A few points, in no particular order, to consider.
- Supreme Court Justices
- On Election Day, you might do some voluntary mortification, such as fasting, in reparation for sins that will be committed.
- This is a turning point for these United States. Don’t sit it out.
- Down ticket races are really important.
- If you are wavering about voting or about your vote, ask your Guardian Angel to help you.
- Ask the Guardian Angels of your friends and loved ones to help them as they make their decisions.
- Whom will the enemies of these USA fear more?
- I would vote for the corpse of Millard Fillmore if it could keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House.
- Pray throughout the day. Ask God to have mercy on us.
- If you are trying to figure out how to watch the election results, it is sometimes said that higher quality wine or spirits won’t produce such a terrible hangover. Maybe. It is certain that re-hydration is important.
- How’s Obamacare working for you? It’s also called, laughably, the “Affordable” Care Act.
- GO TO CONFESSION!
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Delightful suggestions, Father. May I suggest the Vivino app for your phone to aid in selecting a 3-5 star wine? No nasty headaches for us Z-boosters! I’ve got a nice Bordeaux on standby.
In the case of a close race, don’t forget to pray for the electoral college in December when they officially cast their votes.
It’s going to be awful, but it could always be worse. God has His plan.
May Our Lady smash the skull of the old serpent!!
(In December, the electors meet in their respective state capitols to cast their ballots for president and vice president. States may or may NOT require their electors to vote with the popular majority, and they may or may not give all of their electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote. – random google search)
I wish they would get rid of the electoral college. It is a remnant of bygone days when long-distance communication was poor and the majority of people could neither read nor write.
The Chickeb
GO TO CONFESSION!
Got a Confession scheduled tomorrow morning with my parish priest.
Whoever wins tomorrow, remember:
“Jesus has been Crucified, and Three Days Later He Resurrected from the Tomb.”
Shut up and focus on That.
After you die, neither Hillary, Trump, or even Emperor Constantine, King Louis IX, King Tut, or any other ruler of this world that you can name will be there to give an account for Your Life Choices.
Actually, Obamacare does work for me. Before it, I couldn’t afford health insurance at all, so I’m thankful for this program. Of course, it’s not as good as Obama’s original plan, before the Republicans got their paws on it. The premium increases have more to do with the greed of insurance companies and their multi-million dollar salaried CEOs. THAT is sin.
If you work for a large company and you get group health benefits at an affordable cost, be very grateful.
[So, even though its killing the economy and insurance rates are skyrocketing, causing widespread problems, you’re good with it. It’s good for you, so who cares about others.]
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With some trepidation I must disagree with the Masked Gallus. Isn’t the electoral college to offset the population advantage of the larger states against the small? To dilute the ‘popular’ vote. I could be wrong.
Deschute Black Porter for tomorrow night; plus watching 13 Hours, and cleaning my guns.
On another and happier note, the confessional restoration I mentioned in some past week “Good News” is 99% finished, 1% tomorrow. St. Wenceslaus Church, Tabor, SD
I would no more get rid of the electoral college than I would get rid of the Congress. I think of it as a special legislature the sole purpose of which is to elect the executive.
Masked Chicken,
That is an awful idea, if you mean to just have the President elected by a popular vote. That would mean that only places like New York, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco would matter in a general election.
It’s probably the most crucial vote in the United States ever. Say a lot of Hail Marys. I hear the Devil hates that prayer.
To the Masked Chickeb,
Don’t confuse literacy with intelligence. I actually would rather move to a more subsidiarity friendly model that really put a huge emphasis on State governments and the electors, but then I would also support the breaking up of the USA into three or four separate regional federations. If we abandon all political tradition in favor of mass democracy, which is more or less the destination we’re almost at, I think things will get worse, not better. There’s a reason that the Founding Fathers loathed the idea of Democracy, and there’s a reason it didn’t work out so well in Athens. The electoral college, rather, hearkens back to a time when there was the equivalent of American nobility who were better educated, more experienced, and were able to make decisions for the good of their country because they actually did truly love their country. The common mook, back then as now, will sell out his country in a heartbeat if it means he gets a free cell phone out of the deal. Let’s face it – most folks are not experienced, educated enough, or clever enough to see through rhetorical smoke screens and bribes dressed up as benefits. If they were, snake oil selling wouldn’t have such a long and still currently vibrant history in this country. Even among Traditionalist Catholics I see the marks of a good conman fleecing innocent souls (don’t get me started on the “you have to buy my special and super accurate translation of the Vulgate” deal or the anti-vaccination homeopathic solutions I’ve seen many folks buy into).
