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Vulcan wrote: There are three big problems in American politics.
1) We're doing VERY well when half the eligible voters actually vote. Voter turnouts average around 35%.
2) Of those who do vote, 35-40% of them would vote for Genghis Khan on a 'Raze America to the ground!' platform so long as the little 'R' is there next to his name... and almost exactly the same percentage would do the same so long as the little 'D' is there instead. So with between 70% and 80% of the active voters brainlessly voting the party line, there's no real chance for third parties to get involved on any sort of large scale.
3) Of the 20-30% who don't vote party lines, a majority will vote for whoever's campaign ads were most pervasive, not persuasive. The candidate who spends the most money on ads almost always wins.
Unless at least one (and preferably all three) of these problems are solved, the American political situation will continue to degrade.
I'd like one, just one, election at some point in my life where I can realistically vote FOR someone, not against someone. I'm tired of choosing between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. The one happy note in the last election was that it violated your third point. The guy that spent less won.
First off, shocked this is still open. I thought it was an inventively cruel (and well played) April fools joke by the mods. Still not sure it isn't...
d-usa wrote: And during the recent issues with healthcare, tax-cuts, and especially funding, we had multiple times where the Senate (and sometimes the House) had plans and compromises, and then they met with Trump who declared that he didn't like this or that, and then the plan fell through. Bills are developed by Presidents, and then shaped by what Presidents want, and the Senate then ends up passing nothing rather than passing something that Trump doesn't agree with. But it shouldn't matter what a President wants as far as drafting a bill and moving it through the process is concerned. Yeah, it's helpful if you got the support of the POTUS, but at the same time he doesn't really have a say until the end where he can sign it or veto it. We often treat the POTUS as if he is a Prime Minister, serving as leadership of the party in power in the legislative chambers, and won't move forward with the legislative process if he doesn't like something. Republicans in the House and Senate need to step-up and decide that they are their own co-equal branch of the Government and pass whatever bill they want, and then Trump can either man-up and veto it or he can design to sign it. Right now he gets to derail whatever bill he wants, and (rightfully) blame the lack of legislative process on the legislature because they didn't pass anything.
I find this a genuinely insightful way of putting things, thanks Dakka OT!
Just one suggestion to maybe stop this thread from getting locked and the subject perma-banned - perhaps specific incidents that are particularly contraversial like school shootings shouldn't be raised here? This should stick to the nuts and bolts of US politics, and if possible avoid specific, contraversial events. Those events normally get their own threads anyway, beacuse there's a lot more to discuss in those events than just the political angle. Just a suggestion.
Anyhow, anyone remember back to the heady days of 2017 when Trump would continuously mention how well the stock market was travelling under him? Never mind it grew even faster under Obama, the general consensus was that presidents make a mistake when they take credit for a rising market because they have no control over when it will reverse. Well Trump has proved them wrong, because a president can impact the stock market. By doing stupid things like starting trade wars. Over the weekend the market dropped about 2% after news of Chinese retaliation to US trade sanctions broke. This is the second major reversal of the Trump presidency, and the result is interesting - from the day Trump signed the tax cut that was intended to improve investment return and therefore grow productivity and jobs, the market has dropped 4.4% overall. The tax cut was pretty flimsy and unlikely to have much impact in the first place, but now Trump has sunk any rationale for it with his trade war.
So it turns out a president maybe can impact a stock market, if he does something really stupid.
Ashiraya wrote: This is probably a joke thread, but you know, whatever.
I did find this gem on reddit.
It's getting a lot of play on twitter. In terms of of media control I'm not sure its that big a deal, if this was 1990 it'd be panic stations but these days media is presented from so many companies across so many platforms I don't think it matters. The bigger issue to me is that so many Americans eat this stuff up, which we already knew because of FOX News, Breitbart etc, but this is just a reminder how bad the problem is. A lot of Americans just don't care that their news is given a political bias dictated by head office, as long as that political bias suits their own politics. Depressing stuff.
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MajorTom11 wrote: Corey Booker has a lot of potential, but he has not found a way to the national stage just yet. He has the spunk, but I am not sure if he has the cool.
The way to the major stage is the primary campaign. Success in early states in the primary campaign take people barely known outside the beltway and turn them in to national political figures. Obama was a guy who gave a great convention speech, then successes in early states in 2008 made him a national figure. GW Bush was a governor with a modest national profile and a Dad who was a one term president, Bill Clinton was a governor with no national profile at all.
Hell, I'd say not being on the national spotlight before your primary run is a big advantage. Most candidates who were well established figures before their political run did pretty badly. Hillary Clinton, Romney, McCain and Bob Dole were all very well known before their presidential runs.
I have no idea how Booker will do. You never really know until a person is placed in the national spotlight. We all know Booker is running. Whether he'll flourish is something we'll find out in 2019 and 2020.
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Frazzled wrote: The other ones noted are old East Coast Liberal elites. Trump would go through them like crap through a goose.
That's a really bad take. In 2016 Trump beat a poor to middling candidate, and he only managed that by shooting the moon in picking up the close states. 80,000 votes across three swing states was Trump's margin of victory.
While none of the Democrats listed strike me as particularly impressive, they're all going to produce more coherent, understandable campaigns than Hillary 'go read my website' Clinton. So for Trump to win we'd have to argue that either he will be better liked than he was in 2016, or Republicans as a whole will be stronger than in 2016. Now 2020 is a long time away, but both things are intensely wrong right now and getting more wrong by the day. 2020 is a long time away, so I guess anything can happen but calling it likely, let alone probable is ridiculous.
But you didn't even limit yourself to just likely, you didn't even limit yourself to probable. You said Trump 'would'. Really bad take.
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oldravenman3025 wrote: This. The Left Coasters, New York Champaign Socialists, and New England Bluebloods all need to be purged from the party, for the Democrats to ever be a serious contender again. It was those types running the party into the ground that helped Trump triump over Killary.
This line about Democrats needing to do something radical needs to die. It's horribly wrong.
