Very interesting links. Long but worth it.

 I've been negligent in keeping up with blogging. Mea culpa. But here's lots of good stuff.

Reports on the Trump campaign. Feeling confident in August. Trump's appeal to white working class remains strong. People who think Trump is nuts, including Hannity. Voting suppression shenanigans--just one of many tactics to reduce the turnout. Republicans getting more worried. Less cowardice towards Trump--a bit less. Unfocused campaign near the end--maybe the emphasis is simply on bluster. Details of targeting black voters in 2016 for discouragement.

In-depth reports about how Biden chose Kamala Harris. I'm very interested in decision-making processes. This reports a budding connection. I hope that's a good sign. 

Other tidbits about Biden. A long piece focusing on personality and character. Like many Dem campaigns, Biden is late with a strategy for Latino voters. The Biden campaign goes gross on drug test request. (Don't talk about urine PLEASE!!!!)

Heading toward fascism? A refugee from a fascist country warns the US that we are definitely headed in that direction. Not all hyperbole by any means. 

Real data on voter fraud. It's not clear that the methodology is strong, but (if so) this should be getting more attention. Actual numbers on dead people voting and double voting. Nothing on ballot harvesting which is the biggest form of fraud. 

Dangers in refusing abortions. A Michigan senator tells how his wife was refused an abortion for a failed pregnancy that put her health and life in danger. Rigidity is winning over realism and women's lives. 

Snapshot USA. Portland police allow left and right whackos to fight. Illogical complaint about NYC restrictions on restaurant. Consider necessity versus option. No rational person literally believes Tucker Carlson. That is the conclusion of a judge in dismissing a slander suit against him. 

Covid relief 2.0. Seems to be permanently stalled. This is another case of GOPers have no ability to handle difficult negotiations. 

Global warming factors. Broken down and explained very clearly. It would be much hotter by now if the sunspot activity had a normal cycle rather than a very low cycle. We got lucky, but humans are fucking our climate. 

Image: abcnews.go.com

May/June links

(Catching up on posts started a while ago. This one originally written around so long ago it's embarrassing)

The man who recorded the confrontation and death of Ahmaud Arbery, he was very nervous about his role in the incident. He tried to distance himself and wished for justice for Arbery. Now he is also charged in the murder.

Michael Flynn in the news. Transcript of his call to the Russian ambassador.  The adviser to judge says no, you can't just drop charges against someone who pleaded guilty.

Egregious incident of stalking and harassment by ebay security employees. ebay!!!!

Trouble counting lots of absentee ballots. States need to step up and make this work better.

Qanon is strange and fascinating - not what they write, but how people are responding to this weirdness and hokey conspiracy thing. More about the origin and internals in a video with a founder of 8chan (starting at 37:46).

Bolton's book, delayed by the Trump administration, showed that quid pro quo was actually standard for Trump.

According to Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign is wobbling. Trump needs to be the president and take care of the problems, like the huge covid crisis.

Interesting law ruling from the Supreme Court that concerns tribal lands. It expands the power and independence of the tribes.

Image: chicagotribune.com

Reviewing voter suppression

(Catching up on posts started a while ago. This one originally written around 5/27/20.)

Even though Republicans have discovered and are chasing a new terrifying form of voter fraud (fraud from mail-in ballots), I'm still parrying claims that they weren't doing any other kind of voter suppression, which is also known as making it harder for some (poor/old/students) to vote. So I quickly found some excellent sources on this information:

From The Guardian, an excellent state-by-state listing.

People having a tough time getting the required ID - two articles.

I'm looking forward to when the New York Times will let me read this article about Alabama.

Image: wfae.org

October links: too many

GOPers learn to negotiate. The GOPers in Congress learned and managed to fund the government. No shutdown. Trump was out of the loop.

Lying scummy politics. A scummy, lying trick in a campaign ad. Chris Collins, indicted for insider trading, gives a completely false translation of his opponent's words.

