The Republican Party’s long slide into Trumpism and Donald Trump’s personal long slide may not have been inevitable, but they were certainly predictable. Conservative grandees in endowed think tanks eventually will churn out retrospectives about how, like September 11, nobody could have foreseen where they all were headed as they marched lockstep into its maw, principled conservatives to the end.
The trend lines were there. From the Birchers and Goldwater to Nixon and the Southern Strategy, from the parallel rise of the Christian right and movement conservatism, to Reagan, to “Rush Rooms” and the Gingrich revolution, and from birtherism to climate denialism to Trumpish authoritarianism. It is quaint to think George W. Bush’s tax cuts, malapropisms, and war cabinet once seemed the apotheosis of the conservative project. The momentum of that project would carry the right’s explosive-laden artillery shell beyond its intended liberal targets. Plutocrats would get their tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks, but at risk of bringing the shining city on the hill’s walls down around them and us. David Koch is dead, but the Amazon is still on fire.
Aside from a few Never Trumpers and the occasional Republican politician’s or pundit’s road to Damascus experience, a broad consensus for explaining it has yet to manifest. Not that there isn’t money to be made in trying in the meantime.
Politico’s Tim Alberta tries in “American Carnage,” writes Jonathan Chait, but “lacks a robust theory to account for the behavior the author so expertly portrays.” The movement conservative leaders thought they had built upon a philosophy of lower taxes and small government was simply a facade. Their own internal polling told them their voters had no interest in it. The culture wars the party fueled as a useful tool in advancing their donors’ objectives was their base voters’ true philosophy:
This would seem to confirm the conclusions that liberals have long harbored. The Republican Party’s political elite is obsessed with cutting taxes for the wealthy, but it recognizes the lack of popular support for its objectives and is forced to divert attention away from its main agenda by emphasizing cultural-war themes. The disconnect between the Republican Party’s plutocratic agenda and the desires of the electorate is a tension it has never been able to resolve, and as it has moved steadily rightward, it has been evolving into an authoritarian party.
The party’s embrace of Trump is a natural, if not inevitable, step in this evolution. This is why the conservatives who presented Trump as an enemy of conservative-movement ideals have so badly misdiagnosed the party’s response to Trump. The most fervently ideological conservatives in the party have also been the most sycophantic: Ryan, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Mick Mulvaney, the entire House Freedom Caucus. They embraced Trump because Trumpism is their avenue to carry out their unpopular agenda.
Alberta’s conservatism puts him in a position to supply “a vast trove of inside-the-room scenes of Republican professionals standing mouth agape at the Mad King,” Chait explains. “But his only explanation for why so many Republicans betrayed their supposed values to support Trump is personal weakness, which is fine for explaining one person’s choices but is inadequate in accounting for how a party followed a single course en masse.”
As dead as irony is in the Age of Trump, the irony remaining is how a movement in reaction to the social transformations of the 1960s now mirrors, and in many ways exceeds, the worst excesses of which it accused civil rights “communists” and long-haired hippies with their drugs and godless “moral relativism.”
Now it is the Republican base addicted to drugs, looking for an angry fix, and making obeisance to a false prophet as the party’s elite grovel for a seat at his right hand. What conservatives need now is not pundits or preachers, but poets.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness …”
Amazon rain forest in flames, film at 11: Top 10 Eco-Flicks
By Dennis Hartley
Come on you world, won’t you give a damn?
Turn on some lights and see this garbage can
Time is the essence if we plan to stay
Death is in stride when filth is the pride of our home
-from “Powerful People” by Gino Vanelli
The iconic portrait above was taken Christmas Eve, 1968 by Apollo 8 crew member Major William A. Anders. The story behind the photo is detailed on NASA’s website:
Anders said their job was not to look at the Earth, but to simulate a lunar mission. It was not until things had calmed down and they were on their way to the moon that they actually got to look back and take a picture of the Earth as they had left it.
“That’s when I was thinking ‘that’s a pretty place down there,'” Anders said. “It hadn’t quite sunk in like the Earthrise picture did, because the Earthrise had the Earth contrasted with this ugly lunar surface.”
