The 2016 United States Presidential Election

The whole idea of primaries has always seemed odd to me. Over here parties pick their leaders and their candidates for different posts (including President) by a variety of internal processes. The idea of a big public vote where some people who aren't even members of the party can get involved seems an odd approach.They have very recently started doing it in France. The Socialists introduced a primary for the the last Presidential elections, and this year the Republicans will have one as well.The US system still seems odd though. The Republican primary in France will be held on 20th November. If no one gets 50% of the vote they will have a runoff the week after. Only in the US do you think it necessary for this process to take a year.

You have a bicameral legislature.Elect one house by proportional representation; thus ensuring the representation of minority views and allowing viewpoints which are widely spread across the country but lack any geographical stronghold to be represented.Elect the other house by single-member districts, thus ensuring that there are representatives tied to specific communities.Simple.

This seems flawed to me. People are not a member of only one community, so you would just be forced to pick one of your many allegiances (unless you're offering people as many votes as they choose) - how is this an improvement on the geographic one?What's more, anyone who pays attention to politics and wasn't an idiot would immediately realise that it's pointless to actually pick a community you identify with, since it would be much more effective to enrol yourself in a swing community where your vote is more likely to have an impact.

It's worthwhile remembering that the last time a Le Pen got to the second round of the Presidential election the runoff vote was probably the biggest landslide in the history of democratic elections, as almsot everyone who hadn't voted for him in the first round turned out to vote for anyone but him.Now, I know Marine is not Jean-Marie, but the fact remains that if she makes it to the runoff she's likely going to be running against the Republican candidate, who will then again have not only his own support but the whole of the organised left campaigning for 'anyone but Le Pen'.And whilst it's true that we (myself included) said there was no chance of Trump winning, I don't think anyone who paid the least bit of attention said there was no chance of Brexit.

To be fair, I've never seen dronestar use a photo as evidence of anything. They're only there to provoke some kind of guilty emotional response; so really the source is not so important. A photo of someone torturing a puppy somewhere in China would have the same relevance to the validity of his arguments.

Reasurring to hear a voice of calm. You've elected a shit president. Lots of countries have shit presidents. We have one - he's very happy that Trump won. He gave a congratulatory speech in which he looked forward to better relations, and in which he accused the current US ambassador (an Obama appointee) of not showing up for the independence day celebrations (ours, not yours). This was a lie, as the US ambassador was of course there, but it's pretty standard for our shit president. Life will go on.

Not exactly. Most European countries have a compulsory health insurance paid for by employers. The British system in which healthcare is paid for out of general taxation is quite unusual. The two enormous differences with health insurance here and in the US are:1. The state pays health insurance for those not in empployment (including children and pensioners - so this actually the majority)
2. Health insurance companies are not permitted to make profit

Being a foreign, my primary concerns are the actions the US is going to take on the world stage. On that front, we have Trump making a lot of noise about opposition to free-trade agreements in the election, but I can't help but suspect that was simply lying to get votes, especially since he picked as VP someone strongly in favour of TPP and TPIP.Where I think a huge change from the Obama administration is coming is climate policy. Getting effective international agreements on emissions reductions and the like is notoriously difficult at the best of times - under a Trump presidency with a Republican congress, there isn't a scintilla of hope of the US agreeing to anything, nor of actually working to implement agreements already signed.I'm also a little concerned that Trump's friends here in Europe seem to be the nationalist right who are currently working hard to abolish the European Union, and in some countries liberal, constitulational democracy while they're at it. I'm not sure how much difference it will make, but my fear is that governments like PiS in Poland may be a bit more emboldened in their depredations if the leader of the free world is giving them a cheerful thumbs up instead of raising concerns about the rule of law.

Hilary Clinton received more votes than any other Presidential candidate in the history of the United States except Obama. More than her husband, more than Bush, more than her opponent. Now, you could argue that Obama has set a new bar that a Democratic candidate should be expected to live up to, especially against such an opponent. But to claim that turnout was worse than for Gore is plainly false. She got about 12 million more votes than Gore did.

