Trump protestors

[tar]

Delta1212,

 

My intention was not to call democrats names, but to point out that the ascribing of the values of one section of the electorate of a party, to the whole party is not likely to be correct, and especially not correct if you have the tendency of ascribing decent values to your own party, and casting the other party as deplorable.

 

It is just as likely in terms of voter fraud and Intimidation, and peer pressure and tampering, that a KKK member tied up some jew and black guy on their way to the polls, as some young unethical campaign worker "helped" an invalid at an old age home, cast their absentee ballot. These things, I think would balance out, and any complete and fair recount would cast both republican and democratic votes into question.

 

Can you promise me, for instance, that there is not one case where that unethical student, cast an absentee ballot from their parent's address, and voted in person from the campus polling place?

 

Regards, TAR

[waitforufo]

You are obfuscating. Nobody wakes up one day and randomly finds themselves at a Constitutional Convention. There is usually first a lengthy conversation about whether something needs to be changed or not.

 

So, in your opinion, is there any threshold of discrepancy between popular and electoral vote that could be reached that would make you think "Hmm, maybe a constitutional amendment, brought about through the legally defined channels for doing so, would be a good idea."

 

Incidentally, Trump has yet to actually win according to the rules laid out in the Constitution. As you say, the popular vote doesn't matter, only the electoral votes. And Constitutionally, the electors can do whatever they want. Since they haven't voted yet, Trump hasn't won yet.

 

We all know he is going to, but if you're going to be a stickler for constitutional law, you can't pick and choose which elements you want to follow.

So by lengthy conversation do you mean a conversation that will last past January 20, 2017? If so, have at it.

 

No, there isn't any threshold of discrepancy between popular and electoral vote that could be reached that would make me think "Hmm, maybe a constitutional amendment, brought about through the legally defined channels for doing so, would be a good idea."

 

Now of course you and other US citizens may wish to abandon the electoral college in favor of the popular vote. I have pointed out the means through which this can be done. I strongly encourage you, and those of like mind to give it a try.

 

Yes, I agree that Donald Trump is not officially president elect until January 6, 2017, when the electoral college votes are counted in congress, and then does not become president until January 20, 2017. I have never denied this.

 

Who is denying that Trump won?

Perhaps you should read iNow's post 403, your post 405, ten oz's post 407, and Memammal's post 416.

 

 

In my opinion, if true and not merely captious, that no degree could exist which would change your point of view lacks reasoning.There is a degree at which I would change my point of view about anything and everything. If you do not allow for new information to update your prespective your are being unreasonable. Perhaps 2 million more popular votes isn't enough for you to consider revising how you feel but to say no number seems either dishonest or dangerous. Surely if Clinton won 120 million votes to Trumps 60 million votes yet lost the Electoral College you would reconsider? There is a point where the imbalance become too great for us to call our system democratic.

 

"We must follow our Consitution" is an empty statement. The Constitution is different today than it was in 1787. It was designed in such a way as to allow change. Changes are the reason why more than only land owners are allowed to vote, a President can only serve two terms, we still don't have slaves, and etc. The total populatioon of the Country when the Constitution was signed was 3.9 million. The 2 million more votes Hillary Clinton received is a number larger than the total pool of eligible voters that existed when the Constitution was created.

I think the system works as designed and works just fine. Change the constitution and I will change my perspective. I will then say we have to do it the new way.

 

If you don't like the constitution, as I have pointed out, feel free to attempt to change it. Your hurdle will be high. If "We must follow our Constitution" is an empty statement, then the constitution is an irrelevant document. I doubt our country would be improved by dismissing the constitution as irrelevant.

 

Yes, our country is a much larger piece of real estate with a much larger population then when it was founded. Each state, as it was added, understood that it would have to live under the constitution or work by constitutional means to change it. As you point out, the constitution has been amended in the past through constitutional means. I give you my strongest encouragement to attempt to change the constitution. I doubt you will succeed, but I wish you luck.

 

Swansont is likely on a more productive path. The state legislature of each state can choose any means it prefers to cast it's electoral college votes. States don't even need to put presidents on the ballot, but could instead cast their state electoral college votes by legislative act. The state legislature could give that power to the state governor. My guess is that this would also fail. I just don't see smaller states diminishing there voice to the shouts of the popular vote.

