Favorite recent post by the previous poster

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

"Dakota Nice" is a thing, guys. It's not as famous as Minnesota Nice, but we're decent people too.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

NC, because weather, obviously.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

What is the male/female ratio in this forum?
And - I hope Cath and Santander allow me to ask this question - what about the straight/bi/gay ratio?

We have a whooping number of about six active female posters, an increase of like 400% within one year,

And who are these six?
I've already learned that Peeps is a woman, and I guess that TexasGurl is a GuЯЯЯЯl, too.

I'm a woman and people won't stop comparing me to Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

Get the hell out of South Dakota, then.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

I made him a driver's advice checklist, based on all the things he said he got wrong:

Tips:
- Stop signs say "STOP" for a reason.
- You won't have a specially trained instructor to help you when you're driving IRL.
- Being overly sticky over small details leads to casual misses of your surroundings.
- Crosswalks are for people.
- Don't ever take your hands off the steering wheel.
- The most important part of starting your car is starting your car correctly.
- Turn signals are helpful.
- People need to know when you're parking, too.
- D = Drive. P = Park. N = Neutral. R = Reverse.
- Please look at the road. There's a giant window in front of you for a reason.
- Driving too slow is potentially as dangerous as driving too fast.
- Don't fiddle over the gear anymore than you need to.
- BONUS: Don't kidnap that girl, please.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

Yes. Because as we all know, demographic shifts are not a real thing, cultural shifts are not a real thing, and what's true now will always be true always in the future because that's how it's always been.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

Actually drawing another Democratic district in Oregon is pretty easy. Oregon voted for Hillary by almost 11 points. OR-2 is a huge R vote sink. OR-4 is a very margin seat that Hillary won by like 0.1% (I think it might be the closest seat in the country) but has a strong incumbent and the Democrats could just boost it a bit by adding places like Ashland and Bend from OR-2 and shedding the Republican territory, and you have a seat that would be very hard to win for the Republicans even if DeFazio retires but would be about D+4 or so. That means in the remainder of Oregon Hillary would've won it by about 16-17 points, and thus could easily be chopped up so all the districts are at least in the teens margin of victory.

I'm not actually that convinced it would be easy to create another relatively Democratic district in Oregon given laws and precedents regarding how districts are created.

So let's start with the current population and then let's assume that population growth % by county/ cities within counties remains constant at 7/15-7/16 levels, and then let's annualize that growth rate out to 7/20.

The population of the State would be about 4,350,000 or roughly 725k per US-CD, assuming Oregon gains another House Seat.

The estimated population by County would look something like this:



Generally the rule in Oregon is that whenever possible, one needs to keep cities within one CD, try to observe county boundaries, especially for heavily rural counties, where the County seat is the center of government, and generally try to observe the whole concept "communities of interest". Additionally, you aren't supposed to be deliberately going and creating blatant partisan Gerrymandered districts.

So let's start with CD-02 as the "Republican Vote Sink"....

Basically the district is going to have to lose some real estate, that will have to end up elsewhere....

1.) You aren't going to be able to chop up Central Oregon (Crook/Deschuttes/Jefferson) without fundamentally separating well defined and understood communities of interest.... Trying to run a skinny district all the way out just to gobble up Bend likely wouldn't meet the Oregon criteria, unless you're also taking in large chunks of heavily Republican territory at the same time.

2.) So, this leaves us with 3 Counties and part of a 4th that are currently in CD-02, where we need to look to grab the extra 200k voters for the district. Hood River and Wasco in the far North could potentially be added into a district in Western Oregon, since there are some linkages between the bulk of the population along the Columbia River Gorge in Hood River and The Dalles and East Multnomah and Clackamas Counties.... The former is overwhelmingly Democratic, and the latter is an ancestral Democratic County with recent Republican leanings.  Then you have Jackson County in the South that has both some heavily Republican Areas, as well as some heavily Democratic communities. Either way the remainder of Josephine County (Grants Pass) will end up in CD-04 adding more Republican Votes.

