General Chat / 2016 Elections

 

 

This makes no sense to me. How can you prefer this system over a system where every vote weighs exactly the same? I mean, a (simplified) system where you just count all votes in the end and make the one with the mayority president is the the one where "Each ballot matters, each vote matters", isn't it?

 

And another thing, just out of interest, how you come to say that Hillary is "left"? To my standards she is not near being left, especially on the foreign policy.

 

 

Hillary is left on an American political spectrum, the spectrum for the country that she ran in and the country that this discussion is about.

 

 

The deregulation of the market is what led to the 2008 recession because of an unregulated Wall street pushing subprime mortgages. In theory what you say may make sense, but in reality it only perpetuates corporate greed in the worst way that leads to the inevitable consequence of unfettered capitalism: a bubble economy, recession, higher wealth disparity, etc. History has shown that it doesn't work.

 

I think Hillary's plan was to push for more investment into renewable resources, to get off dependency on fossil fuels as soon as possible. Any economic pockets hit by this step will be aided by federally funded packages to help retrain workers in mining towns for new jobs in the industry. But let's face it : coal mining towns are done for. It is both unsustainable for the economy as it is for the environment, and the rural towns that have developed around the sites of coal mining are depressed regions of low-paying dangerous coal mining jobs. There needs to be a shift away from that infrastructure and that method of job-generation, and a push for more renewable energy research, implementation, and retraining of current low-skill jobs to push them towards these new technologies.

 

It's almost as if we're stymieing our own progress, given all the new innovative energy technology we're capable of, for the sake of small mining towns around coal plants that are completely rooted in the 20th century. However, while it's important to move forward with technology, we cannot forget the people that have built their lives around that defunct technology and we must work to bring them forward with us. Abandoning coal mining is fine, but abandoning people is not. 

 

P.S. The reason we don't know about Hillary's position on this (nor Trump's) is because it was NOT COVERED by the media during the election blitz that focused on the email scandal and the "grab them by the pussy" scandal. That is what our democracy has been degraded down to: real issues are spurned in favor of covering the latest scandal of the OPPOSING candidate. It's downright embarrassing. 

 

 

I generally agree, though it is hard to pinpoint blame in my opinion on the crash of the sub-prime market, it existed in the 90s and died off, only to come again after 9/11, when interest rates where maneuvered to keep the economy moving.  Essentially, it was pushing off an economic crash in favor of short term growth, in an area that no one really understood or paid any attention to.  I doubt any other leader would of faired much better at the time, it was pretty much a lose-lose situation.  Lose now, or lose tomorrow, and they chose tomorrow as politicians always do.

 

There are a lot of problems, some of them government can solve and government can't.  Sometimes I feel it should be governments job to invest in things like climate change tech, other times not so much.  Generally I think people shouldn't be forced by the hand of politics to live certain ways and support certain causes, which is why I had a big issue with Clinton.  Neither candidate is perfect but we live in an imperfect world run by imperfect me in an imperfect system, its just the way it goes.

 

As far as the EC goes, there simply are much bigger and more important issues.  EC is something that only comes into play once every 4 years and in the end doesn't really do much bad, so IMO not something people should worry about.

$5 says le pen gets in and within 2 years the eu is crumbled.

How's the situation in the US now? I've heard a lot about demonstrations and smaller riots against trump. Also a friend of mine posted this:

 

To anyone who doesn't have as many US-Facebook friends as I do and thinks things aren't "as bad": Various people I know personally and a much greater number I don't know have been harassed, threatened and attacked with sentences such as "Shouldn't you be on a bus back home", "Ching Chungs back to communist land" "Your time is up" etc. by Trump supporters int he past 24 hours.

 

Can anyone verify similar stuff? Hope this isn't true & wish you all the best over there.

 

"MFG"

Offenses are isolated, exaggerated by media as always.  Actually there have been offenses on both sides, along with many false reports.

 

These will dissipate to the "normal" level pretty soon, I don't think people should really be worried.  Tensions are high because this was not predicted by big media, and obviously some sadly can't handle the result.

Things aren't great over here. You have people on both sides being awful. You have Hillary supporters rioting and attacking people wearing Trump hats. We've had multiple instances of high schools chanting "build a wall" and "deport them". I know it will get better but this is the most divided I've ever seen the country.

But I don't know why I'm arguing with you, its clear your disappointed your favored candidate wasn't elected and your blaming the EC, which has been the same for 230 years, and I doubt has ever been an issue in your mind before yesterday.

