> "May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in "uninteresting times" of peace and tranquility than in "interesting" ones, which are usually times of trouble. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti...
I don't think I'd want to swap places with most dogs, personally.
It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative. That's precisely antithetical to free-speech ideals.
Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated? I don't go crying to Facebook to censor opinions I don't like.
Calling thousands of supporters to go to the capitol and telling them "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." is a very precise call to violence.
"Kill them", "Attack them", "Burn down that building" is a very precise call to violence. "You have to be strong" is not. "You have to show strength" is not.
#KillAllMen on the other hand is a very precise call to violence, and yet nobody cares about banning that on social media.
This goes the other way too, with obviously satirical hashtags.
Sorry, I forgot 18 U.S. Code § 2383 hasn't been declassified yet. [/snark]
It's not clear at all what your point is. Are you a freedom of speech absolutist? Do you not believe in due process?
...are you quite serious? Has a single person in the world taken this as an actual call to action?
It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks. Some of his supporters had been saying for weeks now that they were "standing by" and ready to do "what had to be done" when Trump would call to them. His speech yesterday was predicably heard as the call.
I don't believe for 1 second that he didn't intended for his words to be interpreted that way.
And for the record, #KillAllWhatever should be banned as well in my book, I'm not defending it.
Thank you.
> It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks
If something is "very precise" in context, then it is not precise. If we have to interpret words, then we have multiple interpretations and everybody can have their own truth. You can't say something is "a very precise call to violence" because of some people may interpret it their way.
His tweet (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469127807005777...) is very precise. "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!"
Trump and allies have been communicating the date and requesting this behavior for weeks. Anybody surprised at the result should be deemed mentally incompetent.
> He explicitly did not call for violence.
Effective communication need not be specific. Surely you possess this knowledge, but might it have been in "cold storage" at the time you wrote this comment?
> It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative.
Reality is often not as it seems. Often it is even the exact opposite of how it seems.
> Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated?
"Truthy", but orthogonal. Two wrongs don't make a right (or so "they" say).
These are humans, not robots.
Absolutely nothing has changed in the President’s speech or behavior since his 1st speech announcing his candidacy 5 years ago.
We needed a John Hancock 5 years ago that was willing to draw a line on violent speech and disinformation regardless of the consequences. Instead we got media leadership with their thumbs to the wind ignoring their platform policies and hiding behind a “public interest” rationale.
Too little too late.
What Trump did over the last 5 years pales in comparison to what he is doing now.
The effortless transition of power is the most fundamental and sacrosanct process in a democracy. And everyone has an obligation to defend it.
Instead we got this tweet “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election," he tweeted. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
He has sworn duty to not incite the crowd, no matter how much he thinks he has lost. That’s what the courts are for (which he tried and lost) and even many,many recounts (which didn’t move the needle noticeably) and that is what the democratic process is for.
Even if the US election often seems like a coin flip, the fact that it only lasts 4 or 8 years means that a wrong flip doesn't matter so much.
This is probably pretty important, as it's well known that Americans like to exhaust all other options before doing the right thing ;)
I find it somewhat disappointing that the more compelling allegations were not tested in court. At least there would be public documentation of the argument and reasoned verdict.
Wisconsin’s screw up had to do with who was eligible to receive a mail in ballot. There was a ruling that confirmed that ballots were sent to people ineligible for mail in voting, but that they would have to be argued individually. IIRC there were 200k mail in ballots provided and now separated from the voter. Even if you could identify all ineligible voters, there would be no way to identify their ballots.
I do[0]. And if you review the court records (summarized in the link below), you'll find that the courts (including the Supreme Court) found no merit in the allegations you're repeating.
Is it possible that ~80 judges of all political stripes, in the court systems of six different states as well as the federal courts are all in cahoots with the Democratic Party to steal elections?
Sure, I suppose it's possible. But unlikely in the extreme.
To put a fine point on that: The "issues" you're describing have been litigated, several of them repeatedly, and the claims have been found to be largely without merit.
As such, folks who are claiming this stuff is true are either misinformed or lying.
But don't believe me. Check it out for yourself.
Pretty much all the claims, counterclaims, legal arguments and court rulings are public records. As I mentioned, many of those are detailed (with citations/links) in the link below.
