{"id":41485,"date":"2020-10-15T04:38:50","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T11:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=41485"},"modified":"2020-10-15T04:39:30","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T11:39:30","slug":"squatchs-open-thread14-october-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/15\/squatchs-open-thread14-october-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 14 October 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh my!\u00a0 Twice within one week!\u00a0 I had a favourite meal — turkey and the trimmings! Canadian Thanksgiving is now a memory.\u00a0 Normally I and a number of others would get together for our Thanksgiving feast of turkey, ham, veggies and salads.\u00a0 Of course there would also have been the obligatory pumpkin pie.\u00a0 But alas, COVID-19 put that off until next year at the earliest.\u00a0 Instead, I ordered a turkey dinner with all the trimmings from my favourite restaurant and ate at home.\u00a0 It was sooooooooooooooo good!\u00a0 I also treated my 3 fur babes to fresh roasted chicken which they scarfed up like Hoover uprights!\u00a0 While we were scarfing, the news did not stop.\u00a0 I am taking a course in Indigenous Studies from the University of Alberta online and I am also taking a course on racism based on Ibram Xendi’s book “How to be an Anti Racist” through my church.\u00a0 It has been a busy week of studying and will continue to be until mid November.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

CNN<\/a><\/strong><\/span> — <\/span>“The unmasking is a massive — it’s a massive thing,” Trump said shortly after the release of the names. “It’s — I just got a list. It’s — who can believe a thing like this? And I watched Biden yesterday on ‘Good Morning America’ being interviewed by one of your colleagues, George Stephanopoulos, and he said he knew nothing about anything. He has no idea. He knows nothing about anything.”\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

So important to Trump was this unmasking news that Attorney General William Barr tasked John Bash, the US Attorney in San Antonio, in late May with conducting\u00a0an investigation into whether the unmasking was politically motivated.<\/p>\r\n

That investigation has ended,\u00a0according to The Washington Post. And it has ended without any charges being brought against Biden or\u00a0any<\/em> other Obama administration official. Or even any public report of its findings.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

There’s a pattern here, of course. From his initial insistence that\u00a03 to 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election\u00a0(for which he has provided zero evidence) right through these unmasking claims, Trump has desperately seized onto anything and everything that would suggest that not only did the so-called “deep state” work to keep him from winning but it has also done everything it can to hamstring his presidency. …<\/p>\r\n

Remember how Trump repeatedly raised questions about whether Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 election to help him and hurt Hillary Clinton? Well, the intelligence community, special counsel Robert Mueller and the\u00a0US Senate Intelligence Committee all said that that’s\u00a0exactly<\/em>\u00a0what happened.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Or how Trump said that the entire Russia investigation was politically motivated by people out to get him?\u00a0It wasn’t.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Or how Trump said that President Barack Obama and Biden had “spied” on his presidential campaign? Also,\u00a0debunked.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Or how the DNC email server was somehow in the possession of the Ukrainians?\u00a0It isn’t.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Or how Google and social media sites are biased against conservatives?\u00a0Not quite.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The more recent events have led Trump to be extremely unhappy with AG Barr because he did not do Trump’s bidding to Trump’s satisfaction.\u00a0 In a comment within the past few days, Trump was asked if Barr would be his AG pick for a second term should he win.\u00a0 Trump would only say he was not happy.\u00a0 With Trump it is one thing after another, one scandal after another, conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory after another.\u00a0 Trump is a walking case of paranoid delusions and a national security risk.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Canadian Press<\/a><\/strong> — <\/span>She’s accurately predicted the Brexit vote, the 2016 American presidential outcome, and last year’s federal election in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Now, a Canadian-made artificial intelligence system called Polly is forecasting next month’s U.S. presidential election, using public social-media data and algorithms.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Polly is profiled in the new documentary “Margin of Error,” which premieres Saturday on Ontario’s publicly funded network TVO, and across Canada on\u00a0tvo.org<\/a><\/strong><\/span> and the station’s YouTube channel.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

The predictions currently update daily and have a high margin of error that will become smaller closer to the Nov. 3 election, but as of Wednesday afternoon, she had Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with 346 Electoral College votes vs. U.S. President Donald Trump at 192.<\/p>\r\n

