u.s. politics: sundowning on the american empire

[Wethers]

14 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That could be achieved via internal Gerrymandering of State Legislative districts, but, again, you cannot Gerrymander US Senate elections because Senators are elected on a state wide basis.  The same is true for Presidential elections with the exception of Nebraska and Maine who both aportion some of their electoral votes based on districts.

I'm not sure I understand.  If a party gains full control of state legislature (and other offices), could they not use that for targeted voter suppression? Part of accomplishing this is winning the state legislature (via gerrymandering).

Wouldn't voter suppression then affect Senate and Presidential elections?  If you reduce the ability for those who would vote for the opposing party to vote it has an effect on the state-wide totals...  Close polling stations and so on.  Makes it easier for one party to win the Senate seat and the electoral votes for the state.

So gerrymandering to help gain full control of the state enables techniques (like voter suppression) to influence Senate and Presidential elections by suppressing turnout by opposing voters in subsequent elections.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, sologdin said:

cannot Gerrymander US Senate elections because Senators are elected on a state wide basis

am not recalling anything in art. I that prevents state-wide representatives. you know any attempts to make representatives at large, or any cases on it? it seems plausible, considering that small states have only one representative.

I would love to see that happen.  I think single member districts could be renamed single member fiefdoms and it wouldn’t be inaccurate.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Wethers said:

I'm not sure I understand.  If a party gains full control of state legislature (and other offices), could they not use that for targeted voter suppression? Part of accomplishing this is winning the state legislature (via gerrymandering).

Wouldn't voter suppression then affect Senate and Presidential elections?  If you reduce the ability for those who would vote for the opposing party to vote it has an effect on the state-wide totals...  Close polling stations and so on.  Makes it easier for one party to win the Senate seat and the electoral votes for the state.

So gerrymandering to help gain full control of the state enables techniques (like voter suppression) to influence Senate and Presidential elections by suppressing turnout by opposing voters in subsequent elections.

Yes.  But what you are describing isn’t “Gerrymandering”.  It is targeted voter suppression based upon the results of internal state elections that are impacted by Gerrymandering.  That is two steps removed from actual Gerrymandering in US Senate or Presidential elections three steps from SCOTUS nominations and confirmation.

That’s my point.  

[DMC]

16 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I would love to see that happen.  I think single member districts could be renamed single member fiefdoms and it wouldn’t be inaccurate.

Abolishing single member districts is not unconstitutional, but I guarantee if anybody seriously tried the Federalist Society crowd would make sure their guys on the bench struck it down.  Regardless, here's a good rundown on the institutionalization of single-member districts.  It would be easier to try to change the size of SCOTUS than trying to punch that ocean.

[Wethers]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yes.  But what you are describing isn’t “Gerrymandering”.  It is targeted voter suppression based upon the results of internal state elections that are impacted by Gerrymandering.  That is two steps removed from actual Gerrymandering in US Senate or Presidential elections three steps from SCOTUS nominations and confirmation.

That’s my point.  

Sure, but current reality is that targeted voter suppression is essentially a given if Republicans (maybe even Democrats, don't know) win full control of the state.  So it's not really a step, just nature taking its course, or am I overstating things?  And due to the 100% politicization of the SCOTUS nomination process, it is essentially also automatic that if a party controls the Senate they will block any nomination they don't want, and if they also have the Presidency, they will ram through politically favorable nominations to SCOTUS.

So saying Gerrymandering is 3 steps from gaining SCOTUS seats is (to make an extreme analogy) sort of like saying no it wasn't the extra dry brush and twigs I threw on the small fire in the forest that caused the giant forest fire.  It was the person that caused the initial spark or dropped something that was lit.  Then later, it was the fact that the dry grass was adjacent to dry trees and acres of dry brush which caused the fire to spread.  And much of that only happened due to warmer climates and death of trees due to attack from a larger insect population thriving in warmer temperatures.  My adding kindling was just one among many steps.  Gerrymandering is the adding of kindling in this (admittedly tortured) analogy.  Sure it is just one step, but it is a significant contributor to the overall end result.

