That was on "Face the Nation" today, in answer to probing by John Dickerson about whether Trump is getting intelligence briefings. Priebus says he is — "it feels like every day." And then:
I’m not sure if it is every day. But it’s a lot. And that’s who he is. It’s someone who studies and someone that wants to be informed and it’s someone who asks a lot of questions and listens.Dickerson asks if Trump is "a details guy," and Priebus says "He is a details guy," and then "I would say it’s he’s a Socratic method guy" and the rest of the quote I've set out above.
Dickerson asks Priebus what he does when Trump tweets something that's not true, such as when he said there were millions of illegal votes in California. Priebus's lame response was that we don't know it's not true. Dickerson patiently, politely nailed him:
I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it, or does he have to tighten up his standard of proof?We all know the answer to that question, but I appreciate that Dickerson had the presence of mind to put it in the form of a question... especially nice, since Priebus had just expressed admiration for the Socratic method. What can Priebus say (except You got me, Socrates)? He makes a lateral leap:
I think he’s done a great job. I think the president-elect is someone who has pushed the envelope and caused people to think in this country, has not taken conventional thought on every single issue. And it’s caused people to look at things that maybe they have taken for granted.Priebus distracts us onto the subject of Trump's ability to distract us with some new nutty thing. Hey, here's a theory! Ever think about it that way? Then Priebus brings up the flag-burning issue. That was a faux pas from Trump, wasn't it? So why shift to that? Priebus says flag-burning "is an 80% issue" — meaning (I presume) that 80% of Americans want to punish protesters who burn flags as a way of expressing themselves.
And then you watch the news media and they say, well, it’s constitutional. Well, right, it is constitutional...He means the Supreme Court has found a constitutional right to burn the flag as symbolic expression.
... and but it doesn’t mean it’s not a subject for debate and discussion for the Supreme Court to revisit down the road.That is, a Supreme Court opinion on a constitutional matter does not stop the conversation about what the constitution means. A case can be overruled. And a Supreme Court appointment is in the offing. What issues will come to the foreground as we grill the new nominee? Why not make it flag burning? Whether the flag-burning decision is ever overruled, there's political advantage in getting us talking about how we feel about it.
America! The flag!
It's an 80% issue.
Posts
123 comments:
Flag burning is an issue the adults throw out for the kids to bicker about while the adults talk about something else important/irrelevant/unsavory they feel requires distraction of the masses.
The masses fall for it every time.
Priebus's lame response was that we don't know it's not true.
With all due respect, Ann, there is more evidence that is IS true than that it is not. Certainly, it can be proven that it COULD be true.
Most successful businesspeople i've been associated with are 'Socratic Method'.
Justice Cruz will certainly makes things interesting.
How well I remember John Dickerson's Mom asking LBJ awkward questions. I think LBJ was a little bit sweet on her.
Reince Priebus has a whiny tone that irritates me.
And "illegal votes" take in a lot more territory than just votes by illegal aliens. It would be very surprising if there is not "millions of illegal votes" cast; not just in this election, but every national election.
College students voting at home and at school, people who own property in two or more states and think they are entitled to vote in each, etc.
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it, or does he have to tighten up his standard of proof?" As before, I don't know why you are taking the position you are taking. Trump believes there is a lot of voter fraud. Any state that wants to can do a serious job of studying the issue and finding out if that's true. There are states that actually enable voter fraud, for instance, California which gives out driver's licenses to illegal aliens and voting registration to anyone with a license.
I really don't see why it's unreasonable to say, I think that the result is a massive amount of voter fraud. I can't currently prove it because these states don't make that easy. If you don't think so, prove it.
There also is a reason why every state has jokes about election day being the "Day of the walking dead," and similar.
We've had 8 years of theories with no basis in them. Democrats should be comfortable with this.
We've had 8 years of theories with no basis in them. Democrats should be comfortable with this.
Theories from smart democrats deserve more respect than theories from dumb republicans.
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it..."
Family health insurance premiums will drop $2,500/yr ...
And we now have the invasion from the south that by now must be a great deal larger than the 11 million the MSM first came up with a decade or more ago, and the Obama administration practically tells them they are entitled to vote, never mind the stupid laws, and the Aztlan movement that believes that anyway, without any encouragement.
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it..."
If we apologize to the world, they will love us for it.
Dickerson asks Priebus what he does when Trump tweets something that's not true, such as when he said there were millions of illegal votes in California.
It's not true that Trump there were millions of illegal votes in California: "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."
Research commissioned by the Pew Center on the States highlights the extent of the challenge:
"Approximately 24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.
More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.
Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state."
Millions seem reasonable to me. I don't expect Trump to have counted the California ballots and projected out an exact number. If millions become 800,000 fraudulent votes then that is 800,000 more than the League of Women Voters will admit to.
