Just Vote!
Secure your place as a participant in one of the more insane elections in US history.
If you are a Florida voter, I would appreciate a ‘yes’ on amendment 2.
In Florida the polls are open from 7AM to 7PM local, and if you are in line when the polls close you still get to vote. There may be rain tomorrow afternoon and evening on the Panhandle.
Update: An easy way to keep up with what’s happening tomorrow if you have an IOS or Android device is with The Guardian‘s app. You can opt in to election alerts and receive them as things happen.
30 comments
Secure your place as a participant in one of the more insane elections in US history.
I did!
If you are a Florida voter, I would appreciate a ‘yes’ on amendment 2.
I did that too!
🙂
the first (and only) time I tried early voting, I stood in line for HOURS, so I never did that again, though people tell me that it’s not so bad now that they’ve expanded the number of places you can vote.
besides, I wanted sooooooooo badly to be able to report any intimidators. unfortunately I live in one of those really civil and well-behaved neighborhoods, at least as far as voting goes, and my polling place has always been a model of propriety. (no snark, it’s true).
Thank you, Hipparchia. We actually had a line at my polling place for the first time I can remember. It was only two of us, but it had never happened before.
What we didn’t have were signs, anywhere. Only two local candidates had signs at the normal spot near the polls.
Well… It’s now official. The majority of the USA is insane!
Unbelievable. And from my news feeds, it seems most of those who voted for Trump expect him to throw Clinton in prison as his first order of business. Thus proving my claim above.
The US exchange & ASX have plummeted, as well as the Dow. ASX dropped AU$46 bln, but has improved a little and investors lost about $36 bln. The AUD tanked also when the results came in. Gold prices are rising sharply as investors are selling shares and buying gold, rising 3.5% in a few hours! One economist was quoted as saying: “Sell stocks, buy gold and bonds and head for the hills.”
…
Chris Evans (Capt. America) tweeted: “This is an embarrassing night for America. We’ve let a hatemonger lead our great nation. We’ve let a bully set our course. I’m devastated.”
And there are many, many more! *sigh*
LOL -> @AnnCoulter — “1928 was last time Republicans had the White House, the House and the Senate.”
Yeah… And the Great Depression began on October 29, 1929! Coincidence? LMAO
And apparently, the Canadian Immigration website was overloaded & crashed! LOL
And he’s not even in the WHouse yet! 😐
Clint Eastwood is very happy! LOL
Oh, this: BBC: Reality Check: Who voted for Donald Trump?
What a surprise… *shrug*
My congratulations to Vladimir Putin and James Comey for organizing the first-ever intelligence agency coup in American history. Let us just pray it is a bloodless one. But I doubt it will be, because the long knives generally come out after a coup as the winners of the coup exterminate anybody who they fear may overturn their coup.
It’s over for the next thirty years. Most of the Democratic-appointed members of the Supreme Court are on their last legs, and the Republican-appointed members have shown that they are against civil rights for blacks, gays, women, or really, anybody who isn’t a rich white male American. This court has already signalled that it doesn’t support the right for people of color to vote, basically what we’re going to see is a return to poll taxes and the Black Codes that basically make all people of color felons and disenfranchises them. Obamacare is going to be repealed and the health care system is going to completely collapse other than for rich white male Americans, other than perhaps in New York State and California where the state is large enough and the state government progressive enough to cobble together a single-payer system to take its place. And as trade wars start up, we will see a new Great Depression take hold on most of the country, a Great Depression that Reichsmarschall Trump shall blame on those evil LIE-berals, of course, leading to his Stormtrumpers being even more fanatical in support of their orange Messiah.
It’s not just who counts the vote that counts. It’s who you *allow* to vote that counts. Trump won Florida because of over 500,000 black and brown people who were scrubbed off the voter rolls. Same with North Carolina. I expect ever-stricter requirements for who is allowed to vote to become the norm.
The Soviet Union lasted ten years after their first KGB leader. Russia came back a bit under their first KGB leader, but is close to economic collapse today. Secret policemen aren’t very good at running countries, it seems. We will see.
It isn’t the first USA intelligence agency coup. There have been several. True, most were outside the USA. All ended badly.
You can also blame the DNC & Clinton as well. They rigged it so Bernie had no chance at all, even though most Dem voters wanted him. The DNC pissed them off. Many never trusted Hillary. So, they didn’t vote or decided on a punishment vote for Trump.
