Okay, I’ve devoted my last few blogs to wonderful science news… and ongoing not-so-wonderful arguments over how to get max benefits and minimize the harms from ‘generative artificial intelligence,’ as the mélange of chatGPT/Bard/LLM-golems are now being called.
(Alas, and I say this with love: any emerging super AI would look at the insipid level of discussion going on right now and conclude there’s little sapience to emulate, here on Planet Earth!)
Anyway, for my own health and yours, let’s turn to a less-infuriating topic. Time for a political posting! Let’s start with the so-called “election steal”…
== Thieves think everyone else does it, too ==
Latest word is that half of the saps who signed on to be on Trump’s slates of shill ‘alternate electors’ are now turning state witness for immunity. Fine. Anything to push this along.
Trumpian claims of a 2020 election ‘steal’ are so weird! Most of the places where it supposedly happened were in Red States where Republicans controlled the offices with real power over elections – governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General. So what’s the rationale, again?
The scenario is that somehow Democrat Mayors of those states’ large cities concocted a cabal that cheated on a massive scale, fooling all the State-controlled employees and veteran senior citizen volunteer poll workers. Moreover they did so perfectly! In a coordinated putsch that left zero real evidence. (Again, those red attorney generals would have pounced, if there were any. Any at all.)
Okay so, we’re to believe a whole passel of pathetic mayors did this – far better than any operation by any spy agency in human history – without a single participant being motivated by patriotism – or huge whistleblower rewards offered by Fox etc. — to denounce with evidence and collect those big prizes? Wow, that’s some scenario!
Throw in vote-flipping voting machines. Dig it, that indeed used to happen… in red states that used notorious machines without paper ballots or receipts that might allow a hand audit. That travesty quietly ended during the Obama Administration and today almost all places in the U.S. use paper that’s then read by the voting machine. This, in turn, allows post-election hand audits of suspicious (or random) precincts. You might recall when Arizona Republicans tried to do just that, with the “cyber ninjas” in Maricopa County. Much to their embarrassment when Biden’s net total went UP by a very small amount?
Which is weirder? That this illogic keeps recurring? Or that democrat politicians are too polemically dim to make the point as clearly as I just did?
== Weirder ==
What’s the weirdest aspect? That millions of flat-out imbeciles across our highly educated country clutch these KariLake / MikeLindell yammers desperately, like religious catechisms, without ever, ever, ever having the maturity to get fed up with promises of evidence “next week.” See “Kari Lake carries election denier banner across Iowa amid divided GOP.”
Now this: The Trump campaign paid researchers to prove claims of 2020 voter fraud or a ’steal’ – claims that were entirely unsupported. Repeat that: their own hired investigators found none, but Trump ordered the findings kept secret. The report was never released publicly because the researchers disputed many of Donald Trump’s theories and could not offer any proof for his false assertions that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election.
No surprise to those of us who spent 2+ years demanding to see the ‘proof’ Lindell and others raved that they had and would release ‘next week.’ Like Trump’s “great US health care plan to replace Obamacare!!!” that he literally said “you’ll see next week!” scores of times.
Or “You’ll do your taxes on a card!”
Or “I’ll show you all the financials!”
Or “Putin is smart, so very smart!”
Oh and here’s a slam dunk I have never seen applied to this mess. Where are those ‘love letters” Trump exchanged with Kim Jong Un?
They are property of the U.S. archives and the people of the US. It is the most explicit case of a state document – openly touted BY Trump – that was never handed over. Stolen, in fact. Have any of you even heard a peep about that?
Probably some advisers took one look at the letters and cried ‘burn them!’
Um, okay. Here’s another ‘why does no dem say it?’ Why, after putting us through years of “Obamacare is terrible!” do we hear nothing about it or even the O-word, from McCarthy & McConnell and them all? Could it be because Obamacare works and is now hugely popular? Or because folks might ask: “Where is that Trump-care plan we were promised ‘next week’?”
Heck after 3 years, will you go ahead and indict Hunter Biden already? You have 60% of state attorneys general and had J Durham, Trump/Barr’s Special Prosecutor.
Maybe Hunter WILL get indicted for something. Fine. Meanwhile, though, grand Juries across America have indicted almost a hundred times as many GOP factotums as Democrats. Demand your uncle BET $$$ on that. He will flee.
Heckfire, let’s compare – transparently – HB’s entire life to any randomly chosen month of Donald Trump Junior. Seriously, let’s start a bi-partisan campaign to get BOTH Trump and Biden to order utter transparency from their sons. And while we’re at it, let’s compare war hero and great guy Beau Biden to Eric?
“By his fruits you shall know him.”
Oh, one lie that’s circulating: … that disgraced former counter-intelligence FBI lead in New York had been opposed to Donald Trump. In fact McGonigal’s paymaster in Moscow was the same one who recruited as Russian agents Michael Flynn and Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani and a dozen others.
Only in a twist, it appears that the New York Times may have been complicit… along with Putin pal Jill Stein… in helping Trump achieve his surprise ‘victory’ in 2016. See the Washington Post on: Why Biden’s document case is different than Trump’s.
Enough ranting from Brin for now. Hang on just a bit.
== Random musings ==
Apparently whole networks of Russian spies are being unravelled by western intelligence agencies, validating my longstanding suspicion that those agencies have long been quietly far more competent than they let on. Alas, what has not cracked yet are two far more important vipers’ nests: the world of secret wealth hoards and the kompromat files used to blackmail (likely) hundred in western capitals, especially Washington DC.
== And… Jimmy… ==
Okay, some of you are old enough to recall when presidents both earned and deserved some degree of respectful deference, even from the opposition. Nixon wrecked that, as did Vietnam and hell year 1968.
Still, there was a flicker the first year of Jimmy Carter’s term, when a little affectionate humor flowed… attempting to recapture some of the fun of Vaughn Meador’s JFK – ribbing First Family records. I just played a little of this one. And here are some sample tracks.
Of course we know the US right was desperate for revenge for Watergate, and conspired with the Ayatollahs to extend the hostage crisis to reward Reagan for favors to come. And since then US politics were never the same, especially after Dennis ‘friend to boys” Hastert’s ‘rule’ ended all negotiation in the greatest deliberative body on Earth.
Still, with all the world suddenly rediscovering Carter – at minimum as a profoundly good human being – this little affectionate roast merits remembering.