URLs du Jour

2022-08-23

  • Yay! The Sample Ballots for next month's primary election are available. And here's mine:

    [Sample Rollinsford Primary Ballot 2022]

    As noted previously: a lot of choices for the three big offices.

    Since I have no illusions about my vote "mattering", I am not a tactical voter. I'm simply looking for candidates whose views most closely match my own. It wouldn't hurt to have senses of (1) humor and (2) humility; I realize the latter quality is rare in politicians.


  • Should I automatically blackball Karoline Leavitt? She's been pretty outspoken about the 2020 election being stolen from President Bone Spurs, and hence has been labelled an "election denier" in the august pages of the New Hampshire Union Leader

    But (hey) maybe not. Because Pun Salad fave David Harsanyi says: 'Election Denier' Is The Dumbest Rhetorical Device In Modern Politics.

    When the Washington Post warns us that “Election deniers march toward power in key 2024 battlegrounds” it isn’t talking about Stacey Abrams or Josh Shapiro, it is laying the groundwork for challenging the legitimacy of the next election.

    And voters should be able to question the legitimacy of elections if they believe laws have been unjust or cheating has occurred. Even if you contend, as I do, that most election fraud claims are overstated or partisan wish-casting, it is a function of “democracy” to bring your grievances to the political arena. But, it seems, the only ones tagged as “deniers”—and all the big outlets liberally use the term now—are Republicans. Which is just another reason half the country distrusts journalists– a vacuum in trust that doesn’t only propel skepticism, but gives space for more conspiracies to flourish.

    I agree that the WaPo (and other pundits cited in Harsanyi's article) should be bipartisanally consistent about flinging the "denier" epithet. And it shouldn't be applied to folks who are simply pushing for improved polling securitty.

    But … yeah, Karoline's a denier.

    "The 2020 election was stolen and Joe Biden didn't legitimately win 81 million votes. That's preposterous," Leavitt said during the debate at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.

    At this stage of the game, such claims are either delusional or outright lies told to win the votes of the deluded.


  • Red meat for the bubbas. Joe Lancaster looks at the D-side candidate running for the US Senate in Pennsylvania, who's violating the "Given your opponent, all you have to do is pretend to be sane" rule. John Fetterman Proposes Prosecuting Oil Executives for High Gas Prices.

    Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is locked in a heated Senate race against former television host Dr. Mehmet Oz. Despite being sidelined from the campaign trail by a stroke right before his May primary victory, Fetterman has kept his opponent on defense with a constant stream of memes portraying Oz as an out-of-touch, out-of-state elite.

    Now, Fetterman is trying a new tactic: weaponizing law enforcement against business leaders he doesn't like.

    In an op-ed posted in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Fetterman laid out a series of policy proposals. Like many politicians of recent years, both Democratic and Republican, Fetterman advocates a "Buy American" standard of "mandating that companies we buy from make their products right here at home."

    Fetterman also said, "It's time we crack down on the big, price gouging corporations that are making record profits while jacking up prices for all of us." He continued, "Chevron, Exxon, and Shell have seen their profits increase 200% since last year, but they're still charging us sky-high prices for gas," which he called "deeply unpatriotic." He also criticized the meatpacking industry, which the federal government heavily subsidizes.

    Fetterman also said: "We'll crack down on this by prosecuting the executives of these huge corporations."

    Lancaster makes the obvious point that prosecuting people is not in the senatorial job description. Obviously, Fetterman is trying to appeal to the folks who either don't know that, or don't care.


  • God helps those who help themselves. But, Jim Geraghty asks, Who's Not Helping the Candidates?. He looks at the finger-pointing going on about dismal GOP prospects in November. But here's an interesting point:

    What do GOP Senate candidates Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Vance, Blake Masters,* and the not-so-Trumpy Joe O’Dea have in common?

    None of them have run for office before. Ever. Not even town council or school board.

    And (as he goes on to explain in that footnote):

    *I had originally listed likely New Hampshire GOP Senate nominee Don Bolduc as a first-time candidate, but in 2020, Bolduc ran for the GOP Senate nomination, finishing second with 58,749 votes. New Mexico GOP nominee Mark Ronchetti ran for Senate in 2020, and Connecticut GOP nominee Robert Stefanowski was the GOP nominee for governor in 2018. I was going off a list of candidates who had never won office before, and none of these candidates mention their unsuccessful bids on their campaign biographies.

    A lot of people want to start their political careers at, or near, the top. Inspired by Trump, no doubt.


  • Invidious boxes are the worst. William McGurn looks at the state of play for Racial Discrimination and Harvard’s Invidious Boxes. The big upcoming SCOTUS case is Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (and also the University of North Carolina).

    Unfortunately, in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the court declared that colleges’ use of race to further diversity was constitutional. In her majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor implied this would be temporary. She couldn’t imagine affirmative action would still be necessary in 25 years. After retiring, she said that might have been an underestimate.

    The Harvard and North Carolina cases now give the court the opportunity to rid the country once and for all of an unfair practice that leaves only a heightened sense of resentment in its wake. Were the Roberts court simply to declare that race preferences violate both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment, it would be a tremendous victory for a colorblind America.

    Even so, one of the more persuasive friend-of-the-court briefs argues that such a decision would still leave unfinished business. Filed by David Bernstein of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, it suggests that not only are racial preferences arbitrary, unfair and unconstitutional, so are the racial boxes the schools use to classify students.

    I gotta read Bernstein's book. Might be necessary to (gasp!) buy it.


Last Modified 2024-02-15 5:19 PM EDT