Arizona County's Voting Machines Rendered Unusable By OAN-Financed Vote Auditors
from the nice-work,-cyber-idiots dept
The libs have been owned. They've been owned so thoroughly that Maricopa County, Arizona is going to need to buy millions of dollars of new electronic voting machines.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs sent a letter Thursday to Maricopa County officials to let them know that the fake "audit" of the 2020 election probably ruined hundreds of voting machines the county sent for "testing" under a subpoena from the state Senate. Since there's no knowing whether Cyber Ninjas, the QAnon enthusiasts running the audit, had messed up the machines, they can't safely be used again in future elections.
Once the machines were no longer under Maricopa County's control, Hobbs explained, the "chain of custody" was broken, leaving her with "grave concerns regarding the security and integrity of these machines," she wrote.
Before we get into the more expensive implications of this, let's backtrack a little to see how this came to be.
For months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, President Donald Trump and his enablers claimed the upcoming election would be fraudulent. Suspecting he was on his way out, Trump ramped up his baseless claims that everything from voting machines to mail-in votes couldn't be trusted.
Once he had lost, the claims went into overdrive. The election had been "stolen." Hundreds of true believers stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 with the intent of preventing the election from being certified as a win for Joe Biden.
The claims of fraud continued. Nobody could prove any fraudulent activity had occurred but Trump and his acolytes continued to insist Trump had been illegally removed from power. This group of idiots included several Congressional reps and Senators. It also included everyone from a pillow salesman to a cybersecurity "expert" who claimed his inability to properly compose a tweet was evidence of malicious hacking.
Welcome to Maricopa County, where everyday is another scene cut from "Veep" because it was considered too improbable. State senate Republicans hired the ridiculous-sounding "Cyber Ninjas" to perform "America's Audit" (called this despite the fact it's confined to a single county in a single state) -- a recount of every vote in the county.
Since then, it's been fiascoes piled on debacles piled on a foundation of conspiracy theories. It started with auditors working with blue pens that could be used to change ballots. Auditors are only supposed to use red pens, which can't be read by auditing equipment and voting machines.
That's the most sane part of this. The CEO of the Cyber Ninjas has tweeted out stuff about "stopping the steal." The audit is partially financed by One America News Network, one of several entities sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems. At one point, auditors were using UV lights and 5k cameras to search for traces of bamboo, following up on the absurd claim that a box of filled ballots had been shipped in from China. How this was supposed to prove a link between ballots and China is best left to the brain geniuses at Cyber Ninja, who probably assume nothing is above slanty-eyed furriners and their desire to elect Sleepy Joe.
Even the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors found the whole thing appalling. Its scathing letter to state Senate leadership pointed out the auditors' inexperience and apparent inability to count and said the whole thing was nothing more than the state Senate placing election integrity in the hands of "grifters and con artists."
This brings us back to the latest insanity. The voting machines were turned over to the Cyber Ninjas, who then acted as though chain-of-custody isn't that big of a deal. Since they followed none of the steps needed to ensure the machines remained intact and secure, the county has no choice but to decertify them once the Ninjas are done entertaining their "stolen election" fantasies. This isn't just the Secretary of State saying this. This is also the DHS's election security experts.
[DHS officials] unanimously advised that once election officials lose custody and control over voting systems and components, those devices should not be reused in future elections. Rather, decommissioning and replacing those devices is the safest option as no methods exist to adequately ensure those machines are safe to use in future elections.
As many as 358 machines may be affected by the actions of cybersecurity "experts" who have no previous experience with either election security or conducting a vote audit. The total cost for replacement could be more than $6 million.
The only upshot is that local residents won't be paying for these. Thanks to the agreement reached with the so-called auditors, Maricopa County isn't responsible for costs like these. No, it will be the entire state paying for the clusterfuck that is "America's Audit." The state is on the hook. And with lawsuits already flying, taxpayers will be out even more money no matter what the outcome of this litigation is. And it all could have been prevented by either 1) hiring competent people to conduct the audit or 2) Senate Republicans not indulging the worst members and supporters of their party.
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Filed Under: arizona, audit, chain of custody, cybersecurity, election security, elections, maricopa county, recount, voting machines
Companies: cyber ninjas
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Under the leadership of Kelli Ward, the AZGOP has taken a hard turn toward the fringe. They've alienated voters and donors; the current leadership is somehow too far-right for the party of Evan Mecham, Fife Symington, and Joe Arpaio.
And they see which way things are going. Democrats have held a majority of Arizona's seats in the US House for years, and now both our US Senate seats have gone to Democrats. Statewide offices are increasingly going to Democrats as well (though governor has been a tough nut to crack), and while Republicans still hold both chambers in the state legislature, they've gone from supermajorities to a majority of just 2 seats in each house.
They're panicking.
And much like the GOP at the national level, they really only have two choices if they want to keep winning elections: either they can stop being racist conspiracy whackjobs and start appealing to more mainstream voters, or they can engage in mass-scale voter disenfranchisement efforts and make sure only racist conspiracy whackjobs get to vote.
They've made their choice.
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Forrest Trump
Stupid is as stupid does.
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Burden of proof is on "officials".
Techdirt's out-of-sight shenanigans in BLOCKING comments with the mysterious "spam filter" -- mine are never let out of the alleged "moderation" -- is good example of WHY independent audits are needed. Techdirt is cheating behind the scenes and of course claims that it isn't. So long as can hide the evidence, the corrupt few will believe.
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'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it'
Because if there's one thing you want in your election integrity auditors it's for them to be heavily biased towards a particular result and grossly incompetent.
Carrying on with the conspiracy theories like this may play well to the nutjobs and worse infesting the party but all they're doing for everyone else is showing just how corrupt and broken the republican party is and ensuring that only crazies and worse will want to align themselves with the party going forward.
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Re:
Choice three seems really popular: Burn down everything on the way out.
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Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
IKR? I never see your inane comments like this one i can't see either.
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Re:
To be fair, they really didn't have a choice.
They hitched their camel to Trumps star & they have to stay with the program no matter what. They fear what might happen if the Trump faithful turn upon them, I mean look what they did in DC.
So the only option is to pull out all the stops to rig the elections toward themselves.
Which pretty much sums up how this is all going to play out.
The GQP screaming how the election was stolen from Trump while actively trying to undermine upcoming elections to keep their grip on power.
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Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
Morons like this explain how Trump could have possibly won in 2016. Only the inbred could have voted for that idiot.
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Re: Re:
Well no, "be less racist" was never actually an option.
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Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
Comment Held for Moderation...
Thanks for your comment.
It will be reviewed by our staff before it is posted.
The above is a LIE.
Slipped one in, but prior text was again blocked! CHEATY Techdirt can't stand ANY dissent.
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Re: Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
And I'm in again after dozens of tries.
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IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
You kids can never see the flip side of assertions.
It's up to AZ administration to PROVE that the election was fair, NOT that We The People have to figure out every possible shenanigan. State and county have tried vigorously to avoid ANY audit outside of saying "no, we're totally honest".
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Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
Sometimes adding on to a blocked comment works.
There. Got in the horrible dissent that Techdirt can't stand, so blocks out of sight.
This is why so few comments of late: everyone KNOWS you censor, Techdirt.
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If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” - David Frum
Swap out conservatives for 'conservatives' as I imagine there are still some people who self-identify as such who aren't just using it to defend being horrible people and that seems to be the GOP in a nutshell these days.
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Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
You are spamming the site with repeated falsehoods, and lies. Additionally you are insulting TechDirt and everyone in it, quite often because you do not understand the very basics of how networks, the internet, the web, web sites, and web site commenting works.
You generate spam. Many respond via the "spam flag" on the insightful/funny/copy functions/flag <- Spam filter flag.
You are a spammer. And a liar. And a nutjob. See, simple to explain, difficult for an idiot to understand.
My 1st Amend rights align with Mike's. We don't want to be associated with you: Read the 1st, Dummy. The 1st Amendment that is. If you need help, see your doctor.
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Re: Re: Re: Burden of proof is on
More or less. This one keeps metaphorically shooting his foot off and every time he does it he complains it's someone else's fault.
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Bad dudes (in Arizona)
CYBER NINJAS HIJACKED THE PRESIDENT*!
ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO FIND OUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED**?
*('s legitimate electoral victory)
**(Biden won Arizona fair and square)
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Re: Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
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Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
Oh, I had a guy give me some no-true-Scotsman rap about how the talking heads on Fox News aren't real conservatives the other week.
Dude used the phrase "Buckleyite fusionism" unironically.
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Next time use a pencil & paper
.
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Troll confirms he is reality-challenged
Well, you certainly never do. And when you do make them yourself they never really make sense and often contradict themselves.
They did, the AZ administration who happened to be Republican at the time certified the result and later the audit that happened afterwards.
Well, if you believe in every nutjob you come across I'm afraid you idiots will be looking for nonexistent shenanigans for a very long time.
Oh? Did you make that shit up yourself or are you just repeating what other idiots said?
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The Arizona state government needs evdience of major voting irregularities to prompt a government-run audit. No such evidence exists in re: the 2020 election, even after recounts and other cursory investigations. The current “audit” is being carried out by a nakedly partisan outside group that wants desperately to find in favor of Trump regardless of the truth. This ridiculous farce of an “audit” is a conclusion in search of a theory, an answer in search of a question. Anyone who takes it seriously is equally as ridiculous.
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Wow, this beats GQP's previous record of wasted gov funds over something stupid.
