The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

I don't see how who sits in a position, mostly ineffectively, is more important than internet censorship, disregard for internet privacy, and other various foot-to-ground policies and their corporeal enforcement.

As I've said before, neither Trump, Hillary, nor even Jill Stein, was ever going to come to every community, teach every child how to read, give every individual a place to live and/or work, every community an outreach center or social structure... no, that was never going to happen as the "president" level, that is solely reserved for community and city and, to a lesser degree, state. I say lesser degree, because 50 randomly massive individual governments doing different things can in fact be a bother, so there's few things they should enforce that the federal doesn't (and very few things the federal should, meaning both should enforce in a hands-off-other's-lifestyle manner).

The one thing I can think the state should do, is represent the multiple communities at the federal level as a liaison. They should have almost no "flavor" laws. Looking at you, "acts against nature" law in Michigan, which is in direct violation of the SCOTUS ruling in Lawrence vs Texas.

That's probably the worst thing about certain issues. Is that crummy suit-politicians got everywhere, or very colorful character politicians. Goes for both sides, like De Leon, or Abbott, both have pros and cons but both/either could have no cons at all if they conceded liberties they shouldn't lay their pecker-beaters upon. Like gun control based on hardware limitations. Or abortion and bathroom enforcement. Ridiculous to think this is why we pay politicians more than I make in 3 years, not including their agenda-based stock portfolios. I'd do it for free, if it meant I could scrap unnecessary laws.

I think I found a good example of that kind of shtuff @mered4 or @elodea were talking about, about the soundbytes being cited out of context.

Eric Trump: "Nepotism is a fact of life"
a la this shitty Takei clickbait liberal propaganda article: http://qklnk.co/9YDX7s

Complaints: "Nepotism, murder, and rape, are all facts of life, it doesn't make them right. Snooty trust-fund rich class privilege, born rich, don't understand a thing about nepotism and why it's bad".

Very true, except the full quote covers that.

“Nepotism, is kind of a factor of life. We might be here because of nepotism, but we’re not still here because of nepotism. You know, if we didn’t do a good job, if we weren’t competent, believe me, we wouldn’t be in this spot. [He (the president)] expects people to perform. If they’re not performing, he kind of encourages them to go on their way. You know the one thing, Don, Ivanka and I never let him down really in any factor of life. And I think it’s one of the reasons that we’re as innately close as we are.”

I doubt he'd readily disown them based on their performance, as my own disowned me a handful of times on a flimsy whim, so it's all bullshit, but quoting it out of text puts words in his mouth that he never said. By that logic...

...can easily be condensed into...

11/10, I liek dis style o' journeylism.

Bonus: Hitler was not a nepotistic leader, he wasn't born of class, and preferred young edgy strategist and officers, over high-veterancy old experienced officers. Looks like Trump isn't identical after all.

Hopefully this is nothing to get provoked about. I just find the jokes to be absurdly funny x'D have a gander :

so is attacking Syria a good or a bad thing according to you?

You know, I'm still on the fence about that. Not for no good reason, especially pre-gassing. However, wasn't that a violation of Geneva Convention? I know only few parts of it, but I'd swear at some time the conglomerate of nations would have made something like gas, nuclear, and bio weapons illegal. Iraq didn't even use them, they merely "had" them.

If it was a violation, then don't just sucker-punch them. We gave Iraq like a month to jump through hoops, I distinctly remember "3 days left before US response, 2 days, 1 days, awaiting US response, US has declared war on the Hussein regime and have troops mobilized". All the time, they could have surrendered to NATO inspectors with no "off limits" areas.

As it stands, yeah, it could have been handled better. At least Hillary would have issued an ultimatum (and possibly even never followed through with it at all, so it could be worse too).

I feel ya I think I'm actually not clear on that too.

I mean evidently Bashar al-Assad in my mind has to be put out of office and the gaz-crimes are intolerable and inhuman. but, potentially, intervening (especially in this way) is making things worse. I just don't know what to think of it.

time will tell I just wish I had the answers now

I think it was wrong, mainly because it looks way too much like an emotional overreaction "on a whim". No real plan. No real long term goal. Just a quick "you did something we consider especially bad, here we're gonna blow up some of your stuff, kill a few of your soldiers maybe".

"Repay" violence with more pointless violence.

Yes the those gas attacks are a severe crime by the Assad regime. But it's not like they're the only crime. Assad is constantly murdering and torturing people and nothing has been done for years. And NOW in the spur of the moment of an "especially bad" thing they hit "back"?

Either formulate a plan to get rid of Assad for real and solve the situation or keep interference down to providing humanitarian support stuff.
Considering the track record of the western world to "bring peace" to nations in the middle east I'd say it is clear what is the better option.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...obama-eight-years-mar-a-lago-us-a7670541.html

Something something economic anxiety.

just your everyday fun fact : https://www.google.fr/search?q=trum...ome..69i57.12590j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Fun Fact: Both sides gerrymander hella-hard.

Look at California, drawn so north-Cali, who resents Cali btw, has even poorer representation in their own state. Look at Texas, in Houston and Dallas it's actually drawn with a republican lean but still goes liberal, but the rest of the state swings it by benefit of the republican draw. Florida and Ohio and New York... All drawn by existing party, to keep existing party in office.

