Presidential Election: 2012

[Omnis]

We want Santorum and Gingrich to stick in the race though. Even though they aren't on the ballot in half the states. Can't let Romney get the magic number.

 

[Liquid]

Can't let Romney get the magic number.

He'll lose against Obama. Only Paul could give the incumbent a run for his money.

 

[livemusic]

That's why Omnis said he can't get the magic number (of delegates).

 

[Liquid]

That's why Omnis said he can't get the magic number (of delegates).

Doesn't matter either way, because the general opinion here seems to be that Ron Paul is the #1 guy and both Romney and Obama are clones, as I alluded to a few pages back. Both won't be good Presidents, but Romney won't win even if he does get nominated.

It's a case of Paul getting delegates more than Romney not getting delegates. And thanks to the infighting amongst the mainstream candidates Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, the longer they're in the race taking votes off each other, the better it is for Paul to go about his business.

And the stories of electoral fraud remind me how 'grateful' I am to live in an elitist, populist Government with more backhanders than a tennis competition as opposed to the greatest democracy in the world. It's laughable, for all the wrong reasons and makes me sympathise for the Americans on this forum, most of whom seem to have a lot of opinionated sense, that they have to put up with this bile thanks to media outlets like FOX.

 

[Omnis]

I just hope the GOP becomes the Rand Paul, Jim DeMint party. Everyone except for Paul and Romney are retreads from a failed era, and then Romney is a corporate bedfellow of that era. Let the neocons form the CDP-- Cognitive Dissonance Party.

Here's the way I see this election:

Obama stays President: Good because it will mean that the GOP is a dinosaur and the neocons have no more power within the party. Bad because, well, the neocons have power in the other party and it doesn't make a difference.

Romney becomes President: You'd hope that it wouldn't be so bad, or that it would at least be better than Obama. But when things don't get better it's just going to galvanize a Hillary campaign or something to that effect. People will fight eachother while nobody changes policy. I think it would be a pyrrhic victory for the GOP, but the problem is that it would take another 4 to 8 years for it to change into what it needs to be instead of being ready for 2016. The only good thing that would come out of an Obama loss is that it would show that you don't have 8 years to do something anymore. I'm concerned with the amount of incumbent victories we've had the last few cycles. Everyone my age has grown up with Presidents in office for almost a decade. We need to start a trend of kicking them out sooner when they usher in huge recessions and wars.

The biggest thing with the GOP is that, in order for it to be something desirable to me, it would have to completely overhaul all local chairs. These guys are old fuddy duds that are caught in the web spun by Karl Rove. They can be bought off as we saw in Maine or they're just plain stuck with their minds beholden to the party elites that don't stand for anything.

The good news is that most of the people I talk to in college are ready to go in the right direction. Every young person supports the Paul/DeMint way. It's just a question of whether they'll get involved to affect change and whether they'll be corrupted somewhere along the way.

 

[Famine]

It's a case of Paul getting delegates more than Romney not getting delegates.

It's both.

There's 2,286 delegate places in total for the final party convention. If one candidate secures 1,144 delegates, it's game over. If not there's still debates to be had and there's still game left to play - the more Romney, Santorum and Gingrich take the same delegates off each other, the less likely any one of them is to score 1,144.

 

[Joey D]

As a Michigander, I want to apologize to everyone by having Santorum up by 9.3% compared to the rest of the field. I'm not even sure how or why those numbers shifted so far away from Romney, as I know not a single Republican that is supporting him.

Oh well, I guess if they want to give away the election, its easier to just nominate him in the first place.

I too would like to apologize for this as well.

===

They've already started running ads here for various things, the funniest one is be Romney though. He talks about how important the unions and the auto industry are to the state when he's been quoted saying that the US Government should have left the industry to fail. Whether you agreed with the bail out or not, I can tell you right now Michigan, or at least SE Michigan, would have been destroyed if any 1 of the Big 3 filed for bankruptcy and we, as Michiganders, can all see that.

With that said though Romney should win here, although if Santorum wins I fear the population of this state is truly stupid.

 

[TheBook]

I too would like to apologize for this as well.

===

They've already started running ads here for various things, the funniest one is be Romney though. He talks about how important the unions and the auto industry are to the state when he's been quoted saying that the US Government should have left the industry to fail. Whether you agreed with the bail out or not, I can tell you right now Michigan, or at least SE Michigan, would have been destroyed if any 1 of the Big 3 filed for bankruptcy and we, as Michiganders, can all see that.

