Nov. 12, 2012.

    I just found this in the Washington Post. Have a look at it and see what you think. If it is true, then what do we do about it? Probably Trump would label it as "fake News". and go on demeaning the press, especially The Washington Post, which is one of the more credible news sources, along with the New York Times, CNN, BBC, etc. I still don't understand why Trump just doesn't take them all to court for libel if he is so sure that what they publish is not true. But have a look.

               Opinions

The U.S. is in a state of perpetual minority rule

People fill out their ballots on Tuesday in Ridgeland, Miss., in the 2018 midterm elections. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)

By Daniel Markovits and

Ian Ayres

November 8

Daniel Markovits and Ian Ayres teach about law, economics and politics at Yale Law School. Ayres is an author of “Voting With Dollars.”

Many see the midterm results as a split decision. Democrats herald their victory in the House as a repudiation of President Trump’s agenda. Republicans, meanwhile, regard picking up three seats in the Senate as a vindication of that very agenda, and the president tweeted that the election was a “very Big Win.”

Both appraisals accord Trumpism a democratic legitimacy it has not earned and does not deserve. Look behind the midterm elections’ outcomes — and the distortions produced by small states in the Senate and by gerrymandering in the House — to focus directly on the votes that constitute democratic bedrock, and a very different picture comes in to focus. The partisan balance of power — even the new balance, including a Democratic House — subjects the United States to undemocratic minority rule.

As of this writing, Democratic candidates for the House overall have won 4.2 million more votes than Republican candidates did. And partisan gerrymanders and geographic sorting meant that the Democrats needed every vote they got.

Similarly, although the 2018 tallies are not complete, we estimate that the Democratic senators in the new Congress — taken all together over the three cycles that elected them — will have won 4.5 million more votes than Republican senators. The members of the Democratic minority, on average, each received about 30 percent more votes than their Republican counterparts. 

Both results represent trends rather than historical anomalies or accidents. Research by the political analyst David Wasserman (of the Cook Political Report) shows that the current Republican biases in both the House and Senate elections are at all-time highs — greater than the partisan biases in favor of either party at any prior time for which data exist.

The electoral college system extends these biases into presidential elections. Donald Trump himself also lost the popular vote — by 2 percentage points, or nearly 3 million votes — in 2016. This difference represents the greatest popular-vote loss suffered by any winning president in history.

President Trump and the Republican senators have used their offices to remake the judiciary in their own image. Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh entrench a reliable conservative majority at the Supreme Court, in spite of being nominated by a popular-vote-losing president and confirmed by senators who, our research shows, collectively won (in each case) about 24 million fewer votes than the senators who voted against the nominations.

All in all, then, a Democratic Party that has dominated the popular vote across all federal offices enjoys only a narrow elective majority in one half of one branch of the federal government. And Trump and Republican senators are using their control of the rest of the government to promote policies that will extend and entrench the Republican skew in elections. The Supreme Court will likely soon hear a series of cases in election law that review the very practices that underwrite Republican power.

Finally, these patterns follow a dark demographic logic. White men — roughly one-quarter of the total U.S. population — constitute Trumpism’s core constituency. Exit polls showed they favored Trump over Hillary Clinton by 62 to 31 percentand favored Republicans over Democrats in this year’s midterms by 60 to 39 percent. No other major demographic group supports the Trump agenda with anything approaching this enthusiasm. We’ve estimated that if white men voted like the rest of America, Democrats would have won the 2016 presidential election by 19 percent and would, following the midterms, control a majority of the Senate with at least 20 more seats.

Because of the distortions of our current election process, the atypical preferences of this historically privileged minority continue to dominate almost the entire government. White men’s votes should of course be counted like everyone else’s, but they should not count for more.

If democracy is what the great political scientist Robert Dahl once called “the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals,” then the true verdict on the midterms departs dramatically from the common view. Trumpism does not enjoy any sort of democratic mandate — not even a mixed one.

It is instead a case of minority  rule.

Nov. 13. 2018.

      I just finished my morning prayers and thought that I must apologize for afflicting you with so much Trump. Here is some other things to put the balance back in order somehow.

