The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[MATTROSE94]

Sanders is not winning Ohio or Florida.

I feel like the guy in SpongeBob. "How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man?"

Ohio is not a tossup state, it's Lean R at the very least. Sanders is also not winning Florida with his views. It's a Tilt R state, and the vast majority of Cubans won't vote for a socialist. Not to mention Florida has recently gone for the incumbent frequently (Obama 2012, Bush 2004, Clinton 1996, Bush 1992, Reagan 1984.)

I supported Sanders in 2016, but it's more likely than not that he loses these two if he ran.

[MATTROSE94]

This post is indicitive of two major problems with trumpists... you don't understand that not everything is black and white and simplified (unless it suits you), and you don't understand that many Republican or Trump criticisms are not partisan (liberal / conservative "teams") in nature (unless it suits you). Let me expand on some of your claims in a nuanced, reality-based way...

We hate that the guy on the $20 bill waged a holocaust-like internment and genocide of indigineous Americans and we don't want to celerate that.

We love the police but we hate that minorities, especially black people, are treated differently sometimes, especially in life or death situations. There is nothing in the law or police handbook that says cops should treat minorities any different than white people.

We hate when people "must" respect the pledge of allegiance (and national anthem) in ALL contexts, EXACTLY the way that we are told we "must", even when we may have good reason to invoke our First Amendment rights to act differently while still not being unnecessarily disrespecful.

We hate that our gun laws are causing mass death and are going way above a beyond our Second Amendment rights to allow mentally ill people to purchase AR-15 military assault rifles at gun shows without background checks and then use them to murder our children.

We hate it when religion is forced into places it shouldn't be in, OR when christianity is given special privledges in a nation that is supposed to ALWAYS treat every religion equally.

We hate the electoral college because it's a system that we don't like that ALSO is not build into our constitution or declaration of independance or any major American legal / historical framework. It is perfectly patriotic and valid to challenge it and want an alternative system.

We hate our president because he's an immoral corrupt liar who doesn't take his job seriously, screws up constantly when he does attempt to take it seriously, doesn't belive in non-fascist democracy or American values, and is likely a bought and paid for Russian puppet (traitor).

We hate Supreme Court justices that want to move backwards on abortion and LGBTQ rights, despite the majority of the American population (over 50%) wanting to keep movng forwards. We hate Kavanaugh because he isn't the right man for the job, regardless of his politics.

We hate big gulp sodas because they're terrible for our health and our children's health. They should be legal to buy (obviously) but they shouldn't be readily available for children inside of schools.

We hate men with beards and penises who used to be women 20 years ago being forced to pee in women's bathrooms alongside women and little girls, regardless of what makes the trans man OR the women in that bathroom comfortable.

We... don't hate Rudolph to my knowledge. At least, I haven't seen any compelling reasons to hate Rudolph as of yet. I'm pretty damn skeptical to the whole idea, but will aa always remain open-minded.

[MATTROSE94]

Trump’s latest irresponsible actions and his cultist crowd increasingly resemble Hitler’s final moments in his bunker, as the Allied forces advanced on Berlin ...

[MATTROSE94]

Best post of all time!

I am an election judge

[MATTROSE94]

Go Dr Gross, McGrath is no longer tied with McConnell she is down 48-41


Dr Gross and Dr Bollier are needed in this Pandemic

[MATTROSE94]

"Leprachauns"are real with dwarfism in the Human race

[MATTROSE94]

@MATTROSE94

This thread is for actual quality efforts.
If you want to memorialize your favourite OC posts the appropriate thread is this: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=368396.0

I didn’t know that thread existed. These posts are probably the weirdest ones I ever read on the site.

[MATTROSE94]

The NY Post is worse than trash.

