Category: Update

The story led with an assurance, an oddly worded one: “None of the Oregon residents who were automatically registered to vote without demonstrating citizenship voted in an election where they could have cast the deciding ballot, the state’s elections director told lawmakers on Wednesday.”

The Oregon Capital Chronicle assured us that the automatically registered voters who were not eligible to vote participated in elections where, in the number investigated, they couldn’t’ve made a difference.

In Oregon, as in every state except for Arizona, voters only need to swear under penalty of perjury that they’re citizens and eligible to vote when they proactively register to vote. Since 2016, the state has automatically registered people to vote when they obtain or renew driver’s licenses and state-​issued identification cards if they present documents that prove citizenship, like a U.S. passport or U.S. birth certificate. 

But an audit completed this week found that DMV staff had erroneously marked 1,259 people who didn’t provide those documents as U.S. citizens and forwarded their information to the Secretary of State’s Office, resulting in them being registered to vote. Ten of those individuals voted, though election officials learned that one of those 10 is a citizen who has voted for decades and just didn’t bring documentation to prove citizenship when renewing a license.

Julia Shumway, “Suspect votes didn’t affect election results, state officials say,” September 25, 2024.

A pattern can be observed. They used to tell us that “no illegals vote in our elections, which are pristine.” Now they say “sure some undocumented aliens vote, but their votes do not change elections.” 

Next? “Undocumented aliens voting for our candidates ‘saved our democracy.’”

Paul Jacob has been writing about noncitizen voting for some time.

California’s commission on reparations — covered by Paul Jacob here in the past — recommended a huge reparations bill. But of course the State cannot afford it. So Governor Newsome made some hoopla over the issue of slavery, intoning the least sincere apology in recent history. “As part of a California reparations package, Gov. Newsom signs a bill to officially apologize for slavery,” explains CalMatters. “But he vetoed others sought by reparations supporters.”

“This signing event marks a significant milestone in California’s ongoing efforts to promote healing and advance justice,” explains a document from the governor’s office. “The legislation includes critical measures that tackle a wide range of issues affecting Black Californians, from criminal justice reforms to civil rights and education.”

But a less deceptive appraisal can be found from Scott Adams:

As the COVID pandemic experience is teaching us, there is something deeply wrong with medicine in America — if we did not know already. But we are ill, as Paul Jacob indicated on September 5, “Stay Puft America,” for other reasons, too. Like food.

There are now many resources online, however, that may help us understand just how far off the mark our doctors and nutritionists have become. Comedian Jimmy Dore recently explained, to the best of his abilities, a case against using statins. The problem is not cholesterol, he says, but sugar.

The danger of sugar, and not just refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup, has been warned against for ages. A famous book in the 1970s made a big hit, but the Big Gov/​Big Agribiz complex fought back with the Low Fat story, and we have been arguing about this ever since. 

None of this can possibly be adjudicated on this site. What is true? What should you eat? What should and shouldn’t you do to prevent strokes and heart attacks and diabetes? These are questions to answer somewhere else than on ThisIsCommonSense​.org.

But still, it may be worth listening to the latest guest on The Diary of a CEO podcast, Jessie Inchauspé:

What is wrong with our diets and our doctors? Increasing numbers of scientists and doctors have joined a legion of food faddists to blame sugar. But is it really a molecule that is to blame? Or is it … government? Could it be that the Big Gov/​Big Biz paradigm has poisoned us? Is poisoning us?

It sure looks like this malign entity has worked mightily to make billions off the bad habits that regulators, subsidizers, and lobbyists have — behind the scenes of advertising and product placement — enticed us into.

On July’s last day this year, Paul Jacob considered the sad self-​parody that is “the governor of California, unhappy with a popular video.”

The full story turns out to have long legs:

The video’s maker may have thought he was covering every base by calling it a parody in the very title, an indignity of self-​labeling that Jonathan Swift would never have permitted. People consuming Swift’s satire were left to figure out for themselves that when he proposed that the children of poor people be eaten to render them “beneficial to the publick,” he was engaging in satire.

In contrast, the Kamela Harris campaign ad parody in question is called “Kamala Harris Campaign Ad Parody.” Clear. Unmistakable. 

Like the content.

Still, this video has not escaped the agenda of would-​be censors like Governor Gavin Newsom. The parody uses a “deepfake” AI-​generated voice that sounds like Harris. It’s even got the Harris Cackle. So Newsom wants to outlaw it.

“Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” he says. (Why?) “I’ll be signing a bill … to make sure it is.”

But as Reclaim the Net points out, California has already outlawed certain uses of deepfake media. 

These forbidden uses do not, however, include parody, which is constitutionally protected speech.

Today’s update finds that the story became big news this week, as the governor did indeed sign the bill into law.

There have been many reactions, including by Dave Rubin, who got a rise out of California resident Drew Pinsky. “As goes California, so goes Canada and the EU … and now Brazil, too,” Dr.Pinsky who went on to characterize Newsom as a man who “thinks he is a trendsetter.” That’s a kind of power. The power to lead. Even if for evil, against the Constitution of the United States and the American free speech tradition.

But why is the story really coming up again, after a lag of several months?

The Babylon Bee. The satire site ultimate AI parody of Newsom had been making the social media rounds:

And that is not the only tweak of Newsom from the Christian humor site.

The big news this weekend should have been SpaceX’s big accomplishment this past week. But talk of it has been oddly muted. Some have drawn political conclusions from the silence, such as Friday’s post by “DogeDesigner” on X (@cb_doge on Twitter): “SpaceX, an American company, just completed the first-​ever commercial spacewalk, the farthest from Earth in over 50 years. Yet, no recognition or appreciation from the President. For [the] Democratic party, politics always comes first, not America.”

Elon Musk replied with a “Sigh.”

But in the Democrats’ defense, they have a whole lot to lose by saying anything nice about Elon Musk’s two outfits in question, X and SpaceX. Further, just maybe the president of the United States (Biden?) has been waiting for the mission’s completion.

Wait no more!

“Tech billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis completed the first-​ever commercial spacewalk in SpaceX-​designed suits,” we read at Devdiscourse. “The Polaris Dawn mission tested new spacesuit technology in extreme conditions and conducted 36 experiments. This mission marks a significant milestone in commercial spaceflight and advances scientific knowledge for future space endeavors.”

The space walk occurred on Thursday, with all five crew members participating. The flight began on Tuesday. Splashdown of Polaris Dawn’s Dragon spacecraft occurred early Sunday.

Oh, and the new space suits look snazzy.

Paul Jacob has been following SpaceX for years here on Common Sense with Paul Jacob.

H.R. 8281, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act), introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R‑TX), would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration. It passed the House in July and is hovering in the Senate where …

Wait. Something happened. It’s been placed in the latest Continuing Resolution (CR) on the budget!

But before you get too excited, Thomas Massey, Republican Representative from Kentucky, calls this a “Bright Shiny Object” which will be voted for by Republicans and voted against by Democrats and, according to the rules of “political theater” will be removed before the CR goes to the president’s pen.

Besides, the SAVE Act can’t save the election we’re worried about, since the general election will be held just a few weeks from now and everybody’s been registered and …

Well, watch Massey on X.