I hate to say this, but we’re in for some very very bad elections in the future, thanks to you-know-who. This week, the Michigan secretary of state suspended a township clerk from running the election next week. Why? Because she’s all-in on the Big Lie, or is at least Big Lie-curious enough that she wouldn’t participate in routine equipment checks, required by law before the polls open:
(The suspended clerk) said she is worried about the security of the tabulators — including in relation to their performance in the November 2020 presidential election — and believes they were connected to or had the ability to be connected to the internet in past elections.
This is a Big Lie cornerstone, especially in Michigan, where one of the local grifters calls himself a “cybersecurity expert” and has been running around the state saying he could tell the tabulators were connected to the internet because he saw some cable, or something.
I ran the tabulator the last couple of elections. If you’ve ever taken a test where you filled in bubbles on an answer sheet, you know how it works: It’s set up to read certain patterns and assign votes accordingly. In Antrim County, where the infamous OMG-how-is-Biden-winning-in-this-red-county screwup happened last year, it was an inputting error, quickly corrected; essentially, someone told the machine the wrong pattern to read.
You open the polls by plugging it in, starting it up and printing an initial tape (called the zero tape). When the polls close, there’s a shutdown procedure, the totals tapes are printed, and then and only then do you take a small cellular modem out of its cubbyhole on the machine, plug it in and transmit the returns via cell signal back to the Board of Elections. Then you shut it down, follow all the closing procedures, etc., and push it back against the wall, to be picked up by the Board of Elections workers the next day.
This was all explained to the clerk by the state’s elections chief, of course:
Michigan election protocol prohibits connections to the internet, and Hillsdale County has denied any connectivity between the machine and the internet. Brater also notified Scott in an Oct. 15 letter that, while the tabulator has a modem physically attached, “the modem is disabled while polls are open.”
“Tabulator programming does not allow any modem communications to occur while voting is in progress; the secure transmission can occur only after the election is complete and the tabulator tape has been printed,” Brater wrote. “Additionally, data transmission is one-way.”
What’s more, all those paper ballots the tabulator was reading? They’re preserved. In Antrim County, once the tabulating error was corrected, the clerk held a hand recount, and had the correct totals checked and double-checked. All the tabulator is, is a set of eyes.
Doesn’t this sound reasonable? And yet, the Big Lie continues. Now, imagine scores of clerks like this, aided and abetted by the true-believer canvassers who are stepping into vacant slots all over the state. Imagine a future where every election that a Republican doesn’t win, they just say FRAUD and refuse to accept the results.
And we’re supposed to “understand” these people? You maybe see now why I’m a little nervous these days.
The architecture of the present crisis and the ominous waypoints ahead are clear. No matter the outcome of the next Presidential election, the GOP nominee, likely Trump, will refuse to concede a clear defeat. Allegations of fraud will be made without evidence.
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 26, 2021
This tweet is the first of a thread that gets worse as it goes on. Read it. Have a nice day!
ROGirl said on October 27, 2021 at 8:34 am
How much of this nationwide Big Lie campaign/movement is being funded by the Koch Brothers, the Mercers, Peter Thiel, etc.?
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Julie Robinson said on October 27, 2021 at 9:12 am
The Allen County, Indiana machines are old enough t0 pre-date internet capacity, but they are electronic. When you push the buttons your vote is recorded internally, and at the end of the day another button is pushed to tabulate. A calculator tape spits out with the results. Want to do a recount? Push the button again. Want a print out of how you voted, or a paper ballot? Not possible.
I suppose the machines could be programmed to disregard the button pushing, but since they are not connected to the internet, it would have to be done machine by machine before the election. Which would require a lot of cleverness.
Here in Orlando I think we vote with bubbles and Scantrons. I’ll tell you after next week.
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Suzanne said on October 27, 2021 at 9:23 am
What the GQP is doing is what has been done in Hungary, Poland, Russia and being attempted in other authoritarian leaning countries. Get the “right” people elected or appointed, change laws in your favor, especially election laws, and the people no longer have a voice. What Orban has done in Hungary has all been done by bending the law to fit his desires. A bloodless coup under the cover of legal maneuverings.
