I Blamed It On Putin

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yogi
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I Blamed It On Putin

Post by yogi »

On Monday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and FBI Director Christopher Wray released a joint statement saying foreign operatives were seeking to influence American voters and might allege they pulled off election interference that did not take place.
"Americans should be aware that foreign actors – and Russia in particular – continue to try to influence public sentiment and voter perceptions through actions intended to sow discord," the statement read. "They can do this by spreading false information about political processes and candidates, lying about their own interference activities, disseminating propaganda on social media, and through other tactics."


It's hard to not to be opinionated after the 2018 midterm elections. Hell, I was opinionated well before that. Most of the people I talked to about the current presidency did not fully understand my ideas about social engineering and how it empowered a dotard to occupy the Oval Office. Well, it's becoming common knowledge now. Too bad it wasn't taken seriously a few years ago.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 916737002/
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Kellemora
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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Georgia is right next to us, and in one of their counties where they only have like 256 registered voters, there were over 600 ballots turned in.
How can this be? How do you vote without your name being on the list?
This is one thing they need to get fixed or the election process is useless.
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yogi
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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Georgia made headlines in recent weeks with its numerous cases of voter suppression to the tune of several hundred thousand votes. I believe a suit has been filed to try and resolve THAT issue. The Kemp/Stacey face off for governor seems like a case of local tampering, but the article I cited above shows how foreign powers manipulate peoples' thinking at that level. I don't believe it's all a Communist plot, but the influence from outside this country is grossly underestimated.
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pilvikki
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

Post by pilvikki »

well, that was annoying, my reply just left without fw address.

what i was saying was that when i was staying with daughter in canada, they'd come to the door, ask who lives there and mark you down. i'd go home up north and get another lot in the mail. + plus one for steve, who wasn't even with me any more. so, i could have easily voted for 3. multiply that with a few hundred and you'll get interesting results.
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yogi
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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I think the whole thing could be simplified by not registering voters ahead of time. On the day of the election bring some proof of residence along with a photo ID and voila! You're in. The thing is that today's facial recognition technology could make voter fraud damned near impossible, but then half the politicians in office today would be gone.
Last edited by yogi on 08 Nov 2018, 23:03, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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The home town where I was raised, when it was under home rule that is, had an interesting set of principles regarding local voting, which of course did not apply to countywide, state, or national elections.
But within the town itself, and even after it became a 4th class city for a short time.
Only certain people were allowed to vote on certain issues, mainly those that affected them. If an issue did not affect you, you could not vote on the issue.
Naturally, if an issue affected everyone in one way or another, then the issue could not be isolated to a select group.
As a simple example: If you were not a homeowner, you could not vote on an issue that had to do with a new proposed tax to homeowners to cover something only homeowners could normally benefit from. In some cases, if you were a landowner, and the tax did affect your land in some way, then you could vote on the issue too.
That might sound unfair if you don't know the reason behind not allowing non-homeowners to vote on a homeowner only issue. If it is only the homeowners who will bear the tax burden for the amenity, then those who will not share in that burden shouldn't be allowed to say, yes we want this because it will cost us nothing, and we will occasionally benefit from it too.
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yogi
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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The act of voting by the citizens of a country, state, county, city, village, or any geopolitical entity is about as fundamental to democracy as one can get. Tampering with the votes or repressing voting rights should be akin to something like high treason because it's a direct attack on our system of governance. Unfortunately those who are in charge of overseeing the process are often the ones who abuse it. In that sense Democracy is a failure.
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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Our Federal election system is as a Republic. While most states, counties, and cities election system is as a Democracy with limitations that can for the most part make them a Republic also.

In a true democracy, if the majority voted to take your car for example, they could do so by majority vote.
In a republic, you own your car and it cannot be commandeered by the majority for their own use.
This is why I said there were limitations in a democratic society bordering on it being a republic also.
If they want your land, they often use techniques such as blighting to make it worthless to you.
I've seen it happen several times in my lifetime right there in St. Louis County.
Like where the Galleria sits.

They tried something similar where my late wife's sister lived, but they caught on and stopped it in it's tracks.

Basically it works like this:
A contractor wants a huge piece of land for a large development.
He will go to the homeowners and offer them about 25% to 35% more than their homes are worth, with a promise to buy in like 2 to 5 years, once they get everyone on board. They may even have contracts for this, with loopholes in the clauses to get the buyers out of the deal.
With this offer in hand, most of the homeowners stop fixing or repairing anything, and just live there biding their time.
Even the city gets involved and no longer maintains the roads and other things they are supposed to take care of.
The area falls into decay and the property values plummet.
The contracts become null and void because the buyer claims they could not get the necessary permits to build, or not enough of their neighbors agreed to the deal.
The houses are devalued, with many now only worth about 1/4 of what they were a few years earlier.
The contractor, or another contractor steps in to save them, offering them perhaps 20% more than the current evaluation. Because the area was blighted by the city, most of the homeowners now just want to take their losses and get out of there as soon as possible.

