[DEBATE] Presidential Election - 2016 (closing Nov 22)

Ya, Crimea is pro-Russian, I suppose. I'm not there so I don't know for certain. Of course there was no free voting on any of it. I suppose that makes it ok for a large country to invade a small independent one and take part of it for themselves because they say that's what the people want. I guess that makes sense.

Write-ins won't win. Never even heard of Johnson or Stein nor have the majority of the American people. If there was a none of the above option maybe there could be a re-election? IMO the whole election system is dysfunctional.

I don't know how the American election system works, but over here we don't vote for a Prime Minister. We vote for a party to represent our local constituency - this gives the party more seats in parliament (doesn't work well - the SNP got less votes than UKIP, but more seats in parliament). The party with most seats has their leader become the Prime Minister. Of course, people vote for the party leader and not their local MP candidates, but nevermind.

I always figured the US was the same. You shouldn't be voting for a candidate to win, but for a party you like. If parties with similar ideologies to you get more votes, the less power the biggest party gets. Apparently not.

Has anyone ever noticed how we call the democratic peoples by their first name (Hillary,Bernie) and the republicans by their last names (Trump, Rubio,Cruz,Kasich)?

The people living in Crimea have always been pro-Russian. 58% of the people living there are Russian (assuming this works like the British people who live in Northern Ireland, they're probably staunchly Russian loyalists) - there's significant Tatar and Ukrainian minorities, but I believe the Ukrainians are also pro-Russian (not sure about the Tatars since they were treated very badly by Stalin, and they're not Slavic either). Crimea has also been treated fairly badly by the Ukrainian government in the past.

Their alternative is being forced into European integration, and they (along with Belarus... and the United Kingdom lol) don't want that to happen to them. Probably a good thing, too, since it was NATO, Western Europe and the United States who got them into this mess in the first place.

Republican candidates have better surnames.

For example 'Trump' means 'fart' in all versions of British English.

That's correct. It won't win. You asked for options though and I gave you some.

The majority of the people who follow the election even a little bit know who Johnson/Stein are.

58% of the people that live in Crimea are Russian citizens? If they are they would have no say in the matter. I'm guessing what you mean is that they are of Russian descent? Or what do you mean? My ancestors are English. How many Americans are of English descent do you think? I suppose that means England should annex the US? I am having a hard time following your reasoning. So if a lot of people from one country move to another that country should belong to the country they moved from. Russia sent troops into an independent country and took part of it for themselves with force. Nobody was asked if that was ok, they just did it. Crimea was part of Ukraine until Putin decided he would like to have it. I am very confused how you think that is cool.

I mean they are ethnically Russian and I'm also guessing a significant portion of that population are immigrants.

Well, no, because England itself has been annexed by the UK and that's a different situation entirely.

The West has backed things like this happening before. A significant portion of immigrants from one place move into a place that isn't historically theirs and overtake the native population, and it suddenly becomes okay for them to claim it as theirs. Number one example would be colonialism, but here's more recent examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Ireland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Kosovo_declaration_of_independence (<This one will get me shit for saying that it's wrong but I don't care lol)

Based off this I'd conclude that if 58% of the Crimean population are ethnically Russian and they are being suppressed by the government of a larger nation, it would be okay for Russia to annex them - but of course, it's not, because it's done by Russia, and people don't like Russia expanding westwards.

I'd also just like to point out I'm in no way a Russian sympathiser or something. I don't approve of their activities in eastern Ukraine, their bullying of the Baltic states, their threats to Denmark, their feud with the European Union, or their flying of bomber planes into the UK.

I personally think you are wrong. I believe it is incorrect for any country to invade another country by force and take part of their territory as their own. I don't believe Putin did it to help the people there but to expand his territory. Russia kinda has a recent history of doing this kind of thing. He is a bully and will continue to send Russia's military to enslave the free people of other independent countries under any guise he can think of. And, as in Ukraine, if they resist he will murder them en mass. He will shoot down civilian aircraft and then lie about it. Even after an international authority says he is wrong. He is emboldened and the longer we justify his crimes the harder it will be to stop him.

And here I thought this was a discussion on the presidential election cx

Been kinda skipping the political news, can someone giv me a summary of what has been happining(i know the basics but im not from US)
so questions that i have:

What is democrats win?
what if trump wins?
what can decide who wins?
etc

In the poll (EMC) the candidates are tied. Hillary had a short lead in that poll before but it has shrunk.

