I know a guy who hoped Ben Carson would become the GOP nominee because he felt that it would confuse and frustrate liberals to have a black person as an opponent.
Spite for other people seems a very odd reason to support a political candidate. I'd prefer people focus on helping our allies rather than hurting our enemies--especially when those "enemies" are people we aren't even at war with and aren't actually killing anybody.
It is as good a reason as any when you are not allowed to vote.
It seems everyone is forgetting how much both candidates were so universally despised this election. I remember people talking about the "lesser of two evils" in previous elections, and tactics have been similar between two candidates, but none that I can remember has been this emotionally charged with absolute detestation, both for and against Hillary and Trump. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say that most people voting for their candidate was actually voting against the other candidate. Bernie may have been a socialist and distasteful to the Democratic Party, but he is not as universally hated as Hillary Clinton. Even democrats hate her. I know a lot of democrats that voted for Trump because Hillary was their candidate. (I also know some republicans that voted for Hillary because Trump was their candidate.) I have absolutely no doubt that if Bernie had run against Trump he would have won. He would have got all or most of the "hatred votes" that Hillary could never have gotten. I do not believe the "Jew Card" and "Socialist Card" would have been even close in equivalence to Hillary's perceived repeated abysmal failures and horrible track record.
I think it is a stretch. There was no shortage of people who outright supported Donald Trump, as the most casual glance at social media and news reports will show. Hillary Clinton was consistently more popular (or less unpopular than him). Both of them captured the majority of their party's "normal" vote, with some small, percentage-wise, shifts from the last few elections (more educated people to Hillary, more white people overall to Trump, etc). Don't trust your anecdotal evidence. Hillary was not hated by Democrats. Democrats voted, in large numbers, to give her the nomination. That's why she had it.
As for punditising about Bernie... if the fact he lost decisively to Clinton (in large part because minorities were unenthused to vote for him) is not enough to give you pause in a confident declaration that he would outperform Clinton, then consider that he is completely untried as a national candidate. It is very difficult to tell how anyone will perform as a national candidate - and you need look no further than Donald Trump to prove that, as it was virtually unanimously believed that he would be a disaster for the Republicans, that his many flaws would sink them at all levels of the ticket, and that any Democratic candidate including Clinton would easily crush him.
(And, of course, if Comey hadn't halved Clinton's lead in the last week of the campaign, she would have won, and people would STILL believe this despite how close he came to winning. Que sera, sera.)
It may be that Sanders would have won. It may be that he would have lost. As he himself said, it's useless to dwell on it now. It also just breeds division in a party that badly needs to get its shit together for the next two elections.
Hard numbers that illustrate what I've been saying about what your vote ACTUALLY means in the Electoral College:
On average, a white person has 1.0214 Real Votes, or 102.14% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.14% edge. On average, nonwhites as a whole have 0.9625 Real Votes, or 96.25% of a fair electoral representation — a 3.75% disadvantage. On average, a hispanic voter has 0.9322 Real Votes, or 93.22% of a fair electoral representation — a 6.78% disadvantage. On average, a black voter has 0.976 Real Votes, or 97.6% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.4% disadvantage. A white vote is worth on average 6.1% more than an average nonwhite vote, 9.6% more than a hispanic vote, and 4.7% more than a black vote. A CA resident has 0.84 Real Votes, whereas a WY resident has 3.04 Real Votes (much has been made of this disparity already). Wyoming is 85.9% white, California is only 40.1% white.
Hard numbers that illustrate what I've been saying about what your vote ACTUALLY means in the Electoral College:
"If electoral votes were divided evenly, each one would represent 583,305 people. A fair electoral representation is 1/538,305 of an electoral vote per person.
On average, a white person has 1.0214 Real Votes, or 102.14% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.14% edge. On average, nonwhites as a whole have 0.9625 Real Votes, or 96.25% of a fair electoral representation — a 3.75% disadvantage. On average, a hispanic voter has 0.9322 Real Votes, or 93.22% of a fair electoral representation — a 6.78% disadvantage. On average, a black voter has 0.976 Real Votes, or 97.6% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.4% disadvantage. A white vote is worth on average 6.1% more than an average nonwhite vote, 9.6% more than a hispanic vote, and 4.7% more than a black vote. A CA resident has 0.84 Real Votes, whereas a WY resident has 3.04 Real Votes (much has been made of this disparity already). Wyoming is 85.9% white, California is only 40.1% white."
Point 2 should be illegal, or at least the police needs to act more than they have been doing. Voter intimidation is a very real thing at the voting booths, particularly when the SJWs and the unions are there in force. Either empower the police to throw those pukes in jail for a few days or ban the so-called volunteers altogether.
Citation, please. From a real news site, if possible.
I hate the preferrence thing, though. I hate it because it is completely undemocratic. Democracy is "1 man, 1 vote", not "1 man, as many votes as you want until one of the guys you are voting for is top 2". It is complete bullhokey.
Well, for starters, you and I don't live in a democracy, we live in a constitutional monarchy where the clearly elected government was overthrown by the Queen's representative in living memory. And then the voters approved by returning the undemocratically appointed government to power at the next election. So, y'know.
Beyond that, the argument is that in a multiparty system, preferences allow voters to vote their conscience, instead of strategically choosing votes to make sure the people they least like don't get in, as happens in Canada (my home country). It also has an argument for more accurately reflecting the will of the people than a first past the post riding, where someone can win on 33% of the vote because three other parties all split the rest of it - even though they were more closely ideologically inclined to each other than any of them was to the winning party.
As for the Hillary/Trump thing, the only reason why I applauded the Trump win was to see the likes of Lene Dunham, Robert de Niro, Lady Gaga and all the various hate-filled whacko celebrities get their panties in a knot and their heads explode. Other than that, what do I care? I am not American and I don't get a vote. All the bloody morons rioting in Melbourne and Sydney over the Trump win... The Australian education system has a lot to answer for.
I am bemused that you referred to "hate-filled whacko celebrities" in the same sentence as Trump, but was not referring to him. Certainly that meat dress was kind of strange, but it's not really in the same ballpark as "grab them by the pussy".
As for thinking that Australia isn't affected by the election of a mostly unknown quantity to the presidency of the most powerful country in the world - it is quite possible it will in fact make a difference to you. Even ignoring moral issues (and you kinda have to in the country that proudly stuffs refugees in concentration camps), he's a trade protectionist and could if he were so inclined damage the Australian economy a fair bit. On the other hand, I suppose if he rescinds AUSFTA, you'll be allowed to use your own copyright laws again.
Some people are also concerned he might blow up the world, nuke Indonesia or whatever, but I'd say that's pretty histrionic. (He could do it, though. There is basically nothing stopping any US President from launching nukes other than hoping some people won't follow orders they're sworn to follow.)
The President-Elect went on another Twitter rant today, again claiming, like an insane lunatic, that we would have also won the popular vote going away if not for the millions of illegal votes. Again, I reiterate, this man is a joke, but more importantly, his ego is a stark danger to the world. He is not emotionally stable:
Is he? There has been various suggestions that there were many illegal migrants voting against him in places like California when they should not be allowed to vote. Now, I don't claim to know who the voting process in America works, so I can't say it is true or not, but I have heard of this before. It is nothing new.
I agree with almost all of this. In regards to the polls, the NATIONAL aggregates are going to end up being right on the money. She is going to win the popular vote by 2%, which is where the polls were. Florida and Ohio were a 50/50 toss-up the entire time. Where things don't make any sense is in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and especially Wisconsin. Either there were severe polling errors in those 3 states specifically, or something else was going on.
