United States intelligence officials have been quietly issuing warnings to government agencies all summer about a rising threat of extremist violence tied to the 2024 presidential election, including plots to destroy bins full of paper ballots and promote "lone wolf" attacks against election facilities throughout the country.
This map doesn't use any shapefiles per se, it is created entirely in code by using arcpullr and tigris for the geospatial data. https://github.com/AndyArthur/r_maps_and_graphs/blob/main/Distance%20to%20Albany%20County%20Early%20Vote%20Site.R
When I was a younger individual I used to enjoy politics and politicians. While I still enjoy the analysis side of things and the personalities, and sometimes the creative ways that politicians find to get around problems they face, I have a growing disdain for politics. I hate the cult nature that has grown around leading politicians like Trump and Biden, how people feel they have to take certain actions in support of their preferred leaders. Or how politics often becomes a way that individuals hide from their own personal failings.
Nowadays I tend to see politics are more of a freak show, something entertaining but without much of a consequence to myself or something that I have much of a stake one way or another in. Yes, it provides me a living, something to grab some of fat off it’s hide to sustain me, but not something that I consider deeply personal or important like much more ideological people do these days. If anything when people talk about how awful the other side is, I just sit there quietly, moaning to myself, realizing how ignorant people can be to the awfulness of their own party.
I’ve always been an independent when it comes to politics. I don’t really like either party, or how they bring out the worse of American society. But also I realize when politicians play their public relations game up front, the thing to watch is in details and how things are being made worse or better behind the scenes. Usually it’s the little stuff that politicians never talk about that make the biggest difference in life. Things rarely noticed outside of industries they are most apply to.
I don’t play victim to politics. Instead I focus on my own life, realizing what the politicians do it outside of my control. I can vote or even campaign or show up at public hearings and scream, but it’s like buying a lottery ticket. Chances are good it won’t make a difference, what is bound to happen will happen. It’s not to say that sometimes one won’t get lucky and make a difference but it’s rare. But choices in my own life are things that I can truly control, and have much more power over rather then that of the politicians.
I never got rallying around the flag or the support our police and military movement. Government workers have jobs and we expect them to do it competently for pay. It’s what I do too. But I don’t expect any parades in my honor. Government workers get paid, and many have unions and if they are concerned about low pay or unsafe working conditions – the solution shouldn’t be parades or medals given out – but better pay, benefits and working conditions. Government workers aren’t virtuous but they deserve fair working conditions.
Indeed, I’m deeply cynical about the government. I don’t think the government is out there to help but instead is motivated by a complex web of personal ambitions. Every government program after all is motivated by a desire of politicians to get reelected or a government employee to get a promotion and make more money. So if anything I’m a libertarian – regulate the corporations and big businesses but leave the little guy alone.
In a newly unsealed court filing, special counsel Jack Smith provides the most detailed picture yet of his criminal case against Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and why the former president isn't immune from prosecution.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, released the filing, with minor redactions, on Wednesday.
The special counsel uses the 165-page document to make his case that Trump's actions around the election were made in a private capacity and not in his official role as president.
The filing comes after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that presidents enjoy broad immunity for official acts while in office, but not for unofficial acts as a candidate or a private citizen.
While relatively fewer states went blue, they were more populated and make up a majority of the United States.