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The GOP Election Plan Is Simple: Even When You Don't Win, Cheat |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=48731"><span class="small">Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone</span></a>
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Thursday, 06 December 2018 13:31 |
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Smith writes: "Three months have passed since that fleeting, anonymous New York Times op-ed from a Trump staffer claiming that she or he was busy trying to save us from the president's agenda and 'his worst inclinations.' The piece was largely useless, but it was entertaining."
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker addresses members of the media from his office in Madison, Wisconsin, for the first time after failing to win re-election in the 2018 race. (photo: John Hart/AP)
The GOP Election Plan Is Simple: Even When You Don't Win, Cheat
By Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone
06 December 18
What we’re witnessing in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina will disenfranchise voters for years to come
 hree months have passed since that fleeting, anonymous New York Times op-ed from a Trump staffer claiming that she or he was busy trying to save us from the president’s agenda and “his worst inclinations.” The piece was largely useless, but it was entertaining. Conservatives who have remained silent about Republican disenfranchisement were inspired, in their own way, to defend voting rights.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the House Majority Leader, declared in a letter to the Times that the writer was “thwarting the wishes of the legitimately elected president from within the executive branch.” The Federalist’s David Harsanyi, a Libertarian, argued that the op-ed “celebrates the idea of nullifying an election.” Ari Fleischer, President George W. Bush’s press secretary, wrote in his own op-ed that “if the American people don’t like what Donald Trump is doing, they can elect a Democratic House and-or Senate this fall,” adding that this is “how our system was meant to work and be responsive to the will of the people.”
There is often an inherent whiteness, maleness and heterosexuality associated with the term “people” when Republicans use the word. The party has only one demonstrated strategy for competing in a browning America: Whiten it, physically and electorally. Republican cheating has grown so pervasive that we have come to expect it, especially since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. We now expect these abhorrent laws, and to see “Voter Fraud is a Felony!” billboards in black neighborhoods. The genius of their persistence is that we get used to this nonsense.
It is why we are failing, as a country, to show concern about what is happening in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina right now. The voter disenfranchisement on display in these three states is an extension of broader Republican efforts to reject the will of those citizens who vote in ways they don’t like, the same people who are most likely to block their path to power in future elections. The devil takes many forms, as does voter suppression.
Mark Harris, a Baptist preacher who considers Islam to be “Satanic,” won May’s GOP primary for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. After the November 6th general election, the Associated Press prematurely called the race in his favor. Leading by a mere 905 votes over his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, Harris’ win seemed close but certain. However, the state’s Board of Elections has twice refused to certify the victory, citing irregularities with absentee ballots. The board may order a new election on December 21st when it meets to review the mounting evidence that Harris and his campaign engaged in illegal activity that disproportionately affected voters of color.
Further reporting revealed suspicious vote counts favoring Harris in certain counties with large numbers of unreturned ballots. Both Popular Information and WSOC reporter Joe Bruno then revealed on Monday that Harris’ campaign used (and possibly paid) workers to collect ballots, many of which were never returned. The mere act of “harvesting” is against the law in North Carolina — something that apparently didn’t trouble L. McCrae Dowless, Jr., the Harris campaign political consultant and convicted felon who is most directly linked to the illegal ballot collections. Harris did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
If these allegations are true, we now have an example of a Republican not just committing election fraud, but resorting to a form of organized crime to help the party hold onto a House seat. What is happening in Wisconsin and Michigan, though, is nothing less than a defecation on democracy.
In those states, there is no question who won. Voters in both Wisconsin and Michigan elected Democrats to take over for their appalling Republican governors: Tony Evers to replace the anti-labor villain Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Gretchen Whitmer to oust Flint disaster architect Rick Snyder in Michigan. Yet the Republican-led state legislatures in both states were kept in power by gerrymandered districts. Democrats netted nearly 200,000 more votes in Wisconsin last month, but state Republicans increased their slight senate majority and walked away with 63 of the 99 assembly seats. A Michigan ballot proposal to reign in partisan redistricting passed in November, but Republicans still retained majorities in both houses.
Now, Republicans in Wisconsin have just passed legislation that amounts to an assault on the state’s rule of law. It will strip Evers of powers that he doesn’t even have yet. It will prevent the new governor and the incoming state Attorney General, Democrat Josh Kaul, from withdrawing from litigation against the Affordable Care without the permission of the Republican majority. The measure also usurps Kaul’s job, giving many of his powers to the state legislative branch. Consider a state law unconstitutional? The Republicans in the statehouse will not only be able to intervene and prevent the attorney general from settling any claims — a provision will allow them to “retain legal counsel other than the Department of Justice.” The state’s top lawyer has essentially been fired before he even takes the job, without the say of the plurality of voters who hired him to represent their interests.
