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On August 05 2025 20:44 Doublemint wrote: just Trump using the already available corruption with the gerrymander and turning it up to 11. Republicans happily oblige.
Dems face a dilemma.
something you can only face if you have at least a teeny tiny bit of morals. Republicans just fall in line when their leader calls.
the amount of stink you could make... let them arrest you. you do this as the whole Dem representation that "fled" and let them fight it in court but more importantly in the court of public opinion. unprecedented levels of righteous indignation. and eyeballs.
people will rally for you, giving a damn for what's right and getting arrested for it? what's more American than that?
in addition you give people room and a reason to vent. the amount of actual disdain for Republican policies is off the charts, and that's before the health care cuts - with hundreds of rural hospitals on chopping block - come into effect.
Republicans rehabilitated depraved and misguided Jan06ers - a ton of them actually criminal - and you wanna tell me you cannot do this for standing up to corruption a child can understand? that it's majorly fucked that politicians are able to willy-nilly choose their voters instead of the other way round?
Democrats refused to delay their vacations to prevent the worst legislation Trump has signed with basically 0 accountability.
Democrats are cowards and con artists, not a real opposition party. Their supporters are basically hostages with stockholm syndrome
On August 05 2025 15:47 Velr wrote: And is there any realistic scenario where the Democrats somehow "win" in this? Despite never showing up again which seems to be a strange solution?
They probably already have their own maps ready to gerrymand NY and California to get the seats back, but they do not want to go there, so they go for "absence" first.
That so many conservatives are fine with this is a major problem for the US democracy.
Democrats in California have 82% of House seats with 60% of the vote.
Gerrymandering has become reduced to a nonsense term these days.
The distribution in California says nothing about the issue. If voters were spread out perfectly one party could take 100% of the seats with 51% of the votes. 60 for 80 seems like an actually fair system.
The question for Texas is; do Democrats already have an unfair advantage with the current districts that makes them overrepresented? It's probably unlikely since the new map would take 5 seats from the minority party.
Anyway the actual solution to this problem would be a constitutional amendment that adds some (~20%) "free" seats per state that gets assigned from non-winning votes. Makes it far less useful to redistrict and would also allow for smaller statewide parties to get a few seats.
Here are the latest results for House in Texas and California, respectively. 58.41% 40.39% 60.48% 39.23% Here is party control of the seats: 66% 34% 82% 18%
Either that extra 2% or so is doing a lot of heavy lifting that makes it necessary to once again flee a legislative session in Texas for fear of becoming as lopsided as... California, or it's rank self-serving hypocrisy by the legislators. Self-serving I can understand. Less impressed by tough guy Newsom saying he's going to make California bluer if Texas changes their own state's map, as though California should have any influence on Texas politics, and as though his state wasn't already wildly away from the mean of proportionality.
So you say that California that is 6% off per side is worse than Texas that is ~19% off per side?
Both are of course issues but I could see in a proportional system (depending on the amount of seats things are split on) that California might be theoretically possible without any gerrymandering. While the Texas one is clearly not possible without tweaking things.
California margins should be closer by ~5% or whatever ends up being correct based on seats. Texas by ~20%. That is 4x worse in Texas?
I am happy to agree both should be as close to 0 difference as possible.
Gerrymandering is like nuclear weapons. Ideally nobody should have any, but expecting one side to give them up out of moral ideality while the other side builds more is simply insane for obvious reasons.
Since Republicans have decided that more gerrymandering will benefit them, there is zero reason whatsoever Democrats should not follow suit to the fullest extent possible. Politics isn't a game, Republican policies kill people every single day and there should be zero remorse about opposing them with every tool in the arsenal.
Firstly, the higher the vote gets the more lopsided the result gets in simple plurality systems. Everyone knows this. Oblade is pretending that we don’t all know this. Each marginal percentage point yields disproportionate returns.
Secondly, different states can’t be compared like that. A state with evenly distributed populations could be 100/0 representation off of 55/45 vote. A state with big rural urban political divides and contiguous geographic districts could see large amounts of wasted votes as seats are won by large majorities. Texas is not California.
The idea that the response to democrats actions is to gin up a reason to arrest them the moment they do return to Texas is hilarious to me. They are feeding into every reason for them not to want to return as they are legitimately going to be arrested for no reason if they ever return.
Even in Oregon the dems just used the law already on the books before the Republicans did the same thing to mandate that none of them could run for re-election.
