#i am prepared to commit voter fraud | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bookwyrminspiration · 2 years ago

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Alright then! MSo, Ninjago is a TV show that basically was made as a way to get parents to buy toys for their kids back in 2011. It has evolved beyond that, but that was the reasoning for it being created. It has a pretty medium sized fandom, probably a bit bigger than keeper.

It’s basic plot is that it follows a group of ninja with elemental powers that help defeat supernatural enemies. One such instance is when they face up against an evil genie creature.

There are two main characters who are important to the story: Lloyd, who is the green ninja, and Kai who is the red ninja. They are often depicted as being very brotherly and that’s what a lot of the fandom sees them as.

A little while ago, there was an account on Tumblr dedicated to running a bracket tournament on the best red and green duo. Obviously, Lloyd and Kai were put on it by a few different people, myself included.

It went pretty normal for the first round, where Kai and Lloyd won against Red Guy and Duck from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.

However, the normalcy was soon be over. Because in the next round, Ninja was up against Mario and Luigi. And I am pretty sure I don’t need to explain to you that Mario and Luigi are a very popular duo.

So the Ninjago community decided to come together to take down the popular duo. A few people @ a few different bug Ninjago blogs, which brought the poll into more people’s view. And the discord server for the most popular Ninjago fanfic shared a link, so it definitely was in people’s eye.

We almost lost, but we managed to eek out a win against the Mario and Luigi. To commemorate the occasion some people drew fanart. But the war wasn’t over yet.

The next battle for Ninjago was against Phineas and Ferb, one of the most iconic duos in cartoon history. But we were prepared.

Once again we all banded together and we managed to defeat Phineas and Ferb, this time in a landslide.

We only had one more opponent: Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. The Ninjago community knew that if we won this, then we could get at least some bragging rights that we won a popularity contest (even if we committed voter fraud.)

It was a fairly intense battle. We all shared link with each other in order to make sure we all had voted. Also, I may or may not have gotten some of my friends outside of the Ninjago community to vote for Lloyd and Kai.

Finally, it all came to a close. On March 2, Lloyd and Kai won, 64.7% to 34.3%. It took voter fraud, campaigning and a whole of working together but we done it. We won a popularity contest.

I am definitely not doing the story justice whatsoever, but if you want to see the polls, they were on redandgreenpoll tumblr.

Anyway, thank you for indulging my silly little story, and if you want to know more about Ninjago let me know!

-⚙️

My apologies whenever I hear the word ninjas now my brain just goes "where did all these ninjas come from" to quote the one, the only, the velocipastor at 48 minutes and 20 seconds into this glorious movie. it's probably not as funny without the hilarity and mindset of the previous 48 minutes but I think about it...so often...

but hey! is that the lloyd who has the joke made about him like "uh no your name is lu-loyd, I named you and that's how it's pronounced" or whatever it is? pronouncing both the Ls?

back to your story: wow! you're right, you don't need to explain to me how popular those other duos are or how impressive it is that you beat them. I 100% believe you when you say it was voter fraud because those franchises are popular. i suppose ninjago is popular enough that I vaguely know about it's existence, but still! congrats to you all on your victory and all the bragging rights you now have :)

what an intense popularity contest. I'll have to look through that tumblr bracket showdown to get a better sense of what you're talking about, but thank you for sharing it with me! if you'd like to tell me more about ninjago, I'd be happy to listen, but otherwise i likely won't seek out further information (no offense. i just don't watch a lot of things in general, nothing against ninjago itself :) )

#ninjago #quil's queries #⚙️ nonsie #long post #i do also have a second ninjago post in my askbox right now from someone else explaining some of it #so i should probably also answer that one #oh you know what maybe the increased humidity from the rain is why my shorts weren't dry this morning #<- completely unrelated random thought but I already typed it out so it's staying #anyway! very fun story! even though I have very little context!#i am nodding my head along to your story with fond amused attention and slight perplexion :)

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 27, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

This morning, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol began its hearings with testimony from two Capitol Police officers and two Metropolitan Police officers.

After Representatives Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) opened the hearing, Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and and Officer Harry Dunn of the Capitol Police, and Officer Michael Fanone and Officer Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan Police, recounted hand-to-hand combat against rioters who were looking to stop the election of Democrat Joe Biden and kill elected officials whom they thought were standing in the way of Trump’s reelection. They gouged eyes, sprayed chemicals, shouted the n-word, and told the officers they were going to die. They said: “Trump sent us.”

Lawmakers questioning the officers had them walk the members through horrific video footage taken from the officers’ body cameras. The officers said that one of the hardest parts of the insurrection for them was hearing the very people whose lives they had defended deny the horror of that day. They called the rioters terrorists who were engaged in a coup attempt, and called the indifference of lawmakers to those who had protected them “disgraceful.” “I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room,” Fanone said. “But too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist, or that hell wasn’t actually that bad.”

The officers indicated they thought that Trump was responsible for the riot. When asked if Trump was correct that it was “a loving crowd,” Gonell responded: “To me, it’s insulting, just demoralizing because of everything that we did to prevent everyone in the Capitol from getting hurt…. And what he was doing, instead of sending the military, instead of sending the support or telling his people, his supporters, to stop this nonsense, he begged them to continue fighting.” The officers asked the committee to make sure it did a thorough investigation. “There was an attack carried out on January 6, and a hit man sent them,” Dunn testified. “I want you to get to the bottom of that.”

The Republicans on the committee, Representatives Adam Kinzinger (IL) and Liz Cheney (WY) pushed back on Republican claims that the committee is partisan.

“Like most Americans, I’m frustrated that six months after a deadly insurrection breached the United States Capitol for several hours on live television, we still don’t know exactly what happened,” Kinzinger said. “Why? Because many in my party have treated this as just another partisan fight. It’s toxic and it’s a disservice to the officers and their families, to the staff and the employees in the Capitol complex, to the American people who deserve the truth, and to those generations before us who went to war to defend self-governance.”

Kinzinger rejected the Republican argument that the committee should investigate the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020, saying that he had been concerned about those protests but they were entirely different from the events of January 6: they did not threaten democracy. “There is a difference between breaking the law and rejecting the rule of law,” Kinzinger observed. (Research shows that more than 96% of the BLM protests had no violence or property damage.)

The officers and lawmakers both spoke eloquently of their determination to defend democracy. Sergeant Gonell, a U.S. Army veteran of the Iraq War who emigrated from the Dominican Republic, said: "As an immigrant to the United States, I am especially proud to have defended the U.S. Constitution and our democracy on January 6.” Adam Schiff (D-CA) added: “If we’re no longer committed to a peaceful transfer of power after elections if our side doesn’t win, then God help us. If we deem elections illegitimate merely because they didn’t go our way rather than trying to do better the next time, then God help us.”

Cheney said: “Until January 6th, we were proof positive for the world that a nation conceived in liberty could long endure. But now, January 6th threatens our most sacred legacy. The question for every one of us who serves in Congress, for every elected official across this great nation, indeed, for every American is this: Will we adhere to the rule of law? Will we respect the rulings of our courts? Will we preserve the peaceful transition of power? Or will we be so blinded by partisanship that we throw away the miracle of America? Do we hate our political adversaries more than we love our country and revere our Constitution?”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both said they had been too busy to watch the hearing. But the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, John Thune of South Dakota, called the officers heroes and said: “We should listen to what they have to say.”

Republicans are somewhat desperately trying to change the subject in such a way that it will hurt Democrats. Shortly before the hearing started, McCarthy House Republican conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who was elected to that position after the conference tossed Liz Cheney for her refusal to support Trump after the insurrection; and Jim Banks (R-IN), whom McCarthy tried to put on the committee and who promised to undermine it, held a press conference. They tried to blame House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for the attack on the Capitol, a right-wing talking point, although she, in fact, has no control over the Capitol Police.

Shortly after the hearing ended, some of the House’s key Trump supporters—Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Bob Good (R-VA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)—tried to hold a press conference in front of the Department of Justice, where they promised to complain about those arrested for their role in the January 6 insurrection, calling them “political prisoners.” The conference fell apart when protesters called Gaetz a pedophile (he is under investigation for sex trafficking a girl), and blew a whistle to drown the Republican lawmakers out.

This story is not going away, not only because the events of January 6 were a deadly attack on our democracy that almost succeeded and we want to know how and why that came to pass, but also because those testifying before the committee are under oath.

Since the 1950s, when Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) pioneered constructing a false narrative to attract voters, the Movement Conservative faction of the Republican Party focused not on fact-based arguments but on emotionally powerful fiction. There are no punishments for lying in front of television cameras in America, and from Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Queen to Rush Limbaugh’s “Feminazis” to the Fox News Channel personalities’ warnings about dangerous Democrats to Rudy Giuliani’s “witnesses” to “voter fraud” in the 2020 election, Republicans advanced fictions and howled about the “liberal media” when they were fact-checked. By the time of the impeachment hearings for former president Trump, Republican lawmakers like Jim Jordan (R-OH) didn’t even pretend to care about facts but instead yelled and badgered to get clips that could be arranged into a fictional narrative on right-wing media.

Now, though, the Movement Conservative narrative that “socialist” Democrats stole the 2020 election, a narrative embraced by leading Republican lawmakers, a story that sits at the heart of dozens of voter suppression laws and that led to one attempted coup and feeds another, a narrative that would, if it succeeds, create a one-party government, is coming up against public testimony under oath.

“The American people deserve the full and open testimony of every person with knowledge of the planning and preparation for January 6th,” Cheney said today. “We must also know what happened every minute of that day in the White House—every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to, during, and after the attack.” She added: “We must issue and enforce subpoenas promptly.”

—-

Notes:

Manu Raju @mkrajuRep. Liz Cheney told me the Jan. 6 investigators should move rapidly to enforce subpoenas. She didn't specify who should be subpoenaed. "I think it is very important that we issue and enforce subpoenas, as the chairman has said, and we do that quickly," Cheney said1,091 Retweets5,401 Likes

July 27th 2021

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a37144429/capitol-police-officer-slam-table-michael-fanone/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/five-takeaways-from-the-first-jan-6-committee-hearing

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-capitol-security/police-recount-calamity-of-u-s-capitol-attack-at-panel-hearing-idUSKBN2EX12Z

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/27/one-republicans-jan-6-committee-went-out-his-way-rebut-his-partys-whataboutism/

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/27/1021161550/this-is-how-im-going-to-die-police-sergeant-recalls-the-terror-of-jan-6

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/us/jan-6-inquiry.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/27/jan-6-commission-hearing-live-updates/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/07/27/liz-cheney-statement-jan-6-committee-probing-capitol-insurrection/5375885001/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #January 6 2021 #capital insurrection #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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opedguy · 2 years ago

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Jan. 6 House Select Committee Farce

LOS ANGELES (OnineColumnist.com), Dec. 30, 2022.--Telling the whole story about the Jan. 6 House Select Committee, a transcript of testimony by former Dept. of Homeland Security Chief Ken Cuccinelli pounded by Committee lawyers to admit former President Donald Trump said the election was “rigged.” To partisan Democrats and Republicans on the committee, it was all about the “gotcha” moment with witnesses admitting “something,” then leaping to conclusions about motive. What difference did it make whether Cuccinelli said Trump thought the Nov. 8, 2020 election was “rigged?” Committee members wanted anything incriminating about Trump, whether it means anything or not. Cuccinelli refused to admit he heard Trump say the election was “rigged,” something he tweeted many times since losing the election to 80-year-old President Joe Biden. Cuccinelli refused to knuckle under the cross examination.

When asked repeatedly whether or not he heard Trump say the election was “rigged,” Cuccinelli refused to acknowledge the obvious. “I am not prepared to say that,” Cuccinelli told the Committee under oath. “Is it fair to say,:” asked a Committee investigator? “That seeds of distrust were even with respect to the 2020 election—after the November 2020 election,” asked the investigator. “I am not prepared to validate that word,” Cuccinelli said regarding Trump post-election comments about “rigged election.” Committee investigators were trying to establish that Trump whipped up his base to attack the Capitol and stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote. So, members of Committee took greater liberties to stretch the facts to the breaking point, saying if Trump said the election was “rigged,” that meand that he encouragef his supporters to riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

When you consider how the Committee operated, getting Cuccinelli to admit that Trump said the election was “rigged” mean the Committee could infer that Trump encouraged his followers to vandalize the Capitol. Members of the Committee, like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) and Rep. Adam Kinsinger (R-Ill.) concluded early on that Trump planned and organized the Jan.6 insurrection. So, by the Committee’s logic, if Trump called the election “rigged,” he encouraged violence by his followers. Committee members routine referred to Jan. 6 so-called “insurrectionists” as “Trump supporters.” Committee members have no clue whether or not the Jan. 6 rabble-rousers or criminals were Trump supporters but referred to them that way. Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland, 70, and his 52-year-old Special Counsel Jack Smith attempt determine whether the Committee’s work was political hit job.

When you think of all the emphasis Democrat and press gave to Trump’s taxes, it’s another red herring for the seething hatred expressed toward Trump. Trump infuriated the press by winning the 2016 election over the universal backing for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Most of the broadcast and print media predicted a decisive Hillary victory Nov. 3, 2016, only to see Trump win. Trump humiliated the press by proving them wrong, when he beat Hillary in the Electoral College, while Hillary won the popular vote. Now that the Supreme Court cleared the way to release five-years of Trump’s federal taxes, the press got its way even if the public yawned. Only Democrats and the press care about trying to humiliate Trump by exposing his private financial information. Just like Trump calling the election “rigged,” who cares other than partisan Democrats?

How many times did the Jan. 6 House Select Committee say that Trump used the “Big Lie” to whip the Jan. 6 mob into a frenzy before attacking the Capitol? Democrats and press used to “Big Lie” to refute the “rigged election,” or Trump’s statements of widespread voter fraud. Democrats and the press conflate Trump personal opinions about the Nov. 8, 2020 election with galvanizing crowd to commit violence against the government. House Committee members could not find any language that encouraged anyone Jan. 6 to break the law. Whether or not certain groups or individuals broke the law Jan. 6, it’s a leap to say Trump encouraged lawlessness. Whatever happened to the Jan. 6 lawbreakers, it was not something Trump encouraged or should be punished for. Anyone who broke the law Jan. 6, has been prosecuted to the full extent of the law, receiving long jail sentences.

Garland and Smith have some big decisions to make about the Committee’s recommended charges against Trump. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), formerly lead impeachment manager and key player on the Jan. 6 Committee, said recently that Trump has led a “misanthropic life.” When Garland and Smith hear that, how can they take any of the Committee’s criminal charges against Trump seriously? Raskin lets the Department of Justice know the extent of Committee’s bias against Trump. If Trump felt the Nov. 8, 2020 were “rigged” by Democrats, that’s his personal opinion, not a crime, not grounds for prosecution. Yet Democrats refer to Jan. 6 lawbreakers as “Trump supporters,” continuing to denigrate the former president. Garland and Smith know that any court with extreme prejudice against a defendant would trigger a hung jury. Trump’s case shows egregious bias and partisanship.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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womenofcolor15 · 5 years ago

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Trump FIRES Secretary of Defense Mark Esper + Trump’s Former Lawyer Says He’ll Likely Flee To Mar-a-Lago & Will Never Return To White House

Trump is having a post-election FIT! He just fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper amid ongoing tensions. And he has been recklessly tweeting on Twitter, per usual. Get those deets, plus what Trump’s former lawyer think he’ll do next inside…

The post-election shakeup!

Trump is mad y’all! He can’t take the fact he lost the 2020 presidential election, so he’s causing drama before his exit. Of course.

Days after it was projected that Joe Biden & Kamala Harris will be the next President and Vice President of the United States, Trump went into overdrive on social media. He hopped on Twitter to announce he “won” the election “by a lot” even though the ballots and electoral votes said otherwise.

View this post on Instagram

This is the Big Clown Energy we are leaving behind. Also, if you thought Dems simply pander and don’t actually care about their constituents, your king hit the golf course as the election was being called for Biden, as multiple people tested positive (again) for coronavirus in HIS White House last night and this morning, and as over 100K additional cases of Coronavirus took over the US in solely the last 24 hours. He cares none. Act accordingly.

A post shared by TheYBF (@theybf_daily) on Nov 7, 2020 at 9:21am PST

As the ballots were being counted, Trump hit the hit the golf course as the election as multiple people tested positive (again) for Coronavirus in HIS White House over the weekend. There was over 100K additional cases that popped up in the US in 24 hours. No sweat off Trump’s back. He was busy golfing.

Today, he threw a fit and fired the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. He announced Christopher Miller - who serves as director of the National Counterterrorism Center - will become acting secretary "effective immediately."

I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020

Apparently, there was tension brewing between Trump & Esper before the firing. CNN reports:

Esper's increasingly tense relationship with Trump led him to prepare a letter of resignation weeks ago, an attempt to fashion a graceful exit in the widely expected event that the President decided to fire him, several defense sources, including one senior defense official, told CNN.

Esper had been on shaky ground with the White House for months, a rift that deepened after he said in June that he did not support using active-duty troops to quell the large-scale protests across the United States triggered by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. Esper also said military forces should be used in a law enforcement role only as a last resort.

His remarks from the Pentagon briefing room were seen by many as an effort to distance himself from Trump's threats to deploy the military to enforce order on American city streets and went over poorly at the White House, multiple people familiar with the matter said.

According to multiple administration officials, White House sentiment about Esper had been souring for some time, with both Trump and national security adviser Robert O'Brien viewing him as not entirely committed to the President's vision for the military.

For months, Trump and O'Brien had been frustrated by Esper's tendency to avoid offering a full-throated defense of the President or his policies, the administration officials said. One administration source told CNN that Trump had no respect for Esper, leaving the defense secretary with little influence and little choice but to take his lead from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

No surprise here Trump is using his power during his post-election meltdown. Trump’s defense team has been hard at work trying to find a loophole that would get him to serve out a second term. Trump’s legal team has already suffered losses in Michigan and Georgia courts this week, but Trump has pledged to keep moving forward with a legal strategy that he hopes will overturn state results that gave Democrat Joe Biden the win in Tuesday’s vote.

Reuters reports:

The Trump campaign is fighting Philadelphia election officials over vote counting in the city, which continued on Saturday. A state court on Thursday granted the campaign closer access to the proceedings, a ruling that officials have appealed.

