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Sorry, Paul, but I have no idea what this message means. Care to elaborate, please?

Ken (sitting in SW Michigan waiting for the 12-24" snow we're supposed to get over the next 48 hrs)

======

who wants it ND is up right now

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A month after Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings' death on April 6, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that the special election for Florida's 20th Congressional District would not take place until Jan. 11 of next year, meaning the seat will remain without representation for 280 days. That's as the gap that proceeded the state's two most recent special elections: In 2014, specials were held in the 13th District just 144 days after Rep. Bill Young died and in the 19th District just 148 days after Rep. Trey Radel resigned. Both were Republicans.

Local election officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties the dates that DeSantis wound up choosing, including a primary on Nov. 2. Soon after, however, the primary take place on Sept. 14 and the general on Nov. 9, with one official saying, "People would like it to be earlier."

DeSantis disregarded that advice in a move that Democrats are certain to attack as motivated by a partisan interest in depriving the party's narrow congressional majority of a key vote. (The governor's long delay in waiting to schedule the election was also hotly criticized, with one candidate, Democrat Elvin Dowling, demanding a date be set.) The decision further means that the majority-Black 20th District will have no voice in the House for the better part of a year.

It's not yet clear when the filing deadline will be, but in a press conference announcing the dates, , "I think that puts qualifying towards the end of the first week of September."

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The Republican view is that if they can get away with it, it's constitutional. At times I'm almost ashamed to? be a Democrat in that they seem almost never to stand up to the brazen attempts at takeover by extra-legal means.

Bah, humbug....

Ken

==========

I HATE, HATE, HATE it

Buffalo

On Tuesday, April 27, 2021, 06:41:09 PM MST, Kenneth E. DeBusk via groups.io <kendeb52@...> wrote:

The Republican plot to steal the 2024 election

Illustrated | iStock

April 27, 2021

The redistricting process in Washington. The Census Bureau released initial data from the 2020 census Monday afternoon, (much later than usual thanks to a combination of the pandemic, Donald Trump's efforts to stop unauthorized immigrants from being counted, and his administration's ), which means that congressional district boundaries will soon be redrawn to account for changes in population.

These changes will probably tend to benefit the Republican Party, as conservative states will get more seats — for instance, Texas will gain two seats, while New York, California, and Illinois will all lose one. Republicans are also certain to use the process to try to gerrymander themselves as many additional congressional seats as possible by leveraging their control of a majority of state legislatures. And that is just the opening tactic in a long-term strategy to abolish American democracy and set up one-party rule.

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The basic strategy goes like this. First, win control of state legislatures, then gerrymander the state district boundaries such that it's virtually impossible to lose, and add further protection with vote suppression laws making it harder for liberals to cast their ballots. Then, leverage control of the state legislatures in a post-census year to gerrymander the congressional district boundaries and gain a large advantage in the national House vote. This was after the previous census in 2010, when a fortunately-timed Republican wave victory allowed them to cement a roughly in House elections and control of the chamber for eight years, along with .

, gerrymandering means Republicans enjoy a 3.4-point handicap in the state House and a 10.7-point handicap in the state Senate; in Pennsylvania, it's a 3.1-point handicap in the House and a 5.9-point handicap in the Senate; and in Wisconsin, a 7.1-point handicap in the House and a 10.1-point handicap in the Senate.

Though some of those 2010-vintage gerrymanders have been eroded or taken down through the courts, new ones will be attempted in every state Republicans control this year that do not have nonpartisan redistricting commissions (which is ). As , a fresh hardcore House gerrymander would likely net the GOP 15-20 House seats — easily enough to let them take the majority, if the 2022 electorate looks anything like 2020. And thanks to the conservative hammerlock on the Supreme Court, the new gerrymanders and vote suppression measures are virtually guaranteed to be blessed as "legal" (in conservative jurisprudence, something is constitutional if it benefits Republicans).

It's impossible to gerrymander the Senate, of course, but luckily for Republicans that chamber is inherently gerrymandered due to the large number of disproportionately white, low-population rural states that lean conservative. The swing seat in the Senate is biased something like to the right.

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If the GOP can win the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms, and if they retain control of a handful of swing-state legislatures, then they will be in a perfect position to steal the presidency in 2024. As at The Bulwark, it would be quite simple to steal a presidential election within the formal rules of America's electoral system, though of course it would be a blatant violation of the entire spirit of the Constitution. The that governs presidential elections says that if Congress does not certify a majority winner in the Electoral College, then the next president will be chosen by a vote of the House — but each state delegation bizarrely gets only one vote. Wyoming's one representative will get the same sway as the 50-odd representatives in California. (The vice president would be chosen by the Senate, a relic of the old rules in which that office had a separate election.)

