Well, this vindicates everything deltago said about the non-arrest of the suspected Portland shooter. Even if he WASN'T directly involved in how that went down, he is taking credit for it now and celebrating it:
So much for up holding the constitution. The constitution doesn’t end after the second amendment.
I’d be investigating if I was a democrat representative. I’d be investigating if I was a Republican.
~
Any way. That Hunter Biden story. Allegedly the New York Post did the unethical thing of not blacking out Hunter’s email so it does go against twitter’s terms of service.
It also goes against journalism ethics and is one of the first things taught in college and the post did it on purpose. The story is a) gaining more traction than it would have gained if it wasn’t for this faux pas, b) How many sycophants are now blasting that email with death threats and other stupid things?
This whole ordeal played nicely into Trump’s team plans. That isn’t a coincidence.
Well, this vindicates everything @deltago said about the non-arrest of the suspected Portland shooter. Even if he WASN'T directly involved in how that went down, he is taking credit for it now and celebrating it:
I'm old enough to remember when Republicans disliked the idea of extrajudicial killings.
In other news - Looks like Youtube is ripping down a lot of the QAnon stuff. Specifically the stuff designed to be targeted at a malleable audience. That's good. We were talking about censorship the other day, but I think removing conspiratorial content designed to be harmful to its audience is a good thing.
The Hunter Biden stuff seems to be falling apart. It's looking more and more dubious that the laptops were left at a repair shop, and more like he was directly hacked to release damning photos/emails. The issue with this new twist is: Once we know the hacking is targeted, the information we receive from it becomes less reliable. Why should I believe the emails are not forged?
Edit - I'm not turning this conversation to Wikieaks, but the reason why their leaking of Podesta's emails and the such was a big deal was because they had a lot of credit for apolitical document releases. They lost that credibility immensely upon working directly with Roger Stone on behalf of the Trump Campaign. If Wikileaks dropped a new bombshell tomorrow, it would mean a good deal less than 4 years ago. NYPost has a similar issue: They arent trusted in a way that lends credibility to the story.
Portland shooter- this is the guy who murdered some republican, execution style, and didn't comply with police?
Funny how narratives change. If this was some republican it would be non-stop complaining about the scourge of "white supremacist fascist violence domestic terrorism" but when it's a Good Guy on the side of Right and Justice slaying the Great Evil it's all about how police aren't nice enough to him.
Hilarious how Vice News actually interviewed this guy to try to paint him as the innocent victim and it got massively downvoted. Ordinary, non ideological people see through this. The media supports murdering republicans, full stop. They did not even give this much kindness to Nick Sandmann.
If you can't see the double standards in this country at this point you are just in denial.
Even his own sister said he wouldn't go quietly, but don't let that stop the purely partisan narratives.
“That shocked me that it was the police, at first ... but then I thought about it,” Reinoehl’s sister said. “There was no way that the Michael I knew would have gone quietly, although that would have been the right thing to do.
There is a Grand Canyon-sized gap between "not treating him nice enough" and going to the confrontation with no intent of him being taken in alive to be charged and put on trial. That is what Trump is saying, and if he is just bloviating, that really isn't my problem. His words are his words.
Moreover, there are 21 witnesses who say the Marshalls did not identify themselves before opening fire. But this is now becoming a pattern. Just like with Breonna Taylor, one witness who is a compete outlier to two dozen other accounts is given more credible weight simply because they are telling the story cops want:
I'm not sure where this idea that he should have just been allowed to go on his merry way is coming from. That is not even remotely the issue. The issue is cops being allowed to just break into apartments in the middle of the night or open fire on murder suspects without even announcing who they are or what they are doing. And, again, the scary thing is that tons of people think that's absolutely peachy and above board.
I feel like you missed the point. No one was defending him as thought he was the good guy. The idea that the media is fine with Republicans being murdered is objectively false, and cannot be meaningfully substantiated though statistical evidence.
We can, however - point out that the the president saying Federal Marshalls had no intention of taking a man in alive is problematic.
Portland shooter- this is the guy who murdered some republican, execution style, and didn't comply with police?
Funny how narratives change. If this was some republican it would be non-stop complaining about the scourge of "white supremacist fascist violence domestic terrorism" but when it's a Good Guy on the side of Right and Justice slaying the Great Evil it's all about how police aren't nice enough to him.
Hilarious how Vice News actually interviewed this guy to try to paint him as the innocent victim and it got massively downvoted. Ordinary, non ideological people see through this. The media supports murdering republicans, full stop. They did not even give this much kindness to Nick Sandmann.
If you can't see the double standards in this country at this point you are just in denial.
Even his own sister said he wouldn't go quietly, but don't let that stop the purely partisan narratives.
“That shocked me that it was the police, at first ... but then I thought about it,” Reinoehl’s sister said. “There was no way that the Michael I knew would have gone quietly, although that would have been the right thing to do.
I'll put my usual disclaimer that I don't see much of the US media, but the picture I do get is not the same as you're painting:
- I've seen more comment in the media defending Kyle Rittenhouse than doing that to Reinoehl.
- I've seen no comment supporting murdering Republicans.