    I have been getting quite a few visitors. The Savannah Parks community came in force one morning. There were about 15 (as many as you could fit in the minibus). We sang and prayed, all in Zulu, the rosary and other prayers and they all had a chance to pray individually for me. It was very touching. The have a real community spirit. If anyone is sick or if there has been a death in a family, they will all come to pray and offer help of any kind, including money to help feed the people who come from far. They are really Christians.

    Then there are others who come, bringing fruit and , mmmmm, mutton curry. I have a bit each day and it is good for both body and spirit. A couple of the novices have come and it gives me a chance as the senior to give them some words of encouragement and advice. Some sisters have also come and other friends promising prayers and any way that they can help.

   As for me, I can’t wait for Friday. I feel like I am going stir crazy.  Once I finished all the preparations for the home leave and my monthly financial report, I ran out of immediate things to do. And then time was on my hands. But then I decided to start going through my files and getting rid of things and collecting things together that were scattered. That could take a few years.

    I have a fantastic shower. It comes out with full force. And each morning when I get up, I hammer my back, especially the part where the problem is (lumbar regions) and the rest of my body, and it really loosens up the muscles and the aches and pains diminish.

   I have been saying Mass here at my desk after the shower and praying for all of you who have been praying for me all these years. I try to remember especially those who have heavy burdens to carry like serious health problems, or job problems, or financial problems or whatever. The more I think of it the more I realize how blessed I am.

Bu let me leave you to do your thing today. I am getting ready for breakfast. It is almost 7am and I have been up since 4am, with a break for a short sleep between 5 and 6am. Lots and lots of love to you all.

Nov. 11, 2018,

     I get tired of Trump bad-mouthing the press….anything that is critical of him or the Republican party or one of his friends is called “fake news”. Why doesn’t he just sue CNN or NBC or BBC and rake in the millions he could get when he proves that they are not telling the truth in their news. He loves money. Here would be an easy killing. But we know why he doesn’t dare. It doesn’t need any explanation. Trump know how to press all my buttons.

He dared to blame the California firefighters and those responsible for looking after the forests. How stupid and insensitive. My friends in California (one of them was spared when the fire stopped just outside her back window.) were furious at these stupid and insensitive remarks.

     If I were the Europeans I would start looking now at how they could disconnect from America and just trade within themselves and Asia so that he couldn’t punish them with tariffs on goods that no longer come from America. When the jobs began to disappear because there were no more customers from the rest of the world, maybe the stupid republican supporters of Trump would learn a lesson about isolationism or forcing all others to play your game or be punished. He has no clue about diplomacy or fairness, which he boasts about so often.

Nov. 8, 2018,

Now it is the 9^th already, Let’s go back a bit. After the MRI on Tuesday, the 29^th, I didn’t know the protocol. Do I wait for them to contact me or must I do a follow up. I waited till Thursday and phoned the doctor’s office, left a message but got no response. I phoned again on Friday and the secretary told me to come on Monday and she would try to squeeze me in as he had a full schedule. That was some progress,

      On Monday, Bishop Khumalo drove me to the hospital, and both of us expected it to be a long stay because it meant being squeezed in and having to wait. However

Nov. 4, 2018

Last night was the first time I slept happily throughout the whole night, no spasms, only a jerk here and there when I shifted positions. From 10 to 1:30, peaceful sleep, only awake to pee. Then back to a sound sleep till the alarm went off at 4:15am.  Up, shower, Mass at my desk, and back to rest till 6:15.

Up, get dressed, morning prayer, breakfast, reading. All beautiful.

Then when I tried to get up to do something, I think to turn the printer on, Oh my goodness, the pain in my lower back. It was impossible to walk. I had to sit back down again and am sitting now.

What happened, from almost miraculous absence of pain and spasms to a pain that makes me think twice before trying to get up. What the heck is going on.

November 2, 2018

Well now, what has been happening since the 26^th. I have just been lazing around. The instructions are that I should not put any undue pressure on my back as it might cause permanent damage to my spine. Well, now, how do you not put pressure on your back? Don’t move. Ha. So, in any case, I have cut down on my movements. They bring my meals up to me so that I don’t have to go to the elevator (lift) and down the passage to the dining room. I miss the company but, OK. So I hardly move out of my room.

   The 26^th was a Friday. Sat. and Sun. very quiet. As for sleeping at night I have gotten used to the spasms every 15 seconds or so and turn on the left for a while then on the right for a while then flat on my back and then I sit on the edge of the bed for a while. Can’t really sleep but somehow doze. It goes like that from about 10pm to maybe 2:30am. Then, for some reason, it seems to quite down, not go away completely, but offering a chance to get a bit of sleep. Last night, I got a taste of what the doctor probably was preparing me for when he gave me meds for pain. Up till now I have felt no special terrible pain, but last night, for a short time (I don’t know why it happened that way) I felt a sharp and medium painful pain for about 5 minutes, but then it went away. Maybe that could be the future and the reason why the pain capsules.

    In any case, On Monday the 29, the day before the MRI (which was finally ordered via a friend who contacted his friend who is a radiologist). I went to our neurologist to get a a script for the pharmacy for something to make sure the spasms didn’t happen during the MRI. That would be a disaster. He then asked about the form. I said, what form. Ha. Someone had forgotten to tell me that he has to fill in a form to authorize the MRI, the results of which will then be sent to his computer. Hooray. Got that done. Then the doctor (Wolpe, by the way, was a well-known anti-apartheid congressman for the State of Michigan around Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Grand Rapids. He was the head of the subcommittee on Africa and did a great job. He died in 2006. He was Jewish and the conservative so-called Christians in his area said they don’t want him they want a Christian for Congress. How unchristian can you get…but he said they are not related) said to come about an hour after the MRI to see what to do. So we wen to the place where the MRI was to be done…Jackpersad… and got the instructions what to do and not do for the MRI, as, for instance, not to wear anything that has metal on or in it. They also asked if I had any metal in me. I told them not yet. So the booking was confirmed.

We then went to the pharmacy to get the prescription  filled. Two tiny little pills, R8,50 for the two. Ha. That’s about 40cents in the US. Powerful little things…muscle relaxants that also make you a bit drowsy. They worked fine.

I climbed on the table for the MRI and was positioned by the nice lady radiographer and given a remote in case I go into a panic I can push the button and it will stop. As I had been told by a friend I also asked for a cloth to be put over my eyes…not to see the inside of this tube and panic. However, in spite of the noise, the medicine worked fine. I didn’t move a muscle and even the noise (it is very noisy, I don’t know why) didn’t bother me. I think I must have slept and then it was over. Nice calm experience,

    We then went up to the doctor’s office (neurologist), Wolpe, who looked at the results of the MRI and sent us to Dr. Van Der Merwe (neurosurgeon) to have a look. He showed where the column where the spinal cord is looks as though it is narrowed down a lot almost closed off with the bunch of nerves coming through. Being a neophyte I don’t know what should and should not be or if it is not right how to fix it. After that we went home.

     That Was Tuesday. Wednesday, nothing, Thursday, nothing. I don’t know what the procedure is. Should I contact him or will he contact me to see what is the way forward.

So I phoned his office Friday (yesterday) and the secretary promised to pass the word to him and he would get back to me. He didn’t. So I phoned again today and said to please organize a time when I can meet him to find out what is going on, Monday if possible. She said Monday is full but come at 10am and, even if I have to wait, he will try to squeeze me in. OK. That is something positive. So much for the URGENT part.

    In the meantime I am getting tired of Kashogii stories and the Saudi’s and the vitriol in the buildup to the midterm elections. (I voted, by the way, by absentee ballot).

   An aside. I just finished the lunch that was brought up to me (fish of course since it is Friday). Bishop Lobinger (89yrs. Old, my neighbour—who wrote most of the things about small Christian communities that was published worldwide) just brought me my post. One of the items was my copy of the National Catholic Reporter. Ha. It is now November 2.  This is the May 18-31, 2018 edition. Our post is faithful in the end. Holy Moses.

    See you again in a few days, and many thanks for the torrents of prayer. I hope that God is listening.  Cas.