US Politics: Electoral College Votes (12/14/2020)

[Fragile Bird]

3 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I'm particularly worried that I'm not hearing more about this invasion of Wisconsin.  Should I be worried? I mean...Parler says it...

Did you scroll down and see the bizarre video with Dan Crenshaw?!

[The Anti-Targ]

12 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's not in regards to the House.  Democratic members have objected in 2000, 2004, and in 2016 - or the last three times a Republican won.  As the article I just linked mentioned, Barbara Boxer joined the objection to Ohio in 2004 as a Senator and then was the only Senator to vote in favor of her own objection.

That's disappointing to hear. Congress has no business trying to overturn the EC vote, IMO. But since Democrats have staged symbolic but pointless objections then there is not a lot of justification to demand Republicans don't do the same. 

It is especially galling to see the 2004 and 2016 results being objected to. As far as I recall Bush and Trump won the EC fair and square. Lies and propaganda may have swung people in the vote they cast, but they voted how they voted. Any illegal interference was in the manner of influence not vote tampering.

[Myshkin]

29 minutes ago, Ordos said:

I know I'm late to this but I really want to get my opinion out there on the Internet. There are 3 states that voted for Obama twice AND Trump twice: Iowa, Ohio and Florida. I cannot see how you can be a two time Obama voter and a two time Trump voter considering how irreconcilable the political differences between them are.

I can understand how someone would vote for Obama twice and temporarily lent their vote to Trump given how unhappy they were with Clinton and the limited progress made under Obama for various political causes. Then after 4 years of Trump they would quickly switch back to their traditional Democratic leanings.

I can understand how someone would vote for Trump twice and Obama once. Such was the case in North Carolina and Indiana. They might have been unhappy with George Bush's shortcomings and temporarily lent their vote to Obama but then quickly get back to their Republican roots.

The only thing I can attribute the results to is changing demographics. Either younger voters are becoming more conservative or not voting or perhaps leaving the state and/or there is population decline leaving only conservative voters. 

If I am wrong, tell me how a voter can be a two time Obama voter and a two time Trump voter.

It’s real simple: Socialism. See, nobody knew all DemoRATS, including Obama, were socialists until Bernie foolishly blew our cover. 

[Myshkin]

Hearing new reports that John Roberts physically and emotionally bullied the other conservative justices into not taking up the Texas case. Because SCOTUS is high school and Roberts is captain of the football team.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

Because SCOTUS is high school and Roberts is captain of the football team.

Well, all he'd have to do with Kavanaugh is send him to out to get the kegs.

[Jaxom 1974]

32 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Did you scroll down and see the bizarre video with Dan Crenshaw?!

Saw that on it's own. Never mind that a Congressman from Texas has no business making a "commercial" like that for. Georgia Se ate race...but it was one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen...

[Argonath Diver]

So, was Barr a "Big disappointment" or did he do "an outstanding job"? I'm genuinely confused about this. Trump was upset with Barr for not disclosing an investigation into Hunter Biden, apparently, and also for, you know, doing his actual job as the AG regarding the election fraud investigations. Now they're high fiving each other and saying they were both great?

Trump often makes little sense, until you look at very single action he makes through a lens of lifelong narcissistic personality disorder, but this breakup is baffling. This Reuters article explained the circumstances, but still leaves me looking around lost a la the Pulp Fiction Travolta confusion meme.

[Myshkin]

31 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well, all he'd have to do with Kavanaugh is send him to out to get the kegs.

Shut up stats nerd, you’re not invited to the party. 

[DanteGabriel]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

It was the War of 1812 that initiated Uncle Sam.

But it's possible that it goes back as far as 1775-76 though.

So much mythology and false information has been propagated about this over the years.

Myself I like to think this Sam was Sam Adams, i.e. a real person.

 

 

 

 

 

There was a female personification of America as well, Columbia. She's kind of been forgotten, or maybe replaced by Lady Liberty.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(personification)

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

Shut up stats nerd, you’re not invited to the party. 

It's cool, I'll just get high with Breyer and Sotomayor, they're more fun anyway.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

7 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

This shit has nothing to do with Sanders.  The complaints are about Biden and policy.  You guys are obsessed with this Sanders stuff - any criticism of Biden and you're just blurting out Sanders reflexively.  Has nothing to do with this.

I agree, it has very little to do with Bernie. I tend to use him as a rhetorical device on those occasion, when I mock the more rabid fan boys in his support. For whom, anything short of Bernie, is just not Bernie, and nothing will do but Bernie, who is their proud white haired knight, basically the pure hearted Parzival on his eternal quest for the holy grail to bring the progressive Kingdom to the US. And who are actively looking for slights, and find them in the most bizarre places, likesay Nancy Pelosi's freezer.