Anyway, I've said it before, I think Hillary should have gotten partial-electoral-vote from Texas, and Trump partial-electoral-vote from Cali, but Trump would STILL have won even in that scenario. The only difference, is northern Cali's vote wouldn't have been "placed as democrat" upon their state voting democrat for them, and inner-city Texas wouldn't have been "placed as republican" upon their state voting republican in their stead.

John Oliver actualy confirms that in this vid assumptions much.

or you know you could have election by dirrect sufferage like we have in france.

We don't because reasons we've stated. IF we had direct suffrage, it'd be to elect a president of Cali-BosWash, and a president of the entire ******* breadbasket (I'm'a call it the Extended Texas Nation). The vast lands, won't be ruled from the city, and both have nukes and military stations, so the cities SURELY aren't going to FORCE the vast midlands to obey their whims and surrender their food for the cities.

Which is why we have a weighted election. Simple as that. It's not even THAT weighted, I did the math many pages back. Per-population-unit, it's no more than 1.8 votes per person in Alaska and Wyoming, and no less than .9 vote a person in Texas and Cali, while considering the "people who show up to vote" is different than "population", Alaska voters hold 3 votes per vote, and Cali voters still hold closer to 1.1 vote a vote. It's not radical, not if you want 1 big *** nation which has 3 individual states that each are bigger than France (as well as their population and thus their "major crimes a week".

Just adding that bit at the end, because I'm tired of every week, 1 incident happening "somewhere in Europe", and every week, 1 incident happening in the US, and the US being way larger in population and size than all of Europe. It happens "more by ratio" in the US, but not by nearly the biased propaganda gap.

So before you ask again, surrender your vote to Russia, because you're just an "Oregon" to their "California/Texas/Alaska", they're bigger and should vote in your affairs. No? Didn't think so, and I don't blame you.

Actually the EU has ~500 million citizens according to wikipedia, compared to the USAs ~320.

Russia isn't even part of the EU?
And "only" has ~145 million citizens.


The argument about "but if we do it just by who gets the most votes overall the small country regions with few people will get forgotten" has some merit, but...

It feels just wrong. Why should a person in some rural nowhere have more voting power than a person in a city?

Yes considering the needs of those rural areas is important and the system should consider that, but the way it is now... it got you where you are today. It got you "Hillary vs Trump, pick your poison". I think you're not happy about that either.

There ought to be ways to produce incentive for your politics to consider the interests of rural areas as well in some other way that isn't so extremely prone to abuse.
Might be as simple as not having the politicians decide what districts they want and instead define some score systems that defines "fair districts" and then automatically create districts that maximize that score. I am sure what fair districts are can be defined in a way that all would agree on, if you do it on an abstract level.

The system was only formed, as a nation opposed to 13 independent nations, because none of the 13 wanted one another to have total authority based on population.

To change it without permission, is "bait and switch". 13 states join a republic, and slowly form 50 states, for someone to just flip it to a democracy without permission. Can you really blame any of the 50 from seceding the original union, if the union changes without permission? You cannot say a single word against it, it's entirely within rationale and reason.

It's very relevant to "why Europe doesn't form a nation based on population". You don't, even despite attempting an EU and getting mixed results, the EU being as loose as the "Articles of Confederation" was to a newly formed United States.

France refuses to join an equal-representation uniform nation with Germany, UK, Spain, ect. They're hypocrites if they criticize weighted representation of individual states as they form the United States.

The population thing was in fact a Wild Arse Guess. Here's something noteworthy though. China is still "part of the world" with "globalization" and "artificial borders made by mankind". Why don't you give them their 3 billion vote worth of representation in your country? Because to hell with them, it's YOUR country, right?

Lastly, as far as "it got you where you are today", no, it didn't. Firstly, it's "winner take all" isn't actually how the ENTIRE country works, two states split electoral college votes by percent, which is how all 50 should push to do things, and it would encourage third party, let alone be more fair for any two candidates in existing divided states. Secondly, division in itself, coupled with lack of a backbone for people to vote what's "best for all" opposed to "agenda", completely unrelated to the "republic basis" of the nation, is what got us 2 crummy choices. Leaders of the parties, gave us whoever they wanted, as the DNC proved, and we still elected those idiots against our best interest. Some wanted "lgbt rights" (this time around anyway), some wanted "gun ownership rights".

NEITHER wanted BOTH, and the BOTTOM LINE for THAT, is HOW are we going to PROTECT the CHERRY-PICKED CHOICES we want to SUPPORT, if we DIVIDE OTHERS who want to PROTECT their CHERRY-PICKED CHOICES they want to SUPPORT?

The answer, is we don't ******* prosecute people with different choices than ourselves. Very important.

you're the one person I know to defend that and your threats of "what would happen" have no bearing on reality whatsoever. not to mention you basing a lot of it on erroneous numbers and facts.

dude, scale your examples down. That gerrymandering in the US from what I saw in the John Oliver video seems to be about rather smallish districts, not about nations of hundreds of millions of people.
Like "significantly smaller than states" districts.
You could probably keep a republic concept between the states, but split them internally into much fairer districts?
Also the US is trying to be one thing. Germany and China so far are not. For ... geographic reasons? xD