Loose Ends: Holiday Vacation Update
Saw that this morning. Pretty much always that way with me and this blog is pretty clear evidence over the 13 years I’ve been writing it.
…And this is why I haven’t posted hardly at all since the election. I’m generally uninterested, though I poke fun and deride leftists here and there on Facebook as a sort of distraction. But even that’s wearing thin. It’s getting increasingly coolish and short-dayed up here in the mountains—first snow just a couple of weeks ago, 28F on the exterior therm this morning—so I’ve just been doing other stuff. Some days I don’t even check my email.
Just a couple of things to put forth that explain my disdain for the current politics now that an unfavorable, shocking, and “out-of-nowhere” result presented itself to the left.
- First it was bussing in rioters in the streets, some paid. Didn’t work.
- They threatened Electors in various ways. Didn’t work.
- Millions signed petitions. Didn’t work.
- They raised millions and millions from duped marks to initiate recounts in several swing states. Didn’t work. In fact, backfired, because Trump ended up with additional votes and the only questionable fraud shows up in heavily D precincts.
- Russians “hacked” voting machines. Didn’t work; and no, they didn’t.
- Russia “influenced” the election by “hacking” DNC emails. Well, no, they didn’t…it was an inside leak, not an outside hack and Wikileaks asserts Russia is not the source. But even if they had, it would have been a valuable Russian service in exposing the lies, deceit, corruption, and collusion of the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and the Main Pravda Media. Note they are not denying the truthfulness or authenticity of any of the Wikileaks, only the audacity to tell the truth about them.
- And now it’s so-called Fake News, euphemism for any truths about Hillary Clinton she doesn’t like.
Democrats are infants, toddlers, and children. There is no other explanation. These are people afraid of the dark, and of boogie men behind closet doors. And like children, they are in perpetual do-over mode. Here, let Maureen Dowd, of all people, explain by means of her brother, Kevin (NYT).
Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics. The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more popular votes. That can be her participation trophy. […]
Here is a final word to my Democratic friends. The election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts. And finally, to all the foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be a payoff or a rebate.
…And about that 2.8 million “popular vote” deal—scare quotes because there is no such official designation—it’s merely a compilation of the totals of all 50 states and DC. From Investor’s Business Daily:
As we noted in this space earlier, while Clinton’s overall margin looks large and impressive, it is due to Clinton’s huge margin of victory in one state — California — where she got a whopping 4.3 million more votes than Trump.
California is the only state, in fact, where Clinton’s margin of victory was bigger than President Obama’s in 2012 — 61.5% vs. Obama’s 60%.
But California is the exception that proves the true genius of the Electoral College — which was designed to prevent regional candidates from dominating national elections.
From that article linked in the quote:
This data suggests that not only is the Electoral College a valid system given the logic of representative democracy, but that it is, in fact, effective and, given the nature of how totally fucked up California is politically, absolutely essential.
Seriously, the United States sincerely needs protection from Califucktardistan and the Electoral College performed magnificently to do exactly that.
…Ok, now a brief word on the whole vaccination thing I posted first here (13 comments) and then here (115 comments). The more I dug into it, then read more and more of the comments on those posts, the more I felt as though I had time warped back to the 1970s and was reading Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict all over again, which was all the rage amongst evangelical Christians back then.
At any rate, that killed it for me and I became just as uninterested in the deal as I would be in arguing with various groups of people claiming that seat belts are too risky because they do kill or cripple a small few (same with airbags). There are multitudes of similar examples, all plagued with the same laundry list of logical fallacies that signal you’re dealing with True Believers and it’s really pointless to engage in argument.
You just dismiss them, let them think whatever they like. Let them judge your unwillingness to sanction their bullshit “evidence that demands a verdict” however they like, and move on.
To reiterate:
- I do not advocate for forced vaccination (just as I am opposed to mandatory seatbelt and motorcycle helmet laws).
- Vaccinations do appear to harm some small percentage of people some of the time (just like seatbelts and airbags).
- Vaccinations are not 100% effective in 100% of people in preventing an infection anyway (just like bullet-proof vests and flotation-vests).
- My opinion in reading through all the various stuff is that while all possible negative anecdotes are hyped to the max, falsified, or just plain fallacious associations (post hoc ergo propter hoc), there is nonetheless some valid criticism in terms of which and how many vaccinations does one really need. In this vein, it’s similar to criticism of over-medication in general. Do your research, use the vaccines and drugs that make sense to use.
