Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

Norris

Norris

Yeah, I have to say that I don't get the connection between a moderately high level campaign worker basically "we don't care if our criticisms of the president have any basis in fact" and lying about your sex life under oath. Neither are good, and only one of them is criminal, but I really can't see how the two even begin to relate.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Conventions leave Atheists asking "Which party represents me?"

This is a fair point. The Dems knuckled under to the pressure and did that vote bullshit to get "God" back into their platform... but they had to do the vote 3 times because the crowd wouldn't go along with them. It was really, really painful to watch, especially with the teletron showing this was all scripted and no one thought there would be significant objections. Then they just called it anyway, lied, and put "God" back on the platform to appease the religious crowd. What an absolute crock of shit... 71% of those identifying themselves as atheists vote Democratic and this was the first year they've even been acknowledged as existing at a major convention, then they pull this shit.

Dems. Stop alienating your voter base. I know you don't have any balls but your smarter than this.
 
Norris

Norris

GasBandit said:
God damnit, THE LIBERTARIANS!
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I think there was a "with even a remote chance of actually being able to gain power and actually govern according to my political beliefs" clause implied in the question.

There's a catch-22 with third parties -they won't get elected unless they believe it's not a wasted vote, people won't believe that a third party vote isn't a waste unless third parties start winning elections.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Norris said:
I think there was a "with even a remote chance of actually being able to gain power and actually govern according to my political beliefs" clause implied in the question.

There's a catch-22 with third parties -they won't get elected unless they believe it's not a wasted vote, people won't believe that a third party vote isn't a waste unless third parties start winning elections.
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More evidence that Democracy ain't all it's cracked up to be, unfortunately.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Two guys jump off the top of a skyscraper, one some time after the other. The first guy, as he rapidly approaches the ground screams, "Doing this was a huge mistake!" The second guy, having just barely jumped, yells back,

North_Ranger said:
I dunno, it's working pretty well up here.
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Aaaanyway -

 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
North_Ranger said:
Hey, I'm not the one disparaging an entire political system because of one opinion of a country doing a shitty job at it :p
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Ehhh last I saw greece wasn't doing so hot with theirs either. Bunch of other euro countries too. Pretty much the only ones that are going gangbusters either are sitting on a jillion cubic miles of oil, so pretty much ANY political system they want to try would work because everything works with enough money... or a military superpower's hat... or Germany. Because of... you know, Germans.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

Staff member
GasBandit said:
Ehhh last I saw greece wasn't doing so hot with theirs either. Bunch of other euro countries too. Pretty much the only ones that are going gangbusters either are sitting on a jillion cubic miles of oil, so pretty much ANY political system they want to try would work because everything works with enough money... or a military superpower's hat... or Germany. Because of... you know, Germans.
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Tut tut, now you're arguing economics, not politics. Also, Finland is none of those things, and I was only arguing the matter from my own country's perspective. I just found it worth poking a little fun that because of democracy doesn't work - in your opinion - in America, it should be chucked in the dustbin.

Also, vis-á-vis how "hot" Finland is doing...

Finland is last, #177 in the Failed States Index - that is, failing in failing. Though for comparison's sake, Greece is #138 and USA #159 - and apparently worse off than Portugal at #160 ;) Apologies for the Wikipedia link, I have misplaced the original (Finnish-language) version of the article...
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
North_Ranger said:
Tut tut, now you're arguing economics, not politics. Also, Finland is none of those things, and I was only arguing the matter from my own country's perspective. I just found it worth poking a little fun that because of democracy doesn't work - in your opinion - in America, it should be chucked in the dustbin.

Also, vis-á-vis how "hot" Finland is doing...

Finland is last, #177 in the Failed States Index - that is, failing in failing. Though for comparison's sake, Greece is #138 and USA #159 - and apparently worse off than Portugal at #160 ;) Apologies for the Wikipedia link, I have misplaced the original (Finnish-language) version of the article...
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"Democracy is the worst form of government - except for everything else." Winston Churchill

And greece's political situation definitely contributed to its economic situation. They voted themselves cushy, unsustainable entitlements and woe betide any elected official who starts talking austerity. We're seeing the same thing here, too - "vote for me and get free money and less work - don't think about how it'll all end up."

And now, some links!

Obama did indeed gut welfare reform according to the man who helped draft the work requirements in the 1996 law.

The CBO is projecting that if nothing changes before January 2013 and we go over the “fiscal cliff,” the unemployment rate will climb to 9.1 percent.

Biden: Fact check me! I DARE YOU! Well, okay...

The Obama administration begins a voucher program at the state level for two million poor seniors on Medicare. Isn’t that what they are accusing Paul Ryan and the Republicans of doing?

