I just don’t like the non-zero chance that this somehow gets reversed once the Trump administration begins. Jones is a huge Trump supporter, and I could absolutely see him meddling in this case in whatever illegal-but-theyll-make-it-legal way he can. The outright bribery and corruption is on full display, and I absolutely could see Trump do this even if only to show everybody else the rewards they might receive if they get on board.

How cute…Warren thinks this guy will have a job 30 seconds after Trump’s coronation.

If it happened, it was a digital attack. Which means (a) this should have been found and defeated in the first place by even rudimentary network security, and (b) it should have been caught within seconds, not weeks. “Hey, Bob. We’ve got these preliminary totals that are all over the map here, might wanna come take a look at this.” If your poll numbers show that 50,000 people showed up to the polls and sent in early ballots, the number in that system had better be 50,000. If it’s 50,001 or 49,999, you have a problem.

For the numbers to be off to the tune of ten million people nationwide, and it wasn’t caught live and in real time, that is a systemic failure of epic proportions and actively makes the situation worse. Because it means that not only was some group of people allowed to enter our systems with impunity, alter the counts, and escape undetected, but it means that even the most rudiementary checks for accuracy are so bad that they simply may as well not exist, and the “election security” that Democrats have been touting for the past 4 years will also prove to be nonexistent.

Like I said. They knew how many people showed up to the polls. They knew how many people sent in early ballots. Before even looking at a single vote, if the total number of votes cast in the system is not equal to the number of people who physically showed up to the ballot, they need to double check and find out where the error is. If that vote is off by thousands, then counting shouldn’t even begin and several people should be jumping up and down screaming like everybody’s hair was on fire. By about 6 PM or shortly after whatever time that voting closed on the east coast, the entire east coast should be aware that there is something very, very wrong here. Incompetence wouldn’t even begin to describe a level of failure at that scale if it didn’t.

Does it really matter? The end result would still be the same. “Our elections were so insecure that ________ were able to go into networks across the nation, alter or invalidate the votes of over 10 million people, and escape undetected.” Doesn’t matter who you put in that blank. The message would be the same. “Our election systems our compromised, Trump certainly isn’t going to fix it in 4 years, so it won’t matter who you vote for in 2028 since _________ is probably just going to decide the result again anyway.”

About 2 weeks to late, for starters.

Sure.

Choose one:

1. United states elections are secure; hacking voting systems to invalidate or alter over 10 million votes would be an impossibility, and any attempts to do so would be caught and thwarted by a team of networking experts using at least the bare minimum of networking security at multiple levels.

2. United states elections are so insecure that ____________* can hack into voting systems nationwide undetected, alter or invalidate the votes of tens of millions of people across all 50 states and hundreds of districts, exit with impunity and escape detection for two weeks and counting.

• can be anything you want. Trump’s team. Trunp supporters. Russian hackers. North Korean hackers. Aliens. Doesn’t matter. The point would be that it’s apparently so easy to change the vote counts that your vote doesn’t even matter; the election is going to be decided by whatever hacker was most successful anyway.

Pick one. The two cannot coexist simultaneously. For fraud to exist at that scale, you’re saying that our election integrity is about as secure as my grandmother’s wireless hotspot. A problem of that scale can’t be fixed in four years, rendering it irrelevant to even bother trying in 2028. Trump would make sure of that.

He is literally going out of his way to pick the worst possible candidate for literally every position. And this is all sending a message to Republicans, not Democrats. The message is very simple. The Trump Train 2.0 is about to take off. You WILL get on board, or you WILL get run over.

His VP pick was an empty husk of a generic white male that brought nothing to the table. Except for the fact that he was a harsh critic of Trump. Was. But the message was loud and clear. “This is a man who once compared me to Hitler. He is now my lap dog. And he will say what I tell him to say.”

He then demanded that the Senate go into recess so he can make recess appointments that even he knows are too radical. This is Trump putting his dick out on the table. He is saying “I will do exactly what I want, or you will get Cheney’ed.” He is making sure the Senate knows who is calling the shots. And top cronies like Tuberville are Trump’s lap dogs that are threatening to make it happen, come hell or high water.

His HHS secretary is an anti-vaxxer who professes to have brain worms and wants to get rid of all abortion meds, birth control, and vaccines.

His AG is a man who has already proven to be a willing puppet, but is also guaranteed to follow Trump’s commands to the letter since he has federal sex trafficking charges being held over his head. This ensures that Trump doesn’t have to go through a Saturday Night Massacre to get the AG to do his bidding.

His “budget czar” is already threatening to slash programs that are important to Republicans. Or at the very least, programs that even republicans know it would be political suicide to fuck with.

His Ambassador to Israel believes Palestinians don’t exist.

His new “Border czar” is an open racist.

This isn’t “trolling the libs”. Trump knows he could easily find people to put in those positions that would anger the left, while also being able to get legitimate support from the right. The fact that he is going so far out of the way to find the stone-dead-worst people available for these positions is not only trolling the libs, but a power play against his own base. Their votes will be a test of loyalty. They are not confirming a Cabinet position. They are swearing their allegance to Donald Trump under threat of political execution. “I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.”

