If only there was a way to educate people.... Maybe start when they're young, and teach them how the Constitution and all that works! And make it public!
Nah, the Republican party would never allow such a thing.
I was reading a column from someone who had the optimistic thought that when the whole of human knowledge was available at a keystroke, people would be so much more informed and understanding.
People use the magic of the internet, and now AI, to become Temu experts on what interests *them*. Just ask a MAHA mom about vaccines, autism, pesticides, and why the collagen molecule is too big to penetrate the dermis. We all know a fan who goes Nate Silver deep on their team’s stats across decades.
Question to MAGA: Where did you hear that? MAGA: I heard that on the internet. The internet knows all! Question: Who told you that? MAGA: The internet!
When I was in my 20s I used to believe we needed a test that you had to pass in order to vote. Then I decided that was elitist and anti-American. And now in my 50s I am going back to the wisdom of a test. Can you pass a 5th grade civics test? Great! You get to vote.
Hello. You have reached Tim Coffey's "Morning Shots" autoresponder. You are receiving this message because the content in this morning's newsletter has triggered Mr. Coffey's more illiberal and violent inclinations as the preferable method to deal with the MAGAe. As Mr. Coffey wants to spare his fellow Bulwark subscribers from full exposure to his feral id, he will not unsheathe those ideas this morning. There will be no further comment from Mr. Coffey this morning. Thank you, and have a nice day.
The main reason I don't have faith in America's elections isn't that I think the machines, the people tabulating the results can't be trusted (I live in Texas so I can't say I'm not concerned), or even attempts by foreign governments to influence or interfere. No, I don't trust our elections because I don't trust the people casting the votes. Clearly there's a problem when millions of people can look at Trump and think 'I like him' or even 'he's better than that woman the Democrats have selected'. It's sickening that people can look at someone who's gay and think they're mistreating our boys, but are fine with a man who has a history of sexual misconduct and regularly denigrates women.
Trump's speech will have zero effect on people who can think for themselves, but our country, it seems, is full of people who've outsourced their thinking to the latest feeds that come up on their social media.
'The concept of “confidence” in elections comes up repeatedly. The report assesses that Russia’s government ran an influence operation denigrating Joe Biden, supporting Trump, and “undermining public confidence in the electoral process.” It notes that Iran attempted both to “undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects” and “undermine public confidence in the electoral process.” It relays that Moscow has “longstanding goals of undermining confidence in US election processes.” And it says that, “Some foreign actors . . . spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to try to undermine public confidence in election processes and results.”'
This is such an astute observation from Sam that these allegations against foreign actors map onto Trump's own actions so tightly, and that the impact of what Trump did and is still doing is millions of times greater than the impact of what our adversaries were doing. Trump is the single biggest geopolitical threat to the stability of the United States. We elected the country's biggest traitor who campaigned on calling his opponents traitors.
It's been over six years, and these conspiracy theories have lost little steam, which means we're going to live with this probably for the rest of our lives. No evidence will be sufficient for these believers to stop believing, because six years of looking and finding nothing hasn't convinced them, and they'll always keep looking because they know the election was stolen, they simply haven't found the evidence yet. It's a movement whose entire foundation is innuendo, and it turns out innuendo is a surprisingly strong and durable foundation when you have a cult of suckers.
I wonder how much of what Trump was spewing last night was a bit of projection. I see where Wisconsin is going after Musk for influencing voters in the 2024 election, and Pennsylvania also has investigations into Musk for similar reasons. It would be amusing in the extreme to see Musk get nailed for his machinations on behalf of Trump.
Everything he says is a projection. He accused the other side of the crimes he wants to commit, so when he does half the country will say, well both sides do it.
These theories haven't lost steam over 6 years because they are repeated so frequently in various settings across the country. In California just this year there was the sheriff who was also a candidate for governor getting his buddy the judge to issue a warrant to seize ballots and other material from a previous election. Also a whole county in CA just passed an local measure that functionally detaches their elections from state law, runs its own registration system, basically ends vote by mail (which over 3/4th of the large county uses), allows no early voting, and of course demands "voter id."
