my what a wicked web we weave.....
Wake Up, America! Wake Up! PLEASE!!
- Thread starter Drillher4me
- Start date
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who is in it for themselves?...might want to rethink ..ANOTHER of your stupid fucking statements
MAGA scrambles to repair the Hunter Biden narrative
Instead of publishing the more salacious allegations, conservative media has been more focused on covering alleged suppression of the story.
www.politico.com
interesting read.....and shows what trump/McConnell has done to the country
The Supreme Court Is Begging For a Legitimacy Crisis
The most generous appraisal of life in the Trump years actually dates from 1850, by a writer reflecting on Napoleon, a leader one imagines Donald Trump could readily admire: “There’s a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.”
Are we at the lowest ground? We are close, for sure. And it turns out Ralph Waldo Emerson was right: There is a certain satisfaction. The president may bend the truth and often break it — an average of more than 50 false or misleading claims a day, says The Washington Post —but in some essential ways he exhibits a lack of pretense that is surely a key element of his appeal to supporters.
It was Mitch McConnell who felt compelled to weave a web of hypocritical casuistry to explain why he pushed a vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court days before a presidential election when in February 2016 he blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland on the grounds it was an election year. Trump, if not more honorable, was arguably less insulting when he stated the obvious: Republicans have the votes and there’s no principle at work other than we will do it because we can.
Here’s something Emerson neglected to remind us, however, about a brand of politics that is free of hypocrisy and cant: It is pretty damn frightening. At a minimum, we are now about to find out what it is like when the Supreme Court joins the rest of us on the low ground — liberated from the pretense that it is anything but another arena in the battle for power.
“How many divisions does the Pope have?” Joseph Stalin supposedly asked. The Supreme Court has the same number. Its power, like that of pontiffs, rests on mystique — on faith that its judgments are grounded in procedure, precedent and timeless principles. Mystique, in turn, inevitably requires a measure of artifice.
For a generation, the words and actions of the justices themselves — combined with an infusion of partisanship and ideological warfare into judicial appointments in which both parties are culpable but Republicans more so — have shredded the mystique on which the High Court rests.
It is likely that no pillar of institutional life in America will emerge from the Trump era — whether in January or in 2025 — more dangerously corroded than the judiciary. The Supreme Court is virtually begging for a legitimacy crisis.
Republican-appointed conservatives overrode their supposed preference for deferring to states and for narrow interpretations of their constitutional authority to order an end to vote-counting in Florida — Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a blistering dissent. He warned of the damage the majority had done to public confidence in the Court: “Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
At the time, that might have seemed a bit overwrought. Sure, people get hot in the moment, but then they cool down. Democrats had ash in their mouths but they quickly spit it out. The majesty of the Court was such that even Al Gore, while saying he disagreed with the decision, declared that he would accept it without reservation. He even expressed a wish that the election rancor might prompt Americans into a commitment to find “a new common ground” that, umm, hasn’t quite come to pass.
What would happen today in a Bush v. Gore, after two more decades of contempt-driven politics, in a country that just lived through a summer of often violent racial unrest? What’s more, what should happen? Is it self-evident that Americans should show solemn respect to a Court that decides, with clear ideological and partisan divisions among its members, that while it intervened in Florida to stop vote-counting with the presidency at stake, it has such respect for states that it won’t intervene in Wisconsin to ensure that legal votes are counted? Stevens was not overwrought; he was prescient.
The high-minded, tut-tutting view is that it would be terribly unfortunate if Democrats — were they to gain control of the Senate and the presidency — seek payback for McConnell’s gambit on Coney Barrett by increasing the size of the Court to offset the three justices named by Trump. The tut-tutters are no doubt responsible and right. On the other hand, by the dictates of Trump-McConnell logic Democrats should by all means stack the court to their advantage. There’s nothing in the Constitution that puts the number of justices at nine. As Trump non-hypocritically argues, if you have power you get to do what you want.
At the moment, America’s most appealing hypocrite is Chief Justice John Roberts. He was in a huff when President Barack Obama criticized the justices to their faces at the 2010 State of the Union after the Citizens United decision. Roberts in 2018 also scolded Trump for referring to Trump judges and Obama judges: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Very nice words. But what planet is Roberts on? No one who has watched the recent history of Supreme Court nominations or narrowly divided decisions could possibly believe what he said. Roberts knows this, and arguably is being hypocritical by denying the obvious truth — that the judiciary is infused with politics. Justices often time their retirements — alas they have displayed less precision in timing their deaths — so that presidents of a particular party can nominate their successors. Liberal and conservative justices don’t just disagree on technical matters of constitutional interpretation. These are harnessed to competing visions of society and government’s role in achieving them — just the same as in other political arenas. But in the legal arena the battle for power is supposed to be waged obliquely — within prescribed limits that are partly real but partly artifice. Trump’s violation was to abandon artifice.