If the (D)s suggest fraud occurs then they should get behind same day voting at a poll and voterid. I expect that is where Trump is headed.
It's apparent the country is not confident in the election process. The only way to make a progressive confident is to let them win every election. The only way to make a conservative confident is to count honestly.
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it..."
If we destroy the US coal industry, global warming will be lessened.
Neither the Constitution nor the Common Law grant the Supreme Court the power to determine the constitutionality of legislative acts. That is a usurpation by Marshall, who should have been impeached and convicted for his crime.
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it..."
I'd offer "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor", but that wasn't a theory. It was just a damn lie.
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it..."
If we don't build the Keystone pipeline, global warming will be lessened.
Even his own State Dept. told him that wasn't true.
So we have TWO conspiracy theories about the election this year. The Dems claim Russian hackers helped Trump, and the Repubs claim that millions (!!!) of illegal aliens tried to help Hillary.
The nice thing about having two competing conspiracy theories is that they make each other look ridiculous.
I have a very high standard that conspiracy theories must meet: Find me a snitch. Find me someone who will admit "Yep, we rigged the election." He or she can remain anonymous, their voice can be disguised. But before I believe a conspiracy theory, that's what I require.
DJT infuriates the Media that demands to see his proof that Mexican Citizens are voting in California, where it is actively being encouraged by the Voting Officials who overlook Hispanic voters with bad or no documents. But that is only an strong probability.
Then the Media self righteously demands DJT agree with the Fiction that Russia hacked the DNC which has absolutely zero proof. The fake news guys know that Seth Rich stole it while working at the DNC and gave it to Assange, who has said as much and offered a reward for the killer.
Rich had been fingered for that by Hillary four days before he was executed mafia style as a message to other would be traitors.
there is more evidence that is IS true than that it is not.
California is a great example of the possibility that it is true. My wife's DL expired at her birthday last January. She tried to make an appointment to renew it before it expired. After January 1 when the illegal DL law took effect, she could not get an appointment at a DMV office in southern California until April. For nearly four months she did not have legal ID so that illegals could be accommodated.
The DL came with "Motor Voter" registration automatically, Hillary's entire margin was California.
I suspect that when the GOP brings up voter ID and purging the voter rolls of the dead, this will reappear.
California will resist but the feds may be able to push it through.
That was a faux pas from Trump, wasn't it? So why shift to that? Priebus says flag-burning "is an 80% issue" — meaning (I presume) that 80% of Americans want to punish protesters who burn flags as a way of expressing themselves.
The first question that has to be asked after every Trump tweet is: who's being trolled here?
Trump's tweets are NOT statements of policy. Trump's tweets are his attempt to "control the discourse", & set the national conversation going in a direction conducive to his policies to go.
Does anyone really think that Trump is going to expend political capital in a losing constitutional fight to imprison flag burners? No. The purpose of that tweet, which came close in time to the announcement of his "Thank you, America" Victory Tour, was to troll the Left into showing up at every single Trump rally & burning an American flag. Trump then can say "to 80% of Americans" "Aren't you glad I'm in office as a bulwark against assholes like those guys burning the American flag outside?". And 80% of America will go "Sadly, he has a point...".
It also didn't hurt the trolling that the media went apeshit about Trump stomping on the Constitution, only to have it pointed out after they made fools of themselves on camera, that HRC had sponsored a bill in 2005 with exactly the same measures Trump was calling for.
For example:
http://www.usapoliticstoday.com/voter-fraud-uncovered-hillary/
Kansas requires every potential voter to prove citizenship before they are allowed to register to vote. Let's force California to adopt the same law and then see how many voters are stricken from the rolls.
If the MSM did a cursory fact investigation it would be clear that there are many illegal voters. But the MSM just wants to opine without doing any work. Typical.
"Does anyone really think that Trump is going to expend political capital in a losing constitutional fight to imprison flag burners?"
Pushing something w/ 80% approval (were a const amnd was only one vote short in the Senate) is the opposite of expending political capital.
This is a perfect thing for DJT to push. Not only will the SJWWs fall inline, so will all the other folks that add up to the 80% approval. Great diversion while the swamp is packed w/ insiders who can divert benefits to the job creators.
Anywho, at some point some of you may start to realize what counterparties it is that DJT is beating, i.e. who it is that he's getting the better of w/ his deal skilz.
Carry on.
There is no "evidence" of illegal aliens voting because the people in charge don't want to spend the time and money to develop the evidence for obvious reasons.
And Christian crosses before that. Burn the baby... I mean, bra. Klearly Talibanesque.
