Forum: World Events
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15 Nov 20 4:58 am
+ Trumpworld's faux-intellectual grifters are helping him debase democracy with bogus 'voter fraud' claims. And Republicans rake in the cash.
Anthony L. Fisher
Sat, November 14, 2020, 7:28 AM CST
CARSON, NEVADA, UNITED STATES - 2020/11/08
Trump lost the election, by a lot. Because he's too weak to admit he's a loser, he's damaging democracy.
Internet "skeptics" are amplifying his fake voter fraud claims by engaging in baseless speculation couched in faux intellectual inquiry.
The skeptics created smoke in search of a fire, but these gullible simpletons are just helping Republicans raise money, while GOP voters' faith in the democratic process plummets.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
Trump seems intent on not admitting that he lost the election. He seems doubly intent on ignoring the fact that he will lose the election by slightly more than the electoral college margin by which he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 — while also losing the popular vote by twice that election's margin.
Instead of accepting the plain reality staring him in the face, Trump insists there has been widespread voter fraud, while providing zero compelling evidence.
He's been peppering his base with voter fraud allegations for years (remember his shameless lie about caravans of illegal 2016 voters in New Hampshire?). And the president spent months pre-emptively subverting public confidence in the election to keep his base exorcised if he were to lose (which he has, decisively).
Meanwhile, the facts are not in Trump's favor. The right-wing Heritage Foundation tried to prove an epidemic of voter fraud in the US and came up with 1,298 cases of alleged election misconduct. But that was spread out over 36 years and 1,826,807,464 ballots. Heritage effectively proved voter fraud is a negligible issue.
And in a joint statement by the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, the non-partisan government election watchdogs stated plainly: "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
"The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," the agencies declared.
Republicans refuse to push back
But all that "evidence" is just Deep State hooey to the "very stable genius" in the White House. Trump still won't accept the message that he's been fired — with good cause — by the American people.
The president's disdain for the will of the people goes hand in glove with his idealization of "tough" authoritarian tactics and "strong" authoritarian leaders. Trump's never going to be a dictator, but when it comes down to it, he's just not that into democracy.
Also not being much of a reader or law-abider, it's conceivable that Trump may legitimately not know he can't illegally occupy the White House after January. And most of his fellow Republicans don't seem inclined to tell him, so they're sitting back while he smashes the retweet button on every berserk internet fabrication that comes across his screen.
(In a thread that spans hundreds of tweets —with more coming every few hours! — the journalist Issac Saul has attempted to assemble a comprehensive debunking depot for suspicious-sounding but ultimately baseless voter fraud claims spreading across the internet.)
To be sure, there are a few Republicans willing to "bravely" demonstrate that they live in a reality-based world.
George W. Bush's political mastermind Karl Rove wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that there's "no evidence" of voter fraud.
The Trump-appointed Election Assistance Commission Chairman Benjamin Hovland told Insider that the president's claims of voter fraud are "shameful," they "hurt the fabric of our nation," and the "undermining of confidence in our elections and our democracy" is "exactly what our foreign adversaries want to see."
Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt — who sits on the board that oversees elections — probably put it best to CNN: "I have seen the most fantastical things on social media, making completely ridiculous allegations that have no basis in fact at all ... One thing I can't comprehend is how hungry people are to consume lies."
There'd be less to worry about if most of Trump's fellow Republicans similarly cared enough about the country's future as a liberal democracy to insist that he accept the will of the people, graciously concede, and help provide a stable transition of power to the next democratically-elected administration.
If the GOP stepped up and denounced the president's wild theories, then Trump could continue to be a clown who debases the country to enrich himself — but he'd just be an increasingly irrelevant one.
Unfortunately for our democracy, there's money to be raised, and two runoff elections in Georgia that will determine the balance of power in the Senate.
So the GOP tacitly supports Trump's very lame but very dangerous assault on democracy. They're ok with poisoning their party's voters' faith in a fair US presidential election. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll, almost 70% of Republican voters said the election was not "free and fair," a figure which doubled in the week after the election.
Forum: World Events
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15 Nov 20 12:03 am
+ Tens of thousands rally in DC to support outgoing President Trump; 10 arrested as protesters clash with counter-protesters
Christal Hayes, N'dea Yancey-Bragg and Grace Hauck, USA TODAY
Sat, November 14, 2020, 5:39 PM CST
WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people clad in red, white and blue rallied and marched in support of outgoing President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Saturday afternoon to protest supposed "voter fraud" in the 2020 presidential election. But as night fell, skirmishes between protesters and counter-protesters broke out across the city.
