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[quote quote=1414]
Yuck. Re douche bag discussion. Fwliw, I associate douchebagery with more of a goofy/effete disposition rather than bombastic a la Orange one. More of a B male persona. Open season on white guys.
e.g., Beto O’Rourke, douchebag.[/quote]
good example. Beto is definitely the personification of douchebag. Trump is cut more from the “asshole” mold, but as everybody knows am asshole can still be wildly effective so we wont see that as the slur applied.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)No. This will be characterized as an opportunity for “dialogue” and a “teachable moment” about how we all need to “do better.”
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)Yeah I messed up on name. Sorry about that. Not sure why I recalled neodymium while responding.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1381]You are arguing the rules (my bad for mentioning them), whereas your original question simply asked if it was fair if one state made the rules for the rest of the country if they had 99% of the population. I simply took your extreme example to its logical conclusion — from 99% to 99.9+%. I thought it was “we the people”. I am sure the states argument was meant to protect the rights of the people in those states, not some soil and minerals. When the imbalance becomes so extreme those folks end up as oligarchs for all practical purposes. If they were all communists and the other 99% were Breitbart conservatives, I’m going to guess there would suddenly be some new interpretations of the meaning of “states rights”.[/quote]
Actually I’m pretty sure I made fun of arguing the rules, and then argued the practical principles. Apologies if you missed that.
While looking at this from the perspective of “what if all the bad peoples are in the minority and this gives them power” is a fair interpretation, in real life that’s awfully naive. The more likely scenario is that a large state, like California, gains too much clout on an issue that hits small or rural states. Think about water rights as an example. Would it be “fair” for Californians to vote themselves rights to all of the excess water in the west?
Maybe to make it a better hypothetical, make Nevada the heavy. Would it be fair for Nevada to vote itself all of California’s water, or should california have at least a say in the matter.
Im telling you, this union of states is important. Local government is super important, and to supersede it by saying that the bicameral legislature is unfair is to ignore a lot of history where minorities and rural folks have been crushed by political elites from faraway places. Is that “unfair” to the individual voting in a presidential election from a large state? Perhaps, but only because they can’t see the checks and balances in play on their own likelihood to mob up and crush the distant, rural unknown folks.
Maybe a better discussion is this, Neo: what would be a better system? Are you arguing for direct democracy?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)- [quote quote=1376]Even if they only had the Senate it seems absurd. The other 300M+ people effectively couldn’t pass any legislation, budgets, etc. without the consent of most of those 98 people. They could not appoint anyone to the courts either without the approval from the oligarchs.[/quote]
Starting to feel like a debate about baseball rules. It’s absurd that your first two foul balls are strikes but you can foul a hundred more times and not strike out, but them’s the rules.
In practical terms our federal government is built to give some weight to states over people. It’s just the way it is. That actually helps protect minority populations, but objectively. Since we have established via the civil war that union is for life, then I’d suggest that the weighting of states is even more important.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)- [quote quote=1376]Even if they only had the Senate it seems absurd. The other 300M+ people effectively couldn’t pass any legislation, budgets, etc. without the consent of most of those 98 people. They could not appoint anyone to the courts either without the approval from the oligarchs.[/quote]
Starting to feel like a debate about baseball rules. It’s absurd that your first two foul balls are strikes but you can foul a hundred more times and not strike out, but them’s the rules.
In practical terms our federal government is built to give some weight to states over people. It’s just the way it is. That actually helps protect minority populations, but objectively. Since we have established via the civil war that union is for life, then I’d suggest that the weighting of states is even more important.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1370]Edit: replied in the wrong place. Meant for Personal Legend… PL: A state isn’t its population? So to take your example to the extreme (it’s already quite extreme though), hypothetically if just two guys lived in the other 49 states you think all 98 of them should get Senate Seats and Congressional votes. And 98 people should be able to set the laws, budget, etc. for 300 million people in another state? They would win the electoral college too, I believe, and would be able to appoint a President and all the Supreme Court justices. As you know, that would be an oligarchy under the guise of “democracy”.[/quote]
Technically speaking, yes, that could happen but only in the hypothetical, and it would never be oligarchy because the 49 states could not vote in or even recommend the vast majority of the government, but it’s an absurd reduction of course.
Sticking to the electoral college, In your example the 49 states would get something like 98 senate seat electors and another 49 rep electors. That’s 147 of the 538 votes. Assuming the one big state had all or nothing electoral commitment, that state would determine the election every time. The extreme is not a good example as the minority is really never protected.
In the policy example, the big state gets the house and the presidency, and the small states get the senate. The executive would have to play nice enough with the senate to get judges and key appointments confirmed, and the house would have to play nice enough to get any meaningful legislation ratified.
As it stands, the union would not exist without the balancing of state and population representation. The state gets two votes, regardless of its population, and the population gets the rest.
it’s a weird, wonderful machine that allows for massive states with some counterbalancing of the other states. It’s not near the disaster you suggest, even in the extreme.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1363]lout????!!!! YOu can’t disrespect me like that! Such micro-aggressions are offensive! really good word that rhymes with lout is grout, no doubt, as you can see from your redoubt, and I am out![/quote]
And your disdain for douche bags has me thinking you prefer it musky. Not judging.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)Any attempt to measure anything that puts a historically disadvantaged group at a disadvantage seems to be moving into the “racist” bucket.
There is no objectivity. You say 2+2 = 4 and I tell you that the Arabs are murderers and oppressors of women and so using their number system makes me ill. You, sir, are therefore wrong. And on top of that: How dare you make me ill, sir!!!!
That’s it in a nutshell. Attempts at objectivity get met with righteous indignation that offer no alternative to achieve the objective goal.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1356]I am sorry but the third question is simply uneducated claptrap. If the framers had wanted pure majority democracy we’d have it. some of them believed in it, hell, its a reasonable thing to believe in. They decided on what we have for obvious reasons. Now had the framers known that we would have an election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump its safe to say we would probably all be singing hail to the king.[/quote]
The question is “Uneducated claptrap” eh?
You sling the high hard one when you don’t even understand the question. If someone is questioning the electoral college, they are usually advocating for direct democracy, which isn’t what the framers built or intended to build. So, My friend, why would posing that question be “uneducated claptrap?”
It usually smokes out the ignorance in the room.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1357]is it ok to be more insulting than that and refer to him the douche bag in chief? who cares.[/quote]
What if I care you insensitive lout?
What does everybody have against douche bags?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1348]
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Do you believe that, if California had 99 percent of the country’s population, that California should be able to make laws for the rest of the country?
Of course, because effectively there would be no “rest of the country”. Dirt doesn’t get a vote. All those maps showing some huge swath of red states are highly misleading.[/quote]
Dirt doesn’t get a vote, I agree.
But states do. And a state isn’t its population.
The framers were smart.
Should we abolish statehood?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)Maybe people are actually waking up. I doubt it.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1322]Obama likes it. Strip club capital of the world. Can’t pump your own gas. I’ve only known one person from Portland and she murdered her husband. She was really nice when I knew her. I did know a guy who moved to Portland and I’m told he went insane. I don’t want anything to do with anyone from Portland.[/quote]
Well, that sorts it for me!
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)[quote quote=1316]Ps: Lex, did you catch DiBlasios’s recent “solution” yesterday? The good people of BedSty must and will “take back the street corners”? Tell me, are you partial to vigilante justice…let’s the Mayor redirect that billion to his wife’s visions; or how about an asymmetrical response on the street corner; only the bad guys are armed[/quote]
Let the good mayor go stand on the street corner. This is a guy whose security detail could rival that of the president.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)
