A week or so ago I said that I stood behind Trump because he won the election fair and square and deserved to be given a chance to carry out his vision. I've reconsidered. I'm still opposed to the "#NotMyPresident" movement, ...
Hope you and yours had a happy thanksgiving.
Now that things have settled down a bit, we see two things:
(1) Trump is making horrid choices for his cabinet, and
(2) There WAS election fraud, some more blatant than others:
Three Wisconsin Counties Just Admitted They Padded Trump’s Win With Fake Votes ...
Election fraud perpetuated by the election officials, not the voters. They were just stupid enough to get caught, forgetting to pad the number of voters to match. How many more did this and did cover their tampering?
The only way to know for sure is with a complete vote audit and recount for the State of Wisconsin.
Two groups have filed to have the ballots recounted, one is the Green Party:
Stein's fundraiser website explicitly says the campaign is not an effort to help Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but to "ensure the integrity of our elections." Clinton has not commented on the efforts.
"State law allows any candidate on the ballot to request a recount, but if the margin is more than 0.25 percent, the candidate must pay for its cost.
Stein initially set a fundraising goal of $2.5 million. As donations started pouring in, that goal jumped to $4.5 million, as New York Magazine's Yashar Ali pointed out on Twitter.
As NPR's Camila Domonoske told the Newscast unit, "Some security and election experts have publicly called for paper ballots to be checked in Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan, to make sure that the computers that counted those ballots weren't hacked."
Then there is Michigan and Pennsylvania where there are campaigns underway to raise money and volunteers to be monitors, again by the Green Party:
Just in case, the State of Michigan is preparing for a recount of nearly 4.8 million votes cast in the 2016 presidential race.
Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, has raised more than $5 million to pay for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. She filed a formal recount request Friday afternoon with the Wisconsin Elections Commission and faces a Monday deadline in Pennsylvania and Wednesday in Michigan.
What we’re doing is standing up for an election system that we can trust. We deserve to have votes that we can believe in, she said in a video on her Facebook page. This is a commitment that Greens have expressed that we stand for election integrity, that we support voting systems that respect our vote. We demand voting systems that are accurate, that are publicly controlled, that are not privatized.
Her campaign manager, David Cobb, said the recount request in all three states is a given because of: Michigan's close election results; the fact that the vast majority of pre-election and exit polls in the state showed a lead for Clinton; and that there was a significant under-vote on Nov. 8, when an estimated 85,000 people cast ballots but did not make a selection in the presidential race.
"It is great that there are paper ballots in Michigan, but the only way to confirm the results is to do an audit or a recount," Cobb said.
Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is pushing for vote recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three traditionally Democratic states where Donald Trump did much better than expected on Nov. 8. And donors pitched in to fund them, surpassing a $2 million goal in just hours.
The money keeps pouring in, showing a vast dissatisfaction with the election results.
This seems a more proper way to deal with the results than protesting #notmypresident.
Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is pushing for vote recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three traditionally Democratic states where Donald Trump did much better than expected on Nov. 8. And donors pitched in to fund them, surpassing a $2 million goal in just hours.
The money keeps pouring in, showing a vast dissatisfaction with the election results.
This seems a more proper way to deal with the results than protesting #notmypresident.
This will drag on for many months and in the courts for longer. By then Trump will have been sworn in and will be in the Oval Office. Only impeachment could remove him and I doubt the Republican House will go there. You can bet the Republican Senate would never convict.
Donald Trump will be our next President until removed by the congress or, in four years, by the voters.
Actually there is a time limit for the recounts to be finished, which are all before the electoral college meets.
I believe the hard date for this is December 13th which is six days before the electoral college actually carries out the voting function. There will be a soft deadline somewhat before this date because states won't want to futz around with having no electors ready on the due date.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson
Seems to me if its clear that certain things that require ancient dates couldn't possibly be true, we are on our way to throwing out all those ancient dates on the basis of the actual evidence. -- Faith
Re: Some evidence of voter fraud, election fraud, disruption of Trump rallies etc.
Faith responds to me:
quote:As usual here, the responses are all unrelated to the information
Yes, and we wish you would stop. You need to pay attention to the information and stop confusing the fact that you are being contradicted with some form of personal attack.
