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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Hawaii has had Democratic supermajorities in its legislature for a long time. To the point that the Republican party was for a time - or still is - reduced to one seat in the state senate.
Given that Hawaii is ethnically very different from the rest of the US (large majority Asian if memory serves), I suspect that Republican race politics just can't hook enough people there.
California has had Democratic majorities for decades in its legislature. But they only recently - 2012-2014 - had a supermajority there.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI look forward to The Bear Flag Republic slowly taking over the US once the whole thing fragments into little weak countries.
We are the Land of the Setting Sun. Muahahaha!
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edited 28th Nov '16 11:13:43 PM by MadSkillz
Something needing to be discarded for not having factual basis is an opinion, not a fact. And something being important just because it's a fact is also an opinion, not a fact. Again, don't dismiss the role emotion plays in anything; the reason anyone does anything —like say, caring for other people in general— is because people feel things on some level, whether ethical, emotional, or both. If they think either is a fact, then that's what they think, and they will act on it.
Part of the reason many people supported The Moldy Tangerine —likely including some of the electors who voted for him— is because they perceive that another Democrat-run executive branch will only throw them further under the bus. It's one thing to say that their livelihoods are dying, but it's another to do so and just leave it at that. And I know it isn't just being left at that. But the solutions aren't appealing to them, because they haven't been convinced that they're the right ones, not emotionally, and not morally.
I do care about facts on some level. But the reality is that politics —and the progression of human history— is never just about facts. It never was and has been just about the facts. Facts are things that people work with, around, through, and even against, because it was thought of as right and/or because it felt good. If you want people to listen, then you've got to tell them your view in the ways that make them see it as being right in all the ways that aren't just factual. You have to make them think that your way is worth it. If we can't do that, then nothing will happen in our favor, maybe not even by outliving others.
On a last note, please don't turn into left-wing stereotypes like how many prominent republicans turned into right wing stereotypes. That will only worsen the divide and the conflict.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to be a stereotypical centrist extremist.
edited 28th Nov '16 11:17:51 PM by Ikiniks
but maybe somewhereedited 28th Nov '16 11:27:12 PM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."Finalists for the Treasury job include Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), who heads the House Financial Services Committee; Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker and prominent Trump campaign supporter; and John A. Allison IV, who built one of the largest regional banks, BB&T, a transition official said.
The swamp just got 10 feet deeper.
As awful as Pence would be for the LGBT community, Supreme Court rulings mean he can't at least revoke same sex marriages or ban abortions completely. So some legal limit exists as to how far he can act to curb LGBT rights.
First if all, wouldn't the Supreme Court be dominated by Pence and his cronies? Second, if not, will they agree to curb Ne Neutrality too?
If it will be the last bastion of freedom, they'll need foreign volunteers to organize a militia unit.
Writer Julia Jones told the New York Times in an interview that Bannon, who was recently named as Trump’s chief White House strategist, would occasionally claim that some people were genetically superior and once suggested that the vote should be limited to property owners.
Jones said she told Bannon that such a policy would “exclude a lot of African-Americans.”
According to Jones, Bannon replied, “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”Jones asked specifically
about his longtime executive assistant Wendy Colbert, who is black.
"She’s different. She’s family,” Jones said he replied.
...
Jones, who described herself to the Times as very liberal, insisted that Bannon was “not a racist” but instead “using the alt-right—using them for power.”
Bannon's not racist. He just doesn't want black people to vote, guys.
I'm not even remotely surprised that he would suggest reducing suffrage to property-owners.
It dovetails right into what we were talking before about the "American Dream" and the implications of those who can/can't succeed. Here, non-property owners would be considered not "responsible" enough to have a say in government.
I'm sure it would also be easily excused by that whole "founder's original intentions" nonsense (vs. the 20th and 26th amendments).
edited 29th Nov '16 12:53:29 AM by Eschaton
You know I am reminded of this quote by J. Arch Getty
I wonder based on that reality if having a Manichean attitude to dictatorship is healthy. Because it's a fact that people in real-life do not have that. I mean Singapore's Lee Kuan-Yew is a dictator and he's praised by Obama openly
and praised by the likes of both liberal elites like Fareed Zakaria and authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, and that old scoundrel Henry Kissinger. I mean seriously, he ran Singapore like a Competent Trump (he had a habit of suing his opponents and shutting down and buying up newspapers) and yet when he died he's made into a hero. The same applies to that Saudi royal who died recently and got fawning comments by the Western allies. This despite the fact that it's a feudal theocracy that makes Iran look like a John Stuart Mill paradise.
Fidel Castro is a heroic figure in Africa
, and was best friends with Nelson Mandela...he is considered one of the figures who played a part in curtailing the power of the Apartheid government (which was backed by USA). Obviously none of this excuses the other stuff he did, the crackdown on homosexuals in Cuba and the political prisoners. As a guy into tiers-mondisme/anti-racism and other issues, my feelings about Castro overall is close to that line in Touch of Evil: "He was some kind of man, What does it matter what you say about people?"
And historically some dictators are considered positively, Oliver Cromwell has a statue outside Parliament and then you have Napoleon, who was a hero to European Jews he brought out of the ghetto (like Heinrich Heine) but was weirdly made into a Hitler-analogue in wartime propaganda (forgetting that it was The Duke of Wellington who as PM denied, repeatedly, giving Jews the vote. and his descendant was a Nazi-enthusiast). And of course these days in some quarters, Julius Caesar is being reclaimed as a man of the Left.
So I am just thinking why have this attitude that a dictatorship is the worst thing in the world...its a terrible thing of course for a Democratic Society to have its institutions wither like that but ultimately there are some dictatorships which people will support and accommodate more than others. It happens today, everyday and it has happened in history. Hating Castro because he's a dictator and supporting other tyrants is not based on belief in democracy, it has everything to do with "our tyrant" and policies we approve of.

Doesn't Hawaii currently also have a supermajority of Democrats? As in entirely Democrats?