Delta1212

I have zero interest in "destroying the adversary." I would rather everyone succeed. However, that also means that if you want my cooperation in fucking over some other group of people, I'm going to give you the finger. I've heard too many comments from people who think Muslims are all terrorists, black people are all criminals, gay people are going to hell, poor people are lazy, sick people are irresponsible and liberals should all be killed to take "Let's all come together as Americans" as anything more than an empty platitude. You want to come together as Americans to solve the problems we face? I'll do whatever I can to help you. You want to solve your own problems by screwing over some other group? No, thanks. Call me when you're serious about helping everyone and not just the "right" Americans.

Working together to do what, exactly? There is literally nothing in all of the specific things that Trump has actually done or tried to do that I actually want to see done. I do not oppose Trump because he is Trump. I oppose the things he says and does. If he starts doing and saying things that I support, I will continue to support those things getting done.

There was a Russian reporter in the meeting that the White House thought was Lavrov's personal photographer.

If North Korea is going to merge with another country it will almost certainly be with South Korea and not with China. That is the preference if both Koreas, the US, I believe still Russia and China itself who, among other things, doesn't want to have to deal with the humanitarian crisis that is the DPRK. There is also the issue of language, history and ethic background, which are much bigger deals in Asia than I think a lot of Westerners realize. South Korea has the 11th largest economy in the world by GDP, just behind Canada and ahead of both Russia and Australia. They don't require US money for reunification efforts (though I wouldn't be surprised if we did help out, we just wouldn't be underwriting the whole process because it isn't necessary).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html Trump was bragging about the "great intel" he gets to Lavrov during their meeting and accidentally revealed a bunch of highly classified information about ISIS that had been passed along by an ally and which we did not have permission to share, had not, in fact, even shared with most of our own allies. It was detailed enough that Russia will likely be able to identify the source of the information, which is likely also positioned to provide intel on Russian interests in Syria. White House officials and intelligence officers are scrambling to limit the damage insofar as that is possible as this not only places the intelligence operation of our ally at risk but also makes it less likely that they will share vital information with us in the future.

Well, in some respect it kind of does if the people elected in the last election refuse to do the due diligence that the public wants them to do.

Five Presidents have won the electoral college without having won the popular vote. John Quincy Adams, in 1824, was a Democratic-Republican which later split into the Democrats and the Whigs (he was part of the Whig faction). All four of the rest were Republicans. The Democrats don't invoke complaints about the electoral college when they win without the popular vote because they never have. The closest you can get is a precursor party from 1824.

Well, that's why they have control of the House, anyway. The Senate can't be gerrymandered.

The Democrats can't get a majority in either, let alone both, houses of Congress until 2019, so I don't know why that would speed anything up. The timeline for changing over remains the same regardless of how many seats in each house you win.

See though, I have a hard time with just going by the straight numbers, and it's not an example of gerrymandering in any case. First, those numbers compare Senators across three different elections including both midterms and Presidential elections. Those have variable rates of voter participation and you need to figure out a way to adequately account for that. It might very well still show the same basic result, but until that's taken care of, you're mixing apples and oranges together in one big bowl. Second, the reason it isn't gerrymandering is that the Senate cannot be gerrymandered the way that it is set up. The "districts" are the states, and they can't be redrawn to advantage one party over another. However, there is a built-in bias in the Senate towards low-population states. The states that benefit most from there are mostly rural states far from the coats, which also tend to be current Republican strongholds.

