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rauthschild · 2 years ago

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Any thinking Autochthonous American -- given the choice, would always choose to stand on his own land and soil, rather than hazard the perils of the High Seas and Inland Waterways -- as a matter of law.

The Law of the Land is solid and sure.

Justice on the land and soil of this country does not depend on public opinion (democracy) nor does it depend on private belief (theocracy).

Justice on the land depends on us and our ability, somewhat limited as it may be at times, to reason our way through the facts and evidence and determine by logic what must be true.

Ultimately, truth matters. All else is immaterial.

Here is the truth:

If you don't accept responsibility, you have no rights; and, if you do not accept liability, you have no authority.

The Colorado Nine, the January 6th Protesters, Stewart Rhodes, the Bundys and even President Trump have all come under this same gun and all of them have been forewarned by me and told the facts that they need to observe and the steps they need to take.

They haven't listened --- and in every single case, they have not only failed in their objectives, they have opened themselves up to prosecution and persecution --- both.

So long as you allow foreign governments to assume things about you, and so long as those foreign governments are benefited by assuming that you are an Unknown Enemy without rights or guarantees, the conclusion is foregone.

They will choose in their own favor and devil take the hindmost.

All the while, it's you and your failure to declare and record your correct political status that is giving them the leeway to make assumptions about you and to exercise their own "discretion" concerning you.

Let me give you an example:

You are standing in your driveway raking leaves one afternoon, and two of their officers decide that, in their opinion, you look like a dangerous subversive.

They arrest you and snoop around your home. In addition to the rake, they find a chainsaw, a hoe, and an ax in your garage.

These tools found in your garage could be used to murder people!

Soon, a man is found dead under mysterious circumstances, and you are deemed to be the murderer -- because that is the prevailing public opinion (democracy) or the earnest belief (theocracy) of your detractors.

This is the logic of mob rule (democracy). And it is also the logic of the Inquisition (theocracy).

But, wait, wait, you say--- we are Americans! We are owed a republican form of government, not a democracy! Not a theocracy!

You are subjecting yourselves to both these foreign forms of government by default, by failing to declare and record your political status as a Virginian, New Yorker, Minnesotan, Texan, or Californian....et alia, and by failing to support your own American Government, which is vested in your State Assemblies and their unincorporated Federation of States.

That's why the January 6th Protesters are being treated so very badly by the Municipal Government in the District of Columbia.

The Protesters have had Municipal citizenship of the United States conferred on them without their knowledge or consent, and they have all neglected to waive the benefit of this foreign political status or otherwise declare their choice of political status.

Those who have them incarcerated are free to opine whatever they wish and believe whatever they wish about these Unfortunates, and treat them accordingly. There is no public record or pre-established evidence otherwise.

The members of the Municipal Congress don't even recognize the January 6th Protesters as persons covered by the Geneva Conventions. As a result, the Mavens of the Majority are free to feed them gruel and let them freeze in unheated cells, labeled as "Unknown Enemy Combatants".

The Protesters are being treated as traitors to the Municipal Government, which is a separate and foreign Beastie, an entity whose only excuse for being here is a largely dishonored service contract called known as "The Constitution of the United States".

That's why President Trump is being prosecuted in the District of Columbia and not the States where his purported crimes occurred. He has done nothing that could be prosecuted under the Law of the Land, but he has allowed them to prosecute him in other venues and on charges based merely on their opinions and their beliefs.

Now that you can see how they are working these systems of foreign law (both democracy and theocracy) against Americans, you can also see why they feel the need for propaganda and an airtight stranglehold on the media to control public opinion and private belief.

What are you going to do about it?

Inaction is not an option. Such arbitrary "law" based on public opinion and on private belief only gets worse over time and both the lapses of justice and the abuses of power become more shocking.

Ever wonder how the Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters were allowed to run all over the place without masks at the height of the so-called Mask Mandates? Ever wonder how they are allowed to loot stores without consequences? How about burning down fire stations? Maiming police officers? Vandalizing warehouses?

You know, thanks to Mad Cow Disease, that these Municipal Corporation Subcontractors have the ability to track down a single cow born in Canada through numerous sales transactions all the way to a feedlot in Indiana ten years later. How difficult would it be for them to track down all those who committed crimes during the George Floyd Riots?

It was the opinion (democracy) and belief (theocracy) of the foreign corporations inhabiting the District of Columbia, that these people were entitled to defend themselves against purported "racial injustice" by being allowed to loot and commit arson and vandalism and armed robbery and any other crime they liked.

Problem is, they did these things outside the District of Columbia.

It's time to liquidate these foreign corporations and take other actions to restore actual law and not merely "the rule of law" or "appearance" of law.

You, Americans, have a choice and a responsibility to make that choice.

I told the Colorado Nine to record and publish their declarations of political status. They didn't listen to me.

Last time I had contact with Bruce Doucette, the supposed leader of the Colorado Nine, he was still in some horrible jail facility penned up with murderers and rapists and armed robbers --- all violent criminals --- when he never harmed a flea.

In their opinion and belief he was as dangerous as Charles Manson.

The bread-and-water conditions under which the January 6th Protesters have been held reflects the same brand of lawlessness on the part of the Municipal Government Subcontractors and the members of their "Congress".

In their opinion and belief, the January 6th Protesters were there as dangerous Unknown Enemies to overthrow their government and eat them alive, and nobody can say otherwise.

This is because you, Americans, who are owed the Law of the Land, are being wishy-washy and failing to establish your correct political status and failing to man the offices and populate the assemblies of your own government.

You are letting your bought-and-paid for foreign Subcontractors, your own Federal Employees, rule over you and impose their "law" upon you, and as the Boyz at the Vatican will tell you, if you press them hard enough, it's all your own fault.

The moment you lift your hand as Americans, you are assumed to be acting in insurrection against these foreign governments.

Why?

Because you are misidentified as citizens of these foreign governments, and you are presumed to owe allegiance to these foreign governments.

Any action you take that -- in their opinion (democracy) is a threat -- or anything that you say against them that may be -- in their belief (theocracy) -- taken as a threat, counts as insurrection coming from one of their own citizens.

You can't be charged with insurrection or commit insurrection against a foreign Municipal Corporation, unless you are one of its citizens.

I wish nothing but good to every man and woman of goodwill. I have no reason to lie to you and receive no benefit from doing so --- unless you count having a clean conscience.

Q, White Hats, Alliance ----I am telling you right now, in front of God, if you try to substitute a British Territorial entity or other foreign corporation for the American Federal Republic, it will be exposed for what it is, and come to naught.

It's a simple choice and it's up to you.

Work with the lawful State Assemblies and their Federation of States dba The United States of North America since 1721. If you want a contract, do it honestly. Don't try to foist off a British Territorial substitute for our Federal Republic by guile. Don't try to substitute yet another foreign corporation for it.

We are aware of all the variations of United States of America, States of America, United States, Unity States, blah-blah-blah that have been incorporated from here to Bangkok. It's not going to work.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything in this world. I have just told you the right way to get the job done. We chartered the Confederation and they incorporated the first Federal Republic; if anyone can replace those organizations, we are the only ones competent to do so.

The United States of North America

Family of Nations

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sidbridgecomedy · 2 years ago

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Comedy and Free Speech

If there's a constant in the comedy world, it's people complaining about being censored. Since I'm a comic by night and a corporate communicator by day with a double-degree in Communications and English, I think I can shed some light on this one.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm not an attorney or a constitutional law scholar. If any of my readers are and find any of this information to be incorrect, please let me know and I will edit this article appropriately).

There are really two separate issues here: Your freedom of speech and a show runner's right to protect his or her business.

Let's start with the constitutional stuff.

Here's the First Amendment's exact wording: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What does that mean? It means that the government cannot arrest you because you said something - even something about how crappy the government is. (By the way, remember this is from the Constitution of the United States of America. Every other country is different, so if you're traveling internationally, don't bust out your hilarious "Doesn't the Government of Saudi Arabia SUCK?!" jokes).

The First Amendment is a bit murky - you can still get arrested for some pretty specific language that would incite people to commit murder or cause a massive disturbance. You can also get in big trouble for compromising national security by leaking classified information.

Those things aside, comedians have enjoyed a lot of protection under free speech laws. You really have Lenny Bruce and George Carlin to thank for that. Bruce actually went to prison on obscenity charges for his stand-up and was posthumously pardoned.

George Carlin got arrested for his historic "Seven words you can't say on television" bit and the case was quickly dismissed by a sympathetic judge, setting a precedent that was so far reaching, it was actually part of the Communication Law curriculum I had to learn in college. Which is awesome.

Carlin and Bruce basically set a bar for profanity among comedians that has allowed us to say just about whatever the hell we want on stage for decades. If you've made a dick joke, you should, at some point, cup your hands together in prayer after you leave stage and thank them both profusely.

Some of you are probably thinking, "If that's the case, why do I keep getting censored?!"

The answer is you're not getting censored. You're getting fired. You're getting rejected. You're getting told when you suck. That leads us to the second side of this discussion:

You're free to say it, but the audience and the person who booked you don't have to like it or allow it on their stage.

The First Amendment only protects you from getting arrested. Comedy club owners are well-within their rights to pull your ass off the stage and deny stage time to people who use obscene material.

The comedy club isn't the government. It's a business and that business is allowed to make decisions on how to best serve its customers.

This doesn't just apply to bad words, by the way - if the club owner hates the word "moist", he can totally tell you not to use it and deny you stage time if you refuse.

On the flip side, if the club owner loves it raunchy, he has a right to allow the raunchiest, most foul garbage to spew from his stage and you can't call the cops because you were offended by "Aristocrats Night."

I didn't go digging for precedents, but I can't think of a case off the top of my head where a comedian said something offensive, got fired, then successfully sued.

