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https://twitter.com/WarOnDumb/status/1699063982597026271 Alabama had their 2020 redistricting map slapped down by the courts, again. This is the legislature'a second try (designed by the solicitor general to get this result) but, in effect, is the original map. As noted in the tweet (Whitmer is a longtime AL politics columnist in mainstream papers), even the Trump judges are pretty livid about the state's clear effort to get this back to SCOTUS to continue shredding the VRA. It's the first time I can recall a conservative panel calling a state out for wasting time to get to a Purcell ruling, which has unambiguously happened here (AL asked for 5 weeks to create a new, compliant plan and returned with an extraordinarily noncompliant map). Court has ordered a special master to create a usable map for 2024 and the remainder of the cycle, and Alabama is expected to appeal that result given the constitutional presumption that a state will draw its own maps. Alabama allegedly needs the map by October for the 2024 elections, so a sympathetic SCOTUS can deny Black Alabama citizens their constitutional rights for another cycle if they choose. Really just a question of if they decide Alabama's been too blatant and they'd like a case with less obvious malfeasance.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:36
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I wonder if SCOTUS keeps loving around with gerrymandering it'd accidentally take the gloves off California to cut the R-CA delegation down from 12 to like 4. That and if NY dems can stop loving it up, the Republicans would be hosed. Gerrymander for a few cycles until you have the political power to securely enshrine voting rights and break gerrymandering once and for all.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:46
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Main Paineframe posted:She isn't chasing after people who want to kill Jews. She's chasing after people who want to kill Muslims. Has she? It seems like the only time she ever gets mentioned nowadays is either when she's doing something for the attention (see when she handcuffed herself to Twitter's office door) or because she's trying to gently caress actual neo-nazis who are openly anti-semitic, or is surprised that the actual literal swastika-bearing nazis openly hate her.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:57
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duodenum posted:I wonder if SCOTUS keeps loving around with gerrymandering it'd accidentally take the gloves off California to cut the R-CA delegation down from 12 to like 4. That and if NY dems can stop loving it up, the Republicans would be hosed. Gerrymander for a few cycles until you have the political power to securely enshrine voting rights and break gerrymandering once and for all. The question is if a gerrymandered-in dem from CA or NY would willingly sacrifice their own seat and likely political career for the good of the republic. I have my doubts.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:59
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Discendo Vox posted:A quick googling suggests this appears to have an absolutely terrible reputation for promoting pseudoscience. Who funded it? Netflix documentaries are pretty much trash, and they seem to approve basically everything, but documentary film can be about pseudoscience beliefs. Documentary in the popular mind has taken on the idea that it's telling you a fact, but it's really just a movie that documents. I haven't seen that particular documentary though so I don't know how the information is presented, if it's presented as "fact" and not as "belief" that I find it would be a poorly made documentary. Classic examples are Nanook of the North which used plenty of pre-staged shots and is still considered a documentary. Or something like Man with a Movie Camera which doesn't really make a point, but just documents cities in Russia and the film makers in inventive ways. A more modern example of a documentary that pushed a hybrid fictional telling would be The Act of Killing, with reenactments of events from someones perspective.
