Comments on: According to Obama …

By: Sennacherib

Sennacherib — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 21:40:49 +0000

He’s gone stale and knows it.

By: Steve (retired/recovering lawyer)

Steve (retired/recovering lawyer) — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 14:13:47 +0000

So is it possible that Obama is now finally exposed for what he has always been? I make no claim to anything like unusual powers of perception, but how was it that I was able, almost immediately to catch the whiff of a grifting charlatan on Obama when everyone else was singing his praises as a “healer,” our national savior, the embodiment of enlightened patriotism, the lightbringer and on and on, ad nauseam? He was not elected by blacks, although they voted for him overwhelmingly on account of his skin color (cafe au lait, but close enough for government work) but by gullible white Americans! No, it’s your fault, Mr. and Mrs. (and moreso, Mx.) America; you gave us this rotting, stinking hater of all things traditional and good, this quisling, this islamophilic, anti-Christian, anti-American, lying sack of merde. Thanks ever so much.

By: huxley

huxley — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 03:03:45 +0000

Re: Obama quote

Gringo:

I do remember that quote. In 2008 Obama styled himself as above it all, beyond red and blue.

But I noticed that when Obama was young he wasn’t hanging out with Young Americans for Freedom or William F. Buckley’s circle.

By: R2L

R2L — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 02:49:54 +0000

Kate on October 16, 2025 at 10:58 am said:
“Presumably Justice Jackson’s claim that black Americans don’t have full access to their voting rights if they aren’t guaranteed a Representative who is also black … ”
Except we realize, given the state and status of many Democrat run cities and states, that we can hope one day blacks (or “blacks” or Blacks) may realize that having a black Representative has not been all that beneficial over having one who just works on their behalf, no matter his/her racial or other identity allocations.
Clearly part of achieving that is overcoming the march through the institutions.

By: Gringo

Gringo — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 20:30:43 +0000

huxley quoting Huey Lewis:

I used to be a renegade, I used to fool around
But I couldn’t take the punishment and had to settle down
Now I’m playing it real straight, and yes, I cut my hair
You might think I’m crazy, but I don’t even care
Because I can tell what’s going on

It’s hip to be square
It’s hip to be square

Barack Obama, in his time as a student at Occidental College, was also concerned about hip vs. square. From Dreams from My Father:

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.

From an early age, Barack Obama was a poseur, adopting certain opinions or behaviors for the purpose of creating a certain impression on others. Some might call that the stance of a phony. But it is also the stance of a born politician. Barack chose his profession wisely. 🙂

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:33:35 +0000

In a single-member-district order, the majority party will have some advantages and have a seat haul which exceeds their share of the vote, depending on how evenly spread is their advantage. (Were their advantage perfectly evenly spread, they’d win everywhere).
==
If you want proportional representation, you have to switch to some sort of slate system.

By: Kate

Kate — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:23:49 +0000

The ironic thing about California’s independent commission is that it nevertheless has produced districts weighted towards Democrats; the 40% of California voters who vote Republican do not have anything near 40% of the Representatives. So Prop 50 calls for an even more gerrymandered map.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 18:27:57 +0000

The commission has Republican, Democratic, and supposedly non-partisan members (who side with the Democrats; that’s why they’re appointed). If you want a functionally impartial commission, it should consist of four members, two appointed by the Republican state chairman and two by the Democratic state chairman. (The pitfall here is that it may decay into an incumbent protection scheme; where you have a vigorous rotation-in-office rule where a minimum of 1/3 of the current legislature has to stand down every four years, this tendency might be mitigated).
==
The insistence on equipopulous districts with little variation is what generates a demand for centralized and purely discretionary re-districting.

By: fullmoon

fullmoon — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 17:39:27 +0000

The No on 50 people should turn it into a “Citizens vs Politician” contest.
Majority def dislike politicians. Maybe mix in a suggestion pro lifers and Trump supporters are “Yes on 50”.
Confuse the leftys..

By: fullmoon

fullmoon — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 17:35:38 +0000

The yes on 50 commercials are basically anti-Trump. No actual explanation of what the proposal is.Three pro 50 for every one anti 50.

Also:
California voters transferred the power to draw congressional lines from politicians to a bipartisan citizen commission in 2010 [1], with sources indicating this independent redistricting commission was created nearly two decades ago [2]. The commission was specifically established to take redistricting power away from politicians and give it to citizens [3].

California’s current extraordinary redistricting effort led by Governor Gavin Newsom. This represents a significant departure from the normal decennial cycle, as Newsom is pushing for a redistricting plan that could temporarily override the commission and create districts more favorable to Democrats until after the 2030 Census

https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/california-redistricting-history-3db923