Monday, November 14, 2022

Trump ‘decided to be part of the problem’

 


Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a new interview that former President Trump’s tweet during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot attacking Pence was “reckless.”

“It angered me,” Pence told ABC’s David Muir. “But I turned to my daughter who was standing nearby, and I said, ‘It doesn’t take courage to break the law, it takes courage to uphold the law.’ ”

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3734106-pence-trump-decided-to-be-part-of-the-problem-on-jan-6/

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Democrats retain grip on U.S. Senate, defying Republican 'red wave' predictions

 Democrats retain grip on U.S. Senate, defying Republican 'red wave' predictions

 

PHOENIX, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Democrats held onto control of the U.S. Senate while limiting projected losses in the House, handing a major victory to President Joe Biden and extinguishing hopes of the "red wave" that Republicans had expected leading into the midterm elections.

Democratic leaders described the outcome - sealed late Saturday with a win for the incumbent senator in Nevada - as both a vindication of their agenda and a rebuke of Republican candidates, many of whom had parroted former president Donald Trump's false claims about widespread election fraud.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democrats-keep-control-us-senate-crush-republican-red-wave-hopes-2022-11-13/

 

Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Vigilantes Are Intimidating

 Vigilantes Are Intimidating Voters

Billy Wooten has been running elections in Georgia’s Chatham County for about 25 years. First, as a poll worker; then as a trainer for other poll workers; and now as the county’s board of elections supervisor.

For the most part, his instructions for the 15 or so poll workers who showed up for an October 14 orientation weren’t that different from years past: He always explains how to work the technology, how to respond when a voter shows up at the incorrect polling location, and what to do with the bags of ballots at the end of election night. But increasingly, Wooten, 67, has had to supplement his training with tips on how to respond to election-integrity skeptics, and especially the ones who have signed up to become poll watchers.
“Some people might decide they’re gonna be trouble.”
While the statewide audit ultimately showed no change in the outcome of the election, pro-Trump activists still attempted to badger Wooten’s workers.

Well, some of his workers.

As the team broke for lunch and headed for the parking lot where the election deniers were marching, “the white poll workers were told, ‘Enjoy your lunch,’” recalls Wooten, “and the Black workers were asked, ‘Were you still stealing votes?’”

It’s a tale as old as the nation itself. For over a century, agitators have attempted to interfere in fair elections, especially through attempted disenfranchisement of Black people.

While the United States ratified the 15th Amendment, enshrining Black mens’ right to vote, in 1870, it was far from a guarantee they could cast a ballot unscathed. In 1920, for example, a white mob repeatedly ordered Black men in Ocoee, Florida, to leave the voting precinct. When one Black man returned to the polls, a large group of white men—including members of the Ku Klux Klan—killed several Black men (historical accounts range somewhere between six and 60).

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/11/poll-watchers-election-armed-vigilantes/




Our world is unjust and replete with suffering

 Our world is unjust and replete with suffering

By Kieran Setiya
2nd November 2022
Our world is unjust and replete with suffering – what can an individual possibly do about it? As the philosopher Kieran Setiya writes, there are far better options than capitulation or despair.

Chances are, before you clicked the link that brought you here, you were doomscrolling: skimming from headline to headline in a daze of horror. Click once to see energy prices spiraling; click again for the faltering of democracy; a third time for glaciers melting as climate chaos worsens. Scanning the news can leave you feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the world's crises. What choice do we have but to deaden our emotions? The alternative would be guilt and shame for carrying on our lives without doing much to make a difference.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221102-injustice-is-everywhere-so-what-are-our-moral-duties

 


 

Promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory

 

Promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory on Telegram are claiming US President Joe Biden announced in an address to the nation that Democrats plan to "cheat" during midterm polls by flooding vote counts with fraudulent ballots after Election Day. This is false; Biden made no such remark, but instead urged Americans to be patient as election workers across the country tally all legally cast ballots, a process that takes time.


 

Sunday, November 6, 2022