Election Lies: Trump is preparing to deny another loss

Former President Donald Trump has escalated his long-running assault on the integrity of US elections as the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final stretch, using a new series of lies about ballots, vote-counting and the election process to lay the groundwork to challenge a potential defeat in November.

Nonpartisan democracy experts say they’re seeing many of the same warning signs that were blinking red before Election Day four years ago, when Trump flooded the zone with election lies and conspiracy theories that he amplified after losing to Joe Biden. His campaign of deception culminated in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“The threats have not abated; they have only increased,” said Lindsay Daniels, a senior director at the nonpartisan Democracy Fund, which works to strengthen US democracy. “We saw a lot of activity in 2020 around peddling false claims and frivolous lawsuits. We are already seeing signs now, stage-setting, that these things may be attempted again.”

Trump has made at least 12 distinct false claims over the last two months that raise baseless doubts about the validity of a potential victory by Vice President Kamala Harris. (Recent polls suggest the race is very close, and Trump could certainly still win.)

Trump, who wrongly insists the 2020 election was marred by massive fraud, said at a debate in June that he will accept the 2024 results regardless of who wins “if it’s a fair and legal and good election.” A majority of Trump supporters in battleground states like Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania now say they’re “not at all confident” or only “just a little” confident the results will be accurately tallied, according to recent CNN polling.

Trump has lied about the legitimacy of the vote counts in key states, the reliability of mail-in and overseas ballots, the size of Harris’ crowds at rallies, and more. Here’s a fact check of these and other claims.

Read the rest here.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church

I found this to be an excellent primer on a subject I am not much familiar with.

A day in the life of a dictator

One of Vladimir Putin's role models. He has gone to great lengths to rehabilitate Stalin in the official version of history now taught in Russia.

Putin is Terrorizing and Murdering Russian Refugees

In November 2022, my editors asked me to be careful about what I ate and stop ordering takeout. Initially, I didn’t think much of it. But I soon realized the importance of their advice when, just one month later, my colleague Elena Kostyuchenko discovered she had been poisoned in Germany, in a probable assassination attempt by the Russian state.

Such stories have become routine. Last year, an investigative journalist, Alesya Marokhovskaya, was harassed in the Czech Republic; in February, the bullet-riddled body of a Russian defector, Maxim Kuzminov, was found in Spain. In both cases, the Kremlin was assumed to be involved. Russian opposition figures know well that even in exile they remain targets of Russia’s intelligence services.

But it’s not just them who are in danger. There are also the hundreds of thousands of Russians who left home because they did not want to have anything to do with Vladimir Putin’s war — or were forced out, accused of not embracing it enough. These low-profile dissenters are subjected to surveillance and kidnappings, too. Yet their repression happens in silence — away from the spotlight and often with the tacit consent, or inadequate prevention, of the countries to which they have fled.

It’s a terrifying thing: The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care.

Read the rest here.

David French: Decency has become countercultural in the Republican Party

...The yearslong elevation of figures like Mark Robinson and the many other outrageous MAGA personalities, along with the devolution of people in MAGA’s inner orbit — JD Vance, Elon Musk, Lindsey Graham and so very many others — has established beyond doubt that Trump has changed the Republican Party and Republican Christians far more than they have changed him.

In nine years, countless Republican primary voters have moved from voting for Trump in spite of his transgressions to rejecting anyone who doesn’t transgress. If you’re not transgressive, you’re suspicious. Decency is countercultural in the Republican Party. It’s seen as a rebuke of Trump.

This has changed the composition of the party. While many decent people remain — and represent the hope for future reform — Trump’s Republican Party has become a magnet for eccentrics and conspiracy theorists of all stripes. In a sharp essay (which my colleague Ross Douthat also highlighted), Matthew Yglesias calls this phenomenon the “crank realignment.”

Indeed, Trump in his diabolical shrewdness knows how to build and maintain his own base. He’s shed the Republican Party’s traditional commitment to life. He’ll sprint away from any policy or principle that he believes might cost him power. At the same time, he watches his crowd roar when he demonizes immigrants (MAGA’s true north star) and he sees “red-pilled” young men rally to his side when he punches hard and never backs down.Leaders don’t simply enact policies; they dictate the cultures of the institutions they lead. 

We’ve all experienced this phenomenon in our workplaces, churches and schools. I’ve compared the cultural power of a leader to setting the course of a river. Defying or contradicting the leader’s ethos is like swimming against the current — yes, you can do that for a time, but eventually you get exhausted and either have to swim to the bank and leave, or you’re swept downstream, just like everyone else.

Trump has set the course of the Republican Party’s cultural river for more than nine years. Fewer and fewer resisters remain, and they’re growing increasingly exhausted and besieged. You can see it online in response to the Robinson news. The mere suggestion that Republican primary voters can and should do better is greeted by scorn and contempt.

Both parties have always been vulnerable to nominating or electing the occasional crank, but Donald Trump’s ascendance meant that a crank led the party, and the best way to join with him is to imitate him. That’s how you get a Mark Robinson, or a Marjorie Taylor Greene, or a Lauren Boebert, or a Matt Gaetz. The list goes on. That’s how leaders change institutions. They make them into images of themselves.

Read the rest here.

