The next 20 posts to Facebook from October 22nd-November 13th:
Day 21 (money, money,
money, money . . . money- the theme song to Trump’s reality show)
If
you can justify still voting for someone who can spend millions to discredit
someone challenging you and still have money left over to buy a small country
with your election campaign funds, I love to tell you, but you are part of the
problem.
“We’ll be launching a multimillion-dollar digital
campaign that talks about what’s at stake and how a vote for a third-party
candidate is a vote for Donald Trump, who is against everything these voters
stand for,” said Justin Barasky, a strategist for Priorities USA.”
NO- a vote for a third party is a vote for a THIRD party
candidate and a legitimate, productive, purposeful vote at the dawn of a new
way of thinking for American voters who are interested in the bigger picture. Laughable.
Only the first part of that sentence is legitimate. I’m far too cynical to believe my diatribe
will actually do any good.
We
are in dire need of so many improvements in the election process (term limits,
campaign finance, super PACs oversight, congressmen turned lobbyist, ethics
violations, American Legislative Exchange Council regulations, Commission on
Presidential Debates [CPD] reforms)- do you think any of those get fixed by
continuing to vote for either of these parties? Do you put a question mark at
the end of a rhetorical question?
Certainly, there is no guarantee any of those problems improve just by
electing a different presidential candidate- no, but it’s a start.
Day
22 “Gary Johnson” + news
No entitlement you could name, about to cripple
this country in the years to come, is more unsustainable than a republican or
democrat who thinks they are entitled to the political office of their
choosing. They will spend any amount,
say and deny anything they have to, and do anything they have to in order to
attain it.
A week after Trump’s harassment video blew up
big (cable and network news) and small media (blogs and internet articles), I
did a search on Gary Johnson and then clicked “news”. These were the
first screen of results, in order, on Google:
1- A “Daily Beast” article- “Donald
Trump’s Collapse Gives Gary Johnson an Opening.” Worth the read, a fair
critique of Johnson’s candidacy, but some tip-offs that it wasn’t written by a
professional news agency. I’m in good company- my offerings always have
plenty of those same signs.
2- Fox13now.com
3- The Inquistr – if
you stuck the word “Grand” in front of that and tried to pass it off as some
kind of Twitter sequel of a famous passage in a Dostoyevky novel, you have my
interest.
4- The Libertarian Republic- about who
Johnson would nominate for the supreme court
5- “Libertarian Gary Johnson’s Polling
Struggles are Clinton’s Gain”- U.S. News and World Report (Opinion section)- it
is noteworthy that this is only the Opinion section- not front and center
6- Huffington Post- about his
championship of Private Prisons
7- Twitchy- ??? about a Twitter typo from
the Johnson camp directed at Trump, where respondents again use it to ridicule
Johnson.
8- A blog about why Utah voters might
favor Johnson over Trump
9- The same blog addressing Johnson’s
foreign policy stances
10- A CNN David Axelrod opinion-ish
piece- about how Johnson would treat ISIS the same as Obama. This is a
summary of podcast distributed by CNN and not ultra-affiliated with the major
cable news station.
So far, any of these “news” outlets strike you
as mainstream, legitimate? Only the Huffington Post article.
11- The New York Times. There you go.
Finally. All of this convinces me that if the presidential race
were akin to any Olympic event in history, the media would remove the third
stand usually reserved for the bronze medalist.
12- KOAT Albuquerque- a newspaper from the
state he was governor of for 2 terms
Others- another from the Libertarian Republic
(#4 above); the blog referred to in #s 8 and 9 above; RealClearPolitics (not
bad); Washington Times (great- if it weren’t a blurb about the Libertarians
urging Mike Pence to drop Trump and support Johnson); another from #12 above;
something from NPR- awesome . . . about Johnson’s medical records with the
conclusion that he is the healthiest of the 3 leading poll vote getters fitness
to be pres. – not awesome; and then about half way down page 2 of the Gary
Johnson “news” Google search results- an article from The Cannabist.
Very significant media coverage, not dismissive
in the least- where the most meaningful contributions are blogs, unknown sites
or subsidiary locations of otherwise legitimate news agencies. The word complicit comes to mind when you
think of the news coverage given to other party candidates.
Day 23 (Where’d she get
those millions?)
“For three
years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS
that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic
fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government
contributions reported in preceding years.”
On
the heels of that, we heard about this didn’t we- from October 9th?: “Another Side of Clinton – Latest WikiLeaks
release paint candidate as a moderate at ease with Wall Street”. This A.P. article
A
CNN Money article from August 26, 2016 announces: “Associated Press botches Hillary Clinton
Report and Response.” The AP had taken
and run with a report about how many visitors of Clinton’s, while she was
secretary of state contributed money to the Clinton foundation. Deplorable . . . for the AP. Have to get that stuff right, or legitimate conflict
of interests, scams perpetrated against the gullible public, and elitist words
and actions will be ignored. Lucky for
those who wouldn’t vote for Clinton have stories like this next one to cuddle
up to; unfortunately, those who will vote for her can ignore yet another
indication that she is also unfit and unqualified to be president of the United
States:
News
Agency: Associated Press; Author:
Lisa Lerer; Title: Another Side of Clinton; Subtitle: Latest
WikiLeaks release paint candidate as a moderate at ease with Wall Street.”
“.
. . in speeches to some of the country’s biggest banks, [Clinton] highlighted
her long ties to Wall Street . . . saying that she views the financial industry
as a partner in government regulation.”
That’s
like leaving senators in charge of a congressional ethics committee, a fox in
charge of the hen house. Abigail Adams
wrote to the future second president- “Remember, all men would be tyrants if
they could.” Apparently that sentiment
can be expanded to include women. No man
or woman who has gathered in so complete a pile of money, is the best judge in
determining how it shall be retained or spent.
Day 24 (which one really
is the lesser of two evils- rhetorical question?)
With
apologies to Jon Oliver, whom I love, of HBOs “Last Week Tonight”, and his
September 25th presentation of Clinton’s and Trump’s political and
business missteps . . . revealing Clinton’s errors and lies as somehow
preferable enough to justify that voters should elect her is like stating a
preference of donkey scat over elephant vomit as the most favored emission to
wake up covered in as the human prisoner of a zoo keeper landlord holding you captive:
If the two candidate's scandalous negative qualities (as
personified by their FHOICCIS score) were compared and the likelihood of their
obtaining your vote were measured by their proximity to Earth, Clinton is
Uranus, 1.7-1.9 billion miles away, and Trump is Neptune, 2.7-2.9 billion; I'm
sorry, but that is not a meaningful difference.
Day 25
This is a process, and the logic considers the big picture.
You go to bed the night of December 12th and wake up to 12
inches of snow. You either don’t have a snow blower or yours isn’t functioning.
You have 45 minutes before a conference call to shovel/clear a driveway that
will probably take you an estimated three hours to complete- once you factor in
the cold, the energy loss, the will, and sore muscles and joints and the idea
that your favorite episode of the A-Team is due up on the FX channel at 4 pm.