Anders described the view of Earth before Earthrise “kind of like the classroom globe sitting on a teacher’s desk, but no country divisions. It was about 25,000 miles away where you could still recognize continents.”
Often referred to as “the planet’s lungs” because it provides 20% of the world’s oxygen, the Amazon rainforest has been ablaze for weeks. NASA has captured satellite images of the billowing smoke from the catastrophic fires, which continue to spread.
As of today (Aug. 23), the wildfires have so far reached a number of Brazilian states, including Amazonas, Para, Mato Grosso and Rondonia, and the tropical forests of Bolivia. NOAA/NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured a natural-color image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on Wednesday (Aug. 21). The image shows smoke from the fires gathered over the Amazon across South America.
[…] “Not so long ago it was thought that Amazonian forests and other tropical rainforest regions were completely immune to fires thanks to the high moisture content of the undergrowth beneath the protection of the canopy tree cover. But the severe droughts of 1997-98, 2005, 2010, and currently a large number of wildfires across northern Brazil have forever changed this perception,” Carlos Peres, a biologist at University of East Anglia, said in a statement.
Natural fires in the Amazon are extremely uncommon. The fires now ravaging the Amazon rainforest were set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for crops and cattle pastures, according to the Washington Post. The span of the fires includes the land of Indigenous communities, which has been targeted by arsonists seeking to use the land for illegal logging, mining and cattle ranches, Amnesty reports.
Global outrage and protests erupted against Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in response to the fires, following Bolsonaro’s actions to weaken environmental protections and indigenous land rights in the country and for his support of mining and forestry in the Amazon, despite the prevalence of illegal mining and logging activities.
“The newly elected Bolsonaro administration in Brazil has rapidly dismantled Brazil’s institutional capacity to confront any threat against wild nature, while unleashing a widespread sentiment of impunity to thousands of landowners as haphazard agricultural frontiers continue to expand,” Peres said.
Oy. Not such a “pretty place down there”, these days.
Clearly, the current administration in Brazil is not only demonstrating a complete lack of regard for the health and future of its own nation’s precious natural resources, but to the health and future of the entire planet. If that makes you mad, join the club. Mr. Beale and I want you to get mad. But do you want to know what really chaps my ass? There was a time not so long ago when our own nation was making some positive strides on this front.
The Trump Administration’s tumultuous presidency has brought a flurry of changes—both realized and anticipated—to U.S. environmental policy. Many of the actions roll back Obama-era policies that aimed to curb climate change and limit environmental pollution, while others threaten to limit federal funding for science and the environment.
It’s a lot to keep track of, so National Geographic will be maintaining an abbreviated timeline of the Trump Administration’s environmental actions and policy changes, as well as reactions to them. We will update this article as news develops.
As you’re likely aware, many “updates” follow that intro (the most recent one is from May 2, and something tells me that there may be a few more nuggets following this weekend’s G7 conference). Bookmark the link, if you dare (sick bag on standby).
Considering the Earth’s on fire and all, here are my picks for the Top 10 eco-flicks. As long as you don’t print out a hardcopy, this post is 100% biodegradable (it’s a com-post!).
Chasing Ice- Jeff Orlowski’s film is glacially paced. That is, “glacial pacing” ain’t what it used to be. Glaciers are moving along (“retreating”, technically) at a pretty good clip. This does not portend well. To be less flowery: we’re fucked. According to nature photographer (and subject of Orlowski’s film) James Balog, “The story…is in the ice.”
Balog’s journey began in 2005, while on assignment in the Arctic for National Geographic to document the effect of climate change. Up until that trip, he candidly admits he “…didn’t think humans were capable” of influencing weather patterns so profoundly. His epiphany gave birth to a multi-year project utilizing modified time-lapse cameras to capture alarming empirical evidence of the effects of global warming.
The images are beautiful, yet troubling. Orlowski’s film mirrors the dichotomy, equal parts cautionary eco-doc and art installation. The images trump the montage of inane squawking by climate deniers in the opening, proving that a picture is worth 1,000 words.
