U.S. Politics: You Didn't Think It Would Be So Easy, Did You?

[Tywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, Mexal said:

But his job was governed by specific DOJ rules. He gave Jr a pass because he couldn't prove Jr knew the laws and in a court of law where you prosecute said crime, that matters since it's a major deciding factor on whether it is a crime or not. Drawing up an indictment just so he can lose in a court room doesn't help anyone. At the end of the day, the actions are still explained and bad. It's up to the Dems to do something about that (i.e., hold public hearings and get this shit on TV). It's their fault they haven't, not Mueller's.

And therein lies one of the major flaws of the judicial system. Far too often prosecutors care more about their winning percentage than executing justice, and frankly I’ve heard a ton of former prosecutors say that it’s BS that he would lose. It really would just come down to the jury and judge you’re dealt, but that shouldn’t be the reason why you don’t indict someone. And furthermore, the key word you used was “rule.” It’s not a law, and a more liberal prosecutor might have been willing to indict several more people, including the president for obstruction.  

[Mexal]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

And therein lies one of the major flaws of the judicial system. Far too often prosecutors care more about their winning percentage than executing justice, and frankly I’ve heard a ton of former prosecutors say that it’s BS that he would lose. It really would just come down to the jury and judge you’re dealt, but that shouldn’t be the reason why you don’t indict someone. And furthermore, the key word you used was “rule.” It’s not a law, and a more liberal prosecutor might have been willing to indict several more people, including the president for obstruction.  

DOJ rules are law for the DOJ. They stand by them. All indictments had to go through the DOJ. Mueller didn't have final say on the indictments.

[Tywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

This is mostly academic, but why would you be creating two eastern states, when there are virtually no people in those states?  The whole point of splitting up California is to take an administrative superstate and create states that are more manageable.  If you are splitting up the state into 8 states that are roughly even population, you're probably going to get at most two of the eight that are Republican leaning, and that's assuming that the lines are drawn in a specifically nonpartisan manner.

Yes, it is academic, if for nothing else than it would be impossible to settle the hypothetical water disputes. But I am going in assuming the states would not be of equal size. You’d need three states based around the Bay Area, L.A. and San Diego, which means the states wouldn’t be of equal size whether you split it up into five or eight states. San Diego is fairly conservative, and a lot of the remaining areas are as well, or at least they’d be toss ups. The more you’d expand it, the worse it would be for Democrats.

[Mexal]

Also, here are the full remarks. Pretty clear what he was doing.

 

[Tywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, Mexal said:

DOJ rules are law for the DOJ. They stand by them. All indictments had to go through the DOJ. Mueller didn't have final say on the indictments.

He could have easily recommended indictments and forced Barr to overrule him. Instead he said, “Hey Congress, lookie here” and let Barr set the narrative. Mueller brought a spoon to a knife fight, and he knew he was doing so. That’s why he was the wrong man for the job.

[Mexal]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

He could have easily recommended indictments and forced Barr to overrule him. Instead he said, “Hey Congress, lookie here” and let Barr set the narrative. Mueller brought a spoon to a knife fight, and he knew he was doing so. That’s why he was the wrong man for the job.

Dude, his job wasn't to take down the presidency or his children. It was to conduct an impartial investigation, indict where he could get a Grand Jury to indict based on the law and write a report on what he found and why he indicted or didn't indict. That was his job and he did it. His report is pretty fucking clear that there was ethical and potential criminal wrongdoing that they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt but that is very serious. It's Congress' job to do everything else and Nancy Pelosi does not want to do anything. That's the issue, not Bob Mueller's lack of indictments.

[Tywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Dude, his job wasn't to take down the presidency or his children. It was to conduct an impartial investigation, indict where he could get a Grand Jury to indict based on the law and write a report on what he found and why he indicted or didn't indict. That was his job and he did it. His report is pretty fucking clear that there was ethical and potential criminal wrongdoing that they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt but that is very serious. It's Congress' job to do everything else and Nancy Pelosi does not want to do anything. That's the issue, not Bob Mueller's lack of indictments.

You think he did his job? Not interviewing the two most important witnesses is not doing your f’ing job, and when the reason you didn’t do it was because it would have taken a while, you clearly failed your duty. Again, numerous prosecutors have come out and said they would have done so much differently, and even with the evidence he found, they would have concluded that there was enough there to indict. Mueller has a very conservative view of the law, and that’s why the Trumps skated.

