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Rockhurst done

You clearly don't see my point....every Region etc. has that outlook per say about other regions. I 100% agree that the East/West coast see the mid west and South as radical and they as orthodox and vice a versa. That human nature and the way of civilization.

How do you keep a Republic together if there is a huge divide in culture, beliefs and the way of the economic structure and the smaller population group is at the mercy of a Mob rule vote democracy? You have a electoral college to balance that effect. If not then the smaller population area's might well look to dissolve the Union, already a lot of sentiment in the Red regions for that..

The fact is I agree with a lot of your post....Cultures try to indoctrinate, other Cultures resist, I agree that there are people in other regions I agree with and so forth. The issue is that the EC tries to balance that out at least on a symbolic nature.

Do away with the EC and then that might be the last nail in the coffin of this Union.
It's all political. Once Texas goes blue in 2028 or '32, the Republicans will be screaming to end the EC and demanding a national vote so that "every American's vote counts the same nationwide" while the Dems will suddenly be in favor of the EC because the GOP can't win the White House without Texas.
 
Your nasal cavity, trachea and lungs all have mechanisms, such as cilia and mucous membranes, to prevent infection from airborne microbes.
Any surgical incision or opening to the pleural or gastrointestinal cavity is not so protected.
Hopes this helps your friend.
So technically none of us should catch the virus, thanks to these built-in protectants you mention? Unless we have surgery and maybe catch it there?

That really doesn’t sound accurate, as a large number of the 240,000 dead did not have surgery prior to getting the virus.

However, it is hard to understand how wearing a mask could make things worse, whereas it’s much easier to believe that not wearing a mask/having an extra barrier could perhaps increase the likelihood of the virus spreading.

It’s sort of like whether to believe in God or not. If the non-believer is right, we both wind up as worm food in the end. But if I’m right, I have eternity in heaven whereas the non-believer spends forever suffering in hell.

why not just play it safe and wear the mask?
 
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Your nasal cavity, trachea and lungs all have mechanisms, such as cilia and mucous membranes, to prevent infection from airborne microbes.
Any surgical incision or opening to the pleural or gastrointestinal cavity is not so protected.
Hopes this helps your friend.
And so doctors and nurses are wearing masks during surgery to help prevent........airborne microbes!?!? I think you're slowly proving Bosko's point. Lmao.
 
Right. When exhaling into an open body cavity or wound, this is absolutely necessary.

Again, I’m not arguing against masks. I just don’t like the whole “surgeons wear them” point.
Obviously breathing into an open wound is different than sneezing or coughing around someone. I feel like people using the "surgeons wear them" because it proves the point that masks work.
 
I guess a simple way to look at it is this way: if you and me and three other people were sitting together in my living room, and you knew that all of us but you had COVID and were currently contagious, would you be more comfortable (feel safer) if

a) none of us were wearing mask
B) we were all wearing masks
C) you were the only one with no mask
D) you were the only one with a mask

the answer seems real obvious to me
 
Obviously breathing into an open wound is different than sneezing or coughing around someone. I feel like people using the "surgeons wear them" because it proves the point that masks work.
At this point anyone sneezing or coughing,,,going out into public when they obviously know they are ill should be strung up Tar’d and feathered and ran out of town on a rail,,,not just made to wear a mask
 
I guess a simple way to look at it is this way: if you and me and three other people were sitting together in my living room, and you knew that all of us but you had COVID and were currently contagious, would you be more comfortable (feel safer) if

a) none of us were wearing mask
B) we were all wearing masks
C) you were the only one with no mask
D) you were the only one with a mask

the answer seems real obvious to me
A

SIgned,
Dr Scott Atlas, Radiologist
 
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Very different indeed. Some recent CDC data makes me question how effective they are. That being said, I’d recommend erring on the side of caution for now.
Truth. But if everyone understood when they were necessary and when they weren’t, that’d be a huge help too. I’ll grab mine and throw it in for a quick run into Kum n Go. Totally unnecessary, but I just do it. Not worth the trouble to not.
 
I guess a simple way to look at it is this way: if you and me and three other people were sitting together in my living room, and you knew that all of us but you had COVID and were currently contagious, would you be more comfortable (feel safer) if

a) none of us were wearing mask
B) we were all wearing masks
C) you were the only one with no mask
D) you were the only one with a mask

the answer seems real obvious to me
That’s a super simplistic, and invalid, analogy. If I knew you all I had influenza, I’d never sit in the room. But I don’t go around masked up constantly every influenza season. But I do wash my hands a lot more.
 
