U.S. Politics: Here At the End of All Things

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I would sincerely respond to this post, but telling you how I feel could let you know how I might respond in the future, so just some blah blah blah I <3 the Constitution, with a bit of go fuck yourself, and look, there's 99 red balloons over there!

These hearings are basically sneak peeks at the kangaroo courts Barrett will help install if Trump wins re-election.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So then perhaps it's wrong? 

The Judicial Canon?  You really want Judges/Justices telling everyone without any facts before them without having reviewed statutes, case law, or regulations how they would rule in a hypothetical case?

Really?

[argonak]

15 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

about 30 minutes of my experience was actually voting. Including three Public Service Commissioners, various other minor elected officials, including sheriff,  five(?) ballot proposals, including a very long proposal on a special sales tax, etc. 

Yeah Washington has a lot on the ballot this year.  We already got our voter's pamphlet and looked through it.  Most of it will be easy choices.  The Republican Governor candidate's page is an embarrassment though.  I can't believe this is the best they could dig up for state.  He didn't even bother to put in experience, job history, or policy information.  Its almost literally "vote for me because of the R."

I hate this identify politics, where some people are just considering their party to be equivalent to their religion or team.  Its so frustrating.  I tried to talk to my sister while I was visiting, and while we kept it civil, we couldn't even hardly talk about policy.  I thought we were doing good while agreeing that housing was over priced (she can't afford a house or really even to move out right now), but then she just got stuck into this "socialism is evil" loop.

Meanwhile my parents are on SS and Medicare, and both surviving Grandparents depend on Medicaid to pay for their assisted living.    I tried to talk to my Dad last year ago about how, "wouldn't it make sense if instead of paying my insurance company, i just paid my bill into medicare so that they could use the money for him," and he acted like I was a 4 year old who didn't understand anything.  Yeah dad, I don't just "don't understand," even though (BECAUSE OF HIM) I was able to get 5 years of higher education, and I have a higher position and pay than he was able to get (AGAIN, ALL BECAUSE OF HIM!)

Its so depressing.   I'm who I am because of them, I owe pretty much everything to their pushing and teaching.  But they continually vote for people who are everything they taught me not to be.

[karaddin]

@Ormond yeah I've actually brought up the complexity of your voting a couple of weeks ago as another factor that could also deter people from voting, but you're right that I wasn't considering it here. In Aus we have two ballots in a federal election, the lower house is simple and we just need to put a number next to each candidate in our preferred order.

The senate ballot is actually enormous and can take a while to fill out if you want to control your vote in detail, but the simplest mechanism to fill it out is literally just putting a 1 in a single box. The slowest part if you're taking that option is getting the enormous ballot positioned in the booth so you can write on it.

But that's it. And our elections are split up completely, local state and federal are all on their own days with different frequency so you're only ever having two ballots to fill out.

In the US you have them all piled up on the same day and you vote for so many things at the local level. That absolutely would have an impact on the time taken.

[argonak]

Just now, karaddin said:

In the US you have them all piled up on the same day and you vote for so many things at the local level. That absolutely would have an impact on the time taken.

Generally it doesn't take me more than half an hour to an hour.  I figure that's the least I can do to help determine the operation of my nation state.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The Judicial Canon?  You really want Judges/Justices telling everyone without any facts before them without having reviewed statutes, case law, or regulations how they would rule in a hypothetical case?

Really?

Yep. 

Do you think judges have more integrity than your every day politicians, a plurality of which are also lying lawyers who lie for a living? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yep. 

Do you think judges have more integrity than your every day politicians, a majority of which are also lying lawyers who lie for a living? 

Then we might as well throw open trials and Constitutional questions to popular votes.  We should elect the Supreme Court directly as a mini-legislature directly answerable to the people for set terms.

I do not, and have never “lied” for a living. Thank you very much.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

These hearings are basically sneak peeks at the kangaroo courts Barrett will help install if Trump wins re-election.

I will answer nothing, other than softball questions.

Now give me a job for life!

Er, what?

[Zorral]

38 minutes ago, Fez said:

Well, first of all, give me one iota proof that this was election-related, just one. That's all I ask for. As opposed to this just being an unfortunate coincidence. Because, ya know, the number of people who would even know that that cable would affect the voter registration site is vanishingly small.

The California thing more proves my point. It was really stupid, limited in scope, and caught almost immediately. Also, based on the locations they were put in, it seems more like that was a plan to try to harvest additional Republican votes; not discard Democratic votes.

 oR, As soMe Would Say -- None So Blind.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Then we might as well throw open trials and Constitutional questions to popular votes.  We should elect the Supreme Court directly as a mini-legislature directly answerable to the people for set terms.

I do not, and have never “lied” for a living. Thank you very much.

Does it make you feel better if I say bend the truth? 

Do civil trials not use popular votes? What about elections, in many cases? Don't we also elect many judges directly? 

So many questions, but society says not to ask them.....

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Does it make you feel better if I say bend the truth? 

Do civil trials not use popular votes? What about elections, in many cases? Don't we also elect many judges directly? 

So many questions, but society says not to ask them.....

Not on legal questions.  Only on questions of fact.  That is all Juries handle.