They just take Trump’s word for, because he is so selfless he gave up his life of privilege to save America, and being rich, he was unbribeable, so why would he lie to them? Let him do the thinking, and you can go placidly about your lives.
Imagine if Al Gored shared this same psychological pathology. We'd have been hearing this whining constantly for a quarter century now, and at least he had a little legitimacy to his grievance. Good lord.
I've never completely agreed with the man, but I've always had the utmost respect for him. His episode with Tim a few months ago was such a breath of fresh air.
The skies here in eastern PA this morning are a little clearer than they were last night, but there's still the stink of forest fires in the atmosphere, and according to my weather apps it will get worse this afternoon before it improves (and it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow, which I hope is also true for Canada).
While looking for maps of the smoke path, I saw posts from some Michigan Republicans protesting Canada's forest management. They don't mention that a) those forests, which have generally be untended for hundreds of years, are drier than ever because of the literally unspeakable (by those Republicans) conditions of climate change; and b) the area covered by those forests is larger than most U.S. states and as sparsely populated as, say, Wyoming or eastern Montana. You can go hundreds of kilometers between settlements.
But never let facts get in the way of outrage. Their party has taught them well.
Speaking of Blockheads, Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno wants to punish Canada for its wildfires spewing smoke across the eastern midwest and northeast. How long will it take DJT attach himself to that one? (and up the tariffs on Canada)
"Put more bluntly, Trump used the bully pulpit to undermine U.S. elections in ways that no other president has—in ways that adversarial governments could only dream of."
Or... Krasnov is working for an adversarial government and doing exactly what he is told. As JVL (and many others) have said before, what would he be doing any differently if he were a confirmed foreign asset?
We all know where this is going. We all know that this is going to end up in civil war. The right will not stop and change course. They know they have crossed lines and it is secure power now, or face consequences. Since we know that Republicans are allergic to consequences, they will turn on other Americans to achieve their aims.
"We all know that this is going to end up in civil war."
A few years ago I heard a lecture from a prominent psychologist about the ways that people can use language to manipulate public opinion. As a case in point, she warned to be on guard whenever someone uses the phrase "we all know. . . ."
The reason why? Because that phrase may not, in fact, be factually accurate and instead serves to marginalize anyone who doesn't happen to agree with it.
As a case in point, I don't "know" that we are heading for a civil war. That would seem to be one scenario, but I could see others being potentially more likely. One reason why is that, at least at this point, a goodly proportion of Americans would appear to be just trying to live their lives. Social media hot talk can lead us to forget that.
There was a Colbert bit back in the first term when the Mueller Report came out and confirmed Trump wasn't a Russian agent. Colbert's reply: Then what the hell is wrong with him? He did a whole thing with Trump being the Manchurian candidate, only without needing to be shown the cards.
I watched the Bulwark's feed last night for ten minutes and just have to say I am so glad I have no employment related reason to sit through the entirety of Trump's bull shit. For me to volunteer to watch a complete Trump speech would be intentional self harm. 10 minutes was all I would allow myself. It was all I needed. Thank you Sarah and Sonny for making some of my ten minutes palatable. I most certainly shared Sonny's dumbfounded rage.
During the last campaign he promised those good Christians this would be the last time they needed to vote. At the time the media and pundits didn’t seem to know how to report on what he said. I mean, they couldn’t take him seriously, could they? Yet here we are where the president of the United States is actively making the case the quasi-democratic country he presides over cannot have competently have a free and fair election. Banana meet Republic!
I've been thinking a lot about how last night's speech is such a Rorschrasch test. If you're coming into this with some baseline skepticism about whatever the president says -- totally reasonable IMO! -- then this is going to seem like so much bluster and barely even worth fact-checking. But if you're still operating in the realm of "he's the president, he may be exaggerating but it's got to be based on *some*thing," there's a sense that if even a sliver of what Trump said is true it's a massively big deal and the fact those Radical Left Dumb-ocrats won't investigate it tells you all you need to know.
I know where I stand, of course. It's not even a question. But it's such an onslaught of lies, I don't even know how to begin talking to anyone not convinced.
