AZProgressive
AZProgressive's Journal"I Don't See Them Accepting The Results." Scenes from Election Protests in Maricopa County Arizona
Tensions are running high outside of the Maricopa County Elections office in Phoenix, Ariz., where more than a hundred protestors have demonstrated for the last three nights to argue about the electoral process after former Vice President Joe Biden became the front-runner in the traditionally red state.
New York-based photographer Sinna Nasseri has spent most of this year on a road trip across America documenting the fraught political landscape, West Coast wildfires and life amid COVID-19 lockdown.
In Trump’s presidential race run on conflicting words and disinformation, photographs provide another layer of evidence to process—visual proof sliced out of the landscape that focuses your attention on particular moments, fractions of seconds. In Nasseri’s images, the confusion of 2020 is frozen using a flash, framing some of the most extreme points in the fight with the most fringe members of Trump’s base gasping in the final round.
Through his lens, supporters of President Donald Trump wrap themselves in flags and hold signs about QAnon, (a conspiracy which promotes Trump as the final defense against a “deep state” cabal of Democrats and Hollywood elite who traffic, rape, and cannibalize children); Boogaloo Boys in Hawaiian shirts strut with AR-15 rifles; and media spinsters Alex Jones and Mike Cernovich add to the chaos.
https://time.com/5908628/maricopa-county-arizona-protests/?amp=true
Click on the link for the photos.
Arizona Call for Biden Flipped the Mood at Trump Headquarters
WASHINGTON — With Florida looking red early on Tuesday night, President Trump and his advisers thought they were witnessing a repeat of election night 2016, when a victory in Florida foreshadowed a victory over all.
Inside the East Room, the mood was upbeat as hundreds of people, including cabinet secretaries, ambassadors and former officials who have remained loyal to Mr. Trump, mingled and dined on sliders and french fries. Officials who had been pessimistic about the president’s re-election chances suddenly started to picture four more years in power.
(Snip)
Mr. Trump and his advisers erupted at the news. If it was true that Arizona was lost, it would call into doubt on any claim of victory the president might be able to make.
What ensued for Mr. Trump was a night of angry calls to Republican governors and advice from campaign aides that he ignored, leading to a middle-of-the-night presidential briefing in which he made a reckless and unsubstantiated string of remarks about the democratic process. Standing in the East Room at 2:30 a.m., he dismissed the election as a “fraud” and claimed he wanted to stop the counting of votes and leave the results to the Supreme Court.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/politics/trump-fox-news-arizona.html#click=https://t.co/DD3vPdpNfX
EXPLAINER: Why AP called Arizona for Biden
(Snip)
But changing demographics, including a fast-growing Latino population and a boom of new residents — some fleeing the skyrocketing cost of living in neighboring California — have made the state friendlier to Democrats.
Many of the gains have been driven by the shifting politics of Maricopa County, which is home to Phoenix and its suburbs. That’s where Biden sealed his victory. Maricopa County accounts for 60% of the state’s vote, and Biden ran up huge margins there.
In 2016, Trump carried the county by 4 percentage points, which helped propel him to a win. But two years later, Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema flipped the seat from Republican control by winning the county by 5 points.
When the AP called the race for Biden, he was leading there by 9 percentage points.
https://www.azfamily.com/news/politics/election_headquarters/explainer-why-ap-called-arizona-for-biden/article_924ca49e-1e9b-11eb-8d70-ab46aeff34e0.html
A decades-long blue wave
Young voters, projected to turn out overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, could provide a huge advantage for Democrats not just this for this election, but for decades to come.
Driving the news: Pollsters and political scientists have been poring over two new reports by the liberal Center for American Progress and the Harvard Institute of Politics this month that examine both the growing size and enthusiasm among the nation's youngest voters.
The Harvard poll finds that 63% of 18- to 29-year olds "definitely" plan to vote. Their enthusiasm for Biden grew even stronger since September.
The Center for American Progress' models forecast a huge advantage for Democrats in future elections, based on demographics and voting patterns of today’s youngest generations — even taking account of trends that show that Americans tend to become more conservative as they age.
https://www.axios.com/blue-wave-decades-biden-democrats-62bc1d31-ffd2-4a4a-8f8a-b2f476c65876.html
DOJ Unveils More Sweeping Cyber-Charges Against Russian Intelligence Officers
The Justice Department unsealed charges against six alleged Russian government hackers on Monday and said they were behind a rash of recent cyberattacks — from damaging Ukraine's electrical grid to interfering in France's election to spying on European investigations and more.
The men work for the Russian military intelligence agency GRU — which also led Russian cyber-interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Justice Department officials said Moscow has only sustained or heightened its intensity of effort since then.
