US 2024 Presidential Election

Trunkage

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Because Biden was holding the bag when it went down. Except for Covid, everything Trump touched went incredibly well, everything Biden touched turned to dross. Might have something to do with Trump the man vs. Biden the puppet and his handlers. And those same incompetent and/or evil puppet masters will be controlling Kamala.
Trump trade war with China was a failure, and led to inflation. Onshoring isn't helping because it's just that expensive

This made Trump too chicken to criticism Pooh Bear. My countries PM did, then China sanctioned us to try to get us to change our mind. But Fuck China. Trump left us twisting in the wind because he's chicken shit

Trump left all the Asian Pacific area go and then wondered why China has increased it's influence with a LOT of countries. They had more countries willing to let China invade Taiwan than before he left office. Utter failire

Trump moving the Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem encouraged Israeli settlers to kill and rape Palestinians which led to Oct 7. Utter failure

Trump failed to contain Putin who took more land while Trump was president. Failure

North Korea launched missiles which angered Trump.... not long after Trump thought he could make NK peaceful. Failure.

Iran has been running free as Trump demanded they listen to him and they just ignored him. This definitely has not helped the situation in Israel, Lebanon or Yemen. Utter failure

He pulled out support from much of Africa leading to a whole swathe of countries being pro-Russia. Utter failure

He stopped Obama's border policy and then wondered why immigrants suddenly flooded the border. Utter failure. And he's been deliberately thwarting any actual solution for his own benefit

Trump Covid response was his best policy response. It killed fat less people and didn't hand countries to Dictators

Edit: I don't know if I have approved of any of Biden foreign policies. Biden decision have generally been bland to bad to horrible. But he hasn't destroyed our society like Trump has, so he wins the point. By default
 

gorfias

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That's what you were told (and apparently uncritically accepted), but what evidence has been shown for either his criminality or him being "too senile to prosecute"*?

* Biden is, obviously, old and has lost (at least) a step. That's a far cry from legally unprosecutable, though.
And HRC was not, using legal lingo, criminally negligent. She was extremely careless. Copium.
 

Schadrach

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I don't know about that; there're quite a few people who'd find standing in line for extended periods pretty strenuous without anything to eat.
Giving someone nice food if they vote is like the go-to example for illegal turnout buying. If I remember right there was a restaurant out west that got into trouble for having a "free meal if you have an I Voted sticker" sort of promotion one year. Giving anyone anything of any value in exchange for voting for you is vote buying, giving anyone anything of any value in exchange for voting at all is turnout buying (which if allowed is functionally vote buying, since such an offer can be tailored in kind or location to encourage turnout from people more likely to vote a certain way).

Everything I'm talking about, the satellite offices and food being nearby, are perfectly reasonable measures that make it easier to vote.
I think the key argument bout the satellite offices is that a place that allows you to register to vote, receive a ballot, fill it out and turn it in to be counted not being a "polling place" is a distinction without a difference, and one that feels like it was used to do an end run around election rules.

EDIT: Where I live, I see non-stop adds about, "Trump and his Project 2025". I have never, ever, heard him ever endorse it or claim to have anything to do with it.
Trump spoke at a Heritage Foundation (creators of project 2025) conference in 2022, in which he talked about this "great group" (the working group behind Project 2025) saying “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do." When talking to the people behind Project 2025 about them creating Project 2025, he certainly seemed to have an idea what it was and supported it. Of course, that's probably just his narcissism talking, or maybe that he's losing track of things like that in his old age.

 

BrawlMan

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Trump spoke at a Heritage Foundation (creators of project 2025) conference in 2022, in which he talked about this "great group" (the working group behind Project 2025) saying “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do." When talking to the people behind Project 2025 about them creating Project 2025, he certainly seemed to have an idea what it was and supported it. Of course, that's probably just his narcissism talking, or maybe that he's losing track of things like that in his old age.
The fucker knew exactly what he was talking about. But he just doesn't care so long as he benefits from it and other people suffer.

