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User avatar
By Drlee
#15095521
I must say that there are actually people who see this as a hope spot because they run out of hope (of defeating CCP's tyranny) otherwise.

There are probably even more people thinking CCP, or even the Chinese people supporting CCP, deserve this.

Please stop saying it as if it is some kind of pure evilness.


The problem is that the US can't win this. We cannot defeat China on its home territory but we could interdict its trade and isolate it. But that is the rub. The rest of the world won't tolerate it. I don't think even our population would allow us to go very long without the tons of cheap consumer stuff we get from China. Certainly the EU wouldn't. And the US is deeply wounded in the economy. We do not have the money to coerce the EU and others into tolerating a cutoff from these goods.

Add to this the fact that not a single foreign leader trusts Trump to do what he says and I am afraid that the US will not be Hong Kong's savior.
User avatar
By Beren
#15095522
Patrickov wrote:I must say that there are actually people who see this as a hope spot because they run out of hope (of defeating CCP's tyranny) otherwise.

Please stop saying it as if it is some kind of pure evilness.

Hey, people, don't hate the idea of a US-China war so much because we're running out of hope in HK! :knife:

However, the US military won't go for it even if Trump wants to, the most you can hope for is some FONOPs in the South China Sea.
By Patrickov
#15095525
Beren wrote:Hey, people, don't hate the idea of a US-China war so much because we're running out of hope in HK!

However, the US military won't go for it even if Trump wants to, the most you can hope for is some FONOPs in the South China Sea.


No worries, I actually don't see Trump doing that because he behaves like Carrie Lam / Xi Jinping himself in the Minneapolis incident.

But I am pretty sick of some of his adversaries trying to denounce such development, as well as denouncing Trump for single-handedly causing this.
By Patrickov
#15095528
Drlee wrote:I am afraid that the US will not be Hong Kong's savior.


Ultimately this is not the objective. If we cannot save ourselves no one can.

It is just that the punishment needs to be done, and saying it like something wrong and over-crediting Trump for this development is itself wrong.

P.S. A Hong Kong newspaper dresses Trump as Rambo on Saturday. Fucking stupid if you ask me, because Trump is behaving domestically like CCP (the very entity that caused the perils of this newspaper's owner (Jimmy Lai) and served as the reason why he created this paper in the first place).

I can act Nazi to Commies or even encourage others to act Nazi on Commies, because I have no one to account for, but it is wrong for a influential newspaper to advocate something like that. If it has to be done, dress up Pelosi when the Congress approves this.
User avatar
By Beren
#15095534
Patrickov wrote:No worries, I actually don't see Trump doing that because he behaves like Carrie Lam / Xi Jinping himself in the Minneapolis incident.

But I am pretty sick of some of his adversaries trying to denounce such development, as well as denouncing Trump for single-handedly causing this.

Even Trump is not so crazy, but if a US-China war broke out, HK would be trumpeted first and [rule 2 violation deleted - Prosthetic Conscience].
Last edited by Beren on 30 May 2020 18:32, edited 1 time in total.
By Patrickov
#15095536
Beren wrote:Even Trump is not so crazy.


He's not. I am criticising those who suggests he is.
User avatar
By jimjam
#15095626
I hope America is great again ……. I cannot take much more of this greatness. And I never even got one of those way cool little red beanies :(
User avatar
By Wulfschilde
#15095706
Drlee wrote:The problem is that the US can't win this. We cannot defeat China on its home territory but we could interdict its trade and isolate it. But that is the rub. The rest of the world won't tolerate it. I don't think even our population would allow us to go very long without the tons of cheap consumer stuff we get from China. Certainly the EU wouldn't. And the US is deeply wounded in the economy. We do not have the money to coerce the EU and others into tolerating a cutoff from these goods.

Add to this the fact that not a single foreign leader trusts Trump to do what he says and I am afraid that the US will not be Hong Kong's savior.

There is no "end game" strategy on China really. If the communists were toppled, the first thing to go would be the two-child policy and then a couple generations later we might have 3 billion Chinese instead of 1.4 billion. Trying to beat an opponent you can't directly attack usually doesn't work out well.

The only real way to counter China would be to qualitatively improve the west, bringing America and western Europe closer together. But this would require that we get rid of those who want to destroy the west, namely AntiFA. None of this "degrowth" and "everything is racist" tribalism will be able to face off against China long term. Only unity and superior quality would have a chance of doing so. Unfortunately for the west there seems to be no capacity to make that happen.

