Tyrphanax

doubleofive said:

TV’s Frink said:

I’m curious what one of the few sane pro-gun people I know (Tyr) thinks about this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/02/15/republicans-in-congress-just-made-it-easier-for-mentally-ill-people-to-get-guns/?utm_term=.7ba74facde16

I’ve been (stupidly) assuming that this was part of some larger bill that was actually sensical, but no, the gun lobbies are just worried about old mentally ill people who can legally not handle their own finances being able to buy guns.

It’s complex, but I’m glad you brought it up because I’ve been annoyed today seeing it in the news painted by the media as “WOW REPUBLICANS BASICALLY HAND GUNS TO INSANE KILLERS?!”

The intent of the bill is to keep mentally ill people from owning guns, which seems reasonable to me. Sure.

The issue is that the brush they use is a broad one. So it’s not just potentially dangerous people who are affected: it could be someone who is normal in every other way, but is so dyslexic that they can’t balance a checkbook. Just because you can’t handle your finances doesn’t mean you’re a potential danger to those around you.

Here’s a good article that I feel represents both sides well: http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-gun-law-20150718-story.html

I also worry that laws like this with no real clear definition as to what constitutes “mentally ill/incompetent” will keep people from seeking help they need.

To me, this falls into the realm of a band-aid bill, like the border wall, which have been increasingly annoying me lately. They do very little to address actual issues and instead just look to me like ways politicians can say “look, I did something!”

It’s also the failing with many of the “common sense” gun controls people bring up. Is it common sense not to sell a gun to a person diagnosed with ASPD and narcissism? Of course. Is it common sense to deny gun ownership to a broad group of people purely because for some reason they can no longer handle their own finances? Eh. I think that’s a very grey area and could border on discrimination. The criteria for what constitutes mentally ill isn’t defined enough in my opinion to warrant this kind of action against all who fall into the category.

DominicCobb said:

Tyrphanax said:

DominicCobb said:

If a majority isn’t a majority then what is it?

What if, in your scenario, millions lived in that one city and the boonies, all put together, amounted to a dozen, total. What gives those people more of a voice than a dozen in the city? Just because people live in a city, doesn’t mean they all think alike or want the same things.

If the people want a cat, they’ll elect a cat. Whether there’s an electoral college system in place wouldn’t change that. There’s nothing about cats that’s going to make everybody in the cities vote for it and no one in the boonies.

Yes there are more liberals in the cities, but if liberal candidates started pandering to only those in the cities they would lose a lot of other votes fast. As is, we have conservative candidates who don’t consider those in cities at all because they don’t have to (well besides corporate fat cats). Our current system gears elections to a small amount of states, not the whole country. Why should people in the rust belt and Florida have control over the country?

Yeah, but how does a straight popular vote not just do the same thing? Why focus on some podunk state in the Midwest when you can just win the most populous states (which would be the ones with the largest liberal metros) and take the election? Again, the idea behind the electoral college was to make candidates focus on the whole country and not just the most populous states, and to make voter fraud more difficult.

I just worry about a majority dictating terms to a minority is all. It’s the old “two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner” adage. We have checks and balances all over government and going with a straight popular vote does away with that entirely.

I’m not saying the electoral college is a perfect system at all, and there are definitely ways to modernize it and bring it up to code, it’s just that I feel that it was put in place for a reason and that I believe it more or less serves that purpose. I also reject NPV as subversive of the constitution verging on fraud.

States aren’t a hive mind though. There’s no such thing as focusing on the most populace states alone. There are voters in New York State who vote a lot closer to those in North Dakota than NYC.

The EC was put in place because of the North/South dichotomy where there were clear divisions between the wants and needs of Northern and Southern states. We don’t live in a country anymore where different states have wildly different make ups and concerns. Two thirds of the country isn’t going to eat the other third, that’s just not going to happen. But when the EC was put in place, the North fucking the South over was a legitimate concern (and it still happened anyway, if you ask the South why they seceded). What happens with policy now affects every state, and every voter.

I just don’t see how this boogeyman hypothetical of a popularly elected president a thing.

There’s already state governments and Congress in place to ensure the individual states get what they need. But at the end of the day we’re supposed to be a democratic nation so everyone should get a say. As is my vote means diddly fucking squat.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Forgive this European if he misunderstands the US Presidential election setup but…

Isn’t the “less populated States and rural areas” argument only a thing if the popular vote had gone against them all the time without the EC system?

The reverse is true…

In the last 100 years the popular vote has given the same result as the college in all but two extremely controversial occasions (Bush in 2000 & Trump in 2016). The idea that there would never be a Republican President again with the Popular vote is nonsense and the opposite of the reality. So why not go with the popular vote?

All but two of our fifty states are winner-takes-all, which means that the candidate with the most votes in that state wins that state’s electoral votes, so the popular vote is almost always going to mirror the electoral college votes.

