i would love more parties and more choices. If we could get something besides FPTP voting that would be great.
You are still missing who votes. You seem to think you vote, but it is really the state that votes.
Uh... no, that's my point. If electors are selected by a popular vote, that's the vote. Very rare for electors to switch candidates.
This states thing is a questionable proxy system. We are sort of, theoretically, a republic of states. Sure. However, it's a flawed system that isn't quite relevant to how the country has developed. It's silly to act like a system invented 250 years ago will always be the best or most effective. The founders of the country didn't expect for the systems to never change. They also didn't expect a party duopoly and hoped to avoid the current situation.
Anyway, it's clearly not purely a 'states vote' situation since it votes are weighed by population. A pure one state, one vote situation would be like that. Texas Republicans recently had a brilliant idea like that where each county would have one vote, which is obviously absurdly anti-democratic - imagine 4 million people in Houston having the same vote as 72 people in some tiny county.
I'm obviously aware of electors. They're selected by what you called a 'popularity contest'.
A 'fair vote for president' is not really what I'd call the electoral college. Why would my vote count for more in Wyoming than Florida? It's not consistent either. Large states still have way more power, so I'm not sure what that's solving.
Okay, glad we can agree on swing states. How could that change under the current system, though? I guess small population states are never going to be as popular for campaigning as places where you can go visit 20x the population in just one city.
The left complains about this system because gives conservatives power disproportionate to their actual numbers, while we are still nominally a democracy. If there was anything like reasonable bipartisan legislative work, it might be better, but things have become so contentious. And yes, I don't expect to see it change because conservative states would have to choose to give up power.
A popular vote is something people who do understand the Constitution or the power of the states.
I can't parse that sentence.
Being president isn’t about being popular. It is about the states picking the person to represent them.
We are a representative government. We are not a boy band where popularity matters.
What? Within each state it's a popularity contest.
So you're saying popular vote or 'boy band popularity contest' is fine within each state, but not for the whole nation at once? What's the difference other than that the electoral college is imprecise? We have to disproportionately select electors where people in North Dakota count 3x as much as people in Texas or California? Why's that? The Senate is already bad enough where 30 million people in Texas get the same weight as 4 million people in Oregon or 700,000 in North Dakota. I don't see why selecting electors by popular vote and then having them vote makes any difference other than as a charade to pretend states are independent.
The idea that the US is a coalition of independent states made sense over 150 years ago or 250 years ago, but not so much now. As much as say, some idiots in Texas fantasize about it, states are not free to leave the US and it's no different than any country made up of provinces.
I would be more fine with the electoral college if the number of electors was updated to match growing populations. The system also is super lame in how it makes the entire election come down to tens of thousands of votes in 'swing states'.
I like how you act like you really believe these things and that they make sense.
that's true, there was that, but then on 4chan it became "pepe says kek on doubles" and then "meme things into existence" and then it got all twisted with meming trump into the presidency by saying kek a lot or something, and that sort of ruined it
it was related to trump bullshit involving Pepe being racist around 2015-16
wow, that's something I was happy to not have heard in a while
The corrupt liberal propaganda machine in Tishomingo covered it up 😤
So you think the Oklahoma town canceled their football for… ?
prob just secondhand meth smoke given the demographic
It does seem pretty wild how widely it's prescribed given anecdotes like that. I also a knew a guy who had been taking it for over 10 years and clearly was wildly addicted.
This is another headline phrased as if the program is exclusively for undocumented immigrants, while it's actually for anyone and the issue is whether to require a SSN to apply. Last time, it was about housing assistance and Fox did the same thing. However, Newsom ended up vetoing that anyway (as mentioned in this article).
I had a friend whose mom was prescribed Ambien. I think it was the first time I’d ever heard of it. She said she kept having experiences like waking up in bed with empty bags of flour and jars of mayonnaise, so she stopped taking it.
My guess is Iranian Republicans thought of this scheme. I mean, Iranians have a lot better things to think about right now.
In the past, definitely. I'm not sure what the current system is.
Realistically, might as well read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pager as it knows a lot more than I do. I had a pager for several years and have done network programming, that's about it... i have an insulin pump that people often mistake for a pager though, ha. It makes me look pretty cool.
