OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
15d ago
The article goes into it a little, but right now we already have 9,000 congressional staffers. It already takes about 10,000 people to run congress, but only a small percentage is elected.
The hope is that if races become smaller, each congressman needs to fundraise less money and spend less time campaigning. Smaller races will be won in the tens of thousands instead of millions. They will have more time to actually run the country and can decrease staff accordingly.
Committees are already divided into subcommittees. It's not unreasonable to divide that even further, into sub-subcommittees.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
15d ago
We need a bigger House. If we have 10,000 Representatives split proportionally, we wouldn't be squabbling over how to best gerrymander each little slice.
Pros:
- Less money being raised - representative spends more time governing than fundraising.
- Representatives would be "Friends of Friends," the ratio would be back to 30,000:1 citizens:representatives, which is where it was at the start of our country. It would be easier to know your representative and for the representative to actually represent a geographic area.
- Much harder for parties to whip/control the House, which would lead to less gridlock/conformity.
Many other questions are along similar logistical lines: how would voting work? Would they use clickers? What if the clickers break? How could C-SPAN get the cameras in? Wouldn’t a large House end up more under the sway of leadership than ever? It’s like nobody’s ever seen a parliament of a few thousand people!
In fact, we know how to run a legislative body consisting of several thousand people, because Americans do just that all the time. I’ve even participated in one!
The 2014 Minnesota Republican Party state convention had 2,020 voting delegates at its opening. I was an alternate, but ended up serving as a voting delegate. It was a pretty thrilling day! The GOP senate endorsement was closely fought, and we went to ten ballots over two days. (I had to drop out after the first night.) We followed Robert’s Rules of Order, which work just fine for huge crowds, with standard convention rules. We cast paper ballots and handed them to trusted ballot-counting teams. The House floor “debates” you see on C-SPAN are mostly on-camera onanism to an audience of six or seven people, but, at the MNGOP convention, we fiercely debated the merits of each candidate among ourselves—not so much on mic, but person to person. The candidates courted us. Their surrogates courted us. Candidate teams were back in their offices just off-site, printing up supportive flyers and (as the losing candidates grew desperate) nasty slanders for rapid distribution on the floor.
It was a blast. In the end, the body reached a collective decision. Our candidate was not my first choice, but he was far from my last. Similar conventions happen everywhere in the country, year in and year out, for both parties, without major drama or disaster. The House can run just as smoothly! This is what a republic looks like!
Combined with an amendment about making districts boundaries as close to their geographic center as possible, it would create a more fair system overall.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
19d ago
The comment lacked a lot of background information that would be necessary to have a decent conversation without many people googling around. Which isn't against the rules, but we get used to Top Level Comments providing/linking to background information.
It was also phrased weirdly and I had to do a double take to see that Good Fortune wasn't a ship but a movie.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
19d ago
Trying real hard to be maximally charitable, but it appears you misread that statement and might need to reread the comment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
20d ago
It's Computer-Mediated-Communication, which lacks several important features of in-person communication, like tone, body language, and synchronous feedback. Most importantly it is easy to reproduce/leak by malicious actors.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
20d ago
Yes, in person.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
20d ago
I don't think it's an inconsistent opinion to believe that:
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These are obviously jokes and that this is substantially different than actually wishing death on political enemies and doubling down on it in public.
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I want serious people to be staffers and serious people don't put jokes like this in writing these days.
Have you never jokingly pretended to eat your toddler? I have of course. But if I wrote out the joke it's different. We've begun to treat writing like it's conversation, when of course it's not.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
22d ago
I suspect that this was a state actor, maybe Russia, maybe China. No one took credit, which makes it pretty difficult for the talking heads to make hay on it.
For what it's worth (nothing at all), someone I follow on X says he's done tours of the facility and their safety standards were top-notch. I saw other people on X pointing and laughing that it's a woman-run business and this is just what you get when you let women make explosives.
I don't know if the American public will ever know what caused this, but hopefully there is someone in Homeland Security or the Military who is figuring it out and how to prevent it from happening again.
Why aren't the tinfoil hats all over this? Maybe they're too stupid to make the obvious inferences. Or maybe they are being suppressed to prevent a panic. I think there is just too little information. No cameras, no suspicious messages to decipher. Just an explosion at the explosion factory.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
22d ago
I found it really confusing on mixing up shame and guilt together. Rumi is ashamed of being half demon but she's not guilty the same way the guy who sold out his family for a comfortable life.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
You mean the guys who drive pick up trucks and already destroy the environment with their capitalist spending habits? Guys like those will turn Nevada into even more of a wasteland? Anger! Let the culture war commence!
