Tag: elections

Donald Trump and a quote of bob Anderson

Do Bad Character Traits Trump Trump’s Policies?

On June 5, 2020

Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers
George Will,
For the better part of the last four decades, George F. Will has been at the intellectual center of American conservatism.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-one-should-want-four-more-years-of-this-taste-of-ashes/2020/06/01/1a80ecf4-a425-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.
James Mattis, a four-star U.S. Marine Corps General, served as President Donald Trump’s 26th Secretary of Defense from 2017 to 2018)

http://https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/06/03/former-defense-sec-james-mattis-calls-trump-a-threat-to-constitution.html

The nation needs to choose leaders more wisely.
John Kelly, Former White House chief of staff for Donald Trump

No books, no friends, no music, no curiosity, no patience, no integrity, no compassion, no empathy, no loyalty, no conscience, no courage, no manners, no respect, no character, no morality, no honor, … not even a dog. (Bob Anderson)
Bob Anderson, BEing Liberal

Trump’s Approval Slips Where He Can’t Afford to Lose It: Among Evangelicals. Polls and private concerns from top social conservatives show the president’s standing with the cornerstone of his base isn’t what it used to be. A photo op with the Bible was supposed to help fix that.

Former President George W. Bush and Senator Mitt Romney won’t support Mr. Trump’s re-election. Colin Powell will vote for Joe Biden, and other G.O.P. officials may do the same.

I am sometimes a little right of center but mostly left of center and try to be an Independent. I am not a fan of Bernie Sanders and certainly not a fan of Donald Trump. That said, here is an article from Being Liberal.

Being Liberal is rated as Left Biased based on story selection that always favors the left and Mostly Factual for factual reporting, rather than High, due to the use of reasonable sources, while excessively using emotional language that can occasionally lose context. (D. Van Zandt 7/30/2017) Updated (10/16/2019)

by Charles Pierce– (W) “In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.” I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

“And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

“The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

“Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too. Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”
– Charles Pierce

Kids, don’t try to pass your next history test with these ‘facts’ pic.twitter.com/A9lToIoaLP
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 3, 2020

Vote By Mail

By Fred

On April 11, 2020

In Politics

Is it time for the United States of America to implement universal vote by mail and eliminate having to make a physical presence at a polling booth?

While Americans have moved from state to state, job to job, young to old; there has been a political battle for control of the direction America takes. The direction is dependent on how we incorporate into our voting these words from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

“That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth and shall have a new birth of freedom.”

Does America move in the direction where we believe that all people are born free and equal before the law, that we all possess at least certain minimal rights that have to be mutually respected, and that we are capable of self-governance? If so then making it easy to vote is paramount.

Or, does America move in the direction where we believe we are born into bondage, that our liberties are granted as a privilege, that most of us are not capable of self-governance, and that only a very few of us should enjoy the full blessings of liberty. If so then we should make it harder for those that we don’t feel should enjoy the full blessings of liberty.

Voting by mail makes it easier to vote and therefore more people would vote. Your support for it might indicate which direction you want America to achieve or you have concerns about vote by mail’s ability to give us honest elections.

We have two sources from which to form our conclusion on vote by mail fraud.

Politicians that think Vote by mail will give or take away an advantage.
Data from reputable sources that have analyzed the results of vote by mail.

If you would choose 2 if it supports the conclusion you want but not if it didn’t, then your mind is probably closed. If you choose 1 you have a 50 50 chance of being right.

A politician may want to make it harder for evangelicals to vote if they believe they would vote against them and the same regarding minority populations. But in a democracy, reducing access to the ballot is difficult to justify so motives and strategies to discourage voting by particular groups cannot be openly announced. That’s where the myth of criminal voters comes in.

Some believe the Electoral College gives an advantage to one of the parties and some believe an election decided by popular vote gives them an advantage. Some believe gerrymandering can give them an advantage. Vote by mail is just another fear some have because it might give an advantage to the other guy.

24 journalism students at twelve universities reviewed some 2,000 public records and identified just six cases of voter impersonation between 2000 and
Under Republican President George W. Bush, the U.S. Justice Department searched for voter fraud. But in the first three years of the program, just 26 people were convicted or pled guilty to illegal registration or voting.
- Out of 197,056,035 votes cast in the two federal elections held during that period, the rate of voter fraud was a miniscule 0.00000132 percent!
- No state considering or passing restrictive voter identification laws has documented an actual problem with voter fraud.
- When federal authorities challenged voter identification laws in South Carolina and Texas, neither state provided any evidence of voter impersonation or any other type of fraud that could be deterred by requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls.

The absence of photo identification at polling locations has not been a problem and requiring it has not decreased fraud. To say a weakness of vote by mail is the lack of voter photo identity ignores the fact that requiring it was an effort to fix a problem that didn’t exist.

Charles Stewart III of MIT proclaimed that voter fraud in America is rare and even less rare when vote by mail is used. Fraud has occurred but when it is big enough to sway the outcome of an election, it is likely to be detected.

Five states now conduct all elections almost entirely by mail. They report very little fraud.

At some point America will actually be what we like to say it is. A good place to start is with elections.