[ThinkerX]

a temporary bit of good news, though there appears to be an inexhaustible supply of horrible candidates:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-his-choice-for-us-spy-chief-has-decided-to-stay-in-congress/ar-AAFfenm?fbclid=IwAR2Lf9FnI1o3AwvrbBI6O2uSrQBYDiwJFeTd-bEzP6thl_Ca9MHtTo6aoyA

 

WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he had dropped his choice for spy chief, Representative John Ratcliffe, after questions about the congressman's lack of experience and possible exaggerations in his resume.

Trump blamed unflattering news coverage for fellow-Republican Ratcliffe's decision to bow out of the nomination process and instead remain in Congress.

"Rather than going through months of slander and libel, I explained to John how miserable it would be for him and his family to deal with these people," Trump said on Twitter.

"John has therefore decided to stay in Congress."

[DMC]

@Triskele, thought the latest 538 slack chat would be of interest:  

Quote

On Thursday evening, GOP Rep. Will Hurd of Texas’s 23rd Congressional District said that he would not seek reelection in 2020. Hurd is the sixth GOP representative to announce retirement in the past two weeks and the eighth so far in 2019.

There were, of course, also a lot of GOP retirements in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections — at least 23, according to our count.

So what’s happening this year? Should we expect another big wave of GOP retirements? And more importantly, what do we think is driving Republicans to retire (or even leave the party): Is it fear of a primary challenger because they aren’t “Trumpy” enough, or is it fear that the GOP will not win back the House majority in 2020?

 

[Martell Spy]

25 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

a temporary bit of good news, though there appears to be an inexhaustible supply of horrible candidates:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-says-his-choice-for-us-spy-chief-has-decided-to-stay-in-congress/ar-AAFfenm?fbclid=IwAR2Lf9FnI1o3AwvrbBI6O2uSrQBYDiwJFeTd-bEzP6thl_Ca9MHtTo6aoyA

 

 

 

Trump is blaming the media. I thought he was going to muzzle those people and now they are dictating his picks?

Quote

 

According to my colleague Adam Rawnsley, Erickson has written at least 19 tweets referencing Buttigieg since April—it’s hard to tell how many precisely because he has deleted his recent Twitter history.

On Resurgent Erickson has written six times about Buttigieg since April, with five columns written on April 8 and April 9, and the sixth this week. (He has written about Joe Biden seven times.)

The tweets, columns, and condemnation suggest Erickson is truly vexed not just by Buttigieg and his sexuality, but also furious that he invokes his own faith when challenging Trump and his supporters.

 

Erick Erickson, It’s Time to Get Out of Pete Buttigieg’s Bedroom
Erick Erickson seems creepily focused on Pete Buttigieg’s sexuality, and alleged hypocrisy. He would do better to take in Buttigieg’s message about Christian behavior and ethics.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/erick-erickson-its-time-to-get-out-of-pete-buttigiegs-bedroom?ref=home

[ThinkerX]

a (temporary?) liberal victory of sorts on immigration (asylum)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/federal-judge-rules-against-trump-asylum-policy/ar-AAFfmEA?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=msnclassic

Moss found in Friday's ruling that the policy is in conflict with the law, which states that "any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival...), irrespective of such alien's status, may apply for asylum."

The administration had argued that the policy doesn't block the migrants who enter the U.S. outside of a legal port of entry, but rather that they were ineligible for asylum in the first place.

But Moss disagreed, finding that there is little difference between the two interpretations, particularly for the immigrants impacted by it.

"As a matter of common usage, no one would draw a meaningful distinction, for example, between a rule providing that children may not apply for a driver's license and one providing that children are not eligible to receive a driver's license," he wrote. "Both locutions mean the same thing."

[Zorral]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-democrats-majority-impeachment-inquiry-donald-trump_n_5d4316c4e4b0ca604e2ebeca

Quote

The number of House Democrats calling for an impeachment inquiry reached 118  with the support of Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) on Friday, and now includes more than half of the 235-person Democratic caucus. (Other news outlets have previously reported that a majority of House Democrats supported an impeachment inquiry. HuffPost has only been counting explicit and open calls for an inquiry, and not hedged statements that a member would support impeachment under certain conditions. The majority threshold for those had not been reached until now.)

....The Democratic caucus milestone still leaves impeachment supporters far short of the 218 votes they need in the House to begin the process, as Congress did in the cases of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/02/more-than-half-house-democrats-support-an-impeachment-inquiry-so-why-isnt-there-one-yet/?

