Tiber727
21d ago
That doesn't seem to conflict with what he said. The anger from the base has been there in various forms for years. What Trump managed to do was convert that anger into support for him specifically, and for that support to reach a level where Trump can force others to toe the line.
The point isn't that anger will go away, just that it won't converge in a single direction. DeSantis for instance seemed poised to play himself as Trump 2.0, and that didn't work out for him.
Tiber727
23d ago
Fair. I actually did add most of that in an edit, because I do want to make sure I have my numbers right.
Still, I'm aware Kamala is not liked here, and I'm not that impressed by her either. But it seems a bit much to act like anyone at barely above average intelligence should be able to go to law school and pass the bar on the first try, when half of law school students couldn't.
The California Bar pass rate is about 1/3, including repeat testers.
Edit: Some other sites are giving me different numbers, about 50% here. But still I would argue knowing the general pass rate is important context.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Barrett I overall respect, which is odd to me considering how she came into office. Jackson is in a similar vein as Sotomayor and Kagan, but she is somewhat more of a process person and informed by her experience as a defense attorney. Earlier I might have agreed with you on Roberts, but based on his actions lately and some leaks I'm beginning to think that he can be ideological as the others, just not as straight Dem/Rep.
I got their intention in Trump v. United States, but A, I think they went too far (the evidence ruling, plus ruling that communications can not be investigated), and B, it was a perfect example of all the judicial activism oft-complained about. No immunity would be the originalist ruling, as the Constitution says nothing to suggest immunity.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I will probably never vote Republican because Republican policies I generally strongly dislike outside of maybe a couple of them. But as far as Democrats go, I will likely not vote at all for a candidate I dislike or have not researched. But I dislike Trump strongly enough, particularly his allegations of election fraud, that it would take a very detestable Democrat for me to not vote against Trump.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Obviously in the long run the market will usually point in the right direction. But not every actor in a system is a rational one. I'm not interested in micromanaging every possible behavior. I'm more interested in, when you can point to a situation that is clearly far out of bounds of reasonable, forbid it for the sake of if someone ends up in that situation they have recourse. To that end, the limits should be high enough that it doesn't come up often. It shouldn't need too much enforcement. Just allow it to be sued over and with penalties that would dissuade it.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I just mean that Trump seems to mean what he's saying policy-wise a little more.
My subjective experience is the opposite, but then I don't really pay much attention to her. I fully admit I am voting for generic Democrat and against Trump, not out of any like for her as a candidate. I also meant that if Kamala hypothetically says:
A. I am not going to go after guns.
B. I am going to increase social security
C. I am going to improve relations with [country].
D. I am going to create jobs.
etc.
I could reasonably guess she might be lying about A, B and C could be true, and D is a blanket statement every candidate makes. With Trump, for any values of A-Z, I honestly wouldn't know which he would be lying on or would do a 180 because A) He has that "used car salesman" vibe, B) He talks a lot and has no filter, C) He is very mercurial, and D) He seems very manipulable if you stroke his ego.
Frankly, it's a bit crazy to me that you'd support the No Kings Act.
Actually, on second reading I'd walk that back. I speed-read and missed important parts. I do support that a President should be criminally accountable for crimes, but I missed the jurisdiction stripping. I don't know. I think the Supreme Court is, if not actively protecting a Republican President, at a minimum passively allowing a partisan figure to be functionally immune out of some impossible ideal of non-partisanship (that they only seem to care about at selective times). But the No Kings Act does go too far in the opposite direction. I could accept Barrett's conclusion of Trump v. United States, but that's moot since it was part of the dissent.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Is your agreement required for something to be reasonable?
No? It was an introductory statement which I laid out my reasons for.
Counting votes in advanced of election day provides increased opportunity and incentive to compromise election security [...]
That all assumes that voter fraud is reasonably achievable and the only issue is needing more time to adequately prepare. That premise has yet to be established and even if it were, the reaction to that knowledge should be change the process such that they cannot achieve that regardless of having an extra few days.
This smuggles in the assumption that a photo ID is sufficient to establish a valid identity. [...]