At least 10 people had been arrested as of Saturday evening, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Four people were arrested for firearm violations, two for assault, one for not having a permit, one for assaulting a police officer and two for disorderly conduct, according to public affairs officer Alaina Gertz.
The daytime rally – advertised by several names including Million MAGA March, Stop the Steal and March for Trump – started at Freedom Plaza, where the crowd's chants of "four more years" and "stop the steal" largely drowned out event speakers. Part of the group then marched to the Capitol.
The crowd was largely protesting "voter fraud," to "show support for our President" and to "preserve the integrity of the vote," according to various event pages. Trump has refused to concede and leveled baseless allegations of voter fraud to falsely claim the election was stolen from him.
Most of the rally participants were not wearing face masks, which help prevent the spread of COVID-19. The massive crowd, filled with red Make America Great Again hats and large flags with Trump’s name, was an unusual site in the nation’s capital, a liberal city. Biden won D.C with 93% of the vote, according to the Associated Press.
Forum: World Events
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14 Nov 20 10:50 am
+ As Soon as Trump Leaves Office, He Faces Greater Risk of Prosecution
William K. Rashbaum and Benjamin Weiser
Fri, November 13, 2020, 7:13 AM CST
President Donald Trump lost more than an election last week. When he leaves the White House in January, he will also lose the constitutional protection from prosecution afforded to a sitting president.
After Jan. 20, Trump, who has refused to concede and is fighting to hold onto his office, will be more vulnerable than ever to a pending grand jury investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into the president’s family business and its practices, as well as his taxes.
The two-year inquiry, the only known active criminal investigation of Trump, has been stalled since last fall, when the president sued to block a subpoena for his tax returns and other records, a bitter dispute that for the second time is before the U.S. Supreme Court. A ruling is expected soon.
Trump has contended that the investigation by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, is a politically motivated fishing expedition. But if the Supreme Court rules that Vance is entitled to the records, and he uncovers possible crimes, Trump could face a reckoning with law enforcement — further inflaming political tensions and raising the startling specter of a criminal conviction, or even prison, for a former president.
“He’ll never have more protection from Vance than he has right now,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas.
...that a long time ago, when I was in 4th Grade, I heard my teacher calling a girl classmate (she was actually a very lovely, very pretty, very quiet and reserved girl) by her Full Name: Cynthia Gunther.
Well, FUUUUUCK.
I had never ever heard that last name in my life before, and so for some damn stupid reason I just found it so fucking unbelievably-funny.
And so I LAAAAAUGHED AND LAAAAAUGHED AND LAAAAAAAAAAUGHED so much nonstop.
And Cynthia just looked at me with an expressionless face all that time. Not crying, not anything.
(maybe She thought I was a stupid Dipshit. She Was Right.)
Goddamn, I feel bad about that now. I really wish I could Apologize to Her about that.....
Forum: World Events
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14 Nov 20 2:25 am
+ Life after QAnon: Trump's loss allows some to escape conspiracy cult's grip
Caitlin Dickson
Thu, November 12, 2020, 12:20 PM CST·15 min read
The voter fraud claims first began flooding Justin’s Twitter feed late Tuesday night, as the results of the presidential election were still trickling in.
The 26-year-old, who lives in Austin, Texas, and once wanted to become a journalist, hadn’t even voted, nor did he ever really like Donald Trump. But he quickly found himself falling down a familiar rabbit hole, following one Twitter thread after another in search of proof that the election had been rigged by the Democrats against the president.
“I just became obsessed with figuring out that it was rigged and putting pieces together that it was,” Justin, who asked to be identified only by his first name, told Yahoo News. “I wanted to say that I was on to this before everyone, when everyone else blindly believed the lies of the media.”
As Tuesday night spilled into Wednesday, Justin said, he called off work and he spent the rest of the week “on Twitter trying to convince myself of this election fraud stuff.”
Millions of others were doing the same thing, and some of them undoubtedly still are. How it will end for them is unclear: disillusionment, resignation, anger are all possible outcomes. A worst case would be further radicalization, leading to violence.
But Justin’s failed search for evidence of fraud in the election had a very different effect. It was the key that allowed him to escape his years-long obsession with QAnon, the conspiracy theory that holds millions of people around the world in its cultlike grip.
