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General Category => Matters of Life and The Universe => Topic started by: Billy Underdog on February 27, 2018, 02:06:18 PM

Title: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Billy Underdog on February 27, 2018, 02:06:18 PM
This is first and foremost a question to Charger, but as it might develop into something long and interesting i desided to start a thread to encompass more within the same topic.

Charg, i've always wondered about the Finnish relationship with its occupants Sweden and Russia. Which of these countries do you have the best relationship to now "after the fact". Both you personally and what you see as the Finnish majoritys opinion as a whole?
It's funny with the Norwegian history, because despite having been occupied by Denmark for almost 400 yrs and in an involuntary union with Sweden for less than a hundred, we're overall more positive towards Danes than Swedes. Despite while being "Danish" we had absolutely no say, whereas in union with Sweden we had our own government and constitution. I've always found that peculiar, so just wondering what point of view a somewhat similar country with a somewhat similar occupation history have.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on February 27, 2018, 06:40:48 PM
I know there are a lot of Danes that are still rankled over the ethnic cleansing of Skane.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Billy Underdog on February 28, 2018, 07:32:37 AM
I know there are a lot of Danes that are still rankled over the ethnic cleansing of Skane.

I have to admit it took me a second of thinking "wtf?" until i understood you're joking...
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on February 28, 2018, 10:56:40 AM
I know there are a lot of Danes that are still rankled over the ethnic cleansing of Skane.

I have to admit it took me a second of thinking "wtf?" until i understood you're joking...

No, really, that's how they describe the de-Danification of Skane and Halland.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Billy Underdog on February 28, 2018, 11:39:30 AM
No, really, that's how they describe the de-Danification of Skane and Halland.

Wow... Those Danes...

Well, yeah, i know they have a romantic view of how great the Danish kingdom once was, and that they regret losing huge parts of their land. Just like we Norwegians regret the loss of much of our land over several decades (some given away from the Danish king to the British, some kept by the Danes, some given to Sweden and so on...)
But to call it ethnic cleansing..? First of all, Danes and Swedes (and Norwegians) are the same ethnicity (exept the Sami people of northern Sweden and Norway). Second, though the physical land of Skåne have shifted rulers several times, there haven't been any mass killings of the people living there, they've been the same all along, something pretty apparent in their Swedish dialect, which is pretty close to Danish.

Is this truely Danes you're talking about, or second, third or fourth generation immigrants with Danish ancestry?
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on February 28, 2018, 02:02:59 PM
To be sure, these are people with Danish ancestry, not current Danes.

Current Danes don't seem to be all that hung up on anything.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Billy Underdog on February 28, 2018, 02:24:32 PM
To be sure, these are people with Danish ancestry, not current Danes.
Well, that's a whole different matter then, because
Current Danes don't seem to be all that hung up on anything.
that's very true...

I saw a program about this American woman with Norwegian ancestry (for some reason Norwegians love how much Americans with Norwegian ancestry love Norway). She was like the third or fourth generation immigrant. And she absolutely LOOOOVED everything Norwegian. That is, exept post WW2 Norway...  :doh: It was something about our social-democratic politics that didn't sit well with her...  :wall:

Well, that's who we are now, and have been since 1945. Her romantic views based on what her grandparents and great grandparents have told is just that. Romantic. It doesn't exist any longer... She loves something that used to be, not something that is.
I don't think i'm far off if i guess that your "Danes" are somewhat along the same lines?
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Billy Underdog on March 17, 2018, 10:34:03 AM
Charg, i've always wondered about the Finnish relationship with its occupants Sweden and Russia. Which of these countries do you have the best relationship to now "after the fact". Both you personally and what you see as the Finnish majoritys opinion as a whole?
It's funny with the Norwegian history, because despite having been occupied by Denmark for almost 400 yrs and in an involuntary union with Sweden for less than a hundred, we're overall more positive towards Danes than Swedes. Despite while being "Danish" we had absolutely no say, whereas in union with Sweden we had our own government and constitution. I've always found that peculiar, so just wondering what point of view a somewhat similar country with a somewhat similar occupation history have.

I never got an answer on this one, Charg. You know i'm a history geek, and this is something i've been VERY curious about for a long time.
If you don't feel like sharing your own point of view, atleast share what you see as the Finnish "norm".
If you don't wanna go public about either, please send me a PM...
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Vyn on November 23, 2019, 01:36:37 PM
"That which is not dead can eternal lie…"

Riffing off of the "how does one country, or you personally, feel about another or your own from the past" narrative, some recent interactions in real life have caused me to think about this.

