Winning U.S. Senate as Defining Struggle; also, Some Foreign Policy Concerns

#John Nichols, "Lost Without the Senate," The Nation, August 10/17, 2020. 

"McConnell had the GOP Senate as a fully owned subsidiary of the corporate interests and billionaire donors that fund campaigns." "The Republican lawmakers and his [McConnell's] cadre of obedient partisans have made it perfectly clear time and time again that they will not be moved by the fact that a legislative initiative is essential." "Democratic candidates, strategists, donors, volunteers, and voters all talk about the need to fundamentally alter the direction of our governance and our country. If fundamental change is the point, winning the Senate has to be understood as the defining struggle of an election year."

#Dexter Filkins, "The Uncounted," The New Yorker, September 7, 2020.

"In 2018, according to an analysis by the Dartmouth [University] professor, Michael Herron, about two hundred thousand ballots arrived on Election Day or the day before, and more kept coming after the deadline passed." "In the 2018 race, according to Herron, about eleven thousand ballots were rejected because their signatures did not match, or because they were not signed." Former U.S. Senator Bill Nelson told Filkins: "Those were my votes." After recounts by machine and hand, Rick Scott won by ten thousand and thirty-three votes -- one tenth of one percent of the eight million cast.

#Vera Bergengriven (sp.) and Lissandra Villa, "Homegrown threat," TIME, September 21, 2020.

"Gallup found that last year, 59% of Americans were not confident in the honesty of their nation's elections, third worst among the word's wealthy democracies." "According to an August WSJ/NBC poll, just 11% of Trump supporters said they planned to vote by mail, compared with 47% supporters of Democratic nominee, Joe Biden." "More than 35% of registered voters say they are not confident the election will be fair, according to an August, Monmouth University poll."

#Kallem Hawa, "Present Absences," The Nation, August 10/17, 2020.

Kallem Hawa quotes Rashid Khelidi, author of "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine," to the effect that "the British mandate established two parallel realities in Palestine: an embryonic nation-building project for the Jewish minority, and the continuation of colonial policy for the Arab majority, whose question of self-determination was left unaddressed." "First, by conditioning Israeli's withdrawal from the lands it had seized from Jordan on the establishment of secure frontiers, it provided Israel with an opportunity to run roughshod over the resolution's intent, enlarging its borders in perpetuity by claiming security as an excuse. Second, by authorizing a negotiated settlement to come between Israel and 'Arab' parties, the resolution allowed Israel to exploit its language and ignore the existence of the Palestinians."

#Charlie Campbell, "TikTok, on the chopping block," TIME, August 17/24, 2020.

"Beyond tech supremacy, Beijing and Washington are feuding over trade tariffs, the detention of 1 million ethnic Uighur Muslims in China's Xinjiny region, the erosion of freedom in a semiautonomous Hong Kong and the militarization of the COVID-19 pandemic." "As a national-security argument it's 'pretty weak,' says Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'The reality is that the Trump administration is acting primarily on commercial concerns,' he says. " " 'TikTok is the first social-media platform out of China that became truly global.' "

" 'Some in the administration want to burn down as much as possible,' Segal says, 'so that it's very hard to reset the  relationship.' "

#David Klion, "Will the Left Get a Say in the Biden Doctrine?" The Nation, August 10/17, 2020.

Stephen Werthaim, a cofounder of the Quincy Institute, a think tank that launched last year, with funding from George Soros and Charles Koch, told David Klion that the "pandemic illustrated a lot of what we've been saying for sometime -- that our main challenges from the perspective of US interests are planetary and transnational, not military threats from rival nation-states." Kate Kizer, the policy director of the advocacy group, 'Win Without War,' expressed similar fears. "I'm seeing the different paths ahead -- either one of authoritarianism, driven by xenophobic nationalism, or an internationalist response that is rooted in cross-border solidarity and cooperation." 

ADDENDUMS:

*A Washington Post analysis of data collected in three vote-by-mail states found 372 possible cases of double voting on behalf of deceased people out of 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections.

*While in California on September 14, President Trump said of that state, "It will start getting cooler. You just watch. I don't think science knows, actually."

*"Briefly noted," TIME, August 3/10, 2020. "Hot Springs, Arkansas was once a casino that rivaled Las Vegas, despite a state law criminalizing gambling. As this history shows, from 1870 to 1967, businessmen openly disregarded the law, with the connivance of the police and lawmakers."

*The New York City Police Department has endorsed Trump for president. Why would it endorse a serial-law breaker?

*A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending transgender health-care protections.

*Trump said of the F-35: "You sell it today and its obsolete tomorrow." U.S. warplanes average 27 years of service.