This is a neat trick of dismissing an opposing argument while missing that it detracts from your own argument. Your argument is that you need to do 2 things in order to vote:
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Establish an identity
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Establish that the identity is able to vote
Your argument following that is that doing 1 does not do 2. Okay, but the fact that you still need to do 2 has nothing to do with whether or not you've done step 1. They already do check that your name and credentials is registered, so 2 is covered. And even if it weren't, changing which IDs can be used to establish 1 does not change how step 2 is performed according to you. If your argument is that step 2 is insecure, then if the N.C. legislature were truly trying to increase security and not disenfranchise voters it seems like they should have focused on that, no?
This assumes the only reason to create a fake ID production or dissemination process is to cast 1 extra vote [1], or that 1 fake ID only enables 1 extra vote [2], or that a fake ID is required for a fraudulent vote [3], or that 1 extra vote is in a context of 100 million [4]. This would be incorrect, on all ends.
To pick just one example- if you automatically enroll people with driver's licenses to vote, but also issue driver's licenses to non-eligible persons (as Oregon did), then a real ID of a real person would flag as a valid voter no matter how many fraudulent voter IDs were issued.
You do a bit of a gish-gallop here. I put numbers above to show the 4 arguments, but you only respond to 1.
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Doesn't sound like North Carolina is enrolling all drivers to vote, so probably not relevant. And even if it were, automatically registering people when they get a driver's license != registering everyone just because they got a license and not checking eligibility.
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Why would it not? And even if not, then the problem isn't with checking the ID.
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As with 2, if they aren't even using an ID, then messing with the requirements to use an ID won't fix this.
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I threw a semi-random number out there because most people talk about election fraud in the context of Presidential elections. While election fraud should still be caught, election fraud only really has consequences if it changes who/what wins, which it takes way, way more than a single vote to do. You have to commit it at scale for it to achieve anything at all.
This is not an argument of disenfranchisement, this is an argument that non-standardized partisan-correlated voting IDs like student IDs should be used in the first place.
What? If the reason it was disallowed was because it was most used by one party, then it absolutely was an attempt at disenfranchisement. That's tautological. Either you can vote or you cannot, and the ID proves your identity or it does not. If a form of ID previously was good enough to prove a person's identity, then I would say the onus is on the people removing it to argue that it's not secure.
If your voting station marks down that you voted via a tally mark on a piece of paper, it does nothing to check for double voting unless there's someone else, sometime later, who actually puts it into a system to check against other databases.
Then you'll be happy to know that they literally do go back and check. And they sometimes prosecute people for it if they believe it was intentional.
I am always happy to find a new mind reader in the American populace, unless you happened to have some other evidence that the distinction was driven by racism rather than something else.
It was North Carolina BTW. And what you sardonically refer to as mind-reading was the N.C. court of appeals looking at all the actions performed and all the actions NOT performed at the same time, and taking into consideration that the legislature had the data they could use to disenfranchise. They came to the conclusion that their actions lined up too strongly with what a biased actor would do to reasonably assume a coincidence.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Sincere on what though? Trump contradicts himself and makes impulsive decisions so often that I cannot take anything he says seriously. And from the view of someone who leans Democrat, I wouldn't want many of the things he proposes if he were sincere.
Yes, China is a major polluter, but that attitude doesn't solve anything. In fact it makes it worse. It's like saying I should break the law because other people break the law more, which the only result of that philosophy is more net crime. I would support nuclear, but I don't see Republicans taking any tangible action to support nuclear either.
I would absolutely support the No Kings Act. I think the Supreme Court has been making extremely political decisions while pretending they're above it all, and Trump v. United States invented several claims that are not supported by the Constitution at all.
When it comes to firing for unfair reasons, I'm not talking about a heavy hand. For instance, it is only illegal to fire someone for refusing to commit a crime in most but not all states. One of the most common repeat threads in /r/legaladvice is employers telling employees they cannot discuss wages, which is blatantly illegal but it seems like nothing is really done unless an employee actually gets fired and sues over it.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I don't pretend my policies are 100% free, but even something like a minimum 2 sick days a year, or mandating that someone cannot be made to work > 24 hours straight do not strike me as onerous enough to have a noticeable impact on price. It wouldn't result in any change 99% of the time in any case, it's there for the few times it would apply.
How do you expect to stop the extremely entrenched practice of outsourcing to the cheapest bidder?
I don't think you can. Labor is like a tenth of the price in other countries, if that. Best thing to do is invest in more high-tech industry.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I don't agree with that.
