Lurker > Humble_Novice

Agree with all of this. A better argument for people who want to make it "Biden v Trump" is to make it "Democracy v Fascism". The Republican Party will absolutely turn us into some model of either Hungary or Russia if they're ever given the chance, with or without Trump.

This election season is the time to just say it straight out without any of the niceties we grew up taught to display in order to respect opposing political opinions. The modern GOP is evil, and has been for a long time. Donald Trump is evil, and has been since before he entered politics.

If you vote GOP or refuse to vote for Biden, the only realistic alternative at this point, then you are endorsing evil. You are allowing it to slither into power, to harm this country, and to hurt marginalized people who are our neighbors and friends.

Biden is absolutely flawed and makes mistakes. I dont care, and neither should anyone else. This time there is clearly a good side and a bad side, and a refusal to endorse the good and figure the rest out later means you are on the wrong side.

I dont want to hear about policy or anything else. MAGA is screaming who they are from a damn bullhorn, and it is not acceptable. It never was. Vote Blue, or understand that you are helping people who are screaming in your face that they are evil ascend to power, with all of the unconscionable consequences that will bring.

The floor is completely wrong. Although the Muromachi period did start to see tatami rooms beyond just a sleeping and sitting tatami, they absolutely did not look like this. Additionally sitting in seiza was not a standardized thing until much later in the Edo period. The way the samurai are sitting here would never happen in a period drama made in Japan. It's a very obvious mistake. You can look up sitting samurai from the period and will notice that cross legged sitting, agura, is by far the most common at that time. Seiza was facilitated by the full tatami rooms that became standard in the Edo period and the rules requiring it followed that development.

I hope the fucker is dead

Dude what the hell.

I checked myself using Word's wordcount and these are definitely not accurate. Like I said, Yasuke's article has about 1,500 words bloated on to it by the References section. I'll concede that it turns out that Yasuke's article is longer by about 500 words, but again, like I already said, cut out the In Popular Culture Section and it's less than Akechi's. They have about the same in historical content writing with an edge to Akechi, Yasuke is just in more fictional media that Wikipedia thinks is worth mentioning.

But you want to know who has a longer article than either of those guys combined? Surprise, it's William Adams. Do you have any opinions on why that is now?

Michigan Democrats asked state election officials to investigate Republican Senate candidates on Friday, accusing the Republicans of fraud and potential forgery of ballot signatures.

Michigan is shaping up to be a critical battleground state in the 2024 presidential election. The state has swung between Republican and Democratic candidates in past elections, making it a key target for both parties. Following the retirement of Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow, Republicans and Democrats have been vying for her Senate seat that is expected to be highly competitive with Representative Elissa Slotkin as the Democratic frontrunner for the Senate nomination and former Representative Mike Rogers as the Republican frontrunner with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

On Friday, attorneys for the Michigan Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) submitted a letter to the Board of State Canvassers asking election officials to investigate whether nominating petitions submitted by Republican U.S. Senate candidates Rogers, Justin Amash and businessman Sandy Pensler as well as former candidate Peter Meijer had "patterns that indicate the presence of potential forgery and other fraudulent signature gathering tactics."

"The apparent fraud uncovered demands an immediate investigation" and that the state Bureau of Elections and the canvassing board "should uphold their responsibility to protect the integrity of Michigan's elections and conduct a full, thorough examination," Michigan Democratic Party Chairwoman Lavora Barnes said in a statement.

Newsweek has reached out to Rogers, Amash, Pensler, Meijer and the Michigan Democratic Party via email for comment.

The letter claims that further investigation is needed as the candidates' submissions appear to have potential fraudulent signatures, with petition sheets that appeared to be filled out by only one person, voters' names appearing across multiple petitions in different handwriting and other evidence of potential fraud.

The vote came six years after Puigdemont led a botched 2017 independence bid that triggered Spain's worst political crisis in decades.

Led by Salvador Illa, Spain's health minister during the pandemic, the Catalan Socialist party won 42 of the regional parliament's 135 seats -- nine more than in the previous election in 2021.

Hailing the result as "historic" in a posting on X, Sanchez said it would mark the start of "a new era in Catalonia".

"A new era for all Catalans, whatever they think," said Illa as his supporters cheered his victory.

It was a major victory for Sanchez, who had wanted to show that his policy of defusing tensions triggered by the Catalan crisis had worked, ultimately reducing pro-independence sentiment in this wealthy northeastern region of eight million people.

And it gives him some much-needed breathing space after a difficult start to his latest term in office which began in November and has been soured by right-wing opposition and a graft probe into his wife that almost caused him to resign.

