Brane Space

Friday, May 29, 2020

Battling The Excesses Of An Authoritarian Demagogue? Don't Look To FaceBook's Mark Zuckerberg

"You did GOOD, Mark! Defending my lies from those nannies at Twitter!"

"This order is a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law. It threatens the future of online speech and internet freedoms"
- Twitter response to Trump's executive order designed to regulate existing law toward authoritarian ends

"President Trump said Twitter is trying to censor him and he wants to use his presidential power to crack down on them.": - CBS reporter Paula Reid this morning

"I see this order as just a distraction intended to divert attention from the devastation of Covid 19"- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

What is Trump's game and why is he really so furious at the prospect of mail voting? It is because he's been exposed as the shameless con man he is for trying to manage perceptions about the virus and he knows a majority of citizens aren't buying his act. Hence, with the economy cratering too (40 million now unemployed) he has nowhere to go but down - and certainly will be blown out in November. That is, unless he can get enough states to back off mail ballots using his fulminations and "terrible twos" -style of tantrums

In his latest con, Trump issued an "executive order" yesterday in retaliation for Twitter putting flags on his lying tweets about voting, e.g.

The flag simply read: 'Get the facts about mail voting'

Simply a heads up to those who gobble Trump's tweets with zero discrimination. Certainly not "censorship" as the Right's crybabies are trying to portray. But leave it to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook honcho, to try to offer his absurd two cents. Likely terrified of Trump's twitter fulminations, Zuckerberg and his other spokesmen tried to defend their own cowardly stance by saying (WSJ yesterday, p. A4):

"We prefer not to be an arbiter of truth"

But given Trump's outrageous lies about mail voting, it's clear Zuckerberg has no problem being an enabler of lies. What else could he be? Because if you're not prepared to at least flag lies when they appear - irrespective of the source- then you and your platform are useless. Worse, you're contributing to the ongoing national polarization.

Zuckerberg and his ilk have always taken the position of laissez faire social media speech and they just assume FB users are grown up enough to engage in "robust debate" and recognize falsehoods when and where they appear. But that is a helluva ask, especially after Russian bots overloaded Facebook's boards back in 2016, playing no small part in Hillary's narrow electoral college loss. Oh, and seeing a record for retweets of the bots' anti- HRC balderdash. As per a WSJ piece from Oct. 17, 2017 (p. B2):

"470 Russia-backed Facebook accounts including Blacktivist and Secured Borders quietly infiltrated communities on social media. The issues they targeted spanned the U.S. political and social spectrum, including religion, race, immigration, gun rights, and gay rights. "

Adding:

"Facebook said the accounts were created by Russian entities to exploit tensions among Americans and interfere with U.S. elections

Yep, Markie, there's a lot of insight for truth there!

According to one FB spokesperson quoted in the WSJ piece:

"We have crafted our policies to focus on misrepresentations that would interfere with the vote."

Well, if Trump's deranged tweets against mail ballots aren't doing that, I don't know what would qualify. The scumball is blatant and aggressive in his single-minded campaign and even had the temerity to screech Wednesday:

"Clean up your act NOW!"

This from a Turd whose own act has been one prolonged exercise in authoritarian depravity and irresponsibility. This is the same president who on Thursday Tweeted out a video of a supporter saying, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” A classless degenerate who's hurled the office of the presidency further into the gutter in the last week with his attacks on Joe Scarborough for allegedly killing a woman.(Lori Klausutis) when she worked as part of Scarborough's staff when he was a FLA congressman. This despite a medical examiner's report that Lori had a heart condition which caused her to lose consciousness, fall and hit her head.

Thus, Trump is using her as his own political football against perceived enemies as he causes the family no end of grief and pain. But why be surprised when he's directly responsible for tens of thousands of COVID 19 deaths for not acting in a competent and responsible manner? For initially calling the virus a hoax, wasting a valuable 2 weeks before acting, which a Columbia University study disclosed probably resulted in 54,000 more deaths.

