Election Meddling

kbd512 · 2018-04-12 15:28:03

GW,

I can separate what a person says or believes from how they behave. If my wife decided she was going to vote for every Democrat in America tomorrow, I would love her no less and think no less of her. When I met her, I didn't ask what her politics or religious beliefs were because I simply did not care and I still don't. I can disagree with someone's reasoning completely and still love and respect them as a person.

I don't turn my back on people because they don't think and believe exactly as I do. Acceptance of differences is part of adult behavior and agreement is not required for acceptance. People are more than the sum of their political beliefs and always have been. I think we do ourselves a disservice if we forget that. I also think my own beliefs can withstand public scrutiny and debate. If they can't, then they're probably invalid to one degree or another and that is why I choose to engage in such debates. I don't feel the least bit threatened or otherwise put off by having my beliefs questioned or challenged.

We have friends and acquaintances who vote both ways. I seriously doubt either of us are going to start picking and choosing our friends based upon their group identity or their political proclivities. I won't presume to know what my wife truly believes about that, but I believe such behavior would be an unacceptable display of childishness. Sadly, that's exactly what some fairly well known liberals have suggested that their like-minded "true believers" should have done during the last election cycle. The notion that someone can only be "X" because they believe "Y" is facially absurd. I think we're a little more complicated than that.

What I object to is this recent trend in child-like behavior and responses to the political process. My beliefs about this are pretty simple:

1. It's not okay to exclude people you associate with, let alone sleep with (as some liberals have suggested others do), simply because they believe something you don't. My wife is a Buddhist. I'm an atheist. I think religion is stupid (all of it, without qualification, no matter what outcomes are produced), whereas she strongly associates her religion with the man she most admires, misses terribly, and can never get back... Her father. Our eldest son is a registered Democrat. We're Republicans. We love our child no less and that's never going to change.

2. All government is force, period and end of story. I would not use my vote to take anything from anyone else beyond what is minimally necessary for our system of governance to function. I believe anyone who thinks it's acceptable to use government (force) to take from other people specifically to benefit themselves is either incredibly naive or unjustifiably selfish or perhaps a bit of both, irrespective of their lot in life. I don't believe in equal outcomes and any attempt to produce equal outcomes is necessarily evil based upon what is required to produce such outcomes. Everyone should have equal opportunity, but that implies seizing upon whatever opportunity is presented and then capitalizing on it to the best of one's ability.

3. In a society purported to be "civilized", rioting and making accusations without evidence is not an acceptable form of protest when you lose a political argument or election. After an election is over with, unless it can be proven with tangible evidence that a significant number of votes were illegally cast or improperly counted, then all parties need to accept the results and move forward with the rest of life. Whether or not some foreign government, our own government, or a private party displayed some political propaganda on the internet or on TV is irrelevant. Propaganda doesn't change ballots. People do. Much like guns, this is yet another instance where liberals refuse to accept that a person did "X" and no inanimate object like "an internet propaganda meme" was ever capable of such behavior. It's a borders problem. They can't draw the distinction between the scenery and the actors. All the props in the world don't make a movie.

SpaceNut · 2018-04-15 18:03:19

Bullets are now flying with the James Comey gives first interview since President Trump fired him, Comey says his assumption Clinton would win was 'a factor' in the email investigation which many feel doomed her chances of a win. The Sarah Sanders for the Trump white house is saying that Comey announced new Clinton email probe to give himself 'cover', and that a 'Bipartisan consensus that James Comey doesn't have credibility'. Comey says Trump asked if he could disprove salacious allegations in 'dossier' which did kick off the investigation but we know how Trump reacts in typical Trump slams James Comey as 'slippery' in new Twitter tirade.
President Trump suggests ex-FBI Director Jamees Comey should go to jail but GOP House committee chairmen request Comey memos on Trump not just one but Three Republican House committee chairmen called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to turn over memos written by fired FBI Director James Comey unredacted copies of the memos "immediately."

SpaceNut · 2018-05-20 20:34:34

The art of collusion takes another turn as Foreigners tried to influence the 2016 election – Not just Russia of which Trump strikes back with the next Trump to ask Justice Department to look into campaign surveillance claims

kbd512 · 2018-05-28 18:50:13

SpaceNut,

Speaking different languages has little to do with whether or not we're united. The belief that we are not united says a lot more about the problem, real or imagined, than any language differences. I speak English because the overwhelming majority of Americans speak English so they can communicate with each other. There was no consideration of race or ethnicity in that decision.