A lying scientist. Cornell

Trump outrageous again. I think it's part of his plan. In love with NK dictator.

Revision of a critique on conservatism. Maybe it is a lot of paranoia. This is a very good read--maybe the most important in several months.

Dangers in US-China relations. Link.

Coerced sex is legal. If done by police.

Russia investigation update. A Trump operative considered using phony accounts. Buried in this article: sentencing for Manafort and Flynn. Does that mean the investigation is almost over? I'm guessing yes. You don't sentence your informants until they have fulfilled their side of the bargain.

Famous for 15 minutes. A mom screws up against #metoo. Funny.

California voter registration. Always curious about this black hole.

Climate change links.

Anti-democracy. Georgia puts voter applications on hold.

Antifa and Nazis are still fighting, but I lost the link.

Image: aip.org

So many stories

I didn't publish this when I first started writing, and now there's been a flurry of stories to follow. Someday I may catch up on my writing, but not yet. However, I'm posting this belated piece today. 


Has Obamacare failed? This article shows pretty clearly that the answer depends on where you live. Some places, yes. Some places, the market is still doing well.

What to do in Afghanistan. Trump likes his top national security adviser McMaster, but disagrees with his plan for Afghanistan. So what will happen?

Voter fraud claims turn nasty. Imagine someone claimed you shouldn't be on the voter rolls. Let's say they lied about you, said you didn't live at your address, etc. Unfortunately, this happened statewide. Read about it.

Which states can't meet pension obligations? That's a good question. This article has one of the best graphs I've ever seen to show the answer. My state (Mass) - so-so. Not as bad as I feared.

Conservatives for riots? This article discusses how an associate of video sting con artist James O'Keefe tried to bribe a progressive organizer to arrange riots for Trump's inauguration. Sounds very sinister. Then I realized that she was probably trying to do a video sting, not actually trying to arrange false flag riots.

List of lies. Donald's. I don't want to go through the whole list, but it's good that somebody compiled one. I'm glad it wasn't me.

The 10-Day Diet. How to lose a bad choice for communications chief in 10 days. But before he's completely forgotten, read this hilarious piece about him calling up a reporter and forgetting to say the magic words "off the record" or "background." Some communications chief.

Fact checking comparison

I read the following in a comment about requiring ID to vote:

"In fact the Republican chairs in both Pennsylvania and Florida ADMITTED that this was why they were doing it."

That shouldn't be hard to check. Fire up Google, search for "party chair admits reason for voter ID" and I get this:

Are there any conservative sites that covered this issue? Not in the first 100 hits. Let's try the conservative alternative to Google called yippy:

Zip on getting this information from the conservative search engine. One more try, this time I'll take the search directly to a conservative site, The Daily Caller:

What's funny is that there's video for both Pennsylvania and Florida party officials talking about this. My God, video.

God I love technology. Remember, whatever you try to hide, it isn't going to stay hidden.

Images: google.com, yippy.com, dailycaller.com

Short: Voting fraud results: 491 vs. 10

One of the tropes of loony right-wingers is that there's "massive voter fraud." Supposedly Obama won in 2012 by such fraud. Anyone who has done the slightest bit of independent research finds that the biggest area of voter fraud is with absentee ballots, not voter impersonation. This article puts a number on that: 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud versus 10 cases of voter impersonation.

I don't know where the idea came from that demanding certain ID gave Republicans an edge in close elections. There is certainly an elections/campaign industry that researches this sort of information-- for the benefit of paying clients, mind you. There are also partisan think tanks that come up with rationales that cover up the partisan reason for changing voting rules. So, the GOP finds that they win elections by requiring specific IDs, and they enact these requirements on the false pretense of MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD.

It's nice to have a good post to refute this claim.

Image: electionlawblog.org

Extra. A much better conservative rundown of the evidence. Outright lies are debunked, stronger evidence presented, and innuendo fills out the roster.

