The New Three R’s: Racism, Reproduction and Recycling

 

George Will says that “consciousness-raising” is the politically correct term for “propaganda” in the progressive mind and with funding from the federal government they are probably bringing this to a school near you.

 

Schools push a curriculum of propaganda

By George F. Will

Washington Post, April 3, 2013 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-schools-push-a-curriculum-of-propaganda/2013/04/03/6d25550e-9bc1-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html?wprss=rss_george-will

 

Take the time to read this thing.  What do you think of teachers telling school children that they have insufficient guilt about having white skin?  How does such a program fit with the morons who believe requiring a child to learn might damage the kid’s self esteem?

 

Highlights:

 

Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction in collaboration with the federal program VISTA [Volunteers in Service to America but the “volunteers” are paid] urged white students to wear white wristbands “as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”

 

A flyer distributed at a DPI-VISTA training class urged whites to “put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege,” to “make a daily list of the ways privilege played out” and to conduct an “internal dialogue” asking questions such as “How do I make myself comfortable with privilege?” and “What am I doing today to undo my privilege?”

 

After criticism erupted, the DPI dishonestly claimed that the wristbands were a hoax perpetrated by conservatives. But the flyer DPI used explicitly advocated the wristbands and Wisconsin’s taxpayer-funded indoctrination continues, funded by more than Wisconsin taxpayers.

 

Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers.  Between 1950 and 2009, while the number of K-12 students increased 96 percent, full-time-equivalent school employees increased 386 percent.  The number of teachers increased 252 percent, but the number of bureaucrats — including consciousness-raising sensitivity enforcers and other non-teachers — increased 702 percent.  States could have saved more than $24 billion annually if non-teaching staff had grown only as fast as student enrollment.  Americans wonder why their schools have done so little to improve reading, math and science scores.

 

President Reagan said: “If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever.  But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you’re liable to be given more money to do it with.”

 

N and I often wonder why diversity Nazis never demand that all-black public housing include a proportionate share of white folks and other races.  Are all-black colleges sufficiently diverse?  How about black caucuses?

Men Who Do More Housework Have Less Sex

 

I thought it essential to alert everyone of this critically important scientific study.  N says it was done by men and they made it all up.

 

Men Who Do More Housework Have Less Sex

By Rebecca Coffey

Scientific American Magazine

March 30, 2013

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=men-who-do-housework-have-less-sex

Time for Substance in Politics

 

This column is a modestly difficult read.  Not long, just complex and a little esoteric for some.  But if you think government is currently messed up and especially if you think government or process is irretrievably damaged, this is worth a read.  For me of course, the column grinds some of my favorite axes.

 

For GOP Substance, Deregulate

By George Will, The Washington Post

March 24, 2013 

http://www.thestate.com/2013/03/24/2689300/will-for-gop-substance-deregulate.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Allow me to paraphrase – redundantly if you’re nuts enough to read my posts.  We are the problem.

 

• The two most powerful and damaging lobbies in the nation are the Democrats and Republicans.  Both are radical and growing worse.

• The Parties control government and they regularly pass incumbent protection legislation.  Over the centuries, this has defeated too much of the Framer’s intent which was to protect America from the basic nature of human beings.

• Americans no longer consider our system of government exceptional;  we allow Congress to abdicate its responsibilities to the Executive and the Courts;  we happily encourage Presidents and Courts to make law;  we think the Constitution is obsolete;  we think the Electoral College and the Senate are undemocratic;  we don’t even bother to teach our exceptional system to our school children.

• We have taken sides in the propaganda war between the ruling Parties and in the process we have elevated opportunists and the fringe detritus of our population.  We have abdicated our common sense to intellectual midgets.  We equate popular opinion with governing and join cults.

 

The solutions to our problems lie in returning to common sense and American governmental basics. 

 

• Local government must be primary.  We send tax dollars to Washington so that distant legislators can decide how we should feed our poor and heal our sick and how much money we need to spend in order to do those things.  What are we thinking?