Benghazi: 4 years, 0 indictments. $7,000,000 in the red
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials&qu
You have a weird sense of porn.
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Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
There is something both hilarious and horrifying about the idea that Fox News isn't 'conservative' enough for Trump cultists these days, how quick they are to turn on each other at even the hint of heresy...
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Now here's hoping DHS charges the Arizona GOP the full cost to replace all the voting machines they have to decertify.
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Re: charges the Arizona GOP
Yes. I also wondered why the FRauditors weren't on the hook for the cost.
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Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
The Republican party is not the party of conservatives, it is the party of enemies of the Republic. Their rejection of democracy needs to be called out and fought at every opportunity.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Did you really expect someone who sexually identifies as a copyright to be not completely fucked up?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Unfortunately for you, Lostinlodos and tp have been picking up the slack. You're not needed, blue. You're so basic you make litmus test paper turn green just by looking at it.
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Re: Altogether now!
There once was an out of the blue
Who hated the process of due
Each post that he'd made
Was DMCAed
And shoved up his ass with a screw
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I don't see it mentioned above, probably overlooked it, but for the record - Maricopa County had real auditors check the machines and the ballot counts TWICE after the November election. No problems found in the machines or the counts.
I can't believe my taxes are paying for this cluster f*ck.
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Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
Sadly you humans have morals and reject the idea of turning them on each other & letting it fix itself.
We can save them!!
No, no you cannot.
These are not toddlers who think there is a singing purple dinosaur who loves them, these are wackjobs with weapons they are more than willing to turn on anyone who dares question them.
This gestures at the world today is exactly what happens every single time your idiotic race decides that we can reach them & reason will win the day.
Oh Hitler is just misunderstood, he means well.
Oh Nero, he just wants everyone to be happy.
Yep never happened before you hairless apes of short memories.
They helped kill 500,000 citizens, are trying to gloss over sedition & treason, and we still have people pretending bipartisanship will fix this.
Governors & State Legislators are still trying to pretend the mask mandates were just evil plots.
When the delusion has a bodycount, you have no smart ideas to remove the obviously mentally deranged from office before they kill again?
We have a large number of citizens who have been told to reject the evidence of their own eyes & fear the vaccine.
This is going to make the pandemic keep going.
Now we pretend we can trust the maskholes to actually be fully vaccinated out in public without a mask.
How many more people do we need to kill on the altar of ego?
Typhoid Mary was a lovely housekeeper, how many did she kill before society finally said enough and locked her away for the protection of society?
We have a disease, that is very very real, that we could have stopped but there were no adults in the room.
Now these coddled well armed idiots are going to refuse to do the 1 thing that could actually end the pandemic and we could resume with our lives because... Trump told them it was bad.
Lets put them on a reservation, send in some blankets, and call it a day. The grandmother you save might be your own. There comes a limit to personal freedom & infecting others should be it. We have wheelchair Hitler Youth screaming that forced vaccination is the worst thing ever & people should resist. That wearing a mask is a huge personal freedom destroying burden on them. If you saw an asshole running around with a lit stick of dynamite would you try to reason with them or would you drive them away from others before it went off?
America has a great history of breaking promises, whats one more. Put them in camps until they can witness up close what a covid infection does & remind them that we have a vaccine but you didn't believe in the thing thats killing you.
Stop staring at me like that.
I didn't say put Arbeit macht frei above the gate.
If they want to kill themselves, why stop them?
We get felt up to get on planes on the off chance someones underwear might be a bomb but you balk at the idea of locking up super spreaders who will keep infecting others as long as they are free, until we can get everyone else willing & able to be vaccinated the shots?
We can apologize to them in 25 years or so... the apology might be in the form of grave wreaths but they were free to decide to not be vaccinated, but stopped from taking others with them.
Pretty win win in a sociopathic sort of way.
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Re: Re: Re:
There is a smidge of racism in there, but they only care about people able to give them money & have power.
Besides if they can't keep the other races down whom will they tell the poor white folk they keep failing to help is as fault?
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'All the evidence says I'm wrong, the evidence must be wrong'
Ah, but you see you're looking at it through the lens of sanity, for those living a life of denial that their Dear Leader lost, one positively riddled with conspiracy theories to avoid having to face that the fact that the audits kept coming up fine is merely seen as proof that the conspiracy was really good.
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That's not an "either-or". They already did 1), and the people in 2) rejected the result. Doing more of the 1) wouldn't prevent the issue.
So we're left with: "And it all could have been prevented by Senate Republicans not indulging the worst members and supporters of their party."
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liability
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Re: liability
That would require them to admit that the auditors did something wrong and it wasn't just people overreacting due to a trifle like 'voting machines were allowed out of state custody and tinkered with by a biased third-party', and since that's not likely to happen they'll just dump the costs on the taxpayers.
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Re: Re: liability
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Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
White supremacy in a nutshell.
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Maybe tampering with the voting machines was the whole idea?
I mean, makes a lot more sense than actually hiring a company calling itself "Cyber Ninjas" for an audit. Maybe this was the front, and dragging it out until they could have a pretense for fiddling with the voting machines out of custody was they whole point?
Expect the state legislature then to override election officials over how to conduct the election. Georgia has passed laws for that purpose already; Arizona is probably taking a cue from them.
The question is just where Georgia will get rigged voting equipment to make their legislative manipulation count. But if everything else fails, they can just import it from Arizona, with some "Dominion is owned by Hugo Chavez" sob piece or something.
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Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
"There is something both hilarious and horrifying about the idea that Fox News isn't 'conservative' enough for Trump cultists these days"
It's a double-edge sword, really. On the one hand, they're drifting so far from reality at this point that no sane person is going to tune in except to watch the train wreck ironically, while Dominion and others who can demonstrate actual damages from their cult baiting should ensure that they never have the reach that Fox did.
On the other hand, Fox is a big reason why the country's in this mess in the first place and it's somewhat dangerous for them to come out looking like the moderate choice. While I can't imagine anyone looking at something like Tucker Carlson's show and take it seriously, apparently many do, and they still vote.
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Re:
"No problems found in the machines or the counts."
The point is not to find actual problems. The point is to continue the charade pretending that the election was stolen and continue motivating cult members to rally and vote.
That's why all the accusations are such laughable nonsense, ranging from looking for bamboo to claiming that ballots were fed to chickens. There's nothing to find, and they know it, but the end result is not the point. They have no evidence that can sway anyone's opinion at this point, they just need to keep the cult angry and motivated.
"I can't believe my taxes are paying for this cluster f*ck."
I sincerely hope that you and others remember this well during whatever elections you have coming up over the next few years, and you vote convincingly for people who will use your money better.
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Re: Re:
Also actively trying to undermine the previous elections. It wasn't enough, so they redoubled their efforts.
In my opinion, they're convinced the election was stolen because they cheated, and still lost... which obviously means the other side also cheated. Gaslight, Qbstruct, Project.
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Re: Maybe tampering with the voting machines was the whole idea?
"I mean, makes a lot more sense than actually hiring a company calling itself "Cyber Ninjas" for an audit."
Meh, the name's really the least concerning thing about the whole thing. I've worked with companies that have chosen names that equally sound like some teenager's XBox tag and it's sometimes been a sign that the company really know their stuff (i.e. it's a small team of nerds who know their stuff but don't use corporate speak).
The evidence seems to be that this is absolutely not the case here, but the name is not necessarily a problem on its own.
"The question is just where Georgia will get rigged voting equipment to make their legislative manipulation count"
That might be the backup plan, but their recent laws being passed to ensure voter suppression are already working to frontline of the next election battle.
"some "Dominion is owned by Hugo Chavez" sob piece or something"
They need to be careful there, as Dominion is tired of taking that kind of crap and they have decent evidence of actual harm from the people they're already suing for vast amounts of money.
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Re: Forrest Trump
If this was only "stupid" it'd be one thing. But the reality is that what happened was essentially this;
GOP: "Stop da steal! Just because the dem libs outnumber us ain't no reason fer us to lose da election! It's obviously rigged!"
Cyber Ninjas: "We haz 3l33t h4x0r sk1llz! These machines don't work good! We know this cuz after we rewrote the stuff in them when we were "auditing" them they won't boot!"
We should probably be grateful to Trump for this at least - he made the GOP reveal that they'd turned into an embarrassing dumpster fire catering only to the dumbest dimbulbs to be found in the american heartland. It's a party centered entirely around the idiocracy now.
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Re: Re:
"To be fair, they really didn't have a choice."
At that point, no. I mean they already laboriously climbed the tarpeian rock and hurled themselves from the top. "Halfway down" just isn't a good place to start reconsidering the life choices bringing you to that point.
It's the new motto of the US I guess - "Go real dumb or go home!"*
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I disagree with them on a lot of issues, for very good reasons, but at least those two guys attempt to make some sort of semi-coherent argument, as wrong-headed and constantly goalpost shifting as they are.
Old blue up there only manages one or two lies before he descents into self-obsessive whining about the spam filter followed by 30 posts on multiple articles where he thinks he's being clever for spamming his way past it. While a reasonably good record of whatever mental illness he suffers from, it doesn't make for great conversation.
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Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
"If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy."
That's a fallacy. I consider myself a liberal conservative as did oh so very many others, including no few actual statesmen - like Franklin and Eisenhower. Metaphorically it's about looking at the tub and removing the baby before you toss out the bathwater.
The current US conservatives aren't people eager to preserve what works and shape progress to abide by self-evident principles. They are instead people who have rejected present and future in favor of going back to less civilized eras. Metaphorically they're about abolishing the idea of bathing in the first place, so condemn the water and the tub as blasphemous abomination, and punish the baby for being wet.