Wisconsin has an incoming Democratic trifecta: Evers and Kaul will join a re-elected secretary of state, Douglas La Follette, who is a victim of a similar power grab. In a state with rampant voter suppression, outgoing governor Scott Walker cut La Follette’s staff from 50 to one and stuck his office in the basement. The bills Republicans just passed will help neuter that office in a different way— slashing early voting schedules again, a move that was blocked in 2016 by a federal district judge who concluded that doing so discriminated on the basis of race. Now that Trump has five reliable enablers of voter suppression on the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps Wisconsin’s GOP is willing to give this another shot. They are also trying to move a state Supreme Court election in 2020, despite there being no need to do so. As journalist Mark Joseph Stern argued, this is designed to discourage voter turnout and prevent a liberal takeover of the body.
Wisconsin’s Republican Senate leader, Scott Fitzgerald, said the quiet part out loud in a conservative talk radio interview on Monday, calling his next governor a “lap dog” for teachers’ unions and saying that “we don’t trust Tony Evers right now.” His will, and presumably that of 17 other sitting GOP state senators, outweighs the collective will of the state that the governor is allegedly supposed to represent.
In a crack-of-the-morning vote Wednesday, Wisconsin’s Senate passed the sweeping measures by one vote, 17-16. Then the state assembly passed it, and outgoing Gov. Scott Walker will sign it into law. Lame-duck power grabs aren’t new for him, nor for Republicans nationwide. The assembly’s Republican speaker, Robin Vos, defended this by saying that he was sticking up for the voters in his district. “Where I live, people have said do whatever you have to do to make sure the reforms that have been positive for Wisconsin don’t go away,” he said via the assembly’s Twitter a day before the vote.
This mirrors what North Carolina Republicans pulled in 2016, seeking to limit the powers of Democrat Roy Cooper after voters elected him governor that year. Michigan saw that blueprint, and as the state welcomes its own Democratic trifecta — the first in 28 years — Republicans there have proposed new measures that would neuter the incoming governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Protecting unconstitutional measures, such as one that allows adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples, is taking priority over that will of the voter we hear so much about.
Voter suppression is not merely about gerrymandering, closing polling places and requiring IDs to shape an electorate. It is a declaration that only Republicans are allowed to run things, even when the voters say otherwise, and that any challenges to their power are invalid. We worry, rightfully, about what Trump does and will do to our democracy. He soils it with his lies about undocumented voting and his encouragement of intimidation at the polls. But the embarrassment of his “voter fraud” panel demonstrated that he is actually rather ineffective at suppressing votes. Trump is a small man, but that isn’t why this is bigger than him. When it comes to protecting Republican power for themselves and their shrinking white electorate, the real pros are at the state level.
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Two Years of Lame Excuses About Not Hiring Colin Kaepernick |
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Thursday, 06 December 2018 13:31 |
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Greene writes: "Kaepernick, who inaugurated the league's social justice protests in 2016 by sitting and then kneeling during the national anthem, has been out of the NFL for going on two full seasons now. While NFL owners clearly don't want Kaepernick in the league on account of his activism, he's maintained his training regimen and has expressed his desire to try out for a team."
Kaepernick: still out in the cold. (photo: Joe Robbins/Getty)
Two Years of Lame Excuses About Not Hiring Colin Kaepernick
By Nick Greene, Slate
06 December 18
They’ve had two years. NFL coaches still haven’t come up with a good excuse for their teams not signing Colin Kaepernick.
 or all intents and purposes, Washington doesn’t have a quarterback. Starter Alex Smith suffered a Theismann-like leg injury in November, and his backup, Colt McCoy, fractured his fibula against the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday. That leaves Mark Sanchez, who signed with the team just before Thanksgiving. He replaced McCoy in the second quarter of that game against the Eagles and threw for 100 yards, zero touchdowns, and one interception. Washington lost, 28–13.
Washington’s Sanchez-led offense managed 36 total yards in the second half. For all the visual learners out there, that’s about two-thirds the length of a Boeing 737. When you walk to seat 26D, you’re traveling a longer distance than Mark Sanchez was able to move the ball in two full quarters.
Washington is just one game behind first place in the wide-open NFC East. The team would have a pretty navigable route to the postseason were it not for the fact that its current quarterback plays like a gout-stricken mall Santa. Speaking with reporters after Monday’s loss, Washington coach Jay Gruden dismissed an obvious candidate the team might bring in for the position. “He’s been talked about,” Gruden said, referring to Colin Kaepernick. “But we’ll probably go in a different direction.”