With that said though Romney should win here, although if Santorum wins I fear the population of this state is truly stupid.

Michigan as a whole would have died, had one or both of the auto companies gone under. It would have started in Detroit and worked its way all the way across.

This primary will be the first election I've voted in, and I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Keef]

We want Santorum and Gingrich to stick in the race though. Even though they aren't on the ballot in half the states. Can't let Romney get the magic number.

No, we want Santorum and Gingrich out of the race because they're asininity distracts from the contrasts between Romney and Paul which is something that needs to be focused on at this point.

 

[Omnis]

This is from 2008 and it shows why politics is a sham:

No, we want Santorum and Gingrich out of the race because they're asininity distracts from the contrasts between Romney and Paul which is something that needs to be focused on at this point.

Gingrich and Santorum are mathematically disqualified from getting the nomination. It's just not possible for them to reach the clear-winner delegate threshold. If you take the two of them out and consider that half go to Paul and half go to Romney, then it still is possible for Romney to break the threshold.

Paul will win with the delegates anyway. Nobody else has more support. He just needs to keep Romney from crossing the winning threshold and then he can split wigs at the convention when the other two drop out.

 

[Keef]

Gingrich and Santorum are mathematically disqualified from getting the nomination. It's just not possible for them to reach the clear-winner delegate threshold. If you take the two of them out and consider that half go to Paul and half go to Romney, then it still is possible for Romney to break the threshold.

Paul will win with the delegates anyway. Nobody else has more support. He just needs to keep Romney from crossing the winning threshold and then he can split wigs at the convention when the other two drop out.

I'm not about to declare anybody a winner of anything. I am prepared to say that Romney will not beat Obama without the sizable group of core Paul voters like you and I. The other two candidates are just wasting time, and the reason they're doing it is because they want to distract the media away from Paul vs. Romney so Paul gets less coverage.

 

[YSSMAN]

Whether you agreed with the bail out or not, I can tell you right now Michigan, or at least SE Michigan, would have been destroyed if any 1 of the Big 3 filed for bankruptcy and we, as Michiganders, can all see that.

With that said though Romney should win here, although if Santorum wins I fear the population of this state is truly stupid.

And here is the thing: All of the candidates were against the bailout. We can all point to Romney's article about telling Detroit to drop-dead, but they were all against it... They still are... And every single one of them would have proudly put Michigan in a worse position without thinking twice about it.

Honestly, the only Republican I respect in this state is Governor Snyder. As much as I hate 35% of his policies, he's done a damn good job of getting things done while pissing off both parties. If that's the case, you know you're doing the right thing. The circlejerk the other day on Reddit about the City Manager fiasco demonstrated something really important to me. Michiganders come in a wide variety of social, political and economic colors. But when it really comes down to it, when things get really bad around here, we choose to do the hard thing, and it normally comes out better in the end.

 

[Biggles]

It’s hard to know where to start with you Famine, as you continue to pile one questionable claim on top of another in order to come up with yet another.

Famine: Math is, of course, independent of the mathematician - as logic is of the mind.

There is no “of course” involved. Just like your “First Truth”, the casual assumptions that you make are not shared by the experts in those respective fields, who, at the very least, would regard statements of that sort as extremely contentious. I would suggest you take the time to read more deeply on these subjects, as I think you would then be less likely to make such sweeping statements.

For example:

Physicist, Stephen Wolfram: “For a long time, I’ve been interested in the essence of mathematics. Is today’s mathematics the only possible mathematics, or is it a mathematics that is sort of a great artifact of our civilization?” His “resounding” conclusion is that “the mathematics that we have today is in fact a historical artifact."

"I suspect that if we were to just sort of ask mathematical questions arbitrarily, the vast majority of them would end up turning out to be unsolvable. We just don’t see it because the particular way that our mathematics has progressed historically has tended to avoid it. Now, you might say, ‘But mathematics is a good model of the natural world.’ I think there’s kind of a circular argument here because what’s happened is that those things which have been successfully addressed in science when studying the natural world are just those things that mathematical methods have successfully allowed us to address."

Mathematician, Gregory Chaitin: “When you’re a mathematician and you find something that feels really fundamental, you may think that if you hadn’t found it, somebody else would have because in some sense it’s got to be there. But some mathematics feels much more contrived. … If you look into the inner recesses of many mathematicians, and I include myself, you find that we have this theological medieval belief in this Platonic world of perfect ideas of mathematical concepts... But, is it all a game that we just invent as we go along? ... My final conclusion after a lifetime obsessed with mathematics, is that mathematicians should behave a little bit more like experimental scientists do. If they do computer experiments and see that something seems to be the case, but they can’t prove it, and yet this something is a very useful truth if it were true, then maybe they should add that as a new axiom. Mathematicians will reel back in horror, but I think my work pushes in this direction. I’ve been forced against my will toward saying that mathematics is empirical—or, to put it in other words, we invent it as we go.”

