That's right, Romney will even put it in writing....on his etch-a-sketch.:lol2::artist:

Seriously, he has flipped on more major issues than any other candidate I can remember. Mr. "I'm a moderate Republican" meets Mr. "I'm so conservative I only sleep on the right side of the bed". When he was pandering to the right in the primary, I was half expecting him to drop a dime to the INS on his household staff to make his right wing bones on immigration policy.

2002 - Pro choice
2012 - No choice

Now that's a man you can rely on to stick to his convictions! :rolleyes:

I don't fault a person for changing their position on a given subject, even one as important as a woman's choice regarding abortion. In the case of our lawmakers, I'd like them to explain the reasoning behind their decision. That's true whether they've changed their position or not.

The reason they changed their minds matters to me. If it's for what I feel is a good reason, I can respect that. They've had a serious change of heart, they got religion, those kinds of reasons might not be my reasons but I can respect them. If the reason is to curry favor with a given part of the electorate, I can't respect that reason. For someone like Romney, who ostensibly would be representing all citizens, I don't think this kind of reason is worthy of my respect. And that looks like the basis for his change, I've certainly heard nothing to the contrary.

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/24/161685...s-funny-shapes

Very depressing story. It seems that gerrymandering to protect incumbents also has had the effect of electing extremists both left and right because one party districts are usually one by the most extreme hack. These guys can't compromise because the next douche will have room to run more extreme.

I've heard other people propose that partisan gerrymandering should be made illegal for the reasons suggested above. There will never be a perfectly fair solution but I have confidence it wouldn't be too hard to avoid completely partisan redistricting.

It seems like a simple thing, until you start digging into it.

That web based game where you get to draw districts in a fictional state to learn how gerrymandering works was really good. I learned a lot from that.

If you make each district reflect the same proportions as the whole state, then the majority will always defeat the minority party and the minority will have no representation at all in government. That's very bad. By gerrymandering the districts, you can set it up so that the minority party is able to win at least a representative or two, and have some influence in government. The down side is the extremism you mention.

I'd like to see districts that have only a very slight edge in one direction or another so that candidates have to be moderate to win, but also so that the minority party in the state has a district where things are leaning their way, so they can get some representation too. Basically, you need a benevolent dictator to draw those lines, and that kind of misses the point.

I would prefer to stay in my ignorant bubble thank you very much.

I wonder how much difference this rule would make:

The land area added by making the shape of a district convex (ie, putting a "rubber band" around it) cannot be more than 50% of the area of the district.

That would limit the weirdness of the shapes a bit.

Restrict it to counties (parishes). People would be more concerned about politicians fucking with county lines.

Ummm...

The rest of Oregon is already ticked off with Multnomah County (PDX)
because Multnomah and Lane (Eugene - Univ of Oregon) counties
already carry any/all state elections by a good sized majority.

So if something is proposed that will benefit PDX, the State legislators
try to balance that issue with at least one "goodie" for the farmers, loggers, fishermen, etc.

That will alway be the case if the power resides in the people. Areas with more people will have more power.
With gerrymandering they are fucking with that premise by creating artificial population divides to create political power, usually by the party in power to benefit their own party.
Counties could be split into districts or all representatives elected at large.
But if the voting districts were restricted to within counties, it would limit their ability to grab power from the people. Counties with larger populations would of course have more representatives, hence more power, as it should be.

Have you considered multi-member electorates?

LOL, you can't even cope with preferential voting.

LOLLL some of you can't even manage a butterfly ballot paper.

Yes, Romney has flipped on several issues, but Massachusetts is a VERY liberal state, and that's where he was governor.

If you're a pragmatic person, and you believe in states rights, you will be more liberal as it's governor. You aren't just running your own agenda, you're being a true statesman.

So what has Obama flipped on?

*deficit spending
*reforming immigration
*closing Guantanamo Bay prison
*securing our Southern border

Fortunately, your Chicago politician has brought his filthy Chicago style politics to Pennsylvania Ave, so every state that tries to limit fraudulent voting by requiring picture ID, gets taken to court by his Justice Dept.

And everyone on his "Enemy's List", gets turned over to one of the investigative arms of his office - usually the IRS.

And every GM car dealer that was closed, when GM got into financial problems and had to be saved by the fed's, was a Republican party donor, except one black dealer.

Despite the objection by his commerce department, he lent over half a million dollars to a big supporter, to open a solar energy plant. Now they're bankrupt, of course. I wonder if our gov't will get their money back ?? Our money.

He says he's going to cut taxes for the middle class. Well, he's not, and his many tax "cuts" so far, have been from merely extending the Bush tax cuts, which he keeps trying to chip away at.

His spending will require, sooner or later, a large increase in taxes, and cuts in services. That tends to be how Socialism works - it's great until the money runs out. Then you're screwed.

Obama has taken over $716 million out of senior care, to help fund Obama care. Since Obama care allows companies to get exemptions from it, and 90+% of our largest companies have requested an exemption, Obama care is going to cost a LOT more than we were told.

Of course.

When the fact checkers are giving Obama "4 Pinnoccio's" for his lies while campaigning, you know that:

1) He's lying, big time, and

2) He can't run on his record of achievements, because he doesn't have anything worth a damn.

Now if he can just get enough people on welfare, and get them to stop looking for a job, he'll get this high unemployment problem, fixed right up! :rolleyes:

His EPA is right on the ball however. They wanted to ban plywood and oriented strand board (which is used to make just about every building in the country, and EVERY home), because the glue they use produces some volatile gases.

So what should we use to build with? EPA has no idea, and doesn't care. Any studies to show the way it's used is harmful? Nope. They just decided it was bad. Finally, had to be told to stop the nonsense when the recession hit the housing market so bad.

Now the EPA wants to have every puddle of water, treated like it's a lake or river, and require an environmental report, if a truck drives through the puddle of water. Any idea what an environmental impact report costs? You can kiss the timber industry good bye if this becomes law. They could never afford such nonsense.

But hey! We're the EPA, and we make the law, with no interference from anyone else except the President, hey hey! :mad:

@Adak: Your cherry Kool Ade got mixed in with the lemon.

If you're going to re-post libertarian views from the DailyPaul,
you should use copy/paste. The bullet point was Chrysler, not GM.

And just as with any Karl Rove award-winning utterance, it takes a few paragraphs get into back into the real world.
Here is FactCheck.org

And for what it's worth...

On May 24, 2011, Fiat paid back $7.6 billion in U.S. and Canadian government loans.
On July 21, Fiat bought the Chrysler shares held by the United States Treasury.