So now 47 is saying that if he can’t get his election rigging bill called the SAVE Act passed in Congress, he’ll just issue an Executive Order that does the same thing. He wants to eliminate mail in ballots. He wants your name on your current ID to match your birth name. (Sorry, anyone who took their spouse’s name when they married. Tough luck, I guess.) They’re both stupid provisions, of course. But the most stupid part of all? Executive Orders are not laws. They don’t carry the weight of laws.

Obviously, he wants to get rid of mail-in ballots. That should be all the proof a thinking person needs to know he plans to rig the machines and he can’t as easily rig votes on paper ballots. Another way you can know that’s true is the claims that paper ballots are so easy to rig. As it happens, paper ballots are hardest to rig. That’s why he doesn’t want them. Paper ballots beat him in 2020 and paper ballots will beat him again in 2026, assuming we’re allowed elections.

I think EVERY American (and MAGA, too) should vote on paper ballots. My position feels buoyed by trump’s efforts to eliminate paper ballots. On second thought, since the machines will be rigged to increase red votes, MAGA can feel free to use them. Blue voters absolutely should not.

I expect to cast my absentee ballot in November, the same as I’ve been doing for years. Voting mail-in is easiest on the voters and most secure in the vote. No wonder that loser doesn’t want them around…

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We all know Alexi Navalny died IN the hands of his political rival, Vladimir Putin. Now the best evidence indicates that he died AT the hands of his political rival, as well. He was murdered by a powerful neurotoxin found in a specific kind of South American frog. There’s no known instance of the stuff occurring naturally anywhere in Russia, though it can be synthesized…

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Oh, the Gordie Howe International Bridge, eh? It gives us all a small glimpse into how Capitalism really works. See there’s a bridge connecting Detroit, Michigan in the US and Windsor, Ontario in Canada. It’s called the Ambassador Bridge and it was owned by a guy named Manuel “Matty” Moroun. It’s old (opened in 1929) and inconvenient. It connects surface streets on the Ontario side so if you use it, you’ll still have to wend your way through town. Oh, AND, it’s a toll bridge. The Moroun family makes money from the thing.

So, a new bridge was proposed. Bigger, better, and more convenient to use. ALSO a toll bridge, by the way. But if you’re getting ready to travel from Detroit to Ontario and you’re going to choose which bridge, most people, I think, would choose the higher capacity, more convenient bridge and that was designed specifically to be the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Such a common sense choice by consumers means Moroun’s Ambassador Bridge will lose traffic, which means Moroun will lose money.

Hey that’s Capitalism, right? Build a better mousetrap, and all of that jazz. A better way chooses the winners and losers, right? Or does it? Mr. Moroun, understanding the hit to his revenue, fought the bridge since day one. He knew his bridge was outdated and inconvenient, but he had the comfort of sitting back and enjoying the only route between the cities. He got to be lazy because he had the only bridge. I mean, the Moroun family could have arranged a new bridge as well, right? Instead, they filed lawsuits, all of which they lost.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge has been built and is ready to open now. Canada paid for the thing but they made sure to include US steel and US labor. It’s been a good, internationally cooperative project that promises to improve economies and lives all around. In 2020, Matty Moroun finally did the decent thing and he shuffled off his mortal coil, leaving ownership of his crappier bridge, the Ambassador, to his family. They have kept up the fight.

In a very real sense, he left them a weight around their necks. The Ambassador’s day has passed. As people shift to the new bridge, the revenues from reduced traffic will drop and that could threaten maintenance on the older span because you KNOW that if a Capitalist has to choose between profit and safety, well, you’re on your own. Profits first, always.

The new bridge is built, now, and ready to open. If you’re the Moroun family, what to do? The people have a new, better bridge but the Moroun family has something, too. Money. Here’s the real “Capitalism.” The Moroun’s have been spreading money around. Put a little (or a lot) into the right hands, you can STILL tie up the traffic. Moroun money has purchased them access to an excellent tool, the most corrupt President in the history of history. So they used it.

Matthew Moroun went to the White House and talked to 47 directly. We know the family has dumped large sums of money into Donny’s world and they likely left yet another big check because after that meeting, suddenly, the Gordie Howe International Bridge is seen as some kind of international security threat.

No, no details on exactly HOW the Howe Bridge is a threat. None needed, really. The Gordie Howe International Bridge will benefit thousands of work-a-day Joes all day, every day but it will hurt one powerful family of billionaires. There’s honestly no telling how this will play out. We can’t count on our “government” to do the right thing for the masses. Hell, Donny might bomb the thing, just to make the point.

But that’s how Capitalism really works. Build a better mousetrap, ‘Big Mousetrap’ will use their money and market share to bury you under lawsuits and blockades, limit your market, and try to wrangle control of (or copy and steal) your design. In Capitalism, money prevents progress as often as it enables progress. The actual question always comes down to who gets to keep the money, and if it ain’t the already rich, it ain’t happening…