The best simple, general summary of this I have read is this:

"All laws, whether logic or science, are merely observations on how the universe we live in behaves. There are no laws out there that cause things to happen a certain way. Rather the law is a description of how things behave. That is, a law is how a human mind needs to express the relationships that things have to each other, whether causal, mathematical, or logical. If there are alien life forms that have something we might call intelligence, they might express laws differently but the only disagreement would be which expressed how the universe was and is best, which was most useful, and which could predict future behavior best."

In my opinion, libertarianism is a product of 18th century thinking – the "Age of Reason". Locke may have been a rationalist, but he was also an idealist, describing the world as he thought it should be, rather than as it was. Even in the 18th century, Hume sounded a more skeptical note by describing the “is – ought” problem.

There has been a lot of water under the bridge since Locke’s time: scientific, technological, philosophical, social, political – you name it. Our understanding of the way the universe works, our relationship to the universe & to each other - has changed in that period of time. Like Newtonian physics, libertarian ideas are rational, logical & remain useful ways of understanding the world – they are not “illogical” or “wrong” but they need to be modified & added to by our subsequent knowledge & understanding. What we need now is not a dogmatic idealogy based on an 18th century way of looking at the world, but an approach that provides the best solutions in the present day.

 

[Famine]

It’s hard to know where to start with you Famine

Use logic to demonstrate why logic is wrong. It is, literally, all that is asked of you. Until you do, don't "start".

The best simple, general summary of this I have read is this:

"All laws, whether logic or science, are merely observations on how the universe we live in behaves. There are no laws out there that cause things to happen a certain way. Rather the law is a description of how things behave. That is, a law is how a human mind needs to express the relationships that things have to each other, whether causal, mathematical, or logical. If there are alien life forms that have something we might call intelligence, they might express laws differently but the only disagreement would be which expressed how the universe was and is best, which was most useful, and which could predict future behavior best."

Congratulations - you just quoted the definition of science (more specifically the definition of a Law in science) and showed how math, physics and logic are independent of the thinker. Like I done gone said.


Any thoughts on, you know, the GOP primaries?

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

Use logic to demonstrate why logic is wrong. It is, literally, all that is asked of you. Until you do, don't "start".



Congratulations - you just quoted the definition of science (more specifically the definition of a Law in science) and showed how math, physics and logic are independent of the thinker. Like I done gone said.


Any thoughts on, you know, the GOP primaries?

HAHAHAH Finally, you force him to go down the subject of this thread. Also the bolded part is funny.

I think Bob Barr has a real chance this season...oh yeah it's not 2008 anymore.

 

[homeforsummer]

You should check out the podcast. They don't get through the news without at least one 20 minute rich, white guy rant from Adam. And I think he manages to anger at least one special interest group every few months and one pretentious celebrity (the latest is Kevin Smith) a year.

I'm a listener too (off topic, if you don't already, search for Carcast - another of his, car-based, equally brilliant). Find him hilarious and also find myself agreeing with most of what he says. Will have to listen to that episode as I'm also a bit behind with them at the moment.

 

[FoolKiller]

So, here is a bit of conspiracy thinking regarding Ron Paul possibly being censored.


First, a compilation of all of Ron Paul's technical difficulties.




And then Chris Matthews blatantly ignores Ron Paul in a favorability poll, and even discusses the election for eight minutes without mentioning Dr. Paul.




And finally, Ben Swann follows up his report on the Maine Caucus.

 

[LMSCorvetteGT2]

I have the feeling that this actually going on and have felt this way for a while. The problem is I think it is done to such a degree to make the people or rest of the masses that are planning on voting at least GOP wise see the Ron Paul camp as conspiracy theorist. That we all have the theory that Paul isn't being shafted, even when it is exposed as such they would like others to believe that haven't been brought over to the Paul camp that voters of Ron are theorist and thus so is the man they want elected.

Obviously there is something going on. When poll numbers, news paper articles, national and local medias redact items like some kind of CIA release one with a rational bit of clarity must ask why isn't everything being shown? Is it because of the GOP or a more bilateral system in play of a higher orgin?

