Techdirt is always talking about horrible people making horrible false copyright infringement claims, and I fully agree that it's horrible and the people doing so need to be smacked down hard.
Now that someone doing so actually got smacked down hard for it, you're saying there's a problem with that?
Generally, the fewer people that vote the more favorable it is to Republican candidates.
This would seem to not hold up against the facts: the 2016 election had the highest voter turnout in recent memory, and across the board--not just in the Presidential vote--the Republican party won in a landslide.
As I've said before on here, it was pretty much inevitable, as it's the Republicans' turn to screw things up now. It's a clear pattern that's been going on for decades in American politics: we didn't like Bush Sr. raising taxes after saying "read my lips, no new taxes," so we threw him and his party out and elected Clinton, who was even worse. We got sick of his endless scandals, so we threw him and his party out and elected W, who was even worse. We got sick of his moronic antics and endless wars, so we threw him and his party out and elected Obama, who was even worse. (Are you seeing a pattern yet?) Then we got sick of him and his party causing trouble for us with health care, race relations, civil rights, and oh-by-the-way not doing anything to put an end to the endless wars he campaigned on opposing, so we threw him and his party out and elected Trump, who is almost guaranteed to be even worse.
Anyone who was surprised by Trump's victory is simply not paying attention.
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Laughable Postion of Democrats on the Integrity of Voting
One thing I do know: every time I've gone to the DMV, wherever I'm living at the time, there are a lot of minorities there.
Sure, I'm just one guy, but I'm a guy who's and moved around a lot, and I've never seen any compelling evidence to back up this narrative that's being pushed on us.
Re: Re: The Laughable Postion of Democrats on the Integrity of Voting
Making it easier for people to vote is a good thing. You disagree?
I disagree. Unless you were to replace the word "people" with "legitimate citizens," in which case I agree wholeheartedly.
Voter fraud is inconsequential
This is an example of what they call "lying with statistics." The camp pushing that narrative loves to point out how few people get prosecuted for voter fraud each election. And they're right; it is a really small number of people. However, in doing so they conveniently ignore all the reports of cases like the districts with more votes cast than registered voters that make it clear that there is massive fraud going on.
Put in that context, the statistics about such a tiny number of people being prosecuted take on a horrifying new implication: there is massive fraud going on and in the vast majority of cases, we have no clue at all who it is!
But the "documents" to prove eligibility of voters is ... designed to stop certain groups from voting.
Yes, exactly. No one disputes this. The question is, who is it designed to stop from voting? The people actually trying to put these laws in place say it's to stop people who don't have the right to vote from voting, whereas critics like to push the racism-ist narrative that it's to stop underprivileged minorities who do have a legitimate right to vote from voting.
I'm more inclined to side with the first group, for three reasons. First, as noted above, there is widespread fraud going on and we have no idea who's doing it. Why not take simple, common-sense measures to weed some of it out?
Second, because the racism-ists have cried wolf so many times, and done so much harm to ordinary, decent people in the ensuing witch-hunts, that it's worth taking anything they say anymore with a rather sizeable grain of salt.
Third, because one thing that's a legitimate voter ID everywhere is a driver's license/state ID card, and I've actually gone through the process of one, many times and in many places due to moving around for different jobs, and the process in no way fits the racism-ists' narrative of some massive, arduous ordeal that acts as a barrier to enfranchisement.
Think back to the last time you did it. You go to the DMV, which is a few miles away from your house. Close enough that you could probably walk if you didn't have a car, or (depending on where you live) take the bus. Then you sit around for a long time waiting (and waiting and waiting...) for them to get around to you, and you pay the fee (about $20,) fill out the paperwork, and they send you your new ID card/driver's license in a few days. It's good for quite a while--how long depends on where you live, but generally between 3 and 10 years.
The racism-ists' entire narrative falls apart when you think about it critically instead of simply accepting their wild accusations at face value. Stop to consider, for a moment, just how arduous it really is to, in the worst-case scenario, have to visit the DMV for a few hours and pay $20 once every 3 years. It's difficult to conceive of any scenario in which that presents an actual barrier to any legitimate American citizen, no matter how disadvantaged.
So can we please drop the "voter suppression" conspiracy nonsense already? It doesn't even pass the laugh test.
Re: Re: Re: If the EFF ever needed to put "Broken by Design" stickers on something...
DailyKos is a liberal site that doesn't promote hatred of people.
If you think this, then you are not paying attention. They blatantly promote hatred of all things conservative, often in so many words. There's been more than one article on there that literally used the word "hate" in the context of how any right-minded reader should feel about the subject of the current excoriation. Some of them were written by Markos, the guy who runs the site.
