27th June 2016, 8:29 PM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Is it holding her to a standard no one has been held to before? Absolutely! We've all been fools not to consider it important! I can't say if it's sexism that's fueling lots of this sort of comment on her or not (I'm sure it is), but there's another factor. This is the first time in a good long while we've had two major candidates that AREN'T being funded by major political interest groups, at least as far as I know. When the entire field was taking all these donations from the special interest groups, it wasn't something we could use to filter it, but now we've got that.So what's your plan to fund a $500 million to a billion dollar presidental election cycle through $27 donations only? It'd never haoppen. The only way to get money out of politics would be ot have rules like England's, where political campaign ads aren't allowed except in certain, limited preset times... but with our stronger First Amendment rights, that'd never pass muster here I think. Alternatively, what? Mandate public funding of campaigns? But SuperPACs, etc, exist, and for every campaign-funding loophole you close, rich people find another way to spend money to influence elections. We badly need to reign in PACs and such, but that'll only happen with a Supreme Court willing to overturn Citizen's United -- and even then we still have VERY expensive election cycles, as there is next to no chance of getting rid of the current ad model of presidential campaigning, where campaigns, PACs, and the like all pay TV stations individually for ad time and there is no limit to how many ads they can play.
Personally, on free speech grounds, I do think that Britain-like restrictions on advertising probably would not hold up here. So facing that, what can you do? Overturning Citizen's United and mandating strong disclosure rules for all groups advertising (so they have to say where they're getting their money from, specifically, up front) are key, but again, you still would need lots of money to run a campaign, and that money has to come from somewhere -- and it won't be exclusively small donations, that does not add up to enough.
So yeah, I agree that the influence of money over politicians is a concern, it always is, but I don't see any way around it. And as for Bernie, yes, he had a very well-funded primary campaign, but could his "small donations only" campaign actually have kept pace in November? Sure, Trump's campaign is a mess financially, but the RNC, the Kochs, and such sure aren't!
Quote:Obama certainly was taking a lot of these donations, and well, Obama has been a bit disappointing and isn't the golden hope we were all dreaming of.While I was hopeful for Obama, I wasn't one of his big fans, of course; I wanted Hillary to win the Democratic nomination that year. As for what I think though, he's mostly been a pretty good president, except for one big problem: so, SO many times, he'd compromise before a debate even took place! He seems to think that if you offer someone a good deal they will take it, but with the Republicans as they are, that was an incredibly naive belief, and indeed it did not happen. There is a definite draw to his hopeful optimism, but it's got a downside too. I saw this coming in the primaries; for example, again, Obama's health-care plan was a bit to Hillary's right as an attempt to start with a 'bill that could pass', as if the Republicans care about things such as supporting iteas that were theirs ~20-odd years ago... yeah, right! He consistently under-estimated Republican intransigence because of his too-optimistic world view, basically. Hillary's much more realistic about the state of the opposition, so I think despite surely facing a similarly unending wave of Republican hate and governmental inaction, she might have gotten more done. But we'll see which way that goes soon, since the Republican Party sure isn't getting more reasonable as time goes on and she is our likely next president.
Quote:I'm not saying Obama has done nothing, but face facts, Obama didn't need congress' permission to close all the camps in Guantanamo Bay. He could have closed Echo with a single executive order, but didn't.Well, maybe he could have closed it, but congress, and the Republicans in congress particularly, made it near-impossible to move the prisoners there anywhere else and you can't just release them as the people still there mostly are definite terrorists, so what could he do? It is definitely frustratiing that Guantanamo didn't close, but I blame the Republicans for this first, since they blocked moving the prisoners.
Quote:Anyway, I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Voting for Clinton is better than Trump. PLENTY of sexists have been slamming Clinton unfairly. That's a fact, but my criticism of her isn't because I'm suddenly picking nits I never picked on before. It's because I WOKE UP. I've realized the systemic problems the entire system has. I'm not claiming conspiracy. I'm claiming far too many politicians are acting in their own selfish interests resulting in a massive mess. No need for conspiracy there, it's just a bunch of random people plotting a bunch of conflicting nonsense that ultimately hurts us far too often, and for decades. So, I've decided the best way to put a stop to it is to start looking for conflicts of interest in candidates and pick accordingly. It's something we SHOULD have been doing all along. But, I'll give you this. 4 years from now, you can gladly take me to task on this. If I'm just letting these conflicts of interest slide in 4 years' time, get on me for my hypocrisy.Well, at least you admit you've changed your standards this cycle.
Quote:As for the gun issue, I have to say this, I've changed my mind on the no guns for those on the no fly list. On the face of it, it's blindly true that possible terrorists shouldn't be getting guns. Everyone can agree on that (and most Americans do), but the problem is the no-fly list is horrible government overreach, and when we say "okay, in this case, let's go ahead and expand it", we're tacitly saying "okay, it's fine to have a lack of due process for this". There's hypocrisy in it, but this is one of the few times when the slope really is slippery. Gun rights need answers, and the Dem's OTHER bill was a no brainer that should have passed.Owning assault rifles and other such weapons should be illegal, so anything which reduces their ownership sounds good to me!
Now, the FBI's most-wanted list DOES have oversight on it. Let's use that as our model instead and ban anyone on the most-wanted list from buying a gun.