Ofc, I am a blasphemer, who will burn at the pyre, along side all those other heathens who fail to believe in him. Ofc. there's room for atonement and to escape the burn, if you just accpeted the Bern as your true saviour in your heart.

[GrimTuesday]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

I do agree he was overly defensively there and does indeed start yelling.  I don't, however, take that to mean he doesn't care about civil/voting rights/criminal justice reform - just the opposite.  If he didn't care he wouldn't have such an emotional response in trying to demonstrate that he is pursuing an aggressive agenda on those issues.  Or maybe he was just sick of sitting there listening to people lecturing him on what he needs to do for an hour and got pissed off, who knows.  Either way I don't think it's much of an indication of anything.

I think that it is more so being part of the establishment than Biden himself. We saw a similar reaction when Feinstein was confronted by people from the Sunrise Movement.

I will say that it is something of a continuation the Obama administration's attitude towards activists. I did a lot of reading about the Obama administration's interactions with activists on the ground, and there was always significant frustration with activists and those to the left of the administration for calling them out on their inactivity. This WaPo article offers some insight.

President Obama bristles when he is the target of activist tactics he once used

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Myshkin said:

Hearing new reports that John Roberts physically and emotionally bullied the other conservative justices into not taking up the Texas case. Because SCOTUS is high school and Roberts is captain of the football team.

Parler?

[Fury Resurrected]

47 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I agree, it has very little to do with Bernie. I tend to use him as a rhetorical device on those occasion, when I mock the more rabid fan boys in his support. For whom, anything short of Bernie, is just not Bernie, and nothing will do but Bernie, who is their proud white haired knight, basically the pure hearted Parzival on his eternal quest for the holy grail to bring the progressive Kingdom to the US. And who are actively looking for slights, and find them in the most bizarre places, likesay Nancy Pelosi's freezer.

Ofc, I am a blasphemer, who will burn at the pyre, along side all those other heathens who fail to believe in him. Ofc. there's room for atonement and to escape the burn, if you just accpeted the Bern as your true saviour in your heart.

Or maybe in this case, people would like different policies of Biden and you are the one invoking Bernie Sanders. Isn’t that what the argument was all this time? Support Biden to defeat Trump and then pressure him from within the party? You’re gonna have to get used to some dissent within your coalition from the pure fact that it is a coalition and half the party settled for the guy they disagree with a lot of the time. Biden should be expected to do a little dancing with the ones that brought him and that does include the left. There’s no need to parrot right wing bogeyman shit about Bernie Sanders, the left are a sizable part of the party landscape with or without him, and frankly there’s plenty of other members of Congress to point at as proof that this is not about one guy.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Or maybe in this case, people would like different policies of Biden and you are the one invoking Bernie Sanders. Isn’t that what the argument was all this time? Support Biden to defeat Trump and then pressure him from within the party? You’re gonna have to get used to some dissent within your coalition from the pure fact that it is a coalition and half the party settled for the guy they disagree with a lot of the time. Biden should be expected to do a little dancing with the ones that brought him and that does include the left. There’s no need to parrot right wing bogeyman shit about Bernie Sanders, the left are a sizable part of the party landscape with or without him, and frankly there’s plenty of other members of Congress to point at as proof that this is not about one guy.

I will go thru this bit by a bit.

Quote

Or maybe in this case, people would like different policies of Biden and you are the one invoking Bernie Sanders. Isn’t that what the argument was all this time?

No this argument, got started over some video conference, showing a supposedly derogative or bored Biden, in a video conference. Whcih was of a rather low quality. A lot of that is an interpretation of Biden's behaviour in said video. Of course, a certain user (and basically this forums embodyment of a Bernie Bro) tried to beat Biden down with the most negative/vicious interpretation, dressed up as a factual argument. And this gets annoying.

Quote

Support Biden to defeat Trump and then pressure him from within the party? You’re gonna have to get used to some dissent within your coalition from the pure fact that it is a coalition and half the party settled for the guy they disagree with a lot of the time.

All of this is fine. You can disagree with him about policies, and push him into making better policies. But this is not what this was about. See above. I mean, I could simply point out that, he hasn't even taken office yet, and he gets mauled over policies he obviously hasn't even passed. This is where it gets irritating (at least for me). I mean, if you can and want to criticize him, fine. But do it on actual policies, and not some personal behaviour in some low resolution video, which is open for interpretation. I think, DMC, the nateiest Nate in the history of Nates (including Silver and Cohn) gave a different interpretation, of what he saw (Biden being attentive, taking notes, and feeling quite strongly about the issue). This is where I draw a line.

Quote

There’s no need to parrot right wing bogeyman shit about Bernie Sanders, the left are a sizable part of the party landscape with or without him, and frankly there’s plenty of other members of Congress to point at as proof that this is not about one guy. Biden should be expected to do a little dancing with the ones that brought him and that does include the left.

