Idolise Trump? Goodbye!

[Kisaha]

I do not even participate in the forum much, there is so much toxicity that I censor myself and stay out of sight, and older users sure remember me as a fierce debater!

My speciality is documentaries and politics. One a did years ago was Democracy (or the lack of it) in modern political systems, my thesis in University was "The clash of Capitalism, Communism, Fascism and the Italian Neo-Realistic movement", and even recently I participated on a European team and did a documentary for the recent euro elections in Greece after 10 years of recession, while I do not support a specific political party, so I can be free and analyze the situations free of bonds or ties.

This is not a discussion or a civil exchange of views, some people just DO NOT READ, they just spread hate and confusion, and the carnivores thrive on those. Why do we need them among us?

[dgbarar]

Dear EphariamP:

You stated the following in your post:

"Sorry, but you are wrong here. 62,984,828 people voted for Trump, vs 65,853,514 for Clinton, so nearly 3 million more voted for Clinton. Why isn't SHE president? Thank our regressive electoral college system put in place by aristocratic southern slaveholders."

You do not understand the origins of the US Constitution.  During the Constitutional Convention of 1787 one of the biggest hurdles to overcome was that the small states were concerned about being dominated by the large states.  To get agreement amongst the 13 states they agreed to the following:

1. Bicarmal legislature with the lower house (House of Representatives) to be proportional to the population and an upper house (Senate) where each state would have two senators.
2. That the President would be determined by the majority of electors.  With each state having a number of electors equal to the number of members in the House of Representatives plus two Senators.

You made the statement that our "electoral college systems was put in place by aristocratic southern slave owners".  But who were the large states of the day: New York(non-slave), Pennsylvania(non-slave), Massachusetts (non-slave), Virginia(slave), and  North Carolina(slave).  And the small states were: New Jersey (non-slave), Connecticut (non-slave), Rhode Island (non-slave), Vermont (non-slave), and Maine (non-slave).

As you can see, it was the small, non-slave states that wanted what has become known as the Connecticut or the Great Compromise not the "aristocratic southern slaveholders" as you asserted.

When you make statements like this it important to get your facts correct.

Let the revisionists begin with their flaming and possible banning from the this site.  Regardless, I don't care. Just want to make sure that the history is correct.

Sincerely,

Don

[IronFilm]

7 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

I would have loved a Blackmagic Cinema Camera 2.5K with 60p mode and a 15ms readout and decent battery life.

The Micro Cinema Camera is kinda that?

As in my mind the OG BMPCC is basically an improved OG BMCC

And the Micro is an improved (adding for instance 60fps!) OG BMPCC

  

7 hours ago, noone said:

Not quite.     Not that many voted compared to how many Americans there are (and She actually got a few million more votes than he did which is something that seems just weird to me but , close enough).     About 19% of Americans voted for Trump and about 20% voted for Clinton

Of course I mean half of those who voted. 
That's obvious. 

And by your own numbers it is a 19% vs 20% split. 
That's almost as about as close to a 50/50 split as you can practically get!

 

  

6 hours ago, EphraimP said:

Sorry, but you are wrong here. 62,984,828 people voted for Trump, vs 65,853,514 for Clinton, so nearly 3 million more voted for Clinton. Why isn't SHE president? Thank our regressive electoral college system

Again, that's a damn close to 50/50 ish split! My point remains

And I strongly dislike this argument of "but but but the popular vote, it's all the electoral college's fault!"

All the players knew what the rules were well in advance, and they each sought to win under those conditions. 

It is like if you play a game of Go then complain you lost because it wasn't a game of Chess. You know it was going to be Go that was played many years ago in advanced! You prepared and trained for decades to play a game of Go, don't complain that it wasn't Chess instead. (which nobody in your country has ever played anyway)

If POTUS was determined by the popular vote then both Trump and Hillary would have campaigned in drastically different manners. 

Who here could possibly predict that result accurately? Absolutely none of us. 

In fact, not just Clinton/Trump would have campaigned differently, but also all the people in their respective primaries would have campaigned completely differently as well! Who knows if even either would have won their party's nomination? It might have been totally bizarrely different instead! 

