The voting “reform” bill: it gives me no pleasure to say I was right…
…when I wrote in December that a “voting reform” bill would probably be the very first bill the Democrats would try to pass in their new session – and that it could very well destroy valid voting in this country if it passed both legislative bodies. This prospect was one of the biggest things that haunted me for months prior to the election:
If the Democrats end up controlling the Senate as well as the House and eliminating the filibuster, and if Biden or Harris becomes the president, I predict that the Democrats will revive their intent to effect an extremely radical remaking of election law in order to favor their party. You may or may not recall that one of the first acts of the new Democrat House when it was installed in January of 2019 was to pass (by strict party-line vote) the Orwellian-entitled “For the People Act”. It died in the Republican-controlled Senate, and so not all that much attention has been paid to it. But we need to take another look, because if the Democrats do get the Senate this time, I believe that passing it will be one of their first orders of business.
And here we are:
Democrats introduce their first bill in the House: H.R.1…Nationwide mail-in voting, banning restrictions on ballot harvesting, banning voter ID, criminal voters,DC Statehood roadwork, it’s all in here.
At the moment states set their own rules on voting and have a lot of leeway, but there’s nothing I can find so far that would prohibit Congress from setting national rules that supersede individual states’ desires, as long as the new rules don’t violate the 14th Amendment or something considered basic like that.
This is what Mitch McConnell said about the bill’s similar predecessor back in January of 2019:
“I think it’s more accurately described another way: The ‘Democrat Politician Protection Act.’
“This sprawling, comprehensive proposal is basically the far left’s entire Christmas wish list where our nation’s political process is concerned. What would it do? It would pile new Washington D.C.-focused regulations onto virtually every aspect of how politicians are elected and what Americans can say about them. So my Democratic friends have already tried to market this unprecedented intrusion with all the predictable clichés. Quote – ‘restoring democracy.’ Quote – ‘for the people.’ Really? The only common motivation running through the whole proposal seems to be this: Democrats searching for ways to give Washington politicians more control over what Americans can say about them and how they get elected…
“To begin with, Democrats want to make the Federal Elections Commission a partisan institution…
“…[T]he legislation that Democrats are moving through committee would throw away that bipartisan split. It would reduce the FEC to a five-member body and — listen to this — let sitting presidents hand-pick their majority. Obviously this is a recipe for turning the FEC into a partisan weapon.
“Democrats also empower that newly-partisan FEC to regulate more of what Americans say. That 3-to-2 FEC would get to determine what they subjectively see as ‘campaign-related’ — a new, vague category of regulated speech. There’d also be new latitude to decide when a nonprofit’s speech has crossed that same fuzzy line and subsequently force the publication of the group’s private supporters. All this appears custom-built to chill the exercise of the First Amendment and give federal bureaucrats — and the waiting left-wing mob — a clearer idea of just who to intimidate…
“Perhaps most worrisome of all is the unprecedented proposal to federalize our nation’s elections, giving Washington D.C. politicians even more control over who gets to come here in the first place. Hundreds of pages are dedicated to telling states how to run their elections, from when and where they must take place, to the procedures they have to follow, to the machines they have to use.
“Democrats want to import the inefficiencies of state and federal bureaucracy to ballot boxes and voter rolls while making it harder for states and localities to clean inaccurate data off their voter rolls, harder to remove duplicate registrations, ineligible voters, and other errors, harder to check every box Washington Democrats demand before allowing you to pick your representatives. Provision after provision would make it easier for campaign lawyers to take advantage of disorganization, chaos, and confusion…
“This sprawling power grab clocks in at around 570 pages. Seemingly every one of those pages is filled with some effort to rewrite the rules to favor Democrats and their friends.”
I can’t cover all the bill’s provisions in this post, but suffice to say that this bill (you can read the whole lengthy thing here if you wish; I’ve only read some sections) would take away the rights of red states to avoid the pitfalls of early voting or mail-in voting or many other regulations that would help to ensure valid elections (for example, as I read it, it does away with witness requirements for signatures on mail-in ballots).
Would SCOTUS let it stand? The tradition is to allow Congress broad discretion to set rules for voting in federal elections (House and Senate, and probably president), although not in local or state-only ones. SCOTUS precedent seems to be that Congress can pass laws superseding state rules in federal elections, and so I don’t see that SCOTUS will be willing or able to stop this sort of bill.
