I've repainted Ohio to a neutral gray. I grant very few neutrals, but OH seems very close..Turnout operations may be the factor determining who wins. Virtually no change in the overall odds, Ohio isn't a keystone this year.

Infighting.
Appearances.
Shaping public opinion to prevent a revolt?

Ask em.
It's too late to ask George.

A

If they already own the politicians, why are they paying to lobby them?

The problem with Republican investigations is they won't target the real crimes... because they are guilty of them too or their funders are.
Everything from campaign finance violations to pay to play to war crimes.

I need to apologize for falsely attributing the quote "fighting for peace is like f**king for virginity" to George Carlin.
Someone schooled me today that he never said it and that it was a Vietnam era anti-war slogan falsely attributed to him by numerous quote websites.

Whoops.

But, in the spirit of this post here's a real Carlin quote from his "Dumb Americans" bit-

"There's a reason that education sucks. And it's the same reason that it will never ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now. The real owners. The big, wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, and city halls. They got the judges in their back pocket. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed. well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interest. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits."

Peace and love to the whole CW gang.
A

Another our years of nonsense. Pathetic. I think they are just digging the "we do nothing" hole deeper.

I'm with you on this! It angers me to no end that they think this is what they are elected to do! We are all AMERICANS, first and foremost, not Republicans/Democrats! That has been lost on so many politicians. Republicans that are already announcing that they won't support anything that Clinton endorses are telling their constituents that their best interests aren't going to be considered when it comes to how the politician will vote on legislation.

Another our years of nonsense. Pathetic. I think they are just digging the "we do nothing" hole deeper.

It will come to a point when the Republicans can't count on off year elections for another "landslide" as the demographics, which make them unelectable during Presidential years, will even overwhelm those off year elections. Then, perhaps, we will get a center right party that accepts reality, the fact that society has changed since 1955, and, heaven forbid, science.

Until then, as another "Doubtful Democrat", I'll just keep voting and supporting the same party.

CW: Even winning the popular vote for the House by over a million votes nationwide didn't give the Democrats control of the chamber, in previous elections. That's a pretty good definition of rigged.

Couldn't agree more. It was nice to hear that Obama's getting behind fixing the gerrymandering problem as well.

We also need the left to get interested in the mid-terms. The Bernie and Jill and Gary fans don't seem to realize that their odds go up in midterms, because enthusiasm is amplified by low turnout. Or would they rather the Tea Party keep that tactic all to themselves?

tend to agree that smaller districts don't make representation better. however, i do think it's a good springboard from which to float other ideas that might result in a more fundamentally fair system. my suggestion was to make gerrymandering irrelevant by statewide proportional representation - rules whereby people vote for parties instead of people, like they do in israel or in some UK elections. in israel any party to get more than 3.25% of the vote gets to pick a member of the knesset (MK), and those that get more votes get to pick more MK's. I haven't seen anything in the US Constitution that specifically bars such a system at the state level.

JL

Most likely Clinton EV tally = 341

Wildly optimistic landslide Clinton EV ~500 (1% chance)

Wildly pessimistic Clinton showing, 108 EV (<1% chance)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwixycPZl_vPAhWs7oMKHRzbCZwQ3ywIHzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DkWdfRRtAs3o&usg=AFQjCNHfo1yyWyJdcJ75WOQVX0ftlBKg6w

Interesting argument from that web page, but it breaks down under close inspection.

Each of my State Reps is serving a mere 114,000 citizens, compared to my Congressman who answers to approximately 700,000. I do not feel 6.14 times as well represented by my state rep. compared to my congressman. In fact, I know far less about what my state rep. is up to. (Probably no good, that's always a safe assumption.)

The House o' Reps is about the same size as my high school was. I was at least passingly familiar with every one of fellow students, and didn't even try very hard. I think it's important that our Federal Reps know each other well, because compromise is based on trust. I regard my political reps as agents of compromise, at least in theory, admittedly is much better than practice.

Going back to Colonial levels of representation isn't going to resemble my high school, it's going to look like the Galactic Senate in Star Wars.

http://storage.torontosun.com/v1/blogs-prod-photos/0/7/b/7/0/07b7085dd2f8e0de9317c01be5b59ede.jpg?stmp=1437347834

Nobody in Star Wars seems to like the Galactic Senate very much. My luck would be to get Jar Jar Binks as my rep, not Natalie Portman.

In the Electronic Age, it is technically feasible to govern entirely by direct referendum on every single issue. That does not mean it's a good idea. Most citizens have to work for a living. Or look for work to make a living. They haven't got the time to be well informed on the minutia of legislation, and legislation is all about minutia. It's like being informed about what's on the ballot. I voted last week. I spent the whole night before voting figuring out what I should vote for. It was not easy, and in the end, I ended up spit-balling a lot of choices. Minutia bites you in the end.

I think Gerrymandering is the most serious threat to Representative Government. That's were my focus is. More reps isn't going to solve The Gerrymander threat.

http://www.thirty-thousand.org/

i don't know what solution would be constitutionally possible, but it seems to me we could tweak the system in a number of productive ways. maybe make district lines irrelevant by instituting parliamentary style party elections? allocating districts to representatives by the percentage of the votes your party gets could open the way for more third party representation. i haven't found anything in article I that outright prevents such a thing; is it explicitly forbidden? it seems to say that district lines are up to the states to decide, no?

JL

Man, those were the days. Favorite WWN headline: "I Was Bigfoot's Love Slave!"

Heh.

-CW

Thanks... fixed!

Mea culpa, as always.

:-)

-CW

Who could ever forget the hard hitting journalism of the Weekly World News reporting on the space alien that endorsed Bill Clinton, Bill and Hillary's adopted UFO infant named John Stanley Clinton, or Hillary's extraterrestrial lover named P'Lod?