Politics

The Other Big Lie πŸ€₯

The Other Big Lie πŸ€₯

It is super naughty of former President Donald John Trump to keep throwing bones to conspiracy theorists who believe the election was stolen. It’s also naughty that states with Republican lead legislatures are using false claims of fraud to try to manipulate voting laws to give them an advantage in edge cases – you know when the election is 49-49 or something close to that.

The thing is that throwing an election in an edge case is just that – maybe a subversion of democracy but hardly a big one or a novel things. Incumbents have long used their lawmaking powers and disbursement of public funds to enhance their chances of re-election. Elbridge Gerry was governor of Massachusetts a very long time ago. And it’s not like the lawmakers writing the laws to enhance their chances of re-election weren’t elected themselves.

Will we see the second coming of the Trumpster through election chicanery in 2024? It’s possible but he’ll still have to be quite popular and the Democratic nominee particularly weak leading to a very close election. Legal chicanery works but it’s not necessarily popular or giving of legitimacy. 

Hometown 🏑

Hometown 🏑

It seems like a lot of small town businesses in Central New York State and probably other places use the term hometown in their name. I guess living in the suburbs temporarily, with only a somewhat vague idea about where I want to live in the future, I’ve never really had a place to call home, and I certainly don’t have hometown pride.

But it must at some level be nice to have a place to call home, a community to be proud of. A place where you cherish your neighbors and friends, a place still not completely dominated by the anonymous big box stores that dot the freeway interchanges. 

A series of GIF showing shifting election results in New England, New York and Pennsylvania

In recent years with the candidacy and election of Donald Trump, he has made a lot of the more rural counties much redder, although it’s hard to say how long that will last now that Trump is no longer a (likely) candidate going forward. While there has been a shift back towards the blue column in 2020, Trump changed the map over the past two elections in many less populated counties.

New York State is decidedly more blue than Pennsylvania, even in its more rural outlying counties.

New England, especially Vermont and Massachusetts are quite blue, especially after the most recent elections.

The Monster of We

The Monster of We

12/16/21 by NPR

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/132760233
Episode: https://play.podtrac.com/npr-510333/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/throughline/2021/12/20211216_throughline_final_mix_ayn_rand_wads_lw_121521.mp3

Are most modern problems caused by selfishness or a lack of it? Ayn Rand, a Russian American philosopher and writer, would say it’s the latter — that selfishness is not a vice but a virtue — and that capitalism is the ideal system. Everyone from Donald Trump, to Alan Greenspan, to Brad Pitt have sung Ayn Rand’s praises. The Library of Congress named her novel Atlas Shrugged the second most influential book in the U.S. after the Bible. Ayn Rand wasn’t politically correct, she was belligerent and liked going against the grain. And although she lived by the doctrine of her own greatness, she was driven by the fear that she would never be good enough.

In this episode, historian Jennifer Burns will guide us through Rand’s evolution and how she eventually reshaped American politics, becoming what Burns calls “a gateway drug to life on the right.”

When the Myth of Voter Fraud Comes for You – The Atlantic

When the Myth of Voter Fraud Comes for You – The Atlantic

If there is an individual in America who epitomizes one central aspect of our political moment, it might well be Crystal Mason. The story of Mason, a Black woman, illuminates the extraordinary efforts the Republican Party has made to demonstrate that fraud is being committed by minority voters on a massive scale. That false notion is now an article of faith among tens of millions of Americans. It has become an excuse to enact laws that make voting harder for everyone, but especially for voters of color, voters who are poor, voters who are old, and voters who were not born in the United States.