Overall, though this country is just too dang big to govern as a whole (consider, 1 member in the house of representatives “represents” on average over 700,000, with some states skewing well above that average). We make the late Roman Empire look manageable in comparison. Even if, best case scenario, Trump wins in a crushing landslide, there’s not much he can really do to keep the wheels from coming off this crazy Rube-Goldbegian government. At most he can stand in as a Constantine did, get the persecutors off our back, and buy us a good chunk of peace within which we can grow our families, communities, and parishes.
One World Religion propaganda, from wikileaks and the pen of a Lefty Rabbi : https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/56498
“Recognizing the Pope’s prophetic role at this historical moment doesn’t mean that we can’t also urge him to rethink the Church’s stance on women, on homosexuals, on abortion, and on birth control. We at Tikkun have gently rebuked him on these issues. The contradiction between his message for social justice and saving the planet and his refusal to change the Vatican’s persistent attempts to prevent governments from funding birth control is something he could change without abandoning the notion that the fetus is sacred. Those who believe themselves to be without contradictions in their own practices and belief systems can throw the first criticisms. We at Tikkun are a bit more humble than that. Yes, there are parts of what he supports that I think need to be changed. But we also recognize the context of his situation–dealing with a Church of a billion people who have been for centuries stuck in these patriarchal directions and worldviews. “
It seems there is some confusion here when people talk about the Electoral College. It is 2 things:
(1) What Kerry is talking about, which is that votes are apportioned by states according to number of senators and congresscritters, so that even the smallest states get at least 3 votes, which gives them more influence than they otherwise would have in a simple majority vote, and (2) what I think Chicken was referring to, that the votes don’t actually elect a president but choose electors who then vote for the president, normally voting for the candidate they are pledged to but not always required to.
(1) involves the argument over the current winner-take-all (in most cases) state by state allocation vs. direct election. I have heard arguments both ways here, that the current system encourages concentration on the “swing states” rather than a broader campaign.
As for (2), what WVC said above. A better solution would be subsidiarity, returning more power to the states and communities, letting the Federal Government focus on international relations, mismanaging the Post Office, and such things that it does best and allow us local yokels to manage things ourselves.
“There’s not much Trump can do”. Just those things you mention will be enough. We need to turn our country back to its PEOPLE and to families first. I believe in doing this the revelatory truths about abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage, and gender issues will be seen for the evils that they are. We are the one and only country in the world that understands freedom and have lived in freedom all our lives. Tragedy lies in throwing it away because we believe the Alinsky-ites. I agree, too many people are stupid, there’s no other way of putting it. Let’s pray their everloving cell phones distract them today of all days.
masked chicken, no, that was not the reason for the electoral college. in 8th grade civics we covered the reasons for it.
Let’s remember who our Patroness is, Our Lady Of the Immaculate Conception. Our Lady, pray for us.
un-ionized says:
masked chicken, no, that was not the reason for the electoral college. in 8th grade civics we covered the reasons for it.
What reasons were you taught?
I shall pray and do some mortification today. Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!
Also, here is a helpful article that explains the history behind the Electoral College and why it’s still relevant and important, for anyone who’s interested: http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/07/why-the-founders-created-the-electoral-college/
MC,
I am opposed to electing a President with popular vote. IMHO, the larger the electorate the less a voter knows about the candidates–and that encourages demagoguery. In fact, in the 19th century John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson disagreed on whether the electors should be chosen by popular vote. Jackson of course favored it. Adams said that changing to popular vote would elect demagogues and war heroes.
IMHO, JQ Adams was right.
I have to confess that I prefer a parliamentary system because it preserves the local flavor of national elections. The Prime Minister is not Head of State. And both the PM and the President, where there is no monarch, are usually elected by parliament.
JonPatrick :
(1) involves the argument over the current winner-take-all (in most cases) state by state allocation vs. direct election. I have heard arguments both ways here, that the current system encourages concentration on the “swing states” rather than a broader campaign.
Sorry to play Devil’s Advocate, but Constitutionally, Florida should, in the Bush vs. Kerry Election, have declared itself “contested” according to the principles of the Federal Law, and according to the local State Constitution, Florida should have sent zero Electors to the Federal College that year, and Kerry should have won.
The fact that *that* Election result was openly rigged for partisan reasons by a handful of unelected Justices has led directly to the very parlous state of democracy in the United States in present times.
