Republicans are making clear their commitment to lying in their reckless resistance to science-based pandemic response and in their blatant rejection of the plain fact that Donald Trump lost a fair election. Election officials everywhere are saying that, in Joe Biden’s electoral victory last week, there was no fraud:
The New York Times contacted the offices of the top election officials in every state on Monday and Tuesday to ask whether they suspected or had evidence of illegal voting. Officials in 45 states responded directly to The Times. For four of the remaining states, The Times spoke to other statewide officials or found public comments from secretaries of state; none reported any major voting issues.
…Some states described small problems common to all elections, which they said they were addressing: a few instances of illegal or double voting, some technical glitches and some minor errors in math. Officials in all states are conducting their own review of the voting — a standard component of the certification process [Nick Norasaniti, Reid J. Epstein, and Jim Rutenberg, “Election Officials Nationwide Find No Evidence of Voting Fraud,” New York Times via Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2020.11.10].
Not one Trump lawsuit has withstood judicial scrutiny, revealed any voting irregularities, or identified a single illegal vote. Yet 70% of Republicans in a Politico/Morning Consult survey are willing to say the election was not free and fair. Of course, none of those Republicans are claiming that fraud led to their gains in the House and their staving off of a Democratic takeover of the Senate….
A people and a party that manufacture their own reality, that embrace lies for political gain, cannot be trusted to govern. Democracy and survival depend on being able to see the world as it is, not simply as we wish it would be.
I’m not surprised by Republican opinion on voting. They are by and large ignorant of the mechanics of the election process, but mostly they don’t believe in our modern one person, one vote democracy.
Republicans believe only white men with property should vote. I’ve heard Republicans say this and I think it is quite widespread. They would strip everyone else of the vote.
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s AMICUS podcaster on 2.25.20 (@16:00-46:00) seeks accountability from lawyers (like Rod Rosenstein’s rationalization of serving Trump’s “Comey hate”; Rosenstein’s obstruction of Mueller’s counter intelligence aspect of the investigation into Trump’s collaboration with Putin; and now the revealed role of child separation as a DOJ leverage policy at the border). She compares the example of post-WWII Nuremberg “Nazi” judges’ trials which jousted inhumane behavior of the Holocaust with decisions within the four corners of the “law”; judges whose defense was “I was just doing my job” (like an abusive policeman).
But then Lithwick may just be a silly emotional female lawyer too naive to understand it as just “ethics”. This is a developing analysis. Conservative packing of the courts. RAGA. The Roberts SCOTUS, the mocking Justice Thomas, both two stepping around Kavanaugh’s incompetence, though conservatism, for the job. A 6-3 court.
The mammoth job Biden has ahead to repair Trump’s GOP enabled damage to our democracy, will require complex resuscitation of the entire court system. And Mitch McConnell and our John Thune will obstruct that needed repair at EVERY step. The cost John Thune is inflicting may be irreparable.
As Cory says, they who “manufacture their own reality, that embrace lies for political gain, cannot be trusted to govern.“
It’s called delusion folks.
The Dope Queen of Delusion and her court.
Delusion:
An idiosyncratic belief that is firmly
maintained despite being contradicted
by what is generally accepted as reality.
Did I miss something?
I don’t think so.
Republicants lying! I’m shocked but after all their lips are moving.
Cory: the GOP commentariat really has started getting McCarthyist in some of the tactics they are using to support Trump. In the mid-2000’s, there was a website that parodied Glenn Beck’s style of “reporting” that said “We’re not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 – in fact, we think he didn’t! But we can’t help but wonder…” and went on to ask why Glenn won’t prove he didn’t do it. The absolute dingus Troy Jones is following this same script on the War College now, asking “What do you have to hide?” to people that point out the claims are baseless and keep getting smacked down by courts.
World keeps on spinning.