The Emerald Forest– Although it may initially seem a heavy-handed (if well-meaning) “save the rain forest” polemic, John Boorman’s underrated 1985 adventure (a cross between The Searchers and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan) goes much deeper.
Powers Boothe plays an American construction engineer working on a dam project in Brazil. One day, while his wife and young son are visiting the job site on the edge of the rain forest, the boy is abducted and adopted by an indigenous tribe who call themselves “The Invisible People”, touching off an obsessive decade-long search by the father. By the time he is finally reunited with his now-teenage son (Charley Boorman), the challenge becomes a matter of how he and his wife (Meg Foster) are going to coax the young man back into “civilization”.
Tautly directed, lushly photographed (by Philippe Rousselot) and well-acted. Rosco Pallenberg scripted (he also adapted the screenplay for Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur).
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster– I know what you’re thinking: there’s no accounting for some people’s tastes. But who ever said an environmental “message” movie couldn’t also provide mindless, guilty fun? Let’s have a little action. Knock over a few buildings. Wreak havoc. Crash a wild party on the rim of a volcano with some Japanese flower children. Besides, Godzilla is on our side for a change. Watch him valiantly battle Hedora, a sludge-oozing toxic avenger out to make mankind collectively suck on his grody tailpipe. And you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Save the Earth”-my vote for “best worst” song ever from a film (much less a monster movie).
An Inconvenient Truth– I re-watched this recently; I hadn’t seen it since it opened in 2006, and it struck me how it now plays less like a warning bell and more like the nightly news. It’s the end of the world as we know it. Apocalyptic sci-fi is now scientific fact. Former VP/Nobel winner Al Gore is a Power Point-packing Rod Serling, submitting a gallery of nightmare nature scenarios for our disapproval. I’m tempted to say that Gore and director Davis Guggenheim’s chilling look at the results of unchecked global warming only reveals the tip of the iceberg…but it’s melting too fast.
Koyannisqatsi– In 1982 this genre-defying film quietly made its way around the art houses; it’s now a cult favorite. Directed by activist/ex-Christian monk Godfrey Reggio, with beautiful cinematography by Ron Fricke (who later directed Chronos, Baraka, and Samsara) and music by Philip Glass (who also scored Reggio’s sequels), it was considered a transcendent experience by some; New Age hokum by others (count me as a fan).
The title (from ancient Hopi) translates as “life out of balance” The narrative-free imagery, running the gamut from natural vistas to scenes of First World urban decay, is open for interpretation. Reggio followed up in 1988 with Powaqqatsi (“parasitic way of life”), focusing on the First World’s drain on Third World resources, then book-ended his trilogy with Naqoyqatsi (“life as war”).
Manufactured Landscapes– A unique eco-documentary from Jennifer Baichwal about photographer Edward Burtynsky, who is an “earth diarist” of sorts. While his photographs are striking, they don’t paint a pretty picture of our fragile planet. Burtynsky’s eye discerns a terrible beauty in the wake of the profound and irreversible human imprint incurred by accelerated modernization. As captured by Burtynsky’s camera, strip-mined vistas recall the stark desolation of NASA photos sent from the Martian surface; mountains of “e-waste” dumped in a vast Chinese landfill take on an almost gothic, cyber-punk dreamscape. The photographs play like a scroll through Google Earth images, as reinterpreted by Jackson Pollock. An eye-opener.
Princess Mononoke– Anime master Hayao Miyazaki and his cohorts at Studio Ghibli have raised the bar on the art form over the past several decades. This 1997 Ghibli production is one of their most visually resplendent. Perhaps not as “kid-friendly” as per usual, but many of the usual Miyazaki themes are present: humanism, white magic, beneficent forest gods, female empowerment, and pacifist angst in a violent world. The lovely score is by frequent Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi. For another Miyazaki film with an environmental message, check out Nausicaa Valley of the Wind.
Queen of the Sun– I never thought that a documentary about honeybees would make me laugh and cry-but Taggart Siegel’s 2010 film did just that. Appearing at first to be a distressing examination of Colony Collapse Syndrome, a phenomenon that has puzzled and dismayed beekeepers and scientists alike with its increasing frequency over the past few decades, the film becomes a sometimes joyous, sometimes humbling meditation on how essential these tiny yet complex social creatures are to the planet’s life cycle. Humans may harbor a pretty high opinion of our own place on the evolutionary ladder, but Siegel lays out a convincing case which proves that these busy little creatures are, in fact, the boss of us.