A fast look at the Voting Rights ruling

While Congress is stalled (for the foreseeable future), the Supreme Court chugs on through its roster of important cases. It's probably good that two branches of government can still function. However, I don't think I'll be giving out accolades to the justices.

Yesterday, in a 5-4 vote along party lines (which weren't supposed to exist in the judiciary), the Supreme Court removed a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required Department of Justice review and approval of changes to voter law in areas with pervasive voter discrimination 50 years ago. It's easy to imagine that the law is outdated, and these places have taken the lesson to heart, changed their ways, and don't need the supervision anymore... after nearly 50 years of it.

Maybe these places, mostly in the South, have accepted the lesson that voting should be equally accessible to all citizen. However, looking at the whole country, the actual circumstances are different. Republican legislatures all over the country are trying to make it harder to access voting. They pretend that voter fraud is rampant, and that's their excuse for passing ID laws that they hope, secretly in their hearts, will reduce voting among minority, poor [i.e. Democratic] voters. They don't actually take measure to prevent the only pervasive form of voter fraud, which is the pooling of absentee ballots in the hands of professional vote wranglers.

The hope that political groups won't tamper with voting to suppress certain folks hasn't been fulfilled yet. For that reason, the ruling of the Supreme Court is premature, even after 50 years of oversight.

Luckily, we will still have citizen and media oversight. Suppression efforts are occurring, and will continue to occur, and will hopefully backfire as they did in 2012. Keep watching, keep reporting, keep embarrassing the schemers, the hacks, the operatives, the spin-shysters. All the tools to do that and to disseminate the information are available, thank God and the internet.

If I can repeat my motto for this year: Whatever you try to hide, it ain't going to stay hidden. Everybody, please make it so.

Fraud, or fair exercise?

Image: mfs-theothernews.com

Extra. I considered the possibility that monitoring isn't necessary anymore, but the posts about this ruling didn't support that: Pro-ruling, current tricks, even an enumerated list (probably incomplete).

Short: Strong black voter turnout

Whites apparently forgot to "take back our country" in the 2012 election. After many years of turning out in the highest proportional numbers of all racial groups, they were finally bested by black voter turnout:

I guess the pundits who said that whites stayed home are partially right. Compared to their usual high turnout, whites didn't do as well, whereas blacks turned out more than ever. I hadn't believed the complaint that whites were demoralized, and therefore they stayed home in record numbers, but it appears to be true to some extent. However, whites still poll above their weight--so not a sign of generalized malaise.

GOP campaign operatives are still moaning that they woulda won had they matched their 2004 numbers. I think they should let go of 2004 because that's a holy grail they probably won't repeat in a presidential election year.

It also looks as if the voter suppression efforts in Florida and Ohio backfired, which are lovely just desserts. Democrats take note! All parties take note!

Caveat: This data is based on exit polling, which isn't the best methodology. However, it's all we have. If you're interested in the topic, it's worth wading through the source article.

"White voters also outperformed their eligible vote share, but not at the levels seen in years past... As recently as 2004, whites typically outperformed their eligible vote share by at least 2 percentage points." -- Fox News

... however voter deception or self-deception is an expected part of the game.

Image: theblaze.com

Update 5/9/13. Another good article at HuffPo.

Guest viewpoint: PA voter ID law

[The guest author is MP's brother in Pennsylvania.]
[Reposted due to flakiness on some browsers and invisible HTML gremlins.]

I live in Pennsylvania where a judge this week, under prior directions from the PA Supreme Court, gutted the new voter ID law here for the Nov. 6 election. The law was passed last March unanimously among the majority Republicans in the PA House and Senate, and signed by GOP Governor Tom Corbett. All Democrats in the PA House and Senate voted against it.

