This would have gone in the science links on Friday if I had been able to find an article whose headline didn’t have misleading things in it. I know, I should have just written my own. Anyway, so the magnetic field of the planet always fluctuates and wiggles around a bit, and back in the day when a compass was always an object at least big enough to fill the palm of your hand, the amount of drift didn’t matter. But modern navigation devices (and the way we use them) require a bit more precision, so scientists map the field changes and try to build mathematical models that allow the computerized navigation aids to take the changes in the field into account. Well, things have been a bit more dicey than usual the last few years: Erratic motion of north magnetic pole forces experts to update model that aids global navigation.
(click to embiggen)Once again some news stories either broke after I had finished this week’s Friday Five or new developments related to stories I’ve posted about before. And, as usual, I have a few thoughts to go along with the news links. Today we deal with a horrible person dealing with the consequences of just a small number of his horrible actions.
In case you don’t remember: the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred back in 2012 were 20 six- and seven-year-old children (along with six teachers) were murdered by an angry 20-year-old. Alex Jones used to be a radio host (his show is carried only on the internet now) of a thing called Info Wars where he spouts all sorts of ridiculous conspiracy theories, while peddling gross survivalist food and other shit to his gullible (and fearful) listeners. And one of the conspiracy theories he pushed hard on his show for years was that Sandy Hook never happened, that no children actually died, and that the grieving parents people saw on the news were all actors.
And the issue is, that a bunch of people who are just as dangerous as the original shooter, believed him. They began harassing the parents, threatening them and their surviving children. They staked out the graves of the buried children and harassed anyone that visited those graves. The families have had to move and try to rebuild their lives several times because of the evil, deplorable followers of this greedy, evil, deplorable man.
And so the fact that some of the families have finally found a court that will hear their case is pretty awesome. I hope he winds up penniless and on the street.
I also wish more of the idiots who have harassed the families were sitting in jail, but I’ll settle for Jones being ruined.
Once again some news stories either broke after I had finished this week’s Friday Five or new developments related to stories I’ve posted about before. And these are stories I want to make a bit more commentary on than I usually do with the Friday Fives. So, let’s jump into these things…
This isn’t just bad for them, it is bad for the economy. What makes the economy work isn’t the giant billion-dollar companies or wealthy investors: it is ordinary people spending money day to day.
And the really insane part is contained in this article: Millions face delayed tax refunds, cuts to food stamps as White House scrambles to deal with shutdown’s consequences. Go read some of those quotes! There are a number of Republican congresspeople quoted who were cheering the shutdown a week ago, who are only now learning that government shutdown means that people who voted for them aren’t getting their foodstamps, or the social security checks, and won’t get tax refunds. There are Trump cabinet officials quoted in there who didn’t understand it.
They didn’t understand that ‘government shutdown’ means that the government shuts down!?!?
It isn’t just Trump who is ignorant and doesn’t know how things work. It’s like half the goddamn Republican party!
The thing is, they can end this. The first deal, the one Trump vetoed a couple of weeks ago, passed the Senate unanimously. The Republican-controlled Senate passed the deal with no wall funding already. Congress can override the President’s veto. Now, since new Congresspeople were sworn in and this is technically a new Congress, I believe that means that they have to first pass the deal again, let him veto it, and then if all the Senators who voted for it before, and a bunch of these Republican Reps in the House who are finally realizing what this means joins the Democrats on the reconsideration, BOOM, veto overridden and government is running again.
I’m going to repeat something that I say from time to time: the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with the assumption that it is Congress that runs the country. Article I of the Constitution describes the Congress, its powers, its responsibilities, and its limitations. Everything that follows in the Constitution (the Presidency, the Judiciary, the Amendment process, the Bill of Rights) are in relationship to the Congress. The President isn’t supposed to run the country, Congress is. And they can. I realize it means some Republicans (not even half of them—just enough to with the Democrats—reach two-thirds) growing at least a teensy bit of a spine.
“In this struggle, many evangelicals believe they have found a champion in Trump. He is the enemy of their enemies. He is willing to use the hardball tactics of the secular world to defend their sacred interests. In their battle with the Philistines, evangelicals have essentially hired their own Goliath — brutal, pagan, but on their side… A hypocrisy becomes unsustainable. A seed gets planted. And a greater power emerges, revealing new leaders and shaming those who reduce Christianity to a sad and sordid game of thrones.”