 

I have an even better solution. Why don't you pick presidential candidates that can win the electoral college? Instead you pick candidates like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton and then wonder why they lose. Obama didn't ignore entire segments of the population and won. Perhaps you should learn from Obama.

[tar]

delta1212,

 

Would such unethical behavior be excused if the student defended themselves by saying they wanted to make sure a misogynist was not elected and the first woman president was?

 

Regards, TAR

[Delta1212]

delta1212,

 

Would such unethical behavior be excused if the student defended themselves by saying they wanted to make sure a misogynist was not elected and the first woman president was?

 

Regards, TAR

What unethical behavior?

[swansont]

ten oz,

 

except for the fact that the straw that is being grasped at is election fraud

The hope is that somebody paid by Trump hacked into the electronic voting system and found a way to cleverly "lose" one out of every 14 votes cast electronically for Hilary and switch them to Trump, and that these votes have left no paper trail, and therefore the recount will be meaningless and the suspicion will be enough to demand that EVERY electronic system be suspected of being hacked by Russia or Trump, and that the election needs to be redone, using paper ballots.

I think the hope is that if there were any shenanigans that a trail was left.

 

How this would not be a conspiracy theory is beyond me. Could be true, we could all be dupes, but same for black helicopters and alien anal probes.

You're jumping the gun by assuming that no evidence is found and that a lot of people would still be pressing the issue. (there will always be people wearing tinfoil hats; the number will never drop to zero)

 

It ignores the reality that in every state, there are good people that are looking for things that don't add up. And the systems have been checked and double checked for bugs and vulnerabilities by people that are citizens of the U.S. and designed the system to not be vulnerable to such attempts. Do you trust these people, or not?

These computer people raising the issue are good people looking for things that don't add up. They may have found one. It may be worth investigating further.

 

But what that means, is not that Trump rigged the election, but that the Russians did, and that we cannot have an honest election ever again, unless we use paper ballots, and trust the old system of trusting personal integrity to ensure a fair election. But that would also mean that we are at the mercy of the Russians in any and all areas of our computer systems, and would have to scrap and redo everything. The reach of the conspiracy would grow, and we would all be afraid that the Russians were syphoning off our bank accounts, a 14th of a cent at a time, to where nobody noticed the theft.

I used a paper ballot, which was the optically scanned and offers a paper trail. You have introduced a false dilemma here.

 

Bottom line, believing that Trump could not have won legitimately is virtually saying that 60 million of your fellow Americans stole the election from you, and the system did not work for you

You are ignoring the very real effect of voter suppression and gerrymandering. Unfortunately there were instances of this which could not be fixed before the election. Or, as in the case of North Carolina, the court ruling seems to have been largely ignored.

 

What you are ignoring, is that the populace of the U.S. is the same as it always was, except for a change in some demographic variables. Same people that voted for Trump, are the ones that have made this country work, for years. They are not the enemies of America nor her values, they are the upholders of such.

By saying this you imply that voters for Hillary are not. Screw that.

 

What would a recount hurt? The whole idea of an election. We would have to do the whole thing over again, the primaries, the conventions the whole deal. And it would give a chance for people to vote based on what happened when they did not. Maybe Bush or Kasich would win the republican primary if people got a do over, or Sanders or Biden win the democratic line if people got a do over. From the beginning I thought Trump was not a serious candidate. Turns out, he was.

A recount is only a problem if it gives a significantly different result, and if it did, it means the original tally was wrong.

 

You have mentioned doing the whole thing over again twice now. What provision is there in the law and/or constitution for a do-over?

 

[Ten oz]

@Delta1212, WI is inside of a single percentage point with less that 30k votes separating them.

[swansont]

 

swansonT,

 

Thank you for the correction of the numbers. But and this is a big but, people that stayed home, may have stayed home for different reasons, and people that voted for Hillary may have not wanted her as much as I did not want Trump. You can not say that people that did not vote for Trump, did not want Trump. It might be true, but you are assuming that everyone that voted for Trump is an idiot, and everybody that did not vote for Trump hates him and does not want him as their president. You cannot make such gross generalizations in this case.

