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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
United Kingdom13775 Posts
On August 09 2016 03:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 02:55 LegalLord wrote:On August 09 2016 02:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 09 2016 02:35 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:26 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 09 2016 02:24 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 09 2016 02:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:04 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:
[quote]
HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views. That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him. Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we? http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/Oooops. Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'. If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased. Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. . This They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful' But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased. Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation! Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton? Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses. But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me". This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections. I completely agree that Hillary is not ideal, but the fact of the matter is that either Hillary or Trump will become president. That's the mathematical reality that we face right now, and so I feel an obligation to figure out which of those two candidates I prefer- which some may view as voting for the lesser of two evils- and to vote for them to make sure the worse candidate isn't elected president. That's being a realist and a pragmatist. People keep saying that not voting or voting third-party are sensible alternatives, as if there's a secret third option to who's going to become president in this election, and it just blows my mind. I'm equally astonished at those who can't understand why someone should pick the lesser of two evils. The problem with the "lesser of two evils" argument is that if it is applied consistently, then you make no progress. It just tells politicians that they can be as bad as they want, but as long as they're slightly better than "the enemy" then you have to vote for them. The "lesser of two evils" argument has been consistently applied for many election cycles now, and while it's valid for any one of them it starts to become a real problem if you keep on applying it over and over again every single election, slowly voting against any real progress. That would be an issue if the president was the entire government. It is just one of many offices we get to vote for on election day. The ticket is larger than just that office and we can vote for other people that more closely reflect our world views. The president is supposed to represent all of the US, not everyone will get everything they want.
The president is by far the most important representative of the people on a national level. Yes, it's pretty clear that local elections also determine public policy, and that you also get to vote on 1-2 representatives to the Legislative Branch every election, but those don't set the policy anywhere near as much as the leadership of the party (which is very strongly influenced by the president). It's very easy for the president to tie the hands of the lower level representatives of the people through the significant influence the president holds, both explicit powers and implicit coercion, so it's really a pretty unfortunate turn of events if the president is a downward spiral of a consistent "lesser of two evils" line of argument.
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Indeed; most people can't self-teach that well, and it's always harder. It's not something definitive Igne, it's a thought about what's needed. I'd need a lot more research before concluding it should definitely be done.
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On August 09 2016 03:03 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 02:35 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:26 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 09 2016 02:24 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 09 2016 02:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:04 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 09 2016 01:45 Biff The Understudy wrote:On August 09 2016 00:52 biology]major wrote:On August 09 2016 00:24 Biff The Understudy wrote:On August 08 2016 23:49 Doodsmack wrote:
So Trump lied through his teeth about contacting Kasich for VP? Is there still any claim to Trump being less crooked than Hillary? I'd like to hear the argument. Well except for using a wrong server for her emails, there has never been the shadow of a proof that Hillary was crooked. Meanwhile, the life of Trump is littered with cheated customers, ruined investors and thousands of lawsuits, and his short political career has been built on one lie after another. But apparently nobody seems to notice how rich it is to call anyone, least of all Clinton, crooked. On that subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnQoE3s7J7g HRC is so truthful and honest that she was given 4 pinocchios by the washington post. Then she had an opportunity to address it, where she gave an incoherent answer that didn't even acknowledge why she was defending her position in the first place . I don't expect you to even respond reasonably to this, but am more interested in the delusion you will come up with to protect your views. That sounds horrible. How many did Trump get? My point is not that Hillary is a saint, but that Trump should really shut his big mouth with his crooked Hillary because she is a model of honesty and integrity next to him. Before you protest, let's look at a serious, independent fact checking website, shall we? http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/Oooops. Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'. If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased. Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. . This They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful' But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased. Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation! Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton? Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses.
But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me". This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections. Uh, you do realize that the Clinton Foundation has to file with the IRS as a charity and they undergo an audit by a public accounting firm each year and these are all available on their website, right?
People often forget that the Clinton Foundation is a charity and is very public about what they do.
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On August 09 2016 03:09 farvacola wrote:Depending on the definition of knowledge being used, the internet hasn't actually democratized knowledge so much as pretend to. Personally, I think understanding knowledge as an inherently trust-based, contingent hierarchy of communication makes the most sense, and in thinking along those lines, the Internet is hardly a wholly positive phenomena. Call me a bad Marxist, but I think that some hierarchies are helpful and even necessary, particularly with regards to education. This is not to say that education in the US is not overly-hierarchilized 
Obviously hierarchies and networks have advantages and disadvantages. But when knowledge flows are dominated by one so thoroughly (in this case hierarchies) you amplify the disadvantages of hierarchies and lose the advantages of networks (citation to Manuel DeLanda).
