they were published widely and directly addressed to the people (of New York in particular).

Why do you lie so badly? Do you lack Common Sense?

The anti-Federalist papers are the same, and not really anti-Federalism but more concerned with the amount of power the Federal Government was given.

Well, insofar as you already lied about the nature of the Federalist papers, this is another lie here, what with them also being propaganda documents.

About the closest you can come is something in the way of it being true that they were concerned with the amount of power the Federal Government had under the Constitution, but you overstate your case since many of them did oppose any form of "federal" government.

Still, you get dinged severely for your earlier lies.

Remember that bit I said about common sense? Not only did you just flat out lie, but you seem to lack common sense.

Oh wait, you do. Really, s.petry, are you trying to look as bad as Trump who faked Time Magazine covers to promote himself?

What's the point of making shit up, so badly? Do you like living in a fabrication?

There was no ideological friendliness.

Things aren't quite so simple.

"Lenin is the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between Communism and the Hitler faith is very slight." - Joseph Goebbels, “Hitlerite Riot in Berlin: Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler to Lenin,” New York Times, November 28, 1925

“I know how much the German nation loves its Fuhrer, ... I should therefore like to drink to his heath.” -- Joseph Stalin

From: p. 37, The Collapse of Communism in the USSR: Its Causes and Significance, by Doug Lorimer

Stalin's foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, even denounced a war against Hitlerism as "criminal". In a speech to the Supreme Soviet on October 3, 1939 he stated:

The English government has declared its war aims as nothing more nor less than the annihilation of Hitlerism ... A war of this kind cannont be justified in any way. The ideology of Hitlerism, like any ideological system, can be accepted or rejected -- this is a question of political opinion. But anyone can understand that an ideology cannot be destroyed by force. ... This is why it is sensless, indeed criminal, to wage any such war for the elimination of Hitlerism."

German–Soviet military victory parade in Brest-Litovsk

In these sad times it is exceptionally comforting to see many Parisian workers talking to German soldiers as friends, in the street or at the corner café. Well done, comrades, and keep it up, even if it displeases some of the middle classes - as stupid as they are mischievous. The brotherhood of man will not remain forever a hope: it will become a living reality. --- L 'Humanite, 4 July 1940

Watch The Soviet Story from 38:57 - 44:45

Nazis & Communists: Ideological Bedfellows (Read the whole thing.)

. . . . Max Eastman, an early communist who later saw the light and rejected communism, wrote in his 1937 book The End of Socialism in Russia that the Soviet Union was “a totalitarian state not in essence different from that of Hitler and Mussolini.” Eastman later wrote in a subsequent book, Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955): “Stalin’s totalitarian police state is not an approximation to, of something like, or in some respects comparable with Hitler’s. It is the same thing, only more ruthless, more cold-blooded, more astute, more extreme in its economic policies, more explicitly committed to world conquest, and more dangerous to democracy and civilized morals.”

Erica Mann in 1938 noted the common war waged by Bolsheviks and Nazis against God and family, and wrote: “Again, all we have to do is replace ‘Bolshevism’ with ‘National Socialism’ to get a fairly exact picture.” Sir Arnold Lunn wrote in his 1939 book Communism and Socialism: “The quarrel between Communists and Nazis or between Stalin’s Communists and Trotsky’s Communists is not an economic controversy, but a struggle for the spoils of office.”

Herman Rauschning, the Danzig Nazi leader who later repudiated Nazism, wrote in his 1939 book The Revolution of Nihilism: “It is in the nature of things that the planning and methods of work of the Soviet State and the Fascist and the National Socialist States should be growing more and

You seem to be wrong on multiple counts. WWI, for one thing. Trademark, for another. The patent already expired by end of WWI. Lastly, it looks like Germany punished US Bayer, not USA punishing Bayer. Fuck, that's a lot wrong. http://www.history.com/this-da...

What you are saying is right. But President Reagan had put a big start in disassembling Unions. We are down to lest than 10% and a lot of blood was shed to make these unions. The Haymarket Riot used bombs and that gave them a reason to strike back. http://www.history.com/topics/...

You could actually publicly be a communist or an anarchist [...]

That's kind of sad — as if the Rosenbergs' case has not taught us any lessons...

Other than that the main emphasis of a clearance investigation seems to revolve around whether or not someone could blackmail you.

Yes, it makes perfect sense to check, whether an otherwise loyal citizen can be compelled into treason by an asshole... But one should still be even more suspicious of actual assholes — like our "heroine"...

http://www.history.com/this-da... - This was all pre-union, Ford wasn't unionized until the 1940s.

Other perk included housing and free copies of The Dearborn Independent

ok found it:
http://www.history.com/this-da...

have crossed the Arctic Ocean under ice, for example: http://www.history.com/this-da...

People are afraid of nuclear fission whether or not those fears are justified. That is human nature and it is unlikely to change.

Nonsense. It's not even remotely human nature, and it was changed, forcibly. Humanity's fear, and in particular Americans' fear of nuclear power is one of the great propaganda victories of the 20th Century.