The only difference between them and Breitbart is who they're inciting hatred against. Both are ugly, festering menaces that are destroying our culture, rotting it away from the inside.
Re: If the EFF ever needed to put "Broken by Design" stickers on something...
It looks like you're trying to make some good, legitimate points, but be careful who you cite. Unfortunately, your credibility goes right out the window when you link to a site like the Daily Kos, an extremist site dedicated to raving irrational hatred of all things even the slightest bit conservative. They're basically the Left's answer to Breitbart.
> But, that doesn't seem to be the reason why Trump is against these deals. Rather, almost all of his commentary on these agreements is about how other countries are "winning" and the US is "losing" from these trade deals
And he's right about that much, at least
> and how he's ready and willing to jack up tariffs and basically set off trade wars with some of our largest trading partners. That's bad, and will likely cause a lot more harm than good.
Personally, I've always been a fan of Tom Clancy's suggestion that our fundamental trade policy should essentially be "our markets are as open to your country's trade as your country's markets are to our trade." If you want a level playing field, you could do a lot worse than to make the other guy play by his own rules and see yow much he likes it.
Yeah, this is a basic idea I've been proposing for a while now:
The Crime Does Not Pay Act
Any corporate entity found to be guilty of illegal business practices which brought in revenue shall be fined a minimum of 100% of the revenue received through illegal means.
Eliminate slap-on-the-wrist fines that can be written off as the cost of doing business, and so many things start to fix themselves.
I'm all for essentially blanket immunity under Section 230 for community content, but AirBNB is something else entirely. It's not just some forum where people can post rental listings, which is what Section 230 was written for because it's the sort of thing that was around when the CDA was written.
AirBNB is a booking agency. Every rental that takes place, takes place through AirBNB's infrastructure, with AirBNB taking a cut of the deal. To say Section 230 applies here is to create all sorts of perverse incentives, because if you can create a site to help people sell illegal things, get a cut of each sale, and then claim immunity and operate with impunity once people start using it for much more serious crime, what's to stop someone from doing exactly that?
Sorry, but the only ruling that makes any sense is that AirBNB stops being a simple "content platform" when it becomes a business partner. And I don't see that as "chipping away at Section 230 protections" in the slightest, because it doesn't do anything at all to harm the sites that Section 230 was intended to protect. All it does is properly clarify the boundaries of Section 230 WRT a category of sites that weren't a thing back when the CDA was passed.
Seriously, anyone who didn't take one look at the slogan "make America great again" and immediately say "he's going to ride those four words all the way to the White House" is simply not paying attention.
Sure, the polls kept predicting Clinton would win, and yeah, what Nate Silver managed to pull off last time around was pretty awesome, but even when the entirety of the Primary process showed Trump consistently doing significantly better than polls predicted, everyone in the media continued to treat the polls as gospel. (Einstein's definition of insanity springs to mind!)
The 538 polling was the sort of trick you can only pull off once, because once people realize they're being observed, their behavior changes. (Techdirt readers are already quite familiar with this principle as applied to surveillance, but it's true in other contexts as well. Many, many other contexts.) Drawing attention to Nate Silver's accomplishments destroyed its effectiveness.
Re: Re: One small silver lining that no one mentoined...
Another good thing that results from his election: we didn't elect Hillary.
Various email leaks make it painfully clear that she stole the primary nomination from Bernie Sanders, with the willing help of a viciously anti-democratic Democratic Party. If she had won, that would have set an awful precedent, that doing so is OK and rewarding.
Therefore, she had to lose, period. I just wish she could have lost to someone who would make a good President.
10. Bad trade agreements: It's a bit of an open secret that Hillary was only against the TPP because she had to publicly express disapproval of it in the primary, and that she had every intention of fully supporting it once she was sworn in. That's not happening now, and by all appearances, Trump will actually oppose it and other bad trade deals.
Will he do so out of xenophobia and a complete misunderstanding of foreign trade? Absolutely! But remember, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing.
On the post: Jayme Gordon Guilty On All 4 Counts Of Wire Fraud In Scheme To Sue Dreamworks For Copyright Infringement
Techdirt is always talking about horrible people making horrible false copyright infringement claims, and I fully agree that it's horrible and the people doing so need to be smacked down hard.
Now that someone doing so actually got smacked down hard for it, you're saying there's a problem with that?
On the post: Somehow Everyone Comes Out Looking Terrible In The Effort For Election Recounts
Re: Re: Let's assume there's voter fraud
This would seem to not hold up against the facts: the 2016 election had the highest voter turnout in recent memory, and across the board--not just in the Presidential vote--the Republican party won in a landslide.