Trump is leading the news cycles with Tweets. Hilarious. There is blood spouting from the anxious JournoLists' eyes and nose. It's a Japanese dramatic prop. They should probably get it checked.
"Well, right, it is constitutional...but it doesn’t mean it’s not a subject for debate and discussion for the Supreme Court to revisit down the road."
Imagine the shock when "progressives" learn that the concept of a "living" malleable constitution can be used against them. Not hard to predict that they will be filled with new respect for precedent.
The California voter situation was evident even during the primaries, where Hillary came out well ahead of Bernie, who probably should have won, or at least made it close. There was, in fact, a concerted effort by the DNC to get illegals to vote--and vote for Hillary.
Trump: 3 million illegal votes.
Dems LIAR, way less than that!
"That you find minnows in the milk does not prove it has been watered, but it is reasonable grounds for suspicion."
H.L. Mencken
It is a problem that Trump's penchant for exaggeration sometimes ubdermines his ability to get important issues into discussion.
And, P,B&J, the slang term is "anyhoo."
Canada is so fucked up right now.
It is vitally important that we protect free speech in this country.
The free speech clause is an area where our Supreme Court is right. To attack the Supreme Court on free speech--to curtail free speech--is idiotic.
I love our free speech case law.
Try burning the rainbow flag. Then we'll see that flag burning is not allowed.
None of these allegations can be easily proved or debunked. California and the Dems will block any attempts to get an accurate count of illegal voters; only intelligence agencies can definitely gauge the extent of Russian influence in the electoral process [and they often don't get things right]. But that doesn't matter. Politics is a matter of impressionism, not scientifically determined fact. One might as well protest that Van Gogh's stars don't look like the real thing.
How does "Dickerson" know it's not true? Don't Dickersonians issue driver's licenses to illegals in California? And then urge those same illegals to use their new California driver's license to vote. By the millions: Viva La Raza!!!
The campaign promise was to put pro-life people on the Supreme Court.
Also to put somebody on the Court who is like Scalia.
Nino hated flag-burners as much as the next guy. But he loved our Constitution and our free speech clause. That's why he joined Texas v. Johnson.
Good linked essay, St. Croix! Any man who respects Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche has my respect.
And, yes, above all, we must preserve freedom of speech! No matter how disgusting, hateful or offensive, the right to express it must be upheld. The consequences or lack thereof, however, cannot be guaranteed.
I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it, or does he have to tighten up his standard of proof?
It's called a hypothesis. The next step is to see if there is justification by doing tests. Simply waving your hand and believing it's not true doesn't make it not true anymore than saying it makes it true.
There's reasonable indications that there are problems with illegal voting. The only way to know is to study the issue. Having an audit of our voting system nationwide is not an absurd idea.
Even if it isn't true, it's worth putting to bed by making sure one way or another.
Texas v. Johnson
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it..."
I knew as soon as I saw that sentence that we would have an endless supply of non-Trump examples to remind the formerly unquestioning that they were just that once upon a time.
i'm really so tired of you guys repeating the same old tropes about voter fraud... statistically the majority of dead people don't vote... a majority of election commissions in the states are majority republican... the kochs and the donalds of the world have more then enough money to fund any investigation, gather proof and prosecute... many of the states in question have republican AGs..the great voter fraud hunter Kobach filed only 6 cases.. a total waste of time and money.. if it were so widespread we would see prosecutions all over the place... Trump won... now govern !
And why do banks put their money in vaults, when there's no evidence anything would happen to it if they didn't?
Althouse and Dickerson believe that there is hardly any illegal voting going on -- despite the fact that Chicago positively boasts about its level of cheating -- so of course it doesn't exist. Or if it exists at all, it's purely de minimize. But the entire establishment works hard to prevent anyone from collecting definitive information to prove Trump's theory either way, and from that I conclude that it is more likely Dickerson and Althouse are the ones who are wrong, not Trump.
The Socratic method isn't just a matter of asking questions and doesn't seem to apply here. But you can tell a lot from the kinds of questions people ask.
They say the kind of questions Ronald Reagan asked during his briefings showed he had a real grasp of the information. He also wasn't shy about following his instincts and asking for additional or different analyses. For example, when he assumed office he wasn't satisfied with the intelligence community's party line on the Soviet Union and demanded to see conflicting analyses. Turns out they were right and the party line was wrong and the rest is history. I hope Trump has some Reagan in him.
Flag burning is an easy one
As a former Marine, it offends me greatly, approaches the level of "fighting words", and I want to see the perps accidentally catch fire.
BUT, its the canary in a coal mine. The day that Americans are no longer free to burn American symbols in protest is the day we all lose a portion of our Liberty.