Silent Running– In space, no one can hear you trimming the verge! Bruce Dern is an agrarian antihero in this 1972 sci-fi adventure, directed by legendary special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull. Produced around the time “ecology” was a buzzword, its message may seem a little heavy-handed today, but the film remains a cult favorite.
Dern is the gardener on a commercial space freighter that houses several bio-domes, each dedicated to preserving a species of vegetation (in this bleak future, the Earth is barren of organic growth). While it’s a 9 to 5 drudge gig to his blue-collar shipmates, Dern sees his cultivating duties as a sacred mission. When the interests of commerce demand the crew jettison the domes to make room for more lucrative cargo, Dern goes off his nut, eventually ending up alone with two salvaged bio-domes and a trio of droids (Huey, Dewey and Louie) who play Man Friday to his Robinson Crusoe. Joan Baez contributes two songs on the soundtrack.
Soylent Green– Based on a Harry Harrison novel, Richard Fleischer’s 1973 film is set in 2022, when traditional culinary fare is but a dim memory, due to overpopulation and environmental depletion. Only the wealthy can afford the odd tomato or stalk of celery; most of the U.S. population lives on processed “Soylent Corporation” product. The government encourages the sick and the elderly to politely move out of the way by providing handy suicide assistance centers (considering current threats to our Social Security system, that doesn’t seem much of a stretch anymore).
Oh-there is some ham served up onscreen, courtesy of Charlton Heston’s scenery-chewing turn as a NYC cop who is investigating the murder of a Soylent Corporation executive. Edward G. Robinson’s moving death scene has added poignancy; as it preceded his passing by less than two weeks after the production wrapped.
One more thing: Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m not the only bee in your bonnet:
Yesterday, after even Fox News host Martha MacCallum acknowledged that the stock market plunged as a result of Donald Trump’s tweeted demand that American companies “immediately start looking for an alternative to China,” Graham was upbeat. “I like it,” he said about Trump’s tactics. “I’m 100% with him.”
[…]
Not surprisingly, Graham didn’t mention any of that, nor did MacCallum ask, as Graham dismissed the stock market plummet and higher prices as no biggie in relation to Trump’s glorious leadership: “The stock market doesn’t impress me at all when it comes to China,” Graham said. “What impresses me is the president’s determination to get them to change their behavior.”
Graham even suggested Trump further escalate the trade war: “They sell us a lot more than we buy from them. We could put tariffs on a lot more products coming out of China than they can put tariffs of products going into China from the United States.”… “Will we feel this as consumers? Yes.” …
Despite his own behind-the-scenes opposition, Graham all but pulled out the pompoms for Trump’s trade war now. “Mr. President, keep it up. You’re the only guy in my lifetime who’s ever taken on China. And you’ve got a good hand, play it out,” Graham gushed.
Graham thinks he can blather this sycophantic garbage to win re-election among his Trump cultist South Carolina voters and he’s probably right.
He also thinks that no one will remember it or care about it once Trump is gone and he attempts to become a respected mainstream “statesman” again. Sadly, he’s probably right about that too.
G7 News: Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, announces that “under no condition” will the EU agree to Trump’s suggestion to invite Russia back into the G7. In fact, Ukraine may be invited as a guest to next year’s summit. #G7Biarritz#G7Summitpic.twitter.com/e2iL6v1Sq8— Stephanie Kennedy (@WordswithSteph) August 24, 2019
I heard a commentator quip that Trump just wants Russia back in the G7 because he wants the opportunity to have one of those one on one private chats with his bff Putin. That sounds right. But whatever his reasoning it appears he’s determined to pay off his buddy Putin for services rendered. I assume he is too stupid to care how it looks.
