Election Meddling

GW Johnson · 2017-07-27 18:59:42

Why not just issue 10-to-100-times more guest worker permits than we do now, and forget all the wall constructions and border guard issues? None of these migrant workers take jobs that Americans are willing to do, that much is certain. The stats show it, if you disbelieve all the ideological propaganda.

I'm not at all talking about paths to citizenship, only paths for "bracero" legal foreign worker permits. We've done this before, and quite successfully. For over a century.

Such folks who stay up here "long term", paying taxes and raising kids, should actually have a path to citizenship. Those are the folks we really want. I honestly don't give a good goddamn what their heritage or former nationality is. Why should anyone care, who is not a racist?

Screw the ideologies. Screw the politics. Screw the parties and the politicians. Why not do what we already know works? And it is well-proven to work very well, at that?

GW

SpaceNut · 2017-07-27 19:43:46

This is what you get when you vote for the people nd not party or what the leasere says to do for party.... So It’s Extortion: Trump Threatens to Defund Alaska because Senator Murkowski Voted ‘No’ on Trumpcare

Along with the probe there is the still ongoing efforts New York AG Schneiderman working with intel community; Trump/Russia arrests coming

SpaceNut · 2017-07-30 10:15:19

Commentary on New Report Exposes Thousands of Illegal Votes from 2016 Election

Government Accountability Institute concluded in its report that thousands of votes in the 2016 election were illegal duplicate votes from people who registered and voted in more than one state.

The Government Accountability Institute was able to obtain voter registration and voter history data from only 21 states because while some states shared it freely, “others impose exorbitant costs or refuse to comply with voter information requests.”
The Institute compared the lists using an “extremely conservative matching approach that sought only to identify two votes cast in the same legal name.” It found that 8,471 votes in 2016 were “highly likely” duplicates.
Extrapolating this to all 50 states would likely produce, with “high-confidence,” around 45,000 duplicate votes.

Not millions as claimed with data contained in the state’s voter registration system. NH did not give up voter information but the GAI claim that the win for clinton could be not so based on biased use of direction of error possible....

“the probability of correctly matching two records with the same name, birthdate, and social security number is close to 100 percent.” In fact, “using these match points will result in virtually zero false positives.”

So the Real ID would fix the problems found.

The Institute also found more than 15,000 voters registered at prohibited addresses “such as post office boxes, UPS stores, federal post offices, and public buildings.” In some cases, more than 100 voters “were registered to the same UPS store locations.”
They also found voters whose registered addresses were “gas stations, vacant lots, abandoned mill buildings, basketball courts, parks, warehouses, and office buildings.”

Election Integrity Commission as it researches the registration and voting process and looks for ways to fix its vulnerabilities and security problems, enhance our democratic process, and make sure every eligible American votes and is not disenfranchised by illegal votes. There are other issues that also must be fixed in addition to the Identification....

SpaceNut · 2017-07-30 21:29:47

But once past the ID then there is the electronics which we know have been hacked and that changes the voted outcome...
Defcon hackers find it’s very easy to break voting machines

The machines were not protected and were just some of the machines used in the election....

GW Johnson · 2017-08-01 15:58:51

As RobertDyck showed above, there are many ways and means to a practical and very positive ID at the voter polls. Restricting this is prima facie evidence for trying to restrict which citizens can vote and which cannot, to whatever criteria suits whoever is legislating the restrictions. And I think the judges have already seen through this evil. Same kind of evil nonsense as gerrymandering districts, except even worse. Yet people still believe this bullshit is a worthwhile solution to a real problem, when in point of fact (so far) it is a solution in search of a problem.

As for REAL voting security, if a computer is involved, it can be hacked, especially if it connects in any conceivable way to the internet! PERIOD. END OF ISSUE! It can be hacked even without connecting to the internet, but some somewhat-specialized radio equipment is involved. This has been known since the 1980's.