But Roberts is one of the most interesting, and possibly consequential figures, in contemporary life because he has the courage of his hypocrisy. He is committed enough to preserving the institutional mystique of the Court as non-partisan arbiter that he has incurred the wrath of one-time conservative allies. He likely trimmed his own views and signed on to opinions that he doesn’t wholly believe on such questions as the Affordable Care Act to avoid letting the Court slip further into political flames. Although he signed on to the recent Wisconsin decision, he is probably praying that the vote there is not close enough for the decision on mail-in ballots to have any consequence.
Some progressive activists actually hope that Roberts will stop trying so hard to keep all the plates up in the air. Just let Trump’s and McConnell’s logic play out. A conservative Court will strike down Roe v. Wade and Obamacare — and then let the electoral backlash on behalf of progressives begin. But this course would come with real human consequences, not just political ones, and likely paid disproportionately by less-advantaged people without the ability to get health insurance or travel to states that allow abortion-rights
When Roberts sermonizes about independent judges and a nonpartisan judiciary, he is demonstrating the old adage that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. He isn’t describing the reality of the judiciary as it is, or perhaps even as it will ever be, but he is describing an ideal that people should at least try to approximate. It is dangerous when a democracy lets go of hypocrisy altogether.
what was once a highly respected arm of government is now just another partial right wing part of government
The Supreme Court Is Begging For a Legitimacy Crisis
The most generous appraisal of life in the Trump years actually dates from 1850, by a writer reflecting on Napoleon, a leader one imagines Donald Trump could readily admire: “There’s a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.”
Are we at the lowest ground? We are close, for sure. And it turns out Ralph Waldo Emerson was right: There is a certain satisfaction. The president may bend the truth and often break it — an average of more than 50 false or misleading claims a day, says The Washington Post —but in some essential ways he exhibits a lack of pretense that is surely a key element of his appeal to supporters.
It was Mitch McConnell who felt compelled to weave a web of hypocritical casuistry to explain why he pushed a vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court days before a presidential election when in February 2016 he blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland on the grounds it was an election year. Trump, if not more honorable, was arguably less insulting when he stated the obvious: Republicans have the votes and there’s no principle at work other than we will do it because we can.
Here’s something Emerson neglected to remind us, however, about a brand of politics that is free of hypocrisy and cant: It is pretty damn frightening. At a minimum, we are now about to find out what it is like when the Supreme Court joins the rest of us on the low ground — liberated from the pretense that it is anything but another arena in the battle for power.
“How many divisions does the Pope have?” Joseph Stalin supposedly asked. The Supreme Court has the same number. Its power, like that of pontiffs, rests on mystique — on faith that its judgments are grounded in procedure, precedent and timeless principles. Mystique, in turn, inevitably requires a measure of artifice.
For a generation, the words and actions of the justices themselves — combined with an infusion of partisanship and ideological warfare into judicial appointments in which both parties are culpable but Republicans more so — have shredded the mystique on which the High Court rests.
It is likely that no pillar of institutional life in America will emerge from the Trump era — whether in January or in 2025 — more dangerously corroded than the judiciary. The Supreme Court is virtually begging for a legitimacy crisis.
Republican-appointed conservatives overrode their supposed preference for deferring to states and for narrow interpretations of their constitutional authority to order an end to vote-counting in Florida — Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a blistering dissent. He warned of the damage the majority had done to public confidence in the Court: “Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
At the time, that might have seemed a bit overwrought. Sure, people get hot in the moment, but then they cool down. Democrats had ash in their mouths but they quickly spit it out. The majesty of the Court was such that even Al Gore, while saying he disagreed with the decision, declared that he would accept it without reservation. He even expressed a wish that the election rancor might prompt Americans into a commitment to find “a new common ground” that, umm, hasn’t quite come to pass.
What would happen today in a Bush v. Gore, after two more decades of contempt-driven politics, in a country that just lived through a summer of often violent racial unrest? What’s more, what should happen? Is it self-evident that Americans should show solemn respect to a Court that decides, with clear ideological and partisan divisions among its members, that while it intervened in Florida to stop vote-counting with the presidency at stake, it has such respect for states that it won’t intervene in Wisconsin to ensure that legal votes are counted? Stevens was not overwrought; he was prescient.
The high-minded, tut-tutting view is that it would be terribly unfortunate if Democrats — were they to gain control of the Senate and the presidency — seek payback for McConnell’s gambit on Coney Barrett by increasing the size of the Court to offset the three justices named by Trump. The tut-tutters are no doubt responsible and right. On the other hand, by the dictates of Trump-McConnell logic Democrats should by all means stack the court to their advantage. There’s nothing in the Constitution that puts the number of justices at nine. As Trump non-hypocritically argues, if you have power you get to do what you want.
