Libtards on Parade: Alcoholism, Corruption, Murder

[Phil K]

Libtard Lies and Self Deception (of course!)

 

Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

 

“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.

 

“There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.

 

 

Edited March 24, 2015 by Philonius

[Fairweather]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-foster/democrats-benefit-from-illegal-immigrants-voting_b_1418523.html

 

There is a huge problem with voter fraud. And, in my opinion, it is proven by the vehemence of the Democrats, the beneficiaries of the fraud, toward enforcement of our laws.

[Fairweather]

Libtard Lies and Self Deception (of course!)

 

Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

 

“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.

 

“There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.

 

 

Interesting piece. I seriously have to wonder if you actually read your own post as you left out a few bits like this:

 

In 2003, the Indiana Supreme Court invalidated East Chicago Democratic Mayor Rob Pastrick’s primary victory because of massive fraud. Pastrick, an eight-term incumbent, lost in a 2004 repeat election.

Forty-six people, mainly city workers, were found guilty in a wide-ranging conspiracy to purchase votes through the use of absentee ballots.

[tvashtarkatena]

With its 50/50 chance of matching perception with reality, a chimp beats stupid every time.

[Phil K]

Libtard Lies and Self Deception (of course!)

 

Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

 

“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.

 

“There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.

 

 

Interesting piece. I seriously have to wonder if you actually read your own post as you left out a few bits like this:

 

In 2003, the Indiana Supreme Court invalidated East Chicago Democratic Mayor Rob Pastrick’s primary victory because of massive fraud. Pastrick, an eight-term incumbent, lost in a 2004 repeat election.

Forty-six people, mainly city workers, were found guilty in a wide-ranging conspiracy to purchase votes through the use of absentee ballots.

 

FW, nice try cherry picking information to imply the exact opposite of what the article states again and again. That being: individual voter fraud is so uncommon as to have virtually NO effect on election outcomes. Heck, this isn't even a case of individual voter fraud, but rather of a group of insiders trying to manipulate the system. Corrupt pols of any stripe deserve to be outed and punished.

 

Too bad Katherine Harris (using her position as FLA Secretary of State and with the complicity of Governor Jeb Bush) was able to get away with improperly purging thousands of legitimate likely Democratic voters from Florida's registration lists in 2000. Too bad Kenneth Blackwell (while simultaneously serving as both Secretary of State AND co-chair of Bush's re-election committee) was able to manipulate registration and voter machine access enough to flip the state in his boy's favor.

 

 

But you don't care about that shizz.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Philonius

[LUCKY]

The internet like Facebook is a happier place if you adhere to basic etiquette! no politics no religion and NO FOOD pics

Climbing Access advocate

Lucky

[Phil K]

Excuse me. I thought this was Spray.

[AlpineK]

Excuse me. I thought this was Spray.

 

And you are correct

 

While part of a climbing site this isn't the land of of well thought out arguments and or Robert's Rules of Order.

[JayB]

i'm w/ colonel kurtz, i can put up with a lot of shit, but hypocrisy not so much - i've never gotten why we get to have nukes but nobody else does? seems an impossibly arrogant pose to strike, but then some folks do get off on that i suppose?

 

the cold war was scary for sure, i'm not so young i don't remember it - but the essential logic that made it so freaky sure frak'n worked, no, and still will hold true in the future? the rule was clear: you use nukes, you get nuked into oblivion - do we really think iranians or north koreans are so much more rabid n' rat-shit crazier than the soviets that they won't remember this?

 

 

Sorry for the reverse thread drift, but the "Who are we to oppose country X getting nukes when we have them?" has always fascinated me, so I have a few questions.

 

The least head-scratching argument for this position is that the logic of deterrence will hold no matter what the ideology or motives of the people who run the state. Is that your main argument? Even if you accept that proposition for the sake of argument, does the stability of the regime and the capacity to secure the weapons have any bearing on this position?