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Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
"Burden of proof is on "officials"."
No, the burden of proof, as always, is on the person making an extraordinary claim, no one else. No official will ever be responsible for proving that the alleged teapot orbiting Mars does not exist.
Basic logic, Baghdad Bob.
"Techdirt's out-of-sight shenanigans in BLOCKING comments with the mysterious "spam filter""
Nothing "mysterious" or inscrutable about the spam filter. It acts according to standards. The issue you are having is that your way of interacting just keeps triggering it.
You are metaphorically the naked guy smeared in feces coming to the door of the pub and not getting admitted, who then after rushing the bouncers spends his time in the pub standing on the dance floor and screaming about "unfair treatment".
"...is good example of WHY independent audits are needed."
Any auditor who is independent will be rendering the same judgment about you the spam filter does. That the only person to be blamed for your comments getting stuck is you.
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Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
"You are metaphorically the naked guy smeared in feces"
You say metaphorically, but it would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that this is how he's actually posting.
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Re: 'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it'
"Because if there's one thing you want in your election integrity auditors it's for them to be heavily biased towards a particular result and grossly incompetent."
It's how the GOP have operated since the 70's. I mean the rot started with the southern strategy way before but it took a while before the republican party had become a party of deranged carnies combing the voters for gullible marks. Trump was an inevitable production of that process because at some point they'd crown the bigliest grifter king.
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Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
... hence my follow-up to the quote noting the difference.
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Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
So elections are corrupt until they prove otherwise? Republican justice in action. They don't support you, therefore guilty until proven innocent.
Funny how republicans scream to high heavens when democrats fight for recounts in close elections, or tell people like Stacy Abrams to 'get over it' after losing a race where the person she ran against was also overseeing the election and screwing with polling stations in areas that vote democrats, also funny how they fight all attempts to standardise voting laws because it would make it harder for republicans to disenfranchise communities that vote against them.
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But it's a winning strategy!
It's well known that the largest relevant voter block in most elections is the block of non-voters. It's a much larger block than that of the swing voters.
You got the non-swing voters in your bag already, and a large ratio of non-voters doesn't vote because they don't see themselves represented by sane politicians.
So all it takes to win elections is to become plausibly insane. Even implausibly insane will gather a lot of new voters while possibly scaring fewer of the swing voters away.
Remember: you don't need to convince the sane (though turning them insane over time is certainly going to solidify your standing): most of them already are decided how to vote. You don't change your political leanings on a whim: after all, politics make only sense when pursuing long-term strategies rather than zigzagging back and forth, and so you gravitate towards what is available and it has some staying power.
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Already ruined by the manufacturer.
You cannot ruin something that has already been ruined by the manufacturer, especially at its software level.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Lostinlodos, maybe, but you cannot seriously tell me that Tero "Meshpage" Pulkinnen, aka Mr. "I believe subway stations are funded by subway maps and telling someone where to go is copyright infringement", actually makes any attempt at being semi-coherent.
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Re: Re:
I'm not sure blue is inbred. Given his fervent support of Trump I'm pretty sure he has to be the result of pussy-grabbing rape.
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Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
"You kids can never see the flip side of assertions."
Because there isn't one.
No matter how much a five year old claims the fairies in the backyard was the one who stole the cookies or the drunk tries to claim it was the pink elephant who made him drive under the influence, an assertion is just words without any inherent value.
To go beyond that requires any indicator, observable to other people, that those words may have factual value. This has been explained to you many times, Baghdad Bob.
"It's up to AZ administration to PROVE that the election was fair, NOT that We The People have to figure out every possible shenanigan."
No it's not. It's always up to the accuser to prove malfeasance. The AZ administration only needs to prove a damn thing once the accusers have enough evidence to put it in front of a judge.
"State and county have tried vigorously to avoid ANY audit..."
In what world? Because in the one we all live in all the states have been audited a few times by now and even the republicans own election supervisors could find no fault.
I realize you'd rather not discuss the monitoring which DID take place because all that shows is a bunch of republicans getting angry phone calls from president 45 ordering them to ignore the evidence of their own lying eyes and declare the election fraudulent.
Seriously, Baghdad Bob, I'd call you a liar if I weren't so sure, by now, that you actually believe what the voices in your head are telling you over any external input.
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Re: Re: charges the Arizona GOP
"I also wondered why the FRauditors weren't on the hook for the cost."
Either because the AZ administration has no legal game or they're still writing up the costs.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I said semi-coherent, not based in reality.
Case in point: he's just responded to an article about Starlink where he's claiming that his software is an improved clone of Elon Musk's tech and that Starlink needs to use VR instead of rockets to get their satellites operational.
It's an astoundingly stupid claim with no basis in reality, but I can understand what he's trying to say better than the guy who argues with himself.
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Isn't it possible that Democrat operatives messed with the machines so that they couldn't be audited? Keep in mind that the Maricopa elections officials were doing some very suspicious things with the vote count.
No evidence of fraud was heard by any court. All court rulings were based on pleadings from Democrat attorneys concerning process and time.
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So if anyone remains 500 years from now to examine Amerikan history, how will they view this particular time period? Perhaps, the Age of Morons Ruling Over Morons; I offer this as a serious suggestion. Pabst Blue-Ribbon connisseurs, wife-beaters in pickup trucks take time away from watching "Dancing With The Stars" to actually vote these moron-leading-morons into office, or to just give them power to "run things", such as that empirically granted to "Cyber Ninjas". Articles published this week suggest that the Maricopa madness will actually produce a "victory" for Fascist Dictator-for-Life wannabe Donald Trump. The ultimate result could be just that, with the added effect of the violent, painful death of Democracy. The Trains will Run On Time, and Mike Lindell will start selling "My Lampshade", made from human skin of those viewed less "desirable" by Our White Christian Overlords. Boy, what a century THIS will turn out to be!
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Re:
"Isn't it possible that Democrat operatives messed with the machines so that they couldn't be audited?"
Add it to the pile of unfounded claims you've made without evidence. I mean, it holds up better logically than the theories about bamboo and chickens, but you still need some evidence
"All court rulings were based on pleadings from Democrat attorneys concerning process and time."
So... you're not even going to go with the tired old "activist judges" standard whining (presumably because a number of the judges involved were Trump appointees), you're now going to complain that it's unfair because the people being accused of a crime were able to present an argument in court?
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Re:
(Original comment inadvertantly submitted without name-attribution. It is indeed mine. - DR)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The chucklenut can't even teleport an animation to someone else's screen and he expects governments and corporations to kiss the ground where he walks.
Copyright cultists. Not even once.
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Re:
You know the people controlling Maricopa county's elections were republicans, right? So in your mind, democrats pretended to be lifelong republicans, got elected as republicans and spent years doing thankless jobs so they could unseat a republican by making voters in a democratic area vote for a democrat... Talk about cunning!
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Re:
I'm of the opinion that Robert Heinlein got it right in his future history books where he described this time period as 'The Crazy Years' Let's just hope that he was wrong in the theocracy that followed that time.
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Also worth noting: The Supreme Court, which rejected attempts to basically have SCOTUS itself decide the election results, currently has a two-thirds conservative majority. The same Associate Justices that Trump named to the court also rejected his arguments (and those of his supporters) because even they didn’t believe in undying fealty to Dear Leader at the cost of American democracy.
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Given that Republicans have every incentive to refuse certification of election results — and their supporters have no issue with using political violence to enforce that decision — I’d be more worried about fascism.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm waiting for gender NFTs as the next wave of digital idiocy.
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Re: Re: 'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it'
Nah, you can actually date the GOP's slide into dotage with the Chinese Civil War.
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Re: Re:
He's going to complain it's unfair because the people on his team stopped fighting when asked to present their evidence in court, and thus their opponents should have been gentlemen and also backed off.
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Perfect Naming Convention
the term "ninja" as it relates to the firm hired by the GOP to perform audits is perfectly named: as the ancient Ninja were(are?) those whom use their skills "in the darkness" to "hide their activities" and typically were used as "Assassins(to mysteriously kill what is not liked)." As opposed to the Samurai, whom one could not miss for their representative armor on the battlefield, whom did at and beyond pain of death, hold to Respect, Honor & Nobility. GOP of course pick their own, whom they are "like," whom they relate to. How silly is it to expect anything other than evil from,.. evil.
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Re: Re: Maybe tampering with the voting machines was the whole i
Wouldn't it be a real gas if Dominion and the rest of that crew simply refused to sell any machines to AZ, Georgia, et al?
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Re:
"Isn't it possible that Democrat operatives messed with the machines so that they couldn't be audited?"
So the Dems, whom are not in power, are able to be operatives that messed with Republican controlled machines, so they can't be audited. Did they play the Mission Impossible theme, while doing it?
"Keep in mind that the Maricopa elections officials were doing some very suspicious things with the vote count."
Republican election officials? What 'suspicious things' that you can't seem to be more verbose about?
"No evidence of fraud was heard by any court."
Yea, when you don't have any evidence, there's nothing to show.
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Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
What's a liberal conservative?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials&qu
"After relentlessly spamming the site I finally got some comments to post. I just can't understand why my posts get caught in the spam filter."
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Really?!
These machines have already been shown to be easily hacked and manipulated before the Audit in many hacker conferences. There should be no issue with the manufacturer validating the hardware/firmware are factory level and wiping and imaging the machines.
Also remember, the original offer was to perform the audit at Maricopa county facilities and they would be able to monitor, but they objected and stonewalled which is why it's at the Arena.