 

 

I did not make these gross generalizations. You did, by assuming things that I did not say. Please stop with the straw-man posts.

 

You claimed that "62 million plus Americans that did not want to have Trump represent their country". The numbers I quoted were to show that this claim is not accurate. First of all, you ignored 5 million people who voted for Johnson or Stein. Secondly, there are 138 million registered voters who did not vote for Trump. For your claim to be true, all of the nonvoters must have wanted Trump to be president. I find that highly unlikely, and am certainly not going to accept it without evidence.

 

I made no claim as to any of the non-voters wanting anyone else to be president. That's not required to show that your claim is false. Reading anything more into my objection is all on you.

 

Perhaps you should read iNow's post 403, your post 405, ten oz's post 407, and Memammal's post 416.

 

 

The only one that comes close is Memammal's post, which suggest doing a recount to be sure of the results. Maybe you should reread the other posts you listed.

 

For example, correcting a claim about how many people didn't want Trump to be president is not claiming he didn't win the election. What about that exchange don't you understand?

 

If you need clarification from the other posters, you should ask.

[tar]

on this popular vote thing, I have an issue with the changing demographics of my country causing an increase in democratic registration

 

on two scores

 

One, how is it possible that the "real" values of democracy and American values, would come from people new to being American, and the people that have made America a place to come to, are now idiots?

 

And two, I have always thought it unfair, that I married and had two children, the replacement number, fair to the world and to myself, and yet I must take care of other people's children because they had more than they could manage to raise in safety and comfort, for whatever reason. Are not children primarily the responsibility of their parents? If a catholic family has 5 kids and raises them all, with good ethics and schooling, to be contributing members of society, that is one thing. If a catholic family has five kids, when they couldn't afford the first, and the father is a drunk and the mother is on pain killers and government assistance...it seems unfair to me, that lack of responsibility, should transfer the burden of raising those kids, to me. Sure global warming is a threat, but so is overpopulation. People should not have babies they can't take care of. I am not proposing forced abortions or letting such babies suffer, but I can not reach into other family's lives and tell them what to do, so I expect others to take care of their own children, or not have children they cannot raise. Not assume they can suckle off the cow, and not help mend the fences and bail the hay.

[Delta1212]

A lot of the "changing demographics" are the result of a larger percentage of the population being black. Most black people can trace their ancestory in this country back farther than a lot of white people can. They aren't "new" to this country.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

I said 62 million plus, meaning we know at least the count of 62 million and growing voted for Hilary, and in this, proved they did not want Trump. People that stayed home or voted for other candidates, did not help Hilary defeat Trump, and in this did not show us that they did not want Trump to be their president. If they felt strongly about not wanting Trump to be our president, they should have voted for Hilary. She was the only candidate that could win, instead of Trump.

 

Regards, TAR

Delta1212,

 

Well then blacks are not practicing replacement numbers when it comes to planning their families.

 

Should government programs reward this behavior, stressing our resources like that?

 

Why do you vote democrat, automatically, if you are black?

 

Regards, TAR

Besides California has a lot of white democrats and pacific island democrats and Hispanic white democrats. The black vote I don't think turns California blue. I think liberal thinking turns California blue.

[Delta1212]

Black fertility rates are actually below the replacement rate in this country. White fertility rates are simply farther below replacement rate.

[tar]

it is the left coast

[CharonY]

on this popular vote thing, I have an issue with the changing demographics of my country causing an increase in democratic registration

 

on two scores

 

One, how is it possible that the "real" values of democracy and American values, would come from people new to being American, and the people that have made America a place to come to, are now idiots?

 

And two, I have always thought it unfair, that I married and had two children, the replacement number, fair to the world and to myself, and yet I must take care of other people's children because they had more than they could manage to raise in safety and comfort, for whatever reason. Are not children primarily the responsibility of their parents? If a catholic family has 5 kids and raises them all, with good ethics and schooling, to be contributing members of society, that is one thing. If a catholic family has five kids, when they couldn't afford the first, and the father is a drunk and the mother is on pain killers and government assistance...it seems unfair to me, that lack of responsibility, should transfer the burden of raising those kids, to me. Sure global warming is a threat, but so is overpopulation. People should not have babies they can't take care of. I am not proposing forced abortions or letting such babies suffer, but I can not reach into other family's lives and tell them what to do, so I expect others to take care of their own children, or not have children they cannot raise. Not assume they can suckle off the cow, and not help mend the fences and bail the hay.

