2020 Presidential Election

[The Don]

Trump Tweets

If Biden wins—China will OWN the United States...

I suppose it'll be a nice change from Russia owning the President of the United States.

btw, has President Trump won that trade war with China yet, or is he still throwing billions at farmers who have lost one of their major markets ?

 

[Bob001]

Trump Tweets

If Biden wins—China will OWN the United States...

Interestingly, since they already own something like a trillion dollars of U.S. bonds, some say they almost do.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040115/reasons-why-china-buys-us-treasury-bonds.asp

 

[Mader Levap]

I'm quite skeptical of Carbon Engineering's claims. The problem is that demand for energy keeps rising and is expected to continue to rise.

Of course. After all, there are no other sources of energy. No nuclear plants, no solar panels, no wind turbines. World won't switch to electric cars in next few decades. Etc, etc, etc.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

And what exactly is so "onerous" about taking rather bare-minimal steps toward making sure that a voter is actually somebody who's allowed to vote?

Funny, in Norway all I need is my credit card (or passport). Why do you think this is not good enough?

 

[Bob001]

Funny, in Norway all I need is my credit card (or passport). Why do you think this is not good enough?

What? The argument is that when someone is registered to vote and his name is entered into the rolls, he shouldn't have to provide additional ID at the polls, a practice some states have instituted to making voting harder.

In the U.S., credit cards aren't used as ID, most people don't have passports, and the people who do don't carry them around routinely. There is no U.S. national ID.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Funny, in Norway all I need is my credit card (or passport). Why do you think this is not good enough?

Um that is not in the post you link. But the reason is probably that in Norway they actually make passports free and easy to get? The difficulty is that they then targetly make the free ID's that are legally required for voting hard to get. Remember this is a goal to disenfranchise the poor not improve election security.

 

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

No one amongst the trumpkins thought to register that domain.
Something something best people .

I wonder if the Democrats may even have snatched it up before the GOP even thought of evolving "MAGA" into "KAG".

That domain was registered in 2015, and the most recent update to the domain information was about a month ago.

 

[varwoche]

(bolding mine)

I see this kind of reactions a lot on Twitter, also in regard to Lincoln Project types.
While I understand them, now may not be time for this.
Biden and down ballot Democrats need every vote they can get, including votes from disaffected or disgusted Republicans.

What they did before is what it is. Even what they do now is not always very tasty, like how many of them defend Barrett and ridicule the threat to ACA.

But, as the good book says, there is a time to be silent and a time to speak.

Let's speak about the weakness of Flake as senator, the hypocrisy of many "moderate" Republicans who seemed unaware of the underlying racism in GOP policies (well before Trump), etc... But let's do it after Biden is elected and the Senate is flipped (if these happen, of course).
For now, let them vote, let them be "compagnons de route".

The Republicans are super-pragmatic and super-opportunistic. The Democrats and their Twitter fans should at least learn that from them. For the next 19 days, that is.

In the movie Independence Day, as space aliens were wiping out humanity... definitely not the right time to hash out grievances.

 

[Armitage72]

No one amongst the trumpkins thought to register that domain.
Something something best people .

I wonder if the Democrats may even have snatched it up before the GOP even thought of evolving "MAGA" into "KAG".

When "Keep America Great" was first proposed, it was pointed out with some amusement that this was the advertising tagline of one of the films in the "Purge" franchise, a series about the rich and powerful manipulating the poor into killing each other in order to maintain their hold on power. I suppose it's possible that the domain was owned by someone connected to the studio or the filmmakers until recently.

 

[acbytesla]

Again this is why they whole "Deep State/New World Order/Evil Jews" nonsense, both full on Qanon B.S. and lighter versions of it, have been so popular with the Right in recent years. The narrative they are pushing still needs a villain in there somewhere.

But also Trumpism is a religion and Christianity has been chugging along for a couple thousand years now on the back of a pure, simple "Well God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and all powerful but... well there's still evil in the world because God somehow has a vastly less powerful arch enemy so let's just pretend like makes sense or works" or "because we deserve it because we don't listen to God enough" so I'm sure it has plenty of steam in just chugging along on "We have to save the country from... somebody just roll with it."

Haven't you heard. According to Eric Trump, his father "saved" Christianity.

 

[Lurch]

That's not enough to explain why they'd all show up at the same time on the same day and create lines as if it were election day when there are still so many days left to spread this out over.

That's just pure fiction. Once you're in the room where you wait for a booth to be available, you show your ID and sign the list during the same time while you'd be waiting anyway if there were nobody looking at ID and no list to sign. It makes literally zero seconds of difference.