This is pure politics and FUD that they need to replace the machines. Do they need to do some work to review? Absolutely. Chain of custody doesn't seem to mind on mail-in ballots but they have an issue with chain of custody here?
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Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
No, this guy wasn't a Trump cultist; just the opposite. He was, presumably, a guy who's identified as "conservative" his whole life and is pretty upset to be lumped in with guys like Trump and Tucker Carlson.
And I can understand that, y'know, but language changes. It can be useful to observe that "conservative" means something a hell of a lot different now than it did in the days of Eisenhower, or even Reagan, but the fact is that shift has occurred, and stubbornly insisting that everybody's just using the word incorrectly is just conversation-derailing pedantry.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you
"While I can't imagine anyone looking at something like Tucker Carlson's show and take it seriously, apparently many do, and they still vote."
Something something Faux News's own lawyer said people would have to be really really stupid to think Tuckers skits were news...
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Re: Re: Re: liability
But it is the state that has to pay, so the county wouldn't have standing to sue to recover that money.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Greed and selfishness are definitely a big part of the equation, but if you look at today's GOP and only see a "smidge" of racism, I don't know what to tell you.
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Re: But it's a winning strategy!
"Largest" and "most relevant" are not synonyms.
While campaigns do tend to put too much emphasis on swing voters, turning nonvoters into voters is a difficult problem. If it were as easy as "give them an alternative and then nonvoters will turn out to vote," then Bernie Sanders would be president.
I'd say that, based on recent elections, it's not a matter of convincing swing voters or nonvoters -- it's a matter of maximizing turnout among people who are already inclined to vote for one party or the other.
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Re: Re: Re: liability
I was going to say that I didn't expect much from County Attorney Allister Adel, but I did a little reading and saw the headline Maricopa takes steps to possibly sue over Senate election audit, so maybe?
The County Board of Supervisors is pretty goddamn unhappy about the situation too.
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Re: Re: Maybe tampering with the voting machines was the whole i
The Venn diagram of "nerds who know their stuff" and "people who say 'cyber' unironically in 2021" is two circles.
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Re: Re: Re: Maybe tampering with the voting machines was the who
I'm pretty sure Dominion's goal here isn't to sell fewer voting machines.
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Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
Someone preferring the established ways but open to the idea that others might be different?
In countries other than the U.S., that's actually permitted.
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Re:
Isn't it possible that Democrat operatives messed with the machines so that they couldn't be audited?
possible != probable
Let me explain the difference...
It's also possible that at some point, I might read a comment from some conspiracy-obsessed nutcase that actually has some merit.
It's not probable though, based on the small likelihood of you morons pulling your heads out of your collective asses anytime soon.
HTH
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Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
You kids can never see the flip side of assertions.
You don't say?
It's up to AZ administration to PROVE that the election was fair, NOT that We The People have to figure out every possible shenanigan.
Well, I guess it's all we can do since you guys haven't done fuck-all to prove it was unfair.
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OAN-ism?
Did Biblical scholars have the Maricopa "recount" in mind when they condemned a sin called "OAN-ism"?
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Re: Next time use a pencil & paper
We tend to prefer pens; harder to erase.
And I usually vote by mail, so I can't speak to how voting machines are used at every precinct in the state (I think I've only voted in-person once; that was pen-and-paper too), but AIUI at least some of the "voting machines" at issue in this story aren't for casting votes, merely for tabulating votes on paper.
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Re:
No.
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Don't forget that this is just the start. They want to take this clown show on the road and demand similar audits in every swing state that Trump lost.
Of course the ultimate goal isn't to overturn the election, it's to sow doubt, so that they can later point to the audits and say "See? They wouldn't be auditing the ballots if there weren't serious questions about the election!" Naturally leaving out the part where they themselves manufactured said doubt.
It's all to make it easier to cry "fraud" the next time they lose an election. Get used to it, this is going to be the GOP's SOP going forward.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until
Yeah but that lawyer is part of the deep state and he's being paid to make sure that true patriots don't listen to the truth being told...
...I wish I was kidding, but so many of them react like that to basic facts.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, you teleport packets to someone's machine for it to display, you upload satellites into low orbit. Don't confuse the two. It's easy! This isn't rocket science.
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Re: Next time use a pencil & paper
I think they operate better with crayons or oversize sidewalk chalk.
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Re: Re: Re: Maybe tampering with the voting machines was the who
You owe me a screen wipe.
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And the ultimate goal of sowing doubt about the electoral process is easy enough to discern: Enough doubt about the process would allow Republicans to not only challenge, but outright ignore any election result. Welcome to American fascism — if you think it can’t happen, it already is.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it u
One does wonder how the lawyer hired by & representing Faux was part of the Deep State.
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Re: Forrest Trump
He's Trump,
He's Trump,
He's Trump,
What's with that hair?
He's Trump,
He's Trump,
He's dumber than a chair.
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Re: Re:
And also to motivate the rubes to keep donating "to the cause".
It's a can't lose proposition for the "leadership" -- every set-back, and every finding (no matter how definitive) against them, becomes just another strand in the web of conspiracy theory, and another item entered on the fund-raising cash register.
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Re:
About as possible that a coven of LGBTQ BLM Satanists, lacking physical access to the machines, resorted to conducting a human sacrifice based, satanic ritual, which successfully cursed the voting devices and thereby foiled the techno-ninja auditors in their efforts to uncover the Democrat's underhanded tampering.
And that's not even considering the what the extra-galactic aliens did...
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Re:
The way these people are going at it, it will turn out to be both.
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Re: Re:
They installed Windows 95 backwards, opening the portal from Comet Pizza directly into the "real" machines running at the DUMBS.
Jesus, I really need a new hobby.
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Re: Re: Next time use a pencil & paper
Imagine if there was just 1 standard for how to do these things.
Would make auditing the systems much easier & not 27 different code bases to check for bugs/hacks.
Would also make it harder for some states to make sure some citizens can't vote so they can hold onto power.
For all the the bitching and screaming about election integrity I'm still waiting for some newsperson to actually ask Republicans about the people who attempted to illegally vote... they've all been Republicans.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Going by Tero Pulkinnen standards, 2 + 2 = 4 would be considered witchcraft.
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Machines
Hey Sport,
How about stop using machines at all?
Paper ballots, hand counted in front of observers at each precinct. That's the way they do it in other countries, like England.
Elections should never be done with "machines," which have been shown over and over and over again to be easily hackable. Why are the techies at Tech Dirt not aware of this fact?
it beggars belief.
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Re: Machines
These are machines that produce paper receipts. We've written about some of the problems with them, but machines that provide reviewed paper ballots have been shown to have certain advantages to pure paper ballots, where mistakes/errors/confusion are more common (and they create more issues for those who are blind -- whereas machines can help those voters).
Saying elections "should never be done with machines" is pure ignorance or propaganda.
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Re: Machines
"teh Techies" are generally quite well aware of this fact, and many indeed object rather strenuously especially the ones that have particular expertise in security, etc.
But actual expert opinion about the deficiencies and dangers of electronic voting are routinely ignored and over-ruled by the politicians (with remarkably little attention by the mass media).
It's the politicians, not "the techies" who for whatever reason have been studiously ignoring the experts repeated explanations (and demonstrations) about how/why secure but anonymous electronic voting is inherently a really difficult problem (and certainly not just like electronic banking).
And of course it's generally (in the USA) the politicians, not "the techies" or any expert, neutral parties, who have the actual say in how the balloting systems are designed, what balloting method is implemented and how elections are conducted.
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Re: Re: Machines
The magic phrase is "verifiable paper trail".
And of course, 'verifiable' includes 'independently auditable'.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you
Now that there's a vaccine available maybe their refusal to take it is a good thing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until
Sadly the Darwin awards issued to the anti-vaxxers comes at the expense of the lives of saner people.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it u
"...I wish I was kidding, but so many of them react like that to basic facts."
To rational people the mindset of the 30% is an insane one. It just isn't that hard to see why they hold on to it though;
They've been raised to ignore factual and observable evidence in favor of faith no matter who tells them otherwise.
The articles of which are that liberals are evil, that there is always someone they can hate for the misery in their own lives, and that who they currently need to get their hate-fix over will be told them by the holy Prophets of Anger And Fear. Alex Jones, Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Coulter, etc.
Telling these people to take it down a notch, embrace rationality and chill the fsck out is literally telling them to abandon the self-image and personality they've constructed their whole life. Of course their first responses to that will be anger and denial.
This is the root of the US problem; 30% of their citizenry are horrible people beyond hope, who can not be persuaded by anything less than a life-changing formative event that they are, in fact, wrong. About literally almost everything.
I don't see any way out for the saner majority than to persistently keep them out of civilization until inbreeding and poor life choices has taken care of the problem once and for all.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it u
Indeed. Nobody would be arguing about masks and holding localised superspreader zones if they were the only ones being infected and locked down. We'd just let themselves get on with killing each other. The problem is that they put the rest of us at risk and get us restricted because they couldn't be adults for a couple of weeks.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig
"The problem is that they put the rest of us at risk and get us restricted because they couldn't be adults for a couple of weeks."
I have come to the rather sad conclusion that at least in the US part of good mental hygiene has to be to work towards an idiot-free environment as a result. Ideally speaking that would mean bringing up standards of basic education but that solution's going to be too late for this generation which is currently at risk of Death By Stupid.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig
...and the above was me, by the way. Got logged out again without noticing...
