I have as hard a time getting angry over a diatribe like this as I do getting angry at a 2 year old melting down. The election didn't go their way, so it is time for a tantrum. It's way to long -- he may just as well have listed a long list of noxious names to call the majority that voted for Trump (and it does look like it will be a popular vote majority as well as an electoral one at this point). This paragraph is a sample.
All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.
It is such an echo of Reagan, here was the WaPo in 1980:
“Something of gigantic proportions happened—must have been happening for a long while—and the capital and the political wise men were taken by surprise. . . an ‘anti-Washington,’ ‘anti-establishment’ political storm warning was missed by Washington and the establishment.”
Ya think? Not that the elites were likely to pay any attention then -- or obviously in the intervening years. They live in a blue bubble and they listen to themselves talk about "bitter clingers", "fly-over country", "deplorables", "Bible thumping racist rubes", etc, etc.
They know they want to remove the right of such people to vote -- or just replace them with "undocumented Democrats", but in the 36 years since Reagan, their only lament is that those damned unwashed masses are still out there!
So they have a tantrum -- and riot. Because being two years old forever is all they know.
Hayward sums up what brought us Trump in one brilliant line:
"Elections no longer change the character of our government."
The reason for this is the Administrative State, the subject of a big book I'm slogging through:
The premise of the Constitution is that the people should rule. The premise of the administrative state, explicitly expressed by Woodrow Wilson and other Progressive-era theorists, is that experts should rule, in a new administrative form largely sealed off from political influence, i.e., sealed off from the people. At some point, it amounts to government without the consent of the governed, a simple fact that surprisingly few conservative politicians perceive. Ronald Reagan was, naturally, a conspicuous exception, noting in 1981 in his first Inaugural Address, “It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”
The problem is that even Reagan was unable to actually reduce the size of government (he only slowed the rate of growth). If Trump wants to change the character of our government, Scott Walker needs to go to Washington. The unelected Democrat union controlled administrative state MUST be brought under control, or this will be yet another election that doesn't change the character of government.
The other prong of attack to return to some semblance of freedom has already been strongly begun by Trump -- we must take back our history!
Post-modern intellectuals have pronounced their historical judgment on America’s past, finding it to be morally indefensible. Every great human achievement of the past—whether in philosophy, religion, literature, or the humanities—came to be understood as a kind of exploitation of the powerless. Rather than allowing the past to be viewed in terms of its aspirations and accomplishments, it has been judged by its failures. The living part of the past is understood in terms slavery, racism, and identity politics. Political correctness arose as the practical and necessary means of enforcing this historical judgment. No public defense of past greatness could be allowed to live in the present. Public morality and public policy would come to be understood in terms of the formerly oppressed.
BOistan is like a person in recovery from addiction or mental illness. We need to embrace our past as our past, imperfect, but OURS, which includes both strengths and weaknesses -- we need to focus on WHAT'S STRONG vs what's wrong! Attempting to punish ourselves in the present for the past while ignoring the strengths of that country we killed called America is hurting all of us!
Here is how the excellent linked article puts it:
More than just a rebuke to political correctness and identity politics, a Trump victory would be, in their eyes, a vehicle for reasserting the sovereignty of the people and withdrawal of consent for the administrative state and the suffocating boundaries of acceptable opinion backing it up. A large number of Americans have responded positively to Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” because they too see Trump as a forceful tribune against the slow-motion desiccation of the country under the steady advance of liberalism.
So you have committed a felony, you have come to the US illegally, should you feel safe?
Dreamers like Quiñonez, who essentially outed themselves as undocumented, could see their protections stripped. ICE raids on factories and construction sites could begin anew. “And I certainly think we’re going to see some wall-building,” Martin said.
BO said yes, Trump says no. Why is it again that we have elections at all? BO doesn't think the Constitution matters, even though he took an oath to defend it
Do elections matter? BO once thought they did -- but the WaPo apparently doesn't agree with him today.
Does that mean that they consider the one:, the all powerful BO to be ... dare I say it, WRONG???
Satan is "the accuser" -- he abhors actual freedom. He seeks to enslave the soul to constantly justify itself -- to "pull itself up by it's own bootstraps", thus becoming ever more lost.
Here, in this instance of profound hypocrisy, began the idea of America as a victimizing nation. And then came the inevitable corollary: the nation’s moral indebtedness to its former victims: blacks especially but all other put-upon peoples as well.
