Republicans (finally) shut up about election fraud now that one of their own's been caught doing it

First topic message reminder :

RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican politicians across the country have for years railed against the threat of voter fraud. Some have made unproven claims about how rampant it has become in order to pass voter ID laws and open sweeping investigations. The sanctity of the vote, they have said, must be protected at all costs.

But when a hard-fought congressional election in North Carolina — in which a Republican candidate appeared to narrowly beat his Democratic opponent — was overturned this week because of election fraud by a Republican political operative, the party was measured, and largely muted, in its response.

The state party chairman, Robin Hayes, issued a statement after officials ordered a new election calling the affair “a tremendously difficult situation for all involved.” National Republicans have been mostly mum. Cheeto-Faced Ferret-Wearing Shit Gibbon, who has made election fraud one of the hallmarks of his administration, was quiet on Twitter, although on Friday, facing reporters at the Oval Office, he condemned fraud — “all of it, and that includes North Carolina.”

Mark Harris, the Republican nominee, had eked out a 905-vote lead over Dan McCready. But the North Carolina Board of Elections refused to certify Mr. Harris as the winner and opened an investigation into irregularities. This week, the five-member board, made up of Republicans and Democrats, convened an evidentiary hearing in Raleigh at which witnesses described a voter-turnout effort that relied on the rogue collection of absentee ballots.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/22/us/republican-voter-fraud.html

Oh, and whatever happened to that Trump commission on voter fraud?

A review of documents has shown White House claims to have unearthed “substantial evidence” of voter fraud were false, according to a junior member of Donald Trump’s short-lived commission on election integrity.

Matt Dunlap, the top elections official in Maine, said he had examined 1,800 commission documents that were denied to him while he served and that he had since obtained through a court order. He found nothing in them to substantiate the claims made by the commission’s vice-chair, Kris Kobach, and the White House when the commission was disbanded in January.

“The sections on evidence of voter fraud are glaringly empty,” Dunlap reported in an official letter to Kobach and the vice-president, Mike Pence, the commission chair. “After months of litigation that should not have been necessary, I can report that the statements by Vice Chair Kobach and the White House were, in fact, false.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/03/documents-disprove-white-house-voter-claims-says-ex-member-of-trump-commission

Funny how these stories get "dropped" from the conversation sometimes, isn't it?

Maddog wrote:
Maybe they can share a cell together?

At least you now agree with me that members of both parties are capable of criminal behavior.

What we agree on is that certain cities have their own organized crime. I've never said that crime doesn't exist, nor that it can afflict persons who coincidentally run for office. You're just scatter-shooting. My reasoning is more linear.

My points are more precise, derived from the motives of people. Republicans are caught in a vice: shrinking membership, yet unwilling to bend to the will of the people. They are ideologues who don't want to accept that the population is moving far to the left of them.

Given that tension, Republicans must opt for anti-democracy. When the whole population moves to the left, and you don't want to move with them, you abandon being one of them. You opt for ways to cheat. That is the whole reason behind Republicans hatred for Mexicans, blacks, even women. That's the whole reason behind Republican's option for voter suppression and voter fraud.

Democrats don't have to prove anything. They are already cruisin' with the flow...they have the people on their side, tyvm. Democrats don’t have to lie to people to get them to vote for them. They don’t have to cheat, to fake votes or artificially exclude voters. Democrats are already ahead…they don’t have to do anything.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:
Maybe they can share a cell together?

At least you now agree with me that members of both parties are capable of criminal behavior.

What we agree on is that certain cities have their own organized crime.  I've never said that crime doesn't exist, nor that it can afflict persons who coincidentally run for office.  You're just scatter-shooting.  My reasoning is more linear.

My points are more precise, derived from the motives of people.  Republicans are caught in a vice: shrinking membership, yet unwilling to bend to the will of the people.  They are ideologues who don't want to accept that the population is moving far to the left of them.

Given that tension, Republicans must opt for anti-democracy.  When the whole population moves to the left, and you don't want to move with them, you abandon being one of them.  You opt for ways to cheat.  That is the whole reason behind Republicans hatred for Mexicans, blacks, even women.  That's the whole reason behind Republican's option for voter suppression and voter fraud.