OK, one final thing that just crossed the wire this morning, published only four days ago. One of the most common questions I receive here and about, is “what ever happened to Art De Vany?” As many long-timers know, Art was my entry into all things Evolutionary Fitness back in 2008.
I haven’t listened to the whole thing, yet, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy and everyone will get something out of it.
Have a Merry Christmas; Happy and Prosperous New Year.
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Of course, when the electoral college was designed, California wasn’t a state. To suggest that the founders anticipated protecting the Union from California some 200 years into the future is pretty silly.
I also can’t find any real evidence to suggest the design of the system was to prevent domination by regional candidates. California is large, but still has only 12% or so of the population, so by itself, it couldn’t dominate a popular vote. The real concern was that a series of regional or favorite son candidates would produce no winner. So originally electoral college voters were required to cast two votes, one of which had to be for a candidate from another state. They failed to anticipate the rise of national parties which resolved the problem.
It is true that they didn’t entirely trust the public to elect the President, and wanted a buffer, intermediaries who could exercise judgement to overturn a popular vote that produced an unqualified president elect. But that isn’t what happened here either (unless the electoral college decides to exercise judgement and give the win to Clinton).
Instead, the geographic distribution of votes just happened to favor Trump. 80,000 votes (out of 120,000,000 cast) in three moderate size states was the difference. So even the idea that the system intentionally confers an advantage to the smaller states (where Republicans currently dominate) doesn’t really seem to be the correct explanation for why Trump won.
Mostly the claims that Trump’s victory vindicates the design of the system is just self serving BS to try to create a mandate where one really doesn’t exist. We are stuck with the result because of a traditional system that may have outlived it’s usefulness. In the minds of most voters, the outcome of the Presidential election should be a reflection of the will of the people. Most of the time it does. The occasions where it doesn’t only serve to erode trust in the way that the system works. You can try to argue that people need to respect the outcome because that is how the Constitution is written. But the Constitution only has authority as long as the majority consent to be governed by it. If the will of the majority is regularly denied by an arcane system of rules that no longer make sense to the majority of the public, what do you think will happen?
“To suggest that the founders anticipated protecting the Union from California some 200 years into the future is pretty silly.”
I suggested no such thing. But it is cool that the representative republican vision of civics applied well some 200 years later. This is what people like you always miss. It is the United States, not a single federal entity. There are 50 of them and beyond their own exclusive domains the Fed has no say in, they have minimal representation regardless of the democratic will of the people (also reflected in the Bill of Rights, where there are enumerated protections regardless of the whims of Fucktardistan).
The fact is, almost double Clinton’s “popular vote,” which is a construction anyway (there is no such thing in reality…it’s no more meaningful than a statistic), is accounted for by CA and had CA voted in relative proportions to other Blue states, Trump would have what won the so-called popular vote too. Meaning, the system in place prevented the metro areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles from overturning the “will of the people” in literally the entire rest of the country.
Democrats are so dumb. Not only can they not accept the results that went down as per the established rules, they cannot even accept the fact that we are not a democracy and never have been. And it’s a good thing, too, for aspects of democracy such as state and local ballot initiatives are very often a disaster.
I’m gonna side with Cynical Sal here. When you included this part of IBT piece in your (approvingly cited) pull quote: “But California is the exception that proves the true genius of the Electoral College — which was designed to prevent regional candidates from dominating national elections.” you created an impression that you also share that view. That part wasn’t needed to make the good point about the California popular vote disparity. You walked it back in the reply, Richard, I get it. I do understand why Cynical Sal saw it as he did, though.
As to the IBT’s point, read Federalist 68 and you don’t see anything about regional candidate domination in it. Maybe some of them were thinking about it, maybe not, but apparently it wasn’t something Hamilton thought warranted explicit inclusion to help sell the Constitution.
“But it is cool that the representative republican vision of civics applied well some 200 years later…”
Is the system really working that way now, Richard? Are the state laws which require the electors to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their state truly consistent with the original vision of the process? To the extent those laws essentially work, on the state level, to undo the protections against an uninformed public electing a poor candidate for which the E.C. was, in part, established, those laws allow the states to undermine the vision the founders established. On the other hand, I guess, perhaps the founders would have been just fine with letting a decision like that devolve to the 50 independent federal states that form our union. To be clear I’m not suggesting those laws are unconstitutional. That’s been decided. Just not sure that the crew in late 1780s would have thought they were a smart idea.