And come on. The internet has every book ever written on it. I think you are coming from a privileged Western position of media-hyped "information overload" and "echo chambers" when you make comments about how it hasn't democratized knowledge. Compare the knowledge opportunities of those living in the third world 50 years ago to what they have now on refurbished internet-capable laptops.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Distance education isn't exactly new and the biggest innovation of the internet is merely simplified logistics due to software instead of manual processing. And the problem has generally been that while distance education is very convenient and more than satisfactory for simpler/rote topics, the more advanced your education the less capable a distance education is capable of properly teaching you. Everyone I know who went for a distance degree, whether online or by correspondence, would admit that they sacrificed some learning for the sake of having convenience.
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Canada11363 Posts
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-talks-economics-keystone-pipeline-in-detroit-today-1.3711541
So I guess Trump is raising his proposed taxes- I guess he originally had four tax brackets taxed at 0%, 10%, 20% and 25%. Now it's three tax brackets at 12% 25% and 33%. Is there somewhere were it actually says what his tax brackets are? Because I can easily find the tax percentages, but I cannot so easily find who will actually be paying the percentages.
I don't know what typical presidential candidate websites look like, but I have to say compared to what we get during election time with party platforms, I don't really like interview and speech aggregators at the expense of text descriptions of policies as it makes it difficult to actually find the particulars in the policy promised. Even the sound bite approach to the Issues is not a good substitute compared to laying out proposed policies in text.
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On August 09 2016 03:13 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 03:09 farvacola wrote:Depending on the definition of knowledge being used, the internet hasn't actually democratized knowledge so much as pretend to. Personally, I think understanding knowledge as an inherently trust-based, contingent hierarchy of communication makes the most sense, and in thinking along those lines, the Internet is hardly a wholly positive phenomena. Call me a bad Marxist, but I think that some hierarchies are helpful and even necessary, particularly with regards to education. This is not to say that education in the US is not overly-hierarchilized Obviously hierarchies and networks have advantages and disadvantages. But when knowledge flows are dominated by one so thoroughly (in this case hierarchies) you amplify the disadvantages of hierarchies and lose the advantages of networks (citation to Manuel DeLanda). And come on. The internet has every book ever written on it. I think you are coming from a privileged Western position of media-hyped "information overload" and "echo chambers" when you make comments about how it hasn't democratized knowledge. Compare the knowledge opportunities of those living in the third world 50 years ago to what they have now on refurbished internet-capable laptops.
While I'm at work and accordingly unable to respond in appropriate length, I'm certain that we're talking about two different kinds of knowledge. Access to information is one thing, knowledge of the thing that said information regards is something else. Privilege has nothing to do with it, particularly when an accusation therewith can be made in the opposite direction vis a vie what can be characterized as an overly-simple view of what knowledge actually is.
(Nice DeLanda reference though, I'll need to refresh my reading of him when I get the chance.)
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On August 09 2016 03:15 LegalLord wrote:
Distance education isn't exactly new and the biggest innovation of the internet is merely simplified logistics due to software instead of manual processing. And the problem has generally been that while distance education is very convenient and more than satisfactory for simpler/rote topics, the more advanced your education the less capable a distance education is capable of properly teaching you. Everyone I know who went for a distance degree, whether online or by correspondence, would admit that they sacrificed some learning for the sake of having convenience.
indeed; though the large cost savings is somewhat worthwhile. Using distance learning entirely, you could provide free college for everyone at a not too expensive rate.
Part of the reason I talked about a government run continuing ed for all; is that the scale of it would better allow for in-person learning to be done locally.
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They did take tax reform off his site, probably redoing it. Interesting development.
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The internet is never going to replace human interaction in the learning process for education or professional training. If anything, the internet is a flawed medium of information storage due to how poorly it is curated.
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I think the biggest problem with self-learning is that people tend to try to reinforce the things that they are already good at while neglecting the things that they're not so good at, which is only natural if you have no supervision when you learn. Nobody wants to spend hours on things that are frustrating to learn and this can lead to people skipping some important fundamentals.
In software development bootcamps in the US seem to be increasingly common where people with no prior background are essentially pushed through a one year course on some specific skillset that is very marketable. And while it's true that these people can be productive workers and earn a lot of money it doesn't have a lot to do with education in any traditional sense.
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Let me re-orient my position. I am in no way saying that internet classrooms are equivalent to traditional classrooms. But if you want to go down this road, I do think that "skills-based" teaching is perhaps the kind of thing that is best suited for teaching over the internet, in that it's often very mechanistic and narrow. Those kinds of things aren't even what would have traditionally been included under the umbrella of an Education. Becoming an IT person? Becoming an HR person? Any of the hundreds of other middle class office jobs that people have?