In order to pass it, however, the Senate would have to jettison the filibuster. We know that might indeed happen.
Make no mistake, though. If by some miracle we dodge this bullet this time, the Democrats will be intent on accomplishing it if and when they can do so. If they do, I predict that many states will refuse to comply.
If you continue to wonder about the legality of national control of election rules, please see this:
Although the Elections Clause makes states primarily responsible for regulating congressional elections, it vests ultimate power in Congress. Congress may pass federal laws regulating congressional elections that automatically displace (“preempt”) any contrary state statutes, or enact its own regulations concerning those aspects of elections that states may not have addressed. The Framers of the Constitution were concerned that states might establish unfair election procedures or attempt to undermine the national government by refusing to hold elections for Congress. They empowered Congress to step in and regulate such elections as a self-defense mechanism….
On occasion, Congress has exercised its power to “make or alter” rules concerning congressional elections, and some of its laws lie at the very heart of the modern electoral process. It has established a single national Election Day for congressional elections, and mandated that states with multiple Representatives in the U.S. House divide themselves into congressional districts, rather than electing all of their Representatives at-large. Congress also has enacted statutes limiting the amount of money that people may contribute to candidates for Congress, requiring that people publicly disclose most election-related spending, mandating that voter registration forms be made available at various public offices, and requiring states to ensure the accuracy of their voter registration rolls.
Hey, but what if Congress passes a law trying to ensure the inaccuracy of the voter registration rolls? Did the Founders ever contemplate that?
What if Congress were to declare that all states must allow anyone to vote who came to the polls or who submitted a ballot, without any checking at all? Would that be constitutional? In other words, is there no limit to the fraud that Congress is allowed to enable by overriding states’ efforts to make fraud more difficult?
In the TIME article, they’ve already told us that stealing an election was not only perfectly legal—it was the only MORAL thing to do under the circumstances. (As is running the opposition out of town…if the opposition is lucky enough not to get strung up before they’re kicked out.)
And if SCOTUS puts up any resistance the “enemies of the people” will be dealt with accordingly.
To be sure, the USA is “a nation of laws”, but these can be changed “for the benefit of all”.
(BTW, the USSR was also “a nation of laws”….)
I keep saying the Democratic Party is neo-communist and Capitol Hill has become the new Kremlin.The Dems on the Hill are the new Politburo, protected by razor wire and thousands of National Guardsmen armed with live ammo, vetted to be sure they will have no hesitancy in killing their fellow Americans.
But I feel like Artfldgr: no one seems to hearken (BTW, Art, where are you?)
Providing for massive vote fraud in federal elections. Again, Democratic voters will pretend it isn’t happening, will lob accusations at opponents. They’ve pretty much succeeded over 80 years in wrecking what were once referee institutions and now they’re bound and determined to destroy electoral competition. This will not end well.
From One Party Hell to dictatorship. How long does this transition take?
Cicero:
I don’t see why you say no one seems to hearken. I don’t think you’ll get a whole lot of disagreement here, except on the technical grounds that the Democrats are still allowing some private property (their system is more like fascism, where the government tells the big businesses what to do and they do it). Do you mean no one hearkens in your non-virtual life?
Stalin is SUCH an inspiration…to the point where he seems to have become the current “fad”…and here I thought if anyone was going to resurrect him it would be someone along the lines of Putin.
Well, wrong again, as the Democrats have laced up their jackboots and are preparing for a long stomp (forever, if they get their wish) through America’s institutions (and on her Constitution, no less):
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/public-confessions
H/T Powerline blog
https://stream.org/trumps-impeachment-and-stalins-show-trials/
H/T Blazingcatfur blog
File under: Darkness 24/7?
With this one bill they’ll get it all. Have to nuke the filibuster to pass, they’ll do it. Have to pack or intimidate SCOTUS to get it enforced everywhere, they’ll do that too. The thrill of total, never to be taken away power is just too delicious to not do it. Of course the SR’s, like the SA, and Saruman never learn that only one can wield the true power.
“One Bill to rule them all, One Bill to find them, One Bill to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.”
This is going faster than even I thought it would.
geoff b:
This was the very first bill the Democrats passed in the House as soon as they won control of the House in 2018. The very first one. Even though they knew it wouldn’t get anywhere in the Senate. I noticed it at the time and was alarmed.
