Meanwhile, T rump has abused the power of his office to force a foreign power to provide info that T rump can use in his campaign against his opponents.
That is much worse than any regular “quid pro quo”. Tit for tat, this for that, transactions are a standard part of human life. It is that the “tit for tat” is ALSO extortion and ALSO undermines national interests and ALSO breaks campaign finance laws (tho the latter is no big whoop, I guess - but the 1st 2 damn sure are BIG whoops).
One of the several dishonest tactics that he Trumpists are using to try to effectively counter the impeachment process, is to flat out lie and say Obama did the same crime that he (T rump) has been found out about, recently (i.e., trying to bribe foreign countries into helping him politically by using the aid money we have for that country held back, til they comply with his corrupt demand). That is a big fat lie. But then, that’s what FOX news and the Trumpists do - lie, lie, lie.)
In grade school, when we learned about Hitler, they really drilled into our heads that we needed to know this story so it wouldn’t happen again.In my grade school we learned a lot about Russia, about how they were our enemy and communism was pure evil. How did that work out for us?
In my grade school we learned a lot about Russia, about how they were our enemy and communism was pure evil. How did that work out for us?I was open to the idea of communism, in it's purest form, but as I got older I realized it's pretty hard to implement in a pure form. But I think I knew that from the beginning since Marx and Lenin addressed the difficulty of starting a communist country in a capitalist world. There's always that temptation to give up your equality for a little bit of hedonism. So I can put those younger aspirations down to naivete.
What I didn’t see coming was this sudden shift even by people older than me to trusting Russia, admiring Russia or at least not considering them a threat. It’s not even a lack of awareness of history, it’s ignoring what they just did last year or last week. The people who are doing that now were the same people who were so worried that the hippies and socialists were leading us toward a Russian take over.
I often wonder about electronic voting being secure. -- WilliamThis can be confusing, since I hear of studies that say a handful of actual voting fraud cases have been prosecuted. There is no evidence for massive illegal ballots. On the other hand, I have not been convinced that a purely electronic system has all the proper accounting trails. I'm sure someone is checking the software and hardware, but hiding something in there would not be that hard. Of course, it has the usual flaw of any conspiracy theory, the number of people needed to make it work and how to keep all of them quiet.
The only way I can think of to take care of that is that each voter is assigned a “voter number”, giving them an account they can log onto to check how their votes were tabulated. So at any time I, for example, could check my entire voting history and report any discrepancies.
The problem with that, however, is then the government has this information about you in an easy to access format. And history has shown that if politicians have a database then politicians are going to get into that database. Social Security numbers were supposed to ONLY be used for the collection and distribution of Social Security. But for some reason I needed to give mine to get my gas turned on here a little over 13 years ago. And people used to ask for it before they would take a check from me (I had long hair in my youth) and write it right on that check. And voter registration is ONLY for the purpose of voting. Oh, and jury duty. Oh, and political mailings. Oh, and so North Carolina can see how all the black people voted to make their votes go away in the next election.
Sooner or later we’re going to get another Trump in office, only the next one won’t be an idiot like this one is. Then we will suffer greatly for all the data we have allowed them to collect on us. Imagine if Hitler had had this much information about German residents during WWII. Their voting records, DNA databases, complete records of their online habits, a history of everyone they ever called, how long they talked, their text messages, the ability to listen in on any call with no notice, GPS coordinates for any moment of the day, complete bank records, spending habits… I think Germany would have been a much scarier place back in those days. It may not be in our lifetimes, but we are heading there because we keep giving up freedom for safety.
The state governments already have databases on voters (voter registration roles and tabulations of when you voted). I think the T rump administration was trying for awhile to get that information from the states, all compiled by the Federal govt. (that would have been a step towards totalitarianism, I suspect).
Maybe we should mandate a paper ballot in all federal elections. In the old days there was the fallback to recounting physical ballots if a problem was suspected.
Note: I don’t think that T rump is less of a threat than some potential future, more erudite, and mentally organized autocrat wannabe. T rump has special “idiot-savant” political abilities. Yet is still so lacking in other needed characteristics of a POTUS, that he is likely to make more dangerous mistakes than a more mentally capable aspiring dictator.
TimB,
I agree with all of you guys. I try not to be paranoid about electronic voting, but I sure would feel better about paper ballots. Lausten is correct. There has never been a case of massive fraud in voting, except in one case in Ga. involving absentee ballots.
I have a lady friend who volunteers every election to help out in our small community. In our state we have photo I D, which has it’s + and -. If a voter comes in without an I. D., they are allowed to vote, but they have to come back within so many hours and produce an I D. Most do. I think they call it a provisional ballot.
Those that do not return with an I. D., their ballot is discarded. She told me the main concern is in the absentee ballots. Every election there is a big crisis about absentee ballots. She says there could be a loophole in the absentee ballot voting. She does not trust it.
I remember that in Georgia, there was a dispute over absentee ballots when Stacy Abrams lost the Governors race. There was a 50,000 absentee ballot dispute. Abrams believed she was cheated. Now that would be defined as mass fraud if she is correct.
I never saw a computer system that some whiz kid could not hack. Even top secret military systems have been hacked. The Chinese and Russians have some of the best hackers in the world.
Indeed.