The Quasi-Enfranchised of California

Below is a list of electoral college votes of states the population of which, taken together, is roughly equal to that of California. The figures in the middle column are the electoral college votes granted each state, and their total, compared to the electoral college votes granted California. The rightmost column represents the percentage of the total population of the United States living in each state, and the sum of those percentages, compared to the percentage of the population of the United States living in California.

Each group, the one with fourteen states in it, and the group with one, comprises roughly one eighth of the population of the United States. There are 538 electors in the electoral college, and one-eighth of 538 is not that much more than 67, which, if electors were apportioned democratically, would be the number shared out among each group. Sixty-seven. Not 81 for the one group and 55 for the other.

The groups are further distinguished by the fact that one voted for Donald Trump for president, and the other for Hillary Clinton.

	State	EC Votes	% of U.S. Population
	Missouri	10	1.89
	Michigan	16	3.11
	Oklahoma	7	1.22
	Mississippi	6	0.93
	Arkansas	6	0.93
	Utah	6	0.93
	Kansas	6	0.91
	W. Virginia	5	0.57
	Idaho	4	0.51
	Montana	3	0.32
	N. Dakota	3	0.27
	S. Dakota	3	0.24
	Alaska	3	0.23
	Wyoming	3	0.18
	TOTAL	81	12.24
	California	55	12.18

Leftovers

I don't feel in any way responsible for Donald Trump's recent promotion, having publicly raised the significant eyebrow against his election from the first, and having cast my vote for his opponent in the event, but now, just by being American, I find myself uncomfortably complicit in the acts of his coming presidency. Sad.

In Donald Trump's mind the actual and considerable plurality of votes for Hillary Clinton for president can be explained away, giving him the true plurality of votes, if the millions of illegitimate votes for his opponent are discounted, as they should be, being illegitimate.

Evidence of these illegitimate votes is utterly nonexistent, except as yet another instance of arbitrarily tendentious untruth created by our nearly president, Trump.

Otherwise, clearly and unarguably, nearly three million more Americans gave Hillary Clinton their vote for president than gave their vote to Trump. A solid majority of the people in this country did not vote for him and don't believe he's going to do this country any good at all as president.

Donald Trump's initial reaction to such slights is to speil a counter-narrative based on some singularly untrue assertion. That is to say, his first impulse is to make shit up. He won the plurality, he claims, not her! A landslide!

Donald Trump's initial rhetoric is always followed by perpetual grudge. He will hold it against most Americans that they so clearly signalled their disdain. And he'll find a way to get back at them, because that's what grudge does.

Alas, Dallas

Fifty-three years ago today John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

It's hard to fully express the jolting tangible change of catastrophe engulfing those of us who lived in that moment, death of course the capital catastrophe, with its irremediable denial of what we are allowed to believe about the world. The rest of the future may be arguable, but the future may not include the dead. The dead are gone and not to return. Kennedy took a bullet to the head as he travelled in a motorcade through Dealy Plaza. He died soon after.

The jolt shook everyone who lived in that moment, shook hard. Kennedy's assassination knocked American culture, all of its political, social and religious institutions, completely off-kilter, and the people living through it felt and remarked on the lasting nature of the change. It was an epoch-making event, and for years newspapers noted the anniversary of his assassination right there on the front page.

But history, bearing a succession of catastrophes of equal or greater weight down the intervening decades, marches on. Kennedy's murder has long since ceded its place on the front page to other fresher woes.

Rest in peace, you shiny man.

A Close Reading Always Bounces You Outside The Text

Chat of Dr. Strange and psychedelia brings to mind the Tribute to Dr. Strange, a dance concert at Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco in October of 1965, featuring the pre-Grace Jefferson Airplane, the Charlatans (the archetypal hippie band), and the Great Society, the group Grace was in when she wrote White Rabbit and where she first sang her brother-in-law's song Somebody to Love. Hosted by KYA's all-night DJ, Russ "the Moose" Syracuse, and produced by the pre-Chet Helms Family Dog, it was quite the tribute, from all reports. This was all a few years before the cover of the Pink Floyd album A Saucerful of Secrets, which incorporates the nod to the good Dr. referred to in the Crooked Timber post, demonstrating perhaps that America was chewing through its cultural capital about two and a half years faster than Britain was at the time.

Mose Allison (November 11, 1927-November 15, 2016)

Thanks, Comey

President-elect Donald Trump will appoint Steve Bannon his chief strategist, a sort of co-equal to newly named Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, whose current position as head of the Republican National Committee presumably will be filled by Trump soon, too.

Famous Last Words

—Leonard Cohen, September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016

Wait 'Til Next Year

No one can deny this years World Series was a corker. The Chicago Cubs ended their historically long World Series Championship drought with a seventh-game extra inning one-run victory over the Cleveland Indians, a club which hadn't won the Series itself since 1948, despite leading this year's Series 3-1 before the Cubs rattled off three consecutive victories to take it all.

The seventh game will be talked about endlessly by people who love to talk about baseball. It was so rich in incident, in catastrophic failures and galvanizing heroics, that the ten innings just bulged with them.

Thus closed the 2016 MLB Baseball Season, with an absolutely classic instance of the genre.

For fans of the club, there's still the rankling end to the San Francisco Giants season, which came earlier in the playoffs against these same Cubs in a game the Giants led 5-2 going into the top of the ninth inning. The Cubs, pitted against the gravely inferior San Francisco Giants bullpen [which had to that point blown 30 such save opportunities since the start of the season (leading the National League in that dubious category)], rallied to win the game, 6-5.

The season began to crumble for the Giants after the All-Star break, and they barely outlasted the St. Louis Cardinals in vying for for the final Wild Card slot into the playoffs. In various invocations of the multiverse the Giants survive the ninth against the Cubs and send Johnny Cueto out to the mound for the do-or-die fifth game, which path our universe did not happen to take.

2016 San Francisco Giants Season Evaluation Checklist

☒ A. Beat the Dodgers
☐  1. Every time
☑  2. Most of the time
☐  3. Foil them in their quest for the pennant

☒ B. Win all games at least half the time
☐  1. Half the time
☑  2. More than half the time

☐ C. Win The Pennant

☐ D. Win The World Series

The Whip Hand for the Home Stretch Of It

At Slate, Frank Foer reported on the very peculiar transmissions between a Trump computer and a computer owned by Alfa Bank — a Russian bank run by oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin. The transmissions began early this year, peaked in early August, and then abruptly ceased a few weeks ago when a New York Times reporter began inquiring about them.

According to the New York Times, The FBI opted for "an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts." They go so easy on presidential candidates at the Bureau these days.