Do Republicans just have power fantasies about arresting their political opponents? I was pretty conservative I thought before the trump years but I never saw this out of them.
On August 06 2025 00:55 KwarK wrote: Firstly, the higher the vote gets the more lopsided the result gets in simple plurality systems. Everyone knows this. Oblade is pretending that we don’t all know this. Each marginal percentage point yields disproportionate returns.
Secondly, different states can’t be compared like that. A state with evenly distributed populations could be 100/0 representation off of 55/45 vote. A state with big rural urban political divides and contiguous geographic districts could see large amounts of wasted votes as seats are won by large majorities. Texas is not California.
You can eyeball this by looking at the districts. There is zero reason to give Dems any highground here, and they've been master gerrymandering types for decades. Also, as I said, generally Dem voters are *less* efficiently packed. California has lots of purple areas they've drawn blue.
Second, this differential is exactly the criteria Dems use to complain. This is what they are doing right now. It's the most common criteria. See i actually agree with you to an extent, but nobody is saying what you are saying.
Third, in states Dems control entirely (both Houses+gov) their current advantage over their total vote share is higher than in states where the GOP controls eveything (something like +21 to +16).
Finally, calling out oBlade, when what you are saying applies equally to Democrats who are complaining, is just a teensy bit of bias. You are dealing in hypotheticals to avoid people who are here showing actual maps and numbers.
But finally, and this is for eveyone else too. In 2024 Republicans win the overall nationwide House vote by over two points. They won a majority by... 2 points. It's almost like these things cancel out. Thought I'd throw that in there for all the popular vote obsessives.
Edit: also im not sure why I should believe a 2 point difference between ca and TX should lead to that big of a difference because of "disproportionate" returns. That's insanely disproportionate and at least deserves a second look
On August 06 2025 01:28 Sermokala wrote: The idea that the response to democrats actions is to gin up a reason to arrest them the moment they do return to Texas is hilarious to me. They are feeding into every reason for them not to want to return as they are legitimately going to be arrested for no reason if they ever return.
Even in Oregon the dems just used the law already on the books before the Republicans did the same thing to mandate that none of them could run for re-election.
Do Republicans just have power fantasies about arresting their political opponents? I was pretty conservative I thought before the trump years but I never saw this out of them.
They are MAGAs, so the plan is probably something like:
-First find reasons to arrest them, then hold a trial (they can come if they want, else they are not represented) -Then they are felons (and not Trump), so they cannot vote or be elected -Since they are felons, you can remove them from the thingy and do whatever you wanted to do that they prevented by not being there.
Dunno if that is actually what is going on, but that is what i would expect nowadays. Not like courts or anyone else is gonna stop them from going maximum banana republic.
On August 05 2025 15:47 Velr wrote: And is there any realistic scenario where the Democrats somehow "win" in this? Despite never showing up again which seems to be a strange solution?
They probably already have their own maps ready to gerrymand NY and California to get the seats back, but they do not want to go there, so they go for "absence" first.
That so many conservatives are fine with this is a major problem for the US democracy.
Democrats in California have 82% of House seats with 60% of the vote.
Gerrymandering has become reduced to a nonsense term these days.
The distribution in California says nothing about the issue. If voters were spread out perfectly one party could take 100% of the seats with 51% of the votes. 60 for 80 seems like an actually fair system.
The question for Texas is; do Democrats already have an unfair advantage with the current districts that makes them overrepresented? It's probably unlikely since the new map would take 5 seats from the minority party.
Anyway the actual solution to this problem would be a constitutional amendment that adds some (~20%) "free" seats per state that gets assigned from non-winning votes. Makes it far less useful to redistrict and would also allow for smaller statewide parties to get a few seats.
Here are the latest results for House in Texas and California, respectively. 58.41% 40.39% 60.48% 39.23% Here is party control of the seats: 66% 34% 82% 18%
Either that extra 2% or so is doing a lot of heavy lifting that makes it necessary to once again flee a legislative session in Texas for fear of becoming as lopsided as... California, or it's rank self-serving hypocrisy by the legislators. Self-serving I can understand. Less impressed by tough guy Newsom saying he's going to make California bluer if Texas changes their own state's map, as though California should have any influence on Texas politics, and as though his state wasn't already wildly away from the mean of proportionality.
Just for you I actually did the numbers.
So we can both agree that the general idea of gerrymandering is to comfortably win (~60%) in your districts while letting your opponents win big in their districts (because you packed their votes there.
So first for California.
