early of a Saturday morning

 

CUT TO:

THE ENORMOUS FIFTH FLOOR OF THE WASHINGTON POST.

It looks, early of a Saturday morning, pretty deserted.  Those reporters that are around are young, bright, and presently involved in nothing more taxing than drinking coffee and thumbing through the papers.

HARRY ROSENFELD surveys the scene from his office doorway as WOODWARD approaches, hangs his coat at his desk, not far from where ROSENFELD is standing.

ROSENFELD

Where's that cheery face we've come to know and love?

WOODWARD

You call me in on my day off because some idiots have broken into local Democratic Headquarters--tell me, Harry, why should I be smiling?

ROSENFELD

As usual, that keen mind of yours has pegged the situation perfectly.  Except (a) it wasn't local Democratic Headquarters, it was National Democratic Headquarters--

(WOODWARD is surprised--he hadn't known)

--and (b) these weren't just any idiots, seeing as when they were arrested at 2:30 this morning, they were all wearing business suits and Playtex gloves and were carrying--

(consults a piece of paper)

--a walkie-talkie, forty rolls of film, cameras, lock picks, pen-sized tear gas guns, plus various bugging devices.

(puts paper down)

Not to mention over two thousand dollars, mostly in sequenced hundred dollar bills.

_____________________________________

{"ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN"

Screenplay by William Goldman

Pre-rehearsal version March, 1975}

___________________________________

___________________________________

September, 2020

a headline in The Atlantic

Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters

some headlines in today's New York Times

With Cross Talk, Lies and Mockery, Trump Tramples Decorum in Debate With Biden

Trump Allies Say the Virus Has Almost Run Its Course.  'Nonsense,' Experts Say.

Nearly 100,000 Defective Absentee Ballots Sent to N.Y.C. Voters

Pandemic Convinces Airline Workers It's Time for New Horizons

Disney Lays Off 28,000, mostly at Its 2 U.S. Theme Parks

____________________________

_________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

written by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

...According to the plaintiffs, they stopped and questioned voters in minority neighborhoods, blocked voters from entering the polls, forcibly restrained poll workers, challenged people's eligibility to vote, warned of criminal charges for casting an illegal ballot, and generally did their best to frighten voters away from the polls....

     This year, with a judge no longer watching, the Republicans are recruiting 50,000 volunteers in 15 contested states to monitor polling places and challenge voters they deem suspicious-looking.  Trump called in to Fox News on August 20 to tell Sean Hannity, "We're going to have sheriffs and we're going to have law enforcement and we're going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys" to keep close watch on the polls.  For the first time in decades, according to Clark, Republicans are free to combat voter fraud in "places that are run by Democrats."

     Voter fraud is a fictitious threat to the outcome of elections, a pretext that Republicans use to thwart or discard the ballots of likely opponents.  An authoritative report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, calculated the rate of voter fraud in three elections at between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.  

Another investigation, from Justin Levitt at Loyola Law School, turned up 31 credible allegations of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion votes cast in the United States from 2000 to 2014.  Judges in voting rights cases have made comparable findings of fact.

     Nonetheless, Republicans and their allies have litigated scores of cases in the name of preventing fraud in this year's election.  State by state, they have sought--with some success--to purge voter rolls, tighten rules on provisional votes, uphold voter-identification requirements, ban the use of ballot drop boxes, reduce eligibility to vote by mail, discard mail-in ballots with technical flaws, and outlaw the counting of ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward.  

     The intent and effect is to throw away votes in large numbers.

These legal maneuvers are drawn from an old Republican playbook.  What's different during this cycle, aside from the ferocity of the efforts, is the focus on voting by mail.  The president has mounted a relentless assault on postal balloting at the exact moment when the coronavirus pandemic is driving tens of millions of voters to embrace it.

     

This year's presidential election will see voting by mail on a scale unlike any before--some states are anticipating a tenfold increase in postal balloting.  A 50-state survey by The Washington Post found that 198 million eligible voters, or at least 84 percent, will have the option to vote by mail. 

Trump has denounced mail-in voting often and urgently, airing fantastical nightmares.  One day he tweeted, "MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE.  IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.  WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION."  

Another day he pointed to an imaginary--and easily debunked--scenario of forgery from abroad:  "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION:  MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS.  IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!"

By late summer Trump was declaiming against mail-in voting an average of nearly four times a day--a pace he had reserved in the past for existential dangers such as impeachment and the Mueller investigation:  "Very dangerous for our country."  "A catastrophe."  "The greatest rigged election in history."

Summer also brought reports that the U.S. Postal Service, the government's most popular agency, was besieged from within by Louis DeJoy, Trump's new postmaster general and a major Republican donor.  Service cuts, upper-management restructuring, and chaotic operational changes were producing long delays....

In the name of efficiency, the Postal Service began decommissioning 10 percent of its mail-sorting machines.  Then came word that the service would no longer treat ballots as first-class mail unless some states nearly tripled the postage they paid, from 20 to 55 cents an envelope.  DeJoy denied any intent to slow down voting by mail, and the Postal Service withdrew the plan under fire from critics.