One sector of the American economy is definitely booming - gun sales.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
That was an interesting read alright. I don't agree with everything but I do agree with him on a lot of what he's saying. He ignores the fact that the only periods in living memory in which spending increases did not outpace gdp growth was when government was locked up by opposing parties. His desire for bipartisanship is misplaced - rather, forcing the voters to make the choice between centrism/collectivism and distributed government/individualism is what has to happen. These are two diametrically opposed concepts which can find no common ground, and trying to straddle the fence and make everybody happy just means more trouble.

Do you want a cradle-to-grave DC nanny, knowing you'll never be more than the under-drone they let you be, or do you want the income mobility and opportunity afforded by individualism with the caveat that you will rise or fall by your own hand and possibly the capricious whims of happenstance?

Some links:

A majority of likely voters consider the presidential election to be more of a choice between Obama and Romney than a referendum on Obama’s first term. That's not good news for Romney.

Obamacare Summed Up in One Sentence: "Let me get this straight. We're going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted social security and medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that's broke. What the %#$@ could possibly go wrong?"

WaPo: Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings?
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
Do you want a cradle-to-grave DC nanny, knowing you'll never be more than the under-drone they let you be, or do you want the income mobility and opportunity afforded by individualism with the caveat that you will rise or fall almost entirely by the capricious whims of happenstance, despite of or in the face of your hard work?
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Fixed that for you. Really, that's what the choice has become: You can ether have security or you can have a chance of moving up the ladder, but you will never get both unless your willing to put others at risk instead of yourself. The banking scandal proved this... no one was punished or held responsible. Hell, some were rewarded for it.
 
Covar

Covar

GasBandit said:
Obamacare Summed Up in One Sentence: "Let me get this straight. We're going to be gifted with a healthcare plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted social security and medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that's broke. What the %#$@ could possibly go wrong?"
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That's 3 sentences :troll:

AshburnerX said:
Fixed that for you. Really, that's what the choice has become: You can ether have security or you can have a chance of moving up the ladder, but you will never get both unless your willing to put others at risk instead of yourself. The banking scandal proved this... no one was punished or held responsible. Hell, some were rewarded for it.
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IF you really believe that no one can better their lives through hard work and determination then I just feel sorry for you. The fact that you think that everyone who does, does so by screwing someone over just makes it that much worse.

Now if you'll excuse me there's some people in the lower middle class I need to go shove into poverty so I can rise into the upper middle class.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Covar said:
That's 3 sentences :troll:


IF you really believe that no one can better their lives through hard work and determination then I just feel sorry for you. The fact that you think that everyone who does, does so by screwing someone over just makes it that much worse.

Now if you'll excuse me there's some people in the lower middle class I need to go shove into poverty so I can rise into the upper middle class.
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Hard work matters but it doesn't matter as much as a random encounter with someone looking to invest in a project does... or for that matter, if your boss is having a bad day and you showed up right at the moment he's been told he needs to start downsizing. Even owning your own business comes down to luck. How were you supposed to know that a PizzaHut and a Donataos were going to open up on the same street as you, 2 years after you started your little pizza joint? Or that drought would raise the price of tomatoes sky high, or that vast quantities of tainted pork were being shipped out and you got some? There are literally thousands of things out of your control that can make your business succeed or fail.

Hard work is what keeps you going in times of hardship but it's really not what decides if your going to become a smashing success.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
The fallacy of that kind of thinking is that one can still be comfortably prosperous without risk, with the "security" of collectivism. The truth is, unless your nation has a tiny population sitting on vast oil reserves, all it means is that everyone is kicked down to the same level of "barely subsisting" poverty.

Tomato blights happen. Cancer happens. No amount of government intrusion is going to fix that, and government is the least efficient method to provide goods and services. Yes, we NEED government to maintain the rule of law and civil order, but when it becomes the solution of first resort for everything from health care to employment, that is the death knell of prosperity.

"Life IS pain, anyone who tells you different is selling something." - Dwead Piwate Wobberts.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
90%+ of Afghanis have no idea what 9/11 was, or what bearing it had on the presence of American troops in their country.

!
 
Norris

Norris

GasBandit said:
No voter fraud, huh? Democrat political challenger drops out of race after (apparently confessed) allegations that she voted twice in 2008 and 2006.
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Because voter ID laws will totally prevent some one from registering and voting in two different states, one of which might not legally prohibit the practice (the "registering in multiple states" part, not the voting twice part). This case has just about fuck all to do with the voter fraud laws that are being struck down by the courts.

