So, when does USA split up into different countries?

[Galway Eagle]

Packers/Pats would dominate the YFL.

Now here's someone who's thinking of the positives!

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

Bingo, adding more each day. Collection is actually growing in value due to demand. Love it.

😂😂😂😂😂

[warriorchick]

Tennessee state ranking:

Education - 33rd
Health - 40th
Homicide - 42nd
Violent crime - 48th
Economy - 16th
Poverty - 42nd

Paradise on earth, I tell you.
Seriously, I'm sure Tennessee is lovely if you're a person of means. But doesn't seem so swell for the average person.

Depends on exactly where you live.  I wouldn't want to live in inner-city Memphis. But there are plenty of places that are highly ranked.  There are affordable suburbs in the Nashville area that are safe, have great schools and are served by Vanderbilt healthcare.

Where are the numbers for tax burden? Climate? Cost of living?

[🏀]

Depends on exactly where you live.  I wouldn't want to live in inner-city Memphis. But there are plenty of places that are highly ranked.  There are affordable suburbs in the Nashville area that are safe, have great schools and are served by Vanderbilt healthcare.

Where are the numbers for tax burden? Climate? Cost of living?

Cute.

[🏀]

How ridiculous is this conversation?

The greatest country ever built could be torn down because of a septuagenarian who has a bad toupee, lathers in skin bronzer and keeps a vanity golf handicap doesn’t think enough people liked him in the last election.

Great job America. You are great.

[JWags85]

How ridiculous is this conversation?

The greatest country ever built could be torn down because of a septuagenarian who has a bad toupee, lathers in skin bronzer and keeps a vanity golf handicap doesn’t think enough people liked him in the last election.

Great job America. You are great.

You really think that’s what it’s about? FFS.  That’s like screaming “socialist” at anyone who skews to the left and favors more social programs

Should have just stuck with your snarky reply to a reasonable counter reply about Tennessee

[MU82]

Depends on exactly where you live.  I wouldn't want to live in inner-city Memphis. But there are plenty of places that are highly ranked.  There are affordable suburbs in the Nashville area that are safe, have great schools and are served by Vanderbilt healthcare.

Where are the numbers for tax burden? Climate? Cost of living?

It's like anywhere -- people can produce stats to make any place seem great or bad.

Most people who don't live in Chicago love to describe the entire city as a vast hellscape of gun violence. But in the 10 years we lived in our North Side neighborhood, there were fewer shootings than there were in idyllic Apple Valley, Minn., where we lived the 10 years before that. There also was a hostage situation in Apple Valley, but it really was a nice place to live and raise a family.

Doc Dribble tried to portray Milwaukee as "da hood," which is good because Black people love it when old white guys use ebonics. He intimated that because of the violence in "da hood," no parents would pay big money to send their kids to Marquette ... even though thousands do.

Where I live in the Charlotte area is quite nice, and yet the crime rate doubled here over the last year.

I have no doubt that parts of Tennessee are wonderful, and also no doubt that parts are horrible. Same with the Detroit area or Vegas or LA or DC or, well, pretty much anywhere.

And as Pakuni says, it's a lot easier for those with money to find the "nice" areas.

[🏀]

You really think that’s what it’s about? FFS.  That’s like screaming “socialist” at anyone who skews to the left and favors more social programs

Should have just stuck with your snarky reply to a reasonable counter reply about Tennessee

#maga

His administration did lead and promote the Insurrection.

[Galway Eagle]

Depends on exactly where you live.  I wouldn't want to live in inner-city Memphis. But there are plenty of places that are highly ranked.  There are affordable suburbs in the Nashville area that are safe, have great schools and are served by Vanderbilt healthcare.

Where are the numbers for tax burden? Climate? Cost of living?

With all due respect you love to pick and choose which stats to throw out there when $hitting all over Chicago and Illinois so saying 'there's some good spots and some bad' and 'where are the good stats?' For a place that you prefer personally is pretty hypocritical when you don't do that yourself.

[jesmu84]

Tennessee state ranking:

Education - 33rd
Health - 40th
Homicide - 42nd
Violent crime - 48th
Economy - 16th
Poverty - 42nd

Paradise on earth, I tell you.
Seriously, I'm sure Tennessee is lovely if you're a person of means. But doesn't seem so swell for the average person.

I thought violent crime numbers were evidence of poor leadership and caused mass population movement?

[Jockey]

Depends on exactly where you live.  I wouldn't want to live in inner-city Memphis. But there are plenty of places that are highly ranked.  There are affordable suburbs in the Nashville area that are safe, have great schools and are served by Vanderbilt healthcare.

Where are the numbers for tax burden? Climate? Cost of living?

The low tax burden causes:
Education - 33rd
Health - 40th
Homicide - 42nd
Violent crime - 48th
Poverty - 42nd

[JWags85]

#maga

His administration did lead and promote the Insurrection.

So there were no divisions and burgeoning schisms until Trump? Got it.

[warriorchick]

With all due respect you love to pick and choose which stats to throw out there when $hitting all over Chicago and Illinois so saying 'there's some good spots and some bad' and 'where are the good stats?' For a place that you prefer personally is pretty hypocritical when you don't do that yourself.