There was a movie back in the early 80s called “The Toy”. Objectively terrible movie by all accounts and would usually not recommend it. Low point of Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason’s careers. But I’m recommending it because of the role Gleason plays in the movie, which is basically Donald Trump: 1982 edition. The literal only difference is that Gleason doesn’t say the quiet parts out loud. He shouts it from the rooftops, knowing there’s nobody left with the power to stop him. The supporting characters are all shown to have bent to his will, knowing their fate but basically powerless to do anything about it.

If you want a shot at how Trump talks to people, go watch that movie.

I’m not trying to gaslight a thing.

Try telling people “Our elections are secure” while also telling them “Trump supporters changed ballot counts in voting systems across multiple states without detection.”

Pick one. The two cannot exist simultaneously. If you pick the former, your investigation is irrelevant. If you pick the latter, nobody will ever believe our elections are secure again. If you try to pick both, you’re the one gaslighting.

Ok, but ask yourself…even under a best case scenario, what do you expect to realistically accomplish? Trump won, but by slightly less?

Because if you prove anything, that also comes with the side effect of proving that our elections are not secure. You just proved that __________ successfully hacked voting machines across multiple counties in several swing states without being detected. It doesn’t matter who you put in that blank. Trump’s cronies. Russian hackers. North Korean hackers. Chinese hackers. Killer clowns from outer space. All of the above. Doesn’t matter. You’ve just told the entire population of the United States that their vote really doesn’t matter because the election is going to be decided by whatever hacker group is most successful. Good luck trying to get any voter to believe our elections are secure ever again. No matter what happens, the losing side will always just blame “the hackers”. Those lawsuits against Dominion and the other voting machine manufacturers? Yeah, they’re going to be giving that money back, because you just proved that any old hacker group actually could get into them at will and change the outcome of the election. Fox News will gladly take back their 800 million. Good luck getting anyone to believe that either the 2020 or 2024 election was legitimate. Or any other election ever again, for that matter.

I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree, then. I think we’re both on the same side and ultimately want the same things. And I’m not saying your points are invalid. But at the same time, I don’t see any real evidence to support it, I have absolutely no reason to believe that Trump’s team of all people would have the brain capacity necessary to pull it off, and I think chasing down conspiracy theories with little tangible evidence is going to do far more harm than good.

Again, the best that we would be able to hope for is to say “Our elections are so insecure that Trump and his band of human crayon eaters was able to hack into systems nationwide without a god damned person noticing. Oh, and Kamala Harris actually won the election. Believe us!” Because you will not get any further than that with your average American voter.

The undeniable facts are this: Kamala Harris got 10+ million less voters than Joe Biden. Which means that 10+ million Biden voters stayed home. The GOP had absolutely nothing to do with that. If those 10 million democrats came out to vote, we’d have won the election in a landslide even if Trump was able to pull off that little stunt.

We lost because 10 million Democrats stayed home. What the GOP did or did not do has absolutely no impact on that fact. No investigation will change that fact.

If all she saw was them two going into a bedroom, she would not have been able to testify that she saw them have sex. They could have stepped into the bedroom for any number of reasons. Yes, we can infer what happened in that bedroom, but that inference carries no legal weight without other evidence to support it. If she saw a sexual act take place before they went into the bedroom, then she still saw a 35 year old man sexually assault a minor.

She was 17, not 7, if you were in that situation would you call, especially that you don’t know the age?

If I had reason to believe she was 18 and of sound mind, I’d have forgotten that I saw them walk into the bedroom together by the time I was done with my next drink.

Even if she found out the girl was 17 later, she still didn’t call the police and say “Hey, I saw a member of the United States House of Representatives sexually assault a 17 year old!”. At some point, she knew who Gaetz was, knew the girl was 17 at the time, knew what happened and did nothing.

I’m not going to go into the age of consent issue, or the “Hey she’s 17, she knew what she was doing” argument, or the fact that she got into porn afterwards. A Representative in Congress trafficked a girl under the age of 18 across state lines for the purposes of sexual activity. If that were you or me, we’d be in jail right now with our names permanently etched into the sex offender registry. If a jury of his peers wants to look at the whole picture and say “meh”, then so be it. But he needed to be put in front of that jury.

Would it be criminally negligent not to investigate this after Republicans told us they were going to do this and put people in place to do this.

It is not criminally negligent to ignore claims that have no basis in reality. In fact, it would be more criminally negligent to waste taxpayer money to give credibility to these claims by investigating.

Only one of these two sentences can hold true

1. Our elections are safe and secure, with multiple fali-safes in play to ensure said integrity.

2. Our elections are so insecure that people can simply drop off thousands or even millions of fake ballots across the country, mix them in with the real ones, and absolutely nobody notices. In multiple states.

Again. Think of what it would take to be able to cram tens of thousands of ballots into the ballot box without a trace in multiple states across the country. Thousands of people would be needed to print, fill out, drop off, mix in, and count these ballots. And not one person has said something? Not one person let the cat out of the bag? Not one county ended up with an anomoly where there were more votes than voters? And it still doesn’t explain the 10 million or so Biden voters who just stayed home.