This indebtedness became a cultural imperative, what Styron might call a “transforming circumstance.” Today America must honor this indebtedness or lose much of its moral authority and legitimacy as a democracy. America must show itself redeemed of its oppressive past.
America was founded on ideas -- and VALUES, the highest in the the history of the world save those of Jesus. Indeed, it was founded on the values of Christ -- that ALL were equally endowed with the opportunity for redemption.
But America was a human creation -- like the Church. It was imperfect, and in the eyes of Satan and his followers, imperfection means you are NOT redeemed! You are a hypocrite for claiming high values but failing to live up to them fully! Thus you stand ACCUSED, unless you abandon your values.
So imperfection is to be accused and held against all who fail to follow the Satanic authority. The only hope for redemption is WORKS!
How to do this? In a word: deference. Since the 1960s, when America finally became fully accountable for its past, deference toward all groups with any claim to past or present victimization became mandatory. The Great Society and the War on Poverty were some of the first truly deferential policies. Since then deference has become an almost universal marker of simple human decency that asserts one’s innocence of the American past. Deference is, above all else, an apology.
This is a very good policy if you can set yourself up as the arbiter of proper deference -- as the left wing culture increasingly has. The greater the need to pay deference (penance), the greater their power -- thus a never ending stream from women to blacks to gays to transgenders to Muslims to ???. It is like the Scribes and Pharisees or the pre-Reformation Catholic Church -- being under the law of PC is a gift that keeps on giving to the ruling elite who defines what is and is not proper penance.
Since the ’60s the Democratic Party, and liberalism generally, have thrived on the power of deference. When Hillary Clinton speaks of a “basket of deplorables,“ she follows with a basket of isms and phobias—racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and Islamaphobia. Each ism and phobia is an opportunity for her to show deference toward a victimized group and to cast herself as America’s redeemer. And, by implication, conservatism is bereft of deference.Donald Trump supporters are cast as small grudging people, as haters who blindly love America and long for its exclusionary past. Against this she is the very archetype of American redemption. The term “progressive” is code for redemption from a hate-driven America.
The problem with works driven redemption is that it creates it's own form of power structure, a "priesthood" if you will that decides on "the redeemed". So the priests of PC tell us that in order to "atone for the sins of America", we must live in slavery to political correctness, and they will define who is and is not "redeemed" -- but we don't like it. The part built into our souls that yearns for Christ, grace, and true freedom knows that we are being misled.
Deference has been codified in American life as political correctness. And political correctness functions like a despotic regime. It is an oppressiveness that spreads its edicts further and further into the crevices of everyday life. We resent it, yet for the most part we at least tolerate its demands. But it means that we live in a society that is ever willing to cast judgment on us, to shame us in the name of a politics we don’t really believe in. It means our decency requires a degree of self-betrayal.
But self-betrayal is not freedom, and worse, it instills the "soft bigotry of low expectations" against many groups in our nation -- FOREVER. We rob other humans of their personal power with our conviction that we must "fix them" to redeem ourselves, and the elite are happy to sell us indulgences and pad their "foundations".
After all, the problem with deference is that it is never more than superficial. We are polite. We don’t offend. But we don’t ever transform people either. Out of deference we refuse to ask those we seek to help to be primarily responsible for their own advancement. Yet only this level of responsibility transforms people, no matter past or even present injustice. Some 3,000 shootings in Chicago this year alone is the result of deference camouflaging a lapse of personal responsibility with empty claims of systemic racism.
The BRIGHTEST item in Trumps acceptance speech was that he seeks to "invest in the inner cities". **IF** he were able to bring back some of the trillions parked overseas due to our high corporate taxes, invest in our inner cites and allow them to regain their personal power as full responsible citizens, he has the chance to improbably become the greatest president since Reagan -- or even greater. I agree this a BIG "if", but it IS possible!
Societies, like individuals, have intuitions. Donald Trump is an intuition. At least on the level of symbol, maybe he would push back against the hegemony of deference—if not as a liberator then possibly as a reformer. Possibly he could lift the word responsibility out of its somnambulant stigmatization as a judgmental and bigoted request to make of people. This, added to a fundamental respect for the capacity of people to lift themselves up, could go a long way toward a fairer and better America.
The priesthood of PC took a major hit last night -- let's pray that the tide can be turned!
I use BSOD because you have probably seen more than one on your Windows box -- typically MANY more.
On the S/38, AS/400, IBM i that I worked on, a good many people NEVER saw what we called a "machine check", and even most of them that did saw one "a time or two a year".