Kaepernick, who inaugurated the league’s social justice protests in 2016 by sitting and then kneeling during the national anthem, has been out of the NFL for going on two full seasons now. While NFL owners clearly don’t want Kaepernick in the league on account of his activism, he’s maintained his training regimen and has expressed his desire to try out for a team. Despite missing the entire 2017 season and (probably) the entire 2018 season, Kaepernick’s last NFL start came on the same day as Sanchez’s last start, and his career passer rating, touchdown-to-interception ratio, and completion percentage are all better than those of the current Washington starter. Nevertheless, Gruden insists that his team is staying away from Kaepernick for “strictly football” reasons. That logic doesn’t exactly pass muster, as Steven Ruiz explains in his comprehensive piece over at USA Today.
“There’s not a lot of time to get a brand-new quarterback and system installed in a couple of days,” Gruden said. Kaepernick became a star when he filled in for a concussed Alex Smith in 2012, performing so spectacularly well that the San Francisco 49ers immediately promoted him to be the team’s starter. Why should Gruden expect him to be able to fill in for, uh, Alex Smith?
Nevertheless, Gruden said it would be “very difficult” for Kaepernick to adjust to the kind of offense Sanchez took for a spin during his blistering performance on Monday. As a result, Washington signed a different kind of backup to be at the ready in case Sanchez disappoints. (He will disappoint.) That player: former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Josh Johnson, who hasn’t thrown a pass in the NFL since 2011.
Gruden’s reasoning may seem bizarre, but it’s actually standard coach-speak. While NFL team owners are the most likely culprits for keeping Kaepernick in the cold (as the quarterback alleges in his grievance against the league), it’s usually up to the coaches to publicly formulate the excuses. According to the men who prowl the sidelines, learning an NFL offense is more challenging than solving the Hodge conjecture. You need to be a Nobel-winning super genius to do it. Or Tom Savage.
After Tennessee quarterback Marcus Mariota got hurt in 2017, then–Titans head coach Mike Mularkey said, “I know [Kaepernick’s] not familiar with our offense.” That offense, which Mularkey dubbed “exotic smash mouth,” ranked 23rd in total yards last season. How on earth could Kaepernick have memorized such an intricate playbook, which, judging by the Titans games I watched, consisted of the following three plays: hand-off left, hand-off right, pass to the tight end?
At least Mularkey sounded as if he’d considered bringing in Kaepernick. When Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone last October, (recently fired) Packers head coach Mike McCarthy gave an an ornery response to a reporter who asked about Kaepernick. “Did you just listen to that question I just answered?” he said. “I got three years invested in Brett Hundley. Two years invested in Joe Callahan. The quarterback room is exactly where it needs to be. OK?” McCarthy never saw a return on those investments. Hundley lost six of the nine games he started and threw nine touchdown passes and 12 interceptions. Callahan threw for 11 total yards all season.
The Houston Texans were also in the market for a backup quarterback last season after Deshaun Watson tore his ACL. Despite running a read-option offense that Kaepernick is familiar with from his days in San Francisco, the Texans opted to look elsewhere. “Colin Kaepernick’s a good football player,” Houston coach Bill O’Brien said, “[but he] hasn’t played football in a while.” The Texans instead signed Josh Johnson who, as mentioned earlier, hadn’t thrown a football in an NFL game since 2011. (And still hasn’t.)
According to all these coaches, Kaepernick—and seemingly only Kaepernick—lacks what it takes to learn an NFL offense. He’s had too much time away. (Unlike, say, Josh Johnson.) Or he hasn’t had enough time to catch up. Either way, you won’t see him behind center any time soon.
On Sunday, Jay Gruden will have to pretend that Mark Sanchez represents Washington’s best hope to make the playoffs and that Josh Johnson’s body of work has been enough to earn him the backup role. To be fair to Gruden, though, the coach did give another reason for rejecting Kaepernick. Gruden said he wanted “someone with a similar skill set” as the unremarkable Sanchez to be his backup. In 2018, Johnson certainly fits the bill.
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What You Know About the American South and Climate Change Is Wrong |
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Thursday, 06 December 2018 13:31 |
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Bergman writes: "I'm no southern apologist, nor do I speak for any southerner other than myself. But I want readers to know that the south is not a uniform swath of white, populist, anti-science zealots (though they thrive there, and have the habit of being the loudest in the room)."
