Random Thoughts

[Dukefrukem]

Dude. Norwegian prison cells. I rest my case.

Holy shit!

Do you really believe this shit is local? Given what's been going on lately, that seems naive.

This discussion is going nowhere since youdon't have proof that it isn't local and i dont have proof that is. Just don't assume the worst. "OMG we're all doomed because Arizona has shit checks and balances!"

Are we really surprised a state with no economy comprised of mostly desert has government issues?

[Irish]

This discussion is going nowhere since youdon't have proof that it isn't local and i dont have proof that is. Just don't assume the worst. "OMG we're all doomed because Arizona has shit checks and balances!"

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. When that happened, a bunch of states passed onerous voter ID laws. The reasons are generally bullshit, the result is to make it difficult or impossible for disenfranchised voters to vote (read: minorities and the poor). This is part of what happened in Arizona.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFOwlMCdto

Back in 2010, the Republics successfully gerrymandered districts all over the place, from North Carolina to Michigan. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for Democrats to take back the House.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/...ht-dems-house/

This shit is happening all over the place. It's not just Arizona.

[DavidSeven]

I don't think framing whatever incompetence happened in Arizona as "fraud" is especially helpful for public discourse. It's been a weird election cycle. A lot of anger, which I think comes from the extreme ends of both parties, to be honest. A lot of social media citations to fringe news sources. Everyone's corrupt. Everyone's a liar. Hey, can we talk about platforms or nah?

If something went wrong in Arizona, then I'm more inclined to believe it was simple incompetence rather than some carefully plotted scheme. Some people may not have made it through the long lines. Okay. The eventual winners were both polling ahead of their competitors in Arizona by 20, 30 points before the primary. They're also heavily favored at the national level. Can we apply logic? Quiz: you're the betting favorite to win the nomination and statistically guaranteed to win a state primary. Is that the time to do something criminal?

On my high horse now, it really feels like the public conversation has been focused on all the wrong things these last few months.

[D_Davis]

Yep. Gerrymandering has completely destroyed the ability for voters to cast a vote that actually matters.

And in WA we have super delegates who, even though something like 70+% of the democratic voters want Sanders, are still pledging their support to Shillery.

It's all theater, all an illusion, a magician's forced choice.

[number8]

Holy shit!

There was an uproar a few years back when that asshole who shot 70 kids was sent to one of these prisons and people from other countries was outraged--outraged!--when they found out what Norway prisons are like and that this mass murderer lives in a cell with TV and internet. But yeah, Norway prisons have very nice facilities and look more like an expensive summer camp.

Norway has the most humane prisons in the world, but many other scandinavian countries are along the same lines. In Finland, most prisons don't even have fences and let the murderers and drug dealers who are on good behavior to commute to town to work or go to school or hang out with family (wearing ankle monitors, obviously).

One reason I've heard for why it's like that is because these things are not left open to political debates over there. There are no politicians or citizens debating on criminal justice policies, because those decisions are instead left to psychologists and criminology experts, who seem to have concluded that treating criminals humanely actually rehabilitates them and keeps crime rates low.

[Irish]

A Republican controlled Arizona Senate cut the budget, and a Republican official reduced the number of polling places from 200 to 60. In Phoenix, there is now one polling place for every 100,000 citizens. The Mayor of Phoenix has asked the Department of Justice to investigate instances of voter suppression.

Now, we can believe this is just gross incompetence (or maybe some kind of weird coincidence that it was supremely difficult to vote in an area that featured a certain kind of voter). But given the increasingly nasty shit that has gone down in every big election over the last 20 years, forgive me if I'm a little skeptical.

Quiz: If you were gonna fuck with a general election, would you set up the process up in, say, March? Or even earlier, say a few years back? Or would you wait until November during a presidential election year?

Also, are these "fringe sources"?

On Arizona:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/24/politi...tment-justice/

http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-w...ues-in-arizona

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ngled-election

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/...arizona_e.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riley-...b_9550670.html

https://www.salon.com/2016/03/24/vot...investigation/

https://www.rt.com/usa/337496-arizon...earing-recess/

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pet...mocratic-party

On bad voter ID laws:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-requirements/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/ar...y-about-fraud/

https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-r...d-requirements

[D_Davis]

Nice try with those liberal media links.