What that really means is that the ONLY secure ballot is a paper ballot, counted physically. There needs to be a defined and uniform standard about how these are printed and read, to avoid all that "hanging chad" and "butterfly ballot" bullshit. The downside is that it may take a day or two to count all the votes, just like it did in the 1950's. Big f***ing deal.

And, IMHO election hackers need to be strung up from the nearest light pole by their own entrails. No exceptions, not even for diplomats from foreign countries. Wherever we find and identify them. As soon as we identify them.

Paragraph 2 above is also why I believe driverless cars and pilotless airplanes are REALLY BAD ideas.

GW

Antius · 2017-08-19 08:08:47

The Democrats are funded by Saudi Wahabi's that want Islam to conquer the Western world. They also receive money from Israel.

Why should we honestly care if the Republicans received some funds from Russia. They are arseholes, but so are the Saudis. There has been scant evidence of Russian collusion in the US election so far. But if it did happen, why would it be unacceptable and Saudi collusion acceptable? Or is it just that the Republicans are the 'wrong sort of people'?

Last edited by Antius (2017-08-19 08:09:39)

GW Johnson · 2017-08-19 17:02:02

I already told you why Trump is so insistent on dismissing his connection to the Russians. He is incredibly vulnerable to pressure from Putin, because most of his recent income comes from Russian customers, and he owes a ton to Russian banks run by the Russian mobsters who symbiotically keep Putin in power. If Trump’s tax returns and related financial documents ever came to light, this would be revealed for what it is.

For the final time, it ain’t about “collusion”, it’s about vulnerability to extortion and blackmail. It’s about total ignorance regarding the job he holds. It’s about a complete inability to work for anybody but himself, in violation of the purpose of his job. It’s about being a bully and a racist, not a uniter. It’s about being the most egregiously unfit person to ever hold the office of President of the United States, in all of our country’s history.

Post 974: he’s not being criticized for denouncing violent hate groups. He’s being criticized for not denouncing violent hate groups until forced to. Those hate groups are a big part of his political base, and have been since early in his campaign. His former strategist Bannon pulled off getting him elected in part by including those hate groups in Trump’s base. Bannon has gone back to Breitbart, whose business model is catering to those same hate groups.

Post 975: what you imply about Saudi Wahabbism is sort-of true. It really is a supreme evil. That is their state religion, although the princes themselves do not practice it. They have funded schools and mosques around the Muslim world to teach this evil since the 1950’s, using oil revenues to do it. They are thus actually by far the largest promoter of state-sponsored terrorism on the entire planet, and they have been for over 6 decades now. That has little connection to either Democrats or Republicans in the US, which is where you are wrong. Those parties are owned by the financial giants of the corporate world. THAT is why the 2016 US elections were rigged to give us two evils to “choose” from.

GW

louis · 2017-08-19 19:54:40

This is well established - the amount of money that went into the Clinton Foundation from Arab state sources is amazing. Also Huma Abedin's family are a Muslim Brotherhood clan - and Huma has never repudiated that background, never condemned her family for supporting that murderous conspiracy.

Foreign influence on votes is basically a law of life. We had the Irish PM over in the UK campaigning during our EU referendum. The USA has tried to influence elections all over the planet for decades past. Everyone knows Russia (and before them the USSR) tries to influence election results. Big deal!

Antius wrote:

The Democrats are funded by Saudi Wahabi's that want Islam to conquer the Western world. They also receive money from Israel.
Why should we honestly care if the Republicans received some funds from Russia. They are arseholes, but so are the Saudis. There has been scant evidence of Russian collusion in the US election so far. But if it did happen, why would it be unacceptable and Saudi collusion acceptable? Or is it just that the Republicans are the 'wrong sort of people'?

Terraformer · 2017-08-20 02:20:14

Remember foreign interference in our referendum last year, when Barack Obama tried to meddle by telling us that we'd be at the back of the queue for a trade deal he would have no say in negotiating? Then the winner of the US election told us we'd be at the front of the queue. Good times.