I hope Trump gets better advice. But it's not a deal breaker for me. The people burning flags don't give a damn about the rights of people like me, so if they burn... oh well. I've decided to stop defending the rights of people who would send me to the Indoc Camps.
i dont know what althouse and dickerson 'believe' but this subject has been studied by honest people on both side of the political divide many, many times and any evidence (FACTS) that there is wide spread voter fraud does not exist... now i know that we are in a 'post fact' world but when i was growing up you needed to prove your point.. so if any of youse guys have proof, please forward to jeff sessions i'm sure he will be happy to pursue...
"Hey, here's a theory! Ever think about it that way?" Very slightly OT: isn't that the Althouse MO?
There was reporter for a Miami area paper who for whatever reason decided to compare voter rolls with jury summonses that had been returned because the prospective jurors weren't citizens. He discovered there were people who had indeed voted in the previous election but claimed for the purposes of jury duty that they weren't citizens. He actually went to see some of them at their homes and had a lot of doors shut in his face. So, were these people lying about their status when they registered to vote or were they lying about their status to get out of jury duty?
Seriously...am I the only one who can recognize hyperbole anymore?
@GWash, as luck would have it my long-ago baccalaureate was in mathematics, and my lengthy career involved developing stochastic models as part of my efforts to design and develop large computer systems. This leaves me ideally placed to examine the alleged studies you assert have been performed by allegedly honest people and determine for myself their validity.
Put up (i.e., post some links) or shut up, ass-face.
I'm really so tired of you guys repeating the same old tropes about voter fraud
Well then stop cheating.
evidence (FACTS) that there is wide spread voter fraud does not exist.
We have 1,000+ examples from just FOUR Virginia precincts. Extrapolate.
When we first complained about voter fraud, your side said it did not exist. When we gave you proof, your side said that while it exists, its insignificant. Now you are saying voter fraud is not "wide spread". Do you not see yourselves?
And why are you so invested in denying voter fraud? If one black man was denied entrance to the polls, your side would go nuts. But if 10 black men have their votes cancelled out by 10 illegal votes, no big deal?
As with most things, I believe the answer depends on whether it helps the Left on not. It's why you like to pretend we are Nazis, so you can justify doing evil in the name of "good".
That is a usurpation by Marshall, who should have been impeached and convicted for his crime.
And not a very subtle one.....He obviously deliberately created the controversy while simultaneously serving as Secretary of State and Chief Justice just so he could invent judicial review, and do so in a manner in which neither Congress nor the president would challenge him.
I dislike flag burning, but my only question is, does that flag you're burning belong to you? I don't like book burning either, but if it's your book you're entitled to burn away.
I have a very high standard that conspiracy theories must meet: Find me a snitch. Find me someone who will admit "Yep, we rigged the election."
You mean like the guy on the Project Veritas tape?
fen, that is the point... the charge is that there are millions of illegal votes... no one disputes that there is voter fraud (on both sides)... the question is how significant and the answer to that is that it is not significant.. and secondly you don't know me or what 'side' i'm on... i'm just tired of the pointless regurgitating of conspiracy theories.. we can't move forward together if we are constantly making shit up... i'm sure we all do better living in a reality where a point can be made with facts to back it up... if not, if we are truly now in a place where facts don't matter (whether obama or trump says it) then we have a much harder hill to climb..
GWash, citizenship ID for voter registration and ID for voting should be mandatory for every state in federal elections. If CA or some other state wants their illegals to vote for state legislature positions and for governor, that's up to them. But they shouldn't impose their lax/corrupt practices on the nation.
Given how California issues driver's licenses (and hence registers to vote) to millions of illegal aliens you'd have to be incredibly naive, or willfully self-deluded to not acknowledge that illegals are voting in significant numbers in California. You'd have to be equally naive or deluded to expect California Democrats to do anything about something that clearly benefits themselves.
You're being weirdly disingenuous, Althouse.
For the record, voter impersonation has never been the issue. So please don't change the subject.
The issue is who is filling in and voting with the absentee/early mail-in ballots. And who in person is really a Mexican Citizen with Motor Voter issued ID type voting in person as a citizen and waived through with a wink by Mexican immigrant poll workers in California.
The faked issue is Popular Vote totals that was won by Hillary by 3 million in California because of extra Mexican votes,while all the other states combined gave Trump the popular vote by 1.5 million .
The immigrants groups are being organized using Soros money to create southwestern Mexican ruled States, or a Muslim ruled State here and there, plus many Metropolitan areas.Then they plan to take over those government's jobs and take the graft.
That is, a Supreme Court opinion on a constitutional matter does not stop the conversation about what the constitution means. A case can be overruled. And a Supreme Court appointment is in the offing. What issues will come to the foreground as we grill the new nominee? Why not make it flag burning? Whether the flag-burning decision is ever overruled, there's political advantage in getting us talking about how we feel about it.