On the plus side, the value of my Bitcoins are increasing faster than gold! 😉
It seems that Trump may have achieved one thing. Apparently (if Twitter & my news feeds are anything to go by) many Canadian & Mexican citizens want their Governments to close the borders and/or build a wall! LOL
Oh, China had a hand in this also, not just Russia.
Wait, China voted for a man who promises to put a 25% tariff on all imports from China as his first task when he gets into office? I don’t think so!
Russia, on the other hand, had very good reasons to want Trump rather than Clinton. Trump and Putin are pretty friendly with each other and Trump wants nothing to do with any wars in Europe. Putin wants the Baltics back? Sure, go right on ahead!
As for intelligence agency coups within the United States, it depends upon whether you think the assassination of JFK was an intelligence op or not. And of course Watergate was an FBI coup against Richard Nixon….
A few comments popped up on my Twitter feed that are worth posting I think.
Ricky Gervais @rickygervais:
“In the long run things won’t change much. The rich will stay rich, and the people with power will make the poor blame each other.”
Adam Baldwin @AdamBaldwin:
“Media, who exactly misled you into believing that Hillary would win &/or that Trump’s victory is an “upset”? Please name names.”
George Takei @GeorgeTakei:
“This is the 2nd election in recent memory where the popular vote winner is not the one elected. It’s time to end the electoral college.”
Yeah. Sorry George. Too late! That won’t happen now, not a chance.
A new one from Ricky:
Ricky Gervais @rickygervais :
“In very sad times, like today, I always find comfort in the fact that we’ll all be dead soon & none of this will matter. You’re welcome :)”
LOL yeah… that’s the silver lining right there! 😀
This: If You’re Blaming Facebook For The Election Results, You’re An Idiot
Kryten, things are going to change very much for people of color in much of the United States. They are basically going to be stripped of the right to vote (since Justice Department oversight is going away and the new Supreme Court will approve of any restrictions on voting rights that are proposed), and subjected to violence and repression reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. Things are going to change very much for women, too. They are going to be stripped of the right to an abortion, and likely other rights too. To say that “nothing’s going to change” contradicts what we’re actually seeing on the ground. Florida and North Carolina were lost because close to a million people of color were “caged” off of the voter registration rosters and not allowed to vote. That agenda is going to extend further now that all oversight is being called off.
Not to mention gay rights. Real President Pence signed a bill as governor that made applying for a marriage license while gay a felony. Expect the new Pence Supreme Court to extend that nationwide, voiding all gay marriages and making it a felony to apply for a gay marriage.
Hi. Friend of Kryten 42. I agree.. And it’s gonna be a tough 4 years. The most fun will be the faces of all those Trumpettes when he screws them over .
The Trumpettes will just blame liberals. Facts don’t matter in Trumpland.
not nearly as many political signs anywhere this year, over here in almost-Alabama; voter turnout in my precinct about the same as 2012 iirc or maybe a bit more; no lines at all at my polling place – in fact, the people who check you in initially (where you show them your id) were fighting over me as I walked in the door.
very happy to see amendment 1 go down in flames. 😈 happy to see that amendment 2 didn’t go up in smoke. 😈
not especially happy about the other amendments, but oh well, the results on 1 and 2 were (to me) most important anyway.
Welcome, Jennifer. You can comment here even though you are a friend of Kryten, but thanks for the warning 😉
Florida passed the medical cannabis law, but my primary physician probably won’t give me a prescription for depression due to the election of Drumpf.
Enjoy yourself Kryten, You still have Trumbull.
Comey is obviously culpable in the coup. I used to clean data files in SoCal and did merge-purge on millions of records in multiple files. Downloading from tape was the slowest part of the job, and this was using 80286s. I could have probably processed that laptop in 8 to 12 hours, and a forensic geek would have tools to do it even quicker. Comey stalled his ‘Never mind’. Obama was responsible for Comey, and other Republican moles having positions of power because of his worshiping at the temple of bi-partisanship. Republicans don’t believe it, anymore than they believe in governing.
By now the pollsters should have figured out that Trump supporters were under-represented in this election. It may have been because people didn’t want to admit they were going to vote for a xenophobic misogynist. We have probably seen the twilight of the poll.
With luck, the Dems might get back the Senate in the midterm, but I doubt it. The powers that be thought that Hillary deserved the nomination for playing nice with Obama, but the rank and file wanted Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders when Ms Warren declined to run.
