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Politics Discussion
- Thread starter caribou
- Start date
kgmets
BSB God
The irony of our miserable Tuesday night was that the law of most of those southern states allowed early voting to be counted in advance with the result that Biden jumped off to big early leads only to have Trump's Election Day turnout overcome those leads, while in contrast the Republican legislatures of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan insisted that no early votes could be counted until on or after Election Day with the result that Trump jumped off to early leads based upon Election Day voting only to be overcome the last few days by the belated counting of the early mail voting which has made the Republicans miserable. Whenever you hear Trump moan about post Election Day counting, just remember that his Republican legislatures of those three swing states insisted upon it. Another irony is that Trump's repeated attacks on early voting by mail resulted in very few Republicans using that option to vote, which resulted in Biden gaining votes the last few days even from Republican counties as those Republicans almost all voted on Election Day and the few Democrats in those counties were virtually the only ones early voting by mail.
So True. Trump screwed himself by telling Republicans to risk their lives by going to the polls in person on election day rather than voting by mail. It's playing out after election day just like anyone could have predicted. A huge lead for him on election day either withered down much lower or totally flipped the other way once the mail in votes started getting counted. In states like Florida where they were allowed to be counting and processing mail in votes as soon as they arrived by mail or in the drop off locations several weeks before the election, there was no drama and prolonged hand-wringing like we're seeing play out elsewhere right now.
Having said that, if the vote in Florida had been as close as Georgia for instance, we still would have had to wait for all the military ballots to arrive and be counted. Just like it was in 2000.
But again much of this prolonged waiting in states like Pennsylvania and others is due to Republicans' insistence beforehand that no mail in ballots could be counted before election day. So as much as I hate the waiting also, the Republicans screwed themselves and even risked making their states and state legislatures look incompetent.
juanjo
BSB Addict
So very true. In fact, Trump may have screwed himself out of some votes by doing so. His attack on mail-in ballots meant that a lot of folks who were Republican and who usually voted by mail did not do so this year. There is some evidence that of that number, a portion simply did not bother to vote since they did not want to go stand in line or were unable to do so. In addition, there were a lot of Republicans who typically voted by mail and were on the list to automatically receive a mail-in ballot. Because of Trump's nonsense, those folks did not do so but instead showed up at the polls. This meant that because they were listed as mail-in voters their votes were provisional at the polls. Their ballots had to be checked to ensure that they had not already voted by mail. This is slowing things down as well. There are roughly 100,000 provisional ballots in Arizona alone. There is a similar number in Pennsylvania. How many are Republicans vs Democrats is unknown. This is slowing things down.
Finally, I noticed a number of people ranting on the slowness of the counting, claiming that this was a sign of fraud. The fact is that the slow nature of the process is why a large number of states allow all the preliminary vetting of mail-in ballots to be done prior to election day. The process of verifying the validity of a mail-in ballot is lengthy and takes time - which of course argues strongly against Trump's rants about how fraudulent the process is but that hasn't stop these fools.
BTW, on CNN the other night there was a discussion of the history behind the 50% rule that Georgia and some other Southern States have on races for offices in their states. While it is common for states to do this in primaries, it is uncommon in general elections. The practice developed after the end of Reconstruction and was a method used, among others, to suppress Black voting.
I missed this one last night Juanjo.
Your point is well taken that we could still get an unwelcome surprise or two in some states where a lead might possibly slip away again.
But the crux of your post is a point I have been pondering for a while myself. It's one thing to have traditional political differences among friends, colleagues, coworkers, acquaintances and so on. Abortion, gay rights, government spending and the debt, funding for federal programs that make up the safety net, immigration, healthcare access, foreign aid, etc, etc. For me I can differentiate between friends and people I know who are more conservative in some or many of the traditional ways and still get along with them wonderfully. For me the distinction has come between those who are not just more conservative than me, but those who are die-hard Trumpers. What can you deduce about people who have drank the kool-aid and totally gone down the rabbit hole into the Trump cult of personality? Those who believe every Trump lie or make excuses for the lies and treat the guy like he's Moses speaking from the mountain top after just having gotten marching orders from God himself?
I'm not talking about some perfectly wonderful people who are one or two-issue voters. Those who only support Trump mostly or only because of the abortion issue for instance, but don't necessarily believe all his lies or think that he's perfect and infallible. I personally met one woman who supports Trump because she wants somebody tough on immigration. Why? Because her son and only child was killed years ago in a car accident. The other driver was at fault. The other driver also was a Mexican illegal. He was here in the country illegally. He had no driver's license. So of course he had no insurance. Not even any help for the grieving parents to pay for any earthly expenses related to their loss. So when Trump came along and talked about getting tough on illegal immigration from Mexico, that was music to her ears. Can I blame her for supporting Trump because of immigration?
