This is so insidious and depressing. Nothing the Republican party does surprises me anymore. He outright said today that he's doing this to stymie mail-in voting, and the Republican party supports him on it. The president is outright saying "I want to hinder the vote for everyone, across the board" and the Republican party supports it. It's so sad.
This is a taste for Americans of what it must feel like for many people across the world in less fortunate countries every day, for as long as anyone can remember. I can't imagine living with this indefinitely with no hope of change.
It's only going to get more brutal -- Trump is terrified of losing the legal protection of the presidency and will not hesitate to do literally anything to hold on to it.
This election is a referendum on the survival of humanity.
I recognize that the previous sentence seems hyperbolic but I believe it to be the case. I'm terrified.
Well I am a libertarian, Both Biden and Harris are known "Tough on Crime" Authoritarians,
I also oppose 99% of their platform including government run healthcare, extreme theft errr taxation, open social programs for anyone that happens to be physically located inside the boarders, their Identity / Social Justice Warrior politics, I could go on and on
I support federalism, I support individual liberty, I support meritocracy. all of which they stand against
The think tanks' efforts to brand "socialism" as authoritarianism have paid off. M4A being painted as an authoritarian nightmare is a slick trick on their part.
Can you point me to a non-authoritarian socialist nation, now or at any point in the past...
Socialism fails very quickly if not backed by an Authoritarian form of government... Only with Authoritarian enforcement can it survive and then only with extreme poverty and misery for most people.
Literally every candidate must be seen as "Tough on Crime" because the public wont vote for anyone who doesn't make this appeal. This became a big Republican stance that Clinton embraced that helped him win the election. So please show me the not "tough on crime" politician that has any shot at winning an election.
Biden and Harris have done more for mass incarceration than anyone else. Which makes their selection by the Democrat party in today's "defund the police" narrative the funniest thing to happen in politics since Howard Dean's scream.
This was when the Republicans had majorities in both chambers of Congress, Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House, and the Republican's Contract on America was passed, unfortunately. The Democrats shifted right because they thought that's what would win them elections.
Sure, Biden and Harris are terrible candidates because they're 1990s Republicans, but they're a million times better than Trump and Pence. The smear campaigns against them are an attempt to elevate Trump and Pence so he seems only as awful as Biden And Harris. Don't take the bait. Don't defend them. For a Republican to warn liberals that Biden and Harris don't deserve anyone's vote because they're those "tough on crime" types when it was Republicans who shut the government down to force through "tough on crime" legislation and codify "tough on crime" as a requisite to hold political office is some serious b.s.
A lot of the tough on crime stuff is Dem's trying to counter the "law and order" playbook by the GOP. Criminal "justice" definitely needs to be re-examined and re-worked.
Pretty hyperbolic statement. America (the federal entity) might be in danger of survival long-term but humanity has survived much worse. You don't even need to go back 100 years to imagine what it looks like for a major nation to collapse under authoritarianism.
It's also another disincentive for him to get the pandemic under control. Because if we got down to tens or hundreds of infections per day per state, there'd be less need for mail-in voting.
Trump. The pandemic works for him, because then more people want to vote by mail, which he can limit through defunding the post office. If the pandemic isn't as much of an issue, then he can't limit the supply of voters as easily.
The president is outright saying "I want to hinder the vote for everyone, across the board"
No, he isn't "outright saying" that. This is the kind of statement that Scott Alexander rightfully criticised some years ago when people started saying Trump is "openly" racist:
Here's an actual quote from him: "Mail-in ballots are very dangerous - there's tremendous fraud involved." That's what he is outright saying.