Then, after November 3, 2020, it became clear to me that it would be the first order of business of the new House and Senate – depending on how those Georgia runoff elections went.
I’m not sure why the bill didn’t get much attention in January of 2019 when it first passed. It seemed to me that the Democrats were clearly signaling their intentions. I think a lot of people on the right ignored it because it clearly was going nowhere in the Senate at the time. But it’s not as though everyone wasn’t warned about the Democrats’ intentions. COVID allowed the Democrats to put these changes into place earlier in a lot of states. But they aim to make them permanent and universal.
@Cicero:
Seriously you do our side’s cause no help by going on about the Muh Communism stuff. All it does is make the Normies think that they’re hearing the rantings of some old time John Bircher… Now they don’t know anything about the Birchers, or about Communism either — but they *have* been inoculated by education system, media to have an immediate allergic full-on antibodies to the rescue reaction whenever they get the hint of That Old Time Reds Under the Bed Religion coming on.
It’s the same as when our side hears them calling us Fascists. To which I would reply, “Wouldn’t be a bad start. Could only wish. And BTW, I’m a Carlist. Now die mofo!”
And the truth is, that the word you’re looking for is not ‘Communism’ — We could argue all day about what it *is*… but truth is we don’t really know yet.
In other words, go easy on the nomenclature fixation. You’d do better to point out to the Normies you meet in daily life what the Nomenklatura have in mind for them if they’re Ordinary White People.
Re the Dodger: He does have a case of this too but there is some value in his obsessive detailing of how this is a multi-generational project — in the most literal sense that present day movers and shakers tend to be descended from earlier ones. Even then, things are mostly emergent phenomena. Breeding Will Out.
If McConnell is right about this bill restricting what Americans can say about DC politicians and SCOTUS does not rule it unconstitutional, then obviously free speech no longer exists.
However, the greater the tyranny, the sooner the doom they unwittingly seek shall befall them. When the men behind the curtains, imagine it safe to finally step out into view, they begin the countdown to their fall over the cliff’s edge, a danger that their arrogant certainty obscures from their awareness.
“The thrill of total, never to be taken away power is just too delicious to not do it.” geoff+b
Indeed, in its purest form, that is the nature of lust. But “total, never to be taken away power” rests upon the assumption that “you can fool enough of the people, all of the time”. An impossibility when total power requires exposure of actual intent.
Lenin fooled enough of the people to seize total power. By the time Khrushchev arose to the Premiership, no one was fooled any longer. But Americans for all their gullibility are not ignorant peasants who have only known the Czar’s oppression.
“But they aim to make them permanent and universal.”
Then Republicans will have to start playing by the same set of rules. Not only in terms of ballot harvesting but in crafting political messages and policies and recruiting candidates that appeal to the sort of voters brought into the system by these new procedures.
That probably will mean more Trumpian and less traditional conservative/libertarian but them’s the breaks.
Mike
Settle down and calm down and dig in for the long run, if as it appears the majority voted for Trump and the other folk used their system to steal the election and then put in all sorts of incompetent people then all is not lost. Just us their methods against them an plan for a longer, much longer strategy when they are unable to deliver on promises. Rome was not lost in a day and we are not Rome and the Nazi’s takeover with the Reichstag event is not who we are either. Rome took over 400 years to fall and the Krauts in German loved their new leader and millions turned out to Seig Heil him at events, not so with Herr Biden. I lived in German for three years a little over 20 years after WWII and became good friends with older Germans who went through the ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ and they alway told me how great their leader was until he started the war and then started losing. That event has some similarity to our current event but we are not Krauts, Germanic folk who had lived on the same land for over 2,000 years and had an Nation less than 80 years old cobbled together out of Kingdoms and Pincipalities in the late 1870’s and Ruled until 1917 by a monarchy and then for less than 20 years by a dysfunctional government that was off the rails.
We the people are still here and every year the new folks who came here from dysfunctional countries and work hard and want to grow and build are not stupid people. I am talking about my neighbors, people with hispanic names in this part of Texas and they work hard, love their children and they are developing a deep love for our nation and they like the fact that they are accepted as Texans.
