Over the last couple of days, I've seen various members of the Elite gloating about Biden's probable win. Neocon warmonger Bill Kristol tweeted that the "experts" would soon be in control of our foreign policy. Sorta-kinda-Republican presidential and Hewlett Packard flameout Carly Fiorina tweeted about competence taking the place of incompetence in the White House.
And on it goes, one loser after another crowing that our long, national nightmare will soon be over. Meanwhile, the press is positively giddy and I believe that the percentage of positive news stories has jumped considerably.
Taking away the ongoing Twitter catfights of the last four years where members of the Harvard, Yale and Berkeley glee clubs tried to scratch each others' eyes out in public, I didn't think things were all that bad. Up until the Wuhan Flu struck and we all lost our minds following SCIENCE!, my 401K had been doing great and my neighbors all had jobs. None of our sons were at risk of being drafted into a Krisotological war in the Middle East and, in fact, those money-grubbing Jews seemed to be getting along with the Koran-crazed Arabs better than ever.
So what was the big deal? As far as I can tell, what bugged Kristol and Fiorina and Kerry and NBC was the fact that not only were they not in the saddle, but they were being revealed as the complete failures they were.
As I've said before, I'm less interested in the outcome of the election than in the way the Kristol / Fiorina / Biden / Schumer morons have managed to obliterate trust in all of our institutions, now including our elections. Faith in nearly everything was sacrificed so they could gain power again.
Enjoy it while it lasts, guys. Things built on sand seldom last long.
 |
| Quick, take a picture while it's still up so we can remember this moment! |
You know, when I start feeling depressed about the current state of politics in this country, I find that reading about Tilden vs. Hayes in 1876-77 makes me feel better.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidential_election
Now, *that* was a crapshow. And yet our ancestors pulled through somehow.
I agreed with, or at lest understood the position of, so very much of this post, until we got to "As I've said before, I'm less interested in the outcome of the election than in the way the Kristol / Fiorina / Biden / Schumer morons have managed to obliterate trust in all of our institutions, now including our elections. Faith in nearly everything was sacrificed so they could gain power again."
ReplyDeleteThat really is all on Trump. Trump started complaining about election issues in 2016, and he has not stopped since. While Trumps legal team is something like 1 win and 28 losses in the court filings, he is Big Lying about election fraud.
As much as I disliked Trump, I have thought and still think there were much worse Presidents we could have gotten from the Republican party (Pence, for one). However, the damage he is doing now will lst a long time after he leaves office.
Here, KT:
ReplyDeletehttps://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2020/11/19/us-elections-2020-shock-and-horror/
Tim, I agree that our political leaders have almost all been C-students and career washouts, but at least back then, they didn't control a $4T budget and have regulatory authority over almost every aspect of our lives.
ReplyDeleteOne Brow - If it's all on Trump, I look forward to faith in our institutions being restored soon! Note: I won't be one of those people.
Here is some information on confirmed voting fraud. It includes names of the people who did it, and what they actually personally were convicted of doing.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
I see that California has way more confirmed vote fraud cases than, say, Michigan, and the California cases are a lot more recent. So I guess I can see why you might be more concerned out there.
Still, these seem to bear out what I was saying earlier: they are mostly small-scale affairs, a few dozen to a few hundred votes here and there. Doing something really big in the tens of thousands of votes range, involving more people and leaving more evidence, would be a lot harder to cover up.
Tim, to me it doesn't matter if it happened, it matters that the system was designed to reduce trust in it. I've seen recent polls saying that 30% of *Democrats* thing the election was stolen. Who is going to convince them or the majority of Republicans otherwise, a totally untrustworthy press?
ReplyDeleteK T Cat,
ReplyDeleteI wish building was as easy as destroying!
I mean, you had Trump's guy in charge of election security saying this election was one of the safest and most secure ever, and then fired a few days later. If we hear hear constantly about elections being stolen, despite a lack of evidence, that has an effect. We both know how easy it is to persuade people of a lie.
Here's an opinion pointing out the unlikeliness of massive fraud, from a consedrvative source:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/americans-deserve-the-truth-even-if-its-unpleasant/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in-tag&utm_term=third
Actual statement:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cisa.gov/news/2020/11/12/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election
It is a statement from a council, not "Trump's Guy," and was declaring there was no evidence during an active investigation of which they would be a subject, and which goes beyond both their powers and their responsibilities.
Their involvement is tampering with election results via breaking into the national infrastructure.