The media doesn't even bother reporting what was actually said these days, much like your repost or re-tweet of their provably false claim that he called immigrants "animals". The media decide for themselves what they wanted everyone else to believe about what he actually said and then made up something they thought would support their narrative. Unless you just became another one of his stalkers, how would you know what President Trump did this weekend?

Liberals have an unhealthy Trump fetish that can best be described as Trump Derangement Syndrome. I used to think that was just a made up term to make fun of people, but the effects are all too frighteningly real. We had an election and we elected President Trump. Afterwards, liberals rioted, generally pitched fits like spoiled children, and said every possible ugly thing they could think to say because they lack the maturity to accept that they don't get their way every single time they think they should. Moving on with the rest of their lives is long overdue. Most children aren't still throwing tantrums two years after they lose a game, but far too many liberals are. If they spent as much time focusing on things that actually matter as they do on the personality of one person who they disagree with, it's likely that they'd lead much happier lives.

Memorial Day isn't about President Trump and the fact that the media made it about him only feeds the narcissism problem he has.

Anyway, turning the TV off and tuning the media out would be a change that would do everyone some good. Try it some time. The last time I watched the TV, I was watching the election results. The American people expressed their opinion on the matter with their votes and the people in the majority of electoral districts voted for Donald Trump. That's our form of representative government, it worked as it always has, and the result is what it is. There's another Presidential election in two years. There's another opportunity to choose a new President in two years.

The more personal attacks you post here about President Trump, the more certain I become that he was the right person for that job and the more certain I become that I will vote for him again in another two years. Thus far, you've also attacked former President Obama based upon the supposition that he was not a good President because he said the election results represented the will of the American people. Former President Obama handled the transfer of power graciously and I expect President Trump to do the same if he is not reelected. I look forward to more propaganda expressing outrage regarding why you believe our government is not operating as it should. Welcome to the club.

SpaceNut · 2018-06-07 18:16:36

Good luck for the people of Canada as I hope that it works out for the best interest of the people for whom is elected.

Speaking of US primary elections there were many over the last few days.
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/20 … ngres.html
http://www.startribune.com/eyes-are-on- … 484881751/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics … ar-AAyiaVT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/election … ew-mexico/

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3062 … ip-in-2018

commuted the prison sentence of Bradley Manning, and his actions were blatant intentional release of classified information to unauthorized persons or entities, yet I never heard you make a peep about it.

Oh Chelsey manning which sent log files to wikileak...the same organization that hacked the DNC computers to release all the emails...

I find now content reference as to what was leaked which was in the realm of classified information but the logs are history as captured and are a nothing as the events have already been seen by others.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/arti … this-week/

defense insisted that the documents themselves should never have been classified, and that their release has not caused any harm.
calling into question whether Manning was, in fact, the source of the documents given to WikiLeaks.
Assange was the government’s real target, and he repeatedly floated the idea that the government was trying to force Manning into a plea deal in exchange for his testimony against Assange, should the U.S. decide to pursue Assange and WikiLeaks for violating the Espionage Act.

No change of outcome really does not make any difference as to what might have been labeled classified if it is meant to be secret, confidential or top secret as these are all really a need to know condition for the information classing but there was question as to proof that he was the leaker and if he was proven to be the leaker was the length of time spent fit for that crime due to the outcome of that informational leak the correct amount before being commuted?

.
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SpaceNut · 2018-07-03 19:38:06

The FBI and CIA did disagree on what extent there was for collusion into the 2016 election but with aqddition data the Findings that Russia meddled to help Trump beat Clinton were 'accurate and on point': Senate intel panel

The disagreement even in the House was evident when the Democrats side of the report was redacted but now it is the sanets turn and its clear.

The assessment, announced in an unclassified summary released Tuesday, represents a direct repudiation of the committee's counterpart in the House - and of President Trump himself, who has consistently rejected assertions that Moscow sought to bolster his candidacy.
"The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions," said Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said in a statement .
Senate panel also found that a piece of Democratic-funded opposition research known as the Steele dossier did not "in any way the analysis in the ICA - including the key findings."
This was "because it was unverified information and had not been disseminated as serialized intelligence reporting," the Senate report found.

