I'm excited to unveil the One Voice: Nothing New Under The Sun podcast, available in most places that host podcasts. In it we take current events in the US news cycle that particularly are of interest to young people, and cover them from a biblical and historical perspective. It already has two episodes published. The first one is about the epidemic of mass shootings in this country, and the second is about whether or not we should push for America to be a christian nation. Come check it out!

https://linktr.ee/One_Voice

So there are rumor Trump is supported by Putin in election .

But we all know china is friend of Russia .

Now Trump almost rage war on China .

How any of this make sense .

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Oh , so Putin is playing politics now is he ?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl959QnD3lM

Who wants to play a prediction game where we would try to guess what Trump next move in short and medium term will be and then compare with the actual reality. I know that is hard to predict somebody like him but I think it would be fun. If it works we can improve upon the idea adding some kind of points or other rewards for the best predictors. Want to join?

I need your opinions on this theme, because rn were all in a big-big trouble with coronavirus and our "great" idiotic president don't want to help his people, who can't sometimes afford their groceries in quarantine, Putin nearly literally said that he won't spend money on helping for small businesses and people of his literally own country. And also i'm awared about this because I want a good future for my country and also for all of the people living in Russia. So, give me some info that you know about all the shit, what this clown, called Putin did and for what he should be shamed by all smart enough people. I just want to know what guys above Russia know about his ridiculous and shameful did.

I feel that the worst part about the EC is not the disproportionate voting power the small states have, but the winner take all system which ensures only a handful of swing states actually matter. My proposal is to concede the extra voting power to the small states to get rid of the WTA and allow more competitive elections with minimal spoilers.

How about we allow states to award points to each candidate up to the number of electors that they would normally have. Voters would be allowed to vote for ALL the candidates they approve of for the presidency and each candidate would be awarded points by the state equal to the states maximum point value multiplied by their approval rating. The candidate with the most points would win.

So, Vermont would have 3 points to give to each candidate and if Bernie Sanders got 75% approval in Vermont, he’d get 2.25 pts from the state (3 * 0.75=2.25).

This would allow for all states to matter, it would allow small states to keep their extra voting power, and it would allow for more competitive elections with minimal spoiler effect.

I think the biggest problem with this catching on is that elected officials don’t actually want more competitive elections, but it could catch on with ordinary people.

This term is starting to be thrown around. Thoughts?

Hey all,

I want to be totally up front that this is somewhat shameless self-promotion. If this is the wrong place for this post please let me know and I'll take it down. I've been working on a new political media site and would like to gauge people's sentiment towards the current news climate. Reactions to different mediums and the importance of bias/lack of bias in reporting are rapidly changing and I'm curious about people's responses. I've put together a short (8 question) survey that I would be really appreciative if people would fill out.

Cheers!

Or of someone can give an overview it would be awesome too :D

Hey all,

So based on history and predilection, I expect that Trump will be fighting with the Supreme Court for the entirety of his administration. Specifically:

1. He will be appointing a new member soon, and it will be controversial, they always are.

2. He has already made a number of statements about new laws that appear to be at odds with existing law. A specific example is talking about opening up libel laws against the media, which is against a chain of legal findings about freedom of the press in regards to public officials. There are others.

3. He is already known for being a frequent flyer in litigation.

4. Like FDR, it is likely he will want to pack the courts. As they are lifetime appointees it is unlikely they will go voluntarily.

5. He appears to be embracing executive actions, perhaps even more so than Obama?? Time will tell.

Thoughts?

Not sure how he can keep a straight face while saying the phrase "leaked information" in the press conference.

Anyone else have good scandal names?

I'm hoping that someone can tell me why it seems like I'm the only one talking about fascism. So, here's the most straight forward criteria for a fascist government I could find.

Fascism is generally defined to be the farthest right you can go on the traditional political spectrum, and can be synonymous with "totalitarianism." Now that we are starting a new year with every branch of the American government controlled by the right wing, I think it's necessary to keep this list in mind.

