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Lou Dobbs Forced to Retract Libelous Claims on Air

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2020 //
15

The Washington Post reported that FOX Business News commentator, Lou Dobbs, a big fan of Trump’s, was compelled to air a segment retracting his statements about a voting machine vendor, under threat of a lawsuit.

In addition, Newsmax apologized fully for its slanders against the two major voting machine companies, stating that they were not part of any conspiracy to rig the election. Please watch this. It’s unintentionally hilarious and makes mincemeat of the Sidney Powell-Rudy Guiliani conspiracy theories. Amazing what the threat of a lawsuit can accomplish, especially when the defendant has knowingly lied.

Here is the Lou Dobbs story:

Something surprising happened Friday night on Lou Dobbs’s top-rated show on the Fox Business Network.

Dobbs, an opinion host and conservative ally of President Trump who has consistently raged over the past month that the president was robbed of a second term by a rigged election, introduced a segment that calmly debunked several accusations of fraud that Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump supporters have lobbed against the election technology company Smartmatic.

“There are lots of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software,” Dobbs told his viewers before introducing Edward Perez, an expert with the nonprofit Open Source Election Technology Institute, to give “his assessment of Smartmatic and recent claims about the company.”

Perez then appeared in an apparently pretaped segment, where he shot down various conspiracy theories in response to questions from an off-camera, unidentified voice — not Dobbs’s.

The segment, it turns out, was in response to a 20-page legal demand letter that was sent this month by Smartmatic to Fox News Media. Similar letters went to Fox’s smaller competitors on the right, Newsmax and One America News. The letters demanded “a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports” aired by the network in its coverage of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Specifically, the company charged: “Fox News has engaged in a concerted disinformation campaign against Smartmatic. Fox News told its millions of viewers and readers that Smartmatic was founded by [the late Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez, that its software was designed to fix elections, and that Smartmatic conspired with others to defraud the American people and fix the 2020 U.S. election by changing, inflating, and deleting votes.”

Not only are these claims false, the company said, it played only a relatively minor role in this year’s presidential election, as a contractor for the election process in Los Angeles County, Calif.

In the legal letter, Smartmatic included segments from Dobbs’s prime-time show as examples of “false and defamatory statements/implications,” with some comments coming from Dobbs himself — Dobbs said on Nov. 18 that the company consists of “left-wing radicals” — and others from guests such as Giuliani and onetime Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell.

Fox News confirmed to The Washington Post on Saturday that the fact-checking segment seen on Dobbs’s show Friday night will also air on “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” hosted on Saturday night by Jeanine Pirro and “Sunday Morning Futures,” hosted on Sunday morning by Maria Bartiromo, the shows mentioned in the demand letter. (Smartmatic had demanded that the corrections “must be published on multiple occasions” and must be made during prime-time shows, so as to “match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications….”)

In the segment, Perez clarified that Smartmatic is, “for all intents and purposes,” a completely separate company from Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology company that has faced unsubstantiated charges of wrongdoing. In a Nov. 12 appearance on Dobbs’s show, Giuliani claimed that Dominion is owned by Smartmatic; on Nov. 16, Dobbs said that “Dominion has connections” to Smartmatic, while also claiming the since-debunked theory that Smartmatic “had ties to” Venezuela’s Chavez.

During Friday night’s fact-checking segment, the questioner asked Perez: “Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?”

This appeared to be a reference to Giuliani’s Nov. 12 claim on the show that with Smartmatic software, “the votes actually go to Barcelona, Spain.” Perez responded, “No, I’m not aware of any evidence that Smartmatic is sending U.S. votes to be tabulated in foreign countries.”

It is unclear whether the fact-checking segment fulfilled Smartmatic’s demand for a retraction. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment Saturday. In the legal demand letter, Smartmatic said that the comments made on Fox will cost the company “hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars” in value.

Thus far, Fox appears to be the only network that has publicly made amends in response to Smartmatic’s complaint. Newsmax, which began referring to Joe Biden as “president-elect” only on Monday, released a statement responding to Smartmatic’s demand letter by placing the burden of blame on the guests who expressed those views on air.