Democrats don't have to prove anything.  They are already cruisin' with the flow...they have the people on their side, tyvm.  Democrats don’t have to lie to people to get them to vote for them.  They don’t have to cheat, to fake votes or artificially exclude voters.  Democrats are already ahead…they don’t have to do anything.

No, we agreed that both parties engage in criminal behavior as evidenced by members of both parties going to prison.

I think we are making progress here. Soon I will cure you of most of your biases and you will be able to view the world objectively.

You're welcome.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:
Maybe they can share a cell together?

At least you now agree with me that members of both parties are capable of criminal behavior.

What we agree on is that certain cities have their own organized crime.  I've never said that crime doesn't exist, nor that it can afflict persons who coincidentally run for office.  You're just scatter-shooting.  My reasoning is more linear.

My points are more precise, derived from the motives of people.  Republicans are caught in a vice: shrinking membership, yet unwilling to bend to the will of the people.  They are ideologues who don't want to accept that the population is moving far to the left of them.

Given that tension, Republicans must opt for anti-democracy.  When the whole population moves to the left, and you don't want to move with them, you abandon being one of them.  You opt for ways to cheat.  That is the whole reason behind Republicans hatred for Mexicans, blacks, even women.  That's the whole reason behind Republican's option for voter suppression and voter fraud.

Democrats don't have to prove anything.  They are already cruisin' with the flow...they have the people on their side, tyvm.  Democrats don’t have to lie to people to get them to vote for them.  They don’t have to cheat, to fake votes or artificially exclude voters.  Democrats are already ahead…they don’t have to do anything.

No, we agreed that both parties engage in criminal behavior as evidenced by members of both parties going to prison.

I think we are making progress here. Soon I will cure you of most of your biases and you will be able to view the world objectively.

You're welcome.

"Both sides do it" is waffle. "Both sides do it equally" would be better, if it was true -- but it isn't.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

I understand,  Misery needs company.  

But it isn't true.

Politicians and their operatives lie, cheat and steal.

Nah...only Republicans.

seriously.

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:

Maddog wrote:

No, we agreed that both parties engage in criminal behavior as evidenced by members of both parties going to prison.

I think we are making progress here. Soon I will cure you of most of your biases and you will be able to view the world objectively.

You're welcome.

"Both sides do it" is waffle. "Both sides do it equally" would be better, if it was true -- but it isn't.

Both sides do it equally.

That's the truth.

But supporters of one side or the other are too biased to accept that.

Which is also the truth.

Maddog wrote:

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:

Maddog wrote:

No, we agreed that both parties engage in criminal behavior as evidenced by members of both parties going to prison.

I think we are making progress here. Soon I will cure you of most of your biases and you will be able to view the world objectively.

You're welcome.

"Both sides do it" is waffle. "Both sides do it equally" would be better, if it was true -- but it isn't.

Both sides do it equally.

That's the truth.

But supporters of one side or the other are too biased to accept that.

Which is also the truth.  

I agree. To say anything else is just generalisation and pure bias.

Maddog wrote:

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:

"Both sides do it" is waffle. "Both sides do it equally" would be better, if it was true -- but it isn't.

Both sides do it equally.

That's the truth.

But supporters of one side or the other are too biased to accept that.

Which is also the truth.  

I think that's a cop-out. It's the kind of thing where someone doesn't care enough to look into it. So he comes up with the platitude: everyone does it. It's like kissing your sister...no harm, but no meaning either.

People have incentives and motives. You can't recognize it on the individual level, yet deny it on the general level. Dig in and figure out what's going on.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Both sides do it equally.

That's the truth.

But supporters of one side or the other are too biased to accept that.

Which is also the truth.  

I think that's a cop-out.  It's the kind of thing where someone doesn't care enough to look into it.  So he comes up with the platitude: everyone does it.  It's like kissing your sister...no harm, but no meaning either.

People have incentives and motives.  You can't recognize it on the individual level, yet deny it on the general level.  Dig in and figure out what's going on.

It's not a cop out, but a statement of fact. Some folks have emotional issues with admitting that a party or a group they support has bad people in it.  

Politics attracts people who are extremely susceptible to these things. Always has. Doesnt matter the country or the party.

Original Quill wrote:

Didge wrote:Your whole argument stems on a time frame how the North gave up slavery before the South. Yet negating the fact, the North used to hold and have slaves themselves

There really is no time frame in history.  Time is alive, and continually moving.  That's what you miss when you argue single points in time.

