Good morning, all.
1 The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative non-profit public interest group that focuses particularly on voting issues, claims to have data suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s narrow win in New Hampshire in the 2016 election—about 2,700 votes gave her the state—may have been achieved by fraud. A study showed that more than 6,000 voters in New Hampshire had used the state’s same-day voter registration procedures to register and vote. The current New Hampshire speaker of the House, Shawn Jasper, sought and obtained data about what happened to these 6,000 “new” New Hampshire voters who showed up on Election Day. Most of them are no longer in the Granite State. Only 1,014 have ever obtained New Hampshire driver’s licenses. Of the 5,526 voters who have not, just 3% have registered a vehicle in New Hampshire. 70% of the same-day registrants used out-of-state photo ID to vote in the 2016 presidential election in New Hampshire and to utilize same-day registration.
All of which suggests that it would be prudent if a group other than a right-wing advocacy organization did an unbiased and objective study. Since Democrats won several top races last year along thin margins, notably Maggie Hassan defeating Kelly Ayotte in the U.S. Senate race by 1,017 votes, some Republicans are claiming that out-of-state voters illegitimately tilted the election. Of course, for all anyone knows, the same-day voters may have voted Republican. The episode does compel three conclusions:
- Same day registration is a recipe for chicanery. I am suspicious of any elected official or activist who supports it.
- The Democratic/ mainstream media cant that there is no voter fraud is incredible on its face, and manifestly dishonest.
- The nation’s lack of eager, objective investigators without partisan agendas is crippling. I don’t believe what conservative sources and pundits conclude about the New Hampshire vote, and I find the lack of interest the liberal national mainstream news media seems to have in the story— on Google, I see New Hampshire sources and conservative sources like Breitbart, BizPac, Fox and the Washington Times—gives the story more credibility, not less.
2. For those who are still having trouble accepting that the DACA was an illegal measure as executed by President Obama, I highly recommend the article by Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley, who explains why he regarded it as “a flagrantly legislative act by President Barack Obama.” So did I, but he’s a legal scholar and I’m just a lawyer. From an ethics perspective, my area of expertise, I’m still disturbed at the attitude of the supporters of this Obama’s end-around the Constitution (and others). which can be summarized as, “Let’s see if we can get away with it, because we like the results.” It translates into “the ends justifies the means,” and epitomizes the drift of the Left toward totalitarian methods and philosophy.
3. I thought over 4000 words about the Boston Red Sox sign-stealing scandal was more than sufficient, but more information has trickled in since:
- Dustin Pedroia, the de facto Red Sox captain and revered as a player who plays the game “right,” Told ESPN that he didn’t see why the electronic sign-stealing was a big deal. “It’s part of the game. Our adjustment to that stuff is: Go out to the mound and change the signs,” he said. “It’s been around a long, long time. We were doing that at Douglass Junior High School [in Woodland, California], where I played. So, I don’t think this should be news to everybody.” My guess is that this is the general attitude among the players on all the teams, who take the attitude that the game within the game has always involved coming up with devious ways to steal signs, and whether it is by Apple Watch or other. more prosaic means doesn’t matter. “Everybody does it,” in other words, and also, “Everybody’s going to keep doing it, too.”
When Red Sox player Jackie Bradley, Jr. hit a home run on Wednesday, he pointed to his wrist. I have to say, I thought it was funny…
- After I found out that MLB allowed iPads as an exception to its “no tech in the dugout” rule because it had a promotional deal with Apple, I learned that the iPads aren’t allowed to be connected to the internet. What? Someone on the radio said yesterday that this is like handing out guns to gang members but telling them that they can’t buy bullets.
As with most MLB scandals, this one is in part the result of management greed and stupidity.
- I should have included this in the original post: to some extent, I blame the New England Patriots and Boston’s fawning, ethics-free football fans. They are ethics corrupters. The city’s idolizing of Brady, who has the most infuriating smug smirk perpetually plastered on his face, and his coach, cheaters both, has created a culture in the city’s sports that might well have been a tipping point for the Red Sox. At least the NFL punished Brady hard. It looks like the Sox will be receiving minimal penalties.
