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You know what? While I am glad the truckers are probably not going through Sacramento, part of me also does not really mind either if they do. If more truckers paralyze our roads, maybe it will make people think about alternative modes of transportation, i.e. PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. If the roads are all obstruct, the bus system probably would not work either, BUT light rail systems and subways should still work. I live close to a light rail station, so I do not mind taking it again like how I used to as a college student. In combination with high gas prices, I hope this will make people think about public transportation more and be incentivized to drive less.

And do not forget about bikes too!

Edited by XRay
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1 hour ago, XRay said:

You know what? While I am glad the truckers are probably not going through Sacramento, part of me also does not really mind either if they do. If more truckers paralyze our roads, maybe it will make people think about alternative modes of transportation, i.e. PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. If the roads are all obstruct, the bus system probably would not work either, BUT light rail systems and subways should still work. I live close to a light rail station, so I do not mind taking it again like how I used to as a college student. In combination with high gas prices, I hope this will make people think about public transportation more and be incentivized to drive less.

And do not forget about bikes too!

Buses are great and all, but I'm not sure if it'll be the best option once grocery day comes around...Or the rare occasion that you'll have to wait for the next because one's full. Speaking of which, I'm not entirely sure if choosing public transportation over your own car is that great of an answer during an pandemic.

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1 minute ago, Armchair General said:

Buses are great and all, but I'm not sure if it'll be the best option once grocery day comes around...Or the rare occasion that you'll have to wait for the next because one's full. Speaking of which, I'm not entirely sure if choosing public transportation over your own car is that great of an answer during an pandemic.

If the bus is full, then that means we need to invest in more busses, not less.

As for the pandemic, yeah, that could be an issue, but we could enforce vaccine requirements to use public transport. If a person is all up to date on their vaccines, there should not be much issue using public transportation.

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I've been looking at redistricting a lot since the new year because it's been very good news lately for the Democratic party going into the 2022 midterms. Republicans were in total charge of affirming 43 percent of seats across the country compared to the Dem's 17 percent, so the results thus far have been basically an upset, rather than a repeat of 2010 as we expected. For the most part, redistricting is finished. At the time of writing, only six states haven't finalized a map yet. But of those six, the only one where Republicans can hope to make decent gains is Florida. Ohio's gerrymander attempt was thrown out (which is why it's one of the six remaining), so whatever they cook up next can only be an improvement in terms of fairness like what happened in North Carolina a few week ago. Meanwhile, The Democrats' own occasional gerrymander attempts have made it through in states like New York and Illinois. The only Republican gerrymanders worthy of mention are Texas, Tennessee, maybe Georgia? The first and third of which may be thrown out after 2022 if their lawsuits bear fruit.

Wouldn't it be better if neither party were capable of gerrymanders like this? Of course, but this is how the game's been played for decades. And if you're morally opposed to the idea, you should be voting for them anyway since they are on the side of fair elections. They're currently trying to make a ban on partisan gerrymandering as recently as the Freedom to Vote Act, and most D-majority states already have some level of protections in place at the state level even though they have no competitive incentive to make such rules.

Of course you may be looking at this map and thinking "12 more D leaning seats? That's huge!" But most (probably all?) of the seats in question are currently held by Democratic congressmen. It doesn't mean Democrats have '12 MORE seats' waiting to be picked up at the end of this year. The new maps just better reflect the political reality of those states and will afford easier re-election in the future. Will Democrats hold their majority in the House after 2022? It certainly doesn't seem hopeless to me. And even if Republicans do take back the majority, it may only be by single digits, and that's hardly a sure thing in the House where voting outside of party lines is more common even in the polarized political climate of the twenty first century.

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Looks like Gavin Newsom has started an proposal for dealing with Cali's homeless problem...by forcing them to accept mental health and drug rehab services. I'm not saying that this is an great thing, since nearly all of the crazy ones that I've seen tend to keep to themselves; but there's also that guy who overdosed on fentanyl in his hotel room, last year.

Edited by Armchair General
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I've always imagined being able to use public transportation/riding a bike/ or walking to work but sadly it just doesn't exist for me, my place of work is over 30 miles away; there is no public transportation available to me to get me to work let alone provide me with a avenue to acquire groceries or have access to other services.

Not needing a car is just a fairy tale for me unfortunately so I have to deal with buying gas, license updates, maintenance, insurance, inspections and registration(contributing to the death of the human race and everything living on our planet).

