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2016 American Presidential Campaign

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I get as much of my news from al jazeera as from foxnews. I dont believe either source programs my mind. Believe it or not I think for myself. Unless you can show me differently, the news i read on foxnews's website is not fake news. Everyone has their spin. Now I admit that Im fairly libertarian. I am also pretty liberal. I support gay marriage because it cuts down on abortions. But other things matter to me as well. First and foremost is an inherent mistrust of authority and government. Time will tell how things will go. I dont have all the answers but I try to listen to what everybody has to say. Diversity is important and I kinda pride myself on the fact that I have my own perspective. And to be clear, I am a male but I am not a white christian. So I don't know what you think my problem is....other than I enjoy reading the foxnews website.

But, in all fairness, you said in another thread that you get your news from fox, yes?
Maybe that's your problem. It's hard for me to understand how people think trump could be anything but disasterous for the USA and the world.
 
Cant speak on their behalf but pretty sure ronny loved it. As a degenerate liberal libertarian, I know I love California...almost as much as my home state of Colorado. San Francisco will always be my favorite city on earth....so far anyway. Everything about California is great in my eyes...except the traffic. Not yet been to Washington. I have a feeling yet that paradise will be found outside Seattle.

What is it with conservatives and California?

It's something like 10% of the population and 15% of our GDP. It's a pretty sizable state.

So if you remove 10% of the population that tends to be wealthier, better educated, and more productive, Trump wins the popular vote?
 
What is it with conservatives and California?

It's something like 10% of the population and 15% of our GDP. It's a pretty sizable state.

So if you remove 10% of the population that tends to be wealthier, better educated, and more productive, Trump wins the popular vote?
Trump would have won the popular vote if proof of citizenship was required to vote.
 
"The amount of voter fraud is so marginal ..." the Establishment media is always saying, but brings out very little facts to prove it, only a few flimsy studies trying to (a) prove a negative and (b) almost always these claims are parroted by people who would benefit most from the types of voter fraud that are usually discussed. But more importantly, a. Proving the negtative. You're a pretty logical person, I think. How can you prove voter fraud is not there when in many places anyone can just walk in and cast a vote, basically rendering any study of voter fraud at that level (which would include voting by non-citizens, people various identities, whatever) impossible to determine. Take a look at the map at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States, the law largely, but not entirely, breaks down on a "red/blue state" level, unsurprisingly. Now why would that be? Because the Democrat Party does better in elections which don't require ID, and when it is in power (or in fact perhaps even more rabidly when it is not) fights to get these laws repealed because of supposed "racism," which is mostly absurd, and contains the kernel of a racist characterization in itself; while they, of course, abuse any governmental power they can get to get out their vote (viz. mailing of ballots to welfare recipients.)

Manipulations like "Gerrymandering," of course, are a venerable American tradition used by both parties. The repetition of this message supposedly marginal (or even nonexistent) voter fraud, keeping in mind it would be very difficult to keep records of or it, even by more cerebral papers like the Times, is clearly self-serving for the liberals. And, yes, putting up barriers for certain populations who tend to vote Democrat is advantageous to the Republicans, and vice-versa; so what? It's party politics, as old as the nation itself, and practiced by both parties. And even if voter fraud is marginal, it can make an important difference in marginal states, which quite often make the decision in elections.

To take this a bit more further and be more extreme about it, I, for one, think that we made a series of large mistakes in making it easier to vote; more barriers to voting are good things, because people who would be barred thereby from voting are unmotivated voters who are almost invariably low-information voters. Fuck 'em. The more people we disenfranchise, the better TBH. If you're a Democrat, ask "what's the matter with Kansas?" (or not; it's an imbecilic book, better titled, "where did the Democrat party lose all touch with reality as regards it's social agenda," a question that laudably is being raised in the party after the Trump win); if you're a conservative, think of all the groups that vote for the Democrat party almost invariably.

That is, both sides of the aisle are damaged by low-information, low-motivation voters (recall the YouTube videos made of asking random people about whether they liked Obama's policy on x,y,z, and actually telling them McCain [or Romney's] policy.) Do a good start on getting rid of them and maybe our national political discourse can start to head back to the times when we regularly had debates between Vidal & Buckley on regular new networks and Kennedy-Nixon type debates instead of the inanities of today. But this, of course, is why I think this system doesn't work, anyway. People managed to develop most of civilization and more beautiful artworks than the world has seen before or since under the rule of kings and princes and popes, China is outstripping us economically ... democracy is dead. Had a bit of a renaissance but was always dead in it's soul. Lead us down a lot of very bad roads. It's not just dead, but mouldering. And the sooner that we realize this and fix it, we'll be better off tremendously.
 