But that's kind of tangential to the main point I was making, which had to do with certification programs. Any of the programs focused on improving the employability of the bottom 50% by offering skills in demand by employers are just additional certification programs that solidify the stratifying overly-hierarchical education system.
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On August 09 2016 03:19 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 03:13 IgnE wrote:On August 09 2016 03:09 farvacola wrote:Depending on the definition of knowledge being used, the internet hasn't actually democratized knowledge so much as pretend to. Personally, I think understanding knowledge as an inherently trust-based, contingent hierarchy of communication makes the most sense, and in thinking along those lines, the Internet is hardly a wholly positive phenomena. Call me a bad Marxist, but I think that some hierarchies are helpful and even necessary, particularly with regards to education. This is not to say that education in the US is not overly-hierarchilized Obviously hierarchies and networks have advantages and disadvantages. But when knowledge flows are dominated by one so thoroughly (in this case hierarchies) you amplify the disadvantages of hierarchies and lose the advantages of networks (citation to Manuel DeLanda). And come on. The internet has every book ever written on it. I think you are coming from a privileged Western position of media-hyped "information overload" and "echo chambers" when you make comments about how it hasn't democratized knowledge. Compare the knowledge opportunities of those living in the third world 50 years ago to what they have now on refurbished internet-capable laptops. While I'm at work and accordingly unable to respond in appropriate length, I'm certain that we're talking about two different kinds of knowledge. Access to information is one thing, knowledge of the thing that said information regards is something else. Privilege has nothing to do with it, particularly when an accusation therewith can be made in the opposite direction vis a vie what can be characterized as an overly-simple view of what knowledge actually is. (Nice DeLanda reference though, I'll need to refresh my reading of him when I get the chance.)
Information is the stuff of knowledge-making. You have a point, but my post is directed to the technocratic folks here who view public education as a perpetual economics machine.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On August 09 2016 03:20 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 03:15 LegalLord wrote:
Distance education isn't exactly new and the biggest innovation of the internet is merely simplified logistics due to software instead of manual processing. And the problem has generally been that while distance education is very convenient and more than satisfactory for simpler/rote topics, the more advanced your education the less capable a distance education is capable of properly teaching you. Everyone I know who went for a distance degree, whether online or by correspondence, would admit that they sacrificed some learning for the sake of having convenience. indeed; though the large cost savings is somewhat worthwhile. Using distance learning entirely, you could provide free college for everyone at a not too expensive rate. Part of the reason I talked about a government run continuing ed for all; is that the scale of it would better allow for in-person learning to be done locally.
A lot of schools take a hybrid model, where the basic training classes are online ed and the practicum is in-person, or the lectures are online and the exams are in-person. Those are broadly useful and allow a relatively small college to have tens of thousands of students without straining their resources. For more advanced topics like science, math, or engineering degrees, full-time in-person instruction for most classes is almost a necessity.
On August 09 2016 03:22 Nyxisto wrote:
I think the biggest problem with self-learning is that people tend to try to reinforce the things that they are already good at while neglecting the things that they're not so good at, which is only natural if you have no supervision when you learn. Nobody wants to spend hours on things that are frustrating to learn and this can lead to people skipping some important fundamentals.
In software development bootcamps in the US seem to be increasingly common where people with no prior background are essentially pushed through a one year course on some specific skillset that is very marketable. And while it's true that these people can be productive workers and earn a lot of money it doesn't have a lot to do with education in any traditional sense.
Yes, there is a lot of accuracy to this. Online classes are best for low-level learning and rote memorization of topics that are important but not exactly pleasant to lean. More advanced topics need real instruction.
Software development bootcamps are to a large degree a con job, both for the students and the employees. They teach you how to do grunt work (which is not great for a long career) and often mislead employers about the quality of their grads.