VOTED. I was voter 73 this morning. Our parish is holding Adoration and hourly public rosary until the polls close.
As an aside, I’ve been unemployed for 7 months. Even with 2/3 of our income gone, Obamacare costs more than our house payment. So we have no insurance with a diabetic in the house and must pay the penalty come tax time. Only finding coupons for insulin on the internet and my selling my plasma are getting us by. THAT is how it’s “working” for us.
MouseTemplar, I’m sorry to hear that things are going so badly.
Can I suggest looking into your state Medicaid program? In most states, it provides free health insurance for people with limited assets. Since it is a state-run program, the requirements vary from state to state.
Also, the premiums for insurance from your state healthcare exchange are linked to your income, so they should be reduced substantially on the basis of your low income. It may be worthwhile going through the application process online to find out what the reduced cost would be for the coming year. If they are still more than you can manage, Medicaid is the fall-back program.
I hope things improve soon.
In response to Kerry above.
I was at that church in Tabor, SD for a TLM a few months ago. I was admiring the confessional box there. I may need to make a trip to see the finished work. I hope Fr. Jones is able to expand his use of the TLM with lots of education of his parish. Beautiful church designed for the worship of Christ.
Peace be to you,
Janice
As for what I said, earlier, Hamilton agrees with my assertion (from the Wikipedia article on the Electoral College):
Alexander Hamilton described the framers’ view of how electors would be chosen, “A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated [tasks].”
This state of affairs no longer holds. Indeed, one of the primary reasons against the popular vote was that slaves would be excluded. Indeed, because of the winner-takes-all nature of the EC delegations in all but two states, the EC is nothing more than a very course set filter (called an ultrafilter in set theory) which may absolutely not reflect the overall quality of the set. In other words, it is possible to win the popular election, without any effect of the factionalism the early Federalists feared from the popular vote, and, yet, lose the election because the winner-takes-all filtering, in effect, disenfranchizes what might be a sizable minority of state voters which are counted in the general election. More than that, nothing prevents factionalism at the state level any more than the federal level, so the EC can be affected by factionalism the same as the popular election, so the Federalist’s argument is worthless, once communication among state voters becomes fast enough and easy enough to form factions – the Founding Fathers never conceived of such a thing as a Twitter storm – i.e., instant, transient faction formation.
Unlike Senators and Congressmen, who are responsible to voters for a myriad of decisions during their terms, Electors are given a one-shot exercise in voting that can hide a great deal of popular malaise.
Times have moved on. Population density is a poor rationale for assigning representation, since the larger the density, the greater the probability of psychological skewing. Almost all high population density regions in the U. S. skew liberal (absent a special history), so, in a sense, factionalism is, currently, built into the EC, exactly in the sense the Founding Fathers didn’t want. They didn’t see this trend because political party stability and demographics were much more fluid in the late Colonial and early Federalist periods than after the Civil War, when the current two party system was locked in. Further, the existence of the EC virtually guarantees that there will never be a third party capable of emerging in the U. S.
Just some thought, but I enjoy the conversation on this election day. It is fitting.
The Chicken
MouseTemplar, I second what jhayes says, the abode and car are usually excluded from the calculation of need. I have been on various forms of assistance twice in my life and once applied for Medicaid for my mother at a nursing home. It’s there for those who need it. The stigma is on the people who make it one.
Masked Chicken,
Would an alternate solution be to increase as well as change the role of the electors? The problem with pure populist democracy is that it continues to move the emphasis of political and government power to the national level while simultaneously reducing public political rhetoric to the lowest common denominator.
Right now everyone thinks in terms of national government. Whether one is pro-life or pro-abortion, pro-traditional marriage or pro-whatever-floats-one’s-boatism . . . .etc., everyone thinks in terms of “fixing” the problem at the National Gov’t level. Moving to a strict populist vote seems like the final nail in the States’ Rights coffin. There really wouldn’t be any concept of a sovereign state left – we’d all be no more than just bureaucratic subdivisions of the grand Federal Beast.
On other hand, increasing the independence and number of electors puts more of the emphasis back on the states. Granted, things can be factionalized at the State level, but it would be at least logistically more difficult and financially much more expensive for the oligarchs to shape their agenda across so many different fiefdoms. Additionally, increasing the number of electors allows for the electors to have a closer tie to the people they’re representing, and giving them independence to vote for whom they choose vice being a sock puppet for the people would make it much more dynamic. I’m not sure what consequences there would be for electors to go rogue – if we lived in a world that had people actually tied to the land they lived on, the problem would take care of itself (elector so-and-so owns a business in our community, so we elected him to be our representative, but then he sold us out like a rat, well, we’ll do what we can to make sure his business goes bankrupt).
