Month: August 2020

  • I Am Still in a Facebook Argument, And I am Ashamed

    I responded to the guy, and should not have, here is what I said:
    That’s twice now you have asked me what conservative news I read, and I must say that I don’t see the relevance of that information to this discussion. What if I read more conservative news than you; does that make my argument more valid and therefore correct? If you read more liberal news than me, does that now make your argument the right one? Besides, you just provided a list, not proof, that you read liberal publications. For all we know, you just googled a list and reprinted it. And I’m calling you out on this trick, as I have seen you do it other times to other people, to somehow prove that you are more well read. Come on, mate! Get some new material! Why don’t we just measure our hands to see whose is bigger? But to answer your question, my father helped found The National Review, and I spent summers with William F Buckley Jr. on the Cape sailing and discussing the need for a cohesive conservative political philosophy that is big tent, and also encourages individualism through free markets and personal responsibility.
    All joking aside, the tactic you are trying to use here is to keep the discussion as micro as possible (Any fraud in a systems renders that system invalid and must be discontinued as it no longer can be trusted), but when it comes to voting in the United States, it has to be a macro, context-based discussion. Such as, 749 cases of voter fraud is not a good thing, but if you compare 749 cases of voter fraud to the 500+ million votes cast in the United States since 1948, which is the date range the Heritage database used, then you are looking at way less than one percent, right? (I’m not the math guy, I’ll leave that to you.) It would seem to me that would be akin to saying that if one murder was committed in a city of 10 million, that you have to scrap all the homicide departments in the police force, because murder could be rampant. Now, I would view that as, wow, that police department is doing an amazing job!
    Also, in human history, when a political party is in power and it starts to try and limit access to people’s ability to vote, does that result in more or less enfranchisement?
    And that’s what leads me to believe that you are lacking an understanding of the history of the United States when it comes to voting rights. Here is a nice primer for you:
    Sadly, the language and argument of the possibility of voter fraud with mail-in ballots, which currently is being pushed hard by many conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, are not new, and goes well back 150 years. I ask you to educate yourself on the Jim Crow south, the Red Summer of 1919, Operation Eagle Eye (and how it has continued to this day,) and the language used in the opposition to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Did you even take a moment and wonder why so many of these Republican voter laws came about after repeal of part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013? What part of the country are they focused? Who does these laws affect? Why did it only become a national issues after 2013?
    Dude, I know that I am not going to convince you of my position through a Facebook post, and you still wouldn’t believe me if I was right in front of you. But, I’m not asking you to believe in what I know, but I am asking you to question everything you think you know. Is that not the way we become more intelligent?

  • I got Involved in a Facebook “Voting Fraud” Debate

    I know that you shouldn’t get involved in FaceBook debates, but it was about voter fraud, and it really rubbed me the wrong way. I also freely admit that responding to the “debate” just played into the host/trolls hands. Yet, I don’t feel like we can sit on the sidelines anymore…

    The Post:

    Say, let’s talk about that 381 page database that keeps being referred to. It is from the Heritage Foundation titled “A Sampling of Election Fraud Cases From Across the Country.” Here is the link to it:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0kPCSmTRe6j8wTeMdI73IljE5xLkOQAk_L31lnbIBmh9Jnn5CJDt9Esvk

    There is an analysis of that database from The Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan law and public policy institute at NYU’s School of Law. The following link gives a quick summery of the Center’s findings on the Heritage’s database, as well as another link to full analysis, titled, “Heritage Fraud Database: As Assessment.”

    https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/analysis-heritage-foundations-database-undermines-claims-recent-voter

    I offer this information to help with the conversation/debate, as voting is the most important foundation stone in the institution of a democracy.

    Here is a sampling of their findings:

    “Among the examples in the Heritage document are a case from 1948 (when Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey) and a case from 1972 (when Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern). Only 105 of its 749 cases came from within the past five years.

    In reviewing billions of votes cast, the Heritage Foundation identified just 10 cases involving in-person impersonation fraud at the polls (fewer than the number of members on the president’s Commission).

    The database includes only 41 cases involving non-citizens registering, voting, or attempting to vote over five decades, highlighting the absurdity of President Trump’s claim that millions of non-citizens voted in the 2016 election alone.

    Many cases highlighted in the database show that existing laws and safeguards are already preventing voter fraud — the ineligible voters or individuals engaging in misconduct were discovered and prevented from casting a ballot.”

    And then there is this quote:

    “This ‘database’ does not come close to being an actual study of election misconduct on which national policy should be based,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center. “It is a grab-bag of cases, few of them recent, many irrelevant to the panel’s work. Waving around a stack of paper does not make it real evidence.”

    I found this information in less than five minutes of searching on the internet. In fact, it took me longer to type this up, than it did to find this analysis. Unfortunately, it is not 380 pages of “convictions” as has been claimed.

  • Day Trip Out of New York

    I decided that I was going to take the weekend off from writing anything, with the exception of journaling. That lead to an exceptionally lazy Saturday, where none of us did anything. As for Sunday, we planned a hike outside of New York City, at the Great Hollow Nature Preserve in Connecticut. We went looking for a place that had an “easy skill level” that was kid friendly, but still had enough of a hike to make us feel like we had accomplished something. Great Hollow checked all the boxes, and we had a wonderful afternoon of hiking, which ended with a picnic on the lawn.

    As we are now in the middle of August, the last month of Summer before school starts, the idea that we will be able to get away for a vacation is no longer even remotely a possibility. To make the best out of this situation, we are planning more day trips upstate, and seeing if we can find a few more easy trails to tackle. This has been the third time this Summer that we took a short excursion to get out to a park or preserve to do some very easy hiking, and it has been a welcome relaxation for us. 2020 has thrown us so many curveballs, car trips to break up to monotony of being stuck at home have helped.

  • The Day Went Sideways

    I thought I had a plan for today.

    That was my first mistake.

    What I had set out to do today was help out my friends. They had rented a car, and to help save them some dollars, I offered to drive them to the rental place, which was in New Jersey. Not really a big deal, just across the George Washington Bridge.

    Well…

    Nothing is easy in New Jersey.

    It took over three hours to pick them up, drop them off and get home. They say New York City has emptied out… but not on the GWB.

    By the time I had got home, I had lost the time I had set aside to blog and work on the novel. (Clearly, I’m blogging now, but I’m doing it while the kid is running around the park. Not the most attentive parent today.) I am afraid that the novel won’t get any attention and that’s just the way it’s going to be.

    But that’s okay.

    I don’t want to beat myself up if I don’t work on every project, every day. It was a good thing that I helped out my friends and got to spend time with them. Things go sideways, that’s just life. I need to be more forgiving to myself, and be more confident that I am committed to following through on writing.

  • Making Time to Write, Again

    Today has gone better, when it comes to making time to write.

    I have stuck to the schedule and I was able to get some journal time in at the park. About 30 minutes, total. Luckily, the kid has started to make friends with the other regular children at the playground, which leads to the air of stability for both of us.

    I am in the afternoon quiet playtime section of the day, where the kid plays in her room, and I finish up my chores, and get about 30 minutes on the couch to do this; blog.

    I am trying not to delve in on the news of today, as I know that will be a distraction for me. I am working at staying focused on finishing this. Then I will have some art time with the kid-o, which can be a fun creative outlet, a palate cleanser so to speak. Then I will let the kid have an hour of free TV time, which will give me a chance to get back to the novel, which sadly, a month has passed since I worked on it last.

    As I go through all of these motions, I am aware enough to know that I will need to repeat this process for at least two to eight months for this habit to form. It does feel like I am the sideshow magician spinning plates, trying to keep everything going.