Octopus Overlords

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:20 pm

ImLawBoy wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:56 pm I think he has a better chance of it than your typical Republican, since he'll be representing a deep red state that really despises Trump.

I think "really despises" is probably a bit strong, tbh. Trump clashes strongly with LDS values, but he still has a ton of support simply because there's an R next to his name.

I never thought I'd see the day where I'm relieved that I'd be represented by Mitt Romney in any capacity. Yet, given the alternative (Hatch, or worse), the fact that Romney seems mostly sane (even if I disagree with him on nearly everything), and his lean towards an anti-Trump stance (or at least lip service to it), I find myself in that camp. It's really just...weird.

Defiant wrote: Thu Feb 15, 2018 10:50 pm Based on the "I cut, you choose" method of splitting some cake:

There’s another way to solve gerrymandering. It’s as simple as cake.

The first party divides the state into eight districts (in a way that satisfies all legal requirements) and hands the map to the second party. The second party freezes one of the eight districts drawn by the first party and then divides the unfrozen part of the state into seven new districts. The second party then returns the map to the first party, which then freezes one of the seven new districts, draws six more and hands it back to the second party. This process continues until, after seven rounds, all eight districts have been frozen.

Why is the “I cut, you freeze” protocol fair to both parties? Intuitively, neither party is able to unilaterally shape districts, as each party can only freeze districts drawn by the other party. In fact, we establish mathematically that this protocol can prevent one party from packing a targeted group of voters into a district. This property holds when both parties employ their best possible strategies, which might make use of sophisticated algorithms and detailed information about voters.

The article does point out that it has problems with states with two (or very few) districts (and probably also for the last two districts of any state. But it does look like a reasonable solution (at least, to solve the problem of preventing one party or another from biasing the map to a large degree, anyway)

ImLawBoy wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:33 pm

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:20 pm

ImLawBoy wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:56 pm I think he has a better chance of it than your typical Republican, since he'll be representing a deep red state that really despises Trump.

I think "really despises" is probably a bit strong, tbh. Trump clashes strongly with LDS values, but he still has a ton of support simply because there's an R next to his name.

I never thought I'd see the day where I'm relieved that I'd be represented by Mitt Romney in any capacity. Yet, given the alternative (Hatch, or worse), the fact that Romney seems mostly sane (even if I disagree with him on nearly everything), and his lean towards an anti-Trump stance (or at least lip service to it), I find myself in that camp. It's really just...weird.

You'd know the attitude in Utah better than me - sounds like I was overstating it. I still think he will have more leeway to resist Trump than a Republican from, say, Mississippi.

El Guapo wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 2:30 pm The other unknown is what exactly Romney's long-term ambitions are. Does he still aspire to run for President? If so, would he try to prepare himself as an anti-Trump candidate (and bank on Trump collapsing / getting impeached within the next few years), or does he want to leave open the possibility of running as a successor to Trump? If he doesn't aspire to be president, is he content being Utah senator for the rest of his career? Does he aspire to shape the direction of the Republican Party more broadly?

Holman wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 3:41 pm

El Guapo wrote: Fri Feb 16, 2018 2:30 pm The other unknown is what exactly Romney's long-term ambitions are. Does he still aspire to run for President? If so, would he try to prepare himself as an anti-Trump candidate (and bank on Trump collapsing / getting impeached within the next few years), or does he want to leave open the possibility of running as a successor to Trump? If he doesn't aspire to be president, is he content being Utah senator for the rest of his career? Does he aspire to shape the direction of the Republican Party more broadly?

The Republican party is still so pro-Trump that there's no way an openly anti-Trump candidate will gain their enthusiasm. If Trump wants 2020's nomination, it's his. If he declines to run, the GOP's best bet is Pence, who can claim to have been part of the MAGA revolution while subtly implying that he's more conservative than Trump knew how to be.

So Romney's earliest chance at the presidency will be 2024, when he'll again be running against an incumbent Dem who succeeded a disastrous Republican. Only this time he'll be 77 years old. (Romney is actually older than Hillary Clinton.)

The senate it is.

A state senator shouted Monday at University of Idaho students affiliated with Planned Parenthood, trying to schedule a meeting with him to discuss birth control and sex education.

Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Moscow, said he would call law enforcement officials if they attempted to visit his office at the Capitol again.

The students, who had traveled nearly 300 miles from the Moscow campus to participate in a Boise lobbying event, were trying to schedule a meeting with Foreman.