Won the total vote with 60,48%, republicans get 39,23% If we look at the districts the republicans won the average win was 58,6%, the median was 59,3% and the spread between highest and lowest victory was 13,6% (best win was 65,3%).
If we just eyeball the democratic districts their spread is 30% (51% to 81%) and they are crushing it (70%+) in MANY districts.
If they set that up they did a horrible job.
-------------------------------
Now Texas
Total votes republicans 58.41%, democrats 40.39%.
For the districts the democrats won the average is 65%, median is also 65% but the spread is 33,6% (51,3 to 84,9%). Also 2 districts are uncontested which I guess means it wasn't even worth showing up?
Meanwhile the republican spread is 20,2%, and that's only because the 19th district is a major outlier. In fact if we ignore that one there is not a single one above 70% (next highest one is 69,4%) and the spread is 8,9%.
And indeed most won districts lie comfortably above 60% where you want to be.
So if the democrats are gerrymandering California they are doing a shit job but Texas looks sus as hell BEFORE we are looking at redistricting so that with current numbers republicans would get another 5 seats (I don't even know how that would be possible).
On August 05 2025 15:47 Velr wrote: And is there any realistic scenario where the Democrats somehow "win" in this? Despite never showing up again which seems to be a strange solution?
They probably already have their own maps ready to gerrymand NY and California to get the seats back, but they do not want to go there, so they go for "absence" first.
That so many conservatives are fine with this is a major problem for the US democracy.
Democrats in California have 82% of House seats with 60% of the vote.
Gerrymandering has become reduced to a nonsense term these days.
The distribution in California says nothing about the issue. If voters were spread out perfectly one party could take 100% of the seats with 51% of the votes. 60 for 80 seems like an actually fair system.
The question for Texas is; do Democrats already have an unfair advantage with the current districts that makes them overrepresented? It's probably unlikely since the new map would take 5 seats from the minority party.
Anyway the actual solution to this problem would be a constitutional amendment that adds some (~20%) "free" seats per state that gets assigned from non-winning votes. Makes it far less useful to redistrict and would also allow for smaller statewide parties to get a few seats.
Here are the latest results for House in Texas and California, respectively. 58.41% 40.39% 60.48% 39.23% Here is party control of the seats: 66% 34% 82% 18%
Either that extra 2% or so is doing a lot of heavy lifting that makes it necessary to once again flee a legislative session in Texas for fear of becoming as lopsided as... California, or it's rank self-serving hypocrisy by the legislators. Self-serving I can understand. Less impressed by tough guy Newsom saying he's going to make California bluer if Texas changes their own state's map, as though California should have any influence on Texas politics, and as though his state wasn't already wildly away from the mean of proportionality.
Just for you I actually did the numbers.
So we can both agree that the general idea of gerrymandering is to comfortably win (~60%) in your districts while letting your opponents win big in their districts (because you packed their votes there.
So first for California.
Won the total vote with 60,48%, republicans get 39,23% If we look at the districts the republicans won the average win was 58,6%, the median was 59,3% and the spread between highest and lowest victory was 13,6% (best win was 65,3%).
If we just eyeball the democratic districts their spread is 30% (51% to 81%) and they are crushing it (70%+) in MANY districts.
If they set that up they did a horrible job.
-------------------------------
Now Texas
Total votes republicans 58.41%, democrats 40.39%.
For the districts the democrats won the average is 65%, median is also 65% but the spread is 33,6% (51,3 to 84,9%). Also 2 districts are uncontested which I guess means it wasn't even worth showing up?
Meanwhile the republican spread is 20,2%, and that's only because the 19th district is a major outlier. In fact if we ignore that one there is not a single one above 70% (next highest one is 69,4%) and the spread is 8,9%.
And indeed most won districts lie comfortably above 60% where you want to be.
So if the democrats are gerrymandering California they are doing a shit job but Texas looks sus as hell BEFORE we are looking at redistricting so that with current numbers republicans would get another 5 seats (I don't even know how that would be possible).
They arent doing a bad job lol, they have an overall higher discrepancy when looking at the entire house delegation. You are missing the forest. Again, Democrats due to geography and demographics have a harder time unless they are utterly shameless, like IL. They also have an ideological, political,(and they think legal), obligation to draw districts based on racial make-up, which further restricts them. Lots of their own activist groups would be very upset if you replaced a Latino dem in a safe seat with a somewhat moderate white guy. Ans they wnt out of their way to make swing districts in places like orange county just barely blue enough to knock off Republican incumbents. This all happened in the last few years.
