Life
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Posts posted by Life
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well, it's not like i don't take issue with him. but i just don't think it's entirely fair to paint him a villain. similarly, i don't think it's entirely fair to paint gandhi a hero.
point is, i'd like to see more subtlety in people's answers. ("no moral similarities to us presidents. none," from life for example, is unfair)
There are no moral similarities.
Name me a single US President who had political opponents jailed and shot.
My favourite is that people who want to go after Pence for his position on electro-shock therapy for gays are ignoring Castro's abuses against the gay community because Castro viewed homosexuality as a consequence of capitalism and gays needed to be re-educated through labour camps.
But if Castro wasn't a villain, then I guess Stalin was a pretty decent dude too. He reinvigorated the Soviet work force!
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marxism isn't inherently bad. especially theoretically.
Marxism is inherently bad, especially because it works so well.
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MY MISTAKE. Always thought Anne Frank was Dutch-born.
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in my head something like that would be made an amendment to the constitution. so it'd be pretty major and will likely be well understood and supported by the time of ratification. changing our voting system is huge, but my generation wants it. it could definitely happen within 30 years or something.
i guess it could work alongside it, but the ec is ass so i'd rather it just begone.
Our generation also believes that Marxism is a good idea so I wouldn't put too much stock into the "change is good" mentality.
Also, I find it impossible to believe the idea that if the roles had been reversed, we would still have this conversation. If Trump won the popular vote and lost the electoral college, I would bet just about anything that all of you would be pro-electoral college. Mind you, I actually would be pro-electoral college still because it's the best system that exists in the world (considering that I've dealt with two different parliamentary systems).
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It's kinda strange how people give him credit for "making the trains run on time". I could say the same about Mussolini or Stalin or any other authoritarian.
Of course, it's not really surprising that Putin went and made a statement that said, "Fidel Castro was a sincere and reliable friend of Russia". But other people praising him like Jeremy Corbyn or other world leaders doesn't really add up, because they are willing to overlook a lot because of the better conditions he brought.
I'm ashamed of Trudeau but not surprised. Castro was a pallbearer at Pierre Elliot Trudeau's funeral (quite literally the worst PM we had ever had before his son got into politics).
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Yeah, because California and New York aren't part of the U.S., or it's not like they aren't some of the most populated states, right? Also, Texas has more population than New York. Do you like the idea of Texas deciding national policy, or is only California and New York not okay because they vote a party you do not like personally?
Like I said in my post above, the "my vote doesn't matter" mentality doesn't always work because, as this election proved, some states do swing and in unexpected ways. But there were indicators in the news that certain states were going to go in certain directions, or were going to be battlegrounds. I had already pretty much known that Ohio was going to go Republican after seeing some of the pre-election projections that had been around for weeks. If you live in a battleground state, a swing state, or a state that have a very strong probability of swinging during the election season then of course you should go vote. But that still doesn't change the fact that the party that "loses" essentially has their vote count for nothing because the entire state goes to the winning party.
I'd rather just do a system where every vote counts, so I actually feel like my vote counts when I'm voting. It'd be more representative to states in which a party is winning only by like 51% or so. Failing that, awarding a proportional number of votes could also work. But the electoral college as it stands just does not really seem like a good system. Does any other country do it this way? And why do people think it's a "superior" alternative to what some of the other democratic countries do?
Let me compare to Israel.
In Israel, there are 120 Knesset seats and parties are awarded seats based on proportion of votes. Since basically no party can achieve a majority, they have to create a coalition with other parties in order to create a government. Last majority government here was something like 1978 (just before Menachem Begin got into power).
Which means that Bibi can essentially stay in power indefinitely due to simply creating a coalition with parties who will work with him to make up a majority of Knesset seats. So my government can essentially be run by a party that ~75% of the country did not vote for. And this has happened for the past 11 years.
Not to mention that there is no checks and balances system, unlike the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_legislative_election,_2015
Likud literally only has 25% of the seats.
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You could reduce every state's EV total by 2 (that is, make it equal to the number of House of Rep members), which would make them roughly proportional to population. You could also change it so that every state had a system like Nebraska or Maine, thus giving a rural Californian (majority Republican) or a person in Austin (majority Democrat) more likely to have their vote reflected. Combined, these two would make the system more like that of the UK or Canada, which much less often hands absolute power to someone who couldn't even manage a plurality of the vote.
Liberals in Canada have a majority government and are currently using that majority to undermine the election system for future elections.
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Well, Texas has 50 times the population of Wyoming...
Also, as it is now, neither Texas nor Wyoming matter
Yes but 3 electoral votes is the minimum a state can have. 2 Senators and 1 Member of Congress.
The only real argument I can see here is "well, just change the proportions to more accurately represent the states". Which I'm not completely opposed to but I don't like the idea of too many Members of Congress.
