If only folks had gotten off their tail and voted for an alternate candidate rather than sitting on the couch whining about our political system and making memes…
You can’t just vote for an alternate candidate. That’s a non-viable strategy. In a fptp system (and one that requires owner money) ,you are reliant on party leadership to put forth worthwhile candidates. Democrats should have started grooming the heir apparent on Jan 21, 2020.
True, I’m more referring to the primaries in 2016 and 2020. You get all too many around here clamoring for 3rd party protest votes or disengagement.
Even with the sketchy goings on during those two, if there was an overwhelming vote for Bernie (who’s no younger mind you, but it’s an alternate that appeals to a different demographic) it’d be a tough sell to go against that even if the party did get a court to agree they could.
Even without party backing though, if there was a particular person that people took to en-masse the rules don’t preclude them from office or appearing on national ballots. Look at Trump, people at first wrote him off as a joke, similar to the other times he ran before, now he’s a major threat to both parties.
Oh, I completely agree. This is way too complicated to fit into simple comment chains. There will be books upon books about this (assuming we’re still allowed to write books in the future).
I know the word “rigged” is overused in politics these days but I’m not sure how else to describe the method the RNC and DNC use to select candidates. We have a matchup of historically unpopular individuals who were both President already, and yet most feel as though there was an inevitable quality to each receiving his party’s nomination.
I live in a primary state where party registration is arbitrary and I could have easily participated in the process for either major party (just providing this background lest I be accused of being something I’m not). Problem is, by the time it rolls around to my state, the momentum of previous caucuses and primaries has all but secured the nomination already and my ability to influence the process is effectively zero.
The DNC and RNC have created a system of managed coronation disguised as some sort of democratic process. And what’s worse is they now set the precedent of rigged debates designed to exclude meaningful alternatives. If they have a second debate they’ll probably make up something about minimum Twitter mentions or shoelace color to purposely exclude RFK and other 3rd party candidates again.
I asked in another thread what candidate other people canvassed for and maybe they shouldn’t be complaining if they didn’t canvass for anyone. I didn’t canvass for anyone and said so. I got one person who said they canvassed for Bernie Sanders. And they have my respect for that. But mostly other than that, I just got downvotes. It didn’t surprise me, but I think it kind of proved what I was saying.
We got Biden in 2024 because not enough people, myself included, did enough to get anyone else. Frankly, in my case, I wasn’t offered an alternate candidate who threw their hat into the ring (Bernie did not) and who I thought would be electable. I don’t have an issue canvassing for a candidate who hasn’t announced they would run, but I personally don’t think it’s a good use of my time.
I didn’t find anything about Doug Burgum or especially Marianne Williamson that made me feel like I should work for their campaigns. They didn’t convince me to put the effort in.
To be clear, Biden didn’t convince me to put the effort in either.
Not so obvious when you consider how many of us stopped watching about 5 minutes in. I didn’t click your spoiler because I didn’t want to hear anything else you had to say. I feel like your joke didn’t really land well.
dude federal authorities should totally investigate this fucker’s laptop. i bet there’s all sorts of illegal fucked up shit in there. sex is all he thinks about all day every day. there’s no way he has normal porn habits.
I will yet again say that your browser histories should be public information if you’re going to run for office, or at the very least once you get elected. With heavy penalties if it turns out you’re hiding anything.
I’m an elected state official in Florida at the extremely local level. Fuck off with that. People don’t need to know my browsing history. It’s entirely possible to judge someone’s fitness by the acts they take in office alone.
My browsing history is my business, not yours or anyone else’s. You may as well start asking for my correspondence history, a record of the content of my private conversations, etc…
I understand the danger that bad actors posing as normal candidates pose. Trust me, I’ve dealt with it first hand. But throwing out huge swathes of otherwise qualified candidates because they aren’t willing to share every piece of their personal life is not the remedy.
Dude, I normally agree with you, but not on this. You’re trying to set up a purity test for office. You might not use it that way, but the Repuglicans will.