Here in Texas I have worked with people of other nations and states in the US, mostly European and once they get the feel of Texas and want to put down roots they tend to become Texans, not always but a lot of the time. The future of the voting theft will be best confronted by getting out in the grass roots, door to door and talking with people, regardless of color and all the different wedges the left tires to drive in between us. My daughter lives close to Detroit, she has good friends who are black and they have told her that Trump, with his work on bringing jobs back to people was the best thing they had seen in over 50 years.
It is hard work to stay calm and reasonable and not rise to being bated by hateful leftist taunts and accusations. Trying to out argue and idiot is futile and trying to win over the dedicated on the left is a waste of time so I suggest we work one at a time to win friendship and acceptance when we can with folks who might be receptive to a better future. This life stuff was never supposed to be easy, yet here we are, caught in a huge mouse trap full of cheese and we need to slow down and figure a way out, no matter how long it takes and quit being reactive and start being proactive.
People’s eyes glaze over when they hear ‘The Communists this or that’.
Hell, anyone who is not terminally retarded will move heaven and earth to not live in the Black part of town or have their children be forced to interact with same in the Edumacational System. But say a single less than adoringly worshipful thing about Blacks and those same people will instantly have a Operant Conditioning type response and ‘Racist!’
They’ve been Carefully Taught. That song in South Pacific gets things ass-backwards. On purpose of course, given that it’s always with the didacticism where Ye Usual Suspects concerned 😛
I like to be a bore and insist on calling things by their real names and spout off about the Confucian Rectification of Names as being a foundational bedrock of a just polity, but with Joe Normie none of this will work. He’s in full-on half-panicked Skinner Mode 24/7. You want to change his thought patterns and behaviour, you’re going to have to appeal directly to his amygdala in order to short circuit the Operant Conditioning.
Amygdala. Not a place we like to go. But we’re all headed there on a one-way ticket. Hopefully the sojourn will be short and sharp.
Neo:
I’m sorry I didn’t see that piece.
I’m just surprised that the Left figures they have everything in hand to remake the world, this time, for sure. I’ve seen them get in a hurry before and blow it.
I’ve written over the years about what some call enculturation, what I call emotional learning. The natural process where young people learn the “proper” emotional responses for the society they are immersed in. The Left has perverted that process, in the colleges first, to get a generation that responds emotionally as the Left wants them to.
I’d thought they would just continue doing that for more decades but it seems they believe they have enough people “encultured” now to just boil the rest of us frogs all at once.
@geoff+b
^^ The Zaphodeplorable just said the same thing — naturally my explication was deplorably much cruder.
To get through to people, we’re going to have to go through some people. And I don’t mean Interlocutors; I mean through or over at ramming speed.
Although… got nothing against Mister Interlocutor if we bring back Minstrel Shows.
Hands up anyone who has been to a Minstrel Show this side of reincarnation.
MBunge,
Given the dems control of the Federal gov. and willingness to apply federal ‘standards’ to the States, upon what basis do you imagine that the left’s control over how the votes are counted and assigned won’t be applied to future Trumpian candidates and nominees?
Why would the dems, now zealous in their political control, in fraudulent future ‘elections’ prevent enough RINO nominees from being elected but allow enough Trumpian nominees to be elected that could challenge their electoral majority?
I have been to multiple Minstrel shows when I was a youth and a local civic club my dad was a member of and by the Lt. Gov for the state of that club in the early 1950s. In the spring of each year they would use the largest public school auditorium and lots of them in black-face put on a fund raiser for two nights on the weekend where most all of the proceeds when to low income black children in our town. The men in the line, lots of lawyers and MD’s would roast their fellow citizens and make all sorts of tawdry jokes about the wives and families of the upper class. Lots of music, song and dance and I dad would do some quartet singing and when I was in the high school Jazz Band we would do a large part of the music and the whole damn town would turn out. This was up until about 1963 and by the mid 60’s it was dead and no longer even though some of the black people in our town would play parts in the Minstrel Show. Yep, been there and done that.
Interesting!
I saw one in the late 70s put on by a small city choral society in Australia. Year before probably did a R&H Musical. Year after might have been Romberg’s Student Prince. Same folks would be competing against each other in Lieder contests in the local Eisteddfod. No ACLU / SPLC there, of course. Today would be impossible, nay unthinkable, of course.
Impossible isn’t half as much a problem as Unthinkable. It’s the closing down of avenues of thought and memory which really Gets my Goat (Sorry Ahmed! Look, you can go next. OK?!).
And Happy CNY to all of you Evil Cultural Appropriators, FWIW.
