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@bmdrocks21
Honestly seems just as likely.
nop
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@Greyparrot
I don't. It was merely to show what was being talked about. BTW embrace your inner Bender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaLARZVPx8
EDIT: Polls show he already got the support. Always <3 Grayparrot, but frenemies are to be kept at arms length.
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@Greyparrot
Lol if you're really pinning your hopes on closing that gap based on an alleged fracking position that's been around since the primaries I'd say you got about a fart's chance in a hurricane.
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@Greyparrot
Are you a member of Antifa?
If you know me well enough you'd know that I'm far too selfish to make substantial personal sacrifices for social causes. I will mail a ballot and yak. I may even bring some pizzas and water bottles to the protesters, but that's about it. I did contemplate a federal case against the state in an attempt to overturn laws banning subversive organizations on the grounds that they infringe upon the right to revolt, but it never went beyond the brainstorming phase.
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@MisterChris
I'll take my chances, and I'd say the odds are looking pretty good right now. PA's the key state in all the models, and even Trafalgar group's polling has Biden in the lead there.
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@Greyparrot
@Dr.Franklin
We'll see what happens.
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@SirAnonymous
I want to see Trump play every legal card he's got, get owned in the courts, and finally be dragged kicking and screaming from the white house.
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He's going to squirm like a maggot and I'm going to laugh my ass off.
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@Greyparrot
The evidence speaks for itself. There is no need to rely on another person's interpretation.Well, you are still back to the conundrum of believing a person's arbitrary interpretations of one's actions and the actual intent.
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@Greyparrot
By Andrew Stein, opinion contributor — 08/07/19 10:50 AM EDTThe views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill
Andrew Stein is the former Democratic president of the New York City Council and founder and chairman of “Democrats for Trump.” He is the brother of The Hill’s chairman.
Edit - Here's some more about Andrew Stein:
STEIN is first charged with making false statements ona form he submitted to the IRS in April 2008 in connection withhis efforts to receive IRS approval of a plan to pay off his taxdebts. In the form, STEIN made a number of material falsestatements. Among other things, in response to questions thatcalled for such information, STEIN failed to disclose theexistence of Wind River LLC and his use of Wind River LLC bankaccounts -- which STEIN used to deposit and then withdrawapproximately $1.6 million in order to cover what appear to beSTEIN’s personal expenses. STEIN also failed to disclose thefact that he was using the credit cards of third parties in orderto pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal expenses,including travel, hotel stays, and restaurants. Finally, inresponse to a question that required STEIN to list all rental orreal property, STEIN listed only his personal residence in NewYork, New York. In fact, both before and after STEIN signed the2008 Form 433-A, he made at least $150,000 in payments for anadditional luxury rental property in Bridgehampton, New York.According to the Complaint, STEIN used proceeds of the investmentfraud perpetrated by STARR to make these payments to rent theBridgehampton property.STEIN is also charged with making false statements tofederal officers who attempted to interview him. In November2009, after a special agent with the IRS advised STEIN that agrand jury was investigating him, Wind River LLC, and individualswhose credit cards STEIN had used, STEIN falsely denied knowingWind River LLC or the individuals whose credit cards he had used.When the special agent tried to serve STEIN with a grand jurysubpoena issued to Wind River LLC, STEIN falsely denied being anofficer of Wind River LLC and refused to accept service of thegrand jury subpoena, even though STEIN had repeatedly indicatedon documents that he was a manager or member of Wind River LLCand he had used Wind River LLC primarily for his personalbenefit.
Your source sounds like a Trump-supporting liar to me. Why should I believe him?
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@Greyparrot
Eh, the incidents were all sourced and I remember most of them. It didn't look like fake news. Trump's probably racist. I don't really see any point in denying it. I mean, the more interesting conversation would be what the impact of it is, and I think it's along the same lines as the impact racism in the GoP has long had. It's generally policies that are bad for the poor are supported because if something's bad for the poor then it's bad for blacks. It gets wrapped up in libertarian nonsense and other sophistries for political reasons.