There wasn't, though. The problem is is that almost nobody paid attention to the fact that there was a significantly higher amount of "undecided and third party" vote this time around than there was last time (or in any election since 2000, IIRC). That's why Trump was still in the running despite his vote never getting above 40% or so for most of the campaign. As it turns out, the late-deciding voters broke for Trump, and due to Clinton's lead sharply decreasing in the last week, that was enough to turn several states from "narrow Clinton" to "narrow Trump".
The polls were actually closer to the result this time than they were in 2012 (as you noted above), but the media didn't care about how much they missed in 2012 because the person won who the polls said was most likely to win.
It's no coincidence that these are the 3 states being looked at for a recount (for all the good it will do, which is likely none). These places are where the numbers didn't turn out like they should have. As it happens, Michigan and Wisconsin have become even more razor-thin as the days have gone by. I will reiterate that I don't think this is even going to happen or do a lick of good, but there is more than enough reason to at least be somewhat suspicious of what happened in these states.
It's also worth checking, but I doubt there was any significant fraud going on. Trump and his own campaign team thought he was going to lose even on the morning of election day. They certainly didn't do it. And the Russian bogeyman is a silly obsession of the media. Any sort of hacked voting would have been very easy to detect because it would cause weird aberrations in returns, places with voting machines having strikingly different results than otherwise similar places with paper ballots (somebody did claim this happened, but the differences evaporate upon close examination, as 538 showed), etc.
Citation, please. From a real news site, if possible.
I... see... And here I was thinking that I'd get some intelligent debate about politics, and then I get this...
Translation: If I don'[t like what I see, I don't consider it reputable, and yes, I don't care if it is Fox News. I only get my "news" from the ABC, man!
Well, for starters, you and I don't live in a democracy, we live in a constitutional monarchy where the clearly elected government was overthrown by the Queen's representative in living memory. And then the voters approved by returning the undemocratically appointed government to power at the next election. So, y'know.
That is a skewed view of the whole thing. The Queen's representative can only act under certain conditions that is clearly laid out in the constitution. He/she is our safeguard against PMs who get drunk on power and try to drive Australia into the ground. I actually like that emergency reset button. The subsequent election proved that he did the right thing and therefore acted correctly. The last thing we need here is a Neville Chamberlain or Obama. I'd rather have the Queen's representative than one of those.
Beyond that, the argument is that in a multiparty system, preferences allow voters to vote their conscience, instead of strategically choosing votes to make sure the people they least like don't get in, as happens in Canada (my home country). It also has an argument for more accurately reflecting the will of the people than a first past the post riding, where someone can win on 33% of the vote because three other parties all split the rest of it - even though they were more closely ideologically inclined to each other than any of them was to the winning party.
You vote with your one vote any way you like. I don't give a damn if you voted strategically or with your conscience. That is YOUR decision, and YOU deal with the consequences. You do NOT get to have your cake and eat it, too. That is the problem with the last couple of generations. They have been SPOILT to believe they can have everything or they are somehow "disadvantaged". You can see it in the way they cry about housing affordability. They want to go to nightclubs on the weekends, drink themselves into a stupor, eat at fancy restaurants every other night, go on holidays every other month, and still afford the Eastern suburb home their parents bought 50 years ago.
Uh-uh. You either save for a home or you enjoy your life, there is no both. When I see some childless yuppie couple cry that they earn 150k a year and still had the EVIL bank foreclose on them, I just want to puke. I earn half that, and I have multiple properties by my 30s.
You CHOOSE what you want to do, and then you deal with the consequences of your choices.
I am bemused that you referred to "hate-filled whacko celebrities" in the same sentence as Trump, but was not referring to him. Certainly that meat dress was kind of strange, but it's not really in the same ballpark as "grab them by the pussy".
There you go again, ignoring stuff people said or excusing them because they happen to be on your side. Perhaps you missed how de Niro demanded to know how Schwarzeneggar was going to vote and then attacking him for not answering as was Schwarzeneggar's right? Perhaps you missed how the likes of Dunham said she was going to leave America if Trump won and then told people off for wanting her to follow through with her promise? How about the Baldwin brothers attacking their OWN BROTHER on social media because he did not toe the orthodoxy?
I am bemused at how tribal the SJWs are. Hilariously, SJW is a term that I was unfamiliar with until the 2016 American election. Now, I see how it perfectly describes a certain part of the political spectrum.
As for thinking that Australia isn't affected by the election of a mostly unknown quantity to the presidency of the most powerful country in the world - it is quite possible it will in fact make a difference to you. Even ignoring moral issues (and you kinda have to in the country that proudly stuffs refugees in concentration camps), he's a trade protectionist and could if he were so inclined damage the Australian economy a fair bit. On the other hand, I suppose if he rescinds AUSFTA, you'll be allowed to use your own copyright laws again.
Some people are also concerned he might blow up the world, nuke Indonesia or whatever, but I'd say that's pretty histrionic. (He could do it, though. There is basically nothing stopping any US President from launching nukes other than hoping some people won't follow orders they're sworn to follow.)
Irrelevant. I don't get a vote. There is nothing I can do to affect the vote. And to hold a protest and a riot in reply to an election half a world away is retarded. What they the fools think they were going to achieve? Get the Americans to overturn an election result in order appease a bunch of numpties half a word away? Go get a job, stupids! Then perhaps you can afford that house you were moaning about.
Hard numbers that illustrate what I've been saying about what your vote ACTUALLY means in the Electoral College:
On average, a white person has 1.0214 Real Votes, or 102.14% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.14% edge. On average, nonwhites as a whole have 0.9625 Real Votes, or 96.25% of a fair electoral representation — a 3.75% disadvantage. On average, a hispanic voter has 0.9322 Real Votes, or 93.22% of a fair electoral representation — a 6.78% disadvantage. On average, a black voter has 0.976 Real Votes, or 97.6% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.4% disadvantage. A white vote is worth on average 6.1% more than an average nonwhite vote, 9.6% more than a hispanic vote, and 4.7% more than a black vote. A CA resident has 0.84 Real Votes, whereas a WY resident has 3.04 Real Votes (much has been made of this disparity already). Wyoming is 85.9% white, California is only 40.1% white.
So, in other words, it is based on geography and not race? Check!
Now, how about you get the blacks and other minorities to move to say Wyoming to even things up?
There wasn't, though. The problem is is that almost nobody paid attention to the fact that there was a significantly higher amount of "undecided and third party" vote this time around than there was last time (or in any election since 2000, IIRC). That's why Trump was still in the running despite his vote never getting above 40% or so for most of the campaign. As it turns out, the late-deciding voters broke for Trump, and due to Clinton's lead sharply decreasing in the last week, that was enough to turn several states from "narrow Clinton" to "narrow Trump".
*beep!* WRONG!
Oh, so very wrong! And for a variety of reasons, I am actually DELIGHTED that you got it so wrong. Keeping up this narrative would actually help future liberal defeats, and that can only be good for the well-being of the planet.
It's also worth checking, but I doubt there was any significant fraud going on. Trump and his own campaign team thought he was going to lose even on the morning of election day. They certainly didn't do it. And the Russian bogeyman is a silly obsession of the media. Any sort of hacked voting would have been very easy to detect because it would cause weird aberrations in returns, places with voting machines having strikingly different results than otherwise similar places with paper ballots (somebody did claim this happened, but the differences evaporate upon close examination, as 538 showed), etc.
We will never know because Gillard decided to play the sexist card instead of actually trying to get judged on her merits. Bad move and alienated a lot of the voting public. And then she decided to play the race card as well. Even worse move.