3.) Jackson County will have to be split regardless, and if we need to give some back to CD-04, we may as well run a clean stretch over from Southern Josephine and grab Ashland, Phoenix, and Jacksonville, plus some Republican Rural areas along the Way....

4.) So now we can leave Wasco in CD-02 taking us up to 553k, meaning we need another 170k from Jackson, which conveniently happens to neatly take in the heavily Republican rural areas in the Eastern and Northern parts of the County as well as Medford.

5.) That should give us Hood River County to play with as part of district in the Portland Area, unless we want to keep it in reserve in case someone gets antsy about that being the only place East of the Cascades not in CD-02.

6.) CD-04--- So now we have a big problem, we've added some pretty solidly Dem turf from Ashland area, but we've also added some heavily Republican territory in Grants Pass, and out population is exceeding its limits. Fine--- let's get rid of the rest of Linn County and move that into another district, since part of it already is, and Mid-Valley areas are used to getting shifted around a little bit...

7.) So what to do with the rest of the State? Ok--- if you look at the population of the three core counties of Metro Portland, their combined population should account for about 1.9 Million by 2020 or 45% of the State Vote, not to mention some spare change from Exurbs around Newburg in Yamhill County. It's only fair that Metro Portland gets 3 CDs predominately located within the Metro area, and another CD that is predominately located in the Mid-Valley.

8.) How to "stretch" the Metro Portland vote in a way the dilutes the strong Democratic Votes, while simultaneously respecting precedent?

9.) It makes sense to split Multnomah into two halves--- West of the Willamette and East of the Willamette. This has been done before, and plus you have a County that will have somewhere around 850k people that will need to be split regardless.

10.) CD-03 would retain all of MultCo East of the River, which would give it a base of about 676k Population. To take the other 45k you would probably need to take in the existing Exurban parts of Clackamas already in the district (Happy Valley, Sandy, Estacada), but you're running out of population, and would need to move some heavily Republican rural areas into CD-05, in what is already a marginal district. I guess you might be able to offset by moving some of the Republican leaning exurbs above into CD-05 instead, but either way....

11.) CD-01 would have West Multnomah (170k), Columbia, Clatsop (92k), Tillamook (27k) for a base of 289k, leaving us with another 436k population.... Well this is pretty much all going to come out of Washington County, so we may as well take all of the rural areas, places like Forest Grove and such, throw in fast-growing Hillsboro (110k), a bunch of unincorporated areas West of Portland, etc

12.) CD-06--- Thinking Tigard and Beaverton would be the base (160k) along with another 42k in the SW portion of the County for 202k in Washington.... Add in Yamhill, Polk, Benton, and Lincoln and you have another 342k for 544k to date.... we still need another 200k Pop. I guess you could throw Linn County into the Mix and some rural parts of Marion.

13.) CD-05--- Would keep existing Democratic suburbs of Milwaukee, Lake Oswego, Gladstone, West Linn, and Uninc Areas around there, throw in Salem-Keizer, Woodborn, and all of the rural areas in Marion along the I-5 corridor, and you're still maintaining much of the district.

Here's a crude map of what that would look like--- haven't run the '16 GE Pres precinct numbers against this, but it looks like you would end up with a potential 5-1 Dem Congressional Delegation, albeit with 2 reachable Republican flip seats (CD-05 and CD-06), assuming that letting go of Linn combined with Ashland overpowering Grants Pass strengthens CD-04.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

I'm related to FDR Garfield and my grandfather is friends with John McCain and served in Vietnam with him he also gave security briefings to Jimmy Carter  

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

I see they are at it again with the bitching and whining about Hillary.  Move the hell on, she beat him fair and square.

Clinton writes a book where she "bitches and whines" about people that supposedly contributed to her loss and it's the people reporting on it who need to move on? I understand that criticism of Mother hurts you guys deeply, but come on, let's be rational here.