The City of Philadelphia Board of Elections has said its observation rules were needed for security reasons and to maintain social distancing protocols.

Trump’s campaign on Wednesday filed a motion to intervene in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging a decision from the state’s highest court that allowed election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday’s Election Day that were delivered through Friday.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., seemingly took a shot at the Black Lives Matter movement with a tweet about how Trump supporters aren’t rioting:

70 million pissed off republicans and not one city burned to the ground.

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 7, 2020

An innocent man was brutally murdered on camera either, but go OFF. Let's not compare apples to oranges.

So, what can American’s expect from Trump during his final weeks as president?

According to Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, the former reality star will likely flee to his headquarters at Mar-a-Lago, spend Christmas there and likely will NOT return to the White House for the transfer of power to Biden. He said Trump will likely fight the election results until January from his Florida property.

“I would not be shocked if there is no concession speech at all. My theory is that at Christmas time he goes to Mar-a-Lago. I think he will stay there through the inauguration. I would not be shocked if he will not show up to the inauguration either,�� Mr Cohen said on MSNBC.

“He cannot let the camera look at him and basically pull down the curtain and see the wizard standing beside. He is just a loser and it is killing him and, right now, what is going on in the White House is nothing but finger-pointing.”

WOMP!

As of the time of this post, Trump isn’t giving any signs of conceding.

After it was projected Biden would WIN the presidential election, people ALL over the nation - including Chrissy Teigen & John Legend - stepped outside to celebrate. And it was the perfect day to do so as temperatures were high in many parts of the country. Look at GOD.

Peep the celebrations in Brookyln, L.A., Philly, Washington D.C. and more below:

@JoyAnnReid I just wanted to share these pictures from Saturday’s celebration of Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris Celebration in Brooklyn pic.twitter.com/uZwdCzFvAF

— Jahlion (@Jahprince25) November 9, 2020

Brooklyn:

Postal workers getting the love they deserve.

Ok, this is awesome... pic.twitter.com/3mElStKMcb

— Rex Chapman(@RexChapman) November 7, 2020

WATCH LIVE: Crowds have gathered across SoCal, including in West Hollywood and DTLA, to celebrate Joe Biden being projected to win the presidential election. Here's video of a celebration in Venice. https://t.co/FdZ4isCUhq pic.twitter.com/xltK9LzQ0a

— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) November 7, 2020

WATCH LIVE: Celebrations continue across SoCal after Joe Biden is projected to be the next president of the United States. This video captures celebrations in West Hollywood. https://t.co/IBG7rIWAow pic.twitter.com/rFOULufxhw

— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) November 7, 2020

West Philly reacts to Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania by dancing in the street, of course pic.twitter.com/WBuipfLydN

— Ellie Rushing (@EllieRushing) November 6, 2020

The Biden/Harris Philly dance party is on. Even Gritty is there.

Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough, Pennsylvania...pic.twitter.com/R4L1jWUo4x

— Rex Chapman (@RexChapman) November 7, 2020

lots of cheering and car horn beeps outside Philly city hall right now after news of Biden’s win pic.twitter.com/vVqT8ZV6aJ

— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) November 7, 2020

hundreds gathered at Philly gay bar Woody’s lost it when Joe Biden referred to gay and trans Americans pic.twitter.com/gamnAWa68s

— Amber Jamieson (@ambiej) November 8, 2020

LIVE FROM BLACK LIVES MATTER PLAZA, WASHINGTON D.C. FOR BIDEN HARRIS pic.twitter.com/dd2cCYAzjW

— soft boi nat (@nat_meier) November 7, 2020

Washington, D.C. in front of White House as President-Elect Joe Biden set to take stage in Delaware: pic.twitter.com/8DwhxroW9a

— Molly O'Toole (@mollymotoole) November 8, 2020

Washington D.C. reacts to the news of Joe Biden being named President-Elect. Nonstop honking in downtown. @fox5dc pic.twitter.com/FymQkWeiLy

— Ama Arthur-Asmah (@Ama_A_Asmah) November 7, 2020

Dear Trump Supporters: He Rather Y’all Believe His Lie(Voter Fraud) & Continue To Divide This Country For His Own Self Ego. Before He Tell Y’all To Do The Right Thing & Support This New President & Administration. If He Was Smart He Would Know God Doesn’t Like Ugly(Behavior)!

— Plies (@plies) November 9, 2020

This World Is Witnessing The Truth & Unveiling Of A “Fake Strong” (Trump) Man. He Was Never As Tough As He Wanted His Supporters To Believe. He Couldn’t Handle Tough Questions(60min Interview), Nor Could He Handle Tough People (Kamala). He’s A Insecure Child In A Mans Body!!

— Plies (@plies) November 8, 2020

Change is coming!

And let us find out Biden is letting his inner petty out now that he's our next president:

How it started How it’s going pic.twitter.com/TiOluozUYk

— Dena Grayson, MD, PhD (@DrDenaGrayson) November 8, 2020

Photos: Stratos Brilakis/Drew William Anderson/Shutterstock.com/Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/11/09/trump-fires-secretary-of-defense-mark-esper-trump%E2%80%99s-former-lawyer-says-he%E2%80%99ll-likely-flee-

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newstfionline · 5 years ago

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Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Democracy in the dumps (Foreign Policy) Young people are more disillusioned and less satisfied with democracy than at any point in the past 100 years, according to a study by the University of Cambridge. The study—which assembled data from 4.8 million respondents in 160 countries collected between 1973 and 2020—pointed to income inequality and the high rate of youth unemployment as the driving reasons behind the disillusionment.

Pandemic air travel milestone; 1 million passengers screened (AP) The number of passengers screened in a single day for flights in the U.S. topped one million for the first time since COVID-19 infections began to spike last March. The notable milestone, reached Sunday, signifies both the progress made since the darkest days of pandemic for the devastated U.S. airline industry, when fewer than 100,000 people were screened per day in April, and how far it still has to go. The million plus passengers screened Sunday compares with 2.6 million on the same day last year, or roughly 60% fewer, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

Presidential Candidates’ Microphones to Be Muted in Parts of Final Debate (WSJ) The presidential candidates’ microphones will be muted during parts of their final debate Thursday as organizers seek to limit the interruptions and crosstalk that marked their previous meeting. The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates on Monday announced a plan for the debate, which will be divided into six segments, each with a different topic. President Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will be silenced while their opponent gives a two-minute opening statement at the start of each question.

Already facing grueling year, National Guard revs up for election and aftermath (Washington Post) The National Guard, already facing one of its busiest years, is prepping for election-related missions that include cybersecurity for local electoral authorities, ballot counting in at least one state and backup for police or if unrest erupts after the vote. The preparations come as the United States heads into one of its most contentious presidential elections, which is taking place in the middle of a global pandemic and amid persistent suggestions by President Trump that he may dispute the results if he loses. Parts of the country have also been experiencing racial justice protests and environmental threats ranging from wildfires to hurricanes, which have further stretched a Guard already on the front lines responding to the pandemic. The Guard’s domestic deployments this year under state authorities reached a peak of 86,367 forces in June, according to a spokeswoman for the National Guard, far larger than the approximately 50,000 guardsmen who deployed domestically to respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. There are about 450,000 members of the National Guard across the country. Federal law prohibits the deployment of armed troops to polling places during elections, but National Guard units can do certain missions on Election Day if they are deployed by governors using state funds, which means they would also be unarmed, according to Guard officials. During primaries earlier this year, for example, some states used their Guard units, in civilian attire, to help local election authorities struggling with a shortage of volunteers at the polls because of the pandemic.

Evo Morales Is Out. His Socialist Project Lives On. (NYT) In a presidential election that was widely viewed as a referendum on the legacy of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, voters appear to have spoken clearly: They want his socialist project to go on. On Monday, exit polls in Bolivia showed Mr. Morales’s handpicked candidate, Luis Arce, with such a wide lead that his main opponent, Carlos Mesa, conceded the election, and Mr. Arce’s supporters began celebrating in the streets—despite the fact that official results may not be available for days. Mr. Arce is the chosen successor of Mr. Morales, a transformative figure in a nation where power was traditionally concentrated in the hands of a wealthy, white elite. During his 14 years in office, Mr. Morales slashed poverty, built roads and schools, and nationalized the oil and gas industry. But he fled the country last year after his run for a fourth term ended in accusations that he had committed election fraud, deadly protests and a call by the military for him to step down. He called his ouster a coup. He sat out this year’s vote in neighboring Argentina.

Argentina passes 1 million cases USHUAIA, Argentina (AP)—At the edge of Argentina in a city known as “The End of the World,” many thought they might be spared from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. Sitting far from the South American nation’s bustling capital, health workers in Ushuaia were initially able to contain a small outbreak among foreigners hoping to catch boats to the Antarctic at the start of the crisis. But as Argentina passed 1 million virus cases Monday, it is now smaller cities like Ushuaia that are seeing some of the most notable upticks. The trajectory is showing that the pandemic is likely to leave no corner of Latin America unscathed.

