The rise of menace as a mainstream political tool

[essentialsaltes]

A California journalist documents the far-right takeover of her town: ‘We’re a test case’​

Doni Chamberlain’s been a journalist in Shasta county for nearly 30 years. Now she’s targeted by the extremists who are looking to reshape the region​

[Naughty language in this Guardian article. Just leaving a headline so the interested can find it.]

 

[Yttrium]

With unfounded fraud claims swirling, red California county dumps Dominion voting machines​

Swept up in unproven voter fraud claims, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors has upended the county’s election process, canceling its contract with Dominion Voting Systems and opting this week to pursue, among other options, the possibility of counting votes by hand.

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A California county has dumped Dominion, leaving its election operations up in the air​

The controversial decision has now left the county without a way to conduct elections.

Shasta County's next scheduled election is the presidential primary in March of next year. But the county clerk, Cathy Darling Allen, said some municipalities want to hold their own elections later this year.

If the county wants to try counting ballots by hand, it would first need approval from the secretary of state, and have to submit a proposal for a voting pilot program at least nine months ahead of the next election.

Until then, without choosing another vendor, Shasta County doesn't have a way to conduct elections at all. That's left thousands of county residents even more confused about the trustworthiness of its elections.

They're afraid Democrats will steal the vote, so they shut down the Republican vote. That's paranoid logic for you.

 

[Say it aint so]

Labeling these parents who speak out against CRT at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists” is the epitome of lunacy and hypocrisy!

CRT defender tells parents he's got 1,000 soldiers 'locked and loaded,' some see as threat

CRT defender tells parents he's got 1,000 soldiers 'locked and loaded,' some see as threat

Forth Worth parents told Fox News that they felt threatened when a parent who defended critical race theory turned to the crowd during a school board meeting and said, "I got over a thousand soldiers ready to go," before adding, "locked and loaded," as officers escorted him out of the room.

I have been told that these kind of threats, if taken seriously and looked into, is just more parental harassment.

 

[timothyu]

Once it becomes more obvious that nationalism is dying to global corporatism, we may see the far-left join forces with the far-right. Now that would be interesting. Disturbing, but interesting.

Not likely considering the far left is being used by the Great Reset to further it's globalization agenda. People forget that even nations can be absorbed into the global government of Corporatism. It's no longer a mater of left/right but one of global vs national, and natioanal is becomes just another local government like city county or state on the global landscape

 

[Say it aint so]

"Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment"
DHS

That report was in 2009. First, I find it not a shock that what they warned about has in fact come to fruition. In fact from 2022:

"Report to the Secretary of Homeland Security Domestic Violent Extremism Internal Review: Observations, Findings, and Recommendations"
DHS

I think we all know what the report found.

Secondly, as I peruse this thread I can only roll my eyes seeing the desperate comparison to "Antifa and BLM" and that favorite nonsensical catechism, "wokism"

 

[timothyu]

It's funny how the right is now being accused of what the left once was back in the counter-culture days 55 years ago. Of course even the motives have changed from one of concern for others to one of self interest today, and rights have become more important than responsibility. People talk about magnetic poles shifting but society has beat that to it.

 

[rambot]

It's funny how the right is now being accused of what the left once was back in the counter-culture days 55 years ago. Of course even the motives have changed from one of concern for others to one of self interest today, and rights have become more important than responsibility. People talk about magnetic poles shifting but society has beat that to it.

yeah. I've noticed that too. It's weeeeeird.
In the 90s I was a 'left winger' and went to protests against globalization while the right wing LOVED it! That narrative has also flipped as I see left wingers ambivalent about it and right wingers activitely arguing against it.

Weird.

 

[timothyu]

Weird.

And it's not even a Monty Python skit from 50 years ago

 

[FireDragon76]

It's funny how the right is now being accused of what the left once was back in the counter-culture days 55 years ago. Of course even the motives have changed from one of concern for others to one of self interest today, and rights have become more important than responsibility. People talk about magnetic poles shifting but society has beat that to it.

Anti-globalism wasn't part of the counter-culture 55 years ago.

 

[rambot]

Anti-globalism wasn't part of the counter-culture 55 years ago.

