Politics: On Voter Fraud and Voter Suppression

Honestly, this post was going to have a different name at one point, but then I realized that it might not work based on what I knew about things in the end. I was going to call it the myth of voter fraud and reality of voter suppression. But voter fraud is not a myth. It just isn’t the type of huge problem that the Republicans would have you think, at least with how they feel about Democrats and how they think it is their fault alone.

First, let’s start with voter fraud. We hear from Republicans often enough about all of the ways they seek to suppress the vote by supposedly protecting it from fraud. They do this by forcing those who want to vote to have ids or making people jump through hoops in order to vote. They are convinced that without these hurdles, people will do radical things like voting more than once or voting when they aren’t otherwise able to.

There are some truths to voting fraud. But it’s not the truth that they want us to know. What we do know is that in Illinois, there were less than 20 non-citizens who voted in an election based on a glitch in an Illinois law that passed unanimously. Only one of those people voted more than once. I do not know yet if the result was changed as a result of these votes.

Every time I think of the idea of someone voting more than once, I have to think that this is the least effective way to commit voter fraud. There are far better methods out there. Why not make it so that certain ballots aren’t accepted if you know that they won’t likely be in your favor? Why not make it so that you can’t pull the lever of one candidate, but can for the other? Why not make just enough confusion and delay to cast doubts on whether the real eventual result is never accepted or not? Why not kill the candidate who is likely to win so that they are stricken from the ballot? If you are already committing crimes, why not make murder one?

Now I don’t buy into conspiracy theories, but only brought up the murder one simply because it seems like it could have happened to one Paul Wellstone. It was close enough to the election that there were already votes cast for him absentee. He was likely to win, but now couldn’t since the state he was senator of, Minnesota, strikes any and every dead person off of the ballots. With a last minute Democrat put on the ballot in his place, a Republican wound up winning the election and didn’t have to face a special election like a Democrat who would have won did. I do not think that Paul was actually killed and certainly don’t want people to do this.

Harvesting ballots has already been proven as a way to commit fraud. They would make such a thing disappear like mail-in ballots disappear in order to boost their chances of winning. And this happened in a North Carolina congressional race for the US House. It was a Republican that was running whose campaign did this. Don’t believe me? Here’s a link. This happened a mere two years ago in 2018 and already the Republicans have forgotten about it. They wouldn’t be saying that only Democrats benefit from mail-in voting or that it would be fraud for them if they remembered that this was a Republican race committing fraud.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud

Now we get to the side of voter suppression. The first instance that I remember it happening in the US was related to Jim Crow and laws of that era preventing black people from voting. Sadly, America has never gotten past that. I firmly believe that Trump is not against people voting, be it by mail or other ways, provided that they are voting for himself. Otherwise, he doesn’t want black people to vote since they won’t vote for him. He said so himself.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-told-civil-rights-leaders-it-was-great-many-black-people-didn-t-vote-in-2016-according-to-leaked-recording/ar-BB18ePP6?li=BB141NW3&ocid=mailsignout

The sabotage with the mail right now that is causing the delays is illegal. If you mess with mail, you are committing a federal crime. Messing with mail-in ballots is a crime and a form of voter suppression. Will the problems magically go away after the election? Hopefully, we won’t have to wait that long. Some people simply can’t vote any other way. Does Trump really want to put those in the military at a disadvantage? The Republicans should be more upset about this as you’d think that more of their supporters would donate via check and use the mail for it.

The pandemic has made things even worse with voter suppression. The Republicans are even using or planning to use intimidation tactics as well in order to do what it takes to win. We are seeing polls close. We are seeing people forced to vote during a pandemic. We have seen a lot of missing absentee ballots that never get to their planned recipients and alternatives had to be done at the last minute, if they happened at all.

I’m going to end the post here with this paragraph as I don’t know what else there is to say in this post. I hope that I covered all the important bases in this and don’t know if I missed anything important. We’ll see how this world changes and we can only hope that it changes for the better by fixing both of the problems mentioned in this post.

