American Politics

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2777322]Three million more votes were cast for Republican House candidates than Democrat House candidates. And Republicans control the House by a c*nt hair.

[URL]https://www.cookpolitical.com/charts/house-charts/national-house-vote-tracker/2022[/URL]

Republicans received 2.8 percentage points more of the popular vote, and hold about 2.06 percentage points more seats in the House.

Woe be to the repubs, bothsiders and neithersiders who facilitated redrawn districts that resulted in a fair outcome, with party representation in the House approximately the same as the parties' respective share of the popular vote. For by facilitating fairer redistricting they have enabled the evil Republicans to control the House.

This is actually an excellent illustration, that the 40% of Americans who believe that Trump won the 2020 election are no more irrational than many Democrats. Democratic politicians are always dreaming up imaginary ways Republicans are disenfranchising voters..[/QUOTE]Turns out Repubs redrew and gerrymandered so many districts to such an extreme degree for it to be virtually impossible to expect a Dem win in them that the vast majority of House seat candidates that ran UNOPPOSED or, at best, against a third party candidate who also had no chance of winning, were Repubs:

[B]Democrats Allowed 24 Republican House Candidates to Run Unopposed[/B]

[URL]https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-allowed-24-republican-house-candidates-run-unopposed-1760345[/URL]

[QUOTE]Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London's Centre on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek that Democrats may have had good reason not to contest races they believed they were likely to lose.

"Funneling money, energy, and attention into races where Democrats have no shot at winning only diverts resources from contests that are in play," Gift said.

"While there's something to be said for running a candidate on principle especially against 'ultra-MAGA' Republicans like Paul Gosar there are risks," he said.

"Besides using up scarce resources, it's hard to find candidates willing to be a sacrificial lamb," Gift went on. "And even if these candidates do exist, any wrong moves they make including gaffes, scandals, or indiscretions reflect negatively on the party. Getting thrashed in a general election also isn't the best look for the Democratic Party."[/QUOTE]Dems wasting all that money and resources by placing and backing candidates in those races very, very likely would not have changed the outcome in those newly redrawn and heavily gerrymandered Repub districts one iota. However, it definitely would have significantly reduced the Repubs' bragging rights on that "Three million more votes" bit. LOL.

And if we also logically subtract most or all of the 142,000+ votes some non entity purportedly named "George Santos" scammed out of that New York district, well, that pretty much puts an end to any surgically isolated Repub / Bothsider / Neithersider whining about "fairness."

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2777522]I favor a system like what Thomas Jefferson envisioned, where governmental authority and the power of the purse rest with the states to the extent that it makes sense. If we had that, it wouldn't matter so much which party controlled the federal government. Or how presidential and congressional elections were decided. People like you would be freer to be governed and live the way you want to live in California. And the same would be true for people like me in Texas, who don't appreciate northeastern and west coast politicians fucking us over with, for example, climate and border policies that don't make sense for our state. And taking our money and flushing a big % of it down the drain.

To answer your question, the way the Senate is set up, with 6 year terms, without the power to initiate spending bills, and with each state receiving equal representation, makes sense to me. And if we were writing a new Constitution, it would make sense to do away with the Electoral College and elect the winner based on the popular vote.

The only two presidential elections in modern times where the winner lost the popular vote were Bush vs. Gore in 2000 and Trump vs. Clinton in 2016.

If Gore had won in 2000, maybe we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.[/QUOTE]Yeah, we probably wouldn't have gotten Obama's Rapid Response Vaccine programs to produce millions and millions of vaccines for a so-called "Clinton Pandemic" by January 21,2021 because we wouldn't have needed them for a Pandemic that never happened in the first place.

Neither Clinton nor any other Dem would have defied all expert warnings not to do something so dangerous and stupid as to defund and remove the officials whose job it was to monitor and immediately report, prevent and respond to initial cases of a coronavirus spread.

But Repub Trump did.

Maybe a particular region in China would have needed some that quickly.

And, of course, the USA and the rest of the world could have then taken them at our leisure in the midst of another uninterrupted Great Dem Economic Expansion heading to budget surpluses, just to be sure, on the remote possibility that someday "one case out of China" did indeed break out and cross over somewhere.

It's not surprising that you favor typically Dem states with tens of millions of American taxpaying citizens residing in them, overwhelming contributors to USA GDP, getting the exact same representation in the Senate as typically Repub states with fewer American taxpaying citizens than live in a few square blocks of just one city in those Dem states and with practically nonexistent contribution to USA GDP.

