I fear Greeks, even when they're baring rifts.
Following Roger Stone on twitter has been is recommended.
My typos and stupid phrasing let them be shown to you.
We always heard that the presidential system of government where the presidential election is unrelated to the legislative election is unstable. Well, here it is at last.
The Chicago Tribune is not a liberal paper.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested Monday that he fears the general election "is going to be rigged" -- an unprecedented assertion by a modern presidential candidate.
Trump's extraordinary claim -- one he did not back up with any immediate evidence -- would, if it became more than just an offhand comment, seem to threaten the tradition of peacefully contested elections and challenge the very essence of a fair democratic process.
If this leads to people taking seriously the problems America has in terms of security and transparency of elections, it'll be worthwhile.
I LOOK FORWARD TO AN ORDERLY ELECTION, WHICH WILL ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR A VIOLENT BLOODBATH
rtcb, are you a troll? (I guess I should be asking everyone else.) I'm not around all that often, but I've managed to notice that a high proportion of your comments are moronic.
I don't think rtcb is a troll, but I was also about to note that comment 6 sure seems like trolling.
If this leads to people taking seriously the issue of the structural integrity of steel beams when subject to burning jet fuel, it'll be all worthwhile.
Sure, but does Philip Gourevitch really know anything about where this kind of rhetoric could lead?
This talk about rigged elections isn't coming out of nowhere. People have been talking about it a lot since 2000. The fact that the managers at Diebolt are giving money to HRC's campaign is going to be cited for the next three months.
If this leads to people taking seriously the issue of the structural integrity of steel beams when subject to burning jet fuel, it'll be all worthwhile.
Funny, but there actually is a problem with election security. I suggest that a better analogy is, "hopefully Bernie Madoff will get people to take seriously the fact that mutual fund fees are too high."
This talk about rigged elections isn't coming out of nowhere. People have been talking about it a lot since 2000. The fact that the managers at Diebolt are giving money to HRC's campaign is going to be cited for the next three months.
All of those statements are true. But none of them should be used as a defense of Trump's strategy. You do realize, I hope, that 6 and 12 sound like exactly the sort of thing that would (and did) lead Clinton supporters to call Bernie supporters, "useful idiots." Surely there must be a better way to make your point that doesn't make it sound like you don't personally care about either truth or the outcome of the Clinton/Trump race so long as you get to make your (valid) point.
6- I don't intend to defend Trump, or his tactics, but I do think there might be a silver lining in this cloud. Whichever Republican was in Trump's shoes was likely to make these kinds of claims. When Democrats talk about this kind of stuff, we get called names, but when it is Republicans something is likely to get done.
The OP is one of the first Trump things that actually make me uneasy for the future. Like, now it really has to be Clinton by a landslide.
Also, we're on the road this week, posting will be spotty. I wasn't on the road last week, but was drawing a blank on interesting things to say.
Ogged used to troll his own blog but now he has people for that.
A rule of thumb for assessing electronic voting systems
I don't intend to defend Trump, or his tactics, but I do think there might be a silver lining in this cloud. Whichever Republican was in Trump's shoes was likely to make these kinds of claims.
OK, but none of them ever have in the past though.
When Democrats talk about this kind of stuff, we get called names, but when it is Republicans something is likely to get done.
A lot of us were complaining in 2004 when the Diebold executives promised to do everything they could to reelect Bush. No politicians were making a big deal out of it though. Maybe Kerry should have threatened to mount an armed insurgency. Neither party has tried to do that in living memory, actually.
Thinking about 19.1 more, I do fully believe that Ted Cruz would be likely to make these kinds of claims. Fair enough.
I don't picture an armed insurgency though. I could see my first post as cavalier if you thought an armed insurgency was a possibility, but based on our experience with Vanilla ISIS the insurgency would end quickly when they ran out of snacks.
The Malheur insurrection didn't exactly end quickly or entirely peacefully, despite the initial lack of snacks.
Trump's constellation would not be talking about Diebold or whatnot under any circumstances; they're post-facts. If Trump won they'd disappear all doubt in the electoral process; when he loses any uproar will be fig leaves for "too many of the wrong kind of people voting". How is this not obvious, rtcb?
Back to the OP, I'm not too worried about actual armed conflict this time - famous last words! - largely because Trump's base skews so old. But it's more water lapping the dunes.