I find it hilarious that the "Trump dossier" of damaging information, lapped up so eagerly by Trumps opponents, was put together by a non-American. I guess contacting foreigners for damaging information on your opponent is only wrong if your last name is Trump.

SpaceNut · 2017-09-04 20:00:55

The commision to review voter fraud seems to have gotten Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny

Electronic voter registration logs were tampered with....North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Arizona with at least 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers, according to interviews with nearly two dozen national security and state officials and election technology specialists.

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November.
Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours.
Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before.

and yet nothing was done to correct the issue....
Russian hackers had not altered the vote count on Election Day but altered the votes that could be cast indirectly changing the results....

The growing level of colusion to take payments and more is mounting in the investigation which will shake the US as never before.

SpaceNut · 2017-09-07 19:19:41

Social media proved its value in a huricane rescue efforts but it was not so good when it came to politics as it was used to spread lies....
Facebook disclosure of Russian ads may be "tip of the iceberg," says Sen. Mark Warner

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to know more about Facebook and Twitter ads apparently bought by phony Russian accounts during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The American people deserve to know both the content and the source of information that is being used to try to affect their votes

Facebook has "not closed the book" on Russian-linked internet troll investigation

Facebook said it has shut down the fake accounts that were still active.

edit::
"Collusion network" Facebook flaw leads to millions of fake "likes"

The researchers, from the University of Iowa and Lahore University of Management Science in Pakistan, found dozens of sites that operate so-called collusion networks, which rapidly generate users' likes for free.
Facebook posts that rapidly receive a lot of likes are more likely to be placed higher in other people's feeds, meaning users buoyed by fake likes can ultimately generate significantly more real attention and influence.
In order to participate, users have to grant the networks wide-ranging access to their accounts, so that those accounts can be harnessed to like others.
The networks exploit code known as OAuth, which allows third-party applications such as Spotify, iMovie and the Playstation Network to access users' Facebook accounts from anywhere between a few hours to even months at a time.
Researchers warn the exploit can be used for darker purposes than just gathering extra likes.
"In addition to reputation manipulation, attackers can launch other serious attacks using leaked access tokens. For example, attackers can steal personal information of collusion network members as well as exploit their social graph to propagate malware," they write in their forthcoming paper.

Most people make use of there cell phones for this operating on an OS that is Android.....so probably more than likes are going on...

Antius · 2017-09-15 10:21:51

SpaceNut wrote:

Director of the NSA, Admiral Mike Rogers, has admitted in a private town-hall-style meeting of NSA staffing that Donald Trump did, in fact, collude with the Russians. Months ago it was reported that there was a FISA surveillance warrant on Carter Page, dating back to at least the summer of 2016, which would have been right in the middle of the time he worked for the Donald Trump campaign.
The surveillance on Carter Page actually goes back much further than originally thought. It goes all the way back to 2014. This means that every word of Page’s remote communications with Donald Trump and the campaign have likely been recorded.

Who cares. What does collude mean anyway? The Democrats receive campaign contributions from the pro-Israel lobby, Saudi Arabia, China, to name just a few. I would fully expect Trump to have conversations with the Russians. It is not an insensible thing for an aspiring president to do. Wouldn't it be great to actually find a way of getting along with these people? The fuss and paranoia generated by the US media over 'Trump and the Russians' is absurd. The Washington Post and New York Times are Zionist rags pushing their own interests and a lot of people are either too ignorant or too stupid to see through it.

Last edited by Antius (2017-09-15 10:23:00)

GW Johnson · 2017-09-15 16:01:54

Look, "collusion" isn't the problem, vulnerability to foreign extortion is. Collusion is a moral failure, not a legal failure.

Vulnerability to foreign extortion depends upon where your income actually comes from, and to whom you owe money for the loans needed to run big businesses.