4. Cross the DACA post with Hurricane Harvey, and you get this quote, from Wednesday’s Washington Post:
“A lot of us don’t get no food stamps. We don’t get no help from the government. We lost everything we have.”
—Marina Robles, Houston-based illegal immigrant. (The Post, of course, used the cover-term “undocumented.”
Yes, Marina, this is what happens when you are in someone else’s country illegally. You take your chances. Your indignation is unjustified, and your sense of entitlement is offensive.
5. Cross DACA with the post on Hillary’s new “everyone is to blame but me” book, and you the revelation, from CNN, that in 2014 Hillary told Christiane Amanpour this regarding children who cross the border illegally (the bolding is mine):
AMANPOUR: Should they be able to stay here? It’s safer.
CLINTON: Well — it may be safer but that’s not the answer. I do not —
AMANPOUR: Should they be sent back?
CLINTON: Well, first of all, we have to provide the best emergency care we can provide. We have children 5 and 6 years old who have come up from Central America. We need to do more to provide border security in southern Mexico.
AMANPOUR: So, you’re saying they should be sent back now?
CLINTON: Well, they should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are, because there are concerns whether all of them should be sent back. But I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families. And just as Vice President Biden is arguing today in Central America, we’ve got to do more. I started this when I was secretary to deal with the violence in this region to deal with border security.
But we have so to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.
During the campaign, however, Clinton was a full-throated DACA advocate, and neither the evil Bernie nor any debate moderators (like CNN’s) ever brought up her earlier hard line, nor was it presented to viewers by CNN to let them know that on this issue, like so many others, Clinton’s position depended on who she was taking to, and when.
Unethical, incompetent and biased journalism.
So why is this clip suddenly surfacing again now? Conservative cynics believe it is because Hillary is making a nuisance of herself with her finger-pointing campaign, so now the Democrats and their captive news media want to discredit her.
Sounds about right to me.
Does anyone have a better theory?
Ethics Alarms 
1) Insert a re-run essay about why we need a single, national Holiday devoted to a single day of Voting, and that’s it.
2) Those who argue that DACA is a completely Constitutional EO by a President “prioritizing” the enforcement of a law, understand that yes, Executives must allocate enforcement resources and in practice that means alot of enforcement is deferred until later for less serious crime. But DACA amounts to the statement “We will not enforce this law for this set of people”. That is why it is unconstitutional.
Usually I disagree with some points on your morning warm-up, but today I agree on every single point you have. Maybe I am moving up the ladder or maybe you are moving down the ladder?
Time will tell!
Just like the Dear Colleague Letter from 2011, which violated separation of powers and due process?
http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/07/betsy-devos-rape-ocr-title-ix-campus
Exactly like it.
It deserves its own blog post.
Try reading the comments on this article.
http://washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/09/07/protesters-gather-anticipating-devos-speech-on-campus-sexual-assault/
also try finding out what was written on Twitter about this.
“After I found out that MLP allowed iPads as an exception to its “no tech in the dugout” rule”
Pretty sure you meant MLB there. My Little Pony characters can’t use iPads, having hooves and all.
You owe me a keyboard and new nose.
1. While those ‘ghost’ voters could have supported Trump, I think it quite unlikely, given the area of the country this is in (were there actual Trump supporters in New England? /snark)
Thus, I have a few suggestions:
-Investigate the social media of these folks, and see if they are ‘white nationalist’ or ‘SJW’ supporters (I will take bets from anyone willing to support the former)
-Investigate if any of these also voted in the state from which they had photo ID. This is a federal crime. Then prosecute (‘pour encourager les autres’)
-Observation: photo ID voter requirements are racist, we are told, except when Democrats can use them to cheat. This statement may be biased, but I have not seen the trend of GOP cheating at the polls that we have with Democrats.
2. The left always insists that laws can be changed, until they get what they want. Then things are set in stone. If the left cannot win in an election, they go to court (shopping the judges to get their intended result) and if that does not work, they riot. The alt right is catching on to using these tricks. I have popcorn and a comfortable chair, and a garden hose. I will be watching for the fires to spread to my property when the time comes.
3. Cheating is unfair unless you really really like the cheater. People who support such behavior have character flaws and ethics rot.
