Uh oh. He threw down.
Nobody can leave the thread until the dance-off challenge is answered.
I don’t get it.
You. SilverWook. And a mirror ball.
Uh oh. He threw down.
Nobody can leave the thread until the dance-off challenge is answered.
This guy thinks way too much about fonts:
https://backchannel.com/how-fonts-are-fueling-the-culture-wars-f9d692101fea
And, of course, I’m a complete sucker for this sort of thing.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/north-carolina-gerrymander/index.html
The Supreme Court struck down two congressional district maps in North Carolina Monday, holding that the state had engaged in an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The ruling is a victory for the black North Carolina voters who had argued the plans packed African-Americans in districts that already had a high percentage of African-Americans, thus diluting their presence in other districts.
As a result, the ruling sends the North Carolina legislature back to the drawing board – with significant potential implications for the 2018 midterm elections. The state has been nearly split along partisan lines in recent statewide elections – such as for governor and president – but Republicans control 10 US House seats compared to only three for Democrats.
Gorsuch did not participate, but it wouldn’t have mattered as the vote was 8-0 and 5-3 in the two different cases.
Why didn’t Gorsuch participate? He is on the court now. He already participated in one decision not to hear a case.
I don’t know in this particular case, but considering the length of cases in general, he may have been around for the opinion-writing section, and even most of the arguments, but if you weren’t on the court when the arguments started, it would be pretty expected not to participate.
Here’s the letter from Flynn’s lawyers re: the Russia investigation taking the fifth, refusing to turn over documents, and again making the offer for testimony in exchange for immunity:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3728320-Michael-Flynn-counsel-s-letter-to-Senate.html
I’d now like to take a moment of silence, to commemorate the the fact that we will no longer have arguments about whether these documents from Flynn’s lawyers are forgeries, Photoshops, or some other elaborate ruse that Flynn’s lawyers are afraid to contradict for fear of the wrath of Hillary the all-powerful private citizen.
For those watching the CSR negligence fiasco unfold, the Trump administration just punted, and (I think) that means the CSR payment obligations will be met for 90 days. The problem? While the 90-day extension means they’ll be funded through the insurers’ rate filing deadline (June 21st), insurers like to look a little further into the future than 90 days when setting their rates for the whole year. And it would be very reasonable for them to assume the negligence will return in 90 days, and set their rates accordingly higher.
Everyone voted against Hillary because of the things Trump is actively doing right now.
Don’t forget that she was on Death’s door.
Last night I dreamt that the news announced Trump had died from a heart attack. Not making a joke, it’s just something that happened.
I’ll make the joke. Can you imagine the WorldNutDaily reaction to that one?
Thanks, Obama!
That’s huge. But I think the gerrymandering of the House is enough to maintain a Republican majority against even a Democratic tsunami like that.
Source?
The only useful hard data point is this one, which says a 1.2% Democratic victory margin in terms of votes translates into a devastating Democratic defeat in terms of seats. Everything else is modeling and extrapolation (mine included). In general, prognosticators say that things break even at about an 8-9% Democratic advantage. If the Democrats win by 8-9% in the House, control of the House is a toss-up–could go either way. I think both RCP and 538 used this 8-9% value last time around. The problem is that this tends to be a “generic ballot” metric, rather than a per-seat metric. So if the swing seats don’t shift as much as safe seats, the whole model falls apart. Considering the Republicans effectively control the nation’s election process, and have a huge foreign intelligence apparatus willing to selectively take down individual House candidates in key races, I’d say the 8-9% margin simply isn’t big enough to get a win. I’d say we need to win by 12% to win at all. That’s my model, the source is me 😉
EDIT: This is not to say it’s hopeless. But nothing less than the complete collapse of the national Republican party (which, thankfully, still seems to be in the cards, albeit remotely) is going to give the Dems control of anything at the national level in 2018. So… focus on the states. Governorships, state legislatures (Huge pickup opportunites! Gaining 12 more governorships is quite plausible!). We do well enough there in 2018, and we’ll be much better positioned to do something interesting in the House and/or Senate in 2022 after redistricting, when the landscape isn’t tilted quite so strongly against us.
You should change your numbers then. The chance of Democrats winning either the Senate or the House is definitely not 0%, unless that was tongue-in-cheek.
No, I took the probability of total collapse of the national Republican party into consideration. I could have said <1% for this too, but at enough decimal places, it just makes more sense to round down.