As for his executive order to try to punish Twitter, don't make me laugh. Incredibly before signing his order yesterday the fool blabbed (WSJ, p. A1 today) :

"We're here today to defend free speech from one of its greatest dangers."

Failing to have the self-awareness or intellect to grasp that HE - as an autocratic demagogue - is the singular greatest danger to liberty and that his lies are a perversion of free speech.

Here it is useful to go to the Wikipedia entry:

"There is no constitutional provision nor statute that explicitly permits executive orders. The term executive power in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution refers to the office of President as the executive. They are instructed therein by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 5 or face impeachment. Most executive orders use these Constitutional reasonings as the authorization allowing for their issuance to be justified as part of the President's sworn duties, the intent being to help direct officers of the U.S. Executive carry out their delegated duties as well as the normal operations of the federal government: the consequence of failing to comply possibly being removal from office"

In other words, these more comport with a wish list based on appeals or pleas from a president to the legislative branch to formalize into law what he seeks to do. In Trump's case, most legal experts note his scribbles on fancy paper are "essentially toothless" - they don't change existing federal law- nor can they without formal legislative input. Hence, only congress has the power to curtail Twitter's legal protections.

As Mike Masnick of Techdirt explained:

To be clear: the executive order is nonsense. You can’t overrule the law by executive order, nor can you ignore the Constitution. This executive order attempts to do both. It’s also blatantly anti-free speech, anti-private property, pro-big government — which is only mildly amusing, given that Trump and his sycophantic followers like to insist they’re the opposite of all of those things.

As for Zuckerberg's act and the insipid claims of supporting "free speech" I was gratified to see one professor (Bridget Barrett) call it out in the WSJ piece. As she aptly noted:

"To give a less kind reading of that, they (Facebook) want to stay friends with the folks who are regulating them."

As for the two Trump tweets that were flagged, they were:

"There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent"

And then: "This will be a Rigged Election!"

Both hysterical expulsions I'd more expect from a high school sophomore who flunked his Government class. And as Ms. Barrett of UNC Chapel Hill pointed out:

"The posts appeared to violate two of Facebook's own rules around voter interference which bar posts that misrepresent methods for voting and whether votes will be counted."

Again, that makes Zuckerberg a liar enabler, as well as a punk for Trump, to help spread his bunkum. In the meantime, kudos to Twitter for continuing to courageously flag Trump's most outrageous tweets - including beckoning "shooters" to fire at the "thugs" in Minneapolis. While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has taken some heat for being too mild in response to Trump's flagrant speech crimes, he is at least doing something! That's more than can be said for Mark Zuckerberg and his "clown car" of Trump enablers and sycophants at Facebook.

See Also:
Anything to get reelected: Trump once more stokes violence

And:

White supremacists are thriving on Facebook, despite its promises to crack down

And:

Donald Trump

Twitter Put up a Fact-check — so Trump Threw a Tantrum

by Cody Fenwick | May 29, 2020 - 7:11am | permalink

— from Alternet

Thursday, May 28, 2020

More Symbolic Logic From Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell rose to much prominence as a philosopher through his propositional functions, which we will explore in this post. Much of this content was articulated in Russell's book, An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy.

Preliminaries:

1) One cannot assume a "logical deduction" unless there exists a relationship between the premise and the conclusion such that we have a right to expect the conclusion IF we know the premise is true (cf. Russell, op. cit., p. 145)

Said relationship then ought to be between analogous truth claims OR attitudes, but not mixing up both.

2) From (1) it follows that two truth functions which have the same truth value for all values of the argument are indistinguishable. Thus, p and q are the negations of not-p and not-q.

In terms of propositional functions, let q = S(A) and p = S(B). Then if p = f(q) the contradictory hypothesis is p' = f(~q) .