In relation to police actions more generally, there's been plenty of criticism in this thread of police killings in other cases where the official police line was not the same as that offered by video evidence or witnesses. It should be therefore no surprise to see that same sort of criticism in this case. I don't think that reflects a party political view though, but just a desire to see the law operate in practice the way it's supposed to in theory irrespective of who the person killed was.
It's perhaps also worth providing a bit of context here on the coverage of terrorism generally by the media and why you might indeed have seen more coverage of right-wing terrorism. As has been said before, right-wing violence in the US seems to be a greater problem than left-wing violence. It's caused more deaths in the past and the greater continuing potential for future problems from right-wing extremists has been highlighted by US intelligence agencies for at least 20 years now - see for instance this recent report by Homeland Security or this FBI testimony to Congress in 2002 (if you Google for terrorist threats you can find plenty more examples over the years). These agencies (despite Trump's rhetoric), themselves lean heavily to the right - unsurprising for organizations that are largely white, middle-aged and with strong links to the military - so I would find it difficult to believe that they have been involved in a decades long attempt to deliberately skew the perception of where terrorist threats are in reality coming from - even if the death count did not support their threat assessments ...
Video: "We got a Trumper right here!"
"Here?"
"Here!"
*gunshots*
Media: hE wAs iNnOceNt aNd tHe pOliCe wEre tHe baD GuYs
And of course they call the murder victim "far right". Nobody else is an extremist, certainly not the murderer. Just the victim.
These sociopaths make my blood boil. They will glorify murderers and slander the dead.
I haven't heard anyone here claim he was innocent. Based on what we know, he was almost certainly guilty. We aren't even having the same conversation. The question is did police go to their confrontation with him with NO intent to arrest, but to simply have him eliminated without a trial. And based on 21 witnesses, and the President himself, that was precisely the intent.
A trial would be the place where that video is presented, it is determined that he was, in fact, the man who uttered those words and shot the gun, and a jury of 12 people deciding whether or not that is the case. In which case, he would have then went to prison for the rest of his life if found guilty. Overwhelming witness testimony suggests there was no intention of taking him alive, and that the goal was execution on the street. Whether or not HE executed someone in the same manner is immaterial to the issue at hand. That is what a court room is for.
If we're just killing SUSPECTED murderers as a matter of policy to bypass the other 2/3 of the legal process, then why have any rules at all about anything?? The answer, of course, is that we don't have any rules. Cops just make them up as they go along, and get away with it 90% of the time.
Again, I'm not the one you should have an issue with for claiming they did what they did. You should talk to their boss (as these were federal agents). He is the one who just admitted they went there to kill him.
Well, voted today. Two hours in line, not as bad as I feared. Also seriously lucked out that one of my friends and her husband were in line right in front of me, so the time went pretty quick. Um even if they are ridiculously conservative. I felt weird to vote all dems except State Treasurer, had to be done though. My family has already excommunicated me so no fear of reprisals. Anyway, it’s a bit of a relief to have it done and out of the way.
I'm just sitting here hoping that my mail in ballot arrives. The USPS here has a crappy track record of actually getting my mail to me. This was before the recent kefuffle of sabotage...
Hope you didn't wait too long. If you don't get the ballot in time, I'd still vote in person if I were you. Double-mask if you want to be safer, but I wouldn't stay home for this election unless I was on my deathbed....
I'm high risk, and my wife and son are higher risk, who I am also the caretaker of. Its one thing to risk my health, its entirely another to risk theirs.
Portland shooter- this is the guy who murdered some republican, execution style, and didn't comply with police?
Funny how narratives change. If this was some republican it would be non-stop complaining about the scourge of "white supremacist fascist violence domestic terrorism" but when it's a Good Guy on the side of Right and Justice slaying the Great Evil it's all about how police aren't nice enough to him.
Hilarious how Vice News actually interviewed this guy to try to paint him as the innocent victim and it got massively downvoted. Ordinary, non ideological people see through this. The media supports murdering republicans, full stop. They did not even give this much kindness to Nick Sandmann.
If you can't see the double standards in this country at this point you are just in denial.
Even his own sister said he wouldn't go quietly, but don't let that stop the purely partisan narratives.
“That shocked me that it was the police, at first ... but then I thought about it,” Reinoehl’s sister said. “There was no way that the Michael I knew would have gone quietly, although that would have been the right thing to do.
No the Portland shooter was the one who killed a person in self defence, or defence of another individual.
The person who was killed was part of a gang of individuals filmed spraying Bear mace at peaceful protestors from the back of pickup trucks and the leader advised them to carry concealed weapons. So no idea where you’re getting ‘execution style’ although I can guess it’s from someone from that caravan of alleged choir boys.
And we now have it from the horses mouth that compliance wasn’t a concern for the Marshall’s arresting him.
And the story of him firing upon them with an automatic rifle fell apart in less than 24hrs after such a gun was not recovered from the scene.
So people can attempt to spin this anyway they want. End of the story is that he was killed before he was put up for a fair trial and the actions of the police were highly suspect especially contrasted with that moron who killed 2 people and now has the Right funding his defence.
Video: "We got a Trumper right here!"
