Cheating and change... and clues about the Iran and NK wars.

==  Cheaters: Have we had enough? ==

I've inveighed elsewhere against the wide variety of ways that the Confederate lords and their devoted foot-soldiery slam their thumbs on the scales, shafting electoral fairness in order to defy the popular will. (The GOP won three of the last five presidential contests, but the popular vote just once.) 

Of course the biggest tension right now revolves around the vote of a single American, as the Supreme Court takes on not one, not two, but four different lawsuits about gerrymandering.

Those who have been here a long time know that I've been shouting about gerrymandering since way back in the last century. In fact, my "Minimal Overlap" solution was reviewed by a top U.S. federal judge and a major plaintiff in one of the cases. I hope it helps, a little.  Though how could it have come to this...? 

...That we must pray for the health of Justice Anthony Kennedy, because the destiny of our republic and the entire enlightenment experiment (and thus, possibly, the fate of the galaxy) revolves around one man? 

This should be a no-brainer. Justices Roberts and Alito, were they patriots and jurists -- not political hacks -- would demolish this systematic rape of democracy, with a blowtorch. Rest assured, they will be remembered. Only please, someone out there up Justice Kennedy's Secret Service protection! And test his food. 

== Investing in change ==

Paraphrasing (only slightly) Andrew Carnegie: “There are three things you can do with vast wealth: Spend it yourself on interesting or worthwhile things; leave it to the government; leave it to your children. Of these, number three is by far the worst.” 

Does this surprise you? Almost no one comments on the differing attitudes toward oligarchy and inherited aristocracy that tend to be expressed by those who made their fortunes by creating and selling real goods and services, vs. those who acquired immense wealth via Wall Street machinations, or lobbying, or through vices like gambling or organized crime, or cornering markets, or middle-man (‘golgafrincham’) parasitism, or subsidized resource extraction, or gilded cradle inheritance.

Today, most of the billionaires who got rich by working with engineers to invent or produce better goods and services are either Democrats or libertarians and most are sharply critical of the Republican policies like the 100% never-ever-worked “Supply Side” (voodoo) “economics.” 

Or the War on Science. Innovator billionaires show that competitive capitalism can be vital and generative! They already invest in R&D and jobs and production. They also denounce these tax cuts for a passive-income aristocracy that never, ever do any of those things.

== More cheats ==

Heck, while we're at it; here's one more cheat: The “Cross-Check” system to identify duplicate registrations has dumped thousands who simply had the same name and were verifiably different people.  Now we find that Cross-Check is easily hacked… and was probably designed from the beginning with that aim.

In fact, I've long said that I would have nothing against gradually rising voter ID requirements, even though almost no election day false voter fraud has been reported in 30 years. Many of you have heard me say this, but until someone out there in politics/punditry also points it out, I am behooved.

There is only one test to see if Voter ID is a "reform" or if it is blatantly partisan voter suppression:

"Has the state accompanied the new voter ID restrictions with substantial funding to help under-documented but legal US citizens to get the ID they need and to get registered?"

It is called compliance assistance, and corporations get it any time government imposes a new regulation. So, why cannot poor people get help with compliance for voter ID laws?  

If a state has sincerely done that, then I will admit that the demand for more voter ID might be honest and due to the rationalized declared reasons. (And you should admit it, too!)

Alas, not one red state that has passed restrictive voting laws has allocated a penny to help poor citizens of the state, or the elderly or the young, or divorced women, to comply with onerous new restrictions on their franchise. Not even fig-leaf funding. In fact, most of these gerrymandered GOP-cheat states have concertedly closed DMV offices in counties where many democrats live. Seriously? Can anything be more blatant?

In other words, they are exposed as lying-hypocritical, outright-cheating election thieves. And the same goes for anyone who defends this foul crime against democracy.

(Ah, Justices Roberts and Alito, is there any point at which you'll finally get fed up and realize that aiding cheaters will kill the Republic, as well as the Rule of Law?)

== The Coming War

You have to grab bits of insight where you can find them. Many can tell that some kind of war is coming. Out of all post-Eisenhower Republican presidents, only Gerald Ford didn't rush to throw our forces into major combat, on flimsy pretexts (some of them purely-concocted.) And Ford oversaw the final end-calamity in Vietnam. 

Is there a scintilla of chance that Donald Trump won't go there, ordering a distraction from his domestic troubles, overruling our faithful, devoted and wary military officer corps?

Reiterating: a U.S. - Iran "war" has always been openly yearned for by every anti-democratic faction on the planet, including the GOP, their overseas petro-boyar and oil-sheik and coal-baron masters, and even the Tehran mullahs, themselves.

Yet, most attention seems to warn against a tussle with North Korea. Read this. But in fact, I deem such a scenario unlikely!

1) Kim has what he wanted, a nuclear deterrent that is far, far cheaper than his immense and bankrupting standing conventional army.  Now he can offer arms reductions -- which he needs far more than anybody else! -- as a bargaining chip to get bribes from the South.

2) Anyone who thinks he got both H Bombs and ICBMs without direct and knowing aid from certain neighbors is a bona fide fool. Neighbors that have owned and operated NK since 1950, using that potemkin regime as a tool for Plausible-Deniability War against the West. 

There are a few simple statements we could make, that would cauterize such scenarios and threats, overnight. Alas, it won't happen.

== And... ==

This article misses the point. It used to be inconceivable that the Fox lie machine could be undermined by boycotting American patriots, angry at the Murdoch's hate-campaign against all US fact professions. But that's changed. There is blood in the water and we all can do our bit to deal with this pack of outright traitors, helping sell us out to foreign dictators. See: Fox News sponsors.

There's little you can do so easily that will be more effective.

Listen to this: Congressman Hakeem Jeffries dismantles Jeff Sessions in epic 5-minute cross-examination.