Politics: Which Side Really Cares about Fixing Racism?

I just spend a good long while writing the wrong post that didn’t need written right away. Now I don’t have much time for writing a post so I will write this one. Seeing all the lies right now that are going on with the Republican National Convention, I might as well straighten stuff out since among the two parties, it is clear that Republicans don’t care about fixing racism as they only want to get outraged over the idea that they can be racist.

Let’s see: remember when Trump talked about how after white supremacists did a rally and it lead to violence and a death when he called them very fine people? How are racist people fine people? Let’s think about this for a moment. They are not. Yet people on the right, instead of making outcry over what Trump said were instead upset over what they felt was unfair treatment of the guy in the White House. How dare you insist that these neo Nazis are called what they themselves call themselves? Why would you think that Trump would ever be a racist?

Well, let’s see. When he announced that he was running for president, he called people from Mexico rapists. He has sought to build a wall on just that boarder and has only succeeded in getting three miles built in all his time in office. Mexico did not pay for the wall as there was a government shutdown longer than any in US history in order to secure funding. Even if you don’t think that Trump was ever called or considered a racist before he became president, you would be forgetting what he said about the Central Park Five. There have been plenty of other things that he has said before he was president too. And his role as president seems to be trying to get rid of all of the progress that the first black president did including, for some reason, the great economic turnaround that had taken place before Trump took over.

If Republicans want to be known as the party that cares more about racism and fixing it, then they have a whole lot of work ahead of them. They don’t seem to care how many more people who aren’t as well off have been dying in greater numbers because of coronavirus. It has done more harm to black communities than others. But they aren’t interested in fixing it. They are only interested in making sure that Trump voters can vote, but not anyone else.

The irony is already widespread. I mean, they had two black people at the RNC tonight say that Trump isn’t racist. Also tonight, Trump once again used a racist slur to refer to coronavirus more than once. He doesn’t care about minority voters unless they vote for him. He certainly doesn’t mind if they don’t vote as this story that was revealed not even a week ago was made known.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-told-civil-rights-leaders-it-was-great-many-black-people-didn-t-vote-in-2016-according-to-leaked-recording/ar-BB18ePP6?li=BB141NW3&ocid=mailsignout

Democrats are wanting more people to vote and there is a reason that most minority races that aren’t white support them in much higher numbers than they do Republicans. It is because of the two parties, Democrats actually care without wanting something in return. They want people to have everything especially if they can’t afford it. They want people to have health care since they know that minorities are more likely to die without proper health care. Republicans can lie and say that they aren’t racist. Indeed, some of them like their voters or politicians in that party actually do want to help minorities and aren’t racist at all. But since those considered minorities are way more common in the Democratic Party than the other side, I would say that it is clearly the liberals who care about ending racism since they don’t get racist voters anymore.

What else is there to say? I should do a post on all the honest politicians of today and why I do believe that you’ll find more honesty in the Democratic Party than the other side. But that is not worthy of talking about here. Try to honestly tell me that Democrats are the racist ones and that there is no racism at all in the Republican Party. And be prepared to defend such a ridiculously wrong and false belief.

Politics: The Spoils System- Its Meaning, History, and Importance Today

Hopefully at some point in history class, you learn about the spoils system regarding politics. It is based on the phrase “to the victory belong the spoils.” It is one of the worst ways to run an office of any political kind as you can run into issues with quid pro quo this way. Supposedly, it is not done anymore, at least legally. But I should explain it to you nonetheless. I don’t think that it has gone away entirely so I might as well talk about it.

What the spoils system means is basically that if you help get someone elected, they would then give you a job because of this. This could happen with any number of jobs and any way that you want to work towards the future in office. All you have to do is get someone elected and then it seems like they owe you if they take part in the spoils system.

The history of it started officially when we had one of the most polarizing presidents in US history: Andrew Jackson. He gave a lot of friends jobs and other people benefited from him being president that wouldn’t have benefitted if he hadn’t gotten elected. William Henry Harrison sought to end it, but wound up dead within a month of taking office. It was ultimately when it came to the presidency of James Garfield that we got to more of the issues with it. A man by the name of Charles Guitau thought that he helped Garfield get elected. When Charles was refused a job in the new administration, he suddenly changed and wound up killing Garfield. This was the catalyst that lead to such a thing being undone, or so we hoped, at least.