One of my aunts lived where the Galleria now sits. Her home was valued at over 250k, a little less than several of the homes around her. She was offered something like 315k for her house. She didn't want to move since her home was recently renovated, plus all the people on her street knew each other, having lived there for over 40 years, and they looked out for each other. She was one of the hold-outs who didn't want to sell. They upped the offer to 325k, and her neighbors convinced her to sell, and many were going to buy in a new subdivision so they would all still be together.
As mentioned above, with contracts in hand, they all stopped maintaining their properties, knowing everything was going to be torn down anyhow. Two years went by and nothing happened. After another year, no one could sell their house for over 200k. A few did move out while they could, and before property values dropped any further. Not my aunt, she refused to move. It eventually got to the point, with most of her neighbors gone, the city decided to force everyone out by totally blighting the area. At the end of it all, she was given under 100k, I think more like 87k for her 250k house.
She moved into a seniors apartment complex from there, and had enough money to stay until she finally passed away.
But knowing what they did to my aunt, and many others who lived in that area, is one reason why I never set my foot anywhere on the Galleria property. I also would not buy from companies who had stores in the Galleria either.

When I saw the same thing happening where my late wife's sister lived, and knowing she was a hold-out like my aunt, she was wise enough to get most of the homeowners together and stop the impending actions that would drive them out of their homes. I don't know what happened since I moved away, but they are all gone now, so it doesn't really matter anymore.
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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A republic is
a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
A democracy is
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
I like the way Abraham Lincoln put it
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
In practice a republic is multiple democratic states under the leadership of a president, not a monarch. If y'all recall, we made this place what it is because our forefathers didn't like the king of England.

According to the above definitions a republic is a state while a democracy is a system. Lincoln pegged it when he said it's all about people determining their own destiny. Regardless of what you call it or how it operates, voting is the sacred cow that makes it all work as intended. The point I was making earlier is that messing with the voting is an attack on democracy.

Even in a democracy somebody isn't going to like the results of the voting. For example, the powers that exercise their right of Eminent Domain can be a bitch to deal with. Supposedly the government representatives are acting in the best interest of all the community, but when you lose your house and home to a shopping center it's hard to see how that benefits you personally.

My daughter had a close encounter with the concept of Eminent Domain. She lived close to O'Hare International Airport many years ago. O'Hare is several miles outside the city limits of Chicago but good ol' Mayor Daley decided he wanted it to be in the city proper. There was an enormous cash cow out there to be had for the taking. So, the mayor incorporated the section of Interstate that connects O'Hare to Chicago. The airport proper likewise was made part of the city. All this went well for a few decades until the air traffic over Chicago and the surrounding areas became too much for the FAA to deal with. The solution was to expand the airport and increase the number of runways, of course. Makes sense, right? Expanding the airport, however, turned out to be a nightmare that the City of Chicago eventually won. They had to use their right of Eminent Domain to convince the homeowners that a bigger airport was in their best interest. There were a ton of legal battles that lasted about ten years. Toward the end of that period when it looked like Chicago would dominate, they came around with those premium offers to buy the peoples' homes. My daughter didn't think twice. She took the money and ran further west out of the range of Chicago's airport. It was a hassle because she had to change jobs, but in fact it worked out in her favor over the long run. But still, it doesn't seem right that some government in some city that isn't even the one you live in can evict you if they had good reason to do it.
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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I have nothing against the proper use of Eminent Domain!
Such was not used in the taking of the property for the Galleria.
For a public highway, for an airport expansion, etc., but it is not normally used for a Private Enterprise.

I'm sure you are now familiar with Page Avenue.
The land was purchased to not only continue Page Avenue to the river, but also partway across St. Charles County.
Most of this long strip of land was purchased for between 85 cents and $1.25 per acre.
They never built all of Page Avenue, it stopped somewhere around Mason or Baxter Road, I don't remember which now.
The land sat empty, except for letting farmers use it for crops for over 20 years.
A few greedy poly-TICK-ians decided they could pocket a lot of money by selling the land to subdivision developers, and did so for anywhere from 3 to 8 grand per acre. In a few near end areas it was 10 to 15 grand per acre.
In less than five years they decided to go ahead and extend Page Avenue, and had to buy back the property for close to if not over a million dollars an acre.
Anyone with half a brain could see Page Avenue was due for an extension at the time the poly-Tick-ians decided to sell it, and I don't doubt it was those same poly-TICK-ians who bought most of the 3 grand per acre sections of land, only to turn it around in 5 years and sell it back to the state for a million bucks an acre.
But, it seems, that's how most of our poly-TICK-ians get filthy rich in such short periods of time. They find ways to steal our tax money using what appears to be legit methods. But not if you dig deep enough.
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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Corruption in politics has been around for as long as there have been politicians. Couple that with the power that is obtained with ownership of money, and you have a lot of temptation that is hard to resist. The sad truth is that people expect the powers that be to be corrupt to some degree. It's been normalized. Some of it is mere perception, but there is an overwhelming amount of it going on these days at the federal level. I keep reading stories about the day when dozens, if not hundreds, of sealed indictments will be served to do some old fashioned swamp cleaning. Until that actually happens, I'll remain convinced that good has lost out to evil. The bad guys are in control and have been for a long time. It's only going to get worse until it all collapses.
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Kellemora
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Re: I Blamed It On Putin

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Hate to say this, but I have to agree with you Yogi!

I saw what they did to my home town after the poly-TICK-ians took over.

How does one become a multi-millionaire on a 100k a year salary, unless they are on the take.
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