If you shake your keyboard upside-down and whack the keys a few times, the shift key won’t stick anymore.
Also, welcome to the present! The left has been politically wiped out and hasn’t been relevant in US politics since 1974! Enjoy your stay!
STOP HARSHING MY BUZZ!
Sorry! 12 Governorships! 12! Totally reasonable chance!
Sure, but other things have changed too. The US Attorney General wasn’t doggedly pursuing voter suppression in 2016–that’s assured in 2020. Russia didn’t know tipping their hand would have so little effect on the outcome–they may be less subtle in 2020 (maybe not Polonium unsubtle, but bad news nevertheless). 2020 will be different in ways other than approval ratings.
That’s huge. But I think the gerrymandering of the House is enough to maintain a Republican majority against even a Democratic tsunami like that.
Source?
The only useful hard data point is this one, which says a 1.2% Democratic victory margin in terms of votes translates into a devastating Democratic defeat in terms of seats. Everything else is modeling and extrapolation (mine included). In general, prognosticators say that things break even at about an 8-9% Democratic advantage. If the Democrats win by 8-9% in the House, control of the House is a toss-up–could go either way. I think both RCP and 538 used this 8-9% value last time around. The problem is that this tends to be a “generic ballot” metric, rather than a per-seat metric. So if the swing seats don’t shift as much as safe seats, the whole model falls apart. Considering the Republicans effectively control the nation’s election process, and have a huge foreign intelligence apparatus willing to selectively take down individual House candidates in key races, I’d say the 8-9% margin simply isn’t big enough to get a win. I’d say we need to win by 12% to win at all. That’s my model, the source is me 😉
EDIT: This is not to say it’s hopeless. But nothing less than the complete collapse of the national Republican party (which, thankfully, still seems to be in the cards, albeit remotely) is going to give the Dems control of anything at the national level in 2018. So… focus on the states. Governorships, state legislatures (Huge pickup opportunites! Gaining 12 more governorships is quite plausible!). We do well enough there in 2018, and we’ll be much better positioned to do something interesting in the House and/or Senate in 2022 after redistricting, when the landscape isn’t tilted quite so strongly against us.
Dems take the Senate (meaning 51+ seats) in 2018: 0%
Dems take the House in 2018: 0%
From the article:
I’ve framed these losses in terms of votes lost rather than seats lost because converting from one to the other is tricky. That there are fewer and fewer swing districts is an undoubtedly big help to Republicans. On average since 1922, the 7.5-point popular vote swing against the president’s party has translated into a loss of 29 seats in the House, but Democrats probably wouldn’t get quite so favorable an exchange rate. And there are other factors that go into the calculation, such as how strong the incumbency advantage is and how broadly the opposition party contests the map. It’s the sort of thing that you’d probably want a model to help figure out, and we don’t have a model yet.
The Republicans will lose a ton of votes, and that will be most visible in the House. More people will vote for Democrats than Republicans by a huge and maybe even unprecedented margin. That much we all agree with. It’s the votes-to-seats modeling where the difference lies. I think right now the Dems are slated to win the popular vote in the House by something like 11 points. That’s huge. But I think the gerrymandering of the House is enough to maintain a Republican majority against even a Democratic tsunami like that. Call me back when 538 has a model.
The Senate? Look at the map. I see exactly two Democratic pickup opportunities (NV and AZ), and AZ will be hard-fought. On the other hand, will Democrats hold on to ND? WV? IN? Holding onto MO will be a huge stretch. In the Senate, the Dems will lose seats. Losing only one seat would be a sign of an unprecedented Democratic wave.
Don’t really disagree with much there either. They’re saying there’s a huge Democratic wave coming. I agree.
Trump re-elected in 2020: 60%
At most the odds are 50-50. I think you overestimate their chances.
That’s so far off I’ll admit my numbers will certainly change by the time it happens. Nevertheless, remember that pretty much everyone knew Trump was Putin’s man in 2016 and he still won. Russia could afford to be a lot less subtle in 2020. And Trump will definitely lose the popular vote again, and by a larger margin.
Here’s my odds on various things happening (no timeline) after the events of last week.
