The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Steve Thomas]

I have been online in various discussion groups of one kind or another since before Windows was invented.

Terribly

Redundant

Obtuse

Lazy

Laggard

Snowflakes.

Live to fight. That’s their only purpose. The reason doesn’t matter. Arguing is an end unto itself. More often then not, they are late teen incels living in their mother’s basement, or someone who is emotionally stuck at that age. You cannot win arguments with Terribly Redundant Obtuse Lazy Laggard Snowflakes because they are not interested in growing. If you don’t fight with them, eventually they will get bored and move on to somewhere else where they can pick fights. That’s the only way they can get attention.

Steve Thomas

[Cliff Varnell]

3 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

I have been online in various discussion groups of one kind or another since before Windows was invented.

Terribly

Redundant

Obtuse

Lazy

Laggard

Snowflakes.

Live to fight. That’s their only purpose. The reason doesn’t matter. Arguing is an end unto itself. More often then not, they are late teen incels living in their mother’s basement, or someone who is emotionally stuck at that age. You cannot win arguments with Terribly Redundant Obtuse Lazy Laggard Snowflakes because they are not interested in growing. If you don’t fight with them, eventually they will get bored and move on to somewhere else where they can pick fights. That’s the only way they can get attention.

Steve Thomas

A word to the wise, Steve.  See y’all in 2024!

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Good!  Thanks for asking.  I actually went 16 months between posting as I work on a screenplay.  Took a break from that to weigh in on the overthrow of Diem, and the midterms.  Now I bask in schadenfreude thanks to the crypto-fascists who rooted for the GOP.

That’s interesting. Hows the screenplay going? What’s the topic? 

[Cory Santos]

40 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

A word to the wise, Steve.  See y’all in 2024!

Cliff, I turned the WiFi back on for you so you could post.  But you need to behave.  Now go finish the script.   Back to work.   

[Matthew Koch]

2 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

LOL

Are you so dumb as to not realize that there are untold numbers of your posts that can be collected and shown to reflect an anti-America, pro-fascist, pro-authoritarian slant?

Or do you just burp out your bullsh*t without ever considering that?

Put your money where your mouth is Matt and show us the goods, make the case. You seem to do the same things as William which is state hyperbole as fact and refuse to cite it when asked. 

[John Cotter]

2 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

LOL

Are you so dumb as to not realize that there are untold numbers of your posts that can be collected and shown to reflect an anti-America, pro-fascist, pro-authoritarian slant?

Or do you just burp out your bullsh*t without ever considering that?

Please give it a rest, Matt. Your two latest comments here are out of order.

I could say more than that about them, but it would be only further inflaming the situation.

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Mark, my experience in California is the same as yours.They have representatives of both parties at the polling stations. They do check signatures. I've used paper ballots whether I voted at the polls or by mail in voting. There are a lot of safeguards built into the election system. I think Chris's most salient point is that there is such a difference in voting and election laws between the states, so I can't say anything about other states. That's because there's no "big government " standardization on a federal level. Because of course, we're not about  "big government" in the U.S!  

heh heh

 

 

 

Of course Chris's statement is so hedged. Does anyone really think in a country of 340 million, there isn't one incident of voter fraud?

 

Let's look where the rubber meets the road. The most scrutinized election maybe in American history since the Florida Presidential election was cut short.

 

The most contested case of voter fraud in the 2020 election was in Arizona.

The Republicans forced a 2020 recount in Arizona at considerable expense to the state, purely because of what we know now to be the deception of Donald Trump. The results after a lengthy count were, of 2.1 million ballots,  to their embarrassment, they found 99 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump!

 

I hate to bore you with math and figures Chris, but  that means there was an error of 360 total votes out of 2.1 million votes, or a percentage of .00017 voting error, or 17 per 100,000!. So in the most contested 2020 election there was an inaccuracy of 17 per 100,000!