 

[Biggles]

math, physics and logic are independent of the thinker

No, it is not clear that they have any absolute or objective existence outside of the ability of the human mind to conceive them. Math, physics & logic today are dramatically different from they way they were understood 200 years ago & will no doubt be dramatically different from they way they are now in another 200 years. Newtonian physics were held to be objectively correct for over 200 years until Einstein came along. Einstein's ideas are now being further modified ... & so it goes on.

That is, a law is how a human mind needs to express the relationships that things have to each other, whether causal, mathematical, or logical.

the mathematics that we have today is in fact a historical artifact."

I’ve been forced against my will toward saying that mathematics is empirical—or, to put it in other words, we invent it as we go

Use logic to demonstrate why logic is wrong.

Clearly a pointless excercise - if logic were "wrong", using logic to prove it wrong, wouldn't prove anything.

Logic isn't "wrong". Claiming that, in human affairs, every scenario has a single correct answer, like a math calculation, is wrong, however. You can't make such a sweeping statement & back it up simply by claiming that "logic demands it", without laying out in detail, how & why.

Any thoughts on, you know, the GOP primaries?

Full marks for entertainment value. The Republican establishment is caught between the need to energize the "base", & fear of what that energized base represents. So there's been a parade of Tea Party/Christian-Right sanctioned front-running candidates from Bachman, to Perry, to Cain to Gingrich & now Santorum. Ron Paul continues to plug away consistently, but in the end his constituency isn't large enough to make it possible for him to win the nomination. The only question is, is there a place anywhere in the GOP or the US political system for his voice to have any meaningful impact? In a system with some kind of proportional representation it would be possible for Paul to exercise significant influence over policy making. I'm not sure whether that possibility exists within the monolithic structure of US politics.

I still think Romney will win the nomination - although a last minute appearance by Palin or Trump would provide further outstanding entertainment. If the US economy shows consistent signs of improvement, Obama will win a second term. If not, it could be a very, very tight election.

 

[Keef]

You guys remember Hermain Cain's ridiculous "smoking man" ad? Well...

 

[Famine]

No, it is not clear that they have any absolute or objective existence outside of the ability of the human mind to conceive them. Math, physics & logic today are dramatically different from they way they were understood 200 years ago & will no doubt be dramatically different from they way they are now in another 200 years. Newtonian physics were held to be objectively correct for over 200 years until Einstein came along. Einstein's ideas are now being further modified ... & so it goes on.

You're describing the mutability of our understanding of physics - or math or logic - which is subjective and not physics - or math or logic - itself.

So yes you can use logic to disprove logic - you objectively show why reasoning held as objective is subjective... The invitation still stands.

Full marks for entertainment value. The Republican establishment is caught between the need to energize the "base", & fear of what that energized base represents. So there's been a parade of Tea Party/Christian-Right sanctioned front-running candidates from Bachman, to Perry, to Cain to Gingrich & now Santorum. Ron Paul continues to plug away consistently, but in the end his constituency isn't large enough to make it possible for him to win the nomination. The only question is, is there a place anywhere in the GOP or the US political system for his voice to have any meaningful impact? In a system with some kind of proportional representation it would be possible for Paul to exercise significant influence over policy making. I'm not sure whether that possibility exists within the monolithic structure of US politics.

I still think Romney will win the nomination - although a last minute appearance by Palin or Trump would provide further outstanding entertainment. If the US economy shows consistent signs of improvement, Obama will win a second term. If not, it could be a very, very tight election.

I'd love to see Sarah "Kiss of Death" Palin come in and speak up for Romney

In any case, the Paul camp have shown quite compelling information that says that, though they haven't actually won any one of the nine States so far on the popular vote - the only candidate of the four not to have done so - they have in fact won four of them on delegate counts. It is the delegates that go to the National Convention, rather than the Republican voters...

 

[Sach]

Why do we have national funding for the arts? I would cut it 100%.

The question is: Why shouldn't we have (far more) funding for the arts? Really, I'd like to know why you would think such a thing.



Let me guess, the arts are of no value to a society?

 

[Keef]

How is a Frenchman going to come in here and start talking about government-subsidized fine art.

Just about every function of society can be handled more efficiently by private entities and individuals. The government shouldn't sponsor anything - it should only exist to protect life, liberty, and property, and do nothing else.

 

[Sach]

How is a Frenchman going to come in here and start talking about government-subsidized fine art.

Just about every function of society can be handled more efficiently by private entities and individuals. The government shouldn't sponsor anything - it should only exist to protect life, liberty, and property, and do nothing else.

