Slashdot Mirror
Electoral College Elects Donald Trump As President (nbcnews.com)
mi writes: The drama is over, Donald J. Trump passed the 270 electoral votes necessary to become President. A few electors dissented, resulting in their prompt dismissal and replacement per their state's laws. Ironically, more dissenters turned on Clinton than on Trump... The sky may not be falling yet, but the Earth is already in peril.
I fear the drama is just beginning.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
She did win the popular vote though.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is no stopping him; Trump will soon be president. And I for one welcome our new orange overlord. I’d like to remind him that as a trusted slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in his underground cheeto dust cave hotels.
(Disclaimer: I didn't vote for the SOB.)
I note that in all the discussion of how Clinton won the popular vote, in CalExit America, she actually lost by about half a million votes. California's vote was that lopsided.
Trump is ... an embarrassment, at best, but the overheated histrionics of the Left wore very very thin a long time ago.
I've been saying for years: Never give powers to your very favorite president in history that you wouldn't want to see in the hands of the president who horrifies you the most. The current administration has spent 8 years weaponizing the Federal government to go after his opponents. For those who applauded that... we'll see how that works out for you in the next 4-8 years.
Maybe we'll get some actual consensus that federalism and limited powers are a good thing again. If so, a Trump presidency might be just the medicine we need, no matter how bad it tastes.
Dems lost because hillary sucks, period!
And because they were too arrogant to elect her instead of bernie who was overall ranking higher than her against trump.
This story was submitted by mi, who is pretty much a partisan hack. It's written with little substance and is very misleading about the faithless electors. Although a couple of Democratic electors attempted to switch their vote to Sanders, that's not the main reason for faithless electors from that party. And two faithless Republican electors from Texas cast a single vote each for Kasich and Ron Paul. One of the faithless Democratic electors cast a protest vote because of the North Dakota pipeline. The others were actually casting votes for Republican candidates other than Trump to try to entice Republican electors to join them and send the election to the House of Representatives. That's why three Democratic faithless electors cast votes for Colin Powell. The story is so misleading and lacks so much substance that it's an embarrassment, even for Slashdot.
She did win the popular vote though.
The popular vote is trivia. Neither side was trying to win the popular vote. They spent their time and money to maximize the electoral. If the popular was the goal then they would have spent their time and money very different and we would have a very different popular vote as a result. Focusing on the popular vote is like focusing on the fact that the losing team in a football game moved the ball more yards. Interesting but neither team was trying for that.
Obama did a few odds/ends executive orders that could have been shut down by Congress if they cared to bother. Mostly he didn't lock up non-violent drug offenders and he didn't go out of his way to deport illegal immigrants who were holding down jobs (though his admin still did a fuck load of deporting). The right didn't care that much about #1 and actively support #2 so long as they don't have to admit it to their base (they can't get enough of that sweet, sweet cheap labor).
We don't need federalism. The federal gov't were the ones that put a stop to the farce that was "Separate but Equal". They broke up the Trusts. They enabled the Unions that created the middle class. They bring in real and effective disaster relief and keep our shipping ports open. The State governments have proven themselves powerless to stand against even the smallest tyrannies time and time again. Look at Flint, Mi's Water supply (that Gov Snyder is still fighter the cleanup of) and the complete breakdown in Democracy it represented.
What's the phrase about small gov'ts? Small enough to drown in a bathtub? That's your democracy. Small enough to drown in a bathtub...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
California!? What do they know? Oh yeah, how to build a economic powerhouse that respects cultural diversity.
Not exactly. The fact that several high value tech companies decided to locate somewhere over there has more to do with mundane things (like weather and geography) than any political factors. If New England was one state instead of several, you'd see basically the same landmass only with a bigger economy.
She did win the popular vote though.
Yes, only in America can you win by 3 million votes and still somehow lose. Thanks, Electoral College!
Somehow? There is no mystery. She was not trying for the popular vote, both Hillary and Trump were allocating time and money for the electoral vote. If the popular vote were the goal they both would have allocated time and money very differently and that popular vote would have been very different. The current popular vote is a side effect, trivia.
Also its not the electoral college that is the problem. The Electoral College only has a small effect itself, a small bump due to the two electors every state gets that correspond to their Senators, the remaining number of electors corresponding to their House representation which is proportional to population. The real huge bump is due to the states going winner take all. That is a state problem, not a federal problem. Some states do proportional rather than winner take all. Two states?
