The Goat Pen

Epidemic!

Cletus wrote:

sardis wrote:A white heterosexual couple who have a happy marriage and lovingly raise 4 children without the help of government are a pox on society.

If they believe the same stuff that their pastor does, they are awful people.

Attacking them for their beliefs would be one thing, but they are basically being attacked and intimidated for something they have not said or even indicated. There will likely be pressure now on HGTV to "do something." It's basically pushing HGTV and/or this family both to extract basically a statement of allegience from one of them.

She's Korean. But don't tell DS.

"they are basically being attacked and intimidated for something they have not said or even indicated."

That's practically the Goat Pen mission statement...

different viewpoint on the popular vote versus electoral college

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There are 3,141 counties in the United States.

Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57.

There are 62 counties in New York State.

Trump won 46 of them.
Clinton won 16.

Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.

In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond)

Therefore these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.

These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles.
The United States is comprised of 3, 797,000 square miles.

When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be ludicrous to even suggest that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election.

Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the rest of our country.

Why not? Just b/c they choose to live in close proximity to each other? That hardly seems a reason for their votes to count less than someone who chooses to live on the prairie (or wherever). It also belies your point from the other day that the red states compromise the majority of the country (I can't recall how you put it, but I'll look for it)...

Here is is:

hedge wrote:"he is going to give the red states a voice - you know - the majority of the country"

Actually, that's not true, as even this election has shown, with Hillary getting over 2 million more votes than Trump. If the west coast, the northeast and a handful of the major metropolitan areas broke off and formed a separate county, it would be far more populous with far more wealth and financial resources than the red states. I'm not suggesting that's going to happen or that it should happen or anything like that, just stating a fact...

Throw DC in there as well. I guess you could set up Montgomery as the red state capital. And also, you seemed pretty prickled by the idea that California, etc., would want to leave the union. Seems like you'd be happy if my idea (above) came to pass. The yokels could go their way and the metropolitan "elites" could go there's, and never the twain shall meet. I've always been a confederate at heart, I think it's a great idea. It would certainly get rid of the federal power, another idea I thought was close to your heart. The blue states could live in peace with gay marriage and legal marijuana and all that stuff, and the red states could go to church every day and teach their children whatever the hell they liked about evolution and the bible and all that. Again, I think it's a great idea. Why do you disagree? A peaceful dissolution of this so-called "union" would solve a lot of problems, for both sides...

"Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the rest of our country."

This could easily be rephrased as "sparsely populated republican states (Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, etc) don't and shouldn't speak for the rest of the country", and it would be just as true (and false) as how you put it...

Being a united states the forefathers wanted to give just that extra little shot for states by creating the electrical college for just the circumstance created this year and in 2000.

The other aspect is trump would have changed his strategy by campaigning in a lot more populous areas instead of going to 20- small towns in ohio wisconcin Pennsylvania and Michigan. candidates would concentrate much more on NY/Cali/TX/Fla/big cities. not saying trump would have won the popular vote if that's the way it was but he certainly would have concentrated his efforts in more urban areas

Clinton "won" the popular vote only in a very limited sense and set of rules. Even if the electoral college was abolished, its debatable that a straight popular vote would replace it. Clinton only won a plurality of the vote and the majority voted for someone else. In most popular vote systems she would not be declared the winner, but instead we would now go to a highly competitive runoff election where the two candidates were within a couple percentage points of each other. probably less people would vote in that run off election and it would possibly be skewed by higher turnout in random places that happen to have local or state runoff elections happening at the same time, so if some random city has a mayoral runoff it could impact the vote, for example. I'm not sure either democrats or republicans would risk creating just a straight first past the post plurality system, because that maximizes the impact that 3rd party spoiler votes are going to have and I think both would realize that they are kinda playing with fire. Of course talking practically is kinda worthless because there is no way in hell enough states are going to ratify an amendment to the constitution that would ostensibly serve solely to shift power in presidential elections greatly towards Texas, New York, and California.

hedge wrote:Why not? Just b/c they choose to live in close proximity to each other? That hardly seems a reason for their votes to count less than someone who chooses to live on the prairie (or wherever). It also belies your point from the other day that the red states compromise the majority of the country (I can't recall how you put it, but I'll look for it)...

I already told you I wasn't talking about population


look at it this way

Hillary won California by almost 4m votes. That easily surpasses the delta in popular votes between Trump and her.

I'm not comfortable with the idea that California, based on population density, has a larger share in determination of who wins the national election. They already have a sizeable interest in their electoral college representation, but their needs and vision of America does not represent the rest of the majority of America. So take California out of the equation and Hillary loses the popular vote by several million.

That's not to diminish California as a state, but their weight in the election - in this case- if tied to popular vote would have far outweighed their position in the overall United States.

hedge wrote:"Large, densely populated Democrat cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the rest of our country."

This could easily be rephrased as "sparsely populated republican states (Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, etc) don't and shouldn't speak for the rest of the country", and it would be just as true (and false) as how you put it...

that's not true. They have a representative number that gives them a voice in the electoral college but not the ability to determine the outcome. Those sparsely populated states would have not had a say at all had Hillary won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, etc.,

and consequently, if there is some huge population shift in the country where people leave California in droves and end up in other states, that representation will shift but will still not allow a select group to control the outcome of the election based on population alone.

Cletus wrote:

sardis wrote:A white heterosexual couple who have a happy marriage and lovingly raise 4 children without the help of government are a pox on society.

If they believe the same stuff that their pastor does, they are awful people.

http://babylonbee.com/news/nation-shock ... -position/

Based on its economic activity and contribution to the country (and cultural, too, but that's pretty hard to quantify), California should have more say in the election not less.

Cletus wrote:Based on its economic activity and contribution to the country (and cultural, too, but that's pretty hard to quantify), California should have more say in the election not less.

Sounds like only land/property owners should be allowed to vote, people that pay the taxes....hmmmm.

Toemeesleather wrote:

Cletus wrote:Based on its economic activity and contribution to the country (and cultural, too, but that's pretty hard to quantify), California should have more say in the election not less.

Sounds like only land/property owners should be allowed to vote, people that pay the taxes....hmmmm.

Cletus would have been the guy talking up the British in 1775

"There are 3,141 counties in the United States.

Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57."

Not sure where you got that from, but the report I read said Clinton won almost 500 counties. And those counties represent almost 2/3's of the US GDP:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... a6410fd2f5

hedge wrote:"There are 3,141 counties in the United States.

Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57."

Not sure where you got that from, but the report I read said Clinton won almost 500 counties. And those counties represent almost 2/3's of the US GDP:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... a6410fd2f5

I got it from Allen's Wests website. That might very well be some of that fake news horseshit that everyone is up in arms about.

They represent the GDP how? by location ? headquarters? workers who produce the goods? that's could be a very misleading headline.

With regard to the GDP number of the counties Clinton won, let me rephrase your comment about who should or shouldn't be "speaking" for the rest of the country: "Numerous poor ass counties that don't contribute jack shit to the economy of this country (Buttlick, WVa, Possum Gulch, KY, Candlelight, AL) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the counties that actually produce the vast majority of the wealth and services for this country." Of course, that's just as wrong as your original statement about large, densely populated segments of the country shouldn't be allowed to speak for "the rest of us", b/c poor people's votes count just as much as rich people's, but I'm sure somebody would agree with it...

"I got it from Allen's Wests website."

They guy who played Batman on TV??