Wealth inequality in Brazil (Globo) Rafaela Dutra was working in Rio de Janeiro’s tourism industry and studying to become a nurse when the coronavirus arrived. A resident of the sprawling low-income favelas in the city’s Zona Norte, she had worked in one of Copacabana’s shiny, high-rise hotels, earning up to twice the region’s minimum monthly wage of 1,200 reais ($220). But after six years on the job, Dutra told Brazilian daily O Globo, she was laid off in April after the city had dried up of tourists. The only work she could find was selling clothes on the street at a time when most people started working from home or had also lost their jobs. “Some days I sell less than 50 reais ($8.80) worth of stuff,” she said. Dutra’s story is a case in point: poverty and inequality are on the rise in Brazil, a country of 210 million people, where a massive wealth divide has long plagued society. With COVID-19, the economy has begun to unravel and policymakers are warning of a backslide into entrenched poverty of dangerous proportions after temporary government support winds down. Not long ago, Brazil was hailed as an economic miracle for the rate at which it was lifting its people out of poverty. Now, the pandemic risks jeopardizing the progress the country made.

Narcosubmarines in the Atlantic? (WSJ) Narcosubmarines, which ferried cocaine from Colombia to Central America since at least the 1990s and have become a convenient way to ship large quantities of coke amid rising enforcement along traditional shipping lanes, have now been found crossing the Atlantic. Built for around $1 million apiece in the jungles of South America, the low-tech submersibles are an expensive but critical link in smuggling drugs out of their manufacture sites to Europe and North America. For a while, they were more of a “get the drugs out of the country to a depot site in Central America” leg of the adventure, but last year authorities nabbed a narcosubmarine flush with 152 bales of cocaine off the coast of Spain, so either that was one incredibly lost drug smuggler or they’re now using the DIY-vessels to make the 4,000-mile journey by sea rather than dice it on a container ship.

Ireland to go back into lockdown as Europe battles second wave (Euronews) Ireland became the first European country to announce a return to a full lockdown, with the entire population to be reconfined for six weeks. Prime Minister Michael Martin made the announcement on Monday evening, with the lockdown coming into force on Wednesday at midnight. Schools, he said, would remain open. A raft of new restrictions came into force in Italy on Monday, after being announced on Sunday by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, with the country dealing with daily highs of infections. Wales has announced a strict, 17-day “firebreak” lockdown on Monday, starting on Friday. This is essentially a full lockdown, with only critical workers and those that cannot work from home allowed to travel to work. Everybody else will be expected to stay indoors, while all non-essential retail shops, leisure services, restaurants, pubs and cafes will be closed. Bars, cafes and restaurants are shut in Belgium from Monday for a month. There is also a curfew in place, between midnight and 5 am, with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo highlighting the “exponential” growth of the pandemic. The chancellor of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, announced on Monday that from Friday private gatherings will be limited to six people indoors and 12 people outdoors. In Paris and eight other cities in France, restaurants, bars, cinemas and other establishments were being forced to close no later than 9pm to try to reduce contact among people. The country is deploying 12,000 extra police officers to enforce the new rules.

After Teacher’s Decapitation, France Unleashes a Broad Crackdown on ‘the Enemy Within’ (NYT) France on Monday unleashed a broad crackdown on Muslims accused of extremism, carrying out dozens of raids, vowing to shut down aid groups and threatening to expel foreigners as anger swept the country following the decapitation of a high school teacher for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class. Many of those swept up in raids were already in police files for showing “signals” of potential radicalization, like preaching radicalized sermons or sharing hate messages on social networks, government officials said. More than 200 others—the bulk already in prison—were threatened with a rare mass expulsion. But other groups targeted in the raids included Muslim associations previously given government subsidies for their work promoting better civic relations, and only 15 of the people arrested had any connection to the gruesome attack on Friday. The scope of the response was a measure of how the killing of Samuel Paty, a teacher in a suburb north of Paris, had reopened old wounds in France. The nation remains traumatized by terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists that killed scores in 2015, starting with the editorial offices of the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine—whose cartoons the teacher had shown. As much as the Charlie Hebdo killings, the beheading of Mr. Paty has struck deep inside the French psyche as an assault on a principal pillar of the French republic—the secular public school system—as well as the nation’s devotion to freedom of speech. Thousands of people took to the streets in cities around France over the weekend to demonstrate their horror at the killing on Friday. And politicians, especially on the right, jostled to sound the alarm against “the enemy within,” as the hard-line interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, put it in a radio interview, referring to so-called radicalized Muslims.

Chinese military beefs up coastal forces as it prepares for possible invasion of Taiwan (SCMP) Beijing is stepping up the militarisation of its southeast coast as it prepares for a possible invasion of Taiwan, military observers and sources have said. The People’s Liberation Army has been upgrading its missile bases, and one Beijing-based military source said it has deployed its most advanced hypersonic missile the DF-17 to the area. Beijing regards Taiwan as a breakaway province which it has vowed to take back, by force if necessary. Relations between Beijing and Taipei have deteriorated since Tsai Ing-wen from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected as president in 2016 and refused to accept the one-China principle. Ties have come under further strain this year as Taipei moved closer to the United States and signed a series of arms deals, including for Patriot missiles and an upgrade to its F-16 Viper jets. Satellite images show that both the Marine Corps and Rocket Force bases in Fujian and Guangdong provinces have expanded in recent years, according to Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review. “The size of some of the missile bases in the Eastern and Southern theatre commands have even doubled in recent years, showing the PLA is stepping up preparations for a war targeting Taiwan.”

Chinese and Taiwanese officials clash in Fiji amid rise of ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ (Washington Post) As a junior diplomat posted to Fiji in the 1990s, Chen Yonglin and the rest of his embassy colleagues fixated on the most sensitive issue in all of Chinese diplomacy: Taiwan. He tracked Taiwan’s pharmaceutical and agricultural aid to the remote Pacific archipelago. He monitored Taiwanese officials’ interactions with the local Chinese community. He tried to dissuade Fijian officials from attending Taiwan’s National Day celebration every October and local hotel managers from hosting it. When that failed, he sat in a coffee shop across the street to observe—discreetly—who attended. “At most, a braver colleague would wander over and peek inside,” said Chen, who was a third secretary in Fiji from 1994 to 1998 and defected in 2005 while serving in Sydney. “But gate-crash? Never. That was a different time.” The difference was laid bare this week after Fiji media reported that Chinese officials barged into the annual Taiwanese celebration, sparking a physical scuffle that left a Taiwanese official hospitalized. The basic contours of the incident were not refuted by either government and it was the latest aggressive turn by Chinese diplomats, who are quickly shedding their traditional image as one of China’s more polished, less muscular, arms of government. The behavior of the Chinese diplomats underscores the political pressure inside the bureaucracy to publicly defend China’s position on international issues, particularly over Hong Kong and Taiwan. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu condemned China’s “uncivilized wolf warriors,” a term used in China and abroad referring to the new breed of more muscular Chinese diplomacy. “As a sovereign state, we’ll celebrate Taiwan National Day everywhere, every year.”

Thailand admits first foreign tourists in 7 months (AP) Thailand’s tourist industry on Tuesday took a modest step toward reviving its coronavirus-battered fortunes by welcoming 39 visitors who flew in from Shanghai, the first such arrivals since regular travelers were banned from entry almost seven months ago. The visitors who arrived at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport are pioneers in a “Special Tourist Visa” program devised by Thai authorities to restore step-by-step a sector of the economy that welcomed almost 40 million foreign visitors last year and by some estimates accounts for more than 10% of the country’s GDP. Bringing in tourists from China was a natural choice. Thailand was one of the top overseas destinations for Chinese tourists in 2019, when they accounted for by far the largest number of visitors to Thailand by nationality. Just as crucial is China’s ability to keep new coronavirus infections in check, a sharp contrast to most other parts of the globe that send visitors to Thailand.

The protest playbook (Washington Post) This past weekend, Lalisa could not look away from her smartphone. Clicking between Twitter, Instagram and secure messaging app Telegram, the 27-year-old who lives a comfortable, middle-class life in Bangkok was joining newly established Telegram groups, telling her what to pack and where to assemble for yet another mass protest in defiance of Thailand’s military-linked government and monarchy. Most of the posts were from protesting guides of last year’s demonstrations in Hong Kong translated into Thai. Young, digitally savvy Thai protesters like Lalisa are at the forefront of a swelling anti-government movement that has broken the mold in Thailand—both by shattering the long-held taboo against criticizing the powerful monarchy, and by revolutionizing mass protests and dissent in the country. Shedding the old strategy of occupying streets, which made them an easy target for police, demonstrators today have borrowed from their Hong Kong counterparts, subscribing to the “be water” strategy of fluid gatherings. The result so far has been harder for police to control, even in the context of Thailand’s long history of crackdowns on political movements. In recent days, police officers have privately admitted to being outmaneuvered, unable to arrest demonstrators en masse or prepare their crowd-control weapons ahead of time. Police have “never experienced this before,” said a 21-year-old officer deployed to Bangkok, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the protests. “The protesters disappear even before we arrive; we cannot tackle the protests by using our old methods.”

