TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word.
Follow us on Twitter: @ThisWeekAmerica
This Week in Moral Fiber
High-profile Republicans around the country either supported Donald Trump's candidacy until the Access Hollywood tape came out (e.g., John McCain and Kelly Ayotte) or continue to support Trump, post-tape (e.g., Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell). The last few weeks, including the tape, have shown us nothing we didn't already know--Trump is a racist, Trump is a misogynist and a sexual predator, Trump is a religious bigot, Trump is a megalomaniac, Trump is a bully, Trump is a liar, Trump is disdainful of the Constitution, Trump has offered hate speech a mainstream soapbox, Trump doesn't represent the values that we believe America should exhibit or that we'd want our children to emulate.
So why do people like Rubio (who has previously called Trump a con man, an erratic individual who couldn't be trusted with the nuclear codes, and "a serious threat to the future of our party, and our country") continue to support Trump's candidacy?
There's only one conceivable answer--craven political opportunism. They want the votes of Trump supporters so much that they're willing to set aside their own principles to pander to them. Their political futures are, to them, more important than the country they claim to serve. They're a shameful demonstration in self-serving weaseldom, and they all deserve to lose their races and be forced to find employment in the private sector (or, in the case of McCain, a rocking chair in the sun). They've willingly surrendered their integrity--or shown it to be nothing but a mirage from the start, a mask of integrity they put on during campaigns but forget the rest of the year.
There are a few principled Republicans who have put country first (but most of them aren't up for reelection this year, so the test is lacking in substance). Not many, but Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, and John Kasich come to mind. Whatever our policy disagreements with these people, they deserve credit for having the courage of their convictions and taking the right stand against Trump. The rest deserve our contempt.
Side Note: Speaking of moral fiber, the Trump campaign has essentially given up on any hopes of winning by encouraging voters with a positive message, and instead is pinning its hopes on a secretive, cynical online campaign designed to keep people (especially African Americans) home on election day. It's a more targeted, less public twist on the now-common Republican tactic of voter suppression (again, especially of black voters). And once again, it leads to the natural question: why are Republicans so afraid of Americans who vote? Is it perhaps because they can't make an argument based on their policies and on the real issues that Americans face?
This Week in Gridlock
Among the people who said they were unendorsing Trump and then flip-flopped are Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R/UT). When the Access Hollywood tape was uncovered, Chaffetz said, "I'm out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president." 19 days later, he tweeted, "I will not defend or endorse @realDonaldTrump, but I am voting for him. HRC is that bad. HRC is bad for the USA." For that, the Washington Post reported that he set a "some sort of modern record for flip-floppery."
Apparently his moral outrage didn't last long. Or maybe he simply remembered that his ongoing mission in life is to "investigate" Hillary Clinton. House Republicans--and Chaffetz specifically, who chairs the House Oversight Committee--are promising four more years of nonstop, absurdly partisan "investigations." Despite the utter lack of any actual scandal during Obama's two terms, House Republicans spent more time and taxpayer money "investigating" the administration (and Clinton) than they did actually legislating--you know, the thing they're supposed to do. Congress, during the Obama years, has hit new lows in terms of passing legislation. Now the Republican Senate refuses to hold hearings on the president's Supreme Court nominee, leaving the judicial branch hamstrung, too. The executive branch, thanks to congressional Republicans, is the only one of our tripartite government that is remotely functional.
To be sure, there are real scandals going on in America today. It's a scandal that 33,000 Americans will lose their lives to guns in the next 12 months, but congressional Republicans block even the study of gun violence, much less any attempts to do anything about it. It's a scandal that tens of thousands of Americans remained out of work--some of whom still have not returned, and will not return, to the workforce, because congressional Republicans rejected all efforts to get them to consider economic stimulus remotely appropriate to the depths of the recession. It's a scandal that millions of Americans face illness and bankruptcy and worse because Republican statehouses refuse to expand Medicaid, and congressional Republicans refuse to even discuss improvements to the Affordable Care Act. It's a scandal that congressional Republicans have deliberately worked to make President Obama a failed president (albeit unsuccessfully for the most part, much to the nation's relief), and are already planning the same treatment for Clinton.