• Individual liberty must again become the underlying principle in governing.  How can a nation that was enlightened by the 18^th Amendment conceive of “The War on Drugs” let alone pursue it without Constitutional challenge and perpetuate it even in its obvious, continuous and inevitable failure?  

• I do not advocate isolationism but how can any nation enlightened by Korea and Vietnam continue to invade foreign nations without a Congressional declaration of war?  Personally, I would advocate a mandatory war tax to fully pay for any foreign military engagements.  And yes, bombing a foreign nation is an act of war regardless of whether the pilot is on the plane or sitting in a trailer in Texas.  I support Bush and Obama using drones against terrorists but not without Congress giving official authorization.

• No lobby should have government-given advantage over the others.

• We should all vote at the same time and for any candidate that can demonstrate credibility.

We should be appalled by the process we witnessed in selecting candidates for President in 2012 and we should be deeply ashamed of the caliber of those candidates.  This reflects on us.

Cyprus – Yet Another Cautionary Example

 

My progressive friends have fallen for Paul Krugman – the Keynesian socialist – who maintains two outrageous positions:

 

1.     The best way to achieve the progressive agenda is to have government spend the nation into fiscal catastrophe.  At that point Americans will surely adopt the solutions chosen in Europe – or perhaps even Venezuela.

 

2.      Deficits do not matter.  We are the world currency;  we can print money forever;  these conditions will always prevail.  Ya know, like housing prices will never decline.

 

That otherwise intelligent people listen to this crap is exactly the same condition as my many friends who find Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck credible. 

 

We’re not Greece my lefty friends tell me.  OK, but how did Greece become Greece?

 

Now if you haven’t paid attention to the latest Euro blowup in Cyprus, you should.

 

Cyprus Bailout Incites Turmoil as Blame Flies

By James Kanter, Nicholas Kulish and Andrew Higgins

NYT:  March 18, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/business/global/cyprus-bailout-incites-turmoil-as-blame-flies.html

 

In case you don’t read the column, Cyprus is bankrupt and the EU has decided – practically overnight – that the solution is to “tax” the savings account of every bank depositor in the nation.  If the Cyprus government refuses, then Brussels won’t bailout the country and real chaos will ensue – yes, savers could lose everything in a national default.

 

·         How did Cyrus get to this point where the debt is too big to service?  [Please.  Spare me the drivel.  Cyrus spent more than it earned;  a lot more;  and over an extended period of time.]

 

·         Who is expected to pay down the debt;  in this case;  in every case;  in every nation?  The answer is always the working middle class.

 

·         Can government suddenly seize part of your savings in accounts guaranteed safe by the government?  Not in America, right?  If the alternative is chaos, you better believe it.

 

·         Is it people with savings accounts that caused the problem?

 

·         What will be the result of closing the Cyprian banks and proposing this “solution”?  Capital will flee.  Collapse will be more certain.  Recovery that much more distant.

 

·         Who thought of this awful thing?  It was European “capitalists” and the IMF.  But it can’t happen here.

 

So, back to Paul Krugman and the foolish folks who buy the argument that America is exempt from Economics 101.  Did you notice the contradiction in the Krugman rules?  America will never go bankrupt he says.  But his plan is to plunge the nation in crisis so that we’ll finally “do the right things”.  Hmmm …

 

Personally, I think most progressives are just dumb.  They’re like the Michele Bachman and Ron Paul fans, they mean no harm, they’re just dumb – they drank their team’s kool-aid.  Krugman however is a smart pinko-commie with an agenda and a growing following of people who should know better.  I realize that Republicans make it easy for this fringe looney to look sensible by comparison.  But never forget that these people will not only squander all the golden eggs, they’ll happily eat the golden goose as well.

 

Want more?  Look at Brook’s evaluation of the budget produced by the Congressional Progressive Caucus last week.