I can assure you that when it happens here, my friends and neighbors here in rural NE IN will not bat an eye. Their concept of history stopped in 4th grade, they support anyone who hates the same people they do, and they want life to be simple like it was back in the days of Jim Crow and redlining.
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Deborah said on October 27, 2021 at 10:41 am
When I read that Steve Schmidt twitter thread yesterday it made me sweat. It all seems inevitable now which is almost the worst part. What in heck can we do about it? Packing the courts and ending the filibuster may not even help now.
The other thing I think about and sweat over is what Sarah Kendzior calls a “transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government”. This latest financial deal with the Saudi Bone Saw guy and Kushner is frightening. I mean what happens transnationally if TFG actually does get elected in 2024?
Suzanne, I think your fellow citizens will eventually feel the pinch when things fall apart like they did in 2007/2008. They always fall apart royally when Republicans take the reins. Unfortunately a lot of damage will be done before they figure it out, and so much water will have passed under the bridge it will probably be too late.
It’s all so depressing.
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Suzanne said on October 27, 2021 at 10:45 am
Case in point to my comment above. Just spoke to a local man who told me that the price of gas proves that Biden is going to run the country into the ground, that he’s incompetent, and that Judge Jeanine Pirro had a segment on how Biden isn’t really running the country but Obama is behind the scenes. Shadow government. He was skeptical at first but Judge Jeanine spelled it all out and now he’s sure it’s true.
I hear this kind of thing almost every day. My township trustee is a Holocaust denier, my county councilman swears drinking tonic water will stave off COVID because it’s the same virus as malaria. If the GQP and Fox talking heads tell them that the election was rigged, that the election officials are corrupt, they will believe it.
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Deborah said on October 27, 2021 at 10:52 am
On a completely different note, all the talk about the pitcher who struck out three players while he had a fractured leg (fibula) is maybe not as heroic as it sounds. I had a fractured heel bone (calcaneus) and walked on it nearly 6 miles a day for 2 weeks. It hurt a lot, sure, but I thought the pain would go away, I had no idea it was a fracture until I finally went to the Dr. I was stupid for continuing to walk on it, of course. On the other hand a fractured fibula might be a lot more painful. What do I know.
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David C said on October 27, 2021 at 11:38 am
I know a guy who had his fibula removed because of osteosarcoma. He walks just fine.
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alex said on October 27, 2021 at 11:43 am
What irritates the shit out of me are people who sit me down and try to lead me down the garden path in order to spring derp on me that they get from Judge Jeanine or Breitbart or some other cesspool. These are educated people who know better but expect me to be a good sport and swallow their line of bullshit. I work for attorneys, some of whom obviously think that Trump is good for their pocketbook and don’t respect my intelligence in the least.
I got an earful from a woman (not a boss) recently who engaged me in conversation and then did a segue into some nonsense about Biden putting electronic chips in our vehicles and charging us an 8 cents per mile surcharge and that’s how he’s paying for his infrastructure plan or what have you. I called bullshit on it and pointed out that any new tax is front-page news in every newspaper in Indiana and no way you’ll convince me that they’re all conspiring to keep this one a secret.
I shot down one of my bosses (now thankfully retired) who tried to browbeat me into accepting some derp about the Affordable Care Act and I was on her shit list until she was gone. But I get the feeling that some of these fat cats are getting talking points from the Kochs and Mercers or whomever on how to make their underlings swallow shit that’s objectively false, at least to anyone who isn’t living under a rock or inside the right-wing media bubble.
The modus operandi is always the same, and in fact reminds me of evangelicals who pretended to take an interest in me personally in my younger years only to spring it on me that their real motive was to get me to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and start attending services at their church.
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Jeff Gill said on October 27, 2021 at 12:14 pm
FYI for anyone who’s interested: malaria is caused by a parasite in the bloodstream. Plasmodium, as I recall. But not a bacterium nor a virus.