Your kids, who are depending on you to get them into the house, are coming
home.
So, you don’t have time to get it all done, but making a 45
minute dent in a task that would take 3 hours leaves you with a more manageable
effort the next time you go out. This is a wet snow . . . the kind that gives
you a backache, could give you a heart attack, and you definitely don’t want to
have to do it. But you don’t have a choice. Putting it off another hour
jeopardizes the freedom you would rather spend elsewhere. You can blame the
weather and curse the conditions that caused the snow, and wish the obligations
that only allow this 45 minute window to make progress were larger.
At the end of the 45 minutes of shoveling you won’t feel good,
because the job isn’t done. However, people driving by your driveway on their
way to the dentist, or the homeless guy who passes by your property on his way
to beg for food, will notice that progress has been made on the overall goal of
clearing the driveway. Perhaps you were thinking ahead and carved out of the
snow a path for your kids.
Ladies and gentlemen, when you start to finish your basement,
start a paver patio project in the backyard, go shopping for a new car, or plan
a wedding- it isn’t all done once you begin. It is a process; there is a goal.
It takes will, time and consistency to accomplish the end result. For the
basement, there are wall frames to construct; there are foundations to tamp
into level for the pavers; for a wedding you have to secure a church and a hall
on the same date. There are hundreds of things to accomplish before you
complete the job of a finished basement or being married. You cannot start with
the end and you cannot get to the end until you start.
Getting this country where it needs to be, so that at the very
least we have more options to choose from on election day is no different than
any other labor, or labor of love, you can think of. Name me one that isn’t? It
is time to start shoveling.
Day 26 (Polls) from an
October 10th CBS News article
leveraging an NBC News/Wall Street Journal pollfrom CBS News
“The survey found that in a two-way race between the two
nominees, Clinton leads Trump 52 percent to 38 percent, up from a
7-percentage-point lead last month.”
“In a four-way race involving third-party candidates, Clinton
leads Trump by 11 percentage points -- 46 percent to 35 percent, up from
Clinton’s 6-percentage-point lead in last month’s poll.”
A different poll, from October 11th (Deseret News in
Utah) brings us this information: “As
Trump falls, independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin continues to
rise. He is now in a statistical three-way tie with Republican Donald
Trump and Hillary Clinton in McMullin's home state of Utah.” Here is the link to the poll according
to a new Utah poll released late Tuesday.
“The poll shows Clinton
and Trump tied at 26 percent, McMullin with 22 percent and Libertarian Gary
Johnson getting 14 percent
“94 percent of Utahns have
watched or heard about the video in which Trump” was caught speaking lewdly
about women.
“Both Clinton and
Trump have unfavorability ratings of about 70 percent, according to
the poll.”
First-
“Utahns”? That’s a thing?
Second-
I’ve seen this so many times, it is a tiresome epidemic- Mr. or Mrs. article
writer, the word is “Independent”.
Capitalize the word when used in reference to a political party, you
know, just as you would for those other two parties. How would you like this: republican and
democrat? In the same sentence-
“independent”, “Republican”, and “Democrat”?
If you are that oblivious, you should go back to writing papers about
what you did on summer vacation.
Third-
who are the four candidates splitting the votes? Their names?
Fourth-
what “two-way race” is she referencing?
Are there only 2 candidates vying for the presidency?
Fifth-
Why delineate between a two-way and a four-way race? Is she referring to two different elections?
Sixth-
again, how is Mr. Groper still polling at 38% after all that?
Day 27 (Polls- Part I)
In the 1988 movie Die-Hard, John
McClane says: “Quit being a part of the f_ _ _ _ _ _ g problem and put the
other guy back on!” to the Deputy Chief of Police, who just made a bad decision
in hostage rescue 101. To keep the intro. short, just go watch the movie and
understand that the nature of polls is a hostage situation, we are one John
McClane away from being rescued and Dwayne T. Robinson is George Gallup.
Many things come before the
primary process (party posturing, becoming a legitimate little candidate with
an R or a D next to your name, fundraising events, and all kinds of other
things about which I couldn’t even begin to speculate). The most troublesome-
is polling. As Michael Traugott mentions in the article linked below- “
‘polling is a very important element of democracy.’ “ No, no it isn’t. There is
no benefit to the types of polling he is referring to. None. He “helped prepare
a groundbreaking report on how Gallup, a public-opinion titan, erroneously
predicted Romney would defeat Obama in 2012.”
Traugott also thinks that “Polls
‘give the public an independent voice that’s not generally present’ otherwise
in politics and political news coverage.” Wrong again, what voice does it give
to people who don’t want option A or option B? 9/10ths of the article is about
all of the things wrong with polling and the last five sentences read like the
equivalent of the closing couplet of a sonnet. The poet has spent 12 lines
deploring his melancholy existence (his love favors someone else, he is about
to die, time sucks or fate is unfair) and resolves in 2 lines to better that
situation or make amends with his conscience. Sounds like a pretty good
summation of politics generally- months and years of growing disgust, apathy
and general awareness that something big is wrong and a couple of months we
resolve to basically do nothing about it, but re-watch SNL’s portrayal of one
of the debates.
Examples of why 21st century
polls are not close to right (contained within the article):
1) Mistakes in core samples
(racial makeup, political ideology, overall methodology)
2) It is a digital, multicultural
world- plenty of survey subjects don’t speak much English
3) Rise in cell phone usage- not
tied to a fixed address- “it’s not unusual for owners to have a different area
code than where they actually live”
4) Falling response rate due to
busy lives, cell phone users being able to screen and block incoming calls
5) Automated calls to get
opinions have been banned by federal law protecting consumers
6) “Gated, private communities
that door-to-door surveyors can’t reach”
All of those factors have led to
a steep decline in the number of poll respondents. The remedy for all of the
above is a “better methodology, improved modeling of public behavior, smarter
ways to reach people (including Internet solicitations and small amounts of
cash) and a commitment to learn from its mistakes.” You could apply that
approach to just about any promise a candidate makes to the voters during an
election.
I would want to know what
constitutes a “small” amount of cash and what kind of public behavior they
intend to improve and how. Are they out to measure and predict, or influence
and control?
Day 28 (Polls Part II)
“The extensive review process
involved a significant amount of new research, including the fielding of
experiments and simulations focused on three areas of pre-election polling --
survey and sample design, survey field management, and data handling.”
I understand two major points
people defending a polling company could claim-
1) this is one report by one
polling agency in the broad spectrum of all political races;
2) polling is
their job- how do you not think they will improve this process.
My answers to both of those
complaints:
1) I could find 100 articles in
the last 30 years that showed polling to be deceptive, inaccurate, or a
negative indicator for who would actually win an election, or by how much. How
many polls do we actually need? Any?
2) More significantly- polls are
speculation, not science, despite the verbiage they use explaining how they were
conducted, and exist to give a preview of what will happen when a broad range
of people vote on something. Polls aren’t necessary to a democracy; voting is.