Which I;ll have to relay later as something here is calling me away from my computer!
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Vyn on November 23, 2019, 08:31:29 PM
Ok, made it back.

When and where I was brought up, the U.S.S.R. was the enemy. So much so that it was simply a given that they hated and wanted to destroy our country and therefore we should feel the same about them. Terms used to label the nebulous "them" included Russians and Communists. The Vietnam war was sold to the people here not as us fighting Vietnamese (although we were), but as fighting our enemy the U.S.S.R.

The NVA folks where merely an outreach program for the main machine located in...you guessed it, the U.S.S.R. I believe The Evil One resided somewhere in Russia.

I recall seeing tattoos on people with illustrations and text such as "Fuck Russia", "All Communists Must Die", and so forth.

I had (and still have!) a t-shirt with an American bald eagle in flight carrying a scrolling banner that says "Kill a Commie for Mommy".

My point, and in short, is that the propaganda was strong and prevalent enough that kids like me took it as the unvarnished truth. As I grew older, education and life experience in general changed my views and thinking such that I could distinguish truth from propaganda.

Several months ago we hired a woman who is from Russia. As the months have past, we've had discussions about this very thing. She informed me that it was the exact same thing in her country as it was in mine.

She wouldn't admit that The Evil One lives there, but speculated that Cthulhu might reside in Siberia :)

Fucking politics.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on November 24, 2019, 08:08:34 AM
^^^^^^
I always felt that it wasn't the Russian people that were the evil, but those in the Kremlin that were running their country.  The same way I don't blame the German people for what the Nazis did in WW2.

With the advancements in communication today, it is a lot easier to check out what is happening in the rest of the world, instead of having to rely on what you were told by your own government.  You can count on 1 hand the number of countries left that still have the ability to brainwash their population with propaganda, like in the past.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Vyn on November 24, 2019, 07:33:32 PM
With the advancements in communication today, it is a lot easier to check out what is happening in the rest of the world, instead of having to rely on what you were told by your own government.  You can count on 1 hand the number of countries left that still have the ability to brainwash their population with propaganda, like in the past.

Good point. Knowledge is power in very impactful ways.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on November 25, 2019, 09:31:12 AM
I'll take a contrary side to the idea that the Internet makes us more immune to propaganda. I'd refer interested parties to Evgeny Morozov's book, The Net Delusion.

Some takeaways include how surveillance is more prevalent in all societies, not just authoritarian ones. But on propaganda and democracies, I gathered that governments no longer need to have propaganda convince the entire country, just one more than 50%, or enough people in the right districts to get a win in an election with a minority of the popular vote.

And for checking out news... do people in general go to sources because of their reputation for accuracy, or because they're assured the news there will be delivered with a political angle that they are comfortable with? When I look back on how mass media evolved in the USA, it's full of newspapers that had clearly partisan editorial and reporting policies. They'd even have "Democrat" or "Whig" or "Republican" in their company names. As corporations gained in power after the Civil War, papers - regardless of political affiliation - took on pro-corporate stances that had to be challenged by non-mainstream papers and magazines, like Ramparts and Mother Jones. These outlets tended to get lumped in with political leftism, since that was a convenient label to tar them with when their investigative journalism got too close for comfort for corporate bosses and boards. With the development of the Internet, we see even more niches pop up, some with very pronounced biases.

We've also seen the competition for eyeballs result in sensationalism, which on the Internet we see as clickbait titles. I honestly do all I can to avoid clicking on any story that has "10 things" or "you won't believe" in its title, because I know it's more about the "look at this trainwreck" aspect of the story and less about the actual events that happened. Stories about school finance mismanagement get pushed aside for stories about violent crime or celebrity meltdowns.

But circling back to propaganda, if people tend to stay with news outlets that have a partisan bias they appreciate, then the us/them shifts from USA/Russia types of associations and becomes attached to domestic political party affiliation.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on September 25, 2020, 03:25:08 PM
I'm jealous.  :(  Texas has the best political adds and the best politicians.

Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Vyn on September 27, 2020, 01:05:58 PM
Everything's bigger in Texas.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on September 28, 2020, 12:44:11 PM
Well, if by "best politicians" you mean "most restrictive in terms of legislating voting rights restrictions that make Texas one of the most difficult places in the USA to register to vote and/or cast a ballot, particularly if one is Black, Hispanic, or Native American", then I would agree with you.