I’d love to ask the guy if he believes COVID is not a viral infection, but he probably wouldn’t understand the question.
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Suzanne said on October 27, 2021 at 12:32 pm
Jeff Gill, I don’t doubt you are correct.
But I like the idea of drinking lots of tonic water as long as you add gin and lime…
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JodiP said on October 27, 2021 at 1:54 pm
Jeff Gill is correct–and I learned something really cool. I always had assumed it was a virus or bacteria. https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/faqs.html
I am also very worried about 2022, no matter the outcome. If Dems hold the house and Senate, there will be challenges and another armed insurrection? Rolling Stone had an article out on Sunday that members of congress were actively involved in the January 6th planning to a degree not known previously. Here’s the WaPo version: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/26/gop-lawmakers-distance-themselves-jan-6-rally-despite-supporting-its-cause-downplaying-capitol-riot/
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Deborah said on October 27, 2021 at 2:34 pm
Apparently Santa Fe is crawling with media lately because of the Baldwin shooting incident. I have no dog in the controversy, I don’t especially have any great affection for Baldwin and his wife with the hilarious name Hilaria. He’s an ok actor I guess. My right wing sister thinks I’m devoted to Baldwin because of his politics, which I find amusing. The only thing that gives me pause about the whole incident is that it’s being investigated by Santa Fe authorities who aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. It’s a small city of barely 80,000 population, even though it’s the state Capitol I’m not sure it draws the best and the brightest.
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LAMary said on October 27, 2021 at 2:47 pm
Hilaria, who speaks with a faintly Spanish accent, is Spanish or Latinx in any way. Nothing weird about that. Also somehow the Baldwins had children less than 9 months apart. By a lot. Again, nothing odd about that. I kinda think he’s a jackass but not because of his politics. I’m good with those. It’s the rest of his life that’s jackassish.
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Dorothy said on October 27, 2021 at 3:00 pm
Well other pitchers have had broken legs and continued in a baseball game before having to leave. Of course it involves my Pittsburgh Pirates in 1967 involving my superhero Roberto Clemente:
https://thisdayinbaseball.com/st-louis-cardinals-ace-bob-gibson-suffers-a-broken-leg/
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Snarkworth said on October 27, 2021 at 3:02 pm
I worked as an election judge long ago, and I feel confident that most elections are free of fraud. My reasoning is that extensive malfeasance would involve large numbers of people being in on it, and all those people would have to keep their mouths shut.
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ROGirl said on October 27, 2021 at 3:15 pm
Involvement by large numbers of people is a feature of the conspiracy beliefs. “They” are all in on it.
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Colleen said on October 27, 2021 at 3:16 pm
Snarkworth, that is precisely why I am not a believer in conspiracies. People can’t keep their traps shut after a staff meeting where proprietary information is shared, but they are supposed to keep global political conspiracy on the QT? Not buying it. Besides, the conspiracy theorists are just the type of people who would want to brag about the inside conspiracy info they have….
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Snarkworth said on October 27, 2021 at 3:27 pm
Exactly, Colleen.
Stop me if you’ve heard the story about the king who had ears like a donkey. He was careful to wear hats that concealed his deformity, and the only person who knew was his barber, who was sworn to secrecy. One day the barber could stay silent no longer, so he went out and dug a hole in a field, into which he told his secret. Then he covered up the hole and felt much better. But then grass grew on the spot, and the wind swooshed through it and said over and over, for all to hear, “The King has donkey ears!”
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Julie Robinson said on October 27, 2021 at 3:33 pm
Mary, I’m kind of ashamed to say that you got me googling that one, and apparently their sixth child was born by surrogate. I don’t know about you, but if I was pregnant with kid #5, I wouldn’t be thinking that I needed to pay a surrogate to have #6 only a few months after I’d had #5. No thank you.
Also, Alec doesn’t strike me as the most patient of people so I’m wondering how he does with that many little ones. I’m particularly remembering a nasty voicemail he left for his oldest daughter.