Also do you really want to see your daughter’s entire browser history because you raised her well, and she decides to become a civil servant? Or worse, have it plastered all over the news? Think hard on that one.
If she did something nefarious that the public should know about? Absolutely I do. I’m not why you think I would consider family a special case and I’m sorry you think that I’m that sort of hypocrite because I sure have never indicated I am.
(Also, I don’t know why people insist on telling me they normally agree with me when they disagree with me, but it happens all the time.)
Nah dude, I wasn’t calling you a hypocrite. I was trying to reframe it so that you could see how whatever her sexuality is would be weaponized against her. It’s a bad idea, for people that "have nothing to hide.
Would you want the world to know all the porn you ever looked at? Cause I wouldn’t, and from what I can tell, I’m into some pretty tame shit.
I wouldn’t run for office. And if you’re worried about that sort of thing and don’t want people to know about it, maybe you shouldn’t either. Because if they learn, you’ll be in a world of shit of your own making when you could have avoided it.
The result of this is that the only people who can get into office are literally perfect or they’re very good at hiding their activities. You leave no room for normal people with varying levels of flaws and foibles and ‘weird’ interests to participate.
So let’s push normal people out of public office, and make sure to only have sociopaths who have no shame?
For example, I looked up a spider monkey’s vagina because a book about sexuality my partner was reading said they have large external clitoris coming out of their butt.
I can bet you all my wealth that it would be used by Republicans to say I’m into bestiality and a sexual deviant.
dude federal authorities should totally investigate this fucker’s laptop.
Its frustrating, because a Bush USA would have been so far up Ron’s ass he wouldn’t need those lifts in his shoes. But Obama and Biden just kinda shrug at this and let it slide.
When people talk about the New York Times’ neoliberal bias, this is what we’re talking about. Lots of people won’t notice because it’s relatively subtle, but it is absolutely biased against progressives/actual liberals.
The New York Times published the headline “Bowman Falls in House Primary, Overtaken by Flood of Pro-Israel Money” — before swapping it out for “Bowman Falls to Latimer in a Loss for Progressive Democrats.”
This is why we need more independent outlets like The Intercept. This shit needs to be called out.
The problem with The Intercept is that it was founded by Glenn Greenwald, who is constantly not only going on right-wing media, but often agreeing with their terrible points.
So I don’t trust it a lot of the time.
I don’t doubt what they are saying in this case, however.
I totally agree about Greenwald, but he was pushed out/resigned in 2020, he has nothing to do with them anymore. When he co-founded it, he was still a well-respected journalist. He isn’t anymore, but The Intercept still does exceptional journalism. I recommend taking another look.
Disagreeing with one of the founders which doesn’t work there anymore means it’s untrustworthy? If you believe The Intercept is a “right wing propaganda outlet” you’d better to cite examples of that than what you think of an ex-employee.
Now you want me to go through every questionable thing Greenwald has said every time he does things like go on Fox News and agree with the presenter and pick a specific one?
Okay, fine. How about when he called Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson socialists?
I’ll agree with you that his comment is far fetched. His definition of a “socialist” appears to be more related to non-interventionism.
As you had the courtesy to provide an example I did a little digging too and found that the Intercept did publish an article about Glenn which was not all that positive.
Glenn Greenwald’s decision to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship. Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus, the preposterous charge that The Intercept’s editors and reporters, with the lone, noble exception of Glenn Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in fearless investigative journalism because we have been seduced by the lure of a Joe Biden presidency. A brief glance at the stories The Intercept has published on Biden will suffice to refute those claims.
The narrative Glenn presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear as a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum. It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time. For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign — and launder them as journalism.
We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years. It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not The Intercept.
The defining feature of The Intercept’s work in recent years has been the investigative journalism that came out of painstaking work by our staffers in Washington, D.C., New York, and across the rest of the country. It is the staff of The Intercept that has been carrying out our investigative mission — a mission that has involved a collaborative editing process.