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we are all the way there yet. However, I do believe we are much closer than we should be, and we have yet to see the effects of the Trump administration. I am as genuine as possible when I ask if anyone can say we're not in any danger of reliving the 20's?

Happy New Year 🎉

Source

The future hinges on humanity's ability to make choices, we must crowd source government!

I would like you to Open your mind, and leave any preconceived notion's of what post representative democracy may look like. I hope that you would agree that in the natural process: When a small group of people are trying to find consensus, suggestions and ideas are put forward by any one or more individuals in the group. Informal voting takes place. Based on that information more suggestions may emerge. This process is repeated until the highest level of satisfaction is achieved. Only then is the vote official. The free flow of unofficial voting is essential here. We would like to add that various vote reforms are attempts to supplement for our inability to provide,"The free flow of unofficial voting."we can re-create this on the worldwide scale.

WHY US, WHY NOW, The Opinion Market.

There are three main forms of growing opinion market, ( growing because the average Internet user age is passing approximately 40,) these markets are:

(1) polling for news organization.

(2) The commercial product & entertainmen market.

(3) And then we have the political upheaval pushing for change. This is the one that is forcing Twitter to act as a petition. This is also the market that thousands of organizations are competing for at this very moment.

Within the next 2 to 5 years someone will fill this void. It is easily predictable that there will be several entities that will emerge victorious, each in slightly different ways. The voice of humanity will be louder, but it will not be speaking with one voice.

Right now there is an opportunity to monopolize all of these markets, and expand on it by excepting all opinions of every conceivable type. Everything in life can be political, and everyone in the world has an opinion on something.

We are here because no one else is aware of this opportunity, and we cannot just sit here and watch it go by. Here is our plan, http://www.yourupinion.com/

we are asking If you could take a moment to give us your perspective, and let us know if you would like to be involved.

Thank you from our 52 members, and myself, Brian Charlebois

I just want something really straightforward. A long list of the positions (a tree would be nicer, but not necessary) and who is picked (not rumored, actually picked).

I'm not sure this exists, but I thought I'd ask if it does. It's pretty tiring to follow all the speculation and rumors. I just want the information. No need for all the sensationalizing.

It'd be nice if there was a website that broadly covered all of this, but I can't say I've ever heard of anything that comes close to just organizing everything.

In a stunning shock, the Republicans have won control over the White House and both houses of legislature. Democratic influence over federal affairs isn't looking good, and a lot of good work like Obamacare, the TPP, and the Paris Agreement all look like they're in jeopardy on the federal level. Is there a way Democrats could preserve, at least in part, Obama's legacy on the state level?

And this raises a more interesting question for abstract American political theory purposes: if that is possible or even likely, do you see the Democrats possibly becoming a states' rights party like the Republicans once were? Personally, I see this as a realistic possibility because this election has revealed the irreconcilable existence of two Americas: an urban one that skews deeply blue with large population centers and a lot of the wealth and job creation, and the broken rural center of the country that has felt economically left behind and just pulled off the Trump upset.

In such a world, where there is now precious little hope of uniting the two, the best hope for affluent liberal America would seem to be to try to protect the past eight years' progress on a state-to-state scale, such as with marijuana legalization and government-backed healthcare. Obviously this is not ideal, but it may stop the bleeding. Edit: I also mention this because all election year-long, we've been hearing allusions to the major realignments like 1932/36 and 1964.

So we are all, I trust, up on the low-key shade Sam Wang and Nate Silver and the rest of the aggregation gang are throwing at each other. What's the probability Clinton will win? 99%? 80%? LESS THAN 80%?

Right. And they each have arguments, sure, and it's all fine. And I've see a few people say, well, we'll know on Wednesday!

But will we? Clinton wins by 3.5, 310 to 330 EVs. Who was right? Did she have an 80% chance to win and won, or a 99% chance to win and won? Who can say?