Yessssss, somehow I was kinda expecting you to say stuff like that, given the non-ironic usage of "SJW" and all. You'll forgive me if I don't feel like engaging you on behalf of the record of someone who's been gone from politics for years (and who should also be in the Hague along with Rudd, Abbot, and Turnbull).
Oh, by the way, voting for someone because you want to see a woman president? That is an even WORSE reason than voting against someone because of retarded celebrities.
This I'll argue with, though.
1) From a scientific perspective, women being in public office positively changes perceptions on the capabilities and societal roles of women, as shown in an interesting inadvertent experiment in India where some villages were randomly selected to elect women counsellors. After just two rounds of women running things, notable changes in the opinion of both men and women as to how fit women are to do this, as well as other ancilliary changes in outlook, were recorded in contrast to villages who hadn't ended up having any. This is a striking experiment, but of course is backed up by decades of research showing the effects of women in business and politics elsewhere.
2) From a personal perspective, in this year, in this decade, it seems more relevant than ever to think getting females into visible high office is a good in and of itself. It does not necessarily trump (lol) all other political concerns, but it's a plus alongside "believes in climate science" and "has opinions that at least resemble mine on LGBT issues".
I'm still trying to wrap my head around how electing a celebrity is sticking it to all those other celebrities you hate so much. You do realise this is likely to encourage many more celebrities to run for (and possibly win) high office, yes? I'm also not certain why celebrities are completely unqualified to have public opinions, but having one be the most powerful person in the world is totally unconcerning to you.
I find it funny that the President-elect is making false assertions about an election that he won. Yikes! Also, I find it ridiculous that people actually think Sanders would have outperformed Clinton.
1) From a scientific perspective, women being in public office positively changes perceptions on the capabilities and societal roles of women, as shown in an interesting inadvertent experiment in India where some villages were randomly selected to elect women counsellors. After just two rounds of women running things, notable changes in the opinion of both men and women as to how fit women are to do this, as well as other ancilliary changes in outlook, were recorded in contrast to villages who hadn't ended up having any. This is a striking experiment, but of course is backed up by decades of research showing the effects of women in business and politics elsewhere.
2) From a personal perspective, in this year, in this decade, it seems more relevant than ever to think getting females into visible high office is a good in and of itself. It does not necessarily trump (lol) all other political concerns, but it's a plus alongside "believes in climate science" and "has opinions that at least resemble mine on LGBT issues".
Don't. Give. A. Crap.
I only have 1 criteria when choosing someone for a job: Is he/she the best person available for the job in terms of experience, qualifications and mental aptitude?
I'm still trying to wrap my head around how electing a celebrity is sticking it to all those other celebrities you hate so much. You do realise this is likely to encourage many more celebrities to run for (and possibly win) high office, yes? I'm also not certain why celebrities are completely unqualified to have public opinions, but having one be the most powerful person in the world is totally unconcerning to you.
That is because you, as is usual with your kind, refuse to give your "opponents" their just due. You keep on thinking that Trump is nothing but a celebrity. I am sure it would help your cause. As I said before, I am delighted that you and your kind still think in a certain way.
I... see... And here I was thinking that I'd get some intelligent debate about politics, and then I get this...
Translation: If I don'[t like what I see, I don't consider it reputable, and yes, I don't care if it is Fox News. I only get my "news" from the ABC, man!
You made an extraordinary claim that I, frankly, do not believe. I asked for you to cite it. If you don't believe in any of the specific things I refer to (say the thing about India I mentioned in another post), you may ask me to cite it.
For the hell of it, I will assume you're not being disingenuous and explain to you that it has been common in my experience for people here and elsewhere to back up extraordinary claims by linking to conspiracy theory/alt-right/neo-Nazi sites. I was attempting to head off any attempt by you to do the same. If your source if Fox News (or a Murdoch rag), that is acceptable as far as it goes, once I track down whatever they're sourcing it from (I would do the same thing if you linked it to the New York Times - all media has a bias, though some wear it on their sleeves).
I think most people would agree that intelligent debate about politics would involve the citation of a source upon request.
That is a skewed view of the whole thing. The Queen's representative can only act under certain conditions that is clearly laid out in the constitution. He/she is our safeguard against PMs who get drunk on power and try to drive Australia into the ground. I actually like that emergency reset button. The subsequent election proved that he did the right thing and therefore acted correctly. The last thing we need here is a Neville Chamberlain or Obama. I'd rather have the Queen's representative than one of those.
You and I disagree on the matter. I think the unelected representative of the monarch of a different country should have no influence whatsoever over the elected government of this country (or my own country).
Also, referring to Chamberlain and Obama is bizarre and would appear to have nothing to do with the matter at hand.
They have been SPOILT to believe they can have everything or they are somehow "disadvantaged". You can see it in the way they cry about housing affordability. They want to go to nightclubs on the weekends, drink themselves into a stupor, eat at fancy restaurants every other night, go on holidays every other month, and still afford the Eastern suburb home their parents bought 50 years ago.
Uh-uh. You either save for a home or you enjoy your life, there is no both. When I see some childless yuppie couple cry that they earn 150k a year and still had the EVIL bank foreclose on them, I just want to puke. I earn half that, and I have multiple properties by my 30s.
Aww, sadly, you are not, you're just an angry 30-something who doesn't understand that your anecdotal experiences do not match statistical realities.
There you go again, ignoring stuff people said or excusing them because they happen to be on your side.Perhaps you missed how de Niro demanded to know how Schwarzeneggar was going to vote and then attacking him for not answering as was Schwarzeneggar's right? Perhaps you missed how the likes of Dunham said she was going to leave America if Trump won and then told people off for wanting her to follow through with her promise? How about the Baldwin brothers attacking their OWN BROTHER on social media because he did not toe the orthodoxy?
Would "toe the orthodoxy" in this case be "not openly supporting an unqualified racist sex offender for president"? I'm just guessing.
I actually didn't pay attention to any of those things because I don't care about celebrities. For example, I have no idea how many Baldwin brothers there even are and what they do other than "imitate Trump" and "start Gamergate". I only know there ARE Baldwin brothers because they made a joke about it in Team America: World Police. I think. Some South Park-y thing, anyway.
So yes, I missed every single thing you mentioned. The difference between you and I (okay, one difference) is that I not only don't care about celebrities, I don't pay close attention to everything (left-wing) celebrities do and get angry about it, because that to me would actually constitute caring.
I notice you have failed to defend how a celebrity getting elected is totally showing all those stupid jerkface celebrities how wrong they are to have political opinions.
Irrelevant. I don't get a vote. There is nothing I can do to affect the vote. And to hold a protest and a riot in reply to an election half a world away is retarded. What they the fools think they were going to achieve? Get the Americans to overturn an election result in order appease a bunch of numpties half a word away? Go get a job, stupids! Then perhaps you can afford that house you were moaning about.
Oh my god, you actually said "get a job" as if that's related to people being worried about Donald Trump being elected president. While arguing on the internet about that self-same topic.
Out of fake curiosity because the reason is obvious, why is it you're so angry about this, yet haven't mentioned a word about the right-wing rallies around the world, or Pauline Hanson suddenly getting a ton of media time here? Isn't that just as stupid? Shouldn't those stupid right-wing numpties go get a job? After all, the US election has nothing to do with Pauline Hanson, right?
Now I know you are just trolling, as you have always done, judging from other threads I have seen you enter, particularly the meme one where you acted to deliberately get it shut down. The problem with people like you is that you see everything as either one of your causes or something you need to destroy. You think that lecturing people, yelling at them, belittling them, verballing them, bullying them, shutting them down and pack-attacking them would somehow would make them come to your way of thinking.