Anyone who votes to send Republicans to Congress is knowingly voting for at least four more years of dysfunction, of moral cowardice, of wasted taxpayer dollars, of stalled economic progress and a recovery weakened by intentional congressional obstruction, of blocked progress on limiting gun violence, of willful dishonesty from congressional Republicans who continue, for instance, to blame Americans for the deaths at Benghazi, to refuse to acknowledge the problem of climate change, and to pretend that tax cuts for the rich are a substitute for sound, intelligent economic policy. It's time to elect a groundbreaking leader, and to give her a Congress that cares about all of America, not just its rich white people.
More below the fold, including good news, more good news, some bad news, Kansas, the border, and bears.
This Week in Good News
Vox.com has the story: "The inflation adjusted weekly income of the typical full-time American worker hit an all-time high in the third quarter of 2016, according to data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
It's brief, but what it means is that the average American worker is making more money than at any time in our history.
Another story, released just before our Friday deadline, held more good news for America's economy:
The economy grew in the third quarter at the fastest pace in two years, aided by a spike in soybean and other U.S. exports and a rebound in the size of inventories companies keep on hand for sale.
The government said gross domestic product, the official scorecard for the economy, expanded at a 2.9% annual clip from July through September. That’s a marked improvement from the first half of the year when the U.S. grew just barely over 1%.
We keep saying, here at TWiA, that Democratic presidential administrations are better for the economy than Republican ones. The reason we keep saying it is that it's true. The fastest job growth on record was during Bill Clinton's administration. The last budget surplus of the last 50+ years was also during that administration. The longest stretch of job growth on record was during the Obama administration, and now we find that Americans are making more than ever.
Meanwhile, what do Republican administrations bring us? Brief periods of growth, accompanied by recessionary downturns.
Presidents can't single-handedly control the nation's economy. What they can do is set the agenda. They can take steps, by working with Congress and through executive actions, to push the economy in one direction or another. The Republican approach to the economy is the same in administration after administration: cut taxes, cut spending, cut regulations. Those are fine if your goal is to make the rich richer.
But most Americans aren't rich. Most of us are somewhere in the middle class, and those Republican prescriptions make it harder for us to stay there. Instead, the right kind of government spending is necessary. Regulations help keep the unhelpful impulses of profit-hungry corporations in check. And taxes are by nature redistributive, so the question is whether they'll redistribute everybody's money toward the rich (the Republican approach) or redistribute the rich's money toward everyone else (the Democratic approach). We know, through long experience, which one works, and this new evidence proves it once again.
This Week in Kansas
For more evidence of the effect of Republican economic ideas, look at Kansas. That's where Governor Sam Brownback (R) announced a "real-life experiment," in his words, in running his state along the Republican principles of cutting taxes, spending, and regulations.
The results have been disastrous. The state had been in good fiscal shape, but under Brownback's plan, job, wage, and economic growth fell behind that of neighboring states. Budget shortfalls caused Kansas schools to have to slash weeks from their schedules because they simply couldn't afford to keep the lights on and the doors open. Roads are going unrepaired. Businesses have flocked away from Kansas, not to it. The state's credit rating was downgraded multiple times.
Brownback was so sure his plan would work--despite all of economic history saying it wouldn't--that he instructed his Council of Economic Advisors to file regular reports on the impact of his "experiment." Then, to his dismay, they did. Finally, this week, he's had enough of the bad news. So is he changing his policies?
Nope--instead, he's discontinuing the reports. As the Topeka Capitol-Journal reports:
Gov. Sam Brownback’s advisory council pulled the plug on a quarterly report developed to assure timely analysis of the administration’s economic policies.
The Council of Economic Advisors chaired by Brownback will no longer compile and distribute a Kansas-specific review of economic markers picked by the administration and championed as an accountability test of its economic vision.
The article continues:
Absence of the state’s quarterly review was noticed by the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, which used the council’s report to advance tax policy conclusions contrary to those advocated by the governor. Heidi Holliday, executive director of the nonprofit center in Topeka, said the downplay and eventual demise of the council’s economic assessment tool was an attempt to minimize public exposure of weaknesses in Brownback’s program to build the state’s economy by exempting 330,000 businesses from the income tax and reducing individual state income tax rates.
“He specifically asked the council to hold him accountable through rigorous performance metrics,” she said. “Five years later, the metrics clearly show his tax experiment has failed while business leaders and local chambers of commerce across the state openly ask him to change course.”