And since we have a completely flawed and corrupt election process, as
evidenced by the findings from the Last Week Tonight piece above, the findings
of Wiki-Leaks on the DNC conspiracy to hand the democratic presidential
nomination to Clinton, super-delegate existence, campaign finance Citizens
United type of stuff- do we really need a hundred polls to tell us that all of
the things the two parties do to rig the system are working?
George Gallup (http://www.capitalcentury.com/1935.html) founded his whole approach to polling in 1935, and Gallup polling
for presidential elections has been in existence since the election of 1936. In
2012, after 80 years of polling they got their third presidential election
wrong. They’ve been off by at least 2 percentage points on both candidates
almost every election since 1936 and the three times they got the winner wrong
a third party got at least 1% of the popular vote (1948, 1976, 2000).
Day 29 (Polls Part III)
Here are the four things the
Gallup poll research, conducted after the 2012 presidential election, stated
were the cause of predicting a Romney win over Obama:
1) Gallup’s likely voter
estimating- there is a difference between registered and likely voters
2) Regional controls on
interviews- completed interviews of people within certain geographical regions-
in other words, some regions of the country were underrepresented
3) Weighted race and ethnicity- a
disproportionate number of respondents reporting they were multiracial or
Native American- more indicated they were than was accurate
4) Landlines v. Cell phone- the
listed landline sample in use in 2012 consisted of older and more Republican
respondents
Other than the questions asked
during the interview and the order in which the pollster offers the potential
answers, I can’t think of another thing Gallup got wrong in 2012. It is
remarkable learning a polling agency with that reputation, and 80 years of
experience, got so many foundation level components to polling wrong
(socioeconomic, cultural, geographical, technology used, demographics, etc.)
And if they got that many things wrong, what can we possibly expect, or find,
are wrong with other polls?
To me, polling is a solution
without a problem. It impacts who will vote, who will stay home and not vote;
polls capture an opinion from someone years and months, in some cases, before
an election, and from others who don’t know the candidates or the issues within
a week of one.
Ask a group of kids registered to
attend camp next summer if, on July 24th 2017, they are going to want to stay
inside to play backgammon or go outside and swim. Voting is democracy; polling
is not. Some people with too much time on their hands speculating on future
events, isn't necessary. I suggest those people find some money, invest it in
the stock market and see what happens. What if the majority of kids don't want
to do either, but you only mention the two options?
Someone knocks on your front door
and asks, in two months, if you would choose being buried alive or drowned as
your future method of death. The poll results come out and it is determined
that 52% of people chose drowning. We keep choosing from among those options
and so they keep presenting them. What would happen if we stopped choosing the
options they offer?
The selections we make become
"popular" to the extent that the other options are less preferable;
we need to get to the point where we select options that we make available and
the only way to do that is to choose the mode of death WE find preferable. To
do that, we need to make more options exist. Maybe an option of living
contented until we're 88 and passing away in our sleep is something we should
look into so our kids don't have to choose to drown.
Don't ask me who I would choose
two months from now from among two candidates in what I'm finding is an
obviously rigged and corrupt election process; ask me now for my choice- I VOTE
to live.
Day 30 (more fun with polls)
I found these first two links
amusing. A Gallup poll about how the majority of voters want a third party to
be available:
Pew Research Center- “Voter
General Election Preferences”
About all the blocking this candidate from
getting elected instead of actually favoring one because of confidence in their
fitness to serve as a representative of our views and values:
http://www.people-press.org/…/2-voter-general-election-pre…/
“2016 Campaign: Strong Interest,
Widespread Dissatisfaction”
“Overall satisfaction with the
choice of candidates is at its lowest point in two decades.” I can’t believe
that as of July 7, 2016 democrats and republican voters were 43% and 40%,
respectively, are “satisified” with their candidate for president. Important to
keep in mind, that is registered democrats and republicans, not those who are
normally coerced into voting for one or the other.
It is noteworthy that of all the
poll results indicating that Americans want third party candidates to get more
coverage, want them on the debate stage, etc., the poll results haven’t
actually equated to anything meaningful changing; and despite the polls about
who is winning a race that is the case study for rigged elections is still
keeping everything the same.
And a poll-result-laden article-
“The Majority of Americans want to See a Third Party on the Debate Stage”
“a whopping 62% of voters want to
hear what Johnson has to say.” And “The President of the Commission on
Presidential Debates has said he may be willing to make wiggle room for
Johnson”:
Wiggle room for Johnson. You
sickos. “Wiggle room,” yeah that sounds like some official government word for
– a subset of the 2 major party cronies going into a room in 1987 and deciding
to wiggle out of including anyone else in debates unless they reached some
arbitrary 15% voter preference threshold based on, you guessed it- POLLING. It
Can’t Happen Here. Someone resurrect Sinclair Lewis- he’s got a sequel to
author.
Polling isn’t the worst thing
that has to be fixed in order for us to divest ourselves of the rigged/corrupt
election process we have now- it is just one of them. Tomorrow, item number 2.
October 31- Happy Halloween
Day 31 (Problem #2- the Media)
Joe: Wait, problem 2 is polls.
Bill: no problem 1 was polls, 2
is Media
Joe: . . . pretty sure it was
polls.
Bill: Hmmm.
Me: I’m rather confused.
You see, I don’t even know if
problem #1 starts with the media or the polls, but I think I have a better
chance than either one of those entities causing our problems than they have of realizing how many problems they’re causing by not doing their
jobs.
Here’s a typical poll exchange
from say August 1st of 2016-
Pollster: “If the election were
held today, would you vote for Clinton, Trump or someone else?”
Respondent: I would probably go
for a third option.
Pollster: I understand. But if
the election were just between Clinton and Trump?
Respondent: Probably Clinton, if
I have to choose.
You don’t have to choose at all
and you certainly don’t need to choose a democrat over a republican.
I don’t have the space to detail
how fundamentally deficient every poll I have ever participated in actually is.
What I do know is that the result of a survey like that where demographics such
as income, age, gender, race, etc. are already known, the 1000+ responses, of
likely voters, are congealed into the simple math of- Clinton 44%, Trump 38%,
undecided = 11% and other candidates 6% or something grotesquely similar. The
assumption is that the 11% will largely fall into either one of the major party
buckets, because they always do; I don’t think polling has changed
since 1936. That is why and how we need to start shoveling- by holding polling
entities accountable for their sloppiness, ignorance, discrediting options
outside of the two they are choosing to assume are the only names worth
bringing up.
The media then, on the NBC
Nightly news, the local news in Tallahassee, the internet sites, some bloke’s
radio program, the newspapers and bloggers pick up those poll results and
distribute them without much, or any, vetting and most of what registers with us
is that Clinton has a 6-point lead.
Newspaper example: September 18,
2016- the Minneapolis Star Trib. published the MN poll results from 625
registered Minnesota voters.
This is what I wrote, after
prefacing the article and poll results in question, to the author of that
article and the person to whom responses or questions about the nature of the
poll were to be directed:
“I am curious about a number of
things- what is the standard reporters use to continue to capitalize the words
"Democrat" and "Republican" especially in reference to the
voters who align themselves with those parties and not capitalize a voting
block consistently referred to as "independents"?