The roll that social media is also being examined even further than the adds that ran as to the data mining that was done as well to send people false information, fake news and just made up story lines that was targeting swaying the elections out come.

The summit of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has been agreed, its date and place will be announced on June 28. What could possibly go wrong? If recent history is any guide, we have no shortage of reasons to worry.

Trump doesn't care what people think about his relationship with Putin; President Donald Trump clearly doesn't care what anyone thinks about his baffling, opaque and deferential relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump apparently plans to meet with the Russian leader alone, likely with only translators in the room, at the start of their summit in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16.

SpaceNut · 2018-07-14 10:28:16

On the Trump visit to Putin “This is not a witch hunt, and it is certainly not a joke, as Donald Trump has desperately and incorrectly argued in the past,” 12 Russians accused of hacking Democrats in 2016 have plenty of Florida connections

Longtime South Florida Trump confidant Roger Stone had previously confirmed that he was in touch with the hackers, though he told CNN Friday that he didn’t think he was the person referred to in the indictment as “a person who was in regular contact with senior members” of the Trump administration who also communicated with the Guccifer hackers.

So now we know why he needs all the H1 visa's down in Maralogo.....

“Congressman Curbelo has and continues to condemn any and all foreign interventions in the American democratic process, and neither he nor anyone on his campaign has ever contacted any foreign agent to request illegally obtained documents or information,” Curbelo campaign spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said. “He welcomes today’s indictments and strongly encourages the Department of Justice to reveal the identity of the candidate for Congress who allegedly engaged a Russian agent.”

Since the attacks are still ongoing whats being done by each state to protect the registry data of legal voters, safe guard the equipment used to collect votes with backups of votes cast for the electronic equipments just to name a few things.....

SpaceNut · 2018-07-14 11:34:22

This is one way to deny real american the rights to vote The US is using an expanded fingerprint database to review the citizenship of thousands of Americans
Its a tool being used to screen out citizenship of those that come here. But I want to see how that trick works when baby prints are used to prove at birth that you are american born.

From one state election board, the Russians managed to steal information on 500,000 voters, Rosenstein said, although he did not identify which state. Trump won the 2016 election by winning three key states by slim margins that added up to around 80,000 votes.
The Russians also "targeted state and local offices responsible for administering the elections; and sent spearphishing emails to people involved in administering elections, with malware attached," Rosenstein said. He stressed, however, that the indictments contained "no allegation that the conspiracy altered the vote count or changed any election result."

Those small data skewing is enough to say that they did change the outcome as to what happeneed to purging of an acurate data base of registry to removal of people whom were not in the one used on election day to changing place of district that you were authorized to vote in three key states by slim margins that added up to around 80,000 votes.

https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results

Here are the number of electoral votes by battleground state: FL 29; PA 20; OH 18; MI 16; NC 15; VA 13; AZ 11; WI 10; CO 9; IA 6; NV 6; NH 4
Trump won in Pennsylvania with 48.8 percent of the vote, earning 20 electoral votes. Clinton won 47.7 percent of the vote. Error 3.5
Trump won in Florida with 49.1 percent of the vote, earning 29 electoral votes. Clinton won 47.7 percent of the vote. Error 3.2
Trump won in North Carolina with 50.5 percent of the vote, earning 15 electoral votes. Clinton won 46.7 percent of the vote. Error 2.8
Trump won in Ohio with 52.1 percent of the vote, earning 18 electoral votes. Clinton won 43.5 percent of the vote. Error 4.4
Trump won in Iowa with 51.7 percent of the vote, earning six electoral votes. Clinton won 42.3 percent of the vote. Error 6.0
Trump won in Wisconsin with 47.9 percent of the vote, earning 10 electoral votes. Clinton won 46.9 percent of the vote. Error 5.2
Trump won in Wisconsin with 47.5 percent of the vote, earning 16 electoral votes. Clinton won 47.3 percent of the vote. Error 5.2

Clinton won in New Hampshire with 47.6 percent of the vote, earning four electoral votes. Trump won 47.2 percent of the vote. Error 5.2
Clinton won in Nevada with 47.9 percent of the vote, earning six electoral votes. Trump won 45.5 percent of the vote. Error 6.6
Clinton won in Colorado with 47 percent of the vote, earning nine electoral votes. Trump won 44.8 percent of the vote. Error 8.2
Clinton won in Virginia with 49.7 percent of the vote, earning 13 electoral votes. Trump won 45 percent of the vote. Error 5.3

So if all states count 100% of all votes cast then there is aproblem with the Error numbers.