I think another point he makes is the most important:
“The employment of an unethical, racist, anti-immigrant, misogynist Giant is not likely to play well with women, minorities and young people, who are likely to equate conservative religion with prejudice for decades to come.”
Honestly, polling information indicates that’s already happened. Which actually gives me a lot of hope.
I know it muddles the point, but it’s both: they are angry and afraid and ignorant and hateful and racist and all the rest… (click to embiggen)
Today’s XKCD comic reminds us the the world is always spinning and it’s always the middle of the night somewhere. https://xkcd.com/2092/
There were several things I started to blog about this morning. I’ve been very sad, for instance, that chickadees, juncos, sparrows, and the jays have all completely stopped visiting my bird feeder. I know the hawk killed and ate many of them, and that caused the rest to become much more cautious and less prone to lingering at the feeder. I don’t know if the hawk has actually just wiped out enough of the local population that I’m going to have to wait until new birds are hatched next year and start spilling over into the neighborhood. Today I’m going to dump out the birdseed that has been in the feeder apparently untouched for a few weeks, clean out the feeder, and only put a small amount in when I hang it back up. Because though the feeder seems to keep the seed dry, I still assume in our super damp climate that at least some of the seeds are starting to rot in there.
This is one of those times of years where all the news sites get very sparse. I understand. Writers, editors, and reporters have families and want to take time out for the holidays, too. It’s one reason so many end-of-year lists get published: the can be assembled before someone goes on vacation and scheduled to publish during the holidays. Sometimes such lists are interesting, though, so I’ll give you at least one below.
Hey, how about a little schadenfreude to close out the year: Laura Ingraham’s Radio Show Cancelled Due To Advertiser Boycott. I repeat my earlier comments on these kinds of stories: this isn’t censorship, it is consequences. I find it amusing that the end of the political spectrum that most insists on the value of personal responsibility never wants anyone they agree with to actually be held responsible for their hateful behavior. Similarly, they’re so obsessed with letting the marketplace decide, until the marketplace doesn’t pick them…
I miss seeing Kermit the Frog in the reporter sketches…Once again some news stories either broke after I had finished this week’s Friday Five or new developments related to stories I’ve posted about before. Further, these are the kinds of stories where I have some opinion that I feel must be expressed. So, for this last Saturday in 2018, I’ve got three topics for your consideration. One story is political, while the second two are about love (though there are, of course social/political aspects).
The first one also involves me geeking out about two of my favorite topics: Parliamentary Procedure and the Constitution. And since it is politics and you’ve already had plenty of that this year, please feel free to scroll down to the First Kisses and Double Dads sections. I promise this update ends on a happy and adorable note!
Empty Seat in District 9
I have posted lots of links (and written some longish posts) about the Blue Wave that happened in the midterm elections. Well, that story is still developing. One of the issues is related that the misreporting that happens pretty much every election night in America: networks and the reports, anchors, and analysts that work for them all like to declare winners on election night, so they can then spend time explaining what this means. The problem here is that there are often a lot of ballots left to count in every district of every state on the morning after election night. And sometimes races which don’t appear close on election night turn out to be very tight. This is why on the morning after election day news services all over the place were declaring that the Blue Wave was just a ripple, when it fact, once all ballots were counted and elections were certified, it turned out to be more of a tsunami.
To wit: on election night is seemed the Democrats had only taken a net 20 seats from Republicans in the House of Representatives, but by the end of November, when nearly all of the elections were actually certified, it turned out to be 40 seats. A lot of races that networks had decided were likely Republican actually were won by Democrats.
Here’s what we know. During the primary, before the actual mid-term election, voters in one region of the state began reporting receiving absentee ballots that they had not asked for. Then reports came in of people showing up at the doors of some people who had absentee ballots and offering to take them to turn in for them. Turns out there was an extensive operation to steal absentee ballots, filling out and forging signatures on blank ones when they could and discarding those that had been properly filled out but didn’t vote for the Republican. And the crazy thing is that the people running it kept records of their activities! North Carolina election-fraud investigation centers on operative with criminal history who worked for GOP congressional candidate.
North Carolina law requires the election board to, if election fraud is proven, void the election and call a special election. The law also authorizes the election board to void even if fraud isn’t proven if the there is sufficient cause to doubt the integrity of the outcome. Because the investigation was ongoing, the margin of “victory” is only 905 votes, and the number of illegally diverted in at least in the hundreds, the Election Board voted unanimously to not certify a winner in the race. One wrinkle: the vote was on Friday, the last day of operation for the current Election Board, which had to dissolve because of another, unrelated, lawsuit. The new governor has to appoint a new board. At one point the outgoing governor was discussing appointing a temporary board, but decided that it was unlikely any decision of temporary appointees would survive any court challenge.
