Category Archives: Politics

Tyranny On The Docket

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The Supreme Court should unanimously choose democracy over tyranny, possibly as soon as today. I use “should” in both of its senses: it is the right thing to do and they will do it. The only question is whether they dismiss Texas’s outrageous lawsuit with or without an explanation. Greg Sargent of The Washington Post argues that we need to consider what’s at stake: 

President Txxxx has once again demanded that the Supreme Court invalidate millions of votes in four states, nullifying the election and keeping him in power illegitimately.

Indeed, Txxxx was unintentionally explicit on this point: He predicted that Joe Biden’s presidency will be corrupt, and commanded the court to overturn the election results on that basis, in the process making this command with no legitimate legal or constitutional basis at all.

As early as Friday, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on this demand, which has taken the form of a lawsuit waged by the state of Texas, and backed by Txxxx and his propagandists, against four swing states that Biden won. The court will likely refuse to hear the case.

All of which is why the scorching reply brief that Pennsylvania has now filed is an extraordinarily important document. It frames the stakes with appropriate urgency, by essentially arguing that the Texas lawsuit and its supporters are, in effect, asking the court to arbitrarily and lawlessly impose the will of Txxxx supporters on that of the majority that rejected Txxxx — i.e., tyranny.

Even if the court does reject the lawsuit, it’s important for Americans to understand what Txxxx and his co-conspirators are attempting. Now that more than 100 House Republicans, more than 15 Republican state attorneys general and the two GOP senators running in the Georgia runoffs have endorsed this lawsuit, we should be clear on what large swaths of the GOP are really supporting.

The Texas lawsuit asks the court to invalidate the outcomes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia on the grounds that the voting in them was administered illegally, a claim that largely revolves around the dramatic expansion of vote-by-mail in them. That could clear the way for GOP-controlled state legislatures in all four to appoint pro-Txxxx electors.

The Pennsylvania brief attacks the core of Texas’s case . . . . Pennsylvania points out that numerous courts have already shot down the same irregularities alleged by Texas, including the falsehoods that verification standards weren’t followed and that poll-watchers weren’t allowed to witness counting. . . .

It’s in debunking the merit of Texas’s other claim — of harm done to it — that the bigger point is made.

As the Pennsylvania brief notes, intrastate disputes that the Supreme Court has heard generally involve alleged damage done by one state to another state’s “core sovereign interests.” This might involve, say, a dispute over a boundary or a body of water.

In this case, though, Texas is instead claiming that its voters have been harmed by the supposedly illegitimate pro-Biden outcome in the four other states.

Which Texas voters were harmed by this? Why, those who voted for Txxxx, of course, or at least didn’t vote for Biden. . . .

[The Pennsylvania] brief notes, what Texas is really demanding is this:

Far from trying to vindicate its own sovereign or quasi-sovereign interests, Texas is ultimately seeking redress for the political preferences of those of its citizens who voted for President Txxxx.

It adds:

Let us be clear. Texas invites this Court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next President of the United States. That Faustian invitation must be firmly rejected.

. . . Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, emails me this:

Texas is basically asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election for no other reason than because it has suspicions no one has been able to prove about mischief in other states. It’s not just a borderline frivolous legal suit; it’s an invitation to the Justices to simply substitute the preferences of a minority of voters for those of the clear majority.

We spend a great deal of time debating whether Republican elected officials endorsing this effort genuinely support its goals or instead are trying to realize other instrumental purposes, such as energizing the base or keeping Txxxx happy so he will endorse GOP candidates.

But even if those are also operative motivations, . . . would these elected Republicans be fine with this effort actually succeeding? There is just no evident reason to give them the benefit of the doubt . . . 

