[jogs]

Winstonm, on 2017-March-13, 08:21, said:

And according to your analysis, George Bush was one of the worst presidents of all time as he was in office when the stock market collapsed.

Bush was a terrible president. But Bush has been a great ex-president.

[ldrews]

Zelandakh, on 2017-March-16, 09:40, said:

Do you have any evidence to suggest that both goals were not being fulfilled before the Republicans started upon their campaign of de-enfranchisement? I have thus far seen no evidence of large-scale voter fraud in the USA. I have seen evidence of large scale de-enfranchisement. It seems as though we are closer to your stated goals by outlawing the techniques being used to cause the latter.

When you "no evidence of large-scale voter fraud" are you saying there is evidence of smaller scale voter fraud? Can you link me to any reputable studies on the subject. I know of one publicized case in Texas of an illegal immigrant illegally voting, but don't know of any more. California automatically registering driver license applicants for voting while at the same time issuing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants gives me pause. I would like to see somebody do at least a random sample of voter validation/verification in California.

You may be right that there is no significant problem. But lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.

[ldrews]

cherdano, on 2017-March-16, 09:47, said:

I have seen evidence that those who want to disenfranchise segment X of voters make wild claims about widespread voter fraud among segment X of voters. The ldrews bots of the world parrot that line, of course.

Well, let's prove me wrong. Would you support conducting a voter verification/validation study in California? The results of such a study would certainly shut me up, wouldn't it?

[ldrews]

Winstonm, on 2017-March-16, 11:24, said:

He can't seem to grasp that the purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Since the majority of the popular vote was Democratic, then you are asserting that the purpose of the U.S. Constitution at the moment is to protect the Republicans from the Democrats, right?

[Winstonm]

ldrews, on 2017-March-16, 14:58, said:

Since the majority of the popular vote was Democratic, then you are asserting that the purpose of the U.S. Constitution at the moment is to protect the Republicans from the Democrats, right?

You're making yourself look stupid.

[ldrews]

PassedOut, on 2017-March-16, 09:53, said:

Your statement about California is absolutely false. Only citizens are automatically registered to vote when issued driver's licenses, illegal immigrants are not. An applicant can obtain an AB-60 driver's license without a birth certificate or passport proving citizenship, but is not then automatically registered to vote. Because it's easy to get the license, there's no need for the illegal immigrant to risk fraud, and California isn't going to vote for Trump regardless.

Where do you come up with this nonsense?

I could be misinformed. Can you provide me with a link to an authoritative description/discussion of the California Driver License application process as it applied to applicants without proof of citizenship?

[PassedOut]

ldrews, on 2017-March-16, 15:04, said:

I could be misinformed. Can you provide me with a link to an authoritative description/discussion of the California Driver License application process as it applied to applicants without proof of citizenship?

You can find that information readily. DMV.org, for example, describes the Driver's License & ID requirements for each state, and there are several other sources as well. Here is information about California's AB-60 Driver's License:

Quote

SUMMARY: California Driver's License for Undocumented Residents

As of January 2015, California residents who cannot establish legal presence in the United States may apply for a driver's license if they can show eligible proof of identification and residency in the state. These driver's licenses may not be used for identification purposes. By law, no one may discriminate against a holder of an AB-60 license, or use this license to attempt to question the holder's citizenship or immigration status.

You can read the details about obtaining this license -- which definitely does not trigger voter registration, and cannot be used as voter identification -- on the linked page. You can also read the section on applying for a standard license to see that proof of citizenship is one of the identification requirements for the standard license with automatic voter registration.

What puzzles me, though, is how you could have thought for even a moment that California automatically registers illegal immigrants for voting. I'm not a democrat and I do know that legislatures pass dumb laws, but a law like that would never fly anywhere. And if any legislature did try to pull a stunt like that, they'd be in court before the ink could dry -- and the media would have a field day covering it. It wouldn't be just some old drunk on a barstool providing you with "information" that beggars belief.

[y66]

From Let Bannon Be Bannon! by David Brooks:

Quote

I continue to worry about Steve Bannon. I see him in the White House photos, but he never has that sprightly Prince of Darkness gleam in his eye anymore.

His governing philosophy is being completely gutted by the mice around him. He seems to have a big influence on Trump speeches but zero influence on recent Trump policies. I’m beginning to fear that he’s spending his days sitting along the wall in the Roosevelt Room morosely playing one of those Risk-style global empire video games on his smartphone.

Back in the good old days — like two months ago — it was fun to watch Bannon operate. He was the guy with a coherent governing philosophy. He seemed to have realized that the two major party establishments had abandoned the working class. He also seemed to have realized that the 21st-century political debate is not big versus small government, it’s open versus closed.

