Tag: election

R Street: H.R. 1 is a direct attack on free speech and federalism

Today the House of Representatives passed HR1, containing election reforms. R Streets has an article titled H.R. 1 is a direct attack on free speech and federalism. The bill heads to the Senate next where it will face a more difficult battle. President Biden has said that he will sign it if it passes.

H.R. 1, the “For the People Act,” is a direct attack on free speech and federalism.

For years, H.R. 1, the “For the People Act,” has been advanced as a way to fix our political system. The bill is sweeping in scope, and represents a wish list of ideas from the political left. In the new Congress, the bill will likely take center-stage.

H.R. 1 is likely the most consequential piece of election-related legislation in years and mostly in a bad way. Let’s be clear: it should be easier to participate in elections and easier to talk about elections. Anything that does the opposite is a bad idea.

As an organization, R Street stands strongly for the cause of political reform, and we will always support good policy. H.R. 1 is not good policy. For example:

  • It limits freedom of speech: The first amendment protects public speech and case law accords the most protection to political statements. While the internet does make broad circulation of ideas easier than ever before, reaching a true mass audience almost always requires spending money. Therefore, restricting money spent on political causes, while perhaps well-intentioned, also restricts speech. H.R. 1 only adds to the labyrinth of laws and regulations that govern spending money on political causes and it should be opposed for that reason alone. It’s through political speech that people can make their views known and can debate with each other. Less money for political speech means that whoever has power already is likely to keep it even if they use it in harmful ways.
  • H.R. 1 would weaken organizations that are seeking to impact public policy in positive ways: The first amendment applies to mass media organizations, nonprofits and unions, and is the reason any of these groups can speak without any fear of criminal sanction. Profit-making businesses, the lifeblood of the economy, have political rights too. The right to speak freely also involves the right to speak collectively and anonymously. We believe that limiting speech for people or groups we disagree with eventually could open the door to limiting our own speech. As a non-profit organization, the precedents H.R. 1 would set for groups like us would significantly restrict the ability of numerous organizations to carry out critical policy work.
  • It aims to forbid anonymous speech: Anonymous speech about political matters has played a vital role in America’s history—just ask the authors of The Federalist Papers. Many of those who supported the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s had very legitimate fears of having their identities uncovered. There are many good reasons to speak anonymously and disclosure requirements only harm individuals who support unpopular causes. But sometimes people who support once-unpopular causes turn out to be right. Helping a cause should not require public declarations of support.
  • It federalizes elections unnecessarily: The Constitution and its amendments make two promises that are sometimes at odds: voting rights can’t be abridged and states should run their own elections. While there should be a strong federal role in protecting the right to vote and election security, the specifics of election administration should be left to the states. This helps good policy ideas spread while bad ones die well-deserved deaths. Decentralization makes the overall system stronger—people intent on disruption have to figure out 50 separate systems—and lets states adopt customized practices, preferences and political systems. H.R. 1 would slash these differences and undermine state autonomy, an important strength of our electoral system.

Don’t get us wrong—there are some reforms in H.R. 1 that make a lot of sense. Vote-by-mail, mandatory paper trails for votes, enfranchisement of those with felony records, same-day registration, non-partisan redistricting and federal pre-clearance of changes to voting laws are all ideas worthy of support. But at the federal level, H.R. 1 is a bad bill that would squash political speech.

Epoch Times: Justice Clarence Thomas Dissents From Supreme Court on Election Case

The Epoch Times reports on the Supreme Court’s decision not to review election results in Justice Clarence Thomas Dissents From Supreme Court on Election Case: ‘We Need to Make It Clear’

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a dissenting opinion regarding the high court’s decision not to take up a case challenging the Pennsylvania Nov. 3 election results.

The court on Monday announced it won’t take up lawsuits challenging a Pennsylvania state court decision that relaxed ballot-integrity measures, including a move to extend the ballot-receipt deadline during the November election by three days due to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Former President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania’s GOP urged the court to take up a review of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling.

“This is not a prescription for confidence,” Thomas wrote on Monday, adding that “changing the rules in the middle of the game is bad enough.” Thomas, considered by many to be the most conservative justice, said the court should have granted a review.

“That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future,” Thomas wrote (pdf). “These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”

Other than Thomas, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also dissented.

“If state officials have the authority they have claimed, we need to make it clear. If not, we need to put an end to this practice now before the consequences become catastrophic,” Thomas, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, also wrote.

Thomas also appeared to make a reference to allegations of fraud and irregularities during the Nov. 3 election.

“We are fortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud,” Thomas wrote. “But that observation provides only small comfort. An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence. Also important is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.”

The Supreme Court on Monday also declined to review a bid by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and others who asked the court to strike down a policy that expanded mail-in ballots.

A lawyer for Kelly, Greg Teufel, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week that “it’s important the court should take an interest in whether Pennsylvania’s election laws are administered constitutionally or not, and in accordance with the Pennsylvania constitution and with the federal constitution.” Teufel noted that before the court’s decision on Monday, there was a slim chance of the justices taking it up.

Trump still has a request on the Supreme Court docket regarding his challenge to changes that the Wisconsin Election Commission ordered last year.

The Trumpet: How the 2020 Election Was Saved

Stephen Flurry at The Trumpet tells us How the 2020 Election Was Saved by entrenched interests.

Last week Time magazine published a 6,500-word article admitting the existence of “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information”—all for the purpose of protecting the 2020 election.

And, Time tells you, this was all a good thing.

This is the propaganda media in action. It is a vivid sign of just how wrong the world we live in has become.