From 1992 until 2016, that's 24 years and 7 presidential elections, Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one election, and that election was in the wake of 9/11 with a huge rally effect around the sitting president. Sure, elections aren't won by popular vote, but it shows the Dems aren't just competitive but the stronger party on the whole. Think of it this way - had the coin flip elections in 2000 and 2016 broken the other way we'd be talking about Dems dominating the presidency for a quarter century, and talking about the Republicans as a party pushed down in to local politics and congressional obstructionism. Which would be silly of course, but it goes to show how much political narrative is just plain bad analysis.
And that's before we get to what's happened to Republicans in elections since they took control and their actual policies were revealed. The special elections so far have shown Republicans likely to lose a lot in the 2018 mid-terms.
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RiTides wrote: Even though I'm an independent voter in Maryland (a state that always goes Democratic) I think it's a very good reason. Without that system, huge areas of the country could be completely discounted. There are drawbacks, of course, but the alternative has huge ones, as well.
Think of it this way, as resident of Maryland in a popular vote system a candidate won't do much to chase your vote because Maryland isn't that big. But in the current EC system candidates do nothing to chase your vote because Maryland isn't swinging Republican. You intended for the EC to give small states some say, but instead it gave almost all states, including most of the smaller states, absolutely no say at all.
Popular vote would be dominated by larger states, but it would still be an improvement for most smaller states because they would at least have some relevance.
But there are ways to move to a better system without dumping the weighting to smaller states. For instance, the EC system could be kept with each state getting electoral votes equal to its number of seats in congress, so smaller states get the boosted weighting from all having two senate seats. But instead of having almost almost all states give their electoral votes on a winner take all basis, you could have EV proportionately allocated. So Maryland has 10 EV, and it the vote went like 2016 then Clinton would get 6, Trump 3 and Johnson 1 (or Trump 4 and Johnson 0 depending on how you break up partial results). There would be a reason to campaign there, because instead of a certain 10 votes for the Democratic candidate, campaigning could shift the Dem to 7, or the Rep to 4 or 5. The roughly 40 to 45 states that are currently irrelevant would be relevant again, while small states would still keep their weighting.
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RiTides wrote: AlmightyWalrus - Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was referring to the Democratic primary's practice of using "Super Delegates" to determine about 15% of their primary vote, regardless of the actual voting.
The super-delegates aren't good, but people way overstate how problematic they are. There has literally never been a single instance of super-delegates swinging a result away from the popular vote. The one time it might have happened was 2008 when a whole lot of delegates pledged to Clinton, only for Obama to win the popular vote. You know what happened? As soon as people realised Obama was going to win the popular vote they all switched from Clinton to Obama. This is because the super-delegates know that handing the result to a candidate with less votes would fracture the base and kill their turnout in the upcoming general election, they're not going to do it unless the majority candidate is bad on a Trump like scale.
There are much bigger issues in the primaries, such as how delegates are actually assigned. See, just winning the vote on primary day isn't the end of the process. For instance, in 2016 at the Nevada convention Sanders team turned up in huge numbers, and tried to use votes on the day to give Sanders more delegates out of Nevada than Clinton got, despite Clinton having won the primary. Republican primaries have a similar issue, Ted Cruz actually managed to score a majority of delegates in some states that Trump had won, Paul Manafort was originally brought on to the Trump team give them some expertise of their own and rival Cruz's manipulation of the system.
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MajorTom11 wrote: There is an answer to be had here. There is a way to vet gerrymandering scientifically... It's not witchcraft, it's stats. If the dems gerrymandered too, then they should be forced to re-district just like the GOP had to.
The solutions are available, don't kid yourselves guys, it's the political will to do it that is lacking and nothing else. If data strategy can lead to gerrymandering, then data policy can eliminate it.
The Dems do gerrymander, Maryland for instance. It's just Republicans do more of it, and they do it much harder. As well as, you know, Republicans being Republicans, there's a couple more reasons why. The first is just a natural thing - the migration in to cities by mostly liberal people has naturally concentrated the Democratic vote, boosting the effect of deliberate gerrymandering. The second issue is that 2010 was a Republican wave election, they won a stupid number of state houses and governorships, and so when the 2010 census results opened up for redistricting these new Republican majorities set about using new data techniques to make some of the most outrageous gerrymanders you could think of.
As for solutions... independant electoral commissions work just fine. The only reason to refuse to let an impartial body draw up a decent map is because you want to gerrymander.
This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2018/04/03 04:35:27
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
sebster wrote: That's a really bad take. In 2016 Trump beat a poor to middling candidate, and he only managed that by shooting the moon in picking up the close states. 80,000 votes across three swing states was Trump's margin of victory.
We may still disagree on this, but I feel like the Russian influence on the election is a very important factor to mention. Especially in light of what's been revealed since. Now I'm not suggesting Russia swayed 80,000 voters, or even just 800 voters, from the candidate they would have picked anyway but I think it's entirely plausible that the toxicity generated convinced a lot more than 80,000 voters to simply 'give up' and stay home. And we both know the vast majority of non-voter citizens go Democrat when they actually show up.
MajorTom11 wrote: There is an answer to be had here. There is a way to vet gerrymandering scientifically... It's not witchcraft, it's stats. If the dems gerrymandered too, then they should be forced to re-district just like the GOP had to.
The solutions are available, don't kid yourselves guys, it's the political will to do it that is lacking and nothing else. If data strategy can lead to gerrymandering, then data policy can eliminate it.
The Dems do gerrymander, Maryland for instance. It's just Republicans do more of it, and they do it much harder. As well as, you know, Republicans being Republicans, there's a couple more reasons why. The first is just a natural thing - the migration in to cities by mostly liberal people has naturally concentrated the Democratic vote, boosting the effect of deliberate gerrymandering. The second issue is that 2010 was a Republican wave election, they won a stupid number of state houses and governorships, and so when the 2010 census results opened up for redistricting these new Republican majorities set about using new data techniques to make some of the most outrageous gerrymanders you could think of.
As for solutions... independant electoral commissions work just fine. The only reason to refuse to let an impartial body draw up a decent map is because you want to gerrymander.
I've found this video by John Oliver to be an extremely valuable (and non-biased) run-down of the gerrymandering situation.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/04/03 04:45:45
Currently, California is hemorrhaging population. According to the news at the moment they have a net population loss of about 200 people per day, and the rate is increasing. That doesn't sound like much, but this time next year they could be down 70,000 people.