[MATTROSE94]

D's probably get 8 seats AZ, CO, 1 GA, IA, ME, NC and SC and pronly 1 more from AK, KS or MT that's the max we got in 2008, but in 2006, 2008, 2014 a word of caution only 5 incumbents got defeated, 8 seats this time will be well over 5 incumbents and that rarely happens in history, since the 1990s

Dems should expect not a 60 seat Senate but a 51/55 seat majority, Jones, McGrath, Espy and HEGAR are done, making 60 seats impossible

[MATTROSE94]

Best post thread of all time!

BRTD, TexasGurl, and other old posters, was OC always like this?

Yes. Though his posting style has evolved a bit. It's still off the wall and nonsensical as he's always been granted.

And Solid's goofy maps that have Sununu,  Parsons losing and Dems winning IN gov are sensible? He doesnt even post on a regular basis, and tell us why his maps are goofy. He just posts NUT maps all over the place and never responds. Because he is Authoritarian 

[MATTROSE94]

I actually have MATTROSE94 on ignore because I got sick of reading his "ironic" posts of bad analysis written seriously and deadpan which is not and never has been funny but does result in threads being derailed with unironic replies to it (really wish others would quit taking the bait though because I can still read their posts and it's insufferable.)

The fact is, I am pretty sure MATTROSE94 is not ironic at all when he makes his completely deranged takes. I agree people should stop taking the bait. Arguing with him is kind of useless.

I am actually messing around with some posters on the site by posting weird predictions and outlandish political analyses. None of my election posts are meant to be serious at this point, as I got really burned due to the 2016 election and now realize that American elections are little more than political theater. My main focus on the site now is looking back at weird posts by OC, as they are very funny to read imo.

[MATTROSE94]

I find his heartlessness when dealing with covid one of the main reasons why he lost reelections as it proved that the man didn't truly care about the American people. He could have done a lot more, but chose to play his little game. Yes, I'll condemn him on covid as he could have did a hell of a lot more to stop it at the federal level. There's a lot of stuff I agree policy wise with Trump but he was kind of a jerk and kind of heartless. For this he lost.

[MATTROSE94]

I disagree with your assertion that the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was "an utter disaster for the country." It was an utter disaster for the 51 million people who voted for Gore, and it was a disaster for ME, personally, but i was not a disaster for the 50.5 million people, besides me, who voted for Bush. Those voters got what they wanted. Also, even though Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al was not a "sequel" to Bush v. Gore, that does not mean that there never will be a sequel at any point in the future. So long as Presidents from both parties continue to select who to appoint to the Court for ideological reasons, rather than because the people being appointed are the most highly objective interpreters of law that can be found in the country, the possibility exists that Bush v. Gore will have a sequel of some sort. Even liberal Supreme Court Justices appointed by Democratic Presidents might give in to the temptation to perform another Bush v. Gore of some sort.

I had been a Republican back in the 1990's, and I voted for George W. Bush that year. But my loyalty to the GOP was mostly based on the fact that I had faith that Republican-appointed Justices were mostly going to be better than Democratic-appointed Justices. I particularly believed that Republican-appointed Justices were going to be Originalists: they would respect the original meaning of each and every clause in the Constitution. Conversely, I assumed that Democratic Presidents were not going to appoint any Originalists. That assumption was based on the fact that the Democratic Senators had rejected the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the SCOTUS in 1987. That was why, slightly more than 20 years ago today, as soon as I heard in the news that GWB was going to try to get an injunction in federal courts to stop in the Florida recounts, and that included in his legal argument was that the method of recounting ballots was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, I was devastated that Bush was using that argument. What he was asking the federal courts to do had nothing to do with the intended meaning of the Equal Protecion Clause. Then, exactly 20 years ago today, the SCOTUS granted Bush's request for an injunction, and they based their reason why they granted the request entirely on the Equal Protection Clause and that alone. I knew then that none of the five Justices who granted the injunction were truly Originalists at all. They were relying on precedents from the Warre Court era, especially during the 1960's, that had nothing to do with the originally intended meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