As is the case with 48 other state Republican party organizations (the exception being Utah), the Texas State Republican Party consistently invokes Jim Crow-era language and legislation to create barriers to voting that disproportionately affect minorities and younger voters. In states where Jim Crow laws are still on the books, the Republican parties there are defending and expanding those laws. In states where those laws have been removed, the state Republican Parties are fighting to reinstate them. In states where the laws were never passed, the state Republican parties are pushing to impose such laws. In northern tier states, voting restrictions are geared more to impact Native Americans. In farming areas, Hispanics and rural Blacks. In states with a significant Black population, Black voters, usually through voting record purges that are presented as color-blind database cleaning efforts that wind up with 90% or so of their targets being minorities in predominantly Democratic districts.

When I was doing a survey of legislative voter suppression over two weeks earlier this month, only the Utah Republicans stood out as working to both increase voter registration and remove holdover laws from more racially stringent times. All other Republican parties were opposing the expansion of voter registration and were holding the line on restrictive laws or attempting to introduce more stringent critera with race-negative outcomes for Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

And while Democratic Party politicians passed Jim Crow laws in the South in the wake of Reconstruction, it was Republican Party politicians in the North that passed racially discriminatory laws in those states, around the same time period. When the Democratic Party made desegregation and Civil Rights part of its platform in the 1960s, that's when Southern Democrats began to vote for Republican presidential candidates, but continued to support white supremacist Democrats on a state and local level. That began to change in the late 70s as the Democratic Party began to push for state organizations to support Black and Hispanic candidates. That national directive from the Democratic Party then led to a migration of politicians from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in the Deep South states. Alabama took the longest to make the cutover, but with it, all the political heritage of Jim Crow in the South has shifted its party association to Republican.

With the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the Republican-dominated Supreme Court ruling in the Shelby County case and rulings that gutted the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by the same court makeup, Repbublican-dominated legislatures have stepped up the introduction of Jim Crow-style legislative barriers to voting. Because of the Shelby County ruling, these changes in voting law are no longer subject to judicial review prior to implementation. Instead, they can be implemented and the Blacks be kept from the voting booths as the court challenges move forward.

This national policy of denying votes to minorities has been well-documented, with the national party itself having been successfully sued several times over coordinating voter suppression efforts. This is why the dirty work of voter suppression now devolves to a state level, with national party approval. The first coordinated national voter suppression drive run by Republicans was Operation Eagle Eye in 1964, patterned after a successful voter suppression drive in Arizona in 1958.

Nationally, a Black has roughly 75% voting strength as a white person and a Hispanic has about 55% the voting strength of a white person. This is determined from access to the ballot as well as representation skews from Senate/Electoral College effects. Continued Republican legislative and judicial opposition to full voting rights will keep those numbers at those levels or drive them down.

So, yes, everything's bigger in Texas, including the barriers to establishing voting rights.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on September 28, 2020, 03:12:26 PM
^^^^^^
Yeah, I meant all that.

(https://emojis.wiki/emoji-pics/apple/man-facepalming-apple.png)
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on September 29, 2020, 11:30:09 AM
^^^^^^
Yeah, I meant all that.

(https://emojis.wiki/emoji-pics/apple/man-facepalming-apple.png)

Oh good. I like it when we can agree on things.

Seriously, I love you, Typhon, even when it's not easy to do so.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on September 30, 2020, 08:21:23 AM
Oh good. I like it when we can agree on things.

Seriously, I love you, Typhon, even when it's not easy to do so.
:think:  Because you have trouble controlling your emotions on some issues, I'm going to take this comment with a grain of salt.  I view you as part of the Black Sabbath brotherhood.
 :rockon:
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on September 30, 2020, 09:32:52 AM
Well, better to take with salt than not at all. :D
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on October 07, 2020, 08:10:37 AM
A new report finds there are currently 349,773 deceased registrants on the voter rolls in 41 states.  The worst states in this regard are Michigan, Florida, New York, Texas, and California, which account for roughly 51% of the dead voters who are still mistakenly registered.

Even worse, state records show that 7,890 of these deceased voters cast ballots from the grave in the 2016 presidential election and 6,718 did so in the 2018 congressional elections.

Yet, some think that voter fraud is not a real problem.   :doh:
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Vyn on October 07, 2020, 09:15:57 AM
I will say this, I'm glad they caught 350,000 of those little zombie mofos.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 07, 2020, 09:50:25 AM
Yet, some think that voter fraud is not a real problem.   :doh:

Well this wouldn't be a problem if US would be like any other civilized country and demand a photo ID for voting.

