As Desi notes on today’s BradCast, the underlying theme to our boatload of stories is that “elections matter”. Then again, that seems to pretty much be our underlying theme every day on this program. Glad she’s finally noticed! [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]
Among the too-many stories covered on today’s show…
- Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally resigns amid his sexual harassment scandal. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul will become New York‘s next Governor and the first woman to serve in that role;
- $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill finally clears the U.S. Senate with a 69 to 30 vote (including 19 Repubs voting in favor with all of the Dems.) It’s a big early victory for President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda and a feather in his cap. But there’s a long way to go still, including an eventual vote in the House and, most importantly since everything hinges on it, agreement among Dems on the much larger $3.5 trillion, Dems-only reconciliation package paired to go with it. But, for now, so far so good;
- Pandemic horrors continue to worsen in the U.S., despite easy availability of free, safe and effective vaccines to prevent it. The most devastated states are run mostly or completely by Republicans. Arkansas had just 8 ICU beds available in the entire state as of Monday, according to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, after throwing away 80,000 unused vaccine doses last week. Mississippi had 0 ICU beds open and more than 200 patients waiting in ERs for a room, with all numbers heading straight up. Louisiana hospitals have returned to the bad old pre-vaccine days, but Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is “praying and fasting”, so that should help. Florida is smashing their pandemic records with hospitalizations at an all-time peak and young, healthy and unvaccinated residents now dying (many from the same church over the past two weeks.) At the same time, Texas is halting elective medical procedures and begging out-of-state health care workers to come to the state. But the Republican Governors in both TX and FL are banning school districts from requiring masks for staff and children (who, under 12, cannot be vaccinated!) in the new school year. Two of the largest districts in Texas are, thankfully, defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s authoritarian order. Several districts in Florida are doing the same in response to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is now threatening to withhold salaries of Superintendents and School Board Members who ignore his tyrannical and deadly edicts;
- In Wisconsin, where a Democratic Governor presides along side a gerrymandered GOP-controlled state legislature, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed several Republican absentee ballot voter suppression laws today, which would have affected disabled and elderly voters in particular, and challenged the state Assembly’s schemes to carry out an Arizona-style post-election “audit”;
- Speaking of 2020 denialism, Dominion Voting Systems filed three more defamation lawsuits today, seeking $1.6 billion in damages each, against wingnut news outlets Newsmax and One America News Network (OANN), as well as Trump MAGA billionaire Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO and a major financier of the AZ Audit and huckster of 2020 denialism and fetishist merchandise and media. Today’s new legal complaints, filed in federal court, are in addition to previous similar ones filed against Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Fox “News”. (Ever wonder why these “news” organizations are being sued by voting machines companies, but we haven’t been, despite our nearly-20 years of critical reporting on them? There’s a reason for that, as we also discuss today.);
- And, speaking of the MyPillow Guy, CNN’s Drew Griffin took apart his “Absolute Proof” of election fraud in an investigative report late last week. Even as Griffin made a few errors himself, suffice to say it didn’t go well for MyPillow Guy, who is also reportedly having a tough time today kicking off his three-day “Cyber Symposium” in South Dakota, after which he has promised his “absolute proof” will result in a 9 to 0 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate Donald Trump before the month is out! Sounds plausible;
- Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the U.N. declares “code red for humanity” in its latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), while apocalyptic wildfires and drought play out around the world at the very same time from Northern California to Greece. What an elaborate “hoax”!
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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in science, you have to disprove a hypothesis — so the evidence presented has to disprove the hypothesis that every vote was counted as cast.
So really, the nontransparency of using computerized equipment to cast and tabulate our votes disproves, or at least renders uncertain, results when testing the hypothesis that every vote was counted as cast, does it not?
Allin,
You don’t really want fair and accurate elections.
You just want the Pussy-Grabber to be re-instated.
Otherwise, I’ll bet you couldn’t care less about computerized voting.
Please correct me and explain why, if I am mistaken.
Allin @1 asked:
I’m not entirely sure I understand your question here. But without a hand-count of hand-marked paper ballots, there is no way to know for certain that votes were counted correctly as cast.
DonL @2:
I believe Allin was asking a legitimate question. FWIW.
Perhaps I was wrong in assuming Allin was, “maga”.
If so, I’m sorry about that.
It’s just that lately, I have been engaging online with various maga-types who sound progressive/reformist in their complaints at first, about Dominion, etc. But again and again, these folks, when pushed, display no interest in discussing the issue further (i.e.in terms of having a notion of what kind of voting system the US should adopt for the future, hopefully with support from both left and right).
I have found that the magas only want 45 re-instated, and have no interest in any real reforms of US voting systems. Otherwise, the issue apparently bores them.
Hopefully, Allin wants reform (the “gold standard” with no computers) in our voting systems, even when tRump is not going to be
re-instated.
Allin, DonL, Brad,
“in science, you have to disprove a hypothesis” … actually, it is called “falsify”.
In deep science the one who asserts a hypothesis must also present the methodology for falsifying that hypothesis.
For example, when Einstein hypothesized that gravity around a cosmic body (star, planet) curved space around it (so that light would travel around it in a curved path rather than in a straight line) he explained how his hypothesis could be falsified.
He said that a certain star (if light traveled in a straight line) would not be visible at a certain time, from a certain location on earth, and at a certain time.
When the time he mentioned, the star that should be invisible/hidden mentioned, and the location he mentioned were all verified before hand, the time thereafter came for the test.
Scientists were amazed that the star (that would NOT have been invisible if light traveled in a straight line near a planet where its own gravity was curving space around it) was in fact visible, not invisible), his hypothesis withstood the falsification attempt.
In the voting machine context one must verify that hand counting can be valid, that machine counting can be valid, and establish the criteria to establish that. Likewise the conditions where bother are not valid.
If corrupt criminals who have been paid to come up with a certain outcome count ballots, and the count result is corrupt, then the hypothesis that all hand counts are valid is falsified.
If corrupted software counts are corrupted, the same result obtains.
In other words, both machine counts and hand counts can be corrupt or valid.
Thus, voting machines can be more accurate and less corrupt than hand counted ballots, and hand counts can be more accurate and less corrupt that voting machine counts.
Determining which is which is not a function of biased opinion one way or the other.
Both are a matter of professional, competent, and honest implementation and use.
Dredd @6:
I would add that both are a matter of public oversight to determine if they are accurate or not. The problem is, there can be no oversight of machine counts unless the ballots are hand counted. Thus, hand counts are the only way to prove that a machine count was accurate. Thus, why not just start out with hand counts in the first place?