That’s a super simplistic, and invalid, analogy. If I knew you all I had influenza, I’d never sit in the room. But I don’t go around masked up constantly every influenza season. But I do wash my hands a lot more.
I wondered if someone would go this route. And it emphasizes why you in particular should wear a mask. Because you don’t know who around you may be ill such as in Walmart.

People like to use the flu analogy. I’m wondering now if when we have a bad flu season, and so many people locally are dying from it, will you start to see more masks worn then?

us mask-wearers are trying to do our part to slow the spread. And hopefully not get it ourselves to suffer through.

Oh, and I love football!
 
That’s a super simplistic, and invalid, analogy. If I knew you all I had influenza, I’d never sit in the room. But I don’t go around masked up constantly every influenza season. But I do wash my hands a lot more.
That's a super simplistic, and invalid, analogy. There are multiple oral antiviral agents available for outpatient flu treatment, there is a vaccine for flu, and every doctor's clinic in the country can perform a rapid test to tell you in 5 minutes whether you have the flu, none of which are available for COVID.
 
I wondered if someone would go this route. And it emphasizes why you in particular should wear a mask. Because you don’t know who around you may be ill such as in Walmart.

People like to use the flu analogy. I’m wondering now if when we have a bad flu season, and so many people locally are dying from it, will you start to see more masks worn then?

us mask-wearers are trying to do our part to slow the spread. And hopefully not get it ourselves to suffer through.

Oh, and I love football!
You can wear your mask all flu season if you like. I’ll roll the dice when all the mandates are done. Fear is a weird thing.
 
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That's a super simplistic, and invalid, analogy. There are multiple oral antiviral agents available for outpatient flu treatment, there is a vaccine for flu, and every doctor's clinic in the country can perform a rapid test to tell you in 5 minutes whether you have the flu, none of which are available for COVID.
You said sitting in the room. I’m not going in a room full of known flu patients. Mask or not. That’s moronic. As it would be to go into the room you proposed. Would I go into a room of 100 people that weren’t showing any symptoms? Yep, sure would.
 
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It's all political. Once Texas goes blue in 2028 or '32, the Republicans will be screaming to end the EC and demanding a national vote so that "every American's vote counts the same nationwide" while the Dems will suddenly be in favor of the EC because the GOP can't win the White House without Texas.

I agree with your premise if that comes to pass and Texas turns Blue...

And If Texas goes Blue then you might actually see a mass exodus from there to other regions that are Red as well. I'd welcome Millions of Red Texans into Missouri that would be Glories!!
 
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No
Montana gets 2 electors because they are a state. Every state gets 2
They get one more to represent their population.

California gets their 2 for being a state,,, then a crapload more to represent their population which is a crapload larger than Montanas

It’s a perfect system

Once again, this is mental gymnastics, not rational thought.
 
You clearly don't see my point....every Region etc. has that outlook per say about other regions. I 100% agree that the East/West coast see the mid west and South as radical and they as orthodox and vice a versa. That human nature and the way of civilization.

How do you keep a Republic together if there is a huge divide in culture, beliefs and the way of the economic structure and the smaller population group is at the mercy of a Mob rule vote democracy? You have a electoral college to balance that effect. If not then the smaller population area's might well look to dissolve the Union, already a lot of sentiment in the Red regions for that..

The fact is I agree with a lot of your post....Cultures try to indoctrinate, other Cultures resist, I agree that there are people in other regions I agree with and so forth. The issue is that the EC tries to balance that out at least on a symbolic nature.

Do away with the EC and then that might be the last nail in the coffin of this Union.

My stance is that we have direct election on every level except one (though senators used to not be directly elected as well). We have yet to turn into a 1 party nation. The electoral college was designed to fail (and was lamented as such in the Anti-Federalist Papers) so that the House would, in most years, end up electing the president as many at the Constitutional Convention wanted (and many opposed). In all their wisdom they should have anticipated that political parties would be the death of their intentions. They laughably thought we would be different than the home country in that.

