The Republicans’ next tactic to delegitimize the election

And so it begins.

If they can’t get their way with Voter ID laws designed to suppress Democratic votes, Republicans are setting the stage to blame what is shaping up to be Mitt Romney’s loss on the voting machines.  And as is usually the case when the Republicans start screaming about vote fraud, there is no there there.

The Republican National Committee alleges voting machines in Nevada and five other states are flawed and improperly showing votes for President Obama instead of GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

In a letter sent Thursday to state election officials, the RNC’s chief counsel says a “significant number” of cases have been reported of votes being placed for Obama when a voter cast a ballot for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

Here’s the thing: Even if this were true – glitches do happen sometimes – this isn’t a problem in Nevada. We use voter-verifiable, paper-trail voting machines. In fact, the machines provide a two-step double-check, the first being where the voter reviews their ballot on the large touchscreen, and again, a second time by viewing the print-out that scrolls under the plastic window to the left of the touchscreen.  At both of these verification points the voter has the opportunity to go back and change or correct any of their votes before officially casting it.  If any person casts a vote for the wrong candidate after being given TWO chances to correct it, well, I’m sorry, but that’s on them.

And it appears, that hasn’t happened at all.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said his department has had about four complaints of the 400,000 ballots cast this election. In every instance, the issue was corrected before the voter cast his or her ballot, he said.

Four out of 400,000.

Hardly the “significant number” the RNC letter alleges.  And each vote was corrected before it was cast.

The Republicans are also trying to imply that the machines are not well-maintained and glitchy.

The RNC asks that machines be recalibrated and voters be reminded to double-check their choices before their votes are recorded.

Lomax said it is possible for the machines to fall out of sync, but the county recalibrates the voting machines at least once a day.

As far as demanding that “voters be reminded to double-check their choices before casting their votes,”  as I mentioned above, that process is already built into the voting process.

Did they run this by Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) before going down this road?

In 2003, when the state decided to go completely to the touchscreen voting machines, there was a hue and cry from all sides of the political spectrum about the need for voter-verifiable machines and that meant a paper trail. I remember going to town halls and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, and Non-Partisans who were determined that the integrity of their votes would be protected.  It was so loud and so bipartisan (poli-partisan?) that county clerks and registrars across the state were set back on their heels by the people of Nevada.

From an article in the Reno Gazette-Journal in December 2003:

“A paper trail is an intrinsic component of voter confidence, ” Heller said in explaining why he insisted that Sequoia–which already has nearly 3,000 machines installed in Clark County– include the receipt printers on new machines for the upcoming elections. The printers must be added on existing machines by 2006.

Heller mentioned the Florida elections in 2000, saying, “The Florida debacle and the chaos created by the’hanging and pregnant chad’controversy clearly demonstrate the need to move forward with advanced technology.”

While the printers add to the cost of the voting systems, Heller said “money takes a back seat to accuracy, security and voter confidence.” The printers let voters see their ballot choices before finalizing their votes.

The decision to go with Sequoia machines was based in part on a review by the state Gaming Control Board’s slot machine experts who issued a report saying the Diebold machine that was analyzed “represented a legitimate threat to the integrity of the election process.”

Marc McDermott, the GCB’s electronic services division chief, said the Sequoia machine”represents a much more secure option.”

From USA Today in 2004:

[Secretary of State Dean] Heller purchased the equipment in December, after his staff conducted town hall meetings and solicited comments from voters. The feedback came after voting activists discovered security breaches and conflicts of interest among executives at voting equipment companies, particularly Ohio-based Diebold Inc.

“Voters were very vocal in their concerns about paperless electronic voting,” Heller said at a Carson City community center where voters received red, white and blue “I voted touchscreen” stickers as they left the polls. “Diebold’s controversies were on the leading edge of voters’ minds.”

Voter advocates praised Nevada’s system, in which paper records will be kept in county election offices for 22 months and used in case of a recount.

For the RNC to come in now and try to pull this shit just shows how desperate they are.

The crazy

It’s too much for me. Really.  I can’t find the words to express my complete and utter disbelief at what is passing for the Republican Party.  I thought things couldn’t get any worse than the Clinton years when the Republicans went completely around the bend with their endless investigations and faux outrage. I was wrong.

I can’t believe these fools aren’t being laughed off the national stage.  If the guy at the counter at the local diner was saying some of the shit these idiots are, sane people would quietly ignore him. They most certainly would not give him a microphone and a column in the local paper.