Where have I used stats to $hit on Illinois or Chicago?  I could (for example, the net number of people who have moved out of the state in the last decade according to the last census), but I haven't.  I might have said that I don't like Illinois and I am glad that I moved, but I don't believe I have never said anything derogatory about those who like it.

It's disingenuous to use statistics about a state in general to judge whether or not a person's move was a good decision. No one who voluntary relocates does it to reduce his quality of life.

[MU82]

The civil war has already begun ... and democracy is losing.

From the NYT's David Leonhardt:

American politics these days can often seem fairly normal. President Biden has had both big accomplishments and big setbacks in his first year, as is typical. In Congress, members are haggling over bills and passing some of them. At the Supreme Court, justices are hearing cases. Daily media coverage tends to reflect this apparent sense of political normalcy.

But American politics today is not really normal. It may instead be in the midst of a radical shift away from the democratic rules and traditions that have guided the country for a very long time.

An anti-democratic movement, inspired by Donald Trump but much larger than him, is making significant progress, as my colleague Charles Homans has reported. In the states that decide modern presidential elections, this movement has already changed some laws and ousted election officials, with the aim of overturning future results. It has justified the changes with blatantly false statements claiming that Biden did not really win the 2020 election.

The movement has encountered surprisingly little opposition. Most leading Republican politicians have either looked the other way or supported the anti-democratic movement. In the House, Republicans ousted Liz Cheney from a leadership position because she called out Trump’s lies.

The pushback within the Republican Party has been so weak that about 60 percent of Republican adults now tell pollsters that they believe the 2020 election was stolen — a view that’s simply wrong.

Most Democratic officials, for their part, have been focused on issues other than election security, like Covid-19 and the economy. It’s true that congressional Democrats have tried to pass a new voting rights bill, only to be stymied by Republican opposition and the filibuster. But these Democratic efforts have been sprawling and unfocused. They have included proposals — on voter-ID rules and mail-in ballots, for example — that are almost certainly less important than a federal law to block the overturning of elections, as The Times’s Nate Cohn has explained.

All of which has created a remarkable possibility: In the 2024 presidential election, Republican officials in at least one state may overturn a legitimate election result, citing fraud that does not exist, and award the state’s electoral votes to the Republican nominee. Trump tried to use this tactic in 2020, but local officials rebuffed him.

Since then, his supporters have launched a campaign — with the Orwellian name “Stop the Steal” — to ensure success next time. Steve Bannon has played a central role, using his podcast to encourage Trump supporters to take over positions in election administration, ProPublica has explained.

“This is a five-alarm fire,” Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, who presided over the 2020 vote count there, told The Times. “If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in ’24.”

Barton Gellman, who wrote a recent Atlantic magazine article about the movement, told Terry Gross of NPR last week, “This is, I believe, a democratic emergency, and that without very strong and systematic pushback from protectors of democracy, we’re going to lose something that we can’t afford to lose about the way we run elections.”

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist, notes that the movement is bigger than Trump. “I think things have now moved to the point that many Republican Party officials and elected officeholders are self-starters,” she told Thomas Edsall of Times Opinion.

The main battlegrounds are swing states where Republicans control the state legislature, like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Republicans control these legislatures because of both gerrymandered districts and Democratic weakness outside of major metro areas. (One way Democrats can push back against the anti-democratic movement: Make a bigger effort to win working-class votes.) The Constitution lets state legislatures set the rules for choosing presidential electors.

“None of this is happening behind closed doors,” Jamelle Bouie, a Times columnist, recently wrote. “We are headed for a crisis of some sort. When it comes, we can be shocked that it is actually happening, but we shouldn’t be surprised.”

Here is an overview of recent developments:

Arizona. Republican legislators have passed a law taking away authority over election lawsuits from the secretary of state, who’s now a Democrat, and giving it to the attorney general, a Republican. Legislators are debating another bill that would allow them to revoke election certification “by majority vote at any time before the presidential inauguration.”

Georgia. Last year, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, helped stop Trump’s attempts to reverse the result. State legislators in Georgia have since weakened his powers, and a Trump-backed candidate is running to replace Raffensperger next year. Republicans have also passed a law that gives a commission they control the power to remove local election officials.

Michigan. Kristina Karamo, a Trump-endorsed candidate who has repeated the lie that the 2020 elections were fraudulent, is running for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections. (Republican candidates are running on similar messages in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and elsewhere, according to ABC News.)

Pennsylvania. Republicans are trying to amend the state’s Constitution to make the secretary of state an elected position, rather than one that the governor appoints. Pennsylvania is also one of the states where Trump allies — like Stephen Lindemuth, who attended the Jan. 6 rally that turned into an attack on Congress — have won local races to oversee elections.

Wisconsin. Senator Ron Johnson is urging the Republican-controlled Legislature to take full control of federal elections. Doing so could remove the governor, currently a Democrat, from the process, and weaken the bipartisan state elections commission.

The new anti-democratic movement may still fail. This year, for example, Republican legislators in seven states proposed bills that would have given partisan officials a direct ability to change election results. None of the bills passed.