The Republican canceled at the last minute. The students left him a note and condoms in his office before moving on to other scheduled meetings.

The students and Foreman passed in a hallway. He emphatically refused to speak with them in an exchange that several people recorded on camera.

“Abortion is murder. I stand against it,” Foreman says in the short clips, posted on Facebook. “I am a Roman Catholic. I am a conservative Republican. I think what you guys do stinks.”

After a further exchange, Foreman then walks through an office door. “The next time you walk in my office, you’re going to be dealing with ISP,” he says.

Dillon added that the other meetings were peaceful even if the lawmakers disagreed with their talking points.

For example, Dillon said Sen. Bob Nonini, a Republican from Coeur d’Alene, waved a rosary while talking to students about abstinence but did not shout or demean the students.

Skinypupy wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:54 am

Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Moscow,

Holman wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:02 am https://twitter.com/samstein/status/965785407077212161

link

Mitt's gonna Mitt. Disgusting.

1. Alaska
Taxes paid as pct. of income: 6.5%
Income per capita: $55,646 (8th highest)
Income tax collections per capita: $0 (tied — the lowest)
Property tax collections per capita: $2,639 (4th highest)
General sales tax collections per capita: $0 (tied — the lowest)

2. Wyoming
Taxes paid as pct. of income: 7.1%
Income per capita: $55,116 (9th highest)
Income tax collections per capita: $0 (tied — the lowest)
Property tax collections per capita: $2,109 (9th highest)
General sales tax collections per capita: $1,384 (5th highest)

3. South Dakota
Taxes paid as pct. of income: 7.1%
Income per capita: $47,834 (22nd highest)
Income tax collections per capita: $0 (tied — the lowest)
Property tax collections per capita: $1,301 (24th lowest)
General sales tax collections per capita: $1,131 (9th highest)

4. Tennessee
Taxes paid as pct. of income: 7.3%
Income per capita: $43,326 (18th lowest)
Income tax collections per capita: $46 (8th lowest)
Property tax collections per capita: $830 (7th lowest)
General sales tax collections per capita: $992 (18th highest)

5. Louisiana
Taxes paid as pct. of income: 7.6%
Income per capita: $42,298 (13th lowest)
Income tax collections per capita: $639 (12th lowest)
Property tax collections per capita: $839 (8th lowest)
General sales tax collections per capita: $627 (12th lowest)

The top public school administrator in Washington, D.C., resigned his position Tuesday, four days after it was revealed that he had conspired with another official to place his daughter in the district's highest-performing public high school. In the process, Public Schools Chancellor Antwan Wilson bypassed the rules governing placement of district students in schools outside their own neighborhoods.

The other official, Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer Niles, was forced to resign last week.

Wilson is the second consecutive chancellor to be embroiled in a school placement scandal. Last May, The Washington Post obtained a report from the city's inspector general revealing that his predecessor, Kaya Henderson, had helped influential D.C. officials get their children directly into the most desirable schools by bypassing the lottery system with so-called "discretionary placements." By the time the report became public, Henderson had already left the school system following a five-year stint in the top job.

On one level, this is maddening malfeasance. District residents have now had two consecutive chancellors, both of whom promised to be champions of reform and good governance, caught abusing their positions for personal gain in the same way. Families across the city with many fewer resources than these officials face the school lottery's notoriously long odds every year. Often, it's their only chance to avoid dismally underperforming neighborhood schools. That the people responsible for maintaining and operating that system are apparently unwilling to play by the rules they enforce is inexcusable and grotesque.

Holman wrote: Tue Feb 20, 2018 12:49 pm Flip-flopping on Trump would be Peak Romney.

malchior wrote: Thu Feb 22, 2018 6:16 pm MO Governor Eric Greitens indicted for invasion of privacy!

Federal courts reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote:I just saw MO Gov. Eric Greitens being led away in the custody of the St. Louis Sheriff.

Holman wrote:https://twitter.com/anamariecox/status/ ... 7838350336

Ted Cruz at CPAC: "“I think the Democrats are the party of Lisa Simpson, and the Republicans are, happily, the party of Homer and Bart and Maggie and Marge.”

Imagine wanting to be the party of Homer and thinking Lisa was the problem.