Nigeria Erupts As Lagos Comes to A Standstill (Foreign Policy) Two weeks of demonstrations in Nigeria came to a head yesterday as protesters effectively shut down Lagos, the country’s largest city. As part of the mass demonstrations, the city’s airport was blockaded by protesters along with the country’s main highway, the Ibadan expressway. Over the past two weeks, the protests have grown from a movement focused on disbanding the country’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS)—accused of extortion and committing extra-judicial killings—to encompass anti-corruption and governance issues. Like recent protests in Hong Kong and Thailand, the protests have no central leader but are undoubtedly youth led, with the hashtag #EndSARS becoming shorthand for the movement. The national government has indicated it will soon take a harder line against the protests, during which at least 15 people have been killed so far. According to Amnesty International, police have already used excessive force in at least six Nigerian cities. The threat of violence has become so genuine that some groups have crowd-funded private security guards to protect them against attacks. Meanwhile, the country’s armed forces, who have threatened to intervene in the protests, are conducting a nationwide military exercise, Operation Crocodile Smile. “The biggest strength of the protests has also become its biggest liability, which is total absence of centralized leadership,” David Huneydin, a local journalist, told the Wall Street Journal. “A military intervention is now highly likely.”

#headlines #news

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restoreamericanglory · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on Restore American Glory

New Post has been published on http://www.restoreamericanglory.com/breaking-news/texas-mayoral-candidate-arrested-on-more-than-100-counts-of-ballot-fraud/

Texas Mayoral Candidate Arrested on More Than 100 Counts of Ballot Fraud

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In the latest sharp reminder that mail-in balloting leaves the door wide open for extremely troubling instances of fraud, mayoral candidate Zul Mohamed of Carrollton, Texas was arrested this week on felony charges involving 84 counts of mail-in ballot application fraud and an additional 25 counts of unlawful possession of a mail-in ballot. For his crimes, Mohamed could spent as much as 20 years behind bars.

“Mail ballots are inherently insecure and vulnerable to fraud, and I am committed to safeguarding the integrity of our elections,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “My office is prepared to assist any Texas county in combating this form of fraud.”

Law enforcement began investigating Mohamed in late September after the Denton County Elections Office informed the sheriff that a PO Box registered to a nursing home was requesting absentee ballots. After the office asked residents of the nursing home if they had requested the ballots, they learned that no one at the nursing home had any idea that the request had been made.

Ultimately, investigators found that the PO Box was rented with fraudulent identification. Police staked out the box and waited until Mohamed picked up ballots from that location on October 7th, at which time they followed him home and executed a search warrant. They quickly found the requested ballots and put Mohamed in cuffs.

“Voter fraud is a serious and widespread issue and cannot be tolerated,” said Denton County Sheriff Tracey Murphree said in a statement. “The fact an actual candidate for public office would engage in these activities is appalling. We will continue to aggressively investigate allegations of voter fraud.”

These cases keep popping up. Whether it’s Trump-supporting ballots being found in the trash, piles of ballots being found in a Wisconsin ditch, Ohio voters having their ballots thrown out due to massive amounts of errors, or mayoral candidates trying to defraud the election, the hits just keep on coming. Can there be any real faith in this election when these cases are already legion? And that’s not even getting in the ballot harvesting schemes that Democrats are using in several states to give themselves an additional, unfair advantage.

We have a feeling that the presidential election is going to be a chaotic affair, and the legal challenges will be numerous. This could have easily been avoided, but Democrats just had to have it their way. As always with them, winning is far more important than keeping our elections secure and trustworthy. We would say that they should be ashamed, but why waste our breath?

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go-redgirl · 5 years ago

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Texas Mayoral Candidate Charged With Voter Fraud

A candidate for the mayor of a Texas city just north of Dallas has been arrested and faces 109 felony counts of ballot fraud, Denton County officials announced.

Zul Mirza Mohamed, 39, who is challenging Carrollton’s Republican incumbent Kevin Falconer, has been charged with 25 counts of unlawful possession of a ballot and 84 counts of fraudulent use of a mail ballot application.

Carrollton is a city of about 140,000.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday besides the 84 absentee ballots that Mohamed already obtained, he was caught applying for more when he was arrested, The Washington Times reported.

The investigation began on Sept. 23 when Denton County election officials realized they had sent numerous ballots supposedly requested by residents of a nursing home to a post office box. When contacted, the nursing home residents said they had not requested the ballots, the Denton County Sheriff’s Office said.

The post office box was discovered to have been rented with a fraudulent driver’s license and a university student ID.

An undercover officer was assigned to the post office to surveil the box, and on Wednesday Mohamed came to pick up the ballots. Police followed him to his home in Carrollton, obtained a search warrant and found the ballots.

''Voter fraud is a serious and widespread issue and cannot be tolerated,'' Denton County Sheriff Tracy Murphree said. ''The fact an actual candidate for public office would engage in these activities is appalling.''

President Donald Trump has routinely stated he believes universal mail-in ballots are ripe for fraud and abuse, while Democrats have contended there is no evidence of widespread abuse.

''Mail ballots are inherently insecure and vulnerable to fraud, and I am committed to safeguarding the integrity of our elections," Paxton said. "My office is prepared to assist any Texas county in combating this form of fraud.''

The Carrollton case is the second voter fraud prosecution launched by Paxton in recent weeks. In September, he announced the arrest of a Democratic Gregg County commissioner and three associates in connection with a 2018 election.

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OPINION: Only Democrats, crooked democrats at that, would do such an unethical thing as that, what a shame!

If it wasn’t for crookedness and deception the Democrats would never win a an election in this country ever!

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news-lisaar · 5 years ago

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plusorminuscongress · 7 years ago

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New story in Politics from Time: Tensions Rise as Election Recounts Begin in Florida

(FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.) — The first election workers are recounting ballots Sunday in Florida’s bitterly close races for the U.S. Senate and governor, ramping up their efforts after the secretary of state ordered a review of the two nationally watched contests.

Miami-Dade County election officials began feeding ballots into scanning machines Saturday evening. The tedious work in that one South Florida county alone could take days, considering some 800,000 ballots were cast. Multiply that by 67 counties in the nation’s third-most populous state, and the scope of the task was beginning to sink in Sunday.

In neighboring Broward County, its scheduled start of the recount was delayed Sunday because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines. The county has come under criticism from Republicans for its handling of the election. In Palm Beach County, the supervisor of elections said she doesn’t believe her department can meet the Thursday deadline.

The Florida secretary of state ordered the recounts Saturday, an unprecedented step for the two flagship races in a state that took five weeks to decide the 2000 presidential election. Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s office said it was unaware of any other time either a race for governor or U.S. Senate in Florida required a recount, let alone both in the same election.

Florida’s counties can decide when to begin their recounts, but must complete them by 3 p.m. Thursday. Elections officials in two large counties in the Tampa Bay area — Pinellas and Hillsborough — began recounts Sunday morning.

Unofficial results show that Republican former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by less than 0.5 percentage points, which will require a machine recount of ballots. In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is less than 0.25 percentage points, requiring a hand recount of ballots from tabulation machines that couldn’t determine which candidate got the vote.

Scott’s campaign and the Republican National Committee issued statements saying Gillum and Nelson should give up and decline the recounts.

Scott said Sunday that Nelson wants fraudulent ballots and those cast by noncitizens to count, pointing to Nelson’s lawyers objecting to one provisional ballot being rejected in Palm Beach County because it was cast by a noncitizen.

“He is trying to commit fraud to win this election,” Scott told Fox News. “Bill Nelson’s a sore loser. He’s been in politics way too long.”

Both the state elections division, which Scott runs, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have said they have found no evidence of voter fraud.

The recount opens against a backdrop of political tensions. President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted without evidence that the elections were being stolen. Angry protesters gathered at an elections office in Broward County on Saturday, waving signs and shouting with bullhorns.

“Let me say clearly, I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote,” he said, adding that he would accept whatever outcome emerges. He did not mention the recount in his Sunday morning tweets.

In a video statement released Saturday, DeSantis said the election results were “clear and unambiguous” and that he was preparing to become the state’s next governor. He also thanked the state’s supervisors of elections, canvassing boards, and the staffs for “working hard to ensure that all lawful votes are counted.”

“It is important that everyone involved in the election process strictly adhere to the rule of law which is the foundation for our nation,” he said.

In the Senate recount, Scott implored the state’s sheriffs to “watch for any violations and take appropriate action” during the recount.

Scott and his supporters, including Trump, have alleged that voter fraud is underway in Democratic-leaning Broward County, where the Republican lead has narrowed since Election Day. The state’s election division said Saturday that its observers in Broward had seen “no evidence of criminal activity.”

The scene recalled the 2000 presidential recount, when it took more than five weeks for Florida to declare George W. Bush the victor over Vice President Al Gore by 537 votes, and thus giving Bush the presidency.

Florida was mocked for the way it handled the infamous 2000 recount, especially since there was no uniform process then on how to proceed. That has changed, with the Legislature passing a clear procedure on how a recount should be conducted.

Florida is also conducting a recount in a third statewide race. Democrat Nikki Fried had a 0.07 percentage point lead lead over Republican state Rep. Matt Caldwell in the race for agriculture commissioner, one of Florida’s three Cabinet seats.

By KELLI KENNEDY and TERRY SPENCER / AP on November 11, 2018 at 11:59AM

#Time #politics #PlusOrMinusCongress #±Congress #Indega±#IndegaPlusOrMinus #TimeMag #TimeMagazine

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whatisonthemoonarchive · 4 years ago

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Confessions of a Deprogrammed Trump Supporter

Originally posted here: strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/22/confessions-of-a-deprogrammed-trump-supporter/

As many people are aware, CNN recently aired a wonderful interview by former Moonie-turned-cult-deprogrammer Steve Hassan giving advice to Americans wishing to deprogram their MAGA-hat wearing loved ones, now that the age of Trump is coming to an end.