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On August 09 2016 03:24 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 03:19 farvacola wrote:On August 09 2016 03:13 IgnE wrote:On August 09 2016 03:09 farvacola wrote:Depending on the definition of knowledge being used, the internet hasn't actually democratized knowledge so much as pretend to. Personally, I think understanding knowledge as an inherently trust-based, contingent hierarchy of communication makes the most sense, and in thinking along those lines, the Internet is hardly a wholly positive phenomena. Call me a bad Marxist, but I think that some hierarchies are helpful and even necessary, particularly with regards to education. This is not to say that education in the US is not overly-hierarchilized Obviously hierarchies and networks have advantages and disadvantages. But when knowledge flows are dominated by one so thoroughly (in this case hierarchies) you amplify the disadvantages of hierarchies and lose the advantages of networks (citation to Manuel DeLanda). And come on. The internet has every book ever written on it. I think you are coming from a privileged Western position of media-hyped "information overload" and "echo chambers" when you make comments about how it hasn't democratized knowledge. Compare the knowledge opportunities of those living in the third world 50 years ago to what they have now on refurbished internet-capable laptops. While I'm at work and accordingly unable to respond in appropriate length, I'm certain that we're talking about two different kinds of knowledge. Access to information is one thing, knowledge of the thing that said information regards is something else. Privilege has nothing to do with it, particularly when an accusation therewith can be made in the opposite direction vis a vie what can be characterized as an overly-simple view of what knowledge actually is. (Nice DeLanda reference though, I'll need to refresh my reading of him when I get the chance.) Information is the stuff of knowledge-making. You have a point, but my post is directed to the technocratic folks here who view public education as a perpetual economics machine.
am I one of those people?
also not clear on what your statement is trying to say.
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On August 09 2016 03:22 IgnE wrote:
Let me re-orient my position. I am in no way saying that internet classrooms are equivalent to traditional classrooms. But if you want to go down this road, I do think that "skills-based" teaching is perhaps the kind of thing that is best suited for teaching over the internet, in that it's often very mechanistic and narrow. Those kinds of things aren't even what would have traditionally been included under the umbrella of an Education. Becoming an IT person? Becoming an HR person? Any of the hundreds of other middle class office jobs that people have?
But that's kind of tangential to the main point I was making, which had to do with certification programs. Any of the programs focused on improving the employability of the bottom 50% by offering skills in demand by employers are just additional certification programs that solidify the stratifying overly-hierarchical education system.
Now this I agree with wholesale.
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On August 09 2016 03:21 oBlade wrote:
They did take tax reform off his site, probably redoing it. Interesting development.
If he repudiates his primary-debate-era tax cutting plan, he'll take away one of the final reasons I'd consider voting for him. He's still committing unforced errors alienating segments of his base if you ask me.
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United States42950 Posts
On August 09 2016 03:45 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 03:21 oBlade wrote:
They did take tax reform off his site, probably redoing it. Interesting development. If he repudiates his primary-debate-era tax cutting plan, he'll take away one of the final reasons I'd consider voting for him. He's still committing unforced errors alienating segments of his base if you ask me.
Would you want the primary era tax plan with the spending plans he has? Surely fiscal responsibility (ie not increasing the deficit further) trumps lowering taxes. If he is to raise spending then at least have him not slash revenues.
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On August 09 2016 03:10 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 03:00 Plansix wrote:On August 09 2016 02:55 LegalLord wrote:On August 09 2016 02:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 09 2016 02:35 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:26 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 09 2016 02:24 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 09 2016 02:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:04 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'. If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased. Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. . This They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful' But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased. Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation! Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton? Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses. But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me". This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections. I completely agree that Hillary is not ideal, but the fact of the matter is that either Hillary or Trump will become president. That's the mathematical reality that we face right now, and so I feel an obligation to figure out which of those two candidates I prefer- which some may view as voting for the lesser of two evils- and to vote for them to make sure the worse candidate isn't elected president. That's being a realist and a pragmatist. People keep saying that not voting or voting third-party are sensible alternatives, as if there's a secret third option to who's going to become president in this election, and it just blows my mind. I'm equally astonished at those who can't understand why someone should pick the lesser of two evils. The problem with the "lesser of two evils" argument is that if it is applied consistently, then you make no progress. It just tells politicians that they can be as bad as they want, but as long as they're slightly better than "the enemy" then you have to vote for them. The "lesser of two evils" argument has been consistently applied for many election cycles now, and while it's valid for any one of them it starts to become a real problem if you keep on applying it over and over again every single election, slowly voting against any real progress. That would be an issue if the president was the entire government. It is just one of many offices we get to vote for on election day. The ticket is larger than just that office and we can vote for other people that more closely reflect our world views. The president is supposed to represent all of the US, not everyone will get everything they want. The president is by far the most important representative of the people on a national level. Yes, it's pretty clear that local elections also determine public policy, and that you also get to vote on 1-2 representatives to the Legislative Branch every election, but those don't set the policy anywhere near as much as the leadership of the party (which is very strongly influenced by the president). It's very easy for the president to tie the hands of the lower level representatives of the people through the significant influence the president holds, both explicit powers and implicit coercion, so it's really a pretty unfortunate turn of events if the president is a downward spiral of a consistent "lesser of two evils" line of argument.