Like any job, accepting stage time at a comedy club means accepting an implied contract. Even on an open mic show, comics are either briefed on the rules or the rules are posted on the wall. Going on stage means agreeing to those rules. The same way your job doesn't allow you to wear jeans, the club doesn't allow you to break those rules. And the same way an obstinate refusal to wear anything but jeans will get you FIRED, an obstinate refusal to avoid a word or topic in your material will cost you your stage time.

There's also the consideration of the audience.

A lot of audiences love clean shows. Some love dirty shows. The more risky your material, the more polarizing it can be. The opinions of the audience shouldn't dictate your material, but you do need to be aware and able to adapt to any situation you're in.

If there's one threat to the vast protections afforded to Americans by the First Amendment, it's over edgy comics pissing off audiences to the point of activism. I'm not saying it's fair, but the wrong joke in front of the wrong people while the wrong party controls the House, Senate, Supreme Court and the White House could lead to limits on free speech, and that's bad.

I'm not saying you can't take risks, but think before you rock the boat.

Additionally, with our current climate of social media warriors attacking any business who pisses them off, one upset audience member is all it takes to cause huge nightmares for a comedy club. If the club chooses to mitigate that risk by prohibiting a few words or topics, that's their choice. You can respect it or you can choose not to perform there.

In summary, you have a legal right to free speech that is potentially limited by inciting hate/murder talk. Everything else is fair game in the USA, including criticizing the people who uphold the First Amendment. The comedy club, however, has a right to protect its business and to deny stage time to anyone who doesn't meet their defined requirements.

So what's the best way to beat back the scourge of censorship by evil comedy club gatekeepers (like me)?

BE FUNNY.

If you can actually write funny jokes while still working within the restrictions of the house, you will get more time. Once you've paid your dues, show runners get a lot less restrictive. Headliners can say almost anything they want to on stage. Want the same freedom? Get good at comedy.

And if you think I'm being an unrealistic jerk when I say that, it's not just me talking. You know who else started out clean? George Carlin. Go on Youtube and look up his "Al Sleet the Hippy Dippy Weatherman" routine. He made it as a clean comic first before he started pushing the boundaries. Once he was already well known, it was a lot harder for the people in charge to deny him his pulpit.

Now get out there and enjoy your freedom.

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karen-anti-r-cml · 2 years ago

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February 1, 2023... Finally Someone Was Brave Enough To Stand Up And Say It To The Faces Of The confederate maga loyalist aka republicans!!!

These CMLs Traitors shouldn't even be allowed political office, let alone lead "The Pledge Of Allegiance" they've already proved their Allegiance is not to the United States, after planning a Coup, renouncing their oath of office, helping trump in his effort to turn our country into a putin style dictatorship it would a mockery for any of them to say Pledge, but it would be even worse for them to say it in the United States Capital!

matt gaetz, one of the worst CMLs and a sexual predator want to start taking turns saying the Pledge before starting the House Judiciary Committee meetings.

Hell it's a very bad joke for Confederate maga loyalist to be on a Judiciary Committee!

Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the Committee's Ranking Member, immediately objected, saying they already recite the pledge on the Floor every day. "I don’t know why we should pledge allegiance twice in the same day to show how patriotic we are,".

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., Thankfully noted many Republicans (CMLs) on the committee Voted Against Certifying the 2020 Presidential Election on January 6, 2021.

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., said he was introducing an amendment to gaetz's amendment that clarified the Pledge Cannot Be Led By Anyone Who has Supported an Insurrection Against the United States. Cicilline Added...

"This pledge is an affirmation of your defense of democracy and the Constitution. It’s hard to take that claim seriously if in fact, an individual in any way supported an insurrection against the government."

Amen!

gaetz making a fool of himself said he was concerned the Cicilline proposal would make many Democrats ineligible to lead the pledge, too, because of previous elections when some in their party objected to electors.

These CML/republicans are morons if they think objecting to electors is = to planning an Insurrection, trying to carry it out, lying in court after court to try and get the Will of the People Overturned, whenever ask about their involvement in the Insurrection it does matter if it's 1 question or 1000 they plead the 5th on everyone.

wesley hunt, a little freshmen joined the debate argued reciting it during committee meetings is necessary because it represents the deaths of thousands of Americans. "The least we can do is to pay homage," to Americans who have made that sacrifice for the nation. "Democrat or Republican, we are in this together. That flag is the one thing that unites us."

little hunt is delusional. January 6, 2021 "republican" were causing injuries, death and destruction against Democrats, the United States. They marched through the halls of the Capital

They All Belong In Jail Either Awaiting Trial, Sentencing or Serving Their Time.

And it's time to let Benedict Arnold rest, when referring to someone who can't be trusted, who lies, breaks laws, kills or causes death all while trying to overthrow Our Country should now be called republicans or confederate maga loyalist.

Unfortunately, in the end gaetz's amendment, passed. I'm guessing because of Democratic fear of being seen as Un-American or like the republicans after the Civil War they just didn't want to do what should have been done and because republicans did not deal with confederates then, we are dealing with confederate maga loyalist and if the Democrats do nothing, the ccle will continue, possible getting worse, possibly ending Democracy in favor of Fascism!

"Fireworks in House after Democrat says 'insurrectionists' should be banned from leading Pledge of Allegiance" https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/fireworks-house-democrat-says-insurrectionists-banned-leading-pledge-a-rcna68585

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years ago

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I've long said that a second American civil war would break out because of a new Nullification Crisis, and I think the Texas abortion law may be that crisis.

In the 1800s, South Carolina decided it didn't have to pay federal taxes because its lawmakers believed the constitution was an unenforceable agreement between the states, something they could opt out of at any time (they said they never would have joined the Union in the first place if they had known the government would be telling them what to do). The federal government, of course, disagreed with their decision, and the Supreme Court ruled that the president had the power to mobilize the national guard to enforce federal laws if the states refused to enforce it themselves. The states cannot unilaterally nullify federal law. The federal government has authority over them unless the Court explicitly cites a breach of the 10th Amendment.

Texas is breaking federal law by violating Roe v Wade. The Supreme Court hasn't explicitly overturned Roe, so it still stands as the law of the land, which Texas is just outright ignoring because they want to. They're trying to nullify federal law, so unless the conservative majority on the court specifically overturns Roe (they very well could, which would be a legal can of worms in and of itself), Joe Biden has the legal authority to mobilize the national guard to enforce the law and stop the abortion ban. This would lead to legal challenges at best and full scale civil war at worst because the Texas guard would refuse to mobilize under his authority or would mutiny against him. But by NOT enforcing the law, the precedent is set that suddenly NO federal laws are enforceable. What's stopping a blue state from banning guns if a red state can ban abortions? Banning guns would be illegal, but if states can nullify federal law and supersede the constitution then everything is fair game. This too would lead to war as gun nuts would take up arms against the state government for trying to ban them (and chances are the blue state guard would side with the nut jobs over the government, selectively enforcing the laws for one party over the other). Damned if you do, damned if you don't; enforcing federal law could lead to war, but so could ignoring it. The ball is in the conservative's court; they can't have it both ways, they can't carve out an exception for themselves but expect the other side to keep playing along as if nothing has changed. The laws either apply to everyone or no one.

We are teetering on the edge of history right now. This could be a turning point in our republic, and I think pundits on both sides are quietly hoping it'll all blow over. They want to just sweep it under the rug so it doesn't escalate, but pressure has been building for decades, especially in the last 5 or 10 years, so something's gotta give.

You never know what's going to be a major historic event until after it happens. Maybe this becomes the new normal and abortion simply becomes illegal in a ton of states, or maybe this catalyzes a long overdue revolution. Will this end with a whimper or a bang? Who can possibly tell? I pray this isn't normalized. I pray we don't grow complacent. I pray we don't just let this happen. We need to act, we can't keep expecting old rich elites to act for us; Congress doesn't have or best interests in mind, they've proven that time and time again by failing to act on important issues from civil rights to healthcare to the minimum wage and now abortion. Half the elites want us dead, so why should we keep looking to the other half to stick their necks out for us? The solution isn't to have "good" elites combat the bad ones, it's to get rid of the elites altogether.

I don't want to undersell this. We can't just act like it's okay for Texas to ban abortions, this is a major fucking deal! But at the same time, I don't want to blow this out of proportion either. Very few things wind up in the worst case scenario, and we've made it through similarly bad situations in the past, so this might not necessarily explode into something bigger. But we just don't know how bad this will be until the consequences start piling up. Once women start seeking abortions and doctors start getting arrested and wannabe vigilantes start claiming bounties on them, then we'll know just how far the country is willing to bend before it breaks.

Either the law means something, or it doesn't. If Republicans are allowed to break whatever law they want, then they're giving Democrats carte blanche to do the exact same thing. You can't cheat and then get mad when your opponent cheats right back; you've thrown out the rules, so why would you expect the other side to keep following them? How can you possibly hold them to a higher standard then yourself?

Democrats need to understand: If your opponent cheats, you can't win by playing by the rules. There's no shame in stopping to their level; they can't claim the moral high ground from down in the mud.

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sage-advice-wrapped-in-rice · 2 years ago

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Gun Control: Unified and Divided

This is an essay I wrote for a class I’m currently taking in college. I simply thought it would be cool to share and I wanted it to be published somewhere. Please don’t argue with me in the comments I don’t care about your opinion.

According to the Gun Violence Archive there were 691 mass shootings in 2021. Amongst those affected 1,563 children were killed. With mass shootings on a steady incline, children can’t feel completely safe in schools and large crowds are huge causes of anxiety and concern for many. At the same time, protecting the second amendment is being discussed more than ever. With tensions rising, and more people being injured or killed, the American people are calling for action on both sides of the political spectrum. The only thing is, nobody is sure who is responsible for that action.

