A modern civil war will not be fought on battle fields. That shit was pointless and stupid in the first civil war (which is a large reason why the South lost, they wanted glorious battles, and the north just burned cities)
No, a modern civil war will look like the mess in Syria or Haiti. It will be disorganized, chaotic, and there will be far too much pointless bloodshed, with no battle lines. Just a bunch of assholes killing people who they disagree with.
Or even the headline. It clearly says Georgia.
Honestly? Because a national popular vote (for president) would take an amendment, or every state joining the national interstate voting compact, but wouldn't actually fix the deeper issue of the dysfunction of Congress.
Also, the compact might be of questionable constitutionality.
But fixing congress... This link spells out the problem as well as a one time fix for a problem that's always going to exist.
A one time fix might be enough to fix things for a while...
But to truly fix things...
Set up something akin to Lemmy mixed with Wikipedia. Now, the only people who can post to this social media would be members of congress. Every single bill would have to be posted in its entirety to this platform for at least 30 days before a vote could be called. And then, members of congress could post in the comments, debating the bill. This would also give them ways to post links and research and shit,
Now, the important thing here, this platform would be open to anyone to view.
Hell, add in the ability to post video comments. Let these people play their popularity contests, but out in the open.
Oh yeah, if the bill is amended, then the 30-day timer restarts. Also, no more breaks. Congress is always officially in session. Then allow voting via the platform. Allow votes to be cast beforehand, but they finalize on the 30th day. If the bill does not get enough votes to pass, it's dead, but can be resubmitted, or kicked back to committee. (a sub-lemmy for particular topics)
Maybe add in hired transcribers whose only job is to post transcribed text of any meeting or such.
Then make the software open, and get states to use it, and city councils. Basically all government should be done in text and in the open. With time for those making the laws to actually read them, and for the public to be able to know exactly what's going on in government.
The benefit of my idea here is that it can support quite a bit of expansion, while still allowing a fairly local feeling representation. Because congress could easily work from home most of the time.
My ideal election laws would have an electoral college type setup, but based on congressional district rather than by state. Now, here are the changes that make it workable.
First, the number of congressional districts needs to increase. Massively. There needs to be a fixed ratio of Representatives to state population. At least 1 rep per X people. Then that number needs to be set in stone.
Congress got into a pissing match 100 years ago over how to do apportionment, so now we're stuck with 435 Representatives when the population of the US has more than tripled and two new states have been added.
The next thing that needs to be set in stone is a way to draw districts. Shortest split-line is the method of choice here. Now, it can favor conservatives and rural areas a bit, but only if your number of districts is too low. With enough districts, the output starts to look a lot like actual population maps. If you squint.
I'd ditch the Senate. Or roll it into the House. Maybe say that each state gets an equal number of representatives who serve more than 2 years. So that there's a group of people who have institutional knowledge when the next congress forms.
This would be important for the next change I'd make. Term limits, or rather, consecutive term limits. You'd be able to serve two terms, but then to serve a third you'd have to take one full term off, actually living in your district. You must spend 25 of every 30 days living in the district for at least 2 years to qualify to represent that district.
The final, and most impactful, change would be the voting system itself. We desperately need to ditch FPtP, and Ordinal voting systems in general. Cardinal voting systems are the only way to have viable third parties, with actual, separate identities.
My current favorite system is STAR. It's the absolute best single winner election system out there. There may be better systems in the future, but for now, this is it.
So let's talk practicality of these fixes.
Increasing the size of Congress is a single law. That's it. If you want to push things a bit further, there's James Madison's Congressional Apportionment Amendment, which despite being introduced in the late 1700s, is still a viable amendment, and could theoretically finish the ratification process.
Fun fact, the 27th amendment, which was ratified within my lifetime, was introduced along with the congressional apportionment amendment.
Drawing districts is a State level thing, but Congress does have the power to set requirements on federal elections. They could require that federal districts be drawn via a certain way.
But still, an amendment is likely the only way that it would be implemented.
Term limits flat out need an amendment, same with ditching the senate.
And the final note, the voting system needs to either be done state by state, or via the ability to control federal elections. Possibly needs an amendment to actually apply to everyone,
It's a two pronged attack.
It has always been a two pronged attack.
The rich assholes who want to fuck everyone over can't just come out and say it, they need a Face to rile up the crowds, but that Face is a problem. The Face can turn on the rich fucks. Well, to an extent. They're a useful charismatic fool, and possibly a danger to the rich, but mostly a danger to everyone else.
Anyway, the solution is to stand next to the fool king, and pass him "advice". Like a list of judges to appoint. "Don't think about it, we vetted these guys, and they love you".
Then there's the congressmen. "Don't have time to write a bill? Well, we saved you the trouble. It even does some of the shit you've been ranting about, but mostly it makes us richer".
And that's how it goes. People like Leonard Leo, Peter Thiel, Joel Kaplan. They're the brains.
They also funnel a shit-load of money into pushing their twisted ideologies.
Guardians 3 was good.
Mostly because they weren't trying to shoehorn future movie plot setups into it.
On that note, the Holiday Special was also pretty good.
Shang-Chi wasn't a bad movie... Not one I'm likely to rewatch much, but a good popcorn movie...
Other than that, no Marvel has started falling into producer interference mode, where every movie must explicitly set up the next, even if they don't have a full plan for what's next.
They've lost sight of the key to their success; telling a tight, self-contained story made by people who love the characters.
Um, the IDF has been killing Palestinian civilians en-mass since the start of the war. Using 2000lbs bombs in civilian areas kills civilians.
High level Israeli officials have flat out said that the end goal is 100% ethnic cleansing. An Israel completely free of Palestinians.
They've been slow rolling the Ethnic Cleansing for decades, but now they have an excuse to speed things up a bit. With the unwavering support of various major powers, Israel can speed run the ethnic cleansing.
https://www.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-gaza-palestinians-concept-paper-1.7015576
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/16/israel-gaza-mass-evacuation-ethnic-cleansing
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/10/bartov_genocide_apartheid
The calcium carbonate in hard water precipitates out when you boil it, i.e. it turns solid.
Microplastics make for great nucleation points for the calcium carbonate to latch onto. So, the microplastics became super easy to filter out of the water (with some getting stuck to the bottom of the kettle in that white scale that you have to use vinegar to clean out.
The calcium carbonate in hard water precipitates out when you boil it, i.e. it turns solid.
Microplastics make for great nucleation points for the calcium carbonate to latch onto. So, the microplastics became super easy to filter out of the water (with some getting stuck to the bottom of the kettle in that white scale that you have to use vinegar to clean out.
From the looks of things, the IDF laid a trap for Palestinians.
The IDF promised food aid to the people they've been starving for the past few months (and keeping on the brink of starvation for the past 17 years)
The crowds gathered, waiting for the food aid to trickle out, when the IDF opened fire with vehicle mounted, heavy machine guns. Over 100 people are dead, and something like 750 were wounded.
When the news says something like "as much as 45 years in prison" that's never the amount that even a poor person would have gotten.
To get to the maximum statutory sentence, the reporters had to completely ignore the sentencing guidelines.
This video is talking about Trump, but breaks down how the actual sentencing guidelines work.