I'm sure that SCOTUS would love to repeal the 13th and 19th amendment too. This is THE MOST crooked court ever. It absolutely must be reformed before we have no protections whatsoever.
"MacCALLUM: The whole point of the voter rights act was to have race neutrality."
You couldn't find a more concise example for when the conclusion is smuggled into the premise if you tried. That's so much cart that you can't even see the horse anymore.
I am a former academic philosopher so let me look, using a Rawlsean perspective, at redistricting done in order to achieve white supremacy.
Rawls proposed policy makers should adopt what he called the Original Position: Imagine you must design the rules of society from scratch, but you're behind a "veil of ignorance" — you don't know what race, gender, class, talents, or social position you'll be born into. Rawls argued that rational people in this position would choose fair principles of justice (or fair distributive utilities.)
If the Republicans were thoughtful enough, they would realize that their redistricting schemes were very unjust. But they don't give a hoot, sad to say.
Another argument that there should be more philosophers in government ( including the Supreme Count.) 🙂
I believe the left is doing a horrible job selling the outrage on this. Making majority-minority districts carries with it many assumption sthat are unearned. Do we expect all black people to vote the same? How are conservative black people supposed to feel when they are lumped into these districts? If black people are spread out around the state won't it mean that candidates need to cater to their opnions a bit? Right now, if you are a candidate in a non-majority-minority district why would you even care what black people think? There is no incentive. And why, after 60 years do we still need these crutches? And finally, what about all the other minorities that don't get their own districts? And finally finally, are white people supposed to vote for white people the same way black people are supposed to vote for black people as this whole argument presupposes?
I keep thinking that I’m as disgusted and angry as I can get about the actions of the Trump regime and this criminally offensive Supreme Court, but there is no limit except my concern for my blood pressure.
Once upon a time, Klansmen showed up in sheets. Now they come in thousand dollar suits, manicures, and Ivy League degrees. I prefer the old model--at least you knew where they stood.
'Nuclear' scenario looms as 'cataclysmic' change to Senate rules mulled
Senate Majority Leader John Thune's (R-SD) resistance to eliminating the filibuster is eroding as prominent Republicans who once defended the 60-vote threshold reverse course, signaling deepening fractures within GOP ranks over the Senate's most consequential procedural rule.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who warned in 2021 that scrapping the filibuster "would be bad for the Senate and bad for the country," reversed his position last month after the Republicans' voting bill stalled in the chamber, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), another former filibuster defender, now supports ending it.
Thune has pledged to preserve the filibuster while serving as majority leader, and dismantling it would require broad GOP consensus that currently doesn't exist. However, Republicans have already begun eroding the threshold through alternative methods, including aggressive use of the Congressional Review Act to overturn agency actions.
Both parties have previously invoked the "nuclear option" in the recent past. Democrats eliminated the filibuster for most presidential nominees in 2013; Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017.
Sen. Angus King (I-ME), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, argued the filibuster's preservation prevented worse outcomes. "If we didn't have the 60-vote requirement, we'd have the Save Act or something worse," he said, referencing Republican voting legislation and potential abortion restrictions.
Rs play the zero sum game. As long as 'those' people don't get anything they'll die making that happen. We are all connected and they refuse to believe that.
>>MacCALLUM: That’s the same point that the Supreme Court judged when they took out race-based admissions for universities around the country. The whole point of the Civil Rights Movement was to have equality, to have people not in different groups based on the color of their skin, whether they are white or Black or any color at all.<<
And the whole point of the current ANTI-Civil Rights Movement is to preserve a hierarchy of power based on social class. Perhaps it's merely convenient that such a hierarchy can self-perpetuate when skin color, sex, and other thing are so handy as proxies for social class. When white boys from rich families got the best primary and secondary education, then they dominated the applications and admissions into higher education, after which they were the next generation of white men running things and making more money and sending their white boys to prep schools to get the best primary and secondary education and...
One might SAY that the system is based solely on merit, but it's actually based mostly on wealth and power, and the EFFECT is to discriminate against non-white and non-males. So seeking out candidates based ON MERIT but also sex and race is an effort to mitigate the bias inherent in a system that MacCallum and her ilk claim would work just fime if those considerations were prohibited.
