Evil Fluffy posted:

Hillary has a better chance at winning 400-450+ EVs than the Democrats retaking the House. The House is Gerrymandered as gently caress and heavily in the GOP's favor.


The best shot the Democrats have at retaking the House in the next decade or so is to get a SCOTUS majority that agrees Gerrymandering is a thing that needs to be struck down and then make sure a court case ends up in their lap so that they can do exactly that while forcing the states to use a system similar to California so that we don't end up with situations like in NC where a majority vote for Dems but the GOP take a super majority of seats.

Winkie01 posted:

downout posted:

I saw a good post somewhere the other day that pointed out that when people talk about the debt it's under the framing of "each U.S. citizen owes 43K" or something like that. But that completely ignores that if doing the math in that manner, then that citizen also owns part of the roads, land, buildings, etc that make up the U.S. It seems obvious, but for some reason that never dawned on me.

WorldsStrongestNerd posted:

Yeah the correct response to "Your share of the national debt is 43k" is

A. That's not how the debt works, and
B. Even if that was how it works, that 43k in debt got me several million dollars worth of roads, ports, education, tanks, ect ect.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

If the GOP goes all in on Trump and he gets Mondale'd it will take them decades to recover.

Star Man posted:

As much as we'd all like to see a few blood-red Republican states turn for the presidential election, it will be for that one elction and only for the predisdent.

quote:

The party of Lincoln is dying

Academician Nomad posted:

Uh oh guys
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...03255&tid=ss_fb

I hear the Democrats are losing their grip on the Solid South so that could be true!!

(I know Mugwump-chat is supposed to go in YCS but I'm so sick of Clevelandians and their superior attitudes)

quote:

The process of unendorsing Trump is humiliating, but only for a moment. The honor of choosing rightly, when it mattered most, will endure.

Samurai Sanders posted:

I love the last line

quote:

many of us will never be able to think about the Republican Party in quite the same way again. It still carries many of the ideological convictions I share. Collectively, however, it has failed one of the most basic tests of public justice: Don’t support racists — or candidates who appeal to racism — for public office. If this commitment is not a primary, non-negotiable element of Republican identity, then the party of Lincoln is dead.

Samurai Sanders posted:

edit: but boy howdy is the author naive about the state of the party before Trump.

Gyges posted:

Must suck to be someone who voted for Scotland to stay in the UK and then have the UK leave the EU. Assuming Scotland isn't a hive of anti-EU voting.

MaxxBot posted:

So this is something I've been wondering about for a while, there seems to be a long term trend in US politics where we have a fair amount of debt but we seem to have no loving money to spend on anything. Our roads and bridges are crumbling, our higher education no longer receives much state backing, and now I just heard on the radio that public schools are seeing the worst funding situation that they have ever seen. Meanwhile we seem to have a lot more debt than we have in recent history.



I get that we're probably taking in less tax revenue then we have in previous times but is that the whole story? It seems like every single part of our budget at every level is nonstop austerity yet fiscally we're still in a lovely situation.

theflyingorc posted:

Speaking of weird names, I am amazed that the Republican attack machine never found it interesting that Barack Obama's mother's name was STANLEY.

stanley is a boy's name, what are you hiding Obama????

there wolf posted:

This particular slap fight is getting tiresome. Let's switch to a different channel. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/magazine/choosing-a-school-for-my-daughter-in-a-segregated-city.html?smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur&_r=0 Excellent article on the impact of segregation on schools with a heavy focus on New York and the writers own struggle with where to send her daughter.

Electric Bugaloo posted:

From what I understand, the consensus is that a successful Brexit would reignite a lot of the Scottish Independence fire since Scots in general have a better opinion of Europe/are more likely to perceive a net benefit to EU membership/haven't been steeped in decades' worth of immigrant panic.

If Britain leaves the EU it's possible that Scotland leaves Britain with the goal of rejoining it.

Samurai Sanders posted:

I love the last line


edit: but boy howdy is the author naive about the state of the party before Trump.

Antti posted:

And yes it pretty much boils down to "wily Poles are coming here to steal our jobs and live on our dole." The Brexit movement's leaders are ultra-right Tories and UKIP's Nigel loving Farage. There are hundreds of thousands of Britons in the EU stealing everyone else's jobs, it'll be interesting to see what happens to them. The only good thing coming out of Brexit will be that it will utterly destroy Cameron's legacy as a so-called statesman, since he promised the referendum as an electoral expedient.