The law called for a test period during this spring’s primaries, when voters going to the polls would be asked to show a photo ID but if they didn’t have the prescribed type of photo ID, they could still vote in that primary election. For the general election in November, however, the law stated that a party without te proper form of photo ID would only get to vote via provisional ballot, which would only be counted if the voter presented the proper form of photo ID within 6 days at the county election office. In effect, few would bother since that period of time to get the proper ID then travel to the county office is too short just to have a vote counted that might not matter.

This law would have no impact on me. I have a valid PA driver’s license and a current US passport, both valid forms of photo ID under the law. My wife and son have the same, since we went to Canada last year and needed up-to-date passports.

Most people in PA, likely 95% give or take, have some form of valid photo ID under the law. They would be able to vote, no sweat, assuming they remembered to bring it with them. What the big deal?

The Veneer of Reasonableness

The key element of this entire affair is the use of a veneer of reasonableness to ram through an law designed to produce a favorable political outcome for those who rammed it through. Surveys in PA consistently show that a majority of people support the law and the supposed concept behind it: to verify that people who vote are who they say they are.

But that was just a convenient subterfuge, like a salesman who takes extra business trips to spend more time with his mistress. During court arguments, the state’s lawyers stipulated that they had ZERO evidence of in-person voter fraud (i.e., someone impersonating another registered voter at a polling precinct in order to cast a illegitimate ballot). This is the only kind of voter fraud that presentation of a voter’s prescribed photo ID at the polls would mitigate.

As the PA Supremes pointed out, a legal stipulation has consequences. From that point on, the state could no longer argue that there would be any harm – to the state or the electoral process – from failing to enforce the law. I would further argue that any citizen who supports the law and, hence, the state’s legal position could no longer argue that voter fraud is rampant, widespread or even exists. As the PA Supremes correctly concluded, any evidence of harm – that is, inability to cast a ballot that would count – to duly registered voters required the voter ID law to be put on hold.

Find the Fraud

So if there’s no fraud, and a new law to prevent the non-existent fraud, what could possibly be the reason to require a prescribed form of photo ID? The answer is obvious, as stated by the GOP majority leader in the PA House: “Allow Romney to win Pennsylvania.” This was a foolish motive, too. Chances are and were at the time that the number of people disenfranchised from the new law, even if disproportionately Obama voters, would not be enough to swing PA’s electoral votes to Romney. This GOP mistress could only let those who passed the law feel better for a bit.

I suppose the GOP also hoped to sow some confusion and sap Democratic resources in attempts to assist the disproportionate Obama voters who would need to acquire a new prescribed photo ID. They definitely achieved that goal for a while, but that was certainly not going to be enough to change the outcome.

In the end, the judge ruled that the Nov. 6 election would work the same as the primaries last spring. You can be asked but you don’t have to show. This will certainly cause additional confusion for some voters and be another distraction for Democratic opponents to the law’s existence. But voters and the law’s opponents won’t have to continue to expend resources and time in the impossible attempt to get a prescribed photo ID for everyone who would need it, including those voters who don’t know that they would need one. The GOP received that bonus, but now their wife is on to their dishonestly and they will likely pay the price.

I’m guessing that the PA GOP will let it go now – in their hearts if not in fact – since their ill-conceived plan can no longer work. Yet, all people who abhor this kind of politics and deception have to guard against similar ruses on the public. It’s easy to pick on a minority – the smaller the better – to gain an advantage for another minority if the majority of people don’t care because they aren’t impacted. While the PA courts ultimately got this one right, it doesn’t always work out that way.

When I’m asked at the polls on Nov. 6 (no early voting allowed in PA) for my photo ID, I’m going to ignore the poll watcher – whom I’ve known personally for years – and talk about the weather as I sign my name in the registry book, just as I’ve always done it. They have my signature digitized from my registration right in the book. That’s why voter impersonation never happens. The poll workers know their neighbors, and the signatures have to match, duh.

Collateral damage in voter suppression... and lead plaintiff

Image: politicstoday.biz