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Sep 5, 2023 15:59
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Main Paineframe posted:She doesn't support this particular group. She supports many other political positions and movements that they also support, but she doesn't support this one specific anti-Semitic group. Also, she suggests that they might secretly be Feds false-flagging to make the whole movement look bad. To be fair to all the conservative Zaydes and Bubbis in Florida, the actual mainstream Republican party in Florida is not advocating throwing them in ovens or openly supporting the concepts of Neo-Nazism. If anything, they are overly pro-Semitic and constantly trying to reach out to them. It doesn't really take any cognitive dissonance to think that voting for the people who will keep the income tax eliminated in Florida so they can draw from their retirement tax-free in Florida and talk about how much they love Israel are not going to throw them into the oven.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:17
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In other Georgia RICO news, they're continuing to terrorize the Stop Cop City movement using the state's extraordinarily broad RICO laws. In this case, they've expanded to tie in leafletters. https://twitter.com/atlanta_press/status/1699048574862958765 https://twitter.com/atlanta_press/status/1699067502637219970 Also concerning is the continued effort to criminalize the bail/solidarity fund. It's part of the reason I had concern with Willis' decisions in the Trump indictment, where she used the full expanse of a pretty unhinged law. It's tougher to draw attention to this blatant abuse when a chunk of Willis' overt acts were also pretty explicitly protected behavior. This is both a reminder of how red state officials will continue to abuse any law they can to criminalize dissent and that just because there's mutual dislike between Trump and Kemp doesn't mean Kemp hasn't spent his entire career abusing the law for political benefit. including the 2018 accusation and faux-investigation, two days before the election, that Abrams and the Democratic Party tried to hack the state's voter registration systems quote:It was a stunning accusation: Two days before the 2018 election for Georgia governor, Republican Brian Kemp used his power as secretary of state to open an investigation into what he called a “failed hacking attempt” of voter registration systems involving the Democratic Party. quote:The internet activity that Kemp’s staff described as hacking attempts was actually scans by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that the secretary of state’s office had agreed to, according to the GBI. Kemp’s chief information officer signed off on the DHS scans three months beforehand.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:24
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KillHour posted:The question is if a gerrymandered-in dem from CA or NY would willingly sacrifice their own seat and likely political career for the good of the republic. I have my doubts. Given that the sentiment among Democratic party politicians seems to be "Actually, we need a strong Republican party", I doubt it.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:29
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the_steve posted:Given that the sentiment among Democratic party politicians seems to be "Actually, we need a strong Republican party", I doubt it. California passed a constitutional amendment to hand over its redistricting process to a non-partisan committee. New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois actually have gerrymandered the Republicans into very "unfair" districts. Illinois in particular is gerrymandered against the GOP in a pretty extreme way. Republicans tends to get about 42% of the statewide vote in Illinois, but only get 17% of the congressional seats. New York's most recent maps fell to a court ruling following a constitutional amendment to end partisan gerrymandering and are being redone this year after having a fairly pro-GOP map in 2022, so not sure what that will look like.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:38
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I don't know if more uncompetitive Congressional seats is what this country needs, even if they're filled with Democrats.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:43
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Fewer fascists in positions of power is a good thing, by most means- especially if that specific means is already being used by the fascists in other places.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:48
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Judgy Fucker posted:I don't know if more uncompetitive Congressional seats is what this country needs, even if they're filled with Democrats. Gerrymandering can create more "competitive" seats, in that a gerrymandered map will create an 80/20 entirely noncompetitive seat in order to turn two other seats into 55-45 seats. It's meant to give the opposing party massive advantages in a small amount of seats (thus "wasting" a higher percentage of their votes) and your party a smaller yet comfortable advantage in a large amount of seats.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:50
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Judgy Fucker posted:I don't know if more uncompetitive Congressional seats is what this country needs, even if they're filled with Democrats. No but unilateral disarmament doesn’t work. Sure, gerrymandering needs fixed, badly, but only fixing it in states where it is benefiting Democrats is only going to make everything worse.
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Sep 5, 2023 16:50
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duodenum posted:I wonder if SCOTUS keeps loving around with gerrymandering it'd accidentally take the gloves off California to cut the R-CA delegation down from 12 to like 4. That and if NY dems can stop loving it up, the Republicans would be hosed. Gerrymander for a few cycles until you have the political power to securely enshrine voting rights and break gerrymandering once and for all. This is basically what Illinois decided to do last cycle and its working a treat, highly recommend.
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Sep 5, 2023 17:12
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the_steve posted:Given that the sentiment among Democratic party politicians seems to be "Actually, we need a strong Republican party", I doubt it. Is this actually a real world thing at all, or is it one of those internet telephone games like how Obama saying he's not a communist and Republicans used to have a liberal wing morphed into him being Reagan's biggest fan? Because the ones that always get seem to cited (like when Pelosi used that exact phrasing to trash-talk Republicans and call them a "cult") are really REALLY clearly "the Republican party isn't going to dissolve tomorrow and we'd like them to be reasonable opposition rather than unhinged psychos." Again, that quote literally called modern Republicans a cult.: https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1523812812434329602 This is, remember, someone who well remembers plenty of pro-choice Republicans and when Nixon signed the EPA into law. It seems to be right in line with the common leftist criticism of the Democratic party getting lazy especially in blue states since being able to point to the shitshow on the other side keeps them from having to be a positive good themselves.