---

As for the 2020 election. Can people still argue for a vote-by-mail election if we don't see a spike in COVID-19 cases in places where these "protests" are happening? Either these mostly Democratic places have a spike in disease while the more legally re-opened conservative places don't, or people abandon the lockdowns. It's a lose-lose situation. Extending the lockdowns until the election is probably impossible as a result of all these protests because these people are clearly not "social distancing".
By Patrickov
#15095718
Wulfschilde wrote:There is no "end game" strategy on China really. If the communists were toppled, the first thing to go would be the two-child policy and then a couple generations later we might have 3 billion Chinese instead of 1.4 billion.


Two-child would be there to stay. And the main point is when this population have some standards of living the birth rate would naturally fall. Chinese female can be much more assertive in this area. Even in the old times women could choose not to marry and not to have children.
By Doug64
#15095719
Drlee wrote:No. The obvious (and admitted) Republican attempts at voter suppression means that they are bigots as a party.

Let's not fool ourselves. This is not about secure elections. That has been studied to death and disproved for a few decades now. It is about which identity group gets to vote.

A New Jersey NAACP leader disagrees with you:

NJ NAACP Leader Calls For Paterson Mail-In Vote to Be Canceled Amid Corruption Claims

    A Paterson NAACP leader said the recent city council vote-by-mail election was allegedly so flawed that the results should be thrown out and a new election ordered.

    “Invalidate the election. Let’s do it again,” Rev. Kenneth Clayton said amid reports more that 20 percent of all ballots were disqualified, some in connection with voter fraud allegations.

    “These kinds of acts make people not want to vote anymore. They feel disenfranchised, disconnected that their votes don’t count, and that is not fair to people," he said.

    Rev. Clayton said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will soon be filing a written complaint to Gov. Phil Murphy — who ordered the vote-by-mail only election — and State Attorney General Grubir Grewal.

    Paterson activist Ernest Rucker said his experience this election is an example of the kind of corruption that allegedly took place. Rucker said he never received a ballot but that election records show someone mailed in a ballot in his name.

    “I was robbed of the right to vote or not vote,” Rucker said. “I was disenfranchised.”

    New Jersey Deputy Assembly Speaker Benjie Wimberly and his family had a different issue. “My vote and my wife and two sons’ votes did not count in this past municipal election,” he said.

    Wimberly said he is a supporter of Gov. Murphy but given the history of vote-by-mail controversies, the governor should have done more to allow in-person voting and to ensure safeguards were in place for those ballots sent by mail. That one in five ballots were eliminated, some due to alleged corruption, Wimberly said he was "fed up with this … That’s how you disenfranchise voters. That’s the bottom line.”

    Wimberly said he was still waiting for an explanation from the Board of Elections as to why his family’s votes were set aside. He said if the issue is a signature matching the one on file, it's possible for signatures can change over the years. He said the voting booths should be open for elections, adding that if people can shop in supermarkets and liquor stores using checkout machines, they can do it for elections too.

    “It is what is right for the people,” Wimberly said. “We need in-person voting machines with social distancing.”

    Murphy ordered elections vote-by-mail in an attempt to keep people safe during the coronavirus crisis. In the upcoming primary, the governor will allow one in-person voting site per town.

    In addition to apparent problems with the vote count in Paterson, NBC New York has shown video of ballots left out in building lobbies, of one voter handling many ballots, and reported on postal workers reporting finding hundreds of ballots at a time stuffed in mailboxes in Paterson – and even in a neighboring town, Haledon.

    Two councilmembers are demanding a recount and criminal investigation. Mohammed Akhtaruzzaman said Wednesday his lawyer filed a formal appeal with the courts. “The integrity of this election is in question,” he said.

    “(Authorities) should take a close look at how the Paterson election went, put the corrective action in place and if there is wrongdoing I would hope they would uncover that and take all appropriate action," said longtime councilman Bill McKoy.

    A winning candidate, Luis Velez, agreed. He added that authorities need to be more transparent given the widespread fraud allegations.

    “The individuals conducting the investigation should come out and talk and bring back the confidence of those voters and where they stand with those investigations," Velez said.

