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    Something change or just old?

    When I was younger I always hated electron day because there wasn't anything but election news on TV. But today I find myself anxious to watch the results this evening. lol

    In reality who ever wins will have very little effect on me. I'm retired and my retirement income is set. But my complete dislike of Trump seems to make the outcome seem vital. Shamefully it's not because I'm worried about how this will effect my kids, grandkids, great grandkids and future generations.

    Should be interesting.

  2. #2
    PowerPoster kfcSmitty's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    I thought most people were saying the results wouldn't be available tonight?

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    Junior Member wossy's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by wes4dbt View Post
    When I was younger I always hated electron day...
    That's a very negative thing to say. Although I suppose we find a resistance in all things that transform our current state. These things happen in phases I have noticed. We can only hope to induce change before we shuffle off this coil.
    On the bright side, I've still got pessimism and despair to fall back on.

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    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    I'm much more positive, so I'm looking forward to proton day. Of course, with all the cows out here, most of the population is waiting for muon day.

    Oddly, I was just talking to a boson. He's not very heavy, so he's certainly not a Higgs, but he's stuck around, so perhaps he's a gluon?
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by kfcSmitty View Post
    I thought most people were saying the results wouldn't be available tonight?
    There will be a lot of information tonight. Most live voting will be available but some states don't process the mail in ballots until voting is over, so they will take longer. But some states have already processed their mail in ballot so we will have a good idea of what's going on in those states.

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    Junior Member wossy's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
    He's not very heavy
    Have you checked that you are not brothers?
    On the bright side, I've still got pessimism and despair to fall back on.

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    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    I love the strange references that get thrown out rather casually around here.

    Recycle, folks.
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    The fact that the elections are so close just proves to me I have no clue how other peoples minds work and I should stick to "1"'s and "0"'s.

    I thought the last four years had clearly proven that Trump is a lying conman, has no moral compass and is harming the country. But here we are, split.

    Is it people don't care he is a liar? I find it impossible to think that many people actually believe the things he says. Maybe all that's happened in the last four years is really just Fake News.

    Think I'm gonna block CNN, FOX, MSNBC..... on my TV. Go back to the ignorance is bliss method of living. lol

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    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    The one person I talked to about this didn't believe that Trump lies.
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
    The one person I talked to about this didn't believe that Trump lies.
    Well that's 1, 67,000,000 to go. lol

    It struck me that the biggest con Trump has pulled off is he created the great economy before the virus. I've always thought he inherited a booming economy and managed not to screw it up to bad. That may just be my bias but I can't think of anything major he did for the economy.

    But SH your the economy expert, what do you think. Or should I ask Carnac the Magnificent???

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    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Might as well try Carnac, I can't think of anything either.
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    Fanatic Member Delaney's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by wes4dbt View Post
    But SH your the economy expert, what do you think. Or should I ask Carnac the Magnificent???
    If you want to speak to stones, no wonder you got no answer https://translate.google.com/transla...des-megalithes
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by Delaney View Post
    If you want to speak to stones, no wonder you got no answer https://translate.google.com/transla...des-megalithes
    Carnac the Magnificent was a persona Johnny Carson, a late night talk show host, would play. He retired in 1992. But Carnac is a magnificent place also, I'm familiar with it. Just not a mystic like Johnny played.

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    Super Moderator jmcilhinney's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by wes4dbt View Post
    The fact that the elections are so close just proves to me I have no clue how other peoples minds work and I should stick to "1"'s and "0"'s.

    I thought the last four years had clearly proven that Trump is a lying conman, has no moral compass and is harming the country. But here we are, split.

    Is it people don't care he is a liar? I find it impossible to think that many people actually believe the things he says. Maybe all that's happened in the last four years is really just Fake News.