Time admitted that it was revealing the “secret history” of a “cabal,” wielding enormous power over a “vast, cross-partisan campaign” and “hundreds of millions of dollars,” committing a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes” of “unprecedented scale” that was ready, among other things, to “flood the streets.”

This is not a conspiracy theory blog or even a conservative commentator. This is liberal, mainstream Time magazine. And this is an outright admission that liberals committed a nationwide conspiracy to change the election—including changing laws and changing your perception.

This is an attempt to admit the conspiracy that you suspected (and were scoffed at for suspecting) is real—because the truth is leaking out anyway—but to make you believe this was all a good thing.

The conspirators “were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.” They were not destroying the Constitution; they were rescuing democracy! They were not destroying your rights; they were “saving” the election.

Just weeks ago they were telling us, “Conspiracy? What conspiracy?” Now they are telling us, “Oh, of course there was a conspiracy—and it was a good thing.”

Read this Time article, and you will better realize how badly America is afflicted.

Here are quotes, in context, straight from the February 4 Time magazine article by Molly Ball titled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” (The context is: Believe that this was all a good thing.)

This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. …

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream—a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.

They were controlling information and changing rules and laws, but even though the average rational person would consider this rigging the election, you had better believe that they were “saving” and “fortifying” the election process!

Who were they? How did they control your information? How did they influence your perception? This article gives shocking detail about some of that, even admitting the threat of violence that the leftists were using to control the election—while constantly reminding you: We will let you confirm that it was a conspiracy, but you must believe it was a good conspiracy.

In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from ceos. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and afl-cio published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain—inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests—in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

If anyone thought the 2020 election was 155 million American voters choosing between the qualifications of two candidates and having their eligible votes counted and added up to determine the winner, the liberals at Time and elsewhere know differently. But remember: It’s good that liberals conducted a massive assault on voters’ perceptions (to say nothing of voters’ ballots) because, remember, Donald Trump was assaulting democracy.

This group, ranging from street rioters to billionaire executives, had an army on standby in case they needed to “save” the election by conducting a massive, violent coup!

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election—an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted.

Time magazine says that protecting the freedom, fairness, credibility and soundness of the election was the job of an “extraordinary shadow effort”—and that the people laboring in these shadows did not care who won. They had no intention to influence the outcome—only to make sure it was “fair.” Is your mind performing all the necessary contortions to believe what Time journalists and executives are telling you?

The article continues:

For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined president. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

How altruistic! These leftists and conservatives were motivated not by stopping President Trump’s reelection. They just care so much about democratic self-governance! Forget about the fact that many of them have been desecrating and destroying the memories of the Founding Fathers who established democratic self-governance. Believe instead that they spent hundreds of millions to make sure each voter could freely choose whichever candidate he or she thought was best for this country, just as the founders intended. Believe that changing the outcome of the election by manipulating millions of people was the furthest thing from their minds!

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers, and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.

After every election, the votes are counted and the winners are announced on election night. Except for 2020. This time, they planned for the count to take longer. And they colluded to implement information campaigns to influence Americans to expect the count to take longer. Some of their media assets prepared voters before the election and included social media posts telling people to “relax” because “good things take time.” Time says you must believe that this virtually unprecedented delay—a delay they were planning to have ahead of time—was “protecting the integrity” of the election.

Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy. … The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure—in the middle of a pandemic. For the thousands of local, mostly nonpartisan officials who administer elections, the most urgent need was money.

Good thing the liberal super-rich and all the organizations they fund have a lot of money!

Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million.

Time says you should view super-rich elites spending hundreds of millions to change the actual administration of the election process—and just in the swing states that would determine the outcome of the election—as philanthropists courageously “stepping into the breach.”

The article also admits that it was this same “loose” liberal cabal—which, you might suspect, is probably not all that loose—that organized and initiated the violent, destructive summer of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and riots.

The billionaire executives of Facebook and Twitter, for example, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, both met with “civil rights” leaders who were warning them that they had better silence pro-Trump “rumors.”

Time also admits that they coordinated to create online information campaigns to convince Americans that a delay in vote counting was normal. “The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by e-mail, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok [which is controlled by China], urging that every vote be counted. … The organization’s tracking polls found the message was being heard: the percentage of the public that didn’t expect to know the winner on election night gradually rose until by late October, it was over 70 percent. A majority also believed that a prolonged count wasn’t a sign of problems.” Time insists it was a good thing the billionaires and radical activists succeeded in changing the beliefs of the average American—otherwise people might think there was a problem with the election.

Finally, Election Day came on Nov. 3, 2020. And there were problems with votes being cast. And there were a lot of problems and delays with counting the vote—especially, for some reason, in the swing states that would determine who won the election.

The article says that following Election Day, the conspirators “monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result.”

Who were some of their leaders? Norm Eisen, “a prominent lawyer and former Obama administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program” (emphasis added). Did this former Obama official also not care who won the election, but only wanted to guarantee fairness?

Another organizer was a man named Mike Podhorzer, who set up mass teleconference calls to keep everyone coordinated. “The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives.”

“Democracy Defense,” “Voter Protection,” “Protect the Results,” “Civil Rights.” These sound like groups of people interested in lawful, constitutional, free and fair elections. Right?

Well, it turns out they did have a preferred candidate. And if that preferred candidate did not win on Election Day—or whenever the delayed vote-counting was finally done—they had a massive network of “protesters” ready to be unleashed at any moment.

This was a threat!

The article continues:

But behind the scenes, the business community was engaged in its own anxious discussions about how the election and its aftermath might unfold. The summer’s racial-justice protests had sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disrupting civil disorder.