Quote

 

It’s possible that nothing will happen as a result of this milestone.

That’s largely because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been resolute that starting down the impeachment path would be the wrong move for Democrats if they want to keep their majority. Pelosi is the one person in Congress who has the authority to stop the impeachment train before it gets rolling because, well, she’s the boss. And she’s well aware that a lot of her caucus still doesn’t support impeachment.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/02/brittany-kaisers-work-with-cambridge-analytica-helped-elect-donald-trump-shes-hoping-world-will-forgive-her/?

Quote

 

What followed was a highly public — and still unfinished — quest for moral redemption that has played out across the globe and, now, in a Netflix documentary called “The Great Hack,” released July 24. It includes images of Kaiser up to her shoulders in a giant pool under an impossibly blue sky in Thailand, uncertain what to do. And it later depicts Kaiser, in a far more determined frame of mind, testifying before the British Parliament about the many unsavory deeds of her former employer and warning of the ongoing privacy threats posed by Facebook, whose dealings with Cambridge Analytica resulted in July in more than $5 billion in U.S. fines.

But two important elements are missing from the film. The first is Kaiser’s private meetings with British and U.S. prosecutors, including those from then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office, which she recently detailed in interviews with The Washington Post. In these she also explained her visit with Assange in 2017 and how close she came during the hottest days of the Cambridge Analytica scandal to turning over the entirety of her hard drive to WikiLeaks for publication online.

The second missing element is a decisive moment of reckoning for Kaiser, during which she fully acknowledges her role in matters she now regards as wrong and possibly illegal. She repeatedly calls herself a “whistleblower” but viewers of the film may wonder: Why didn’t she blow the whistle a little sooner — ideally before Cambridge Analytica’s misdeeds had become front-page news worldwide?

 

 

[Bonnot OG]

 

[all swedes are racist]

7 minutes ago, Bonnot OG said:

 

yeah, was reading about that the other week. utterly insane it’s not a bigger news story

[Bonnot OG]

7 minutes ago, a good and nice guy said:

yeah, was reading about that the other week. utterly insane it’s not a bigger news story

Nah, the biggest news from PDX was about Andy Ngo and his lies, not that there is a literal Nazi cop and how that the department  is okay with it. Which would also explain why that department makes up shit like cement in milkshakes, which ignored the science of what sugar does to it, and their refusal to retract that statement,  or the refusal to actually arrest any far right individual apart of Patriot Prayer / Proud Boys etc after they mass assault individuals and cause s riot. The mayor in that city has to be one of the most spineless scumfuck mayors in the US. 

[Bonnot OG]

Cany wait for the Cheney family to go extinct. Just such terrible bigoted people.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

Erick Erickson, It’s Time to Get Out of Pete Buttigieg’s Bedroom
Erick Erickson seems creepily focused on Pete Buttigieg’s sexuality, and alleged hypocrisy. He would do better to take in Buttigieg’s message about Christian behavior and ethics.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/erick-erickson-its-time-to-get-out-of-pete-buttigiegs-bedroom?ref=home

I listened to a long form interview he did on NPR like a year ago (1A I think) and he made it unmistakably clear that he's a religious bigot (i.e., if you don't adhere to his specific sect, you're less than him). It must be mindf***ing him that a gay man can speak more eloquently about their religion than he can. 

[The Mother of The Others]

Xoxo

 

 

 

On 8/1/2019 at 12:21 PM, TrueMetis said:

Remember, the Republican focus on "illegal" immigration is just a starting point.

Is that unfounded fear something you're just spreading around for others to hear, imagining that this helps the cause, or does it actually trouble you?   Because it's the kind of paranoia that doesn't serve you and will lead people who get a whif of it to dismiss you along with your other more grounded concerns.   Dad had similar fears about Obama declaring martial law after some legal changes went through quietly.   I suspect it was really due to analysts' worries at the time that the dollar could implode, so the gov started gathering guns, etc., to "endure" in a nightmare scenario where americans were crashing the barricades to loot whatever was left.   But dad saw this as, "Aha!  Watch him, he's going to declare martial law!"    And my message to him was the same as to you now: you're letting the worry machine get the better of you.   The stated border issue is the actual issue.   If it did grow into something else, you'd have me on your side to fight it along with the ultramajority of Americans , even those you guys are currently branding as racists because it's fun and addictive.   So do yourself a favor and relax on that one, really.  Important lesson to keep in mind.  When you demonize the opponent, you end up keeping yourself up at night with demonic worries entirely of your own making.