Since becoming premier in 2018 in the months following the failed separatist bid, Sanchez has sought to "heal the wounds" caused by the unprecedented political crisis

In 2021, he pardoned the separatists jailed over the secession bid and is currently advancing an amnesty bill for those still wanted by the justice system in exchange for key separatist backing that let him secure a new term in office.

In gaining more than 200,000 votes, the Socialists managed to deprive the pro-independence parties of the majority they needed to stay in power in a region they have ruled for the past decade.

Final results showed Puigdemont's hardline JxCat, the moderate ERC of outgoing Catalan leader Pere Aragones and the smaller hard-left CUP secured 59 seats, compared with 74 last time.

Even if they were to count the two seats won by the new ultranationalist Catalan Alliance, they would still be well short of the 68 seats required to rule.

JxCat won 35 seats, slightly higher than last time, while ERC fell sharply to 20, down 13, and CUP won just four, down from nine.

Puigdemont, 61, fled Spain to avoid prosecution following the botched secession bid and has lived in self-imposed exile ever since, running his campaign from southern France.

Although he will be allowed back when the amnesty bill becomes law, he had hoped a strong showing in Sunday's vote would have seen him re-elected leader, paving the way for a triumphant return.

He pledged to retire from politics if he failed to win.

me? Cause I live in a red state and dont see the point in wasting an hour of my day to cast a symbolic vote for a candidate Im not even particularly fond of.

If I lived in a swing state Id probably vote for Biden.

How many slam dunks did you see?

DFL state Rep. Heather Edelson will fill a vacant seat on the Hennepin County Board, after winning a special election on Tuesday.

In preliminary results, Edelson got 54 percent of the vote to defeat businesswoman Marisa Simonetti. The two candidates emerged from a field of six after an April primary election.

Edelson will represent District 6, which includes Edina, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Wayzata, among other communities.

She campaigned on improving mental health services and resources for people with disabilities work that she says shes well-prepared for after her time in the legislature and her previous job as a mental health therapist.

She will fill the vacant seat left by Chris LaTondresse, who resigned last year to take a job with an affordable housing nonprofit. Edelson will start after the legislative session ends next week.

The seat is up for election again in November.

Coleman was right, and with the legislative session entering its final week, Democrats launched what turned into an epic, 50-hour talk-a-thon starting on Monday, with the intent of once and for all preventing the GOP's candy-laden amendment from advancing.

A Missouri filibuster, mind you, is nothing like the D.C. version, which requires only that a senator file a piece of paperwork. Rather, the Show Me State demands a "talking filibuster," just like in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." And with a tiny Democratic caucus of just nine members, sustaining one is no easy task.

"I mean, it's physical. You're standing at your desk for three hours at least," explained Arthur. "Some have picked up extra shifts and really helped out. It's been an incredible team effort, and I'm really proud of everyone for stepping up and sacrificing sleep, and at times hydration, and talking at all hours of the night."

Members of the Senate's nihilistic Freedom Caucus exhorted their colleagues to break the filibuster by invoking a seldom-used procedural maneuver known as "calling the previous question," which, notably, only requires the support of a simple majority.

But the Republican leadership, which has been engaged in a rancorous row with the Freedom Caucus for years now, ignored those pleas. With the far right determined to burn everything down, GOP leaders have had to rely on Democrats to keep basic government functions operational.

Just a week ago, for instance, Democrats provided the votes for the state's annual budget while the Freedom Caucus stood opposed. Were Republicans to call the previous question, Democrats would have no reason to keep working with them.

So in the face of unshakeable Democratic solidarity and an utter lack of unity on their own side, Senate Republicans backed down on Wednesday afternoon. They instead voted to refer their amendment to a conference committee that would hash out a path forward with the House.

But the House had no interest in talking. The lower chamber had already passed the make-amendments-harder amendment, complete with ballot candy, and wasn't about to change course. As St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum explained, House Republicans believed that voters would never pass a sugar-free version of the amendment.

As a result, on Thursday afternoon, the House rejected the Senate's request for a confab. Democrats, their bodies exhausted but their spirits energized, stood ready to renew their parliamentary marathon, knowing they would only have to sustain it until 6 PM local time on Fridaythe drop-dead end of the legislative session.

That turned out to be unnecessary. While the chamber's leader, Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, made one last public attempt early Friday morning to encourage the House to pass a ballot candy-free version of the amendment, the Senate adjourned a short time later.

"There's no way the Senate can get done in 8 hours what it couldn't do in 50," Rowden said just before his party caved.

It was a complete and total victory for Democrats: No version of the GOP's amendment, either with or without candy, will appear on the ballot this year. Remarkably, almost the exact same thing happened a year ago, when a previous Republican plan to restrict direct democracy died on the very last day of the legislative sessionalso due to GOP disarray.