The fundamental error in the (forgive my stereotype) Republican-private-entity theory is that competition amongst the private parties will lead to higher quality production and quality of life for the rest of us.


First of all, how in the hell does this apply to the arts? I honestly don't think that anyone who believes that funding for the arts should be cut is even capable of answering that question in the first place, because if they think that way they understand absolutely nothing about the situation concerning the arts in our society today. And market competition amongst the arts is an utterly absurd notion, contradictory to the nature of the arts' existence in the first place.

Secondly, this assumption completely ignores the blatant fact that societal control, especially on the global level, has been on a skyrocket course toward corporate ownership in the past 50 years. It's moving so fast that you're still stuck in Regan-era thinking, when in fact the time of that thinking has long past. The decline of the middle class is a direct result of corporate dominance. Our current society is not filled with endless innocent small-scale private entities as you would like to believe. Things are deluded and wasted just as much by corporate interests, especially when they have dismantled the competition (the small-scale people you seem to think have a real shot). As soon as corporate interests assume control over things necessary to a society they no longer have to strive against anything else to win over our dollars, or whatever is of interest to them. Quality of life/products/culture declines rapidly at this point, arguably well beyond the paranoid fears of what a socialist society would likewise produce.

The government shouldn't sponsor anything - it should only exist to protect life, liberty, and property, and do nothing else.

I find comments like these funny as well, when the people who make them also claim that the government should be one "of the people". In what ways then? The ones you pick and choose? You simply choose not to pick the arts, and you are in denial that you are merely exercising a subjective opinion.




Think about it, who are actually the private entities in the US? The US doesn't produce anything. It has given its citizens' jobs to those in other countries, it has given its auto industry to other countries, it imports a vast amount of its produce from other countries, same with technological devices, etc. The private interests in America are vastly non-American! Corporate (and quite frankly, Republican) interests are not invested in the American workforce. They are not interested in a country that provides for itself. They are interested in growing corporate, global monoliths that they can have their shares in at the expense of the middle class.



Ironic that you would choose to live in a society controlled by corporate interests (equally "big brother"), out of a fear that your own government shouldn't have control.

 

[Keef]

First of all, how in the hell does this apply to the arts?

Woot! There's only 2 hours left to make the quota for the $15,000 bonus! Most of the cheap precincts are gone but if you've got $30 to spend on mailing super brochures then there's plenty of options for you.

 

[Sach]

I live here, smart guy.



Any intelligent answers? And do you also think that you are not currently living under socialist provision as it is?

 

[arora]

And do you also think that you are not currently living under socialist provision as it is?

That makes it ok then? A bad analogy but should get my opinion across. If I ate tainted beef every day for years and couldn't figure out why I was always sick, and my neighbors where doing the same, well, they day the butcher figures out there is a problem, that is the day we would all stop eating it.

 

[Sach]

That makes it ok then? A bad analogy but should get my opinion across. If I ate tainted beef every day for years and couldn't figure out why I was always sick, and my neighbors where doing the same, well, they day the butcher figures out there is a problem, that is the day we would all stop eating it.

If you ate tainted meat every day, which led you to have chronic digestion problems, but died in the end of overlooked cancer, which would be worse?

 

[arora]

If you are saying without a socialist government we will all die of cancer then I'd say I'll die with the cancer, but I don't believe we need such a government to advance medicine. If that's not what you are saying then I don't understand your post.

 

[Sach]

Who currently controls the vast majority of the farming industry in America? Is it American farmers?


Who currently owns patents on seed production, and has begun weeding out independent farmers (private entities) by raising prices on seed production necessary for them to maintain an income through farming?


In the past 10 years, what exactly has been done by 'private entities' to bolster long-term job production in America that is concerned with anything other than the providing mundane services ('Starbucks jobs')? More specifically, what have private entities done in the past 10 years to create an American presence in the global economy through American-made exports?

As you answer that question, also ask yourself how China and India's economies have grown to the point that we are now 'scared' of what China can do? Hint: It might have something to do with their auto industry. Now, stop for one second and go look up a picture of what Detroit currently is, compared to what it was. And while you're at it, go count the number of American-made vehicles that are parked on your Washington D.C. street.





Still waiting for Keef to demonstrate how 'private entities' have the investment in American citizens in mind, specifically by proving that those entities are as a majority, non-corporate, and even more specifically to show that America is not in fact the tit that the real global economic powers have been sucking dry in the name of 'free-market competition' since the free market has gone corporately disinterested.