If there were doubts about where Trump stood on these changes, he resolved them at an August 12 news conference.  Democrats were negotiating for a $25 billion increase in postal funding and an additional $3.6 billion in election assistance to states.  

     "They don't have the money to do the universal mail-in voting.  So therefore, they can't do it, I guess," Trump said.  "It's very simple.  How are they going to do it if they don't have the money to do it?"

What are we to make of all this?

     In part, Trump's hostility to voting by mail is a reflection of his belief that more voting is bad for him in general.  Democrats, he said on Fox & Friends at the end of March, want "levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

_________________________________

-30-

the mouth but not the muscle

 

American voters:  President Nixon had some problems.

Donald Trump:  Hold my beer.

_______________________________

____________________________

some of the headlines in today's New York Times

How Fox News Covered the Trump Tax Story on Monday

Even as Americans Grew Richer, Inequality Persisted

End the Filibuster?  Pack the Court?  The Left is Pushing Biden

Trump's Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance

Ransomware Attacks Take on New Urgency Ahead of Vote

     Attacks against small towns, big cities and the contractors who run their voting systems have federal officials fearing that hackers will try to sow chaos around the election.

Voters Believe Winner of Election Should Fill Court Vacancy, Poll Shows

Some Workers Face Looming Cutoffs in Health Insurance

As Covid-19 Closes Schools, the World's Children Go to Work

     Former students are taking illegal and often dangerous jobs in India and other developing countries, potentially rolling back years of progress in social mobility and public health.

____________________________

____________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

written by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

...Speaking as a man with unexpended ammunition, Gore laid down his arms.  "I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College," he said.  "And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."

We have no precedent or procedure to end this election if Biden seems to carry the Electoral College but Trump refuses to concede.  We will have to invent one.

Trump is, by some measures, a weak authoritarian.  He has the mouth but not the muscle to work his will with assurance.  Trump denounced Special Counsel Robert Mueller but couldn't fire him.  He accused his foes of treason but couldn't jail them.  He has bent the bureaucracy and flouted the law but not broken free altogether of their restraints.

A proper despot would not risk the inconvenience of losing an election.  He would fix his victory in advance, avoiding the need to overturn an incorrect outcome.  Trump cannot do that.

     But he's not powerless to skew the proceedings -- first on Election Day and then during the Interregnum.  He could disrupt the vote count where it's going badly, and if that does not work, try to bypass it altogether.  On Election Day, Trump and his allies can begin by suppressing the Biden vote.

There is no truth to be found in dancing around this point, either:  Trump does not want Black people to vote.  (He said as much in 2017 -- on Martin Luther King Day, no less -- to a voting-rights group co-founded by King, according to a recording leaked to Politico.)  He does not want young people or poor people to vote.  He believes, with reason, that he is less likely to win reelection if turnout is high at the polls.  

     This is not a "both sides" phenomenon.  

     In present-day politics, we have one party that consistently seeks advantage in depriving the other party's adherents of the right to vote.

Just under a year ago, Justin Clark gave a closed-door talk in Wisconsin to a select audience of Republican lawyers.  He thought he was speaking privately, but someone had brought a recording device.  He had a lot to say about Election Day operations, or "EDO."

At the time, Clark was a senior lieutenant with Trump's reelection campaign; in July, he was promoted to deputy campaign manager.  "Wisconsin's the state that is going to tip this one way or the other ... So it makes EDO really, really, really important," he said.  He put the mission bluntly:  "Traditionally it's always been Republicans suppressing votes ... [Democrats'] voters are all in one part of the state, so let's start playing offense a little bit.  And that's what you're going to see in 2020.  That's what's going to be markedly different.  

     It's going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program, and we're going to need all the help we can get."  (Clark later claimed that his remarks had been misconstrued, but his explanation made no sense in context.)

Of all the favorable signs for Trump's Election Day operations, Clark explained, "first and foremost is the consent decree's gone."  He was referring to a court order forbidding Republican operatives from using any of a long list of voter-purging and intimidation techniques.  The expiration of that order was a "huge, huge, huge, huge deal," Clark said.

His audience of lawyers knew what he meant.  The 2020 presidential election will be the first in 40 years to take place without a federal judge requiring the Republican National Committee to seek approval in advance for any "ballot security" operations at the polls.  In 2018, a federal  judge allowed the consent decree to expire, ruling that the plaintiffs had no proof of recent violations by Republicans.  The consent decree, by this logic, was not needed, because it worked.

The order had its origins in the New Jersey gubernatorial election of 1981.  According to the district court's opinion in Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, the RNC allegedly tried to intimidate voters by hiring off-duty law-enforcement officers as members of a "National Ballot Security Task Force," some of them armed and carrying two-way radios.  