EDIT: I thought about it and even that idea is stupid. 1 Member of Congress in Wyoming vs. 36 in Texas. Yep, US system is brilliant and that's without any sarcasm.
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Seems to be enabling the tyranny of a minority at the moment to me, and I'm not sure how that's better. People who voted Democratic are gonna have almost no power at the federal level for the next 4 years, despite there being more of them than who voted Republican at both the presidential and senate level.
If you decided by popular vote, their opinions would count for exactly half of the total. Which is as it should be. As is a person in Wyoming's vote counts far more than that of a person who lives in California or Texas (incidentlaly, why is Texas so often ignored in these conversations? It's the second most populous state by quite a bit, not NY).
I think the EC has its advantages (it prevents the need for a nation-wide recount, for one), but some of the defences of it seem pretty logically inconsistent. And it has some major problems, and yeah I do think it has probably contributed to the low turnout in US elections.
No, it doesn't.
Wyoming is worth 3 electoral votes. Texas is worth 38. They're based on proportion.
11 Wyomings are worth 1 Texas.
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How does it give these people a voice, when the politicians know for sure who they're going to vote for?
No one campaigns in Montana, the Dakotas, Vermont, Wyoming, Idaho, and the plentora of small states that always vote the same way. Has a presidential candidate ever spent significant time in those?
They campaign in NH, Iowa and maybe Maine because they can flip, not because they're small. The electoral college does not give "small states" more power. Wyoming is the most republican state in the US, and no one gives a fuck about campaign on there regardless of its size because it will always vote the same way.
This is actually made explicit by Nebraska in itself. No one campaigns in its two districts that always go republican. The only district that receives significant campaigning is the one that can go either way, which happens to be urban.
What I mean to say is that the "the electoral college gives more power to small states" thing is bullocks. It does not give them more power. Montana, Wyoming and all the small states that are not swing states get no power from it.
It gives power to states that can swing either way, regardless of the size. It gives power to NH, but it also gives power to huge Florida and Ohio.
The problem with your logic is that you assume that states that aren't in play will never change their positions. It is a fair assumption but not an accurate one.
50 years ago, the electoral map looked entirely different.
http://www.270towin.com/1960_Election/
Texas and New York both voted Democrat while California was Republican.
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i don't really see how the context and material conditions in cuba even compare to sweden or any first world country. we're talking about a small island that before the revolution was a third world neo-colonial military dictatorship, and now provides housing, healthcare, and education to literally all of its citizens, despite being economically isolated by the us and the rest of the world, and then went on to be instrumental in defeating apartheid and provides some of the best medical assistance in the world to third world countries.
the authoritarianism and other problems should be critiqued where they exist, but if we're giving nuance to us presidents who have mostly all done terrible things, i don't see why it shouldn't be afforded here.
So Fidel Castro eliminated political opponents for decades with firing squads and jail but at least he gave the citizens health care.
Thank god!
There is no moral equivalency here to US Presidents. None.
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Not "on behalf of all Canadians". Absolutely not.To be fair he kind of needs to praise Castro for diplomatic relations with Cuba. I mean, the Saudi King was a bastard; didn't mean Obama pointed that out when he died. For us non politicians, though:
Despite being misunderstood, Joseph Goebbels was a visionary in media relations.
To whom, exactly?castro was a hero tbh
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This, this and this.I live in flyover country, so I'm thankful for the Electoral College because it gives my region a voice.
Considering Hillary didn't take the lead in the popular vote until more votes started being counted in California and New York, I'm even more thankful. I do not like the idea of California and New York City deciding national policy.
True democracy is mob rule. As I stated above, the electoral college eliminates the tyranny of the majority.
Imagine if California voted one way and New York the other. You wouldn't say that the electoral college is silly.
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The electoral college exists to avoid the tyranny of the majority.
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Maxime Bernier is relentless in his attack.
Honestly, who does Trudeau think he is? On behalf of all Canadians? No. Not on my behalf.
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Fidel Castro is dead and Justin Trudeau decided to show his Communist roots by praising a tyrant.
And then... this happened.
The Emperor Nero comment is mine.
Honestly, I am ashamed to call myself Canadian.
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Since it's the only non-reactionary response (all the rest were "but they're science deniers!!!"), I'll answer it.Rather than resort to the reactionary stance, I shall instead ask you to explain this point.What I agree on is that the government isn't the only one that can do something about it. However, I don't think that the ones causing the most pollution will suddenly have a change of heart and do things in a more eco-friendly way, especially if it cuts into profits. I'm willing to do what little I can, but my individual impact is relatively low.
Now, this is only based off of personal anecdote but I get a lot of engineers who come to my bar. And the general point that they stress is that they're not in the business of destroying the evironment for personal gain and their companies are the same.