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We are aware of it. Every so often, someone remembers back to 2000, when Union County [Lake Butler] had hand-counted their ballots and gone to bed by midnight, only to wake up for the next couple of weeks to news that Volusia was still trying to get theirs counted, and out-of-state Republican interference had been brought in to make it, ahem, challenging to count the ballots in So Fla.
The solution, of course, was for the state to mandate that everyone, including Union, go with machine counting in the future.
The problem with hand-counting is that it requires
and sometimes those are hard to come by. Here, we try to combine darker-complected voters into huge precincts in order that the long queues discourage potential voters, and that makes hand-counting difficult.
Yes, technically, there is a race-neutral reason for the large precincts. Efficiency. It is important that we not appear to be doing these things with rce-based motivations.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you
"...but the fact is that shift has occurred, and stubbornly insisting that everybody's just using the word incorrectly is just conversation-derailing pedantry."
Shift is one thing. But I 'll bring to the table my argument that as a liberal conservative I'm a bit upset that the word "conservative" now has to do the heavy lifting for the concept of "maliciously deranged".
Most of the people using this word in the US today aren't talking about preserving values or principles. Or conservatism in general. Their agenda is to roll back society by a few centuries. A "shift" is when you argue at what point "grey" should be referred to as dark or light. Not which shade of pink it should refer to.
The only reason these people keep calling themselves "conservatives" any longer is for the same reason grifters and con artists through the ages are keen to refer to themselves as "entrepreneurs". Because more accurate terminology would give away the game.
So no. Let's not refer to the alt-right as conservatives.
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Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
"What's a liberal conservative?"
Most of the founding fathers of the USA come to mind.
If you ever had that great idea, the best thing since sliced bread was invented, and wanted to see that idea in circulation improving humanity (or on lesser scale, your job) immediately and choose to cautiously look at how that new idea will impact principles and processes worth preserving then you are to some extent at least, conservative.
Old-style republicans had some of that. The idea that factual reality and principles could constrain ideology.
Today a liberal conservative in the US would be a centrist-left democrat, if that helps.
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Re: Re: Re: Burden of proof is on "officials".
"You say metaphorically, but it would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that this is how he's actually posting."
You know what's sad? I can't disagree. Not after reading ten years worth of Baghdad Bob consistently proving cognitive ability so bad you couldn't trust him to tell the difference between a toilet and a dinner tray...
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Re: Re: Re: 'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it'
Ah, the origin of the "Yellow peril" in the american consciousness?
I'm dubious. I mean, that war lasted from 1927 to 1951 so it covered a lot of ground. Around that time FDR and Truman managed to alienate all the racists up until then staunchly democrat, turning the democratic party into one not primarily beholden to the idea that human worth was color-coded.
Left on its own that would just have resulted in the racists sitting in their "Dixiecrat" party and hollering about black men coming for their women.
The southern Strategy was when the republican party, a few years later under Goldwater and Nixon in the 60's and 70's, decided to cater to all these disillusioned former democrats pining for the good old days of when the KKK were recognized in politics.
And that's also the turning point when the "Party of Lincoln" started becoming the "Party of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Robert E. Lee".
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I said semi-coherent, not based in reality."
By his own admission Tero bloody pulkinnen is mainly around here to troll people and isn't even very good at it. The only reason you can call him semi-coherent is because your bar of standards is by now so low the fact that his sentences, taken on their own, can parse at all stands out as a massive upgrade from the likes of old Baghdad Bob.
Then you look at any three comments of his, back to back, and find that sure enough, he's contradicting himself and positing impossibles.
It's just that Baghdad Bob manages that same contradiction whenever he puts three words together.
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Re: Re: Re:
Incest and pussy grabbing are not mutually exclusive..
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Re:
"Isn't it possible that Democrat operatives messed with the machines so that they couldn't be audited?"
The brief explanation? No. It's not possible. Full stop. For a longer explanation I invite you to read up on cryptographic verification. That idea is so implausible that it's on par with the idea that democrats used their Jedi powers to mind control the voters én másse.
And I'm sure at the time of writing Alex Jones and the Qanon Shaman are trying to fit that angle into their narrative of the Gay Frog conspiracy and the army of Shadow Queer Ninjas getting trucked all over the nation just to fsck shit up for the new confederacy.
"Keep in mind that the Maricopa elections officials were doing some very suspicious things with the vote count."
They didn't, because if they did and anyone could say they did in front of a judge then there would be an official inquiry. That assertion is just you standing in a sunny day in fscking death valley and arguing how much the damage of the current cold snap will cost.
"No evidence of fraud was heard by any court."
Bullshit. There were a dozen court hearings where republicans were invited to lay out their evidence of fraud. Had there been any single indication of fraud it would have sufficed. Yet every last GOP lawyer shut up in front of the judge because what they kept claiming on social media would be considered perjury in a courtroom.
Your liars got caught pants down and forced to make a statement in a forum where lying would hurt them. And clamped up.
"All court rulings were based on pleadings from Democrat attorneys concerning process and time."
That's what happens when a bunch of man-children show up in a courtroom about an election they consider rigged based on nothing but an anonymous post-it note and a conspiracy theory from Stormfront about Antifa magically rewriting the ballots using jewish space lasers.
I can in a similar vein claim that the 30% of the american citizenry who voted for Trump are mind-controlled clones of Hitler...with the exact same amount of evidence to show for that which the GOP's claims about the rigged election had.
Face facts. Your boy didn't lose because of some vast conspiracy of global super-powered liberals with magic wands and space lasers copperfielding all the ballots with Trump's name on them. He lost because the vast majority of the american citizenry are not on board with racism, nazism, white supremacy or Being Fscking Douchebags In General.
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Re: Really?!
"There should be no issue with the manufacturer validating the hardware/firmware are factory level and wiping and imaging the machines."
I can imagine that in order to ensure the machines operate according to incredibly paranoid parameters it's not just a factory reset needed. They need new certificate keys, brand-new validation, error-checking by trusted third-party experts, etc. The whole shebang.
Which, when all it's said and done, probably means the cost of a full replacement is about on par with trying to fix the broken one and needs a lot less paperwork.
I'm not surprised, really.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game
smiles in sociopath
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
You've managed to inter people who were much less dangerous many times before.
A global health emergency seems like a much better reason than we hate Asians.
We have plenty of space to hold them where they can't harm others with their wackiness & its not like the neighbors have taken advantage of those in internment camps stealing homes, property, businesses.... oh oops.
People thought I was just being extra snarky when I called humans the "Hold my beer" race.
I really am always confused how the species manages to survive their own self destructive actions.
When someone wants to scream MUH RIGHTS...
I present the 100 miles inland that is a Constitution Free Zone, "Free Speech Zones", Well she wasn't the target so it didn't violate her rights, and all of the other insane things you've accepted in the name of safety & security.
These maskholes are a clear and present danger.
They can & will end up spreading it to others, not to mention each one of them can create their own variants to add to the mix.
You are more likely to be infected by a maskhole than blown up on a plane by terrorists, perhaps we should respond like its actually serious & stop coddling those screaming that mask mandates are just like the Holocaust. Lets give them the real feel & pack them into camps. Then their selfish natures can run their course.
500K+ dead when a majority shouldn't have gotten infected in the first place if maskholes had been adults about it.
You've shredded the rights you all hold so sacred over much smaller death counts for very little gain, where if the maskholes were removed from the general population until they are vaccinated or dead we could end the pandemic.
I guess humans only accept locking up those with more melanin to "solve" problems.
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Tim Cushings pushing brainwashed propaganda for the libs
Sigh, shitlibs always willing to push lies to get their way. Like Biden lying his entire political career and presidential campaign to get into office.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it'
When Mao kicked Chaing off the mainland, rather than examine why the Chinese rejected Chaing, you saw the Republican establishment (with Luce and the evangelicals backing them) blaming Communist spies for "losing China" instead of accepting that the Chinese people didn't want another round of despots and warlords.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you
See what I mean?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it'
i before a on this one: Chiang.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until
Whoops, replied to the wrong post.
"See what I mean?" was supposed to go under the post where SDM responded to me calling this semantic argument "conversation-derailing pedantry" with four paragraphs of conversation-derailing pedantry.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it
Yep. Not like Chiang's going to complain, but you're right.
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Re: Re:
Bullshit. There were a dozen court hearings where republicans were invited to lay out their evidence of fraud. Had there been any single indication of fraud it would have sufficed. Yet every last GOP lawyer shut up in front of the judge because what they kept claiming on social media would be considered perjury in a courtroom.
To be fair they're half right, it's just not the half they think. No evidence of fraud was heard in court because no evidence was presented to be heard, as the second the same people who had been stridently asserting fraud were placed in a situation where lies had potential consequences all that confidence seemed to disappear in smoke right along with the 'ironclad evidence' they'd been boasting about to anyone foolish enough to listen to them.
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Re: Re: Machines
AKA, restless 94110 in a nutshell.
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Re: Really?!
You truly are delusional. Nobody mentioned "chain of custody" issues with ballots because there were no issues. I sure as Hell won't trust any machine these "experts" "audited".
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Re:
I was a wee Phoenician when the Mecham business happened, but wow, looking him up on Wikipedia now looks like a template.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"There is a smidge of racism in there, but they only care about people able to give them money & have power."
That's not really a distinction you can functionally make any longer. If the base they rely on to give them money and power is the base they addressed in that recent CPAC when they stood on a stage shaped like the winged Odal rune of Racial purity while proclaiming a message of "Blood and Soil" then it's pretty safe to say that racism is today the core ideology of the republican party.
