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Delta1212

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Posts posted by Delta1212

  1. I have zero interest in "destroying the adversary."

     

    I would rather everyone succeed.

     

    However, that also means that if you want my cooperation in fucking over some other group of people, I'm going to give you the finger. I've heard too many comments from people who think Muslims are all terrorists, black people are all criminals, gay people are going to hell, poor people are lazy, sick people are irresponsible and liberals should all be killed to take "Let's all come together as Americans" as anything more than an empty platitude.

     

    You want to come together as Americans to solve the problems we face? I'll do whatever I can to help you. You want to solve your own problems by screwing over some other group? No, thanks. Call me when you're serious about helping everyone and not just the "right" Americans.

  2. I hate to burst bubbles, but Trump's not being impeached, nor is he resigning. This is all a continuation of the "Drumpf's done this time" fantasy that's been pervading liberal thought for about two years now.

     

    It's not happening, ladies and gentlemen. Now, please, instead of trying to sabotage our president, and harming out country in the process, let's start working together to build a more prosperous America.

    Working together to do what, exactly? There is literally nothing in all of the specific things that Trump has actually done or tried to do that I actually want to see done.

     

    I do not oppose Trump because he is Trump. I oppose the things he says and does. If he starts doing and saying things that I support, I will continue to support those things getting done.

  3. Recent development about Trump meeting with the Russians in the Oval Office, Putin is offering the US transcripts of their meeting. Does this mean that the Russians were allowed to bring sound recording devices into the Oval Office? Or does it mean the Russians have photographic memories and can reconstruct the meeting?

     

    Obstruction of justice is looming in front of Trump as he sets off on his trip abroad.

    There was a Russian reporter in the meeting that the White House thought was Lavrov's personal photographer.

  4. And who says they'd unify with South Korea instead of just merging with China, for example?

    If North Korea is going to merge with another country it will almost certainly be with South Korea and not with China. That is the preference if both Koreas, the US, I believe still Russia and China itself who, among other things, doesn't want to have to deal with the humanitarian crisis that is the DPRK.

     

    There is also the issue of language, history and ethic background, which are much bigger deals in Asia than I think a lot of Westerners realize.

     

     

    The US government gave money and help South Korea.

    South Korea has the 11th largest economy in the world by GDP, just behind Canada and ahead of both Russia and Australia. They don't require US money for reunification efforts (though I wouldn't be surprised if we did help out, we just wouldn't be underwriting the whole process because it isn't necessary).

  5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html

     

    Trump was bragging about the "great intel" he gets to Lavrov during their meeting and accidentally revealed a bunch of highly classified information about ISIS that had been passed along by an ally and which we did not have permission to share, had not, in fact, even shared with most of our own allies. It was detailed enough that Russia will likely be able to identify the source of the information, which is likely also positioned to provide intel on Russian interests in Syria. White House officials and intelligence officers are scrambling to limit the damage insofar as that is possible as this not only places the intelligence operation of our ally at risk but also makes it less likely that they will share vital information with us in the future.

  6. If Trump has obstructed justice that is a crime. The process, our process we should respect, is one which has laws. It isn't a "bypass" to want our laws enforced. Winning an election doesn't entitle one to obstruct justice, demagogue judges (contempt of court), and totally ignore conflicts of interest. It is a constitutional crisis if we can't expect our elected officials to act as they are sworn to. Our process requires Congress to run real investigations into these matters. Our process does not demand the public just wait till there is another election for due diligence to occur.

    Well, in some respect it kind of does if the people elected in the last election refuse to do the due diligence that the public wants them to do.

  7. It's interesting to me that supporters of both parties complain that the other party has committed gerrymandering. It's sort of a "catch all" for when one isn't getting one's way. The other mechanism that gets so abused is the electoral college; no one complains when their own candidate wins the electoral vote but not the popular vote - it's only invoked when it displeases.

    Five Presidents have won the electoral college without having won the popular vote.

     

    John Quincy Adams, in 1824, was a Democratic-Republican which later split into the Democrats and the Whigs (he was part of the Whig faction).

     

    All four of the rest were Republicans.

     

    The Democrats don't invoke complaints about the electoral college when they win without the popular vote because they never have. The closest you can get is a precursor party from 1824.

  8. The Democrats can't get a majority in either, let alone both, houses of Congress until 2019, so I don't know why that would speed anything up.

     

    The timeline for changing over remains the same regardless of how many seats in each house you win.

  9. The 48 members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate, in their most recent respective elections dating back to 2012, collectively earned 78.4 million votes on their way to victory. Republicans, by contrast, won just 54.8 million voteseven though there are 52 of them. In other words, Senate Democrats have gotten more than 23.5 million more votes than Republicans. In a head-to-head election, that would amount to a crushing 59-41 margin in percentage terms.

