mistercwood

I genuinely didn't mean it as a dig, more just wanted to add my own personal experience. I know that there are libertarians who don't fall into the caricature I mentioned, they just seem to be fairly rare within the broad swathe of people who *say* they are libertarian. There's a lot of positives to the ethos, so long as you can control for the fact that people aren't starting on the level playing field that it would require in order for it to be fair.

Not to pile on too much (because I do think the OP is a perfectly valid point/question to raise), buuuuut.... my honest opinion is that most libertarians are just conservatives who want to smoke weed on occasion and don't give a shit who you marry. Every self-proclaimed libertarian I've ever met in person was a middle/upper class white dude of means. I've never met a poor one. It is extremely easy to be libertarian if you're already established in life.

You're all being extremely boring.

Poe's law went overtime on that one - Michael Moore retweeted it, and not ironically.

There will be facebook posts and youtube videos though already asserting that the doc confirms that Obama eats babies and Clinton made furniture from the bones, I guarantee you. They know no-one who wants to believe it is going to actually read the document, they did the same thing already with the last deposition docs that leaked.

That one was debunked immediately. Audio only? Yeah it was credible to assess that he may have said "good" instead of "go ahead". With video, you see him clearly make eye contact with the moderator who was waiting for Biden to finish and says "go ahead" for her to continue - he blurs the words together but he's not saying "good". There's literally thousands of things to attack Trump on, this isn't one of them.

Man, I wish I had the confidence to declare, "racism isn't a thing any more so don't talk about race", like that just makes it so. It seems so easy, why didn't we think of this sooner?

That wasn't my conscious intention, but now that you've highlighted it, fair enough, point taken. Agreed on your other points.

With respect, you guys never left the 1st wave: I understand the cultural issues at play that were always going to make the US a difficult one to get under control, but this is still damning.

I agree with your assessment that a change to pop-vote would change the dynamic, but I don't think it would have much of a swing in terms of party-support % amongst the population. Even if it did suddenly bring some massive groundswell of previously hidden conservative support, I still think it would be better than the wildly contorted system that is the EC. It would at least be an accurate assessment of the will of the people. Right now Republicans get two bites of the apple - one from the EC giving a disproportionate weighting to lower-populated states that lean red, and a second bite from the rules governing Senators per state that also tips the scales unevenly. I'd potentially be onboard with leaving the EC untouched if it could be rebalanced against the Senate issue. Also though, you guys desperately need ranked run-off voting to escape the 2-party system. My most commonly picked party is the biggest of the independents here, but at least I know I still get to preference which of the big two gets my vote if/when my preference doesn't win.

Once again: Entire industries are built around the fact that the internet is an imperfect environment, with millions of people who make their living by either identifying security issues in order to fix them, or exploiting those same issues for personal gain. Voting fraud is, as you say, incredibly rare - mostly because it requires physical acts to partake in. Removing the need for any real level of physicality opens up the process to whole new attack vectors that are much much easier for state and non-state bad actors to drive a wedge in to. It *sounds* like a great idea, but it absolutely is not.

This entire "scandal" is so painfully, embarrassingly obvious as a fake that I fully expect Rudy to turn out to be Jacob Wohl in a mask. It's about that level of incompetence.

If a genie showed up and said I got to pick between guaranteeing a Biden win but Mitch remaining, or another Trump term but Mitch turfed forever, another 4 years could look like a reasonable sacrifice.

By all accounts, once you scratch the surface of QAnon that's exactly what you find underneath.

That's not what he's said at all. Scenario A: Either a full travel ban from hotspots or mandatory quarantine for all incoming travelers. Everyone gets locked down regardless of citizenship. Scenario B: No travel restrictions, no quarantine. Scenario C: Let citizens return from hotspots freely, with no quarantining or tracing. Non-citizens blocked from travel, but this only reduces incoming numbers by say, 30%. Trump said he called for Scenario A. This was bullshit. What actually happened was C. B & C are functionally identical for the purposes of controlling spread. YES there are slight differences in the end case figures, no one is disputing that. What they are saying is that A was the method that would actually be a control. It never happened.

There's an XKCD for everything lol: https://xkcd.com/2030/

Ah, but you repeat yourself.

At this point it's more of an October Advent Calendar.

...on the night of the election, if the results are close. Because the mail-in's take time, and only an idiot would just pack up shop then and there.

The odds that, with so many income streams and wildly varying holdings, two consecutive years would come out to the exact same figure? Fucking laughable. Someone in his team decided or was instructed to just pay "something" as a way of not completely taking the piss and paying zero. And as always, they were too lazy and unoriginal to even try and hide that it's an arbitrary number.

This contents page is fucking trash and I won't apologise for saying so:

I genuinely have no idea who or what you are trying to address there. Not placing blame cos the quote function is borked, just letting you know why (probably) no one is responding.

I didn't watch the one from this thread, others did and responded. I've taken the time to find the PragerU one buried in the *other* thread, and am watching now - I hope my ad-blocker is doing its job because I don't want those hacks making a cent off my view. I am one minute in, and they've already failed twice. First item is the claims about renewables already starting to hit efficiency limits - classic PU, yes they throw up some figures that could well be valid, but there is no source. They rely on people seeing numbers and assuming that means good science. They also just dismiss out of hand that new efficiencies can be found - not that they're not here, but that they're just going to not happen and ignore anyone who says they can. Lastly (on this item) the low percentages are clearly being used to make the energy sources look poor, while conveniently and deliberately not acknowledging how insane the amount of solar radiation hitting the surface of the earth every day is. 33% of a million is always going to be bigger than 90% of 100,000, for example. Second item is the claim that for wind and solar to work the wind has to blow and sun has to shine. For wind, sure, conceded. For solar, holy fuck how is this dumbass, completely debunked talking point still doing the rounds?? Solar panels work when it's cloudy, this is not in dispute at all. Efficiency lowered? Absolutely. That's not the claim in the video though. One minute into a 5 minute video and there's already a flat out lie. I gave you the benefit of the doubt so I could at least claim to have approached this in good faith. I'm not watching the rest, and stand 100% by my original claim - PragerU have zero credibility, none. EDIT: Here's a much longer video by someone smarter than me breaking down PragerU for the complete hacks they are:

They're not always meaningless though. The PragerU vid was perfectly valid to dismiss without review, they're about as credible as a flat-earther video - there will be some facts presented, but they will then be spun and distorted into some unholy mess that doesn't reflect reality. Using pretty charts that mean nothing doesn't get them brownie points.