You know that not all those demographics are socially, and even legally equal, right? That it's important to look at what women or blacks or hispanics are voting for because they have different concerns from you, Straight White Male, playing through life on the easiest difficulty setting?

also it never ceases to amaze me, how close the popular votes really are. as of now Obama has won the popular vote by a little over 1.3 million votes. It's still at 50% Obama 49% Romney.

the joke is the abrahamic god literally is that
E: oops the page moved

To a certain extent politicians still focus campaigning in an unbalanced manner. a state like California that has consistently voted democrat since... i don't even know when does not get NEARLY the amount of campaigning as a swing state does.

I am sure it is probably the more reliable of several ****ty ways of doing it, but it really kind of make me raise my eyebrows when a full 40% of the population of a state votes for one candidate, yet not one electoral vote goes to that candidate.

States can allocate their college votes however they want.

and that usually (nearly always) ends up being winner takes all.

I've always felt a proportional electoral assignment was the best method.
Anyways. What was I here to bring up. Oh right!
My state legalized gay marriage to pot dealers, so yay for that. Also, I've spent a long time looking at the polls coming out of Puerto Rico and reading up on what they mean, and all signs point to them having just approved statehood, so now all the flags are wrong.

-Everything's changing, yay~

whoa.... that seems like it could be fairly significant.

"Mind if we join your failed state?"

It still has to be approved by Congress but I don't see it being much of a problem.

Fox News will lament Puerto Rico joining the union as a way to pad the Hispanic vote.

But is his Lambo blue?

Yes, a lot of software is going to break

The three things I liked:

1. All the dumbasses who said horrible things about rape got voted out
2. More states legalizing gay marriage and more states legalizing medicinal, or recreational, marijuana
3. That it ended up being quite decisive (3 mil) as opposed to 2000

I'm excited to see Obama in a second term when he doesn't have to worry about re-election.

I really want to take a trip to Colorado or Washington now.

It's only legal to split them in Maine and Nebraska, I thought.

Some things I liked about this election:

• Akin and Mourdock got the boot. Two sentences literally cost the Republicans seats in the senate.
• Elizabeth Warren won her race on a platform of kicking wall street in the ass.
• Paul Ryan will never be on another presidential ticket.
• Conservatives have learned they need to divorce themselves from the fundie-inspired social conservatism to remain competitive.

Some things I didn't like:

• How close we came to electing a blatant liar, the worst by far, as president. It's not his politics that bug me, it's the precedent that it's okay to lie and cheat your way into the presidency that Americans almost set.
• Stein and Johnson only got ~1.2% of the popular vote. I'd like to see either party reach the 5% threshold to unlock 20 million in federal funding.

Personally I'm wondering how it could be as close as it was, and the only thing I can think of is Citizens United. People keep saying it's heartening to see that it had no effect on the election, but can we really be sure? What if the reason we have the same government (president, house, senate) as four years ago is because Citizens United prevented a more radical progressive shift?

Jesus Christ (no pun intended), I'm tired of all of these dumbasses that the election has stirred up.

HURR MY GOD PREFERS AMUURIKA CUZ WE'RE THE ONLY FREE COUNTREE IN DA WURLD. WE SHULDNT INPRUVE AR MEDIKAL KARE BECUZ IT'LL RUIN OUR MEDIKAL KARE, OR GIVE WOMEN, HOMOS AR ATHIESTS AR DEM MOOSLEMS AR DEM MEXECANZ EKWUAL RITES BECUZ GOD DOESNT INTEND FAR IT. JUS LOOK AT NEW YORK AND NEW JIRSEE, THEY LEIKD DEM HOMOS AN GOD SET EM STR8. WE SHULD STOP KILLIN BABBIES AND GIT AR GUNZ B4 DA GUBMINT TAEKS DEM AWAI. FUKKIN OBAMA STEALIN MAH FAVURRED DIP. I IZ GONN VOTE FOR THE LESSER OF EVILS OF THE TWO PARTIES, EVAN WEN GIVEN A DOZEN OPTIONS CUZ WE NEED TO CHANGE FROM DIS MESSED UP TWO PARTEE SISTEM. DUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

In short, I just wish to apologize to the world for the hurricane of stupid that is a large portion of America. I swear that we're not all like this.....

..... I think....

Because these are things that will always matter as long as we have a major political party dedicated to the preservation of white male privilege.

What depressing year. The liberals are pretentious douche-bags, the republicans are nothing but an intellectually empty knee-jerk reaction to said douchbaggery, and everyone has decided that everyone else is stupid. As far as I can tell it looks like there's a lower chance of us invading Iran, and that's the only thing that I was really worried about.

Seem kinda likeyou've mostly decided that everyone else is stupid?

Actually no, not at all. I think most people are actually plenty smart. However, it's emotionally convenient and satisfying to take strong, socially defined positions. Admitting that you just don't know with any real confidence is not emotionally satisfying.

What? Depressing, year.

There's a pretty strong correlation between education and liberal thought. See here, for instance: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Political_beliefs_of_academics. Statistically, a liberal is much less likely to be pretentious than a republican. You might just have a hard time telling the difference.

No, they aren't. They're a cunning and deliberate proaction to generate douchebaggery. There's a difference between appealing to unintelligent, uneducated people and being unintelligent, uneducated people. The Republicans know exactly what they're doing and why they are doing it, especially with the Tea Party takeover orchestrated by the Koch brothers and Dick Armey.

lol.