This means that by 2020 California could loose a couple electoral votes, while the conservative states (unlikely to shift blue) could gain some. This could very well make a Democratic comeback more complicated.
Grey Templar wrote: Frankly, liberals need to drop gun control and be all for personal gun ownership.
"Liberals need to stop being liberal about this issue" is a thing lots of people like to say right now. It's exactly as valuable as all the "conservatives need to stop being conservative about this issue" hot takes we saw from 2006 to 2016.
Namely because gun control has its roots in racism within the Democratic Party. It was originally brought about in an attempt to limit African Americans access to guns, and went hand in hand with other attempts to limit their ability to vote and attend “white” schools. Democrats need to stop being hippocrits on this, as the party that allegedly champions personal rights and freedom.
You're slightly kind of right about some of this, but mostly you're pretty wrong. There have been a lot of bit of gun control, and most had little to do wth racism The 1936 act that placed tight controls on fully auto, and the amendment in the 80s that only allowed for grandfathering and no new weapons wasn't based in racism, it was based in criminals using auto weapons to outshoot police.
The bit you're kind of a little bit right about was that some gun laws have been pretty damn racist. For instance, California has proposed and passed some gun laws targeting specific makes and models because they were preferred by black people, particularly the Black Panthers. But here's a funny thing - the NRA was in support of each of those laws. This is because when you look back in history, everyone was more than a little bit racist.
But even if we ignore the factual errors in your claim, more than anything the existence of some racist reasoning behind some past laws as a reason to reject a law today with no racial elements is some really crappy analysis.
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d-usa wrote: And during the recent issues with healthcare, tax-cuts, and especially funding, we had multiple times where the Senate (and sometimes the House) had plans and compromises, and then they met with Trump who declared that he didn't like this or that, and then the plan fell through. Bills are developed by Presidents, and then shaped by what Presidents want, and the Senate then ends up passing nothing rather than passing something that Trump doesn't agree with. But it shouldn't matter what a President wants as far as drafting a bill and moving it through the process is concerned.
Sort of. IT depends how much political capital the president is willing to spend. For instance when Trump shot down three or four bills protecting dreamers that had bi-partisan support, it was because Trump was willing to go to the mat to stop the bill (well not Trump but actually John Kelly and Steve Miller, but the effect is the same).
However, Trump had a clear idea for the budget he wanted, with cuts to almost everything outside the military. But congress put up a bill that had nothing Trump wanted, but because this wasn't the fight Trump wanted, and because Trump and his staff are miles out of their depth on anything that involves the actual management of the country, Trump rolled over. Congressional Republicans got the spending they wanted, because they were willing to fight on the issue and Trump was not.
Afterwards Trump swore he'll never sign a budget like that again, and everyone laughed.
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whembly wrote: Stick to paper ballots... there's nothing stopping us from having the primary day (or election day) all done on one day.
There is a lot to be said for the travelling carnival style of primaries. It gives lower profile candidates a chance concentrate their limited resources on the smaller early states, to prove they have something about them with good results in those early states. Without that system then the only winners you'd see would be candidates who were already very well connected, and very well financed.
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NinthMusketeer wrote: We may still disagree on this, but I feel like the Russian influence on the election is a very important factor to mention. Especially in light of what's been revealed since. Now I'm not suggesting Russia swayed 80,000 voters, or even just 800 voters, from the candidate they would have picked anyway but I think it's entirely plausible that the toxicity generated convinced a lot more than 80,000 voters to simply 'give up' and stay home. And we both know the vast majority of non-voter citizens go Democrat when they actually show up.
Did we every disagree on this? Honestly I've been all over the shop on this issue, so it wouldn't surprise if at some point I argued the opposite of what you posted above, but I don't remember it.
Anyhow, I agree that when the margin of victory was so low, pretty much anything that had any impact at all must have had a decisive impact. And I agree the intent wasn't to win people over to Trump, but to dissuade liberal leaning voters from turning up at all.
Thing is its near impossible to tell if the Russian ops had any impact at all. Because their campaign geared up over time, and was running from very early in the primary, its hard to pick out the impact in any poll movements (unlike Comey's late announcement where you can see a 2 point shift immediately). We can look to Clinton's trashed reputation and claim that was due to Russia running fake news attack pieces, but Republicans have been running fake attack pieces on Clinton since the early 90s, I don't think those attacks started working for the first time in 2017 when a Russian started doing it. Certainly the Russian hacking and the ludicrous non-stories that came out of various emails had some effect, if only because it focused the coverage on her emails and other loosely related issues, which meant each of Trump's long string of scandals all got less coverage.
But we can't know for sure that it had an effect, and we certainly can't know the scope of the effect. But if there was even a small effect, then given the closeness of the election it would have swung the result.
I've found this video by John Oliver to be an extremely valuable (and non-biased) run-down of the gerrymandering situation.
I look forward to going home, putting the kids to bed, making a coffee and clicking on that link to be told the video is not available in my area
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/04/03 05:56:10
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Grey Templar wrote: Frankly, liberals need to drop gun control and be all for personal gun ownership.
"Liberals need to stop being liberal about this issue" is a thing lots of people like to say right now. It's exactly as valuable as all the "conservatives need to stop being conservative about this issue" hot takes we saw from 2006 to 2016.
Namely because gun control has its roots in racism within the Democratic Party. It was originally brought about in an attempt to limit African Americans access to guns, and went hand in hand with other attempts to limit their ability to vote and attend “white” schools. Democrats need to stop being hippocrits on this, as the party that allegedly champions personal rights and freedom.
You're slightly kind of right about some of this, but mostly you're pretty wrong. There have been a lot of bit of gun control, and most had little to do wth racism The 1936 act that placed tight controls on fully auto, and the amendment in the 80s that only allowed for grandfathering and no new weapons wasn't based in racism, it was based in criminals using auto weapons to outshoot police.
The bit you're kind of a little bit right about was that some gun laws have been pretty damn racist. For instance, California has proposed and passed some gun laws targeting specific makes and models because they were preferred by black people, particularly the Black Panthers. But here's a funny thing - the NRA was in support of each of those laws. This is because when you look back in history, everyone was more than a little bit racist.
