Classic Trump

[hntnhole]

21 hours ago, NWUSHorny said:

Awesome idea, an after poll, pole the hole party. I will of course want to pole a large sample of holes and allow all of the poles include my hole in their pole sample

You're no slouch at pol-emec's .... and you hide it well, too 😁

[hntnhole]

16 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

If you believe he's bad and evil, then do you also believe you have zero responsibility to help stop him from becoming president again?

Everyone that wants to be a productive citizen of the US must, therefore, vote.  It's a basic duty of every citizen, whether they're voting positively or negatively, as we well know.  

Thus, even if someone feels "above" the vote/not-vote issue, holding oneself above the fray is nothing but an abject failure as a citizen of the US.  Vote for someone, vote against someone, but if someone (who can) doesn't even bother to vote at all, they deserve no further attention from serious-minded citizens. 

Politically, socially, culturally, they've chosen to become the chaff amongst the wheat, and those who have no inclination to take their words or thoughts seriously can't be blamed. 

Absolution is easy, when we're the one offering it to ourselves, huh? 😇

[PozBearWI]

Poll worker here....  And that probably influences my viewpoint quite a bit.  Working an election with a 20% turnout is frustrating.  Local elections are far and away the most consequential to ones daily life.  And yet I win my local office seat quite handily with those tiny turnouts.  

Somehow we need to make talking about politics sexy again.  It shouldn't have to resort to shouting.  We might have to agree to disagree.  The League of Women voters who not surprisingly are THE place to go for candidate information (vote411).  I regularly see the R seats with ANY candidate input at all.  The local boards are the ones making the rules governing what happens where one lives.  Closest representative government to ones residence.  And yet 10 to 20 percent will show up for the local elections.  And even the big ones might get to 70; I think highest ever here was about 80 percent turnout.  

One would think ones most local representative would actually be picked to represent.  A relative handful decide for the many....  😞

[norefusal]

On 8/3/2024 at 2:27 AM, NEDenver said:

I call it being bad at math.  Sometimes, maybe, it’s being easily manipulated.  Voting for a third party only makes it easier for the main party further from one’s own ideology to win.  Therefore, it’s only a good strategy for right wingers who want to vote for libertarians or constitutional conservative minor parties.

so..

i read here people attempting a serious discussion of 3rd party voting. 

then i read an article about our current 3rd party choice admitting he picked up a dead bear cub "road kill" then, because of "too much falconry and steak dinner" dumped the dead bear in central park a decade ago. 

🤣

[hntnhole]

17 hours ago, PozBearWI said:

Poll worker here.

1.  Thank you for offering/providing that crucial service.  

17 hours ago, PozBearWI said:

Local elections are far and away the most consequential to ones daily life.

2.  I am always surprised by those who can't seem to comprehend that basic, obvious fact.  The local positions have a very direct impact on our neighborhoods, our libraries, all the necessary services we depend on, from garbage-pickup to guidelines the cops have to follow.  Should the local libraries offer The Handmaid's Tale?  How often should the streets be swept?  How huge do the potholes have to be before they're filled in?  Can the cops detain someone merely because they don't like their looks?  

The large-scale Federal actions impact us, of course, but  local elections do so in a far more impactful way, and are a part of our daily lives.  

[norefusal]

3 minutes ago, hntnhole said:

 

The large-scale Federal actions impact us, of course, but  local elections do so in a far more impactful way, and are a part of our daily lives.  

and yet the whole system is gamed the opposite. 

my feed is so clogged w the same nat info i know by heart already and yet frantic last minute searches for info, any info about the locals, who they are and what they think is like searching for a needle in a haystack. 

 

[hntnhole]

49 minutes ago, norefusal said:

for info, any info about the locals

When I moved here, I joined a local Dem organization (lgbtq+) that is mostly comprised of gay folks that were born around here, or at least grew up here (Ft. L.).  We meet regularly, local candidates for local offices come and give short addresses as to why they should be elected to whatever local office they're running for, then we vote (via writing the name of our choice) on a little slip of paper), and the results are announced at the end of the meeting.  

When election time rolls around (here, we just finished the first round), and the results (meaning, the officially-backed candidates that via our meetings), are posted on the website.  These are County-wide elections, so we can only vote for candidates in whatever District we live in, of course.  There are easily hundreds of members, but mostly quite local.  

There is also the regular Democratic Organization which I also belong to, but - it's ... well, not as much "fun" as the queer one.  😜

[50latinos]

1 hour ago, hntnhole said:

When I moved here, I joined a local Dem organization (lgbtq+) that is mostly comprised of gay folks that were born around here, or at least grew up here (Ft. L.). 

I would love to join.

[hntnhole]

check  your mailbox .... 

[BootmanLA]

3 hours ago, norefusal said:

and yet the whole system is gamed the opposite. 

my feed is so clogged w the same nat info i know by heart already and yet frantic last minute searches for info, any info about the locals, who they are and what they think is like searching for a needle in a haystack. 

Part of that is the demise of actual local news.

When I became an adult, most decent-sized cities (say, >100,000 people) in the U.S. had a daily newspaper that usually had at least 8-10 major articles of local/state importance. If the city was larger than, say, 250,000 people, it not infrequently had two such papers (often one morning paper and one afternoon paper), and even when the two papers were owned by one company, the papers themselves competed to break stories quickly and thoroughly. When they were owned by separate companies, the competition was even fiercer. While the New York Times and the Washington Post have long been the two biggest "national" newspapers, there were several others that filled a similar role - the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, the Dallas Morning News, and more. Weekend editions of each were almost an inch thick (granted, with lots of inserts and ads, but still), and even the daily editions had 50-60 pages of mixed ads and news.