During the 2016 election cycle, interest among Kansas business owners and political candidates appears to have grown for repeal of the tax exemption adopted in 2012 by the Republican-led Legislature and Brownback.
Brownback's economic plan--based on ideology instead of evidence--is a spectacular failure. Instead of admitting that, he's trying to prevent it from being reported.
The results of that experiment are in. As with other experiments in trickle-down economics, it was a colossal disaster. But that's exactly the plan that Donald Trump offers for America.
No thanks, Donny. We'd rather go with what works.
This Week in Good News (Presidential Edition)
Presidential approval is often linked to a booming economy. This week, the Gallup poll on President Obama shows his approval rating hit 57%--his highest number since just after his 2012 re-election. For comparison, these are the approval ratings of our past few two-term presidents at this moment in their administrations:
George W. Bush: 25
Bill Clinton: 57
Ronald Reagan: 51
(Reminder: George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were one-term presidents. Richard Nixon had two terms but didn't finish the second one. Gerald Ford and John F. Kennedy were partial-term presidents, so in the modern era, these four are the only full two-termers we have to compare).
Clinton and Obama finished (or are finishing) their terms with strong economic numbers, and their approval ratings are correspondingly high. Reagan's recessionary moves didn't bear their full fruit until he had passed the baton to George H.W. Bush, so his number was on the high side.
The enthusiasm behind the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump indicated that 2016 would be a "change" election, as did the "right track/wrong track" polling. But that polling is shifting, as CNN reports on its latest poll: "Overall, 54% say things in the country today are going well, 46% badly. That’s a reversal from late July when 54% said things were going poorly and 46% said they were positive." Economic conditions usually matter more than clearly subjective right track/wrong track polls, and in that area--as well as in Obama's soaring popularity, and in consumer confidence (about where it was in 1996, during the last boom period)--it's looking less like a "change" election and more like a "stay the course" election. Clinton can be counted on to essentially continue the Obama economy (albeit with many proposed changes, such as a big increase in infrastructure spending, if she can get it through Congress), while Trump promises to upend it. America can't afford to go backward now, so we need Clinton in the White House.
This Week in Neo-Fascism
According to this historian, Donald Trump is only a little more than half-Fascist (scoring 26 out of 44 possible Benitos). We think he scores Trump a little low, particularly on his encouraging of violence against political foes and against his Democratic opponent, but we're nonetheless glad Trump ranks below Hitler and Mussolini on the scale.
On the other hand, studies such as the one reported here are not comforting. Americans (especially, though not exclusively, white working-class Americans) are increasingly suspicious of American institutions and open to the idea of an authoritarian figure who will take control and bring order to the chaos of modern life. The piece, which begins with a quote from Supreme Court Justice David Souter, ends with:
The best response to civic ignorance, Souter said in 2012, was to engender a knowledge of (and respect for) republicanism beyond the cheerleader-like patriotism that accompanies fear and panic. “What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible,” he said in Concord. “And when the problems get bad enough … some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’”
It’s the right proposition, but it’s likely too late. Consider that a 2012 Xavier University study showed that two out of three Americans who take a citizenship test offered to immigrants fail (some 97.5 percent of the immigrants applying pass). And in an age of fact-free governance and campaigning, where Trump can construct an entire universe of falsehoods and lies and sacrifice long-term civic solidarity in favor of a short-term profit, it may be a bit too late for civics.
An armed revolution will not come to the U.S. anytime soon. But if Franklin’s (and Souter’s) biggest fear was that Americans would voluntarily surrender their liberty, the PRRI’s report shows that a growing bloc of voters are increasingly ready to do just that.
This Week in Responsibility
At the Washington Post, Greg Sargent looks at the same polling, particularly as it pertains to the problem of voting. Sargent writes:
Here’s where it gets worse. Only 37 percent of Americans believe that “people casting votes who are not eligible to vote” is a bigger problem than “eligible voters being denied the right to vote,” which is seen as a bigger problem by 41 percent. But a huge majority of Republicans sees the former as the bigger problem:
Roughly two-thirds (66%) of Republicans believe voter fraud is a bigger problem than voter disenfranchisement, compared to only 19% of Democrats. More than six in ten (62%) Democrats say eligible voters being denied access is the bigger problem facing the election system.
