Forums / Discussion / General

Looks like more shit of trump’s crimes is being unselaed
if he weren’t rich and a politician he’d be in prison

The funny thing is that this wouldn't have been the October Surprise if not for the fact Trump had been delaying his trial through appeals and with help from the Supreme Court.

Aw, Hells Mah! NO! deactivated their account.
Godspeed, NO!.

Poor No!! became another victim of the culture wars…smh

Woah, why did No! deactivate?

He had been "threatening" to leave the site as long as i've been here. I'll be completely honest, once a month like clockwork he started his usual "maybe i'll kill myself" routine and it started to feel more and more insincere each time. Hell, he once even admitted that when it comes to politics he pretends to act a certain way to piss people off, so i wouldn't be surprised if the whole "nihilistic depression" schtick was also just for attention.

Yep. I was parodying one of his posts.

Please don't say this.

Even if it turns out to be true, it's never a good thing to start putting around that someone's acting depressed/suicidal 'for attention.'

A lot of the time, people are somewhat attention-begging with it, because on some level they're trying to get literally any form of broadcast out so that they feel communicated with and have a reason to, well, not kill themselves.

It also takes a lot of time, speaking from experience, to actually get around to doing it. Even when you pick a date and time and so on, there's a fair chance you'll back out the first time. The second, too. I sure did.

Depressed people act self-destructively. Part of that can be intentionally alienating everyone around them, attention-begging, et cetera. It's still not a good idea to imply that it's ever 'something they're just doing for attention', all the same.

I totally understand your point. His particular case is absolutely not indicative of everyone that goes through suicidal ideations, and my last message to him was really a sincere (if maybe stern) plea for him to get help. But i have reasons to believe No! was being insincere about it, because if he really was feeling suicidal because people downvoted his opinions on the Godot controversy, then he's just too fragile to hang around the internet, there's no way of sugarcoating it. That, and him confessing that he sometimes puts on a show to annoy people, paint his actions in a heavily suspicious light. I can only hope he gets the help he needs.

Spending so much time online clearly wasn't good for him, hopefully he gets his stuff together and focuses on something else.

Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters is sentenced to 9 years for voting data scheme. The 69-year-old was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.

Something something projection. Another victim of Trump's attempts to subvert the 2020 election.

I'll admit I personally found that he seriously started to get really…uh…overbearing** after a while, but I still genuinely felt for the guy, given how unbelievably oppressive this decade has been. From the bottom of heart, I sincerely hope things eventually look up for him. Same for anyone who's also currently having it rough.

a'ight need to send him off proper

Vance is right back to pretending trump won in 2020
Also trump tried to deny disaster relief to places that voted dem

In unsuprising news a rep candidate for senator said "the bad guys won ww2"

Let me guess… The Soviet Union?

"If you look closely, you see the link between liberalism and communism in the Allied forces. Remember what Gen. Patton said and why they capped him."
nope just a straight up fascist like patton

the US is 0-2 in cleansing the worst people from power after their political movements were militarily defeated

Ron DeSantis is refusing to take Harris’ call on Hurricane Helene. A source familiar with the situation said he was dodging the Democratic presidential nominee’s calls because they “seemed political,” according to a DeSantis aide. The same person said “not to my knowledge” when asked if DeSantis had spoken to President Joe Biden.

Typical childish behaviour from the trump cult

Trump sent covid tests to putin
and jill stein's campaign is admitting her only goal is to take vote from Harris

Putin tells Trump: "Work with China, Trump. They are our Allies."
And then Trump studies Mandarine and destroys Taiwan.

Genuine nightmare. Milton is going to wipe Tampa off the fucking map. For the love of god, work with your enemies here.

Trump is threatening 60 minutes for interviewing Harris
nothing totalitarian about that though of course

Accuse him of Communism. Because that's how he behaves.

Walz is rightfully calling for the end of the electoral college

Every so often, this power-grab pipe dream comes back up, even more tiring and nonproductive than before.

Have people considered campaigning better and/or not being completely devoid of charisma? Then, you don't have to whine about the electoral college. It worked for Reagan!