According to the plaintiffs, they stopped and questioned voters in minority neighborhoods, blocked voters from entering the polls, forcibly restrained poll workers, challenged people's eligibility to vote, warned of criminal charges for casting an illegal ballot, and generally did their best to frighten voters away from the polls.  The power of these methods relied on well-founded fears among people of color about contact with police.

-30-

even my voice was strong, then

 

     I love the Tina Turner documentary titled The Girl From Nutbush, now on You Tube.  It sets my interest ablaze.

     Both Ike and Tina Turner have this distinctive speaking style -- they talk kind of fast, and enthusiastic with punchy, staccato emphasis.

     In the film, when Tina describes the beginning of her singing career in a St. Louis nightclub, she tells the interviewer about audience reaction to her performance.  She's speaking quickly, very articulate, but in one spot the words get turned around -- it's so cute, she says, rapidly and shyly, "...because even my voice was strong, then."

     What she meant was, "my voice was strong, even then."  Or -- "even back then, my voice was strong."

     You totally know what she means.  "Even my voice was strong then."  That phrase has always stuck with me.

________________________________

__________________________

some headlines from today's New York Times

In Lockdown, an 86-Year-Old Blogger Finds an Audience and a New Purpose

China Gives Unproven Covid-19 Vaccines to Thousands, With Risks Unknown

The Virus Sent Droves to a Small Town.  Suddenly, It's Not So Small.

Trump Announces Barrett as Supreme Court Nominee, Describing Her as Heir to Scalia

_____________________________

___________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

written by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

..."I would like to promise and pledge...that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election....

IF

I

WIN!"

------------- The question is not strictly hypothetical.  Trump's respect for the ballot box has already been tested.  In 2016, with the presidency in hand, having won the Electoral College, Trump baldly rejected the certified tallies that showed he had lost the popular vote by a margin of 2,868,692.  He claimed, baselessly but not coincidentally, that at least 3 million undocumented immigrants had cast fraudulent votes for Hillary Clinton.

All of which is to say that there is no version of the Interregnum in which Trump congratulates Biden on his victory.  He has told us so.  "The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election," Trump said at the Republican National Convention on August 24.  

     Unless he wins a bona fide victory in the Electoral College, Trump's refusal to concede -- his mere denial of defeat--will have cascading effects.

The ritual that marks an election's end took its contemporary form in 1896.  On the Thursday evening after polls closed that year, unwelcome news reached the Democratic presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan.  A dispatch from Senator James K. Jones, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, informed him that "sufficient was known to make my defeat certain," Bryan recalled in a memoir.

He composed a telegram to his Republican opponent, William McKinley.  "Senator Jones has just informed me that the returns indicate your election, and I hasten to extend my congratulations," Bryan wrote.  "We have submitted the issue to the American people and their will is law."

     After Bryan, concession became a civic duty, performed by telegram or telephone call and then by public speech.  Al Smith brought the concession speech to radio in 1928, and it migrated to television soon afterward.

Like other rituals, concessions developed a liturgy.  The defeated candidate comes out first.  He thanks supporters, declares that their cause will live on, and acknowledges that the other side has prevailed.  The victor begins his own remarks by honoring the surrender.

     Concessions employ a form of words that linguists call performative speech.  The words do not describe or announce an act; the words themselves are the act.  "The concession speech, then, is not merely a report of an election result or an admission of defeat," the political scientist Paul E. Corcoran has written.  "It is a constitutive enactment of the new president's authority."

In actual war, not the political kind, concession is optional.  The winning side may take by force what the losing side refuses to surrender.  If the weaker party will not sue for peace, its ramparts may be breached, its headquarters razed, and its leaders taken captive or put to death.  There are places in the world where political combat still ends that way, but not here.  The loser's concession is therefore hard to replace.

Consider the 2000 election, which may appear at first glance to demonstrate otherwise.  Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush on Election Night, then withdrew his concession and fought a recount battle in Florida until the Supreme Court shut it down.  It is commonly said that the Court's 5-4 ruling decided the contest, but that's not quite right.

The Court handed down its ruling in Bush v. Gore on December 12, six days before the Electoral College would convene and weeks before Congress would certify the results.  Even with canvassing halted in Florida, Gore had the constitutional means to fight on, and some advisers urged him to do so.  If he had brought the dispute to Congress, he would have held high ground as the Senate's presiding officer.

     Not until Gore addressed the nation on December 13, the day after the Court's decision, did the contest truly end.  Speaking as a man with unexpended ammunition, Gore laid down his arms.  "I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College," he said.  "And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."

-30-

put this record out!

 

newspaperman Harold Evans

----------------------------------------------------

Something that makes me really happy is the fact that my favorite documentary about Tina Turner is now on You Tube.

I don't think it's on DVD, so I had believed I might not see it ever again...

     You just type in, "The Girl From Nutbush" -- it's an hour and a half.  (There are some clips on there that say, Part 2 or part 3, but we don't have to watch it in different parts, the complete video is there, it says "1:29:46.")

