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Can you buy IV alcohol? I think if I can get the drip-rate right I can skip all this incoming nonsense and just vote in 2016. IF THERE'S STILL AN AMERICA LEFT
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Nov 2, 2014 04:59
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My Imaginary GF posted:You need high returns on imvestme t in GMO foods so that you get some investment in GMO food that primarily aids small-holding least developed nation farmers. If Monsanto is fo it, then I is agin it. Seriously though, I understand that there isn't anything intrinsically wrong with GMOs, and probably wouldn't vote against GMOs. But it just chafes me, deep in my soul, to be on the same side as Monsanto.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:01
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IT AINT NATURAL
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hangedman1984 posted:If Monsanto is fo it, then I is agin it. So vote Democrat and call your elected Reps to enforce anti-monopoly laws. Not voting advances Monsanto's interests far, far more than voting ever will.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:03
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Eh people have a right to control what goes into their body, even if they're acting irrational about it.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:06
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My Imaginary GF posted:So vote Democrat and call your elected Reps to enforce anti-monopoly laws. Not voting advances Monsanto's interests far, far more than voting ever will. I never said I wouldn't vote, I just wouldn't vote down GMOs. Its just that being on the same side as Monsanto really rankles me to the core.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:11
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Torka posted:How can the American population desire a Democratic executive branch and Republican legislature simultaneously? I don't understand how your system works, seems like either your voters are wildly schizophrenic or one of those two groups shouldn't be in power The system is messed up for sure, but this particular artifact is partly due to Local Politics. People are voting for parties, sure, but they're also voting for the individual candidate and how well they'll Represent Our Region (even in regions that are gerrymandered nonsense). Plenty of voters will vote for opposite parties for President, Senate seats and House seats, because they support Party A, but Party B's candidate for the House of Representatives feels like "not a politician" to them, or something. Largely, it's about constantly blaming whoever's in power for everything, and election cycles don't match up, and everyone has a different idea of "who's in power" when the president and legislature are opposed. Ooh! ooh! This would be helpful for non-Americans to know: In history classes and "social studies" classes, when we learn about our country's founding and structure, the phrase "checks and balances" is repeated over and over. The three branches (Executive (the President), Legislative (Senate and House), and Judicial (Supreme Court and lower courts)) are all supposed to keep each other in check, and "balance out" each others' influences. We're taught that our system was designed this way to prevent power overreach -- we're afraid of someone taking control of the government for a few years and doing irrevocable damage in the meantime. So basically, the American system has that huge fundamental difference from the common parliamentary system: Our government, from its very core, was designed to limit what people in power can accomplish. We aren't supposed to have huge swings in policy at the whims of voters -- there's a mix of what people voted for this year, and what people voted for a few years ago, to temper the influence of any one movement. This is actually a pretty big philosophy behind our government's structure, whether we like it these days or not. Obviously, it hasn't led us to any fewer problems working their way into the core of our government, and it certainly makes it hard to undo any of them. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 05:12
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Caros posted:It drives people away from GMO foods because it makes people worry that there is something wrong with them. After all, they had to put a LABEL on them. My Imaginary GF posted:tl;dr seriousquestion, what would it take to get you to vote against GMO labeling? FlamingLiberal posted:We have the attention span of a flea when it comes to national political memory. As it is, a significant group thinks Obama was President in 2008 when the market crashed. Phone posted:Are you voting for Paul Muad'Dib? Roumba posted:Can you buy IV alcohol? I think if I can get the drip-rate right I can skip all this incoming nonsense and just vote in 2016.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:12
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Take your pick: Not to mention that "your local Republican candidate" was probably a much better preference than "your local Democratic candidate" when compared to Mitt Romney as compared to Barack Obama.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:15
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A Gillespie ad came up saying that he will replace ACA and my mother went  "Yeah"Does she not understand that if it gets replaced, said replacement will be far worst than the supposed "medical cost increases" she's been complaining about?
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Nov 2, 2014 05:17
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Are we doing a separate thread for election night posting about how much we hate this country and want to die, posting it here or the midterms thread, or just in every thread in D&D? I mean all the cool kids will probably be doing it in IRC but still.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:31
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I'll be working at a polling place on Tuesday so I can make 200 bucks. Can't wait to get yelled at by old white people.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:35
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VirtualStranger posted:I'll be working at a polling place on Tuesday so I can make 200 bucks. $200? I only made like $50 for the afternoon/evening shift as a senior in high school in 2010.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:37
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Got my bottle ready! ...Oh, wrong bottle  Anyways, already early voted. I know it likely won't happen but I really hope Nunn gets in office. I really admire her charity work with HW Bush and he father did great work on nuclear disarmament.