We have no doubt that Glenn will go on to launch a new media venture where he will face no collaboration with editors — such is the era of Substack and Patreon. In that context, it makes good business sense for Glenn to position himself as the last true guardian of investigative journalism and to smear his longtime colleagues and friends as partisan hacks. We get it. But facts are facts, and The Intercept’s record of fearless, rigorous, independent journalism speaks for itself.
Analysis / Bias The Intercept has been criticized by both Republicans and Democrats, such as this New Yorker article that reads, “Greenwald’s focus on “deep state” depredations has exiled him from MSNBC but has given him a place on Fox News.”
Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald has criticized MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for turning into an “utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.” Greenwald says this criticism has led to the end of his appearances on MSNBC. Greenwald often criticized left-leaning media coverage of Trump-Russia collusion, namely CNN, MSNBC, and CBS, arguing that “very little evidence supported the idea that Moscow was hot for Donald.”
However, The Intercept is harshly critical of Donald Trump and right-wing policies with articles such as this: Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Culmination of War on Terror Mentality but Still Uniquely Shameful. In review, The Intercept publishes articles with strongly emotionally loaded language, such as “The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice” and “The 10 Most Appalling Articles in the Weekly Standard’s Short and Dreadful Life.”
The Intercept rejects mainstream establishment politics in favor of progressive liberalism with this pro-Bernie Sanders quote: “ignore the opinion polls and the bogus arguments against him: whether you like him or not, Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner right now,” from “Critics Say Bernie Sanders Is Too Old, Too White, and Too Socialist to Run for President in 2020. They’re Wrong.”
Regarding sourcing, The Intercept always uses credible sources such as The Economist, The Hill, Politico, NYMag, and the Washington Post.
In general, The Intercept provides in-depth investigative stories that are sensational in nature. Most stories are critical of the right-left establishment and lean strongly progressive left in ideology.
Yeah I appreciate this take, and I think it’s still mostly accurate, but Glenn Greenwald was pushed out from The Intercept in 2020, when his weird political transformation became apparent. I was very sad to see his weird red-pilling, I really respected the way he handled the Snowden leak. Can’t really take him seriously anymore though. I don’t think they have anyone with his bizarre beliefs on staff anymore.
Yeah I think that was my main reservation, and he’s been gone a few years now. But it was a little while - in the fuckstormchaos of 2017-2020 - where you’d see a theindependent link and it was straight garbage. It’s hopefully much better now.
All I see is typical MBFC bias. The opinion of some rando (MBFC being the opinion of one person mind you) rating them on the internet is not signs of a problem with them.
The investigations uncovered Epstein’s close ties to former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, as well as his once friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump
Dear AP, why the fuck are you downplaying Trump’s ties to Epstein? Trump hung out with child diddlers to diddle children. He was hilariously cagey when asked if he’d release Epstein materials as president.
There may not be enough evidence to get him in court, but he should be held in the same group as Clinton and Andrew.
Bro the guy was literally “the leader of the free world” and said nothing about his friend selling children to child diddlers and you are going to come at me with a “but akchually WHICH LAW DID HE BREAK?!?!?!?”. Go piss.
Laws should follow and codify ethics, not dictate them. If a transgression (such as not reporting CSA to the relevant authorities) is not already banned by law, that doesn’t mean it’s fine. It means the law needs to be amended.
In this specific case I agree, not reporting CSA should be illegal (and probably is?) I’m not so sure that we should codify the current ethical understanding into law though.
We need to leave room for development. Forcing new ideas to first go through the battle of legalization isn’t helpful in this regard. Laws are there to regulate what normal social regulation can’t do properly.
I think people who cheat on their partners are morally speaking bad people. But writing into law you can’t have multiple partners at once is quite obviously a bad decision, because there are happy polyamourus relationships. The government doesn’t need to get involved here, being treated like the ass that you are for cheating is punishment enough, and leaves the room for developing new ways of living together.
I guess we need to distinguish between legislation, regulation and case law established through judicial precedent. Legislation is definitely too cumbersome to react to shifting moral standards. Regulation and judicial precedent are more flexible in cases where legal consequences are warranted.