So a woman who's never uttered so much as a contrarian peep about a SCOTUS who's ok'd legal bribery and corruption on 1st amendment grounds sees merit in revisiting a 1st amendment right so clear that even right-wing nutjob Antonin Scalia upheld it.
Deplorable.
As they say: Those who can't, teach. I think I now understand why actual practice, let alone an appointment to the bench, was never in your destiny.
Feel free to keep offering aid and comfort to the fading power of aging lunatics over the next four years who have as their desperate goal the aim to turning us into a full-blown fascist dictatorship.
mock, that would be a solution but that is very close to requiring a national identity card which i really don't think anyone would support and is probably very unconstitutional.. i think the technology is out there or will soon be to verify who you are, where you are voting and how many times you have voted ... of course that has its problems too... there should be a way for every eligible citizen (18 or older, non felon) to vote and have their vote counted accurately and honestly or we are not the greatest nation in the world and this 200+ year experiment is in peril...
You're being weirdly disingenuous, Althouse.
She always is. Just like Trump, her aim is attention. Not coherence.
GWash falsely opines: mock, that would be a solution but that is very close to requiring a national identity card which i really don't think anyone would support and is probably very unconstitutional..
Horseshit.
Maybe Priebus went to a different kind of law school, but in the Socratic method, the guy asking the questions is the one doing the teaching, not the other way around.
That was a very interesting interview, St. Croix. Thanks. I subscribed to Peterson's YouTube channel.
@The Cracker Emcee
Illegal aliens who apply for AB-60 driver's licenses are not registered to vote. The license is for driving purposes only and can't be used as a form of identification. That, of course, does not mean that illegal aliens don't register to vote using fake ID. Or if they register by mail and then vote by absentee ballot, they don't have to show ID at all. You would have to be delusional to think there aren't any number of non-citizens registered to vote in this state. And why bother to register if you're not going to vote?
Right. Illegal voting. Next up: The gray aliens, the contribution of volcanoes and sunspots (and Chinese propaganda) to global warming, the Rafael Cruz-JFK conspiracy, the tinfoil hats, the wonderful people in Hawaii finding out terrific things with Obama's birth certificates, and other fantasies that allow right-wingers to think they're onto something useful for once.
You people are about as useful as a human dildo at an elephant orgy. Just go away.
The Socratic method works best when you have someone like Socrates questioning someone like Plato. In other cases, it's more akin to someone like Costello probing someone like Abbot to ascertain who's on first........Trump tweeted about millions of illegal voters. Stein actually filed a lawsuit to see if the Russians hacked the voting machines in Wisconsin, and Hillary joined the suit. Who's the bigger dummy?
Trump obtains information by asking questions. I'm sure no president has done that before.
@Hargar
College students voting at home and at school, people who own property in two or more states and think they are entitled to vote in each, etc.
A few years back, Florida discovered that some 40,000 people who were registered to vote in Florida were also registered to vote in another state. Most of them were snowbirds who lived part time in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey which also means that most of them were registered Democrats. Now, of course, I have no idea what percentage of those dual registrants had actually cast two ballots in a given election.
GWash seems new to me.
the great voter fraud hunter Kobach filed only 6 cases.. a total waste of time and money.. if it were so widespread we would see prosecutions all over the place... Trump won... now govern !
We had an election in California in which Bob Dornan was defeated by Loretta Sanchez by by less than 300 votes and the fact was hidden by California ?
Given that Sanchez's margin of victory was 236 votes, after she, her campaign and supporters consistently stonewalled the investigation by refusing to respond to subpoenas and playing the Hispanic "race card," how can you assert that it was an "inescapable conclusion" that she would prevail?
And it has gotten far worse.
Sukie says: Illegal aliens who apply for AB-60 driver's licenses are not registered to vote. The license is for driving purposes only and can't be used as a form of identification.
From what I understand, in CA they only ask if the applicant is a citizen and no proof is required. Most carry 'regular' drivers licenses and have been automatically registered to vote. How many of them vote is difficult to say.
@GWash If you're going to use the "many people have studied this " argument, you would get a lot farther if you would provide a link or two.
We don't need a national identity card (an anathema!) in voting oversight. A state ID works just fine and the state is the appropriate issuer since they make the rules. There is no question that CA is abusing the concept of only legal citizens voting. The only question is how large is the body of illegals that have been enabled to vote.
We have or will soon have, as you say, to verify identity. The problem, as with illegal immigration - gun laws, even - is enforcing the law.
I have a very high standard that conspiracy theories must meet: Find me a snitch. Find me someone who will admit "Yep, we rigged the election."
You mean like the Kennedys and the Democratic Party about the 1960 elections?