This is what accountability looks like.

Categories Elections, Hoax, Lies, Media

Brian Stelter: Rightwing Media Are Promoting Dangerous Radicalization

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2020 //
33

Brian Stelter has an always interesting show on CNN on Sunday mornings, where he discusses the media. He is not a “both sides” commentator.

Watch this powerful analysis of the “mass “”radicalization” promoted by Trump and his baseless conspiracy theories. Trump allies talk about martial law, overturning the election, seizing voting machines.

Bottom line: Our democracy was known for years as highly stable. No more. We are in trouble.


https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2020/12/20/stelter-commentary-radicalization-in-media-rs-vpx.cnn

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Fake News, Fascism, Freedom, Insane, Trump

Republican Leader: The Election Is Over

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2020 //
11

Trevor Potter is a Republican who was former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and president of the Campaign Legal Center. He writes here about efforts by Trump and his surrogates to promote their belief that the election can be overturned to Congress on January 6, when the Electoral College results are presented to Congress. The Trump campaign has chosen “alternate slates of electors” and will pressure Republicans to accept them, even though they do not represent the voters of their states and were not certified by the Secretary of State or the Governor.

Potter wrote in the Washington Post:

Jan. 6 is not another Election Day. Don’t let President Trump convince you it is.

What will happen then — a joint session of Congress to receive the presidential and vice-presidential election results transmitted by the states — typically occurs every four years in relative obscurity. But this election cycle has been anything but typical. While there’s no realistic chance of anything happening Jan. 6 to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power consistent with the will of America’s voters and Monday’s electoral college votes, there is still a good chance Trump will try to make the day a super spreader event for the election disinformation with which he is relentlessly trying to infect American democracy.

Foreknowledge is, however, a form of inoculation here. By understanding exactly what does and doesn’t happen Jan. 6, all of us can contribute to making that day a reaffirmation of our democratic process rather than part of a continued assault on it.

As required by the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment, the House and Senate will gather in a joint session presided over by Vice President Pence. There, the slates of electors for president and vice president from the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, received by Congress from the state governments and accompanied by certificates from the governors, will be read out, and the vote totals will be counted. This is usually a routine process — as it should be, because federal law urges any disputes over such slates to be resolved in the states by Dec. 8, ahead of the electoral college meeting Dec. 14. That is to say any disputes (which are rare to begin with) are meant to be disposed of well before Congress gathers to count the electoral votes. It’s “really a formality,” as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) has rightly called the coming session.

But it is at least possible for members of Congress to raise objections to one or more slates of electors as they’re read aloud. Under a 130-year-old law called the Electoral Count Act, if one representative and one senator jointly object to a slate, then the whole process pauses while the House and Senate separately debate the objection, then vote on whether to sustain it.

This gives Trump’s die-hard supporters in Congress an opportunity to again provide more disinformation about the election on national television Jan. 6. At least one Republican House member, Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), has said he is considering making such an objection — much to Trump’s delight. He’s thinking of objecting even though his ostensible reason, purported election fraud, has been resoundingly rejected by state and federal courts, state election officials of both parties and even Trump’s own attorney general. (It has also been rejected by Trump’s lawyers, who have mostly refrained from bringing fraud charges in actual court proceedings where they would have to prove them, even as they fling accusations around outside of court.) 

Even if Brooks finds one or more colleagues and senators to join him, there’s no real possibility of overturning the outcome of the election: the Electoral Count Act requires both the House and the Senate to reject a slate of electors, and there is no sign that either chamber would do so. A number of Republican senators have already rejected such a challenge to the votes of the people, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is telling his caucus not to join any such effort. Surely a majority-Democratic House won’t do so.

As with so much that’s happened since Nov. 3, however, it’s not the threat of actually changing the outcome that’s most worrisome here. Instead, it’s the danger of spreading disinformation and undermining the perceived legitimacy of American democracy, planting the seed for future attempts by the losing party to change election results if they control state legislatures or Congress.

