Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development. Because being a good brain surgeon qualifies you to be in charge of public housing in what way??? This idea of hiring people who have absolutely no experience in the Cabinet post they are taking is insane. Who would ever accept this in any other portion of their lives?? Would you call an optometrist to fix your sink?? A landscaper to help you with an in-grown toenail?? I seem to recall the guy Bush put in charge of FEMA was, before that job, an Arabian horse breeder. Ask New Orleans how that worked out. Democrats may hire career bureaucrats to fill government positions, but good god, at least they have expertise in their respective fields. Hiring Ben Carson to this position is no different than putting me in charge of NASA. Contrary to popular opinion that government is bad by default and does nothing right, these are IMPORTANT jobs that require vast amounts of knowledge and work.
Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development. Because being a good brain surgeon qualifies you to be in charge of public housing in what way??? This idea of hiring people who have absolutely no experience in the Cabinet post they are taking is insane. Who would ever accept this in any other portion of their lives?? Would you call an optometrist to fix your sink?? A landscaper to help you with an in-grown toenail?? I seem to recall the guy Bush put in charge of FEMA was, before that job, an Arabian horse breeder. Ask New Orleans how that worked out. Democrats may hire career bureaucrats to fill government positions, but good god, at least they have expertise in their respective fields. Hiring Ben Carson to this position is no different than putting me in charge of NASA. Contrary to popular opinion that government is bad by default and does nothing right, these are IMPORTANT jobs that require vast amounts of knowledge and work.
I will say that, although I agree with you, I'm all for getting our current politicians who are entrenched in corruption out of our government. Their replacements should be qualified, though.
Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development. Because being a good brain surgeon qualifies you to be in charge of public housing in what way??? This idea of hiring people who have absolutely no experience in the Cabinet post they are taking is insane. Who would ever accept this in any other portion of their lives?? Would you call an optometrist to fix your sink?? A landscaper to help you with an in-grown toenail?? I seem to recall the guy Bush put in charge of FEMA was, before that job, an Arabian horse breeder. Ask New Orleans how that worked out. Democrats may hire career bureaucrats to fill government positions, but good god, at least they have expertise in their respective fields. Hiring Ben Carson to this position is no different than putting me in charge of NASA. Contrary to popular opinion that government is bad by default and does nothing right, these are IMPORTANT jobs that require vast amounts of knowledge and work.
Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development. Because being a good brain surgeon qualifies you to be in charge of public housing in what way??? This idea of hiring people who have absolutely no experience in the Cabinet post they are taking is insane. Who would ever accept this in any other portion of their lives?? Would you call an optometrist to fix your sink?? A landscaper to help you with an in-grown toenail?? I seem to recall the guy Bush put in charge of FEMA was, before that job, an Arabian horse breeder. Ask New Orleans how that worked out. Democrats may hire career bureaucrats to fill government positions, but good god, at least they have expertise in their respective fields. Hiring Ben Carson to this position is no different than putting me in charge of NASA. Contrary to popular opinion that government is bad by default and does nothing right, these are IMPORTANT jobs that require vast amounts of knowledge and work.
I will say that, although I agree with you, I'm all for getting our current politicians who are entrenched in corruption out of our government. Their replacements should be qualified, though.
So I did some digging, and actually realized something pretty interesting. This is a controversial issue, but many are saying that he is the best qualified because he is the only HUD head that has actually lived in subsidized housing. I found this very interesting. It could bring the head of department to a personal level of those in the actual housing for once.
Having had a lot of exposure to subsidized housing before (having many family members living in such) I will agree that he makes some good points: government housing is more often than not of atrocious quality, barely livable in many situations by common American standards. The Republican Party has historically been incredibly fraudulent in the HUD department, and it has only ever benefitted and been improved under members of the Democratic Party.
Perhaps this is a good move? I don't know. It is certainly a new and different move. But good? We will just have to see if he even gets voted in to find out if this is good or not. So far I'm thinking not.
Cabinet secretaries are like CEOs of corporations--they have nothing to do with the daily operations of the company they are running and, in fact, might not actually know that much about the company is operating at the level where it interacts with customers. The job of CEO is to examine the compiled data presented by SVPs, Presidents, or other C-level executives and coordinate with the Board of Directors about the company's financial future in both the short term and the long term. Consider the company for which I work, a diabetes testing supply company (along with other assorted medical equipment). Agents who deal with patients on the phone log in to the patient database to process orders, take payments, etc.; our CEO does not have a user profile for that system because, in accordance with HIPAA, there is no legitimate business need for him to access patient data. No, his job is to schmooze vendors from other companies, deal with representatives from whatever institution is lending the company money, wine-and-dine representatives from CMS (Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services), the Federal agency in charge of reimbursement rates to medical providers (your physician) or equipment providers.
