Why Can’t America Have a Sharp Young President??
Honestly, this is looking bad …
They are now debating over which one looks prettier ….
They are now debating over which one looks prettier ….
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sarabee1995 · 26-30, F
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Elessar · 26-30, M
@Soossie Both are stubborn, one for having indicated a successor and retired and one because, well.. stubbornness isn't even his worst trait.
That said, the problem with Sara's position (who's my friend and we pretty much agree on 99.999% of issues minus perhaps this only one) is that in a first-past-the-post system voting for a third candidate is essentially identical to sitting out the election: only the second option has a chance of winning over the first (whomever will be first and second choices will be known only in November), third options don't win anything, 'don't get to form coalitions, and essentially don't matter in the slightest once the election is over. Voting a third party in such a system is only meaningful if there's a chance that one specific third party could become the second or the first - which is not the case in 2024 America: third parties are many, there's not a clear dominant one, and even the most "popular" one (RFK?) has zero chances of toppling either democrats or republicans anywhere.
You can do so called protest vote in proportional democracies like Europe's (most of it anyway), where voting for a third party will essentially strengthen or weaken a specific party within the winning coalition, but not in FPTP, in which the concept of coalition doesn't exist.
For instance, let's say I don't really want party A to win, at the same time I'm not a big fan of B even if I believe that B would still be better than A. If the election I'm voting in used America's system I'd be forced to either vote for B or throw away my vote / let others decide for me. Instead, I can vote for C - that is also strongly opposed to A, not fans of B either, but that may agree to form a "B+C" coalition after the vote (with their percentages added together) just for the sake of opposing A (and compromising on eachother's differences). At the same time, also A would have to form a coalition (say, "A+D") in order to counter this alliance, and by doing so compromise with D and potentially renounce to some of their most radical policies.
This is not possible in America, where voting for C is exactly the same as not voting at all (=> letting A win in spite of having a low % of support within the eligible population, due to low turnout).
I absolutely understand and relate with Sara being pìss*d at this, but it's not by letting Trump win that you get this fixed, especially when Trump is the one benefiting the most from the current system, and openly advocating for making it even harder to have any options besides himself.
It's maybe possible to replace FPTP with something that gets them out of this two parties nightmare (ranked choice, for instance), but it'll require long term commitment, and definitely not allowing wannabe-authoritarians to win lazily and make changes even harder to pass.
That said, the problem with Sara's position (who's my friend and we pretty much agree on 99.999% of issues minus perhaps this only one) is that in a first-past-the-post system voting for a third candidate is essentially identical to sitting out the election: only the second option has a chance of winning over the first (whomever will be first and second choices will be known only in November), third options don't win anything, 'don't get to form coalitions, and essentially don't matter in the slightest once the election is over. Voting a third party in such a system is only meaningful if there's a chance that one specific third party could become the second or the first - which is not the case in 2024 America: third parties are many, there's not a clear dominant one, and even the most "popular" one (RFK?) has zero chances of toppling either democrats or republicans anywhere.
You can do so called protest vote in proportional democracies like Europe's (most of it anyway), where voting for a third party will essentially strengthen or weaken a specific party within the winning coalition, but not in FPTP, in which the concept of coalition doesn't exist.
For instance, let's say I don't really want party A to win, at the same time I'm not a big fan of B even if I believe that B would still be better than A. If the election I'm voting in used America's system I'd be forced to either vote for B or throw away my vote / let others decide for me. Instead, I can vote for C - that is also strongly opposed to A, not fans of B either, but that may agree to form a "B+C" coalition after the vote (with their percentages added together) just for the sake of opposing A (and compromising on eachother's differences). At the same time, also A would have to form a coalition (say, "A+D") in order to counter this alliance, and by doing so compromise with D and potentially renounce to some of their most radical policies.
This is not possible in America, where voting for C is exactly the same as not voting at all (=> letting A win in spite of having a low % of support within the eligible population, due to low turnout).
I absolutely understand and relate with Sara being pìss*d at this, but it's not by letting Trump win that you get this fixed, especially when Trump is the one benefiting the most from the current system, and openly advocating for making it even harder to have any options besides himself.
It's maybe possible to replace FPTP with something that gets them out of this two parties nightmare (ranked choice, for instance), but it'll require long term commitment, and definitely not allowing wannabe-authoritarians to win lazily and make changes even harder to pass.
black4white · 56-60, M
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HumanEarth · 56-60, F
Reason10 · 61-69, M
@Elessar
Read and LEARN, bat guano for brains.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/fingerprints-of-obama-on-subprime-foreclosure-crisis/
The Obama Record: The Obama camp's running a new ad reminding African-Americans of all he's done for them as they weather an economic crisis he "inherited." Left out is his own role in their predicament.