The racial divide is also striking. According to numbers provided to me by PRRI, African Americans say that denial of access to eligible voting is the bigger problem by 66-21, while whites say that voter fraud is the bigger problem by 42-35. But as Ari Berman recently demonstrated, voter suppression is a far more extensive problem than is voter fraud, which is virtually nonexistent:
The real danger to American democracy stems from GOP efforts to make it harder to vote. New voting restrictions — like voter-ID laws, cuts to early voting and barriers to voter registration — that are in place in 14 states for the first time in 2016 will make it harder for millions of eligible voters to cast a ballot. And voters are lacking crucial protections because this is the first presidential election in 50 years without the full provisions of the Voting Rights Act….It’s incredibly unlikely there will be widespread voter fraud on Election Day. But there will be eligible voters who show up to vote and are turned away from the polls. That’s the real threat to election integrity we should be focusing on.
Yet the public is closely divided on this question, and Republican voters overwhelmingly think voter fraud is the bigger problem.
Sargent--and Ari Berman--are correct. As we mentioned last week, and have reported many times before, in the biggest study ever done, in-person voter impersonation has only been discovered in 31 cases out of a billion votes cast. The other forms of "voter fraud" Trump and his fellow Republicans rant about: undocumented immigrants bussed to polling places, people voting using the names of dead people who happen to still be registered, etc., are figments of overactive imaginations, not actual occurrences. But millions of people disenfranchised is a genuine scandal, and one that needs to be addressed.
And the question remains--why are Republicans so convinced of things that are so blatantly untrue? The answer to that isn't particularly complicated: right-wing media.
Also at WaPo, Catherine Rampell tackles the question in this piece. She writes:
If Republicans truly want to save the Republican Party, they need to go to war with right-wing media. That is, they need to dismantle the media machine persuading their base to believe completely bonkers, bigoted garbage.
It is, after all, the right-wing radio, TV and Internet fever swamps that have gotten them into this mess, that have led to massive misinformation, disinformation and cynicism among Republican voters. And draining those fever swamps is the only way to get them out of it.
For a sense of just how misinformed Republican voters have become, consider a few of the provably wrong things many believe.
Seven in 10 Republicans either doubt or completely disbelieve that President Obama was born in the United States. Six in 10 think he’s a secret Muslim. Half believe global warming is possibly or definitely a myth concocted by scientists.
Among just Trump voters, 7 in 10 believe government economic data are fabricated. Half don’t trust that votes will be counted accurately in the November election.
Further, some fraction — though to my knowledge, as yet unmeasured — apparently believes presidential elections are determined by Instagram followers. All hail President Selena Gomez!
Republicans and Trump backers didn’t come to these conclusions independently. They learned them from the influential TV, radio and Web outfits whose imprimaturs Republican politicians desperately seek, and whose more troubling content these politicians have been reluctant to criticize.
It’s not as if Republican politicians have had any principled objection to media criticism in the past. Of course, their critiques have been reserved solely for left-wing lame-stream media, or at least media outlets they think are putting their thumbs on the scale for Democratic causes. When Republicans generically attack bias in “the media,” they are widely understood to be referring to centrist and left-leaning media, even though the most-watched cable news channel is, by leaps and bounds, conservative Fox News.
When it comes to the paranoid, destructive excesses of right-wing media — not just Fox News’s headliners such as Sean Hannity, but also Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones — Republican leaders have been somewhat more reluctant to condemn or even gently critique.
That’s presumably because many of the crazy conspiracy theories circulated by these outlets served the party’s political interests. At least in the short term.
She's correct. It's a duty of elected officials to tell citizens the truth, even when it hurts. Since the rise of the right-wing media machine, Republican politicians have refused to do so, because stirring up their base seemed a reliable way to win votes. In turn, the right-wing media pushed politicians ever further toward the right fringe, and supported primary challenges when officials seemed to be straying toward the center.
The result? A media bubble that's almost completely divorced from reality, and a made-for-TV candidate who lives inside the same bubble. Never have we had a major-party candidate who so recklessly spouted conspiracy theories and repeated obvious lies. The Republican Party's problem is that most Americans don't live inside that bubble. The base is getting smaller and more radical, and that's great for winning party primaries, but not so helpful in national elections. If the party wants to compete on the national stage, it will have to find its way back to reality.
