Gerrymandering

[Corso]

It only upsets people in the Salon when the Republicans do it.

The "Republicans do it more" argument is odd, if you really think about it. It's wrong. Period. Not "more wrong".

I thought political threads died here, now that Trump is gone. I assume everyone is quite happy & satisfied with the stellar job Biden/Harris have done, based on the radio silence here...nothing to complain about, perfection achieved.

Happy 4th everyone!

Corso signing out from the Commonwealth Of Massachusetts, the state that invented Gerrymandering. And yes, more Democrats have performed the act than Republicans here. Your experiences may differ due to location.

[XR2]

IMHO we are in the midst of a huge struggle for the reins of our country. They are using every tool available including the strongest one. The stupidity of the great unwashed. The game may not be lost yet but if common sense is to prevail we will need a bit of luck.

EDIT:Oh Trump is far from gone. Just not camping in the White House anymore.

[Too Tall]

I'm from Michigan and we have some of the most aggressively gerrymandered districts in the country. We also have a citizen driven movement, https://votersnotpoliticians.com/ that looks to be successful in taking the districting process away from partisan legislators. I think this will have a tremendously positive impact.

When people were collecting signatures on the petition that put the proposal on the ballot, people were waiting in lines 5 and 10 people deep to sign.

Following....

[Saab2000]

Following....

When I lived in Michigan I voted in favor of this. It had wide bipartisan support among the electorate and passed with a wide margin. Unsurprisingly, there was a campaign of borderline misinformation and just plain old stupid ads against the measure. It wasn’t hard to deduce which party was behind the opposition to the ballot initiative.

I am glad it may lead to more appropriate districting in Michigan, which as noted in the article, has some absolutely absurd district borders.

[jclay]

It only upsets people in the Salon when the Republicans do it.

Really? You know this to be fact??

The "Republicans do it more" argument is odd, if you really think about it. It's wrong. Period. Not "more wrong".

Specious argument. Would you rather have cancer on one tiny, skin surface portion of your wanker, or hundreds of sites all over and inside your body, including the aforementioned location? July 6 post here is relevant and worth reading: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/

I thought political threads died here, now that Trump is gone. I assume everyone is quite happy & satisfied with the stellar job Biden/Harris have done, based on the radio silence here...nothing to complain about, perfection achieved.

With Mitch and the GOP elevating their Obama era obstructionism to an even higher art, the suite of serious to existential challenges facing the country and the planet, and the Jan 6 attempted election overturning/insurrection, why on Earth would you think that?

Maybe we're reasonably satisfied to have someone who, warts, imperfections and all, doesn't throw gasoline on cultural fires in a transparent attempt to gain power and attention.

[jclay]

From Truthout.org:

Newly leaked video footage of a recent event hosted by the right-wing group Patriot Voices shows Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas openly admitting that his party wants “18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done” as President Joe Biden, a bipartisan group of senators, and congressional Democrats work to pass climate and infrastructure legislation.

“Honestly, right now, for the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022,” Roy says in the clip, referring to the month after that year’s midterm elections. Republicans need to flip just a handful of seats to take back the House and Senate.

“I don’t vote for anything in the House of Representatives right now,” Roy says in response to an audience member’s question about the sweeping infrastructure and safety-net package that Democrats are planning to pass unilaterally alongside a White House-backed bipartisan deal.

Roy’s articulation of the Republican Party’s strategic thinking is hardly a diversion from what the GOP leadership has said publicly, but it was viewed as further evidence that the bulk of the minority party is not interested in good-faith legislative talks with the Democratic majority.

More here including a video and some related links: https://truthout.org/articles/in-lea...d-obstruction/

[Sino]

doesn't throw gasoline on cultural fires in a transparent attempt to gain power and attention.

Dear lord, you really don't read much about the democratic party do you? Where to even start...the entire party has been built precisely on doing exactly this.

[jclay]

Dear lord, you really don't read much about the democratic party do you? Where to even start...the entire party has been built precisely on doing exactly this.

"Someone" is a key word in the sentence I wrote. The obvious and implicit comparison was between Biden's behavior and Trump's incendiary, destructive, lying invective.

[Corso]

Really? You know this to be fact??

Hmmmm, my opinion is challenged as "fact", where your often lengthy one sided view is what, other than simply your opinion?

Compare the thousands of post here about the last President, for every statement he made, his jokes taken as gospel, etc etc, to nothing posted about Biiden putting his foot in his mouth every time he speaks?

When T used executive orders, he was a a dictator, when Biden ran out of ink from all his- no comments here...

The past outrage over the border vs the disaster now occurring down there, but the sound of crickets? Harris has done a great job...not. Joe put her in charge, correct?

Big city crime at all time high, as well as gas prices, etc. But let's chant "infrastructure", like it's 1950- and watch the money disappear into union pockets- as union leaders order there members to vote D, and the cycle of payback continues.

I keep hoping to see real leadership, hoping to see the press ask hard questions, but well, we all know what's going on.

But hey, it's only my opinion.

