“We are a minority-majority state, and the idea that the four candidates of color are not going to be on the stage to bring those perspectives, to really speak to those communities, is really not doing right by the voters,” said Betty Yee, a former state controller who is running for governor. The four candidates “of color,” Betty, like you, are polling in single digits. And the quality of thought you expressed in that statement explains why.
2. Nah, this guy was never part of Obama’s “Deep State”! MSNOW’s Symone Sanders-Townsend, maybe the worst of its propaganda-mongers but it’s a photo-finish among about eight of them, asked former CIA Director John Brennan about President Trump saying that the administration has been having conversations with Iran, while Iran’s parliamentary speaker denied it. Brennan replied, “Well, I tend to believe Iran more than I do Donald Trump, because he could not acknowledge the truth even when he’s slapped in the face with it repeatedly,” Brennan responded. Nice! I guess Brennan also believes Iran when it says the U.S. is “the Great Satan.” This is Jane Fonda-level disloyalty during wartime.
3. Here is how we end up with so many anti-white, anti-American racists in the black community. After a December game last year against the United States Military Academy where the Howard women’s basketball team “took a knee” during the National Anthem, the university installed a policy requiring its athletes to stand and show respect for the nation (that keeps its school afloat despite its discriminatory admissions policies). Instead of complying, the team decided to remain in the locker room during the anthem before games.
Vice President of Athletics Kery Davis “explained, fatuously, that the new standing mandate “is about supporting our students’ freedom of expression while upholding mutual respect for all communities.” She did not explain how refusing to appear on the court, standing or otherwise, is consistent with that objective, or how it qualifies as expression at all, since the team has never explicitly expressed what it’s supposed to mean. Like First Kneeler Colin Kaepernick, they probably don’t know. If it means, “I hate the United States,” then Howard could, and should, tell the girls that they can “protest” the existence of their own country all they want, but not when they are representing Howard.
4. “Dishonest, biased and stupid is no way to practice journalism,Erica.” New York Times reporter Erica Green thought she had a real “gotcha” on President Trump because…well, because she’s not too bright, sadly. Neither is the Times editor who allowed her idiocy to be published. “President Trump, who has long railed against mail-in voting — including on Monday, when he called it “mail-in-cheating” — used the method himself in a Florida special election scheduled to take place on Tuesday,” she wrote triumphantly in “Trump, Who Calls Mail-in Voting ‘Cheating,’ Just Voted by Mail.”
Oh! Erica thinks this is hypocrisy, because she never learned what the word means. The sub-headline on this embarrassing story (the Times being the party embarrassed) also says, “Trump has long fixated on mail-in voting to bolster his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. But he recently used the method in a Florida special election.”
The latest example of Times ethics rot tracks with the flawed argument holding that if you believe that the mortgage interest deduction is bad policy, you are a hypocrite to deduct the interest in your own taxes. To put it another way, Erica believes that if you think a law or policy is wrong, it’s hypocritical to obey that law or derive the benefit of it like anyone else. To put it another way, Erica is an idiot.
Trump is President of the United States, and is using absentee voting, not mail-in voting. So she’s wrong on the facts. Second, his describing mail-in balloting as cheating obviously means that the practice makes voter fraud easier, which it does, thus rendering it unwise. His characterization does not mean that anyone using the deliberately insecure method is “cheating.”
I would expect Erica’s abysmal level of critical thinking in a middle school weekly paper, not a national newspaper. The Times, however, has apparently decided that any cheap shot against the President of the U.S. is a noble thing.
Ethics Alarms 
1 – Imagine UCLA cancelling a political debate among a bunch of candidates “of color” because the students protested the lack of white candidates in the mix. I’m sure USC would completely understand the logic behind it and support the decision.
Alternative thought: Blacks and hispanics in California are clearly smart enough NOT to run for governor.
2 – It’s MSNOW, it’s John Brennan, fish gotta swim.
3 – I’ll wait for the analysis from “A Friend”…which (spoiler alert here) will be something along the lines of, “A lot of commenters disagreed strongly with her story and those comments weren’t deleted, so the NYT can’t be biased.”
A solid majority of the people in this country see the same problems with mail-in ballots that caused them to be outlawed in most other countries. And the vast majority of that solid majority still supports the notion of absentee ballots.
Here’s where I’ll go off on my election rant. I love elections or at least the idea of a fair proper election because it’s the only poll of the people that matters, and it’s supposed to be all inclusive and final. I hate that I don’t feel great about elections anymore and it’s not because the Right Wing tells me that elections are stolen, it’s because the Left Wing tells me that reasonable assurance activities should not be allowed; even in the face of incontrovertible evidence of impropriety.