The press has never questioned the president about his involvement. But his fingerprints are there.
Before the crisis, Obama pushed thousands of credit-poor blacks into homes they couldn't afford. As a civil-rights attorney, he sued banks to rubberstamp mortgages for urban residents.
Many are now in foreclosure. In fact, the lead client in one of his class-action suits has since lost her home and filed bankruptcy.
First some background: Obama focused on "housing rights" when he worked as a lawyer-activist and community organizer in South Side Chicago. His mentor — the man who placed him in his first job there — was the father of the anti-redlining movement: John McKnight. He coined the term "redlining" to describe the mapping off of minority neighborhoods from home loans.
McKnight wrote a letter for Obama that helped him get into Harvard. After he graduated, he worked for a Chicago civil-rights law firm that worked closely with McKnight's radical Gamaliel Foundation and National People's Action, as well as Acorn, to solicit lending-discrimination cases.
At the time, NPA and Acorn were lobbying the Clinton administration to tighten enforcement of anti-redlining laws.
They also dispatched bus loads of goons trained by Obama to the doorsteps of bankers to demand more home loans for minorities. Acorn even crashed the lobby of Citibank's headquarters in New York and accused it of discriminating against blacks.
The pressure worked. In 1994, Clinton's top bank regulators signed a landmark anti-redlining policy that declared traditional mortgage underwriting standards racist and mandated banks apply easier lending rules for minorities.
Also that year, Attorney General Janet Reno and her aide Eric Holder filed a mortgage discrimination case against a Washington-area bank that forced it to target minority neighborhoods for subprime loans.
Reno and Holder also encouraged civil-rights lawyers like Obama to file local lending-bias cases against banks.
The next year, Obama led a class-action suit against Citibank on behalf of several Chicago minorities who claimed they were rejected for home loans because of the color of their skin. It was one of 11 such suits filed against the financial giant in Chicago and New York in the 1990s.
As first reported in Paul Sperry's "The Great American Bank Robbery," the plaintiffs' claim lacked merit. Factors other than race figured in the bank's decision to turn them down for loans.
One of Obama's clients had "inadequate collateral" and "an incomplete application," while another had "delinquent credit obligations and other adverse credit history."
Obama argued such facts miss the point: that Citibank's neutral underwriting criteria may have adversely impacted his clients as a class of people. He demanded it turn over loan files from the entire Chicago metro area to prove it regularly engaged in a pattern of discrimination.
The court didn't award him the files. But Citibank eventually settled, despite the weak case. Under the 1998 settlement, Citibank vowed to pay the alleged victims $1.4 million and launch a program to boost home lending to poor blacks in the metro area.
In the run-up to the crisis, Citibank underwrote thousands of shaky subprime mortgages to satisfy the court in Obama's case. Defaults were common. When home prices collapsed, most of the loans went bust.
His lead African-American client, Selma Buycks-Roberson, who was denied a loan due to bad credit and low income, got her mortgage only to default on it years later.
She got a foreclosure notice in 2008, according to The Daily Caller website, along with many of her Chicago neighbors.
By putting them on the hook for loans they couldn't pay, Obama did them no favors. Blacks have been hit hardest by foreclosures. But what does Obama care? The Caller reports he pocketed at least $23,000 from the Citibank case.
Today, he blames the devastating wealth drain in black communities on subprime mortgages. He says "greedy," "predatory" lenders tricked poor minorities into paying higher fees and interest rates.
But Obama was for subprime loans before he was against them. "Subprime loans started off as a good idea," he said as those loans began to sour in 2007.
His closest economic advisers also promoted subprime lending. Several months earlier, Chicago pal Austan Goolsbee, who later became his top economist, sang the praises of subprime loans in a New York Times column. He argued they allowed poor blacks "access to mortgages."
One of Obama's top bank regulators, Gary Gensler, once bragged that thanks to subprime mortgages, banks made home loans to minorities at "twice the rate" they made to other borrowers, according to "Bank Robbery." "A subprime loan is a good option when the alternative is no access to credit," he said years before the crisis.
Obama hasn't learned from his mistakes.
Far from it, IBD has learned the mammoth credit watchdog agency he created (with input from NPA radicals) will dust off Clinton's 1994 minority lending guidelines to crack down on stingy lenders. And he's ordered Holder, now acting as his attorney general, to prosecute banks that don't open branches in blighted urban areas.