If the Democrats so freely admit to 1960, why should we believe that year was special?
I thought the "Socratic method" involved a lot of yelling and hitting.
I thought the "Socratic method" involved a lot of yelling and hitting.
Yes. IIRC, Moe Howard used the Socratic method.
Rhythm and Balls said...ou people are about as useful as a human dildo at an elephant orgy. Just go away.
--
Heyyyy...missed ya!
Dickerson bluffs that Trump's statement on scope of illegal voting has been debunked, and that is the furthest thing from the truth.
This is an open question, and I want it to remain an open question because otherwise we will never fix it. It is a real issue.
Clearly there are a lot of illegals registered and a lot of dead people on voting rolls. A recent study in Virginia found over 1000 legal immigrants who were not citizens were registered, and some of them had in fact voted in past elections.
The Obama Admin did everything it could to not get to the bottom of these questions.
Blogger GWash said...
any evidence (FACTS) that there is wide spread voter fraud does not exist...
--
Right..and if you don't post highway patrol to monitor traffic, no one speeds...err..it's not wide spread.
But hey..as the recount effort informs us, every vote matters.
What is the upside for illegals to vote in California? They take the risk merely to increase the meaningless popular vote?
When we voted here in California my wife tried to show her photo ID to the poll worker. They didn't even want to see it, just asked to see the name on her voter's guide booklet.
What is the upside for illegals to vote in California? They take the risk merely to increase the meaningless popular vote?
For one thing, they can and do keep the Democrats in total power in the state.
I thought the "Socratic method" involved a lot of yelling and hitting.
Jetherine was not a Clampett.
Alt-right indeed. Hrumph.
Kellogg's delenda est.
@steve,
What is the upside for illegals to vote in California? They take the risk merely to increase the meaningless popular vote?
You mean that "meaningless popular vote" of a surplus 2.5M votes that allows the Democrats to claim that "Hillary won"? Those votes are now about the only good thing the Democrats have to show from the election of 2016.
The Project Veritas videos had not just one but two Democrats openly admitting and bragging about rigging elections, and that they'd been doing it for 50 years. And one of them has visited Obama in the White House hundreds of times. Both were fired when the videos came out.
Why doesn't that meet the high standard of proof for conspiracies?
They take the risk merely to increase the meaningless popular vote?
Risk? What risk? Obama has so much as admitted there is none.
@Mock Turtle:
To apply for a "regular" driver's license (or an identity card) in CA, you have to provide your SSN and proof of your birth date and legal presence. Unless you opt out, if you are 18 and a citizen, you are automatically registered to vote. If you register elsewhere, the registrar of voters will use your DMV records to confirm your identity (it also uses your DL signature to verify the signature on a mail-in ballot). However, if you state on a mail-in application that you don't have a SS and/or DL number, you will still get registered. In that event, you MAY be asked for appropriate ID at the polling place. If, however, you request to be an absentee ballot voter when you register, you'll probably never have to show any ID to anybody.
Lots of illegals in CA have fake ID. But, like I said, it's easy enough to get registered without any ID at all.
Sukie, most illegals and legal non-citizens who are working here have SSNs. You certainly don't need to be a citizen. My husband was a British citizen [resident alien] in the US until he became a US citizen in 1990 and he had a SSN from 1970 when he moved here.
As noted above, the Socratic method -- asking questions, forcing the student to think on their feet, walking the student through a logical puzzle -- is not a way of learning something. It's a way of teaching something. If Trump is asking a lot of questions, that's good. But it's not Socratic.
I think our host offers a venue for socratic discussion where nothing is taken for granted, no arguments from authority, "Science says" where the press is just another authority to be ignored as their "facts" must be treated as having no more basis than mine, unless they are reasoned to. The Horror The Horror. Don't you know you must listen and obey your betters, thr press and the socialists Marx and Engels. Come worship with me at the Altar of dirt, it's the safe thing to do, after all. Why risk salvation? Good Fun, mr. T. is driving everyone nuts because now they have to think for themselves, the same way that Martin Luther and his 96 principles nailed to the wittenberg dor freed (now literate) serf slaves from ter betters, the church, today's press. Go Go Go. All you have to lose is your chains.
"We can't move forward together if we are constantly making shit up" he said as he palmed two aces into his shirt cuff.
Mockturtle, legal resident aliens are issued SSNs. But you need more than a SSN to get a driver's license in CA. You also need to establish your legal presence with a birth certificate, passport, naturalization papers, green card or other valid form of non-citizen ID. If it's a form of non-citizen ID, you don't get registered. Illegals can get tax ID numbers from the IRS because all the IRS cares about is collecting taxes, but they can't be used as a form of identification for DLs or to register to vote. Lots of illegals have a SSN (although not necessarily a SS card). They either steal the number from someone else or they use fake papers to obtain their own.