I’m living in fantasy land, admittedly, but I think it’s worth while to consider whatever options there are to actually increase State power at the expensive of Nationalist government. We have a better chance in addressing, fixing, fighting, or influencing things at the State level (and perhaps bigger states need to be further subdivided – I’m okay with that). We have practically no influence on the national scale where billionaires like Soros and Zuckerberg get exactly what they pay for. There’s a reason both of our political parties so often line up on more-or-less the same side on numerous issues (immigration, free trade, healthcare . . . etc.)
” Granted, things can be factionalized at the State level, but it would be at least logistically more difficult and financially much more expensive for the oligarchs to shape their agenda across so many different fiefdoms.”
I agree that states need to have more direct influence than the federal government, especially in areas such as life issues and education. The problem is that the Supreme Court took away that control with Roe vs, Wade. An activist Supreme Court is horrible for states rights.
It was more expensive for the oligarchs to influence all of the state politics until mass communication ramped up. Now, they can speak directly to individual voters through telephone canvasing or the Internet. Many of the assumptions inherent in the Constitution are being subtly altered by modern technologies and we do not have an electorate trained to modify the Constitution. The whole gender movement (something not in the Constitution) is proof of that.
The Chicken
Dear Chicken,
I don’t disagree. The Constitution is like some sort of reanimated corpse that is now forced to gambol and skip to justify any and everything. The fact that many NRA supporters think the 2nd Amendment prevents states from making rights restricting the owning or use of fire arms or that free speech advocates think the 1st Amendment can be used to keep states from making laws restricting free speech are so far from the original understanding of the Constitution that it isn’t worth arguing about anymore. And we’re not even talking about the absurd rights, such as gender self-identification, abortion, and so-called homosexual marriage, that have been “read” into the old and crumbly piece of paper.
We really are a country ruled via Supreme Court, and Jefferson saw early on that the “checks and balances” were not going to be work as the Judicial Branch was early on tilting toward disproportionate power and sway.
At any rate, once Amnesty is passed it will all be moot. Whether via electorate vote or popular vote, the Democrats will win every Presidential election for the rest of the history of this country as we know it. Perhaps, though, we may wake up tomorrow to hear good news. One never knows. I’m going to have a delicious bacon, egg (no offense intended), and cheese sandwich, regardless.
I gave the advice of the US Catholic Bishops thoughtful consideration, remembering well who they are. And I took into account all the thoughts expressed here that I’ve been reading for several months. They were very informative, and useful in helping me feel like I did the right thing this morning in the polling booth. I voted for Hillary Clinton to keep the corpse of Millard Fillmore out of the Oval Office.
So….scotch and water?
Went to vote, as I was leaving, the nice lady handed me , the I voted sticker. I politely refused it. She was taken aback, and asked, aren’t you proud you voted? With the choice we had, not really, but as I told her nicely, “I’m a 67 year old Viet Nam vet, not a ten year old, getting a sticker for participation. At which point my bride grabbed my arm to lead me away :) as my sons say, your an angry old man Pops lol
Dear janicethemenace59, you did not, I presume look inside the confessional. Several months ago the the (top of the) wall to the (top of the other) wall to wall carpeting would still have been in place. (As a friend quipped, “Probably there since Eisenhauer.) There are a few photos on the St. Wenceslaus’ fakebook page. (Ignore the bearded fellow; he was attempting to look stern. Father insisted upon a smile.) The grate can be opened from Father’s side for face to face confession. A frame with shoji paper makes the grate translucent, for the sake of anonymity. The frame on the floor has not been fastened in place around the grate. In what state do you live?
Dear Fr. Z,
Thank you for your ever wise election day advice. I shared your helpful thoughts with my husband at breakfast this morning. He too appreciated them (especially the tips about good quality wines and spirits) and, with a twinkle in his eye said: “Ah, Fr. Z, His motto should be “The alphabet stops here!”
I’m grateful to you during these difficult times. Your blogs help us to keep things in perspective.
Without the electoral college we would be living in the United Socialist City-states of Los Francago York, and Hillary’s corrupt election stealing tactics would have prevailed.
Thank God for the wisdom He blessed our founding fathers with.
….And God bless the NRA!
I can think of no single better thing to do to contribute towards our future Liberty than join the NRA….beyond praying, of course!