I will do that by giving you an illustration from the scripture. In Mark Chapter 9:17-24 we read about a man who came to Jesus asking Him to heal his demon possessed child:

17 Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit.
18 And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.”
19 He answered him and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.”
20 Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.
21 So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”
And he said, “From childhood.
22 And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

The cure for unbelief in the bible is to ask the Lord to help your unbelief. When you begin to ask God to change your heart so you can believe, He will begin to do a work in your life that will you be able to perceive.

We are all deaf dumb and blind without God bringing light to our understanding. This is how you will be able to comprehend spiritual truth. This happens only through faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus is turning from your sins and turning towards God to be forgiven

I'm as surprised as most everyone at how the election turned out. In the week or so leading up to election night, I considered the possibility that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, but not the other way around.

Still, as someone who thinks the electoral college is bullshit, consider this thing from all angles:

Hypothetical Possibility 1: At first, when I thought that Trump might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, I thought that would be a good thing going forward. Both sides would have been screwed out of a victory by the idiotic system in recent memory, which might push for bipartisan support to scrap it.

But thinking further ... I don't think that would have actually panned out. The GOP establishment wouldn't have seen that as "their" candidate getting screwed, they would have been happy. They might have had to pay lip service to the idea of reconsidering the electoral college to pander to angry Republican voters who felt cheated out of a Trump presidency, but they could easily have just left it at that and sat on the issue until apathy took over again.


Possibility 2: The likely reality. Trump will win by electoral votes but lose the popular vote, and that will stand. The Senate and House are both Republican controlled, and the Supreme Court will very likely swing further in that direction. Possibly a LOT.

That sounds terrible. And it definitely means that in the short term, there will be absolutely zero traction for anyone wanting to push the idea of getting rid of the electoral college. BUT -- it also sets up a gold-plated opportunity to see real, actual movement on that front in 2 years. Think Trump is going to be horrendous? Think GOP-controlled Legislature will be abysmal? Look on the bright side -- if those expectations are correct, the blowback in midterm elections won't be a "wave". It'll be a fuckin' tsunami. And that's what we need to have a shot at killing the electoral college.


Possibility 3: Faithless Elector rampage. You can argue, with some merit, that the electoral college was intended to prevent or safeguard against exactly the kind of situation that we are in now. And I'd love to see President Bernie myself. But what would actually result if enough electors swapped to make that happen?

First, NYTimes projects Trump getting 306 electoral votes. That would mean that 37 faithless electors would have to happen to flip the election. You have to go back more than 100 years to find an election where there has been more than 1 faithless elector. There has only been 1 election with more than 37 faithless electors, and that was in 1872 because the candidate died. So realistically, it would be close to impossible to pull this off. (all info from wikipedia)

But forget the odds and just assume that it did happen. I think that would be a strategically terrible idea for Democrats, liberals, etc. Trump won because enough people didn't like the prospect of President Hillary and/or actually wanted to see what Trump himself could do. In either case, his voters generally aren't going to give him a whole lot of leash to screw things up or fail to deliver on their expectations. It will be next to impossible for him to keep those swing people happy. If Trump is 1/10th as terrible as the average Democrat expects him to be, he will alienate all of those people in very short order.

But if faithless electors "stole" the presidency from him (and you know that's how it would be perceived)? Oh, man ... he'd effectively be a political martyr. The anger and backlash would likely be apocalyptic and/or lead to revolt. Worse than almost any realistic way that Trump himself might fuck things up as the President. Even if that was somehow avoided, which I tend to think would be impossible, whoever got installed as President would have the shortest leash of all time, and a massively hostile and motivated Legislature that they would be forced to attempt to work with. Better have some sacrificial lamb to put in there that has zero political future, and even then they would probably cause massive damage to their party by association when they inevitably fall.

No, I think the clear best option is to let Trump (and the GOP) dig his own grave over the next year or two, and then graciously ride the wave of comeuppance.

I'm voting Trump but I'm anti political correctness, anti sjw , anti hypersensitive

But I'm not in the electoral college so votes don't matter anyhow, an elector can vote any way they wish, there is no rule they have to vote how the state tells them. It's happened a few times in past.

They are called "Faithless Elector" , they have Wiki and bunch of sites on them

An elector can ignore the state popular vote and give the electoral to whomever

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Faithless - Mass Destruction. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

Love it dearly. One of my first cassette singles. Also loved the B side, Faithless the Wonder Boy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjRxHUgWcN4

I understand your discomfort with my phrasing. My beef is with the electoral college system.

While I was getting my degree, I took some really good American History and Government classes at college. The prof in the Govt. class really went into depth explaining the electoral college to us, and to me the shittiness of that system was just shocking. For example: (none of this is news to a truly informed voter or an interested person with an internet connection, but it WAS news to me when I was ~20 years old, and I think it still would be news to a really high percentage of US voters)

* First is the very idea of an electoral college. The only way to become president of the US is to win the most electoral votes. But voters don't cast electoral votes, the people of the electoral college do. OK, the electoral college is supposed to follow the votes/will of their state/constituents (more on that next), but the fact remains that literally/practically, our votes as citizens don't matter. Only the electoral votes count. So yes, in the most literal sense ... NONE of our votes "matter".

* In general, the "electors" (the people on the electoral college) are supposed to cast their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state / district. I think 2 states (Nebraska and Maine?) divide up their suggested electoral votes to be as close as possible to the actual proportions of the popular vote, but that's a whole other issue. Anyway, in general the electors are supposed to cast their vote for the popular vote winner in their state. BUT, that process isn't automatic. The votes that actually matter, the electoral votes, are cast by fallible human beings -- and they might "go rogue" and vote against what they are "supposed to" do. That is called a "faithless elector". That would be bad enough if it was just some weird loophole that technically exists but has never actually happened in practice, but actually faithless electors happen fairly frequently. The only upside is that they haven't ever changed the outcome of an election. Yet.

