04 November 20
We Will Not Back Down, We Ask For Your Support
Now more than ever we are faced with enormous challenges. These are the times the bring out the best in the best of us.
We will stand as strong now as we ever have.
We proudly ask for your support.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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04 November 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
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FOCUS: Charles Pierce | The President Begins His Final Assault on Democracy
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "In the whiskey hours of the morning, Donald Trump declared victory in an election where millions of votes have yet to be counted."
n Mississippi, Mike Espy took a tough beat from incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith on Tuesday. However, Mississippi also legalized medical marijuana, approved a handsome new flag that does not include any elements associated with sedition, and it undid an election law that was one of the last legacies of Jim Crow. Essentially, during the establishment of American apartheid in the 19th century, Mississippi set up what amounted to an electoral-college system, whereby any candidate for statewide office had to win the popular vote and then win a majority of the 122 districts of the Mississippi House of Representatives. This effectively has been the reason that no Black American has ever been elected statewide since that system was put in place. On Tuesday, the voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot question that did away with this system. That is a very good night for Mississippi.
And speaking of Jim Crow, it's hard not to conclude that Florida was allowed to be Florida again because of an infamous decision by its legislature to monkey-wrench a law that passed by referendum two years ago. Two thirds of Florida voters approved a ballot question by which felons were given back the franchise once they had completed every part of their sentence. The Republican legislature leaped in and passed a bill requiring the felons to pay back all their outstanding court costs and fines. This was fairly clearly a poll tax in sheep's clothing. However, some Republican-installed judges in a federal appeals court sided with the legislature, and about 800,000 people who should've been allowed to vote in 2020 were prohibited from doing so. And that is the last thing I am going to write about Florida and this election.
The big news in the whiskey hours of the night was that both presidential candidates emerged to speak to their supporters. Joe Biden came out to yet another funny-car rally in a Wilmington parking lot. After Biden was done, the president* tweeted about his "big win," which, of course, was hallucinogenically untrue. Biden knew it was coming and he was having none of it.
“We feel good about where we are. We really do. I’m here to tell you tonight, we believe we’re on track to win this election...We’re still in the game in Georgia, although that’s not what we expected. We’re feeling really good about Wisconsin and Michigan. And by the way, it’s going to take time to count the votes, but we’re going to win Pennsylvania.”
And there was great honking and rejoicing.
An hour or so later, the president* came out into the East Room of the White House, committing yet another federal crime just by stepping on stage.
"A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we're not going to stand for it. We were winning everything and all of a sudden, it was all called off...Such a vote, such a success....There's never been anything like it...Most importantly, we're winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount."
He claimed he "won" Michigan with 81 percent of the vote. And then he got to the heart of his basic pitch to his audience: grandiosity mixed with collaborative paranoia.
"You know what they did? They knew they weren't going to win, they were going to court...They sent out thousands of ballots...This is a fraud on the American public. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we won this election. We'll be going to the Supreme Court. We don't want them to find any ballots at four o'clock in the morning."
That was the end of the night for me. This thing shouldn't be close. That the outcome is still close enough for the president* to lie about is his final victory over our tattered democratic pretensions.
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