In this film Ike Turner talks about "Fool In Love" -- he had some guy who was going to record the song but he did not show up -- a "no-call, no show" so to speak; as long as Ike was paying for recording-studio time, he had Tina record the song.  

     He was planning to then later find the original intended singer and record him over her vocals.

But everyone who listened to the demo said, "Man, that's great.  Put it out!  Put it out!"

So they put it out and, Ike says, "Damn thing was a hit!"

He adds, "That's why she's straining so, on that record, hollerin' like that? -- 'cause I had it in the key that he would sing it in."

____________________________

____________________________

some of today's New York Times headlines

Trump Again Sows Doubt About Election as G.O.P. Scrambles to Assure Voters

     President Trump declined for a second day to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election, while Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, implicitly rebuffed him, promising an "orderly transition."

Battles Over Voting Rules Fuel Concern About Postelection Fights

Louisville's Police Force Feels Besieged on Two Fronts

     Officers say that city and police officials were slow to release crucial details in the Breonna Taylor case.  Protesters are fed up with what they consider abusive tactics.  Calm seems a long way off.

Ocean Heat Waves Are Directly Linked to Climate Change

Young Women Take a Frontline Role in Thailand's Protests

Harold Evans Dies at 92; Crusading Newspaperman With a Second Act

___________________________

___________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

written by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

...Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede....  If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.

Trump's invincible commitment to this stance will be the most important fact about the coming Interregnum.

It will deform the proceedings from beginning to end.

We have not experienced anything like it before.

-------------- Maybe you hesitate.  Is it a fact that if Trump loses, he will reject defeat, come what may?  Do we know that?  Technically, you feel obliged to point out, the proposition is framed in the future conditional, and prophecy is no man's gift, and so forth.  With all due respect, that is pettifoggery.  

We know this man.  

We cannot afford to pretend.

Trump's behavior and declared intent leave no room to suppose that he will accept the public's verdict if the vote is going against him.  He lies prodigiously -- to manipulate events, to secure advantage, to dodge accountability, and to ward off injury to his pride.  An election produces the perfect distillate of all those motives.

Pathology may exert the strongest influence on Trump's choices during the Interregnum.  Well-supported arguments, some of them in this magazine, have made the case that Trump fits the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy and narcissism.  Either disorder, by its medical definition, would render him all but incapable of accepting defeat.

Conventional commentary has trouble facing this issue squarely.  Journalists and opinion makers feel obliged to add disclaimers when asking "what if" Trump loses and refuses to concede.  "The scenarios all seem far-fetched," Politico wrote, quoting a source who compared them to science fiction.  

Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, writing in The Atlantic in February, could not bring herself to treat the risk as real:  "That a president would defy the results of an election has long been unthinkable; it is now, if not an actual possibility, at the very least something Trump's supporters joke about."

     But Trump's supporters aren't the only people who think extraconstitutional thoughts aloud.  Trump has been asked directly, during both this campaign and the last, whether he will respect the election results.  

He left his options brazenly open.  

"What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time.  I'll keep you in suspense.  Okay?" he told moderator Chris Wallace in the third presidential debate of 2016.  Wallace took another crack at him in an interview for Fox News this past July.  "I have to see," Trump said.  "Look, you -- I have to see.  No, I'm not going to just say yes.  I'm not going to say no."

How will he decide when the time comes?  Trump has answered that, actually.  At a rally in Delaware, Ohio, in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, he began his performance with a signal of breaking news.  "Ladies and gentlemen, I want to make a major announcement today.  I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters, and to all the people of the United States, that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election."  

He paused, then made three sharp thrusts of his forefinger to punctuate the next words:  "If ... I ... win!"  Only then did he stretch his lips in a simulacrum of a smile.

-30-

why he treats you like he do

 

WHOOAAHH!!

There's something on my mind

Won't somebody please -- PLEASE! -- tell me what's wrong

You're just a fool, you know you're in love

You've got to face it, to live in this world

You take the good along with the bad

Sometimes you're happy, and sometimes you're sad

You know you love him, you can't understand

Why he treats you like he do, when he's such a good man

He's got me smilin' when I should be ashamed

Got  me laughin' when my heart is in pain

Oh -- no, I must be a fool

But I'll do anything he wants me to do

You're just a fool, you know you're in love

You've got to face it to live in this world...

_______________________________________

"A Fool in Love" - written by Ike Turner

------------- Several versions and performances of this song are on You Tube, pick some and Play Them.

_______________________

_______________________

New York Times headlines

Fired Officer Is Indicted in Breonna Taylor Case

Ginsburg Remembered as Champion of Justice as Struggle Continues Over Her Successor

White House Accused of improperly Politicizing Review of John Bolton's Book

     The account by a former National Security Council official also implied that the Justice Department may have told a court that the book contains classified information and opened a criminal investigation based on false pretenses.