Maybe.

But the amount of voter fraud is so marginal as to be meaningless this election. American citizens did not vote for Trump.
Stanford found that during the democratic primaries, hillary did much better in all the states with no paper trail. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6mLpCEIGEYGYl9RZWFRcmpsZk0/view?pref=2&pli=1

Of course, thanks to wikileaks, we already know they rigged the primaries for her. If they were willing to do that, it's not hard to believe they were willing to commit major fraud in the general election. She is so boring compared to obama yet she gets more votes in california than he did in either of his wins.

Even mexico has stronger voting requirements than we do 8)

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Is democracy dead? Isn't that how most of the world outside middle east picks their leaderz?

I know but its turned out that humans sometimes choose the wrong person.

In a way, democracy is hugely flawed. Is the public really the most qualified body to determine who should be in charge? I wouldn't choose medical treatment simply because a lot of people thought I should. One expert would convince me though.
 
Well i suppose that is the nice thing about being in a representational republic..the electors will elect the right human should the great unwashed pick the wrong human. Of course the last two elections did not bear that out...indeed the ec has never gone against the popular vote....factored as 50 states of course. In all seriousness, and ive asked before...how would you propose humans pick leaderz? Me, i love a selection every 4 years. The founding pops brilliance never ceases to amaze me.
 
I think we should vote on issues. Then hire public employees to "make it so". We really don't need leaders anymore they are obsolete.
 
Arguing that you can't really prove voter fraud is NOT happening is a legitimate point. But so to is it legitimate to say that it is disingenuous to claim voter fraud IS happening without proof. You can perhaps say that on the balance of evidence it 'might' be happening, or 'probably' is happening. But without evidence it's extremely hard to say to what extent the problem goes.

You may not be able to prove a negative, but you also can't argue a positive without evidence. From what I've seen it sounds to me like it probably does happen, but I won't pretend to know to what extent it influences the election. It could be a lot, it could be utterly insignificant. But until there is evidence a problem exists id be hesitant to change the system. We've had all sorts of problems with electronic and machine voting from trying to solve problems that exist largely in the imaginations of the people selling the machines. I'd want to see evidence of the problem actually being a problem before doing something that could have unintended, or worse, intended side effects.
 
I think we should vote on issues. Then hire public employees to "make it so". We really don't need leaders anymore they are obsolete.

Oh how I wish that were true, at one point when I was younger I might well have agreed. But alas I just don't think society is smart enough to have true democracy yet. We barely make do with representative democracy.

Democracy works great at preserving rights and freedom's, and expressing the peoples will. But it is an utter disaster in practice when it comes to making decisions for the greater good in the long term at short term expense.

No matter what the issue, if it requires short term sacrifice for the greater long term good, a very large number of people will allow themselves to be manipulated into sacrificing the future for the desires of the present. Democracy is terrible at this because people are terrible at it. I wish they weren't but they are. You could argue that we should do it anyway and if we screw everything up well that's our own fault. But with long term issues it will largely be our children to suffer the consequences.

I hope one day we will be ready for real democracy.
 
I do agree with most of what you say Jess, I don't think people as a whole are too dumb to vote though. Some are but there are only about 20% (made up numbers) and they are split into two camps of 10% each and far too busy yelling at each other while providing nothing of value for society. They do functionally cancel each other out if everyone votes. While America is getting hung up on voter fraud, they are missing voter apathy. Change the system so more then 50% care enough to bother. We are far smarter than this system is and voter apathy is a demonstration of that. Don't sell yourself short, your skill at debate would make you influential in a true democracy.

First I always think now without money in the equation. For any social or political progress to happen we need to make the paradigm shift to tracking resourses not labour. Once the tool of control is dismantled people won't be fed so much pure bullshit and truth can rise to the top. Voting is a lot easier when you have an issue with 4 or 5 options and we use social media to resolve problems.

We are smart enough to change now. We need to pack up our fear of change, bite the bullet, and change our world before clinging to our old worn out ideas make us do things we will regret.

Humanity is ready for the next event, all the unrest worldwide is just a simple way of seeing this system is far too oppressive and we can do better. Any thought that even tighter control would improve the failing world is hilarious to me, attempting to control others is exactly why we are in the mess we are. We need democracy so we can gain control of our world by giving up the choke hold we have ourselves in.
 
Think of the great revolutions of thought we've had, from Plato to the Buddha to the enlightenment, and how nothing much changed. I do not believe you can fundamentally change human nature.

Then again, I am a pessimist... :\
 
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