@suzianne said
Or just abolish the electoral college completely.

Direct popular vote (one person, one vote) is more fair and equitable. Not counting my vote because the guy I voted for didn't get the majority in my state is just adding insult to injury.

Trump's people are pressuring NE to change how their electors vote. In most states, it's winner take all, but in NE, electors vote proportionately (some voted Biden, some voted Trump last time, same as the Cornhuskers themselves voted). Trump's people figured out that every EC vote counts, so they are pressuring NE to adopt the winner-take-all system. It's gerrymandering with a different name.

And yes, the EC should have been abolished a long time ago.

@no1marauder said
Pecker's testimony today didn't tell us anything we've haven't known for years, but it got into evidence that Trump was directly involved in scheming with Pecker and others for them to use funds to help his campaign far in excess of legally allowable limits. This bolsters two of the theories regarding the intent to commit another crime which elevates the falsification of ...[text shortened]... and kill" payments were to protect Trump's family rather than directly linked to the 2016 election.

"At least if he wins, I'll be pardoned for electoral fraud."


https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/25/politics/video/sketch-artist-trump-hush-money-trial-elizabeth-williams-ebof-sot-digvid


Pecker cannot have not known what he was letting himself in for.

@pettytalk said
I see that living in the shed with Herman's goat has done you some good. A very impressive listing of who is who in the world of the spirit of true philosophy. Let us add Pythagoras to the list, and it will get us closer to the essence of the spirit of the Holy Ghost.

When the body is shed, only the spirit remains. Or if we want to scare the children, it's a ghost of a ...[text shortened]... he handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVSxWCosMM0

Pythagoras didn't fit nearly as well into the Christian scheme of things as Plato did. For two reasons, I suspect.

First, he maintained that there is intelligible order in the cosmos, permeating all phenomena, which he called Harmonia. It is nothing to do with any deity, it is utterly dis-personal, can be apprehended by reason alone, and is especially manifest in mathematical proportions (for example in musical chords). There isn't any 'nether world' for Pythagoras -- there is just this world, mathematically ordered. Plato, on the other hand, postulated a 'nether world' of perfect Forms, and it was easy for early Christian theologians to interpret this 'nether world' as the abode of God and his angels.

Second, Pythagoras mostly likely held Orphic ideas about the afterlife, whereby the psyche migrated to other beings (not necessarily humans). He reportedly recognized a former friend in the body of a dog, and a river was heard to speak to him (Christians would have denounced such things as necromancy, demonology, or witchcraft). That doesn't quite fit in with the Christian scheme of things, whereby the soul lives only once and is promoted/demoted to the 'nether world' forever.


And yes, Herman's goat is very well-read in classics.

@suzianne said
May they all rot in hell.

I'll be satisfied if they just rot in a penitentiary.

@shavixmir said
My God.

Are these fake electors the same “alternative” electors republicans here have been saying “is a thing”?

Crazy world the US of A.

Yes.

The defense is that they were backups just in case a legal challenge to the result of the election were to have succeeded. The prosecution says, no, it wasn't that at all--they were going to try to get Pence to use the fake electors' votes instead of the genuine ones all along, but Pence didn't play along with it.

Instead of voter ID, America should implement elector ID.

@pettytalk said
"Christianity is Platonism for the masses." -- Nietzsche

Judaism for gentiles. (They don't have to refrain from eating pork or circumcise their sons.)

@suzianne said
This is an interesting take.

The Catholics overthink everything. It’s a habit they picked up after Origen read Plato, and they can’t walk it back it now after so many centuries of torturing logic to make the incredible credible.

Protestants put less emphasis on the doctrines (the Trinity and all that) and more on the personal conviction aspect.

@mott-the-hoople said
slavery was good for the economy too

If you think it was, then I suggest you offer yourself into slavery, work for no wages until you can't anymore, then come back and tell us how you liked it. Oh, and don't forget to tell us what useful skills you learned along the way (harnessing an ox behind a plow, how to use a hoe and sharpen an axe, pulling bugs out of cotton balls, etc).

@wildgrass said
FYI - You can read a couple articles per month for free. Just sign in with your email.

I don't want 'them' to have my email. I don't like spreading my digital footprint all over the Internet. That's why I buy 'The Economist' at the local news agents.

