American Politics Discussion

[RandoEFC+]

12 minutes ago, Eco said:

I said this exact thing to my Mom. I asked her that isn't giving to the needy in the Bible? Because that's what the democrats are all about. 

I think what hardcore conservatives would say that they should be able to give their money on their terms, to the organization(s) that align most with their view. 

If they actually did that though, there wouldn't be Labour parties and Democrats having to fight for it to happen and get the votes to put it into action.

I get that people like to call themselves "libertarians" and it's the "land of the free" blah blah blah but if you're happy to give up some of your own money to help people less fortunate than you, then just pay your taxes. It isn't more complicated than that when you throw all of the 'excuse language' out the window.

[Eco]

1 minute ago, Harry said:

Mate Biden Obama and Clinton aren't very left wing, if you placed them into Australian politics they may even sit in our conservative party... The Sanders/AOC wing of the Dems is quite extreme but the establishment Dems have not been giving much ground to them.

Obama much more than Clinton, but his Obama-Care scared the shit out of a lot of Americans as being a socialist stance. Sanders/AOC are certainly more left, but Obama is seen as being very liberal, so going from that, to Trump, is just another polar opposite shift in the system. 

Just now, RandoEFC said:

If they actually did that though, there wouldn't be Labour parties and Democrats having to fight for it to happen and get the votes to put it into action.

I get that people like to call themselves "libertarians" and it's the "land of the free" blah blah blah but if you're happy to give up some of your own money to help people less fortunate than you, then just pay your taxes. It isn't more complicated than that when you throw all of the 'excuse language' out the window.

But how do you collect those taxes? Do you tax major corporations? Do you do a flat tax where everyone pays the same percentage? Do you tax the wealthy more because they can 'afford' it? 

Even something as simple as 'paying your taxes', can be a lot and drown out discussions with 10 different points of view. 

[Azeem]

Tax everyone but leave loop holes so everyone should have a fair chance of evading it not just the rich 

[Harry]

3 minutes ago, Eco said:

Obama much more than Clinton, but his Obama-Care scared the shit out of a lot of Americans as being a socialist stance. Sanders/AOC are certainly more left, but Obama is seen as being very liberal, so going from that, to Trump, is just another polar opposite shift in the system. 

 

We have Medicare in Australia. Everyone has it. You can pay extra for private health insurance which will cover you for dental and physio and get your access to a private hospital, but everyone has Medicare and can visit doctors for free, get medicine for cheap, have every issue covered and not be out of pocket much at all. 

We looked at Obamacare thinking it was pretty light on in comparison.

[Dr. Gonzo]

2 minutes ago, Azeem said:

Tax everyone but leave loop holes so everyone should have a fair chance of evading it not just the rich 

Are you in charge of taxation in Spain?

[Harry]

I don't think you could possibly have scripted this election Day to play out in a worse way for triggering everyone's 2016 "oh no it's happening again" anxiety.

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 minute ago, Harry said:

I don't think you could possibly have scripted this election Day to play out in a worse way for triggering everyone's 2016 "oh no it's happening again" anxiety.

 

At least nobody got shot and the weird voter suppression caravans were only confined to one day over the weekend.

Yesterday could have gone worse, even though it should have gone better. Regardless of whether Trump loses or not, I still can’t help but feel America’s failed a character test here.

[Stan]

54 minutes ago, Eco said:

I dumbed it down, as I'm not talking about single issue voters. 

My Father-in-Law will ALWAYS vote republican, and we have talked about this a ton of times. Why? Because he believes in a smaller government, is a small business owner, thinks there should be no regulations on guns, thinks abortion is murder, and believes that he should have complete control of his health care and that it should be forced on him. 

Does he like Trump? I don't think so, but he will never vote Democratic. 

While that's fine and totally his right, is there such a thing as spoiling your ballot in USA? Like, using your right to vote but abstaining from voting for anyone because you're just not satisfied with who to choose...

[Eco]

1 minute ago, Stan said:

 While that's fine and totally his right, is there such a thing as spoiling your ballot in USA? Like, using your right to vote but abstaining from voting for anyone because you're just not satisfied with who to choose...

Sure. You can write in a candidate or just not vote for a candidate. 

[Azeem]

That makes sense depending on the political system. If the President/PM doesn't have much individual power to decide on these issues abortion, gun control, health care etc then i will vote for the guy who i think is right for this role not with whose political party i share views on these issues. 

But if the power is there....

[El Profesor]

2 hours ago, Eco said:

Naw, I still (sadly) think Brazil will likely take the cake on that one. 

Sorry @El Profesor

Yes. Bolsonaro put all his coins on Trump and now we brazilians are going to get screwed big time. 

Some people on the potential Biden administration have already indicated that they're not going to deal with Brazil. 

In some sense though, I think considering the profile of our economy it was always a matter of when not if that we would end up more aligned to China than to the US.

 

 

[Burning Gold]

They keep saying the mail-in votes will be largely Democrat leading according to their data, but what data is that?

The polls have got it dramatically wrong (again), so is the mail-in vote data more reliable?

[Stan]

Idiots. 

 

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

4 minutes ago, Burning Gold said:

They keep saying the mail-in votes will be largely Democrat leading according to their data, but what data is that?

The polls have got it dramatically wrong (again), so is the mail-in vote data more reliable?

I think from the early counts of mail-in votes, in places like Michigan Biden shot right up after something like 10% or mailed ballots were counted.

But I’m not 100% on it tbh.

[Azeem]

The US embassy also tweeted reservations about violence in Ivory Coast elections.

They're doing it on purpose

[Inverted]

2 hours ago, Burning Gold said:

Does it have to be Stalin? Bernie Sanders spoke about Castro in rather glowing terms quite recently.