This was part of the means of persuading those executives who might not have been quite ideologically liberal enough to participate in this election manipulation: use of force. This is describing a violent, government-overthrowing coup!

Meanwhile, the liberals’ “messaging”—more accurately, deception—was that the nation must live in fear of Trump voters rioting and staging a coup! But in truth, Trump voters reacted to losing a highly unusual, highly suspect election mostly by getting up and going to work the next morning.

The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as November 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.”

This may seem like a lot of different “action committees” and “research groups” and other organizations. But where do they all get their funding and their marching orders? In many cases, it traces back to the same few billionaires. Not quite as “loose” a coalition as it seems.

At 11 p.m. on election night, President Trump’s results were better than anyone expected. (Even after the delayed, largely fraudulent vote-counting, he ended up with an official total of 74 million—an all-time record second only to, somehow, Joe Biden’s 81 million.) In response, this “election integrity”-minded group signed in for an emergency teleconference call.

Hundreds joined; many were freaking out. “It was really important for me and the team in that moment to help ground people in what we had already known was true,” says Angela Peoples, director for the Democracy Defense Coalition. Podhorzer presented data to show the group that victory was in hand.

While he was talking, Fox News surprised everyone by calling Arizona for Biden. The public-awareness campaign had worked: tv anchors were bending over backward to counsel caution and frame the vote count accurately. The question then became what to do next.

The conversation that followed was a difficult one, led by the activists charged with the protest strategy. “We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street,” Peoples says.

They were perhaps minutes away from setting off mass protests and, undoubtedly, riots. But they were afraid that enough Americans might finally react against everything that had been going on, and the liberals on the conference call decided to trust their system.

So the word went out: Stand down. Protect the Results announced that it would “not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary.” …

Activists reoriented the Protect the Results protests toward a weekend of celebration. “Counter their disinfo with our confidence & get ready to celebrate,” read the messaging guidance Shenker-Osorio presented to the liberal alliance on Friday, November 6. “Declare and fortify our win. Vibe: confident, forward-looking, unified—not passive, anxious.” The voters, not the candidates, would be the protagonists of the story.

The planned day of celebration happened to coincide with the election being called on November 7.

This is what the liberal activists and elites were telling their people to think and feel and express for the purpose of locking in their win. And the fact that the planned day of celebration was the same day that the mainstream media, in coordination, called the 2020 presidential election for Democrat Joe Biden was only a “coincidence.”

Remember the celebration? Did you see all the coronavirus-scare-mongering liberal politicians and their followers thronging in the streets without masks—and wonder why they weren’t celebrating in their homes, wearing two masks and sitting at least 6 feet apart?

This is the art of the steal. The swamp is deep! The “deep state” is deep! This is what Donald Trump warned about: powerful, influential elites who are “enemies of the people.” There truly is a conspiracy at work.

And you can take the liberals’ own word for it! Time executives were very deliberate about the words they used to describe this. Conspiracy, cabal, protest strategy, reprising the summer demonstrations—these are not words that accidentally slipped by editors. They want you to know there was a conspiracy—perhaps because you would find out anyway—and they want you to think it’s a good thing.

Read this Time article and come to a stark realization: The world you live in—which seems fine on the surface—is hanging by a thread. And the thread is rotten.

The only answer, the only hope, is not the Republican Party or some new party or even the ideals of conservatism. Your only hope is to see the world and even this once-great nation for what it is and to use this opportunity for what it is: one last chance to repent.

See also The Organic Prepper’s The US Ministry Of Woke Propaganda Wants To Cancel You, Me, Fox, & Anyone Else Who Disagrees

Raconteur Report: Good Luck With That Plan

Aesop at Raconteur Report gives his opinion on DC shenanigans in Good Luck with that Plan.

Meme from Sal the Agorist

For reference, in Iraq and A-stan, Uncle’s guys only had a few tens of thousands of insurgents with which to contend. IIRC, the number that comes to recollection is around 50K or so. Britistan, from 1969-1999, was never confronted by more than a few thousand active Provos in the IRA, and it bled them and tied them up handily for three decades before everyone knocked off by mutual consent.

His Fraudulency is potentially facing millions.

Seems legit.

Forget the happygas: I suspect the next few years are likely to be some of the worst times seen in these parts in 150 years and more.

BTW, proof that no insurrection was ever intended earlier this month: they have upwards of 30K troopies from the Notional Guard in DC, now.

We had 400,000 people on the National Mall on the 6th. That would have been 6 complete D-Day invasions-worth of American troops. Eisenhower didn’t have that many troops in France after the Normandy D-Day Invasion until July, a month later. If the MAGA crowd had actually wanted or intended to go all seize-the-government, (besides obviously not bringing a shit-ton more guns, nor any intent to hurt anyone) they could have conquered DC, Virginia, and Maryland, and held it indefinitely, with an army that size. (For reference, 400,000 people is approximately twice the size of the Marine Corps, anytime since the Vietnam War.) “Insurrection” my ass. That was a staged photo op co-opted by BLM/Antifa, for DNC propaganda gaslighting purposes, as we’ve seen non-stop every day since it happened. There aren’t enough cops east of the Appalachian Mountains to contend with a crowd that size were same intent on misbehaving, even if the po-po had been as inclined to murder as was one trigger-happy Barney Fife, determined to go all Tiananmanen Square on unarmed marchers, from safely behind a barricaded door.

