The rest of the world has their own problems to deal with, but I'm curious to hear from the international prog community.  If you were in our shoes, who would you vote for?

Oh you could add a third one: Gary Johnson. 

Of course Clinton. 

 

ditto

There's many reasons for it. And I can say with confidence that the views of those two clowns and Castro are number 463736373738383 in the list of reasons why. 

Yet, there are other parties, and if there is anything worse than Trump and Clinton in this race, it's the two party system that allows each candidate to scare voters into voting for them election cycle after election cycle. So I'm inclined to look elsewhere. That said, I'm not sure if there is even a third party candidate that I really support. We'll see. I haven't done as much research on third party candidates as I should have.

Overall, though, I'm pretty despondent about the effort of government in the first place. It's better than no government imo. But inevitably holes are found in every system and people exploit them. I'll put up my best efforts as a voting citizen of the US, but I don't feel it will do much good.

 

Ergo, Giant Meteor > Trump 

Yes, because I agree with their views more than Johnson. I know if I were a business I wouldn't want to be forced to make something against my will. 

Johnson wants to force companies to do things for people against their will, such as forcing a Christian baker to bake a cake for gay people. While I of course am against bigotry like that, you've got to let businesses run themselves. Hopefully, smart consumers will start boycotting the business and get it to change their ways or go out of business. 

zappaholic wrote: Or if Giant Meteor is not to your liking, this guy's running again:

He can't lose again. His message is just too appealing.

That's not the only reason I supported those candidates of course, and that was just an example that was brought up during the libertarian debates. It's also not just about "cakes", it could be applied to any business. Would you want to be forced to sell or do something for your worst enemy?

Consumers do have the choice to not support a business. Yes, one person can't make a difference, but if consumers as a whole start a boycott a smart business will respond to that and fix whatever the problem consumers are having. Now, that's not to say there aren't business that have shady ways of making money, but in theory what I'm saying should work.

Though I'd agree religious people of the type that motivate this discussion on cakes and related are progress' worst enemy. 

Gays are certainly not religious people's worst enemy, maybe a better example is a Jew doing something or selling something to a neo-nazi. I know if I was Jewish, I wouldn't want to do something nice for someone who would support the eradication of people of my faith.

Bolded: Why would they do it anyways?

Bolded 2: That's another thing about regulations like these. Would anyone really want to go into a place where the staff would be giving them dirty looks or throwing insults? I'd rather let a place be bigots and not go there, than go into a place and be surrounded by people who hate me.

True, boycotts don't work very well if you're dealing with a huge company like that. For smaller companies though, it's easier to boycott. If you get enough people aware of something bad that a company is doing, there is a chance that they will either change their ways or go out of business.

Sorry, you've lost me. Are you asking me why a business would refuse someone whose lifestyle they disapproved of? Probably because they are judgemental based upon some form of prejudice I suspect.

I'd much rather the need for such regulations didn't exist at all. If people stopped being bigoted arseholes and stopped using religion as a flimsy excuse for their bigotry then there would be (and should be) no use for regulations that prevent their arseholery. The last thing any country needs is a ghetto for arseholes to freely practice their bigotry unchallenged.

If it is okay to boycott a bakery that refuses to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple then it is okay to boycott a bakery for refusing to bake a cake a christening cake for a christian couple. Are we then boycotting the bakery for how they discriminate against people who don't share their beliefs or are we boycotting them for their beliefs, which is just another form of discrimination. Once that boycott proves to be ineffective then things will escalate into picketing and harassment, and eventually physical violence. That is lynch-mob mentality and it is the worse kind of justice. We have laws, law makers and law enforcers because it is far more acceptable than the alternative. As I said, you don't get to pick and choose who is permitted to discriminate so you don't get to pick and choose who gets boycotted.

I know that.....BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW 

So if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency there will be two President Clintons and I presume that officially she'll be referred to using her full name and colloquially as President Hillary, however this will be the first time that a President has occupied the White House in any capacity other than as President. I guess that in that situation he will also be known as the First Gentleman Bill Clinton (as opposed to First Dude or First Spouse)...

In the unlikely event of America waking up on November the 9th to find President-elect Jill Stein measuring the Oval Office for drapes with her husband adopting the (albeit unofficial) 'First Lady' role of White House host as First Gentleman Richard Rohrer this wouldn't be an an issue. Gender role reversal is not uncommon in a presidency and there are female presidents in other countries whose husbands are known as First Gentleman. 

