The US Supreme Court (by the usual 5-4) has certified Ohio’s Jim Crow stripping of more than a million mostly black and Hispanic citizens from the 2018 voter registration rolls. Unless the Democrats effectively respond, a GOP victory in the 2018 mid-term election may be a done deal. Continue reading
More than 140 of November’s congressional elections will be decided using electronic voting machines with no verifiable paper trail, leading to concerns among election officials that any hacking or tampering will be undetectable—and accurate recounts or audits in the event of extremely close races, difficult to verify. Continue reading
In a matter of mere hours, a new election will take place. Unlike seemingly all other national elections worldwide, this election will bring real “hope” to a needlessly impoverished country. This election will see real “change” come to a country far too long restricted and controlled by external foreign powers. For this is an election that is steeped in real democracy; not the US-inspired definition—the one based solely on the archaic shards of what little is left of a desperate empire struggling to hold onto its waning influence. This election will showcase, finally and thankfully, a return to the true definition. Continue reading
People have long known these kinds of conversations take place, but rarely is the regular voter allowed to hear exactly how it goes down. Continue reading
Are you happy with the electoral choices provided you by the two major parties? If not, should you vote for a third party candidate? Continue reading
It’s scheduled for April 22, Maduro is favored to be reelected for another six-year term. Continue reading
The US Supreme Court may be about to make a second Trump term inevitable. Continue reading
The Golden Globes: Hollywood’s most prominent women, costumed in black to support the #MeToo movement, were misty eyed, wonderstruck when Oprah Winfrey delivered her first campaign speech, inspiring liberals throughout the USA! USA! USA! to an orgasmic shattering-of-the-glass-ceiling altitude. Some among the crowd appeared transfixed, transcending the secular. Their faces rapt, as if they were witness to the birth of a saviorette. This time, one beloved enough to defeat Donald Trump. Fast forward to when there would be no need for a post-inauguration multitude of pussy-hat wearers from towns and cities throughout the country, walking, driving, busing, flying, raging to Washington, D.C., to protest the defeat of a neoliberal, regime-change warmongering, homogametic narcissist by a pussy grabbing, white nationalist, soon-to-be warmonger, heterogametic narcissist. Continue reading
We spent Monday and Tuesday in “Dewey Defeats Truman” mode, fully preparing to write a piece on the election of Republican Roy Moore to the United States Senate. We had even dusted off a 1925 quote from the great H.L. Mencken during his coverage of the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee in which he excoriated the fundamentalist Southern foes of evolution: “Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience.” Continue reading
While the whole world watches Tuesday’s Alabama US Senate election, race-based battles behind the scenes could decide the outcome. Continue reading
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are being denied the right to vote because they are poor. Continue reading
Steve Bannon’s attempted fascist putsch in Virginia and New Jersey has failed. Continue reading
The Virginia and New Jersey elections attracted national interest, why they got mine, along with how anti-Trump sentiment might affect them. Continue reading
Donald Trump’s primary enablers, the corporate Democrats, may be poised to blow it again in upcoming elections in Virginia on Nov. 7 and Alabama on Dec. 12. Continue reading
Of all the myths the Republicans have perpetrated, and there are a lot of them, perhaps none is more powerful or insidious than the foundational one that this is an overwhelmingly conservative country and that progressives are outliers in it, along with its pernicious corollary that conservatives are “real” Americans while liberals (and the minorities who support liberal policies) are somehow counterfeits. Continue reading
As the White House releases 112 pages of colorful comments—and personal information—after it asked for the public to weigh in on its so-called Election Integrity Commission and received an overwhelmingly negative response, a new lawsuit aims to protect voters’ privacy rights by stopping the controversial commission’s sweeping data demand. Continue reading
The Jim Crow GOP has stolen yet another congressional election, this time in Georgia. As always, the media and Democrats are saying nothing about it. Continue reading
In the wake of Georgia’s 6th U.S. House district Democratic Party hopeful Jon Ossoff’s loss to Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Karen Handel, Democrats are crying in their cups of Starbuck’s latte and chai. In what was the most expensive House races in American history, Handel beat Ossoff by 3.8 percentage points. Continue reading
