Orts #899
“Imagine an America,” Ezra Klein writes in a new [Oct 16, 2018] Vox piece [ https://bit.ly/2pUI11t ], “where Republicans consistently win the presidency despite rarely winning the popular vote, where they control both the House and the Senate despite rarely winning more votes than the Democrats, where their dominance of the Supreme Court is unquestioned, and where all this power is used to buttress a system of partisan gerrymandering and pro-corporate campaign finance laws and strict voter ID requirements and anti-union legislation that further weakens Democrats’ electoral performance.”
“If this seems outlandish,” Klein adds, “well, it simply describes the world we live in now, and assumes it continues forward.”
also from the same Vox article: "By 2040, 70 percent of Americans will live in the 15 largest states. That means 70 percent of America will be represented by only 30 senators, while the other 30 percent of America will be represented by 70 senators."
and: "America is in an unstable equilibrium. Its current political system is producing outcomes that feel illegitimate to the left. Any effort to reform that system would produce outcomes that feel illegitimate to the right. We cannot stay here, but we cannot move."
______________________
I had two jobs, I had dishwater hands
And on the weekend in a rock and roll band
One Friday night, in my hometown bar
In walked a girl who looked like a movie star
She stared at me and it was turning me on
She said she worked in a beauty salon
I heard a voice inside me say
She ain't pretty, she just looks that way
We made a date to go for a drink
I wore my jeans and she wore a mink
There was this misconception all over town
That she ate lonely guy heart by the pound
She said, "Take me home, there won't be no fuss"
I said, "Sure, you got some change for the bus?"
Watching her leave, I heard the bartender say
She ain't pretty she just looks that way
-- lyrics of a pop song, first two verses
_________________________
"That’s Trump’s edge over everybody. That’s his gift. He can do no wrong because he’s all wrong.
When someone frolics at the nadir for as long as he has, there’s nowhere to go but sideways."
https://nyti.ms/2NTWhkG