Times have changed

Back in the 1950s President Eisenhower on a trip to southern California made time hit the links with the famous actor/comedian Bob Hope, a fellow enthusiast of the game. As they were riding out to where their balls had landed, suddenly a golf ball came flying out of nowhere and bounced off the front of the presidential golf cart startling Mr. Eisenhower. Without missing a beat Hope quipped that it was either a Democrat or a film critic. Ike chuckled and they went on with their game as if nothing had happened.

Harland & Wolff is bankrupt

RMS Adriatic of 1907

The company that revolutionized the design of passenger ships in the 1870s and would go on to build some of the most famous vessels in history, including one that was in her time, the largest and most luxurious ocean liner ever seen, is reportedly now insolvent.

When non-Denominational Isn't

Abolition of Cash Bail May Contribute to Crime

WASHINGTON (TND) — How to best respond to crimein our communities is a debate that has evolved but has never subsided.

In the summer of 2020,in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, calls grew louder for a complete overhaul of the criminal justice system. That included ending cash bail— a policy implemented in cities like New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles by progressive leaders who argue that innocent until proven guilty was a reality only for those who could afford it.

But others see a connection between the new policy and a rise in crime, as notedin a new study by the Yolo County California District Attorney’s office. It found that the rate of recidivism was far higher for those who paid no bail versus those who did pay.

"In this study, individuals released on zero bail were subsequently rearrested for a total of 163% more crimes than individuals released on bail," it read.

Read the rest here.

cf This

Primatial Divine Liturgy, Nativity of the Theotokos

Tucker Carlson

I used to like watching him back in the days when he was a relatively sane conservative sparring on CNN and elsewhere. Now he seems to have gone off to whatever plain of reality is home to QAnon, MAGA, and outright Nazi apologists. All in all, rather depressing.

UK: New Law to Remove Last of Hereditary Lords from Parliament

The government is proposing to banish all remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords in the biggest shake-up of parliament in a quarter century.

The UK’s 92 remaining hereditary peers – who have inherited their titles from their parents – will lose their right to sit and vote in the upper chamber under proposals put forward by ministers on Thursday.

The move would complete reforms first made by Tony Blair’s government, which revoked the 700-year-old right of all hereditary peers to sit in the Lords in 1999. Just 92 of them, elected from the whole group, were allowed to remain until an agreement could be reached to phase them out altogether.

All 92 hereditary peers who now hold seats in the Lords are white men, and their average age is just under 70. They have continued to top up their numbers by holding byelections when one of them retires or dies.

Campaigners have long called for the system to be overhauled. In its manifesto, Labour said the continued existence of hereditary peers was “indefensible”.

The government’s bill will mean that there will no longer be any hereditary peers in the upper chamber. The earl marshal and the lord great chamberlain, who had been expected to keep their seats because of their ceremonial functions, will also be removed.

The bill is likely to become law sometime next year, and will fulfil a Labour manifesto commitment.

Read the rest here.

If Republicans Want to Win, Trump Must Lose — Big

Accepting his party’s nomination in 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale vowed to cut the deficit with a memorable line about the tough medicine either he or Ronald Reagan would have to administer to the country.

“Let’s tell the truth,” Mondale said, “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

Now, as Labor Day marks the final stretch of another presidential campaign, it’s time for another round of truth-telling.

The best possible outcome in November for the future of the Republican Party is for former President Donald Trump to lose and lose soundly. GOP leaders won’t tell you that on the record. I just did.

Trump will never concede defeat, no matter how thorough his loss. Yet the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party.

Harris is less a doctrinaire progressive than she is up for grabs on policy, but any liberal course she takes would be constrained by a GOP-held Senate. No, that’s not a sure thing, but it’s the safest electoral bet in this turbulent election. What is virtually certain come January is that conservatives will have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, which will also serve as a check on the law and rulemaking coming out of a Democratic White House.

Harris is effectively an emergency nominee, has few policy proposals, scant governing history in Washington and a history of churning through staff. Oh, and she would be the first Democrat to enter the presidency since 1884 without majorities in both chambers, should Republicans flip the Senate.

That adds up to a recipe for gridlock — and perhaps some deal-making to fund the government and avoid across-the-board tax hikes — but not a Scandinavian social welfare state.

2026 would represent the sixth year of one party holding the presidency, always a promising midterm for the opposition. Those conditions, along with a diminished, twice-defeated Trump, would make it easier for Republicans to recruit Senate candidates.

Consider just the governors: Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, Georgia’s Brian Kemp and New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu would all be prime targets for Senate Republicans. As one GOP senator put it to me in hoping for Trump’s defeat: Who do you think would have a tougher 2026 reelection, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) under Harris or Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) under Trump?

A Democratic House majority would also be far easier for Republicans to reverse under Harris than Trump. And the GOP would almost certainly find more success in the 36 governors’ races taking place that year if they were running against the so-called six-year-itch.

For most Republicans who’ve not converted to the Church of MAGA, this scenario is barely even provocative. In fact, asking around with Republicans last week, the most fervent private debate I came across in the party was how best to accelerate Trump’s exit to the 19th Hole.

Read the rest here.

Old New York

From the turn of the previous century.

From the crime blotter

"Eight persons were arrested this morning for gambling at 136 Anthony Street and breaking the Sabbath. They were held to bail and to answer."

Source

How far have we sunk?