What makes more sense instead of what the spoils system does is instead have a merit based system where people who earned their way to the top actually get there. Only people who get what they should from hard work and merit should get their way there, not people who simply helped whoever won the election.

It is still a problem today, only now it is called the political machine. You help the right person, they help you. Only it isn’t based on hard work. It is based on just banking the right person and hoping that they bank you back.

The importance today with the Trump administration is why I’m doing this blog post. You see, there have been people in his administration who are or were there at some point all based on the fact that they helped get him where he is. Betsy Devos, who had spent a lot of money on helping the Trump campaign and has little education experience, got to be the Secretary of Education. The former senator who endorsed Trump first whose name I don’t recall got to be the attorney general. And now we have a huge Trump supporter with conflicts of interest against the Postal Service as Postmaster General. This man, Louis DeJoy, has actively worked in order to sabotage the very place he works at simply due to the spoils system.

In conclusion, this system of government sucks and clearly doesn’t work that well for the rest of the country, although it certainly works well for those who benefit from the spoils. It should not take place at all and should be a part of this country’s horrible past. But it isn’t right now as we are left with the horrible affects of the ineffective people who got where they are simply by being the supporter of the person who won office.

Politics: How Much of a Problem are White People?

What is the best way of starting this post? Well, I’m a white person and shouldn’t hate my own kind, right? Well, it depends on the circumstance. It is a fact that white people, at least in this country, have always had an unfair advantage over the other races that they don’t deserve. They deserve to be knocked down a peg.

Should I be hard on my own race? Probably. I mean, it seems that the racists are only whites. But that can’t be right. And I can’t say that without the fact that not all white people are racist being brought up. I’m not racist. I hope people don’t think that about me or that I’ve ever given that vibe to anyone. Ideally, someone like me is only called racist if I correctly call out the racism in others. I talked about why that would be in a previous political post in this blog.

Once, to see if I was right about my idea that white people were a problem, I sent this letter into the Life Sherpa column which ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. A man named Joe Holleman, a black person, replied to the letter. First, here is what I wrote:

“As a white guy, I have to agree with the consciousness that white people are typically evil. They are more likely the cause of problems than other people are.” This was just my thoughts at the time and it was long before the era of Trump. I still feel that way in some places and know that someone wrote a book about the 2010s called “The Decade of Shitty White People.” Joe, of course, disagreed in some places with his reply, writing this:

“Congratulations, you’ve combined a ‘look at me, I’m sensitive’ guilt with a Howard Zinn-like grasp of demographics, sociology, and history. Did your analysis only include that area known as ‘Western civilization’? If your position is that more evil has been done in the U.S. and Europe by white people than any other cultural or racial group, I agree. I’ll also contend that more good has been done there by white people. There happen to be a lot of white people hanging around in those places. I ask only because you seem to have left out some serious evil happening in other places, like ISIS in the Middle East and Boko Haram in Africa.” (Who is Howard Zinn?)

There was a bit more to his response that I don’t think is relevant right now. I was, in fact, only including Western civilization in my analysis. More people have died since 2000 in this country because of white supremacists than because of foreign terrorists. And Joe is right that some of the advances in this country over the years has been due to white people. Look at all of the advances that Lyndon Johnson helped bring minorities. Abraham Lincoln was a good person who moved racial issues forward as well.

But there are still a lot of horrible issues caused by white people. Even long before we had the likes of Trump in office and a sudden zombie of followers of him, we had a legislature that seemed to prevent the progress that the first black president was making. Now, we have a lot of people still trying to undo Obama’s legacy, such as the ACA, something that they still don’t have a good replacement for around a decade of it existing now.