Generally speaking, western banks won't touch Trump, because of his 6 bankruptcies-of-record as a real estate mogul. The reason he did not fade into richly-deserved obscurity with bankruptcy number 6 was a moral failure on the part of the Wall Street investment banks: they thought (rightly) they could make more money from keeping him financially alive to sell use of his name, than from liquidating him.

Since then most of his customers and investment bankers have been Russian. The same Russian mafia that keeps itself in power by keeping Putin in power. If Trump's tax returns were ever revealed, that is exactly what they would reveal.

Why else would he do "anything" to keep them secret? He's in hock up to his eyebrows to the same Russian mafia that keeps Putin in power. If they say "frog", he has to hop, just like Putin.

Sooner or later, they WILL say "frog". And he will have to hop. Not tolerable in a US president.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-09-15 16:05:24)

SpaceNut · 2017-09-15 18:36:57

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/collusion

An agreement between two or more people to defraud a person of his or her rights...
A secret arrangement wherein two or more people whose legal interests seemingly conflict conspire to commit Fraud upon another person

Electoral fraud, election manipulation, or vote rigging is illegal interference with the process of an election, whether by increasing the vote share of the favored ...

Months of adamantly denying that investigators would find even a shred of evidence pointing to collusion between his campaign and Russia meetings this has been found to not be true as there has been many meetings

"Collusion networks" can gain a foothold through some third-party apps on Facebook. Researchers say a security loophole has allowed at least a million Facebook ... Media-sourced proof that Russia threw the 2016 election for Trump, and Trump colluded with the effort.

Facebook revealed Russia had bought ads ahead of the election, a tangle of financial relationships between Trump and his operation with Russian money.

Trump campaign and other associates have worked really hard to hide their connections with Russians.

In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's nation or sovereign (the crime of) showing no loyalty to your country,

.

GW Johnson · 2017-09-16 11:05:22

The Constitution defines treason as either (1) making war upon the United States, or (2) providing aid and comfort to its enemy; and it prescribes the procedures by which government officers or private citizens can be tried for it. Conviction requires at least 2 witnesses to the act, or a confession in open court.

Impeachment could be for treason, or it could be for the deliberately ill-defined "high crimes and misdemeanors", as it has been 3 times before. Impeachment procedures are also defined by the Constitution. The House draws up and brings charges, the trial is conducted in the Senate, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding, not the VP. There are no standards for conviction given, except for treason. But it does take a 2/3 super-majority of the Senate to convict, that is specified.

Lawyers are not needed to interpret these things. The language in the Constitution is clear enough to someone with 3rd grade reading ability.

Now, collusion with the Russians to sway the election might (or might not) be worthy of an impeachment trial. Who knows? We'll see. Last time around, oral sex with an intern in the Oval Office was considered worthy. There's no real accounting for politics, anyway. And impeachment is most clearly a political process, or it would have been relegated to the courts by the Constitution.

But what is clear is that the Russians (1) attempted to sway voters' choices with fake news stirring up the "alt-right", the same as they have been doing in Europe in recent years, and (2) they tried and mostly-failed (but not entirely-failed) to break into voter registration records, voting records, and voter machines.

Personally, I consider those 2 things acts of war. And they have gone unanswered. More than just Trump deserve to be run up against the wall and shot for that lack, if nothing else. This has been going on since before the 2016 election.

As for the "alt right", which is largely the Nazis, the KKK, the other white supremacist groups, and similar trash: this country didn't go to total war to destroy Nazi Germany, only to see people marching in its streets under the Nazi swastika flag, and giving Nazi salutes.

And we didn't fight a Civil War only to see the KKK try to bring back a de-facto form of slavery, except that THAT is EXACTLY what happened after the Civil War, until the 1960's. After a century of that bullshit, it's way past time to put an end to it, and finally heal.

There are no "good" Nazis. There are no "good" KKK, etc. The sooner we quit being politically correct about this, the sooner we can rid our society of these enemies-of-our-state.

As for Confederate heroes, Mr. Lincoln chose not to regard the Confederates as traitors at the end of the Civil War, in the interest of reuniting a fatally-divided country. We don't need to reverse his decision today! The Confederate monuments were erected mostly in the 1920's as part of the intimidation during the century of de-facto slavery after the Civil War. You can tell because of the lack of other types of monuments to other heroes, where these were erected.

And yet, while we can reject what these Confederates fought for, we can still admire the skill and valor with which they fought! This is not an insignificant thing: that war lasted 4 years, not 1, precisely because of that very skill and valor. THAT is why some US military bases are named for Confederate heroes, such as Ft. Hood near where I live.

What Schwartzkopf used in the ’91 Gulf War was a Confederate tactic, but at the army level, something not done since the Civil War. And it worked, just as it did 150+ years ago. American ingenuity at its best, even if it was Confederate. That is something worth remembering.

There is no need to destroy 100% of this for the sake of a political correctness fad-of-the-moment. We just need to recognize the difference between what these monuments meant to those who erected them, versus what they can still mean for all of us today. Perhaps changes of venue are appropriate. Perhaps a mix of monuments to more diverse people is even more appropriate.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-09-16 11:11:14)

kbd512 · 2017-09-17 07:19:04

SpaceNut,

The judges in our courts system already understand that spreading political propaganda through social media is not a crime, but this point of law seems to be lost on you and GW. Even so, make your best attempt at explaining what crimes you think were committed by spreading political speech on social media, whether the information was factual or otherwise and whether it was spread by a foreign government, super pac, or some dimwit in his mother's basement who was "offended" that someone he didn't like ran for President.

When various media outlets spread information by mass media using "anonymous sources" from within the FBI, or from our various intelligence agencies, and former FBI Director James Comey knew those media reports were factually incorrect, were any of the members of our media ever prosecuted for that?

Maybe some of them were fired by the media outlets they worked for because they were sorry excuses for journalists and their "stories", or should I say "fairy tales", were later proven to be factually incorrect, but were they ever prosecuted by our government for spreading false information?

If those sorry excuses for journalists were never prosecuted, do you think there might be some reason for that beyond the fact that their ignorance-based narratives agreed with your political persuasions?

Apart from our growing population of obese people, the US doesn't have a "soft underbelly". It does far too many people with "soft heads". The evidence for that is that they're too ignorant to question everything any media or government source says or does. They're so spectacularly ignorant that they don't even know what pertinent laws apply to using social media for political purposes. Apart from libel or making threats, both favored tactics of leftist groups, there are few laws regarding freedom of speech and that's a very good thing. Thank you for proving that point to the rest of the world reading this in a way that I never could.

Since this point of law isn't clear, the second you say "I think", "I believe", "it seems to me", or anything of the sort, you're stating an opinion. You can have the opinion that the sky is red, even if the rest of us see blue, and it's not a crime of any kind. The rest of the people watching the "red sky" / "blue sky" argument are free to believe whatever they want. Similarly, you can have the opinion that former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is a liar and a felon who should either be in jail or on trial right now because that's exactly what would happen if someone in the military decided that laws pertaining to classified information did not apply to them. Absent the evidence backing that opinion that only the FBI has, it's still just my opinion. If someone who works directly or indirectly for a foreign government posts that same opinion to social media, then their opinion is still within our laws and they may do so, whether you like it or not.

Political speech you don't agree with is still not a crime, no matter how much you want it to be. Oddly enough, there are still no calls from anyone in the Democrat Party to prosecute former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for actual theft of state secrets. Taking classified information from a secure environment and downloading it to your home server is an actual federal crime, destroying evidence of the theft of state secrets is an actual federal crime, and so is lying to FBI agents about such activities. It doesn't matter whether or not you meant to do it or not and it doesn't matter whether or not you did so knowingly or through carelessness or ignorance, it's still a federal crime.