& this applies to a lot more than just last night's gaslighting and the election fraud nonsense. How people respond to all the ICE raids is the example I keep coming back to, though I'm sure there are others. It's like the thing being charged (masked men in unmarked cars swooping down on American streets and just killing a dad on his way to work) is so awful, it's *too* awful, and they just don't have the confidence in what anyone is saying these days to believe it. It's too unpleasant. So they don't think about it instead.
That's what this feels like to me, and it's frustrating how little power we have to get people to wake up. I know that's not new, but last night does have me feeling it in a particularly acute way.
The Daily Beast is reporting this morning that the ICE agent who shot and killed the Colombian immigrant Joan Guerrero has a long history of mental illness.
Yeah, I saw that last night. I’ve already emailed my Senator asking how someone like that could be let loose on us. I know the answer, but I at least needed to put my name down as someone really disturbed by this.
"After he lost the 2016 Iowa caucus, Trump declared that, “Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz . . . either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.” I vaguely recall being flabbergasted at the time. I thought it was a bit. I didn’t realize it was an ethos."
Hillary realized. She knew it and she told everyone. She tried to warn us.
If I remember that little creep Hans von Spakovsky appearing on Fox News before 2000, preparing this ground, surely some of you do as well. This is what really existing conservatism(TM) was up to 30 years ago, and *not* defense of free markets.
"He bemoaned alleged compromises of our voting systems, specifically Venezuela’s supposed manipulation of electronic voting machines."
I keep wondering what plans he has for Maduro, sitting in US jail. It would not surprise me if he makes some kind of deal with Maduro "confessing" to interference with 2020 elections in exchange for reduced sentence, leniency or a pardon. It's a wild thing to even consider, but who are we talking about here? We have continually suffered from a failure of imagination regarding what he's willing to do and ways he'll manipulate the law and his powers.
That or they created some kind of Frankenstein monster "evidence" out of all the stuff they took out of Georgia. But, no. It's the same lazy, meandering, evidence-less, fever dream buffoonery as ever...same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was... I hope the majority of people have grown tired of this stupidity. I fear not.
Trump lecturing us on election security is like Willie Sutton holding forth on the scourge of bank robbery.
In the aftermath of the 2020, Trump made claims regarding fraudulent voters. Secretary of State Raffensberger and his aide Gabriel Sterling obliged him by investigating each of his claims, comparing voter registration rolls to other documents. The results of their investigation, which they testified to under oath to the the 1/6 Committee, were as follows:
Trump: 66,000 underage voters → Georgia: 0
Trump: 2,423 unregistered voters → Georgia: 0
Trump: 10,315 dead voters (5,000 in the phone call) → Georgia: 4
Trump: 2,056 felons voted → Georgia: fewer than 74 were identified as still serving felony sentences (not 2,056).
Certifying these numbers to be fact in filing a lawsuit was part of what got Trump indicted by Fani Willis.
"Much of the voting public probably knows little about the process of administering US elections..."
Much of the voting public knows almost nothing about almost everything. That's the real problem.
If only there was a way to educate people.... Maybe start when they're young, and teach them how the Constitution and all that works! And make it public!
Nah, the Republican party would never allow such a thing.
I was reading a column from someone who had the optimistic thought that when the whole of human knowledge was available at a keystroke, people would be so much more informed and understanding.
Didn't work out that way.
It's much easier to believe than to think.
“I mean, I keep trying to think, but nothing's happening” - Curly Howard.
Yuck it up Debbie.
Feels better too :-)
Actual facts and reality are too boring.
It's more that Southern States are not into education. The GOP is just their current preferred means of delivery. 60 years ago it was the Dems.
1965 Voting Rights Act.
He did say he loves the poorly educated.
And he has the best words!
People use the magic of the internet, and now AI, to become Temu experts on what interests *them*. Just ask a MAHA mom about vaccines, autism, pesticides, and why the collagen molecule is too big to penetrate the dermis. We all know a fan who goes Nate Silver deep on their team’s stats across decades.
Question to MAGA: Where did you hear that? MAGA: I heard that on the internet. The internet knows all! Question: Who told you that? MAGA: The internet!
When I was in my 20s I used to believe we needed a test that you had to pass in order to vote. Then I decided that was elitist and anti-American. And now in my 50s I am going back to the wisdom of a test. Can you pass a 5th grade civics test? Great! You get to vote.