"Here?"
"Here!"
*gunshots*
Media: hE wAs iNnOceNt aNd tHe pOliCe wEre tHe baD GuYs
And of course they call the murder victim "far right". Nobody else is an extremist, certainly not the murderer. Just the victim.
These sociopaths make my blood boil. They will glorify murderers and slander the dead.
You're not accurately characterizing what the mainstream reporting has been. And honestly, you're not even making the effort to take in the arguments being presented to you from other posters here.
This isn't complicated, and it's something any small government conservative should grasp. There's a perfectly sound reason why people focus on misdeeds by state authorities over misdeeds by private citizens.
Don't understand why people have to open an argument or respond to a post with a defamatory claim or 'put down' of the original poster. Not a very sincere tactic to try and put someone down or make someone smaller in order to get your opinion across. Pelosi tried it with Wolf Blitzer, didn't work.
Here you have an absolute crystallization of someone in the Trump inner-circle not having an ounce of understanding why "Sleepy Joe" is such a god-awful attack line. Mr. Rogers?? People would kill to have Mr. Rogers right now. That's the point:
You can chalk half of Biden's lead up to COVID-19. You can chalk the other half up to people sick to death of having to live through this bullshit day after day. They are fundamentally worn out on his reality TV schtick and the fact that his team doesn't understand that is why they're losing.
I'm just sitting here hoping that my mail in ballot arrives. The USPS here has a crappy track record of actually getting my mail to me. This was before the recent kefuffle of sabotage...
Hope you didn't wait too long. If you don't get the ballot in time, I'd still vote in person if I were you. Double-mask if you want to be safer, but I wouldn't stay home for this election unless I was on my deathbed....
I'm high risk, and my wife and son are higher risk, who I am also the caretaker of. Its one thing to risk my health, its entirely another to risk theirs.
In any other election I'd say not worth the risk.This one, get an N-95, double-wrap and vote dude.
Edit: I'm not in any way trying to get you to risk your life and those in your circle, just stating that this may very well very well be the most important election you ever vote in, so mitigating your risk to close to nill is better than not voting imho. I'm not worried about Covid-19 though so no judgement from me if you do what's you feel is right for you and yours, mate...
Trump continues his crusade in search of votes from extremists by refusing to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory. He initially justified that by saying he knew nothing about it and couldn't trust what he was told by the moderator, but then went on to say "I know nothing about it, I do know they are very much against pedophilia, they fight it very hard."
It would be astonishing if QAnon supporters don't take that as an endorsement of their position, in the same way as the Proud Boys did recently. That may solidify Trump's position with those voters, but as a group they were already solidly his. On the other hand it's just another nail in the coffin for his chances of extending his support from his base.
If Trump were to win, I dread to think what would happen over the next 4 years. He's continuing to set up a position where extremists will expect him to take action in support of their aims. If he does so, that's a direct problem. Even if he doesn't though many people will be motivated to take action themselves - for instance because they believe the forces of the deep state are constraining Trump and he needs their help to do what he 'clearly' wants to do, but can't.
I'm just sitting here hoping that my mail in ballot arrives. The USPS here has a crappy track record of actually getting my mail to me. This was before the recent kefuffle of sabotage...
Hope you didn't wait too long. If you don't get the ballot in time, I'd still vote in person if I were you. Double-mask if you want to be safer, but I wouldn't stay home for this election unless I was on my deathbed....
I'm high risk, and my wife and son are higher risk, who I am also the caretaker of. Its one thing to risk my health, its entirely another to risk theirs.
In any other election I'd say not worth the risk.This one, get an N-95, double-wrap and vote dude.
Edit: I'm not in any way trying to get you to risk your life and those in your circle, just stating that this may very well very well be the most important election you ever vote in, so mitigating your risk to close to nill is better than not voting imho. I'm not worried about Covid-19 though so no judgement from me if you do what's you feel is right for you and yours, mate...
Just wanna throw out that voting by mail is fine. There's not a lot of good empirical evidence that a mail-in vote is going to be thrown out. In-person votes get rejected as well. There's absolutely nothing lesser about voting by mail (or in person early even), from a campaign winning perspective. Virtually every campaign (left or right) in a region where it's an option has always encouraged to get their supporters to vote by mail.
This is even including Trump's bluster, which is largely just that.
I'm just sitting here hoping that my mail in ballot arrives. The USPS here has a crappy track record of actually getting my mail to me. This was before the recent kefuffle of sabotage...
Hope you didn't wait too long. If you don't get the ballot in time, I'd still vote in person if I were you. Double-mask if you want to be safer, but I wouldn't stay home for this election unless I was on my deathbed....
I'm high risk, and my wife and son are higher risk, who I am also the caretaker of. Its one thing to risk my health, its entirely another to risk theirs.
In any other election I'd say not worth the risk.This one, get an N-95, double-wrap and vote dude.
Edit: I'm not in any way trying to get you to risk your life and those in your circle, just stating that this may very well very well be the most important election you ever vote in, so mitigating your risk to close to nill is better than not voting imho. I'm not worried about Covid-19 though so no judgement from me if you do what's you feel is right for you and yours, mate...