SpaceNut · 2018-07-21 08:21:59

The wars were against terrorist groups that used human shields and while we do not like the fact that civilians were killed in the actions these are still not the same as a leader using a secret policing system to rid that nation of its own people or what is considered problems.

Now we know why Trump does not like others in a room to hear a discusion of what he and others talk about.
Video tape and conversation fall under the same law of security protection.
'Totally unheard of & perhaps illegal': Trump erupts amid news that Michael Cohen may have secretly recorded a conversation with him

SpaceNut · 2018-07-22 21:35:24

The collusion was seen as abnormal communications to Russians. False claiming spin machine is at it still Rubio refutes Trump's tweets on Carter Page, saying FBI did not spy on Trump campaign FBI's releasal of a heavily redacted documents detailing the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

And so is the attacks on American voting democracy as we are still seeing increased hacking to undermine and influence the outcome of the elections is in violation of U.S. criminal law.

This is the tax chicken of 2017

The inflateable Trump Chicken has been showing up in so many places and it now has the jail bird stripes.

trump%20chicken%202_1518975813462.PNG_4979034_ver1.0_640_360_1532284229246.jpg_5834225_ver1.0_640_360.jpg

Terraformer · 2018-07-24 09:50:07

So, is a foreign national spreading Fake News interference in the election, or not?

kbd512 · 2018-07-24 10:42:53

Real journalists don't use anonymous sources for what are clearly politically motivated attacks, unless their only aim is to attack people they have political disagreements with.

GW Johnson · 2018-07-24 12:34:44

No one knows how good or bad the Steele dossier is yet, because it has yet to be made public. Premature to call it fake news, I should think.

GW

SpaceNut · 2018-08-11 17:01:21

Last year there was a short list to Trump's supreme court picks all of which happened as a result of Obamah's chance to put some one in office being delayed by the gop congress. So it comes as no suprise as the show is on the other foot that they want to push there pick through this time.
Memo shows Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh resisted indicting a sitting president Bill Clinton wanting to make the vote before the mid term elections as they could change the balance of power.

SpaceNut · 2018-08-28 17:38:41

Speaking for President Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the podium that my clearance has been stripped. John Brennan ‘Uncertain’ His Security Clearance Has Been Revoked

Normally documented when this occurs so ya it probably is not...

This is one way to change a vote even if its just a primary with the real deal coming in just 10 weeks. Arizona county wants polls open later amid Election Day delays

After a contractor failed to set upvoting machines across the county's more than 500 precincts, delaying voting at several dozen polling locations.

"This wasn't a problem of the machines. Our technology works well," said Fontes. "The problem was the actual setup of the technology in the polling places." "A negative impact on one voter is too much," said Fontes. "I really do feel terrible that we couldn't be there for every single voter."

SpaceNut · 2018-09-08 16:37:18

Rallies for the coming elections for the various states is ramping up...November midterm elections would give Americans "a chance to restore some sanity in our politics,".
Obama, on campaign swing, urges 'sanity in our politics'

There are many Republicans that could lose races where they have nominated candidates who are not seen as “likable” enough.

Top Trump Adviser Says Ted Cruz Could Lose Texas Senate Race

It would seem that Obama has taken a page out of the Trump play book in that Obama speaks at rally for Democratic congressional candidates in California

"As a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president but as a citizen, I'm here to deliver simple message and that is that you need to vote because our democracy depends on it,"

Another way to defeat Trump and his picks is to ???Their new mission? Foil Trump. Ex-intelligence officials run for Congress as Democrats. They've hit the campaign trail, fed up with what they see as the president's disdain for the intel community.

