12% of voters are illegal immigrants in Frederick County (Maryland)

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by me again, Mar 21, 2017.

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  1. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    I'm no Trumper by a million miles, in fact I told family I was going up to your parts if the thrice-married narcissistic reality show star won (which, ahem, I have yet to follow up on) but I think the Russian thing has about as much validity as the Red Scares of the McCarthy Era. Joe McCarthy had more bona fide evidence of his Russian stuff than the present crowd has of theirs. But of course, time will tell.
     
  2. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    FTF wrote "the Clinton supporters who lost are just as adamant that the election was legitimate". I disagreed. So in claiming that "Russia did, in fact, hack the electoral system", you seem to be agreeing with me while seeming to disagree.

    Mueller's entire investigation is an open-ended fishing expedition. I think that it was Beria (Stalin's secret-police chief) who once said, "Find me the man, I'll find you the crime".

    So what justifies all the hysteria and all the investigations? What precisely did the Russians supposedly do that justifies all the shrieks about "aggression" and "act of war"?

    Hillary herself puts alleged Russian interference in the election atop her list of reasons why she lost. Alienating the white lower-middle class (the Democrats' traditional "working class" base) doesn't appear anywhere on her list.
     
  3. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    What ever happened to the Investigation...........

    Trump said there would be an investigation in to the fact that up to 3 million "illegals" (as he puts it) voted in the last election. Great infowars stuff:

    Fact-check: Did 3 million undocumented immigrants vote in this year's election? | PunditFact

    No mention of that lately. Incredible! I am sure there are still some out there who believe it? Does anyone here believe that? after all Trump said it was fact! I would like to hear one of his ardent supporters back this claim up? Anyone? Of course, Trump always show some consistency in certain things. Remember the Obama wiretap claims? Whatever happened to that? I could just go on and on. The guy speaks with a forked tongue.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 10, 2017
  4. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    If anyone thinks voter fraud doesn't occur on a significant level, they're fooling themselves. I teach fraud for a living: White Collar Crime, Cyberfraud, Tax Fraud, developed those courses for my uni. Of course some illegal and legal aliens vote fraudulently, same as some legal residents vote fraudulently in districts other than their own. Illegals vote for the same reasons that over 100 million citizens vote each presidential election cycle: some policies favor them over others.

    One might as well say there isn't widespread academic fraud or corporate fraud. The notion that this doesn't exist on any significant level, as a number of talking heads have claimed, is a side splitter to those of us who are experts in the field (or trying to work our way to that status, like me). They're just being silly or lying intentionally to support their own narratives. As long as there are human beings involved in the process, there will be fraud and it will not be insignificant. The question is how widespread it is and whether it tends to favor one side or the other and how severely it distorts the system.
     
  5. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

  6. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Problem is in this day and age of 15 minute attention spans, political pundits, politicians, activists, what have you say whatever serves their interests in the moment and then move on knowing that seldom will a significant number of people remember six months out. Both Clinton and Trump have played that game, but I agree, the guy acts exactly like the reality show star that he is--it's just a much bigger reality show now with bigger ratings.
     
  7. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    If ever an election was teed up for the Democrats to win going away, it was this one. Hillary was an almost unimaginably incompetent candidate to not defeat the one of the pro wrestling controversy, reality TV show narcissism, revolving marriages, and perpetual pout.
     
  8. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    "Well there are certain sections of New York, Professor, that I wouldn't advise you to try to teach." ;-)
     
  9. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    No, you didn't just disagree. You said "Clinton supporters keep pushing the fanciful but unsubstantiated thesis that the Russians somehow subverted the entire American democratic process and that Hillary would be President today if they hadn't."

    No one is saying that the Russians subverted the entire American democratic process. No one. And your comparing Mueller to Beria is just crap and it shows you to be the hysterical one. If, at this point, you really don't know why there's an investigation then it's just because you don't want to know.
     
  10. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  11. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    I've asked and without receiving an answer.

    Investigations are for crimes. What crime is here suspected?
     
  12. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Sorry, I'm not going to play that game. If you want to pretend to be ignorant then I'll play along and assume you're ignorant. AFAIC that means that you have no standing in the discussion because I won't discuss this matter with someone who has willfully ignored the facts. Google is your friend.
     
  13. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    Google has few friends.

    I guess I'll just have to live with being ignorantly unaware of what crime is being investigated.
     
  14. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Probably sage advice.
     