If you look at the margin of error on the polls, it becomes clear that the reason the polls were wrong is because they counted people as “likely voters” who had been scrubbed off the voter registration rolls — but who didn’t know it. And those people were predominantly Hillary voters, being poorer, darker, or more stereotypically liberal (e.g. college students) than the voters who *weren’t* scrubbed.
It is also clear that Comey’s stunt won the election for Trump. If Hillary Clinton had won 2% more votes, she would have won. 2% was exactly the dip that Comey’s stunt made in her poll numbers.
We basically just saw the first Jim Crow election of the 21st century. The Republican Party realized, in 2012, that they couldn’t win if people of color were allowed to vote, so they went all-in for voter suppression via closing polling places, scrubbing voter registration lists, ridiculous ID requirements that were hard for anybody who was young or poor to meet, etc. They were betting that the Obama Justice Department would be slow off the mark to counter these, and that the Supreme Court would rule in their favor once the Obama Justice Department got a case to the Supreme Court. And their bet paid off. We will now have a new Jim Crow for the next 40 years, until the crop of judges that Trump selects die out. Yay. It’ll suck to be brown in the Jim Crow states. Again. At least there won’t be slavery. Yet.
Hi Jennifer, welcome to one of the sanest asylum’s on the ‘net! 😉 😀
And thanks Bryan… The USA & Aus. finally have something truly in common! You know I’ve been commenting about a situation like this for years occasionally. This is no surprise to me, and I doubt it really is for you m8! 🙂
We have something else in common too it seems. I’ve been seeing a shrink the past few Months who has diagnosed me with Major Depressive Disorder, recurrent episodes. She is working on a “Mental Health Plan” because nothing I’ve tried is really working for me. Including things that used to work. She wants me to start trying anti-depressants. Given that the last time they tried that a few years ago, they made me want to either suicide or take out my anger on certain people in Canberra (literally), I’m not sure that’s a good idea (given my training & proven skill in dealing with people who are deemed to be a serious problem that needs to be removed). But I am still sane enough to know that removing our respective *problems* will do little if anything, & may make things worse. Though, Ricky’s *Silver Lining* does come to mind.
You know me well enough to understand. Which is one reason I come here.
I suggested Sanders & Warren over a year ago. But Warren is too smart for that. And I think she is better where she is, where she can actually do some good & not just be a toothless figure head. Unlike the majority of Americans, She (and I) do know how things work (or don’t, as the case may be).
Badtux, that’s why I posted Ricky’s comment “In the long run things won’t change much. The rich will stay rich, and the people with power will make the poor blame each other.”, because that is fundamentally true Not only in the USA, but here now also. The fundamental problem won’t change as far as I can see.
Assange Statement on the US Election
Oh, & this (Twitter):
Gov. Mike Huckabee @GovMikeHuckabee:
“If HRC wins she will appoint her Filipino maid to head CIA. She already has access to all the secrets anyway. No need to train her.”
This is a small part of your (and our) problem.
But this comment did make me laugh (from an Aussie):
“It will be fascinating to see how we deal with American refugees.”
LOL
Regarding China, they have always played the long game, and China only cares about China. A couple examples (and there are several others):
US election 2016: China eyes chance to weaken US power
This was an interesting one that almost nobody noticed:
New Interpol head is Chinese former deputy head of paramilitary police force
Also, Most Americans seem to believe that Russia & China still hate each other. And perhaps @ the lowest levels that may still be so. But at the top, not even close! “Thick as thieves” comes to mind.
Lastly:
231,556,622 eligible voters
46.9% didn’t vote
25.6% voted Clinton
25.5% voted Trump
Think about it.
I’m quite aware that China and Russia no longer hate each other. China buys a lot of military technology from Russia now, and Russia appreciates the cash. Their space capsule was also built with a lot of Russian help, it appears to be basically a scaled-up Soyuz. And their new indigenous fighter jets are also being built with a lot of Russian help (not to mention Israeli help — so much for that whole “ally” thing, LOL!).
That said, like all nations, China does not have friends, China has interests. And their interests right now are *not* best served by having a President who promises to start a trade war with China.
China wants a destabilized USA, and Trump will (probably) deliver that. They (and the rest of the World) know that Trump ONLY cares about Trump! He couldn’t give a rat’s fart for the USA or it’s citizens. He is a huge hot air balloon! So long as he can continue to convince the moronic Americans he is God’s gift, he will rake in the money! Which is all he cares about.