This means that the investigation into the fraud won’t be concluded before the new Congress meets next week.
Now a lot of people have been sharing on social media the claim that a Supreme Court case from 1969, Powell v. McCormack, prohibits the new Congress from refusing to seat the so-called winner of the District 9 race. And that’s where my nerdiness got triggered. Powell v. McCormack was a complicated ruling about two statements in the Constitution, both from Section 5 of Article 1: “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members…” and from the next sentence: “Each House may…, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.” It is true that the Court ruled that the House couldn’t vote to expel a member without first allowing said member to be sworn in a seated. But the Court also said that this only applied to members “only after a member-elect had been elected under the laws of the state in which the congressional district was located.”
Under the laws of North Carolina, the person isn’t elected until the Election Board certifies the results. It doesn’t matter that one candidate has declared himself the victor by 905 votes. It sure as heck doesn’t matter if a bunch of television talking heads declared him the winner on election night. He does not become a member-elect until the North Carolina Election Board certifies him as the winner. The Board unanimously voted that not to certify. North Carolina law requires a new election if fraud is proven, and allows a new election if fraud seems likely.
The Blue Wave may actually turn out to be one victory bigger than we thought!
First Kisses
The U.S. Navy has a tradition that when a ship has been deployed for an extended time, that upon return to shore, there is a symbolic first kiss of a spouse welcoming home one of the sailors. The ships hold a raffle to determine who will be the sailor who does this. Naval spouses are typically on hand to meet the ship, and there is usually a whole lot of kissing and hugging and joyful welcoming that happens after that first kiss. This happens all the time, so it should be no big deal, right? Well: Gay Sailor’s Homecoming Kiss Prompts Wrath from Local News Viewers, Jubilation from Social Media.
First, this is hardly the first time a same sex couple has been the first kiss for a returning ship. Queer people have been allowed to serve opening in the U.S. military since September 20, 2011. The very first same sex married military couple were married on that very day. These two guys are hardly the first same sex couple to win that silly first kiss lottery (that is believed to be a lesbian couple back in December of 2011), and not the first to go viral. So I’m not exactly sure why this one blew up the way it did.
I’ll just leave it at: if you object to a pair of spouses kissing after being separated from months, you don’t ever get to claim you’re not a bigot.
Double Dads
For the first time ever, Nickelodeon’s ‘Double Dare’ features a family with two dads. So, Nickelodeon is considered a kid’s programming network, and the Double Dare game show is one of its most popular programs. In the show, families compete in what is essentially a trivia contest, where the family can perform a physical challenge rather than answer the question in order to win a round.
What I liked about how this story was how casually it was handled. The host asked them how they had become a family, the dads responded that six years ago they adopted their two sons, and then the host said, “And now you’re on Double Dare as Team Double Dads.”
That was it. And you know what? That’s all it needed to be.
Adoption by same sex couples is still under very active attack from many bigots, so I want to remind everyone that letting queer couples adopt children doesn’t mean that straight couples are being denied those kids. There is a serious shortage of qualified foster parents and adoptive parents. The Foster Care Crisis: The Shortage Of Foster Parents In America. For lots of kids without parents, the alternative to a gay or lesbian couple or a single parent adopting them isn’t a straight couple, it’s no family at all. Officials currently estimate that 65,000+, or about 4 percent of all adopted children live with gay or lesbian parents at this time.
Adoption questions aside, there are a lot of children being raised by queer parents. It’s a difficult number to nail down, because even now it isn’t always safe for people to openly declare their sexual orientation. Most of the studies indicate that at least 160,000 families headed by a gay or lesbian person include children under the age of 18. One reason for that is that lots of queer people, particularly in conservative states, make a go at straight marriage, wind up with kids, and then come out of the closet afterword. So a lot of kids are being raised by their divorced queer parent (with or without a queer step-parent).
First, thank goodness for the rule of law: Neo-Nazi Found Guilty in First Degree Murder of Heather Heyer at Charlottesville White Supremacist Rally. Remember those rallies, with those alt-right jerks chanting Nazi phrase while waving their tiki torches? You know, that ones that Trump called “fine people” and at another part referred to as “us”? And there were counter-protesters (the people Trump called “them” in the same sentence) who were there to speak out against hatred and genocide and so forth? And then there was the asshole who drove his car into the crowd on counter-protesters, injuring at least 35 people but worst of all, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. The neo-Nazi behind the wheel of that car was arrested, charged with murder, among other things, and this week the jury returned their verdicts (plural):
James Fields found guilty on all 10 counts, including 1st-degree murder, for ramming car into a group of peaceful counter-protesters following Charlottesville white nationalist rally in 2017.