Ridiculous, But Still Seditious

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The attorneys general of Texas and 17 other states run by Republicans are asking the Supreme Court to change the winner of the presidential election in four states Joe Biden won: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If the Supreme Court agreed, the Democratic electors in those four states wouldn’t get to vote for Biden. Instead, the Republican-led legislatures in George, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would appoint electors who would then presumably vote for Biden’s opponent. Since those four states have 62 electoral votes between them, the Orange Menace would receive 294 electoral votes, enough for him to stay in office another four years. Voila!

The president and his cult have already lost more than 50 lawsuits before both Democratic and Republican judges aimed at changing the results of the election. But, according to the president, this latest lawsuit is “the big one”. It’s always been his hope that the Supreme Court, now overflowing with Republicans (three chosen by him), would come to his rescue if the election didn’t go his way.

In lawyer-speak, there is “no factual or legal basis” for the Supreme Court to intervene in the election. Giving Texas what it’s asking for would amount to a judicial coup d’Ă©tat. Pennsylvania’s response to the lawsuit says “the Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated”. It’s not a close call.

In fact, it’s unlikely that the attorneys general of Texas and the other states think they can win. The president may be an ignoramus who lives in a world of his own imagination (he is), so he might think there’s hope. No doubt millions of his supporters believe the Supreme Court will step in and save their hero. But the attorneys general all made it through law school. They’re simply using the Supreme Court to publicly demonstrate they’ll do anything, no matter how preposterous, to back this president and Keep America Great Again.

As an indication of the seriousness of the Texas lawsuit, look at the statistical “evidence” the lawsuit presents (pages 6 and 7 here). They got one of the president’s supporters, who is roughly 80 years old and claims to have a Ph.D.in economics, to state that there was less than a 1 in 1 quadrillion chance (that’s less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000) that Biden won even one of the four states, given (1) how far ahead Txxxx was at 3 a.m. on the night of the election and (2) how much better Biden did than Hillary Clinton four years ago. These calculations were based on two absurd assumptions:

(1) Votes counted before 3 a.m. on the night of the election and those counted after 3 a.m. (including on subsequent days) were from identical samples of voters. But, as expected, Democrats tended to vote by mail, which meant their ballots were counted more slowly; and, of course, some jurisdictions count votes and report results more slowly than others. The assumption that “votes are evenly and randomly distributed among geographic regions, demographics, and voting method, so that any two large groups of voters should generate similar results [has been] described as “ludicrous” and “statistical incompetence” by several academics. Kenneth Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said “This is going to be used in undergraduate statistics classes as a canonical example of how not to do statistics” [Wikipedia].

(2) Since they were both Democrats running for president, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton should have received roughly the same percentage of votes in the four states. Is it necessary to mention that Biden and Clinton were different candidates running in elections four years apart, and that Clinton ran against a political newcomer, while Biden ran against an incumbent with a disastrous four-year record? Or that the differences between Biden’s percentages and Clinton’s were relatively small — the only significant difference being that he won and she lost?

So, the Supreme Court will either refuse to consider Texas’s lawsuit or dismiss it. This doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Millions of Republican voters, more than a few of whom are either violent or crazy, are counting on the Supreme Court. How will they react when they’re disappointed? (Gosh, I hope they refuse to vote in the Senate election in Georgia — that will show the politicians who’s boss!)

Secondly, hundreds of Republican politicians from around the country have signed on to this lawsuit, all repeating the same stupid arguments in favor of ignoring the votes of millions of their fellow citizens. As Paul Krugman wrote today:

The [Republican Party] has no commitment to democracy, and hasn’t for years. Given the chance to turn America into Hungary, the GOP wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

Some Republicans might hesitate, but it’s clear that one of our major political parties no longer plays by the rules. Their goal is power, and we have no idea how far they’ll go to get it or keep it. 

Note: Now that all the states have certified their election results, the Electoral College will meet on Monday and declare Joe Biden the winner. Thirty-seven days later, he’ll be sworn in. If you’d like to look at the legal documents filed for and against Texas’s suit, they’re available on the Supreme Court site.