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Nov 2, 2014 05:41
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Mantis42 posted:Eh people have a right to control what goes into their body, even if they're acting irrational about it. Except they can already make the choice, jesus christ. The USDA Organic label ceertifies there's no GMOs in the product. Has the label? No GMOs - one-and-done. Mandatory labeling doesn't add any useful information, especially since there's very few products that exclusively use GMOs so the only honest label would be one saying "may contain GMOs" (companies typically buy bulk produce and will easily use GMO inputs for one batch and conventional hybrids for another).
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Nov 2, 2014 05:41
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hangedman1984 posted:I never said I wouldn't vote, I just wouldn't vote down GMOs. Its just that being on the same side as Monsanto really rankles me to the core. Eh, I'm on the same side as Nixon regarding the EPA. There are legitimate criticisms of the systems in which businesses in America operate, and then there are unproductive criticisms of GMOs as a tool of Monsanto. Monsanto is only one corporate which produces GMOs; for now, they happen to be the largest. Vote to not allow them to remain so, and let your reps know exactly why you voted that way. Don't vote against GMOs as a vote against Monsanto. E: Nintendo Kid posted:Except they can already make the choice, jesus christ. The USDA Organic label ceertifies there's no GMOs in the product. Has the label? No GMOs - one-and-done. Whats worse, you wanna see Monsanto take the issue to the Supremes and see how they feel about food labeling standards? Don't even give them the opportunity to deal with the issue. A vote for GMO labeling is a vote in favor of Monsanto's medium-term interests. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 05:45
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Torka posted:How can the American population desire a Democratic executive branch and Republican legislature simultaneously? I don't understand how your system works, seems like either your voters are wildly schizophrenic or one of those two groups shouldn't be in power From a technical standpoint, the methods of electing of the two branches is why. Presidential elections are immune from gerrymandering so even if all the state's democrats are crammed into 2 of 10 electoral districts they can win the state's popular vote wrt presidential electoral votes. The republicans still get eight legislative seats from the however. E: for senate seats the explanation is bad candidates
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Nov 2, 2014 06:17
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My Imaginary GF posted:You should always bother voting, even when you don't want to vote for anyone. Its not a lock Full D if you don't vote. Please, don't make me beg, go vote. Seriously, why wouldn't you vote? Voting is loving awesome and makes you a stakeholder in America, so go vote unless you're not a stakeholder in the best future possible for America. You love America, so vote. It's mostly because I have yet to switch over my out of state driver's license and Oregon voting is all mail-in ballots based off of that, I think  Honestly I live in such a liberal bastion that I never really worried about it too much.
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Nov 2, 2014 06:40
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Torka posted:It's clearly possible under the system, I just don't understand how it could be the result of deliberate voter choice. Who the hell says "I want this party running this part of government and this other party running that part" I don't understand. Only one branch of government is on the ballot this year except for local judicial, gubernatorial and AG elections. If you're talking about 2012, the house is the result of gerrymandering, which favored the republicans, and staggered terms for the senate, which favored the democrats. the US' system is pretty bad, but it's not like it's voodoo. libem voters in the UK get hosed, and Greece's system awards fifty bonus seats to the party with the plurality. most everyone could use some system cleanup.
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Nov 2, 2014 06:41
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Mantis42 posted:Eh people have a right to control what goes into their body, even if they're acting irrational about it. Nah, if people are going to make poo poo choices they shouldn't be given the choice.
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Nov 2, 2014 06:49
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Nckdictator posted:Anyways, already early voted. I know it likely won't happen but I really hope Nunn gets in office. I really admire her charity work with HW Bush and he father did great work on nuclear disarmament. I have yet to vote even though California permits voting by mail. But my polling place is at a nursing home literally next door to my apartment complex (nevermind on my way to work), so I have no excuse and fully intend to vote in person, as I have in both of the previous elections I've been able to vote in here in California. Will feel good to 
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Nov 2, 2014 06:53
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InequalityGodzilla posted:What's wrong with GMO labeling? I'm against it because it's giving in to a bunch of paranoid hippies but are there other reasons? Food can last longer and in better shape if its treated with radiation instead of the current salted preservative hellscape. Guess how many people would want to buy anything with a radiation notice on it? GMOs would fair slightly better but would still suffer because people are really loving dumb and would just assume it's bad like how there's a lot of people who assume anything nuclear is going to destroy everything.
