Jobs… better Economy… (returning) Industry through trade disincentives to decrease reliance on on China… increasing use of our own Energy sources to decrease reliance on the Middle East. Border Protection and enforcement and measures to ensure Federal election integrity. And why not throw in Maturity and Peaceful Transition (hey, Hillary brought it up when she claimed that Trump and his supporters would be the ones throwing tantrums after the 2016 election). Our talking points of yesterday.

Pandemic response prompts thoughtful debate on whether "any means to an end" lockdown with no clear 'sunset' limits carries inherent risks to country and even public health that are worse than the disease. /s

Wrongful death captures the horror and imagination of Americans in lockdown, and promotes national discussion of police brutality as Democrats and Republicans unite to protest the action and review police procedure as protesters scrawl "police brutality matters" on buildings. /s

People have let their psyches become hacked by race. By racists. Again.

Whataboutists tally up 'white victims' and 'bad black cops' in a pointless game of "Where was the outrage when…" to even the score. Both factions add up to nothing. Both are people who will never convince one another when they should be uniting to agree to root out bad cops. They have been hacked by race also.

And the talking heads are suddenly injecting racism into everything. Race in your face, race all over the place.

Don Lemon, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the only ones who don't need an excuse, it's been their gig all along.

Some are exploring the financial ties between persons vilifying Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Gilead and that is interesting (yawn, please forgive).

But there is another story here that has contributed to many needless deaths in the USA, and certainly will in the future if journalists do not move to stop it. And it may be that those financial ties are also associated with wrongful deaths.

Simply the OMISSION of ZINC given with HCQ in treatment, "suspicious" drug trials that test HCQ without also giving ZINC and even some HCQ treatment given today without ZINC. It is possible that HCQ given BY ITSELF NEVER had any reliable effectiveness with COVID, and clinical studies are starting to bear this out.

These "zinc-less" studies have come with a great human cost -- in terms of the patients involved in them both treated and controls… and time wasted by even trying this ridiculous no-ZINC option first in a crisis, and now a politicized public backlash against HCQ that is unfounded because it was never given a fair trial until recently. And on into the future as the unfair/broken no-ZINC drug trials continue to steer doctors and the public.

This is a difficult issue to describe for we are talking about the absence of something. For example, even a fair coverage of HCQ that fails to mention the possible role of zinc's anti-COVID mechanism and failing to press doctors to describe it -- is nevertheless helping to bury HCQ even though HCQ+ZINC if given early is the most promising treatment discovered to date. Zinc's anti-COVID mechanism has been known since 2010 and HCQ makes the treatment viable.

Consider all of the HCQ press coverage you have heard to date. How often has the topic of ZINC arisen? There's the problem. Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine were first tried because they are zinc ionophores. So why has all the discourse been about HCQ itself, but seldom if ever ZINC?

Part of the problem is that like many supplements ZINC by itself has a whole "snake oil" culture grown around it, and while it has been shown somewhat to help fight viruses like the common cold, there are so many ridiculous claims out there doctors feel unscholarly discussing zinc by itself. When they are discussing some new drug they are on more comfortable ground.

But what if that promising new drug does nothing by itself, but is already known to do something great in combination with zinc (where it is the zinc brought into the cells that actually has the anti-viral effect)? Sadly, they will continue to discuss the wonder drug. They may have done good research and personally recognize the crucial role of ZINC and would never treat patients with HCQ without also supplementing ZINC… but unless you ask them about it you may never hear it mentioned. This is a tragedy in the making.

Now what if other doctors, distracted and beset by crisis, hear about this "wonder drug" from that news story and fail to do the simple research themselves? And are given the chance to administer HCQ without ZINC, the omission of ZINC stemming from simple ignorance of its promising mechanism? Some patients might be fortunate to have high levels of ZINC from other sources. Many will be ZINC-deficient because they are elderly and the disease has disrupted their lives and what small supplements they may normally take. To work effectively this anti-COVID mechanism may require a large amount of ZINC to be present in the blood, always given with the HCQ.