The concept that the government is created by the people and only upheld by their happiness in its ability to do its job is called popular sovereignty. Assuming we trust that system, we should trust the people in our government to make laws about gun control. The Articles of Confederation were a great example of what happens when the federal government doesn’t have enough power or doesn’t have enough control over topics or issues that should be dealt with at a federal level. Gun control is one of these issues. Since guns have become such a safety concern in the past few decades, having federal laws on how they should be dealt with would unify our country and make it easier to standardize safety across the nation. Truthfully nowhere is completely safe from gun violence. People may argue that each state has a certain political leaning and the cultures are different, so each state should make its own gun laws, but there have been mass shootings all around the country regardless of each states’ political and cultural views. The gun show loophole is an extremely good example of why we should start with gun control on a federal level. Under federal law private sellers of firearms are not required to perform federal background checks on buyers. At the same time anyone(meaning private sellers) is allowed to sell a firearm to someone without a license as long as they have no reason to believe the person is prohibited from possessing firearms and they both reside in the same state. If this sounds extremely dangerous and irresponsible to you, you would be completely justified in thinking that. We clearly have problems with gun control on a federal level and we need to fix it. Having gun control be decided completely in the federal government would force them to consider every states’ point of view as there would be no way for the federal government to use individual state laws as a crutch to justify vague and dangerous gun control laws on a federal level. On top of all this we have the 2nd amendment. When the framers were creating the Constitution they thought the right to protect yourself was important enough that we should include it in the rights that our very country is built on. The fact is that gun laws were being made on a federal level from the very beginning of the nation and there’s no reason to change that. I also think it’s worth mentioning that the “federal government” deciding gun laws doesn’t just mean Congress. President Biden has said he wants to create a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and require background checks on all gun sales. Another good example would be in the case of D.C. v. Heller(2008). This case essentially gives us what is our modern day interpretation of the 2nd amendment. The Supreme Court decided in a 5-4 vote that people are allowed to own firearms outside of being in a state militia and that they are allowed to use it to defend themselves. I understand that it is hard to trust the federal government with issues such as this. They’ve been trying to deal with it for years and often we find that they endlessly argue and don’t get a whole lot done. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen unification or peaceful compromise from our federal government on a single issue in my lifetime, and I’m truthfully not sure I will, but if we could somehow make it unavoidable for them to decide I think it would turn out to be a good decision. I can’t imagine a scenario where somehow they would make gun control even looser than it already is at a federal level. It simply would not get the votes. This would also ensure political equality, or equal weight in decision making, amongst the states.

Despite the fact that I have just made a very compelling argument for federal policy, there would be some benefits to state decided gun control as well. Having states decided their own gun control policy would make people happier. Each state could cater to its people’s opinions as policy in California is drastically different than that of somewhere like Arkansas. It is also so that if states want stricter gun control they can have it. On a federal level it would take an extremely long time to get sufficient gun control, if we got it at all. This is more or less how the country exists now, and for the most part the policies do reflect the general political ideals of each state. However, nationally we are very divided and a lot of people are unhappy with the way gun control is being handled. With individual states passing better gun control laws we can work towards a safer country one piece at a time even if it’s a slow process, but the only problem with that is that gun control won’t be the same in every state. Even if more states pass stricter gun control laws they won’t all be the same and making the country safer would be easier if the laws were standardized.

The solution that would make the most sense to me, if we take into consideration our current political climate and tendencies, would be to have split jurisdiction. It would be so that the federal government would make decisions on how someone would acquire firearms and what kind they should be able to own, and that would be standard across the country. I also happen to believe that open carry laws should be made on a federal level. States can decide how they’re used or where they’re allowed. In my mind this way makes the most sense and would make the most people happy while still making the country safer on average, so long as the laws made on a federal level are in the stricter direction. The main issue is background checks and availability. Because the laws surrounding those issues are not the same in every state, it makes it easier for people to acquire and travel with firearms to different places. As it is, the age at which you can buy certain firearms isn’t standard. Shotguns and rifles and ammunition for them can only be sold to people who are eighteen or older. Any other kind of firearm or equipment or those firearms can only be sold to people twenty-one or older. In situations like that there needs to be consistency so when problems arise there is no gray area as to what is allowed and what isn’t. I think that starts on a federal level so that states have a baseline as to where to go with gun control from there.

Despite the fact that the second amendment has been around since nearly the beginning of America, we have just recently started to question the essentialness of it in our society today. As gun violence becomes more of an epidemic the need for gun control becomes greater as well, but whose responsibility it is to create those laws is still a major point of contention. Only through reaching across the aisle and bipartisan legislation can we truly make it work.

Works CitedGun violence archive. Gun Violence Archive. (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2022, from https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls

#gun control #politics #second amendment #government #u.s. government #u.s. politics #political science #gun violence

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verycleverboy · 4 years ago

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Today in the false reality of the Republican Party

To Matt Masterson, the review of 2020 ballots from Maricopa County, Ariz., that's underway is "performance art" or "a clown show," and definitely "a waste of taxpayer money."

But it's not an audit.

"It's an audit in name only," says Masterson, a former Department of Homeland Security official who helped lead the federal government's election security preparations leading up to November's election. "It's a threat to the overall confidence of democracy, all in pursuit of continuing a narrative that we know to be a lie."

By lie, he means the assertion from former President Donald Trump and some of his allies that election fraud cost him a second term in the White House.

And, Masterson says, the strategy chosen by the Arizona's Republican state Senate leaders is working as intended to undermine confidence in the outcome of last year's vote.

The process is a simple exercise in how disinformation spreads and takes hold in 2021. And experts fear it presents a blueprint for other states and lawmakers to follow, one that is already showing signs of being emulated across the country.

"Now we have a playbook out there," said Masterson, who is currently a policy fellow with the Stanford Internet Observatory, "where if you don't like the results — by the way in an election that wasn't particularly close ... you just claim you didn't lose and in fact the process itself was rigged against you."

(continue reading)

A few quick words to get us up to speed: The 2020 Maricopa County (AZ) election results have already been audited multiple times. Every one of these audits were instigated by the Arizona GOP, and every time the results came back squeaky clean. No irregularities. No

Each of the previous audits were done by-the-book by respected firms, so obviously they couldn’t do that again. For the current ongoing Republican attempt to delegitimize the American system, they hired a firm with no expertise in the field led by a “stop the steal” conspiracy theorist. An on-air host from the ultra-right wing media outlet One America News not only fundraised for the latest “audit”, but organized trips for out-of-state legislators to give this exercise in fraud a veneer of respectability that it absolutely didn’t earn.

Meanwhile, the “process”, such as it is, seems designed with the specific intent of cooking the books. One of the on-the-floor observers shared her horror story with the Washington Post.

I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels, whizzing hundreds of ballots past “counters,” who struggled to mark, on a tally sheet, each voter’s selection for the presidential and Senate races. They had only a few seconds to record what they saw. Occasionally, I saw a counter look up, realize they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it. This process sets them up to make so many mistakes, I kept thinking. Humans are terrible at tedious, repetitive tasks; we’re especially bad at counting. That’s why, in all the other audits I’ve seen, bipartisan teams follow a tallying method that allows for careful review and inspection of each ballot, followed by a verification process. I’d never seen an audit use contraptions to speed things up.

Speed doesn’t necessarily pose a problem if the audit has a process for catching and correcting mistakes. But it didn’t. Each table had three volunteers tallying the ballots, and their tally sheets were considered “done” as long as two of the three tallies matched, and the third was off by no more than two ballots. The volunteers recounted only if their tally sheets had three or more errors — a threshold they stuck to, no matter how many ballots a stack contained, whether 50 or 100. This allowed for a shocking amount of error. Some table managers told the counters to recount when there were too many errors; other table managers just instructed the counters to fix their “math mistakes.” At no point did anyone track how many ballots they were processing at their station, to ensure that none got added or lost during handling.

(full article here)

It’s almost like manufacturing errors is the point of this fiasco, delegitimizing and destabilizing the American system. It’s almost like the Republican party was presented with a stark choice by the very crazy, very violent people who make up the most motivated part of its base: Either your career goes or the electoral process does. Pick one. And united as a body, in lock step all the way down the line, the Republican Party chose the path of personal power and international humiliation over dignity, morality, and democracy. Welcome to the New Cult Of The Lost Cause, just as stupid, hate-filled and built on lies as the old one.

And for those who are brain-broken enough to genuinely believe there’s still a legal route to reinstall Donald Trump, a man whose name will forever be marked as the sorest loser in the history of American politics, Lawrence Norden, director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, has an answer for them (via ABC News), one that sadly they’ve willfully ignored over and over again, and will continue to do so.

"We already had the court battles. And in the case of the presidential election, when the totals are certified in Congress it is over. And there is no constitutional route to reverse that."

To which I add:

It’s over. For the love of God, grow up and move the fuck on.

#Arizona #2020 election #goddammit #here we are again #Donald Trump #EndTheGOP

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 13, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released information about the 2020 census, designed to enable states to start the process of drawing new lines for their congressional districts, a process known as redistricting.

Because of that very limited intent for this particular information dump, the picture the material gives is a very specific one. The specificity of that information echoes the political history that in the 1920s began to skew our Congress to give rural white voters disproportionate power. It also reinforces a vision of America divided by race: precisely the vision that former president Trump and his supporters want Americans to believe.

The U.S. Constitution requires that the government count the number of people in the country every ten years so that lawmakers can divide up the representation in Congress, which is apportioned according to population in the House of Representatives. (The Senate is by state: each state gets two senators.)

This matters not just for the relative weight of voices in lawmaking in the House, but also because of our Electoral College. The Electoral College is how we elect the U.S. president. Each state gets the number of electors that is equal to the number of senators and representatives combined. So, if your state has 10 representatives and 2 senators, it would have 12 presidential electors.

Censuses are never 100% accurate. It’s hard to count people, especially if they don’t want to be counted. Censuses also are inherently political, since a corrupt president will not want an accurate count: they will want areas that support their party to be overcounted, while areas that support the opposite party to be undercounted.