“Smoking gun”-type indisputable evidence of criminal wrongdoing by senior administration official available to public: 100%
Successful RICO prosecution of senior administration official: 85%
Presidential pardon of senior administration official: 80%
Impeachment of senior administration official: <1%
All mainstream media access to White House revoked: 10%
All mainstream media (including Fox) access to White House revoked: 1%
Dems take the Senate (meaning 51+ seats) in 2018: 0%
Dems take the House in 2018: 0%
Trump average approval rating (Gallup): 36%
Trump re-elected in 2020: 60%
Trump appoints one or more additional Supreme Court justice: 40%I like the direction the news has been heading too, but there is still quite a hill to climb. I wouldn’t treat this like a done deal at all.
Well this is depressing as shit.
My work here is done.
Thanks to darth_ender for your responses. I did get a bit of a crash course in Mormonism, but it was mostly of the “how do I escape this building without being set on fire” emergency crash course variety and less of a thorough theological study variety. And yes, I knew I wouldn’t actually get set on fire, that was an exaggeration. For one thing, Mormons tend not to carry lighters 😉
So in my state, we have two big state universities with a big football rivalry. The bigger school is in a big city, the smaller school is out in a rural area. The smaller school has intense, passionate fans. One simply does not fail to show school spirit. The larger school has some passionate fans too, but also plenty of students who could care less. It’s this latter bit that is particularly galling to fans from the smaller school. The lack of enthusiasm in itself is a sign that something is very wrong with the larger school, its team, and its fans. How could someone not care about their football team?
Well, I’ve just been poring over what separates me from Dawkins (and I hope it’s rather a lot), and I think this story may illustrate part of it. To me, the existence of God really isn’t a very interesting or useful thing to know. I mean, I’m atheist and so by definition, I do know the answer. But I don’t actually care that I know the answer. It doesn’t affect my daily life, it doesn’t factor into my decisions. Would the thought that I could be wrong bring about a sense of existential angst? Nah. The past few days in this thread are about as much thought I’ve given the topic in decades. Dawkins on the other hand? He’s got face paint and a giant foam finger (the middle one of course). Go team!
Honestly putting anything terribly religious (pro or con) on a billboard seems more tacky than offensive. It’s like keeping a Bible on the back of your toilet. Technically doable, maybe you could even build a case for why you do it, but… ew. No. There’s a better way. But then I obviously don’t think much of billboards.
Here’s my odds on various things happening (no timeline) after the events of last week.
“Smoking gun”-type indisputable evidence of criminal wrongdoing by senior administration official available to public: 100%
Successful RICO prosecution of senior administration official: 85%
Presidential pardon of senior administration official: 80%
Impeachment of senior administration official: <1%
All mainstream media access to White House revoked: 10%
All mainstream media (including Fox) access to White House revoked: 1%
Dems take the Senate (meaning 51+ seats) in 2018: 0%
Dems take the House in 2018: 0%
Trump average approval rating (Gallup): 36%
Trump re-elected in 2020: 60%
Trump appoints one or more additional Supreme Court justice: 40%
I like the direction the news has been heading too, but there is still quite a hill to climb. I wouldn’t treat this like a done deal at all.
The filenames for the Dutch subs are: SW-nld-full.sup, ESB-nld-full.sup, and ROTJ-nld-full.sup. They can be found in the SUP-720p or SUP-1080p folders.
EDIT: Many preservations including the Despecialized Editions only include the SRT portion of Project Threepio. If you want BD-SUP, you can download the whole project, typically from the same places you got Despecialized.
In non-Russia-related news, the entire healthcare industry is begging the federal government to end the now dire CSR negligence so that the health insurance market doesn’t get upended. I hate to break it to them, but torching the healthcare system wasn’t a negotiating tactic, it was a campaign promise.
The Independent now says the person of interest is Kushner.
EDIT: New York Magazine also backs this up, says four sources confirm (I believe that’s considered “innuendo” by our previous Trump standards). The First Family has been touched. This may well stir up another blind vindictive panic adding to the obstruction tally. The White House is already looking at taking measures that would completely coincidentally shield Kushner (and Manafort) from the Special Counsel.
After rejecting an offer to testify behind closed doors, Comey has agreed to testify in public to the Senate Intel Committee, after Memorial Day.
Hillary did provide a good example here. When the topic is guaranteed to be so highly politicized, it’s better to do it in public so that the public/media has a reference for distinguishing spin from fact. You do lose the ability to discuss classified matters, however.
In lighter news.
Not really news so much as confirmation–the investigation is not merely going after the “bad apples” who have already been culled, Paul “Never Heard of the Guy” Manafort and Michael “Witch Hunt” Flynn. It’s looking into current senior administration officials.