[Matthew Strongin]

Hmmmm, my opinion is challenged as "fact", where your often lengthy one sided view is what, other than simply your opinion?

Compare the thousands of post here about the last President, for every statement he made, his jokes taken as gospel, etc etc, to nothing posted about Biiden putting his foot in his mouth every time he speaks?

When T used executive orders, he was a a dictator, when Biden ran out of ink from all his- no comments here...

The past outrage over the border vs the disaster now occurring down there, but the sound of crickets? Harris has done a great job...not. Joe put her in charge, correct?

Big city crime at all time high, as well as gas prices, etc. But let's chant "infrastructure", like it's 1950- and watch the money disappear into union pockets- as union leaders order there members to vote D, and the cycle of payback continues.

I keep hoping to see real leadership, hoping to see the press ask hard questions, but well, we all know what's going on.

But hey, it's only my opinion.

C'mon man. You didn't state an opinion. You said that it only upsets people here when Republicans do it. That's not true. I, for one, loathe gerrymandering when Democrats do it. But Republicans do it more so they catch, deservedly IMO, more heat for it. This is just one of many areas where we need significant reform to our elections.

Executive orders have been the norm for multiple administrations due to Congress's failure to function as legislative body. Obama used way too many thanks to the McConnell obstructionism. That set Trump up to use way too many to overturn policy that wasn't enshrined in law. Shitty on both sides.

If you want to have a discussion about the border crisis, feel free to start a thread. The forum isn't colluding to suppress border crisis discussions in an attempt to make Biden look good. It hasn't come up. But if you'd like someone to go on record, I'll say that there is still a border crisis. Much of it inherited given Biden has been in office for 1/8th of his term. But some Biden admin decisions have certainly exacerbated the number of illegal immigration attempts as people look to take advantage of a more lenient administration. There's a lot more too it than that, but I'll save my thoughts for that thread if you want to hear what others on the Salon say rather than projecting.

I'm not quite sure how you can equate big city crime to the president unless you're also suggesting that Trump's terrible handling of the pandemic was part of a larger strategy to lower crime rates by keeping people locked in their homes. And if you're implying Biden is at fault for rising gas prices I would suggest doing some reading on the economic drivers. Here's one to get you started: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier...soline-prices/ (TL;DR: supply and demand due to major and slow moving adjustments to capacity during the peak of the pandemic combined with impacts to refinement capacity and challenges with distribution.)

If you want to have serious discussions about major issues of the day, I'm all for it. I enjoy the political threads here because I often learn a thing or two from people whose politics may not normally align with mine. But this nonsense of people painting the rest of the salon with broad strokes based on assumptions and opinion is exhausting.

[Corso]

If you want to have serious discussions about major issues of the day, I'm all for it. I enjoy the political threads here because I often learn a thing or two from people whose politics may not normally align with mine. But this nonsense of people painting the rest of the salon with broad strokes based on assumptions and opinion is exhausting.

Matt,
I'm simply pointing out the obvious. Last President = hundreds of postings. New President = barely a chirp, even though many solanista's state they are not on one side or another, the number of postings speak volumes.

So why wouldn't the broad stroke apply, based simply on the number of postings? Don't you find it strange that the political discussions for the most part, have slowed to a crawl?

Exhausting? The daily postings complaining about Trump in the past 4 years, no matter what he did. The endless links to left leaning publications and comedy shows were non-stop.

Big city crime: c'mon man, the protest were part of a strategy to paint Trump (and republicans) as racist, the destructive (and encouraged by the left) protest were part of making one side look bad before the elections.

Have the issues vanished? Certainly not. What has disappeared are the destructive large scale riots. Why?

Gas prices: Anything that happened under Trump's time-he was blamed for. What's good for the goose, etc. All you have to do is go back and re-read threads here. it's on record, no?

[ides1056]

Beat that dead horse.

[Corso]

It only upsets SOME people in the Salon when the Republicans do it.

I've revised my original reply. Obviously I didn't mean 100% of the Salon.

And I apologize for creating a drift from John's original subject of Gerrymandering.

[theflashunc]

Matt,
I'm simply pointing out the obvious. Last President = hundreds of postings. New President = barely a chirp, even though many solanista's state they are not on one side or another, the number of postings speak volumes.

So why wouldn't the broad stroke apply, based simply on the number of postings? Don't you find it strange that the political discussions for the most part, have slowed to a crawl?

Exhausting? The daily postings complaining about Trump in the past 4 years, no matter what he did. The endless links to left leaning publications and comedy shows were non-stop.

Big city crime: c'mon man, the protest were part of a strategy to paint Trump (and republicans) as racist, the destructive (and encouraged by the left) protest were part of making one side look bad before the elections.

Have the issues vanished? Certainly not. What has disappeared are the destructive large scale riots. Why?

Gas prices: Anything that happened under Trump's time-he was blamed for. What's good for the goose, etc. All you have to do is go back and re-read threads here. it's on record, no?