Again though I'm returning to the die-hard Trumpers who would jump off the proverbial cliff if he asked them to. I just don't see how I can be friends with them or see them the same way as before. What can you deduce about people who have drank the kool-aid and totally gone down the rabbit hole into the Trump cult of personality? Because it really speaks to someone's character. For one that tells me they are very gullible and weak-willed. That part in itself is not a sin or a crime. But then you take it it deeper into the character issue.
Trump has come along and said among many other loathsome things... You don't have to even pretend to like black people if you don't. You don't have to even pretend to like Hispanics if you don't. You don't have to even pretend to be tolerant of gay people if you're not. You don't have to even pretend to be tolerant of people of different religions if you're not. You don't have to even pretend to care about poor people if you really don't. It's perfectly fine to be racist. It's perfectly fine to be homophobic. It's perfectly fine to hate Jews and Muslims. There were good people on both sides when people carrying torches chanted, " The Jews will not replace us!" It's perfectly fine to take money from the poor and give it to the rich. If the process of majority will democracy is too messy and inconvenient to you, and you'd rather take shortcuts to get the "right" people in power to represent your own personal wish lists...then follow me. Just let your id run wild and let your most selfish and greedy impulses be your guide to life.
It's difficult to be friends with people who subscribe to that kind of ideology.
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juanjo
BSB Addict
Thank bog it is over.
If any of you are fans of Bill Mahr's show you might enjoy this.
Farewell Douchebags
It's a shame we won't get to find out what fresh hell you would have put us through for the next 4 years. Don't let the door hit you in the a** on the way out.
Farewell Douchebags
It's a shame we won't get to find out what fresh hell you would have put us through for the next 4 years. Don't let the door hit you in the a** on the way out.
mikeyank
Long time forumite
Excellent speech by President-elect Biden!
juanjo
BSB Addict
It certainly was. But I am sure the Fox pundits will claim it was evidence of his dementia.
kgmets
BSB God
My 95 year old mother said that today was the happiest day in her life since the 1945 VE Day celebrating the end of World War II in Europe!
juanjo
BSB Addict
A few observations.
Trump supposedly doubled his LGBT support from 14% in 2016 to 28% in 2020. At first, I thought this exit poll must be way off, but I have been finding other recent articles/surveys that seem to suggest this number is probably accurate.
Bear in mind that in the exit polls, typically 7%~8% of voters said that they were LGBT, but in some states (Washington) it was as high as 14%! Now I don't really believe that 14% of Washington voters are LBGT -that number has to be a fluke- but the 7% to 8% number I do believe because it is so consistent from state to state to state. Which, incidentally, combined with other polls, I think means that LGBT people tend to vote at a significantly higher rate than straight folks. It is easy to see that if we are 8% of the electorate and 28% of us voted for Trump, that's slightly more than 2 percentage points, and a couple of the states were won or lost by less than 2 percentage points. Then I'm like, WTF is wrong with these people?
Second issue, there seem to be a number of people who are now posting that Trump should be pardoned for anything he might have done in office so the country can "get back to normal". Sorry but no. If we were just talking about the usual sort of political shenanigans that politicians do when they are in office using parliamentary tricks to get one over on the other side or similar sorts of nonsense, I might agree that it was not a big deal. But this president came in and deliberately set the entire country on its ear and did so for his own personal benefit. You might remember that Mueller did not recommend an indictment for certain crimes like obstruction of justice because he believed a sitting president could not be indicted for a crime while in office. However, Trump can be indicted and prosecuted for those actions once he is out of office. There is a significant amount of evidence that the Trump family used their time in Washington to shift millions of dollars directly from the government coffers into their bank accounts. Then there is the question of the money from the COVID relief bills which seems to have gone to a number of cronies of the Trump family or Kushner. There are other issues as well which need to be investigated to see if this man has abused his office.
If he did do so then he needs to be prosecuted. If his actions for example during the worst days of late last winter and early spring indicate violations of law in his handling of the epidemic, those need to be dealt with as well. Likewise, his ordering federal officers to open fire on nonviolent protesters, teargassing them just to clear the street for a photo opp. If there are no consequences for his actions then the next Trump imitating would-be authoritarian corrupt hairball who comes along and gets himself elected will not think twice about doing the same or worse because he will know Trump faced no consequences.