Carson's job at HUD won't have anything to do directly with housing or urban development. Instead, he will be sitting in mostly-boring meetings, looking at powerpoint presentations, listening to people drone on about the numbers their team spent 3 months crunching in Excel, and discussing general policy direction with his boss and his immediate underlings. In other words, he will be a pen-pusher, nothing more. Even then, he will generally only use the pen to sign his name to documents that other people wrote and compiled.
Although it would be ideal for a Cabinet secretary to have some experience dealing with the subject their agency deals with, the only requirements to be a Cabinet secretary are "must be nominated by the President" and "must be confirmed by the Senate". The current SecHUD, Julian Castro, was at least mayor of San Antonio so he has some experience dealing with urban development.
Truthfully, I suspect that whole "zomg--Castro violated the Hatch Act" was smoke designed to keep him off the ticket (he was being eyed as a pretty good VP nominee) but not so that Hillary could capture the ticket but so that Castro can try again in 2020. If I were going to give advice to the DNC, I would urge them to consider him.
The thing about Trump is all he really wants is respect. He wants to sit in the big chair and have flunkies and foreign leaders bow and scrape to him. And he is willing to do or say absolutely anything to achieve that goal. So yeah, he cares more about people taking the piss out of him on TV than he does about running his country or actially achieving anything he said to get people to vote for him. That is why it rankles so much that he lost the poplular vote that he is willing to undermine his own position to challenge it.
Its hard to believe that people knew he was like this: a faker, a blowhard, a guy only wants to enrich himself, a thin skinned guy who wants to surround himself with suck ups, a guy who's proud of cheating other people to get ahead, a man with no plan other than "being the best".
And people thought well yeah he's like that but I'm going to vote for him anyway.
I'm sure it's a lot easier for people on the outside looking on, with media which, whilst not completely unbiased (because that isn't possible), is at least fairly non-partisan, to form an accurate impression.
It's not media slant that forced trump to say he could grab em by the pussy and they let him do it because he's famous. It's not the media when Trump called himself John Bolton and John Barron and bragged how Donald Trump could get any woman. It wasn't the media that made the trump university scam. It's not the media that refused to release his tax records. The foolish statements that come from his mouth don't need any slant.
There are a lot of people who read things like pizzagate on breitbart and believe it though. Kellyanne Conway said you are not under oath as she's professionally lying on the TV.
The media is responsible for reporting it though, and, as reported by the BBC, it appears that Trump's supporters only read media that spin things in Trump's direction, eg. "unfounded scurrilous rumours of improper conduct towards women are being spread by the nefarious Clinton camp"; whilst Trump's opponents read completely different media, with zero overlap. There are no media outlets that are trusted by both sides.
The thing about Trump is all he really wants is respect. He wants to sit in the big chair and have flunkies and foreign leaders bow and scrape to him. And he is willing to do or say absolutely anything to achieve that goal. So yeah, he cares more about people taking the piss out of him on TV than he does about running his country or actially achieving anything he said to get people to vote for him. That is why it rankles so much that he lost the poplular vote that he is willing to undermine his own position to challenge it.
Its hard to believe that people knew he was like this: a faker, a blowhard, a guy only wants to enrich himself, a thin skinned guy who wants to surround himself with suck ups, a guy who's proud of cheating other people to get ahead, a man with no plan other than "being the best".
And people thought well yeah he's like that but I'm going to vote for him anyway.
I'm sure it's a lot easier for people on the outside looking on, with media which, whilst not completely unbiased (because that isn't possible), is at least fairly non-partisan, to form an accurate impression.
It's not media slant that forced trump to say he could grab em by the pussy and they let him do it because he's famous. It's not the media when Trump called himself John Bolton and John Barron and bragged how Donald Trump could get any woman. It wasn't the media that made the trump university scam. It's not the media that refused to release his tax records. The foolish statements that come from his mouth don't need any slant.
There are a lot of people who read things like pizzagate on breitbart and believe it though. Kellyanne Conway said you are not under oath as she's professionally lying on the TV.