Our disastrous civic education at work.

It's one of the most integral compromises of the union (though it's technically downstream from a different, even more important compromise that the power-hungry also don't really like: bicameralism).

and if you're in a solid color state your vote doesn't matter

Tens of millions of people vote for the President every election. Regardless of system, your individual vote is very unlikely to actually matter as a fact of statistics.

It was an idiotic compromise that has nos benefit for the people of the modern country
just like not outlawing slaves in 1776

No one would give a shit about the electoral college if the Presidency didn't become so imperialized in the early half of the 20th century. Congress needs to do it's goddam job.
But it certainly does have benefits. It assures that less populated states – ones focused on extractive industries have a fair voice in choosing the Presidency which is supposed to represent the Union. Again, representative democracy, we elect representatives to represent us on local, and federal level. The whole point of the country was founded that states functioned as mini-countries with a fairly large level of autonomy.
And yes, I am well aware of the coming demographic political crisis where 25% of the country will have 75% of the electoral power, and vice versa.

Best solution? Start making states purple.

>Start making states purple.
how?
unless we're gonna start breaking them up and fusing them together I can't imagine a way to do so

>But it certainly does have benefits. It assures that less populated states

if they have less of a population then they should have less say
I may not be a big fan of democracy but I sure don't support giving more authority to someone because of WHERE they live

>How do we start making states purple?
Getting rid of "winner take all" rules for electoral votes would be a really good start. Seeing last month how hard Republicans tried to blitz them onto Nebraska before the election (Because it's one of the two states that doesn't do that, and it had a "blue dot" that hurt Trump back in 2020,) has reminded me that those rules definitely aren't being kept around for the benefit of the common American.

I was, blessedly, wrong. Milton spared Tampa to some degree- there was no storm surge, and while dangerous, this wasn't the nightmare everyone was worried about.

People are still dead, of course, but the city hasn't been fucking annihilated.

Trump is apparently too much of a coward to even debate on fox, or more likely his handlers said no because they want to keep him out of the public

I was hearing something similar about Kamala Harris and interviews, or at least she and Walz aren't doing enough interviews before the election.

Isn't the purpose of Electoral College for smaller states to have more influence so every election doesn't just get decided by California and New York?

People vote in elections, not land

What's funny is that arguments against the electoral college are so tired and recycled that I knew you were going to say this eventually. States are not "just land", they're essentially subordinate smaller countries with their own distinct culture, politics, and circumstances.

I would argue that the regional cultures aren't neatly confined to the individual States with a lot of bleed-over. The Dakotas were split to rig the Electoral College in favor of the anti-slavery side, and there are many States (like Washington & Oregon) that are mostly interchangeable. There are even many instances of States with major regional divides, such as with Colorado--where the eastern half is culturally aligned with Kansas and Nebraska, while the western half is more like the West Coast.

> States are not "just land", they're essentially subordinate smaller countries with their own distinct culture, politics, and circumstances.

This is functionally a nothing-statement. Every individual city has its own distinct culture, politics, and circumstance. Every /district/ within a city has its own culture, politics, and circumstance.

There's massive variation within states to the point that one half of a state to the other might as well be completely different.

There's got to be a better system than the Electoral College that can be implemented. It's fair for basically nobody.

I'm pretty sure that any debate that lasts for more than 50 years is bound to have tired and recycled arguments. This is like saying the round-earth side in the flat-earth debate have no legitimacy because they regularly pull out the geometry and geography cards: they do it all the time because it's the truth (or, to put it generally, the most researched arguments).

I don't even know what other arguments would even hold any water for the anti-college side (outside of the overt focus on Swing States due to their unreliability for any party), especially when considering that Congress itself is already supposed to allow small states to get a leg-up over larger states in the Senate (that bicameralism you mentioned).