It also seems unlikely that the institutional GOP or the military would side with Trump given how much they obviously hate him, and without that kind of support any insurrection is doomed. Sure is scary to imagine it might come to that, though.
Am I the only one who has to remind himself that Milo Yiannopolous isn't the guy from Ancient Aliens? I guess that's racist towards Greek people.
23- Digby has been talking about this for years, it was always only a matter of time before the right appropriated narrative about rigged elections. She'll doubtless have a post about it in a couple of days. Maybe it won't really go anywhere, but I wouldn't be surprised if the case bolts itself together too easily to be easily dismissed.
Didn't lots of states move away from electronic voting machines as a result of those concerns being raised back then?
Perhaps something worse, but most likely to provide enthusiasm and chaos in order to eat the airwaves and create distractions so a) Obama can pass TPP in the lame duck, and b) Clinton, under siege from impeachment proceedings immediately after inauguration, can achieve the kind of fugugly bipartisan deals possible with a closely divided Congress.
Not to mention the false flags provocations, atrocities and justus causus belli planned for 2017.
Just as Obama wanted to pave the way for future AA politicians by proving he was not a "tax and spend" liberal, Clinton will want (like Thatcher) to prove that a woman President can be trusted to bomb and burn, and she will prove it early.
Just as Obama wanted to pave the way for future AA politicians by proving he was not a "tax and spend" liberal
That's funny - I thought he wanted to push America into a double-dip recession in 2011, thus clearing the way for him to run for re-election as a Republican in 2012, which would in turn be followed by a declaration of war against Iran. I'm sure someone told me that.
Clinton will want (like Thatcher) to prove that a woman President can be trusted to bomb and burn, and she will prove it early.
Elderly white Texan misogynist will vote Trump shock.
Surely Bob should be arguing in favour of rigged elections, in order to rip away the facade of procedural liberalism and reveal the violence inherent in the system?
No, I think you're getting your trolls confused. Roger is in favour of rigged elections in order to address the truly important issue of what the Diebold Corporation might or might not have done in a couple of counties in Ohio in the election before the election before the election before this one. Bob is against all elections of any kind, as the alternative (a long and bloody civil war) is much more fun to watch.
US elections are hopelessly riggable at present. I think RTCB has a point that this might have a silver lining if we can get the hell away from black box voting. As it stands rigging an election would take all of two or three people in the right position. There's also the 2000 Florida fiasco, which could readily have been prevented by uniform well written standards for voting devices.
34.last: How so? I mean, Florida was so close that any number of things could have prevented the debacle. But if I recall correctly, the big scam was:
a) Collect lists of felons from other states
b) compare that list to your voter db, using extremely loose match criteria for every field but race
c) that gives you a superset of actual felons, also including random people that match their racial demographics
d) disenfranchise!
I am amenable to being corrected.
Is there any recorded instance of Trump losing at anything without accusing the winner of cheating?
Except by "voter fraud," Trump isn't really talking about Diebold machines. His concern is about not letting people with Spanish-sounding last name vote unless they present six forms of ID. I don't see a silver lining to that.
35: Due to the design of the ballot several thousand voters accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Gore. Bush won by under a thousand votes. There's also the whole fiasco of recounting ballots with hanging and dimpled chads and so forth. The voter disenfranchisement obviously has to be handled through other channels, but avoiding people accidentally voting for the wrong candidate seems worthwhile, as does avoiding idiocy with hanging chads.
37: I don't think he has any idea what he is talking about. He only knows there's a chance he might lose, and that could never happen in a just universe.
In 2008 McCain went this route to some extent re: ACORN.
We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."
These rancid motherfuckers have been sowing the wind for many years, and now they have most assuredly reaped the whirlwind. Trump's style may be sui generis but much of his base material is standard Repub material.
Whichever Republican was in Trump's shoes was likely to make these kinds of claims.
No, I don't think so. Not "these kinds" of claims. Sure, your average Republican will complain about [non-existent] voter fraud in order to justify voter ID laws, but claiming three months out that the results of a national election are not to be trusted if things don't go your way? That's pretty much unprecedented.
Agree that Trump has taken it to a whole new level.
Trump's current problem is that he can't seem to help adding the easily provable lie to the underlying standard BS. For instance on the debate scheduling flap, the R's (as Priebus confirmed) were willing to support him in making a stink about the (wholly precedented) conflicts with sporting events, but Trump had to claim he "had a letter" from the NFL.