Immediately after the end of World War II, the Greatest Generation was absolutely convinced that they were entering the Atomic Age and that it was going to be the best thing since sliced bread. Science fiction was absolutely saturated with atomic everything, and even though it was a disrespected fringe literature at the time, that didn't stop its enthusiasm from leaking over into the rest of the world. To the point where "atomic" became synonymous with "good", "modern", and "the future", slapped on advertising copy as a matter of course, in much the same way as "green" is today. The phrase "too cheap to meter" originated in 1954, and though the speaker was referring to fusion power, the phrase stuck, and is still applied today, to both fission and fusion. (Sarcastically, nowadays, but it persists nonetheless.) The future was bright, and it was going to be nuclear powered.

Then Green Peace set themselves against it. They spent the '60s and '70s telling the world how dangerous nuclear power was, and when the Three Mile Island accident happened in 1979, they were quick to capitalize on it, despite there being zero injuries or deaths caused by it right up through the present day. They spent the next seven years hammering on that accident, trying to convince the world how scary nuclear power was. And they were succeeding. If the propaganda had gone the other way, Three Mile Island would have been a great victory for nuclear power. Even with a partial core meltdown, no one was injured. The "Big Scary Thing" had happened, and it wasn't scary at all. Except people were being told that it was scary, and after a generation of it being hammered on, it was starting to stick.

Then in 1986, the Chernobyl disaster happened, the greatest gift to anti-nuclear forces since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And still, it could have gone the other way. The Nixon era attempt at détente had withered and the USSR was again the Great Enemy of America. (The USSR didn't disintegrate until the tail end of 1991.) Chernobyl could have been spun as a Soviet screwup, proof of the inherent inferiority of the Soviet system and indeed, it was used for that purpose, but by far the loudest message hitched to that disaster was "nuclear bad". And it worked.

It took two generations of intense propaganda and legal obstructionism, but Green Peace won. They had completely reversed the attitude towards nuclear power of an entire continent. Meanwhile, between 1946 and 1989, 4208 people, including 116 children, died in coal mining accidents and disasters around the world, while just 31 people died as a direct result of Chernobyl. (The count of indirect deaths of both coal burning and the Chernobyl disaster are violently disputed, so I'll leave them aside, saying only that both are much bigger than the direct deaths.) Human nature should have been terrified of coal by the end of the 20th Century, because it had indisputably and directly killed so many. Human nature is to be scared of the things we're told to be scared o

Blame the anti-intellectual Europeans who forget how everything worked in their quest for a Catholic idiocracy.

http://www.history.com/news/th...

Once mocked by scientists, now an accepted part of Earth's history. Except by the "deniers".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.history.com/shows/a...

My head asplode. Because Poe's Law.

And the SMART people in the room know that whether you are a NAZI is defined by what you say and do, not by who you are.

So what has Milo said or done that makes him a NAZI? I'll wait.

Hell, I would argue that Israel has become a NAZI state !

That's because you're ignorant and prone to hyperbole.

No other time in history has somebody like him failed to become a dictator

People were afraid that Bush would become a dictator. And then Obama. And now, of course, Trump. He'll be gone in four or eight years, just like those who came before him, even Andrew Jackson.

Actually launching and retrieving flying vehiclies from massive airships is nothing new. the US Akron and US Macon were blimp aircraft carriers carring multiple planes able to both launch and retrieve.

http://www.airships.net/us-nav...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.history.com/topics/...

the russians even built planes that other planes could launch from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and Darpa still wants these:
http://www.popsci.com/article/...

and both the russians and Lockeed developed concept aircraft based on nuclear powered super planes with runways built into them:
https://forums.spacebattles.co...
russina surface effects nuclear powered sea skimmer concept:
http://englishrussia.com/2015/...

The Electoral College was a concession to the less populous states to get them to join the Union, along with the bicameral legislature with the equal representation in the Senate. This was so that the states with larger populations couldn't dominate the political landscape as easily. But why let that get in the way of a perfectly good opportunity to play the race-card?

It sought to reconcile differing state and federal interests, provide a degree of popular participation in the election, give the less populous states some additional leverage in the process by providing “senatorial” electors, preserve the presidency as independent of Congress, and generally insulate the election process from political manipulation.

That was politics.

Really?

Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church.

Of course this is against a backdrop of massive energy consumption increases, which makes moving away from coal extremely difficult.

China has epic pollution problems based on its dependency on low-grade coal. How bad is it? They're sending their kids to school in surgical masks, which unfortunately do almost nothing. Can you imagine that happening here?

Recent research, however, shows that while China's coal consumption has continued to increase, it has decreased as a fraction of total energy production. They aren't ready to solve their pollution problems, but they're at least trying to reduce the rate at which the problems get worse. They're trying to *shift* their coal use away from cities like Beijing.

Anyone who favors reviving coal jobs in the US should look at the air pollution problems in Beijing, or the Killer "Fog" that blanketed London in 1952. Not that that is likely to happen here; short of an attempt to actually promote coal use over natural gas coal won't be able to compete.

Here you go, once you've had your parents read it to you go ahead and read this.Hopefully that clears that up for you! :)

waiting for the kill

Yes I saw you and your friends flying over London England on December the 5 1952 while the purse snatchers robbed little old ladies and slipped away because of the fog.

