Thread: FBI recommends not to indict Hillary

Well, Epy, it seems there's nothing to discuss with you. It seems your thoughts are just: US is ruined, how could any president make it any worse and you don't seem to be even considering that the wrong candidate might just make everything worse. To me, you seem shortsighted, so there's no point discussing anything with you.

And, really, having a president is just dumb if you ask me. Why have one person that rules over almost everything? How's that democratic? Thank goodness we don't have any of that nonsense here (although this system's really no better).

Originally Posted by Elysia

And, really, having a president is just dumb if you ask me. Why have one person that rules over almost everything? How's that democratic? Thank goodness we don't have any of that nonsense here (although this system's really no better).

Err...

A president doesn't rule over everything. He doesn't have the legislative power, for instance. So he can't make new laws. He does have a veto power for new laws passed, but he can only exercise it on certain types of laws and there are many safeguards in-place to avoid abuse. He can propose new laws, but these will be discussed and approved by the congress. At best he can try and lobby for his proposals to pass if the congress holds enough members willing to support his proposal, which is rare in these days when the congress is dominated by the opposing party.

The president cannot intervene either on many public services affairs, including National Security. He can nominate new directors for many public service areas, but he is seriously limited in the executive orders he can issue. The president of the United States, for instance, cannot issue an order like Puttin did that online services must render their security keys.

The list of limitations goes on. But perhaps the most important one is that the president of a democratic country can be removed from office by an impeachment vote. In the USA this is the power of the House of Representatives, by majority vote and it is up to the Senate to trial the impeachment. Other democratic countries share similar processes. In the USA two presidents have been impeached in the past, but both survived the trial and were found not guilty. The later, Bill Clinton was impeached on the charges of perjury in a senate haring and abuse of power. I dare you to even come close with anything similar in pseudo-democratic countries.

The ol' saying "the president of the United States; is the most powerful man in the world", that's just a romantic notion. There are far more powerful people in democratic countries than the men and women that hold political positions. But more important, the core organization of a democratic regime, the so-called meta-democracy, is made exactly to support a whole series of structures of checks and safeguards that tries its best to hold men and women in positions of power, as well as public and governmental institutions, all accountable. And a implement a complex network of auto-regulation and supervision.

Democracy is not just the best regime. It's the only possible if we wish to ensure certain liberties and the advancement of our societies.

Originally Posted by Epy

The two-party system is crap, the electoral college is crap, and basically the whole "system" is crap. I'd be happy if he did turn out to be super-........ty like you say and some good change came from it.

I sort of like the libertarians. I mean, who wouldn't feel an hint of sympathy for this party if they are liberal. But these guys on USA just took it way too far (why is it is always like that over there?). I mean, Minarchism, really? Hell, no! And the whole position on guns, because rights... whatever.

So I have a mixed feeling around them. I've spoken with a few libertarians before. And it's always great when we start. We share cool stories, share similar points of views on some things. But when we start to get into the gritty details of governement structure and responsibilities or the issue of civil liberties, it's when the love story ends and I get to witness some extreme points of views tat would make many liberals flee in terror.

EDIT: I don't agree there is such a thing as a "wasted vote". Any vote is a political stance. The participation process should be about making effective your political orientation. Heck, I even defend the position that refusing to vote is a legitimate political stance that must be respected in the overall context of what a free democracy should be. But above all voting shouldn't really be about winning. I don't think you win anything when your political orientation gets to power. There are too many variations in the way like-minded people think and act, that you will always be ensured you have a government in place that will not fully adhere to your own principles.

So, the president is just a figurehead. Which kind of makes me wonder, why is the president even there? This kinda brings me back to how I think it is dumb. Why can't you just gather a council, let people vote and if there's a big enough consensus, let it happen? *shrug* Politics... never my strong side. All systems I know of are just horrible...

Originally Posted by Epy

1. Again, they're both idiots, both terrible choices, I don't like either

I agree. They're literally the worst people in the country.

Originally Posted by Epy

2. I used to be libertarian, but, wasted vote

No. The only wasted vote is the one that compromises your principles.

Originally Posted by Epy

3. The two-party system is crap, the electoral college is crap, and basically the whole "system" is crap. I'd be happy if he did turn out to be super-........ty like you say and some good change came from it.

There are more parties. Gary Johnson is polling very strongly. It's literally proof that the whole country is fed up with the BS that we've lived with for the last 200+ years.

Originally Posted by Elkvis

There are more parties. Gary Johnson is polling very strongly. It's literally proof that the whole country is fed up with the BS that we've lived with for the last 200+ years.

