Election 2016

[Prak]

http://mic.com/articles/131416/bernie-s ... nald-trump

"But as Sanders makes a direct appeal for Trump's voters, the two very different anti-establishment politicians are now engaged in a war of words befitting two outer-borough brawlers."

...I actually now kind of want to see that. Trump's a bit younger, I think, but Bernie seems like a guy who grew up scrapping.

[erik]

Happened a month ago, but it still made me laugh now.



Stretching out New E n g l . a . n . . d

I enjoyed the comments.

To make it more topical I recall hearing in the news a couple weeks ago a Syrian refugee family was moving to Indiana after having settled in another state previously, despite our shitty governor's knee-jerk demand to stop Syrians from immigrating here, and he's powerless as fuck to do anything about it (as predicted, because governors cannot prevent interstate travel or settlement).

[Ancient History]

http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/06/gary- ... president/

Which splits Rand Paul's fraction of the vote down to "diddly/squat."

[DSMatticus]

http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/06/gary- ... president/

Which splits Rand Paul's fraction of the vote down to "diddly/squat."

I suspect you are giving modern "libertarians" too much credit. Gary Johnson couldn't even win 1% of the vote when he was running against Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Nobody - not even self-styled libertarians - give a shit about libertarianism. Libertarian is just a thing Republicans call themselves when they want to feel intellectually superior to all the other people pulling the exact same lever for the exact same reasons. Gary Johnson isn't socially conservative enough for modern libertarians, and Rand Paul has shown that if it means votes he is willing to fellate those particular causes (or at least not oppose them), so he's the much more viable "libertarian" candidate. By miles.

[Ancient History]

Well, Rand Paul isn't going to get 1% of the vote either. But I find it amusing.

[Winnah]

So instead of responding to Occluded Sun, I propose we play a game. First, name a policy position of the Democratic party. Second, name a policy position of the Republican party. Third, describe the Xanatos Gambit that wins regardless of which policy is enacted. Let's show the Illuminati how this shit is done.

I'll play

1. Democrats support excluding minor parties from major political debates.
2. Republicans support excluding minor parties from major political debates.
3. Both major parties win.

1. Democrats support Obamacare.
2. Republicans support Romneycare.
3. Insurance providers and big pharma win.

1. Democrats support financial and military aid for Israel.
2. Republicans support military and financial aid for Israel.
3. Israel wins.

1. Democrats support TTP and TTIP.
2. Republicans support TTP and TTIP.
3. This answer is classified. Please report to re-education centre for processing.

I can keep playing, but I'll just start listing fortune 500 companies and showing how they come out ahead, even if they send lobbyists to representatives of both major parties, with bags stuffed full of cash.

You can't seriously be so deluded to believe that people disenfranchised with the current political system all cling to some paranoid worldview; Reptilians, Illuminati, Bilderberg orgies, Bohemian Grove sacrifice and aliens from Planet X?

I suppose it is a lot easier to dismiss someone as a 'conspiracy theorist' than accept that the democratic values you claim to hold are so easily swayed by the power of money and a lack of principles.

[Username17]

1. Democrats support Obamacare.
2. Republicans support Romneycare.
3. Insurance providers and big pharma win.

Uh... Republicans don't support Romneycare. The only reason Romneycare was ever on the table was to act as a negotiations ploy to kill single payer healthcare. That was extremely specific, as we recall that William Kristol said while suggesting that Republicans claim to support Romneycare-like proposals:

The long-term political effects of a successful... health care bill will be even worse — much worse... It will revive the reputation of... Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.

Romney allowed through Romneycare in Massachusetts only after Democrats had forced through the idea that some kind of health reform was inevitable. Romneycare is the most conservative plan that Democrats could accept, and so that was the compromise. You'll notice that once it actually became law, that Republicans spent their every waking moment trying to repeal it, and have voted to end Obamacare at least sixty times. You'll also note that the Republicans had the opportunity to pass Romneycare on a national level during the Bush years and decided not to do that. Because they obviously don't support Romneycare and even admit that they do not and never did support Romneycare when discussing strategy.

Because you know what? They actually tell people what their strategies and goals are. You stupid fuck.

You can't seriously be so deluded to believe that people disenfranchised with the current political system all cling to some paranoid worldview

Actually, yes. Your worldview is paranoid and insane. Like your Bitcoin enthusiasm. Also you don't know the difference between Disillusionment and Disenfranchisement. Hint: they are very much not the same thing. If you think you have been disenfranchised, you very much cling to a paranoid worldview.