In response to saberopus (in response to Obi_Kwiet)): Could be true, since he wants them to be quite.

Every complex problem has a simple but wrong solution, such as Ron Paul, nihilism / not voting at all, etc.

I think Winston Churchill's thoughts on democracy are more instructive.

Having said that, there are some serious structual problems with US democracy. I feel they have to do with the the ridiculous borrowing leverage the US has had and how financially overextended it has become (in large part from the whole Bush war racket). George Carlin would just attribute it to garbage-in => garbage-out (selfish ignorant voters =>selfish ignorant politicians). Of course, if there weren't so many ignorant hicks in flyover country clinging to guns and religion, there might have actually been a legitimate opposition party to curtail the left's excesses.

Why are programs intended to dampen the business cycle the "left's excesses", but you give a pass for massive and unnecessary subsidies on commercial farming, mining, oil, and investment; market protectionism for American steel, beef and lumber; and trillions of dollars for proposed and current tax cuts? Shouldn't you be happy there is a legitimate opposition party to curtail the right's excesses?

You have one party that wants a little bit of socialism for everyone, and another party that wants complete socialism for a hand-picked few.

Apparently equality is excessive now.

No, you don't understand. They're pretentious because they're educated.

Well I'm really talking about moral pretentiousness, but either way, a college education doesn't exactly make you an expert on economics or other complex social issues. Ideally, college educated people would have a much greater appreciation for their lack of competence in those areas, but I haven't seen anything that would indicate that this is the case.

If you are actually trying to imply that you've supported a causal relationship between knowledge and liberal opinions, it's probably not even worth arguing the point.



Well, I'm talking about the constituency rather than the party leaders. In both cases there's a pretty big difference in perspective.

Certainly; I'm an equal-opportunity critic. Obama's constituency surely benefited from government spending, but I'm sure the administration still meant well and founded the policy on mainstream economic wisdom. Your next post hit the mark exactly on my feelings about how the right differs here: I can't call the right's blatant corruption an "excess", since the word implies that a smaller amount would have been beneficial. To the contrary, things like farm subsidies and drug prohibition are bad policy at any scale.

There are conservatives who mean well, but their ideology so greatly conflicts with reality, that they feel the need to repeat talking points to isolate themselves from harsh truths. Kind of like religion. Maybe Wookie06 would have something to say here, but unfortunately, such simple beings often have no off switch.

I've stopped voting based on ideology and just go for the guy I feel hasn't lead a campaign of ridiculous distortions and appeals to ignorance.

I've gained a great deal of respect for highly educated people as I've grown older. A million monkeys couldn't parallel the works of Shakespeare, you know? One thing that really irks me about the U.S. relates to a quote I heard here by Asimov:



I would just die without NPR, for example.

Also,http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pretentious

Perhaps this doesn't apply to many pursuing soft majors like business and politics, but I've found studying a technical subject at a college to be a very humbling experience. Of course, I've also found that a study of history with an open mind can also be eye-opening and humbling.

Maybe you're confusing pretentiousness with elitism? I mean, isn't it proper to increase one's ego proportionally to knowledge and abilities? At least the academic left's "elitism" is based on intellectual merit and not on coming out on the top of the heap of the dog-eat-dog, dollar chasing "real" world.

Wow, really? Just look at your average (white, possibly decently wealthy), selfish, ignorant Republican voter. Usually these folks just finished high school and pursued the almighty buck or joined the military, or perhaps majored in a non-science degree, or finally, were intelligent but used their abilities to become a greedy lawyer, accountant or whatever.

Unfortunately, it also seems that degrees in the elite, but non-scientific disciplines are infinitely more respected in electoral politics than a career in hard science.

I mean, suppose Steven Chu isn't a political genius; he nevertheless is a hell of a physicist, and therefore knows quite a bit about honesty:

--Feynman

Um yeah, like all of those college-educated economists who warned Bush that financial deregulation would lead to an economic collapse, or those college-educated earth scientists who are currently warning us that our food supply is being directly threatened by anthropogenic climate change. Those guys definitely aren't experts. The GOP said as much.

At best a strawman.

The entire country benefited from government spending, not just Obama's "constituency" (by which I assume you mean poor/black people, even though his largest donors are rich software engineers. Idk?)

Social programs, support for higher rates of taxation, fiscal and monetary policy have dampened the effects of the business cycle while protecting labor capital from economic volatility. The net result is that the American economy has retained a greater potential output than it would have otherwise. That means the prices of a lot of things (e.g. construction) will be more stable in the long run. It costs a lot of money, but the alternative costs a lot more.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.

The ivory tower liberal elite eggheads? What moral pretentiousness. Not like those good Christians on the right who think the sick and poor deserve to die because they're lazy and/or look different.

I should realize that I'm not qualified to judge the effectiveness of the various stimulus programs (and therefore dismiss any specific amount of it as pork), but I will certainly concede that the traditional American system of markets and limited government is pretty horrendous at long-term investment. I'm all for investment in education and infrastructure, and for economic stimulus if the academic experts prescribe it.

Having said that, when conjuring excesses of the left, teachers unions come to mind.

kill me

(double post)

Okay, I said they come to mind. I admit my ignorance on the matter, but would you please let me in on why their negative reputation is mistaken?

(I guess I was channeling Darth_Alran here.)

Is educating the next generation of voters really where you want to pinch pennies?