2016 US Presidential Election Thread

[AniX]

if you want lasting impact of a presidency, then you should be talking about SCOTUS

this this this this this

this is why 2016 is a fight that Dems/humanity can't afford to lose

This is pretty much a moot argument, it is said every election.

its only a moot argument when SCOTUS isnt ridiculously politicized
The current bench is just doing whatever the fuck it wants

Its also not a moot argument given the ages of some very key positions on the court

True, but SCOTUS judges do what they can to avoid retiring during an administration of the opposite ideology. Of course if they die there is nothing they can do.

And SCOTUS has always been politicized. This will happen when the president nominates the judges and the judges are a check and balance against the other branches as much as a judicial body.

For Example, the last 10 SCOTUS Retirees(as opposed to having died or resigned)

Justice - Nominating Prez - Retirement Prez
David Souter - Bush I - Obama

Sandra Day O Conner - Reagan - Bush II

John Paul Stevens - Ford - Bush II

Lewis F Powell Jr - Nixon - Clinton
Harry Blackmun - Nixon - Clinton

Thurghood Marshall - Johnson - Clinton

Byron White - Kennedy - Clinton

Potter Stewart - Eisenhower - Reagan

William J Brennan Jr - Eisenhower - Bush I

John Marshall Harlann II - Eisenhower - Nixon

So 7 of the last 10 justices to retire retired with a presidident of the same party of the president that elected them.

Also, never in US History has 4 consecutive presidents won reelection and finished both terms(Clinton>Bush>Obama>???), so history is against that happening this time.

Are you really of the opinion Stevens and Brennan were rubbing their hands going "I better resign now or a LIBERAL might take my seat"?

[AniX]

Also, never in US History has 4 consecutive presidents won reelection and finished both terms(Clinton>Bush>Obama>???), so history is against that happening this time.

This is kind of a nonsense stat for predictive purposes. Is it REALLY less likey? If I flip a coin 4 times, it is unlikely to end up heads every single time. But if I've flipped 3 heads it's still 50/50 i'll get a heads next time.

Unless you can come up with a cogent theory on WHY this is a phenomenon, given the small sample size (43 presidents [not counting Cleveland twice]) this isn't very convincing.

To say nothing of the fact that people in the past got sick more and died earlier, it isn't all that surprising that historically we haven't seen a sequence of four old men going a full eight years at a hyper-stressful job.

[AniX]

if you want lasting impact of a presidency, then you should be talking about SCOTUS

this this this this this

this is why 2016 is a fight that Dems/humanity can't afford to lose

This is pretty much a moot argument, it is said every election.

its only a moot argument when SCOTUS isnt ridiculously politicized
The current bench is just doing whatever the fuck it wants

Its also not a moot argument given the ages of some very key positions on the court

True, but SCOTUS judges do what they can to avoid retiring during an administration of the opposite ideology. Of course if they die there is nothing they can do.

And SCOTUS has always been politicized. This will happen when the president nominates the judges and the judges are a check and balance against the other branches as much as a judicial body.

For Example, the last 10 SCOTUS Retirees(as opposed to having died or resigned)

Justice - Nominating Prez - Retirement Prez
David Souter - Bush I - Obama

Sandra Day O Conner - Reagan - Bush II

John Paul Stevens - Ford - Bush II

Lewis F Powell Jr - Nixon - Clinton
Harry Blackmun - Nixon - Clinton

Thurghood Marshall - Johnson - Clinton

Byron White - Kennedy - Clinton

Potter Stewart - Eisenhower - Reagan

William J Brennan Jr - Eisenhower - Bush I

John Marshall Harlann II - Eisenhower - Nixon

So 7 of the last 10 justices to retire retired with a presidident of the same party of the president that elected them.

Also, never in US History has 4 consecutive presidents won reelection and finished both terms(Clinton>Bush>Obama>???), so history is against that happening this time.

Are you really of the opinion Stevens and Brennan were rubbing their hands going "I better resign now or a LIBERAL might take my seat"?

I am of the opinion that justices don't want their retirement to cause a major shift of ideology on the court.

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/04/24/s ... retirement

YOUNG: But what about this idea that justices consider who their replacement might be? Ruth Marcus(ph) writes about the Washington Post, and she says of course justices can't be insensitive to the identity of their successors because they care about their work, and they want to care about who will pick up or, as she writes, dismantle it. The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist has said in the past that it's not 100 percent true that they calculate, but sometimes they do.

What about that calculation, thinking about who the president will be when they retire?

