FL is gone. Based on the rust belt polls from a few weeks ago this seems to confirm that the easiest path does in fact lie through those 3 states (MI/WI/PA)
That gets Biden only to 269. He would need NE-2 to win.
Can't believe I am saying this but for the first time in the History of the United States of America 269-269 seems legitimately in play this November.
You heard it here first: The EC is going to be a 269-269 split and Republicans are going to lose the House this November, but they are going to elect Trump president as their final act in power. It would just be too fitting.
The new house is seated before the electoral college convenes. However, they are still likely to control more state delegations (although the math is harder with Alaska in Democratic hands.)
Republicans currently control exactly 26 delegations (green = tied, which would mean no vote cast in a contingent election for president without bipartisan support for one candidate).
However, since it's the next congress that votes, we have to account for the likely changes. Democrats have quite a good chance at flipping the delegation in AZ, but Republicans are sure to break the tie and pick up NC on the new maps in any situation where the national PV is remotely close. Democrats control the PA delegation by one vote, and they have a representative in a 2X Trump seat who will have a tough race in this environment. Democrats also control the MI delegation by 1 vote, but all their seats are pretty safe. The best Dem pickup opportunities after AZ are probably flipping the western MT seat to tie or trying to flip the other eastern seat and create a tie in Kansas, both extreme longshots if the presidential election is close enough to be 269/269.
In short, the NC remap ended any realistic chance for Dems to block a Trump reelection in a 12 Amendment vote.
I know there will be champagne corks going off in Washington and Tel Aviv, but this is very sad. He was the legitimate head of state on a diplomatic mission. And the world has only Iran's restraint to thank for the fact that WWIII didn't break out after the wanton attack on its embassy last month.
I was baptized in a UCC church yet raised Catholic in all but name (i.e. no church) because my dad was an atheist for most of his life and didn't like organized religion. I think he'd have preferred I came out as gay than express interest in working for the church. That aside, I suppose it's extremely difficult to honestly separate culture from religious convictions. I have witnessed enough things which I will not discuss or reiterate publicly anymore (because people would think I'm crazy... and maybe I am) to believe that there must be something beyond the material world, and the metaphysical intertwines with the physical. As a catholic/Anglican, the most significant example of that is the Eucharist.
I also believe because I want Christianity to be true, and I feel like that's the driving desire for most of the faithful. I live with the humility in knowing that I might be wrong and probably am wrong in my understanding of things. I trust that the Blood of Jesus is enough to save all people even if God's path for them did not necessarily lead them to Christ in this lifetime. But even if I am wrong, I try to live the way I think is best because I believe what is promised to followers of Jesus is worth doing so.
Christianity prompts ideas that are fundamentally absurd or impossible to define in concrete, non-abstract terms. A virgin birth with endless debate over what "virgin" means and whether Mary truly was one. The Holy Trinity.(!) Both individual and tribal interpretations of Scripture that eventually resulted in hundreds of different sects. All these things are absurd. But enter the Divine Mystery, and we peacefully accept the things we cannot understand or control and take a shot at changing the things we can control. That's what I believe each individual's mission in life is.
Faith, love, and hope are the only things humans can truly have and no matter how wretched either nature or humans are to us, they are insignificant in God's realm and in the context of an eternal being whose nature we know little of as a consequence of our finite minds. The same God - the only God that can actually destroy us, destroy our eternal being in ways that earthly things never can - also loves His people in ways that nobody, and nothing, on earth can ever know.
Now is a time when we really could do with a strong and credible Irish Labour party. Which just makes what has actually happened there all the more tragic.
That ship arguably already sailed in 2011, but Dublin Bay South was a disaster disguised as a triumph. Bacik, who has spent her entire adult life ensconced in the bubble that is Trinity, has absolutely no idea how to connect with voters beyond Portobello and Ranelagh or even with her own councillor base.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (LHL) has submitted his formal resignation effective may 15th and advised President Tharman Shanmugaratnam to appoint finance minister Lawrence Wong as his replacement. After more than 19 years in office, LHL has resigned a mostly successful prime ministership, though he lacked the same kind of international presence as his father he has kept the model stable, accepting necessary liberalisation and making appropriate u-turns when public sentiment bubbled up(like in 2011 against immigration), as well as allowing the existence of a formal parliamentary opposition(something his father has never accepted). His Singapore is clearly a freer place than that of his fathers, though he was also never afraid of suing a critic into bankruptcy using the country's strict libel laws. Singapore today is a richer, and most would agree better place to live than when he first took office though critics will point to a lack of focus on welfare and an increasing obsession with GDP metrics, along with a rising cost of living, as well as start of a possible housing crisis as week points.
Didn't see the first post in this thread at first, reminds me of the Singapore political compass you posted here maybe 3 years ago.
As many people have said: housing costs. However, I think this is really more important than a lot of people realize.