Polly also had Biden with 55 per cent of the popular vote vs. Trump at 45 per cent.<\/p>\r\n

“But of course the huge caveat in that, particularly in the U.S., is issues of voter turnout, vote suppression, early voting and discounted ballots,” …<\/p>\r\n

Definitely check out the interactive map at https:\/\/advancedsymbolics.com\/us-election\/<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I don’t know about you, but I like Joe Biden’s numbers there.\u00a0 Of course there are many factors involved, but if previous uses are any indication, Polly may have star status . . . assuming nobody screws with the algorithms, this just may a new and reliable tool.\u00a0 The article has more detail so I encourage you to read it.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

AlterNet<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>—\u00a0<\/span>President Donald Trump urged California Republicans to defy a state order to remove\u00a0fake “official” ballot drop boxes after numerous top officials called them “illegal.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Monday\u00a0issued an order\u00a0to the California GOP and three county chapters requiring the removal of unofficial ballot drop boxes erected in front of locations like gyms, gun stores and churches that were falsely marked “official.”<\/p>\r\n

Trump, however, urged the party to fight the order in court.<\/p>\r\n

“You mean only Democrats are allowed to do this? But haven’t the Dems been doing this for years?”\u00a0the president tweeted, drawing a dubious comparison between the boxes and the\u00a0legal “ballot harvesting” efforts by Democrats that have drawn his ire. “See you in court. Fight hard Republicans!” …<\/p>\r\n

“Screw you!” Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said in response to Newsom’s tweet, according to\u00a0Politico. “You created the law, we’re going to ballot harvest.”\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

The offices of the attorney general and secretary of state said in a\u00a0cease-and-desist order\u00a0to the GOP that the law required “persons to whom a voter entrusts their ballot to return to county election officials provide their name, signature and relationship to the voter.”<\/p>\r\n

Becerra and Padilla also argued during a Monday conference call that the boxes were “illegal,” because they were designed to trick voters by claiming to be “official.” The boxes lack the security requirements mandated for official collection boxes installed by election officials, they added.<\/p>\r\n

Just like a Republican to twist and obfuscate well intentioned laws.\u00a0 I have not read the actual California law, but as Bill Maher says, “I just know it’s true.”\u00a0 Trump has encouraged North Carolinian Republicans to vote twice, once by mail and once in person.\u00a0 I hear the same has been conveyed to Trump supporters in Florida.\u00a0 Now over and above all the other Trump bullshit, he is encouraging voters and the Republican party to break the law .\u00a0 End the madness and DUMP TRUMP<\/strong> and as many Republicans as possible.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>—\u00a0<\/span>The most important<\/span>\u00a0ballot question in 2020 is not Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, or Democrat versus Republican. The most important question is: Will Trump get away with his corruption\u2014will his crooked and authoritarian tactics succeed?<\/p>\r\n

If the answer is yes, be ready for more. Much more.<\/p>\r\n

Americans have lavished enormous powers on the presidency. They have also sought to bind those powers by law. Yet the Founders of the republic understood that law alone could never eliminate the risks inherent in the power of the presidency. They worried ceaselessly about the prospect of a truly bad man in the office\u2014a Caesar or a Cromwell, as Alexander Hamilton fretted in\u00a0\u201cFederalist No. 21.\u201d\u00a0They built restraints: a complicated system for choosing the president, a Congress to constrain him, impeachment to remove him. Their solutions worked for two and a half centuries. In our time, the system failed.<\/p>\r\n

Through the Trump years, institutions have failed again and again to check corruption, abuse of power, and even pro-Trump violence.<\/p>\r\n

As Trump took office, I published\u00a0a cover story in this magazine, arguing that his presidency could put the United States on the road to autocracy. \u201cBy all early indications,\u201d I wrote, \u201cthe Trump presidency will corrode public integrity and the rule of law\u2014and also do untold damage to American global leadership, the Western alliance, and democratic norms around the world. The damage has already begun, and it will not be soon or easily undone. Yet exactly how much damage is allowed to be done is an open question.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

