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2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

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  • #46
    Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

    Originally posted by joecct View Post
    There is an old accountants joke that when asked what 2+2 is, the answer the accountant gives is "What do want the number to be?".

    That's Mitt. He gives you the answer you want to hear, not the truth or what he believes.

    He can't handle the truth?
    Maybe he's just Deconstructionist. What's "truth," after all? Or Jamesian. "Truth is what works."

    Jon Stewart did a very nice bit about the RNC "embracing" (guh!) Mitt.

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    • #47
      Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

      back in the day, our CFO had a joke - which numbers do you want to see, the ones for the IRS, the ones for the Bankers or the real ones?
      Originally posted by mtu_huskies
      "We are not too far away from a national championship," said (John) Scott.
      Boosh Factor 4

      Originally posted by Brent Hoven
      Yeah, but you're my favorite hag.

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      • #48
        Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

        Maybe I should titled this thread "Release the Incumbent!"
        CCT '77 & '78
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        - Benjamin Franklin

        Banned from the St. Lawrence University Facebook page - March 2016 (But I got better).

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        • #49
          Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

          Originally posted by joecct View Post
          Maybe I should titled this thread "Release the Incumbent!"
          I love this title. Very apropos. Lots of little deaths coming this election season.

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          • #50
            Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

            Originally posted by leswp1 View Post
            I love this title. Very apropos. Lots of little deaths coming this election season.
            We'll see. The definition of a broken system would be a Congress with a 10% favorability that returned 90% of incumbents. But with gerrymandering that's possible in the House.
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            • #51
              Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

              What really irks me is that people are trying to tell me to vote against someone. I was uncomfortable with that in 2008, and I have no intentions of doing that this year. I'd rather not vote.

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              • #52
                Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                Originally posted by leswp1 View Post
                I love this title. Very apropos. Lots of little deaths coming this election season.
                I beg your pardon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_petit_mort
                "This world is your world. Take it easy, but take it." - Woody Guthrie

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                • #53
                  Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                  Originally posted by Kepler View Post
                  We'll see. The definition of a broken system would be a Congress with a 10% favorability that returned 90% of incumbents. But with gerrymandering that's possible in the House.
                  Finding some way around gerrymandering would probably do more to fix our system then anything else. A majority or large minority of the House would have to be concerned about their re-election and not just the odd primary challenger. You'd still have 100+ in both parties that roll to victory anyway, but that's not enough to gum up the works and turn everything into a war instead of a situation to find compromise.
                  "I went over the facts in my head, and admired how much uglier the situation had just become. Over the years I've learned that ignorance is more than just bliss. It's freaking orgasmic ecstasy".- Harry Dresden, Blood Rites


                  Western Michigan Bronco Hockey- 2012 Mason Cup Champions

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                  • #54
                    Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                    Originally posted by bronconick View Post
                    Finding some way around gerrymandering would probably do more to fix our system then anything else.
                    I agree that removing politicians from drawing district lines would help improve the situation. In many cases, it appears that both parties collude with each other....OK we'll give you xx safe districts and you'll give us yy safe districts.....that seems to be happening in NY state as they are losing two seats in the House due to the 2010 census.

                    I'm not sure that it "would do more than anything else" but that's a story for another day....it would be a big improvement.
                    "Hope is a good thing; maybe the best of things."

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                    • #55
                      Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                      If there were a rational way to have public financing of elections, that would likely help more, but a party-blind method of drawing districts would be great. I'm sure there are computer models that could draw districts according to population distribution.

                      These are two problems where the parties collude to maximize members' personal power at the expense of the voters (and the republic).
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                      • #56
                        Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                        Originally posted by bronconick View Post
                        Finding some way around gerrymandering would probably do more to fix our system then anything else. A majority or large minority of the House would have to be concerned about their re-election and not just the odd primary challenger. You'd still have 100+ in both parties that roll to victory anyway, but that's not enough to gum up the works and turn everything into a war instead of a situation to find compromise.
                        There already is a way, and its starting to become more common. Maybe the best movement in politics today is citizens referedums to put redistricting in the hands of an independent commission. This happened in California and a modified version in Florida (where the legislature drew the districts but couldn't take incumbent protection into account). Also in Arizona despite the efforts of the governor to overturn it. While I'm fully aware this would undo some gerrymanders that benefit the Dems (IL & MD come to mind), so be it.
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                        • #57
                          Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                          Originally posted by Kepler View Post
                          I'm sure there are computer models that could draw districts according to population distribution.
                          I'm pretty sure that would not work given existing Federal law. I seem to recall reading somewhere that a Federal law requires a certain amount of "gerrymandering" to make sure there are districts in which "minorities" are the "majority" if you know what I mean. District lines drawn solely on the basis of population distribution are seen by some as a way to covertly disenfranchise minorities by 'spreading them around' to the extent that they can never concentrate their vote in any one place to elect 'one of their own.'

                          It seems that this viewpoint assumes that the single most important quality a candidate can have is racial or ethnic identification with potential voters; apparently this viewpoint seems to think that what a candidate might actually "stand for" doesn't matter much.
                          "Hope is a good thing; maybe the best of things."

                          "Beer is a sign that God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- Benjamin Franklin

                          "Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -- W. B. Yeats

                          "People generally are most impatient with those flaws in others about which they are most ashamed of in themselves." - folk wisdom

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                          • #58
                            Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                            Originally posted by FreshFish View Post
                            I agree that removing politicians from drawing district lines would help improve the situation. In many cases, it appears that both parties collude with each other....OK we'll give you xx safe districts and you'll give us yy safe districts.....that seems to be happening in NY state as they are losing two seats in the House due to the 2010 census.

                            I'm not sure that it "would do more than anything else" but that's a story for another day....it would be a big improvement.
                            Don't remind me... they're trying to gerrymander the conservative part of Syracuse's district by throwing Ithaca in with us.

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                            • #59
                              Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                              Originally posted by FreshFish View Post
                              I'm pretty sure that would not work given existing Federal law. I seem to recall reading somewhere that a Federal law requires a certain amount of "gerrymandering" to make sure there are districts in which "minorities" are the "majority" if you know what I mean.
                              Yep, there are laws from the 60's mandating minority-majority districts. The problem they were addressing was itself gerrymandering: southern states with say 30% black population would draw their districts so that every district was 30% black. Since the white population was, shall we say, highly color sensitive, no black candidate could be elected under that system.

                              The two reasons I can think of to phase out those laws are (1) it's fifty years later and most of us have grown up a bit, and (2) if you did have blind districts you would eliminate the initial abuse the law was designed to address.

                              For that matter, since people tend to self-segregate even in the absence of institutionalized racism, you'd probably wind up with "minority majority" districts in a blind system anyway.

                              It would be even better if voters just voted for the policies they favored rather than the demographics of the candidate, but alas that seems like too much to ask. It's really interesting that race and ethnicity are such enormous weighting factors in voting patterns while gender doesn't seem to matter at all. I assume it's because genders do not self-segregate, so everybody is aware at any given time that both genders are equally full of crap, while racial and ethnic groups in isolation fear The Other.

                              Nice species.
                              Last edited by Kepler; 04-04-2012, 11:39 AM.
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                              • #60
                                Re: 2012 Elections - Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death....

                                My computer model would be that all district lines are strictly north-south from the state's northern border to southern. Distribute the lines east-to-west so that each chunk contains the same number of people.

                                Who would this benefit? I have no idea - as it should be.

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