It seems that a lot of my blogs lately have started out with some version of “a lot’s happened over the last week…” And I guess that’s because a lot HAS happened over the last week. And since so much has happened, it’s hard to pick just one thing to cover, so I’ll touch on a couple of things.
First, the recount. How serious is it? In my view – not very. Its principal purpose is an attempt to delegitimize the election of Donald Trump. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has raised nearly $7 million from gullible people to fund the effort in three states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. She finds it such a horror that Donald Trump was elected President, and not her, or Hillary Clinton, that she’s wasting her time, and other peoples’ money, on this doomed-to-fail effort. The irony is that had she not run in the first place, and the approximately 1% of the vote that she garnered gone to Hillary Clinton instead of to her (as most of it certainly would have), Donald Trump may not have won the election. Of course we’ll never know for sure, but in many ways, she’s the Ralph Nader of 2016.
Then there’s Hillary Clinton. In a move that just reeks of hypocrisy, Hillary’s campaign (or what’s left of it) has announced that it will join with the Nader (oops, I mean Stein) recount effort. This is the same Hillary Clinton who thundered that candidate Donald Trump was “threatening democracy” when he said at the third and final debate, that he would look at the results of the election before he automatically said they were legit. At the time, Hillary was joined by her allies in the mainstream press (meaning virtually all of the mainstream press) in roundly criticizing Trump for his “dangerous” rhetoric. Now she’s DOING, what he merely SAID. And the press yawns.
The bottom line is, the recount is much ado about nothing. And Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as our 45th president on January 20th. (And I’ll be there.)
Okay, next topic. The electoral college. Twice now in the last 16 years, one candidate has won the electoral college, but not the popular vote (Bush over Gore in 2000, and now Trump over Clinton in 2016.) Prior to that we’d have to go back over a century, to the election of 1876, for another example (Rutherford B. Hayes, who had represented our Congressional District in the House of Representatives, lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden, but won the electoral college, and therefore the presidency.)
Some think we should get rid of the electoral college, and just go with the popular vote. Any chance of this happening? In my view, not a chance. Why? Because it would require a constitutional amendment to make that change, meaning a two-thirds vote in the House, a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures ratifying it. The smaller states will never allow this to happen, because they know, that rather than getting a lot of attention, both in the primaries and in the general election as they get now, they’d be mostly ignored. The bulk of presidential candidates’ time would be spent in big states, with big cities, and a lot of people concentrated there, like California, and New York, and Texas, and Illinois. Not gonna happen.
It’s about as likely to happen as candidate Trump’s push for congressional term limits. Now I’ve always voted for term limits, and will do so if they come up again, but their chances of passing, in my view, are slim to none. Why? Again, like changing the electoral college, it would take a constitutional amendment, a two-thirds vote, etc. And the necessary two-thirds votes in either house, much less in both houses, just aren’t there, and I doubt they will be there any time in the foreseeable future.
And finally – Fidel’s dead! And I say, good riddance. This bastard was a murderer, a torturer, a dictator, a scoundrel, a thug, a tyrant, scum. But that didn’t stop some folks on the left, including our soon-to-be-former-President Barack Obama, from praising this recent arrival to Hell.
Obama offered “condolences” to the Castro family, and alluded to “powerful emotions”, but didn’t have the guts to mention anything about Castro’s utter disregard for human rights or human life during his murderous reign. The previously mentioned Green Party candidate Jill Stein, insanely declared that “Fidel Castro was a symbol for the struggle for justice.” (Thank God this woman lost.) Canada’s leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Castro a “remarkable leader”, again, not mentioning the thousands and thousands of innocent human beings who received a bullet to the head, after having been horribly tortured, under Castro’s direct orders. Failed President Jimmy Carter said he’ll remember Castro “fondly.” And nowadays, no controversy is complete until San Francisco 49ers Colin Kaepernick, who is too full of himself to stand for the national anthem, weighs in. Kaepernick was enthusiastically booed in Miami before the Dolphins/49ers game over the weekend, after spewing pro-Castro blather, and trying to explain his way out of why he had previously worn a pro-Castro T-shirt at a press conference. Sure wish this guy would shut up and play football (like some Broadway actors I could mention.)
Okay, I’ve taken enough of your time. Thanks for reading this week’s blog. See you next week.