 

So in this case. The voting was extremely accurate.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/arizona-republicans-release-findings-widely-panned-election-audit-2021-09-24/

 

*****

Ben, If you remember. Bush went on TV to beg for funding for his "surge" in 2008. And Obama got in office and just went along with increase, which was a major failing but he did end up withdrawing to a level before he even took office by the time he left office, from 40,000 all the way to 8000!

Kirk:

The problem is the modern-day Donk Party has been completely co-opted by the globalist-militarists---witness Obama's decision to implement Bush war plans in Afghanistan.  And HRC's vow to stay in Afcrapistan (forever, evidently). 

There is no more anti-war or loyal opposition wing of the Donk Party. And as I recently posted, the weapons industry splits donations about 50/50 between the Donks and their allies, the establishment GOP. The New Donk heroes are Liz Cheney and W. Bush jr. 

BTW, the finance industry (think Wall Street) has also migrated into the Donk column in terms of political contributions and now splits campaign contributions about 50/50 split also. 

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=F

There are hyper-partisans left out there, but I assume they are people who directly benefit from their allegiance with one party or the other. 

I am skeptical. What starts in this world as a cause or movement becomes politics, then becomes a business, and then a racket.

The US political parties have entered the coprolite racket stage. And you know fossils cannot change. 

 

 

 

[Matt Allison]

Yep. The GOP is imploding. And they 100% deserve to.

 

[Mark Knight]

On 11/14/2022 at 6:17 PM, Chris Barnard said:

Hi Mark, sounds tight there. Was it one of the states contested by the Republicans? I seem to remember the court hearings being somewhere else. 
 

Isn’t one of the strong arguments that there should be uniformity across all states? 
 

 

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the US Constitution gave the right to set election rules to the states: 

"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."

The language is slightly confusing and seems a bit contradictory. It states that the state legislatures make the rules, BUT that Congress can pass a law overruling the state laws. That allowed for the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Nineteenth Amendment, and several Voting Rights Acts of Congress to override some of the state laws.

However, with the most recent Supreme Court justices being "strict originalists," no one wants to propose a law standardizing all election laws for fear that the current majority might use that "originalist" interpretation to strike down any such standardization as unconstitutional, as it would be deviating from the "original intent" of the authors of the Constitution.

IMHO, standardized election laws would be an extension of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I'm not a lawyer, so my opinion only carries the weight of a single citizen.

A person I follow on twitter is a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe of Native Americans. He complains that in some instances, Native Americans living on the reservations must travel as far as 200 miles one way to their nearest polling location to vote. I believe that his complaint is valid, as most of us in America travel less than 1/8 that distance to vote. But because each state makes their own election laws, that "problem" is perfectly legal in the states where it occurs. IMHO, that;s another argument for uniform election laws nationwide.

[Guest]

49 minutes ago, Mark Knight said:

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the US Constitution gave the right to set election rules to the states: 

"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."

The language is slightly confusing and seems a bit contradictory. It states that the state legislatures make the rules, BUT that Congress can pass a law overruling the state laws. That allowed for the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Nineteenth Amendment, and several Voting Rights Acts of Congress to override some of the state laws.

However, with the most recent Supreme Court justices being "strict originalists," no one wants to propose a law standardizing all election laws for fear that the current majority might use that "originalist" interpretation to strike down any such standardization as unconstitutional, as it would be deviating from the "original intent" of the authors of the Constitution.

IMHO, standardized election laws would be an extension of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I'm not a lawyer, so my opinion only carries the weight of a single citizen.

A person I follow on twitter is a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe of Native Americans. He complains that in some instances, Native Americans living on the reservations must travel as far as 200 miles one way to their nearest polling location to vote. I believe that his complaint is valid, as most of us in America travel less than 1/8 that distance to vote. But because each state makes their own election laws, that "problem" is perfectly legal in the states where it occurs. IMHO, that;s another argument for uniform election laws nationwide.

Thank you, Mark. An interesting read. It should surely be in the interests of each state to have the most secure system possible, if they indeed support the ideals of justice and democracy. 
 

