The caption writes itself.

But probably shouldn’t.

It’s like the quick bemusement I had at Jerry Garcia’s passing.  “Who’s Grateful Now?”  Then I just wipe the smirk off my face.

Here I suppose it’s “sometimes you have the choice, other times –”

Quick guilty smirk, wipe it off, and proceed.

Curious, though.  Indeed, Michael’s trademark “CHOOSE LIFE” T-shirt — a work of political-firebrand-cum-designer Katharine Hamnett — wasn’t intended to be an antiabortion statement. Rather, it was a willful call to hope in the face of daunting odds.

It’s sort of obvious (I suppose?) he’s not anti-abortion, though he is wading through Thatcher ‘s Great Britain and Ronald Reagan’s America and conservative cross-currents such that you stare at such a thing and wonder… What?  was he trying to sell to a partial a traditional market-place?

Oh.  No.  He (or whatever is behind “Wham”) is reclaiming the message of “Choose Life”.  Or…  And…

No.  No.  George Michael wasn’t about commercialism.  I mean, what of that whole Freedom 90 video , huh?  Huh?  Huh?

Lyrus Thomas, John Wesley Powell — American Nations, 261-262

Why there is no “Reconquista”.

There is not, however, any chance of Mexico’s annexing El Norte:  Nortenos on both sides of the present border would sooner break off from both countries and form their own republic.  After all, even the Mexican portion of El Norte is three times wealthier than Southern Mexico, where it is forced to export tax dollars.  As Harvard fellow Joan Enriquez has noted, there’s very little binding the region to Mexico City, which doesn’t provide it with technology, basic services, security, or a market for its products.  If El Norte’s Mexican sections — Baja California, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Tamaulipas — had their choice, Enriquez notes, they’d probably prefer some European Union – style relationship with the United States rather than to remain in Mexico; they have more in common with the American section of El Norte than they do with the rest of their own country.  “Southwest Chicanos and Norteno Mexicanos are becoming people again,” University of New Mexico Chicano Studies professor Charles Truxillo told the AP in 2000, adding that the creation of a separate state was inevitable.

…  … … And some terms of history on “why things are as they are” — page 290-291

El Norte experienced a profound agricultural labor shortage during the war as farm and railroad laborers migrated to better paying jobs at the new military plants.  The solution:  a wartime guest worker program by which 250,000 Mexican citizens were allowed into El Norte, setting the foundation for a far larger and less organized postwar program that would tip the balance of power back to nortenos a few decades later.

So.  How did the candidates for the Whig Party go over?

Brandon Kirshner did not appear on the ballot.

Trevor O’Grady was apparently running for President, and one thing I know is that a dual run for President and US Senate does not work.  Usually.  (Yeah.  I know Garfield.)

The actual “Modern Whig” endorsed / approved president for President was Democratic hopeful Jim Webb.  He didn’t get very far.

It has to be a record.  7 faithless electoral votes.  So, here we are.  The official results of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump 304
Clinton 227
Colin Powell 3
Faith Spotted Eagle 1
John Kasich 1
Bernie Sanders 1
Ron Paul 1.

1872’s election does not count, as the Democratic candidate — Horace Greeley — died shortly after the election, so this is a record.  If it proves a portents of a future where “Hamiltonian electors” ignore the state results — that is the stuff of speculative fiction on the end (or evolution) of our Republican Democracy.

I did note the story of a faithless elector from Washington during the midst of the campaign who said they would not vote for Hillary under any circumstances — were dead set on Bernie.  I have no way of knowing if the election came down to a one vote Clinton lead, with the new tie thrown to the Republican state delegated dominated House, if this would be the case.  But given the big ground-swell in Washington for…

Colin Powell / Maria Cantwell
Colin Powell / Susan Collins
Colin Powell / Elizabeth Warren
Faith Spotted Eagle / Winona LaDuke

Presumably the Bernie supporter went for Faith Spotted Eagle — as it’s hard to imagine they’d go to the “hard headed realist” route — such as it is– and… well.

The votes were part of the Hamilton Electors movement. In this movement, some Democrats pledged to go faithless and give their electoral vote to a compromise candidate. They had hoped this would convince Republican electors to do the same, and possibly prevent President-Elect Donald Trump from winning the Electoral College. They thought if they could keep Trump from getting the 270 votes that he needed to win the Electoral College, then the vote would be given to the House of Representatives and the House might choose the alternative Republican instead.

