CSotD: Schadenfreudean Slips
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Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-??) appears to have voted illegally, a particular problem for someone in a political party that keeps screaming about voter fraud.
But it’s not his only problem, or even the main one: While there is no residency requirement for US Senators, Alabama law requires the governor to have lived in the state for seven years. The opponent he beat in the Republican Primary is claiming Tuberville hasn’t fulfilled that requirement.
It’s a mess, but an amusing one. Tuberville had been living in Florida but then changed his residency to Alabama on August 1, 2018, and qualified for a homestead exemption on his taxes. But then he and his wife voted in Florida the following November. Whoops.
If he didn’t legally move to Alabama, he’s not eligible to run for governor, and could face charges for misstating the facts in establishing his campaign. But if he did change residence, he could face charges of illegal voting.
He also may have violated the rules by using public funds to travel to Florida, if it is only a vacation home and not his primary residence.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but as I was moving from Maine to New Hampshire in 2008, I cast an absentee ballot in Maine, because I knew the issues there but would be a newcomer in New Hampshire on Election Day.
However, I was going to still be in the probationary phase of my new job, living in a rental on a six-month lease and driving with a Maine driver’s license in a car with Maine plates. I was not yet a New Hampshire resident.
Tuberville not only spent a lot of time back in Florida, but maintained a Florida driver’s license until 2023. He’s likely to overcome the residency issue in terms of the governor’s race — he has tax records backing up 2019 residency — but the voting issue should make the upcoming election campaign a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, Congressman Randy Fine (R-FL) is having conniptions over on Xitter because the former resident of his apartment apparently didn’t let the board of elections know she’d moved, and they sent her a ballot there.
“All anyone would need to do is fill it out, sign it, and send it back,” Fine says, which is true.
And if he did, he might get to share a jail cell with Tommy Tuberville, given that he’d have been committing voter fraud.
A dangerous game: The GOP is already squawking about the California primaries, apparently intent on touching off another futile recounting of paper ballots.
There’s an old piece of advice that says if you tell the truth, it spares you the issue of having to remember what you said, and it’s related to the issue of the boy who falsely cried “Wolf!” so often that nobody believed him when the wolf actually appeared.
Telnaes applies this to Dear Leader’s recent physical, because the Trump White House has become such a flowing river of disinformation that when they announce that the president is in perfect health, there is a strong assumption that he has, as she puts it, one foot in the grave.
It doesn’t bolster his credibility that he keeps falling asleep in meetings, whether that is a serious sign of health problems and possible sunsetting or simply the natural result of staying up at night sending out unhinged social media messages.
Credibility seems to be an ongoing issue, not only for Dear Leader but throughout his administration. Stephen Miller launched into a tirade on “Food Stamps,” by which he meant the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, actual food stamps having been phased out nearly 20 years ago.
The way most welfare works in most states and most places is we take your word for it. … If you say your kids are hungry, you are going to get food stamps. … We don’t check, as a country, if you even have kids. You will just start getting the checks.
Pushback was fast, with both workers and recipients enumerating the hoops people must jump through in order to qualify for SNAP benefits, a process of bureaucratic documentation that is said to keep many people from being able to complete the application.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Trump’s nomination of Bill Pulte, a homebuilder who has been director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for about a year, as Director of National Intelligence hit a wall nearly as soon as it was announced.
Cartoonists were not the only ones to cite his lack of qualifications for the post (beyond hitman), and resistance came from both sides of the aisle, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio declining to endorse him and Mitch McConnell delivering a blistering opinion:
Very few Senate-confirmable positions come with statutory eligibility requirements. There are good reasons why the Director of National Intelligence is one of them. Anyone performing this role of such immense public trust must have the extensive national security experience required by statute, and no nominee who falls short of this requirement will earn my vote.
In response to this bipartisan rejection, Trump announced that Pulte would only be “acting director,” with the explanation that Pulte wouldn’t actually want the job to be permanent.
Sure, Don.
And now the sports: The World Cup is about to kick off, but there are still seats available, since the scalpers seem more enthusiastic about the games than the fans are.
One issue, Amorim suggests, is that foreign fans are scared to come here because they’re heard horror stories of tourists being stopped, jailed and sent back by ICE and Customs. It’s enough of a problem that the Committee to Protect Journalists put out a guide for reporters being sent to cover the games to help them avoid being waylaid.
Some games are being played in Canada or Mexico, which helps avoid ICE issues, but doesn’t save fans from the hassles of dealing with FIFA itself, which has some serious organizational issues. At one point, they accidentally gave out free tickets and had to claw them back.
Things are bad enough that Fortune is offering advice that must surely be too late.
That’s the way the ball bounces.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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