The GOP is changing state voting laws big time. Surprisingly though, most of the changes are nowhere near as limiting as the Democrats would like you to believe. Of course, by the same token, most are completely un- necessary and many are truly bizarre. One requires voters to re-register using the same piece of identification that was originally used or their application will be invalid. This is ridiculous!
I originally registered to vote 64 years ago. Whatever I used as an ID on that distant date has long ago surrendered to the inevitability of disintegration. Making a new copy is no longer a possibility because state document formats change every couple of years. It’s a moronic demand and obviously being used by the GOP to cut down voter registration. If this country had anything better than the pathetic voting record it does, this might cause a significant drop in voting numbers but realistically speaking it will probably cause little or no problem.
Look people, we are privileged to live in the greatest democracy in the history of the world. If having to get off our collective asses once every two years to vote to keep that Democracy alive is too much to ask then maybe we just don’t deserve it.
The functional response by the Democrats to these new laws limiting the ability to vote must be to get registered no matter how inconvenient and arrive at the polls in such huge numbers that they significantly change the makeup of congress.
The fact is, turnout for the Mid-Terms is always significantly smaller so it is more than possible for the Democrats to do the work and turn out numbers that could drown the GOP, sending the message that these phony changes have only enraged the beast and it is about to eat its tormentors.
There’s been a lot of noise made about Biden’s comments relative to the 2022 election. All the woke people are upset because he used the words “rigged” and “election” in the same sentence. Of course we have to worry about rigging the election in 2022. We are facing a party that has talked about nothing but rigged elections since 2016. One would have to be mentally unstable not to expect them to try something crooked in the next one. It’s the only way the GOP can look at an election.
One thing that the Democrats have finally figured out is that if you can’t beat them you should join them. They are doing that right now in New York where after decades of being in a position to do so, they are finally gerrymandering voting districts that they control.
For years all they did was stand around and whine about the GOP rigging voting districts. Now they are doing it themselves. Maybe if they do it enough the GOP will back off so we can all agree to stabilize the voting districts in some equitable manner. I have always maintained that the only workable system is to use the existing county designations as voting districts.
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Everybody’s all bent out of shape about Vladimir Putin’s wrangling of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border but this observer just doesn’t see an invasion happening.
Sure, Putin stands at the border of the Ukraine, rattling his sword and threatening war but is it real? Can he pull it off or does he think he can? Even more important do we think he can and how far are we willing to go to stop him if he moves his troops. Putin can’t afford a war financially and he won’t get a big cheer from the Russian people no matter how it turns out. No one wants to see their kids shot at just to make the leader look like a big deal, not even Russians.
No, no one wants war, not even Vlad. The question is, will he threaten himself into a corner from which the only escape is war?
For those who bothered to look, Putin has left himself an out to cover the details that will affect his ego if he doesn’t go to war. He has stated over and over, even as he inched troops closer to the border, that he will never invade Ukraine. So, now if he never does invade he will not look like he chickened out. He can fall back on “I always said I wasn’t going to invade.”
Right now our administration is faced with another problem that is even greater than Ukraine. If we let Putin have his way, China will smell the weakness and invade Taiwan. No, Putin is not the only greedy, acquisitive motherfucker around; the planet is overrun with them.
So, Biden’s problem is multifaceted and he has to start with a consideration of what will happen if he guesses wrong and China decides that they can push us around. And of course he also has to consider the political ramifications of any decision he makes.
Putin knows one thing. Neither the US nor NATO is willing to put troops on the ground to protect Ukraine. What he doesn’t know is whether or not they are willing to put planes in the air to do just that. What Biden must do now is give Putin more to think about including seeing that we are willing to do great harm to Russia without starting a war.
In that vein I think Biden should move first by immediately applying a sanction just to punish Putin for starting this whole shit show. It has to be something serious but not catastrophic, like closing Russia out of the Swiss banking System. Closing off all fossil fuel exports from Russia to Europe would work even better but that will do too much damage to European countries that depend on Russian gas to get them through those northern winters. Foremost among these are Germany and England. So we should hold off on that one until we absolutely have to use it.
After applying the first sanction Biden should announce what will happen if Putin doesn’t withdraw his troops or if any of them should accidently cross the border. That would have to include the fuel embargo as well as personal sanctions against Putin and his oligarchs.
Finally Biden should make it clear that the incursion of any Russian troops into Ukraine would trigger US and NATO air attacks on said troops. This is calling Putin’s bluff and normally it would be the only way to stop an incursion, if it were a real one.
In this case however, Putin probably has no intention of moving large masses of troops across the border. But if left alone he will certainly begin inching them into Ukraine the way he did in the northeast. This is where we must stop him. Make it far too costly for him to actually move. Eventually we can give him some insignificant prize so that he can save face but if we let him start this incursion it will never end.
So if Putin says he isn’t going to invade and he really has no reason to invade, and the President of Ukraine says there is no real threat of invasion, how come everybody in the world is warning of an invasion and worrying about Russians running wild in the Ukraine?
Who would benefit from a war to stop the Russians from invading Ukraine? Who is benefitting from all the sword rattling that is going on now? Well, we just sent a couple of hundred million in arms and supplies to Ukraine and the more real the war gets the more weapons are going to get delivered to various combatants. So it’s fairly obvious that the military industrial complex that supplies the world with the means to kill each other will benefit big time. That’s probably why its highly paid, widely assigned army of lobbyists are so busy right now telling anyone who will listen that war is inevitable and whoever they are speaking to should jump in immediately so as to assure a tactical advantage.