President Obama has been warning about this trend for years. As with just about everything else he's said, Republicans have refused to listen. Now those who genuinely care about their party and the country are figuring out that he was right. At the New Republic, Brian Beutler reports:
“For years,” Obama said in Las Vegas, “Republican politicians and the far-right media outlets have pumped up all kinds of crazy stuff about me, about Hillary, about Harry [Reid]. They said I wasn’t born here. They said climate change is a hoax. They said that I was going to take everybody’s guns away.”
Obama went on:
[T]here are a lot of politicians who knew better. There are a lot of senators who knew better. But they went along with these stories because they figured, you know what, this will help rile up the base, it will give us an excuse to obstruct what we’re trying to do, we won’t be able to appoint judges, we’ll gum up the works, we’ll create gridlock, it will give us a political advantage. So they just stood by and said nothing. And their base began to actually believe this crazy stuff.
So Donald Trump did not start this. Donald Trump didn’t start it. He just did what he always did, which is slap his name on it, take credit for it, and promote it. That’s what he does. And so now when suddenly it’s not working, and people are saying, wow, this guy is kind of out of line, all of a sudden, these Republican politicians who were okay with all this crazy stuff up to a point, suddenly they’re all walking away. “Oh, this is too much.” … Well, what took you so long? What the heck?
It should be alarming to Republican strategists that the outgoing Democratic president has a better handle on what’s happened to their party than GOP politicians and conservative intellectuals—many of whom blame Trump’s rise on the media, or liberal dirty tricks.
“When I was watching the president,” the conservative radio host John Ziegler told Business Insider, referring to the above remarks, “I was struck by how he seemed to understand the problems with conservative media more than any Republican does. It was frustrating to see him be the voice of reason.”
We here at TWiA World Headquarters have likewise been warning about this trend for years. When study after study shows that Fox "News" viewers are less informed than people who don't watch TV news at all, that's a sign that something's amiss. When conservatives turn to blatantly dishonest sources like Drudge and Breitbart and Limbaugh and Beck--not to mention the sheer lunacy of Alex Jones--it's obvious that they're drifting away from facts and reason.
America has a two-party political system, but both parties need to be engaged on the same issues--the real issues, not the fantasy ones--for it to function. For too long, we've been dysfunctional because Republicans have been playing to their extremist elements and abandoning principled conservative voices.
This Week in Gun Safety
Pro-gun death advocates keep pushing to allow guns to be carried on college campuses. The argument they make is that if students and faculty are armed, then someone will be able to stop a mass shooter before too many victims are injured or killed. Is there any research to back that theory up? No; there's only the wishful thinking of the NRA and their ilk, putting ideology and their own financial interests ahead of the safety of our young people.
Now a major new study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Stanford University, and the University of Massachusetts, Boston addresses exactly that issue. Its findings are summarized here:
As mass shootings and casualties from those shootings have risen sharply over the past decade, one rationale for allowing more civilians to carry firearms, both on and off college campuses, is to avert rampage shootings or stop rampage shooters before additional victims are shot. Central to these arguments are the notions that “gun-free” zones attract individuals set on mass murder and that armed civilians frequently thwart or interrupt such shootings. New research on mass shootings involving six or more victims murdered that occurred in the United States from 1966 through June 2016 contradicts these claims. Only 12% of these shootings took place, in whole or in part, in a truly gun-free zone (no armed security or police or armed civilians) and 5% in a gun- restricting zone (civilian gun possession prohibited). A separate study of mass shootings involving four or more fatalities, that included domestic incidents during 2009-2015, found that only 13% occurred in a gun-free or gun-restricting zone. Successful civilian uses of guns to stop a mass shooting were incredibly rare and about as common as armed civilians being shot while attempting to respond to mass shooting incidents. Furthermore, the data show no evidence that RTC laws–which, it is argued, lead to more armed citizens ready to defend against a mass shooting–reduce mass shootings or the number of people shot in those incidents.