So much for that representation "fairness" BS you tried to float.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2777532]It's not surprising that you favor typically Dem states with tens of millions of American taxpaying citizens residing in them, overwhelming contributors to USA GDP, getting the exact same representation in the Senate as typically Repub states with fewer American taxpaying citizens than live in a few square blocks of just one city in those Dem states and with practically nonexistent contribution to USA GDP.[/QUOTE]I'm perfectly fine with one vote for each tax dollar paid.

And like I already said, I'm perfectly fine electing the president by popular vote.

This is the United STATES of America. Again, as a believer in a federal system, like Thomas Jefferson, I believe power should be vested in the states to the extent it makes sense. So it makes sense to for each state to have equal representation in one of the governing federal bodies. Many other countries have similar systems, like Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, and Burundi. And that's just going up to the B's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_country

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2777524]Turns out Repubs redrew and gerrymandered so many districts to such an extreme degree for it to be virtually impossible to expect a Dem win in them that the vast majority of House seat candidates that ran UNOPPOSED or, at best, against a third party candidate who also had no chance of winning, were Repubs:

[B]Democrats Allowed 24 Republican House Candidates to Run Unopposed[/B]

[URL]https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-allowed-24-republican-house-candidates-run-unopposed-1760345[/URL]

Dems wasting all that money and resources by placing and backing candidates in those races very, very likely would not have changed the outcome in those newly redrawn and heavily gerrymandered Repub districts one iota. However, it definitely would have significantly reduced the Repubs' bragging rights on that "Three million more votes" bit. LOL.

And if we also logically subtract most or all of the 142,000+ votes some non entity purportedly named "George Santos" scammed out of that New York district, well, that pretty much puts an end to any surgically isolated Repub / Bothsider / Neithersider whining about "fairness."[/QUOTE]You fail to note that there were about 12 races where Democrats were the only major party on the ballot. And that in reality only 16 Republicans ran unopposed, with no opponent from the Democratic Party or another Party.

[URL]https://www.270towin.com/news/2022/09/15/uncontested-the-35-house-districts-with-only-one-major-party-ballot_1419.html[/URL]

It wouldn't have made any difference Tooms. Use the following assumptions.

USA population is 330 million.

There are 435 House Districts.

There were 11 more Republicans than Democrats running in districts where there was no opponent from a major party (from above link).

About 1/3rd of voters in a district where there's only one major party candidate would have voted for a hypothetical opposition candidate.

A total of 107.6 million people voted in the House election (from Cook political link I've shown you at least 3 times).

Based on the above, a reasonable estimate of the additional number of popular votes Democrats would have gotten would be

11 x (330 million /435) x 107.6/330 x 1/3rd = 900,000

Republicans still would have won the popular vote by over 2 million votes.

And it would be completely illogical to subtract out 142,000 votes for Santos as you argue. If another Republican had run, he probably would have gotten about the same number of votes as Santos. Or the difference would have been next to nothing compared to the 3 million vote margin for the Republicans.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2777522]I favor a system like what Thomas Jefferson envisioned, where governmental authority and the power of the purse rest with the states to the extent that it makes sense. If we had that, it wouldn't matter so much which party controlled the federal government. Or how presidential and congressional elections were decided. People like you would be freer to be governed and live the way you want to live in California. And the same would be true for people like me in Texas, who don't appreciate northeastern and west coast politicians fucking us over with, for example, climate and border policies that don't make sense for our state. And taking our money and flushing a big % of it down the drain.

To answer your question, the way the Senate is set up, with 6 year terms, without the power to initiate spending bills, and with each state receiving equal representation, makes sense to me. And if we were writing a new Constitution, it would make sense to do away with the Electoral College and elect the winner based on the popular vote.

The only two presidential elections in modern times where the winner lost the popular vote were Bush vs. Gore in 2000 and Trump vs. Clinton in 2016.

If Gore had won in 2000, maybe we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. Many lives, mostly Iraqi, and many American dollars would have been saved. If Gore governed like Bill Clinton in his second term , he might have made a good president, if the House were in Republican hands and and people like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin were in his administration.

