The After Words and the Afterwards

John Oliver Explains Why We’re All Screwed After Tuesday (msn.com)

– written by Ky Henderson at Rollingstone –

John Oliver wasted no time in getting to his main story on Last Week Tonight, which makes sense considering how frightening that story is: Tuesday’s midterms, election subversion, and how absolutely off the rails America is likely about to go. 

For starters, most Republican candidates for federal and statewide offices either believe the 2020 election is illegitimate, question its legitimacy, or say they do because they’re sociopaths who believe it will get them elected. This includes people who may very well be running elections two years from now.

“Over half the country has an election denier running to oversee their elections,” Oliver explained, “and many of them are expected to win.”

As Oliver made clear, he wasn’t talking about the s*** like voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement, and early voting restrictions that Republicans are pulling all over the country in order to prevent people who don’t vote for them from voting at all. That stuff happens before votes are cast; Oliver’s story was a warning about what will happen after people vote — election subversion, or the refusal to acknowledge legitimate results.

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“One of the big clues that these conspiracy theories are b******* is that so many of them are predicated on the belief that the Democratic Party is well organized,” Oliver said. “Who on Earth is stupid enough to buy that b*******?”

There are legal guardrails to prevent individuals from rigging elections, but they largely depend on judges, state legislatures, and even the Supreme Court doing their jobs based on law, not on politics and the ravings of lunatics. Thing is, those three entities have in large part been captured by Republicans.

“Everything that we’ve talked about tonight has the capacity to overwhelm our system, making it harder to certify elections quickly, leading to confusion, which sows doubt in the process, and in turn causes absolute chaos,” Oliver said. “Which is very worrying given that we’ve all seen what confused but motivated people are capable of doing when they think the process is broken.”

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34 thoughts on “The After Words and the Afterwards”

  1. the afterwards won’t be pretty no matter who wins. if we win, there will be more jan6s. If they win, god help us …

  2. the hill:

    Clyburn told “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream that election denialism and calling the press the enemy “causes those kinds of deterioration in democracy.”
    “I taught history and I’m telling you what I see here are parallels to what the history was in this world back in the 1930s in Germany, in Italy,” Clyburn said. “The facts are very clear.”
    […]
    Clyburn on Sunday also said Americans must reject election deniers.
    “If they are lying, they’re denying, they’re trying to delete, they’re trying to nullify our votes, vote against that foolishness,” he said. “We’ve got to decide how do we want to exist in this world, and that’s what we’re talking about.”

  4. welcome to PESD (pre-election stress disorder)

    taken from Pre-election stress disorder (cagle.com)

    I’m already anxious about the outcome.
    I speak of next week’s elections, and a modern malady the Mayo Clinic refers to as “Election Stress Disorder.”
    “We notice it in our bodies, the tension in our shoulders,” says Dr. Robert Bright, a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist. “Sometimes people get GI (gastrointestinal) upset or headaches. People have trouble sleeping.”
    Bright says the scary negative political ads aren’t helping our stress levels.
    […]
    No matter what happens next week, half the country will have a temporary moment of joy, if their candidate wins, and the other half will suffer — you guessed it — more stress.
    Half the country will be certain this midterm election will have been the most fair and transparent in history, and the other half will be certain fraud caused their candidate to lose.
    Whether happy or mad, though, one thing is for certain: many won’t be able to resist the urge to go on social media and argue about politics with friends, family and neighbors, which will cause even more stress.
    And rather than cool down over political matters that are largely out of our control, we’ll get angrier and more vindictive and that will be the energy we carry into our holiday gatherings, where harsh and bitter words will be said that may harm relationships forever.
    So what can we do to nip election stress in the bud, Dr. Bright?
    We can relax, he says, and realize that all that we can control is our own vote and that it is no better or worse or more important than anybody else’s.
    “And that’s the wonderful thing about living in a democracy,” he says. “We each have an equal stake.”
    Besides, there’s another very important reason not to stress over our elections: The real stress doesn’t generally kick in until we realize we elected a bunch of buffoons.
    > 
     [by Tom Purcell, creator of the infotainment siteThurbersTail.com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist]

  5. On an even brighter note, there are actually voices out there, including mine, that thinks there is a slim chance we might hold both houses.  There would still be hell to pay, but it could happen.

    Four Scenarios

     

  6. No matter what happens tomorrow, some important things to remember

    From Robert Fulghum‘s best-selling book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. 

    1. Share everything.
    2. Play fair.
    3. Don’t hit people.
    4. Put things back where you found them.
    5. Clean up your own mess.
    6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
    7. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
    8. Wash your hands before you eat.
    9. Flush.
    10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
    11. Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
    12. Take a nap every afternoon.
    13. When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
    14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
    15. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup — they all die. So do we.
    16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK.

  7. Avoiding all the prognostications about this election day has made my life happier.  This last weekend had one upsetter, but it was from the guy who is a solid faux snooze watcher.  He is absolutely, no maybe or it’s BS, positive believer that Paul Palosi was not attacked or injured by a MAGA idiot trying to kidnap or kill the Speaker.  Deep state, made up videos, phony police reports, yup the whole thing was staged or something.

  8. The countdown podcast’s opening comment by Olbermann today is all about how Tiffany Cross gets fired because of criticism from, get this, Fox News and Tuchus Carlson, and none of the MSNBC hosts line-up has dared to say a word about it.  Except for Joy Reid. She’s the only one to say anything about it.
     And a goodly bit of msnbc history is tossed into the mix. 
    That’s HIS point of view–I never saw the show.

