America's Second Civil War

"In other words black people tend to be the poorer, less advantaged group and thus appear to be more prone to criminality if you don't look below the surface and realise that comparative poverty underlies and better explains the patterns. In the same disadvantaged position white people are also more prone to criminality than their more well off or powerful peers." - Sir Professor Spot261 from lecture #528 of "Ruminations On Race 101"

just yankin' yer chain spot! and I agree that poverty drives the crime train up to a point. For example if you have to steal food or illegally tap into the power grid to keep lights on in your house, this pattern could be explained. Committing armed robbery, carjacking, home invasion, aggravated assault, drive by shootings, etc. not so much. Sorry but nobody gets a pass from me for committing these violent acts. If you engage in said acts and eat a bullet for your efforts, the needle on my pity meter just won't budge, sorry.

"you do realize that a lot of this progress involves folks coming there who were not cooked in the fever swamp of southern racism all their life coming INTO Georgia from elsewhere though - right?

Not to say that there's not racism elsewhere (oh hell naw) but if you're going to say "look at Georgia! proves racism is no longer a thing in the South!"....

yeah, that's bullshit.


(also, gonna be pretty hilarious when all these new Georgians flip the state blue and conservatives have to turn around and start bitching how they ruined your state)[/quote]" - Nova

did I ever claim there wasn't racism in Georgia? If so, quote me. That's what I thought. "Cooked in the fever swamp of racism?"
Yeah, once the enlightened woke progressives started flooding in and started sticking it to the man, everything was just hunky-dory.
Thank you oh gracious knights of liberalism for showing those white cretins the error of their ways!

more and more, it's become yours-or that which you closely resemble but deny/dance around. Arguments long ago settled over when "free" speech becomes a reasonable threat to others/incitement of hate and or violence and then we see Milo suing because nobody wants to hear his shit. The entitlements demanded by the already privileged are appalling.
I mean, there you are whining that christianity is being removed from public discourse and claiming others are demanding a safe space? No, it's that we don't care to hear the same shit for the hundred thousandth time.

What you define as "political correctness" is a caricature of what was meant when the term was first coined... i.e.: some sensitivity for others in how we speak/phrase things. That's all it ever was. Not language police (that woulda been conservative christians of the era looking for satan in D&D modules-geez- safe space anyone?)

Leftist ideology is more about wrestling control of the narrative from those traditionally held it to the detriment of everybody else. I.e.: the lost cause mythos of the CSA. How many decades has America bought that particular right wing narrative?

Help me out?

Yabut that's Jersey

Thing is I'm not justifying anything or offering sympathy, simply acknowledging the fact that crime rates are always higher where you have sharp socioeconomic divides. That doesn't know colour, it's simply that black people are statistically more likely to be in that situation.

White people would show the same patterns, as would hispanics, asians, whoever. It's the situation, not the skin colour determining that criminality.

The sun will explode before any such "evidence" is presented by @Tererun about any of the claims heshe makes about anyone on this board.

Which side keeps trying to criminalize burning the flag? Which side has spent the last three years having conniptions because an athlete knelt during the National Anthem? Which side keeps passing laws that require taxpayer-funded schools to endorse their religious beliefs? Which side throws temper tantrums when anyone uses a holiday greeting that acknowledges the existence of religions other than their own?

The cultural right in this country is deeply authoritarian, obsessed with enforcing conformity, and cares little for any freedom other than their own untrammeled ability to shit on others.

but you can get away with saying this, discussing anything racial in a rational manner. As a white conservative straight male most of the wordforge left would be all over me like white on rice! Oh shit can I say that? Here come the pitchforks!

Conservative schools, often religious and terrified of dissent to the point they will deny students for their sexuality or beliefs or showing too much shoulder?

Pray tell, which words aren't you allowed to use that you think are actually perfectly fine?

Which side has striven to remove all traces of anything non-Christian from public discourse?

Plenty of conservative voices, unless you are conflating outright racists with conservatism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

As seen by the sensible mature discourse from the right that doesn't immediately start screeching COMMUNISM SOCIALIST VENEZUELA DEATH PANELS as soon as someone suggests something as crazy as not sending people bankrupt because they got cancer.

What's wrong with that?

Nice try NotDayton.

