Election results discussion thread (and sadly the inevitable aftermath)

[Kwak]

Ahh yes, I heard about that:


But it's not like I'm going to read all this stuff to figure it out myself.

Then why demand answers to your 'questions' if you've got it all figured out already?

 

[Avnger]

Ahh yes, I heard about that:


But it's not like I'm going to read all this stuff to figure it out myself.

Read Silvanus's post 1 page back...

Trump campaign abandons part of legal challenge to Pennsylvania election results

Allegation that 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots were illegally processed without its representatives watching has been dropped

www.theguardian.com

Trump has officially dropped the allegation that PA mail-in ballots were counted without poll-watchers present. The only claim remaining of the PA lawsuit is that blue counties were allowed to "cure" in advance and red counties weren't.



There's so much to unpack from this passage, from (what remains of) Trump's lawsuit.

Firstly, if "following the law" results in "disenfranchising many", then you've got a fucking problem.

Secondly, there's nothing in PA law that excludes a notice-and-cure process. Its perfectly legal to begin with.

 

[Houseman]

Then why demand answers to your 'questions' if you've got it all figured out already?

You were the one who asked me what the complaint was. I told you. Then you said they retracted it. Then I posted that.

I'm asking whether or not (you think) people made reasonable efforts for the "official observers" to be allowed to do their jobs and prevent fraud.

 

[SupahEwok]

I'll just wait for Gethsemani or someone else to come back and answer my questions, as you're obviously not taking this seriously.

Taking you seriously is the mistake that keeps on giving in these threads.

 

[Silvanus]

But it's not like I'm going to read all this stuff to figure it out myself.

That wouldn't tell you anyway (yet); that's the suit as it stood before this particular amendment.

 

[Houseman]

That wouldn't tell you anyway (yet); that's the suit as it stood before this particular amendment.

I meant specifically this: "Read the redlined version of the Republican amended complaint here."

 

[Silvanus]

I meant specifically this: "Read the redlined version of the Republican amended complaint here."

Ah yeah, I had another look. You're right, I'd missed the amended one there as well.

Reading through it now.


EDIT: OK, the relevant part (the Counts) begins on page 63. At least now I can see why the news organisations are saying he's dropped that complaint, and Trump is saying he hasn't.

So, the original lawsuit had 7 Counts (separate points it wanted the Court to make rulings on individually) with separate relief sought for each. Some of them concerned the 680,000 mail-in ballots they claim were counted without watchers present-- the relief being the disqualification of those ballots.

All Counts on that basis have been dropped. You can see in the amended version, Counts I, II, III, VI & VII have been struck through entirely. That means that Counts IV & V remain: they now represent the only points on which the complaint is asking the Court to rule. Neither of those Counts specifically refer to, or rely on, the claim that poll-watchers were excluded, and neither of those Counts seek the disqualification of the mail-in ballots.

The two remaining counts only allege more broadly that "equal protections" weren't respected, and that Republican-leaning counties weren't given the same opportunities to fix ballots that had technical errors (which number a few hundred).

The claim about poll-watchers being excluded is still present in the complaint-- but only in the "Factual Allegations" section (starting on page 12). Not in any Counts. This means that the Trump campaign is not asking the Court to actually rule on that specific question, and isn't relying on it for any of its remaining arguments. It's solely there as background, to try to establish a picture of the "unequal protections" I mentioned earlier.

In short: the request for those ballots to be disqualified has been dropped. Those ballots are safe.

 

[Houseman]

Ah yeah, I had another look. You're right, I'd missed the amended one there as well.

Reading through it now.

I saw some tweets that had screenshots of things that were redlined, but I don't speak legalese enough to know if the complaint was removed entirely, reworded somewhere else, or if it was considered redundant.

 

[Silvanus]

I saw some tweets that had screenshots of things that were redlined, but I don't speak legalese enough to know if the complaint was removed entirely, reworded somewhere else, or if it was considered redundant.

I've edited my post with a summary. In short, I can see why Trump said he hadn't "dropped" it, because it's still present in there as background. But he's not pursuing it, drops the request for the Court to rule on it, and is no longer seeking the disqualification of those ballots.

 

[tstorm823]

No, it entirely is. Laissez-faire capitalism has been in practice in the United States since the early 19th Century, and the government spending, government programs, and infrastructural works usually cited as counter-examples to this throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries fall consistently into at least one of two groups: development for business and the wealthy, and protection of business and the wealthy. Not even Reaganomics was new under the sun during the dubious leadership of its nomenclature; it was the predominant economic theory of the Gilded Age, except then it was known as "horse and sparrow theory" which was a practical statement the poor can eat shit.

One needn't look further than the presidencies of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover -- not to mention the outcome of their disastrous administrations, the Great Depression -- as proof positive for this. Fun side activity, compare the relationship of the Panic of 1893 to the Great Depression, and the relationship of the S&L Crisis to the Great Recession, and take a little gander for yourself as to exactly whose economic policies and which responses (or more appropriately, lack thereof) precipitated all four.