We have heard the montra of we will make Mexico pay for the wall over and over again and yet we are the ones footing the bill for it.
The military may build part of Trump’s border wall, but it won’t be easy

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is considering a request from the Department of Homeland Security that he spend about $450 million to build part of President Trump’s border wall in Arizona.
But the construction itself could run headlong into time-consuming environmental regulations and the funding may require support from a Congress that is bitterly divided over Trump, the border and immigration.
The request includes constructing a 30-foot barrier along nearly 32 miles of Arizona's Air Force’s Barry M. Goldwater bombing range near Yuma.
Mattis could declare the 32-mile section of wall vital to national security. Under federal law that would allow him to spend up to $50 million per year on building it.

kbd512 · 2018-09-09 22:44:29

SpaceNut,

The Intel community involved us in Iraq because they were not honest about the WMD's. If you place any trust in these clowns simply because they're now running for a political party you favor, then you'll get more needless wars. I guess as long as there's a "D" next to the name of the candidate and they hate President Trump, it doesn't matter what they do or say, does it? If there's one thing I've learned from the media during this past election cycle, it's that anything goes. There's no more journalistic integrity to be had, just brain excrement that one particular group of political partisans likes the taste of.

If anyone here thinks Robert O'Rourke will defeat Senator Ted Cruz in the next election, they need to stop lying to themselves in the same way they lied to themselves about President Trump having no chance of becoming President. This "Beto" character is another imaginative machination of the liberal left that has about the same chance of being voted into office as Hillary Clinton. The only "surprisingly fierce battle" for Senator Cruz's senate seat is going on between the ears of our radical leftists. I guess Texas will have to look forward to more riots when he's not elected to office. Maybe his failure to get elected will be the fault of the Chinese or the East Outer Mongolians this time.

JoshNH4H · 2018-09-10 15:54:47

Out of curiosity, kbd512, have you consulted the polls in the Texas race? RealClearPolitics puts the average of the polls at Cruz+4.4% with around 13% of voters undecided. Cruz is clearly the favorite in the race (He's leading in the polls, after all) but this suggests that the race is at least competitive. This is particularly true given that we're still about 2 months out from the election--it could go either way, though one would of course rather be Cruz than O'Rourke at this point. For reference, Cruz won by 16% in 2012 and Trump won by 9% in 2016.

For the record, Clinton was leading by about 3-4% on the eve of the election, and forecasters such as 538 believed she had a 2/3 chance of winning. She ended up winning the popular vote by 2% and losing the electoral college, as we all know. The point is, the polls did a decent job predicting the outcome, and pundits don't know how to interpret them.

A good reading of the polls at this moment (considering that there are relatively few of them, that there's a couple months till the election, that polling is inherently imperfect, and that Senate polls are less reliable than Presidential polls) would suggest that Beto probably has somewhere between a 10% and 25% chance of winning.

But you know what? If Republicans in Texas prefer to believe that Cruz has this thing locked up and stay home in November, I have no problem with that. Per 538, Texas also has 9 congressional districts that are at least vaguely competitive, so the difference between a blowout for Cruz and a very narrow Cruz victory is a substantial one.

kbd512 · 2018-09-10 22:11:24

Josh,

The polls were so famously accurate during the last election that I don't put much faith in anyone's polling data. Some may consider the last election an anomaly, but I think it's a turning point. People, in general (across the political spectrum), are completely fed up with politicians who promise the moon and then deliver nothing of value or screw us over at every opportunity. In the end, time will tell, as it always does.

JoshNH4H · 2018-09-11 09:16:47

kbd512 wrote:

The polls were so famously accurate during the last election that I don't put much faith in anyone's polling data.

I wrote:

For the record, Clinton was leading by about 3-4% on the eve of the election, and forecasters such as 538 believed she had a 2/3 chance of winning. She ended up winning the popular vote by 2% and losing the electoral college, as we all know. The point is, the polls did a decent job predicting the outcome, and pundits don't know how to interpret them.

A 1-2% polling miss hardly seems like a big miss. Rather, the fact that this flipped the winner of the electoral college speaks to the closeness of the election.

For reference, a 2% change in the national popular vote might have flipped the electoral college in two out of the last ten elections: 2016 and 2000. These were both notably close elections (Particularly 2000) in which the winner of the popular vote lost the electoral college anyway.

The last election was a close one, which means it's more likely that a small polling error (again, 1-2% on the national popular vote) is more likely to result in the polls being "wrong". Surely you, a numerate and intelligent consumer of news, understand that it's important to consider all measurements in conjunction with their margin of error.

My point is this: The polls were not off by that much in 2016. The polls, when looked at with a well-constructed model (again, I believe 538 has the best one out there) showed Trump with a 1/3 chance of winning. I imagine you are not surprised when you roll a die and you roll a 1 or a 2. Polling remains the best tool we have for predicting who will win an election. If you're interested, the Upshot's polling project is an incredible demonstration of how error in polling works.