@suzianne said
I managed to eke out my own American Dream. All I wanted was to be able to stand on my own two feet without anyone else's help. And I made it and more. Considering where I've been, I considered it a major victory. And I'm actually happy with it. Everything else I can do in this life is gravy. When I see people who should be thankful acting like they deserve so much more, it makes me sick.

Democracy and pluralism are about personal empowerment, not results. That's where so many Americans are barking up the wrong tree. Comparing oneself with the Joneses is bound to make everyone, including the Joneses, resentful.

@suzianne said
This is fair, since they caused a fly-by-night company to come into Phoenix to ostensibly perform an audit on the voting machines (which found zero impropriety, by the way), and in the process, they rendered those machines unable to be trusted in future elections, so the State of Arizona had to pay to have them ALL replaced, to the tune of millions of dollars.

A case of the cure being worse than the disease.



😵

@sonhouse said
Indicted along with some 11 others in the fake elector scheme.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/arizona-election-indictments-giuliani-meadows-trump-00154241

Right wingers can cheer (for now), your god Trump is named co-conspirator UN indicted, that is unless Rudy or Mark flip, since Rudy knows where ALL the bodies are buried.

That is also why Trump has not s ...[text shortened]... es are buried so God Trump does not want to rile Davy. Anyone else is fair game but not buddy Davy.

Let's hope that the prospect of prison sentences for perjury awakens in the defendants a sense of decency, stronger than their hope that if Trump gets back into power, he'll pardon them.







( PS Presidential pardons work only in federal cases, not state cases.)

@mchill said
I still don't understand what his supporters see in him. He's a convicted fraudster, lifelong womanizer who fathered 5 children by 3 different ladies (not including the illegitimate ones) a tax and payroll cheat who doesn't pay his employees and respects only dictators of other countries.

Nikki Haley could easily defeat Joe Biden, yet his supporters stand by him, and believe all his lies as if they were listening to God himself. I don't get it. 🙄

Millions of Americans are angry and feel they've been cheated out of something they can't name. I can name it for them: The American Dream. It was supposed to happen and it didn't. If you worked hard, you were supposed to get a washing machine, a chicken in every pot, a two-car garage, a digital watch, and the world's highest standard of living. But it didn't make them happy, and so they feel they've been cheated out of a birthright. They haven't read their sacred documents carefully: it says "the pursuit of happiness" not the attainment of it. So, in America today, there are millions of people who feel they should be happy, because they think this was promised to them (it wasn't), and they're angry about it. Someody must be to blame! Now who could that be ?? The two main culprits are: goobermint (over-regulation), and immigrants (stealing our benefits).

Trump embodies for those millions of Americans the lost American dream: he's fabulously wealthy (or seems to be anyway, but, really, he's living on other bank's credit); he's the poster boy for angry entitlement; and he routinely bashes 'the establishment' (goobermint) and immigrants. That's his recipe for popularity.

@kewpie said
Phranny regularly starts threads with an article written by Heather Cox Richardson, and normally attributes the article. Obviously a simple oversight in this case, as all regular readers would know.
Try voicing "phranny" and the first name that comes to mind is Fran, Frances (female names) and Francis (male name) so it's not certain that the poster is female, but given the p ...[text shortened]... ther posters civilly and refuse to engage in rubbish posting - that's adult behaviour. Over to you.

that's adult behaviour

The male of the species grows up until age 8; after that, it just gets bigger.



😆

@mlb62


"Ghost" is an infelicitous choice of words, because it suggests to most people the immaterial remnant of a once-embodied personality (something like 'Nearly Headless Nick' in Harry Potter). "Holy spirit" is a slightly better formulation insofar as one takes the word "spirit" as in "the spirit, rather than the letter, of the law." In Christian theology (don't ask me to quote the Bible here because Christian theology was formulated long after the gospels were canonized) the Holy Spirit is wholly abstract, not any sort of personality. Think of Plotinus ... think of Parmenides's The One ... Think of Plato's Forms ... it is no accident that I am referring you to Greek philosophers, because that is who early Christian theologians (Origen et al) based Christian theology on too. Without Greek philosophy, there would be no Christian theology. Think of a wholly de-personalized power indwelling in a person who has faith.