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Huckleberry

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Huckleberry

  1. Just now, elfenix said:

    maybe we can stop disingenously claiming that the electoral college is good at getting attention for small communities. the facts bear out that it's not.

    Nobody says that it's good for getting attention for small communities. You definitely slew that straw man, though.

    The attention that is paid to how good it is for small communities comes from your side of the argument when they complain that the votes of citizens in smaller states have a disproportionately large say in who becomes POTUS.

  2. 6 minutes ago, elfenix said:

    people who show up to your rallies are already voting for you.  and no one campaigns in wyoming right now anyway - wyoming isn't losing anything from that standpoint.  did you miss the previous page?

     

     

    ad buys are waaaaaaaaay cheaper in south dakota than houston.

    No, I didn't miss anything, I already addressed that most of y'all are just wanting to trade one broken system for another. But, purely as a matter of coincidence of course, the new broken system will favor your preferred candidate more often than the current broken system.

    Also, Jesus H. Christ I should have gone for the multi-quote. My apologies, I hadn't reloaded the page when I started responding.

  3. 12 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    It doesn't have to.  The Senate, controlled by small states, always has the power to reel it in if they want to.  The problem we have is that both the Senate and the President are small state owned, so the Senate gives him a rubber stamp rather than reels him in.  And with Trump specifically, its because they desire all the backwards things he is doing, they just don't want the optics of being on the hook for doing them themselves.

    You think executive power expands because the Senate and Presidency are small-state owned? So when executive power continued ballooning under Obama and a blue Congress that was because of small states?

    If and when the POTUS election changes to a direct popular vote, executive power will expand more rapidly than it ever has before. Congress will bend the knee to the President even more than they do now as the executive claims MANDATE FROM THE PEOPLE!!! just like they do now except then it will be accurate.

  4. 12 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

    The federal government arising directly from the people with the states not being a party to its formation is irrelevant to the normative question of why some voters should arbitrary have more power than others?  lol. 

    Yes, it is. I mean you can ignore the actual specifics of my post if it makes things easier for you, but it doesn't matter if the States created a compact or if the People signed a contract when the bottom line is what the document says. The document says the POTUS is elected in this manner.

  5. 10 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    If both parties ignore the small states, then all of a sudden all of those rural voters are there for the taking. Do you think they still vote Republican if no one is talking to or caring about them, especially if the GOP policy is crafted towards the urban areas?. 

    I believe a national popular vote would create a 50 state strategy. And better, more inclusive policy would be the result. 

     

    "All of those rural voters"? Boy howdy, I bet the party machines are going to duke it out over those 36,000 unaffiliated voters in Wyoming.

  6. 2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

    But that presupposes that the only way to target those voters is to personally visit them. Sure those help drive turnout, but it's not the only way to do it. In a popular vote system, the Republican turnout in California, New York, Oregon, etc. and the Democratic turnout in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, etc. (assuming no vote suppression) would increase substantially regardless of whether or how often the candidates personally visited them because their votes would suddenly matter, and the candidates would be forced to tailor their campaigns and policies to appeal to them. 

    No they wouldn't. Tailoring your campaign to court Republican voters if you're a Democrat loses you Democrat voters. And vice versa.

    That part of y'all's theory is more hopeful than anything else. Both of the two major party bases despise any candidate who has their letter next to their name and doesn't preach the party gospel. You will lose more voters from your base than you gain in independent voters by "tailoring your message" which will very quickly be translated into "selling out."

  7. 4 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    With a popular vote, voters in small states would have the same say in the election as any other voter.  The idea that American citizens are electing the national executive to represent their individual state is a bad one in the first place.  You elect your Senators to represent your state.  You elect your Representative to represent your community.  You elect the President to represent the nation.  Your Senators can and do insure your rights in the government.  Having the President elected in the same way allows for the tyrannical enforcement of small state will, and allows them to not only maintain their rights but to force punitive actions against large states through 3 branches of government.  Gerrymandering in the House is just gravy on top.

    Part of the issue is the vast expansion of executive power.  Reel that in and the problem wouldn't be so apparent.  But instead we have a situation where the parents of a TX soldier have less of a say than a Wyoming resident in electing the man that can send their son into harms way.  And if I have less of a say, then I'm not letting my kids join "your" military.  And it is "yours" more than "mine" because your vote counts more than mine everywhere that military decisions are made.