Not only was Bush's and the Court's reasoning a grand departure from the meaning that was intended in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, it was even a grand departure from those 1960's Warren Court precedents themselves. Think of it this way: look at the election results of the 1968 presidential election between Nixon, Humphrey, and Wallace. Now imagine these things: imagine that the results of Florida and New Jersey were flipped, and those states went to Humphrey instead of Nixon. That would give Nixon only 270 electoral college votes, and it would give Humphrey 222 electoral college votes. Now imagine that, in Ohio specifically, Nixon was ahead by only 904 votes instead of what actually happened: that he won by 90,428 votes. Now imagine that Humphrey decided to ask Ohio to recount the votes. And furthermore, imagine that Ohio was conducting the recounts in approximately the same way that Florida was conducting them in 2000: that there was no statewide standard for determining a legally valid vote, and in some Ohio counties, county clerks used different standards for determining a legally valid vote than in other Ohio counties. So Nixon initiates a lawsuit that tries the stop the recounts in Ohio, arguing that Ohio is violating the Equal Protection Clause. In 1968, would the Warren Court have granted Nixon's request and stopped the Ohio recounts, citing its own relatively recent precedents about how all citizens' must have equal voting rights? Of course the Warren Court wouldn't have done that!

The simple fact is that neither the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as adopted in 1868, or as interpreted (erroneoulsy, IMO) by the Warren Court during the 1960's, required that Florida should have had a statewide, uniform standard before the state started recounting ballots. "The law" didn't make the SCOTUS do what it did, so the only other explanation for why Justices Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas granted Bush's request was that they wanted to ensure that Bush would be the winner of the election. So Bush v. Gore was neither a fair, objective, nor accurate interpretation of the Constitution. I knew that 20 years ago, and I still knew it two years later, when I made a conscious decision to stop supporting the GOP, and indeed to stop voting all together.

During the years 2004 through 2014, I was consistently saying, to anyone who asked why I wasn't voting anymore, that "Why should I bother to vote if the Supreme Court can hand down a ruling that prevents my vote from being counted?" That was a short-hand way of explaining how I really felt, more deeply, which was that I did not trust that either Democrats or Republicans were going to appoint true Originalists to the Supreme Court. And that without any presidents appointing people to the Court who would objectively and accurately interpret what each clause of the Constitution was intended to mean, the Constitution was going to continue to be misinterpreted far too many times. Why bother participating in a system of government in which the judiciary misinterprets the highest law of the land?

I have my reasons for why I decided to return to the voting booth in 2016.

[MATTROSE94]

F

In the Soviet Union there were no homeless people, science was prospering, no mass migration from the Soviet Republics due to Moscow giving subsidies to less fortunate republics and kept developing their infrastructure, everyone was treated as equals, no drugs and HIV epidemic, Soviet engineering was the envy of the world, elders got respectful pensions, everyone had jobs, no wars & conflicts inside the state, their army wasn't filled with psychopaths hazing new recruits, etc.

[MATTROSE94]

Basically the Dems really screwed themselves with their appointments in the 60s and then there were basically 24 years of GOP picks (since Carter didn’t get any, as stated). One of Clinton’s picks (RBG) of course just died and then Breyer is still on the court at like 85 or whatever.

Kennedy:
Byron White: 31 years, retired and replaced by RBG under Clinton.
Arthur Goldberg: 3 years, retired and replaced by Abe Fortas under LBJ

LBJ
Abe Fortas: 3 years, retired and replaced by Harry Blackmun under Nixon
Thurgood Marshall: 24 years, retired and replaced by Clarence Thomas under GHWB

The combo of Goldberg followed by Fortas was just awful. From what I can tell, LBJ wanted to replace Goldberg with his friend Abe Fortas and succeeded in doing so. Fortas was basically an ethics bomb, but LBJ in probably the worst domestic policy move he made (Vietnam obviously being the worst overall) decided to try to elevate Fortas to Chief Justice after Earl Warren retired. That failed and Fortas resigned a few months later, in the Nixon administration following yet another scandal.

