2 hours ago, greend said:

Why would I bust my a** to raise money for someone else's campaign?

Elections should have a cap. Allowed to spend a certain amount of money campaigning and thats it.

14 hours ago, e-a-g-l-e-s eagles! said:

It was much worse at my parents house then mine. Plane flew right over their house and about a mile and a half up the mountain dropping fire retardant. Another area the fire retardant is really low on the mountain like maybe a quarter mile up from a house. It’s been insane especially with no rain whatsoever in the forecast and the winds have been ridiculous  Couldnt get fire fighters into the canyon cause of how hot and steep it was. We were truly lucky cause we were about a mile away from where people were forced to evacuate. Like that on top of the rising cases of Covid out here and hospital getting closer to capacity in AZ it’s been a crazy two weeks out here. 

I hope they're able to get it under control.  That's just crazy.  

21 minutes ago, Boogyman said:

Elections should have a cap. Allowed to spend a certain amount of money campaigning and thats it.

There are caps on election contributions to individual candidates.  The caps on individual contributions usually limits the cash on hand to spend for most politicians.  The real money is from independent expenditure groups.  This is the whole problem with Citizen's United and corporations as people. There is no limit on spending for these groups.  There are limits on these groups coordinating with a campaign.  

38 minutes ago, Boogyman said:

Elections should have a cap. Allowed to spend a certain amount of money campaigning and thats it.

Citizens united is BS but then so is allowing unions to contribute.  Do away with both

6 minutes ago, NCiggles said:

There are caps on election contributions to individual candidates.  The caps on individual contributions usually limits the cash on hand to spend for most politicians.  The real money is from independent expenditure groups.  This is the whole problem with Citizen's United and corporations as people. There is no limit on spending for these groups.  There are limits on these groups coordinating with a campaign.  

I know. I mean allow each campaign to only spend a set amount of money, not matter where it comes from. A salary cap. Even the playing field, financially at least.

15 hours ago, justrelax said:

Yes, let's talk about these changes. After the Civil War blacks could vote, own land, hold office, move about freely during Reconstruction. Once Grant was out of office, however, all that dried up. A black on the road without a documented purpose could be seized and placed in a work gang for an indefinite period. Slavery by another name. The statehouses and Congress once again became all white. Then we have Plessy vs. Ferguson, separate but equal. That was, what - 1898? Then fifty years passed. No progress. Then came WWII and hundreds of thousands of black soldiers fought and died, albeit in segregated units. Harry Truman integrated the armed forces, a very unpopular move. When  these black GIs came home to the South they were assaulted in their uniforms, often lynched. That's where the Civil Rights movement began, much as the freedom of black soldier almost a century before. If you can  fight and die for the country you can be a citizen, although for roughly 80 years during that span you could not. I'll pass over red-lining for the moment. The Civil Rights movement did great things and then came the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Breakthrough! Umm, not so much. The minority group that benefited most from that Act were white women, black men were a distant second, and black women suffered serious setbacks. Voting? Well there were literacy tests, poll taxes, and today we have poll taxes under another name in Florida and Iowa, currently being challenged by the courts. We have hundreds of thousands of enrolled voters stricken from the rolls. We have mail-in ballots being challenged on spurious nonsense by the same people and states that did it before. We have Georgia, where if the election wasn't stolen it gave every appearance of it, and by whom and for what?

I don't mean to say we haven't made progress but it's two steps forward, one-step back or, post-Reconstruction, three steps back. Today, we see the spiritual descendants of those same miscreants attempting to suborn voting rights. Is there anything more basic to citizenship than that right? It's so blatant and so obvious.

Not so many years ago, my wife and I were returning from Gettysburg and we stopped at a roadside diner. Big Confederate battle flag on the wall. My wife said to me, "if anyone asks, I'm you're secretary." I ordered a hamburger and a Coke. She ordered a Coke. I got my order. She got half a glass of warm Coke, no ice. I paid. No tip. And drove 100 mph until I was sure there was no one following. Twenty-first century PA. Ha.

Agree on the Patriot Act. An abomination. A shredding of the Constitution.

That's why I distrust gradualism. It gives the villains time and room to maneuver. And I hope I have explained a tiny bit of black rage, when the rules keep changing and the bar gets higher, and the issues that were previously dealt with are raised again, and again.