Donald: “They [Republicans] are by and large ignorant of the mechanics of the election process . . ”
I could not disagree more. Although the one-person one-vote fairness escapes them, the GOP/Conservatives have clearly used the mechanics of disproportionate representation of the Senate, gerrymandering in Red states to move the voters to create the outcomes they wish, and run tactical elections for President focusing on the electoral college. Take SD for example, our state representation and to a far larger degree our national representation does not at all show the proportion of democrats being represented.
Republicans have also used their legislative power to disenfranchise voters who tend to vote for the other fellows.
The GOP has cut the pie up in the ways to. allow them far more pieces than they deserve. Add all this to the judicial takeover (including stacking the Supreme Court by denial of Obama’s Presidential power to appoint) and you see that this is a party that has deftly focused on ruling the US BECAUSE of their deep understanding of the mechanics of voter representation/suppression. Republicans figured out how to beat the one-man one-vote core democratic process in this republic.
Biden/Harris are beating trump by 5 million votes so far.
“Psephologists classify defeats by the following margins with these technical terms:
By 2 million votes: butt kicking
By 3 million votes: drubbing
By 4 million votes: spanking
By 5 million votes: shellacking
By 7 million votes: hoomiliation
By 10 million votes: niliation
(And if they don’t, they should.)
Recent history
Biden’s winning margin now beats those of Al Gore in 2000, George W Bush in 2004, Barrack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
It is still well behind Obama’s margin of 9,550,193 in 2008 and Bill Clinton’s 8,203,716 in 1996. But gaining.
Late global news
Trump’s level of defeat is being reported in France as ‘la ruine bleue’, in Germany as ‘ein katastrophe’, in Spain as ‘un colapso’, in Italy as ‘la devastazione’, in China as 崩溃, in Romania as ‘crăpătură’ and in Botswana as ‘tötta-lifugt’.
Figures quoted here are from Associated Press, taken at about 03.00 New York time on Wednesday 11th November, 2020. The count continues.”
Even Q is finally starting to figure out that they got conned into the trump grift.
o, Yeah, I wasn’t specific. I think the Republican leadership is as you state. They are particularly knowledgeable in the art and science of voter disenfranchisement, and do that to maximize their power. But they can do this ultimately because their base prefers disenfranchisement of minorities and women. I’ve heard this from Republicans, and I thought they were kidding. They were not. They believe in going back to 1789, when only white men were above average.
They say they want a civil war to achieve those goals Mr. Pay. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/9/1994581/-SO-YOU-WANT-A-CIVIL-WAR-HUH?utm_campaign=trending
I guess they who want this, have flunked American and World History. It really doesn’t take to much to see what happened in the civil war here 1860-1865 or what is going on now in the Mideast and the Caucus Region.
Hillary lost by a narrower margin and gave her concession speech the morning after the election. The Dems didn’t throw a tantrum about taking it to the Supreme Court. Get over it, Republicans, you lost. Donald is a man of great weakness and can’t man up and accept defeat.
Americans take their elections too seriously, nothing ever changes much in the country either way, except with Biden there will at least be some sanity and calmness. I don’t think Biden plans on invading a country yet. Just calm down everyone.
Justice Roberts has persuaded Kavanaugh to come to his side to keep ACA alive at the moment.
Yesterday I had a rather interesting conversation with someone who apparently has been influenced by mendacious Trumpist/Noem propaganda. This individual looked to be a kind, rational individual that was employed in a position to help people.
Among the views he expressed to me, he asserted the following pieces of propaganda:
– the COVID 19 news we hear and read is fake. The media puts out this fake information because the owners are friends of the Clintons. Most doctors and hospital personnel are falsely reporting COVID 19 deaths to illegally claim funds earmarked for treating COVID 19 (i.e. committing federal felonies, like medicare and medicaid fraud which typically can lead to long prison sentences, loss of professional licenses, restitution obligations, etc).
– California Democrats recently legalized pedophilia (this is plainly untrue and was apparently a Qanon position)
– Biden has not won the election
When I attempted to explore the source for these viewpoints and whether additional information might make him question them, he stated that no, because there are no objective “facts.” Instead, whatever one believes is a fact regardless of other available and verifiable contradictory information. He backed up this idea by asking me: “Have you ever talked to a millennial?”