The fact that your kind can say with a perfectly straight face "tyranny of the majority" as if it is something bad whilst living in a democracy or a republic says much about how detached from reality you are.
You and your kind are spoilt. You see something you don't like, your first instinct is to destroy it in a fit of temper. It doesn't matter what it is. You just want it gone. In your self-righteousness, you never see how the world is not about you nor that you right all the time. That is why Trump won. That is why Pauline Hanson did so well in the last federal election. Ah, well. Too bad, so sad, nevermind.
As I said, please continue with your crap.
To everyone else, I apologise on behalf of all sane, hardworking, larrakin Australians that we are inflicting this person upon you all.
Oh, so very wrong! And for a variety of reasons, I am actually DELIGHTED that you got it so wrong. Keeping up this narrative would actually help future liberal defeats, and that can only be good for the well-being of the planet.
I'm so sorry for believing what the actual data says.
And actually, since it more likely to be liberals that take effective action on climate change, their election is generally what is most good (or, perhaps, least bad) for the well-being of the planet.
If you're planning to prove my point by going on about how global warming is a hoax by evil big solar or whatever, I'll remind other readers that during the last Australian election, 93% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached, and about a third of it died.
Oh wow. 93%? That's down from the other numbers you lot love to use. What was it? 99%? 97%? Now it is 93%? In a few years we might actually get you guys to admit to the fact that you are all hot air and crap.
As for global warming, considering that I have read the AR4 report and debated Professor Andy Pittman of the University of NSW's Climate Change Unit, you are fighting an uphill battle there.
It is very simple: Science is based on the Scientific Method, and for anything to be considered science, it MUST meet the criteria as set out by that method. One of those criteria is that any experiment MUST be repeatable and, therefore, predictable. Another criteria is that all data and methodology MUST be released for inspection.
The global warming advocates have done neither and in fact, actively refuse to do the latter.
If you are not going to meet the Scientific Method, you have no right to call what you do science. And if it is not science but you still have faith in it, it is religion. I am not interested in your religion, thanks. I already have one of my own.
I only have 1 criteria when choosing someone for a job: Is he/she the best person available for the job in terms of experience, qualifications and mental aptitude?
The applicant's sex has no bearing on it.
Admit it, you are just a sexist.
And yet, by your own admission, you think it's great Trump got elected because it stuck it to all those celebrities.
But I'm sure you'd totally have voted for Clinton if you were an American voter, since she was far more qualified, experienced, even of temperament, and sounder of judgement (you're going to argue with these last two, I imagine, but it is self-evidently absurd to do so) than him, and your "celebrity" obsession doesn't have anything to do with the criteria outlined above.
By the way, when I explained how electing women was beneficial for the long-term good of society, that is part of my criteria for what the best person for the job is. If you're not interested in the long-term good of society, then that is your right, but I'm not obliged to use the same criteria you do.
That is because you, as is usual with your kind, refuse to give your "opponents" their just due. You keep on thinking that Trump is nothing but a celebrity. I am sure it would help your cause. As I said before, I am delighted that you and your kind still think in a certain way.
While you're busy ranting about "you and your kind", you know I already stated in the thread that I would ideally like to see Hillary Clinton go on trial for war crimes, right? Who is "my kind"? What side am I on? What do you know about my politics? Nothing except that they aren't the same as yours.
Trump is a celebrity. You didn't qualify "celebrity" for a single other hated one you mentioned - you said nothing about their education, or what non-celebrity qualifications they did or didn't have to be able to hold a public political opinion. Donald Trump is a celebrity. He has no experience in the public sphere, and yet even before this election he mouthed off about his political opinions all the time - on twitter, in interviews, in his books.
You cannot defend his political judgement, because he is one of the prime figures in a discredited and silly conspiracy theory about Barack Obama's birthplace. Trump even admitted he was wrong about it. Yet he mouthed off about it for YEARS. Being wrong the whole time. He's been publically wrong about many other politically-relevant things as well.
Donald Trump is everything you've said you hate about celebrities with one little extra: he's not left-wing. And that means you don't hate him, just like you bitched about whatever Baldwins told their brother off on twitter but not the Baldwin that supported Trump publically in the first place (and I won't be holding my breath to hear you decry how he used his celebrity to get Gamergate rolling). Not once have you derisively named a right-wing celebrity - even though they exist, in smaller but just as vocal numbers to left-wing celebrities.
Just like you have nothing but contempt for left-wing protesters and Australians deeply concerned about who got elected US president, but nothing to say about right-wing demonstrators and you yourself are an Australian who is "delighted" at the assumed outcomes of this and future US elections, who consider yourself so knowledgeable about the minutiae of the election that you can confidently say my data-based opinion of the outcome is wrong.
You will never have the "intelligent debate" you say you wanted when your view on politics is simply to divvy up everything into "like me" and "not like me" and despise everything in the latter category.
@Ayiekie Sorry I don't have much fun time in the next few days so I'm going to only respond to a few parts of your interesting post. I will respond in full a later time.
But, on demographics. I posted 538 because I know most Clinton supporters take it as a reliable source.* I think Sliver, as a Clinton supporter, doesn't report this properly. The narrative that Clinton has more support among diverse voters is false -- or, is only true if 'diverse' means blacks over 55. Take a closer look at the polls. Clinton cleaned up -- cleaned up -- with elderly, southern black voters. She lost HI, WA and AK among hispanics, asians and first nations peoples. The exit polls show that Sanders won in all demographics groups in all northern open primary and caucus states and won among all demographic groups under 30. The divide was between young and old voters.
And, as predicted, when Sanders left the race the young left the political process.
We can no longer run candidates that only appeal to core supporters. If the next candidate -- like Gore, Kerry and Clinton -- only appeals to the over 55 crowd we will continue to have Republican rule. Fewer and fewer people call themselves democrats, this is increasingly a nation of independents and the energy is on the side of the left and the libertarian leaning indies.
Again, the polls say that Sanders would have won in NY handily if indies were allowed to vote. And this would have changed the outcome of both races.
Quickly on polls. I suspect you didn't click on the links. the 10 point lead Sanders has was the average of many polls, not an outlier. Please take a look. There was no poll showing him losing a handful showing Clinton losing. And the proof of any poll is in the result. Those polls were accurate -- Clinton lost by predicted by the margin of error.
So, again, the discussion should be about: how to we make sure that we never again have a Clinton like candidate.
Same point -- sorry to post and run. Will respond in poll.
1. The point about the Ralston article was not that the DNC helped write it but that once written, a column written for a local paper went national. Staff were instructed to spread a hit piece. And that is rigging. The DNC also did edit other stories in the NYT and Politico but this is about spreading the hit piece.
2. The campaign started months before the primaries and Wikileaks only has the tail end.
More later, thanks for engaging.
* (I'm actually much more critical in general -- I think Nate Silver called MI wrong *twice* because he fails to acknowledge the big problems of modern polling: land lines and selection bias. He just can't aggregate land line polls and internet polls together and expect to get anything meaningful -- but if he were to stop he'd need to close shop)
Now I know you are just trolling, as you have always done, judging from other threads I have seen you enter, particularly the meme one where you acted to deliberately get it shut down. The problem with people like you is that you see everything as either one of your causes or something you need to destroy. You think that lecturing people, yelling at them, belittling them, verballing them, bullying them, shutting them down and pack-attacking them would somehow would make them come to your way of thinking.
Projection is a helluva drug.
It actually took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about with this "meme" thing.
The Meme thread you googled my username to findread my entire post history to find "remembered" was in 2013. That's an impressive memory you have to remember seeing it, person who joined this forum in June 2016 along with a whole bunch of other people with strong political opinions.
