The New American Politics thread

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Azure

Universal health care would save money long-term.

Either way its not about reducing the debt as much as growing the economy.

But given how much the US spends and what the deficit is at right now, the US could easily balance the budget with small increases in taxes and less pork.

Run a $100 billion dollar surplus per year. Use that to slowly pay off debt.

As long as the U.S. is in a permanent election cycle it will never pay off its debt or get much else of importance done.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

Sorry, I ask this alot in this thread -

For Dems and Repb - any of these states today winner take all?

No, March 15 will be the beginning of the WTA states.

[calgarygeologist]

I would say this was probably a great night for Bernie.

Nebraska is about 55% for Bernie and CNN says that Sanders won Kansas.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Kavvy

Sorry, I ask this alot in this thread -

For Dems and Repb - any of these states today winner take all?

Originally Posted by octothorp

No, March 15 will be the beginning of the WTA states.

Some states, like Maine, Texas, Oklahoma, are winner take all if a candidate gets 50% plus 1.

http://frontloading.blogspot.ca/p/20...cation-by.html

Democrats do proportional distribution across all states.

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

I would say this was probably a great night for Bernie.

Nebraska is about 55% for Bernie and CNN says that Sanders won Kansas.

I'd say it's a good night, but great is probably an overstatement (if the goal is actually winning the primary), as he's still way behind the sorts of margins that he needs to get in these states. 538 says in a 50/50 national race, he should be winning Nebraska and Kansas by 17% margins; and to make up for the current deficit, he needs to be running better than 50/50.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by octothorp

I'd say it's a good night, but great is probably an overstatement (if the goal is actually winning the primary), as he's still way behind the sorts of margins that he needs to get in these states. 538 says in a 50/50 national race, he should be winning Nebraska and Kansas by 17% margins; and to make up for the current deficit, he needs to be running better than 50/50.

The margin in Nebraska could increase by the end of the night. Only 75% had reported and apparently a lot of Bernie votes are still out there. Nebraska and Kansas wins are hopefully good signs for Bernie taking the mid-west of America.

[Senator Clay Davis]

The decisiveness of Hillary's win in Louisiana though probably means she wins the most delegates, so while Bernie won more states it will be Hillary who wins the more important number tonight again. And there's Bernie's problem, on the 15th a lot of delegate heavy states have her up by strong margins right now. If he not only can't turn that around, but essentially flip the numbers, he has no path to win since the Dems are all proportional.

[Slava]

That was hilarious. One guy on CNN "we only have 9% so we want to wait a few minutes before we call it". Literally ten seconds later, Wolf Blitzer "well we're ready to call it, Donald Trump wins Louisiana!"

I so hope the other 91% turns the tide, just for comedy.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

The decisiveness of Hillary's win in Louisiana though probably means she wins the most delegates, so while Bernie won more states it will be Hillary who wins the more important number tonight again. And there's Bernie's problem, on the 15th a lot of delegate heavy states have her up by strong margins right now. If he not only can't turn that around, but essentially flip the numbers, he has no path to win since the Dems are all proportional.

Looks like the delegates should be pretty evenly split tonight for the Democrats. Bernie is 2/3 in Kansas and should be high 50s in Nebraska. Hillary is ~75% in Louisiana. Seems like they should both have around 60 delegates of the 125.

The Trump press conference tonight should be really interesting. I expect it to be hard hitting against Cruz because the numbers seem to be showing Rubio as falling off the board and Cruz being the contender.

[FireGilbert]

American politics are so interesting and hilarious. I almost forget how much I enjoy these four year cycles.

It looks like we might be seeing the end of the Republican Party. RIP 1854-2016.

Two things I find odd about the Republicans:
-They call themselves the GOP despite the Democrats being around longer
-They use the colour Red, normally reserved for Communists or Leftist parties.

[Itse]

On the debt thing:

Since most of the current world currency IS debt, the idea of everybody starting to collectively pay off debt would be the equivalent of everybody just burning all the money... Well okay it's not as simple as that. But it's close enough for this discussion.

Anyway, national debts are not meant to be paid, nor is there any real need to. Period. If a politician is selling you something based on that idea, he's probably lying to you or possibly completely clueless.

Balancing national budgets in the long term is only in a very complicated way tied to the numeric value of the debt.

/back to your regurarly scheduled programming.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

American politics are so interesting and hilarious. I almost forget how much I enjoy these four year cycles.