Thanks for sharing your story.  I mean there's more than just the spirit of segregation behind the challenges to voting.  There's a direct line be pro-segregationist Democrats who switched to Republicans in the south.  Jesse Helms was one of those segregationists. His campaign attorney, Thomas Farr, helped draft the restrictive voter ID law in NC that was struck down.  

53 minutes ago, Boogyman said:

I know. I mean allow each campaign to only spend a set amount of money, not matter where it comes from. A salary cap. Even the playing field, financially at least.

So independent expenditure groups spend money on campaigns independent from the campaigns.  The candidate has no control over it.  What you're suggesting is to overturn Citizens' United.  It would take a Constitutional amendment.  

Just now, NCiggles said:

So independent expenditure groups spend money on campaigns independent from the campaigns.  The candidate has no control over it.  What you're suggesting is to overturn Citizens' United.  It would take a Constitutional amendment.  

Sold!

 

32 minutes ago, NCiggles said:

  It would take a Constitutional amendment.  

Or another Supreme Court ruling, eventually. 

1 hour ago, NCiggles said:

I hope they're able to get it under control.  That's just crazy.  

They said yesterday they had it at 40 percent contained. But due to the winds they weren’t able to have helicopters and planes to help fight it so it moved super quickly up the mountains to mt. Lemmon. It looked bad yesterday over in that area like things you only see in movies type of smoke and fire. Phoenix from what I’ve read had a fire they are also dealing with. It’s a complete crapshow in AZ right now. 

29 minutes ago, e-a-g-l-e-s eagles! said:

They said yesterday they had it at 40 percent contained. But due to the winds they weren’t able to have helicopters and planes to help fight it so it moved super quickly up the mountains to mt. Lemmon. It looked bad yesterday over in that area like things you only see in movies type of smoke and fire. Phoenix from what I’ve read had a fire they are also dealing with. It’s a complete crapshow in AZ right now. 

Yikes - 40% contained sounds like 60% uncontained.  

2 hours ago, Asg 15 said:

Citizens united is BS but then so is allowing unions to contribute.  Do away with both

Honestly,  I think the real problem we face is disinformation and a lack of real media.  

11 hours ago, Green_Guinness said:

I had a Swan mating pair on my lake.  They had 3 cygnets last year, but only 1 survived.  They are big and while they are also beautiful, they have sharp beaks and claws and can inflict some hurt if they want to.  This year, though, I have only seen 1 Swan on the lake.  Don't know if it's the cygnet all grown up and the adult pair left the lake for it to find its own mating partner of if one of the original mating pair died and it's now all alone.  But when one takes off from the lake, even at the opposite end, you can hear the beating of their wings on the surface of the water.

 

34 minutes ago, NCiggles said:

Yikes - 40% contained sounds like 60% uncontained.  

I don’t really believe it’s 40 percent. After seeing some of the pictures yesterday and the smoke i still think 80-75 percent uncontained 

 

25 minutes ago, NCiggles said:

Honestly,  I think the real problem we face is disinformation and a lack of real media.  

I wholeheartedly agree

4 minutes ago, e-a-g-l-e-s eagles! said:

I don’t really believe it’s 40 percent. After seeing some of the pictures yesterday and the smoke i still think 80-75 percent uncontained 

 

I did a fiber optic job at the federal prison in Tucson years ago. I swear that same mountain was on fire then

5 hours ago, greend said:

Why would I bust my a** to raise money for someone else's campaign?

Because in that hypothetical scenario, your preferred candidate would also get more money...?

 

 

LOL, B Brooks is crazy.

1 minute ago, Green Dog said:

LOL, B Brooks is crazy.

Yup. And that's a compliment.

39 minutes ago, Asg 15 said:

I did a fiber optic job at the federal prison in Tucson years ago. I swear that same mountain was on fire then

How long ago? 4 years to the date of this fire they had one. 
 

part of the reasons people have been against fireworks shows for Fourth of July out here is due to A mountain is like 50-50 to catch on fire when they do it. 

48 minutes ago, Green Dog said:

Because in that hypothetical scenario, your preferred candidate would also get more money...?

I'm the candidate, and I'm not doing it. 

2 hours ago, Allhaildawk said:

Or another Supreme Court ruling, eventually. 

To get Alshon off the books? 

Tra Thomas is no Baldinger.  He doesn't throw around baseless hyperbolic praise like it's going out of style.  

I could see Pryor coming in and doing a very, very good job at RG.  Solves the RG problem, but it doesn't address the Brooks cap issue.