No, I do not “bend the truth for a living”

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Not on legal questions.  Only on questions of fact.  That is all Juries handle.

No, I do not “bend the truth for a living”

Aren't you doing your clients a disservice then? Think about it, even if it makes you uncomfortable. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Aren't you doing your clients a disservice then? Think about it, even if it makes you uncomfortable. 

My job is not, and has never been to “lie” or “bend the truth” for my clients.  I will not do so.  

I truly do not care if my clients would be “better served” with lies.  That ain’t my fucking job.  

[Kalbear]

56 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It really would be that hard to do. The problem would be getting people to trust the process. 

Shit, I feel like I've heard that before.....

It's not just that it's really hard to do or that it's hard to get people to trust the process. It's that it would  cost a LOT of money to do right, because software engineers cost a lot more per hour than mail processors. 

I think that it could be done, eventually, with some early rollouts and a lot of whitehat hackers and a lot of fault tolerance. Employing those aircraft engineers and whatnot would be pretty helpful here. But what most people think about is something like writing an app, some CRUD database, an SSL cert and deploying to AWS - which is wildly insufficient for the needs.

Basically, anyone who tells you that it can be done (much less done cheaply) is probably trying to fuck you over for money.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

My job is not, and has never been to “lie” or “bend the truth” for my clients.  I will not do so.  

I truly do not care if my clients would be “better served” with lies.  That ain’t my fucking job.  

Did Johnnie Cochran do a bad job in defending OJ?  Was he also honest? The answer to both questions is no. You know this. And that is your fucking job. To win. Morality takes a back seat. Come on now man. 

And it's every bit as true when putting people on the bench. They've always been politicians. Deep down you must understand this. The literal thing we're discussing here, the willingness to say what you thick, or more specifically the refusal to do so, is 100% political. Everyone with a brain knows how Barrett feels about abortion, and how she'll act given the chance. Her only defense is to say that she can't tell you how she will, while winking at every conservative on the committee. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just now, Kalibear said:

It's not just that it's really hard to do or that it's hard to get people to trust the process. It's that it would  cost a LOT of money to do right, because software engineers cost a lot more per hour than mail processors. 

I think that it could be done, eventually, with some early rollouts and a lot of whitehat hackers and a lot of fault tolerance. Employing those aircraft engineers and whatnot would be pretty helpful here. But what most people think about is something like writing an app, some CRUD database, an SSL cert and deploying to AWS - which is wildly insufficient for the needs.

Basically, anyone who tells you that it can be done (much less done cheaply) is probably trying to fuck you over for money.  

So pay them. Have I ever written a post here that suggests I'm cheap? Isn't that what we're doing with the government funding of vaccine trials at this time? 
 

[Maltaran]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

In terms of comparing the time it takes to vote in the USA vs. other countries --

Please tell me if I'm wrong, but my belief is that in a parliamentary system like the UK, Canada, or Australia, all you have to vote on in a national election is one member of Parliament, period. That should take you about 15 seconds. 

Sometimes they have the general election on the same day as the local elections, so you might have to vote for as many as three councillors as well as the MP

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

uh huh

32 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Then we might as well throw open trials and Constitutional questions to popular votes.  We should elect the Supreme Court directly as a mini-legislature directly answerable to the people for set terms.

I do not, and have never “lied” for a living. Thank you very much.

 

[Kalbear]

Also, to get back to the 12 hour lines being fine argument -

@Ormond is right that part of the issue is that we have a lot to vote on. But it still is significantly easier with mail voting; you have weeks to make your decision, you can choose to simply not vote on those things if you don't want, you get a voter pamphlet and ample time to investigate, etc. It's a separate issue as to whether or not we should have as many ballot items on our election choices, but probably the right answer is often 'yes', and the solution should be to make the information needed for this more available and achievable. It's not like getting the information at the ballot box is particularly easy. 

I was thinking overnight that I might have come off as too harsh, but no. I think this is still a gross failure of the system, and black people shouldn't have to continue to be heroic in order to actually vote in 2020. This also has a lot of downstream effects too - if people think it's a pain in the ass to vote they'll salve themselves thinking they only have to do it every 4 years - and then they won't vote in those primaries, they won't vote in those off-year state and local elections, they won't vote in the midterm elections. And that is also a form of voter suppression.

And yes, this is voter suppression. Not giving enough resources via polling places and money to vote is voter suppression. It's one of the oldest forms of it! At some level someone decided that making people wait absurdly long was more reasonable than spending the money, and while they might not have been intentionally trying to suppress voters they certainly knew what was coming, especially given the problems of the primary in that state. And Georgia aint' alone - Texas is seeing absurdly long lines too. 

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So pay them. Have I ever written a post here that suggests I'm cheap? Isn't that what we're doing with the government funding of vaccine trials at this time? 

You might not be cheap, but the US government is, and state governments are.

That is another problem, by the way - we don't have federal election systems, we have state run election systems. 50 different systems to engineer for is a fucking nightmare of testing and methodology. And states by themselves (with maybe the exceptions of California, New York and Texas) don't have the money to do this at the scale it needs to be done at.