And I allege that ZINC has NOT been given to many. What was by the end of March most probably a comedy of tragic errors of this kind (just failing to do the research)… by the first week of April becomes suspicious. Prominent researchers who should have spoken out against the omission of ZINC in these trials failed to speak out publicly, and it begins to become sinister. As I put it, through a combination of human error and suspicious circumstances, practically indistinguishable from evil.

We have an important milestone in this story that is especially relevant to Fauci's actions in April. For Fauci is "the" one you would have expected have done the research and recognize the crucial importance of ZINC.

But actually the research was handed to him, on a platter! At the April 8th press conference Trump astonished many by giving some very specific details about medical treatment, something presidents seldom do,

TRUMP 4/8/2020: "In addition [to hydroxychloroquine] the azithromycin and ZINC — they say ZINC — you should add ZINC. Now, it’s all — has to be recommended by doctors, physicians. But they say ZINC. I want to throw that out there because that’s where they seem to be having the best result. So you add the ZINC and the azithromycin."

Mentioning ZINC five times in one paragraph? Why would ZINC feature so? The person Trump had privately heard from and maybe even spoken to was probably Dr. Zev Zelenko, a family practitioner in upstate NY. Zelenko had recently announced results of treating some 350 patients, some among them very ill, and reported a near 100% recovery rate. Using HCQ with ZINC, plus azithromycin.

Zelenko had done his research. And it is out there, not just embedded in research papers. This March 6 MedCram video explains the mechanism by which ZINC opposes coronavirus, two timecodes from the same video are copied below. The step by step explanations are not difficult to follow and the whole video is worth a watch. Several of MedCram's subsequent videos about the HCQ mechanism have been taken down by youtube which is worthy of its own angry email. But this one has escaped the youtube censors,

COVID-19 infection mechanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeh054-Hx1U&t=3m35s

ZINC's effect to inhibit replication: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeh054-Hx1U&t=14m33s

On March 23 Zelenko wrote an open public letter to the medical community ( http://www.nunesfarma.com.br/download.php?id=TlRBPQ== ) with a copy to President Trump detailing his successful treatment with HCQ+ZINC+AZ. To his great credit Zelenko stressed the importance of ZINC in the letter, alluding to the mechanism described in the video above with these words,

"We know that hydroxychloroquine helps Zinc enter the cell. We know that Zinc slows viral replication within the cell."

Should that alone be enough to communicate that it is actually ZINC doing the useful work, with HCQ as just a crucial component to get ZINC into the cells? Remember, ZINC taken orally tends to stay in the blood and only enters cells en masse in the presence of a powerful ZINC ionophore such as HCQ.

On April 7th Zelenko followed up with a "Mr. President please…" letter ( https://t.co/QJNF0JkLVt?amp=1 ) addressed directly to President Trump re-hashing the treatment and imploring Trump to issue Executive Orders to remove State obstacles to physicians attempting to prescribe HCQ to patients.

This April 7th letter repeated his regimen but did not stress the importance of ZINC as should have been. But perhaps Zelenko felt it would have been belaboring the obvious, an echo of medical professionals' reluctance to expound on zinc from all the "snake oil" surrounding it. That is tragic.

But as we see 24 hours later, someone was listening. And that someone had read Zelenko's previous letter also.

TRUMP 4/8/2020 the day after Zelenko's letter: "In addition [to hydroxychloroquine] the azithromycin and ZINC — they say ZINC — you should add ZINC. Now, it’s all — has to be recommended by doctors, physicians. But they say ZINC. I want to throw that out there because that’s where they seem to be having the best result. So you add the ZINC and the azithromycin."

Now that we see Trump's remark in light of in vito COVID research going back to 2010 describing ZINC's ability to slow or stop viral replication… and considering Dr. Fauci's considerable experience in virology…

By April 9 what had Fauci and the medical establishment done? Fauci did oversee the beginning of a clinical trial whose announcement you can read here ( https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-hydroxychloroquine-potential-therapy-covid-19-begins ) WITH NO ZINC.