Video included in the original post: https://youtu.be/TnblPVMEYAc

I was fortunate enough to have read Hassan’s book and had the loving scrub-brush of truth wash my brain of all of its formerly pro-Trump sympathies and can honestly say that I am most certainly better off for having left those old delusions in the past.

For one thing, I used to enjoy my right to free speech… but thanks to the terrible events of January 6, 2021 that left 3 people dead, horned Q supporters doing photo ops for media, pro-Trump rioters let into the capitol building by guards, and busloads of conspicuous violent figures whom some say were “provocateurs” (whatever that means), I have come to realize that I was all wrong. Free speech is actually very dangerous. Words we took for granted like “patriot”, “nationalism”, or “vote fraud” are actually very racist and using them is a sure fire sign that you might be a domestic terrorist. At any rate, using them should at least be enough to get someone banned from social media and put under surveillance.

For a long time, I thought that record numbers of Black and Hispanic voters supporting Trump in 2020 meant that Trump was not racist, but I now realize that these poor folks just suffered from “multiracial whiteness”.

I thought that questioning voting machines that had been caught red handed manipulating elections across the world was patriotic and that somehow some conglomeration of Big Tech, the media, intelligence agencies and a thing called “deep state” were colluding to create a color revolution in the USA… but I now realize that I was actually supporting conspiracy theories and thus violence and thus domestic terrorism.

I was so far gone that my pre-deprogrammed self was actually persuaded in the crazy idea that depopulation agendas hid behind the cover of a “Great Reset agenda”, concocted by a shadowy elite of sociopathic oligarchs. I have now learned that this was either a silly conspiracy theory, the result of my own delusions or if it was true, then I can at least say with certainty that it is all for my own good.

The truth that I have now come to discover, is that free speech has just gone too far. This practice has reached its limits, and Twitter’s legal executive Vijaya Gadde is absolutely right. Social Media should do its civic duty and extend its censorship of “dangerous thoughts” to citizens and political officials outside of the USA in order to protect the world from itself. If other world leaders are worried about this new truth, then they should seriously do some soul searching and learn to think differently.

The old me is long gone, and now all I can say is “thank god” Joe Biden has found himself in the position of leader of the free world at this historic moment of change.

For awhile it was looking like Donald Trump would actually stop forever wars, and untie the U.S. military’s involvement from the CIA. That white supremacist actually came precariously close to destroying the foundations of globalization that many enlightened billionaires had put decades of energy into organizing- first destroying Obama’s Transpacific Partnership, then the Paris Climate Accords and THEN he had the nerve to scrap NAFTA itself by giving nation states a say in economic affairs!

He even committed the sin of criticizing NATO itself- the very foundation of western collective security from the obvious threats of Russia and China!

He called for insane things like “bringing back manufacturing to the USA”, “restoring protectionism”, and “making space exploration and arctic development a priority for the nation” and everyone knows that this is all so 1963.

But now the “disturbance” is over, and the age of Biden has arrived!

Joe Biden is a man who understands what liberal values and the “rules-based order” are really about.

He was wise enough to get onto the unipolar bandwagon before it was popular by drafting the 1994 surveillance bill that John Ashcroft later used verbatim for the Patriot Act after 9/11.

He was smart enough to know that Wall Street couldn’t lead America into the 21st century as long as Glass-Steagall was in place and voted for its repeal in 1999.

He was one of the loudest supporters of NAFTA which helped reduce carbon emissions drastically by exporting dirty industrial jobs oversees where they should be.

He also gave the Credit Card companies the political support they needed to stop citizens from abusing their generosity which went a long way to help Americans build character and take responsibility for their short sighted consumer decisions.

After 9/11, Biden also brilliantly supported the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq (who may not have had anything to do with 9/11 but at least showed the terrorists who’s boss).

Unlike those cultish Trumping fascists, Biden was courageous enough to proclaim even before the horrible insurrectionary riots of January 6th, that a new Patriot Act/Domestic Terror Bill would be needed to purge the republic of dangerous terrorism and the insidious thought crimes which spread doubt in honest elections, and distrust in the benevolent political structures leading the western world. Thinking people know, that thought does sometimes cause action… and if we want to truly remedy wrong actions like the riots of January 6th, or dangerous COVID-denialism, then we should most certainly take the battle to the realm of the mind.

The brilliant Steve Hassan even recognized this reality in his CNN interview when he said that “the bottom line is all of America needs deprogramming because we’ve all been negatively influenced by Donald Trump.”

Sure, some people think that the 46 deaths and 32 riots caused by Antifa and BLM over the past six months might qualify as domestic terrorism, but that’s only because they are infected with racist wrong think and don’t realize that these groups were just fighting against fascism and racism.

Certainly, the first 100 days after Biden’s inauguration will be inspired.

Already, Biden has made commitments to sign the USA back onto the legally binding Paris Climate Accords to help us win the war against climate, and has shown the good sense to reverse Trump’s disastrous decision to break the anti-China TPP in 2016. Biden always said he would renegotiate the TPP in order “to hold China accountable”, and everyone knows Trump’s selfish decision only helped China by freeing up its neighbors to work together on the BRI. If only Trump hadn’t killed TPP, then the 14 nation strong Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership which China just finalized would never have happened.

Most importantly, our benevolent overlords who meet at Davos every year are happy once more and have even kicked off Biden’s inauguration with a special celebration entitled “the Davos Agenda” running from January 25-29. According to the WEF, this event will “mark the launch of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative and begin the preparation of the Special Annual Meeting in the spring. Each day will focus on one of the five domains of the Great Reset Initiative.”

The USA’s new Special Envoy on Climate, John Kerry, captured the excitement of this wonderful moment perfectly when he said: “The notion of a reset is more important than ever before… we’re at the dawn of an extremely exciting time.”

According to the Great Reset architects, this is definitely the right idea.

WEF President Klaus Schwab has taught us that the “age of owning things” is so passe, and we know that this obsolete relic of capitalism isn’t compatible in our new age of global peace and brotherhood.

Ownership of “things” just makes us selfish and forget about the real purpose of life.. which is really about sacrifice. Establishing new supranational organizations to manage the levers of consumption and production according to evidence-based standards and scientific realities of carrying capacity is the only remedy to the evils of populism and being ignorant to this reality doesn’t lessen the fact that boards of experts who are smarter than you say that it is so.

According to the WEF’s Great Reset website global CO2 output collapsed by over 7% during the 12 months of global COVID-19 shutdowns… which means the COVID-19 is more of a blessing than many dim witted selfish nationalists who like owning things realize.

So what if the world population will contract under the shutdown of the world economy under COVID lockdowns? And so what if we lose our capacity to support industrial civilization through the imposition of global green energy grid?

Didn’t the late great Maurice Strong (who was WEF Executive Director and father of the Great Reset), ask the question in 1991:

“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

So get ready for an exciting time in history, and hopefully China finally learns that the new world order is Unipolar – with a big green hug for all well behaved leaders who get rid of such silly ideas as “nationalism”, “industrial progress” or “ending poverty through development” which dangerous concepts like the Belt and Road Initiative threaten to unleash. Most importantly, China has to really deprogram itself from her belief that Russia is a worthwhile partner in the 21st century. Xi made a good decision to attend this month’s Great Reset conference and both he and Modi would do well to abandon dirty fossil fuels, their support of nuclear energy development or space mining in order to adapt their realities to the computer models which have been telling us how to hitch our destinies to a world of entropy and diminishing returns.

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highvoltagearea · 5 years ago

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U.S. Postal Service warns most states of delays in mail-in ballot deliveries

The U.S. Postal Service is warning states coast to coast that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted, even if mailed by state deadlines, raising the possibility that millions of voters could be disenfranchised.

Voters and lawmakers in several states are also complaining that some curbside mail collection boxes are being removed.

Read more: Trump admits Post Service funding stalled to avoid mail-in ballots

Even as President Donald Trump rails against widescale voting by mail, the post office is bracing for an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The warning letters sent to states raise the possibility that many Americans eligible for mail-in ballots this fall will not have them counted. But that is not the intent, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in his own letter to Democratic congressional leaders.

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The post office is merely “asking elected officials and voters to realistically consider how the mail works, and be mindful of our delivery standards, in order to provide voters ample time to cast ballots through the mail,” wrote DeJoy, a prominent Trump political donor who was recently appointed.

1:43 Trump open to USPS funds as part of ‘overall bill’

Trump open to USPS funds as part of ‘overall bill’

The back-and-forth comes amid a vigorous campaign by Trump to sow doubts about mail-in voting as he faces a difficult fight for reelection against Democrat Joe Biden.

Though Trump casts his own ballots by mail, he’s repeatedly criticized efforts to allow more people to do so, which he argues without evidence will lead to increased voter fraud that could cost him the election. Meanwhile, members of Congress from both parties have voiced concerns that curbside mail boxes, which is how many will cast their ballots, have abruptly been removed in some states.

