Favorite recent post by the previous poster

[RFayette]

Ah, I should have known.

They really should add a question of these polls answered by those who oppose legal abortion. " what police should a woman who has an illegal abortion face?

A) Fines of up to $5,000
B) up to one year in prison.
C) up to 3 years in prison
D) up to five years in prison
E) up to 10 years in prison
F) up to 20 years or longer in prison."

Follow up question to anyone who answered anything but a comma should prison time be mandatory in such cases.

The real issues the first question. Most so-called pro-life individuals shy away from the concept of actually Prosecuting and imprisoning women for choosing to have an abortion. And yet that is the fundamental philosophical legal and moral issue here. Where is pro-life fanatics tender picture pro-choice supporters as wild hedonists glorifying abortion as a Sacrament and high-fiving each other every time one occurs, the fact is approximately 99 + percent of abortion rights supporters simply don't want women prosecuted for obtaining an abortion, or making it otherwise essentially impossible to obtain for anyone but the upper middle-class or better off.

Badger, your poll of hypothetical abortion punishments omits a rather important actor in an abortion; the abortionist. There's a huge spectrum of pro-life opinion that can be summarized as "throw the book at the abortionist but be relatively merciful to the woman".

Moreover it's disingenuous to say that pro-lifers have to favour punishing women who have abortions severely to avoid hypocrisy, given how common making exceptions in punishment is in our judicial history.

I'm far more sympathetic to say a college student who's boyfriend took off, than the abortionist who profits from the murder of said college student's baby.

[MAINEiac4434]

[Atlas Force]

Young Conservative youngconservative YaBB God ★★★★★ Posts: 3,182

ME: Curtis vs Erwin « Reply #543 on: June 18, 1970, 09:31:59 pm »Quick Someone calculate the chance Margaret Chase Smith is defeated: *calculating* *calculating* *calculating* 0% chance.

[BBD]

It’s not 2002 anymore, enough said.

[TDAS04]

I think Hickenlooper, Perlmutter, or Polis might run against Gardner in 2020.

Ed Perlmutter did a 180 when he decided to run for reelection after dropping out for governor. Not sure what exactly that might signal, but I supposed he could be interested in moving up to the Senate.

As for John Hickenlooper, it must be noted that he's never before held office in the Legislative Branch. Before he was elected governor, he was the mayor of Denver, and before that, a businessman. A decent executive does not necessarily a good legislator make. Take Joe Manchin, for example. When he was governor, he genuinely enjoyed his job and his popularity was through the roof. Now in the Senate, he's shed a lot of that popularity, he's been forced to "ride the fence" quite a bit, and he hasn't had as much of a good time (though it's probably been good for his wallet). That's why I was sort of surprised that Manchin decided to run for reelection this year rather than running for gov in 2016 or retiring from politics altogether. There's plenty more examples from both parties throughout history. Considering all this, gun to my head, I'd probably bet that Hickenlooper runs for Prez rather than Senate. But we really don't know 100% how these things will turn out until they actually happen, so he may surprise us yet.

Out of the three mentioned, Jared Polis would be able to accrue most seniority in the Senate. Let's not kid ourselves here, though. He's in the governor's race to win it. As much as I'd like to see Cary Kennedy beat him in the primary, it seems highly unlikely at this point. Barring some sort of unknown scandal of actual substance, he's also on track to demolishing Walker Stapleton in the GE. In the event that he does lose, and it isn't because of a scandal, I could see him making a comeback by going after Gardner. But that would also depend on whether he loses in the primary or the general. If Polis loses in the general election to Stapleton, who's more flawed than Gardner by a country mile, it would signify that he's too weak to take on the latter in 2020.

If none of the above three or other well known quantities jump in the race, there's going to be a very interesting and possibly dirty primary brewing on the horizon. Lots of ambitious folks making their move. Hold your horses and prepare for the ride!

[YE]

Sherrod Brown, easily. 

[Dr. MB]

It came to my attention via the burn victims thread that he makes 36 and change posts per day. Lean HP. Empty quotes me a lot but that’s just an insane number of posts per day. Can’t be much lower than TexyArk or whoever that person with that disgusting sig was and Eharding levels. At least those two generated well political discussion of sorts. Also his changing avatars thing and the joke changing of his PM score are changes that are reserved for April Fools Day.

[Atlas Force]

Last night I dreamt I was helping Bob Menendez in a gunfight against the godfather of the Sicilian Mafia. This took place in a hotel in Iowa City.

[Canis]

TIL Maine has plantations as a form of municipal government.

Source: Looking up Grand Lake Stream, whose ME-02 Dem primary results are showing up as an exact tie for Golden and St. Clair with 2 votes each, at 100% reporting.

[ON Progressive]

     Between reforming charter schools to mitigate this effect and creating authoritarian new policies that effectively deny an appropriate education to top-performing students, why am I not surprised to see so many people support the latter?

Totally agree I went to the number one charter school in the world so I have seen how charters can preform well. The problem is there is a lack of supervision I say more supervisors need to be hired for charters along with adding some regulations like requiring them to provide public transportation for children. Charter Schools can and will work. Mine was especially proficient with helping students with disabilities I say we get more charters like that.

[Goldwater]

"White working class" is too broad of a label anyway.

That's my view. People use "WWC" when they really mean non-college whites, but there are plenty of average and even high income whites without college degrees (see: Long Island).

[Atlas Force]

Both are absolutely terrible, but not the nazis.

