US Politics: Now with Alt Facts

[Happy Ent]

3 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

[…] why hacking was so unlikely, even if theoretically possible. […]

Just for the record, experts in e-voting and computer security don’t think like that. Hacking either happens or not. It is always possible—Halderman has hacked plenty of elections himself. That is why people like him and me worry about increasing trust in the election procedure. One of the improvements to the US system would be routine recounts, or at least a risk-limiting audit. (For comparison, Sweden—where I am an election official—recounts every single vote. Always. By hand.) This is a principled stance that has very little to do with the actual details of the current election; people like Alex (and myself) adopt this stance no matter who wins. “unlikely” is not part of our epistemological framework here. “there was no sign of fraud” is also not something we are interested in—a well-executed election manipulation leaves no sign.

The current election is a good example of loss of trust, which is something election nerds worry about. There have now been at least three direct attacks on this trust (Trump pre-election, Stein post-election, Trump again). This is not good, but is fixable by well-knonw methods. People like Alex help with that.

[maarsen]

3 minutes ago, Samantha Stark said:

Que?

Keep your mouth shut and learn from your betters. As in senior senators. 

[Mudguard]

29 minutes ago, Mexal said:

The end result of this isn't going to be a fair investigation into the voting procedures of the USA. It will be a targeted look at the states Trump lost and will give ammunition to Sessions to further suppress the vote in the name of "combating voter fraud". It doesn't matter if the investigation finds something or not, that is what is going to happen. Republicans already do it in red states. If they can find some way to take control of elections in blue states, they will.

I'm not quite ready to assume all that is going to happen.  I'm very skeptical of Trump, but I don't yet view him as the devil incarnate.  I may end up there in four years though.

[Mudguard]

7 minutes ago, BloodRider said:

The problem here is that the people running the show have already made up their minds what the answer will be.  

If they do the investigation, and it concludes that there really was 3-5 million illegal votes, then I'll be extremely worried.  Not that they actually found evidence of mass fraud, but that they are using an investigation to make up facts for things that really matter.

 

38 minutes ago, aceluby said:

2 things.

First, you're comparing in person voter fraud to election machine tampering.  Trump is claiming 3-5 million undocumented people voted independently, all for the same candidate, with no real way to determine how or if it happened.  The investigation started by Stein made no such claims, but requested a recount of actual votes to compare to the machine totals.  The only way that these are similar is that it has to do with voting; but really they are two very different things.

Secondly, if the recount did show irregularities, there was the possibility of changing the result of the election.  Nothing is gained by Trump's claims.  He's President and still will be President whether they find anything or not.

They are nowhere near the same thing.

Actually, the claim is more broad than just in person voter fraud.  It includes any type of voter fraud, including fraud through mail in ballots, which is also extremely rare.

[aceluby]

Just now, Mudguard said:

If they do the investigation, and it concludes that there really was 3-5 million illegal votes, then I'll be extremely worried.  Not that they actually found evidence of mass fraud, but that they are using an investigation to make up facts for things that really matter.

 

Actually, the claim is more broad than just in person voter fraud.  It includes any type of voter fraud, including fraud through mail in ballots, which is also extremely rare.

Which makes the two events even less similar.  

[mormont]

56 minutes ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

Trump is a Conspiracy theorist.  It is one of the things that gravely me.  Not saying other President were not but Trump definitely more of a believer of them than others have been.

I think this is very true, and explains a lot. If Trump truly believes that Obama managed to hide his 'real' birth certificate from the public for eight years, then why wouldn't he believe he can get away with hiding his tax returns? More worryingly, why wouldn't he feel justified in doing so?

That's the worry. Everything that the right-wing conspiracy theorists accused Obama of doing, or planning? Those guys believe that he did it, or was going to, and now they're in office and they think it's their turn. Except they're really going to do it.