—NBC News report
Not everyone is happy with this development. There was a lot of commentary on the alt-right/neo-Nazi/InCel/Men’s Rights Advocates side of various social media very angry about the first degree murder charge, especially. I actually laughed out loud at some of the comments. It’s always enlightening to watch people who pride themselves on logic demonstrate their ignorance and irrationality. Painful, but enlightening.
Those online lawyers are trying to claim that the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to hurt people because of a meme he shared on social media three months previously of someone running liberals down with this car. That is not what happened. Instead, prosecutors showed the jury video of Fields sitting stonefaced in his car with the engine idoling, watching the counter protestors (who were all some distance away), and then, throwing his car into reverse, backing as far as he could on the street, throwing it into first, and peeling out aiming for the crowd. He wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t confused. He intentionally backed up so he could have more space to get his car up to as high a speed as possible when he hit it.
He drove 500 miles to participate in the rally. When his mother found out where he’d gone, she texted him urging him to be careful. He texted back (shortly before driving into the crowd): “We’re not the one who need to be careful.”
There was a lot of video (because it’s a big protest and people have their phones and Go Pros and such out), and numerous witness statements that there was no one standing near his car. Contrary to the tales his supporters are telling each other, he wasn’t surrounded, no one was yelling at him, nothing.
Yes, the Instagram post about driving over people was also part of the narrative for premeditation, but it was a tiny part. There were other conversations and comments made in the days leading up to the rally. And, of course, that chilling text message to his mother.
So, his intent to cause harm is established by his words shortly before the act, and the very deliberate act of slowing backing up to get more running room with the car. And twelve people on that jury came to a unanimous decision that the prosecution had established his intent to harm and that he had planned to do it before hand. An important part of premeditation isn’t just that it’s planning in advance, though. Part of the reason we think of premeditated murder as worse than an impulsive act of passion, is an opportunity to change one’s mind. I don’t know the precise jury instructions this jury was read, but the typical text from the judge includes that bit about premeditation: did the defendant have an opportunity where he could have stopped and decided not to go through with it, and then went ahead?
He could have, at any point during the backing up and staring at the crowd decided not to do it.
One of the other crimes he was found guilty of was fleeing the scene of the crime.
His defense team tried to disprove the intent argument by saying he was immediately remorseful, et cetera. But, he fled the scene. Sure, once he was tracked down and arrested he was sobbing, but I think we all know that he was upset because he had been caught.
Of course, Fields wasn’t the only alt-right jerk found guilty…
So what does it all mean? Each of the three men has already pled guilty to serious crimes. Each made a plea deal to cooperate with Mueller’s invistigation, the U.S. Attorney’s investigation, and “other related prosecutions.” That latter is one of the few public hints we’ve been given over the 80-some weeks of the Special Counsel’s investigation that information is being shared with state (and apparently international) justice departments. That latter is important not just because of more crimes, but it has been a signal that even if Trump rushes in and tries to pardon everyone, it won’t keep the men out of jail. Presidential pardons have no effect on state criminal charges, nor of international ones (as are likely to be brought by various European countries we can assume since Trump’s banking associates were raided last week over there).
While a lot of people are focusing on the anonymous Individual-1 named in the filings (which is clearly Trump himself), and the fact that the men have already made statements and provided evidence that Individual-1 participated in their crimes, what I find a bit more interesting is that all three of these men’s cases came to this point today, and how very different they are. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, according to the filings, has cooperated fully since he plea deal–everything he has told prosecutors has been able to be verified. So both Mueller and the U.S. Attorney are asking the judge for leniency on his behalf for the crime’s already pled guilty to.
Trump’s former attorney, who months ago bragged that he would take a bullet for Trump, on the other hand, has sometimes been less than cooperative. He has continued to lie about some things that the prosecutors can prove are lies. He has, on the other hand, provided a lot of evidence that Individual-1 committed a number of crimes related to the recent election. So, the prosecutors are asking the court to not go nearly so lenient on him, but don’t be too harsh, either.
And then there’s the former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Manafort has lied and lied and lied in indisputable ways. So both prosecutors are recommending maximum penalties for all his crimes.