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Sep 5, 2023 17:12
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Quixzlizx posted:Gerrymandering can create more "competitive" seats, in that a gerrymandered map will create an 80/20 entirely noncompetitive seat in order to turn two other seats into 55-45 seats. FLIPADELPHIA posted:Fewer fascists in positions of power is a good thing, by most means- especially if that specific means is already being used by the fascists in other places. The alternative form of gerrymandering tends to be even more racialized - cracking. That's what is at play in Alabama, where the state GOP has split a segment of black voters between districts in a way to ensure that they're the "35%" in 2 65R-35D districts and thus have basically no political power in either district. Texas is notorious for doing this with Hispanic voters as well.
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Sep 5, 2023 17:12
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Not incredibly surprising, but roughly 7 in 10 Republicans said that Trump being convicted would have no impact on their support for him and only 13% said it would cause them to no longer support him. A full majority (52% to 60%) have already ruled out ever supporting Pence, Christie, or Asa Hutchinson under any circumstances. Christie being the highest at 60%. Asked to name their biggest worry about Trump as a candidate, the top three answers GOP voters provided were: quote:- 8% say their biggest worry is that his opponents will attack him or not work with him DeSantis is still in second place, but way behind. Vivek Ramaswamy is the only candidate to significantly increase their support - going from 1% to 6%. All other candidates basically stayed the same or fell. Trump is still sitting at "only" around 50%, but despite about half of GOP voters saying they aren't 100% committed to him yet, nobody else is even close and DeSantis is still 34 points behind him. https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1699091674209677633 quote:CNN Poll: GOP voters’ broad support for Trump holds, with less than half seriously worried criminal charges will harm his 2024 chances Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Sep 5, 2023 |
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Sep 5, 2023 17:16
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Paracaidas posted:
If I have to choose between a "reasonable" Republican who will gently caress the poor, destroy the biosphere, and hollow out public institutions and a more overtly racist one that will do all those things with 33% more vocalized racism, I'll generally pick the latter because having them be the face of the Party ensures they will continue to wane in nationwide popularity as Boomers die. I'd rather have ~40% of a given legislative body be Lauren Boeberts than ~50.1% Mitt Romneys FLIPADELPHIA fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Sep 5, 2023 |
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Sep 5, 2023 17:23
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All of the gop candidates campaign plans are fundamentally relying on trump either going to jail or dying
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Sep 5, 2023 17:28
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OctaMurk posted:All of the gop candidates campaign plans are fundamentally relying on trump either going to jail or dying Really the latter because he would still get the nomination from jail.
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Sep 5, 2023 17:29
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There's always a large number of "Undecided" or "Not Sure" answers from polls like this because: A) Some people are always wanting "something better" regardless of the current options. and B) A lot of normal people aren't paying attention to politics 1.5 years out from the election. But, it is still kind of interesting that there are about 35% of GOP voters who aren't 100% sold on Trump right now, but will also absolutely still vote for him if he were a convicted felon and even hypothetically admitted his own guilt. Not sure what those people are still waiting for.
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Sep 5, 2023 17:49
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In some positive news, the FDA relaxed their guidelines for blood donations, eliminating criteria based on gender and sexual orientation. The Red Cross has updated their donation guidelines as well: for instance, you're no longer asked about male/male sex at all, just whether you've had any new sexual partners lately. https://www.redcrossblood.org/local-homepage/news/article/inclusive-blood-donation-change-rcbs.html
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Sep 5, 2023 18:06
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:Really the latter because he would still get the nomination from jail. I realize the constitution does nothing to stop his nomination from jail (super cool "get out of jail free card" there America) but is it possible the GOP might not let him be their nominee by some rule they have/make up? They of course realize he is currently their main nominee, but a chunk of the established GOP still hates Trump and only support him cause they have no spines. Might be a chance to be rid of him.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:27
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Orthanc6 posted:Might be a chance to be rid of him. spine not found
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Sep 5, 2023 18:32