The 1890 census is a famous example of both of these problems. Indigenous Americans who were eager to avoid the observance of the federal government out of concern for their lives moved around to avoid being counted. The process itself was notoriously corrupt because in 1889 and 1890, the Republican Party had forced the admission of six new western states—North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming��that supported the Republicans, and had insisted that the new census would show enough people there to warrant statehood. So they were eager to find lots and lots of people in those new states but very few in the populous territories of Arizona and New Mexico, which they knew would vote Democratic. (I would love to write a whole post about the 1890 census, but I will spare you.)

Today, because of the pandemic, the results of the 2020 census have been delayed, and states are already behind in their schedules to redistrict for the upcoming 2022 election. (I know, I know, but it really is right over the horizon. Some states are already thinking about moving their primary elections because there’s not enough time to redistrict before them.) So yesterday, the Census Bureau released the information states need to begin that process. It released its record of the number of people living in each state and U.S. territory.

But in addition to needing to know the actual numbers of the count, state lawmakers need to know the racial makeup of their states, since there are federal rules about making sure minority votes aren’t silenced in redistricting by, for example, splitting a minority vote into small enough groups among districts that minorities essentially don’t have a voice (this is called “cracking”), or concentrating members of one group into a single district, so they are underrepresented at the state level (this is called “packing”).

So the material that came out yesterday was not the entire information from the census; it was just the material states need for redistricting.

It shows how many people there are living in America today. Population shifts mean that Montana, Oregon, Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida all picked up a seat, while Texas picked up two. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, California, and West Virginia all lost one. Within those states, cities have grown and rural counties have lost people. For the first time in our history, all ten of the country’s largest cities now have more than a million people in them.

The material released yesterday also shows the nation’s racial makeup. That information is confusing, as all self-identification on a form can be. It says that America’s white population has dropped significantly since 2010. According to the census, people who identify as white now make up 58% of the population while just ten years ago they made up 64%. But the census also shows that people who self-identify as a mixture of races has skyrocketed, climbing from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020. It seems likely that some of the drop in self-identification as white is due to people identifying themselves differently than they have in the past.

Urbanization and multiculturalism are not new to our history, and their appearance in the census led lawmakers to create an imbalance in our government in the 1920s. The Constitution says that a state can’t have a representative for fewer than 30,000 people, but it doesn’t say anything about an upper limit of constituents represented by a single representative. In 1912, when the country had 92 million people, the House had grown to 435 members.

But the 1920 census showed that more Americans lived in cities than in the country, at the same time that white Americans were all tied up in knots that those new urban dwellers were Black Americans and immigrants from southern and central Europe and Asia. Aware that continuing to allow more representatives for these growing numbers of Americans meant that the weight of representation would move away from rural white Americans and toward immigrants in cities, lawmakers refused to continue increasing the number of seats in the House. (They also passed the 1924 Immigration Act, which set quotas on how many people from each country could come to America.)

In 1929, lawmakers froze the number of representatives at 435 voting members of the House. While this number would bounce around as new states came in, for example, it has once again settled as the number of voting representatives today, when our population is 331 million.

That cap means that the size of the average congressional district is now 711,000 people, a number that is far higher than the framers intended and that favors smaller, more rural, whiter states in the House of Representatives. It also favors those states in the Electoral College, where they have more weight proportionately than they would if the House had continued to grow.

By identifying everyone by race—as it needed to, for redistricting purposes—yesterday’s census material also engages what sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields have called “racecraft,” which, by artificially dividing people along racial lines, reinforces the idea of race as the most important thing in society. Yesterday’s material does not mention, for example, income or wealth, which are not explicitly factored in when redistricting but which the last census material released on that topic suggested are at least as divisive as race.

The idea that race is paramount is, of course, the theory that the right wing would like Americans to believe, and the idea that white Americans are being “replaced” by people of color and Black Americans falls right into the right-wing argument that minorities are “replacing” white Americans.

For a century now, the machinery of redistricting has favored rural whites. With the 2020 census information reinforcing the idea that white, rural Americans are under siege, it seems unlikely that lawmakers in Republican states will want to rebalance the system.

But it seems equally unlikely that an increasingly urbanizing, multicultural nation will continue to accept being governed by an ever-smaller white, rural minority.

—-

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/12/redistricting-census-data-503994

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/08/10/census-race-population-changes-redistricting/

https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/567360-white-population-declines-for-first-time-in-us

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/55/why-435/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/12/politics/us-census-2020-data/index.html

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/coloring-outside-the-lines/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#census #redistricting #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #electoral college

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atheistforhumanity · 5 years ago

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Secret Police in America

We have been saying that Trump is a dangerous figure that does not respect democracy from day one, and now we face the worst possible threat. This of course ties closely to the militarization of police, which the right wing has been working on for years. In this post I’m going to break down secret police and how they exist right now. There is a lot to unpack here, so I’m going to break this up into a short Q and A style.

What are secret police?

What makes a security for secret, and separate from normal police, is chiefly the lack of identity. These actors wear masks, carry no identification, will not respond to questions, and will never be identified to the public. They also will not be identified to local police authorities. This means the public has zero ability to hold them accountable for abuse or misconduct. Secret police are also characterized by lack of oversight. The public usually has no information on who these people take their orders from.

Why are secret police bad?

The number one reason is that these parties act outside of the scope of the law. That sounds strange, because it’s hard to imagine law enforcement being illegal. However, the key difference is that normal police operate on rules and regulations that have requirements for action, but secret police act solely on whim and have no clear requirements to justify them taking action (more on that further down). Secret police have only ever been maintained in authoritarian/fascist states. It is impossible for a secret police force to be maintained within a true democracy. The reason for this being that democracies are based on the concept of public accountability over government and representative action. Secret police are literally the opposite of this model. Furthermore, the motivation and purpose of secret police is completely anti-democratic. Secret police have never existed to maintain law and order. They are purely enforcers of a leader’s political agenda and meant to strike fear into those who decent. This is why we see them pop up during a major protest and why Trump has threatened to send them to other cities “run by liberal democrats.” Historically, we can clearly see that a leader uses secret police when their policies and actions are in extreme opposition to the people and there is heavy political resistance. These leaders have given up on winning politically or maintaining order and protecting civil rights. They choose control over human rights and democracy.

Are secret police legal?

Secret police generally start out as an illegal force that violates it’s citizen’s rights and later becomes legalized when an authoritarian gains more power. The secret police’s actions in America are 100% illegal and their very creation is is anti-democratic. Their actions are illegal because they violate the 4th Amendment, which prevents law enforcement from making seizures without probable cause or warrants. Trump’s legal defense of them right now is that they are operating under the rule that can “arrest” anyone if they believe that a felony has happened or will take place. The key here is that they do not require probable cause, only the suspicion of a crime. Also, the Trump admin has stripped away the proviso for this group that their actions cannot be solely on First Amendment activity. This literally means these men are being told they can “arrest” people for protesting. This, of course, is completely illegal. This is why none of the representatives of the people of Portland or Oregon want these forces in their city or state.

How did Trump create this secret police force?

The how of this is intertwined with the militarization of police forces. It was ten years ago when I first protested police militarization online and on my college campus. Now we are facing the worst case of police militarization. The core of this creation has to do with the DHS. Over the course of Trump’s presidency, he has fired or pushed out every single Presidential appointed leader in the DHS. As he usually does with other institutions, he only partially filled the gaps and with inexperienced loyalists. The agency has been acting with a shortage of leadership and a lack of oversight for some time now. Trump has made use of this and altered the already broad purview of the DHS to create his Domestic Security Force, or secret police. This secret police force is made up of DHS agents, CBP officers, and DEA agents. Trump also altered the mandates of the DEA to allow them supplement other law enforcement and conduct covert surveillance. This is particularly concerning, because the language used makes it sound if the DEA is combatting some terrorist or drug cartel force, but in actuality the subjects in these new mandates are the American people. Customs and Border Patrol agents have been pulled into this because of Trump’s political ties to the agency and their support for him. In the past, Trump has ordered CBP officers to break the law and turn back asylum seekers, and even said he would use his pardon power to protect them. This is not the only time Trump has urged illegal behavior and promised pardons. He, of course, has pardoned several criminals already.

So now we have a mixture of DHS, CBP, and DEA agents in non-identifying military fatigues snatching up citizens off the streets without any clear indication a law has been broken, and not going through any of the law enforcement regulations, such as reading of rights, official declaration of arrest, use of warrants, and observing constitutional rights.

What Comes Next? What is being done?

The ACLU if fighting a legal battle for our democracy. They are suing the federal agents and trying to argue their legality. All of this happens as Democrats are about to reveal their sweeping bill on police reform, in reaction to protests around the country. This bill, however, will not directly effect the secret police situation. For that we need congressional action. What our representatives are doing right is arguing. They are currently locked in debate about the legality of the secret police and about money. Earlier in the year, funding for several agencies connected to domestic security ended, and now congress is trying to decide who should be refunded and how much they should receive. The main argument circles around the DHS, which is the main body of the secret police force. Shockingly, our representatives are failing us in dramatic fashion. There is no consensus rejecting the secret police or against further funding them. If more funding is given to the DHS and other agencies then that will mean Trump gains that much more resources for his secret police force, if something is not done. Furthermore, congress is currently debating giving the DHS powers vastly expand their powers of surveillance and use dragnet tactics with computer data. Basically, this would mean they would track internet activity for anyone in favor of protests and then use these secret police to “arrest” them. It is as scary as it sounds, and people like myself would come under danger.

What Can You Do?

This is a very critical time because our representatives are about to make decisions that could reign in this illegal power or could strengthen it. They will be making this decision with a presidential election coming up in mere months. The best thing everyone can do is call their house representative and tell them how passionately you are against the creation of this police force and make it clear their decision will effect your vote in November. That’s the power of Democracy, and it’s still the best weapon we have!

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions just ask.

#us politics #secret police #portland #police brutality #law enforcement #fascism #Trump #democracy #liberal #progressive #take action

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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In September of 2020, I published a book entitled The Stakes. It was billed as a “current events” or election-year title. The election behind us, the candidate I recommended is no longer president. But the analysis which led me to that recommendation is very much still “current.”