Addressing Kirk, I think California seems a bit of a foregone conclusion because of demographics. Its more the states that go either way and have less secure arrangements that have met scrutiny. Of course one side says its all fine and the other says its been rigged or manipulated. I did watch a couple of the televised hearings and alleged corruptions. From memory it wasn’t proven or contested whether the manipulation could happen, only stated that it didn’t on this occasion, or not to an extent that constituted the vote being swung. 
 

However, we are in or entering an age where it doesn’t look necessary for either side to cheat. The Cambridge Analytica doc. from 2018 or 19 showed how peoples data could be used against them to sway the vote. It was very sophisticated psychological marketing which was cited for the Brexit vote and the US 2016 race swinging toward populist candidates. 
 

Cheers.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Mark Knight said:

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the US Constitution gave the right to set election rules to the states: 

"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."

The language is slightly confusing and seems a bit contradictory. It states that the state legislatures make the rules, BUT that Congress can pass a law overruling the state laws. That allowed for the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Nineteenth Amendment, and several Voting Rights Acts of Congress to override some of the state laws.

However, with the most recent Supreme Court justices being "strict originalists," no one wants to propose a law standardizing all election laws for fear that the current majority might use that "originalist" interpretation to strike down any such standardization as unconstitutional, as it would be deviating from the "original intent" of the authors of the Constitution.

IMHO, standardized election laws would be an extension of the "equal protection" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But I'm not a lawyer, so my opinion only carries the weight of a single citizen.

A person I follow on twitter is a member of the Lakota Sioux tribe of Native Americans. He complains that in some instances, Native Americans living on the reservations must travel as far as 200 miles one way to their nearest polling location to vote. I believe that his complaint is valid, as most of us in America travel less than 1/8 that distance to vote. But because each state makes their own election laws, that "problem" is perfectly legal in the states where it occurs. IMHO, that;s another argument for uniform election laws nationwide.

MK--Good arguments, and I would one step further and eliminate the Electoral College for the presidential elections, and just go to straight popular vote. 

A straight popular vote would radically reduce incentives to game elections in tight swing states.

Are elections clean? In Sept. 2018, the NYT ran a magazine cover story that there was an "election security crisis" in America. Largely around the ability to gimmick vote-counting machines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/magazine/election-security-crisis-midterms.html

By 2020, such concerns had (officially) evaporated....

The 'Phants are thought to have gimmicked the 2004 election through absentee ballots in Ohio. 

Interesting topic. 

[Benjamin Cole]

"The FBI may have had up to eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys organization around the time of the Capitol riot, court papers suggest along with a New York Times report."--Insider

Informants? Or facilitators? Instigators? Provocateurs? 

How does the FBI have eight informants inside the Proud Boys and not know what is going on?

BTW, the Proud Boys leader, the Afro-Cubano Enrique Tarrio, is called a "former" FBI informant. Tarrio was released from a Washington DC prison on...Jan 5. 

Interesting. 

 

[Matthew Koch]

10 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

"The FBI may have had up to eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys organization around the time of the Capitol riot, court papers suggest along with a New York Times report."--Insider

Informants? Or facilitators? Instigators? Provocateurs? 

How does the FBI have eight informants inside the Proud Boys and not know what is going on?

BTW, the Proud Boys leader, the Afro-Cubano Enrique Tarrio, is called a "former" FBI informant. Tarrio was released from a Washington DC prison on...Jan 5. 

Interesting. 

 

Ben it's worse than that, 20 feds in Oath Keepers. Jesse Waters talked about that on his show tonight, starts about 3 min in

 

[W. Niederhut]

5 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

A promise of chrissyfits to come...

Our transcontinental pal, Chrissy,

on occasion, was churlish and prissy.

A most sensitive Brit,

he'd, at times, throw a fit,

of the kind that are often called, "hissy." 🤥

 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Our transcontinental pal, Chrissy,

on occasion, was churlish and prissy.

A most sensitive Brit,

he'd, at times, throw a fit,

of the kind that are often called, "hissy." 🤥

 

W. You’re on a lyrical roll tonight. I am pleased that you’re in better spirits. Even if it does go against the high standards of intellectual chatter you claim to want to maintain here. 🙂