 

The more exotic form of the argument from equality is that - hey, we're a state, and we have nukes - and they're a state, so it follows from that we have no legitimate basis for wanting to deny them access to nuclear weapons. Even if you play along and accept this premise, that still leaves room to inquire about the standard that should be used to grant access to the nuke-club. Does the state have to exist for a certain period of time, contain a certain number of souls, abides by a certain standard of behavior, command a certain number of square miles in order for this standard to apply, or does any entity that self-identifies as a state qualify under the "we're a state, they're a state, we have nukes, ergo...." argument"?

 

If you are a committed nihilist, then I think it's possible to construct an argument that is logically consistent with the premise that there can never be any legitimate basis for denying any entity that self identifies as a state access to nukes, but as soon as you declare that a particular value or outcome is preferable to another, then you have a solid utilitarian argument for wanting to deny nukes to whichever state wants to use them to advance the stuff that you've conceded is worse than an alternative. E.g. if a state declares that humanity is a scourge to the planet and they've stated their intent to use nukes to kill off the human race, including themselves, and have a special breed of genetically engineered howler monkeys that they've bred for the job take over, as soon as you concede that plan is at least modestly less desirable than *not* killing off ~7 billion souls, and/or unlikely to be realized in practice, then there's your argument for keeping their hands off of the red button, no?

 

Or is this just something that you haven't spent much time thinking about? That would make more sense to me, but if you actually have a defense of the "argument from equality" as it pertains to nukes chambered away in your noggin, I'd be interested to hear what it is.

[ivan]

ye certainly have embraced my old professor's mantra of "dazzle them w/ brilliance or baffle them w/ bullshit," good sir

 

you had a lot of fancy footwork in there, I doubt i'll answer everything you asked or consider every argument, but here's my 3-minute response

 

yes, I do think all states (using the consensus definition humans have established over the ages for what a state is (and incidentally, would you contend iran or north korea don't meet it?)) have the right to build the defense force they feel necessary to defend themselves - no, I don't think deterrence will always prevent the use of those weapons, though we've managed the better part of a century to have them and not use them - Russian atheists probably were more concerned w/ the here and now than fellers dreaming of forty virgins and a pie-in-the-sky, and thus less likely to invite a nuclear holocaust.

 

the details of what is/isn't a state i'll leave to you to hash out (can I apply the supreme court's pornography definition? sure seems to work ) - does isis call itself a state? yes. do I think it's a state? not yet, but maybe someday. do I want a future nation-state that calls itself isis to have nukes? no, of course not. would I consider myself a hypocrite to say the usa could have nukes, but not this future isis-state? definitely. would I be okay w/ our country annihilating that state prior to using those weapons? no. afterwards. yes, though I'll concede it was a bummer it had to come to that.

 

I'm a happy-go-lucky nihilist - douglas adams was my prophet but he's dead now and that's all that matters of course a utilitarian will bend the rules to benefit himself and his family. it possible that I'm as lousy a nihilist and utilitarian as I am a climber/father/teacher/human-being/etc

 

not certain what to make of your "argument from equality" - is equality even a real thing? I just thought it was a slogan

[tvashtarkatena]

Does anyone remember the passive aggressive hyper defensive lawyer from SNL? It's so funny that you would...

 

WARNING: PROBABLY FICTIONAL, HIGHLY NARCISSISTIC POST TO FOLLOW. DO NOT READ IF HYPER SENSITIVE OR EASILY EXCITABLE.

 

That deterrence has worked until now is pure fluke, considering how many times it almost didn't work. FWIW, in our naval computer wargames with the 'red team' (both teams Merkin, of course) in the summer of 1979, either one side or the other started tossing tactical nukes within 30 minutes of the start of hostilities - a scenario which generally leads to a strategic exchange according to the analysts of the day. Back then, the Russkies had sub launched nuclear cruise missiles, something had no viable countermeasures for (nor did we have them ourselves yet), plus a more significant first strike conventional capability - so the Blue Team had a lot of incentives to go big early. Since the Russkies knew that - so did they. If their first nonconventional strike failed to take out the entire nuke armed task force (which would be pretty much every single US warship) - they had even more incentive to toss some tactical nukes.