At the moment, America’s most appealing hypocrite is Chief Justice John Roberts. He was in a huff when President Barack Obama criticized the justices to their faces at the 2010 State of the Union after the Citizens United decision. Roberts in 2018 also scolded Trump for referring to Trump judges and Obama judges: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Very nice words. But what planet is Roberts on? No one who has watched the recent history of Supreme Court nominations or narrowly divided decisions could possibly believe what he said. Roberts knows this, and arguably is being hypocritical by denying the obvious truth — that the judiciary is infused with politics. Justices often time their retirements — alas they have displayed less precision in timing their deaths — so that presidents of a particular party can nominate their successors. Liberal and conservative justices don’t just disagree on technical matters of constitutional interpretation. These are harnessed to competing visions of society and government’s role in achieving them — just the same as in other political arenas. But in the legal arena the battle for power is supposed to be waged obliquely — within prescribed limits that are partly real but partly artifice. Trump’s violation was to abandon artifice.
But Roberts is one of the most interesting, and possibly consequential figures, in contemporary life because he has the courage of his hypocrisy. He is committed enough to preserving the institutional mystique of the Court as non-partisan arbiter that he has incurred the wrath of one-time conservative allies. He likely trimmed his own views and signed on to opinions that he doesn’t wholly believe on such questions as the Affordable Care Act to avoid letting the Court slip further into political flames. Although he signed on to the recent Wisconsin decision, he is probably praying that the vote there is not close enough for the decision on mail-in ballots to have any consequence.
Some progressive activists actually hope that Roberts will stop trying so hard to keep all the plates up in the air. Just let Trump’s and McConnell’s logic play out. A conservative Court will strike down Roe v. Wade and Obamacare — and then let the electoral backlash on behalf of progressives begin. But this course would come with real human consequences, not just political ones, and likely paid disproportionately by less-advantaged people without the ability to get health insurance or travel to states that allow abortion-rights
When Roberts sermonizes about independent judges and a nonpartisan judiciary, he is demonstrating the old adage that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. He isn’t describing the reality of the judiciary as it is, or perhaps even as it will ever be, but he is describing an ideal that people should at least try to approximate. It is dangerous when a democracy lets go of hypocrisy altogether.
what was once a highly respected arm of government is now just another partial right wing part of government
this is why this IS the trump virus!
Officials in Trump's administration say, despite public denial, the president is actually pushing for a herd immunity strategy for COVID-19
Three senior health officials told The Daily Beast that the administration is taking the step to push that strategy into policy despite public health experts and doctors warning that the strategy would result in many more people getting sick and dying.
Public health officials have repeatedly said that a herd immunity approach would be dangerous and potentially catastrophic.
"This is simply wrong," Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said on Twitter on Monday. "Herd immunity is not a strategy or a solution. It is surrender to a preventable virus."
One source told The Daily Beast that while the administration has been careful not to use the term "herd immunity," their policy efforts focused on the idea that vulnerable Americans should be protected while everyone else is able to get exposed and potentially infected
Officials in Trump's administration say, despite public denial, the president is actually pushing for a herd immunity strategy for COVID-19
- Public health officials have repeatedly said the approach would cost thousands of unnecessary infections and deaths.
- Herd immunity is when a population has enough people who are immune to a virus it slows the spread of transmission.
Three senior health officials told The Daily Beast that the administration is taking the step to push that strategy into policy despite public health experts and doctors warning that the strategy would result in many more people getting sick and dying.
Public health officials have repeatedly said that a herd immunity approach would be dangerous and potentially catastrophic.
"This is simply wrong," Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said on Twitter on Monday. "Herd immunity is not a strategy or a solution. It is surrender to a preventable virus."
One source told The Daily Beast that while the administration has been careful not to use the term "herd immunity," their policy efforts focused on the idea that vulnerable Americans should be protected while everyone else is able to get exposed and potentially infected
Why Trump needs to suppress the vote to win
Donald Trump won the presidency with 46 percent of the popular vote. His approval rating, according to Gallup, has never hit 50 percent. He remains under 50 percent in national polling averages.
The president’s inability to capture a majority of support sheds light on his extraordinary attempts to limit the number of votes cast across the battleground state map — a massive campaign-within-a-campaign to maximize Trump’s chances of winning a contest in which he’s all but certain to earn less than 50 percent of the vote.
In Philadelphia, his campaign is videotaping voters as they return ballots. In Nevada, it’s suing to ******* elections officials in Nevada’s Democratic-heavy Clark County to more rigorously examine ballot signatures for discrepancies that could disqualify them. The Trump campaign has sued to prevent the expanded use of ballot drop boxes in Ohio, sought to shoot down an attempt to expand absentee ballot access in New Hampshire and tried to intervene against a lawsuit brought by members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona which sought to allow ballots received from reservations after Election Day because of mail delays. And that’s just a few of its efforts.
Never before in modern presidential politics has a candidate been so reliant on wide-scale efforts to depress the vote as Trump.
“What we have seen this year which is completely unprecedented … is a concerted national Republican effort across the country in every one of the states that has had a legal battle to make it harder for citizens to vote,” said Trevor Potter, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission who served as general counsel to Republican John McCain’s two presidential campaigns. “There just has been this unrelenting Republican attack on making it easier to vote.”
Potter, who now heads the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, added, “It puzzles me … I’ve never worked for a Republican candidate who thought it was a good idea to make it hard for people to vote.”
For Trump, however, the math makes sense. In 2016, he won Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — five of this year’s most important swing states — with under 50 percent of the vote. In two others, Georgia and North Carolina, he captured exactly half the votes. Having failed to expand his base beyond a committed — and sizable — core in his first term, the president stands to gain from a diminished turnout, particularly among voters of color.
Elections have long been marred by legal and illegal forms of voter suppression. But the coronavirus — and Trump’s baseless warnings about widespread voter fraud — shifted a once-ancillary feature of campaigns into overdrive. Democrats pushed to ease voting rules amid the pandemic, and Trump pushed back.
It wasn’t just in court, either. For more than three decades, the Republican National Committee had been hamstrung by a consent decree limiting the RNC’s ability challenge voters’ qualifications at the polls, after the committee was accused of efforts to discourage African Americans from voting. After the order was lifted in 2018, Trump and the RNC began assembling a massive poll-watching operation. And Trump is heavily invested in its success.
Outraged after a court in Pennsylvania rejected litigation to allow poll watchers at satellite elections offices, Trump wrote on Twitter late Sunday night, “How terrible is this? We are just seeking a fair vote count. This can only lead to very bad things. Bad intentions much??? Disgraceful!!!”
On Tuesday morning, he tweeted, “Philadelpiha [sic] MUST HAVE POLLWATCHERS!”
The RNC and the Trump campaign bristle at the idea that they are engaging in voter suppression or that there are strategic motivations behind their actions. They frame it as resistance to a Democratic assault on election integrity.
By May — fully six months before Election Day — the Trump campaign and the RNC had committed at least $20 million to legal efforts they cast as necessary to maintain voting safeguards and an orderly election.
Nick Trainer, the Trump campaign’s director of battleground strategy, called it “the height of hypocrisy that Democrats call our election transparency efforts ‘voter suppression’ — they’re the ones who scared voters away from the polls for months.”
Courts have been resistant to Republicans' claims about voter fraud in cases to restrict voting, if not outright rejecting them. But Republicans have found victories in rolling back Democratic-initiated changes on two principles: That federal courts should not change election laws close to the election — also known as the Purcell Principle — and, increasingly, that the judiciary should defer to state legislatures.
Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate a lower court's order that extended the ballot return deadline in the battleground state of Wisconsin, meaning ballots would be due by Election Day.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at University of California Irvine School of Law, said “trying to make voting harder during a pandemic is pretty tough to justify,” suggesting instead that “the Trump wing of the party thinks keeping the electorate smaller helps Trump.”
The effect is often to disadvantage Democratic-leaning constituencies. In swing state Florida, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature slapped additional restrictions on felons trying to register to vote after voters in 2018 approved a measure designed to restore most felons’ voting rights.
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott limited ballot drop-off sites to one in each county, a measure with outsized effects on the most heavily populated — and more Democratic — areas like Harris County, which includes Houston.
And then there is what’s coming on Election Day. Following Trump’s call in his first debate with Biden for “my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully,” some far-right groups have said they will be out monitoring polls. Last week in Minnesota, a company that had been recruiting former Special Operations members to guard polling places backed off after the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, opened an investigation.
Recruiting volunteers for his Election Day operations, Trump calls what he’s building an “Army for Trump.”
“They’re open about it,” said Stuart Stevens, who was Mitt Romney’s chief strategist in 2012 and who is now working against Trump’s reelection. “They’re not even pretending not to rely on voter suppression.”
Every politician understands the benefit of his or her opponents’ supporters turning out in lower numbers. But Trump is the rare candidate who has openly expressed the value of addition by subtraction. Shortly after the 2016 election, Trump acknowledged in a private meeting that lower Black turnout that year benefited him, saying “it was great.”
Trump’s public comments about the electoral system in the years since have been no more encouraging for voting rights activists. He has repeatedly asserted that voter fraud is rampant and that the election will be “rigged,” despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. That is significant because there is evidence that lowering trust in the electoral system itself depresses turnout.
Benjamin Ginsberg, a nationally recognized elections lawyer who has represented past Republican presidential nominees, said it is Trump’s language that makes his approach to voting unique.
“What’s different about this election is the president’s rhetoric,” he said. “We’ve never had a president who has said our elections are fraudulent or rigged, and based on all the years I was doing Election Day operations, there’s just no proof to support that.”
Ginsberg said, “The real problem is that fraud and suppression has become part of each party’s get out the vote operation,” noting that such rhetoric could be an animating factor for the bases of each party, but could depress turnout among low propensity voters.
It is not clear that the GOP’s efforts to reduce turnout will work. Early votes have surged past 75 million, according to the United States Elections Project, and Democrats have used concerns about voter suppression as a tool to motivate voters.
Still, Democrats remain wary of the possible effects of Trump’s efforts to shrink the electorate in his favor. In a memo circulating among Democrats late last week, one party strategist described Trump’s narrow path to an Electoral College victory as relying on “a surge in support from voters who skipped 2016 and the midterms and a substantial relative depression in Democratic turnout.” Among reasons for concern, the strategist said, “the scale and scope of the Trump campaign’s unprecedented voter suppression activities.”
“It’s the only way they can win or at least come close to winning,” said Andrew Feldman, a Democratic strategist in Washington. “We’ve seen them continuously try legal means — however unfair or grotesque the legal means are — that are nothing short of voter suppression.”
While Republicans are trying to limit ballot access, Democrats are in an equally furious effort to expand it — and to answer Trump’s poll-watching effort with a counterforce of their own. And Republicans say Democrats brought many of this year’s legal fights on themselves.
“Democrats in a lot of states tried to change the rules that governed an election 90 days before an election,” said Trainer.
Poll watchers, he said, “will be trained to ensure all rules are applied equally, all valid ballots are counted, and all Democrat rule breaking is called out — and if fouls are called, we’ll go to court to enforce the laws, as rightfully written by state legislatures, to protect every voter’s right to vote.”
Continue Reading
Holds true for any republican...if people get out and vote....the majority of the right would not get into office
Donald Trump won the presidency with 46 percent of the popular vote. His approval rating, according to Gallup, has never hit 50 percent. He remains under 50 percent in national polling averages.
The president’s inability to capture a majority of support sheds light on his extraordinary attempts to limit the number of votes cast across the battleground state map — a massive campaign-within-a-campaign to maximize Trump’s chances of winning a contest in which he’s all but certain to earn less than 50 percent of the vote.
In Philadelphia, his campaign is videotaping voters as they return ballots. In Nevada, it’s suing to ******* elections officials in Nevada’s Democratic-heavy Clark County to more rigorously examine ballot signatures for discrepancies that could disqualify them. The Trump campaign has sued to prevent the expanded use of ballot drop boxes in Ohio, sought to shoot down an attempt to expand absentee ballot access in New Hampshire and tried to intervene against a lawsuit brought by members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona which sought to allow ballots received from reservations after Election Day because of mail delays. And that’s just a few of its efforts.
Never before in modern presidential politics has a candidate been so reliant on wide-scale efforts to depress the vote as Trump.
“What we have seen this year which is completely unprecedented … is a concerted national Republican effort across the country in every one of the states that has had a legal battle to make it harder for citizens to vote,” said Trevor Potter, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission who served as general counsel to Republican John McCain’s two presidential campaigns. “There just has been this unrelenting Republican attack on making it easier to vote.”
Potter, who now heads the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, added, “It puzzles me … I’ve never worked for a Republican candidate who thought it was a good idea to make it hard for people to vote.”
For Trump, however, the math makes sense. In 2016, he won Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — five of this year’s most important swing states — with under 50 percent of the vote. In two others, Georgia and North Carolina, he captured exactly half the votes. Having failed to expand his base beyond a committed — and sizable — core in his first term, the president stands to gain from a diminished turnout, particularly among voters of color.
Elections have long been marred by legal and illegal forms of voter suppression. But the coronavirus — and Trump’s baseless warnings about widespread voter fraud — shifted a once-ancillary feature of campaigns into overdrive. Democrats pushed to ease voting rules amid the pandemic, and Trump pushed back.
It wasn’t just in court, either. For more than three decades, the Republican National Committee had been hamstrung by a consent decree limiting the RNC’s ability challenge voters’ qualifications at the polls, after the committee was accused of efforts to discourage African Americans from voting. After the order was lifted in 2018, Trump and the RNC began assembling a massive poll-watching operation. And Trump is heavily invested in its success.