Example: if p = f(q) = "The Bible is inerrant on all truth - physical and spiritual"

BUT - if one contradiction is found - say by geological science, i.e. "The world is 4 billion years old not four thousand", we must have: p' = f(~q)

"The Bible has at least one false (physical) claim, so cannot be inerrant"

3) Five basic truth functions exist (op. cit.)and are not all independent:

i) The 'negator': Not-p

Expresses that function of p which is true when p is false, and that which is false when p is true.

Note: The truth of a proposition or its falsehood is referred to as its "truth value". This can be either TRUE or FALSE, i.e. the true value of a true proposition is true, and the falsehood of a false proposition.

Thus: Mars has two Moons, Deimos and Phobos, is a true proposition, and

Saturn does not have 101 Moons, is a true proposition

ii) The disjunction: p OR q:

This is a function whose truth value is 'truth' when p is true and also when q is true. (It can be mechanically-electronically embodied by the logical OR - gate)

But the truth value is falsehood when both p and q are false.

iii) The conjunction: p AND q:

Has 'truth' for its truth value when BOTH p and q are true, otherwise falsehood.

It is denoted by the logical AND gate.

Example: p : "Solar flares erupt with large areas and temperatures in the millions of degrees"

q: "Solar flares result from magnetic instability in the associated plasma"

iv) Incompatibility: ~ (p /\ q)

E.g. p and q are not both true, or the negation of conjunction (iii). It is also the disjunction of the negations of p and q, i.e. not-p or not-q. The truth value appends 'truth' when p is false, and also when q is false. Likewise, the truth value appends falsehood if both are true.

v) Implication: p->q (p implies q) or "if p, then q"

Example: If the New Moon is aligned with the Sun we can get a total eclipse of the Sun

Here: p = alignment of Sun and New Moon

q = total eclipse of the Sun

This can be generalized in various ways, e.g.

"Unless p is false, q is true" OR

"Either p is false or q is true"

4) Further generalizations are possible using (1)-(3), e.g.

a) Negation is the incompatibility of a proposition with itself, or p/p

E.g. "the Apollo astronauts brought back Moon rocks made of green cheese"

b) Disjunction is the incompatibility of not-p and not-q or (p/p)[(q/q)

Example: "Saturn is not a very large or hot star"

c) Implication is the incompatibility of p and not-q, or p[(q/q)

Example: "If the Moon rises tonight, the Sun will not rise tomorrow"

d) Conjunction is the negation of incompatibility, e.g. (p/q)[

Example: "Saturn and Earth are both member planets of the solar system"

5) Gödelian Truth Limits:

Consider a simple statement of logical transitivity:

X = Y

Y = Z

therefore X = Z

What if instead we append an axiomatic statement that reads, in effect: "X=Y is unprovable-in-the-system". If this statement is provable-in-the-system, we get a contradiction, since if it is provable in-the-system, then it can’t be unprovable-in-the-system. This means the original axiom: "X= Y is unprovable-in-the-system" is false. Since in any consistent system nothing false can be proven in-the-system, the proposition is undecidable.

Now, given all these basics, let's see if we can apply them to the assertions or alleged propositions made by one blogger (on Wordpress) with whom I had an exchange 4 years ago.:

Example (1):

"All TRUTH is exclusive ! The truth that "two plus three equals five" is very exclusive too . It does not allow for any other conclusion ."

The basic and most fundamental error is that he mixes up an absolute general statement, with a particular one. "All Truth is exclusive" is in fact unprovable by the same set of axioms or axiomatic statements that would prove "2 + 3 = 5". The reason is that the first is a meta-statement about the WHOLE Truth system! To be more concise, the offender is rendering an ALL-inclusive truth statement about what he insisted is an absolute exclusivity! He claims "all truth is exclusive" but his statement itself is all-inclusive and implied to be the exception to his own proposition! Thus it violates the Gödelian Truth Limits (5).

