Samantha
Samantha's JournalWe keep hearing about Trump needing to hold his base -- but how big is his base?
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Trump received the votes of just 26 percent of the voter eligible population, and Clinton received 26 percent as well. A whopping 48 percent voted for neither.
It appears to me Trump can hold onto every single voter who supported him in the 2016 election and still get his posterior kicked by the right opponent. I use those last two words because I am sure we all as individuals have our own idea just who that opponent should be. Not wanting to distract from the essence of this thread by generating heated discussions over who should take him on, I ask you to just reflect on the fact that it appears a myriad of contenders could throw him onto the mat with ease....
And just that thought will help me sleep better at night.
Sam
chart from https://mises.org/blog/26-percent-eligible-voters-voted-trump
Is it as easy as 1-2-3 to facilitate the Russians penetrating US voter registration rolls?
or are these three subjects simply coincidences....
Watch your step.
Step one: on the subject of Russia attempting to access voter information rolls in the summer and fall of 2016
In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/us-news/2017/06/13/russian-cyber-hacks-us-electoral-system-far-wider-previously-known
Since the hackers did not get all they wanted, perhaps they took a look at the next step.
Step two: perhaps a surreptitious collaboration can, under cover of a joint cooperation, supposedly be formed to allow those who hack to "work" with those who are unknowingly the target of the attacks.
"The establishment of a working group as reported by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to study how to curb cyber interference in elections in which the Russians would play any role, would be akin to inviting the North Koreans to participate in a commission on nonproliferation," Schiff said in a statement Friday. "It tacitly adopts the fiction that the Russians are a constructive partner on the subject instead of the worst actor on the world stage."
Lavrov's proposal comes amid a new CNN report that cites US intelligence officials who say Russian spies, emboldened by the tepid response to their hacking activities from President Donald Trump and the Obama administration, were increasing their efforts to collect intelligence in America.
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-putin-cybersecurity-hacking-syria-lavrov-adam-schiff-2017-7
If publicity snuffs this asinine proposal for the Russians to get what they want, go directly to Step 3.
Step three: If at first one does not completely succeed try a different route:
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity's vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, sent a letter to each state Wednesday asking a series of questions soliciting feedback about election administration, voter fraud and the integrity of the process. CNN obtained a copy of the letter sent to Maine's secretary of state.
Kobach also requested that each state provide "publicly available voter roll data" as allowed under each state's laws, which could include full names of registered voters, dates of birth, party registration, last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting history. (bold emphasis added)
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/30/politics/kris-kobach-voter-commission-rolls/index.html
Are these series of events simply coincidences or might the voter registration rolls from the states ultimately end up where one might least expect them, unless of course that is in the hands of hackers.
Think about it.
Sam
Let's put names and faces to the phrase "top 400 richest people"
This Forbes article is from October 2016, but for purposes of this discussion, that will work.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2016/10/04/forbes-releases-35th-annual-forbes-400-ranking-of-the-richest-americans/#10401923502f
Check out these people listed who it appears will be receiving a tax break at the expense of poor and disabled citizens losing their Medicaid coverage if the Trump administration is successful in "repealing and replacing The Affordable Care Act." You will have no problem recognizing many if not most of these names and faces Forbes presents in its article.
What prompted me to take a look was wondering simply if Donald Trump was listed. What do you know!
Quoted from the article:
"Donald Trump fell 35 spots to No. 156 this year. Trump is worth $3.7 billion, down $800 million from last year, largely due to a decrease in New York real estate prices and new information about his holdings. Forbes presents an asset-by-asset breakdown of his empire. Forbes has been tracking The Donald’s fortune since the debut of The Forbes 400 in 1982. His fortune is real, though by no means approaching the $10 billion that Trump continues to maintain he is worth." (bold emphasis added)
What a coincidence
If one can get past the simple barbarism of depriving the least fortunate of our citizens of their Medicaid coverage (which I believe those who are simply decent human beings cannot do), how does one justify a so-called President of the United States authenticating this bill when he himself will financially benefit from it? There is a word for that but you may choose your own -- mine is unrepeatable.