Not only has Obama scapegoated banks for the crisis he helped cause, he's exploited minority suffering to continue reckless policies that hurt those he claims to champion.
Find someone with an education to idiot-splain ACORN to you.
Read and LEARN, bat guano for brains.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/fingerprints-of-obama-on-subprime-foreclosure-crisis/
The Obama Record: The Obama camp's running a new ad reminding African-Americans of all he's done for them as they weather an economic crisis he "inherited." Left out is his own role in their predicament.
The press has never questioned the president about his involvement. But his fingerprints are there.
Before the crisis, Obama pushed thousands of credit-poor blacks into homes they couldn't afford. As a civil-rights attorney, he sued banks to rubberstamp mortgages for urban residents.
Many are now in foreclosure. In fact, the lead client in one of his class-action suits has since lost her home and filed bankruptcy.
First some background: Obama focused on "housing rights" when he worked as a lawyer-activist and community organizer in South Side Chicago. His mentor — the man who placed him in his first job there — was the father of the anti-redlining movement: John McKnight. He coined the term "redlining" to describe the mapping off of minority neighborhoods from home loans.
McKnight wrote a letter for Obama that helped him get into Harvard. After he graduated, he worked for a Chicago civil-rights law firm that worked closely with McKnight's radical Gamaliel Foundation and National People's Action, as well as Acorn, to solicit lending-discrimination cases.
At the time, NPA and Acorn were lobbying the Clinton administration to tighten enforcement of anti-redlining laws.
They also dispatched bus loads of goons trained by Obama to the doorsteps of bankers to demand more home loans for minorities. Acorn even crashed the lobby of Citibank's headquarters in New York and accused it of discriminating against blacks.
The pressure worked. In 1994, Clinton's top bank regulators signed a landmark anti-redlining policy that declared traditional mortgage underwriting standards racist and mandated banks apply easier lending rules for minorities.
Also that year, Attorney General Janet Reno and her aide Eric Holder filed a mortgage discrimination case against a Washington-area bank that forced it to target minority neighborhoods for subprime loans.
Reno and Holder also encouraged civil-rights lawyers like Obama to file local lending-bias cases against banks.
The next year, Obama led a class-action suit against Citibank on behalf of several Chicago minorities who claimed they were rejected for home loans because of the color of their skin. It was one of 11 such suits filed against the financial giant in Chicago and New York in the 1990s.
As first reported in Paul Sperry's "The Great American Bank Robbery," the plaintiffs' claim lacked merit. Factors other than race figured in the bank's decision to turn them down for loans.
One of Obama's clients had "inadequate collateral" and "an incomplete application," while another had "delinquent credit obligations and other adverse credit history."
Obama argued such facts miss the point: that Citibank's neutral underwriting criteria may have adversely impacted his clients as a class of people. He demanded it turn over loan files from the entire Chicago metro area to prove it regularly engaged in a pattern of discrimination.
The court didn't award him the files. But Citibank eventually settled, despite the weak case. Under the 1998 settlement, Citibank vowed to pay the alleged victims $1.4 million and launch a program to boost home lending to poor blacks in the metro area.
In the run-up to the crisis, Citibank underwrote thousands of shaky subprime mortgages to satisfy the court in Obama's case. Defaults were common. When home prices collapsed, most of the loans went bust.
His lead African-American client, Selma Buycks-Roberson, who was denied a loan due to bad credit and low income, got her mortgage only to default on it years later.
She got a foreclosure notice in 2008, according to The Daily Caller website, along with many of her Chicago neighbors.
By putting them on the hook for loans they couldn't pay, Obama did them no favors. Blacks have been hit hardest by foreclosures. But what does Obama care? The Caller reports he pocketed at least $23,000 from the Citibank case.
Today, he blames the devastating wealth drain in black communities on subprime mortgages. He says "greedy," "predatory" lenders tricked poor minorities into paying higher fees and interest rates.
But Obama was for subprime loans before he was against them. "Subprime loans started off as a good idea," he said as those loans began to sour in 2007.
His closest economic advisers also promoted subprime lending. Several months earlier, Chicago pal Austan Goolsbee, who later became his top economist, sang the praises of subprime loans in a New York Times column. He argued they allowed poor blacks "access to mortgages."
One of Obama's top bank regulators, Gary Gensler, once bragged that thanks to subprime mortgages, banks made home loans to minorities at "twice the rate" they made to other borrowers, according to "Bank Robbery." "A subprime loan is a good option when the alternative is no access to credit," he said years before the crisis.