Menace to Society

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It’s excellent news that the federal government and almost fifty states are suing Facebook for being an illegal monopoly. Their aim is to break up the company. But it’s too bad Facebook management can’t be sued for being immoral creeps. They know how bad they are, just like the managers at cigarette companies who knew they were causing cancer and the oil company executives who knew decades ago they were destroying the climate.

This report is from the Daily Mail back in May (it’s a newspaper that specializes in less important topics — note the brief paragraphs):

Facebook researchers learnt as far back as in 2016 that 64 percent of all extremist group joins are due to its own recommendations but executives . . . killed any efforts to fix the problem, according to sources.

Research at the social media giant in 2016 and again in 2018 unearthed a worrying trend linking the platform’s recommendations to extremist views on the site.

But despite researchers coming up with several different solutions to tackle the problem of extremism, no action was taken.

People familiar with the matter have told The Wall Street Journal that the move to dismiss the recommendations was largely down to Facebook VP for policy and former George W. Bush administration official Joel Kaplan, who famously threw Brett Kavanaugh a party when he was appointed Supreme Court Justice in the middle of sexual assault allegations in 2018 . . . .

In 2016, the company carried out research that found there was a worryingly high proportion of extremist content and groups on the platform.

Facebook researcher and sociologist Monica Lee wrote in a presentation at the time that there was an abundance of extremist and racist content in over a third of large German political Facebook groups.

The presentation states ‘64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.’

Most of the joining activity came from the platform’s ‘Groups You Should Join’ and ‘Discover’ algorithms, she found, meaning: ‘Our recommendation systems grow the problem.’

Facebook then launched new research in 2017 looking at how its social media platform polarized the views of its users.

The project was headed up by Facebook’s then-chief product officer Chris Cox who led the task force known as ‘Common Ground’.

It revealed the social media platform was fueling conflict among its users and increasing extremist views.

It also showed that bad behavior among users came from the small groups of people with the most extreme views, with more accounts on the far-right than far-left in the US.

The concerning findings were released in an internal presentation the following year.

‘Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,’ a slide from the 2018 presentation read.

‘If left unchecked,’ it warned, Facebook would feed users ‘more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform.’

Cox and his team offered up several solutions to the problem, including building a system for digging out extreme content and suppressing clickbait around politics.

Another initiative called ‘Sparing Sharing’ involved reducing the spread of content by what it called ‘hyperactive users’ – who are highly active on the platform and show extreme views on either the left or the right, the sources told the Journal.

But the efforts – and the research – were reportedly blocked by senior executives including founder Mark Zuckerberg and Kaplan.

According to sources, Kaplan killed any attempts to change the platform branding the move ‘paternalistic’ and citing concerns that they would mainly impact right-wing social media users, the Journal reported.

Unquote.

Facebook has become a big part of the right-wing media machine, partly because the company was criticized for being unfair to right-wingers. In response to that criticism, they hired Republican executives to make sure right-wing lies and conspiracy theories weren’t interfered with, in fact, that they were promoted, as the report above shows. Thus, from The Guardian last month:

Since election day, 16 of the top 20 public Facebook posts that include the word “election” feature false or misleading information casting doubt on the election in favor of Txxxx, according to a Guardian analysis of posts with the most interactions using CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool. Of those, 13 are posts by the president’s own page, one is a direct quote from Txxxx published by Fox News, one is by the rightwing evangelical Christian Franklin Graham, and the last is the Newsmax Higbie video [“a laundry list of false and debunked claims casting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election”].

The four posts that do not include misinformation are congratulatory messages by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for Biden and Kamala Harris and two posts by Graham, including a request for prayers for Txxxx and a remembrance by Graham of his father, the conservative televangelist Billy Graham.