Just wanna throw out that voting by mail is fine. There's not a lot of good empirical evidence that a mail-in vote is going to be thrown out. In-person votes get rejected as well. There's absolutely nothing lesser about voting by mail (or in person early even), from a campaign winning perspective. Virtually every campaign (left or right) in a region where it's an option has always encouraged to get their supporters to vote by mail.
This is even including Trump's bluster, which is largely just that.
To be fair, I believe there is a small increased chance of a rejected vote via mail in rather than in person. I think it's like 1% for in person, and 2% for mail in (but that sometimes goes up under certain circumstances). Of course, there's a correlating thought that voting by mail increases voter turnout, so the net gain is positive at an election wide level.
Trump repeated lies tonight about finding thousands of ballots in dumpsters all with votes for him. He's desperate to create a narrative that the election is being stolen from him - which is absurd since all available polling points to a Biden blowout.
I'm just sitting here hoping that my mail in ballot arrives. The USPS here has a crappy track record of actually getting my mail to me. This was before the recent kefuffle of sabotage...
Hope you didn't wait too long. If you don't get the ballot in time, I'd still vote in person if I were you. Double-mask if you want to be safer, but I wouldn't stay home for this election unless I was on my deathbed....
I'm high risk, and my wife and son are higher risk, who I am also the caretaker of. Its one thing to risk my health, its entirely another to risk theirs.
In any other election I'd say not worth the risk.This one, get an N-95, double-wrap and vote dude.
Edit: I'm not in any way trying to get you to risk your life and those in your circle, just stating that this may very well very well be the most important election you ever vote in, so mitigating your risk to close to nill is better than not voting imho. I'm not worried about Covid-19 though so no judgement from me if you do what's you feel is right for you and yours, mate...
Just wanna throw out that voting by mail is fine. There's not a lot of good empirical evidence that a mail-in vote is going to be thrown out. In-person votes get rejected as well. There's absolutely nothing lesser about voting by mail (or in person early even), from a campaign winning perspective. Virtually every campaign (left or right) in a region where it's an option has always encouraged to get their supporters to vote by mail.
This is even including Trump's bluster, which is largely just that.
However, if you don't receive your mail-in ballot in time, there is 0% chance your vote gets counted if you don't show up in-person. That's not an option for me in this contentious election cycle as long as I can mitigate my risk for voting at the ballot box. That's all I'm saying...
I've come across a few articles and radio programs lately talking about how people get sucked into conspiracy theories (like QAnon, which was what reminded me). One of the points that particularly struck me from those is that this commonly happens when social media content originating from QAnon groups bleeds across into the mainstream. That can happen for instance as a result of people searching for information on an almost unrelated topic, but getting presented with this stuff because it's been prioritized by the algorithms used by social media companies (as clickbait stories tend to be). If a reader then goes specifically searching for confirmation, they can quickly get sucked into a bubble of self-reinforcing content.
This is relevant to recent discussion because it casts doubt on the idea there should be no censorship of content on social media platforms. In a perfect world such censorship would be unnecessary because everyone using the platforms would be aware of the tricks used to promote conspiracy material and seek specific confirmation of that outside the bubble (in most cases of course not finding that). However, we're certainly not in that perfect world at the moment.
While, in principle, I don't think there should be total freedom of expression on social media, I'm not sure how any restrictions should be regulated. Much of the reason for current problems is to do with the commercial interests of the platforms that push them in the direction of promoting controversial material. Even if you believed therefore that the owners of the platforms were politically disinterested, there are obvious problems in the self-policing approach. Setting up some sort of state censorship though looks extremely unpalatable, so it may be that self-policing is the least-worst option.
I didn't watch either town hall tonight. Like alot of people, I was fairly pissed Trump was just rewarded with equal time for pulling out of a debate because he contracted COVID-19 and didn't want to adhere to the rules. But my understanding is people did alot of channel flipping.
First off, the Trump campaign severely miscalculated by going all in on "Joe Biden is senile", because he clearly isn't, and they just keep saying that he is anyway, which makes them look even more ridiculous. Biden's best answer tonight was to the question "what does it say about the country if you lose??" to which he answered "it probably means I'm a lousy candidate". Which is a pretty great answer, and probably means he isn't, in fact, a lousy candidate.
Secondly, NBC made a shameless ratings grab because of Trump's whining (again, HE is the one who got himself sick, and the debate commission was simply protecting the other participants by going remote), and plenty of people at the network think it was pretty disgusting to give in to him. But the Trump team capped the night off by celebrating how Trump had "defeated" moderator Savannah Guthrie. If you are someone who despises the media in the way necessary to respond to that declaration, you are already a Trump voter. To everyone else, in the midst of the current situation, it's childish nonsense.
Luckily enough I was able to go to the courthouse today and request my mail in ballot. I filled it out right there and handed it in. The other option was walking upstairs after I had my mail in ballot and putting it in the box that the security people people had when you went into the the building. I thought that it was pretty impressive how much they want everyone to vote.
I am not sure how much this election has to do with politics anymore, it is deeper and a bit scary. Sorry, I am not that intelligent or as politically invested as many here, I do know fear though and I have never felt it more than the last four years.