Hello. You have reached Tim Coffey's "Morning Shots" autoresponder. You are receiving this message because the content in this morning's newsletter has triggered Mr. Coffey's more illiberal and violent inclinations as the preferable method to deal with the MAGAe. As Mr. Coffey wants to spare his fellow Bulwark subscribers from full exposure to his feral id, he will not unsheathe those ideas this morning. There will be no further comment from Mr. Coffey this morning. Thank you, and have a nice day.
We the Bulwark appreciate Mr. Coffey taking the day off to spare us his id. We had enough of a feral id unleashed last night.
Salute!
Time to storm the Bastille and drag this false king and his court of corrupt jesters out of the Whitehouse and send them to an Ecuadorian gulag.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Oh, I posted a bunch of swears last night while watching Sarah and Sonny submit themselves to Trump's horrible mumblings..you're forgiven.
The main reason I don't have faith in America's elections isn't that I think the machines, the people tabulating the results can't be trusted (I live in Texas so I can't say I'm not concerned), or even attempts by foreign governments to influence or interfere. No, I don't trust our elections because I don't trust the people casting the votes. Clearly there's a problem when millions of people can look at Trump and think 'I like him' or even 'he's better than that woman the Democrats have selected'. It's sickening that people can look at someone who's gay and think they're mistreating our boys, but are fine with a man who has a history of sexual misconduct and regularly denigrates women.
Trump's speech will have zero effect on people who can think for themselves, but our country, it seems, is full of people who've outsourced their thinking to the latest feeds that come up on their social media.
“Outsourced their thinking” is a good description.
'The concept of “confidence” in elections comes up repeatedly. The report assesses that Russia’s government ran an influence operation denigrating Joe Biden, supporting Trump, and “undermining public confidence in the electoral process.” It notes that Iran attempted both to “undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects” and “undermine public confidence in the electoral process.” It relays that Moscow has “longstanding goals of undermining confidence in US election processes.” And it says that, “Some foreign actors . . . spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to try to undermine public confidence in election processes and results.”'
This is such an astute observation from Sam that these allegations against foreign actors map onto Trump's own actions so tightly, and that the impact of what Trump did and is still doing is millions of times greater than the impact of what our adversaries were doing. Trump is the single biggest geopolitical threat to the stability of the United States. We elected the country's biggest traitor who campaigned on calling his opponents traitors.
It's been over six years, and these conspiracy theories have lost little steam, which means we're going to live with this probably for the rest of our lives. No evidence will be sufficient for these believers to stop believing, because six years of looking and finding nothing hasn't convinced them, and they'll always keep looking because they know the election was stolen, they simply haven't found the evidence yet. It's a movement whose entire foundation is innuendo, and it turns out innuendo is a surprisingly strong and durable foundation when you have a cult of suckers.
I wonder how much of what Trump was spewing last night was a bit of projection. I see where Wisconsin is going after Musk for influencing voters in the 2024 election, and Pennsylvania also has investigations into Musk for similar reasons. It would be amusing in the extreme to see Musk get nailed for his machinations on behalf of Trump.
Everything he says is a projection. He accused the other side of the crimes he wants to commit, so when he does half the country will say, well both sides do it.
Maybe DJT will give Musk a preemptive pardon. After all he came within 250' of the White House.
These theories haven't lost steam over 6 years because they are repeated so frequently in various settings across the country. In California just this year there was the sheriff who was also a candidate for governor getting his buddy the judge to issue a warrant to seize ballots and other material from a previous election. Also a whole county in CA just passed an local measure that functionally detaches their elections from state law, runs its own registration system, basically ends vote by mail (which over 3/4th of the large county uses), allows no early voting, and of course demands "voter id."
Riverside Sherriff Bianco is on record as “proud” of his prior Oath Keepers membership.
Conservative counties in CA are very rahrah on becoming Charter Counties. Kern just passed Measure A in June with 63.59% of the vote.
They just take Trump’s word for, because he is so selfless he gave up his life of privilege to save America, and being rich, he was unbribeable, so why would he lie to them? Let him do the thinking, and you can go placidly about your lives.