4. Notice the reason DACA recipients are so freaked out: the government has their names and addresses. Also knows they have illegal family members who are now uncovered. We CAN find and deport these folks, and they know it. Thank you, Obama: your arrogance and stupidity will likely rid us of at least half a million criminals in the coming year. This is a drop in the bucket, however, to the millions here. Start putting the employers in jail (mandatory sentencing) and this shit stops cold. This lady in Houston is bold enough to speak on national TV: wonder how long until she is ‘out-processed.’ Texas rescuing folks because life is in jeopardy does not mean she can assume we will not come for her after the disaster.
5. So the Democrats are using a Republican tactic? How well has that worked for the GOP over the years?
Jerry Pournelle passed today. I’m sorry.
We have lost a great author, no doubt.
I quit science fiction about the time all the most negative of the inventive authors’ extrapolations began to come true. Enough was enough. It was Fantastic … and Amazing and If and Analog and SF&F while it lasted — subscriptions followed me to Japan in 1970 and were devoured cover-to-cover until their deaths (including Pournelle’s first short). It was an education and a wonder: Isaac Asimov would explain in one magazine what a black hole was and Pournelle would create in another an indelible impression of its interior and what became of the people who entered it. His collaborations with Larry Niven drove me to spend a week’s salary in a Ginza bookstore for a hard copy of The Mote in God’s Eye (that was in ’75: I looked it up). Among other future horrors, it featured a pocket-size computer. Back home, in ’81, I read another of their novels that posited a race riot in LA that destroyed a large section of the city. [repeat first sentence] He was so damn Right.
“… the most negative of the inventive authors’ extrapolations began to come true.”
Not all of the negatives have come true: Piper’s destruction of the northern hemisphere in nuclear fire has not happened, aliens have not taken the earth and kicked us off (a common theme ala’ John Varley,) and Pournelle’s ‘Fallen Angels’ global cooling catastrophe seems to be in no danger happening.
There are some cool positive predictions as well.
Star Trek The Original Series predicted 1.44 inch ‘floppy’ disks in the 1960s. They also predicted the iPad concept, first in TOS but much better in The Next Generation… and those ‘pads’ inductively charged as you walked down the corridors of your star ship (similar tech to the iPhone X charging mat) Of course, communicators looked like clam shell cell phones, and Alexis/Google/Siri are poor little sisters to the Enterprise main computer… It could blow the ship up, after all 🙂
I want my tricorder, though.
‘The War Machine’ by David Drake and Roger MacBride Allen predicted smart phones, taking it to the incorporation of true AI with personality… and a will to be unethical in order to survive.
David Gerrold extrapolates many good technologies in his Chtorr books, from Internet based businesses to driverless cars to weapons technology (many of his sight systems are being developed today or are newly created)
I will concede that Niven’s ‘Dream Park’ series predicted reality TV, and that supports your view more than mine. (note: while researching this reply, I found an ‘undiscovered’ (by me) Dream Park novel that I will now acquire: thanks!)
It’s no good trying to cheer me up, Slick. It’s a bitter little world.
What a interesting little video. Artistic, yet totally nihilistic. Human misery is the theme.
For every such I could show you examples of human joy, human nobility, or human happiness. But if one only looks at the sun reflected in a muddy puddle, one misses what makes it great.
I hope you are not really in such a dark place, Penn.
Only when I’m mourning the loss of yet another author of true American classics. Or being snarky.
“Yes, Marina, this is what happens when you are in someone else’s country illegally.”
What Marina has is an alternate country to retreat to, while plain old American victims of the hurricane are more or less stuck.
1. 6,000 might well be college students at school in New Hampshire, along with people who might have weekend residences there but cars in Massachusetts. I think it’s likely that residency requirements made it easy for these folks to reside in New Hampshire for a day, and they chose to vote there because it was a battleground.
I would bet, though, that there are a few folks who voted early elsewhere and took the opportunity to vote in New Hampshire, too.
I believe you are quite accurate. I know plenty of folks went up election day to “help” out after voting in MA. Did some cook the books? I am absolutely sure they did. A few I know even admitted to it! WTF. Have a condo in ski area – no problem – you are on the tax rolls and have a pile of documentation. Ditto with have a nice plave by the lake.