I don't hate the Electoral College as it was conceived, I just see it as less democratic than a popular election, particularly since all but 2 states are winner take all rather than proportional to their popular vote. Of course the idea of a popular election was barely even considered (2 of the states represented there even mentioned it) at the constitutional convention, so maybe we should just stop having the popular vote for president, since it isn't in the Constitution. I'm all for textual and literal originalism, as long as the entire document is interpreted that way.
 
I see it as evening out the democratic process. With 50 states and the vast differences that reside across those 50 states, as I stated the EC in some ways helps balance out the Large Population area's to the smaller Population area's. At least it appears that way to many.

Moving to a truly popular vote for the president could disenfranchise a massive amount of people leading to a true break up of the union.

It's clear that this country is sharply divided and Trump vs Biden is a Prime example.....without a doubt the Gulf between Red and Blue is vast and almost unbridgeable. The common ground between the two sides has shrunk to the size of a House Lot. And I don't think that there is any way this is walked back.

The very fact that so many are appalled and sadden that Trump has gotten 68million + votes and see this as a horrific testament of all those people as opposed to just a different outlook on the proper way to govern is pretty darning for the future of America.
 
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I see it as evening out the democratic process. With 50 states and the vast differences that reside across those 50 states, as I stated the EC in some ways helps balance out the Large Population area's to the smaller Population area's. At least it appears that way to many.

Moving to a truly popular vote for the president could disenfranchise a massive amount of people leading to a true break up of the union.

It's clear that this country is sharply divided and Trump vs Biden is a Prime example.....without a doubt the Gulf between Red and Blue is vast and almost unbridgeable. The common ground between the two sides has shrunk to the size of a House Lot. And I don't think that there is any way this is walked back.

The very fact that so many are appalled and sadden that Trump has gotten 68million + votes and see this as a horrific testament of all those people as opposed to just a different outlook on the proper way to govern is pretty darning for the future of America.

I guess I don't see allowing every individual American citizen's vote to count the same as every other American citizen's vote (as it is in every single other election except the president) as disenfranchising, because the very definition of the word doesn't allow that to be the case. The word literally means "to deprive someone of the right to vote." I think I understand what you are saying, though. My thought is this: just because people have chosen to live in a different location, it doesn't mean that they are less of an American citizen, regardless of the number of other people who have chosen to live (or stay) in the same location.

Ultimately, when you look at a standard election cartogram, what it comes down to for the vast majority of the map is rural voters vs. urban voters. They value different things (for varying reasons that seem to them to make sense) and they both believe they are right and the other side is not. Except that now it's more that my side is right and you are stupid/insane/un-American for believing what you believe.

This is the real issue in America and the world in general: that so many are willfully incapable of empathizing or sympathizing with the "other" side. They refuse to see anything from a different perspective. This is not a political observation, this is a scientific observation: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190422090847.htm
It's so much easier for us to choose to not even consider another human being's perspective. Intellectually lazy, but easier.

Your last point is a valid observation, and if you switched the word "Trump" with "Biden" and "68 million" with "72 million" it would be just as valid.
 
It's almost like a 3rd party makes sense, huh?

The 2-party system is what the Founders thought we could avoid, but alas, humans seem to need a binary "us and them" to simplify things in the ideological sphere.
 
I see it as evening out the democratic process. With 50 states and the vast differences that reside across those 50 states, as I stated the EC in some ways helps balance out the Large Population area's to the smaller Population area's. At least it appears that way to many.

Moving to a truly popular vote for the president could disenfranchise a massive amount of people leading to a true break up of the union.

It's clear that this country is sharply divided and Trump vs Biden is a Prime example.....without a doubt the Gulf between Red and Blue is vast and almost unbridgeable. The common ground between the two sides has shrunk to the size of a House Lot. And I don't think that there is any way this is walked back.

The very fact that so many are appalled and sadden that Trump has gotten 68million + votes and see this as a horrific testament of all those people as opposed to just a different outlook on the proper way to govern is pretty darning for the future of America.
I see your point in paragraph 2, but a massive amount of people are also disenfranchised under the current electoral college model.

There are millions of Republicans in California, but their votes don't count because it is a blue state, so why even bother to get out and vote for a republican there? There are also lots of democrats in Texas, but their votes don't count either, because Texas is a red state. If we had a national vote, everybody's vote would count equally.
 
The 2-party system is what the Founders thought we could avoid, but alas, humans seem to need a binary "us and them" to simplify things in the ideological sphere.