But the long and the short of it is that if you think that the results of compromises that two teams were willing to accept are the same thing as both teams wanting the same thing, you're a lunatic and belong in a looney bin full of loonies. That is a completely insane point of view.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

First off, I want to point out that that is a very boring way to play the game.

1) Democrats are against exterminating the entire human race.
2) Republicans are against exterminating the entire human race.
3) The lizard people get to keep their cattle. Lizard people: 1. Us: 0. Harry "Bringer of the Apocalypse" McDoom 2016.

The point of the game is to mockingly illustrate that policy differences actually are meaningful and judging the parties on how they disagree is completely appropriate. If you want to show this silly little naive sheeple what's what by turning his own game around on him, you cannot do so by choosing policies on which the two parties agree. The presence of similarities demonstrates neither the absence nor insignificance of dissimilarities. You'll want to name policy disagreements and convince me I shouldn't give a shit about them because ultimately the lizard people are going to fuck me either way and I'm a fool - a fool! - for not seeing it.

But beyond that, even after allowing you to take the massive handicap you've claimed for yourself... you still lost three out of four times.

1. Democrats support excluding minor parties from major political debates.
2. Republicans support excluding minor parties from major political debates.
3. Both major parties win.

This is simply deceptive. The reason we don't have significant minor parties is because we have FPTP voting. The reason we have FPTP voting is because the fucks who created this country either thought two parties were enough or because they weren't nearly as clever as everyone seems to think. It has nothing to do with any decisions made by anyone in the past hundred years. Neither party has made changing - or preserving - FPTP a part of their platform, because it's an impossible goal. It would require massive bipartisan support across the country, and that's just not fucking happening.

You are using this to claim some sort of broad similarity about their desire to lock out upstarts. And frankly, that's fucking bullshit. The two parties do disagree on electoral reform - the Republican party is overwhelmingly in support of relaxing restrictions on private political spending, and the Democratic party is overwhelmingly in support of tighter restrictions on private political spending. You'll note that the less money there is is politics the more accessible it is to the average individual. Your insinuation that the parties are equal in their desire to preserve the status quo is pretty demonstrably false. If the Democratic party gets its way, people like Gary Johnson would have a better chance of making an impact on the political scene - both as third party candidates (because the spending disparity between major party and minor party would be much smaller) and as a major party candidate (because it would take far less money for an upstart to compete with the party establishment).

1. Democrats support Obamacare.
2. Republicans support Romneycare.
3. Insurance providers and big pharma win.

Romney spent his entire presidential campaign denouncing Obamacare and pretending Romneycare never happened. Republican state governments savaged the implementation when given the chance, creating a coverage gap that's fucked a lot of people. The Republican party wants Obamacare dead, and they do not want to replace it with Romneycare.

According to opensecrets.org:

In 2008, the insurance industry sent 2.7 million McCain's way and 2.6 million Obama's way.
In 1012, the insurance industry sent 4.7 million Romney's way and 1.7 million Obama's way.

In 2008, pharma sent 2.4 million Obama's way and .8 million McCain's way.
In 2012, pharma sent 2.0 million Obama's way and 1.9 million Romney's way.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that neither the insurance industry nor big pharma really like Obamacare. Their political spending has taken a hard right turn; they were much more enthusiastic about Obama before he was in office, so presumably they didn't get what they wanted, and they think they have better odds of getting that from Republicans.

1. Democrats support financial and military aid for Israel.
2. Republicans support military and financial aid for Israel.
3. Israel wins.

This is kind of baffling. The fact that Obama isn't sucking Israel's cock hard enough is a current and ongoing "controversy." You should look into the Iran deal. Like, at all. I'm obviously not happy with either party's treatment of Israel (where the fuck is "sanctions" on the menu?), but if the choice is between war in Iran and not war in Iran, I know which fucking one I'll pick.

And you know what? That's an easy choice. You should really be able to fucking make it.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, it would be amazing how bad those attempts were if I didn't already know you were a crazy person. Like, I think you are somehow less capable of making arguments that "both parties are the same" than Tussock. And since Tussock is always wrong about everything, and that meme started when he was talking about how both parties are the same, that's genuinely impressive.