Followed by trial after trial of HCQ with NO ZINC. HCQ by itself, HCQ with azithromycin. How about HCQ with sugar sprinkles, HCQ with roofing nails and railroad spikes? Now that you know the extent to which Zelenko had communicated the importance of ZINC to President Trump successfully, doesn't that seem a little… unusual?

Fauci's dismissive public remarks at the time about 'anecdotal' versus 'clinical' results don't even raise a red flag with me. But yet there is little excuse if you are launching trials and must try variations of a drug. Wouldn't you try the combination that has the greatest claimed efficacy, first?

So it is not idly that I harbor actual suspicions about Fauci's motives and conduct around April 9th. At his level of expertise the omission of ZINC given with ZINC ionophore HCQ might be the type of blunder that ends careers, or even deliberate and criminal.

There is also such a thing as a growing conspiracy of omission and ignorance. Something begins to not happen. Some may begin to notice something crucial that is missing, but everyone believes it's someone else's job to point it out. Has this happened across the United States? Are people who 'do the research' so rare?

Consider what may have happened already with HCQ drug trials in the USA. Given the query

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=hydroxychloroquine&cond=covid-19&cntry=US

…we see 201 studies (as of 5/23) of HCQ proposed, in progress or done. We simply add 'zinc' to the search,

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=hydroxychloroquine+zinc&cond=covid-19&cntry=US

…only 3 studies, all "new", announced or recruiting.

This is for hydroxychloroquine, a known zinc ionophore whose most likely anti-COVID mechanism is actually bestowed by ZINC, and relies on the presence of ZINC -- perhaps in copious amounts -- in a patient.

Here is where the absence of ZINC becomes surreal, in these clinical trial announcements. Everything that is part of the test must be listed, even ZINC. The absence of anything in these study announcements means it may be either simply not present or its presence would remain forever unknown and never recorded. Unless the trial or study is specifically "given with zinc" or "controls for ZINC" there may not be zinc. These trials are at the very least useless or of marginal value in crisis. We see no mention of ZINC in almost all of these.

What is happening in the US? I cannot find fault in Trump aside from a lack of follow-up.

Of course you cannot rule out the mere presence of ZINC in any actual patient because it is present in everyone and essential to life. So there are people out there with ZINC in their blood when they arrive at the hospital. But is it a sufficient amount for this treatment? Even failing to record the various levels of patients' ZINC in the blood and report it as part of the trial result would seem to be ludicrous!

I'd surely like to hear a doctor weigh in to say whether testing a ZINC ionophore for efficacy with no ZINC is ridiculous, ignorant or immoral. But will not hold my breath. And I am wondering also, why aren't more doctors communicating actual alarm over this?

If you ask you'll get some wagon-circling, for sure. "Zinc? Huh??" (not done the research). "The anti-COVID ZINC mechanism has been shown in the laboratory but not in patients" (not true! See below), "we really don't know how it works" (always a favorite because people love to hand out benefit of doubt), or even the grave accusation "Zelenko is a fraud!" (not true far as I know), "zinc is a 'quack' medicine!" (true for some supplement claims, but deflecting from its proven COVID mechanism).

Fauci's explanation for NOT seeing trials launched with ZINC on April 9th after Trump's ZINC remarks would be most interesting of all.

Dr. Zelenko has gone through some difficult times as a new celebrity. His youtube videos have been taken down, and one contained some back of the napkin calculations that attempted to extrapolate the number of COVID cases in his area based on his patient load and population… which was not such a great idea as his quick estimates embarrassed the town elders who felt compelled to challenge the numbers publicly. It also turned out that some of the patients he counted at first were treated with symptoms but had not actually tested positive at the time he claimed them as COVID patients, due to a shortage of tests.