It's true that dems could draw a CA map with only two Republicans, but even that would have strained the credulity of the commission with the public, and who knows what CA courts would have done (which have been somewhat more sane than might be expected in general). Sometimes you see some % and think its fine ans also protects long time incumbents (which is what Texas did after 2020).
I disagree with your premise. You want to win more districts, compared to what yourself would win otherwise, and your opponents to win fewer districts, compared to themselves, by treacherous methods. You do not want to let your opponent win by a greater margin in the FEWER DISTRICTS THAT THEY WIN, than your opponent let you win by in a completely different state where YOU won more seats than your opponent did in your own state. + Show Spoiler +
Not just a greater percentage, but a greater raw number, even though the other one is a smaller state and you have almost the same exact popular vote percentage spread.
There "could" be a map where Republicans still win seats in 9 districts, but at a 51% majority. That's lower meaning it's not a sign of the "comfortable" wins you argue gerrymandering engenders.
You're asking me to believe if that were the map, it would be less gerrymandered than the exact same result happening now, with 9 seats at an average of 59%.
I can just as easily argue the people who drew the 9 seats at 51% are so good at gerrymandering, that they made it look legit and close. They even increased the fabled marginal voting power of each voter in the contested districts. Surely we can trust marginal voting power as being inversely correlated with gerrymandering, right. + Show Spoiler +
And the next election they could easily be down to 0 seats after losing all 9 districts with a mere 49%, theoretically.
The fact that your metric can't detect or differentiate this leads me to believe it's not measuring gerrymandedness.
My idea of gerrymandering is you draw a blatantly contorted district that circumvents the natural way the population in an area is distributed. It differs from a popular understanding of gerrymandering, which means whatever the status quo is must be considered unassailably fair regardless of how brazenly it benefits Democrats, and any deviation that benefits a Republican in the slightest, is automatically gerrymandering.
Map drawing in Texas or California or Illinois could all be gerrymandering, or it could all not be, or some of it could be. But one has to make an argument why the specific districts are not in the range of plausible or why there is a clearly better arrangement. Based on people in the same area with some form of intersecting interests. Look, Republicans might get more seats, is not enough, because look, Democrats already have far more. That is all I'm saying.
I'm saying if you really want to judge this stuff, you have to get down, look at heat maps of populations, overlaid with borders of actual municipalities (counties and cities), and with ethnicity, and with socioeconomic status, and with school districts, and with watersheds, and with a million things. But that's a thankless job because someone will still come out of the woodwork and say "This party got 1 extra seat, the whole thing's a scam, that whole party's an antidemocratic scam." Nobody wants to delve into it when really what the person speaking believes is simply that proportional representation is better by default, and there is no argument for how to draw better lines for direct representation, because the person isn't interested in drawing lines, doesn't care about the lines, and doesn't want there to be lines to begin with, because they are inherently against the concept of direct representation and believe there is no good way to do it except write a constitutional amendment and switch systems entirely.
On August 06 2025 03:16 oBlade wrote: I disagree with your premise. You want to win more districts, compared to what yourself would win otherwise, and your opponents to win fewer districts, compared to themselves, by treacherous methods. You do not want to let your opponent win by a greater margin in the FEWER DISTRICTS THAT THEY WIN, than your opponent let you win by in a completely different state where YOU won more seats than your opponent did in your own state. + Show Spoiler +
Not just a greater percentage, but a greater raw number, even though the other one is a smaller state and you have almost the same exact popular vote percentage spread.
There "could" be a map where Republicans still win seats in 9 districts, but at a 51% majority. That's lower meaning it's not a sign of the "comfortable" wins you argue gerrymandering engenders.
You're asking me to believe if that were the map, it would be less gerrymandered than the exact same result happening now, with 9 seats at an average of 59%.
I can just as easily argue the people who drew the 9 seats at 51% are so good at gerrymandering, that they made it look legit and close. They even increased the fabled marginal voting power of each voter in the contested districts. Surely we can trust marginal voting power as being inversely correlated with gerrymandering, right. + Show Spoiler +
And the next election they could easily be down to 0 seats after losing all 9 districts with a mere 49%, theoretically.
The fact that your metric can't detect or differentiate this leads me to believe it's not measuring gerrymandedness.
My idea of gerrymandering is you draw a blatantly contorted district that circumvents the natural way the population in an area is distributed. It differs from a popular understanding of gerrymandering, which means whatever the status quo is must be considered unassailably fair regardless of how brazenly it benefits Democrats, and any deviation that benefits a Republican in the slightest, is automatically gerrymandering.