If that crowd had been actually and truly hostile, those cops would have been found with their badges shoved up their asses, their severed jangly bits in their mouths, and their decapitated heads mounted as decorations on the spiked tips of the metal fence around the Capitol, and a few thousand marchers would have been wearing sweatshirts afterwards that said “Now I have a machinegun. Ho-Ho-Ho”

That crowd was no such vengeful mob, or the lists of dead PD the next day would have looked like the crawls on TVs after 9-11. These were clearly not the revolutionaries the gaslighting media and deranged Democommunist leadership keeps trying to invent.

“Revolt” my ass. That was a Sunday church picnic, kicking sand in the faces of a pack of shitweasels. No more, no less. To those thinking things will ever again be that peaceful this side of their appointments with a gibbet and noose, my only reply is

“Yippee Ki Yay, m*****f*****s.”

Meanwhile, the mainstream “conservative” broadcast punditry, and much of the online versions as well, seems content as a pig in sh*t to cuck-cuck-cluck about how they’re going to “Get ’em next time!” and “Vote Harder!” at them in 2022 and 2024, as if we didn’t just watch that ship sail right into an iceberg and kill everyone on board, twice, in the last two months. Everyone babbling bullshit about solving this at the ballot box is entirely delusional, and has suffered a psychotic break with reality. They should be locked up somewhere with soft food, soft music, and soft walls, until they die, or come to their senses, and I don’t particularly care which, at this point. They’re worse than worthless, and contribute nothing but active disinformation 24/7, which inarguable truths are the only reason why they’re still permitted to broadcast their tiddly twaddly codswallop on the public airwaves. That assessment is true for the entire goddamned LOT of them, BTW, lest there be any misunderstanding.

Yesterday, guy I was talking to about whether/when things go frisky noted “Nobody wants to be the one to go first.”

True enough.

But the thing you need to remember, given the numbers of us versus the number of them, is that once it does kick off, no one will want to be left out before there’s no more minions and/or Democommunists to shoot.

Ponder on that.

Then remember that in any group, there’s an absolute minimum number of short bus window-lickers that can’t be controlled. Just like with Kung Flu, those Gilligans – from either side – are going to be what sparks the fuse on the powder keg on which we’re all sitting.

Doubt me?

Okay. Tell me please, who fired that first shot on Lexington Common 245 years ago… I’ll wait over here while you’re working out that answer.

Oh, BTW, those 30K guys in D.C.? Mostly NG MP units (per Big Country Expat’s info). Who are, overwhelmingly, civilian LE types in their day jobs. So Team Fraudulent has essentially stripped the entire Eastern seaboard cities and counties near those units of a good number of their regular police officers.

That shouldn’t have any downside, should it…?

Me, I’m going shopping this weekend, at a couple of GI surplus haunts.

You never know what useful items you might find in nooks and crannies until you look.

Breitbart: ***Live Updates*** U.S. Capitol Descends into Chaos on Day of Electoral College Certification

Breitbart provides live updates on the chaos in DC.

5:51 P.M. NBC reports that the woman shot earlier in the Capitol building has died.

 

5:50 P.M.

 

5:43 P.M. CNN reports the Capitol building has been secured.

 

5:35 P.M.

 

5:14 P.M.

 

5:06 P.M.

James Howard Kunstler: Giving Up the Ghost

In Giving Up the Ghost, James Howard Kunstler talks about what could happen tomorrow and after in regards to the US Presidential election.

Things are shaking loose. Secrets are flying out of black boxes. Shots have been fired. The center is not holding because the center is no longer there, only a black hole where the center used to be, and, within it, the shriekings of lost souls. Will the United States go missing this week, or fight its way out of the chaos and darkness?

Whatever occurs in this strange week of confrontation, Joe Biden will not be leading any part of it. Where has he been since Christmas? Back to hiding in the basement? Did the American people elect a ghost? Even if this storm blows over, could Joe Biden possibly claim any legitimacy in the Oval Office? And then what happens with the rest of the story — which is an epic economic convulsion sharper than the Great Depression — as time is unsuspended and the year 2021 actually unspools?

Only the bare outlines of this week’s fateful game are visible. Mr. Trump has not conceded the election. An action will play out in congress under rarely-used constitutional rules as to how the electoral college votes are awarded to whom. The rancor around this action is already epic. Few of the political players are beyond suspicion of dark deals and shifty allegiances. Persistent rumor has the president laying out a royal flush of deadly information about his antagonists, enough to make heads explode among the formerly cocksure and vaporize the narrative they’ve been running for four years.

A whole lot of people are converging in the nation’s capital at midweek, maybe even the touted million. It is a moment, possibly, not unlike the Bastille in Paris, 1789. They will be clamoring right outside Congress as the electoral vote ceremony proceeds. If the battle is not joined in the chamber, it’s a little hard to believe the crowd will just heave a million sighs, trudge back to their cars, and drive quietly home.

Senator Ted Cruz has come up with a pretty sound plan: a ten-day emergency audit of the balloting with an electoral commission consisting of five Senators, five House Members, and five Supreme Court Justices — to consider and resolve the disputed returns. The proposal is based on the 1877 procedure for resolving the contested Hayes-Tilden election. “Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed,” the proposal stated. Naturally, the Democratic Party’s news media handmaidens denounced it as “embarrassing” — which raises the question: who exactly will be embarrassed if the plan goes ahead?

On Sunday, Mr. Trump had a telephone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, ostensibly to discuss efforts made by his office to authenticate the validity of the Nov. 3rd balloting in that state. This is being portrayed by The WashPo, The New York Times, and the rest of the gang as a virtual replay of the Ukraine phone call that eventuated in the 2019 impeachment.  Consider that the notorious Ukraine phone call was an attempt to inquire about the influence-peddling of Hunter Biden at the time when his father was vice-president. Does anyone doubt now, a year-and-a-half later, with the release of Hunter B’s laptop evidence, that there was some legitimate concern there? Might anyone suspect that there is also some genuine concern about the Georgia balloting — and Mr. Raffensperger’s failure to audit the vote? Did Mr. Raffensperger stupidly walk into a trap in that phone call? I doubt that the call was casual or impulsive on the president’s part.