You're about a century too late.

Yellow journalism isn't a new thing.

Kinda reminds one of the Roosevelt's Fireside chats

Ok I think Trump is a moron who will probably fuck the country over,

If that is your expectation? What is your conclusion, maybe this:

but I support the democratic process therefore support him as the elected leader.

Democratic process? People go and vote, one person, one vote to be counted. Is it then fair, to filter those votes by state through another element - electoral college - historical origin described there: http://www.history.com/topics/... and turn the result into the opposite what the vote count resulted in?
Not the first time this happened and supposedly again this time. Isn't this the opposite of a democratic process and can be manipulated?

In general, you have a 2-party system in the US and all kinds of things happen to leave it that way. Not really a great mechanism to reflect different opinions and promote changes.

One thing I am already sick of is the amount of anti-Trump articles doing the rounds based purely on speculation of what he might do as POTUS.
  This sort of thing is bearable during an election when everyone is trying to convince others to vote for their person, but its over, he won, let it go.

Hold it right there - not just yet the POTUS but given plans for his presidency, selecting and announcing his cabinet members and coming back to his election campaign promises. That has already great impact on people and other states which are watching anxiously. That's not speculation, those are facts!

One example: Deport "illegal" aliens in whatever great numbers - millions or even a fraction of that - what are the logistics to run such an undertaking, the legal background to even do this and the repercussions in people's mind - aren't US immigration offices overloaded with applicants fearing Trump action's consequences. In an orderly legal system, there will be court cases with deportations but personal/judges have been cut short: http://qz.com/771583/a-record-...

He should be given the chance to lead and be judged on his actual decisions, not what we think he might do. All this Anti-Trump hysteria is doing is proving Trump right and feeding the monster.

Trump has no political experience at all:
Professional Experience
Chairman, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, Incorporated
Founder/Chairman/President/Chief Executive Officer, The Trump Organization, 1975-present

And seem to have screwed people during his career, I think it's just natural to be suspicious. Why don't YOU relax?

OMG! That's simply not true! Horses!? WTF? You're either lying or willfully ignorant. Here are just a handful of citations that support my statement:

http://dailysignal.com/2016/11...

http://www.history.com/topics/...

http://www.historycentral.com/...

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/...

Show me what you got that supports your Horseback premise. Take your time...

US elections were very different before TV. When voter made a decision based on mostly written information and the candidates actual policy positions, plus maybe seeing a candidate once address a crowd, elections weren't about sound bites and hot takes. But the Nixon-Kennedy debate marked the beginning of a new era.

I don't buy that at all. FB is mostly "written information". Candidates policy proposals are more available for scrutiny than ever.

There was also plenty of garbage "journalism" before TV.

TV and Twitter have taken over not by force, by by virtue of giving people the soundbites and one-liners that they want.

Elections, and politics in general, were very different when they were largely an exercise among "elites". That is just the plain, if sad, fact of the matter. Populism never leads to responsible government or prosperity.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." H.L. Mencken

Well, until Facebook goes back to less than 1 billion monthly users, your idea sucks for not impacting American politics.

It's not just Facebook.

US elections were very different before TV. When voter made a decision based on mostly written information and the candidates actual policy positions, plus maybe seeing a candidate once address a crowd, elections weren't about sound bites and hot takes. But the Nixon-Kennedy debate marked the beginning of a new era.

This way the same sort of "state change in voting", 56 years later. Trump was a master at getting free press in a world of 24-hour news coverage and social media and one-liners and tweets. Even less information being looked at than the TV era. Trump demonstrated that "any press is good press" as he rode the wave of "talking heads just can't stop talking about how bad he is" to victory. That's the new era - 140-character attention spans.

The content hasn't mattered much for 56 years, and matters less now. People aren't persuaded by "fake news", they've already decided based on the world around them, and grab any quote that looks good to defend that position. Clearly the media had very little actual influence this election. I doubt social media did either - people decide first, based on the real world ("it's the economy, stupid"), then talk about it on social media.

I am sorry, but those reasons are completely and totally wrong. Just do a Google search and click any article on the topic.
Here y'a go, first hit on Google: History.com

The reasons you listed come from someone reasoning "Well, back then they rode on horseback, and it was hard to get around and count all those votes, etc." But it is not supported by history. They were perfectly capable of counting the popular vote and rolling that up. They didn't pick the electoral college as a way to get around technological limitations. Think about it: They had to count the popular votes in the state anyway before they could send the electors.

There are 2 much simpler reasons:
1. They believed states should get one vote for each senator and each delegate, not a simple number based on popular vote. This goes back to the "great compromise" that resulted in the bicameral legislature.
2. It abstracts the state's election system from the federal election system.

Let me expand a little bit:
If a state was to get 4 electoral votes, then they wanted each state to choose how those votes are apportioned. That means if one stated wanted the state legislature to choose, they could do that. If another state wanted the governor to decide, they could do that. If yet another state wanted it to be decided by a boxing match, they could do that.

That principle still exists today, which is why some states give all the electoral votes to one candidate, and other states split the votes.