BUT ... sometimes there were machines that had issues, and badness came in numbers -- we would fix one problem, but another would be hit, and it looked THE SAME! Of course it did, the machine stopped cold with a red light on the console and it took a LONG recovery to get it back up.
So too especially Democrat rhetoric, for politics -- EVERY Republican nominee since at least Goldwater has been "Crazy, Dangerous, Racist ... "like Hitler". Ho hum.
National Review is in the "Never Trump" camp -- they would prefer Hildebeast to Donald because they are rather wired into the beltway and rather like the status quo. But at least they see that when you scream "clear and present danger" since 1964, including in 1980, and the world not only doesn't explode, but the economy grows and the USSR actually DOES go away, well, your credibility may be quite strained.
So maybe Trump really is "Hitler", but after BO, I'm more than ready to take my chances in case he pulls it out!
At least not if you find 70-80% of the population believing the same thing and care what 70-80% of your fellow BOistanis think.
70% of people believe that BOistan is in decline, 84% think the elites play by different rules, and a strong majority feels their kids will be less well off than they are.
"First, the American people believe that the country is not only on the wrong track but almost 70 percent say that America is in actual decline. The concept of decline is antithetical to the American experience.
Second, for more than three centuries, the animating moral obligation of America has been the self-imposed obligation that each generation passes on to its children a better America than they themselves inherited. This is what makes us Americans. In Armada’s polling we found that a majority of Americans believe that they are better off than their parents were. But a great majority says that THEIR children will be worse off than they themselves are today. This is the crisis of the American Dream. And it is no surprise that a majority of Americans agree that if we leave the next generation “worse off” that there will still be a place called “the United States” but there will no longer be an “America.”
Third, when asked whether or not everyone in America plays by the same rules to get ahead or are there different rules for well-connected and people with money, a staggering 84 percent of voters picked the latter. Only 10 percent believed that everyone has an equal opportunity."
The early voting looks like Trump may be the pick and all the pundits will be wrong -- as Caddell said:
The question on the table now is: could 2016 be the second such election? If it is, it won’t be for Hillary Clinton.
The elites don't report this because they don't really care that 70% of the "idiot common people" think that their country is in decline -- the elites are doing great, and they want to keep it going JUST LIKE IT IS!
What we have been looking at is a nation through a media kaleidoscope. If Trump wins, we MAY get even some of the hypnotized to see the reality of the destruction that BO wrought.
The top 1-5% have manipulated and purchased close to 50% of the public to believe that they have no personal power and must be dependent on the state -- while the top 1-5% take ever larger rewards for their "largesse" with the money of the top 50-95%.
Are 70 and 80% of the people less brainwashed than the elites believe? We will soon know, but the answer won't be a complete surprise to some of us if it goes against the elites.
As I cast my vote for Trump today I thought back to 1976 when I voted for Jimmy Carter. I was completely confident then -- my family always voted Democrat, I had been schooled to vote Democrat and pretty much everyone on campus voted Democrat. Let's face it, unless you were filthy rich or some sort of a knuckle dragger, why would you ever vote any other way? Nixon was evil -- he was only voted in because Johnson was a warmonger. He lied -- US presidents didn't lie then, it was an impeachable offense.
Then, on March 18th, 1977, Jimmuh spoke of "The Moral Equivalent of War" (MEOW) and I bought a cat and started reading National Review. You see, the "greatest challenge since WWII" wasn't warming then -- it was the FACT that the planet was OUT OF OIL. Only idiots believed otherwise.
By 1980 I was firmly resolved to vote for a MADMAN -- Ronald Reagan, a one of least intelligent people that ever lived (Carter was a certified genius) that considered the USSR to be an evil empire that could be defeated. The idiocy of Reagan and his "totally misled or evil" followers was a danger to the entire world. The "Doomsday Clock" ticked closer to midnight. Reagan was a complete embarrassment -- a foolish actor, a mere marionette to powerful interests that would destroy the economy and likely our very lives!
I was a lot less confident then, but I cared.
Fast forward 40 years to this AM. If someone would have told me that 40 years later I would be voting for another Republican candidate, almost as maligned as Reagan was back then, I would have asked what kind of weed he was smoking. (back then weed was illegal) In 1980, we actually still believed in amendments to the Constitution -- the Equal Rights Amendment didn't time out until 1982 -- probably the point where "The Party" (TP-D) decided that they were going to use the SCOTUS to make whatever wholesale changes they wanted without any more amendment attempts.
