All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[aja_christopher]

There are multiple reasons to block election security measures, including fundamental disagreements on how to handle the problem (IE- mandating paper ballots throughout the nation goes against local control of elections; a mandate on reporting any offers of foreign assistance may be overly broad.)

Otherwise known as "plausible deniability" when working with -- or not attempting to prevent -- foreign agents influencing American elections.

There are also "multiple reasons" to gerrymander districts and "purge" black and brown voters from the voting rolls -- but the main one is so that the Republican party can suppress "minority" votes in order to win those same elections.

You're quick to jump on "open borders" on the basis of a biased assumption, but exceedingly slow to admit the obvious with regards to your party's true nature.

[Tuck]

I thought we already had nationwide paper backup ballots.

Frankly, anyone who is ok with something shady because it benefits them is an idiot. Those benefits are always going to be provisional. If we assume McConnell wants Russian help, who's to say they won't decide supporting a Dem next time around if what is beneficial to them?

(Same thing with this weird libertarian argument progressives make now defending corporate censorship. The history of corporate censorship is to suppress progressive ideas . . . and there's no reason to think that won't come back around again.)

[Kirby101]

How did Kemp suppress over 100,000 votes?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...abrams/575095/

Under Kemp, Georgia purged more than 1.5 million voters from the rolls, eliminating 10.6 percent of voters from the state’s registered electorate from 2016 to 2018 alone. County election officials shut down 214 polling places, the bulk of them in minority and poor neighborhoods.*

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ation-cummings

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/65959...-investigation

But I am very sure you will sweep this aside and close your eyes to the voter suppression that is at the heart of your Party.

[Kirby101]

There are multiple reasons to block election security measures, including fundamental disagreements on how to handle the problem (IE- mandating paper ballots throughout the nation goes against local control of elections; a mandate on reporting any offers of foreign assistance may be overly broad.)

Sure, keep telling yourself that. I guess it helps you tell yourself that your Party is not completely corrupt.

[Mister Mets]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...abrams/575095/


https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ation-cummings

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/65959...-investigation

But I am very sure you will sweep this aside and close your eyes to the voter suppression that is at the heart of your Party.

Many of the people removed from the voter rolls were those who had died, moved out of state, or were incarcerated.

The rule in Georgia for a generation (adopted in the early 1990s under Democratic leadership) had been that people get removed from the voter rolls if they haven't voted in seven years (they do receive notification). For this to change the outcome of the election, there would have to be a significant number of Democrats who did not go out to vote from 2011-2018, including when Obama ran for reelection, but did intend to vote for Stacey Abrams.

[Kirby101]

Which ignores all the other suppression Kemp engaged in.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ation-cummings

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...voting-745711/

Kemp’s recent decision to suspend more than 53,000 voter applications, 70 percent of which were filed by black residents, for violating the state’s “exact match” verification standard has drawn attention to his penchant for restrictive voter laws and purging of voter rolls. American Public Media reported last week that Kemp purged an estimated 107,000 voters last year simply because they didn’t vote in the prior election. He is also being sued for leaving more than 6 million Georgia voting records open to hacking.

[InformationGeek]

To quote the person I got that from...

It’s fine that he violated the UN, because he still likes ME!

[InformationGeek]

Oh, here is this piece of work.

Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too bad!

[jetengine]

Remember when America praised Dictatorships that threatened to murder their allies and nuke the nation ?

[aja_christopher]

Which ignores all the other suppression Kemp engaged in.

That's exactly his intent: to ignore it and pretend like minority voter suppression -- both legal and illegal -- it isn't a cornerstone of Republican politics.

I doubt even he buys what he tries to sell others, but whether he does or doesn't is irrelevant to the truth about his party.

-----
"I’ve Worked in Republican Politics. The Party’s Voter Suppression in the Midterms Has Been a Disgrace"

"A Republican operative of otherwise dubious election-year morality once told me his red line: strategies that attempt voter suppression must be rejected, always. Your candidate should not win by embracing tactics that represent the antithesis of democracy. Not in 2018. Not in America. And especially not in the Deep South. The region’s blighted history of oppression against African Americans reveals what such a strategy truly is and why we must reject it.

During my time in Republican politics, I overlooked plenty of unseemly partisan warfare. But the voter suppression of our citizens that we’ve seen this year is something that no American can ignore.

A representative for Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp called his opponent Stacey Abrams’ unwillingness to concede before all votes were counted “a disgrace to democracy.” But leaders like Kemp are the real disgrace. Abrams engaged new voters; in turn, Kemp openly said he’d like to suppress their participation.

Kemp was also running while serving as secretary of state, the office that oversees elections, and resigned two days after balloting, only when challenged by a lawsuit...

Worse still, the responses of Republican officials, including the President, have made it clear that they missed the civics lesson explaining that elections need to be perceived as free and fair to establish the legitimacy of elected leadership. So far, the rare member of the party involved in a close contest who has acted in a manner worthy of that mandate is one who will not be serving: with her gracious concession, Arizona Senate candidate Martha McSally has been the lone outlier in a sea of Republicans crying fraud.

That an estimated 113 million people—an increase of 30 million voters from the 2014 midterms—still turned out, despite this mess, demonstrated that Americans want to do their part. In Florida, citizens even expanded the number of people who can participate by reinstating the right to vote to 1.4 million former felons. This devotion deserves a fair process.

This is not about abstract ideals. It is about how people live. These communities have paid with their lives and livelihoods throughout history to gain the right to vote. We cannot repay them with broken systems. In her seminal work, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander writes that racism “functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.”

To tolerate this disenfranchisement is to be complicit in the worst of this nation’s past."

https://time.com/5455179/georgia-bri...blicans-trump/

[Gray Lensman]

I saw this elsewhere and decided it was worth a repost here.

main-qimg-8ef7bdfbe68d6623f7ef149630a47fb9.jpg

[jetengine]

I saw this elsewhere and decided it was worth a repost here.

main-qimg-8ef7bdfbe68d6623f7ef149630a47fb9.jpg

Its frankly insane how ludicrously shitty the GOP became in 70 years.

[PaulBullion]

Economics is one of many things Trump doesn't understand. The Fed lowering the Prime Rate signals a weakening Economy. And they specifically said Trumps tariffs are one of the reasons.

So Today he announces new tariffs on China. Moron.

Yup, third day of losses.

[PaulBullion]

It's my opinion and I am entitled to it.

Nothing worthwhile EVER hides behind that defense.

[Tuck]

Nothing worthwhile EVER hides behind that defense.

The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars since Empire.