Everyone who handles classified information for our federal government receives extensive training on what is permitted and what is not, what the laws and regulations regarding handling of classified information are, and they also receive continuing training and reminders about handling classified information for as long as they hold a security clearance. Former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, knew exactly what the law was, as it pertained to handling of classified information, but she decided to violate the law anyway.

The Democrat Party ran a candidate that the people in an overwhelming majority of electoral districts thought was a worse choice for President than President Trump and that's why former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, lost the election. Blaming everyone else for her personal failings and spreading nonsense related to this laughably absurd witch hunt that's gone on for the better part of a year without finding out which "witch" was to blame is so unbelievably silly that it's simply too tiring to respond to every absurdity I've seen posted here.

Former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, didn't inspire enough people to get off their rear ends and vote for her. We don't have popular votes because major cities aren't the only ones who get a say in elections in our system of governance. President Trump won the election because enough people voted for him in a plurality of electoral districts. That's all that happened. It's over. Let it go.

Next time, run a candidate who doesn't lie about things that don't even need to be lied about (because it's so obvious in a world where every time someone farts it's recorded on video and uploaded to the internet for posterity), stop patronizing and talking down to people, stop the identity politics nonsense, and stop allowing your party to rig its own elections for or against one candidate or another. Try finding someone who at least does a good job of pretending to like our country and its people, including the ones who live in "fly over" country. If your party can do those things, then they can simply undo everything President Trump did that they don't agree with. Otherwise, be prepared for another loss at the polls.

This politically motivated Trump-Russia investigation farce is the sort of conspiracy theory nonsense that belongs on a Rachel Maddow or Alex Jones show. The US federal government has been investigating President Trump and his campaign staff for over a year now and we still don't have anything approaching "evidence" of anything at all. We have lots of proven lies from leftist media outlets, rumors, and innuendo from "anonymous sources", which is just liberal regressive speak for "I just made something up to disparage President Trump because I hate President Trump", but nothing in the way of actual evidence.

SpaceNut · 2017-09-17 17:56:37

Rallying cry to 'resist' Trump evolves

The Capitol's ruling Democrats introduced more than 35 bills to mount policy blockades against Trump. Four have since become law or part of the state budget, and eight more await the governor's signature.

Will the 2018 House Elections Be 2006 All Over Again? Will Democrats win control of the House of Representatives Democrats they would have to pitch a near-perfect game to take control of the Senate (the map heavily favors Republicans), the House will likely remain the main event in national electoral politics for the next year and a half.

Of course this all started with the changing of the electoral lines to begin with...
Fight Over Electoral District Boundaries Heads To Supreme Court

Lie cheat steal ect... win at any cost... “There is a sense that something has gone amiss with American democracy, that there is this effort to rig the rules of the game.”

It is a political practice nearly as old as the United States - manipulating the boundaries of legislative districts to help one party tighten its grip on power in a move called partisan gerrymandering - and one the Supreme Court has never curbed.
That could soon change, with the nine justices making the legal fight over Republican-drawn electoral maps in Wisconsin one of the first cases they hear during their 2017-2018 term that begins next month. Their ruling in the case could influence American politics for decades.
The case began in 2015 when a dozen Wisconsin Democratic Party voters sued state election officials claiming the redistricting law intended to discriminate against them for their political beliefs and create enduring Republican majorities.

SpaceNut · 2017-09-18 20:34:28

Collusion with an enemy:
Exclusive: US government wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman under secret court orders before and after the election

Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

SpaceNut · 2017-09-25 18:56:30

Private email server bad but private email? Jared Kushner used personal email to communicate with White House officials

Not....

Before and even after the presidential election, Trump criticized his opponent Hillary Clinton for handling classified information on a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. So where is the same response?
Plus even more have been found to be doing the same ....

