gehringer_2

If the old South States keep sliding back into Jim Crow, a state like CA might decide to pass a serious secession plan. That would precipitate a crisis that would force the rest of the country's hand. Or the northern states House delegations might someday bring the issues to crises by refusing to approve transfer payments into the 'consumer' states - just stopping the Federal government. But they could at least get back closer to some political balance if they would admit DC and Puerto Rico and then increase the size of the House to 500 to dilute the EC imbalance. None of that would require an amendment but would get us closer to where the idea of amendments would be back on the table.

Except that was put to death in practice pretty firmly in by 1863. The Civil War established once and for all on the ground that the US is a single unitary state and no longer a confederation. We may have a tiered federal government, but we are no longer a confederation. The people in every state need their votes to count equally if we are to continue to call ourselves a democracy.

If you want to watch the Tigers your options seem to be shrinking. We are with DirectTV_Stream/Nee ATT mostly because they will still carry the local sports networks, though there is now a surcharge for them.

As I have watched politics over a few decades, the money in elections bothers me more day by day, but legislative horse trading, which can be labeled 'pork', is actually not so bad a thing to me - it's how get things done - somebody in my district needs this, someone in your district wants that. I think it's something that sounds worse in rhetoric than it really is in operation. I really have no problem with 'earmarking' for example and I think the Congressional leadership made a mistake eliminating the process. The question is not so much whether something got into a bill by individual earmark or for what might be a narrow constituency - as long as it is a public one. It don't mind if an interest is narrow as long as it's public. A post office for Podunk or a road that may be little used but still connects some real people I can live with as the cost of getting enough legislators on board for more important stuff even if some would call that pork. Even a useless weapons system isn't the worst thing since most of that money goes to salaries in the end. It's the tax and regulatory giveaways to the donor class, both private and corporate, that bother me most anymore.

LOL - One of the things Pelosi was trying to do would have been a favor to the remaining sane people in the GOP by removing Trump from future electoral politics, but they weren't having any.

always a good call.

LOL! On seeing this bit of blasphemy, any Christian that has read his NT should think of this: Have a nice day.

We've seen it before in MI. The same kind of 'stick in your eye voting' is probably also what helped keep Coleman Young in office so long. Consequences are just broader when it happens on a national scale.

Just grazing google there have been a couple of Al Qaeda plots caught inside Canada since 9/11, so their screening procedures aren't all that perfect.

not quite true. There was Ahmed Ressam in 1999. Ferried to Washington State from Vancouver with 100lbs of explosives. Planned to set off a bomb at LAX. I thought there was one other group apprehended in BC a number of years ago as well but I can't find anything that matches. Maybe it was this same story and I had it muddled. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/trail/inside/cron.html

I can see there are some interesting aspects. We have been told that more women in power is supposed to create a 'better' environment than the testosterone dominated one, so if women in business are just as bad as men, there's a counter narrative story on that front. But then even more than that, she has turned around and based her defense on blaming everything on the men, trying to play poor abused woman, so there is a story in whether she is believed (aren't we always supposed to believe the woman?) or does she get her comeuppance (yes she did) for trying to have it both ways? So I think the case does reflect a lot of current cultural tensions.

The language Progs apparently don't see that telling Spanish speakers how to speak Spanish is pretty much a form of English language cultural imperialism.

true. English nouns do not have gendered forms, we only have only gendered pronouns. In Latin and languages more closely derived from it, the nouns themselves have gender which makes the fixations of our English language police on pronouns pointless in those languages. You'd have to rewrite the entire dictionary.

the fixation on gender in and of itself seems to be somewhat unique to American progressives. I wonder if that is just the natural reflection/reaction to the overly strict gender role assignments of historical American Puritanism.

As a matter of fact ewsieg, after 9/11 the US complained bitterly to the Canadians that their asylum processes were much too liberal and did not sufficiently protect the US, and in view of that fact stopped allowing low security passage back into the US from Canada. This of course was damaging to Canadian cross boarder commerce and in retaliation (one of many) the Canadians closed Canada to easy entry by American workers who previously had been able to cross the border freely on a short term basis for their trans-national employers. I was such a traveling consultant and as a result of this little tit-for-tat actually had to apply for a Canadian alien work permit, which was, after much bureaucratic exercise and legal fees paid, duly stapled inside my passport, both of which I was now required to present to enter Canada to do a day or two of technical consulting when previously I could simply cross the border with nothing more than my ID and a "howdy" to the Canadian customs officer. It took a number of years of wrangling to improve the situation somewhat, though still well short of where it was in 2000.

a Driveline guy? Kewl.

this may be true but it's a bit apples and oranges. What is the comparison between '17 and '21?

that is actually pretty much in line with the total estimated dead from all the atomic attacks (2 by the US) in world history, and that has been 75 yrs. By 75 yrs we will have killed >600,000 with guns. Well, that is less than Covid, and since Covid's apparently not a problem, I guess guns aren't either. #culturegoneinsane

sounds like a natural for the broadcast booth, he could tell inside stories about half the teams in the league!

I wouldn't tell anyone not to buy crypto if they want to, but just realize that investing in crypto is like being a 'technical' stock buyer in the sense that you're placing your bets on trend analysis and/or market psychology predictions, not the kind of 'fundamental' value analysis you might do for a company or product.

and luckily, common Russian nouns do not have patronymics - War and Peace would an inch thicker....

yeah - you wonder. There is enough uncertainly on both sides with the available testing that you're left with doubt. I had a 'cold' in early Dec - passed it to the SO. It hung around more than two weeks, though that is not particularly unusual for me. I tested twice - the 'U' does a saliva based PCR, neg both times. Symptoms didn't match Delta - no fever, no taste/smell effect, energy level fine. But still - maybe an early Omicron? But since then we have been through 3 crowded airports, 3 completely full plane flights, more restaurants than we have been in in 2 yrs, and an Xmas party where we know a grandnephew went positive the next day. If anyone should have caught it it since then it was us, but we're fine - so maybe we had it? Or what we both had in April '19 before there was any testing may have been it. One person can always be the outlier.

this is true. The more fundamental split in the US is urban/rural and it exists in pretty much every state. Aside from maybe the core of the old South, a state's relative blueness is pretty a measure of its internal urban/rural population dist. Even in Tx Houston is Democratic, and even in CA the Central valley is GOP.

SO found testing a time available at a CVS in A^2 tomorrow. Couldn't find anything when we looked before leaving town on the 20th. I have one scheduled tomorrow at the U's student/staff service. I'll be interested to see if they have moved back into the bigger room where they started in 2019. They had shifted to a smaller room this fall after they waived the weekly testing requirements for the vaxxed.

and the ultimate irony that has emerged is that we can only know what it should cost to buy some real object with BitCoin et al by first ascertaining their value against the standard of the US (fiat) dollar.