Monthly Archives: October 2014

No Voter Fraud?

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From Hans von Spakovsky, of the Heritage Foundation, via The Wall Street Journal, comes this.

In the past few months, a former police chief in Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to voter fraud in a town-council election. That fraud had flipped the outcome of a primary election. Former Connecticut legislator Christina Ayala has been indicted on 19 charges of voter fraud, including voting in districts where she didn’t reside. (She hasn’t entered a plea.) A Mississippi grand jury indicted seven individuals for voter fraud in the 2013 Hattiesburg mayoral contest, which featured voting by ineligible felons and impersonation fraud. A woman in Polk County, Tenn., was indicted on a charge of vote-buying—a practice that the local district attorney said had too long “been accepted as part of life” there.

Don’t look for recourse—or even for these cases to survive IMNSHO—from the Barack Obama/Eric Holder Justice Department.

Look to your voting next week. And check your ballots before you push that last CAST or ENTER button.

Should NATO Cooperate with Russia?

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Can it, even? NATO’s new head, Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, thinks so. After all, “Russia [is] NATO’s biggest neighbor and both [are] here to stay.”

Sure. Enemies must cooperate, because they’re both big. Makes sense. Yeah.

“We simply can’t ignore each other. One way or another, we will have a relationship. The question is what kind of relationship,” he said.

NATO continues to aspire to a cooperative relationship with Russia but to get there Russia would need to want it and to take clear steps to make it possible.

Well, he’s half right: we can’t ignore each other. But Russia’s view of “cooperation” has been clear. It invaded and partitioned Georgia, with one effect being the prevention of that nation from joining NATO as it had wanted to do. It invaded and is busily partitioning Ukraine for the explicitly stated purpose of keeping it from aligning with western Europe, much less joining NATO, a move Ukraine had indicated it was interested in exploring. It has threatened Poland with nuclear attack if it accepted basing American missile shield facilities on its soil. It has moved troops close to the Baltic States and pursued cyberwar against them.

Yeah, we need to cooperate with this enemy. Or NATO needs a new politician to head it up who understands the situation.

Is the Distinction Important?

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The Wall Street Journal ran an article by Danny Yadron and Siobhan Gorman earlier in the week that talked about the penetration by Russian hackers of Federal government computers and those of companies doing business with the government. It’s an important article, and I recommend you read it all, but I want to focus on a couple of statements made in it that go to the heart of why we’re having so much trouble dealing with our enemies.

The statements are these:

A US official said differentiating between Russian criminal hackers and government hackers is difficult because the government uses cybersurveillance tools created by criminal groups and criminals use tools developed by the government.

And

“It [the recent hacking of JP Morgan Chase & Co] looks to be criminal and of Russian origin,” the US official said. But when it comes to gauging whether that criminal element is working with the government, “you’re back into that gray area. You really can’t tell.”

Russia is a totalitarian state, for all that it has “elections.” All the modern, cool totalitarian states do this anymore. As such a regime, the “criminal” hackers are limited in doing what they do without the Russian government’s active condoning of that behavior. This is further substantiated by the ubiquitousness of the free exchange of tools between these hackers and their government.

Whether any particular hack job is done by hackers or by formal agents of the Russian government, both are working for the benefit of Russia and for (not only to) the detriment of us.

Misunderstandings like these, of the fundamental character of certain of our enemies, are at the heart of why we’re having so much trouble defending ourselves from them and ultimately of defeating them.

For What Are We Voting?

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In mid-term elections, we’re voting for Representatives and Senators for Congress as well as Representatives and Senators for our state legislatures (except States like Nebraska, which have gone the unicameral route; my point will be the same when I get to it) as well as lots of candidates for positions farther down the ballot.

In all of these races, questions are local, and we voters must choose our candidates based on our view of those candidates’ positions on those local questions.

However.

When we’re voting for those Representatives and Senators in Congress, it’s necessary to keep in mind that the Congress takes most of its actions in the name of the United States, not in the name of any particular State. Congress’ questions are national more than local; what our Congressmen do has national and international implications.

Democratic Party Senate candidates like Alison Lundergan Grimes of Kentucky and Michelle Nunn of Georgia, as well as their counterparts in other States’ Congressional races, like to insist that President Barack Obama is not on this fall’s ballots, only their own names are. They’re right, and that’s the crux of the matter.

Obama also agrees that his name isn’t on any of the ballots this time around. However, he’s been quite explicit about his policies, those candidates, and those ballots:

I’m not on the ballot this fall. But make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.

Obama also is urging you to vote for Democratic Party Senate candidates in close-run races in several States so he can keep the Senate and continue those policies.

If Michelle Nunn wins, that means that Democrats keep control of the Senate, and that means that we can keep on doin’ some good work.

And

These are all folks who vote with me, they have supported my agenda in Congress…. These are folks who are strong allies and supports of me….

Keep this in mind as you vote next Tuesday. And check you ballots very carefully before you cast them.