If they wanted to avoid a Two party system then you can't have a winner take all system. You could give say seats in the House based on the percentage of what each party get's in votes. But the system they sit up was clearly a 2 party system. A 3rd party has zero chance of surviving unless the replace a current party.
 
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I guess I don't see allowing every individual American citizen's vote to count the same as every other American citizen's vote (as it is in every single other election except the president) as disenfranchising, because the very definition of the word doesn't allow that to be the case. The word literally means "to deprive someone of the right to vote." I think I understand what you are saying, though. My thought is this: just because people have chosen to live in a different location, it doesn't mean that they are less of an American citizen, regardless of the number of other people who have chosen to live (or stay) in the same location.

Ultimately, when you look at a standard election cartogram, what it comes down to for the vast majority of the map is rural voters vs. urban voters. They value different things (for varying reasons that seem to them to make sense) and they both believe they are right and the other side is not. Except that now it's more that my side is right and you are stupid/insane/un-American for believing what you believe.

This is the real issue in America and the world in general: that so many are willfully incapable of empathizing or sympathizing with the "other" side. They refuse to see anything from a different perspective. This is not a political observation, this is a scientific observation: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190422090847.htm
It's so much easier for us to choose to not even consider another human being's perspective. Intellectually lazy, but easier.

Your last point is a valid observation, and if you switched the word "Trump" with "Biden" and "68 million" with "72 million" it would be just as valid.


Regarding your article on empathy you can even go deeper......Several studies have been done that show that people don't show the same level of concern or any concern when shown images of other races,religions and such in distress. PBS had a great documentary on this about how people can easily genocide their neighbors(Bosnia War/War crimes/ethnic Cleansing), and Nat'l Geo. had another study on how people feel more empathy toward people who look like them, a possible relative, as opposed to people who even look less like them even if they are the same Race. Having a Degree in Anthropology I try to keep abreast of this stuff a bit because it is interesting.

Now of course some people have tried to refute these studies....because they are distasteful to some to suggest than Nature has a part in this as opposed to environment and could be interpreted to excuse racism because those traits could be hardwired as survival skills thus making those traits natural as opposed to nurtured. I disagree with the refutation of these studies because as Humans we need to acknowledge we have instinctual impulses that need to be analyzed and controlled, as opposed to pretending they are simply learned traits and some BS educations/indoctrination and such can do the job of stopping Racism.

The same goes with the empathy study done above I would suggest that the more baseline reason of feeling less empathy is do to evolutionary traits that made it easier to attack and take resources from those different than you thus people who look different, dress different and such are easier to enact violence upon if need be to survive. We are still the Human Animal,tribal and prone to wanting to associate with those who are like minded and share the same core Values.

This can Clearly be seen in the Color of the Map with Reds controlling vast rural regions of the U.S. and Blue's controlling smaller Regions of the U.S. herded into Metro area's. It's not by chance that the 68+ million are from Rural areas and the 72+ million all congregate into Urban area's. Birds of a feather flock together.

This brings me back to the EC in that those citizens in Rural area's know they are the minority and will probably always be the Minority..... the EC balances out their ability to have a say in the President to a degree. It allows their voices to carry some weight as opposed to being a minority easily ignored and ultimately under the complete control of the majority in that regard. If that is taken away My concern is that the near half of the nation that is Red will decide to chart their own path as a separate state.........





 
If they wanted to avoid a Two party system then you can't have a winner take all system. You could give say seats in the House based on the percentage of what each party get's in votes. But the system they sit up was clearly a 2 party system. A 3rd party has zero chance of surviving unless the replace a current party.

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but if it isn't, it should be: the founding fathers definitely did not create a winner take-all-system. It is still neither in the Constitution, nor the amendments. This was on purpose. The electoral college idea really just ended up being lip service to those who didn't want the house to pick the president (because many at the convention, minus a notable minority, wanted exactly that). The founders debated for months on the exact mechanism they wanted for electing the president. Winner-take-all was farthest from their minds precisely because of political parties. But it became the de-facto method over time because of the fear of losing influence and political parties.

The individual states took it upon themselves to make it winner-take-all because they saw that a winner would not happen very often as the system was conceived and it would, more often than not, fall to the house to elect the president. Election by the House is exactly what the majority at the constitutional convention wanted, according to James Madison's notes, though, to his credit, he personally thought a direct popular vote was the fairest method, even though it wouldn't necessarily favor his state.

