WatsonRules

Who did he plan to assassinate? And when did that happen?

???

Not Newbie, not Rusty.

I'm the first one. Someone recruit Newbie Jr back here.

You of all people know that there are tons of good, funny, intelligent posters of all political stripes that would still post here but don't want to be called groomers or pedos or racists in the second post after they start a thread. I doubt you clean this place up by agreeing among a few of those posters that you won't post about politics.

Too bad lots of folks don't agree with you and express it in every thread regardless of the topic.

So, if gutter and others start doing stuff like that and some of these other goofs come in and soil the thread accusing them of pedophilia or posting videos of Biden falling or posting eighteen posts with thirty minute videos and eight paragraphs of commentary that have nothing to do with the subject, what are the mods prepared to do?

Nothing that I know of. Life got busy, didn't log in for a while, tried to come back, all gone. At that point, I had never even had a temporary timeout.

I had four or five, they all got banned in one fell fuhner swoop.

I was savaged badly in GTG, but laughed at every single comment. These sissies would be a puddle on the floor in the face of GTG.

Shiny and new. See my post count?

Funny, but no.

I could only aspire to be Rusty.

Oh, no, no, no. We'll leave that up to AliasDetective.

You think any one of these pansies could handle tubgirl? Lemonparty? Hell, you couldn't even do a proper jihad with this crop of tards.

You're failing.

Not from FBG. Permabanned here years ago, came back a few months ago to check things out. It still sucks, only worse.

Anything short of Hunter Biden immediately thrown in jail and Joe Biden doing the perp walk from the White House will not satisfy folks here.

In Ohio, it makes it virtually impossible to put something on the ballot in response to laws the incredibly gerrymandered legislature puts out. Since the will of the people of Ohio is that a woman should have the right to choose (greater than 50%, by most polls), you would hope that the legislature would have taken that into consideration instead of passing a law that makes 10 year old rape victims have to travel out of state to get an abortion, but they didn't because they don't have to when there's virtually no blocks on their power due to their supermajority. . When the will of the people is ignored, what other recourse do they have? This fall, voters are putting a referendum on the ballot to change the constitution to enshrine a woman's right to choose because of the incredibly restrictive heartbeat ban (no exceptions for rape or incest) on abortion. They can't win state races to put politicians in place that will listen to the people, so this is the only avenue they have left. If they don't have that, only legislators have the ability to put proposed changes before the people for a vote. Nobody should want that. The worse part of Issue 1 was not actually the 60% threshold, but the requirement for all 88 counties to submit signatures. That is a virtual impossibility in any state. ETA: No, all public votes do not need to be constitutional amendments. Voters repealed a law passed by Kasich some time back that limited collective bargaining, and when they did, he said "the people have spoken, the issue is settled". There is still that avenue of repeal. In the case of abortion, repealing the law isn't going to have the same effect on DeWine or the state legislature. They will just come back with another one to replace it. Putting it in the constitution is the only way to ensure that the right to choose is protected in Ohio.

The Geek Club is a powerful example of people willing to cede their power to the government as long as they think it advances their beliefs or if it's something they don't understand but they suspect it has to do with liberals. This thread is a perfect example. The will of the people of Ohio was that they will not allow the legislature to take away a right that has been in place for 120 years. Geeks here are lamenting that politicians today are not more powerful than they were yesterday and they don't even know it.

