SlowBoy
1mo ago
That would be even emptier. Be careful about what you see on social media, because it could have the same effect as Russian disinformation. That parses to something like: Look both ways before you cross the street, because a plane could fall on you.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
Computer, enhance:
Over the last three days, Chinese ambassadors, Russian-backed news outlets and others with ties to Russia and China have tweeted more than 1,200 times about the United States,
Wow, foreign infiltrators tweeted a thousand times! That's a lot of tweets.
Come on, there is no evidence that these campaigns are barely statistically significant. I know guys who put out that many tweets in a week.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
This is an unfalsifiable theory. If there is Russian interference, hey, wow, I was right. If there's not, well, whatever, I was just being careful, and it's always good to be careful.
Russian social media campaigns being in any way influential is extremely implausible. Whatever they might be spending would be a drop in the bucket relative to what Americans spend on social media all the time. That has been the case every time a number is attached to whatever Russia is supposedly spending.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
This leads to the most unhinged takes bubbling up to the surface
But lots of these takes are not unhinged.
FEMA distributes relief to migrants and illegals. That's not a conspiracy or furtive rumor. That's a basic function it performs with budget allocations and press releases and grants. Noticing that FEMA is now claiming to be out of money is not some weird partisan non-sequitur. It's a basic observation of cause-and-effect: they spent money on illegals and now are out of money for Americans.
Likewise, rumors about FEMA getting in the way. This is rumoring of the worst sort, but it's also correct to talk about it. You have first-hand accounts of people claiming that FEMA officers are confiscating relief and getting in the way. Imagine that that happened to you -- well, some guy on twitter concluded that this is just all part of a broken media incentive infrastructure, so it doesn't matter if it's true or false. Comforting!
SlowBoy
1mo ago
Important to note that, then as now, electors formally cast their ballots at their respective state capitals. Without mass communication there was no reliable way to coordinate. If all federalists defect and vote for Jefferson and Burr, the tie gets broken in the House, where the Federalists could swing the election to Burr. If some Democrats honestly defect so Jefferson is ahead of Burr, there's the risk that poor coordination puts Adams ahead of Burr. And who's to say that, right now, there aren't Federalists defecting to Burr so he's ahead of Jefferson?
The College was so chaotic that it could have very quickly ended the Republic.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
I know many of you have strong feelings on the truthfulness of the claims. I will say this: if someone goes and makes those claims, they shouldn't run again.
But what if it's true?
Vance had a very good night and I thought Walz basically did fine. I thought it was a pretty boring debate, and I disagree with the idea floating around that these kinds of debates are good. (I believe you're genociding me, you believe I'm trying to kill you, but, importantly, we can come together and talk like adults about our shared values and buh-boh -- boring! I'm glad Trump destroyed this.)
SlowBoy
1mo ago
Biden-Harris TPS program is flying migrants directly into small communities with government subsidies. They released a special app for immigrants to apply to while waiting in other countries. Pew estimates just under a million immigrants:
(The figure cited shows a few countries with TPS approval older than the current administration, subtract those for an estimate. Notably Trump rescinded TPS for a few countries during his administration and it was treated as a big deal.)
Hundreds of thousands of illegals are coming in across the border. Here's a pew post about how Biden stopped Title 42 expulsions, leading to Title 8 Apprehensions (they get a court date and then leave lmao):
This article tries to put a positive spin on it by claiming Republicans are overestimating. The result is, still, alas, of course, millions of illegals coming in through the border:
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigration-figures/
Of those 6.5 million encounters by CBP, 2.5 million people have been released into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court or report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the future, or other classifications, such as parole.
Here's another great AP fact check which concludes that Biden and Harris aren't flying hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the country, because they're actually just flying hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the country on purpose:
Trump said during his speech, “Today it was announced that 325,000 people were flown in from parts unknown - migrants were flown in airplane, not going through borders ... It was unbelievable. I said that must be a mistake. They flew 325,000 migrants. Flew them in over the borders and into our country.”
But migrants are not being flown into the U.S. randomly. Under a Biden policy in effect since January 2023, up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter the country monthly if they apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive at a specified airport, paying their own way.
[...]
Biden has exercised parole authority far more than any of his predecessors, which Trump calls “an outrageous abuse” that he will end if returned to the White House. Biden has granted entry — by land or air — to at least 1 million people using parole, not just the 327,000 who flew from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela though December.
The article then alleges that paroled immigrants can't become citizens, but that's not really true: eventually they simple stop being paroled immigrants because their status increases to some other status. There are law firms scattered all over the country dedicated to figuring out how to give legal citizenship to these kinds of immigrants. The government pays them!
I don’t think the average illegal alien is voting.
They acquire citizenship and then overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. Which is Musk's claim: if Harris wins election, these immigrants will stay in the US and form a voting block that will vote Democrat in 2028, by which time there will be even more and more immigrants on the path to citizenship.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
The math is much more generous for swing states. A few ten thousand votes in the right swing states and you have a new electoral coalition. The Biden administration is bringing in millions.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
This is a story about a Democrat mayor getting indicted under a Democrat politician, and you're whining about Republicans.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
Red voters in red states will not switch blue after a natural disaster. Why would they? At best the Biden administration handles this competently, at worst it's a disaster. Is Kamala Harris going to lead a public relief tour? Trump would.
Going further, does the administration even care about red voters in red areas? They haven't stopped spending money on charter flights for resettling Haitians. That's their priority. They will authorize whatever emergency funds sound good on a campaign ad.