It helps here to present a more concrete illustration and example, to show why the most general statement is false. We take here the original claim of Epimenides in his “all Cretans are liars” paradox:

"All Cretans are Liars"

If the speaker is a Cretan, then the statement is ipso facto unresolvable. If Cretan, he exists within the so-called abstract, formal system. Yet, he’s making a statement (meta-) about the system. Hence, is he lying? Or is he telling the truth? This cannot be resolved. An undecidable proposition, as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (II) applies.

In like manner, the statement "All Truth is exclusive" emerges as an undecidable proposition at the very least. (And it may also be false in the framework earlier considered).

Scott Soames in his monograph Understanding Truth further clarifies the issue of more and less general schema to arrive at truth, and what is “materially adequate” p. 69:

“The characterization of individual instances of (different) schema has consequences for more general definitions of truth. If such instances (e.g. L1 statements) are thought of as partial definitions, then the task of defining truth for an entire language may be seen as finding a way of generalizing the partial definitions so as to cover every sentence of the language.”

In other words, in order to make the claim: "All Truth is exclusive" one would have to: a) have access to ALL COMPLETE truth statements that can exist in the universe, and b) show that no two of them exhibit disjunction, or incompatibility of other problems. In addition, one would have to articulate his proposition as compatible with the claim: in other words, one cannot formulate an all-inclusive truth statement to apply to one for which "All Truth is exclusive". This is not feasible, because no human mind is capable of formulating an absolute exclusive truth statement via an all-inclusive truth claim.

Consider the following statements referring to solar flares, and note the L1 hierarchy that presents:

1) A class X solar flare occured on the Sun last Tuesday.
2) A class X-7 solar flare occurred on the Sun at 22h 33m GMT last Tuesday.
3) A class X-7, optical class 2B solar flare occurred on the Sun at 22h 33m GMT last Tuesday.
4) A class X-7, optical class 2B solar flare occurred on the Sun at 22h 33m GMT last Tuesday and lasted a total duration of 1440 seconds.
5) A class X-7, optical class 2B solar flare occurred on the Sun at 22h 33m GMT last Tuesday, peaked 543 seconds after inception, and lasted a total duration of 1440 seconds.

Now, are ALL of the above statements (referencing the same event) EXCLUSIVELY true? Or better, are they all EQUALLY true? If not, why not? Can one therefore have true statements which do not express the entire truth but rather only a partial truth? Obviously, the answers are in succession: NO - they can't all be exclusively true (on account of factual intersection), NO - they are not all equally true (since they embody different levels of knowledge about the event), but YES - one can have TRUE statements which only convey a partial truth.

Now, if one can have partial truth statements then one can still access truth or true valued assertions at some level.

Let's go on:

Example (2):
"The same is true for value statements , such as "Racism is wrong" and "People should not be cruel." These views do not tolerate any moral alternatives . "

The problem here is that he has not proven the values are actual truth values, as opposed to the subjective values of a moralism in his own mind. In particular, he's violated Precept (1): "One cannot assume a "logical deduction" unless there exists a relationship between the premise and the conclusion such that we have a right to expect the conclusion IF we know the premise is true". But he has formulated no premise, because he's not defined either "racism" or "cruel" - he simply assumes everyone knows exactly what he means! Hence, he leaves us no testable proposition that can be put into any logical relationship, far less link a premise to a conclusion.

Questions then occur: Absent a premise how can any proposition be articulated? How can it be tested? The first step in setting out a premise that portends a "truth value" is therefore to carefully define one's terms, don't assume everyone knows what you mean!

So, IF he defines both "racism" and "cruelty" and then integrates them into a premise, tied to a conclusion that relates them- we may then consider whether "These views do not tolerate any alternatives". (He clearly didn't believe racism was at work when in one of his blog post railing against Obama, he depicted him as a witch doctor with bone through his nose. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Example (3)

"All truth CLAIMS are exclusive . For example , if humanism is true , then all non-humanisms are false . If atheism is true , then all who believe in God are wrong . Every truth claim excludes its opposite ."