Incidentally, one gets a sense of how utterly goofy the presidential election process is by considering the fact that not only is it possible to tie the above House vote, since there are 50 states, it is also possible to tie the individual state delegation votes, because have an even number of representatives. There is no process to break such ties, and this process has not been used since 1824.

At any rate, it follows that if Republicans have a majority of the House delegations in 26 states (as they despite being in the minority overall), they only have to foul up enough state certifications to prevent an Electoral College majority, and then have their state delegations hand the presidency to their own candidate no matter how badly he or she lost the popular vote.

Republicans have been clearly signaling for months they are going to try this. Indeed, they already tried something like it in 2020 — Trump attempting to stop the state vote certifications based on fabricated accusations of voter fraud, and tried to bully Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into in his state. When that didn't work, Trump sicced a violent mob on the Capitol to halt the certification in Congress. The Capitol putsch was an act of desperation, but a majority of House Republicans to overturn the 2020 election even so. Trump also came quite close to disrupting the certification in Michigan, which only happened because one Republican member of the electoral oversight board, Aaron Van Langevelde, .

As Last notes, Republicans are now taking ever-more extreme steps to make sure that doesn't happen again. Van Langevelde has been . Most Republican elected officials who did not try to overturn the 2020 election or otherwise criticized Trump have come under from , , and ; several have already or are . Raffensperger has also drawn a , and the Georgia state legislature now has over the state's electoral oversight board as part of the state's new vote suppression law. In Arizona, Republican legislators have proposed a law allowing the state legislature to at any time before the inauguration. Just like Trump's plot to steal the 2020 election, it's all happening in plain sight.

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If they succeed and take full control of the federal government, it would be a trivial matter to rig the electoral system such that Democrats cannot ever again win national power. Similar to the strategy their ideological ancestors used to create Jim Crow, they could simply pass a bunch of facially neutral laws that make it exceptionally difficult to vote in cities or other liberal bastions, and then get their partisan judges on the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp it all as super constitutional, no really.

One will search in vain for any sense of urgency among elected Democrats to deal with this authoritarian threat. So-called moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are not only so far unwilling to get rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights protections, they are also still pretending like Republicans are , like some man insisting a shark is just misunderstood while his leg is halfway down its throat. If they don't black in and reckon with the parlous state of American institutions, and , 2020 might be the last competitive election in United States history.

--
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

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Democrats face a stark choice on redistricting

Making the House larger and reforming redistricting is a start, a good governance gateway drug. But the idea that would do the most to arrest the downward spiral of procedural escalation, mistrust, and paranoia that characterizes relations between the two parties and their voters would be much more profound.

Maryland-based Fair Vote to completely replace the "single-member district plurality" system, in which each of our 435 districts produces a single winner, even if that person wins just a plurality rather than a majority of the vote. Instead, most districts could elect between three and five members, by , making gerrymandering all but impossible, allowing smaller political parties to win seats and giving politicians incentives to broaden their appeals. The group's has been introduced in the last two congresses, but so far has yet to pick up widespread support.

The bad news is that a handful of recalcitrant Democratic moderates in the U.S. Senate are likely to block any of these reforms. Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are still publicly wedded to their unflinching support of the legislative filibuster, which means not only that the For the People Act is dead on arrival but so is any conceivable reform of the House that might avert this gerrymandering catastrophe that is unfolding right under their noses. They believe that slow-rolling the Democratic agenda that President Biden promised the voters will help them retain their seats in 2024, and that the party's slim congressional majorities are best preserved by doing basically nothing.

They are wrong, of course, and they are running out of time to change course. Maps will be drawn of the midterm elections, and they don't have time to wait until next April to figure out they will never find 10 Republicans to help them fix American democracy, for the very simple reason that the GOP detests and fears the electorate and wants to make sure the verdict of its majority never comes down.

If Manchin and Sinema won't budge and Congress doesn't step in to end these clearly anti-majoritarian practices, blue-leaning states like California should untie their hands and gerrymander their GOP seats away. Better for Democrats to use the full measure of their power than once again lose on principle.