What I wonder, given the eerie silence at Joe Biden’s end of things, is whether there is some negotiation underway for Mr. Biden to concede the election before events move forward into official inquiries. I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if that is the case. A US election has never concluded under such an enormous cloud, and with such a show of weakness by the putative winner. Joe Biden is but a ghost in the machine, and the machine is infernally corrupt, and now just about everybody knows it, including the figures fighting so hard to pretend that it isn’t so. Something like a war is underway both within the USA and from without. Mr. Trump is a war president and he’s not shirking his duty. War goes where it will and a genuine leader goes out to meet it where it comes.

Alt-Market: If You Thought 2020 Was Bad, Watch What Happens In 2021

Brandon Smith at Alt-Market makes his own predictions for the new year in If You Thought 2020 Was Bad, Watch What Happens In 2021

In terms of the economy and the American social situation, 2020 is definitely one of the ugliest years on record, there’s really no way around it. That said, I get the impression that many in the public are operating under the assumption that we are about to cross over the peak of the mountain and it will be all downhill from here on. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

All eyes have been focused on the pandemic event, and the thinking is that once the pandemic is “over”, the crisis will be over and everything will go back to normal. But, as the globalists have been telling us since the outbreak began, the world “will never go back to normal again”. It’s not because of the pandemic, mind you, it’s because THEY won’t allow things to go back to normal. The “great reset”, as the World Economic Forum calls it, is meant to go on for many years. And, the globalists intend that every aspect of our lives be changed into something almost unrecognizable.

First I want to make it clear that I don’t expect the reset agenda to be successful. In fact, I think it’s going to fail miserably. The globalists have reached too far too fast and exposed themselves, and millions upon millions of people around the world and in America are not buying the pandemic narrative. But here is the problem; the pandemic is a distraction from a much greater threat, namely the economic collapse that is developing right now.

The financial downturn has been created by international banks and central banks through massive debt creation and inflationary stimulus measures. The initial spark for the wildfire took place in 2008, the economic threat has been under the noses of the public for quite some time. Now, however, the establishment has some perfect scapegoats, including the Trump Administration as well as the coronavirus. The globalists are hoping that people will become so mesmerized by the pandemic crisis and the election fight that they will rest all blame for the collapse on those two ready-made targets.

Make no mistake, the economy was put on life support long before Trump ever entered office and long before anyone ever heard of COVID-19. The globalists are simply pulling the plug right now and letting it die.

Of course, stock markets remain high, but the stock market does NOT represent the economy. It does not reflect financial health or the stability on main street. The stock market is an artificially propped up Pavlovian bell designed to make the public salivate every time the tickers go green. A majority of people tend to associate stock prices with economic improvement (mainly people who know nothing about economics or stocks). The extent of their research is 15 minutes of mainstream news a day along with 30-second reports on the Dow rising or falling, that is all. A rising Dow is enough to keep a large percentage of the population believing that things are going to get better.

Eventually stocks will crash along with almost everything else, just as they did in the hyperinflated markets of Weimar, Germany. But, what the public should be focused on is small business closures, including U-6 measurements, retail spending while stimulus is cut off, eviction notices, etc. This will tell you what the actual story is behind the economy.

There are certain events that could also expedite the downturn, and we must be wary of black swans right now. The financial system has been made so fragile over the past decade that any single major shock could bring it down (remember 2008?). Let’s not mistake stimulus for resilience. Stimulus has its limits and I believe we are hitting those limits as we enter 2021.

Here are some of the events I predict will happen next year, along with the effects they will have on the stability of America and many other parts of the world…

Contested Election Continues into January

State electors are supposed to finalize the presidential election results a week from now, but I suspect legal battles may prevent the electoral college from completing the tally. This could lead to electoral college results being ignored, and the fight for the White House continuing into next year (unless the Supreme Court can hear all arguments and come to a decision in record time).

Growing evidence of election fraud specifically in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan has led many conservatives to question the outcome of the presidential election. I don’t think the majority of the doubters will accept a Biden presidency even if Trump decided to concede.

What I think is more likely is that Trump will stay in office beyond the January inauguration day, and that the political left will suddenly realize that the election was not as absolute as they originally assumed.

The contested election would not cause economic instability directly, but it would mean that the public will be knocked out of their stupor and that their faith in the future will be shaken. Overvalued, fragile financial systems rely on the “greater fool” to support prices and need the blind faith of the population in order to continue lurching forward. That faith is about to be tested.

Mass Protests, Riots, Possibly Armed Conflict

I have become rather suspicious of the behavior of the mainstream media these days, even more so than usual. Why? Well, every time a hard fact on election fraud is released, the media has chosen to lie outright about it. And I’m not talking about clever spin in an attempt to diminish the effect of the news, I’m talking about outright lying that could easily be checked and debunked by anyone.

This kind of disinformation would never convince conservatives or even intelligent moderates because we double-check the sources. People on the political left, though, are more inclined to believe whatever the MSM says without doing their own research. I’m beginning to wonder if the media is pulling the same stunt they did in 2016: giving leftists false hope through misinformation, so that when things don’t go their way, they will become enraged as if something was stolen from them.