Imagine how Trump might frame the votes that he could push for in January as he continues to deny his election defeat. First, just as Trump has turned on Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp — previously a close ally — because Kemp would not take illegal steps to disrupt that state’s vote certification, the soon-to-be-former-president could start tweeting demands that objections be lodged in Congress. Trump has also attacked Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey for not preventing that state’s certification of electors for President-elect Joe Biden, and the U.S. Supreme Court for rejecting a far-fetched lawsuit by his supporters in Texas. Second, if one or more objections are made, Trump might frame the potential votes in the House and Senate to be a vote for him or for Biden — and Trump might, in turn, excoriate any Republican who votes “for Biden,” as he would misleadingly frame it.

That’s why it’s essential to immunize the American people against these falsehoods now, before they can spread. There’s simply no vote for or against any candidate Jan. 6 when Congress meets. No representative or senator is being asked to choose between Trump or Biden. That’s something they were all entitled to do along with other Americans, when they as citizens voted before or on Nov. 3. As Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said recently, “trying to get electors not to do what the people voted to do is madness.”

Instead, there’s only one thing that could be put to a vote Jan. 6: American democracy. The question is whether to respect the choice already made by the American people in every state, as certified by each state’s own election system, whether any particular member of Congress likes that choice. The alternative is to lodge a legally futile but psychologically damaging blow against the integrity of America’s fundamental democratic process and the principles of federalism and the sovereignty of voters.

There’s a way to prevent all of this, of course. No member of Congress should have to choose between casting a vote for democracy itself or avoiding excoriation by the sitting president on Twitter. If lawmakers do not indulge in partisan, baseless claims of election fraud by joining an objection Jan. 6, no vote occurs. Instead, the day proceeds just as it should: as a routine ceremony finalizing the votes already cast by the American people, proceeding the inauguration ceremony Jan. 20.

Don’t let Trump claim otherwise. There’s nothing left to vote for or against. We already voted — and he lost.

Categories Elections, Hoax, Trump

The Madness of King Donald

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2020 //
22

Trump is obsessed with overturning the election he lost. He continues to tweet that he won and that the election was tainted by widespread fraud, even though his campaign lost every lawsuit in state and federal courts for lack of evidence and was twice rejected by the US Supreme Court. Trump appears to be delusional, egged on by conspiracy theorists and his inflated ego and raging narcissism.

The New York Times published a story about a long meeting at the White House on Friday where Trump considered ways to reverse the results of the election. Trump consulted with attorney Sidney Powell, who was previously ousted as one of his campaign lawyers after she unveiled her theories about voting machines programmed in Venezuela by followers of deceased dictator Hugo Chavez. No court accepted her evidence.

President Trump on Friday discussed naming Sidney Powell, who as a lawyer for his campaign team unleashed conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines in the United States, to be a special counsel overseeing an investigation of voter fraud, according to two people briefed on the discussion.

It was unclear if Mr. Trump will move ahead with such a plan.

Most of his advisers opposed the idea, two of the people briefed on the discussion said, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. In recent days Mr. Giuliani has sought to have the Department of Homeland Security join the campaign’s efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the election.

Mr. Giuliani joined the discussion by phone initially, while Ms. Powell was at the White House for a meeting that became raucous and involved people shouting at each other at times, according to one of the people briefed on what took place.

Ms. Powell’s client, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser whom the president recently pardoned, was also there, two of the people briefed on the meeting said. Some senior administration officials drifted in and out of the meeting.

During an appearance on the conservative Newsmax channel this week, Mr. Flynn pushed for Mr. Trump to impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election. At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea.

Ms. Powell’s ideas were shot down by every other Trump adviser present, all of whom repeatedly pointed out that she had yet to back up her claims with proof. At one point, one person briefed on the meeting said, she produced several affidavits, but upon inspection they were all signed by a man she has previously used as an expert witness, whose credentials have been called into question.

The White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly and aggressively pushed back on the ideas being proposed, which went beyond the special counsel idea, those briefed on the meeting said.

Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump there was no constitutional authority for what was being discussed, one of the people briefed on the meeting said. Other advisers from the White House and the Trump campaign delivered the same message throughout the meeting, which stretched on for a long period of time...

Mr. Trump, egged on by supporters like Ms. Powell, has never conceded and, holed up inside the White House, he continues to assert that he actually won — even though the baseless claims Ms. Powell and others have made of widespread fraud have been thoroughly debunked and even many of Mr. Trump’s closest allies have dismissed as preposterous her tale of an international conspiracy to rig the vote...

Ms. Powell accused other Trump advisers of being quitters, according to the people briefed.

But the idea that Mr. Trump would try to install Ms. Powell in a position to investigate the outcome sent shock waves through the president’s circle. She has repeatedly claimed there was widespread fraud, but several lawsuits she filed related to election fraud have been tossed out of court...

Part of the White House meeting on Friday night was a discussion about an executive order to take control of voting machines to examine them, according to one of the people briefed on the discussion.

Mr. Giuliani has separately pressed the Department of Homeland Security to seize possession of voting machines as part of a push to overturn the results of the election, three people familiar with the discussion said. Mr. Giuliani was told the department does not have the authority to do such a thing.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Trump

Michael Gerson: The Moral Hypocrisy of Conservative Leaders

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2020 //
55

So you thought the election was over after Joe Biden won the vote of the Electoral College on December 14, as predicted, by 306-232. And perhaps you thought it was over when Mitch McConnell finally congratulated Biden after the Electoral College voted and called him the President-Elect.

But: Trump is continuing his hapless campaign to reverse the election, despite the fact that his claims of fraud were rejected more than 50 times in state and federal courts and twice by the Supreme Court. Stephen Miller said that the election was not finished, that several states had prepared their own slates of Trump electors who would take their case to Congress, and that the decision about the presidency would not be finished until January 20, Inauguration Day. George Conway of the Lincoln Project told Anderson Cooper on CNN that Trump was behaving as he is for three reasons: 1) he is delusional; 2) he is scamming his followers by raising money for himself (whoever heard of a billionaire appealing for $5?); 3) he is malevolent.

Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post about the hypocrisy of certain rightwing “leaders” who support Trump’s ridiculous claim that the election was “stolen.”

Gerson wrote about the assault on democracy by conservative leaders, who are enabling Trump’s delusional behavior:

“It was stolen,” said conservative luminary William Bennett on a recent podcast. “The election was stolen.”


In a Dec. 10 open letter, a group of conservative stalwarts — including activist Gary Bauer, former senator and former president of the Heritage Foundation James DeMint, and head of the Family Research Council Tony Perkins — alleged that “President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election.” They called on state legislators in battleground states to “appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump” and urged the House and Senate to reject competing slates reflecting the actual vote.


For some of us, watching prominent conservatives turn against rationality and democracy is not just disappointing; it is disorienting...

The intellectual bankruptcy and moral hypocrisy of many conservative leaders is stunning. People who claimed to favor limited government now applaud Trump’s use of the executive branch to undermine an election. A similar attempt by Barack Obama would have brought comparisons to Fidel Castro. People who talked endlessly about respecting the Constitution affirm absurd slanders against the constitutional order. People who claimed to be patriots now spread false claims about their country’s fundamental corruption. People who talked of honoring the rule of law now jerk and gyrate according to the whims of a lawless leader.

These conservative leaders no longer deserve the assumption of sincerity. They are spreading conspiratorial lies so unlikely and irrational, they must know them to be lies.

Gerson questions their motives for their immoral claims. Is it cynicism? Fear? A will to power? Why accept blatant lies? Why attack the foundation of democracy, which is free and fair elections? Why defend a would-be tyrant?

Perhaps these conservative leaders view democracy as a secondary concern, compared with the broader crisis of Western civilization. Maybe resisting the impending arrival of cultural and economic Marxism requires conservatives to use whatever means are necessary — including the invalidation of a valid election.
This justification — “by any means necessary” — may be the least conservative arrangement of letters in the English language.