But in a granular sense they are saying different things. Consider:

http://i.imgur.com/efWaDBv.png

This is the middle of the very useful NYT aggregators' aggregation page.

They're saying different things. Not just different levels of confidence, different results. Maine's CD2 in particular they really seem to disagree on.

It will be interesting to see this on Tuesday. Is Nebraska's CD2 a tossup, or 96% R to win? Is Ohio a tossup, or 95% R to win?

I haven't seen much on the house, but I'll look at the senate and the governors races:

Senate:I see the Dems not losing any seats, but picking up seats in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire for sure, but also potentially winning close races in Florida, North Carolina, and Missouri if the Dems get a national landslide, and then Arizona as a really long shot but still potentially possible if Arizona is ocean blue due to Trump.

Worst case scenario(counting the 2 independent senators caucusing with Dems):Dem 51, GOP 49 Best Case Scenario:Dem 55, GOP 45

Governors: I see Dems maybe losing Vermont, but keeping all their other governors, and taking North Carolina and Indiana. Really though, I could see them keeping Vermont.

Worst case scenario(they don't add to 50 because Alaska has an independent governor):GOP 30 Dems 19 Best case scenario:GOP 28 Dems 21

So, what are your predictions? Also, do you have any for the house?

For liberals, I'd have to go with George McGovern and to a lesser extent Eugene McCarthy, since unlike certain other big liberals at the time, McGovern was very progressive on war and social issues, which Defintely influences a lot of standard modern liberal ideology. He also was instrumental in the transition towards the all 50 state primaries we have today.

For conservatives, I'd say the modern base is too religious and far right for even Goldwater, so Defintely Reagan and religious leaders like Falwell, you could even say potentially Newt Gingrich and also famous conservative pundits like Hannity and Limbaugh since Newt started the ball rolling for the more toxic modern day climate in Washington, and those pundits are a major part of the reason why we can't have civil discussion much, and it caused republicans growing hatred for the other side.

So, who would you say were the architects for modern day liberalism and conservatism in the U.S.?

He starts with this 7 tweet chain...

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/792212396202876928

And then someone asked this and he replied...

*@TheRickWilson So assume early voting=high dem turnout, drop oppo wknd before Nov 8, high # of GOP who haven't voted demoralized, stay home.

Rick Wilson Verified account ‏@TheRickWilson @dantil Now you're playing the GAME

Interesting. I said earlier we should know by the 4th if the rumors of coming oppo were accurate. I guess that was more true than I thought. From what he has written tonight, this is a coordinated effort for oppo to drop it at times when it damages Trump the most.

**First they damaged him during early voting and now he says they will get him the last weekend before the election to demoralize GOP turnout. **

He was asked why he or Liz Mair doesn't just drop it and he said this...

Rick Wilson ‏@TheRickWilson 2h2 hours ago @procrastilearn @LizMair As stated a million times; it's not in our hands to drop it. We're not reporters.

Someone commented on Clinton campaign's patience....

Lawrence Walsh ‏@LarryWalshID 3h3 hours ago @TheRickWilson Where's that Trump oppo research we keep hearing about? Clinton campaign must have incredible patience.

Rick WilsonVerified account ‏@TheRickWilson @LarryWalshID they do

Will it happen? I guess we'll find out sometime between now and the 5th. I will say that I am more likely to believe Rick Wilson than if it was just a random reporter on twitter. He has a long history as a respected Republican strategist. Liz Mair has also been talking about oppo that has yet to hit. She's mentioned 2 big pieces still out there that haven't hit yet.

We all know by now that the emails Comey referred to in his letter didn't actually have anything to do with HRC and that Chaffetz was the one who said the investigation into her emails was "reopened." However, most of us also know that won't matter one whit to the voting public, who will only read the sensationalist headline. So where does the campaign go from here? How do they address this bombshell? Or has the clock run out on both campaigns, and people are going to vote for who they're going to vote for?