2016 might have been Marco Rubio vs Bernie Sanders instead! But more likely it would have been something else entirely, perhaps a scenario none of us could even think up right now. 

My country New Zealand went under a radical shake up of the rules we play under back in the 1990's, when we switched from FPP to MMP voting. And of course our parliamentary parties now campaign and behave in a completely different manner to back in the FPP days. Am sure if we changed our voting system again in the future, say to STV, then we'd see yet another cultural shift in how our politicians campaign. You can't just easily use the results under one system to predict how they'd perform under another totally system.

  

6 hours ago, EphraimP said:

But please don't try to explain our politics to us.

Heh, I'm actually one of the biggest political geeks around. Perhaps more so than a camera geek, god knows I've spent more of my life obsessed nerding out over political philosophies / campaigning / results / stats / etc than on filmmaking. (sad huh?)

I've no doubt I know American politics better than the average American.
 

6 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

This is deeply suspicious and points to a kind of fake user linked to a campaign of some sort.

I doubt either the Republican or the Democrat presidential campaigns care about launching a digital campaign targeted at the EOSHD forum. Wouldn't believe that it is some coordinated serious campaign. 

Perhaps the real reason is linked to a culture of fear on this forum from anybody expressing their true opinions under their usual accounts thus are doing it "anonymously"? I see that happen often enough on other forums / social media. 

  

1 hour ago, dgbarar said:

Let the revisionists begin with their flaming and possible banning from the this site.  Regardless, I don't care. Just want to make sure that the history is correct.

Thank you Don for a well thought out and reasoned post. 

[EphraimP]

1 hour ago, dgbarar said:

You made the statement that our "electoral college systems was put in place by aristocratic southern slave owners".  But who were the large states of the day: New York(non-slave), Pennsylvania(non-slave), Massachusetts (non-slave), Virginia(slave), and  North Carolina(slave).  And the small states were: New Jersey (non-slave), Connecticut (non-slave), Rhode Island (non-slave), Vermont (non-slave), and Maine (non-slave).

As you can see, it was the small, non-slave states that wanted what has become known as the Connecticut or the Great Compromise not the "aristocratic southern slaveholders" as you asserted.

When you make statements like this it important to get your facts correct.

Let the revisionists begin with their flaming and possible banning from the this site.  Regardless, I don't care. Just want to make sure that the history is correct.

Sincerely,

Don

My statement was not quite accurate, I'll grant you. But the electoral college wasn't entirely about big-versus small states. There was indeed a strong movement among the aristocrats among the founders to insulate the election of the chief executive from direct election by the masses. 

George Mason of Virginia argued that 'it would be as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for chief Magistrate to the people, as it would, to refer a trial of colours to a blind man. The extent of the Country renders it impossible that the people can have the requisite capacity to judge of the respec­tive pretensions of the Candidates.'  

Or, as the political scientist William Keech wrote in 1978, "The Electoral College system ... was created by the founding fathers for the new Republic not as a direct outgrowth of eighteenth-century political principles but rather as an ad hoc compromise between those who believed in election of the president by Congress and those who believed in popular election,"

So, my point about the elitism inherent in the electoral college stands. I could have written the point better. 

[EphraimP]

11 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Of course I mean half of those who voted. 
That's obvious. 

And by your own numbers it is a 19% vs 20% split. 
That's almost as about as close to a 50/50 split as you can practically get!

It's not obvious and  it doesn't address the voter disenfranchisement I mentioned and a whole host of problems with our country and our current political system. You said "half the population in America voted for Trump" rather than half of registered voters (which still isn't true) or half of voters who voted for one of the two major party candidates (we DO have minor political parties in the US, whatever good it does us). Your statement implies he has the support of half the country. That's simply not true. 

I will say, however, that my post probably comes a lot closer to an ad hominem take than I intended. The canard that the Great Pumpkin has the support of half the country is really tiresome and you could say it triggered me.

[EphraimP]

42 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Again, that's a damn close to 50/50 ish split! My point remains

And I strongly dislike this argument of "but but but the popular vote, it's all the electoral college's fault!"

