Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Inasmuch as I deeply respect people who go out of their way to put their lives on hold or take necessary precautions in order to halt the spread of the virus, it does seem to me that many people have overshot level-headedness and are instead erring on the side of "GAAAAH IT'S THE END TIMES".

I don't think it's important what people call this thing save for considerations at how it might be stoking unwarranted racial tensions (as opposed to calling out entities like the CCP, not individual people, for their lacking basic humanity— again, this is my bias as someone living along the West Philippine Sea/South China Sea and I could be missing salient points because of those biases, please feel free to correct).

Not the first time a specific region will have had the honour of their name being associated with a virulent disease, but with all the mad politics involved in this mess and the masses of dead bodies piling up I just hope everyone takes this shit more seriously because that's the bare minimum people should be doing (but keep short of excessive nervosa pls) .

 

A decent explanation of the constitutional issues (both state and federal) in Pennsylvania from this election cycle:

https://www.jenkuznicki.com/transcript-mark-levin-on-pennsylvanias-crucial-appeal-to-scotus

 

I've lived in PA most of my life, and what happened here is an embarrassment. I don't have a problem with voting early, but I have a huge problem with the signatures not matching, accepting votes after Tuesday, etc.

If a person physically goes to the polls in PA, they have to show a photo ID, they have to sign-in on a signature sheet (right next to your signature that is on-file), and the signature is checked that it matches. Then you vote. Why the rules became different for mail-in/absentee ballots is beyond my comprehension. How they can accept votes mailed after the election is supposed to be over, is beyond my comprehension.

FWIW, I did not vote for Trump and I don't think PA matters in the overall election results (ie., Biden won). But that doesn't change the fact that much of what happened in PA WRT this election was wrong/illegal and that the people that did this need slapped hard.
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Don't let the fact that Levin is a far right talking head color your opinion/allow you to dismiss what he wrote. In the events leading up to this election in PA, he is almost 100% accurate.

 

Eh, that rambling attempt at a legal/constitutional argument begs more questions than it answers. I for one suspect that it is not correct to say that under Pennsylvania's state constitution each and every minutia of election procedure needs a (state) constitutional amendment to change - that's not the level constitutions work at.

Here's the deal my right wing libertarian (so called "conservative") friends. Elections in the USA are governed from the laws/real amendments following the civil war on up through the civil rights and beyond that are intentionally loosey goosey. This is to keep voter intimidation/suppression/disenfranchisement to a minimum. In other words our system is highly decentralized, run mostly by local (and often incompetent) officials and volunteers, and intentionally designed to make it very easy to vote. It has been this way for a long time, and there is always a certain amount of incompetence and outright fraud every election.

The idea that this decentralized system was successfully manipulated, centrally, on a massive scale, in just such a way that it cost Trump half a dozen or more battlegrounds yet allowed the GOP to make serious gains locally in the house, well that's just conspiratorial thinking.

Get over it, Trump lost - people split their ticket. Rest easy the GOP made real gains this election and will win the house back in two years...

 

Don't mistake that I am arguing that it would change the election. I'm not. That's completely different, and it's best not to conflate the two issues (who won vs. constitutionality of lawmaking).

For the "who won?" issue, we'll find out partially on Monday when the electoral college votes, and January 6 when the new congress determines the outcome of the EC vote. Also, as @crenca says, who won any given election is a temporary issue that can be resolved in 2-4 years.

The second issue is systemic and permanent, and thus far more important to address. If a legislature is free to violate a state's constitution when writing statutes, and there is no remedy in the state's supreme court, that creates a de-facto "ruling class" who can enact any legislation they like. That is using the law to destroy the law as Bastiat describes.

My opinion is that SCOTUS should strike down what SCOPA did (re: Act 77) without providing a remedy, and leaving that to the Penn. legislature.

 

This is the point I’ve been trying to get across to several of my conspiracy theorist colleagues. Yes, there is bound to be fraud in most elections but again, if you’re arguing the point that the WHOLE election was fraudulent then you invalidate the rest of the gains Republicans made.

People didn’t vote against the republican party. People voted against Trump or didn’t vote red ticket. It’s pretty much what happened to Hillary. No one liked her so they voted against her or didn’t vote at all.

Also, this whole calling governors to overturn the election results is a really bad look for Republicans.