He has already backed out of some of his rhetoric to get elected (such as removing his anti-Muslim info from his website). There is no chance at all he would say no to China’s money!
Hell, he was elected whilst he has pending legal suits and even court cases! LOL And that may be a reason why he ran. Because the Courts are now finding it almost impossible to find impartial Jurors!
Trump due in court before Oval Office
In the “Oh, gee… What a surprise!” Dep’t:
Tough reality check for Trump’s pledge of better heartland jobs, wages
Trump aide says no decision on Clinton prosecutor, now focused on unity
And more! And this is only day one! LOL
I’ve been reading the major news media’s articles about “where Hillary went wrong” which just sets my hair on fire. Thankfully, I can come to your site and see that you (and commenters) get it. Her poll numbers plummeted at the same time that Comey decided to spew insinuations. Anyone not making that connection is being willfully obtuse. Add to this the “scrubbing” of the voters as Badtux mentioned, and the deal is done.
Same as Hipparchia, there were few political signs out in my area. I live in the middle of RepublicanWorld (nod to Larry Niven) on my road, and usually the road looks like a porcupine with all the political signs. But this year? Not a sign to be seen on the street! Not one. These cowards voted for the b*stard, but were too ashamed of him to put up the signs.
“1928 was last time Republicans had the White House, the House and the Senate.”
Great day, Kryten, I can’t believe Ann Coulter would bring up that comparison! Well, I always did think she was an idiot. And I think a few other things about her that are better left unsaid on a public forum. It’s an interesting point as you said, and not for the reasons she thinks. That is a scary comparison for sure.
And I just keeping thinking “Supreme Court”. Yikes.
but my primary physician probably won’t give me a prescription for depression due to the election of Drumpf.
maybe you could get a freelance gig as a QA/QC inspector for your local farm or dispensary. 😉
The Russian and Chinese people have hated each other since the 13th century and the Mongol invasion. Individual leaders have gotten along, most notably Stalin & Mao, but when Khrushchev failed to recognize that Mao was the senior leader of communism after the death of Stalin, things turned sour. They get along but Russia has a lot of empty arable land just North of China, who needs more land. They are ‘friends’ when it suits the leaders.
Russia wants to shatter NATO unity and will work with whoever is available. They don’t need to like or trust them as long as they cause trouble.
It is necessary to remind people that Drumpf lost the popular vote, but got his votes in the right states. Thank you Electoral College, the system that gave us the Shrubbery after an assist by the Supreme Court.
Ann Coulter should be the one talking about voting fraud, since she has experience in registering in the wrong address and being registered in two states at the same time.
I know barely more than the minimum about cannabis. I can run the field tests and certainly know the smell, but I was never interested.
This could be a preview of the Trump Government. It’s a weekly newsletter I receive from the Labor party called “The 5&5”. 😀 The 1st part is a speech by opposition leader Bill Shorten, the 2nd is a summary of what our LNP Gov. did the past week. To themselves! LOL The 3rd is just the typical LNP politician’s lunacy. *shrug* The 4th is to show that Trump isn’t the only one with a legal cloud hanging over him!
1. “Let me start where the week ended. On Thursday after Question Time, Bill Shorten stood up and told the story of the different paths Australia and the United States have taken when it comes to equality and division over the last few decades. It didn’t get much publicity but it is a really important speech. He contrasted what has followed since Bob Hawke and Paul Keating delivered the social wage and negotiated the accord with the union movement, to what followed when the United States pursued trickle down economics with Ronald Reagan. Just consider these stats: in the last 30 years our minimum wage has risen by 11.2% in real terms, in the USA it has fallen by 21%. In the last 20 years the proportion of the population aged 25 to 34 with a tertiary education grew by almost 90 per cent in Australia – but it increased by just 30 per cent in the USA.”
2. “The weekly “own goal” from the government has been coming earlier each week. When they went home early and we took control of the floor of Parliament it was a Thursday. Kelly O’Dwyer and Michael Keenan voted to condemn their own Government on a Wednesday. Trading guns for votes was exposed on a Tuesday, so this week we all wondered what might happen on Monday. They didn’t disappoint. Right at the start of the day Emma Husar, Labor MP for Lindsay moved a motion getting stuck into the government for “short-changing Australian pensioners”. Scott Buchholz a Queensland LNP member jumped to his feet to speak. He obviously hadn’t been listening to the motion against his own government and when asked if he seconded the motion he happily agreed.”