A friend picked up malaria while in Africa with the Peace Corps in the late 70’s. It was bad enough that they sent him home for treatment, but get this, it never leaves your body. His illness would reactivate from time to time and leave him miserable; sweating, aching, alternately hot and cold and shivering.
The tonic idea may have come about because once upon a time quinine was used to try and prevent/treat malaria. Without much effect, but it was all they had to offer.
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alex said on October 27, 2021 at 3:44 pm
My mom’s brother contracted malaria during military service overseas and it came back to bite him when he was battling cancer. Not a pleasant experience.
Regarding conspiracies, I’m reminded of a great quote which I don’t remember concisely but the gist of it was:
“The only person dumber than a criminal is the criminal who tells another person about his crime.”
Inevitably such relationships become fraught with tension over the possibility that the other person is blabbing. Best buds will eventually become sworn enemies.
But the same dynamic applies even if it’s a family trying to plan a surprise birthday party for grandma. Someone’s inevitably going to spill.
Anyone who believes in conspiracy theories, especially those that would necessarily involve hundreds or thousands of people, doesn’t know jack about human nature.
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Icarus said on October 27, 2021 at 3:54 pm
Three can keep a secret if two are dead
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Sherri said on October 27, 2021 at 4:18 pm
From late on yesterday’s thread, if you want to hear about a sociopath I knew in high school:
I’m not a true crime podcast fan, but I stumbled across this episode, which is about a murderer I know. A guy I went to high school with, had several classes with, and dated a girl, Amy, I had known since third grade, is a sociopath who murdered that girl a few years later and murdered the next woman he took up with. He was also connected to the unusual deaths of Amy’s father and her aunt. He was a little odd in high school, but didn’t particularly stand out. I thought he was a little creepy, but not for any particularly reason.
https://www.podcastone.com/episode/Amy-Vick-Part-1-of-2
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Jeff Gill said on October 27, 2021 at 4:36 pm
Literally just got back from a conference with an assistant county prosecutor where we both were discussing how thankful we were that most offenders confess, and quickly (if usually incompletely).
Miranda aside, it continues to amaze me that in the overwhelming majority (like 90-ish percent) of cases we handle, the perpetrator will confess right after the Miranda warning is given (all on video tape if you’re a skeptic about police interrogations). People want to tell their story, and parallel but somewhat separately, they want to frame the narrative their way. It’s enough to keep the rest of the justice system busy to tidy up the holes and inconsistencies between various confessions.
Which is why the urban murder spike is such a problem: that’s the one area you rarely have spontaneous confessions. Not to ruin anyone’s Dateline-based assumptions, but in most homicides there’s few suspects and not enough names to even go looking for to ask questions, so the confession “handle” isn’t there to get a grip on, just the slippery corpse and usually the most fragmentary of witness accounts, leaving closed circuit camera footage carrying way too much weight and rarely having the license plate number or clear facial view to help out the detectives.
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Jeff Borden said on October 27, 2021 at 6:49 pm
What scares you more:
a.) American dumbasses
b.) Foreign enemies
I know my answer.
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Sherri said on October 27, 2021 at 6:54 pm
I think the thread by Quinn Cummings gets at the underlying reasons the gun incident happened:
https://twitter.com/quinncy/status/1453459648288210946
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Suzanne said on October 27, 2021 at 9:48 pm
I am watching Rachel Maddow who has finally figured out that the idiocy about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump is mainstream thinking among Republicans. I nearly screamed at the TV “Where have you been?!?!”
I am so disheartened by the fact that people in more civilized areas of the country still do not understand what is going on out here in great swaths of the country and has been for years.