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@Barney
Prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
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@ILikePie5
It's about priorities. Accurately representing the people is of a greater priority than providing third parties with influence. I do think third parties should be represented and have a voice. Like I said, the goal is representation. However, when a single person is being selected to represent everybody, I just don't see that it's very possible to do that for that particular position. Additionally, the influence third parties have through the spoiler effect is an incidental and round-about way of providing third parties with a voice in the political system. Contrast the presidency with, for example, a deliberative body like congress where the legislative power is divided amongst hundreds of seats, then providing third parties with seats there strikes me as more appropriate, perhaps with proportional representation.
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@ILikePie5
You’re once again not addressing the point I made. Public opinion can shift rapidly. Historically it has in both directions even if the person that wins gets a majority or a plurality. It’s an arbitrary snapshot of who should be President. Using your form of voting, Lincoln would not have been President and nor would Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton. You’re creating a method that puts a timestamp of approval ratings. How’s that better than any other poll for that matter lol. Third parties lose relevance in your model - it’s plain and simple.
The goal is representation. Providing third parties with relevance is not the goal. What good leaders may have been elected through plurality voting in the past is not relevant. A broken clock is right twice a day, they say. Fluctuations in public opinion happen in both RCV and plurality voting. So, I don't see how that's factor in choosing between the two.
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@ILikePie5
Why is this assumed to be bad. Because of that system we had Presidents like Lincoln, Wilson, and even Clinton to an extent in his first term. Just because they don’t get a plurality doesn’t mean they’ll automatically bad. You’re making an assumption that isn’t true. Hoover won in a landslide but he is probably one of the worse Presidents. Plurality isn’t indicative of anything.
If the goal is to elect someone who best represents the majority of voters, then electing the person whose views are most consistent with those of the majority of voters would be ideal. With plurality voting, multiple candidates with roughly similar views may split the vote of the majority of voters who have similar views. Then, a third candidate who has roughly opposite viewpoints and significantly less support may win simply because the vote is not split between the third candidate and a fourth one. The end result is that the candidate who wins is the one who is the least representative of the voters. When the goal is to represent the voters, this is not ideal.
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@ILikePie5
RCV is undemocratic. Third parties can’t act as spoilers under that system and a result, their positions can’t impact the election.
I see that it would diminish the influence of third parties but I don't see that it's undemocratic. Each voter has equal power in determining the outcome. I view the spoiler effect as problematic rather than beneficial anyway. The goal is to represent the people. Say the conservative vote is split between 2 candidates and the liberal vote is united behind a single candidate. Even though most of the votes were for conservative candidates, the liberal candidate may end up winning anyway, even though one of the conservative candidates would better represent the voters.
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@ILikePie5
I would imagine that instant runoff voting would increase the probability of GoP victories since a lot more conservatives vote Libertarian than liberals vote Green. Or, at least, that's what happened in 2016. I think Maine is doing it for 2020. There will probably be data from Maine to assess the probable impact such a voting system would have on the current balance of power.
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@ILikePie5
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@Greyparrot
Yeah, I know how it works. I don't like how it works. Lying has become so normalized. Everyone just expects it now. Accepting the lies and telling them to other people seems to be rewarded, perhaps as a way of advertising loyalty or something. I think false and misleading advertising in our culture has probably contributed to the problem. People are continuously inundated with bullshit. It's our reality, unfortunately. I do a lot of work in debt buying and legal work, and it's like the rules are the opposite. What's rewarded is being a complete jerk, but whatever I do, I cannot lie. No lies is the rule, and this seemed to fit well with my personality anyway, as I was already an asshole pretty much but rejected dishonesty in this aspergery, Holden Caulfield sort of way.
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@ILikePie5
Ah who needs evidence these days anyway? The facts are whatever you want them to be. Lets just make'm up.