Obviously states aren’t a hive mind, but there are plenty of clear divisions between states and regions of the US; it’s why the interior of the country usually swings red while the coasts swing blue. You don’t really solve Texas being a red state or California being a blue state if you remove the electoral college.

Majorities are things to be wary of in my opinion, regardless if it’s today or 1850. It’s not a hive mind, sure, but people follow packs and that can lead to bad things and in my opinion, it’s better to plan for the possibility that two thirds of the country might indeed eat the other third; after all, people didn’t expect the revolution or the civil war or Trump’s presidency. We’re always simultaneously not as homogeneous as we think and more homogeneous than we think.

As it stands, you can win all the big 15+ electoral votes states (California, Texas, Florida, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina) and still lose the election. But you probably won’t win all of those states because some are red and some are blue, not to mention swing states and flipping states (which played a big factor with Bush and Trump), so the small states where “your vote doesn’t matter” are still incredibly important. In a straight popular vote, why even think about states with a population less than 9 million? Under the current system it can come right down to a state like Montana or Alaska; with a straight popular vote, nothing matters but winning the biggest, most populous states in your constituency, not so much winning a broad variety of different voters.

As with any system, there are of course places that “matter” more than others, but in the current system, which states are important can change from election to election. A pure popular vote just means the biggest states and cities keep getting more important.

I used to be big on abolishing the colleges until a few years ago. Is it perfect? Far far from it, but the importance it places on the voice of the smaller states and minorities in the larger scheme of the governance of the nation as well as the steps it takes towards preventing and containing possible election fraud to the state where it occurs are all important to our elections and should be preserved rather than just outright abolishing the system. It’s checks and balances, which is one of the biggest ideals that the nation was founded upon.

I’ve only been to one Celebration and it was definitely worthwhile.

Looking a bit less short and stocky, too.

Warbler said:

Tyrphanax said:

I also reject NPV as subversive of the constitution verging on fraud.

Actually, it doesn’t. The Constitution allows each state to decide for itself how it will award it’s own electoral votes. This includes awarding them to the winner of the state popular vote, a vote by the state legislature, awarding them by popular vote in each Congressional district within the state(and two votes to winner of the state popular vote), or awarding the electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. States rights.

I realize that it’s the right of the state, but firstly, the NPV agreement isn’t based on the state’s popular vote, it’s based on the nationwide popular vote. Secondly, does it not mess with the system to have some states on this system and others not? Shouldn’t they just try to change the constitution instead of subverting it?

What if a super red state like Texas signs the NPV agreement and is then forced to give its electoral votes to the Democratic candidate just because they won the nationwide popular vote? How does that make sense?

DominicCobb said:

If a majority isn’t a majority then what is it?

What if, in your scenario, millions lived in that one city and the boonies, all put together, amounted to a dozen, total. What gives those people more of a voice than a dozen in the city? Just because people live in a city, doesn’t mean they all think alike or want the same things.

If the people want a cat, they’ll elect a cat. Whether there’s an electoral college system in place wouldn’t change that. There’s nothing about cats that’s going to make everybody in the cities vote for it and no one in the boonies.

Yes there are more liberals in the cities, but if liberal candidates started pandering to only those in the cities they would lose a lot of other votes fast. As is, we have conservative candidates who don’t consider those in cities at all because they don’t have to (well besides corporate fat cats). Our current system gears elections to a small amount of states, not the whole country. Why should people in the rust belt and Florida have control over the country?

Yeah, but how does a straight popular vote not just do the same thing? Why focus on some podunk state in the Midwest when you can just win the most populous states (which would be the ones with the largest liberal metros) and take the election? Again, the idea behind the electoral college was to make candidates focus on the whole country and not just the most populous states, and to make voter fraud more difficult.

I just worry about a majority dictating terms to a minority is all. It’s the old “two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner” adage. We have checks and balances all over government and going with a straight popular vote does away with that entirely.

I’m not saying the electoral college is a perfect system at all, and there are definitely ways to modernize it and bring it up to code, it’s just that I feel that it was put in place for a reason and that I believe it more or less serves that purpose. I also reject NPV as subversive of the constitution verging on fraud.

DominicCobb said:

Tyrphanax said:

DominicCobb said:

And so would be the case for any “scary” winners under the popular vote system.

Indeed, but the fire for changing it right now because someone we don’t like won the election seems rash.

I’ve always been against the system. Even if it was the other way around, a 3 million vote discrepancy is unacceptable.

That’s the whole point of the system, though. The population is weighted unevenly towards big cities which almost always are islands of highly concentrated blue in a reddish sea.

If we had one state with one big city in it and most of the Liberals lived there while most of the Conservatives lived out in the boonies and there were more Liberals in the city than Conservatives in the country, we’d so rarely have a Conservative President that you’d think we were a single-party nation and the Conservatives would feel very unincluded. I don’t think it’s entirely fair to allow a majority to have control purely because they’re a majority. What if they want to elect a cat?

DominicCobb said:

And so would be the case for any “scary” winners under the popular vote system.

Indeed, but the fire for changing it right now because someone we don’t like won the election seems rash.