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Interesting and depressing/funny poll results from the new WSJ poll. https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/WSJ_Poll_Aug_2023.pdf Top 5 Most Important Issues for 2024 Election: quote:Economy - 24% The issues that 0% or 1% of people said were their most important issue: This past year is the first time that "Jobs" has been so low on the issue priority ranking. quote:Economic inequality - 74% of Americans think that the inflation rate has risen in the last year. Only 20% answered correctly. - 48% think that the stock market has declined in the past year. Only 27% answered correctly and 25% didn't know. - 54% of Americans say their personal financial situation has gotten worse over the last year. Among Republicans, it is 75%. - Biden and Trump both have net approval ratings of -19. However, Trump has higher "very favorable" and "very unfavorable" ratings than Biden. Only 6% have a "somewhat unfavorable" view and only 12% have a "somewhat favorable" view of Trump - the rest are all on the extreme favorable/unfavorable sides. Interestingly, Biden's job approval is higher than his personal approval rating - this has generally been the opposite with more people approving of him personally than of his job performance. - Mike Pence is the most unpopular national political figure that they polled. Only 3% of Americans have a very favorable opinion of Pence and nearly 70% either have "somewhat" or "very" unfavorable feelings about him. - If they can't pick Trump, then Ron DeSantis is the significant favorite second choice of Republican voters with 35%. Vivek Ramaswamy is second with 16%. - Roughly 1/5th of Americans say they are still aren't definitely sure who they would vote for in 2024. 40% say "definitely Biden" and 39% say "definitely Trump." Another 12% are leaning towards one specific candidate, but not 100% sure. 8% are totally undecided and (somehow) don't know enough about Trump or Biden to make a decision. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Sep 5, 2023 |
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Sep 5, 2023 18:36
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Orthanc6 posted:I realize the constitution does nothing to stop his nomination from jail (super cool "get out of jail free card" there America) but is it possible the GOP might not let him be their nominee by some rule they have/make up? They of course realize he is currently their main nominee, but a chunk of the established GOP still hates Trump and only support him cause they have no spines. Might be a chance to be rid of him. Doing so would almost certainly cause a massive voter revolt and a blue landslide in the Senate and House.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:40
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Orthanc6 posted:I realize the constitution does nothing to stop his nomination from jail (super cool "get out of jail free card" there America) but is it possible the GOP might not let him be their nominee by some rule they have/make up? They of course realize he is currently their main nominee, but a chunk of the established GOP still hates Trump and only support him cause they have no spines. Might be a chance to be rid of him. Trump will be the nominee. Best to just accept that. If the GOP tries any ratfucking to keep him out he will absolutely, positively, burn the entire party down around himself out of spite. He'd just fart out on social media how everyone needs to write in his name on the ballot to prove that he's the bigliest best president in history and enough of the chud-o-sphere would follow their leader to destroy whoever got put in his place. The rest of the party may hate him, but they also know he'll do it so they won't make a peep.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:43
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Orthanc6 posted:I realize the constitution does nothing to stop his nomination from jail (super cool "get out of jail free card" there America) but is it possible the GOP might not let him be their nominee by some rule they have/make up? They of course realize he is currently their main nominee, but a chunk of the established GOP still hates Trump and only support him cause they have no spines. Might be a chance to be rid of him. They could absolutely come up with One Weird Trick to stop him. Rigging primaries is a time-honored political tradition. Thing is though, no matter how much the GOP establishment allegedly hates him, they know he butters way too much bread for them to blatantly cross like that.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:48
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the_steve posted:They could absolutely come up with One Weird Trick to stop him. Rigging primaries is a time-honored political tradition. Hasn't his legal defense been costing them money by taking money that would otherwise go to Republican causes and just get redirected into his pocket?
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Sep 5, 2023 18:51
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Randalor posted:I am honestly concerned that Laura Loomer is going to end up dead in a shallow ditch because she keeps doing the equivilant of slathering barbecue sauce on her face and running towards the face-eating leopards. Hell, I'm honestly surprised she's still alive at this point. She is by definition, a Kapo.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:51
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Gyges posted:It's mostly that they agree on almost everything except for a tiny little quibble over who's considered white. Which is an odd sticking point since basically all the other hated 19th Century Europeans are considered whites in good standing. What I would give to have a national platform to say that White People are a thing that got made up and doesn’t exist. That White People are as real as Santa Claus (the point being that Santa is way too real for something that’s fake)
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Sep 5, 2023 18:56
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Angry_Ed posted:Hasn't his legal defense been costing them money by taking money that would otherwise go to Republican causes and just get redirected into his pocket? Probably, but is what he's costing them more than what he's bringing in? I'm talking in terms of anything; money, voter turnout, whatever qualifies as a benefit.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:58
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It’s a big problem (for them) that a lot of donations are going straight to Trump personally rather than into party coffers, where they could be spent on other candidates
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Sep 5, 2023 19:01
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the_steve posted:Probably, but is what he's costing them more than what he's bringing in? I'm talking in terms of anything; money, voter turnout, whatever qualifies as a benefit. Election denial hurt them in the midterms for sure, and there's no future party with Trump in it where that goes away.
