StrangeSox

I'm sure all of the Boomers who will be voting to cut this will grandfather themselves in to whatever changes they want to make.

Ryan says Republicans to target welfare, Medicare, Medicaid spending in 2018 Said with no apparent sense of irony as they're pushing a $1.4T tax cut for businesses and the wealthy

Pence and Haley supported, Tillerson and Mattis opposed this move https://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/...477816366149632

...that's not whataboutism though

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/whistl...-ripped-n827031

Flynn Said Russian Sanctions Would be ‘Ripped Up,’ Whistle-Blower Says

Recognized Jerusalem and will build a new embassy there.

OTOH the centrist wing has horrible policies leftists or even left-liberals are hilariously bad at politics though

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 6, 2017 -> 10:45 AM) Multiple Dem Senators are coming out today calling for his resignation. Gillibrand, Hassan, Hirono, McCaskill so far You can add Harris to the list now, too, and I'm sure more will be coming. e: add Murray, gotta imagine this is coordinated and will be every female Dem Senator.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Dec 6, 2017 -> 09:01 AM) Another woman says Franken tried to forcibly kiss her He needs to resign now or the Democratic Party needs to do something. Someone wake up Chuck Schumer. Multiple Dem Senators are coming out today calling for his resignation. Gillibrand, Hassan, Hirono, McCaskill so far

Trump Has Privately Decided the Sexual-Assault Allegations Against Roy Moore Are Bunk Rapists gotta stand together

This tweet, which is based on the department of interior report listed today. https://twitter.com/KieranSuckling/status/9...src=twsrc%5Etfw

Eight more National Monuments getting chopped down in size

Hugh Hewitt, Republican Hack, you mean.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 11:21 AM) Democrats not realizing that "playing nice" and ~decorum~ don't matter, at least at this point, is going to result in them continuing to get their asses kicked. Jones gets it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 12:51 PM) If 90% of one group are concentrated in one area, while the other party is better spread out in order to make that 50/50 total, it isn't going to be an even distribution. Which, again, accounts for some of the disproportionate representation but not a majority of it.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 12:19 PM) This is true. However, the voting power discussion is a poor comparison. They are basing it on how much a person dictates the decision of the state electoral college vote. This is true. A single person in Wyoming does influence the outcome for the state than a single person in California. However, California has 55 electoral votes and Wyoming has 3. So while a single person in Wyoming has more affect on the state vote, they have a far lesser affect on the election due to the vast difference in the electoral votes. The more populist states still have a greater affect on the election. The individual in California is less represented in the House, the Senate, and in their vote for Presidency than the individual in Wyoming.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 12:09 PM) You could but that isn't the system we currently have. Here is why. How informed are most people on a topic such as farm subsidies? water, land and hunting rights? The people form the urban areas would always vote against these issues because it doesn't affect them. The people in the rural areas would never get anything from anyone because they would ALWAYS be voted against. These people need representation and would never get it under a straight population vote or the proportional vote you propose. The candidates that would support policies to benefit them wouldn't win. People in this forum have said Alabama is a backward state. Do they not have a right for representation? But we don't see that playing out now. Representatives from urban districts don't vote down farm subsidies or water/land/hunting rights. A lot of federal spending that goes to rural communities is more likely to be pushed by Democrats representing urban areas than conservative politicians representing rural ones. One notable example is the opposition to rural projects like TVA--they were proposed and planned and executed by 'coastal elites' like FDR and to this day are opposed by more rural conservative voters. I think at most you could say not that urban voters would vote against those things but that they wouldn't be a priority and maybe not receive the attention they're due. Alabama has major cities and is right at the median in terms of state populations, so that's not a great example. And like BS pointed out, we've already got the Senate. Two Senators for 500k residents in Wyoming, two Senators for 40 million people in California. Why give unequal representation beyond that? What should happen as more and more people move to cities? If we get to say 90% non-rural population, should rural voters still get 25-50% of the say in what our government does or doesn't do?

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 11:57 AM) This is the definition of a representative democracy. The idea is to not let the dense urban areas control everything by pure numbers. Otherwise the rural areas would not have any representation. Not really? You can have a proportional representative democracy wherein rural Americans, who comprise 15% of the population, get roughly 15% of the total representation. You'd still have the Senate as well, which massively favors rural voters. I see no reason why some voters should get more or less voting power based on their proximity to their neighbors. People vote, not acreage.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 11:38 AM) This isn't really true. For all of his talk he really hasn't been able to do 25% of the stuff he's tried to accomplish. congress is really serving as the check and balance to him. If the President can fire anyone who looks into allegations of collusion with a foreign government to aid in an election with zero consequences, we're in an authoritarian state.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 11:36 AM) You missed the point. Population distribution isn't even, and neither is the distribution of votes within those areas. Chicago is a great example of that. The population of democrats in the city is so evenly highly and distributed that in previous elections there were literally zero Republicans in office, despite there being significantly more Republicans in the city. Democratic votes tend to be concentrated in much higher levels within urban areas, while Republican votes tend to be much more sparsely concentrated, but more widely spread. That is how you see the heatmap from the last election where despite having a much lower percentage of votes, a much higher portion of the physical area of the country voted republican. Short of the creating the long and drawn out ear muff type district like we see in Chicago that extends for long mileages to encompass both urban and rural areas, there is only so much that can be done with a population distribution problem. I did edit that in to my original post because you're right, when one coalition packs itself into dense urban areas, that is going to put them at a disadvantage in our district-based system (versus a pure proportional representation-style system you see in some smaller parliamentary countries). But that doesn't explain away the entirety of the effect of partisan gerrymandering. In a hypothetical completely neutral districting map, Democrats will need more than 50% of the vote to get a majority because of these geographical effects, but the partisan gerrymandering makes it even worse. You don't only see ear muff-style districts for Dem advantage, either. Look at how well Austin, TX gets carved up to reach in a grab a piece of the democratic-majority city and then extend far out into the rural areas in an effort to neutralize those democratic votes in Austin as much as possible. Look at how they handled the redistricting in Wisconsin that's currently under review by SCOTUS. They didn't go through all of that trouble because there's no benefit to partisan gerrymandering. One way to help lessen the geographic effect and get back to a more proportionately representative system would be to abolish the hard cap on the number of House Reps imposed in the early 20th century and let the number grow so that we've always got approximately 1 rep per 100k or 200k people. As it is now, we all lose more and more power in our individual votes as our population grows.

New Gallup poll on the GOP tax plan 29% Approval overall --25% Independents --7% Democrats --70% Republicans 56% Disapproval --56% Independents --87% Democrats --16% Republicans