We lost, and these theories have no basis in reality. If they did, we’d know it by now.

Muslims: We voted for Trump because Harris supports Israel! He’s not hurting the right people!!!

Trump: Oh, yes. Yes we are. Now get on the fucking plane. The in-flight meal is pork chops.

AZ - 123K+ 7.2%+ of Trump’s total vote.  Enough to reverse the outcome.

As odd as it is, you are not cramming 123,000 ballots in there without anybody noticing. It’s just not going to happen. Even spread out, that’s still thousands if not tens of thousands of ballots per district. Somebody would have noticed. Somebody would have said something. Some counties would have vote counts higher than the number of registered voters. There would be a giveaway. You don’t cram 7.2% of Trump’s total vote in a state as big as Arizona and leave no trace. That’s just impossible.

EDIT: People are saying these were digital counts that were manipulated. The argument still stands, though. For that argument to be valid, that would mean that our elections are so insecure that Trump and the brainworm crew were able to hack into voting systems nationwide, en masse, and without anybody noticing. Thousands of people would still have to be involved. There would be a digital trace showing something happened, even if we couldn’t figure out exactly what or by whom. Someone would have made a human error that would stick out like a sore thumb. Digitally or physically, you are not pulling that kind of stunt at that level without anybody noticing, particularly not those lead paint eaters.

Here’s the problem:

• After spending 4 years saying that our elections are secure, how do you start a serious investigation into this without sounding like whining hypocrites at best?
• Even if you prove to be 100% in the right, do you honestly think that you’re going to get people to believe it?
• Even if you prove to be 100% in the right, doesn’t that also just prove that our elections really aren’t secure and can be manipulated pathetically easily?
• The number of people needed to pull a stunt like this off would be in the thousands. Yet, not a single person has come forward and talked? Not a single election worker saying “Hey, I opened up a box of ballots to count, and all of them were just votes for Trump and nobody else.” Not a single worker tasked with tracking the shipment of these ballots reporting any anomalies? Remember. Every state went redder. You don’t think that in blue states like California or even purple states like Wisconsin, that if there were any anomalies they wouldn’t be screaming about it on social media before they were done unpacking the damn box?
• Wouldn’t this have just lead to several anomalies in the voting count in at least some cities? Bulk cramming votes by the tens or even hundreds of thousands would surely lead to the number of votes cast in some states or counties being higher than the number of registered voters.
• How do you prove that it wasn’t just a bunch of low-information Trump voters showing up just to support him, not caring about the other downballot races?

Personally, I’d rather stick with the narrative that our elections are safe and secure, and the US voters simply voted against their own interests. The best we could hope for beyond that is the GOP saying that the election was stolen in 2020, the Democrats saying it was stolen in 2024, and nobody believing our elections are secure at all heading into 2026 and 2028.

And even if you want to put all of that aside. A stunt like this would make Mission Impossible seem like Sesame Street by comparison. Think of the work it would take on a national level to pull this off with absolutely nobody talking and without a trace. Now look at the people Trump has leading the charge. What in the name of Jesus’s favorite camel makes you think that any of those fuckwits have the mental capacity to pull that off?

These claims have little to no basis in reality and should be immediately disregarded just like Trump’s claims of 2020. The fact of the matter is that we lost.

EDIT: People are saying these were digital counts that were manipulated. The argument still stands, though. For that argument to be valid, that would mean that our elections are so insecure that Trump and the brainworm crew were able to hack into voting systems nationwide, en masse, and without anybody noticing. Thousands of people would still have to be involved. There would be a digital trace showing something happened, even if we couldn’t figure out exactly what or by whom. Someone would have made a human error that would stick out like a sore thumb. Digitally or physically, you are not pulling that kind of stunt at that level without anybody noticing, particularly not those lead paint eaters.

Right. 65% of voters. With a turnout far higher than the national average.

And they basically voted 2:1 in favor of Trump.

“Woman told House Ethics Committee she saw Gaetz have sex with minor, her lawyer says”

First, watched? I have several dozen questions…

Second…you didn’t immediately call the police to report a child was being raped?

Given that over 60% of voters in the county voted for Trump, they can’t be all that concerned.

And if you voted for Trump and are suddenly concerned, you did this to yourself.

I can’t remember what media I was doomfully consuming, but someone basically said Dems should not try to court Republicans to vote… because even if it works, they’ll arrive at the polls and vote Republican.

Now this is an interesting take on it that at least makes some more sense. I don’t think we have any precedent to really go on; how many times do we really see someone from one party advocating for the other guy. It would be interesting to study how valid it actually is.

You laugh, but remember that at one time, someone walked into a boardroom and actually said “<puff> So, I’ve got this idea for a new cartoon. It’s about a sponge. <puff> And it lives in a pineapple…<pass>”, and is now a millionaire many, many times over.

So who do we get to play the two dudes that have to Weekend at Bernies Drew Carey around the oval office all day?