- > "Trump will be the biggest loser"
- > "Trump will be a loser"

Well said my man. I just hope the voters see that if they hurt hillary, they are essentially electing Trump into office, 'cause there's no way that a 3rd party candidate can get enough votes to actually become president. There's just too many of them out there that share the votes; all it'd do is hurt the major candidates that actually have a chance...

Ah yes, American politics, how I love thee... :\

Nice find man. Speaking from experience and knowledge, as I have a number of family members that are republican (not me though), their reasoning for not "wanting" to believe in science boggles my mind. Granted, some of them believe at least a little bit of it, most of them deny most of the already-proven facts out there...

Bible-huggers, that's the word I call them. Nothing wrong with it, it's their choice to be like that and ignore stuff that's already been proven, some, repeatedly, but it just entertains me at how weak (in my opinion) their reasoning is...

I don't hate them, but they do make me wonder how they're even related to me...

good one? bruh why you always waste your time doing things like this its just annoying bro

That's not exactly correct. That's how it works in practice, but the Prime Minister is actually just the person with the support of the majority of MP's. The UK system would function perfectly fine if parties didn't exist.

In the US however, the President is elected by everyone (although through a bit of a muddled system). This is due to their bigger separation of powers. In the US the executive, legislature and judiciary are very separate. In the UK the executive forms part of the legislature (although power is exercised through the Queen). The Judiciary in the UK is more separate though, where people are selected on their merit.

I mostly agree with you. But Soul is right when saying that there's a huge number of people who would rather be in Russia. When the USSR was split up, Crimea was a popular region for Russians (Soviet heads of state often went there for holidays), but it was given to Ukraine. Originally, the unrest in Crimea was as a result of rebel groups, and they had genuine popular support (I won't say overwhelming or even majority though). Then Russia stepped in and supported these groups unofficially, until they annexed the region at which time they became significantly more involved.

Most of the resistance is being coordinated by people in Kiev, and not the people in Crimea. In all fairness, this is about as considerate of the wishes of the people in Crimea as the approach by people in Moscow.

Russia is most definitely not just going in and enslaving people and murdering then en mass if they resist. Putin is not ordering that planes get shot down, the evidence supports that it was done by Russian forces, but there is nothing to suggest that it was a preplanned attack and instead more of a random selection of aircraft, which turned into a catastrophic accident.

The biggest issue is that we can't just denounce him, his actions and his country and move on. That'd be a diplomatic nightmare. No one is justifying what he does, but just saying enough is enough and doing something stupid won't turn out well for anyone.

I'm sorry. I just fail to understand why you seem so annoyed.

And I suppose Russia deserves to have Georgia too. We all seem to forget about what has happened there in 2008. Russia decided that they needed to protect ethnic Russians there that were citizens of Georgia. Another independent country. So the huge Russian army came in and demolished the much smaller Georgian army. Killing hundreds of soldiers and civilians alike, women and children. They didn't technically annex it but they still occupy a good portion of the country for their own. And what stories have come out of Georgia since the Russian occupation, atrocities, murders and gang rapes of the women and girls. Why does the West, and even the people on this thread, turn their backs on these people and even try to justify that it is ok that Putin wants to expand Russia by killing the armies of these independent countries and taking them over? Natural Gas. Natural Gas. Natural Gas. I must ask, are you mba2012, a western European. I believe western Europe is a slave to Russia for it and will give them anything they want. And guess what, Putin knows that too.

Depends what you mean by 'western European'. He's Australian.

And nah, we're not slaves to them - the politicians, maybe (this is probably part of the reason people want to vote for the nationalist parties now). They're scared of us (NATO and the EU, both political projects founded to destroy Russian dominance in eastern Europe are speeding towards them). We don't want or need a war breaking out on our border, in places that have been bombed to shit since the 1910s and are still reeling from the disease that is Communism, when we're still dealing with the problems coming from the middle east and the politically unstable EU.

If Germany increased military spending - which they won't, because that whole issue is controversial and the people there don't want it - and displayed more diplomatic aggression, Russia probably wouldn't be attempting to beat down on our door in response to the west beating on their door.

The only country whose mainstream politicians stand up to Russia is the UK. The UK is over its head in political instability, nationalism, and discrimination issues (immigrants getting told to leave the country because we voted to leave the EU), and losing its power right now. We can't do anything. Plus, in a few years time, if Labour wins the 2020 election, we'll probably be siding with Russia in many European issues.

And I'm not referring to a war. I mean significant economic restrictions on Russia. Which Western Europe has not wanted to do. And I understand the dependence on Russia's natural gas but letting them do what they're doing for it will not serve them in the end.