One does have to agree that a lot of white people are problems. Just go to a Trump rally and you will see the type of ignorance and arrogance that white people have. Some people think that problems like racial issues don’t exist anymore. It is part of the problem where some say that a problem isn’t real or doesn’t exist anymore, leading people to not have to solve problems or do anything like that. Even without racism involved, white people cause lots of problems as they even try to get their issues blamed on others.

It is hard not to be ashamed of my own race a lot of the time. From the racism to the issues that it seems that these people cause such as blind support of horrible conservative ways all in the support of pro-life issues and nothing else, white people have been in power for far too long and we need better people of other races in office instead.

Still, it is nice to have some of the advantages of being a white person. I still don’t know if I like it given the general negative ways that my race treats other people, including those within their own race who dare try to help out other races or work for equality among other people. I just would not want to change my race if I could because then I could have people call the cops on me for doing a normal thing or be otherwise discriminated against.

White supremacy is a huge problem. From the motherfuckers in the Klu Klux Klan to basically anyone who thinks that their race is superior in some way, we have a lot of people who hate others based on the color of their skin. That makes no sense. We are all one human race and the sooner we all realize that there is nothing that separates one human from another, even if they have different skin colors in the end.

In conclusion, white people suck. Not all of them, if they can help it. But a lot of them and you should be able to know who is on the sucky side of white people and who actually wants to help fix the racial issues or other ones. And you’ll be able to know who is who in most cases. Are they out to divide people like the guy in the White House? Or do they want to fix issues? One can only hope that better people exist in us then the white people of today.

Politics: Vote by Mail Thoughts

In what might be a more important issue of our time than it has ever been before, we have to think about the important ways that we can vote. We can even vote early if we want to and can in some places by voting by mail. This shouldn’t be a controversial or political issue, but it is. And there is a lot to say about it.

There is a belief that voting by mail, or absentee voting, will lead to fraud. How much of this is a valid concern and how much is overblown to discredit use of it and results from it is another thing that parties don’t seem to agree on. One might be more honest with this than another.

The guy in the White House is convinced that the use of mail in voting will lead to Democrats winning and Republicans losing. He doesn’t seem to think people should be able to do this. But he does vote by mail himself. And he’s okay with those in Florida voting by mail. It would seem that more Republicans vote by mail than Democrats in that state. Thus, why ban it there? But the threat of, um, people being able to vote, at least by ways that others don’t like, seems to be more of a hot button issue than it should be.

Of course, this leads to controversy with a misleading term known as ballot harvesting. This is how people feel that fraud happens when people simply make sure that ballots are collected by other people. This is how we know that votes have been counted and gathered. Again, some think that this is how the Democrats get fraudulent victories.

What’s interesting is that there is one instance that I know of where this was used for fraud. But it wasn’t a Democrat who was doing it. In a North Carolina race for House of Representatives, there was a Republican campaign who effectively stole votes and rigged that election as a result by making sure that votes weren’t counted at all. They refused to certify the election results and that district had no representative as a result due to the fraud. But this is worth noting because while so many Republicans are convinced that only Democrats use this for fraud, the only known cause of fraud that I’m sure happened was with a Republican campaign.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud

Still, all the lies and rhetoric with voting by mail has lead some people to do what they can to get rid of that option, even if they might need it in the future. In Michigan, some Trump supporters made videos of burning their applications to vote by mail, thus losing a potential window of opportunity that they have to vote that they might not otherwise have.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/14/1953082/-Michigan-MAGAs-burn-their-own-absentee-ballot-applications-to-own-the-libs

There can be issues with this process, though. 2000’s presidential election remains notorious for how this process worked when it factored into a recount. There is evidence that ballots that black voters did were never counted or sent in. And yet, vote by mail is considered a way that only benefits that Democrats when it is well known that most black people vote for Democrats and are not having their votes counted in this real scenario.

A possible issue is that different states have different rules with how vote by mail works. There are 50 states and there very well might be 50 different rules as a result of how or even if one can vote by mail. Some states might require the information of two notaries. Some states don’t allow you to vote by mail without an excuse. It is hard to know what all the state’s rules are right now without looking them up or otherwise knowing offhand.

