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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Vietnam was uniquely different. Nobody has ever fucked with the post-industrial United States and gotten away with it. Japan got nuked, North Korea is...North Korea (and almost got nuked), the USSR collapsed, Germany was torn apart and sewn back together twice, Iraq got fucked multiple times, and we killed so many people that both al-Qaeda and the Taliban are more ideas for randoms to affiliate with than actual organizations anymore.

Vietnam was started and ended based on political intrigue, and thus to the public had no purpose. There were people genuinely, publicly clamoring for genocide to be our response to 9/11. Believing the American people are vulnerable to stopping a war where America was actually struck through guerilla tactics is the height of foolishness. Vietnam got us to leave because they never did anything to us in the first place. They were left with a nation. Iraq and Afghanistan were left with survivors. The government had already agreed to just keep dropping nukes on Japan as they came off production if they wouldn't surrender.

Such is power and geopolitics.

[Reelya]

One interesting point is from Chomsky: the anti Vietnam war protests were basically ignored by the media (why would corporate media report something they didn't support) up until the point that a major report was published about the economic costs of the vietnam war. After that point, corporate owners turned against the war, and the floodgates opened for the media to speak against the war, at which point, the anti-war protestors were a convienient proxy.

It might be a bit different now, since post-internet the media landscape is different, but I'd say it's still more important to have the big media owners on your side than the public.

You see the same thing with the 2003- Iraq War I think. At the time of the war, only 3% of American media sources were identified as anti-war (even MSNBC sacked journalists who were anti-war in the lead up to the war). Later, reports came out showing the cost of the war in the trillions, and after that was when the media really turned against the war.

[Sergarr]

Jill Stein is now officially the Ralph Nader of 2016.

Stein votes/Trump margin:
MI: 51,463/10,704
PA: 49,678/46,765
WI: 31,006/22,177

Third Parties™

[Reelya]

Hmm, state-level instate run-off voting would have prevented that situation. I think that's preferable to the "no third parties, ever" solution.

[Sergarr]

However it would require collective action in order to make them all switch to that system, because apparently, the main reason why the states switched to FPTP system in the first place was because it was giving them relatively more political power vs states which didn't have FPTP.

[Reelya]

FPTP vs IRV is a different issue to winner-takes-all vs proportional. Both choices have similar motivations, but they're completely independent concepts. If you have IRV at state level, as I suggested, that would require a winner-takes-all state to work, it's not really compatible with the proportional EC idea, which still has the Spoiler Effect on a national scale.

FPTP vs IRV is whether or not third-party candidates can "split the vote". Both major parties might like the sound of IRV for that reason (if you have a slim majority you don't want either Libertarians or Greens ruining your day), and it could be implemented per-state independently.

[PTTG??]

Jill Stein is now officially the Ralph Nader of 2016.

Stein votes/Trump margin:
MI: 51,463/10,704
PA: 49,678/46,765
WI: 31,006/22,177

Third Parties™

That assumes that all stein voters would have voted for Clinton instead of, for instance, renouncing their citizenship. FiveThirtyEight posits 10% of Stein votes might have gone to Trump, 55% would have gone home, and the rest might have gone to Hill.

[Sergarr]

That would still be enough to flip Michigan, though. Which would make the possibility of EC doing what it was intended to do and prevent a horrible demagogue and a Tweeting disaster, Donald Trump, from introducing USA economy to his big league business plan done by the best people (spoiler: it involves declaring the entire country bankrupt).

[Flying Dice]

Frankly the people crying about third party voters not voting for their candidate are delusional, especially in this cycle. People voted for Stein and Johnson because they were disgusted by both Clinton and Trump but still showed up to vote (mostly for other races, I suspect).

Get IRV, sure, that's great, we fucking need election reform. But whatever bag of dicks someone thinks is entitled to my vote damn well isn't, and that sheer fucking arrogance is half of what stopped me from pinching my nose and voting Clinton. And unlike 2000 this one was just stolen by good old fashioned gerrymandering rather than also being hijacked by the SCOTUS and a candidate's brother's gubernatorial power.

Whenever I read all this stuff about the alleged possibility of the EC essentially throwing a giant hissy fit and refusing to elect Trump, it just makes me hope that if my side had lost, we'd have been a bit less... am-dram about it.

The hypocrisy is beautiful but not that surprising. SJWs and corporatist mouthpieces prior to the election talking about how a Trump loss would mean violent radicals doing this and that. Cue Clinton's loss and we've got violent radicals looting, burning, and calling for assassinations. This is what happens when the corp-caps get total control and find a nice pack of ideologues to set loose, the Gilded Age nostalgia club never bother cleaning the mess up after.

[WealthyRadish]

STV would be better than ranked choice, but it's a start (at least in Maine). All it addresses is the spoiler effect, though. Single member districts are the big problem, and until those are eliminated we'll continue to see gerrymandering, uncontested races, and the gross influence of outside funding influence or decide congressional races.

[Shadowlord]

Did you hear about this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz706wH_ly8

Ohio's house and senate passed a law* which makes abortion illegal as soon a fetal heartbeat is detectable, which is pretty much making it illegal entirely because of how early that is. This is, of course, unconstitutional.

* It's going to Kasich, and it'll become law unless he vetoes it

[martinuzz]

I thought chemistry was complex chemistry and biology was simple chemistry

Ahahahah no.
It's the other way around. Biochemistry is the most complex chemistry there is. Chemists just look IF a chemical bond can form, biologists look how it forms, and how it folds in 3d in an environment with dual polarity (water), and what macroscopic effects the shape of a molecule has on it's ability to react with other molecules.

EDIT: in other news, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich had a little message for Trump on CNN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRX37ysqvpo&feature=youtu.be

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

[McTraveller]

Did you hear about this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz706wH_ly8

Ohio's house and senate passed a law* which makes abortion illegal as soon a fetal heartbeat is detectable, which is pretty much making it illegal entirely because of how early that is. This is, of course, unconstitutional.

* It's going to Kasich, and it'll become law unless he vetoes it

Just out of curiosity, what makes that unconstitutional?  Specifically - what provision in the (I presume Ohio state, but maybe US?) constitution is being violated?

[penguinofhonor]

I believe it's Amendment 14, Section 1 of the US Constitution, at least if the Supreme Court is to be believed.