There was also a bizarre affair involving an email [corsi zelenko zelinski] that generated a strange story in the Times that had the flavor of a smear, in which someone claimed Zelenko had said that a hospital-approved study he was conducting was FDA-approved. In light of the fact that the drugs he was using (HCQ+ZINC+AZ) are FDA-approved for some things, one could see how confusion might arise over the terms. Exasperated, he has apologized that he misspoke and is not familiar with all the terms researchers use.

And most recently Zelenko has decided to leave the community where he has practiced medicine for 16 years. The announcement was sudden but I see no foul deeds in his mishaps, certainly not his stellar record of COVID treatment. There might be a separate human interest story in this too.

……..
[continued in comments, length limit]

Trump heard about hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) near the end of March and mentioned it publicly on March 19. At the time there were some amazing success stories from doctors who were giving it to their patients with zinc supplements.

HCQ is a known zinc ionophore and the most likely HCQ+zinc anti-COVID mechanism is that zinc is being drawn into the cells where the presence of zinc in the cell (significantly!) inhibits viral replication.

Even if you take zinc as a daily supplement almost all of the zinc remains in the blood where it cannot help to fight off the virus. You need an ionophore like HCQ (or less effective quercetin). But it is the zinc (imported into the cells) that does the work. Zinc is proven to do this.

Which means, giving HCQ to someone for COVID WITHOUT SUPPLEMENTING ZINC is ineffective, ridiculous and possibly harmful. For some already at death's door, no better than rat poison.

Around April 8 Trump evidently heard from someone who was alarmed at the omission of zinc in some document or ongoing discussion... and it impressed Trump enough that it came out in his press conference remarks,

TRUMP 4/8/2020: "In addition [to hydroxychloroquine] the azithromycin and ZINC — they say ZINC — you should add ZINC. Now, it’s all — has to be recommended by doctors, physicians. But they say ZINC. I want to throw that out there because that’s where they seem to be having the best result. So you add the ZINC and the azithromycin."

Mentioning zinc five times in one paragraph? Why would zinc feature so? The person Trump had privately spoken to was probably Dr. Zev Zelenko, a family practitioner in upstate NY. Zelenko had recently announced results of treating some 350 patients, some among them very ill, and reported a near 100% recovery rate. Using HCQ with ZINC, plus azithromycin.

Cuomo of NY tried to shut down Zelenko's operation on March 24 by forbidding the use of HCQ except in "state-sanctioned trials". Zelenko was really pissed and appealed to Trump directly and Trump intervened. Zelenko's clinic reopened for COVID patients the day after. Zelenko has continued to treat patients. as of April 21 it was 1,450 positive patients with only 2 deaths, 4 ventilator cases (all recovered).

It does not count as a "drug trial" because Zelenko never put some people into a Control Group and consigned them to die for Science. He simply applied a cocktail with ever-increasing evidence that it works. Family practitioners are known for that.

Zelenko and a controversial frenchman Raoult (who infuriatingly fails to mention zinc in his press though I know his institute uses it) are the main sources of 'anecdotal' results with many patients to date. There are several others, including local doctors who report great success in USA nursing homes and regional hospitals.

The press has been very unhelpful here, even if doctors' use of HCQ is presented in an unbiased manner, critical absence of mention of zinc is annoying. Particularly when they just say "... with a gee-whiz cocktail of vitamins and minerals". Shoddy.

So on April 9 ...two days after someone (Zelenko?) had gone on about it to Trump and one day after Trump had mentioned ZINC five times in one paragraph, what did Fauci and the medical establishment do? They began a clinical trial whose announcement you can read here ( https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-hydroxychloroquine-potential-therapy-covid-19-begins ) WITH NO ZINC.

Thus begins the phase of the "USA zincless murders" that continues today.