My state was nice enough to send me an application to vote by mail and I filled that out and turned it in. I have voted in every general election and primary since 2010 when I first became old enough to vote. I have always done that in person. Those days may not be over for sure, but I do plan to vote by mail this time. While I do worry some about the vote not being counted when it should, I also worry about that with voting in person as well. I mean, unless the entire country does paper ballots at the polls, there is no way or knowing for sure that what you did actually registered as the right thing and will show up that way or that the vote won’t be changed like it can electronically. I’d say that there is potential for fraud in many methods of voting at a polling place and that worrying about just one very valid method isn’t that big a problem or issue.

There’s not much else to say as I end this post. I think that voting by mail is perfectly fine and quite acceptable. It is hardly how just one side wins and the other side loses. It is hard to know how much valid concern there is with fraud through this method, but I’d argue that there isn’t enough concern that this is the only issue with fraud to be too concerned about it. All I know is that one cannot delay the election without changing the constitution unless one is able to make an amendment too it, which isn’t happening this time around. Voting by mail is a good option and worth doing in the end.

Cast Update 8-9-2020

This blog currently has the most confusing posts out of all of them right now. I mean, some blogs don’t have certain times that they are updated, but this one does and yet also doesn’t at the same time. I have a cheat that has to be used to update one of my blogs and it currently applies to this blog. My Survivor blog will sometimes include schedules of what the plan is for when certain blogs are updated. It also includes former updates from this blog at times right now in certain posts. Remember when I shared past updates from both my Good Wife blog and Elementary blog in this blog? I do that in my Survivor blog too. Now there’s not much else to say, such as wondering why the update of this blog is now, so let’s just get to the cast update.

Tea Leoni: She will be in a project called Endangered, which will be a movie. There are no other things that I see her in right now besides that. I don’t know when they finished filming the show, but you’d think that those who are still doing projects will have stuff right now to do (if that makes sense).

Endangered: This is a movie about the lives of threatened species. We’ll see what role she has in it. The website I’m checking makes it seem like she’ll be lending her voice to it so maybe it will be some sort of documentary. The release date is unknown now.

Bebe Neuwirth: She’s had a recurring bit on Blue Bloods and may show up on it from time to time. There are other minor things that she has done. It appears that she will be in a new movie called Modern Persuasion. Another thing she is appearing in is Julia. She will also be in The Sandman.

Modern Persuasion: This movie has an unknown release date at this time. The plot is about a woman’s ex-boyfriend hiring her company which forces her to deal with various things in her life. I don’t know yet what role Bebe will play in this.

Julia: This is a pilot for a show about Julia Child, the chef. We’ll see if anything comes from the pilot in the future or not. It would have an edge if it was already filmed. The release date is currently unknown for this. Maybe one will never come.

The Sandman: There is no plot mentioned for this yet, but there is a picture with this that says this will be adapted from a Neil Gaiman book and be an Audible original based on that book. I don’t think that I’ll be able to review it as a result. This is out now.

Geoffrey Arend: He hasn’t really been doing that much yet. Maybe he will later. I guess we’ll see what will become of his career. Maybe there will be something in the future. I can only hope so. Until then, just wait to see what happens.

Kathrine Herzer: She hasn’t been doing much since the show ended or now, it seems. Maybe she is going back to a more normal life. Not all the child actors or actresses continue into the field when they get older as they want to do other things in life. Remember the people from Shining Time Station?

Evan Roe: Again, this person has not been doing much after the show ended. I guess it hasn’t been over long enough or a lot of these people just haven’t found a new job yet. You’d think that the filming would have ended long enough ago, but maybe not.

Tim Daly: I might easily run out of ways of saying that people from this show haven’t done much of anything yet now that the show has ended and it hasn’t been over that long. I can only hope that there are a lot of people who have something in the work at some point.

Zeljko Ivanek: He also has no new projects in the works right now, although he could be wanting to retire in the future or something like that. I won’t make assumptions and just wait until the next time I see something potentially in a later post.