Original Mike said...
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it..."
"Family health insurance premiums will drop $2,500/yr ...".
An important distinction. We may presume that in fact Obama's lie had quite a bit of "evidence" behind it, which one of his flacks would have been happy to produce if requested. Of course, that evidence was all statistical flim-flam and flat-out fabrication, for which some Ivy League chiseler got paid handsomely. The Progressive academy is always ready to gin up "evidence" for any proposition it favors, and to shit on any theory it dislikes. I suppose a guy in Priebus' position has to pretend to take a sold-out POS like Dickerson seriously, but the rest of us don't. He's a Democrat, and he will tell any lie the Democrats want told. If his lips are moving...
there should be a way for every eligible citizen (18 or older, non felon) to vote and have their vote counted accurately and honestly or we are not the greatest nation in the world and this 200+ year experiment is in peril
See. This is how I know you are full of shit. If a citizens right to vote and have it counted accurately was really so sacrosanct, you would also be giving your full-throated support to preventing that same citizen from being disenfranchised by illegal voting.
Instead, you gaslight us. Why the contradiction?
You also need to establish your legal presence with a birth certificate, passport, naturalization papers, green card or other valid form of non-citizen ID.
Nope. Just a residential address.
The new plan in Cali is to have motor-voter type of registration, with the registrant affirming (by his his or her signature or mark) that they are a citizen, but the affirmation of citizenship is not supposed to count for anything but voting. They'll need more ID for that.
The libs are shooting themselves in the foot with their 'get rid of the electoral college!' demand. Yeah, a simple plurality, with each state incentivised to put as many voters on the roll as possible.
Blogger Quaestor said...
I thought the "Socratic method" involved a lot of yelling and hitting.
Jetherine was not a Clampett.
I am not Jethrine Bodine. I am a different Jethrine.
The Socratic method could be a way to hide your ignorance (but also maybe a way to drill down)
One thing: he's not just saying yes that's right like a dummy.
So when Obama in an interview broadcast on nationwide television says 'not a smidgen of corruption' in the IRS despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, Althouse and the fawning MSM give it a complete pass. But Althouse is jumping up and down here shaking her pom-poms when a blow-dried talking head in her opinion 'nails' Trump's White House Chief of Staff for something Trump tweeted that may or may not be an exaggeration.
And not a word here today about Wisconsin ignominiously dropping yet another B1G Championship game last night. ;-)
dwick, the difference is that Obama is [to Althouse] a 'lovely man'. Trump isn't lovely.
We could tighten up the voting laws first and see how it goes. That might be proof.
You have to make an appt at the Cali DMV to renew your license?
WHAT? Did I read that right, Michael?
How to apply for a driver license if you are over 18
@Seeing Red
You have to make an appt at the Cali DMV to renew your license?
WHAT? Did I read that right, Michael?
I've been renewing my license by mail for years. So has my husband and just about everybody else I know. Possibly you need a clean record to be able to do that.
steve uhr: What is the upside for illegals to vote in California? They take the risk merely to increase the meaningless popular vote?
Geez are you NEW around here Uhr? Every hispanic student in California is handed a list of democrats to vote for by their teachers, who also tell them to give the list to their parents "because if the republican is elected your parents will be deported tomorrow." So it is in their own self interest to do the work of dirty democrats, or so they are told and they believe it.
And what do mean by "risk"? There's no risk. Haven't you heard? We don't check and we don't prosecute. If they were prosecuted then we'd have more to talk about here.
Way back on August 30, Kellyanne Conway knocked this pitch about Donald and the Socratic Method out of the park. The subject was Trump's attitude toward debate preparation. According to NYMAG.com:
“He’s an unconventional candidate, so debate prep in the classic sense doesn’t apply to him,” Kellyanne Conway told the [NY] Post. “That applies to the accoutrements that are usually associated with getting ready for debates: contrived gestures, lecterns, a group of consultants in belted khakis holed up in a cabin, the Socratic method of peppering questions. That’s not him.”
Trump doesn't deal well with details as mentioned by ghostwriter Tony Schwartz and confirmed by the Roger-Ailes-led debate practice team.
Mr. Trump found it hard to focus during those meetings [and] ... he did not seem to pay attention during the practice sessions
This made-up story by Priebus reminds me of the laudatory post yesterday in American Thinker that claimed that Trump had a business reputation for finishing projects "on-time and under-budget" but the only person who ever said such a thing was Donald Trump (many times as a matter of fact). But I was particularly struck by the timing of such a remark in a speech he made from his not-yet-finished hotel in Washington. Of course there was the 1986 redo of the Central Park Ice Rink story that you dont want to miss.