The places I could conceivably work at with walking or biking distance are mostly fast food places(not a living wage) and moving to a new place?, we rent someone old grandma's place for less than half of what other places would charge.

Down the street a 2 bed 1 bath 1,300 USD a month!

Apartments shockingly costing more than that and all of these new housing development start at 250k and skyrocket over that

My partner and I did a loan search and we would only get a loan of under 60k even though we have a credit score of 799.

We make do with the situation we live in, unfortunately the "good ol US of A" is very divergent to its detriment in certain regards.

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21 hours ago, Anterrilvraskannothdervos said:

I've always imagined being able to use public transportation/riding a bike/ or walking to work but sadly it just doesn't exist for me, my place of work is over 30 miles away; there is no public transportation available to me to get me to work let alone provide me with a avenue to acquire groceries or have access to other services.

Yeah, riding an bike that far will take you an few hours just to get there. Unless you feel like getting up before sunrise or carpooling, there really isn't much you can do, outside of moving closer to your workplace or finding another job.

 

22 hours ago, Anterrilvraskannothdervos said:

Apartments shockingly costing more than that and all of these new housing development start at 250k and skyrocket over that

My partner and I did a loan search and we would only get a loan of under 60k even though we have a credit score of 799.

We make do with the situation we live in, unfortunately the "good ol US of A" is very divergent to its detriment in certain regards.

 

21 hours ago, Anterrilvraskannothdervos said:

 

The places I could conceivably work at with walking or biking distance are mostly fast food places(not a living wage) and moving to a new place?, we rent someone old grandma's place for less than half of what other places would charge.

Well, the concept of living on your own off of minimum wage is more or less an myth unless you're making some money on the side. I really can't see how people can believe that it's possible without having an few roommates.

 

It's almost amazing how we went from being self-sustaining to being at the mercy of the economy, in an way.

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Draft Opinion shows Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights

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The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

...

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.

The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. It’s unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft.

No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The draft opinion offers an extraordinary window into the justices’ deliberations in one of the most consequential cases before the court in the last five decades. Some court-watchers predicted that the conservative majority would slice away at abortion rights without flatly overturning a 49-year-old precedent. The draft shows that the court is looking to reject Roe’s logic and legal protections.

 

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Once a creepy bit of trivia, now a dystopian reality. The list of 26 states legally primed to outlaw abortion once Roe is overturned. 

I don't think this country is ready for the massive scale of incoming protests. And I don't think the Republican party is aware of the massive platform they just handed their opponents. 

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Does the current supreme court try to be as illegitimate an institution as at the time of Drett vs Scott?

In any case this clearly shows the drawback of intertwining the judiciary with politics so incestuously. If judges are installed by politicians for their political views rather than for their legal qualifications then those judges will inevitably be politicians first and judges second. And this can lead to bill being enshrined in the law for half a century only to be randomly overturned because the judges need to appeal to their religious fundamentalist patrons. 

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4 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Does the current supreme court try to be as illegitimate an institution as at the time of Drett vs Scott?

With the way that things are going, nearly everyone is an politician if they're appointed by one. Only thing that can  theoretically prevent an conflict of interest is to let the public vote for the justices of the Supreme Court in the same way lesser judges are elected.

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9 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Does the current supreme court try to be as illegitimate an institution as at the time of Drett vs Scott?

Funny you should say that, as I have been thinking of the decision as Drett-Scott 2 ...

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Oklahoma has now put into effect an abortion ban law similar to the Texan one:

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/oklahoma-governor-signs-week-abortion-ban-law/story?id=84395778

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I'd say, probably the worst implications of that draft has to be:

Quote

The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision

As with that reasoning they can easily go next against other stuff that's not explicitly stated in the Constitution or its Amendments. Specially when they condition that interpretations are only valid only if they're "deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition" (page 5) and the like.

Edited by Acacia Sgt
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/14/2022 at 6:06 PM, Armchair General said:

Some idiot  genuinely believed the stuff that gets posted on 4Chan and went on an shooting spree in Buffalo, New York. And he actually survived and posted an manifesto, beforehand.

To be fair one of the biggest media channels supports and spreads this kind of garbage ideology.

Its not really surprising people believe these things, considering it is on Fox News, you know under the guise of it being news.

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As a kid studying WWII History and The Holocaust in school, the part about how it got to a point where Nazism became a mainstream political ideology never made sense to me.