 

But our closest call had nothing to do with those damned Russkies - we almost nuked ourselves when a B52 exploded with two nukes on board over Goldsboro NC - 2 of the 3 fail safes on one warhead failed - only one lowly solenoid prevented detonation. Both bombs free fell to the ground.

[tvashtarkatena]

You gotta love the Reagan Won The Cold War BS.

 

It's over?

 

Last time I checked, the Russkies and us still had plenty nukes aimed at each other. Our boomers (still patrolling!) are going to decommission 4 silos each - each boat will only be able to wipe out 200 instead of 240 cities at that point

 

 

[Crux]

When rolling by the old air raid siren on Phinney Ridge--memories--of the way we still are.

[tvashtarkatena]

...like the circular area probables of my mind....

[tvashtarkatena]

Back to the topic at hand. Oh wait, there was none.

 

 

[ivan]

libtards are double-plus bad

[ivan]

That deterrence has worked until now is pure fluke...

can't argue w/ that

 

in the end it boils down to which one you dug more: dr strangelove or on the beach?

 

the philosopher asks: if life is everywhere in the universe, and intelligent life the inevitable result of evolution, why don't we see evidence of alien beings in all directions?

 

the cynic concedes that, once a creature develops certain powers, the forces that led to the creation of those powers can't help but use them to blow the whole thing apart

 

so long as the bar keeps serving pan-galactic gargle-blasters it'll all stay groovy

[tvashtarkatena]

Once our wee ones make robots with empathy we're done for.

[ivan]

should the amish be allowed to have atomic power, pending certain re-arrangements in their world views?

 

christ, how i'd like a pay-per-view of a bare-knuckle brawl betwixt an amish bruiser n' a committed buddhist

[JayB]

ye certainly have embraced my old professor's mantra of "dazzle them w/ brilliance or baffle them w/ bullshit," good sir

 

you had a lot of fancy footwork in there, I doubt i'll answer everything you asked or consider every argument, but here's my 3-minute response

 

yes, I do think all states (using the consensus definition humans have established over the ages for what a state is (and incidentally, would you contend iran or north korea don't meet it?)) have the right to build the defense force they feel necessary to defend themselves - no, I don't think deterrence will always prevent the use of those weapons, though we've managed the better part of a century to have them and not use them - Russian atheists probably were more concerned w/ the here and now than fellers dreaming of forty virgins and a pie-in-the-sky, and thus less likely to invite a nuclear holocaust.

 

the details of what is/isn't a state i'll leave to you to hash out (can I apply the supreme court's pornography definition? sure seems to work ) - does isis call itself a state? yes. do I think it's a state? not yet, but maybe someday. do I want a future nation-state that calls itself isis to have nukes? no, of course not. would I consider myself a hypocrite to say the usa could have nukes, but not this future isis-state? definitely. would I be okay w/ our country annihilating that state prior to using those weapons? no. afterwards. yes, though I'll concede it was a bummer it had to come to that.

 

I'm a happy-go-lucky nihilist - douglas adams was my prophet but he's dead now and that's all that matters of course a utilitarian will bend the rules to benefit himself and his family. it possible that I'm as lousy a nihilist and utilitarian as I am a climber/father/teacher/human-being/etc

 

not certain what to make of your "argument from equality" - is equality even a real thing? I just thought it was a slogan

 

Thanks - that was interesting. My three second take is that you are a nihilist in theory but a utilitarian pragmatist in practice. I think that'a fine as a personal philosophy, even if the parts don't fit together - but I'm glad that it's generally been utilitarian types who have a chauvinistic partiality towards liberal western values rather than equalitarian nihilists that have had their hands on the red button.

 

As an aside, one of the practical reasons that I oppose proliferation is that I think that the states that are most eager to get their hands on nukes these days have (correctly) concluded that all modern/liberal/western societies are no longer ruthless enough to go tit-for-tat in an ICBM exchange, much less retaliate in kind in the event of a nuke transferred from a hostile regime and set off in the Port of Long Beach by any of the non-state actors out to bring down the Great Satan. There are lots of reasons for that, and I think that's a very concrete sign of moral progress, but the days when a chap like Curtis LeMay is calling shots that can immolate entire cities with the public behind him is long behind us.