If I was Hillary Clinton, and was trying to rig the election, I reckon I'd focus on Florida and Ohio, instead of wasting my time faking millions of wasted surplus votes in California and New York.

What you say is going on in Europe is not going on. No one in Germany is thrown out of their homes to make way for asylum seekers. In Italy hotels are being used as reception centres; but these are not places siezed by police. The owners are paid for housing refugees. Not that this is happy situation. Some of the organisations running these centres seem to be linked to organised crime and are under investigation. They are paid per refugee; but much of this money intended for housing and feeding them is alledgely being diverted into mafiosos pockets. Since more refugees means more pilfered money; they are actually incentivised to delay their asylum applications and keep them there as long as possible. Not a pretty situation, but not the one you describe.On the subject of Europeans being disarmed for years; gun ownership laws are different in every country in Europe. Some have very liberal laws (like here in Czech Republic) but ownership rates remain low. Others have much higher rates of gun ownership. Germany has stricter gun laws, but actual rates of gun ownership are much higher. In Switzerland about half the adult population owns a gun; in Sweden there are more than 2 million guns legally registered in private ownership.Europe is quite a diverse and interesting place. You should come visit.

There weren't a lot of assertions. On the ongoing court cases and investigations into mafia involvement in the running of refugee centres - these are matters of public record. Here's the Washington Post reporting on the story, but I found the same story on Breitbart Report if you'd rather a foaming right-wing website.Regarding the 'assertion' that Germans are not being forced out of their homes to make way for refugees; it would more behoove you to show evidence that this is happening, no? I'm not sure how you want me to demonstrate this negative. Point to some German families at home?It seems the story about the hotel owner is true. The local authorities requisitioned his hotel under a law dating back to the 19th century - the Italian version of eminent domain - as they ran out of volunteers. The hotel owner had previously asked about volunteering as a refugee centre since his hotel was going under financially; but decided not to as he thought the compensation offered was too low. The refugees were there for a week before the requisition order was revoked (source (in Italian)). The council made a deal with a cooperative organisation to house them instead. This cooperative, unfortunately, is one of those mentioned which is currently under investigation for funnelling the money intended to house refugees into the pockets of mafiosos (source (in Italian)).----------With regards to the rest of my 'assertions without evidence'; they were simply about the gun laws and levels of gun ownership in various European countries. This is not difficult info to find. The only specific number I threw out was more than 2,000,000 officially registered guns in private hands in Sweden. That's from this report on gun ownership from the Swedish police (page 8 - found via Wikipedia).

Not quite - he asked about the terms if he offered his hotel, but never actually did so. He considered the offer (7 Euros per refugee per day) absurdly low.I actually agree with Faith on this one. It's all well and good to say that it's my Christian duty to offer something of my own free will; but that does not mean that if I refuse the duty of the state is to requisition it by force - compensation or no.It's important to consider the effects of this sort of decision as well. When we have an already tense situation with people inciting violence against refugees; this is going to do the very opposite of defuse things. This is exactly the sort of thing that encourages people to take violent action or vote for the fascists.

I'm a little confused about which refugees and which Muslim nations the two of you are discussing here. Where do you think the overwhelming majority of refugees from the Syrian war are? They are in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. The Jordanian government is spending about US$2.5 billion a year on Syrian refugees according to World Bank estimates. This is dwarfed by the amount the Turkish government has spent.Not that the Muslim world are all throwing their arms open with glee; any more than the rest of the world. Everyone's happier when something is someone else's problem.

I don't think a million refugees is too many for the West to absorb. How they're distributed can be problematic however; and of course here 'refugee' does not just mean 'Syrian'. Most of the refugees in Italy that we were talking about are from Africa, for example.Regarding how many of the refugees in Turkey want to continue to Europe - I haven't a clue, to be honest.