Outraged after a court in Pennsylvania rejected litigation to allow poll watchers at satellite elections offices, Trump wrote on Twitter late Sunday night, “How terrible is this? We are just seeking a fair vote count. This can only lead to very bad things. Bad intentions much??? Disgraceful!!!”
On Tuesday morning, he tweeted, “Philadelpiha [sic] MUST HAVE POLLWATCHERS!”
The RNC and the Trump campaign bristle at the idea that they are engaging in voter suppression or that there are strategic motivations behind their actions. They frame it as resistance to a Democratic assault on election integrity.
By May — fully six months before Election Day — the Trump campaign and the RNC had committed at least $20 million to legal efforts they cast as necessary to maintain voting safeguards and an orderly election.
Nick Trainer, the Trump campaign’s director of battleground strategy, called it “the height of hypocrisy that Democrats call our election transparency efforts ‘voter suppression’ — they’re the ones who scared voters away from the polls for months.”
Courts have been resistant to Republicans' claims about voter fraud in cases to restrict voting, if not outright rejecting them. But Republicans have found victories in rolling back Democratic-initiated changes on two principles: That federal courts should not change election laws close to the election — also known as the Purcell Principle — and, increasingly, that the judiciary should defer to state legislatures.
Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate a lower court's order that extended the ballot return deadline in the battleground state of Wisconsin, meaning ballots would be due by Election Day.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at University of California Irvine School of Law, said “trying to make voting harder during a pandemic is pretty tough to justify,” suggesting instead that “the Trump wing of the party thinks keeping the electorate smaller helps Trump.”
The effect is often to disadvantage Democratic-leaning constituencies. In swing state Florida, the state’s Republican-controlled legislature slapped additional restrictions on felons trying to register to vote after voters in 2018 approved a measure designed to restore most felons’ voting rights.
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott limited ballot drop-off sites to one in each county, a measure with outsized effects on the most heavily populated — and more Democratic — areas like Harris County, which includes Houston.
And then there is what’s coming on Election Day. Following Trump’s call in his first debate with Biden for “my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully,” some far-right groups have said they will be out monitoring polls. Last week in Minnesota, a company that had been recruiting former Special Operations members to guard polling places backed off after the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, opened an investigation.
Recruiting volunteers for his Election Day operations, Trump calls what he’s building an “Army for Trump.”
“They’re open about it,” said Stuart Stevens, who was Mitt Romney’s chief strategist in 2012 and who is now working against Trump’s reelection. “They’re not even pretending not to rely on voter suppression.”
Every politician understands the benefit of his or her opponents’ supporters turning out in lower numbers. But Trump is the rare candidate who has openly expressed the value of addition by subtraction. Shortly after the 2016 election, Trump acknowledged in a private meeting that lower Black turnout that year benefited him, saying “it was great.”
Trump’s public comments about the electoral system in the years since have been no more encouraging for voting rights activists. He has repeatedly asserted that voter fraud is rampant and that the election will be “rigged,” despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. That is significant because there is evidence that lowering trust in the electoral system itself depresses turnout.
Benjamin Ginsberg, a nationally recognized elections lawyer who has represented past Republican presidential nominees, said it is Trump’s language that makes his approach to voting unique.
“What’s different about this election is the president’s rhetoric,” he said. “We’ve never had a president who has said our elections are fraudulent or rigged, and based on all the years I was doing Election Day operations, there’s just no proof to support that.”
Ginsberg said, “The real problem is that fraud and suppression has become part of each party’s get out the vote operation,” noting that such rhetoric could be an animating factor for the bases of each party, but could depress turnout among low propensity voters.
It is not clear that the GOP’s efforts to reduce turnout will work. Early votes have surged past 75 million, according to the United States Elections Project, and Democrats have used concerns about voter suppression as a tool to motivate voters.
Still, Democrats remain wary of the possible effects of Trump’s efforts to shrink the electorate in his favor. In a memo circulating among Democrats late last week, one party strategist described Trump’s narrow path to an Electoral College victory as relying on “a surge in support from voters who skipped 2016 and the midterms and a substantial relative depression in Democratic turnout.” Among reasons for concern, the strategist said, “the scale and scope of the Trump campaign’s unprecedented voter suppression activities.”
“It’s the only way they can win or at least come close to winning,” said Andrew Feldman, a Democratic strategist in Washington. “We’ve seen them continuously try legal means — however unfair or grotesque the legal means are — that are nothing short of voter suppression.”