It’s a glorious sunny morning and because all the factories in Shenzhen are closed for the holidays, the sky is bluer than blue.
It’s now Year of the Ox. Appropriately our leaders for a very broad definition of ‘our’ and ‘leader’ are all wearing horns: Devils or Cuckolds depending.
No Chinese I’ve ever talked to has heard of the ‘May You Live in Interesting Times’ Chinese curse. So it’s definitely apocryphal. That’s comforting!
“upon what basis do you imagine that the left’s control over how the votes are counted and assigned won’t be applied to future Trumpian candidates and nominees?”
There are 50 states. Votes are actually counted at a local level. It’s counties where I live but it could be cities or districts somewhere else. Outside the big cities, many if not most of those local levels are controlled by Republicans. And a GOP that started running more Trumpian populist candidates would probably have more success in those big cities. Not enough to take over but enough to have SOME Republicans in positions of authority.
Mike
MBunge:
Only going to work if your side has its own Hard Men standing by every one of your vote count observers. Also your side needs to have every one of their guys doxxed. You need to know in advance where they work and where they live and make damn sure they know you know. That’s how they roll — how they intimidated your side’s polling guys in the recent debacle. There is no more ‘This is not Who We Are’.
Hate to sound like the Dodger… but they’ve been telling us for decades… Listen to Joan Baez speaking at Woodstock. Yadda yadda Organize blah blah Organize oink honk Organize…
Organize, Organize, Organize.. They do it. Our side shows up on the day in the naive believe that Truth and Justice will Out. Jaysus wept!
Zaphod – as I recall the Wikipedia entry on this Ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” it’s popularity stems from JFK using it on a trip to Africa (South Africa?).
I think a speechwriter picked it up from an SF novel. The author, in turn, composed it imagining as if it were an Ancient Chinese curse!
So, yes – it was invented. By a writer. An American writer, I presume. And popularised by an American President were it became a common place bit of fictional wisdom, attributed to the Chinese (because older, wiser people, etc).
@TJ:
Thanks. Interesting!
FWIW, all the Chinese Curses I do know have subject matter more like Gutter Italian or Spanish profanities than anything Ezra Pound might have dashed off in a Canto.
I downloaded a Hong Kong related app recently and fell about laughing when i saw the feedback email address: help@DLLM.io — DLLM letters are an acronym of Cantonese pronunciation transliterated to Latin alphabet which expands to #### Your Old Mother and the .io == in/out just icing on the cake.
It’s sometimes amusing to hear two members of the local laboring classes having some friendly banter. Every sentence begins with DLLM and then proceeds to more inventive insults and word plays.
Lots of good earthy profanity in everyday Street Mandarin too. Despite all their apparent Borg-like conformity, up close you find a lot of prickly individualists — until Nationalism or other in-Group Preferences kick in.
Lesson for Whitey here ^^ We’re good at the prickly individualist bit, not so good at sticking together when facing outside or even inside threats.
Before I moved on down in Texas and I lived in Dallas I had a good friend who was a Doctor, Chinese who grew up in Shanghai and he had very wry sense of humor. He told me that virtually all of the educated upper class people in China spoke English, his was excellent, because using English they could communicate between all of the various languages and better yet use a simple keyboard with our European alphabet. He had learned to sing American songs as a child going to school in China and ‘Old Black Joe’ the spiritual was one he like a lot and since my first name is Joe he would come up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and start singing ‘Old White Joe’ and that was the way he would get even with me because I would accuse him of eating dogs and he would shake his head and tell me, ‘No, no, we don’t eat dogs, Koreans eat dogs and we like out dogs and take good care of our pets.’
I don’t know how we lost this ability to have fun with each other and tease and bond friendships but it has been a tremendous loss for forming bonds between folk of different backgrounds. Maybe it is a guy thing of trading insults but in the past it was an important part of welding friends together by kind of putting a strain on the limits. I am old and did that for years making good friends with a lot of guys and it was never meant to mean my background was superior, it was more like how men whack on each other almost hard enough to hurt to say I see you and I like you and don’t you dare try to give me a man hug.
My apologies for getting off topic, I made a huge mess of Elk and Brisket chili this evening, drinking a couple of Scotch and Soda doubles and that kind of loosened up my fingers on the keyboard, the supper was really fine. I started following the comments instead of the original posting. Thank you all, Neo for your thoughtful postings and commentors for the incredible replies. That will be all !
