Devonshire
1yr ago
The free speech group has overlap with the right these days out of a common enemy, but I have no illusions that things would change if the right grabbed control of institutions.
Devonshire
1yr ago
I guess if you see everyone in two clearly defined camps.
I just see one gang going around town inflicting violence against randos, and then a second gang is showing up, saying "it is bad that the first gang is inflicting violence against randos," and then inflicting violence against some randos themselves while saying stories about how this is all part of some grand plan to reduce total violence in the world.
Or they just like inflicting violence. It is fun, after all.
Devonshire
1yr ago
avoiding Just World fallacy and all the other things torture apologists have said on this very thread
Hey. Asshole.
I think it is good to avoid torture. It is an excellent thing to do.
Do not do it from a position of lies, especially putting lies in my mouth.
Devonshire
1yr ago
It would not help this problem but voters often move just on a pathos of "oh yeah we should clean things up."
Devonshire
1yr ago
Voting systems are supposed to prioritize clear answers, even over correct answers.
Tell someone they can vote, or not. Getting that wrong either way is bad, but the answer given absolutely has to be consistent.
Republican Commissions to find fraud
The guy I responded to said that Republicans were "unable to perform any investigation into it for 30+ years."
There are absolutely investigations into fraud. Your very sentence implies their existence!
I do NOT think that, as many Democrats say, that "looking for fraud and not finding any means we can stop looking."
But I also do NOT think that "if we look for fraud and and do not find enough to flip an election, that means we were just not permitted to investigate hard enough."
Devonshire
1yr ago
Canada, the UK, France, you have to show ID and prove with physical documents your eligibility to vote
I mean, I already said I wanted Voter ID.
So. Yeah.
If someone has their address change and they file the change-of-address form and they get mailed a new voter registration card at their new address, the bureaucracy better not come back after they vote and say "oh wait we double-checked our records and the form showed up 3 days late we never should have sent you that now we fuck you in the ass."
Devonshire
1yr ago
Cool, but I am not sure why this was a response to me.
Devonshire
1yr ago
It is really hard for someone to look at their outgroup do something controversial and say "oh yes, that was a good idea he just did."
(I do not trust the ingroup much on this, either.)
Like all politicians, DeSantis does lots of things, some of them work and some of them do not.
Devonshire
1yr ago
was unable to perform any investigation into it for 30+ years.
As much as I am annoyed by the Democrats saying "there is no almost no fraud in the places it is easiest to look and someone would have to have shit for brains to try to commit fraud", it is the same annoyance when Republicans forget their own commissions set up to exactly find fraud and then do not find any.
It is like there is no room for nuance at all and it is all signalling.
Devonshire
1yr ago
Election security is very important. But if people ask if they can vote and get told they can vote, arresting them seems to not help much. This is not getting us Voter ID. It just looks like the bureaucracy telling people one day they are doing things okay and the next "lol get fukt."
Devonshire
1yr ago
Half of Broward County’s election precincts reported more ballots cast than the number of voters.
I stopped reading here because I had to look this up.
This is not "there are 4000 voters in this county, but 4100 ballots were cast."
This is "212 people were logged as submitting a vote at this voting center, but 213 ballots were in the machines."
So someone goofed up, or someone stuffed a ballot. This is distributed across 293 precincts, with a total of 885 extra ballots.
'strangely,' Broward and Palm Beach County had no discrepancies or delays in the 2020 election
It sounds like Florida fixed the problems. Which is what is supposed to happen when an auditor shows problems! That is not "strange" at all!
The systems to keep the books aligned have gotten much better. The election I observed in Florida (very boring!) had numbers on each ballot so if one just "showed up" it would be recognized. Was it someone playing games or was it normal human error? Good question. The new system stops both accidentals and purposeful unaccounted ballots, so either way I am happy it is in place.
Oh, and lets not forget that Rick Scott very directly claimed the election was being stolen. He and Stacey Abrams were two years ahead of Trump on applying this tactic.
This is important to remember.
Devonshire
1yr ago
This is so obvious I feel dumb for not noticing it. And Obama left the DNC amazingly unsupported by the end of his presidency, too. You kind of expect Trump to not give a shit about the GOP, but surely Obama cares about the institution of his party, right?
(I think Obama kept his email fundraising list out of the DNC's hands, but I am having trouble googling this to confirm.)
Devonshire
1yr ago
My model was not Afghanistan. It was Crimea. Russia would roll over it, the West would be Really Mad, but then shrug because what can you do?
Devonshire
1yr ago
Massively flawed candidates absolutely can get close to winning if they have found ways to use back-channels to force out opposition before elections start.
Devonshire
1yr ago
It seems like bad-logistics was something that Putin could have known if he had bothered to check.
Devonshire
1yr ago
It is hard enough for people to update with new information. To actually update with new information and remember they used to have the incorrect information is rare.
I absolutely thought that Kiev would fall and fall quickly. (Should I have known this based on information I had available at the time? Good question.)
Devonshire
1yr ago
I'm not saying Bush's use of torture was stupid
I am not saying it was, either. But I am saying the anti-torture movement did not want to have an uncomfortable discussion that we were leaving a useful tool on the table by declining to torture, because "it does not work anyway."
But life is not a morality play. Sometimes making the morally right decision leaves you worse off. That is why it is called the moral decision. If you pay nothing for your principles they are not principles.
Nobody is questioning that torture is useful when what you want is a false confession, or even a true one
See, now, this is even worse. Torture can absolutely get confirmable information out of a person. That is extremely useful in a conflict. Pretending it is just useful for false confessions to manufacture a war is refusing to face reality.
An anti-torture movement that is built the idea that torture does not work is built on a foundation of lies and will crumble to dust in the first strong wind.
An anti-torture movement that says "yes torture works, but we refuse to do it, because those are our principles" is healthy in the long term.
The argument the anti-torture crowd are making is not "Torture is useless for all purposes."
That is the exact argument I reliably hear from them. Bringing up that some torture gets useful intelligence generates a lot of hostility and denial.
(EDIT I got called a "torture apologist" for saying that some torture gets useful intelligence by this very person, so, yep, this conversation went exactly the way I thought it would.)
The anti-torture movement has been colonized nearly completely by people opposed to Bush's GWOT and they want him to be both stupid and evil.
Devonshire
1yr ago
It is the underside of the lid of the trashcan that I care about. My current trash can has a layer of disgusting grime around the door to the battery compartment.
It is the lid I am talking about. The ones I have seen are not a solid piece of plastic (from the underside, at least, where I need it) and are full of seams and nooks and crannies.
Maybe it could be made with a peelable liner or something.
Devonshire
1yr ago
The government can make you marriage legal, but no one can make other people actually respect you.
Devonshire
1yr ago
The ball was moved from "torturing people for information" to "torturing random people for random facts."
We can decide "we will not torture even though it works." That is a principle.
"We do not torture it does not work anyway" is a Just World Fallacy.
Devonshire
1yr ago
I opened https://www.themotte.org/post/120/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week just now and it worked.
You need multiple people. To stuff a ballot box in a precinct, you would need at least an accomplice stuffing the books, which are explicitly in the control of another person.
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