babylonsister
babylonsister's JournalRegardless of What Happens Today, We Are the Future of America
Regardless of What Happens Today, We Are the Future of America
by Robert Reich | November 8, 2022 - 7:55am
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Obviously, I can’t tell you how today’s elections will turn out. But I do want to reassure you about one thing: Over the long term, we are winning.
Ask yourself: Why are the election deniers, the monied interests, and the bigots and the haters fighting so hard to defeat us? Why are they telling such blatant lies? Why are they so desperate to suppress our votes? Why are they so willing to violate the Constitution, the rule of law, and common decency in order to claw their way to victory?
For one simple reason: They are afraid of us.
They know deep in their hearts that we are the future of America.
We who call ourselves progressives. We who are people of color. We who are young. We who are women. We who are new immigrants to these shores. We who are LGBTQ people. We who are Muslim and Jewish and people of every faith, or no faith. We who are poor. We who are average working people who need and deserve better jobs and higher wages. We who believe in democracy and cherish the Constitution and the rule of law.
They are afraid of us because we are gaining in numbers, gaining in strength. Our voices are growing louder.
more...
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/103889/regardless-of-what-happens-today-we-are-the-future-of-america
The Rude Pundit: Vote Because Fuck Them
Amen, brother! 
https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2022/11/vote-because-fuck-them.html
The Rude Pundit
Proudly lowering the level of political discourse
11/07/2022
Vote Because Fuck Them
Goddamn, I can't fucking take them anymore, any of them, any of the assorted MAGA racist freaks and moral lepers and violent morons, any of the QAnon fucknuts who are so goddamn deranged that there should be a Bedlam opened just to store them in and keep them out of the sight of decent human beings, any of the shitposting mob masturbating to bleeding over their oh-so-edgy memes, any of the gun-fellating, immigrant-hating bible-humpers, any of the cadre of corrupt cunts and cocksuckers who claim that the 2020 election was corrupt, any of the shit-smeared liars and rube exploiters who make bank and gain power because that's better than telling the motherfucking truth, any of the scurrilous lickspittles groveling on the ground, prostrating themselves before the slothful, gluttonous, greedy, lustful, pride-engorged, envious, and wrath-driven Donald fucking Trump, as loathsome a corpulent creature to ever undulate out of the depths of crude criminality to demand obeisance and tribute from the vile and deranged and scabby and dumb crowds who would rather blow up the country than even entertain the possibility that they have been, are being, and will be conned and manipulated and mentally raped by savage purveyors of faith, of falsehoods, of fantasies, from Fox to Falwell. I cannot fucking take them anymore.
So I'm gonna go vote on Election Day because fuck them all. Fuck them in front and then turn them over and fuck them in the back. Vote because if enough of us do, we will force them to show their asses sooner than they wanted to. We know, we fucking well know, that they are begging for an excuse for violence. They are begging for a chance to assert the power they believe they have, that they have accumulated because of the mental illness of their ideology, helped by the fucked up timing of Trumpian rhetoric and pandemic-induced paranoia. They want to show how they can overturn our votes, how they can just toss them out, how they can change them to their favor. They've teed it up: only they can win and it be legitimate, and they are mostly so rankly stupid that they don't see there is no logic in that idea. They don't fucking care. So vote because they are voting. Vote because they wanna kill us. Vote because they wanna dominate us. Vote because we can win this. Vote because our winning will drive the final nail into their empty heads, breaking their tiny brains and forcing their worst plans into the light. Then we can have that fight and not wait to see how fucking bad it gets in 2024.
And we may very well fucking lose. But they want that despair to engulf us. They wanna convince us we already lost and keep us from voting. I don't give a fuck right now about that. Fuck them. Fuck them hard and fuck them rough. If we're gonna lose, I gonna go down swinging.