 

Plus, this happens every election, the losing party always says the electoral college is the reason they lost etc.... its an issues that will never be considered an issue as long as there is someone sitting in office.

I'll admit to it never being as much as an issue to me as it is now. Not because Clinton lost, but because Trump won. I've always found it a dumb system but this being the second time in 5 elections to happen, proves it doesn't work anymore. That's a failure rate of 40%. Imagine if you had a vending machine that 40% of the times drops out a sprite when you want a coke. Surely, they'd replace that vending machine. Imagine an airline that 1% of the time flies to the wrong airport. Surely they'd suffer from that.

 

The system is faulty but that's not to say that's a reason they should take the win from Trump. They knew beforehand what this system was and he won within this system. The good part of the EC is that they may end up voting for HRC if Trump does get convicted for rape and fraud later this month.

 

Whereas Twitter was hilarious on Tuesday it's been depressing me ever since. Stuff like this constantly pops up along with threads of people telling their full story, how they've been harassed and feel unsafe;

https://twitter.com/...432456807284738

 

A housemate of mine lived in Oklahoma and I've heard her talk about how it's about as bad for HRC supporters over there.

Can anyone verify similar stuff? Hope this isn't true & wish you all the best over there.

It's very true. I can speak for a large majority of people in my Facebook feed who have posted lengthy commentary about how unsafe they truly feel and how they have witnessed, for lack of a better word, hate crimes. From teens and young adults, no less. Which is surprising to me since exit polls had shown Clinton taking more of the millennial vote. Mostly the things I'm seeing is actually people afraid of Trump's followers and how his rhetoric has empowered their state of mind, not actually the man himself.

 

I will say, for what it's worth, that Trump's acceptance speech after his win on Tuesday gave me a sliver of hope that he could actually have a humble bone in his body. Also his meeting with Obama, too, made me feel the same way. At this point it's a waiting game to see what kind of president he will become. I'm not entirely hopeful, but we really don't have any other choice but to be.

The electoral college is in the same boat as superdelegates and closed primaries. Everyone knows it sucks, I actually think Republicans and Democrats agree that it sucks. I know Donald Trump thinks it sucks. We all hate it but we can't change it now since we knew the rules going in and changing it now would make Democrats look bad (and would of course be totally impossible). If we want to change these things we could probably do it in 2 years, but they're out of sight and out of mind until it's political season again and it's too late to do anything.

I know it will get better but this is the most divided I've ever seen the country.

 Erm...we did have a civil war...the current parties are quite divisive but I don't think the sky has fallen just yet. 

 

I've always found it a dumb system but this being the second time in 5 elections to happen, proves it doesn't work anymore. That's a failure rate of 40%.

There have been 58 presidential elections, and 4 candidates have won without the popular vote. 4/58 = 6.9%. On average it has happened once every 58 years! The system is not broken. The electoral college exists to make sure the votes of less-populated states still matter. Otherwise a candidate would campaign in New York, California, Texas, and Florida and nowhere else. There are 50 United States of America, not just 4. It seems more unfair because it has happened twice in the last 16 years. The previous two times it happened were in 1876 and 1888, only 12 years apart. Then it didn't happen again for 112 years! There's no need to call for a new system until more data is collected. If a candidate keeps winning the popular vote but losing the election, like if it happens 2 or 3 more times in the next 20 years, then maybe we should discuss a new system. If your airline flies you to the wrong airport 6.9% of the time, you'll still get to your destination 93.1% of the time. It's not worth saying, "I'm never going to fly again!" if there is a 93.1% chance of success. 

 

TL;DR The world is not ending, and we don't need a new system. 

This is my rant from Facebook:

 A man whose name is synonymous with egregious wealth will soon be the leader of the country with the world's largest income gap. A man who brags about the evasion of taxes and condemns those who can hardly afford to do so will soon have the power to compile the national budget. A man who continually and unashamedly disrespects women, in the face of the most highly regarded female presidential candidate our country has ever seen, will soon have veto, pardon, appointing, negotiative, censorship, and military powers, among others, to take advatage of at his will.

 

 

 Erm...we did have a civil war...the current parties are quite divisive but I don't think the sky has fallen just yet. 