  9. While podcasting about i came across Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast (an homage to monster movie “The Amazing Colossal Man”) and it is a treasure trove of comedians, Hollywood, Television, and monster movie stories and trivia.   He’s done one a week since 2014. If ya like that stuff it’s great.  
    Guests like Cavett, Carl Reiner, Michael McKean, Harpo Marx’s son, Svengoolie, Mac Davis, Weird Al…etc

    Oh, also the guy, Gianni Russo, who played Carlo in the godfather movie who wasnt even remotely an actor but nevertheless got the gig.

  11. i’ll continue to praise BBC World Service radio, i learn at least 3 things a day from it- one example from yesterday is that as arctic sea ice melts due to rising mean temperatures, sediment contained within absorbs more sunlight than the relatively cleaner ice that melted away, which melts the ice faster, and then algae starts to grow on the surface and that absorbs even more sunlight which raises the temperature of the ice even more contributing to further melting, it’s a terrible chain reaction.
     
    There’s a a cursory 3rd-person coverage of American politics on there, usually to the effect of “the Yanks are about to cut off their nose to spite their political face, once again, and now to science news…”

  13. Eight warmest years on record witness upsurge in climate change impacts

     

    Tags: 
    Climate 
    Climate change 
    Weather 
    Greenhouse gases 
    Drought 
    Floods

     

    6

    Published

    6 November 2022

     

    Press Release Number: 
    06112022

    Sea level rise accelerates, European glacier melt shatters records, extreme weather causes devastation

    Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt 6 November (WMO) – The past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record, fuelled by ever-rising greenhouse gas concentrations and accumulated heat. Extreme heatwaves, drought and devastating flooding have affected millions and cost billions this year, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s provisional State of the Global Climate

     

  18. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/06/texas-churches-johnson-amendment-election/

    “Two Sundays ago, O’Rourke, a Democrat, and Patrick, a Republican, visited different churches where pastors praised them and allowed them to give speeches about the upcoming election. This was in violation of federal law, according to tax law experts. Known as the Johnson Amendment, the law bars tax-exempt organizations from intervening in political campaigns.”

    “Sam Brunson, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago, said the language Riggle used while introducing the lieutenant governor was an “endorsement of Patrick by the pastor of a church acting in his capacity as pastor in the course of ordinary church meetings.”

    “Riggle said in an interview that his church did not endorse any candidate and that his introduction was focused on biblical values, not politics. He added that he believes the Johnson Amendment should be overturned.”

    D or R, this is wrong…until SCOTUS makes it even worse.

  19. Can’t wait to go vote tomorrow.  Also… can’t wait to wake up Wednesday morning and to realize my world is political ad free!
     

  21. A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than an average person in a year. The world’s 125 richest billionaires cumulatively yield an annual average of three million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, which is equal to the annual carbon emissions of France, a nation of 67 million people.

  22. OM – Is that including the emissions from blowing their enormous egos into low, Earth orbit? 

  23. Much of our current woes were road tested over the Climate fight for the last 20 years. And long before. 
    Climate Denier > Election Denier . This is no accident, those propaganda  tools were honed  back then. 
    Back then some blogger posted some horse shit   about a new climate report. The Daily Mail would wash ir to give it more weight. 
     
    And Boom , FOX News was running with it like it was “The Real Truth”. 
    This is where they invented 2 kinds of “Truth” .
    There is “Truth” and then there is “Real Truth” .
     
    Now, they just inject the lie into the national blood stream. Np need to wash it. 
    Around that time , I saw a pattern with them.  A page straight from Gobbles playbook.  So I coined this phrase.
     
    “Lie, deny , rinse, repeat” .  This is key , pick something simple and repeat it a million times.  Never debate , always attack, never admit you were wrong, amd when you are  …………….. Rattle your keys and change the subject. 

  24. Gobbles had his six kids in the bunker as the Red Army approached . He and his wife  murderer them , before  they killed themselves .
     
    “Family Values” was a cornerstone  of the Nazi mantra. 

  26. Thanks for the time of the eclipse, BiD- i would have looked for it tomorrow night had i not seen your post 👍🌑

  28. Madness  Zuckerberg has lost $100. Billon dollars, the stock is down 70% . 
    Musk is about crash Twitter.And if the wingnuts take AZ .  It’ll crash like a zeppelin. 
     
    Power and water are the issue . Not a word about that stuff.
     
    Plus, that woman running against  Lake is a chip monk wearing bangs. 
    She refused a debate . Why vote for her if she can’t  stand up ?  

  32. One last thought …….. 
    The Water Towers  of our world.  Every great river we depend on is a pile of ice above 14,000 feet. Now the heat is out to eat it , faster than anyone dreamed of. 
    We’re all not going  fit into Vermont behind a pile of rocks. 
     
    To see immigration as a choice is to miss the point  It is life or death . 
     
    No one I mean No one abandons their home on a whim. 
    Italy just turned  back nearly  300 people to Africa.
    The day is coming  when the Germans ship back the Italians. 
     
    Climate is the  fuel of this problem , to see it any other way is folly.  And it ain’t going to slow down. 

  33. Olbermann:  
    Whatever happens today, the media is doing everything it can to stick to the “Red Wave” narrative: Their polls all indicate Democratic leads in the Generic Congressional Ballot so what did Politico, Yahoo, and Reuters do? THEY DISMISSED THEIR OWN POLLS AS OUTLIERS. It all underscores the real media narrative: The media corporations are sucking up to the fascists (8:30) Last night, the Republicans gave away the next narrative: any election undecided by Wednesday morning has been fixed by the 

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