Looking at the relevant issues, election reform, healthcare, and trade regulation (and tossing out FP, since the US Supreme Court doesn't deal with that the same way as it does other issues) I can name a 5-4 decision along party lines addressing each of those issues in the last 4 years in which all four democrats took the explicit position you are saying they don't take, or republicans took the explicit position of the opposite of what you claimed they take. Heck, I could probably do it in the last two years.

[Username17]

Ted Cruz has a legitimate birther problem. He was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. He's less of a citizen at birth than Obama by a considerable margin (who was born to an American mother and a foreign citizen father in the United States). So all the schmucks who claim that Obama doesn't count as a natural born citizen are hypocrites if they don't make the same arguments against Cruz.

But it turns out that Cruz's mother appears on Canadian voter rolls around the time of his birth. Which means that at the very least his parents were lying about any American connections they had at that point. So there's even a not insane argument that Calgary Cruz isn't eligible to be president.

The schaudenfeude is delicious.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Wow, that part about the mother on voter rolls is hilarious.

[Mechalich]

You can absolutely be a citizen of Canada and vote in Canada and still be a citizen of the US and vote in the US at the same time. Lots of people do it actually, you just have to have citizenship in both nations and you vote abroad in the country you aren't actually residing in.

It is actually not even especially uncommon for people to have citizenship in three or more nations - it's quite common among Russian Jews: Russia, Israel, and whatever country they moved to after leaving Israel, often Canada or the UK.

Cruz is a jerk, and of course the Republicans are hypocrites, but having citizenship by blood through one parent qualifies as natural born for constitutional purposes.

[Kaelik]

Dual citizenship was impossible at all until 1967, even then being a dual citizen was heavily frowned on and highly regulated. Cruz was born in 1970. There is good reason to believe that his then voting in canada mother (who might have been a Canadian citizen before 1967) was a citizen of Canada and not the US.

It's certainly not impossible for him to be a US citizen, but it's not guaranteed.

[Ancient History]

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/ ... a-poverty/

[Winnah]

Uh... Republicans don't support Romneycare. The only reason Romneycare was ever on the table was to act as a negotiations ploy to kill single payer healthcare.

Republicans initially backed the individual mandate, until they didn't. The idea arose from a conservative think tank called the Heritage Foundation, you may have heard of them.
http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/1989/pdf/hl218.pdf

It was Dole that proposed a bill that required individuals to buy insurance. A counter to the Clinton administrations proposals that employers buy insurance.

Then the Republicans changed their stance on the individual mandate because that is what Republicans do. I suspect it was to undermine Romney's presidential bid, later to oppose Obama and the Democrats solely for the sake of opposing Obama and the Democrats, but who fucking knows what Republicans are thinking. The fact remains that the origins of Romneycare were Republican.

If you think you have been disenfranchised, you very much cling to a paranoid worldview.

Disenfranchised. To be denied franchise. Sure, I feel that way at times. When my statutory rights are subverted or diminished and representatives of my government tell me it's for my own good, or it is to keep me safe from the boogeyman, that I have nothing fear so long as I have nothing to hide, I begin to feel a distinct lack of franchise. Disillusioned, disenchanted, disenfranchised. If that makes me crazy, so be it. You're arguing with a crazy person, you fucking idiot.

But the long and the short of it is that if you think that the results of compromises that two teams were willing to accept are the same thing as both teams wanting the same thing, you're a lunatic and belong in a looney bin full of loonies. That is a completely insane point of view.

This is not about two sides forming a compromise. It's about parties external to government exploiting partisanship. It is about a lack of opposition and debate. Is that what you expect from democracy?

The point of the game is to mockingly illustrate that policy differences actually are meaningful and judging the parties on how they disagree is completely appropriate. If you want to show this silly little naive sheeple what's what by turning his own game around on him, you cannot do so by choosing policies on which the two parties agree.

Why not? You set the rules, I'll play by those rules. I'll play as long as I want, or not at all. I'll come and go as I please. If you want to play a different game, with different rules, I'm not stopping you, however, changing the rules during the game is bad form. You can't be moving goalposts as I am kicking for goal.

You're not touching upon secret trade deals, so score one for me.

But beyond that, even after allowing you to take the massive handicap you've claimed for yourself... you still lost three out of four times.

I'll bite.

