Your World Is On Fire

Ted Cruz gave a speech in New Hampshire over the weekend, and was engaged by a 3 year old girl. After the girl spoke her mind, Cruz remarked, "The Obama economy is a disaster, Obamacare is a train wreck and the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind-the whole world is on fire." Considering we've added jobs, more people have healthcare, and we at least brought some troops home, I think all of those are working fine. You also told a 3 year old that the world is on fire, when in fact the world is filled with carbon emissions. If you're going to tell a child that the world is coming to an end, at least tell her the truth.

Upcoming elections

What a clusterfuck they will be. We've gotten the least insane people from both sides to battle for the presidency. Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton will be in the race, end of story. Fuck the primary elections, it'll be Bush and Clinton. Jeb Bush is related to George Bush, so he's unacceptable. Hillary Clinton is the target of Republican attacks and seems to be irresponsible with her email choices, so I'm undecided at this point. Republicans don't want a female president, but I don't want yet another shitty president. As it turns out, both parties have selected the most ironic people for the elections. Another Bush gets to run, even after George decided to invade a country for no reason, and a Democrat gets to run, despite their previous failure to stop Republicans from stealing the Senate. Should a Democrat run? Yes. Should it be Hillary Clinton? Hell no. Not only will it be the same shit Obama is currently doing, but we'll have to deal with another gridlock in Congress if the Republicans win Congress again, but not the presidency.

Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality has been an issue for some time. The Republicans don't want the FCC to make the decisions because they want to regulate the internet their way. Here's the reason that can't happen. If that happens, internet companies can intentionally slow down your internet connection for certain websites. The current Congress majority does not want to regulate internet because some of their supporters are the very people that run the internet companies. The arguments against net neutrality are scant and almost don't matter, but then again, so are the arguments for corporations being people, and Citizens United vs. FEC made them people. I've got to hurry this post along before the internet company decides to slow me down for talking about this, so I'll make the end brief. Pass Net Neutrality. Allow people to browse the internet freely without Comcast slowing down  their Facebook page because they liked DirecTV.

Gerrymandering and malapportionment

With Congress's approval rating at just 16 percent, one wonders how in the holy hell people get reelected. Some of it is just voter laziness and/or voter fraud. The other part is corruption in our government. Many Congressional representatives use a process called gerrymandering to get reelected. In this post it is important to understand the difference between gerrymandering and malapportionment. Malapportionment does not have to relate to the boundaries at all, while gerrymandering specifically relates to the boundaries. There are several ways to gerrymander: Cracking, Packing, Hijacking, and Kidnapping. Cracking spreads the voters of particular types into many different districts to stop them from having a large voting bloc. Packing concentrates many voters of one type into a single electoral district to prevent them from influencing other districts. Packing and Cracking are often used together, especially when the party controlling the districts has a state-wide minority. Hijacking redraws two districts in order to make two incumbents of the same political party run against each other, ensuring one will be eliminated. This leaves the remaining district to be won by the other party. Kidnapping moves areas where a certain elected official has support to another district, which makes it harder for that official to win with the new electorate. This is used against officials who have support in many urban areas; their supporters are moved to another district, and the new electorate is more rural. These tactics are used together the majority of the time. Who would do such a thing? The majority party in Congress, usually. The districts are selected by the Census Committee, and who controls who's in committees? The majority party. Currently, Republicans. With their majority in the House they managed to gerrymander their way to a majority in the Senate. Point is, politicians are liars, regardless of party affiliation. Obama is a liar. Boehner is a liar. McConnell is a turtle (seriously, the guy's too old to be human). Hillary Clinton did not have sexual intercourse with that woman. You see my point. What can we do to stop it? Nothing. That's right, nothing. Since Republicans control the committees, the only way Congress can change now is if they focus all their energy on cheating for the presidency. If they get the presidency, they'll do the same thing Obama is doing, except they'll order a mass execution of all Mexicans to solve the problem.