But it was in the 90s. BIG time. Naomi Klein. No Logo.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Public tirades, recall threats as Shasta County roils from decision to dump voting machines​

Weeks after deciding to dump Dominion Voting Systems and become the largest government entity in the U.S. to hand-count its votes, Shasta County officials are now grappling with the complex logistics of actually carrying out that approach, accurately and legally, in a county of 200,000 people.

In a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday spiced with angry personal attacks — and during which Supervisor Kevin Crye was served with recall papers on the dais mid-session— county staff told board members that hand-counting ballots could cost an additional $3 million over two years. The board ultimately voted to fund seven more staff positions to carry out the effort, even as flabbergasted citizens in the audience bemoaned what they said were absurd new expenses for a county struggling to provide healthcare and homeless services.

The fraud claims [about Dominion like those that recently cost FOX the better part of a billion dollars], nonetheless, found traction in Shasta County after a hard-right majority, including Crye, were elected to the board in November. Crye, the owner of a Ninja gym with no previous experience in elected office, recently announced he has been in touch with MyPillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a prominent pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist, about aiding Shasta in its plan to pilot its own voting system.

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Supervisor Mary Rickert implored her colleagues to reverse their decision, saying it was “irresponsible” and ”terribly reckless.”

“I am horrified with what is happening in Shasta County,” she told them. “This is going to be your legacy.”

Supervisor Patrick Jones, who spearheaded the movement to dump Dominion, shot back: “This is going to be our legacy. We are going to have free and fair elections in Shasta County.”

Many in the audience, meanwhile, beseeched the board to rethink the move. “You are building an inefficient, costly voting system predicated on lies and misinformation,” Susanne Baremore told the board. “Bring us back to the 21st century.”

“Three million [dollars] in additional expenditures in the next two elections,” said one man. “Where are you going to pull that money from? What law enforcement agency or fire department? Why would we do this?”

[The Democratic county registrar opposed dropping Dominion, but] is committed to ensuring a free and fair election, and for months has been consumed with little else. Nobody, anywhere, she said, “is counting ballots by hand at the scale of the number of registered voters that we have.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

Public tirades, recall threats as Shasta County roils from decision to dump voting machines​

county staff told board members that hand-counting ballots could cost an additional $3 million over two years. The board ultimately voted to fund seven more staff positions to carry out the effort, even as flabbergasted citizens in the audience bemoaned what they said were absurd new expenses for a county struggling to provide healthcare and homeless services.

Crye, the owner of a Ninja gym with no previous experience in elected office, recently announced he has been in touch with MyPillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a prominent pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist, about aiding Shasta in its plan to pilot its own voting system.

Mike Lindell's guest is wrong about her claim, but the name checks out.

 

[Nithavela]

Public tirades, recall threats as Shasta County roils from decision to dump voting machines​

Weeks after deciding to dump Dominion Voting Systems and become the largest government entity in the U.S. to hand-count its votes, Shasta County officials are now grappling with the complex logistics of actually carrying out that approach, accurately and legally, in a county of 200,000 people.

In a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday spiced with angry personal attacks — and during which Supervisor Kevin Crye was served with recall papers on the dais mid-session— county staff told board members that hand-counting ballots could cost an additional $3 million over two years. The board ultimately voted to fund seven more staff positions to carry out the effort, even as flabbergasted citizens in the audience bemoaned what they said were absurd new expenses for a county struggling to provide healthcare and homeless services.

The fraud claims [about Dominion like those that recently cost FOX the better part of a billion dollars], nonetheless, found traction in Shasta County after a hard-right majority, including Crye, were elected to the board in November. Crye, the owner of a Ninja gym with no previous experience in elected office, recently announced he has been in touch with MyPillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a prominent pro-Trump election conspiracy theorist, about aiding Shasta in its plan to pilot its own voting system.

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Supervisor Mary Rickert implored her colleagues to reverse their decision, saying it was “irresponsible” and ”terribly reckless.”

“I am horrified with what is happening in Shasta County,” she told them. “This is going to be your legacy.”

Supervisor Patrick Jones, who spearheaded the movement to dump Dominion, shot back: “This is going to be our legacy. We are going to have free and fair elections in Shasta County.”

Many in the audience, meanwhile, beseeched the board to rethink the move. “You are building an inefficient, costly voting system predicated on lies and misinformation,” Susanne Baremore told the board. “Bring us back to the 21st century.”