What happened in that thread was that someone posted a meme that used a word that started with "n", refers to black people, and is not used in polite company. As the person who used it wasn't American and upon inquiry did not believe the word was sufficiently offensive to take down the meme picture, I continued to say they should and quoted the board rules at them (instead of, say, reporting them which would possibly have led to an infraction, which seemed harsh). In retrospect, I probably should've just reported it instead of arguing about it, but oh well. Also, as one would expect, I wasn't the only person to comment on it.
That one meme picture was taken down. The thread kept going for another couple of pages afterwards, and I wouldn't have tried to close it anyway.
I guess your memory isn't that good after all. You wanna judge me for speaking up to someone who posted the n-word in a public forum? Go for it, buddy. This isn't 4chan.
The fact that your kind can say with a perfectly straight face "tyranny of the majority" as if it is something bad whilst living in a democracy or a republic says much about how detached from reality you are.
Says the guy who supports Trump even though he got less votes than Clinton, and who supports a first-past-the-post system that allows people with 30-40% of the vote to routinely win. And there you go with "your kind" again.
To everyone else, I apologise on behalf of all sane, hardworking, larrakin Australians that we are inflicting this person upon you all.
I'm not Australian, and nobody's going to know what "larrakin" means. But I am done with you. Really, googling/researching me to try and come up with a dippy personal attack - and then getting the facts completely wrong through either malice or sloppiness - is a bit beyond the pale.
The fact that I CAN google/research you proves that you are not someone that people can debate with. Thank you for outing yourself, SJW activist.
If you are not Australian, then kindly stop talking as if you are. Leave alone to deal with our problems. We don't need your crap here. We have enough of our own, thanks.
@Ayiekie Sorry I don't have much fun time in the next few days so I'm going to only respond to a few parts of your interesting post. I will respond in full a later time.
No worries, thread moves fast, I've had to let it lie fallow for days at a time before.
But, on demographics. I posted 538 because I know most Clinton supporters take it as a reliable source.* I think Sliver, as a Clinton supporter, doesn't report this properly.
Honestly, I think this is disrespectful to Silver. His models are open and transparent. He shows what he weights, why he weights it, and explains the methodology behind it. If he is a Clinton supporter, then it certainly didn't stop 538 saying Trump had a much higher chance to win the election than most media outlets. And his track record of 99/100 states called correctly for two elections speaks for itself.
I can't argue too much about your statements with diversity because it's been the better part of a year since the primaries and I don't want to go rereading a ton of old articles to argue it. I will say that Sanders' problems with getting black voters to vote for him were known at the time and addressed by his campaign (as well as leading to the disruption of one of his events by people affiliated with Black Lives Matter). I will also note that Clinton beat him handily in the popular vote overall.
We can no longer run candidates that only appeal to core supporters. If the next candidate -- like Gore, Kerry and Clinton -- only appeals to the over 55 crowd we will continue to have Republican rule. Fewer and fewer people call themselves democrats, this is increasingly a nation of independents and the energy is on the side of the left and the libertarian leaning indies.
Did any of these candidates lose the overall youth vote? Plus, of course, two of them won the popular vote overall. Youth energy is important, but it's also at least as important to get older people out to vote for you - there's a lot of them, and they also statistically are more likely to vote. The ideal candidate is everything to everybody ("everybody" meaning "everybody plausible to vote for your party) - like Obama, or Justin Trudeau. But it's hard to manufacture such a candidate.
Again, the polls say that Sanders would have won in NY handily if indies were allowed to vote. And this would have changed the outcome of both races.
Once again, it is intellectually inconsistent to complain about independents being blocked from voting (which happens in a bunch of states, and in any case is not a self-evident evil), but ignore how much Bernie Sanders benefited from caucuses. If every state had a free vote, he would have lost to Clinton even worse than he did. You can't change anything and get around the fact that more Democrats wanted Clinton than wanted Sanders. He lost because he was the less popular choice.
On New York, for the sake of argument let's say he does win. It's not winner-take-all, so it wouldn't have made a dramatic difference without an unrealistic one-sided win (especially unrealistic since in reality, Clinton won convincingly and I'd need to see some studies to show independents would turn up in enough numbers to reverse the result in Clinton's home state to that extent).
I see this as rather similar to Democrats arguing about how the Electoral College lost Clinton the election. Even if we take it for truth, it doesn't matter, because that's not the election that was fought. Sanders went into the primaries knowing the rules. Every state sets their own - New York didn't make up this rule just to let Clinton win. He ran, and lost, under the agreed rules, just like Clinton did in the general.
Quickly on polls. I suspect you didn't click on the links. the 10 point lead Sanders has was the average of many polls, not an outlier. Please take a look. There was no poll showing him losing a handful showing Clinton losing. And the proof of any poll is in the result. Those polls were accurate -- Clinton lost by predicted by the margin of error.
I know about the polls. I dismiss them because they were chronologically far removed from the election, and history shows (as documented by 538) that polls that far out are just not predictive of eventual election results. At all. If they happened to coincide this time for Clinton, then stopped clock, twice a day, et cetera. It doesn't mean anything about Sanders - I also cannot stress enough the difference between polling about a nationally known figure who has been a fixture of the political scene for decades, and a formerly obscure and independent Senator.
* (I'm actually much more critical in general -- I think Nate Silver called MI wrong *twice* because he fails to acknowledge the big problems of modern polling: land lines and selection bias. He just can't aggregate land line polls and internet polls together and expect to get anything meaningful -- but if he were to stop he'd need to close shop)
He's not failed to do that at all. He's addressed the land line problem many times.
Also, his model is quite accurate. You mention he missed MI twice, and you're right, that might indicate a problem. But the vast majority of states he got right, and this is the third election in a row he's been righter than almost anyone else. The misses will hopefully help make the model better, but that's not a reason to throw it out.
Aaaaaanyway, why is the saying, "Have your cake and eat it too." so popular? I understand what its supposed to illustrate, but its cake man! What else is cake used for? Why have cake if indeed you don't plan to eat it?
Hard numbers that illustrate what I've been saying about what your vote ACTUALLY means in the Electoral College:
On average, a white person has 1.0214 Real Votes, or 102.14% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.14% edge. On average, nonwhites as a whole have 0.9625 Real Votes, or 96.25% of a fair electoral representation — a 3.75% disadvantage. On average, a hispanic voter has 0.9322 Real Votes, or 93.22% of a fair electoral representation — a 6.78% disadvantage. On average, a black voter has 0.976 Real Votes, or 97.6% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.4% disadvantage. A white vote is worth on average 6.1% more than an average nonwhite vote, 9.6% more than a hispanic vote, and 4.7% more than a black vote. A CA resident has 0.84 Real Votes, whereas a WY resident has 3.04 Real Votes (much has been made of this disparity already). Wyoming is 85.9% white, California is only 40.1% white.
It is based on where you live, not what race you are. Just because more blacks and hispanics live in more populated areas than whites does not mean that their vote counts less because of their race. This is complete, utter, absolute nonsense and is twisting the numbers to suit your own idea of racism in our country. You want racism? Go back to the 50s and 60s, where blacks were imprisoned or even killed because they tried to exercise their lawful right to vote.
Whether it's based on race or geography it's still not right and undemocratic.
It doesn't matter. The government is not devalueing your presidential vote based on race. In fact, it is entirely misleading to say it is devalued based on location of residence as well.
In a presidential election, no one's vote matters except for the members of the electoral college.
538 votes. Not 318M votes.
Even if it was 318M votes that elected the president, it's still utter nonsense to say your vote is devalued based on your race.
The president is the only official elected this way. Your local government officials are much more influential over your life than the president ever could be.