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
23d ago
Environmentalism vs Reindustrialzation in the US. For Military purposes we need to reshore rare earth refinement. This will undoubtedly lead to some desert in Nevada getting radiated and risk the extinction of some heretofore undiscovered species of jackalope.
Alternatively, bringing freedom and democracy to Venezuela. The latest Nobel Peace Prize winner was practically begging Trump for it.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
25d ago
The thing people mess up the most is that the CEO isn't competing with them for their salary, the CEO is competing against other CEOs. A bad CEO can absolutely destroy a company, so a company will pay as much as it can afford to have a good one.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
29d ago
I do not believe that they are thinking of a totally impartial judge and jury coming to the conclusion that their opponent has indeed committed the crime they are accusing them of beyond any reasonable doubt.
I have never considered it to be taken any other way? The truth is, the MAGA masses honestly, earnestly believe that these people have committed high crimes and treason, which a fair and unbiased trial would reveal the full details of, resulting in an inevitable and just execution that even the Blue Tribe would agree is just. Are they right? Likely not. But I have never doubted that this is what they earnestly believe.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
30d ago
I don't think saying, "This person is guilty of a capital crime, in my opinion," is the same thing as calling for political violence. It's calling for the rule of law, and if the law says, "Sorry, this person isn't actually guilty of a capital crime," then there you go. Violence stops there.
MTG though, she's something else. I have no qualms with wishing she were out of office and disavowing most of what she says. Marjorie Taylor Greene had an average 24% Approval Rating among Republicans. Most Republicans didn't recognize her name in the poll:
Most who were asked about Greene said that they had no opinion of the congresswoman. Republicans were less likely to be aware of or have an opinion about Greene than Democrats, with 64 percent of Democrats weighing in compared to only 44 percent of Republicans.
Greene is more important to Democrats to show how crazy Republicans are, than she is to Republicans who largely don't think about her at all and when they do agree she is pretty crazy.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
30d ago
I suspect that what you saw was a bunch of children raised to go through a bunch of hoops, one of which being community service, but this wasn't necessarily indicative of cynicism elsewhere. Many of those children likely had ideals, which they pursued as they gained independence and power.
I was one of those American Teenagers. The Key Club didn't seem to do anything useful as far as I could tell but I got a tshirt and marched in a parade. I started a Math club at my brother's middle school which was ok, maybe inspired some kids to think of math more creatively but didn't help anyone improve their math scores. I was in Varsity Swimming and Club Swimming, which was the biggest time suck of them all but it made my father happy.
I viewed all this as things to put in a portfolio that proved I could handle many things at once, that I was able to get along with a club of people, that I was able to act independently enough to start a club, etc. It was selfishly about proving what I could do. But.. that's what kids do. That's what kids are. What are your limits? And most importantly from the schools' perspective, are you going to graduate from an Ivy League school with a full course load and some extracurriculars?
This didn't stop me from being deeply concerned about many things in the world with vague plans on addressing them later. But as a child, you have very little control over your life. I did what my parents wanted me to do, and they wanted me to do this because at a young age I had taken an IQ test that had proved to them I had the ability to do this. I had some options on which clubs I joined, but some things I had very little choice at all. I swam varsity swimming because my father swam varsity swimming and coached swimming and that was what our family did.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
American R1 universities are scarily efficient machines. So efficient that they could support admin excess and woke parasitism without harming their productivity one bit.
Can you expand on this? My impression is that these universities have endowments that should give them all the funding they need in perpetuity, but still require ever-increasing tuition that is payed by the government with debt. This debt cannot be discharged with bankruptcy which is distorting the market. It doesn't seem efficient to me, just more of the Beltway woes exported across the country. But maybe you were thinking of something different?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Are you doing ok? I know we just had a long back-and-forth about the nature of God (except you might not agree with the word Nature, so just substitute what-God-is-ness.) And this is the "arguing about things politely" website. But I want to express to you how sad I was to hear the news, and how much I hope that LDS and Catholics can stand against desecration of safe and holy places.
