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see I don't allow myself to post here at anytime past midnight anymore because i saw this post and went "god i wish i had a trans butch rn". literally -5 reading comprehension.
wouldnt be surprised if shes one of the targets for the insane transvestigators on twitter who are obsessed with analyzing peoples facial and bone structure to prove they're trans and then you see the photo and its literally cis john and cis mary.
anyway don't insult peoples appearance because all you do is hurt someone else whos reading your post and looks like that
MTG is such a vile person there is worse that can be said. The picture was posted as a joke and my response was also a joke. Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Body is the trademarked quote from Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who’s appearance MTG attacked on the floor of Congress during a session.
wouldnt be surprised if shes one of the targets for the insane transvestigators on twitter who are obsessed with analyzing peoples facial and bone structure to prove they're trans and then you see the photo and its literally cis john and cis mary.
I honestly get sick of this. I'm really sick of my people dying, what did Medo do to deserve getting murdered on the beach?
He's literally an influencer that documents his tent life, but no we must continue to commit genocide on the Palestinians who pose such a threat to the Israeli government.
I don't think it's extreme to say that Israel targets Palestinian civilians, it is not difficult to avoid civilian causalities. People in Gaza live in a 15 mile radius (approx 2- 2.1 million people), where are they expected to go when they're prisoners of their own land?
This genocide needs to stop, and it needs to start with the US funding stopping at a complete halt any support to the Israeli government. This doesn't seem like it will be happening anytime soon from either parties from recent speeches but one can hopefully wish.
I honestly get sick of this. I'm really sick of my people dying, what did Medo do to deserve getting murdered on the beach?
He's literally an influencer that documents his tent life, but no we must continue to commit genocide on the Palestinians who pose such a threat to the Israeli government.
I don't think it's extreme to say that Israel targets Palestinian civilians, it is not difficult to avoid civilian causalities. People in Gaza live in a 15 mile radius (approx 2- 2.1 million people), where are they expected to go when they're prisoners of their own land?
This genocide needs to stop, and it needs to start with the US funding stopping at a complete halt any support to the Israeli government. This doesn't seem like it will be happening anytime soon from either parties from recent speeches but one can hopefully wish.
So as predicted, there is now “evacuation orders” in the West Bank, along with air strikes, bulldozers, tanks, and more.
This unfolding genocide has been so obvious, so clear cut. It could not have been undertaken without the United States support.
I am not sure if I can ever forgive Israel or the United States. The former for their - let’s be brutally honest - Nazi levels of evil undertaking this genocide - and the latter for their ironclad support and complicity.
I feel sick watching the news today. More children diagnosed with polio, more deaths. We see an “October 7th” every single day now from Israel, on Palestine, more death and destruction. It’s evil, frankly.
Sorry for the update nature of this post - but I had to share how I am feeling. I am probably going to take a break from it for a bit.
To the Palestinians among us, you have my support.
It's time for Bughouse's quadrennial election cycle the-electoral-college-is-terrible post! (definitely made at least a few in 2016/2020). This time I bring a tool and some actual numbers, not just philosophizing on why it's bad.
I remember coming across this* years ago (and being horrified) and wondering if I could play around with maps myself and more extremely than this.
Well apparently you can! this is an interesting tool, if you have lots of time on your hands. If you want to have fun you could try to gerrymander hilarious new state lines under which the popular vote winner wins every state. I was less nefarious and just played around with totally fictional and arbitrary state boundaries, only respecting the following rules:
1) DC still a separate district and have 50 other total states (i.e. I wanted my math to produce a 538 EV map)
2) Alaska and Hawaii stay their own things bc not contiguous
3) I thought it would be fun to do a better job of grouping counties up to states by using a geographic commonality like a long stretch of the coast or border or surrounding lake michigan, etc.
4) I wanted to make sure that there was a good range of populations, not aiming for each state to all be ~5-10M people, but at the same time to be less dramatic than currently. No CA behemoths.
Everything else was up for grabs. 4 color map below to show where the states are, this is not the political lean of the fictional state. (DC is still a district with 3 EVs and AK and HI are left as is, see #1 and #2 above, just not included in the screenshot.)
