Politics The 2016 US Presidential Election

While I agree with your assessment, and I too would have voted for Trump if there was no contest on the Democratic side. Just because Cruz would have a grand plan and a laser focus on getting his agenda passed. Even if it meant shutting down the government. Cruz would go after centrists and left-wing policies and laws. It would be like having Rush Limbaugh in charge of the country. So, while he might not go after Hispanics, blacks, and Muslims right away, he would put an end to any liberal law that has been passed in the past 50 years.

I disagree that Bernie's opposition to nuclear is anti-science. It is just that the environmentalists haven't made the case very clear why it is bad. And I haven't run the numbers either. But, to mine the ore, transport it, process and enrich it, has to emit quite a bit of pollution. All the cement that goes into a nuclear power plant uses quite a bit energy to make and that creates pollution. The workers that have to go to the plant everyday generate pollution most likely. And the storage of the spent fuel and contaminated items will take some effort to build. So, maybe the pollution generated is small compared to that over a long enough timeline for the stable energy generated, but that is why nuclear isn't a zero-emission energy source.

And GMO food is more about corporate control of food production and making seed saving impossible for the farmers, even if there isn't anything wrong with eating crops that can make their own pesticide or handle being covered in it.

 

Once again Levite lays it out as best it can be said.

I don't like Hillary, I would rather she not be president but I unless Bernie gets the nomination I'm stuck voting for her.
It's not rocket science.

 

Yes.

 

That's how I feel about Bernie. He has some ideas that sound great idealistically, but in reality most of them would never happen and/or they would end up watered down.

 

And while Trump will never get away with that Hillary "women are the primary victims of war" Hot Coffee Clinton does get away with talking about men the way Trump talks about muslims and backing gender jim crow laws like VAWA. She'll praise Putin as soon as she thinks it will get her power, and would back the KKK if she thought she could get away with it and use it to further her own interests.

Hillary is Trump but more competent and more dangerous because she actually gets away with shit.

None of them are, but while Trump is an empty tinfoil hat of substanceless rhetoric Hillary is the one spearheading a very dangerous and very capable political movement that [url =https://archive.is/7RnMU]we've seen before[/url]. Again: Trump and to a lesser extent Cruz are being watched like hawks, they'll never get away with anything genuinely harmful or dangerous. Especially Trump. Hillary on the other hand already does.

Given the choice between being locked in a room with Manson sedated in a straight jacket and the average mugger wide awake with the key I'll take Manson sedated in a straight jacket any day. On the surface he's a lot crazier and scarier but in practical terms he's less of an actual threat.

Baseless misogyny? Obama Boys, Bernie Bros, the made up "yelling" nonsense, tens of thousands of dollars spent on the great public evil of (male) rude people on public transport... you're comparing a papercut to a sucking chest wound.

I have a problem with gender jim crow laws like VAWA and the massive systemic and institutionalized discrimination and at times violence against 50% of the victims of IPV that aren't women. Are you saying that all women support that? That's very misogynist of you if so.

I have a problem with the claim that men "choose to engage in unwanted sexual intercourse" and so can never be raped by women, and use that definition to erase 50% of the victims of rape recorded each year. Are you saying that all women support that? That's very misogynist of you if so.

I have a problem with using bomb threats, crime, blackmail, and mob violence to silence anyone who even considers disagreeing with the previous two. Are you saying that all women support that? That's very misogynist of you if so.

What's interesting is that you simultaneously claim that the people who do this are an infinitesimally small minority, and yet ALSO that I have "problems with women". This can not be.

Either the people supporting this toxic ideology are an infinitesimally small minority and therefore I do not have "problems with women" OR an overwhelmingly large enough majority of women support this toxic ideology and thus they are not an infinitesimally small minority as you claim.

You can not have both.

And, of course, it's beyond the pale of intellectual dishonesty to try and swap out "women" for one of the most toxic, violent, and dangerous ideologies poisoning society today which even the President of the United States has had to repeatedly publicly condemn.

 

If Clinton wins the Presidency, look forward to at least four years of diatribes, hand wringing, and out right sedition from the likes of Shadowex3 that we saw from similar sorts over a black President.

It reached levels of idiocy and ridiculousness over the past eight years. Get ready for more, just in a different flavour.

 

Dont forget if Bernie wins, he would be our first Jewish president and a "socialist" to boot.

Oy vey, a double whammy!