This is simply deceptive. The reason we don't have significant minor parties is because we have FPTP voting. The reason we have FPTP voting is because the fucks who created this country either thought two parties were enough or because they weren't nearly as clever as everyone seems to think. It has nothing to do with any decisions made by anyone in the past hundred years. Neither party has made changing - or preserving - FPTP a part of their platform, because it's an impossible goal. It would require massive bipartisan support across the country, and that's just not fucking happening.

"The fucks that created this county" originally ran as independents. Partisan lines formed as a response to whether or not the nation should honor it's treaties with France during the war of the First Coalition or remain neutral. Those factional divides grew deeper after the government ratified a treaty with the British. "The fucks that created this county" recognized the dangers of partisanship and spoke out against it. Washington in his valedictorian address and later Monroe in his admonition of factional politics.

Amalgamation ultimately failed and partisan lines were drawn, but FPTP did not prevent reformers and nonpartisans asserting themselves in mainstream politics. Lincoln was a third party candidate. Third parties advocated for issues such as an end to slavery, womens suffrage, child labour laws, the 8 hour work day, graduated income tax, regulation of transport fares, prison reform, improvements and extensions of public education, the direct election of senators, environmental and economic reforms. These issues were popularized and the major parties were forced to introduce them into their agenda.

The last hundred years has seen numerous constraints placed on minor parties. State determined ballot access laws, campaign finance laws limiting access to subsidies and retroactive public financing (major parties receive public funding before an election) as well as blatantly criminal delegitimization tactics (Watergate a notable example).

You are using this to claim some sort of broad similarity about their desire to lock out upstarts. And frankly, that's fucking bullshit.

I was not making up any claims. I was playing your game.

1. Democrats support excluding minor parties from major political debates.
2. Republicans support excluding minor parties from major political debates.
3. Both major parties win.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is a private non-profit established by the Republican and Democrat parties. It sponsors and produces debates for US presidential and vice presidential candidates. It assumed control of the presidential debates from the League of Women Voters, which withdrew sponsorship of the 1988 presidential debates when campaigns demanded full control over practically every aspect of the debates. The league said at that time that it had “no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”

In order for a third party candidate to receive an invitation to the presidential debates, they are required to poll at 15% in national surveys, far in excess of FEC requirements to actually appear on the presidential ballot. The only third party presidential candidate to be invited to debate by the CPD was Perot in 1992. The rules for the 1996 debates were altered, requiring that candidates must also be endorsed by a 'substantial' number of major news organizations, with substantial being a number determined by the CPD on a case by case basis. This change of rules prevented Perot's Reform Party from attending the 1996 debates. In 2000 the rules were again altered, requiring that a candidate must have a 15% support level in '5 trustworthy' national polls.

The CPD has been the subject of numerous lawsuits by third party and independent candidates. It has been the subject of criticism from the League of Women Voters, the organization that used to run the debates. Third party candidates are excluded from the presidential debates, even as audience members. There are campaigns and petitions to allow the inclusion of third party candidates that qualify for the ballot, to receive an invitation to the the presidential debates in Current Year, so check them out.

You have failed to demonstrate that the Republicans and Democrats do not benefit from excluding third party candidates from these debates. Score 2 for me.

Romney spent his entire presidential campaign denouncing Obamacare and pretending Romneycare never happened. Republican state governments savaged the implementation when given the chance, creating a coverage gap that's fucked a lot of people. The Republican party wants Obamacare dead, and they do not want to replace it with Romneycare.

I don't see anything in the rules of the game about currently held beliefs. The genesis of Obamacare was a Republican policy. Both parties worked to bring it about, even if the result is not what policy makers from both parties envisioned. This is a good thing. Now you can blame Republicans for putting the idea in Obama's head.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that neither the insurance industry nor big pharma really like Obamacare. Their political spending has taken a hard right turn; they were much more enthusiastic about Obama before he was in office, so presumably they didn't get what they wanted, and they think they have better odds of getting that from Republicans.

Are you suggesting that medical insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies have not benefited from Obamacare? I'm not talking about non profit co-operatives here. Insurance and drug lobbyists got their way on health care reforms. The share price of these companies has soared, the return on revenue dwarfs other industries in similar fields and profit expectations continue to rise.

Take a look at the S&P 500 and chart Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint/Anthem from 2010. Their rise is in no small part due to Obamacare. Prescription drug spending is up, which is great for pharmaceutical companies, but forces insurers to raise proposed rates for health care plans in order to maintain profits. Think of the shareholders.

Big pharma and insurance providers win. That may change if Sanders is elected, but unless Hitlery has a stroke, that has little chance of happening. Score 3 for me.