Russia, Russia, Russia!!! But what about the Americans? Continue reading
In my wildest imagination I cannot picture President Donald Trump strolling along hand in hand with Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, even figuratively. But in this weirdest of worlds, they might find themselves in a position where they are forced to superficially get along to preserve the hallowed transatlantic alliance. Continue reading
Monday brought a victory for voting rights. Continue reading
Kris Kobach was spooning down vanilla ice cream when I showed him the thick pages of evidence documenting his detailed plan to rig the presidential election of 2016. Continue reading
Even in an election year as shot through with conspiracy theories as this one, it would have been hard to imagine a bigger bombshell than Russia intervening to help Donald Trump. But that’s exactly what the CIA believes happened, or so unnamed “officials brief on the matter” told the Washington Post. Continue reading
The claims that the Russian government hacked US voting machines are absurd. Voting machines are not connected to the Internet. To hack a voting machine you have to be physically in proximity to the machine and use a hand held device. The machines can be programmed to throw the vote count to one candidate or the other, and there are other ways to interfere with elections. Possibly if a foreign power had server presence in the US, some precinct reports of results could be intercepted and altered, although a voice check over the telephone is an easy way to verify the electronic transmission. What is clear is that Russia cannot hack the voting machines. Continue reading
Two, long, boring years before every presidential election, we hear a constant barrage of empty promises. Candidates will say whatever voters want to hear, but then once elected, they change their views and do a position switch. The result is that we get the same old prototypical leaders over and over again. It happens because “the system is rigged,” as George Carlin said. Our so-called “democracy” is a sham, a big joke. Voting does not change anything significantly, and it is understandable why many individuals do not even vote or vote for a third party. Continue reading
Universally, Trump was depicted as an anti-establishment candidate. Washington and Wall Street hated him, and the media were deployed to vilify him endlessly. If they could not discredit Trump enough, surely they would steal the election from him. Some even suggested Trump would be assassinated. Continue reading
There have been many thought-provoking articles in the alternative news lately. Robert Reich says all current members of the Democratic National Committee should resign so that we can have a new democratic party. Noam Chomsky says, “Trump’s win puts government in the hands of the most dangerous organization in world history.” Bill Gates has argued that we need socialism to save the planet. Robert Scheer says this [the election result] is “the revenge of the deplorables.” Chris Hedges exclaims in an article, entitled “It’s Worse Than You Think,+++++” that “Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed.” Continue reading
A friend of mine who has dual Israeli-American citizenship tells the story of entering an elevator in Jerusalem shortly after a bullying right-wing government had taken over the country. Continue reading
That line from a 1960s lyric spoke to a society in the midst of social change totally misunderstood by opinion makers and their employers. The situation now is more serious, the changes needed more radical, and the degree of confused ignorance of the people and criminal immorality of the leadership greater than before. Thus, an election in which the ruling establishment demanded defeat of one of its own, a rich and unruly capitalist, in favor of one of its employees, a more reliable worker in the fields of empire, and they failed. Continue reading
As the unexpected US president-elect took to the stage, the crowds erupted in jubilation, basking in the historic moment of populist revolution, certain that reform and change had finally come. Continue reading
Within days of the U.S. general election, central elements of the result have already entered into American mythology: the revenge of the “white working class voter”; the unprecedented anti-establishment character of the president-elect; the populist revolution that led to Trump’s victory; and the years in the wilderness now facing Democrats and progressives in America. Continue reading
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Why Republicans always win, even if they’re called ‘Democrats’
Posted on June 15, 2018 by Jack Balkwill
In their casual rhetoric at election time, Democrats pretend to represent the public interest, saying you should vote for them to stop the Republicans, but never tell you they are the Republicans in a two-corporate-party duopoly made up of clones with two names. Continue reading →