As I already showed (Example (1)) the first statement is an undecidable proposition by virtue of en embedded contradiction. Thus, we behold an all-inclusive truth statement intended to apply to the proposition that "all truth is exclusive"! Thus it is a meta-statement about truth claims, not a statement within an axiomatic system concerning a class of truth claims. Thus, it is a non sequitur to flip from this most general, undecidable proposition to saying "thus if humanism is true all non-humanisms are false". In addition, it's an oversimplification, since one can have a conjunction (3(iii)) such that a truth value exists when BOTH p and q are true. (And again, we note he's neither defined "humanism" nor "non-humanism" so we've no idea what he means.)

But let's use the conjunction of propositions to show discrete and particular possibilities that defy his simple conclusions. It is known that in its most generic sense "humanism" means :

That philosophy or coherent attitude supportive of human values, i.e. those values that elevate, sustain and integrate a society beyond its merely physical or mechanical operations

Thus, our society provides physical infrastructure - such as roads, sewers, water mains, etc. and also mechanical contrivances (buses, or cars, trains) to help the people survive but humanism allows support systems beyond these basics, for example, decent and affordable health care. The reason is that a society without quality affordable health care (accessible to all) cannot function to its optimum. If too many are ill, then they can't be productive and if not productive, the society deteriorates because too few must work to care for the many who are ill or otherwise disabled.

The underlying conjunction here (p and q) is:

p: Humans are worthwhile beings to support in other ways besides purely mechanical;

q: All humans have the same essential needs for humane support, so all should thereby be provided with said humane support

Since (p -q) defines the conjoint truth value, then "non-humanisms" would have to mean non-humans and would thereby be ab initio excluded from the proposition putatively concerning HUMANS. Hence, the claim of "non-humanisms" implicit in a human domain is a falsehood since it wouldn't apply to humans anyway! (Though one can argue that an "extended humanism" would also confer health care on animals in need, or at least certain classes of them, i.e. personal pets)

The statement about atheism is also invalid, because it reduces atheism to one meaning, ignoring all others. (For example, implicit atheism, and agnostic atheism). It would be like me writing: "If evangelical Christianity is true , then all other Christians who believe in God are wrong". This is arrant nonsense. Moreso since it hinges on the claimant providing the necessary and sufficient conditions for his (exclusive) deity to exist - thereby showing why its conditions supersede those of other Christians. To append a truth value to the statement then, a specific definition of atheism is needed, not an open-ended term that invites any reading.

Finally, the appended proposition:

"Every truth claim excludes its opposite ."

Has already been shown invalid, since it omits consideration of the fact that conjunction is the negation of incompatibility, e.g. (p/q)[. If one can have any conjunction, uniting propositions of truth p and q, then clearly a contingent truth claim p does not exclude its co-contingent q. As a more or less trivial example:

p: "Every photon of light is a particle"

q: "All light is waves"

In fact, as noted before in a previous blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-on-heisenberg-microscope-in.html

Both statements can be true, provided the optical limits of observation are made clear. It is this very example, underscored by quantum mechanics, which displaces the either-or exclusionary absolutism of the claim. In other words, the actual experiments of QM show that observables in the form of propositions can be BOTH and not merely one OR the other! This is the very basis for the development of quantum logic, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/09/foray-into-quantum-logical-and.html

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Looking At Some Plasma Instabilities Applicable to the Sun

There are many variants and types of plasma instabilities on the Sun which play both major and minor roles in events ranging from X-class solar flares to coronal mass ejections and even filament ejection-displacement. In this post I look at a few of these.