It is fairly
insulting, as an Independent, to be an afterthought in these types of articles
and in the polls, considering the likely delivery of the questions. You elected
to capitalize the word "Undecided" in the table of results in the
right bottom corner of your article (on page A1). So- "Undecided" . .
. but "independent"? Huh.
This state (MN) features one of the strongest,
for what it is worth, Independence parties in the country. You can't condescend
to legitimize them? There is an industry-wide misuse of the word
"Independent" in my opinion. Bloomberg, at the DNC a couple months
ago, referred to himself as an "Independent", and was throwing his support behind
Clinton. A real Independent does not support a candidate like that, as much because of her affiliation with a political party cabal, as because of what she specifically represents- see any previous or future posts on this topic- or turn on the television, crawl out from under a rock and pay attention.
“Can someone research an article
on the nature of these kinds of polls, the questions asked, the phrasing, the
"also receiving votes" dismissive nature of Independent party
candidates? Big topic to be sure, but can we break it down for this specific
poll? The voters questioned, I'm assuming, weren't identified as "registered"
republicans and democrats? I've been asked those same type of questions over
the phone and with volunteers going door to door. Independents (Libertarians,
Green Party) are always considered afterthoughts- the order in which the names
of the candidates are read is indicative of the two-party bias we have, that is
perpetuated by the media and authored by pollsters- "If the general
election for president . . . were held today, which one of the following
tickets would get your vote:
Clinton, Trump, Johnson, Stein,
not sure?" That list isn't alphabetical. That list probably isn't based on
the previous results from April; it isn't based on the expected results of the
poll they are currently conducting? That is mostly a rhetorical question.
“Plenty of other questions, but
I'll leave it with this relatively harmless one- I get that Johnson/Weld are
only polling at 6%. But you guys in the newsrooms, editorial boards, across
this country have got to start asking yourself- why would you feel the need to
crystalize the results of the poll for the candidates whom the poll favored
(Clinton and Trump) on page A1 of the paper, in a font size at least twice as
large as those also ran candidates whose minuscule numbers appear beneath the
leading vote getters? You are playing right into the hands of the status quo as
if you've been directed by them.”
Shockingly, I received no
response.
Only the answer by Mr. Owl to the
question- “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a
Tootsie Pop?” was more elusive. The answer, though completely subjective, to
that question was 3; ironically, that is, at the very least, how many parties
should be on the debate stage no matter how horribly the third party is
polling. Again I ask, do the minor parties not poll well because the media
doesn’t cover them, or not cover them because they don’t poll well. On this
very important question of life- our glass is half empty.
November 2
Day 32 (CPD) (Problem #4 with our RIGGED election process)
(Polls, the media and No
Ranked-Choice Voting or RCV were the first 3). I could have spent 5 more posts
on the first 2, so consider yourself fortunate.
At this point, it would be a
victory to just get third and fourth parties onto the debate stage? The only
current way to get that done is to legitimize them; the only way to do that is
to hold out like a defensive-end outperforming his rookie contract until you
force the hand of the powers that be.
We have to demand poll questions
from pollsters calling our homes to give equal treatment of any third and
fourth and fifth parties mentioned during the predictably simplistic
questioning. If the third or fourth party candidate is judged to not be insane
(to the extent that the two conglomerates the news only has the attention span
to cover aren’t objectively judged so) and the candidates are listed in
alphabetical order on a phone questionnaire, why should a third party candidate
whose last name is Johnson be listed last (if at all), if he’s running against
a candidate named Trump. Why would a Progressive, Populist, Independent named
Anderson be listed last in a race featuring candidates named Carter and Reagan.
16 years ago the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) settled on 15% as the
number at which a presidential candidate must be polling in order to be
included in debates.
http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=overview Why not at 8%.
Why not a change of rules to
invite whoever the third most popular candidate, according to the five leading
polls, to the debates? Ah, but we know why. Money, influence, money, power,
money.
Commission on Presidential
Debates- screams and laughs- “The CPD's selection criteria have sought to
identify the individuals whose public support has made them the leading
candidates.”
- If the pollster mentions the
name of the third party candidate after the two political monopoly parties, a
rundown of the foods they ate that day, and a crop report on corn futures in
Oregon, how in the hell is someone going to gain “support”?
- If the news channels, who
broadcast news 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for all 671 days of a
presidential election cycle include only an iota of mentions for third parties,
while stories, town halls, focus groups and pundits sweat over the monopolizing
media darlings (reps and dems), how are the non-traditional candidates supposed
to gain “support”?
- If the amount of time, in 2
years that is devoted to the also-ran parties in newspapers, magazines and
legitimate websites could fit into a tube the size of those in Monsters Inc.
before Sully and Wazowski discovered the laughs of children supplied more energy
than their screams, how in the hell is someone going to gain “support”?
- If a third or fourth party
candidate has 2-3 small children, a small business to run, employees to hire,
wages to control, trades and purchases to make, and business deals to travel
to, while your average major party candidate misses two-thirds of his or her
senate votes while making calls to donors and attending dozens of $1000 a plate
dinners sponsored by investment firms and pharmaceutical companies, how in the
hell is a progressive party candidate supposed to gain “support”?
Again, the election process is
rigged, but not in the way Trump thinks it is. The whole reason he is the
republican nominee and standing on the debate stage with only one other
candidate is because our elections are rigged.
Day 33, November 3
Committee on Presidential
Debates- 15%- pretty good interest rate on just about any investment vehicle;
pretty ridiculous and arbitrary minimum number for the CPD cabal to decide upon
for allowing other candidates to be heard on any of the general election debate
stages. It’s as if the powers that be are guarding against allowing another
voice onto the stage.
Is that my paranoia or their
conspiracy? It can’t be both- they’re pretty mutually exclusive. You mention
either of those words (paranoid and conspiracy) and people think you’re nuts;
writing them in one line is downright foolish (yes, a step beyond nuts believe
it or not. The latter implies a standard qualification for being considered
sane has been violated; no one has any behavioral expectation of people
classified as “nuts”).
For as many things as are
outlined here to all be against the possibility of additional candidates
outside of the status quo representing the concerns so clearly within the
collective population to devastating majority (60% of people want another
candidate in every election- not just this one), and for a third candidate to
never make it onto a stage or speak into a microphone- I’m either insinuating
there is a conspiracy, or I’m paranoid. To be saved from the label of paranoid,
one only has to be right 30% of the time- but can never be wrong twice in a row
(???). Since that math isn't possible, someone pronouncing as many things wrong
with the election process as I have been, has to be paranoid. And it isn't a
theory if you're right; it's a conspiracy.