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MarkH said on October 27, 2021 at 10:50 pm
Alex @#8 — There is a basis for the talk about the mileage tax you and your ‘friend’ discussed. Though not front page news, it has been covered. Right now it is tucked inside the pending infrastructure bill as a study only. The 8 cent/mile rate is BS, and no other specifics for that reason. If and when the bill is approved, the study will commence. AP has the details.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-907285011746
Additionally, this type of tax has been on states’ radar screens for some time and Oregon and Utah have actually implemented such a tax. Oregon was first and particularly keen on it as, years ago, looming hydrogen-fueled cars would have depleted gas tax coffers. Utah instituted a pilot/study program for evaluation. In each case we’re talking only 1-2 cents so far. Ten other states, including here in Wyoming, are looking seriously at the mileage tax. A plug-in device is the most logical way to track millions of vehicles, which is the major obstacle. WaPo has details here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/interactive/2021/electric-mileage-tax/
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Sherri said on October 28, 2021 at 12:39 am
Jonathan Katz is in Charlottesville, covering an interesting trial getting underway, where injured plaintiffs are suing the organizers of the Unite the Right rally: https://theracket.news/p/some-very-fine-people-walk-into-a
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Dexter Friend said on October 28, 2021 at 1:42 am
Suzanne…the emphasis on that clip, which was repeated on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show following, was that the number, nationwide, across all economic status groupings, is 60%. 60% of Republicans believe that Trump is their true President and should be legally re-installed into office.This is the current status of The Big Lie. Also, Eastman was caught on a recording explaining “Pence’s cowardice” in not doing more to steal the election by any means necessary. The Republican Party is corrupt. It is the party of Trump. Trump is responsible for these threats on federal judges also, as it is his crazed supporters who are determined to kill judges. A culture of violence on many levels. Demonic.
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Suzanne said on October 28, 2021 at 9:09 am
Dexter, I understand about the appalling statistics that Maddow reported on. It is horrible. What bothered me was her expressed surprise at this number. I forget exactly what she said but it was along the lines of “who knew?” Many of us have known for quite some time but we were generally called alarmists.
I think Rachel Maddow is one of the best on tv, she’s smart, thorough, and fair but someone like her can’t fathom that the people I talk to every day are not some fringe goofballs but the majority here. In my daily interactions, I would raise eyebrows if I said I like Biden and that I think the only wall that needs to be built is between the church and state. A statement that there was massive election fraud in 2020 and that what will solve our problems is to elect good Christian men to office and that the Democrats are the party of Satan would get me nods of agreement.
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annie said on October 28, 2021 at 1:26 pm
evidently trump jr. has been walking around with a t-shirt which reads, “guns don’t kill people; Alec Baldwin kills people” Such classy offspring trump raised.
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Deborah said on October 28, 2021 at 2:27 pm
I just watched a creepy, poorly made video of Zuckerburg explaining his Metaverse concept. Surely that was a parody made by some teenagers in their basement. It can’t have been made by a multi-billion dollar corporation. If so they’re definitely trying to look down market. What’s up with that?
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Sherri said on October 28, 2021 at 3:23 pm
The metaverse, as coined by Neal Stephenson in his science fiction novel Snow Crash, is a dystopia. Small wonder that tech titans with the emotional development of twelve year old boys only see the gee whiz cool shit and not the fact that our hero is living in a shipping container in a world of extreme income inequality.
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Julie Robinson said on October 28, 2021 at 4:29 pm
Most twelve year olds could also tell you that dystopias never end well.
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Deborah said on October 28, 2021 at 8:42 pm
Meta as in “we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society… for profit!” As AOC says.
I’m dropping my Facebook account tomorrow. I like the good parts about keeping in touch with people but the dark side is just too much. It’s time to go.
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LAMary said on October 28, 2021 at 9:18 pm
Eric Trump was in Nashville with Roger Stone this week. They were speakers at an anti vaxxer event at Opryland resort.
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basset said on October 28, 2021 at 9:59 pm
I remember seeing some promotion for that but no news stories.