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Nov 2, 2014 06:57
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Aliquid posted:I don't understand. Only one branch of government is on the ballot this year except for local judicial, gubernatorial and AG elections. In the UK, Canada, and a bunch of other parlimentary democracies, whichever party has the most power in the Parliment gets to promote the Prime Minister. Torka is used to that, so it seems odd to him/her that we can have one party control the legislature and another party control the executive, when only one party can have the majority of the voters at any given moment.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:02
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ComradeCosmobot posted:I have yet to vote even though California permits voting by mail. But my polling place is at a nursing home literally next door to my apartment complex (nevermind on my way to work), so I have no excuse and fully intend to vote in person, as I have in both of the previous elections I've been able to vote in here in California. Will feel good to It sure felt good to
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Nov 2, 2014 07:20
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It's not the idea of a separately elected House/Senate and President I found odd, that's pretty easy to understand, it was the idea that with the same bloc of voters you could end up with different parties having control of each branch at the same time. There's been some good responses explaining how that ends up happening though, I didn't realize gerrymandering played such a large role in the House.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:21
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Wolfsheim posted:It's mostly because I have yet to switch over my out of state driver's license and Oregon voting is all mail-in ballots based off of that, I think Is your original registration a more competitive Senate-level district? If so, you should really go vote. Torka posted:It's not the idea of a separately elected House/Senate and President I found odd, that's pretty easy to understand, it was the idea that with the same bloc of voters you could end up with different parties having control of each branch at the same time. There's been some good responses explaining how that ends up happening though, I didn't realize gerrymandering played such a large role in the House. Well, it was a piecemeal process implemented to gently caress over the other party. Andrew Jackson didn't expand the franchise out of the kindness of his heart; nor did Senate appointments move out of the hands of state elections from the benevolence of state elected officials. From the framework of the American system evolving to gently caress over the not-yours party, divided levels of government makes perfect sense and is an inevitable outcome of the system whenever there exists a power vacuum. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Nov 2, 2014 |
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Nov 2, 2014 07:22
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Ditocoaf posted:In the UK, Canada, and a bunch of other parlimentary democracies, whichever party has the most power in the Parliment gets to promote the Prime Minister. Torka is used to that, so it seems odd to him/her that we can have one party control the legislature and another party control the executive, when only one party can have the majority of the voters at any given moment. Don't worry, the GOP is actively working to change that. I look forward to a Republican possibly winning in 2016 due to GOP-held states changing their EC vote distribution to ensure that just enough get siphoned off to ensure the election goes their way. And if that happens people still will just sit there and take it.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:26
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Evil Fluffy posted:Don't worry, the GOP is actively working to change that. I look forward to a Republican possibly winning in 2016 due to GOP-held states changing their EC vote distribution to ensure that just enough get siphoned off to ensure the election goes their way. Eh. Done badly enough, its a bit of a prelude to civil war. It disrupts power allocation and really would be fixed via an organized constitutional amendment process OR we'd face internal conflict over the issue. I can't see very many other results.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:29
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Torka posted:It's not the idea of a separately elected House/Senate and President I found odd, that's pretty easy to understand, it was the idea that with the same bloc of voters you could end up with different parties having control of each branch at the same time. There's been some good responses explaining how that ends up happening though, I didn't realize gerrymandering played such a large role in the House. Hahahaha, yeah, gerrymandering. That's really something like 3/4 of the answer right there. The elections are pretty much the same people, but the Presidency is gerrymander-proof. Sure, there's technically the Electoral College which assigns X votes to each state based on population, but even Republicans know if they try any blatant poo poo on elections that aren't already on a knife's edge heads will roll (the Gore/Bush vote was sadly close enough that they could get away with poo poo there). However people pay a lot less attention to the houses, and even less attention to state politics. It basically goes Presidency >>> Federal House/Senate >> local city/county > State sadly, with the local stuff often either equal or edging out the state stuff simply due to how intimate it can be. Since less people pay attention to the lower elections, Republicans can get away with more poo poo and have gerrymandered themselves into power for another decade. So, for all those folks overseas, we're sorry. We let the Republicans chat to stay relevant.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:30
