^^ 1st, 2nd, 3rd strike, it’s moot in the end when nukes start getting lobbed towards one another. I for one don’t want to survive the hell that follows.
And besides, the nuke gaff awhile back with text alerts of missiles heading to Hawaii opened my eyes for those 10+ minutes. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
You heard about it so I wouldn’t expect you to fully grasp what a WTF moment that was at ‘ground zero’.
I couldn't remember which thread this was in until I stumbled on it again. While Ed continues to know me better than I know myself ( :eek ), I will admit that my use of the word 'mirror' was a mistake. There is not AN EXACT reversal of each of the linked items in your post. Chilling similarities, only.
Right now, here in Virginia, the Republicans determine the redistricting, so they favour their candidates. When Democrats are in charge, they do the same thing, along with changing voting rules, to favour themselves. And it sucks either way. Whether one likes the Daily Beast or not, the point remains salient; we need to get rid of gerrymandering and changing election rules like that, no matter who does it. I remember my utter disgust back in elementary school learning about it and seeing the resulting maps of districts over the years.
It is nearly impossible to converse with you when you get this way. Please recall that YOU were the first to mention gerrymandering (North Carolina) in this discussion. You challenged me to present "any examples?". I may have forgotten which thread we were in after my initial comments but I DID remember making the comments. Here's a suggestion for you...
"Chilling similarities"... outside of gerrymandering -which is unfortunately common but still done mostly by the GOP- there are no similarities. No one is blocked from voting, elections are not certified like Georgia or NC, people don't go to jail for voting.
My memory is fine (at least today it is ) your attempt was feeble.
The AP scrutinized the outcomes of all 435 U.S. House races and about 4,700 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year using a new statistical method of calculating partisan advantage. It's designed to detect cases in which one party may have won, widened or retained its grip on power through political gerrymandering.
The analysis found four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones. Among the two dozen most populated states that determine the vast majority of Congress, there were nearly three times as many with Republican-tilted U.S. House districts.
Traditional battlegrounds such as Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and Virginia were among those with significant Republican advantages in their U.S. or state House races. All had districts drawn by Republicans after the last Census in 2010.
The AP analysis also found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats over what would have been expected based on the average vote share in congressional districts across the country. That helped provide the GOP with a comfortable majority over Democrats instead of a narrow one.
Republicans held several advantages heading into the 2016 election. They had more incumbents, which carried weight even in a year of "outsider" candidates. Republicans also had a geographical advantage because their voters were spread more widely across suburban and rural America instead of being highly concentrated, as Democrats generally are, in big cities.
Yet the data suggest that even if Democrats had turned out in larger numbers, their chances of substantial legislative gains were limited by gerrymandering.
"The outcome was already cooked in, if you will, because of the way the districts were drawn," said John McGlennon, a longtime professor of government and public policy at the College of William & Mary in Virginia who ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in the 1980s.
A separate statistical analysis conducted for AP by the Princeton University Gerrymandering Project found that the extreme Republican advantages in some states were no fluke. The Republican edge in Michigan's state House districts had only a 1-in-16,000 probability of occurring by chance; in Wisconsin's Assembly districts, there was a mere 1-in-60,000 likelihood of it happening randomly, the analysis found.
The AP's findings are similar to recent ones from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which used three statistical tests to analyze the 2012-2016 congressional elections. Its report found a persistent Republican advantage and "clear evidence that aggressive gerrymandering is distorting the nation's congressional maps," posing a "threat to democracy."
So (because tl;dr), as long as someone does a bad thing less frequently than someone else does the bad thing, the one that does it less gets a free pass. You're such a caution.
It is nearly impossible to converse with you when you get this way. Please recall that YOU were the first to mention gerrymandering (North Carolina) in this discussion. You challenged me to present "any examples?". I may have forgotten which thread we were in after my initial comments but I DID remember making the comments. Here's a suggestion for you...
So (because tl;dr), as long as someone does a bad thing less frequently than someone else does the bad thing, the one that does it less gets a free pass. You're such a caution.
The beatings will continue until morale improves...
According to the Tampa Bay Times, in a 71-45 vote Wednesday evening, legislators voted to require people with felony records to pay restitution, as well as all court fines and fees — including fees that have been converted to a civil judgment — before regaining their voting rights.
The measure is one of two bills Republican legislators have introduced this year addressing how to implement a 2018 ballot initiative known as Amendment 4. The amendment restored voting rights to an estimated 1.4 million people with felony records after they completed “all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.”
The Florida state Senate is also debating a version of the bill, but that one only requires a person to fully repay restitution — including restitution converted to a civil lien — before being able to vote; court fines and fees are not included. The Senate bill has not been put to a vote yet, but it is expected to be soon, as the differences between the two measures will need to be resolved before the legislative session ends on May 3.
Local activists and state Democrats say the House measure in particular undermines one of the largest expansions of voting rights in recent decades by effectively requiring people to pay excessive — and in some cases insurmountable — fees to vote.
Navigating the labyrinth of fines and fees could be especially difficult in Florida, which has become so reliant on financial charges levied against people in the justice system that criminal justice reform advocates call the state one of the worst practitioners of “cash register justice” in America. In 1998, Florida passed a constitutional amendment that requires that parts of the court system be funded by these fines and fees.
And in 2010, an analysis from researchers at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that fines and fees have become a top source of revenue for the state, noting that “since 1996, Florida [has] added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations for criminal defendants and, at the same time, eliminated most exemptions for those who cannot pay.”
Earlier this year, local Florida news outlet WLRN reported that more than “$1 billion in felony fines were issued between 2013 and 2018,” according to reports from a statewide group.
“Over that five year period, an average of only 19 percent of that money was paid back per year,” the report noted. Part of the problem, apparently, is that some of these unpaid fines and fees can be sent to debt collection agencies, which can add charges that significantly increase the amount a person owes.
While Florida Republicans support making people pay before being able to vote, politicians have bristled at any assertion that they are acting unfairly, or are effectively levying a poll tax on voters. “To suggest that this is a poll tax inherently diminishes what a poll tax actually is,” Republican Rep. James Grant said in March.
The Miami Herald notes that another difficulty that could arise with the repayment requirement is the fact that Florida currently does not have any system tracking court fines, fees, or restitution — and creating one could cost millions of dollars.
Currently, the Florida House is discussing a proposal that would allocate an additional $2 million to the state’s Commission on Offender Review. The money would be used to hire more people to review the applications of people looking to have their voting rights restored.
I am starting a new thread called shooting gallery. The purpose of the thread is to keep recording gun incidents and deaths in the US reported on the news. Please contribute if you see an incident worth posting. Please post only new gun related incidents in the US. It should be an...
I've been for it for a long time and took AOC a couple of days ago to force Pelosi to grow a pair and 'consider it' again, but if not now based on the Ukraine events it will never happen...
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) your attempt was feeble.
GreenT · updated 
Teutone · updated 