The media is responsible for reporting it though, and, as reported by the BBC, it appears that Trump's supporters only read media that spin things in Trump's direction, eg. "unfounded scurrilous rumours of improper conduct towards women are being spread by the nefarious Clinton camp"; whilst Trump's opponents read completely different media, with zero overlap. There are no media outlets that are trusted by both sides.
The difference between the two camps ads - as George RR Martin pointed out - was Clinton was running Trump's own voice, his own writings, his own words. So people don't believe it when it's coming directly from the horses as-- er mouth.
Some Trump supporters get all their their faux news from alt-right sources and fake news sites. There are Russian people creating fake news websites that Trump supporters gobble up. Then these guys laugh as they get paid ad-revenue into their pockets while making up fictional stories to undermine US institutions and democracy. That's the news some people get. Another angle is that he gets people so worked up about untrustworthy news media and then he says whatever BS he is spouting is the only news you can trust is him. Sounds very dictatorish right?
It might be worth noting that this accolade is awarded purely for newsworthiness, and as such has previously been given to both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
It might be worth noting that this accolade is awarded purely for newsworthiness, and as such has previously been given to both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
As well as the computer, the earth, and YOU.
That's right, you personally were TIME magazine's person of the year in 2006. A cop out, I know, but there you were staring back at yourself if you've happened to have a TIME subscription a decade ago. Congrats on this achievement.
He deserves person of the year from time since he was able to win the presidency despite losing the popular vote by over 2.5 million votes and in spite of his Access Hollywood comments.
Person of the Year for Time is something that I wouldn't want to be given. Considering the kind of people that have been awarded it in recent history, I would consider it an insult to be named Time Person of the Year. Kinda like the Nobel Piss Prize or the Academy Award (i.e., Oscar).
The only reason I would accept is so that I can smash it on stage in front of everyone and then walking off with two birds flipped, but even that is not worth the effort of dressing up and fake grinning all evening until the moment.
It's not always bad. When the Person of the Year was "You," it was quite positive--not even condescending, though it easily could have been.
The Time article on Merkel was also quite positive. It made her seem like a boring but smart and effective technocrat--which is personally my favorite kind of politician.
In Michigan, where Donald Trump won by just 10,704 votes, election officials are refusing to recount ballots in counties Hillary Clinton won handily.
Poll book signatures don’t match up with ballots counted because of outdated voting machines that malfunctioned. Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s elections director, said 87 optical scanners that are used to tally each ballot broke on Election Day. This affected 59 percent of all ballots cast in Detroit.
“It’s not good,” Baxter conceded.
Elsewhere in Michigan, other counties Clinton won by a large margin experienced the same discrepancies in their precincts. In Gennesee County, which houses Flint, 13 of the county’s 222 precincts also had ballot totals that didn’t match poll book sign-ins, with most of the issues in predominantly black Flint. Six of 30 precincts in Ingham County, which houses Lansing — the state capital — are also ineligible for recount.
DETROIT (AP) — Michigan's presidential recount was halted Wednesday after three days, assuring Republican Donald Trump's victory in the state, when a federal judge said he'll abide by a court ruling that found the Green Party candidate Jill Stein couldn't seek another look at the vote.
Meanwhile, the fate of Stein's request for a recount in Pennsylvania must wait at least until a federal court hearing on Friday, just four days before the Dec. 13 federal deadline for states to certify their election results.
Trump narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in both states and Wisconsin, which started its recount last week.
None of the recounts were expected to affect the outcome of the election. Stein, who received about 1 percent of the vote in all three states, said she requested them to verify the accuracy of the vote. She has suggested, without evidence, that the votes were susceptible to hacking.
Here's what's happening in each state and in Nevada, where a partial recount of the race was requested by independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente:
___
WISCONSIN
The recount is more than 70 percent complete in Wisconsin, and Clinton has gained just 82 votes on Trump, who won the state by more than 22,000 votes. The Wisconsin Elections Commission reported Wednesday that 34 of 72 counties had completed their work and that the others are on track to finish by next week's deadline. More than 2.1 million votes out of the nearly 3 million cast have been recounted.
___
MICHIGAN
A recount that started Monday ended Wednesday night. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith set aside his earlier order that got the recount moving, acting after the state appeals court said Stein doesn't qualify as an "aggrieved" candidate under Michigan law.