    We aren't gonna last much longer as a nation in our current state.  Wyoming is gonna have a much tougher go at going it alone, but if they want to keep the status quo, that's where they are gonna end up.

     

    The bolded portion is absolutely true. The problem for your side of this debate is that switching the Presidential election to a direct popular vote will only accelerate that expansion of executive power.

  8. 5 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

    Huckleberry, is it your understanding then that the federal government was formed through a compact between the sovereign states?  

    That's a totally irrelevant question. Whether you subscribe to compact theory or believe it was a contract from the People it doesn't change what the Constitution says about electing the President. Whether it was the States forming a compact and agreeing to that method or the People choosing that method and delegating the election to the States the end result is the same.

  9. 3 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    Do you think both parties would ignore those smaller states?  Each vote matters. Would Ds or Rs risk the emergence of a 3rd party that would pay attention to the rural areas? 

    If Republicans try to attract voters in NY and CA, do you think they stick with anti-immigrant, anti-LGBQT, anti-minority, evangelical bullshit policy they have now?

    If Dems try to attract voters in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho do you think they'll promote policies that will ignore rural areas and leave them behind?

     

    Yes, they will be ignored. Why would I appeal to 10,000 independent voters whose vote might be swayed in Cheyenne and Casper at a big event in Wyoming, then take a bus for two hours to Laramie to target another 4,000 voters when I can hit 100,000 in a single shot in Houston, then take a bus for two hours and hit another 40,000 in Austin?

  10. 4 minutes ago, Dropout said:

    You’re assuming they’d be invisible to campaigns. Even if your assumption is correct it’s their campaign. They can run it how they like. The voters can vote accordingly. I would also rather be invisible to a campaign than have my vote mean absolutely nothing. My vote for president has never mattered.

    Give me a break states elect people. I mean I get it that’s the law it’s the way it was set up but states aren’t living things. This is like corporations are people. People elect people. I can’t take the statement “States elect the President” seriously. It just doesn’t make sense to me. One person one vote perfect sense. The EC and everything in between is overthought bs.

    This just confuses me. You claim to understand it but then act like it's confusing. It shouldn't be confusing at all, and it's not BS. The election for the office of POTUS is an election of the States, not of the People. Every State gets to decide how they want to apportion their electors. Your "one person, one vote" logic is perfect for democratic elections. The Presidential Election is not a democratic election. However, the "one person, one vote" idea is perfectly valid within your State as it determines its electors.

    You know what else used to be an election of the States and not the People? Senatorial elections. The 17th Amendment changed that. Another one would be required here. Good luck with that. More likely is an agreement between States to all apportion their electors differently. But, again, none of them will agree to that because they're scared of lowering their ruling party's impact on the election.

    • Like 1
  11. 3 minutes ago, Dropout said:

    If I have a vote and you have a vote that are of equal value in a national election who’s getting gored?

    The one who lives near fewer other votes and therefore is invisible to the campaigns.

    The States elect the President, not the People. Lots of people want to change that, which is fine, but nobody is willing to sacrifice to change it. Want to have campaigners pay more attention in your State? Have your State legislature vote to change apportionment of its electors from winner-take-all to something else.

    • Like 1
  12. 4 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    The polarization will continue to get worse if we keep things the same.  We have the proof. Look at what the GOP has become over the last 30-40 years. Look who's sitting in the Oval Office. 

    I'd appreciate to hear your rationale for the second paragraph. Why would either party ignore the small states with a popular vote? I especially don't understand this argument when the current system allows politicians to ignore the voters in the most populous states.  With the EC only 5-10 states even matter. 

     

     

     

     

    Why would I go to Wyoming or spend any money there when there are ten times as many registered voters in Harris County? In a popular vote, it's absolutely certain that I can change more votes by campaigning in Houston than all of Wyoming.

    To put it another way, there are more registered voters in the orange area than in the purple area:

    image.png

    Why would I spend money traveling around all that purple area?

    4 minutes ago, Dropout said:

    This is simple to me. One person one vote or stop calling America a democracy. 

    It's not a democracy, so...

  13. Yeah, the common belief is the Civil War led directly to the change. In reality it looks like there was a small shift during the Civil War, then a steady pace of change through Reconstruction, then another spike some time around the Panic of 1893 through the McKinley assassination.