The pundits on the other hand were way off. Those pundits who insisted for the whole election that Trump had no chance of winning were entirely wrong. Their interpretation of the polls was skewed and they showed no understanding of error or probability. The lesson I take from this is that polling is a good (though imperfect) tool for measuring the state of a race and for forecasting elections while morons on cable news are not.

Having said that, it doesn't really matter for most people what the polling shows (unless you're professionally involved with campaign strategy). What the polls say should have no bearing on any person's choice or on their choice to vote or not. It is tautologically true that, for Statehouse, Governor, Senate, and House races, the winner will be the person who gets the most votes.

Which, by the way, means that Beto O'Rourke has some chance of winning. As above, I estimate that chance as 10%-25% (I don't think the difference matters that much. Anywhere in that range you would be a little surprised if Beto wins, but not that surprised). I'm curious to hear if you agree or disagree with that range, or alternatively what you think the probability of a Beto win is.

JoshNH4H · 2018-09-11 15:04:00

A follow-up to that, with Hurricane Florence on my mind: Elections are a bit like hurricanes. Both are major news events and both are forecasted by groups of people who build models based on data. Despite many years of expertise and advanced models, weather cannot be predicted with certainty. Part of this is due to the difficulty of measurement (weather models are more accurate when you have more and more granular information about the state of Earth's atmosphere across the surface of the planet, just as elections forecasts are more accurate when there are more public polls), but there is an inherent uncertainty to forecasts due to the unpredictable and chaotic nature of reality. Consider the following map:

The National Weather Service currently predicts that the hurricane is most likely to strike near a particular part of coastline in North Carolina, and most of the forecasts do have it making landfall somewhere on the NC coastline. Should the hurricane make landfall in South Carolina instead, we won't say that the NWS has failed. We won't say we're never trusting them again and hurricane forecasting is worthless. We wouldn't say we "don't put much faith in anyone's [weather] data". Instead, we'll recognize that weather forecasting is hard and inherently imperfect, but that we're still much better off for having it. The hurricane is currently forecast to make landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, but that doesn't mean it can't make landfall as a Category 5 or a Category 2. By the way, if anyone here is in its path I hope you stay safe.

All the major news networks, of course, will be spinning nearly-worthless, hyperbolic garbage from now until the hurricane peters itself out as a rainstorm over West Virginia. Consider, by comparison to the above, the following dumpster fire from CNN:

180911141417-hurricane-florence-model-plots-205-p-m-et-exlarge-169.jpg

This map is not intended to inform you, it's intended to scare you. By using a dozen different models and displaying the expected path from each (instead of combining them into a single probabilistic forecast), CNN has made the hurricane seem to threaten more people than it actually does. No doubt they will spend the most time discussing the path with the most potential for damage. And while they will speak constantly of forecasts and meteorology and perhaps even have a few meteorologists on the show, someone who gets all of their information from CNN will have learned nothing.

kbd512 · 2018-09-11 15:08:35

Josh,

As a result of the last election, I think every election has a greater degree of uncertainty attached to it when unconventional politicians become involved. Robert Francis O'Rourke, aka "Beto", may very well have as good as a 1 in 3 chance of being elected, mostly because of the Democrat party line voters in the major cities and the likelihood of faltering Republican turn out at the polls. That said, Senator Cruz is popular here and currently holds the office, so O'Rourke has an "uphill all the way" campaign to undertake. If there's recently been a major shift in national sentiment about the direction our country is going, despite media pundit assertions that there is, then I don't see it. I could always be wrong, though.

Terraformer · 2018-09-13 04:29:15

Oh good. Is America finally going to ban campaigning for elections? Propaganda will no longer be allowed?

GW Johnson · 2018-09-13 08:48:35

Kbd512:

To answer your question in post 1759 just above, I don't yet know what new ideas Beto might or might not have. I'm more interested in how he prioritizes doing the people's business vs party advantage. My wife has classmates in El Paso, which Beto represents in the House. We may contact some of them to see how well he did representing them.

I don't believe the propaganda from either party, whether chest-puffing or slamming the other side. All are lies. I didn't like one-party rule by the Democrats in Texas half a century ago, and I don't like one-party rule in Texas by the Republicans today. Both are very bad, since neither party's agenda makes good public policy. It works better when power is balanced, so they can be checks on each other.