"This is a victory for the taxpayers and voters of Michigan," said Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairman of the state Republican Party.
The state elections board said the recount would stop after Goldsmith's decision. Trump won Michigan by about 10,700 votes over Clinton. More than 20 counties so far were recounting ballots, and more were poised to start Thursday. Roughly 4.8 million ballots were cast.
Goldsmith said Stein raised serious issues about the integrity of Michigan's election system. But he said she offered "speculative claims" and "not actual injury."
___
PENNSYLVANIA
U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond in Philadelphia on Tuesday scheduled a hearing Friday on the request for a recount. The Republican Party and Trump warned that the case threatens Pennsylvania's ability to certify its election before the Dec. 13 federal deadline. Stein's team hasn't produced evidence of hacking, but calls Pennsylvania's election system "a national disgrace."
Also Tuesday, Pennsylvania election officials updated the state's vote count to show that Trump's lead over Clinton had shrunk to about 44,000 out of more than 6 million votes cast. That is still shy of Pennsylvania's 0.5 percent trigger for an automatic statewide recount. A state spokeswoman said 15 provisional ballots remained uncounted.
___
NEVADA
A partial recount is underway in Nevada at the request of De La Fuente, who finished last with a fraction of 1 percent of the vote. He paid about $14,000 for the recount to provide what he called a counterbalance to the recounts sought by Stein. Most of the 92 precincts being re-counted are in the Las Vegas area, with eight of the precincts in four other counties. If the sample shows a discrepancy of at least 1 percent for De La Fuente or Clinton, a full recount will be launched in all 17 Nevada counties. Clinton defeated Trump in Nevada by 27,202 votes, out of 1.1 million votes cast. Nevada Secretary of State spokeswoman Gail Anderson said the recount will be finished by the end of this week.
Attorneys for Stein argued the recount must continue, stressing that thus far it has shown numerous voting problems across the state, particularly in Detroit, where more than half of the precincts' ballots cannot be recounted due to problems that have not been disclosed. They also argued that Stein is an aggrieved party if she participated in an election that was plagued with mistakes or fraud. And the voters of Michigan have a right to know that, too, they said.
"There is no way of knowing whether fraud occurred without conducting the recount," Stein's attorney, Hayley Horowitz, told Goldsmith during the hearing, arguing it is "way to early" to know if fraud was an issue.
Would the voters of Michigan care what a non-entity got when the two top players EACH outnumbers her votes by about 20 to 1? Sounds like the attorneys are speaking on behalf of people without getting their permission or even consulting them. Arrogant little sods...
I'm pretty sure this is really about Hillary taking those states, not about Stien taking them. Either way, there's no chance. Every other state has come back with almost no change after most of the recount.
I hope so, but it galls to see the regressive left keep demanding recounts or revotes when the voting doesn't go their way. Brexit, this, and a host of more local things. They just cannot admit that they are NOT the majority and have the temerity to keep repeating the mantra of "tyranny of the majority".
Don't they know what a democracy is? Of course, given half the chance, they would get rid of democracy altogether, as has been advocated by quite a number of their kind, the easiest example of whom is Tim Flannery of Australia.
You are aware that it is irrelevant in the US elections and completely hypocritical of the regressive left to point that out, given the number of elections they have won even though they lost the majority vote (especially here in Australia).
I hope so, but it galls to see the regressive left keep demanding recounts or revotes when the voting doesn't go their way. Brexit, this, and a host of more local things. They just cannot admit that they are NOT the majority and have the temerity to keep repeating the mantra of "tyranny of the majority".
Don't they know what a democracy is? Of course, given half the chance, they would get rid of democracy altogether, as has been advocated by quite a number of their kind, the easiest example of whom is Tim Flannery of Australia.
@AdaJ Can you elaborate what you mean by the left complaining about the tyranny of majority and what democracy is given that Trump lost the popular vote? I think I am not getting your point.
Oh puh-lease. Your kind's deliberate obtuseness is amusing, were it not so pathetic.
Your kind claim that you love democracy, but when you lose an election you go ape. Take a look at Brexit. And don't you dare tell me that you have never used the phrase "tyranny of the majority" when your side lost a vote before. Similarly, don't you dare tell me you have never championed minority rights, without ever asking the permission of said minority, of course.