    Then the pace of the shift actually decelerated around and after McKinley's assassination through Teddy's administration. Then for some reason electing a fat guy really spiked the shift which continued through WWI and eventually stabilized somewhere around the usage seen at the end of that war with fluctuations now and again.

    Of course all of that is eyeballing it, I wish there were a chart available showing those proportions against each other instead of just out of a larger population of phrases.

  14. 1 hour ago, BearSchlong said:

    it'll reverse this

     

    Just as it will reverse this

    NoFlag.gif

    Sean Payton actually pointed out the Steelers play to the media when asked about this rule change. It was refreshing to see a coach point out when shitty officiating helped his team even though the same coach basically had a Super Bowl appearance affected by the call the new rule is most directly addressing.

    Of course, there were two missed calls on the Rams play. Targeting was also missed.

    • Like 1
  15. 2 minutes ago, JustBecause said:

    Yup.  It’s the United States of America not United State of America. 

    This ignores quite a bit of American history, though. Even simple and seemingly trivial things like the shift from the United States being a plural noun to being a singular noun.18vd8ez7bcg1fpng.png

    There are good arguments on either side of this but it shouldn't be too much to ask to keep the discussion on this board on the up and up and philosophical. Obviously there's no way the discussion in Washington stays that way.

    @Michael Knight's suggestion earlier in the thread to increase the size of the House is spot-on. Not only is that the right thing to do to keep the government closer to the people, it also will help with some of the issues here. And the oft-cited objection in terms of the number of people in Washington bears little weight in the age of Skype and Facetime. There is no reason every legislator has to be in Washington all the time. In fact, making it so most Congressmen and Congresswomen aren't in Washington all the time will help significantly. Right now the halls of Congress are like shooting fish in a barrel for lobbyists. Make them have to fly around the country to visit every voting legislator instead of a one-stop shop for special interests.

    Imagine that, Representatives more easily reached by their constituents than by special interest lobbyists.

    • Like 5
  16. A TE coach should generally be a recruiting rainmaker and earns his money on the road and recruiting all year long. The amount of time spent on his position group is far less, as you say, but they are usually busting their ass all over the state and country all year long.

    Or should be.

  17. Also, I've already solved this multiple times. 

    Obviously this topic comes up every four years, so here we are in 2016. In an effort to keep what could be a ridiculously long post as short as possible I will list some of the alternatives below, discussing each briefly, then conclude with the one I would favor most. This is intended to be a thought exercise where hopefully adult-type people can discuss things on a theoretical level and do so civilly. If you come into this thread and start any partisan shit then fuck you and stay out.

    A. Current system

    Nobody seems to like it all that much, but the people that really hate it are the ones that lose each election. I like the current system in one respect in that it is based on the idea that each State has an inherent value simply by being a member of the union but also reflects the idea that more heavily populated States reflect the will of a greater number of citizens. Detractors of the first part of that sentence like to say things like "land shouldn't have a vote" but I simply view that as far too dismissive of the idea that the nation is a union of distinct States. Those that are familiar with the political posts I've made over the years are well aware that I am a huge fan of the Federal concept in that I believe that the various States should be free to have far different laws on many topics because that presents American citizens with 50 choices of where they want to live. They can vote with their residence in such a system, and the voice of migration would over the long haul have a major say in laws and political developments.

    Why do I not like it? Because despite each State's ability to determine how they apportion the delegates the vast majority go with a winner-take-all approach and I simply don't like how that completely devalues votes in States that are solidly one party or the other. I think there is a happy medium in there somewhere.

    B. Straight popular vote

    Nonstarter for me because as noted above I like the fact that States have inherent value. Plus logistically at some point there will be a race so close that a recount is needed and all ballots nationwide will need to be transported to one location. Just an absurd visual. Plus then you raise the question of runoff elections if it's a straight popular vote considering that 17 times nobody has received more than 50% of the popular vote. Two-round systems are used in dozens of nations where a popular vote decides the chief executive.

    C. Electors assigned proportionally to popular vote

    This is just putting a different label on the straight popular vote. Basically holding on to the 538 electors simply for tradition's sake. Nah.

    D. Assign 2 electors to each State winner, the rest assigned proportionally

    This is an attempt to mimic the fact that the electors for each State represent their two Senators and their current Representative count. The reason I don't like this one is because it ignores the fact that Congress was actually set up so that bills must pass both the Senate and the House, so while the Senate is considered the upper chamber the fact remains that they are at least nominally equal in effecting laws. Which leads me to my two favorite options, one of which is I absolutely do not favor due to political realities.