Is the media setting up the left for an epic shock by refusing to report any of the legitimate election fraud evidence and making them think there is no case? Is the goal to hit leftists so hard with Trump staying in office that they riot viciously in response?

Maybe I’m wrong and Biden goes into office without any obstructions as many expect. Let’s be honest, though, there are only two ways the election situation can go at this point:

In light of election fraud evidence, Trump stays in office. Leftists riot en masse claiming the presidency has been stolen. Conservatives will be asked to support martial law measures to “stop the insanity.” By supporting martial law, conservatives would sacrifice the very constitutional protections and liberties they claim to defend.

Biden enters the White House under heavy suspicion of fraud. He then tries to institute a Level 4 national lockdown in the name of stopping the pandemic. With the death rate for the virus well under 1% for anyone not living in a nursing home with preexisting conditions, and no evidence that mask mandates do anything to stop the virus spread, millions of American refuse to comply. The states and communities that do comply will suffer even more small-business closures and unemployment.

Biden would then try to initiate martial law measures, erasing civil liberties and possibly triggering a civil war.

Medical Passports and Vaccination Blackmail

Government officials are constantly in the media these days claiming that vaccinations will not be made mandatory. What they don’t mention is that they are already trying to legislate that anyone without a vaccination or medical passport will be unable to participate in normal society or even be allowed to work in their job. This program is moving at an incredibly fast pace, which makes me think the globalists realize they are losing the battle for the minds of the citizenry and they need to rush their agenda before it’s too late.

Here is what will happen in 2021 in terms of the pandemic:

  1. The media and elitist organizations will continue to pump up the infection numbers to frighten the public, even though the death rate is so low it makes the infection rate meaningless.
  2. If Biden is in office, mandates will be made into a federal issue and will be federally enforced.
  3. If Trump is in office, state governments will try to enforce mandates and major corporations will help them.
  4. There will then be a major push to require medical passports proving a person is not infected to enter into any public place. This means submission to 24/7 contact tracing or getting a new vaccine whenever ordered to. Basically, your life will be under the total control of state or federal governments if you want to have any semblance of returning to your normal life.
  5. If this process does not work and does not intimidate enough people into compliance, governments will seek to offer stimulus checks or a form of Universal Basic Income, but only for those people who agree to tracking through their cell phones and to vaccination.
  6. New mutations of COVID-19 will be conveniently found every year from now on, meaning the public will have to get new vaccinations constantly, and medical tyranny will never go away unless people take an aggressive stand.

It Gets Worse From Here On…

2021 will be far worse that 2020, but at least the lines will be drawn and the fight will be more clear to everyone. The economic crisis is what concerns me the most. The events listed above will complete the final downturn in the global system and America in particular. Such a financial crash would cause far more chaos and death than the coronavirus ever could.

Ultimately, I believe the public will respond badly to pandemic mandates. Many conservative states and counties will simply refuse to enforce them. However, the question is, will people end up fighting each other and forget all about the globalists that created the problem in the first place? Will mass poverty succeed where the pandemic failed in convincing Americans to give up their liberties in exchange for some stability?

Distractions abound, and the reset agenda looms, but I don’t see the globalists coming out of this unscathed. Too many people now know who they are and what they are up to.

Publius Huldah: A Constitutional Roadmap for Conquering Election Fraud

Attorney Publius Huldah writes A Constitutional Roadmap for Conquering Election Fraud.

The following shows what the State Legislatures and each Branch of the federal government have the authority to do to address the monstrous crime which has been committed against our Country.

1. Article IV, §4, US Constitution

The fundamental Principle which should guide us in dealing with this issue is set forth at Article IV, §4, US Constitution. It reads,

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

The essence of a “Republic” is that sovereign power is exercised by Representatives elected, directly or indirectly, by The People. 1

Election fraud strikes at the heart of our Constitutional Republic. Therefore, Congress, the federal courts and the Executive Branch [i.e., the “United States”] have the duty, imposed by Article IV, §4, to negate the fraud in order to preserve our republican form of government.

As shown below, the States also have authority to remedy the election fraud committed in their State.

2. The Constitutional framework governing federal elections

These are the clauses in the US Constitution everyone should study:

♦ Art. I, §4 is the “times, places, and manner” clause: It means what it says! Federal and State judges, and federal and State executive agencies, have no authority to tinker with election laws made by the State Legislatures or Congress. When they tinker with the laws, their acts are usurpations and must be treated as such [link].

♦ Art. II, §1, clause 2: The President & Vice President are to be elected by Electors appointed, in such manner as the State Legislatures shall direct…

♦ Art. II, §1, clause 4: Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors and the Day on which they Vote.

♦ The 12th Amendment sets forth the procedures for how the Electors are to cast their votes for President & then for Vice President. To our detriment, we have ignored those procedures for a long time.

♦ The 20th Amendment, §1, says the terms of President & Vice President end January 20; and the terms of Senators & Representatives end January 3.

♦ And §2 of the 20th Amendment says Congress shall meet on January 3, unless they make a law setting a different date. Congress did make a law which changed that date to January 6.

3. The Statutory framework

At Title 3, US Code, §§ 1-21 [link], Congress implemented the constitutional provisions.

Congress understood there would be fights in the States over the selection of the Electors. So they provided for the fights:

A.

At 3 USC §1, Congress set November 3 as the date for appointing the Electors in the States.

But the next two Sections address what happens when Electors aren’t appointed on November 3.

♦ §2 says the Electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the Legislature of each State may direct.

♦ And §3 says Electors are chosen when any controversy respecting their appointment has been finally determined. “Determining the controversy” is, of course, the purpose of the litigation and the hearings in State Legislatures.