This is a strategic action. It warns all of the other people who are being or are about to be questioned by either the Special Prosecutor or the U.S. Attorney, that if you don’t cooperate, they will bring the hammer down. And if any Trumpkins are reading this and thinking smugly, “until the president shuts it down,” well that’s not easy. Yes, Trump has been maneuvering to shut Mueller down, but so far he’s been unsuccessful. And while I don’t think the Senate Republicans are yet ready to hold Trump to account if he fires Mueller, stopping the U.S. Attorney is much more complicated, and nothing the alleged president can do prevents a jurisdiction like, say, the New York State Attorney General, pursuing charges against many of these people. It doesn’t stop the Congressional Democrats, who are about to take control of that chamber, from holding hearings including asking a fired Mueller to come tell the public everything he found out.
I don’t think it is at all a coincidence that as this was coming to light that Trump went on a lengthy, angry, foul-mouthed attack on Twitter directed at his former Secretary of State. I think he’s starting to realize that he has backed himself into a corner, and the people he counted on to protect him are all going to behave like Flynn if they find themselves in the crosshairs. Donald Trump’s entire existence has just been set on fire
Right now, I just hope the country survives long enough for us to see a bunch of his inner circle carted off the prison.
Regarding the cartoon I illustrated this post with: I probably should do a new Sunday Funnies post about this site, but if you want to learn more about Trudeau’s long running comic, or just catch up, you ought to check out Reading Doonesbury: A trip through nearly fifty years of American comics
We don’t think of it this way, because we forget that state boundaries don’t have an objective reality. They are imaginary lines on the map just like congressional districts are.
I know it’s been a lot of politics lately, but since most of my writing time is going to NaNoWriMo, blog posts will be short. And the kind of blog post where I share a couple of links and make a shot commentary don’t take much time. So, here we go:
Despite all the things stacked against the blue wave (gerrymandered congressional districts, voter suppression efforts, the non-democratic/non-proportional nature of the Senate), the not-Nazi party has won a lot: Democrats had a good showing on Election Day. It’s been even better for them since. A lot of the races were too close to call on election night, but eager newspeople were more than willing to call them anyway. As more votes are counted, some of those calls are proving to be wrong. As just one example that this isn’t something that should surprise us: six years ago Jeff Flake was elected to represent Arizona in the Senate. On election night in 2012 he led his opponent by nearly 6%, so everyone called it. By the time all of the votes were counting, his lead had shrunk to a teensy bit more that 2%—he still won, but it was a lot closer than it had appeared on election night.
This year, that same Senate seat was up with no incumbent. On election night, the Republican candidate led the Democratic condidate by a woefully thin margin of one-half of a percentage point. As more ballots have been counted, the lead shrank, just like Flake’s did six years ago (because late-coming ballots often lean heavily one way or another; in Arizona’s case, late-arriving ballots tend to be more Democratic). So now the Democrat leads by a bit more than one percent. That’s a smaller shift than what happened six years ago, but well within what should have been expected: ELECTION DRAMA: Democrat Takes Tiny Lead in Arizona Senate Count; Florida Senate & Governor Prepare For Recount.
Will the lead widen? Will it narrow? Will it narrow enough to throw things into a recount? Will it flip? We don’t know for certain until all the ballots are counted. And that’s true of many races. We’re all so eager, as voters, to know the answer right away, forgetting that ballot counting takes time. The results reported on election night are always just a sample.
It isn’t just a matter of which ballots come in later (because of military ballots being shipped in from overseas, or absentee ballots mailed on the last day, or states like mine where all voting is by mail and we’re allowed to mail or drop off our ballots at the very last moment). Nor is it just because of issues like that story about one county I included a link to on Saturday where an overadundance of gross incompetence delayed the beginning of counting (among other things). In very high population centers, the sheer volume of the number of ballots means that only a tiny fraction are counted by the end of election night. Instead of hundreds or maybe thousands more to be counted in the following days, it’s hundreds of thousands. So we have low-populations counties like one in the Florida panhandle which had counted all but 26 ballots by the end of election night, and then a place like King County in Washington where there were over a quarter of a million (250,000) uncounted ballots in hand the day after election day—and because mail-in ballots were still in the postal system, thousands more on their way.
We don’t get answers fast. The fact that the margins change as more ballots are counted doesn’t mean something fishy is going on. The election ain’t over until every vote is counted.