    To date spokespersons for the State Attorney General, the NJ Secretary of State, the FBI and U.S. attorney have all declined to say if an investigation is underway. Numerous residents and candidates have said FBI agents and investigators from other agencies have been in town asking questions. A spokesman for the Justice Department Civil Rights Division in Washington DC also had no comment.

    Murphy has said the problems in Paterson would be looked at but advised one Paterson resident who had raised doubts about the process to “keep the faith.”

    Assemblyman Wimberly, who said he is a strong Murphy supporter, said he has been disappointed in the governor’s response to date. “Keep the faith is not the answer any voter is looking for in particular the 3,200 voters who had their votes thrown out in this past municipal election.”

    The vote for the council means control of $300 million in spending. Add in school funding and state aid, the city budget totals nearly $1 billion dollars. Veteran Paterson Press writer and editor Joe Malinconico said Paterson has a history of voter fraud and election controversies. Malinconico said one key question unanswered by election officials is why those 3,200 votes were apparently rejected.

    “What is the track record on rejecting vote-by-mail ballots?” Malinconico said is another issue. Malinconico is awaiting word from the Board of Elections as to what percentage of mail votes were rejected in the past as compared to 19 percent seemingly rejected in this all vote-by-mail election.

    “It’s one out of every five people, imagine that. If one out of five people showed up at the polls on election day and were turned away, we would have an incredible backlash in this country.”

jimjam wrote:A second wave and concomitant lock down is inevitable.

It hasn't happened so far, and so long as our healthcare systems aren't overwhelmed it isn't going to. People aren't going to have the stomach for another shutdown for anything less.
User avatar
By Wulfschilde
#15095725
Patrickov wrote:Two-child would be there to stay. And the main point is when this population have some standards of living the birth rate would naturally fall. Chinese female can be much more assertive in this area. Even in the old times women could choose not to marry and not to have children.

I really doubt this for a number of reasons.

First, I think it would require a totalitarian government to enforce a policy like that. It's only enforceable through violence. I doubt any democracy could maintain this policy.

Second, any Chinese democracy that maintains economic development and is willing to continue a two-child policy would still be a threat to the US. Just look at Russia; it's technically a democracy today but is still regularly at odds, sometimes even militarily, with America and the west. So just getting rid of communism would not necessarily solve the issue of a rival power forming. In order to prevent that, they would need to damage the country economically as well; and that would remove the phenomenon of lower fertility rates which is associated with higher levels of economic development.
By Patrickov
#15095727
Wulfschilde wrote:Second, any Chinese democracy that maintains economic development and is willing to continue a two-child policy would still be a threat to the US. Just look at Russia; it's technically a democracy today but is still regularly at odds, sometimes even militarily, with America and the west. So just getting rid of communism would not necessarily solve the issue of a rival power forming. In order to prevent that, they would need to damage the country economically as well; and that would remove the phenomenon of lower fertility rates which is associated with higher levels of economic development.


The problem is democracy itself is rather hard to maintain if a country is as populous and vast like China or Russia. Even in India or Brazil there are serious problems. Ultimately China will have to face the question of whether and how some level of unity can be maintained in order to achieve both social freedom and stability.

As this discussion deviates from the US presidential election I beg to stop here. Maybe we can continue this in another thread.
By Doug64
#15095730
Patrickov wrote:The problem is democracy itself is rather hard to maintain if a country is as populous and vast like China or Russia. Even in India or Brazil there are serious problems. Ultimately China will have to face the question of whether and how some level of unity can be maintained in order to achieve both social freedom and stability.

As this discussion deviates from the US presidential election I beg to stop here. Maybe we can continue this in another thread.

Ah, but this thread isn't just about the 2020 presidential election, there's all the rest of them as well. And the size of India and Brazil are precisely why some variation of the US federal system would be a good idea.
User avatar
By JohnRawls
#15095860
Lol for people thinking it is a gift to Trump. Last month Trumpers said that Biden will loose because he won't be able to mobilize the democratic left base, guess what is happening right now without him doing a thing. This also applies to the black democratic vote.
By Istanbuller
#15095864
Some news outlets already claimed that it is Russians behind protests. US mayors also point out protests are no longer about police brutality.

Get real, John. Trump is winning like crazy. Even possibility of moderates voting Trump is much more realistic than ever before.
By Patrickov
#15095869
Istanbuller wrote:Some news outlets already claimed that it is Russians behind protests. US mayors also point out protests are no longer about police brutality.