EPA removes waste at Texas toxic sites, won't say from where but recovered 517 containers of "unidentified, potentially hazardous material" from highly contaminated toxic waste sites in Texas that flooded last month during Hurricane Harvey.

GW Johnson · 2017-09-27 10:58:10

What I think we have seen is that there is not a GOP that controls Congress and the White House, there are really two, and they cannot agree with each other. One is the far-right extremists that want to impose extremist ideology as policy (a really bad idea), and the rest, who understand that governance involves a lot more than ideology.

There was a recent op-ed page political cartoon that summed it up quite succinctly: an elephant with a head at each end.

Because imposed ideology is such a bad substitute for debated policy (even if not extremist), I propose that the non-extremist part of the GOP get with the Democrats, and get back to governing this country with realistic policy proposals, something not done in multiple decades. That part of the GOP plus the Democrats would outnumber the GOP extremists, so this could theoretically actually work, at least until the next election cycle.

The problem is fears of not being re-elected for not being ideologically "pure", and of being "primaried". So I think such two-party governing behavior is still unlikely. Although it is urgently necessary.

We may need to eliminate gerrymandering by taking the drawing of districts out of the hands of state legislatures and giving it to some sort of independent groups, probably involving the courts to one extent or another. That would make the representation more fair overall, and also go a long way toward eliminating the political evil of "primarying".

I'd like to see the elected rep spend the majority of his term working for the people instead of off-the-job running for re-election. I think we need some severe limits on the window for campaigning, both at the primary and general election levels. If not that, at least suspend all salaries and office allowances when out campaigning.

And I am apalled at how the rich giants own everything about our government, using it as the tool to extract everything from us. We are headed for financial slavery because of it, if not already there. The destruction of the middle class is well underway, and I just told you how it is being done. We need strict and severe limits on private monies for campaigning.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-09-27 11:10:15)

Antius · 2017-09-28 16:57:23

What the British government did today should confirm to anyone that the British government is not a democratic organisation. It is not so different in it’s use of arbitrary power as the likes of the Chinese government.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09 … rror-laws/

Whatever one thinks of the politics of Scottish Dawn, they are a political protest organisation. To my knowledge, they do not carry out assassinations or plant bombs. That didn’t deter the British government from banning them as a terrorist organisation. As such, anyone found to be a member or promoting or associating with them in any way, faces a long prison sentence.

The Home Secretary Amber Rudd gave the following reasons for banning the organisation:
‘National Action is a vile racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic group which glorifies violence and stirs up hatred while promoting their poisonous ideology, and I will not allow them to masquerade under different names.
“By extending the proscription of National Action, we are halting the spread of a poisonous ideology and stopping its membership from growing – protecting those who could be at risk of radicalisation.’

In other words, they were banned and criminalised not because of anything they did, but because the UK’s despotic Home Secretary doesn’t like their ideology, and in her typical oafish way, decided to crush something she didn’t agree with, probably without even understanding the significance of what she was doing.

This effectively makes the UK a totalitarian state. We still go through the motions of having elections. But political parties are not free to present radically different policies to those of the powers that be. If you don’t bow down to the ideals of cultural Marxism, then you are a terrorist and a criminal. People are not free to express opinions – if your opinion is offensive to anyone, you can be arrested and charged with inciting hatred in Britain. One has to wonder what the point of elections actually is under conditions like this.

The same Home Secretary recently brought into power a bill that allows the UK police, MI5 and other government agencies, unlimited access to the online activities and phone calls of any individual. From now on, anything you say, write, search for, or read can be intercepted and used against you.

According to the Sun newspaper, here are some of the activities the British government will imprison you for:

‘Being a member of, or inviting support for a banned terror organisation is a criminal offence carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Arranging or assisting in arrange a meeting of a banned group or speaking to a meeting can also be punished with a decade long prison term.
Wearing clothing or carrying something that arouses suspicion you are a member or supporter of a banned group is punishable by six months inside or a fine of up to £5,000.
Any group can be banned by the Home Secretary if she believes it is concerned in terrorism.
This includes committing a terrorist act, preparing a terrorist act, encouraging terrorism, or being otherwise concerned in terrorism.’