Beyond Bizarre

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In 1960, after we’d already been introduced to The Twilight Zone, DC Comics gave us Bizarro World. Wikipedia explains:

In the Bizarro world of “Htrae” [“Earth” spelled backward], society is ruled by the Bizarro Code, which states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!” In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: “Guaranteed to lose money for you”. Later, the mayor appoints Bizarro No. 1 to investigate a crime, “Because you are stupider than the entire Bizarro police force put together”. This is intended and taken as a great compliment.

Millions of Americans are  now living in Bizarro World, where up is down, left is right. From Oliver Darcy of CNN:

Here’s a transcript of a conversation [radio agitator] Rush Limbaugh had with a caller [on Tuesday]. It’s important to keep in mind that right-wing media has absolutely convinced a fairly significant portion of country the election was stolen. What that leads to, I’m not sure. But it is a dangerous lie:

CALLER: . . . I thank you for everything you’re doing. And my comment today is that the national news media and the Democratic Party are using the fear factor in order to control the people. This is right out of the Alinsky, communist playbook. [Presumably, the caller means that the media and Democrats are inappropriately warning about the pandemic.] It’s to divert people’s attention to the real facts of what they’re doing. It’s clearly a stolen election. We’ve seen the election results. We’ve seen the fraud that’s taken place. We need to have our place in court. We need to never stop fighting. We need a prayer chain and millions of people to get out in the street so that the national medicat ifnore the populace.

LIMBAUGH: Well, that’s gonna be a tough thing to pull off.

CALLER: I know that.

LIMBAUGH: The national media, in the first place, it isn’t media. You’re asking them to all of a sudden start reporting the news, when they don’t do that anymore. . . .

CALLER: If the streets are lined with truck drivers and the roads are lined with people and clog these cities up, it becomes a desperate action. But if they steal this election, they’ve stolen our libertry, they’ve stolen our freedom.

LIMBAUGH: Yeah, I know.

CALLER: We’re done.

LIMBAUGH: Not just that.

CALLER: That can’t happen.

LIMBAUGH: They have forever corrupted the Constitutuion. I mean, the stakes are quite serious.

CALLER: Well, we need to ever stop. The people have to stand up. There too many people too quiet sitting by the waywide, unfortunately.

LIMBAUGH: Why do you think they’re doing that?

CALLER: Well, if 40% of the people are still watching the propaganda — it’s not news, it’s the progranda media for the Democratic Party — anybody that refers to the national news as national news is a fool. They are the propaganda wing. They are the Democratic Party.

LIMBAUGH: Right, I know. Bur why are so may people just sitting by doing nothing?

CALLER: They are just in the phase that nothing can be done. What they don’t understand is Txxxx is Txxxx, and he is the major factor standing in the way of a revolution. This is a revolution. It’s the corporate world and politics mixing together to overthrow democracy and to put control on the people.

LIMBAUGH: Well, there’s one thing. Txxx does know that. Txxxx is very, very aware. He knows what’s at stake too. And that;’s why he’s not going away. It’s why he’s not conceded yet. That’s such an important thing. That has the left kind of discombbulated. They’re running around saying, “We told you, Txxxx will not participate in a peaceful transfer of power”. He’s not gonna concede yet because there go his legal optionns if he does. If he concedes, then it’s officially over. . . .

So Txxxx is not going to concede while all of these legal challenges play out. And it’s got the Demcorats just perplexed because they thought by now that they would have seen to it that the chances that Txxx has for vicctory here are so small, and so tiny, not even worth pursuing. But Txxxx doesn’t see it that way in any shape, manner or form.

Unquote.

Txxxx and his gang have lost over 50 lawsuits aimed at reversing the presidential election. There is zero chance the Republicans will succeed in any court in America, including the one in Washington that now has six Republicans and three Democrats. But it won’t matter. The Republican Party chose a demagogue to run for president, a foolish or rabid minority elected him, and we’ll continue suffering consequences after he leaves the White House.

83% of Republicans polled after the 2020 election said they didn’t believe Joe Biden won

Once you’re at home in Bizarro World, why go back to the real one?

