US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9517

On December 14 2017 08:24 mozoku wrote:
I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere (538?) that the public perception of the impact of gerrymandering far outweighs its practical impact(i.e. it's a real thing to be sure, but it's effect is pretty marginal). I'm all for having it fixed (compactness-minimizing algorithms are my preferred solutions), but unless I'm misinformed then painting gerrymandering as a crisis-level issue is sort of like calling this tax bill "armageddon."

On December 14 2017 08:25 Plansix wrote:

Without an alternative solution to the problem, it is support through inaction. You are promoting doing nothing, which is support of the status quo.

On December 14 2017 08:29 xDaunt wrote:

So how would you explain away the shittiness of pre-colonial Africa?

On December 14 2017 08:33 Sermokala wrote:

Support for the idea to solve a solution means support for all the issues that come with the solution. History is littered with terrible decisions that were led with honest intentions.

On December 14 2017 08:15 xDaunt wrote:


Don't mistake a non-governmental solution for being no solution at all. Conservatives simply have radically different answers to the problems that the nation has.

On December 14 2017 08:29 xDaunt wrote:

So how would you explain away the shittiness of pre-colonial Africa?

On December 14 2017 08:35 GreenHorizons wrote:


Like compared to the Dark Ages of Europe?

On December 14 2017 08:33 Sermokala wrote:

Support for the idea to solve a solution means support for all the issues that come with the solution. History is littered with terrible decisions that were led with honest intentions.

On December 14 2017 08:35 Mohdoo wrote:

Meaning what, you just stop? I understand government cynicism, but you aren't really providing an alternative path to progress.

On December 14 2017 08:40 Plansix wrote:

Its also littered with cowards who were to afraid to take risks that lead to terrible results, like the great depression. This line of argument as not compelling.

On December 14 2017 08:37 Plansix wrote:

Its fucking super hot there and its hard to grow crops. The same with some regions of North America pre colonies, except harsh winters were the real killer. Civilizations advanced at different rates depending on the environment they existed in. That super dope regions where Greece and Rome started, prime early civilization real estate. That land by the river in Egypt, also prime early civilization real estate.



The dark ages were super shit. People overlook that era and the 20 crusades just to export warlords and assholes to the south.

On December 14 2017 08:44 Sermokala wrote:

No It means questioning things. Conservatism isn't about stopping things or bringing things back those are reactionaries. Conservatism is about conserving what we have. Progress happens its just checked and challenged like it should be. Modern America is suppose to be about periods of progress and reflection. People were really unhappy about social security on both sides. That doesn't mean one party literally didn't want any social security and refused to allow it to happen.

I'm asking for having the method the election commission will use before the commission itself. Thats the path to progress I want. For that people are trying to argue thats support for gerrymandering.

On December 14 2017 08:55 farvacola wrote:

Morocco doesn't count either I'd guess.

THE HOSTEL IN Tapachula looked at first like any other border town flophouse. Dark back rooms with naked mattresses. Dust unspooling in the sunlit lobby. A bird cage under a dirty towel. A few tenants hung out over smartphones, skin slick in the thick air of southernmost Mexico. Then a young woman in a black hijab passed through.

“Salam alaikum,” she said, exchanging greetings with a Somali student who’d folded himself onto a small bench in the lobby. Her long skirt disappeared around the corner.

The student chose the pseudonym Ahmed Ali Hassan, the Somali equivalent of anonymity, and kept his voice low. He was 24, and the hostel’s other guests were mostly young African men like him.

Another Somali sat down next to Hassan, warning that my colleague and I could be spies. The month before, American voters had elected Donald Trump, who campaigned on suspicion of refugees and Somalis in particular. Now they had their own.

The Somali turned to me: “Do you know Sarah Palin?”

I said I didn’t, and he got up, unimpressed. “Check your luck,” he said over his shoulder. “She calls the shots now in Trump’s White House.”

“Maybe they are rich in the USA,” an Eritrean interjected. “They can help us.” Hassan shrugged.

Welcome to “Mama Africa,” as the hostel has become known, thanks to the new clientele.