As to Marshall, it’s hard to say if he would have lasted into the Clinton administration (he died 4 days after the inauguration) and I wouldn’t blame him for being mad if Carter wanted to replace him given that he served 10-11 years past the end of the Carter admin. That’s just kind of one of those unfortunate things.

As to Trump getting three picks, the way that I see it, either Gorsuch or Barrett is essentially a stolen seat. I can see the argument for one, but not the other. I don’t care which one you pick, but one was essentially stolen by the GOP. Sadly, Gorsuch is my favorite of Trump’s picks. Kavanaugh for all of his issues was legitimate, but he really shouldn’t be on the court with all of his issues. Count me as being suspicious regarding Kennedy’s resignation. Gorsuch has been a good replacement for Scalia. Scalia always had a few positions that I liked regarding civil liberties and Gorsuch seems to be in the same mold. His support of Native American rights is refreshing.

/rant

[MATTROSE94]

This post strikes me as pretty geopolitically ignorant.  Iran is not a "miserable" global outpost like Afghanistan or Libya, it is a relatively wealthy, urbanized and developed regional player.  Iran's HDI rating of 0.783 makes it roughly comparable to U.S.-aligned democracies such as Mexico and Ukraine in terms of development, and it has a well-developed manufacturing, research and education sectors by international standards.  Most Iranians alive in 2021 live comfortable, consumer-driven lifestyles comparable to the urban middle classes of other large, developing powers like Brazil or China. 

Yes, Iran is a Islamist theocracy but it is not really any more authoritarian or cruel than the average Middle Eastern country.  Iranian citizens vote for democratic representation at both the federal and local level, which is more than can be said for the U.S.-backed House of Saud after all.  The U.S.' policy of isolating post-revolutionary Iran has pushed it into an unnecessarily antagonistic position with the West, and U.S. leadership to normalize this relationship would have the dual benefit of improving regional stability as well as neutralizing the potential for Russia to build Iran as a counterweight to U.S. influence in the region.     

[MATTROSE94]

I’m not saying that 2023-2030 should look like 2020. I’m just saying that there’s a good chance that the new normal contains some of the lessons learnt from this year.

I took a series of classes in undergrad, back in ‘18/‘19 looking at the public health, focusing on the malaria epidemic. One of the major sticking points in getting the disease under control is getting the populace on board with health measures. Rebuilding your sanitary infrastructure is complex, and it’s often uncomfortable to sleep under a bed net.

The hypothetical used by the lecturer to explain reluctance was this ‘we could probably get rid of 90% of flu cases in we wore face masks in public during the winter’. Such an experiment would of course be impossible, thanks to the cultural norms such a mandate would breach. Fast forward, and lo and behold, influenza fell off a cliff this year. The disease is less transmissible than COVID, and was controlled by masks, distancing and reduced air travel (primary intercontinental vector of the virus).

What I’m trying to say, is that we always lose vulnerable people in the winter. For those who worry about their health, I think it would be acceptable for them to maintain the current standards of hand-washing, mask-wearing and physical distancing. No enforcement, but they should have the option.

And if shopping centres continue to mandate masks, I’ll be happy to comply - COVID is endemic now, and we need to stay vigilant for the arrival of another virulent strain.

Edit: apologies, this rambled on longer than I’d planned.

[MATTROSE94]

The most likely outcome is that the original election result stands, but it's complicated. 

1. If the state being disputed has a single certified slate of electors under its laws within the safe harbor deadline (2nd week of December), and there is a House/Senate split over whether to reject those EVs, the original EC results stand and the original winner becomes president.  This has historically been ceremonial and it is also very unclear whether Congress even has the constitutional right to reject a single certified slate of EVs.  Federal courts may very well order them counted even if they tried.

2. If there is a legal dispute in the state continuing beyond the 2nd week of December so no one certifies the EVs by Safe Harbor day, and supporters of both candidates submit their slates, congress is voting on which slate to pick.  If both houses pick one slate, it counts of course.  If there is a House/Senate split where each chamber endorses a different slate, the governor of the disputed state picks the winner, but the language of this section is highly ambiguous and there would surely be a long, complex legal challenge.