Trump's claim that he was "just having fun" and "smiling" when he referred to himself as "the chosen one" the other day is a demonstrable lie. Here's the tweet Trump posted trying to rewrite history, followed by the video. pic.twitter.com/Y1VT5diqN2— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 24, 2019
Nobody believed he was kidding when he said this either, although he later claimed everyone was laughing at the time:
Like all right-wing authoritarians has no sense of humor. They just laugh at their cruelty.
For all of the Fake News Reporters that don’t have a clue as to what the law is relative to Presidential powers, China, etc., try looking at the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Case closed!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2019
President Trump asserted on Saturday that he has the authority to make good on his threat to force all American businesses to leave China, citing a national security law that has been used mainly to target terrorists, drug traffickers and pariah states like Iran, Syria and North Korea.
As he arrived in France for the annual meeting of the Group of 7 powers, Mr. Trump posted a message on Twitter citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, a law originally meant to enable a president to isolate criminal regimes not sever economic ties with a major trading partner over a tariff dispute.
[…]
The president’s threat to all but cut off one of America’s most important trading relationships could disrupt a global economy already on the edge of recession amid his trade war while further unsettling giant companies in the United States that rely on China in their production and sale of everything from clothing to smart telephones.
Mr. Trump has often made drastic threats as a negotiating ploy to force a partner to offer concessions, as when he vowed to close the border with Mexico or impose tariffs on its goods to force action to halt illegal immigration. But if he were to follow through, it would be the most significant break with China since President Richard M. Nixon’s diplomatic opening to Beijing in the early 1970s.
Mr. Trump’s claim that he has the power to order American companies to pull out of China also represents the latest assertion of authority by a president who has repeatedly crossed lines that his predecessors have not. While he came to office criticizing President Barack Obama for exceeding the power of his office, Mr. Trump has gone even further in creative ways to take action on his priorities.
“Any invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in these circumstances and for these purposes would be an abuse,” said Daniel M. Price, a former international economic adviser to President George W. Bush. “The act is intended to address extraordinary national security threats and true national emergencies, not fits of presidential pique.”
Under the weight of Mr. Trump’s tariff war, China has already fallen from America’s largest trading partner last year to the third largest this year. The United States remains China’s largest trading partner. China said Friday that it would raise tariffs on American goods in retaliation for Mr. Trump’s latest levies and the president vowed hours later to increase tariffs even further.
China’s commerce ministry issued a strongly worded statement on Saturday warning the United States to turn back from ever-escalating confrontation, but it did not threaten any new trade measures.
“This unilateral and bullying trade protectionism and extreme pressure violate the consensus of the heads of state of China and the United States, violate the principle of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, seriously undermine the multilateral trading system and the normal international trade order,” the Chinese statement said.
American business leaders in China said on Saturday that forcing United States companies to leave the country would hurt the competitiveness of American industry and could cause heavy financial losses.
“It’s difficult to move out of China, and any time they are forced to do so by tariffs, this is a momentous act and is not in response to efficiency,” said Ker Gibbs, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
“When we see the president tweet something like that, we are in no position to give up the China market — it’s too large, it’s too important,” Mr. Gibbs said.
Business leaders said that if American companies were forced by Washington to leave China, the result could be a series of fire sales at greatly reduced prices. Companies from other countries, especially in Europe, would snap up the businesses on sale and it could be hard for the United States to re-enter the market later.
In raising the possibility of forcing American businesses to pull out of China on Friday, Mr. Trump framed it not as a request but as an order he had already issued.
“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing our companies HOME and making your products in the USA,” he wrote on Twitter, adding, “We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them.”
In fact, aides said, no order has been drawn up nor was it clear that he would attempt to do so. For the moment, they said he was trying to send a message to American businesses that they should begin to disentangle from China on their own.
But it accompanied a radical shift in his assessment of President Xi Jinping of China. In the past, he has effusively praised Mr. Xi and described him as a friend, taking the Chinese leader at his word that he would stem the flow of fentanyl to the United States. In the last two days, he has accused Mr. Xi of not living up to his fentanyl pledge and described the Chinese leader as an “enemy.”
Andy Mok, a trade and geopolitics analyst at the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing, said that the Chinese government was coolly assessing the latest American actions.