If you want to see what I’ve been up to, check out The Neophyte Photographer.  Making photographs seems far more productive than bemoaning the current state of U.S. politics.

I’ll have to write about something else, I suppose.

In the meantime, Sweetie and I will be celebrating a belated Valentine’s Day at the newly re-opened La Vecchia tonight.

Looking forward to a three-day weekend too.

PS – Who saw Jon Stewart give Arne Duncan a good grilling the other night?

Bad, bad Leroy Gingrich

Wow. Either all those South Carolinian conservative evangelicals stayed home yesterday, or they don’t really believe their own definition of “family values.”  If they did, Rick Santorum should have been their guy.  Instead he came in a distant third with less than a fifth of the vote.

From the sword-sharp pen of James Carville:

I mean, most people thought it was kind of a watermark when your Tea Party gang booed the golden rule. You know, I’ve spent some time in Philly and they have always thought they were pretty radical because they actually booed Santa Claus and Willie Mays. Philly, I’ve got news for you — you ain’t got nothing on South Carolina Republicans. They just aren’t buying any of that do-unto-others garbage.

[ . . . ]

I would like to take a moment to revel: I cannot personally tell you how pleased I am to see old Newt rise to the top after listening to all of your nauseating, sickening lectures on the evils of government and the importance of family values. Now, you guys have to deal with a $1.6 million Freddie Mac consultant (who says he wasn’t a lobbyist) who has been married three times.

Any high ground the social conservatives might have had going into yesterday’s South Carolina Republican primary vaporized in their full-throated approval of a serial cheater, D.C. insider and child labor advocate.  Seriously, I’ve got nothin’.  The Republican base has made it crystal clear:  They want to hate. They LOVE to hate. They want the meanest junkyard dog they can find, and that’s what they went for yesterday.

Sigh

Gawd the corporate media makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

From the NYT:

Mitt Romney’s quest to swiftly lock down the Republican presidential nomination with a commanding finish in the Iowa caucuses was spoiled on Tuesday night by the surging candidacy of Rick Santorum, who fought him to a draw on a shoestring budget by winning over conservatives who remain skeptical of Mr. Romney.

A commanding finish? Huh?

Come on. No one expected Romney to win Iowa, let alone do so with a “commanding finish.”  In fact, until a few weeks ago I don’t think anyone thought Romney was going to even get a third place showing.  That he is (at this writing) within four votes the kind of religious right candidate to whom Iowa Republicans love to give their votes  tells me that Mitt will be the Republican nominee.

Then again, stranger things have happened.

 

 

Three faces of the GOP

The three factions of the modern Republican party are duking it out tonight in Iowa.

There’s the religious right’s Rick Santorum, the pro-business crowd’s Mitt Romney, and the libertarian wing’s Ron Paul.

We all knew this was bound to happen one day, didn’t we?

Pass the popcorn.

Ooof.

John W. Smart on the scary possibility of a President Gingrich:

Warts may be appealing in 2012. We are done with messiahs.

Ah, the good old days!

What Newt Gingrich would have the U.S. return to

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike. Growing opposition to child labor in the North caused many factories to move to the South. By 1900, states varied considerably in whether they had child labor standards and in their content and degree of enforcement. By then, American children worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers.

The fact that he is leading in all GOP primary polls right now tells me everything I need to know about today’s Republican party.

Gingrich won’t back off support for relaxed child labor laws

“not a proper subject of inquiry”

. . . this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults – a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.

Lin Wood, speaking on behalf of his client, GOP presidential candidate and family man, Herman Cain.

 

The thing is, I actually agree with this sentiment.  Do I think it’s scuzzy that men on the left and the right can’t keep it in their pants?  You better believe it.  I find them disgusting. I wouldn’t want to be their wife or their girlfriend. 

 

I don’t give a shit who is doing who. Honestly, I don’t. 

 

And as I have said to my husband more than a few times over the years, Do you think your private sex life should be a condition of your employment? Do you think it would be right if your boss called you into his office one day and demanded to know if you were having an extra-marital affair, and that if he found out you were having an affair that he had the right to fire you? What does that have to do with your ability to do your job? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That would be between you and me. Your boss has nothing to do with it, UNLESS said affair affected the quality or security of your work.

 

I would much rather Herman Cain be judged on his abysmal lack of knowledge, experience, and his habit of throwing out the race card any time anyone dares challenge him. I don’t want this to be what sends him out of the race. I want the voters to look at his record (none), his ideas (bereft), his knowledge of anything outside his Tea Party talking points  (“Uzbekibekistanstan”  “. . .  Libya . . . um . .  .”) and judge him accordingly. Put him in Santorum territory, ya know? 

