American Politics

[Spidy]

So David French, considered a Republican Conservative Liberal, couldn't have wrote a more truer, sensible and calming words, w / are to Republican Conservatives who truly want to "do the right thing" and save the Republican Party from Trump (and themselves).

NYT, David French (OPINION), "To save Conservatism from itself, I am voting for Harris...",Aug. 11, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/o...-abortion.html

• David French: "I believe life begins at conception...I want prospective parents to be able to use I.V.F. to build their families, I do not believe that unused embryos should simply be discarded thrown away as no longer useful."
  
  "But I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and ironically enough I'm doing it in part to try to save conservatism."
  
  Here's what I mean.
  
  "Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism...
  
  "It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as traitors..."
  
  "Its not just Trumps lies that are contagious, but his cruelty as well, and that cruelty is embedding itself deeply within one of Trumps most loyal constituencies, conservative evangelicals. It is difficult to overstate the viciousness and intolerance of MAGA Christians against their political foes. There are many churches and Christian leaders who are now more culturally Trumpian than culturally Christian. Trump is changing the church..."

French, used to consider himself, the ugly, dreaded "Republican Partisan" and according to him, "...it altered the way I saw the world". I can only imagine some Repubs here are living a similar nightmare. (...kkkk!)

French goes on to basically say, that he's so disgusted with Trump and his enablers, for letting conservatism lose its way, and he feels voting for Harris, is the way to save it, ...from itself.

Bravo!!! I for one applaud, and do enjoy listening to a good common sense Repub voter (rare as they are) with a spine and backbone, that stands up to the cult of MAGA and wants to bring normalcy back to Conservatism and a Republican Party, lost in the cult of Trump.

David French, long time "Republican Partisan", reborn again Conservative and now voting for the Harris/Walz...Bravo!

[SubCmdr]

I seen a lot of technological development. I own a lab top computer, an iPad, iPad mini, iPhone, and a Fire 11 tablet. Please do not get the idea that I am a technophobe or some old man who can't keep keep up progress of technology. Here are my thoughts:

Technology

Ever try to get a girls phone number when the battery of your cellular phone is dead. Better have a pen or pencil and some paper. LOL! Now there is nothing like scanning the QR code for the phone number exchange in social media. But, back up plans are important.

Crypto currency

No my brother I believe in BTC and the others that a based on their basic formula. LTC, BCH. Everything else is basically unproven junk on which to speculate. The majority of crypto is a huge casino. Does not mean I don't play.

My belief in BTC, has noting to do with the ledger and everything to do with the fact that is of limit supply. It is digital gold. And the fact that it is permission less. I do not have to ask permission to send value to another person 24/07/365 as long as I have a internet connection. That is the power of crypto. Lastly, BTC and others like it are decentralized. China banned crypto mining. Miners picked up an walked. But mining did not completely stop. Because it is almost impossible for a government to stop it. If CBDC gets instituted not only can the government track your money, they can put restrictions on your money, they can take your money, they can put a expiration date on your money.

There are crypto currencies like ETH that have an unlimited supply just like fiat currency. If you want to really understand beyond just a superficial level read the book titled The Bitcoin Standard. Part of the reason this election is so important to me is because democrats are hostile to crypto currency because they realize the power that it takes from the government and gives back to the individual. Unfortunately the republican populace is so DUMB as to run an incompetent pair of racist assholes for the highest office in the land.

Machines

Are black boxes that can be altered, hacked along with being prone to programming errors and backdoors. There is only one type of voting machine I would trust, and that is one with open source code. Currently I use a hardware wallet to store my crypto currency. It is driven by open source code. People way smarted than me can check the code (and do all the time). Prevents errors (more eyes on the code) and malicious actors from adding bad code into the system software. I prefer that over machines run by proprietary code where we have to trust a central authority to maintain our safety.

Humans.

I have a bias towards my fellow man. The US military has a policy. No killing machines. Every machine with the capability of killing a human request a human in the chain of the command that leads to the killing strike.

Democracy requests the same thing. We cannot let our machines decide who our leaders (representatives) are going to be.

Are a sports fan my friend? Can you tell me a sport where you would prefer that machines are the arbiters of the sport? I cannot. But I am biased. I have been a sports officiator. My favorite was baseball umpire. Balls and Strikes are judgment calls. There is a machine that checks up on the umpires not. But in the end it is still a human call. I personally believe that is the way it should be. Human competition decided by human spirt and officiated by humans.

Even video review involves humans taking a "look at the video tape".

We agree on proper instructions. But I still think that votes should be marked by and hand counted. Election service should be like jury service a responsibility of citizenship. If a army of people is needed to count the votes then so be it. There is absolutely no reason that we need immediate results while allowing months before the new government actually takes over. That is some ancient bullshit to me. CEO's take over companies in a day. Change of command ceremonies happen in hours. There is a great scene in Band of Brothers where a office has to be replaced in the middle of an assault that got stalled.

Machines need to be given credit where credit is do. But in mindless reliances on technology is dangerous.

As everything in the world, technology advancement allows for more accuracy not less. Example, you believe in crytocurrency because the ledger is accurate from one transfer to the next, and so on are recorded, and that over printing of money is a human decision. As fiat money can not be accounted for once it is printed and in the hands of the user, crypto can be trace through its lifetime. Machines have parameter that they don't disregard and codes can be audited. I believe most of the errors are human, not machine. Machines only need to be adjusted once at the test levels to prevent machine errors. Whereas human can continue to make the same mistake over and over again.