Both. Seriously my friend are you unaware of the CONSTANT bitching among right wingers about left wing bias brainwashiung their kids at college? That shit has only been going on for 40 years.
You can't possibly have missed it. The "left wing snowflake" think has some validity but the majority of it is some propagandist finding a rare exceptional nutter and usaing them to drive the narrative that all liberals are running to safe spaces.

Consider - fools like Deniesh D'Sopuza regularly get invited to speak on "liberal" campuses (and protested, rightly so) but you virtually never see a liberal speak at Liberty University or Hillsdale or Bob Jones or any other notoriously conservative school - how come?

I take it you don't get e-mail alerts from "One Million Moms" or any similar outfits.

Maybe if Pharisees pretending to "Christianity" were not trying to establish an Evangelical Theocracy via the GOP they wouldn't be so worried about it?

The blowback against official references to Christianity is a DIRECT and proportional reaction to those assholes trying to legislate their doctrines on those who do not hold them by choice. Try to take over, actually, TBH, regain your former dominance, and you can expect some resistance.

Oh good Lord - I'm so sorry Tim Allen has been forced into a lonely life in a Cabin in Montana. When did you become such a sucker for propaganda? Turn off the Limbaugh show.

The right. Because the actual term is bullshit propaganda.

Why is it that "you can't say the N word" is "politically correct" but "How dare they say a Muslim prayer at the city council?" is a perfectly legit concern?

To be clear - that which is CALLED "politically correct" certainly exists...but it exists in equal measure on both sides, it's simply that right wing propagandists first weaponized the term. Same as they've done with other terms like "social justice warrior"

And so is the right. And it has been ever thus. And you're too smart to not see it.

The WASPs who are being harmed by seeing GLBT, muslims, and brown people. The ones who are terrified to go to the bathroom in a stall because a trans person might be around. The ones who cannit take atheism and want it run off of campus by prayers and religious propaganda.

You mean the people who melt down when presented with GLBT people and non-whitewashed US history? You mean the people who have tried to ban all forms of women's health information because an abortion might happen?

You mean which side has spammed christianity to drown out any mention of atheism or Islam?

Again, which side has controlled US censors since the invention of TV and radio to keep GLBT people, interracial marriages, words they have declares curse words, and has enforced the presentation of only WASP culture as positive?

You are so intellectually dishonest. The religious right has created politial correctness and enforced it in our media so only WASP issues can be presented while any other issue is censored and limited. I know you are mad because other people have gotten added to public recognition and now you have to see GLBT, atheists, muslims, and other races on TV, but you can STFU with your lies pretending that the right has not been the ones who have needed to be broken in this instance.

Now get the dildo and start pushing until you can taste it lanzman kitchens.

"You mean the people who melt down when presented with GLBT people and non-whitewashed US history? You mean the people who have tried to ban all forms of women's health information because an abortion might happen?"

Like the wave of conservative Trumpers taking vacation tours of plantations them leaving bad reviews because the guides said so many bad slavery things

Who the fuck tours a plantation and expects a POSITIVE experience? What were they expecting? Mint juleps and whipping the houseboy?

Even then, mint juleps.

No-one with human tastebuds should enjoy that shit.

Right up there with

This thread seems relevant to the current state of affairs in America.

The host of the podcast that inspired this thread is in Portland.

First, let me give this context by saying I believe this is possible, not that it's likely.

But one of the most likely of these unlikely scenarios is beginning to take shape. There are several ways it can be stopped, but most of them rely on good faith by the GOP, and quite frankly, that's of dubious providence these days.

How would it kick-off? President Pelosi.

How do we get there? By following what Donald Trump is signaling.

He's stated from the podium of the White House in a press conference that the election will be fraudulent, that foreign adversaries are helping the Democrats, and that the Democrats are openly stealing the election through mail-in voting. He claimed without evidence that 20% or more of all the ballots could be fake. And then he said it will probably go to the House to determine the winner.

He followed up the next morning by tweeting that there will be so much fraud that no one will ever know who truly won the election.

This is clearly one of his possible scenarios, and he's laying the groundwork. And from a limited POV, it makes sense.

The Constitution says that if a winner can't be certified in a joint session of Congress overseen by the VP, then the President is determined by the House of Representatives.

But the House votes by state, not representative. Each state gets 1 vote. That gives the GOP a win, and that's not likely to change by election day.

The problem with that ploy? It requires a quorum. If the Dems refuse to show, no president is selected. In theory the VP would then do so, but if the House doesn't meet, the Senate won't, because the losing side will also refuse a quorum.