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At the same time that the need for timely delivery of the mail is peaking, service has been curtailed amid cost-cutting and efficiency measures ordered by the DeJoy, the new postmaster general, who is a former supply-chain CEO and a financial supporter of Trump and other Republicans. He has implemented measures to eliminate overtime pay and hold mail over if distribution centers are running late.

Read more: U.S. Postal Service emerges as flash point ahead of 2020 presidential election

The Post Office released letters it sent to all 50 states and the District Columbia on its website. While some states with permissive vote-by- mail laws were given a less stringent warning, the majority with more restrictive requirements that limit when a ballot must be cast were given a more dire warning.

The laws, the letter said, create a “risk that ballots requested near the deadline under state law will not be returned by mail in time to be counted.”

Many state officials criticized the move.

1:37 Coronavirus: Pelosi accuses Trump of trying to ‘undermine democracy’ over Postal Service funding

Coronavirus: Pelosi accuses Trump of trying to ‘undermine democracy’ over Postal Service funding

“This is a deeply troubling development in what is becoming a clear pattern of attempted voter suppression by the Trump administration,” Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement. “I am committed to making sure all Virginians have access to the ballot box, and will continue to work with state and federal lawmakers to ensure safe, secure and accessible elections this fall.”

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Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington state, where all voting is by mail, said sending fall ballot material to millions of voters there is a “routine operation of the U.S. Postal Service.”

“Politicizing these administrative processes is dangerous and undermines public confidence in our elections,” she said in a statement. “This volume of work is by no means unusual, and is an operation I am confident the U.S. Postal Service is sufficiently prepared to fulfill.”

Read more: Democrat-led House calls new U.S. postal chief to explain country-wide mail delays

Meanwhile, the removal of Postal Service collection mail boxes triggered concerns and anger in Oregon and Montana. Boxes were also removed in Indiana.

In Montana, postal officials said the removals were part of a program to eliminate underused drop boxes. But after the outcry, which included upset members of Congress, the officials said they were suspending the program in Montana. It was unclear if the program was also suspended in other states.

At least 25 mail boxes were removed in mid-July in Montana with another 30 scheduled to be taken away soon, said Julie Quilliam, president of the Montana Letter Carriers Association. She rejected the claim that the boxes were removed because of low usage.

2:19 Concerns about mail-in ballots, postal service’s reliability

Concerns about mail-in ballots, postal service’s reliability

“Some of the boxes scheduled to be removed from downtown Billings are nearly overflowing daily,” Quilliam wrote in a Facebook message.

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All three members of Montana’s congressional delegation — two of whom are Republican — raised concerns about the removal of mail boxes in letters sent to Postmaster DeJoy.

“These actions set my hair on fire and they have real life implications for folks in rural America and their ability to access critical postal services like paying their bills and voting in upcoming elections,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat.

Read more: Facebook expands anti-misinformation efforts for U.S. users ahead of Nov. 3 election

Republican Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte, also a Republican, raised similar concerns in letters to DeJoy about the effect the removal of the mail boxes might have on delivery times. All three asked for information on how the agency decided which boxes to remove and whether any more removals were planned.

“During the current public health crisis it is more important than ever the USPS continue to provide prompt, dependable delivery service,” said Gianforte.

Postal Service spokesperson Ernie Swanson said the Oregon removals were due to declining mail volume and that duplicate mail boxes were taken from places that had more than one. The Postal Service said four mail boxes were removed in Portland this week.

2:47 Trump defends claim that mail-in voting is ‘invitation to fraud’

Trump defends claim that mail-in voting is ‘invitation to fraud’

“First-class mail volume has declined significantly in the U.S., especially since the pandemic,” Swanson said. “That translates to less mail in collection boxes.”

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Separately, the National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents 300,000 current and retired workers, endorsed Biden.

The union said Trump has been hostile to the post office and has undermined it and its workers while Biden “is – was – and will continue to be – a fierce ally and defender of the United States Postal Service,” said union president Fredric Rolando.

Hanson reported from Helena, Montana. Associated Press writers across the U.S. contributed to this report.

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nemolian · 5 years ago

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Anything less than nationwide vote by mail is electoral sabotage

The global pandemic has cast a light on decades of cumulative efforts to manipulate and suppress voters, showing that the country is completely unprepared for any serious challenge to its elections system. There can be no more excuses: Every state must implement voting by mail in 2020 or be prepared to admit it is deliberately sabotaging its own elections. (And for once, tech might be able to help.)

To visualize how serious this problem is, one has only to imagine what would happen if quarantine measures like this spring’s were to happen in the fall — and considering experts predict a second wave in that period, this is very much a possibility.

If lockdown measures were being intensified and extended not on May 3rd, but November 3rd, how would the election proceed?

The answer is: it wouldn’t.

There would be no real election because so few people in the country would be able to legally and safely vote. This is hardly speculative: We have seen it happen in states where, for lack of any other option, people had to risk their lives, breaking quarantine to vote in person. Naturally it was the most vulnerable groups — people of color, immigrants, the poor and so on — who were most affected. The absurdity of a state requiring voters to gather in large groups while forbidding people to gather in large groups is palpable.

With this problem scaled to national levels, the entire electoral process would be derailed, and the ensuing chaos would be taken advantage of by all and sundry for their own purposes — something we see happening in practically every election.

For the 2020 election, if any elections official in this country claims to value the voters for which they are responsible, voting by mail is the only way to enable every citizen to register and vote securely and remotely. Anything less can only be considered deliberate obstruction, or at best willful negligence, of the electoral process.

Image Credits: Bill Oxford / iStock Unreleased / Getty Images

There’s a fair amount of talk about apps, online portals and other avenues, and these may figure later, but mail is the only method guaranteed right now to securely serve every address and person, providing the fundamental fabric of connectivity that is absolutely necessary to universally accessible voting.

Hand-wringing about fraud, lost ballots and other issues with voting by mail is deliberate, politically motivated FUD (and you can expect a lot of it over the next few months). States where voting by mail is the standard report no such issues; on the contrary, they have high turnout and few problems because it is simple, effective and secure. As far as risk is concerned, there is absolutely no comparison to the widespread and well-documented process and security issues with touchscreen voting systems, even before you bring in the enormous public health concerns of using those methods during a pandemic.

Federal law requires that troops around the world, among others unable to vote in person, are able to request and submit their ballots by mail. That this is the preferred method for voting in combat zones is practically all the endorsement such a system needs. That the president votes by mail is just the cherry on top.

Fear of voters

So why hasn’t voting by mail been adopted more widely? The same reason we have gerrymandered districts: Politicians have manipulated the electoral process for decades in order to stack the deck in their favor. While gerrymandering has been employed with great (and deplorable) effect by both Democratic and Republican officials, voter suppression is employed overwhelmingly by the political right.

While this is certainly a politically charged statement, it’s not really a matter of opinion. The demographics of the voting public are such that as the proportion of the population that votes grows, the aggregate position begins to lean leftward. This happens for a variety of reasons, but the result is that limiting who votes benefits conservatives more than liberals. (I am not so naive to think that if it were the other way around, Democrats would altogether abstain from the practice, but that isn’t the case.)

This is not a new complaint. Deliberate voter suppression goes back a century and more. Nor is the practice equally distributed. For one thing, white, well-off, urban areas are more likely to have effective and modern voting systems and laws.

This is not only because those areas are generally the first to receive all good things, but because voter suppression has been aimed specifically at people of color, immigrants, the poor and so on. Again, this is no longer a controversial or even particularly partisan statement; it has been admitted to by politicians and strategists at every level — including, quite recently, by the president: “They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

When voting by mail was merely a convenient, effective alternative to voting in person, it was fairly easy to speak against it. Now, however, voting by mail is increasingly looking like the only possible method to accomplish an election.

Again, think of how we would vote during a stay-at-home order. Using only today’s methods would be dangerous, chaotic and generally an ineffective way to ask the population at large who they want to lead their city, state and country.

That is no way to conduct an election. Therefore, we currently have no way to conduct a national election. Voting by mail is the only method that can realistically be rolled out to accomplish an effective election in 2020.

Disunited states

Because elections are run by state authorities, voting methods and laws vary widely between them. The quickest way to a nationwide vote-by-mail system would use federal funding and authority, but even if states were in favor of this (they won’t be, as it is an encroachment on their authority), Washington is not. The possibility of a bill implementing universal voting by mail passing the House, Senate and the president’s desk by November is, sadly, remote.

Which is not to say that no one in D.C. is not trying it:

Vote-by-mail should be having its moment. Will it?

This means it’s down to the states — not great news, considering it is at the state level that voting rights have been eroded and voter suppression enshrined in policy.

The only hope we have is for state authorities to recognize that the 2020 presidential election will be a closely watched litmus test for competence and corruption that will haunt them for years. It’s one thing to put your finger on the scale under normal circumstances. It’s quite another to author a high-profile electoral failure in an election few doubt will be one of the most consequential in American history — especially if that failure was manifestly preventable.

And we know it is preventable because due to federal voting rights laws, every state already has some form of accessible, mail-in or absentee voting. This is not a matter of inventing a new system from scratch, but scaling existing, proven systems in ways already demonstrated and verified over decades. Several states, for instance, have simply announced that all voters will get absentee ballots or applications sent unrequested to their homes. No one said it would be easy, but the first step — committing — is at least simple.