Well, there were many outside factors that contributed to her loss.  Sure, she contributed to her own loss as well, but it's completely warranted to place blame on other factors because they did happen.

I don't disagree with that, but the idea that Clinton throwing a tantrum over a primary that happened a year ago doesn't constitute "whining" but reporting on/responding to it does defies simple logic.

It'd be one thing if Hillary left politics after her loss and people still chose to criticize her. That would constitute needless whining, sure. But as long as she chooses to remain a vocal public figure, criticizing what she says is fair game, even if it does end up hurting her supporters' feelings.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

I remain studiously opposed to the use of superlatives. To pick one example, 4,685,047 people voted Trump in the great state of Texas. Not fair to categorize them like that.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

All together probably could be summed up as "Civilly Libertarian with support of a Populist Economic Progressive Nation State". Though in more complex terms Civilly i dislike government intervention in this aspect of policy and support the standard spiel of liberal libertarian aspects here like Gay Marriage, Medical Marijuana and other none lethal drugs ext.. However i may differ on the issue of religious liberty, Immigration, and Guns among others were i support full constitutional rights and for immigration a tight border (due to fact that a open borders welfare state is much more susceptible to collapse economically then others).

On Economic Policy i'm a standard progressive supporting Multi Payer Healthcare (I like more choice then just single payer), a strengthening and renewing of the welfare state from the 1930s-70s era and expand that more. Ya know SS and all that sh**t. I support major tax increases on those making over a set margin 1 million dollars annual (As in anywhere from 1-20 million and above that noticeable increases). No Bailouts and No Handouts (Corporate Welfare) either from the Government and support a separation of these two entity's. Also hold these people accountable to any financial crimes they have committed and not get them away with there crimes. And them the rest is the standard 'breaking up the large financial banking/other corporate entity and talking about how too big to fail is bogus' sort of stuff.

On foreign policy i would be a standard Paleoconservative/liberal libertarian/progressive in the fact that i want non interventionism when ever possible. Not a Isolationist and believe we should continue our alliances with other important country's but i don't support unnecessary wars like Iraq or Afghanistan where there is direct intervention. Cases were there are genocides or our alliances are being broken then there should be a closer eye on whether we should intervene but solider use should be the last option. Things like Rwanda or Kosovo are these cases. We should strive as much as possible to stay out of the business of country's altogether but that could not be the case but that is rare. I'm also skeptical of the UN and the US should try to obtain as much sovereignty as possible but don't support leaving it as it has done at very good job since 1945 of keeping somewhat of stability world wide.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

California swung right that year.  I know the GOP Convention was held in San Diego, but usually that doesn't have much of an impact.

Yes, most of the West swung right in 1996, but California is more urban and densely-populated like an Eastern state, and Clinton improved upon his 1992 margins among both Hispanics and Asians.  It seems like Bill should have carried the state by more than 13 points.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

The American Pie spinoff movies are good
There are at least five songs that would make better national anthems than “Star Spangled Banner”