Which means on Jan 20th the President of the United States, in termporary capacity at least, is the Speaker of the House. Note, that doesn't have to be Pelosi. It doesn't even have to be a member of the House! They could make Biden Speaker if they wanted to.

But I certainly don't think the Democrats will allow Trump a 2nd term if he refuses to accept the election results. And I think it is very likely the GOP base will lose their minds and violence will break out if they refuse a quorum.

The GOP can do the right thing and lean on Trump, they can refuse to play along and ensure the electoral votes are counted, but their base will hate them for it. They haven't shown the courage so far.

Anyway, for the first time in my life time, Maud might be right. Halftime might be over.

See this thread: https://wordforge.net/index.php?threads/americas-second-civil-war.117740/

>merged<

Damn ..., that's an hour of my life I won't get back - took an hour because I'm also working.

Anyway, Chicagoland is a perfectly valid term for the region north of I-80 in Illinois and south of Highway 50 in Wisconsin; west of Lake Michigan and east of Highway 47(Illinois)'120(Wisconsin). Otherwise, when someone responds to the question "Where in Chicago" with "Cicero", the other person isn't wondering if the mean the suburb (bad) or the street (good).

Also, despite being in Wisconsin, the area still feels like Chicago in much of the culture that isn't felt even 10 miles north of me.

Wut?

it's all in the thread

I'm not sure about the statement that the Senate won't meet.

The House is an oddball case because it's possible for a party to hold a majority, and thus control whether a vote can happen, and yet still lose a party-line vote in that particular situation.

In the Senate, the same party will have control over both whether there is a quorum and who wins the vice presidential election, and I don't think it's possible for the minority party to deny a quorum. (A quorum is 51, so hypothetically in a 50/50 split, the party that's in the minority because they don't hold the vice presidency could deny the Senate a quorum ... but Senate procedure is to always assume there's a quorum unless somebody requests a quorum call, so a member of the minority would have to be there to make the request, and would thus be the 51st senator.

This is getting pretty deep into arcane weirdness, but I think it's possible for Mike Pence to make himself acting president in this scenario.

I think whatever rules the Senate has on the subject will be hastily rewritten the moment it looks like this could happen.

If there's another sufficiently blue wave on election day, a change is possible. And that'd be fine, because the current rules law make the incoming House, not outgoing, the one that selects the President. Obviously the Dems have no reason to change that. (Used to think that was just a House rule, but apparently it's a law.)

Doesn't work. The 12th amendment provides a different definition of quorum for a contingent election. At least one member from each of ⅔ of the states has to be present. There are currently 41 states with at least 1 Republican Representative. There are 10 states where only a single member would need to flip, but those include the single Reps in WY, SD, ND, MT, and AK, only AK and MT of which are remotely plausible. The remainder are MD, OR, NV, and IA, which, thanks to gerrymandering, makes it even less likely than some of the single-Rep states. So preventing a quorum is out.

Possible but far from guaranteed.

Even if the quorum denial were a viable plan, that can't follow. There'd need to be a quorum to select the new Speaker. There will be no Speaker of the House in that case. So it falls to the President pro tempore of the Senate. Chuck Grassley or Patrick Leahy, depending on which party ends up controlling the Senate.

Here's another wrinkle.

Although each House delegation gets one vote, there is a House rule -- in effect since at least 1801 -- that states a state's vote must be agreed to unanimously by all members of its delegation. Although the rule can be changed at any time, the Democratic majority would presumably only change it if the result would be in their favor.

Right now, there are 18 unanimous House delegations ... and, yes, each party has nine of them.

All-Republican
Alaska
Arkansas
Idaho
Montana
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
West Virginia
Wyoming

All-Democratic
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Maine
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
New Mexico
Rhode Island
Vermont​

So if nothing changes, the House would be unable to choose a president without some kind of deal being struck.

The most likely flips that are located in states where a flip would change this calculation are all D-to-R flips. Xochitl Torres Small losing re-election in her R+6 district in New Mexico would drop New Mexico from the all-Democrats column and make the vote 9-8; Kendra Horn losing her R+10 district in Oklahoma or Ben McAdams losing his R+13 district in Utah would add that state to the all-Republican column and make it 10-9.

Gonna need a source on that because as far as I know, that's just simply not true.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40504.pdf

In 1825: