Ranting About the Electoral College

     There has been much ranting about the Electoral College in the wake of the fact that Hillary Clinton won the overall popular vote, but lost the Electoral College vote, thus giving Trump the Presidency. Articles are popping up in left-leaning news publications saying that the Electoral College is anachronistic, indefensible, etc...I disagree with this however, for the following reasons:

     If there was no Electoral College, then virtually none of the states would get any attention by the candidates except for California and New York, people need to remember how our country is structured. We are a republic that consists of fifty states, hence the name, the United States of America.

     No one state, just because it has more people, has a right to dictate its will on the other states in terms of national policy. That is why the system is set up to check that. That is why each state gets two senators, regardless of its population size, because the Senate acts as a check on the House, which serves to represent the popular will and passions of the people. The Senate is to consider the longer-term ramifications of legislation. The Senate's design prevents the more populous states from being able to dictate national policy and essentially lord over the smaller states. The Electoral College is designed for a similar purpose.

     What people are also forgetting or unaware of is that the House ultimately has to approve of the Electoral College vote. They can choose to reject it. Now remember, the House is structured to represent the popular demands of the people. Unlike the Senate, each state gets House representatives based on their population size. More population equals more House members. Yet, the House has remained solidly in Republican hands. In fact, the GOP  actually gained some seats in the House. What this tells us is that Hillary's win of the popular vote most likely only was due to states like California giving her a slight edge. Had the House clearly gone Democratic party, along with the popular vote going to Hillary, then one could make the argument that the House should reject the Electoral College outcome. But the fact that the House has remained solidly Republican means that the overall popular will is aligned with the Electoral College outcome and that the Electoral College, if anything, is likely working exactly the way that it is supposed to.

     Some might try to claim that the Electoral College is aligned against the Democratic party candidates, but I disagree with that completely. Barack Obama won both the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2008 and 2012, with a lousy economy in the latter. And we now know that some of the swing states and blue states that flipped red only managed to do so by small margins of voters, likely because around a million black voters stayed home this time around then voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Had they come out and voted, Hillary would likely have won the Presidency. This also would mean that the working-class white vote that came out in force, ranging from Republicans to some Democrats, wouldn't have still been enough to put Trump over the top (although I would be very interested in seeing the popular vote had Trump not said a lot of the stupid things that he did during his campaign---he could still have run on his overall themes of reforming trade, building a border wall, etc...and still done even better I think with many people). So Democratic party presidential candidates can very much win with the Electoral College.

     I also do not at all agree with those saying, "No other country in the Western world has a system like the Electoral College!" well for one, the claim that "every other country" does or does not do something is not unto itself an argument. Plenty of other liberal democracies also require you to show an I.D. before you vote, but the same people complaining about the Electoral College consider voter I.D. here in the U.S. to be racist, oppressive, and the equivalent of a poll tax and hence blatantly un-Constitutional. I would think that one reason other countries can get by without an equivalent of the Electoral College is because population-wise, they tend to be a lot smaller than the United States. And for the ones that do have a very large population, such as Japan, it is crammed into such a small space that there is just no need for any Electoral College equivalent.

On the Donald Trump naked statue

     So some "art" group a few days ago went and put up some statues of Donald Trump in various major cities around the country, these cities portraying Trump as naked. His body is portrayed as being utterly grotesque and his penis is of course portrayed as incredibly small and I think no testicles.

     But I have to say that I agree with those who point out that the group, in their hatred for Trump, have essentially engaged in one of the things that the Left in particular is supposed to be against, which is body shaming. Basically they're knocking on Trump for his physical appearance instead of his political views. Criticizing him for his political views is fine, but body shaming like this is bad, as there are plenty of other people that said Trump haters like and think are decent who also would not be anything special to look at.

     One also has to wonder at the hypocrisy here, because if such statues had been produced of say Hillary Clinton, would the media response have been so light-hearted? Or that of the NYC Parks Commission? We probably instead would have seen a tsunami of negative criticism towards the group that created said hypothetical statues, with criticism leveled with regards to sexism and body shaming.

Now John Avlon Knows How Conservatives Felt

John Avlon writes an article for The Daily Beast on Trump, in which near the end, he says, "America is on the knife edge of dangerous" with regards to Trump (LINK). This is exactly how the political Right felt on the eve of Obama's election, and IMO they have turned out to be correct for the most part.