Get real, John. Trump is winning like crazy. Even possibility of moderates voting Trump is much more realistic than ever before.


If I remember correctly this person is a Turk. I am a Chinese / Hongkonger and Rawls is Estonian. To be fair neither of us see the full picture so neither of us is in the position of asking one another to "Get Real".
By Doug64
#15095921
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out:

Biden staff donate to group that pays bail in riot-torn Minneapolis

    Campaign staff for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden are advertising their donations to a group that pays bail fees in Minneapolis after the city’s police jailed people protesting the killing of a black man by a white police officer.

    At least 13 Biden campaign staff members posted on Twitter on Friday and Saturday that they made donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which opposes the practice of cash bail, or making people pay to avoid pre-trial imprisonment. The group uses donations to pay bail fees in Minneapolis.

    Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Reuters that the former vice president opposes the institution of cash bail as a “modern day debtors prison.”

    But the campaign declined to answer questions on whether the donations were coordinated within the campaign, underscoring the politically thorny nature of the sometimes violent protests.

    Bates instead pointed to Biden’s comments that protesters have the right to be angry but that more violence won’t solve justice problems.

    President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign on Saturday said it was “disturbing” that Biden’s team “would financially support the mayhem that is hurting innocent people and destroying what good people spent their lives building,” in an email about the Reuters story that called for Biden to condemn the riots.

    Trump, a Republican who has described himself as a “law and order” president, on Friday called protesters “thugs,” and on Saturday said states and cities must get “much tougher” on anti-police protests or the federal government will step in by using the military and making arrests.

    Trump has also expressed sympathy over the case of George Floyd, who died on Monday after a police officer pinned him to ground by kneeling on his neck.

    It is unclear how many people have been jailed after four nights of protests. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on Saturday said many of those arrested have been from out of state.

    Minnesota could be critical in determining the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

    The Democratic candidate in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, narrowly won the state by a 1.5 percentage point margin. Trump hopes to win the state this year and held a large rally in Minneapolis in October.

    Trump has struggled to attract African American voters, with only 8% of African Americans voting for him in 2016, according to a Reuters/Ipsos Election Day poll. However, a nationwide decline in black voter turnout in 2016 was widely seen as contributing to Trump’s victory.

    Biden’s campaign staff, in their Twitter posts, called attention to U.S. inequities based on race and income.

    “It is up to everyone to fight injustice,” Colleen May, who identified herself as an campaign organizer for Biden in South Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida, said in a Twitter post that included an image of her receipt from donating $50 to the Minnesota Freedom Fund.

On the one hand, I can understand the opposition to bail. IMHO it’s simply a way for the rich and connected to avoid jail time—if you’re dangerous or a flight risk you should be kept in prison while awaiting trial, if you aren’t either you shouldn’t have to pay to be released (the state should be happy to release you, to reduce the cost). On the other hand, these idiots are helping pay to put thugs that have been destroying neighborhoods back on the streets so they can do it again! This is not going to be a good look for the Biden campaign, and don’t think that the Trump campaign and allies won’t take advantage of it (more than it already is).

What will also be interesting is how this will play in the state. These rioters and their supporters are already unlikely to vote for Trump (to put it mildly), but how will the rest of the state take it? The Trump campaign has been making a play for the state, and I doubt most Minnesotans approve of torched and looted businesses like the Biden campaign apparently does.
User avatar
By Wulfschilde
#15095938
I've been trying to figure out the spectrum on this whole looting and burning thing. It seems clear that most people will not like it but this is PoFo, so that point is being heavily contested and as such, I've decided to think it over.

So, most people are naturally apolitical. I believe they can be forced to care about politics but even then, I don't think that turns them into one of the zealots. Rather, I think they get into politics with the goal of having an "exit strategy" which will allow them to go back to not having to care about politics anymore.

So people who are against the pillaging are still against it and people who are for it are still for it. But what about those who were apolitical about it? They will likely want whatever is the quickest and easiest fix. And I think that Trump and the usual "law and order" or "jobs not mobs" dialogue is what can offer that.
User avatar
By Donna
#15095952
How the electorate feels about the riots can be very different several months after-the-fact than during the first week. Right now people just want it all to end but in November more people will be open to a discourse about racism.

Magatards must be getting really thirsty for that re-election bid if this is what they're attaching their hope to. It's not even June yet.
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