This report also reviews research relevant to the unique context of college campuses, especially student demographics and characteristics, and the implications for increased access to firearms among college students. Late adolescence and early adulthood is marked by increases in a variety of risky behaviors including violence, binge drinking, and drug abuse. Binge drinking, a common behavior among college students, especially elevates risks for involvement in violent altercations. Risky decision-making in adolescence and early adulthood is due, in part, to on-going brain development during that stage of life that can compromise emotional and behavioral regulation, impulse control, and judgment–all of which are essential for avoiding the circumstances in which firearm access leads to tragedy. Age-specific homicide offending peaks around the age when youth reach the minimum legal age for purchasing, possessing, and carrying handguns (19-21 years).
Suicidal behavior that leads to death or hospital treatment peaks at age 16, but remains high through age 25, covering the age span of most college students. Mental illnesses, such as depression, that commonly emerge during adolescence and young adulthood, coupled with restricted impulse control and the stressors that many college students experience, increases the risk of suicidal behavior among college students. Research demonstrates that access to firearms substantially increases suicide risks, especially among adolescents and young adults, as firearms are the most common method of lethal self-harm.
Increasing the presence of guns on college campuses does little or nothing for the safety of the student population, but in fact increases the risk of gun violence and gun death. That may or may not be what the NRA and other pro-gun death organizations and legislators hope for, but it's what they'll get.
This Week on the Border
Shane Bauer is one of the best investigative reporters in the business. After a stint working undercover as a guard in a private prison, he wrote a piece for Mother Jones that brought new attention to the waste and abuse in the private prison industry, and helped lead to a DOJ decision to stop housing federal prisoners in private prisons. His newest article is about his time undercover with a border militia, operating on the Arizona/Mexico border. If you've ever wondered what the people who join these paramilitary operations are like, read Bauer's piece.
This Week in Treason
We've been wondering how many days will pass between the next president's inauguration on January 20, 2017, and the release of the first of the pro-gun death lobby's messages saying "Okay, President Obama didn't snatch all the guns, declare martial law, or give up US sovereignty to the UN, but only because he was trying to soften us up so Hillary Clinton could do it."
Turns out, they're not even waiting for the election to make that prediction. This week, NRA executive VP and CEO--a man who makes millions of dollars every year from encouraging Americans to shoot each other to death--said that Hillary Clinton will will "come for your guns, she will attack your right to carry, she will attack your most basic right to defend your family with a firearm in your home."
The number of "militia" groups always spikes during Democratic presidential administrations, and drops during Republican ones. An observer would be forgiven (mostly because it's correct) for noting that America's right wing seems to comprise a lot of sore losers.
What does it say about Donald Trump, and about America's right wing, that so many people supporting Trump talk about armed revolution as a response to a Clinton win? And own enough guns to make a go of it? It even extends to elected officials, like former Rep. Joe Walsh (R/IL), who tweeted "On November 8th, I'm voting for Trump. On November 9th, if Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket. You in?"
In the America we love, people who lose elections work harder next time. There's nothing patriotic about taking up arms against our elected government, or threatening to do so. But that's contemporary American conservatism in action. The moderate Republicans have been forced from the movement, the intellectual conservatives talk to each other in the pages of magazines read only by other conservative intellectuals, and the extremists have the national stage, controlling the Republican party and the right-wing media machine.
Treason is an ugly thing to see.
Side Note: The paranoids over at the Oath Keepers militia group plan to "form up incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting teams and go out into public on election day, dressed to blend in with the public … with video, still camera, and notepad in hand, to look for and document suspected criminal vote fraud or intimidation activities.”
As the Southern Poverty Law Center reports, "The Oath Keepers are well known for showing up heavily armed in instances of social crisis. Staking out polling stations to thwart voter intimidation is likely to cause more problems than it solves, especially given the group’s own history of frightening locals. Coming at a time of increasing racial tensions, likely armed, mostly white men secretly patrolling voting stations looking for “suspicious” activity is incredibly worrisome."
What could go wrong?
This Week in Gary Johnson
Somewhere, Libertarian VP candidate William Weld is burying his face in his hands and saying, "How did I get involved with this loon?" You have to see this video.
This Week in Bears
Here's a polar bear live cam from Manitoba. Sometimes they're just snoozing or sniffing the air, sometimes they're moving around. It's a peaceful oasis in a hectic world.
This Connecticut man tried to build a bear-proof bird feeder. He didn't reckon on tall bears.
Comments