Warbler said:

Tyrphanax said:

I’m okay with the electoral college system. It could use some tightening up, but overall it’s a decent system.

I find that a straight popular vote is scary.

What do you think of my suggestion?

It wasn’t bad.

I think there is plenty more than the electoral college system to blame for that.

I’m okay with the electoral college system. It could use some tightening up, but overall it’s a decent system.

I find that a straight popular vote is scary.

It was the 80s all day.

They talk about this on Star Wars Oxygen. <_<

I would like to add “run his fade” to my vocabulary but I’m not sure if being mega white makes that funny or dickish.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html

Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

…Oh.

TV’s Frink said:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38972180

A US district judge in Virginia has ruled that President Donald Trump’s executive order barring entry from seven countries is unconstitutional.

Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a preliminary injunction, asserting that the campaign vow to institute a “Muslim ban” violated the First Amendment.

The Monday ruling is significant, as the judge ruled that religious bias is at the heart of Mr Trump’s ban.

All of the following is very encouraging.

In her 22-page ruling, the Virginia judge cited several of Mr Trump’s campaign statements including those in which he promised to create a “Muslim ban” if he were elected president.

“The president himself acknowledged the conceptual link between a Muslim ban and the EO (executive order),” Judge Brinkema wrote.

She also criticised the president’s statements that persecuted Christians may be permitted entry despite the ban, which she said amounts to a religious test.

She also referenced a Fox News interview in which former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump adviser, said that the president wants a “Muslim ban” and that he had been instructed by Mr Trump to put together a commission to determine “the right way to do it legally”.

Judge Brinkema sharply criticised lawyers for the justice department, who she said did not present any evidence except for the president’s executive order.

“Maximum power does not mean absolute power,” she wrote. “Every presidential action must still comply with the limits set” by the separation of powers laid out in the US Constitution.

If Trump is incapable of learning from his mistakes, and past history indicates that’s precisely the case, his term will be quite short.

Man. Don’t mess with people have have been practicing law all their lives.

TV’s Frink said:

Whoa.

http://theslot.jezebel.com/oklahoma-lawmaker-pregnant-women-are-hosts-whose-bodie-1792303950

Women, you may think that the flesh that covers you and the organs and muscles and neurons that make you breathe and poop and eat are your own, but actually they are not. Oklahoma State Rep. Justin Humphrey can see how might “feel like that is” your body, but if you are pregnant, he regrets to inform you that your body is now a “host” and you are an interloping ghost that once used to inhabit it.

In an interview with the Intercept, this is how Humphrey justified the unconstitutional bill he recently introduced, which requires pregnant women to get the fetus’s father’s permission to obtain an abortion:

Ultimately, he said, his intent was to let men have a say. “I believe one of the breakdowns in our society is that we have excluded the man out of all of these types of decisions,” he said. “I understand that they feel like that is their body,” he said of women. “I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’ And you know when you enter into a relationship you’re going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don’t get pregnant,” he explained. “So that’s where I’m at. I’m like, hey, your body is your body and be responsible with it. But after you’re irresponsible then don’t claim, well, I can just go and do this with another body, when you’re the host and you invited that in.”

“Congratulations on becoming a host and inviting that in!” is a truly beautiful thing to say to a pregnant woman. Hallmark should start printing that on cards for baby showers.

Oh yeah, I saw this insanity yesterday. I would have posted it here but for some reason I thought this was where I saw it.

Pure, unadulterated dark ages insanity.

doubleofive said:

LuckyGungan2001 said:

I can’t find any Legends novels at my library except for a couple of Legacy of the Force, Fate of the Jedi and The Old Republic books, and the Darth Bane trilogy. Also, the Legends stuff I’ve read so far I’ve mostly liked.

The Thrawn trilogy is ok, but I’m not sure you need to read the Legends books before you read the new one. Though it is entirely possible that the new book fits into both canons, judging by its place in the timeline (pre-Rebels). Cause I’m sure Zahn can’t be arsed to care about there being a new canon.

I really doubt they let him just go rogue and write whatever he wanted to haha

Quote this post to see the code:

Nice, I like it!

TV’s Frink said:

Michael Flynn has resigned. Good riddance.

I think his record will sit for awhile, too. Last one was a Nixon appointee (go figure) who lasted like a year or so.

SilverWook said:

TV’s Frink said:

What’s not to understand? He obviously learned nothing from his ban, Jay was right to ban him, and Jay made a mistake by letting him come back.

A permanent ban was weighed against his contributions to various projects around here. If those mean anything to him, he’ll behave. There won’t be any second chances.

Yeah but shouldn’t Roman Polanski still go to jail despite his film career?

Jetrell Fo said:

FanFiltration said:

Jazz Legend Al Jarreau Dead At 76

I just saw this. Very sad. He always remembered his Wisconsin roots too. A big loss to the world of music and Jazz.

Yeah, this one hurt.

Cloudy, 67/20.

This feels more like February weather.

lol

Welcome!