To recap briefly (but read the whole thing!), the book explains how every prominent and powerful American institution, including the federal government, has been taken over by a hostile elite who use their vast powers to attack, despoil, and insult about half the nation. In the sixth chapter (excerpted here), I outline what I think America will look like if the present ruling class refuses to moderate, cannot be forced to share power, and has the wherewithal to keep its regime going. In the seventh chapter, I sketch several possibilities—from secession to Caesarism to collapse—that might result if it turns out that our overlords are a lot less competent than they think. And in the final chapter (excerpted here), I offer policy and other ideas that might enable America to avoid those fates.

That chapter (from which this essay is adapted) culminated with a proposal now being talked about widely, namely, to allow counties, cities, and towns unhappy with their current state government to join another. This would be a practical, and practicable, way to ease Blue and Red Americans’ present discontent and exasperation with each other.

There are precedents. The counties that became Maine split from Massachusetts in 1820, and—more famously—those that became West Virginia left Virginia during the Civil War. Fittingly, when I wrote the chapter, West Virginia had generously offered to welcome western Virginia counties unhappy with rule from newly, aggressively Blue Richmond. Today, a year later, West Virginia’s governor says the offer still stands.

There are similar movements throughout the country—most, though not all, driven by disaffected Reds. The most recent, news-making example was five Oregon counties joining two others in voting to leave the Beaver State and become part of Idaho.

So far nothing has come of any of this. But why shouldn’t these efforts be allowed to proceed if both the welcoming state and the exiting counties want it? Wouldn’t that be “democracy”?

…

Classical philosophers and historians alike condemn democracy as a bad form of government, in part because of its partiality but mostly because of the specific nature of the demos, which they contend is the polis’s least wise and least moderate part.

I would here add that it’s both sad and hilarious to see classically-trained academics and intellectuals bleat on about the sanctity of “democracy.” The worst offenders are the Straussians, who really should know better. Haven’t we all read Republic VIII and Politics VI, to say nothing of the warnings from Strauss himself on the dangers and shortcomings of democracy? Their failure as analysts is worse. The present American regime that they celebrate as “our democracy” is all but identical to classical oligarchy (discussed in those same books) while the “populism” that gives them the vapors is much closer to the democracy they claim to revere. But even more embarrassing, the Straussians’ central boast is to stand above, in Olympian detachment and even disdain, all regime pieties and see through them as self-serving rationalizations. Yet when extolling “democracy,” they sound no different than an Assistant Secretary of State, foundation president, or CNN host.

…

States such as California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, and now Virginia are utterly dominated by one party, and often one city, which amounts to the same thing. This is how Virginia—cradle of the American Revolution and home to four of our first five presidents—suddenly, just like that, became implacably hostile to the first two amendments to the United States Constitution. Five cities and counties, three adjacent to Washington, D.C., essentially dictate to the other 128.

The uncomprehending angst of people who’ve lived the same way, in the same places, for generations suddenly finding themselves harassed by a hostile government—ostensibly “theirs”—is mocked by the ruling class as a lament over “lost privilege.” After Virginia flipped from purple to Blue in 2019, the state legislature immediately enacted draconian gun restrictions that flew in the face of centuries of tradition and peaceful practice. Too bad! You lost! That’s “democracy.” As Joel Kotkin has remarked, “The worst thing in the world to be is the Red part of a Blue state.”

We should not, however, give the powers-that-be too much credit for principled consistency. If and when popular majorities produce outcomes the rulers don’t like, their devotion to “democracy” instantly evaporates. Judges, administrative state agencies, private companies—whichever is most able in the moment to overturn the will of unruly voters—will intervene to restore ruling class diktats. On the other hand, when voters can be counted on to vote the right way, then voting becomes the necessary and sufficient step for sanctifying any political outcome. It doesn’t even matter where the votes (or voters) come from, so long as they vote the right way. The fact that they vote the right way is sufficient to justify and even ennoble their participation in “our democracy.”

Blues perpetually outvoting Reds and ruling unopposed: this, and only this, is what “democracy” means today.

Bad Faith Objections

Reds, increasingly, are catching on. They know the game is rigged, that they cannot win, and the veneer of their participation and consent is a sham.

This is why the gaslighting is being dialed up to the lumen levels of blue stars. Every objection to Blue despoilation is now openly ascribed to “white supremacy.” Don’t want to be late for work because regime-favored thugs “protesters” are illegally blocking an intersection? White supremacy! Object to being beaten on the streets? White supremacy! Want to see the laws enforced equally and impartially? White supremacy!

Obviously, nothing is more susceptible to this dread charge than calls for “secession.” Hence the entirely apples-to-oranges cases of redrawing state lines better to reflect residents’ preferences and interests will be—already is being—compared to the events of 1860-61.

…

Some opponents of Red attempts to leave Blue states will disingenuously point to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, the ne plus ultra anti-secession argument. But there Lincoln was talking about replacing ballots with bullets throughout a sovereign state—overturning not merely the outcome of one election but the form of government itself. The peaceful rearrangement of political and administrative boundaries within a sovereign state is an entirely different act, with far lesser—and less grave—consequences. Indeed, in the latter case the consequences may be entirely salutary: there is ample precedent in history and around the world of countries redrawing internal lines to suit shifts in population and interests.

Others will try to muddy the waters by facilely equating the peculiarly American use of the word “state” for our 50 regional governments with the far more common meaning of state as “sovereign and independent country.” Lincoln said secession was unlawful, unconstitutional, and immoral—but this hypocrite Anton who claims to be a Lincolnite is endorsing the very practice! The argument is false and will be offered in bad faith. If you wish to waste a moment of your time, which I don’t recommend, remind such liars that the anti-secessionist Lincoln not only supported but presided over the division of Virginia. The decisive point is that this proposal is here proffered for precisely Lincolnite reasons: to save the Union and keep the current territory and population of the United States together.

…

Article IV, Section 3 states that “no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”

In the Maine and West Virginia cases, new states were formed, hence the legislatures of the original and prospective states, plus the Congress, had to consent. (In the case of Virginia, then in rebellion against the government of the United States, two competing state governments existed. The Unionist government, recognized by the federal government, voted to allow the separation.)

The Constitution is, however, silent on the question of transferring a county from one state to another. No doubt should rural Virginia counties seek to join Charleston, Richmond wouldn’t like it—all that lost tax revenue! Look how many fewer people to boss around! Fewer Electoral votes!

But, constitutionally speaking, the state government’s power to stop it would be dubious. As would, if we want to speculate along such lines, the means. It could, and almost certainly would, take the issue to federal court where, admittedly, any outcome is possible regardless of law, and any outcome favorable to Red interests extremely unlikely. There’s little question that a Blue state capital could easily join with the federal judiciary and the Biden administration to block any such action. That may or may not be “constitutional” as you and I understand the term, but we don’t rule.

Or suppose we interpret Article IV, Section 3 to mean that moving just one county from one state to another constitutes creating a ��new state.” That makes things harder, but hardly impossible. It simply means that legislative victories would have to be won. That may seem impossible now; no empire ever seeks to become smaller. But, dare I say, the election of Donald Trump seemed impossible as late as 9 p.m. on November 3rd, 2016. Public opinion is changing fast. Reds, who’ve put up with a lot only to face repeated demands that they put up with even more, are getting fed up.

Not only do they get nothing but abuse from the political system, increasingly they don’t even get to talk. Any dissent against regime ideology is swiftly and ruthlessly censored on Blue media platforms, which is to say, all of them. Reds’ elected leaders (to the extent that they have any) are declared “domestic enemies” by the Speaker of the House. Blue wise men talk of “cleansing” Reds from the political system. Nils Gilman—a man who called for my death—declaimed that “These people need to be extirpated from politics.” To have no say and no voice, forever, means that one’s only option is exit.

It would be an act of magnanimity, and even self-interest, for a sufficient number of Blues to recognize Red concerns and let the state-county reorganization proceed. Right now, at least half of Red America feels trapped in an abusive marriage, endlessly told they’re worthless, racist, and evil—but also that under no circumstances may they even broach the topic of leaving. Stay and take your deserved punishment is Blue America’s constant message to Red, the political philosophy of Judge Smails: You’ll get nothing and like it.

Besides, as Blues never tire of reminding us, aren’t we Reds poor, weak, and dumb? Who wants such dross as fellow citizens? Imagine (say) Virginia’s glorious future without all those retrograde hicks getting in the way of NoVa’s progressive utopian vision.

If Blues cannot see their way to letting such peaceful means proceed as a way of improving civic harmony and extending the life of the republic, they’re placing a giant bet that they can, through sheer brute force, rule Reds forever. Can they? They’d also be admitting that, in New America, “democracy” just means Blues outvoting Reds, effectively nullifying their franchise.

…

It’s worth pointing out, in this context, the utter hypocrisy of Blues who cry “Jeff Davis!” at the mere suggestion of some rural counties in a Blue State seeking refuge with fellow Reds, which almost certainly would not change the composition of the Senate, but who blithely demand that D.C. and Puerto Rico be made states so the Democrats can get four extra Senators and (likely) four more Electoral votes.

#michael anton #american mind #read the whole thing

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whitehotharlots · 4 years ago

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Previewing the 2024 Democrat Primary

Within a couple weeks of his being sworn in, just about every person on earth will wish Joe Biden was no longer president. Sure, the few surviving John B. Anderson voters will be thrilled to see 4 years of crushing austerity and half-assed attempts at Keynesian stimulus. But most people will begin dreaming about a brighter future.

Good news! The 2024 Democratic primary field is going to contain dozens of options. Bad news! They are all going to be disgusting piles of shit.

The “top tier”

While it’s too early to do any handicapping, these are the candidates the media will treat as having the most realistic chances of securing the nomination.