“In negotiations, and especially in high-stakes negotiations, the side that reacts emotionally generally is the side that does not do well,” he said. “The U.S. side is approaching this from a more emotional side, while China is more calm and calculating.”
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act says that if the president decides that circumstances abroad have created “any unusual and extraordinary threat” to “the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States,” the president can declare a “national emergency.” This triggers special authority for the leader to regulate “any transactions in foreign exchange” by Americans.
The founders understood that leaders were untrustworthy and put together the clunky checks and balances and separation of powers that were supposed to keep any of them from becoming dictators. But once we became the world’s only military superpower our congress abdicated much of its power to the president. Now we see the danger in the hands of this erratic imbecile.
Imagine what a truly cunning authoritarian would do with that. Now that Trump has broken the glass, it’s almost certain we will see that unless the Democrats recognize the danger and fundamentally reform our political system.
By the way — this sort of threat is an abuse of power. Also known as an impeachable offense. Maybe if someone calls it a kitchen table issue the Democratic leadership might become concerned.
A new national CNN/SSRS poll finds that President Donald Trump’s approval rating stands at 40%. His disapproval rating is 54%.
His approval rating is down from late June when it was 43%. His disapproval rating is slightly up from 52% in late June.
What’s the point: Over the last month and a half, a lot has happened in our national dialogue. Trump went after four congresswomen of color. Then he turned his sights on Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is black. More recently, there were the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. And fears are growing over a potential economic slowdown.
All together, it seems like recent news cycles are causing a downturn in the President’s fortunes. His approval rating does seem to be sliding, which is troublesome news heading into 2020.
Presidents’ approval ratings have been highly correlated with their re-election margin. In the midterm elections, Trump’s approval rating lined up nearly perfectly with his party’s vote share in the House elections.
And while the shift in our CNN poll is not statistically significant given the margin of error of +/- 4 points, it’s not the only poll to show that Trump’s approval rating is down.
Take a look at these other probability-based polls that meet CNN’s standards and were completed over the last two weeks.
AP-NORC puts the President’s approval rating at 36%, down from 38%.
Fox News gave Trump a 43% approval rating, a decrease from 46%.
Gallup shows Trump’s approval rating at 41%, down from 42% in late July and 44% in early July.
NBC News/Wall Street Journal found Trump had an approval rating of 43% among all adults, a decrease of 2 points from 45% in July among registered voters and 1 point from 44% in their last poll that surveyed all adults in June.
None of these poll results individually are all that convincing that Trump’s approval rating has declined. Together, however, they make a fairly strong case.
Adding in the CNN poll, Trump has an average decline of 2 points in his approval rating. That may not seem like a lot, but keep in mind these polls put together have a sample size of more than 6,000 people. The chances that all of these polls have Trump’s approval down, even by a mere 2 points, is tiny.
Normally, a 2-point drop in a president’s approval rating would not be a big deal. For this president, however, a 2-point movement is a bigger deal than usual.
Trump’s approval rating has been unusually stable. Any sort of movement is noteworthy with him. According to Gallup, no president has had as narrow a range (35%-46%) of approval ratings than Trump. Trump’s still within that range, though now more toward the middle than the upper part of that range as he had been earlier in the year.
Trump needs to be able to break out of the narrow range in order to make himself a favorite for reelection. No president has won an additional term with an approval rating as low as Trump’s is currently.
The further Trump’s approval rating strays from his disapproval rating, the harder he makes it for himself to win in 2020.
His plan is to make his opponent equally unpopular. The media may help. So who knows?
All paper ballots are not created equal
by Tom Sullivan
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections voted Friday to approve three new voting systems for use in the state beginning in 2020. Over objections from over 20 voters and election experts who spoke demanding only systems using hand-marked paper ballots, the board voted 3-2 to include an ES&S touchscreen machine that prints a paper receipt showing a list of the candidates voters selected, but also a bar code rendering the machines actually count.
No matter what the printout reads, what happens in the electronics between the voter making selections on a touchscreen and the translation to a bar code is what has election transparency advocates concerned. The only person speaking in favor of the ballot-marking devices was Will Wesley, business development manager for ES&S.
