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from the you-can-go-your-own-way-♩♫♩♫ dept.
Supporters of a plan for California to secede from the union took their first formal step Monday morning, submitting a proposed ballot measure to the state attorney general's office in the hopes of a statewide vote as soon as 2018.
Marcus Ruiz Evans, the vice president and co-founder of Yes California, said his group had been planning to wait for a later election, but the presidential election of Donald Trump sped up the timeline.
"We're doing it now because of all of the overwhelming attention," Evans said.
The Yes California group has been around for more than two years, Evans said. It is based around California taxpayers paying more money to the federal government than the state receives in spending, that Californians are culturally different from the rest of the country, and that national media and organizations routinely criticize Californians for being out of step with the rest of the U.S.
Could California go it alone?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday November 23 2016, @05:47PM
the federal government isn't just going to let you leave
They might want to check to see if official policy has been changed since the last case, when atrocities against civilian population centers was the order of the day for 'traitors' who didn't agree that Washington D.C. is the font of all wisdom. For years I have held the position that any secession movement that didn't have a plan to have fully weaponized WMD sufficient to implement MAD on day one was on a suicide mission. The Feral Government will not be willing to engage in any sort of peaceful debate on this subject, only force will suffice and raising a conventional force sufficient to go toe to toe with the U.S. military is not an option.
I have old posts joking about the insanity of imagining Rick Perry and a secret team of Aggies trying to build a nuke in secret so Texas could lead an exit. CA has more of the resources for such an effort, but you still have to imagine a bunch of incompetent lefty morons building a nuke and keeping it secret from the NSA all the way to weapons mounted on missiles. Good luck with that guys.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 23 2016, @05:58PM
Trump might make a war out of it but could you imagine a Democrat having to make that call? Either way their party would loose California's EC votes for the foreseeable future.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:07PM
First they came for the Indians, and I fought them, because I am an Indian. I lost.
First they came for the Indians, and I applauded them because I wanted the Indians' land. Then they came for my slaves, and I---wait, what the fuck? I need those! But I lost.
Then they came for southerners' slaves, and I applauded them because slavery is bad. Then they came for the socialists, and seriously, the USSR is not a model for what I believe in. Too bad, I lost.
Then they came for the socialists, and I applauded them because the USSR is scary. Then they came for northern blacks, and you know I'm gonna Black Panther their shit. I lost that one too.
Then they came for northern blacks, and I applauded them because I'm racist. Then they came for the hackers, but you can't do that because I'm from a rich white family and I didn't know what I was doing. I lost and now I work for them.
Then they came for the hackers, and I applauded them because hackers are scary. Then they came for my sense of entitlement. Guess what happened.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DECbot on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:25PM
Guess what happened.
You became unable to articulate a point?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:48PM
I used to be able to articulate a point like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:55PM
I took a sword through the chest. [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:05PM
For years I have held the position that any secession movement that didn't have a plan to have fully weaponized WMD sufficient to implement MAD on day one was on a suicide mission.
Agree. The only other alternative I see is distributing livefeeds of the land so that any invasion is a PR nightmare not worth the territory, but that is its own gamble and for a piece of land as big and valuable as California I don't think it has a serious chance of working. For a small and practically worthless chunk of land, I could see it.
CA has more of the resources for such an effort, but you still have to imagine a bunch of incompetent lefty morons building a nuke and keeping it secret from the NSA all the way to weapons mounted on missiles. Good luck with that guys.
Weaponising them should be the easy part; SpaceX headquarters are in Cali. I don't doubt that Silicone Valley could figure out an atom bomb given time to organize. I doubt they would get that organized before the shit hit the fan, if they tried to secede and were then promptly invaded.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:42PM
[...] LLNL designed the following warheads: W27 (Regulus cruise missile; 1955; joint with Los Alamos), W38 (Atlas/Titan ICBM; 1959), B41 (B52 bomb; 1957), W45 (Little John/Terrier missiles; 1956), W47 (Polaris SLBM; 1957), W48 (155-mm howitzer; 1957), W55 (submarine rocket; 1959), W56 (Minuteman ICBM; 1960), W58 (Polaris SLBM; 1960), W62 (Minuteman ICBM; 1964), W68 (Poseidon SLBM; 1966), W70 (Lance missile; 1969), W71 (Spartan missile; 1968), W79 (8-in. artillery gun; 1975), W82 (155-mm howitzer; 1978), B83 (modern strategic bomb; 1979), and W87 (Peacekeeper/MX ICBM; 1982).
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_Laboratory#Nuclear_weapons_projects [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:46PM
I think you underestimate how entertaining to many non-Californians it would be to have livefeeds of zealous federal troops shock-and-aweing an insurrection of Californian hippies. You could monetize that and make a killing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:55PM
LOL!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @02:35AM
> an insurrection of Californian yuppies.
There are no more California hippies, ftfy. There might be a few old surfer dudes...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:17PM
"The only other alternative I see is distributing livefeeds of the land so that any invasion is a PR nightmare not worth the territory,"
How's that working for the Native Americans?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:47AM
Amend the Constitution to allow Unilateral Secession. Skip the WMDs.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:05PM
all the way to weapons mounted on missiles.
All you need is to plant one in DC somewhere. You don't need missiles - just a car.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:20PM
CA has more of the resources for such an effort, but you still have to imagine a bunch of incompetent lefty morons building a nuke and keeping it secret from the NSA all the way to weapons mounted on missiles.
Because if there's one thing that Silicon Valley is known for, it's having incompetent morons who can't accomplish anything. Oh, wait... I got that backwards.
I doubt any state could pull off a independent nuclear program and keep it a secret from the news networks and rumor mills, let alone the Federal government. However, I would put California as the #1 or 2 place where such an effort would have the highest chance of success. They have the population, the resources (economic, population, mineral and natural, intellectual, etc.), the land space, the physical distance from Washington DC, and their general reputation of being "lefty peaceniks."