Morning Briefing: Roy Moore Refuses to Take No for an Answer, Plus Another Dude Gets Fired for Sexual Misconduct

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | December 28, 2017 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | December 28, 2017 |

Roy Moore, Alabama Senate candidate and sore loser, has filed a lawsuit seeking to delay certification of Doug Moore’s win in the special election. He’s alleging voter fraud. According to CNN:

His complaint alleges that out-of-state residents had been allowed to vote and that election fraud experts had concluded through statistical analyses that fraud had taken place. One of the election experts Moore cites is Richard Charnin, who also posts about JFK conspiracy theories and the murder of DNC staffer, Seth Rich.

Moore’s complaint also alleged “anomalous” higher voter turnout in Jefferson County, in which census data shows 43% of the population is black. He called the county’s 47% voter turnout as “highly unusual” and questioned the integrity of its election results.

In other words, he’s angry that black people voted against him in large numbers and he’s filing a lawsuit. The suit also claims that Moore took a lie detector test, which revealed that he did not molest children. OK, but 1) how do we know he took a lie detector test? 2) Lie detector tests are historically unreliable when dealing with sociopaths, or people who don’t understand the difference between right and wrong, and 3) WHAT THE HELL DO THE PEDOPHILIA CHARGES AGAINST HIM HAVE TO DO WITH VOTER FRAUD?

In a strange twist, Tim Robbins — the actor — also cited conspiracy theorist Richard Charnin last May when suggesting that Hillary had stolen the primary away from Bernie Sanders:

Mr. Charnin and others who study this issue contend that there are strong indications of election fraud in the Democratic primaries. We might not like it, it might make us uncomfortable, but the numbers and the statistics suggest that something untoward is happening. I understand the immensity of the message being sent. I am being told to shut up about this. I get it. But forgive me for not trusting the Washington Post or any of the mainstream media to put their resources into real investigative journalism that could get to the bottom of this. In the past, mainstream media has shown itself to be a willful participant in propagating political narratives sympathetic to establishment interests, narratives that are untrue and ultimately detrimental to the citizens the press purports to serve. So, I could be wrong about this, but is it possible that the emperor once again is out there buck-naked?

Charnin, by the way, is a crazy person. I perused his blog, which — among other things — insists that Trump won the popular vote, and that the suspicious deaths of seven people who were involved in the Las Vegas shooting (tenuous or otherwise) were actually murders.

Doug Jones’ election results nevertheless expect to be certified today.

+ The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump White House has experienced a whopping 34 percent turnover rate in its first year, twice as high as the second highest turnover rate, the 17 percent turnover rate of the Reagan Administration in 1981 (Obama’s turnover rate, by contrast, was 9 percent).

+ In “Fuck that Guy” news, BuzzFeed News White House correspondent Adrian Carrasquillo is the latest dude to get fired for sexual misconduct following an internal investigation at Buzzfeed. Carrasquillo’s name appeared on the shitty men in media list, which has been the source of a lot of investigations and a lot of terminations (off the top of my head, I recall Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker was also on that list).

+ According to a Gallup poll, Donald Trump is the second most admired man in America, which makes my stomach roil. The only saving grace here is that his predecessor, Barack Obama, was named the most admired man in America, and Hillary Clinton was named the most admired woman in America. Melania Trump came in tied for seventh place among women (Michelle Obama was the second most admired woman in America).

+ I’m sure there are some very wealthy folks among you who can afford to prepay next year’s property taxes in order to avoid the property tax deductions limits put on taxes next year by the GOP tax bill, but the IRS is warning folks that it may not work. They’re saying you’re only allowed to prepay property taxes if your 2018 property taxes have already been assessed. There’s some debate about what that means, exactly, but you know, I just don’t really know what to say to those of you with enough money to pay ahead for an entire year except, maybe, uh, good luck!

+ Finally (with a Hat Tip to Rykker), Maine Senator Susan Collins offered her defense on voting for the GOP tax bill in the Portland Press Herald yesterday. The gist of it is this: It’s good for Mainers because most of us will see a tax cut. THAT’S TRUE. And if that tax cut had been targeted at middle and lower class families, I would have voted for it, too!

But what she doesn’t defend is the fact that the top 1 percent get 83 percent of the tax savings. That’s what’s wrong with this bill. I mean, it’s great that the average family of four might save $2,000 or $3,000 next year but the country is racking up $1.5 trillion in debt so that the top one percent can save millions of dollars a year. The $1.2 trillion that is going to the wealthiest one percent — or the folks who need it least — could have been used to 1) pay down the debt; 2) improve our infrastructure; 3) shore up and expand the Affordable Care Act; 4) help solve the opioid crisis; 5) increase teacher pay or fund new schools, or any number of things besides giving the super wealthy a huge tax cut. They don’t need it! It’s just another way to unfairly redistribute more wealth to the wealthiest.

Susan Collins, by the way, is worth more than $3 million, so she’s going to make out really well under the new tax plan.

Today’s header image has nothing to do with the substance here, but I am enjoying the second season of Travelers this week.