…and the President of the United States couldn’t be bothered to attend a ceremony at a cemetery full of American soldiers who died in that war because it was raining. The asshole flew all the way to Paris for the historic anniversary, but couldn’t leave his friggin’ room to go to a cemetery owned and maintained by the U.S. government where thousands of U.S. troops are burried!?! Trump Skips Visit To American Military Cemetery. And Justin Trudeau Shades Trump For Skipping WWI US Cemetary Visit Due To Rain
“It’s incredible that a president would travel to France for this significant anniversary — and then remain in his hotel room watching TV rather than pay in person his respects to the Americans who gave their lives in France for the victory gained 100 years ago tomorrow,”
—David Frum, former speechwriter to President George W. Bush
Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications under President Barack Obama, said the excuse about the inclement weather did not stand up. “I helped plan all of President Obama’s trips for 8 years,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is always a rain option. Always.”
“As we sit here in the rain, thinking how uncomfortable we must be these minutes as our suits get wet and our hair gets wet and our shoes get wet, I think it’s all the more fitting that we remember on that day, in Dieppe, the rain wasn’t rain, it was bullets.”
—Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen #hesnotfittorepresenthisgreatcountry.”
—Nicholas Soames, a British member of parliament who is a grandson of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill
But enough of that. This beautiful story, written last Memorial Day, tells about that American war cemetery in France, along with the program that paid for mothers and widows of the slain to travel there to pay their last respects in the years following the war: In an American Cemetery in France: Thoughts on Memorial Day.
Join the Resistance!I have errands to run and then do some gaming with friends later, so not a lot of time for creating a post. But there were a few interesting things that I saw in the news yesterday that if I’d seen them earlier (or if they’d been published earlier) might have made it into the Friday Five.
First up, this started as a twitter thread people were sharing. One woman who shared the tale of the disasters she and her husband witnessed when they volunteers as poll workers: Porter County’s 2018 Election Fiasco. The county disbanded its election board this year and put everything in the hands of the County Clerk’s office… and obviously they were not prepared. The post I’ve linked has more details than the twitter thread, as she added stuff when she converted it. It’s really an interesting look into just what a clanky and disorganized mechanism our voting system (not just this one county by any means!) is.
Another clunky thing: while millionaires and richer make up approximately 10% of the population of the country, more than half of Congresspeople are millionaires. And while a congress person’s salary is decent, there are some problems when someone who makes only $29 thousand dollars a year gets elected to Congress (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez becomes youngest woman ever elected to Congress). She’s expected to head to Washington D.C. soon and start participating in orientation, hiring staff and such… but she doesn’t get her first pay check as a Congress person until February. And D.C. is famously very expensive to live in.Fox News Can’t Believe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won’t Sell Clothes She Doesn’t Own To Pay DC Rent. (The clothes thing is because Ocasio-Cortez did a little modeling a few years ago, and she wore some expensive clothes in a photo shoot. You know, clothes that were owned by the people paying for the advertising campaign the photos were for? Clothes the models wear long enough to be photographed in and are then taken back by the actual owners.
What pisses me off about this is the number of people who are Democrats and otherwise not clueless Fox News personalities who are also making fur of the fact that a woman who was working as a bartender in Brooklyn that the people of Brooklyn elected to represent them in Congress, isn’t secretly a millionaire or something. And people wonder why we keep winding up with slimy people as politicians…
And there are other weirdnesses. When, oh when will they start hiring actual designers to work on things like, say, ballots? Something Looks Weird In Broward County. Here’s What We Know About A Possible Florida Recount. As someone who has professionally designed user interfaces and documentation, as soon as I saw the picture of the ballot I realized immediately why 26,000 voters in one county skipped a race entirely: it looks like it is an example, and not an actual office to be filled in.
Finally, some good news for the future. I’m tempted to re-title this next story “Millenials Kill the Republican Party” but I realize that’s a bit of a stale joke, so I’ll still with their title< Trump celebrated the midterm results, but without millennials and women he could be headed for disaster in 2020. Despite all the gloom and doom predictions and the huge number of stories I saw over the last two years claiming that the polls can’t be believed because young voters respond to polls but then they don’t show up, or how Democrats were driving young voters away for reasons, young voters turned out in record numbers, and overwhelmingly they are rejecting what the Republicans in general and Trump in particular are selling.
There is a lot more fight ahead. One election swinging to just half of one branch of government isn’t going to solve anything. And if we don’t remain engaged and call our representatives and urge them not to vote for somethings, things will get much much worse. But there is hope!
Font Folly 