Bannon had the opportunity to realign American politics around the social, cultural and economic concerns of the working class. Erect barriers to keep out aliens from abroad, and shift money from the rich to the working class to create economic security at home.

It was easy to see the Trump agenda that would flow from this philosophy: Close off trade and immigration. Fund a jobs-creating infrastructure program. Reverse the Republican desire to reform and reduce entitlements. Increase funding on all sorts of programs that benefit working-class voters in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Many of us wouldn’t have liked that agenda — the trade and immigration parts — but at least it would have helped the people who are being pummeled by this economy.

But Bannonesque populism is being abandoned. The infrastructure and jobs plan is being put off until next year (which is to say never). Meanwhile, the Trump administration has agreed with Paul Ryan’s crazy plan to do health care first.

Moths show greater resistance to flame than American politicians do to health care reform. And sure enough it’s become a poisonous morass for the entire party, and a complete distraction from the populist project.

Worse, the Ryan health care plan punishes the very people Trump and Bannon had vowed to help. It would raise premiums by as much as 25 percent on people between 50 and 64, one core of the Trump voter base. It would completely hammer working-class voters whose incomes put them just above the Medicaid threshold.

The Trump budget is an even more devastating assault on Bannon-style populism. It eliminates or cuts organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative that are important to people from Tennessee and West Virginia up through Ohio and Michigan. It cuts job-training and road-building programs. It does almost nothing to help expand opportunity for the working class and almost everything to serve defense contractors and the national security state.

Why is Bannonism being abandoned? One possibility is that there just aren’t enough Trumpians in the world to staff an administration, so Trump and Bannon have filled their apparatus with old guard Republicans who continue to go about their jobs in old guard pseudo-libertarian ways.

The second possibility, raised by Rich Lowry in Politico, is that the Republican sweep of 2016 was won on separate tracks. Trump won on populism, but congressional Republicans won on the standard cut-government script. The congressional Republicans are better prepared, and so their plans are crowding out anything Bannon might have contemplated.

The third possibility is that Donald Trump doesn’t really care about domestic policy; he mostly cares about testosterone.

He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health.

But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs.

Indeed, the Trump budget looks less like a political philosophy and more like a sexual fantasy. It lavishes attention on every aspect of hard power and slashes away at anything that isn’t.

The Trump health care and budget plans will be harsh on the poor, which we expected. But they’ll also be harsh on the working class, which we didn’t.

We’re ending up with the worst of the new guard Trumpian populists and the old guard Republican libertarians. We’re building walls to close off the world while also shifting wealth from the poor to the rich.

When these two plans fail, which seems very likely, there’s going to be a holy war between the White House and Capitol Hill. I don’t have high hopes for what’s going to emerge from that war, but it would be nice if the people who voted for Trump got economic support, not punishment.

For that, there’s one immediate recipe: Unleash Steve Bannon!

We're ending up with the worst of the new guard Trumpian populists and the old guard Republican pseudo-libertarians? Yup.

[Zelandakh]

ldrews, on 2017-March-16, 14:51, said:

When you "no evidence of large-scale voter fraud" are you saying there is evidence of smaller scale voter fraud?

This is like having a conversation:
A: "I think UFOs exist."
B: "I see no evidence of UFOs."
A: "Are you saying that aliens exist then?"

or

A: "Meckwell cheat on every hand"
B: "I see no evidence that Meckwell cheat on every hand."
A: "Are you saying that they cheat on some hands then?"

What has the one statement to do with the other other than that they relate to the same theme? Our conversation for comparison:

L: "There is large-scale voter fraud."
Z: "I see no evidence of large-scale voter fraud."
L: "Are you saying there is evidence of smaller scale voter fraud?"

This is just schoolboy debating. Please grow up if you want to be engaged at all. Fwiiw I see no evidence of large-scale voter fraud by the GOP. It is probably at least as likely to be the case as with immigrants. Perhaps we should launch a major federal investigation to check for that. Picking out one group with zero evidence and harassing them is one basis for discrimination. Why are you so keen to go after immigrants, who have a vested interest in not attracting the attention that voter fraud would entail, rather than those that do have a vested interest in rigging elections? You said you wanted to "drain the swamp", the politicians pushing voter de-enfranchisement regulations are the swamp!

ldrews, on 2017-March-16, 14:51, said:

Can you link me to any reputable studies on the subject.

Here is one. And here is the factcheck on the subject that contains many further links all pointing towards voter fraud being at negligible levels. Of course negligible is not zero and there are some well-documented cases of voter fraud. To use this as the basis for mass de-enfranchisement though is about as anti-democratic as the American election process gets and every intelligent person should stand up against those playing this game.