(Hint, it's because the same group of assholes bought the same group of idiots into elected office, who push the same dogshit economic policies on behalf of their paymasters, that caused the same wildly unstable boom-bust cycle for which the country's poor were made to pay the price.)

a) You totally missed the point I was making, which was that "small government conservatism" is about a small federal government, not so much about states/counties/localities. I understand small federal governments are a century old Republican desire, but that has no bearing on states giving their citizens IDs.
b) The Great Depression was not a result of their policies. There were plenty of recessions and depressions before the great depression, that just happened to be the first one that the Federal Reserve system attempted to fix, and they did literally the opposite of currently accepted practices in many cases during the Depression. Some of Hoover's compatriots were involved in that, but it makes more sense to blame Wilson (who instituted the Fed with little guidance or direction almost entirely because countries in Europe had banking systems and the man had a raging boner for Europe) than it does to blame Coolidge.

 

[Eacaraxe]

a) You totally missed the point I was making, which was that "small government conservatism" is about a small federal government...

No, I got it, you're just completely wrong. Corporatism is not "small government", it's the exact opposite of "small government".

"Small government" is not interventionism on behalf of private corporate interests, whether through market re-regulation to protect large corporations up to and including foreign military intervention on behalf of large corporations. "Small government" is not grossly expanding police power and eroding fundamental civil liberties for decades on end. "Small government" is not a trillion-dollar-per-year defense budget as dictated by a Byzantine defense bureaucracy and massive military-industrial complex. "Small government" is not enabling corporate capture of executive agencies whilst simultaneously not reducing their size, scope, or breadth of powers, and in many cases expanding it so as to better-benefit large corporations. "Small government" is not picking and choosing between fundamental rights and liberties using a single religion as the basis for those choices in violation of the principles behind the First Amendment, and using the power of government to enforce the presence -- or lack thereof -- of those rights and liberties.

b) The Great Depression was not a result of their policies.

What, you're now going to say strict adherence to the gold and silver standard, while deregulating Wall Street and the banks, and allowing the outbound flow of capitol via high-risk loans to Weimar Germany creating a fatal liquidity trap, weren't major contributors to the Great Depression? Or are you just going to derp off with a bunch of decades-long debunked Glenn Beck bullshit about the Fed?

Because it's not as if the one thing the Federal Reserve could have done to prevent or lessen the impact of the market crash, wasn't put off the table by both Coolidge or Hoover, or anything.

 

[Revnak]

Woodrow Wilson wanted America to be Europe and that’s what killed America.

Woodrow. Wilson. Un-American.

WOODROW WILSON! ************ JUST HATED THE MYTH OF AMERICA! Y’KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THAT WOODROW WILSON GUY!

God I hate this country.

 

[Avnger]

Woodrow Wilson wanted America to be Europe and that’s what killed America.

Woodrow. Wilson. Un-American.

WOODROW WILSON! ************ JUST HATED THE MYTH OF AMERICA! Y’KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THAT WOODROW WILSON GUY!

That was certainly some words put one after another. You might want to think about putting the bottle down for the night though...

 

[Revnak]

That was certainly some words put one after another. You might want to think about putting the bottle down for the night though...

I haven’t had a drink in three months but reading your godawful posts has made me reconsider.

 

[ObsidianJones]

Allegations:

Georgia elections official says Lindsey Graham looked for way to exclude some legal ballots

Republicans are trying to shift the state’s recount toward President Donald Trump, but the South Carolina senator denied he pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

www.politico.com

Georgia’s top elections official said on Monday that Sen. Lindsey Graham implicitly proposed he toss out legally mailed ballots in his state, as Republicans seek ways to sway election results in the state in President Donald Trump’s favor.
Speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday evening, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the South Carolina Republican asked whether he could check signatures on mail-in ballots during Georgia’s recount and use a high frequency of mismatches to justify throwing away mail-in ballots in certain counties. Raffensperger said he took Graham’s comments as “an implication of look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.”
Graham denied pressuring Raffensperger to throw away legal ballots, telling POLITICO that he had simply had a “very pleasant” conversation about the state’s signature verification process.
The Washington Post first reported their conversation, which reportedly took place on Friday — the same day a Georgia lawyer sympathetic to Trump filed a lawsuit to prevent the state from certifying the election until all signatures could be verified. When presented with Graham’s denial on CNN, Raffensperger pointed out that the lawsuit sought to use a tactic similar to the one Graham proposed to stop the inclusion of absentee ballots in the state.

If true... what should be his punishment?

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Allegations:

Georgia elections official says Lindsey Graham looked for way to exclude some legal ballots

Republicans are trying to shift the state’s recount toward President Donald Trump, but the South Carolina senator denied he pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

www.politico.com

If true... what should be his punishment?

There is a joke the Republican Party is the party of projection. Considering the controversy that happened in 2018 I wouldn't be surprised if this was true.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

I have no word, this is just magic.

 

[Eacaraxe]

If true... what should be his punishment?

Having to post a picture of his bare ass online so the entire internet can see if the "ladybug" allegations are true. We all lose a little, but Graham potentially loses a whole lot, and I'd be willing to forsake a piece of my soul and sanity to gaze upon his ass pic to see if he's a rent boy connoisseur.

 

[SilentPony]

If true... what should be his punishment?

Well its voter fraud, throwing away legal ballots. So Lindsey Graham should face 2 years and a $500 fine for every single vote he wanted thrown out.
Biden won Georgie by 14,155 votes so he'd be looking at a minimum of 28,310 years in jail and $7 million in fines.

 

[Eacaraxe]

...a minimum of 28,310 years in jail and $7 million in fines.

Can't help but laugh, comparing that to your profile picture. Lindsey Graham getting out of prison just in time for the Horus Heresy would indeed be fitting punishment.