Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
This week, some rumination on Trump’s tete a tete with Putin (along with a history lesson for Rob Long), we introduce you to Elizabeth Heng, who is running for Congress in California’s 16th District, we get some #MeToo education from our good pal Mona Charen, (stop whatever you’re doing and buy her book Sex Matters right now) and the city of Santa Barbara declares that if you use a straw in that fair city, you’ll do time. Which sucks. Also, the Word of The Day is spizzerinctum.
Music from this week’s podcast: Sex Bomb by Tom Jones
Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
It’s too bad Mona Charen never described how she got back at the professor who propositioned her. And I wonder if she knows who the professor tried next. It’s possible that ended well, that’s actually how a lot of successful marriages started.
Gary calling Trump a jerk, an *sshol*, “human filth”, etc., is unChristian. Ironically, name-calling is one of the things he dislikes about Trump.
I have not proclaimed my religious beliefs, and you know nothing about them. Gary has. I merely pointed out that he is not living up to his own professed standards.
re: name calling and Christianity.
Listen to some recent interviews of Michael Walsh.
Critical theory rules our world. That is just the reality.
I saw your immediately proceeding reply as well, so no worries. I’m just answering for the conversational value. 1) They may very well have, but not necessarily so. Trump had to present a list to shore up more skeptical portions of his base. As for Kasich, I’m curious if he has a judicial philosophy, or agrees with the base on judges (he may.) I am pretty sure he would bristle at the very idea of being constrained by the will of mere voters. 2) I think future Republican candidates will have to present similar lists of judges in the future, and they should. 3) No, Kasich is punk, I owe him no respect. If I had to choose between Kasich and Trump, I would take Trump without question (I didn’t vote for Trump in the primary or general, fyi.)
So, do I have this right? You would pick Trump ahead of Kasich, but you didn’t vote for Trump ahead of Hillary?
Wow.
I didn’t vote the top of the ticket in the general election at all. I live in California, so I have that luxury, but this was the first time in my adult life I did not vote for President. However had I lived in lets say Pennsylvania I probably would have held the nose and voted Trump. But Kasich, I might have voted Hillary just to spite the GOP at that point.
You can obviously vote for whomever you like or no one at all, but I don’t think your non-vote in California was not entirely without consequence. It allowed Hillary and her supporters to pretend that she had “really” won the election. There’s only one reason that Trump “didn’t win the popular vote.” Let me take this opportunity to remind everyone there’s no such thing as the popular vote. The only thing that matters is the electoral college. But Democrats and NeverTrumpers continue to drum away about how Trump “lost” the popular vote. Hillary won California by 2,568,841 votes, whereas she received in total 1,322,095 more votes nation-wide than Trump. So her “popular vote” “victory” is entirely California.
Yes, I’ve pointed that out before too. Some more like Pagodan, and maybe Rob Long – it doesn’t ultimately matter which states they were in – who did the right thing could have denied the “Trump lost the popular vote” mantra.
I was pointing it out *before* the election.
I’m not sure if my double negative worked there in my previous comment. What I meant was I think not voting had a consequence. It was better than voting for Hillary, though!
As the thought experiment sometimes goes, how is not voting at all, different than voting for Hillary? The result is the same. Especially in terms of not countering the popular-vote mantra.
Or to put it another way, “All that is necessary for the triumph of Hillary, is for Republican voters to do nothing.”
Voting for Hillary would have been worse because it would have added to her vote total. At least not voting at all took one vote from her. So to speak. Since we’re talking about a state she was very likely to win any way that wouldn’t change the Electoral College outcome.
It wouldn’t change the electoral college, no. But it might have removed the “Trump lost the popular vote” thing. And then maybe you wouldn’t have various loons on the left arguing that it’s time to eliminate the electoral college. Although having them out themselves as loons in that way, can sometimes be helpful.
I wonder though. Would Jonah and others have been able to lower themselves to voting for Trump and perhaps saving the country, perhaps even the world, if we did have just a popular vote system? Somehow I don’t think so. “My vote didn’t matter anyway” might be just a cover they just use when convenient.
We appear to be in complete agreement on these matters.
Seems like. I might actually be more disappointed in Peter, though.
Sometimes I think it would be nice if there were imposed consequences for people’s beliefs, so they don’t get to advocate things without consequence just because they get outvoted and don’t have to live under what they advocate.
If someone wants to be a luddite, fine. But they can’t advocate for other people to be luddites too, using TV or radio etc. Because, well, they’re a luddite. So they can’t use that stuff they don’t believe in. We’re going to force them to conform to their espoused beliefs even if they’d rather be a hypocrite.
People who refuse vaccinations still benefit from “herd immunity” of the people around them. So cook up something that makes it as likely for them to get all the old horrible diseases, as it would have been before vaccinations were invented. Don’t let them benefit from something they oppose.
For another example, if Peter believes there shouldn’t be government – taxpayer – funding of scientific/technical research etc such as the space program, well, let’s see. The Internet started as DARPA, a government program. Peter is against that. Therefore, Peter doesn’t get to use the Internet. For anything.
And his children can’t either.
Maybe he can sell Uncommon Knowledge VHS tapes. Unless VCRs can also be traced to some kind of government-funded research. In which case he’s SOL there too.
Ah… well, just to pick on one thing you said, I don’t really believe the government is “responsible” for the Internet. OK, so they linked up some systems in the military. It was the free market that grew the internet….
I take your point and think there is a lot of truth to the idea that Trump’s loss of the popular vote emboldens the nutty/uninformed lefties on the elimination of the electoral college. Even so, absent a true swing situation – the downside of my non-vote was worth the entirely selfish benefit of not pulling the lever. (I would never argue that the decision to no vote was in any way “brave” or “courageous”.)
As to Jonah, I cannot speak for him. I disagree with him more now than ever, and mostly on the Trump stuff. However, he has said, and I’ll happily take his word on it, that if it had come down to his deciding vote, he likely would have voted for Trump.
It isn’t always possible to know when “my one vote won’t make a difference.” And whether it is the deliberate intent or not, from the outside it’s easy to think that the main benefit of not voting is for that person to be able to hold themselves above the rest, who are doing the “dirty work.”
As Amy said when Leonard pointed out that she and Sheldon didn’t have much time to find a place for their wedding, “Get in the boat and row!”
A lot of people need to get that message, including Jonah.