Mail fraud is not a US specific problem. UK elections have had the same problems. In one case someone who had previously been jailed for mail voting fraud took an Instagram selfie of himself in the counting room. An MP has written an article about mail voting fraud here:
The Republican party wants to be a dictatorship. They are putting party over country. They don't want to lose and win at all costs. I wish Obama had done something like this to make sure Trump didn't get elected (this statement is intended to trigger Republicans and force them to defend Trump's actions)
There were so many things which aren't horrible for our democracy which could have been done to change how 2016 turned out. Not taking a shit on the progressive wing of the party at every step may have helped some, actually campaigning in some of the states she assumed to have in the bag and then lost may have helped too.
Obama doing something anti-democratic, illegal, etc to ensure Trump wasn't elected is not a step I would ever support.
No, Republicans are and have always been the corrupt ones. If at all anything, Democrats are too fair because you know they tend to be decent human beings. Republicans are too power hungry and want to win at all costs.
> No, Republicans are and have always been the corrupt ones. If at all anything, Democrats are too fair because you know they tend to be decent human beings. Republicans are too power hungry and want to win at all costs.
I'm a Democrat, and reasonably proud to be so—more proud than I would be to be a Republican, at any rate—but looking back through American history should make you very hesitant to claim anything about what Republicans and Democrats always have been. Democrats have often been the "big party" tent, and that's good; but it means, for example, that we embraced and welcome secessionists for a long time. That's a legacy we largely left behind with LBJ, and I'm glad we did, but it would be disingenuous to disown it.
It used to be meaningful to talk about liberal versus conservative Democrats, and liberal versus conservative Republicans; don't assume that how things are now is how they've always been, or even how they've been for more than a few decades.
No, I could do much better than ad hominem, but why bother? You pointed out a vanishingly small type of crime against mail-in ballots - with no numbers about how much crime occurs against real "voting booths", at that - and that was supposed to justify an intentional dismantling of a constitutionally guaranteed service for political gain by one party. This is clearly disingenuous on the face of it, and if it's not, and you really believe what you're saying, that's even worse and equally unlikely to have you yield from your position.
I have the feeling that any site that reports against your narrative will be deemed "a propaganda site and shouldn't be used as a legitimate source". Good luck speaking to your echo chamber. At least I can see what your what your ideological opponents are focused on. The silence of some news organizations re: the seizure of these fake ids is deafening, btw...
No, this isn't a ideology thing, the epoch times is literally the news paper of the Falun Gong religious movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times It's not "secretly" propaganda, it's explicitly and openly a propaganda site.
Yes, this article, unlike many of the news sources you probably use, links to it's original sources. Your ideological point re: Falun Gong is irrelevant.
Regarding absentee ballots, all 50 states combined yielded 143 fraud convictions over 20 years. Those numbers are so low that there's not any way to massage them into an actual risk to elections.
Oregon has distributed 100 million ballots over the past 20 years in its vote by mail system. In that time there have been just 12 cases of voter fraud.
Like most Rockefeller & Gates sponsored rags, factcheck.org's post is muddying the waters with opinion, circular & contradictory reasoning, & deceptive headlines. This piece you sent me were mainly partisan opinions of the same people who advocate for mail in ballots, masquerading as some voice of authority that the audience is supposed to obey by fiat. There was no discussion, other than a sentence of an opinion, about the process.
Unlike the article above I posted, there are no links to source documents of procedures or any source data other than partisan opinions.
Dude. This isn't complicated. We call them mail-in ballots and absentee ballots, interchangeably. Absentee is an older term and may be falling out of use.
Florida introduced absentee ballots just after the 2000 election. Since then it's been extensively used by deployed military along with anyone else who wants it. Dozens of general and primary elections later, we can see it didn't put those elections at risk.
As a side note, effectively crippling mail-in voting would prohibit many FL elderly (mostly R) from voting.
The executive branch is obviously trying to get in our heads and create as much chaos and turmoil as humanly possible. Possibly with funding from other nations. We're being CIA'd right now.