Sam
Dirty Laundry
It is worth noting that repeatedly washing one’s dirty laundry can eventually clog one’s drains. Once that occurs, it is necessary to hire a plumber. Good plumbers are very expensive. The mechanics of clearing the clog can cost more than one is willing to pay.
On the other hand, failure to remedy the clog in the pipes causes leaks. Serious leaks also necessitate expensive repairs by good plumbers. Otherwise, simply continuing to wash the dirty laundry without repairing the existing problems eventually can cause one’s pipes to burst.
Money laundering in particular is a dirty wash capable of effectuating a devastating bombshell. At that point, one has nothing but an unintended Watergate.
Sam
"Va. Democrat Northam ramps up energy in bid for governor, calls Trump a narcissistic maniac"
As a voter who lives in Maryland, I suddenly desperately feel the need to find a way to vote for this candidate for Virginia Governor -- his pitch is rather pithy!
Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D), vying to be the next governor, is often called low-key. Genteel. Even dull.
Not so Friday night at the annual St. Patrick’s Day fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) that drew about 1,200 people — and every Democrat running for statewide office — to the ballroom of the Kena Shriners Temple in Fairfax County.
In fiery remarks that sometimes bordered on shouting, Northam twice denounced President Trump as a “narcissistic maniac” in a four-minute speech frequently interrupted by cheers from a crowd decked out in green hats, ties and shirts and a smattering of blue Northam stickers.
“We have a fight on our hands, and I want to let you know tonight, I’m ready for the fight,” Northam said. “We need to make sure that that narcissistic maniac doesn’t come anywhere close to Virginia, and we need to make sure together that we take Virginia to the next level.”
(bold emphasis added)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/va-democrat-northam-ramps-up-energy-in-bid-for-governor-calls-trump-a-narcissistic-maniac/2017/03/18/6ba5c48a-0bd8-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?utm_term=.3e09fa857729
It might be careless to talk about him so enthusiastically when I know nothing else about him, but for just this moment let me say:
May your pockets be heavy and your heart be light.
May good luck pursue you each morning and night.*
Sam
*http://tacomaweekly.tripod.com/Irish-Quotations.html
There was no provision in Florida's state constitution for a statewide recount
The only way Gore could have received one would be through permission of the Governor (and we all remember who that was) or by court order. The Florida Supreme Court did order the statewide recount, and it should have had the last word. The Constitution clearly delegates the right to run Presidential elections to the states, and each state must outline its election laws in the state constitution. The Supreme Court jumped in and took the appeal from the Florida Supreme Court.
The "Republican rules" referred to in this thread was the older version of the rules which had been amended about two years earlier. The revised rules were the ones that Gore referred to in selecting a small number of counties for a sampling recount. Gore used the right rules; Bush illegally used the old ones because the Bush operators thought it was to his advantage.
Two years prior to Election 2000, a candidate for mayor was elected I believe in Miami (but I could be wrong) whose opponent hotly contested the win, saying the "winner" had stolen the election. The issue went to court. After a long trial, the "winner" was declared the loser, and the "loser" took over the mayoral seat. And that is why Florida revised its election law so it would never face this type of embarrassing situation again. Little did it know ....
The Supreme Court tried to justify stopping the recount by two laws: the Safe Harbor Law, a law passed centuries earlier when the states sent their slate of electors to Washington to be counted BY PONY EXPRESS. Often the riders and the horses did not get going until too late to reach DC by the time of the vote. Thus we received the Safe Harbor law to prevent a more timely dispatch of votes. In the year 2000, when slates were dispatched via more expeditious methods than by pony express, this law was one of the main laws used to stop the recount -- the potential violation of the Safe Harbor deadline.