Electric Bugaloo posted:

From what I understand, the consensus is that a successful Brexit would reignite a lot of the Scottish Independence fire since Scots in general have a better opinion of Europe/are more likely to perceive a net benefit to EU membership/haven't been steeped in decades' worth of immigrant panic.

If Britain leaves the EU it's possible that Scotland leaves Britain with the goal of rejoining it.

UrbicaMortis posted:

If the Leave vote succeeds but it comes out that a majority of Scotland, Wales or NI voted Remain, poo poo would really hit the fan.

greatn posted:

So what's the big deal if they do split?

boom boom boom posted:

World War 3

greatn posted:

So what's the big deal if they do split?

Antti posted:

Yeah, e.g. the 350 million is the gross. So it excludes all the money coming back to the UK.

Turkey joining the EU is a joke given that the visa waiver agreement is already on the rocks because Erdogan doesn't want to reinstate press freedoms. Albania? Serbia? Really? It took forever just to bring in Croatia. And admittance has to be unanimous! The UK can't actually do poo poo about EU membership if they're outside of the EU. They'll be like Norway: they just have to take everything dictated by the EU if they want to do business with it.

Darth Walrus posted:

The UK suddenly loses most of its cushy trade deals with the economic superpower on its doorstep - and since so many countries have been using the UK as their gateway to the EU via those deals, that means bad news for an appreciable chunk of the world. That's also ignoring what it does to confidence in the economic superpower in question, the EU, meaning that people will start getting leery about investing in big beasts like Germany or France. There could be a seriously alarming ripple effect here.

Anos posted:

It should also be noted that the EU has given quite good deals to Norway and Switzerland which might be seen as a preferable alternative. However, as it turns out it doesn't really make people want to join more - it just makes it easier to not join. Those deals would not be made today and if Britain leaves there will be every incentive to demonstrate why membership is beneficial.

Luigi Thirty posted:

Yeah I'm pretty sure the mainstream belief is just "wash your hands before the next time you pray" which you'd do anyway because ew, raw bacon. You can ask a thousand imams and you'll get a thousand different answers.

quote:

As the Quran forbids Muslims from drinking alcohol, the soothing, cheering and stimulating effects of coffee made it a popular substitute in Islamic countries for wine. The first coffeehouses are said to have been established in Mecca (Saudi Arabia). Known as the Kaveh Kanes, they were public places where Muslims could socialize and discuss religious matters.

The relationship between Islam and coffee has not always run smoothly though. Some Muslims believed coffee was an intoxicant and therefore is banned by Islamic law. In 1511, the governor of Mecca, Khair Beg, saw some worshippers drinking coffee in a mosque as they prepared for a night-long prayer vigil. Angered, he drove them from the mosque and ordered all coffeehouses in Mecca to be closed. This incited the pro-coffee Muslims and a heated debate soon ensued. In this dispute, two unscrupulous Persian doctors, the Hakimani brothers, who were infamous for testifying on the side of the highest bidder, condemned coffee as an unhealthy brew. The doctors had good reason for wanted it banned, for it was popular cure among the depressed patients who would otherwise have paid the doctors to cure them. The matter was only resolved when the Sultan of Cairo, Khair Beg's superior, intervened, demanding that a drink that was widely enjoyed in Cairo should not have been banned without his permission. Khair Beg soon paid for his insolence. In 1512, he was accused of embezzlement and the Sultan sentenced him to death.

By the late 16th Century, the use of coffee was widespread throughout the Arabia, North Africa and Turkey. The nutritional benefits of coffee were thought to be so great that coffee was considered as important as bread and water. So much so that a law was passed in Turkey making it grounds for divorce if a husband refused his wife coffee.

Shifty Pony posted:

I thought Ireland was the English speaking EU gateway of choice these days, or is that only for tech firms?

Anos posted:

It should also be noted that the EU has given quite good deals to Norway and Switzerland which might be seen as a preferable alternative. However, as it turns out it doesn't really make people want to join more - it just makes it easier to not join. Those deals would not be made today and if Britain leaves there will be every incentive to demonstrate why membership is beneficial.

Radish posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft338yltVLE

loving Poles fixing things.

Antti posted:

Yeah, e.g. the 350 million is the gross. So it excludes all the money coming back to the UK.

haveblue posted:

I thought it was more that Irish tax law was friendly to inversions so you didn't have to maintain staff or do actual work there, just operate our of Ireland on paper.