 

The Progressive Shift

By David Brooks

NYT:  March 18, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/opinion/brooks-the-progressive-shift.html?ref=opinion

America’s Exceptionalism under Fire

 

There have always been modestly informed adults who forgot some of the civics they were taught in school and fell for the idea that the Electoral College was “undemocratic” and therefore somehow bad;  better to elect presidents by popular vote we’re told.  This nonsense never led anywhere because our leaders knew better.

 

But today, the ascendancy of progressives and their do-gooder allies is bringing the exceptional American system of government under threat and even ridicule.  Otherwise intelligent people are beginning to listen to such drivel.  My grandson is persuaded that the Constitution of the United States of America is document out of date.  Apparently my younger grandchildren aren’t even taught civics anymore.  More and more fools are not only attacking the Electoral College, now they find it “unfair” or “undemocratic” that small states have as many Senators as large ones. 

 

Consider this lengthy opinion piece from the front page of the New York Times written by the lefty Adam Liptak.  This guy has a wide audience;  he teaches at several of our elite lefty colleges and writes for influential lefty magazines.

 

Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in Senate

By Adam Liptak

NYT, 3/11/13

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/democracy-tested.html?hp&_r=0

 

The Founders were above all else concerned that that America would never again be under the thumb of a dictator.  And in the pursuit of this objective, their bedrock priority was individual liberty which they ingeniously sought to protect from both government and “the tyranny of the majority”.  They never believed in “pure” democracy and neither should we. 

 

“Populism” is dangerous – think Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot and so many others – do you really believe that German, Russian or Chinese people were bad or dumb?  Collectively, people are often spectacularly dumb in any given moment.  Individually we are always self interested and worse.  People are flawed and the Founder’s exceptional form of government protects us from ourselves better than any other system on the planet.

 

The Founder’s strongly advised against political Parties and today we can see their wisdom better than ever.  Federal government dysfunction is widely seen and hotly detested at the moment but it’s not the Founder’s system of government that’s broken.  Far from it, the Founder’s system is arguably protecting us from getting worse faster.  Checks and balances are a good thing.  Deliberation is at least of help, even for idiots.

 

What’s broken is our political system.  We’ve allowed the major political Parties to become the most powerful, entrenched and destructive two lobbies in the nation.  Our primary system allows the candidates for office to be selected for Party loyalty above the good of the community.  By the time the nation votes, radical political monopolies have eliminated the suitable candidates.  Once in place, legislators more and more work for their Party and some vaguely defined and incredibly malleable “principles” over the simple good of the nation.  If fact, the Party system has degraded the caliber of our legislators and at the same time shifted from offering solutions to problems to the perpetual demonization of the opposition. 

 

And we fall for it.  We have taken sides with one or the other tribe of morons and opportunists.  Can you believe that Rush Limbaugh has 22 million listeners?  Do you think that the likes of Michele Bachman, Herman Cain or Rick Santorum are of legislative caliber, let alone Presidential?  Do progressives and climate crazies represent the will of America?  They say they do.

 

Sandra Day O’Conner – former Supreme Court Justice – is so appalled at the ignorance of our citizens about our system of government that she has started iCivics.  It’s a 50 state effort to begin teaching civics in our schools again.  More power to her because kids can’t even name the three branches of government let alone understand and defend the objectives in the Federalist papers.

 

Ask yourself these questions for a start:

 

1.      Is government by referendum – i.e. “pure” democracy – a better idea than representative government? 

 

2.      Would the nation be better off if we did everything the way New York City, California or perhaps Texas says we should?  How about the Detroit way or the Arizona way?

 

3.      Do we approve of Presidents invading sovereign nations or should Congress declare war first?  If Congress passes a law, does the President have to implement it or can he modify it with signing letters?

 

4.      Have you thought about a third political Party as a possible way to break the Democrat/Republican monopoly?  If so, how do you think we should resolve a 34/33/33 popular vote result in a Presidential election?