As a person of an ethnic minority, I am sick of white, middle-classed white people speaking on my behalf as if I am some kind of ignorant deaf-mute with no spine who needs the white ubermensch to intervene on my behalf or I would be trampled on. I maybe of an ethnic minority, but it does not mean I wish for democracy to be suspended nor does it mean I want special privileges simply because of an accident of birth.
It is highly insulting of me and my abilities to hear some loon whom I have never met and whom I do not know claiming to speak on my behalf, especially when I know that same loon is in no way connected to whatever he is talking about (be it ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation). Even more especially when I know that he is doing it for the feeling of power rather than actually having any empathy for the subject he is prattling on about.
The thing about Trump is all he really wants is respect. He wants to sit in the big chair and have flunkies and foreign leaders bow and scrape to him. And he is willing to do or say absolutely anything to achieve that goal. So yeah, he cares more about people taking the piss out of him on TV than he does about running his country or actially achieving anything he said to get people to vote for him. That is why it rankles so much that he lost the poplular vote that he is willing to undermine his own position to challenge it.
Its hard to believe that people knew he was like this: a faker, a blowhard, a guy only wants to enrich himself, a thin skinned guy who wants to surround himself with suck ups, a guy who's proud of cheating other people to get ahead, a man with no plan other than "being the best".
And people thought well yeah he's like that but I'm going to vote for him anyway.
I'm sure it's a lot easier for people on the outside looking on, with media which, whilst not completely unbiased (because that isn't possible), is at least fairly non-partisan, to form an accurate impression.
It's not media slant that forced trump to say he could grab em by the pussy and they let him do it because he's famous. It's not the media when Trump called himself John Bolton and John Barron and bragged how Donald Trump could get any woman. It wasn't the media that made the trump university scam. It's not the media that refused to release his tax records. The foolish statements that come from his mouth don't need any slant.
There are a lot of people who read things like pizzagate on breitbart and believe it though. Kellyanne Conway said you are not under oath as she's professionally lying on the TV.
The media is responsible for reporting it though, and, as reported by the BBC, it appears that Trump's supporters only read media that spin things in Trump's direction, eg. "unfounded scurrilous rumours of improper conduct towards women are being spread by the nefarious Clinton camp"; whilst Trump's opponents read completely different media, with zero overlap. There are no media outlets that are trusted by both sides.
The difference between the two camps ads - as George RR Martin pointed out - was Clinton was running Trump's own voice, his own writings, his own words. So people don't believe it when it's coming directly from the horses as-- er mouth.
The BBC's position is not that they didn't believe it, it's that they never heard it, because they are watching different media, avoiding anything that said anything they didn't want to hear. And this was true of both sides.
Again, I must reiterate the point that the popular vote in Presidential elections here in the United States is an irrelevant statistic. We do not have one generalized election for President; instead, we have 51 separate yet simultaneous elections for President. The only statistic which has any meaning are the State-wise results where the winner is the candidate who wins either plurality (the most votes if no one earns a simple majority) or a simple majority.
Jill Stein isn't trying to change the results of the election (which isn't going to happen) and she isn't trying to figure out if she got more votes (this is possible but not likely). No, she is pushing for hand recounts in order to ingratiate herself to the Democrat leadership in hopes that she will be able to switch parties and try to run as a Democrat in 2020.
In Michigan, where Donald Trump won by just 10,704 votes, election officials are refusing to recount ballots in counties Hillary Clinton won handily.
Poll book signatures don’t match up with ballots counted because of outdated voting machines that malfunctioned. Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s elections director, said 87 optical scanners that are used to tally each ballot broke on Election Day. This affected 59 percent of all ballots cast in Detroit.
“It’s not good,” Baxter conceded.
Elsewhere in Michigan, other counties Clinton won by a large margin experienced the same discrepancies in their precincts. In Gennesee County, which houses Flint, 13 of the county’s 222 precincts also had ballot totals that didn’t match poll book sign-ins, with most of the issues in predominantly black Flint. Six of 30 precincts in Ingham County, which houses Lansing — the state capital — are also ineligible for recount.
No, she is pushing for hand recounts in order to ingratiate herself to the Democrat leadership in hopes that she will be able to switch parties and try to run as a Democrat in 2020.
If she inadvertently exposes any more Democratic voter fraud, she may just kiss that opportunity goodbye!