That brings up my final point. At present we now know that roughly 70 million people were willing to believe and vote for this disgusting man. They did so for a variety of reasons - some political, some religious, some economic, and some probably sheer bloodymindedness. But they willingly voted for an authoritarian douchebag who if he had been competent enough could have swept to re-election last week and probably tried to convince the country he needed a 3rd term after that. He has shown the authoritarian douchebags out there that if he can do it, they can. He has shown them that the Senate and the House will not stand in his way if he manages things correctly and the people will cheer him as he strips away their liberties. We cannot rely on the next guy being as incompetent as Trump was. So he needs to know that if he tries to do this, the consequences awaiting him if he loses are serious. And frankly, Trump needs to pay the bill for his criminal negligence and complete incompetence during his four years of office. It is one thing if a president misjudged a situation and bungles his response but quite another when he ignores and denioes a situation exists because he thinks acting will damage his political power.
Trump supposedly doubled his LGBT support from 14% in 2016 to 28% in 2020. At first, I thought this exit poll must be way off, but I have been finding other recent articles/surveys that seem to suggest this number is probably accurate.
Bear in mind that in the exit polls, typically 7%~8% of voters said that they were LGBT, but in some states (Washington) it was as high as 14%! Now I don't really believe that 14% of Washington voters are LBGT -that number has to be a fluke- but the 7% to 8% number I do believe because it is so consistent from state to state to state. Which, incidentally, combined with other polls, I think means that LGBT people tend to vote at a significantly higher rate than straight folks. It is easy to see that if we are 8% of the electorate and 28% of us voted for Trump, that's slightly more than 2 percentage points, and a couple of the states were won or lost by less than 2 percentage points. Then I'm like, WTF is wrong with these people?
Second issue, there seem to be a number of people who are now posting that Trump should be pardoned for anything he might have done in office so the country can "get back to normal". Sorry but no. If we were just talking about the usual sort of political shenanigans that politicians do when they are in office using parliamentary tricks to get one over on the other side or similar sorts of nonsense, I might agree that it was not a big deal. But this president came in and deliberately set the entire country on its ear and did so for his own personal benefit. You might remember that Mueller did not recommend an indictment for certain crimes like obstruction of justice because he believed a sitting president could not be indicted for a crime while in office. However, Trump can be indicted and prosecuted for those actions once he is out of office. There is a significant amount of evidence that the Trump family used their time in Washington to shift millions of dollars directly from the government coffers into their bank accounts. Then there is the question of the money from the COVID relief bills which seems to have gone to a number of cronies of the Trump family or Kushner. There are other issues as well which need to be investigated to see if this man has abused his office.
If he did do so then he needs to be prosecuted. If his actions for example during the worst days of late last winter and early spring indicate violations of law in his handling of the epidemic, those need to be dealt with as well. Likewise, his ordering federal officers to open fire on nonviolent protesters, teargassing them just to clear the street for a photo opp. If there are no consequences for his actions then the next Trump imitating would-be authoritarian corrupt hairball who comes along and gets himself elected will not think twice about doing the same or worse because he will know Trump faced no consequences.
That brings up my final point. At present we now know that roughly 70 million people were willing to believe and vote for this disgusting man. They did so for a variety of reasons - some political, some religious, some economic, and some probably sheer bloodymindedness. But they willingly voted for an authoritarian douchebag who if he had been competent enough could have swept to re-election last week and probably tried to convince the country he needed a 3rd term after that. He has shown the authoritarian douchebags out there that if he can do it, they can. He has shown them that the Senate and the House will not stand in his way if he manages things correctly and the people will cheer him as he strips away their liberties. We cannot rely on the next guy being as incompetent as Trump was. So he needs to know that if he tries to do this, the consequences awaiting him if he loses are serious. And frankly, Trump needs to pay the bill for his criminal negligence and complete incompetence during his four years of office. It is one thing if a president misjudged a situation and bungles his response but quite another when he ignores and denioes a situation exists because he thinks acting will damage his political power.
kgmets
BSB God
Right on analysis! I wonder if Trump is considering resigning so Pence would pardon him? Such pardon would only apply to his federal and not state crimes. Still Pence would do a better job with the transition and might even cooperate more with science in dealing with the raging COVID 19 pandemic between now and January 20th. Religious bigot and homophobe that Pence is, at least he is less deranged than Trump. Also, in light of Trump's judicial appointments, any gay voter who went for Trump is deranged as well.
Wow Juanjo. I agree with all of your post. I think Trump is scheming away at how he might be able to give some blanket pardon to himself and his family before he leaves office. I think he should be charged with some federal crimes that you have alluded to. No. I don't buy into the argument that for the good of the country we need to just let it go. Of course I'm still hoping for and awaiting state charges against Trump and possibly his kids too from SDNY and even elsewhere for tax fraud and other illegal shenanigans. No pardon will spare him from state crimes.
