Saturday, June 8, 2013

The Crescendo of Scandalous Crises Mode: Part 2, A New Beginning.

5/16/13:  These guys are awfully frustrated right now,” Carville told MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts, referring to the GOP. “They’re taking the anger out, and I understand that. I think the White House has just got to live with this for 30 days, get the truth out and you know, just roll with the punches here. They’re down to swinging pretty wildly here.”[1]


I’m still kind of hoping to stick to the time table but I have a feeling Carville was not expecting the left wing to be led into the “mud against the wall to see if it sticks” strategy. Regardless, a lot of educating is going on here, apparently. In this second part of my opus, I really want to lay the framework for terrifying things that I guess might suddenly come up to surprise people at the oddest times considering their vast hysterical importance.
 
Someone actually suggested I might be a Nihilist from my rantings in part 1 of this series, a term which before I generally thought to mean that one believed in basically nothing. I get the finer points now but still. Let me disabuse you of that notion. I see a great deal that is wrong, I have very strong political views but… alas, somehow I am outnumbered because no one does anything about the problems that seem all but obvious to me and incredibly important.

Let me begin with the first thing that bothers me to the point of wanting to abandon our country and move elsewhere. The Senate is not representational. We do not have a democracy nor even a fair representative republic in this body (and I will get to the other bodies in later musings. A good murder mystery always has more and more bodies.) When numbers are bantered about that a party has a majority in the Senate, there are logical reasons this should not make any sense at all in any policy perspective, despite the numbers that seem to be obvious.
 

First is the most obvious: there are two Senators from each state. This one factor alone disqualifies us as a democracy and please let’s not get our powdered wigs in a twist when this all comes up in a smear campaign.


 
State
# of US Citizens Being Represented.
Percentage of US Citizens in State Represented
Number of Senators with completely equal power
1
37,253,956
11.91%
2
!000002
26,059,203
8.04%
2
!000003
19,570,261
6.19%
2
!000004
19,317,568
6.01%
2
!000005
12,875,255
4.10%
2
!000006
12,763,536
4.06%
2
!000007
11,544,225
3.69%
2
!000008
9,919,945
3.10%
2
!000009
9,883,360
3.16%
2
!000010
9,752,073
3.05%
2
!000011
8,864,590
2.81%
2
!000012
8,185,867
2.56%
2
!000013
6,897,012
2.15%
2
!000014
6,646,144
2.09%
2
!000015
6,553,255
2.04%
2
!000016
6,537,334
2.07%
2
!000017
6,456,243
2.03%
2
!000018
6,021,988
1.91%
2
!000019
5,884,563
1.85%
2
!000020
5,726,398
1.82%
2
!000021
5,379,139
1.70%
2
!000022
5,187,582
1.61%
2
!000023
4,822,023
1.53%
2
!000024
4,723,723
1.48%
2
!000025
4,601,893
1.45%
2
!000026
4,380,415
1.39%
2
!000027
3,899,353
1.22%
2
!000028
3,814,820
1.20%
2
7001710000000000000
3,667,084
1.19%
0
!000029
3,590,347
1.14%
2
!000030
3,074,186
0.97%
2
!000031
2,984,926
0.95%
2
!000032
2,949,131
0.93%
2
!000033
2,885,905
0.91%
2
!000034
2,855,287
0.88%
2
!000035
2,758,931
0.86%
2
!000036
2,085,538
0.66%
2
!000037
1,855,525
0.58%
2
!000038
1,855,413
0.59%
2
!000039
1,595,728
0.51%
2
!000040
1,392,313
0.43%
2
!000041
1,329,192
0.42%
2
!000042
1,320,718
0.42%
2
!000043
1,050,292
0.34%
2
!000044
1,005,141
0.32%
2
!000045
917,092
0.29%
2
!000046
833,354
0.26%
2
!000047
731,449
0.23%
2
!000048
699,628
0.21%
2
7001610000000000000
632,323
0.19%
0
!000049
626,011
0.20%
2
!000050
576,412
0.18%
2


Ok, somehow I guess you were expecting more. No, this disqualifies our country on a basic right that we all assume: “equality.”  It disqualifies us from fair representation.  To me, my privacy is important yes, my ability to vote to affect laws that affect my privacy and countless other issues: more important.
 

How do I put this in sandwich terms? The guy in front of you in line gets a bigger sandwich for the same price. In fact he can’t carry it out. You, from California, get 1 sandwich for every 66 the guy in front of you from Wyoming gets for the same price. You stand there, watch him take his sacks out in multiple trips, olive oil dribbling down the aisle, as you wait for your turn to order your one sandwich.

 

This vast inequity of power has also been noted by people in the business of buying off politicians. So, I pay 5 dollars and get 66 footlongs here, and 5 dollars gets me one there. An  international company doesn’t care if the person that is helping block legislation is in your particular region, or is your particular representative. They care about the bottom line, and your bottom line is close to meaningless.

 

So why couldn’t the President with a majority in the Senate get your left wing cause off the ground? Seriously, you think that a President can convince a majority of folks getting campaign funds and other goodies from International companies?  While the news reporters are owned by the rich… etc etc?   Majority is just not possible in the Senate except with the most basic of issues. And hey, even if you have a majority, the minority can have a filibuster without actually having one. Each member has a virtual veto on every other member that together represent vast amounts of the population.
 

Tell me you get it, please.  Tell me I am not a Nihilist for thinking the whole thing is laughable.
 

But it is just a few more days to go before overload and implosion of scandals if James Carville's prediction is right. However, at least give his prediction another month. I think he ordered Swiss Cheese on the left side of his sandwich and got extra Amurican instead.

 



[2] Essentially, this is just a table of population with Senate representation added. I guess I understand why the table in Wikipedia has the House representation figures but not the Senate. I guess, I understand. But it only takes a very thin column to do show the other representatives, so why not include it? It is subtle, but this chart is incomplete in just totally ignoring the hypocrisy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

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