251–260 of 275 posts
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That may have been true pre-2016 but it's clear at this point that one of the major parties (starts with an R) is the pro-Putin party. They may have got to that point by dividing, but now they're reaping the benefits.
It may be "clear", but whether it is true is a very different matter.
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It’s notable because he was indicted by Muller for election interference, so it’s confirming the accusation that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election. It’s also newsworthy because many people didn’t (or still don’t) believe any election interference happened, and that it’s the first time (that I’m aware of) where a foreign nation was accused of so directly and materially attempting to influence a US electi…
The reason russian influence entered the zeitgeist was a PR push from people who worked in the HRC campaign and DNC insiders who needed to blame Trumps win on external factors to distract from their "pied piper" strategy of deliberately elevating trump during the primaries because they thought he would be easy to beat. ( https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaig... ) There is no evidence (afaik) th…
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Do we have any examples of this actually happening in the Soviet times until now? He's going to be worried about the groomed successor doing him in earlier than natural death. That paranoia is what keeps them from doing what you suggest.
Lenin himself died of natural causes after leaving power.
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> For the presidential election, the electoral college makes it possible for a candidate to win the presidency with a mere 23% of the popular vote. _Possible_ does a lot of work for you here. You have to assume all the losing states vote at 0% toward the winning party and all winning states vote at 50%+1 for that to happen. Something that is absurdly unrealistic given that California only voted 65% Biden and 35% Trum…
Politicians in Texas and Florida are just as unlikely as California to unilaterally switch proportionally allocating electors, and for the same reasons. A more representative national politics requires coordinated, national reform. However, the first-past-the-post issues you're talking about have very little to do with gerrymandering? EC / Senate politics are unrepresentative of population-majority preferences due to…
Senate politics aside, winner-take-all EC states are mostly gerrymandered to the majority party. It has exactly the same effect as gerrymandered house districts. some states are just not worth putting any effort into winning for the losing party and all focus/money/attention/politics is aimed at persuaded a small subset of constituents, the only difference is scale.
The inaction of the party in power to undo the winner-take-all EC model in a uncontested state shares the same motivation (more power to the party) and has the same outcome (worse representation for the people).
Using the example of California because it's a one-party state (so the advantages and disadvantages are more clear), if they were to proportionally allot EC votes, it would be good for every single Californian. The national Democratic party would move toward California Democrat values and the same situation for Republicans. And, since the state is so blue, it might even provide some incentive for the national Republican party to try and persuade purple Californians, moving them even further left. That's also good for California Democrats. People are led to believe that it would be worse for them, as individuals but that isn't the case. It would be better for _everyone_ in California if California wasn't winner take all.
The only group that it's bad for is the Democratic party.
People need to realize that if your goal is to destabilize the United States, insinuating you are interfering with elections while not actually doing anything, is sufficient to cause national upset
If it is possible to cause people to have doubt then the election system and rules need to be fixed. From what I can gather almost all US elected laws (except the partisan and some racist voter id laws) are from the 1800s. From what I can tell I would state that Brasil has a better election system than the US. Millions voted and everything was counted in just a few hours. There seems to be a whole system to make abso…
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Do we have any examples of this actually happening in the Soviet times until now? He's going to be worried about the groomed successor doing him in earlier than natural death. That paranoia is what keeps them from doing what you suggest.
Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and Khrushchev all died peacefully.
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> I think our political parties and media are responsible for 99% of the political extremism, unwillingness to compromise, and placing their self interests over the well being of the country. FPTP usually creates this polarisation. I don't agree with your take that both parties are equally responsible though, one of them has consistently used political gridlock as a weapon, since Obama years. To the point where one o…
> I don't agree with your take that both parties are equally responsible though, one of them has consistently used political gridlock as a weapon, since Obama years. Is political gridlock the root of the problem? Help me understand how only one party is responsible. Interesting you mention Obama. He ran on an anti-war platform, which was fairly out of line with the media and general American politics at the time. Tha…
The GOP doesn't compromise anymore, it's a fact, no?
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the...
[2] https://www.vox.com/2016/7/18/12210500/diagnosed-dysfunction...
> Interesting you mention Obama. He ran on an anti-war platform, which was fairly out of line with the media and general American politics at the time. That alone was a big reason to vote for him.
> But what did he do? An unprecedented increase in drone attacks. By all measures, Obama let the military industrial complex grow.
I don't care and there was nothing in my comment that led to this segue about Obama. This is purely soapboxing around an issue that wasn't in discussion, thanks anyway.
> How is it propaganda? Are you staying this IS NOT exactly what Russia stated, repeatedly since the early 2000s?
That's exactly the point, you are repeating this which is Russian propaganda. Why should Russia dictate what Ukraine can or cannot do? NATO didn't expand eastwards, countries to the East asked to join NATO. Should NATO say "no, thanks, Russia doesn't allow us"?
You are performing a bizarro form of victim blaming and not seeing an issue with that. Are you subscribed to Mearsheimer's real politik/offensive realism stuff? It really does feel like you are repeating his lines...
Have you forgotten Chechnya? Or Georgia?
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Whatever happened to "wrong"? As in, "that's wrong". Ideally followed by some reasoning. All of these fancier words like whataboutism or misinformation are just attempts to assert authority via the word. They don't convey additional meaning.
Misinformation and disinformation are just nuanced versions of wrong. The former means unintentional and the latter means intentional. The distinctions are useful here because the latter is a claim that the person spouting the information is corrupt and knowingly trying to propagate lies. This is more universally considered bad. People are wrong all the time, but most people aren't intentionally spreading lies. Malin…
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What if the prices are inflated and we are not sending as much as we could?
When we see any indication whatsoever of abuse/lost weapons/etc, then we can discuss audits. So far there has been not one single photo anywhere of any US-provided weapons leaking from Ukraine.