Trump Won't Commit to 'Peaceful' Post-Election Transfer of Power

China's Pledge to Be Carbon Neutral by 2060:  What It Means

California Plans to Ban Sales of New Gas-Powered Cars in 15 Years

______________________________

______________________________

***********************

"The Election That Could Break America"

by Barton Gellman in The Atlantic

(continued)

...He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all.  He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.

Trump's state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for postelection maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states.  Ambiguities in the Constitution and logic bombs in the Electoral Count Act make it possible to extend the dispute all the way to Inauguration Day, which would bring the nation to a precipice.  

     The Twentieth Amendment is crystal clear that the president's term in office "shall end" at noon on January 20, but two men could show up to be sworn in.  One of them would arrive with all the tools and power of the presidency already in hand.

"We are not prepared for this at all," Julian Zelizer, a Princeton professor of history and public affairs, told me.  "We talk about it, some worry about it, and we imagine what it would be.  But few people have actual answers to what happens if the machinery of democracy is used to prevent a legitimate resolution to the election."

Nineteen summers ago, when counterterrorism analysts warned of a coming attack by al-Qaeda, they could only guess at a date.  

This year, if election analysts are right, we know when the trouble is likely to come.  

Call it the Interregnum:  the interval from Election Day to the next president's swearing-in.  It is a temporal no-man's-land between the presidency of Donald Trump and an uncertain successor -- a second term for Trump or a first for Biden.  The transfer of power we usually take for granted has several intermediate steps, and they are fragile.

The Interregnum comprises 79 days, carefully bounded by law.  Among them are "the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December," this year December 14, when the electors meet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their ballots for president; "the 3d day of January," when the newly elected Congress is seated; and "the sixth day of January," when the House and Senate meet jointly for a formal count of the electoral vote.  

     In most modern elections these have been pro forma milestones, irrelevant to the outcome.  This year, they may not be.

"Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it," the legal scholar Lawrence Douglas wrote in a recent book titled simply Will He Go?  

     The Interregnum we are about to enter will be accompanied by what Douglas, who teaches at Amherst, calls a "perfect storm" of adverse conditions.  We cannot turn away from that storm.  On November 3 we sail toward its center mass.  If we emerge without trauma, it will not be an unbreakable ship that has saved us.

Let us not hedge about one thing.  Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede.  Not under any circumstance.  Not during the Interregnum and not afterward.  If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.

Trump's invincible commitment to this stance will be the most important fact about the coming Interregnum.  It will deform the proceedings from beginning to end.  We have not experienced anything like it before.

-30-

something to think about

 

 

The Atlantic has this article written by Barton Gellman.

headline:  The election that could break America

sub-head:  (If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result.  Who will stop him?)

______________________

There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11.  As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb.  They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not.  Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path.

The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord.  Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted.  The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation's creaky electoral machinery.

Something has to give, and many things will, when the time comes for casting, canvassing, and certifying the ballots.  Anything is possible, including a landslide that leaves no doubt on Election Night.  But even if one side takes a commanding early lead, tabulation and litigation of the "overtime count" -- millions of mail-in and provisional ballots -- could keep the outcome unsettled for days or weeks.

If we are lucky, this fraught and dysfunctional election cycle will reach a conventional stopping point in time to meet crucial deadlines in December and January.  The contest will be decided with sufficient authority that the losing candidate will be forced to yield.  Collectively we will have made our choice -- a messy one, no doubt, but clear enough to arm the president-elect with a mandate to govern.

As a nation, we have never failed to clear that bar.  But in this election year of plague and recession and catastrophized politics, the mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down.  Close students of election law and procedure are warning that conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result.  We have no fail-safe against that calamity.  Thus the blinking red lights.

"We could well see a protracted postelection struggle in the courts and the streets if the results are close," says Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the UC Irvine School of Law and the author of a recent book called Election Meltdown.  "The kind of election meltdown we could see would be much worse than 2000's Bush v. Gore case."

A lot of people, including Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, have misconceived the nature of the threat.  They frame it as a concern, unthinkable for presidents past, that Trump might refuse to vacate the Oval Office if he loses.  They generally conclude, as Biden has, that in that event the proper authorities "will escort him from the White House with great dispatch."

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome.  The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him.  If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress.  He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all.  He could seize on that uncertainty to hold on to power.

-30-

spoons are so brutal

 

Picks up 6 utensils.  "One of these will work" sticks 3 of them in the pan.  It's hilarious.

~ Reader Comment on Paris Hilton cooking review in Guardian

     There is such a thing as "British humor" but when I read UK Commenters on the Internet it's more just the style of expression that captures my attention and fascinates.  

     I haven't worked my way up to their style of humor ("humour") yet; I'm still on words and phrases and spellings that are different from how we do it here in the U.S.A.

Over there "across the pond" --

Humor is spelled humour

A rumor is a rumour (Like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours)

If we are honorable here, when we go to England we will be honourable.

Then there's the "s" vs. "z" policy difference:

If we realize truths about civilization in America, when we go to UK, we will realise truths about civilisation.

     They put Mr. and Mrs. and Dr. without the period:

Mr Bailey

Mrs Jagger

Dr Zhivago

     I enjoy their use of the word "then" at the end of a sentence when their meaning is lightly humorous -- when one reader commented desperately that silly reality shows indicate "the end of civilisation," another answered, "Perfect time for the Last Supper then."  You would say this with a cheerful, jaunty attitude.

     The commenter who wrote, "I give up...let's get rid of electricity and start again."

     I think in the U.S. we would say "start over" instead of "start again."

     Why do they spell "program" --

"programme"?

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Other Reader Comments:

-------- The sole purpose of this piece is that if anyone asks me whether I saw Paris Hilton lasagna video on YouTube, I can say "Of course not, but I read about it in The Guardian"...

------- But this is the most comical article and video I have seen since years!  Thanks so much Stuart for this amazing article! (did I say amazing?).  And being Italian and knowing well what lasagna should be (or even just look like...), believe me it is even more exhilarating.  A masterpiece.

P.S.  I would like to suggest her to prepare the Parmigiana next time, that would be another comic hit.

------- haha, brilliant!  Got to watch this now, if only to know what she does with the salt...

---------- I fear for humanity.

------------ Words are not enough.  Pure poetry.

------- Ricotta cheese in lasagna, fucking American's have lost the run of themselves.

And the way they say it too, 'ricoetoe'.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

----------- As she drives off in her vee-hick-ull...

------------ And adds some urbs to the sauce, aregguno for example...

--------- Ahh, the old "making fun of the way people from different places say things" brand of 'humor.'  Real Adam Sandler laughs, straight from the UK.  If I only had a dollar for every time you people went on a rant about the word soccer...

--------------- Humor?

---------- Wow, making fun of foreigners and the way they speak.

-------- Watched about 3 minutes, felt like 15 - not the slightest bit amusing, let alone hilarious.  Why is the Guardian giving this waste of space publicity?

------- I was grateful to have it.  I am so depressed at the state of the environment and the world Paris cheered me up, that's how desperate I am!!

----------- Seeing her & Nicole Ritchie calling bizarre situations in the deep mid-West "hotttt" was equally as funny!

[end of Reader Comments]

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     I never saw "The Simple Life" -- I didn't know they went around pronouncing things "hot."

     That does sound funny.

     Better yet, is this veddy-literate British reader calling the American Midwest -- "the deep mid-West" and no one saying anything!  Hahaha.  There is a "Deep South."  There is no

"deep mid-West."

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the end of civilization

 

     Apparently in January of this year Paris Hilton appeared in a video where she makes lasagna and -- explains about it.

     The Guardian published a review; here are some of the Reader Comments...

-------------- This is America's lasting legacy.  A legion of idiots made famous and rich.

     I just watched 5 minutes of the video.  We are looking at the end of civilisation.

     Perfect time for the Last Supper then.

     It is quite interesting, when you think of the fall of empires and where the tipping points were, the US is probably just starting its own tipping point in that both the economy and military power are still significant but culturally it's completely bankrupt, and the only way is down, down, down.

     To be fair, you can't blame it all on America.  In the UK we've got TOWIE, Made in Chelsea, The Apprentice, Big Brother, etc. all of which thrived on making eejits famous.

     This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards.  Replies may also be deleted.  For more detail see our FAQs.

     The economy is $23 trillion down the tubes and living on a stockmarket bubble.  As for the military, a recent ProPublica article on the state of naval readiness should do it.

     I give up.  The World has gone to shit.  Pull the plug.  Let's get rid of electricity and start again.

     Used to be a time when much of the rest of the world could laugh at the Americans, but not sure that's still the case now.  It's not just the British with their farce in Westminster, but similar patterns all over the world.

     I have just watched the entire 'programme'.  Beyond satire.  Comedy gold.

     Coming soon -- the Donald Trump Fitness Programme.

'I have no idea if Cooking with Paris is a joke or not.'

     It very clearly IS a joke, and an elegant and enjoyable one.  She's taking the mick out of herself and the whole YouTube airhead community, so credit to her.

     She is as thick as the mince in her lasagne.  You have overestimated her intelligence and self awareness abilities by some considerable margin.

     'You have overestimated her intelligence and self awareness abilities by some considerable margin.'

Hello Mr Dunning, hello Mr Kruger.

       It is quite obviously a joke and you have overestimated your own intelligence by a considerable margin.  

If one person produces a satirical video and another can't recognise the satire, it's not the satirist who is the dim one.

Hilton has been sending herself up for the best part of 20 years since The Simple Life.

     I watched the video because of this article, and didn't regret it.  It's completely surreal and hilarious!  Is it consciously done or not is everyone's guess.  If it is, that's a new kind of stand-up comedy.  More please!

—--------------------------

(When the computer makes some words bigger, I don't know how to control that...) 

-30-

a country where they turn back time

 

     An article in The Guardian today talked about '90s shows TV should "reboot" -- one Reader Commented, "'Reboot' = creative bankruptcy.  Modern culture is [messed] up enough without these shambling zombies creeping out of their graves.  Christ, 'Fresh Prince'....

