Hermit wrote:Forty Two wrote:Hermit wrote:Forty Two wrote:The real question is, why would they need privately run food banks in a civilized country which takes care of its poor? Hasn't Canada, Europe and other "civilized" countries gotten a handle on this already?
There are degrees of civilisation. Canada, for instance, is currently governed by the Liberal party. Certainly more civilised than being governed by reactionary fuckknuckles like yours is about to be because a plurality of your voters want it that way, and whose wish has been granted through the agency of you Electoral Collegiate system, but not as civilised as countries governed by parties who still fundamentally support capitalism but temper it with policies based on compassion, altruism and empathy, those qualities being collectively known as "civilised".
This is a failure to understand the US system.
Oh, I understand alright. In parliamentary systems the executive is elected by direct popular vote. In the US system it isn't.
Not correct. In parliamentary systems, generally speaking, the public only votes for their member of parliament (equivalent of Congressman in the US). The MPs then select the executive by vote of Parliament. The voting public has no say. Examples = Canada and the United Kingdom. So, it's like if the US Congress picked the President.
Hermit wrote:
The irony is that one of the purposes for which the US electoral college was originally instituted actually brought about the opposite of what it was designed to ensure, namely, in Hamilton's words: "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States."
It is not a "given" that Hillary Clinton was a person meeting such qualifications. I sure don't agree that she had the kind of merit to establish her in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union.
Hermit wrote:
What you got in this election, is a candidate with many years of experience working in the US administration receiving a plurality of the vote, and another candidate whose qualifications consist of repeatedly declaring bankruptcies, proudly relating how he grabs them by the pussy, changing hid mind on policies more often than he changes his underpants, never having served in any capacity as a servant to the public and basically persuading the masses to vote for him because he's going to make America great again.
That's your view. Another view is that what we got in this election was a candidate who lies incessantly, and who broke the law relative to classified information and lied about it, lied about her activities and the US's activities in Libya, participated in a rigged primary where collusion existed between her campaign and the Democratic National Committee to improperly subvert the primary process, where she received debate questions in advance of debates and said nothing about it, where her campaign officials admitted to cheating in elections and were fired for it, where she lied about being under hostile gunfire, where she lied about her health, where she was extremely hawkish about war with Russia, using her super-PAC to take 10s of millions of dollars of foreign donations, and operating a "friends of Bill" pay to play system and basically using her Foundation as a money making scheme.... As Bernie Sanders said "I don't think you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC."I don't think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don't think you are qualified if you've supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent-paying jobs. I don't think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know, has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries."
Hermit wrote:
And then there is another task the EC was established for, and that it has arguably failed in. It was supposed to protect the US government (Hamilton again) "from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils."
Hillary had far more established connections with foreign powers, given her unprecedented receipts of money from foreign governments and other sources.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... a33ef82349 and
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/po ... .html?_r=0
Hermit wrote:
Anticipating you using the second and third paragraph to ignore the first, let me repeat: I understand the US system alright. In parliamentary systems the executive is elected by direct popular vote. In the US system it isn't. I added the next two merely in order to point out that it isn't working as it was designed to work.
Well, which parliamentary country are you referring to? In Canada, only the people in Justin Trudeau's riding voted for or against him. Every other riding voted for or against candidates for MP to represent that riding. The chief executive of Canada was voted in by coalition of the MPs. If the US was to mimic that process, then the US Congress would elect the President.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar