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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 4 years

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if the GOP could win for real, they would do a lot less cheating

Something you have to understand about recent American history is that the Republican party lost its shit in the 1960s. There are always plenty of reasons for decades-long historical trends, but arguably the core one is that Lyndon Johnson’s administration made a bunch of human rights advances known collectively as the Great Society, the cornerstone of which was a sincere and substantive effort to address the unfinished business of Reconstruction with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Racist white people who didn’t want to share democracy with everyone else became reliable Republican voters, but they’re nowhere near enough to win an election on their own. Republicans realized that their ideology is a miserable death cult that can’t win a fair fight. They could have gotten better ideas, but instead, they started sabotaging democracy.

I am not here to overwhelm you with a list of all the American right wing’s assaults on democracy. But there is a relatively narrow subset which forms a pattern that has become increasingly urgent: times Republicans have abused, usurped, or radically and unilaterally bastardized the power of American government in order to limit voters’ ability to hold them accountable in free and fair elections.

Because it only includes events backed up by reliable and freely available sources, it necessarily only includes the times times they were ham-fisted or sloppy enough to get caught. It has over two dozen entries and is almost certainly incomplete.

1968: Richard Nixon sabotages peace talks to end the Vietnam War because anger over the war is a winning campaign issue for him. Johnson catches him and calls him out, but doesn’t tell the public. Nixon wins and takes office.

1972: Nixon’s re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP, because these people are fucking Bond villains) goes on a crime spree which includes multiple break-ins at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

1992: President George H.W. Bush asks British Prime Minister John Major’s government to dig through official archives for anything compromising on his rival Governor Bill Clinton from Clinton’s time at Oxford University.

1992: A political appointee at the Bush State Department has Governor Clinton’s passport files searched for potentially embarrassing information.

1992: Bush’s Attorney General William Barr pressures federal prosecutors in Arkansas to make some public movement on a white collar crime case tangentially associated with Governor Clinton.

2000: The Florida state board of elections does a racist voter purge, targeting largely Democratic communities of color.

2000: A mob, mostly Republican congressional aides, force election officials in Palm Beach County to shut down its recount.

2000: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents shut down the Florida recount in an unsigned opinion so specious and nakedly partisan that it irreparably damages the legitimacy of not only the Bush presidency but the Supreme Court itself.

2004: Republican election administrators in Florida attempt another racist voter purge, only abandoning it when they get caught.

2006: The Bush administration leans on federal prosecutors to influence the midterm elections with bogus investigations into Democratic politicians and prosecutions of non-existent “voter fraud” cases. After Republicans lose the midterms, several attorneys who resisted the pressure are fired.

2010: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans, in an existential fiat, reclassify money as speech, opening the floodgates to swamp every level of politics with dark money.

2013: The same five Republican Supreme Court justices gut the Voting Rights Act, specifically and explicitly because it has been relatively effective in preventing racist voter suppression.

2010s: Republicans in various state legislatures pass a bunch of laws to suppress the ability of voters to hold them accountable.

2016: Associates of Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani loudly and unprofessionally conduct numerous bullshit investigations into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. They successfully pressure FBI director James Comey – himself a veteran of the corrupt and politicized Bush Justice Department – into several improper and decisive actions against Clinton.

2016: Donald Trump conspires with Russian intelligence and business interests to sabotage his opponent in a presidential election.

2016: Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blackmails the Obama administration out of explaining the Russian government’s sabotage of the presidential election, leaving state boards of elections and the general public vulnerable to the assault.

2017-18: The Republican administration sits on evidence that Russian military hackers have penetrated state voting equipment.

2018: Republican Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp insists on overseeing the election in which he is running for governor. He squeaks out a “win” after purging thousands of voters, arbitrarily closing or refusing to equip polling places, and baselessly accusing his Democratic opponent of trying to hack the election.

2018: A Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina hires operatives to defraud local senior citizens who were attempting to cast absentee ballots.

2018: Republicans lose the governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, but keep control of the state legislatures due to gross gerrymandering. Before the new governors can be sworn in, they cram through laws stripping power from the incoming Democratic governors.

2019: Trump administration officials try to warp the data which will be collected in the 2020 census in a way that will enable future gerrymandering by undercounting largely Democratic constituencies. When they get caught and stopped, they try to justify themselves by lying to the federal courts.

2019: Donald Trump privately tries to extort the president of Ukraine into announcing bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: Donald Trump publicly pressures the government of China into opening bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: All but one House Republican opposes impeaching Trump for his extortion of Ukraine – until that one guy is pushed out of the party. Therefore, no House Republicans vote to impeach Trump.

2020: With one exception, every Republican in the Senate validates Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election by voting to acquit him.

2020: Republicans dig in their heels and refuse to take easy and obvious steps to keep voters safe from COVID-19 at the polls.

This is just the list of things that I could remember off the top of my head and could find receipts for with relative ease. It doesn’t include things that are plausible but unproven, like the allegations that Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff tried to repeat Nixon’s first stunt by working to prolong the Iran hostage crisis because it was a winning campaign issue for him. It doesn’t include dirty, bigoted campaigns that you might call awful but lawful, like the racist “Willie Horton” ad campaign in 1988 or the repulsive homophobic ballot initiatives that were engineered to bolster George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. It doesn’t include the wide array of brutalizations of a constitutional small-d democratic system which aren’t specifically and concretely about elections – everything from eroding the credibility of scientists, experts, and reporters to packing the courts with proto-fascist hacks to lying the American people into war in Iraq.

It really doesn’t matter whether or not I think Republicans win elections legitimately. It’s extremely important that Republicans do not believe they can win elections legitimately.

Now think for a second about their cherished “voter fraud” trope. All this time, Republicans have been screeching that SOMEONE was out there trying to steal elections FROM THEM. It is absolutely correct to focus on and be upset about the racist history and intent of this particular conspiracy theory. I would simply argue that white supremacism is not the only unforgivable aspect of this nonsense trope. The other is the way those claims make it impossible to deal with actual threats against legitimate elections.

This is similar to what psychologists call projection, or the tactic domestic violence experts refer to as DARVO. It is not unrelated to “swiftboating” or the phenomenon students of genocide refer to as the “accusation in a mirror.” It is the axiom small children cite when they say “he who smelt it, dealt it.”

I don’t know the ONE WEIRD TRICK to make it not work. I just know that it – maddeningly – does work, not least on the Very Serious Experts whose ONE FUCKING JOB it is to know better.

So I’m sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a “many bad people on all sides” disclaimer about who does political dirty tricks, but “both sides” is not operative, no matter how desperate the hot-take-industrial-complex is to make fetch happen. It hasn’t been operative for twenty-five years, and it’s really not operative for the next six months. You can bury yourself deep in literature about asymmetric polarization, but you don’t have to do all that to understand what’s important here. Democrats support democracy and want to stop the plague, Republicans support the plague and want to stop democracy, and you should be extremely skeptical of anyone who claims not to know the difference.

#voting rights #donald trump #george w bush #george hw bush #democracy #authortiarianism

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antoine-roquentin · 6 years

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Here’s some Real interference in election campaigns

[Slightly abridged version of chapter 18 in William Blum’s Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower; see it for notes]

Philippines, 1950s:

Flagrant manipulation by the CIA of the nation’s political life, featuring stage-managed elections with extensive disinformation campaigns, heavy financing of candidates, writing their speeches, drugging the drinks of one of the opponents of the CIA-supported candidate so he would appear incoherent; plotting the assassination of another candidate. The oblivious New York Times declared that “It is not without reason that the Philippines has been called “democracy’s showcase in Asia”.

Italy, 1948-1970s:

Multifarious campaigns to repeatedly sabotage the electoral chances of the Communist Party and ensure the election of the Christian Democrats, long-favored by Washington.

Lebanon, 1950s:

The CIA provided funds to support the campaigns of President Camille Chamoun and selected parliamentary candidates; other funds were targeted against candidates who had shown less than total enchantment with US interference in Lebanese politics.

Indonesia, 1955:

A million dollars were dispensed by the CIA to a centrist coalition’s electoral campaign in a bid to cut into the support for President Sukarno’s party and the Indonesian Communist Party.

Vietnam, 1955:

The US was instrumental in South Vietnam canceling the elections scheduled to unify North and South because of the certainty that the North Vietnamese communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, would easily win.

British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:

For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent Cheddi Jagan – three times the democratically elected leader – from occupying his office. Using a wide variety of tactics – from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms – the US and Britain forced Jagan out of office twice during this period.

Japan, 1958-1970s:

The CIA emptied the US treasury of millions to finance the conservative Liberal Democratic Party in parliamentary elections, “on a seat-by-seat basis”, while doing what it could to weaken and undermine its opposition, the Japanese Socialist Party. The 1961-63 edition of the State Department’s annual Foreign Relations of the United States, published in 1996, includes an unprecedented disclaimer that, because of material left out, a committee of distinguished historians thinks “this published compilation does not constitute a ‘thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of major United States foreign policy decisions’” as required by law. The deleted material involved US actions from 1958-1960 in Japan, according to the State Department’s historian.

Nepal, 1959:

By the CIA’s own admission, it carried out an unspecified “covert action” on behalf of B.P. Koirala to help his Nepali Congress Party win the national parliamentary election. It was Nepal’s first national election ever, and the CIA was there to initiate them into the wonderful workings of democracy.

Laos, 1960:

CIA agents stuffed ballot boxes to help a hand-picked strongman, Phoumi Nosavan, set up a pro-American government.

Brazil, 1962:

The CIA and the Agency for International Development expended millions of dollars in federal and state elections in support of candidates opposed to leftist President João Goulart, who won anyway.

Dominican Republic, 1962:

In October 1962, two months before election day, US Ambassador John Bartlow Martin got together with the candidates of the two major parties and handed them a written notice, in Spanish and English, which he had prepared. It read in part: “The loser in the forthcoming election will, as soon as the election result is known, publicly congratulate the winner, publicly recognize him as the President of all the Dominican people, and publicly call upon his own supporters to so recognize him. … Before taking office, the winner will offer Cabinet seats to members of the loser’s party. (They may decline).”

As matters turned out, the winner, Juan Bosch, was ousted in a military coup seven months later, a slap in the face of democracy which neither Martin nor any other American official did anything about.

Guatemala, 1963:

The US overthrew the regime of General Miguel Ydigoras because he was planning to step down in 1964, leaving the door open to an election; an election that Washington feared would be won by the former president, liberal reformer and critic of US foreign policy, Juan José Arévalo. Ydigoras’s replacement made no mention of elections.

Bolivia, 1966:

The CIA bestowed $600,000 upon President René Barrientos and lesser sums to several right-wing parties in a successful effort to influence the outcome of national elections. Gulf Oil contributed two hundred thousand more to Barrientos.

Chile, 1964-70:

Major US interventions into national elections in 1964 and 1970, and congressional elections in the intervening years. Socialist Salvador Allende fell victim in 1964, but won in 1970 despite a multimillion-dollar CIA operation against him. The Agency then orchestrated his downfall in a 1973 military coup.

Portugal, 1974-5:

In the years following the coup in 1974 by military officers who talked like socialists, the CIA revved up its propaganda machine while funneling many millions of dollars to support “moderate” candidates, in particular Mario Soares and his (so-called) Socialist Party. At the same time, the Agency enlisted social-democratic parties of Western Europe to provide further funds and support to Soares. It worked. The Socialist Party became the dominant power.

Australia, 1974-75:

Despite providing considerable support for the opposition, the United States failed to defeat the Labor Party, which was strongly against the US war in Vietnam and CIA meddling in Australia. The CIA then used “legal” methods to unseat the man who won the election, Edward Gough Whitlam.

Jamaica, 1976:

A CIA campaign to defeat social democrat Michael Manley’s bid for reelection, featuring disinformation, arms shipments, labor unrest, economic destabilization, financial support for the opposition, and attempts upon Manley’s life. Despite it all, he was victorious.

Panama, 1984, 1989:

In 1984, the CIA helped finance a highly questionable presidential electoral victory for one of Manuel Noriega’s men. The opposition cried “fraud”, but the new president was welcomed at the White House. By 1989, Noriega was no longer a Washington favorite, so the CIA provided more than $10 million dollars to his electoral opponents.

Nicaragua, 1984, 1990:

In 1984, the United States, trying to discredit the legitimacy of the Sandinista government’s scheduled election, covertly persuaded the leading opposition coalition to not take part. A few days before election day, some other rightist parties on the ballot revealed that US diplomats had been pressing them to drop out of the race as well. The CIA also tried to split the Sandinista leadership by placing phoney full-page ads in neighboring countries. But the Sandinistas won handily in a very fair election monitored by hundreds of international observers.

Six years later, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Washington’s specially created stand-in for the CIA, poured in millions of dollars to defeat Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas in the February elections. NED helped organize the Nicaraguan opposition, UNO, building up the parties and organizations that formed and supported this coalition.

Perhaps most telling of all, the Nicaraguan people were made painfully aware that a victory by the Sandinistas would mean a continuation of the relentlessly devastating war being waged against them by Washington through their proxy army, the Contras.

Haiti, 1987-1988:

After the Duvalier dictatorship came to an end in 1986, the country prepared for its first free elections ever. However, Haiti’s main trade union leader declared that Washington was working to undermine the left. US aid organizations, he said, were encouraging people in the countryside to identify and reject the entire left as “communist”. Meanwhile, the CIA was involved in a range of support for selected candidates until the US Senate Intelligence Committee ordered the Agency to cease its covert electoral action.

Bulgaria, 1990-1991 and Albania, 1991-1992:

With no regard for the fragility of these nascent democracies, the US interfered broadly in their elections and orchestrated the ousting of their elected socialist governments.

Russia, 1996:

For four months (March-June), a group of veteran American political consultants worked secretly in Moscow in support of Boris Yeltsin’s presidential campaign. Boris Yeltsin was being counted on to run with the globalized-free market ball and it was imperative that he cross the goal line. The Americans emphasized sophisticated methods of message development, polling, focus groups, crowd staging, direct-mailing, etc., and advised against public debates with the Communists. Most of all they encouraged the Yeltsin campaign to “go negative” against the Communists, painting frightening pictures of what the Communists would do if they took power, including much civic upheaval and violence, and, of course, a return to the worst of Stalinism. Before the Americans came on board, Yeltsin was favored by only six percent of the electorate. In the first round of voting, he edged the Communists 35 percent to 32, and was victorious in the second round 54 to 40 percent.

Mongolia, 1996:

The National Endowment for Democracy worked for several years with the opposition to the governing Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRR, the former Communists) who had won the 1992 election to achieve a very surprising electoral victory. In the six-year period leading up to the 1996 elections, NED spent close to a million dollars in a country with a population of some 2.5 million, the most significant result of which was to unite the opposition into a new coalition, the National Democratic Union. Borrowing from Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America, the NED drafted a “Contract With the Mongolian Voter”, which called for private property rights, a free press and the encouragement of foreign investment. The MPRR had already instituted Western-style economic reforms, which had led to widespread poverty and wiped out much of the communist social safety net. But the new government promised to accelerate the reforms, including the privatization of housing. By 1998 it was reported that the US National Security Agency had set up electronic listening posts in Outer Mongolia to intercept Chinese army communications, and the Mongolian intelligence service was using nomads to gather intelligence in China itself.

Bosnia, 1998:

Effectively an American protectorate, with Carlos Westendorp – the Spanish diplomat appointed to enforce Washington’s offspring: the 1995 Dayton peace accords – as the colonial Governor-General. Before the September elections for a host of offices, Westendorp removed 14 Croatian candidates from the ballot because of alleged biased coverage aired in Bosnia by neighboring Croatia’s state television and politicking by ethnic Croat army soldiers. After the election, Westendorp fired the elected president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, accusing him of creating instability. In this scenario those who appeared to support what the US and other Western powers wished were called “moderates”, and allowed to run for and remain in office. Those who had other thoughts were labeled “hard-liners”, and ran the risk of a different fate. When Westendorp was chosen to assume this position of “high representative” in Bosnia in May 1997, The Guardian of London wrote that “The US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, praised the choice. But some critics already fear that Mr. Westendorp will prove too lightweight and end up as a cipher in American hands.”

Nicaragua, 2001

Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was once again a marked man. US State Department officials tried their best to publicly associate him with terrorism, including just after September 11 had taken place, and to shamelessly accuse Sandinista leaders of all manner of violations of human rights, civil rights, and democracy. The US ambassador literally campaigned for Ortega’s opponent, Enrique Bolaños. A senior analyst in Nicaragua for Gallup, the international pollsters, was moved to declare: “Never in my whole life have I seen a sitting ambassador get publicly involved in a sovereign country’s electoral process, nor have I ever heard of it.”

At the close of the campaign, Bolaños announced: “If Ortega comes to power, that would provoke a closing of aid and investment, difficulties with exports, visas and family remittances. I’m not just saying this. The United States says this, too. We cannot close our eyes and risk our well-being and work. Say yes to Nicaragua, say no to terrorism.”

In the end, the Sandinistas lost the election by about ten percentage points after steadily leading in the polls during much of the campaign.

Bolivia, 2002

The American bête noire here was Evo Morales, Amerindian, former member of Congress, socialist, running on an anti-neoliberal, anti-big business, and anti-coca eradication campaign. The US Ambassador declared: “The Bolivian electorate must consider the consequences of choosing leaders somehow connected with drug trafficking and terrorism.” Following September 11, painting Officially Designated Enemies with the terrorist brush was de rigueur US foreign policy rhetoric.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs warned that American aid to the country would be in danger if Mr. Morales was chosen. Then the ambassador and other US officials met with key figures from Bolivia’s main political parties in an effort to shore up support for Morales’s opponent, Sanchez de Lozada. Morales lost the vote.

Slovakia, 2002

To defeat Vladimir Meciar, former prime minister, a man who did not share Washington’s weltanschauung about globalization, the US ambassador explicitly warned the Slovakian people that electing him would hurt their chances of entry into the European Union and NATO. The US ambassador to NATO then arrived and issued his own warning. The National Endowment for Democracy was also on hand to influence the election. Meciar lost.

El Salvador, 2004

Washington’s target in this election was Schafik Handal, candidate of the FMLN, the leftist former guerrilla group. He said he would withdraw El Salvador’s 380 troops from Iraq as well as reviewing other pro-US policies; he would also take another look at the privatizations of Salvadoran industries, and would reinstate diplomatic relations with Cuba. His opponent was Tony Saca of the incumbent Arena Party, a pro-US, pro-free market organization of the extreme right, which in the bloody civil war days had featured death squads and the infamous assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

During a February visit to the country, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, met with all the presidential candidates except Handal. He warned of possible repercussions in US-Salvadoran relations if Handal were elected. Three Republican congressmen threatened to block the renewal of annual work visas for some 300,000 Salvadorans in the United States if El Salvador opted for the FMLN. And Congressman Thomas Tancredo of Colorado stated that if the FMLN won, “it could mean a radical change” in US policy on remittances to El Salvador.

Washington’s attitude was exploited by Arena and the generally conservative Salvadoran press, who mounted a scare campaign, and it became widely believed that a Handal victory could result in mass deportations of Salvadorans from the United States and a drop in remittances. Arena won the election with about 57 percent of the vote to some 36 percent for the FMLN.

After the election, the US ambassador declared that Washington’s policies concerning immigration and remittances had nothing to do with any election in El Salvador. There appears to be no record of such a statement being made in public before the election when it might have had a profound positive effect for the FMLN.

Afghanistan, 2004

The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, went around putting great pressure on one candidate after another to withdraw from the presidential race so as to insure the victory for Washington’s man, the incumbent, Hamid Karzai in the October election. There was nothing particularly subtle about it. Khalilzad told each one what he wanted and then asked them what they needed. Karzai, a long-time resident in the United States, was described by the Washington Post as “a known and respected figure at the State Department and National Security Council and on Capitol Hill.”

“Our hearts have been broken because we thought we could have beaten Mr. Karzai if this had been a true election,” said Sayed Mustafa Sadat Ophyani, campaign manager for Younis Qanooni, Karzai’s leading rival. “But it is not. Mr. Khalilzad is putting a lot of pressure on us and does not allow us to fight a good election campaign.”.

None of the major candidates actually withdrew from the election, which Karzai won with about 56 percent of the votes.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Can Republicans Vote In Nh Primary

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/can-republicans-vote-in-nh-primary/

Can Republicans Vote In Nh Primary

The Race In New Hampshire

Trump suggests Republicans vote for “weakest” Democrat in NH primary | AFP

Mitt Romney swept to victory in the New Hampshire primary, turning back a ferocious assault from rivals who sought to disqualify him in the eyes of conservatives. Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, won by a double-digit margin, a validation of his strategy to use his neighboring state to cement his standing as the front-runner. The candidates who had hoped to use the primary to emerge as his leading rival fared poorly, leaving a fractured Republican opposition. Read More »

How Many Delegates Are Up For Grabs

New Hampshire has 24 national delegates. There are 16 district-level delegates divided between the states two congressional districts, five at-large delegates and three pledged party leader and elected official delegates. Candidates need to get at least 15% of the vote in a district or statewide to reach the delegate threshold. If no candidate reaches 15% which is unlikelybased on current polling the threshold is half of whatever the front-runners vote percentage is in the district.

Trump In New Hampshire

HIGHLIGHTS

New Hampshire held its Democratic primary on .

New Hampshire had an estimated 33 delegates comprised of 24 pledged delegates and nine superdelegates. Delegate allocation was proportional.

The Democratic primary was semi-closed, meaning only registered party members and unaffiliated voters could vote in the party’s primary.

Former Vice President Joe Biden was formally nominated as the Democratic presidential nominee at the 2020 Democratic National Convention on August 18, 2020. The convention was originally scheduled to take place July 13-16, 2020. Organizers postponed the event in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Prior to the national convention, individual state caucuses and primaries were held to allocate convention delegates. These delegates vote at the convention to select the nominee. In 2020, a Democratic presidential candidate needed support from 1,991 delegates to secure the nomination.

Recommended Reading: Dinesh D’souza The Big Switch

Where Can I Look Up My Voter Registration Status

Voters that have provided their date of birth on a voter registration form may go to the Secretary of States Registered Voter web link . The person must enter their first name, last name, town or city, date of birth, and complete the security entry. If the name, town or city, and date of birth are the same as what was provided in their voter registration form, their name, voter ID, and party affiliation, if any, will be displayed.

Republican Party Primaries In New Hampshire 2020

Poll times: Varies by locality

Date of New Hampshire presidential primary:

State political party revenue

This page focuses on the Republican primaries that took place in New Hampshire on September 8, 2020. for more information about the Democratic primaries.

Note that the dates and terms of participation for presidential preference primaries and caucuses sometimes differ from those that apply to primaries for state-level and other federal offices, which are the subject of this article. For more information on this state’s presidential nomination process, .

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Iowa Keeps Getting Messier: 5 Takeaways From The Caucuses’ Near

How does voting work?

It’s a primary, so voters head to the polls like they would in a general election. It’s “semi-open,” meaning independents can participate. About 40% of the state are independents, and given that there is no competitive GOP primary happening, one might expect to see a higher percentage of independents turn out on the Democratic side than in 2016.

In 2016, independents made up 40% of the electorate, according to the exit polls, but there were competitive primaries on both sides. In 2008, it was 44%, but in 2004 the last time there was a competitive Democratic primary with an incumbent Republican president up for reelection 48% of the electorate was independents.

Don’t confuse independents with moderates, though. Sanders, who won the 2016 primary by more than 20 points, won three-quarters of independents. He won a slightly lower percentage of self-described moderates, 59%.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, takes photos with supporters during a campaign event at St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Manchester, N.H., on Monday. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/APhide caption

toggle caption

Former Vice President Joe Biden, takes photos with supporters during a campaign event at St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Manchester, N.H., on Monday.

Aside from independents, which other voters are important to watch?

Former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg arrives onstage at Hampshire Hills Athletic Club on Monday in Milford, N.H.hide caption

toggle caption

Donald Trump Says Republicans Will Vote For Weakest Candidate In Democrat New Hampshire Primary

The president called his Democrat opponents “weak” and “extreme” ahead of their nomination;contest there on Tuesday

Donald Trump sought to sabotage; Tuesday night’s Democrat presidential nomination contest in New Hampshire by telling his own supporters to vote in it and pick the “weakest” candidate.

In New Hampshire, the second US state to vote, 40 per cent of voters are not officially registered as Republicans or Democrats, and can choose which party’s primary process they take part in.

At a massive rally in the city of Manchester on election eve the US president said his followers who were not registered should go to Democrat polling stations.

He said: “You have crossover in primaries don’t you? I hear a lot of Republicans here tomorrow will vote for the weakest candidate possible of the Democrats. Does that make sense? You people wouldnt do that…

“My only problem is figuring out who the weakest is. They’re all weak. You can vote for the weakest candidate if you want, don’t worry about it.”

Mr Trump did not name a candidate but his campaign has made clear they believe Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist, would be easiest to beat.

The president said he held “the biggest political rally in New Hampshire history” to “shake up the Dems a little bit,” adding that “they have a really boring deal going on.”

Meanwhile, Democrat candidates criss-crossed the snowy state making desperate last pitches for votes.

Recommended Reading: How Many Republicans Are In Congress 2016

Winners Of The New Hampshire Primary Since 2000

Highlighted names became the partys presidential nominee.

Democrats

Our reporters provided real-time updates from New Hampshire and New York.

Katie Glueck, reporting from Manchester, N.H. Feb. 12, 2020

The establishment is divided, and Bernie Sanders is the winner of the New Hampshire primary. Heres our analysis of the results »

Jonathan Martin, reporting from Manchester, N.H. Feb. 12, 2020

Sanders cements his front-runner status, but his narrow margins in IA and NH and the fractured field show how volatile this race is. Heres our story »

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Jonathan Martin, reporting from Manchester, N.H. Feb. 12, 2020

As significant as Sanderss win: the sudden rise of Klobuchar, Buttigiegs continued success and the collapse of Biden and Warren.

Jennifer Medina, in Los Angeles Feb. 11, 2020

And dont forget the Super Tuesday states, where Bloomberg is spending hundreds of millions to take on whoever survives Nevada and South Carolina.

Jennifer Medina, in Los Angeles Feb. 11, 2020

Latinos make up roughly 20% of voting-age residents in Nevada; black voters, 10%. Immigration and health care are likely to be central issues.

The Tasks That Lie Ahead For Eric Adams After Winning Democratic Mayoral Primary

How Conservative, Undeclared NH Voters Could Swing The Primary | NBC News NOW

MANCHESTER, N.H. Embittered Never Trump Republicans tied to former Ohio Gov. John Kasich have secretly schemed to assist Joe Bidens campaign because they think hes the only Democrat who can beat the president and help them get revenge, The Post has learned.

Emails obtained by The Post show that two top staffers from Kasichs failed, 2016 primary campaign and Ohios former GOP chairman, a Kasich ally, were among those involved in efforts to boost support for the former vice president in last weeks botched Iowa caucus and Tuesdays New Hampshire primary.

Funding for the plan came largely from two deep-pocketed Democratic donors former Microsoft president Jon Shirley and his wife, Kimberly whove made maximum contributions to Biden and hosted a fund-raiser for him last year, records also show.

They think Biden is the only candidate who can beat Trump at the general election, said a GOP source familiar with the strategy.

Documents attached to one email show the group planned to identify and target at least 5,000 Democrats from the conservative voter base in each of Iowas four congressional districts, then use that information in suppression, persuasion and GOTV efforts.

That project failed miserably, with Biden coming in a distant fourth place last week.

In the Granite State, only Democrats and undeclared voters can vote in the partys primary.

A senior GOP source called the groups half-baked ideas dumbfounding.

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Campaigning Takes A Negative Turn In Closing Days Of New Hampshire Race

When is the New Hampshire primary?

Polls open at 8 a.m. ET and close, in most places, at 7 p.m. ET. But there are 221 towns in New Hampshire, and they all set their own times. Some scarcely populated towns famously begin voting at midnight to gain attention.

But all polls will be closed by 8 p.m. ET.

When will we see results?

We will start seeing results after 7 p.m. ET for most places, but there will be no calls from the news networks or The Associated Press until at least 8 p.m. ET. At that point, expect the Republican primary to be called for President Trump.

How Do The Delegates Break Down

There are 24 pledged delegates up for grabs in New Hampshire, with nine more unpledged deletes .

The 24 pledged delegates are allocated proportionally by the primary results, but a candidate must meet a 15 percent threshold to receive delegates.

Here’s a further breakdown within those 24 delegates:

There are 16 district level-delegates . They are allocated in proportion to the percentage of the primary vote won in that district by each preference, except candidates falling below a 15 percent threshold do not get any delegates.

Within a district, if no candidate gets to 15 percent, the new threshold is half the percentage of the vote received in that district by the front-runner.

Eight other delegates are allocated proportionally according to the statewide primary vote. The 15 percent threshold applies for those allocations, as well. If no presidential preference reaches 15 percent, the threshold will be half the percentage of the statewide vote received by the front-runner.

Don’t Miss: How Many Democratic Presidents Have Republicans Tried To Impeach

New Hampshire Presidential Primary

The New Hampshire presidential primary is the first in a series of nationwide party primary elections and the second party contest held in the United States every four years as part of the process of choosing the delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions which choose the party nominees for the presidential elections to be held the subsequent November. Although only a few delegates are chosen in the New Hampshire primary, its real importance comes from the massive media coverage it receives . Spurred by the events of the 1968 election, reforms that began with the 1972 election elevated the two states’ importance to the overall election, and began to receive as much media attention as all of the other state contests combined. Examples of this extraordinary coverage have been seen on the campuses of Dartmouth College and Saint Anselm College, as the colleges have held multiple national debates and have attracted media outlets like NPR, Fox News, CNN, NBC, and ABC. The publicity and momentum can be enormous from a decisive win by a frontrunner, or better-than-expected result in the New Hampshire primary. The upset or weak showing by a front-runner changes the calculus of national politics in a matter of hours, as happened in 1952 , 1968 , 1980 , and 2008 .

State Political Party Revenue

See also: State political party revenue and State political party revenue per capita

State political parties typically deposit revenue in separate state and federal accounts in order to comply with state and federal campaign finance laws.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party maintain state affiliates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and select U.S. territories. The following map displays total state political party revenue per capita for the Republican state party affiliates.

Also Check: How Many Democrats And Republicans In The Senate

Can Democrats Sway Wyoming’s Republican Primary Election

In a highly contested Republican primary race for governor of Wyoming, Democratic voters could make a difference.

Heading into Tuesday’s election, state treasurer Mark Gordon and multimillionaire GOP donor Foster Friess are, according to the polls, in a dead heat for the gubernatorial nomination.

The race is so close that some in Wyoming have urged Democrats to take a one-day elephant ride and cast their ballots for Gordon. A group called Switch for Wyoming has has taken on the battle, urging Democrats to switch their party affiliation to help get Gordon on the November ballot.

“Wyoming’s legislature has been on a long march to the extreme right, but we have history electing moderate governors, thoughtful people who, even though we disagree with them often, act as a check on extreme legislation and bad decisions,” the group’s website reads.

The group also urged voters to not “allow a small number of extremists to pick our next governor” and called Gordon the only “moderate” politician on the ballot.

Gordon is the state’s treasurer and became well known for increasing Wyoming’s financial portfolio by $5 billion in five years. But Friess, a political newcomer with no experience as an elected official, has the backing of Donald Trump Jr. and millions of dollars in his campaign war chest.

Turnout In Pivot Counties

The following table shows the number of voters who participated in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic and Republican presidential primaries in Pivot Counties in New Hampshire and the percentage change in raw voter turnout.

Across the three Pivot Counties in New Hampshire, Democratic turnout was up 18.6%. This was slightly more than the Democratic statewide turnout, which went up 18.8%.

Across the three Pivot Counties in New Hampshire, Republican turnout was down 46.4%. This nearly matched the percentage change in the Republican statewide turnout, which was down 46.3%.

Two Pivot Counties had increased Democratic turnout: Hillsborough and Sullivan counties. Sanders was the winner in both counties in both election years.

With an incumbent in the race, all Pivot Counties in New Hampshire saw reduced Republican turnout.

Turnout in New Hampshire Pivot Counties, 2016-2020 Pivot County

Recommended Reading: Do Republicans Or Democrats Give More To Charity

Arent Republicans Voting Today Too

Absolutely. Eleven candidates are running in the New Hampshire Republican primary. But its not much of a contest.

President Trumps most prominent challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, won 1.3% in the Iowa caucuses to Trumps 97.1%.

Former Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois is also on the ballot, but he dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses. Hes since vowed to help elect the eventual Democratic nominee he told CNN hed rather have a socialist in the White House than the current occupant.

John is a special correspondent.

One Of Several Bills Retained By House Election Law Committee For More Work Would Implement Provisional Ballots For Those Without Proof Of Domicile

New Hampshire Democratic primary voting closes

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One of several bills retained by House Election Law Committee for more work would implement provisional ballots for those without proof of domicile

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VOTING BILLS RETAINED. A group of bills whose Republican supporters say are aimed at ensuring that only Granite State residents are eligible to vote in the state were pulled back and retained Wednesday by the GOP majority on the influential House Election Law Committee.

The committee will ostensibly work on the bills in the coming months, make changes and consider them again either later this year or early in 2022. At that point they would then go to the full House for votes.

The Democratic committee minority voted against retaining the bills, preferring to kill them outright, calling the GOP push an effort to disenfranchise and depress college students turnout at elections. But the GOP majority prevailed in a series of 11-9 party line votes, keeping the bills alive.

Among the retained bills was a measure proposed by state Rep. Robert Lynn, a retired state Supreme Court chief justice, to implement provisional ballots in New Hampshire.

Under current law, voters who are unable to show required identification when registering or voting must fill out an affidavit swearing that they are qualified and have 30 days to provide proof that they are domiciled where they say they are.

Also Check: Republican Primary Popular Vote Totals

Why New Hampshires Independents Are So Tough To Pin Down

Every four years, the anticipation grows around how New Hampshires independent voters might vote come primary day. New Hampshire votes the week after the Iowa caucuses, making its primary a critical test for candidates.

Out of the more than 977,000 registered voters in the Granite State, about 413,500 are undeclared to either party, compared to the states 275,252 registered Democrats and 288,524 registered Republicans. Undeclared voters can choose either ballot in a primary and switch their party back to undeclared with their local election officials after theyve voted.

There hasnt been a sudden surge in Republican or Democratic registered voters switching over to undeclared, New Hampshire Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan told me. But because New Hampshire also allows same-day registration, Scanlan said hes expecting to see thousands of new voters at the polls on Election Day.

Most registrations take place on Election Day, he said. It will be in the tens of thousands. We wont know until Election Day.

The data we have on this group shows undeclared voters are certainly not a monolith, and they dont vote as a bloc. Polling data collected from 1999 to 2014 by Smith and former UNH political science professor and pollster David Moore showed that about 40 percent of undeclared voters consistently voted Republican and 45 percent Democratic. That left just 15 percent who could truly be considered independents, voting for candidates of both parties.

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iesika · 7 years

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This is a companion post for my Hannibal fic What The Water Gave Me which is, as far as I know, the only fanfic ever to need a companion post about flood hydrology. On Saturday, May 14, 2011, while Hannibal was shopping in the French Market, the Corps of Engineers opened one quarter of the gates on the Morganza Spillway and flooded about 4,600 square miles of south Louisiana. In places the flooding reached 25 feet. This was in addition to the previous opening of the Bonnet Carré spillway Sgt. Germaine Grant mentioned in chapter 2, which flooded a stretch of land between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans. You might even remember Sgt. Grant telling Jack and Hannibal that they were in a record breaking drought at the time. How, you may be asking. Why? You should be asking. It's insane. The Why is such a big deal it might have actually started the Great Depression, reversed the main political parties of the US, reshaped the racial demographics of America's cities and created a musical genre.

This is the watershed of the Mississippi River. Every bit of water that flows from every bright spot on that map, from rain, drains, toilets, crop irrigation, whatever, eventually makes its way, like the world's grossest funnel, down, more or less, to a single point at Red River Landing, Louisiana, where the Red River meets the rest. Not too south from there, the Atchafalaya river splits away from the Mississippi. Over the last few hundred million years, the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi have wiggled all over the place, as rivers do, and at any given time, which one was the major outlet to the sea has changed. Rivers do a lot of predictable but unpredictable things, but the most predictable thing they do is seek the lowest ground and the easiest path. If there isn't an easy path the river will make one.

In 1927, due to heavy rains all over the watershed, the Mississippi River flooded 27,000 square miles up to 30 feet and displaced well over 600,000 people, mostly in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. Monetary damages were equivalent to about one third of the entire Federal Budget at the time, or, in modern dollars, over a trillion dollars. Crop failures were huge, driving up food prices nationwide. Let me repeat that. 630,000 internally displaced refugees within the US, within the last century. Did you learn about that in school? I took 2 Louisiana History at two different schools, then took three American History classes at a college in the flood zone, and I learned about this because I googled a Randy Newman song in 2005.

200,000 of the displaced people were poor black people from mostly rural areas, most of them one generation removed from slavery. Most of these folks had little to nothing to use to relocate or to live on, so they were herded into refugee camps where they were stuck with nowhere to go and minimal supplies until the water started to recede months later. Racial tensions were sky high, and the racial disparity in aid, rescue and support was extremely clear. As soon as the water was low enough, tens of thousands of displaced black families joined what we now call The Great Migration - they didn't have a home to go back to, so they went to the big cities, both in the south and, for the first time, up north. Anybody you can think of from the classic Chicago blues scene? Probably ended up there after being displaced by this one event. Mahalia Jackson, who I spotlit last chapter, moved to Chicago at this time as a victim of The Great Betrayal (man, the 1920s were Great, huh?)

President Coolidge put Herbert Hoover in charge of managing the camps, where he made a whole lot of promises and ended up president. When he didn’t fulfill any of his promises to the black refugees, the entire black voting block swung, more or less permanently, to the Democrats. Huey P. Long rose to power in Louisiana on a wave of socialist populism and probably would have been president a decade later if he hadn’t been assassinated in the middle of the capitol building. If you don’t know about the Kingfish, look him up, because holy fuck our country was almost really, really different. As for the Great Betrayal I mentioned?

Wealthy (white) businessmen in New Orleans arranged to dynamite a levee in Caernarvon, Louisiana, flooding areas of St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish where tens of thousands of (poorer) people lived and worked. Reconstructions have shown this was pointless and New Orleans would have been fine, because so many levees had already breached in other locations. Basically no one was ever consulted or compensated for loss of property and livelihood. So it's no wonder that, during and after Hurricane Katrina, there was widespread belief that the flood protections had actually been deliberately sabotaged to flood the lower 9th ward and save downtown. People remember when you fuck them over and they never trust you again. Every school I've ever attended would have been underwater during the 1927 flood, but I never learned anything about this, or about how we've stopped that from ever happening again. Sit tight, it's nuts. Prior to 1927 levees were local projects and they were largely homemade by non-engineers. Surely one big pile of dirt is the same as another, right? But levee construction is an art and a science. Alluvial dirt wants to settle; the ground is wet and it wants to move. After the shitshow of the Great Floods, the federal government created the world's largest flood control project. This is what federal governments are for. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, those unsung superheroes, planned and built a carefully planned and, one hopes, carefully maintained series of interconnected levees, dams, floodgates, spillways, canals and wetlands stretching across that whole area in the top image, but mostly along the Missouri, Ohio, Red, and Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers. It's known as the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project (MR&T) The Lower Mississippi and the Atchafalaya Basin in particular got a complete makeover.

We'll start at the very bottom, because it's simplest. The Bonnet Carré spillway was built 12 miles west of New Orleans to divert the Mississippi around the city in case of very high water. This spillway controls what was a natural flood route for as long as we've been keeping records and is opened on a fairly regular basis - every decade or so. This was one of the first parts of the MR&T completed, just four years after the flood. It's a mile and a half long and runs alongside of the river. When it opens, a channel about six miles long is flooded, dumping the river directly into Lake Pontchartrain and the surrounding marshlands to save the more populated areas. Lake Pontchartrain is huge (home of the longest bridge in the world!) and it has a wide opening to the Gulf of Mexico, so it can basically absorb as much water as we could possibly throw at it. Upriver a bit, things are a little more complicated. I'm not going to go super in-depth. There are numerous control structures connecting the Atchafalaya and Mississippi. The biggest and the one most relevant to our story is the Morganza Spillway, located in Pointe Coupee Parish, upriver from Baton Rouge. If the water gets too high, it will overtop and undermine levees, and the force of moving water becomes so great that it would just shred the other existing control structures, even if they are wide open to let the most possible water through. There needs to be another emergency safety valve to take pressure off the system. The Morganza Spillway is about a mile long, and when it's wide open it lets 600,000 cubic feet of water through per second. That's about half the flow of the entire Mississsippi river at moderate flood stage, passing through one man-made structure, under the control of a handful of human beings.

So in the worst possible flooding scenarios, as happened in 1927, in 1973, and in 2011, the ACoE opens a little gap in the weir. They've never opened it all the way - max capacity has never been tested. This is a projection map from 2011 for what the flooding would look like with the system running at one quarter of total capacity (which is the scenario that ended up happening). Because yeah, people live in those areas! The area's also farmed for timber and drilled for oil. There isn't much commercial fishing - that mostly happens in the Gulf - but there's fish farming, including crawfish ponds. Mostly it's protected or semi-protected wetlands occasionally dotted with camps. I'm not sure if that word is in common usage with the same meaning elsewhere, so just in case, a camp is a (usually but not always cheap or rustic) house or structure not intended for full-time residence, where one can stay for access to water or hunting. You actually have to get a lot of surveying and permissions to build anything anywhere on any body of water in south Louisiana, because the balance of flood control and wetland preservation is so important and precarious, so most of the places in this area will have been grandfathered in rather than freshly built. The Morganza Spillway has been opened twice, once in the 70s and once during this fic. There is a huge, eight parish long and wide river moving over land that's been dry or swampy and only sparsely inhabited for 45 years. Think of all the things it might pick up on the way to sea?

#what the water gave me

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh delivered an angry, emotional defense in his opening statement during a Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, denying the sexual assault allegations against him and blasting Democrats for sabotaging his confirmation process.

“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” Kavanaugh said. “The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy.”

The nominee was visibly upset at points during his opening statement, a markedly different tone from his placid interview earlier this week with Fox News. It also departed from the staid prepared remarks Kavanaugh originally submitted to the committee. Indeed, Kavanaugh said no one but he and a few of his law clerks had seen his final opening statement before he began speaking.

Kavanaugh’s testimony, which turned into a full-throated defense of his behavior and professional and personal character, ran about 40 minutes — almost double the length of the opening statement from Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party more than 30 years ago.

Kavanaugh also cited his friendships with women — and the support he has since received from them — in his defense and emphasized his record of hiring and advancing women. “In a letter to this committee, my women law clerks said I was one of the strongest advocates in the federal judiciary for women lawyers,” Kavanaugh said. “And they wrote that the legal profession is fairer and more equal for women lawyers and wrote the legal profession is fairer and more equal because of me.”

Perhaps most striking were Kavanaugh’s attacks on Democrats, who he said opened the pathway for his family to be harassed and set a dangerous precedent. Kavanaugh accused Democrats of using the allegations against him as a last-ditch effort to derail his nomination.

“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record,” Kavanaugh said. “Revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”

“This is a circus,” he continued. “The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades. This grotesque character assassination will dissuade confident and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country, and as we all know, in the political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.”

Here is a rush transcript of Kavanaugh’s opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Chairman, ranking member Feinstein, members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to make my statement. I wrote it myself yesterday afternoon and evening, no one has seen a draft or it except for one of my former law clerks. This is my statement.

Less than two weeks ago Dr. Ford publicly accused me of committing wrongdoing at an event more than 36 years ago when we were both in high I denied the allegation immediately, categorically and unequivocally. All four people allegedly at the event including Dr. Ford’s longtime friend Ms. Keyser have said they recalled no such event.

Her longtime friend Ms. Keyser said under penalty of felony that she does not know me, and does not believe she ever saw me at a party ever. Here is the quote from Ms. Keyser’s attorney’s letter. Quote, “simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh. She has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present with or without Dr. Ford.” End quote. Think about that fact.

The day after the allegation occurred I told this committee that I wanted a hearing as soon as possible to clear my name. I demanded the hearing for the very next day.

Unfortunately, it took the committee ten days to get to this hearing and those ten long days as was predictable and as I predicted my family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional accusations. The ten-day delay has been harmful to me and my family, to the Supreme Court.

When this allegation first arose I welcomed any kind of investigation, Senate, FBI or otherwise. The committee now has conducted a thorough investigation and I’ve cooperated fully. I know that any kind of investigation, Senate, FBI, Montgomery county police, whatever will clear me.

Listen to the people I know. Listen to the people who have known me my whole life. Listen to the people I’ve grown up with and worked with and played with and coached with and dated and taught and gone to games with and had beers with and listen to the witnesses who allegedly were at this event 36 years ago. Listen to Ms. Keyser. She does not know me. I was not at the party described by Dr. Ford.

This confirmation process has become a national disgrace. The constitution gives the senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced advice and consent with search and destroy. Since my nomination in July there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything to block my confirmation.

Shortly after I was nominated, the Democratic Senate leader said he would, quote, “oppose me with everything he’s got.” A Democratic Senator on this committee publicly referred to me as “evil.” Evil. Think about that word, and said that those who supported me were, quote, “complicit in evil.” Another democratic senator on this committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.” A former head of the National Democratic Committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh will threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.”

I understand the passions of the moment, but I would say to those senators, your words have millions of Americans listen carefully to you given comments like those, is it any surprise that people have been willing to do anything to make any physical threat against my family, to send any violent e-mail to my wife, to make any kind of allegations against me and against my friends, to blow me up and take me down.

For decades to come I fear the country will reap the whirlwind. The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at my hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment, but at least it was a good old-fashioned attempt at working. Those efforts didn’t work. When I did at least okay enough at the hearings that it looked like I might actually get confirmed a new tactic was needed. Some of you were lying in wait and had it ready.

This first allegation was held in secret for weeks by a democratic member of this committee and by staff. It would be needed only if you couldn’t take me out on the merit. When it was needed this allegation was unleashed and publicly deployed over Dr. Ford’s wishes. And then — and then as no-doubt was expected if not planned, came a long series of false, last-minute smears designed to scare me and drive me out of the process before any hearing occurred, crazy stuff, gangs, illegitimate children, fights on boats in Rhode Island, all nonsense reported breathlessly and often uncritically by the media. This has destroyed my family and my good name. A good name built up through decades of very hard work and public service at the highest levels of the American government.

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about president trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups. This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades.

This grotesque, character assassination will dissuade confident and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country and as we all know in the political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around. I am an optimistic guy. I always try to be on the sunrise side of the mountain and be optimistic about the day that is coming, but today I have to say that I fear for the future. The last time I was here I told this committee that a federal judge must be independent, not swayed by public or political pressure. I said I was such a judge, and I I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process. You’ve tried hard. You’ve given it your all.

No one can question your efforts and your coordinated and well-funded effort to destroy my good name and destroy my family will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. You may defeat me in the final vote, but you’ll never get me to never. I’m here today to tell the truth. I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone. Not in high school, not in college, not ever. Sexual assault is horrific. One of my closest friends to this day is a woman who was sexually abused and who in the 1990s when we were in our 30s confided in me about the abuse and sought my advice. I was one of the only people she consulted. Allegations of sexual assault must always be taken seriously. Always. Those when make allegations always deserve to be heard. At the same time the person who is the subject of the allegations also deserves to be heard. Due process is a foundation of the American rule of law.

Due process means listening to both sides. As I told you in my hearing three weeks ago, I’m the only child of Martha and Ed Kavanaugh. They’re here today. When I was 10 my mom went to law school and as a lawyers she worked hard and overcame barriers including the workplace sexual harassment that so many women faced at the time and still face today. She became a trailblazer, one of Maryland’s earliest women prosecutors and trial tested. She and my dad taught me the importance of equality and respect for all people and she inspired me to be a lawyer and a judge. Last time I was here I told you that when my mom was a prosecutor and I was in high school she used to practice her closing arguments at the dining room table on my dad and me.

As I told you, her trademark line was use your common sense, what rings true, what rings false. Her trademark line is a good reminder as we sit today some 36 years after an event occur with no corroboration and refuted by the people who were allegedly there. After being in the public arena of 36 years without a hint, a whiff of an allegation like this. And with my nomination to the supreme court was just about to be voted on at a time when I’m called evil by democratic member of this committee, while democratic opponents of my nomination say people will die if I am confirmed. This onslaught of last-minute allegations does not ring true.

I’m not questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time, but I have never done this to her or to anyone. That’s not who I am. It is not who I was. I am innocent of this charge. I intend no ill will to Dr. Ford and her family. My daughter, Liza, said their prayers and little Liza, 10 years old — said to Ashley, we should pray for the woman, a lot of wisdom from a 10-year-old — we mean — we mean no ill will.

First, let’s start with my career. For the last 26 years since 1992, I’ve served in many high-profile and sensitive government positions for which the FBI has investigated my background six separate times. Six separate FBI background investigations over 26 years. All of them after the event alleged here. I’ve been in the public arena and under extreme public scrutiny for decades. In 1992 I worked for the office of solicitor general in the department of justice. In 1993 I clerked on the supreme court for justice Anthony Kennedy.

I spent four years at the independent counsel’s office during the 1990s. That office was the subject of enormous scrutiny from the media. The year of the impeachment of president Clinton our office and I personally were in the middle of intense national media and political spotlight. I and other leading members of Ken Starr’s office were opposition research from head to toe, from birth to the present day.

Recall the people who were exposed that year of 1998 of having engaged in sexual wrongdoing or indiscretions in their past. One person on the left even paid $1 million for people to report evidence of sexual wrongdoing and it worked. It exposed some prominent people. Nothing about me. From 2001 to 2006 I worked for George W. Bush in the white house. As secretary I was by president bush’s side for three years and was entrusted with the nation’s most sensitive secrets. I travelled on air force one all over the country and the world with president bush. I went everywhere with him from Texas to Pakistan, from Alaska to Australia, from Buckingham palace to the Vatican. Three years in the west wing, five and a half years in the white house. I was then nominated to be a judge on the D.C. Circuit. I was thoroughly vetted by the white house, the FBI, the American bar association and this committee. I sat before this committee for two thorough confirmation hearings in 2004 and 2006.

For the past 12 years leading up to my nomination to this job, I’ve served in a very public arena as a federal judge on what is often referred to as the second most important court in the country. I’ve handled some of the most significant and sensitive cases affecting the lives and liberties of the American people. I have been a good judge and for this nomination another FBI background investigation, another bar association investigation, 31 hours of hearings, 65 senator meetings, 1200 written questions, more than all previous supreme court nominees combined. Throughout that entire time, throughout my 53 years and seven months on this Earth until last week, no one ever accused me of any kind of sexual misconduct. No one ever. A lifetime. A lifetime of public service and a lifetime of high-profile public service at the highest levels of American government, and never a hint of anything of this kind, and that’s because nothing of this kind ever happened.

Second, let’s turn to specifics. I categorically and unequivocally deny the allegation against me by Dr. Ford. I never had any sexual or physical encounter of any kind with Dr. Ford. I never attended a gathering like the one Dr. Ford describes in her allegations. I’ve never sexually assaulted Dr. Ford or anyone. Again, I am not questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time, but I’ve never done that to her or to anyone. Dr. Ford’s allegations stems from a party that she alleges occurred during the summer of 1982. 36 years ago.

I was 17 years old, between my junior and senior years of high school at Georgetown prep, a rigorous, all-boys Catholic Jesuit high school in rockville, Maryland. When my friends and I spent time at parties over the weekend it was from all-girls schools from Immaculata, Holy Cross and Dr. Ford did not attend one of those schools. She attended a private school named Holton Arms and she was a year behind me. She and I did not travel in the same social circles. It is possible that we met at some point at some events, although I do not recall that.

To repeat, all of the people identified by Dr. Ford as being present at the party have said they do not remember any such party ever happening importantly, her friend, miss Keyser has not only denied knowledge of the party.

Miss Keyser said under penalty of felony, she does not know me. Does not recall ever being at a party with me ever, and my two male friends who were allegedly there who knew me well have told this committee under penalty of felony that they do not recall any such party and that I never did or would do anything like this.

Dr. Ford’s allegation is not nearly uncorroborated. It is refuted by the very people she says were there including by a longtime friend of hers, refuted. Third, Dr. Ford has said that this event occurred at a house near Columbia country club which is at the corner of Connecticut avenue and Chevy chase, Maryland. In her letter to senator Feinstein, she said that there were four other people at the house, but none of those people nor I lived near Columbia Country Club.

As of the summer of 1982, Dr. Ford was 15 and could not drive she did not live near Columbia Country Club. She said confidently that she had one beer at the party. She did not say how she got to the house in question or how she got home or whose house it was.

Fourth, I’ve submitted to this committee detailed calendars recording my activities in the summer of 1982. Why did I keep calendars? My dad started keeping detailed calendars of his life in 1978. He did so with both a calendar and a diary.

Very organized guy, to put it mildly. Christmas time we’d sit around and he would have old milestone, old weddings and events from his calendars. In ninth grade — in ninth grade in 1980 I started keeping calendars of my own. For me also it’s both a calendar and a diary. I’ve kept such calendars and diaries for the last 38 years. Mine are not as good as my dad’s in some years, and when I was a kid the calendars are about what you would expect from a kid. Some goofy parts to embarrassing parts, but I did have the summer of 1982 documented pretty well.

The event described by Dr. Ford presumably happened on a weekend as I believe everyone worked and had jobs in the Summers, and in any event, a drunken early evening event of the kind she describes presumably happened on a weekend. If it was a weekend, my calendars show that I was out of town almost every weekend night before football training camp started in late August. The only weekend night that I was in D.C. Were Friday, June 4 when I was with my dad at a pro golf tournament. And had my high school achievement test at 8:30 the next morning.

I also was in D.C. On Saturday night August 7th, I was at a small gathering at beck’s’s house in rockville with Matt, Denise, Lori and Jenny. Their names are all listed on my calendar. I won’t use their last names. Lori and Jenny. Their names are all listed on my calendar. I won’t use their last names here and then the weekend of August 20th, I was doing final preparations for football training camp that began on Sunday the 22nd.

As the calendars confirm, that weekend before a brutal football training camp schedule was no time for parties. So let me emphasize this point. If the party described by Dr. Ford happened in the summer of 1982 on a weekend night, my calendar shows all but definitively that I was not there.

During the week days in the summer of 1982, as you can see I was out of town for two weeks in the summer for a trip to the beach with friends and at the legendary five-star basketball camp in Homesdale, Pennsylvania. When I was in town I spent much of my time, working, working out, lifting weight, playing basketball or hanging out and having some beers with friends as we talked about life and football and school and girls.

Some have noticed that I didn’t have church on Sundays on my calendars. I also didn’t list brushing my teeth and for me going to church on Sundays was like brushing my teeth. Automatic. Still is. In the summer of 1981 I worked construction. In the summer of 1982 my job was cutting lawns. I had my own business of sorts. You see some specifics about the lawn cutting listed on the August calendar page when I had the time the last lawn cutting of the summer of various lawns before football training camp.

I played in a lot of summer league basketball games for the Georgetown Prep team at night at Blair high school in silver springs. Men nights I worked out at another guy Tobin’s house — he was a great quarterback on our football team and his dad ran a workout or lifted weights at Georgetown Prep in preparation for the football season.

I attended and watched many sporting, vents as is my habit to this day. The calendars show a few weekday gatherings at friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers, but none of those gatherings included the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified. And as my calendars show I was very precise about listing who was there, very precise in, and keep in mind my calendars were also diaries of sorts, forward looking and backward looking just like my dad’s.

He can see, for example, I crossed out missed workout and the canceled doctor’s appointments and that I listed the precise people who had shown up for certain events. The calendars are obviously not dispositive on their own, but they’re another piece of evidence in the mix for you to consider.

Fifth, Dr. Ford’s allegation is radically inconsistent with my record and my character for my youth to the present day. As students at an all-boys Catholic Jesuit school, many of us became friends and remain friends to this day with students at local catholic all-girl schools. One feature of my life that has remained true to the present day is that I’ve always had a lot of close female friends. I’m not talking about girlfriends. I’m talking about friends who were women. That started in high school. Maybe it’s because I’m an old child and had no sister, but we had no social media or text or e-mail and we talked on the I remember talking almost every night it seemed to my friends Amy or Julie or Kristen or Karen or Suzanne or Moira or Megan or Nicky.

The list goes on. Friends for a lifetime built on a foundation of talking through school and life charting at age 14. Several of those great women are in the seats right behind me today. My friends and I sometimes got together and had parties on weekends, the drinking age was 18 in Maryland for most of my time in high school and was for all of my time in high school. I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer, but I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out and I never sexually assaulted anyone.

There say bright line between drinking beer which I gladly do and which I fully embrace and sexually assaulting someone which is a violent crime. If every American who drinks beer or every American who drank beer in high school is suddenly presumed guilty of sexual assault it would be an ugly new place in this country. I never committed sexual assault program as high school students we sometimes did goofy or stupid things.as high school students we sometimes did goofy or stupid things.

I look back at high school and cringing for some things. For one thing, our yearbook was a disaster. I think some editors and students wanted the yearbook to be some combination of Animal House, Caddyshack and Fast Times at Ridgemont High which were all recent movies at that time. Many of us went along in the yearbook to the point of absurdity. This past week — my friends and I have cringed — when we read about it and talked to each other.

One thing in particular we’re sad about — one of our good — one of our good female friends who we would dance with had her name used on the yearbook page with the term alumnus. That yearbook reference was “Renate Alum” was intended to show affection in that she was one of us. But in this circus, the media’s determines it was related to sex. It was not related to sex. The woman herself noted the media on the record. She and I never had any sexual interaction at all. So sorry to her for that yearbook reference. This may sound a bit trivial given all that we are here for, but one thing I want to try to make sure — sure of in the future to my friendship with her. She was and is a great person.

This is not a topic I ever imagined would come up in a judicial confirmation hearing and I want to give you a full picture of who I was. I never had sexual intercourse or anything close to it during high school or for many years after that and in some crowds I would be outwardly shy about my inexperience. I tried to hide that. I was also inwardly proud of it. For me and the girls who I was friends with, that lack of major rampant sexual activity in high school was a matter of faith and respect and caution.

The committee has a letter from 65 women who knew me in high school. They said that I always treated them with dignity and respect.

That letter came together in one night. Thirty-five years after graduation, while a sexual assault allegation was pending against me in a very fogged and public situation where they knew, they knew they’d be vilified if they defended me. Think about that. They put themselves on the line for me.

Those are some awesome women. I love all of them — you also have a letter from women who knew me in college. Those were varsity athletes. They described that I treated them as friends and equals and supported them in their sports at a time when women’s sports was emerging in the wake of Title IX. I thank all of them for all their texts and their e-mails and their support.

One of those women friends from college, a self-described liberal and feminist sent me a text last night that said, quote, “deep breaths. You’re a good man. A good man. Good man.” A text yesterday from another of those women friends from college said, quote, “Brett, be strong. Pulling for you to my core.” A third text yesterday from yet another of those women I’m friends with from college said, “I’m holding you in the light of God.”

As I said in my opening statement, the last time I was with you, cherish your friends, look out for your friend, lift up your friends, love your friends. I felt that love more over the last two weeks than I ever have in my life. I thank all my friends. I love all my friends.

Throughout my life, I’ve devoted huge efforts to encouraging and from promoting the careers of women. I will put my record up against anyone, male or female. I am proud of the letter from 84 — 84 women when [they] worked with me at the Bush White House from 2001 to 2006 and described me as, quote, “a man of the highest integrity.” Read the op-ed from Sarah Day from Yarmouth, Maine.

She worked outside of president Bush’s office. Here’s what she recently wrote in centralmaine.com. Today she stands by her comment. Quote, Brett was an advocate for young women like me. He encouraged me to take on more responsibility and to feel confident in my role. In fact, during the 2004 Republican national convention Brett gave me the opportunity to help with the preparation and review of the president’s remarks, something I never — something I never would have had the chance to do if he’d not included me, and he didn’t just include me in the work. He made sure I was at Madison square garden to watch the president’s speech instead of back at the hotel watching it on TV. End quote. As a judge since 2006 I’ve had the privilege of hiring four recent law school graduate to serve as my law clerk each year. The law clerks for federal judges are the best and brightest graduates of American law school. They work for one-year terms for judges after law school and then they move on in their careers. For judges, training these young lawyers is an important responsibility. The clerks will become the next generation of American lawyers and leaders, judges and senators. Just after I took the bench in 2006 there was a major New York Times story that the low numbers of women law clerk in the supreme court and federal appeals courts. I took notice and I took action.

A majority of my 48 law clerks over the last 12 years have been women. In a letter to this committee, my women law clerk said I was one of the strongest advocates in the federal judiciary for women lawyers, and they wrote that the legal profession is fairer and more equal for women lawyers and wrote the legal profession is fairer and more equal because of me. In my time on the bench, no federal judge, not a single one in the country, has sent more women law clerks to clerk on the supreme court than I have. Before this allegation arose two weeks ago, I was required to start making certain administrative preparations for my possible transfer to the supreme court just in case I was confirmed.

As part of that, I had to, in essence, contingently hire a first group of four law clerks who could be available to clerk at Supreme Court for me on a moment’s notice. I did so and contingently hired four law clerks. All four women. If confirmed, I’ll be the first justice in the history of the supreme court to have a group of all women law clerks. That is who I am. That is who I was. Over the past 12 years, I’ve taught constitutional law to hundreds of students. Primarily at Harvard law school. While I was hired by then-dean and now-justice Elena Kagan. One of my former women students, a Democrat, testified to this committee that I was an even-handed professor who treats people fairly and with respect. In a letter to this committee, my former students, male and female alike, wrote that I displayed a character that impressed us all.

I love teaching law. Thanks to what some of you on this side of the committee unleashed, I may never be able to teach again. For the past seven year, I’ve coached my two daughters’ basketball teams. You saw many of those girls when they came to my hearing for a couple of hours. You have a letter from the parents of the girls I coach that describe my dedication, commitment, and character. I coach because I know that a girl’s confidence on the basketball court translates into confidence in other aspects of life. I love coaching more than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life, but thanks to what some of you on this side of the committee have unleashed, I may never be able to coach again. I’ve been a judge for 12 years.

I have a long record of service to America and to the constitution. I revere the constitution. I am deeply grateful to president trump for nominating he was so gracious to my family and me on the July night he announced my nomination at the white house. I thank him for his steadfast when I accepted the president’s nomination, Ashley and I knew this process would be challenging. We never expected that it would devolve into this. Explaining this to our daughters has been about the worst experience of our lives. Ashley has been a rock. I thank god every day for Ashley and my family.

We live in a country devoted to due process and the rule of law. That means taking allegations seriously, but if the mere allegation, the mere assertion of an allegation, a refuted allegation from 36 years ago, is enough to destroy a person’s life and career, we will have abandoned the basic principles of fairness and due process that define our legal system in our country. I ask you to judge me by the standard that you would want applied to your father. Your husband. Your brother. Or your son. My family and I intent no ill will toward Dr. Ford or her family, but I swear today under oath before the senate and the nation, before my family and god, I am innocent of this charge.

Original Source -> Read: Brett Kavanaugh’s angry, emotional opening statement

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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melindarowens · 7 years

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“It’s The ‘Russia’, Stupid!”

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It’s another week in Washington and another horror show. This time it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions being grilled by Senators on whether, when, and how he might have met with certain Russians, or any Russian, or someone who might actually know a Russian. In addition to fishing for any inconsistency that could be used to support an accusation of obstruction of justice or perjury – the usual sleazy methodology of politically motivated investigations here – the transparent aim was to further poison the well on any possible initiative to improve ties with Moscow.

The strategy appears to be working. The Russian Embassy in Washington confirms that for the first time since the Russian Federation’s founding the State Department did not send pro forma national day greetings. Perhaps the bureaucrats were afraid they would be tainted and themselves become targets of multiple investigations into «collusion» with the Kremlin. (Luckily, this intrepid Washington analyst has no qualms about such associations.)

Or more likely, they themselves are part of the Russophobic mob undermining the White House. It has been reported that soon after the inauguration Trump sought to open dialogue with the Kremlin and set an early summit with President Vladimir Putin. This produced a hysterical counteraction from the Deep State. As reported by conservative columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan:

«The State Department was tasked with working out the details.

«Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’.

«Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.

«‘It would have been a win-win for Moscow,’ said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own».

So much for constitutional government and the rule of law…

But now it gets even worse. This week Congress moved legislation designed to codify in statute sanctions imposed on Russia by Barack Obama over Ukraine and evidence-free charges of Russian election interference. Provisions for a presidential waiver, which are standard in any sanctions legislation, are unusually narrow. Congressional proponents are clear that their aim is to take the matter out of the president’s hands. Democrats, seemingly devoid of any other policy agenda or ideas, vow to keep banging the Russia drum through the 2018 Congressional elections.

When all is said and done, there are lots of reasons the political class hates Trump. His heresies on immigration and trade are near the top of the list. But make no mistake: for the Deep State and its mainstream media arm, demonizing Russia and Vladimir Putin personally is a dangerous obsession. (There is reason to suspect «Russian collusion» figured in the thinking of a fanatical Leftist’s shooting attack on Republican Congressmen: «The shooter also signed a petition calling for an investigation into Trump-Russia ties, confirming he was radicalized by the mainstream media’s obsession with conspiracy theories about Russia interfering with the election».)

It remains to be seen whether Oliver Stone’s extended interview with Putin on the Showtime network will have any impact. So far the commentary seems to be divided between descriptions of the substance of the discussion and attacks on Stone for talking with such a bad, bad man: «Speaking after the interview, Stone refuted allegations that he became an unwitting messenger of pro-Putin propaganda or of dishonest information given by the president».

With regard to substance, relatively little attention has been accorded in American media to Putin’s flat accusation that U.S. «special services» have supported terrorists, including in Chechnya. Of course anyone paying attention would know that arming jihadists is a standard part of U.S. policy, going back at least to Afghanistan in the 1980s and repeated in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, and today in Syria. Indeed, as early as the 1950s the U.S. had established a very close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist elements as a weapon against Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and Baathists in Syria and Iraq, who Washington thought were a little too cozy with the Soviet Union and far too socialist and secular for the taste of our pals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

There is a real symbiosis between the anti-Russian imperative in American foreign policy and support for radical Islamic elements. It did not end when the Soviet Union and communism collapsed but rather was intensified. This is why Moscow’s constant calls for a common front against terrorism are always rebuffed. Such cooperation doesn’t make any sense for anomenklatura whose number one goal is hostility to Moscow and for whom jihadists are at worst «frienemies» – people who may be troublesome but useful.

We can only imagine how completely different the world would be if the U.S. were to recognize that Russia is a country that in many respects is not that different from the United States or Europe and that we had common interests. But for the U.S. Deep State, that would amount to switching sides in a global conflict, where we see jihadists essentially as «freedom fighters» against a geopolitical adversary. These same clueless «elites» are then puzzled when their carefully nurtured, cuddly, «moderate» jihad terrorists attack us back here at home.

This irrational pattern is at the root of the hostility of American policymakers toward Russia and any prospect of normalizing bilateral ties. In large part, it’s what underlies the «soft coup» being directed against Trump, of which the Sessions pillorying was an episode. (A late report based on unreliable, unverified sources suggests that Special Counsel on the Russia probe, Robert Mueller, is expanding his investigation to include potential obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. Mueller, a close personal friend of ousted FBI Director James Comey, has already packed his team with partisan Democrats.)

Those behind this attempted coup think we can continue to treat Russia as though it were a minor power of the magnitude of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, or Syria, or even Iran. They think if we just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, either the Russians will collapse or back down. They will do everything possible to box Trump in and prevent him from pursuing any path other than the disastrous course laid out by Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama. They can see no other outcome than removing Putin and returning Russia to the condition of a Yeltsin-era vassal state – a term Putin used in the Stone interview – or, better yet, its territorial breakup along the lines suggested by the late Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Will the Oliver Stone interview change any minds? It’s too soon to tell. But if the soft coup against Trump succeeds, it might not matter, since then America could not be considered a self-governing constitutional republic even in a residual sense. We may have already passed our own Rubicon and just don’t know it yet.

source http://capitalisthq.com/its-the-russia-stupid/ from CapitalistHQ http://capitalisthq.blogspot.com/2017/06/its-russia-stupid.html

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everettwilkinson · 7 years

Text

“It’s The ‘Russia’, Stupid!”

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

«The State Department was tasked with working out the details.

«Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’.

«Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.

So much for constitutional government and the rule of law…

from CapitalistHQ.com http://capitalisthq.com/its-the-russia-stupid/

#TrumpNews #CapitalistHQ.com

0 notes

learningrendezvous · 7 years

Text

Law and Society

DR. FEELGOOD: DEALER OR HEALER?

Directed by Eve Marson

The case of Dr. William Hurwitz educates audiences on the complexities involved in opioid painkiller prescriptions.

The story of Dr. William Hurwitz - a preeminent pain specialist sentenced to 25 years in prison for drug trafficking - provides a window into the ethical dilemma of opioid prescriptions. Painkillers give doctors tremendous power to relieve pain, a primary goal of any physician. But this power begets trouble when the same drugs can lead to addiction, abuse and death.

In 2004 Dr. William Hurwitz was convicted of over 50 counts of narcotics distribution and handed a 25-year prison sentence. DR. FEELGOOD traces Dr. Hurwitz's trial and eventual appeal, detailing the events that led to his arrest.

Testimonies from the witnesses in Dr. Hurwitz's case contradict one another - some revere him, while others condemn him. Taken together, their accounts reveal a profile of a compassionate yet flawed doctor. The film, in telling his story, underscores the tension between every patient's right to pain relief and the lawful need for drug control. There could not be a more critical time to spark discussion on the topic, and call for careful thought and action.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10 - 12, College, Adults) / 84 minutes

RETURN, THE

Directed by Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway

After California's "Three Strikes" law was amended, thousands of lifers were suddenly freed, but re-entry presented problems for the lifers, their families and their communities.

In 2012, California amended its "Three Strikes" law--one of the harshest criminal sentencing policies in the country. The passage of Prop. 36 marked the first time in U.S. history that citizens voted to shorten sentences of those currently incarcerated. Within days the reintegration of thousands of "lifers" was underway.

THE RETURN examines this unprecedented reform through the eyes of those on the front lines--prisoners suddenly freed, families turned upside down, reentry providers helping navigate complex transitions, and attorneys and judges wrestling with an untested law. At a moment of reckoning on mass incarceration, what can California's experiment teach the nation?

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 9-12, Adults) / 84 minutes

RULE OF LAW

Directed by Dan Iacovella

RULE OF LAW shares the story of a newly-disabled outlaw in rural Tennessee whose local court case on minor traffic violations evolves into a landmark class action lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court where the rights of 55 million people and the Americans with Disabilities Act itself are at stake. A lawyer from one of the smallest counties in the country represents the outlaw and takes it to the highest court in the land to debate issues of sovereign immunity and due process.

It reveals how questions of civil rights affecting a broad spectrum of people can arise out of the most unlikely sources, how a good lawyer should never ignore any client and should look for constitutional issues in whatever thorny problems his/her clients have, how slow the legal system is, how unresponsive government lawyers can sometimes be and how anyone, no matter what their history, along with a single small-town lawyer can work together to help millions of people.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 47 minutes

UNLOCKING THE CAGE

Director: Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker

Unlocking the Cage follows animal rights lawyer Steven Wise in his unprecedented challenge to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans. Arguing that cognitively complex animals such as chimpanzees, whales, dolphins and elephants have the capacity for limited personhood rights, Steve and his legal team are making history by filing the first lawsuits that seek to transform a chimpanzee from a "thing" with no rights to a "person" with legal protections. Unlocking the Cage captures a monumental shift in our culture, as the public and judicial system show increasing receptiveness to Steve's impassioned arguments. It is an intimate look at a lawsuit that could forever transform our legal system, and one man's lifelong quest to protect "nonhuman" animals.

DVD / 2016 / 91 minutes

1971

Director: Johanna Hamilton

On March 8, 1971, a group of citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, PA, took every file, and shared them with the public. Their actions exposed the FBI's illegal surveillance program of law-abiding Americans. Now, these previously anonymous Americans publicly share their story for the first time.

The FBI, established in 1908, was for 60 years held unaccountable and untouchable until 1971, when The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, as they called themselves, sent the stolen files to journalists at the Washington Post, which published them and shed light on the FBI's widespread abuse of power. These actions exposed COINTELPRO, the FBI's illegal surveillance program that involved the intimidation of law-abiding Americans, and helped lead to the country's first congressional investigation of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The activist-burglars then disappeared into anonymity for forty years. Until now. Never caught, these previously anonymous Americans parents, teachers and citizens publicly reveal themselves for the first time and share their story in the documentary 1971. Using a mix of dramatic re-enactments and candid interviews with all involved, the film vividly brings to life one of the more important, yet relatively unexplored, chapters in modern American history.

DVD / 2015 / 79 minutes

WHEN JUSTICE ISN'T JUST

Director: David Massey

Directed by Oscar-nominated and NAACP Image Award winner David Massey, this dynamic documentary features legal experts, local activists, and law enforcement officers delving into ongoing charges of inequality, unfair practices, and politicized manipulations of America's judicial system. Additionally, the Black Lives Matter movement and citizens nationwide question the staggering number of police shootings of unarmed Black men and women.

DVD / 2015 / 40 minutes

BUYING SEX

Director: Teresa MacInnes and Kent Nason

Buying Sex is a timely examination of the ongoing and global debate about prostitution laws. Would decriminalizing prostitution free sex workers to take more control over their activities, run legal brothels and manage their own business without fear of punishment? Or would it give the buyers of sex (as well as illicit sex-trade business owners) even more power and opportunity to benefit from and possibly exploit the sale of sexual services? This revealing film allows both sides to make their case.

Filmed in Sweden, New Zealand and Canada, Buying Sex introduces sex-consumers ("johns"), sex workers, and policy-makers who, with eye-opening clarity, challenge our pre-conceptions.

Featuring Trisha Baptie, a woman who used to work the streets of Vancouver's downtown and now is an abolitionist and journalist; Janine Benedet, the lawyer for the intervener Women's Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution; Valerie Scott, sex worker and advocate who entered the trade when she was 16 years old, Angel Wolfe, daughter of Brenda Anne Wolfe, who was one of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton, and many others.

DVD / 2013 / 75 minutes

EVERGREEN: THE ROAD TO LEGALIZATION

Director: Riley Morton and Nils Cowan

Evergreen: The Road to Legalization is the definitive feature documentary film on Ballot Initiative 502, which made Washington the first American state to legalize possession of recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older, when it went into effect on December 6, 2012. Evergreen: The Road to Legalization captures this historic time, providing a balanced view of the issues surrounding Initiative 502 by going inside both proponent and opponent camps to see how citizens are working to change cannabis prohibition policy.

This documentary serves as a case study to demonstrate how Washington State citizens have dealt with the complex politics surrounding marijuana prohibition. What are the local, federal and cultural implications of the first U.S. state voting to approve recreational marijuana possession by a 56 percent to 44 percent margin? How did Washington State get a marijuana reform law passed while Proposition 19 failed in California? Why are many medical marijuana patients, dispensaries and care providers strongly opposed to I-502?

Evergreen answers these questions while tracking the behind-the-scenes efforts of both campaigns - from initial grassroots fundraising efforts, to tense exchanges and conflict-filled campaign stops, to the historic vote by Washington state citizens that effectively ended 75 years of cannabis prohibition policy and its future implications.

DVD / 2013 / 86 minutes

COCAINE UNWRAPPED

Directed by Rachel Seifert

Documents the devastating effects of the war on drugs and suggests realistic alternatives.

COCAINE UNWRAPPED tells the story of cocaine: coca farmers in Colombia, drug mules in Ecuadorian prisons, cocaine factories in the Bolivian jungle, dealers on the streets of Mexico, law enforcement officials on the streets of Baltimore -- and the everyday consumers around the dinner tables of the West. It's a story of politics, death, economic and environmental devastation and human suffering, and explores realistic alternatives to the war on drugs.

The film features front line reportage, exclusive access to the political leaders of Latin America, such as Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, as well as revealing interviews with drug czars. Watch this film and you will never think the same way again about the "War on Drugs".

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 83 minutes

IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT

Directed by Marshall Curry

The Academy Award-nominated story of the radicalization of an environmental activist, from his involvement in and later disillusionment with Earth Liberation Front sabotage, to his eventual arrest by the FBI and incarceration as a domestic terrorist.

In December 2005, Daniel McGowan was arrested by Federal agents in a nationwide sweep of radical environmentalists involved with the Earth Liberation Front-- a group the FBI has called America's "number one domestic terrorism threat."

For years, the ELF--operating in separate anonymous cells without any central leadership--had launched spectacular arsons against dozens of businesses they accused of destroying the environment: timber companies, SUV dealerships, wild horse slaughterhouses, and a $12 million ski lodge at Vail, Colorado.

With the arrest of Daniel and thirteen others, the government had cracked what was probably the largest ELF cell in America and brought down the group responsible for the very first ELF arsons in this country.

IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT, directed by Marshall Curry (Street Fight), tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of this ELF cell, by focusing on the transformation and radicalization of one of its members.

Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thriller, the film interweaves a verite chronicle of Daniel on house arrest as he faces life in prison, with a dramatic recounting of the events that led to his involvement with the group. And along the way it asks hard questions about environmentalism, activism, and the way we define terrorism.

Drawing from striking archival footage -- much of it never before seen -- and intimate interviews with ELF members, and with the prosecutor and detective who were chasing them, IF A TREE FALLS explores the tumultuous period from 1995 until early 2001 when environmentalists were clashing with timber companies and law enforcement, and the word "terrorism" had not yet been altered by 9/11.

DVD / 2011 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 85 minutes

CRUDE

Director: Joe Berlinger

Three years in the making, this cinema-verite feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. An inside look at the infamous $27 billion "Amazon Chernobyl" case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking as it examines a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2009 / 105 minutes

IN SEARCH OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

Directed by Judy Jackson

The first film about a crucial new commitment to the international rule of law: the International Criminal Court.

This is the first film about a crucial new commitment to the International Rule of Law-so victims will no long suffer without being heard, and war criminals will be punished.

Sixty years ago, with the Nuremberg charter, the world first said "Never Again." But these proved empty words for the victims of the Cold War years. The Superpowers couldn't agree on a universal code to punish war criminals. Tyrants ruled with impunity.

So the voices of their victims have echoed down through the decades, refusing to be silent, even in death. Joined by relatives who are unable to move on, until they know how their loved ones died. Different languages from different places, but with the same universal theme-begging to be delivered from the torment of living somewhere between life and death. Telling us that they will be able, finally, to rest, when we find out how they died. Insisting we listen.

It is because of these voices that International Justice has been reborn. In 2002 the International Criminal Court was established in The Hague. So far 100 countries have signed on to the Court's mandate. However, the world's remaining superpower, the United States is strongly opposed.

The new Court is already busy. It is investigating crimes against humanity in Darfur. It has issued indictments against leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda who abduct children and force them to fight. And a militia leader from the Democratic Republic of the Congo faces charges of recruiting children as young as 8 to fight for him.

For the first time war criminals are being forced to listen. The victims' voices now haunt them, telling them they will not be silent until justice is done.

DVD (Color) / 2005 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 66 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Law_Society_1704.html

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therightnewsnetwork · 7 years

Text

Nancy Pelosi tries to make Republicans regret Hillary’s loss; Trump offers The Resistance™ a new hero (open thread)

**Written by Doug Powers

Another Sunday is upon us, and with it the weekly free-for-all open thread. A few things to get the ball rolling…

Because this came out of the mouth of Nancy Pelosi, it’s by default most likely a lie, but she’ll say anything to get people to be sorry Hillary lost:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday she would have retired if Hillary Clinton had won the White House in last year’s election.

“If Hillary had won, I was ready to go home,” Pelosi said after her interview at The Monitor Breakfast, hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, in Washington. “It was really shocking that someone like Donald Trump would be President of the United States. We yearn for the day of a Mitt Romney or a George Bush or someone. But anyway, that motivated me to stay now.”

Remember when Pelosi and the Dems spoke glowingly about Bush when he was president and Romney when he was running? Me neither.

In any case, Hillary was found to have blown a big campaign selling point.

*****

Donald Trump seemed more than happy to give The Resistance™ a new hero:

Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, tweeted Saturday that he was fired after refusing to resign as requested by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired,” Bharara wrote on his verified Twitter account Saturday afternoon. “Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life.”

“One hallmark of justice is absolute independence, and that was my touchstone every day that I served,” Bharara later said in a statement. Bharara’s refusal to resign created a stunning public standoff Saturday, as 46 US attorneys across the country were asked to tender their resignations Friday afternoon.

A source told CNN that Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente called Bharara on Saturday to ask if it was true that he was refusing to resign, and Bharara told him yes. Boente then called Bharara back and said Trump was firing him, the source said. […] But unlike the others, the reason Bharara’s sudden dismissal came as a surprise is that the high-profile US attorney had been told after a meeting with Trump in November that he could stay on and felt blindsided by the request for his resignation on Friday, sources told CNN.

Prosecutor Preet Bharara was fired by the attorney general a day after he refused to return a phone call from President Trump, a report alleges.

An assistant to the president of the United States called Bharara’s office Thursday, saying the president wanted to talk, but Bharara refused citing Department of Justice rules, the New York Times reported.

On Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions notified all 46 federal prosecutors, who were appointed by President Obama and still active, to leave. Bharara was one of those asked to resign.

When Bharara got the call Thursday, he informed an aide to Sessions that he wouldn’t be able to talk to the president because of the rules. He then called Trump’s assistant to say the same.

It is unknown what Trump wanted to talk to Bharara about.

Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour envisions big things for Bharara:

And then suddenly there was a great weeping on the Left:

Maybe Dems can change that part of the Constitution while they’re trying to get rid of the Electoral College.

*****

Some in the media are implying that Trump & Attorney General Jeff Sessions firing dozens of Obama-era U.S. attorneys in somehow unprecedented, but they should tell that to Sessions, who was canned by Bill Clinton’s AG in the early 90s:

Bill Clinton fired 93 U.S. attorneys, not that the MSM’s bending over backwards to point that out.

*****

This week’s “compare the election of Trump to 9/11” duty was handled by NBC News political analyst Mark Halperin:

New York Times bestselling author Mark Halperin said the election of President Donald Trump has “convulsed the country” more than any event since World War II, including the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Outside of the Civil War, World War II, and including 9/11, this may be the most cataclysmic event the country has ever seen,” Halperin said on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert Thursday, appearing with collaborator John Heilemann.

“I don’t want to minimize the loss of life in 9/11, and in the wars,” Halperin said. “Obviously that is beyond anything that has happened. But if you think of how this has convulsed the country — More than half of the country that voted against him and is upset about his being president — it’s self inflicted.”

That’s the same Halperin who laughed off the notion of a pro-Hillary media bias in 2015.

*****

Debbie Wasserman Schultz self-awareness status: Still missing:

File that criticism under Takes One to Know One:

Democrats arrived at their nominating convention on Sunday under a cloud of discord as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, abruptly said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

*****

Last but certainly not least, the perils of doing interviews from home:

Have a good Sunday all!

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

from http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/nancy-pelosi-tries-to-make-republicans-regret-hillarys-loss-trump-offers-the-resistance-a-new-hero-open-thread/

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patriotnewsblogger-blog · 7 years

Text

Nancy Pelosi tries to make Republicans regret Hillary’s loss; Trump offers The Resistance™ a new hero (open thread)

New Post has been published on http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/nancy-pelosi-tries-to-make-republicans-regret-hillarys-loss-trump-offers-the-resistance-a-new-hero-open-thread/

Nancy Pelosi tries to make Republicans regret Hillary’s loss; Trump offers The Resistance™ a new hero (open thread)

**Written by Doug Powers

Another Sunday is upon us, and with it the weekly free-for-all open thread. A few things to get the ball rolling…

Because this came out of the mouth of Nancy Pelosi, it’s by default most likely a lie, but she’ll say anything to get people to be sorry Hillary lost:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday she would have retired if Hillary Clinton had won the White House in last year’s election.

Remember when Pelosi and the Dems spoke glowingly about Bush when he was president and Romney when he was running? Me neither.

In any case, Hillary was found to have blown a big campaign selling point.

*****

Donald Trump seemed more than happy to give The Resistance™ a new hero:

Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, tweeted Saturday that he was fired after refusing to resign as requested by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Prosecutor Preet Bharara was fired by the attorney general a day after he refused to return a phone call from President Trump, a report alleges.

On Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions notified all 46 federal prosecutors, who were appointed by President Obama and still active, to leave. Bharara was one of those asked to resign.

When Bharara got the call Thursday, he informed an aide to Sessions that he wouldn’t be able to talk to the president because of the rules. He then called Trump’s assistant to say the same.

It is unknown what Trump wanted to talk to Bharara about.

Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour envisions big things for Bharara:

And then suddenly there was a great weeping on the Left:

Maybe Dems can change that part of the Constitution while they’re trying to get rid of the Electoral College.

*****

Bill Clinton fired 93 U.S. attorneys, not that the MSM’s bending over backwards to point that out.

*****

This week’s “compare the election of Trump to 9/11” duty was handled by NBC News political analyst Mark Halperin:

That’s the same Halperin who laughed off the notion of a pro-Hillary media bias in 2015.

*****

Debbie Wasserman Schultz self-awareness status: Still missing:

File that criticism under Takes One to Know One:

*****

Last but certainly not least, the perils of doing interviews from home:

Have a good Sunday all!

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/nancy-pelosi-tries-to-make-republicans-regret-hillarys-loss-trump-offers-the-resistance-a-new-hero-open-thread/ %cats%

#conservative

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 4 years

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this is an alarmist post

This post might sound alarmist because I don’t know the respectable, non-alarmist way to put this. He’s going full final-days-in-the-Fuhrerbunker. I want to be alarmist. We need to be alarmed.

On one level, I’m pretty sure you know this. You can probably see a vague reference to “what happened in Portland” and know exactly what the writer means. Unidentified little green men in military-style fatigues deployed against peaceful protesters. Protesters kidnapped off the streets in “proactive arrests.” ordered by someone illegally acting as the head of DHS. Journalists attacked. Middle-aged women beaten and tear-gassed. The mayor of Portland tear-gassed. It was, of course, worse than it looked, and only the most telegenic of concurrent power grabs.

But it’s really hard to stay at the appropriate level of alarm for even three hours – and we need to stay there for the next three months. It’s exhausting no matter what, and nearly all of our current information environment makes it even more difficult than it needs to be.

Most of what the mainstream media has to say about the election isn’t reporting so much as it is fanfiction. Characters with familiar names and recognizable faces feature in an alternative universe where “normal” political forces (which were defunct ten years ago) apply. Sniping about “messaging,” pathologically boring lectures about “enthusiasm” – it would be annoying anti-Democratic concern-trolling in a world where a free and fair election could be taken for granted. In the real world of powerful and accelerating anti-democratic threats, it is both dangerous and bizarre, like dumping a fifth of vodka into a Super Soaker and trying to use it to put out a brush fire.

The mainstream conversation is so disorienting that it’s understandable why there are also a fair amount of influential progressive commentators who have burrowed themselves into the reverse narrative. It doesn’t matter what we do, Trump is just going to steal the election anyway; it doesn’t matter if he loses, he’s going to refuse to leave anyway. A subset of these fatalists swing all the way around to conventional Pundit Brain: Trump has already blown up all the rules of democratic politics because Democrats aren’t using the One Weird Trick that would make them good at democratic politics!*

Before jumping down the rabbit hole of whether these narratives are true, it’s important to emphasize that they are not constructive. We are in a crisis. In a crisis, you need to help people understand that something abnormal is happening AND that there is something they can do to make things better. Communicating to people that things are fine, as the mainstream horserace normal politics model does, isn’t helpful, because it helps people rationalize the false but comforting belief that everything is fine. Communicating to people that things are hopeless, as the doom-mongering counternarrative does, is even less helpful. If you’re acting normal about something abnormal, there’s at least the off-chance you’ll get lucky and unwittingly bluff your way through the short- and medium-term. But if you’re constantly getting the message that you’re screwed no matter what, it’s human nature to either a) go into denial and double down on an unproductive response, which is irrational but understandable or b) get cynical and give up, which is an entirely rational response to a situation that actually is hopeless.

Trump is already trying to steal the 2020 election. He has help from the henchmen he has put in charge of important federal agencies and from the white-shoe lifers in the Republican legal establishment. Anything you can imagine he might do, you should assume he has at least considered it. He will consider things that would never even occur to you.

He hasn’t succeeded yet. He can be stopped with overwhelming turnout. We know this because of the 2018 midterms. Autocrats who are successfully smothering a democracy do not allow the opposition party to win partial or full control in regional governments, take over half the federal legislature, and gain a foothold in the presidential line of succession. That’s not how autocracy works. If you come across a commentator who is under the impression that a burgeoning dictatorship just gives away that kind of power for the lulz, consider taking that person’s opinions on the subject with a grain of salt.

Thanks to the 2018 midterms, House Democrats have been able to foil some of Trump’s schemes and warn the public about others. Even with Individual 1’s desperate thrashing at the intelligence agencies, we’re getting a lot more specific information about Russian attacks on the election than we were this time in 2016 from the Obama administration.

One more important thing we learned in 2018: just because Trump would do something, doesn’t mean he will. Here’s the Once and Future Speaker a few weeks after reclaiming her title:

At least Trump “didn’t declare the election illegal,” Pelosi said. “We had a plan for that” — though really, she acknowledged, the only workable plan was “to win big. Had it been four or five seats, he would’ve tried to dismantle it.” In his news conference the day after the midterms, Trump spoke respectfully of Pelosi….

The Spectacularly Failed New York Times buried the lead as usual, but there are a few really important points packed in here. Democrats did, in fact, have a plan for that, which you’re going to need to remind yourself if you try to follow political commentary in the next few months. For whatever reason, a surprising number of supposedly anti-Trump writers are eager to undermine Trump’s opposition with false claims that Democrats are bumbling naifs who in 2020 still haven’t realized that Trump might not respect the results of an election.** This demoralizing premise is, as you can tell from the Wayback Machine link, not true, but for some reason it remains a popular lie, so it’s worth debunking.