Kamala Harris

Kamala did not win a single primary delegate in 2020. This is because she dropped out before the first primary, and that was because no one likes her. She has no base beyond a few thousand of twitter’s most violent psychos. Her disingenuousness approaches John Edwards levels: any halfway incredulous person can see immediately beyond her bullshit. She has no principles whatsoever, and while that may be par for the course for Democrats, she lacks even the basic politician’s ability to intuit anything that might, hypothetically, constitute a principle.

Even better: she is an awful public speaker. She sounds like how a talking dog would speak if he were just caught stealing people food off the kitchen table. She communicates in weird grunts and faux sassy squeaks, which is how she imagines real black women sound like, but something about her is unable to sell the bit. She begins her sentences in halfhearted AAVE, stops and panics halfway through as she realizes that maybe this sounds fake and offensive, and then reminds herself oh wait, no, this is okay since I’m black. This doesn’t happen once or twice per speech. This is how every single sentence sounds.

Kamala is like Nancy Pelosi in that no sketch show will ever impersonate her correctly, because anything that came close to authenticity would be considered far too cruel. This might benefit her in the primaries, as she exists in the minds of Democrats as someone and something she absolutely is not in reality. Nominating her would be like allowing your child’s imaginary friend to attempt to drive you to the store.

Andrew Cuomo

Easily one of the 50 worst people alive, Cuomo has a solid chance because Democrats, same as Republicans, are unable to differentiate between electability and self-serving ruthlessness. Cuomo used the deadliest public health crisis in American history as a pretext for cutting Medicaid and firing 5,000 MTA workers, and his approval rating increased. New York Dems are little piggies who love eating shit. If we assume that the political media will continue their habit of refusing to discuss the legislative history of right wing Democrats, Cuomo might well cruise to the nomination and then lose to literally any human being the GOP nominates by an historic margin.

Joe Biden

The party loves him because he is a right wing racist. “Progressives” tolerate him because black primary voters over 40 supported him, and their opinion is supposedly a magic window into god’s truth. Everyone else can tell he is manifestly senile. I don’t put it above the DNC to pick a candidate who is in horrible health, dying, or even dead--whatever the financial sector wants, they’ll get. But I would be shocked if his approval rating is above 39% by mid-2023, and by that point deep fake technology will be advanced enough they’ll put out a very lifelike video in which the Max Headroom version of Joe explains he’s proud of his accomplishments--that budget’s almost balanced already--but, man, I gotta abd--I gotta abdica--, uhh, I gotta, I, uhh, I gotta move down, man.

Wild Cards

These candidates would have all have a chance if they ran, but they could all much more easily retire to Little Saint James off of kickbacks they’ve gotten from Citibank and I.G. Farben.

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm is going to receive some hugely influential post in the Biden administration. Let’s say he becomes Secretary of Education. His signature achievement will be replacing all elementary school teachers with Amazon’s Alexa, which saved the taxpayers so much money we were able to quadruple the number of armed police officers we put into high schools. This will give him several thousand positive profiles on network news programs and the near-universal support of the Silicon Valley vampires who will own 99% of the country by the time Biden’s term ends. They will use their fancy mind control devices to convince geriatic primary voters that Rahm’s the one who will bring Decency back to the white house. His candidacy will be the paragon of wokeness, as expressing concern toward the fact that he covered up the police murder of a black guy will get you called a racist.

Rahm has a bonus in that Jewish men are now Schrodeniger’s PoC. When they are decent human beings, they are basic, cis white men who are stealing attention from disabled trans candidates of color. When they love austerity and apartheid, they become the most vulnerable people of color on earth and criticizing them in any way is genocide. No one will be able to mention a single thing Rahm has ever done or said without opening themselves to accusations of antisemitism, and that gives him a strong edge against the rest of the field. The good news is that an Emmanuel candidacy would result in over 50% of black voters choosing the GOP candidate--which, I guess that’s not really good but it would certainly be funny.

Gavin Newsom

Newsom is every bit as feckless as Cuomo, but he doesn’t put off the same “bad guy in an early Steven Segal movie” vibes. He will mention climate change 50 times per speech and no one will bother to mention how he keeps signing fracking contracts even though his state is now on fire 11 months of the year. If anything, this will be spun into an argument about how he’s actually the candidate best suited to handle all the water refugees gathering on the southern border. Look for his plan to curb emissions by 10% by the year 2150 to get high marks from Sierra Club nerds. He’s also a celebate librarian’s idea of what constitutes a handsome man, so he’ll have some support from the type of women who claim to hate all men.

Larry Summers

I mean, why not? Larry, like most members of the Obama administration, has politics that are eerily similar to those of Jordan Peterson. In normal circumstances, this makes a person a dangerous fascist who should not be platformed. But if that person has a D next to their name this makes them a realistic pragmatist who has what it takes to bring suburban bankers into our tent. If current trends in Woke Phrenology continue apace, Larry’s belief that women are inherently bad at STEM will be liberal orthodoxy by 2023, and his dedication to the Laffer Curve could see him rake in massive donations. Seriously, I’m not kidding: cultural liberalism is now fully dedicated to identity essentialism and balanced budgets. Larry is their ideal candidate. If he were black and/or a woman, I’d put him in the very top tier.

Jay Inslee

Unlike Newsom, Inslee’s attempt to crown himself the King of Global Warming won’t be immediately derailed, since his state is only on fire because of protestors. This, however, poses a different problem. He’s going to be a good test case for the Democrat’s uneasy peace with the ever increasing share of the electorate who become catatonic upon hearing a pronoun. On the one hand, you need to take their votes for granted. On the other hand, they’re not like black people or regular gays: most voters actively, consciously despise wokies, and associating yourself with them will ruin a campaign even in deep blue areas. There’s still gonna be riots in a year. Biden’s gonna announce the sale of all our nation’s potable water to the good folks at Nestle and some trans freak named Sasha-Malia DeBalzac is going to use that as an opportunity to sell their new pamphlet about how it’s fascist to not burn down small businesses. No matter what Inslee does in response, it’ll end his career.

AOC

I’m not one of those “AOC is a secret conservative” weirdos, but I am aware enough of basic reality to know she has zero chance of coming close to the nomination. The right and the center both regard her as a literal demon. The party is already blaming her for the fact that a handful of faceless Reagan acolytes failed to flip their suburban districts even though they ran on sensible pragmatic proposals like euthanizing the homeless. The recriminations will only get more unhinged when the Dems eat shit in the 2022 midterms. She will be a Russian, she will be white male, she will be a communist, she will be a homophobe: any insult or conspiracy theory you can name, MSNBC will spend hours discussing. Her house seat challenger will receive a record amount of support from the DNC in 2024 and it’ll be all she can do to remain in congress.

Larry Hogan

Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that he’s a Republican. Larry is the DNC’s ideal candidate: a physically repulsive conservative who owes his entire career to appealing to the most spiteful desires of suburban white people. He’s an open racist in a material sense--if you’re old-school enough to think racism is a matter of beliefs and actions, rather than the presence of cultural signifiers--but his is the beloved “never Trump” style of racism that Dems covet. He’s also a Proven Leader who thinks the role of government should be to finance the construction of investment property and give police the resources they need to run successful drug trafficking operations. Few people embody the Democrat worldview more than Larry.

The Losers Bracket

These people will have at least a small chance due solely to the fact that the Democrats love losing. They have lost in the past, and in the Democrat Mind that makes them especially qualified.

Joe Kennedy

The man looks like a mushroom-human hybrid from a JRPG. Trump proved that physical hideousness need not doom a presidential bid, but a candidate still needs some kind of charm or oratorical abilities or, god forbid, a decent platform. Joe aggressively lacks all of these things. A vanity campaign would be a good way to raise money and perhaps secure an MSNBC gig, so Joe might still run.

Mayor Pete

I am 100% convinced that Pete’s 2020 run was a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. I am also 100% aware that Democrats are dumb enough to enthusiastically support a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. If we have some sort of military or terror disaster between now and 2023 the Dems are sure to want a TROOP, and wait wait wait you’re telling me this one is a gay troop? Holy hell there’s no way that could lose!

Stacy Abrams

Never underestimate the power of white guilt. She lost the gubernatorial race to Gomer Pyle’s grandson, and her spiritual guidance of the Dems saw the party lose black voters in Georgia in 2020. Nonetheless, she is regarded as a magic font of fierceness within the DNC. She might stand a chance if she can establish herself as the most conservative non-white candidate in the field, but there’s going to be stiff competition for that honor.

Elizabeth Warren

Liz is probably angry that the party so shamelessly sold her out even after she was a good little girl and sabatoged Bernie’s campaign for them--yet another example of high ranking US government officials reneging on their promises to the Native American community. Smdh. The fact that this woman hasn’t been bankrupted a dozen times over by various Wallet Inspectors genuinely astounds me. So Liz is probably going to run again, and her campaign will be even sadder the second time around.

It might surprise you to hear this if you don’t work at a college or NGO, but Liz diehards actually do exist. She’ll get even less support this time because there will be no viable leftist in the field for her to spoil, but she’ll still hang in long enough to make sure the very worst possible candidate beats out the second worst possible candidate. Maybe she’ll fabricate a rape accusation against Sherrod Brown. Maybe she’ll spend her entire allotted debate time doing a land acknowledgment. With Liz, anything is possible--so long as it ends in failure.

Amy Klobuchar

Amy was the most bloodthirsty of the 2020 also rans. She will double down on the unpopular failures of the Biden administration, explaining that if you weren’t such a selfish idiot you’d love the higher social security retirement age and oh my god are so such a moron you think you shouldn’t go bankrupt to get a COVID vaccine? There’s a non-unsubstantial segment of the Democratic base that’s self-hating enough to find this appealing, but it won’t be enough to make her viable.

Martha Coakley

She lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a retarded man who was pretending to be even more retarded than he actually was. Then she lost a gubernatorial race to a guy who openly promised Massachusetts voters that he would punish them for electing him. Her record of failure is unparalleled, making her perhaps the ideal Democrat standard bearer for the twenty twenties.

