A General thread for 2024 Presidential Elections

[RTH10260]

[AndyinPA]

Manchin not running for Senate again. That could make keeping both houses tough in 2024.

Link when I can find one.




Edit:

Link that will be updating.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/politics ... index.html

[Volkonski]

'Provocative' Vivek Ramaswamy border comments anger Canadians

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67372909

But one Republican presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy, wants to take the idea even further. His proposal: a wall along the 5,500 mile long (8,900km) US-Canada frontier.

At Wednesday's primary debate in Miami, the 38-year-old candidate argued that enough fentanyl crossed the border last year to "kill three million Americans".

His assertion, however, is not supported by statistics and has been widely panned by experts.

Speaking at the Republican presidential debate in Miami, Mr Ramaswamy claimed that the US should "build both walls" to stop the flow of drugs into the US.

His claim follows an earlier visit to the Roxham Road crossing in Quebec, where he claimed the heavily forested border is "wide open for invasion" and easily crossed by traffickers and illegal migrants.

But statistics show that the scale of fentanyl trafficking along the US-Canada border - the world's longest - pales in comparison to the US-Mexico border.

According to data from US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), just under two and a half pounds - about a kilogram - of fentanyl were seized at the Canadian border in the 2023 fiscal year.

The figure represents well under 1% of the 26,718 lbs (12,119kg) of fentanyl seized at the southern border during the same time frame.

The previous fiscal year, the figures stood at 14lbs (6.3kg) along the Canadian border, compared to 14,104 lbs (6,397kg) along the US-Mexican border.

Additionally, the statistics show that about 189,400 migrant "encounters" were reported at the US-Canada border in the 2023 fiscal year, compared to 2.47m along the border with Mexico. The previous year, only 2.7% of migrants apprehended at the same border were taken into custody between ports of entry.

"You can't compare the borders...when he said that yesterday, I kind of laughed," Dr Frederick Gagnon, an expert on US-Canada relations at the University of Québec in Montreal, told the BBC. "What he proposes seems very extreme".te]

[AndyinPA]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... r-AA1jOMNu

Sen. Tim Scott announced on Sunday that he is suspending his presidential campaign.

The South Carolina Republican senator made the announcement in a televised interview on Fox News with Trey Gowdy. The news came as a shock to his own staff. Multiple campaign staff members confirmed to POLITICO that they had no prior knowledge of Scott’s decision prior to the live television announcement.

[raison de arizona]

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/sta ... 4463661401

On Day 1, *instantly* fire 50% of federal bureaucrats.

Here’s how: if your SSN ends in an odd number, you’re fired.

That downsizes government by half. Absolutely *nothing* will break as a result.

It doesn’t violate civil service rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

SHUT IT…

This avoids civil service protections: no bureaucrat can claim their firings were politically motivated.

Further firings can be executed with a chisel, but Step 1 needs to be an unrestrained chainsaw or else it just won’t happen.

[RTH10260]

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/sta ... 4463661401

On Day 1, *instantly* fire 50% of federal bureaucrats.

Here’s how: if your SSN ends in an odd number, you’re fired.

That downsizes government by half. Absolutely *nothing* will break as a result.

It doesn’t violate civil service rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

SHUT IT…

This avoids civil service protections: no bureaucrat can claim their firings were politically motivated.

Further firings can be executed with a chisel, but Step 1 needs to be an unrestrained chainsaw or else it just won’t happen.

Except that you do not know what valuable knowhow gets lost when you just apply a random rule, the last digit of the SSN is likely a checkdigit. You may be removing the youngest, the ones that are in a learning curve to carry future administrations and at the same time the old workers would be getting mass retirement. You may be cutting all the superiors leaving the workers without guidance. Your administration would get covered in lawsuits cause they do not make timely responses. And of course you are working with the premise that Capitol Hill were in your hands.

[Dave from down under]

He’s insane
Appealing to the stupid

[much ado]

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/sta ... 4463661401

On Day 1, *instantly* fire 50% of federal bureaucrats.

Here’s how: if your SSN ends in an odd number, you’re fired.

That downsizes government by half. Absolutely *nothing* will break as a result.

It doesn’t violate civil service rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

SHUT IT…

This avoids civil service protections: no bureaucrat can claim their firings were politically motivated.

Further firings can be executed with a chisel, but Step 1 needs to be an unrestrained chainsaw or else it just won’t happen.

Except that you do not know what valuable knowhow gets lost when you just apply a random rule, the last digit of the SSN is likely a checkdigit. You may be removing the youngest, the ones that are in a learning curve to carry future administrations and at the same time the old workers would be getting mass retirement. You may be cutting all the superiors leaving the workers without guidance. Your administration would get covered in lawsuits cause they do not make timely responses. And of course you are working with the premise that Capitol Hill were in your hands.

There is no check digit on an SSN. My father submitted SSN applications for my younger brother and me at the same time. Our numbers are sequential, differing only in the last digit. An old friend of mine worked for the Social Security Administration. I mention this to him. He said the first three digits depend on the state where the applications were submitted, the middle two digits are a "batch" number, and the final four digits are assigned sequentially within the batch.

[RTH10260]

Yeah - SSN was invented long before modern IT concepts were devised. Calculating a check digit in the times of the Holorith cards would have been messy. Also too one would not want to lose one character of storage space on the limited storage of a punched card.