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You think he did his job? Not interviewing the two most important witnesses is not doing your f’ing job, and when the reason you didn’t do it was because it would have taken a while, you clearly failed your duty. Again, numerous prosecutors have come out and said they would have done so much differently, and even with the evidence he found, they would have concluded that there was enough there to indict. Mueller has a very conservative view of the law, and that’s why the Trumps skated.

Yes, Bob Mueller is a Republican with a narrow view of the law who was appointed by a Republican. Not sure what else you expected. As for interviewing Trump, he would have been in litigation for over 2 years. Just what the nation needs, another 2 years of speculating on what Bob Mueller's report will say. At the end of the day, there is enough evidence in there to say the Russians tried to help Trump, Trump's campaign were open to those invitations in multiple instances and Trump obstructed justice in at least 6 different instances. That is in the report and spelled out in detail. Congress can do a lot with that and is choosing not to. If you want to blame Bob Mueller for not interviewing the president when he didn't need evidence and couldn't indict him, go for it. If you're interested in blaming Bob Mueller for not interviewing Jr when he basically said he'd claim the 5th towards all the questions, go for it.

I'm more interested in blaming my Congressmen for being terrible when there is more than enough information in there to start impeachment proceedings and making this a public spectacle.  Mueller basically threw them yet another bone today by saying as much ("I couldn't indict the president, there are other mechanisms to hold the President accountable for wrong doing. If I could clear the President of obstruction, I would have said so." And with that, I'm done with this argument.

[Melifeather]

Mueller basically said they have enough evidence, but believe it's unconstitutional to indict a sitting President. Furthermore, since they cannot indict, they also don't want to make an official statement as to his guilt or innocence, because they believe people should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. In a nutshell, it's up to Congress to impeach the President. The House needs to impeach, but the Senate would never find him guilty as long as Mitch McConnel is Majority Leader. IMO the House should still do it, because it's the right thing to do, and his core supporters need to know they're backing a criminal. The office of the Presidency will be forever tainted if no one tries to hold him accountable! Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi believes impeachment would damage the Democrats in the next election - but I strongly disagree! It's more important to me that the House do the right thing and stand on principle than to do what is politically expedient. That being said, I understand her position, because Trump can still be indicted once he leaves office even if he's not impeached. 

[Zorral]

To my ears Mueller seemed to be saying, in such a low key, there is plenty here to impeach, and was suggesting that they do it.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mueller-report-russia-trump-investigation-statement_n_5cee9340e4b0975ccf5e9f24

Quote

 

Robert Mueller Reiterates Investigation Didn’t Exonerate Trump, Points To Impeachment

 Robert Mueller on Wednesday encouraged Americans to read his special counsel report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and reiterated his office’s position that, while President Donald Trump could not be charged with a crime while in office, that doesn’t amount to an exoneration.

“If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” Mueller said at a press conference at Justice Department headquarters in which he also announced his resignation. “A President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. ... Charging the President with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.”

Mueller’s remarks alluded to impeachment, saying that the U.S. Constitution “requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” Mueller said his office was “guided by principles of fairness” and that it “would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of an actual charge.”....

 

In the meantime, AOC frequently begins her morning ritual with coffee while vetting her death threats.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-death-threats_n_5cee2a99e4b0ae671058ffcf

Quote

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reveals Chilling Morning Ritual In Face Of Death Threats
“I‘ve had mornings where I wake up & the 1st thing I do w/ my coffee is review photos of the men (it’s always men) who want to kill me,” ....

....She ended the day on a lighter note, however, by teasing a return to bartending in her congressional district “to promote a national living wage.”

“Let’s see if my margarita+mocktail game is still on point,” she wrote....

 

 

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

He could have easily recommended indictments and forced Barr to overrule him. Instead he said, “Hey Congress, lookie here” and let Barr set the narrative. Mueller brought a spoon to a knife fight, and he knew he was doing so. That’s why he was the wrong man for the job.

See this is just all wrong. Mueller was the perfect man for the job. A good soldier Republican who would take a schellacking for the party and president. 

Everybody wins.

[lokisnow]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Maybe if you keep it to three, but five would mean you’d have NorCal, South Central, Southern and two random states based on Eastern Cali. NorCal and South Central would give you four Democrats and Southern would give you two Republicans. It’s not unthinkable, based on a few different ways to carve them up, that the two Eastern states would give you four Republicans. If you expand that to Loki’s eight, I think it would go even more in the favor of Republicans.