 

This is not how society works, tar. With no kids, why should I subsidize schools and other facilities that benefit kids at all? The reason is that it benefits society as a whole. Regardless whether you got one or two kids, you benefit from schools that are heavily subsidized and the same goes for colleges if either you or your kids visited one (yes tuition fees are horrendeous, yet most of the operating funds are coming from state, not from tuition).

[tar]

Delta1212

 

Black fertility rates are actually below the replacement rate in this country. White fertility rates are simply farther below replacement rate.

 

Well I don't know how you are slicing the numbers, but somebody has not been practicing replacement thinking. The county had a population of less than 200 million when I was growing up, and has a population of more than 300 million now. If white population did not grow, and black population did not grow, where did we get the extra 100 million from? Longevity rates? Immigration?

 

Regards, TAR

[swansont]

SwansonT,

 

I said 62 million plus, meaning we know at least the count of 62 million and growing voted for Hilary, and in this, proved they did not want Trump.

 

62 million plus implies less than 63 million, so that number isn't even close. You didn't say we know for sure that these people wanted Hillary, you said we know they didn't want Trump. So you have to include the 5+ million that voted for the other candidates, and some unknown number of non-voting registered voters. Hillary's count is now north of 64 million votes, so we have at least 69 million people who didn't choose Trump. And untold millions who didn't want him but chose not to vote.

 

SwansonT,

People that stayed home or voted for other candidates, did not help Hilary defeat Trump, and in this did not show us that they did not want Trump to be their president. If they felt strongly about not wanting Trump to be our president, they should have voted for Hilary. She was the only candidate that could win, instead of Trump.

This is just moving the goalposts. This was not the claim to which I responded, so I don't really care how much revising you do to your claim in order to make it true, like Obi-Wan's dialog in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (From a certain point of view Darth Vader killed Luke's father. Yeah, right. A weak effort at rewriting the plot line because you wanted to make more movies) Facts don't depend on a point of view. The original claim was not accurate.

[Delta1212]

Delta1212

 

 

Well I don't know how you are slicing the numbers, but somebody has not been practicing replacement thinking. The county had a population of less than 200 million when I was growing up, and has a population of more than 300 million now. If white population did not grow, and black population did not grow, where did we get the extra 100 million from? Longevity rates? Immigration?

 

Regards, TAR

Partially immigration, partially increased longevity, partially simple timing. The US has been hovering around and dipping below replacement rate more often than not since the early 70s for the population as a whole. It dropped below replacement rate for the last time around when the recession hit and has never climbed back out.

 

The only racial demographic I see as of 2013, the last time I could find a demographic breakdown of fertility rate for, had non-white Hispanic as the only group over replacement rate, and that was 0.05 children per women above replacement, which is practically nothing.

 

If overall fertility doesn't rebound, I would expect the population to grow considerably slower in the future even including immigration. Potentially even shrink. That said, the fertility rate hasn't been that low long enough for the effect to be as obvious. The population having children right now is still generally larger than their parents' generation, so you're still seeing people born faster than they are dying off.

 

You need most of a lifespan to pass before that trend reverses once the population dips under replacement rate, and we're going to only just start to see those effects as the Baby Boomer generation begins to retire and move past the average life expectancy.

Edited November 23, 2016 by Delta1212

[tar]

CharonY,

 

I understand that public works and public schools benefit society as a whole. My unfair claim is that some groups of people don't pull their weight. Some are white people in rural West Virginia, some are black people in the ghetto, some are immigrants from all over the world, that come here for school and work, and send their paychecks home to their mother country, some are Mexican drug gangs that not only have their women on the dole, but deal drugs and live a criminal code. It is not that I don't want to accept the help of my neighbors to build a safe and secure and comfortable and nice looking existence. It is that I don't want other people, other than those contributing, to take advantage of the system that contributing Americans have built, over the last few centuries...it is that I want them to understand they are expected to contribute and follow the laws of the land, not bring their own culture in with a sense of entitlement, and refuse to let their culture melt into the pot. There are rich communities in North New Jersey that are heavily Ethnic Asian that brought a sense of responsibility and hard work, that contribute greatly to our businesses and culture and schools. Then there are areas in Paterson and Newark were I am afraid to get out of the car.