 

5.      Can you move from a densely populated city to Fargo North Dakota?  Can you do the reverse?  

 

6.      Should government buy companies?

 

7.      Should government design stuff such as cars, light bulbs or toilets?

 

8.      Do you like the war on drugs?  Farm subsidies?  How about the Defense of Marriage Act?

 

You get the idea, I hope.  Progressives are in ascendance at the moment and with the excellent support of Republicans, we can expect that they’ll accumulate even more power.  Perhaps you like that but remember, someday it could be the Tea Party or the Ku Klux Klan or PETA or any group.  What do you think about facing these challenges after we eliminate the Senate and let the House make all the laws?

The Pop-Tart Terrorist

 

Don’t miss George Will’s hilarious ridicule of today’s politically correct, do-gooder imbeciles.

 

The Pop-Tart Terrorist

By George F. Will

Washington Post, March 8, 2013

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-schools-protecting-us-from-the-pop-tart-terrorist/2013/03/08/6a636fdc-8752-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html?wprss=rss_george-will

 

I find his closing point irresistible:

 

“Government is failing spectacularly at its core functions, such as budgeting and educating.  Yet it continues to multiply its peripheral and esoteric responsibilities, tasks that require it to do things for which it has no aptitude, such as thinking and making common-sense judgments.”

 

Of course the core problem is us.  We elect our governments and we tolerate their failures.  Even worse, we take sides in these “peripheral and esoteric” food fights that the politicians start to take our minds off real problems and make us all part of what used to be the fringe nut bags of our communities.

Owning a Canadian

 

This is great;  my son started me off on this by sending me one of the emails currently circulating.  Those that care at all about religious arguments in politics have long known that Leviticus is the irrefutable rebuttal to the fundamentalists, evangelicals and other Biblical literalists – Deuteronomy is fun as well.  But this little piece of irreverent sarcasm is a wonderful rebuke to the publically sanctimonious.  Read it, it’ll give you a smile and the references are conveniently at hand.

 

http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/laura.htm#L11.10

 

Please note that I have no problem with the religious.  Most are just ordinary folks like me.  As for the religious fringe, they can condemn any behavior they choose including my cherished hedonism.  They have every right to exclude non-believers from their congregations.  They can freely express their views via any media no matter how dumb or obnoxious their views may be – this is America.  They can teach their kids what they wish.  [Even John Kerry sees this as a national virtue.]

 

But since this is America I don’t want to see any religion in politics.  We should not teach creationism as science in public schools or respect any religious or cultural “sensibilities” if they interfere with the facts.  When it comes to gay marriage, the 14^th Amendment is just as clear for gays as it is for blacks and women – get over it. 

 

And while the evangelicals have a right to say it, I have a right to ridicule what they say without intending any animosity toward the privately religious.  How is it that the Bible thumpers can spew such nonsense and then reject their fellow traveler:  Obama’s Reverend Jeremiah Wright? 

 

I’ve always wanted to ask a fundamentalist who believes that the Bible is the absolute word of God that must be followed to the letter about the issues raised in this humorous letter.  What would one say?  Clearly these devout fathers are not stoning their promiscuous daughters in the doorways of their homes [Deuteronomy 22:21].  And, Abraham was nuts.  When God starts telling me to kill my son, I’m going to tell Him to take a hike and get back on my meds. 

 

But a deeper question for fundamentalists intrigues me.  It’s not so terrible for someone to believe that the Bible is the absolute word of God.  OK, God steered “the word” perfectly through the book burning of Constantine and protects the perfection of the current versions even though the original is lost – faith is faith and God is God.  But then we have the practitioners adamantly reminding us of what the Bible requires.  Doesn’t that suggest that the practitioner is claiming perfect understanding of what the Bible says?  Wouldn’t such a claim translate into a claim of perfect understanding of the mind of God?  Wouldn’t the latter be blasphemy?  But I should not dabble.