With this current system anyone can vote using a dead persons voting ballot..ridiculous system.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on October 07, 2020, 11:16:18 AM
Typhon, you stare at the molehill and ignore the mountain.

You also have bad evidence, gathered by an organization with a history of fighting against voter rights in the USA. That report comes from PILF, which raises baseless lawsuits to try to force states or counties to purge their voter databases along lines that produce race-negative outcomes for Black, Hispanic, and Native American voters. Jim Crow laws, essentially.

Here's one of those baseless lawsuits, which PILF asked to dismiss on its own after it was pressed to provide supporting evidence and it had none: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/public-interest-legal-foundation-drops-meritless-voter-purge-lawsuit

In LULAC of Richmond v. Public Interest Legal Foundation, PILF was found to be in violation of both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as well as the Ku Klux Klan Act.

I admit I had not yet heard of the KKK Act until today, but now I have. And those PILF people that you're quoting were found in violation of it. So they're not exactly what I'd call a trusted source on the matter of voter integrity. Their court records show that they are historically hostile to the extension of voting and civil rights, which puts them squarely on the side of white supremacists, which white supremacists have found a political home in the Republican Party.

Which gets me back to those Jim Crow laws: Since 1964, Republicans have been trotting out these same arguments to justify voter database purges that go after minorities. The methodology used for the voter purges is completely the antithesis of proper address list hygiene methods - which they themselves insist upon for their political mailing databases. When we look at the impact of Republican measures in just one state, Georgia, we see that their recent purge done by then-Sec'y of State Kemp removed roughly 500,000 voters, 90% of which were Black. The error rate on those purges was massive, as the disenfranchised voters will attest to. The methods used came right out of Jim Crow.

I am against racism. Jim Crow laws and their derivatives are examples of institutional racism. The facts you quote come from a group that supports those Jim Crow laws and the impact of those laws is much more far-reaching than the 6000-8000 deceased voters nationwide. If you are bothered by 6-8000 bad votes, you should be bothered even more by millions of disenfranchised minority voters collectively in Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, and Louisiana.

If you're not a racist, then stop bringing facts and figures from a group that violated the damn KKK Act of 1871. You learn something every day, but I didn't bank on that being what I learned today... the KKK Act, and the group that violated it with their spurious and flimsy lawsuits...
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on October 07, 2020, 02:41:53 PM
^^^^^^
I am no expert on the PILF, but how does anything you are saying prove that there are no deceased registrants on our nation's voter rolls?

And why would it be a bad thing, as Charger suggests, to require photo ID for voting?
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on October 07, 2020, 07:11:05 PM
Well, regarding the deceased... we have just over 7500 people die per day, and it does take time for the vital records to catch up with other databases, so sure, at any given time, there are dead people on the voter rolls.

As for voter ID laws, those were first cooked up when the 15th Amendment made it illegal to deny votes on the basis of color or prior servitude. So voter ID laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, and comprehension tests came out as additional barriers to voting.

Take the example of the Republican-led legislature in North Carolina in 2013. The state had previously seen a rise in voter participation, particularly among Black voters. The 4th Circuit Court found that the Republicans passed a voter ID law with "discriminatory intent." It was demonstrated that the legislators had done research on how Black voters vote and then wrote legislation to target precisely those practices. The court found that, “In response to claims that intentional racial
discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist. Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.”

Given the state's history of racial discrimination, the surge in Black voting, and the passage of this legislature to target that surge, the court found that there absolutely was discrimination against Black voters. When we consider the totality of both the nation's history of discrimination and the continuity of that discrimination, the precedent here is that if an error is to be made between increasing voter access and diminishing it, the error should fall on the side of increasing voter access.

The year 2013 is significant in that is the year that the state of Alabama won the ruling in Shelby County v Holder, in which the Republican Supreme Court justices overturned part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Within hours of that ruling, Republican-led states passed legislation to require voter ID. Prior to that ruling, such voter ID laws could not be put in place without first being approved by the courts, due to the history of racial discrimination in those states. So, after that ruling eliminated that pre-clearance requirement, the Republicans immediately took the opportunity to start passing Jim Crow laws, of which voter ID is one such law.

