The 2016 US Election (Part I)

[Knife]

Thanks...

On an aside, the kiddie table debate is already on youtube.

[bilateralrope]

I don't have time to watch it live. Will there be a recording uploaded anywhere ?

[Knife]

And we're off...

[Mr Bean]

Introductions are starting and assume a recording will go up online within an hour.

[Knife]

First question: anyone here who will not pledge to support and eventual GOP nominee and will not pledge to run independently. Of course only Trump raises his hand.

[Mr Bean]

First question and it's a direct attack on trump. Raise your hand if you won't promise not to run as an independent.

OH DAMN IT'S ALREADY STARTING Paul trying to cut in on Trump and it goes NASTY

[Mr Bean]

Second questions everyone handling themselves well.

Okay here's the Bush question to Jeb.

And there goes a women question and Trump has an excellent if still offensive retort.

*Edit we are fifteen minutes in and no one has yet to embarrass themselves but here comes Christie.

[Knife]

Meh minus the start up tiff between Trump and Paul, not many fireworks. Lots of softballs flying though.

[Mr Bean]

First commerica break
Everything interesting is happening when Trump gets involved and you can see him visibly restarting himself.

Big winners this debate look like everyone not named Bush or Paul. John Kasich is going great as well, the guy not giving the moderators what they want.

[Mr Bean]

Finally some serious exchanges when Paul and Christie are fighting it out on stage, everyone is just sitting off to the side. That was a serious back and forth the first real one.

Bush admits the war was a mistake. But says it was totally intelligences fault.

[Mr Bean]

There is seriously some Hillary hate on the Fox News side. I mean every other question is Hillary related, we are an hour in and a good 60% of the questions are Hillary related.


OH SHIT-That's right Scott Walker IS in this debate I totally forgot, he's been a complete non presence

[The Romulan Republic]

Of course they're all focussed on Clinton.

Keep ignoring Bernie Sanders, guys. I'm sure it won't bite you in the ass...

[Mr Bean]

Of course they're all focussed on Clinton.

Keep ignoring Bernie Sanders, guys. I'm sure it won't bite you in the ass...

Twenty years attacking Hillary, Twenty years they have spent attacking her. They can't just quit her.

Also they are playing clips of Fiorina from the kids debate as a question in the main debate.

Commercial break up next... social issues.
Looks like the Republicans believe the correct response to DEATH TO AMERICA from Hardliners is invading Iran and shouting DEATH TO IRAN.

[Mr Bean]

The last question is literally hey has God told you anything recently?

[Mr Bean]

So it's over







If I had to rank them

Came out looking good
Donald Trump
John Kasich
Marco Rubio
Ben Carson

No change
Chris Christie
Ted Cruz
Mike Huckabee

Came out looking worse
Jeb Bush
Rand Paul

Oh wait here was there
Scott Walker


All in all I'm shocked Ben Carson did as well as he did, there were just about five contentious back and forth worth mentioning but otherwise it was pretty bland since there were so many people on stage it was hard to have direct face to face interaction and everyone hates Hillary Clinton.

[blahface]

It is so ridiculous that there are 17 candidates in the primary and a ballot only allows Republican voters to express an opinion on one of the candidates. How can anyone possibly think the results would represent the will of the voters?

[Vejut]

Its the party choosing who it wants to represent it in the actual election for the office, it'd make sense that only members of the party can vote, otherwise it'd just be a very slow runoff style election, which admittedly might not be a bad thing. We also tend to be a bit...over-fond of elections for everything here, so we tend to let anybody who wants to and files the right forms have a shot. That said, several states do allow open primaries, where anybody can vote (though usually only for one of the two major primary elections).

[Mr Bean]

Another bit of news from the debate, the Kid table debate did not have an audience because Fox News denied letting anyone attend not because no one wanted to attend. There have been several stories written about how blatantly Fox is trying to winnow the candidates out ASAP.

[blahface]

Its the party choosing who it wants to represent it in the actual election for the office, it'd make sense that only members of the party can vote, otherwise it'd just be a very slow runoff style election, which admittedly might not be a bad thing. We also tend to be a bit...over-fond of elections for everything here, so we tend to let anybody who wants to and files the right forms have a shot. That said, several states do allow open primaries, where anybody can vote (though usually only for one of the two major primary elections).

I actually meant that it was unrepresentative of the Republican voters. Republicans are only allowed to express an opinion on one candidate in a field of 17 candidates. I was criticizing the plurality voting system.