I did recognize that there are philosophical viewpoints that reject the existence of objective facts or truth.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/truth-philosophy-and-logic
His response was that he was not particularly interested in philosophy, which in turn suggested that this philosophical quandary was not a basis for this fellow’s statements about the truth of factual claims or beliefs.
Anyway, that is one example of the mindset of some Trumpist SD voters these days.
For the good of the country and the integrity of our election processes in the future, Biden should concede.
You’ll also notice .. no riots .. yet.
John Dale is in the bag, so early in the day too.
Yes Jenny, I agree with you. As someone who has seen many
elections come and go, my personal life has not changed to
any great degree as a result of any of them. Any changes in this
country will be slow and evolving, not revolutionary and transformative.
drumpf invited his own foreign election watchers to oversee election and they found nothing out of the ordinary, unless you could call drumpf out of then ordinary.
https://the-immoral-minority.com/team-of-international-observers-invited-by-trump-administration-finds-no-evidence-of-serious-irregularities-with-outcome-of-election/
Amazing how the vote fraud narraTive from drumpf’s lawyers changes when judges ask them questions….
At times, Trump’s own lawyers, who are suing to invalidate ballots and challenge election results in several states, have contradicted Trump’s conspiracy theories. In one case, Trump lawyer Jonathan S. Goldstein was forced to admit that he had no evidence of any fraud concerning a tranche of 592 ballots Trump was trying to get invalidated.
“Are you claiming that there is any fraud in connection with these 592 disputed ballots?” Judge Richard P. Haaz asked Trump’s lawyers.
“To my knowledge at present, no,” Goldstein replied.
Another Trump lawyer admitted that there were indeed observers in Philadelphia’s counting room after Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Paul Diamond specifically asked about it.
“I’m sorry, then what’s your problem?” Diamond asked after Trump’s lawyer confirmed that observers were present
Hi BCB,
I’ve noticed similar rhetoric from people close to me who choose Fox News as their primary source of information. The way I put it together is that Fox denigrates all other major outlets as being liberal spin machines… Such that you can hardly even trust the baseball scores (let alone an article on, say, the Mueller Report) from the likes of the AP, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, BBC, the Guardian, the Atlantic, Vox, or the Weather Channel.
However, these Fox fans do recognize that Fox itself does a fair amount of spinning for their side… although, “not nearly as much as the other networks.” So, as they see it, if the least biased news source is still obviously biased, then how could we ever find the truth about anything? That’s what I think is the source of the “no objective facts” reasoning. And in my experience, bright folks with college degrees have articulated this with a straight face. They truly believe ALL the media is spin.
My effort in these discussions is point them to the Media Bias Chart project… which rates news sources on both reliability and bias. I look forward to the day that DFP shows up on the chart.
Kind regards,
David
Kwick heads up…. Youtube is having major problems at this time so you can’t play videos or music.
David, that does seem to be another point of view that I also have heard expressed – no media source is telling the whole truth, hence one has no real way of knowing any actual facts about events, so one simply accepts the version that they hope to be true. That attitude almost seems a bit more rational than simply declaring that one can create one’s own factual truth by simply asserting it, which is what I understood the individual I spoke with to be saying.
Howz this or fraud by wingnuts….
https://www.thedailybeast.com/usps-staffer-richard-hopkins-told-agents-project-veritas-penned-his-ballot-tampering-claim
also Q anon claimed state department? watermarked ballots to prove fraud which proved to be a lie, as well.
Wingnuts in Arizona manufacture their own fraud….
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/busted-voter-fraud-witness-admits-in-court-that-his-business-partner-is-the-trump-campaigns-lawyer/
dumbass dubya was drumpf before drumpf was on voter fraud…
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/george-w-bush-wrote-trump-voter-fraud-playbook.html