Absentee ballots making up a small part of the total vote count is alot different than the majority of voting taking place via mail in on my levels not just security but logistics, and several other factors
It would be one thing if it rolled out with a defined planned over the course of a few years. it is something else when it is an emergency measure rolled out with no plan in an ad hoc manner
FL's extensive and lengthy trial of absentee voting was a success from every angle. The thing one does after completing a wildly successful trial is to roll out the actual program in the manner and degree that it's needed.
Run out of pencils, voter makes mark on both candidates (check on one, x on other), counter decides to drop a bunch of additional ballots in, your vote is visible to the outside so the person who paid you to vote a certain way can verify.
It doesn’t allow for manipulation, ballot harvesting, or fraud. All Democrat policies for increasing vote turnout - lowering the voting age, no ID, mail in - increase the chances of fraud.
This is a very strong case for a general public strike. The only way for this administration and the Republicans to back off is for the financial market to crash.
You can fix their budget issues by removing the burden placed on them in 2006 that they fund their pension obligations for 75 years. No other entity, government or private, labors under this burden, providing for the retirement of employees who are not yet born. They were profitable for the six years before this law was passed, by Bush and the Republicans, and they would have been profitable for the last 6 years had it not been for this law.
Looking from outside the country: how? How can you like him? I know I will probably not start a good discussion by my question. But I hope to do so.
What could someone like in this man? I struggle to find any redeeming qualities.
Not from the US, but looking from the outside, it seems your country is collapsing on itself and people are cheering on this word little individual that shows little abilities. Just puzzling to me.
Consider that all major US media outlets are driven by ad-spend, which is in term driven by views. Views are driven by outrage. Trump is a great target for outrage. The media love to hate him. He loves to let them hate him.
If you turn off the news, the country is in general humming along just fine. Stock market is doing great. No new wars. Finally doing something to address major trade imbalances with China.
If you listen to the news, everyone and their mother is dying in the streets of coronavirus. In reality, roughly 1-3% of the population has even caught the virus. Deaths are way down from March/April.
For a country and a president that are supposedly incompetent to the point of collapse, things are going pretty damn great.
COVID deaths are trending up, with 1,499 deaths reported for August 12. We're at 166,023 deaths total. Schools forced to open. Terrible quarterly GDP. COVID relief going to Trump's friends. A looming housing market collapse with evictions on the way. Massive unemployment. Probably a second quarantine in the fall due to the awful way that the response has been handled by the federal government. USPS fiasco by trump and his buddy having a conflict of interest with being a post master for the USPS and his investments + ties to XPO. trump's tweet that suggests postponing the election. trump and co's promotion of goya. trump's "It is what it is" response to 160,000 American deaths from COVID. trump's attacks on protesters and response with federal agents in Portland.
I can literally go on and on. This is just what I had the effort to type out. How are these things pretty damn great? Just one or two of these should have a massive negative impact on any politician.
> For a country and a president that are supposedly incompetent to the point of collapse, things are going pretty damn great.
Even _assuming_ everything is great, would it _really_ be his merit? I mean, everything that man did has been counter-productive for your country. He is a bumbling idiot. He really is. What merit does he have? I just can not see it. The fact that "well, we're not all dead yet" is hardly a criteria for success.
And no, my bad opinion of him is not because "the media" - my bad opinion stems from reading his book "The art of the deal" about a decade ago (that was highly recommended by friends - they said it's great!) - and in there he came off, to me, as a corrupt scumbag. All his behavior since only reinforced this.
It looks to me like the slow motion fall of an empire. And empires fall all the time, think about Great Britain, a bit over a hundred years ago they were the "the empire on which the sun never sets" - wonder if in another century people will look the same at the US.
Still, you did not say why you did like him. You just said "it's not that bad". Hardly the same thing. Will admit, you said that you feel that the trade balances with China are being addressed, and, well, that's _something_.
Because the bar has been set so low at this point, "we're not all dead yet" (except for the over 160k people who have died so far from COVID) is actually a talking point I think
> If you turn off the news, the country is in general humming along just fine. Stock market is doing great. No new wars. Finally doing something to address major trade imbalances with China.