Moving forward we need to quickly put into stronger laws many things that Trump got away with simply because he could say they were technically illegal. There were so many norms which we assumed were sacred. But with Trump he proved that they were really based on an honor system. And of course he has no honor. Honor to him is for losers and pussies and suckers. Just like U.S. soldiers who serve in the military and give up their lives.
I agree that we actually got lucky with the first president who had designs to be a dictator, that he was so incompetent and utterly transparent about it from the very beginning. We can't count on being so lucky in the future.
There are more things we need to put into law than I can think of to list or have the time to go into in one sitting. But I'm thinking back to the beginning. Like any candidate who files to run for president has to publicly release his or her tax returns. No ifs and or buts. No excuses about needing time to amend returns or bogus false claims of saying they can't legally release returns that are "under audit", etc.
Also, a president cannot legally pardon himself or members of his own family. (Including in-laws) That needs to be written down and on the books.
Another law needed is one that says any president MUST put his businesses and investments into a blind trust. Because this was not written down in stone into law and is just based on precedent and an honor system, Trump figured out that he could make decisions that would affect the markets, along with gaining insider trading knowledge of what the federal government were planning which would directly impact his own investments and personal wealth.
We need to vastly re-strengthen the Emoluments Clause into law. A president cannot be running resorts, hotels, and other for-profit enterprises where people (and foreign nations) can buy access and influence to him by spending huge sums of money patronizing his private businesses. I don't know how such targeted kinds of laws take shape. But some people upstairs in Congress and the Senate need to figure it out.
It needs to be specifically illegal to "Pinochet" private citizens and "to disappear them" and kidnap them off of American streets in unmarked vehicles by unnamed and unidentifiable "little green men" while being given no Miranda Rights, no charges and no court dates to appear before a judge for release. It needs to be specifically illegal for a president OR a U.S Attorney General to amass a private domestic army to terrorize or otherwise intimidate law-abiding citizens on the streets, sidewalks, polling places, workplaces or wherever.
There needs to be strict anti-nepotism laws put on the books so a president can't install his family members in high positions of power or even high "advisory" type roles. We can't have it remain technically legal for a president to install family members all over the government and run the country from the very top like a mafioso-type criminal enterprise.
Another thing near and dear to my heart (thanks to Trump) is my belief that we need to drastically shorten the time before a sitting president leaves office and the other takes the oath of office. Giving a bitter and dangerous lame duck president all the keys to the castle (including the nuclear football) for an additional 2+ months before he has to leave office after defeat, is just asking for all kinds of trouble. As far as calendar considerations go we need to forget all about the "convenience" of waiting until after Christmas and New years. Screw that! Convenience be damned. A lame duck president (especially a fired and defeated one, rather than a term-limited one) should be out the door no later than mid December, if not earlier.
As I say, those are just a few new laws I feel we need to get on the books quickly after we get Trump out. It's not complete. I'm sure later I'll wish I had included several more. But it gives an idea of what I think Nancy Pelosi (and the Senate) should have on their plate in the months ahead into the new year.
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There was one small typing error that I ran out of time to edit. Of course I meant to say, "...not technically illegal."
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mikeyank
Long time forumite
juanjo
BSB Addict
That's great.
juanjo
BSB Addict
So we now have some clear evidence of how Trump intends to move forward. Both Pence and Trump have ignored phone calls from Biden and Harris to set up a meeting to discuss the transition. You might recall that in 2016, Obama invited Trump to the White House the day after the election to meet with him. a couple of days after that Biden met with Pence to discuss and discussed actions both sides could take going forward to make the transition as seamless as possible. Also, Emily Murphy at the GSA is sitting on around 10 million dollars of transition money which is supposed to go to the president-elect for the transition. Trump has ordered her not to release the funds to Biden and she has, so far, refused to do so. Further, typically the outgoing government meets with representatives of the incoming government to brief the new folks on ongoing issues and areas of concern. If you recall, this was an issue that previously had arisen during the epidemic when it was revealed that the outgoing Obama people held a meeting with the incoming Trump people over emergency preparedness, including dealing with an epidemic. They even ran the Trump people through a dry run on the procedures set up to handle an epidemic. Trump's administration is ignoring any attempts to set up meetings with the Biden team to discuss issues and ongoing matters.