It will be obvious in a few months which state authorities actually care about the vote and which see it as just another instrument to manipulate in order to retain and accrue power. The actions taken in the run-up to this election will be remembered for a long time. As for the federal government interfering with states’ prerogative to run their own elections — that’s a violation of states’ rights that I expect will encounter strong bipartisan opposition.

How tech can help without hindering

Image Credits: NickS (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The tech world will want to aid in this cause out of several motives, but the simple truth is there’s no way a technological solution can be developed and deployed by November. And not only is it infeasible, but there is serious political opposition to online voting systems to be widely deployed. The idea is a non-starter for this election and probably the next.

Rather than trying, Monolith-style, to evolve voting to the next phase by taking on the whole thing tip to tail, tech should be providing support structures via uniquely digital tools that complement rather than replace effective voting systems.

For example, there is the possibility, however remote, that a mailed ballot will be intercepted by some adversary and modified, shredded, selectively deposited, or what have you. No large-scale fraud has ever been perpetrated, despite what opponents of voting by mail might say. States developed preventative solutions long ago, like secure ballot boxes placed around the city and tamper-evident envelopes.

But end to end security is something at which the tech sector excels, and moreover recent advances make a digitally augmented voting process achievable. And there’s plenty of room for competition and commercial involvement, which sweetens the pot.

Here’s a way that commonplace tech could be deployed to make voting by mail even more secure and convenient.

Imagine a mail-in ballot of the ordinary fill-in-the-bubble type. Once a person makes their selections, they take a picture of the ballot in a dedicated, completely offline app. Via fairly elementary image analysis nearly any phone can now perform, the votes can be detected and tabulated, verified by the voter, then hashed with a unique voter sheet ID into a code short enough to be written down.

The ballot is mailed and (let us say for now) received. When it is processed, the same hash is calculated by the machine reader and placed on an easily accessible list. A voter can check that their vote was tabulated and correctly recorded by entering their hash into a website — which itself reveals nothing about their vote or identity.

What if something goes wrong? Say the ballot is lost. In that case the voter has a record of their vote in both image and physical form (mail-in ballots have little tear-off tabs you keep) and can pursue this issue. The same database that lets them verify their vote was correct will allow them to see if their vote was never cast. If it was interfered with or damaged and the selections differ from what the voter already verified, the hash will differ, and the voter can prove this with the evidence they have — again, entirely offline and with no private information exposed.

This example system only works because smartphones are now so common, and because it is now trivial to process an image quickly and accurately offline. But importantly, the digital aspect only addresses shortcomings of the mail-in system rather than being central to it. You vote with only a ballpoint pen, as simply as possible — but if you want to be sure, you may choose to employ the latest technology to track your vote.

A system like this may not make it in time for the 2020 election, but voting by mail can and must if there is to be an election at all.

via:TechCrunch, May 23, 2020 at 01:47PM

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biofunmy · 6 years ago

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Amid Rising Violence and Taliban Peace Talks, Afghan Campaign Begins

KABUL, Afghanistan — As Afghanistan’s presidential election campaign began on Sunday, the country’s leader was facing a series of daunting concerns, from unrelenting violence to fears that his government could be derailed by a peace deal with the Taliban.

Now there are the voters: Weary of waves of terrorism — like an attack on one candidate Sunday — they are skeptical of risking life and limb to cast ballots, especially given the widespread fraud in recent elections.

“Why should I vote?” asked Fatima Hussaini, a resident of Kabul, the capital, expressing a widespread view among the electorate.

“The government hasn’t done anything for us, and we’re not stupid enough to vote again,” declared Ms. Hussaini, who said her 2014 vote had been wasted.

Mohammad Ashraf, 41, a shopkeeper, said he, too, would not vote because he does not believe it would improve security. “I don’t want to take the risk,” he said.

Their fears were not without cause. In Afghanistan, running elections and going to the polls can be life-or-death decisions.

On Sunday, the political party office of Amrullah Saleh, an Afghan vice presidential candidate and President Ashraf Ghani’s running mate, was stormed by gunmen and bombed. Mr. Saleh survived the attack, the president reported, and the Interior Ministry said he was not injured. But 20 people were killed and 50 wounded. Among those killed were 16 civilians and four security force members, according to Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman for the interior ministry.

The bombing underscored fears that this election, like the scandal-marred 2014 presidential vote, would be undermined by persistent terrorist attacks.

An overstretched national police force is being asked to provide security for all 18 presidential candidates and their running mates. Many Afghans fear that insurgents will attack polling sites when voting begins on Sept. 28, and that the fraud and violence that marred the 2014 election will be repeated.

Yet colorful campaign posters and billboards were raised on Sunday despite those fears, the deteriorating security situation around the country and a confusing government bid a day earlier to inject itself into the peace talks between the Taliban and the United States.

This election, already delayed twice, is playing out amid simmering anger and resentment from Mr. Ghani’s government over being frozen out of those peace talks, being held in Doha, Qatar. The Taliban have refused to negotiate with the Afghan government, calling it illegitimate.

And violence has spiked in recent months, with combatants in the 18-year war seeking, in part, to gain leverage at the peace talks.

Afghan security agencies spent eight months on an election security plan that includes armored vehicles and guards for candidates’ rallies and homes, said Nasrat Rahimi, an interior ministry spokesman.

At least one prominent candidate, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, has said Mr. Ghani’s control over the election process could taint the vote.

A coalition of about a dozen candidates, including Mr. Atmar, said Sunday it would boycott the election beginning Thursday if Mr. Ghani did not remove recently appointed government officials loyal to him. Citing the election delay, Mohammad Shahab Hakimi, a spokesman for the group, said that Mr. Ghani’s term had on expired May 22, and that he no longer had the authority to act as president.

Other candidates have suggested delaying the vote so that a newly elected government does not interfere with peace negotiations.

A boycott by two-thirds of the 18 candidates would be a severe blow to an election already in doubt because of the violence and the complex peace process.

“Insecurity is concerning some candidates, raising their doubts as to whether an inclusive election is possible,” a political analyst, Ali Yawar Adili of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, wrote on the group’s website Sunday.

The eighth round of the Doha talks is expected soon, with the United States and the Taliban close to a deal that would exchange a phased withdrawal of 14,000 American troops from Afghanistan for a Taliban promise that the country would not be used by terrorists to launch attacks.

On Saturday, Mr. Ghani’s government announced that it was preparing for direct negotiations with the Taliban in two weeks. The Taliban quickly dismissed that statement, saying they would not negotiate with the Afghan side until they had reached a deal with the United States.

“And we will not sit and talk with the Kabul administration as a government,” said a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid.

Taliban and Afghan representatives, including some government officials, met this month in Doha for so-called intra-Afghan dialogue, discussions intended to help reach an agreement on a road map for a political settlement and a lasting cease-fire.

The United States has set a target of Sept. 1 for some sort of preliminary deal that sets a road map for direct negotiations. It is unclear how such a deal would affect the Sept. 28 election or the status of Mr. Ghani’s government once intra-Afghan negotiations began.

At his “nation-building” campaign launch Sunday, Mr. Ghani made clear that he intended for his government to represent Afghans in subsequent talks with the Taliban. “I am the president of all Afghanistan,” he declared.

He indicated that he would not let the peace process interfere with the election.

“We don’t want those who aren’t committed to peace to sabotage this process,” he told a cheering crowd. “But we want this to happen with principles and in the right manner.”

As his supporters chanted “Long live Ghani,” the president addressed the militants directly.

“I have a message for the Taliban,” Mr. Ghani said. “We don’t look down on you. But don’t forget that each Afghan has to be respected.”

He said that while his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, laid down 11 conditions for negotiating with the Taliban, he was willing to negotiate unconditionally.

Tensions were evident even at this event, though, despite the largely supportive crowd. Mr. Ghani was interrupted by a man who shouted “Liar!” and “Demagogue!” The president’s security agents hustled the protester away.

At a wedding hall across town, Mr. Ghani’s chief executive and main election rival, Abdullah Abdullah, waited until the president’s rally had concluded so that TV coverage would shift to his own rally. Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah have coexisted in a tenuous unity government that was cobbled together with American help after the disputed 2014 election.

Mr. Abdullah criticized Mr. Ghani’s security team for silencing the rally protester. “We would never shut someone’s mouth,” he said.

Mr. Abdullah also ridiculed Mr. Ghani’s penchant for saying he is an heir to exalted Afghan statesmen and poets of eras past. He mentioned the president’s recent misreading of the famous 13th-century poet Rumi.

“The least one can do as a sign of respect is to read their poems right,” Mr. Abdullah said.

He told his supporters that he was committed to the peace process, but he did not discuss how it might affect the election if a deal were reached before then.

For many Afghans, a sense of ambivalence and fear extended not just to the weeks of campaigning ahead, but also to what kind of future their country might face after a peace deal with the Taliban.

Mustafa Arya, a former Abdullah supporter who now backs Mr. Ghani, worried that because President Trump is eager to withdraw American troops, the United States would undercut democratic gains achieved in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.

“We want a peace deal, but not one at the cost to our dignity, or that will bring back the emirate,” he said, referring to a Taliban demand that any post-peace government be an Islamic emirate rather than a republic.

“We don’t want to go back to that period,” Mr. Arya said.

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