    Think I'm gonna block CNN, FOX, MSNBC..... on my TV. Go back to the ignorance is bliss method of living. lol
    Many of Trump's most enthusiastic supporters are those who crave being controlled. That's why his portrayal as an alpha male is so important. Just as most dogs are most happy when there's a clear hierarchy regardless of whether they are in charge or not, so Trump's supporters crave being told exactly where they stand and what they have to do. Most of these people are very religious and are used to being told how to think by their church so the same thing from a president who says that he believes what they do is their dream come true. If they haven't been able to spot the con from their church leaders all this time, why would they spot it in a president? There's all this talk about Trump being pro-life but he's not pro-life at all. He just sees portraying himself that way as the best way to get votes. The people who vote for him don't really care if he believes in banning abortion, as long as he bans abortion. I think that those on the left would probably still vote for someone who supported Medicare For All politically even if they didn't personally believe it, but I think that they would do so with their eyes much more open than the religious right do with Trump. They swallowed the con hook, line and sinker long ago and most are too far gone to see clearly any more. That's not all Trump voters but it certainly is a his base.

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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Is it people don't care he is a liar?
    A bit from column A and a bit from column B. They start by being willing to accept small, reasonably harmless lies (e.g. the size of the crowd at his inauguration). Once they become invested in the message, a combination of confirmation bias, social pressure on their ego and the tendency to find echo chambers means that they will are willing to accept (and actually believe) increasingly outlandish lies. There's a name in psychology for this effect which I, annoyingly, can't remember now. It's actually a well known sales technique and it's also the reason that getting people to sign agreements is so effective, even when that agreement has no legal force. Once we're invested we entrench. This doesn't just apply to Trump but he's certainly deployed it very effectively.

    Trump also uses repetition a lot. This is another surprisingly effective psychological tool of persuasion. We will accept just about any "fact" if we hear it enough. Particularly if it's delivered a catchy phrase. Believe it or not, having it consist of 3 syllables, alliterating and or rhyming strongly reinforces this effect and, if you thing back over Trumps catch phrases, you will find these patterns a lot: "Lock Her Up", "Build the Wall" and "Make America Great Again" (contains a rhyme in Make and Great).

    Something that's easy to overlook if your an opponent of Trump: while he may drop some wonderfully incoherent word-salads, his oration and presentation techniques are actually remarkably good. Which probably isn't surprising given his background.



    On the economy, he genuinely had created growth pre-covid and that deserves acknowledgement. Of course, he did it by massive borrowing and tax cuts/subsidies for corporations, both of which are easy short term measures to achieve growth but tend to have very bad long term effects. Borrowing obviously builds up the debt. Corporate inducements tend to encourage paper tiger corporations which can't really compete once those inducements are eventually removed. So while I think it's worth acknowledging that he created growth, I wouldn't say he should be credited for it - there was going to be a price to pay down the line.
    Last edited by FunkyDexter; Nov 5th, 2020 at 06:59 AM.
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    Wall Poster TysonLPrice's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    On the economy, he genuinely had created growth pre-covid and that deserves acknowledgement. Of course, he did it by massive borrowing and tax cuts/subsidies for corporations, both of which are easy short term measures to achieve growth but tend to have very bad long term effects. Borrowing obviously builds up the debt. Corporate inducements tend to encourage paper tiger corporations which can't really compete once those inducements are eventually removed. So while I think it's worth acknowledging that he created growth, I wouldn't say he should be credited for it - there was going to be a price to pay down the line.
    I tend to disagree with that. I think think there was growth despite Trump. He started harming the economy right away with tariffs. At one point growth started coming at the cost of a HUGE deficit. He done almost irreparable harm to our trading partners in the EU. And his love affair with China turned into a dumpster fire. When the democrats got control in 2008 the country was in one of the greatest recessions ever. After eight years of prosperity republicans took over and in just four years look where we are at.
    Please remember next time...elections matter!