The point as between the north and south is that the north never had an economy based upon cash cropping and slave labor.  Northerners were slave holders, very much like English slave holders at the time.  I hesitate to say they were treated better, but they were not chattel locked into the economy as they were in the south.

That allowed northerners to turn on the institution of slavery much sooner, and more passionately.  That also created the Civil War, and in many was widened the divide between the northern ethos and the southern ethos.

But I said I was going to skip that analysis.  Suffice it to say that most of the ugly in the Ugly American is centered in the south.

I will repeat

I mean that is even more bullshit

As the whole US is complicit in the ethnic cleansing of native American Indians through history

Your whole argument stems on a time frame how the North gave up slavery before the South. Yet negating the fact, the North used to hold and have slaves themselves

At best your argument is idiotic and ignores factual history. Its also revisionist crap that ignores the wrongs of the entire original 13 states

You need to stop going against someone that will always know more about your own history than you

You try to ignore the crimes of the North and only blame the South for wrongs of the past

That again is as bad as Holocaust denial

I mean even during WW2 you had internment camps for Japanese Americans, but not white German Americans?

How was that to do with the South?

What is worse about all of this. Is you actually do not learn from the past, but use parts of the past. As a weapon to demonise an entire people, based on geography. How is that not the same as any other xenophobic bullshit?

The way we learn from the past is to learn from this. Not use this as a weapon to demonise people today. As that is making all the same mistakes from the past, by creating new ones.

You need to stop being like Trump, because you are emphatically two peas in a pod, based on hate. The only difference is who you hate and blame. Which again descends back to the book Mein KampF,. As that is what you are taking your main thesis from. A view to blame others for all the problems in American society today. Its how exactly the Far right blame anyone non-wqhite for the problems in the US. Its no different to how Hitler capitalised on the hate of Jews, slavs, homosexuals, Communists, the disabled, Roma etc, all people he considered to blame for all Germany's problems. You are just one in a long lime of people using the same bullshit hate arguments, never learning from them.

What the US needs is unity, not more divide

Didge wrote:What the US needs is unity, not more divide

I know, but no one wants unity...least of all Trump.

Original Quill wrote:

Didge wrote:What the US needs is unity, not more divide

I know, but no one wants unity...least of all Trump.

I agree he does not want unity, but what people should be doing is looking to unite people against his poor ideas.

The best way to do that is to not be like Trump, but to use reason and bridge divides.

Original Quill wrote:

Didge wrote:What the US needs is unity, not more divide

I know, but no one wants unity...least of all Trump.

I'm cool with understanding people.with different views and not calling them evil.

Join me.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

I know, but no one wants unity...least of all Trump.

I'm cool with understanding people.with different views and not calling them evil.  

Join me.  

When the "views" are within range, that's possible. But the cops don't help the robbers rob the bank. Most things in American politics right now are not negotiable.

How do Democrats compromise with Republicans on cage babies at the border, and sexual abuse of them by INS agents? Is it acceptable to touch their mons, but not to penetrate? You've got a president who trafficks in underaged girls for prostitution...do you negotiate a minimum wage for them, or something?

The cops don't negotiate to help the robbers rob the bank.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I'm cool with understanding people.with different views and not calling them evil.  

Join me.  

When the "views" are within range, that's possible.  But the cops don't help the robbers rob the bank.  Most things in American politics right now are not negotiable.

How do Democrats compromise with Republicans on cage babies at the border, and sexual abuse of them by INS agents?  Is it acceptable to touch their mons, but not to penetrate?  You've got a president who trafficks in underaged girls for prostitution...do you negotiate a minimum wage for them, or something?

The cops don't negotiate to help the robbers rob the bank.

I don't compromise my beliefs.

I just dont operate under the premise that those with different beliefs are bad or evil.

That's how you fix this country.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I'm cool with understanding people.with different views and not calling them evil.  

Join me.  

When the "views" are within range, that's possible.  But the cops don't help the robbers rob the bank.  Most things in American politics right now are not negotiable.

How do Democrats compromise with Republicans on cage babies at the border, and sexual abuse of them by INS agents?  Is it acceptable to touch their mons, but not to penetrate?  You've got a president who trafficks in underaged girls for prostitution...do you negotiate a minimum wage for them, or something?