If Clinton had won in 2016, she couldn't have done much harm with a Republican House and Senate. She wouldn't have gotten re-elected in 2020, because of the Clinton Pandemic. (That's what you'd call it, right?) Our national debt wouldn't be as outrageously high as it is today, because split government results in less spending. And because there's no way the Republicans who would have won the 2020 elections would have been as profligate as Biden, Schumer and Pelosi. Another positive, Clinton probably wouldn't have engaged in Trade Wars, like Trump did. Finally, Trump is a blight on the Republican Party. If he'd lost in 2016, he probably would have disappeared into the sunset.

The big downsides would be that we never would have implemented corporate tax reform, including a cut in rates. And we probably wouldn't have had vaccines ready to go in January, 2021 with Clinton in charge.

So anyway, in summary, if we picked presidents based on the popular vote, maybe we'd be better off today.[/QUOTE]They chased him out long ago (a CIS white male) lololol.

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHR2dk4UNCM[/URL]

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2777522]I favor a system like what Thomas Jefferson envisioned, where governmental authority and the power of the purse rest with the states to the extent that it makes sense. If we had that, it wouldn't matter so much which party controlled the federal government. Or how presidential and congressional elections were decided. People like you would be freer to be governed and live the way you want to live in California. And the same would be true for people like me in Texas, who don't appreciate northeastern and west coast politicians fucking us over with, for example, climate and border policies that don't make sense for our state. And taking our money and flushing a big % of it down the drain.

To answer your question, the way the Senate is set up, with 6 year terms, without the power to initiate spending bills, and with each state receiving equal representation, makes sense to me. And if we were writing a new Constitution, it would make sense to do away with the Electoral College and elect the winner based on the popular vote.

The only two presidential elections in modern times where the winner lost the popular vote were Bush vs. Gore in 2000 and Trump vs. Clinton in 2016.

If Gore had won in 2000, maybe we wouldn't have invaded Iraq. Many lives, mostly Iraqi, and many American dollars would have been saved. If Gore governed like Bill Clinton in his second term , he might have made a good president, if the House were in Republican hands and and people like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin were in his administration.

If Clinton had won in 2016, she couldn't have done much harm with a Republican House and Senate. She wouldn't have gotten re-elected in 2020, because of the Clinton Pandemic. (That's what you'd call it, right?) Our national debt wouldn't be as outrageously high as it is today, because split government results in less spending. And because there's no way the Republicans who would have won the 2020 elections would have been as profligate as Biden, Schumer and Pelosi. Another positive, Clinton probably wouldn't have engaged in Trade Wars, like Trump did. Finally, Trump is a blight on the Republican Party. If he'd lost in 2016, he probably would have disappeared into the sunset.

The big downsides would be that we never would have implemented corporate tax reform, including a cut in rates. And we probably wouldn't have had vaccines ready to go in January, 2021 with Clinton in charge.

So anyway, in summary, if we picked presidents based on the popular vote, maybe we'd be better off today.[/QUOTE][URL]https://crisis24.garda.com/alerts/2023/01/thailand-authorities-slightly-increase-restrictions-as-of-jan-6-update-76[/URL]

Does anyone have a link for cheap insurance for the CCP virus?

Interesting points Elvis.

[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2777348]When I went to my objective sources, the people I trust the most, you learned that this conflict existed with Dems before. AOC and her squad bucked Pelosi and Jimmy Dore was cheering them on. He wanted the squad to demand that the house vote on the single payer option of Medicare for all. What we learned with Obama is he was going to reform health care and he did, by letting the insurance companies right the new law. With Obama, we learned from wikileaks that Citigroup picked the whole Obama cabinet.

And of course, the vote for Medicare for all never hit the house floor as the squad caved[/QUOTE]That's my big problem with Obamacare too. Yeah it's nice more people are covered by insurance. But it's doubling down on a failed system. It didn't do jack to lower cost or improve quality. Yes the insurance companies are one of the main causes of out of control costs.

[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2777348]So the guys like Jimmy Dore, Aaron Mate, and Glenn Greenwald, guys I trust, are asking are these Republican for real? Are they really going to get concessions for the citizens or is Kevin McCarthy going to rule and be a big money guy who does what is best for the big corporations paying him off? And the other possibility is: are these Republican rebels really going at McCarthy for selfish reasons and juicy committee seats?