They're sent like a phone call. Afaik there is no confirmation on the network whether the device received the message.
I can read the entire article. You mean you don't use NoScript etc?
There's no "paranoia" about Theil. He's shown himself to be an incredibly horrible person and to do bizarre things like have special assistants for donating blood he is injected with. Imagine how much 'conservatives' would freak out if Obama or someone similar did that, but he's your boy, keep him.
Okay, keep on selling medical devices because you were too incompetent at being a doctor.
Only if you actually understand the studies, analyses, caveats, potential biases, and possible reasons for the results, which you don't seem to have taken into account. Assuming you're actually citing reliable research, which is unlikely, based on my experiences here. Again, it seems likely that conservatives lead in undiagnosed mental illnesses, which makes sense given the poor access to health care in many conservative majority states, and lower willingness to have their mental health evaluated.
I keep hearing about layoffs, studios being closed and how the industry is troubled. Are companies losing money and sales are poor, or is it the same as Google and other companies laying off people just to pump their stock price and make money despite profitability?
Tl;DR: rented a truck with mechanical problems. Was stranded for 6 hours on the freeway and was not able to return it due to issues beyond my control that were the fault of the originating dealer. I was charged for an additional day of rental ($225) and would prefer not to pay that.
Recently I rented a truck from a well known national moving truck company in the US. As soon as I entered the truck, I noted a message on the dash that it had low tire pressure on one of the rear tires. I obviously should have noted this to the dealer in person immediately, but due to schedules and enthusiasm, I did not. I filled it with air and it seemed alright.
2 days later when I had loaded the truck and was set to travel, I once more filled the tire. Unfortunately, as I drove with the loaded truck, it started slowly and steadily losing air. I stopped to fill it about every 60 miles before I noted, at 1 am at a remote outpost dozens of miles from civilization, air coming from the section of the tire near the fill valve. I decided further travel was ill advised. I made it to a nearby interstate rest stop and called the trucking company’s roadside assistance people.
They determined that there was nobody within 60 miles available to come and change the tire. The representative suggested I should just drive on the leaky tire and see what happened. I felt that wasn’t a very good idea. We ended up deciding that I would sleep at the rest stop and help would come in the morning. I was fine with that. However, I was due to return the truck in the morning, so I called them back. I was then told someone was arranging to have the entire truck towed to my destination, over 100 miles away. This seemed somewhat unnecessary, but sure. So next, that did occur. The truck was towed to where I was going, on a flatbed, at 6 am.
We still had to unload the truck, and wait for someone else to come change the tire before it could be driven to the local dealer to be returned. I called customer service to let them know we were returning the truck later than scheduled due to these problems. Somehow it turned out to be a Kafkaesque customer service archipelago- I talked to 18 different people and I still have no idea why since I wasn’t even asking for anything. Someone came and replaced the tire about 2 hours after I was originally scheduled to return the truck.
The local dealer closed at noon that day, 30 minutes after the tire was finally replaced, so we took it back the next day. We were told by some very stoned young man that he had no control over charging us $225 for the additional day of rental, and I’d have to talk to national customer service. I probably at that point should have just left, but instead I actually gave them my debit card. It was unclear whether I’d ever be charged, but finally 4 days later, they processed the payment.
I called the national customer service and they told me how sorry they were for my traumatizing experience, which was not why I was calling. They offered to refund 80 out of the 225, and I said I didn’t consider that sufficient. I was told someone would call me in 1-3 days. So, I called my bank and reported that wished to start the process of disputing the charge.
Any suggestions? The original payment was $575 and I haven’t even complained about that.
Tragically, I moved and went from living 2 blocks from a Costco to 50 miles. Mainly I miss inexpensive cases of seltzer water… I went to a local grocery store and they were offering 8 cans of seltzer for $4.99, while normally I purchased a case of 24 for $5.70 at Costco. Back in the balmy halcyon days of May, I would walk to my local Costco with a dolly and return with a case of V8, some weird sparkly water from Washington, spinach, mushrooms, Diet Pepsi, Kettle chips, and much more…. and now, the memories are fading into the margins of history.
I am also missing the Kirkland hummus. I could use a vehicle and drive 52.3 miles (or so) to Costco, but it seems slightly unreasonable.