We can now measure the damage done. As we near the 2020 vote, the Trump administration is attempting to\u00a0cripple the Postal Service<\/strong>\u00a0to alter the election\u2019s outcome. The president has successfully refused to comply with subpoenas from congressional committees chaired by members of the opposing party. He has ignored ethics guidelines, junked rules on security clearances, and shut down two counterintelligence investigations of his Russian business links, one by the FBI, the other by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He has assigned prison police and park police to new missions as street enforcers, bypassing the National Guard and the FBI. As in 2016,\u00a0he is once again welcoming Russian help for his election campaign<\/strong>\u2014only this time, he controls the agencies that are refusing to answer the questions of Congress and the American people.<\/p>\r\n

Those who would minimize the threat that Trump poses take solace in his personal weaknesses: his laziness, his ignorance of the mechanics of government. But the president is not acting alone. The Republican politicians who normally might have been expected to restrain Trump are instead enabling and empowering him.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

…Trump has normalized the minority rule.<\/strong> …\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Republicans in the Trump years have gotten used to\u00a0competing under rules biased in their favor. They have come to fear that unless the rules favor them, they will lose. And so they have learned to think of biased rules as necessary, proper, and just\u2014and to view any effort to correct those rules as a direct attack on their survival.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

To understand how the U.S. system failed in Trump\u2019s first term\u2014and how it could fail further across another four years\u2014let\u2019s look closer at some of Trump\u2019s abuses and the direction they could trend in a second term.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

Inciting Political Violence<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\r\n

Trump has used violence as a political resource since he first declared his candidacy, in the summer of 2015. But as his reelection prospects have dimmed in 2020, political violence has become central to Trump\u2019s message. He wants more of it. After video circulated that appeared to show Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and killing two people and wounding a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25,\u00a0Trump liked a tweet declaring<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cKyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.\u201d\u00a0\u201cThe more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who\u2019s best on public safety and law and order,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Trump\u2019s adviser Kellyanne Conway said on\u00a0Fox & Friends<\/i> on August 27. Two nights later, a 600-vehicle caravan of Trump supporters headed into downtown Portland, Oregon, firing paintball guns and pepper spray, driving toward a confrontation during which one of them was shot dead.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

Trump\u2019s appeal is founded on a racial consciousness and a racial resentment that have stimulated white racist terrorism in the United States and the world, from the New Zealand mosque slaughter (whose perpetrator invoked Trump) to the Pittsburgh synagogue murders to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Gilroy, California. In recent weeks, political violence has caused those deaths in Kenosha and Portland. A second Trump term will only incite more such horror.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

Trump uses power to enrich himself and weaken any institution of law or ethics that gets in the way of his self-enrichment. He holds power by inflaming resentments and hatreds. A second term will mean more stealing, more institution-wrecking, more incitement of bigotry.\u00a0 …<\/p>\r\n

Voters in 2020 will go to the polls in the midst of a terrible economic recession, with millions out of work because of Trump\u2019s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. But the country is facing a democratic recession too, a from-the-top squeeze on the freedom of ordinary people to influence their government. Will the president follow laws or ignore them? Will public money be used for public purposes\u2014or be redirected to profit Trump and his cronies? Will elections be run fairly\u2014or be manipulated by the president\u2019s party to prevent opposing votes from being cast and counted? Will majority rule remain the American way? Or will minority rule become not a freak event but an enduring habit? These questions are on the ballot as Americans go into the voting booth.<\/p>\r\n

Although the article is long, to me it is “a call to arms” to VOTE and to vote wisely taking into account Trump’s and Republican corruption.\u00a0 Author David Frum, usually considered right of centre, also covers Trump’s Abuse of the Pardon Power<\/strong>, his Abuse of Government Resources for Personal Gain<\/strong>, and Directing Public Funds to Himself and His Companies<\/strong>.\u00a0 Americans cannot afford to let this mad man take the country hostage for another four years!<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!!<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\r\n

\u00a0<\/h3>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh my!\u00a0 Twice within one week!\u00a0 I had a favourite meal — turkey and the trimmings! Canadian Thanksgiving is now a memory.\u00a0 Normally I and a number of others would get together for our Thanksgiving feast of turkey, ham, veggies and salads.\u00a0 Of course there would also have been the obligatory pumpkin pie.\u00a0 But alas, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[4146,3779,3765,4144],"class_list":["post-41485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-politics","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-election-theft","tag-unmasking","category-35-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}