I hope you all vote, in whatever way is best for you.
I didn't watch either town hall tonight. Like alot of people, I was fairly pissed Trump was just rewarded with equal time for pulling out of a debate because he contracted COVID-19 and didn't want to adhere to the rules. But my understanding is people did alot of channel flipping.
First off, the Trump campaign severely miscalculated by going all in on "Joe Biden is senile", because he clearly isn't, and they just keep saying that he is anyway, which makes them look even more ridiculous. Biden's best answer tonight was to the question "what does it say about the country if you lose??" to which he answered "it probably means I'm a lousy candidate". Which is a pretty great answer, and probably means he isn't, in fact, a lousy candidate.
Secondly, NBC made a shameless ratings grab because of Trump's whining (again, HE is the one who got himself sick, and the debate commission was simply protecting the other participants by going remote), and plenty of people at the network think it was pretty disgusting to give in to him. But the Trump team capped the night off by celebrating how Trump had "defeated" moderator Savannah Guthrie. If you are someone who despises the media in the way necessary to respond to that declaration, you are already a Trump voter. To everyone else, in the midst of the current situation, it's childish nonsense.
Didnt watch them either, but caught some highlights. Sounds like Biden had a really, really good answer on the Crime Bill - essentially apologizing while blaming the states for misapplying it. That's a coherent and good answer. On the other side, Trump's QAnon answer, as referenced by @Grond0 - is just completely terrible.
It sounds like one narrative that come out of this is that by putting the two Town Halls head to head, viewers were able to compare them and found Biden's to be far less ugly/weird/annoying. I dont think this night helped Trump in the slightest.
I'm just sitting here hoping that my mail in ballot arrives. The USPS here has a crappy track record of actually getting my mail to me. This was before the recent kefuffle of sabotage...
Hope you didn't wait too long. If you don't get the ballot in time, I'd still vote in person if I were you. Double-mask if you want to be safer, but I wouldn't stay home for this election unless I was on my deathbed....
I'm high risk, and my wife and son are higher risk, who I am also the caretaker of. Its one thing to risk my health, its entirely another to risk theirs.
In any other election I'd say not worth the risk.This one, get an N-95, double-wrap and vote dude.
Edit: I'm not in any way trying to get you to risk your life and those in your circle, just stating that this may very well very well be the most important election you ever vote in, so mitigating your risk to close to nill is better than not voting imho. I'm not worried about Covid-19 though so no judgement from me if you do what's you feel is right for you and yours, mate...
Just wanna throw out that voting by mail is fine. There's not a lot of good empirical evidence that a mail-in vote is going to be thrown out. In-person votes get rejected as well. There's absolutely nothing lesser about voting by mail (or in person early even), from a campaign winning perspective. Virtually every campaign (left or right) in a region where it's an option has always encouraged to get their supporters to vote by mail.
This is even including Trump's bluster, which is largely just that.
However, if you don't receive your mail-in ballot in time, there is 0% chance your vote gets counted if you don't show up in-person. That's not an option for me in this contentious election cycle as long as I can mitigate my risk for voting at the ballot box. That's all I'm saying...
I'm not endangering my family because someone online told me to vote in person anyway. Its pretty easy to tell someone else to make the sacrifice...
Meanwhile, here in a state that has been running all-mail elections for ten years now ...
My ballot arrived yesterday. The state and county information pamphlets arrived a few days earlier - statements regarding candidates and initiative measures, information on how to vote.
The options for voting:
- Fill your ballot out and put it in the mail, postmarked by election day. No stamp needed; postage is prepaid by the state.
- Fill your ballot out and put it in an official drop box. Addresses for all of these drop boxes are in the county pamphlet; there are about 70 in King County, of which a third are in the city of Seattle. Oddly enough, my local drop box (which I used in the primary) has a typo in its listed address - a wrong digit in the zip code.
- For those that need assistance such as large print or audio, there are in-person voting centers. The county elections office does this weekdays during work hours for three weeks before the election, and they open up a few more places on Election Day and the Saturday and Monday before it.
- If English isn't your primary language, you can request the election materials in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Well, those are the options for King County; the exact languages available presumably vary based on the local population's needs.
- If your ballot is lost or damaged, there's an online system that lets you print out a replacement, and even mark it before printing if you want to.
And then, once you send your ballot, you can track it online to see if it's received and recognized, or if there's a problem that needs to be fixed like a signature mismatch.
That's what things look like when the party that supports making it easier to vote is in charge of most of the state government.
I'll probably take at least a few days before sending mine out. I still have some decisions to make, like my local legislative race. No Republicans in that race; it's between the incumbent and a far left challenger, neither of which I voted for in the primary.
Dropped mine off today. I will reiterate the same things I did when I got the first one back in June for another local election, which is that the amount of effort that would be required to engage in widespread election fraud by mail would be impossible. Even duplicating the correct thickness of the actual ballot and the envelopes themselves would require a professional counterfeiting operation.
My ballot came in that same day I was worried about it arriving on time. My state sent ballot request forms to every registered voter about 3 months ago so that requesting one would be easy. They require postage now though, I don't think they did 4 years ago.