Even more so than religion as the depiction of that blonde, blue-eyed icon of a middle eastern prophet they usually have in their living rooms will tell you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it u
Pedantry or not, the fact remains that if you keep rebuilding the english language with every vagary of Newspeak the alt-right keeps pushing to sprinkle glitter on the shitcake they're selling then we end up with the same problem the germans had in 1930 when a certain party tried catering to both sides of the fence by calling themselves national socialists*.
Black isn't white, peace isn't slavery, and conservative should not mean racist anachronistic asshole.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Conflict of interest? Never heard of it'
"...rather than examine why the Chinese rejected Chaing, you saw the Republican establishment (with Luce and the evangelicals backing them) blaming Communist spies for "losing China"..."
Well, yes. I mean, that happened. It's just that that was a consequence of the shift in republican politics not the spark for it.
"The second Truman set pen to paper on Executive Order 9981 and desegregated the military" is a far more accurate timestamp on when the democrats lost the racist votes to mass migration.
And "Nixon and Goldwater", around 1960, sets the date on when the GOP began importing those racists wholesale.
The commie scare was completely bipartisan with both sides of the aisle, consisting mainly of the wealthy and privileged, heading for the fainting couch with shrill cries in fear of the Red Menace coming for their wallets as well.
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Maricopa
Mea maxima Maricopa
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig
It perhaps shouldn't but at this point it might be too late to salvage the term as the people using it these days very much tend to fall into those categories, such that mention of 'conservative' currently generally does not bring to mind what you might mean by the term.
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Re: Machines
easily hackable
Yeah, I agree - I think the hackers who threw the presidential election to Biden just must've missed the congressional races as well.
Point well noted, though. I'll be sure to pass it on to them. The cabal's meeting shortly to summon the Zionist space lasers over a couple of pizzas.
it beggars belief.
Yeah, it does. Tell me, how do you fuckers expect to be able to count paper ballots when you can't even write intelligently? If your writing skills are any indication of your math skills, I don't feel entirely reassured. You do know that you'll run out of fingers & toes at 20, don't you?
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Re: Re: Machines
"You do know that you'll run out of fingers & toes at 20, don't you?"
24 FTFY
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Re: Re: Machines
"I think the hackers who threw the presidential election to Biden just must've missed the congressional races as well"
That is one of the funniest things about this conspiracy theory - the Democrats are so insidious and so perfectly capable that they managed to fake an 8 million vote win from Biden in ways that survived multiple recounts and official audits from Republicans and got challenges thrown out of court by Trump-appointed judges.
Yet, they're so incompetent that they didn't fake anything of the down ticket races, so they didn't seize total power and they still have to deal with Republicans on issues they're trying to push through.
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Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
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Re: Re: Re: If you can't win an honest game rig it until you do.
Except for:
Did I miss anything? If those aren't conservative positions, then there haven't been any politically powerful conservatives in the US for a very long time.
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Re: Re: Forrest Trump
Wow, a Presidents of the United States of America parody about an actual President of the United States of America…
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“1) hiring competent people to conduct the audit”
Full stop.
The 2) is political partisanship.
Nobody should be against an election audit. A competent audit would have put the issue to rest, for that county. It passes or it doesn’t.
That said this was a total cluster. But that’s how our government works sometimes.
The people pay for government blunders.
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Re: Re: Forrest Trump
Trump lingered last in line for brains, the one that he got was kind of rotten and insane.
Poor thing, so small that birds could land...
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Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
It may come across better without the finger wagging and name calling though.
There’s no doubt a large portion of the population question the election.
Nobody should fear a competent audit. But this was botched in every regard.
The solution moving forward would be to press a federal identification system for citizens and permanent residents. And require that ID to vote.
The government should sponsor and pay for that. Not stand in the way of it.
Funding the RealID program completely could be the solution.
If the Republicans attached covid vaccination verification to the ID it would likely swing enough Dems to pass. Even after Biden vetos it.
Call the bluff with something in return.
The Dems pretend they are against voter ID laws because people can’t afford IDs (along with other actual nonsense). I get it. IDs in this country are so artificially costly that a non-driving person may actually have legitimate reasons to pass in one! $25 every 4 years? That’s nutz!
Take the price tag away and that issue is solved.
Honestly I’ve long called for free AND mandated identification.
Toss that covid vaccine info into the ID and only the outright alt left progressives will dare to vote against it.
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Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
A solution in search of a problem. Voter fraud is a vanishingly rare issue, and the true motivation behind the Republican calls for voter ID is voter suppression.
https://www.npr.org/2012/02/01/146204308/why-millions-of-americans-have-no-government-i d
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/how-voter-id-laws-are-being-used-to-disenfran chise-minorities-and-the-poor/254572/
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Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"!
How would a national ID supplied by the federal government free of charge disenfranchise anyone?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democrats"
There's many ways that have been discussed in the past, but I'm sure that Murdoch hasn't been approving those stories.
A couple that come to mind - rules might be put in place to require people to get such ID from the DMV, yet DMV offices in many inner city and minority areas are being shut down, making it more difficult for a lot of people to access them. Then, require certain types of ID to obtain the voter ID that many people (especially poorer minorities) are less likely to have, such as a driving licence or passport. There's often also calls to block groups that organise and educate would-be voters (remember ACORN? The actual group in reality, not the right-wing strawmen version that an idiot in pimp cosplay created for the outrage machine)
It's a real problem in some areas, and the reason why such voter ID is controversial is because the very real problem of people being disenfranchised vastly outweighs the actual problem of voter fraud.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "Democr
All things that can be agreed to with a bit of compromise. Something the Dems are as unwilling to o do as the Reps.
In most states you need a record of birth (everyone born here gets a birth certificate), a proof of citizenship or legal permanence (SS card or EIN card).
And proof of recent address. Such as last month’s phone or water bill.
This is stuff anyone can come up with.
I understand some states like California and Illinois have made it difficult. But that can be solved in a federal ID issuance.
So my question is, if the sole requirements are as above, the card provided for free, would you still stand against it?
PaulT: why or why not.
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Re:
Your fellow Trump cultists were.
Except the competent audits were rejected by your cheating friends.
They passed the competent audits just fine
The only part the government got wrong was allowing Trump's frauds anywhere near any voting system apparatus.
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Re: Re:
Nobody should be against an election audit.
Anyone who stands against an audit looks like they have something to hide, even if they don’t.
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Re: Re: Re:
The anti-auditors, despite calling themselves Cyber "Ninjas," aren't really hiding much all that well.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "De
Crickets 🦗
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by
Yes, I tend to not to respond to posts I haven't read yet.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by "De
"Something the Dems are as unwilling to o do as the Reps."
Duuur both side bad duurrrr. What a predictable response.
"This is stuff anyone can come up with."
Sure, if you reject the many cases where this has been difficult for people, it's really easy! Documentation can be lost or destroyed, and there are cases where getting new copies have been extremely difficult. Homeless people may find it difficult to prove a recent address, and I'm not sure what it's like where you live, but where I live the utility bills on rentals are not in the renter's name. You might find it easy to do everything you're mentioning, but not everyone does - and those are the people we're concerned about being disenfranchised through attempts to crack down own non-existent fraud.
This is a fun game, but it's been played too many times, and factual reality does tend to make your side somewhat less convincing. Come back with evidence that there's enough fraud to even bother changing the system, then we can start talking about how to deal with the people whose right to vote you will inevitable make more difficult to exercise.
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"Anyone who stands against an audit looks like they have something to hide"
"An" audit? Sure. An audit being undertaken by a clearly partisan set of people who not only are coming up with ridiculous stories of what they expect to find that don't pass any test of reality, and are destroying the usefulness of the very equipment they're investigating in the process? Why would anyone be for that?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WERE by
Thank you.
You’re the first person I’ve seen make any kind of quantifiable comment beyond “the poor or minorities”.
I see a major fault in the I’d everyone with the inclusion of homeless. Especially since too many are veterans abandoned by both parties.
With that I can see where there is an issue to be addressed.
Residence is fairly easy to establish for most people. Any piece of mail with your name and address works in most states. That doesn’t help the homeless.
I’m also quick to agree it’s (too) difficult to get documentation reproduced.
My concern is states, like mine, that are zero ID. You walk in, say “your” name, and get a ballot.
What’s to stop a person from walking in and taking someone else’s ballot?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then WER
"What’s to stop a person from walking in and taking someone else’s ballot?"
The fact that it's a felony with high penalties if you're caught, but very little tangible effect on the overall election result if you're successful?
The real first question to ask is not "can you imagine this being a problem", the question is honestly "is there any evidence of this happening on a scale wide enough to require changing the current system?". I've seen no compelling evidence that it's a major problem at all, let alone one that requires wide-reaching electoral changes that risks disenfranchising so many more people.
We can discuss the solution to the problem in many ways, but first we need the evidence that there is a problem in the first place. Anything I've seen personally is little more than a rounding error, usually less. You may have evidence to the contrary, but I've not seen anything that passes a smell test or basic maths.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted, then
Everywhere else:
“Name?”
“Here’s my id”
“Oh, that makes it easier, thanks”
Voting:
“Name?”
“Here’s my id”
“I don’t need that”
“It has my name and address on it”
“I can’t use that”
“Why?”
“The law says no ID”
Unlike Republicans I’m not saying there is systemic fraud. Only that there is, and was, consistent fraud.
Likely of a very minor scale. Unlikely to change the counts.