Meanwhile, just ran across this and thought it was interesting:
“The head of the National Rifle Association can’t shoot, can’t schmooze, and has the “backbone of a chocolate eclair,” says a former board member—yet commands one of the most influential right-wing organizations in politics.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/the-weirdness-of-wayne-lapierre-the-nras-reluctant-leader
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Dexter Friend said on October 29, 2021 at 4:43 am
I jumped aboard Facebook in 2005 when it launched. I use it not for news, but as a communication tool among friends. Without it, my life would lack much of the joy of life I seek. I find it easy to ignore the bullshit and filter out the garbage and unfriend the asshats.
I am not in tune at all with anything but main Facebook and the bare minimum of IG. I also immediately got on with Twitter when it started, but then it quickly changed and got too busy for me. I have free time, just not that much free time, so I only go on Twitter rarely and just to read someone’s funny post at times. Yahoo! News reported that Facebook as I use it won’t change…we’ll see.
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David C said on October 29, 2021 at 5:47 am
Looks like low-budget movies are a great tax scam. If you can crank them out by pinching pennies and hiring people who don’t know what they’re doing you make more. Who would have guessed?
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2021/10/28/how-the-rich-stay-rich-part-%e2%88%9e/
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Deborah said on October 29, 2021 at 8:23 am
I’m giving myself until the end of today to copy all of my photos and anything else I want to save off of Facebook that I don’t have elsewhere. It’s actually hard to find out how to delete your FB account. I scrolled around for about a half hour before I found the directions of how to do it. I have an Instagram account too but have never used it.
I have a Twitter account which I never post on. I only am on Twitter to read others. I find that I really enjoy doing that, I spend way to much time reading Twitter.
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Deborah said on October 29, 2021 at 8:55 am
Found this morning on Twitter:
“i know it’s said all the time but humans aren’t designed to take in constant information every day about things beyond our control from all around the world on mediums designed to favor the most extreme and provocative content!”
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Darling Vicki said on October 29, 2021 at 9:13 am
Fast, simple steps to delete your FB account: https://bit.ly/31eVlDK
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David C said on October 29, 2021 at 10:33 am
Google – Don’t be evil
Alphabet – Go ahead, be evil
Facebook – Evil
Meta – WASF
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Jeff Borden said on October 29, 2021 at 12:22 pm
Tucker McNear Swanson Carlson is preparing a feature that will run only on the streaming service Fox Nation, but seems likely to add more nitroglycerine to the dumpster fire that is ‘Murica these days. Apparently, it will argue the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “false flag” operation and that the vast majority of those inside the Capitol building were not violent or unruly.
Whitewashing an attempted coup is so much easier when you have an entire sewer system like Fox to spread it. I do not believe in an afterlife, but I wish I did if only to imagine that malignant Australian ogre roasting in the hottest flames of hell along with the junior on-air Goebbels who have carried out his plans.
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Jeff Gill said on October 29, 2021 at 12:30 pm
All we are saying, Jeff B., is give purgatory a chance.
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Sherri said on October 29, 2021 at 2:38 pm
This article gets at the biggest problem with Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse: it’s boring. I’m a little familiar with the history of metaverse projects; Pavel Curtis, who’s mentioned in this article is a close friend and was a co-founder with my husband of their startup, which built a web conferencing product way back in the mid-90s. The stuff Zuckerberg showed would have been boring for Second Life 20 years ago, and of course, we know that Zuckerberg has no clue how to deal with the social problems that arise even in the metaverse.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-was-always-terrible/620546/
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Scout said on October 29, 2021 at 4:01 pm
Sherri, that Atlantic article was fascinating. This right here is why I think Deborah’s got the right idea walking away from the FB cesspool: (Zuckerberg’s) “not humbled by the problem of Russian disinformation, or the spread of anti-vax misinformation, or the challenge of how Instagram affects teen body image. No, he’s humbled by how hard it is to fight against Apple and Google.”
Clearly, Ethan Zuckerman has no love lost for Mark Zuckerberg.