And what exactly is so "onerous" about taking rather bare-minimal steps toward making sure that a voter is actually somebody who's allowed to vote?

Democrats really need to drop this particular brand of piffle. It can't seriously serve, or even honestly be meant to serve, any purpose but to try to increase voter fraud in the Democrats' favor, which casts a bad light on their complaints about voting shenanigans that favor the Shenanicans.

Results and actions speak for themselves. Here I show up at the polling station and am out in less than 10 minutes. The frequent reports I see to my south where wait times of hours are endured speaks to a shameful state of affairs in the supposed "greatest democracy." Parts of the US are really about making this most fundamental act of participation HARD.

It comes down to the fact of the ruling Party having control. There must be instituted an unbiased 3rd party body to administer elections.

 

[Mader Levap]

There must be instituted an unbiased 3rd party body to administer elections.

If it existed, it would be already rotten and corrupted by right-wing authoritarian degenerates. If anything, it would make vote suppression easier on national scale.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Haven't you heard. According to Eric Trump, his father "saved" Christianity.

He hasn't saved it yet.
Biden will kill God first chance he gets - he has that power according to Trump.

 

[Dr. Keith]

This is what scares the heck out of me this year.

In person, you get at least a simple check that the ballot is acceptable. With millions of votes going through the mail, will there be a significant fraction that get rejected for the same reason you are seeing them rejected at the actual polls, but because there is no opportunity to scan them, will those ballots just be not counted? Or will they be accepted by a hand recount?

Come election day, it's not hard to imagine that millions of votes might be rejected at least initially. I have no idea how this will play out in the actual results, but the potential for a truly disastrous outcome exists.

I think it is a legitimate concern and one reason I vote in person. (The other reason is that my state won't let me vote by mail.)

But, the problems I saw seemed to be related to the machine that was printing the ballots after people made their selection. It wasn't always printing properly. I heard one person opining that it may be because she reached for the ballot before it was done printing, but the poll workers didn't really engage her on the "why", they were focused on getting another ballot together and properly cancelling the first ballot.

The only warning they gave me was to be careful that I didn't get hand sanitizer on the ballot, as they were about to slide it across a table where the hand sanitizer dispenser left globs of excess sanitizer every time someone used it. (They need a process person at each polling place to address their setup, but that's a whole other rant.)

 

[Dr. Keith]

That question is answered when somebody registers to vote and his name is added to the rolls. When someone shows up to vote, his name is checked off the roll. That's all it should take. Voter ID is used to make it harder to vote because not everyone has one of the current state-issued IDs that some states require. If your driver license or passport is expired, you can't vote, even though the expired document is all you need to get a new one. In Texas a gun permit is accepted, but not a college ID. Some states that imposed ID requirements just coincidentally closed a lot of DMV offices at the same time and made it harder to get a state ID. There has never been a problem with people showing up at polls and falsely claiming to be somebody else, which is the only kind of election fraud that voter ID requirements could prevent.

This whole issue could be solved if we just issued concealed carry permits to every citizen automatically. But no, the DEMs just hate democracy.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Funny, in Norway all I need is my credit card (or passport). Why do you think this is not good enough?

We have a party who runs campaigns based around citizens being frustrated with government and once elected they do everything they can to make sure that frustration is real.

Getting and renewing a passport in the US is a painful, and sometimes expensive, process. I've let mine lapse this year because I don't see any reasonable country welcoming Americans in the near future, but have otherwise had a valid passport 90% of the time since I turned 15.

Apparently they are becoming more popular, but still less than half of Americans have passports.

https://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-america/2018/01/18/record-number-of-americans-hold-passports/

I can get a credit card in my dog's name without much effort, so we aren't likely to trust those for anything.

 

[acbytesla]

He hasn't saved it yet.
Biden will kill God first chance he gets - he has that power according to Trump.

The devout Catholic who probably has attended church more times in the last 4 years than Trump has in his life?

 

[The Don]

Off topic but I just walk into the local polling station, point at my name on the electoral roll, get my ballot paper, fill it in and pop it in the box. No need for any ID at all.

Meanwhile back in the US, why aren't there simply more polling stations ?

 

[Mader Levap]

Meanwhile back in the US, why aren't there simply more polling stations ?

Too many incorrect people could vote, and we cannot have that in greatest democracy on planet.

 

[acbytesla]

Off topic but I just walk into the local polling station, point at my name on the electoral roll, get my ballot paper, fill it in and pop it in the box. No need for any ID at all.

Meanwhile back in the US, why aren't there simply more polling stations ?

Every State runs their elections a little differently and in some states the politicians have deliberately set out to prevent certain segments of the society from voting. Particularly, in the South.