Given that there is precedent for someone else other than the President's spouse to be given the job of being First Lady in principle Hillary Clinton could appoint another member of the Clinton 'clan' to the role and leave Bill Clinton as First Gentleman in name only (if at all). So, ignoring any personal feelings of whether you like either of the Clintons or not (so if not then pretend your favourite First Lady of your favourite ex-President swapped roles), is the role of White House host/hostess an appropriate one for someone who has previously held the highest office in the country? 

I'm not so sure the question of whether Bill Clinton could serve as vice-president is as constitutionally clear as some would believe.  No person can serve as VP if they would not be eligible to fill the presidency, and no person can be elected to the office of president more than twice.  

But vice-presidents aren't elected so unless something else disqualifies him from filling the presidency, then he could in theory serve as VP.  I can't imagine given the current scrutiny the Clinton's are facing that they would be so bold as to test that theory, but who knows - I wouldn't have thought a racist lunatic Munchkin would lead the Republican party either.  Strange days.

As for the White House hostess, as far as I know First Lady is a ceremonial title with no official basis.  There have been many first ladies who were not the president's spouse (daughters, daughters-in-law, nieces, etc.) but obviously never a First Dude.  IMHO a Clinton White House would designate someone other than Bill for the role, probably Chelsea.  Or possibly one of her nieces from one of her creepy brothers' families.

 

If Bill Clinton were to become VP, he would continue the 28-year run of VPs officially known by their nicknames. So far we've had a Dan, an Al, a Dick, and a Joe. Clinton and Carter are the only actual presidents we've had who went by their nicknames. (Although Truman was named after an uncle whose formal name was Harrison, his own given name was Harry.)

In theory yes, but I suspect many would argue that it's playing with words to avoid the intention of the amendment which was to prevent anyone holding the office of President for more than 2½ terms. Also to achieve that you are playing a semantics game because the Bill Clinton isn't eligible to be fill the presidency by any other route than through the VP chair.

If you were to hold to the spirit of the amendment, rather than the legalese-gymnastics of the wording & semantics of it, then he should step-down after 1 year 364 days if he assumed the presidency from the VP chair as that would have been the maximum anyone could serve going in the opposite direction (VP-Pres -> Elected-Pres -> Elected-Pres).

I've also read that the interpretation of the word "eligibility" would come into play. "Interpretation" gets thrown around a lot in situations like this.

If (and that's a big If) Clinton should select her husband as her running mate it would probably be challenged by the other side. So then what, the Supreme Court? This close to election day?

I'm not even sure Bill would be a plus to her campaign. It's looking like she will have a hard enough time selling one Clinton to the American voters, let alone two.

It is your 12 & 22 amendments that Bob & I are talking about, and if playing semantics with what I called the "legalese-gymnastics" of the wording of the 22nd amendment in particular then you have to consider the legal meaning of the word "shall" too as that is used twice in the amendment and from a legal perspective it doesn't mean what most people think it means.

But a Clinton/Clinton ticket is somewhat immaterial to the point I was making - which is if Hillary Clinton is successful you will have two President Clintons residing at the White House at the same even though only one of them will actually be President of the Untied States. So I guess my question is more of protocol than the idea of B-J Clinton running for any public office other than the one he already has.

Presumably an ex-president has some formal or official status within your country, both social and civic (considering that ex-presidents have a state-funded office and staff, and can claim up to $1million in travel expenses incurred while performing his ex-presidential duties) and there would also be a hierarchy in the White House so the office of ex-President-in-residence must slot in there somewhere.

Frankly I find the constitutional question more interesting than the one about what role Bill Clinton would play in the White House as spouse to a president.  And as far as I know there is no official role for former presidents, the tradition of referring to them as president after their term is a convention of courtesy, not recognition they have a formal standing in the government.

The 12th/22nd amendments question about whether former presidents can become vice presidents is a legitimate concern, and IMHO the interpretation of the 22nd to mean former presidents are ineligible because the intent was to ensure they did not serve more than two terms, ignores precedent.  There is a line of succession that extends beyond the vice president to the speaker of the house, pro-temp of the Senate, Attorney General, and numerous cabinet secretaries.  If we take the narrow view of the 22nd then a former president could not serve in Congress or in a cabinet post, nor as an undersecretary since they can be appointed as acting secretaries and thereby gain standing in the line of succession.  But we've had former presidents serve in some of those roles in the past so we have in fact established precedent that a former president can be eligible to succeed to the presidency, even if they cannot be reelected as president.

But that brings up another question. Generally, for security reasons, the president and vice president are seldom in the same place at the same time. How would they handle the living arrangements? 

The VP has an office in the West Wing (and at the EEOB) and a residence at the Naval Observatory so if HRC is elected and Bill was the VP where would he stay? Would it be a security risk having the Pres and the V-Pres both living in the White House residence?  