Pretty sure I included this think
in another post, but in case I haven't, get ready to be disgusted. Below is a
quote that is really all you need to know-
“Federal Election Commission
("FEC") regulations require a debate sponsor to make its candidate
selection decisions on the basis of "pre-established, objective"
criteria. After a thorough and wide-ranging review of alternative approaches to
determining who is invited to participate in the general election debates it
will sponsor, the CPD adopted on October 28, 2015 its 2016 Non-Partisan
Candidate Selection Criteria. Under the 2016 Criteria, in addition to being
Constitutionally eligible, candidates must appear on a sufficient number of
state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning a majority vote in the
Electoral College, and have a level of support of at least 15 percent of the
national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion
polling organizations, using the average of those organizations’ most recently
publicly-reported results at the time of the determination. The polls to be
relied upon will be selected based on the quality of the methodology employed,
the reputation of the polling organizations and the frequency of the polling
conducted. CPD will identify the selected polling organizations well in advance
of the time the criteria are applied.”
My corresponding questions or
concerns with the contents of just that one paragraph:
1- Aside from the size of the
democrat’s and republican’s collective egos inside the debate hall and the
overall sense of entitlement to the position of president of the United States,
is there not enough room on the stage at the venues chosen to host the debates
for a third podium?
2- “ ‘pre-established, objective’
“- are they defining “objective” in the same way I would and do they know that
objective and subjective are not the same word?
3- “thorough and wide-ranging
review of alternative approaches”- right, right, right- they looked for other
approaches to determining the participants in presidential debates the same way
my daughter looks for her Easter basket, she enters a room, stands in the
middle of it and turns around a couple times . . . sometimes with her eyes open
4- “invited to participate”- first,
if you are on the ballot in all 50 states, or even half of them, you should be
invited to debate in one way or another, on the same stage with the other
candidates who are on the ballot in all 50 states- and no changing the process
for getting candidates onto the ballot in all 50 states is allowable- even if
each state’s criteria for doing so is completely different.
5- “sponsor”- this, politically,
is like a word that would set Beavis and Butthead off on a minute-long
stupidity-induced giggling fit. No non-elected body who formed to keep more,
and/or diverse voices out of politics should be sponsoring something as
integral to “democracy” as a debate on the issues impacting the citizens of a
country. This is yet another thing more important to “democracy” than polling.
6- “Non-Partisan Candidate
Selection Criteria”- you have got to be kidding me. Non-partisan?
7- “candidates must appear on a
sufficient number of state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning a
majority vote in the Electoral College”- so many things wrong with that
sentence-
a) are there states in this
country I don’t know about? Still 50 right?
b) what kind of math are we
talking about here?
c) Electoral College- that old
boondoggle- I’ll get to that one- but in short, all electoral votes go to one
candidate who has taken for granted 1/4-1/3 of the states that party always
wins- that seems fair.
8- “support of at least 15%”- Why
so high a number as 15%? Who came up with it and why? Why not 5%, why not 10%,
why not 1%? Is this where the math comes in? See #7.
9- “five selected national public
opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations”- I
could have spent 3 more posts at least, revealing how flawed polling agency’s
questionnaires, findings, and assessments are
10- “using the average” – more
math
11- “of those organizations’ most
recently publicly-reported results”- how about any of the polls? If the poll
results are not favorable to the plan to rig the election in favor of either of
the two parties, do we just not hear about it and if they don’t report them,
they must not have been conducted?
12- “at the time of the
determination.” Which is when, the day before leaked poll results that were
supposed to be banned from public consumption are leaked?
13- “CPD will identify the
selected polling organizations well in advance of the time the criteria are
applied.” So, is it possible that they choose from among 10 polling agencies,
wherein the results are favorable to blacklisting additional parties from
having representation on the debate stage? So, how many polling agencies are
out there? If the results of the polls are so similar, why do so many of them
need to exist and why wouldn’t we want to have the polling agencies
standardized, with input from an objectively-formed Committee not just
comprised of current or former members of the democratic or republican parties?
When the qualifications for being
debate-worthy are far more stringent than the qualifications of the people
deciding upon who can appear on a stage . . . that is less theory and more
conspiracy. In a nation of laws, plenty of which are outdated, because of the
constitution, (did I just say that) maybe it is time to enact legislation about
who determines a candidate's legitimacy.
Day 34 (November 4) Debate Exposure . . . hold on, wait, stop! I interrupt the continuation of the
intended sub-topic of debates, to bring you one more link I couldn’t keep
myself from addressing related to polls. I found it while searching for what
positives are offered by having a third party involved in the debate aspect of
elections. Since the article pretty much blatantly shows what actual polls do
surreptitiously, I figured it was a mandatory inclusion.
Not sure why the below article’s
contents surprised me, because the lengths that those in power will go to
ensure they each only have one other competitor to deal with is a worthwhile
truth to notice.
“CNN Censors Focus Group Members
Voting Third Party,” October 5, 2016, Aya Katz.
I could quote every sentence of
the article, but I’ll try to contain my disgust by selecting a few:
“CNN chose to edit footage . . .
to make it seem that members of [a focus] group who were not voting either
[r]epublican or [d]emocrat were undecided when . . . they had declared that
they were voting for a third party.”
CNN “re-shot the segment and
replaced [the option for focus group participants to choose] ‘third-party’ with
undecided.”
“Rather than voting for the
Libertarian Party or the Green Party or the Constitutional Party, voters who
have not decided to vote for Trump or Clinton are presented as undecided, as if
the two old parties were the only available choices and anyone who has not
chosen one of the two is still trying to decide.”
Why would CNN feel the need to
allow Donna Brazille to “resign” due to a conflict of interest after
determining that her participation in allowing the Clinton campaign to be aware
of debate questions before a debate, and then pull a stunt like this? Surely,
we will find out two weeks from now that someone deciding to censor the
volunteer voters, by changing the words “third-party” to undecided, and
scripting subsequent responses makes me think that the continued lower-case
appearance of words like “Independent” when in reference to a political party,
are more calculated than one might think.
Day 35, November 5 (yeah, these are getting long, because I'm
running out of time- so are you):
Committee on Presidential
Debates- 15%- pretty good interest rate on just about any investment vehicle-
pretty ridiculous and arbitrary minimum number for the CPD cabal to decide upon
for allowing other candidates to be heard during debate season. It’s as if the
powers that be are guarding against allowing other electable options to
question the records, platforms, affiliations and judgment of the monopoly
party candidates.
Not sure what the Committee on
Presidential Debates (CPD), the online, print, television and radio media, and
polling agencies would have such a problem allowing candidates on the debate
stage. Of course I do, but I want to play along.
What really are the issues with
not allowing more candidates to participate in a debate?
1) Level of issue debate: it is undebatable . . . that the level of
issue debate rises when third parties are invited to debates. Instead of
talking about women-groping, email servers, and general lunacy, we could talk
about how exactly we would better the gun-control problem, school shootings,
the problem in Syria, underemployment, health care, you name it
2) Space: is an auditorium holding 2,000 to 10,000 in the audience,
at a presidential library, college or university, so small that its stage is
incapable of holding an extra podium or three? I realize that one stage holding
19, as it would have needed to during the 2015-16 republican primaries is as
unlikely as it is desperate, (considering Lindsey Graham and Mike Huckabee were
in the quorum).