[0] https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
> do not warrant the wholesale disenfranchisement of thousands of Pennsylvania voters
> such inaction would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters
> That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised.
> tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised
My impression is that’s the crux of many of the decisions.
⅘ of the states would have needed to flip, so as legal avenues close in states the ROI on pursuing other cases begins to turn negative quickly.
Let me be clear: I’m not arguing that any of the arguments are valid or not, just that they weren’t given the time or resources for discovery or developed argument that would provide any type of closure. In many cases the remedy may be worse than the outcome.
Or you can just have other folks spoon-feed you what you want to hear.
If not, and you do the work, I expect that you'll find that these folks are requesting that the courts throw out hundreds of thousands or even millions of votes based on speculation, issues which could and should (and in some cases, were) have been addressed before the election[0], issues which affect orders of magnitude fewer votes than would be affected or change the result of the election, claims of malfeasance that aren't actually malfeasance and a variety of other mostly spurious claims.
The truth is that while there are always irregularities and even fraud[1] in every election, it wasn't enough to change the outcome in any of the relevant states.
[0] Laches isn't just "too late, you lose!", it's that voters relied on the rules in place and if you change the rules after the fact, you disadvantage/disenfranchise voters who did exactly what the rules required. A good example of this was Kelly v. Pennsylvania. The claim was that PA Act 77 was unconstitutional. Except it was passed in October, 2019. Was this case brought immediately? No. Was it brought before the 2020 primary in Pennsylvania? No. Was it brought before the general election? Nope. The lawsuit was filed after two elections. Millions of voters relied upon Act 77 as the law of Pennsylvania. Should all those folks be disenfranchised after the fact?
[1] https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
Note that the above database has found ~1300 cases of fraud all across the US since 1982. Even if the real numbers were ten times what was found, and all of those were in one state and one election, it might make a difference, but it's all 50 states over almost 40 years.
Gotcha. I was mostly responding to this bit:
>they weren’t given the time or resources for discovery or developed argument that would provide any type of closure. In many cases the remedy may be worse than the outcome.
I'd only add (and I should have in my previous reply, mea culpa) that given the known time constraints that any post-election lawsuit carries, election lawyers and campaigns are used to acting quickly.
What's more, in all 3,193 elections (one in each US county) every election day, there are polling/canvassing observers for all candidates on each ballot present.
And almost all states have either paper ballots or voter-verified paper audit trails[0], creating a physical record of each vote.
And since there are 3,193 separate elections, each with their own administrators, poll workers and polling/canvassing observers, literally tens of thousands of people are involved.
In order to commit fraud at any scale would require the complicity of thousands of people. And while a bit hyperbolic, as Ben Franklin is purported to have said, "three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Thousands of people? Not so much.
[0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
>And since there are 3,193 separate elections, each with their own administrators, poll workers and polling/canvassing observers, literally tens of thousands of people are involved.
It's too late for me to edit the above, but the number above should be 3,143 not 3,193.
My apologies for the typo and any confusion.
I think that strongly suggests there's no "there" there. If it had any bias, we'd expect it to be towards the Republican candidate.
Except on those occasions when the President, Senate Majority, and House majority are all the same party. (That gives them two years before the House might flip.) In today's we're right and they're wrong -- which is how each side sees it -- one-party rule could get interesting.
What people seem to keep forgetting is that only one Presidential candidate has ever gotten more votes than Trump got in this last election and that was Joe Biden. Both the far right and far left wings need to be reigned in.
I'd point out that here in the US, the Republican Party is a far-right party, and the Democratic Party is a center-right party.
There is no "far-left" party that has any influence in the US.
You mean like 'no justice no peace' or just speech that doesn't align with your political ideology? (To be clear, I'm all in favor of defunding police and the government at large)
Groups can practice boycotts, peaceful protests, civil disobedience, political activism, fundraising, etc. without resorting to violent speech.
People openly call for violence every day. People vote for it, it's what they want. Just look at the wars in the Middle East. Entire nations are calling for that violence.
Right now, society has the belief that violence by the state against people is sometimes justified, but never the reverse. Unless it's against a 'bad' state, then it's okay. Then they're freedom fighters.
But yes, these are hard to predict times.
