StrangeSox

Lol

Gonna end in a tie

Lmao This is the best and dumbest game ever

So much holding not called on that play

great play design on that last screen

Those two red zone turnovers really, really hurting right now. D is gassed.

that was some pathetic effort on that

Completely different offense this half

Run to the store during half time and miss two TD's??

Bears offense not good

They could have forced McConnell to keep his caucus there, denying them the opportunity to campaign if they need to. And that's 2-3 fewer seats. Instead Chucky decided to make it easier for McConnell.

I already explained that they can go back and campaign either way. Schumer could and should fight every step up the way as McConnell did when he controlled the minority. Winning the Senate is a long-shot, but it's within the realm of possibility. That would then be 15 fewer court seats for reactionary Federalist Society hacks.

The Senate has always been a long shot this year. It's a brutal map for Democrats, and they only really have a hope of taking the chamber thanks to a miracle win in Alabama last year. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Republicans gain 2-3. As the minority party, you only need one member on the floor at a time to gum up the works, but it forces the majority to have at least 50 present. Schumer could have rotated through a number of Dems not up for election or in safe states and let the others go home to campaign, but he is terrible at his job so he agreed to let McConnell keep packing the courts. I don't know that many people would get all that wound up over some circuit judges. It certainly wouldn't be the big media story that a Supreme Court hearing is. e: good timing re: Kavanaugh. It doesn't break it down state by state, so it could hurt Democrats in the Senate, but Kavanaugh remains deeply unpopular the the GOP narrative that he's boosting their overall chances in November may be more wishful thinking than anything.

US Population: 325.7 million California population: 39.54 million (12.1%) New York population: 19.85 million (6.1%) Number of California representatives: 53 (12.2%) Number of New York representatives: (6.2%) Even in the House, thanks to the hard cap of 435 representatives, the largest states are disadvantaged. They have fewer representatives than their total population percentage would indicate. And that's one particular body, which doesn't include the Senate or the electoral College. Here's a nice table summary of the number of people per representative by state. Clearly shows that the less populated states are favored even in the House. California: ~660k residents per representative. Wyoming, ~180k. There would still be states without the current Senate structure or the EC. We have plenty of contemporary federal systems we can easily examine to see that. We can see that you can be a democratic republic without either of those things. You're not actually putting forth any affirmative reasons why it's justified to systematically disenfranchise larger population areas and give electoral minorities control of the government. I have no doubt that there are differences between Iowa and California, though they both share very strong agricultural output! But those differences don't mean that Iowa should get outsized influence in the federal government over California. Each individual American living in California should have the same voice as each individual American living in Iowa. Election and political outcomes would be different under different systems. I'm not sure why you think this is surprising to anyone. I am well aware of that. I'm also well aware that going to a popular vote for President and undoing other anti-majoritarian structures in our government won't guarantee that my preferred policies will win. Plenty of other republics that don't have the EC and our terrible Senate structure nevertheless still elect conservative governments. I would like reforms beyond simply changing the EC--Maine's implementation of ranked-choice voting will be interesting to watch. Hopefully other states move away from first-past-the-post systems as well, though many already force runoffs if someone is unable to get a majority in the first round. None of that is pushing for a parliamentary-style system where we don't have a directly elected President. If we're in a more majoritarian land where the Senate has been substantially reformed, Obama would only need majorities to pass his agenda rather than a supermajority in the Senate as I'd imagine the filibuster would be gone as well. It's also impossible to predict how voting would actually look in that sort of counter-factual, but sure it's possible that the ACA doesn't get passed. That doesn't mean I suddenly drop my support for paring back anti-democratic institutions. Even without the EC, in a first-past-the-post system, Lincoln would still have been President because we don't just combine the votes of the other candidates. We can look at LePage's wins in Maine as an example--the other two candidates split the liberal and center vote, so LePage won in a plurality. In a forced-runoff style system, he'd likely have lost in a head-to-head. In a ranked-choice system, he'd also likely have lost. Maybe Lincoln would have lost in those scenarios as well, and the stain of slavery would have continued. Then again, if not for the myriad compromises with slave powers to ensure that southern states maintained control of the federal government for decades, we likely wouldn't have the EC or the Senate in the first place! That's the danger of going down counterfactual history exercises--way too much "butterfly effect" to evaluate what would or could happen. Maybe if we don't capitulate to the slavers from the start, we don't get the better part of a century of chattel slavery followed by a bloody civil war followed by nearly a century of Jim Crow oppression.

Allegedly for violating FB's spam policies or multi-account policies, but those seem to be vague and applied arbitrarily. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/11/facebook-purged-over-accounts-pages-pushing-political-messages-profit/?utm_term=.efebe078fbe9 here's a partially compiled list https://heavy.com/news/2018/10/facebook-purge-list-deleted-accounts/ some of these seem like trash literal fake news pages, but then they're also shutting down police accountability and other organizing pages too.

Sure, it could. And for decades, we had the fairness doctrine for FCC licensed broadcasters. rabbit didn't bring up government intervention. He posted a story about facebook and twitter purging accounts, both left and right. How facebook and twitter (and youtube and others) will handle information is a worthwhile discussion whether or not "what the government ought to do about it" is central to it. We can come up with other worrying trends in social media (of course mine are going to be from the left viewpoint), here are a couple: Facebook has a "fact checker" function now. One of their five "fact checkers" is the long-time partisan conservative magazine Weekly Standard. They've allowed WS to flag liberal viewpoints as lies/not-factual. Youtube's recommendation algorithm is often gamed to produce increasing radical and conspiratorial recommendations to individuals You can't just up and start a viable competitor in the social media landscape, either. Many have tried and failed. There's huge barriers to entry there in gaining critical mass to be relevant and worthwhile.

Whether it runs afoul of the first amendment isn't the only thing worth considering or discussing. If social media sites are increasingly where people are getting their information, and there's only a few really big players, how those players can control and shape information is an important issue.

love our good and legitimate democracy

Our government is pressuring young immigrant children into signing away their legal protections. In this particular example, Helen is a 5 year old.

Duncan Hunter is also under multiple criminal indictments. It's a neck-and-neck race.

It's incredible how terrible Schumer is at being an opposition leader.

Seems like the Mueller investigation is still focused on potential collusion, not just obstruction.

Yeah, and it stretches back decades before Trump. He's just very vocal about not giving a shit about it.

Gonna keep selling billions in arms to the Saudis to help them murder thousands of Yemenis rather than hold them accountable for almost definitely murdering a journalist