But even if we ignore the factual errors in your claim, more than anything the existence of some racist reasoning behind some past laws as a reason to reject a law today with no racial elements is some really crappy analysis.
Yes, they were supported by the NRA at the time, but that is irrelevant. The point is that Liberals are quite quick to smear anything even remotely associated with racism by the most tenuous of threads, yet despite the Racist origins of the Gun Control platform they aren't dropping it. They may not have racist reasons now for pushing gun control, but their behavior towards other actions that used to be associated with racism makes them hypocrites on this issue.
Plus there is the fact that Gun Control has no evidence that banning guns, limiting access to guns, etc... has any effect on crime.
The number of crimes committed with fully automatic weapons in the last hundred years was a grand total of 3 incidents. Oh, and for a good chunk of that time Fully Automatic weapons were unregulated. You could buy a Thompson Machine Gun through the mail. Yet, the amount of crime resulting from these weapons being available for all practical purposes is non-existent. So why try to ban them at all? Simple, Liberals don't like an armed population that could resist a totalitarian government, so the spin is that these weapons are dangerous and horrible and need to be taken away from everybody despite there being zero evidence for that being necessary. This from the party that allegedly champions personal freedom, equality, and liberty.
According to the FBI crime statistics, in 1993, only 3% of Homicides used a rifle of some kind. Yet Liberals keep pushing to ban AR-15s and other "Scary Looking Assault Rifles" despite them accounting for such negligible amounts of crime and murder, and among a backdrop of violent crime and murder dropping.
In 2013 there was a total of 11,208 homicides committed with a firearm in the US. Out of 315.5 million people. About 3.5 gun homicides per 100,000 people. That is such an insignificant number.
So called "Mass Shootings" have really bad definitions, as does "School Shooting". The Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 defines a Mass Shooting as any shooting involving 3 victims other than the perpetrator. The problem is this easily includes crimes which really don't fit the classic idea of a "Mass Shooting". A gang attacking a rival gang and killing 3 people is technically a mass shooting. But it clearly doesn't belong in the same category as the guy who shot up Las Vegas. Likewise with a "School Shooting", a dude committing suicide in a school parking lot, or a negligently discharged bullet landing on school property, obviously don't belong in the same category as the Parkland School Shooting. Yet they are all lumped in together and used to artificially inflate the numbers of these incidents.
We can look to Clinton's trashed reputation and claim that was due to Russia running fake news attack pieces, but Republicans have been running fake attack pieces on Clinton since the early 90s, I don't think those attacks started working for the first time in 2017 when a Russian started doing it.
It would also be pretty foolish to think that Russia only started running fake ads in the 2016 election. I'm sure they've been trying to muck about on the internet with US elections as long as social media has existed and they'll probably keep doing it forever.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/04/03 06:20:20
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Currently, California is hemorrhaging population. According to the news at the moment they have a net population loss of about 200 people per day, and the rate is increasing. That doesn't sound like much, but this time next year they could be down 70,000 people.
This means that by 2020 California could loose a couple electoral votes, while the conservative states (unlikely to shift blue) could gain some. This could very well make a Democratic comeback more complicated.
That's all pure wrongness. Here's California's actual population per year, with actuals for 2010 to 2017 and forecasts for 2018 to 2020.
The 2020 project has California at 3m more people than 2020, an increase of 8%. Even if we ignore projections, its up 2.3m to the end of 2017, 6%. In contrast, there's a lot of red states that are stagnant. Mississippi has grown a whopping 16,803 growth from 2010 to 2017, 0.57%. Kansas has grown 60,005, 2.1%. West Virginia has fallen 37,137, down 2%. Kentucky is up 114,822, 2.65% That's just me picking states that are strongly red states, interesting that they all showed really mediocre growth. But I'm not claiming growth is bad across all red states, I didn't click and calc the numbers but Texas and Idaho are red states with strong growth (why is Idaho growing fast?!)
Anyhow, even if we accept your 'never mind the growth from 2010 to 2017 that's stopped now and Cali is now in negatives, losing 70k per year', it would end up with California still up 2.08 million, growth of 5.6%
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios
Yeah, CA ain't in negative growth. Yet... I expect that will change though with the issues that are plaguing the state. Namely economic factors forcing young people to migrate elsewhere because they can't afford to live here. It'll be a state of geriatrics and hopelessly in-debted individuals within the next few decades.
Just by the trends you list there, CA would have negative growth by 2050 or so.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/04/03 06:41:05
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
Yes, they were supported by the NRA at the time, but that is irrelevant.
No, it is the exact point. 'In history people on that side of the issue were racist' is meaningless, because it doesn't show any racism behind the modern iteration, and because in history almost everything had some racism behind it. It's a meaningless attack made for no reason but villification.
The point is that Liberals are quite quick to smear anything even remotely associated with racism by the most tenuous of threads
Liberals claim racism for tactical reasons so you're going to as well.
Plus there is the fact that Gun Control has no evidence that banning guns, limiting access to guns, etc... has any effect on crime.
That's completely false but if you want to claim it then whatever, turning this thread in to yet another gun control debate would go nowhere and just get it locked. So be wrong about this, I won't bite. If you want to start a new thread about guns then go and be wrong in there, I might even go there and explain all the ways you're wrong. But I won't be getting this thread locked over your wrongness.
It would also be pretty foolish to think that Russia only started running fake ads in the 2016 election. I'm sure they've been trying to muck about on the internet with US elections as long as social media has existed and they'll probably keep doing it forever.
That wasn't even close to the point being discussed.
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Grey Templar wrote: Yeah, CA ain't in negative growth. Yet... I expect that will change though with the issues that are plaguing the state. Namely economic factors forcing young people to migrate elsewhere because they can't afford to live here. It'll be a state of geriatrics and hopelessly in-debted individuals within the next few decades.
Umm, the reason housing is expensive is because specific locations have so many people looking to move and work there. "High migration causes high demand for housing which causes negative migration" is an impossible thing.
Just by the trends you list there, CA would have negative growth by 2050 or so.
Huh? I didn't give a trend. I took cuda1179's factoid, and used it in place of the actual forecast figures, just to show that even if his figure was right it wouldn't have the impact he thought it would.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/04/03 06:47:21
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
That's completely false but if you want to claim it then whatever, turning this thread in to yet another gun control debate would go nowhere and just get it locked. So be wrong about this, I won't bite. If you want to start a new thread about guns then go and be wrong in there, I might even go there and explain all the ways you're wrong. But I won't be getting this thread locked over your wrongness.