Erich Bergen: He’s also doing nothing yet as of the show ending. How recently did filming wrap? Was it not that long ago? Why is no one that I’m looking up doing anything yet? I don’t get it. Whatever the reason, he has nothing yet and maybe that will change later.

Patina Miller: She is the narrator of a show called Word Party. That’s all that she’s doing for now. I think that she’s a mother so that may affect how much work she’ll be able to do. We’ll see what goes on in her life and I hope she can do something I can watch. She will also be in a project called Power Book III: Raising Kanan.

Word Party: This is a Netflix kids show that is available now. Patina is the narrator of it. I don’t know much about it. I doubt that I will be able to see it in the future. This show is about teaching others how to talk and learning simple things like that.

Power Book III: Raising Kanan: This isn’t set to air until 2021. It is a prequel about Kanan Stark, whoever that is. I doubt already that I’ll be able to see it, although I guess that it is possible that I might at some point. I hope to find out more info about this soon.

Wallis Currie-Wood: She has done very little outside of the show. Maybe she will do something more in Hollywood or maybe not. It will be hard to understand some of why I’m not seeing much in terms of what the cast is doing in the future unless or until more time passes.

Keith Carradine: He has two projects in the works. One is called Sallywood. The other one is called The Daylong Brothers. We’ll see what happens between those and anything else that he does. I look forward to hopefully seeing these films at some point in time. He will also be in something called The Power of the Dog. Maybe more will happen in the future.

Sallywood: This movie romantic in some way, but I don’t know if it’s a comedy or not. It is about a man who moves to Hollywood and becomes a woman’s personal assistant. They’ll be more to it than that. It has an unknown release date at this time.

The Daylong Brothers: This has an unknown release date at this time. It is about three brothers who try to get revenge on their father for selling their souls. This could be interesting, even if I don’t really like to watch horror films. But this could just be normal supernatural.

The Power of the Dog: I don’t know why they are making a Trump based movie. Wait, this has nothing to do with politics. It is about sibling rivalry that happens between two men who are brothers when one of them gets married. It is set for release in 2021.

Sebastian Arcelus: It looks like he will appear in a TV movie or perhaps potential pilot called Blanco. He’s doing better than others in terms of projects in the works. He’s also doing a project called Homebound. That is it for now.

Homebound: This is set for release in 2020. It is about a woman searching for her therapy dog as she deals with personal fears or things like that. There is no trailer for this yet or specific release date. It could be good, but I won’t know unless I can see it at some point.

Blanco: This has an unknown release date at the moment. It is about a criminal who seeks to work with the cops only to build his criminal empire. I have no idea what network this would air on, if any. This might be just another in a long line of passed pilots that I get confused about and wind up in this blog for a long time like what you might have seen in my CSI: Cyber blog.

Sara Ramirez: Despite not appearing or even being mentioned in the final season of this show, she has not done a thing since leaving this show. The others I can understand as they haven’t been off the show this long, but I want her to do something. And I hope she improves her hairstyle for the future.

Kevin Rahm: While the entire world is crazy right now and pilot season messed up, there still might be hope that he is doing something as I see him in Vegas High, the potential pilot for a TV show. We’ll see what, if anything, comes of it later.

Vegas High: This is a pilot for HBO Max. Whether or not it becomes a series is unknown, but if they already filmed the pilot, it would have an edge on other shows. The plot is about a female torn between her Mormon life and the fast paced life of Las Vegas. The release date is currently unknown.

Barbara Hall: I will see what future, if any, she might have in the film or movie industry. You’d think that she’d be doing something at some point or another, but maybe she won’t be at least for a while. I guess that I’ll keep her in the updates for now.

Schedule

Available now- Word Party (on Netflix), The Sandman (on Audible)

Unknown 2020- Homebound

Unknown 2021- The Power of the Dog, Power Book III: Raising Kanan (unknown time on unknown network)

Unknown year- Endangered, Modern Persuasion, Sallywood, The Daylong Brothers, Blanco, Vegas High, Julia