That being said though, I'd prefer that we did away with party primaries and had a single non-partisan primary that used approval voting to get two candidates for the general election.

[ZOmegaZ]

Better, we should just use approval voting and do away with primaries entirely.

[Dominus Atheos]

Surprise surprise, Fox News has possibly been editing the transcripts of the debate to make Bush look better:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/0 ... Parenthood

Well now this is a curious thing.

In the transcripts from last night’s debate that have been released thus far, the exchange where Megyn Kelly asks Jeb Bush about his service on the Bloomberg Foundation at a time when it supported Planned Parenthood (here’s an earlier report on it) has been scrubbed.

Those of you that watched the debate live may remember it as being a particularly tense moment. Megyn Kelly followed up with Bush after Bush dodged the initial question, and Jeb declared he didn't know, he was only there to work on education issues, and "it doesn't matter." But nope, it doesn't appear in the transcripts. (Here's the Washington Post version, which seems to be identical to the CBS one.) And it's not just the transcript:

Fox appears only to be releasing selected clips of the debate, and this exchange is not included.

So that's a bit odd. A simple transcription error, perhaps, that just happened to, oops, take out an entire question, answer, follow up question, and follow up answer?

Huh. Well, it is Fox News. It's only blind luck that the network didn't happen to put up onscreen graphics accidentally declaring some of them "Democrats." It'll be interesting to see if the omission gets fixed, though.

[Exonerate]

WaPo:

Former president Bill Clinton had a private telephone conversation in late spring with Donald Trump at the same time that the billionaire investor and reality-television star was nearing a decision to run for the White House, according to associates of both men.

Four Trump allies and one Clinton associate familiar with the exchange said that Clinton encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party and offered his own views of the political landscape.

It all makes sense now

IMO the only two half-way electable Republican candidates are Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. The rest of the candidates are either too crazy even for the Republican establishment, too crooked, or just nobodies. Chances are good they could carry their home state of Florida.

[blahface]

Better, we should just use approval voting and do away with primaries entirely.

I agree that would be a step up. I don't know if that would be better than having a non-partisan primary though. It should be kept simple and less burdensome for the voter as possible – that is why I support approval voting over score voting. Straight approval would be simpler and less burdensome, but I think some might be more inclined to vote more honestly for lesser preferred, but still liked candidates if there is a top two cushion. Also, a two way competition allows for a more thorough evaluation of the two candidates.

I don't know which would be better overall, but at the moment, I side with top two approval. I could change my mind though.

[jwl]

he's got some crazy tax ideas (Above and beyond Rand Paul) like slapping 50% excise taxes on things to raise revnoue (Booze, cigarettes, anything immoral basically)

On average, the tax in the UK on cigarettes is 77%. Just to put that into context.

[Mr Bean]

he's got some crazy tax ideas (Above and beyond Rand Paul) like slapping 50% excise taxes on things to raise revnoue (Booze, cigarettes, anything immoral basically)

On average, the tax in the UK on cigarettes is 77%. Just to put that into context.

Ahah let me explain for our non-Americans. Unlike the UK or the Philippians or anywhere else with handy geographic isolation excise taxes are state affairs here meaning if one state has a 2$ a pack cigarette task and one has a 1$ a pack cigarette task then as very shortly a smuggling ring will emerge for cross state cigarettes at in the 1$ state with the smugglers making fifty cents in revenue per pack. At fifty cents it's not enough to justify an entire smuggling ring but lots of local transport will happen because they need to catch you in the act of selling said cigarets before they can fine/arrest/murder you.

What about a Federal Tax? Well then you run into Mexico where it just so happens we make lots of cigarettes and we produce the tax symbols stamped on packs of cigarettes headed north, want NY tax symbols? Can do, CA? easily done. So if you Federally toss a 50% excise tax on cigaretts your just giving one more thing to move north of the border except now there's big bucks to be made, it's legal to grow and the illegality comes from tax dodging which unlike heroin lots of people are willing to overlook.

And there's the small fact that 28% of Police departments smoke giving the cigarette smugglers an easy in, in fact it's infamous that New York cops go to Pennsylvania for their much cheaper cigarettes thanks to NY states 4.35$ a pack excise tax. An excise tax on things is fine as long as it's moderate, push it to high and rather than discourage use you simply encourage criminal smuggling to dodge the tax.