If anything voter turnout will increase. When normal life is suspended public life becomes that much more important. Documentation will not be a problem: emergency atmosphere and community mindset will make people solve problems.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
DOJ was absolutely right to indict him (and Hunter Biden while we're at it).
DOJ slow-walked the investigation so certain crimes would reach statute of limitations, indicted when they could no longer put off indicting (because Hunter kept committing embarrassing gun crimes) then gave Hunter a sweetheart plea deal that only fell through when a judge refused to rubber stamp it. DOJ gets no credit here.
Naturally, the right wing didn't stop for a second to acknowledge that the Biden DOJ has indicted a major D figure.
You could just as easily take this the other way, right wing sides with a major D figure for once.
SlowBoy
1mo ago
George Washington did not have kids.
George married Martha after she had been widowed with kids. They absolutely tried to conceive more but could not. Meanwhile, George raised Martha's kids as if they were his own. Between his stepchildren, his plantation, and his slaves, Washington had a very busy homelife, and probably would not have imagined himself as having to compensate with his legacy.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
The mistake occurred in part because Oregon has allowed noncitizens to obtain driver’s licenses since 2019, and the state’s DMV automatically registers most people to vote when they obtain a license or ID.
Conservatives have been saying this for years, and it was treated as a conspiracy. (The article concludes by noting that it's a state and federal crime to do this, after noting that at least nine people in Oregon have done exactly this. Have they announced charges?)
SlowBoy
2mo ago
Your objections are pretty implausible, and then you conclude it's the other party acting in bad faith!
public or semi-public hand counting of paper ballots. This would be prohibitively expensive in the US
This is what we did before vote-counting machines existed. It's what they still do in larger countries like India.
The median voter (quite correctly) doesn't care enough about election integrity
There are dozens of issues decided in an election at the same time. The median voter doesn't care about the Afghanistan pullout, so it's not important. It's fine if we do it again, because it's not a big deal.
the noise about election integrity is there because
It's there because political machines in the cities magic up tens of thousands of votes in the dead of night, counting ballots implausibly takes days, no other country accepts these processes, and any criticism of the above gets you labeled a conspiracy theorist. Then, if you try to recount the election, the chains of custody for these ballots are are illegally destroyed, and there's no proof, and then I get to hear from people like you how there's no proof of fraud.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
Democrats should get ahead of the game and propose their own voter integrity initiatives. It would be an easy slam dunk to say, "Republicanss don't make elections more secure, but Democrats do." Maybe this trickles out in press releases about unmasking Russian ad campaigns, but it never manifests in having the kind of election procedures that are universal in Europe and Asia.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
Illegal immigration is deeply unpopular and becoming more so. The pet thing didn't massively polarize people in favor of immigration. Maybe you're traveling in unrepresentative circles.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
I think this kind of article is just braining, the author has something he thinks or wants to talk about so he has to make up reasons to justify himself. This is really easy in politics. A million things are happening all the time and it's easy to remember a few and string them together. But Chuck Todd is not that smart and articles like this are really not worth much of anyone's time.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
Voodoo and cannibalism are real things practiced in Haiti. That's not blood libel, that's anthropology. It happens in Africa too.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
the most likely explanation is that his previous statements are also true.
Again, he lied about voting for Trump! Why should I accept this frame that his violence is right-wing when the proof that he's right-wing was a lie?
If we want to stop political violence and assassination attempts, the obvious play is to specifically call out the people making violent threats. That includes a number of top Democratic officials.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
What did Trump or the conservative media ecosystem say that lead to those shootings? I think that's a pretty wild comparison. Democratic officials and celebrities are literally calling for violence against Republicans and Trump. Republicans and Trump are not calling for, say, violence at synogogues.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
He lied about voting for Trump, so why do we immediately start believing the next-weakest claim, that he supported Trump? I have a hundred million dollars. No you don't. Ok, but I have 99 million dollars. Ok yeah.
Meanwhile, what radicalizes a guy to try shooting Trump? It doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes on ten years of media calling Trump a threat to democracy, a traitor selling the country to Russia, a violent fascist thug who needs to be executed, take him out and beat him, put his severed bloody head on TV, talk about blowing up the White House -- what, I apologized, and Trump deserved it for all his violent rhetoric, I can't believe Republicans would try shooting him like this.
SlowBoy
2mo ago
At a certain level this is a distinction without a difference. Trump wasn't attacked by his enemies on the left, but by other enemies allied with the left who... Taking the Rick Wilson example. Rick hates Trump, endorses Democrats, takes money from Democrats, etc. etc. Maybe at some level he'll call himself a Republican, but at this point that sounds like marketing. If tomorrow Tulsi Gabbard called for Biden to be shot, we wouldn't say, "wow, the radical left at it again." But we all know where the lines are really drawn.
This is really one of the key points of American politics over the last 15 years: Conservatives feel that elected Republicans don't represent them. Conservatives would overwhelmingly not identify Rick Wilson as one of them. So it feels like bullshit to pin him (or other such) on us just because he continues to call himself a Republican for rhetorical purposes. If I rob a store in shoe polish does that prove black crime?
A WSJ story about two Facebook accounts, and a NYT story about one. If these campaigns were worth taking seriously there'd be more to show for it. Right now scrolling twitter in fear of Russian Propaganda is pretty out-there in risk-perception. I read an article today about a sick cow in Idaho, maybe I'll go vegan.
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