The second law regarding equal protection of the vote was also cited as a reason for stopping the recount. Should Gore prevail in the recount by having votes not counted the first go-around but included in the second round tallied which made him the winner of the election, that would be less than fair to the original voters whose votes were first counted. The thinking stated was that a greater weight would be given to votes picked up in Round 2 than Round 1, and that would not be fair to the original voters. So the Supreme Court disallowed the recount on that equal weight issue. In handing the election to Bush*, the Supreme Court essentially offset the votes of nearly 500,000 people nationwide, the approximate popular vote win Gore achieved over Bush.*
If this sounds crazy to you, it is due to the fact that the whole thing was just that. As I said above, the Supreme Court had no authority to overrule the Florida Supreme Court, and this judgment handed down by it was based on political preferences as opposed to following the supreme law of the land.
And that is exactly why Bush was considered by many to be illegitimate, the protests happened at his inauguration, and this very website sprang into existence. I will always be thankful for the creation of DU because it carried me and many others through the deep, dark years of the Bush* selection.
Sam
Bernie's influence, his ideas, his suggestions, his work
will remain in our society while the bulk of his supporters continue to work for the goals he set out for us. Much has been done already that people do not realize.
300+ people are now running for elective office all over the Country on Bernie's platform. They are not taking corporate money to finance their elections. Additionally, when Bernie asked for a call for action for supporters sincerely interested in making a change to consider running for public office, approximately 7,000 people signed up at his website to get the information he was giving potential candidates to organize a campaign. This was just last week.
There is a political party getting up and running for the last year dedicated to the principle of removing from elected office those who represent the wealthy and corporate interests as opposed to the benefit of the people. They have a plan and they are implementing it as I type this post.
Bernie Sanders' fingerprints will be all over this society in changes we will see made slowly over the next few years. People who are now more aware of what they can do to change this country will step up to the plate and start doing.
I feel we owe Bernie Sanders so much for just showing people the way. He is an incredible politician and well as a great humanitarian.
Sam
You know I have been sitting here analyzing the Guardian website (live results voting)
and I just don't see what all the crowing has been about.
First of all, I think Hillary jumped to a big lead in California because they counted the mail in votes, which many of her supporters do. Over the last hour as I tediously watched, her percentage has very slowly been dropping and Sanders has very slowly been inching up. When last I looked, she was at 59.7 and he was at 39.3 with 36 percent of the vote counted. I don't know what percentage of the overall vote the mail-in constitutes, but at this point, I don't know how anyone knows how California ends up. Now this from looking at the Guardian website.
She did do well in NJ as expected, winning by 26.6 points when I last looked, and that was with 99.1 percent of the vote in. That is about what was projected.
She won New Mexico by 3 points. That was one that could have gone either way. They both hoped to take it, she did but only by 3. Won't make a big difference.
Montana Bernie won as was expected. When last I looked with 77.4 percent of the vote he won by about 5.4; don't know what the final numbers will be but that is respectable and it has been called for him.
Bernie hoped to win both the Dakotas -- he lost SD by 2 points but won ND by 38.6 points. The Dakotas gave him a good night!
So we just have to have wait for California to finish and we do have the comfort of knowing the election is being monitored by the Election Integrity group since there are no exit polls. So I think it too early to tell if that early AP maneuver hurt him or not.
But I am proud of Bernie Sanders performance, and I am proud to be his supporter. Nice going, Senator Sanders.
Sam
We have lost "The Greatest" but his legacy will endure forever
I first saw him dancing across the Olympic boxing ring when I was very young, and I could not take my eyes off him. He was mesmerizing. As a young sports enthusiast, I loved basketball, volleyball, many competitive activities but absolutely not boxing. It was just too violent. Yet here I was watching a man dancing across the boxing stage "floating like a butterfly but stinging like a bee." I followed his career the rest of my life, and he became a superhero to me in many, many ways.
Not the least of these ways by any means was his willingness to protest the Vietnam War by refusing to serve. What type of person does something like that when he or she is at the top of his game and stands to lose everything? A humanitarian does that.
In 2008, during the election, I wrote a piece and posted it here. It received some attention away from this site. I knew this when the election was called, and Chris Matthews remarked to the panel words to the effect that Obama was floating like a butterfly but stinging like a bee, and they all laughed. The piece I wrote compared similarities between these two great men who came out of nowhere and against all odds ended up sitting on top of the world.