While Republicans are trying to limit ballot access, Democrats are in an equally furious effort to expand it — and to answer Trump’s poll-watching effort with a counterforce of their own. And Republicans say Democrats brought many of this year’s legal fights on themselves.
“Democrats in a lot of states tried to change the rules that governed an election 90 days before an election,” said Trainer.
Poll watchers, he said, “will be trained to ensure all rules are applied equally, all valid ballots are counted, and all Democrat rule breaking is called out — and if fouls are called, we’ll go to court to enforce the laws, as rightfully written by state legislatures, to protect every voter’s right to vote.”
Continue Reading
Holds true for any republican...if people get out and vote....the majority of the right would not get into office
MAGA scrambles to repair the Hunter Biden narrative
Instead of publishing the more salacious allegations, conservative media has been more focused on covering alleged suppression of the story.
Well then, if you dont have a suit case to pack and get the hell out of here I'll buy you one!
p.s. at the nearest dollar store!
Very well written and, may I add, I totally agree with!
Be careful you might accidentally read something you didn't know or didn't think of, and in a vulnerable moment, you might actually consider it in good faith!
That would be a huge tragedy.
White supremacists facing charges after allegedly ...
https://www.wxyz.com/news/white-supremacists...Founded in 2018, The Base is a White supremacy organization that openly advocates for violence and criminal acts against the U.S., and purports to be training for a race war to establish White …
White supremacists facing charges after allegedly ...
https://news.yahoo.com/white-supremacists-facing...White supremacists facing charges after allegedly terrorizing family in Dexter. ... 2020. The self-proclaimed leader and associate of a national white supremacist group are now facing felony charges. Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we ...
Email exchange from an old friend whom I haven't communicated with in several years:
The more the media and DC hate Trump and attack him, the more I like him. Just a simple logic question:
Everyone knows America is on the wrong track, we are in bad condition all the way around, and have been for decades.
Our Politicians have been more than happy to put us on this destructive path and keep us there, and if these politicians are attacking Trump, you have to ask yourself "why would that be?"
The answer has to be because he is not playing "their" game, because if he was, they would love him.
The more he destroys them, the more I like him. I hate them scumbags that are enriching themselves while they sell us down the river.
I will never forgive that scab Hillary for what she did to our guys in Benghazi - I see it as she just sacrificed them, that makes me sick.
The more the media and DC hate Trump and attack him, the more I like him. Just a simple logic question:
Everyone knows America is on the wrong track, we are in bad condition all the way around, and have been for decades.
Our Politicians have been more than happy to put us on this destructive path and keep us there, and if these politicians are attacking Trump, you have to ask yourself "why would that be?"
The answer has to be because he is not playing "their" game, because if he was, they would love him.
The more he destroys them, the more I like him. I hate them scumbags that are enriching themselves while they sell us down the river.
I will never forgive that scab Hillary for what she did to our guys in Benghazi - I see it as she just sacrificed them, that makes me sick.
Benghazi? Really?
People are still on that? How many millions of dollars and months of time did the Republican congress waste on that witch hunt again?
And right-wingers get mad when school shootings get "politicized", damn.
People are still on that? How many millions of dollars and months of time did the Republican congress waste on that witch hunt again?
And right-wingers get mad when school shootings get "politicized", damn.
Lies and deceit....it is all he has...
4 hours ago · There is an epidemic among President Trump and his allies when it comes to misstating or bungling coronavirus data, but few have butchered it as badly as Donald Trump Jr. just did. Trump Jr …
2 hours ago · As coronavirus deaths in the US approach 1,000 a day in the current record surge of infections, Donald Trump and his *******, Don Jr, appear intent on publicly disputing the lethality of …
Explaining Donald Trump Jr.'s embarrassing claim about the ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/30/...4 hours ago · There is an epidemic among President Trump and his allies when it comes to misstating or bungling coronavirus data, but few have butchered it as badly as Donald Trump Jr. just did. Trump Jr …
Donald Trump Jr and ******* play down Covid deaths as daily ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/30/...2 hours ago · As coronavirus deaths in the US approach 1,000 a day in the current record surge of infections, Donald Trump and his *******, Don Jr, appear intent on publicly disputing the lethality of …
Putin’s Fancy Bear hackers 'launch attacks on Democrats ...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13063331/vladimir...6 hours ago · California Democratic Party chief Rusty Hicks acknowledged being targeted, but stopped short of naming Fancy Bear. He reportedly said in an email that “the effort by the foreign entity was …
Russian hacker group reportedly targeted state Democratic ...