Alex Jones is not a source. James O'Keefe is not a source. They are quite literally lying to you. Their information is wrong. Even when they try to tell you something true, it is corrupted by lies. Notice your confusion over election fraud, thinking that it was voter fraud. This is not by accident. Alex Jones is deliberately lying to you to make you think there is some sort of threat of voters "stealing" an election, and thus the only way to "protect" the election is to engage in actual fraud such as Voter ID, purging of the rolls, making you think that people are coming from other countries to vote, etc.
It is a deliberate attempt to deceive you, Faith. You need to pay attention to the information and stop confusing the fact that you are being contradicted with some form of personal attack.
quote:and basically it's all character assassination.
So when someone points out that O'Keefe has been jailed for his actions, that's "character assassination"? When we show you the evidence that you are being lied to, that's "character assassination"? Are you honestly claiming that when someone is deliberately lying to you, you don't want to be told because that would make the liar look bad? That it is inappropriate to point out frauds lest you think less of them?
quote:Watch Alex Jones' interview, the information isn't coming from him, it's coming from Bev Harris who is the investigator.
And I didn't contradict her.
What I said was that you are confusing what Harris is talking about, election fraud, with what Jones wants you to think, voter fraud. They are not the same thing. Jones knows this and he is deliberately trying to make you confused about the two.
quote:OK so I should call it election fraud rather than voter fraud
No, not "OK." This is not simply a question of the label we use to describe what is going on. They are two vastly different things. Jaywalking and murder are not the same thing and it is not merely a question of words that separates them.
The things that lead to voter fraud will have no effect upon election fraud and vice versa. If you are truly concerned about the integrity of elections, then you would be doing everything that Democrats are demanding be done: Get rid of Voter ID laws...they do nothing but suppress the vote and specifically target the young, the poor, and those who aren't white. But hey, those demographics tend to vote for the liberals, so it's not a problem, right?
So when you try to blow this off by pretending it's just a question of words, you show that you aren't actually sincere in your claims, Faith. You belie an agenda that seeks to destroy the will of the people. You show to be precisely in the Paul Weyrich camp:
This is the same Weyrich who started the "Religious Right" specifically and precisely because Bob Jones University lost its tax exempt status over its racial discrimination. You are aligning yourself with racists and white supremacists, Faith. But wait...that's "character assassination," right? How dare you be told about the company you keep lest you take a look at what they're peddling and reconsider the information you are being fed.
quote:but the point is it's the votes that are manipulated from the central computer.
That's election fraud, Faith. How does Voter ID stop that? How does purging the voter rolls stop that? How does voter intimidation stop that? How does Trump's lawsuit to invalidate the early voters in Nevada stop that? How does Trump's whining about recounts stop that? How does disenfranchising voters stop that?
If you care about what Harris is talking about, why are you complaining about voter fraud as if that were a thing? Again, there were over a billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014 and only 38 documented cases of voter fraud.
Most by Republicans.
But that doesn't alter an election. It is nearly impossible to alter an election through voter fraud. And yet, all your sources are pushing for tactics to combat voter fraud that do nothing but result in election fraud. And yet, here you are buying their sob story regarding a potential source of election fraud because that means you'll trust them when they tell you that voter fraud is a real problem and thus need to support those tactics.
They're trusting that you won't pay attention to the information, Faith. They're trusting that you'll claim that anybody who contradicts you is personally attacking you. They're trusting that you'll insist that anybody who calls them out is engaging in "character assassination."
You are being lied to, Faith, and you are so wrapped up in the lie that you are doing the very thing you accuse everybody else of. Your response is completely unrelated to the information but is essentially nothing but character assassination.
quote:As for voter fraud, bussing in illegals or others, registering dead people to vote and that sort of thing, that gets revealed in the Project Veritas series.
And it's all a lie.
That is the point you are steadfastly refusing to come to terms with.
Project Veritas is a lie. Everything they put out is fraudulent. O'Keefe was convicted for his fraudulent actions for PV.
quote:Here is the first one in that series, which happens to be about how they infiltrated Trump rallies to provoke violence.
And it didn't happen. They lied to you, Faith.
You need to pay attention to the information and stop confusing the fact that you are being contradicted with some form of personal attack.
Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
And with that, we know that you're not being serious.
What is this "Democrat Party" of which you speak? There's a "Democratic Party," but I've never heard of this "Democrat Party."
If you want to be taken seriously, you might want to consider behaving seriously.
Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
quote:Steve Inskeep talks to Morehouse College professor Marc Lamont Hill, who says it's important that Americans, who may be considered to be uninformed citizens, vote in presidential elections.
First few paragraph from the cite:
quote:STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's talk about a modest proposal by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The former NBA star was on the program last week and made a suggestion in this election year. In a new book, he says many American voters have not really looked into the issues, and he went on to suggest a solution. Stop encouraging people who don't want to vote to vote.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR: Ignorance is not something that lends itself to a meaningful discussion. Some of these people really shouldn't vote because they don't know what the issues are, and I think people that are, you know, voting in the blind are doing a disservice to our country by not being better informed.
INSKEEP: The many people who responded include Marc Lamont Hill. He's a writer and a professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and he was on social media saying he was dismayed, if that's the right word. Professor Hill, why is that?
MARC LAMONT HILL: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. And let me say from the beginning that, you know, I love Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and I appreciate the spirit of his comment. But I'm very concerned whenever we begin a conversation about who should and shouldn't vote. The reason why I'm concerned is because there's a long history of saying certain people shouldn't be voting. And, unfortunately, the people who are often left out of these conversations are people who are black and brown.
What an utterly irrelevant remark that served no purpose other than attempt to misrepresent what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar actually said.
There is a vast difference between telling people they cannot vote and saying maybe we should not encourage some folk to vote. Actually we should not encourage some folk to drive, do surgery, have children, vote ...
There is a vast difference between telling people they cannot vote and saying maybe we should not encourage some folk to vote.
True. And of course, ignorance of the issues is curable. Kareem mentioned that the ultimate problem was folks not doing the minimal amount of work to become informed on the issues and called that ignorance a disservice to democracy. No question that he is right about that.
Nonetheless, what constitutes being informed enough to cast a vote is an extremely low hurdle. You don't have to be informed on every issue in order to cast a vote. Accordingly there is room for having a nuanced discussion about the issue of who should be encouraged to vote.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson
Seems to me if its clear that certain things that require ancient dates couldn't possibly be true, we are on our way to throwing out all those ancient dates on the basis of the actual evidence. -- Faith
Accordingly there is room for having a nuanced discussion about the issue of who should be encouraged to vote.
I'd suggest changing the emphasis slightly. I think it's time to have a discussion about the issue of being a responsible citizen. Surely there is enough time in a basic education schedule to teach US born kids at least as much about the responsibilities of citizenship as we require from those applying for citizenship.
I think it's time to have a discussion about the issue of being a responsible citizen.
It would seem to be the best way to "make America great again".
Our culture tells us that success is about money,power, and fame.
Responsibility is never mentioned as much as it used to be.
Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith
Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.~Proverbs 28:26
Not 100% correct. There is also the 25th amendment, which states a president can be removed if mentally not fit for office. So, there are two legal avenues for congress to remove Trump if he keeps on following his current path. Not being fit to serve , and actions that can allow for impeachment.
The reason for the 25th Amendment is for when a President is incapacitated due to illness or injury. Trying to use this to reverse having elected a flaming asshole to the office would not be in keeping with the intent of the amendment as Congress and the states resolved. Impeachment or losing the next election are the only ways we will be rid of Trump in the next 8 years.
So here is a scenario. Let's say the Wisconsin recount comes up with a different result. Not very likely, but we can suppose. The Republican's and Trump's attorneys, not being as dense a group as we might like, will come up with some reason, any reason, to challenge the result in court. For all the immediacy involved a good group of smart legal vultures could tie this up in court until Dec. 19 when the electors are to meet and vote in each state. You could have an electoral challenge with two slates of electors voting and sending their separate votes to the Senate. In this case the House of Representatives would decide which slate of electors to certify. We can all figure how that would come out.
All this crap about recounts may be a good thing to base some future voting legislation upon but it will not, should not, affect the presently determined and conceded election.
Trump will be our next president which means that extra vigilance will be required on all our parts to keep that shithead and his deplorables from overstepping his "mandate".
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