Yes, I think there is some confusion going on over a lack of differentiating between gerrymandering and the in-built bias of the Constitution towards over-representing less populous states in the national government. This has a similar effect to gerrymandering, but is not actually the same thing. Presidential elections and Senate elections cannot be gerrymandered. Gerrymandering as a practice tests on the way Congressional districts are drawn. Every ten years there is a census, and the state's all have to redraw their district lines to accommodate population shifts so that you have roughly the same number of people in each Congressional district. In many states, the state legislature draws the districts, which gives the party in power on the state level a measure of control over how the state elects its Representatives to the House on the national level. Let's say we have a hypothetical state that has to draw 10 districts. Let's also say that two parties are dominant in this state: The Birthday Party and the College Party. Now, if the Birthday Party enjoys support from 60% of the state's residents, and the College Party 40%, a fair distribution of representatives would be 6 Birthday Party and 4 College Party representatives going to Congress to represent the state. However, if the Birthday Party is in power on the state level, they could redraw the boundaries of the districts according to demographic information such that every district is made up of 60% Birthday Party members and 40% College Party members, resulting in the Birthday Party having all 10 available seats in Congress despite only getting 60% of the vote. On the flip side, if the College Party manages to gain control of the state legislature and they get to redraw the map, they could could create 3 districts that are 95% Birthday Party supporters and 5% College Party members, and 7 districts that are 55% College Party and 45% Birthday Party, giving the College Party 7 out of 10 seats despite only getting 40% of the statewide vote, while the Birthday Party gets 3 out of 10 seats despite getting 60% of the vote. These are both a bit extreme, as it is difficult to clump people quite as efficiently as that, but it illustrates the power of gerrymandering to allow a majority to suppress representation of a minority, or a minority to gain a representational advantage in spite of a majority opposition. Both parties do this to one extent or another, however, there are two factors at work that imbalance the outcomes. One is that the number of states where gerrymandering is significant with Democrats in charge is comparatively smaller (although they do exist, see, for instance, Maryland), and additionally, the Republican Party launched an initiative in the run up to the 2010 census known as Operation REDMAP to gain control of as many state houses as possible with the intention of favorably redrawing the House districts to their advantage. This has given the Republicans a durable majority in the House of Representatives ever since, even in elections where their overall vote totals were lower than that of the Democratic minority in the House.

Blacks are convicted of felonies at higher rates than whites, additionally, there is a disparity in how laws are created that is often non-obvious in their goals and ultimate effects. For instance, cocaine and crack are essentially the same drug, with the latter being slightly modified to allow it to be smoked. Cocaine is more popular with wealthier and whiter communities, crack in poorer and blacker communities. In terms of legal trouble, 1 gram of crack is considered the equivalent of 18 grams of cocaine for sentencing purposes. Enforcement in general tends to disproportionately focus on on poor offenders and black offenders. Overall this contributes to a felony disenfranchisement rate among blacks that is more than 3 times the national average. This is not a coincidence, and nor is it a coincidence that many states expanded felony disenfranchisement rules following the adoption of the 14th amendment that gave blacks the right to vote.

Spicer's understudy performed the White House press briefing today. It's a temporary leave of absence so he can fulfill some duties as a part of the naval reserve. There's been some speculation about whether that is entirely true and if he will be back or not. That's about the extent of that.

The problem with seeing a light at the end of a long dark tunnel is that it's often hard to tell whether it's actually daylight or just an on-coming train.

That was pretty good. I could quibble a little bit at the end, since even a finite universe wouldn't need to be expanding into anything, but since nothing said was strictly wrong, like I said, quibbling.

You're getting mixed up. Swansont's article was from September 2016. The third article which you used as a counter example is what was from January 20, 2017.

Uh...? Weird, didn't show the second quote before. In any case, people aren't trying to argue with you for the sake of it. Even if you are making an overall point I agree with, the accuracy of the details leading up to that point still matter.

You're talking about foreign aid budgets, not charitable donations.

Every time someone calculates pi out to an additional decimal place we should choose a new symbol to represent it.

Keeping in mind that the reason for 2 is that for a theory to be accepted, it needs to acheive 3 with a high degree of precision. A higher degree of precision than any current theory, in fact. Presently, we don't know of a way to develop a model that gives more precise results than a mathematical model.

The whole solar system started as a swirling dust cloud. The planets and other objects in the solar system only coalesced in the first place because of debris colliding and gathering together in clumps. How exactly do you think things formed?

Why does it matter what he would think?

Because the size and mass of an object aren't really related to how old it is?

They didn't just find "something" and decide to name it the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson was predicted to exist as part of the theory outlining the Higgs mechanism. It was predicted to have a set of properties and behaviors associated with it. Then they discovered a particle that had the same properties and behaviors as those predicted for the Higgs Boson.

Also, a company that does business in multiple states can choose which state it wants to buy insurance coverage in for its entire company. Presently, this does not really matter. However, should the above bill pass the Senate, the ability of states to get waivers for aspects of the insurance protections means that many large companies will be able to purchase insurance that lacks basic coverage even for employs that live and work in states that continue to mandate a base level of care be covered.