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@ILikePie5
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@ILikePie5
Biden was not the most popular candidate. He literally came 5th in Iowa and like third in New Hampshire. Pete beat him in both. Joe was on life support till the DNC came over. No one likes Joe. Democrats don’t like Joe. They’re voting for him cause he isn’t Trump.
Can you prove it?
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@ILikePie5
Where I’m at, all the socialists are voting for Joe lol
You'll be happy to know that I'm registered to vote in California where it's nigh impossible for my vote to make any difference. That, and my ballot never showed up in the mail. So, I'm probably not voting at all.
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@Greyparrot
Well, that was 2016. Yeah, there was a lot of BS going on in 2016, but at the end of the day Clinton got 4+ million more votes than Sanders, and in 2020 the lead over Sanders was ~9 million. So, whatever shenanigans were going on didn't seem to be dispositive.
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@Greyparrot
That may be. Nonetheless, Biden's nomination was proper according to the vote.
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@Greyparrot
The nomination of Biden was a disappointment. Sander's popularity was low with black voters. It's the same reason Sanders didn't get nominated in 2016. The early states in the 2020 primary didn't have many black voters in them. So, it gave the appearance that Sanders was winning and then things suddenly turned the other way, but in reality Sanders was doomed from the start. It didn't surprise me. I was expecting it.
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@Greyparrot
Um, not sure what you mean. He was elected twice to VP. Um the election hasn't happened yet so...
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@Greyparrot
So being moderately loyal to the very rich like the establishment Democrats are is okay?
Every straw man begins with "so".
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@ILikePie5
@Username
I see the Democrats as generally the lesser of two evils as far as policies go. The problems I have with both parties is a lack of loyalty to the interests of Americans. The Democrats focus too much on environmental issues and immigrants, particularly illegal ones, all of which is at the expense of common Americans. Republicans also fail to meaningfully address immigration and want too much military spending. (We don't need to protect the whole human race from Russia and China, or whoever) There's this whole libertarian individualist ideology that I largely see as having gained traction as a form of dog whistle racism. People don't want to share with minorities who they don't identify with, but you can't have a racist policy, so you just end up having this idea where nobody shares anything with anybody and anything communal is disfavored. Big kicker for me though is Republicans being too loyal to the interests of the very rich.
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@ILikePie5
How?maybe you should take the high ground first before lecturing me.
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@ILikePie5
Gerrymandering's generally regarded as one of the more despicable practices in modern politics, with large grassroots majorities in both parties opposed to it.
This is a situation where I've asked a question, someone hasn't answered it, I then asked it again, and it still went unanswered. The most reasonable inference when one is faced with avoidant answers is that the person who is not answering the question is hiding something. So, what am I to infer that you are hiding?
I think you're hiding your opinion (obviously), and I think that your opinion is probably that gerrymandering is bad, particularly since you drew attention to the fact that both parties do it. But why would you hide that opinion? Presumably because answering the question honestly forces you to admit that you believe there is value in representing the people. The consent of the governed is best obtained by accurately representing the people, and gerrymandering frustrates that purpose. But such a belief would conflict with other positions you take with respect to the senate and the electoral college. Are those positions reconcilable? Perhaps, but it would be difficult to do so.
Of course, this is just hopeful speculation. Perhaps you believe in nothing but the rules of the game and more power for the GoP. Perhaps you would be supportive of a constitutional amendment making the United States a one-party state, like China, where only members of the GoP can hold any office.
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@ILikePie5
I asked for your judgment as to whether it was good or bad. I did not ask whether or not it was constitutional or unconstitutional.
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@ILikePie5
What do you think about gerrymandering? Good or bad?
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@bmdrocks21
Financial barriers are a problem for the poor. If increasing the birth rate is desireable (or reducing the abortion rate) there is evidence from the fracking boom that increasing incomes among non-college educated men results in significantly more births.