This is kind of baffling. The fact that Obama isn't sucking Israel's cock hard enough is a current and ongoing "controversy." You should look into the Iran deal. Like, at all. I'm obviously not happy with either party's treatment of Israel (where the fuck is "sanctions" on the menu?), but if the choice is between war in Iran and not war in Iran, I know which fucking one I'll pick.

Israeli GDP is around 300 billion. They are a first world county. Israel represents less than 1% of the world population yet receives around a third of the US foreign aid budget. Can't take the training wheels off, because Iran? The last time Iran declared war and invaded somebody was when the British were in control of Afghanistan. Israel has nukes. Even if Iran had nukes, they're not going to commit suicide by firing them at Israel. Nothing prevents the US from protecting their ally should tensions rise with Iran, but their ally is a big boy now, he can stand on his own and he can call for help if he really, really needs it.

Throwing money at Israel is a cheap political tactic. A way for politicians to superficially 'express support' by sending a cheque in the mail and doing nothing else. It's a waste of money, but it keeps AIPAC in business. Score is now 4.

[Mechalich]

Look, there are absolutely issues where the two major parties have extremely similar policy proscriptions or non-prescriptions, especially as determined by their establishment elements. Those issues may be of significant importance to some portion of the voting public and as far as those issues and the voters who value those particular issues highly go, then yes the system does them a severe disservice.

Yet the fact that both parties have positions that are very similar on some subset of all relevant issues and all espouse the same basic overall economic system - some variant of regulated market capitalism - does not make the parties even remotely close to the same. Republicans and democrats hold wildly different policy positions on a huge majority of relevant issues.

The US Republicans and Democrats are further apart by pretty much any estimate than all three of the UK's major parties are from each other. That distance is also growing. The modern incarnation of the two parties probably hit their highest level of overlap during the Nixon administration, and with the exception of a significant move to the right by the Democrats under Clinton, have been drifting apart ever since.

It is true that, despite the growing distance between the parties on almost all issues, you can still hold a position that is completely outside the spectrum of either one. In that sense, yes it is possible to not have a voice. However, if that position is held by any large portion of the voting public it is highly likely that candidates will emerge within one of the parties in order to serve it. This is happening right now: it's the phenomenon of Trumpism. The Donald got his jump start by taking a hard right position on immigration - one that was rejected by the establishment of both parties, and he's now managed to haul the Republicans over to his line of thinking in a huge way. If there is an issue out there where there is significant grassroots support for a position, a candidate is likely to latch on to it and bring it national or statewide attention.

Now, if you're talking about positions that are utterly fringe compared to the mainstream of the body politic, well yeah, you don't have a voice, but you wouldn't have one if there were more parties or a different system either. The solution there is to make your positions not fringe - like the far right is (frighteningly) doing in Europe right now.

[DSMatticus]

Republicans initially backed the individual mandate, until they didn't. The idea arose from a conservative think tank called the Heritage Foundation, you may have heard of them.
http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/1989/pdf/hl218.pdf

It was Dole that proposed a bill that required individuals to buy insurance. A counter to the Clinton administrations proposals that employers buy insurance.

Then the Republicans changed their stance on the individual mandate because that is what Republicans do. I suspect it was to undermine Romney's presidential bid, later to oppose Obama and the Democrats solely for the sake of opposing Obama and the Democrats, but who fucking knows what Republicans are thinking. The fact remains that the origins of Romneycare were Republican.

The 1993 bill to which you are referring received support from about a fifth of congressional Republicans. To suggest that Republicans support an individual mandate because some Republicans introduced it and then four times as many Republicans pissed on it and left it to die forgotten in the congressional record is to tell us that you have no fucking idea what the word "support" means.

The Republican individual mandate is a counter-proposal to the Democrat's employer mandate. It is intended to solve the same problem, but shift the cost of solving that problem downward onto the sick and poor. But Republicans ultimately ended up abandoning their own counter-proposal when they realized that simple intransigence would be sufficient - they just said no to the Democratic initiative and then immediately tossed their own initiative into the garbage alongside it. Turns out they had no interest in solving the problem, and were only really interested in making sure that their corporate sponsors didn't end up paying for it.

At the end of the day, it was little more than a dishonest gesture meant to fool stupid assholes into thinking Republicans wanted to do anything at all, when they really just wanted everything to stay exactly the same. Clearly, it worked.