[jogs]

Winstonm, on 2017-March-16, 11:24, said:

He can't seem to grasp that the purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

When will democrats protect the rights of conservatives to speak on university campuses?

[Winstonm]

jogs, on 2017-March-17, 07:13, said:

When will democrats protect the rights of conservatives to speak on university campuses?

They have the right to speak - but not the right to force their views. If a college invites a conservative speaker, that is fine.

[jogs]

Winstonm, on 2017-March-17, 08:09, said:

They have the right to speak - but not the right to force their views. If a college invites a conservative speaker, that is fine.

No one can force their views.

Middlebury. The speaker was denied the right to speak.

Condi Rice was denied the right to speak a few years back.

[barmar]

ldrews, on 2017-March-16, 14:51, said:

When you "no evidence of large-scale voter fraud" are you saying there is evidence of smaller scale voter fraud?

What it means is that there's no evidence of a level of voter fraud that would swing elections and justify extreme measures to combat it. Trump's millions of illegal aliens voting is a total fabrication, intended to scare people into supporting these voter ID laws, and it apparently worked on you. You've totally drunk the Kool-Aid, and you believe any nonsense he spouts.

No crimes can be eliminated completely, but you have to assess the threat level and make the defenses appropriate.

[Winstonm]

jogs, on 2017-March-17, 08:19, said:

No one can force their views.

Middlebury. The speaker was denied the right to speak.

Condi Rice was denied the right to speak a few years back.

Try expanding your horizons and look for information outside your bubble.

[Winstonm]

I think this is an important article to understand.

Quote

When Angela Merkel meets with Donald Trump on Friday, she won’t just be representing Germany. She’ll be bringing all the hopes and anxieties of an anxious continent—one whose fears have been stoked by the fervor sweeping from Amsterdam to Rome, Paris to Berlin. It’s no exaggeration to say that this meeting between Trump and Merkel could set the tone for the very future of the Western Alliance.

For a specter is haunting Europe—the specter of populist nationalism. Ideologically indeterminate, it manifests across the Continent in the form of France’s right-wing National Front, the post-communist German Left party and the Italian Five Star Movement, which defies any traditional political label. While these parties, and the intellectual currents to which they give voice, may not align on everything, they are invariably anti-establishment, opposed to the European Union, and hostile to America. They are also all supported—either materially or through other, less tangible instruments—by Russia.

[jogs]

Winstonm, on 2017-March-17, 09:56, said:

Try expanding your horizons and look for information outside your bubble.

I live in San Francisco. Heard all the arguments of the left and have rejected them.

[jogs]

PBS did a special on (dis)honesty. The hostess was upset that Trump attacked the media. Has she ever put herself in Trump's shoes?
Since the election 90% of all stories about Trump from ABC, NBC, and CBS are negative. Non-stop negative from CNN and MSNBC. The world isn't falling apart. Trump must have done something right. Consumer confidence is up. Small business confidence is way up.
Trump defunded the US contribution to PBS. Since they are part of the dishonest news.

[nige1]

Those unfamiliar with the US democratic process are intrigued by the seemingly unending and irresolvable argument about the justice of legislation against electoral fraud. First questions:

• What is the proposed legislation against electoral fraud?
• Would it really reduce electoral fraud?
• Would it disenfranchise legitimate voters?
• How?
• Would it target particular groups?
• And how many would it affect?

An analogy: currently, in the UK, we allow postal votes. A boon to those who find it hard to attend a poll-station, in person. Allegedly, however, some patriarchs collect all the postal-votes from their extended families. Such block-votes could have a significant effect on election results. Hence, although stopping postal-votes could disenfranchise some citizens, it might be beneficial overall, by reducing potential abuse of the electoral process.

[rmnka447]

Winstonm, on 2017-March-17, 09:56, said:

Try expanding your horizons and look for information outside your bubble.

Has there been a case where a left wing/progressive speakers was denied the right to speak on campuses because of right wing interference with the lecture/speech?

There haven't been any that I can recall recently.

I think a strong argument can be made that it's progressives that aren't willing to let anything challenge their beliefs by shutting down dissent that's outside their bubble.

The Middlebury and UC-Berkeley protests/riots are exhibits A and B for that assertion. Change the black clothing and masks at Berkeley for brown shirts with swizstika armbands and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between now and 1930's Germany.

[cherdano]

rmnka447, on 2017-March-17, 14:11, said:

Change the black clothing and masks at Berkeley for brown shirts with swizstika armbands and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between now and 1930's Germany.

LOL