Final love letter to a spacecraft. The Cassini exploratory probe finished its life and mission, which was to send us data about Saturn and its moons. The craft was remotely instructed to crash into Saturn to be sure that it wouldn't contaminate the moons where native life might be possible.
Americans and their white president. A tour-de-force essay by Ta-nehisi Coates. He writes that whites of all kinds, not just working class, gave support to a candidate who reflected bigotry. The essay shows one way to view race relations, but I don't agree with it's the whole story. It's still significant that a black president was elected twice, and with more support than Trump got. Coates does present some chilling facts, however, such as a white felon running in the presidential primary against Obama, and getting a surprising number of votes. The Obama presidency has been difficult for many blacks because they've had to endure heightened disrespect.
More about North Korea. North Koreans have been completely immersed in the propaganda that their only purpose is to serve. That complicates both war and diplomacy. A high-ranking ex-officer suggests a naval blockade to change the dynamic. The comment section is a must-read.
Did voter fraud change this Senate election? That's a good question raised here. There are known weaknesses in New Hampshire election law. The numbers of people using out-of-state IDs were high enough in this very close election. This is plausible, but not enough evidence to say it happened.
US spending. Where the federal spending goes. I'm always looking for this info, so here's a link to a handy graph.
Driverless car crash. This summary and analysis points to the technology not being able to handle complex situations. The driver, however, was lulled into depending on the system. That would happen so easily.
Susan Rice, target of conservative smears. A lot of ugly accusations swirled around her as conservatives tried to win the news cycle when lots of Russia news was coming out. Now she's been cleared, but that information is mostly buried. Blowhard conservatives won't even remember that they defamed her. Amnesia is rampant there.
Migration issues confront Canada. Perhaps for the first time, Canada is dealing with mass migration that is poorly controlled. Will it be too much for this generous, empathetic nation?
Image: bloomberg.com
2 comments:
I know you're just making on observation on the NH close senate (and presidential) contests and how a number of people registered and voted the same day using an out-of-state ID to do so. Remember that the party ALSO has to provide their local address and declare under what I assume are criminal penalties that they are "domiciled" at that address.
Based on what I've heard, a large number proportion of those voters were in college towns, which is exactly what you'd expect from out-of-staters voting perfectly legally. Second, it's still a secret ballot so we don't know who those people voted for in the contests (although you could do some statistical analysis based on the precinct results), but whether those LEGAL votes created the difference or not is only a political question that some partisan seem ready to utilize for their own partisan purposes.
In addition, there's nothing to stop many people from other New England states who have a vacation home in NH, and tend to vote Republican, from registering for this election or some time in the past since they expect their votes for senate and president to mean more in NH since it's the only New England (or northeast, really) state that is even a close opportunity for Republicans. I don't see anybody on the R side of the aisle declaring there's anything wrong with those people voting in NH, although they are actually residents of solid D Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, etc.
It was a close election, period. NH also provided the margin for Bush in 2000 also in a close election. Did those questionable votes for out-of-state R-likely voters provide the margin? Perhaps. At least as likely as what Kobach and his witch-hunters suggest happened in 2016. And in 2000 it was the difference between Bush getting the office and not.
People need to think these kinds of issue completely through before tossing around even "questions" about legitimacy.
Dangerous
@Dangerous, I wasn't trying to say the results weren't legitimate. There seem to be holes that invite questionable votes, and these should be investigated to find out if there was fraud and the extent of it. Maybe NH will want to tighten their rules, or maybe they won't. It certainly isn't for me to say if they decide to keep rules with holes in them.
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