Interesting that you're bringing up a straw-man rather than addressing my actual point, which has nothing to do with who one the last election. But I'm not actually surprised, as my wife says about debating politics, or anything else on the interwebs, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I hate it when she's right. 

Have fun experimenting with your F3. Seeing as I have a day job, I really should be doing it, rather that this. 

Signed, not your average American.

[IronFilm]

@EphraimP if you read in detail both of those links you gave you can read the reasons why the Electoral College was chosen as a method actually made sense way way back when the USA was founded, especially back in the pre-internet days! When we lacked instantaneous methods of communication. (perhaps the system could be updated for this modern day and age, although I reckon that process would lead to more troubles than it solves)

Also, the USA is inherently a Federal system, part of me questions if a nationwide popular vote is even the correct approach for that? It's a point which needs to be carefully considered before embarking on a massive upheaval of the country's voting system. 

This wouldn't be such a major issue if only the President didn't today play such a massive massive role in the country, and instead had a more limited scope like the founders intended. Honestly I think that is a more productive pursuit to focus on rather than reforming the voting system, focus instead on reducing back the executive powers of the president and returning it back to the states where they belong. 

  

51 minutes ago, EphraimP said:

I will say, however, that my post probably comes a lot closer to an ad hominem take than I intended. The canard that the Great Pumpkin has the support of half the country is really tiresome and you could say it triggered me.

 

Fair enough if you think I oversimplified when I said "half". 

But I think it was clear enough obvious to anybody what a plain reading of what I said meant:
There is a roughly equal ish divide of "Trump supporters" vs "Hillary supporters"
(isn't the most efficient way to refer to that is to say "half", how else would you sum that that up in one word??)

And yes, there are lots of gotchas and asterisks and footnotes that could be added to either of those statements to further clarify and expand on that point. 

But seriously, that isn't very productive is it and is just debating for sake of debating? We're discussing points like 19% vs 20% for instance! That's bloody damn close, it just further reinforces the gist of my original point. 

I reckon the meme of "but Hillary got most of the votes" is just as flawed & tiresome, if not more so. 

  

22 minutes ago, EphraimP said:

Have fun experimenting with your F3. Seeing as I have a day job, I really should be doing it, rather that this. 

Ditto, we're mere hours away in NZ from martial law and a complete lock down for an entire month. (although I'm kinda half betting it will be extended to last even longer... unfortunately)

Better pop out for a few more supplies to keep me occupied for the next month! Such as finishing building my sound cart. 
(ha! It never will be "finished", I'll be 70yo and it will still be evolving into its next state)

[Andrew Reid]

If I were coming on this forum saying Great Britain was the best country in the world every day, I wonder how long people would last before they got fed up.

This is what I have to put up with from certain Americans all the time.

This is an appeal to them.... Shut up, or fuck off.

[IronFilm]

8 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

If I were coming on this forum saying Great Britain was the best country in the world every day, I wonder how long people would last before they got fed up.

It is especially embarrassing for certain Americans when even little ol' New Zealand handily beats them on their precious freedom rankings 😉 

[EphraimP]

24 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

There is a roughly equal ish divide of "Trump supporters" vs "Hillary supporters"
(isn't the most efficient way to refer to that is to say "half", how else would you sum that that up in one word??)


I reckon the meme of "but Hillary got most of the votes" is just as flawed & tiresome, if not more so. 

 

Again, you're sidestepping my argument, which is that because of the inequalities, voter suppression and political disenfranchisement happening in our system, using votes cast in a national election as a proxy for actual support is invalid. The sad fact is that our political system is dysfunctional to say the least. And I haven't even mentioned the distorting and anti-democratic effects of campaign finance in our system.

Again, the conman in the Oval Office does have a very vocal following and they're definitely the majority in some states and rural areas. But they are most definitely NOT "half" of my country. 

And, good job trying to re-frame my core argument into "Hillary got the most votes," which is was not my point at all. See above. A close reading of my original post would show that my mention of Hillary and the electoral college was an eye-rolling aside from my main point. 