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giftofshewbread · 4 years ago

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Cry Out to God

By Daymond Duck Published on: April 18, 2021

On Apr. 7, 2021, Jean Worland posted an article titled “America just died a little…”

It was written by an unknown writer, and I want to pass on some of what the writer said.

It looks like the Deep State is controlling everything in Washington (Congress, the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Dept, the Pentagon, the Military) plus Silicon Valley, the social media, cable news, and more.

The Clintons have never been prosecuted for destroying e-mails, phones, servers, etc. (add to that pedophilia, and more).

Obama, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Rice, and others have never been prosecuted for spying on Trump, falsely accusing Trump officials, etc.

Soros is never prosecuted for funneling money to groups that riot, loot, destroy property, etc.

Durham’s report on the Russian Collusion myth has never come out.

I will add that:

Dianne Feinstein was on the Senate Intelligence Committee (and even chaired it for a few years) while employing a Chinese Communist as her office manager and driver, and her husband was getting wealthy trading with China, and nothing was done about it.

Eric Swalwell was on the House Intelligence Committee with access to all of America’s intelligence when it was discovered that he had slept with a Chinese spy that helped get him elected. Nancy Pelosi (whose husband also got rich trading with China) refused to remove him, and even reappointed him, and nothing has been done about it.

There is plenty of evidence of election fraud, but the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, refused to hear most of it (and now the Shadow government wants to pack the court so they can get away with everything they have done in the past and everything they plan to do in the future).

Biden says “no Amendment (to the U.S. Constitution) is absolute,” signaling the Shadow Government’s plans to destroy freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and disarm America so they can do what they want, and no one can resist them.

Things are not hopeless because persecution causes God’s people to cry out to God, and when enough do that, He rescues them.

Here are several reasons why I believe the global situation will worsen, cause more of God’s people to cry out, and soon result in Christians being caught up (Raptured).

One, concerning the days of Noah (wickedness): on Apr. 9, 2021, it was reported that experts have confirmed that the abandoned laptop computer at a Delaware repair shop belonged to Hunter Biden, and there is no evidence that the information on it is not true or that it is “Russian disinformation.”

Tony Bobulinksi has verified the accuracy of e-mails on the computer, the work order that was signed when the laptop was left at the repair shop contains Hunter Biden’s signature, and Hunter now acknowledges that “it could be his.”

The laptop contains evidence that Hunter and his dad (Pres. Joe Biden) potentially betrayed America, and Hunter was a sex abuser and drug addict.

Despite this strong evidence, it looks like Hunter and Joe are going to get away with their crimes.

Two, on Apr. 4, 2021, Pope Francis sent a letter to the spring meeting of two globalist groups, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Francis called for a new system of global government, a new system of social order (a godless world religion), everyone on earth to be vaccinated for Covid, and wealth redistribution (a new economic system; The Great Reset) so poorer countries can help pay for programs to fight “climate change.”

Francis’ call to restructure the world mentioned “the common good” (the way he often refers to world government) several times; it totally ignored Jesus, and mentioned God only one time.

These three global systems (world government system, world religious system, and world economic system) will be established, and the role of God and Jesus will be ignored while they are setting it up.

It is incredible that the leader of a religious organization that is located in a city on seven hills is playing an important role in this.

Three, in Jan. 2021, the state of California passed a law requiring officials to jail prisoners according to their gender identity.

On Apr. 6, 2021, it was reported that 261 prisoners that were jailed as men have said they are women, requiring them to be transferred to women’s cells.

Some officials believe some prisoners could be lying about their gender in order to be jailed with women, and this will increase sexual violence and pregnancies in prisons that house women.

Connecticut and Massachusetts have passed similar laws.

Four, the Biden administration is pushing the Green New Deal, and some of those behind it want U.S. citizens to eat less meat.

This passage of Scripture has come to my mind, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth” (I Tim. 4:1-3).

Five, concerning the Mark of the Beast: on Apr. 11, 2021, the Soufriere Volcano on the Caribbean Island of Saint Vincent was erupting and approaching a possible danger level.

Officials decided to use cruise ships to evacuate the island, but they would only allow those that have been vaccinated to board the ships.

Unvaccinated people that wanted to be vaccinated immediately could be, but they would still not be allowed to board the ships because their vaccination could cause them to have side effects.

Six, many that follow current events have seen reports that Covid is mutating, and there could soon be a need for vaccinated citizens to be vaccinated with new vaccines.

We have also seen calls for “vaccine passports” and other ways to track and identify those that have been vaccinated.

On Apr. 5, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the U.S. will not require citizens to use vaccine passports, but he believes the private sector (businesses, schools, etc.) will require proof of vaccination if citizens want to use them (buy and sell, get an education, have a bank account, seek medical care, etc.).

Moreover, it was recently reported that one of Biden’s senior advisors said the Biden administration is already providing guidance to the private sector on this issue.

We don’t know how long it will take, but there is good reason to believe that new vaccines and tracking systems could eventually lead to the Mark of the Beast.

Seven, on Apr. 7, 2021, it was reported that former Vice Pres. and Chief Scientist for Allergy and Respiratory Research at Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, said governments, media and big tech are lying to the public about Covid.

Yeadon said they are planning to produce billions of vaccines for Covid “variants,” and regulatory officials are planning to approve those vaccines without testing them to see if they are safe for the public.

This former Pfizer executive added that he cannot think of any reason to vaccinate potentially billions of people with untested vaccines they don’t need unless it is being done to reduce the population of the earth.

On Apr. 10, 2021, a study of 400 people in South Africa found that more vaccinated people are getting the new strain of Covid than unvaccinated people.

On Apr. 12, 2021, it was reported that official government documents in the U.K. show that the next round of Covid deaths may be higher among people that have already been vaccinated than among people that haven’t been vaccinated because Covid will spread faster among careless, over-confident vaccinated people than among more careful, unvaccinated people.

On Apr. 13, 2021, the CDC recommended a pause in vaccinations with the Johnson and Johnson (J & J) vaccine while they investigate reports of unusual blood clots in six women between the ages of 18-48 (J & J denied that the clots were linked to its vaccine).

Eight, many readers are asking me for advice on whether they should be vaccinated or not, and I am not qualified to answer that question.

A reader sent the link below to me, and those that are considering a vaccination might want to watch this video before they make up their mind.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/bill-sardi/horrific-latent-deaths-predicted-among-the-elderly-by-genetics-professor-after-immunization-with-rna-vaccines/

The video is less than 5 minutes long, but please pay attention.

When the video ends, keep watching, and a second video will start that contains the opinions of many doctors and experts (28 min. and 34 sec.), and what they say sounds extremely important.

Finally, if you want to go to heaven, you must be born again (John 3:3). God loves you, and if you have not done so, sincerely admit that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who died for the sins of the world, was buried, and raised from the dead; ask Him to forgive your sins, cleanse you, come into your heart and be your Saviour; then tell someone that you have done this.

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chaoskirin · 4 years ago

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I’ve reblogged the whole thing so many times here that I hope @zevbaldwin (it won’t link your name for some reason, so here’s a direct link) doesn’t mind me copy/pasting their reply to my post. The bolding is mine, and illustrates that the constitution is not infallible and can be changed by a corrupt establishment:

***

Kids … Let me tell you an interesting story. You may have heard something about Putin. You know, the president of Russia. So, we have a Constitution. And it says that the president can be elected 2 times in a row for a period of 4 years.

Now let me take you to the circus. Putin became president in 2000 and held this post for 2 consecutive terms. In 2008, Medvedev became president (70% of the votes!), And immediately made changes to the Constitution (they did not even arrange a referendum, why spend money) that the president is elected for 6 years. A standing ovation!

The State Duma (parliament) adopted this document. In 2011, Medvedev “got ready!” - at the party congress, it was all broadcast on television, suggested Putin to be elected for the next presidential term, and Putin (surprise, surprise) agreed. This, I can tell you, was a sight! It’s always exciting to watch the complete lack of morality and the conscience of the country’s leaders.In 2012, Putin was elected president, and in 2018 too.

And I must say that in these elections the people behaved slightly differently. There were more candidates from the opposition, and most importantly, the people began to vote more actively for the opposition. If earlier people simply did not vote (who to vote for? All candidates are terrible! Do you recognize yourself?), Then in the 2018 elections, people seemed to wake up from hibernation and went to the polls.

Putin won, but … I think they got scared. They saw that people are becoming more active, that people are beginning to resist. And therefore, in 2019, talks began about how the great Putin is saving Russia from external enemies, primarily the Americans and Trump. How Putin pulled the country out of economic chaos and devastation. Well, you get the idea. And there was talk that we cannot allow the departure of the great Putin. If Putin is not president, Russia will fall apart, fall into chaos and “blood will flood the streets.” Those blood and where it will come from, they did not say. Terrible homosexuals and transsexuals will grab children and destroy morality. I think you know the lyrics. You hear them on TV every day.

That is why it is necessary to enable Putin to remain in the presidency. And in June 2020, a vote was held to adopt amendments to the Constitution, thanks to which all the terms while Putin was president are zeroed and in 2024 our dear President will become president again. In general, according to the current constitution and “fair” elections, Putin will remain president until 2036.

Guys, if your mailboxes are removed, then your votes and voting probably mean something. Don’t wait for your constitution to change so that Trump can remain president indefinitely. Do you think there was someone to vote for in 2018? Not. There were no worthy candidates. At all. But I went and voted. I voted for a woman I hate. But she has at least some thoughts and judgments with which I agree.

Now we have had demonstrations, processions in Khabarovsk for almost a month, and posters like “Down with the Tsar” began to appear. The Tsar is Putin. There are demonstrations in St. Petersburg and in other cities. In general, there is hope that the people will somehow be indignant about the amendments and something will start to change.