We confirm that these localized fracking booms ledto increased wages for non-college-educated men. A reduced form analysisreveals that in response to local-area fracking production, both marital andnon-marital births increase
The point estimate implies that one thousand dollarof fracking production per capita is associated with an increase of 5.96 birthsper 1000 women (standard error of 0.96). In the peak years of the boom,simulated production per capita in the most intensive fracking counties wasbetween $500-$600 per capita, which would suggest that total births increasedby 3-3.6 births per 1000 women, or around three percent. This is consistentwith a positive income effect of income on fertility, as has been found in previouswork
TBH I'd argue that deporting illegal aliens would probably do the trick, as this group of immigrants significantly depresses wages among those without college educations.
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@thett3
We must develop your sense of community. The communist sodomites of San Francisco aren't out to get you.
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@bmdrocks21
This is precisely why it is necessary to launch a preemptive strike.
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@bmdrocks21
The war on fetuses must be won.
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@bmdrocks21
Ah but conception itself is not a point in time, but a process of merging of nuclear material. Lets have a look:
Where are we to draw the line here?
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@ILikePie5
And the Senate was part of it. At that time the State Legislatures selected the Senators so that it was in the best interests of the States - at least until the passage of the 17th Amendment.
You said "decentralization". I don't see how the existence or non-existence of the senate has any impact on decentralization.
Not really. Larger states have more representatives than smaller states which means they have more influence. California’s House delegation has more impact in the House than North Dakota’s House delegation.
OK. Lets look at exactly what you said:
Citizens in smaller states have more voting power in the Senate while those larger states have more in the House
Looking at this again, it's not clear exactly what you meant. But it looks like you were saying that citizens in larger states have more voting power in the house than citizens in smaller states. A citizen in North Dakota has roughly the same voting power in the house as a citizen in California. Also, California's house delegation should have more impact because there is a greater number of citizens in California. I don't really have any sense of fidelity or loyalty to any state, and I don't think most people do either. They're mostly lines on maps and a lot of red tape when you move to a different one.
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@ILikePie5
Not really. Decentralization was accomplished by sharing powers between the states and the federal government. It is not true that citizens in larger states have more voting power in the house. Citizens have roughly equal voting power in the house because representation is based on population.
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@ILikePie5
I view it that way because that's what it does. They had to throw the smaller states a bone so that they'd get with the program. There wasn't anything inherently good about it. Citizens in smaller states should have equal voting power as citizens in larger states. One man, one vote. That is fair.
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@thett3
All of this "abolish the senate" talk is just leftists whining that they "waste" a lot of votes by running up a gigantic margin in California.
Nah. Here's what I said:
[The senate] may have been a good idea at the time, but times have changed. Populations and communities have shifted across state borders, and people don't really identify with their states as much as they did back then, except maybe Texans seem to have a Texas thing going on.
More generally I view the senate as frustrating the will of the people, and the electoral college as well, especially the first-past-the-post allocation of the electoral votes.
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@TheUnderdog
Prenatal life has no value. Suck their brains out and throw them in to the garbage. Bye bye little guy!
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@n8nrgmi
Take what they say with a grain of salt. Everybody knows who they are.
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Instant runoff voting is the solution.
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@ILikePie5
It may have been a good idea at the time, but times have changed. Populations and communities have shifted across state borders, and people don't really identify with their states as much as they did back then, except maybe Texans seem to have a Texas thing going on. Something kindof annoying is that it's very difficult to change the constitution comparatively. (more reading: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/05/amending-the-constitution-is-much-too-hard-blame-the-founders.html ) Oh well, what can ya do though.
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@ILikePie5
The will of the dead people in action. That's what's really going on here.
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@Greyparrot
Who said anything about California?
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@Greyparrot
The people voted for Hillary, and the Senate is even more undemocratic. This is not the will of the people. This is the will of the people being frustrated by American shitocracy.It's the will of the people of America in action.
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