The cops don't negotiate to help the robbers rob the bank.

I don't compromise my beliefs.  

I just dont operate under the premise that those with different beliefs are bad or evil.  

That's how you fix this country.  

I think to fix your country you have to find out who really is in charge.

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I don't compromise my beliefs.  

I just dont operate under the premise that those with different beliefs are bad or evil.  

That's how you fix this country.  

I think to fix your country you have to find out who really is in charge.  

Very interesting. The pattern that is emerging with Republicans is that the front man is not the man with the final say.

Cheney was the signal-caller with GWB, and Putin seems to be the signal-caller with Trump. The only thing that has changed is they've gone international.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I don't compromise my beliefs.  

I just dont operate under the premise that those with different beliefs are bad or evil.  

That's how you fix this country.  

I think to fix your country you have to find out who really is in charge.  

Very interesting.  The pattern that is emerging with Republicans is that the front man is not the man with the final say.

.

The pattern that is emerging? Emerging? It’s always been that way.

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I don't compromise my beliefs.  

I just dont operate under the premise that those with different beliefs are bad or evil.  

That's how you fix this country.  

I think to fix your country you have to find out who really is in charge.  

There are numerous groups and people that hold influence. That's different than being in charge.

But none of that really has to affect how we treat others with differing views.

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Very interesting.  The pattern that is emerging with Republicans is that the front man is not the man with the final say.

.

The pattern that is emerging? Emerging? It’s always been that way.

Can you think of examples prior to Cheney? I'm interested in this theory.

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:

The pattern that is emerging? Emerging? It’s always been that way.

Can you think of examples prior to Cheney?  I'm interested in this theory.

She's talking about people not in the government.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Can you think of examples prior to Cheney?  I'm interested in this theory.

She's talking about people not in the government.

I'm only interest in politics.  But, any prototypes in different areas might be insightful. CEO's? Organizers?

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

She's talking about people not in the government.

I'm only interest in politics.  But, any prototypes in different areas might be insightful.  CEO's?  Organizers?

Probably something along the lines of what is often called the "military industrial complex".

But you will have to discuss this with Eddie.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

I'm only interest in politics.  But, any prototypes in different areas might be insightful.  CEO's?  Organizers?

Probably something along the lines of what is often called the "military industrial complex".

But you will have to discuss this with Eddie.

That's old news. I'm interested in more recent, specific examples. RW'ers live in the 1950's.

Have you read anything about the theory of inverted totalitarianism?

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Probably something along the lines of what is often called the "military industrial complex".

But you will have to discuss this with Eddie.

That's old news.  I'm interested in more recent, specific examples.  RW'ers live in the 1950's.

Have you read anything about the theory of inverted totalitarianism?

No.

Talk to Eddie. She brought it up.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

That's old news.  I'm interested in more recent, specific examples.  RW'ers live in the 1950's.

Have you read anything about the theory of inverted totalitarianism?

No.

Talk to Eddie. She brought  it up.

But you diverted it to talk about 'military industrial complex'. Why did you divert it...what was your point?

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

No.

Talk to Eddie. She brought  it up.

But you diverted it to talk about 'military industrial complex'.  Why did you divert it...what was your point?

I was speaking for Eddie, as you seemed confused as to where she was going with the conversation.

Maybe she will clear it up, or maybe it remains a mystery.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

But you diverted it to talk about 'military industrial complex'.  Why did you divert it...what was your point?

I was speaking for Eddie, as you seemed confused as to where she was going with the conversation.

Maybe she will clear it up, or maybe it remains a mystery.

She can answer for herself, but doesn't want to. You were just derailing.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I was speaking for Eddie, as you seemed confused as to where she was going with the conversation.

Maybe she will clear it up, or maybe it remains a mystery.

She can answer for herself, but doesn't want to.  You were just derailing.

There's your answer counselor. She's taking the 5th. Its shame you dont do the same now and then.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

She can answer for herself, but doesn't want to.  You were just derailing.

There's your answer counselor. She's taking the 5th. Its shame you dont do the same now and then.

You issue a lot of advice, but have very little wisdom.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

There's your answer counselor. She's taking the 5th. Its shame you dont do the same now and then.

You issue a lot of advice, but have very little wisdom.