America was still a great country -- people worked, we flew in space -- even to the moon. We believed our children's lives would be better than ours. We revered God, American History, and I think a strong majority even believed that truthfulness, rule of law, the Constitution, hard work, personal responsibility and independence were good things. Character was important for even the common man -- demanded for leaders. The idea of a "government handout" was considered to be justifiably stigmatized -- you worked for what you had, and if you couldn't afford it, you didn't get it.
Sure, the 30's and the 60's plus Roe V Wade had injected some serious poison into the American system, but I don't think any of us thought that America would perish in our lifetimes -- let alone less than 40 years later.
I expect Hillary to win tonight, but I'm not really watching -- I'll go to bed early and the answer will either be done or not by the AM. I stayed up all night for Bush vs Gore -- lot of good THAT did me!
We know that Hillary will "bring the country together" -- the question is just how much force she will use.
If by some miracle Trump beats the rigged system, I have no expectations. I sincerely doubt he will accomplish all that much, but potentially the movement he muddled into will bring the spirit of the Tea Party back to life and there will at least be a discussion about some semblance of rule of law, fiscal responsibility, incentives to work and grow and yes, some small measure of control of our borders. 70% of the population sees the country as in decline -- if he could move that number up to only 60% that would be a very credible presidency. Optimism used to be one of the hallmarks of America -- heck, if he got to only 60% I might think there was a chance that we could get back to over half of the country feeling we were moving forward!
I leave you with this parting video that I don't believe because this is a cynical time. It does make me wonder however -- if such a video could have been manufactured for one honest life that Hildebeast had touched, does anyone really think it would not have been and every one of us would know the story?
The fact that it exists at all about Trump and we have not read a story of how it is "all fake, lies, disgusting, etc" is at least intriguing. I certainly understand why I have not seen it other than having it pointed out to me on YouTube if it is true.
Could it be true? If there was anything remotely this touching about Hildebeast, would we not ALL be so sick of the story we would be ready to barf? Think about it.
Being a hero as an investigative agency in the US is pretty easy. If you ignore candidates that are in good standing with "The Party" (TP-D), you are a HERO, point out that you have found 650K e-mails on a sex offender named "Weiner"(s) computer, and you are a ZERO!
Oh, you fully vetted 660K emails in a little over a week and are CERTAIN that there is NO PROBLEM?
I consider Haidt to be a genius, but while he is a "fan" of wisdom, as an atheist he misses the largest spiritual truth in the universe, that the BEGINNING of wisdom is the fear of God. We are all prone to believe that our viewpoint is "special" -- unless we internalize at a deep level that we are special ONLY in deep relation to God, we are pretty much doomed to keep forgetting our place.
Thus Haidt, a more brilliant human than I will ever be, says the following ...
So are we doomed? Will the polarizing trends identified by Pew just keep going until the country splits in two? Maybe John Adams was right in 1814 when he wrote, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.”
This has been a frightening year for many Americans. Questions about the durability, legitimacy and wisdom of our democracy have been raised, both here and abroad. But the true test of our democracy—and our love of country—will come on the day after the election. Starting next Wednesday, each of us must decide what kind of person we want to be and what kind of relationship we want to have with our politically estranged cousins.
Regular readers of this blog know that America WAS NOT founded as a "democracy" but rather as a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC ... BOistan is very close to a "democracy", which is precisely why at least the 10-20% of us remaining that realize that are so concerned about being completely crushed by mob rule. John Adams was correct when he said that "democracy never lasts long", as he was when he said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other".
In general, I think the column is EXCELLENT -- I would, the only hope for my dwindling unwilling to be tribal tribe is that enough people of the dominant tribe are willing to follow this advice ...
Second, step back and think about your goals. In the long run, would you rather change people or hate them? If you actually want to persuade or otherwise influence people, you should know that it is nearly impossible to change people’s minds by arguing with them. When there is mutual antipathy, there is mutual motivated reasoning, defensiveness and hypocrisy.
But anything that opens the heart opens the mind as well, so do what you can to cultivate personal relationships with those on the other side. Spend time together, and let the proximity recommended by Cicero strengthen ties. Familiarity does not breed contempt. Research shows that as things or people become familiar, we like them more.
So if you happen to read this and try spending time with a Burkean Christian that will do their very best to love you even if we disagree, I'm available. If you find yourself leaving groups, shunning friends and family, etc because they are "not of your tribe", then perhaps at least consideration of Haidt (hate?) is in order?