 

 

 

There have been 58 presidential elections, and 4 candidates have won without the popular vote. 4/58 = 6.9%. On average it has happened once every 58 years! The system is not broken. The electoral college exists to make sure the votes of less-populated states still matter. Otherwise a candidate would campaign in New York, California, Texas, and Florida and nowhere else. There are 50 United States of America, not just 4. It seems more unfair because it has happened twice in the last 16 years. The previous two times it happened were in 1876 and 1888, only 12 years apart. Then it didn't happen again for 112 years! There's no need to call for a new system until more data is collected. If a candidate keeps winning the popular vote but losing the election, like if it happens 2 or 3 more times in the next 20 years, then maybe we should discuss a new system. If your airline flies you to the wrong airport 6.9% of the time, you'll still get to your destination 93.1% of the time. It's not worth saying, "I'm never going to fly again!" if there is a 93.1% chance of success. 

 

TL;DR The world is not ending, and we don't need a new system. 

 

Will you accept a 7% failure rate for a football game, where 7% of the time the team with less points win?

 

Will you accept a 7% failure rate for your car's brakes?

 

Will you accept a 7% failure rate for your emails being sent vs. not being sent?

 

Will you accept a 7% failure rate for a nuclear power plant?

 

Then why would you accept a 7% failure rate for the election of the president of the united states?

 

If my airline flies me to the wrong airport even ONCE, I'm never flying that airline ever again. Period. I'm moving to another airline, one that won't fuck it up. Duh? 

 

The system IS BROKEN, it needs to be FIXED not ABOLISHED. The removal of the EC is not a great option because, like you said, the balance between small and large states need to be maintained... but stop denying that it's broken when it fails 7% of the time... that's a catastrophically high number in almost any other situation you put it in, let alone for one of the most important democratic systems we have in place in the USA...

Then there's also the (in a previously posted video) mentioned point that a Californian vote is worth less than a vote in Montana. That's not fair either.

 

The EC was a great system 200 years ago when a president could die from whatever between the elections and start of his term without the people in faraway states knowing. Now. It's unneccesary. It's a dumb system.

 

That doesn't mean they should suddenly crown Clinton president now. The rules were set before the 'game' and she lost within those rules, no denying that. For future elections, though this doesn't seem like the way to go anymore.

The so called 'dumb' system is actually used in a large amount of countries, most of which were at some point something to do with Britain.

 

Sorry about that.

 

But the only 'major' countries that use this system are the UK, USA & Canada.

 

Please carry on with your discussion though. I'm sure it will provide much entertainment for people when it gets more heated.

The stupid hate for Trump supporters, his being elected, and the country is worse than anything Trump's done. Because he hasn't even done anything yet.  IMO, people can save this shit for when something racist, masochist, etc. happens.

Mainstream media spends the last decade or so showcasing racial division and conflict; playing a huge role in building up the tension to the point where it is now.

 

Now they ask "How can the new president help alleviate and fix this racial divide?"

 

Really? You bastards.

 

I generally keep my political views private - especially online. I refuse to 'lose' friends and colleagues due to politics. Especially because the vast majority of those same people tend to not think for themselves and blindly believe whatever narrative the echo chamber of their choosing is pushing on that given week.

 

Being from South Florida, I know a lot of Trump supporters. And I can honestly say that they are not the typical 'racist 40+ year old white redneck uneducated working class' folks that the media consistently portrays. I'm living in Miami at the moment, and although Clinton won in Dade county quite heavily, I never once saw a single Clinton/Kaine sign ANYWHERE in the past few months. Nobody I encountered was excited about her and her campaign. I feel that those who voted did so out of a sense of duty - not because they were excited for her as an individual candidate. To tell the truth, a lot of Hispanics that I know voted for Trump. My girlfriend's entire family are legal Cuban immigrants - immigrated to America when they were children, moved from city to city to find jobs, worked their way up, built their own homes, etc. Cubans are conservative by nature, but they strongly view illegal immigration as a hot issue. That, coupled with the issues with Bill's infidelity, her dishonesty, corruption, etc made it impossible for many of them to even consider voting for her according to them.

 

The few ardent Clinton supporters I know seemed to be genuinely idealistic and passionate about her candidacy. I made the choice to never discuss politics with them, as I know that we would disagree on a lot. I love and respect them and would never demean anybody because of their political or religious beliefs.

 

I have never affiliated with any particular political party, as I'm an extremely skeptical person by nature. I like to inform myself from a large variety of sources to find information as unbiased as I can find it. Which unfortunately means reading multiple different articles on the same issue so that I can eventually come to my own conclusion based on facts rather than spin. I've stayed up late at night reading pages and pages of Wikileaks emails. I've read up extensively on Donald Trump's tax and fraud issues. To be a logical and just voter, I felt that I needed to approach it from as balanced a perspective as possible.