Early voting would give more time to count votes, thus increasing election security.
Photo ID = either it's the person or it's not. There's no reason to be any more restrictive than is necessary to establish identity. Creating a fake ID to cast 1 extra vote out of 100 million would already be a large waste of time. Also, when I said they only disallowed SOME forms of ID, I mean only the forms of ID democrats would use, like student IDs.
Same day registration I don't see as a problem to verify.
Provisional voting I could see being used for fraud, but that also make it trivially easy to check provisional votes for double votes.
Pre-registration I see literally no way to use for fraud.
If anything, mail-in votes would be the most likely way to commit fraud, and they were untouched by North Carolina after they found whites used them.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I do generally support labor over capital I would say. But I would also say that I think more restrictions should be placed on Mergers & Acquisitions for large companies. I believe in harsher penalties for companies that break laws, and harsher penalties for labor violations and retaliation. I would support a mandatory minimum number of sick days and maximum consecutive work hours. I would support more scrutiny over independent contractor status and using salary to avoid unpaid overtime.
As for Trump's tariffs talks, I don't think much of them. Labor in other countries costs pennies on the dollar. I think the tariffs necessary to dissuade that would cripple the economy. Well, that and I don't trust anything Trump says, and that goes double for Trump campaigning.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I think Nate's beliefs are a little different though.
Right, I got a little sidetracked there. I haven't paid much attention to Nate Silver to know his specific policies. I was more making the general point that there are valid reasons for a Democrat to express more frustration with Democrats, or Republicans with Republicans, than them simply having dismissed the idea of switching parties prematurely.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I also can't say I agree with that. It's election year, and I think both Kamala and Trump are making populist policy claims that seem completely contradictory to past claims. I have 0 reason to trust that they will stick.
I believe we need to do more for pollution control and managing climate change, and Republicans have and will oppose efforts to do that. Especially Conservative Supreme Court
I generally believe in protections for workers being fired for unfair reasons, and Republicans oppose that.
I support taxation used to provide poverty reduction programs, and Republicans oppose that.
I agree with Democrats on maybe 75% of things. Republicans would take active efforts to not just oppose new efforts but reverse direction on that 75%. That does not make sense to me as a strategy to oppose the 25% I disagree with.
Tiber727
1mo ago
I don't agree with that. I'm a Centrist, anti-woke Democrat, and as such I spend a lot of time criticizing Democrats. But switching parties is unthinkable to me both due to greater distaste of Trump and fundamentally irreconcilable policy differences. The reason I spend more time criticizing Democrats is because people who have some commonality with me are both more persuadable and more frustrating when not persuadable. Also they are my only viable option when trying to enact change.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Can anyone of the "Most Secure Election in History" persuasion steelman the argument against increasing election integrity? Isn't it in everyone's best interest to increase confidence in the electoral process, even if you think 2020 election deniers are kooks, as it will improve the legitimacy of whoever wins and diminish avenues of sympathy for the deniers?
The argument is that the actions Republicans take do not increase election integrity, and are instead aimed at adding hoops to jump through that may reduce voter turnout among groups that typically vote Democrat. For example, North Carolina in 2016 had a law overturned combating voter fraud. For important context, the legislature had requested an received demographic information about how voters vote, by race. That is, whether they use provisional voting, early voting, mail-in ballots, etc. The day after the Supreme Court rolled back provisions of the Voting Rights Act the legislature moved forward with a bill over "election security." Said law:
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Reduced early voting.
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Disallowed SOME but not all forms of alternate photo ID
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Removed same-day registration
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Removed provisional voting if a voter showed up at the wrong polling place within the same county
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Removed pre-registration which allowed teenagers who were below voting age to register, provided they would be eligible to vote on election day
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Did NOT require mail-in voters to show ID.
Based on the above bullet points, can you guess which forms of registering/voting were most used by blacks, and which were most used by whites? Hint - the ones which were used primarily by whites were untouched.
Democrats believe that Republican leaders are borrowing a similar playbook in Republican controlled areas, and that "election security" is simply plausible deniability. I agree with that, but I'd add that as a project manager, my philosophy is that a process should be only as complex and restrictive as it needs to be to perform its function, and no more. In other words, something like photo ID is a burden on the process of voting, and justifiable only if it stops a fraudulent vote. If it does not, then the time spent is a waste and should be cut with prejudice. Likewise, if a form of ID is enough to reasonably establish someone's identity, include it.