TOTENBERG: Well, I think that they must think about it, but they also think about themselves and their contributions and whether they want to stay and think they have something yet to contribute, perhaps even more to contribute.

You misunderstand. I'm not saying the justices don't care about who replaces them, I'm saying that if those justices were basing their retirements off getting a President who agreed with them, those two were so exceedingly liberal they certainly wouldn't have done so during Bush II. Sometimes elderly people need to retire. Let's not mistake correlation with causation, especially given there are only two choices.

[AniX]

I was making a general statement, not saying it qualifies for every justice. Some obviously more so than others.

But as many Justices on your list who were appointed and retired under the same party DISAGREE with the party they retired under as agree with the party. I don't think even your general statement stands up.

[AniX]

Am I the only one who wouldn't really give a shit if that dream became a reality? Minus the death squads.

Making the rainbow flag an exclusively American thing would be pretty fucked up (and also a super American thing to do).

It isn't exclusively American though. The other countries just don't recognize the current planetary flag or the proposed replacement in that rant. It just so happens America also uses that same flag as their national flag.

[AniX]

Yea I thinks it's still a ratio of 79 Cents to a dollar or something

Bernie sanders will fix it

It's not that bad actually. There are actually families where the woman makes more money. 1/1 equality is probably never going to happen because wages are not even equal for people who do the same job.

The entire problem with the wage gap is that you're comparing the amount of money all men and women make in the country, without looking at the careers they actually work, the hours, time off taken, ect. It's a really complex equation.

Edit: Peeking at the wiki on the gap and the latest measurement says 82 cents to the dollar, at least some of that is probably accounted for in difference in skill, experience, occupation. Some of it is probably gender discrimination, but I think it's a bit dishonest to say the entire gap is 100% gender discrimination.

Well, why it is that women have such differences in skill, experience, and occupation? It's certainly not 100% "Lol check this out, I'm going to pay this woman less", but unless you believe that women are inherently less skilled, able to gain experience, and able to work higher paying occupations, the whole thing IS sexism.

[AniX]

Women are 8 times less likely to negotiate for higher wages. I think that's a pretty big contributing factor in why they get paid less. (Being averse to negotiating for wages myself, I can correlate this one.) Not sure how that kind of problem can possibly be addressed either, since an employer is content to pay you as low as they possibly can.

We're also never going to see a world where men and women are distributed completely evenly across every single industry. Because of that you can't really compare wages because you're comparing apples to oranges rather than apples to apples.

Well, I'm sure men who speak up being perceived as assertive and women doing the same being perceived as bitchy has nothing to do with it.

Just because we probably won't see equality doesn't mean we can't identify the SOURCES of why there is equality and see what we can do about them.

[AniX]

just like racism isn't generally evil people trying to murder everyone who's not white

that doesn't mean it's not a problem that needs fixing

+1

One of them most harmful beliefs in terms of actually solving gender inequality is that there is no sexism if there is no sexist. It's simply not true.

[AniX]

Oh, also: do you know who was the first person to write computer programs? Ada Lovelace, she was using some mechanical computers. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with compsci, so I'm not entirely sure what it means. But still, it's really worth asking yourself: how come you probably have never heard of her, but you know who, for example, the Wright brothers were. (She was also the daughter of Byron, & just over all a fascinating person, it's worth reading about her.)

I don't think that is quite a far comparison. I mean, on the whole we know more about male accomplishments than female ones, but I'm sure most people know the Wright Brothers better than Filo T. Farnsworth or even Turing.

[AniX]

When someone is leading the field by double figures it's usually a sign you should take them seriously.

This early the polls are way too fickle to tell. Last year literally everyone BUT Romney was the frontrunner until they weren't.

[AniX]

I have no problem with religious beliefs, even ones that I disagree with the premise of their belief strongly. I have a lot of problem with hypocrites and irrational people.

For an example of what I mean, look at two people who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman: Rev. Huckabee and Gov. Kasich and tell me who 1. respects the rule of law and 2. takes the other tenets of their faith, such as compassion for others, to heart.

[AniX]

http://dailynewsbin.com/news/protester- ... ter/21526/

Who would have thought?

[AniX]

Liberals aren't all a rainbow of awesomeness.

Specifically when it comes to the economy and

national defence

.

I'm not an economist, so I'm not the best qualified to say specifically, but I would say foriegn aid,

national defence

, social security, and welfare need to be looked at closer. Sure hard choices need to be made, but if nothing is done, 100 years from now there won't be a United States.

