Ranvier @ Ranvier @sopuli.xyz

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9

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928

Joined

2 yr. ago

That would be very surprising if it were true, considering the incomprehensively vast numbers of stars and planets out there. I wonder what the equivalent of crying in the shower would be for some alien though? Maybe that is our unique trait.

I'd say more broadly the legal and political system works against any organizations that threaten the status quo, but yes America's attitudes toward communism have been pretty obvious throughout the twentieth century. I just took issue with the idea that political parties or idealogies are illegal in and of themselves in the US, constitution still manages to protects some things.

Someone better tell these people they all could be arrested at any moment!

https://www.cpusa.org/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA

No but seriously it's an unenforceable junk law that no one has bothered to take the time to repeal that was never even really used in the first place. I mean, the communist party runs candidates for office to this day. Someone finally tried to use it in 1972 to keep a communist candidate off the ballot and a federal district Court promptly ruled it unconstitutional.

https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/1zey0ee5l/arizona-district-court/blawis-v-bolin/

I think the person above you is trying to talk about the number of house representatives being frozen but just phrased it a little vaguely. You're right that reapportionment happens every ten years, but the number of reps got capped at 435 in the early 20th century. It used to grow with population.

Because a state gets a minimum of one house vote, this means that states with at large representatives like Wyoming or Montana are often representing less people than bigger states. If we allowed the number of reps to grow again, it could be made more proportional to actual population and lessen the distortion from having a minimum of one representative creates. It would also lessen the electoral college advantage that small states currently have, since the electoral votes for larger states would go up while for smaller states they would stay the same. Giving Washington DC and Puerto Rico proper representation would help too. All of this would get closer to one person one vote for president, though still with the winner take all system causing issues as you point out. There's a lot to fix.

That would involve convincing current house members to dilute their power, and the senate which is becoming increasingly republican/minority rule dominated to go along with it. We can't even get them to stop trading stocks. The article makes a lot of great points about how problems in the constitution are self perpetuating and prevent themselves from being fixed, somewhat by design. I'm not saying we'll have another civil war or something, but at some point the government not responding to the will of the people is going to boil over in some way unless more progress is made in making the US government more democratic (meaning democracy, not political party).

Weird when this happens, broken clock I guess. Why is he even against this?

In his call to “kill FISA,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”

Oh yeah, his campaign kept talking to Russian agents and shared campaign data with them. Also ironic that he signed this bill when he was president. For once I hope Trump's meddling in the house is successful though.

No that's incorrect, the party could always have arranged their own nominating contest and still had delegates. There was nothing preventing them from doing that, and that's what the DNC urged them to do many times. The state cannot stop a political party (a private organization) from picking their own candidates and delegates. For instance, in Nevada the republican party there decided they did not want to line up with the state selected primary date, and held their own caucus instead that did award delegates.

The state democratic party in New Hampshire that chose not to do this (because they believe they should always get to have first say) and the state government that passed this dumb law (for the same reason) are the ones disenfranchising people here. And no, don't put words in my mouth, I'm not in favor of disenfranchising anyone. The state party should have just held their own nominating contest later so that they would have had delegates. And New Hampshire shouldn't have the sole authority to determine the presidential election schedule for everyone else. If other states acted like them we'd have a never ending game of who's primary is actually first.

The comment was 4 sentences? I said the same thing both times, and just elaborated more on why in the second comment since you misconstrued my first.

I'm greatly in favor of anyone pressuring NH over this. There's no reason why Iowa and New Hampshire should get such an outsized roll in deciding who the nominees are, over and over again, every election, for a century. And the people who live in states farther in the primary calendar basically get no say. There should be a rotation of states if anything.

New Hampshire's state law is ridiculous and unenforceable too, all it would take is another state passing their own law saying, no we go first, and suddenly there is no way both laws could be upheld at the same time, and they're trying to hopscotch each other pushing farther and farther back in the calendar. Policies like New Hampshire's law are why we have candidate debates over a year before the actual election! Whole situation is ridiculous.

While I share some of your concerns about the DNC, I'm not gonna shed a tear for the voters in New Hampshire and Iowa that had more say than anyone else in the country about who would be president for a century.

No, that's incorrect. Alabama is complaining that the democratic convention is too late (even though they have allowed it later for Republicans in the past). They set an earlier deadline for the nomination to be finalized, trying to force conventions to take place earlier. This would lengthen the main presidential campaign after the conventions take place. Since all primaries have to be done by the time a convention takes place, earlier conventions also put pressure for there to be earlier primaries too. There's no reason we need the presidential campaign proper lengthened from two months to two and a half months at Alabama and Ohio's whims. Two months is more than enough.

Democrats and Republicans alternate who has the earlier and later primary each year. If we allow these states to start pushing conventions out from August more and more, then instead of one party in July and one party in August, we'll end up with one party in July and one in June before you know it.