There are some Protestants who do not consider Catholics to be Christians because we don't "Believe in the Gospel" which is reduced to Sola Fide. Who gets to be The Gatekeeper of what a Christian is? I don't know. I know you're not Catholic and I'm not LDS - that's something that we get to decide within our sects. But the term Christianity is so broad that no single group can claim the authority to gatekeep. If you consider yourself Christian, then that's good enough for me.
The Medievals believed Islam to be a Christian Heresy. If muslims count, LDS certainly does.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
but the other sacraments (including Mass) are necessary for almost everyone and do require sacramentally ordained ministers in apostolic succession.
The Catholic view leans more towards, "God is not limited by His sacraments, but this is the only sure way He taught us." Meaning it's possible others are saved through the Church without knowing they are connected with the Church, like Abraham was. But the Church isn't going to change what it's doing, because this is the only sure way they know of.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
It's not even a good slogan. It's lazy. Throwing your life away without even being able to come up with something catchy and fun is... stupid.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Yeah, and I hope I was clear in my first comment that I think Vance can do a Weekend at Trump's and that would still show competent leadership. But that's clearly not what Kamala did, she was comfortable getting shut out of the decision tree and then couldn't fight back into a position of leadership.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Plus, the VP is supposed to stand by and just be ceremonial/decorative, not try to muscle in on the presidential turf.
Our Constitution and the 25th Amendment is pretty strong evidence against this. They're the president's backup, expected to take over the role if the president becomes incapacitated.
If Harris couldn't take on Jill Biden, then how can she possibly take on Putin? Why didn't we have Jill running for president instead?
No one intends to hand you the reins, a leader TAKES the reins. Like Jill took the reins. Harris could have gotten the Cabinet on her side and just pulled a 25th, nothing Jill could have done. But the Cabinet preferred a zombie Biden and Jill in charge over Harris.
Likewise, if Trump becomes a zombie, I fully expect Vance to take over, otherwise he's not worth backing for 2028.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
One reason why I didn't consider voting for Kamala (of many) was that if she were half-way competent she should have taken control of the Biden White House. Either become President herself, or otherwise controlled things. If the Cabinet didn't think she'd make a good president, why should I?
I give Vance to after the Midterms, when he could serve 2.5 Presidential terms legally. If he doesn't take over and Trump keeps deteriorating to the degree we saw Biden, it tells me that he's not actually a leader. That doesn't necessarily mean the 25th Amendment gets invoked right away, but there would be a clear move of the Cabinet deferring to him, him taking more direct actions, etc.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
When pregnant I got headaches at the normal-to-me frequency. With Ibuprofen I can just take one pill, small dose, and it's gone. With Tylenol I would take the recommended dose, wait four hours of suffering, and then on the second dose I could finally feel some effects. The pain was gone but I could still feel the headache waiting. Numb but still pounding? It was weird and not pleasant.
But still better than absolutely nothing, which is what is left to pregnant women now.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1mo ago
Do you feel the same way at the DMV when you learn from some bureaucrat that they can't give you what you need today because you need to get some piece of documentation that you didn't know about?
I view the police as basically the same as any bureaucrat - they want to keep it boring, get the forms submitted, move along. Maybe you messed up, maybe they messed up, but you both just want a functioning society so be polite and get through the encounter as smoothly as possible.
I misread this as international travel, so this is advice specifically for that, but if you get mugged or lose your passport, go to the embassy. I traveled in a group to Australia and one of the guys lost his passport (WYD Sydney, so we were mostly 14-18 years old with a handful of chaperones.) He went to the US embassy, made a few phone calls to his parents, and was back home before the rest of us.
As far as establishing identity goes, you weren't born with an accurate photo ID. At some point the government just takes it on faith that you are yourself if you have the right papers and someone willing to vouch for you. You hopefully keep your birth certificate, marriage certificate, SSN card, etc at home (in a fire proof safe if you're forward thinking.) People routinely lose everything in fires and floods and then start over again. Not great or convenient, but they don't suddenly become non-persons.
A lot of the advice is along the lines of, "Don't travel alone." You might lose your phone, but your travel buddy would hopefully still have his. Even if you are traveling alone, hopefully you still have some phone numbers memorized - family members, best friends who would be willing to drop everything for a few hours and help you out.
A lot of travelers wear something like this under their clothes with some cash and their ID. It's not going to deter a serious mugging, but it does protect against pick pocketing
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