The two other approved systems employ scannable, hand-marked paper ballots. Currently, fewer than one quarter of the state’s 100 counties use ES&S iVotronic touchscreen machines scheduled to be decertified this year. The remaining counties already use hand-marked paper ballots.
“How would anyone know they’re not voting for a cannister of Pringles?”
Chairman Damon Circosta, a Democrat, voted with the two Republican members against a motion from Board of Elections member Stella Anderson requiring only “human-readable” paper records. It was Circosta’s first meeting since his appointment by Gov. Roy Cooper.
Republican board member Ken Raymond said voters objecting to the bar code system were being “inconsistent at best” since they accept bar code scanners at the grocery store and can easily verify the price they paid.
“I cannot look at a bar code and know that that bar code represents my vote,” said board member Jeff Carmon, a Democrat.
Ultimately, the choice of which of the approved systems counties purchase to replace decertified touchscreen machines lies with local boards of elections.
Here are the talking points. Your turn, @SpeakerPelosi & other sponsors of the #SAFEAct. Use talking points to explain to the nation what specifically is in the bill so that corrupt state officials, including corrupt members of our own party, stop screwing over our elections . pic.twitter.com/5NdBMprX2l— Jennifer Cohn (@jennycohn1) August 23, 2019
Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, indicated his organization may file lawsuits against counties that choose electronic ballot-marking systems, reports Carolina Public Press. Such systems are already approved in other states:
Marilyn Marks, the executive director for a nonprofit, election-integrity watchdog group Coalition for Good Governance, is currently suing Georgia in federal court over that state’s voting system, addressing similar issues of security brought up in North Carolina.
“The Coalition for Good Governance would feel an obligation to immediately launch a legal challenge any decision to purchase barcoding ballot marking devices in NC,” Marks wrote in a statement to Carolina Public Press.
“Barcode balloting cannot pass constitutional muster… There are numerous other constitutional violations of the barcode balloting systems that courts must address if election officials prefer to favor vendors over voters.”
Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) presently uses the iVotronic touchscreen machine. Early voting is underway there in the NC-9 do-over election between Republican Dan “bathroom bill” Bishop and Democrat Dan McCready.
Nice start: through the 1st day of early voting in #NC09, Dem voters have outnumbered Reps by nearly 2-to-1. But historically, Dems vote early and Reps vote late, so don't make too much of it.
Time for a tall soothing drink … and a baby giraffe:
Zoo Miami’s newest baby Giraffe recently made her exhibit debut!
The female calf, which was born on July 22, walked out onto the exhibit with her mother and other members of the herd, curiously exploring her new surroundings. The newborn had been held inside a holding area with her mother to give them time to bond and to allow staff to slowly introduce her to the herd.
Shortly after birth, she received a neonatal exam where, in addition to a general physical, she was weighed, had her blood collected and received a microchip for identification. She weighed in at 149 pounds and is the fourth baby born to Sabra, her nearly 9-year-old mother. The father is a 6-year-old named Titan. This is the 56th Giraffe born in the zoo’s history!
Giraffe have a pregnancy of approximately 15 months, and the mother rarely, if ever, lies down while giving birth. The baby falls about 4-6 feet to the floor where it receives quite an abrupt introduction to the world! Newborns stand nearly 6 feet tall at birth.
The status of the Giraffe in the wild has recently been elevated from a “Least Concern” to “Vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) due to significant reductions in their populations over the last several years.
House Democrats have steadfastly refused to begin impeachment inquiry hearings, favoring a strategy focused on courts and prosecutors. They have made crystal clear that they believe there will never be polling favorable enough to pressure Republicans to convict Trump in a congressional impeachment trial, and that the Senate will ultimately acquit him. They also maintain that working through the courts to expose Trump’s misdeeds will lead to a stronger case in 2020, when Democrats can win at the ballot box.
The 4th Circuit decision shows just how risky that strategy is.
Let’s assume Democrats are right and that impeachment hearings would lead to impeachment by the House and acquittal in the Senate. That is still a far better option than losing in the courts.
