'Voter fraud' claims are a racist attack on Black voters so let's act like it
Our outsized contribution must not be erased by establishment figures on either side of the aisle.

Nov. 11, 2020, 5:30 AM EST
By Brittany Packnett Cunningham


(MSNBC) Historically, voter fraud seems to be a consistent complaint when two things happen: when Republicans lose, and when Black people are the ones to defeat them. The idea that Black, brown and Indigenous voters could deliver a decisive blow to the white supremacist political aspirations of the Trump administration is, in some ways, an offense to those who’ve spent their careers — and certainly this election cycle — ensuring that would be nearly impossible.

Digital disinformation targeting Black communities has been a central part of President Donald Trump’s strategy from the start. More traditional GOP suppression tactics, like gerrymandering, polling place closures and false mailers, continue to abound. Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia continues to insist that fraud was the culprit for the state’s surprising flip from red to blue, assuming that tricks similar to those he leveraged when he ran his own election in 2018 would be successful. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s dismantling of a U.S. Postal Service staffed by committed public servants in order to sway election results has been criminal. And of course, Trump himself continues to rally Republican troops and voters with dangerous rhetoric of election theft that threatens to, at the very least, upend even fragile faith in our electoral processes or, at most, amount to an oft-warned attempted coup.

The left is being told to extend an olive branch to a right spoiling for a fight. But instead of telling us to hug the people who insist our voices are fraudulent, the Democratic Party should be doing everything it can to secure this election and the safety of the voters who participated in it. We must not confer legitimacy on the Republicans’ behavior or on Trump’s attempts to undermine the rule of law — which he seems to support except for elections and his own taxes. Such credibility is not something our frail democracy can afford to award him, and the marginalized communities who won this election can’t afford the violence that may accompany his worst tactics. .............(more)

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/voter-fraud-claims-are-racist-attack-black-voters-so-let-n1247249?icid=msd_topgrid

This article is paywalled, but you can get the gist of it from these graphs



(Detroit Free Press) Barry Croft didn't just hate Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the feds say.

He detested many politicians, records show, and wanted them dead.

President Donald Trump. Former President Barack Obama. Former President Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. President George W. Bush.

....(snip)....

"Democrats. Liberals. Muslims. Hang all anti-Americans," reads an image that Croft posted to Facebook. Alongside the words was a noose. ..........(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/11/14/kidnap-suspect-hit-list-included-donald-trump-barack-obama-feds-say/6281770002/

..... I want to see Bill Barr destroyed, humiliated and flogged (in the figurative sense).

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Saturday morning to level charges against Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams of working in tandem to deny him votes that might have led to him not losing the state to former Vice President Joe Biden.

In a two-tweet outburst, the president wrote, “The Consent Decree signed by the Georgia Secretary of State, with the approval of Governor @BrianKempGA , at the urging of @staceyabrams, makes it impossible to check & match signatures on ballots and envelopes, etc. They knew they were going to cheat. Must expose real signatures!” ............(more)

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/expose-the-crime-trump-accuses-goper-kemp-and-dem-stacey-abrams-of-stealing-georgia-votes-from-him/?

Trump is going out the way he came in: A loser, a liar and a cheat
As the virus heads into a winter surge, our defeated president tweets, plays golf and runs a money-raising scam

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
NOVEMBER 14, 2020 1:00PM


(Salon) It's one of the sad truths of the human experience that you can't count tears. Maybe the first few you might be able to, but then they just flow from your eyes, running down your cheeks until you can taste them on your lips, a flood of salty sorrow and pain and helplessness.

That is where we are: beyond counting, beyond being able to measure the tragedy and loss of COVID. Statistics can't do it for us anymore. We're reduced to comparisons, a doctor quoted in the New York Times on Thursday comparing 1,000 deaths a day to "two jumbo jets dropping from the sky. If every day, two jumbo jets would drop from the sky and kill everybody, don't you think that everybody would be in a panic?" asked Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University.

Well, no, doctor. Everybody is not in a panic, especially not our president, who with just over two months left in office played golf at his Virginia course last Saturday, a day that two jumbo jets dropped out of the sky with 1,007 dead of COVID, and Sunday, a day when only one jumbo jet dropped out of the sky with 464 dead. Nearly 126,000 new cases were diagnosed on Saturday, and 103,416 more Americans came down with the disease as Trump piloted his presidential golf cart around the links the next day.

....(snip)....

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: He wouldn't be Trump if he wasn't figuring some way to pocket some bucks for himself off his loss, and on Monday, he set up a website entitled "OFFICIAL ELECTION DEFENSE FUND," with a button screaming "CONTRIBUTE NOW!" A careful scroll through the fine print reveals that not a single dollar goes to Trump's so-called official recount defense fund until the Trump "Save America" PAC is paid $5,000, and the Republican National Committee gets $3,300. That means you would have to contribute more than $8,300 for Trump's "election defense fund" to receive any money at all. The RNC is free to use its share to aid the Republican candidates in the Georgia Senate runoff elections, for example.