But have no doubt that the Repubs will be all in on de-legitimizing a Clinton win; they just don't want to be so obvious.
It depends on how close the results are. If Clinton wins by a narrow margin, Republicans may have a tantrum about voter fraud and dirty tricks, though in private they'll probably be thinking they dodged a bullet. I can't see them making the same claims if it's an Electoral College blowout.
But regardless of the election results, they're already all in on de-legitimizing Clinton herself, and that will never, ever change.
The practical point surely is that by saying in advance that the election will be fixed he achieves two things. First, he ensures that his base, the 27% or whoever, will fervently believe it and carry that belief to their graves, so that's another thing to be resentful about. But more importantly, the House majority will pretend to believe it, so that's the tin hat on any chance of anything useful getting done.
If Clinton wins narrowly it's a clever fix; if she wins 70/30 it's a clumsy fix. You heard it here first.
Trump knows he's in trouble. His campaign organization is a joke. Republican big money donors like the Kochs are putting all their energy into down-ticket races, and some are even switching to Hillary. He's trapped and he knows it. Barring a miracle this election will be a fiasco for him. He has to line up excuses beforehand.
Unfortunately a significant fraction of his base will believe any lie he tells them. The people who are unfazed by the lie about thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11 are going to buy his line completely, and some of them are scary well armed nutjobs.
First, he ensures that his base, the 27% or whoever, will fervently believe it and carry that belief to their graves, so that's another thing to be resentful about.
That's what worries me most about this. How does Trump address his supporters after the results come in and they learn that they lost? A normal candidate would try to talk them off the ledge, say that they lost fair-and-square, and tell them that they've laid a foundation for a long-term movement. But Trump is not a normal candidate. He cannot accept defeat. So will he tell them that they wuz robbed, and call for them to grab their pitchforks and storm the gates? What's his endgame?
AIHSB, anything the Republicans accuse the Democrats of doing is something they are already doing or would like to. In many cases the criticisms are more "why didn't I think of that first?" It's the counterpart to Rove's hitting your enemy's strengths- also accuse your enemy of your own weaknesses so when yours are exposed it's just he said/she said.
Anyway, to get all conspiracy minded, it's obvious Trump needs a big terrorist attack to both boost his numbers and stay in the headlines in a slow news month, and the Olympics are coming up. I don't think ISIS et al have the reach or organization to pull off anything big, maybe a random shooting. Who could pull off something big? Trump's best pal Vlad, and the Russians are already pissed at the Olympics for catching them cheating. Did any Russian athletes get readmitted by applying for a waiver via their individual sports?
48: Pull a Gérard Depardieu and move to Russia, dammit?
48: sell them subscriptions to the Trump Political Report?
He cannot accept defeat. So will he tell them that they wuz robbed, and call for them to grab their pitchforks and storm the gates? What's his endgame?
On the evidence, race riots.
Those are going to be over determined.
It also seems unlikely that the institutional GOP or the military would side with Trump given how much they obviously hate him.
They may hate him but boy are they ever more interested in voting for him than anyone else. (The pie charts breaking things down a bit are impressive too: the Marine Corps wins out with 58.78% saying they'll vote for Trump, and Clinton only getting 8.57%.) Why anyone would think that an institution filled with hard right loons would somehow be sensible about this is beyond me. I mean, I know that we've seen the occasional spokesperson come out and say "That thing Trump said we should do is horrible and we would never do that for another nearly-a-decade", but that's pretty far from saying that the military as a whole hates him.
I think it's fair to say that, at least assuming similar likelihoods that Clinton would win*, we would see stuff like this from any Republican candidate for president. But Trump is going to do it especially loudly and he's already working up the dangerous and on the verge of being dangerous lunatics in the base into screaming fits so it's a lot more dangerous. I can absolutely see a fair bit of violence resulting from him losing the election - not necessarily coordinated-ish violence like the Malheur stuff, but absolutely more Dylan Roof stuff.
*We probably wouldn't see anything like them though.
54: "The survey, conducted July 5-8, elicited responses from 1,915 active-duty service members, reservists and National Guard personnel, all of them Military Times subscribers. The results, while not a scientific sampling of the military as a whole... Between July 5 and July 8, Military Times conducted a voluntary, confidential survey of subscribers who include verified active-duty service members, reservists and National Guard personnel. More than 63,000 subscribers received e-mail invitations to participate. In total, 1,915 respondents completed the survey."
