2020 Senate & House

Discussion in 'West Mall' started by Joe Fan, May 5, 2019.

  1. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    She might be having problems. She's pretty old, but I didn't hear anything about this until after she decided not to act like a raging freak during the Barrett hearings. Furthermore, she's hardly the only senator to have cognitive problems. Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond were practically asleep their last ten years in the Senate. But the media didn't make it an issue.
     
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  2. bystander

    bystander 10,000+ Posts

    BINGO. We know what this is; punishment for being reasonable. They lauded her performance in trying to destroy Kavanaugh. These people are ruthless. They are truly totalitarians.
     
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  3. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

    Thurgood Marshall did sleep during oral arguments. No one dared bring that up either. In chambers, he watched TV, clerks wrote everything
     
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  4. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

    They are about 3 decades late
    Her husband was getting huge contracts for work essentially controlled by her committee
     
  5. nashhorn

    nashhorn 5,000+ Posts

    AOC learned from her very well.
     
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  6. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

    I worked for the federal govt for many years and we were not allowed to remotely come near what Feinstein got away with, for decades. They would move us out of stuff in the blink of an eye. For something as basic as 10 shares of stock in some company, or maybe even you went to the same school as the wife of the named party. The same rules never applied to these people or the "political hires" (the ones who came in to head departments with administration changes).

    I always felt the same rules should apply to everyone.
     
  7. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    Really Joe?
    Then you definitely did not belong in Gov't
    of any kind
     
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  8. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

  9. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    Rand Paul let out his inner voice. This is the voter suppression tactic the Republicans prefer. Fewer voters. This is how they want to maintain power. Rand Paul doesn't want to win over all voters, just their base.

     
  10. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    It's voter suppression to not send out ballots to everyone? Is that the new normal?

    I understand your point. We shouldn't bemoan more people voting. But you know that it isn't that simple, right? He is talking about election law that must be followed. Also, this was in the context of people voting from wrong/illegal addresses and multiple times. So give me a break.
     
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  11. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    They aren't sending out ballots to everyone. They are sending out "absentee ballot applications" to registered voters. The pool of voters has expanded significantly, with Stacey Abram's efforts having a huge impact. The applications for absentee ballot are clearly making it easier for all registered voters to vote by mail. Rand Paul doesn't like the fact that more voters are voting.

    Which election laws aren't being followed? Does any state have laws on the books prohibiting a SOS from sending out absentee ballot applications? Why would an election official want more people to vote absentee? Maybe because the COVID protocols for in-person voting means they can't single thread their voters and still keep them safe and/or satisfied by not waiting in line for hours and hours?

    I haven't followed the state by state claims that election laws aren't being followed but know that in court none of those claims have held up, with the exception of PA where VBM voters were restricted to 6 days instead of 9 to cure their votes.

    I'm certain there are violations of wrong/illegal addresses for voters. How much effort is acceptable to confirm? We have examples of politicians with PO Boxes as their address to qualify for representing a district. We know that people move, specifically non-home owners on a frequent basis and updating their address with the elections office is likely the last of their worries in most cases. How much public resources should be devoted to this cleanup effort? From public perception, GA is already at the forefront of voter roll cleanup efforts, much to Stacey Abram's concern.
     
  12. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    If they are already registered voters (and I don't argue with that point) then how is this action expanding the pool of voters?

    I don't know specifically. But maybe Rand understands better than you or me. Maybe he doesn't. But that is the main point from the R side. The election protocols were changed unilaterally by governors or other politicians without changing state law. Did GA change state law saying all registered voters be sent absentee ballots? If not, then they violated their own law.

    Well we know from the last couple of months that the election wasn't a vector for COVID transmission. So the fear is mostly artificial.

    Some of the court decisions might have been correct, but I have seen multiple that were based on technicality, political bias, and simple disregard.

    I personally put articles and graphs on several forum threads showing that there was serious smoke in multiple states. Those who were open to the idea that there was fraud accepted them as evidence. Others who aren't open to the idea simply ignored it and pointed to the court rulings. Courts aren't the source of truth that we must all bow down to. Intelligent, skeptical, open people can look at data and make independent judgments. It is obvious that not everyone is that including many judges, whether Rs or Ds.

    If the States involved really cared about election integrity they could have based investigations on the voting database records. They could have looked at the points in time where strange things happened and interviewed everyone working during the time those ballots were counted. They didn't. It could have cleared everything up. Instead you have Dominion offices closing shop and disappearing. You have strange videos put on Twitter with narration but the people in the videos were never asked about what was going on. You have people like yourself laughing about Rs thinking there was fraud, while choosing to forget the investigation the Ds ran for 3 years.

    The action of the courts leads to more questions in many people's minds, it doesn't answer them.

    I say that while noting that several of the suits were obviously weak and stupid. I thought Trump's team was barking up the wrong tree most of the time.
     
