Bernie and Shane Carwin

[berimBOWLoh]

Yeah, I chose the word carefully. I'm not saying he didn't hit hard, but I see no reason to think that he hit harder than Fedor, JDS, Nelson, Hunt, or a lot of other HWs. He took out Gonzaga (who's not exactly known for having a Huntian chin) with very little load, but it landed right on the button and Gonzaga was moving into it. That was kind of impressive, but it's not all-time stuff. Brock went down out of fear and handled Carwin's attack from there, JDS got caught cleanly a few times without much effect. Carwin landed about a billion clean shots to Mir. The Wellisch KO was nice, but you're talking about a guy who normally fights at LHW and wasn't a top-20 talent. It's really odd to me that so many people list him as the best HW puncher ever (shit, there was a recent thread where lots of people were talking about him as one of the p4p hardest punchers ever!).

this is what i always thought. Carwin appealed to the lowest common denominator in a huge way. "look at doz hands, bruh, he touches u and its ova!!!"

it was always apparent that his boxing "skills" were horrible. Hard to think somebody with such rudimentary skills would be the hardest hitter of all time in any combat sport.

 

[ultramanhyata]

So are you going to vote Hillary in the general or are you going to pout?

I wsh there was an option to pull a lever for "disenfranchised". And that then the disenfranchised vote would be counted and be included in the press coverage.

It would have more social power than simply not voting. It would definitely motivate me if I had the option of casting a counted but condemning vote.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I wsh there was an option to pull a lever for "disenfranchised". And that then the disenfranchised vote would be counted and be included in the press coverage.

It would have more social power than simply not voting. It would definitely motivate me if I had the option of casting a counted but condemning vote.

I think they should allow two choices, and if your first choice isn't in the top two, your second choice is your vote. That way people can vote for David Duke without worrying about costing the Republicans the election or for Chomsky without worrying about giving it to Trump, etc.

Really, though, there's no reason a leftist would not prefer Clinton to Trump or Cruz. Especially with a Republican Congress.

 

[ultramanhyata]

I think they should allow two choices, and if your first choice isn't in the top two, your second choice is your vote. That way people can vote for David Duke without worrying about costing the Republicans the election or for Chomsky without worrying about giving it to Trump, etc.

Really, though, there's no reason a leftist would not prefer Clinton to Trump or Cruz. Especially with a Republican Congress.

I don't understand how this is different than the current process. And since neither Duke or Chomsky are on the ballot let's use a real example.

How does your model keep a woman who votes for the Green Party from "giving" her vote to Trump?

 

[Jack V Savage]

I don't understand how this is different than the current process. And since neither Duke or Chomsky are on the ballot let's use a real example.

The current process only allows for one vote, and thus if you vote for a third party with no chance to win, you increase the chances that a candidate that you don't want to win will. The change I'm talking about would be to allow you to pick two choices and rank them (1/=2). If your first choice isn't among the top two, your second choice is your vote.

How does your model keep a woman who votes for the Green Party from "giving" her vote to Trump?

The woman who votes for the Green Party would pick a second choice that would, presumably, not be Trump. If she votes 1. Green, 2. Democratic, her vote would (likely) end up counting for the Democratic Party, but she would be registering a different ideal preference--essentially like your protest vote, but also doing some practical good. It would also make a third party much more likely to be successful, as every voter who preferred the Green Party would vote for them without having to worry about helping to Nader Trump into office. Further, most Democratic voters and probably some Republican voters would have the Greens No. 2, so if they had enough votes to beat Democrats, they would probably have enough to actually win the election.

And that would work for a fascistic offshoot of the GOP. Say Trump loses the nomination and wants to run third party. As it stands now, he'd just ensure a Clinton victory. But under this system, he'd have a very good chance of winning, as would Cruz. It would be a serious, three-way fight.