As so often, there is nuance to the topic. General statements are hard to make both concisely and precisely. I opted for brevity, but you are absolutely right.
Either way, we agree that complacency about CSA is fucked up.
There is this, where a anonymous person has reported beeing raper by Trump as a Teen girl (please read this at your own discretion). She never went to court because she was intimidated.
Median earnings grew faster than inflation every quarter between Q2 2022 and Q4 2023, a year and a half straight. Ticked down in Q1 2024 but basically back to pre pandemic levels.
That alternative would replace Ohio’s current system for drawing congressional and legislative maps, which relies on elected officials, with a 15-member panel of Ohioans without close ties to politics.
Honestly, I feel like if districts are gonna be drawn, it’d make more sense to just choose some algorithm and have a computer do it.
Like, if you want to have non-partisan oversight of the algorithm selection, great, but I’m not at all sold that partitioning up the election map requires anything beyond a simple, mechanical process.
reads further
Fed up with politicians manipulating maps to ensure reelection, a crowd of Ohio voters took a key step toward offering a redistricting alternative on the November ballot.
The commission would draw maps that “correspond closely to statewide partisan preferences of the voters of Ohio.” Unlike redistricting proposals approved in 2015 and 2018, this requirement is explicit and mandatory.
If you divide up electoral districts to try to clump similar voters, you kind of guarantee that you’re ensuring re-election. In fact, from past reading, that’s what gerrymandering tends to do. It isn’t primarily that politicians try to get an edge for their party overall. It’s that they try to ensure that they have safe seats without serious competition, even if that ensures that politicians from the other party also enjoy the same situation. Think of an oligopoly, where companies divide up territory or something like that, and each has a monopoly. Like, if you’re going to mandate that under this district-drawing system, what you’re functionally doing is minimizing the power of the public in elections relative to that of incumbent politicians.
Researchers found tactic, widely used in 2020, made little difference in partisan numbers but yielded safe seats, less-responsive representatives
Basically, what gerrymanderers principally aim to do is to reduce how much a politician in an electoral district tends to need to care about what their electorate wants, by eliminating realistic challengers.
One of the most consequential outcomes of this redistricting cycle has been the continuing decrease in the number of competitive congressional districts. Under new maps, there are just 30 districts that Joe Biden won by less than eight percentage points in 2020 and, likewise, just 30 districts that Donald Trump won by less than eight points.
All told, there are now fewer competitive districts than at any point in the last 52 years. If the good news is that both parties emerged with reasonable opportunities in coming years to win control of a closely divided House, the bad news is that they will fight that battle on the narrowest of terrains under maps artificially engineered to reduce competition.
In the end, a closely divided House remains up for grabs, with reasonable opportunities for both parties to win control in coming years. However, barring unforeseen political shifts, most voters will watch that fight from the sidelines due to maps that artificially reduce competition. If Americans hope to reverse the long-term decline of competitive districts, reforms to create fairer, more independent map-drawing processes will be essential.
That’s a good deal if you’re an incumbent politician who wants to be in a position to make use of political influence without being at political risk. But it’s the worst deal you could get in terms of your own influence if you’re a member of the voting public.
Ted Linscott, the retired bricklayer from Athens, said Appalachians tell it like it is: “When we see BS, we call BS and the way our districts are drawn is BS.”
I’m not saying you’re wrong there, dude. But being happy about this proposal is kinda, well…I’m gonna need Gary Larson to help me out on this one.
Honestly, I feel like if districts are gonna be drawn, it'd make more sense to just choose some algorithm and have a computer do it.
Like, if you want to have non-partisan oversight of the algorithm selection, great, but I'm not at all sold that partitioning up the election map requires anything beyond a simple, mechanical process.
Agreeing on the algo, its params, etc. is going to just be another never-ending fight. It now also requires teaching any oversight committee about all of this. Even if it were left to some "non-partisan" (I'll believe it when I see it) engineer, each successive government would just replace the algo and/or engineer.
