Chaos benefits the loser.

There was a debate last night. Joe Biden was on the stage with some other guy. I didn’t watch. From the reviews and excerpts I heard today I didn’t miss anything. That other guy, the nasty one, wasn’t as obnoxious as he was during the first debate. But he wasn’t any more truthful. Joan Sutherland of Daily Kos has a complete rundown of the debate. I didn’t read it, though I scanned it for the commentary tweets. Such as this one about the top of the debate from Lauren Cho:

If you can’t summon the flames directly from hell, store-bought is fine.

From Jessica Valenti when the topic was the coronavirus:

"You're lucky I didn't kill more of you" is quite an answer.

Though Biden got to the point:

Anybody who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America.

And from Jay Willis:

I believe Trump wants to win the election more than anything in the world, but I do not believe Trump wants to be President of the United States at all.

There were five more topics after that. Mark Sumner of Kos reviewed what Russia did in the 2016 election and what they are likely to do in this one. They very much want to keep the nasty guy in office.

If Election Day ends without a clear and absolute winner, Russian agents may not need to actually alter votes. Instead, they could deface local websites, alter totals that were displayed on news pages, use social media to push rumors of massive fraud, issue releases of supposedly updated totals … in short do everything that would “sow chaos and doubts about the integrity of the results.” Officials left no doubt about who Russia wants to benefit from all this: They’re doing it all for Trump. Chaos benefits the loser. If Trump was winning, there would be no reason to try and make people distrust the results.

Nichole Perlroth, a cybersecurity reporter at the New York Times, tweeted a mention of an article on that site:

U.S. administration officials have been watching Russia's FSB penetrate state and local systems in recent weeks and believe they have pieced together Russia's plans for election interference. It is far worse than Iran.

Joan McCarter of Kos reported that Biden has announced he will put together a national commission to study how to reform the court system. McCarter is all for it. She said Biden should continue to talk about it. However, there are a couple aspects to Biden’s proposal that should not be put into practice. First, waiting 180 days for the commission to report is way too long. The Senate will need and want to act way before then. The GOP can do a great deal of mischief in that time. Even the Supremes are acting quickly, such as in cases to limit voting rights. Second, Biden says he wants a bipartisan commission. McCarter says that including a Federalist Society type on the commission for balance would be a disaster. But I object to the bipartisan part. Over just the last year, from the sham impeachment trial, to the refusal to act on pandemic relief, to the way they are rushing judges to lower courts and Amy Coney Barrett on to the Supreme Court, the GOP has consistently proven they do not have the interests of the country in mind. They have forfeited any participation in reforming the courts. The purpose of court reform is undoing the harm they created. Greg Dworking, in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted the New York Times. I’ll summarize the excerpt. A meatpacking plant in Colorado provided paid leave to workers of high risk of serious illness. Then OSHA cited them for serious virus related safety violations. The fine: $15,500. The company brought its high risk employees back to work. The size of the fine told the company if an employee dies because of their lax protections will be less than they save in lax protections and paid leave. From other stories I’ve read I’m surprised OSHA bothered to write the citation. Michigan news has included the story that Jocelyn Benson, the Secretary of State, has banned open carry firearms around polling places and near where votes are being counted. The open carry crowd has filed suit, saying the SoS doesn’t have that power. Benson responded, saying she has the responsibility of making sure voters are not harassed. David Neiwert of Kos discussed some of what’s going on behind this simple story. Attorney General got involved by asking state police to patrol polling places to keep the open carry people away. Several county sheriffs have said they will not enforce Nessel’s order, though they would arrest people engaged in “voter intimidation.” And behind that, Neiwert noted, is that several sheriffs are

members of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an extremist organization which claims, among other things, that county sheriffs, not the Supreme Court, are the arbiters of what’s constitutional.

That’s an amazing and scary claim. It is not at all supported by the Constitution. Neiwert describe a few cases where the CSPOA has flaunted their power. And he’s implying another: the sheriffs will claim they get to decide what “voter intimidation” means.