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    Super Moderator FunkyDexter's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    I think we're saying the same thing in different ways:-
    At one point growth started coming at the cost of a HUGE deficit
    This is the sort of thing I mean. It's "growth" but with some potentially horrendous side effects.
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Wow, what an election. Never thought Biden could over come the 600,000 vote deficit in Pa. I guess no one told the Trump supporters you can mail your vote in or maybe they just love standing in long lines.

    Doesn't look like this thing is gonna be over any time soon. Ga. will have a recount and probably Pa. Hope the recounts go quicker than the first one. Then if Trump still loses he will be filing law suits like McDonald's makes hamburgers.

    It's obvious our country is truly divided, don't think Biden will bring it back together much but Trump will definitely continue to tear it apart.

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    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by wes4dbt View Post
    Then if Trump still loses he will be filing law suits like McDonald's makes hamburgers.
    Quickly and sloppily put together?

    It's obvious our country is truly divided, don't think Biden will bring it back together much but Trump will definitely continue to tear it apart.
    Yeah. Trump will tear at the fabric of this country for the rest of his life. In out lifetimes, the loser of any presidential race, including 2000, took some action to heal the divide after losing. That won't happen this time. The divide will be a sore that Trump will keep picking at for years.
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Sh,

    You keep mentioning the states have control over how they handle vote. So, why is the Supreme Court already involved? To be honest, the Supreme Court scares me. Probably Trumps only path to victory.

  21. #21
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    You can elevate up through the state courts, then move over to the federal courts, then keep on appealing up the chain if you don't get what you want (or the other side can appeal up the chain if you do get what you want). I've seen on other sites that the supremes tend to say that the states can do what they want, but there are just a couple cases where the federal courts could come into play. One is if the states are blatantly violating their own rules, which they aren't, but the other one...I forget what it is, exactly, but it is something about whether or not the courts have a say.

    Frankly, I'd be surprised if SCOTUS did much in this case. John Roberts is VERY adamant about maintaining the status of the court. He saw what happened in Bush v Gore, and I really doubt he'd want to repeat that, so I'd say that Trump has to have a VERY strong case to get a favorable ruling. I don't see that happening.
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Hope your right. It just gives me an uneasy feeling.

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    Super Moderator jmcilhinney's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by wes4dbt View Post
    Wow, what an election. Never thought Biden could over come the 600,000 vote deficit in Pa. I guess no one told the Trump supporters you can mail your vote in or maybe they just love standing in long lines.
    Trump has been setting this up for a long time. He's been bad-mouthing mail-in ballots for months with the specific intent of trying to have them excluded from the count, knowing that they would favour Biden. Trump has been simply repeating over and over that mail in ballots are subject to fraud and therefore all mail-in ballots are fraudulent and should be excluded. So many political commentators have been saying that early counts will likely favour Trump and then Biden will come back later and that is exactly what has happened. Trump knew this too and has specifically tried to use it to his advantage. He said that he was going to claim victory if he was ahead on election day and that's exactly what he did. When the poll numbers did what any sensible person knew they would, Trumps supporters - and a few who claim not to be biased either way - followed Trump's programming and claimed that it could only be due to fraud with basically zero evidence.
    Quote Originally Posted by wes4dbt View Post
    It's obvious our country is truly divided, don't think Biden will bring it back together much but Trump will definitely continue to tear it apart.
    It seems clear to me that Trump not only doesn't care about unity but has specifically been sowing disunity to his own advantage. No politician can keep everyone happy but some at least try to some degree. If Trump could get 51% of people devoted to him, I have little doubt that he would not care how hard he had to screw the other 49% to achieve it. Trump will demonise anything and anyone if he thinks doing so will get enough people to support him. He's a flat-out bully and no one should be surprised because that was his MO coming in.