Several years later, as states started making their elections winner-take-all based on a statewide popular vote, James Madison actually backed a constitutional amendment to prohibit winner-take-all and move to a district electoral vote, which had been debated as an alternative at the convention: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_1_2-3s10.html .

To anyone who styles themselves a Constitutional originalist or textualist, this is a fantastic resource: https://www.consource.org/document/united-states-constitution/
It cross references every clause of the Constitution with the notes of discussion about that clause.

This one synthesizes a lot of that information, so that you don't have to slog through every note (though I always recommend slogging through the original texts so that your reading isn't colored by punditry): https://constitutioncenter.org/deba...y-congress-revises-the-electoral-college-1804

 
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The simplest way to look at it is, we are not the United Citizens Of America or the Peoples Republic Of America.. We are a collection of individual states uniting as one country. Each state gets a say in who is President of the part of our country that isn't left to the states. The EC insures that Wyoming gets a real and proportional say in who that President is. The truth is that the POTUS is way more powerful than ever intended.
This individual state concept is also why we have so many differing methods from state to state in voting for President.


You are absolutely correct that the president is way more powerful than intended especially considering that creating the legislature was article 1. There are an unbelievable amount of executive orders that are still in effect dating back decades that should not be the case.

When you say "each state" gets a say in who is the president, you obviously mean "the people of each state," since we all know that states aren't sentient. When you say this, you are necessarily saying that the people of one state's votes are quantitatively (not qualitatively) worth more than another's because mathematically, they are; this conclusion is unavoidable without resorting to semantic arguments. This is not "proportional" in any way that the term is defined.
 
It is proportional in that my vote counts the same as every other person in my state. Each state is proportionally equal to the other since the EC is arrived at through Senator and Representative totals. Representatives are decided by equal population division. It, and our legislative formula was designed to give power to states through the Senate but the Senate can't legislate without consent of the people (representatives).
You may not like being a nation of states but you are in the wrong country then.
You may change your mind once Texas finishes turning blue in 2028 or 2032 like California and Colorado did before them. At that point, Texas, NY & California will all be blue and we will not have a republican POTUS for decades thereafter without a popular vote.
 
It is proportional in that my vote counts the same as every other person in my state. Each state is proportionally equal to the other since the EC is arrived at through Senator and Representative totals. Representatives are decided by equal population division. It, and our legislative formula was designed to give power to states through the Senate but the Senate can't legislate without consent of the people (representatives).
You may not like being a nation of states but you are in the wrong country then.

Again, a semantic argument about proportionality (or a misunderstanding of what proportionality means, maybe), thus proving my point. Legislating and electoral college voting are two vastly different things. They only way they are connected is through the number (House Reps and Senators combined), which is not proportional to the populations of the states, no matter how you parse it. It was never intended that states would do winner-take-all. It is the winner-take-all format that goes against the founders' intentions, at least according to what they have written.

The entire argument that the purpose of the Electoral College is to weaken the influence of large states is not built on fact. It is a circumstance that certainly arose, but it is demonstrably not the purpose. James Madison directly states that the threat of factions (political parties/interest groups) was the greatest concern for them at the time because the factions might choose an unqualified person for president. They thought they could pick wise, responsible, objective electors not beholden to the p. Instead we pick party pawns.

And, of course, we can't forget about the three-fifths compromise's role in the creation of the Senate and Electoral College, both of which passed by the narrowest of margins at the convention and only because the southern states refused to ratify the Constitution without being allowed to count the people for representation that they refused to count as human beings, according to Madison's convention notes.

In short, elections should be won by virtue of good ideas that resonate with the majority of the people, not by virtue of entrenched political parties in rural strongholds with more land area.
 
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Nobody is going to convince the other side on the effectiveness of masks.
I wear the stupid thing...just not exactly sure how effective it is. But true, not exactly sure what I need to see to convince me. If you put a couple of bourbons in me, I'd probably relent and say they're "slightly" effective. Idk if it's worth all the crap. I'm sure they'd be just as "slightly" effective during flu season too. I think that's my fear, is the fraidy cats out there keep these darned things around forever. Human interaction, and reading faces and expressions, is a truly fun part of life. It's already sterile enough these days. Pun totally intended there.
 
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