Van's Phunky Spam

Paul Ryan is conducting a phone poll on the ACA (Obamacare), hoping to hear overwhelming popular opposition to it. If you would like to express your support for the Affordable Care Act, call (202) 225-3031. Press 2 to weigh in on the issue. You’ll hear a brief recording about HR-3762, Paul Ryan’s proposal to gut the ACA, and President Obama’s use of his veto power to stop it. Then, you will have a chance to indicate your opinion with the press of a button.

Press 1 if you support Obamacare, 2 if you oppose it.

the number above worked when I called earlier today, but apparently as of now (11/19, 5:45 EST) the number is: (202) 225-0600

I haven’t tried the latter number but just in case the first doesn’t work, try that second one.

also though, there’s a really weird 60-90 seconds of complete dead silence before the phone tree starts. no “please hold” or waiting music or anything.

STILL TIME FOR AN ELECTION AUDIT: COLUMN

A Washington Post–ABC News poll found that 18% of voters — 33% of Clinton supporters and 1% of Trump supporters — think Trump was not the legitimate winner of the election. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has called on Congress to investigate the Russian cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee and the election.

There are reasons for concern. According to the director of national intelligence, the leaked emails from the DNC were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.” The director of national intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Security Agency concluded that the Russian government is behind the DNC email hack and that Russian hackers attacked U.S. voter registration databases.

We know that the national results could be tipped by manipulating the vote count in a relatively small number of jurisdictions — a few dozen spread across a few key states. We know that the vast majority of local elections officials have limited resources to detect or defend against cyberattacks. And while pre-election polls have large uncertainties, they were consistently off. And various aspects of the preliminary results, such as a high rate of undervotes for president, have aroused suspicion.

Computers counted the vast majority of the 130 million votes cast in this year’s election. Even without hacking, mistakes are inevitable. Computers can’t divine voter intent perfectly; computers can be misconfigured; and software can have bugs.

Did human error, computer glitches, hacking, or other problems change the outcome? While there is, as yet, no compelling evidence, the news about hacking and deliberate interference makes it worth finding out.

CONT. 

Biff

Orange Mussolini

Prima Donny

Racists are a problem

White people are not

Homophobes are a problem

Straight people are not

Transphobes are a problem

Cis people are not

Sexists are a problem

Men are not

And most importantly,

All white people do racist things without being aware they are

All straight people do homophobic things without being aware that they are.

All Cis people do transphobic things without being aware that they are.

All men do sexist things without being aware that they are.

Saying things like ‘some men’, ‘some cis people’ absolves the blame of individuals and only seeks to comfort those with privilege and power.

When a post says ‘some X’, the X will always assume that they are not because THEY ARE NOT AWARE.

And most importantly,

It’s called metonymy, when anyone who is oppressed makes an exasperated statement like ‘i hate straight people’, they are substituting straight people for the concept of a system and a culture that teaches, incentives, and legitimizes homophobic acts and normalizes homophobic acts so that straight people constantly do honophobic things without realizing it and that’s really fucking annoying.

And just as important,

Now? There’s nothing to stop them. Except all of us. In the same way we have to protect LGBTQ, women, racial groups, we MUST protect the disabled. Because dismantlement of social security, Medicare and Medicaid are LETHAL to the disabled. Who already constantly struggle financially. If they cut benefits 1%? 5%? 10%? Well when you’re struggling on $800 or $1200 a month… do the math.

And we disabled? We literally can’t march in protest. Because most of us are, well, not able! So we’re dependent on you all to help keep us alive. Because while Republicans might claim empathy for us, they’re priorities are monetary. They’ll couch it in “cutting waste” or making social security stable “longer” or giving power to “states” to run things. “Efficiency” and such are the things they’ll pretend to be seeking. But its just code.

Boulder

Portland

New York

Seattle

Detroit

Berkeley

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Dallas

Chicago

Miami

This is, at best, extremely frustrating and at worst, very very dangerous. There are people out there, for whatever reason, who are taking advantage of public sentiment and creating false news stories that play to our worst fears. Every time you share a false news story, you make it less likely that people will believe the real ones that come after them.

For those of you who don’t know, the Electoral College has the final say in December. It’s only happened once or twice, but sometimes they vote against a candidate who’s already “won”. Candidates can win the popular election and still lose the electoral college’s election. THIS IS OUR LAST SLIVER OF A CHANCE TO KEEP BUTT TRUMPET OUT OF OFFICE!

There’s been multitudes of posts going around, talking about fighting back, never giving up, doing what’s right.

ITS TIME TO WALK THE WALK:

And that’s not even the reason the college was made in the first place. It was made for 2 reasons. 1. The founding fathers didn’t trust the citizens. They thought the citizens were too uneducated to make a good choice. And 2. It’s easier to count the votes of a small group of people all in one place rather than millions across the country when there’s no cars or internet.

Without the electoral college, every single vote would count exactly the same.  No vote anywhere in the country would be worth more than any other vote.  Now you may ask, but Raymond, isn’t it like this already?

NO.  IT FUCKING IS NOT.

Take Wyoming for example.  Wyoming has a population of 584,000 people.  They also have 3 electoral college votes. This means that each 194,667 votes is worth one electoral college vote in Wyoming.  Now let’s look at California.  California has a population of 38.8 million people and 55 electoral college votes.  This means that it takes 705,455 votes for each electoral college vote.  

A VOTE IN WYOMING IS WORTH 3.5X MORE THAN A VOTE IN CALIFORNIA.

It literally takes 3.5 times more votes to get 1 electoral vote in California than it does in Wyoming.  How tf is that fair?

Mind you, and it isn’t any coincidence, “for 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency,” (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe). In tandem, Thomas Jefferson’s win against John Adams was decisively a result of the increased electoral power of Southern states as a result of the additional votes from slavery, it was said at the time that “Jefferson metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.” This ‘pro-slavery’ bias was widely commented upon in 1803 where the Twelfth Amendment, which made reforms to the Electoral College, was widely considered as a means to empower politically and electorally the South. Pennsylvania, granted, had more citizens than Virginia but as a result of Virginia’s expanding slave population Virginia had far more electoral clout than Pennsylvania if the 40% of its population who were slaves were counted (hmm wonder why so many of our early Presidents were from Virginia!). Therefore Virginia triumphed in electoral power because white slaveholders would count slaves as persons only to boost their ability to continue to preserve slavery, offering nothing to the usurped political power of the slaves than continued subordination and oppression. 

This isn’t to say that the Electoral College wasn’t introduced because founding fathers were not convinced that the voting population could effectively get educated about national races in a time before much of the technology and transportation of today was non-existent. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t introduced because, as mentioned prior, counting millions of votes by hand and delivering the results by horseback wasn’t a deep concern. This is to say that “not all academics agree that slavery was the driving force behind the Electoral College, though most agree there’s a connection.”

It’s also been argued that “in direct elections, candidates would campaign only in large cities,” because you would just have to reach out to the most people and urban areas have concentrated populations. However, “it’s the electoral college that shortchanges voters. Because it makes no sense for candidates to spend time or money in states they either cannot win or are certain to win, thriving cities such as Atlanta, San Francisco and El Paso get no love from White House hopefuls.” Shit I live in Texas and neither candidate gave much of a shit about us lmao (though that did mean not too many attack ads on TV haha!).