Flood damage to farms in Wallace, North Carolina; Isle De Jean Charles, which is disappearing due to rising water levels; Hector Benthall gets a hug from his neighbor after remnants of Hurricane Michael; a woman carrying water in Immokalee, Florida, after a hurricane. (photo: Jo-Anne Mcarthur, Amir Levy, Spencer Platt, Sean Rayford)
What You Know About the American South and Climate Change Is Wrong
By Megan Mayhew Bergman, Guardian UK
06 December 18
Southern states are not a uniform swath of white, populist, anti-science zealots. As climate is changing, so is the south – in this new column, Megan Mayhew Bergman goes back home to find out more
here’s a Welsh word – Hiraeth – which refers to a “homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, or a home which maybe never was.”
This word evokes the way I feel about the American south. It’s where I grew up, a place I loved as a child and came into conflict with as a teenager. Though I have a little observational distance now, the south still feels like home in a bone-deep way.
Most writers I know wrestle with the idea of home. It’s a place you love, pick fights with, want to protect. I’m often frustrated by the cliched representation of the south in the media. But I’m even more frustrated by the south’s tepid response to climate change, and politicians who continually fail their constituents’ best interests.
I was raised in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and made it to college not having traveled above the Mason-Dixon Line. I never intended to go “up there”, to cold and buttoned-up New England, but after 30 years in the south, I moved with my husband to his family farm in Vermont.
Nine years later, I observe many people in the two regions still viewing each other with suspicion and anthropological wonder.
My northern friends and family say, “I could never live ‘down there . Those politics, and the hot summers.”
My southern friends and family say, “I could never live ‘up there’. I don’t know how you survive winters.” (I hardly do.)
But what used to seem like quaint regionalism feels like tribalism in 2018. When I watch news reports about hurricanes and politics, I see an overly simplistic and dismissive portrayal of southerners. I know that portrayal is historically hard-earned, yet unfair to the increasingly purple nature of the urban south, and the hard-working intellectuals, entrepreneurs, conservationists, social-justice workers, bookstore owners and artists that call the south home. Or even moderates alienated by the current state of political discourse, or teenagers approaching voting age who grew up more socially and environmentally progressive than their parents.
I’m no southern apologist, nor do I speak for any southerner other than myself. But I want readers to know that the south is not a uniform swath of white, populist, anti-science zealots (though they thrive there, and have the habit of being the loudest in the room).
When we plan and talk about the south and climate change, it’s critical to acknowledge that the region is multicultural and multitudinous.
I want to show Guardian readers some of this texture, dig into the complexity and dissonance of the south. In this new column, I’ll introduce you to shrimpers, faith leaders, real estate agents, artists and elders. You will read about conservatives, independents and liberals.
Together, we’ll walk on the frontlines of climate change, visit flood zones, public housing, schools, coastal landmarks and places under pressure.
Something that keeps me awake at night: the south-east is projected to lose the most economic value in climate change scenarios, and may be the least prepared to cope, given the outright climate change denial espoused by many southern politicians.
How can a region that finds talking about climate change uncomfortable build up smart levels of resilience to face an increase in heat-related deaths, energy costs, flooding, and a decrease in agricultural output and outdoor labor productivity?
How can it prepare new power grids and a ready and willing workforce for the green economy?
How can a region so heavily invested in its Christian identity deny, ignore or talk around a problem that’s going to hit its poorest and most vulnerable the hardest?
If the south is to build resilience in the face of climate change, hearts, minds and policy will have to change quickly. Otherwise, the region will face further, and potentially catastrophic, losses to culture, landscape, property and biodiversity. But the extreme politicization of climate change in the south, paired with the often condescending stance of the already converted believers, makes this much-needed cultural shift a hard sell.
I know what it’s like to move out of a classic red state mentality; it’s an awkward leap, like crashing a party you weren’t invited to. It’s a new language, accent, code. Sometimes it feels like trying to sit with a smug group of high schoolers in the cafeteria who profess to have better taste in music. But in 2018, it’s in our shared interest to make conservation conversations easier to join.
I think a lot about conversion moments, what it takes to move from a place of cold denial to complexity or increased understanding. These moments are often experiential. I wish that more people were afforded the opportunity to decamp from regionalist mentalities, political ideology and ivory towers and witness the humanity of the “other side” – or, as those of us who revere the natural world would say, the sheer interconnectedness of all species.
I think of the Federal Writer’s Project, when writers like Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Huston got out into the field and attempted to capture the south in a time of profound struggle and change. Huston wrote of Florida in her proposal, “There is still an opportunity to observe the wombs of folk culture still heavy with life.” The American south is again in a poignant moment, culturally heavy with life, with a force stronger than the Great Depression beginning to shape it. I want to bear witness to what’s hanging in the balance, get real about the stakes.
