Your center for news and press coverage, provided in a relatively biased manner from a crazy old coot who hopes to shortly be a grandfather
Rick Santorum suspends campaign, dropping out of race for Republican nomination.
Cites daughters health, delegate math as his reasons.
Discuss
Last edited by Shiav; 04-12-2012 at 05:35 PM.
Are you serious?! Awesome, I was about to move to Canada.
He wasn't my candidate of choice anyway. In fact, he was a bit creepy...
(Won't this thread get closed in, like, ten seconds?)
Is this not the off topic area? I believe it is. If we can discuss movies, music, etc. we can discuss this, no?
I've gotten a slap on the wrist for talking politics here before.Originally Posted by Shiav
That seems counter intuitive. What could they call you on? So long as you are not being hateful or insulting (which I've never seen you be, so I highly doubt it was that) or pejorative then there isn't much they can complain about is there?
Truth be told, it was mainly me critisizing some of the media on things that they'd said (about my state, etc.) that I found... unbearable. I deserved it, in hindsight. It was me being insulting in response to their being insulting, only I wasn't saying it to the author of the articles- I was spewing politics all over this place instead.
The theory with the no-politics rule is to avoid flame wars, which isn't entirely unlikely with something as volatile as this (that is, politics in general. Not this thread). If we can keep it to peacefully discussing politics here, I think we may be able to get by. Besides, we've done pretty good so far.
(Just a note: I think I've broken two or three forum rules in this little conversation already...)
On-topic: he was horrendously outnumbered anyway, and it wasn't really good for his public image for him to be campaigning with sick children at home. At this point, it's about certain that Mitt Romney will be Obama's opponent come November, and anyone who doesn't believe that needs to open their eyes. There are only so many states left, and Romney has taken most of the ones they've already been through. Even if someone were to take every remaining state, I don't believe it's possible to beat him anymore.
I think the inevitability of Romney has been apparent for some time, and Gingrich and Santorum were just kidding themselves to believe otherwise.
As to November, it should be a very interesting matchup. Depending on what the job numbers are I think it could go either way, neither of them are that different so it really just depends on how the economy is doing
Religion and Politics are banned topics, the thought is that sooner or later they will just develop into massive flame wars, and it always turns out like that. There are a couple of forums I'm a member of that allow this sort of thread to be discussed, and without fail it always ends up with people just throwing insults at each other.
Hm. That seems rather derogatory to us, no? Presuming that all discussions will result in a flame war would imply that their customers are universally unintelligent and boorish. From the civilization side of things, I really don't see how this would be a logical assumption. Especially considering we're in the off topic section, which is usually where you find the people who actually care about a gaming community.
Not necessarily, at the end of the day all it would take is just one person making a stupid comment to spark the insults, wanting to avoid that happening is hardly them assuming that all of their customers are unintelligent.
I've got to agree with I-ChooseTheImpossible, most of us are happy to have a civilised discussion but it only takes one guy acting like a douche to ruin it, and their are plenty of those around. In fact so far the we've already strayed off topic.
Here comes the Mod-Hover craft to take us away and cut out our tongues, run for the hills!!!
Back on topic, I have to say I haven't been following the Election that closely but it seems like all the multiple candidates does is divide the party and it's supporters.
Well, as long as we all look at politics from an objective perspecive, merely thinking in numbers and percentages, it's a safe topic. Eventually, though, someone will want to get into who they personally support and why. That's when things get ugly.
Atlas: There will only be one Republican candidate to run against the current President, Obama. These are caucuses that are going on now. They merely choose who will be the one person who runs against Obama. Both parties do this before an election. The Republican party is divided now (less than they were a little while ago), but once they've settled on Romney (I say that using logic, not opinion) the division will, for the most part, disappear.
It's very different from our system over here. The leaders of the parties are normally decided by a vote inside the party between the party members and the unions that support them. Then we have 50+ party's who all run against each other. It's very strange for me seeing a two party system, where it seems that the two party's seem to disagree with each other and themselves so much they might as well be oppositions, but I guess that happens here too.
The same-party opposition is always leveled out by the fact that, come election day, we'll pretty much always vote on whoever falls on our side of the aisle (at least, those of us who follow politics and have opinions on said politics), regardless of any disagreements we may have with the person running. It comes from the idea that having anyone from your side be President is better than having someone from the other side take office.
I want to talk about the British system for a second, though. So, the people don't choose who is running, but you get to pick from whoever the huge number of parties choose?
Not really - but you're not voting for the same things here/in Britain.