Tiber727
1mo ago
He has fully captured the Republican party. He forced them to remove anti-abortion language from the platform.
My personal interpretation of Trump is I don't think he would take any real action in any direction on abortion once he's in office. I think he's more interested in being President because of the prestige of being President more than for any policy reasons. And because of that I don't think he would do much if they returned to that policy after the election.
But to tie it back to the point about Kamala vs. Trump's debates, I think she can simply ignore what you said and concentrate on him being largely responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. I expect lots of talk about Texas.
Probably like 25% of the population are pro-life absolutists.
Let's clarify some language here. I was trying to do so in my first response but let's confirm if we're on the same page here.
When it comes to marijuana legalization, you might have an opinion one way or another but if the state next to you decided to legalize or criminalize marijuana, you might say it's none of your business. If the state next to you decided to legalize murder you would probably say "What the hell?! Change it back!" It likely will not affect you but it still offends your sense of right and wrong. Most people are not pro-life absolutists in that they might make exceptions under X weeks or in the case of child rape, etc. But I do think whatever criteria they think is right, they generally think is right everywhere and should apply everywhere, rather than being decided on a state by state basis.
Tiber727
1mo ago
The thing is, Trump's personal opinions on abortion don't matter. Trump isn't proposing any changes to federal law, and in fact the justices he appointed ensured that he can't. His opposition to Florida's actions are all talk, and given he's on the campaign trail there's no reason to believe he'll put any public pressure on future actions if he wins the election.
Trump's effective policy on abortion is ending Roe v. Wade, which opened the floodgates on states banning abortion. But aside from a few extremely principled libertarians, that's not the policy anybody actually wants. Whichever side of the abortion debate people are on, their beliefs are strong enough that they probably want those beliefs to apply nationwide. And given he's running as a Republican, Trump is still on team "wants to stop virtually all abortion."
Tiber727
1mo ago
Probably, but outside of election season, Trump is likely to be providing party support to those who will try whatever they can. For example, I still have no idea how Texas' laws about traveling out of state to get an abortion are not a violation of interstate commerce.
Tiber727
2mo ago
With regards to sports, I don't think anyone disputes that estrogen has a negative effect on athleticism and testosterone a positive. The dispute is over the "performs in the cis-female athletic range" part. I would probably put trans women and men in the men's category, in that testosterone is probably not going to give enough advantage to a trans man to really matter.
As for seeing penises, I guess it's one of those things where you probably just have to say America is prudish and you are an exception. Short of Amazon tribes, even less prudish places like Japan that have penis festivals have segregated restrooms.
Tiber727
2mo ago
My theory is that she thinks that the longer Trump talks the weaker he looks. Trump talks in streams of consciousness that often wander completely off-topic. For someone like Kamala who has barely any record and Isn't that good of a speaker, why not let him ramble and try to jump on the weakest thing he said?
Don't know if it will work (he's called "Teflon Don" for a reason). But maybe she'll have better luck by not being a geriatric man with a history of gaffes.
Tiber727
2mo ago
"Coup" is the closest word I can think to describe it. To my reasoning, one party is unilaterally inventing a conspiracy (note that "election fraud" only seems to be a concern when a Democrat wins) then using said conspiracy to attempt to stay on power when legitimately he was the losing candidate and must transition power.
Let me put it this way. Let us pretend that my accusations were true of a hypothetical person that is not Trump, and that they had succeeded. What term would be better to describe it?
I looked up similar stats recently. According to an ATF study somewhere between 58% and 87% of gun crimes were committed by someone other than the purchaser. This next stat is somewhat old (2004), but probably still reasonably reliable. About 43% are bought off the street, 12% are bought from legal markets, 25% are consensually given by a family member or friend, and 8% are stolen - Source 1, Source 2.
Tiber727
3mo ago
I think I agree with you on some aspects, but can't quite get there with your conclusion. I do fear that AI safety is a dogwhistle for information control to some degree. On the other hand, there is a valid need to prevent AI from confidently spitting out an answer that that mole on your back is cancer and the cure is drinking bleach. AI is still laughably and confidently wrong on a lot of things.
If such a candidate existed you wouldn't vote for him anyway. At least I don't think so, because I don't think communists are well-received here.
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