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/1/5/1617584/-We-re-the-popular-party-Senate-Democrats-won-over-23-million-more-votes-than-Republicans

    See though, I have a hard time with just going by the straight numbers, and it's not an example of gerrymandering in any case.

     

    First, those numbers compare Senators across three different elections including both midterms and Presidential elections. Those have variable rates of voter participation and you need to figure out a way to adequately account for that. It might very well still show the same basic result, but until that's taken care of, you're mixing apples and oranges together in one big bowl.

     

    Second, the reason it isn't gerrymandering is that the Senate cannot be gerrymandered the way that it is set up. The "districts" are the states, and they can't be redrawn to advantage one party over another. However, there is a built-in bias in the Senate towards low-population states. The states that benefit most from there are mostly rural states far from the coats, which also tend to be current Republican strongholds.

  10.  

    But that's not what you showed. You showed that one state's votes are worth more than in another state (Wyoming vs Texas) in a national election. I was talking about within a particular state. As your article and iNow's comment say, this is about the House (and local office), not the presidency. Gerrymandering does not occur at the national level, other than what's already built in by the electoral college.

     

     

    A non-sequitur is not evidence. It's not even an argument.

     

    Yes, I think there is some confusion going on over a lack of differentiating between gerrymandering and the in-built bias of the Constitution towards over-representing less populous states in the national government. This has a similar effect to gerrymandering, but is not actually the same thing.

     

    Presidential elections and Senate elections cannot be gerrymandered. Gerrymandering as a practice tests on the way Congressional districts are drawn. Every ten years there is a census, and the state's all have to redraw their district lines to accommodate population shifts so that you have roughly the same number of people in each Congressional district.

     

    In many states, the state legislature draws the districts, which gives the party in power on the state level a measure of control over how the state elects its Representatives to the House on the national level.

     

    Let's say we have a hypothetical state that has to draw 10 districts. Let's also say that two parties are dominant in this state: The Birthday Party and the College Party.

     

    Now, if the Birthday Party enjoys support from 60% of the state's residents, and the College Party 40%, a fair distribution of representatives would be 6 Birthday Party and 4 College Party representatives going to Congress to represent the state.

     

    However, if the Birthday Party is in power on the state level, they could redraw the boundaries of the districts according to demographic information such that every district is made up of 60% Birthday Party members and 40% College Party members, resulting in the Birthday Party having all 10 available seats in Congress despite only getting 60% of the vote.

     

    On the flip side, if the College Party manages to gain control of the state legislature and they get to redraw the map, they could could create 3 districts that are 95% Birthday Party supporters and 5% College Party members, and 7 districts that are 55% College Party and 45% Birthday Party, giving the College Party 7 out of 10 seats despite only getting 40% of the statewide vote, while the Birthday Party gets 3 out of 10 seats despite getting 60% of the vote.

     

     

    These are both a bit extreme, as it is difficult to clump people quite as efficiently as that, but it illustrates the power of gerrymandering to allow a majority to suppress representation of a minority, or a minority to gain a representational advantage in spite of a majority opposition.

     

    Both parties do this to one extent or another, however, there are two factors at work that imbalance the outcomes. One is that the number of states where gerrymandering is significant with Democrats in charge is comparatively smaller (although they do exist, see, for instance, Maryland), and additionally, the Republican Party launched an initiative in the run up to the 2010 census known as Operation REDMAP to gain control of as many state houses as possible with the intention of favorably redrawing the House districts to their advantage.

     

    This has given the Republicans a durable majority in the House of Representatives ever since, even in elections where their overall vote totals were lower than that of the Democratic minority in the House.

  11. Yes.

    They hacked the democrats, and not the Republicans.

    Which shows obvious favoritism.

     

    Also, I was researching on the voter turnout.

    One of the major things, is that Republicans are trying to suppress black voters from turning out because they have criminal records.

    The criminal records thing though, prevents a lot of people from voting, owning guns, and a lot more.

    And they aren't things like petty crime, they're usually for felonies.

    I'm just curious on what you think of this. Just wondering. I know a guy who can't vote because of his record, but when I've asked him about it in the past he said he made the mistakes and now he's paying the consequences. But he also said the for the most part, it doesn't interfere with his life.

    Blacks are convicted of felonies at higher rates than whites, additionally, there is a disparity in how laws are created that is often non-obvious in their goals and ultimate effects.

     

    For instance, cocaine and crack are essentially the same drug, with the latter being slightly modified to allow it to be smoked. Cocaine is more popular with wealthier and whiter communities, crack in poorer and blacker communities.