 

Religion is not for me because I never found one that makes any sense in the long term.  I don’t think I’m an atheist although I don’t really care.  I’d wager that the practitioners of any of the religions of Abraham would call me atheist but I don't care about that either.  I’ve ruled out religion and the Gods of religion but I can’t rule out God – something had to start it all.  I have a problem with the theories of the origin of the universe.  What started the “big bang”, what was there before?  I used to say that maybe God is infinity.  “It all started with energy which was always just there,” the physicists say now.  Yeah but who created the energy?  Nobody?  Well then God is energy, I guess.  In the end, I’m just more comfortable with the universe being a child’s terrarium in the third grade of some alternate reality than I am with the Gods of religions.

 

One last thing in an effort to alienate everyone equally, my wife likes to say that religion is the root of all evil.  In other words, we’ve murdered more people in the cause of religion than any other.  I infuriate her by saying I can agree only if I’m allowed to include communism as a religion.  She says communism is not a religion so I say fine then “the left” is the root of all evil – they have murdered more people than all the religious and fascists combined.  That makes her furious but not compared to the response I get from my lefty friends.

 

As I see it, communitarians, progressives, climate alarmists, animal protectors, food Nazis, et al are practicing a kind of religion.  Practitioners are absolutely faithful to their cause;  ends justify means;  heretics are banished.  Some have far more institutions, doctrine and history than others but the parallels are there.  Activists laughably ridicule the obvious stupidity and hypocrisy of the religious right without ever seeing their own.  Like the politically active religious, the left would and does use the law to impose their views on others.  And they are ascendant in the moment.

 

So my brethren … go forth and sin no more.

 

Deuteronomy 22:21: “she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.  She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father's house.  You must purge the evil from among you.”

 

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp

Fiscal Cliff Averted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not

 

 

Here’s your government in action.  We avoided the some sort of fiscal cliff by adding $4 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years – it’s like treating a hemorrhage by opening another artery.

 

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/01/news/economy/fiscal-cliff-deal-cbo/

 

Here’s a key quote from AP’s Charles Babington:

 

“While Americans widely denounce the mounting debt, not so many embrace cuts to costly programs like Social Security.  And most want tax increases to hit someone other than themselves.”

 

Analysis: Cliff Deal Is Another Pain-Free Punt

By Charles Babington - Associated Press

http://www.thestate.com/2013/01/02/2575600/analysis-cliff-deal-is-another.html

 

We better wake up.

 

P.S.  Look at this smirking fool, happy over his clear political victory at the expense of every American.  This was the anti-Bush, remember?  But what is the difference?  Both make wars in other nations.  Both continue deficit spending.  Both fail to reform anything and especially not the nation ruining entitlement liabilities.  Both create new entitlements.  And both refuse to explain that taxes must go up on everyone while we reduce benefits for all but the truly needy.

 

 

If you favor one of our political Parties, you are part of the problem. 

The Fiscal Cliff is a Joke: The Problem is us

 

The real fiscal cliff is our unsustainable welfare state which, depending upon your personal preferences, is already bankrupt or will be no later than 2030.  Unfortunately, as a result of an aging population [too few babies and too little immigration] and surging health care costs, our welfare system has become unaffordable.  The average Medicare couple pays $109,000 into the program and gets $343,000 in benefits out.  The statistical you and me – American Greeks – will end the political career of anybody that tries to fix this or even tell us the truth about it.

 

·         Government debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is around 74 percent now.  Interest on that debt for 2012 was $360 billion.  The fiscal cliff deal on the table at the moment would raise about $60 billion a year in new taxes.

 

·         Under current spending, debt will approach a ruinous 90 percent of G.D.P. in a decade and a cataclysmic 247 percent of G.D.P. 30 years from now. 

 

·         By 2025, entitlement spending and debt payments are projected to suck up all federal revenue.

 

·         According to the International Monetary Fund, meeting America’s long-term obligations will require an immediate and permanent 35 percent increase in all taxes and a 35 percent cut in all benefits.