 

Permanent is the right word I think. Examples are everywhere. Sticking with SCOTUS, going back to Dred v Scott, to modern times by finding things like "privacy" and the like in between the words/lines of the Constitution. Legislatures do this all the time as well, and sometimes they are checked by the courts and sometimes not. All this is the nitty gritty and the less-than-perfect implementation of constitutional systems.

How? This is the hard part. With SCOTUS, you have the "originalist" vs. "living" divide. On a legislative level you have the back and forth that (hopefully) gets corrected with elections. As far as PA specifically, I suspect Mark Levin and company are probably incorrect about what the letter and spirit of the PA constitution, though whatever the case I support a procedural remedy all the way to SCOTUS if necessary. However, don't think that the whole momentum/direction of our loosey goosey local election systems is going to change, or at least very quickly.

 

Parts of China already look like 1984 the movie with John Hurt / Ceacescu’s Romania. Manchuria, the abandoned industrial parks and destitute villages in a post-industrial wasteland without paved roads and dirty faces. No good will come of it when they demographically collapse in 20 to 40 years. Chinese dynasties fall hard. Soon they will be lying about the genetics of the Chinese populace because of the thousands of years of non-Han admixture and the Han chinese adopting Barbarian customs and clothing. The Romans did the same thing and then claimed that stuff, like hard soap, pants, and the bestest emperors (who were Spanish and Illyrian), were Roman since the dawn of time.

China’s economy is already cooking the books. Right now the official tagline is that the “services industry is underreported” and might be “45-55%” of the economy there. What major services industry? Even if that is true, that means the PRC’s economy is much worse than it is on paper. The real question is despite the 1984 police state, can the CCP collect accurate statistics? The Soviets and East Germans couldn’t. The real statistics shown by the KGB and Stasi to the politburo where rough guesstimates passed up the ranks in a game of sycophantic telephone.

 

So tell your right wing libertarian, or whatever, friends, how much fraud is OK? because you are saying that that shit that happened in Georgia did not cost Trump Georgia electoral votes, the same MI, the same PA. Because it could not be centrally manipulated? But it did not have to be.
And, in Canada, I am only remotely interested in the outcomes of any specific election but what I really do not want is to live again next to the superpower where as Josef Stalin wisely said : "it is interesting who voted for whom, but what is really important is who is counting the votes".
And if a significant number of Americans loose their confidence in the integrity of presidential elections, what do you think is going to happen next? Because the argument "nothing to see here, is all by design, get over it" is unlikely to convince anyone.

 

that’s it f**k this I’m moving to Canada

...wait

 

Dude, as one of @crenca "Right-Wing Libertarian" friends I'm happy that elections are non-centralize in the US. Last time I check, states control the elections and they cascade the tasks down to local level. This prevents the "OMG Russians" from trying to "hack" an US election on a massive scale.

What shit that happened in GA? The same state elections that's controlled by the GOP Secretary of State office, which by the way have to follow the laws based in the state's General Assembly and the laws signed by the GOP (who have full control of GA for 20+ years)? You know how much harder to vote in GA than in FL? As someone who is in FL, FL is generous on how to vote when comparing to GA (and knowing folks who moved from GA to FL and say that voting in FL is waaay easier than in GA).

 

There's a process to it which has already played out in the courts. Trump assigned lawyers to go to state and argue the case for voter fraud. The judges listened and where there was no evidence of fraud the cases were thrown out (which was pretty much all of them). Some of these judges were Trump appointed judges. So the system is working as it should.

 

Others have already explained that the system is working. This point however is somewhat concerning to me, in that far too many are swallowing what the media - right and left - is feeding them. Far too many believe what their TV's, Facebook, and phone apps are telling them, or often just suggesting to them. We seem to have less actual "journalism", and more political opinion on the one hand, and just plain emotional manipulation (for the purposes of sells/ratings) on the other than too many seem to realize. Whether it is left wing hysteria and fraud like the Russian scandal and impeachment, or right wing hysteria like a stolen election, where are the voices that pierce through both and get to the underlying reality? Sometimes there is not enough $money$ in reality to sell it I suppose...

 

WAAAHHHHH BUT HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FEEL SPESHIAL AND USEFUL????? MUH MORAL GESTURINGS!!!!!!!!!!

*both sides are equally guilty of the above