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My Imaginary GF posted:Eh. Done badly enough, its a bit of a prelude to civil war. It disrupts power allocation and really would be fixed via an organized constitutional amendment process OR we'd face internal conflict over the issue. I can't see very many other results. As much as your conservative relatives may say otherwise, I doubt we will get a civil war in our lifetimes, even if poo poo like that gets passed. Conservatives crazy enough to start civil wars are the kind of people who get caught blowing up OKC. Liberals won't start a civil war because they don't own guns. And no one other than the existing government will win a civil war because no one in the states is riled up enough to pull off the multi-decadal insurgency you'd need to pull it off. That said, we could easily see rioting and civil disorder until it's resolved (or the cops/military come down on it like a hammer, which is honestly more likely), but you won't see a real civil war.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:34
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Wolfsheim posted:I live in Portland, OR and haven't been paying close attention to local politics, though radio ads keep talking about legal weed and GMOs. Should I bother voting, or is it pretty much a lock to go full-D? I mean statistically, not in the sense of being morally fulfilled by following through on my civic duty. InequalityGodzilla posted:What's wrong with GMO labeling? I'm against it because it's giving in to a bunch of paranoid hippies but are there other reasons? There isn't a single food you eat that isn't genetically modified. It was just modified using error prone selective breeding instead of controlled lab conditions Carrots were originally purple, they were bred to look like they do to show support for the House of Orange in the dutch succession crisis.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:35
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Yeah the only reason Republicans have never and will never manage to keep a proportional representation for electoral votes in a major state is because they remain convinced they can win the whole state in question if they just get The Right Guy and then all of a sudden they're not just picking up 5 scrap electoral votes, its a full 15 or 20.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:36
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Alkydere posted:Hahahaha, yeah, gerrymandering. That's really something like 3/4 of the answer right there. The elections are pretty much the same people, but the Presidency is gerrymander-proof. You get GOP-held swing states changing their EC vote distribution while the solid red states don't and it's about as close to congressional gerrymandering as you could get. Do this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida and suddenly the race between Obama and Romney would've been much closer. Though once the GOP takes the senate in a few days we'll get to see how fast they move to act on their victory and how quickly the Democrats capitulate to them.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:39
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ComradeCosmobot posted:As much as your conservative relatives may say otherwise, I doubt we will get a civil war in our lifetimes, even if poo poo like that gets passed. Conservatives crazy enough to start civil wars are the kind of people who get caught blowing up OKC. Liberals won't start a civil war because they don't own guns. And no one other than the existing government will win a civil war because no one in the states is riled up enough to pull off the multi-decadal insurgency you'd need to pull it off. Not conservative relatives. Ambitious moderates who perceive themselves as having been 100% locked-out of the highest office in the land. There is only one safeguard that checks the power of a party's gerrymandering of the Presidency: Senate elections. I do expect that, in such a scenario, you'd see the Senate refusing to fill vacancies in the Supreme Court until the court rules against such a party. You could speed up the process by having the Senate vote to remove sitting justices until it achieves the outcome it wants; I just don't quite see how that would fully play out in a manner whose validity is accepted by extremists on both sides.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:39
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Evil Fluffy posted:You get GOP-held swing states changing their EC vote distribution while the solid red states don't and it's about as close to congressional gerrymandering as you could get. Do this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida and suddenly the race between Obama and Romney would've been much closer. Though once the GOP takes the senate in a few days we'll get to see how fast they move to act on their victory and how quickly the Democrats capitulate to them. But that's the thing. Republicans forever think they can just get all the votes in all of them and be King poo poo so they don't dare ensure those states return solid electoral margins for Democrats. This is why the only proportional states are loving Nebraska and Maine.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:41
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Fried Chicken posted:Go vote because, as Charles Pierce put it, "you never know who is trying to open the basement window". Sure, partisan races may be a lock, and ballot initiatives may be a lock. But what about officially non partisan races that are deemed non important that actually have a lot of power? School board, zoning board, judge slate and the like. There has been a lot of dark money creeping into those races, and it can have a lot of repercussions for your town. Vote so you can break clout farms and disrupt higher up long games. Vote to keep the creationists off the school board. Vote to keep the cronies off the zoning board. Of course those are also the hardest elections to vote in unless you're already intimately familiar with the people running. They're the candidates most likely to only have their own website and literally no impartial information available about them, which makes it all the more difficult to be sure you're making the right choice unless you're willing to spend several hours pouring over Google hits in hopes that you pull up a newspaper article or other third-party source mentioning them that isn't behind a paywall. It's not hopeless, but it just goes to show how non-trivial picking out who you are going to vote for is. I don't always like finding that I've spent 3-4 hours researching my ballot selections, but by the same token, it at least lets me feel confident I'm making the right choices... And let's be honest: 8-10 hours (3-4 hours for the primary and 3-4 hours for the general, plus minimal time for off-calendar elections) every 2 years isn't a huge deal (especially if you pace yourself and spread the research out over the month between when you get your sample ballot/voter info and when you actually vote).