Missed that bit huh.
Back in the real world, meanwhile, Obama got more donations from military personnel than Romney did back in 2012 - by almost two to one.
Well, I didn't miss the earlier surveys showing a similar preference among troops and veterans, so as clever as your response was there, sorry but no. That one was just the most recent one to show up, and since it was consistent with every other one I went with it.
But please, ajay, tell me more about how something even less indicative of actual support than a voluntary poll undercuts the most obviously predictable thing in the world.
Isn't his play to have the election "stolen" and then monetize the increased value of his brand? Other than introducing his kids to the general public -- to ensure that the value of the brand survives him? -- is there any other point to the thing?
Both the Washinton Times and Washington examiner are badly written right wing rags. The link to 58 about Vet preferences is a poll from yes a right leaning pollster of under 2000 vets.
Campaign donation info 2016. Remember that the military is mostly young.
The issue I've read about is evangelical preponderance among officers in the USAF, but I haven't checked the source quality.
Does he really look like a guy with a plan?
The Washington Times and Washington Examiner aren't Morning Consult, which is what they're reporting on. There's a difference between "the poll that they're reporting exists" and "them".
Remember how Sanders had more donors than Clinton yet somehow fewer votes? I'm guessing there's a distinction to be made between votes and dollars.
Seriously what is the reasoning supposed to be here: (1) (x) position is clearly morally superior therefore (2) despite actual polling and demographics the military supports position (x)? You realize how dumb that is, right?
I've no reason to suppose you aren't misinterpreting those polls as well, either through stupidity or deliberately. Why on earth would I take you seriously on this of all issues?
The Washington Times and Washington Examiner aren't Morning Consult, which is what they're reporting on. There's a difference between "the poll that they're reporting exists" and "them".
I only know what I've read in this thread, but there are probably demographic differences between, "current active-duty military" and "veterans and voters who belong to veteran households" -- I'm presuming that the latter is older (and possibly whiter?) than the former.
63. You haven't presented actual polling. Morning Consult, which I mentioned, the right-leaning shitty pollster cited by the shitty papers, was created by Michael Ramlet, who also owns polling firm Paragon Insight and has consulted for Republicans.
Your point about demographics stands for older commisioned people in the services. They're a numerical minority, though they give the orders. I doubt that polling and simple questions are the right way to think about this-- I would strongly prefer longer-form pieces describing the thinking of particular individuals, and which discuss evidence that political bias of soldiers is a problem.
For the US military, I'd be especially interested in knowing how Taguba and his discharge are viewed by people currently in the service.
Feel free to keep talking and have the last word if you like.
My point about demographics was that there are way, way, waaaaay more Republicans in the military than Democrats. And that this is a pretty good reason to think that, I dunno, more of them support the Republican party candidate than the Democratic party one?
I'm not sure how that could be confusing or a strange thing to say, but apparently it is?
despite actual [...] demographics
You mean the overwhelmingly poor and/or non-white demographic that comprises enlistees*?
It would be extremely unsurprising for a group that is 2/3 nonwhite and 50% under 25 to be Dem-leaning, even if their job is military. The officer corps--whiter, older, and more committed to the military as an institution rather than a means to escape poverty--is certainly likely to be GOP-leaning, if not heavily GOP, but that's a far cry from 54's 7:1 alleged ratio.
*almost half are 25 or younger; enlisted soldiers are 32% nonwhite
I mean, good grief. We have (1) multiple polls saying more members of the military (and veterans) support Trump than Clinton; and (2) that there's a really huge disparity between identifying as Republican and Democrat and that (3) people are the right outnumber people on the left in the military. And, on the other hand, we have.... what? What is the supposed evidence that balances out against these things?
As far as I can tell lw's response is "I don't like it" and ajay's is "you're a jerk shut up I hate you". That alone is a pretty good reason to think that there might not be a good reason to think that they don't generally support Trump.
Actually, a little more research suggests that enlisted are not as poor-leaning as it used to be, and that in fact the poorest quintiles are underrepresented in the military (probably due to more stringent educational requirements, plus criminal record effects).