Arguably the most important figures on this issue are Republican officials and voters who believe in democracy and are uncomfortable with using raw political power to overturn an election result.

Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official, has helped to start the Renew America Movement, which supports candidates — of either party — running against Trump-backed Republicans. It is active in congressional races but does not have enough resources to compete in the state contests that often determine election procedures, Taylor told The Times.

Gellman, the Atlantic writer, argues that Democrats and independents — as well as journalists — can make a difference by paying more attention. “Grass-roots organizers who are in support of democratic institutions,” he said on NPR, “could be doing what the Republicans are doing at the precinct and the county and the state level in terms of organizing to control election authorities to ensure that they remain nonpartisan or neutral.”

[forgetful]

So there were no divisions and burgeoning schisms until Trump? Got it.

I'm with you JWags. Trump was a poster child of the problems that had been brewing for quite some time. He was a marketer extraordinaire who took advantage of existing schisms to gain power, and maintain a stranglehold on that power. He did not create these problems, just made them more manifest.

I'm not sure when this schism really appeared to go down the 1-way road to where we are now, and am not sure what the exit ramp from this schism will look like.

[🏀]

So there were no divisions and burgeoning schisms until Trump? Got it.

Division? Of course, that’s encouraged.

Schism is just another word for opinionated division so sure.

I can say for a certain that there were no white, suburban middle class led Insurrections until Trump them to it. Not too mention having a PowerPoint spelling out the steps to steal democracy from America because of the Insurrection.

Not that democrats will ever do anything to keep this from happening again, they’re just as guilty.

Keep flying that flag, friend.

[Galway Eagle]

Where have I used stats to $hit on Illinois or Chicago?  I could (for example, the net number of people who have moved out of the state in the last decade according to the last census), but I haven't.  I might have said that I don't like Illinois and I am glad that I moved, but I don't believe I have never said anything derogatory about those who like it.

It's disingenuous to use statistics about a state in general to judge whether or not a person's move was a good decision. No one who voluntary relocates does it to reduce his quality of life.

You literally had me looking up CPS High school rankings defending that CPS isn't the utter trash you've claimed it to be... that'd fall under education. Years ago I recall a gun debate with you can't remember the specifics I just know it happened and that I posted that people from burbs that don't have it happening in their backyard shouldn't get a say to which you disagreed because it effects housing value. That'd fall under crime/violence.  You've also mentioned the tax rates as well in the past but I'll agree on that one so don't have the specific situation at the ready.

Stats was the wrong word but picking and choosing which topics to post about would be accurate

[JWags85]

Keep flying that flag, friend.

Oh I’m MAGA now? Never voted for him, never defended or outspokenly stood up for him, and am on record here criticizing his BS countless times.  But since I’m not holding him primarily accountable for the rampant divisiveness and chasms in this country, He’s my hero whose flag I fly?

Got it.

[#UnleashSean]

Oh I’m MAGA now? Never voted for him, never defended or outspokenly stood up for him, and am on record here criticizing his BS countless times.  But since I’m not holding him primarily accountable for the rampant divisiveness and chasms in this country, He’s my hero whose flag I fly?

Got it.

Don't ya know 2021 internet? If you dont blame orange man for literally everything, then you in fact are an incel who supports him.

[Jockey]

So there were no divisions and burgeoning schisms until Trump? Got it.

There were no coup attempts until trump.

[🏀]

Oh I’m MAGA now? Never voted for him, never defended or outspokenly stood up for him, and am on record here criticizing his BS countless times.  But since I’m not holding him primarily accountable for the rampant divisiveness and chasms in this country, He’s my hero whose flag I fly?

Got it.

Didn’t think I said that. Nope. Didn’t.

[Galway Eagle]

So there were no divisions and burgeoning schisms until Trump? Got it.

Well there was no major birther movement till he did that as I recall. But I'd say the whole recent divide started and with the tea party formation and McCain (who I like previously) mainstreaming hardline right politicians with Palin and then allowing that uneducated lunacy to get popular.

Then violent militias were practically legitimized when the Bundy standoff happened and when they took over a town in North Dakota.

Just some random thoughts on the escalation over the past 15yrs

[jesmu84]

Well there was no major birther movement till he did that as I recall. But I'd say the whole recent divide started and with the tea party formation and McCain (who I like previously) mainstreaming hardline right politicians with Palin and then allowing that uneducated lunacy to get popular.

Then violent militias were practically legitimized when the Bundy standoff happened and when they took over a town in North Dakota.

Just some random thoughts on the escalation over the past 15yrs

IMO...way before that. Newt Gingrich? Ronald Reagan?

[Galway Eagle]

IMO...way before that. Newt Gingrich? Ronald Reagan?

I'm only 30. I might not have noticed it during bush or something but it just didn't seem as divided. But there's definitely not going to be any one starting point it's all a slow trend with a few major escalation moments.

[GB Warrior]

IMO...way before that. Newt Gingrich? Ronald Reagan?

Gingrich mastered the art if weoponizing politics. If we're looking for threads that lead to the modern day, he's a pretty good place to start