     An answering Comment read, "Sorry, but have to stand up for Fresh Prince.  I seriously doubt Malcolm X, Dr King and other such topics had been talked about in such a way before then (at least on UK TV).  

Sure it was a glossy view of life given the LA Riots, etc but it also played into the aspirational feel of the 90s which has been crushed since.  Episode 1 even talks about the need to resolve climate change (albeit as a punchline) - that bit has not aged so well."

----------------------------------------

     Has the "aspirational feel" of the '90s been "crushed"?

     Here's something:  in the 1958 romantic comedy Indiscreet, the Cary Grant character mentions climate change -- he says, "They're saying the weather's changing."  Or maybe he says climate instead of weather -- have to check.

     1958.

     Aspirational 1990s.

     2020, Year of the...?

     

On You Tube, type in

Al Stewart, Year of the Cat

and play.

On a morning from a Bogart movie

In a country where they turn back time

You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre

Contemplating a crime

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running

Like a watercolor in the rain

Don't bother asking for explanations

She'll just tell you that she came

-- In the year of the cat

She doesn't give you time for questions

As she locks up your arm in hers

And you follow till your sense of which direction

Completely disappears

By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls

There's a hidden door she leads you to

These days, she says, "I feel my life

Just like a river running through"

-- The year of the cat...

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"Year Of The Cat" - written by Al Stewart and Peter Wood.  Producer:  Alan Parsons.

-30-

standing still, yet always receding

 

--------------- [excerpt, The Bridges of Madison County, novel by Robert James Waller, 1992 - Warner Books] ----------------

     He looked at his watch:  eight-seventeen.  The truck started on the second try, and he backed out, shifted gears, and moved slowly down the alley under hazy sun.  Through the streets of Bellingham he went, heading south on Washington 11, running along the coast of Puget Sound for a few miles, then following the highway as it swung east a little before meeting U.S. Route 20.

     Turning into the sun, he began the long, winding drive through the Cascades.  He liked this country and felt unpressed, stopping now and then to  make notes about interesting possibilities for future expeditions or to shoot what he called "memory snapshots."  

     The purpose of these cursory photographs was to remind him of places he might want to visit again and approach more seriously.  In late afternoon he turned north at Spokane, picking up U.S. Route 2, which would take him half-way across the northern United States to Duluth, Minnesota. ------------------------ [end, excerpt]

____________________

[excerpt from The French Lieutenant's Woman, novel by John Fowles, 1969 - Jonathan Cape (UK); Little, Brown (US)] -----------------------------

Charles set out to catch up, and after a hundred yards or so he came close behind her.  She must have heard the sound of his nailed boots on the flint that had worn through the chalk, but she did not turn.  He perceived that the coat was a little too large for her, and that the heels of her shoes were mudstained.  

He hesitated a moment then; but the memory of the surly look on the dissenting dairyman's face kept Charles to his original chivalrous intention; to show the poor woman that not everybody in her world was a barbarian.

     "Madam!"

     She turned, to see him hatless, smiling; and although her expression was one of now ordinary enough surprise, once again that face had an extraordinary effect on him.  It was as if after each sight of it, he could not believe its effect, and had to see it again.  It seemed to both envelop and reject him; as if he was a figure in a dream, both standing still and yet always receding.

-30-

he liked this country and felt unpressed

 

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman...

~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

-------------------------------------------

     Playing back-and-forth two romantic comedy films from the 1950s, Designing Woman and Indiscreet, led me to review other romantic films that were not comedies -- instead, straight-up Intense Love Stories, sometimes with a strange psychological twist...

       The French Lieutenant's Woman

       The Bridges of Madison County

     (Do they all have to have Meryl Streep in them?  Well -- no, but...they might...)

     Sometimes I go to You Tube to see what other people Comment about a movie...  someone Commented under a clip from The Bridges of Madison County:

~~  "There's always the attraction to what you can't have.  If they could stay together forever, they would have got bored and started to fight."

     (I was feeling like, "No!  No no nooooo!!"  LOL)

_______________________________

     Old Movies:  

               To me, old movies are from Hollywood's Golden Age -- Online Knowledge Guys say that extends from "the end of the silent film era to the early 1960s."

     For "Old Movies," I think of

All About Eve -- Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, 1950

It Happened One Night -- Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, 1934

Casablanca -- Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, 1942...

     Imagine my surprise when I read a Comment on You Tube, typed in by some kid with a heartfelt attitude:  "Brokeback Mountain is my favorite old movie!"

(turning head slightly; palms up...)

-30-

seem to find the happiness

 

     I want to take Indiscreet (1958, on You Tube) and Designing Woman (1957, Amazon Prime-rent or buy) and watch them both, taking notes on what to discuss about them.

     I say "WATCH" because even though I keep talking about these movies, I haven't watched either of them lately.  I stream them on android tablet, and listen to them while I'm doing things at home ...