I will agree with you that proper instructions are needed, but I like machines over the what we have before.

Finally, I want to say I really appreciated your reasoned response and the chance to reply in a equally reasonable fashion. I hope you can take something from my post and even if we agree to disagree then I hope we both had our thoughts patterns stimulated.

[Paulie97]

Stopping by just for this post I've wasted too much time in this thread so have sworn it off, but am stopping by to reply to Paulie's off-topic comments elsewhere.

But lacked the intestinal fortitude to reply to my last several posts on the "Stupid Shit in Kyiv" thread where everything is on topic, where your highly repetitive "deep state" conspiracy theories, various false equivocations / whataboutisms related to past US wars and Kremlin propaganda have received rebuttals from me and others ad nauseum. The one where you said that Russia isn't trying to kill civilians, where you brown nose a guy who asserts that Alexi Navalny died of natural causes, where you express confidence that Putin would honor a peace accord, etc. Putin is a war criminal, coward at heart with zero honor, that's sore about the lose of the Soviet Empire. He started a war. Ukraine wants to fight back, and NATO has responded, Occam's Razor. You're welcome to go back to the Ukraine forum and respond to the many posts I made to you earlier this month that you skipped over. Do it point by point. That might help you make another go at swearing off this thread. You might even succeed this time, or at least divert your addiction. You never know.

So other than the post to me, how many more have followed since swearing off this thread? I counted four, some pretty lengthy. Sounds like you're really struggling, and you have my sympathy. Wink.

P.S.

Ike isn't my fav president, but I do think his economic achievements cut against the idea of Tooms, that Repubs always bring economic disasters, going back to Lincoln. That's the context, thus a little honesty occasionally will go a long way if you're interested in at least some pretense of credibility.

[EihTooms]

How the Inflation Reduction Act sparked a manufacturing and clean energy boom.
Aug. 20, 2024

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/20/infl...ndroidappshare

Tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act have led to a boom in new manufacturing projects in the U.S.

GOP congressional districts and rural communities have benefited in particular.

The presidential election is creating uncertainty about the future of those projects, with some investors worried a Republican victory could weaken the IRA.

The Inflation Reduction Act has sparked a manufacturing boom across the U.S., mobilizing tens of billions of dollars of investment, particularly in rural communities in need of economic development.

The future of those investments could hinge on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The prospect of a Republican victory has shaken the confidence of some investors who worry the IRA could be weakened or in a worst-case scenario repealed.

Companies have announced $133 billion of investments in clean energy technology and electric vehicle manufacturing since President Joe Biden signed the IRA into law in August 2022, according to data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rhodium Group.

Actual manufacturing investment has totaled $89 billion, an increase of 305% compared to the two years prior to the IRA, according to MIT and Rhodium. Overall, the IRA has leveraged half a trillion dollars of investment across the manufacturing, energy and retail sectors, according to the data.

"It is having a transformative effect within the manufacturing sector, said Trevor Houser, a partner with the Rhodium Group. The amount of new manufacturing activity that were seeing right now is unprecedented in recent history, and is in large part due to new clean energy manufacturing facilities.

Some 271 manufacturing projects for clean energy tech and electric vehicles have been announced since the IRA passed, which will create more than 100,000 jobs if they are all completed, according to the advocacy group E2, a partner of the National Resources Defense Council. The investments sparked by the IRA have been a boon for rural communities in particular, Houser said.

Ah, memories, and BTW, are we better off now than we were 4 years ago, Part Infinity? LOL:

We can reshore manufacturing jobs, but Trump hasnt done it.
Trade rebalancing, infrastructure, and climate investments could create 17 million good jobs and rebuild the American economy.
Aug. 10, 2020

https://www.epi.org/publication/resh...acturing-jobs/

While the Trump administration has claimed that the era of U.S. offshoring is over, the reality is that the United States has not begun to address the root causes of Americas growing trade deficits and the decline of American manufacturing. Decades of trade, currency, and tax policies that incentivized offshoring, combined with an utter failure to invest adequately in infrastructure and good jobs at home, have contributed to growing inequality and an eroding middle class.

President Trumps erratic, ego-driven, and inconsistent trade policies have not achieved any measurable progress, despite the newly combative rhetoric. On top of that, COVID-19and the administrations mismanagement of the crisis has wiped out much of the last decades job gains in U.S. manufacturing.

You want more of the former or more of the latter? This is decision time. Vote accordingly.

[EihTooms]

Please correct me if I you believe I'm wrong, but you, Spidy and Lichtman maintain that Bush stole the election. When he did no such thing. From the NYT arcticle.

"A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff -- filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties -- Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations. ".

Please note that the NYT says a recount of all the suspect ballots MIGHT have resulted in a Gore victory. And furthermore, There was no set of circumstances in the fevered days after the election that would have produced a hand recount of all 175,000 overvotes and undervotes.. "

If the Florida election had played out as directed by the Democrat-controlled Florida Supreme Court, Gore would have lost.

This is the way our system works. I don't believe your argument here that Bush stole Florida makes any more sense than Team Trump's argument that Democrats stole Pennsylvania because of the way mail in votes were treated there.

As to Lichtman, I did listen to your Youtube link, twice. First, I suspect based on what he said that he was shamed by John Lott into using precinct level analysis instead of the misleading county level analysis he used earlier. Lichtman originally claimed that blacks were 9 X as likely to spoil ballots as non-blacks. Now he says the difference was half that, presumably in my mind because he was forced to use precinct level analysis. I don't believe his claim that 95% of blacks voted for Gore.