If you care about laws you yourself have to follow, then put energy into local elections (Mayor, Chief of Police, Judges, etc...)
If you care about the laws others in your sphere of influence follow, or about laws that affect your job/business, then you put energy into the state elections that actually govern that.
If you care about supreme court nominations, the military, or having a stopgap to prevent "bad" laws from being passed--then you put energy into the presidency.
You don't even have to vote party line in any of it. You can have as widespread a pool of politicians as you'd like. The power to shape the laws of the land and who enforces it is 100% in the power of the populace.
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On August 09 2016 04:13 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2016 03:10 LegalLord wrote:On August 09 2016 03:00 Plansix wrote:On August 09 2016 02:55 LegalLord wrote:On August 09 2016 02:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 09 2016 02:35 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:26 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 09 2016 02:24 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On August 09 2016 02:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 09 2016 02:04 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
[quote]
Politifact has some very dubious judgment calls on whether certain statements are 'truthful' or 'untruthful'.
If you've ever gone through their articles and read why they rate statements the way they do, you would hardly call them independent or unbiased. Some of the ones about Bernie say "misleading"/"requires caveats" but then are given a "false" yet you can go to Hillary's and find similar situations given "half-true". I mean they generally do a decent job of putting the facts together (there have been some recent and rather large errors) but the final verdict is often bs. . This They report the facts and plenty of the time it's very straightforward and no one will disagree with the verdict on a rating as 'truthful' or 'untruthful' But often their judgment calls on whether something is 'truthful' or 'untruthful' is anything but consistent between candidates. They are not independent and they are not unbiased. Those are interesting inconsistencies that may or may not be a part of Bernie's evaluation! Now, back on topic: Is there any reason to dispute the fact that Trump has had far more scandals, made more unprofessional and dirty deals, and is more "crooked" than Hillary Clinton? Well, if you add in the Clinton foundation she would probably give him a run for his money, but the CF enjoys a much higher level of protection from investigation/reprimand than Trumps businesses. But that's what's so sad about this all. She (or yall) shouldn't compare herself to the worst candidate to be nominated in modern times and be able to say "well I'm better than that, so you must vote for me". This is such a utter failing of the voting public it should go down as one of our worst elections. I completely agree that Hillary is not ideal, but the fact of the matter is that either Hillary or Trump will become president. That's the mathematical reality that we face right now, and so I feel an obligation to figure out which of those two candidates I prefer- which some may view as voting for the lesser of two evils- and to vote for them to make sure the worse candidate isn't elected president. That's being a realist and a pragmatist. People keep saying that not voting or voting third-party are sensible alternatives, as if there's a secret third option to who's going to become president in this election, and it just blows my mind. I'm equally astonished at those who can't understand why someone should pick the lesser of two evils. The problem with the "lesser of two evils" argument is that if it is applied consistently, then you make no progress. It just tells politicians that they can be as bad as they want, but as long as they're slightly better than "the enemy" then you have to vote for them. The "lesser of two evils" argument has been consistently applied for many election cycles now, and while it's valid for any one of them it starts to become a real problem if you keep on applying it over and over again every single election, slowly voting against any real progress. That would be an issue if the president was the entire government. It is just one of many offices we get to vote for on election day. The ticket is larger than just that office and we can vote for other people that more closely reflect our world views. The president is supposed to represent all of the US, not everyone will get everything they want. The president is by far the most important representative of the people on a national level. Yes, it's pretty clear that local elections also determine public policy, and that you also get to vote on 1-2 representatives to the Legislative Branch every election, but those don't set the policy anywhere near as much as the leadership of the party (which is very strongly influenced by the president). It's very easy for the president to tie the hands of the lower level representatives of the people through the significant influence the president holds, both explicit powers and implicit coercion, so it's really a pretty unfortunate turn of events if the president is a downward spiral of a consistent "lesser of two evils" line of argument. If you care about laws you yourself have to follow, then put energy into local elections (Mayor, Chief of Police, Judges, etc...) If you care about the laws others in your sphere of influence follow, or about laws that affect your job/business, then you put energy into the state elections that actually govern that. If you care about supreme court nominations, the military, or having a stopgap to prevent "bad" laws from being passed--then you put energy into the presidency. You don't even have to vote party line in any of it. You can have as widespread a pool of politicians as you'd like. The power to shape the laws of the land and who enforces it is 100% in the power of the populace.
Only if they take it back. As of now they are largely stuck in a paradigm that means they have to vote for evil, because it's less evil than the alternative.
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EPT