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Deborah said on October 29, 2021 at 4:23 pm
I did it! I pulled the plug on Facebook after spending a good part of the day retrieving photos and rereading stuff I posted long ago. I have some regrets of course, I’ll completely lose contact with people I don’t have any other way to be in contact with, I wish I didn’t feel like it had to be done. The good parts of FB are wonderful but that was outweighed by the dark side. Maybe I’ll find another way to connect to those people someday. I never had many FB friends to begin with, but those I had were people I very much enjoyed being connected to. I’m happy that many of my FB friends are here on nn.c so I can still connect this way, as long as Nancy is so kind to have this community.
Facebook doesn’t make it easy to quit and I technically have 30 days to reinstate and still keep everything intact. I don’t think I’ll succumb but who knows.
Now I have to figure out how to get the app off of my desktops on my phone and iPad.
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Jeff Borden said on October 29, 2021 at 6:51 pm
I wish every senseless gun death in America got the kind of deep dive coverage as the accidental death on the Alec Baldwin movie set.
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diane said on October 29, 2021 at 9:29 pm
Really liked the article. The only thing he mentioned that I had heard of was Second Life. I was an older student going back to school to get a Master’s in Library Science when it was briefly big. Professors I really admired were into it and I remember really struggling to get the point and finally giving up, pretty disappointed that I just didn’t get it.
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Sherri said on October 29, 2021 at 11:16 pm
LambdaMoo is memorable to me not because I ever hung out there, but because I remember talking with Pavel about an incident that happened there: http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html
Had he cared, there is much Zuckerberg could have learned from the early days of the Internet.
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Dexter Friend said on October 30, 2021 at 1:29 am
As bad as Tucker Carlson is, his racist homophobic hateful father, Dick Carlson, was worse.
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Icarus said on October 30, 2021 at 12:18 pm
the vast majority of those inside the Capitol building were not violent or unruly.
funny when a few looters or rioters do that at an otherwise peaceful BLM or other left-leaning protests, that point doesn’t get brought up.
not that I believe for an instant that statement is in the zip code of accurate for the Jan 6 insurrection.
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Deborah said on October 30, 2021 at 1:23 pm
I think I heard of Second Life in 2005 when I was briefly employed at a firm where I gave my notice barely 6 months after starting work there because it was horrible. My boss called herself a futurist, whatever that is, she raved about this platform that you could live in virtually. You could buy dwellings and clothes for your avatar etc. She thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I thought it was weird and pointless. This was in a well known architecture firm in Chicago and this woman had won many awards for her interior design work and at the time I worked there she was in her mid sixties. She was barely able to use the computer, other people did the work that needed to be done on computers for her. I thought it was odd that she was so enthralled with Second Life when she was so ignorant about how to even write and send an email.
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basset said on October 30, 2021 at 4:51 pm
One of my former neighbors was a performer in Second Life, think he had an auditorium or salon or something in there. Watched it some but never could get interested.
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diane said on October 30, 2021 at 6:53 pm
To return to our proprietress’ original point in her post, Michigan is not alone in said chicanery. Here in Boebert country, the local clerk and recorder was removed from handling the election by the state Secretary of State. Litigation naturally ensued and the Secretary of State thankfully prevailed. But what happens when that office is held by a brainwashed proponent of the big lie?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.denverpost.com/2021/10/13/tina-peters-mesa-county-elections-griswold/amp/
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diane said on October 30, 2021 at 7:05 pm
When the investigation was starting, the Clerk and Recorder turned to the MyPillow guy.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gjsentinel.com/news/western_colorado/peters-ignores-state-orders-speaks-out-at-my-pillow-guy-event/article_d7fc66cc-fa15-11eb-96ad-af6f75e1dee6.amp.html
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Deborah said on October 31, 2021 at 10:09 am
Have you all seen the video clip of Melania and TFG at the Braves game? She does one of her smiling toward her husband routines that turns into a look of total disgust while she’s turning away. It’s another classic one similar to her change from smiling at TFG when he turns to look at her that instantly turns to a look of utter despair as he turns away during his inauguration. She obviously knows she’s on camera, yet she can’t seem to help herself from showing her true feelings. At least it sure looks like that’s what’s happening. Of course she’s been complicit in a lot of the creepiness of her husband’s behavior.
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