Thanks for making the point about California, though. That isn’t getting nearly the run that it should in the Main Pravda Media as a simple, factual counterpoint to the popular vote totals. Popular vote – a statistic, the ultimate exit poll, a factual point of no relevance to the outcome of the process.
“you created an impression that you also share that view.”
Oh go fuck yourself.
I don’t owe you a fucking thing and I don’t give a single runny shit what you think about that.
Good luck being “clever.”
…And another thing.
Clinton deserved to lose because she ran her campaign as though it was a so-called popular vote contest, not even making an appearance in a couple of the states she took for granted.
Trump, on the other hand, even though on record criticizing the electoral college, nonetheless ran his campaign per the reality of the game.
It’s analogous to him fully admitting that he and his business interests take advantage of the tax code to every extent possible, saying “you don’t like the rules, change them.”
So, Trump ran a campaign of integrity to the way the rules are actually set up, not how he wishes they might be. That’s also a hallmark of many sports greats, who play by what the rules are and their estimation of how officials might call and interpret, not how they would craft the rules.
And the nearly uniform behavior of the left since Nov 8 has demonstrated that they are a morass of cry-baby children poor sports.
If we had a so-called popular vote to decide the presidency, Trump would have run his campaign a lot differently because then it is a widespread popularity contest and not a regional, tactical, and strategic contest.
An analysis of the electoral college in general shows that it generally gives Democrats an edge. Trump beat them at their own game.
Electoral college was designed so that small geographic areas with very large population centers could not dominate and tyrannize over the rest of the country via popular vote. Myopia not being a particularly valuable trait with which to select leaders, and large population centers being notably myopic WRT problems outside their own geographic areas (i.e., the problems faced by areas that grow and make the things hoovered up by the large population centers). Electoral college levels the playing field so that all geographic areas have a more or less equal say.
So basically, the electoral college worked “perfectly”. Just because it didn’t work out to your satisfaction doesn’t mean it didn’t work.
And advocate to change it at your peril, because it might work out the way you want it too, one day.
Whoever wrote that IBD article got the gist (preventing large population centers from always governing the country at the expense with the rest of the country’s geography) right but didn’t make clear the larger picture, which is that the electoral college has NEVER been all about certain geographic areas like California. It’s about limiting undue influence that might come about by large populations living in certain areas. Doesn’t matter if that area is in Nebraska or Missiouri or California or New York.
Just so you know, I love you, Amy. 🙂
This is all quite elementary and coincides perfectly with the intent of the founders of this football league.
That is what is so fucking beautiful about it. I am truly amazed at the various levels of precautions they took. King George must have been almost as bad as Obama.
“I guess, perhaps the founders would have been just fine with letting a decision like that devolve to the 50 independent federal states that form our union.”
FUCKING FINALLY.
DOES ANYONE ELSE FINALLY FUCKING GET IT?
DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND? FUCKING MORONS? THIS IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, ALREADY.
Democrats are a fucking plague of moron.
Thank you Richard, the reiteration of your vaccine stance is quite sane.
You understand that “Fake News” isn’t actually fake, but information that the mainstream propagandists don’t want circulated. Please consider that the “Fake News” about pharmaceutical/vaccination damage may be exposing similar truths.
I will keep reading your posts, a good overview of what is going on in the world, exposing politics for what it really is. I don’t even bother with mainstream anymore, a waste of time trying to sort through the mind-numbing crap. I just had to get my 2 cents worth in on vaccine damage.
Have a good vacation.
No. It is just fake. Go ahead and assert.
The media “fake news” meltdown, and “Russia helped” meltdown is unprecedented and epic. I think the govt. influenced media is in a panic as they are having more difficulty “fooling most of the people most of the time” with the existence of internet offering the means for rational counter arguments to be propagated.
The popular vote whining is also tremendously amusing. In sports terms, for those familiar with sports: “The 49ers should have been declared the winner, they got the most total yards in the game. But the other team got more points, and the rules have always said the team with the most points wins. No, 49ers got more yards, they should win!” Incredible.
Sorry to hear you are reconsidering your vaccine post. There is a lot of fuzzy thinking on the subject, and the more smart and rational people who make well researched and well reasoned posts the better, in my view. If you do follow through with it, I suggest breaking down your analysis into two parts: analysis of effectiveness, and analysis of risk, since they are independent. And for each, propose a hypothetical ideal / 100% bulletproof study, and rate the existing studies in terms of how closely they come to the best possible in terms of study design and quality.
