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Vader

The Next President

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14 hours ago, sucks2Bme said:

 

I have always been taught and read that it is intentionally vague because the Constitution was meant to be a living document hat could be changed with time as society and the people under it changed. The founders were smart and if anything got overestimated, it was the people of the future. The Constitution was also written at a time when the US was supposed to be weaker federally and executive-ally (?) and the states were supposed to have more - at least as I understand it but its been a while - which changed after the Civil War. 

 

Yeah, that's how I always looked at it, they built in the mechanics to change it becaus ethey knew society/the country would change with time. Hard enough where we couldn't do it willy nilly but we would have the ability to do that.

 

So how about that debate? That looked pretty rough for Trump. Also did anyone notice the jacked up white balance on Clinton's camera? Very odd. 

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It was a little disappointing - Trump didn't seem as brash and crazy and I guess I was looking forward to the crazy. Hillary did a great job and the more I see her the more confidence I have in her. 

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So I mailed my mail-in vote ballot yesterday here in Illinois, man what a good way to do things. I was able to leisurely do research on each of the races and make actual informed decisions on most things.

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Paddy Power has a long history of controversial advertising that they use to drum up business. To me, this is just another side to that. They get a bunch of retweets and shares and it gets posted here and probably other places. Clinton has such a high chance of winning that it makes no difference to them if they pay out now or later, except that they get free advertising now.

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Has the press in the US and the world become incompetent and almost useless, or has it always been like this in one way or another? Headlines portraying the election race as tightening, but that isn't really happening is it now? The Princeton site now predicts 100% chance for Clinton.

 

Press freedom is being wasted on sensationalism all around the world I guess.

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4 hours ago, Erkki said:

Has the press in the US and the world become incompetent and almost useless, or has it always been like this in one way or another? Headlines portraying the election race as tightening, but that isn't really happening is it now? The Princeton site now predicts 100% chance for Clinton.

 

Press freedom is being wasted on sensationalism all around the world I guess.

This election has been the culmination of multiple long term issues in this country. The mainstream media's obsession with being 'balanced' even when one side is 100% wrong while at the same time pretending that Republican ideas and Democrat ideas are the only kind of ideas that exist, news programs that are more focused on being entertaining and drawing viewers than informing them, the desire for every political race to be super close so more people will watch the news and a very long campaign by right wing media to discredit more centrist media.

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18 minutes ago, Cordeos said:

This election has been the culmination of multiple long term issues in this country. The mainstream media's obsession with being 'balanced' even when one side is 100% wrong while at the same time pretending that Republican ideas and Democrat ideas are the only kind of ideas that exist, news programs that are more focused on being entertaining and drawing viewers than informing them, the desire for every political race to be super close so more people will watch the news and a very long campaign by right wing media to discredit more centrist media.

 

Yeah, it's shocking how terrible the 24 hour news cycle is; it seems to hard to fix though. 

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I think the attempt at fake balance is less harmful than the elevation of the horse race as the only newsworthy part of the election. Media companies have basically adopted the sports coverage model for politics. Rather than debating the potential impact of any policy proposal, event, or scandal on the American people or the world, television talking heads chatter endlessly about what that day's events mean for the election as if the election is an end unto itself.

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To me the worst aspect of the whole system is how emphatically all media companies, both what you might consider old and new, solicit uninformed opinions about things while providing almost no context.  I constantly see polls based on questions like "Should Hillary go to Jail", and I don't know how a reasonable person could construct that poll with any intent but to solicit the worst kind of reaction out of people.  If you watch even a half hour of cable news today you can see how the whole endeavor was designed to create conflict that the hosts and audience can revel in for as long as it can be made to last.  Media companies have just become places where people are encouraged and rewarded for confirming their bias, and as much as I might agree with a lot of their positions liberal publications like the Huffington Post are absolutely the worst offender in this regard.  I can't recall how many times I've seen a headline in these massive, panic inducing, bold block letters making some person out to be horrible or a situation to be dire only to read it and wonder how the hell they even came up with that title.  I can see how one might write off the headline as being separate from the article, but I think today the headline can in most cases be more important than the article itself, or at the very least what is perceived as it's sentiment.

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I don't know how big the media's effect on this is, but to me the fact that Trump still has so much support even when he loses, shows that this election is much less about the persons than everyone thinks and more about the parties. But on the other hand, maybe to the part of the electorate who is not set in stone and who decides which way the scales fall, it is more about the persons.

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I think to some degree that's been the case for some time now.  You could run a C'thulu/Satan ticket and it would still get 40% of the vote because party loyalty is a stupid thing that exists.  The argument most people have for Trump has mostly to do with the Supreme court and US foreign policy from my experience.  As much as the economy, immigration and so on get a lot of play in the news, Trump more than anything seems to be a response to globalization and the US role in the world order.  For most people, particularly those who live in rural areas, all they know about US foreign policy is that we spend millions if not billions outside our borders only for the rest of the world to hate us for it.  That might seem like an oversimplification, and to some extent it is, but in all the conversations I've had with enthusiastic Trump supporters that's a pretty common sentiment.  If you look at the US foreign policy, particularly when it comes to things like Russian aggression in Europe, or trade deals in Asia, the conservative opinion more often than not is to ask why we're even involved.  It's no surprise that Trump enjoys a high level of popularity among the most selfish fucking generation in US or even world history

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On 11/3/2016 at 3:59 AM, Erkki said:

Has the press in the US and the world become incompetent and almost useless, or has it always been like this in one way or another? Headlines portraying the election race as tightening, but that isn't really happening is it now? The Princeton site now predicts 100% chance for Clinton.

 

Press freedom is being wasted on sensationalism all around the world I guess.

 

Yes, the race is tightening. That is factual. The question of whether that has an impact on the outcome is a different set of parameters.

 

In Imaginationland, if Candidate A is up by 15 points 1 week before the election they are >99.9% to win. If they drop to 10 points up, they're still >99.9% to win but it's also still true that the race is tightening.

 

Some website ran a headline that said "Clinton Down 7 Points in New York" within the last week. A sane person reads this and interprets that as Clinton having a 7 point deficit in the polls. What it ACTUALLY said was her support had gone from Clinton +24 to Clinton +17 in one set of polling data. It's all about shock, and how data is interpreted.

 

It also shouldn't say 100%, I think he corrected that.

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Okay, American friends. Say that I wanted to follow election night from the internet. What would be a good place to do that from? NY Times?

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Guardian promised some kind of fancy real time phone alert, but it doesn't work for me. Or it hasn't started yet?

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Nothing will happen until polls start closing. So at like 7 or 8 pm eastern you'll get the first wave, and then every hour after that till like 9pm Pacific (12am eastern) if it's a landslide they will 'call' the election before that point in favor of one candidate. In close states it'll take longer for ballots to be counted and recounted, so it's possible not all states will report in before the end of the night.

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My plan is to have NPR or NYT on half my screen and local NPR on my other half. Need to find out who wins those school board seats!

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12 minutes ago, Vulpes Absurda said:

Holy shit I'm so fucking scared. I'm so scared.

 

Yup. I'm not even american  and it's almost 3am where I live but everyone I know around here are glued to their screens and terrified too, trying to not lose hope. :/

 

What a fucking joke 2016 has been for politics everywhere. Sending good vibes!

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WHAT IS GOING ON

 

WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING OVER THERE

 

STOP IIIIIITTTTTTTTT

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Damn, I guess the original thread title was prophetic. 

I would like to say I was surprised, but after Brexit I can sort of see anything happen.

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Trump now needs 4 points to win.

 

My apologies to all the Americans on this forum.

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