Yeah nope. The evidence does not support gun control and bans as being effective at all. Just go read the FBI crime statistics if you care to enlighten yourself.
Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
MajorTom11 wrote: So what is the argument here, that a state with 2 million people in it should have equal standing to a state with 40 million because it's the united STATES?
Yeah sorry, that makes no sense. You are prioritizing an arbitrary border over the first, most sacred principal of a democracy, that every citizen gets a vote, and their vote counts.
If you think it is more important to make South Dakota equal to California or New York just because they are all states, while completely turning your back on THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY that live in those states, sorry, but I think your priorities are horrendously out of wack. Country first. Citizens first.
Ah so essentially "These states don't matter now because the don't have population to fight back against the majority" instead. Because the only things that would certainly be good for states that many term "Flyover" is that they now have no real say in anything. I suppose those states should just buck up and enjoy what California and New York dictates for them right? Because it's quite clear that there's some disdain going on for such states right now.
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Grey Templar wrote: Yeah, CA ain't in negative growth. Yet... I expect that will change though with the issues that are plaguing the state. Namely economic factors forcing young people to migrate elsewhere because they can't afford to live here. It'll be a state of geriatrics and hopelessly in-debted individuals within the next few decades.
Umm, the reason housing is expensive is because specific locations have so many people looking to move and work there. "High migration causes high demand for housing which causes negative migration" is an impossible thing.
.
No its not an impossible thing. Its a description of a cycle. People want to move somewhere and work there, which drives prices up. Eventually to the point where you cant afford to live there anymore, which leads to migration elsewhere. It seems every week there is an article about Bay Area housing becoming more and more expensive. Such that even Executives at Google and Amazon are having difficulty finding housing near work. If they are having trouble, just imagine what middle class people are having to endure.
Seriously dude, I'm freaking experiencing this first hand. I'd need to earn twice what I do now to afford rent for a tiny 1 bed room apartment of my own in this area.
I basically have to plan on leaving CA if I want to enjoy any decent standard of living on my own.
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Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines
Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.
NinthMusketeer wrote: We may still disagree on this, but I feel like the Russian influence on the election is a very important factor to mention. Especially in light of what's been revealed since. Now I'm not suggesting Russia swayed 80,000 voters, or even just 800 voters, from the candidate they would have picked anyway but I think it's entirely plausible that the toxicity generated convinced a lot more than 80,000 voters to simply 'give up' and stay home. And we both know the vast majority of non-voter citizens go Democrat when they actually show up.
Did we every disagree on this? Honestly I've been all over the shop on this issue, so it wouldn't surprise if at some point I argued the opposite of what you posted above, but I don't remember it.
Anyhow, I agree that when the margin of victory was so low, pretty much anything that had any impact at all must have had a decisive impact. And I agree the intent wasn't to win people over to Trump, but to dissuade liberal leaning voters from turning up at all.
Thing is its near impossible to tell if the Russian ops had any impact at all. Because their campaign geared up over time, and was running from very early in the primary, its hard to pick out the impact in any poll movements (unlike Comey's late announcement where you can see a 2 point shift immediately). We can look to Clinton's trashed reputation and claim that was due to Russia running fake news attack pieces, but Republicans have been running fake attack pieces on Clinton since the early 90s, I don't think those attacks started working for the first time in 2017 when a Russian started doing it. Certainly the Russian hacking and the ludicrous non-stories that came out of various emails had some effect, if only because it focused the coverage on her emails and other loosely related issues, which meant each of Trump's long string of scandals all got less coverage.
But we can't know for sure that it had an effect, and we certainly can't know the scope of the effect. But if there was even a small effect, then given the closeness of the election it would have swung the result.
I disagree on whether or not the Russian meddling had any impact at all, it definitely had an impact, especially considering the somewhat recent indictments of 3 Russian companies and 13 nationals that were involved in a several years long plan (data gathering, ad campaigns, protests/group organizations/rallies, bots/trolls, etc starting after Trump went to Russia for the Miss Universe contest iirc), along with the hacking done by Russians in at least 7 states, there's no way they didn't influence the election. It also started back in 2014, well before the 2016 election primaries were even considered obviously. And while you're right we might not know the entire effect the hacking and campaign by the Russians might have had, we can certainly say they meddled and influenced the election, be it changing addresses or names so people couldn't vote without multiple forms of ID, or actually changing votes, which might be a little too brazen, and the former is certainly harder to prove was done maliciously instead of a records update by the actual person.
For the Russians to do all of that and NOT influence the election is just a silly notion at this point.
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DQ:90S++G++M----B--I+Pw40k07+D+++A+++/areWD-R+DM+
bittersashes wrote:One guy down at my gaming club swore he saw an objective flag take out a full unit of Bane Thralls.
Grey Templar wrote: No its not an impossible thing. Its a description of a cycle. People want to move somewhere and work there, which drives prices up. Eventually to the point where you cant afford to live there anymore, which leads to migration elsewhere.
Except your cycle misses out one really big step - the price is responsive to the level of demand. When the price starts encouraging some people to look elsewhere and thereby cool demand you don't see the price just keep going up and up and force demand in to the negatives. Instead you see demand start to decline, and price level off or even drop. This is called arbitrage, it is the central mechanic of economics.
Seriously dude, I'm freaking experiencing this first hand. I'd need to earn twice what I do now to afford rent for a tiny 1 bed room apartment of my own in this area.
The discussion isn't about the price of housing in the major IT hubs in Cali, we all know its expensive. The debate is whether demand driven price increases can lead to negative demand. Hopefully my answer above shows this is an impossibility.
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Wolfblade wrote: I disagree on whether or not the Russian meddling had any impact at all, it definitely had an impact, especially considering the somewhat recent indictments of 3 Russian companies and 13 nationals that were involved in a several years long plan (data gathering, ad campaigns, protests/group organizations/rallies, bots/trolls, etc starting after Trump went to Russia for the Miss Universe contest iirc), along with the hacking done by Russians in at least 7 states, there's no way they didn't influence the election. It also started back in 2014, well before the 2016 election primaries were even considered obviously. And while you're right we might not know the entire effect the hacking and campaign by the Russians might have had, we can certainly say they meddled and influenced the election, be it changing addresses or names so people couldn't vote without multiple forms of ID, or actually changing votes, which might be a little too brazen, and the former is certainly harder to prove was done maliciously instead of a records update by the actual person.