The country is doing 'just fine' if you are a person who has expendable income to invest and job security (and health insurance) because you have the ability to work remotely. The unemployment rate is very high, and most of those laid off are not knowledge workers - which is correlated with lower pay. Those who can least afford it are losing the most jobs. The wealth gap, already at an all time high, is undoubtedly going to increase significantly.
Obviously the country is not at the point of collapse, but do you not think the problems I just listed are cause for serious concern?
war1025 is a religious white guy in Iowa who has argued that Proposition 8 in California wasn't a ban on same sex marriage. I'd actually be surprised if someone like this wasn't a Trump supporter.
Believing that scientists, teachers, economists, ethicists have been deceiving you all these years, while a POS reality TV star with decades of lying, bigotry, cheating people, dozens of credible accusations of sexual assault, cheating on his wives is somehow your beacon of truth and honesty. You are a bad person.
As another outsider looking in I've been shocked lately by the state governors. I thought Trump was aberration, but seeing how many mini trumps are running states shows that he is more of the norm than I ever realized. If I was in one of the saner parts of the country I'd be joining secessionist movements, they country just seems ungovernable as is.
Since Iowa is pretty high up on that list of "states that are run by mini-Trumps", I'll just throw in my two cents that for a state that is supposedly doing "everything wrong", life is basically normal here. We wear masks when going into stores now. That's literally the only major change to an otherwise normal life.
The third world nation known as the "United" States of America, not to be mixed up with the United States in North America that is Mexico, nor Canada–which is also a nation of states that stand united, has an identity problem it seems.
Bipartisan politics are ruining the nation, as corrupt politicians whose political careers are funded by companies, with nobody standing in the way.
Will Democrats be able to fix it even if they get elected? I don't think so. Joe Biden is just another yes-man puppet. They are probably more corrupt than we like to admit, too. Doesn't mean the Republicans are better or worse, I'm saying it's the same thing: an illusion of choice. Illusion being the key word.
What the USA needs is a complete overhaul of the political landscape.
And that requires something grand. Something like many generals getting together and deciding to overthrow the government, and to install an intermediary government of scientists and specialists to figure out what kind of government would be best.
The role of the military would be to strike down any civil unrest about this with decisive and lethal strikes. Designate the Republican and Democratic parties as domestic terror groups. Lock up the current politicians; try them in court. Once corruption is proven, make them the ONLY prisoners in for-profit prisons.
But seeing as none of that is going to happen, nothing will change. If things go the way they seem to go, Trump will serve another 4 years at the very least.
Over the top cynicism doesn't help. Biden isn't the second coming of Jesus, but to suggest he and Trump are the same kind of politician as Trump, or that his cabinet and appointees will be of the same kind as Trump's, is insanity. Trump is the first president we've had who behaves as he does. Nixon, who wasn't nearly as corrupt, felt compelled to resign because he thought the Republicans of his time wouldn't back him up. Things have changed. And if they change for the worse they can also change for the better.
Democrats (and Republicans) are domestic terror groups? Was Obama a terrorist by your estimation? Carter? And the cure for this is a military coup? When has that ever worked?
False equivalency and hyperbole ensure things don't get better.
88 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadThis is a taste for Americans of what it must feel like for many people across the world in less fortunate countries every day, for as long as anyone can remember. I can't imagine living with this indefinitely with no hope of change.
This election is a referendum on the survival of humanity.
I recognize that the previous sentence seems hyperbolic but I believe it to be the case. I'm terrified.
I also oppose 99% of their platform including government run healthcare, extreme theft errr taxation, open social programs for anyone that happens to be physically located inside the boarders, their Identity / Social Justice Warrior politics, I could go on and on
I support federalism, I support individual liberty, I support meritocracy. all of which they stand against
Socialism fails very quickly if not backed by an Authoritarian form of government... Only with Authoritarian enforcement can it survive and then only with extreme poverty and misery for most people.