Conveniently, many of these instabilities are defined in terms of specific velocities. One of the more important of these is known as the electron drift velocity  v _d  :

v _d  = I/ n e

where I is the current, n the number density (per cubic meter, for example) and e the electron charge. Often v _d is defined instead based on current density (J) where: J = I/A (current in amps flowing through a magnetic flux tube or channel of some cross-section area A)

So: v _d = J / n e

In many other cases, where J, I are not so easily obtained, v _d will be the electron drift velocity in a combined magnetic and gravitational field, i.e.:

v _d= m _e g _s  c / e B

where B is the magnetic induction, e the electronic charge (1.6 x 10^-19 C) ,  g _s = 273 ms -2  the gravitational acceleration on the Sun, c is the velocity of light (2.98 x 10 ⁸ m/s) and m _e the electron mass (9.1 x 10 ^-31 kg) .

In the case of the ion-acoustic instability, the threshold for its onset is when:

v _d > 43  v _s

that is, the drift velocity is at least 43 times the ion sound speed, where:

v _s = Ö  (kT/ m _i)

where k is the Boltzmann constant (1.38 x 10 ^-23  J/K), T the (Kelvin) temperature and m _ithe ion mass (e.g. m _i ~ 1.7 x 10 ^-27 kg).

Sen and White in a 1972 paper dealing with the role of the Hall effect in flares, showed that the two-stream instability is incepted when the drift velocity:

  v _d > v _ith

where  v _ith is the ion-thermal velocity:

v _ith = Ö  (2kT/ m _i)

(rms value = Ö 3(kT/ m _i)

In two-stream instability, when an electron flow is suddenly injected into a plasma – say for a coronal loop – the particles’ (Maxwellian) velocity distribution acquires a “bump” on its "tail" (higher velocity end of the distribution), consistent with two streams- an unperturbed one ( f _ov) and perturbed one ( f _eb ) applicable to the electron beam (See diagram below ).

In the region where the slope is positive (df _v/d v > 0) there is a greater number of faster i.e. than slower particles so a greater amount of energy is transferred from particles to associated (e.g. Alfven) waves. Since f _eb contains more fast than slow particles a wave is excited, and there is inverse Landau damping such that plasma oscillations with v_ph (phase velocity) in the positive gradient region are unstable.

Resonant electrons (at v _ph> w_e / k) where w_e is the electron plasma frequency, i.e.

w_e = [n_e e²/ m_e ε_o] ^½

are the first to be affected by the local wave-particle interactions and have distributions altered by the wave electric field, E1, such that the total energy balance:

E1 (TOT) = ½ E1 _w + ½ E1 _k

referencing the wave and kinetic (particle) contributions respectively.

Thus, for E1(TOT) = const. then as the electron velocity decreases, the particle kinetic energy decreases and the wave energy density increases.

In Landau damping the exact opposite occurs, so the gradient df(v)/d v decreases, and with it the wave amplitude, while the particle kinetic energy increases- i.e. wave energy lost is fed to the particles (electrons) which gain energy.

Note also that the "plasma beam instability" is just the finite temperature analog for the two stream instability. In other words, if one has a "two stream instability" one de facto also has the beam instability.

Lastly, for the Buneman instability, the relevant condition is:

v _d >  v _eth

where  v _eth is the electron thermal velocity:

v _eth = Ö  (2k T _e/ m _e)

where T _eis the electron temperature and k the Boltzmann constant.

The rms (root mean square) value for v _eth is Ö 3 (k T _e/ m _e)

The objective for much better solar flare predictions is to be able to interpret which of these instabilities is near onset for a given solar plasma condition. This is not easy by any means, and probably requires much better optical resolution than available at present. However, solar physicists will "truck on" using all the resources they have to effect the best forecasts of which they are capable.

See also:

A Closer Analytical Look At Two Stream Instabilities...

Trump's Derangement On Mail Ballots Signals A Potential Effort At A November Election Coup

"BWAAHAAHAHA! We got to stop mail voting! It would be the end of me! Melania, change my diapers!"

