‘President-select’
‘President-select’
Just to clarify, it is absolutely wrong to call Donald Trump “president-elect,” since he actually lost by more than 2 million votes on Nov. 8.
A more appropriate label would be “president-select,” if and when the archaic Electoral College votes Dec. 19 to select him as the next White House occupant.
More seriously, Trump not only would be a minority-elected president, he definitely would not have the all-important moral mandate to govern the country. Indeed, given that the U.S. had been invading and/or bombing countries across three continents in the name of “promoting democracy,” the real moral mandate he has is to immediately cease all U.S. military interventions overseas.
That would at least save trillions of dollars (not to mention countless lives!) to invest in his promised job creation and infrastructure repairs inside the United States. And then, maybe he’d get a modicum of respect from the majority of voters who elected his other electoral competitors.
Danny H.C. Li
Keaau
End of the line?
Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, says the Thirty Meter Telescope, if constructed, “may be the end of the line” of ground-based telescopes vs. space telescopes (page 73, The Economist, Nov 26, 2016).
Ground telescopes, even with adaptive optics (AO), are surpassed by space telescopes because Earth’s atmosphere interferes with ground telescopes (according to the Space Telescope Science Institute).
Why build the TMT?
Christopher J. Roehrig
Waimea
Mahalo, donors
Pahoa High &Intermediate School’s RTI Committee and NHS want to thank the following super generous donors that made our recent fundraiser a success: H. Eunice Nursery Inc., Kenneth Lee Nursery, Mountain Meadows Inc., Kapoho Kai Nursery, Behr’s Nursery and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Hedke. Mahalo!
Sheryl S. Ogawa
Teacher, Pahoa High &Intermediate School