In my opinion, an algo should be legislated with its implementation forced, but I'm not holding my breath.
I feel like a big part of how districts are drawn should involve asking the people which areas are important to them.
It would definitely have to involve some algorithms to sort out and keep the populations roughly equal.
But in general, I kind of envision a system where maybe every 5 or 10 years or so you’d sit down in front of a computer, maybe on election day, or when you renew your driver’s license, or something like that, and you’re presented with a map of your county and the ones that surround it. You select all of the places you live, work, shop, drive through regularly, or otherwise spend most of your time or have particular interests in or concerns about
The computer then draws a district around as many of those points as possible, keeping the population fas even as possible even, and snapping the borders to obvious places- city and county borders, rivers, school districts, major roads, etc.
Then it averages them together into maps that more accurately reflect where the people in those districts actually spend their time.
Pretty big undertaking on the software side, we’d run into the same kinds of issues we do with voting of how to get people to actually show up and fill in their maps, but if we could implement it, to me that seems like the best way to actually draw districts that make sense.
Because I know when I look at the district map where I live, I see a lot of areas included that I have absolutely no connection with, I don’t live there, work there, drive through there, go shopping there, know anyone who lives there, and in general if they burned to the ground today I probably wouldn’t notice for a year or longer, and then there’s other areas where I do spend a lot of time and have other connections to that are not part of my district.
Honestly, I feel like if districts are gonna be drawn, it’d make more sense to just choose some algorithm and have a computer do it.
I’ve thought about this exactly. Here’s my idea.
Crowd source the algorithm every X years. Anybody with basic skills in map making and programming can submit a candidate algorithm. Candidates are scored by…
A) how well they evenly distribute the population across districts (eg +X points for every extra person a district has above a perfectly even distribution), and…
B) how simple the districts are (eg. +Y points for every corner each district boundary has.), which would prevent any kind of gerrymandering.
Lowest score with above example points system wins. Winner gets to have their name on any ballots used while the districts chosen by the algorithm are used. Or something. 🤷
The real median household income in the United States for 2022 was $74,580, which represents a 2.3 percent decline from the 2021 estimate of $76,3301. This figure is based on money income, which is pretax and does not account for the value of in-kind transfers. It’s important to note that this calculation excludes billionaires and focuses on the broader population.
It seems that they are already excluded for some reason.
If you use median, removing or not of 1000 people from a pool of millions indeed has zero impact. My guess is that they worded it like that because they assume people don’t knownwhat a median is, so they describe the practical effect
Is that why I was fired after training my replacement that was paid less than me? Is that why nobody is paying the amount I was formerly paid for my skill set now?
Cuz, from my point of view, nobody wants to train and nobody wants to pay employees what they’re worth.
Drop. The. Fuck. Out. You are going to fucking lose you geriatric fuck and SCOTUS just ensured that Trump will use his power to be a dictator when he’s elected.
I believe people are going to do the right thing this November. We need to be vocal and vote. But no matter what happens, no one deserves fascism. We’re all still people.
Biden has the power to do something now, but instead he’s using it to campaign. What good will voting him in do if he’s just gunna sit on his hands and do nothing? That has little to do with him being old. Not saying that I won’t vote for him, but it’s understandable to be frustrated, and people definitely don’t deserve fascism for that.
Germany has the same problems. After the reunification they merged the east and west state railway companies into a private enterprise, the Deutsche Bahn AG. Since then, the service progressively became worse and the prices unaffordable.
They engaged in a downward spiral of cutting infrastructure investments and reducing coverage/offer and having less private travellers. Now the infrastructure is such a bad state, that the bad quality of the service is a running gag in Germany. Voyagers now expect their train being late and hope that it will not be cancelled last minute.
In the last couple of years, there has been a push to invested in the infrastructure, but it’s too little too late and it’s going to take decades to make the train an attractive option again.
One of the reason why they are still getting by financially, is because the have very good marketing.
Here’s a good video about it. It’s in German, but you can get the English auto-translation.
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