As David Bier, a policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute, attempted to lay out research proving that immigrants actually have lower crime rates than native-born Americans, contribute significantly to the economy and are assimilating just as well or better than past generations of immigrants, his fellow panelists derided his statements as “nutty” and angry audience members shouted him down.

“Sweetie, you’re too young to know,” one woman called out as Bier said that the economy has historically done well during periods of high immigration to the United States.

When he noted that the U.S. proportionally takes in very few immigrants and refugees compared to other nations, a man interjected, “You’re a dreamer!” and much of the crowd broke out in applause and jeers.

During a heated question and answer session during the immigration panel, a man from Four Corners, Virginia went on an extended diatribe about a Latino man who once crashed his car in front of his house.

“I had to go down to court to testify, and I was the only white face in the crowd other than the lawyers being paid to translate for these people,” he said. “You can go down to Four Corners Park and see obvious illegal immigrants defecating in the woods, fornicating in the woods, and on and on and on. These people are not the immigrants of the 20s and 30s. They will never be able to get good jobs here and be good citizens. Is that in your study?”

The session's moderator, K Carl Smith, described himself as a "Frederick Douglass Republican", an audience member interjected. "When Douglass came through slavery … he [wrote] a letter to his former slave master and said: 'I forgive you for all the things you did to me'," Smith said.

From the floor, Scott Terry, pictured, asked: "For giving him shelter and food for all those years?"

After the session, Terry, 30, claimed to the Guardian that he was a direct descendant of former confederate president Jefferson Davis, and that he was "not prepared to throw all my ancestors under the bus".

Asked if he disagreed with slavery, Terry described it as a "complicated issue. I can't make one broad statement that categorically it was evil all the time because that's not true". Asked to clarify his comments about "shelter and food", Terry said: "The slaves couldn't just work without being supplied quarters and all that. And you couldn't just … it's not legal to murder a slave. Slaves even had rights under the old south."

Holman wrote: Thu Feb 22, 2018 10:17 pm https://twitter.com/rxpatrick/status/966795751216091136

Federal courts reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote:I just saw MO Gov. Eric Greitens being led away in the custody of the St. Louis Sheriff.

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 23, 2018 3:47 pm So...CPAC seems to be going well.

So, it's basically a racist convention then? Got it.

malchior wrote: Fri Feb 23, 2018 4:41 pm

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 23, 2018 3:47 pm So...CPAC seems to be going well.

So, it's basically a racist convention then? Got it.

Good lord - this stuff is ugly. When Cato is part of the liberal conspiracy you know the wheels have really come off.

The NRA-sponsored award was given to Pai in recognition of months of heavy criticism over his successful push to repeal the agency’s net neutrality rules. Pai led the push to repeal the rules, which were overwhelmingly supported by the public, in December.

"Ajit Pai is the most courageous, heroic person that I know,” said Dan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, while introducing the FCC chairman.

“He has received countless death threats. His property has been invaded by the George Soros crowd. He has a family, and his family has been abused in different ways. Chairman Pai, thank you for everything you’ve done."

Pai’s award is a handmade Kentucky long gun, which will be housed in the NRA’s museum in Fairfax, Va.

Previous winners have included Vice President Pence and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke.

A West Virginia judge dismissed a coal mogul’s defamation lawsuit this week against cable television host John Oliver and HBO.

In a decision dated Wednesday, West Virginia Judge Jeffrey Cramer accepted HBO’s argument that Bob Murray, CEO of coal mining giant Murray Energy Corp., failed to show that Oliver had defamed him according to the law.
...
“The fact that Murray found this speech embarrassing or disagreeable does not remove it from the broad protection of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has stated time and again that the type of speech at issue here — news and commentary about public figures and issues of public importance — ‘occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection,’ ” the company said in asking the West Virginia judge to dismiss the case.

Chaz wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2018 10:54 am Trump didn't create it. He's the culmination of work that's been going on for decades. He's just managed to crystallize it and make them feel like it's now okay to say this stuff out loud.

Holman wrote:But Trump has moved the fringe to the center of the party. If they'd nominated Jeb or even Rubio, GOP racism would have been kept to the margins of expression and forced to wait in the hall like usual, at least at the national level. With Trump, racists and nationalists are not only enjoying the spotlight but literally setting policy.

Pyperkub wrote: Mon Feb 26, 2018 11:02 amThe Tea Party paved the way,

Carpet_pissr wrote:I wonder where the ACTUAL conservatives in this country will go now they have no party?