 

Even if they decided not to target us for whatever reason, I have much less confidence that the principle of strategic deterrence will stay the hands of the folks running the show in the Gulf States, Pakistan, etc - for a variety of reasons.

 

Anyhow - I have my own requirement for determining who gets to have nukes, which is the capacity to effectively design, build, and maintain a modern sewage system capable of handling 1/3 of their total output of caca without any foreign material or technical assistance. It's more of a necessary requirement than a sufficient one, but I find it frightening that there are already countries with nukes that fall short of that standard.

[ivan]

i doubt we're that far apart when it comes down to it boy-o - certainly selling nukes is a big no-no - i see the decision of a state to join the nuke club as being a big deal w/ the devil that comes with the following basic rules:

 

- if you use a nuke against a nuke enabled nation, expect them to use every nuke they have against you in retaliation

- if you provide a nuke to a 3rd party, you get the same treatment if they choose to use it

- in the aftermath of a nuke strike, the aggrieved party is highly unlikely to be interested in bullshit things like who actually is to blame, and will begin Response Scenario #1 against all the usual suspects

- if you are nuke enabled, and choose to begin a conventional war against another member of The Club, the likely time that will elapse from the start of said war and the first use of nukes will be roughly equivalent to the amount of time it takes a high-school kegger to get out of control

- if you are a member of The Club, your use of nukes against anyone for any reason comes w/ a 75% assurance the other members of The Club will annihilate you in short order for breaking the seal (for example: iran gets nukes, nukes israel, usa reduces iran's population to 1/100 of pre-nuke population (and yes, now strong odds Club members on iran's periphery come into play - india's unlikely to fire on us as they don't have the same supply of hate, but maybe - china and russia are still close enough and cantankerous enough and well-supplied enough that they could push the whole thing to the awful conclusion though - it would be a sad decision we'd take in our anger, and the consequences would be awful (but that's what we get for being in the Club)

 

i don't agree at all that we as a nation have backed that far away from the nuclear abyss - the american public's response to 9/11 is highly instructive - in the aftermath of a nuclear strike on the united states the mood of the public will be one solely bent on massive revenge - the essential logic of the cold war ain't going anywhere

 

i agree, possession of nukes by religious fanatics is grim indeed - guess that's what comes w/ being born into this age (could be worse i suppose, while i live w/ the threat of nuclear incineration hanging over my head, i can also watch inter-racial chinese porn for free at any hour and eat fresh tomatoes in february )

 

i have some hope in the premise that a state, in order to develop nukes and the many delivery systems needed to threaten us with total destruction, needs to have a relatively sane population to produce them

 

[tvashtarkatena]

possession of nukes by religious fanatics - you mean any of the GOP s shitbasket of candidates + the clown parade that is Congress?

 

tots agree.

[ivan]

agreed - i'm as gob-smacked n' leery-leery of georgia-based religious lunatics as those in the levant

 

[tvashtarkatena]

as always, jayz drain waste vent test offers an innovative solution for who smong the brown unwashed masses gets into the nuclear country club. to his shit handling criterion id add a shithead criterion - the recent propensity for starting 'wars of choice'. not that bald faced, unjustified military aggression in the form if full scale invasion, occupation, and the torture if indigenous populations would have anything to do with nucular responsibility.

 

when it comes to shitty thinking, ask a republican. deep doo doo experience there in stumble fucking into a future they have no hope of understanding, but hey, praise the lord.

[ivan]

I'm willing to conceive of jay as a reasonable guy - I answered his questions as well I could and would be interested in his response: isn't it hypocritical that one well established nation-station can have nukes but others can't under threat of death? if it is in fact hypocritical, isn't that a problem for a nation like ours that prides itself on its ideals, or are we just to make the old fashioned naked assertion of "might makes right" and be honest about the mere lip-service we offer said ideals?