RCV brings down another Republican

I wrote yesterday about how the incumbent Republican for Maine’s 2nd district Bruce Poliquin sued to stop the second and third choice votes of the third and fourth place candidates from being counted and argued that he should be declared the winner based on his plurality of just the first choice votes, where he had a slim 2,000 vote lead over Democratic challenger Jared Golden. He clearly seemed to think that the 23,000 second and third choice votes would go against him.
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Family murders in rural Ohio

Ohio has developed a reputation for producing grisly serial killers and psychopaths. Jeffrey Dahmer is perhaps the poster child for but there are so many competitors for that dubious honor. I don’t usually comment on such things but two years ago in April 2016, there was a particularly bizarre case. That was the systematic execution style murder of eight members of a family in four different homes. Seven of them had been shot in their beds. The case remained unsolved but just yesterday authorities finally announced arrests and the information that was released was startling.
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How to interview a Trump surrogate

Mehdi Hasan shows how in this interview with Steve Rogers, a Trump advisor for his 2020 campaign.

But alas, this will not catch on. Why won’t we see mainstream US journalists follow Hasan’s lead? Because they want the same old hacks to appear over and over again on their shows and if they are too hard on them, they won’t pay a return visit. That is the dirty little secret of the US politics-media axis. Each side knows what the other side expects in order to put on a show for the viewers. It’s show biz.

Good riddance to Tom MacArthur

Tom MacArthur is a Republican congressman from New Jersey who tried the familiar two-step of pretending to be a moderate while being a Trumpista. I am very glad to report that it was announced today that he has lost his seat to Democratic challenger Andy Kim, leaving the New Jersey Republican congressional delegation, like the California one, in tatters with just one congressperson from the former five, with some of the lost seats having been held by Republicans for decades. The House is now 229-198 in favor of the Democrats, a swing of 34 seats so far, with eight seats still undecided.
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One of the tragedies of poverty

One of the many adversities that befall those who are poor is that they get tempted to take risks with their own lives and the lives of their families just in order to survive, such as selling their organs and committing crimes. I was shocked to read this report about Anucha Thasako, a 13-year old Thai boy, who died of a brain hemorrhage after a boxing bout. It was bad enough that children are boxing at all but it appears that it is a way for poor people to earn money. Thasako had fought in 170 bouts since the age of eight.
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Get ready for lame duck shenanigans

In this Hanukkah election season for the Democrats, another day brought another gift in that Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was declared the winner for the Arizona senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Jeff Flake.

Meanwhile, the US senate race in Mississippi will be heading to a runoff vote on November 27 since no candidate won more than 50% of the vote. The Republican incumbent candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith has got herself into trouble by saying that “”If [Tupelo cattle rancher, Colin Hutchinson] invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Her opponent Democrat Mike Espy is black and given the racist history of public hangings especially in the deep south, the comment was seen as reprehensible.
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