My only hope is that he will do something that can get him impeached relatively quickly, before too much damage can be done.
Trump has already put a fail-safe in place for that. Unless someone really wants to see Mike Pence as president, they would do their very best to make sure that doesn't happen.
The mountains of madness have many little plateaus of sanity - Terry Pratchett.
I honestly believe that the incoming President Trump showed great insight when he said this:
https://twitter.com/realDonald...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I can only imagine the outcry, if HRC had won and the republicans were asking to ignore the votes of Americans, because they voted incorrectly. Seriously, the people who were honestly hoping that the electoral college voters would ignore the votes of the people of their states, and simply disenfranchise however many million voters it would take, just so they can get their way?
I personally think Trump will be a horrible, horrible president. I cannot imagine any good coming from his presidency. The world climate alone may never recover. My only hope is that he will do something that can get him impeached relatively quickly, before too much damage can be done. Having said that, I still cannot understand the thought process behind attempting to tell 50% of the country, "your vote doesn't count, unless you vote the way you are supposed to". If that actually happened, the utter and complete demise of any semblance of democracy in the USA would have happened, and there would either be a) a revolt, or b) a new, non-democratic country.
Can you imagine the outcry if China had hacked the RNC and tipped the election so that HCR won? Do you really think that all we'd have at this point would be a bipartisan call by the handful of remaining still rational Rep. and Dem. senators for action, a call that will come to nothing, and a few media personalities expressing 'concern'? We'd have a full scale armed uprising on our hans complete with convoys of camo coloured pickup trucks full of tacticool 2nd amendment people carrying tricked out M4s and AK-47s cruising through the streets and sweeping house to house looking for 'librul China lovin traitors'.
Democrats haven't been this mad since Republicans freed their slaves
She did win the popular vote though.
Yes, only in America can you win by 3 million votes and still somehow lose. Thanks, Electoral College!
As someone who voted for Clinton (not as a vote for her, but a vote against the Orangegutan), don't thank the EC. Thank the DNC for crowning a fucking crook, HRC. The DNC lived in a fucking bubble not grasping how much hate there is for HRC.
It doesn't fucking matter if the hate is deserved or not. That's reality, and a politician should have had a pulse on it. Instead HRC chose ambition over country and against all logic, she went for it. From the moment she was nominated by the DNC, I knew the gig was (almost) over. I knew it when I cast my vote for her. You had to be living in a fucking bubble to not see it.
So here we are, today. The Electoral College did its work. Don't blame it for the output. Blame the input provided by both major parties. Garbage in, garbage out.
Also, Democrats seem to like the idea of a limited federal government again.
"His name was James Damore."
Um, who do you think won the popular vote?
Nobody, because there is no "popular vote" for President of the US.
"Popular vote" is a fiction invented by those who are unhappy that their candidate lost the election, or by those who won and want to claim some "huge mandate from the public" to do something. The rest of us know what it takes to win.
It is ridiculous to assume that the "popular vote" would be the same were it the actual system in use to elect the President, and that's why it is ridiculous to assume it means anything when it is not. If the voters (and candidates) operated under a "popular vote" system, the results could be, and probably would be, very much different. There are too many instances of people who don't bother voting because they know their state will go to the "other person". For example, if you live in California why bother voting for a Republican president when you know that the Democrat is going to win anyway? Many of those non-votes would have voted had "popular vote" been the rule of the day, and it is unlikely that the California statewide vote total would have been as lopsided as it was. Or maybe it would be. That's the point -- you can't know until it happens, and it didn't happen.
Except that Drano is often a bad choice to fix a blockage, as it can damage pipes and won't clear some kinds of debris. It's the proper tool for someone too lazy to use proper tools or too cheap to call a professional.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/garden/24fix.html as one example.
It's even "terrible for the environment." Hey, look at that, so is Trump.
Thanks for the oddly-appropriate metaphor.
Why wouldn't it be fair if 10 million people had their votes counted equally as 10 million other people? As it is, politicians basically spend all their time in swing states. People make a big deal about how they would go to dense population areas, but as it is, they DON'T go to those places because they already have the vote for that state in the bag.