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Sep 5, 2023 19:07
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Paracaidas posted:Alabama had their 2020 redistricting map slapped down by the courts, again. This was buried deeper than I read in to the 200 page filing from the courts, but is something that I hope keeps SCOTUS from using it as its wedge to shred the rest of the VRA: https://twitter.com/lyman_brian/status/1699118637812957188 I noted in my post that the solicitor general designed the revised map. I'm nearly certain of this, in part because the relevant legislative bodies have been unable to answer who actually designed it. I'm glad the court is taking note, because it really highlights the risk that "The VRA and the federal courts are usurping Alabama's explicit constitutional duty to set the time, place, and manner of elections" runs headlong in to "was this map designed in the manner prescribed by the state legislature?"
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Sep 5, 2023 19:10
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Orthanc6 posted:I realize the constitution does nothing to stop his nomination from jail (super cool "get out of jail free card" there America) but is it possible the GOP might not let him be their nominee by some rule they have/make up? They of course realize he is currently their main nominee, but a chunk of the established GOP still hates Trump and only support him cause they have no spines. Might be a chance to be rid of him. Not a chance in hell. Even if such a rule existed, inventing a technicality to disqualify the guy who is by far the most popular choice for the nomination would be political suicide (and possibly also actual suicide, given how militant his diehard base is). That's why the establishment Republicans put up with him in 2016, that's why they played along with him in 2020, and that's why they're absolutely not going to get in his way no matter what in 2024. As long as he's the clear frontrunner, there is zero chance of the GOP rebelling against him. Yeah, Trump is terrible for the party in a lot of ways, but the people who vote in primaries love him, and that means that most Republicans have to either embrace Trump or start planning their retirement from politics. Doesn't matter how much they hate it, or how much it hurts their chances in the general, or how much they resent Trump taking all the fundraising for himself. If they publicly defy Trump, they'll face a well-funded primary challenge from some absolute maniac that the base will absolutely love. That's why I'm always emphasizing the importance of building political support among the people. It's essentially impossible to blatantly ratfuck someone who's leading by 40 points. Even if the rules technically provide a route for ratfucking, pulling some dumb bullshit against someone overwhelmingly popular is like pulling the pin on a grenade and dropping at your own feet - the political backlash will be severe and it will be messy.
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Sep 5, 2023 19:21
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Killer robot posted:Is this actually a real world thing at all, or is it one of those internet telephone games like how Obama saying he's not a communist and Republicans used to have a liberal wing morphed into him being Reagan's biggest fan? She could have just said she wants the GOP to stop being a cult then. Saying that the US needs a strong Republican party is unnecessary, because it's a completely independent idea from them not being a cult. Obviously neither of us can read her mind and figure out what she really meant, but we can certainly make an educated guess based on her and her party's actions. We know that she's very wealthy, so she's not affected by the same material concerns about having a strong Republican party as most other people are. We know that she's been hostile to the left wing of her party in the past, and supportive of the right wing (remember she actively campaigned for a pro-gun anti-abortion Democrat against his leftist primary opponent). But to be fair, my interpretation is pretty close to yours. I think that she does want the GOP to stop being unhinged psychos, mostly because she has been personally affected by an unhinged psycho trying to beat her husband to death with a hammer. But the problem with that is back when the Republicans were "reasonable opposition," they were still psychos, just of the hinged variety. You could surmise that she wants them to go back to speaking in dogwhistles and saying all the right platitudes that make them seem normal and respectable. And I think that that is naive at best.
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Sep 5, 2023 19:25
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Fister Roboto posted:She could have just said she wants the GOP to stop being a cult then. The quote in the post you quoted literally says she wants them to stop being a cult.
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Sep 5, 2023 19:28
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Fork of Unknown Origins posted:Really the latter because he would still get the nomination from jail. There's a nonzero chance that the chuds simply refuse to believe he's dead, instead thinking he's in hiding from the deep state. There's a good chance he'd still win a state or twi. Then, when the Republicans nominate someone else (because even they won't nominate an actual corpse), the chud rank and file think he was robbed by the RINO GOP, stay home and the Republicans have a 40% loss in their turnout on election day and just get *crushed* all up and down the ticket.
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Sep 5, 2023 19:33
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The quote in the post you quoted literally says she wants them to stop being a cult. The word "just" in "could have just said" indicates "said that and no more," which is consistent with what's being argued in the rest of the post.
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