My mom and I turned in our ballots today, so we are all set.
 

Silvanus

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Giving someone nice food if they vote is like the go-to example for illegal turnout buying. If I remember right there was a restaurant out west that got into trouble for having a "free meal if you have an I Voted sticker" sort of promotion one year. Giving anyone anything of any value in exchange for voting for you is vote buying, giving anyone anything of any value in exchange for voting at all is turnout buying (which if allowed is functionally vote buying, since such an offer can be tailored in kind or location to encourage turnout from people more likely to vote a certain way).
Right, but these weren't giving someone food for voting. There was no requirement, you got food whether you voted or not. It was simply free food near polling places.

I think the key argument bout the satellite offices is that a place that allows you to register to vote, receive a ballot, fill it out and turn it in to be counted not being a "polling place" is a distinction without a difference, and one that feels like it was used to do an end run around election rules.
If we consider them polling places, then the complaint against them disappears, because the government is perfectly legally entitled to designate polling places.

The legal restriction upon which TStorm is basing his objection applies specifically to mail.
 

Eacaraxe

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The Stryker 105mm gun platform didn't work...
It "didn't work" because there's no purpose whatsoever to putting an L7 on a wheeled AFV that can just as well mount ATGM's, or be used as a mobile C4ISTAR center for fire support, whether that comes in the form of drones, artillery, or manned ground attack aircraft. Let alone one with an autoloader that's never outperformed a manned crew, that just tacks on more cost, more maintenance, and more potential points of failure resulting in F- or K-kills.

30mm autocannons do the job just fine against lightly-armored vehicles or defensive positions. Any more than that and you're not pointing a fuckin' 105 at it and expecting that peashooter in the day of composite and reactive armor to win the day. You're launching an ATGM at it from defilade, or more likely calling in artillery or CAS.

...The only versions of it that worked were the Dragoon and the soon-to-be M-SHORAD...
Funny you didn't mention the C4ISTAR, medevac, engineer, artillery, scouting/surveillance, or the actual anti-tank variants.

...Also, the armor sucked, and it even had to install cope cages around it to protect against 1980s RPGs...
Yeah, you could say that about the Bradley, too. It still turned out to be one of the most combat-effective AFV's of the late 20th Century. Because being heavily-armored, and having a poor power-to-weight ratio as a consequence, was contrary to its doctrinal purpose.

...The third arm of the power armor did work. It made you more accurate with LMG fire...
Okay, now you're down to defending that stupid fucking boondoggle by saying it was as effective as...a $30 bipod.

...Also, I don't use popular mechanics; I use War on the Rocks...
Wow, War on the Rocks, huh? The podcast and journal made of, by, and for the people with a vested interest in advertising these stupid fucking boondoggles in the first place? Do you think Nintendo Power was an unbiased and impartial source of news for Nintendo products too?

To think I was being charitable when I said PopMech...

It scored quite a few kills against Ukrainian Su-27s with long-range missiles alongside Mig-31s using ballistic missiles.
Oh, for Chrissakes.

...And there was a period when the USSR had more nuclear weapons than the US...
Had more nuclear warheads, because the Soviets used MIRV's. The Soviets never outpaced the US in delivery platforms. This is one of the most heavily-debunked lies of the entire Cold War, and the very fact you're trying to cite it is nothing short of laughable.

...because of aggressive US arms racing by Reagan which caused the USSR to go bankrupt...
Yeah, and I'm sure the Soviet gerontocracy and inability to form a stable successor government to Brezhnev's, the invasion of Afghanistan (attributable to Carter, not Reagan), failure to develop Siberian fossil fuel production in a timely manner as an economic base, and the nuclear disaster that caused a quarter-trillion dollars in economic damage had nothing to do with it. Naw bro, it was 100% Ronnie Raygun, trust me.

If you want to go "that" route...the Carter admin killed SALT-II, not Reagan. Even if that bullshit chickenhawk Republican narrative were true in the first place -- and it still isn't -- it wasn't even Reagan that did it. You're necrofellating the wrong President.