  13. OUBubba

    OUBubba 5,000+ Posts

    • Funny Funny x 1
  14. Horn6721

    Horn6721 10,000+ Posts

    Posting an lying article from 8 months ago?
    :lmao:
     
  15. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    Good question and I don't know what Rand was getting at. My assumption is that he was referencing that the voter participation rate of registered voters is being pumped up by actively giving them VBM options. Typically, special elections have low turnouts. Allowing all registered voters to request a VBM (or absentee) ballot flips that equation on it's head. That marginal voter that typically only shows up every 4 years to vote for President may vote now that it's a little easier to vote absentee. Again....that was my assumption but it seems logical.

    In GA they aren't all being "sent absentee ballots". This is critically important word play. They are being sent absentee ballot applications. You have to apply for an absentee ballot. Only after being accepted are you sent a VBM/Absentee ballot. I'd wager the legislator has not codified into law in any form rules around the SOS sending out these applications. In cases I've looked at like PA, the rules were around who is eligible for an absentee ballot, not who can apply nor how they receive the application. Has a court case been brought in GA challenging eligibility of absentee ballots? If so, I'm not aware and given that hasn't been challenged then that should be evidence that even #TheKraken and Lin Wood don't think the SOS is doing anything illegal.

    On the Covid front I haven't seen any analysis on whether voting offices were superspreader events or not. Of course, that's a bit like a chicken and egg situation, right? Election offices took a lot of precautions and VBM reduced the volume of voters in the booth. If a quality research analysis was completed and found them not to be superspreader events then I'd simply proclaim SUCCESS!.

    I was with you until you went all conspiracy theorist. I for one did appreciate you trying to defend your position with facts and data. You and @mchammer deserve credit in that regard. Alas, what I saw posted was anonymous internet twitter accounts with claims, analysis results but no mention of their methodology or any ability to verify the claim. Call me skeptical but my roles in the past have revolved around data/analytics for large corporations. For example, depending on the methodology that we've used, the turnover rate look really bad or really good. Our diversity metrics were the same which is why we always aligned with leadership on the methodology pros/cons before publishing dashboards. It's that way with any data. Absent exposing the methodology used most analyses are bunk as you can't tell the creator's bias. So, please forgive me if I didn't give the anonymous internet twitter users as much credibility as you chose to grant them.

    We did get some insight into the data being presented in court that were making serious claims. Russel Ramsland is an idiot. Whether he simply signed off on the work of his team's shoddy work or actually did the analysis himself the information and charts he presented to justify his claim of voter fraud was pure unadulterated kindergarten quality work. You didn't back him (unlike @Garmel ) but his was the only affidavit that included data that you could actually verify/dispute. Ramsland is the guy who first popped up in Lin Wood's GA suit who noted that many townships/precints in MI had a higher voter participation rate than registered voters. He proudly proclaimed some were as high as 450%. Of course, a quick Google search of the precincts determined that ~50% of the list he claimed for Michigan (MI) actually were in Minnesota (MN). Furthermore, I'm not sure what data he was using because you could go to the publicly available reports from those Counties to see that his analysis was WAAAAAAAYYYY off. Take 2, Ramsland submitted an affidavit in #TheKraken's case in Michigan. Good news, he didn't include MN data this time. Unfortunately. a 10 second review of his charge duplicate entries. Yes, in the chart 30% of the entries had the same township named albeit with different voting percentages. For me, that was strike 3. This "expert" being promoted by Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and @Garmel is either a functional idiot or was dumb enough not to review the information he signed the affidavit for. Either way, his credibility is less than 0. Oh yeah...he's also the guy that supposedly completed the forensic analysis an Antrim County, Michigan for #TheKraken. You tell me whether he's believable after the kindergarten cop routine of his previous affidavits?

    Why don't you think judges gave any credence to the lawsuits? If amateur @Seattle Husker can see the grave errors in the analysis you don't think a judge can too? Further add on unbelievably un-credible affidavits by people like Melissa Carone and it's not hard to imagine a judge siding with the Defendants, especially after reading their responses.
     
  16. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    I more or less agree with the paragraphs above the comment I quote below.

    What methodology? The graphs I posted whether anonymous or not were just graphing the JSON files made publicly available from the NYT. You don't understand the method needed to create a time series plot? You are making this way too complicated.

    I don't defend anything Ramsland did or didn't do. He presented data. Some other show much of it to be faulty. That is the process I want to see. Addressing the data. I didn't watch what he presented about MI. I did watch his discussion of data from 2018 elections. It seemed reasonable and measured. It seemed like a reason to look more closely at Smartmatic/Dominion systems, but nothing was presented as conclusive. The types of things you mention about his MI data are nothing like his older analysis. Weird.

    Some do, some don't. Many judges rule based on their politics and not on the letter of the law. If a liberal judge doesn't want Trump to be elected he/she isn't going to accept a case that would challenge a Biden election. I have seen this kind of bias enough to think it reasonable it is an explanation of at least SOME of the rulings.
     
  17. Duck Dodgers

    Duck Dodgers 1,000+ Posts

    Watching today's US media is like the media of the Soviet Union - you can't look at what they are talking about directly, as it's propaganda. You look at why it's being presented - who gains and who loses, and why now?

    Using that, you can see that Feinstein has fallen out of favor, and now the same facts about how old and senile she is are getting widespread attention, instead of being covered up by her fellow leftists who run the media.