Even a map with somewhat less electoral college distortion because there's no states as large as CA in my map (largest pop is ~20M, about half of CA's) and very few super small states (only 2 states, AK and a state I called "the desert" in northern NV, under 1M, vs 5ish states in reality under 1M) you still end up with plenty of popular vote to electoral vote distortions:
Year
Electoral Votes(R)
Electoral Votes(D)
Real World Votes (R)
Real World Votes (D)
Shift caused by random map
2004
300
238
286
252
R+14 EVs
2008
204
334
173
365
R+31 EVs
2012
269
269
206
332
R+63 EVs
2016
282
256
306
232
D+24 EVs
2020
243
295
232
306
R+11 EVs
This is not remotely to say that the current EV map/real world state boundaries is bad for Rs and good for Ds (that seems rather unlikely given that in the real world there's a good chance for Ds to win the popular vote but lose electoral college every close election under the modern map, but the reverse is close to impossible...) I just may have drawn a map that would have historically been even more favorable for R voters than the real world map.
Really the more important point to get out of these numbers instead is the following:
1) State lines are ultimately arbitrary and have arbitrary effects on the electoral college and will pretty much always swing the result one way or another by ~1-5 states
2) Unless you're very consciously trying to gerrymander to avoid the result (which I absolutely was not here, nor are the real world state lines in any way "intentional" for modern day elections), you will inevitably have a few states that are much closer than others and these 1-5 states will therefore swing a close election, hence why the counts are normally swinging by ~10-30 electoral votes. For example in my 2020 map the state that's "south texas" is decided by 0.11% for Rs. The state that makes up most of real world CO and WY is a 0.72% D win in 2012 and a 0.3% R win in 2016. The state covering Minnesota+ in 2004 would have been decided by literally 3 votes.
3) The absolute "error" caused by the randomness here is ~29 EVs per election, or ~5% of the total EVs. If we assume absolutely no bias anywhere in the system, truly arbitary state lines drawn with no purpose in mind and that have nothing to do with generally well-distributed populations, this is basically like saying "an election that is a tie in the popular vote would be expected on average to come out 298-240 one way or the other. Half the time it might come out closer than that (i.e. closer to tied popular vote reality), half the time it might come out farther than that (i.e. farther from reality). Really this confidence interval would be shifted rightward, since the map seems to have a +R bias, but I'm oversimplifying here because this is just one random map. A real analysis of this, if we analogize to state level district gerrymandering, would require generating many thousands of random maps and assessing the impact overall. One map doesn't really prove anything but it's illustrative of possible effects of having individual states voting in an electoral college, in general. That's all I'm after here.
4) Likewise, an election where someone wins by ~<5% of the vote they could still lose a decent portion of the time if the map happens to not be favorable to them (as we already know). On the flip side, elections that are actually pretty close by popular vote can be distorted by an electoral college vote. Obama only beat Romney by 4% in 2012. Under a different random map that could absolutely come out tied. Instead it was almost fair to call it a landslide because Obama happened to win FL by <1% and the only close state he lost at all was NC. He won every other state that was within a 7% margin. A random map it turns out would actually have been less kind to 2012 Obama and the election could have even been tied with an apparently unfavorable map I made up.
or tl;dr
1) swing states are inevitable and arbitrary
2) swing states have an inherent distorting effect on the popular vote
hence:
3) where state lines happen to be arbitrarily drawn has the potential to swing literally any close election within ~5% of the popular vote, give or take.
4) please for the love of god abolish the electoral college, it's an abomination to democracy.
Article reads:
"(No, that’s not a typo. While I moved the counties from Washington to Idaho, the apportionment formula is such that North Carolina picks up the extra House seat.)"
To learn more, watch this to learn how the math we use for congressional apportionment, and hence he electoral college, is itself a mess!
therefore an alternative way to look at things is that some of that ~29 EV movement is not due to swing states but due to the randomness of apportionment. nothing about NC changes but it gets 1 more or fewer seat and EV. This could definitely add up to a few EVs per census cycle, and is yet another reason why further extending the problem of apportionment (which is at least to some extent needed for congress!) to a context where it's just not needed. use a popular vote for president and the apportionment issues go away.
It's time for Bughouse's quadrennial election cycle the-electoral-college-is-terrible post! (definitely made at least a few in 2016/2020). This time I bring a tool and some actual numbers, not just philosophizing on why it's bad.
The electoral college is a relic of slavery and only slightly less egregious than the bullshit body that is the Senate. As of 2024, they both disproportionately amplify the power of small, rural states, which un-coincidently tend to be whiter states. There is no easy fix for this, as those states will never voluntarily give up their power. There are populous counties within large states that have larger populations than states like Wyoming. Yet Wyoming has equal Senate power to California/ Texas / Florida / NY, make that make sense.