Now, this is clear action that shows that Trump wants to make the situation as difficult as possible for Biden. It is difficult to hire staff and vet them without the funds to perform the function required to be done in that process. However, it does appear that the Biden camp was aware that this might be a problem were Biden to be elected. Biden has been soliciting money for transition matters from donors and currently has around 7 million dollars. Also, some might recall that several months ago it came out that Biden had been putting together groups of people to advise him on specific issues or areas of interest. The article I read focused on the fact he had set up a group of around 2-3 thousand to advise him on foreign affairs. At the time there was some speculation given some of the folks in the group who were all serious heavyweights, as well as, why do that when foreign affairs were clearly not a big issue in the campaign. I would suggest that we are looking at a shadow State Department, already interviewed and hired, which has been in operation for several months. They would still need security clearances and briefings but other than that they exist.
Biden was, as I understand, going to announce a similar group for COVID issues today. I am wondering if that group does not already exist and has for a period of time similar to the foreign affairs group. It would appear to me that Biden and his people assumed that trump would behave as he is currently behaving and simply started preparing in advance to have people and funds to go forward if this scenario emerged. If so, that was clever and bodes well for the incoming administration.
Ona final not, last night two rumors were running around like crazy on that there newfangled world wide web. First, Alex Jone's Infowars was pushing a story that Trump was certain the Democrats would try to steal the election and so he laid a trap for them by ordering that all ballots have a secret watermark containing a QC code in it. Thus, any ballot without such a code was illegal and fraudulent. Jone's claim is that Trump did indeed catch hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots. Now, each state prints its own ballots. There are certain security measures that are standardized regarding ballots and particularly mail-in ballots. Some states do use QC codes, others use watermarks, other use microprinting, and some use other security measures on the ballots themselves. Most use several different ones. But that has existed for some years and the security in some states might or might not use QC codes. In other words, just more bullshit from Alex Jones. Sadly, there are a surprising number of people who fall for this crap.
The second rumor regarded everyone's favorite nutcase former mayor who supposedly has been strongly urging Trump not to concede and to fight this out to the bitter end. The claim is that yesterday Rudy gave Trump a bunch of death certificates and other documents showing that hundreds of dead people voted in certain states. The rumor went on to say that Trump was going to release this information at a news conference today. Now I can see Rudy doing this. They have already tried this a couple of times and it has blown up in their face. So let's see if Trump goes for round three.
Now, this is clear action that shows that Trump wants to make the situation as difficult as possible for Biden. It is difficult to hire staff and vet them without the funds to perform the function required to be done in that process. However, it does appear that the Biden camp was aware that this might be a problem were Biden to be elected. Biden has been soliciting money for transition matters from donors and currently has around 7 million dollars. Also, some might recall that several months ago it came out that Biden had been putting together groups of people to advise him on specific issues or areas of interest. The article I read focused on the fact he had set up a group of around 2-3 thousand to advise him on foreign affairs. At the time there was some speculation given some of the folks in the group who were all serious heavyweights, as well as, why do that when foreign affairs were clearly not a big issue in the campaign. I would suggest that we are looking at a shadow State Department, already interviewed and hired, which has been in operation for several months. They would still need security clearances and briefings but other than that they exist.
Biden was, as I understand, going to announce a similar group for COVID issues today. I am wondering if that group does not already exist and has for a period of time similar to the foreign affairs group. It would appear to me that Biden and his people assumed that trump would behave as he is currently behaving and simply started preparing in advance to have people and funds to go forward if this scenario emerged. If so, that was clever and bodes well for the incoming administration.
Ona final not, last night two rumors were running around like crazy on that there newfangled world wide web. First, Alex Jone's Infowars was pushing a story that Trump was certain the Democrats would try to steal the election and so he laid a trap for them by ordering that all ballots have a secret watermark containing a QC code in it. Thus, any ballot without such a code was illegal and fraudulent. Jone's claim is that Trump did indeed catch hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots. Now, each state prints its own ballots. There are certain security measures that are standardized regarding ballots and particularly mail-in ballots. Some states do use QC codes, others use watermarks, other use microprinting, and some use other security measures on the ballots themselves. Most use several different ones. But that has existed for some years and the security in some states might or might not use QC codes. In other words, just more bullshit from Alex Jones. Sadly, there are a surprising number of people who fall for this crap.
The second rumor regarded everyone's favorite nutcase former mayor who supposedly has been strongly urging Trump not to concede and to fight this out to the bitter end. The claim is that yesterday Rudy gave Trump a bunch of death certificates and other documents showing that hundreds of dead people voted in certain states. The rumor went on to say that Trump was going to release this information at a news conference today. Now I can see Rudy doing this. They have already tried this a couple of times and it has blown up in their face. So let's see if Trump goes for round three.