Comments
http://www.salon.com/2016/12/06/ben-carsons-life-in-public-housing-qualifies-him-to-be-hud-secretary-supporters-say/
Having had a lot of exposure to subsidized housing before (having many family members living in such) I will agree that he makes some good points: government housing is more often than not of atrocious quality, barely livable in many situations by common American standards. The Republican Party has historically been incredibly fraudulent in the HUD department, and it has only ever benefitted and been improved under members of the Democratic Party.
Perhaps this is a good move? I don't know. It is certainly a new and different move. But good? We will just have to see if he even gets voted in to find out if this is good or not. So far I'm thinking not.
Carson's job at HUD won't have anything to do directly with housing or urban development. Instead, he will be sitting in mostly-boring meetings, looking at powerpoint presentations, listening to people drone on about the numbers their team spent 3 months crunching in Excel, and discussing general policy direction with his boss and his immediate underlings. In other words, he will be a pen-pusher, nothing more. Even then, he will generally only use the pen to sign his name to documents that other people wrote and compiled.
Although it would be ideal for a Cabinet secretary to have some experience dealing with the subject their agency deals with, the only requirements to be a Cabinet secretary are "must be nominated by the President" and "must be confirmed by the Senate". The current SecHUD, Julian Castro, was at least mayor of San Antonio so he has some experience dealing with urban development.
Truthfully, I suspect that whole "zomg--Castro violated the Hatch Act" was smoke designed to keep him off the ticket (he was being eyed as a pretty good VP nominee) but not so that Hillary could capture the ticket but so that Castro can try again in 2020. If I were going to give advice to the DNC, I would urge them to consider him.
Some Trump supporters get all their their faux news from alt-right sources and fake news sites. There are Russian people creating fake news websites that Trump supporters gobble up. Then these guys laugh as they get paid ad-revenue into their pockets while making up fictional stories to undermine US institutions and democracy. That's the news some people get. Another angle is that he gets people so worked up about untrustworthy news media and then he says whatever BS he is spouting is the only news you can trust is him. Sounds very dictatorish right?
That's right, you personally were TIME magazine's person of the year in 2006. A cop out, I know, but there you were staring back at yourself if you've happened to have a TIME subscription a decade ago. Congrats on this achievement.
The only reason I would accept is so that I can smash it on stage in front of everyone and then walking off with two birds flipped, but even that is not worth the effort of dressing up and fake grinning all evening until the moment.
The Time article on Merkel was also quite positive. It made her seem like a boring but smart and effective technocrat--which is personally my favorite kind of politician.
Poll book signatures don’t match up with ballots counted because of outdated voting machines that malfunctioned. Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s elections director, said 87 optical scanners that are used to tally each ballot broke on Election Day. This affected 59 percent of all ballots cast in Detroit.
“It’s not good,” Baxter conceded.
Elsewhere in Michigan, other counties Clinton won by a large margin experienced the same discrepancies in their precincts. In Gennesee County, which houses Flint, 13 of the county’s 222 precincts also had ballot totals that didn’t match poll book sign-ins, with most of the issues in predominantly black Flint. Six of 30 precincts in Ingham County, which houses Lansing — the state capital — are also ineligible for recount.
The Orange One was right - it was rigged.
The latest on the recount from http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/michigan-recount-over-pennsylvania-sets-hearing/ar-AAlgkZi?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
DETROIT (AP) — Michigan's presidential recount was halted Wednesday after three days, assuring Republican Donald Trump's victory in the state, when a federal judge said he'll abide by a court ruling that found the Green Party candidate Jill Stein couldn't seek another look at the vote.
Meanwhile, the fate of Stein's request for a recount in Pennsylvania must wait at least until a federal court hearing on Friday, just four days before the Dec. 13 federal deadline for states to certify their election results.
Trump narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in both states and Wisconsin, which started its recount last week.
None of the recounts were expected to affect the outcome of the election. Stein, who received about 1 percent of the vote in all three states, said she requested them to verify the accuracy of the vote. She has suggested, without evidence, that the votes were susceptible to hacking.
Here's what's happening in each state and in Nevada, where a partial recount of the race was requested by independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente:
___
WISCONSIN
The recount is more than 70 percent complete in Wisconsin, and Clinton has gained just 82 votes on Trump, who won the state by more than 22,000 votes. The Wisconsin Elections Commission reported Wednesday that 34 of 72 counties had completed their work and that the others are on track to finish by next week's deadline. More than 2.1 million votes out of the nearly 3 million cast have been recounted.