No whiteman was ever refused admission to higher education in favor of a "less-qualified" non-whiteman. At best, he was 5th place closely preceded by a whiteman in 3rd with 1 point better on the ACT, who was also tied numerically with a non-whiteman who had to work much harder to get there against societal barriers that the 5th-place whiteman finds so easy and convenient not to recognize.
Until society at large cannot use white maleness as a proxy for social class, because true equality has been achieved across all demographics, then any system that claims to be strictly merit-based will be anything but that.
That's my lay perspective on it. Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.
At gunpoint. He got most of those people to drink poison by pointing a gun at them. Or just shot them instead. While his cultists believed in him enough to go to his community, once there they were trapped, and very few of them went willingly to their deaths. The idea that they all happily killed themselves is mythmaking, not reality.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Adolph Hitler uniting with a bullet, thereby setting a precident that Nazi's everywhere should adoringly follow. Have a nice Hitler Snuff Day Weekend!
I'm sure that SCOTUS would love to repeal the 13th and 19th amendment too. This is THE MOST crooked court ever. It absolutely must be reformed before we have no protections whatsoever.
"MacCALLUM: The whole point of the voter rights act was to have race neutrality."
You couldn't find a more concise example for when the conclusion is smuggled into the premise if you tried. That's so much cart that you can't even see the horse anymore.
I am a former academic philosopher so let me look, using a Rawlsean perspective, at redistricting done in order to achieve white supremacy.
Rawls proposed policy makers should adopt what he called the Original Position: Imagine you must design the rules of society from scratch, but you're behind a "veil of ignorance" — you don't know what race, gender, class, talents, or social position you'll be born into. Rawls argued that rational people in this position would choose fair principles of justice (or fair distributive utilities.)
If the Republicans were thoughtful enough, they would realize that their redistricting schemes were very unjust. But they don't give a hoot, sad to say.
Another argument that there should be more philosophers in government ( including the Supreme Count.) 🙂
You are assuming they have an ability to consider the benefits to others.
They can only imagine themselves, now.
I believe the left is doing a horrible job selling the outrage on this. Making majority-minority districts carries with it many assumption sthat are unearned. Do we expect all black people to vote the same? How are conservative black people supposed to feel when they are lumped into these districts? If black people are spread out around the state won't it mean that candidates need to cater to their opnions a bit? Right now, if you are a candidate in a non-majority-minority district why would you even care what black people think? There is no incentive. And why, after 60 years do we still need these crutches? And finally, what about all the other minorities that don't get their own districts? And finally finally, are white people supposed to vote for white people the same way black people are supposed to vote for black people as this whole argument presupposes?
That's a true avalanche of bullshit and bad faith arguments, congratulations.
If you truly don't understand the value of minority representation, hie thee to a bookstore or library and read up on the Jim Crow south.
We'll still be here when you get back. Some of us are old enough to literally remember why the Voting Rights act was enacted.
I keep thinking that I’m as disgusted and angry as I can get about the actions of the Trump regime and this criminally offensive Supreme Court, but there is no limit except my concern for my blood pressure.
Her Black friend is a blackface doll passed down for generations, probably.
Once upon a time, Klansmen showed up in sheets. Now they come in thousand dollar suits, manicures, and Ivy League degrees. I prefer the old model--at least you knew where they stood.
She has a black friend? Lemme guess. Clarence Thomas or Tim Scott.
Tim Scott, who wrote a book about his "unlikely friendship" with a white Republican
Was that before or after he "got married"?
'Nuclear' scenario looms as 'cataclysmic' change to Senate rules mulled
Senate Majority Leader John Thune's (R-SD) resistance to eliminating the filibuster is eroding as prominent Republicans who once defended the 60-vote threshold reverse course, signaling deepening fractures within GOP ranks over the Senate's most consequential procedural rule.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who warned in 2021 that scrapping the filibuster "would be bad for the Senate and bad for the country," reversed his position last month after the Republicans' voting bill stalled in the chamber, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), another former filibuster defender, now supports ending it.