"No country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously or irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented damage to pursue small tactical advantages and to satisfy fits of spite," said John C. Demers, assistant attorney general for national security.
"Today the department has charged these Russian officers with conducting the most disruptive and destructive series of computer attacks ever attributed to a single group. ... No nation will recapture greatness while behaving in this way."
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/925423705/doj-unveils-more-sweeping-cyber-charges-against-russian-intelligence-officers?utm_campaign=politics&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social
The News Media Isn't Biased Against Trump. It's Biased For Him.
By Jonathan Chait
(Snip)
It is true that Trump found many of the questions posed to him difficult to answer and that Biden answered his queries more easily. It is also true that mainstream news coverage, in general, has depicted Trump in a brutally harsh light. (This, of course, omits conservative media, which functions as a state-controlled message machine.)
But it’s not the media’s fault that Trump continues to incriminate himself and is unable to answer simple questions. The problem is not that the media holds him to a difficult standard. He is held, by necessity, to a more forgiving standard than any modern president. But however low the bar is set, Trump continues to trip over it.
(Snip)
Imagine if Biden had been asked the same question. He would have had little difficulty saying, ‘No, the Democratic party is not the cover for a satanic sex ring.’ The reason reporters don’t pose this question to Biden is not because it would be too difficult for him to answer, but because it would be too easy.
(Snip)
Guthrie asked Trump why he tweeted “a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden orchestrated to have SEAL Team Six, the Navy SEAL Team Six, killed to cover up the fake death of bin Laden.” If Biden had tweeted out a claim that Trump had killed somebody, and that person was in fact alive, he would probably be asked about it — a lot. Indeed, if Biden had tweeted a ludicrous murder accusation, it would represent a crisis for his campaign so dire that the press would likely talk about little else. His allies would be pressed to denounce him, and Democrats would be discussing ways to force him off the ticket. For Trump, it was just another item on the list of questions.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/article/media-isnt-biased-against-trump-biden-liberal-news.html?__twitter_impression=true
US intelligence analysts feared Russia would dump hacked and forged Burisma emails targeting Biden a
US intelligence analysts feared Russia would dump hacked and forged Burisma emails targeting Biden as an 'October surprise,' report says
*US intelligence analysts suspected at least as far back as last month that a mixture of hacked and forged emails from the Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings might be dumped online as an "October surprise," The New York Times reported Wednesday.
*Russian military-intelligence hackers successfully breached Burisma's servers in January, The Times reported earlier this year.
*Wednesday's report said analysts contacted people with knowledge of the hack because they were concerned "the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt" the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.
*Earlier Wednesday, the New York Post published an article purporting to feature a "smoking-gun email" between a Burisma executive and Biden's son Hunter.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-intelligence-analysts-hacked-burisma-emails-russia-october-surprise-2020-10?amp&__twitter_impression=true
Exclusive: Feds chased suspected foreign link to Trump's 2016 campaign cash for three years
Washington (CNN)For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.
The investigation, which both predated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President's foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel's pursuits.
The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller's team could fight for the Egyptian bank's records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly.
Prosecutors suspected there could be a link between the Egyptian bank and Trump's campaign contribution, according to several of the sources, but they could never prove a connection.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/politics/trump-campaign-donation-investigation/index.html
This is why I support ending felony disenfranchisement
Denounced as Going 'Too Far' When Sanders Said It—American Bar Association Backs Full Voting Rights for Incarcerated People
Bolstering a proposal which was denounced by centrists and conservatives as going "too far" in the fight for voting rights when Sen. Bernie Sanders backed it during the Democratic presidential primary, the American Bar Association won applause from rights advocates on Thursday regarding its support for full enfranchisement for current and former prison inmates.
At its annual meeting earlier this month, the ABA adopted a resolution stating the organization would urge all levels of government to "repeal laws that disenfranchise persons based upon criminal conviction [and] restore voting rights to those currently and formerly incarcerated, including those on probation, parole, or any other community-based correctional program."
The national lawyers' association further said (pdf) that "no person convicted of crime" should be disenfranchised in the U.S. because of failure to pay fines, court fees, or other payments as a result of their conviction.
Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, who was elected last year to be commonwealth's attorney, the top prosecutor for Arlington and Falls Church, Virginia was among the reform-minded attorneys who applauded the resolution—and wondered why she was criticized during her campaign for expressing support for prisoner's voting rights.
"Glad to see that 'radical' organization, the ABA, joined the fight," tweeted Dehghani-Tafti.
Common Dreams
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/14/denounced-going-too-far-when-sanders-said-it-american-bar-association-backs-full%3famp
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