|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Nationally, there’s been plenty of talk about election security and assuring fair elections.
There have been battles between Republican led states that want to require voter ID (something Democrats and the Dept. of Justice oppose). They ban ballot harvesting and demand reforms to voter registration and mail-in ballots.
Here in California, those friction points are already in law thanks to the Democrat majority. Anyone who obtains a driver’s license is automatically registered to vote. You may recall that Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law that mandated non-citizens, whether here legally or illegally, could get licenses. So, they’re registered.
This came to my attention in a post on Nextdoor by a mom employing a foreign-born nanny. She got a license so she could drive in the kids around. Come the next election, a ballot showed up for her.
I placed five calls to the public information line for the Secretary of State’s Office — they all went to voicemail — and none have been returned. My simple question was how the office validated that all of these people registered by the DMV were vetted to determine they were citizens and thus eligible to vote. You can draw your own conclusions, but the lack of a returned call likely provides the answer.
The aforementioned governor also signed the bill that permits ballot harvesting and current Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed through the universal mail-in ballots during Covid. So we have millions of ballots floating around and it’s debatable how much attention election workers pay to validating signatures on mail-in ballots.
Welcome to the invitations to voter fraud here in the Golden State.
The White House and vice president tuned in to how bad the optics were when Hurricane Helene ravaged Florida and North Carolina. President Biden could not be bothered to leave the beach in Delaware while Kamala Harris was at a ritzy fundraiser in San Francisco.
When Milton approached, the White House cancelled Biden’s trip to Europe and the vice-president showed up in the South.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump was on the ground within a couple of days delivering relief supplies and encouraging victims. Trump also played another role. Franklin Graham, whose headquarters in Boone, NC, were badly damaged along with the small town, swung his emergency relief operation from Samaritan’s Purse into full action. Communications were largely down, a fact that Graham mentioned to Trump who said he’d call Elon Musk. Musk promptly allocated his Starlink systems to restore communications.
Samaritan’s Purse, which has both cargo planes and helicopters as well as a fleet of various sized trucks, started airlifting supplies via its helicopters. It was joined by choppers from the NASCAR teams as well as privately owned choppers to move water, food another desperately needed supplies to victims because roads were washed out and impassable. A couple of days later, the National Guard joined in with its cargo choppers.
Moving quickly is critical because the mountain towns are at 2,400 feet elevation and it’s getting cold at night.
A sports aside: Tom Brady, like Jared Goff, a Northern California product, marveled at his toughness during Sunday’s blowout win over Dallas. Goff had a brutal first year with Detroit after he was traded there by the Rams.
What Brady left unsaid was Goff went through something similar as a freshman at Cal when new coach Sonny Dykes installed him as starter. He was physically hammered by the opponents’ overwhelming pass rush. It got much better in later years so he moved to the top draft choice.