As for election meddling:

That solution is very simple, very easily doable, just very unpopular. Go back to paper ballots. If computers are involved, they can be hacked. Period. THAT is the lesson of recent history, in multiple venues. If computers are not involved, then hacking is excluded. No foreign meddling with vote counts is possible.

Now you need to learn from paper ballot history, too. No more of that hanging-chad or butterfly ballot nonsense. One plain sheet with bubbles to fill in. THAT works! The count is slower, which makes the talking-heads impatient, but screw that. Paper ballots worked fine for several decades. So what if the count isn't complete for 2-3 days?

Where you cannot exclude the computers is online social media. THAT is where the real meddling took place, with faked stories and propaganda, preying on people who tend to believe only what they want to hear, not what really is. That vulnerability is a consequence of dumbing down the schools over the last 4 decades. You cannot test for critical thinking with a bubble answer sheet on a standardized test. I ought to know, my second career was teaching.

The only way to handle foreign propaganda on social media is to publicize a lot of fact checking, but you will always be far behind the curve, that way. The bad guys can turn that crap out faster than the good guys can debunk it. In the long term, you must teach children how to think critically, in an education system that is not dumbed-down. That will take another generation to correct from the time we start. No one has yet started.

On banning propaganda or not:

Probably impractical. Just remember, in general, the way to tell if a politician is lying, is that his lips are moving. Particularly if he is a high party functionary. Talk is cheap. Look at what they actually do. If you don't like it, don't elect or re-elect him/her. Simple as that.

Actually doing what I suggest means shedding the strong party preferences so many have. These are based on false belief systems and propaganda lies. (People willing to hurt others to further their own false belief systems is a good operational definition of terrorists.) The party label here is not important, only what you think a candidate might do or not do. Not what they say, what YOU think they might do! That requires critical thinking and a willingness to look at prior patterns. So use your brain!

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2018-09-13 08:54:12)

kbd512 · 2018-09-13 10:00:36

GW,

I'll wait for you to get back to me on how well O'Rourke represented his people in El Paso with some concrete examples of what he did to make life better for his constituency.

I'm not particularly enamored with the political propaganda from any party. That's part of why I choose to refrain from watching TV or participating in the social media "cirque de stupide". From what you say about it, I'm not missing anything.

I'm all in favor of paper ballots, but I think a ScanTron machine (pre-internet era variety) would be fine for speeding up the voting tabulation. Didn't most of us take at least one test using those in school? Seems to me that they were pretty accurate. If not, then I don't mind waiting for the results.

I admit to having strong preferences for candidates who don't openly preach about the wonders of socialism and the evils of capitalism. I'll also admit that I lose all interest in the rest of what they have to say after they start doing that. Until we have a single example we can point to where authoritarian government control over every aspect of life improved the common man's lot in life, I'll stand by that belief. The utter lack of evidence for the opposing side of that argument demands it.

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#251 2018-04-12 15:28:03

Re: Election Meddling

#252 2018-04-15 18:03:19

Re: Election Meddling

#253 2018-05-20 20:34:34

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#254 2018-05-28 18:50:13

Re: Election Meddling

#255 2018-06-07 18:16:36

Re: Election Meddling

#256 2018-07-03 19:38:06

Re: Election Meddling

#257 2018-07-14 10:28:16

Re: Election Meddling

#258 2018-07-14 11:34:22

Re: Election Meddling

#259 2018-07-21 08:21:59

Re: Election Meddling

#260 2018-07-22 21:35:24

Re: Election Meddling

#261 2018-07-24 09:50:07

Re: Election Meddling

#262 2018-07-24 10:42:53

Re: Election Meddling

#263 2018-07-24 12:34:44

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#264 2018-08-11 17:01:21

Re: Election Meddling

#265 2018-08-28 17:38:41

Re: Election Meddling

#266 2018-09-08 16:37:18

Re: Election Meddling

#267 2018-09-09 22:44:29

Re: Election Meddling

#268 2018-09-10 15:54:47

Re: Election Meddling

#269 2018-09-10 22:11:24

Re: Election Meddling

#270 2018-09-11 09:16:47

Re: Election Meddling

#271 2018-09-11 15:04:00

Re: Election Meddling

#272 2018-09-11 15:08:35

Re: Election Meddling

#273 2018-09-13 04:29:15

Re: Election Meddling

#274 2018-09-13 08:48:35

Re: Election Meddling

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