Let's play this game, though, even though it is absolute nonsense.
The highest average population by senate district is in Montana, nearly 1,000,000 on average. The lowest population average by senate district is Rhode Island, just over 500,000 on average. That means that your vote for senate member in Montana is HALF the value of that same vote in Rhode Island. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congressional_districts
It doesn't make any sense, but let's mix race into it in the same manner, shall we? Montana is 89% white. Rhode Island is 84% white. That means that as a white person living in Montana, your vote is worth even less than half compared to a white person living in Rhode Island. As minority in Rhode Island, your vote is so much more powerful based on your demographic than a white person living in Montana, that you have practically rigged the senate district. Source: http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/44 http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/30
Oh, the plight of the Montana white man! Poor, poor Montana white man, who's vote is so devalued simply because of his race (I mean location, whatever, it's still undemocratic)! If only the government and the people didn't discriminate against him! If only they listened to him!
For crying out loud, this argument is completely ridiculous. Your vote for the president is NOT devalued based on race or location of residence. Your vote for the president is meaningless because of the member of the electoral college, most of whom are not even required to vote according to their state's presidential preference. It has nothing to do with where you live or your ethnicity.
Comments
As for punditising about Bernie... if the fact he lost decisively to Clinton (in large part because minorities were unenthused to vote for him) is not enough to give you pause in a confident declaration that he would outperform Clinton, then consider that he is completely untried as a national candidate. It is very difficult to tell how anyone will perform as a national candidate - and you need look no further than Donald Trump to prove that, as it was virtually unanimously believed that he would be a disaster for the Republicans, that his many flaws would sink them at all levels of the ticket, and that any Democratic candidate including Clinton would easily crush him.
(And, of course, if Comey hadn't halved Clinton's lead in the last week of the campaign, she would have won, and people would STILL believe this despite how close he came to winning. Que sera, sera.)
It may be that Sanders would have won. It may be that he would have lost. As he himself said, it's useless to dwell on it now. It also just breeds division in a party that badly needs to get its shit together for the next two elections.
On average, a white person has 1.0214 Real Votes, or 102.14% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.14% edge.
On average, nonwhites as a whole have 0.9625 Real Votes, or 96.25% of a fair electoral representation — a 3.75% disadvantage.
On average, a hispanic voter has 0.9322 Real Votes, or 93.22% of a fair electoral representation — a 6.78% disadvantage.
On average, a black voter has 0.976 Real Votes, or 97.6% of a fair electoral representation — a 2.4% disadvantage.
A white vote is worth on average 6.1% more than an average nonwhite vote, 9.6% more than a hispanic vote, and 4.7% more than a black vote.
A CA resident has 0.84 Real Votes, whereas a WY resident has 3.04 Real Votes (much has been made of this disparity already). Wyoming is 85.9% white, California is only 40.1% white.
Beyond that, the argument is that in a multiparty system, preferences allow voters to vote their conscience, instead of strategically choosing votes to make sure the people they least like don't get in, as happens in Canada (my home country). It also has an argument for more accurately reflecting the will of the people than a first past the post riding, where someone can win on 33% of the vote because three other parties all split the rest of it - even though they were more closely ideologically inclined to each other than any of them was to the winning party. I am bemused that you referred to "hate-filled whacko celebrities" in the same sentence as Trump, but was not referring to him. Certainly that meat dress was kind of strange, but it's not really in the same ballpark as "grab them by the pussy".
As for thinking that Australia isn't affected by the election of a mostly unknown quantity to the presidency of the most powerful country in the world - it is quite possible it will in fact make a difference to you. Even ignoring moral issues (and you kinda have to in the country that proudly stuffs refugees in concentration camps), he's a trade protectionist and could if he were so inclined damage the Australian economy a fair bit. On the other hand, I suppose if he rescinds AUSFTA, you'll be allowed to use your own copyright laws again.
Some people are also concerned he might blow up the world, nuke Indonesia or whatever, but I'd say that's pretty histrionic. (He could do it, though. There is basically nothing stopping any US President from launching nukes other than hoping some people won't follow orders they're sworn to follow.)
The polls were actually closer to the result this time than they were in 2012 (as you noted above), but the media didn't care about how much they missed in 2012 because the person won who the polls said was most likely to win. It's also worth checking, but I doubt there was any significant fraud going on. Trump and his own campaign team thought he was going to lose even on the morning of election day. They certainly didn't do it. And the Russian bogeyman is a silly obsession of the media. Any sort of hacked voting would have been very easy to detect because it would cause weird aberrations in returns, places with voting machines having strikingly different results than otherwise similar places with paper ballots (somebody did claim this happened, but the differences evaporate upon close examination, as 538 showed), etc.
Translation: If I don'[t like what I see, I don't consider it reputable, and yes, I don't care if it is Fox News. I only get my "news" from the ABC, man! That is a skewed view of the whole thing. The Queen's representative can only act under certain conditions that is clearly laid out in the constitution. He/she is our safeguard against PMs who get drunk on power and try to drive Australia into the ground. I actually like that emergency reset button. The subsequent election proved that he did the right thing and therefore acted correctly. The last thing we need here is a Neville Chamberlain or Obama. I'd rather have the Queen's representative than one of those. You vote with your one vote any way you like. I don't give a damn if you voted strategically or with your conscience. That is YOUR decision, and YOU deal with the consequences. You do NOT get to have your cake and eat it, too. That is the problem with the last couple of generations. They have been SPOILT to believe they can have everything or they are somehow "disadvantaged". You can see it in the way they cry about housing affordability. They want to go to nightclubs on the weekends, drink themselves into a stupor, eat at fancy restaurants every other night, go on holidays every other month, and still afford the Eastern suburb home their parents bought 50 years ago.
Uh-uh. You either save for a home or you enjoy your life, there is no both. When I see some childless yuppie couple cry that they earn 150k a year and still had the EVIL bank foreclose on them, I just want to puke. I earn half that, and I have multiple properties by my 30s.
You CHOOSE what you want to do, and then you deal with the consequences of your choices. There you go again, ignoring stuff people said or excusing them because they happen to be on your side. Perhaps you missed how de Niro demanded to know how Schwarzeneggar was going to vote and then attacking him for not answering as was Schwarzeneggar's right? Perhaps you missed how the likes of Dunham said she was going to leave America if Trump won and then told people off for wanting her to follow through with her promise? How about the Baldwin brothers attacking their OWN BROTHER on social media because he did not toe the orthodoxy?
I am bemused at how tribal the SJWs are. Hilariously, SJW is a term that I was unfamiliar with until the 2016 American election. Now, I see how it perfectly describes a certain part of the political spectrum. Irrelevant. I don't get a vote. There is nothing I can do to affect the vote. And to hold a protest and a riot in reply to an election half a world away is retarded. What they the fools think they were going to achieve? Get the Americans to overturn an election result in order appease a bunch of numpties half a word away? Go get a job, stupids! Then perhaps you can afford that house you were moaning about.
Now, how about you get the blacks and other minorities to move to say Wyoming to even things up?
Oh, so very wrong! And for a variety of reasons, I am actually DELIGHTED that you got it so wrong. Keeping up this narrative would actually help future liberal defeats, and that can only be good for the well-being of the planet. You and I, at least, agree on this.
1) From a scientific perspective, women being in public office positively changes perceptions on the capabilities and societal roles of women, as shown in an interesting inadvertent experiment in India where some villages were randomly selected to elect women counsellors. After just two rounds of women running things, notable changes in the opinion of both men and women as to how fit women are to do this, as well as other ancilliary changes in outlook, were recorded in contrast to villages who hadn't ended up having any. This is a striking experiment, but of course is backed up by decades of research showing the effects of women in business and politics elsewhere.