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Nov 2, 2014 07:43
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Evil Fluffy posted:You get GOP-held swing states changing their EC vote distribution while the solid red states don't and it's about as close to congressional gerrymandering as you could get. Do this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida and suddenly the race between Obama and Romney would've been much closer. A problem with this scheme is that they would lose their value as big swing states and it would result in far less money being invested in the state during the election. I figured that there would be significant resistance based on that.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:44
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Evil Fluffy posted:You get GOP-held swing states changing their EC vote distribution while the solid red states don't and it's about as close to congressional gerrymandering as you could get. Do this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida and suddenly the race between Obama and Romney would've been much closer. Though once the GOP takes the senate in a few days we'll get to see how fast they move to act on their victory and how quickly the Democrats capitulate to them. They tried briefly in PA about three years ago. Fell apart very quickly because the entire congressional delegation realized that the Democratic party would dump a shitload of money into winning the presidential election in each of the many marginal seats in SEPA (which are all Republican held thanks to 2010 and gerrymandering.) I'm pretty sure the public hated the idea too.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:46
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Torka posted:It's not the idea of a separately elected House/Senate and President I found odd, that's pretty easy to understand, it was the idea that with the same bloc of voters you could end up with different parties having control of each branch at the same time. There's been some good responses explaining how that ends up happening though, I didn't realize gerrymandering played such a large role in the House. The block of voters is close to 50/50 split between R and D, most variation in election results is from current events influencing less infirmed voters and encouraging/discouraging people to go to the polls.
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Nov 2, 2014 08:20
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There has been a very neglected point about the control of congress that I want to make. Everyone has been focused on the senate. But the house is going to be huge here no matter who takes the senate, and even worse if the GOP does take the senate. Right now Boehner can barely keep the tea party in line. He has enough moderates that when he can't keep them sane he can grovel to Pelosi and get enough Democratic votes to not sink the ship. Pelosi can let about 1/6th of her caucus vote their way and still deliver the votes to make up for any tea party tantrum. But that's about to change. Between GOP retirements, primary wins and losses, and dems losing in off years, the tea party caucus in the house is looking to grow by 28. Most of those are GOP seats remaining in GOP control but the party isn't the issue so much as the sanity of the rear end in the chair is the issue. With those 28 flipping to the tea baggers that sharply changes the calculus of getting anything through the house. Because now Pelosi will only be able to release 4 democrats to vote against these bills instead of the usual 32. And of course, the ones who would be in a position to jam it up if they vote the way people want back home come from the most liberal states. This isn't a cause for hope. Yes, one option is they try to work around the tea party and let 5 representatives from Vermont be the effective gatekeepers on what gets passed. Obamacare will be repealed and replaced with single payer; health care and maple syrup for all! But that'd not what is going to happen. What is going to happen is the tea party is going to have pretty much a lock on legislation. They may not play the game well enough to sit in the titled seats, but they will be running the show because, again, without them not even the sane poo poo like budget authorization will pass. A 90 seat caucus of nuts will be driving the legislative agenda. And to the extent they have been pacified these past 4 years its because they have been told "we can't do poo poo while the dems have the senate". Now that's gone. In case my inane late night rambling has this far failed to make its point, let's look at an example of resolving the nuttiness. To end the shutdown the 2013 budget authorization act passed 332-94, with 62 Rs and 32 Ds voting against and 169 Rs and 163 Ds voting for. If that 62 becomes 90 then the only way to pass it is A) make it liberal enough that only 4 or less Ds will vote no while simultaneously keeping it conservative enough that you don't lose any republicans (good luck there) B) make it extreme enough to appeal to the 90 tea baggers Tuesday is not the time to drink yourself to death. That comes later
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Nov 2, 2014 08:28
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Chimera-gui posted:A Gillespie ad came up saying that he will replace ACA and my mother went If the ads are replaced with happy ads she'll become happy.
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Nov 2, 2014 08:39
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