Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
>Trump will "heroically" broker "peace deals."

Using Neville's playbook.
  

    
I also don't understand how he won the popular vote with such a
lower number. Everything I'm seeing says Dems hit their numbers,
it's not that we didn't turn out. But that consistent shift across
the country is very hard to parse.
  

    
>I was going to bring up the question of whether vote totals match
checkins

You're not the only one. It beggars credulity that ~20 million
*fewer* votes were recorded than in 2020. Not possible.
  

    <scribbled by magdalen Sat 9 Nov 24 15:25>
  

    


PS: quoting X/Twitter in this thread --- that boils my blood, too. ELON
FUCKING MUSK owns, runs, and profits off that shithole. could we please
stop giving him eyeballs and money, sharing quotes off his shitty platform?
  

    
This time the fascism, the racism, the misogyny were out in the open
and on full display - and he did *better*.  I just can't get my head
around it.
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
I know there was a fair amount of Russian fuckery, like the bomb
threats and stuff. But overall I think the counting was fair,
because until Mark Elias tells me it wasn't I trust he knows what's
up.

Two things - Latino vote moved toward Trump, across the board. And,
yeah, we continue to underestimate the American unwillingness to
give women any agency. 
  

    
Both the NYT and the WaPost seemed to make a point of headlining
that a woman lost for the second time.

My only consolation, and it's a small one, is that the Senate looks
much better for Democrats in two years. Two long, miserable years.
  

    <scribbled by lperson Wed 6 Nov 24 10:25>
  

    
<Assuming there are free elections and Trump doesn't have viable
Democratic candidates assasinated.>

Just so...



<but this morning I hate my country.>

The US has been an irredeemably evil shithole country forever.

It was founded on the basis of chattel slavery, genocide,
exploitation, and expropriation, and has a political system which is
a sick, grotesque caricature of an actual democracy, and an
electorate the majority of whom are idiots, lunatics, and fascist
assholes.
  

    
The lack of transactional politics. 

The Blue States pay taxes to subsidize the Red States. Red States
are hugely more dependent on the federal government in general. The
Democrats pass a trillion dollar infrastructure bill that subsidizes
new industries and non-union factories mostly in Red States. The
Blue candidate says she would be president for all Americans. The
Red candidate says he would withhold federal emergencies support for
Blue states. 

It may be too late, but should the Democrats rethink the concept of
pork? 

<https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-governmen
t/2700>
  

    
I guess there's a Google/chatgpt explanation why the Dems started
with half the seats in the Senate the Reps did is that what's
reversed next time?

Last time I looked there was a bigger gap between seats and 50% Ds
vs Rs.

In some of the close races the 3rd/4th candidates combined was about
the same as Trump's margin over Harris.  Even saw some rfk's.  
  

    
2nd para is house.
  

    <scribbled by lperson Wed 6 Nov 24 10:25>
  

    
So far Stein and Kennedy together received votes equivalent to  3/4
of  the gap between Harris and Trump in Michigan. The remainder
would give Trump a lead twice as big as the one with which Biden won
the state in 2020. Stein received most of those 44,000 votes from
Muslims and Arab Americans protesting US support for the slaughter
in Gaza. She had no effect on the outcomes in other swing states.
Harris would have lost even if she had won in Michigan.
  

    <scribbled by lperson Wed 6 Nov 24 10:25>
  

    
I already feel the stirrings of a new resolve.

I am a person of immense privilege. I'm housed, fed, loved, healthy,
and past child-bearing. 

My priorities have long been the people who don't have those things,
and the welfare of animals. 

Today I can't even think of any sort of political involvement,
struggling to improve a country that, in majority, wants to go
backward. Maybe later, not today.

But I'll still write checks to house and feed the homeless. I'll
still advocate for the mentally ill from the platforms I'm gifted
with. I'll still collect soda cans for the Homeless Cat Network;
I'll still give my monthly donation to the Nine Lives Foundation. My
money and volunteer time will still go to my favorite public radio
station. I'll still support our state and national parks. 

I'm not going to my grave having retreated to my comfy home on the
hill and given up caring about people, the Earth, and animals. I'm
still me.
  

    
<292>: Those people chose to vote against an administration that
supports the murder of their relatives and the murder of people who
are like them, for being like them. I can't call them idiots for
doing that.
  

    <scribbled by lperson Wed 6 Nov 24 10:25>
  

    
We were just counting the ones who voted for Stein. I'm sure there
were more who voted for Trump, the once and current peace
candidate(!). They're better judges of their own interests than you
are. Deal with it.
  

    <scribbled by lperson Wed 6 Nov 24 10:25>
  

    <scribbled by lperson Wed 6 Nov 24 10:25>
  

    
Fuck those people. 
  

    
It didn't make a bit of difference.  Voters across the country had a
very clear choice to make and they made it.  RFK and Stein voters
did not change the outcome.