The change would increase polarization and ideological extremism, which definitely has a negative side. The current system incentivizes moderation at the presidential level, but those incentives don't seem to be working on the GOP. My change would balance that out, which I think is good in the short run but could lead to problems down the road. Either way, it would make the system more democratic.

 

[ultramanhyata]

The current process only allows for one vote, and thus if you vote for a third party with no chance to win, you increase the chances that a candidate that you don't want to win will. The change I'm talking about would be to allow you to pick two choices and rank them (1/=2). If your first choice isn't among the top two, your second choice is your vote.



The woman who votes for the Green Party would pick a second choice that would, presumably, not be Trump. If she votes 1. Green, 2. Democratic, her vote would (likely) end up counting for the Democratic Party, but she would be registering a different ideal preference--essentially like your protest vote, but also doing some practical good. It would also make a third party much more likely to be successful, as every voter who preferred the Green Party would vote for them without having to worry about helping to Nader Trump into office. Further, most Democratic voters and probably some Republican voters would have the Greens No. 2, so if they had enough votes to beat Democrats, they would probably have enough to actually win the election.

And that would work for a fascistic offshoot of the GOP. Say Trump loses the nomination and wants to run third party. As it stands now, he'd just ensure a Clinton victory. But under this system, he'd have a very good chance of winning, as would Cruz. It would be a serious, three-way fight.

The change would increase polarization and ideological extremism, which definitely has a negative side. The current system incentivizes moderation at the presidential level, but those incentives don't seem to be working on the GOP. My change would balance that out, which I think is good in the short run but could lead to problems down the road. Either way, it would make the system more democratic.

Still scratching my head here...

So, in a theoretical national race between Trump, Clinton and Bloomberg, the polls come in and we see Trump got 40%, Cinton got 35% and Bloomberg got 25%.

We would then have to go back to the ballots and reassign all the second, "ideal" votes that were cast by each citizen and do a complete recount?

 

[Jack V Savage]

Still scratching my head here...

So, in a theoretical national race between Trump, Clinton and Bloomberg, the polls come in and we see Trump got 40%, Cinton got 35% and Bloomberg got 25%.

We would then have to go back to the ballots and reassign all the second, "ideal" votes that were cast by each citizen and do a complete recount?

Why would we have to recount ballots that already cast? It would just be automatic. The second choice in the "Bloomberg first" ballots would be the ones that count (assuming they're for Trump or Clinton). This isn't rocket science. If your first choice isn't 1/2, your second choice counts.

The point is that people wouldn't be afraid to cost Trump the election by voting for Bloomberg and thus Bloomberg would have a real chance, and the fact that 25% of the electorate voted for a protest candidate would be registered.

 

[ultramanhyata]

So let's say Sheila really wants to vote for Bloomberg. But is also afraid that because Bloomberg is a long shot her vote might hurt Hillary; Hillary being a candidate she would prefer over Trump.

The polls have just opened. Can Shelia assign her Bloomberg vote as her "real" vote? And then, once all votes are counted, and Trump is declared the winner, under what theoretical scenario would Sheila (and those like her) be able to default to her secondary, Clinton vote, to possibly turn the tide and defeat Trump?

 

[Jack V Savage]

So let's say Sheila really wants to vote for Bloomberg. But is also afraid that because Bloomberg is a long shot her vote might hurt Hillary; Hillary being a candidate she would prefer over Trump.

The polls have just opened. Can Shelia assign her Bloomberg vote as her "real" vote? And then, once all votes are counted, and Trump is declared the winner, under what theoretical scenario would Sheila (and those like her) be able to default to her secondary, Clinton vote, to possibly turn the tide and defeat Trump?

Sheila would vote 1. Bloomberg, 2. Clinton. If the first choices are as you described (with Bloomberg coming in third), her ballot would count as a vote for Clinton. There's no additional input needed and Trump would not be declared the winner unless the second-choice ballots made him the winner.