In Alabama, the state legislature packed Blacks into as few districts as possible, diluting their voting strength relative to white voters. Before Shelby, this would likely have joined the hundreds of other laws Alabama tried to pass and would have been denied pre-clearance. After Shelby, the arrangement stands on the books during any court challenges to it.

In Arizona, the voter ID law was supplemented with a requirement to provide additional documents proving citizenship, barring many minorities from participating in state elections and making it more difficult for them to participate in federal elections.

In North Carolina, there was the voter ID law that targeted Blacks "with surgical precision".

In North Dakota, the Republicans passed a voter ID law that excluded tribal IDs as valid forms of photo ID.

In Ohio, the Republicans eliminated the provision to allow registration and voting on the same day during early voting. It also cut back the early voting period in that state and restricted access to absentee ballots and made them easier to reject.

In Texas, the voter ID law was already on the books from 2011, but was not enforced until after Shelby, when it was free from the pre-clearance requirement. When there are errors in spelling on the voter rolls, voters in Texas are denied their votes.

In Wisconsin, the Republicans there passed a law that, like North Carolina's, was indented to target voters of color. It is currently under a stay from the US Supreme Court.

If we didn't have such a history of racism in the USA and voter ID laws weren't so surgical in their targeting of minorities, there would be nothing wrong with them. But we have that history and those laws have that character, so there is harm in them. I'm against racism, so that means I'm also against those voter ID laws that solve a problem that really isn't there.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 08, 2020, 06:11:12 AM
^^^^

Making it a racial issue is just ridiculous. Sorry but it is.

Virtually in every single other country in the world a photo ID is required for voting and it's been like that for decades. Why is it that only in the US it would be a racial issue??

Come on....that's just a smoke screen and a stupid one at that.

The US voting system is ancient and very prone to misuse or even outright fraud. Not to mention how ridiculously complicated it is.

For example here in Finland you get a voting registration form in the mail few weeks prior to election, you sign that, you take it with you on voting day, then you give it to the clerk who then asks to see your ID and scans it with a computer after which they give you the ballot, every single candidate has their own number, you write the number of your candidate on the piece of paper, seal it in an envelope and then give it to the clerk who stamps it and puts it in a bigger envelope and gives it back so you can drop it in the box. That's it. Doesn't matter what election it is the process is always the same.
Simple, easy and 100% certain that only people with the right to vote get to vote.

There is no way in hell that anyone without an ID could ever vote here. And it's been like that...I don't know even..atleast since the 80s. And not ONCE has anyone said that "fuck that's some racist shit man...!"
Come on. Let's get real, if a country wants to truly get rid of election misuse and fraud ID requirement is the only way to go....and if you're against that then you are also against honest elections.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on October 08, 2020, 08:20:56 AM
That's the thing, though Charger. In Finland, there is an organized effort to sign up every person as well as to provide that person with an ID. In the USA, there is an organized effort to *block* minorities from accessing those voting rights.

https://www.infofinland.fi/en/information-about-finland/finnish-society/elections-in-finland paints a picture that looks like a dream to me. Official notification a month before voting of where to vote? We have to look that up for ourselves and when the Republicans close polling places, they don't necessarily make a public notice of that event. And they let citizens of other countries vote in municipal elections! Wow, that is very far ahead of what we do here, and I say that with admiration.

The page itself is in one of 12 languages at the site. I am impressed by that as well. When I search for "voter suppression Finland" I have to specify "suppression" in the search and even then I get articles about US states at the top of the search results! "Finnish" appears on the wiki page for voter suppression because it's a language that the page is translated into. And then there's an article about how Finnish politics has some of the least gender inequality and how that is a lesson for the USA...

... Finland obviously does not have a history that includes forcing an ethnic group to immigrate as slaves and then, upon emancipation, leaving them completely on their own in an economically and socially vulnerable condition where their former masters held power and then used that power to lynch them when their voting rights were protected and then formally oppress them when those rights were no longer protected. It's no mistake that racial violence rose in the USA as Blacks struggled for their voting rights, it was a reversion to form.

Charger, if the government provided IDs and automatically provided registration materials, then yes, voter ID would be a total non-issue. But in the USA, we've got situations where the Republicans are in control of a state's government, see changing voter demographics, and then move to suppress those voters instead of shifting their policies to attract voters.  (we also don't have proportional representation, and use first-past-the-post elections, which further restrict voter rights and representation) In states with large Native American populations, the Republicans made laws that did not accept Native American photo IDs, even though there were identical to state drivers' licenses in their provisioning. They did not show a date of birth, so that criteria was used to disallow them - and in the process, bar Native Americans in that state from voting.