@Old Texan:
You make a very good point in your reminiscence. We’ve lost the ability to let off steam and lubricate the social bonds with a bit of friendly animosity. Apart from the Progressive Agenda, I think it’s also related to the presence of women in the workplace and the eradication of exclusively male spheres. Women simply do.not.get this mode of male interaction — and increasingly younger generations brought up by single mothers and female teachers do not get it either.
Your Old Friend was bang on about the dialects problem. English really was a useful Lingua Franca. And pre smartphones, Chinese character typing input methods were a nightmare.
Beyond that, there’s even a place for separateness and amused but polite *mutual* contempt. Out East, nobody pretends that we’re all one big family. Different ethnic groups and sub-groups are free to maintain a degree of exclusiveness and that’s fine. Everybody rubs along more or less OK. Freedom of Association is something precious.
The non-Muslim part of the Batak population of Sumatra eat dogs. This is an improvement as they used to eat their deceased parents not so long ago. The Manadonese eat dogs and have some of the best diving locations on the planet, so they can be forgiven. It’s illegal in Hong Kong, but I’m sure Fido is on the menu in some villages out in the New Territories.
Meanwhile, Back at the Impeachment Ranch:
https://forward.com/culture/463892/with-jewish-lawyers-on-each-side-interpreting-the-constitution-is-not/
Any Briskers, err… Fiskers for this one?
James Madison could not be reached for comment.
OldTexan on February 11, 2021 at 7:29 pm: Great post proposing calm and rational examination of the situation.
One small OT nit you might like to explore: Arther Ferrill, in The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation [1986], suggests that the Roman Army was still pretty decent up to 378 AD, only starting to show performance decline in 406-410, with final collapse in 476, due to the incorporation of increasing numbers of barbarian recruits who did not have the same allegiance to Rome and acceptance of the required level of training and discipline that former armies had. So not a 400 year decline but more like 100 years. Plus the Romanoi of Constantinople managed to remain in power for another 1000 years.
R2L:
Good points. Still we must remember that Rome, post Diocletian Reforms, was a very different beast. Eastern and Western Empires by this point looked nothing like the early to mid Principate, let alone the Republic. Much closer to oriental despotisms in practice.
That Efficient Army was kept in line by Frumentarii (secret police / spies) and the more obvious Zampolit types — Legates and various Imperial Eunuch secretaries who followed commanders around on their staffs. Fun times.
I guess the point though is that such dysfunctional and, well, Byzantine perversions of what we might consider a nation’s or empire’s foundational mythos and ideals can survive and even thrive for a *very* long time.
A bit surprised Erdogan hasn’t started calling himself Kayser-i Rum. It’s only February.
Zaphod,
I hadn’t seen yours when I wrote. I used to have more time to read and write but now don’t so I miss things. I’ve read here off and on for years but mostly hung and commented at Protein Wisdom for well over a decade, then on Twitter for a few years but they don’t want me around now so I’m now reading blogs more again. Neo has always been excellent.
Haven’t read the bill, but does it mandate the changes or authorize them?
Neo;
I thought that this;
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/natan-sharansky-doublethink
would be a very good subject you could write about and/or address in one of your write-ups.
Sorry it is not germane to the immediate topic at hand , but I did not know how else to bring it to your attention.
geoff+b,
Jeff Goldstein is quite a talent. The disruption his crazed cyber-stalker caused to his blog, life and family is incredible. I was a daily reader of Protein Wisdom for years (and likely read many of your comments), but my attention faded as Jeff’s work there dropped off as the ordeal decreased his ability to post. I hope he and his family are well! The story would make a good documentary.
This will sound trite, but this seems to be a continuation of city mouse/country mouse. Or urban vs. rural. Or elites vs. rubes. Victor Davis Hanson makes similar comparisons with Ancient Rome. And its eventual fall.
None of the fraud we saw in last year’s presidential election surprised me. It’s the way things have been done in Chicago my entire life. And it’s the way things are done in every U.S. city with a long standing, Democrat machine. Sometimes the vote counting is even done accurately, but prior to the election there are threats, bullying, slander… whatever is necessary to eliminate any viable opposition candidates so they are not even on the ballot. When that work is done on the front end, no vote fraud is necessary come election day.