On 8/1/2019 at 7:01 AM, Zorral said:

 I HATE THE MEDIA, particularly TV.

It's refreshing to hear that from you guys.   It should be US, not Trump, telling the media to stop doing fan service, take their egos and opinions out of it, and pour their energy back into doing the news properly.  To inform.   and let the viewer decide.

On 8/1/2019 at 11:02 AM, aceluby said:

It's like they were going for Republican street cred more than anything.

Didn't really bother to grade CNN, but they came off as "less weird than NBC," if that helps.   The opening pageantry maybe was to show all voters, "We're patriotic too!  .....Honestly!   ....Right?"    But the questions were less about republican influence ("Trump racism" was part of some questions) and moreso just them wanting to keep it from being a dud.  You shake up a snow globe.   Cuz why have a debate and not shake things up.  Your physical science teacher makes things fizz and explode to show Science! in action.   Political Science, same thing.  It was going to be pummeling time anyway.  Giving fodder to republicans was unavoidable.  So have fun with it, said CNN.

On 8/1/2019 at 1:27 PM, Fragile Bird said:

And that Grindr, the gay dating site, is owned by a Chinese company 

So that's why there's so many jokes about random people's pics looking like a grindr profile.    I've heard what soviet communism thinks of gays, but china not so much.  Massive re-edcation centers wouldn't surprise me, it's being done for other "offenses." They're trying to go high tech with controlling their populace, maybe them having all those gay I.D.s is ominous to the point of whoa.  

23 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

As for Booker, .

I'm a pro at critquing Hillary as a space alien, but I don't feel that way about Booker.  Maybe some of you have seen local coverage of him for years and are speaking from that vantage point?  Because he immediately captured my interest at the first debate.   

Quote

Very disappointed by Harris. Tired? Maybe. To me, she seemed constantly annoyed, Arrogant? Dismisive? I cannot put my finger on it, but I didn't like it.

Yang.

The sitdown segment with her afterwards had her speaking in a more relaxed setting to  [Their grayhaired ace newsanchor] and Kamala was..... I can imagine that Kamala being my president without me constantly twitching like I would have under a Hillary administration.   She is in sort of uncharted territory for "how to be."   Maybe she didn't want to pitbull all the time like in debate 1, cuz of optics.

And also.....  YANG!    Yang embracing math also makes him the opposite of Warren.   I did like him, and his after conversation too.  Bonnot sounds really biased by trying to run Yang down as an undesireable, just saying.  Yang is totally desireable.  Not that I'm on grindr or anything  (Yet.)   But I may be gay for Yang.   I wonder if he'd pick someone named Yin as a running mate, or would that be too much.   He's more than just that bui proposal.  Don't let him do that, but maybe have him visibly working on projects during the next dem administration.

21 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Democrats Still Haven’t Learned Their Lesson About the Courts, the presidential candidates still don’t have a plan for Mitch.

Ah, so this is why Mitch is satan lately in things I overhear.   He's always been unlikable.   Unlike Yang.  (Too soon for a Yang callback?)

20 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

as well as massive voter suppression, 

In Cali we have voter unsuppression.   Like, a card carrying dem knocks on your door on election day if, asks you if you have a ballot laying around that he/she could deliver to the polling place for you.  How nice.  Kindhearted, really.   Inviting all kinds of election fraud seems to be the way of things in this blue state, making it legal to do what's properly illegal elsewhere, like in some Carolinas type state where the same thing resulted in a scandal.  Here it's par for the course.  And just about the last 2 republicans in the state lost their seats after "winning" on election night because of all the new fun and games.  So corruptafornia proves that permament problems accrue no matter who comes to "own" a state.

20 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

"That's a load of crap"

"That's a load of crap"

Am I seeing double?

That kind of doublecrap is what you get after eating at Chipotle.

16 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

Baltimore..... I need to pick my battles or I'm not going to make it to the election 

And just think, the election is still like 5 years away.   (In Biden years).    

My thing about Baltimore is the people there must be totally racist 1000% because they're constantly talking about the rats and how much it sucks.   See what I'm saying about the racism thing becoming meaningless when it's used every hour on the hour.  Starts to sound like a dem brain coocoo clock.