     Alfred Hitchcock's polite criticism of verbal films of the 1960s was that they were "photographs of people talking."  He believed films should not be that; they should tell the story visually, where possible.  (You still have dialogue, though....)

     Anyway, I think these two 1950s romantic comedies use visual techniques and "splash" to tell part of their stories, but I miss that because I'm never watching, I'm only listening - while doing stuff.

     Both Indiscreet and Designing Woman are about falling in love.  In modern times, it's been written that there is really no such thing as a romantic comedy anymore because those stories used to be based on obstacles that the couple faced, and in today's society, there are no obstacles.

     But actually, if you see these two 1950s films, they still work today, because the obstacles are ones that have not disappeared with an evolving society.  

     In Designing Woman, the obstacles are simply the two people in love accepting and adjusting to each other's priorities, lifestyles, tastes, etc.  

     And there's the age-old thing where one partner is upset because the other one used to date someone before meeting them.  (It doesn't make sense, but people do that anyway -- at least in movies...)

     And in Indiscreet, it's a question of the two people getting onto the same page as to what the relationship is going to be.  That type of obstacle may change form, with time, but it doesn't disappear.

______________________________

     Something that fascinated me the first time I played Designing Woman from Amazon was, I could notice the influence of not one, but two Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy movies:  Woman of the Year (1942), and Pat and Mike (1952).

     From Woman of the Year, Designing Woman borrowed the scene where the newly married couple has a party and all their friends are there, and her friends are vastly different from his, so it's awkward / funny / weird...

     In Pat and Mike, there are underworld-mob guys interested in fixing sporting events and illegally winning money on them, and they become a threat.  This scenario is mirrored in Designing Woman -- It's played for laughs in both films -- no one is getting seriously beaten up, it isn't the Godfather or the French Connection, right?....

     Indiscreet was directed by Stanley Donen -- the guy who received an honorary award at the 1997 Oscars, and danced with it, singing --

Heaven -- I'm in heaven,

And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak --

And I seem to find the happiness I seek,

When we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek...

     Wow, that was 39 years after Indiscreet....

-30-

romantic comedies of the '50s

 

     Does the expression "back-in-the-day" have to mean the 1970s?  Or can it mean anytime in the past?  I don't know...

     I've been playing, from the Internet, two romantic comedies --

Indiscreet, 1958 - from You Tube

and

Designing Woman, 1957 - from Amazon Prime.

     "Designing" is not to be confused with "Designing Women," plural, TV situation comedy from the '80s.  This 1957 movie is "Designing Woman," singular.

     Both films have beautiful colors -- Designing Woman-Cinemascope; Indiscreet-Technicolor.  And both are what you could call "frothy."  Silly and exuberant.  The kind of stories where some character or other might say, "Where have you been all my life?"  (Or -- "Why haven't I fallen in love with you yet?!"...)

Indiscreet stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.

Designing Woman, Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck (Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird).

-30-

where have you gone, Chris Matthews?

 

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you

Woo-woo-woo

What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?

Jolting Joe has left and gone away

Hey-hey-hey

Hey-hey-hey...

     My God, I miss Chris Matthews, the host of the cable show Hardball from 1997 to 2020.  No one else can do what he does!

     There's a common saying:  "No one is indispensable" -- but that is not true.  Some people, they do something that no one else does, and that's that.

     I used to come home and put on Chris Matthews' show -- first on cable TV, and then in recent years, from You Tube instead:  what a pleasure! -- to listen to his rapid-fire, scintillating, staccato "this-this-this-happening in news, government, and/or politics -- Whadda-you-make-of-it??!!" he would demand of his guest.

     So much knowledge, background, and talented analysis.  He was constantly applying history to present happenings and efforts, highlighting significance and adding intellectual texture to our understanding of current events.

     And his enthusiasm!  Chris Matthews is great.  And it is a -- silly tragedy, that he was hounded out of his job because of "me-too."  Me Too is essentially a good cause, since -- Of Course, people shouldn't be sexually harassed at work.  But then one of the outcomes -- collateral damage, maybe you could call it -- is a sort of hysteria, where people start accusing everybody, or something....

     "Why haven't I fallen in love with you yet?" is not "harassment," it's an old-fashioned, gallant way of giving a compliment to a woman.  

     I think the young lady who complained about this was either wanting to get on a bandwagon of accusers -- like mob mentality, or else she is maybe lacking in social skills and genuinely didn't know how to process a certain kind of light-hearted remark.  When Chris Matthews said that to her, he was treating her as if she was at his level of witty repartee.  She was not.

     I just felt totally bereft, not having Chris Matthews to talk-talk (rhat-a-tat-tat) and tell me what's going on and what it means.  Recently I've taken to playing clips from Hardball on You Tube -- I don't care that it isn't today's news, I listen anyway -- Rand Paul talking about something 9 years ago? -- if he's talking with Chris Matthews, and the clip is  more than 3 minutes long, it's gonna get played....

-30-