abff08f4813c

Hmm… I understand the that last line to mean that every State should have the same number of Senators in the Senate.

But from https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/56523/can-the-us-senate-be-abolished-without-unanimous-consent-of-the-states it sounds like a workaround is simply to set that equal number to zero. Meanwhile there’s no prohibition on adding a new, third House to Congress - so maybe we reply the Senate with the House of of State Peers or something.

Alas, it looks like we’re screwed now.

Agreed, but does it require every state to agree? If enough constitutional amendments could be passed and ratified by a two thirds majority on all levels, then the Constitution could simply be amended to implement those changes (and the authors behind the paper for this proposal expect that this is exactly what will happen once the plan is executed successfully - rather than Dems abusing their power or DC enacting minority rule over the entire country, they’ll cooperate to design a better, fairer, and reformed system)

Hey, same here. And you know what? There’s hope - at least one pollster is predicting a major blowout for Harris, https://app.vantagedatahouse.com/analysis/TheBlowoutNoOneSeesComing-1

Wanted to add - not directly related to the above article, but kinda confirming the general environment:

“She hit me the other day,” Trump said. “I was going to say to my people, ‘Am I allowed to hit her now?’”
“They said, ‘Take it easy, sir,’” Trump said.
“Well, what do you mean?” Trump replied to himself. “She said bad about me. I can’t hit back?”
The conversation continued with Trump’s imaginary staff pleading with the former president to “just relax.”

This is from https://www.rawstory.com/michelle-obama-vs-trump/ but it’s a series of direct quotes from the guy himself.

This is exactly why I like the 127 DC states plan so much, https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review

Need to drop the filibuster to pass the required laws to implement it, but once that’s done, Dems have not only a permanent super majority in the Senate, but the required two thirds majority of House, Senate, and even States to pass constitutional amendments. So as soon as its removed, the filibuster can be re-enshrined via a constitutional amendment as a permanent fixture (preventing the GOP from taking advantage once they inevitably retake power).

She was predicted to win the popular vote…And she did.

But this article is saying it’s based on the EC,

Nate Silver’s latest forecast now gives Vice President Kamala Harris a slight edge in the Electoral College
The model shows Harris securing 271 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 267.

Well, this is a hurdle though: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/07/19/gerrymandering-republicans-redmap

Bill Clinton, who won in 1992, was from the midwestern state of Arkansas. I think this trend started long before, and has to do with the center of the US shifting differently from some of the more populated areas of the US.

When we ran a young charismatic candidate with a progressive campaign in 08, it was easy to get voters on board and red states became blue, it even carried over to flipping state governments

See https://lemmy.world/comment/12409521 - but the TLDR is that 2008 isn’t comparable, since a major gerrymandering effort by the GOP took place in 2010 that took Dems by surprise - and this gerrymandering made the above virtually impossible to repeat (by design, I might add).

Yep, the truth is it shouldn’t even be this close, but Kamala has moved significantly right in the last four years.

Actually, that’s probably why she’s winning. Because of the nature and makeup of the Electoral College, we can consider the Presidential election biased in favor of the GOP candidate.

It’s the only explanation for why they keep moving right after Obama’s 08 landslide

I’ve explained this in detail before, so rather than reposting, I’ll just point folks over to this, https://lemmy.world/comment/12409521

The Dem party doesn’t try to get landslide victories, they want to give voters the absolute minimum they need to win.

Well, I’m sure they would if they could. But see above - it’s not possible with the current structure. I’m still hopeful that we can get Harris elected, and then have a chance of getting the 127 DC states plan to pass - https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review

Which would allow Dems to pass the required constitutional amendments to address the systemic problems with the current, erm, system.

There are real benefits to the third party candidate in this scenario though - since they’re getting multiple votes in a safe state, but federal campaign funding eligibility is just based on the national popular vote, this gets them closer to that funding than if the swing voter did a straight vote for the third party.

Also, he has confessed to telling the ranger back then that he shot himself. Surely the ranger would have known he was lying or not if he saw the wound? You’re right again - it doesn’t add up.

Wow, you’re right. When I first read that sentence I assumed that he meant that the gun went off when he fell down, and it fired into his arm - into his old wound from the war - and that’s why he worried the new bullet might have dislodged the old one, along the lines of https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3846953/ or https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5731308/

But then I reread it and it says,

Sheehy himself has sought to parry Peach’s version of events by saying he had never been hit by gunfire that day in 2015.

So you’re right. The bullet would have to be dislodged by his act of falling down. I’m not a medical or a firearms expert so I can’t say for sure on this point, I can only note that my internet searches don’t seem to come up with any other examples of this ever happening.

I guess Sheehy might have gotten irrationally worried over nothing that day - a strong enough fall can do that and much worse to the good ol’ noggin, I suppose. But that also means he never tried to get a bullet removed after so many years? Isn’t that really dangerous to leave the bullet in? And couldn’t the doctors who saw in in 2015 tell if the bullet was recent or really old?

This sounds right, but I’m curious. What specific systems or factors are at play here that make it impossible to hide this? Like what if the reason no one else has come forward now is because the other grunts who were with him that day all later died in combat?

Also - a war wound while defending against the enemy is one thing. But a wound from friendly fire? It almost feels like he wanted to go with the former but changed his story to the latter to come up with a good excuse to avoid having documentation for it…

To the surprise of absolutely no one.

Yep, hopefully Harris will be able to direct the US reps at the UN to stop doing that much.

Unfortunately it seems there’s a law that requires the US to defund where the UN recognizes Palestine as an independent state (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/unesco-votes-to-admit-palestine-over-us-objections/2011/10/31/gIQAMleYZM_story.html / https://archive.is/67xzK ) but I don’t think that applies to the scenario you just discussed.

(I also don’t get how that law works with the US supporting a two state solution - how can the US support a two state solution, one of which being Palestine - and defund those who recognize two states too?)

Me too. Although even once Harris takes office, AIPAC would still have a lot of power and influence. But I’m choosing to remain optimistically hopeful here.

I wonder if this could be another reason for a red shift as seen in polling earlier. Herding convinced otherwise independent polls to move rightward when one or a few particularly well regarded polls swung that way, perhaps?

Thank you for your service! This makes perfect sense. I was wondering if this was similar to Uncommitted’s non-endorsement of Harris, where they declined to explicitly endorse her due to Gaza but basically said everyone needs to out and vote for her anyways - and you answered this for me.

That’s exactly right.

Overall, the article just reflects the long standing situation - China’s never really been in control of or comfortable with North Korea. Rather, it was always just seen as the “least bad” option out of a bunch of seemingly bad ones…