[kyc0705]

STOP EMPTY QUOTING AND HAVE A THOUGHT

[100% pro-life no matter what]

A good analysis of the problem of voting third party:

A 3rd party cannot exist in a first past the post winner take all Presidential system.

Why is that

FPTP naturally levitates towards a two party system. Generally, these two parties end up housing large chunks of the respective left and right in their country, and so voters will end up voting for one to keep the other out of power. Voting for third parties that closer align to your viewpoint ends up helping for the major party you don't like, because it takes a vote away from the major party you tolerate.

Let's say you're a left-wing voter, and you live in a country with a center-left and center-right party. Your country has 100 voters, and elects its president with a single-round FPTP system. But in this election, a far-left insurgent candidate also runs alongside the two major parties. Some of your fellow left-wing voters, dissatisfied with the wishy-washy stances of the center-left party, gravitate towards them. They've amassed a lot of momentum, and you really think they could shake up the race. But what if the outcome looks like this?

Center-right candidate: 45 votes (WINNER)
Center-left candidate: 40 votes
Far-left candidate: 10 votes

By not voting for the center-left candidate, your votes have inadvertently helped the center-right candidate—the candidate the furthest from your views—win. In the next election, you and your friends make sure to avert this, and hold your nose and vote for the center-left candidate. Despite the fact that they're not particularly popular with anyone, they're closer to your beliefs than the center-right candidate. At the next election, the results look like this:

Center-left candidate: 55 votes (WINNER)
Center-right candidate: 45 votes
Far-left candidate: 0 votes

The third party acts as a spoiler, and can't garner support without fear that votes for them will help the center-right party. Eventually, all elections gravitate toward those two parties, as voters vote against their fears, instead of for their genuine beliefs. FPTP can only really support two major, feasible parties.

(This video from CGP Grey explains it in much more depth.)

[OSR stands with Israel]

MASSIVE HP.  I would lose all respect for anyone who is even conflicted about this one.

[RFayette]

Infrastructure Bill Passes Senate as a majority of Republicans and Democrats vote for it. Romney signs the bill in a signing cermony



Romney: Thank You, Thank You. Really all the thanks goes to the great group of Congressman and Senators from behind me who worked very hard to make sure this bill passes so we can finally begin the process of not only rebuilding our existing infrastructure but build new types of infrastructure in areas that didnt have them before so those areas can finally have the ability to attract commerce in the 21st century . One such type was making sure every town and city in our country is able to get broadband access because in today's economy you need the internet at good speeds to attract commerce and such commerce will improve the lives of everyone living in this great nation of ours. Also another great thing about this plan is it does not add a single penny to our deficit because instead of borrowing more money or raising taxes to pay for this plan but instead cuts spending in wasteful areas and instead uses that money on things that actually would benefit our nation. Once again thank you all for coming together to pass this and today we showed the world what we can do if we work together in a bipartisan matter. Now there is one last thing that is left before this bill becomes law and that is my signature so I will go over to that table and sign the bill.


Romney Signs Bill

[Atlas Force]

Favorite: Myself
Least favorite: Everyone else

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This seems like a surefire way to annoy millennials into not voting for you.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Klobuchar,s response sounds kind of clintonesque.

Which is a good thing. It is right to the point.

[OSR stands with Israel]

1. Hutchinson

2. Boozman





3. Cotton

[All Along The Watchtower]

More like trump towing the gop line .


Why should flake vote against policy he supports just to stick it to Trump

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

About the same as they were the last few elections, aka quite Republican.

TheDeadFlagBlues brought up a good point here or on AAD (can't remember which) that, among Republican primary voters, white Catholics were pretty heavily for Trump (hence his massive support in the Northeast). I imagine that this would be true especially of white Catholic men - even more 'cafeteria" ones (actually, maybe especially them, since if you look at white evangelicals in the 2016 Republican primaries, not going to church often/being more of a "cultural" evangelical was heavily correlated with Trump support compared to the more devout and community-involved evangelical voters, who were more likely to back Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio (but still, a lot of them backed Trump, and not just in November).

I think that there were similar patterns in the primaries between Trump support among Catholics in the Northeast and Trump support among white evangelicals in the South/Southeast; the more "secular" or "cultural" social conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant, were a lot more likely to support Trump than other social conservatives, though the "devout-less devout"gap obviously narrowed considerably by the time Trump became the presumptive nominee.

There are also lots of overlapping patterns there with education, income, blue-collar vs white-collar, the levels of poverty, unemployment/underemployment, labor force participation rate, and just general social cohesion, probably an urban/inner suburban vs. exurban/small city/rural divide as well - along with gender, marriage rates, family size, number of college-educated professional women in a given area, etc. Note that Trump support in the primaries showed a lot of the same demographic patterns as Trump support in the general election, which shouldn't be surprising, really.

PS: Sorry for using the whole "Cultural Religion" term here that you really dislike.

[DavidB.]

8/10 Beet. I think this was one of your better recent efforts.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Also, in most families both spouses have a job and both are doing the housework.

That's just not true. Even in a highly equal society like the Netherlands, men have fulltime jobs much more often than women, and women do much more household work, even though men now do some of the household work and women usually have a part-time job.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The US has a large trade deficit because it's a consumer nation. It takes in more goods than it sends out.
We certainly need manufacturing on some level but what's good for some parts of the US manufacturing sector can easily be bad for the nation as a whole.
That's why I stand by the concept of free trade and think it should be in force in most cases - the people harmed by it are much outnumbered by those are helped. Protectionism harms the interests of masses of Americans who don't have manufacturing jobs and many who do have manufacturing jobs.