After serving Mexicans and Central Americans for years, the 24-room, $2.50-a-night hostel has reinvented itself in order to meet a surge of African migrants transiting Mexico. When I met Hassan there last December, most of the tenants hailed from Cameroon, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. Last year, Mexican authorities recorded nearly 4,000 Africans entering the country, an almost 400 percent increase from 2014. This year, as of November, more than 1,800 Africans have arrived, including 84 Somalis. They are fleeing poverty, civil war, jihadist insurgency, and famine, and way stations in Mexico like Mama Africa are merely a pause along an unbelievable route to the most unlikely of destinations: the United States, under the new anti-immigrant regime of President Trump.

Trump’s latest travel ban — which the Supreme Court allowed to take effect last Monday — indefinitely bars most citizens from seven countries, including Somalia. And while refugees aren’t subject to the ban, the administration is making it harder than ever to ask for a safe haven in the United States. After a total halt to refugee admissions, the Trump administration announced it would resume resettling them, but made 11 countries subject to additional scrutiny, again including Somalia. Trump cut the number of refugees the United States will accept this year to 45,000, a historic low.

The administration’s cynical calculus is that it is less burdensome to “keep them over there.” Yet Trump’s policies may be exacerbating the global refugee crisis and unwittingly bringing it to his doorstep.

By slashing assistance to African countries with some of the largest refugee populations but stepping up counterterrorism strikes, Trump risks fueling the conflicts that compel people to migrate in the first place. And by cracking down on immigration, whether through travel bans or near-impossible requirements, he is simultaneously closing the few official avenues refugees have for resettlement. Like Hassan, many now believe their only chance at survival is to get themselves onto U.S. soil and claim asylum.

Bill Frelick, director at Human Rights Watch’s refugee program, told me the administration’s “short-sighted” approach “is going to be far more costly and potentially more destabilizing.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

As the United States and Europe resort to increasingly draconian deterrents to keep out migrants, African nations hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees are beginning to push them out. Meanwhile, South and Central American countries maintain some of the most relaxed immigration requirements in the world. The combined effect has busted open this migration route through the Americas to the United States.

It’s not without risk. When I met Hassan in Mama Africa, he walked us through his four-month exodus for hours, but declined to give his contact information. He did not want to be found again — not by me, not by immigration authorities, and not by those in Somalia who wanted him dead. Not when he’d made it this far, traversing 11 countries and entire continents. Not when only the last obstacle remained.

“At this time, Donald Trump is president — he hates all Somali people,” Hassan told me matter-of-factly. “Because one Somali guy is terrorist, he doesn’t represent all Somalis.” Still, he was undeterred. “I have to reach, to make my dream come true.”

On December 14 2017 08:37 Plansix wrote:

Its fucking super hot there and its hard to grow crops. The same with some regions of North America pre colonies, except harsh winters were the real killer. Civilizations advanced at different rates depending on the environment they existed in. That super dope regions where Greece and Rome started, prime early civilization real estate. That land by the river in Egypt, also prime early civilization real estate.



The dark ages were super shit. People overlook that era and the 20 crusades just to export warlords and assholes to the south.

On December 14 2017 08:53 TheTenthDoc wrote:


I don't think xDaunt thinks Egypt counts as Africa. That or he doesn't believe the Code of Hammurabi was a big deal.

On December 14 2017 08:54 Plansix wrote:

Why is the burden on us to provide the method to such a complex problem in this discussion? From my reading, the systems people are proposing are very complicated and there are quite a few of them. Do you have one in the upcoming Wisconsin case that you are particularly fond of?

On December 14 2017 09:06 xDaunt wrote:

Do you really want to rely upon dictatorial states that were entirely based and built upon the institution of slavery for your rebuttal?

On December 14 2017 09:05 xDaunt wrote:

Climate was a constant throughout the good and bad times, so I don't think you're going to find much refuge there for your argument.

The Dark Ages were certainly a bad time, too, but the point is that Europe got past them. Africa never did, in spite of being essentially "gifted" with all of the know-how of how to do so during the colonial period. I'm not in favor reestablishing colonialism in Africa because I don't think that you can forcibly "civilize" a people (just look at all of the disasters of American "nation-building"), but it doesn't change the fact that Kipling was onto something with his poem.

The Dark Ages were certainly a bad time, too, but the point is that Europe got past them. Africa never did, in spite of being essentially "gifted" with all of the know-how of how to do so during the colonial period.

On December 14 2017 09:06 xDaunt wrote:

Do you really want to rely upon dictatorial states that were entirely based and built upon the institution of slavery for your rebuttal?