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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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It hasn't, but it's a general rule among the centrist parties in Germany (to my understanding) that red-red-green can never be allowed to happen, ever. Which may lead to some very serious drama if it starts looking like it's a possibility.
A center-right, center, center-left coalition (which would be our version of a stoplight coalition) isn't going to work in America, and I suspect it won't work for much longer in Germany if the EU starts collapsing in earnest and there's no longer enough "treasure" to pacify all the major interests behind the parties involved.
edited 11th Feb '17 12:30:23 PM by CaptainCapsase
@Cap: I was under the impression that at least some of the failure of other presidential systems is because they're mostly found in the New World and we have a long history of overthrowing Latin American governments and installing dictators out of political convenience and/or CIA boredom.
Also, save for the top executive office, there's no real reason a presidential system needs to be associated with FPTP (or parliamentary with proportional voting - after all, many well-known parliamentary governments use FPTP districts instead). A presidential system can have a proportionally elected legislature just as easily as it can have easily gerrymanderable districts with FPTP voting.
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Yes, but when it comes to the top level office, only one person can hold it, and that makes non FPTP systems somewhat dicey; say there's 5 candidates running, and someone gets in with only 15% of the vote? That's not a strong popular mandate. You can mitigate that by doing multiple rounds of voting (or instant runoff systems like ranked choice which can be gamed and which are comparatively complicated), which is what France does, but France's system is already semi-presidential rather than a fully presidential or parliamentary system.
edited 11th Feb '17 12:29:40 PM by CaptainCapsase
Well, first, in that case, it sure is nice that the executive doen't actually hold all the power (at least on paper, but we are currently in the process of testing that in practice right now), so an unpopular winner can't just rule by fiat (again, in theory, and we're testing the practice right now).
Though I would very much prefer that we eliminated the Electoral College (a non-necessary and grossly detrimental compoment in our presidential system) and used two-round voting like France (does not mandate semi-presidential/semi-parliamentary government) or some manner of ranked-choice voting.
Independent of the parliamentary/presidential issue, our election system is almost as poorly designed as it could possibly have been. If they didn't also own slaves, I'd probably consider our electoral system to be the Founding Fathers' Dethroning Moment Of Suck.
edited 11th Feb '17 12:37:02 PM by Balmung
" Yes, but when it comes to the top level office, only one person can hold it, and that makes non FPTP systems somewhat dicey; say there's 5 candidates running, and someone gets in with only 15% of the vote? That's not a strong popular mandate."
In Argentina we do a second round. These are the rules for one here:
- No candidate gets over 40% of the vote means second round between top 2.
- If the top candidate gets between 40% and 45%, and the second gets within 10% of the first, there's a runoff.
- If the top candidate gets over 45% they're president and that's it.
Altough personally I'd prefer if we had a proportional parliament with M Ps apportioned by provincial population (or the Council Democracy system we talked about in the Constitution thread), because the presidential race tends to distort politics too much.
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV@Caps, the issue is more that the current Left party is the fusion of the old one (ie the successor of the SED) and a splitoff of the SPD during a penis-length contest between Oskar Lafontaine and Gerhardt Schröder.
The SPD is still miffed about that. And as a result the Left on the federal level is a weird mix out of people who thirty years ago would have run the GDR by way of party membership and the SPD's equivalent of Never Hillary Democrats
That and the Left party having such fun idea's as complaining that the new SPD Chancellor candidate does not immediately and instantly vow to never go into a Cabinet under Merkel (which would only really favor the Left party).
In short, the SPD (and the Greens) don't trust the Left Party to have their back in a coalition or be willing to be a team-player. Rather, the Left would be more liable to put their issues front and drag their partners (and remember, they'd be a junior partner in any coalition) into them with no concern. And since we've seen what tail-wags-dog inter-coalition crap can be with Seehofer and the CDU...Its understandably that Red-Red-Green is not exactly making them feel warm and fuzzy.