If she selects a different running mate (and I'm sure she will) then none of this will matter.

Unfortunately law and politics isn't maths and science so the logic of Article 2, the 12th & 22nd amendments and the Presidential Succession Act isn't perfect. The 12th states the VP cannot be someone who is constitutionally ineligible to be president and that does not specifically mention any other role the line of succession (because they are not elected to their roles by public ballot). Therefore a 2-times president is not ineligible to hold any of those governmental roles in the line of succession other than VP - he just cannot become president from those roles so the succession passes to the next in line. You are doing this already with the Secretary of the Interior, who should be 8th in line but is constitutionally ineligible to be president because she was born in London. Of course if the point were reached where looking at the 8th in line to be president was the next step then I doubt there would be much of anything left to govern so picking any surviving ex-President as a figurehead regardless of how many terms he'd served would probably be the wisest choice anyway... I would imagine by then even President 'aisle be bach' Arnie would seem like a good idea.

 

I made my thesis about the Presidential eligibility but can't assure you it's impossible 

Logically should be impossible because the spirit of the Constitution is to avoid a person holding the Presidential office more than two terms, plus two years.

But legally is another issue, being that even when one of the obligations of the Vice-President is to replace the President according to the XXV Amendment, he would bea Vice-President not elected as President, and even if replacing  the President permanently, he would only be fulfilling the duties of the Vice-President

In my dissertation I said that I believed it was unconstitutional, but one of the juries had doubts.

This would be a hard job for the Supreme Court.

I agree with you entirely Iván, and I have said the wording of both amendments is not perfect (they look like they were written by a couple of 2nd year law students during a coffee break - no legally binding document should be ambiguous or open to interpretation). The 22nd amendments shows that an un-elected term counts as an elected term and are therefore equivalent - while there is nothing to say that the logic is commutative, there is nothing to say that it isn't either, which is why I said:

However, my post was merely pointing out (to Bob) that the VP role is the only role in the line of succession that someone ineligible to be President was excluded from holding. A 2-times ex-President can be Secretary of State just as Sally Jewell can be Secretary of the Interior even though she cannot be VP or President.

Given the current mood of our electorate, a monarchy might be cathartic.  At least we'd have something to storm and someone to banish.  

Well, he wasn't:

That's the problem with Amendments, they are created as patches to solve problems. But they are written decades or even centuries after the original Constitution and by people from another Congress with different perspective and in some cases almost a different language.

So at the end you have a Constitution from the XVIII century with amendments wrote in the XX century co-existing...This IMHO is absurd.

Washington rejected to be elected three times and this was almost a rule (moral of course, because Grant almost broke the rule), but after Roosevelt  was re-elected three times, they only created a patch to avoid this.

In our first Constitutional Congress, somebody proposed the Amendment system, but it was rejected, choosing the total modification of the Constitution (Or partial in an emergency case), in order to keep the coherence...The whole Constitution is written by the same Congress or Constitutional Assembly of the same year in order to keep the coherence between all articles.

But this doesn't work all times, the dictator Bolivar created a Constitution on 1826 in which he was allowed to be President for all his life, luckily he left to Colombia the same 1826 and the Constitution was officially repealed in 1827.

The only constitution we have is the ability to eat bland, stodgy food without getting constipated... 

The advantage of not having a formal constitution is you can change it without having, or causing, a revolution, which has worked alright up until now. 

The US Constitution is remarkably general and not rigid enough to have survived for so long only with the addition of amendments. That idiots tend to interpret certain parts in completely anachronistic ways (like the 2nd amendment) is another matter. 

That can work in the UK.

But I assure you, it wouldn't work in Latin America.

I always liked the UK system, things work, because they have to work, but here if a i doesn't have a dot on the top, I assure you that a dictator as Fujimori would say it's an l and for that reason a mistake in the text so he may dissolve the congress.

The new Constitution (By Fujimori) says a President can only serve two consecutive periods, and for a re-election he  has to wait a 5 years period.

Fujimori said he was able to serve three consecutive periods, because his first election didn't counted being that the Constitution was proclaimed after he was elected, despite the fact that the text didn't made an exception.

So he was re-elected (Cheating of course) and had to escape from Perú to Japan and resign by fax, because we were at the border of a revolution....In Japan he said he was Japanese and he was allowed to stay, he only was captured when he went to Chile for tourism, and deported to Perú.

So we had a Japanese President despite the fact that the Constitution says only a native born Peruvian can be President.

We need a formal Constitution.

That's the problem the Congressman of 1791 didn't believe it was necessary to explain that you can use arms, to avoid and invasion, and that in the XXIst century a handgun would make no difference if USA is invaded.