Like Justin, many American Q devotees were struggling to make sense of the outcome of the presidential election, which seemed to upend the core mythology of their worldview.
After all, QAnon is rooted in the baseless belief, seeded on the internet fringes by an anonymous figure known as “Q,” that Trump has been secretly working to dismantle an alleged satanic cabal of child-eating pedophiles including prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton, high-ranking government officials and other members of the “global elite,” code on the far right for “Jews.” And though the movement has since evolved to encompass various other beliefs including opposition to vaccines, COVID-19 skepticism and concerns about human trafficking, its central premise remained an apocalyptic faith in the imminence of “the Storm,” a day of reckoning in which Trump’s righteous followers would round up this nonexistent cabal for trial and execution.
Now, not only had Trump lost the election before achieving the highly anticipated demise of the “deep state” cabal, but the individual or group behind the shadowy “Q” persona had conspicuously gone silent since Election Day.....
Forum: World Events
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14 Nov 20 2:21 am
+ Twitter flags ballot conspiracy theory shared by Trump – after it is shared widely
Kari Paul and Maanvi Singh
Wed, November 11, 2020, 7:40 PM CST
Twitter took more than an hour to flag a highly misleading video shared by Donald Trump, which baselessly pushed claims of ballot fraud and was retweeted more than 70,000 times before the platform took action.
The tweet from Trump – and Twitter’s failure to flag it – led to outrage and concern. It also prompted renewed calls to have the president’s Twitter account suspended or permanently banned. Twitter has said the president will no longer receive the same treatment under its policies for newsworthy individuals when he is out of office.
“It’s going to be really nice to have a President who isn’t an internet troll trafficking already debunked conspiracy theories,” the spokesman for California’s secretary of state tweeted in response to Trump’s sharing of the video.
Forum: World Events
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12 Nov 20 3:56 am
+ AP News
U.S. Politics
Report: Trump Disparaged US War Dead as ‘Losers,’ ‘Suckers’
A new report details multiple instances of President Donald Trump making disparaging remarks about members of the U.S. military who have been captured or killed.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED 4 SEPTEMBER 2020
DELRAY BEACH, FLa. (AP) — A new report details multiple instances of President Donald Trump making disparaging remarks about members of the U.S. military who have been captured or killed, including referring to the American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 as “losers” and “suckers.”
Forum: World Events
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12 Nov 20 3:43 am
+ The CDC chief lost his way during COVID-19. Now his agency is in the balance.
Brett Murphy and Letitia Stein, USA TODAY
Wed, November 11, 2020, 1:50 PM CST·26 min read
Dr. Robert Redfield, eyes closed and searching for words, explained to Congress why the health agency he leads had softened coronavirus protections for slaughterhouse workers.
The White House, meatpacking industry and other federal agencies were not involved, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention insisted during the September hearing.
None of that was true.
Redfield was sitting in the White House when he instructed his staff to change a series of safety recommendations to suggestions, adding dozens of qualifiers such as “if feasible” and “not required.” He turned to a West Wing aide and told her the edits came directly from Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff.
Smithfield Foods, the South Dakota meatpacking plant under scrutiny, had seen the tougher recommendations, one of the first documents outlining COVID-19 protections for the industry. The CDC emailed it the day before the edits were made. Federal agriculture and labor officials also weighed in.
Redfield’s actions in overruling the CDC scientists who had spent a week investigating and writing the original guidance fit a pattern defining his leadership during the COVID-19 crisis. He has repeatedly allowed politics to undermine scientific best practices — and then publicly denied it.
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09 Nov 20 1:44 pm
+ Arkansas police chief resigns after appearing to call for violence over election
Tim Stelloh
Sun, November 8, 2020, 6:09 PM CST·2 min read
An Arkansas police chief has resigned after he posted messages on a right-wing social media site that appeared to urge people to assault "Marxist" Democrats over the presidential election, the mayor said.
Kevin Elliot, the mayor of Marshall, a city of roughly 1,200 people about 100 miles north of Little Rock, said in a statement Saturday that he "condemned" the comments by Police Chief Lang Holland.
"The Marshall community does not in any way support or condone bullying or threats of violence to anyone of any political persuasion," he said. "We are a welcoming community that is humbly working to build a bright future for ALL our citizens."
Elliot said that after he consulted with lawyers about Holland's posts, which appeared on the site Parler, he met with Holland, who resigned effective immediately.
The posts were no longer visible Sunday, but NBC affiliate KARK of Little Rock published screenshots of some of them.