Texas is really tricky. I could see it play out as you described, but I could also see just two Democrats coming out of the greater Austin area and then maybe there’d be one other state that is competitive while the other three states are deep red.

Ultimately I think splitting states up would be a terrible idea, and I think it would spread across the nation with Democrats taking huge losses. What we need is a Constitutional Convention, but we are not at a place where that can occur in a healthy fashion.

Actually no, regarding California, because of how you would need to divide the states geographically and economically, you can't create a small (million people) rural northern california state, it would be too poor you have to leave it with major GDP and urban areas. and the same holds true for the rest of the state, you have to divide the bay area into three states and southern california into four states. 

Northern California would maintain both Marin County, and Sacramento, incluing Solano, Sonoma, Napa and San Joaquin counties. That gets you to 4.5 million, with about 3 million plus in the urban areas. This makes Nor Cal lean blue, but it might be swingable if the rurals vote greater than 75% republican.

The south East Bay and San Jose (three counties, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara) comprise a state of 4.5 million that would rival New York for wealth, and would certainly be solidly dem

The san francisco peninsula would snake down (SF, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey San Benito, Stanislaus, Merced, Fresno, Kings & Tulare counties) and gather up the central part of the state to get to 4.5 million, This would actually be a bit swingier than Nor Cal, but still probably safely dem, as the high latino population in the central valley that democrats have always ignored could be harvested and activated because such voters have a lot more value in a smaller state.

Eastern California would extend from Sierra and Yuba counties, all the way down to San Bernadino County and half of Riverside county to get to 4.5 million, this would possibly be the most republican state, but San Bernadino has also been systematically disinvested and ignored by democrats for decades, and there are a lot of potential voters they've never bothered to activate, democrats could probably make this state competitive year in and year out. 

Southern California would be Imperial, San Diego and about half of riverside County. This is traditionally seen as strongly republican, but San Diego is swingy, and since you cannot combine it with Orange county (too many people if you combined them), it is not actually solidly republican

Orange County would be combined into a state of 4.5 million by taking about 25% of LA County, that means contiguous with the border of LA county is shares, which is East LA county more or less. while some small pieces of those parts of LA are republican, the bulk of that population is Intensely liberal, and since OC has trended significantly less republican in recent years, you probably get another very swingy state, particularly as it forces democrats to invest in all the voters they've ignored, both in OC and in East LA.

About Half of LA county survives as it's own state (Long Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu, South Central, Crenshaw Hollywood, Downtown some of the Valley), given the county itself is physically significantly larger than Rhode Island, this isn't particularly problematic. 

the last 25% of LA county (north county pieces and some north west parts of the valley) is combined with Ventura, Bakersfield, Santa Barbera and SLO) to make the eighth state of 4.5 million. this again, would be a swingy state. 

By my count that makes 8 solid democrat sentators, 6 swingy senators, and 2 weak leaning republican senators. 

And at least four of those swing seats would be lean democrat seats if the democrat party were forced to stop disinvesting in and ignoring their allies and potential voters, which only happens in smaller states situation.

Texas is similar. A 4.5 million population state in the north west of Texas would be the ONLY solid Republican senate seats.

A 4.5 million state on the southern border would be solidly democrat.

a 4.5 million state centered around Houston would be solidly democrat.

a 4.5 million central texas state centered around Austin would be lean democrat to swing

a 4.5 million north east texas state with dallas ft worth would be lean democrat to swing.

And again, the same holds true, in smaller states, democrats have a ton more value to reap in not ignoring voters and and allies, and could transform those swing states to lean democrat states.

(I say 4.5 million because that's 0.75x the average population of the states, and thus establishes a floor under which new states may not go under, it also limits the number of states eligible to split up to those with 9 million or more).

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

See this is just all wrong. Mueller was the perfect man for the job. A good soldier Republican who would take a schellacking for the party and president. 

Everybody wins.

Nah, Mueller just made a messy situation even worse. We’re all losing.

[lokisnow]

I've posted something similar to this before.

Pass a law saying any state has the assent of congress to divide into a smaller state so long as it meets the following preconditions:

No new state may have a population less than 75% the average population of the current states nor more than 125% the average population of the current states.

Counties may not be divided between states, unless the county has a population greater than 25% of the average population of the states and is also physically larger than the area of the smallest state.

If a county is subdivided, city boundaries shall be used instead of county boundaries, contiguity shall be maintained, and if unincorporated parts of a county shall be divided using rivers and bodies of water, Mountain ranges, interstates or state highways as boundaries.