Now the focus will be on November, when voters are very likely to have the chance to reinstate the right to an abortion. Earlier this month, reproductive rights advocates submitted more than double the number of signatures needed to place their amendment on the ballot. A review of those signatures is pending, but few in Missouri doubt they'll hold upwhich is why Republicans were so desperately trying to pass their amendment.

Missouri Democrats scored a major win on Friday after Republicans abandoned their effort to make it harder to amend the state constitution. The victory paves the way for a ballot measure that would restore abortion rights to pass with just a simple majority this fall.

The stunning climb-down came thanks to a record-breaking Democratic filibuster and bitter internal divisions among Republicans, both between warring factions in the Senate and between the upper and lower chambers of the legislature.

Republicans were open about their desire to thwart an effort to undo Missouri's near-total ban on abortion by moving the goalposts for an amendment that's likely to appear on the ballot in November.

To that end, they sought to place a measure on the Aug. 6 primary ballotjust ahead of the November votethat would require amendments to win not only majority support among voters statewide, as is currently required, but also a majority in five of the state's eight congressional districts.

Those rules would have made it much harder to pass progressive proposalsbut not conservative measuresthanks in large part to Republican gerrymandering.

The fifth "bluest" district in the state (northern Missouri's 6th District) voted for Donald Trump by a daunting 37-point margin, putting it far to the right of the state as a whole, which Trump won by 16 points in 2020. By contrast, the tipping-point district for conservatives would have been the 3rd District, which backed Trump by 26 points.

"So basically the effect of that is it would dilute the voices of those who live in more populous areas like Kansas City and St. Louis," Democratic state Sen. Lauren Arthur told Daily Kos Elections on "The Downballot" podcast, "and it would give more power and weight to the votes of those in rural Missouri."

But Republicans knew that even this one-sided approach would struggle to win the support of conservative voters, even though it would only need a majority to pass.

"I think Republicans recognize that the measure will be incredibly unpopular," said Arthur, "and that people understand and support the concept of one person, one vote."

So the GOP sought to sweeten the deal with a cynical bit of manipulation that both sides dubbedone derisively, the other unabashedly"ballot candy."

Like any confection, this candy was sugary, empty, and unnecessary. Republicans proposed to woo conservatives by including provisions that would ban non-citizens from voting and prohibit foreign political donationsthings that are already illegal under state and federal law.

Democrats were prepared to fight the GOP's amendment fair and square at the ballot box and would have let Republicans send it to voters (albeit with Democrats voting against it) without any blandishments.

But they objected furiously to the inclusion of conservative candy. And they had good reason to, since this tactic had proven successful in the past: In 2020, voters repealed a redistricting reform measure they'd passed in a landslide two years earlier by narrowly adopting a Republican amendment that included some fig-leaf ethics reforms.

The Senate's Democratic minority turned to one of the few tools at its disposal to keep ballot candy off the ballot. In February, Democrats successfully staged a 20-hour filibuster that led the chamber to pass a version without these artificial sweeteners, though the measure's sponsor, Republican Mary Elizabeth Coleman, said at the time the battle to reinsert them wasn't over.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the structure of the Consumer Financial protection Bureau, the watchdog agency set up by Congress after the 2008 financial crash to protect consumers from predatory and deceptive practices by financial institutions.

The vote was 7-to-2. Writing for the court majority, Justice Clarence Thomas focused on the text and history of the appropriations clause of the Constitution, all of which, he said, give Congress broad discretion and flexibility as to how it authorizes funds to be drawn from the Treasury. He noted that the very first Congress allowed several executive agencies to fund themselves from revenue they collected, much like the CFPB does today in getting a capped amount from fees collected by the Federal Reserve system.

Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented. They said that the court had turned the appropriations clause of the constitution into a "minor vestige," allowing the CFPB to "bankroll its own agenda without any congressional oversight."

Congress created the CFPB after the 2008 financial crash to protect consumers from what were seen as predatory and deceptive practices by financial institutions. Since then, the bureau has established consumer protections for transactions ranging from mortgages to credit cards. But payday lenders have, for years, fought regulations that would limit excessive fees charged on small loans of just a few hundred dollars fees that often end up costing people thousands of dollars.

Then, last year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the CFPB's structure is unconstitutional because, instead of an annual congressional appropriation, Congress set the agency's funding at a capped amount that comes from banking fees paid to the Federal Reserve System.

The government appealed to the Supreme Court because many other agencies are similarly funded, including the Federal Reserve itself; the FDIC, which insures bank deposits; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which charters and regulates all national banks; and potentially even Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by a specific tax.