[DavidSeven]

Yes, the voter restriction laws are problematic. My issue is with framing it as "fraud" and using that as a means to label individual candidates as corrupt, which is a narrative that voters from both parties have latched onto. Again, I'm talking about actual claims that fraud was committed. I'm not going to read through every link you posted, but the first three you posted (CNN, Seattle Times, Motherjones) contains not one direct reference to "fraud." No one is saying that a number of voters weren't excluded due to systemic problems arising from voter registration laws or bureaucratic systems. That obviously happened. Did it skew a result in any particular direction or favor one candidate over the other? Based on polling data, that doesn't appear to be the case.

NY Times:

But Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, said the end of federal oversight had opened the door to the chaos in Arizona.

“This doesn’t appear to have been caused by the intention to make it harder for anyone to vote, but by bureaucratic incompetence,” Mr. Hasen said. “Section 5 was very important in catching these screw-ups, a second pair of eyes that just aren’t there anymore.”

[DavidSeven]

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

And for what it's worth, I agree entirely with your feeling on this decision.

[Winston*]

American politics are so amazing to watch as a spectator. Literally the biggest political issue in my country in the past year was whether we should change our flag. We decided to keep the current one.

[megladon8]

Bernie Sanders' name "accidentally" left off the democratic nominee ballots in Washington.

[number8]

Bernie Sanders' name "accidentally" left off the democratic nominee ballots in Washington.

This did not happen.

[Dukefrukem]

Was that another headline in "Stuff We think is happening in the country below us-Times"?

[D_Davis]

Bernie Sanders' name "accidentally" left off the democratic nominee ballots in Washington.

I don't think this happened. He won here with 72%.

My brother-in-law was chosen as a delegate.

[Dukefrukem]

This is Canada and USA in an elevator together.

[megladon8]

Ah. Jen was reading me some headlines. We both thought it was real.

Carry on!

[number8]

I don't think this happened. He won here with 72%.

My brother-in-law was chosen as a delegate.

He's talking about DC, not Washington. There was a misunderstanding there where the Democrats submitted both Sanders and Clinton's registrations a day late and some rando challenged Sanders' registration and triggered a hearing, but so far no one has challenged Clinton's. Somehow every political blog misinterpreted the situation as the Democrats submitting only Sanders' late, and of course people started thinking it was intentional.

Sanders is currently not on the ballot because of this technicality, but it's a minor clerical dispute that is going to get sorted very easily.

Tinfoiling, man.

[megladon8]

He's talking about DC, not Washington. There was a misunderstanding there where the Democrats submitted both Sanders and Clinton's registrations a day late and some rando challenged Sanders' registration and triggered a hearing, but so far no one has challenged Clinton's. Somehow every political blog misinterpreted the situation as the Democrats submitting only Sanders' late, and of course people started thinking it was intentional.

Tinfoiling, man.

Yeah sounds like this is it. The piece Jen read me said that his name had been left off ballots and it was suspected that it was basically an attempt to sabotage his campaign.

[number8]

The original news story by NBC that found out about it was pretty clear how it happened, but EVERYONE from Politico to Washington Post that reported NBC's discovery afterwards somehow failed reading comprehension. I facepalmed pretty hard.

[D_Davis]

Fart rape - concept creep at its finest. This has to be satire, right?

https://thewaterpipe.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/can-a-fart-be-misogynist/

[D_Davis]

Whew. Things have gotten so crazy though with the regressive left that's it's getting harder and harder to tell.

[number8]

[bac0n]

okay, foot removed from mouth. I deleted my post when i discovered that was a joke.

[Dukefrukem]

Awe cmon. Wouldn't be Match Cut if we couldn't revisit bad posts years from now.

Just wait until I uncover all the posts about MCU and Captain America Civil War.

[number8]

This is the best April Fools joke any company has ever done. Game fucking over.