B.

Article II, §1, clause 4, US Constit., gives Congress authority to determine the Date on which the electors vote:

♦ 3 USC §7 sets that date for December 14.

♦ But 3 USC §§12 & 13 provide for what happens when Congress hasn’t received the Electors’ votes by December 23.

So we see that flexibility to deal with fights in the States over the selection of Electors is built into the US Code.

C.

Now we get to the counting of the Electors’ Votes in Congress: 3 USC §15 says Congress is to meet on January 6 to count the votes. The President of the Senate [Mike Pence] presides. He is to call for objections to the votes. The rest of §15 and §§16-18 deal with handling the objections in Congress respecting the Electors’ votes.

So the statutory framework recognizes that selecting the Presidential Electors can get messy; and that there would be fights over the Electors in the States and in Congress. We are working through this process right now.

4. Congress has the power to determine whether the President elect and Vice President elect are qualified for office.

Section 3 of the 20th Amendment shows that Congress has the authority to determine whether the President elect and Vice President elect are qualified for office. 2 If either is not a natural born citizen, Congress has the power and the duty to disqualify that person. 3 Accordingly, it was Congress’ duty to inquire into whether Obama was a natural born citizen; and today it is Congress’ duty to inquire into whether Kamala Harris is a natural born citizen.

Congress also has the power – and the duty – to disqualify Biden and Harris on the ground that the fraud bringing about their sham “election” was an attack on the States’ Right, guaranteed by Article IV, §4, to have a republican form of government.

5. Election Fraud is a federal crime

It is the DUTY of the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute the election fraud. It is disgraceful that they have done nothing.

6. The Duty of the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is surely aware of its Duty, imposed by Article IV, §4, US Constitution, to guarantee to the States a republican form of government where Representatives are elected by The People – and not by corrupt politicians who pay for massive organized election fraud and cheating.

While the Supreme Court obviously cannot enforce its own rulings and must depend on the Executive Branch of the federal government to enforce them; 4 the Supreme Court must issue an Opinion consistent with Article IV, §4, which, when enforced by the Executive Branch of the federal government, solves the present crisis.

7. The State Legislatures should appoint replacement Electors

It is clear that State Legislatures have the power to ignore the fraudulent election and appoint a new set of Presidential Electors. Such is consistent with the Constitution and the statutory scheme laid out in 3 USC §§1-21. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has already acknowledged that State Legislatures may do this.

REMEMBER that Article II, §1, clause 2, US Constitution, says Electors are to be appointed “in such Manner as the State Legislatures” may direct.

Originally, Electors were generally chosen by the State Legislatures. In McPherson v. Blacker, decided 1892 [link], the Supreme Court gave the history of how each State Legislature chose their Electors since the first presidential election. It was only later that State Legislatures began to provide for the popular election of the Presidential Electors.

Congress expressly recognizes that State Legislatures may resume at any time the power to select the Electors. Remember that 3 USC §2, says,

“Whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law, the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct.”

Additionally, in Bush v. Gore, decided 2000 [link], the Supreme Court said that the State Legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it chooses, select the Electors itself; and even after granting the franchise to the People to select the Electors, State Legislatures can resume the power at any time.

So yes, in States where the election was stolen, the State Legislatures may – and should – reassume their plenary power to select the Electors. America urges the State Legislators to be bold and do what is right.

8. Warning

Republican establishment cowards who refuse to confront and defeat the election fraud don’t seem to understand the consequences of their refusal to man up and fight the fraud. Our Country is right now in the process of being overthrown and taken over by profoundly evil people. You better fight while we still can.

Endnotes:

1 Federalist No. 10 (J. Madison) [link]: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, … *** … The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; …”

2 The qualifications are set forth at Article II, §1, clause 5 and the 12th Amendment, last sentence.

3 Whether or not a President elect or Vice President elect meet the constitutional qualifications for office is a political question for Congress to decide.

4 Federalist No. 78 (A. Hamilton) [link] “…The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” [Caps are Hamilton’s; other emphasis added]

Breitbart: Texas Sues Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin at Supreme Court over Election Rules

From Breitbart, Texas Sues Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin at Supreme Court over Election Rules. Texas argues that the defendant states “usurped their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes. They accomplished these statutory revisions through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.”

The State of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court shortly before midnight on Monday challenging the election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the grounds that they violate the Constitution.

Texas argues that these states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures. Additionally, Texas argues that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Finally, Texas argues that there were “voting irregularities” in these states as a result of the above.

Texas is asking the Supreme Court to order the states to allow their legislatures to appoint their electors. The lawsuit says:

Certain officials in the Defendant States presented the pandemic as the justification for ignoring state laws regarding absentee and mail-in voting. The Defendant States flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted. Whether well intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States. Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.

…

This case presents a question of law: Did the Defendant States violate the Electors Clause by taking non-legislative actions to change the election rules that would govern the appointment of presidential electors? These non-legislative changes to the Defendant States’ election laws facilitated the casting and counting of ballots in violation of state law, which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution. By these unlawful acts, the Defendant States have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but their actions have also debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.

Texas approached the Supreme Court directly because Article III provides that it is the court of first impression on subjects where it has original jurisdiction, such as disputes between two or more states…

Link to motion at Scribd

 

The Spectator: Reasons Why the 2020 Presidential Election Is Deeply Puzzling

Patrick Basham at The Spectator writes Reasons Why the 2020 Presidential Election Is Puzzling.