Of all places, you'd think HN would support free speech, but yesterday, you got downvote brigaded for mentioning that facebook and tech companies shouldn't be our censors.
The logic was "we must protect democracy by having zuckerburg censor an elected government official".
One moment it's facebook is evil. The next moment, facebook and zuckerburg are the heroes we need to save democracy. Go figure.
The point of free speech protections are to protect the stuff you don't like. Don't like a private business censoring? That's free speech.
no, its to protect speech you don't like, not "stuff", or it could be abstracted to any number of maxims.
a private business cannot censor its own expressions, only those of others. The issue of censorship only cones up wrt publishing platforms discrimination on who they serve.
It's not surprising at all given his behavior. Being president doesn't excuse it.
by which you mean in immigration holding cells, after being separated from their apparent guardians, as an anti-trafficking measure.
so what would you do?
Who built the cages? https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=who%20built%20cages%20for%20children
You’re making https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673162 ’s point.
Who cares?
There’s all kinds of less-objectionable potential uses of the cages than the ones to which the Trump Administration has put them. Building them isn’t the problem.
People are only cross about this because it's Trump.
The policy of deliberately maximizing use of the cages by maximizing family separation and using the induced psychic harm as a deterrent is a policy adopted by the Trump Administration.
The policy of requiring segregated detention of children, when actually detained, which caused the cages to be necessary was a judicially-imposed policy.
The policy of minimizing detention of children so as to minimize the use of the cages, including not detaining adults accompanying children without reason beyond illegal crossing, was a direct response to that judicially-imposed policy by the Obama Administration that was abandoned by the Trump Administration.
So, if one is using “built the cages” with the peculiar meaning you suggest of “adopted the policy for their use that is the subject of the objections”, Trump “built the cages”.
[0]https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2018/06/18/ap_1816885517410...
They were built to keep children separate from each other (gender segregated) and from adults: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/26/fac...
Yes it is bad that children were arrested under Obama. Obama should absolutely have to answer to those crimes. But so should Trump. In addition Trump also needs to answer for the child separation (not done under Obama). Yes, Obama needs to answer for war crimes and extrajudicial killings, but so should Trump, and in addition Trump needs to answer to toxic rhetoric, inciting racism, inciting racism, inciting people not to follow public health protocols, etc.
I think the election was stolen, but stolen by Trump alone and basically handed over to Biden.
If anything, Trump stole the election from his supporters.
They should be pissed he couldn't show restraint and just shut his mouth to take the victory so he could continue with their favored agenda.
Instead, he actively sabotaged himself. His ego prevented him from seeing that unfold. And nobody could reign him in at any point. That's crazy.
Doesn't matter how many good things you get done if you show everyone you are incapable of humility, incapable of listening to advisors and data and fabricating things on the regular.
I said 'behaviour' and what I meant is that his incitement to violence is beyond the pale.
FB, Twitter and many other people agree. It's obviously a value judgement but not a particularly difficult one.
- http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-tells-crowd-to-knock-th... "Knock the crap out of them" complete with video and offers to pay legal fees
- https://thinkprogress.org/donald-trump-my-fans-were-right-to... - "Maybe he should have been roughed up." on Fox and Friends
- https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-punch-him-in-the-fac... - "He's smiling [a protestor]. I'd like to punch him. Punch him right in the face."
I find it ... 'odd' ... that you can be so well-informed about DNC issues but have "no recollection" (I love that phrase, works so well when people are being hauled in front of Congress) of any specific issue of violence from Trump or the RNC.
In fact, here you go, someone's collated them all, with evidence:
http://mashable.com/2016/03/12/trump-rally-incite-violence/#...
At least nine video captured incidents:
- "I'll beat the crap out of you"
- "Part of the problem... is no-one wants to hurt each other any more."
- "The audience hit back. We need more of that."
and so on. and so on.
The "hilarious" part is I posted this four years ago, and it was a synopsis of less than a year of Trump's public calls for violence.
Go and read his Twitter feed from the past few weeks, where he has spewed lies about non-existent fraud in an almost hourly basis, told Mike Pence to overturn the result, and where he called on his supporters to come to DC on the 6th. He has been whipping up his supporters into a frenzy for some time.
Watch the video clips of his speeches he has posted on Twitter, with yet more lies about how the election was "stolen from him", the other side are "evil", and how his supporters must "fight" for democracy by helping him overturn the will of the American people.