 

[ultramanhyata]

Sheila would vote 1. Bloomberg, 2. Clinton. If the first choices are as you described (with Bloomberg coming in third), her ballot would count as a vote for Clinton. There's no additional input needed and Trump would not be declared the winner unless the second-choice ballots made him the winner.

So you're saying Sheila's vote for Bloomberg is counted for Bloomberg. But once polling results are in, if Bloomberg has finished third and Clinton second, now Sheila's and the other Bloomberg supporters "default" votes get added to Clinton and Trump to see if they can change the outcome of the election??

 

[Jack V Savage]

So you're saying Sheila's vote for Bloomberg is counted for Bloomberg. But once polling results are in, if Bloomberg has finished third and Clinton second, now Sheila's and the other Bloomberg supporters "default" votes get added to Clinton and Trump to see if they can change the outcome of the election??

They don't change the outcome of the election. The outcome of the election is dependent on all the votes. But other than that, yeah.

Under our current system, you can have the majority of voters favor either Bloomberg or Trump over Clinton, but Clinton would win because they'd divide the votes. That kind of thing is what happened in 2000, where Bush was the third choice of most voters, but he won. Nader's vote total was also suppressed because people were aware of what voting for him would mean. Under my system, Nader might have gotten 15% of the first-choice votes, but Bush would have still lost. If we presume that Gore voters would have all had Nader as their second choice, Nader would actually (God forbid) have had a good chance of winning the whole election. Given that he would have been seen as viable, he would have gotten more money and more exposure and led to him maybe getting his act together better, and he might have gotten a majority of the "left" vote, which have given him the votes of people who had Gore as their first choice.

Again, that's a potential downside. The reason we have such a right-wing extremist Congress is all the uncontested general elections that lead to situations where a majority of primary voters from one party are deciding on the seat. But it would also lead to more people being involved in the process and re-enfranchising disenfranchised types. It could also reduce extremism by creating a situation where the candidates shoot for second-choice support from people they know are not on their side for their first choice.

 

[UpaLoompa]

I would describe it as blowing up what we have in place now. A single payer is a massive change!

Haven't both republicans and democrats argued that the ACA is a moved toward single payer, i.e. that's actually the goal?

 

[Jack V Savage]

Haven't both republicans and democrats argued that the ACA is a moved toward single payer, i.e. that's actually the goal?

How would that work? There's no real expansion mechanism. Maybe if there were a public option, I could see it potentially outcompeting private insurance (not a sure thing, of course), but even that would be paid for with after-tax dollars rather than with taxes and it only affects the individual market. The idea of the ACA is to replicate the benefits of single payer without throwing people off plans that they're already satisfied or causing massive economic dislocation.

What I think the next target can be is Medicaid for all children. Generally, I think we do a very good job of fighting poverty for the elderly, and a poor job of fighting child poverty so what I'd like to do is deal with children the way we deal with the elderly (monthly cash payments and gov't-provided health insurance that are not means-tested). That would make so that you have roughly 40 years of your prime where you get insurance from your employer or you get it on exchanges (with subsidies if necessary) or Medicaid if you qualify. I think most single-payer proponents could live with that, and I think it would be very hard to get further than that.

 

[UpaLoompa]

How would that work? There's no real expansion mechanism. Maybe if there were a public option, I could see it potentially outcompeting private insurance (not a sure thing, of course), but even that would be paid for with after-tax dollars rather than with taxes and it only affects the individual market. The idea of the ACA is to replicate the benefits of single payer without throwing people off plans that they're already satisfied or causing massive economic dislocation.

I'm just thinking back to some of the discussion at the time, not how it would work. I seem to recall (with no details) proponents of the ACA suggesting that it will facilitate a movement to single payer.

 

[VivaRevolution]

Yes it has. Cost growth is near all-time lows.

You said it jack, COST GROWTH, is at all time lows, as in 17% of GDP is still growing.

All time, meaning since they have been tracking it, and since it started spiraling out of control.