USA voting

I hope those of you who can vote in the US federal election have done so.  The lines here for early voting are extremely long (thank goodness).

The options are night and day. We've had a preview of night, previously. It would be undoubtedly worse the second time around. So vote (if you have not) while you still can. Trump wants to block citizens who live overseas from being able to vote in the future. (Yes, I heard that out of his own mouth.) So it's use it or lose it time....

I submitted my absentee ballot the other day.

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oh.my.god.

oh.my.god.

Exactly my sentiments.  Not even close.  This time around everyone knows exactly what to expect so I guess we are getting the President the majority want.

That waits to be seen. It's entirely possible the majority went the other way, as happened the first time he "won" - I believe Ms. Clinton actually had a larger number of individual votes cast for her than did Trump.  But it's the electoral college game that counts.

The last count I saw for the current election was dems 66,684,706 and reps 71,560,311, but they're still counting ballots.  So, 138,245,017 votes in, and of that 4,875,605 more for Trump than Harris. I'm bad at math, but that's like 3.5% of the total voters?  The actual numbers question will be answered in a week or two, when they have all the ballots counted. But again, it won't matter what the popular vote was, it's the electoral college votes that count. So it's where the additional Trump voters were voting that matters.

On the good side, and aside from showing that this country is seriously, seriously divided to the point of national schizophrenia, it does point out which states are solid blue and which are solid red. Since we were thinking of moving next year, it's now much easier to know which ones to avoid moving into.

Putin must be very happy today.

 

As of this moment there are only 3 (small?) States left to declare so I very much doubt she will overtake him on the popular vote, and she lost hugely on the electoral college vote.

So sad.

Oh, bummer. We've already had a kid jump off the 8th floor library stairwell landing at my former University-of-employment this morning. Campus was hush-hush about it, other the running everyone out of the library, for hours and now are pointedly saying that it wasn't "an enrolled student" and there's "no threat to the campus community".  So, what, a graduate?  A drop-out? Faculty or Staff?  Or a local non-documented, or LGBTQ, etc?  Some poor tortured soul who wandered a considerable distance in off the street and up into the stacks, that they'd have to already be familiar with to know about that stairwell?  Does it freaking matter?  Given what's going on in this country right now, I'd say all the kids are under threat of one sort or another. Some are just going to be super hyper-sensitively aware of it. And there's really not much of a safety net for them. I would hope campus did a little more than say "there's no danger to the campus community." But I doubt they will.

God rest that poor kid's soul.   

And Camarillo is burning down tonight.

God rest that poor kid's soul.   

 

My US friends are universally distraught about the result...even the Republicans. I had beers with one of them over the weekend and we agreed that the results say some very disturbing things about the US involving lack of respect for the courts, standards of morality and prejudice of many kinds. We also agreed that his Republican Party no longer exists and has been replaced by the MAGA Party. He will never call himself anything other than a Republican, but will be voting Dem. until things change.

My US friends are universally distraught about the result...even the Republicans. I had beers with one of them over the weekend and we agreed that the results say some very disturbing things about the US involving lack of respect for the courts, standards of morality and prejudice of many kinds. We also agreed that his Republican Party no longer exists and has been replaced by the MAGA Party. He will never call himself anything other than a Republican, but will be voting Dem. until things change.

You may have already seen the meme that apparently started in Germany and spread via Ireland to the UK.

What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.

You may have already seen the meme that apparently started in Germany and spread via Ireland to the UK.

What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.

I would laugh if it wasn't so true. It's hard to take in because I live somewhere that voted 75% for Harris.

I wish I could say this was a complete surprise. However, the MAGA types are the people I grew up with, in one form or another. Working class, maybe high-school diploma, distrustful of government (of any flavor), the-cops-are-not-your-friends-they-work-for-the-elite, distrust of "outsiders" (aka, anyone not from the region and of their class), universities are dangerous because we don't understand them (except for veterinarian, nursing, and teacher training places). Same with Big Science. They've always been here. Remember the Illinois Nazis and the KKK?  They never really went away, just morphed.  In Texas they were very fond of unofficial militias... now, THAT was really freaky, when you'd come on platoons of them drilling in full camo & live weapons out in the sticks!

It's the low-income immigrant and borderline (class borders) vote, generically, that surprised me. The people who stand to lose the most have shot themselves in their collective foot. Then again, as much as I like a lot that Biden has done, there are some US foreign policies that leave me absolutely livid. If there had been a viable option to the Dems, and there unfortunately was not, I'd probably have gone down that road.

Welcome to the 1950s, again. Grit teeth, tighten belt, and be ready to do what you can do when you can do it. If you're in a state, or live close to the border with one, unfriendly to women's reproductive rights, you might consider that there will be a need for what might best be called safe-houses. Again. Ditto for Dreamers and other desperate people. [Jeez, it gets older every time it comes 'round.]