However having seen vote flipping on machines myself, I know issues exist in general.
That alone is why I’ve been supportive of audits.
This cycle has been a disaster.
Mail in voting and absentee voting are NOT the same.
Some states sent every person on the registration list a ballot. Dead people. Non-residents.
We have ballot drops broken into. We have mail boxes broken into.
We have at least two post office regions that back dates stamp cancellation.
We have unsigned ballots. We have late ballots. We have duplicate ballots.
If ever this was the year for audits! It didn’t help that the closest people around him kept telling t he President it was stolen.
I’m more of the belief the media did a good enough job of hiding the obvious mental issues of Biden that people voted for him.
That combined with blatantly false reporting about Trump pushing the ignorant populace to vote for Biden. No election fraud and election manipulation needed.
However as each election becomes tighter and tighter those few fraudulent votes become more and more important.
59.1:49.9 counties in the last 5 elections show how close voting is.
I’ve shown above how we could eliminate the issue for most of the poor and minority population.
I don’t have an immediate solution to the homeless, or the asinine document system in this country.
But I’m sure if anyone tried a solution could be found.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted,
[Projects facts not in evidence]
[Asserts facts notmin evidence]
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupt
Biden is in middle early stage Alzheimer's. That is very much a fact for any person who has ever be around the condition.
Trump?
Russian meetings: false
Russian collusion: false
Fine people neo nazis: false
All immigrants are bad: false
Called troops losers: false
Lied about C19 origins: false
Told people to inject bleach: false
Lied about mask usefulness: false
Lied about vaccine production scheduled: false
There’s 9 replayed headlines. All false.
as for ignorance:
If you voted for a man with Dementia, your An idiot.
If you don’t know, or didn’t know about it, you are or were ignorant.
(Yes, I admit a number of people are well aware of his problems and want a shadow presidency).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily cor
If it's such an easily verifiable fact, I'm sure you can provide objective sources testifying to it then.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily
This one has many links to outside sites:
https://humanevents.com/2020/10/13/executive-dysfunction-a-clinical-evaluation-of-joe-bidens- cognitive-linguistic-deficits/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14541957/joe-biden-slammed-botching-key -facts-candace-owens-dementia/
Again, anyone who has dealt with various related cognitive issues such as Biden is suffering from knows the signs and sees them all here.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily cor
Thanks for proving me correct on all counts with your deliberate lies.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily cor
Good job admitting you're an ignorant idiot, Trump voter.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily
I feel sorry for you. So far into the system you lost your ability of critical thinking.
For rational comprehension.
When presented with facts you cower in fear and scream “bad man”.
When anyone challenges the made up nonsense of the standard DNC-
Funded
Run
Controlled
Edited
Staffed
And distributed
news you cower and cry “bad man”.
You have my sympathy for your condition. I suggest thou, you seek professional help.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so ea
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so ea
No amount of gaslighting from you will change the fact that we were there when you had every one of your corrupt partisan disinformation talking points completely debunked with facts, yet you come here delusionally pretending like that never happened.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so ea
Thanks for an actual apparently high quality source. We can only hope he does better than the last office holder. So far that's the case.
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Re: Re: Nasch
I feel sorry for his family. Deeply. I know exactly how that works out when people forget who your are.
And I feel for him.
No doubt he’s mentally strong. But that’s different from competence.
So far he’s neither up or down in my view, as President.
His team managed to pull together the various vaccine ideas and get a National rollout going.
That’s a huge win.
But the border is worse, in part from his pre election welcome. He stonewalled on China despite evidence in viri complicity.
And the tax plans would gut small business already under dire strain.
Weighted, I’d say he’s even.
My concern is what happens if he degrades.
These mental issues can last till death with no major change. Or, a person can go from knowing who they are to total cluelessness in a day.
I’ve seen both.
His chain of command concerns me.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupted,
"Unlike Republicans I’m not saying there is systemic fraud. Only that there is, and was, consistent fraud."
So, present your evidence that this is true, and true to the point where it causes real problems with the ballot and not barely reaching the level of rounding errors as has been confirmed so far. Then, we can discuss the correct methods to fight that without causing disproportionate problems elsewhere.
But, you have to pass that first hurdle, and the baseless claims from the right-wing propaganda shitrags you've stated shape your worldview are not good enough to base legal action upon. Actual evidence barely shows any real fraud, and half of it seems to be Trump cultists trying to "prove" fraud by deliberately committing it. The largest example of real "fraud" I'm aware of in the last election involved people incorrectly registering PO boxes instead of real addresses, which is easily explained by record numbers people facing eviction, not a systemic failure that's likely to happen under normal non-pandemic circumstances. And certainly not something that's worth the risk of disenfranchising huge numbers of people over.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so ea
Hint: if your reliable source involves the British tabloid well known to make things up, is still largely banned in Liverpool due to its lies about the people there, and largely built its sales on pictures of topless teenagers on page 3 and not its news content, you don't have a reliable source.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily corrupt
You’re a bit late to the debate. Discussed elsewhere on site.
I’ve acknowledged the issue for the homeless and showed how to eliminate I’d concerns for every other class.
The 2016 election set a record for number of votes. 2020 was just over or just under depending on source. When the country is this closely decided every legal vote MUST count and every illegal vote must be cancelled.
Every time any of you claim anything close to “ right-wing propaganda shitrags” you burn any level of concession.
48 of the top 50 and 8 of the top 10 news organisations in the IS are run by Democrats, owned by Democrats, funded by Democrats, and have a political/civil revolving door with Democrat.
As I’ve said elsewhere at least NYT will post retractions when confronted with evidence. You may not like them but Breitbart has a 96p accuracy rate. Excluding retracted articles NYT is also 96p.
Compared to CNN 89
MSNBC 74
And WaPo 68
Fox News holds at 95
“ known to make things up”
Sorry, for a moment I thought your were talking about the blatantly fake stories of WaPo and MSNBC
“largely banned in Liverpool”
People who support censorship should be burned at the stake
“ pictures of topless teenagers on page 3”
What’s wrong with breasts? Are you afraid of them?
Sorry: free the nipple, free the clit, free the dick.
The naked body is a work of natural art to be cherished. Ogled!
And in any circumstance where agreed to, fondled.
That said it’s hard to list a reliable source when you discount any that isn’t owned and operated by Democrats. I chose one I didn’t recognise off hand.
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Uh, it didn’t.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily cor
"You’re a bit late to the debate"
Just catching up on email after a nice long weekend...
"Every time any of you claim anything close to “ right-wing propaganda shitrags” you burn any level of concession."
I've never seen the claims being made outside of said sources, and the sources I'm aware of are not known for factual reporting.
"48 of the top 50 and 8 of the top 10 news organisations in the IS are run by Democrats"
Funny, isn't it? The right-wing cesspools tell you to hate everyone else due to "bias", then you believe the lies and spin they feed you without question.
"You may not like them but Breitbart has a 96p accuracy rate"
I await your proof that this is even remotely true.
"Sorry, for a moment I thought your were talking about the blatantly fake stories of WaPo and MSNBC"
"Nuh uh you're the liar!" is not a rebuttal to decades-long trends of the newspaper lying to its readers.
"People who support censorship should be burned at the stake"
It's not censored. It's boycotted by an entire city who were so offended by the lies told about them that very few places even stock the newspaper.
If you believe that a free market boycott as a result of the paper's own actions is "censorship" then, well, you'¡re probably dumb enough to read the other liars you claim as sources.
"What’s wrong with breasts? Are you afraid of them?"
No, I just don't think that the sexual exploitation of vulnerable 16-23 year old models is good indication of the journalistic standards of a newspaper.
"That said it’s hard to list a reliable source when you discount any that isn’t owned and operated by Democrats. "
All I'm asking for is an actual source of factual information, but apparently basic facts are partisan in your right-wing echo chambers...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so easily
“… await your proof that this is even remotely true.”
Point to something inaccurate they didn’t retract or modify.
Just one.
“… Nuh uh you're the liar!" is not a rebuttal to decades-long trends of the newspaper lying to its readers”
Glad your finally catching on that the Dems run news and their news is propaganda!
“ No, I just don't think that the sexual exploitation”
Seriously. Give it a rest on this. So many just can’t understand that some people WANT to be sex objects! And if not that quick cash!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF so ea
"Point to something inaccurate they didn’t retract or modify."
Ah, your favourite game of moving the goalposts. Rather than source your own claim, you demand that I provide proof of something - and not only that, but you insert the idea that the lies are all OK so long as they apologise for them later. Classic.
"So many just can’t understand that some people WANT to be sex objects!"
...and some don't, with the 80s UK scene that gave you Samatha Fox's 16 year old boobs being pretty notorious for exploitation.
Whatever, I'm just pointing out that a newspaper that built its audience on softcore porn, and has lied to such an offensive degree that entire cities have boycotted them, might not be a reliable source for real news. But, given that you've been programmed to believe that factual sources are a Democrat conspiracy, I can understand you not being open to reality.
You go for your Rupert Murdoch echo chamber (and yes, he owns The Sun as well as the majority of your other favourite publications), I'll go for actual journalism.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: IF s
I suggest you grab a copy of Breaking the News. A well referenced book explaining all of this.
I’m not sure what the story is with Fox. She opted to do so, for many many years. And it allowed her the exposer to move on to music and television.
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lol, does it explain how Breitbart is "center right"?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Actually, yes. Lol
All you have to do is look at Wikipedia to see who is the board of directors for these companies. Managing editors. Etc.