2) From a personal perspective, in this year, in this decade, it seems more relevant than ever to think getting females into visible high office is a good in and of itself. It does not necessarily trump (lol) all other political concerns, but it's a plus alongside "believes in climate science" and "has opinions that at least resemble mine on LGBT issues".
I'm still trying to wrap my head around how electing a celebrity is sticking it to all those other celebrities you hate so much. You do realise this is likely to encourage many more celebrities to run for (and possibly win) high office, yes? I'm also not certain why celebrities are completely unqualified to have public opinions, but having one be the most powerful person in the world is totally unconcerning to you.
Also, I find it ridiculous that people actually think Sanders would have outperformed Clinton.
I only have 1 criteria when choosing someone for a job: Is he/she the best person available for the job in terms of experience, qualifications and mental aptitude?
The applicant's sex has no bearing on it.
Admit it, you are just a sexist. That is because you, as is usual with your kind, refuse to give your "opponents" their just due. You keep on thinking that Trump is nothing but a celebrity. I am sure it would help your cause. As I said before, I am delighted that you and your kind still think in a certain way.
For the hell of it, I will assume you're not being disingenuous and explain to you that it has been common in my experience for people here and elsewhere to back up extraordinary claims by linking to conspiracy theory/alt-right/neo-Nazi sites. I was attempting to head off any attempt by you to do the same. If your source if Fox News (or a Murdoch rag), that is acceptable as far as it goes, once I track down whatever they're sourcing it from (I would do the same thing if you linked it to the New York Times - all media has a bias, though some wear it on their sleeves).
I think most people would agree that intelligent debate about politics would involve the citation of a source upon request. You and I disagree on the matter. I think the unelected representative of the monarch of a different country should have no influence whatsoever over the elected government of this country (or my own country).
Also, referring to Chamberlain and Obama is bizarre and would appear to have nothing to do with the matter at hand. Ahahahaha. I hope you actually are the eighty years old you're pretending to be, in which case I'll be impressed by your net savviness. Aww, sadly, you are not, you're just an angry 30-something who doesn't understand that your anecdotal experiences do not match statistical realities.
(Or historical realities.) Would "toe the orthodoxy" in this case be "not openly supporting an unqualified racist sex offender for president"? I'm just guessing.
I actually didn't pay attention to any of those things because I don't care about celebrities. For example, I have no idea how many Baldwin brothers there even are and what they do other than "imitate Trump" and "start Gamergate". I only know there ARE Baldwin brothers because they made a joke about it in Team America: World Police. I think. Some South Park-y thing, anyway.
So yes, I missed every single thing you mentioned. The difference between you and I (okay, one difference) is that I not only don't care about celebrities, I don't pay close attention to everything (left-wing) celebrities do and get angry about it, because that to me would actually constitute caring.
I notice you have failed to defend how a celebrity getting elected is totally showing all those stupid jerkface celebrities how wrong they are to have political opinions. Oh my god, you actually said "get a job" as if that's related to people being worried about Donald Trump being elected president. While arguing on the internet about that self-same topic.
Out of fake curiosity because the reason is obvious, why is it you're so angry about this, yet haven't mentioned a word about the right-wing rallies around the world, or Pauline Hanson suddenly getting a ton of media time here? Isn't that just as stupid? Shouldn't those stupid right-wing numpties go get a job? After all, the US election has nothing to do with Pauline Hanson, right?
The fact that your kind can say with a perfectly straight face "tyranny of the majority" as if it is something bad whilst living in a democracy or a republic says much about how detached from reality you are.
You and your kind are spoilt. You see something you don't like, your first instinct is to destroy it in a fit of temper. It doesn't matter what it is. You just want it gone. In your self-righteousness, you never see how the world is not about you nor that you right all the time. That is why Trump won. That is why Pauline Hanson did so well in the last federal election. Ah, well. Too bad, so sad, nevermind.
As I said, please continue with your crap.
To everyone else, I apologise on behalf of all sane, hardworking, larrakin Australians that we are inflicting this person upon you all.
And actually, since it more likely to be liberals that take effective action on climate change, their election is generally what is most good (or, perhaps, least bad) for the well-being of the planet.
If you're planning to prove my point by going on about how global warming is a hoax by evil big solar or whatever, I'll remind other readers that during the last Australian election, 93% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached, and about a third of it died. That is because I try to find out what is actually most likely, instead of just believing what is most convenient for my "side".
As for global warming, considering that I have read the AR4 report and debated Professor Andy Pittman of the University of NSW's Climate Change Unit, you are fighting an uphill battle there.
It is very simple: Science is based on the Scientific Method, and for anything to be considered science, it MUST meet the criteria as set out by that method. One of those criteria is that any experiment MUST be repeatable and, therefore, predictable. Another criteria is that all data and methodology MUST be released for inspection.
The global warming advocates have done neither and in fact, actively refuse to do the latter.
If you are not going to meet the Scientific Method, you have no right to call what you do science. And if it is not science but you still have faith in it, it is religion. I am not interested in your religion, thanks. I already have one of my own.
But I'm sure you'd totally have voted for Clinton if you were an American voter, since she was far more qualified, experienced, even of temperament, and sounder of judgement (you're going to argue with these last two, I imagine, but it is self-evidently absurd to do so) than him, and your "celebrity" obsession doesn't have anything to do with the criteria outlined above.
By the way, when I explained how electing women was beneficial for the long-term good of society, that is part of my criteria for what the best person for the job is. If you're not interested in the long-term good of society, then that is your right, but I'm not obliged to use the same criteria you do. While you're busy ranting about "you and your kind", you know I already stated in the thread that I would ideally like to see Hillary Clinton go on trial for war crimes, right? Who is "my kind"? What side am I on? What do you know about my politics? Nothing except that they aren't the same as yours.
Trump is a celebrity. You didn't qualify "celebrity" for a single other hated one you mentioned - you said nothing about their education, or what non-celebrity qualifications they did or didn't have to be able to hold a public political opinion. Donald Trump is a celebrity. He has no experience in the public sphere, and yet even before this election he mouthed off about his political opinions all the time - on twitter, in interviews, in his books.
You cannot defend his political judgement, because he is one of the prime figures in a discredited and silly conspiracy theory about Barack Obama's birthplace. Trump even admitted he was wrong about it. Yet he mouthed off about it for YEARS. Being wrong the whole time. He's been publically wrong about many other politically-relevant things as well.
Donald Trump is everything you've said you hate about celebrities with one little extra: he's not left-wing. And that means you don't hate him, just like you bitched about whatever Baldwins told their brother off on twitter but not the Baldwin that supported Trump publically in the first place (and I won't be holding my breath to hear you decry how he used his celebrity to get Gamergate rolling). Not once have you derisively named a right-wing celebrity - even though they exist, in smaller but just as vocal numbers to left-wing celebrities.
Just like you have nothing but contempt for left-wing protesters and Australians deeply concerned about who got elected US president, but nothing to say about right-wing demonstrators and you yourself are an Australian who is "delighted" at the assumed outcomes of this and future US elections, who consider yourself so knowledgeable about the minutiae of the election that you can confidently say my data-based opinion of the outcome is wrong.
You will never have the "intelligent debate" you say you wanted when your view on politics is simply to divvy up everything into "like me" and "not like me" and despise everything in the latter category.