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The Republican plot to steal the 2024 election

Illustrated | iStock

Republicans have been clearly signaling for months they are going to try this. Indeed, they already tried something like it in 2020 — Trump attempting to stop the state vote certifications based on fabricated accusations of voter fraud, and tried to bully Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into in his state. When that didn't work, Trump sicced a violent mob on the Capitol to halt the certification in Congress. The Capitol putsch was an act of desperation, but a majority of House Republicans to overturn the 2020 election even so. Trump also came quite close to disrupting the certification in Michigan, which only happened because one Republican member of the electoral oversight board, Aaron Van Langevelde, .

As Last notes, Republicans are now taking ever-more extreme steps to make sure that doesn't happen again. Van Langevelde has been . Most Republican elected officials who did not try to overturn the 2020 election or otherwise criticized Trump have come under from , , and ; several have already or are . Raffensperger has also drawn a , and the Georgia state legislature now has over the state's electoral oversight board as part of the state's new vote suppression law. In Arizona, Republican legislators have proposed a law allowing the state legislature to at any time before the inauguration. Just like Trump's plot to steal the 2020 election, it's all happening in plain sight.

If they succeed and take full control of the federal government, it would be a trivial matter to rig the electoral system such that Democrats cannot ever again win national power. Similar to the strategy their ideological ancestors used to create Jim Crow, they could simply pass a bunch of facially neutral laws that make it exceptionally difficult to vote in cities or other liberal bastions, and then get their partisan judges on the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp it all as super constitutional, no really.

One will search in vain for any sense of urgency among elected Democrats to deal with this authoritarian threat. So-called moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are not only so far unwilling to get rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights protections, they are also still pretending like Republicans are , like some man insisting a shark is just misunderstood while his leg is halfway down its throat. If they don't black in and reckon with the parlous state of American institutions, and , 2020 might be the last competitive election in United States history.

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Hey, hey, you're infringing in my rights to be cynical and have the same sorts of ideas as you have :)

The only winners in war are the people who sell the weapons and, of course, the undertakers.

Ken

========

A war with China? Hell, I can't think of a more stupid idea. First, we can't out manufacture them, we have sent all that to them. Second, in a ground war, they have the numbers and have shown a willingness to lose them, they win. In a nuclear war, no one wins. Besides, how would we get our i phone 12 pros?

Buffalo

On Monday, April 5, 2021, 08:52:24 PM MST, Kenneth E. DeBusk via groups.io <kendeb52@...> wrote:

I cannot send this and have people believe that I worship the ground Fred walks on or thinks his writing is the best that ever was. Hell, I can't even decide over time if I like him or not. Certainly our ideas on political issues are all over the place, with agreement 100% in places and worries in other places that he's gone insane and no one else has told him yet.

That being said, it's a decent piece looking at one possibility. Obviously, there are others, too.

Ken

===========

War with China? What Fun!

I’d Rather Be Ruled by Brain-Damaged Twelve-Year-Olds

??April 3, 2021

There is no limit to misjudgement. If the psychic curiosities in the Federal bunker start a war with China, or push Beijing into starting one, it will be blamed on a proximate cause, such as a collision of warships after which some lieutenant who joined on waivers lost it and opened fire. After all, historians have to write about something. The causes will actually be deeper and more complex.

To begin, people are cerebrally arranged to form groups–“packs” is a better word—and fight with other groups. This is dimwitted, but so are people. The urge manifests itself in wars, political parties, football, teenage gangs, and contract bridge. It is not rational. In football, armored mercenary felons having no relation to the cities they represent, battle other felons from another city, most of whose citizens would not let their daughters within a parsec of said felons—all this while the fans scream in adrenal murderousness. It is just what we do. At the national level, it is called “patriotism.”

Territoriality is part of the disorder. Human minds—the phrase may be an overstatement—seem intended for small wild groups for whom protection of hunting grounds might be important. When a Secretary of State embodies this instinct, he may, for example, confuse Asia with a patch of woods rife with deer. An instinct well suited to one situation is applied to another to which it isn’t.

But why do Americans regard China as an enemy? Partly because the vast military sector of the economy needs an enemy as a budgetary pretext. This is often said. It is also true. Since none of the anointed enemies—Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea—does anything to threaten Americans, a drumbeat of media about largely imaginary menaces is needed. And provided.

At a somewhat deeper level, it is again the pack instinct. Conservatives in particular tend to see the world in terms of tribes, countries, or faiths presumed hostile. Even though the public has almost no knowledge of China, or because of this, it can quite easily be persuaded that China is very dangerous. People can then easily begin clamoring for war and, politicians being politicians, they will not risk votes by pointing out the stupidity.