Of course, I'm pretty sure the electoral college system isn't even the worst part about the American process. I think that honor belongs to (as @Jokes Joestar 👌ꙮ mentioned) the winner-takes-all system present in so many of them, which allows any group to become over-represented in their state, which can misrepresent state cultures (which you said th EC was supposed to represent), and especially city and county culture.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa wrote:

There's got to be a better system than the Electoral College that can be implemented. It's fair for basically nobody.

From an article from about 5 years ago:
Maine and Nebraska are currently the only states that divide their electoral votes outside of winner-take-all system (the winner-take-all system being the primary reason the electoral college is so shit).
Meanwhile, there's a state-legislative movement (which may or may not dissolve immediately after this election) called the National Popular Vote Interstate Vote Compact that aims to distribute electoral votes entirely by popular vote to try and remove any advantages, which would be the closest to directly electing a President that we could get without changing the Constitution.

Yes, the Electoral College (as a system involving votes based on number of Representatives and Senators) is constitutionally required, as enumerated in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 2. The only way to change it is to get 3/4 of the states to approve either a 2/3 Congressionally approved amendment or 2/3 State-approved amendment, as better stated in Article 5.

On a tangental note about an Article V convention, one could match mega-donations to Republicans if you had a dollar for every time they tried to circumvent law and order.

I would argue that the regional cultures aren't neatly confined to the individual States with a lot of bleed-over.

Indeed, it's actually very complicated. To clarify confusion created by me trying to answer a nothing statement with another rather meaningless statement, it's not just that states have their own governments and economies, but because we have a federal system. The existence of the states is not dictated by the whims of the central government, unlike in a unitary system, but unlike a confederation, the central government's existence isn't dictated by the whims of its subordinates.

There's got to be a better system than the Electoral College that can be implemented. It's fair for basically nobody.

There probably is, but people rarely even try to propose one besides "just remove it lol". The electoral college being slightly unfair for everybody makes it hard to create a satisfactory replacement.

I'm pretty sure that any debate that lasts for more than 50 years is bound to have tired and recycled arguments.

Oh, for sure, but people should have the dignity to use different wording, instead of repeating the same sentences ad nauseam.

and your way of running a country doesn’t work, look at the CSA

What the hell are you even on about?

especially when considering that Congress itself is already supposed to allow small states to get a leg-up over larger states in the Senate

It could be argued that just the Senate isn't enough of a counterweight. And it also doesn't help matters that many who are anti-EC are also against the Senate being equal.

The only way to change it is to get 3/4 of the states to approve either a 2/3 Congressionally approved amendment or 2/3 State-approved amendment, as better stated in Article 5.

And this is why I called it a "pipe dream", as there's no realistic scenario in which such an amendment would survive the Senate, and unless it dies fast in the House, it would be a massive waste of time that would make everyone angrier.

I find it interesting that so many people inherently understand something like the UN, where resolutions get voted on by countries. But we seem to never apply this kind of logic to our own elections.

Land is the representation of the people that live upon it, and as such, votes in a larger union of lands, for a representative of that collective union.

people pay attention to the general assembly?

And now the Kremlin confirms covid tests were sent to Russia, despite Trump's denial. Whether or not they were specifically for Putin was not confirmed.

Kremlin confirms Trump sent Russia Covid-19 tests, after former president denied Bob Woodward claim

Russia has confirmed that Donald Trump sent the Kremlin sample Covid-19 tests in the early days of the pandemic, after revelations in veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book raised further questions about the former US president’s relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Trump administration “sent us several samples of test kits,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, broadly supporting Woodward’s claim. His intervention comes after Trump denied the claims, telling ABC News they were “false.”

[…]

Peskov did not confirm whether or not those tests were specifically for Putin’s own use, as Woodward writes.

Alright, I've been gone for a while, but I hope it's alright if I pick back up some of the arguments before we were interrupted.

I'll also link in the username who I'm replying to:

@Chewybunny

"Any system is ripe for abuse. Our system makes it so democracy, specifically, the popular vote, doesn't have as much power. I think that's a good thing. People are stupid, and most people don't really care about issues outside of how it personally affects them.