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

Basically this.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

1. Democrats, in my view, no longer support policies that strengthen our national defense (i.e. many democrats support cuts to the Defense budget without analyzing what actually needs to be cut, democrats only take positions on foreign policy based on whether or not it benefits them electorally)
2. I am supportive of inclusive and pro-equality values in society, but many progressives and democrats go way too far by promoting SJW-Culture (i.e. ranting about white privilege, engaging in oppression olympics etc...)
3. Democrats, in my view, no longer support the US-Israel Relationship in the same regard as they had done historically. Some elements even engage in blatantly anti-Israel rhetoric and policies. And there are even some who engage in antisemitic behavior and/or encourage antisemitic behavior.
4. The Democratic Party is vehemently pro-choice. So pro-choice that they try and purge pro-life democrats from their ranks.
5. Democrats claim to support human rights but have lately had flawed or conflicting views on opposing international human rights abusers like Iran, Turkey, and radical elements of Palestinian society.
6. Democrats claim to support indigenous rights but clearly pick and choose which ones they think are more "worth supporting." (i.e. where have democrats been on supporting Kurdistan?)
7. Democrats and I are completely opposed to each other on many economic issues, such as taxes, where I am very conservative and oppose progressive tax systems. I'd say, specifically, that democrats' stances on the environment and taxes are areas where I am very much opposed to them.
8. Democrats have become much too anti-Gun rights for my tastes.
9. While I am not a leftie on economic issues, I find that today's democrats have become much more elitist then they would care to admit. They have been isolating their historically pro-Labor union base with out-of-touch elements from areas like the Bay Area or NoVa dictating policy positions.
10. Traditionalists and religious people have been increasingly isolated from the Democratic Party.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

 

Can one of the Nevadans shed a bit of light on why Democrats don't have stronger candidates here? In particular, I'm thinking about fmr. SecState Ross Miller, whose loss in 2014 I've heard described as "accidental" (due to there not being a real Democratic candidate at the top of the ticket). Or to a lesser extent, other past row officers / 2014 row officer candidates who lost for similar reasons but were otherwise pretty strong, like Kate Marshall and Kim Wallin. Seems to me like they'd have stronger name rec / more compelling resumes than the two County Commissioners, but I understand that Clark County is massive and the role that Sisolak / Giuwhatever hold is probably pretty influential.

Compared to most states, the Dem bench really isn't that bad, just that there's no star A tier candidate, aside from Ross Miller, who is doesn't seem interested in running for anything anymore (his CD has been an open seat for 2 cycles now and declined both times, also declined to run for Lt. Gov). Kate Marshall, who has lost two elections in a row, is running for Lt Gov and Majority Leader Aaron Ford is running for AG. As for Wallin, she got like 40% of the vote IIRC in 2014. Also worth noting that all the candidates that aside from Marshall are also from Las Vegas, so they'd have the same problem as Sisolak/Giunchigliani have in that have no extra appeal to Washoe County.

With that said, the 2014 disaster is definitely hurting the bench in the long run. Look at my CD, NV-03. Susie Lee lost the clown car Dem primary in NV-04 in 2016 but is running for the open race and has raised like 300K and is basically the establishment candidate. Jack Love is also in and is a former insurance agency owner and favors Medicare for All and may be a bit to the districts left.  

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

Trump pre 2000

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

I don't know enough about the two Stacey's to pick one. What distinguishes them the most?

This (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-georgia-insight/in-georgia-battle-of-the-staceys-tests-democrats-future-idUSKBN1EE18S) seems to be a fairly neutral article describing the differences between the campaign strategies of the Staceys. Although it's light on actual policy positions, largely due to the fact that most of them are shared, a quick Google search regarding the issue of your choice should (hopefully) yield results.

I like Evans' strategy more – mostly regarding out-of-state donations, but, she seems to be the underdog. Not much of a difference with policy, so I'll go with Evans for the strategy reason.

Still, Abrams has a point, high black turnout would turn Georgia into a very competitive state.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

Lincoln Infrastructure Renewal and Maintenance Act (LIRMA)

Section 1: Short Title

This bill should be cited as the "Lincoln Infrastructure Renewal and Maintenance Act".

Section 2: Establishing the Infrastructure and Development Bureau

I. The Bureau of Infrastructure and Development shall be established and referred to as the BID.
II. The BID shall enforce regulations and laws related to infrastructure.
III. The Office of Infrastructure Safety and Inspection shall be established as part of the BID.
IV. The Office of Infrastructure Repair shall be established as part of the BID.
V. The Office of Infrastructure Employment shall be established as part of the BID.
VI. An Administrator of the BID shall be chosen by the Governor and confirmed by a majority vote in the Assembly.
VII. The Office of Infrastructure Safety and Inspection, the Office of Infrastructure Repair, and Office of Infrastructure Employment all shall have a deputy administrator appointed to them by the Administrator of the BID.