I would like to share that thread with you in case you missed it. Here are the first few paragraphs and a link to the rest. I still have the two pictures mentioned in the thread proudly hanging on my hallway wall, and I count them as true treasures.
Sam
From: Political Sporting Comments from Inside the Beltway, May 17, 2008
He danced across the Olympic boxing stage more quickly than a tae kwon do tornado, whipping down to earth as if a killer whirlpool. So graceful was his footwork across the ring, Michael Jackson must have gazed at the sight of him in open awe. His punches were lightning-bolt swift and just as electrifying. He fought the bruising battle like a giant smashing a bug with a swat too quickly to be observed with the naked human eye. His float like a butterfly, sting like a bee motto could not have been more fitting. He was mesmerizing – this man to be known as Muhammad Ali.
And so I watched from across the room with unabashed thrill at the sight of a man participating in a sport I had vigorously avoided all my young life. It was simply too barbaric a thing - that sport called boxing -- for me to observe. Yet here I stood in my Republican father's living room, saying "look at him, look at him!" The man from Tennessee watched momentarily and then responded, "He's no Joe Lewis." "But that's why I like him," I excitedly yelled.
I followed the career of Muhammad Ali the rest of his professional life. As a young female who migrated from Knoxville to Washington, my ears were roundly boxed at times by all my Southern family members. "What do you possibly see in him - this guy who's going to ruin boxing?" was their constant admonishment.
As his career started to take off, I found myself some years later just a few short miles from where he set up his training camp to prepare to fight Jimmy Young. By then, I was married to an artist, who himself practiced tae kwon do by night, and indulged in photography with a gifted eye. This man I married had zero interest in the boxing world. But knowing of my fascination with Muhammad Ali, he came home to tell me one night of the training camp just down the road from where we lived.
"Would you like to go -- I could take some pictures for you," he asked.
Later that evening, there my artist mate was at ringside, snapping away with the press photographers. Roll after roll of film he took. It was simply one of the best nights of my life. When the film was developed, he asked me to pick two that he would enlarge. Today, these two are among my most valued treasures. One of them is a close up of a young Muhammad Ali. Every muscle from the waist up is captured in one of the photographs, showing beads of perspiration dripping from the ripples of those incredible muscles after his dazzling workout in the ring. The other is a full body shot which showcases the perfect position of the man in action, pulverizing the leather of a full body bag, with the bag in full swing into the air, and the body of the boxer throwing a perfectly-executed punch. Both are simply beautiful.
More at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6005693
I believe we will never see the likes of someone like him who through a myriad of avenues taught us all a very important life lesson: it doesn't matter what people say about you, it doesn't matter what people think about you, but when you are knocked down, you have to always get back up and keep following that personal road to your destiny. And that is how one becomes "The Champ."
Peace to the soul and to the family of the Great Ali. We will never forget and the love will never die.
Sam
"It is all about me"
and the money, too, of course. That is what it is about for Hillary Clinton.
I am surprised at a couple of things you said (meaning I didn't know you knew them) but I will throw in a couple of thoughts.
Yes, she has endangered President Obama's term in office. I knew that when I read about another incident I do not want to describe here right now. Many people think that he will "save" her but the truth of the matter is, I am going to put this politely, he will not influence her future.
There is a legal perspective under which one can say President Obama is responsible for the acts of Hillary Clinton, but I don't want to talk about that either. I want him to be able to leave office in a dignified manner unscathed by this debacle. He has done a wonderful job for the most part, and he deserves credit for that. A lot. Not an impeachment.
I do not know what will be the outcome of this whole devastating debacle, but I do know that some time ago the FBI's opinion was that it had enough evidence to nail down her indictment and conviction, and that if it did not happen that would be for political reasons, in which case many agents and probably Comey as well would resign. The DOJ seems to agree that the evidence is there, but the problem is other people think the ramifications of an indictment are potentially too earth-shattering to touch. Hard to imagine, isn't it?
I personally hope that Hillary after seeing all of the evidence the FBI has negotiates a deal that allows her no time in prison.
Sam
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