TexasTiger 12,829 Posted April 4, 2020 Share Posted April 4, 2020 31 minutes ago, Grumps said: It's not obvious to me. This thread seems to say that the more that vote, the better for the democrats. If COVID-19 keeps people from voting that would mean more likely victory for republicans. Trump's approval ratings are going up presumably because of his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. But you know me, I am good at missing the obvious! As proven by your dated poll reference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662 Posted April 4, 2020 Share Posted April 4, 2020 I dont see any reason why you'd be okay with election day being a holiday other than you think it'd hurt your stance... With how democratic we preach this country to be, why not give people the maximum freedom and time to practice that freedom? I know for the university, I worked with a group that wanted to get a polling place on campus to make it easier for students to get a vote in. There's no good reason that the university turned it down IMO (I believe the city council okayed it, as well, but I'd have to double check.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 4, 2020 Author Share Posted April 4, 2020 45 minutes ago, TexasTiger said: As proven by your dated poll reference. Not to mention Trump's poll ratings are now declining. The "crisis bump" is over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 4, 2020 Author Share Posted April 4, 2020 1 hour ago, Grumps said: It's not obvious to me. This thread seems to say that the more that vote, the better for the democrats. If COVID-19 keeps people from voting that would mean more likely victory for republicans. Trump's approval ratings are going up presumably because of his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. But you know me, I am good at missing the obvious! I'll trust you on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 7, 2020 Author Share Posted April 7, 2020 https://www.vox.com/2020/4/6/21211378/supreme-court-coronavirus-voting-rights-disenfranchise-rnc-dnc The Supreme Court’s disturbing order to effectively disenfranchise thousands of Wisconsin voters American democracy is in deep trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad_ATX 13,654 Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 13 minutes ago, homersapien said: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/6/21211378/supreme-court-coronavirus-voting-rights-disenfranchise-rnc-dnc The Supreme Court’s disturbing order to effectively disenfranchise thousands of Wisconsin voters American democracy is in deep trouble. Make no mistake. This is all about a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUFAN78 3,894 Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 Found this interesting: https://www.insidesources.com/mail-in-ballots-make-voter-fraud-easy-i-know-because-i-did-it/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexava 6,973 Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 On 4/4/2020 at 12:37 PM, homersapien said: What do you mean by that? I don't "bend" my logic to "fit" anything. I apply my values and logic to form my decisions in every aspect of my life, starting with my decision to have children. This doesn't mean I am a complete environmental aesthetic. Like many - if most Americans - I have a very, very nice lifestyle. For example, I must have a vehicle. But I don't buy a massive SUV or truck - since there environmentally responsible alternatives which will meet my needs. And I critically examine my actual needs instead of my perceived ones, at least for the most part. I advocate environmentally responsible decisions in our individual individual lives and as a society. If you want to have an honest discussion about specific ways or alternative available that will be for our ecology, we can have it. But you are clearly trying to attack me personally in a "gotcha way" manner and I think it's sleazy and disingenuous. I have never maintained I have a zero environmental footprint. I just try to do the best I can, for the sake of my own values and love of the earth, as well as the human race, including your descendants. So **** you. P.S.: The way I burn wood creates very little to no "soot". So, in balance, the way I heat my home is more ecological than the way other people heat their homes, especially considering the thermostat settings they probably use. Like I said though, I have an inherent advantage by acquiring - and protecting - 70 acres of wilderness. So I personally don't need to increase "our forests" to make my wood burning ecologically self-sufficient. (Considering your compulsion to play "gotcha", I know it must be difficult for you to wrap your head around that, but at least try this time around.). And my 33 hp tractor uses very little fuel, perhaps 25-30 gallons per year, and it is equipped with a state of the art Diesel Particulate Filter (DFF). It is essential to maintaining my (ecologically-friendly) lifestyle. Like the gas my 30 mpg VW uses though, it obviously shows up on the "negative" side of the ledger. Now, should we talk about you and your environmental footprint in specificity? I don’t think he is taking into consideration that you are using already dead or fallen trees. I’ve cut and burned a good bit on wood in my days. I’ve only cut down one live tree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexava 6,973 Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 Just cancel the presidential general elections in all states except the 