If a decent opposing candidate does make it on the ballot homeless are rounded up and given food, money, alcohol… driven to polling places and either handed pre-filled ballots or escorted to the polling station to ensure they vote “accurately.” Stacks of pre-filled ballots are added to those legally cast. Boxes of votes from wards or precincts that lean the wrong way are lost in transit and never counted; thrown in trash cans or rivers…
The big city machines are simply expanding their methods and reach as more and more of the country becomes “big cities.” What was Barack Obama’s job before the Chicago machine put him in politics? Community organizer. For decades in Chicago and other Democrat run cities people have built careers off of funneling, skimming, distributing and collecting tax payer money. Every drop of concrete poured on a commercial job in Chicago involves some democrat palms getting greased, somewhere. Jesse Jackson formed Operation Push as a very successful grift to ensure blacks got their part of the pie. Target a local business and give the owner/board an ultimatum: Monday morning there will be a line of protesters outside your business marching with signs that state your business is racist, or donate to Operation Push and the protesters will stand down. The unions donate to the politicians and the politicians award contracts to the unions; and ignore “cost overruns” and blatant embezzlement. Now teachers and attorneys generals are in on the grift.
The rural regions of our country no longer have the population to be an effective counter balance to the big cities. As we’ve seen for about 60 years, the march towards turning the federal government into Chicago, or Detroit, or Philadelphia or New York will continue.
Our big cities figured the above out around the turn of the last century and demographics have been driving the trend towards D.C. and national control for years.
Rufus T. Firefly,
Jeff G. seems to be doing okay. He’s put up a post on PW about his statement at the sentencing hearing for that stalker. He’s also done some very good threads on Twitter. “Threadreaderapp” should have most of them available.
geoff+b,
What is his Twitter handle?
Chick Corea died yesterday in his home town of Chelsea Mass of a rare cancer.
I’m not a big jazz buff, but I loved his work. I heard him live on 4 occasions and then had lost touch. I didn’t know he won 23 Grammys and is currently nom. for 2 more. Here’s a youtube selection with the most musically assessable at the top.
Where Have I Known You Before
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O25Wm42m3qE
This one is fun. It’s like a Spanish themed movie music medley.
My Spanish Fantasy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb8Cqztclrs
This has The Girl from Ipanema flavor. Chick on Fender Rhodes Electric and Joe Farrell on flute. Every time I hear the Fender Rhodes it takes me back to the early 70’s.
You’re Everything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbynfCYDfuI
Here’s some more from the early 70’s with Farrell on flute and soprano sax. Its got live footage, unfortunately mucked up a bit with artsy video inserts. I love Farrell on the soprano sax near the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2CO4VVCP1w&list=RDj2CO4VVCP1w&start_radio=1
Finally, an homage from Rick Beato
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHuv0I-qbA
Ack, accessible.
Rufus, “at”proteinwisdom The first part changes often.
“The rural regions of our country no longer have the population to be an effective counter balance to the big cities.”
But unless you are really big on live theater, live music, or live games of major college or pro sports, there’s no longer any need to live in the big cities. The internet brings the exact same stuff to Des Moines that it does to New York City. What’s propping big cities up right now is physical and emotional inertia.
There’s probably hundreds of thousands of people, if not a couple million or more, who’d be happier and relatively more prosperous living in places like Kansas City instead of New York City.
Mike
MBunge:
And then will they turn those places blue?
“And then will they turn those places blue?”
Not if they’re offered a viable alternative. It’s not like the stuff that has made California and the mega-cities crap holes was pushed up from the bottom by popular demand. One of the under examined aspects of Republican Failure Theater has been the absolute refusal of the GOP to significantly contest Democrats in states like New York, Massachusetts, and California.
Mike
JohnTyler brought this post to our attention, and he does well to recommend it.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/natan-sharansky-doublethink
After having read it earlier this week, I was somewhat intrigued to later see many of his observations echoed in a somewhat different situation by a very different person.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/gina-carano-reportedly-has-new-project-with-the-daily-wire/
And yet, truth is truth, no matter what the circumstances.
Sharansky:
Carano:
Losing a movie gig is, of course, no comparison to incarceration in the Soviet Gulag, but it is a difference of degree not of kind, as many people have been pointing out recently.
And your link is not really off topic, John, since the corruption of the election process is part of every dictator’s agenda.