The shorter version, what's the Finnish equivalent of a terrorist group organized on racial lines that used intimidation and murder to attack and oppress another racial group, which has been active for over 150 years? And that lack of a Finnish KKK is why voter ID and registration are non-issues in Finland... and why they are hotly contested issues in the USA, with those adhering to white supremacist stances opposed to fairness in registration, ID, and other matters of voter rights.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on October 08, 2020, 08:35:37 AM
^^^^^^
Complete crap.   :redcard:

Charger hits the nail on the head.
Democrats have been claiming for a long time now that to require a photo ID will make it too difficult for some minorities to vote.  Meanwhile, you have to have a photo ID in order to drive a car, get a bank account, and receive aid from most assistance programs.  I personally believe that the Dems fear that the more accurate an election, the more unlikely they retain any power.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 08, 2020, 09:28:59 AM
ZZZ I think you're letting your own political hatred and bias twist and bend the issue completely here. Also you're talking about stuff that happened like 200 years ago. Has nothing to do with today.

The fact of the matter is and will always be. If you don't need to prove your identity upon voting no one can know who it is that is voting nor does that person even have the right to vote. And by such you can never EVER be sure that the elections are neither fair nor honest.

And it's not a party issue, it's a DEMOCRACY issue.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on October 08, 2020, 12:01:11 PM
Yes, I agree it's a democracy issue, but it's the Republican Party that has moved in 49 of 50 states to either enact, maintain, or expand voting restrictions that impact minorities disproportionately, with a complete suite of legislation that includes voter ID laws.

As for the claim that photo ID makes it too difficult for minorities to vote, that's been in evidence since before 1964, when it was Southern Democrats making that requirement - and the same "you need ID to drive" justification that masked the racism in the intent.

Typhon, if Republicans wanted more accurate elections, why are they constantly using voter purge methodology that is proven to have an extremely high false positive rate that impacts Black voters far out of proportion to White voters? Sorry, but this is one of the prices the Republicans have to pay when they ally up with white supremacists to foist their views on abortion and gun control on the rest of the nation - racial discrimination goes along with that package.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: KiloDeltaCharlie on October 08, 2020, 12:28:51 PM
In the UK the electoral register is updated pretty quickly after someone dies. Last year we had a general election on the 12th December. Dad died on the 22nd Oct, and the polling cards were sent out 3-4 weeks later, we didn't get one for dad.

We don't have Id cards in the UK and there would be an outrage worse than a Brexit debate if the government tried to introduce one. Even without one there is very little suggestion that electoral fraud is prevalent in the UK.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 08, 2020, 01:22:40 PM
We don't have Id cards in the UK and there would be an outrage worse than a Brexit debate if the government tried to introduce one. Even without one there is very little suggestion that electoral fraud is prevalent in the UK.

Hang on? What??? You don't have any form of ID in the UK? No passports no drivers licences nothing? How in the hell does that work?!!?!
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 08, 2020, 01:29:12 PM
in evidence since before 1964, when it was Southern Democrats making that requirement - and the same "you need ID to drive" justification that masked the racism in the intent.

Honestly...I just don't understand why demanding an ID to vote can ever be considered racist??? That's so so stupid argument.

As that would mean the whole of Finland would be racist, and Sweden, and Norway and Germany and about gazillion other countries...totally ridiculous.

The only reason to NOT want ID to vote is to maintain the possibility to rig elections. Simple as that.

Every single citizen can get an ID. Every single one. It might be difficult due to some regulations but if you want one you can get one. Period.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: KiloDeltaCharlie on October 08, 2020, 02:41:51 PM
We don't have Id cards in the UK and there would be an outrage worse than a Brexit debate if the government tried to introduce one. Even without one there is very little suggestion that electoral fraud is prevalent in the UK.

Hang on? What??? You don't have any form of ID in the UK? No passports no drivers licences nothing? How in the hell does that work?!!?!

Well of course we have them, but not everybody has one (for instance, I don't have a driving licence and my mother doesn't have a passport, and I don't think I would have to go too far to find a friend or relative who doesn't have either). What I'm talking about is a dedicated ID card. This was considered by the then government about 15-20 years ago... and would have caused the uproar I alluded to... the idea was eventually dropped. It's funny, people are happy to have passports and driving licences but making them have a dedicated ID card is beyond the pale! ;)
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on October 08, 2020, 03:19:01 PM
Typhon, if Republicans wanted more accurate elections, why are they constantly using voter purge methodology that is proven to have an extremely high false positive rate that impacts Black voters far out of proportion to White voters? Sorry, but this is one of the prices the Republicans have to pay when they ally up with white supremacists to foist their views on abortion and gun control on the rest of the nation - racial discrimination goes along with that package.