As I've said before on here, it was pretty much inevitable, as it's the Republicans' turn to screw things up now. It's a clear pattern that's been going on for decades in American politics: we didn't like Bush Sr. raising taxes after saying "read my lips, no new taxes," so we threw him and his party out and elected Clinton, who was even worse. We got sick of his endless scandals, so we threw him and his party out and elected W, who was even worse. We got sick of his moronic antics and endless wars, so we threw him and his party out and elected Obama, who was even worse. (Are you seeing a pattern yet?) Then we got sick of him and his party causing trouble for us with health care, race relations, civil rights, and oh-by-the-way not doing anything to put an end to the endless wars he campaigned on opposing, so we threw him and his party out and elected Trump, who is almost guaranteed to be even worse.
Anyone who was surprised by Trump's victory is simply not paying attention.
On the post: Somehow Everyone Comes Out Looking Terrible In The Effort For Election Recounts
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Laughable Postion of Democrats on the Integrity of Voting
Sure, I'm just one guy, but I'm a guy who's and moved around a lot, and I've never seen any compelling evidence to back up this narrative that's being pushed on us.
On the post: Somehow Everyone Comes Out Looking Terrible In The Effort For Election Recounts
Re: Re: Re: The Laughable Postion of Democrats on the Integrity of Voting
(I'm almost hoping you're not, because it amuses me to think of French clowns meddling in our elections while trapped in glass boxes.)
On the post: Somehow Everyone Comes Out Looking Terrible In The Effort For Election Recounts
Re: Re: The Laughable Postion of Democrats on the Integrity of Voting
I disagree. Unless you were to replace the word "people" with "legitimate citizens," in which case I agree wholeheartedly.
This is an example of what they call "lying with statistics." The camp pushing that narrative loves to point out how few people get prosecuted for voter fraud each election. And they're right; it is a really small number of people. However, in doing so they conveniently ignore all the reports of cases like the districts with more votes cast than registered voters that make it clear that there is massive fraud going on.
Put in that context, the statistics about such a tiny number of people being prosecuted take on a horrifying new implication: there is massive fraud going on and in the vast majority of cases, we have no clue at all who it is!
Yes, exactly. No one disputes this. The question is, who is it designed to stop from voting? The people actually trying to put these laws in place say it's to stop people who don't have the right to vote from voting, whereas critics like to push the racism-ist narrative that it's to stop underprivileged minorities who do have a legitimate right to vote from voting.
I'm more inclined to side with the first group, for three reasons. First, as noted above, there is widespread fraud going on and we have no idea who's doing it. Why not take simple, common-sense measures to weed some of it out?
Second, because the racism-ists have cried wolf so many times, and done so much harm to ordinary, decent people in the ensuing witch-hunts, that it's worth taking anything they say anymore with a rather sizeable grain of salt.
Third, because one thing that's a legitimate voter ID everywhere is a driver's license/state ID card, and I've actually gone through the process of one, many times and in many places due to moving around for different jobs, and the process in no way fits the racism-ists' narrative of some massive, arduous ordeal that acts as a barrier to enfranchisement.
Think back to the last time you did it. You go to the DMV, which is a few miles away from your house. Close enough that you could probably walk if you didn't have a car, or (depending on where you live) take the bus. Then you sit around for a long time waiting (and waiting and waiting...) for them to get around to you, and you pay the fee (about $20,) fill out the paperwork, and they send you your new ID card/driver's license in a few days. It's good for quite a while--how long depends on where you live, but generally between 3 and 10 years.
The racism-ists' entire narrative falls apart when you think about it critically instead of simply accepting their wild accusations at face value. Stop to consider, for a moment, just how arduous it really is to, in the worst-case scenario, have to visit the DMV for a few hours and pay $20 once every 3 years. It's difficult to conceive of any scenario in which that presents an actual barrier to any legitimate American citizen, no matter how disadvantaged.
So can we please drop the "voter suppression" conspiracy nonsense already? It doesn't even pass the laugh test.
On the post: Court (Again) Tosses Lawsuit Seeking To Hold Twitter Accountable For ISIS Terrorism
That which we call a Twitter
by any other name
would be just as full of Twits.
On the post: After All That, E-Voting Experts Suggest Voting Machines May Have Been Hacked For Trump
Re: Re: Re: If the EFF ever needed to put "Broken by Design" stickers on something...
If you think this, then you are not paying attention. They blatantly promote hatred of all things conservative, often in so many words. There's been more than one article on there that literally used the word "hate" in the context of how any right-minded reader should feel about the subject of the current excoriation. Some of them were written by Markos, the guy who runs the site.
The only difference between them and Breitbart is who they're inciting hatred against. Both are ugly, festering menaces that are destroying our culture, rotting it away from the inside.