Obama hasn't learned from his mistakes.
Far from it, IBD has learned the mammoth credit watchdog agency he created (with input from NPA radicals) will dust off Clinton's 1994 minority lending guidelines to crack down on stingy lenders. And he's ordered Holder, now acting as his attorney general, to prosecute banks that don't open branches in blighted urban areas.
Not only has Obama scapegoated banks for the crisis he helped cause, he's exploited minority suffering to continue reckless policies that hurt those he claims to champion.
Find someone with an education to idiot-splain ACORN to you.
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JoyfulSilence · 46-50, M
Fortunately, the nation and its governments are far more resilient than the temporary political controllers of the executive branch.
First, periodic elections and term limits allow turnover, obviously. No hereditary monarchs or supreme leaders for life that the people at large never get to choose.
Next, federalism spreads control and duties across the nation. The city or county governments handle most crimes and local regulations, the states handle a lot, and things like schools. It makes for a confusing patchwork, but allows diversity, where people technically could move to a better place. Still, fairness and goodness should be universal. So the national government has a role, to standardize things.
Also, at the national government, power is split, as well, and each part has a say on the other parts. The executive nominates judges, the legislative approves, and then judges are independent. The legislative passes laws, but the executive must approve (unless the veto is overturned by the executive). The executive interprets implementation. The judicial judges both the laws and implementation. No decrees, no kings.
It is messy, and hard to do things. But this is by design. The only expediency is during an emergency, so we give such power to the executive. So it is scary when they are bad, crazy, or feeble. But they are surrounded by advisers. And moral people can still refuse to carry out orders. They are not robots. Still, ballistic missiles would obey. So scary.
First, periodic elections and term limits allow turnover, obviously. No hereditary monarchs or supreme leaders for life that the people at large never get to choose.
Next, federalism spreads control and duties across the nation. The city or county governments handle most crimes and local regulations, the states handle a lot, and things like schools. It makes for a confusing patchwork, but allows diversity, where people technically could move to a better place. Still, fairness and goodness should be universal. So the national government has a role, to standardize things.
Also, at the national government, power is split, as well, and each part has a say on the other parts. The executive nominates judges, the legislative approves, and then judges are independent. The legislative passes laws, but the executive must approve (unless the veto is overturned by the executive). The executive interprets implementation. The judicial judges both the laws and implementation. No decrees, no kings.
It is messy, and hard to do things. But this is by design. The only expediency is during an emergency, so we give such power to the executive. So it is scary when they are bad, crazy, or feeble. But they are surrounded by advisers. And moral people can still refuse to carry out orders. They are not robots. Still, ballistic missiles would obey. So scary.
@JoyfulSilence
You have one of the best governing system in your country … no one can have the absolute power without being held responsible for what they do and it’s consequences ….
Yet, a sharp middle age president could make really good decisions (with the help of his/her advisers) for the nation …
You have one of the best governing system in your country … no one can have the absolute power without being held responsible for what they do and it’s consequences ….
Yet, a sharp middle age president could make really good decisions (with the help of his/her advisers) for the nation …
carpediem · 61-69, M
@Soossie Not everyone feels that way. Many of us believe we have a candidate with a good plan and better policy. Despite what leftist media will have the world believe, not all conservative leaning people are evil. Sorry that so many can’t respect the beliefs of others. It wasn’t always this way.
And I agree that many people chose Biden for his party. Now they have to reconcile that vote with what they witnessed yesterday.
And I agree that many people chose Biden for his party. Now they have to reconcile that vote with what they witnessed yesterday.
BohemianBoo · M
Justmeraeagain · 56-60, F
@Justmeraeagain
They’re both picked by their own parties … they need insane puppets as their candidates ..
They’re both picked by their own parties … they need insane puppets as their candidates ..
JimboSaturn · 51-55, M
Pfuzylogic · M
antonioioio · 70-79, M
WalterHoeReally · M
BLP11520 · 61-69, M
@WalterHoeReally once again guns are not the problem when I was a little kid people weren’t shooting up schools
BLP11520 · 61-69, M
Look up the bath School bombing in in Bath Michigan, where a man dynamited schools and killed about 44 people that was like 100 years ago
bookerdana · M
bookerdana · M
BittersweetPotato · 31-35, F
Heartlander · 80-89, M
pearllederman · 61-69, F
SW-User
What difference would it make? This emphasis on age is very naive and superficial
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