As for what can be done, the Democrats need to immediately grant statehood to DC, Puerto Rico, and US Territories such as the Virgin Islands.
Then, consider the following:
- Republicans recently passed the 1,000,000 mark in voter registration differential in Florida (source: link). This difference has grown consistently since 2020, when Democrats held a roughly 100,000 registration edge. This shift happened largely due to COVID and accelerated the existing political trends in Florida that I mentioned above.
While I am still not in the Florida blue camp, this discussion about Florida going blue is only picking up steam. At minimum, Democrats need to invest in Florida due to the sheer number of House seats it commands. Here in this video at 1:00 state party chair Nikki Fried (the last Democrat to win statewide in Florida) explaining that the 1 million vote registration gap is NOT Republicans registering that much more voters. Republicans have removed over 500,000 Democrats and 400,000 NPA (which break 65-70% Dem) voters from the voter rolls as “inactive.”
Indeed they would. The broader point being that if we aren’t going to change the disasters that are the Senate and electoral college, there should at least be something to counteract the extreme rural state bias.
If we get rid of the Senate, how about we give additional House Seats to all Island States that bear the weight of supporting Military bases?
This is coming from the perspective of someone from Hawaii, that I wouldn’t want to lose my home state’s power weighted over its population— but honestly if Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico were given representation; all of these places are especially vulnerable to losing visibility so I’d want them to get representation disproportionate to their population, and also acknowledging their over-weighted burden & blessing of having strategical geography importance.
It's time for Bughouse's quadrennial election cycle the-electoral-college-is-terrible post! (definitely made at least a few in 2016/2020). This time I bring a tool and some actual numbers, not just philosophizing on why it's bad.
I remember coming across this* years ago (and being horrified) and wondering if I could play around with maps myself and more extremely than this.
Well apparently you can! this is an interesting tool, if you have lots of time on your hands. If you want to have fun you could try to gerrymander hilarious new state lines under which the popular vote winner wins every state. I was less nefarious and just played around with totally fictional and arbitrary state boundaries, only respecting the following rules:
1) DC still a separate district and have 50 other total states (i.e. I wanted my math to produce a 538 EV map)
2) Alaska and Hawaii stay their own things bc not contiguous
3) I thought it would be fun to do a better job of grouping counties up to states by using a geographic commonality like a long stretch of the coast or border or surrounding lake michigan, etc.
4) I wanted to make sure that there was a good range of populations, not aiming for each state to all be ~5-10M people, but at the same time to be less dramatic than currently. No CA behemoths.
Everything else was up for grabs. 4 color map below to show where the states are, this is not the political lean of the fictional state. (DC is still a district with 3 EVs and AK and HI are left as is, see #1 and #2 above, just not included in the screenshot.)
Even a map with somewhat less electoral college distortion because there's no states as large as CA in my map (largest pop is ~20M, about half of CA's) and very few super small states (only 2 states, AK and a state I called "the desert" in northern NV, under 1M, vs 5ish states in reality under 1M) you still end up with plenty of popular vote to electoral vote distortions:
Year
Electoral Votes(R)
Electoral Votes(D)
Real World Votes (R)
Real World Votes (D)
Shift caused by random map
2004
300
238
286
252
R+14 EVs
2008
204
334
173
365
R+31 EVs
2012
269
269
206
332
R+63 EVs
2016
282
256
306
232
D+24 EVs
2020
243
295
232
306
R+11 EVs
This is not remotely to say that the current EV map/real world state boundaries is bad for Rs and good for Ds (that seems rather unlikely given that in the real world there's a good chance for Ds to win the popular vote but lose electoral college every close election under the modern map, but the reverse is close to impossible...) I just may have drawn a map that would have historically been even more favorable for R voters than the real world map.
Really the more important point to get out of these numbers instead is the following:
1) State lines are ultimately arbitrary and have arbitrary effects on the electoral college and will pretty much always swing the result one way or another by ~1-5 states
2) Unless you're very consciously trying to gerrymander to avoid the result (which I absolutely was not here, nor are the real world state lines in any way "intentional" for modern day elections), you will inevitably have a few states that are much closer than others and these 1-5 states will therefore swing a close election, hence why the counts are normally swinging by ~10-30 electoral votes. For example in my 2020 map the state that's "south texas" is decided by 0.11% for Rs. The state that makes up most of real world CO and WY is a 0.72% D win in 2012 and a 0.3% R win in 2016. The state covering Minnesota+ in 2004 would have been decided by literally 3 votes.