Under rules that apply to regular political action committees like Save America, Trump is free to engage in all manner of self-dealing, such as appointing his children to salaried leadership positions in the PAC, or using the money to pay for fundraising events at Trump-owned venues like Mar-a-Lago, his Doral golf club or the Trump International Hotel in Washington, or to rent office space in Trump Tower. Every dollar paid by the PAC to any of those Trump-owned properties would go directly into the pocket of Donald Trump, the sole owner of all of them. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/14/trump-is-going-out-the-way-he-came-in-a-loser-a-liar-and-a-cheat/

(Guardian UK) When the Arctic researchers Jacqueline Grebmeier and Lee Cooper made their annual scientific pilgrimage to frigid seas off Alaska last month, what they found was startling.

Areas that were previously accessible at that time of the year only with an ice-breaking ship had become open, wavy water.

“We packed our long underwear, and we never put it on,” Cooper said.

In years past, the pair could convince wary volunteers to accompany them by promising walrus sightings. But with no sea ice to perch on and fewer clams to eat, the tusked butterballs have moved to more comfortable accommodations on the beaches.

Instead, the research team saw huge fishing boats searching farther north for Pacific cod, and a container ship traveling a newly melted route from Quebec to Korea. It snowed only once during their three weeks on the water. ..............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/13/arctic-melting-climate-change

The far right is cracking up, as their violent fantasies of Trump's fascist takeover evaporate
QAnon, the Proud Boys and white nationalist groups flail around helplessly as twilight falls on the Trump era

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
NOVEMBER 13, 2020 6:06PM


(Salon) The far right had a dream: That one day, people who had been exiled to the unacceptable margins of American political life could play the role of Donald Trump's brownshirts.

In the weeks leading up to the election, excitement was rising among those Americans who convinced themselves that Trump would be the glorious leader in a national purge of their perceived enemies. QAnon fans buzzed with excitement that "the storm" — their term for their belief that the entire Democratic establishment, as well as many popular celebrities, would be rounded up into prison camps — was coming soon. The Proud Boys, a neofascist group that claim to defend "Western civilization," were also riled up after Trump told them to "stand by" during a presidential debate in September. The menagerie of white supremacists and militia groups were stepping up recruitment efforts, stoked about what they believed would soon be the eruption of a new civil war.

Then came the election. Trump lost. This has been very difficult for those people to accept.

People with fanatical and delusional beliefs famously don't give them up just because they've been hit over the head with reality, of course. The various subcultures of crackpots that have sprung up under Trump are no exception.

Still, the election results have sent these groups reeling. All of them have spent the past four years growing their ranks and orbiting around Trump, convinced that he was a savior figure who would crush their perceived enemies. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/13/the-far-right-is-cracking-up-as-their-violent-fantasies-of-trumps-fascist-takeover-evaporate/

What's next for Fox News without its "golden goose"
Trumpism needs Fox News more than Fox needs Trump. But there are around 73 million reasons for Fox to stick with it

By MELANIE MCFARLAND
NOVEMBER 14, 2020 12:00AM


(Salon) In the recent past a person may have dared to imagine a world with a significantly muted Donald Trump. Nearly 78 million voters pushed to make that a reality, spurred on in no small part by the desire to simply shut him up. That's understandable. The man takes up a lot of mental real estate whether people want him to or adamantly do not.

However, that dream is predicated on the notion that the media organizations serving as Trump's megaphone – Fox News, in the main – would wean themselves off of the endless mutual ego-stroking that joined man and network at the hip over the last five years.

But with around 73 million voters indicating their comfort with another four years of Trump's madness, the one certainty is that while Trump may recede from the center of our lives, Trumpism isn't going anywhere. The difference, at least for Fox, will be in finding and anointing the next star for the right wing to rally around.

On its face, that idea doesn't quite wash. Trump insists on starring in anything that bears his name, including the political movement he birthed. Logically Trumpism cannot exist without the grifter for which it is named.

....(snip)....

Multiple reports have indicated that Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and the network have been preparing for a post-Trump world for a long time, which means they're to sell the scorn that a Biden presidency will yield. Already the election's outcome, which the prime time hosts still have not acknowledged, has already provided some primo absurdist scaremongering. (If you haven't watched Carlson's warning to middle America that liberals want everyone to drink Starbucks, do treat yourself.) Post-inauguration, we may witness Trump appearing on Fox with diminished frequency, but Fox's ability to incite its audience's wrath against the left is eternal. And that is what Trumpism thrives upon. .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/13/fox-news-trump-whats-next/

https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1327006603862704128?s=19

Well duh that should have been obvious when you took the case.


Trump law firm withdraws from Pennsylvania case challenging election
The abrupt withdrawal overnight is a blow to the president’s efforts to overturn the result of the vote in court


(Guardian UK) A major law firm withdrew overnight from a Trump campaign case in Pennsylvania seeking to have mail-in ballots thrown out, in the latest blow to the president’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election result in court.

The Ohio-based Porter Wright Morris & Arthur firm, which brought a suit on Monday alleging that the use of mail-in ballots had created “an illegal two-tiered voting system” in the state, abruptly withdrew from that case in a memo to the court.

“Plaintiffs and Porter Wright have reached a mutual agreement that plaintiffs will be best served if Porter Wright withdraws,” the memo said. The lead lawyer in the case, the Pittsburgh-based Ronald L Hicks Jr, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The news was first reported by the New York Times.

Unlike most lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign, which targeted small pools of votes whose exclusion would not change the election result, the Porter Wright suit challenged nearly 2.65m votes that were cast by mail, the majority by Democrats. ...............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/13/trump-law-firm-withdraws-pennsylvania-election-case