    The problem is that far too many people see that as a positive attribute. It's quite funny - in a bad way - that those who bleat the most about freedom and how bad dictatorships are are the same ones who crave an authoritarian leader for themselves and to bring everyone else to heel by force before any other option. Before anyone brings it up, I'm not talking specifically about explicit military force when I say that but, while some laud Trump for not having started any new wars during his term, he and many of his supporters seem awfully keen to deploy the US military domestically. With regard to the supposed "hoax" regarding "good people on both sides", notice how any actual condemnation of white supremacists is basically a footnote while any talk of BLM and the recent protests paints everyone involved as an antifa terrorist as the default and, despite most protests and protesters being peaceful, there's nary a mention of there being good people on that side or any consideration of the specific issues that sparked the protests in the first place. America does nothing about the root problem and then wonders why this sh*t keeps happening.

    I also wanted to add, before anyone tries to claim otherwise, that I am no particular fan of Biden. I think that he's a bad candidate, just as I thought that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, but I would vote for either of them over Donald Trump, holding my nose while I did so. If I was in a position to vote in the US, I would be supporting Bernie Sanders and more locally, the candidate that most closely aligned with his position. For you Americans, Bernie Sanders is not a communist or even a socialist. He's not radical at all. By the standards of the world outside the US - you know, most of it - Sanders is mainstream left. The idea that Sanders is a radical socialist is stupid enough but that the US right accuse people like Biden and Pelosi of being "radical leftists" shows just how desperate and bereft of actual policy they really are. Here in Australia, our last three prime ministers have been right wing. Tony Abbot was far right, Malcolm Turnbull was moderate and Scott Morrison is somewhere between the two. Biden is barely left of Malcolm Turnbull, if at all. In the US, your Democratic establishment are actually right wing by global standards.

    For the record, I'd say that Tony Abbot may even have been left of Mike Pence. After he left the office of PM, he was campaigning against same-sex marriage on "religious freedom" grounds. Funny how Christians are supposedly humble but they can even make a discussion about whether loving relationships should be legally recognised all about them.

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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Biden and Pelosi are not "left" at all in the normal sense of being pro-labor. They are elite, warmongering, authoritarian, one-world statist corporate stooges. That is what the "right" objects to as much as the "left" does, but Orwellian redefinitions of vocabulary have left everyone divided against themselves and communicating by grunts and gestures.

    Sanders, at least when talking, is not Communist or even particularly socialist. He's also no friend of labor even when he's mouthing platitudes ("policies"), promoting unbalanced trade and opposing labor organizing. In reality he serves the role of sheepdog, faithfully undermining the chances of any actual pro-labor candidacies while leading gullible sheep into the DNC's windowless van with false promises of free ponies and candy.

    I voted for him twice in primary elections, if only to support the policies he mouthed on the campaign trail rather than the more explicit globalist neo-fascism of his "opponents" (bosses).

    But there is a reason why he's known as "Blarney Sans-Does."

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    Re: Something change or just old?

    jmc,

    Yeah I agree about Trump. It confuses and worries me that 47% of the voters are so unhappy they are willing to over look the fact that he is morally bankrupt. If you look at the voting map it's a clear divide, rural, small cities were heavy Trump and major metropolitan areas heavy Biden. Rural areas may in general be more conservative but that's what's strange, Trump is not conservative or representative of the "right". But all he had to do was claim he was and people were willing to overlook his entire life and believe him. It just seems to me that there is a strong need (that's not being met) they feel that's driving them. I don't know what it is, don't think the Dem's know either.

  26. #26
    Super Moderator Shaggy Hiker's Avatar
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Rural areas may be seeing more of a decline, too, so it may have to do with economic opportunities. As we become a more urban society, the country is hollowing out. That may have something to do with it.
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    Re: Something change or just old?

    Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
    Rural areas may be seeing more of a decline, too, so it may have to do with economic opportunities. As we become a more urban society, the country is hollowing out. That may have something to do with it.
    That's true but I was amazed by the power of rural votes. In Texas Biden convincingly won Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin. The largest cities in Texas, three of the four are in the top ten largest cities in the US. Biden lost Texas by over 600,000. I wouldn't have thought that would be possible. Trump almost won Pa. the same way. Strange. lol

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