I'll agree with you on one thing, though, scaling back our imperial presidency. I don't I'd go nearly as far as your states' right position. I'd be more than happy if we re-balanced the power between the executive branch, congress and the courts. But that would mean Congress would actually have to learn to govern again, instead of giving away the shop to corporate America and the courts are getting pretty packed with under-qualified reactionaries, so I'm not holding my breath. 

[Cinegain]

For all I care you did. I just came here back in the GH2 days. Not for your blog or your opinion, honestly, you're a bit of an outspoken person yourself with wild opinions of which some I'd probably wouldn't agree with, stirring up some trouble... but I just came here because you had the GH2 Hacks vault going on back in the day and EOSHD and Personal-View were about the only two places really helpful for getting the most out of that little camera. PV is a bit meh though in terms of how it has been set up and being run. The community here felt more at home and I stuck around. To see certain folks not frequenting here anymore is kinda sad because they offered a bunch of information and inspiration. They were either banned after quibbles or scared away?

Dunno. I'm like a fella during the gold rush... I take a sieve and scoop up some dirt from the stream... I wiggle it around a little, filter out everything I would regard as dirt and rubbish and take away the gold. But hey... if you're a person that happens to like mud baths... that's your prerogative... but maybe look for the good and not the bad. Is better for the heart and mind.

[Andrew Reid]

It's all very well being a fella in the gold rush taking what you can and not giving anything back... What about me as moderator who has to keep a positive atmosphere in the forums and track down trouble makers? Are you saying I shouldn't bother and just let the place go to shit?

[noone]

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

 

  

Of course I mean half of those who voted. 
That's obvious. 

And by your own numbers it is a 19% vs 20% split. 
That's almost as about as close to a 50/50 split as you can practically get!

 

  

 

Yeah, nah!     Depends on if you mean to say that trump is very popular or not (19% of Americans does not sound  popular against 46% of voters for the winner does VS 48% for the main loser with others getting around 5% combined...46%  also does not sound THAT popular for the winner in an effective two horse race).    He IS popular with his base but he needs more than his base to win (also not an American but a political geek) and at the midterms they lost ground and at the state elections recently they did not pick things back up generally.    You might think it a meme but it is FACT Clinton got more votes for president than Trump and anyone else in history except Obama.

If you mean the election in 2016 was close, I agree as 4 states had margins of less than ONE percent and Trump won three of those and if just those states were reversed, Clinton would have won. (I do not particularly like her either).

Trump still CAN win but he needs more than he is getting 

The electoral college is a bit of a joke to me (and more so that not all states use the same method to allocate the college votes).

 

No matter, i look on it as an interested outsider but i do despise Trump for the things he has done and said..

 

I guess I better stick to cameras and lenses now.

[Geoff CB]

1 minute ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's all very well being a fella in the gold rush taking what you can and not giving anything back... What about me as moderator who has to keep a positive atmosphere in the forums and track down trouble makers? Are you saying I shouldn't bother and just let the place go to shit?

Honestly I would just not allow political posts of any kind on the forum. 

[dgbarar]

Noone:

You made the following statement in your last post: "The electoral college is a bit of a joke to me (and more so that not all states use the same method to allocate the college votes)."

This statement is incorrect.  Each state has an a number of electors equal to the number of members of the House of Representatives plus 2--the 2 represents the number of Senators.  If a presidential candidate wins the state then he is awarded that states electors.  It's that simple!  The states cannot allocate electors in any way other than how it is specified in the Constitution.  And Constitution says winner take all.

There have been occasions where an elector has not voted as was required by law.  But these cases are few and far between and have never changed the outcome of an election.  There also have been some states that are attempting to allocate electors based on popular vote.  But this is not constitutional and will not be allowed by the US Supreme Court.

The only way this can be changed is if there is a constitutional convention.  A constitutional convention can only be called by 1) two thirds majority vote in both the Senate and the House of Representative or 2) two thirds of the states.  Not gonna happen.  Why?  Because the small states, which make up the bulk of the US states, are never going to give up their power in electing a president

These are first principles of constitutional law in the United States.  This first principle is no different than any other first principle.  Think of it in terms of sensor technology: given the same technology small pixels are inherently nosier than large pixels. 

