December 22, 2020: Can We All Agree - No More Stupid Maps?

 

12/22/20: Make that ten days. Once again, “The President has no public events scheduled” Tuesday, as the White House reports.

 

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In other words, your tax dollars at work, to get Esformes a pardon, for stealing your tax dollars to begin.

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From deep inside the bunker, however, Trump lashes out at enemies, a growing horde, and pardons a few criminal pals. The president’s Twitter feed has always been a place to go if you like racism, paranoia, self-pity, petty insults, and half-baked policy, all wrapped up in an authoritarian vibe. 

Now, we’re getting flat-out “crazy.” The president’s “enemies list” expands to include Sen. Mitch McConnell. Trump has blasted Republican “puppets” in Georgia and torched the U.S. Supreme Court. The soon to be ex-President of the United States is seeing enemies behind every door. 

VP Pence? Him, too. Lame Duck Don is said to believe that his second in command has been “insufficiently loyal.”

 

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WHEN OLD FRIENDS FAIL, make new ones by pardoning a whole bunch of disreputable characters. 

Top names on the list of pardons issued today are former congressmen, Rep. Chris Collins, and Rep. Duncan Hunter. Apparently, both deserve relief because they were the first members of Congress, back when Trump was just a terrible candidate running to trash the rule of law, to endorse the man. Sure, Collins, and his son, Cameron, and a whole pack of Cam’s in-laws, were accused of insider trading. Cam, alone, managed to dump stock on poor dupes who didn’t have the same inside dish dad had, and avoided $570,000 in losses as a result. 

But what’s a president supposed to do, if not pardon all his felonious friends? 

Duncan Hunter and his wife were found guilty of siphoning off a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds and spending the money for family vacations and to pay Hunter household expenses. 

Famously, that included using $600 in campaign cash to fly the family’s pet bunny along during an Italy trip. 

Not to mention: Rep. Hunter using campaign cash to fund an alleged five extramarital affairs. (See: 8/8/18 and 8/22/18.)

 

Also snagging pardons: George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign aide in 2016, and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer. Both men lied to investigators about contacts with Russians – or, in Zwaan’s case, contacts with other liars working for Trump, who had already lied about contacts with Russians. 

Several pardons issued Tuesday hold up under scrutiny, but my favorite is the one for Philip Esformes. He’s described by the New York Post as a “Florida nursing home tycoon.” Esformes had been sentenced to twenty years in prison after he was convicted in a $1 billion Medicare fraud scheme. 

In other words, your tax dollars have been at work, to get Esformes a pardon, for stealing your tax dollars to begin.

 

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AT ANY RATE, the president remains as unwilling as ever to accept his November defeat. On Tuesday, Lame D. did tweet once about vaccine distribution and how great it was going – and all because of him. 

Mostly, he spent his day lashing out at all those who refuse to support his insane schemes to overturn the vote and secure a second term. Mitch McConnell continued to take fire, for having admitted that Joe Biden would in fact soon be President of the United States. 

New to the president’s hate list was “RINO John Thune, ‘Mitch’s boy,’” as Trump described him in a tweet. Thune represents a solid red state in the U.S. Senate, but the president has had about all he can stand of Thune’s concern for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. He wants the votes of six states overturned; and he wants it now, or no later than January 6.

“South Dakota doesn’t like weakness,” he raged on Twitter. Thune “will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!” 

For pure, unadulterated idiocy, the president’s retweet of a post by someone named “Kevin McCullough,” may be my favorite of the day.

 We see this same lame argument every four years, when some knothead posts the kind of map (above), showing how much of America is “red” country, not “blue.” 

McCullough is just the latest – and, in Trump, we finally have a president so ill-informed as to buy the concept. And it’s worth noting that McCullough posted the wrong map, from the 2016 election, and that neither he nor the president noticed. We provide the correct map from 2020, as a service. 

“America is 50 states,” McCullough first notes. Yay! Got that right! Focusing on several of those states where the voters chose Biden over Trump, which results Trump doesn’t like and still hopes to overturn, McCullough explains, “Minus the states in question Trump won 25, Biden won 16.” 

I don’t get the poor sap’s math. So, I check the electoral map. Sure enough, Trump won more states, especially if we don’t count eight of the states Joe Biden won! Such as Pennsylvania. My map does show that Trump received the electoral votes from 26 states. I also know conservatives love the Electoral College, because since 1992, they’ve only won the popular vote once. 

But really? President Trump thinks we vote by square mileage? 

Apparently, he does.

 

That’s the argument McCullough is advancing. And it’s an incredibly stupid argument from the start. “Those [pro-Trump] states house 2974 counties. Even with the ‘votes in question’ Trump won 2496 [counties], Biden [w]on 477. Trump won 84% of America, Biden ‘won’ 16%.” 

So, let a liberal blogger explain again – as he did in 2016. In 2012. And in 2008. Consider California. The state has a population of more than 40 million. So that blue state has fifty-five (55) electoral votes. 

Trump did in fact win wide swaths of the country if we measure by square miles. That doesn’t change the fact he won states with low populations. Wyoming has six people per square mile. The entire state has 567,000 people. Wyoming gets three (3) electoral votes. Alaska also has three (3). Montana has three (3). North Dakota has three (3). South Dakota also has three (3). Idaho has four (4). Nebraska has five (5). Kansas, Iowa, and Utah have six each (6, 6, 6), and Oklahoma has seven (7). 

If you are keeping track, those eleven states all went for Trump; but they have only a combined 49 electoral votes.

 

It’s bad enough we pick presidents based on how the Electoral College works, which is how Trump won in 2016. We absolutely do not pick presidents by how many counties they win. That would be like picking our leaders based on how many cornfields states have. Or which states have the biggest piles of hors manure. And you’d think even this dimwitted president could figure it out. 

Here again are a few pictures I have taken while bicycling or hiking in various corners of this beautiful land. 

We count people’s votes. We don’t count counties. We don’t count open space. Here, for example, is what one chunk of Wyoming looks like:

 That’s my bicycle to the left, by the way. There don’t appear to be any voters at all in this area.

 

Here’s the view (above) from the seat of my bicycle, in southwestern Utah, as I pedaled across the Sevier Desert in 2011. Not many potential voters for Trump – or Biden – or anyone else – in sight.

 

This portion of Montana, along the Beartooth Highway, north and east of Yellowstone Park, is more scenic; but there aren’t a lot of voters. There might be a few grizzly bears; but they don’t vote.

 

South Dakota has more cows than most blue states. We don’t vote by pasture size. We let people vote. 

Cows don’t vote. People do. And each person, over the age of 18, gets one vote. 

You’d think the right-wing types would figure this out and quit posting and retweeting stupid maps.