Traditional conservatives have regarded such ideas as the path to tyranny, the highway to the guillotine. This approach assumes an emergency that does not actually exist. Are the barbarian hordes really arriving under the brutal, pitiless direction of . . . Joe Biden? Will the rescue of civilization from decadence really be accomplished under the courageous moral leadership of . . . Donald Trump?


Conservatism is supposed to produce the best of citizens — lawful, loyal and respectful of the Constitution. In some quarters, it is now producing the worst — fractious, resentful and cynical. A large portion of the responsibility rests on conservative leaders, who have sold their convictions cheap.

Categories Biden, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Hypocrisy, Trump

Wall Street Journal: Time for Trump to Concede

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2020 //
27

The Wall Street Journal is one of the most conservative editorial voices in the nation. Today its editorial says that the Electoral College has decided the election. Biden won. Trump lost. Trump should concede.

The Electoral College meets Monday to cast its votes for President, officially marking Joe Biden as the election winner. President Trump’s legal challenges have run their course, and he and the rest of the Republican Party can help the country and themselves by acknowledging the result and moving on.

Mr. Trump’s last legal gasp came Friday evening when the Supreme Court declined to hear the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. As we predicted, the Court cited Texas’s lack of legal standing to challenge how another state manages its elections. 

Some on the right claim that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, but this is wrong. The Justices said they would have taken the Texas case as a “bill of complaint” when states sue other states. 

This is a technical point that concerns the Court’s case management, and the two Justices have a long-time view that the Court should hear more of these direct state appeals. We happen to agree, but in this case the Texas claim was outside constitutional bounds. Justice Alito (joined by Justice Thomas) added that he would “not grant other relief.” This was not a dissent on the merits of the Texas claim.

Mr. Trump and his camp are attacking the Court, and the President is deriding the “standing” point as a dodge. It is much more than that. Limits on standing are fundamental to a conservative understanding of the proper judicial role under Article III of the Constitution. If anyone can sue without a cognizable injury and the possibility of remedy, the courts would be overwhelmed with frivolous claims.

There is more to the editorial but I don’t subscribe and this is the free content available to me. Note: Even if Alito and Thomas had dissented, which they did not, the vote would have been a decisive 7-2 against Trump’s frivolous claim. It was 9-0 against Trump’s frivolous claim. At what point do courts begin to fine and punish lawyers for repeatedly filing frivolous claims?

Categories Accountability, Elections, Trump

Caroline Guiliani Offers Self-Care Tips for Those Who Accept Reality and Concede Defeat

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2020 //
14

Caroline Rose Guiliani offers thoughtful tips about self-care for those who acknowledge that TrumpWorld will no longer inhabit the White House. She clearly has her father Rudy and his client Donald Trump in mind in this article in Vanity Fair.

It is very funny.

Here are two of her excellent suggestions:

Adopt a stray. Please, just treat it better than Trump has treated his lapdogs: William Barr, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham.

Engage with your surroundings. It’s time for a redesign! Demolish remaining Confederate statues and consider replacing them with busts of Dolly Parton and John Lewis. For outdoor architectural projects, I recommend Four Seasons Total Landscaping. (Get a jump on your holiday shopping at the literary establishment next door.) Sexual self-care is critical if you don’t want to end up in the crematorium across the street. This is not a sponsored ad. But it could be! Call me, Fantasy Island.

Read them all!



Categories Elections, Humor

Frank G. Splitt: The Legacy of Trumpism

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2020 //
77

Frank G. Splitt is an esteemed engineer who recently celebrated his 90th birthday. He writes from the perspective of many years of experience and knowledge.

By Frank G. Splitt December 3, 2020


The Trump Presidency
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly


The experience is shattering. How much stupidity! What delusion among such cultured and actually clever people! Just unconditional belief in the Führer, delight that ‘finally our weapons speak’.1 —Erich Ebermayer, September 3, 1939


My September 21, 2020, essay “Trumpism and Its Factions: An Existential Threat to America’s Democracy,” began with the above epigraph and concluded with the following three questions:2


If the president has his way, who would be able to stop him from using all the levers of government to not only contest the results of the upcoming election if he loses, but also who would stop him from realizing his personal and political aims as well as his ambition if he wins either by votes cast or by a SCOTUS decision as in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000)? Shades of Germany in the 1930s?”