5 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

There are now more Republicans named Jim in Congress than there are women who have announced they will be running for the Republicans. 

Sometimes I'll finish a sentence with, "...... , Jim."     Just because.  It started as a Jim Nance sportscaster joke thing during football, but now I do it outside of that & I don't care if the person I'm talking to is a Jim or not.  Fuck it.

[TrueMetis]

18 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Is that unfounded fear something you're just spreading around for others to hear, imagining that this helps the cause, or does it actually trouble you?   Because it's the kind of paranoia that doesn't serve you and will lead people who get a whif of it to dismiss you along with your other more grounded concerns.   Dad had similar fears about Obama declaring martial law after some legal changes went through quietly.   I suspect it was really due to analysts' worries at the time that the dollar could implode, so the gov started gathering guns, etc., to "endure" in a nightmare scenario where americans were crashing the barricades to loot whatever was left.   But dad saw this as, "Aha!  Watch him, he's going to declare martial law!"    And my message to him was the same as to you now: you're letting the worry machine get the better of you.   The stated border issue is the actual issue.   If it did grow into something else, you'd have me on your side to fight it along with the ultramajority of Americans , even those you guys are currently branding as racists because it's fun and addictive.   So do yourself a favor and relax on that one, really.  Important lesson to keep in mind.  When you demonize the opponent, you end up keeping yourself up at night with demonic worries entirely of your own making.

Are you really this stupid? Legal immigrants and just straight up US citizens are already being arrested by ICE. ICE has had it's power massively increased which will only exacerbate that issue. And the US president just recently told 3 people born in the US, and a 4th who's been a US citizen for 19 years to go back to where they came from.

This isn't an unfounded fear, this is shit that's already happening. It's not demonizing anyone to point out the shit they are actually doing. Like did you not see the post about the 13yr old who's carrying around a copy of his passport in the hopes it will protect him from this shit?

[Rippounet]

28 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Is that unfounded fear something you're just spreading around for others to hear, imagining that this helps the cause, or does it actually trouble you?

Google "denaturalization task force."

[Zorral]

18 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Are you really this stupid? Legal immigrants and just straight up US citizens are already being arrested by ICE. ICE has had it's power massively increased which will only exacerbate that issue. And the US president just recently told 3 people born in the US, and a 4th who's been a US citizen for 19 years to go back to where they came from.

This isn't an unfounded fear, this is shit that's already happening. It's not demonizing anyone to point out the shit they are actually doing. Like did you not see the post about the 13yr old who's carrying around a copy of his passport in the hopes it will protect him from this shit?

In Georgia, Puerto Ricans, who are US citizens, and when living on the US mainland can vote in all the elections, have had their citizenship documentation papers and passports taken away from them at the DMV when applying for new drivers licenses.  The pretext is 1) you must prove you're a US citizen; 2) when the documentation is handed over, it is taken away and never returned.  Then you can be deported to goddessa knows where.  It has happened.  There was a long report about this on NPR last month.

 

[drawkcabi]

 

36 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Are you really this stupid? Legal immigrants and just straight up US citizens are already being arrested by ICE. ICE has had it's power massively increased which will only exacerbate that issue. And the US president just recently told 3 people born in the US, and a 4th who's been a US citizen for 19 years to go back to where they came from.

This isn't an unfounded fear, this is shit that's already happening. It's not demonizing anyone to point out the shit they are actually doing. Like did you not see the post about the 13yr old who's carrying around a copy of his passport in the hopes it will protect him from this shit?

Yeah, all you have to do is listen and realize for most people who aren't white, straight, and a natural born U.S. citizen it's not paranoia it's legitimate fear. I don't throw the term "white privilege" around lightly, I know it exists though and a big one is feeling confident in being able to dismiss the well founded fears others are crying out about as paranoia or blowing things out of proportion. People are afraid for their freedom and even their lives for good reasons and the least we can do is believe them when they point it out. 

 

So then,

1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Sometimes I'll finish a sentence with, "...... , Jim."     Just because.  It started as a Jim Nance sportscaster joke thing during football, but now I do it outside of that & I don't care if the person I'm talking to is a Jim or not.  Fuck it, Jim.

No?