Recent Comments

1. about 5 hours ago on Adam@Home

   In his cell in the basement, of course. They may let him out for Thanksgiving, though…

2. 1 day ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “You mean what did not happen during his first term?”

   Because during Trump’s first term there were adults in the room and in his cabinet preventing him from doing some of the illegal and stupid things he tried to do. Those same adults now confirm that’s exactly what happened. Those were people recommended to Trump by other adults, but now Trump knows he needs to put in his staff only sycophants who will approve whatever he decides. He has essentially said so.

   “If Putin “controlled” Trump, why didn’t he ask his “buddy” to let him invade Ukraine sometime between 2017 and early 2021 instead of waiting until 2022?”

   For several reasons. First, Putin was preparing his military apparatus, and that takes time (and money). And clearly he should have prepared even more, because he expected to finish the job in three weeks and it’s going to be at least three years.

   Second, Putin was expecting Trump to win the re-election. Don’t be surprised, because even you thought Trump was going to win. He was counting on Trump refusing to help Zelenskyy in any way. In fact, he knew that Trump would be pleased by the invasion since the Ukraine scandal, and in particular his call with Zelenskyy were the backbone of his first impeachment. Putin knows Trump is a resentful SOB just like himself.

   Putin also knew that it would be much easier for Trump to turn a blind eye after the re-election, because doing it before would likely have cost Trump said re-election. And Putin knew that Trump’s main goal was getting re-elected at any cost. Putin knows Trump is a narcissistic SOB just like himself.

   Waiting until after the re-election also gave a little bit of extra time for Trump to withdraw or at least weaken NATO as he repeatedly threatened to do (again, things that would weaken Trump’s chances of re-election).

   Thus, early 2022 was a perfect time for Putin to invade. But as I said, two things failed in his calculation: Trump lost, and Putin wasn’t nearly as prepared as he thought.

3. 1 day ago on Pearls Before Swine

   Returning to the question of how the EC helps small states, here is the answer:

   Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution specifies that each state get the same number of Electors in the College as the number of Senators and Representatives that the state has in Congress. Each state has one Representative in the House per Congressional District, and a total of two senators. The number of Congressional Districts is roughly proportional to the population of the state (ideally each district should have a population around 761,000 but in real life this is rarely possible so they have to round up or down).

   If the number of Electors were equal to only the number of Representatives in the House, California would get 52 and North Dakota 1. That is 11.95% and 0.23% of the pie (435 districts), and of course very much in line with their share of the total population.

   But since the two senators of each state count, California actually gets 54 Electors and North Dakota 3. But the pie is now bigger: 538 Electors, so California’s share got reduced to 10.04% and North Dakota’s got increased to 0.56%.

   That is how small states benefit from the Electoral College. They taught you it had something to do with W-T-A but never gave a good reason why… because it doesn’t!

   It’s a silly little mathematical trick that can be applied to any electoral system: Just multiply the number of votes for each candidate in California by (52+2)/52 = 1.04, in North Dakota by (1+2)/1 = 3, and so on for the other states.

   (Of course people are going to scream that then each vote in California is worth 1/3 of a vote in the smallest states… Sweetheart, that is already happening, it’s just disguised.)

4. 1 day ago on Pearls Before Swine

   (…continued)

   “If you want to advocate eliminating Winner-Takes-All, as Maine and Nebraska have done, I’m all for that.”

   What ME and NE do is barely an improvement. If the voters for each party are uniformly distributed throughout the state, the result is identical to W-T-A. If they are unevenly distributed, then the results can be manipulated by gerrymandering.

   For example, suppose a state has 10 Electoral Districts, and 60% of voters go for party A and 40% for party B. You can draw gerrymandered maps where A will get only 3 EDs and B will get 7 EDs. So A gets 3 EVs and B gets 7+2=9 EVs. The party with 60% of voters gets 25% of the EVs and the one with 40% of the voters gets 75% of the EVs.