He says that one out of every 9 to 10 ballots cast by blacks was spoiled. Incredibly, he then goes on to say that most of those spoiled votes were overvotes, where the voter picked Gore and also wrote in "Gore. " So apparently he expects people to believe that, say, one out of every eleven or twelve votes cast by blacks were over votes, where "Gore" was written in on the ballot. He says tens of thousands of votes were marked by blacks that way. Presumably only black, Gore voters made this mistake. Whites, blacks and Hispanics voting for Bush didn't write in "Bush" too.

Lichtman is definitely biased based on what he says about George Will in the segment. Admittedly so is John Lott.

Finally, Lichtman has a record to protect, that he forecasted 9 elections correctly and the 10th was stolen. His fame, pride, and to some extent income follow from that record. Anybody with half a brain should realize that picking a winner for Bush / Gore or Trump / Hillary Clinton was blind luck. Bush / Gore could have gone either way. And Trump / Clinton was a once in 200 year electoral college fluke. Trump won fair and square, but based on the popular vote he shouldn't have. Anyway, the reason Lichtman is bringing this up 24 years later is because he's trying to make people believe he's some kind of infallible forecaster. If he wasn't right about Bush/Gore, then, by damn, Bush must have stolen the election.

SubCmdr and CheckMate1 may disagree about electronic voting, but I believe they've got the right idea. You come up with simple rules and respect them. That's fair, and builds confidence in our electoral system.

You really should repent and see the light on this one Tooms. If you don't, you've given up the high ground to Donald Trump and others who claim the 2020 election was stolen. Maybe that's not to best way to put it though. Better to say you will have climbed down into the same pit.



If you'd said, "If Al Gore, Dennis Hastert (R) and Bill Frist (R) had continued the enlightened leadership established by Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich (R) and Trent Lott (R), and if Gore hadn't invaded Iraq, the USA would be a better place," I'd agree with you. And I believe that might have happened. The idea that Gore would have somehow prevented 9/11 and the 2008 meltdown is a pipedream though.

And why are you blaming Jeb Bush for stealing the election, when it was Democratic officials (and one individual who had no party affiliation) who were in charge of counting the ballots in the 25 Florida counties with the highest spoilage rates?

I'll go with the quotes I cited from that NYT report, the fully substantiated Majority Conclusion of that Civil Rights investigation and the clear intention of the American electorate as counted in their votes.

You need to be more concerned about saving 100% of your mortal soul in how you vote this year. Saint Peter will not allow Bothsider / Neithersiders to straddle half in and half out of those Pearly Gates when their day of reckoning comes as it will for all of us. He will count you as a Trump supporter.

[Tiny 12]

Your NYT report appears to support Lichtman's contention regarding over votes and a Gore win even if they had ignored the earlier ballot / vote rejections and only gone with the hanging and dimpled Chad examination, but carried out in a more state-wide fashion rather than the more limited precinct examinations Gore went with due to time restraints:

The minority dissenting opinion expressed by Thernstrom and Redenbaugh, much of which relies on Lott's article on spoiled (non voted) ballot rates, is too twisted and convoluted for me to read all of it, particularly considering it is in fact the minority opinion that was overwhelmed and substantiated by the majority in that hearing anyway.

However, as I scanned it I was struck by the effort they put into promoting the idea that one can not necessarily conclude that the high percentage of ballots / votes that were rejeced for over votes (as opposed to non votes) in highly segregated African American precincts in Florida were originally cast by African Americans. Like, you know, maybe most of the rejected ones were cast by the scant few White, Asian or Hispanic residents in those precincts. After all, once cast the identity of the voter is not known.

Uh. Ok. LOL.

And most of those African American precincts, predominantly Dem and definitely not Repub, had Dems for election supervisors? No kidding? Of course, if Repub State Legislators say toss out the over votes, that is what those law-abiding Dems are going to do.

Doesn't change the fact concluded by the majority in that Lichtman hearing and the consortium reported on by the NYT that more Floridians voted for and intended to vote for Al Gore rather than GW Bush in the 2000 election.

Please correct me if I you believe I'm wrong, but you, Spidy and Lichtman maintain that Bush stole the election. When he did no such thing. From the NYT arcticle.

"A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff -- filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties -- Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations. ".

Please note that the NYT says a recount of all the suspect ballots MIGHT have resulted in a Gore victory. And furthermore, There was no set of circumstances in the fevered days after the election that would have produced a hand recount of all 175,000 overvotes and undervotes.. "

If the Florida election had played out as directed by the Democrat-controlled Florida Supreme Court, Gore would have lost.

This is the way our system works. I don't believe your argument here that Bush stole Florida makes any more sense than Team Trump's argument that Democrats stole Pennsylvania because of the way mail in votes were treated there.

As to Lichtman, I did listen to your Youtube link, twice. First, I suspect based on what he said that he was shamed by John Lott into using precinct level analysis instead of the misleading county level analysis he used earlier. Lichtman originally claimed that blacks were 9 X as likely to spoil ballots as non-blacks. Now he says the difference was half that, presumably in my mind because he was forced to use precinct level analysis. I don't believe his claim that 95% of blacks voted for Gore.

He says that one out of every 9 to 10 ballots cast by blacks was spoiled. Incredibly, he then goes on to say that most of those spoiled votes were overvotes, where the voter picked Gore and also wrote in "Gore. " So apparently he expects people to believe that, say, one out of every eleven or twelve votes cast by blacks were over votes, where "Gore" was written in on the ballot. He says tens of thousands of votes were marked by blacks that way. Presumably only black, Gore voters made this mistake. Whites, blacks and Hispanics voting for Bush didn't write in "Bush" too.