But let us go back to the collision of warships. Why would a diversity-admit junior officer open fire on China? Proximately, because he is frightened and panicky. A bit more remotely, because he has been told over and over and over that the Chinese are dangerous and aggressive and want to do terrible things, seldom specified. The military tells them this because you cannot prepare the troops for war by telling them that there is no reason for it.

?

Why would a President allow a war, knowing (if in a lucid moment) that it would produce absolute unshirted havoc in the economy even if it didn’t go nuclear? He wouldn’t. That is, he wouldn’t all at once choose Armageddon. But he couldn’t afford to seem soft on China, not with the midterms looming, so he couldn’t back off. If in the ensuing shootout the Navy got trounced, he most assuredly couldn’t drop the matter, and would have to double down. So, of course, would the Chinese for the same sorts of reasons. Off to the races.

Deeper in the forest of causation is that the pathologically aggressive, amoral, manipulative, and crafty tend to rise to power. We select as rulers those who are least fit to rule. In America this is often done a bit differently, with the unscrupulous and powerful choosing cardboard leaders whose strings they can pull. The effect is the same.

Why would war seem reasonable? Because Americans have never seen one, and believe their forces to be invincible. If you think that you can’t lose a fight, why avoid one? And because those in comfortable circumstances know that a war in Asia would be fought by the lower economic classes, about whom they care nothing and don’t much like. American elites do not fight. Note the list of draft dodgers during Vietnam: Bush II, Cheney, Bolton, Trump, Biden.

These men, knowing almost nothing of the military, war or, very likely, military history, are quickly hijacked mentally by the Pentagon. The firm handshake, the steely gaze, the clean shaven, confident, and patriotic warriors (if only via Powerpoint) are impressive to pols who…well, you know…haven’t done that. They project strength and realism, without necessarily having either. Listening to them, you can easily get a sense of being accepted into a special, manly club. They say that America has the most powerful, invincible, best trained, tra la, tra la, and if you haven’t been there it is easy to believe. The Chinese? A cakewalk. Iran? Coupla weeks.

Another reason for easily blundering into a war poorly understood is the very low quality of American government. Congress and the President are chosen by popularity contests, not according to competence. A congressman who worked his way up the political ladder in Wheeling or Baton Rouge knows state politics. He is unlikely to know anything about the first Island Chain or what a terminally guided ballistic missile is. A friend in a position to know estimates that ninety percent of the Senate do not know where Myanmar is. No one without a grasp of geography has more than a child’s understanding of military, economic, or strategic reality. But they vote on these things.

Sez I, we are well and truly screwed. But there is little we can do about it.

--
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell, British philosopher and mathematician

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I cannot send this and have people believe that I worship the ground Fred walks on or thinks his writing is the best that ever was. Hell, I can't even decide over time if I like him or not. Certainly our ideas on political issues are all over the place, with agreement 100% in places and worries in other places that he's gone insane and no one else has told him yet.

That being said, it's a decent piece looking at one possibility. Obviously, there are others, too.

Ken

===========

There is no limit to misjudgement. If the psychic curiosities in the Federal bunker start a war with China, or push Beijing into starting one, it will be blamed on a proximate cause, such as a collision of warships after which some lieutenant who joined on waivers lost it and opened fire. After all, historians have to write about something. The causes will actually be deeper and more complex.

To begin, people are cerebrally arranged to form groups–“packs” is a better word—and fight with other groups. This is dimwitted, but so are people. The urge manifests itself in wars, political parties, football, teenage gangs, and contract bridge. It is not rational. In football, armored mercenary felons having no relation to the cities they represent, battle other felons from another city, most of whose citizens would not let their daughters within a parsec of said felons—all this while the fans scream in adrenal murderousness. It is just what we do. At the national level, it is called “patriotism.”

Territoriality is part of the disorder. Human minds—the phrase may be an overstatement—seem intended for small wild groups for whom protection of hunting grounds might be important. When a Secretary of State embodies this instinct, he may, for example, confuse Asia with a patch of woods rife with deer. An instinct well suited to one situation is applied to another to which it isn’t.

But why do Americans regard China as an enemy? Partly because the vast military sector of the economy needs an enemy as a budgetary pretext. This is often said. It is also true. Since none of the anointed enemies—Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea—does anything to threaten Americans, a drumbeat of media about largely imaginary menaces is needed. And provided.