It’s not the first time this year the LNP have torpedoed themselves. 😀
3. “I don’t often think about Peter Dutton. But when I do, the words “stand-up comic” are not front of mind. At the start of the week Peter Dutton decided to show the other side of Peter Dutton by not being angry while answering a question. That of itself was unusual. Anger is what he does.
Instead he decided to try his hand at stand-up comedy with a long fictitious anecdote which he had clearly decided was very funny when he had practiced for hours in the mirror. It left everyone in the chamber a bit bewildered. Albo raised a point of order under the rule against ‘weirdness’.”
4. “We actually managed to get some answers in Question Time. And the news for the Government wasn’t good. As you’ve seen in the media, former Senator Bob Day may have been ineligible to sit in the Senate. It’s a complicated and serious constitutional issue which will now go to the High Court to be resolved. But what was clear this week was that the Prime Minister was aware before the 45th Parliament even sat for the first time that the composition of the Senate was potentially illegitimate. That means Malcolm Turnbull has known for every single day of this Parliament that there was a cloud hanging over the Senate and he chose to keep this secret from the Australian people until just last week. Breathtaking.”
And these last two just for a laugh on us! 😉 LOL
“You may have never heard of Craig Kelly. Most people haven’t. But he chairs the Coalition’s Committee on the Environment and Energy and he had two extraordinary interventions on climate change policy. Just after Trump had won in the US, he posted “Paris is cactus” on social media. One small problem, his post was just before the Australian Government announced it had ratified the Paris Agreement. But earlier in the week it was even stranger. On Monday he blamed action on climate change for children drowning. Here’s his logic: acting on climate change affects electricity prices, swimming pools use electricity, swimming pools will increase the cost of swimming lessons, fewer children will learn to swim, and therefore: more children will drown. Remember, the Government has a majority of one and he’s one of them.”
“Things go from bad to worse for Attorney-General George Brandis. On Tuesday, a Senate inquiry delivered a report into the conflict between the Attorney-General and the former Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson. Here’s some of what the report had to say, “The lack of respect that the Attorney-General has displayed towards the Solicitor-General, and the state of their relationship prior to the Solicitor-General’s resignation […] demonstrates his lack of competence to hold the office of Attorney-General.” Scathing. But it doesn’t end there. Just before Question Time on Thursday, the Attorney-General withdrew the Legal Services Direction which started it all. I’m going to try soon to deliver you a list of the worst that doesn’t include George Brandis. He makes it difficult though.”
Oh! One more for the road! I really despise Julie Bishop!
“Julie Bishop decided to try her hand at being a head kicker in the Parliament on Thursday by going through the different examples of Labor MPs who had been critical of Donald Trump. It was an absurd attack. Labor makes absolutely no apology for opposing comments which boast of demeaning women, ridicule people with disabilities or discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin or their faith. But despite this, Julie Bishop somehow decided this was an attack on Labor.
I went back to her in the next question asking why she hadn’t referred to her own Coalition colleagues describing Donald Trump and his campaign as: “cruel and nasty”, “terrifying”, “too unstable to hold that high office” and as “a drop kick.” It’s on the record for anyone to see.
Suddenly I was on the receiving end of the famous Julie Bishop Death Stare.”
Our Sarah Palin!
Yeah. See, you are not the only Nation run by complete incompetents & crooks. *shrug*
Have a laugh on us y’all! 😉 (I am!) LOL
At least your politicians are failing at being Disraeli, while ours are poor imitations of Gabby Hayes. Many of our Congresscritters are elected because they are dumber than bricks, not in spite of it. They take absurd positions totally disconnected from reality. Drumpf saying that the drought in California is over when any local farmer farmer could show him that it isn’t. You have a few of them popping up from the Outback suffering from being out in the sun too long without a hat, but we have people who pride themselves on it. Look at the Shrubbery – born in Connecticut, educated at an elite prep school, and attended Yale and Harvard, but sounds like a bad imitation of a Texas drawl and playing the part of the town drunk.
I’m sure that I find your politicians more amusing than my own, because your pols aren’t screwing up my life. So go ahead and laugh, someone needs to enjoy our national dark comedy troupe – Republicans in charge of the US government.