Thanks Dave.
For Vaccines, I understand there are some slightly marginal issues. As they are so very marginal in my assessment, I’m just not interested in them.
See, up until a few weeks ago, it was always a debate I avoided. I did fine with my 60’s era childhood vaccines, so did my 3 younger brothers and literally everyone I knew. There was zero experience of the ‘post hoc, ergo propter hoc’ stuff I see everywhere, now, once I looked.
It’s ALL bullshit and I’ll not waste any more time on it.
It’s bullshit.
So, so, so cool that you and Art are talking again. Nice. I like it 🙂
Please don’t be rough with him though Richard. I find your personalities are extremely different but your values and beliefs are so very similar.
Arthur De Vany has a facebook page. He recently said that he takes no supplements whatsoever except for melatonin; however, i see that the supplement he developed called guardian is still for sale at glutathionescience.com. He was using his supplements regularly, including BCAAs, but for some reason (which he hasn’t gone into when asked), he has stopped all of them except for melatonin.
Thanks weila. Old people have trouble sleeping so that probably explains the melatonin. Art was never a big supplements guy anyway compared to some out there. Sisson has a nice balance I think.
Art De Vany actually was such a big supplements guy that he developed his own BCAA supplements and his other supplement called Guardian. You must have not visited his old website where he promoted it. I think it was called arthurdevanyonline, but it seems to have been taken down or I don’t have the address right. This is one of his products: http://www.glutathionescience.com/glutathione_science_018.htm
I ordered his products before. It would be nice to know why he isn’t promoting them anymore. However, I am not going to go on his facebook and push for an answer. That would be biting the hand that feeds me good information on specific questions I ask him (when he wants to answer).
I am still in shock that Hillary lost….it was quite amazing, but it does show how lazy and stupid her and her team were. In the end, we all saw who she really was when she failed to give a concession speech and left her most ardent supports hanging the night of the election. Good riddance to her.
Stupid #1: What employee brings their own email server to work?
Obama should have walked her out upon learning of this stupidity. Any other private organization would have walked her out.
Stupid #2: She must have listened to her own sycophants who told her she had states locked up when she decided not to campaign in them. It is not like she didn’t have the money to visit.
Stupid #3: She miscalculated Bernie’s popularity in her own party. She should have found a better way to fold them into the party, because those people were pretty rabid voters. She pistol whipped Bernie and then the imp ended up campaigning for her. I think Bernie supporters hated Hillary. Hillary was so unpopular she didn’t hold rallies….nobody would attend.
I am sure there were others, but these are the 3 that stuck with me.
Stupid #4: The Green Party sank her battleship. Jill Stein cost her the election. The old Ralph Nader ploy.
I was in Olympia WA yeterday and picked up a couple of discarded Hamilton elector placards on the capitol steps. These zealots flipped 3 Hillary electors to Colin Powell, who would otherwise never have won any electoral votes. They will serve as an iconic reminder of 2016 snowflake power out in my greenhouse.
Donald Trump is YOUR president now fuckers! Electoral college debate is fucking over.
Richard,
I can only perceive pathology in observation of passionate interest in “elections”. Of course my perception has hardened in layers since birth. I remain devoid of any internalized sense of security or surety of survival. That absence is confirmed externally if the report is true that Hillary won a minuscule number of rural counties. The calculation I’ve heard credited her with only 487 of 3,100 counties. That speaks to the “popular vote utility” yielded by densely populated socialist collectives (cities). Given the woodchuck truth that nothing ever gets done until something gets sold, any and every election achieves nothing for country folks as long as statists move money between cities.
The conflict remains freedom versus statism. Electing Trump is greatly symbolic as woodchucks are not as dumb as they are inclined to prefer being underestimated. The trash ’round my neck of the woods collecting entitlements is widely hated. The trash downstate that builds their prisons up here, attacks inalienable rights and mandates medicaid expansion be rammed down the throats of property owners are hated more. Hatred is infinite as surely as truth is infinite.