3) Slippery slope: the next thing someone on the CPD, or others who
are rigging the election process will say is “how many would we like there? If
you put three, four and five on the stage, where does it stop? It is a slippery
slope and next thing you know you have the Cannabis party candidate talking
about federal funding for marijuana growers.” If there is money in it for the
government, that idea would be rife with appropriations in favor of the
measures- a truly lit idea. My answer to the slippery slope concern- let’s get
to three through five candidates included in debates and we’ll worry about the
far less significant problem of too many candidates on the debate stage later,
you know, like after there are actual laws enacted that legally guide the qualifications
for inclusion in debates. What is worse, having only two options, considering
the number of issues and lack of intelligent, meaningful and permanent answers
they consistently don’t offer, or invite a few more that will keep the main two
from saying so many redundant, corrupt and ineffectually stupid things?
4) Numbers: There are 30 minority
parties that will be on at least one ballot- you cannot invite all of them, so
. . .
5) Preliminaries: We have so many
network and cable television outlets, and all of them have a presence online.
No one can tell me that there isn’t room on these channels/programs for
recorded televised debates that could be youtubed to death. If the candidates
polling at .0001%, whose prime goal after being elected president of the United
States would be to change the spelling to “Amerika”, wouldn’t that be stupid,
wrong, different and entertaining? His failure wouldn’t be dissimilar to the
failures that traditionally occupy air time, cable television time, radio
discussion topics and streamed or podcasted videos, debate highlights that are
currently available.
6) Legitimacy: There would be no
also-ran debates where they take the 6 candidates polling the worst and have
them get onto a stage no one pays attention to, separate from those polling
more than 10%, as happened on the republican side this year. Put the
candidate’s names in a hat and pull out 8 apiece and put them on two different
stages and have two separate debates. The number they draw is also the order in
which they stand from left to right. That way, the poll numbers don’t place the
two leading candidates in the middle of the stage, where the debate organizers
want most of the attention to be focused, subconsciously and surreptitiously
helping decide for voters who are the most legitimate candidates.
7) If there are 16 candidates
vying for any office in the nation, let alone for president, have them debate
each other. If three candidates don’t have any idea about what they are talking
about, have them fail because of their own weaknesses not because of the
strength of the political machine. If a candidate suffers for his ignorance,
like a basketball team fails on the court, then so be it, but at least they got
an opportunity. Michael Jordan said, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take;
it is even harder to take them if you don’t have a ball in your hands. The NCAA
basketball tournament is the best sporting event in the world and tens of
millions pay attention. The public determines who they’re voting for in the primary
after a level playing field has been set, not after the media and party
organizers, supporters and corporations with their hands all over the election
cycle have dictated to the American people who the nominee is going to be.
(Remember- super-delegates, campaign finance, CNN censoring town hall voters,
etc.)
8) Money and ratings: Google
“ratings for republican primary debates” to find out if any of this is this is
a good idea. Ratings = money, that is how they sell advertising. Any chance it
is a worse idea to televise or otherwise make available videotaped debates or
to have another 15 Wolf Blitzer segments trying to get a good answer from
Trump’s third campaign manager about how he won a debate by flinging the most
feces accurately? If there had been a fourth presidential debate this year, any
odds that wouldn’t have been the next thing Trump tried? And can you imagine
how much advertising would cost?
Unless the personages polling,
paying for polls, or affiliated with the polls are rigging the election process
by asking people who just finished teaching their two-legged giant poodle how
to take a selfie with a refurbished Polaroid camera, why should a bonus party
candidate be restricted from contributing in a debate during the general
election or primary seasons on any one of a dozen cable or network news
channels broadcasting 24 hours a day? If a republican or democratic candidate
is really on his or her way to vying for the white house against all comers,
why not let luck decide how persuasive and skilled an orator they are by having
them debate against five candidates intelligent and objective people haven’t
even vetted yet.
Shouldn’t they be able to
distinguish themselves amongst candidates at the presidential kiddie table
(which is basically how those so obsessed with upholding the two-party system
treat third parties)? No? Isn’t that what people determining the whole process
are asking of third+ parties?
Consider the number of television
news outlets alone (Fox News, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MS-NBC, etc.) and compare
that to the 5 ESPN stations. The national spelling-B, women’s lacrosse, SEC
football games from 1978, UFC coverage, and bowling have been known to grace
ESPN channels. You can’t tell me that seeing another kid faint on purpose to
delay his potential failure to spell the word “alopecoid”
http://www.foxnews.com/…/boy-collapses-at-spelling-bee-nail… is more watchable than Rick Perry stating that Creationism is
taught in Texas’ (the state he governed) public schools- when it isn’t.
Day 36, November 6 – Debates concluded
Let’s look at a couple of quotes
from this story from the Atlantic.com- “In an Unusual Election Year, Should
Third Parties be allowed to Debate?” written by Nora Kelly, August 29, 2016: http://www.theatlantic.com/…/gary-johnson-jill-stei…/497735/
“In an editorial this month
[August of 2016], the Los Angeles Times wrote that voters must be given a
chance to hear “alternative ideas” at the upcoming debates. The Charlotte Observer
put it more pointedly, with a reference to Trump’s now-infamous allegation that
the election could be stolen. “While the presidential election isn’t rigged
(despite what some Republicans might want you to believe), the debates sure
seem to be.” Voters, in particular, have responded to the Johnson campaign:
He’s polling better now than he did as a presidential candidate in 2012, and
more than a million people tuned into the second Libertarian town hall.
“The Trump and Clinton campaigns
haven’t had much to say about Johnson and Stein. Neither campaign responded to
requests for comment about those candidates’ hypothetical involvement in
debates. Open-debate advocates probably shouldn’t expect any displays of
support, either, as neither campaign would want to risk defection if
third-party opponents perform well.”
. . . “She [Chris Carson, current
League of Women Voters president] wouldn’t say definitively that a 15 percent
cutoff is what her organization would mandate if it were still in charge, but
pressed the importance of sticking to “really clear” criteria to reasonably
limit candidate numbers. The commission, which did not respond to repeated
interview requests, notes on its website that the League used a 15 percent
metric in 1980.” Note: “League” refers to the League of Women Voters.
Additional points on the contents
of the above:
1) “Unusual election year”- every
election year is unusual in that they only happen every four years, we have
candidates who don’t belong in office, saying and doing things we cannot
believe. Since there is no Constitutional directive guiding the criteria for
the intricacies of debates, I would think the adherents who would defend the
Constitution with their life, would be willing to accept such an oversight;
2) An editorial, that's from the
media right, in favor of including third party candidates? Hell hath frozen
over;
3) “ ‘alternative ideas’ ”- why
would we want those, the people normally in favor of voting for either of the
two parties in a normal election are going to vote for one of the two
lunatic-criminals receiving the majority of the affirmative poll-numbers and
will be duped into voting for one of the two major party candidates when, in
four years, the nominees look like angels and/or geniuses.
4) “ ‘the presidential election
isn’t rigged’ ”- oh, it is rigged baby- to quote Trump- “believe me.”