I have personally stood in line at the polls and listened to what we term ‘snowbirds’ (northerners who winter in southern states) talking about how they already voted in their home state and now were voting again. And they were not talking about voting GOP, either, but that is just what I happened to hear.
My blood boils, but what can you do?
The two I know simply voted absentee ballot and went to NH to campain on election day. They were part of a bus load of “progressives” who ventured north. I am sure most had already voted and intended to vote again. I can’t even call them out since it will all be denial. Maybe the Russian hackers can do cross checks?
As far as the New Hampshire voting goes, it appears that is it certainly possible that quite a few of those people could be college students who have decided to legally vote in New Hampshire. Additionally it is also apparently possible to have a permanent residence in Massachusetts but be domiciled in New Hampshire for voting purposes.
It is also quite possible that a number of those voters were there voting illegally to sway what appeared to be a very close and possibly decisive election, although why the Democrats would try to do this in New Hampshire whilst ignoring Michigan and Wisconsin seems a bit …… well, dumb. As Willie Sutton said, banks are where the money is — Michigan and Wisconsin were where the electoral votes were.
Regardless of what I’ve written above, and what others on this blog have related, all of this is speculation and anecdotal evidence, as are claims that there was absolutely no voter fraud.
New Hampshire knows, at least to some degree, who these voters are, and it’s only 5000 people (which, while a relatively small number was enough to sway two elections in that state). Why can they not initiate an investigation to definitively find out the truth of the matter? If nothing else, it would help deflate at least one if not more conspiracy theories that would otherwise hang around forever.
DACA: One thing (of many) that puzzles me is how these attorneys general are able to bring suit against President Trump’s action.
As I recall, when people were trying to sue to have ObamaCare overturned, their initial attempts were dismissed because they lacked standing, i.e. they could not provide evidence that they had actually been harmed or damaged by the ACA.
How does the Attorney General of North Carolina, say, have standing to bring suit against the president? He has not been harmed by this proclamation. No North Carolina residents (and definitively no North Carolina citizens) have been harmed by it.
I don’t get it.
=========================
Also, I repeat my question from a few days ago. DACA was promulgated 5 years ago. Of the 800,000 who have registered under it, how many have initiated steps to regularize their statuses? If not, why not? Isn’t belonging to the United States important enough to make sacrifices for? It certainly was for my ancestors.
Are the immigrant rights advocates around the country advising their clients how to legalize their status here? If not, why not? Did they think DACA was a permanent fix?
And one other observation. In the current climate, if Abraham Lincoln were to issue the Emancipation Proclamation today, care to place a bet on how many people would be lining up in federal court the next day to block it?
You know it would happen. And MSNBCCSA would be saying this would be a good thing because, you know, ……Lincoln!
What?
Let’s not be disingenuous. In our hyper-litigious and politicized atmosphere you know people would be filing such suits.
Let us not forget that, during his term in office, Lincoln was reviled, ridiculed, and misunderestimated as few presidents in our history have ever been. The lens of history has justly magnified him and his achievements, but too many of his contemporary politicians were unable to see beyond their own fiefdoms and petty politics.
My confusion was that you seemed to be saying MSNBC would be part of the Confederate States of America. On what do you base this claim?
Also, did you use the term “misunderestimated” to be ironic?
Someone on the radio said yesterday that this is like handing out guns to gang members but telling them that they can’t buy bullets.
These guys on radio, they don’t know from Apples or apps. An iPad without Internet can still stream or play downloads of TV shows, books or movies, play Angry Birds, tune in to music, take snapshots of the game or the other guys on the bench, or design a new dugout. With the new iCaps, they can attach a small version that drops a screen down over the eyes so they can watch while running the bases.
Yes BUT..if you don’t want players and managers using the internet, don’t give them a tool that allows them to use the internet. You can use an unloaded gun as paperweight or a hammer, too.
Or jam WiFi on the field.
Forgot about WiFi. Actually, they can get the Internet on their phones, no?
I never thought of those alternate uses though. I guess you could really bean somebody hard with an iPad, especially if you were loaded.
Sans a cover, they sail like a heavy frisbee… don’t ask me how I know