Surprise: Democrats.
But for a few bucks the book does a good job of looking everything up for you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You're right inasmuch as I would be surprised if they were Democrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_News
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I suggest you grab a copy of Breaking the News. A well referenced book explaining all of this."
A book from 1996, so widely preceding the current industry layout? An interesting historical document, I presume, but a lot has changed since then and it doesn't address independent and international journalism. I'm sure that it presents some good reasons to avoid certain types of mainstream corporate media, but there's many other options today than you would have had in 1996.
Meanwhile, I suggest you read the vast quantities of information out there about Rupert Murdoch's empire and how he's known to manipulate the outlets he controls editorially. If you're concerned about manipulation of the news, you should be extraordinarily embarrassed to be getting so much of your news from him if you're claiming to be interested in accuracy.
"I’m not sure what the story is with Fox. She opted to do so, for many many years"
That doesn't mean she wasn't exploited (in fact, she later sued her father successfully for stealing a lot of money from her during the 80s, so I'd say it's guaranteed that some exploitation was taking place. Even if not her personally, I suggest you read up on how things operated in the UK modelling industry, there was a lot of questionable stuff happening there.
But, that wasn't my main point. My point was that actual journalism doesn't usually depend on bingo games and 16 year old tits to sell newspapers. That's a sign of the opposite, in fact. The Sun is well known as a set of liars, and that's as true today as it was when Fox was having her puberty exploited on their pages.
There's a number of outlets that are so well known to fabricate stories or use highly questionable methods to sell newspapers, and unfortunately not all of them have suffered the fate of the News Of The World, so I will remind people about how low the journalistic standards are if they are presented as a reliable source.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The book was published in 2021.
I don’t care about international journalism.
“ in fact, she later sued her father successfully for stealing a lot of money from her during the 80…”
She chose to do so. Willing. Her parents signed off on it at her request.
Her father’s theft is unrelated to her choice to pose.
Exploitation is in the eye of the viewer. I neither condemn nor support the decision. It was hers alone.
“ so I will remind people about how low the journalistic standards are if they are presented as a reliable source”
Hey, we agree.
That’s why I have two primary reads daily. NYT, slightly to the left and Fox slightly to the right.
But NYT and Fox News are correct more often than incorrect. Both reliably retract misinformation pieces.
The truth is often somewhere between those two.
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"The book was published in 2021."
In that case, I suggest you actually name the book in full, including author and publisher, rather than making me guess, since apart from a UK radio show the main thing that comes up in a search on that title is a 1996 book.
"I don’t care about international journalism."
Unless it's something from a rag like The Sun which agrees with your preconceived notions, in which case you'll offer them up as flawless citations...
I'd take an interest in international journalism if I were you. It's not just the fact that you get a far more rounded view of international issues that way, but it does open your eyes up as to how some news is manipulated for different markets. I don't even mean that you need to search out actual local news from where a story is taking place. Sky News in the UK, for example, is rather different from Fox in its reporting, and was so even when Murdoch owned it, and the international version of CNN can be markedly different from the US one.
"Her father’s theft is unrelated to her choice to pose."
It does raise questions about whether it was really her full choice, as do similar situations with any child actor working in Hollywood. Some are happy, some have tales of happy upbringing, some are left hollow shells due to the abuse. Although, as I said, even if she wasn't being personally exploited, there's a lot of stories from that industry of just that happening to other models. Whatever the situation, it's not a basis for journalism.
"That’s why I have two primary reads daily. NYT, slightly to the left and Fox slightly to the right."
That's like claiming you have a balanced diet because you eat salad and chocolate every day. I suggest you look a bit more into your nutritional intake and expand it slightly. You might feel differently when you have some real fibre and protein in the mix.
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The top result I have is is a 1912 film. But the next 4 are all the 2021 book. I forgot about some users being out of country.
B08LDW29XN
ISBN-10 : 1982160748
ISBN-13 : 978-1982160746
Try Bing. I haven’t used google search in years.
I’m aware that the US political spectrum is very different from many other European countries.
I prefer to frame US political discussions with US voters in the US bubble.
For better and for worse: the vast vast majority of US citizens have no interest in foreign news.
BBC/BBCA is one of the least watched channels in this country
I’m not saying it’s good that way, just that it is. Framing American politics discussion in an international light adds a third layer of complexity to tense discussions.
I think (this is my own opinion) the vast majority of child/teen start personalities that crash are simply inundated with the excess that comes with fame.
I base that opinion on my own history of “success”. The fall that comes with popularity.
Fox didn’t do so bad. Compared to the Disney starlet turned nymph Phenomenon in the US.
There’s not much besides the MSNBCNN and Murdoch in the US. Secondary news is beholden to funding from left or right.
Anything beyond that usually falls into the extremes, be it mother joined on the progressive (called alt by Republicans) left or or alt-right. Which I don’t read at all.
And before your parrot Breitbart being alt right think about the controlling staff. They’re mostly minority in our country, Jews, Blacks, and Asians.
Personally I have neither the time nor interest to track down anything else.
I’m open to suggestions. Honestly. I’m not a Republican. Note am I a Democrat, though I was registered as the latter up to 2014. If you know if honest journalism not held by the parties I’m all for a source of actual news. It’s becoming very difficult in this country when most of it is blindly Democrats or Republicans.
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"The top result I have is is a 1912 film. But the next 4 are all the 2021 book. I forgot about some users being out of country."
Well, this is why it's a good idea to be specific rather than insist everyone else search for what you're looking for. Search engines weight results depending on a number of things, including personal search history, location and the options you have turned on in your settings. For me, I saw a 1996 book that was apparently well-regarded across the political spectrum by James Fallows. You saw a book written by a Breitbart employee borrowing that title.
In other words, even your access to books based on title is so skewed that it's impossible to have a straightforward conversation about them. Obviously, your ability to discuss the finer points of the issues is going to be somewhat compromised. If your method of research is to search and give us The Sun as a reliable source because it's the first thing you agree with, you're going to get pushback from people with a better way of sourcing their information.
"I prefer to frame US political discussions with US voters in the US bubble."
Then, you lack perspective, especially since you're apparently determined to reject 90+% of US media outright. You also probably have an even poorer grasp of international issues, although that doesn't seem to stop you having an opinion about them.
I can appreciate that you might not care what an Australian or Japanese outlet has to say about a local election race, for example, but you're so determined to block out the vast majority of people who aren't already in your vanishingly small bubble of Murdoch branded approved outlets, you're likely not getting any perspective on any issue.
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“ The Sun as a reliable source because it's the first thing you agree with”
I simply chose the first one that wasn’t US.
“ have an even poorer grasp of international issues, although that doesn't seem to stop you having an opinion about them.”
I generally don’t have much interest with the exception of specific issues that affect people I know.
Actually funny you mention Japan and Australia. Generally my international internet is Russia, Australia, and Japan. Where I have long time friends.
But yes I tend to get their local news filtered through them.
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"I simply chose the first one that wasn’t US."
As I've said - you went for the first thing you agreed with, and it happened to be a notoriously bad Murdoch shitrag. Expand your horizons and start taking notice of what non-Murdoch sources say, and you'll be surprised. I don't mean the opinions, I mean you'll learn how many verifiable facts you're being shielded from.
"I generally don’t have much interest with the exception of specific issues that affect people I know."
Then, you should have interest in international politics.... Despite what certain isolationist luddites are telling you, it's amazing how much world events affect you.
"But yes I tend to get their local news filtered through them."
So, what is it? You take no interest in what everyone else has to say, or you do?
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“So what is it?”
"I generally don’t have much interest with the exception of specific issues that affect people I know."
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"I generally don’t have much interest with the exception of specific issues that affect people I know."
OK,, we've established that you don't care about a vast swathe of the American populous.
What I'm getting at is - are you actually incurious enough about the world not to realise how many international issues do affect you in the US, are you dumb enough to think that only domestic issues affect you, only Russian issues affect your friends in Russia, etc.? Or, are you aware that the world is a complex place with many issues that affect you from outside of your borders, but you have deliberately walled yourself off from different viewpoints about those issues?
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“ the world is a complex place with many issues that affect you from outside of your borders”
I’m surprised. Usually the complaints are American interventionism.
Is the world suddenly of different opinion that because trump was America first?
The quad has a terrible track record internationally post WW2
The Cold War had little to do with communism and everything to do with kill atheism.
We overthrew Iran and installed a puppet so terrible he was overthrown by the populace who installed a religious kingdom beholden to a fictional story written by mid-eastern Christian monks under a pen name. All to fight the Russian atheists.
We armed Afghan rebels creating the Taliban to fight the Russian atheists.
We continue to arm a government in Occupied Palestine who conducts acts of terror against neighbours and pretends it isn’t a nuclear power.
We’re supporting a government in the East who has made it a mission to kill every last one of the Russian minority.
Since the 70s the majority of the world civilian population wanted the US to just stay home.
So did that suddenly flip?
Problems there are not a problem here.
I’d think you’d champion someone who believed the US should just get the fuck out of everyone else’s issues.
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Well, that is the most idiotic screed I've seen come from you, and that's saying something.
"Problems there are not a problem here."
I'd stop reading so much Murdoch shite, it's clearly rotting your brain. In reality, global geopolitics and economics very much affect you there, whether or not it's by your own hand, and it's a shame you lack the capacity to understand why. My apologies for addressing you as if you were an educated adult.
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I'd ask if you have reading comprehension issues, but you've provided enough evidence of that in this thread alone that such a question would be rhetorical at this point.
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