* When we're young and in civics type classes in school, we're brainwashedtaught about Democracy as a very simple, will of the public, one man one vote system. The electoral college shits all over that. One can win the popular vote but lose on electoral votes, and that actually has happened multiple times (not just to Al Gore). In my opinion, the electoral college creates a laundry list of problems (swing states are the only ones that matter, so campaign there and ignore everybody else, etc. etc. etc.), has very few benefits (any supposed benefits of the system are tenuous at best), and is completely contrary to the core concepts of Democracy.


Without the electoral college, a blue vote in Kansas would matter, as would a red vote in Massachusetts. Or a vote for a 3rd party or independent, anywhere. With the electoral college, edge cases like any of those can be safely and easily ignored by candidates.

I think it is unlikely that Kansas would turn blue, even if all of the democrats voted. That being said, we're not a complete LOCK for red; heck, out of the 10 most recent Governors we've had before we turned into Brownbackistan it is an even split between Democrats and Republicans with 5 each. And actually the Democrats had significantly longer total number of years in the office.

So basically, I don't actually think that a vote cast on a losing candidate is "pointless", I just think that the electoral college system does a really good job of making sure that some votes are more pointless than others. It amazes me that there wasn't a MUCH bigger stink made about it when Gore "lost" in 2000, but I guess voter apathy can overcome any challenge to the system.

Newt, I'm not responsible for your emotional state-Who's the bully, really. "In My Less Than Humble Opinion," it is yourself and those like you. I will always tire of atheists popping their spittle on this site because there is no point-There are perhaps two representatives of the type of Christians y'all hate the most and they've slinked-off into a corner after being mauled by faithless, hind-brained fanatics.

I see no real difference in either camp.

Your video, Dude playing the spoons to Insomnia by Faithless, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

In my Politics class in College, we spent quite a bit of time talking about the Electoral College. One thing that wasn't mentioned in this video blew my mind:

The people that make up the Electoral College are called the "Electors". The basic idea of the system is that all of the Electors in a given state will cast their Electoral vote for the candidate that won their state's popular vote. However, there is no Federal law that says that Electors actually must follow through on that.

Some states have such a law, and can punish "faithless Electors" (people who cast an Electoral vote against the state's popular vote) with fines or by replacing them with another Elector. But that isn't universal, and there have actually been (rare) instances where Electors failed to follow the rule/suggestion and actually went against the popular vote.

That pretty much blew my mind and seems even worse than the other failings of the system to me, although I don't think it has ever changed the outcome of an election in the way that the "winner take all" system has. For more info check here.

Awesome looking venue, good to see Faithless there!

Just as well it didn't rain given the slight valley effect there

>> ^dingens:

blocked


HARSH ! VEVO ARE A BUNCH OF FUCKTARD PIECES OF SHIT.

I wish those faithless scientists would stop making fake videos trying to prove the earth is not flat. First, it's evolution in biology class, and now this!!????

The "message" is all over the board, and the way the narrator uses the word "enslavement" reminds me of putting one's hand up to a flashlight beam so the shadow looks huge. Really, if you're going to ramble on about enslavement, start small. You're "enslaved" by your body, you will always need oxygen culled from air. You're "enslaved" by your own belly and the need for food. Except for a few lucky space/moon douchebags, most of us will forever be enslaved by gravity and the earth, never leaving it except to fly to Chicago on peanut-free airliners. You're "enslaved" by your loved ones who demand your time and energy to survive, with no permanent guarantee they will reciprocate. You're "enslaved" by your friends, their opinions, your opinions and the balance of honesty versus hurting feelings needlessly. And so on.

The State is "that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." We know this. The narrator was closest to the current truth when he described governments as mafias. But we've come a long way from the days when tyrants could execute whomever they wished at any time. At least in the "less enslaved" parts of the globe.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --G. Washington.

Modern civilization depends on the one lousy master, or a few masters with powers divided, rather than the whims of 100 million little ones, for when anarchy reigns, the neighbor with the biggest guns and posse wins out. S/he may be benevolent today but not tomorrow. And so ...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Why do vids like this ultimately fail? Mostly due to vagueness and having no real answers, but mainly because they assume that in every epoch the State is all-powerful and all-knowing, when history proves none of them has it 100% correct, or even 30% correct. Governments rise and fall like tides. Sometimes they have no idea what they're doing, at others they know the right things to do but don't or won't do them for any number of reasons.

So what does this all mean? Relax. Grab a beer. Light up a joint. Per quantum mechanics or string theory or something, you both exist and do not exist right now. You are both free and "enslaved". Have a nice evening. I will, for I have pr0n!

O Me! O Life!

By Walt Whitman

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the
struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see
around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here--that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

I'm almost certain this man believes in burning atheists at the stake. He may not admit it, but in his ideal world, what other choice is there? We only die once, but by existing, the faithless corrupt and damn souls to hell for eternity.

See, killing an atheist today means saving the souls of thousands -- maybe millions depending on how far off the Rapture is. Oh, how I look forward to the Armageddon, when righteous angels on horseback tear through the street, people suffer as their bodies lie, everliving in agony crushed on the streets and the anti-Christ reigns supreme over the barcoded masses; the newly faithful starving on the streets because they refuse the mark of the beast.

That's morality. That's morality at it's highest. That's the compass I've been looking for all my life.

by all means!
faithless wives and ravished virgins,

flagrante delicto, at a price
for which there are special terms...