I want us to go down swinging for Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock and John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro and Val Demings and Charlie Crist and Gretchen Whitmer and Tim Ryan and so fucking many others. I want us to go down swinging for what we know is right. I want us to go down swinging because we love the country that we can be, not the country we used to be. I want us to go down swinging so that if we lose we can say that we made it fucking hurt.
But I don't wanna fucking lose. If you already voted, fuck yeah. You go, you millions of beautiful believers in reality. And if you haven't, if you're like me, with an Election Day voting fetish, then line up and, especially in places where they wanna try to stop you from voting, stand there and look tough and smug and vote like your fucking life depends on it. Like all our lives depend on it. Like you wanna finally turn, at last, and tell every single one of those disgusting motherfuckers up top there to, truly, shut the fuck up already.
Donald Trump Jr., Gunning for World's-Most-Despicable-POS Title...
Trump Family Values
Donald Trump Jr., Gunning for World’s-Most-Despicable-POS Title, Continues to Attack John Fetterman for Having a Stroke
The ex-president’s namesake claimed the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania is “brain-dead” and has “mush for brains”—which we’re guessing Dr. Oz had no problem with.
By Bess Levin
November 7, 2022
No one has ever accused Donald Trump Jr. of being a decent human being, but over the weekend, he went from “not a good person” to “despicable piece of shit” when he used his time at a Florida rally to mock Senate candidate John Fetterman for having had a stroke, and claimed that the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor is brain dead.
Speaking as the warm-up for his father in Miami, Junior referred to Fetterman as “the brain-dead potential senator from Pennsylvania” and told the crowd: “I believe that if you’re going to be in the United States Senat[e], you should have basic cognitive function…like, to have a working brain.… But that’s what we’re up against. We’re up against a Democrat Party today that doesn’t believe that a United States senator should not have mush for brains. ‘Mush for brains should be 100% fine,’ that should be the Democrat slogan for 2024.”
Junior did not mention his endorsement of Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who has admitted to being “accountable” for abusing his ex-wife, allegedly telling her, “I’m going to blow your f---ing brains out”; had his home address placed on a “caution list” because of his “violent tendencies,” according to police records obtained by the Associate Press; and says he used to make people play Russian roulette with him. Walker has not denied these incidents and either says he doesn’t remember them or associates them with a dissociative identity disorder diagnosis, once known as multiple personality disorder. (He has since said he has “overcome” his illness, despite doctors warning it’s not that simple.) Others have also suggested that Walker, a former football star, could be afflicted with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. WBUR noted in April that Walker’s “impulsive aggression is typical of former football players suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain illness caused by repeated hits,” and while it’s not clear if Walker has ever officially been diagnosed with that condition, the NFL has said that up to a third of ex-players could suffer from it.
Earlier in the weekend, Junior—who was once basically deemed too stupid to collude with Russia by Robert Mueller—previewed his rally comments in a rant in which he complained that it’s unfair of the media to call those mocking a stroke victim “ableist.”
more...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/11/donald-trump-jr-john-fetterman-stroke-brain-dead
Trump Spent the Weekend Giving the DOJ Even More Reasons to Indict Him
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/11/donald-trump-classified-documents-rallyLevin Report
Trump Spent the Weekend Giving the DOJ Even More Reasons to Indict Him
It’s generally considered a bad idea to confess to the crime you’re being investigated for.
By Bess Levin
November 7, 2022
It remains to be seen whether Donald Trump will be indicted by the Justice Department for taking top secret documents with him to Mar-a-Lago and refusing to give them back, or if he’ll continue to get away with what seems to be a very serious crime. One thing the “yes, he will be indicted” column has going for it? The fact that the former president spent the weekend appearing to confess to said crimes.
On Sunday, at a rally in Miami, the ex-president ranted to the crowd that the FBI “violated” his “Fourth Amendment rights” when it raided Mar-a-Lago last August, complaining that no other former president has had his for-profit club and private residence searched. He added: “Presidents leave, they take things, they take documents, they take things, they read them. Nobody else has ever gone through this.”