Vote by mail is a bit of a pain here if you don't have access to a printer typically. You can download and print off a ballot request to send in.
My ballot came in that same day I was worried about it arriving on time. My state sent ballot request forms to every registered voter about 3 months ago so that requesting one would be easy. They require postage now though, I don't think they did 4 years ago.
Vote by mail is a bit of a pain here if you don't have access to a printer typically. You can download and print off a ballot request to send in.
Yeah, all mail-in voting should be as easy as @jmerry describes. This is the 21st century for God's sake! I'll be voting in-person myself but I live in a small suburban town so hopefully it'll be as boring as it usually is. I guess if there's a bunch of gun-toting militia members outside I'll just say "Make America Great Again!" then go in and vote for Biden... Fuck 'em!
Early voting totals from across the nation are off the charts high. This may be another area where the Trump team WAY overplayed their hand. The attacks on mail in voting (popular) and the Post Office (even more popular) seem to not only have had the effect of making people get this done as early as possible, but it may be that they took those attacks on their right to vote as a personal affront. Given his approval rating is hovering around 42%, I have a tough time believing massive floods of people heading to the polls early is a sign of support for the President.
Comments
‘Didn’t want to arrest him...’
So much for up holding the constitution. The constitution doesn’t end after the second amendment.
I’d be investigating if I was a democrat representative. I’d be investigating if I was a Republican.
~
Any way. That Hunter Biden story. Allegedly the New York Post did the unethical thing of not blacking out Hunter’s email so it does go against twitter’s terms of service.
It also goes against journalism ethics and is one of the first things taught in college and the post did it on purpose. The story is a) gaining more traction than it would have gained if it wasn’t for this faux pas, b) How many sycophants are now blasting that email with death threats and other stupid things?
This whole ordeal played nicely into Trump’s team plans. That isn’t a coincidence.
I'm old enough to remember when Republicans disliked the idea of extrajudicial killings.
In other news - Looks like Youtube is ripping down a lot of the QAnon stuff. Specifically the stuff designed to be targeted at a malleable audience. That's good. We were talking about censorship the other day, but I think removing conspiratorial content designed to be harmful to its audience is a good thing.
The Hunter Biden stuff seems to be falling apart. It's looking more and more dubious that the laptops were left at a repair shop, and more like he was directly hacked to release damning photos/emails. The issue with this new twist is: Once we know the hacking is targeted, the information we receive from it becomes less reliable. Why should I believe the emails are not forged?
Edit - I'm not turning this conversation to Wikieaks, but the reason why their leaking of Podesta's emails and the such was a big deal was because they had a lot of credit for apolitical document releases. They lost that credibility immensely upon working directly with Roger Stone on behalf of the Trump Campaign. If Wikileaks dropped a new bombshell tomorrow, it would mean a good deal less than 4 years ago. NYPost has a similar issue: They arent trusted in a way that lends credibility to the story.
Funny how narratives change. If this was some republican it would be non-stop complaining about the scourge of "white supremacist fascist violence domestic terrorism" but when it's a Good Guy on the side of Right and Justice slaying the Great Evil it's all about how police aren't nice enough to him.
Hilarious how Vice News actually interviewed this guy to try to paint him as the innocent victim and it got massively downvoted. Ordinary, non ideological people see through this. The media supports murdering republicans, full stop. They did not even give this much kindness to Nick Sandmann.
If you can't see the double standards in this country at this point you are just in denial.
Even his own sister said he wouldn't go quietly, but don't let that stop the purely partisan narratives.
“That shocked me that it was the police, at first ... but then I thought about it,” Reinoehl’s sister said. “There was no way that the Michael I knew would have gone quietly, although that would have been the right thing to do.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/09/sister-of-portland-murder-suspect-michael-reinoehl-urges-peace-after-his-fatal-shooting-by-police-in-washington.html
Moreover, there are 21 witnesses who say the Marshalls did not identify themselves before opening fire. But this is now becoming a pattern. Just like with Breonna Taylor, one witness who is a compete outlier to two dozen other accounts is given more credible weight simply because they are telling the story cops want:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/14/no-police-warning-in-antifa-activist-shooting-witnesses
I'm not sure where this idea that he should have just been allowed to go on his merry way is coming from. That is not even remotely the issue. The issue is cops being allowed to just break into apartments in the middle of the night or open fire on murder suspects without even announcing who they are or what they are doing. And, again, the scary thing is that tons of people think that's absolutely peachy and above board.
We can, however - point out that the the president saying Federal Marshalls had no intention of taking a man in alive is problematic.
I'll put my usual disclaimer that I don't see much of the US media, but the picture I do get is not the same as you're painting:
- I've seen more comment in the media defending Kyle Rittenhouse than doing that to Reinoehl.
- I've seen no comment supporting murdering Republicans.
In relation to police actions more generally, there's been plenty of criticism in this thread of police killings in other cases where the official police line was not the same as that offered by video evidence or witnesses. It should be therefore no surprise to see that same sort of criticism in this case. I don't think that reflects a party political view though, but just a desire to see the law operate in practice the way it's supposed to in theory irrespective of who the person killed was.
