Ontario Liberal Party Goes Full Sexist

And unless Canada increases its military either China or Russia will bully them for natural resources.

Unless Canada stays buddy buddy with the states.

Can't defend your resources with maple syrup and a beaver.

 

imho, travel bans wouldn't have prevented COVID from arriving, but that measure and others can reduce and slow the arrival of spikes that cripple hospitals and allow time for medical science and policy decisions.

We in the US got the vast majority of our COVID from Europe. We slowed travel from China. I don't see evidence that there is no connection.

 

It would have maybe delayed the starting date but not by much. As soon as covid arrives there they were ****ed. Masks or no masks.

With the arrive of illegals and the longest border in the world...ya. covid is gonna come for Canada regardless of anything.

 

Except when it doesn't - as in New Zealand and other nations. The measures taken DO limit the spread, signficantly. That's why these countries had almost a year with basically no COVID, while America and Europe never got a break.

 

And yet that's not what happened. It arrived, but couldn't spread.

 

Amen.

There are other problems with America's voting methodology.

For example, a good number of states have "closed primaries" - where party candidates are chosen in elections where voters are limited to voting in the party in which they have registered membership. For those not in the two major parties, this is essentially prohibitive for independent candidates. Party registration is available to the party, obviously. So, in some states a person may vote for a candidate that is not a member of their registered party, but that is interpreted as a change of party registration and that information for that individual is made available to the party!!

With today's computer technology, the information available to the party is highly detailed. That allows for stupendously accurate gerrymandering. That is being used differentially by Republicans, helped by the fact that Republicans are overrepresented in state governments - in part due to these tactics.

In some states, the parties can (and have) chosen to totally ignore the state sponsored primary election process, choosing to select their candidates (all the way up to presidential candidates) by other methods, and in some cases ignoring the outcomes of state held primaries - such as happened in my state of Washington.

And, the whole system of going to polling places to vote is RIFE with methods of influencing the outcome of elections - after all, the location and hours of operation of these sites is chosen by state officials, hourly workers do not get time off to vote, transportation is not provided, ability to vote at a precinct not near ones residence can be restricted, etc., etc. So, there can be long lines to vote, and in some cases it is illegal to provide those in line for HOURS with WATER!! That is why Republicans fight so hard to ensure that voting by mail is severely restricted to those they think are more likely to be Republicans.

The list of issues with the US elections system goes on and on and on. This hasn't even touched on the grossly unrepresentative Electoral College by which we choose a president, or other issues.

Our system is DESIGNED to be as undemocratic as it could possibly be without our highly right wing courts balking.

 

What I pointed out is that there are reasons for reduced travel that you are ignoring.

 

But voters who are not party members have a say in who the party presents as a candidate.

Maybe the answer is to have a party where only dues-paying members are allowed to participate in selecting a candidate.

Public shaming!

Interesting.

 

Actually this is not the case in many states in the USA. Who the party chooses and how they make that choice is up to the party.

The common pattern is for states to choose which candidate will represent each party in statewide primary elections. However, in many states a voter is not allowed to vote for a candidate other than from the party in which they are registered. So, Democrats may have more than one candidate that they are willing to support based on the outcome of the primary. But, if I'm not a registered Democrat in that state, then I can't vote for any of those candidates (and vice versa).

In fact voters may get a ballot that is specific to the party in which they are registered - so other candidates may not even appar.

I might suggest considering where that leaves candidates in America who are independent of either major party.

And, remember that our congress has only two parties the RNC and the DNC. The three or four congressmen who claim to be independent or libertarian, or whatever have to choose one of those two groups to exclusively work with in congress, or they are 100% irrelevant.

Your comment on dues paying members is a major part of the problem if you ask me.

The exclusivity is one of the factors that drives each parties candidates toward radical views. After all, if Republicans are the only ones who could possibly vote for a Republican, the candidates have every reason to distinguish themselves by being radically Republican.

If primary candidates had to appeal to all voters, candidates could win on something besides how staunchly radical they are. This is a well known part of US politics, as it is a regular event that those in congress can get "primaried" - attacked even by their own party for not being radical enough. After all, nobody else is ALLOWED to vote for them.

 

Reducing travel wouldn't have prevented the arrival date by much if at all.

Why?

Illegals immigration.

Canada would have still been infected regardless.

 

It spreads faster when there are more arrival points.

Americans fleeing Trumpian oppression? People crossing the oceans?

Both could happen, sure, but it is not the issue in Canada that it is in the USA. We don't have any land borders with poor countries.

Hospitals would have been less overwhelmed. It wasn't as bad here as it was there, but it was still much worse than it needed to be.

 

Most states have primaries and parties stick with the primary result.

Registering for a party is not the same thing as being a dues paying member, the requirement of parties in Canada.

Without Sanders and King, Democrats don't get to 50 in the Senate.

I'm simply pointing out the difference between the Canadian (British parliamentary system with "first past the post" elections).

My personal preference given the nature of U.S. government is to further weaken the parties.

Money and the media are what promotes radicalism.

Strong parties are incompatible with the U.S. system.

 

I disagree for at least the following reasons.

First and foremost, the measures we take, ALL the measures we take, have to do with reduction, not prevention. Judging each individual measure as to whether it is a prevention is devoid of all reality. Even today, we do not have techniques that are preventions.

Next, reduction IS important. Our various measures have slowed COVID, allowing for hospitals to function and for better approaches to be developed in time to save lives. Slowing COVID allowed people to survive to the point where they could get vaccinated, for example. Slowing COVID allowed for time to test methods of treatment. Slowing COVID allowed for our economy to proceed without the massive collapse that could have come were we to ignore the solutions aimed at reduction.

Next, undocumented aliens are being blamed for all the standard reasons that people hate them. Their numbers are not large enough to be a factor such as is claimed by some. This is really no more than an expression of the blight of our white supremacy movement.

 

Parties do not have "dues" in the US. We could get into the horrifying way in which we fund the parties and their candidates.

I'm not sure why you see dues as an issue wrt this topic.

Amen.

There are major changes possible at the state level to resolve the problems I've pointed to above.

Also, the funding problem is GIGANTIC. Corporations and the super wealthy feed stupendous sums of money to candidates and their parties, making it essentially impossible for anyone else to even buy media time.

Beyond that, these donations are made totally anonymously. Republicans claim that $$=speech. Therefore we have gigantic private campaign foundations that collect and distribute money without any requirement to note where the dollars come from. Our elections ARE bought and paid for.

I think our primary system is at LEAST as important in promoting radicalism, as described above. Our primary system drives out candidates, including incumbents, who aren't the most extreme.

Well, I'll accept that in the sense that super strong parties prevent our system from working in the manner that any rational person would want for a government.