Oh Those Tar Heels

Dramatic events in North Carolina today. There will be a new election in the NC 9th district. Yesterday, Mark Harris', the Republican candidate, son and an attorney testified that he had told his father not to hire McCrae Dowless, warned him that what Dowless was doing was illegal. Also, he testified that Dowless was hired by the campaign through a third party to keep the relationship secret. Why did the son say all this? Because he's disgusted with the way this country has devolved into an undemocratic, win at all costs, polity.

Today, after a lunchtime conference with his lawyers, Harris told the court that he had made some "misstatements," pleaded that he recently had two strokes, and ended his legal action. NC 9 will now have a new election. Harris was asked if he would run in the new election. He didn't answer, and his wife said "we'll see."

Several observations.

1. Harris is a Southern Baptist minister. Apparently, what Jesus would do is lie, cheat, steal, anything at all to win.

2. Harris knew what his campaign was doing because he ordered it to happen, according to his own son. These were not "misstatements." They were flat out lies.

3. Evangelical Christians have lost all claim to moral authority, if they ever had it at all.

4. Republicans are so upset at ballot integrity that they work hard to suppress the vote.

5. But in person voter fraud almost never happens and when it does, it is someone voting in the wrong district by accident.

6. When vote fraud does occur, it is almost always in the form of absentee ballots and this case tells you exactly why. Unless you are a complete dumbass and try to go for a blowout win like a North Korean election, you probably won't get caught.

Dowless illegally collected ballots, tossed the ones that voted for Democrats or Libertarians, filled out the ones that hadn't been completed.

Democrats have done these things in the past. I think of incidents like Hummon Talmadge's election to the Senate, pulled out at the last minute when ballots were found from his home county cast in alphabetical order by the residents of a local cemetary.

But these days, vote fraud is pretty much entirely a Republican operation, because the GOP hasn't believed in democracy since Mitch McConnell became majority leader. They see no reason why losing an election should keep them out of power. This is exactly why the party must be cast into outer darkness. It is thoroughly unAmerican, from the bottom to the top.

And McCrae Dowless needs to be in prison. Probably Mark Harris as well.

Comments

Bend and Stretch. Reach for the Stars. There Goes Jupiter, There Goes Mars...

On this day in 1976, during an interview on BBC Radio 2, British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that a very rare planetary event was about to take place—that Jupiter and Pluto would soon align in relation to Earth, and their combined gravitational pull would momentarily override Earth's own gravity and make people weigh less. He called it the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect, and said that if people jumped into the air at exactly 9:47 a.m., they would experience a floating sensation. Moore signaled, "Jump now!" over the airwaves, and within minutes the BBC switchboard was flooded with calls from people who claimed it had worked. In 1957, the BBC TV show "Panorama" ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a "bumper year" thanks to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Many credulous Britons were taken in. In 1998, Mark Boslough fabricated a press release claiming that the Alabama legislature had legally...

Tis for Today in 1925

Today is the birthday of the author and illustrator Edward Gorey, born in Chicago, 1925. His stepmother was the woman playing the guitar during the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca. The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham Book Mart, with launching Gorey's career: "it became the central clearing house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store's gallery and eventually turning him into an international celebrity." Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following.[7] He made a notable impact on the world of theater with his designs for the 1977 Broadway revival of Dracula, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design. In 1980, Gorey became particularly well known for his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! ...

The Night the Lights Went Out in Detroit

It was on this night in 1967 that a riot broke out in Detroit, marking the beginning of the decline of one of the greatest manufacturing cities in the country. An all-white squadron of police officers decided to raid an unlicensed after hours bar in a black neighborhood where there was a party to welcome home two recent veterans of the Vietnam War. The police stormed the bar, rounded up and arrested 85 black men. While they were arranging for transportation, a sizable crowd of onlookers gathered on the street, having witnessed the raid. Later, in a memoir, William Walter Scott III, a doorman whose father was running the raided bar, took responsibility for starting the riot by inciting the crowd and throwing a bottle at a police officer. After the police left, the crowd began looting an adjacent clothing store. Shortly thereafter, full-scale looting began throughout the neighborhood. The Michigan State Police, Wayne County sheriffs, and the Michigan Army National Guard were alerte...

The Consequence of Matters

Search This Blog