But the point remains that the average foot soldier looks exactly nothing like the typical Republican, so other than broad assumptions that only right-wingers would ever join the military, there's no actual basis for 67. Which is pretty much, "But everyone knows this thing I'm asserting, why won't you agree?"
I'm presuming that the latter is older (and possibly whiter?) than the former.
Officers and reserve both skew much older and whiter than the military as a whole.
Um, the basis was actual fucking polling asking them that question?
And as far as there being no (other) reasons to think they'd be Republicans it's worth noting that "poorest quintiles" is not a reliable Republican demographic, and as far as the geography goes the military pulls more from Republican dominated areas than liberal ones. Is it so hard to look this stuff up first?
"The wind kills all your birds. All your birds, killed. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that." -- Donald J. Trump
The most cited study I found by googling says among enlisted ranks 32% described themselves as conservative, 23% as liberal and 45% as moderates. I think the study's from around 2012.
I expect J-Franz to endorse Trump within the week.
74 - since I also just googled out of curiosity, that looks like a reader-response survey of the "Military Times," not a respectable poll. I couldn't find real-looking numbers for enlisted men on a quick google. The officer corps is plainly more conservative than the general population but beyond that it looks like the answer is who knows.
76: In that case, even a presumably skewed poll of Military Times subscribers tends to undermine the idea that the military is overwhelmingly conservative.
Diane Rehm interviewed Mr Franzen today. I enjoyed what I heard of the interview-- he's kind of pretentious and obnoxious as a low-grade celebrity but is a pretty good novelist. He's going to make his latest novel into a TV miniseries, and is writing the scripts.
Honestly, I think the real enemy this year is a tidal wave of wilful ignorance, not middlebrow overreach.
Cage match or reciprocal attempt at improvised conning, Franzen v Žižek, my money's on the F-ster.
The survey they're reporting on here suggests something like 44% Conservative, 20% Liberal, and 29% Moderate which looks a bit on the high side to me but not out of ballpark. I'd guess those numbers would soften a bit if you started to pull out a bunch of the older whiter veterans (at least I think those are their overall numbers, though they're not entirely clear about that when they present them). "Independent" scores big but when pushed a lot of respondents are willing to say Democrat or Republican (and Republican wins by a good margin). Their interactive thing is godawful but it's still pretty clear that we're talking about a bunch of conservatives.
AIMHMB, watching this campaign coverage with somebody who has no short term memory is a continual reminder as to how fucked up this is.
it's worth noting that "poorest quintiles" is not a reliable Republican demographic
I was correcting my "overwhelmingly poor", not claiming that poor people are Republicans, dumbass.
Look, you're the one who started from a 7:1 ratio and has now backed down to 2:1. But I guess I'm the one without enough background research.
Meanwhile, the 44:29:20 ratio cited in 79 compares with 37:35:24 nationwide in January, which is the most liberal showing in Gallup history. Two years ago, contemporary with the study cited in 79, it was 38:34:24. So basically the military, including the undeniably-conservative officer corps, is a few percentage points more conservative than the country as a whole, and you're left with, again, bare assertion that the moderates are secret Tea Partiers.
It's an especially weak claim given that the candidate in question is spending a lot of his time insulting soldiers and things they value. Is there some reason to think that Trump would outperform a generic flag-waving Republican?
I was correcting my "overwhelmingly poor"
Great. I could use the help.
Yes JRoth, pointing out a subset of the population in one poll (of something different) as being dramatic and over the top and then talking later about different polls of different things is exactly what "backing down" looks like. That's a totally not-strained reading of anything I wrote at all, just like the "moderates* are secret Tea Partiers" line.
Look, I've said:
(1) The idea that the Military hates Donald Trump is not remotely backed up by actual data, and
(2) They don't seem to have any particular trouble with him that shows up in surveys and
(3) This is completely unsurprising because the military is generally more conservative than the population as a whole*.
If anyone has any reason to think that there's some secret majority of the military which loathes Trump that's any more than "but I don't like what Trump has said about some things, personally" or "I don't think they should like him" or "this one guy over there said something mean about him" then I haven't seen it yet. Everything I've seen is just an exaggerated version of the general boggling at the idea of anyone voting for Trump at all, and a firm insistence on the idea that Trump will be defeated in a landslide** as the entire political culture of America turns out to have been reasonable the whole time and everything up till now was just a fluke.
*I'm still impressed that a lot of people decided to argue (without any data) about this one.