 

But here’s the thing.  These are the very people who have made it their mission to peek into the bedroom of every person in America and who flagrantly scorn the very teachings of the god they profess to follow.

 

In other words, I have had it up to my teeth with the religiosity and false morality of the Republican party. 

 

I am sick of these assholes who holler about GOD! and JESUS! and who moan about the unborn while cutting poor children off food stamps and health care.

 

I am sick of these panty-sniffers who scream for “abstinence only” sex education and who would force a woman to bear a child she neither wanted nor was able to care for, but will deny her the very birth control that would prevent her from ever having to consider that hardest decision of all. 

 

I’m fed up with people who keen about the sanctity of life but cheer at the death penalty and whoop it up at the thought people dying for lack of health insurance.

 

I’ve had it with those who willingly send our sons and daughters to die in a land faraway and refuse to acknowledge the innocent lives snuffed out by our bombs and drones.

 

I’m pissed as hell at these “moral” people who ignore their Jesus’ admonition to visit the poor and the sick and who call us thieves or wanting a hand out because we want to make sure that no one dies in the gutter and that anyone who needs to see a doctor can do so without risking her livelihood, her home, or her life savings.

 

I am sick of a morality that brays that all the ill that befalls anyone is their “own damn fault”  and that the rest of us are under no obligation to lift a finger to assist them.

 

So, fuck you, Herman Cain. And fuck that faux morality that you came riding in on.

 

Andrew Sullivan nails it

Republicanism as Religion

And so this political deadlock conceals a religious war at its heart. Why after all should one abandon or compromise sacred truths? And for those whose Christianity can only be sustained by denial of modern complexity, of scientific knowledge, and of what scholarly studies of the Bible’s  origins have revealed, this fusion of political and spiritual lives into one seamless sensibility and culture, is irresistible. And public reminders of modernity – that, say, many Americans do not celebrate Christmas, that gay people have human needs, that America will soon be a majority-minority country and China will overtake the US in GDP by mid-century – are terribly threatening.

But all these nuances do not therefore vanish. The gays don’t disappear. China keeps growing. The population becomes browner and browner. Women’s lives increasingly become individual choices not social fates. And this enrages and terrifies the fundamentalist even more. Hence the occasional physical lashing out – think Breivik or McVeigh – but more profoundly, the constant endless insatiable cultural lashing out at the “elites” who have left fundamentalism behind, and have, on many core issues, science on their side. So within this religious core, and fundamentalist mindset, you also have the steely solder of ressentiment, intensified even further by a period of white middle and working class decline and economic crisis.

That’s how I explain the current GOP. It can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked.

If your view of conservatism is one rooted in an instinctual, but agile, defense of tradition, in a belief in practical wisdom that alters constantly with circumstance, in moderation and the defense of the middle class as the stabilizing ballast of democracy, in limited but strong government … then the GOP is no longer your party (or mine).

Religion has replaced all of this, reordered it, and imbued the entire political-economic-religious package with zeal. And the zealous never compromise. They don’t even listen.

The protector of our prosperity

Anyone surprised by this?

I saw this coming:

At the same lunch, which was sponsored by three conservative think tanks, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he plans to seek a legislative way to waive the $600 billion in national security cuts that would be required if the superpanel fails.

And this too:

At the lunch event and during an earlier House Armed Services Committee hearing, it became apparent that pro-defense Republicans — who also staunchly oppose any tax hikes to swell federal coffers — want the entire $1.2 trillion amount to come from domestic entitlement programs.

During the GOP supercommittee members’ closed-door meetings, “there is a feeling that the discretionary side has already given its part” of needed federal cuts under the August debt deal, Kyl said.

The Republicans will press the 12-member bipartisan panel to focus solely on reforming politically volatile entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

“In a $3.5 trillion [entitlement] budget, there is enough slop in the system” to find $1.2 trillion in savings “without touching benefits or how those programs work,” Kyl said.

But I haven’t heard it put quite this way before. Jeebus on a triscuit:

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) also zeroed in on entitlement program cuts.

“It is time we focus our fiscal restraint on the driver of the debt, instead of the protector of our prosperity,” McKeon said.

Up is down and black is white in Buck’s world.  McKeon has it exactly backwards. It isn’t Social Security that is driving out debt, it is endless wars and a bloated defense budget.  The protector of our prosperity IS our social safety net.