It's perhaps also worth providing a bit of context here on the coverage of terrorism generally by the media and why you might indeed have seen more coverage of right-wing terrorism. As has been said before, right-wing violence in the US seems to be a greater problem than left-wing violence. It's caused more deaths in the past and the greater continuing potential for future problems from right-wing extremists has been highlighted by US intelligence agencies for at least 20 years now - see for instance this recent report by Homeland Security or this FBI testimony to Congress in 2002 (if you Google for terrorist threats you can find plenty more examples over the years). These agencies (despite Trump's rhetoric), themselves lean heavily to the right - unsurprising for organizations that are largely white, middle-aged and with strong links to the military - so I would find it difficult to believe that they have been involved in a decades long attempt to deliberately skew the perception of where terrorist threats are in reality coming from - even if the death count did not support their threat assessments ...
"Here?"
"Here!"
*gunshots*
Media: hE wAs iNnOceNt aNd tHe pOliCe wEre tHe baD GuYs
And of course they call the murder victim "far right". Nobody else is an extremist, certainly not the murderer. Just the victim.
These sociopaths make my blood boil. They will glorify murderers and slander the dead.
I haven't heard anyone here claim he was innocent. Based on what we know, he was almost certainly guilty. We aren't even having the same conversation. The question is did police go to their confrontation with him with NO intent to arrest, but to simply have him eliminated without a trial. And based on 21 witnesses, and the President himself, that was precisely the intent.
A trial would be the place where that video is presented, it is determined that he was, in fact, the man who uttered those words and shot the gun, and a jury of 12 people deciding whether or not that is the case. In which case, he would have then went to prison for the rest of his life if found guilty. Overwhelming witness testimony suggests there was no intention of taking him alive, and that the goal was execution on the street. Whether or not HE executed someone in the same manner is immaterial to the issue at hand. That is what a court room is for.
If we're just killing SUSPECTED murderers as a matter of policy to bypass the other 2/3 of the legal process, then why have any rules at all about anything?? The answer, of course, is that we don't have any rules. Cops just make them up as they go along, and get away with it 90% of the time.
Again, I'm not the one you should have an issue with for claiming they did what they did. You should talk to their boss (as these were federal agents). He is the one who just admitted they went there to kill him.
I'm high risk, and my wife and son are higher risk, who I am also the caretaker of. Its one thing to risk my health, its entirely another to risk theirs.
No the Portland shooter was the one who killed a person in self defence, or defence of another individual.
The person who was killed was part of a gang of individuals filmed spraying Bear mace at peaceful protestors from the back of pickup trucks and the leader advised them to carry concealed weapons. So no idea where you’re getting ‘execution style’ although I can guess it’s from someone from that caravan of alleged choir boys.
And we now have it from the horses mouth that compliance wasn’t a concern for the Marshall’s arresting him.
And the story of him firing upon them with an automatic rifle fell apart in less than 24hrs after such a gun was not recovered from the scene.
So people can attempt to spin this anyway they want. End of the story is that he was killed before he was put up for a fair trial and the actions of the police were highly suspect especially contrasted with that moron who killed 2 people and now has the Right funding his defence.
You're not accurately characterizing what the mainstream reporting has been. And honestly, you're not even making the effort to take in the arguments being presented to you from other posters here.
This isn't complicated, and it's something any small government conservative should grasp. There's a perfectly sound reason why people focus on misdeeds by state authorities over misdeeds by private citizens.
You can chalk half of Biden's lead up to COVID-19. You can chalk the other half up to people sick to death of having to live through this bullshit day after day. They are fundamentally worn out on his reality TV schtick and the fact that his team doesn't understand that is why they're losing.
In any other election I'd say not worth the risk.This one, get an N-95, double-wrap and vote dude.
Edit: I'm not in any way trying to get you to risk your life and those in your circle, just stating that this may very well very well be the most important election you ever vote in, so mitigating your risk to close to nill is better than not voting imho. I'm not worried about Covid-19 though so no judgement from me if you do what's you feel is right for you and yours, mate...
It would be astonishing if QAnon supporters don't take that as an endorsement of their position, in the same way as the Proud Boys did recently. That may solidify Trump's position with those voters, but as a group they were already solidly his. On the other hand it's just another nail in the coffin for his chances of extending his support from his base.
If Trump were to win, I dread to think what would happen over the next 4 years. He's continuing to set up a position where extremists will expect him to take action in support of their aims. If he does so, that's a direct problem. Even if he doesn't though many people will be motivated to take action themselves - for instance because they believe the forces of the deep state are constraining Trump and he needs their help to do what he 'clearly' wants to do, but can't.
Just wanna throw out that voting by mail is fine. There's not a lot of good empirical evidence that a mail-in vote is going to be thrown out. In-person votes get rejected as well. There's absolutely nothing lesser about voting by mail (or in person early even), from a campaign winning perspective. Virtually every campaign (left or right) in a region where it's an option has always encouraged to get their supporters to vote by mail.
This is even including Trump's bluster, which is largely just that.