See what’s going on in your country. And get your heads out of your asses!

In the United States, we have a different method of adopting amendments. I am mentioning this because if I don’t, there will be a whole lot of people pointing and saying “GOTCHA! WE DON’T MAKE AMENDMENTS THAT WAY!!!” but the point is, the people in charge can and will find ways to make what they want to happen happen.

They don’t care about the constitution, and they will find any loophole they can to keep power.

And like I said, this doesn’t just happen--bam!--fullblown fascism. It’s slow enough that some people don’t notice it until it’s too late.

You have to get over the tumblr-purity-bullshit that’s preventing you from voting for Biden. And don’t give me that bullshit about “I’m not voting for a r*pist!” because you know #45 has sexually harassed women (He’s even caught on tape saying ‘grab ‘em by the p*ssy!), broken laws, is currently destroying the USPS, and other things that are too many to list. You also know that there’s no way a 3rd party candidate can win, and by voting 3rd party, you are voting for #45.

So why are you okay casting a vote for #45 and not Biden, who at least has progressive policies?

#american politics #happy monday here's some fascism

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tainted-sentimientos · 4 years ago

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Barack Obama’s DNC Speech

“Good evening, everybody. As you've seen by now, this isn't a normal convention. It's not a normal time. So tonight, I want to talk as plainly as I can about the stakes in this election. Because what we do these next 76 days will echo through generations to come.

I'm in Philadelphia, where our Constitution was drafted and signed. It wasn't a perfect document. It allowed for the inhumanity of slavery and failed to guarantee women -- and even men who didn't own property -- the right to participate in the political process. But embedded in this document was a North Star that would guide future generations; a system of representative government -- a democracy -- through which we could better realize our highest ideals. Through civil war and bitter struggles, we improved this Constitution to include the voices of those who'd once been left out. And gradually, we made this country more just, more equal, and more free.

The one Constitutional office elected by all of the people is the presidency. So at minimum, we should expect a president to feel a sense of responsibility for the safety and welfare of all 330 million of us -- regardless of what we look like, how we worship, who we love, how much money we have -- or who we voted for.

But we should also expect a president to be the custodian of this democracy. We should expect that regardless of ego, ambition, or political beliefs, the president will preserve, protect, and defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched for and went to jail for; fought for and died for.

I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president. I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.

But he never did. For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.

Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't. And the consequences of that failure are severe. 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.

Now, I know that in times as polarized as these, most of you have already made up your mind. But maybe you're still not sure which candidate you'll vote for -- or whether you'll vote at all. Maybe you're tired of the direction we're headed, but you can't see a better path yet, or you just don't know enough about the person who wants to lead us there.

So let me tell you about my friend Joe Biden.

Twelve years ago, when I began my search for a vice president, I didn't know I'd end up finding a brother. Joe and I came from different places and different generations. But what I quickly came to admire about him is his resilience, born of too much struggle; his empathy, born of too much grief. Joe's a man who learned -- early on -- to treat every person he meets with respect and dignity, living by the words his parents taught him: "No one's better than you, Joe, but you're better than nobody."

That empathy, that decency, the belief that everybody counts -- that's who Joe is.

When he talks with someone who's lost her job, Joe remembers the night his father sat him down to say that he'd lost his.

When Joe listens to a parent who's trying to hold it all together right now, he does it as the single dad who took the train back to Wilmington each and every night so he could tuck his kids into bed.

When he meets with military families who've lost their hero, he does it as a kindred spirit; the parent of an American soldier; somebody whose faith has endured the hardest loss there is.

For eight years, Joe was the last one in the room whenever I faced a big decision. He made me a better president -- and he's got the character and the experience to make us a better country.

And in my friend Kamala Harris, he's chosen an ideal partner who's more than prepared for the job; someone who knows what it's like to overcome barriers and who's made a career fighting to help others live out their own American dream.

Along with the experience needed to get things done, Joe and Kamala have concrete policies that will turn their vision of a better, fairer, stronger country into reality.

They'll get this pandemic under control, like Joe did when he helped me manage H1N1 and prevent an Ebola outbreak from reaching our shores.

They'll expand health care to more Americans, like Joe and I did ten years ago when he helped craft the Affordable Care Act and nail down the votes to make it the law.

They'll rescue the economy, like Joe helped me do after the Great Recession. I asked him to manage the Recovery Act, which jumpstarted the longest stretch of job growth in history. And he sees this moment now not as a chance to get back to where we were, but to make long-overdue changes so that our economy actually makes life a little easier for everybody -- whether it's the waitress trying to raise a kid on her own, or the shift worker always on the edge of getting laid off, or the student figuring out how to pay for next semester's classes.

Joe and Kamala will restore our standing in the world -- and as we've learned from this pandemic, that matters. Joe knows the world, and the world knows him. He knows that our true strength comes from setting an example the world wants to follow. A nation that stands with democracy, not dictators. A nation that can inspire and mobilize others to overcome threats like climate change, terrorism, poverty, and disease.

But more than anything, what I know about Joe and Kamala is that they actually care about every American. And they care deeply about this democracy.

They believe that in a democracy, the right to vote is sacred, and we should be making it easier for people to cast their ballot, not harder.

They believe that no one -- including the president -- is above the law, and that no public official -- including the president -- should use their office to enrich themselves or their supporters.

They understand that in this democracy, the Commander-in-Chief doesn't use the men and women of our military, who are willing to risk everything to protect our nation, as political props to deploy against peaceful protesters on our own soil. They understand that political opponents aren't "un-American" just because they disagree with you; that a free press isn't the "enemy" but the way we hold officials accountable; that our ability to work together to solve big problems like a pandemic depends on a fidelity to facts and science and logic and not just making stuff up.

None of this should be controversial. These shouldn't be Republican principles or Democratic principles. They're American principles. But at this moment, this president and those who enable him, have shown they don't believe in these things.

Tonight, I am asking you to believe in Joe and Kamala's ability to lead this country out of these dark times and build it back better. But here's the thing: no single American can fix this country alone. Not even a president. Democracy was never meant to be transactional -- you give me your vote; I make everything better. It requires an active and informed citizenry. So I am also asking you to believe in your own ability -- to embrace your own responsibility as citizens -- to make sure that the basic tenets of our democracy endure.

Because that's what at stake right now. Our democracy.

Look, I understand why many Americans are down on government. The way the rules have been set up and abused in Congress make it easy for special interests to stop progress. Believe me, I know. I understand why a white factory worker who's seen his wages cut or his job shipped overseas might feel like the government no longer looks out for him, and why a Black mother might feel like it never looked out for her at all. I understand why a new immigrant might look around this country and wonder whether there's still a place for him here; why a young person might look at politics right now, the circus of it all, the meanness and the lies and crazy conspiracy theories and think, what's the point?

Well, here's the point: this president and those in power -- those who benefit from keeping things the way they are -- they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can't win you over with their policies. So they're hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn't matter. That's how they win. That's how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That's how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That's how a democracy withers, until it's no democracy at all.

We can't let that happen. Do not let them take away your power. Don't let them take away your democracy. Make a plan right now for how you're going to get involved and vote. Do it as early as you can and tell your family and friends how they can vote too. Do what Americans have done for over two centuries when faced with even tougher times than this -- all those quiet heroes who found the courage to keep marching, keep pushing in the face of hardship and injustice.

Last month, we lost a giant of American democracy in John Lewis. Some years ago, I sat down with John and the few remaining leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement. One of them told me he never imagined he'd walk into the White House and see a president who looked like his grandson. Then he told me that he'd looked it up, and it turned out that on the very day that I was born, he was marching into a jail cell, trying to end Jim Crow segregation in the South.

What we do echoes through the generations.

Whatever our backgrounds, we're all the children of Americans who fought the good fight. Great grandparents working in firetraps and sweatshops without rights or representation. Farmers losing their dreams to dust. Irish and Italians and Asians and Latinos told to go back where they came from. Jews and Catholics, Muslims and Sikhs, made to feel suspect for the way they worshipped. Black Americans chained and whipped and hanged. Spit on for trying to sit at lunch counters. Beaten for trying to vote.

If anyone had a right to believe that this democracy did not work, and could not work, it was those Americans. Our ancestors. They were on the receiving end of a democracy that had fallen short all their lives. They knew how far the daily reality of America strayed from the myth. And yet, instead of giving up, they joined together and said somehow, some way, we are going to make this work. We are going to bring those words, in our founding documents, to life.

I've seen that same spirit rising these past few years. Folks of every age and background who packed city centers and airports and rural roads so that families wouldn't be separated. So that another classroom wouldn't get shot up. So that our kids won't grow up on an uninhabitable planet. Americans of all races joining together to declare, in the face of injustice and brutality at the hands of the state, that Black Lives Matter, no more, but no less, so that no child in this country feels the continuing sting of racism.

To the young people who led us this summer, telling us we need to be better -- in so many ways, you are this country's dreams fulfilled. Earlier generations had to be persuaded that everyone has equal worth. For you, it's a given -- a conviction. And what I want you to know is that for all its messiness and frustrations, your system of self-government can be harnessed to help you realize those convictions.

You can give our democracy new meaning. You can take it to a better place. You're the missing ingredient -- the ones who will decide whether or not America becomes the country that fully lives up to its creed.

That work will continue long after this election. But any chance of success depends entirely on the outcome of this election. This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's what it takes to win. So we have to get busy building it up -- by pouring all our effort into these 76 days, and by voting like never before -- for Joe and Kamala, and candidates up and down the ticket, so that we leave no doubt about what this country we love stands for -- today and for all our days to come.

Stay safe. God bless.”

- Former President Barack Obama

To the decided:

To the undecided:

To the opposed:

#politics #usa politics #democratic national convention #dnc #dnc 2020 #dnc speech #barack obama #president barack obama #forever my president #john mulaney #kid gorgeous #ariel #the little mermaid #nicki minaj #stupid hoes #vote #vote 2020 #cnn

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