**Which would certainly be nice, at least if it was a real landslide and not a "given polarization in America this is an electoral college landslide!" version, but I don't think it's anywhere close to the likelihood of getting a much closer alternative.
Agreed, this is a stupid argument.
(1) The idea that the Military hates Donald Trump is not remotely backed up by actual data, and
I wasn't at all sure that anybody had claimed that the military hated Trump. But, reviewing the thread, teo made that statement. So I blame him. I think everybody agrees that:
the military is generally more conservative than the population as a whole
I had just taken you as arguing that it was not just "generally" but vastly more conservative (the 7:1 ratio that JRoth mentioned above), but beyond that I don't have any argument with your claims.
So Trump ejected a baby (and the baby's mother) from a rally today.
At this point, he's basically attacking motherhood and apple pie. And is there anyone else in America who could declare "I hate babies" while running for public office (for the highest office in the land, no less!) and still have millions of diehard supporters?
Though I have to wonder if Chris Christie now wants off the bus?
Has anyone tried it before?
Maybe the whole loving babies and motherhood and stuff thing wasn't actually that important after all, and everyone just assumed that it was and acted accordingly.
After all the infiltration by motorcycle gangs, drug cartels, white supremacists, neo Nazis, and terrorists, I'm surprised there's any room left in the US military for Republicans and Democrats.
I've been holding my new niece today so I'm very pro-baby.
The fact that the managers at Diebolt are giving money to HRC's campaign is going to be cited for the next three months.
Where did you see this reported? I was curious about it, and I tried a couple of names, and could not find a current or past manager/CEO of Diebold donating to the Clinton campaign, but moreover, this seems to say that Diebold is no longer managing the voting machine business, and the company who currently manage that business is Canadian, so their managers probably can't donate to Clinton. Is any part of this wrong?
90: I suspect the whole thing was made up.
This is kind of going off on a tangent (on the other hand, comity has apparently been achieved, so why not?), but is anyone else bugged by "moderate"? I mean, there are three big problems with it.
1. It's meaningless without a reference point. If I think of Obama as center-right and my uncle thinks of Rush Limbaugh as center-right, we could each call ourselves "moderate."
2. It's almost completely neutral. Most other political labels have at least some negative connotations, but everyone likes the idea of moderation. A party-line Republican might call themselves a moderate in a Democratic enclave just to avoid arguments, and vice versa.
3. These days it's often used to mean "I have deeply held beliefs, some of which may be well outside the mainstream, but they don't match any coherent philosophy or political party closely enough to suit me." A hypothetical person who's pro-gun and pro-national-service-requirement doesn't have anything in particular to identify with.
I'm not sure how those factors would affect military moderates. Maybe they're party-line Republicans contrasting themselves with the white supremacists who have infiltrated the military, maybe they're party-line Democrats who don't want to disagree outright with their Republican bosses, maybe they're pro-gun and pro-national-service-requirement. And maybe all the problems cancel each other out, maybe they actually are genuine moderates, and maybe actual smart people have already solved this problem.
But absent a thorough study showing "this is what it means when someone is a self-described moderate," I'd much rather look at metrics that don't include that as an option, like party ID or approval ratings.
91: Also, Trump has not been talking about that at all, whether it's true or not. Maybe someone here dreamed it.
92: Yeah, I kind of think of 'moderate' or 'centrist' as, under current conditions of American politics, meaning 'incoherent idiot'. The idea of having political positions halfway inbetween the Republican and Democratic parties makes no sense at all.
I think it makes sense when it's followed by a party. You definitely convey some useful information from describing someone as a "moderate Democrat" - they're not a socialist, and they're not Joe Lieberman, they're somewhere in between. But just a "moderate" tout court... what's that?
Oh, sure. Where there's enough other information that it means "I have a coherent set of political beliefs, but I'm not throwing any bombs," that's fine. But where the options are conservative, liberal, or moderate, or Republican, Democrat, or moderate, people who are truthfully answering 'moderate' as the best description of themselves are either completely apolitical, or nitwits. (There's a slight exception there for people who are untruthful -- questioning in detail would put them clearly within one of the other categories, but they don't want to own up to it.)
