Once again, Trump denies the reality of global warming and climate change. This time it was an interview on “60 Minutes” in which the president claimed that what goes up will come down. Not necessarily.
The Real Problem Isn’t That Trump is an Idiot
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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‘Bout time he was proved wrong….
Henri
Maybe you all are as tired of reading this as I am of writing it … but … here’s Version ~43(b)
1) Yes, indeed, His Hairness thinks all US/world residents are idiots.
2) This attitude is NOT restricted to this president nor members of his political party.
3) This condition has existed for quite some time in US politics.
Take, for example, HH’s challenger in the 2016 presidential campaign.
She thought she could garner critical working-class*** votes by refusing even to lie about raising the minimum wage to $15/hr, preferring, instead, to abusively insist that “$12/hr is YOUR max but I won’t step out of my office for any less than $330,000/hour.”
———–
*** Or was she so idiotic as to think she could win with ONLY the votes of the rapidly dwindling number of those not suffering economic depression?
> His Hairness thinks all US/world residents are idiots.
… and I’m not so sure he’s wrong. After all, he did get elected. Sort of.
“After all, he did get elected. Sort of.”
Yes, elected by the rules of a system designed to put a check on the “excesses” of democracy, and call that imbalance balance.
There’s no way George W. Bush and Trump would have taken office if it weren’t for the scales of justice tipped in their favor by the Constitution.
Convincing people that this is true will prove to be as difficult as convincing people that their gods are mere phantasms like Santa Claus.
But we aren’t supposed to talk about that either.
And here I thought that it was only wingnuts who thought that the constitution means the opposite of what it says.
“Convincing people that this is true …”
… is as simple as providing some evidence to back it up. Have you discovered any since the last time around?
Let’s try this a different way, Glenn. You believe that the Constitution was “designed” to give more power to some states than to other states.
Can you tell us which delegates voted against the best interests of their own states, and further explain why they would ever do such a thing?
Article I, Section 2, Clause 3
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
Read this and think about it until you understand that the slave states get bonus seats in the House of Representatives amounting to 3/5 of the total number slaves in that state.
This means slave states have more votes in support of legislation that favors slavery and opposes abolition of slavery.
This makes the Constitution a pro-slavery document.
And I will repeat to your shock and dismay that George Washington was quite capable of telling lies regardless of how disturbing that fact is to you.
Your resistance to reading, understanding, and thinking is like trying to convince my father’s friends that the US was not the beacon of freedom to the world and Vietnam that they believed it to be in 1969.
Of course, these conservative Democrats, like you, disagreed with me then too. So this is familiar territory.
> This means slave states have more votes in support of legislation that favors slavery and opposes abolition of slavery.
I see you’ve made some progress since the last time you made a fool of yourself on this subject. You have evidently discovered that some states weren’t slave states. Congratulations, you just passed fourth-grade American History!
I see you’ve made some progress since the last time you made a fool of yourself on this subject. You have evidently discovered that the Constitution favored the slave states. Congratulations, you just passed more gas out of your asshole.
> …. elected by the rules of a system designed to put a check on the “excesses” of democracy, and call that imbalance balance.
So, let me get this straight – earlier, you claimed that the Senate was “designed” to give more power to small states because it was not based on population. The Electoral College DOES favor more populous states, yet you believe it was also “designed” to imbalance the system.
You lost me somewhere. How can both be the same “design” when they are diametrically opposed?
> You have evidently discovered that the Constitution favored the slave states.
… as evidenced by the fact that we still have slavery today.
I hope you can find the Thirteenth Amendment without aid from me.
Yes, the States are enabled by the Thirteenth Amendment to pass laws making persons slaves as a punishment for violation of state laws.
Slaves have been leased out to corporations who like the cheap and profitable productive labor made available through these leases.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89051115
:: Kindergarten teacher voice ::
Glenn? Honey? In our last lesson we already discussed the 13th Amendment. Remember? No?
That’s okay, don’t cry. We can try again. Maybe you should take notes this time.
