obfuscator

goon is probably the spammer tbh

desperate times call for desperate measures

it's funny because on one hand, all the mods seem to be offline... but on the other hand, there's only 6 members online (including the spammer), so it's like nobody's going to even see the spam anyway lol I, for one, applaud him for breathing new life into otherwise-dead subforums and I just hope that he participates in the coveted Miss Hottie finals before his departure silverion is probably getting a notification about dangerously high server load right about now

yeah....wonder how long that stuff will stay up? some of the previous spam from 5 days ago is still up edit: 1 mod and 2 admins (of the entire team) have even logged into the forums in the past month

Just a note on chicago, their city-wide handgun ban is no longer in effect, as it was found unconstitutional (and also mostly useless)

we must know who is the hottie-est

right hand looks like it's like a left hand...couldn't tell you why, I don't know anything about art. agreed on the arms. I like the style in general though

again, I agree completely...but this isn't a problem with the electoral college, or FPTP - and it's solved much more simply than changing either of those things. Ok, I'm listening. What is the more simple solution? corporate donation bans, tighter personal donation caps, stricter lobbying rules....all things plenty of other similar democracies have Obviously there's plenty of reason for people currently in power (in many parties) not to go for this, but they're equally or more incentivized not to change the fundamentals of election structure. Either way, this is still more straightforward and achievable.

again, I agree completely...but this isn't a problem with the electoral college, or FPTP - and it's solved much more simply than changing either of those things.

There are plenty of other options, no one votes for them lolThe nature of the first past the post voting system means that it's in your best interest to vote for one of the 2 major parties, and even a political system with many, relatively equally popular parties that adopts fptp will trend towards two relatively centrist parties. Unless America changes its voting system, we're unlikely to get more than two parties. Even the most successful third party (the Progressives) managed less than a decade of relevancy before we morphed back into a 2 party system. Don't think it has too much to do with FPTP. Canada has FPTP, and eight different parties in Parliament... similar situation in AUS as well, for example. I don't agree that it's in anyone's best interest to vote for one of the major parties even if they disagree with them, that's exactly the attitude that leads to only two major parties. I think a much bigger issue is political ignorance than anything I think a big difference here, on some level at least, is how they elect their president and senate/congress differently. In Canada and AUS, so far as I know, we elect our area representative and then the leader of whatever majority party (most seats) becomes the Prime Minister or the leader of our country for all intents. Versus basically two very distinct elections with one for area representation and one for leader happen in the states, which I think feeds back into more of a two party system.Definitely true on the presidential election, but congressional and senate are actually much more important. Constitutionally, these bodies are much more powerful than the president (though recently they haven't cared much to exercise that power)

There are plenty of other options, no one votes for them lolThe nature of the first past the post voting system means that it's in your best interest to vote for one of the 2 major parties, and even a political system with many, relatively equally popular parties that adopts fptp will trend towards two relatively centrist parties. Unless America changes its voting system, we're unlikely to get more than two parties. Even the most successful third party (the Progressives) managed less than a decade of relevancy before we morphed back into a 2 party system. Don't think it has too much to do with FPTP. Canada has FPTP, and eight different parties in Parliament... similar situation in AUS as well, for example. I don't agree that it's in anyone's best interest to vote for one of the major parties even if they disagree with them, that's exactly the attitude that leads to only two major parties. I think a much bigger issue is political ignorance than anything

There are plenty of other options, no one votes for them lol

Direct democracy has a ton of problems though. In most situations it's a far inferior system to representative democracy

I'd argue it broke down more due to massive corruption and war, but that doesn't necessarily make your point less relevant when it comes to america This will never happen there are plenty of countries which have similar geographic representation where gerrymandering isn't a big issue (see Canada for example). I wouldn't be so sure it couldn't be fixed Geographic representation does protect minorities, just not in the sense we use the term in the 20th century; precisely because it's so effective that there aren't really grounds to see rural minorities as particularly oppressed! if you did away with regional representation, things wouldn't look so rosy

Part of living in a democracy is that you have to be represented by *someone*, unless you're advocating direct democracy, which has it's own set of massive flaws. Really, you're just complaining about the scale here - but one senator you agree with can represent you better than a hundred who don't. My point is, without DD, you still have some flavour of this problem. It's precisely *because* you have nothing in common with a voter from Utah that the electoral college and regional weighting is important. Whenever you have a country with so many different types of people, and many different minorities, and regions, it can't survive unless there's a legitimate way for the minorities to be included in the democratic process. The US electoral college is the american solution to the problem. It's not perfect, but most countries as large and diverse as the US have similar means of accounting for geographic differences. That's fair enough, just realize that if you don't support the federal government's existence, you don't support the existence of the united states, period. The US could be 50 different countries, but then you'd just have fifty different federal governments. The federal government is the main reason you even have a *united* states - and this isn't specific to america either. Canada is in a similar situation - without a strong federation led centrally we could easily be 6-7 different countries. As far as gerrymandering goes - yeah, that's definitely a problem, but the solution to that doesn't require blowing up the electoral college - it just involves coming up with a better formula, with real non-partisan implementation.

Nonsense...the American electoral college is designed to have locational diversity in elections, so that the entire country is represented, not just its most populous areas. Until the voting process is changed to simple majority of votes, a president elected with sub 50% is just as legitimate as one elected with above 50%. If you think popular vote is the panacea of democracy, you should advocate for a constitutional amendment, not imply presidents are illegitimate. Also, there's no such thing as "shoving" a justice onto the supreme court - pretty sure the nomination and confirmation processes are exactly the same for all presidents. Anyway, I suspect your feelings on the matter have more to do with political disagreements than legitimate issues with the processes

quick everyone saq's coming run away

I don't think we need any more discord in our family

snowflakes represent but seriously, it depends entirely what you're getting emotional about. i mean, most stuff people get emotional about when it comes to politics is pretty inconsequential, but there are also things that it makes complete sense to be passionate about, because they affect people's lives in extremely meaningful ways

heathen tbh

we chillin

Shit posting till Miss Hottie rolls around it's a hard life we live here in OT, hopefully MH final quaterfinal appears before the boards shut down for good

Did i miss something?

its about time for another quaterfinal....over/under on 10 votes?

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