Election Update Explainer: Senate

There’s a lot of loose gossip going around about the slow vote counts that are delaying the final results in the Senate. Most of the conspiracy theories are patently false; there’s no reason to expect malfeasance anywhere, but for different reasons in each state. Having said that, there’s always the possibility of a challenge that would impact the final results regardless of the cause or the truth of any given conspiracy theory. The eventual determination, however, is always definitive for Senate races.

Let’s look at things state by state:

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Voting Against

Some of my friends have been asking people to not vote, as a protest against the corrupt system. It won’t work.

Don’t misunderstand me: I agree that the system is corrupt. Elections are regularly fixed — NOT, as the conspiracy theorists would suggest, by stuffed ballot boxes and voter farming, but rather by the simpler method of limiting the pool of candidates to those Wall Street and the Establishment would find acceptable. We have a choice between terrible and worse.

Which is why I intend to vote against.

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The Elephant In The Room

EDITORIAL

Disclaimer: The Not Fake News has endorsed the Forward Party.

A year ago, to great fanfare, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced the formation of a new kind of political movement in the “Forward Party”. In his eponymous book, he described a loose collection of candidates committed to moderation and compromise drawn from — and belonging to — both major American political parties. The slogan is meant to be descriptive: “Not Left or Right, but Forward”.

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Losing All Respect

EDITORIAL

“I heard his opinion, and I just lost all respect for him then and there.”

We’ve all heard people say this, or something very like it, especially over the course of the past few years. And, after all, how could we still respect someone who fell for such a transparent bit of propaganda, who listens to such an obvious con man, or who mistakes what’s broadcast on that channel for news?

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Fake News Alert: C2A

It’s election season, and the poorly-fabricated false memes are spreading. Be on the lookout, because they are definitely planning to lie to you.

This one’s almost believable unless you think it through: It’s a fake version of the Republican “Commitment To America” that has absolutely nothing in common with their actual platform, or for that matter their policies.

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The Not Fake News Update, 13 October 2022

On this date in 1307, a dawn raid was launched on the Knights Templar by King Philip IV of France, leading to the capture, torture, and execution of hundreds of innocent men. Philip was later named “the Fair”, but for his looks rather than his sense of justice.

Since that day, a lot of things have happened, most not newsworthy. Here are a few of the more recent events that you might have missed due to 24-hour news masquerading as disaster porn:

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Has The World Gotten Scarier?

…or is it just me?

I mean, seriously: There’s a new COVID variant; monkeypox and a deadly flu are now going around; ebola is making a comeback. Russia in Ukraine is retreating, but on the other hand tactical nukes. Trump’s in the headlines; last time that happened, he became president. There’s hurricanes, floods, famine, plague, earthquakes, tsunamis, and you just know there’s about to be a volcano erupting somewhere, right?

This is worse than that Billy Joel song. When does it all end?!

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Who Is The Enemy?

Whenever there’s a war on, the vast complexities of the whole wide world become suddenly simple. There’s Our Side over here, and Their Side over there, and Their soldiers are trying to kill Our soldiers; and so, They are The Enemy. If Our soldiers didn’t fight back, they’d get killed, and worse they’d get other people killed; and so it would be cowardice, or even rank treachery. There’s a time for questions like Who’s Right and Who’s Wrong, and that time is not now, because right now there’s someone with a gun and he’s trying to shoot you, and the best you can do is react; thinking will distract you, and that sort of thing will get you killed.

So even posing the question, “Which side is the right side, really, when you come right down to it?” when you’re at war is a form of treason; it’s Letting Your Side Down.

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