Interesting take. I look at it as less “anti-medieval” and more anti-government. Gygax was a libertarian and it grew out of wargaming. Gygax just wanted a world where he could fight dragons and didn’t bother to do the world building of an economic or political system. I think this was more out of disinterest in the topics rather than as a political stance.

“Please do not link to this draft as it is unfinished and the URL will change upon publication.”

This is still in draft, unfinished, and they specifically asked people not link to it yet. Probably better to wait until the report is final

Thank goodness - I thought maybe I was the only one who saw that!

Yahoo News is an aggregator, so difficult to gauge. The source of this particular article is a site called semafor.com.

I’d never heard of it before so looked into it - Check out the section on China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semafor_(website)

Too true. I have however noted to the admins/makers of the bot that links like this (also the New York Times and others) often include “/opinion/“ in the URL so it should be fairly straightforward and easy to at least address those. Low hanging fruit and all that.

While I don’t have a problem with this article in particular, the MBFC bot is still not making a distinction between opinion pieces and news articles which is problematic.

How do you think legislation happens? This isn’t just “three people”, this is a sitting Democratic Senator and two Democratic Reps. All with long histories in the party. Hell, Beyer was Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. These aren’t nobodies.

And they’re not just “saying that they’d like to do something”, this is actual legislation that was submitted in both the House and Senate. These kinds of bills may have to be introduced a number of times before they pass but Dems are the only ones doing the work to at least try and if nothing else keep the issue alive and active as a discussion.

This is how the legislative process works all over the world, and if you can’t or won’t bother to understand that, than I can’t imagine there’s anything else really for us to talk about.

Not quite.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S4-C1-3/ALDE_00013640/

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

The 24th amendment was a special case as it only applied to federal elections (so technically state office elections could still have a poll tax). There was also a question of voter qualification being outside the generally interpreted meaning of “times, places, and manner” so a statute wouldn’t be enough, but an amendment would.

RCV I think could generally be understood to be covered under “manner” and so Congress can do that without amendment for Congressional races.

So even when Democrats do the right thing, you don’t give them credit? Got it.

Oh, you mean like these two Democratic reps and the one Democratic Senator who just introduced a bill to do ranked choice voting for all 2028 congressional races? https://rankthevote.us/raskin-beyer-welch-bill-would-bring-ranked-choice-voting-to-congressional-elections/

Hmm, interesting. I can’t find any recent polling on this race. Everything seems to be from almost a month ago

The most notorious of them blocked me, so they’re not even seeing this. :)

Yeah, we’re both probably getting too abstract here :)

Which is kind of what it is. Getting a bill passed is very much about knowing what specific parts of Congress you need to interface with. And being a leader is actually having people who canvas the other congress people and figure out who to focus on.

Maybe it is just my engineer brain but I always prefer to work with people who know what it is important and are able to quickly look up the other stuff.

So I guess the question is: Do you believe any of this applies in the analysis of Stein’s qualifications? She has essentially zero experience as an elected official, she has zero experience as a leader of any kind. And she has not demonstrated a basic understanding of the fundamental structure of the government.

Or do you believe there is any evidence that offers evidence to the contrary?

Would you trust a brain surgeon who didn’t know and understand the various regions and structures in the brain? Or an electrician who wasn’t exactly clear on what the building codes allowed regarding which gauge of wire could be installed and what material it was made of?

A President shouldn’t have to know everything, but they should at least know enough to ace a high school civics exam.

He blocked me, so doubt he’ll see it :P

I think you’re overthinking it. This was the actual reported exchange:

Later in the interview, Rye attempted to demonstrate the Green Party’s failure to build power from a grassroots level. She asked Stein how many members of the House of Representatives there were.

“How many total are there? What is it, 600, some number?” Stein said, before Rye set the record straight.

No one is “afraid” of Jill Stein. What they’re afraid of is a GOP and Russian misinformation campaign disguised as a third party presidential campaign causing chaos in an election with likely extremely close margins of victory.

The idea that anyone is afraid of Stein is hilarious by the way. The 74yr old perennial candidate whose only elected experience is partial representation of a district in a municipal legislature for a town of 30k people? Yeah, not a serious candidate - because if she was, you’d hear something from her in between pointless presidential campaigns.

Odd then that they’re using Rule 5 bans on people like me who never posted to their community

Ah, this explains it! Saw I was banned from a community that I’d never posted in and evidently one of the mods is a wanker. Mystery solved :)

Especially as she’s actually run for President twice before! It’s like coming into the same job interview multiple times and giving worse answers each time.