President Trump’s loyal supporters counter such concerns as well as any and all criticism by citing his policies that resulted in ostensibly good if not great accomplishments. It has been claimed that these accomplishments have been negated by the president’s offsetting personality.3 However, these “good” accomplishments, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder—forming only a piece of an ugly story that goes far beyond the president’s personality.


Not mentioned by his supporters have been vast international reputational as well as social and human costs that are still being paid for these accomplishments. Consider first the likely long-lasting impact of President Trump’s assault on America’s democracy and democratic values, as well as his demeaning of the office of the president via cruelty, incompetence, and alleged corruption as well as obstruction of justice.


Also not mentioned are the president’s trade policies that have damaged the U.S. economy and alienated allies. According to Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin: “the president sought to reduce the trade deficit, increase manufacturing employment, change China’s policies, and reach better deals, but fell short on all accounts”4
Furthermore, consider the cost of the president’s divide-and-conquer strategy that not only tore American’s asunder, but also bolstered America’s slide towards autocracy and the fact that bad behavior and policies have steep costs as well. The list includes: the minority-voter suppression highlighted in a recent Commonweal Magazine editorial,5 blatant lies and gross exaggerations, flagrant self-dealing, the tax evasion, the separation of children from their parents, the encouragement of white supremacists, conspiratorialists, and radical right-wing factions such as neo-Nazis, and, perhaps one of the most egregious of all in terms of lives lost, the downplaying and politicization of COVID-19.


An ugly state of affairs has pervaded the fabric of our nation. Sadly, none of this ugliness has any apparent bearing on the actions of President Trump’s loyal cult-like supporters of their tyrannical leader. For example, it has been reported that half of Republicans say Biden won because of a ‘rigged’ election.6 This belief appears to be a psychological phenomenon akin to the Hitler mania of the German people in the 1930s and the Jim Jones cult’s suicides in 1978.


Seemingly, half of Republicans have unconditional belief in Trump who was prescient when he once boasted: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” These voters believe the election was rigged not only because that’s what they want to believe, but more likely because Trump keeps baselessly saying it was rigged—insisting in a December 2, 2020, White House speech that he won the election.7
All of this would not be possible if these otherwise intelligent voters did not willfully suspend moral judgement and succumb to their avarice, self-interest, and/or any one of a number of political single-issues. This situation is not without its parallels, for example President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign recalls one of the most disastrous political lies of the 20th century.8


Trump will always have his apologists and his steadfast defenders. They believe he is one of them fighting for what is right against elitist plots and those of the Deep State, as well as any others who may have betrayed them. To abandon their leader now would be to admit they were wrong—deceived or conned by his lies and exaggerations that placated their heart-felt resentment of the socio-political state of affairs in America.8 And, worse yet, admit that it was wrong to have supported him in the first place. It seems that one of the most difficult things for a person to do is admit that they were wrong—sometimes even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.9


What can be said of the president’s sycophantic congressional enablers? This group lives in utter fear of Trump’s base of loyal supporters and seems to believe the president has the right to impede the transition to the Biden presidency to suit his self- centered present and future interests no matter the cost to national security and the health of American citizens. These interests include: raising money, solidifying his base, undermining the Biden administration, deepening and exploiting ethnic, demographic religious, and racial divisions, as well as positioning for a possible 2024 rerun. 10, 11, 12


Finally, in view of the above, what might a post-Trump presidency portend? Although no one can say with any degree of certainty, here is a potential worst-case scenario: President Biden’s efforts to unite the country will fail, undermined beyond bearing by Trump who will be aided and abetted by Senate Republicans unwilling to stand up to him for fear of alienating his base. This will be followed by a further transition from democracy to autocracy while still conforming to the Constitution as interpreted by an unbalanced Supreme Court packed with Trump nominations and backed by a formidable voting block of true believers. This scenario reflects “shades of Germany in the 1930s.”