Map drawing in Texas or California or Illinois could all be gerrymandering, or it could all not be, or some of it could be. But one has to make an argument why the specific districts are not in the range of plausible or why there is a clearly better arrangement. Based on people in the same area with some form of intersecting interests. Look, Republicans might get more seats, is not enough, because look, Democrats already have far more. That is all I'm saying.
I'm saying if you really want to judge this stuff, you have to get down, look at heat maps of populations, overlaid with borders of actual municipalities (counties and cities), and with ethnicity, and with socioeconomic status, and with school districts, and with watersheds, and with a million things. But that's a thankless job because someone will still come out of the woodwork and say "This party got 1 extra seat, the whole thing's a scam, that whole party's an antidemocratic scam." Nobody wants to delve into it when really what the person speaking believes is simply that proportional representation is better by default, and there is no argument for how to draw better lines for direct representation, because the person isn't interested in drawing lines, doesn't care about the lines, and doesn't want there to be lines to begin with, because they are inherently against the concept of direct representation and believe there is no good way to do it except write a constitutional amendment and switch systems entirely.
You are over complicating it.
Since every district needs to have roughly the same amount of citizens the way you do it is that you break it up into tiny pieces and then you move those around to neighbouring districts. If you are winning big in district 1 you can afford take take some of your red pieces and trade them for some blue pieces in district 2 that is about even. Now you win comfortably in both. If district 3 is close but district 4 is a crushing loss you can trade some of 3s blue pieces for some red from 4. Your going to lose 4 anyway but you will definitely win 3.
You are correct that demographics and geography will constrain you to some degree but if you want to win the most amount of seats the net result of trading all across the board should be to win many districts within an acceptable margin (because voters are fickle beasts and a 5% swing in 4 years is not that improbable but a 10% is) and you will likely end up with some dump zones. Other districts you might only be able to get within reach, but you can lose them anyway.
There is no way to measure it perfectly of course (the entire system is inherently flawed from the start, it's never going to be fair) but California looks a lot less "optimal" than Texas regardless.
Conservatives are usually outraged if you do what they do.
The Hunter Biden Interview is the best thing pointing that out.
"Hunter biden sold Art to generate money:
Trump:
- Quatari money into Trumpcoin - Saudi money into Trumpcoin - Dark money into Trumpcoin - Sheich Jet for Trump - Trump grifting sneakers, watches, bibles (mandatory to be had in some school districts), phones - Trump always booking his own hotels for official functions - Trump "lawsuit" settlements (Cbs 16 Millon personal gain, Murdoch: 10bn asked!) - Trump selling Trump IP to amazon (45 Million for the story of Melania) - Trump selling Dinners with him for millions for business contacts - Trump pardoning people whose relatives or spouses have bought a 1-5 Million PAC dinner with him - Trump opening up Club Trump.. to meet Trump Admin.. lifetime fee: $500000
Trump wasting tax payer money:
- Trump parade which was shit - Trump bombing Iran for no effect - Trump paving over the rose garden - Trump investing 200,000,000 in a "They asked for a Ballroom" ballroom in the white house - Trump playing golf 27 times in 100 days - Trump visiting Trump Mar-a-Lago - Trump visiting Trump Scotland golf links - Trump visiting Trump Tower NY
Trump politics: - Dollar down 16% .. markets inflated by the same amount..markets haven't left "Trump slump" ... $1 Biden is $1.16 Trump - 1 Trillion dollar cut to medicaid - 1 Trillion dollar tax cut to mega wealthy - EPA killed - NASA killed - but funding for SpaceX - DoE killed - Deficit up - 180 billion on ICE.. to remove workers that are net positive for the economy.. unless your job generation is so bad, that kids can go from college..to harvest tomatoes for federal minimum wage.
On August 06 2025 01:28 Sermokala wrote: The idea that the response to democrats actions is to gin up a reason to arrest them the moment they do return to Texas is hilarious to me. They are feeding into every reason for them not to want to return as they are legitimately going to be arrested for no reason if they ever return.
Even in Oregon the dems just used the law already on the books before the Republicans did the same thing to mandate that none of them could run for re-election.
Do Republicans just have power fantasies about arresting their political opponents? I was pretty conservative I thought before the trump years but I never saw this out of them.
