Global

Part I. Personal

Wednesday evening I answered the phone, and a man pretending to work for the local sheriff's department asked me to identify myself, told me that the call would be recorded because it might be used against me in a court of law, and ordered me to get a pen and paper. He spoke fast and unclearly and with lots of strange background noises. He claimed that I had failed to appear for jury duty and I would be arrested if I didn't do what he said. (I'd received no notice of jury duty.)

There are less than 48 hours to go before the Electoral College begins casting its votes. 

Here is a petition to sign that might make a difference:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/ask-hillary-clinton-to-3?source=c.fwd&r_by=1398470

The desperate search for a successful Hail Mary to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president is down to the wire.  The attempts can be easily seen by many as pollyannish.  But we honor such individual acts of extreme clarity in John Kennedy's PROFILES IN COURAGE.  

And given the specter of a Trump presidency, this could be one of them. 

In the final moment, it all rests on Hillary Clinton.  Given the legal strictures of the Twelfth Amendment, she may be the only one who can possibly stop a Trump presidency.

Here's the petition to sign asking her to do just that:

As millions of Americans desperately seek an alternative to Donald Trump, the 2016 presidential election now faces the volatile possibility of a “December Surprise”.

Here are some Constitutional realities:

The Electoral College is set to vote Monday, December 19.

Of 538 electors, Donald Trump apparently has 306 committed to him.  Exactly 270 are needed to win.  Hillary Clinton apparently has 232.  There do not seem to be any other candidates with confirmed committed electors at this point.

Today, Pope Francis released the annual World Day of Peace Message for January 1, 2017, called “Nonviolence—A Style of Politics for Peace.” This is the Vatican’s fiftieth World Day of Peace message, but it’s the first statement on nonviolence, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—in history.

We need to make “active nonviolence our way of life,” Francis writes at the start, and suggests nonviolence become our new style of politics. “I ask God to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values,” Francis writes. “May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life.  When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promotors of nonviolent peacemaking.  In the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms.”

The CIA conclusion that the Russians intervened in our elections in order to help elect Donald Trump has sent Washington into one of its fabled tizzies.

President Barack Obama has ordered an intelligence agency report before he leaves office. Democrats and responsible Republicans are calling for congressional investigations. Pundits are arguing the Russians — combined with FBI Director James Comey’s outrageous interventions — cost Hillary Clinton the election. In response, President-elect Trump is tweeting furiously about voter fraud, peddling lies about millions of illegal immigrants voting and many other things to distract from the escalating scandal.

Left out of this brouhaha is the systematic and purposeful voter suppression that certainly cost Clinton the election. The Russians didn’t do it. It was done by right-wing partisan state officials eager to suppress the vote of people of color, the young and the working poor. These efforts were open, systematic and widespread. And this domestic hacking at our elections was far more destructive than the hacking Russia is said to have done.

Parallel narratives of deepening intrigue and outright denial unfolded Friday, as new revelations surfaced about Russian hacking to steer the presidential election while states showed they were afraid to look under hood to see what happened.

A petition asking the Electoral College not to vote on the next president until a full investigation is done of Russian interference in the 2016 US election can be signed here.

Why?

At moments like these, when every good responsible and enlightened liberal is recognizing the need to destroy the world in order to save it, by getting World War III started with Russia before Trump can move in and damage anything, I believe it is important to remember a few facts that will strengthen our resolve:

The oligarch who owns the Washington Post has CIA contracts worth at least twice what he paid to buy the Washington Post, thus making the Washington Post the most reliable authority on the CIA we have ever, ever had.

When the CIA concludes things in secret that are reported to the Washington Post by anonymous sources the reliability of the conclusions is heightened exponentially.

Phrases like "individuals with connections to the Russian government" are simply shorthand for "Vladimir Putin" because the Washington Post has too much good taste to actually print that name.

This text is the foreword to a new book by Pat Elder called

The Wisconsin recount is headed for disaster, but there’s still a chance to save it. We need a federal lawsuit requiring a hand recount of all paper ballots.

We’re one week into the historic Wisconsin recount, prompted in no small part by widespread concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines and their susceptibility to tampering, fraud, and computer hacking. The difference in Wisconsin is currently about 22,000 votes, or 0.75%. Patriotic, democracy-loving Americans share a common value of wanting to see that every vote is counted fairly, accurately, and honestly, especially in such a close and crucial election as this one.