In fact, despite Trump’s repeated insistence to the contrary, no other American president has ever taken presidential documents—which are the property of the US government—to their home and refused to give them back despite being ordered to do so on numerous occasions. Which makes Trump’s “everybody does it” line not only BS but, according to legal experts, potential evidence to be used against him in court.
After the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in August, Trump claimed that Barack Obama had absconded with “33 million pages” of presidential documents, many of them classified—a lie that the National Archives itself debunked. Last month, Trump also suggested at a rally that George H.W. Bush, who is no longer alive, should be prosecuted for hiding classified documents in a “bowling-alley-slash-Chinese-restaurant,” which also never happened.
As The Hill noted on Monday, congressional Republicans have said that they will go nuclear if the Justice Department indicts Trump, which some believe could happen in the next several months. Speaking to the outlet, Ted Cruz, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned, “If Biden treats the Department of Justice as partisan storm troopers, then Congress is justified in using whatever tools Congress has to stop that abuse of power.”
Pollsters Have 'No F*cking Idea What's Going to Happen' This Election
Pollsters Have ‘No F*cking Idea What’s Going to Happen’ This Election
MARGIN OF ERROR
Pollsters and election handicappers are very worried they could be wrong in decisive ways for the 2022 midterms.
Matt Fuller
Senior Politics Editor
Roger Sollenberger
Political Reporter
Published Nov. 07, 2022 3:29AM ET
If the pollsters and handicappers end up being spectacularly wrong on Election Night, there’s one group that won’t be too surprised: the pollsters and handicappers themselves.
The 2022 midterms could go exactly as modeled—a 20-some-odd-seat pickup for Republicans in the House and maybe a 51-49 GOP Senate—but the people who watch these races the closest are also warning they might be wrong in decisive ways. In either direction.
No one really knows because, like every election, pollsters are extrapolating their best guess based on a set of assumptions. But unlike previous elections, the assumptions are getting bigger.
According to Dave Wasserman, the U.S. House editor at the Cook Political Report, the big problem is that “response rates suck.”
more...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pollsters-have-no-fcking-idea-whats-going-to-happen-during-2022-midterm-elections?ref=home
From the Fringe to the Mainstream: Christian Nationalism Threatens Democracy
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-berkowitz/103861/from-the-fringe-to-the-mainstream-christian-nationalism-threatens-democracyFrom the Fringe to the Mainstream: Christian Nationalism Threatens Democracy
by Bill Berkowitz | November 6, 2022 - 6:31am
As we close in on the Midterm elections, there has been lots of chatter about Christian nationalism, which has deep roots in the country, long before it featured prominently in the 2016 presidential election. From the country’s founding, Christians have often merged religious faith with national identity. And, according to a report in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The ReAwaken America Tour is currently working its way across America to reawaken Christian nationalism.”
The Rev. Jennifer Butler, who attended a ReAwaken America tour stop in Batavia, New York, wrote: “The ReAwaken America speeches touted anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs in the name of Christianity. Speeches were rife with apocalyptic and polarizing predictions of God’s vengeance befalling a wide range of opponents, including the founder of the World Economic Forum, President Joe Biden, and New York Attorney General Leticia James.”
snip//
The Baptist Joint Committee sponsors the Christians Against Christian Nationalism Project. A recent statement deals with the threat of Christian nationalism: “Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.”
Katherine Stewart pointed out that Christian nationalism is not “a social movement arising from the grass roots and aiming to satisfy the real needs of its base. It isn’t. This is a leader-driven movement. The leaders set the agenda, and their main goals are power and access to public money. They aren’t serving the interests of their base; they are exploiting their base as a means of exploiting the rest of us.”
As Rev. Jennifer Butler, author of Who Stole my Bible?: Reclaiming Scripture as a Handbook for Resisting Tyranny, maintained, rather than dealing with real issues affecting Americans, “politicians and pastors under the ReAwaken America tent are touring the country, preying on the fear and anger of people — often white — who feel like today’s country is leaving them behind.”
Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Midterms
https://politicalwire.com/2022/11/06/russia-reactivates-its-trolls-and-bots-ahead-of-midterms/Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Midterms
November 6, 2022 at 8:21 am EST By Taegan Goddard
“It has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most contested races, including the Senate seats up for grabs in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, calculating that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort.”
“The campaigns show not only how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation but also how purveyors of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by the major social media platforms to remove or play down false or deceptive content.”
Manchin erupts at Biden over coal comments
With 'friends' like him... 
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/politics/joe-manchin-joe-biden-coal-plants/index.html
Manchin erupts at Biden over coal comments
Shawna Mizelle
By Shawna Mizelle, CNN
Updated 3:38 PM EDT, Sat November 5, 2022
Sen. Joe Manchin on Saturday slammed President Joe Biden after he called for coal plants across the US to be shuttered, saying Biden’s remarks are “outrageous and divorced from reality” and suggesting it’s “time he learn a lesson.”
snip//
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded in a statement Saturday saying Biden’s words have been “twisted.”
“The President’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense. The President was commenting on a fact of economics and technology: as it has been from its earliest days as an energy superpower, America is once again in the midst of an energy transition,” Jean-Pierre said.
Jean-Pierre’s statement only mentioned Manchin directly once, saying he is a “tireless advocate for his state and the hard-working men and women who live there.”
This story has been updated with additional reaction.
Former House Republican Says Trump's Midterm Senate Rallies Are A Disaster For The GOP
https://www.politicususa.com/2022/11/05/trump-senate-rallies-disaster.htmlPosted on Sat, Nov 5th, 2022 by Jason Easley
Former House Republican Says Trump’s Midterm Senate Rallies Are A Disaster For The GOP
Former Rep Charlie Dent (R-PA) said that Trump should not be in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Georgia, and his rallies are a disaster for the Republican Party.
Dent also pointed out that if Trump announces his candidacy before the Georgia race is settled, it could lead to a repeat of 2020 for Republicans and they could lose their chance to take back the Senate.
No one other than people with the last name of Trump thinks that these rallies are a good idea. Oz appearing with Trump and Mastriano is a terrible idea that will destroy the fake moderate image that Oz is attempting to fool swing voters with in Pennsylvania.
The last thing that any Republican candidate in a swing state should want is for Air Force None to touch down in their race.
The Trump disaster is rolling through the country, and it could cost Republicans any chance of winning the Senate.
Are mail-in ballots not counted until day of election?
Anyone know? I show my ballot was received 24 October, but as of this morning, 6 November, it has not been counted. Should I be worried or is this standard? Thanks for any insight. 
Edit to add...I'm none the wiser...I guess I can assume it's been counted and accepted because I haven't heard otherwise.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx
“Processing” means different things in different states, but typically the first step is to compare the signature on the outside of the return envelope with the voter’s signature on record to ensure a match.
In some states, once the signature is verified the envelope can be opened and the ballot prepared for tabulation by removing it from the envelope, flattening it and stacking it with other ballots. Some states may allow ballots to be run through the scanner, as well, but without hitting the “tally” button to actually obtain results.
Thirty-eight states and the Virgin Islands permit election officials to begin processing absentee/mail ballots prior to the election.
Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.
Nine states and Washington, D.C., permit election officials to begin processing absentee/mail ballots on Election Day, but prior to the closing of the polls.
Alabama, District of Columbia, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Maryland does not permit the processing of absentee/mail ballots until 10 a.m. on Thursday after an election, based on state regulation.
And in two states and Puerto Rico, the day on which processing may begin is not specified:
Connecticut allows processing to begin at the discretion of the local registrar of voters.
Ohio allows processing to begin before counting at a time determined by the board of elections.
Puerto Rico does not specify.
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