[b]So which way does it go? Do we get real concessions and reform, or is this just a ploy by these Republican rebels for more money and power?[/b] I want to believe the former, but if I had to bet, I would pick the latter. It is Washington after all.[/QUOTE]I think it's both Elvis. Some of the rebels care about specific issues, government spending or whatever, and are trying to get leverage. And others like you say are looking for more money and power. If you believe the pundits on cable news, Matt Gaetz is an example of the later. He's raising lots of money from people who don't like McCarthy or business as usual, and he's raising his profile hugely. The longer this goes on, the more money he raises. And I imagine he needs a lot. As you know as well as anyone, courting sugarbabies in the USA is not cheap, compared to Mexico anyway.

[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2777240]Damn Spidy, We agree for once. I'd like your honest opinion about this video. I brought it to the attention of a Democratic friend who ironically said he'd rather watch paint dry than watch Sean Hannity and Lauren Boebert go at it. He honestly used those words. Anyway I think it's hilarious.

[URL]https://www.foxnews.com/video/6318208355112[/URL]

OK, I'll admit that listening to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez expound on Modern Monetary Theory or talk about the famed economist Milton Keynes is more entertaining. But that's mostly because AOC has nicer tatas. She and Boebert are both ditzes.[/QUOTE]

Finally got around to watching this video, due to router/internet provider problems, but that's another story.

Anyways, against my better judgement (...kkkk) I did watch the video and yes...agreed, it's hilarious. The Repub infighting, is just music to my ears, but I may come to regret said comments if it persists, for the next two (2) years.

PS: Cheers to splendid nuances of watching paint dry!

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2777537]You fail to note that there were about 12 races where Democrats were the only major party on the ballot. And that in reality only 16 Republicans ran unopposed, with no opponent from the Democratic Party or another Party.

[URL]https://www.270towin.com/news/2022/09/15/uncontested-the-35-house-districts-with-only-one-major-party-ballot_1419.html[/URL]

It wouldn't have made any difference Tooms. Use the following assumptions.

USA population is 330 million.

There are 435 House Districts.

There were 11 more Republicans than Democrats running in districts where there was no opponent from a major party (from above link).

About 1/3rd of voters in a district where there's only one major party candidate would have voted for a hypothetical opposition candidate.

A total of 107.6 million people voted in the House election (from Cook political link I've shown you at least 3 times).

Based on the above, a reasonable estimate of the additional number of popular votes Democrats would have gotten would be

11 x (330 million /435) x 107.6/330 x 1/3rd = 900,000

Republicans still would have won the popular vote by over 2 million votes.

And it would be completely illogical to subtract out 142,000 votes for Santos as you argue. If another Republican had run, he probably would have gotten about the same number of votes as Santos. Or the difference would have been next to nothing compared to the 3 million vote margin for the Republicans.[/QUOTE]Uh-huh. And how does your pencil-to-paper recalculation of the Repub vote advantage from 3 million to 2 million effect your earlier whine about the "unfairness" that your beloved Great Recession and Massive Jobs Destruction-Producing Repubs had a 2. 8% point advantage in votes with all those additional UNOPPOSED races but only Pink Tinkled out a 2. 06% advantage in House seats?

Did it pretty much make it a whine without justification?

My point about "George Santos" wasn't about replacing him with another Repub Trump Mini-Me candidate with better hiding places for their fraud from the beginning. It was about him being busted and his entire fake bio being outted days before the election rather than weeks after the election.

Here is what I am Partisan for:

When the record, data and all evidence begins to show Repubs are the ones producing all of the major USA Economic and Jobs Creation Boom Times, even at a piddling and largely irrelevant cost of a few months of inevitable high inflation during their Great Economic Recoveries from Massive Job Losses, and none of the Great Depressions, Great Recessions and Massive Jobs Destruction while Dems are producing all of the Crashes, Great Depressions, Great Recessions and Massive Jobs Destruction but none of those aforementioned Boom Times, I will be happy to start voting for and touting Repubs.

Yes, I am that Partisan for Economic and National Security gains vs horrific losses.

But there is really zero sign or indication that colossal switcheroo between the Parties is in the offing in any of our lifetimes:

[B]Bidens rescue plan made inflation worse but the economy better.
Government cash boosted demand when economy was struggling to produce, experts say[/B]

[URL]https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/10/09/inflation-economy-biden-covid/[/URL]

[B]December jobs report: Payrolls rise by 223,000, unemployment rate falls to 3.5%[/B]

[URL]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/december-jobs-report-january-6-2023-125423740.html[/URL]

Thanks, Joe, Nancy, Chuck, the Dems and everyone who voted for them.