The set of people that are like myself -- who understand that America was a Constitutional Republic and BOistan is not, is exceedingly small -- I'd guess less than 5% of the population. BO has usurped the most basic of separated powers in spending money on BOcare not approved by congress -- who sued him and it went to the DC court of appeals and BO LOST -- badly. Nobody cares. We are no longer a Constitutional Republic -- so no longer America. (that is just one example, there are a bunch)
The SCOTUS won't take the case because it would be 4 to 4, thus allowing the DC circuit ruling to stand and BO to be guilty of brazenly violating his Constitutional oath, getting caught and adjudicated against. A HUGE percentage of BOistan has no clue what I'm even talking about.
But BOistan does NOT have a Constitution that means anything, so he skates.
So Haidt is wrong on where he lives. If you care about IDEAS -- and if you were American, you had to, because America was founded on IDEAS, not race, religion, territory or ethnic identity, then it is already "the day after". America might well have survived physical destruction, but it could no more survive the loss of shared ideas, than Christianity could survive the loss of Christ being THE WORD, fully God and fully man -- born of a virgin, dying for our sins and rising from the dead. All the churches could be physically destroyed, but as long as THE TRUTH remains, Christianity will live on.
And so it was with America. It could only exist when a supermajority understood what it was.
So Christians, continue to do the best you possibly can to love those that call you names and hate you -- and pray for them, certainly for their souls, but I also think it is OK to pray that they will read Haidt and decide that they would rather "re-educate us" than kill us.
If Hillary wins as we expect, the best thing about that might be that those "re-education camps" will be a great place to lose A LOT of weight!
The Chinese keep having success in space, and Russia allows a few BOistani's to ride up for cash.
In the 1960's, Kennedy called space "the high frontier", and in old America, a large percentage considered leadership in space to be a critical element in claims to being "the greatest nation on the planet".
BO declared the old exceptional greatest nation to be dead, and established BOistan. A tribal war zone dedicated to each tribe getting "what's theirs", often by taking it from another tribe using the powers of the BOistan government to help them.
The sad thing about Trump's hope to "Make America Great Again" is that the task requires the re-establishment of America, and then in many areas, getting it back to the point where it is an "also ran" again.
One of the founding principles that killed America and created BOistan is that of punishing productivity and innovation while rewarding doing less work and doing work that has less monetary value. The greater the disparity, the more power "The Party" (TP-D) gains, and the less total wealth there is to transfer -- so eventually, money has no value and the ONLY remaining value is your standing with TP. They are the ones that will decide what happens to you, since the financial independence you worked so hard to attain is GONE.
They have always understood this -- it is just that they don't talk about it much. Actions however speak louder than words.
The chart in the attached article is quite interesting -- the government still thinks it is a great idea to reward single earner couples for some reason. You can make over $118K, paying in $679K, getting back $819K -- not bad!
If you have TWO earners however, at $76K, you are already a cash cow ... paying in $919K, but only getting back $839K. The worst spot to be is right around the $118K income point -- you get back $338K LESS than you paid in! A feller could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with $338K! (above that, you have more and more income that isn't taxed on FICA, so at say "250K each" (500K total), FICA becomes "noise".
One might erroneously think that TP would find women living in stable families with high earnings that are the same as their spouse to be a GOOD thing -- but clearly they want to punish it! Stable families are not one of their priorities -- and CERTAINLY not stable high income families. They might even breed little political opponents ... although since TP controls all the education which is basically TP indoctrination these days, even that seems questionable.
I'm guessing that we can understand their thinking a bit here:
Another large category of “losers,” say experts, is younger generations compared with older ones. In 2010, Social Security began paying out more in benefits than it is collecting in taxes. The decline in the number of workers per retiree from three to two as baby boomers retire is making this problem worse.
TP is pretty much assured that the largest percentage of the dual income high earners are "educated" (read "indoctrinated"), so they trust TP ... likewise, the young are HEAVILY indoctrinated these days, so it will take A LOT of pain to get them to look at what is happening to them. Perhaps it is Animal House that has the true wisdom here.
TP spends a lot of money on teachers unions to make sure you trust them -- looks like it pays off pretty well!
I'm not one to object to a well formed female derrière, but I'm not certain it really makes the case for me relative to needing a female president -- let alone HILLARY <dear God, please remove that image from my mind!>!