Disenfranchised. To be denied franchise. Sure, I feel that way at times. When my statutory rights are subverted or diminished and representatives of my government tell me it's for my own good, or it is to keep me safe from the boogeyman, that I have nothing fear so long as I have nothing to hide, I begin to feel a distinct lack of franchise. Disillusioned, disenchanted, disenfranchised. If that makes me crazy, so be it. You're arguing with a crazy person, you fucking idiot.

Frank is poking fun at you because you do not know what franchise means. And he is right, you really don't know what that word means. Franchise refers to the right to vote, and no matter how much time the NSA spends looking through the dick pics on your phone and generally shitting all over your privacy, that is not disenfranchising you. That is why he gave you the word you were actually looking for (disillusioned, not disenfranchised), and instead of doubling down on "I not word good" as you are doing, you should probably just shut up and stop trying to defend yourself on that point.

Why not? You set the rules, I'll play by those rules. I'll play as long as I want, or not at all. I'll come and go as I please. If you want to play a different game, with different rules, I'm not stopping you, however, changing the rules during the game is bad form. You can't be moving goalposts as I am kicking for goal.

I don't know what the lizard people win. I don't know why you shouldn't care about the difference between X and Y simply because X and Y are being offered to you by lizard people. I don't know why people feel the need to embellish simple corruption with vast conspiracy. I do know why the vast majority of the people who talk like Occluded Sun ultimately end up voting Republican - because they're full of shit and to them cynicism is... well... "they don't care about the mask beyond its concealment."

So instead of responding to Occluded Sun, I propose we play a game. First, name a policy position of the Democratic party. Second, name a policy position of the Republican party. Third, describe the Xanatos Gambit that wins regardless of which policy is enacted. Let's show the Illuminati how this shit is done.

That is the game and the motivation behind it. It's a game where X and Y are seemingly different things, and you are supposed to illustrate how both of those seemingly different things will be used by the political system to fuck you over, and as a result you shouldn't care about which of those seemingly different things happens. It's a game that mockingly explores Occluded Sun's "both parties work for Them, so why do you care whether or not you get the party which will make rape victims carry their rapist's baby to term?" bullshit.

You are attempting to do some "technically, you never explicitly said the policies had to be different things" bullshit in order to just name situations where X=Y and then declare yourself winrar. Sure, that's technically accurate - if you cut out literally everything I said except like two sentences. But I see no reason to indulge you when you declare that you're going to decide how to play the game based on 10% of my post and a stubborn refusal to consider context. That's not being clever, that's just being a twat.

But more importantly than whether or not you're a twat, playing the game this way is completely meaningless. It does not make a coherent point. Imagine two hypothetical political parties which agree on literally every issue except about whether or not they should have someone shit in your - Winnah's - mouth. The "Winnah is a shitbag, so really we're just topping him off" party is completely identical to the "Winnah is a shitbag, but that still doesn't seem very nice" party, except one wants to fill your mouth with literal poo and the other doesn't. The number of similarities I could name when talking about these two parties is "all of them, except that one," and yet no matter how many of those similarities I managed to rattle off to you, I'm pretty sure you'd still tell me that the two parties have an importance difference - important enough to get you to the polls to vote.

"The fucks that created this county" originally ran as independents. Partisan lines formed as a response to whether or not the nation should honor it's treaties with France during the war of the First Coalition or remain neutral. Those factional divides grew deeper after the government ratified a treaty with the British. "The fucks that created this county" recognized the dangers of partisanship and spoke out against it. Washington in his valedictorian address and later Monroe in his admonition of factional politics.

You can't actually just make shit up and pretend it will fly. Or if you're going to try to, you should at least do some basic fucking googling, because what a load of fucking bullshit you just dropped here. The Federalist party was formally founded in 1789. The Republican party (no relation) was formally founded in 1791.

That means the first presidential election (1788) managed to technically squeek by without any party-backed candidates, because no parties existed to back any candidates. The ideological schism was there, but it hadn't yet been formalized into a party apparatus.

The second presidential election (1792) had five candidates who received votes. Remember that at this point in time, whoever got the most electoral votes became president and whoever got the second most became vice president, and every elector got two votes. Both the Federalist and Republican parties supported Washington, so he won 132 votes - i.e. one vote from each elector. John Adams, the formal candidate of choice for the Federalist party, won 77 votes, and became vice president. George Clinton, the formal candidate of choice for the Republican party, won 50 votes. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr won 5 votes total. The two parties' preferred candidates carried 96% of the non-Washington vote.