Listen to the tapes of him telling state officials to "find more votes", with thinly veiled threats.
Watch the video of his speech shortly before the riot, where Rudi Guliani said the way to win was "trial by combat", and Trump told them all to march on the capital.
Listen even to his video statement where he asks them to stop the violence - where he still refuses to denounce their actions, banging on about fraud and what "great patriots" they are!
He has, to my knowledge, never explicitly said "let's go and stage a violent coup!", because even Trump is just a tad more intelligent than that - but it is abundantly clear that this is what he was asking for and what he wanted, and it's been clear for all to see for some time.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
“...something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can't have happened and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.”
He said that yesterday morning, right before the capitol was sacked by his supporters, at yet another one of his klan-style rallies.
I further consider falsely calling elections stolen, rigged, or fraudulent just because you lost, as incitement to violence. He has been doing this for two months, but he gave a preview before both the 2016 and 2020 elections that he would call any election he lost as rigged. Without elections, what else is there? Admitting and accepting defeat is one of the most central requirements of a functioning democracy.
Donald Trump still has not conceded. On Wednesday he was spouting lies about a fraudulent election, a stolen election, and to fight. As he has for two months. And this lie is repeated by more than 140 Republicans, 2/3rds of the caucus, in the House of Representatives. Along with 7 Republican Senators. On the record.
These are not the same two things at all. You know that. And yet you choose to replicate a lie and make a ridiculous claim of hypocrisy. And I think it makes you a coward and a person of bad character, and I also think you know that too. The only question is whether it shames you.
Not to mention, do you know how many Democrats objected during the Congressional electoral college and certification session for Donald Trump? No, of course you don’t, because you’re spoonfed biased talking points and aren’t even interested in knowing the whole story. I bet you won’t even look it up because you don’t want to know the truth that Democratic congressional reps also tried to object to Trump’s presidential certification.
Instead, here you are trying use your childish sense of moral superiority to suppress freedom of expression. Maybe if you clutch your pearls even more strongly next time, I’ll feel the “shame” you think I should feel.
Some top choices:
Nightmarish treatment of immigrants, both legal and illegal.
Absolute sabotage of any progress on climate change both through manipulation of the relevant departments and through rollbacks of regulation.
Tax cuts that disproportionately affect the rich.
Attempts to completely dismantle Obamacare without any sensible replacement.
Bigoted limitations on transgender people, especially in the military. And continued DoJ support for legal discrimination against gay people.
but multiple foreign military "actions"
> and leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
Well, you know other than seizing PPE, and then having your son-in-law, a part of your administration, state -on the record-, that you would openly withhold PPE from states that "weren't friendly to the President".
There's many, many more. But you're presenting a rather simplistic (and inaccurate) narrative here.
My taxes went up.
> leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
This one especially.
It's so infuriating that this BS would pass for some sort of Trump accolade. The country is in full-blown crisis, the likes of which we haven't seen in a century. Why should the president do anything? He let the states handle it. What a great leader!
Paid for by running up record deficits - which is the opposite of what the right claimed to stand for, and which Trump directly ran on. And those taxes expire for the people, showing who Trump really worked for in this case.
>no new wars,
Yet destabilizing many areas of the world, leaving it in the opinion of some countries in a much less peaceful place. Here's Germany putting Trump as "Greatest Threat to World Peace " [1]. He's destabilized NATO, he's attacked the US and other intelligence forces to where the US is no longer trusted, likely causing other agencies to share less intel with us. Here's how a lot of the first world thinks of Trump [2].
>leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
And his lack of leadership is a central reason the US has 350K_ dead, while other first world countries only have a fraction of the death and economic downturn Trump caused.
Trump also fought states having the right to their own election rules, didn't want states to deal with immigration on their own terms, didn't want states to deal with protests on their own terms, has repeatedly claimed he has absolute authority over state decisions (including COVID related ones where he claimed he could dictate economic policy, which he didn't have), and on and on....
Trump uses "states rights" to score political points only - pretend to respect them when he wants, and attack them when he wants.
When your evaulation uses a fallacy (cherry-picking) you end up ignoring the majority of the eivdence, your assessment ends up incorrect.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-angela-merkel-germans-...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plumm...