For the Russians to do all of that and NOT influence the election is just a silly notion at this point.
That's evidence that Russia worked to influence the election, which is not in dispute. I think we all know Russia worked to influence the election. The question is whether their work actually impacted individual's voting decisions. I think it is extremely likely that the Russian campaign had a meaningful impact, but we can't know for certain. Afterall, Russia spent a few million a month on their troll farm operation, but Trump and Clinton both spent about a billion on campaigning. Russia gets more bang for its buck because Russian labour is so much cheaper, but even then the amount Russia spent was a pittance compared to Trump and Clinton's campaigns. So in terms of the troll farm that ended up producing those indictments I doubt there was much impact.
The bigger question of Russian impact comes from their data hacks, and those produced a lot of media coverage negative to Clinton which may have had an impact, either in harming Clinton or in drowning out media time that might otherwise have focused on Trump's scandals. The problem though is that we can't ever point to a moment where a Russia driven story broke and Clinton dropped in the polls. This is because Russia ran those things as a drip feed and so they're hard to isolate because they were constantly coming. So there really is no clear evidence we can point to and say with any factual basis that Russia had impacted the polls by x%
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“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
NinthMusketeer wrote: We may still disagree on this, but I feel like the Russian influence on the election is a very important factor to mention. Especially in light of what's been revealed since. Now I'm not suggesting Russia swayed 80,000 voters, or even just 800 voters, from the candidate they would have picked anyway but I think it's entirely plausible that the toxicity generated convinced a lot more than 80,000 voters to simply 'give up' and stay home. And we both know the vast majority of non-voter citizens go Democrat when they actually show up.
Did we every disagree on this? Honestly I've been all over the shop on this issue, so it wouldn't surprise if at some point I argued the opposite of what you posted above, but I don't remember it.
Anyhow, I agree that when the margin of victory was so low, pretty much anything that had any impact at all must have had a decisive impact. And I agree the intent wasn't to win people over to Trump, but to dissuade liberal leaning voters from turning up at all.
Thing is its near impossible to tell if the Russian ops had any impact at all. Because their campaign geared up over time, and was running from very early in the primary, its hard to pick out the impact in any poll movements (unlike Comey's late announcement where you can see a 2 point shift immediately). We can look to Clinton's trashed reputation and claim that was due to Russia running fake news attack pieces, but Republicans have been running fake attack pieces on Clinton since the early 90s, I don't think those attacks started working for the first time in 2017 when a Russian started doing it. Certainly the Russian hacking and the ludicrous non-stories that came out of various emails had some effect, if only because it focused the coverage on her emails and other loosely related issues, which meant each of Trump's long string of scandals all got less coverage.
But we can't know for sure that it had an effect, and we certainly can't know the scope of the effect. But if there was even a small effect, then given the closeness of the election it would have swung the result.
It was 2016, so a while back. At any rate, I agree we'll never know if it did flip the election.
That's completely false but if you want to claim it then whatever, turning this thread in to yet another gun control debate would go nowhere and just get it locked. So be wrong about this, I won't bite. If you want to start a new thread about guns then go and be wrong in there, I might even go there and explain all the ways you're wrong. But I won't be getting this thread locked over your wrongness.
Yeah nope. The evidence does not support gun control and bans as being effective at all. Just go read the FBI crime statistics if you care to enlighten yourself.
It's common sense. You want less people to smoke, make it harder to get cigarettes. You want less people to drive, make it harder to get automobiles. You want less people to use guns, make it harder to get guns. A basic graph of gun ownership vs gun violence by state tells the whole story. Sure, there is evidence the opposite is true, but it comes from sources that simply cannot be trusted. But really the matter like climate change; there's no debate, just the US Republican base denying something the rest of the first world understands implicitly. Even the NRA, who we'd assume to be experts on the matter, believe that more guns=more gun crime. They say otherwise but their actions to the tune of millions of dollars lobbying against any studies being done shows us what they actually believe.
A bigger question is why so many gun advocates think that particular point is even needed for their argument. Tons of people die in auto accidents every day but that doesn't mean cars should be banned, because giving a society freedom means giving it the freedom to hurt itself. Something along the lines of one in 20,000 guns are used to commit a crime. And there is plenty of historical evidence showing that the US has been far more lenient on gun control and also had far less mass shootings at the same time. And finally, the statistical harm caused by mass shootings is tiny, something like less than 3% of all gun deaths, which is only a fraction of violent deaths, which is only a fraction of deaths overall. Taking a step back, it's simple to see how the US culture of glorifying the famous of any sort and the ease of making national news for weeks by going to a school and firing off a few rounds might encourage such behavior. Finally, from a pragmatic perspective, a forward-thinking gun advocate would push as hard as they could for a compromise now since gun ownership (and support for gun ownership) continue to trend downward and have been for a long time. So a compromise now, under a fully GOP government, is going to be a hell of a lot better than what will happen later.
But a large chunk of gun advocates would rather dig the grave for their cause by focusing on an easily-disproved point of contention that undermines the credibility of all gun advocates, even when they say things that are totally accurate.
And FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race. I don't own a gun, I don't have any problem with people around me owning guns, nor do I have a problem with gun control becoming stricter/less strict. I couldn't care less which way the matter goes.
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This is a matter of vital importance to the public safety. While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals. We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons.
-Saint Reagan, beloved leftist
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Peregrine wrote: This is a matter of vital importance to the public safety. While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals. We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons.
-Saint Reagan, beloved leftist
Was that when they put gun laws in place in Cali because Black Panthers had the temerity to arm themselves?
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Peregrine wrote: This is a matter of vital importance to the public safety. While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals. We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons.