The third presidential election (1796) was complicated. With Washington out of the picture, the parties were no longer competing for the vice presidency - they were competing for both the presidency and the vice presidency, so each party has at least two primary candidates they're pushing for. And sure enough, the top two candidates (i.e. presidential picks) took 139/276 electoral votes and the top four candidates (i.e. presidential and vice presidential picks) took 228/276 electoral votes. The remaining 48 votes were split 9 ways. Again, the parties' choices carried an absolutely dominating percentage of the vote.

The fourth presidential election (1800) is my favorite. No, really, I love it. Here are the results:
Jefferson, 73 electoral votes.
Burr, 73 electoral votes.
Adams, 65 electoral votes.
Pinckney, 64 electoral votes.
Jay, 1 electoral vote.

Let me break that down for your stupid ass: the Republican party had 73 electors, and every single one of them voted exactly the same. The Federalist party had 65 electors, and 64 of them voted Adams+Pinckney. Their last elector voted Adams+Jay. Every single elector followed one of the two party's lines (the point of the Adams+Jay vote was to break the tie and make it clear who the president was - it was deliberate and planned). This is literally the most partisan it is possible for an election to be. 2012 was a less partisan election, because there were any votes at all that went to third party candidates.

The fucks that created this country wrote the electoral system responsible for our two party system. They couldn't go two elections without taking advantage of the system they'd wrote to embrace the two party bullshit they'd created. They'd perfected partisan coordination by the fourth election. The good old days you are beating your dick to never were, and the men you are praising are exactly the people who started the institutions you are criticizing.

[A bunch of pointless bullshit.]

You have failed to demonstrate that the Republicans and Democrats do not benefit from excluding third party candidates from these debates.

You are missing the point. Your cherrypicked example of how Republicans and Democrats are corroborating to preserve their dynasties is not actually an accurate reflection of the state of modern politics. Do you know why third party candidates get zero fucking attention? Because we have FPTP voting, and the only thing third party candidates can accomplish is to split off parts of the voterbase from other candidates with whom they are most ideologically similar, guaranteeing neither has any chance of winning. This is a system which incentivizes consolidation. It incentivizes consolidation to the point that the Republican party is literally a tent so big it encompasses both fundamentalism and libertarianism. That's fucking insane, but in order to push social conservatism fundamentalists need libertarian votes and in order to push economic liberalism libertarians need fundamentalist votes and so you see an alliance. If the two groups split, then neither one would ever win another major election again. So they don't split.

There is a real way to measure the extent to which each party is attempting to lock outsiders out of the political process. It's not the way you've suggested (debate hosting regulations). It's to look at where the parties stand on electoral reform, because our election laws are 100% the source of the problem, and have been for the 216 years since our founding fathers figured out how to break them (and then did so, and then never managed to fix them). Democrats want to reduce the amount of money involved in the political process. This makes it easier to challenge the party establishment, both from within and from without. Republicans do not want to reduce the amount of money involved in the political process. This helps preserve whatever corrupt and insular dynasties sit atop our parties.

You have taken a complicated issue where there is a real policy difference and tried to handwave all of that way and instead pick and choose bits here and there that support your narrative. Um, fuck you? If you aren't prepared to understand and discuss the issues as they are, then... don't try.

I don't see anything in the rules of the game about currently held beliefs. The genesis of Obamacare was a Republican policy. Both parties worked to bring it about, even if the result is not what policy makers from both parties envisioned. This is a good thing. Now you can blame Republicans for putting the idea in Obama's head.

We've already covered this. Your basis for calling the individual mandate a Republican policy is really fucking sketchy, considering that the vast majority of Republicans helped kill the individual mandate in 1993 and the vast majority of Republicans are trying to kill it now in 2016.

Are you suggesting that medical insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies have not benefited from Obamacare? I'm not talking about non profit co-operatives here. Insurance and drug lobbyists got their way on health care reforms. The share price of these companies has soared, the return on revenue dwarfs other industries in similar fields and profit expectations continue to rise.

I am suggesting that corporations are rational entities who give money to the candidates that best represent their interests. Pharmaceutical companies and medical insurance providers have responded to the passage of ACA by throwing vastly more of their money (as a percent of total political spending) at Republicans, even as Republicans are threatening to repeal Obamacare and are sabotaging the implementation in states they control. That change in political spending is consistent with a rational self-interest in the complete or partial repeal of Obamacare. It is not consistent with Obamacare being a pet goose that lays golden eggs.