One summer night, while out in the field in such a way, on the roof of a shrimp boat in the middle of the Ogeechee river off the coast of Georgia, I sat with a diverse group of southern artists and conservationists and watched the moon rise over the salt marsh. We found ourselves discussing conservation’s race problem; the continued glorification of plantation culture; the danger of anti-science mentalities in schools; the language southerners use to avoid using the politicized term “climate change”.
That night, we told stories about the changes we’re already seeing, and the financial and spiritual impact on real people we know. We wondered about the future of coastal real estate, the art that will rise from this tense moment, and where the evangelicals are when it comes to protecting Earth, or, as some say, the Creation.
These are conversations I’ve always wanted to have, questions I’ve always wanted to ask. I’ll continue to explore them in a column here, with you.
One of the reasons I will forever be homesick for the landscape of the south, in the vague sense of hiraeth, is that none of us can truly return to the landscapes of our youth. We are no longer waiting for climate change; it is well upon us. We are already in the process of being shaped and displaced. We are bearing witness to a climate already changed.
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FOCUS | Giuliani: The Dog Ate My Counter-Report to Mueller |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=10204"><span class="small">Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Thursday, 06 December 2018 12:41 |
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Chait writes: "The Trump administration has been promising they would respond to any charges by Robert Mueller with a devastating point-by-point defense: a 'counter-report' written by none other than attorney at law and esteemed cybersecurity expert Rudy Giuliani. Let's check in on the progress of the response."
Rudy Giuliani. (photo: Al Drago/Getty)
Giuliani: The Dog Ate My Counter-Report to Mueller
By Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
06 December 18
he Trump administration has been promising they would respond to any charges by Robert Mueller with a devastating point-by-point defense: a “counter-report” written by none other than attorney at law and esteemed cybersecurity expert Rudy Giuliani. Let’s check in on the progress of the response.
Actually, “progress” does not seem to be the appropriate term. More like the opposite of progress.
On July 30, USA Today first divulged the coming counter-report. “Giuliani’s own team worked on its ‘counter-report,’” the story noted, “which he said would be released after his team reviewed whatever Mueller filed with the Justice Department,” which he expected to occur by September 1. That gave Giuliani less than a month to finish.
On August 12, the Wall Street Journal included a brief update: “Mr. Trump’s attorneys are preparing their own report, part of which rebuts accusations from James Comey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation director fired by Mr. Trump in May 2017, according to Mr. Giuliani.”
On August 30, the Daily Beast had a much more extensive update on the counter-report. It was “quite voluminous,” Giuliani boasted. “The first half of it is 58 pages, and second half isn’t done yet … It needs an executive summary if it goes over a hundred.” Giuliani said the first draft would be “in pretty good shape by next week,” though a more cautious source told the Daily Beast that “those involved expect the counter-report to be ready to go in the next two to three weeks.”
A profile of Giuliani in The New Yorker, published September 10, included another counter-report update: “Giuliani said that this ‘counter-report’ is already forty-five pages and will likely grow, adding, ‘It needs a five-page summary—for me.’” Note that just a couple weeks before, the first half alone had stretched to 58 pages, but now the entire thing was just 45 pages. This was perhaps a sign that the report was not proceeding quite as fast as promised.
Today’s Atlantic reports on the state of the administration’s overall response to Mueller, which is as shambolic as one might expect. The numerous difficulties include the fact that nobody is willing to face up to the actual guilt of everybody involved (“There have also been few frank conversations within the White House about the potential costs of Mueller’s findings, which could include impeachment of the president or the incrimination of his inner circle”) as well as the president’s characteristic inability to follow any plan at all. But it also contains a brief reference to Giuliani’s counter-report, the centerpiece of the entire strategy. He’s been furiously compiling it since July.
How’s that report going, Rudy?
Giuliani said it’s been difficult in the last few months to even consider drafting response plans, or devote time to the “counter-report” he claimed they were working on this summer, as he and Trump confronted Mueller’s written questions about the 2016 campaign.
“Answering those questions was a nightmare,” he told me. “It took him about three weeks to do what would normally take two days.”
So we’ve gone from the first half alone being 58 pages, to the entire report being 45 pages, to “it’s difficult to even consider drafting” the report at all. This is like an episode of Matlock that lasts all season long and where the client is actually guilty and Matlock is going through early-stage dementia.
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n Oct. 27, Robert Bowers launched an attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Penn., murdering 11 worshipers and injuring many others. The federal 