“Three million [dollars] in additional expenditures in the next two elections,” said one man. “Where are you going to pull that money from? What law enforcement agency or fire department? Why would we do this?”

[The Democratic county registrar opposed dropping Dominion, but] is committed to ensuring a free and fair election, and for months has been consumed with little else. Nobody, anywhere, she said, “is counting ballots by hand at the scale of the number of registered voters that we have.”

One thing the good people bemoaning the costs should realise is that the additional money spent won't just vanish into thin air or in the bank accounts of some corporation. It will mostly be paid to election workers doing all that counting work and the relaying of the information. Thus, it gets put back into the community, where it can do some good for those people and the places they shop at.

Plenty of places with more than 200.000 citizens does hand-counted votes. Maybe that board should get some experts from countries that do it right and learn from them.

Just.. don't ask the people in Berlin.

 

[rambot]

In regards to menace, I think a GREAT example of it is Brandolini's law.

Conservatives strategists/Russian hackers/bots have certainly done a wonderful job at proving this.

 

[wing2000]

Weeks after deciding to dump Dominion Voting Systems and become the largest government entity in the U.S. to hand-count its votes, Shasta County officials are now grappling with the complex logistics of actually carrying out that approach, accurately and legally, in a county of 200,000 people.

Many in the audience, meanwhile, beseeched the board to rethink the move. “You are building an inefficient, costly voting system predicated on lies and misinformation,” Susanne Baremore told the board. “Bring us back to the 21st century.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out....

 

[Occams Barber]

[The Democratic county registrar opposed dropping Dominion, but] is committed to ensuring a free and fair election, and for months has been consumed with little else. Nobody, anywhere, she said, “is counting ballots by hand at the scale of the number of registered voters that we have.”

We (Aust) do a manual vote count for all elections (federal, state,local) To further complicate things, we use a preferential voting system which means votes are often counted several times over. Voting is also compulsory.

In spite of this it's very quick. At the last federal election voting closed at 6.00pm. We had a broad result (ie. we knew which party had won) by 10.00pm, There were a few close call seats which took several days and multiple counts. All voting is standardised and run by non-political Electoral Commissions who also redraw electorate boundaries when needed (= no gerrymanders).

"Australia’s much-admired, manual system of federal elections has one of the most complex and time-consuming counting operations in the world. While it can at times require patience, the federal election counting process delivers integrity to the results, concentrating on accuracy in a highly transparent manner."​

Counting the votes

Explanation of how Senate votes are counted

www.aec.gov.au

​

​

OB​

 

[essentialsaltes]

Public tirades, recall threats as Shasta County roils from decision to dump voting machines​

Weeks after deciding to dump Dominion Voting Systems and become the largest government entity in the U.S. to hand-count its votes, Shasta County officials are now grappling with the complex logistics of actually carrying out that approach, accurately and legally, in a county of 200,000 people.

The state has attempted to act. Likely there will be a legal fight over it.

California lawmakers vote to limit when local election officials can count ballots by hand​

[The law prevents hand counting for areas with more than 1,000 voters. Shasta is much larger than that, so the law, if signed by Newsom, would prevent Shasta from hand-counting.]

Despite the county getting rid of its Dominion voting machines, local leaders gave her permission to purchase equipment needed to comply with federal laws for voters with disabilities.

[So they have a system in place that could provide machine counting.]

 

[essentialsaltes]

‘Flying syringes’ and conspiracies: The far-right battle for a mosquito control board​

Shasta County had to choose someone for a seat on the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District board.

Candidate #1: Donnell Ewert, a retired epidemiologist who once was the Northern California county’s public health director.

Candidate #2: Jan 6 rally attendee Jon Knight, "who owns a hydroponic gardening supply store in Redding, [and] spoke darkly about his suspicion that Bill Gates had helped unleash genetically modified mosquitoes in California. And he warned about 'flying syringes that will mass vaccinate the population.'"

If you've been following along with Shasta County in this thread, you know quite well who the Board chose.

--

“Do you know how that makes us look as a county? It makes us look like idiots. Outright idiots,” said Supervisor Mary Rickert after voting against Knight’s appointment last week.

Home to 182,000 people, the mostly rural county has long been governed by mainstream Republicans such as Rickert, a cattle rancher.

But there is a bitter divide in Shasta County between traditional conservatives and the far right, akin to Washington, D.C., where ultraconservatives led the revolt that just ousted California Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.