...The US government is rightly doing the same thing again...
They're wrongly doing the same thing again, not because of some triple-secret 4D macroeconomic chess game that never was and never will turn out to be true, but because birds and stars want six- and seven-figure desk jobs in the private sector, and are willing to make sure we're never capable of winning a war again to get them so the process can repeat itself next generation. End of story.
 

Agema

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I think the key argument bout the satellite offices is that a place that allows you to register to vote, receive a ballot, fill it out and turn it in to be counted not being a "polling place" is a distinction without a difference, and one that feels like it was used to do an end run around election rules.
I certainly agree that it can feel like that. However, another way of looking at in the context of a postal vote: you register, get your form, fill it out and post it. There's no poll watcher anywhere in that process.

So government provides all the postal vote services in one place: the ability to register, get a form, fill it out, and submit it. If a postal vote is done without a poll watcher anywhere in the process normally, why does it need a poll watcher when done in a government building?

What happens if the election office simply strips out the vote submission: makes them leave and walk 100m down the street to post the ballot so no actual vote occurs in the building? That's definitely not a polling station anymore, because no voting is occurring, but I struggle to see whether the mailbag being in the building or in the street is a meaningful difference. Can the offices be arranged with a separate room where voters fill in the ballot and submit it, and allow observers only for that specific part? Do we deliberately split up every part of the process (registering, getting a form, filling it in, etc.) - make it deliberately inconvenient for voters - but isn't that sort of defeating the point?

I would argue there is a decent case for monitoring to ensure that the office staff are being fair and neutral - although it also needs to provide privacy for citizens in terms of sensitive personal information that may be involved. A counter-argument to that might be that it involves a level of scrutiny of satellite election office processes that don't occur for other postal votes: surely people can and do contact local government offices and speak to staff about how to do postal votes with no-one monitoring it.

I don't think this matter is remotely straightforward.
 

Hades

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So Vance and Walz have their debate right now. With Vance I think expectations are so rock bottom he can only do well in comparison.
 
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tippy2k2

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We're gonna get dragged into a fuckin World War at this rate cause Biden and Harris don't have the ability to tell Israel to stop bombing places...
 

Schadrach

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The fucker knew exactly what he was talking about. But he just doesn't care so long as he benefits from it and other people suffer.

My mom and I turned in our ballots today, so we are all set.
I was trying to imply that Trump pretending he never knew about or supported it was because either he's a narcissist who will say whatever he thinks will puff him up best or he's going senile and doesn't remember giving the speech because he's falling apart both physically and mentally, as you do in advanced age.

It was simply free food near polling places.
If there's no connection whatsoever between voting and receiving the free food, then it could be a different story. Calling it "Fuel the Vote" when it has nothing at all to do with the vote is a weird choice of labeling, though (hint: the point was to entice people to come out and vote by offering them free food). None of the articles I'd seen on it were clear on whether or not it carried the expectation one would vote or had voted.

If we consider them polling places, then the complaint against them disappears, because the government is perfectly legally entitled to designate polling places.

The legal restriction upon which TStorm is basing his objection applies specifically to mail.
It doesn't eliminate the complaint, it changes it. Because mail in ballots aren't turned in to polling places, and you know poll watchers and such. It's this weird hybrid where it looks and acts exactly like a polling place, but technically isn't so it can do things that aren't how a polling place works either. Literally created to be an end run around policy by being Schrodinger's polling place.

I don't think this matter is remotely straightforward.
It's not, but that's because it's a kind of facility invented during the election to be a polling place but not technically a polling place so policy couldn't take it into account.
 

BrawlMan

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was trying to imply that Trump pretending he never knew about or supported it was because either he's a narcissist who will say whatever he thinks will puff him up best or he's going senile and doesn't remember giving the speech because he's falling apart both physically and mentally, as you do in advanced age
I already know, I just wanted to express my rage.