On the post: After All That, E-Voting Experts Suggest Voting Machines May Have Been Hacked For Trump
Re: If the EFF ever needed to put "Broken by Design" stickers on something...
On the post: State Senator Wants To Turn First Amendment Activity Into 'Economic Terrorism'
Re: Dear America
On the post: Stopping Turnkey Tyranny: What The Obama Administration Can Do About The NSA On The Way Out
Re: That makes more sense
On the post: Florida Voters Vote Down Bill Aimed At Hamstringing Solar Competition
Re: Re: Solar Propaganda
On the post: Time Warner Cable Sued Again Over Sneaky Hidden Fees...By Plaintiff Not Seeking Monetary Damages
Re: Re: What doesn't have hidden fees these days?
On the post: US Admits TPP Is Dead, TTIP On Life Support... But Beware Of What Comes Next
And he's right about that much, at least
> and how he's ready and willing to jack up tariffs and basically set off trade wars with some of our largest trading partners. That's bad, and will likely cause a lot more harm than good.
Personally, I've always been a fan of Tom Clancy's suggestion that our fundamental trade policy should essentially be "our markets are as open to your country's trade as your country's markets are to our trade." If you want a level playing field, you could do a lot worse than to make the other guy play by his own rules and see yow much he likes it.
On the post: Court Not Impressed By Airbnb's Argument Against The City Of San Francisco
Re:
Yeah, this is a basic idea I've been proposing for a while now:
Eliminate slap-on-the-wrist fines that can be written off as the cost of doing business, and so many things start to fix themselves.
On the post: Court Not Impressed By Airbnb's Argument Against The City Of San Francisco
I'm all for essentially blanket immunity under Section 230 for community content, but AirBNB is something else entirely. It's not just some forum where people can post rental listings, which is what Section 230 was written for because it's the sort of thing that was around when the CDA was written.
AirBNB is a booking agency. Every rental that takes place, takes place through AirBNB's infrastructure, with AirBNB taking a cut of the deal. To say Section 230 applies here is to create all sorts of perverse incentives, because if you can create a site to help people sell illegal things, get a cut of each sale, and then claim immunity and operate with impunity once people start using it for much more serious crime, what's to stop someone from doing exactly that?
Sorry, but the only ruling that makes any sense is that AirBNB stops being a simple "content platform" when it becomes a business partner. And I don't see that as "chipping away at Section 230 protections" in the slightest, because it doesn't do anything at all to harm the sites that Section 230 was intended to protect. All it does is properly clarify the boundaries of Section 230 WRT a category of sites that weren't a thing back when the CDA was passed.
On the post: Even Fans Admit Chances Of TPP Being Ratified By US Soon -- Or Ever -- Have Just Slumped
Who wasn't expecting it?
Seriously, anyone who didn't take one look at the slogan "make America great again" and immediately say "he's going to ride those four words all the way to the White House" is simply not paying attention.
Sure, the polls kept predicting Clinton would win, and yeah, what Nate Silver managed to pull off last time around was pretty awesome, but even when the entirety of the Primary process showed Trump consistently doing significantly better than polls predicted, everyone in the media continued to treat the polls as gospel. (Einstein's definition of insanity springs to mind!)
The 538 polling was the sort of trick you can only pull off once, because once people realize they're being observed, their behavior changes. (Techdirt readers are already quite familiar with this principle as applied to surveillance, but it's true in other contexts as well. Many, many other contexts.) Drawing attention to Nate Silver's accomplishments destroyed its effectiveness.
On the post: Data-Driven Policing Still Problematic; Now Being Used By Government Agencies For Revenue Generation
Oh, $urely thi$ i$n't $u¢h a hard que$tion to an$wer ¢orre¢tly...
On the post: What The Election Means For Stuff Techdirt Cares About?
Re: Re: One small silver lining that no one mentoined...
Various email leaks make it painfully clear that she stole the primary nomination from Bernie Sanders, with the willing help of a viciously anti-democratic Democratic Party. If she had won, that would have set an awful precedent, that doing so is OK and rewarding.
Therefore, she had to lose, period. I just wish she could have lost to someone who would make a good President.
On the post: What The Election Means For Stuff Techdirt Cares About?
One small silver lining that no one mentoined...
10. Bad trade agreements: It's a bit of an open secret that Hillary was only against the TPP because she had to publicly express disapproval of it in the primary, and that she had every intention of fully supporting it once she was sworn in. That's not happening now, and by all appearances, Trump will actually oppose it and other bad trade deals.
Will he do so out of xenophobia and a complete misunderstanding of foreign trade? Absolutely! But remember, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing.
On the post: CBC Threatens Podcast Apps For Letting People Listen To CBC Podcasts
Which is something that a broadcaster would never do, amirite?
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