Imagine if Al Gored shared this same psychological pathology. We'd have been hearing this whining constantly for a quarter century now, and at least he had a little legitimacy to his grievance. Good lord.
Al was gored?
I've never completely agreed with the man, but I've always had the utmost respect for him. His episode with Tim a few months ago was such a breath of fresh air.
The skies here in eastern PA this morning are a little clearer than they were last night, but there's still the stink of forest fires in the atmosphere, and according to my weather apps it will get worse this afternoon before it improves (and it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow, which I hope is also true for Canada).
While looking for maps of the smoke path, I saw posts from some Michigan Republicans protesting Canada's forest management. They don't mention that a) those forests, which have generally be untended for hundreds of years, are drier than ever because of the literally unspeakable (by those Republicans) conditions of climate change; and b) the area covered by those forests is larger than most U.S. states and as sparsely populated as, say, Wyoming or eastern Montana. You can go hundreds of kilometers between settlements.
But never let facts get in the way of outrage. Their party has taught them well.
They should have raked the forests. Problem avoided!
like he told California to do
Where's all the Mexicans when you need 'em?
Speaking of Blockheads, Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno wants to punish Canada for its wildfires spewing smoke across the eastern midwest and northeast. How long will it take DJT attach himself to that one? (and up the tariffs on Canada)
Yes! “Don’t cloud the issue with facts!” - Mr. Banks from the original Mary Poppins movie.
After the hellacious summer of 2020 in California I no longer like the smell of a campfire and never want to go camping again because of it.
At least with the teleprompter, he’ll get a pardon. And keep his job and his money./s
I was struck by the fact that they went after the Latino. More handiwork from Stephen Miller?
And I'm sure he was underpaid like the Trump's workers at Mara Lago.
Same - I found myself wondering if the outcome would be the same had the teleprompter operator been named Joe White.
No he won't. He didn't share the winnings with DJT.
Meanwhile people paying more to get early access to what Trump's about to post on Truth Social? No biggie.
"Put more bluntly, Trump used the bully pulpit to undermine U.S. elections in ways that no other president has—in ways that adversarial governments could only dream of."
Or... Krasnov is working for an adversarial government and doing exactly what he is told. As JVL (and many others) have said before, what would he be doing any differently if he were a confirmed foreign asset?
We all know where this is going. We all know that this is going to end up in civil war. The right will not stop and change course. They know they have crossed lines and it is secure power now, or face consequences. Since we know that Republicans are allergic to consequences, they will turn on other Americans to achieve their aims.
"We all know that this is going to end up in civil war."
A few years ago I heard a lecture from a prominent psychologist about the ways that people can use language to manipulate public opinion. As a case in point, she warned to be on guard whenever someone uses the phrase "we all know. . . ."
The reason why? Because that phrase may not, in fact, be factually accurate and instead serves to marginalize anyone who doesn't happen to agree with it.
As a case in point, I don't "know" that we are heading for a civil war. That would seem to be one scenario, but I could see others being potentially more likely. One reason why is that, at least at this point, a goodly proportion of Americans would appear to be just trying to live their lives. Social media hot talk can lead us to forget that.
Some of US will die laughing.
There was a Colbert bit back in the first term when the Mueller Report came out and confirmed Trump wasn't a Russian agent. Colbert's reply: Then what the hell is wrong with him? He did a whole thing with Trump being the Manchurian candidate, only without needing to be shown the cards.
It was really funny. This, much less so.
I watched the Bulwark's feed last night for ten minutes and just have to say I am so glad I have no employment related reason to sit through the entirety of Trump's bull shit. For me to volunteer to watch a complete Trump speech would be intentional self harm. 10 minutes was all I would allow myself. It was all I needed. Thank you Sarah and Sonny for making some of my ten minutes palatable. I most certainly shared Sonny's dumbfounded rage.
Sarah and Sonny watching this they must be gluttons for punishment.
During the last campaign he promised those good Christians this would be the last time they needed to vote. At the time the media and pundits didn’t seem to know how to report on what he said. I mean, they couldn’t take him seriously, could they? Yet here we are where the president of the United States is actively making the case the quasi-democratic country he presides over cannot have competently have a free and fair election. Banana meet Republic!