 

That being said, I have no strong love for either candidate whatsoever after this election. I believe that Trump is obnoxious, blustery, and in way over his head. I do not think that he is the 'racist' monster that everyone portrays him as though. It just seems that he enjoys the shock value of his statements a bit much, and he talks himself into holes way too often - allowing himself to be baited easily.

 

As for Hillary - I do think that she is the worst possible candidate that the Democratic party could have propped up. Regardless of whether you may believe the 'Russia' excuse - the Wikileaks emails are valid. And reading through those emails alone was enough to convince me not to give her my support. There are many reasons why I grew to strongly dislike her; but I made sure that my reasoning would be based on my own conclusions and not because of what the media or my friends tell me. (Which is why I had my Facebook deleted for a while.) In addition to all of the scandal and controversy surrounding her (which isn't much better in regards to Trump either), I am strongly opposed to her leanings toward Globalism. I'm not going to get into it right now, but I do not think that it would be best for us as a nation. Purely conservative Nationalism definitely isn't the solution either. 

 

The media's role in all of this is probably what infuriates me the most. There is absolutely no denying that 'news' channels are promoting their own agendas as opposed to delivering news. This goes both ways. The actions of CNN (especially those revealed behind the scenes in regards to Brazile and Blitzer and the debate questions) disgust me. The condescending and pandering rhetoric of FOX disgusts me as well. This isn't news; its propaganda and sensationalism. The censorship online on certain websites (Reddit / 4Chan / even Facebook and YouTube to an extent) is disgusting. The simple fact that an organization like Correct the Record was even allowed to exist and operate in the capacity that it did is an absolute disgrace. While the over-hyping and dramatization being pushed by far right wing media (Infowars, Breitbart, etc) may not be on the same plane as the corruption following some of the more liberal outlets, I still held them in very low standing in regards to reporting news fairly and accurately as I feel they should. Regardless, they haven't failed us nearly as bad as the Mainstream Media has. People only want to seek news from sources that validate their chosen narrative and agenda. They will gladly close their eyes and cover their ears if they see or read something about their candidate or political affiliation that isn't 'good. Good luck trying to get any Trump supporter to acknowledge his refusal to release tax returns, fraud charges, etc. In the same token, good luck trying to get ANY Clinton supporter to spend time reading through the DNC / Podesta emails on Wikileaks that shed light on what truly goes on behind the scenes regarding their candidate. 

 

This will probably be the last any of you will hear from me regarding these issues. While I have a strong opinion regarding this election in general - most of my frustration and focus is on government as a whole. It's easy to fall in line and become passionate about a cause that many others are rallying around. Whether its 'Make America Great Again', or 'Not My President'. But to take a step back and truly think for yourself is a challenge that few are willing to undertake.

 

To all of my non-American friends; I'm sorry about all of this mess.

^^Yeah I agree. At the end of the day, it is what it is. Trump has been voted president, nothing is going to change, might as well shut up and carry on and see what happens, no one knows what is going to go down until it goes down.

Please carry on with your discussion though. I'm sure it will provide much entertainment for people when it gets more heated.

Was just thinking earlier today, that I really enjoyed how this discussion has stated mostly factual and respectful of each other.

The stupid hate for Trump supporters, his being elected, and the country is worse than anything Trump's done. Because he hasn't even done anything yet.  IMO, people can save this shit for when something racist, masochist, etc. happens.

Agree in the sense that he's been elected and people will have to deal with that. Disagree completely with saying it's worse than anything Trump's done. The man has led to so much hate being spewed around (examples in this topic). Oh, and he's on trial for rape. Admittedly, he hasn't been convicted yet. But rape is much worse than complaining about the president-elect.

 

In that regard:

This is some of the dumbest shit I've seen the internet do: https://www.change.o...-on-december-19

lol much like the petition that demanded the brexit vote be retaken

Trump won because people felt like the system was rigged against them and that their voices weren't being heard. The people that wrote that petition are in complete denial of reality and if it ever happened (which of course it won't) it would reinforce those feelings which caused everyone to vote for Trump in the first place and probably lead to a civil war and honestly it would be justified (and this is coming from someone who despises Donald Trump).

 

He won fair and square. We need to deal with it and move on.

I have so much respect for you, In:Cities. I agree with just about everything you said, and I strive to have the same attitude about posting my opinions online as you do.

 

I'll bow out of the discussion as well (although it has been a good and respectable one) because we all know where I ended up last time a touchy subject came up.