It's like " independent" in that most people have political views that are reliably partisan, but have a self-conception as being special snowflakes free of dogma (independent) or totally rational and not one of those crazy ones (moderate). It's not really about accurate partisan self-assessment.
|| A pterodactyl has attacked our encampment and injured my colleague Professor Summerlee! #lostworldproblems
90- I read it somewhere and had to look it up in response to your question.
Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI),[1] was a subsidiary of Diebold that makes and sells voting machines.
In 2009, it was sold to competitor ES&S. (From:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Systems_%26_Software)
Election Systems & Software (ES&S) is an Omaha, Nebraska-based company that manufactures and sells voting machine equipment and services. The company's offerings include vote tabulators, direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines, voter registration and election management systems, ballot-marking devices, electronic poll books, Ballot on Demand printing services, and absentee voting-by-mail services.
Election Systems & Software logo
ES&S is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group, LLC. In 2014, ES&S was the largest manufacturer of voting machines in the United States, claiming customers in 4,500 localities in 42 states and two U.S. territories. As of 2014, the company had more than 450 employees, more than 200 of whom are located in Omaha. (From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Systems_%26_Software)
MCCARTHY, MICHAEL
OMAHA, NE 68102 MCCARTHY GROUP LLC 12/16/15 $2,700 Clinton, Hillary (D)
Michael McCarthy is co-founder and CEO of the McCarthy Group. If you plug him in to http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/ you get the above result.
Oh yeah, this was kind of interesting: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/23/could_the_2016_election_be_stolen
Wait, so what's the causality here? McCarthy pays Clinton for the opportunity to swing the vote in her favor? McCarthy is a Clinton partisan, so in addition to actually swinging the vote her way, he decides to waste $2700 to swing an additional 10 voters the traditional way?
Man, I wish I had the conspiracy theory gene. The world around me would be way more interesting.
100
Interesting like a car wreck. Could they have found a more incoherent critic of voting machines (which are legitimately concerning)?
I'm in Omaha right now. Eating Herman Cain's pizza.
102: I kind of know Bob Fitrakis (Wasserman's collaborator). He's the bob mcmanus of the Columbus left -- that is if bob actually participated in politics.
99-100: This is all technically correct but wildly misleading. (Which I guess makes the accusations of trolling even more fair.) I went to opensecrets.org like you said and found that donation to Clinton, alone with 17 other donations. 11 of them were to Republicans. The donation to Clinton was the biggest, FWIW, but only by $100 or $200 (depending on whether you only count individual donations or multiple donations to the same recipient), and it generally fits with a common pattern of rich people giving money to politicians on both sides of the aisle, presumably for access or something. That's bad but is completely different from rigging an election in any meaningful sense.
Ah hah! You didn't actually say "Diebold is rigging the election for Clinton," you just said there would be questions. Well, yeah, and Jill Stein has questions about vaccines, and Trump had questions about whether Obama was born in America. In each case it's a shameless dog-whistle.
I got put into TSA pre-check without knowing it. The guy said it was written on my boarding pass. But I never signed up or anything.
105.2: But there is a big difference. For Stein and Trump there are plenty of dogs to hear the whistle. rtcb is just whistling to himself.
What I'm saying is I need not have worried about the carry on cicada corpse.
100: I don't know what to make of DemocracyNow any more. It's true I'd tuned out from them for the last decade at least, but lately have seen a few of Goodman's broadcasts, and they seem an equal mix of straight-faced conspiracy mongering and genuine concern, with nary a signal to differentiate between the two.
For the linked piece, quoting:
HARVEY WASSERMAN: When you compare exit polls, which are generally accurate to within 1 percent, with the electronic outcome, there are huge variations [from the voting results]
Dude, this is proof of nothing. Cut it out.
99: Just for the record, though, that's a different voting machine company, that owned the Diebold voting assets for about one year, before they were resold to Dominion. I don't think the statement that managers at Diebold gave money to Clinton is either technically defensible or true in spirit. If you had said, "a manager of a voting machine company gave money to Clinton," that would have been true.
He didn't mean Diebold, he just meant, "The Bold." Because rich people are very bold.
So when he said "managers at Diebold are giving money to Clinton" he meant "one rich guy who runs a company that owns another company that bought a bit of a company that used to be owned by Diebold seven years ago gave Clinton and a load of other people, many of them Republicans, some money last year".
Well, I'm convinced! Hand me down my pitchfork, honey, it's revolution time!
Or, more briefly, 8.