"How is it that this man is even president?" - Maureen Dowd, Sunday NY Times

"So Trump is worried about his reelection prospects and eager to attack mail-in voting that pretty clearly does not give Democrats any particular leg up, raising the possibility that he is setting himself up to accuse Michigan and Nevada of rigging the system if he loses in November." - Heather Cox Richardson, 'Trump's Twitter Threats On Voting: Is There Really A Bite Behind The Bark?', smirkingchimp.com blog

After yet another weekend with endless histrionics from a "leader" with the moral compass of a slug and self-control of a two year old on a sugar high, even closet Trumpers have to admit the obvious: The nation is saddled with a degenerate whose vile depravity and excesses know no bounds. This is especially after we beheld the fungus -infested maggot relentlessly using his Twitter feed to spread slurs and slander about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. This in connection to the death of Lori Klausutis who worked for him when he was a congressman, inventing outrageous conspiracy ideations about Scarborough being somehow responsible (despite coroner's finding it was a cardiac condition causing her to fall and hit her head on a desk).

Even worse, this unhinged swine continued his drumbeat despite Timothy Klausutis pleading with Twitter to take down the offensive Trump posts that have caused deep pain to him and his family. But Trump, white trash vermin that he is, wouldn't hear of it. Instead ramping up his squalid attacks while drawing next to zero rebukes from the Reepos eager to look the other way as Dotard wreaks havoc. So again what we have seen the past few days is a swine who calls himself "president" willing to spout almost anything - no matter how inflammatory or untrue - in order to be used in his tawdry political battles. So Timothy Klausutis has become yet more collateral damage of Trump's war against critics and we know he has lost it since the COVID-19 pandemic usurped his one sure track to re-election. Exposing him as the grifting con man and reality show pretender resident he really is. As the NY Times also noted:

"Among other things on Tuesday, he boasted about the rising stock market and tried to sow doubt about the results of the coming fall election that polls currently show he would lose, saying, “This will be a Rigged Election.”

The last, of course, is tied to his endless jihad against mail ballots and voting. His latest ploy has been to create so much turmoil, angst and confusion over mail ballots that state governors bow to his whims and whining and halt the march forward: to making mail balloting a viable option for most citizens in November. That is, incidentally, when the COVID second wave could be at its peak - thanks to the hundreds of thousands of idiots who think masks are for Halloween, and COVID intubation scenes in ICUs on the news are medical play acting.

According to a Denver Post piece a week ago, Trump is escalating his assaults on mail voting, with animus especially directed at states like Nevada and Michigan. The foul fungal imp, unable to bluff or intimidate the COVID virus, is trying his best to get as many states as possible to back off a move to mail ballots. In the course of his tilting at mail ballot 'windmills' he has unloaded so many lies, tall tales and disinformation that even his GOP enablers are starting to worry he's gone too far. After all, Reepo voters like and use mail voting as much as Dem voters, as I pointed out in a previous post, e.g.

Skewering The Strawmen Surrounding Mail Voting

This is important, all Trump's huff and puff and hysteria to the contrary. For example, therein I cited University of Florida professor Michael McDonald - who tracks balloting in his own ex post facto research, and found that "Republicans rather than Democrats are most likely to vote by mail".

So, in effect, the bombastic buffoon brat is trying to kneecap his own voters in the process of trying to halt blue states' efforts like in Michigan. In regard to that state, Trump really took a brain dump as he went after Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan Secretary of State, bellowing in one nutso tweet (cf. Denver Post, ibid.):

"Michigan sent absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of primaries and the general election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud path!"

An hour later, the Post article notes he made similar threats to Nevada.

Several wacko aspects to note here which are germane to this discussion: First Ms. Benson did NOT send mail ballots to Michigan residents, she sent applications for mail ballots "just as election officials have done in other states." That also includes, btw, more than a dozen R-governed states. This alone shows Trump doesn't even know what he's talking or tweeting about before he pulls it out of his fat ass.