 

This argument concerning the infrastructure required to generate power does not uniquely apply nuclear power, so let's apply this reasoning to all energy sources. Fissionable material has the highest energy density of any conventional fuel by between seven and eight orders of magnitude, so the amount of nuclear fuel needed to be mined, refined, and enriched is much, much less than any fossil fuel or renewable biofuel. Granted, the most common (light water) reactors only use about a half of one percent of the energy per unit mass of uranium, so the amount of power obtained is effectively two orders less, but that's still a few hundred thousand times more energy than is released by combustion of fossil fuel on a weight for weight basis. The comparably small scale of uranium mining combined with the fact that nuclear reactions do not produce atmospheric emissions results in nuclear power having much lower life cycle pollution figures than fossil fuel sources and about the same if not even lower emissions than renewable energy sources including hydroelectric, solar, and geothermal power. Look up LCA tables comparing different energy sources if you're interested to see just how small a fraction lifetime nuclear power pollution really is compared with the two most popular in the US, coal and natural gas.

As for nuclear waste, "spent fuel" in the US is hardly spent at all, as it contains plenty of unused fertile and fissile isotopes that can be recovered through nuclear reprocessing, a technology which is currently prohibited in the US because it poses a theoretical proliferation risk due to the involvement of the more easily weaponizable plutonium isotopes. Nuclear reprocessing dramatically decreases the amount of waste produced, which in countries that rely on nuclear power with reprocessing (such as France, for whom nuclear power accounts for more than three-quarters of the total) accounts for less than one percent of total industrial toxic waste (which is generally no less hazardous to handle or difficult to dispose of than radioactive waste). To compare with fossil fuel combustion waste, it's estimated that coal plants release much more radiation into the environment than nuclear plants (not because coal ash is intrinsically more radioactive than nuclear waste, but because coal plants produce so much more ash containing concentrated radioisotopes than nuclear plants "produce" spent fuel rods).
Waste volume can be further minimized by the long-existing technology of breeder reactors, which are capable of reprocessing isotopes through the entire actinide series, making fission so efficient (increasing the <1% extractable energy of light water reactors to anywhere from 50-99% for breeders) that if it were put into wide use, uranium would essentially become a renewable resource (as peak uranium would be put off until the increasing solar energy output toward the end of the Sun's main sequence stage pushes our solar system's circumstellar habital zone beyond Earth's orbit). Despite these clear advantages, breeder reactor technology remains largely abandoned because the reactors are very expensive to construct and mining more uranium is much cheaper. So, a pro-science nuclear policy would be to lift the moratorium on nuclear reprocessing and to subsidize breeder reactor development, not to cease issuing nuclear plant permits and deny permit renewals to existing plants as Sanders proposes.

GMO regulation has actually made the technology less available to small companies by restricting it to those most capable of paying its high regulatory costs. Labeling GM foods would only serve to further the anti-science stigma against them, whereas antitrust legislation and intellectual property reform might better address the concerns you've cited.

 

Trump is the only candidate who can still reach the convention with a majority of delegates but the path became a little harder having lost OH (winner take all to Kasich).

On the Democratic side, Bernie's chances are becoming much dimmer or slim to none.

 

And if Trump gets 45% of the delegates, and the next closest person is Cruz with 25%-35% let's say, how would Kasich, who could win 100% of the remaining contests and still not have enough, become the nominee? Especially if Kasich wasn't in the race, Trump would have won Ohio and most likely would have reached the 50% threshold. And you will have a lot of angry Trump supporters if he doesn't get the nomination. But, you also have a lot of angry Tea Party Cruz supporters as well.

The bigger issue is which party will show up to vote in November. Maybe the Democrats can count on the once every 4 year voters to show up again, but in Ohio at least, it seems like there are twice as many GOP voters than Democrats. It happened in the governor race where Kasich won 2 million to 1 million, and yesterday, the GOP had a higher turn out too. And I don't think you can say that tens of thousands of Democrats strategically voted as Republicans this time since the Democratic contest was close.

Ohio vote totals
-----------------------
Kasich 953,846
Trump 726,769
Cruz 267,002
Rubio 59,245
------------------------
Total: 2,006,862


Clinton 676,597
Sanders 511,903
-------------------------
Total: 1,188,500

Not all the votes are in for some reason, but the same 2 to 1 pattern that has happened in the past non-Presidential general elections happened again. And for some reason, I'm pretty sure the never Trump campaign or those Kasich voters won't come out to vote for Hillary.

 

Reagan at least had a 50% top tax bracket on the rich, he would be lumped in with Sanders if he were alive and running today.

 

Let the Republicans beat the shit out of each other. They couldn't get their presidential candidate act together to defeat a vulnerable Obama in 2012; I'm firmly convinced that a strong and effective Republican candidate could've won in 2012. It certainly appears as though they're going to have problems getting unified behind one candidate in the 2016 election.

 

I really, really hope Trump wins and all these liberals get exactly what they motherfuckin' deserve: Idiocracy.

I'll be fine in this brave new world. And my "peers" will still be bitching about, oh, separate but equal toilets.

 

Since you raised the issue of separate but equal toilets, why do you think it is "idiocracy" to opposed conservative attempts like recent bills in GA, MS, NC that would prohibit local governments from enacting anti-discrimination laws and extend protections to LGBTs?