Lichtman is definitely biased based on what he says about George Will in the segment. Admittedly so is John Lott.

Finally, Lichtman has a record to protect, that he forecasted 9 elections correctly and the 10th was stolen. His fame, pride, and to some extent income follow from that record. Anybody with half a brain should realize that picking a winner for Bush / Gore or Trump / Hillary Clinton was blind luck. Bush / Gore could have gone either way. And Trump / Clinton was a once in 200 year electoral college fluke. Trump won fair and square, but based on the popular vote he shouldn't have. Anyway, the reason Lichtman is bringing this up 24 years later is because he's trying to make people believe he's some kind of infallible forecaster. If he wasn't right about Bush/Gore, then, by damn, Bush must have stolen the election.

SubCmdr and CheckMate1 may disagree about electronic voting, but I believe they've got the right idea. You come up with simple rules and respect them. That's fair, and builds confidence in our electoral system.

You really should repent and see the light on this one Tooms. If you don't, you've given up the high ground to Donald Trump and others who claim the 2020 election was stolen. Maybe that's not to best way to put it though. Better to say you will have climbed down into the same pit.

Consequently, it is extremely doubtful there would have been a 9/11 Attack at all then or another time during an Al Gore presidency. Therefore, no invasion of Iraq and no war in Afghanistan.

Oh, and no 2008 GW Bush Financial Crisis near total collapse of Capitalism and the American Economy for Obama-Biden to rescue and recover us from either.

That 2000 stolen election by Jeb and his fellow Repubs had massive and disastrous domino-effect repercussions.

If you'd said, "If Al Gore, Dennis Hastert (R) and Bill Frist (R) had continued the enlightened leadership established by Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich (R) and Trent Lott (R), and if Gore hadn't invaded Iraq, the USA would be a better place," I'd agree with you. And I believe that might have happened. The idea that Gore would have somehow prevented 9/11 and the 2008 meltdown is a pipedream though.

And why are you blaming Jeb Bush for stealing the election, when it was Democratic officials (and one individual who had no party affiliation) who were in charge of counting the ballots in the 25 Florida counties with the highest spoilage rates?

[EihTooms]

It sure looks like "Dems good, Repubs bad" and "Harris good, Trump bad" to me.

I suppose he is just another Democratic Douche.

Exclusive: Conservative Republican endorses Harris, calls Trump a threat to democracy.
Aug. 19, 2024

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/19/polit...cy?cid=ios_app

Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy.

It will be the first time Luttig, a veteran of two Republican administrations, has voted for a Democrat.

"In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of Americas Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, Luttig wrote in a statement obtained exclusively by CNN. As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Partys candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.

Luttig played a now famous role in persuading then-Vice President Mike Pence to defy Trump and certify the 2020 presidential election. In a series of tweets drafted at the request of Pences attorney, Luttig spelled out in stark terms the legal rationale for Pence to reject the former presidents attempt to overturn Joe Bidens victory.

Since then, Luttig has emerged as a preeminent constitutional critic of Trump. In endorsing Harris, Luttig argues that partisan distinctions must, in this election, be set aside in order to prevent the singularly unfit Trump from returning to the White House.

"In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, Luttig writes, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than Americas Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.

Luttigs scathing rebuke of Trump and endorsement of Harris underscores the depths of divisions between Reagan-and Bush-era Republicans and the modern, Trump-dominated GOP. The former judge is just as an unsparing of the Republican party as he is of Trump, whom together he says have launched the war on Americas Democracy.

The corrosive effects, he adds, will echo through generations.

Because of the former presidents continued, knowingly false claims that he won the 2020 election, millions of Americans no longer have faith and confidence in our national elections, and many never will again, Luttig writes. Many Americans especially young Americans, tragically have even begun to question whether constitutional democracy is the best form of self-government for America.

The stakes, Luttig argues, are as high now as in the late 18th century, when the countrys founders and authors of the US Constitution including Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, typically political foes joined together to voice concern over the potential emergence of an authoritarian demagogue.

The stakes, Luttig argues, are as high now as in the late 18th century, when the countrys founders and authors of the US Constitution including Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, typically political foes joined together to voice concern over the potential emergence of an authoritarian demagogue.

"The time for Americas choosing has come, Luttig writes. It is time for all Americans to stand and affirm whether they believe in American Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, and want for America the same or whether they do not.

Though this will be Luttigs first time pulling the lever for a Democrat in any election, he has, in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, come out in support of some decisions by the Biden administration. He wholeheartedly endorsed the 2022 nomination of now-Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the high court, even calling out Republicans who said they would not vote to confirm her.

"The President knew at the time that there were any number of highly qualified black women on the lower federal courts from among whom he could choose including Judge Jackson and Republicans should have known that the President would nominate one of those supremely qualified black women to succeed Justice Breyer, he wrote at the time.

Luttig now joins a number of high-profile Republicans endorsing Harris, including former members of Congress Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock and Adam Kinzinger.

Kinzinger, now a CNN contributor, will have a high-profile speaking slot this week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, also a CNN contributor, endorsed Harris at the end of July in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed.

Her campaign, he wrote, was the best vehicle toward preventing another stained Trump presidency.

Speaking to CNN, Luttig said his decision to publicly back Harris was a matter of knowing right from wrong and acting in accordance.