But, on demographics. I posted 538 because I know most Clinton supporters take it as a reliable source.* I think Sliver, as a Clinton supporter, doesn't report this properly. The narrative that Clinton has more support among diverse voters is false -- or, is only true if 'diverse' means blacks over 55. Take a closer look at the polls. Clinton cleaned up -- cleaned up -- with elderly, southern black voters. She lost HI, WA and AK among hispanics, asians and first nations peoples. The exit polls show that Sanders won in all demographics groups in all northern open primary and caucus states and won among all demographic groups under 30. The divide was between young and old voters.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/10/politics/hillary-clinton-new-hampshire-primary/index.html
And, as predicted, when Sanders left the race the young left the political process.
We can no longer run candidates that only appeal to core supporters. If the next candidate -- like Gore, Kerry and Clinton -- only appeals to the over 55 crowd we will continue to have Republican rule. Fewer and fewer people call themselves democrats, this is increasingly a nation of independents and the energy is on the side of the left and the libertarian leaning indies.
Again, the polls say that Sanders would have won in NY handily if indies were allowed to vote. And this would have changed the outcome of both races.
Quickly on polls. I suspect you didn't click on the links. the 10 point lead Sanders has was the average of many polls, not an outlier. Please take a look. There was no poll showing him losing a handful showing Clinton losing. And the proof of any poll is in the result. Those polls were accurate -- Clinton lost by predicted by the margin of error.
So, again, the discussion should be about: how to we make sure that we never again have a Clinton like candidate.
@semiticgod
Same point -- sorry to post and run. Will respond in poll.
1. The point about the Ralston article was not that the DNC helped write it but that once written, a column written for a local paper went national. Staff were instructed to spread a hit piece. And that is rigging. The DNC also did edit other stories in the NYT and Politico but this is about spreading the hit piece.
2. The campaign started months before the primaries and Wikileaks only has the tail end.
More later, thanks for engaging.
* (I'm actually much more critical in general -- I think Nate Silver called MI wrong *twice* because he fails to acknowledge the big problems of modern polling: land lines and selection bias. He just can't aggregate land line polls and internet polls together and expect to get anything meaningful -- but if he were to stop he'd need to close shop)
It actually took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about with this "meme" thing.
The Meme thread you
googled my username to findread my entire post history to find"remembered" was in 2013. That's an impressive memory you have to remember seeing it, person who joined this forum in June 2016 along with a whole bunch of other people with strong political opinions.What happened in that thread was that someone posted a meme that used a word that started with "n", refers to black people, and is not used in polite company. As the person who used it wasn't American and upon inquiry did not believe the word was sufficiently offensive to take down the meme picture, I continued to say they should and quoted the board rules at them (instead of, say, reporting them which would possibly have led to an infraction, which seemed harsh). In retrospect, I probably should've just reported it instead of arguing about it, but oh well. Also, as one would expect, I wasn't the only person to comment on it.
That one meme picture was taken down. The thread kept going for another couple of pages afterwards, and I wouldn't have tried to close it anyway.
I guess your memory isn't that good after all. You wanna judge me for speaking up to someone who posted the n-word in a public forum? Go for it, buddy. This isn't 4chan. Says the guy who supports Trump even though he got less votes than Clinton, and who supports a first-past-the-post system that allows people with 30-40% of the vote to routinely win. And there you go with "your kind" again. I'm not Australian, and nobody's going to know what "larrakin" means. But I am done with you. Really, googling/researching me to try and come up with a dippy personal attack - and then getting the facts completely wrong through either malice or sloppiness - is a bit beyond the pale.
If you are not Australian, then kindly stop talking as if you are. Leave alone to deal with our problems. We don't need your crap here. We have enough of our own, thanks.
I can't argue too much about your statements with diversity because it's been the better part of a year since the primaries and I don't want to go rereading a ton of old articles to argue it. I will say that Sanders' problems with getting black voters to vote for him were known at the time and addressed by his campaign (as well as leading to the disruption of one of his events by people affiliated with Black Lives Matter). I will also note that Clinton beat him handily in the popular vote overall. Did any of these candidates lose the overall youth vote? Plus, of course, two of them won the popular vote overall. Youth energy is important, but it's also at least as important to get older people out to vote for you - there's a lot of them, and they also statistically are more likely to vote. The ideal candidate is everything to everybody ("everybody" meaning "everybody plausible to vote for your party) - like Obama, or Justin Trudeau. But it's hard to manufacture such a candidate. Once again, it is intellectually inconsistent to complain about independents being blocked from voting (which happens in a bunch of states, and in any case is not a self-evident evil), but ignore how much Bernie Sanders benefited from caucuses. If every state had a free vote, he would have lost to Clinton even worse than he did. You can't change anything and get around the fact that more Democrats wanted Clinton than wanted Sanders. He lost because he was the less popular choice.
On New York, for the sake of argument let's say he does win. It's not winner-take-all, so it wouldn't have made a dramatic difference without an unrealistic one-sided win (especially unrealistic since in reality, Clinton won convincingly and I'd need to see some studies to show independents would turn up in enough numbers to reverse the result in Clinton's home state to that extent).
I see this as rather similar to Democrats arguing about how the Electoral College lost Clinton the election. Even if we take it for truth, it doesn't matter, because that's not the election that was fought. Sanders went into the primaries knowing the rules. Every state sets their own - New York didn't make up this rule just to let Clinton win. He ran, and lost, under the agreed rules, just like Clinton did in the general. I know about the polls. I dismiss them because they were chronologically far removed from the election, and history shows (as documented by 538) that polls that far out are just not predictive of eventual election results. At all. If they happened to coincide this time for Clinton, then stopped clock, twice a day, et cetera. It doesn't mean anything about Sanders - I also cannot stress enough the difference between polling about a nationally known figure who has been a fixture of the political scene for decades, and a formerly obscure and independent Senator. He's not failed to do that at all. He's addressed the land line problem many times.
Also, his model is quite accurate. You mention he missed MI twice, and you're right, that might indicate a problem. But the vast majority of states he got right, and this is the third election in a row he's been righter than almost anyone else. The misses will hopefully help make the model better, but that's not a reason to throw it out.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=salty
No need to thank me.
This is complete, utter, absolute nonsense and is twisting the numbers to suit your own idea of racism in our country.
You want racism? Go back to the 50s and 60s, where blacks were imprisoned or even killed because they tried to exercise their lawful right to vote.
In a presidential election, no one's vote matters except for the members of the electoral college.
538 votes. Not 318M votes.
Even if it was 318M votes that elected the president, it's still utter nonsense to say your vote is devalued based on your race.
The president is the only official elected this way. Your local government officials are much more influential over your life than the president ever could be.
Let's play this game, though, even though it is absolute nonsense.
The highest average population by senate district is in Montana, nearly 1,000,000 on average. The lowest population average by senate district is Rhode Island, just over 500,000 on average. That means that your vote for senate member in Montana is HALF the value of that same vote in Rhode Island.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congressional_districts
It doesn't make any sense, but let's mix race into it in the same manner, shall we? Montana is 89% white. Rhode Island is 84% white. That means that as a white person living in Montana, your vote is worth even less than half compared to a white person living in Rhode Island. As minority in Rhode Island, your vote is so much more powerful based on your demographic than a white person living in Montana, that you have practically rigged the senate district.
Source:
http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/44
http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/30
Oh, the plight of the Montana white man! Poor, poor Montana white man, who's vote is so devalued simply because of his race (I mean location, whatever, it's still undemocratic)! If only the government and the people didn't discriminate against him! If only they listened to him!
For crying out loud, this argument is completely ridiculous. Your vote for the president is NOT devalued based on race or location of residence. Your vote for the president is meaningless because of the member of the electoral college, most of whom are not even required to vote according to their state's presidential preference. It has nothing to do with where you live or your ethnicity.
You want to be heard? Vote local.