Here is an easy way to determine if any recent hydroxychloroquine trial or published treatment or story is shit... just do a text search for 'zinc'. If zinc is not mentioned it's shit. Shitty headlines and shitty news stories, shitty comments by Trump lovers and Trump haters continue to praise/vilify HCQ and they're all shit because HCQ is mentioned as if was some stand-alone miracle/quack drug... without mentioning zinc. Around the beginning of April was when the promising +zinc combination became more widely known, though Zelenko had been discussing it among his peers since February.

Let me demonstrate the shit filter.

Now it certainly LOOKS as if hydroxychloroquine has been 'studied' for COVID-19 in the United States since this epidemic began, what with the country being shut down and a cure being the greatest national priority and all,

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=hydroxychloroquine&cond=covid-19&cntry=US

[201 results as of 5/22, some of which you've probably heard about in the news]

But now that you have a handy 'shit' filter to apply to anything HCQ/COVID-19, you can add 'zinc' and see through it quickly,

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=hydroxychloroquine+zinc&cond=covid-19&cntry=US

[the shitty truth. Only 8 results, all new trials and 2 actively recruiting]

You now know without reading them that 193 of the studies are shit. With my handy shit filter, and the simple knowledge that a zinc ionophore's viral replication inhibition effect is useless without plenty of zinc in the blood to enter cells and actually do the work, you can even dismiss scholarly studies such as these 50 crafted by doctors who should have known better.

You could apply the shit filter retroactively but it's a shitty thing to do. For example, the VA (Veteran's Administration) Study, now used almost exclusively by HCQ haters to vilify the drug, chronicled the last days of mostly-old and very sick veterans in several states, near the end of March. Doctors treated some with HCQ experimentally (with no zinc apparently, per its omission from the study) but it is not reasonable to assume that news of Zelenko's more successful methods in upstate NY could have reached those doctors by then.

But then Trump mentioned zinc in association with HCQ publicly on April 8, rather adamantly. The excuses start to melt away. Since then the shit filter has grown strong, and now has a distinct partisan flavor.

But let me clarify. If someone says "The fake news press are in bed with Big Pharma to suppress this unprofitable wonder drug HCQ" it is shit because they do not mention zinc. Shitty statements like this are easily debunked by referring to shitty studies like the 193 of 201 linked above. Hydroxychloroquine promotion without mentioning zinc has a real human cost.

And if someone says "Trump is endangering lives by mentioning unproven drugs like HCQ and now the Trumptards are going to hold their doctors at gunpoint to write prescriptions for this prescription-only medicine!" it is shit because it does not suggest they they will be also be shoplifting some over the counter zinc supplements to take along with it. And set fire to the place on the way out.

That last implies also the people will be taking HCQ+ZINC at home, possibly even instead of getting sick, which is apparently the newest crime in the US.

But there's new flavors of shit now too, late shit and I bet you're expecting me to get very political. Sorry, that stuff is boring. I only chronicle shit that is human-caused by shoddy thinking. And one such flavor is being administered a drug whose mechanism is supposed to (if only you remembered zinc) discourage viral replication ... in a shitty hospital.

Hospitals aren't shitty in themselves, but you only go to one if you are in a world of shit. Specifically, fluid in the lungs rises above the level of your bank account, the result of a stupid failure to combine zinc and zinc ionophores to inhibit viral replication before it became a problem.

Or perhaps you took no precautions because you're masked and gloved at home hiding behind the sofa and you imagined you could avoid this thing that is as transmissible as the common cold. How stupid is that?

Hospitals are the cleanest places on Earth until you bring them your shit. When you are carried into the hospital, people with bruises and gunshot wounds (doctors who wouldn't fill prescriptions for Trump supporters) will look at your gurgling carcass and say, "Now there's some real sorry-ass shit. Keep it away from me!"

Intubation or any kind of pressurized breathing machine under COVID (or any fluid-in-the-lungs disease) is incredibly bad. You're imagining the nice machine pushing air into the lungs, right? Well ask yourself what the effect really is. Your lungs are little sacs in many branches that all want air. Fluid is bad. And with Earth gravity the fluid collects at the bottom of the lungs towards the ground, which can be all over if you are lying on your back. The liquid starts to present a rising barrier.