6 or 8 swing states. Maybe delay the down ballot races a couple months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I_M4_AU 7,792 Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 45 minutes ago, alexava said: I don’t think he is taking into consideration that you are using already dead or fallen trees. I’ve cut and burned a good bit on wood in my days. I’ve only cut down one live tree. According to the articles I posted, the difference is that burning wood increases the CO2 output in a short period of time as opposed to a slow decay over years which, in turn, is harmful to the environment. His explanation is pure rationalizing his point so he feels good about what he does. Everybody does it or at least knows when they do it. Some people just take longer to realize it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 8, 2020 Author Share Posted April 8, 2020 3 hours ago, I_M4_AU said: According to the articles I posted, the difference is that burning wood increases the CO2 output in a short period of time as opposed to a slow decay over years which, in turn, is harmful to the environment. His explanation is pure rationalizing his point so he feels good about what he does. Everybody does it or at least knows when they do it. Some people just take longer to realize it. No fool. I am mitigating the effects of burning wood by maintaining 70+ acres of forest. The rate of release is a red herring. But even if the rate of release was important, it's offset by the far greater amount of CO2 my forest absorbs in the same year I burn the wood. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 8, 2020 Author Share Posted April 8, 2020 Back on topic: What we learned from Wisconsin E.J. Dionne Jr. Columnist April 8, 2020 at 3:23 p.m. EDT Now we know. Now we know, thanks to what happened in Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin, that Republican politicians will freely use the coronavirus pandemic to tilt electoral outcomes in their favor by obstructing access to the ballot, particularly in Democratic-leaning urban areas hit hardest by the pandemic. Now we know that, for Republicans, voter suppression is part of the party’s game plan. Just ask President Trump, who is petrified of the efforts of congressional Democrats to secure financing for nationwide mail-in voting. He complained about levels of voting such that, “if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” On Wednesday, Trump — who himself voted by mail in 2018 and in last month’s Florida primary — tweeted that voting by mail “for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” Yes: More voters mean fewer Republican electoral victories. Now we know that Republicans will tell absurd lies to rationalize what they are doing. Thanks to the Journal Times newspaper in Wisconsin’s Racine County, we have video of Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the State Assembly, as he took a break from working the polls. Vos, as the paper noted, was “wearing a mask, gloves and full-length gown.” But that didn’t stop him from declaring that “you are incredibly safe to go out.” Especially if, unlike most voters, you’re wearing all that gear. And now we know that the right to vote will get no protection from the five right-wing Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court, who issued an election-eve decision refusing to extend the deadline for absentee ballots. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted acidly in her dissent, “The Court’s order requires absentee voters to postmark their ballots by election day, April 7 — i.e., tomorrow — even if they did not receive their ballots by that date. That is a novel requirement.” In case the conservative justices who wrote the voter-suppression ukase missed her irony, she added: “A voter cannot deliver for postmarking a ballot she has not received.” We know that this fall’s election is in deep jeopardy. We have been warned that Trump, the GOP and the party bosses in robes on the U.S. Supreme Court are perfectly willing to obstruct the right to vote of those most likely to vote Democratic. Outside Wisconsin, Tuesday’s vote was of interest mostly as a Democratic primary battle between former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). But what mattered to Republicans was a contest for the state Supreme Court that was nonpartisan in name only. Conservative incumbent Daniel Kelly faced a vigorous challenge from Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jill Karofsky. The GOP wants to keep the state court conservative, and the court did its part by blocking Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s last-minute effort Monday to suspend in-person voting on Tuesday and postpone the election to June 9. The vote was 4 to 2 along ideological lines, with Kelly recusing himself. Here again, “justice” was entirely partisan. There are two lessons here. The first is that Congress must pass legislation as part of the next economic rescue package that will require mail-in ballots in every state and finance the effort with federal money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) insist that they will fight for nationwide mail voting. It would be better if it went into what they are calling the "interim bill” being negotiated now. But both Schumer and Pelosi insist they will soon call Trump’s bluff and challenge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): Are they so invested in voter suppression that they will block all other relief efforts just to keep access