   And in this case, such extreme situations do happen, for example in the 2018 State House elections in WI and OH. (There goes your argument that because extreme cases haven’t happened then they will never happen.)

   “At least 2016 shows winning one state didn’t swing the Electoral College”

   Yes, but due to the EC and W-T-A, in 2024 Trump would have won (by far) just by winning CA. Conversely, in 2004 Kerry would have one by taking any one of FL, TX, or OH. And in 2000 Gore would have won by flipping any one state in his favor. So it is very common that winning one state swings the EC.

5. 1 day ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “Again, has that ever happened?”

   No, but the mere fact that such things are even possible mathematically is a testament to how irreparably broken the EC system is. Between those extreme-but-unlikely cases and cases and cases with decent results, there is a myriad of outcomes that are far more likely and almost as abhorrent.

   “It’s interesting you call it a “simple mathematical trick” after using that “trick” in your paragraphs above.”

   No I didn’t. Oh, you are one of those brain-washed people who think that the advantage that the EC gives to small states over big ones is because of Winner-Takes-All! Newsflash: It has nothing to do with Winner-Takes-All! You think that you understand the system but you haven’t done the math to realize that your preconceptions are mistaken. For any scenario where W-T-A helps the small ones there is one where it hurts them.

   For example: The W-T-A obliterates the voices of rural Californians, who by nature are more aligned with the agricultural states with very small populations. If the 6 million Trump voters in CA in 2020 had gotten a proportional number of the state’s EVs, that would be 19 more EVs for Trump which is exactly the number of EVs in Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho combined. So the interests of the majority of inhabitants in the six smallest red states were actually hurt because they got zero CA EVs due to W-T-A.

   I will explain the real way how the EC helps small states in a separate reply. You will see that it’s a simple mathematical trick that can be applied to any system, and W-T-A plays no role in it.

   (continues…)

6. 2 days ago on FoxTrot Classics

   iBooks were the lower tier of Apple laptops at the time. The pro line were called PowerBook.

   When Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel processors, they changed the names to MacBook and MacBook Pro.

7. 3 days ago on Cow and Boy Classics

   They are the funniest, I guess?

8. 4 days ago on FoxTrot

   A single portion bag is 40 g (sometimes 45 g). If the cartoonist weighs 80 kg (176 lb), that would be 2,000 bags.

   Or as @MissyTiger said, too many!

9. 4 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “Freedom under a constitutional republic is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.”

   Ah, yes? And what exactly in the Electoral College process gives arms to the lamb?

   If you think it is because it gives small states a boost compared to big states, you are wrong. As I said above, that is a simple mathematical trick that can be applied to absolutely any electoral system. How do you think that works?

   If you think it is because of the winner-takes-all nonsense that almost all states apply… In the 2020 election, 6 million Californians voted for Trump. That is more than any other state in the nation. And yet they got zero votes in the EC representing them. How do you think the winner-takers-all helps the lamb?

   Again: Exactly what in the EC do you think helps the lamb and how?

   @billfl, please educate yourself about your form of government and why you have the system you have. Because you are just blabbering empty talking points without supporting them in any way.

10. 4 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

    “Over the history of the world many of the democracies turned into a dictatorship country. Venezuela is one of the most recent examples.”

    You clearly have no idea about Venezuelan history. Venezuela has never been a pure democracy. It has always been a Constitutional Republic, just like the US. Before Chávez, Venezuela had a pretty decent Constitution, complete with separation of powers and a reasonable electoral process. Chávez replaced it with a trashy Constitution. But as trashy as it is, the new Constitution still has separation of powers (with five powers, two additional ones) and a reasonable electoral process. The problem is that Maduro and Chávez (before he died) don’t respect even their own Constitution, manipulate the other powers, and have clearly stolen the elections several times. (And of course other parts of the Constitution are just plain bad.)

    Please educate yourself about Venezuela before blabbering nonsense about that messed up yet beautiful country.