Halloween jack-o-lanterns



 Both photos taken today by me, rights reserved. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amend the US Constitution on voting rights

Proposed amendment on voting rights: Section 1. The people who are eligible to vote shall have the right to vote. Section 2. The people who cast legal votes have a right to have their votes counted. Section 3. Within states, the process of casting votes shall be substantially the same throughout the state. Section 4. The government shall not erect barriers to people voting. Casting a vote shall be equal in difficulty throughout a state. Section 5. The voting process shall be recorded in a way that close elections can be recounted & all elections can be audited for accuracy of the results. Section 6. States, Congress, the executive branch & the courts shall all be empowered to enforce these goals. States, Congress, the executive branch & the courts shall not be empowered to undermine or diminish these goals. Section 7. Courts shall be particularly vigilant to protect the voting rights of those historically excluded from the voting & electoral process. Section 8. Con...
Read more

best case scenario; worst case scenario... Trump winning might be a good thing

 So, November 3, 2020 is the U.S. election date for President, Congress & other stuff. What is the best case scenario? 1. There is no violence. 2. There is no interference with the right to vote in other ways. 3. The votes are counted in an orderly manner that does not invite allegations of corruption, malfeasance, incompetence or cheating. 4. The Democrats achieve 3/5 super majorities in both the US Senate (60 seats) and the US House (261 seats). 5. Left candidates for President get 15% or more of the vote. 6. Trump wins re-election with about 41% of the vote & Biden gets significantly more, eg 45% of the vote. 7. And various positive referendums pass, eg Illinois amending the state constitution to allow graduated income taxes. This scenario will force Democrats to actually govern in Congress. Nancy Pelosi has got shit out of the Democratic majority in the US House. And Chuck Schumer leads the Democrats like he's got 39 votes on his side, not the 47 (45 + 2) votes he actua...
Read more

remapping Illinois US House districts to make IL-04 & IL-05 Latino districts

Image
 I have begun the process of remapping Illinois' US House districts using demographic data from Wikipedia and censusreporter.org. My goal is to make a map that more accurately reflects the demographics of Illinois. There's a logic to the map that makes sense to me, but I have not focused on creating a bunch of comfortable Democrat districts. See Dave Wasserman's example of this approach. I have avoided creating comfortable Democrat districts because the most reliable way to do this is to prop up "comfortable Dem" districts with Latino, Black and Asian voters who then get to vote Democrat but not be elected as Democrats. (Yes, there are exceptions, like Rep. Lauren Underwood, but the norm is more like having Reps. Bill Foster, Marie Newman (previously Dan Lipinski) and Mike Quigley blocking the path for Latinos.) The draft maps: Illinois' Fourth (IL-04) District ( Wikipedia on current district ):                         Il...
Read more