Again, my issue is not with Bernie, it's part of his support. And my favorite bit to this date, is still the faux outrage over the amount of ice cream in Nancy Pelosi's freezer. I don't disagree with Sanders or AOC on policies, there's a debate to be had, how many of the policies you can implement, and how to go about it. And incremental progress, is by definition still progress.

[GrimTuesday]

47 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I will go thru this bit by a bit.

No this argument, got started over some video conference, showing a supposedly derogative or bored Biden, in a video conference. Whcih was of a rather low quality. A lot of that is an interpretation of Biden's behaviour in said video. Of course, a certain user (and basically this forums embodyment of a Bernie Bro) tried to beat Biden down with the most negative/vicious interpretation, dressed up as a factual argument. And this gets annoying.

All of this is fine. You can disagree with him about policies, and push him into making better policies. But this is not what this was about. See above. I mean, I could simply point out that, he hasn't even taken office yet, and he gets mauled over policies he obviously hasn't even passed. This is where it gets irritating (at least for me). I mean, if you can and want to criticize him, fine. But do it on actual policies, and not some personal behaviour in some low resolution video, which is open for interpretation. I think, DMC, the nateiest Nate in the history of Nates (including Silver and Cohn) gave a different interpretation, of what he saw (Biden being attentive, taking notes, and feeling quite strongly about the issue). This is where I draw a line.

Again, my issue is not with Bernie, it's part of his support. And my favorite bit to this date, is still the faux outrage over the amount of ice cream in Nancy Pelosi's freezer. I don't disagree with Sanders or AOC on policies, there's a debate to be had, how many of the policies you can implement, and how to go about it. And incremental progress, is by definition still progress.

Dude, shut up about the ice cream shit. It was a dumb decision to show off your 24k freezer talking about how how you gotta have your chunky monkey when there are a ton of people who are worried about their jobs and keeping a roof over their heads. I get they were going for a light tone, but it was tone deaf and not a great look in times such as these.

I even called the fact that the Republicans were going to clip it and ship it (they had an attack ad out within hours), and given the fact that Nancy Pelosi is one of if not the least popular politician in the US (seriously her favorability rating is below Trump) that only compounds the bad faith image that people have of her. In the end, it didn't amount to much, but it was still another entry into the "Nancy Pelosi is an out of touch elite who doesn't care about you" attack plan, which by the way if you look at political ad spending in swing states, got a lot more play than defend the police did.

[Darzin]

If Bernie had won the primary and the general, I wonder how understanding Bernie partisans would be about centrists demanding that Clinton acolytes be appointed to high positions and the cabinet? My guess is not very. 

[GrimTuesday]

5 minutes ago, Darzin said:

If Bernie had won the primary and the general, I wonder how understanding Bernie partisans would be about centrists demanding that Clinton acolytes be appointed to high positions and the cabinet? My guess is not very. 

I get where you are coming from, but this really isn't a great comparison. There is a difference between putting people in your administration who are to the left of you, and people who are to the right of you. People who are to the right of you are more likely to undercut a left wing agenda than left wing folks are to undercut a more centrist agenda. In addition, A Sanders administration would be much more constrained by the legislature than a Biden administration since there are members of their own party who are going to actively impede the more progressive aims of a Sanders Admin.

For example, who do you think is going to cause more problems within a Biden administration, someone who has spent a considerable time as a advocate expanding public transportation, or an Uber executive? I can almost guarantee it is going to be the Uber exec because they have close connections with that massive company that is doing their damnedest to build themselves a throne from the bodies of exploited workers.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

2 hours ago, Darzin said:

If Bernie had won the primary and the general, I wonder how understanding Bernie partisans would be about centrists demanding that Clinton acolytes be appointed to high positions and the cabinet? My guess is not very. 

I would be against it for the same reason I'm against it in the case of Biden's appointments,  I think centrism is substantively poor policy. It's not about ideologically diverse representation for me. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

I agree, it has very little to do with Bernie. I tend to use him as a rhetorical device on those occasion, when I mock the more rabid fan boys in his support. For whom, anything short of Bernie, is just not Bernie, and nothing will do but Bernie, who is their proud white haired knight, basically the pure hearted Parzival on his eternal quest for the holy grail to bring the progressive Kingdom to the US. And who are actively looking for slights, and find them in the most bizarre places, likesay Nancy Pelosi's freezer.

Ofc, I am a blasphemer, who will burn at the pyre, along side all those other heathens who fail to believe in him. Ofc. there's room for atonement and to escape the burn, if you just accpeted the Bern as your true saviour in your heart.

You're misunderstanding.  There's no "Sanders support".  Unless maybe you're a VT resident in 4 years?  You're literally the only one talking about Sanders.  

Simon's at least making an argument, you might not like it, or think it's a poor one, or that it's unsupported.   But you're not even making one other than 'guy who voted for Sanders bad'.