Just to preface this, I am a foreigner on an employment pass, so there is some obvious bias. Also, I'm going to oversimplify things a bit, because of course it's more complicated than I'm making it out to be--but I'm going to give the broad strokes.
Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.
Why is housing so expensive? At the core, it's land availability (but of course there are other factors at play). Singapore is a small country with almost no natural resources, so what space there is goes towards either business or residential purposes. No real farming/mining/plantations/etc to speak of. This leads to a very densely populated society that makes large dwellings prohibitively expensive.
Because housing, a basic need, is so expensive, a HUGE emphasis is placed on competition for high-paid jobs. This means that parents encourage their children to pursue one of 3 different career industries: finance, business, and science (especially in chemical technologies). The educational entry-points for these positions are very competitive and are largely based upon results from a variety of standardized tests. Because the educational system is so competitive, parents tend to have a very strict and narrow definition of what is acceptable behavior and leisure-time-pursuits for their children, which can, in time, lead to the children having a fairly myopic view of what is acceptable as well.
Because so much emphasis is placed on a few industries, the other local industries suffer. This means lower wages for lower-skilled workers who don't want to be there anyway. This is especially true of engineering and IT. As a result, companies will often choose to import foreign workers for the most "undesirable" jobs (read: manual labor) that many people are unwilling to do or unable to provide for their family at the offered wages while doing. These foreign workers are often from very poor neighboring countries and are sending money home while staying in dormitories (cutting costs quite a bit).
This leads a culture clash and a bit of resentment from the local population. These foreign workers aren't really integrated into society as they are kept (out of financial necessity) in cloisters of other foreign workers. For many Singaporeans, travel is not financially prudent, and when they do get the chance, they don't often choose locations that are impoverished. As a result, a bias against poor, foreign workers develops as they are seen as "unsafe" and "untrustworthy" (to be fair, however, this is a very common phenomenon that appears in most similar situations--so it is not specific to Singapore). I'll not get into this too much, as it is a very delicate issue, but we should look to the recent Little India incident as evidence of the volatility of this situation on both sides.
Because the big businesses that people aspire to be part of are often multinational corporations, these businesses often have practices and standards that they feel are incompatible with local customs. They will often look inward (towards their home country) for hires rather than outward (towards the Singaporeans). Again, this is very much an oversimplification, as there are a lot of factors that complicate this. However, because many of the highly-sought-after jobs are going to "foreign talent", this also breeds resentment from Singaporeans towards foreigners of the high-income bracket. This leaves locals in a bit of a tight spot because the jobs they don't want to do (and couldn't make a livable wage off of) are taken by foreigners and the jobs they DO want are also often taken by foreigners. To make matters worse, many of the high-paid "foreign talents" are often given very attractive "expat packages" that provides for housing in condominiums--further driving up the cost of housing as it is easier to price-gouge somebody who can put it down as business expenses.
Because competition for these jobs is so intense and is fought on an international level and not just among themselves, Singaporeans also find that the stress of the workplace does not lend itself very well towards more "romantic" lifestyles. Not only that, but Singaporeans tend to be quite pragmatic, and when people in their entry-level, very competitive, high-stress finance jobs living in a 2-bedroom flat look at the housing costs and the cost of extra tutoring for children (seen as a necessity for kids sometimes as young as 4 or 5 to keep their educational edge)--they often decide to have only one child (if any). This leads to an aging population.
Because there is an aging population, more resources need to be devoted towards keeping the elderly active and productive. Combined with the fact that the cultural norm of filial piety is highly-stressed, there is a large feeling of obligation to bring one's elderly parents into their household--further cramping the already small, expensive flats. Again, driving up the cost of larger dwellings as they are more sought-after. EDIT: To make matters worse (in the eyes of the populace), an aging population has a dramatically negative effect on the nation's economy as the local workforce shrinks and leads to less productivity and a reduced consumer-culture. In order to offset this, the government has proposed to increase immigration in order to grow the population. Given the already tense atmosphere surrounding the "foreigner" issue, this will likely exacerbate the "us versus them" mentality that many locals have adopted.
So, in the end, you have a population that is very stressed out, working jobs they don't really enjoy for salaries that don't cover the costs of maintaining the previous and next generations. Mixed in all of this, you have easy scapegoats of "foreign workers" and "foreign talent" because they are seen as an "other" and tend to keep to themselves in their foreigner bubbles. Most of these things can be directly or indirectly attributed to the cost of housing. It is not the only problem in Singapore, of course, and there are obviously plenty of exceptions to this explanation--however, it is probably the most visible and tangible problem that most people can easily feel the effects of.
Every residence (and/or the land these flats are built on) is on a 99 year lease from the government- not that different from the PRC's land use policy but in the context of city-state governance.
Singapore's "solarpunk" landscaping is VERY resource intensive (e.g. extensive pesticide application in a tropical rainforest climate)