  15. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    The fact remains that there's no evidence nor reason to believe this phenomenon distorts the system in any meaningful way. With voting, Free Rider's problem is more substantial; you really have to convince me that undocumented immigrants would intentionally leave permanent trace of fraud... for what? Personal benefit in potential policy change due to one vote is negligible. Trump's claim was that millions voted illegally in CA and NY; even if true, that would give Hillary exactly 0 additional Electoral College votes, even in aggregate. I also do not buy the notion that activists and political operatives are involved in this; risk is completely out of proportion to benefit, as long as we're not in a one party dictatorship (that's why Russian electoral officials can do their magic unchallenged: opposition is powerless). What you are left with are people voting out of ignorance, or fanatics; that would give you a few dozen people per county that could actually be identified (if these reports are even accurate).
     
  16. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Oh, it's quite clear that Russians meddled. DNC hack, fake news, and "bots" (for clarity: these are human-operated fake accounts. Technically they are "sock puppets", but in Russia they're called "bots", and I guess the usage migrated here) all really happened. It is not as clear whether "big data" played a role some suggest, and whether Trump campaign helped in any material way. Trump Tower meeting also happened; there's a scenario where it was inconsequential, but no way was it innocent. How much did it matter? Impossible to know at the moment.

    But I think dismissing this influence out of hand is naive. Kremlin can scramble it's own citizens' brains at will. It was 9th anniversary of war in Georgia this week. There is carefully cultivated positive image of Georgians in Russia, for two centuries now. A Georgian is seen as this super-hospitable and merry noble savage fond of wine and song. Kremlin was able to make Russians hate Georgians seemingly overnight. All cultural context: mountains, wine, songs, Shota Rustaveli, cult Giorgi Danelia movies, 1912 war hero General Bagration, legendary kinship - all was forgotten, at least for a time. They were not even humans anymore: "Georgians" was mangled into "rodents". If you think Americans are immune to this kind of propaganda, one that they're not accustomed to: think again.
     
  17. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Call me biased, but Hillary was a victim of unimaginable character assassination (for decades), as well as a target of misogyny and a backlash against cultural shifts.
     
  18. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    Hillary Clinton Explains Why She Really Lost to Trump - NBC News

    ' "A foreign power meddled with our election," she said, labeling it "an act of aggression." '

    The quote in my last post was totally apt: "Find me the man, I'll find you the crime".

    In the United States system of justice, the state doesn't begin never-ending Kafkaesque prosecutorial inviestigations of its perceived enemies in hopes that the investigation will turn up some evidence that maybe some crime was committed.

    The only thing that I've seen was some DNC flles that showed the DNC's bias for Hillary and against Bernie during the Democratic primaries being leaked by unknown parties to Wikileaks. (A disgruntled pro-Bernie staffer? Debbie Wasserman Schultz's weird IT people who had administrator access to her computers and were transferring files off-site?)
     
  19. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Not a Republican here and am astonished we have a reality TV show star, the very picture of the Ugly American, as president, but the problem I and many others have with Hillary is much of that "unimaginable character assassination" was at the hands of...Hillary Clinton. She has spent a fair amount of her time in the public sphere revealing a very shaky character; e.g., she has this problem with the truth, it is well documented and inescapable. Many voters rightly identified her difficulties with telling the truth as a major factor in voting for Trump, who some felt was at least a vulgar, up front, used car salesman-type liar--to which they could relate--rather than a supercilious, "I'm on a higher plain so I don't have to live by the moral standards of you plebes" liar--which most people hate. At the end of the day, she sees her problem every day when she looks in the mirror.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 11, 2017
  20. FTFaculty

    FTFaculty Well-Known Member

    Not a Republican here and am astonished we have a reality TV show star, the very picture of the Ugly American, as president, but the problem I and many others have with Hillary is much of that "unimaginable character assassination" was at the hands of...Hillary Clinton. She has spent a fair amount of her time in the public sphere revealing a very shaky character; e.g., she has this problem with the truth, it is not just the rantings of the crazed right, it is well documented and inescapable. Many voters rightly identified that as a major factor in voting for Trump, who some felt was at least a vulgar, up front, used car salesman-type liar--to which they could relate--rather than a supercilious, "I'm on a higher plain so I don't have to live by the moral standards of you plebes" liar--which most people hate. At the end of the day, she sees her problem every day when she looks in the mirror.
     

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