5) “ ‘the debates sure seem to be
[rigged].’ ” ya think
6) “responded to the Johnson
campaign”- if he were invited to the debates the 2012 poll numbers of 2%,
increased to 8-10% this year, would be at 15% in 4 years.
7) Debates would legitimize the
third-party candidates, so why would “The Trump and Clinton campaigns have
anything to say- they would have more to lose by not allowing additional
competition into the monopoly they have going in fooling the voting public.
8) Additional candidates
“hypothetical involvement in debates”- as opposed to the major parties
hyper-exclusive control and general ineffectualness on display every debate
9) “neither campaign would want
to risk defection if third-party opponents perform well.” I think the two major
parties learned that lesson in 1992, when, in addition to looking like a fool,
Ross Perot also made Bush and Clinton look pretty average, and the voters took
notice as he received 19% of the popular vote (5% more than Gallup had
predicted). Since traditional margin of error for any poll conducted since I
can remember is +/- 2-4% that should tell you something about how viable
third-parties could be if they were included in debates. If someone is getting
19% of the popular vote, they are more likely to earn electoral votes, even
under the ridiculously outdated process of granting an entire state’s worth of
electoral votes to one candidate.
What better way is there? That
will be Monday’s topic (electoral votes), from which I will take a break on
Tuesday to revisit the topic I started this whole crusade with and then I’ll
discontinue the whole thing, having left about ¾ about what I could have
written on the topic not included in this format.
To begin to summarize- it took
200 years for rumors about Thomas Jefferson and his paternity of a child with
one of his slaves to be proven true. All that really proved was that Jefferson
was a hypocrite, as he still has a better reputation than he deserves. Do we
need to wait that long for the proof that I’ve made available to everyone about
our dysfunctional and corrupt election process to sink in and change the way we
do things in this country? Yeah, probably, we’re just that collectively
stubborn and untrusting.
Day 37, November 7 (Electoral Votes part I)
Things I’ve gotten to which are
wrong with the election process- Polls, Media, No Ranked-Choice Voting,
Debates, our lack of foresight in not legitimizing more candidates and the
worst among them- the CPD. Things I didn’t get into: campaign finance, term
limits, gerrymandering, the supreme court, local government and the
Constitution. The last item mentioned is the biggest roadblock to improvement
in this country any way you slice it. The constitution is the bible of
politics- an outdated relic that’s application to today’s issues is deeply
flawed- think of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendments, to name just a few,
that are in dire need of complete restructuring, which political, government
and corporate entities and private citizens abuse the vagueness of to our
country’s current and future peril.
No easy transition to this
subtopic . . . think about some of the elections in the past. Way back in 1840
when farmers made up 69% of the labor force; in 1900 that was 38%; in 1950
12.2%; by 1990 that was at 2.6%. Consider that the same trend follows in
mining, manufacturing, industrial plants, lumber yards, shipping, blacksmithing
and that the concentration of those jobs is now more than ever in select rural
areas far removed from the issues facing those in major metropolitan areas.
“The average family size dropped
from seven children to four children from the 1800s to early 1900s.”- http://classroom.synonym.com/working-class-early-1900s-1609… It might take me 5 minutes, without using Wikipedia, to come up
with respected sources showing how many kids people are having these days, or
having these days in metro areas compared to rural areas. It might take me ten
minutes to determine what salaries those in the cities are making compared to
those who live within walking distance to a farm, or how much someone in a city
spends on concerts, hockey tickets and dining out, compared to what the average
rural citizen might spend, how likely someone grossing over $110K a year is to
vote for a republican vs. a democrat and whether a 25-34 year-old teacher in
downtown Boise, Idaho making less than $40k a year will go for Trump or
Clinton.
Since I can do it, I know people
whose job it is to know those things, do in fact know them- like the
candidates, the media, polling agencies, corporations bankrolling the
candidates, who subsidize the non-stop election campaigns by donating mightily,
as individuals, not as corporations. Google “Citizens United”.
Who else knows the demographics-
the people who put together the red and blue maps we’re enamored with on
election night. Soon enough John King will be poised before a map of the United
States, moving these electoral votes to Clinton and these to Trump. He’ll crawl
inside the congressional districts within Florida, Ohio, maybe Texas, and see
whose path to 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency is most
unencumbered. He may even call Utah for Evan Mcmullin . . . if we’re lucky.
He’ll hit a button and the 2012 election results will pop up and the only thing
he, or anyone else with these fancy maps will hear about is how Obama did well
in this county in Florida 4 years ago. We will be mesmerized. We’ll be made
into zombies the same way people were by Perot in 1992, for which he is
ridiculed now.
Hell, we can make ourselves into
zombies by going to a CNN site (you know the media darling for liberals that
told us two weeks after they were parting ways with the interim DNC chair who
reportedly fed the Clinton campaign some of the expected questions-
Sorry, got distracted- the link
where you can play with the electoral votes- http://www.cnn.com/electi…/interactive-electoral-college-map
Day 38, November 8, Election Day
I started the overall topic of
this particular election, and the general problems with this rigged election
process, over a month ago. That first week, one of the posts was this from
Stephen C. Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell:
Day 3
“…the Dover trial and its
associated media coverage made me aware that I needed to make my argument in a
more prominent way. Many evolutionary biologists had acknowledged that they
could not explain the origin of the first life beginnings. Leading theories failed
in large measure because they could not explain where the mysterious
information present in the cell came from. So it seemed there were no good
counterarguments to the case I wanted to make. Yet various avoidance strategies
continued to work because the argument did not have sufficient public
prominence to force a response. Too few people in the public, the scientific
community, and the media even knew about it. And yet it provided—arguably—one
of the most important and fundamental reasons for considering intelligent
design.”
The next day’s post was
essentially the same quotation with six minor changes in [ ] below:
Day 4
“…the [presidential election] and
its associated media coverage made me aware that I needed to make my argument
in a more prominent way. Many [political pundits] had acknowledged that they
could not explain the [beginnings of voter tendencies]. Leading theories failed
in large measure because they could not explain where the mysterious
information present in the [vote] came from. So it seemed there were no good
counterarguments to the case I wanted to make. Yet various avoidance strategies
continued to work because the argument did not have sufficient public
prominence to force a response. Too few people in the public, the [political] community,
and the media even knew about it. And yet it provided—arguably—one of the most
important and fundamental reasons for considering [another political party].”
The similarities are striking- I
exchanged 11 words for 12 in 6 locations, less than 10% of the text was
altered; the altered and the original should beg the reader to come to the same
conclusion. We are woefully inadequate in adopting, or in authoring change-
whether we are talking about science and education or politics.
I wrote all of this the last
month, with a few more to come, because I knew I was right; this isn’t my
opinion. Until we take the long view, politics and the corrupt election process
will seem very much like science, education and the case for intelligent
design, the latter of which (ID) is going to be much more difficult to prove.
Vote for a different party this
election, vote for a different party the next . . . trust each other. We’re
living in a Tower of Babel America. So many languages, cultures, backgrounds,
belief systems, so much lack of faith, so little hope, so little foresight.