"In my faith, we believe that we will one day answer for our wrongs. I have always tried to live my life in anticipation of that day. Imperfectly, to be sure. But I have tried, an emotional Luttig said. My endorsement of the Vice President was the right thing to do. It would have been wrong for me to stay silent, and I believe I would have one day had to answer for that silence.

Its really that simple."

Now, when will other high profile Repubs who have either publically refused to endorse Trump or remained silent about it complete the circle and openly endorse Harris?

Especially those who claim to be people of faith; MittWitt Romney, ranch brush-clearer GW Bush, Pious Mike Pence, etc?

Heed Judge Luttig's warning; Remaining silent about it or suggesting you will write in "Mickey Mouse" will surely prevent you from entering the Kingdom of Heaven.

[CheckMate1]

All of the voting issues could be resolved with a pen and paper and proper instructions that are simple. Mark only one candidate for each office or you vote will be considered invalid. In bold just how a wrote it at the top of the ballot.

The votes should be hand counted twice. Elections are the core of democracy. They should be kept simple.

As everything in the world, technology advancement allows for more accuracy not less. Example, you believe in crytocurrency because the ledger is accurate from one transfer to the next, and so on are recorded, and that over printing of money is a human decision. As fiat money can not be accounted for once it is printed and in the hands of the user, crypto can be trace through its lifetime. Machines have parameter that they don't disregard and codes can be audited. I believe most of the errors are human, not machine. Machines only need to be adjusted once at the test levels to prevent machine errors. Whereas human can continue to make the same mistake over and over again.

I will agree with you that proper instructions are needed, but I like machines over the what we have before.

[EihTooms]

As politically knowledgeable (seriously) as you are, it's amazing that the newspaper consortium's work on the 2000 election slipped by you. See here for example.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/u...s-did-not.html

Bush would have come up the winner if the USA Supreme Court hadn't stopped the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, or if the recount had been limited to four Democratic counties, in accordance with Gore's strategy early on. It's more difficult to say what would have happened if all rejected votes had been recounted, but, using some of your favorite words, that's in the realm of "whataboutism" and "might have, could have, should have. ".

Lichtman's work on the 2000 election was for the USA Commission on Civil Rights. John Lott, a Yale economist, was also engaged by the commission. Lott determined that "it is African American Republicans who were harmed. Indeed, the nonvoted ballot rate for white Republicans is higher than for white or African‐American Democrats. The data also indicate that nonvoted ballot rates are highest in those counties where Democrats are the election supervisors. ".

I can say with 100% certainty that Lichtman doesn't know much about statistics, and / or he was pursuing an agenda and purposefully twisted the data. I say this because he favored analysis of the data at the county level instead of the precinct level. His precinct level analysis did not show, with statistical significance, that more African American ballots were spoiled than other ballots. Anyone who's aware of Simpson's paradox would favor the precinct level analysis. To provide a recent example, in Scotland, people who got the COVID vaccine were more likely to have suffered from severe COVID or die from COVID than people who did not. The reason is because older people got vaccinated in higher numbers than younger people. When you segment the date by age groups, you see the vaccine was highly effective in preventing severe disease and death. You're seeing a similar, although not as pronounced, effect here.

Licthman also didn't even look at spoiled ballots among Hispanic Americans or Asians. He just threw them in with whites. This is curious because there were more Hispanics, many of which were Cuban American immigrants. They may have been more likely to vote Republican. Also they were less literate on average than whites and blacks. If you're going to make the racist argument that blacks didn't know how to mark ballots, that should apply doubly for Latin immigrants. Many are learning English. Their presence is the reason California, New York and Texas rank higher in level of illiteracy than most other states.

Lichtman refused to supply his data to dissenting members of the Commission by the way.

Lichtman's agenda probably was to try to benefit the Democratic Party, by showing, by hook or crook, that black voters had been disenfranchised. Democrats used this strategy for many years to get an advantage. It enabled them to aggressively gerrymander blue states, while the courts prevented similar shenanigans in some red southern states. You can see the results by comparing the popular vote for the House of Representatives to the % of House seats won by Democrats. From 1948 to 2008, the Democrats usually got a lot more than their fair share of House seats.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content...s_ch2_tbl2.pdf

From the dissenting commissioners' report.

"The majority report lays the blame for the supposed disenfranchisement of black voters at the feet of state officials particularly Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris. In fact, however, elections in Florida are the responsibility of 67 county supervisors of election. And, interestingly, in all but one of the 25 counties with the highest spoilage rates, the election was supervised by a Democrat the one exception being an official with no party affiliation..

The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state's only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate."

In other words, you can blame high spoilage rates on incompetent Democrats. That's not surprising, Republicans govern better at the state and local level.

As to the rest of your post, I've given up on getting you to see the true light. I think you're a lost cause. But I still pray for your enlightenment.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/345576

https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/vot...ix/dissent.htm

Your NYT report appears to support Lichtman's contention regarding over votes and a Gore win even if they had ignored the earlier ballot / vote rejections and only gone with the hanging and dimpled Chad examination, but carried out in a more state-wide fashion rather than the more limited precinct examinations Gore went with due to time restraints:

But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots. This also assumes that county canvassing boards would have reached the same conclusions about the disputed ballots that the consortium's independent observers did. The findings indicate that Mr. Gore might have eked out a victory if he had pursued in court a course like the one he publicly advocated when he called on the state to ''count all the votes.''
...........
If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin.
...........
All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the three coders agreed.

While these are fascinating findings, they do not represent a real-world situation. There was no set of circumstances in the fevered days after the election that would have produced a hand recount of all 175,000 overvotes and undervotes.