"You can reply to this Message!"Reporters kept in room with black plastic covering windows while at Trump golf course
White House reporters tasked with covering Trump tweeted they were holed up in a clubhouse basement of the luxurious Trump National Jupiter Golf Club & Spa.
That wouldn’t be so bad if the windows and doors weren’t covered with black plastic, blocking all views of the outside world, including Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the golf course.
“Trump's press corps has been placed in a basement suite at Jupiter golf club," tweeted Jennifer Jacobs, a White House reporter for Bloomberg. “Black plastic over windows to give Trump privacy as he golfs"
So I have two messages. The very first one, for the French, and European researchers, we will preserve our budgets, we will reinforce our investment, our public and private investment, in order to do more, and accelerate our initiative in order to deliver in line with COP 21. And second, a message for you guys. Please, come to France, you are welcome, it's your nation, we like innovation. We want innovative people. We want people working on climate change, energy, renewables and new technologies. France is your nation. Thanks.
From The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Twitter
The photo was used side-by-side with a photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was not immediately clear whether the image of Baldwin was accidental or an intentional joke.
Social media users found it funny either way.
edited 11th Feb '17 2:25:03 PM by sgamer82
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Lets not go that far. In Stalinist Russia they'd probably be forced under threat of execution to run a story saying that Trump shot 18 holes-in-one.
...come to think of it, was there no room that just doesn't have a clear view of the golf course? If there is they could of just put the press in their and no one would of been able to say something was off without sounding crazy. By putting black plastic over the windows they make it plainly obvious that the press aren't supposed to see something, even if that "something" is just Trump being really bad at golf.
edited 11th Feb '17 2:23:14 PM by Falrinn
“We are the people who really need help,” said Janel Green, an organizer of the Georgia Alliance for Social Justice, one of the groups spearheading the demonstrations. “We have no voice, no representation in the Senate as our senators refuse to hear our concerns.”
With no town hall meetings yet scheduled in Georgia, critics of the president’s policies targeted an event held Friday led by aides to three GOP lawmakers in the east Georgia town of Greensboro as a chance to make a statement. The event was organized by the offices of Perdue, Sen. Johnny Isakson and Rep. Jody Hice.
The staffers to the three politicians were clearly caught off guard by the size and organization of the protesters, and briefly walked out of the room to chants of “Shame!” A Hice staffer later returned with pen and paper in hand, jotting down notes as more than a dozen speakers railed against Trump’s policies and urged Georgia Republicans to defy him.
“If organized groups want to manufacture protests and continue to be disruptive,” [Perdue’s spokeswoman, Caroline Vanvick said] said, “it will only deny those who really need help.”
The lawmakers’ deputies told protesters Friday the event was never intended to be a “town hall” and that they wouldn’t answer questions, leading to a cascade of boos....But several organizers on Friday and Saturday circulated a press release from Isakson’s office earlier this month describing it as a chance for constituents to talk to his aides about “any issues concerning the federal government, federal legislation or federal agencies.”
edited 11th Feb '17 4:44:04 PM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our livesAmerican scientists are among the best in the world. If Trump won't use them/hobbles them, they might as well do good elsewhere (if only for a while).
Also on the topic of Americans running for the hills, Cape Breton University, a Canadian school that generally gets less than 10 American students a year, has gotten hundreds of applications from the states.
I wonder if someone should warn them that Cape Breton is basically Canada's armpit...
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Cape Breton may have started it. Last year they made an ad (possibly joking) inviting Americans to move there. It may have gotten them some attention from these people.
And Cape Breton is mostly just kind of poor and overlooked. Nova Scotia is overall pretty nice. Least it isn't people trying to move to Newfoundland for the farming.
Newfoundland is called the Rock for a reason. It's also freezing most of the year.
edited 11th Feb '17 5:20:04 PM by Zendervai

Also, it's funny that you say that a legislature is unlikely to switch to "national popular vote winner gets all the state electoral votes" when a compact that would do exactly that contingent upon getting 50%+1 of electoral votes on-board has been adopted by states adding up to 30% of the Electoral College and is pending in states adding up to about 10% more.