Well for starters Derek Chauvin got 22 1/2 years. For seconds you don't have a President shit posting to social media about his grievance du jour with the minority group of choice. It's so nice to have someone who just goes about the work. Is he getting some stuff wrong? Hell yes. But I don't have to think about him everyday because he's not actively trying to subvert a nation's attention span like a toddler throwing a tantrum cuz people won't coo over him.

The GOP's attempts here are a multi-pronged approach at staving off the kind of demographic change that has been inevitable in the country for a few decades now. The only votes that count and are "real" are white votes, who should remain the ruling class in the country, and everyone else is subordinate to that. The US is on the precipice of becoming really the first pluralistic, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democracy in the history of the world, and one party fueled exclusively by white grievance is committed to abandoning democratic principles to keep the reins of power for a shrinking demographic segment of the nation.

[Corso]

The US is on the precipice of becoming really the first pluralistic, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democracy in the history of the world, and one party fueled exclusively by white grievance is committed to abandoning democratic principles to keep the reins of power for a shrinking demographic segment of the nation.

Whose painting with a broad stroke now?

So if the US doesn't reach your stated goal of "becoming really the first pluralistic, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democracy in the history of the world", the "white Republicans" are to blame?

I'm not buying it. Multi-ethnic Corso signing off.

[Sino]

"Someone" is a key word in the sentence I wrote. The obvious and implicit comparison was between Biden's behavior and Trump's incendiary, destructive, lying invective.

I think you know full-well Biden's speech or silence and the voice of the democratic party are absolutely one and the same, whether he can stop dribbling enough to speak a coherent sentence or not. Let's look at the amazingly incendiary, utterly disgustingly hate inciting words of Waters, AOC, Tlaib, Harris, et al, along with their total failure to condemn the hate speech and violent actions of others, and then you can complain about orange man mean tweets with some sort of reasonable validity.

You don't have a leg to stand on, whether or not joe said it directly- Clintonesque semantics is not a valid argument here.

[theflashunc]

Whose painting with a broad stroke now?

So if the US doesn't reach your stated goal of "becoming really the first pluralistic, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democracy in the history of the world", the "white Republicans" are to blame?

I'm not buying it. Multi-ethnic Corso signing off.

Well, yes. Who's currently:
1) Actively restricting access to the franchise with laws that are aimed squarely at minority communities that vote overwhelmingly for the other party.
2) Conducting bogus audits of the 2020 election and perpetuating the Big Lie that GOP losses were somehow not legitimate and if "the right people" (ie: White people) were counted properly, they would win.
3) Opposing any federal minimum mandates for voting in elections, after a conservative Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, the latest case of which was just handed down a few days ago. Justice Alito who authored the decision said there's no issue with voting laws that adhere to standards that existed in the 1980s -- which predates much early voting and a lot of forms of absentee voting.
4) Implementing gerrymandering to an absurd extent. GOP strategists today are openly debating how much to "crack" blue districts in Red states during the redistricting process to further weaken any Democratic Party chance at being the majority party in Congress over the next decade.
5) The GOP is animating all of this with their base with the underlying threat of that very demographic eclipse. "Those people" are taking your country away, whether through immigration or changes in policies around climate change or investment in infrastructure. The boogeyman subtext is always "Hey white people, you won't be calling the shots anymore."

It ain't a broad stroke. It's lots of strokes that come together in a pretty clear picture of what's going on. Again, as David Frum rather presciently said: If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.

[jclay]

It ain't a broad stroke. It's lots of strokes that come together in a pretty clear picture of what's going on. Again, as David Frum rather presciently said: If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.

Bingo!

How anybody observing the behavior of the GOP over the past decade or two can deny that conclusion is astonishing; and those who do will not be changed by facts, history or logic. Attempting that is a pointless exercise; volunteering with organizations like Stacey Abrams Fair Fight and simply outvoting social/political conservatives is the only avenue to progress. I again urge y'all to do just that.

In the plus column, I've benefited from the knowledge and perspectives of some of the others here who lean progressive or merely reasonable. As a related aside here's a link to an interesting study concerning farm work and workers: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...high-schoolers

[HorsCat]

So if the US doesn't reach your stated goal of "becoming really the first pluralistic, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democracy in the history of the world", the "white Republicans" are to blame?

Yep. You nailed it.

[Sino]

Yep. You nailed it.

So writes the wealthy white male,
who owns a bike (s?) worth 10 times the annual salary for most of the world's population, containing multiple parts fabricated with basically slave and/or child labor,
who uses enough water and energy in a week to save the lives of hundreds of less fortunate in that same time,
who drives a vehicle of some sort worth 30 of times the annual income for most of the world,
who contributes directly to toxic emissions at a rate hundreds of times the worldwide average,
who has personally done nothing meaningful or impactful to end this "oppression" or "privilege" except complain via the internet.

YET

thinks that their identification with a political party like a teenager begging to be part of the cool click gives them some sort of moral high ground and perfectly clean karma vs those who ID as conservative or republican. (Of course I don't know if everything above is true about you personally, but you get the point). Obviously you can see what an asinine comment you made.