Also the cynic in me says that because it was predictable that democrats would be the late convention this year (since they alternate with republicans and Republicans were later in 2020), the red states that passed laws that moved their deadlines even earlier did this to try and create this exact situation.

Headline writer: I'm stumped, just cannot think of a headline for this story

/glances at article photo

Wait, I got it!

In 2020 alone, states like Alabama, Illinois, Montana, and Washington all allowed provisional certification for Democratic and Republican nominees,” the campaign official said.

In 2020, Alabama’s GOP-controlled Legislature passed a law to “accommodate the dates of the 2020 Republican National Convention,” shifting the state’s certification deadline for parties from 82 days before the election to 75 days that year.

Republican convention in 2020 was August 24th-27th, even later than the democrats scheduled this year. These laws are silly too, helping to encourage the already ridiculously long presidential campaign to take even longer by pushing conventions further back. Trump can't be kept off the ballot for an insurrection, but setting a deadline earlier than most states that exceptions are routinely made for and it's never been an issue before? Well that's serious, better keep him off the ballot I guess /s.

Wohl and Burkman have previously faced penalties for running similar schemes elsewhere during the 2020 election. In 2022, an Ohio judge ordered the two men to spend 500 hours registering low- and middle-income voters in the Washington, DC, area after authorities in Ohio accused them of running a voter suppression campaign in multiple states.

And in 2021, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a record $5 million fine against them after an investigation found they appeared to have violated US robocalling laws.

Other criminal charges against Wohl and Burkman are pending in Michigan.

And so they keep doing it again and again. They need the book thrown at them. They should be in jail.

Officer noooo! I swear it was in 4/2 time with a tempo of 80 and not 4/4 with a tempo of 160! Don't take me away!!!

Thank you for adding more details!

Yes it shouldn't be able to derail the case in a just world, I just meant in practice that's what is happening since it gives him yet another thing to appeal over. He filed an appeal with the Georgia court of appeals to again ask for all charges to be dismissed or for her to be removed from the case as well (which would create an extraordinary delay well past the election). Hopefully the Georgia court of appeals will just quickly knock it down and not delay the trial any more over it. There's a danger that could happen though. If the Georgia state government goes after her as the case is ongoing who knows. And I agree, he is getting leeway everywhere, treated with kids gloves, appointing his own judges, it's ridiculous. Even if the supreme court rules against presidential immunity, in practice he and all the judges that have helped him have made a mockery of the rule of law.

Well I wouldn't hold my breath for this one. While he surely did it, it looks like the maximum penalties would be fines and probation for class e felonies in new york, though IANAL. Edit: see also comment below, sounds like small possibility of jail time.

Georgia case has a possible appeal pending after that whole relationship debacle. If the Georgia court of appeals takes it up it could push it well past the November election. Otherwise might be able to go to trial in August.

The Jan 5th case had a trial date, but because the Supreme Court took up the "presidential immunity" proposal from Trump to hear, that trial date got canceled while the appeal was being heard. That ruling should be heard by June. Hopefully they could get it rescheduled soon after that since they had been about ready to go to trial, assuming the supreme court doesn't rule in Trump's favor (big assumption).

The stealing classified documents and lying repeatedly to the national archives and fbi and trying to cover it up case was first held up by judge Cannon. She accepted some fight Trump made against the search warrant based on nonsense rulings and prevented the investigators from accessing the documents for like six months before an appeals court finally dismissed the whole thing and gave investigators access to the documents. Then she got assigned the criminal case too after charges were filed (thanks to a random lottery system that because of various factors only had like two judges in the pool to be picked from at the time) and she's been constantly delaying and making nonsense rulings, and is clearly laying the ground work to try and acquit him herself in a way that's unappealable after the trial begins. Unless Jack Smith can collect enough evidence and the court of appeals agrees to remove her before the trial, that case is probably sunk because of this judge (appointed by Trump, rated unqualified by the American bar association before Republicans rammed her nomination through).

So yeah, Trump getting the kids gloves all around thanks to the supreme court and other judges he appointed (and the Georgia prosecutor possibly tanking her whole case with a dumb relationship). And this doesn't even touch on his civil cases.

Exemption for Republicans at an even later date in 2020 but not this year for democrats? Sounds like fuckery to me. It's not a real deadline if they just always exempt for it. And changing venues or dates is incredibly unrealistic for a convention of this size. Ohio should change the dumb law to line up better with other states. Do we really need laws encouraging the presidential election cycle to take up even more time? It should be shorter if anything.

No, August 19th isn't unusually late for a convention. For instance the Republican convention wasn't until August 24th-27th in 2020. Looks like Ohio has a weird early deadline that they routinely make exceptions to. If they try to keep Biden off the ballot it would be Ohio/republican fuckery.