At the same time, most larger cities had TV stations affiliated with the three major networks (CBS, NBC, ABC), and invariably those local stations had early morning local news, evening news, and late night news, and many also had a noon news show. Local radio stations might also be owned by the same company as a local TV station (or newspaper), and the radio station would have news breaks that were fed information from the TV or newspaper reporters.

There are many reasons why those things have broken down, but the bottom line is that many cities barely have a single local newspaper at all. Major companies like Gannett have bought up scores of local papers and replaced the collective army of reporters those papers once had with a handful of stenographers who dutifully transcribe press releases and a handful of right-wing writers who reflect the company line. Likewise, big companies are buying up local TV stations and replacing the local news with less relevant information (because doing the digging to cover local stories, especially political ones, is expensive). Radio is almost 100% nationalized, except for public radio stations, and while the national public radio networks (NPR, APM, PRI, etc.) do excellent coverage of national and international issues, it falls to struggling local affiliates to cover local news, the quality of which varies tremendously.

Part of that is due to the internet. Papers were cheap because of economies of scale and advertising underwriting the majority of the cost, but once the internet started letting companies market much cheaper, if less effectively, the days of multi-page ads in the papers was over. Direct shopping has all but killed department stores, which used to take out those multi-page ads. Classifieds went by the wayside as people found much cheaper ways to sell stuff. And so on.

Those of us who still have a locally-owned newspaper that is committed to covering local politics and government are exceptionally fortunate. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer of us in that situation, and we've now raised at least an entire generation who has no idea what that looks like. 

[PozBearWI]

4 hours ago, hntnhole said:

1.  Thank you for offering/providing that crucial service.  

2.  I am always surprised by those who can't seem to comprehend that basic, obvious fact.  The local positions have a very direct impact on our neighborhoods, our libraries, all the necessary services we depend on, from garbage-pickup to guidelines the cops have to follow.  Should the local libraries offer The Handmaid's Tale?  How often should the streets be swept?  How huge do the potholes have to be before they're filled in?  Can the cops detain someone merely because they don't like their looks?  

The large-scale Federal actions impact us, of course, but  local elections do so in a far more impactful way, and are a part of our daily lives.  

Not to mention property taxes...  

You're welcome?  It is a gift I give myself.  That others benefit too is just frosting on the cake.  🙂 

 

And @BootmanLA I am grateful every Thursday when my local paper comes.  And it is so weird.  Somehow we survive with out "breaking news" for the rest of the week...

Edited August 5 by PozBearWI

[BootmanLA]

8 hours ago, PozBearWI said:

And @BootmanLA I am grateful every Thursday when my local paper comes.  And it is so weird.  Somehow we survive with out "breaking news" for the rest of the week...

If your local paper is a weekly, that's understandable, because (IIRC) you live in a relatively small community, where weekly or semi-weekly papers have long been the norm. But there are plenty of people who live in a substantially larger (population-wise, that is) area and yet there is virtually no local news coverage - nobody to cover the local city council, school board, or county governing body on a regular basis. If there is, it's steno journalism - just writing down the surface appearances and never doing any digging, because in a month that person will be covering something else entirely.

[BlackDude]

On 8/4/2024 at 8:41 AM, hntnhole said:

Everyone that wants to be a productive citizen of the US must, therefore, vote.  It's a basic duty of every citizen, whether they're voting positively or negatively, as we well know.  

Thus, even if someone feels "above" the vote/not-vote issue, holding oneself above the fray is nothing but an abject failure as a citizen of the US.  Vote for someone, vote against someone, but if someone (who can) doesn't even bother to vote at all, they deserve no further attention from serious-minded citizens. 

Politically, socially, culturally, they've chosen to become the chaff amongst the wheat, and those who have no inclination to take their words or thoughts seriously can't be blamed. 

Absolution is easy, when we're the one offering it to ourselves, huh? 😇

Well we just have a fundamental disagreement on voting. It is not my duty as a citizen to give power to a person or party who isn’t going to support the interests of my group. Any person who gives away their power for nothing is t really serious about power. 
 

Also, citizenship is not based on your “voting status.” 

[hntnhole]

Fair enough. 

One singular citizen, however, is not able to "give power" to any political candidate or "group".  It's only in the context of what an election is that matters.  

If I offered the notion that:

1 hour ago, BlackDude said:

citizenship is not based on your “voting status.”

then pardon my lack of clarity. 

The right to vote is a part of being a citizen first, and an important part.  Thus, it follows that those who can vote, but choose to refrain from voting, might also refrain from criticizing citizens that take their rights seriously, including voting. 

Thanks for your response.

On 8/5/2024 at 12:21 PM, norefusal said:

any info about the locals,

Surely there are both local Republican and Democratic organizations in your area.  There are probably an LGBTQ-oriented club or two as well.  Even here in Ruby Red Florida, we have both the regular Democratic and regular Republican organizations, and two LGBT+ ones too (one local, and one state-wide).  

[topblkmale]

7 hours ago, BlackDude said:

Well we just have a fundamental disagreement on voting. It is not my duty as a citizen to give power to a person or party who isn’t going to support the interests of my group. Any person who gives away their power for nothing is t really serious about power. 
 

Also, citizenship is not based on your “voting status.” 

 

Neither presidential campaign supports the interests of the black vote - which is what this thread was originally about. 

Like you @BlackDude and myself, I know MANY black folks who will NOT be voting this election cycle.

Bye blue Georgia and possibly Michigan.