That is your right and I thank you for the clarification, but I hope you understand that I believe that this only proves my point.This is a sentiment which I've been hearing repeated from to quote the "techno-authoritarians" that I refer to:

"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" – by Peter Thiel

Can you clarify what you mean by techno-authoritarians? That sounds to me like technocracy which far more left-leaning people support.

Well, that's the funny thing about left and right, it can be very nebulous especially if you don't take-in the libertarian vs authoritarian axis. Are you left-leaning and supporting this? Am I right-leaning now about this? I've always believed quite simply in democracy, and am against various factions who want to topple it, with my biggest targets around here being religious fanatics and far-right extremists, but I can spare the room for 'techno-authoritarians' and terrorists of all kinds.

I also have to ask, what do you mean by this question? Do you want a reference for some kind of picture of who I have in-mind when I say that? Because at the time I did link some articles. Is it the dangers, because I said they're using the language of democracy and freedom to end it. Is it the origin, that they're authoritarians who happen to come from more technical industries for their fortunes? Or, is it why it's bad? Because these 'techno-authoritarians' are at their core: con-man. Aging entrepreneurs who think that they're atlas holding up the world, when if anything they are more defined by luck or competence in a very narrow field, which has translated into arrogance and failure elsewhere and a negative effect on society at large recently.

They are people who are now using this weakness in not just misguided, but self-serving ways to grab for influence, because when they talk about issues with democracy, they want to be the ones with more power.

I remember the way Boeing used their contacts in the American Government to start up their trade war against Bombardier (and thus Canada) and Airbus (and thus the EU). That hasn't managed to save their company, has it? Worth remembering with a lot of Americans restarting the trade wars talk. That's not even going to the clumsy attempt to threaten NATO that started all this, or the mistreatment of their workers or their terrible personal behaviour.

Why should these people be given even more power? Why would anyone want that?

There has absolutely been Republics with an aristocracy.

Very well, let me clarify what I meant by this, instead of a historical debate but a question of why it's being brought up: Is it responsible of you to compare Republics of the kind of the US & France and others to aristocracies? Because to me, it sounds like laying the groundwork for something else. If you're toppling not a democracy, but an aristocracy than there are excuses.

Ironically the US has a technique it likes to use on others, used on itself.

Bureaucrats in the US will not get purged. It would require the political will that neither Trump or Harris can wield

Right. See, the problem with that rhetoric is that it's the type which is used before these type of purges. The fixation on rot and how it's both impossible and necessary so it leads to the logic of "drastic measures are necessary", coupled with the blueprint from Project 2025, I've only become more concerned from all of this.

US Bureaucracy & Public Sector

As I'm not American, but have only experienced their shockingly bad bureaucracy, I cannot counter you on what you likely have more experience with. Maybe there is an issue of not being able to remove bad-workers, among others you cited.

Which is why I am very drawn to the E-Stonia model of public governance, which has digitalized so much of it's public sector that they actually have a relatively small bureaucracy.

However, I can counter you with my own experiences. You're wrong about Estonia, in Estonia almost one quarter (23.4% last estimate) of the working population is employed by the state. That is higher than the average 18.6% of the OECD countries. The US meanwhile had 13-17% based on various sources, but most below the average. There's been papers written about why there's issues, and France also has it's own problems, but I think to go against a business orthodoxy there's this: Under-staffed and poorly paid workers make for bad workers (including bureaucrats), especially if they're led by political appointees who sometimes even deliberately sabotage their own departments to privatize it.

American pay more for healthcare, yet with worse outcomes after all in their hybrid system. Let's take the example of Twitter, do you think it's better run now that it's been slimmed? No, it's a dumpster fire. Has this Jack Welch type of management worked with Boeing and General Electric? No, so why are these failures in business something that can be translated for governance?

Maybe you can say that they're working for jobs other than bureaucrats instead of making it a public vs private thing, but I agree with Estonia for their willingness to use new innovative technologies and integrate them for greater efficiency. What you're seeking may be efficiency, but it just sounds to me like it'll lead to cost-cutting and the concentration of power into the hands of a few people who are already proven to be unworthy to wield any.