Yes, in the classic democratic looney left, bleeding (and undoubtedly racist) heart liberal, Reagan signed the Mulford Act, which banned open carry after the Black Panthers were arming themselves. He also banned machine guns for domestic civilian import dated post-86, supported the Brady Bill, and the Assault Weapons Ban. He called for a complete manufacturing ban on the exact firearm Grey Templar just so recently bought: a semiauto AK.
So now that we got that out of the way maybe we can steer away from the low-quality bait that got us here.
Think of it this way, as resident of Maryland in a popular vote system a candidate won't do much to chase your vote because Maryland isn't that big. But in the current EC system candidates do nothing to chase your vote because Maryland isn't swinging Republican. You intended for the EC to give small states some say, but instead it gave almost all states, including most of the smaller states, absolutely no say at all.
Popular vote would be dominated by larger states, but it would still be an improvement for most smaller states because they would at least have some relevance.
But there are ways to move to a better system without dumping the weighting to smaller states. For instance, the EC system could be kept with each state getting electoral votes equal to its number of seats in congress, so smaller states get the boosted weighting from all having two senate seats. But instead of having almost almost all states give their electoral votes on a winner take all basis, you could have EV proportionately allocated. So Maryland has 10 EV, and it the vote went like 2016 then Clinton would get 6, Trump 3 and Johnson 1 (or Trump 4 and Johnson 0 depending on how you break up partial results). There would be a reason to campaign there, because instead of a certain 10 votes for the Democratic candidate, campaigning could shift the Dem to 7, or the Rep to 4 or 5. The roughly 40 to 45 states that are currently irrelevant would be relevant again, while small states would still keep their weighting.
I think the latest election where a state like Michigan and Pennsylvania went red kinda throws this on its head a bit. Both had spent the last 24 years going blue. I am slightly amused though, since this was the first election I didn't vote republican, and my state finally flipped.
simonr1978 wrote:
You're not entirely correct there. Cartridge firing handguns IIRC can still be legally owned in Northern Ireland and on the Isle of Man (Or could last time I checked) but are almost completely banned elsewhere in the UK. Scotland has also fairly recently instituted licencing for airguns which is not a requirement elsewhere in the UK. The Isle of Man also has their own separate system of permits for air weapons and crossbows which are not applicable elsewhere. It doesn't differ from county to county, true, but there are circumstances where crossing from one jurisdiction within the UK to another can turn legal ownership into a serious criminal offence. Anyway, apologies for the off-topic diversion.
Perhaps my choice of the UK specifically, as a broad example, is misplaced, because what I really want to focus on is the dichotomy between provinces within in a particular country. Are laws drastically different between say, Bayern and Hessen, in Germany, such that you can break laws by stepping across the border? What about say, British Columbia and Alberta? Between Rouen and Le Mans in France? Genuinely asking, because my relatively ignorant assumption is that other nation's {which are generally parliamentary democracies and not, strictly speaking, republics in the way the US is} do not consistently have a situation where someone can break laws just by passing through different provinces within the country.
Again- this is all in reference to the idea that republics have a fundamentally more difficult task in trying to craft and enforce national laws/mandates because of the constraints and society can suffer because of this. It seems a little ridiculous that moving between US states is almost like you're moving into a different country [geography aside] (compared to other democracies). See: healthcare availability, firearm laws, banking availability/restrictions, insurance providers etc. I recently moved half way across the continent to the DoC and my bank doesn't have a single branch either in the DoC or in the two adjacent states. Someone is supposed to get a new drivers license whenever they move between a state, and my health insurance isn't valid in my new location. Surely this is not true of other democracies?
thekingofkings wrote:
Sheer size of the US matters as well as we are a lot more "diverse" naturally than other countries since we are all at one point or another immigrants. One of our biggest issues as a country as far as I am concerned is we really don't much like each other and certainly don't spend much time trying to. Add an unhealthy amount of distrust to the contempt and you can see why we have a hard time getting things done nationally.
I would also add that there seems to be a consistent trend [culturally] within the US towards insulation (now and historically). There is a drastic lack of opportunity for people within the US, generally, to interact with people who are different from themselves. This is, of course, partially due to geography, but also due to what I would consider to be a dismissiveness of non-American ideas, beliefs, or cultural traditions. Studies have shown that one's ability to empathize, sympathize, or perceive the humanity in others is linked to a consistent exposure to people and places that are unfamiliar to you.
750 WAAAGH Whazgog
750 33rd Agatheon Regiment
"HOW THE F&@% WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW; ILLEGAL OFFWORLD DEATH TOURNAMENTS WERE ILLEGAL?!?!"
"I HAVE ONE QUESTION AND ONE QUESTION ONLY TO ASK YOU: EXPLOOOOOSIONSSS?!?!"
Perhaps my choice of the UK specifically, as a broad example, is misplaced, because what I really want to focus on is the dichotomy between provinces within in a particular country. Are laws drastically different between say, Bayern and Hessen, in Germany, such that you can break laws by stepping across the border? What about say, British Columbia and Alberta? Between Rouen and Le Mans in France? Genuinely asking, because my relatively ignorant assumption is that other nation's {which are generally parliamentary democracies and not, strictly speaking, republics in the way the US is} do not consistently have a situation where someone can break laws just by passing through different provinces within the country.
Well, your three examples of non-Republic countries actually includes two Republics:
Grey Templar wrote: Frankly, liberals need to drop gun control and be all for personal gun ownership.
"Liberals need to stop being liberal about this issue" is a thing lots of people like to say right now. It's exactly as valuable as all the "conservatives need to stop being conservative about this issue" hot takes we saw from 2006 to 2016.
I actually agree with this...
What's changed was that the gun-control crowd are much more honest.
Namely because gun control has its roots in racism within the Democratic Party. It was originally brought about in an attempt to limit African Americans access to guns, and went hand in hand with other attempts to limit their ability to vote and attend “white” schools. Democrats need to stop being hippocrits on this, as the party that allegedly champions personal rights and freedom.
You're slightly kind of right about some of this, but mostly you're pretty wrong. There have been a lot of bit of gun control, and most had little to do wth racism The 1936 act that placed tight controls on fully auto, and the amendment in the 80s that only allowed for grandfathering and no new weapons wasn't based in racism, it was based in criminals using auto weapons to outshoot police.