[Dr. Ken]

[Suranis]

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/sta ... 4463661401

On Day 1, *instantly* fire 50% of federal bureaucrats.

Here’s how: if your SSN ends in an odd number, you’re fired.

That downsizes government by half. Absolutely *nothing* will break as a result.

It doesn’t violate civil service rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

SHUT IT…

This avoids civil service protections: no bureaucrat can claim their firings were politically motivated.

Further firings can be executed with a chisel, but Step 1 needs to be an unrestrained chainsaw or else it just won’t happen.

"MUSK! YOU ARE A GENIUS! Run the government like Elon runs twitter! Please Musk give me money because I love you..."

[neonzx]

Off Topic

Just to complete the issue of checkdigits as some may not understand.

With credit card numbers, the last digit is the check. It was/is a rudimentary thing. Take a debit or credit card out of your wallet and sum each digit before the last. The checkdigit on the end rounds the total up to the next "10".

Of course doesn't mean the card is valid other than the format of the number is legit.

[Slim Cognito]

Is he confusing mass firing with mass layoffs and wouldn’t laid off employees qualify for unemployment? And aren’t there unions sprinkled throughout that? Setting aside the obvious fact that he’s an asshat, it doesn’t seem to me that things work that way. Am I wrong?

[Lansdowne]

On Day 1, *instantly* fire 50% of federal bureaucrats.

Here’s how: if your SSN ends in an odd number, you’re fired.

It doesn’t violate civil service rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

This avoids civil service protections: no bureaucrat can claim their firings were politically motivated.

But there would have to be a definition of "bureaucrat" Presumably published in an Executive Ordure. And wouldn't it be simple for the Federal Bureaucracy Workers Union to assert that the chosen definition was "politically motivated" ?

[Foggy]

Am I wrong?

No, he's appealing to people who have no idea how the system works.

[raison de arizona]

Good to know. And that isn't exactly what she said.

This is insane. Nikki Haley says she will use the federal government to dox every single anonymous account on social media.

[RTH10260]

Good to know. And that isn't exactly what she said.
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/ ... 48728?s=20

This is insane. Nikki Haley says she will use the federal government to dox every single anonymous account on social media.

Nikki Haley vows to abolish anonymous social media accounts: 'It's a national security threat'

https://cbs12.com/news/nation-world/nik ... ley-hochul

most users are "anonymous", behind a moniker of sorts, and the companies usually have little other than an anonymous email address to work with. Also too, social media is international, how does she intend to get those users to disclose without crashing the platforms. And TikTok is outside US jurisdiction.

[bob]

And the hits keep on coming: The South Carolina Democratic Party didn't certify Uygur either.

[bob]

Where's Taitz when you need her?

Arkansas requires a state-level party to certify a candidate's eligibility.

I have doubts Uygur filed that.

[jemcanada2]

On Day 1, *instantly* fire 50% of federal bureaucrats.

Here’s how: if your SSN ends in an odd number, you’re fired.

It doesn’t violate civil service rules because mass layoffs are exempt.

This avoids civil service protections: no bureaucrat can claim their firings were politically motivated.

But there would have to be a definition of "bureaucrat" Presumably published in an Executive Ordure. And wouldn't it be simple for the Federal Bureaucracy Workers Union to assert that the chosen definition was "politically motivated" ?

Nah! They’d just get a definition from Black’s Law volume 5.

[RVInit]

Manchin not running for Senate again. That could make keeping both houses tough in 2024.

Link when I can find one.




Edit:

Link that will be updating.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/politics ... index.html

Also he is likely to be the one nominated on that third party ticket. The one that will ensure Donald Trump wins 2024.

[Slim Cognito]

Will that many Dems vote for Manchin for prez? I could see him taking more Rs and Is, but I've been wrong before. And as much as I despise his ratfuckery, we needed the D behind his name. We're definitely going to lose WV in the senate.

[bob]

The South Carolina Democratic Party didn't certify Uygur either.

And neither did Michigan's Secretary of State.

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

He could still get on the list for Michigan, though.

[Volkonski]

Political violence threatens to intensify as the 2024 campaign heats up, experts on extremism warn

https://apnews.com/article/depape-paul- ... 8540a7ddcd

As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, experts on extremism fear the threat of politically motivated violence will intensify. From “Pizzagate” to QAnon and to “Stop the Steal,” conspiracy theories that demonized Donald Trump’s enemies are morphing and spreading as the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination aims for a return to the White House.

“No longer are these conspiracy theories and very divisive and vicious ideologies separated at the fringes,” said Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who focuses on domestic terrorism. “They’re now infiltrating American society on a massive scale.”

A federal jury on Thursday convicted David DePape of attacking Paul Pelosi at his San Francisco home on Oct. 28, 2022. Before the verdict, DePape testified that he had intended to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and “break her kneecaps” if the Democratic lawmaker lied to him while he questioned her about what he viewed as government corruption. She was in Washington at the time of the assault.

In online rants before the attack, DePape echoed tenets of QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that has been linked to killings and other crimes. A core belief for QAnon adherents is that Trump has tried to expose a Satan-worshipping, child sex trafficking cabal of prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.

Trump has amplified social media accounts that promote QAnon, which grew from the far-right fringes of the internet to become a fixture of mainstream Republican politics.

Many rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, espoused QAnon’s apocalyptic beliefs online before traveling to the nation’s capital for Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that day. A message board formerly known as TheDonald.win was buzzing with plans for violence days before the siege.