[Ormond]

43 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

According to Ivana Trump, he slept with Mein Kampf and studied it thoroughly. Now, the Nazis, including Hitler, were up to their eyeballs in occultism. In 1932 Hitler consulted an astrologer by the name of Erik Jan Hanussen. Hanussen was a hypnotist who taught Hitler how to use his voice and his hands to gain people's sympathy and capture their attention. 

I have no doubt that Trump has studied this extensively. He knows exactly what he's doing. 

Correction: Ivana Trump said he had a copy of My New Order, a collection of Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8

 

[Jaxom 1974]

Dashing off a series of quick fire executive orders doing all the things the GOP loves, a la the abortion ban, is the bread to the Trump circus.  He's giving the general GOP base enough of what they want so they don't notice and/or care when he does things like the wall, actually being paid for by American tax dollars rather than Mexico, or takes another countries oil regardless of its legality...all to fire up his core base to further a more totalitarian agenda...

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

14 minutes ago, mormont said:

I think this is very true, and explains a lot. If Trump truly believes that Obama managed to hide his 'real' birth certificate from the public for eight years, then why wouldn't he believe he can get away with hiding his tax returns? More worryingly, why wouldn't he feel justified in doing so?

That's the worry. Everything that the right-wing conspiracy theorists accused Obama of doing, or planning? Those guys believe that he did it, or was going to, and now they're in office and they think it's their turn. Except they're really going to do it.

Well he can get away with not releasing his tax returns. it's not a requirement, merely a tradition. He obtained the office without releasing them anyway, so I'm not sure what there is to get away with at this point. He actually is justified in withholding them. The decision is his and his alone to make.

 

/The fact that he keeps lying about wanting or meaning to release them is the bit that annoys me. 

[Samantha Stark]

26 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Keep your mouth shut and learn from your betters. As in senior senators. 

I don't acknowledge seniority privileged. It's a form of oppression. 

[Mudguard]

10 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Just for the record, experts in e-voting and computer security don’t think like that. Hacking either happens or not. It is always possible—Halderman has hacked plenty of elections himself. That is why people like him and me worry about increasing trust in the election procedure. One of the improvements to the US system would be routine recounts, or at least a risk-limiting audit. (For comparison, Sweden—where I am an election official—recounts every single vote. Always. By hand.) This is a principled stance that has very little to do with the actual details of the current election; people like Alex (and myself) adopt this stance no matter who wins. “unlikely” is not part of our epistemological framework here. “there was no sign of fraud” is also not something we are interested in—a well-executed election manipulation leaves no sign.

The current election is a good example of loss of trust, which is something election nerds worry about. There have now been at least three direct attacks on this trust (Trump pre-election, Stein post-election, Trump again). This is not good, but is fixable by well-knonw methods. People like Alex help with that.

I have no problem with risk limiting audits, which I think is a good idea and provides a balance between cost and utility.  Full mandatory recount seems like overkill to me absent evidence that it's needed.  But the time for establishing these procedures is before the election.  Asking for recounts in a select number of states that were chosen for the extremely remote chance of flipping the election is not principled.  It's desperate.

Using the logic that because it's possible to hack voting machines, we should enact laws that make an audit or recount mandatory, does that mean that since it's possible that mass voter fraud occurred or that it's possible that in person voter fraud occurs, we should enact additional regulations like voter ID laws to prevent them, regardless of whether such fraud is extremely unlikely?

[PrettyPig]

Voter fraud by 3-3.5M illegal votes = tiny bell that elicits the Pavlovian response from his base.

He's still steaming over the women's march outshining his coronation, I mean, inauguration.  Spicer's AngryAltFactsRant was intended to detract from that in the strange alternate universe in which Trump exists but apparently things like cameras and the internet and technology in general do NOT exist, but unfortunately for Trump the majority of the free world lives in the real not-Trump universe, has all those things, and knows better.

3M votes, though...there's no visual proof for that, right?  No one can slap up a series of 3-3.5M date-and-time stamped ballots to disprove what he's saying, so now he can say it with impunity, fire up the base and the social media vigilantes who defend him, and win a rigged shell game.  He couldn't win on crowd size, so he's going to drop back and punt in hopes of discrediting HRC's popular vote win - something that the media and liberals aren't letting him forget that he lost, and is eating him up inside.