 

What part of this do we not understand?  The nation is being run by Bible-thumpers, libertarian anarchists and progressive, anti-capitalist commies.  If you like one of our political Parties or hate one more than another, then you are the moron.

 

My generation is certainly the “Greediest Generation” and my children’s generation seems to be falling right in behind.  We are going to have to wake up folks.

 

Another Fiscal Flop

By David Brooks

Published: December 31, 2012, NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/brooks-another-fiscal-flop.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

 

Is it sad or hopeful to see the ever optimistic Brooks write this column?  The one place where I disagree with him regards his forgiveness of Boehner and Obama, and by extension the other political leadership.  The left wants to run the country by referendum but Americans don’t;  we expect our representatives to go to Washington and do the right thing.  At a minimum, any leader should be able to tell us the truth – most especially a President now free of personal political consequences for life.  These are the protectors of the middle class?  Also derelict are the media, main stream, political and commentariat combined.  We need some unvarnished truth from these folks.

The Romney Loss

Already, the right wing morons are leaping out of the woodwork to demand that the Republican Party get even worse.  I started writing a post about what really happened in this election when I found the following from George Will - who can say anything better?

 

Thursday, Nov. 08, 2012

Status Quo Preserved

By George F. Will - Washington Post

http://www.thestate.com/2012/11/08/2511241/status-quo-preserved.html#storylink=cpy

 

I hope sensible people everywhere will simply stop listening to the awful Rush Limbaugh and his opportunist ilk.

 

If we believe in this country and its people then we have to understand that the loyal opposition to progressives are as much as half wrong.

 

 

 

 

[Some folks have trouble following links, so I’ve pasted the column below.]

 

 Status Quo Preserved

By George F. Will - Washington Post

Thursday, Nov. 08, 2012

 

America’s 57th presidential election revealed that a second important national institution is on an unsustainable trajectory. The first, the entitlement state, is endangered by improvident promises to an aging population. It is now joined by the political party whose crucial current function is to stress the need to reform this state. And now the Republican Party, like today’s transfer-payment state, is endangered by tardiness in recognizing that demography is destiny.

 

Perhaps Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election on Sept. 22, 2011, when, alarmed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s entry into the Republican nomination race, he rushed to Perry’s right regarding immigration, attacking the DREAM Act. He would go on to talk about forcing illegal immigrants into “self-deportation.” It is surprising that only about 70 percent of Hispanics opposed Romney.

 

As it has every four years since 1992, the white portion of the turnout declined in 2012. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first person elected president while losing the white vote by double digits. In 2012 — the year after the first year in which a majority of babies born in America were minorities — Hispanics were for the first time a double-digit (10 percent) portion of the turnout. Republicans have four years to figure out how to leaven their contracting base with millions more members of America’s largest and fastest-growing minority.

 

Romney’s melancholy but useful role has been to refute those determinists who insist that economic conditions are almost always decisive. Americans are earning less and worth less than they were four years ago; average household income is down $3,800; unemployment was 8 percent or more for a total of 39 months under the 11 presidents from Harry Truman through George W. Bush, but it was over that for 43 Obama months. Yet voters preferred the president who presided over this to a Republican who, more than any candidate since the Great Depression, made his economic expertise his presidential credential.

 

Voters littered the political landscape with contradictions between their loudly articulated discontents and their observable behavior. Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals 2-1 in a nation that has re-elected the most liberal president since Lyndon Johnson and his mentor Franklin Roosevelt. A nation said to be picnicking on the slope of a volcano, with molten anger bubbling just below its thin and brittle crust, has matched a rare record of stability in its central political office: For only the second time — the first was the Virginia dynasty of the third, fourth and fifth presidents, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe — there will be three consecutive two-term presidents.

 

A nation vocally disgusted with the status quo has reinforced it by ratifying existing control of the executive branch and both halves of the legislative branch. After three consecutive “wave” elections in which a party gained at least 20 House seats, and at a moment when approval of Congress has risen — yes, risen — to 21 percent, voters ratified Republican control of the House, keeping in place those excoriated as obstructionists by the president the voters retained. Come January, Washington will be much as it has been, only more so.