    I wonder if there's an internal beef in the CA democrat party as to who gets Harris the Office *****'s Senate seat, such that instead of their Governor having to make a decision, and lose the support of the loser, they have decided to run Feinstein out of office, and thus have two seats to hand out, keeping everyone happy.
     
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  18. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    Sorry, I had you confused with another poster. I'm trying to understand why there is concern about the timing of when the batches of files landed? We knew that these were the states where laws were put in place, and followed, that prevented stated from counting their mail-in ballots early. Trump supporters are questioning how Biden came from behind to win when the VBM ballots were counted. Why are those same people not questioning Florida where the inverse happened? Biden had a sizable lead due to VBM that were counted early then when the in-person votes were counted Trump ran him down and comfortably passed him. Florida is actually the use case that shows all the complaints about fraud are bunk, IMHO.

    I've only read his affidavits in 2 cases and commented on them here. His analysis or attention to detail were atrociously poor that were I a judge would have discounted his analysis completely.

    Of the 80 plus judges that reviewed Trump and his supporters cases they covered the political spectrum and none, not even the conservative SCOTUS judges, thought there was enough merit to warrant a full open hearing. You'd have to be arguing for a vast conspiracy to think that 80+ judges all just wanted Biden to be elected. I could agree that a handful of judges were politically motivated but 80+ over 60 different cases/courts?
     
  19. Joe Fan

    Joe Fan 10,000+ Posts

    • Agree Agree x 1
  20. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    That is a plausible explanation. But there is more to it than that. It isn't the timing so much though you are correct on the timing. It was more some anomalies that were pointed out, where there were patterns that were "unique" compared to other states. It could be what you said but I never saw anyone show evidence for that. I only saw people like you make the assertion. It could be true, but the issue deserved more than a hypothetical.

    I don't dispute that.

    I don't think there was a conspiracy. I do think many of the cases were based on slim to none. When I heard about them it was clear they weren't going after the correct things. I am not that different in my opinion than you. I think there was a little more bias than you that's all.
     
  21. Garmel

    Garmel 5,000+ Posts

    Ramsland is far from an idiot. You're blaming him for mistakes that are more likely due to team Powell than him. Do you really think he did those affidavits beyond signing it? If he was wrong in Antrim why did the SOS (or was it the AG?) try to block the results with a gag order or why didn't they hire another team to dispute him and make him look ridiculous? I know the answer and I think you do too. Ramsland is more than likely correct on Antrim because the same errors at Antrim are popping up elsewhere. Adjudication rates in Fulton County (100k+) and the rest of the Atlanta metro area are ridiculous. Btw, here's another data guy looking at just the Dominion systems. Statistical Evidence of Dominion Election Fraud? Time to Audit the Machines. - FraudSpotters When data analyst after data analyst is saying the same thing we should listen.
    Carone is just one witness and there are hundreds more that are reliable. Do you think any judge is going to overturn an election in his own state? That's career suicide since most are elected. They're passing the buck just like they did in Bush's cases in 2000.

    P.S. With so many professionals thinking there's something wrong with the numbers that pretty much rules something out of being a silly conspiracy.
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2020
  22. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    Holy ****?! Look what happened in Antrim County!

     
  23. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    Is this a joke? The local county official, the State official and a court have all agreed that the initial submission of results were incorrect due to human error which was caught the night of the election and updated. If you want to get technical...BOTH candidates won the vote in Antrim County that night....but Trump won it second after the reporting error was corrected as it should have been.
     
  24. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    The GA Republican party is trying to stop any new election registrants from voting in the Special Election.

     
  25. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    The hand recount just happened Wednesday.
     
  26. Seattle Husker

    Seattle Husker 10,000+ Posts

    But the original count had already given the county to Trump, after the election official correction. I think the claimed original problem that 6k Trump votes were erroneously attributed to Biden then corrected back to Trump that same night. So the hand count confirmed the original count?
     
  27. mchammer

    mchammer 10,000+ Posts

    GOP down 5 seats in the next Congress. Looking at 2020 final results, GOP had 10 races where they got a min of 48.0% of votes. I wonder how crazy Dems are going to be regarding climate, regulations, education, immigration, race issues, etc that are mostly virtue signaling exercises that can go south quickly if posts are fillled with true believers.
     
  28. Monahorns

    Monahorns 5,000+ Posts

    I expect Dems to go crazy, to get what they can when they can.
     
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  29. Mr. Deez

    Mr. Deez Beer Prophet

    In a House that closely divided, they won't have the votes to do much. Obviously the GOP doesn't control the House, but the Democrats only nominally control it. They can choose the Speaker (if they can be unified on a choice and avoid too many absences or "presents"), but there are enough Abigail Spanbergers who don't want to lose their careers that Pelosi (or whomever the House ultimately chooses) won't be able to go too crazy. She'll have to have virtually no defections or will have to rely on Republican votes (which will probably happen on some budget matters). Both will keep her fairly restrained unless she wants to literally get nothing done.
     
  30. mchammer

    mchammer 10,000+ Posts

    The Dem moderates in the House will have more standing if GOP wins the GA senate races.
     
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    • WTF? WTF? x 1
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2020

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