Thune has pledged to preserve the filibuster while serving as majority leader, and dismantling it would require broad GOP consensus that currently doesn't exist. However, Republicans have already begun eroding the threshold through alternative methods, including aggressive use of the Congressional Review Act to overturn agency actions.
Both parties have previously invoked the "nuclear option" in the recent past. Democrats eliminated the filibuster for most presidential nominees in 2013; Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017.
Sen. Angus King (I-ME), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, argued the filibuster's preservation prevented worse outcomes. "If we didn't have the 60-vote requirement, we'd have the Save Act or something worse," he said, referencing Republican voting legislation and potential abortion restrictions.
https://www.rawstory.com/senate-filibuster-rules/
Don't you know they just love to put Jim Crow on the chyron. Nyah, nyah, Dems. You can't do anything about it.
"If you believe this will only affect Black Americans ..."
https://youtube.com/shorts/DKmcSWjXGRU?si=3D5fEq_4jBKHc_vY
Rs play the zero sum game. As long as 'those' people don't get anything they'll die making that happen. We are all connected and they refuse to believe that.
>>MacCALLUM: That’s the same point that the Supreme Court judged when they took out race-based admissions for universities around the country. The whole point of the Civil Rights Movement was to have equality, to have people not in different groups based on the color of their skin, whether they are white or Black or any color at all.<<
And the whole point of the current ANTI-Civil Rights Movement is to preserve a hierarchy of power based on social class. Perhaps it's merely convenient that such a hierarchy can self-perpetuate when skin color, sex, and other thing are so handy as proxies for social class. When white boys from rich families got the best primary and secondary education, then they dominated the applications and admissions into higher education, after which they were the next generation of white men running things and making more money and sending their white boys to prep schools to get the best primary and secondary education and...
One might SAY that the system is based solely on merit, but it's actually based mostly on wealth and power, and the EFFECT is to discriminate against non-white and non-males. So seeking out candidates based ON MERIT but also sex and race is an effort to mitigate the bias inherent in a system that MacCallum and her ilk claim would work just fime if those considerations were prohibited.
No whiteman was ever refused admission to higher education in favor of a "less-qualified" non-whiteman. At best, he was 5th place closely preceded by a whiteman in 3rd with 1 point better on the ACT, who was also tied numerically with a non-whiteman who had to work much harder to get there against societal barriers that the 5th-place whiteman finds so easy and convenient not to recognize.
Until society at large cannot use white maleness as a proxy for social class, because true equality has been achieved across all demographics, then any system that claims to be strictly merit-based will be anything but that.
That's my lay perspective on it. Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.
When I was young I wondered about Jim Jones
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7e07411ecf61cfe8f29f89a76faca7ff68a73bac874a8bb6412a598aa933a3f0.jpg
At gunpoint. He got most of those people to drink poison by pointing a gun at them. Or just shot them instead. While his cultists believed in him enough to go to his community, once there they were trapped, and very few of them went willingly to their deaths. The idea that they all happily killed themselves is mythmaking, not reality.
This is the great secret of the far right. They need you to think you have no choice, because even they know that nobody wants what they are offering.
Clicked on the ONE SENTENCE link...
From his [MLK] “Beyond Vietnam” speech in 1967:
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve."
Truer now than back then.
After listening to Pete "don't call it a quagmire" Hegseth, I tend to agree.
United States of Amnesia
United States of Anti everything not straight white male.
Trump at The Villages seeking strokes… oh wait.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Adolph Hitler uniting with a bullet, thereby setting a precident that Nazi's everywhere should adoringly follow. Have a nice Hitler Snuff Day Weekend!
Rest in peace, Blondi.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYbf62Upd0VEnZjayE_NzKKq41hcwJInp1IuafifTryg&s=10
Hitler gave everyone in his inner circle a cyanide pill.Someone gave one of his dogs a cyanide pill to make sure it worked
It was not the dog's fault. None of it.
This just emphasizes the importance of making sure every dog goes to a good home.
i kinda like to think about how he had ten days to think about how shitty his birthday was.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:vd3i6tcouyn4rnex2sjvau2a/bafkreidlc445lvqiilvgvh6gc7z5bs4qg3zx2xde446ecewkcd65m7risi
The irony escapes the orange menace.