--

So far in 2023, West Nile virus has been found in 152 mosquito samples in Shasta County — more than three times the previous all-time high of 48 found in 2015, according to the vector control district. [Mosquito populations are also up due to the record rainfalls in Califonia]

Three human cases of the virus have been reported in the county this year.

And the mosquito-borne St. Louis encephalitis virus recently was detected for the first time since 1972, which “was shocking, quite frankly,” said Peter Bonkrude, manager of the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District.

That Ewert, the other applicant, actually studied mosquito-borne illnesses did not matter to the conservative supervisors.

“Just because people have a piece of paper on a wall doesn’t automatically give them this great insight,” said Supervisor Kevin Crye, who voted for Knight.

[Knight said] that he is “highly qualified for the position” and that he is a “junkie with information. I wake up at 4 in the morning, and I do hours of research.”

[Here we can see the fruits of his 'research']

Later in that [board of supervisors] meeting, Knight, who has warned about “weaponized bugs,” spoke ominously about the threats posed by “Bill Gates programs” and claimed, erroneously, that the British biotech company Oxitec had released genetically-modified mosquitoes in several California counties.

Kevin Gorman, the chief development officer for Oxitec, told the Times that the only place in the U.S. where it has released its mosquitoes is the Florida Keys, where, with government approval, it launched the insects for the last three years to fight Zika. None, he said, have been released in California.

In a statement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said that while it supports Oxitec’s anti-malaria work abroad, it “does not fund any work involving mosquito release in the United States.”

 

[FireDragon76]

‘Flying syringes’ and conspiracies: The far-right battle for a mosquito control board​

Shasta County had to choose someone for a seat on the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District board.

Candidate #1: Donnell Ewert, a retired epidemiologist who once was the Northern California county’s public health director.

Candidate #2: Jan 6 rally attendee Jon Knight, "who owns a hydroponic gardening supply store in Redding, [and] spoke darkly about his suspicion that Bill Gates had helped unleash genetically modified mosquitoes in California. And he warned about 'flying syringes that will mass vaccinate the population.'"

If you've been following along with Shasta County in this thread, you know quite well who the Board chose.

--

“Do you know how that makes us look as a county? It makes us look like idiots. Outright idiots,” said Supervisor Mary Rickert after voting against Knight’s appointment last week.

Home to 182,000 people, the mostly rural county has long been governed by mainstream Republicans such as Rickert, a cattle rancher.

But there is a bitter divide in Shasta County between traditional conservatives and the far right, akin to Washington, D.C., where ultraconservatives led the revolt that just ousted California Republican Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.

--

So far in 2023, West Nile virus has been found in 152 mosquito samples in Shasta County — more than three times the previous all-time high of 48 found in 2015, according to the vector control district. [Mosquito populations are also up due to the record rainfalls in Califonia]

Three human cases of the virus have been reported in the county this year.

And the mosquito-borne St. Louis encephalitis virus recently was detected for the first time since 1972, which “was shocking, quite frankly,” said Peter Bonkrude, manager of the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District.

That Ewert, the other applicant, actually studied mosquito-borne illnesses did not matter to the conservative supervisors.

“Just because people have a piece of paper on a wall doesn’t automatically give them this great insight,” said Supervisor Kevin Crye, who voted for Knight.

[Knight said] that he is “highly qualified for the position” and that he is a “junkie with information. I wake up at 4 in the morning, and I do hours of research.”

[Here we can see the fruits of his 'research']

Later in that [board of supervisors] meeting, Knight, who has warned about “weaponized bugs,” spoke ominously about the threats posed by “Bill Gates programs” and claimed, erroneously, that the British biotech company Oxitec had released genetically-modified mosquitoes in several California counties.

Kevin Gorman, the chief development officer for Oxitec, told the Times that the only place in the U.S. where it has released its mosquitoes is the Florida Keys, where, with government approval, it launched the insects for the last three years to fight Zika. None, he said, have been released in California.

In a statement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said that while it supports Oxitec’s anti-malaria work abroad, it “does not fund any work involving mosquito release in the United States.”

The IQ is dropping. Maybe it's something in the water...

 

[essentialsaltes]

The IQ is dropping. Maybe it's something in the water...

Bill Gates is using genetically modified mosquitoes to suck brain cells out of people.