Its clearly stated in the constitution that if states change their election laws, then they need to go through the legislature in order to do so. GA, WI. MI and PA ALL made changes WITHOUT going through the legislature. Why? Because in each of those states, the legislature was controlled by Republicans.
The fact they changed their laws the way they did is a clear cut violation of the constitution, it's not even debatable.
Deadline.--Except as provided under 25 Pa.C.S. § 3511[24] (relating to receipt of voted ballot), a completed mail-in ballot must be received in the office of the county board of elections no later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.
This case is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the argument that only the Legislature can set the rules for a federal election:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.*
On November 27, 2020, Judge McCullough of the PA Commonwealth Court issued a preliminary injunction to stop certification of the vote pending review because the Pennsylvania statute, Act 77, enacted on October 31, 2019, which provided for "no-excuse" mail- in voting, changed the Pennsylvania constitution. Amending the PA Constitution requires that the Legislature pass the law in two sessions, and then the amendment is voted upon by the voters. This was not followed in enacting Act 77. The case is Mike Kelly, Sean Parnell, et al. v. Commonwealth of Pa, Governor Thomas Wolf, et al.
On Saturday, November 28, 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled Judge McCullough. The vote was 7-0, with the two Republicans joining in the decision with the exception that the two Republicans wanted to keep the case open to decide the constitutionality of the statute.
The two Republicans should have dissented to state that the election was held under an unconstitutional and therefore an illegal statute. They should have stated that Gov. Wolf, his Democrat secretary of state, and Democrat attorney general Josh Shapiro allowed the election to proceed under a statute they knew was unconstitutional. All three are sworn to uphold the laws and constitutions of Pennsylvania and the United States.
Senator Kelly filed an emergency appeal to Judge Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court requesting an injunction to bar the certification.
The issues raised by Kelly are as follows:
1. May a legislature violate its state constitution's restrictions on the lawmaking power when enacting legislation for the conduct of federal elections pursuant to Article I, § 4, and Article II, § 1 of the U.S. Constitution?
2. Did the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violate Petitioners' rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by dismissing with prejudice the case below, on the basis of laches, thereby foreclosing any opportunity for Petitioners to seek retrospective and prospective relief for ongoing constitutional violations?
The Court did not hold an evidentiary hearing to question why Wolf allowed the election to proceed pursuant to a statute he knew was unconstitutional.
Further, the Republicans have a majority in the Senate and House of the PA Legislature. Why did the Republicans in the Legislature vote for Act 77 to allow no-excuse mail-in voting?
The votes of voters who voted in person were not treated equally because the no-excuse mail-in voters voted pursuant to an unconstitutional law. This is a denial of equal protection and due process.
As Judge McCullough stated:
[A] mail-in voting process that would exceed the limits of absentee voting prescribed in PA Const. Article VII sec 14 could be construed as violating the "one person one vote." In that event, the sheer magnitude of the number of mail-in ballots would not be a basis to disregard not only this provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution but also the "one person, one vote" doctrine established by Reynolds, one of the bedrock decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The PA Supreme Court also said the mail-in voters would be disenfranchised. But that is the fault of Wolf and his secretary of state, who created the problem, not the fault of those challenging an unconstitutional law.
Senator Ted Cruz urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review Kelly's appeal.
The PA Supreme Court ruled to protect the "win" by Biden. This is consistent with its decision to rewrite the law to allow unlimited mail-in ballots received after the election date.
Because people have been lying to you.
[0] https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
I guess he's more welcome to GAB or any other radical social media. His followers will flock to him in a similar way as on Twitter or Facebook. Let him be relevant where people don't question him
In some ways, it’s self-censorship so one doesn’t get downvotes.
I think I find anyone telling someone to relax a bit condescending, but I’m gonna assume good faith that you’re not meaning it.
I think each take is useful, no matter how opinionated they are. I understand your point though, I also wouldn't want every comment in the thread being neutral. Knowing HN, I think we're doing fine :)
Between "I support what facebook did" and "I do not support what facebook did", or "I support Trump" vs "I hate Trump". if I were to take a side right now I would not be able to. Regardless I find it interesting, much of the discussion I've heard in the last 24h is very interesting to me.
FWIW I am not American nor do I live in the USA.
Interesting times.