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4569388/b … awn-ns131/

Apparently, you can now go to prison for wearing the wrong clothing, failing to avert suspicion that you aren’t a member of a group the government doesn’t agree with; wearing the wrong symbols; arranging a meeting for people they don’t like; even talking to a group of them.

This sort of corruption goes far beyond Orwell’s most Dystopian fantasy. The sort of nightmares he dreamed of are now real life. The greatest enemy of any thinking Briton, is his own government. How can these people presume to lecture the likes of North Korea when their own policies are based on such complete oppression of their own people?

SpaceNut · 2017-10-14 20:58:08

Its not often that they get there...

On another note: I think the horse is not only out of the barn but is in the next county on this as Wary of Hackers, States Move to Upgrade Voting Systems

State election officials, worried about the integrity of their voting systems, are pressing to make them more secure ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Reacting in large part to Russian efforts to hack the presidential election last year, a growing number of states are upgrading electoral databases and voting machines, and even adding cybersecurity experts to their election teams.
One aim is to prepare for the 2018 and 2020 elections by upgrading and securing electoral databases and voting machines that were cutting-edge before Facebook and Twitter even existed. Another is to spot and defuse attempts to depress turnout and sway election results by targeting voters with false news reports and social media posts.

Well do not stop there as the voter registries of many states were also hacked and corrupted causing many that were registered to not be so on that very day of the vote.....

SpaceNut · 2017-10-21 12:22:10

Voter suppression in Wisconsin directly affected last year's election, Mother Jones investigation finds

In the 2016 election, President Trump won the state of Wisconsin by almost 23,000 votes. But a new report from Mother Jones published online Thursday found that statewide voter turnout in the Badger State was also the lowest it had been since 2000. Perhaps not coincidentally, the 2016 election was also the first major contest in Wisconsin to require registered voters to bring a current, valid form of state or national identification to the polls — just one of 33 election changes passed under Gov. Scott Walker (R). Other restrictions reduced early voting hours and restricted early voting locations. Such policies are ostensibly instituted to prevent or discourage voter fraud, but Mother Jones point

continue story here

SpaceNut · 2017-11-11 20:17:46

Reading NBC a list of Republicans are saying goodbye to Washington ahead of midterms to which a growing number of House Republicans are choosing to voluntarily drain the swamp one year ahead of the midterm elections. Nearly two dozen congressional Republicans have so far announced they will not be running for re-election, leaving Democrats enthusiastic about the potential for major gains in the 2018 elections. Nine Republicans are running for a different elected position, while 12 are retiring so far. We have seen some seats already change and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Thursday released its “One Year Out” strategy, announcing they plan to target 91 Republican held congressional districts.

kbd512 · 2017-11-25 19:22:22

SpaceNut,

Guess what? Anyone can post whatever they want online. Right or wrong, the internet hasn't yet been censored to only include information approved by the Ministry of Truth. I still don't have any Facebook, Twitter, or other social media accounts. I probably never will since it sounds like they're into propaganda. The people peddling this collusion nonsense are starting to sound a lot like the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Your party's candidate was so bad that she lost to a reality TV show star. It was apparent to everyone watching the utter nonsense of the Democrat Party and the Obama Administration that neither applied any principles grounded in the rule of law, apart from attacking anyone who didn't share their sophomoric ideology. The Democrats need to work on their party platform a bit, but I'm guessing they're only going to double down on the same ideological silliness that cost them the election.

President Obama stood up on national television and stated that the election results reflected the will of the American people. It may not have been his will or your will, but in our system of governance President Donald Trump won the election. Whether or not the Russians were for, against, or indifferent to former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, being elected President, I wouldn't vote for her now or ever.

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