Those duly elected Dems were the ones who shouldered all the heavy lifting and assumed all of the political risk to do what was necessary, when it was necessary, to do as much of it as possible under the tightest restrictions that existed in the Real World and get as much bang for the American taxpayer's buck out of it with as little or less significant pain relative to the gain as anyone predicted.

[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2777348]

So the guys like Jimmy Dore, Aaron Mate, and Glenn Greenwald, guys I trust,
.[/QUOTE]Great to see you mention these 3. They are my top 3 USA journalists right now too. Maybe Matt T would also qualify. Doesn't matter if your Rep or Dem, these 3 will call you out if your talking shlt. Thats how real journalism should be. Maybe you will like David Doel too. His Canadian but has a good channel too. Rational National.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2777568] As you know as well as anyone, courting sugarbabies in the USA is not cheap, compared to Mexico anyway.[/QUOTE]Hookers are hookers no matter what name you give them, and there's no courting involved. Transactions are transactions.

We had one of these "seeking arrangement" girls interviewed on our local news. She was doing pretty good until the prostitution question was directly presented to her, then I've never seen someone so panicked, flustered, and defensive. That's because in spite of all the rationalizations going on in her head, in her heart she knows very well what she is. And their clients know just as well that they are clients.

As to Gaetz, who knows or even cares about his love life as long as he's seeking out adults, but he's a fundamentally unAmerican, lying lowlife whose ideology the American people reject. Though sadly his crowd is able to assert some influence in the Republican Party.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2777598]Great to see you mention these 3. They are my top 3 USA journalists right now too. Maybe Matt T would also qualify. Doesn't matter if your Rep or Dem, these 3 will call you out if your talking shlt. Thats how real journalism should be. Maybe you will like David Doel too. His Canadian but has a good channel too. Rational National.[/QUOTE]Glad to see other folks not getting sucked into the CNN / FOX partisan stupidity.

[QUOTE=Jmioffe;2777701]Glad to see other folks not getting sucked into the CNN / FOX partisan stupidity.[/QUOTE]It should come as no surprise but money money money. Many of CNN's casters are former FOX employees. Seems their attitudes changed with moving to CNN for money?

[QUOTE=Paulie97;2777624]As to Gaetz, who knows or even cares about his love life as long as he's seeking out adults,[/QUOTE]Allegedly Gaetz was dating a 17 year old he met off of Seeking.

[QUOTE=MarquisdeSade1;2777552]They chased him out long ago (a CIS white male) lololol.

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHR2dk4UNCM[/URL][/QUOTE]I don't think they ran him off Marquis. He probably left of his own accord after the politically correct, anti-libertarian Democrats ran off all the affordable hookers. Kamala Harris was the ring leader when she was California attorney general. She went on to greater things when she became a USA Senator, sponsoring FOSTA and SESTA to try to shut down prostitution throughout the USA.

Interesting contrast in the video between wealth and poverty in Monterey County, California. Maybe Tooms moved to Bangkok because he figured he'd be right at home. I don't know if you've been there, but you can visit plush skyscrapers and shopping malls. And if you walk a few blocks you're in a shanty town. You don't have to drive like in California! Although actually the tent shanty towns in Salinas look more like Jakarta than Bangkok.

No wonder so many people are leaving the PRC (Peoples Republic of California).

[QUOTE=MarquisdeSade1;2777561][URL]https://crisis24.garda.com/alerts/2023/01/thailand-authorities-slightly-increase-restrictions-as-of-jan-6-update-76[/URL]

Does anyone have a link for cheap insurance for the CCP virus?[/QUOTE]Yes indeed, if only Thailand had virus insurance. The country was hit very hard by the pandemic because tourism is one of the largest contributors to GDP. And the Thais through 2020 and into 2021 tried to control the spread of the virus through lockdowns. They effectively shut down tourism and travel from overseas until last year, unless you were willing to jump through hoops. Tooms apparently believes we should have done something similar in the USA so we wouldn't have suffered the ill effects of his so called "Trump Pandemic."

Anyway, as I have said several times, Tooms is a bright guy. The availability of hot and cold running hotties was undoubtedly not his only consideration in moving to Thailand. He receives income in dollars from his rental properties but spends Thai Baht. Things must have been cheap for him before the pandemic. But now they're super cheap. Thailand's COVID policies and the effect on tourism played a large part in the depreciation of the Baht. So that now a good all night hooker in Bangkok costs less than a steak dinner (with wine) in many American restaurants.