He had already come third on the last presidential election, I seem to recall being the first independent candidate in USA presidential elections history to reach 1%, or something I like that.
He's a moderate libertarian in the sense that he's a classical liberal and not fully aligned with some of the Looney Tunes of the Libertarian Party. I do like him and am rooting for 2016 to be the biggest independent vote year in USA history (Johnson and others combined), so that a message is sent to the decaying political scene over there.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

...some of the Looney Tunes of the Libertarian Party.

There are a lot of them. We call them the tinfoil hat crowd. I'm a libertarian, philosophically, not a Libertarian party affiliate. I believe in personal, social, and economic freedom. I believe that anything that is not voluntary is implicitly immoral. I believe that anything you do which causes harm to someone other than yourself, without their consent, is immoral. I believe that taxation is theft, and that democracy is simply a way for as few as half of the people to oppress the other half - a way of saying a that particular portion of society's needs/wants/beliefs don't matter, just because they're outnumbered.

All of that being said, I'd be less opposed to a Gary Johnson presidency than either of the other major candidates. He's not a holy messiah or anything like that, but he's a lot more rational and sane than Clinton or Trump.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

rooting for 2016 to be the biggest independent vote year in USA history

So far, that record seems to belong to the 1992 presidential election, in which Henry Ross Perot earned 19.8% of the popular vote, but didn't win any states.

Originally Posted by Epy

Ignorance and indifference: Delving deep into the Clinton e-mail saga | Ars Technica

Ars Technica is really not a god website to read about these things. In fact, you can reply no place is. And I will have to agree. With the death of the blogosphere and the last relevant political bloggers having been assimilated by the content farm, we have lost the ability to become Informed.

But above all, what I am trying to say here is that when an opinion maker technological website presents you with a feature article pretending to be inform you in an unbiased and comprehensive way, your immediate reaction should be to puke and go play a game, instead of passing the link around. This should be true even when the article aligns with your ideas.

Because of two reasons: the first reason, this is a technological website trying to discuss State issues simply because their background involves technology, regardless of how irrelevant the technology and its use is to the whole story. Second, because news websites are not sources of information, merely sources of news. Investigation report is a dying art in the printing press -- and it was never even been born in the online one, where journalism is being performed by all sorts of people without a degree in journalism and more concerned in how rapidly they output articles to feed the web economy.

So, please don't ever again share an Ars Technica article on matters that are technology irrelevant. This will, trust me, help you and everyone else stop feeding what is being the absolute and systematic destruction of perhaps the most important gift the internet gave humanity. Wee need that Internet back. And content farms are destroying it for us.

Originally Posted by Epy

Stupid electoral college.

Maybe today, but it seems like the right reasons to form a party back then, as it does today. It is sad though; it seems that in politics we are always fated to become the very monster we fight. I have no doubt at my age, having seen what I have seen, that I would become one also. All those ideals I shared in my youth, I look at them shamefully today; because it is now so clear how vain and clouded by a false sense of reality they were. It's almost like watching performers sing for world peace; I feel a knot in my stomach, of how embarrassingly vain and false what they are doing really is.

There must be something deeply wrong at a genetic level with the general political philosophy that always translates into an unwilling but assured decline of ethical and moral reasoning. And I think I might know what that is; any system based on creed and faith is inherently weak, the same way a bridge won't sustain itself on rubber pillars.

What does this mean? Probably means that politics should transition from a philosophical background to an empiric one based on mathematics and science. There are ways to achieve this, but they all mean the political circus of candidates, beliefs, elections and whatnot would be over. That's good. But it means democracy would finally be buried. And here I'm just not so sure that would be a good thing.

Originally Posted by Mario F.

Ars Technica is really not a god website to read about these things. In fact, you can reply no place is. And I will have to agree. With the death of the blogosphere and the last relevant political bloggers having been assimilated by the content farm, we have lost the ability to become Informed.

Where do you suggest reading about these things then? Offline mainstream media that is also likely to have their biases and journalists who have degrees but are nonetheless "more concerned in how rapidly they output articles to feed the (news) economy", precisely because of the need to compete with online content farms? As you say "investigation report is a dying art in the printing press". It seems to me that we can extrapolate to say that "when (any news source) presents you with a feature article pretending to be inform you in an unbiased and comprehensive way, your immediate reaction should be to puke and go play a game, instead of passing the link (or paper) around. This should be true even when the article aligns with your ideas." If so, then how are we to have informed opinions? Effectively, whenever you don't like something, you can just rubbish the source without going into detail as to why the article is wrong.