Continuing to sling this mud about white supremacists garbage in the hopes that some of it is going to stick, is a waste of time.  You don't hear me bringing up the fact that it was Lincoln and the Republicans who fought to end the slavery which the Democrats had no problem with, do you?  So stop baiting me with this tactic, already.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 08, 2020, 03:41:44 PM
We don't have Id cards in the UK and there would be an outrage worse than a Brexit debate if the government tried to introduce one. Even without one there is very little suggestion that electoral fraud is prevalent in the UK.

Hang on? What??? You don't have any form of ID in the UK? No passports no drivers licences nothing? How in the hell does that work?!!?!

Well of course we have them, but not everybody has one (for instance, I don't have a driving licence and my mother doesn't have a passport, and I don't think I would have to go too far to find a friend or relative who doesn't have either). What I'm talking about is a dedicated ID card. This was considered by the then government about 15-20 years ago... and would have caused the uproar I alluded to... the idea was eventually dropped. It's funny, people are happy to have passports and driving licences but making them have a dedicated ID card is beyond the pale! ;)

Yeah but Driver's licences and Passports ARE ID's. :D

So obviously you have them. And that's what is used to prove one's identity. Would also work in a voting situation naturally.

We also have a dedicated ID card too which is an option if you do not have Driver's licence or Passport. One of them is mandatory in order to live here. One can't even open a bank account without one...nor can they vote without one obviously.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: KiloDeltaCharlie on October 08, 2020, 04:21:01 PM
We don't have Id cards in the UK and there would be an outrage worse than a Brexit debate if the government tried to introduce one. Even without one there is very little suggestion that electoral fraud is prevalent in the UK.

Hang on? What??? You don't have any form of ID in the UK? No passports no drivers licences nothing? How in the hell does that work?!!?!

Well of course we have them, but not everybody has one (for instance, I don't have a driving licence and my mother doesn't have a passport, and I don't think I would have to go too far to find a friend or relative who doesn't have either). What I'm talking about is a dedicated ID card. This was considered by the then government about 15-20 years ago... and would have caused the uproar I alluded to... the idea was eventually dropped. It's funny, people are happy to have passports and driving licences but making them have a dedicated ID card is beyond the pale! ;)

Yeah but Driver's licences and Passports ARE ID's. :D

So obviously you have them. And that's what is used to prove one's identity. Would also work in a voting situation naturally.

We also have a dedicated ID card too which is an option if you do not have Driver's licence or Passport. One of them is mandatory in order to live here. One can't even open a bank account without one...nor can they vote without one obviously.

But that's the point, not everyone has one and there is no requirement to have an ID like that, so many people will be unable to vote if they introduced the requirement. They aren't talking about introducing voter IDs but if voter fraud ever became an issue it might have to be reconsidered.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 08, 2020, 04:36:20 PM
We don't have Id cards in the UK and there would be an outrage worse than a Brexit debate if the government tried to introduce one. Even without one there is very little suggestion that electoral fraud is prevalent in the UK.

Hang on? What??? You don't have any form of ID in the UK? No passports no drivers licences nothing? How in the hell does that work?!!?!

Well of course we have them, but not everybody has one (for instance, I don't have a driving licence and my mother doesn't have a passport, and I don't think I would have to go too far to find a friend or relative who doesn't have either). What I'm talking about is a dedicated ID card. This was considered by the then government about 15-20 years ago... and would have caused the uproar I alluded to... the idea was eventually dropped. It's funny, people are happy to have passports and driving licences but making them have a dedicated ID card is beyond the pale! ;)

Yeah but Driver's licences and Passports ARE ID's. :D

So obviously you have them. And that's what is used to prove one's identity. Would also work in a voting situation naturally.

We also have a dedicated ID card too which is an option if you do not have Driver's licence or Passport. One of them is mandatory in order to live here. One can't even open a bank account without one...nor can they vote without one obviously.

But that's the point, not everyone has one and there is no requirement to have an ID like that, so many people will be unable to vote if they introduced the requirement. They aren't talking about introducing voter IDs but if voter fraud ever became an issue it might have to be reconsidered.