 

Obama is only the second president (Andrew Jackson was the first) to win a second term with a reduced percentage of the popular vote, and the third (after James Madison and Woodrow Wilson) to win a second term with a smaller percentage of the electoral vote. A diminished figure after conducting the most relentlessly negative campaign ever run by an incumbent, his meager mandate is to not be Bain Capital. Foreshadowing continuing institutional conflict, which the constitutional system not only anticipates but encourages, Speaker John Boehner says of the House Republican caucus: “We’ll have as much of a mandate as he will.”

 

The electoral vote system, so incessantly and simple-mindedly criticized, has again performed the invaluable service of enabling federalism — presidents elected by the decisions of the states’ electorates — to deliver a constitutional decisiveness that the popular vote often disguises.

 

Republicans can take some solace from the popular vote. But unless they respond to accelerating demographic changes — and Obama, by pressing immigration reform, can give Republicans a reef on which they can wreck themselves — the 58th presidential election may be like the 57th, only more so.

 

This election was fought over two issues as old as the Republic, the proper scope and actual competence of government. The president persuaded — here the popular vote is the decisive datum — almost exactly half the voters. The argument continues. As Benjamin Disraeli said, “Finality is not the language of politics.”

A Short Civics Primer

 

Here are a few things I looked up after wondering – over kool-aids on the porch – about an electoral tie this year.

 

1.      The Electoral College has 538 votes which allows for a tie at 269-269.

 

a.      Each state gets one vote per US house district and one vote for each Senator – that’s an unchanging 535 votes each and every year plus 3 more votes for the District of Columbia.

 

[I hate the fact that DC exists as a political entity – all citizens should live in one of the surrounding states.  But the fact that DC has as many electoral votes as some states and almost as many as many others is far worse.]

 

2.      In the event of a tie, the US House of Representatives selects the new President [12th Amendment].  [It happened twice, 1801 and 1825.]

 

a.      The new House does the voting but not until January 1^st.

 

b.      While the House has 435 members, they only get 50 votes – one for each state.  The first candidate to win the votes of any 26 states is the new president.  [DC gets no vote here.]

 

c.       Each state’s “delegation” of House members decides among themselves how their state’s vote will be cast.  [And they can choose from any of the top three electoral vote getters.  In theory, some total outlier could win.]

 

3.      The Vice President is elected by the Senate.  [It happened once in 1837.]

 

a.      The new Senate does the voting but not until January 1^st.

 

b.      Each Senator gets one vote.  The first candidate to win 51 votes is the new vice president.  

 

c.       So, legislative voting could result in the President and vice president coming from different Parties. 

 

d.      Further, 12^th Amendment language precludes the sitting Vice President from breaking any tie which might occur BUT this is disputed by some legal scholars – think of the possible mess here.

 

4.      Deadlocked chambers – add this to the possible Constitutional dispute mentioned above.

 

a.      The House of Representatives must choose a President-elect in time for the inauguration (noon on January 20).

 

b.      If the House fails, the Twentieth Amendment specifies that the Vice President-elect becomes Acting President until the House should select a President. 

 

c.       If the winner of the vice presidential election is also not known by then, then under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the sitting Speaker of the House would become Acting President until either the House should select a President or the Senate should select a Vice President.  None of these situations has ever occurred.

 

One last thought about all this and our current divisive political representatives.  Remember the walkouts of Democrats from the Texas and Wisconsin state legislative sessions?  Well, the Twelfth Amendment requires two thirds of the states to be present in the US House for Presidential voting and two thirds of US Senators to be present for vice presidential voting.  Imagine the utter mess these jerks could make.

 

And finally, as I read it, if the both Houses of Congress were to remain deadlocked until March 4^th, then the “sitting vice president” would become acting President until they acted.  Joe Biden would become President.  Just think of the mess the obstructionists could create.