We will see what we will see


NOTES

  1. Ebermayer, a German liberal intellectual, made these remarks after a visit with aristocratic neighbors who, as Hitler-loyalists, expressed boundless uncritical faith in their leader. The encounter was on the day Britain and France went to war with Germany after it invaded Poland. See pages 368-69 of Frederick Taylor’s book 1939: A People’s History of the Coming of the Second World War (Norton, 2020).
  2. Splitt, Frank G., “Trumpism and Its Factions: An Existential Threat to America’s Democracy, FutureVectors, Sept.21, 2020, Afterword Oct. 13, 2020, http://www.futurevectors.com/Odyssey/Splitt%20- %20Trumpism.pdf
  3. Epstein, Joseph, “Donald Trump, the President His Detractors Loved to Hate,”
    The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Nov.14, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-the-president- his-detractors-loved-to-hate-1160530742143
  4. Irwin, Douglas A., “Trade Truths Will Outlast Trump,” The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Nov. 20, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trade-truths-will-outlast-trump-11605828052
  5. Editors, “Democracy in America?” Commonweal, Nov. 2020, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/democracy-america
  6. Kahn, Chris, “Half of Republicans say Biden won because of a ‘rigged’ election.” Reuters, Nov. 18, 2020, https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-11-18/half-of-republicans-say-biden-won- because-of-a-rigged-election-reuters-ipsos-poll
  7. Restuccia, Andrew and Leary, Alex, “In Speech, Trump Reasserts Fraud Claims,” The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News, Dec. 3, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-reasserts-fraud-claims-despite- lack-of-evidence-losses-in-court-11606949718
  8. Bittner, Jochem, “1918 Germany Has Warning for America,” The New York Times, Opinion,
    Nov. 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/opinion/trump-conspiracy-germany- 1918.html?smid=em-share
  9. Danner, Mark, “The Con He Rode In On,” The New York Review, Sept. 19, 2020, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/11/19/the-con-he-rode-in-on/.
  10. Woodward, Calvin and Swenson, “AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s flailing effort resting on mendacity,”
    AP News, Nov. 21, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-ap-fact-check-joe-biden-donald-trump- technology/
  11. Reich, Robert, “How can Biden heal America when Trump doesn’t want it healed?” The Guardian, Nov. 8, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/08/joe-biden-donald-trump-election- healing-robert-reich
  12. Romano, Andrew and Walker, Hunter, “Trump in exile: How he will remain a force in the GOP, and a threat to Biden’s politics of unity,” Yahoo News, Nov. 18, 2020, . 13. Mazewski, Matt, “Trump Can Run Again,” Commonweal, Nov. 15, 2020, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/trump-can-run-again/
    Frank G. Splitt, is a former McCormick Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and Vice President Emeritus of Nortel Networks, the author of the book An Odyssey of Reform Initiatives: 1986-2015 and its sequel Reflections: 2016-2019. He is the recipient of The Drake Group’s 2006 Robert Maynard Hutchin’s Award and a 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Optics and Photonics. His books and other writings can be accessed at http://www.futurevectors.com

FutureVectors, Inc.
Mount Prospect, Illinois

Categories Democracy, Elections, Lies, Trump

The CEO of Dominion Voting Systems Answers Trump Campaign Claims

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2020 //
32

John Poulos, the founder, president, and CEO of Dominion Voting Systems responded to allegations of fraud by the Trump campaign in this article in the Wall Street Journal. Various spokespeople for the Trump campaign have asserted that the Dominion voting machines flipped votes from Trump to Biden, that the machines were designed by someone in the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela, that Dominion was tied to a worldwide Communist plot to oust Trump, and that the Dominion machines were hooked up to the Internet to facilitate counting votes to favor Biden.

He wrote:

Accurate, transparent and accessible elections—this is the objective that motivated me to create Dominion Voting Systems 18 years ago in Canada. From the start, the company was focused on improving paper-based voting, and it continues to pursue vote-tabulation solutions that enhance accuracy and transparency through audits and reviews, as well as by allowing voters to create, verify and privately cast a marked paper ballot. But if you’ve heard about our role in the U.S. election on Twitter,it’s likely you’ve heard something different.

