American Politics Discussion Thread

[Mjmd]

There is no point in proving something to someone whose beliefs are based on fiction to begin with.

That is why logic is so important. IE showing his beliefs have none. For the sake of defending the core of our nation solidly destroying T-Hawks arguments and exposing the flawed logic at least makes sure we are doing a small part to make sure Democracy doesn't die in silence.

[darrelljs]

It's hilarious to see how the response to stuff like that is always "cheating wasn't proven."  It's never "cheating didn't happen."

I think you are confused. We (literally everyone else in this thread) have given, on multiple occasions, refutation for all the bogus charges of cheating. It's not our fault that the courts didn't take it up. If they had, it would have been better for the country. What's truly tiresome is "cheating wasn't disproven, therefore it happened" without any evidence to support it. For example you keep bringing up the expansion in absentee voting in Pennsylvania as this great cheating scandal, but ignore the fact that it was Republicans who passed that.

Honestly...and I hate going ad hominem like Bob or Nicolae used to, but I have to say it...you are better than than this. I used to respect you as one of the few countervailing viewpoints on this very left leaning thread, but now you just feel like a Joe Rogan troll.

Darrell

[T-hawk]

Once again you're all just dodging the questions. McConnell's bill has the effect of enshrining cheating at the federal level once it has happened at the state level. Is anybody even trying to disagree with that?

Every time I mention cheating, the response is always "you can't prove it". These responses have all the credibility of a child standing next to an empty cookie jar saying the same thing.

Do you even understand that proving a thing is not the same as the thing having happened? When everything we know about human behavior says it obviously did? Try this: The courts and police convicted no driver of speeding on my local highway yesterday. Therefore every car that traveled that highway wasn't speeding. This is the logic Democrats are clinging to.

That said, yes the point that Republicans could and would also cheat is true. But there's fair evidence that the Democrats were worse, in that the voting trends that most skewed out of the norm compared to past elections swung more Democratic. And I would wager that that side was more motivated by orange-man hatred than the side of orange-man support.

[Mjmd]

I mean you realize as I've stated repeatedly that there have been audits, recounts, and investigations right?

Have you ever considered that a big personality president that presided over a time period with various scandals (truthful or not) and that also presided over a recession caused by a pandemic might have caused a president to lose an election? We've talked about the myrid causes of inflation and global scale of the problem but Biden will get the majority blame fair or not. He is at the top. Fair or not Trump got a lot of blame for covid and that recession. None of this is historical anomaly. In a democracy your side losing is going to happen.

[Mjmd]

Once again you're all just dodging the questions.  McConnell's bill has the effect of enshrining cheating at the federal level once it has happened at the state level.  Is anybody even trying to disagree with that?

Also, just to specifically call this out, but you didn't read the bill did you? Its an unfortunately very limited bill and you are giving it way more import than it sadly will have if passed. Now if it started dipping into state powers and methods maybe you would have a loose thread, but sadly very limited bill.

[T-hawk]

What's truly tiresome is "cheating wasn't disproven, therefore it happened" without any evidence to support it.

This does need more explanation, so I'll clarify. Obviously at least some small amount of cheating happened somewhere in the process. It always will, just like any law. If any one election worker anywhere threw out any one Trump ballot, then some nonzero amount of cheating happened. And given the Democrats' obvious extreme motive of Trump hatred, that's trivially true. PA openly admitted favoring the Democratic side, in that rules regarding verifiability of votes were applied differently and more leniently in Democratic-leaning localities.

This started from the question of, how can you support the party that committed Jan 6th. The answer is that the Jan 6th protest was justified. Because we don't have an election system that is robust against those small cheats, and so we can't tell when those small cheats do accumulate into something significant. Sure, there were also protestors that wanted to install Trump no matter what over any amount of counterveiling evidence. They were in the wrong, but judging the entire event by its worst members is also wrong.

Besides that, I'm directing my arguments less at the actual cheating and more at the poor reasoning skills of my opponents here. They can't tell the difference between an occurrence and proof of it, or a court decision versus court procedures such as legal standing, or a trustworthy process versus one that simply recounts the same cheating, and are ignoring factors like obvious human motivation. On the current topic, they do not realize that McConnell's bill does not prevent cheating, but rather the opposite, it enshrines it by removing measures to challenge a reported outcome.

[T-hawk]

I mean you realize as I've stated repeatedly that there have been audits, recounts, and investigations right?

And I've stated repeatedly that those don't help when your audit and recount processes are just recounting the same cheating and fraud. You continue to not understand that difference.

Have you ever considered that a big personality president that presided over a time period with various scandals (truthful or not) and that also presided over a recession caused by a pandemic might have caused a president to lose an election?

Of course and I said so outright upthread. It is still more likely than not that Trump did lose legitimately - only PA and GA really seemed to be within a contestable margin, and that wouldn't swing the national outcome.

My point all along has always been that the unknowability is the problem, and justifies the protesting.

Also, just to specifically call this out, but you didn't read the bill did you? Its an unfortunately very limited bill and you are giving it way more import than it sadly will have if passed. Now if it started dipping into state powers and methods maybe you would have a loose thread, but sadly very limited bill.

I did not read the bill itself, just the article summary of it. My whole point is that it *doesn't* dip into state powers and methods, and therefore is useless to prevent any cheating that happened, because at the state or local level is where it did.

[Mjmd]

What's truly tiresome is "cheating wasn't disproven, therefore it happened" without any evidence to support it.

Besides that, I'm directing my arguments less at the actual cheating and more at the poor reasoning skills of my opponents here.  They can't tell the difference between an occurrence and proof of it, or a court decision versus court procedures such as legal standing, or a trustworthy process versus one that simply recounts the same cheating, and are ignoring factors like obvious human motivation.  On the current topic, they do not realize that McConnell's bill does not prevent cheating, but rather the opposite, it enshrines it by removing measures to challenge a reported outcome.

I'm confused are you talking about yourself or me? You haven't been able to logically disprove anything so far. I've gone IN DEPTH of logical proofs. I and others have pointed out your logical fallacies. 

Again, the bill is very limited and leaves plenty of means to challenge results legally. Read the whole bill. I provided the link. Its almost nothing and far less than we need. Save the theatre for something a little bigger.

[Jowy]

There is no point in proving something to someone whose beliefs are based on fiction to begin with.

That is why logic is so important. IE showing his beliefs have none. For the sake of defending the core of our nation solidly destroying T-Hawks arguments and exposing the flawed logic at least makes sure we are doing a small part to make sure Democracy doesn't die in silence.

You're right, perhaps it might help others who happen to read these posts and haven't yet lost their marbles.

People have been very generous at treating T-Hawk's posts with respect that they absolutely don't deserve.

[Mjmd]

I mean you realize as I've stated repeatedly that there have been audits, recounts, and investigations right?

And I've stated repeatedly that those don't help when your audit and recount processes are just recounting the same cheating and fraud.  You continue to not understand that difference.

Just to logically sound this out for you. Your trying to say that there was large enough cheating so good across multiple states that defied all our original protections. It then was also good enough to get passed intense review measures often incredible partisan driven that couldn't find anything. The fraud was so good there is no evidence of it that could be provided to state legislatures. 

However, based on a BELIEF there was fraud Republican's were justified trying to overturn the election.