We are paying $800 Billion a year in interest payments, thinjk how many peoiple that could help if we could control our spending and eliminate the debt?

Every family in America operates on a budget, their country should too, imho.

"Liberals are wrong for wanting to cut national defense. That said, we need to make hard choices in what to cut and national defense should be looked at."

To say nothing of it is a weird argument to say we should cut social security and welfare and therefore stop helping people so we can pay less interest so we can have more money to help people.

[AniX]

Ohh, that's easy. You see, only certain *kinds* of people are worthy of being helped. Because people who need things like welfare are overwhelmingly minorities and therefore deserve every terrible thing that happens to them. But if I need it, I am just a hardworking citizen down on my luck. I'm not like those *other* people, they're just lazy. Did you know there is so much fraud that goes on in the welfare system? Rabble rabble rabble, bootstraps, rabble rabble drug tests, rabble rabble BIG GOVERNMENT.

My favorite part of drugs tests for welfare recipients is that the same people who demand them are also demanding the government spend less money. Even though everywhere it has been implemented it has cost more to do the drug tests than was saved by not paying out to drug addicts.

To say nothing of maybe doing drugs shouldn't carry a conviction of death by starvation, especially when they are literally compelled by their own bodies to do them.

[AniX]

What does that mean in practice?

It means there should be more incentive based programs rather than handouts.

whaat? you mean its not actually helpful to spout idealism?

Not with an $18T defecit.

Incentive to do what exactly? Get a job they are already looking for?

[AniX]

look at me defending welfare programs
im so liberal guys

I am 100% willing to let conservatives dine "not allowing whole families to starve in the streets" as hyper-liberal. I'm fine with Republicans losing more.

[AniX]

Almost any spending can be justified if you try hard enough, but sometimes tough decisions need to be made.

I don't think there is much trying involved in "Not having families starve". Tough decisions need to be made, but some decisions to keep aren't tough at all.

[AniX]

Kmd - speaking as someone who seems to share similar views to you - you're completely wasting your time trying to make a point here. The people who post in this thread are ultra-liberal to a point. They all vote Democrat, and in fact they don't even like centrist democrats, as evidenced by the heavy Sanders support. They all believe that all minorities are being discriminated against systematically, especially black people, women and transgenders, and if you don't agree it's because of your white privilege. There should definitely have been an indictment in Ferguson, welfare state is great, defund the military, down with cops. And so forth.

I agree with what you're saying, but I'll probably be the only one.

Beyond everything else you said that was wrong, how can someone be both always voting Democrat AND not even liking centricist Democrats? If they hated Centricist Democrats, they would all vote Green.

But yes those seem to be factually supported statement people have provided evidence and sourced arguments for. The fact you decide to just say them with a sneer continuously rather than actually composed reasons arguments against them isn't really our problem.

And for the record, I still stand by the Ferguson lack of indictment.

Also, I think you know better than to think "transgenders" is the proper term.

[AniX]

Just curious, if super rich people were more charitable what would be the most effective and helpful use of their charity?
Or maybe "If you were a billionaire and wanted to help those in need, what would you do?"

I'd throw as much money as possible into making ectogenesis and genetic engineering 1. existent 2. effective 3. as cheap as possible.

[AniX]

True, but net worth is still net worth. Trump is still worth significantly more.

It's easy to have a higher net worth when you begin at a MUCH higher net worth.

[AniX]

Maybe I'm missing something, but surely having a higher net worth to start makes it easier to have a higher net worth later on. Not that it makes it impossible for someone to catch up to you, but even beyond the simple "having a high net worth to start makes it easier to have a high net worth", surely you can agree having the freedom to invest, develop, build, and take risks thanks to your pre-existing assets puts one at an advantage in making money.

If I start with 10 apples and you start with one, do you really think it isn't easier for me to have more apples in a week?

[AniX]

for some reason bernie is pretty invisible this news cycle about the oregon shooting while hillary is really riding it

His voting record on gun control is spotty at best and he would definitely open himself to some pretty powerful attacks from Hillary if he tried to get in on the spotlight.

[AniX]

by 'spotty' you mean 'he identifies more strongly with gun culture than most liberals'

which, yes, is probably why he's not angling on the spotlight there.

Yeah, I meant spotty as in "sometimes he votes for gun control and sometimes against, according to his personal philosophy" and not "He is inconsistent".

[AniX]

Apparently Ben Carson's brain surgeon liscence was revoked. If that doesn't damn a person's candidacy I don't know what would.

Do you have a cite for that? The only article I found is a clear parody.