Edit: Attack the messenger and you won't have to address the message.
Sure, Biden and Harris are terrible candidates because they're 1990s Republicans, but they're a million times better than Trump and Pence. The smear campaigns against them are an attempt to elevate Trump and Pence so he seems only as awful as Biden And Harris. Don't take the bait. Don't defend them. For a Republican to warn liberals that Biden and Harris don't deserve anyone's vote because they're those "tough on crime" types when it was Republicans who shut the government down to force through "tough on crime" legislation and codify "tough on crime" as a requisite to hold political office is some serious b.s.
No, he isn't "outright saying" that. This is the kind of statement that Scott Alexander rightfully criticised some years ago when people started saying Trump is "openly" racist:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wo...
Here's an actual quote from him: "Mail-in ballots are very dangerous - there's tremendous fraud involved." That's what he is outright saying.
Mail fraud is not a US specific problem. UK elections have had the same problems. In one case someone who had previously been jailed for mail voting fraud took an Instagram selfie of himself in the counting room. An MP has written an article about mail voting fraud here:
https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/there-is-wides...
Obama doing something anti-democratic, illegal, etc to ensure Trump wasn't elected is not a step I would ever support.
The Democratic party seems much more interested in seizing power by force than the Republicans.
Every time I see this line of thought, the only thing I can figure is that it's the classic idea of "You see the worst of yourself in your enemies"
The majority of Democrats are good people. The majority of Republicans are good people.
As fun as it is to claim the other side is the devil, most people want basically the same things.
So I guess you can come shoot me at sunrise if it really tickles your fancy.
I'm a Democrat, and reasonably proud to be so—more proud than I would be to be a Republican, at any rate—but looking back through American history should make you very hesitant to claim anything about what Republicans and Democrats always have been. Democrats have often been the "big party" tent, and that's good; but it means, for example, that we embraced and welcome secessionists for a long time. That's a legacy we largely left behind with LBJ, and I'm glad we did, but it would be disingenuous to disown it.
It used to be meaningful to talk about liberal versus conservative Democrats, and liberal versus conservative Republicans; don't assume that how things are now is how they've always been, or even how they've been for more than a few decades.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fake-id-seizures-on-the-rise-m...
Plato's critique of a Democracy is it's the son of Oligarchy & degenerates into Tyranny...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes
https://www.foxnews.com/us/authorities-seize-thousands-of-fa...
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/cbp-louisvi...
https://twitter.com/CBPChicago/status/1291057732825513984
Source Heritage Foundation https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/trumps-absentee-vs-mail-in...
Unlike the article above I posted, there are no links to source documents of procedures or any source data other than partisan opinions.
As a side note, effectively crippling mail-in voting would prohibit many FL elderly (mostly R) from voting.
It would be one thing if it rolled out with a defined planned over the course of a few years. it is something else when it is an emergency measure rolled out with no plan in an ad hoc manner
https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article224873455.htm...
Universal mail-in voting is different in that every registered voter gets a mail-in ballot without even requesting one.
Also, he votes by mail-in ballot to Florida.
I mean, his comment was openly admitting that...
As a citizen, you can do everything right, vote and your vote will still not count.
Whats wrong with pencil and ballot dropped into clear acrylic box, simple and works 100%.
Voting is a hard problem.
2. That's also being fucked with.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/12/report...
https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/sl-polling-place-c...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations/so...
USPS has always provided superior service for us compared to UPS or Fedex.
I am hopeful they'll be able to fix their budget issues by fixing their cost structure.
It seems completely asinine to block their ability to make sound financial decisions and force them into providing an inferior service instead.
What could someone like in this man? I struggle to find any redeeming qualities.
Not from the US, but looking from the outside, it seems your country is collapsing on itself and people are cheering on this word little individual that shows little abilities. Just puzzling to me.