 

Who is being a better American? The Indian couple with high paying tech jobs and kids at the top of their class, or the gang banger in Paterson with who knows how many kids with how many women? Some get it. Some do not. Some I feel are my fellow citizens, some I feel are enemies of society.

 

don't you feel the same?

 

Regards, TAR

[swansont]

 

Well I don't know how you are slicing the numbers, but somebody has not been practicing replacement thinking. The county had a population of less than 200 million when I was growing up, and has a population of more than 300 million now. If white population did not grow, and black population did not grow, where did we get the extra 100 million from? Longevity rates? Immigration?

 

 

 

White population grew (178 million in 1970 to 223 million in 2010) and black population grew (22.5 million to 39 million).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States#Historical_data_for_all_races_and_for_Hispanic_origin_.281610.E2.80.932010.29

[tar]

swansonT,

 

I did not realize that plus had an upper limit implied. Sorry for being inaccurate. I thanked you for your correction of the numbers. What is your point? Mine was only that the people that voted for Hilary, are the only ones allowed to claim that Trump is not their president. Everyone else, whether they stayed home, or voted for another candidate that had no chance of winning, or that wrote in their mother's name, failed to vote for Hilary. That is Hilary 69 million, people that did not want Hilary 224 million registered voters, minus 69 million, or 155 million. So there were more than twice as many people that didn't want Hillary, as voted for Hilary there is more than twice as many people that didn't want Trump than voted for Trump. Bottom line, the 10 million plurality that Clinton got, does not add up to "the country wanted Hilary". So it cannot mean the country didn't want Trump.

 

Regards, TAR

[swansont]

One, how is it possible that the "real" values of democracy and American values, would come from people new to being American, and the people that have made America a place to come to, are now idiots?

 

 

Why is it a given that the values exhibited several decades (or longer) ago were exemplary? We have been a racist, misogynistic country for the entirety of our existence; the thing that has changed is the degree to which we held those "values". We're also xenophobic, but the target of xenophobia has changed over time ("We don't want the Irish!")

 

Don't confuse the ideals expressed in our documents like the Declaration and the Constitution and way people act. (Much like the ideals of a religion and the actions of its followers can diverge widely) American "values", in the form of actions, include hatred and oppression. But those ideals do not appear in our founding documents. The question is which you want to embrace.

swansonT,

 

I did not realize that plus had an upper limit implied. Sorry for being inaccurate. I thanked you for your correction of the numbers. What is your point? Mine was only that the people that voted for Hilary, are the only ones allowed to claim that Trump is not their president. Everyone else, whether they stayed home, or voted for another candidate that had no chance of winning, or that wrote in their mother's name, failed to vote for Hilary. That is Hilary 69 million, people that did not want Hilary 224 million registered voters, minus 69 million, or 155 million. So there were more than twice as many people that didn't want Hillary, as voted for Hilary there is more than twice as many people that didn't want Trump than voted for Trump. Bottom line, the 10 million plurality that Clinton got, does not add up to "the country wanted Hilary". So it cannot mean the country didn't want Trump.

 

Regards, TAR

 

 

So your claim here is that people who wanted Trump to be president might have voted for someone else? Theoretically, the entire country could have wanted Trump but 64 million still voted for Hillary, for some bizarre reason.

 

I am more inclined to believe that people who actually support a candidate vote for that candidate, though the converse might not be true. Trump may have gotten a bunch of votes from people who simply hate Hillary (there are people on record as saying that, too), but people who actually wanted Trump probably did not vote for another candidate.

 

In that light, you can't even say that 62 million wanted Trump.

 

And again, since you still are clinging to this strawman, in this exchange I have made zero claims about "the country wanted Hilary". I am simply debunking your bogus claim that "62 million plus Americans that did not want to have Trump represent their country", since there is no basis for that number being accurate (with my interpretation of 62+) The numbers say that significantly more actual voters didn't want Trump than wanted him.