3) The absolute "error" caused by the randomness here is ~29 EVs per election, or ~5% of the total EVs. If we assume absolutely no bias anywhere in the system, truly arbitary state lines drawn with no purpose in mind and that have nothing to do with generally well-distributed populations, this is basically like saying "an election that is a tie in the popular vote would be expected on average to come out 298-240 one way or the other. Half the time it might come out closer than that (i.e. closer to tied popular vote reality), half the time it might come out farther than that (i.e. farther from reality). Really this confidence interval would be shifted rightward, since the map seems to have a +R bias, but I'm oversimplifying here because this is just one random map. A real analysis of this, if we analogize to state level district gerrymandering, would require generating many thousands of random maps and assessing the impact overall. One map doesn't really prove anything but it's illustrative of possible effects of having individual states voting in an electoral college, in general. That's all I'm after here.
4) Likewise, an election where someone wins by ~<5% of the vote they could still lose a decent portion of the time if the map happens to not be favorable to them (as we already know). On the flip side, elections that are actually pretty close by popular vote can be distorted by an electoral college vote. Obama only beat Romney by 4% in 2012. Under a different random map that could absolutely come out tied. Instead it was almost fair to call it a landslide because Obama happened to win FL by <1% and the only close state he lost at all was NC. He won every other state that was within a 7% margin. A random map it turns out would actually have been less kind to 2012 Obama and the election could have even been tied with an apparently unfavorable map I made up.
or tl;dr
1) swing states are inevitable and arbitrary
2) swing states have an inherent distorting effect on the popular vote
hence:
3) where state lines happen to be arbitrarily drawn has the potential to swing literally any close election within ~5% of the popular vote, give or take.
4) please for the love of god abolish the electoral college, it's an abomination to democracy.
Article reads:
"(No, that’s not a typo. While I moved the counties from Washington to Idaho, the apportionment formula is such that North Carolina picks up the extra House seat.)"
To learn more, watch this to learn how the math we use for congressional apportionment, and hence he electoral college, is itself a mess!
therefore an alternative way to look at things is that some of that ~29 EV movement is not due to swing states but due to the randomness of apportionment. nothing about NC changes but it gets 1 more or fewer seat and EV. This could definitely add up to a few EVs per census cycle, and is yet another reason why further extending the problem of apportionment (which is at least to some extent needed for congress!) to a context where it's just not needed. use a popular vote for president and the apportionment issues go away.
I still cant believe there are people who look at an election system where the most popular candidate with the most votes can lose, and go "yeah, thats completely fine because it protects smaller states" (the smaller states in question being just maine).
To be clear, if I recall correctly the only mechanism for “getting rid of” the Senate is a Constitutional Amendment. Therefore, the likelihood of such thing is infinitesimal.
Statehood can be granted via Congress. Thus, only needs abolition of the filibuster then simple majority votes. Another question is now that Sinemanchin are gone, which Democratic Senator emerges as the new spoiler? Schumer claims to have had 48 votes to kill the filibuster in 2021. But you know corporate Dems gonna find a way to shill.
well, unfortunately there's a very strong chance that D's don't have 50 (+1 VP tb) in the Senate next year anyway since Manchin is done, which will bring it to 50-50 as a baseline.
Therefore Ds need to hold on everywhere else or to find a +1 somewhere. This would require both Tester and Brown to hold on (heck beating Hogan in MD for the open seat isn't even guaranteed sadly...) or if one or both of those loses to flip another seat in TX or FL and/or persuade Murkowski to caucus with Ds. Unironically I think that last option might be the most likely, given Rep. Peltola has demonstrated an ability to win statewide as a D, Murkowski already endorsed her, and at the state government level, AK's legislature has a very strong D presence and operates in a coalition right now. Murkowski has also won a write-in before. If anyone can survive a party switch, it's her, and she really, really hates Trumpism. I still don't think she'll do it, but it seems definitely more plausible to me than flipping FL Sen and maybe more plausible than flipping TX Sen.