EDIT: Forgot Carter Page. The list of suspects is already too long. And dangit Frink why you gotta be like that?
I’m just going to keep adding things as I think of them, so darth_ender’s going to have to reply to an entire book by the time he can get around to it 😉
There’s a lack of cultural awareness you get from being raised atheist. I really thought Jesus was a bank until I was around 9 years old (because, you know, when I saw Jesus Saves on signs, it was reasonable to assume it also provided low-interest 30-year fixed mortgages). I once joked with a friend that we should make “Pop Culture Cliff’s Notes” for home-schooled kids and others who might feel left out of playground talk. I think I could have used that for religion–I never got any sort of “This is why we don’t believe in God”, or “This is what other people believe” talk from the parents. We just… didn’t. Atheism, God, rejection of God, etc, never really came up. I didn’t know there was a word for what we were. Christmas was just snowball fights and a tree. Other people went to church sometimes, sure, but I wasn’t sure what exactly happened in there and it must not have been very important because it never came up and it mostly just meant I had to wait until Sunday afternoon to play with the neighbors.
There’s also the issue of active vs. passive “passing”. Passively appearing Christian is one thing, happens all the time. Actively doing it is really awkward and I never liked it. As an atheist, you nevertheless end up going to churches–weddings, funerals, etc. You may even go to a regular service if you’re caught staying in the wrong person’s house on a holy day. What do you do? You could simply not participate, but depending on the context, that can be really obvious, makes it look like you’re trying to make a statement/make yourself the focus of events rather than the religious service. Or you could do the “imitate a Christian” thing, where you bow your head, kneel, move your lips and/or sing and basically do all the visible actions while privately examining the grain pattern of the pew in front of you. To me, that option seems profoundly disrespectful, and yet it’s still often the best choice, so it’s what I do. Christian pantomime. I hope I do it well, because if people knew I was just doing an impersonation, it could be mortifying.
And sometimes–and I don’t mean this as disrespectfully as it sounds–keeping a straight face can be hard. Sometimes you learn something wildly new about a religion that you had no idea about before. Sometimes it’s simply a shock and it’s really hard not to register that on your face. I knew next to nothing about Mormonism, and went via obligation to a regular Mormon service one day–and due to the gender separation of certain aspects, I was completely on my own! Nobody who knew I was atheist could warn me about what was coming up. Let me tell you, the Cliff’s Notes would have been a lifesaver there.
The House Democrats claim they sent a letter to Mike Pence (head of the Trump Transition Team) in November stating that Flynn had not disclosed that he was serving as an agent of a foreign government, and that this posed a conflict of interest with being national security advisor.
Flynn himself claims he told Pence about this in January.
Pence claims he did not find out about this until March.
The difference? Pence’s timeline clears him of anything but unwitting involvement. But the Democrats kept receipts of the entire transaction, including the reply letter from the Trump Transition Team indicating the letter was received.
Next stop, Paul “Shut Up! Shut Up! No Leaks!” Ryan. Then, President Hatch.
I was originally thinking about this with regard to Dawkins, but it really applies to lots of kinds of ideological intolerance. It’s reasonable for people to think their own religious texts metaphorically sit closer to the nonfiction section than any other religious texts. Even atheists think their uncodified non-belief is nonfiction while belief is fiction.
But there is a saying that goes something like “Sometimes fiction does a better job of capturing the truth than nonfiction”. People have no problem venturing into the fiction section for other reading, but do it for religious texts? Blasphemy! Never! And it’s a shame. Admittedly I’m Mr. Multicultural Signature Line, but I think religions are very valuable, and a net positive for humanity. The fact that I think they’re fiction doesn’t mean they don’t have some valuable truth in them, even for people who don’t believe a word.
Dawkins also inadvertently promotes a bit of an anti-atheist stereotype by adhering so strongly to the “nonfiction is always superior, fiction provides nothing” viewpoint. There’s an opinion out there that atheism is a lazy cop-out for people who don’t want to make sacrifices and want to sleep in on Sundays*. And Dawkins makes atheism sound like the easy, only reasonable choice. But an atheist only needs to wait until someone they love dies, and then they’ll see that this nonfiction business is kind of a shit sandwich. A little fiction can help a lot of people, if they can believe it.
* Don’t get me wrong. Sleeping in on Sundays is awesome.