That’s because Americans generally look favorably upon the Supreme Court. In a Gallup Poll last year, the Supreme Court had a 51–40 approval rating. Any decision in Trump’s favor from the court would carry a great deal of weight with undecided voters heading into 2020.
Meanwhile, approval levels for Congress are deeply underwater — 19–78 in the latest Gallup Poll. The latest Economist poll finds Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell at 29–54 approval nationally.
If Trump has to be acquitted, it would much better come at the hands of a group of people as corrupted and partisan as the Senate Republicans. It would also rob Trump of the halo of Supreme Court victories against Democrats, on which he could legitimately run.
[…]
Even assuming the Senate ultimately votes to acquit him, the end result will be a public that is more certain that Trump violated the law, and more aware that the Republican-controlled Senate is too partisan and corrupted to stop him. That is an incredibly powerful position going into 2020.
While we do not doubt that Democrats in Washington still hold an idealistic view of our governmental and judicial processes, the decision on the emoluments case demonstrates the perils of such a strategy, especially right now. Their adherence to norms is unlikely to be rewarded, any more than Trump’s destruction of norms prevented his victory in 2016.
Donald Trump’s daily whirlwind of contempt for laws and norms has muted our ability to be shocked by much anymore. Democrats must use every tool at their disposal to counter this whirlwind by immediately commanding the media’s and public’s attention and laying out the strongest case possible. That means avoiding court victories for Trump and using the ultimate tool given to them by the Founders — impeachment — before it is too late.
More and more Democrats come out in support of impeachment every day. Nonetheless, the CW which says it won’t happen and would bad if it did, has gelled largely because the Democratic leadership is acting as if that’s the case.
In fact, as I watch this election campaign begin in earnest it looks to me as if Democrats plan to pretend that our politics in 2019 are basically just a healthy debate about issues. It’s not. Their opponent isn’t Ronald Reagan or John McCain or Mitt Romney. He’s an alien from outer space and pretending he isn’t seems as weirdly out of touch as watching Sean Hannity blather on about Bruce and Nellie Ohr every night.
I think we just have to hope that enough people are tired of Trump’s freak show and a Republican Party that has proven it will welcome the second coming of Hitler, that they will simply vote for any alternative. But if Trump passes out of office unscathed, with the whole world seeing that the American political leadership will do nothing but wring their hands at best (and act as accomplices at worst) in the face of this incompetence, corruption and chaos then we really don’t have much hope for the future. The Republicans will have learned they can get away with anything and the Democrats will let them do it.
Democrats will talk and talk and talk about our fabulous 10 point plans and they’ll talk about freedom and liberty and some cunning fascist will come along and take advantage of the precedents that were set today — just as the Republicans took advantage of all the earlier failures to demand accountability for GOP defiance of the rule of law and erosion of norms that kept our flawed constitution functioning.
The lessons are clear. In 2000 we saw a partisan Supreme Court majority intervene to install a president who had not won the popular vote and took the electoral college under extremely dubious circumstances in the state run by the candidate’s brother. It was brushed under the rug. He then started a war based on lies and watched as the world economy imploded. 16 years later a presidential candidate won another extremely narrow electoral college victory after losing the popular vote, this time after openly welcoming electoral help from a foreign adversary. He then blatantly obstructed justice, defied every norm that prevents presidential corruption and displayed obvious unfitness on every level. The congress did nothing.
So they know they can get away with anything. All they have to do is get into office by any means necessary.
2016 will not be the last time this happens. In fact, it’s entirely likely it could happen in 2020. If it doesn’t and the Democrats do manage to pull it out, if they once again refuse to “look in the rearview mirror,” it will likely be the last time they will have the chance. This undemocratic authoritarianism has been growing for a long time and gets stronger by the day.
I know we all want to hear about all the systemic economic and social reforms that have to be done in order to make this country work for all its citizens instead of a few. But I haven’t heard any plans for the kind of political and electoral reforms that will be necessary to ensure that the government on which these fine plans all depend will be functional in the future.
That’s the “systemic reform” I’m waiting to hear from the Democratic candidates. The first step will be accountability for this rogue regime. Without that, nothing will change.