Ohio is one of the most ridiculously gerrymandered states in the country. Democrats besides Sherrod Brown have not fared well because of this in the last thirty years. Since 1992, there have been four years of Democratic control of the Governorship, five years of Democratic control of the House, and Zero years of Democratic control of the Senate. Right now, there are 67 Republicans to 32 Democrats in the House, and 26 Republicans to 7 Democrats in the Senate. A consequence of the supermajority of Republicans in the Ohio statehouse, along with a supportive Republican majority in the Ohio Supreme Court, including Pat Dewine, the son of the current governor of Ohio (), is discounting the will of the people, with a side benefit of corruption at the highest levels. In 2020, former House Speaker Larry Householder was arrested for receiving $60 million in payouts from First Energy Corporation in exchange for passing a $1.3 billion bailout for them. He refused to give up the speakership, and was subsequently removed. He was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison along with lobbyist and former Ohio Republican Chair Matt Borges. Now, Householder is not the only Ohio politician to play the system to his advantage (see Democrat Larry Trafficant), but the scandal had played out in full view and he wasn't removed from the speakership until it became apparent that he was going to be arrested. Ohio's electoral map is so gerrymandered that even the Ohio Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional and ordered it redrawn. The Ohio State Congress said "Fock you" and did nothing, waiting on the Supreme Court to rule. The Supreme Court asked the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider it's ruling, so now two election cycles (2022 and 2024) will have been run using electoral maps that have been deemed by the Ohio Supreme Court as disadvantageous to minorities in Ohio. Now, as to Issue 1, in November of 2022, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and State Rep Brian Stewart proposed "reforms" aimed at better protecting Ohio's Constitution, namely, increasing the threshold for amendments to 60% and requiring signatures from all 88 counties. The threshold has been 50% and signatures from 44 counties since 1912, and in that time, there have been 71 citizen proposed amendments to the Constitution. 19 passed in that time, 8 with less than 60%. Here are some of them, none of which would be considered excessively "liberal" or creating of chaos: Home rule power for liquor sales — 50.5% (1914) 10-mill limit on unvoted real estate taxes —59.6% (1933) Home rule for counties — 53.2% (1933) Eliminate straight-ticketing voting — 57.3% (1949) Raise the state minimum wage — 56.6% (2006) Allow a casino in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo — 52.9% (2009) Prohibit sales tax on food for consumption off premise — 68.7% (1936) Allow someone to vote if they are registered for 30 days — 61.5% (1977) Term limits for state senators and representatives — 68.3% (1992) A valid marriage in Ohio is only between one man and one woman — 61.7% (2004). The United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015 Freedom to choose healthcare — 65.5% (2011) Rights for crime victims — 82.5% (2017) Meanwhile, there have been 156 proposed amendments by the legislature in that time, 108 of which passed, but 41 with less than 60%. Here are some of those, and for the record, more of these would be considered "liberal" in this day and age, especially on the Geek Bored: Deleting the words “white male” from voter qualifications — 55.9% (1923) 6-year term for probate judges — 55.2% (1947) Create a State Board of Education with the power to appoint a Superintendent of Public Instruction — 56.8% (1953) Getting rid of the word “white” when it comes to qualifications of males to serve in the Ohio National Guard, racially integrating the Ohio National Guard — 58.1% (1953) 4-year terms for the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. It also limits the governor to two terms — 55.5% (1954) 4-year terms for State senators — 57.3% (1956) Allow women to serve in the Ohio National Guard and widen the age range to those between 17-67 years old — 50.1% (1961) Blocked special interests from using constitutional amendments to create monopolies — 51.5% (2015) Repeal statewide prohibition — 68.3% (1933) Permit temporary or substitute judges in the Supreme Court — 70.0% (1944) Women can run for office — 68.5% (1953) Allow new Ohio residents to vote for President and Vice President — 61.9% (1957) Authorize the state lottery —64.0% (1973) Voters can elect delegates to national party conventions — 64.6% (1975) Permit state to finance or assist local governments to improve roads, water, sewer and waste collection and treatment facilities — 70.8% (1987) Protect rights of crime victims — 77.6% (1994) Denial of bail to persons charged with certain felonies — 72.9% (1997) Now, Larose and his cronies saw that Ohio voters who support a woman's right to choose were looking to emulate the success of voter led changes to Constitutions in red states like Kansas, so they proposed the raising of the threshold to 60% for citizens, but the proposition would keep the threshold at 50% for legislators. This naked hypocrisy made even supportive Republicans uneasy, so eventually, the threshold of the proposed initiative was kept at 60% for everyone. While the reasoning was ostensibly to protect the Ohio Constitution from "outside special interest groups", LaRose is like many MAGA politicians who can't keep from saying the quiet parts out loud, and wrote to colleagues in a letter that the attempt was to protect Ohio's abortion ban (one of the countries most restrictive) and to thwart redistricting reform. Also, these guys, despite having a legislative supermajority, failed to get the ballot initiative on a February special election ballot because they couldn't get their act together. However, when the citizen-backed referendum got onto the November ballot, they panicked, and, despite having passed a ban on special elections in Ohio after the last special election cost the state $20 million and only managed to rouse 7% of the population to vote, reversed their ban and called this special election. Thankfully, they were trounced, with the added bonus of ammunition against LaRose in his bid to unseat Sherrod Brown in November. The whole thing was a naked power grab, not only about abortion, but about solidifying a Republican supermajority's power in a state that most think is red, but is actually purple and has been for a while. The ads in the last few days appealed so blatantly to the current strain of nationalism that is so prevalent in this country, with waving flags, Ben Franklin, and references to the federal Constitution as an example we must revere, and when that seemed to not work, they had doctors advising people to "do their own research", and mothers lamenting the fact that their children wouldn't be safe unless the threshold was changed, all of which were clear dog whistles to the anti-woke and Qanon crowds. Again, people saw through that and thankfully, preserved their power instead of ceding it to politicians in the name of "protection". Finally, two Republican Governors of Ohio, Bob Taft (who was a terrible governor) and John Kasich, who I have grudging respect for and likely would have voted for had his candidacy in 2016 survived, both trashed this ballot initiative, with Kasich saying "Ohio is stronger when we can all lend our voices and we all have an equal chance to participate in the work of our state's democracy. I’ve experienced that firsthand having policies backed by myself and a majority of the legislature's members overturned at the ballot box and it never occurred to me to try to limit Ohioans' right to do that. It wouldn't have been right then, and it isn't right now." Rant over