So I was just on r/AskTrumpSupporters, for some reason, and saw a question I could answer. So I did. It was a substantive reply about the Hart–Celler Act, which I know about since one of my professors in undergrad wrote a bunch of papers on it. It wasn't attacking anyone, it wasn't even contentious. Virtually no one even knows what the H-C Act is or what it did or any of that.

My post got removed in five minutes.

Why is every popular political sub so fucking ridiculous with its mod standards? Are these draconian mod standards doing something I can't see to maintain some kind of purity or something? r/PoliticalDiscussion has idiotic and cryptic standards for starting a thread, apparently r/AskTrumpSupporters doesn't even want us to discuss stuff in threads, I mean, it's ridiculous.

And this sub seems fine, and has... 190 subscribers.

What's the deal here? Someone explain this to me. I'm baffled.

So, I was watching TV, and I saw 2 ads on CA state props in a row. Neither mentioned what the prop. wanted to do, no policy substance. One went "this bill has bipartisan support from both parties and from both Labour and big business, vote for it!" Okay, that's great I guess, tell me what's actually in the damn bill! Another one went "All these famous Californian newspapers dislike the prop., Vote no on it" Again, tell me what the bill is!? Ironically, they had the gall to say something like "The more you know about this prop., the more you want to vote against it", when this as didn't say a goddamn thing about the contents of the proposal. So anyways, I personally feel that if you're going to make an ad on a law or prop., you should HAVE to mention the contents at least a little bit, or you're just lying to voters. Don't tell me "Vote for X because a newspaper says so", tell me "Prop. X says X, here's a link to the full text, this prop Is X, vote X way ok it

So, what steps would you take to make sure voters are actually being told about the contents of this? Or would you say this is a nonissue?

538 has a good bit on the possible headlines the day after the election:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/youll-likely-be-reading-one-of-these-5-articles-the-day-after-the-election/

Which one to you think is most likely? I'm at about 2.5, I think. Although I admire the writer's standards; a 42/50 8 point gap is defined as a "bare majority", and a "modest" win!

Example

And if the GOP does reinvent itself, how will it be accomplished?

^

Just like last time! Welcome to our thread for tonight's Presidential debate. We'll be sorting about new to keep the thread fresh and the conversation going for the duration of the debate, and posting a separate post-debate thread afterwards to talk about how it went.

The debate will start at 9pm EST. Until then, feel free to talk about your expectations and other thoughts regarding tonight's debate.

In every election there are some races where a strong candidate chooses not to run or primary voters choose a bad candidate, causing the party that should have easily won that race to underperform or even lose that race. What are some downballot examples of that in this election season?

NOTE: Just clarifying again, I am not asking about Trump or Clinton since I said downballot.

Wikileaks released an alleged email from John Podesta to Hillary Clinton that lists potential VP candidates.

Most of them are Democratic politicians. The Gates and Schultz stand out as billionaire non-politican philanthropists.

Assuming the email is legit, why do you think Podesta thought they'd be good VP candidates for Hillary, and how would the electorate have responded to each of them?

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who famously played while injured to win the world series for the Red Sox for the first time in 86 years, has announced that he will be running against Elizabeth Warren in 2018. While he almost certainly won't win (polls have shown him losing to Warren by 20 points, he is very conservative, and he has a long record of controversial statements), what other athletes have entered politics and how often do they succeed?

My goal is to try to connect people to their districts by actually showing it to them on the map. I want people to correlate their district number with their community and vice versa.

You'll see that the first episode is about NC HB2. I would like to make similar episodes for other controversial bills but before I do I figured I would get some feedback from some wonks.

Also, since I already have the NC legislature maps templated, I think I'll make a post-election vid that shows incumbents who won/lost and candidates who ran unopposed in the primary and the general. If y'all think that would be a good idea then maybe I'll start working on maps for some other states as well.

Here it is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l98R7e1GFtc