The minority dissenting opinion expressed by Thernstrom and Redenbaugh, much of which relies on Lott's article on spoiled (non voted) ballot rates, is too twisted and convoluted for me to read all of it, particularly considering it is in fact the minority opinion that was overwhelmed and substantiated by the majority in that hearing anyway.

However, as I scanned it I was struck by the effort they put into promoting the idea that one can not necessarily conclude that the high percentage of ballots / votes that were rejeced for over votes (as opposed to non votes) in highly segregated African American precincts in Florida were originally cast by African Americans. Like, you know, maybe most of the rejected ones were cast by the scant few White, Asian or Hispanic residents in those precincts. After all, once cast the identity of the voter is not known.

Uh. Ok. LOL.

And most of those African American precincts, predominantly Dem and definitely not Repub, had Dems for election supervisors? No kidding? Of course, if Repub State Legislators say toss out the over votes, that is what those law-abiding Dems are going to do.

Doesn't change the fact concluded by the majority in that Lichtman hearing and the consortium reported on by the NYT that more Floridians voted for and intended to vote for Al Gore rather than GW Bush in the 2000 election.

[SubCmdr]

All of the voting issues could be resolved with a pen and paper and proper instructions that are simple. Mark only one candidate for each office or you vote will be considered invalid. In bold just how a wrote it at the top of the ballot.

The votes should be hand counted twice. Elections are the core of democracy. They should be kept simple.

[Tiny 12]

The answers to the questions of how it was known that the overwhelming percentage of "rejected for error" ballots in Florida were cast by African Americans even before they would or could be reviewed for hanging chads as well as how likely most of those earlier rejected ballots / votes would have been for Gore is addressed in the full report and in Lichtman's 10 minute video I linked previously and will link again here:

https://youtu.be/D57mZejswkI?si=Me7T-1y5NWoh0LAN

The shorter (and incomplete) version is:

- 180,000 ballots / votes in Florida were rejected for error....

Your post showed up after I posted mine, I believe. It's getting late here. I'll try to remember to watch the video tomorrow. I suspect my links below provide good rebuttals to whatever's in the video.

Most of the 180,000 rejected votes for president were undervotes and overvotes. By that I mean either the voter didn't mark the ballot for any candidate, or he marked it for more than one.

I undervote in a lot of elections. If I don't know anything about the candidates, I won't choose, and just move onto the next office. I've read about knowledgeable people overvoting. They like two candidates and probably don't realize if they do that, their votes won't count.

[Tiny 12]

Without a link I really can't say exactly where and how all those people got it wrong. But from your description of it I suspect they were focused on ballots with or without hanging chads and all that. Which is not what the study and investigation Lichtman testified in found to be the evidence that votes for Gore were not accepted or counted at all. Did you read the actual link for the actual most definitive study of it that I posted?

As politically knowledgeable (seriously) as you are, it's amazing that the newspaper consortium's work on the 2000 election slipped by you. See here for example.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/u...s-did-not.html

Bush would have come up the winner if the USA Supreme Court hadn't stopped the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, or if the recount had been limited to four Democratic counties, in accordance with Gore's strategy early on. It's more difficult to say what would have happened if all rejected votes had been recounted, but, using some of your favorite words, that's in the realm of "whataboutism" and "might have, could have, should have. ".

Lichtman's work on the 2000 election was for the USA Commission on Civil Rights. John Lott, a Yale economist, was also engaged by the commission. Lott determined that "it is African American Republicans who were harmed. Indeed, the nonvoted ballot rate for white Republicans is higher than for white or African‐American Democrats. The data also indicate that nonvoted ballot rates are highest in those counties where Democrats are the election supervisors. ".

I can say with 100% certainty that Lichtman doesn't know much about statistics, and / or he was pursuing an agenda and purposefully twisted the data. I say this because he favored analysis of the data at the county level instead of the precinct level. His precinct level analysis did not show, with statistical significance, that more African American ballots were spoiled than other ballots. Anyone who's aware of Simpson's paradox would favor the precinct level analysis. To provide a recent example, in Scotland, people who got the COVID vaccine were more likely to have suffered from severe COVID or die from COVID than people who did not. The reason is because older people got vaccinated in higher numbers than younger people. When you segment the date by age groups, you see the vaccine was highly effective in preventing severe disease and death. You're seeing a similar, although not as pronounced, effect here.

Licthman also didn't even look at spoiled ballots among Hispanic Americans or Asians. He just threw them in with whites. This is curious because there were more Hispanics, many of which were Cuban American immigrants. They may have been more likely to vote Republican. Also they were less literate on average than whites and blacks. If you're going to make the racist argument that blacks didn't know how to mark ballots, that should apply doubly for Latin immigrants. Many are learning English. Their presence is the reason California, New York and Texas rank higher in level of illiteracy than most other states.

Lichtman refused to supply his data to dissenting members of the Commission by the way.

Lichtman's agenda probably was to try to benefit the Democratic Party, by showing, by hook or crook, that black voters had been disenfranchised. Democrats used this strategy for many years to get an advantage. It enabled them to aggressively gerrymander blue states, while the courts prevented similar shenanigans in some red southern states. You can see the results by comparing the popular vote for the House of Representatives to the % of House seats won by Democrats. From 1948 to 2008, the Democrats usually got a lot more than their fair share of House seats.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content...s_ch2_tbl2.pdf

From the dissenting commissioners' report.

"The majority report lays the blame for the supposed disenfranchisement of black voters at the feet of state officials particularly Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris. In fact, however, elections in Florida are the responsibility of 67 county supervisors of election. And, interestingly, in all but one of the 25 counties with the highest spoilage rates, the election was supervised by a Democrat the one exception being an official with no party affiliation..