They are MAGAs, so the plan is probably something like:
-First find reasons to arrest them, then hold a trial (they can come if they want, else they are not represented) -Then they are felons (and not Trump), so they cannot vote or be elected -Since they are felons, you can remove them from the thingy and do whatever you wanted to do that they prevented by not being there.
Dunno if that is actually what is going on, but that is what i would expect nowadays. Not like courts or anyone else is gonna stop them from going maximum banana republic.
Not quite, but pretty close:
Attorney General Ken Paxton will ask for a court ruling declaring vacant the seats of any lawmakers who are not back to work by Friday, he said in a press release Tuesday.
[On Monday] House Speaker Dustin Burrows signed arrest warrants, directing the sergeant-at-arms and the Department of Public Safety to find and bring members to the chamber. Those warrants are only enforceable within state lines.
On Tuesday, the chamber once again was six votes short of quorum, and Burrows adjourned until Friday at 1 p.m.
If members are not back by then, Paxton said that would qualify as “abandonment of office,” enabling him to file a legal action seeking to have their seats vacated.
“Democrats have abandoned their offices by fleeing Texas, and a failure to respond to a call of the House constitutes a dereliction of their duty as elected officials,” Paxton said in a statement. “Starting Friday, any rogue lawmakers refusing to return to the House will be held accountable for vacating their office.”
On August 05 2025 20:44 Doublemint wrote: just Trump using the already available corruption with the gerrymander and turning it up to 11. Republicans happily oblige.
Dems face a dilemma.
something you can only face if you have at least a teeny tiny bit of morals. Republicans just fall in line when their leader calls.
the amount of stink you could make... let them arrest you. you do this as the whole Dem representation that "fled" and let them fight it in court but more importantly in the court of public opinion. unprecedented levels of righteous indignation. and eyeballs.
people will rally for you, giving a damn for what's right and getting arrested for it? what's more American than that?
in addition you give people room and a reason to vent. the amount of actual disdain for Republican policies is off the charts, and that's before the health care cuts - with hundreds of rural hospitals on chopping block - come into effect.
Republicans rehabilitated depraved and misguided Jan06ers - a ton of them actually criminal - and you wanna tell me you cannot do this for standing up to corruption a child can understand? that it's majorly fucked that politicians are able to willy-nilly choose their voters instead of the other way round?
Democrats refused to delay their vacations to prevent the worst legislation Trump has signed with basically 0 accountability.
Democrats are cowards and con artists, not a real opposition party. Their supporters are basically hostages with stockholm syndrome
well, in essence you told me they are politicians. and selfish people, which very much aligns.
if for an extended amount of time they keep being ineffective, either forces from without or from within the party will force them to act.
look at AOC - now Zhoran. they in turn inspire others, younger and more effective than the current old guard. and they will rise. despite the inner party struggle, you either adapt or you perish as a party.
Republicans did adapt. to the horror of just about anyone not just in it "to win" and "own the libs".
good governance and one party having too much/all the power are diametrically opposed to each other. people should realize that they are in the wrong country for that.
the most negatively inspiring forces are god damn Republicans anyway. horrendous people are in charge currently... every time there's a bar or standard to lower they just go "hold my beer - I can go even lower than that".
misogyny not so cool after all it turns out. real shocker right there.
more importantly though, the shit Republicans are cooking up. bad policy after bad policy, promises broken and POTUS Orange Diddler enabled at every turn no matter how un-american the request might be.
she has trouble selling their turd sandwich. and looking at social media feeds of various town halls and how they are going for R congress people, she is not the only one.
so yeah to some extent I can understand your misgivings. and still it is a two party system. your options are limited.
in organizing or activism there's a lot more options. only at some point to get things approved or simply done you will need the major parties sooner or later.
Trump on his otherworldly methods of tariff negotiations with China.
"But we are getting very close to a deal. Well, I will tell you... we had a point where we had 145% tariffs on, I put in fentanyl... I actually said to people, "where are we now with China by the way?, because I kept adding more and more."
They said: "Sir, you are up to 145% and I said you gotta be kidding, so I sort of, was putting it down a little"[laughing]. "But when it went up to 145 meaning we were doing 0 percent business with China - China was collapsing"
can't make that up. POTUS on a live interview on CNBC.
listening to "the sausage being made" is somehow even worse than people imagined lol. how long till he goes full Biden and his brain is mush too. on the plus side, he is already kooky.
how much worse can it get? right?
mRNA being dumped by RFK. and his brainworm is just par for the course.
EPT