Liquid has surface tension so the adjacent liquid molecules push as one. The entire mass of less-compressible liquid is pushed "down" by the breathing machine, which includes the submerged "lower" part of the lung. The force of each machine-breath is pushing the liquid-filled portion away from the other stressing and pulling at the air/liquid boundary region. This thing is literally tearing your lungs apart.

This does not happen when you breathe naturally because we are negative pressure breathers, with muscles to expand diaphragm down and chest out to draw air by increasing internal volume. Research the history of the Iron Lung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung which you may have thought was just an archaic term for ventilator. But Iron Lungs with all their bulky and loud hardware were the preferred approach until computers came along and decided they wanted to kill us all.

The mechanical Iron Lung -- once set -- presented a reliable cycle of pressure change within a chamber containing your abdomen that guaranteed you would breathe regularly and properly. If there was liquid in the lungs there was no damaging "piston effect" as from pressurized air being forced in... only the gentle sloshing as liquid redistributed itself in the lungs' changing shape and found new levels.

Computers came along to push the positive pressure rippers (ventilator) over the sloshy negative pressure suckers (Iron Lung) because they weigh 500 pounds less, offer improved access to the abdomen and bedpan, and because (finally) something with a brain could monitor the dangerous process of positive pressure into the lungs. Most computerized vents detect back-pressure difference between what pressure at each point is expected and what is observed and plot it over time against past recorded envelopes. If anything changes they reduce the aggressiveness and immediately alert the operator to come quickly and examine the patient, inside and out, for any structural changes that could account for such a pressure difference and indicate damage to the lungs.

Only joking! The operator merely presses a button to re-train the machine to the "new" parameters. This repeats until the patient visibly changes shape like a squeezed balloon animal. /s

But suffice to say you don't want to be on one, Vent or Iron Lung. If only Vent patients were turning slowly on a spit, the damage at the boundary between air and liquid would shift and be more evenly distributed and perhaps lessened... and if it was like a gyroscope with two axes the patient could even be turned head down and slapped around, some fluid would trickle back into the machine to be collected for Science. But no... Science has failed to provide a safe mechanical form of breathing that also does that other useful thing we do, cough.

If you get this virus you better hope to fight it while you are awake, breathing and coughing.

So the late shit is sort of about ventilators. How America went hysterical in search of them, wanted to build more and more and new kinds. Elon Musk promised ventilators and delivered CPAP machines and hoped no one would notice, which is probably a better outcome than if he had quickly invented a new ventilator. Perhaps people imagined that patients could all go onto ventilators like colonists in a starship hibernating in pods, to emerge fresh and cured. Knowing some of the challenges of positive pressure ventilation, I was kind of alarmed when DIY enthusiasts started brainstorming and showing things, some that would be unsafe for balloon animals.

But while shit is failing to mention ZINC along with HCQ ... late shit is essentially failing to treat the disease before hospitalization. I find it horrifying that anyone could hold the (correct) opinion that this disease can progress quickly... while at the same time support denying doctors the right to have a prescription filled outside the hospital.

It's all because hydroxychloroquine has been branded as a 'quack medicine' by the press. Governors rushed to restrict HCQ "to preserve supplies for pandemic response". Then it was "to protect lupus patients" who are few and already entitled to a 90 day supply. Then it was "until the (shit) studies in progress are complete" and now its "shit studies say it doesn't work".

Dr. Zelenko in NY treats with zinc (no shit), treats early at onset of first symptom for at-risk patients (no late shit) and has 1,450 positive cases with only 2 deaths, 4 ventilator cases (all recovered)... and is branded a quack.

And the real shits (who know full well the mechanism) hold shit trial after shit trial of HCQ with NO zinc. Even in an atmosphere where you must try variations of a drug, they 'chose' try HCQ with no zinc first. And again and again, for months now... are hailed as 'heroic medical researchers'.

........