The majority report argues that much of the spoiled ballot problem was due to voting technology. But elected Democratic Party officials decided on the type of machinery used, including the optical scanning system in Gadsden County, the state's only majority-black county and the one with the highest spoilage rate."

In other words, you can blame high spoilage rates on incompetent Democrats. That's not surprising, Republicans govern better at the state and local level.

As to the rest of your post, I've given up on getting you to see the true light. I think you're a lost cause. But I still pray for your enlightenment.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/345576

https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/vot...ix/dissent.htm

[EihTooms]

A comment and a question. The definitive, after-the-fact study of the 2000 election was done by a group of 8 newspapers, the New York Times, The WSJ, the Tribune Company, the Washington Post, the AP, the St. Petersburg Times, the Palm Beach Post, and CNN. They went back and counted all the hanging chads et cetera and determined Bush would have won anyway if the Supreme Court hadn't stopped the count.

Allan "Rudy Giuliani" Lichtman apparently is approaching the problem from a different angle. I'd like to know how whoever was counting votes knew whether a ballot was marked by a black person or a white person. Lichtman's argument sounds racist to me, that minority voters don't know how to mark ballots.

That's not to say that we might not have been better off under Gore. Maybe Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

And now the question. Elvis brought up Kamala Harris' involvement in getting FOSTA and SESTA passed. I haven't seen a peep out of anyone about that. How do you gentlemen feel about publishing reports here, knowing that Kamala's legislation might just get you or the owners of this site that we treasure thrown in jail? Kamala Harris is not the Monger's Friend.

The answers to the questions of how it was known that the overwhelming percentage of "rejected for error" ballots in Florida were cast by African Americans even before they would or could be reviewed for hanging chads as well as how likely most of those earlier rejected ballots / votes would have been for Gore is addressed in the full report and in Lichtman's 10 minute video I linked previously and will link again here:

https://youtu.be/D57mZejswkI?si=Me7T-1y5NWoh0LAN

The shorter (and incomplete) version is:

- 180,000 ballots / votes in Florida were rejected for error.

- In Florida, people register to vote indicating their race.

- Al Gore's support among African Americans was 95%.

- Of the 180,000 ballots / votes rejected for error, a huge, disproportionately high percentage of ballots / votes in highly segregated African American precincts were rejected, to the tune of 1 out of every 9 or 10 vs that of predominantly white precincts at 1 out of 50.

- Many if not most of the African American ballots / votes that were rejected out of hand were for "over votes" where they had not only punched the Chad hole for Gore but also wrote in his name just to be sure.

- Such an obvious "clear intent" as above was precisely what all those days of hand counting and Chad checking (too late to save those earlier African American precinct rejections) was supposed to be about.

- Even a conservative mathematical estimate on how many African American ballots / votes that were rejected despite the clearest intent imaginable for which candidate they were voting for along with that 95% support for Gore in the African American communities of Florida concluded tens of thousands of Gore votes in Florida were never counted, might not have even made it to the hanging Chad checking stage of the recount on which all those supposedly "definitive" after the fact reviews were based.

Al Gore would very likely have sprung into action to spread the word at airports to be particularly on the look out for suspicious behavior based on that alarming Presidential Daily Briefing Bush got weeks before his 9/11 Attack instead of blowing it off and ignoring it so he could get back to clearing brush down at the ranch the way Bush did and while Rice ignored it as well.

Similar to the way his boss Clinton responded pro-actively whenever he got such an Intel briefing. A serious response like that is almost always picked up and known by the terrorist plotters and they will either drop their plan or behave more suspiciously out of fear in the knowledge that "someone gives a shit and is looking for us. ".

No such worry clouded the intentions or altered the behavior of those 9/11 hijackers under GW Bush. And for good reason; he and Rice didn't give a shit enough to respond to that alarming early warning PDB.

Same as Trump didn't give a shit about all expert warnings for him not to do something so dangerous and stupid as to defund and remove the highly successful Early Warning, Pandemic Prevention Team from those Chinese labs in 2018 and 2019.

Consequently, it is extremely doubtful there would have been a 9/11 Attack at all then or another time during an Al Gore presidency. Therefore, no invasion of Iraq and no war in Afghanistan.

Oh, and no 2008 GW Bush Financial Crisis near total collapse of Capitalism and the American Economy for Obama-Biden to rescue and recover us from either.

That 2000 stolen election by Jeb and his fellow Repubs had massive and disastrous domino-effect repercussions.

[Spidy]

Make no mistake about it, convict Trump is the American "boggeyman", we all fear and loath. More specifically the "Project 2025 Boogeyman"! And let's not forget the sidekick Tweedledee "Single Mom Cat Women" boogeyman!

Yes, as Trump and Repubs, attempt to paint Harris in a poor light, in as many ways as they can, to see what will sticks to the wall and have you believe Veep Harris is "bad for the presidency of the office", that Harris is "bad for the economy", that Harris "has no vision for the country", that Harris "isn't going to be "tough on crime", that Harris will make "America look bad on the international stage", that Harris "isn't intelligent" and lets not forget the newly minted, Harris will be "bad mongering", schtick...sigh!

• Just for the records:
  
  For me anyways, it has always been perfectly clear that whatever the circumstances, world events, changes in gov't administrations, viruses, pandemics, or political "boogeymen" and "boogeywomen", that have seemingly blocked our path to "putang", any mongerer worth their salt, have always adapted and thrived. --Enuf said!