3. If 2 separate EV slates from the same state are certified and submitted prior to the safe harbor deadline, both houses of congress must agree to count them.  A House/Senate split on which slate to endorse means that the state's EV just don't get counted.  Whether this reduces the # of EVs needed to become president is unclear.  This arises from when there were multiple entities claiming to be the state government in certain Southern states during Reconstruction and is probably not relevant to the modern era.  This is not the Old West or the Civil War.  The fake governor/SOS/etc. would simply be arrested.

The scenario where the Speaker of the House becomes president involves a long legal dispute over #2. 

[MATTROSE94]

I'm pro-choice, but I do not support Roe v. Wade as an interpretation of the Constitution. I don't have significant disagreement with what the SCOTUS said about abortion in Roe v. Wade, but I completely disagree with what the SCOTUS said about the U.S. Constitution in that case (along with what the SCOTUS had said about the U.S. Constitution in the cases of Skinner v. Oklahoma and Griswold v. Connecticut -- the two most important precedents that led the Court to decide Roe the way it did).

[MATTROSE94]

If you told me we could run against DeSantis and have a 100% chance of losing or against Trump and have a 15% chance of losing, I would still pick DeSantis.  I genuinely do not believe this country can survive another four years of Trump.  We were very lucky to barely survive the last four.  I will never risk that.

[MATTROSE94]

What concerns me most are the variant strains and the fact that this virus is still multiplying an extraordinary amount of times in human bodies. If we had 80-90%+ uptake of the vaccine, I wouldn't be too concerned. It's clear the vaccines are working and I'm glad to be one of those that is fully vaccinated. However, I also think the warmer weather is keeping the infection numbers lower. Looking at where vaccine rates are low, there probably will be a fall resurgence in some areas and it won't be pretty with the current variants.

With that said, what concerns me even more is a viral mutation that could render our current vaccines useless. That's partly what bothers me about declaring victory right now. This virus is still multiplying exponentially in human bodies across the world. Every replication is a chance for the virus to become something else.

I'm in the minority now, but I'm still sticking with my mask when I'm grocery shopping. At the very least, I haven't been sick this year or last year. I will probably reduce my trips to places like the grocery store though. I've already seen people coughing without covering their mouth.

[MATTROSE94]

It did, however, demonstrate solidarity with families of POWs and MIAs whose whereabouts have never been confirmed.  It was a source of comfort to many of these families.  And the difference between this issue and others is that it was our Government for whom they fought and were captured and/or died.

Our POWs that came back DID suffer torture.  I suspect you care not one whit about that.  They weren't liberals.  They were brave, they were held captive, and the North Vietnamese DID ignore all standards set by the Geneva Convention as to how to treat Prisoners of War.  Perhaps you could recognize that.  

[MATTROSE94]

Trump is a wise guy corrupt  mob boss like John Gotti. The name Teflon Don was actually first give to John Gotti, not Trump. The Trump Organization is also a criminal enterprise filled with fraud like a money laundering mob business.

[MATTROSE94]

It is becoming increasingly clear that lifting of social distancing and other Covid-related restrictions happened too early. At the beginning, we should’ve stayed under lockdowns for three straight years until the population was 90% vaccinated, whichever came first. Now, it is best to renew the restrictions for one more year and assess the situation later as we get in more data.

[MATTROSE94]

I don't want to go back to lockdown either, but there are intermediate measures we can take. Mitigation is not a bad thing. I still fail to see how masks are some apparent massive violation of rights to some people. They are one of the most effective measures we have against this virus (and viruses and other pathogens in general) after vaccines. Lockdowns, although necessary at times, are harmful to businesses and the economy in general. Masks and social distancing indoors are minor inconveniences. That doesn't mean everywhere. It just means in certain places, like stores. There is no harm in basic personal mitigation measures. At this point, I have to wonder how many people decided to stop basic hand-washing since it's apparently probably too much of a chore for most.