This election process is thriving because the two parties, the poll results,
the media, the Commission on Presidential Debates, lack of Ranked-Choice Voting
and the electoral college, among other things, including us, allow it to
continue. They have manipulated you into voting for one of two sides. Anyone
who has thought- a third party vote is a wasted vote or is a vote to keep a
candidate who is even less preferable than the one you’re voting for- is part
of the problem.
Saw this on an episode of the Big
Bang Theory last night. The characters brought up Buridan’s donkey- caught
equidistant between two equally appetizing bales of hay. The donkey risks
starvation if it is unable to choose to walk toward one bale of hay or another
and begin to eat. Yes, we, and the donkey, have free will, even if we don’t
know why we choose one bale of hay over another. I’m guessing everyone voting
has their reasons and I bet I’ve insulted anyone by questioning those reasons
in the course of this diatribe.
In this case, I’m the donkey, the
stubborn ass . . . well, kind of. Not moving toward either bale is the
equivalent of not voting. I won’t walk to either bale of hay as I don’t find
either appetizing. But I’m not going to starve, because I’m not going to
continue to stand there. My bet is that we wouldn’t starve if we elected to
bypass both bales of hay on an errand to find something better to eat. After
all, the fact that there are two appetizing “bales” of hay, per the donkey, is
some indication that someone put them there. It is unlikely that the wind or
stream of water, or decline of a hill piled up the hay into two equal-sized
bales, strung them together and left them there. Where are those people, and
what are they eating?
Johnson, Stein and Mcmullin are
going to lose. Combined, they may receive 7-12% of the popular vote. See that,
let it sink in, even if the oasis four years from now makes it look like some
hipster democrat with a silver tongue or some republican with a great looking
haircut in an expensive suit has raised the bar. Think ahead, get it to 15-20%
in eight years. Grow up, and find the other way. You’re really only the
stubborn ass if you comply.
Day 39, the day after:
Wow. I did not see that coming.
You know who else didn’t see that coming?: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep…/latest_polls/president/ Look at the “reputable” (media) names attached to the poll results-
ABC, Washington Post, Pew Research, LA Times, Reuters, Fox News. USA Today had
Clinton winning the general election by 10% on October 26th. Clinton either had
the lead or was tied in well over three-fourths of the polls dating back to
10/26. Who are these people talking to?
Also, I absolutely adore how many
times these polling agencies include a question about who would get your vote
if it is just between Clinton and Trump. The ELECTION WAS NOT JUST BETWEEN
CLINTON AND TRUMP! That is why they get it wrong- see the link below. Johnson
got 4+% of the popular vote, Stein got 1+%. If you look at each state from the
link above, minority parties consistently made up 4-7% of the popular vote, a
percentage that causes the margin of error in these polls to be more like 5%
than 2.5%. McMullin got 21% in Utah. Johnson and Stein combined to get 7% in
Maine, 5% in Michigan, a combined 222,000 votes where the margin of victory in
the state was less than 17,000 votes.
If anyone says those are wasted
votes, they should have their head examined and I will examine it by reading
all these posts to Facebook over the last 40 days. Clinton lost the election
because she was a terrible candidate and Trump won it despite being one. And
the polling entities got it wrong because there was one candidate who received
at least 1% of the popular vote- in fact, there were 2. I wrote that was
Gallup’s problem in three of the elections they got wrong- 1948, 1968 and 1976-
see Day 28 of these posts. Gallup has an awful lot of company.
People waking up today wondering
about how they shouldn’t have voted for a third or fourth party because it cost
Clinton the election . . . she cost herself the election! Your vote for Johnson
or Stein in Minnesota isn’t transferable to Michigan, Ohio, or Florida and just
as I have been unable to convince you, despite compelling and creditable
research, you cannot convince me of your opinion that I wasted my vote without
any compelling or creditable proof.
Who called this-
http://www.usnews.com/…/why-public-opinion-polls-are-increa… Looks like the people over at Gallup have another committee to
convene on figuring out how their whole reason for being has crumbled all
around them.
Day 40 (Electoral College II)
In presidential elections, there
is a thing called the Electoral College. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes
to win the presidency. We know that each state gets 2 electoral votes because
every state has 2 senators. Because there are 50 states, that is 100 electoral
votes, just based on senate representation. Then, each state gets electoral
votes based on population. California, New York, Florida, Texas have some of
the most electoral votes because they are the most populated. They are
separated into congressional districts for this reason. 1 congressional
district = 1 electoral vote.
When John King’s wizardry with
the red state, blue state map on election night was in full swing, he also
zoomed into which districts were going for either Clinton or Trump and whether
or not the leads in Florida, Michigan or Wisconsin could be narrowed by Clinton
once the districts for the more populated precincts, counties/congressional districts
were reported. Trump trounced her in outstate and she almost came back in
several states when their more densely populated returns, that presumably take
longer to count, were reported.
The major news stations Fox, ABC,
CNN, etc. predict who wins and loses a state based on the gaps in popular vote
and how many precincts have reported. They used to predict states for
candidates much sooner in the evening with far fewer of the precincts
reporting, but in tight races, such as in 2000, they can make mistakes so they
learned 16 years ago, to wait. They waited during this year’s election as well
and the final electoral vote count wasn’t known in a couple states until well
into the following morning.
2016 was an election that was too
close to call and several political panelists commented on how wrong the poll
results were and how horribly the polls translated to the voting results. I
believe I called out that problem with at least four posts where the election
process is rigged due to the polls. It was somehow comforting to see the media
discuss how wrong many of the polls were and communicate their surprised
displeasure, which is rather like an apathetic lion thinking about slowly
gnawing off one of its lame paws despite it not being in peril from a disease that
might kill the whole staff-infected, gangrenous beast. There isn’t much of a
line between the problems of polls and media because many of the polls are
conducted by the media- CNN, USA Today, ABC News, Washington Post.
Since the technology for tracking
the electoral vote based on precinct, county and population area already
exists, and the benefit to the voter, as I’ll explain, will be more apparent if
we award electoral votes in a more fair, transparent and logical way, we should
change to a better way to measure who the better presidential candidates are in
the general election. Lucky for us, this idea is not without precedent.
I have three words for you-
Nebraska and Maine.
Chew on this as yet another
measure at how differently the election was supposed to turn out- http://www.electoral-vote.com/ - on October 17th,
Clinton was projected to beat Trump 352-186.
Not sure what polling entities
are going to do to improve their reach and influence on elections. They can’t
make people, not comfortable with English, answer the door and can’t make cell
phone users answer their phones. People polled who are more “likely to vote” in
November when you’re asking them in July can’t be made to actually vote, but
can be convinced to answer five minutes worth of questions if you do actually
get a hold of them.
If it were up to me, polls would
be banned in this country because of the danger of influencing elections-
prompting people to get out to vote to prevent someone they hate from winning,
or stopping someone, like a third or fourth party candidate from gaining a VOTE
they have earned. All the Rachel Maddow types can preach down to
voters who chose the best among the candidates (Johnson, Stein, McMullin)
rather than choosing to try to avoid the least of them (Clinton or Trump).
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