So let's be real clear, Trump, Vance, Repubs and Project 2025, are the REAL "boggeymen", Americans should pay attention to:

Project 2025, a subversive doctrine, is roughly a 1,000-page document they have written as a manual for their right-wing fascist 2025 administration. They are TELLING you, what this American "boggeyman" hellscape will look like, if Trump/Vance ticket, is elected in 2024 (Note: This is just a short list):

• Mass layoffs of civil servants • Install Trump loyalists • Terminate Constitution
• Investigate political advisors • Seal-Team 6 "sanctioned" political killing

• Mass deportations • Bomb Mexico • Shoot Migrants • Electrify Wall
• Reinstate and expand the ban of people from Muslim-majority countries
• Impose immigrant "ideological screening" • Revoke student protesters visas w/ceasefire

• Gut/Terminate the Dept. of Education • Teach "patriotic education"
• Shoot shoplifters • Require "stop & frisk" • Billionaire Tax-Cuts/exempt f/prosecution
• Mass tent camps for homeless people • Re-institutionalize the mentally ill

• Immunity to all police officers • Deploy Military/National Guard to combat protests
• Federal takeovers of Democratic cities including D.C., Chicago and New York
• Gut the green energy programs • Exit the Paris Climate Accords
• Gut the EPA Increase the use of fossil fuels & discard EVs

• Enforce the 1873 Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide
• Punish Hospital that provide any transgender care
• Nationwide ban on abortion, women's care, trans care minors

• End Birthright Citizenship
• Allow states to roll-back/punish, women's, LGBTQ and minority rights, as they see fit
• Withdraw from NATO • No "two-state" solution • 10% Tarrif on foreign goods

Sure the world would NOT come to an END, as some folk like to tell ya, but it sure would turn to shit! As "everything turns to shit under Trump", just as things ALWAYS do under Trump!

... By stark contrast, when Dems warn us that this or that Repub policy will wreak havoc on the American economy and the lives of millions of Americans, that is exactly what happens. And all too often it truly does bring us to the brink of destroying Capitalism and the American Economy as we know and love it.

So my Days of suffering through know nothing, do nothing, Deadbeat Repubs who insist THEY know how to do anything well and positive for America and that the "idiot" Dems just don't know what they are doing are long, long, long over.

Agreed! As Trump and Repubs, attempt to gaslight they their way to the WH, they do this, precisely because they have become a "know nothing, do nothing" party, under Trump

I ain't falling for that Repub con anymore.

Yep, me neither! Even Veep Harris, says "Don't fall for the okey-doke" (...kkkk!)

[EihTooms]

A comment and a question. The definitive, after-the-fact study of the 2000 election was done by a group of 8 newspapers, the New York Times, The WSJ, the Tribune Company, the Washington Post, the AP, the St. Petersburg Times, the Palm Beach Post, and CNN. They went back and counted all the hanging chads et cetera and determined Bush would have won anyway if the Supreme Court hadn't stopped the count.

Allan "Rudy Giuliani" Lichtman apparently is approaching the problem from a different angle. I'd like to know how whoever was counting votes knew whether a ballot was marked by a black person or a white person. Lichtman's argument sounds racist to me, that minority voters don't know how to mark ballots.

That's not to say that we might not have been better off under Gore. Maybe Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

And now the question. Elvis brought up Kamala Harris' involvement in getting FOSTA and SESTA passed. I haven't seen a peep out of anyone about that. How do you gentlemen feel about publishing reports here, knowing that Kamala's legislation might just get you or the owners of this site that we treasure thrown in jail? Kamala Harris is not the Monger's Friend.

Without a link I really can't say exactly where and how all those people got it wrong. But from your description of it I suspect they were focused on ballots with or without hanging chads and all that. Which is not what the study and investigation Lichtman testified in found to be the evidence that votes for Gore were not accepted or counted at all. Did you read the actual link for the actual most definitive study of it that I posted?

On FOSTA and SESTA, they fall within the usual sucker social issues on which I would never base my vote. Society will work that out regardless who is in the WH. And it will wind up being more liberal than conservative. That's how human beings are. That is what they want.

Meanwhile, none of your parables will ever change the inarguable facts of historic and quite current horrific Repub economic policy and stewardship results vs historic and quite current positive Dem economic policy and stewardship results.

Call it Real World (Dem) results vs Academic and Repeatedly Debunked (Repub) results perhaps.

The fact is whenever Repubs, Wingers, Trumpsters, Conservatives, Bothsiders, Neithersiders, Independents or whatever moniker they are hiding behind warn us that the Dems' plan, policies and stewardship will surely destroy Capitalism and the American Economy as we know and love it according to some passage in a text book written by a ludite, they turn out to be 100% wrong in every conceivable way; we get historic economic Recoveries, Expansions, jobs creation, business successes, even reduced budget deficits and, often, legislation destined to become revered by most Americans as examples for what really Makes America Great.

And we usually get those pronouncement from the clueless rabble just as Dems are coming into office to clean up the typical colossal mess of everything the Repub left behind.

By stark contrast, when Dems warn us that this or that Repub policy will wreak havoc on the American economy and the lives of millions of Americans, that is exactly what happens. And all too often it truly does bring us to the brink of destroying Capitalism and the American Economy as we know and love it.

So my Days of suffering through know nothing, do nothing, Deadbeat Repubs who insist THEY know how to do anything well and positive for America and that the "idiot" Dems just don't know what they are doing are long, long, long over.

I ain't falling for that Repub con anymore.