[tar]

swansonT,

 

Yes, significantly more actual voters wanted Hilary than wanted Trump.

 

This doesn't tell us a thing about what near half the registered voters that didn't come to the polls wanted. They probably wanted a better choice.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited November 23, 2016 by tar

[Ten oz]

CharonY,

 

I understand that public works and public schools benefit society as a whole. My unfair claim is that some groups of people don't pull their weight. Some are white people in rural West Virginia, some are black people in the ghetto, some are immigrants from all over the world, that come here for school and work, and send their paychecks home to their mother country, some are Mexican drug gangs that not only have their women on the dole, but deal drugs and live a criminal code. It is not that I don't want to accept the help of my neighbors to build a safe and secure and comfortable and nice looking existence. It is that I don't want other people, other than those contributing, to take advantage of the system that contributing Americans have built, over the last few centuries...it is that I want them to understand they are expected to contribute and follow the laws of the land, not bring their own culture in with a sense of entitlement, and refuse to let their culture melt into the pot. There are rich communities in North New Jersey that are heavily Ethnic Asian that brought a sense of responsibility and hard work, that contribute greatly to our businesses and culture and schools. Then there are areas in Paterson and Newark were I am afraid to get out of the car.

 

Who is being a better American? The Indian couple with high paying tech jobs and kids at the top of their class, or the gang banger in Paterson with who knows how many kids with how many women? Some get it. Some do not. Some I feel are my fellow citizens, some I feel are enemies of society.

 

don't you feel the same?

 

Regards, TAR

You do realize that Donald Trump has children with 3 different women don't you? Donald Trump has also lost fraud cases in court, failed to pay contractors for their work, and declared bankruptcy 6 times. Oh, and he has boasts about not paying taxes saying that it makes him smart. Is Donald Trump carrying his weight?

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

And I am not sure you are right about our values changing, in a constantly upward Hegelian spiral, as my enlightened Aunt would talk about. If "us" is the population of the Earth, we have at least North Korea and ISIS to consider are bucking the curve.

 

You do realize that Donald Trump has children with 3 different women don't you? Donald Trump has also lost fraud cases in court, failed to pay contractors for their work, and declared bankruptcy 6 times. Oh, and he has boasts about not paying taxes saying that it makes him smart. Is Donald Trump carrying his weight?

 

Yes I realize the thing about the different wives, and that he settled the court case, declared bankruptcy for several of the firms he purchased and has boasted about being smart to take advantage of the tax laws. And yes I think he is pulling his weight. He pays plenty of taxes, just not income tax, and pays the salaries of thousands of people, all over the country. He has employed many and built a lot of stuff. Now he has run for, and won the Presidency of the United States. I think taking on the responsibility for the lives and security of 320 million people is about as much weight as you could want a man to carry.

 

Regards, TAR

[Delta1212]

Well, I guess we're going to find out how well he does carry it once the weight is placed on him.

[Ten oz]

SwansonT,

 

And I am not sure you are right about our values changing, in a constantly upward Hegelian spiral, as my enlightened Aunt would talk about. If "us" is the population of the Earth, we have at least North Korea and ISIS to consider are bucking the curve.

 

 

Yes I realize the thing about the different wives, and that he settled the court case, declared bankruptcy for several of the firms he purchased and has boasted about being smart to take advantage of the tax laws. And yes I think he is pulling his weight. He pays plenty of taxes, just not income tax, and pays the salaries of thousands of people, all over the country. He has employed many and built a lot of stuff. Now he has run for, and won the Presidency of the United States. I think taking on the responsibility for the lives and security of 320 million people is about as much weight as you could want a man to carry.

 

Regards, TAR

Everything you stated that Trump does and has done is just an assumption. You give him the benefit of the doubt. He won't show us his financials so you just assuming the best. You are assuming that what he does pay in taxes elsewhere is enough to still be a net value to society, you assume those he pays is far greater than those who he has stiffed, you assume that those who he has hired generate more good to society than the negative created amongst those he has defrauded. We don't really have any idea because he will not show the American people what is what with his business or personnal finances.

Edited November 23, 2016 by Ten oz