I watched game 6 of the series, including some Hildebeast commercials. Oh, that Trump is SO embarrassing! Our children must be protected! ... Slick Willie? Stains on dresses, cigars in nether regions, oral sex not being "sex" -- oh never mind. If "The Party" didn't have double standards it would have no standards at all!
I find the image above to be a really good one to show us how "chaste" and "child friendly" the Clintons are.
Give a man a fish ... teach him to fish, show him fishnet -- oh, never mind.
I am SHOCKED, shocked I say, to see that Democrats have suddenly discovered that they are HUGE respecters of tradition! How wonderful!
It would be great if we could "all get along" and still have freedom and liberty. In human history, comity was manufactured by the intimidation of the weaker to follow the stronger or SHUT UP! and if they failed to comply, banishing or killing them. China, North Korea, Cuba and Islamic states still follow this time honored tradition.
The widespread belief in Christianity coupled with Greek philosophy provided a framework on which Western civilization was able to arrive at a set of transcendent beliefs that were shared by 80-90% of all educated people. Even better, those beliefs allowed for not only not killing the 10-20% that did not agree, but had a bias toward allowing their beliefs and even LOVING them in spite of their not agreeing on basic tenets of an extremely large group. Those values were what made "Western civilization" more that just a "big tribe".
While transcendence is about more than reason, in the Western case, reason, coupled with "The Enlightenment" was the base from which the democratic republics sprang. In the US, the church was separate from the state, but it's existence was assumed -- as Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other".
Without even a tiny attempt at consistency, there can be no reason nor truth. Democrats have ZERO respect for tradition in reality. The base bedrock of humanity -- marriage, gender, respect for life, private property, free speech, the Golden Rule, or the right to bear arms. Not a single element of the strongest of traditions and codified law in human history is so much as a momentary consideration to the left as they steamroller all of them and treat anyone believing in tradition as "racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary, etc".
"Liberals" DO have one gigantic "tradition". It is the tradition of having only one consistent principle -- POWER!!! On all else, they twist in the wind -- usually being wholly against any mention of "tradition" as they trample the sacred into the mud as if it were yesterdays garbage. But nearly as important to their efforts as complete INconsistency, is their ability to be completely shameless. They have no compunction at all to trot out "tradition" when it suits them as if it was actually something they were concerned about!
We can't "get along", because one of the supposed "American" parties as sworn allegiance to BOistan and as it has been for years now, it is TOTALLY obvious that they will stop at NOTHING to achieve total control and begin the operation of cleansing BOistan of all who disagree with their world view.
The left has one "tradition" that is "sacred" -- totally and utterly destroy your opposition by any and all means possible. The more bloody and painful, the better.
I'm reminded of Hank Williams Jr -- listen to the following and consider "why do we kill and imprison?" ...
In a nation with a lick of common sense, nobody but a worthless party hack would even try to peddle a story this stupid, let alone a supposedly "major news outlet" -- it is a case of the old saw of "a man accused of killing 3 men and a dog, promptly produces the dog alive".
Democrat vote fraud is old and well understood -- the Daley machine in Chicago was especially egregious, but it is "Bad, and Nationwide" (the song is just entertainment, otherwise unrelated).
So, unsurprisingly, the official position of the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) is usually that "there is no such thing as voter fraud" ... see scholarly article here. Since "there is no such thing", we need no voter id, where we MUST have a picture ID to for example "mail a UPS package". Ballots can be mailed all over, even a couple months before the election.
Oh, but wait, some poor disoriented Trump supporter in IA has been found engaging in "voter fraud". I've run into snowbirds that pioneered absentee ballots, because "they lived in both places" -- all the state offices were different anyway, and they "voted for the same top of the ticket so it didn't matter". It is pretty clear to anyone that cares about fair elections that there are millions of cases of voter fraud in BOistan every election, and there used to be in the US as well. At least 90% of them happen to be Democrat -- but their standard position is "it doesn't exist" -- except if you find a disoriented Trump supporter to make an example out of.
It's a new nation -- apparently they are experimenting a bit more with the idea of claiming there is no DEMOCRAT voter fraud, while at the same time deciding to cast aspersions on the votes of the opposition.
Old technique, new area -- deficit in opposition administration? HUGE problem. Democrat? Probably not as big a deficit as it should be! Sexual harassment by Democrat? Oxymoron, never happens. Opposition? The only way that anyone could NOT believe in any accusation wholeheartedly is if they are a misogynist!
We could go on for pages -- BOistan is a world with no actual reality, only "political reality".