Here in Canada, which is based off of the British system, the party votes for it's own leader. HOWEVER, we're not voting for a seperate entity in comparison to a President (who becomes seperate from their party when elected). During an election we're voting for a party, therefore the party that "wins" and the one who becomes "Prime Minister" is the person who is the head of the party who wins the majority of the seats. Our parliament is run by, supposedly, the group of individuals that wins the highest majority of the popular vote.
There's a lot of debate about whether that last line is actually true (first past the post is kind of flawed in this day and age) but that's the system in a nutshell. The PM is not a separate entity from his/her party.
Kind of. Basically there are a certain number of (viable) parties. In Canada this is Conservatives, Liberals, Bloq (now extinct), and NDP.
These parties have their own caucuses on who the leader will be. If you are a party member you get to vote for who you want the leader to be.
Come election day, however, you do not actually vote for that person. You vote for a party member who is running to be a Member of Parliament for your riding. The only people who directly voted for Steven Harper were people in Calgary-West.
If a party wins the election, but the leader does not win his/her riding, they may either choose to have the leader run again in a riding they already won (thus kicking out the person who actually won) or they may choose to elect a new leader.
If no party is able to form a majority government, you can either have Rule by Coalition or Rule by Minority. In the election before the last one, the NDP and Liberals wanted to team up with the Bloq to form a coalition, this eventually dissolved because of infighting and Steven Harper using some semi-illegal powers that gave me a lot of respect for the man.
Rule by Minority is when no party has enough seats to pass their own legislation but instead of making a direct coalition they will either try to recruit people from other parties or try to change some parts of their budget/bills to make them more acceptable so that other parties will allow them to rule.
Oh yes, thats the other big difference. The President of the US is head of State, the Prime Minister is Head of Government (and minds as well be head of state, for all the usefullness of the governor general).
The thing about First Past the Post versus Proportional Representation (say, Sweden) is that in PPR, it is almost impossible for a majority government to form. This means ☺☺☺☺ doesn't get done quite as quickly, and it also allows for more radical groups like Nazis, Greens and Commies to have a say in Government
The Greens have a seat in parliament here. Can't count them out :P
There isn't really a system that works perfectly for vote counting either, PPR has it's limitations, FPTP means you can get elected with a minority of people making the decision. At the end of the day I guess it really doesn't matter, given that there was something like a 40% voter turnout last election.
Edit: I really need to get my brain fixed. I think that was the previous election to last year's. Last year had 61 or something like that.
61? That seems ridiculous. I thought it was higher than previous, but still no where near what it should be.
Holy cow it was 61. Crazy
Yeah. I'm actually super unimpressed that we ended up with a majority in the direction that we did now.
Aw.
Anyways:
EXTRA EXTRA: NORTH KOREAN ROCKET LAUNCH FAILS WITHIN MINUTES OF TAKE OFF
That quote was hilarious.
I'm glad it blew up, but you probably guessed that already. What better way to embarass the new dictator than to have what would have been a proud show of his country's power literally go up in smoke?
I thought it was quite clever
I'm prone to exaggeration.
That's ok, im prone to occasional craziness.
For Jazzterisk and my fellow Albertans, the debate is on right now. Main issue at the moment is health care. Redford saying healthcare is better than most other provinces, and wants to continue improving. Every one else says thats ☺☺☺☺ and is offering there own solutions.
Now moving on to taxes. Raj Sherman argues there is a structural deficit, only 12 billion in revenues from personal taxes. Quote: "Our income shouldn't be tied to the price of a barrel of oil"
Smith questioning Redford on "exorbitant" budget
Smith now talking to Sherman about healthcare. Sherman wants a more progressive tax system, more taxes on the top ten percent of earners, comprehensive health care
Now on to why Alberta spends more per person on health care then any other province, yet isn't as effective as it could be. Redford questioning Smith on what her real plan for healthcare and the budget is, where the two billion in cuts are.
Redford trying to tote the Alberta Advantage, built on the PC's, under attack from left for "breaking healthcare", from NDP for "stealing from our children" (odd, that seems out of character), and from right for not doing enough.
short break for water. grabbing snacks
Voting is compulsory in Australia (that of course doesn't mean there are people who don't vote anyway) at our last election apparently 5% of the votes were "donkey votes" meaning that people (myself included) just numbered their vote in the order they appeared on the sheet of paper.
I noticed you mentioning the Greens getting a seat in Canada, if I recall correctly the Greens actually got quite a few seats in Australia, not enough to take power, but as a result of Labour and Liberal ending up with the same amount of seats which ever way the Greens decided to go decided who would run the country, which is like being given a choice of death by hanging, or death by firing squad, both terrible choices that aren't going to end well.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote