StrangeSox

They were silly not to do it then but we're where we are today. I get sad that a conservative minority gets default control over the majority unless the majority wins by a huge margin. PR and DC would be relatively low-pop states, anyway, so conservatives should *love* giving more low-pop people a voice in government! Dc would be 51st and PR would be 31st. Right up your alley of making sure every American citizen gets an adequate voice in government. edit: for real, the entire history of the US Senate beyond the original 13 states and statehood admission is "terraforming the legislature." The Senate is a really bad system but that's been the workaround from Day 1. Every new state admission has been a political battle about what its boundaries should be because they'd determine political power in Congress. It's why we have two Dakotas! edit: @Quin good point on PR. It's internal politics don't map directly to the rest of the US politics exactly, but they do regularly elect conservative politicians to office there. It's a state that's more likely than not going to send two Dem Senators, but not always.

There's not really much more slope to go down unless the US starts annexing and conquering other territories as far as statehood goes, though They're American citizens who are subject to federal law without representation. They deserve representation and a vote. There's currently a very heavy skew across all levels of the Federal government in favor of conservatives. Democrats need to win the House and Presidency by 5-8% or more, and the Senate is entirely dependent on who happens to be up at any given time. It's only getting worse. I'm not sure why a majority of Americans should simply sit back and accept minoritarian rule. The only way to change the dynamics in the Senate is to admit new states. It's a political battle that's played out over and over throughout our country's history. This would all be part of the same larger reconciliation package that would have vital COVID/economic relief that the minoritarian GOP kept blocking, of course.

Meanwhile conservative politicians and media continue to threaten violence if there is any accountability "look what you made me do"

It's not rigging things. Our Constitution has clear rules and processes for admitting new states. There's no reason the hundreds of thousands of people in DC or the millions in PR should be subject to federal law with no real say. The alternative is for tens of millions more Americans to accept that the current structure of the Senate means we'll always be dominated by white minority rule. If Republicans want to push for other US territories to become states, great! I think colonialism is bad and that these people should have full representation in the governments they're subject to. It's more rigging things to make sure that millions of American citizens remain without a voice and without a vote. I'm giving the right "a hard time" for launching a violent fascist insurrection bent on murdering Congress and the VP and overturning free and fair elections. There's quite a bit of difference between these two things.

The Senate still would remain a huge-and-growing hurdle and you can't fix that without more seats.

Everything about how our states got their shapes was about political power, though. The State of DC would have more people than Vermont or Wyoming and not that much less than the Dakotas or Alaska. Focus on the number of people there, not the acreage. Heck, the Dakotas are a great example of two states that should be one but were split up explicitly to give the party in power more seats. You could create the state of DC and then still have a federal district as you described that would have zero or near-zero residency. You don't get any points and you don't get any political power for "taking the high road" and letting your political opposition maintain vastly disproportionate control given the number of voters for each party.

Still probably the most fucked up thing was new Rep. Boebert live-tweeting Pelosi's location as her fellow travelers were violently storming the Capitol. There will be at least some GOP support for impeachment tomorrow, though shit's not ending any time soon, either:

btw, take your Vitamin D3 or multivitamin supplements! It's still all correlative at this point rather than having a proven mechanistic link, but as Fauci and other experts have said, there's no reason not to have sufficient Vitamin D levels. Just don't overdo it because if you eat a fistful every day you can give yourself kidney stones. If I understood them correctly yesterday, Pritzker and IDPH were saying that part of the distributional problem they're having is a little paradoxical. They set up these systems to be need-based right out of the gate, which makes a lot of sense. But the way they set it up was designed to work with quicker and bigger supplies of vaccines. So because they have this restrictive distribution in place and there's not nearly enough vaccine doses available currently, it's created a distributional bottleneck. If supply increases as it should, it should actually make distribution easier because they won't have to try to be so selective with it. Who knows how much of that is CYA, though. Illinois is in the bottom half of % doses administered.

No. I'm very glad Trump lost. I'm glad the Democrats took the Senate and kept the House. I was bitterly disappointed that Biden won the primary. Not a whole lot, but much more than I expected a week ago before the Dems took back the Senate* Particularly when it comes to vital state and local aid so we don't have a another massive wave of unemployment as vital services and functions are cut. I don't expect them to be able to end the filibuster or reform the courts, but if they're able to ditch the Byrd rule for reconciliation bills**, they may be able to pass important democratic/voting rights reform and potentially even DC/PR statehood. Their margin in both chambers of Congress is so slim that it'll be a big lift to get everyone on board for bold yet important policies, though. Immediately Acquittal because the GOP is a Trumpist party Should use it along with the powers of the 14th to block him, but they won't. *Assumes the violent fascist threat to our democracy is put down and the government can function in a somewhat normal manner **Reconciliation bills give Congress a once-a-year ability to pass a bill with a simple majority that isn't subject to a filibuster. The GOP used that to try to get through an ACA repeal and then to push through tax cuts for billionaires. Currently, it's subject to the "Byrd rule" that limits it to financial matters only. Congress could choose to end that rule on a simple majority vote so that policy changes like voting rights or even statehood admittance could happen under reconciliation.

My wife's signed up through the county we live, her educational employer in another county and the medical group our PC doctor is part of. Hopefully she gets her shot soon since she'll be back to in-person 'teaching' (hilariously unworkable hybrid schedule that will result in drastic reductions of instructional time) in a couple of weeks. Bad news is there's increasing evidence that the E484K mutation found in the South African, Brazil and Japanese variants does have some amount of immunity evasion. It's not a binary full effective/not effective at all situation, but there seems to be a good chance that vaccines as currently forumulated and naturally acquired immunity to date won't be as effective as they were against previous variants. These variants all include the increased transmissibility mutations found in the UK variant as well. It's more urgent than ever that we get doses into arms as quickly as possible.

There's this from Quinnipiac, too Now, that is a drop from 90%+ job approval, but still. Less than a week out from inciting an insurrection and Republicans still overwhelmingly back him. That so much of Trumpism and the modern-day conservative movement is based on propaganda and lies is a very difficult problem to overcome. Who can ever break through that bubble, and how would they do it? The entire "stop the steal" movement had the backing of a majority of the House GOP, a significant portion of the Senate GOP, and numerous state-level GOP officials across the country. It had the support of every major GOP political org and media operation. Some of that was cynical, doing it for fundraising and to undermine their political opponents' legitimacy, but it's not hard to lose control of a monster like that. So where's the incentive for elected Republicans to stand up for this? By and large, this is what their primary voters want. And, as they've very clearly shown, at least some of them are ready and willing to commit violence and even murder to get what they want.

tfw this was definitely a one-day thing that'll go away on it's own and not a continued threat to our democracy btw does anyone have a count on how many public health officials across the country resigned over the previous year due to death threats?

Whether it was because they were fascists who tried to overthrow the government or assholes refusing to wear masks, you can still laugh. The federal "no fly list" is real bad policy and should be abolished ultimately, though! Here's the little bit longer video of that officer being chased up the steps who, thanks to some very quick thinking, is able to divert the mob away from the unguarded doors to the Senate chamber. https://i.imgur.com/PgZkhGo.mp4 Here's a map of the Capitol. The yellow circle is where he pushed back the Qultist and lures the mob down the other hallway to backup. The green line is the path he took.

Nagy is meh but if he's a placeholder while they get someone new at the top, that's fine. Pace absolutely deserves to go imo, but again, if they need him as a placeholder for a year given how many buyers are on the market this year, ok. The next several years of Bears football are going to be pretty dire no matter what.

The smug look on her face is the worst

House brought up this motion, GOP objected, now they're in recess for another 24 hours. Great system we have, works well.

Yes. And lots of stories of suburban Chicago business owners filmed or arrested at the rally. Lawyers who lost their jobs. Plenty of white collar professionals. This was a petit bourgeois insurrection, not a working poor uprising. Plenty of $500k+homes in my area still festooned with Trump garbage.

Gini Thomas, Justice Thomas's wife, also had to purge her Facebook because she was deeply involved in pushing last week's events