To be fair, I believe there is a small increased chance of a rejected vote via mail in rather than in person. I think it's like 1% for in person, and 2% for mail in (but that sometimes goes up under certain circumstances). Of course, there's a correlating thought that voting by mail increases voter turnout, so the net gain is positive at an election wide level.
Trump repeated lies tonight about finding thousands of ballots in dumpsters all with votes for him. He's desperate to create a narrative that the election is being stolen from him - which is absurd since all available polling points to a Biden blowout.
However, if you don't receive your mail-in ballot in time, there is 0% chance your vote gets counted if you don't show up in-person. That's not an option for me in this contentious election cycle as long as I can mitigate my risk for voting at the ballot box. That's all I'm saying...
This is relevant to recent discussion because it casts doubt on the idea there should be no censorship of content on social media platforms. In a perfect world such censorship would be unnecessary because everyone using the platforms would be aware of the tricks used to promote conspiracy material and seek specific confirmation of that outside the bubble (in most cases of course not finding that). However, we're certainly not in that perfect world at the moment.
While, in principle, I don't think there should be total freedom of expression on social media, I'm not sure how any restrictions should be regulated. Much of the reason for current problems is to do with the commercial interests of the platforms that push them in the direction of promoting controversial material. Even if you believed therefore that the owners of the platforms were politically disinterested, there are obvious problems in the self-policing approach. Setting up some sort of state censorship though looks extremely unpalatable, so it may be that self-policing is the least-worst option.
First off, the Trump campaign severely miscalculated by going all in on "Joe Biden is senile", because he clearly isn't, and they just keep saying that he is anyway, which makes them look even more ridiculous. Biden's best answer tonight was to the question "what does it say about the country if you lose??" to which he answered "it probably means I'm a lousy candidate". Which is a pretty great answer, and probably means he isn't, in fact, a lousy candidate.
Secondly, NBC made a shameless ratings grab because of Trump's whining (again, HE is the one who got himself sick, and the debate commission was simply protecting the other participants by going remote), and plenty of people at the network think it was pretty disgusting to give in to him. But the Trump team capped the night off by celebrating how Trump had "defeated" moderator Savannah Guthrie. If you are someone who despises the media in the way necessary to respond to that declaration, you are already a Trump voter. To everyone else, in the midst of the current situation, it's childish nonsense.
I am not sure how much this election has to do with politics anymore, it is deeper and a bit scary. Sorry, I am not that intelligent or as politically invested as many here, I do know fear though and I have never felt it more than the last four years.
I hope you all vote, in whatever way is best for you.
Didnt watch them either, but caught some highlights. Sounds like Biden had a really, really good answer on the Crime Bill - essentially apologizing while blaming the states for misapplying it. That's a coherent and good answer. On the other side, Trump's QAnon answer, as referenced by @Grond0 - is just completely terrible.
It sounds like one narrative that come out of this is that by putting the two Town Halls head to head, viewers were able to compare them and found Biden's to be far less ugly/weird/annoying. I dont think this night helped Trump in the slightest.
I'm not endangering my family because someone online told me to vote in person anyway. Its pretty easy to tell someone else to make the sacrifice...
My ballot arrived yesterday. The state and county information pamphlets arrived a few days earlier - statements regarding candidates and initiative measures, information on how to vote.
The options for voting:
- Fill your ballot out and put it in the mail, postmarked by election day. No stamp needed; postage is prepaid by the state.
- Fill your ballot out and put it in an official drop box. Addresses for all of these drop boxes are in the county pamphlet; there are about 70 in King County, of which a third are in the city of Seattle. Oddly enough, my local drop box (which I used in the primary) has a typo in its listed address - a wrong digit in the zip code.
- For those that need assistance such as large print or audio, there are in-person voting centers. The county elections office does this weekdays during work hours for three weeks before the election, and they open up a few more places on Election Day and the Saturday and Monday before it.
- If English isn't your primary language, you can request the election materials in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Well, those are the options for King County; the exact languages available presumably vary based on the local population's needs.
- If your ballot is lost or damaged, there's an online system that lets you print out a replacement, and even mark it before printing if you want to.
And then, once you send your ballot, you can track it online to see if it's received and recognized, or if there's a problem that needs to be fixed like a signature mismatch.
That's what things look like when the party that supports making it easier to vote is in charge of most of the state government.
I'll probably take at least a few days before sending mine out. I still have some decisions to make, like my local legislative race. No Republicans in that race; it's between the incumbent and a far left challenger, neither of which I voted for in the primary.
Vote by mail is a bit of a pain here if you don't have access to a printer typically. You can download and print off a ballot request to send in.
Yeah, all mail-in voting should be as easy as @jmerry describes. This is the 21st century for God's sake! I'll be voting in-person myself but I live in a small suburban town so hopefully it'll be as boring as it usually is. I guess if there's a bunch of gun-toting militia members outside I'll just say "Make America Great Again!" then go in and vote for Biden... Fuck 'em!
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-suggests-he-may-leave-country-biden-election-2020-10
This should be a huge warning sign to any Republican still stupid enough to go sticking their neck out for Trump - he doesn't care about you.
Loyalty only goes one way. He's ready to run and leave you holding the bag.