Section 3: Funding

I. All funding shall be directed to the Infrastructure and Development Bureau.
II. There shall be 25 billion dollars allocated for updates, repairs, or replacement of existing infrastructure and for the construction of new infrastructure.
III. There shall be 500 million dollars allocated for job training and recruitment in fields related to infrastructure.

Section 4: Inspection

I. The Office of Infrastructure Safety and Inspection shall be responsible for monitoring the condition of infrastructure and the need for repairs.
II. Infrastructure as defined in this bill includes roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, railroads, public utilities such as water, sewage, and the electrical grid, and telecommunication systems such as internet and phone.
III. Infrastructure should be put into 3 categories: "Major Concern", "Moderate Concern", and "Low Concern". "Major Concern" means the infrastructure is in immediate need of repair, "Moderate Concern" means the infrastructure needs repair in the near future, and "Low Concern" means the infrastructure is in good condition.
IV. All infrastructure shall be inspected every year to find the condition and rank it with one of the three categories.

Section 5: Repair

I. The Office of Infrastructure Repair shall be responsible for planning for and managing the repair of infrastructure the Office of Infrastructure Safety and Inspection deems necessary.
II. Infrastructure in the category "Major Concern" shall be repaired or replaced as soon as possible, followed by infrastructure in the category "Moderate Concern".
III. The Office of Infrastructure Repair shall have the power to hire private companies to complete jobs in addition to hiring government workers.
IV. Local people who are qualified for jobs related to any infrastructure project shall be hired first before bringing in workers from other areas.

Section 6: Employment

I. The Office of Infrastructure Employment shall create an “Infrastructure Job Training” program to increase the number of skilled workers.
II. The program shall train people who wish to work in areas related to infrastructure such as construction and engineering.

Section 7: Enactment

This law shall be enacted immediately upon passage.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

He's crazier than I thought

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

This whole saga reveals the stupidity of our Twitter-based politics. It's blindingly obvious that human trafficking predates the 1960s and that viewing people as objects, which is encouraged by our sexualized culture, is a bad thing on so many levels. Now everyone continue vaguely arguing talking points.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

Endorsed!

Proudly endorsed!

Thank you!

In addition, I publicly call on the rest of the candidates running for House to join me in a debate on the issues. A debate is what Atlasians need to hear, as most candidates are not running campaigns or have presented points as to why they should be the choice of Atlasians. It is only fair that Atlasia can hear where we all stand.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

I like them, but this is also my favorite contemporary political portrait, so perhaps I'm just unfairly inclined to anything untraditional:

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

This why i will never support Gillibarnd
*Snip*

Lol, whether you like him or not (I certainly don't), he's the Prime Minister of Israel. The leader of an allied country of the U.S. A Senator who agrees to meet him doesn't necessarily show support for him, but for our country. This just makes me like her more.

It's not only because the meeting,she is really bland on the israeli-palestinian peace process.
I want a president who will say to Netanyahu  "if you will build even one house in the settlements you will pay the price".

Well, then I guess we disagree on the interests of our country. I want an American President who will put pressure on both sides and manage to seem like a honest negotiator for the Palestinians, but you can't just pressure Israel like Obama did- you need to put pressure on the Palestinians, who are the biggest obstacle to peace. And I want a pro-Israeli President like Gillibrand who understands our need for security.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

No. 18 is just perfect, though I do agree that most 16 and 17 year-olds are only marginally less informed than adults. Still, it's too early and you need at least some experience.
Alcohol-purchase age should definitely be lowered to 18, though.

[RFayette 🇻🇦]

In the 1970s you had rumblings of a conservative era that was to come.
There is a fair argument that Liberalism wasn't the future in the 1970s.