You'll remember there are downsides to the ACA. There are administration caps, there's no more kicking people off of their insurance when they get sick, a lot more patients have medicaid (which generally pays out much less for the same treatment), healthcare costs are no longer spiralling upwards at the same insane pace. Sure, volume went up, but the margin of profit on each customer almost certainly went down. And based on their political spending the insurance industry got real fuckin' sour on Democrats real fuckin' fast. There is a reason for that.

Israeli GDP is around 300 billion. They are a first world county. Israel represents less than 1% of the world population yet receives around a third of the US foreign aid budget. Can't take the training wheels off, because Iran? The last time Iran declared war and invaded somebody was when the British were in control of Afghanistan. Israel has nukes. Even if Iran had nukes, they're not going to commit suicide by firing them at Israel. Nothing prevents the US from protecting their ally should tensions rise with Iran, but their ally is a big boy now, he can stand on his own and he can call for help if he really, really needs it.

Throwing money at Israel is a cheap political tactic. A way for politicians to superficially 'express support' by sending a cheque in the mail and doing nothing else. It's a waste of money, but it keeps AIPAC in business. Score is now 4.

What the fuck are you doing? Do you realize you didn't even respond to me, at all? Please google the Iran trade deal. Read about it until you are familiar with who is advocating it, and who is opposing it. Read about it until you understand what it means for our relationship with Israel.

Again, you are looking at a complicated policy topic and cherrypicking small parts of it in order to prop up a flimsy narrative. It's not interesting, it's just deceitful. "How much of Netanyahu's cock should we suck" is another one of those topics where there is a real policy difference. I am not perfectly happy with either party (because neither party has put sanctions on the table), but whether or not to invade Iran or to sit down at a negotiating table with them is a pretty fucking big difference.

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tl;dr Holy shit that was a lot of text. I didn't even realize. But the general gist is... you are a deceitful twat. No, you cannot pass off your founding father fapfic as actual history. Don't try. No, picking an area of policy and then ignoring 99% of it to leave only the parts that fit your worldview is not insightful. It is the opposite of that.

[angelfromanotherpin]

It's like live action South Park.

[Prak]

If you think you have been disenfranchised, you very much cling to a paranoid worldview.

Disenfranchised. To be denied franchise. Sure, I feel that way at times. When my statutory rights are subverted or diminished and representatives of my government tell me it's for my own good, or it is to keep me safe from the boogeyman, that I have nothing fear so long as I have nothing to hide, I begin to feel a distinct lack of franchise. Disillusioned, disenchanted, disenfranchised. If that makes me crazy, so be it. You're arguing with a crazy person, you fucking idiot.

As has already been pointed out, no. "The Franchise" means the vote. Unless you're a convicted felon, you have not been disenfranchised.

Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote).

You may feel your voice doesn't matter, which would make you merely kind of dumb (though the feeling is understandable), but you have not been disenfranchised. You still have the right to vote.

[Ancient History]

http://gawker.com/i-watched-michael-bay ... 1753238965

I have a bad feeling about this.

[hyzmarca]

http://gawker.com/i-watched-michael-bay ... 1753238965

I have a bad feeling about this.

I must admit, reading that review, my first throught was "why is this taking place in Libya when it's supposed to be about Bengazi?"

And then, of course, I googled it and was mildly embarrassed.

I imagine that many Americans were asking the same question.

[RobbyPants]

I just saw a video of a 1980 primary debate where Regan and Bush are competing to see who can be the most compassionate when dealing with immigration. My, how shitty that party has become in the last several decades.

[Occluded Sun]

Terrorist strikes will do that.

[RobbyPants]

1) Terrorist strikes will do that.

1) They've been bitching about a wall before that.
2) Almost no one bitches about a wall between here and Canada.
3) Next to none of our immigrants have turned out to be terrorists.

...it's almost like there's no connection between the Republican's strong shift to the right on immigration policy and terrorism.

[Kaelik]

I just saw a video of a 1980 primary debate where Regan and Bush are competing to see who can be the most compassionate when dealing with immigration. My, how shitty that party has become in the last several decades.

To be fair, bush and reagan were just lying for votes, so they have progressed to being more honest.