Upon dividing into smaller states, new federal elections must be held within 90 days, to be administered by the previous large state government as its final act of existence.

the new smaller states place themselves under the preclearance jurisdiction of the justice department for a period of thirty years, and the justice department will oversee the decomposition and subdivision of the old state power/water/etc governance issues to the new states and the formation of treaties and agreements governing what were previously shared resources within a single state. Like a large infrastructure project, the justice department will have to create a road map to decompose the states, and make at least two percent progress in unwinding the old state every year, if after thirty years the process of unwinding the former large state is not complete, the preclearance jurisdiction shall extend automatically for another thirty years.

Even after rolling down the averages after you add states, only the twelve most populous states would be eligible to divide. and some may not want to.

[Tywin et al.]

34 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

snip

How are you going to break up L.A.?

Also, shout out to Marin Co., the most beautiful place in America I’ve seen not called Miami.

[Jace, Extat]

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

We’re all losing.

Not the people that matter.

[lokisnow]

20 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

How are you going to break up L.A.?

Also, shout out to Marin Co., the most beautiful place in America I’ve seen not called Miami.

LA county is about 10 million people in 12,000 sq km comprising 88 cities and about a million people in unincorporated areas with a nominal GDP of 700 Billion per annum.

So given the above parameters of 4.5 million (floor) to 7.7 million (ceiling) you have a lot of options in how to divide the county.

The city of Los Angeles and Long Beach are together about 4.25 million, of the other 86 cities, only two cities are more than 200k, and only 11 are more than 100k. so that gives you an immense amount of flexibility in how to devise the boundaries. 

given the distinct geographical boundary of the San Gabriel mountains, the antelope valley and mojave desert portions of the county would probably be apportioned to and contiguous with the state to the northwest (Bakersfield and Ventura areas), anchored by Palmdale, Lancaster, and Santa Clarita, these three areas are three of the larger cities in Los Angeles county.

The trickiest part is in sorting out the 76 unincorporated areas of Los angeles county, which is ten percent of the total population of the county.

[lokisnow]

Thinking about who would be Biden’s veep

Bernie lol no

warren is out, she’d rather be in the senate and we are Scott brown gun shy as a party, also Charlie baker

harris is good, but Biden does not seem to need to shore up black support and Harris biggest weakness overlaps with one of Biden’s key vulnerabilities: tough on crime, may be risky

abrahms does not have that vulnerability but is a more Vulnerable to Sarah palin inexperience attack’s, and again, Biden’s numbers are so good with minorities he may not need to shore up that flank

booker is good but it might be too much of a flip flop of the Obama years, but highly likely

beto is possible, he’s from the south but no one cares about the south, and he’s no Johnson (gonna deliver Texas).

buttigieg seems highly likely at this point, and he shores up Biden’s weakest point (age). Something symmetric about the oldest nominee and the youngest nominee. Also vulnerable to sarah palin style attacks, but buttigieg seems more than verbally capable of quelling all such doubts.

the rest of the field seem like at best cabinet positions for Biden, or they go run for senate.

[lokisnow]

These graphs are fire :

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/29/gen-z-millennials-and-gen-x-outvoted-older-generations-in-2018-midterms/

but I am most impressed that gen z, in their first ever midterm election, turned out 30% that is fucking incredible for 18-21 year olds. For comparison, millennials and gen x only turned out 23% in their first midterm. and that gen z turnout was enough to make them 4% of the ballots cast.

Btw, gen z (age 18-24) will be 10% of eligible voters in 2020, if they beat millennials 2008 turnout rate by 7% or more in the presidential? Goddamn that’d be something, especially as young people are distributed across ALL the states and are present in rural urban and Suburban locales unlike minorities.

For point of comparison, millennial voters 18-24 made up 10% of the ballots cast in 2008, I haven’t found what the turnout percentage was though.

[DMC]

This post-hoc whining about Mueller is ludicrous.  Could a more aggressive prosecutor have indicted Junior?  Probably, but that's an even bigger political risk if he's not convicted - imagine the Trump vindication tweets there.  Other than that gripe, Mueller's office did exactly what they said they were gonna do.  You wanna bitch about something, bitch about the House Dems.

10 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

For point of comparison, millennial voters 18-24 made up 10% of the ballots cast in 2008, I haven’t found what the turnout percentage was though.

The U.S. Elections Project is a great resource for questions like this.  While it's not shown by the raw data that page offers, this graph shows that 18-29 year olds in 2008 (which basically makeup millennials) had a little less than 50% turnout.