Trump is not to blame

     While I do not agree with much of what Donald Trump says, I would have to say that he is not to blame for the violent protesters showing up at his rallies. For his GOP opponents and other critics to be claiming that he is creating some kind of "atmosphere of violence" is ludicrous. It is as baseless as those who blamed Pamella Gellar and her Muslim cartoon contest for "inciting" violent Muslims to act. Some say that Trump should have known better, that the areas in which he has been holding the rallies are "inciting" the local populations. That would be like saying that the Civil Rights protests where blacks were getting sprayed with fire hoses, attacked by police dogs, and beaten by armored police with clubs, "should have known better," that they were "inciting" the racist whites by going into such an area to protest, that what did they think would happen?

     Trump and his supporters have every right to hold rallies, wherever they want. If local people don't like him, then the solution is to counter his speech with their own speech, not to try to shut him up. With regards to Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich who have been criticizing Trump's speech as being responsible for the violent acts, I do not know if they really believe what they are saying or if they are just saying these things because they are desperate, but if it's the former, then it really strikes me as cowardice and wimping out on their part. They should standing with Trump on this issue because it is a universal issue. Political speech is one of the most important rights there are. No one has a right to infringe on it.

President Obama's Gun Control Speech

I do not know whether President Obama was lying or just willfully ignorant, but his speech on gun control earlier today (or yesterday technically as it's 1:55 AM now) was littered with lies and distortions:

1) The reason ours is the only country having a problem with mass shootings right now is not due to guns because the guns have been available for decades. The mass shootings are very recent

2) Yes, you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. And we don't tape your mouth shut when you go into said theater either. So his analogy with guns falls apart. Shooting people in theaters (or anywhere unless in self-defense) is illegal too, but we should not be disarming people.

3) Yes, this is in fact a slippery-slope to confiscation. He himself may not have that in mind, but a future administration/government could, and we have precedent for confiscation happening from registries.

4) Joe Manchin's "A" Grade from the NRA is meaningless. He is no friend of the Second Amendment. He is a man who talked about people having the right to hunt in regards to the Second Amendment and that magazine capacity should be limited because he only loads three rounds into the rifle when hunting.

5) The attacker in China with the knife had no intention of killing anyone. He just was cutting of ears. That is why his attack didn't kill anyone. It wasn't that he tried to kill people and failed. There are other knife attacks that have killed multiple people.

6) The Congress cut the funding to the CDC on researching gun violence because the CDC got caught red-handed engaging in lying to promote gun control

7) In addition, gun violence is not a public health issue, no matter what the public health and gun control people try to claim. Problems with cars, food, toys, etc...those are public health issues. Gun violence has nothing to do with problems with guns. It is a criminology issue. Criminologists are the real experts on the issue. Saying that gun violence is a public health issue would be like saying illegal street racing is a public health issue.

8) Research into guns in society by criminologists has constantly been occurring.

9) People on the Terrorist Watch List should not be denied their gun rights as that is a complete violation of due process. That is a very arbitrary list with no specific way to go about getting taken off of it. Ted Kennedy was put on it along with numerous other lesser-known, but wrong, people put onto it.

10) All actual Internet gun sales require a background check. What the President is confusing are private sales initiated through the Internet with being specific Internet gun sales. When we think of Internet commerce with regards to physical goods, all such commerce is a form of mail-order. It basically is like ordering from a catalog, except through a website. All mail-order sales of guns must occur through FFLs (Federal Firearms Licensee holders) who by law must conduct a background check on you before you can take possession of the gun.

Donald Trump

     So I am currently drawn between Donald Trump and the view that he will be a repeat of Barry Goldwater and the idea that he might win. I at first had thought that he was absolutely a guaranteed loss for the GOP, but now I am not quite sure. Should he win the nomination, it really will be interesting to watch, I have no doubt about that. I do not think that Trump has the requisite policy knowledge needed to be president, but he does have a lot of what my dad termed "combat executive experience," i.e. in making decisions on the fly and negotiating and having to basically "shoot from the hip," so-to-speak, and do so accurately. He could be a very good foreign policy president in that the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians would be a lot less inclined to mess with him I think. On the domestic front, I fear that he would try to fix Obamacare by suggesting we replace it with single-payer. I also do not know how much of a conservative he really is. If he just says whatever is needed to get elected (which he seems to do on certain issues while stating his own opinions on others), he may change his stances on things once elected.

     I do hope we get someone decent elected for the next presidency that is not Hillary. I do not think Hillary morally is proper for the presidency and the political positions that she supports I think will only further do damage to the country and infringe on people's rights.