I mean, it's no coincidence that HRC's pop vote win is by 2.8 million, and his claim of fraud votes is 3-3.5M.  I bet this turkey honestly thinks that he can, with a recount, chuck at least 2.95M votes and make himself the winner of that too.  

However, he's so consumed by his own ego that he simply cannot see that VoteGate right on the heels of CrowdGate just makes him look pathetic and delusional.   Which he is, of course.

[Kalbear]

Oh hey, on that XO regarding immigration - did y'all notice that one of the things it did is basically redefine the 'priority' to essentially 'anyone who is here without documentation?

 

[Kalbear]

Also, since I'm riding Altherion's dick, here's the day 6 EPA ruling: the EPA can't release scientific anything without it being reviewed by Trump et al.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

9 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, since I'm riding Altherion's dick, here's the day 6 EPA ruling: the EPA can't release scientific anything without it being reviewed by Trump et al.

 

Cause he has the best brain. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

If they do the investigation, and it concludes that there really was 3-5 million illegal votes, then I'll be extremely worried.  Not that they actually found evidence of mass fraud, but that they are using an investigation to make up facts for things that really matter.

Lulz.

[Mexal]

25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, since I'm riding Altherion's dick, here's the day 6 EPA ruling: the EPA can't release scientific anything without it being reviewed by Trump et al.

 

Yea, this is going to happen across all the agencies. It started with the gag orders. I mentioned this the other day.

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

I'm not quite ready to assume all that is going to happen.  I'm very skeptical of Trump, but I don't yet view him as the devil incarnate.  I may end up there in four years though.

Not sure why. His press secretary already said which states will be targeted (hint: CA and NY). Republicans already heavily suppress the vote in their states. Why is it a stretch to believe that they will want to do it more? Democrats win elections when more people vote. Republicans win elections when less people vote. It's not rocket science but simple logic informed by the experience of the last 4 years.

Trump doesn't have to be the devil incarnate. He just has to allow Republicans to do what they are already doing. In VA for example, there is going to be a bill introduced that splits up the electoral college vote based on county. The winner take all will go away and most of Democrats live in 4 counties (Loudon, Fairfax, Prince William, Arlington), it's possible for Republicans to take quite a few of the votes. There is no Voting Rights Act anymore so anything they do isn't subject to Federal review to ensure unfair discrimination. I know this is already happening in Nebraska/Maine but if more bluish states with Republican leadership do the same, it'll be hard for Democrats to have a chance in the general. We'll see.

[OldGimletEye]

20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, since I'm riding Altherion's dick, here's the day 6 EPA ruling: the EPA can't release scientific anything without it being reviewed by Trump et al.

 

Well, I guess EPA studies are gonna go the way of Trump's tax returns. Down the ol memory hole they go.

[Tywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Mudguard said:

Yeah, Trump's claim of 3-5 million illegal votes is moronic.  I have a hard time understanding why he tweets these things.  Thin skin?  Trying to distract people from other things?  

He's an authoritarian. One aspect of authoritarian leadership is to knowingly say false things, things that are obviously false, and get your supporters and underlings to repeat them, even though they too know it's false. That's how you begin to own them.

3 hours ago, Mexal said:

This is ridiculous. Seems the voter fraud investigation will focus on states he lost and urban areas according to Spicer.

 

 

http://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-01-25/tiffany-trump-steve-bannon-steve-mnuchin-registered-to-vote-in-multiple-states?int=popular-articles-news

Is he accusing them of voter fraud too?

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

Correction: Ivana Trump said he had a copy of My New Order, a collection of Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8

 

It's actually not that uncommon for people who are professional public speakers to study Hitler's speeches. The first thing we had to read in my Persuasion and Propaganda class in college was Mein Kampf.

That said, it's still a terrible look to keep that book by your bed.