It looks like we might be seeing the end of the Republican Party. RIP 1854-2016.

Two things I find odd about the Republicans:
-They call themselves the GOP despite the Democrats being around longer
-They use the colour Red, normally reserved for Communists or Leftist parties.

The Republican Party was formed from mostly pissed off members of the Democrat party and an old party called the Whigs. It's hard to say the Democrat Party is older when up until the Republican formation it was called the Democratic-Republican Party. They are basically the same age.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Itse

On the debt thing:

Since most of the current world currency IS debt, the idea of everybody starting to collectively pay off debt would be the equivalent of everybody just burning all the money... Well okay it's not as simple as that. But it's close enough for this discussion.

Anyway, national debts are not meant to be paid, nor is there any real need to. Period. If a politician is selling you something based on that idea, he's probably lying to you or possibly completely clueless.

Balancing national budgets in the long term is only in a very complicated way tied to the numeric value of the debt.

/back to your regurarly scheduled programming.

What's next? Governments printing their own money!

[JohnnyB]

This is a fascinating primaries run-off on both sides. Cruz coming up on the Republican side with Rubio looking weaker and weaker and Sanders looking to go long with plenty of money and support coming in to him is full of drama. Could we see an independent Trump running in the general after a brokered convention and an independent Sanders running after a close Democratic primary run-off? Stranger things are already happening.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

Two things I find odd about the Republicans:
-They call themselves the GOP despite the Democrats being around longer
-They use the colour Red, normally reserved for Communists or Leftist parties.

That's only a relatively recent development. Because of the association with communism, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats wanted to be associated with the colour red. Accordingly, the television networks would alternate every election which party was shown in red and which in blue. For the 2000 election, it just happened to be the GOP's turn to be red. That election, of course, was so close that the concept of "red states" and "blue states" became ingrained in the American consciousness, and the respective colours have stuck ever since.

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by T@T

The Republican Party was formed from mostly pissed off members of the Democrat party and an old party called the Whigs. It's hard to say the Democrat Party is older when up until the Republican formation it was called the Democratic-Republican Party. They are basically the same age.

The Democratic Party was founded in 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson in response to the "un-democratic" election of John Quincy Adams in 1824. Previously Jackson and Adams were members of the Democratic-Republican party.

You are mostly right about the Republicans though. They were basically an anti-slavery coalition of ex-Whigs and ex-Democrats.

[FireGilbert]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

That's only a relatively recent development. Because of the association with communism, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats wanted to be associated with the colour red. Accordingly, the television networks would alternate every election which party was shown in red and which in blue. For the 2000 election, it just happened to be the GOP's turn to be red. That election, of course, was so close that the concept of "red states" and "blue states" became ingrained in the American consciousness, and the respective colours have stuck ever since.

Thanks. I was thinking it was a fairly recent development that had something to do with colour TV.

Also, up until Nixon, I guess the GOP was the party of the left. Just compare the ultra Progressive Teddy Roosevelt was the crazy religious bigot in Woodrow Wilson.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

Thanks. I was thinking it was a fairly recent development that had something to do with colour TV.

Also, up until Nixon, I guess the GOP was the party of the left. Just compare the ultra Progressive Teddy Roosevelt was the crazy religious bigot in Woodrow Wilson.

As far as I can remember back to Adlai Stevenson the Democrats have been supported by the Unions, blacks and the liberal north with an unholy alliance with the southern Dixiecrats because they still hated Lincoln's party. As a youngster it was always baffling to me that a man like George Wallace was a Democrat. The GOP have always been associated with the right wing and a hawkish foreign policy. When Nixon went after the south, it was a natural merging.

[blueski]

Louis CK has a must read plea to not vote for Trump:
http://www.businessinsider.com/louis...d-trump-2016-3

[2Stonedbirds]

Originally Posted by Slava

That was hilarious. One guy on CNN "we only have 9% so we want to wait a few minutes before we call it". Literally ten seconds later, Wolf Blitzer "well we're ready to call it, Donald Trump wins Louisiana!"

I so hope the other 91% turns the tide, just for comedy.

Was Van Jones on at all last night? I caught part of CNNs... show but not all of it.

CNN has more in common with say, fear factor than an actual news network.

"And we call... DONALD TRUMP to win all the stuff!" -pew pew pew- -lasers- -accelerating graphics-

Much drama. Such wow.