___
MICHIGAN
A recount that started Monday ended Wednesday night. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith set aside his earlier order that got the recount moving, acting after the state appeals court said Stein doesn't qualify as an "aggrieved" candidate under Michigan law.
"This is a victory for the taxpayers and voters of Michigan," said Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairman of the state Republican Party.
The state elections board said the recount would stop after Goldsmith's decision. Trump won Michigan by about 10,700 votes over Clinton. More than 20 counties so far were recounting ballots, and more were poised to start Thursday. Roughly 4.8 million ballots were cast.
Goldsmith said Stein raised serious issues about the integrity of Michigan's election system. But he said she offered "speculative claims" and "not actual injury."
___
PENNSYLVANIA
U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond in Philadelphia on Tuesday scheduled a hearing Friday on the request for a recount. The Republican Party and Trump warned that the case threatens Pennsylvania's ability to certify its election before the Dec. 13 federal deadline. Stein's team hasn't produced evidence of hacking, but calls Pennsylvania's election system "a national disgrace."
Also Tuesday, Pennsylvania election officials updated the state's vote count to show that Trump's lead over Clinton had shrunk to about 44,000 out of more than 6 million votes cast. That is still shy of Pennsylvania's 0.5 percent trigger for an automatic statewide recount. A state spokeswoman said 15 provisional ballots remained uncounted.
___
NEVADA
A partial recount is underway in Nevada at the request of De La Fuente, who finished last with a fraction of 1 percent of the vote. He paid about $14,000 for the recount to provide what he called a counterbalance to the recounts sought by Stein. Most of the 92 precincts being re-counted are in the Las Vegas area, with eight of the precincts in four other counties. If the sample shows a discrepancy of at least 1 percent for De La Fuente or Clinton, a full recount will be launched in all 17 Nevada counties. Clinton defeated Trump in Nevada by 27,202 votes, out of 1.1 million votes cast. Nevada Secretary of State spokeswoman Gail Anderson said the recount will be finished by the end of this week.
Attorneys for Stein argued the recount must continue, stressing that thus far it has shown numerous voting problems across the state, particularly in Detroit, where more than half of the precincts' ballots cannot be recounted due to problems that have not been disclosed. They also argued that Stein is an aggrieved party if she participated in an election that was plagued with mistakes or fraud. And the voters of Michigan have a right to know that, too, they said.
"There is no way of knowing whether fraud occurred without conducting the recount," Stein's attorney, Hayley Horowitz, told Goldsmith during the hearing, arguing it is "way to early" to know if fraud was an issue.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/12/07/federal-judge-halts-michigan-election-recount/95121830/
Either way, there's no chance. Every other state has come back with almost no change after most of the recount.
Don't they know what a democracy is? Of course, given half the chance, they would get rid of democracy altogether, as has been advocated by quite a number of their kind, the easiest example of whom is Tim Flannery of Australia.
Your kind claim that you love democracy, but when you lose an election you go ape. Take a look at Brexit. And don't you dare tell me that you have never used the phrase "tyranny of the majority" when your side lost a vote before. Similarly, don't you dare tell me you have never championed minority rights, without ever asking the permission of said minority, of course.
As a person of an ethnic minority, I am sick of white, middle-classed white people speaking on my behalf as if I am some kind of ignorant deaf-mute with no spine who needs the white ubermensch to intervene on my behalf or I would be trampled on. I maybe of an ethnic minority, but it does not mean I wish for democracy to be suspended nor does it mean I want special privileges simply because of an accident of birth.
It is highly insulting of me and my abilities to hear some loon whom I have never met and whom I do not know claiming to speak on my behalf, especially when I know that same loon is in no way connected to whatever he is talking about (be it ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation). Even more especially when I know that he is doing it for the feeling of power rather than actually having any empathy for the subject he is prattling on about.
The point of this thread is NOT to attack individuals or large groups of people.
If somebody has the wrong idea, criticize the idea, not the person.
Jill Stein isn't trying to change the results of the election (which isn't going to happen) and she isn't trying to figure out if she got more votes (this is possible but not likely). No, she is pushing for hand recounts in order to ingratiate herself to the Democrat leadership in hopes that she will be able to switch parties and try to run as a Democrat in 2020.
If she inadvertently exposes any more Democratic voter fraud, she may just kiss that opportunity goodbye!