The 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865. The Founders were dead. They didn’t write it; they had no control over it whatsoever. According to the historian Herb Wells, the time machine wasn’t invented until 1895, so there’s no way the founders could have time traveled nearly a hundred years into their future to affect that change.
Nor could they have used it to travel to the 21st century to further corrupt the intent of the amendment they didn’t write in the first place.
I know it’s hard to keep up with the other children but you can at least try, m’kay?
I already proved my point beyond refutation so you can continue to pirouette around your Conservative Hocus Pocus all by yourself.
Bye bye.
> I already proved my point beyond refutation
Your original point above was that the Electoral College was “designed” to be “imbalanced.” So far as I remember, you have not provided not one, single shred of evidence to back that up. If you did, I apologize for missing it and humbly request that you post a link.
The problem is that you are completely ignorant of the times. That’s not an insult – although you will most assuredly take it as such – but it’s quite evident from the words you type. There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. You are not a stupid man, but you are working from several invalid assumptions.
The first is that the founders were some sort of cabal seizing power for themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You grew up being told that:
state is to country
– AS –
county is to state
This is not how the founders saw it. They used the word ‘state’ as in “the state of Denmark” or “der Staat.” Each was to be an independent political entity, loosely associated with the others for common interests. More like the UN or the EU than today’s US.
As such, there is no way in Hell that the representative from Pennsylvania would have voted to give more power to Kentucky. He was in it for Pennsylvania. If – for some bizarre reason – he had done so he would not have had a warm reception back home. Tarring and Feathering was still a popular pastime back then.
If you want to argue about history, fine, I’m game. But you would be well-advised to read up on it beforehand.
Actually, the problem isn’t that he thinks we’re idiots (as the woman in the toon says) but rather that too many of us act like idiots. Whether it’s the antivaxxers or the people who don’t vote because everything is awful so why bother or the people who buy into prosperity gospel mindsets or some other thing, the problem is that we almost never get to critical mass on critical issues. Healthcare for all (with a mental health aspect in it) would be an example of that. We rarely see a payoff to being organized politically. Once we do, it will get easier to get the next thing, and the next…
Cool art. Angles, light, colors: oh my!
Both Trump and Obama could talk to us as if we are idiots, even if we’re not, because the system is fixed through the Electoral College and, though people have been granted the right to vote for Senators, the Senate is grossly non-representative. The combined population of California and Illinois is about equal to the population of the 25 least populous (and most cheaply purchased) states, but the former have 4 senators while the latter have 50.
And while the many will watch the main events (elections), the side show where real power is exercised (in terms of assuring that there will be no outcome displeasing to the parasitic ruling owners) will most assuredly install either subordinate Democrats or Republicans, is beneath notice.
To quote Boxer from George Orwell’s Animal Farm:
“I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings.”
So effort goes into winning elections instead of making elections winnable by removing the “fixes” the Constitution grants to the powerful minorities through which the many remain slaves to through popular myth.
The people have been persuaded that change comes passively and inevitably like the swinging of a pendulum, when the reality is that is that change comes like a Tug of War, where the side that passively waits for change to come through elections will be dragged through the mud.
Actually – he’s right for once. The climate will indeed change back. Some day. The question is whether humans will still be around to see it happen.
I’ve seen his attitude before. I’ve known too many thieves and car salesmen in my life. (not that they’re mutually exclusive) They’ve all got the same attitude, “I got something from you, therefore I’m smarter than you” – and no amount of hard data will ever change their minds.
The earth’s atmosphere was oxygenated by anaerobic cyanobacteria.
These species so polluted the earth’s atmosphere with their waste product, oxygen, that many of them now have to hide away in airless places in order to live, because many of them can’t live in their own waste.
But we humans love the cyanobacteria’s waste product just like flies love dog feces.
Some species will find the ruble and waste we leave behind to be like manna from heaven.
The earth and life on it has always been changing.
We most likely will not be able to kill the earth as easily as we can kill ourselves.
We’ve even got some new micro-critters eating plastic now-a-daze. They could bring about the fall of civilization all by their little lonesomes.