The allegations against Dominion are bizarre, but I’ll set the record straight. Dominion is an American company, now headquartered in Denver. Dominion is not and has never been a front for communists. It has no ties to Hugo Chávez, the late dictator of Venezuela. It has never been involved in Venezuelan elections. None of Dominion’s systems use the Smartmatic software that has come under attack, as any state certification lab could verify.

There is no secret “vote flipping” algorithm. Third-party test labs, chosen by the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission and accredited by a program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, perform complete source-code reviews on every federally certified tabulation system. States replicate this process for their own certifications. Postelection canvassing and auditing also exist to provide additional assurance of the vote totals’ accuracy.

The part of the election process on which Dominion focuses is highly regulated and certified. The company doesn’t work in noncertified areas such as voter-registration systems, poll books or signature-verification software, and it doesn’t provide vote-by-mail printing. Dominion voting machines do one thing: accurately tabulate votes from county-verified voters using a durable paper ballot controlled and secured by local elections officials.

Some of the main counties where results have been contested, like Philadelphia and Allegheny (Pittsburgh), don’t even use Dominion voting systems. In fact, across the 14 Pennsylvania counties that use Dominion systems, President Trump received 52.2% of the vote.

Despite the company’s limited role in elections, it has been the target of a stream of outrageous statements since Election Day—increasingly reckless and defamatory allegations that don’t stand up to scrutiny. Dominion is never able to affect the outcome of an election. The entire certification process makes sure of that. Regardless, the company’s focus has always been to be nonpartisan and respectful of all views. Dominion’s customers are election officials from both parties in the 28 states where it operates.

Unlike its critics, Dominion has had to attest to every part of its business ownership and operations to governmental agencies and in courts—under oath and penalty of perjury. We believe it is important to welcome the highest degree of scrutiny and transparency in the election process. This builds trust and leads to more resilient and robust elections. The widespread disinformation campaign America currently faces, however, does the opposite. Baseless and ludicrous smears are presented without evidence and amplified across social media. 

These attacks undermine the tens of thousands of state and local officials who run our elections. When it comes to counting ballots, officials have established a distributed, multilayered system with checks and balances, in which robust safeguards ensure that no one needs to trust blindly any person, company or technology. Here are some of the safeguards in place in Georgia, where the Trump campaign has contested the result:

• Tabulation machines are tested publicly, before bipartisan witnesses, before and right after Election Day.


• On Election Day, poll workers—not Dominion systems—verify voters’ identities, including a signature check. 

• Voters mark a paper ballot to vote. Absentee voters use pens, while in-person voters use “ballot marking devices,” which display a digital ballot for voters to make a selection and then print a paper record. In both cases, voters verify the marked paper ballot before casting it in a secure ballot box through an air-gapped scanning tabulator.

• After polls close, results are tallied by local officials. Paper ballots are safeguarded by thousands of poll workers distributed across 2,656 precincts.

• The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office certified election results after hand-auditing five million ballots, which showed that the paper-ballot voting system counted and reported results accurately. The small change to the final tally was due entirely to the addition of ballots that had been uncounted due to human process errors.

• The state also enlisted Pro V&V, a certified third-party testing laboratory, to audit a random sample of Dominion machines. No tampering was found.

The wild allegations of recent weeks have fueled the harassment of election officials and Dominion employees across the country—including stalking and death threats. The lies and smears have no basis in fact, but they do real damage to our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process. The false allegations should be retracted immediately. 

Citizens should know that America’s rigorous, layered and transparent electoral process—in which Dominion is proud to participate—ensures its elections are secure, accurate and credible.

Mr. Poulos is president and CEO of Dominion Voting Systems.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Lies

The Grinches of Georgia

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2020 //
16

The Republican Senators of Georgia are accused of unethical financial transactions, using their insider knowledge to buy and sell stocks during the pandemic.

Categories Elections, Georgia
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