The bit you're kind of a little bit right about was that some gun laws have been pretty damn racist. For instance, California has proposed and passed some gun laws targeting specific makes and models because they were preferred by black people, particularly the Black Panthers. But here's a funny thing - the NRA was in support of each of those laws. This is because when you look back in history, everyone was more than a little bit racist.
But even if we ignore the factual errors in your claim, more than anything the existence of some racist reasoning behind some past laws as a reason to reject a law today with no racial elements is some really crappy analysis.
A) he's totally right that much of the gun-control initiatives in the past were for racists reasons as the ex-slave holders didn't want their former slaves armed. Read up the arguments in the Dredd Scott case.
B) The point here wasn't to distinctly state that "Gun Control = Racisms"... its to convey that initiative like these isn't pure (ie, to keep people safe), as there are other unstated reasons that would likely prove to be unconstitutional (ie, Obama era change to allow bureaucrats to put people accepting SS help on NICS db without proper judicial adjudication).
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d-usa wrote: And during the recent issues with healthcare, tax-cuts, and especially funding, we had multiple times where the Senate (and sometimes the House) had plans and compromises, and then they met with Trump who declared that he didn't like this or that, and then the plan fell through. Bills are developed by Presidents, and then shaped by what Presidents want, and the Senate then ends up passing nothing rather than passing something that Trump doesn't agree with. But it shouldn't matter what a President wants as far as drafting a bill and moving it through the process is concerned.
Sort of. IT depends how much political capital the president is willing to spend. For instance when Trump shot down three or four bills protecting dreamers that had bi-partisan support, it was because Trump was willing to go to the mat to stop the bill (well not Trump but actually John Kelly and Steve Miller, but the effect is the same).
However, Trump had a clear idea for the budget he wanted, with cuts to almost everything outside the military. But congress put up a bill that had nothing Trump wanted, but because this wasn't the fight Trump wanted, and because Trump and his staff are miles out of their depth on anything that involves the actual management of the country, Trump rolled over. Congressional Republicans got the spending they wanted, because they were willing to fight on the issue and Trump was not.
Afterwards Trump swore he'll never sign a budget like that again, and everyone laughed.
I laughed too... all congress has to do is fund something he really REALLY likes (in this case the Defense Budget).
I don't ever see him vetoing any GOP passed bills... and seriously doubt he'd do that to a Democratic passed bill. He'll be made out as an even more of a pariah, and he simply wants to be loved by all.
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whembly wrote: Stick to paper ballots... there's nothing stopping us from having the primary day (or election day) all done on one day.
There is a lot to be said for the travelling carnival style of primaries. It gives lower profile candidates a chance concentrate their limited resources on the smaller early states, to prove they have something about them with good results in those early states. Without that system then the only winners you'd see would be candidates who were already very well connected, and very well financed.
Very true and well stated. However, it's a system that does elongate the campaign season and I was only inferring that there's nothing stopping us from having the primary election held on one day.
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Well, with DACA they had some bipartisan agreements. Then Trump said he would veto it and they killed it, even though he said he would sign anything they give him. But in the end Trump will be able to say that Congress is the one who killed DACA because they never produced any kind of bill for him to consider, and he wouldn't be lying.
They should have done like the budget: be an independent branch of the government, come up with your own plan, pass it, and send it to Trump and let him do whatever he wants. If he vetoes something, then the Representatives and Senators are safe because they can say "we tried, he vetoed it". If they never send him anything, then they are the ones who failed.
Basically, I feel about the "veto" the same way that I feel about the "filibuster". You shouldn't be able to kill a bill by threatening a veto or a filibuster, you need to put your ass on the line and actually stand there and filibuster or put your ink on the paper to veto. Refusing to do your job because someone else is just threatening to make it hard is a failure on your part.
For the previous 6 years the House knew that the Senate wasn't going to do much of anything with their fivehundred ACA repeal bills, and they knew that Obama would veto it anyway it they did. But they still passed bill after bill to say "we did our job, they/he didn't do theirs/his".
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d-usa wrote: Well, your three examples of non-Republic countries actually includes two Republics:
Federal Republic of Germany
French Republic
French Regions do not have legislatures and thus no independent legislative authority. Yes, Germany is a federalist state. No, simply having the word "Republic" in your name does not make you a Federalist Republic, in the same way that NO ONE says The United States of Mexico even though that's actually what the country's formal name is.
My question still stands: do nations which are predominately made up of provinces suffer legislative inconsistencies which drastically undermine the ability of the national government to make and administer laws across the nation as a whole, as well as protect and enforce the laws equally across the citizenry?
750 WAAAGH Whazgog
750 33rd Agatheon Regiment
"HOW THE F&@% WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW; ILLEGAL OFFWORLD DEATH TOURNAMENTS WERE ILLEGAL?!?!"
"I HAVE ONE QUESTION AND ONE QUESTION ONLY TO ASK YOU: EXPLOOOOOSIONSSS?!?!"
d-usa wrote: Well, your three examples of non-Republic countries actually includes two Republics:
Federal Republic of Germany
French Republic
French Regions do not have legislatures and thus no independent legislative authority. Yes, Germany is a federalist state. No, simply having the word "Republic" in your name does not make you a Federalist Republic, in the same way that NO ONE says The United States of Mexico even though that's actually what the country's formal name is.
My question still stands: do nations which are predominately made up of provinces suffer legislative inconsistencies which drastically undermine the ability of the national government to make and administer laws across the nation as a whole, as well as protect and enforce the laws equally across the citizenry?
Yet, France is a Republic and Germany is a Republic.
Because being a Republic has nothing at all to do with anything you are talking about. A Republic is a form of government with a non-hereditary Head of State who is elected by the public, that's it. That is all it means.
A Republic can have a presidential system, a parliamentary system, the head-of-state can be elected directly or indirectly.
In the case of the United States, we have a Presidential system based on a liberal democracy where we elect a council in the form of the electoral college who then picks the President. As far as us being a "republic", that is all it means.
As far as anything you are talking about, us being a Republic doesn't mean anything and makes us nothing special, especially since you are comparing us to other Republics, all while trying to make some sort of point that they are not really a Republic and are therefore different.
Once you figure out an actual argument based on actual things, maybe we can address the points you think you are making.
750 WAAAGH Whazgog
750 33rd Agatheon Regiment