The vast majority of mining engineers (example but important since Canada has decided to phase out coal mining for the sake of green energy) are environmentalists and companies go out of their way to hire these people. The goal isn't to screw the world for resources and money. It is to allow people to have access to these resources in a way that harms the environment as little as possible. Imagine eliminating oil/coal/gas entirely tomorrow in its entirety. What happens next? Clean energy isn't at a point where it can sustain the entire world entirely on a permanent basis. These resources are needed for survival currently.
Polluting the environment doesn't benefit anyone in the long run and in the Western world, companies understand this. But in the short run, you can't push for closing these industries without making sacrifices yourself.
It feels like Climate Change is something that people push to feel morally superior at this point. It's less about thinking about the practicality of society and more about being able to take the moral high ground without any effort needed.
I'm not a scientist and I don't claim to have all of the answers. But I find conversations like these to not really do anything in practicality because I don't think the people here are going to live by their principles.
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I find it funny that climate alarmists talk about climate change with the rhetoric of religion. As if I don't agree on a point that they make (like that the government is the only entity that can fight climate change), I am essentially a heretic.
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I think it's only a matter of time until it becomes obvious that the right-wing/conservatives are the actual losers of this election. Because they have to watch a not actually that consistently right wing, not actually conservative and not actually republican president making politics in their name and they can't do a whole lot about it without screwing themselves. It's as hilarious as it's potentially dangerous.
Didn't I say this long before the election?
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Bills beat a very aenemic Bengals squad due to a stout D. Problem? We finished the game with 1 WR who was on the team in August... and he was our #4 WR.
And Shady got injured again. Tell me something new.
I don't know how this team is 5-5 right now. If we were anything near healthy, we'd be 7-3 at least. And in all honesty, we should be 3-7 because of injuries.
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Not allowing a recount (in case of suspicion of fraud) is antidemocratic.
I'm not saying that a recount shouldn't be allowed but I find demanding a recount is much more anti-democratic.
Remember, the Clinton camp came up with the opinion that Russia was influencing the election even though there were no solid claims (WikiLeaks had existed long before 2016 and was putting out documents that Democrats loved). If a recount were to happen and it was proven that Hillary lost (I don't think a recount will show anything different), then any claims of the election being rigged are solely on a basis that she and her party do not accept the democratic process.
I have said before that I believed that Hillary's coronation would lead to the end of the Republic and a future tyrannical government in the future (maybe not in the next four years but the path would be set). The idea of rejecting a democratic result makes me believe that I was probably correct.
Now, I know that Trump said the same thing too but it was more in the sense of catching the Democratic Party committing election fraud during the primary. So there was some truth to his statement but I think it came out differently than what he meant to say. I could be wrong too but it felt like he was saying it in jest when Chris Wallace asked him about it.
Not defending Trump on that issue. Challenging the result of a democratic election goes down a very deep rabbit hole and I don't want to do that without a good amount of evidence. Even joking about it is bad. But that's what I took it as. A very poorly timed bad joke that shouldn't have been said.
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That was a joke, bro. Calm down.I don't know if he's racist, he's apparently said some dumb things about civil rights organizations like the ACLU being "unamerican", "communist-inspired" and accused them of trying to "force civil rights down the throats of people" in the past, but even if he's not, he's still a dinosaur dumb fuck for having the opinion that "good people don't smoke marijuana."
What it means that he simply is against drugs. That's a fair position as long as he doesn't keep me from them in a legal sense.
Also, criticizing the ACLU isn't racist or even evil. It means that he has criticism of the ACLU. Would need to look into what the criticism is before I make a judgement call but there is nothing to suggest that he is racist. Especially considering how he legally pushed for the execution of Alabama's KKK leader and almost did it himself.
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100% agree here. Nothing more to really add.as noted in the op, it's meant more to be a comprehensive list of sources. it wouldn't really make sense to decide our metric from the study. for example, known conservatives have posted here noting how bad breitbart is, and libs have posted how bad huffpost is. it would be interesting to see an update though, for the sake of current trends in media!
today was the first day i went on their website and discovered just how much content is paylocked. in the future, it may be worth it to pay for a trusted source. for here i agree, no wsj unless the article is readable.
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That's the one Ben Shapiro is on right? Why does everyone dislike that guy so much? I may not agree with what he says, but from the articles I've read, he argues his points in a civil manner.
Because he's Ben Shapiro. That's why they hate him. He goes on CNN and embarrasses everyone there every single time with his shit-eating grin.
Watch some of his actual debates on YouTube. The race one is probably his best showing but they're all great.
General US Politics
in Serious Discussion
Posted · Edited by Life
It also relies on the elimination of basic freedoms afforded to every person. Which makes it inherently evil.
Phoenix, I'm not saying you're stupid for supporting Marxism. I'm saying that you're evil depending on the degree that you're willing to implement it since it requires force and coercion.