Consider that all major US media outlets are driven by ad-spend, which is in term driven by views. Views are driven by outrage. Trump is a great target for outrage. The media love to hate him. He loves to let them hate him.
If you turn off the news, the country is in general humming along just fine. Stock market is doing great. No new wars. Finally doing something to address major trade imbalances with China.
If you listen to the news, everyone and their mother is dying in the streets of coronavirus. In reality, roughly 1-3% of the population has even caught the virus. Deaths are way down from March/April.
For a country and a president that are supposedly incompetent to the point of collapse, things are going pretty damn great.
I can literally go on and on. This is just what I had the effort to type out. How are these things pretty damn great? Just one or two of these should have a massive negative impact on any politician.
Even _assuming_ everything is great, would it _really_ be his merit? I mean, everything that man did has been counter-productive for your country. He is a bumbling idiot. He really is. What merit does he have? I just can not see it. The fact that "well, we're not all dead yet" is hardly a criteria for success.
And no, my bad opinion of him is not because "the media" - my bad opinion stems from reading his book "The art of the deal" about a decade ago (that was highly recommended by friends - they said it's great!) - and in there he came off, to me, as a corrupt scumbag. All his behavior since only reinforced this.
It looks to me like the slow motion fall of an empire. And empires fall all the time, think about Great Britain, a bit over a hundred years ago they were the "the empire on which the sun never sets" - wonder if in another century people will look the same at the US.
And we haven't gotten into any new wars.
And we have significantly scaled back our existing wars in the Middle East.
And, whether its to his credit or not, health insurance prices have stopped spiking 10-20% per year.
And he's nominated two conservative justices to the Supreme Court.
And he moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
And he just brokered a peace deal between Israel and the UAE
And tensions with North Korea have been de-escalated, even if that effort didn't go very far.
And he addressed funding imbalances in the UN
And my taxes went way down
And he's not a Democrat, so the media is actually critical of him, instead of fawning over how dreamy he is at every turn.
Immigration isn't a big issue for me, but I prefer his stance over open borders.
So I guess there's a random list that you may also tell me isn't actually a list.
The country is doing 'just fine' if you are a person who has expendable income to invest and job security (and health insurance) because you have the ability to work remotely. The unemployment rate is very high, and most of those laid off are not knowledge workers - which is correlated with lower pay. Those who can least afford it are losing the most jobs. The wealth gap, already at an all time high, is undoubtedly going to increase significantly.
Obviously the country is not at the point of collapse, but do you not think the problems I just listed are cause for serious concern?
war1025 is a religious white guy in Iowa who has argued that Proposition 8 in California wasn't a ban on same sex marriage. I'd actually be surprised if someone like this wasn't a Trump supporter.
Edit:
My email is in my profile. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to have an actual conversation instead of just name calling.
Bipartisan politics are ruining the nation, as corrupt politicians whose political careers are funded by companies, with nobody standing in the way.
Will Democrats be able to fix it even if they get elected? I don't think so. Joe Biden is just another yes-man puppet. They are probably more corrupt than we like to admit, too. Doesn't mean the Republicans are better or worse, I'm saying it's the same thing: an illusion of choice. Illusion being the key word.
What the USA needs is a complete overhaul of the political landscape.
And that requires something grand. Something like many generals getting together and deciding to overthrow the government, and to install an intermediary government of scientists and specialists to figure out what kind of government would be best.
The role of the military would be to strike down any civil unrest about this with decisive and lethal strikes. Designate the Republican and Democratic parties as domestic terror groups. Lock up the current politicians; try them in court. Once corruption is proven, make them the ONLY prisoners in for-profit prisons.
But seeing as none of that is going to happen, nothing will change. If things go the way they seem to go, Trump will serve another 4 years at the very least.
Democrats (and Republicans) are domestic terror groups? Was Obama a terrorist by your estimation? Carter? And the cure for this is a military coup? When has that ever worked?
False equivalency and hyperbole ensure things don't get better.