...oh the history books explained it well enough...

"Germany was in a generational crisis after WWI. The economy was in shambles. People could not afford basic living expense. The Weimer government was widely viewed as weak and corrupt, and mainstream institutions and political ideologies were generally seen as unable or unwilling to address the pressing issues of the day. Support for extreme ideologies and identifying + persecuting scapegoats rose to fill the void left by these deficiencies."

But it still never made sense. How could so many otherwise reasonable people get to that state-of-mind where they supported everything up to and including the detention and removal of millions of people + understood it to be their patriotic duty?
__

Looking at America in my adult lifetime--I get it now.

We're all watching the history play out again in real-time 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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9 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

As a kid studying WWII History and The Holocaust in school, the part about how it got to a point where Nazism became a mainstream political ideology never made sense to me.

...oh the history books explained it well enough...

"Germany was in a generational crisis after WWI. The economy was in shambles. People could not afford basic living expense. The Weimer government was widely viewed as weak and corrupt, and mainstream institutions and political ideologies were generally seen as unable or unwilling to address the pressing issues of the day. Support for extreme ideologies and identifying + persecuting scapegoats rose to fill the void left by these deficiencies."

But it still never made sense. How could so many otherwise reasonable people get to that state-of-mind where they supported everything up to and including the detention and removal of millions of people + understood it to be their patriotic duty?
__

Looking at America in my adult lifetime--I get it now.

We're all watching the history play out again in real-time 

If you find people supporting the Nazis unreasonable, just remember back in the day humans eustatically supported mass slaughter for the sake of pure entertainment in the gladiatorial games, and the Aztecs made human sacrifice a regular luncheon. Humans can get into some pretty messed up shit.

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5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If you find people supporting the Nazis unreasonable, just remember back in the day humans eustatically supported mass slaughter for the sake of pure entertainment in the gladiatorial games, and the Aztecs made human sacrifice a regular luncheon. Humans can get into some pretty messed up shit.

On the hierarchy of reasons why humans kill.

It has to be said that there's something particularly egregious about "...because [those people] are the reason why we have all these problems in this country." 

As a manufactured pretext of an overclass trying to redirect societal anger away from their actual ownership of said problems. 

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8 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

On the hierarchy of reasons why humans kill.

It has to be said that there's something particularly egregious about "...because [those people] are the reason why we have all these problems in this country." 

As a manufactured pretext of an overclass trying to redirect societal anger away from their actual ownership of said problems. 

Insidious I'd say more so than egregious. I find killing people just because it's considered dope shit to watch much more egregious. Scapegoating all of societies woes on a particular group is pretty evil, but it's also totally rationale. Especially when it's thriving off latent bigotry that had already been there for generations.

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36 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

But it still never made sense. How could so many otherwise reasonable people get to that state-of-mind where they supported everything up to and including the detention and removal of millions of people + understood it to be their patriotic duty?
__

25 minutes ago, Jotari said:

 

 

Looking at America in my adult lifetime--I get it now.

We're all watching the history play out again in real-time 

Well, it already happened with  the January 6th incident, various cults that came and went (like the Waco Siege), and a few religious sects. Only thing that's different is that it's easier than ever to spread some lies about something and some people are desperate enough to buy into it.

 

16 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

On the hierarchy of reasons why humans kill.

It has to be said that there's something particularly egregious about "...because [those people] are the reason why we have all these problems in this country." 

As a manufactured pretext of an overclass trying to redirect societal anger away from their actual ownership of said problems. 

Sounds like the beginning of an dictatorship or an revolution.

 

 

29 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If you find people supporting the Nazis unreasonable, just remember back in the day humans eustatically supported mass slaughter for the sake of pure entertainment in the gladiatorial games, and the Aztecs made human sacrifice a regular luncheon. Humans can get into some pretty messed up shit.

At least that was done under the guise of religion, though.

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3 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

At least that was done under the guise of religion, though.

And religion is entirely absent from the going ons in modern American politics?

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10 minutes ago, Jotari said:

And religion is entirely absent from the going ons in modern American politics?

I mean, it's still around in the sense of people going against Islam or people using their own perception of Christianity to justify their actions. But I don't think that it's the biggest contributor to what's going on, nowadays. I believe that it's mostly over race, nowadays; along with the immigration "crisis," the divide on how to handle the pandemic, and the economy.

Edited by Armchair General
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