This is somewhat like getting a statement about there being no evidence of damage to the inside of a house from the guy who repairs damage to the road outside.
Foxfier,
ReplyDeleteThis is somewhat like getting a statement about there being no evidence of damage to the inside of a house from the guy who repairs damage to the road outside.
The people inside the house can't find any evidence of damage, either.
Given your demonstrated ability to ignore what you do not want to see, even when have to read past it to find what you do want, I would not trust your judgement even if there were not already so many examples that the mantra has changed to "it didn't change the election" rather than "there was little or no fraud."
ReplyDeleteFoxfier,
ReplyDeleteGiven your demonstrated ability to ignore what you do not want to see, even when have to read past it to find what you do want, ...
I was under the impression this was a blog where people were basically polite and respected differences. I don't mind going in a different direction, but I wanted to make sure that was acceptable first.
.. I would not trust your judgement ...
Good. I have never asked you to trust my judgement. Rather, I've been saying that we each need to be responsible to ourselves for expanding our information sources and looking critically at who we use to provide information.
... even if there were not already so many examples that the mantra has changed to "it didn't change the election" rather than "there was little or no fraud."
The reason it did not change the election is because there was little fraud, and there was never a mantra of "no fraud", except possibly in some right-wing mischaracterizations. Frankly, so far, more fraud has been identified as having been committed by Republicans, which is not surprising, as the Republican President has been telling people how easy fraud would be to commit. Naturally, his followers took him up on that.
I was under the impression this was a blog where people were basically polite and respected differences.
ReplyDeleteNeither of which would oblige me to ignore that, in the face of evidence that you did not like, you found a paywalled article to quote and declared it evidence that the open article I had provided was false and proof of reporting so bad it invalidated the evidence.
When I did the work to find a copy of the article you quoted which was not behind a paywall, I found that it said exactly what the first article had said.
In addition, one cannot help but notice that your standards for being polite and respectful for others towards you are far more stringent than your standards for yourself to others.
Manners do not demand that I respect that, either.
Foxfier,
ReplyDeleteNeither of which would oblige me to ignore that, in the face of evidence that you did not like, you found a paywalled article to quote and declared it evidence that the open article I had provided was false and proof of reporting so bad it invalidated the evidence.
I suppose that, likewise, it does not oblige me to ignore that you are lying about the claim I made ("NY Post made a hash of their reporting"), nor that you ignored I quoted three paragraphs of the article for you so you did not need a paywall.
When I did the work to find a copy of the article you quoted which was not behind a paywall, I found that it said exactly what the first article had said.
Except, it added additional information the Post article did not use.
In addition, one cannot help but notice that your standards for being polite and respectful for others towards you are far more stringent than your standards for yourself to others.
Until this comment, I have not insulted another commentator on this blog. However, I don't mind getting dirty with the pigs, as long as it does not upset K T Cat (his blog, his rules).
Manners do not demand that I respect that, either.
I have not seen that you respect anything that you do not agree with, period. Certainly not accuracy in your claims.
Your accusation of lying rather depends on the evidence not being perfectly available:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22301740&postID=5171777450501729694
But does perfectly illistrate why it is not worth one's time to try to engage you as acting in good faith.
********
If anyone does not want to go through to the link, here is a summary.
He claimed:
In 2000, it was found out that military absentee ballots were treated just like all the other absentee ballots in Florida, in that those which were improperly filled out or attested to were being thrown out.
I responded with a link showing:
incorrect, the Gore campaign challenged to have them thrown out for not having postmarks, when military post did not regularly use those.
(at the link, it said: Many military ballots arrived without a postmark, which is often true of military mail, and were challenged on that basis – after Democrats sent out a memo on challenging ballots that focused on postmarks. )
He stated:
Military people were expected to sign and date their ballots in lieu of post marks. The ballots in question were not properly signed and dated.
I responded with a request for support for this claim.
He responded with an inaccessible article and said:
I'm sure we are all shocked that the NY Post made a hash of their reporting.
Other military ballots throughout Florida were rejected because the voters were not recorded as having requested Florida absentee ballots. Federal law permits members of the military to use what is called a federal write-in ballot, but only if they requested, but did not receive, one of their home state's absentee ballots.
I dug up the article, and copied from the top few paragraphs:
Republican criticism, though, focused particularly on what election officials said was the most common problem, failure to have a postmark. That seemed particularly galling to critics, since military mail can be sent without a postmark.
The goalposts kept moving from there.