More importantly, we didn’t know about the plan until afterward because they didn’t need it. Trump has blinked before, so there’s no reason to assume he won’t blink again. We shouldn’t assume he will do the same thing in 2020 that he did in 2018, because it’s a different situation! Just that people who have assumed Donald Trump will act in a completely different way than he has in the past usually end up with egg on their faces.

My two cents – AND THIS IS JUST MY OPINION SO YOU CAN SKIP IT – is that any kind of post-election autocratic power grab would probably need decisive action from Trump within days, maybe even hours, of polls closing. That, in turn, would require Trump to absorb the narcissistic injury of a loss immediately, which he has been psychologically incapable of doing for the first 74 years of his life. Remember, he didn’t have to come to terms with the curb-stomping he received in the midterms right away. At first he could tell himself that Republicans holding onto the Senate (by the skin of their teeth when they should by all rights have swamped it, but whatever) represented a “split decision” and even a moral victory for him, so he could afford to go into, like, con man autopilot mode and try to charm “Nancy.” Everyone else adjusted to the Democratic victory the next day, and the next night, people got into the streets warning him not to try any bullshit. It was only after bigger districts finished counting and mail-in ballots were counted that it sunk in for him how badly he had lost and what the consequences would be. Then he soothed himself by shutting down the government indefinitely, which he seemed to feel was a display of his power – until “Nancy” pantsed and dog-walked him so he had to slink off and pretend it never happened.

If an election which was more or less as legitimate as the 2016 election (questionable but not Belarus) were held today, I think the most likely result would be a scenario a lot like the midterms: East Coast states make it clear which way the wind is blowing to most people, but Trump goes to bed at 3 AM thinking he’s close enough to fight it out in court. Over the next couple of weeks the mail-in ballots get opened, Miami and Philadelphia finish counting, and the real numbers start penetrating even his toxic bubble. Eventually someone reminds him that his armed Secret Service detail can escort him off the premises no matter what he does, so he loses what little nerve he has and skips Biden’s inauguration to go golfing at Mar a Lago. Or maybe Sochi.

But again, that is not a guarantee or even a prediction. The FACT is that anything can happen in the next three months, and Trump and his goons are putting a lot of effort into ensuring that everyone does happen. I spelled out my opinion of what seems most likely at the moment because it can get really easy to dwell on the worst-case scenario, which leads to fatalism and inaction. The least-bad scenario is actually more plausible than it’s been for the last few years, if we motivate ourselves to get it done. We can’t waste all our time and energy thinking about what he’s going to do, because we need to think about what we’re going to do. Voting is the core issue as always, but it helps to be more concrete.

If your state has early in-person voting, and if you can do so safely, vote in-person as soon as you can. Every state’s vote by mail infrastructure was going to be strained this year before these dirtbags decided to sabotage the postal service. If you can cast your vote early, you can help make the lines a little shorter on Election Day while leaving vote by mail resources for people who need them.

If you are a person who needs vote by mail resources for whatever reason, use them! Request your ballot now. Fill it out and return it as soon as you get it. You might not have to mail it back – your county may have drop boxes, or maybe someone can bring it to the local elections office for you. If that’s a safe option for you, please take advantage of it. If it’s not a safe option, mail your ballot back as soon as possible. You’re not helping anyone from the ICU.

If you and the people you live with are relatively low risk, or if you’ve survived COVID and your health care provider thinks you have immunity for the next few months, consider volunteering as a poll worker. Usually a lot of poll workers are retirees, who are by definition in a high-risk group. If enough of them decide to sit this year out – and that’s the smart, responsible choice – then polling places end up closing, which helps Republican voter suppression by making the lines longer. The more volunteers your area has, the more polls they’ll have open, which makes it that much easier to let people vote quickly and at a safe distance from each other.

This last one isn’t directly about voting, but it’s still pretty important: get used to pushing back on bullshit. There already is another effort to drive down turnout by inundating voters with disinformation. Last time we weren’t ready; this time, we have no excuse.

*Avoiding sources because this stuff is toxic. If you think I’m making this up because you haven’t seen it anywhere, good.

**Look, nobody*** is more sympathetic to The Men and their psychological frailties than me, but seriously, guys, some of you need to log the hell off for a few days.

***For certain non-traditional values of “nobody.”

#democracy #2020 election #authoritarianism

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 3 years

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the voting ends today but the fight almost certainly does not

Republicans are filing increasingly desperate and ridiculous lawsuits trying – emphasis on TRYING – to have votes thrown out because they’re big old losers who know they can’t win legitimately.

If you’re the kind of person who can get into the weeds of federal court filings on elections, you probably already have your hair on fire. If you’re not, I don’t recommend picking up the habit right now. It’s just going to make your head swim. These are so incoherent and meritless that even our corrupt federal judiciary and plenty of conservative state judges have frequently brushed them off. I get the sense that Trump’s lawyers are more hoping to win those cases than trying to win them. What they seem to be trying to do with these lawsuits is some mix of the following dishonest things:

depress turnout by making people feel like he can just have their votes thrown out so why bother;

set something, anything, up on track for the Supreme Court, which Trumpworld is (not unreasonably) confident they have sufficiently corrupted;

create a general sense that there’s some authority other than the voters who get to decide this election.

That is what makes me think Trump’s plan to barricade himself in the White House and tweet out a declaration of victory the first moment Fox News reports a good exit poll for him is only mostly about his pathetic need to self-soothe with an autocratic display. He’s also making one last go-for-broke play for the public narrative. He thinks – again, not unreasonably – that if he says he won, then he’ll get a bunch of “Trump Declares Victory” headlines and chyrons, which puts a thumb on the scale in terms of how people frame any resulting developments in their own minds. It’s not a good strategy, it’s more of a hail Mary, but it’s the only potentially helpful option he’s left for himself.

All of this has, once again, summoned the specter of the 2000 election.

We can’t look one day into the future. But we might be able to prepare ourselves for it if we look about twenty years into the past.

There’s kind of a fable that’s built up around the 2000 Florida recount that Republicans were just tougher and savvier and wanted it more, while Democrats clumsily Ned Starked everything up. It’s important to reject that premise as fundamentally abhorrent. In a functioning democracy, campaign strategy is irrelevant after Election Day, because voters are in charge. The Gore campaign, to its credit, was buying into the basic premise of democracy, and had therefore planned their campaign around trying to win an election fair and square. When you punish or condemn people for that, you are ceding ground to the fascists and agreeing to fight on their terms.

The Bush campaign was just fundamentally not operating from the premise of democracy, but from the premise that elections are merely a weak opening bid from the electorate. Before anyone even knew there would be a recount, they had already gamed out a scenario where they could win even if they lost. The contingency they’d planned for, that struck them as most likely, was actually that Gore would win the Electoral College but Bush would win the popular vote. They planned out a whole pressure campaign to create enough of an uproar to give some friendly Republican state legislatures somewhere just enough of an excuse to award electors to Bush even if their constituents had voted for Gore. That wasn’t the scenario they ended up facing, of course. But when you do those kind of war games, you have to think about what your opponent would do, which means the Bush team was ready to hit the ground running with a whole bunch of things they had been expecting Gore’s campaign to do. The core point of whatever they were going to do was always to create an excuse for the nuclear option of having Republican state legislators send Republican electors to install George W. Bush no matter what their voters wanted.

One major difference between then and now is that generation of Republicans knew what they were doing was abnormal and wrong, so they kept it under wraps. Now they’re so high on their own supply that they brag about it to The Atlantic, because they genuinely don’t realize that people will object and try to stop them if they give up the element of surprise.

In 2000, the nuclear option of state legislatures just ignoring their voters to install Bush was not something the Gore campaign could have reasonably foreseen, and even if they did have an in-house psychic to warn them about it, it’s not something they could have realistically stopped except by winning with the biggest margin possible, which they were already trying to do. In 2020, Republicans are basically trying to run the same play, but against Democrats who very much are as prepared as they could possibly be, and by “Democrats,” I mean Democrats at every level. Inside the campaign, Biden campaign senior adviser Ron Klain ran Gore’s recount effort in Florida, and is therefore the last person to have any illusions about the opposition. Their lawyers are fucking beasts. Outside the campaign, Democratic voters have already voted, dragged their friends out to vote, and are amped for whatever fight tomorrow brings.

And, unlike 2000, any formal government processes are going to have to go through House Speaker Nancy D’Alessandro Pelosi, and honey, she is not having it. Remember, Pelosi has already thwarted not one but two Trump regime connivances to steal elections. In 2018, she successfully deterred any attempt to undermine Democrats’ midterm victory. And with her crisp, digestible, precision strike impeachment strategy, she neutered the HUNTERGAZI plot that Trump had every intention of using to sabotage the election this year. (God only knows what other schemes she headed off by making an example out of the pressure campaign against Zelensky. Any foreign leader or official who might have been tempted to cave under similar pressure by Trump got put on notice that trying to appease him quietly was not going to make their lives any less complicated.) No wonder she felt emboldened to tell the Trumpist wing of the Supreme Court to sit their asses down if they know what’s good for them.

What Democrats – and other small-d democrats and progressives – can do, we’re doing. You need to take heart from that, and brace yourself for a couple of stressful weeks.

Unfortunately, we can’t control everything. We can’t control what Trump will do to seize the narrative, and we can’t do much about how the press responds. And again, I’d point back to 2000 as a cautionary tale. Did you know that most of the networks actually called the race right, and they did it pretty fast? It’s true! Early-ish that night, they called Florida for Gore. And, as a subsequent investigation showed, Gore got more votes in Florida! But the ballot count was tighter than it should have been – a lot of registered voters who were likely to have preferred Gore were kicked off the rolls in a racist purge – so they did a reasonable thing and retracted the initial analysis to say the state was too close to call.

I did say most of the networks. I’ll give you one guess which was the outlier. John Ellis – head of the decision desk (ie, the decision of when to call a race for one candidate or the other) at Fox News and first cousin of candidate George Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush – somehow knew something about the Florida vote count that the Associated Press didn’t. Late that night, as Gore’s numbers were actually ticking up, Ellis called Florida for Bush. (I might’ve been more circumspect making those implications five years ago, but these people have forcefully rejected the benefit of the doubt.) The other networks, embarrassed by the earlier retraction and exhausted after a long night, leapt after Ellis like lemmings in five minutes flat.

This created a narrative that seamlessly dovetailed with the Bush campaign’s evolving strategy: a Bush win was a fait accompli, so why was sore loser Gore insisting on this recount, wasn’t it taking way too long? Of course, the truth was that nobody actually wins an election before the votes are counted, so if Bush really wanted to get this over with, why was he so resistant to having so many votes counted even once?

Because, of course, while Bush’s top campaign people were out in front of the press loftily insisting that this recount was an irrelevant waste of the country’s time and attention, Republican lawyers were down in Florida doing everything they could to run out the clock. Deadline after deadline loomed and then passed with a bunch of Federalist Society hacks badgering and haggling over every single ballot. Said Federalist Society hacks included John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

So legal correspondents and voting rights advocates, unfortunately, aren’t crazy to have their hair on fire about the Supreme Court once again doing what happened next in 2000: the court ordered all the counts to stop until arguments that it scheduled for the day before an arbitrary deadline. Then they handed down a decision that even they knew was so incoherent and indefensible that they said it wasn’t supposed to be used as precedent in any other case, even though the Supreme Court’s job for over two hundred years had been to hand down rulings that lower courts could use as precedent.

(Seriously. Guys. If Doc Brown ever tosses you the keys to his DeLorean, your mission is to go back to 1999 and run Chief Justice Rehnquist over with it. Then – and this is important – back up and run over him again. Twice. Then you can go buy stock in Google or feed Trump to zombie vampire bats or hit up a Borders or whatever.)

If you’re not really familiar with this story, you’re saying “wait, what? Why did people stand for this bullshit?” FAIR QUESTION. There are a lot of reasons, though no excuses. One reason that’s been previously underrated, I guess, is that Bush hadn’t spent the week before the election running around telling everyone who would listen that “what we’re gonna do is, we’re gonna make ourselves a huge pain in the ass while people are trying to count votes, and then we’re gonna whine about, ‘why is it taking so long to count all these votes?’ Heh heh heh.”

If he had … well, I’m pretty sure at least 538 Floridians would have been alarmed enough to make a better choice than they ultimately did.

I always want to be able to share an action item. This time, I can’t. (Unless you can vote but haven’t yet, in which case, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING ON TUMBLR, GET YOUR ASS IN LINE AND STAY THERE.) I don’t know what the world is going to look like six hours from now. It’s entirely possible that there’s a Biden blowout big enough that Trump just gives up and flees the country. But assume we’re not going to get to take the easy way out of this. Get organized and stay fired up. WE RIDE AT DAWN, unless Florida and/or Texas breaks our way by 10:30, in which case, WE DRINK AT 10:31.

#2020 election #2000 election

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