Coincidentally, the Cuban vote in Miami may have just won Florida for Trump

The difference is that when it comes to violence or radicalism Castro is nowhere near Hitler. 

Castro was more legitimate and less oppressive than any of the darlings of the USA in Latin America like Pinochet, Stroeßner, or Videla. Furthermore, his achievements came against an overwhelming tide of international economic resistance which the economies of the Condor regimes did not have to contend with. 

It is not controversial to most Americans to have supported any of those guys, so Castro shouldn't be controversial in the slightest. 

And in any case it's a moot discussion, because whether you have Bernie or Biden, a hysterically anti-communist demographic like the Miami Cubans will always go with a right-wing strongman. The entire reason they're in Florida is because the masses in Cuba overthrew their precious right-wing dictatorship. 

There's no use pandering to them because they are so consumed by hate and paranoia that they are a political lost cause.  

 

 

Edited November 4, 2020 by Inverted

[RandoEFC+]

22 minutes ago, Burning Gold said:

They keep saying the mail-in votes will be largely Democrat leading according to their data, but what data is that?

The polls have got it dramatically wrong (again), so is the mail-in vote data more reliable?

I think they can see some statistics that we can't about the breakdown of votes of mail in voters, on the day voters, early in-person voters etc. It's broadly consistent across the country, we can see it for ourselves. In the states like Georgia and North Carolina, where they released the counts of the pre-Election Day votes first, Biden led and was then pegged back. In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, they weren't allowed to even start counting the early votes until the polls closed yesterday. On the day voting was released first, Trump took a huge lead in all three states, then it moves onto the postal ballots, and Biden catches up. This is a deliberate ploy by the Republican legislators in those three states to set up Trump's plan B this morning "where have all these Biden votes come from, I was in the lead last night, this is fraud". Well he's right on the last count.

[RandoEFC+]

One hand on the cup.

[Burning Gold]

17 minutes ago, Inverted said:

The difference is that when it comes to violence or radicalism Castro is nowhere near Hitler. 

Castro was more legitimate and less oppressive than any of the darlings of the USA in Latin America like Pinochet, Stroeßner, or Videla. Furthermore, his achievements came against an overwhelming tide of international economic resistance which the economies of the Condor regimes did not have to contend with. 

It is not controversial to most Americans to have supported any of those guys, so Castro shouldn't be controversial in the slightest. 

And in any case it's a moot discussion, because whether you have Bernie or Biden, a hysterically anti-communist demographic like the Miami Cubans will always go with a right-wing strongman. The entire reason they're in Florida is because the masses in Cuba overthrew their precious right-wing dictatorship. 

There's no use pandering to them because they are so consumed by hate and paranoia that they are a political lost cause.  

 

 

I mean no one's near Hitler, but Castro was certainly further to the side of violence/radicalism than can be considered decent. But also no one as prominent as Sanders on the right has been trying to rehab Hitler's image. Castro's certainly a more palatable character, but that sort of doesn't matter if the media are able to make it binary and put him in the Bad category.

Completely agree with you on the partisanship of Miami Cubans, but it's about whether you can exercise them. Trump has in a way that Romney and McCain weren't able to. It staggers me that they'll vote for a man whose selling point is that he'll continue trying to cripple their homeland, where their families still live. But I guess that's where the "Castro took away my slaves" meme comes from

[RandoEFC+]

COUNT THE VOTES

STOP COUNTING THE VOTES

COUNT THE VOTES AGAIN!!!!

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Burning Gold said:

I mean no one's near Hitler

I think Stalin's got a higher death count & the 3 Paschas (spelling?) from the Ottoman Empire & Pol Pot in Cambodia are pretty up there on the list of genocidal fuckheads from fairly recent history.

 

1 hour ago, Burning Gold said:

Completely agree with you on the partisanship of Miami Cubans, but it's about whether you can exercise them. Trump has in a way that Romney and McCain weren't able to. It staggers me that they'll vote for a man whose selling point is that he'll continue trying to cripple their homeland, where their families still live. But I guess that's where the "Castro took away my slaves" meme comes from

Tbh that sounds a lot like Los Angeles Iranians. Before meeting some of them, I'd never met any Iranian immigrant that supported crippling sanctions on Iran or outright bombing Iran - pretty much all of them hate the regime in Iran, but nobody wants to do that to their friends and family that are still back home. Not so true about the Tehrangeles Iranians I met, who were actually pretty keen on the idea of bombing their homeland.

But one of the guys I met claimed to be the grandson of the former head of SAVAK (which kind of disgusted me the way he said it with pride)... they're people who desperately want the Iranian monarchy to come back and think that's the best future for Iran. Whereas in the Persian community back home, people I know that DID like the Shah accept that he was/is unpopular with large segments and if there's to be a better future for Iran it'll come with ditching authoritarians altogether rather than going back to the old style of a slightly less repressive authoritarian.

And those LA Persians I know ALL voted Trump. Which makes sense if you like the Shah, I think Trump and the Shah have a lot in common. Weirdly, I think Pence would get on pretty well with Khomeini/Khameini and other Iranian hardliners from the present day 

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

One hand on the cup.

This is encouraging...

... but why hasn't Wisconsin officially been declared then? Is the website I'm looking at just not updating?

[Dr. Gonzo]

Oh Trump's asking for a recount in Wisconsin now

[DeadLinesman]

11 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Oh Trump's asking for a recount in Wisconsin now

Imagine thinking 20,000 + votes is close

[Eco]

Just got back from a job, and happy to see numerous outlets are calling Wisconsin is Biden's. 

With AZ and hopefully Nevada and Michigan, this is certainly looking like a Biden win. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

US Postal Service officials have been called into court to explain why they didn't conduct a sweep for 300k missing mailed ballots.