[there is more, continued in comments]

(re-post of my old essay from T_D on Reddit)

Megacities and the urban sprawl which surrounds and connects them create zones of provincial sentiment, which is now revealed as a national sentiment. It really is a mind-set. At a certain point the city becomes the state (New York, California, Maryland) and views in opposition to those of the urban voting block go to margin.

The urban-rural schism is the most pervasive, but there are regional differences that also transcend party. Look at Colin Woodard's 11 Nation-States of America, which paints a few large swaths across the continent by county which represent waves of immigrant settlers, who seeded these geographic areas with attitudes that, just as with dialect, influence voters today. Even those who re-settle into those areas (and especially their children) adopt the flava. With whimsical names like Yankeedom, New Netherlands, Midlands and Tidewater one can almost imagine a Tolkienesque retelling of the American Tale, and I wish this concept may some day grow into an alternate-selection textbook of history that follows these waves without so much distracting clutter of place-names. On this map South Florida does not even make the list, it is a grey zone labelled 'Part of the Spanish Caribbean'. Hilarious!

Urbanites are more accepting of incremental erosion of personal liberty and a pattern of ever-increasing (but never abrupt) government involvement. I see this described in derogatory fashion as if they are simple sheeple or something, but I don't subscribe to such a vulgar character judgement. I think it may simply be that they are more often exposed to utopian ideals and idealists which say, we're this-close to solving this problem, all we need to do is this one more thing.

Urbanites see their government as a machine that just needs a little tuning here and there. And it is a machine of sorts, one that gathers distant water rights and political power. Eventually the political sway of populous megacities will be complete, but in the United States it is not happening fast enough for them. Which is why they are attacking the Constitution directly, seeking an end-run play to nullify the effect of the electoral college.

Introducing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. By a state's own right to supply Presidential electors in any way it sees fit... some states dominated by Megacities have decided to pass legislation that would 'give' their electoral votes over to the winner of the national popular vote -- regardless of the state's actual popular result.

I see this is a deliberate self-castration of a state's right to choose a President. If there is a battle between the Cities and Not-the-Cities, this is the front line. Look at the green (passed) and yellow (pending) states on the map. The green are your cities vying for political domination. The yellow states are the 'front lines' where progressive legislatures are now trying to sleaze it through, while they hope their rural populations remain unaware of its ultimate effect. MegaCities know that their national voting bloc which increasingly includes non-citizens who intend to vote in Federal elections, is on the cusp of the majority. Which is why they are making their move. Megacities wish to ensure that an 'electoral upset' such as assured Trump's victory will never happen again.

The NPVIC was started by disenfranchised supporters of Al Gore who decided that if they lost it must mean that the system was broken.

No matter exactly what the framers intended, the Electoral College creates a swing zone within which the growing influence of urbanized areas may (yet) reach a balance point with the desires of the sparsely populated rural peoples. This balance point, in which everyone becomes aware that the popular and electoral results differ, should be a time of reflection and reconsideration of both sides. A time for great orators (and red-pillers, shitposters!) to step forth and do their best to convince half the country that that other half is not merely insane.

The Compact is designed as an immoral stealth weapon against ignorant people. It has no effect until its majority is complete... which means that state legislatures can pass legislation binding them to the Compact and bide their time. In the interim they need not face the controversy of their state helping to elect a President against its own popular vote. It is designed to keep knowledge of the Compact under the radar as it gains states.

Then the day it has gained enough electors, it pounces, everywhere. End of college.

We are presently within a swing-zone I describe, provided by the Constitution. We have a President who was elected by college despite a tiny popular vote margin. If we had all given in to the aims of the NPVIC we would ALREADY BE a nation governed by the cities, for the cities. Perhaps FOREVER.

The half way balance point is a most dangerous time in any Republic because the stupidest scandals, sneakiest false-flag subversion, distraction -- and 'fake news' -- could possibly swing the country, not by any well reasoned argument, merely by some ruthless play.