I knew I could bring this back around to cameras.

Don

 

[Cinegain]

Like I said, it's a community here, that also means it's not just all serious, it's a bit like a pub so at times it's just about having a laugh with a couple of mates as well. Bros usually talk girls, sports and cars... well, here it's all sorta of people just geeking out over gear, the latest movies and other things scene related. With a lot of weight put on 'scene related'. And everyone puts in effort to share their knowledge, experiences, et cetera.

So, talking sports... during a football match the ref isn't gonna push the players in the field that are complaining he should've given a penalty and make the scene. He doesn't entertain rubbish with rubbish. You weren't exactly handing out warnings or trying to defuse the situation, was more like throwing fuel of the fire. A ref would issue a warning... yellow card, then red card. Suspended for this and next week's game perhaps. All quite void of much emotion at all. Of course you're free to handle it however you see fit, 'your pub, your rules'. But if a couple of drunks come in and go 'ah, finally my wife let me go with the boys' and you go 'she's a fat pig'... obviously you don't have to be surprised to have bar stools flying around in notime, lol. Unfortunately that's what politics end up like everytime...

[FranciscoB]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

If I were coming on this forum saying Great Britain was the best country in the world every day, I wonder how long people would last before they got fed up.

This is what I have to put up with from certain Americans all the time.

This is an appeal to them.... Shut up, or fuck off.

That's just being an American... Obama talked about America as being the indespensible country. Bush and the land of the free. Trump with being great again. It's part of their swag to act like dicks and to think they own the world.I don't know why, specially with all their own problems with roughly 15% of people living in poverty, about 40% of people not being able to support an unforseen 400 dollars payment, income inequality, racial inequality, lack of affordable Healthcare, militarism, voter suppression, government surveillance, etc etc. No country is perfect but America sure has a lot to go through in order to be "great again". 

https://youtu.be/8OovqEjGijs

[User]

3 hours ago, FranciscoB said:

It's part of their swag to act like dicks

Hey man come on... the French are going to insulted if you don't reference them on this point as well.

[noone]

6 hours ago, dgbarar said:

Noone:

You made the following statement in your last post: "The electoral college is a bit of a joke to me (and more so that not all states use the same method to allocate the college votes)."

This statement is incorrect.  Each state has an a number of electors equal to the number of members of the House of Representatives plus 2--the 2 represents the number of Senators.  If a presidential candidate wins the state then he is awarded that states electors.  It's that simple!  The states cannot allocate electors in any way other than how it is specified in the Constitution.  And Constitution says winner take all.

There have been occasions where an elector has not voted as was required by law.  But these cases are few and far between and have never changed the outcome of an election.  There also have been some states that are attempting to allocate electors based on popular vote.  But this is not constitutional and will not be allowed by the US Supreme Court.

 

 

What part of what I said is wrong?   That it is a joke to me is my OPINION.

You are actually wrong on the electoral college though as yes, all states use winner take all at least in PART but a couple ALSO in part allocate some college votes by district...so yes,  I stand by "more so that all states ETC".    The states are each responsible for their own method of choosing electors and there have been a few different ones used over the years, so no, it is not a constitution thing and currently  two states are different to the rest (Maine and Nebraska?) and I think another state is looking into it again.     

 

Feel free to show me where I am wrong but what would I know, I am Australian.

 

[noone]

1 hour ago, noone said:

What part of what I said is wrong?   That it is a joke to me is my OPINION.

You are actually wrong on the electoral college though as yes, all states use winner take all at least in PART but a couple ALSO in part allocate some college votes by district...so yes,  I stand by "more so that all states ETC".    The states are each responsible for their own method of choosing electors and there have been a few different ones used over the years, so no, it is not a constitution thing and currently  two states are different to the rest (Maine and Nebraska?) and I think another state is looking into it again.     yet another edit...The Republicans in California also looked into getting the same method as used in Maine and Nebraska around 2008 but never went ahead and seem to have dropped it

 

Feel free to show me where I am wrong but what would I know, I am Australian.