Republicans: We need voter ID laws to protect against voter fraud! If that will disproportionally disenfranchise the poor, minorities, and other groups who don't usually vote for us, that's the sacrifice we have to make.
Democrats: Can you show us any evidence of this being even an existent problem? We see nothing to suggest that voter impersonation or non-citizen voting happens on a scale worth disenfranchising a lot of legitimate voters over. We suspect that you have ulterior motives.
Republicans: SEE! This one Democrat politician that owned property in two states registered to vote in both of them and did! In two elections! THAT PROVES IT!
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Actually, the exact words were, "you can't show a single, solitary instance of voter fraud. not one. so nyah!" Well, there's one. A big one.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
So... one extra vote means we should prevent thousands from voting?
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If she can do it, why can't thousands of others? And don't give me "yeah but she got caught." She got caught 4-6 years after the fact. It's not like you can call a do-over on an election 4 years later. No matter how much Al Gore supporters wished otherwise :p

The only valid reason to oppose voter ID laws is because one expects their political side to benefit from voter fraud. Everything else is just hogwash.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Your not being logical about this. Unless your doing it via absentee voting (in which case you'd be caught when they checked residency, which happens BEFORE they send out your voting card), the logistics of it would be VERY difficult to do on a concentrated, election altering scale. To even make this work, you'd need...

- hundreds of people doing it in concordance in a single area, in a single election.
- all of them need to be smart enough not to fuck it up
- all those people would need to have owned or rented property in both locations for long enough to apply for voting registration. This takes months and likely thousands of dollars.
- all of said people would need to be voting for the same candidate, implying they are all in on it.
- all of them would need to move between each polling station, over two or more states. This would take significant travel time unless you live right on the border of another state and own property in the next town over.
- The county your moving to would need to be politcally divided enough that performing such a complicated act of fraud would actually be useful, which is basically impossible to predict (because polls are biased and fucking useless because Americans are capricious).
- You'd need to make ALL of this happen over basically 12-14 hours.

... and for all that effort, you'd be getting AT BEST a single vote, in a single county, per a state. Do you have any idea how insane all of this sounds? Why would you waste all of that money and effort setting up such a complicated scam when it would be much simpler to just stack the counting teams with your people and bribe the overseers, so you can toss out votes for people you don't want to win? You know, like what actually keeps happening in states like Florida and Ohio? It would be much easier to misplace a ballot box than it would be to perform this circus act once, let alone in more than one location.

What your suggesting sounds like a conspiracy theory, Gas.

That being said, I think anyone actually found guilty of voter fraud should have their voting rights removed. If your not gonna play the game as intended, you shouldn't be playing at all.
 
jwhouk

jwhouk

Because one person speeds on the freeway, we need to set up radar detectors and speed cameras every mile and have $1,000,000 fines for exceeding the speed limit just so we can stop speeding!

</ab_absurdium>
 
Norris

Norris

GasBandit said:
If she can do it, why can't thousands of others?
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Because this form of voter fraud requires a person to own property in two different states. Voter ID laws would also be unlikely to help with this form of fraud, because she had legitimately registered in two different states. This isn't a case of voter impersonation.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
Or you just need a list of people who own property and aren't likely to vote.
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They check your signatures here in Ohio at the voting booths. You'd need to be able to quickly and cleanly copy the signature if you wanted to avoid arousing suspicion. And again, this still requires intense logistics to pull off without the entire scheme falling apart and very little gain. The election would literally need to come down to a handful of votes in a single county for this to have an effect.

I'm actually wondering why they don't just take your picture when you first register to vote in an area and just put that alongside your signature on the sign in sheet. It would do the same job as an ID and would barely cost anything. It also has the plus of not being linked to easily lost pieces of plastic.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
AshburnerX said:
They check your signatures here in Ohio at the voting booths. You'd need to be able to quickly and cleanly copy the signature if you wanted to avoid arousing suspicion. And again, this still requires intense logistics to pull off without the entire scheme falling apart and very little gain. The election would literally need to come down to a handful of votes in a single county for this to have an effect.
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I think you overestimate the zeal of your average pollworker, and the legibility of most signatures.

I'm actually wondering why they don't just take your picture when you first register to vote in an area and just put that alongside your signature on the sign in sheet. It would do the same job as an ID and would barely cost anything. It also has the plus of not being linked to easily lost pieces of plastic.
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That could work. I mean, surely these institutions have some manner of computer which could index and store the pictures.

Of course, the fact still remains that a citizen needs a photo ID to function at all as an adult citizen in life and thus the whole "undue burden" thing falls apart like a toilet paper frittata, and it'd be extra expenditure on infrastructure, procedure and training to redundantly accomplish what already exists.
 
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