Second, the threats made to withhold funding, are exactly the classic impeachable offenses that professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford cited in a House impeachment committee hearing last fall. In her words:

“What would you think if, when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has provided, the President responded, ‘I would like you to do us a favor.’ I’ll... send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal.”

That is, trying to extort a political favor via the threat of no critical funding if said favor wasn't delivered.

Interestingly, as the Post article points out, all this kerfuffle and flailing from Trump has occurred as polls show him trailing Biden nationally and in key swing states. In Wisconsin alone, polls take before his rage tweets showed him losing over 65 voters by nearly 18 points. And yet Trump's own campaign staff - writing their own op-eds (D. Post May 17), also are casting baseless suspicion on mail ballots.

I refer to two Trumper campaign clowns, Jenny Ellis and Justin Clark, writing in that Post op-ed ('Mail Ballot Cheating Is Real', ibid.) claiming that: "ballot harvesting creates an environment for potential fraud and election illegitimacy"

Then targeting Democrats in our state (Colorado) for "paying ballot traffickers to go door to door to collect ballots". It appears these two geniuses neglected to mention the most monstrous such "ballot trafficking" offense occurred in North Carolina. An investigation found that such "trafficking" had been done in the NC 9th congressional district election in 2018.

The result? Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. was indicted for tampering with mail ballots. Again, this was a GOP lackey in the service of the campaign he was seeking to help get elected. No thanks to these shenanigans the Republican Mark Harris narrowly defeated Dem candidate Dan McReady.

To my knowledge, no Dem candidate has benefited from such tampering - even in low level elections to a school board. The two Trumper propagandists could as well have saved their time and brain power because no one here in Colo. is going to drop mail voting. It's too convenient and too important an option to be left off the table. And as one former election official responded in a Post letter to Ellis and Clark:

"Mail ballots in Colorado are totally secure. A signature is required for validation and this is always compared to the signature at voter registration. Also, a tab is provided which can be removed before mailing and allows the voter to check to see if anyone else has attempted to vote in their name."

Let's also point out, as Oregon Governor Kate Brown did on All In last week, that mail voting is safe from hacking, and also that paper record provides proof of the process being sound. This skewers the claims of the two Trumpers that "there is a risk of losing the chain of custody of the ballots." No, there is not, given the response of the Colorado state election official, specifically the signature and the tab to mark custody of the actual ballot. Hence, any voter can determine at any time if his ballot is being misused or copied.

Trump's fulminations are clearly also being done to deliberately undermine trust in the November general election. If he can sow enough distrust of the process, especially if mail ballots are allowed in most states, this slimey despot can try to claim the election was rigged. As a recent NY Times article ('Trump Sows Doubt On Voting - It Keeps Some People Up At Night') by Reid J. Epstein put it:

"The president attacked mail balloting again Sunday morning, with a baseless claim that it would lead to “the greatest Rigged Election in history.” And the Republican National Committee said on Sunday that it and other G.O.P. groups had sued to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom of California from mailing absentee ballots to all of the state’s voters... “We’re setting ourselves up for an election where neither side can concede defeat,” Professor Foley said. “That suggests that the desire to dispute the outcome is going to be higher than ever.”

The piece went on to note how Democrats and others are game planning for Trump refusing to leave the White House after a marginal Electoral College loss - and we know he'll be slaughtered in the popular vote. As for the risk of Trump not leaving office if he endures a "narrow" loss, I side with former AG Eric Holder on Real Time some weeks ago: we dispatch the Capitol police and/or SWAT teams, to remove him by force.

In the meantime, Twitter has at least flagged Trump's false tweets about mail voting - giving an addendum 'Get the facts about mail voting'. Well, I have provided a lot of them in this and earlier posts. And btw, should this cockroach try remain in office after being voted out, or try to claim the election results were "rigged" , we will need Americans to erupt in fury in the streets.

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