to voting out of a rescue bill? It’s also time to build outside pressure. Biden and Sanders, who need to show signs of coming together now that Sanders is suspending his campaign, should hold a joint video news conference with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on behalf of Warren’s comprehensive bill to provide $4 billion for postage-free mail ballots. Her proposal also includes a ban on onerous voting requirements, hazard pay for poll workers and an end to voter purges at a moment when it will be hard for voters to defend their rights. Because Warren builds on an earlier Klobuchar proposal, both former presidential candidates should stand together. As for conservatives on the Supreme Court, this was strike three when it comes to election rigging, after the Citizens United decision opening the floodgates to big money and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Liberals have to abandon their skittishness about remedies (such as expanding the size of the court) to battle both conservative court-packing and right-wing judicial activism. Now we know that the pandemic threatens not only our personal health but also the health of our democracy. We need to act urgently for the sake of both. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/08/wisconsin-is-proof-we-need-urgent-action-voting-rights/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
autigeremt 6,598 Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 On 4/2/2020 at 10:16 AM, homersapien said: Link please? Why? You wouldn’t believe it one way or the other with those blinders on. 😎 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
autigeremt 6,598 Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 On 4/4/2020 at 4:16 PM, Dual-Threat Rigby said: I dont see any reason why you'd be okay with election day being a holiday other than you think it'd hurt your stance... With how democratic we preach this country to be, why not give people the maximum freedom and time to practice that freedom? I know for the university, I worked with a group that wanted to get a polling place on campus to make it easier for students to get a vote in. There's no good reason that the university turned it down IMO (I believe the city council okayed it, as well, but I'd have to double check.) It should be a holiday. It should also last two days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 8, 2020 Author Share Posted April 8, 2020 4 minutes ago, autigeremt said: Why? You wouldn’t believe it one way or the other with those blinders on. 😎 Try me. Or just admit you have absolutely no evidence that "Democrats want illegals to vote". It's complete BS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662 Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 51 minutes ago, autigeremt said: It should be a holiday. It should also last two days. And that's just how I look at it. There's no logical argument against it. Someone ITT said "I have to work and I can still make it, so we all should be able to". That's the summary for almost every person arguing against it. I can make it so you should be able to Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McLoofus 35,182 Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 1 hour ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said: "I have to work and I can still make it, so we all should be able to". That's the summary for almost every person arguing against it. I can make it so you should be able to That's actually the Republican party, people of privilege, most straight white males, and a tiny handful of others who somehow conjured bootstraps out of thin air explained. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662 Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 28 minutes ago, McLoofus said: That's actually the Republican party, people of privilege, most straight white males, and a tiny handful of others who somehow conjured bootstraps out of thin air explained. One thing I always wonder about is the republican party’s social views. Both sides have their draws but there seems to be such a stagnation and infatuation with styles of living that are from centuries ago. Even if it comes at the cost of compromising power, I would think as a human, you’d like to continue evolving and moving forward Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McLoofus 35,182 Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 4 hours ago, homersapien said: No fool. I am mitigating the effects of burning wood by maintaining 70+ acres of forest. The rate of release is a red herring. But even if the rate of release was important, it's offset by the far greater amount of CO2 my forest absorbs in the same year I burn the wood. You're very kind to indulge this jackassery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McLoofus 35,182 Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 3 minutes ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said: One thing I always wonder about is the republican party’s social views. Both sides have their draws but there seems to be such a stagnation and infatuation with styles of living that are from centuries ago. Even if it comes at the cost of compromising power, I would think as a human, you’d like to continue evolving and moving forward Liberals like the word progressive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662 Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 3 minutes ago, McLoofus said: Liberals like the word progressive. I wasnt going to be the one to say it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