     

    In terms of legal trouble, 1 gram of crack is considered the equivalent of 18 grams of cocaine for sentencing purposes.

     

    Enforcement in general tends to disproportionately focus on on poor offenders and black offenders.

     

    Overall this contributes to a felony disenfranchisement rate among blacks that is more than 3 times the national average.

     

    This is not a coincidence, and nor is it a coincidence that many states expanded felony disenfranchisement rules following the adoption of the 14th amendment that gave blacks the right to vote.

  12. Theoretical that oversight should come from congress (unless I am mistaken). Which does not seem to work out so well. I have not heard anything regarding Spicer (other that he fumbled). There are a couple of senators that have expressed concern, including McCain, but other than that there was not much (yet).

    Spicer's understudy performed the White House press briefing today. It's a temporary leave of absence so he can fulfill some duties as a part of the naval reserve.

     

    There's been some speculation about whether that is entirely true and if he will be back or not. That's about the extent of that.

  13. What are you talking about.

    Click the page.

    Right at the top it says:

     

    by Inside Edition

    4:28 PM EST, January 20, 2017

     

    What's that stand for? The date the author pissed his pants?

     

    I mean. Come on. That's literally the most pathetic argument you've ever made.

    Somebody tell me I'm not blind. That clearly reads January 2017 and not September 2016.

    I mean, I'm assuming you mistook something and aren't making shit up, but now you're corrected.

    You're getting mixed up. Swansont's article was from September 2016. The third article which you used as a counter example is what was from January 20, 2017.

  14.  

    Not as a percentage of the GDP you don't - we all pledged back in the 70's to try to make our donations internationally total 0.7% of GDP... although the USA does give some of the most money oversees, it is still (as of 2015) only giving 0,2%. A fair few European countries have reached their 0.7% commitments already, so you are in fact lagging behind in this plan to increase international spending. I think the UK has only just raised it's donations to 0.7%... it was increasing yearly until the agreed target was reached.

    You're talking about foreign aid budgets, not charitable donations.

  15.  

     

    What do you mean "proved his equation"?

     

    Do you mean did he compare the predictions of the theory against observation?

     

    If so, then the answer is yes. And when those observations showed that the universe was actually expanding, the cosmological constant was set to zero.

     

    Now we have seen that the expansion is accelerating, the value has been adjusted again.

     

    THIS IS HOW SCIENCE WORKS.

     

     

     

    This is a moronic statement and this is NOT how science works.

     

     

    Of course.

     

    That is why it is stupid to talk about "proving" things in science.

     

     

     

    No.No. No. No. NO.

     

    The constant was added so that the equation matches what we observe. That's it.

     

     

    No. No. No. No. NO.

     

    It is not a proof of anything.

     

    It is just a matter of adjusting the model to match reality (as accurately as we can).

     

     

    We can't "prove" it. You cannot prove anything in science.

     

    However, the model will be continually tested by making more observations. The data from these may be used to adjust the value of the cosmological constant and other parameters.

     

     

    Of course. That is always true of all science.

     

    Science is always subject to change when new data or evidence is obtained. That is how science progresses.

     

    Only an idiot would say that we should never change our models.

     

     

    The equation was updated based on evidence. Therefore it matches the current evidence.

     

    Further observations will be used to check (and either confirm or change) the value of the cosmological constant and other parameters.

     

    Because that is how steichen works.

     

     

    What does it matter what we call it? Most equations are not named after the people who actually invented them, anyway. Many (most? all?) theories are changed after the original version.

     

    And why does changing the value of one parameter mean the name has to be changed?

    Every time someone calculates pi out to an additional decimal place we should choose a new symbol to represent it.

  16. Keeping in mind that the reason for 2 is that for a theory to be accepted, it needs to acheive 3 with a high degree of precision. A higher degree of precision than any current theory, in fact.

     

    Presently, we don't know of a way to develop a model that gives more precise results than a mathematical model.

  17. The whole solar system started as a swirling dust cloud. The planets and other objects in the solar system only coalesced in the first place because of debris colliding and gathering together in clumps. How exactly do you think things formed?

  18. They didn't just find "something" and decide to name it the Higgs Boson.

     

    The Higgs Boson was predicted to exist as part of the theory outlining the Higgs mechanism. It was predicted to have a set of properties and behaviors associated with it. Then they discovered a particle that had the same properties and behaviors as those predicted for the Higgs Boson.

  19. Also, a company that does business in multiple states can choose which state it wants to buy insurance coverage in for its entire company. Presently, this does not really matter. However, should the above bill pass the Senate, the ability of states to get waivers for aspects of the insurance protections means that many large companies will be able to purchase insurance that lacks basic coverage even for employs that live and work in states that continue to mandate a base level of care be covered.

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