In a scenario where Ds have a 50/50 (whether it includes Murkowski or not) or even 51/49, I do not expect them to break the filibuster to grant statehood to PR. That's such a thorny issue that Puerto Ricans themselves remain divided on. DC is however a strong possibility. The proposal is already fleshed out and already passed the House last term with universal D support and was reintroduced this term again with universal D support in terms of cosponsorship, but couldn't get a vote due to Rs holding the speaker's gavel. With a House majority, it would pass again next term. On the Senate side, I am not aware of any D senators who would actively roadblock DC statehood as a matter of ideology in a world with Manchin and Sinema gone. Tester has supported it before and no one else really concerns me ideologically on the question. The only real concern then is "would someone object to removing the filibuster as a roadblock to accession?" and there is at least one concerning senator out there... but I think realistically today no one would stop it if push came to shove.
Also if Ds can't get it done in the 2024 term due to losing the senate narrowly, there's at least a better chance of retaking the senate in 2026, assuming they can hold the house too (ugh).
well, unfortunately there's a very strong chance that D's don't have 50 (+1 VP tb) in the Senate next year anyway since Manchin is done, which will bring it to 50-50 as a baseline.
Therefore Ds need to hold on everywhere else or to find a +1 somewhere. This would require both Tester and Brown to hold on (heck beating Hogan in MD for the open seat isn't even guaranteed sadly...)
Dems have a very good chance at a 50 seat Senate with a Harris victory. Brown will win Ohio, Tester and FL are Toss-Ups, so only have to win one.
Maryland Senate is not competitive. I vehemently reject the idea that Angela Alsobrooks in a state that is 60% non-white and 49% bachelor’s degree or higher will go Republican with Harris on the same ballot winning by 30 points. If there’s any more evidence needed of polling is bullshit, look no further.
I do agree that the many, many left-leaning MD voters who despise Trump but who have supported Hogan for Governor should be intelligent enough to understand the difference of the role between Governor and Senator and the balance of power of the Senate to not vote for him for Senate. But fact remains Hogan won statewide by ~4 points in 2014 and then by ~12 points as the incumbent in 2018. I live in DC and anecdotally know countless MD voters who voted for him at least once and mostly twice. I do think Alsobrooks will win, but it won't be anywhere close to the margin that Cardin/Van Hollen/Mikulski historically have.
I do agree that the many, many left-leaning MD voters who despise Trump but who have supported Hogan for Governor should be intelligent enough to understand the difference of the role between Governor and Senator and the balance of power of the Senate to not vote for him for Senate. But fact remains Hogan won statewide by ~4 points in 2014 and then by ~12 points as the incumbent in 2018. I live in DC and anecdotally know countless MD voters who voted for him at least once and mostly twice. I do think Alsobrooks will win, but it won't be anywhere close to the margin that Cardin/Van Hollen/Mikulski historically have.
Yeah. Governor races have no correlation to Senate or Pres. Larry Hogan is trash btw moderate my ass. The Republican governors in the Northeast are clowns with fake popularity because the Democratic legislatures are veto-proof and will just end-around them either way. Hopefully Hogan loses by enough that he never runs again.
Trump is apparently trying very, very hard to lose the support of military men and veterans, which would probably be the final nail in the coffin for his reelection chances. Deeply foolish behavior.
Trump is apparently trying very, very hard to lose the support of military men and veterans, which would probably be the final nail in the coffin for his reelection chances. Deeply foolish behavior.
Trump is apparently trying very, very hard to lose the support of military men and veterans, which would probably be the final nail in the coffin for his reelection chances. Deeply foolish behavior.
Convicted felon Trump has been bad-talking military men and women for 9 years. Despicable as it is, it hasn’t made a damn bit of difference in his support. The reality is, he could shoot someone on camera and not lose his base. He will get 45-47% of the vote; the same amount of support he’s had since that first campaign in 2016. Sad part is, he’s going to run again in 2028 if he isn’t dead or in prison.
EDIT: By the way, here’s one of those laughable polls from Missouri encapsulating the American voter. 54% of Missouri is going Trump / Hawley, while 52% will vote to enshrine right to an abortion into the state constitution and 57% for minimum wage hike to $15 / hour.
Translation: we hate Democrats because immigrants / brown people / black people bad but we like Democratic policies!
Up RFK in opposition to the two-party system? The guy who just dropped out to throw his weight behind Trump in exchange for benefiting from Trump's cronyism? Are you trolling?