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/30/21541822/...2 hours ago · A Russian hacking group known as Fancy Bear targeted the emails of Democratic state parties in Indiana and California earlier this year as well as progressive think tanks, Reuters reported. The …
Russia's Fancy Bear Hackers, Accused of 2016 Election ...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russias-fancy...6 hours ago · Russia's Fancy Bear Hackers, Accused of 2016 Election Meddling, Are Hitting Democrats Again: Report Brendan Cole 4 hrs ago Fact check: Donald Trump Jr.'s claim about flu deaths, data manipulation ...
fuck....you think this does not take the cake.....someone needs to sho0t his ass!
14 hours ago · Louisville police officer sues Kenneth Walker, boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, for emotional distress, assault and battery. By April Siese Updated on: October 30, 2020 / 2:22 AM / CBS News
4 hours ago · Breonna Taylor's BF, Kenneth Walker, Sued by Cop He Shot for Emotional Distress Breonna Taylor's Boyfriend Sued by Cop He Shot Claims Severe Trauma and Distress. 33.6K; 10/30/2020 6:36 AM PT
Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, sued by ...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/breonna-taylor...14 hours ago · Louisville police officer sues Kenneth Walker, boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, for emotional distress, assault and battery. By April Siese Updated on: October 30, 2020 / 2:22 AM / CBS News
Breonna Taylor's BF, Kenneth Walker, Sued by Cop He Shot ...
https://www.tmz.com/2020/10/30/officer-mattingly-sues-kenneth-walker4 hours ago · Breonna Taylor's BF, Kenneth Walker, Sued by Cop He Shot for Emotional Distress Breonna Taylor's Boyfriend Sued by Cop He Shot Claims Severe Trauma and Distress. 33.6K; 10/30/2020 6:36 AM PT
and more of that WTF?....this kid is going to walk!
2 days ago · MILWAUKEE – Kyle Rittenhouse's lawyers expect to call his mom and four experts to testify at a hearing Friday on Wisconsin's efforts to extradite him to face homicide charges in Kenosha ...
Rittenhouse, 17, shot and killed two people and wounded a third during civil unrest in Kenosha on Aug. 25 in the wake of a police officer shooting and paralyzing Jacob Blake two days earlier. Though Rittenhouse walked toward police with his hands up, they ignored him; he later surrendered to police at his home in Antioch, Illinois. His mom, Wendy Rittenhouse, will testify about the circumstances of his arrest, according to court records.
Also listed as an expert witness for the defense is Andrew Branca, a Denver lawyer who specializes in self-defense cases, instruction and speaking on the topic. His website's tag line reads, "Carry A Gun So You're Hard To *******, Know The Law So You're Hard To Convict."
Two former homicide detectives are expected to discuss "the apparent lack of investigation prior to the filing of the criminal complaint." One of them is retired Milwaukee Police Lt. Steve Spingola, now a regular on the Oxygen network true-crime TV show "Cold Justice."
Kyle Rittenhouse extradition hearing: Mom, experts set to ...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/...2 days ago · MILWAUKEE – Kyle Rittenhouse's lawyers expect to call his mom and four experts to testify at a hearing Friday on Wisconsin's efforts to extradite him to face homicide charges in Kenosha ...
Rittenhouse, 17, shot and killed two people and wounded a third during civil unrest in Kenosha on Aug. 25 in the wake of a police officer shooting and paralyzing Jacob Blake two days earlier. Though Rittenhouse walked toward police with his hands up, they ignored him; he later surrendered to police at his home in Antioch, Illinois. His mom, Wendy Rittenhouse, will testify about the circumstances of his arrest, according to court records.
Also listed as an expert witness for the defense is Andrew Branca, a Denver lawyer who specializes in self-defense cases, instruction and speaking on the topic. His website's tag line reads, "Carry A Gun So You're Hard To *******, Know The Law So You're Hard To Convict."
Two former homicide detectives are expected to discuss "the apparent lack of investigation prior to the filing of the criminal complaint." One of them is retired Milwaukee Police Lt. Steve Spingola, now a regular on the Oxygen network true-crime TV show "Cold Justice."
even a rabid dog will protect it's young
Migrant Children From Other Countries Are Being Expelled ...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/migrant-children...13 hours ago · U.S. border authorities have been expelling migrant children from other countries into Mexico, violating a diplomatic agreement with Mexico and testing the limits of immigration and baby …
US border authorities are expelling migrant children from ...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/...1 day ago · Migrant children from other countries are being expelled into Mexico. Migrants, mainly from Cuba, block the Paso del Norte border crossing bridge after a U.S. appeals court blocked the Migrant …
Migrant Children Sent To Mexico Alone, Against U.S. Policy
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielcassady/2020/10/...1 day ago · Migrant Children From Other Countries Are Being Expelled Into Mexico (New York Times) Trump Cites Coronavirus as He Announces a Border Crackdown (New York Times)
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