We came this close… this close… this close… to a Colin Powell presidency.

And by this close, imagine the distance of the Grand Canyon.  Was it worth a shot?  I don’t know.  What would have happened if there was a ground-swell of support for Ron Paul?  And what does one Texas elector have against Mark Pence that they have for Carly Fiorina?

A political cartoon, I don’t know if it’ll be published or hung somewhere.  Two Face of the Batman comics.  On the first end he’s saying something about Birther-ism, on the second end he’s raving about the CIA hacking and this election.

A false equivalence.  I suppose the end comes up the same — if you want the equivalence to land the other direction at least there was an election taking place with the second to settle the flood of minutiae and provide a story arc to slot false stories in place into the airwaves –  Oh, what was Hillary Clinton doing not campaigning in Wisconsin?

And frankly, it came down to James Comey’s last minute Wiener re-opening of the “case” anyways.  Not the Russians.

“Like complaining about a 15 year old photo-shopping”.  “And the CIA says what?”

So now Comes the age of hysterics in op ed writing.  But who can argue?  Certanly not…

  Who, last I checked in the editorial purview of the magazine, really needs to have the cover for the “Conservative Freakout”, don’t they?

A few weeks ago, an editorial appeared — your syndicated columnist — the liberal side of the op-ed page — who bemoaned Jill Stein’s recount efforts in those rust belt states as futile, and undermining the system — if the numbers change, Trump supporters would cry foul and deservedly so.

Which begs a problem we have in popular representative democracy.  Now, I have every expectation that indeed — this is the vote tally of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and a good case can be made that Jill Stein — with Hillary Clinton shifting about in the back – and this recount are misguided, but…

If results show something different, it undermines an undermined system?

So Sigh and Take Two.  And we see Paul Krugman postulating that a Hillary Clinton win that would’ve come sans the last minute Anthony Wiener re-opening wouldn’t have been viewed as a minor victory.  Maybes.  But that’s in part because he would have helped write the narrative that would whitewash the electoral forces that would be present in a Hillary Clinton win, just submerged.

If, if, if…

Congress is looking into things.  Bi-Partisan support.  With Paul Ryan carefully saying “The election is settled.”

And indeed it is.  And the reason that despite that, Donald Trump is pooh-poohing the idea of Russia hacking and unleashing Hillary Clinton’s email —

— incidentally, supported by last month’s Harpers cover story –

is that it will indeed undermine his election claim.  Maybe it’s a thing the Republicans want anyways — the better to pass the Republican Agenda shared by Trump, and stop as much as they can this Protectionist Nonsense and maintain a spot with the new Cold War.

Any more than the idea that Barack Obama won in 2012 because a Hurricane stopped Mitt Romney’s momentum at the end?   Hard to figure.  In an election result where I can’t claim “The American people were duped” due to the popular vote thing.  In 2000, had the networks not called Florida for Gore even before all of Florida was not done, how would the resulting election result of a clearer Bush victory in the popular vote have shifted things, subtly or not?

Final Senate election.

“If people want somebody who is phony, a flip-flopper and has been on every side and has been everything but a Baptist preacher, they need to vote for John Kennedy,” Campbell, a 69-year-old elected utility regulator, drawls in one throwback line.
“I don’t wear a thousand-dollar suit to walk down a gravel road. He does,” Campbell says in another that refers to a recent Kennedy campaign ad.
“It’s like you close your eyes, and you’re listening to Huey Long ridicule his opponents with a one-liner that put them in their place,” said Bob Mann, a Louisiana State University professor, referring to the assassinated former governor, one of the most colorful politicians in the history of Louisiana.

AND

It was Kennedy’s third U.S. Senate run since 2004 and this time he won in a landslide, taking 61 percent to Campbell’s 39 percent in the low-turnout election. […]

Kennedy declared that he represents change in Washington.

“I believe that our future can be better than our present, but not if we keep going in the direction the Washington insiders have taken us the last eight years,” he said. “That’s about to change, folks.”

Sure.  Sure.

Georgia ends everything on Tuesday.  Then — we just have to wait a few months for some other election somewhere.