Beyond Redemption

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Rep. Katie Porter (D-Ca) points out a blatant example of corruption in Washington:

When I came to Congress, I knew I had a responsibility to pull back the curtain for the American people and expose corruption in real time. So, I’m filling you in on Senator McConnell’s attempts over the last 8 days to tank a *bipartisan* COVID relief bill.

You may have heard that Democrats and Republicans have agreed upon spending $900 billion to fund another round of small business loans, support hospitals and essential workers, and help the 10 million people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. 

Everyone at the negotiating table—including Senate Republicans—has agreed to a compromise. Except one. [Republican Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring it to the floor unless it wipes away all COVID-related lawsuits filed that “allege injury or death” due to corporate negligence. 

These lawsuits represent the worst of the worst examples of disregard for human life—cases filed on behalf of nursing home patients and grocery store workers who died because the company in charge of keeping them safe prioritized cutting costs over protecting them. 

The same McConnell who said that President Txxxx is “100% within his rights” to pursue baseless lawsuits alleging election fraud is now refusing to pass urgently-needed relief unless it strips those same rights from the most vulnerable among us. This must be exposed. 

From Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post:

President Txxxx’s legal team, cheered on by grossly irresponsible Republican officeholders and activists, vowed to fight on to the bitter end on Tuesday. That had extra significance because Tuesday was “safe harbor day,” after which any slate of electors certified by states must be considered valid by Congress and the courts, according to federal law. But Txxxx’s lawyers, who have lost more than 50 cases for absolute want of evidence, insist they will press on beyond the safe harbor date. Should we expect them to cease and desist even after the electors meet on Dec. 14 to cast their votes? Please.

Txxxx continues to put pressure on state officials, most recently the Republican House leader in Pennsylvania, to overturn the will of voters. . ..This is a coup attempt, plain and simple — however far-fetched. A lonely Republican, Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who already announced he will not run for reelection, denounced such efforts. “It’s completely unacceptable and it’s not going to work and the president should give up trying to get legislatures to overturn the results of the elections in their respective states,” Toomey said.

Most Republicans remain mute, but at least one was champing at the bit to join in Txxxx’s preposterous abuse of the legal system. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) “volunteered” to argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) to throw out mail-in ballots. Kimberly Wehle at the Bulwark, . . . excoriated the Texan: “You got that right. Cruz — the strict constructionist — is eager to stand before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue that the Pennsylvania legislature had no power to allow universal mail-in voting, but does have the power to throw out every single vote cast in Pennsylvania and impose its own political will on the citizens of Pennsylvania, who chose Joe Biden for president by a nearly 82,000-vote margin over Dxxxx Txxxx.” Thank goodness, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal on Tuesday with no dissents.

Txxxx has no incentive to stop his efforts to overturn a valid election. To the contrary, with blowhards like Cruz available to provide a patina of respectability, and nearly all elected Republicans refusing to recognize the election results, he has every reason to hit up his fans for more donations and to continue insisting he is the rightful winner. When three Republican members of the inauguration committee refuse to recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and when the Arizona Republican Party retweets a right-wing extremist’s declaration that he is “willing to give up my life for this fight,“ we see that far from being isolated, Txxxx is right at home in today’s deranged Republican Party.

The willingness to overturn the most sacred element in our democracy, a free and fair election, to engender favor with a losing president defines the pathetic state of the GOP. The actions from Republicans indicate that they stand for nothing but keeping power at all costs. They promote cynicism, inspire armed protesters (as we saw in Michigan), lend legitimacy to those threatening state officials (in Georgia, for instance) and set a new standard for every losing president . . .

My ongoing plea to level the Republican Party so that an authentic, pro-democracy party can emerge in its place has unfortunately been entirely vindicated. It is not only Txxxx who must leave office but all those aiding and abetting his unlawful attempts to retain power.