At a somewhat deeper level, it is again the pack instinct. Conservatives in particular tend to see the world in terms of tribes, countries, or faiths presumed hostile. Even though the public has almost no knowledge of China, or because of this, it can quite easily be persuaded that China is very dangerous. People can then easily begin clamoring for war and, politicians being politicians, they will not risk votes by pointing out the stupidity.

But let us go back to the collision of warships. Why would a diversity-admit junior officer open fire on China? Proximately, because he is frightened and panicky. A bit more remotely, because he has been told over and over and over that the Chinese are dangerous and aggressive and want to do terrible things, seldom specified. The military tells them this because you cannot prepare the troops for war by telling them that there is no reason for it.

?

Why would a President allow a war, knowing (if in a lucid moment) that it would produce absolute unshirted havoc in the economy even if it didn’t go nuclear? He wouldn’t. That is, he wouldn’t all at once choose Armageddon. But he couldn’t afford to seem soft on China, not with the midterms looming, so he couldn’t back off. If in the ensuing shootout the Navy got trounced, he most assuredly couldn’t drop the matter, and would have to double down. So, of course, would the Chinese for the same sorts of reasons. Off to the races.

Deeper in the forest of causation is that the pathologically aggressive, amoral, manipulative, and crafty tend to rise to power. We select as rulers those who are least fit to rule. In America this is often done a bit differently, with the unscrupulous and powerful choosing cardboard leaders whose strings they can pull. The effect is the same.

Why would war seem reasonable? Because Americans have never seen one, and believe their forces to be invincible. If you think that you can’t lose a fight, why avoid one? And because those in comfortable circumstances know that a war in Asia would be fought by the lower economic classes, about whom they care nothing and don’t much like. American elites do not fight. Note the list of draft dodgers during Vietnam: Bush II, Cheney, Bolton, Trump, Biden.

These men, knowing almost nothing of the military, war or, very likely, military history, are quickly hijacked mentally by the Pentagon. The firm handshake, the steely gaze, the clean shaven, confident, and patriotic warriors (if only via Powerpoint) are impressive to pols who…well, you know…haven’t done that. They project strength and realism, without necessarily having either. Listening to them, you can easily get a sense of being accepted into a special, manly club. They say that America has the most powerful, invincible, best trained, tra la, tra la, and if you haven’t been there it is easy to believe. The Chinese? A cakewalk. Iran? Coupla weeks.

Another reason for easily blundering into a war poorly understood is the very low quality of American government. Congress and the President are chosen by popularity contests, not according to competence. A congressman who worked his way up the political ladder in Wheeling or Baton Rouge knows state politics. He is unlikely to know anything about the first Island Chain or what a terminally guided ballistic missile is. A friend in a position to know estimates that ninety percent of the Senate do not know where Myanmar is. No one without a grasp of geography has more than a child’s understanding of military, economic, or strategic reality. But they vote on these things.

Sez I, we are well and truly screwed. But there is little we can do about it.

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Lara Trump gets caught up in dog charity scandal

The term “what’s Trump done now” really should have its own listing in the dictionary as this phrase has become almost as standard as saying hello. But it isn’t just Donald who is making news.

There has been widespread speculation that Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, will run for the Senate in North Carolina. It may well be true, although I think Lara would have a tough time getting elected. North Carolina is a purple state, and Mrs. Eric Trump is as solid MAGA red as it gets.

Plus, she has a bit of baggage. And one piece of that baggage is going to be hard to explain. Per the Huffington Post (and now reported by other outlets), Lara’s charity “Big Dog Ranch Rescue” may some explaining to do.

Big Dog is a dog rescue charity associated with Lara as she is one of its chair people. Yet, through documents, including some IRS forms, it has come out that the charity spent 1.9 Million in fundraising for Trump at various properties of his including Mar-A-Lago and his Florida golf course.

This has caused some eyebrows to rise, to put it mildly. What is a dog charity doing with Trump’s fundraising expenses? It is pretty odd. Many on Twitter are deeply upset about this and have even compared Lara to Cruella de Vil. This is most likely not the way Mrs. Trump would like to kick off any campaign, and she is going to have to, at some point, explain herself.

The charity President, Lauren Simmons, has defended the charity. And Friday evening, Mr. Insurrectionist himself, one Donald Trump, gave an impromptu speech at a fundraiser for the charity where he alluded to Lara possibly running. She will undoubtedly face many questions if she does.