But I honestly don't understand how you can carry on with your everyday life without any form of ID?? How do you get a bank account? How do you pay with a credit card if it needs id validation? How do you buy an appartment or a house? Go to the doctor? Get a job for that matter??? Makes no sense to me that one could live a productive life without any form of ID...  :o :twitch:
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Zzzptm on October 09, 2020, 02:15:37 PM
Typhon: Your history is incomplete. While Democrats enacted Jim Crow laws in the South, it was Republican legislatures that put them into place in the North: states just across the Ohio River - Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio - actually had Black Codes in place shortly after the Civil War ended. Since the end of the Civil War, neither party was particularly emphatic about equal rights. The Plessy ruling that paved the way for segregation was handed down by a 7-1 ruling, with Republican justices dominant in the majority bloc.

The Civil Rights Era saw Southern Democrats break with the national Democratic Party, starting in 1948 and accelerating after 1964 after LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act. When you look at the party rule in Southern states since Reconstruction, it's solidly Democratic until about the late 70s, when the Democratic Party was pushing out white supremacist candidates. Those politicians remained active and affiliated with the Republican Party.

I'm not baiting you, it's a matter of historical fact. When we get to current events, there are numerous cases of white supremacists supporting, participating in, and being nominated by the Republican Party. I went over voting rights legislative records in all 50 states and only in Utah was the Republican Party active in expanding voting rights. In all other 49 states, they were squarely opposed to voting rights measures. Even setting aside voter ID laws written to exclude minorities, there's still the matter of voter purges, restrictive voter registration laws, restrictions on early and absentee voting, and other measures that are designed to make it much more difficult for minorities to cast their votes. This is not a "both parties are doing it" sort of thing - it's exclusively in Republican Party-backed legislation. There have been multiple suits against the state and national Republican Party organizations in recent years over violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I'm not making this up or getting it from some wild-eyed website of crackpot info: this is the legislative and court record. It's the truth, plain and simple.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on October 10, 2020, 06:54:49 AM
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50444060088_cf759a218d_z.jpg)


Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on October 10, 2020, 07:50:14 AM
^^^^^^
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Jack the Stripper on January 10, 2021, 01:29:06 AM
Just leaving this here for interest sake given his history and standing in the metal world and that he’s now found himself on the FBI’s most wanted list. I’m not condoning or agreeing with his actions.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Typhon on January 10, 2021, 08:05:47 AM
^^^^^^
I hear that.  The government can't continue to step on our liberties and expect the people to just keep on taking it.   :beerbang:
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Jack the Stripper on January 18, 2021, 12:13:30 AM
So it seems Schaffer has now been arrested after turning himself in and is facing up to 6 charges
https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/iced-earths-jon-schaffer-arrested-for-role-in-capitol-riot/
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on January 18, 2021, 06:38:27 AM
Well he did the honorable thing by turning himself in...which ofcourse I always knew he would.

I do ponder will he actually end up doing some time because we are talking about some serious charges here....
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Jack the Stripper on January 18, 2021, 07:02:57 AM
Well it took him over a week and he knows they would’ve caught up with him anyway as he was one of the most identifiable persons involved. His Lawyer would’ve told him that it was best to just hand himself in. Not sure it was honourable. Didn’t have much choice in the end.

He’ll be doing some time that’s for sure...How long I don’t know. I’m sure the news outlets will report what the maximum sentence carries for all the charges
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on January 18, 2021, 07:16:54 AM
Ofcoruse he had other choices. Most rioters wouldn't even consider turning themselves in. I ponder how many of those blm ones turned themselves in?

Turning oneself in is always honorable thing to do.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: KiloDeltaCharlie on January 18, 2021, 07:35:11 AM
The thing is he knows he was seen there, he was quite recognisable, his lawyers probably told him he has no leg to stand on. By cooperating, he probably thinks authorities will be lenient on him, and maybe get away with a big fine and a suspended sentence.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Jack the Stripper on January 18, 2021, 01:44:00 PM
^^^Yep he could've either lived the rest of his life on the run and have no more career or hand himself in...
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Charger on January 18, 2021, 02:01:48 PM
Well I doubt he'll have a career anymore anyways...

Sad thing really...Granted though the post Tim-era stuff has been spotty at best.
Title: Re: Politics in history. In general.
Post by: Vyn on January 18, 2021, 02:05:11 PM
(https://i.ibb.co/WsP2y3z/hide.jpg)