It could be argued that having a large number of illegal aliens voting without any attempt to stop them violates Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution both in that it subverts the guarantee of a Republican form of government and protection against invasion. Plus any State legislature could apply for protection from the "domestic violence" which has been unleashed by some of said illegal aliens.
Anyone can plainly see that the liberal cesspool that is California is openly encouraging illegals to vote. I would be greatly surprised if the overall illegal vote for killary was less than 5 million.
Of course there were millions of illegal votes cast. Evidence? Occam's Razor. The general disdain for small d democracy from big D Democrats coupled with easy opportunity. Actual evidence would require an actual effort to collect, which neither party seems too interested in doing.
Of course the president elect should be more careful in his accusations, but what about a president who openly encourages people to vote illegally, as our current president has done? Explicitly. On TV.
There's so much to be outraged about that the demands consistency make it difficult to complain about one thing at a time.
There is no "evidence" of illegal aliens voting because the people in charge don't want to spend the time and money to develop the evidence for obvious reasons.
It's worse than that. They've set the system up such that you cannot determine if people have been voting illegally. That's why they're fighting ID laws - the amount of fraud will become visible.
Presidents have always floated trial balloons, but usually they leak them to the press. So what's wrong with Trump using twitter?
Fen said...12/4/16, 7:03 PM
I'm If one black man was denied entrance to the polls, your side would go nuts. But if 10 black men have their votes cancelled out by 10 illegal votes, no big deal?
What are you talking about?? In most statewide elections, they would vote the same way - for the machine Democrat. In local elections, they most often are not in the same district. Who comes up with these arguments?
What you really need to worry about is the possibility of voting by absentee ballot by non-existent people. But - this is case where there would be informers.
They are fighting ID laws because 1) it is an inconvenience and much more inconvenient to some people than others 2) it could prevent college students from re-registering where they attend college 3) complaining about this is a great motivator to get out the vote, and make sure that whoever does turn out, votes Democratic. The Republicans are foolish for pursuing this.
Anyone who wants to commit fraud uses absentee ballots, if that is at all possible. Registration itself greatly complicates the possibilities of using ringers. About the only thing that can happen is proxy voting.
Priebus's lame response was that we don't know it's not true.
We only don't know it's not true in the sense that we don't know the specific numbers of people who vote illegally.
Upon reflection, I find Trump's answer a good one, because any other answer doesn't call the MSM/Academia/Democratic Party bluff that there's no vote fraud going on.
That is, the issue is largely and purposefully unstudied because illegal voters skew heavily democratic and people who study things skew heavily democratic. They don't want to open that can of worms.
Because while it might be a stretch to say "millions", it's not a stretch to say "hundreds of thousands" and those are numbers that could still be determinant. They would be numbers that would fuel a belief among people in the middle that elections are rigged.
You can imagine two sorts of equilibrium points here. In one, the left leaning researchers take the issue seriously, produce credible studies, and enact realistic voter ID laws as they exist in nearly every other voting nation on earth. Then, they could use those robust laws and evidence to point out the validity of popular votes.
On the other hand, you can imagine the equilibrium point we're at. The Left doesn't want to admit it frequently engages in skulduggery at the margins, so it maintains a don't ask don't tell research policy. The right wants to be able to hold out the issue of vote fraud as a potential motivator, so it doesn't actually push for change.
Did Dickerson also ask the same question about the "theory that has no evidence behind it.." when Obama stated that Obamacare will save us $2,500, keep your Doctor, etc. Doubt it!
"I guess [the] question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it, or does he have to tighten up his standard of proof?"
There is evidence that illegals vote, so it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. The question, then, is 'how many.'
I voted for Trump precisely because he knows the meaning of an opening bid. In the absence of information to the contrary, the opening bid is thus: 'millions of illegals voted.'
At this point the progressives can only say: well, not millions, and anyway that's not how a President should talk is it? That's the real non-sequitur, when the question should be 'how many illegals voted'? They're not interested in the answer to that. So they are the ones changing the subject, Althouse.
Nonsense. They're asking him to disarm himself of his most powerful rhetorical technique, a fundamental part of his identity, and his most potent weapon against the left.
Trump's ability to distract us with some new nutty thing. Hey, here's a theory! Ever think about it that way?
I can tell you were never a science major.
Nearly all our knowledge of reality started as somebody investigating a "nutty thing". After investigation - observation, experiment, and measurement - came understanding. (Well, observation, experiment, measurement, and math - the math gives most people headaches.) And after that, the nuttiness disappeared.
There is a risk if anyone ever applies for citizenship. Some people wo have bene told they will become citizns have registered and voted but before being sworn in, because they ddn't know they were not yet eligible, and gotten into trouble.
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