Trump has been the #1 danger to our elections since he came down the escalator.
I've been thinking a lot about how last night's speech is such a Rorschrasch test. If you're coming into this with some baseline skepticism about whatever the president says -- totally reasonable IMO! -- then this is going to seem like so much bluster and barely even worth fact-checking. But if you're still operating in the realm of "he's the president, he may be exaggerating but it's got to be based on *some*thing," there's a sense that if even a sliver of what Trump said is true it's a massively big deal and the fact those Radical Left Dumb-ocrats won't investigate it tells you all you need to know.
I know where I stand, of course. It's not even a question. But it's such an onslaught of lies, I don't even know how to begin talking to anyone not convinced.
& this applies to a lot more than just last night's gaslighting and the election fraud nonsense. How people respond to all the ICE raids is the example I keep coming back to, though I'm sure there are others. It's like the thing being charged (masked men in unmarked cars swooping down on American streets and just killing a dad on his way to work) is so awful, it's *too* awful, and they just don't have the confidence in what anyone is saying these days to believe it. It's too unpleasant. So they don't think about it instead.
That's what this feels like to me, and it's frustrating how little power we have to get people to wake up. I know that's not new, but last night does have me feeling it in a particularly acute way.
The Daily Beast is reporting this morning that the ICE agent who shot and killed the Colombian immigrant Joan Guerrero has a long history of mental illness.
To be clear, not the Daily Beast but some paper reporting a similar story. I think it was the AP, but I could be wrong.
Yes, it was the AP as I read the article as well.
Yeah, I saw that last night. I’ve already emailed my Senator asking how someone like that could be let loose on us. I know the answer, but I at least needed to put my name down as someone really disturbed by this.
"After he lost the 2016 Iowa caucus, Trump declared that, “Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz . . . either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.” I vaguely recall being flabbergasted at the time. I thought it was a bit. I didn’t realize it was an ethos."
Hillary realized. She knew it and she told everyone. She tried to warn us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZf7IASx2mE
Geez, it's hard to watch video clips like that and not mourn what could have been!
But it's also instructive: notice how she makes a great point and then he gets the laugh. It's like seeing the oncoming disaster in one short cut.
If I remember that little creep Hans von Spakovsky appearing on Fox News before 2000, preparing this ground, surely some of you do as well. This is what really existing conservatism(TM) was up to 30 years ago, and *not* defense of free markets.
"He bemoaned alleged compromises of our voting systems, specifically Venezuela’s supposed manipulation of electronic voting machines."
I keep wondering what plans he has for Maduro, sitting in US jail. It would not surprise me if he makes some kind of deal with Maduro "confessing" to interference with 2020 elections in exchange for reduced sentence, leniency or a pardon. It's a wild thing to even consider, but who are we talking about here? We have continually suffered from a failure of imagination regarding what he's willing to do and ways he'll manipulate the law and his powers.
I was sort of expecting a big revelation that Maduro confessed to "flipping" votes due his superior control of Dominion.
That or they created some kind of Frankenstein monster "evidence" out of all the stuff they took out of Georgia. But, no. It's the same lazy, meandering, evidence-less, fever dream buffoonery as ever...same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was... I hope the majority of people have grown tired of this stupidity. I fear not.
Trump lecturing us on election security is like Willie Sutton holding forth on the scourge of bank robbery.
In the aftermath of the 2020, Trump made claims regarding fraudulent voters. Secretary of State Raffensberger and his aide Gabriel Sterling obliged him by investigating each of his claims, comparing voter registration rolls to other documents. The results of their investigation, which they testified to under oath to the the 1/6 Committee, were as follows:
Trump: 66,000 underage voters → Georgia: 0
Trump: 2,423 unregistered voters → Georgia: 0
Trump: 10,315 dead voters (5,000 in the phone call) → Georgia: 4
Trump: 2,056 felons voted → Georgia: fewer than 74 were identified as still serving felony sentences (not 2,056).
Certifying these numbers to be fact in filing a lawsuit was part of what got Trump indicted by Fani Willis.