I want to see voter rolls consistently cleaned up, even wiped clean so that everyone can reaffirm an accurate registration. In Colorado, registration is so easy. You hit a website and plop in a few details and poof, you’re on the voter roll. So why is it disenfranchising ask for regular review and affirmation of your registration?
More than that, in Colorado, we famously have probably the country’s oldest all mail voting….and there’s something good about that, but there’s also something bad about that. We’ve been a solidly blue lefty state since with no hope of having competitive elections. In all honesty, I accepted those election results without question because of all the California influx and because I view Colorado Republicans, largely, as a special breed of stupid. (When we do find a good Republican (Bill Owens, Cory Gardner, Niel Gorsuch) they are an island unto themselves. Reasonable, amenable, and responsible….but they don’t have any staying power due to a lack of conservative political infrastructure. So voters here would rather see incompetent liberals than have to suffer the vitriol injected by both sides.)
So, now, I have to consider what would be better than our mail ballot system…and honestly, I look to my own behavior to devise the recommendation. I’ve probably said it here before, but here it is: every election should be a mail-out & check-in system. Send the ballot to the voters on October 1 and have election day be the final day of FOUR days of checking in ballots, in person, at precincts. With the check-in process, you can easily implement whatever other controls are agreeable/necessary such as duplicate/multiple voting, ID check, etc.
You could even implement hybrid / parallel processing for a ballot. Maybe Voter 1 wants to hand over the ballot for automatic processing because he’s very trusting, but maybe Voter 2 wants to take their pre-filled and completed ballot into a voting booth to insert into a machine and see all of the items tabulated in a summary format with options for final correction and upon confirmation, the paper ballot is ingested to a secure lockbox within the machine, the voting results tabulated, and the voting summary is printed for the voter on a receipt to take as a souvenir. I mean….what would be wrong with this setup?
I also always take this to the next step of considering our elderly population. I know many such facilities of elder care – massive sprawling 2,000 person campuses or 100+ patient buildings. It’s a challenge, but I like the idea of establishing a mobile precinct or those places being designated as a precinct polling place – but what I want to ensure is that only those that want to vote are the actual people voting and making their own decisions.
So there’s my rant. Thanks for hosting this outlet! Way cheaper than therapy!
I think California should push the participation-trophy mentality to the logical conclusion and allow all the candidates onto the debate stage. Perhaps let all the candidates be governor, too. I mean, that’s equity, right?
I heard something earlier to the effect that competitive Democrats wanted less competitive Democrats (which included all of the “colorful” candidates) to drop out.
the reason? California puts the top two candidates on the ballot. All those Democrats candidates might dilute the vote to the extent that the two balloted candidates are Republicans.
the cancellation of the debate (and limiting the participants) would be consistent with an anti-dilution strategy by the Democrats.
-Jut
Don’t you just love that editorializing headline of Erica’s, though? It’s almost as if she needn’t have written an article at all or that it was necessary for anyone to read it.
About point 4 regarding mail-in ballots, being a Dutch citizen I look with disgust at the lack of integrity of elections in the United States.
I have voted in Dutch elections via mail-in ballots for years. The Embassy sends every citizen registered with them who is eligible to vote a named invitation to vote, and a voting form. You return this invitation, and a filled out voting form, plus a copy of your passport, and return it on time to the Embassy so the vote can be counted at Election Day. People who vote in person have to bring a named invitation to vote (which the local government at county level will send to all citizens eligible to vote), plus proper identification provided by the government. This system is waterproof.
Articles such as the one attached at the bottom of my comment give me little faith about the integrity of elections in the United States; this is about Sheriff Bianco in Riverside, CA seizing 650000 ballots over an election disputed claiming he is acting on allegations that the county’s tally was inflated by more than 45,000 votes.
Why are the Democrats so obstinately against the SAVE act, requiring proper ID when voting? Is this because the Democrats think they benefit from corrupt election practices such as ballot harvesting, ballot stuffing, dirty voting rolls, and voting by illegal citizens? Just asking, not trying to be cynical.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jeff-charles/2026/03/23/sheriff-chad-bianco-seizes-over-650000-ballots-over-election-dispute-n2673264
Pet peeve of mine.
It’s akin to a group of friends deciding to cater a dinner together. They can’t decide where to order from, so they take a vote, and the majority wins. Then, the food arrives: when the people who voted against the winning choice eat, are they now hypocrites?
I think, in general, subsidies are a very bad idea. I would absolutely vote against them. But if I have the opportunity to get one, legally, of course I’ll take it. I’m still against it, but I’m also still being forced to pay for it.
Some thoughts: (In no particular order)