Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[smjjames]

Yeah, it's rather broken right now. The thing though is that the two parties are already really entrenched and if a third party butts in, it just ends up taking votes from one of the major parties.

[Darvi]

The two party system wasn't "meant to" do anything. It's just a natural consequence of the political system the US works under, i.e. FPTP.

[GavJ]

From what little I know of American democracy it seems like a form where party loyalty doesn't really make sense.

I mean, here most politicians don't get enough votes for their own seat, they're just granted it by the party, so party loyalty does make sense.

Party loyalty is due to 1) Fillibusters 2) The bicameral system, 3) the two houses being held by different parties by not-tiny margins, and 4) A sufficient number of extremists (mostly on the right due to tea partiers recently, but other than them a bit from both sides)

Voting by yourself isn't usually enough to flip the vote away from party lines, especially when acting moderately will actually draw active pushback from extremists in your party. So it won't accomplish anything other than to piss off your party, who are then less likely to cut you into give-and-take deals. So at the end of the day, you end up serving your constituents less if you don't go by party loyalty.

And since neither party is in power by itself across the board due to two split houses (and minorly, fillibusters), neither is in a position to just hand out gifts or let things slide. EVERYTHING has to be used as leverage in their eyes, so there's no flying under th e radar with respect to the above.

[Mephansteras]

The two party system wasn't "meant to" do anything. It's just a natural consequence of the political system the US works under, i.e. FPTP.

Nor was a party system specifically built into the system. It cropped up pretty quickly, but Washington for one was against political parties as a concept in general. I think because he foresaw the exact type of partisan issues we see today.

[Descan]

I don't particularly like parties, but I recognize they're going to happen, whether official or not, and providing a channel to make them at least non-destructive is probably a good idea. Hence why I want what I want in the Canadian political systems.

[FearfulJesuit]

I'd like to draw everybody's attention to a GOP state senator from Kentucky who has set a new record in knowing nothing about science.

I don't want to get into the debate about climate change. But I'll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There's no factories on Mars that I'm aware of.

Congratulations, Senator Smith.

[Dutchling]

He doesn't know about the coal mines?

And here I was thinking all Republicans were Zionist shills.

[Frumple]

... so is there any context to that that might make the statement less ridiculous, or is that guy just playing it straight? Because if the latter, well. Kentucky needs to stop lobotomizing its politicians. They have enough trouble with the brain without it actively being removed.

[palsch]

Sadly that's been a standard argument against climate change for a good decade at least. Skeptical Science article on it from 2008, but it's been around for a while before then. His version is garbled, but that's fairly standard for any politician talking about scientific or pseudo-scientific topics.


And speaking of academically incompetent senators, the plagerised final paper of Senator John Walsh.

[penguinofhonor]

Kentucky needs to stop lobotomizing its politicians. They have enough trouble with the brain without it actively being removed.

That's not going to happen until the coal companies run out of money to give to their campaigns.

[XXSockXX]

It should be pointed out though, that the academic research papers they are basing this on also imply that Martian culture is more primitive, which may explain the apparent lack of major industries and large scale mining operations:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[scriver]

I'd like to draw everybody's attention to a GOP state senator from Kentucky who has set a new record in knowing nothing about science.

I don't want to get into the debate about climate change. But I'll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There's no factories on Mars that I'm aware of.

Congratulations, Senator Smith.

Shouldn't have gotten into the climate change debate, indeed.

[PTTG??]

Even giving him the benifit of the doubt and saying that he meant temperature changes: Well, he's wrong. Mars hasn't seen the same temperature changes. Assuming that he simply was speaking about solar output in broad terms, he's still wrong, since solar contribution to earth's temperature hasn't changed significantly or consistently.

So instead, let's assume the most optimistic interpretation of what he was trying to say: "Observed global warming is not due to human action." Well, he's still wrong, and strongly wrong. This isn't like string theory or something, we know all of the following facts about as well as we know anything about chemistry or physics, and we've known them for a hundred years or more... First and foremost, temperatures are increasing. Second, this temperature increase is correlated with CO2 increase. Third, Co2, and other greenhouse gasses, have a clear mechanism for increasing temperatures. Fourth, human activity is releasing geophysically significant quantities of (read: LOTS OF) CO2. Fifth, this CO2 remains in the atmosphere (we know because we can actually tell what CO2 came from oil and what came from trees, the ocean, etc.)

Let's go nuts. Let's say that he has secret information that says that it's not human activity. Maybe climate change skeptics know about some secret Obama plot to cover up millions of natural volcanic eruptions happening all of the time all over the planet, or something like that, and that at the same time, a massive scientific conspiracy has spread the total lie that coal and oil release CO2, when in fact combustion is how butterflies are born.

IF THAT WAS THE CASE: Who cares? We know the climate is changing, Senator Smith said the climate was changing. Are we just going to let this "natural" change raise sea levels, destroy farmlands, and cause untold loss of rare and unique life forms on earth? Sure, sooner or later change is going to happen, but human beings do quite a lot of work to control natural change as it is. So, unless you want to shrug your shoulders at Hurricane Sandy and say "Well, who wants subways anyway, they'll flood eventually," and "Why should I maintain the roads? Sooner or later, they'll get potholes..." you've got to address climate change somehow. Saying it isn't man-made is the smallest, stupidest, least important part of the problem, and it hints at a deeply nihilistic viewpoint.

[Reelya]

Yeah, it's rather broken right now. The thing though is that the two parties are already really entrenched and if a third party butts in, it just ends up taking votes from one of the major parties.

That's where Alternative Vote aka Instant-Runoff aka Preferential vote can help out. It gets rid of the "you split the vote" issue that plagues First Past The Post, without greatly complicating elections, and actually removing any need for "run-off elections".

Alternative vote basically means you mark candidates 1,2,3,4,5 in order of your preference. They count "1s" and whoever gets the lowest "1"s is eliminated, with all their votes being passed onto whichever candidate that voter marked "2". This process of eliminating the lowest-scoring candidate and passing their votes onto the next preference continues until one candidate has 50% or more.

Say there's 1 right-wing candidate and 4 left-wing candidates. the right-wing guy gets 40% of the vote, the left-wing ones get ~15% each. Also assume that if ANY one left-wing candidate was fielded by themselves, they'd get 60%. With first past the post, the right-wing guy wins, even though most voters wanted someone else, but with alternative vote, the least-popular left-wing candidates are eliminate one after another, until one has 60%

[LordSlowpoke]

hey you guys do realize the whole 'it isn't manmade" thing isn't total bullshit right

according to what little i know of this whole situation we've been cycling between ice and super not ice ever since the planet stopped being magma

but then wow absolute arguments on the internet that's amazing it's almost like i've never encountered these before