autigeremt 6,598 Posted April 9, 2020 Share Posted April 9, 2020 On 4/8/2020 at 4:47 PM, homersapien said: Try me. Or just admit you have absolutely no evidence that "Democrats want illegals to vote". It's complete BS. History suggests to just keep walking on this one. Can’t convince a wall to move without force. Lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 10, 2020 Author Share Posted April 10, 2020 18 hours ago, autigeremt said: History suggests to just keep walking on this one. Can’t convince a wall to move without force. Lol Yeah, just like all that evidence for massive voter fraud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homersapien 11,362 Posted April 15, 2020 Author Share Posted April 15, 2020 https://www.vox.com/2020/4/15/21222084/kentucky-voter-id-coronavirus-pandemic Kentucky just made it harder to vote during a pandemic Wisconsin-style tactics come to Kentucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aubiefifty 16,754 Posted April 15, 2020 Share Posted April 15, 2020 On 3/31/2020 at 1:32 PM, countoff said: Hang on! Wait a minute! I don't think any Republican (or conservative, or even Trump) has any issue with making the physical act of voting easier for registered voters. Whether that be in the form of absentee, or computer aided, or early voting. Our issue is when the democrats want illegal aliens to vote, or they want to gather up a bunch of sick and impressionable homeless people to be registered and vote on the same day , or there's dead people voting via absentee ballot. There has to be enough time and a method to ensure that the voter is a living breathing citizen of the U.S., state, and district of his/her permanent residence. You guys are trying to distort the quotes from Republicans to imply they don't like a lot of people voting. i dare you to read this and still believe things are being distorted. TWO polling places in a normal dem area to handle a hundred and something thousand voters? read the article and learn something. Yahoo Jack Holmes 9-11 minutes From Esquire Republicans do not want more people to vote. This has been clear for close to a decade. After the Obama coalition swept to power in 2008 and retained the White House in 2012, Republicans had a choice: attempt to broaden their own coalition by appealing to new groups, like Hispanic voters and women, beyond their traditional base of older white Christians; or double down on the white Christian nationalism. They chose the latter, but because this made winning an actual majority of voters difficult, they had to prevent other groups from voting and dilute the power of those votes. The Party of Lincoln has, as a result, pursued a suite of policies aimed at rigging elections for their own benefit. There are the voter-ID laws, cooked up on the pretense of combatting the non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud, but which in practice disproportionately suppress black voters and others who tend to support Democrats. In Texas, they gave away the game on this: a student ID from a college or university did not qualify you to vote, but a concealed-carry handgun license did. The purpose of these laws is to prevent potential Democratic voters from voting, which a Pennsylvania state legislator admitted in 2012 when he bragged that the state's new ID law would deliver Pennsylvania for Mitt Romney. It didn't, but that was the goal of the law. In other cases, there's even more straightforward voter suppression. Reuters found states across the South have closed 1,200 polling places since the Roberts Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. This leads to longer lines, even as some states scale back voting hours, all of which discourages people—particularly, say, hourly workers—from participating. By the time of the Georgia gubernatorial election in 2018, when Brian Kemp was running for governor while overseeing the election as secretary of state—this is known as a conflict of interest—huge numbers of polling places had been closed, often in poorer rural areas and counties with significant African-American populations. This was accompanied by a massive purge of the voter rolls, as more than 100,000 citizens were literally stripped of their voting rights in an initiative overseen by Kemp. Then there was the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, a sprawling initiative overseen by Kris Kobach to purge Certain People from the voter rolls across multiple states. There's also the extreme gerrymandering, as Republicans seized power at the state level following the 2010 Census and—using new technology—drew congressional and district maps that either packed Democratic votes into as few areas as possible or spread them across many districts to dilute them. Democrats in some legislatures have done their own gerrymandering, but there is really no comparison in terms of the extreme tactics. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker lost his 2018 bid for re-election by one percentage point, but he carried 63 of 99 state legislative districts. Republicans got 46 percent of the vote in 2018, according to Ari Berman, but won 64 percent of the state legislative seats. Photo credit: Darren Hauck - Getty Images And it's Wisconsin that illustrated just how severe the decay of American democracy has become on Tuesday, when the state held an election at the height of a global pandemic. Democratic Governor Tony Evers initially supported going ahead with the election back in March, but reversed his position as the coronavirus began to ravage the country. The Republican legislature rejected calls to move the election and allow for voting by mail, however, and Evers' emergency executive order on Monday postponing the election was rejected by conservative majorities on the state supreme court and the United States Supreme Court. The former court is why this was a major issue: Wisconsin elects its judges, and a seat was up on the court that Republicans wanted to retain. They apparently thought their best chance to keep it was to go ahead with in-person voting yesterday. This produced a world-historical farce, in which the city of Milwaukee held an election after 175 of its 180 polling places were closed. That's five sites for a city of 600,000 people. In Green Bay, there were two polling places for 105,000. It also produced more than one iconic image. First, there was Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, one of the two legislators most responsible for this state of affairs, telling everyone it was perfectly safe to go out and vote while looking like he was about to venture into Chernobyl. Then there was this fantastic sign. It was a preview of what is very, very possible on a national level in November. Public-health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, have indicated there will likely be a second wave of COVID-19 by the fall, which could make in-person voting perilous. A big issue is finding poll workers, who normally skew older, but who in this case are forced to interact with hundreds and hundreds of strangers during a pandemic. There's also the risk to voters themselves, which Vos and others were hoping would depress turnout among the right groups. The way to counter this is to do mail-in voting, which Oregon—and the United States armed forces—have done with great success for decades. Mail everybody a ballot, and have them send it back in. That's it. Of course, that's not it, because Republicans don't want more people to vote. That includes the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, who engaged in a legendary faceplant when asked about it at Tuesday's daily news conference in the White House Briefing Room, which—like every other one—offered viewers very little useful information about the national coronavirus response. Anyway, here's the faceplant: Absolutely incredible. Just like Republican claims of "voter fraud" to justify their voter-ID laws, Trump's claim of "corruption" with mail-in voting has the same naked self-interest. After all, his White House has signaled they're open to sending ballots only to voters over 65, who skew Republican. It's horrible, it's corrupt. You just did it. Yeah, I did. What? I'm allowed to. This is a nice distillation of the Republican attitude towards voting. If you vote Republican, you are free to pursue any route to voting, because it will lead to another Republican vote. If you vote Democrat, **** you. At the end of last month, Trump made the rationale even more explicit during an appearance on Fox & Friends. When asked about Democrats' attempts to get national vote-by-mail into the last coronavirus relief bill, he said all the quiet parts out loud. He's not the first Republican to characterize expanding access to our most fundamental right as citizens as a "special-interest project," presumably because, as he openly admitted here, he feels it's not in Republicans' interest. There you go. He just out and said it. If you allow registered voters to vote easily, Republicans will struggle to win a majority of votes with their narrow coalition. That's it. In Georgia, the Republican Speaker of the House, David Ralston, said allowing people to vote by mail would be "extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia." They're not even trying to hide it anymore. This is eerily reminiscent of that Pennsylvania state legislator's brag back in 2012. Sometimes they just can't resist. In typical fashion, Trump jumped on Twitter this morning to rehash his claims that vote-by-mail carries the risk of voter fraud, but he couldn't stop himself from once again saying the quiet part: The end there is the real reason: "...doesn’t work out well for Republicans." The idea that Donald Trump is concerned about fraud is among the more absurd things you'll hear all week. He's concerned about losing, because more people might vote for someone else unless as many obstacles as possible are put in their way. That's the point of voter ID and everything else: raise the opportunity cost of voting to keep just enough of The Wrong People from participating. Of course, it's all tied up in the party's now-bedrock belief that only their voters represent the true will of the American people, and that all Others are just pretenders with no claim to power, regardless of who wins elections. Some people are Real Americans. Everyone else should shut up and be happy they're allowed to stay here. It's the logic of authoritarianism, and of a party that was waging war on democracy well before Trump entered the stage. As usual, the president is not some aberration who has ushered in new and dark forces into Republican politics. He seized on what was there, and merely refashioned it into something more garish and shameless and, yes, dangerous. Instead of a bonehead state legislator giving away the game, it's now the president. And yet they might just get away with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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