Anarchy is not a campaign. The only thing sheltering the socialists’ densely populated cities is entitlements. The only thing sheltering entitlements is…nothing. The fog is lifting and there will never be more than 3 days food supply in NYC. When the cannibals have disposed of their weakest and crawl west up out of NYC I suggest they travel the railroad tracks as it will be their final destination no matter what. As interesting as that sounds, I’ll be already gone. I don’t care to be questioned about the road(s) to hell where strangers have their heads cut off and fingers buried with their toes.
Commencing with Trump’s inauguration, I will cease paying property tax on my village home until Obamacare is repealed . The “fair market value” assessment is more than double the realtor comps I’ve collected. The village is suffering in a swamp of anxiety as there is only one land bank spot allowed in NYS and zombie foreclosures are piling up. The village is competing to get that last spot however they fail to meet the threshold of 100 properties and also fail to meet population threshold of 5,000. It’s common sense that the person who has the upper hand in every negotiation is the one who can afford to walk away from the table with no agreement. It won’t matter what government costume(s) might come forward to confront me. I will reveal pure disinterest in any negotiation that falls short of a “voluntary agreement”. Of course that means all of their confrontations are dead in the water.
I’ve positioned a HELOC on the village property and yanked equity exceeding 50% more than the comps collected. The HELOC was based on the credit union’s hired assessment; they wrote the contract and I paid no closing costs whatsoever. After the HELOC was positioned the credit union merged with the Teachers Credit Union and so they’ve exposed themselves to having one den of thieves pit against the other (gov’t employee union members against taxman and politicians they conspire with). I’ll keep the credit union account current, but of course fraudulent tax bills can’t be paid. The HELOC is the only contract with collateral as there is no first mortgage, and there is no escrow agreement. The velocity and voracity of tax revenue delinquent to the village is collectively mounting as Obamacare has destroyed true fair market value of homes. The board of trustees calls for “patriotism-statism-obedience-dependence” will be ignored as reason suggests no anarchist will lift a finger to impede the cannibalism of socialist versus socialist.
The tax assessor has no voluntary agreement that I should pay fraudulent tax bills or engage in any negotiation with them at all. If in three years a tax seizure is effected the negotiation between teachers credit union and taxman will be less than interesting (to me). I have nothing in the bank, parked in any tax deferred account, or brokerage account for them to reach for. In light of objective and subjective prognosis for fiscal collapse from global balance sheet to municipal balance sheet(s), judgements will never be collected. My wife and I have strategically enjoyed earned income below IRS filing threshold for many years and so garnishments will be ineffective. Agorism looks promising, although less interesting in NY than any non-coastal state.
It pisses me off that I put years of full-time hours reconstructing this village home from roof to foundation, only to see it collectively transformed into nothing but utility to house free shit army tenants. I’ll be damned if I’ll be livestock manager for government. I’ll mow the lawn and maintain the property as it sets vacant. Time is on my side. I’ll perfect my standard answer to inquiries, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate, there’s some men (woodchucks) you just can’t reach.” I ain’t gonna play banjo and cry, and I don’t care when I die.
It’s good to be 57 years old, long in the tooth and done with the magical thinking of statists. I hope you find creative ways of transporting your passions away from elections and the cultist activities of others and walk deeper into the woods. If you smell something rotten out there, it’s likely just meat on the railroad tracks over next hill. Don’t pay it any mind, it will take care of itself. History repeats.
Thanks for everything you do.
Woodchuck Pirate
aka Raymond J Raupers Jr USA
“Seriously, the United States sincerely needs protection from Califucktardistan and the Electoral College performed magnificently to do exactly that.”
This is my new favorite quote. Hilarious, and dead on accurate.
And also a real shame. I currently live in Long Beach, CA. It’s an oddly beautiful area where nature meets industry. I love walking down to the ocean from where I live, and seeing the Long Beach/LA port, the fake islands that exist for oil drilling, and then walking back through the neighborhoods with amazing homes built from the early 1920s or so. This state went for Nixon, Reagan and Ford every time, and used to have Republican governors and mayors. The actual state is amazing, and so much hard work went into developing it, yet it seems that it only took 2 decades to have the population and politicians all replaced with the absolute worst, fucktardly stupid leftist democrats possible.
Man, I am soooo thankful for the Electoral College!
I’d also say your four points on vaccines is the most rational view I’ve seen in the “vaccine debate.” There seems to be mostly hysteria on both sides, which obscures some of the issues that might have merit, like the individual vaccines for measles, mumps, and rhubella being safer if given at intervals than using the newer MMR vaccine.