    E. 2 electors assigned to each State winner, one elector assigned to the winner of each Congressional district

    This one gets to the heart of the people electing the President by speaking in place of their elected Congressmen. This would actually be great in a world where Congressional districts are drawn by computer based on population maps that are devoid of political or demographic information. But holy shit can you imagine the gerrymandering fights when each district helps decide the entire Executive branch instead of merely 1/535th of Congress? So it's a no-go for now. Which leaves me with...

    F. Half of a State's electors (rounded up for States with an odd number) to the winner, the remainder assigned proportionally

    The Senate being traditionally the upper chamber as mentioned, a State with an odd number of electors will assign the extra elector to the State winner. The remaining electors are assigned proportionally to the popular vote within the state. For example, in 2012 the Presidential results in Texas were

    Mitt Romney - 57.17%
    Barack Obama - 41.38%
    Other People - 1.45%

    In this system that would give Romney 19 electors for the State victory, then the remaining 19 would be assigned proportionally. Romney 10.86, Obama 7.86, Other People 0.28 which leaves us with Romney 11 and Obama 8. Romney takes the Texas electors 30-8 in that election instead of 38-0. Similarly California becomes Obama 44, Romney 10, Johnson 1 instead of Obama 55-0. Since I know people will wonder, the overall count in 2012 was originally 332-206 in favor of Obama, with this system it would have been Obama 303, Romney 234, Johnson 1.

    I'd be willing to calculate other elections if anyone's interested.

    Obviously this will never happen but I like it best so that means it's best.

  18. On 3/24/2019 at 10:16 AM, Hank Kingsley said:

    And there are a lot of disenfranchised Republican voters in NY and CA what would finally have a voice in a Presidential election. And Democrats in Texas. 

    Abolishing the electoral college isn't about getting a D in the White House. With a much higher voter turnout and a simple and fair path to victory, it will be easier to unify Americans.  And both parties will have to adjust their ideas/policies to benefit all of us. 

     

     

    Two posts later...

    On 3/24/2019 at 10:21 AM, Hank Kingsley said:

    When a Republican POTUS candidate wins the popular vote once in the last 30 years and we're stuck in the mess, yeah. Something needs to be done. 

    The electoral college made sense at one point. But Republican politicians have learned to game the system and destroyed its value. We have to adapt. 

     

    You shouldn't lie to yourself so blatantly. It's rude and you might get mad at yourself.

  19. Right back at you.  This seems to be a common defect with message board posters.
    Yeah, no. I don't have a position on the veracity of that report. If I had to guess I'd figure it's true that there's some communication going on but that it says nothing about whether or not he's genuinely interested in leaving Tech. It could simply be his agent doing his due diligence in making sure he's always aware of his client's market value.

    You have chosen to believe it's not true based simply on wanting that to be the case. But you're absolutely right that it's not uncommon.
  20. Poster - Win Probability (# Paths)
    Huckleberry - 50.97% (10,040)
    Jack Straw - 15.33% (7,326)
    HornOnTheBayou - 12.28% (4,015)
    Goo Punch - 10.07% (7,415)
    Capn81 - 7.10% (1,947)
    Bartles - 2.84% (1,630)
    Tie - 1.40% (395)
    IPoopOnWhoop - 0.00% (0)
    BigOrange1 - 0.00% (0)

    It turns out that IPoopOnWhoop has also been eliminated. There are 32,768 possible conclusions to the tournament from here forward, note that the win probability above is not the percentage of those paths that lead to a poster's win, but rather the combined probability that one of his win paths happens.

    As you can see, I am only a coin flip to win despite the most dominant position after the first weekend I can remember. I had an amazing four double digit seeds win their first game but all of them lost their second game.

  21. 19 minutes ago, HRSchenker said:

    This happened my senior year of high school and our principal told us it was because they worried about snipers outside who would pick each student off one by one and the surviving students would get blown up by the bomb.

    Even this absurdly overdramatic and fearful logic is dumb. So 100% of students die by bomb instead of some students surviving in a mad dash while a sniper fires at them?

  22. At this point in the tournament I start posting a different update based on overall contest winning probability. Problem is it has to calculate all the possible permutations that are left (which is why I don't do it at the beginning of the tournament, of course). I'm trying to automate it right now so we'll see how long it takes.

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