To say out-loud that you find the results of the 2020 presidential election odd is to invite derision. You must be a crank or a conspiracy theorist. Mark me down as a crank, then. I am a pollster and I find this election to be deeply puzzling. I also think that the Trump campaign is still well within its rights to contest the tabulations. Something very strange happened in America’s democracy in the early hours of Wednesday November 4 and the days that followed. It’s reasonable for a lot of Americans to want to find out exactly what.

First, consider some facts. President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.

Trump’s vote increased so much because, according to exit polls, he performed far better with many key demographic groups. Ninety-five percent of Republicans voted for him. He did extraordinarily well with rural male working-class whites.

He earned the highest share of all minority votes for a Republican since 1960. Trump grew his support among black voters by 50 percent over 2016. Nationally, Joe Biden’s black support fell well below 90 percent, the level below which Democratic presidential candidates usually lose.

Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to 35 percent. With 60 percent or less of the national Hispanic vote, it is arithmetically impossible for a Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Bellwether states swung further in Trump’s direction than in 2016. Florida, Ohio and Iowa each defied America’s media polls with huge wins for Trump. Since 1852, only Richard Nixon has lost the electoral college after winning this trio, and that 1960 defeat to John F. Kennedy is still the subject of great suspicion.

Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor.

We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.

Victorious presidential candidates, especially challengers, usually have down-ballot coattails; Biden did not. The Republicans held the Senate and enjoyed a ‘red wave’ in the House, where they gained a large number of seats while winning all 27 toss-up contests. Trump’s party did not lose a single state legislature and actually made gains at the state level.

Another anomaly is found in the comparison between the polls and non-polling metrics. The latter include: party registrations trends; the candidates’ respective primary votes; candidate enthusiasm; social media followings; broadcast and digital media ratings; online searches; the number of (especially small) donors; and the number of individuals betting on each candidate.

Despite poor recent performances, media and academic polls have an impressive 80 percent record predicting the winner during the modern era. But, when the polls err, non-polling metrics do not; the latter have a 100 percent record. Every non-polling metric forecast Trump’s reelection. For Trump to lose this election, the mainstream polls needed to be correct, which they were not. Furthermore, for Trump to lose, not only did one or more of these metrics have to be wrong for the first time ever, but every single one had to be wrong, and at the very same time; not an impossible outcome, but extremely unlikely nonetheless.

Atypical voting patterns married with misses by polling and non-polling metrics should give observers pause for thought. Adding to the mystery is a cascade of information about the bizarre manner in which so many ballots were accumulated and counted.

The following peculiarities also lack compelling explanations:

1. Late on election night, with Trump comfortably ahead, many swing states stopped counting ballots. In most cases, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers

2. Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed. They were unusually large in size (hundreds of thousands) and had an unusually high (90 percent and above) Biden-to-Trump ratio

3. Late arriving ballots were counted. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions

4. The failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots. The destruction of mail in ballot envelopes, which must contain signatures

5. Historically low absentee ballot rejection rates despite the massive expansion of mail voting. Such is Biden’s narrow margin that, as political analyst Robert Barnes observes, ‘If the states simply imposed the same absentee ballot rejection rate as recent cycles, then Trump wins the election’

6. Missing votes. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards are missing

7. Non-resident voters. Matt Braynard’s Voter Integrity Project estimates that 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia. Biden’s margin is 12,670 votes

8. Serious ‘chain of custody’ breakdowns. Invalid residential addresses. Record numbers of dead people voting. Ballots in pristine condition without creases, that is, they had not been mailed in envelopes as required by law

9. Statistical anomalies. In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch. It is particularly perplexing that all statistical anomalies and tabulation abnormalities were in Biden’s favor. Whether the cause was simple human error or nefarious activity, or a combination, clearly something peculiar happened.

If you think that only weirdos have legitimate concerns about these findings and claims, maybe the weirdness lies in you.

The Trumpet: What Does the U.S. Constitution Say About the Election Crisis?

The Trumpet talks about what the Founding Fathers said in regards to solving contested elections in What Does the U.S. Constitution Say About the Election Crisis?

The rule of law is under attack in America. Evidence shows politicians are trying to transform the nation by emphasizing ends over means. Former United States federal prosecutor Sidney Powell claims to have evidence exposing large-scale voter fraud. During an interview with Fox Business, Powell said she had “staggering statistical evidence” that a leading voting machine firm, Dominion Voter Systems, stole votes from U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Well, I can hardly wait to put forth all the evidence we have collected on Dominion, starting with the fact it was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chávez and then shipped internationally to manipulate votes for purchase in other countries, including this one,” she told Lou Dobbs on November 13. “It was funded by money from Venezuela and Cuba, and China has a role in it also. So, if you want to talk about foreign election interference, we certainly have it now. We have staggering statistical evidence.”

What Powell is talking about is the biggest political scandal in U.S. history—if proved true.

If corrupt politicians can get away with using Communist-funded software to rig an election, then we no longer live in a constitutional republic. We live in an authoritarian technocracy.

Shockingly, most political and media figures do not want to give Powell a chance to present her evidence. News sources from the center-left Washington Post to the center-right Wall Street Journal have condemned Powell’s claims as a conspiracy theory. Former President Barack Obama said in an interview with 60 Minutes that President Trump needs to “put the country first” and concede the election right away. A group of 1,000 attorneys published a letter on November 10 making similar demands. They accused President Trump of violating his oath to the U.S. Constitution by claiming there was evidence of voter fraud.

Of course, none of these figures say what specific clause of the Constitution President Trump had violated. That is because the Constitution does not prohibit presidents from investigating voter fraud. In fact, as the nation’s chief law enforcement executive, you could say the Constitution mandates that he investigate these fraud allegations.

Those accusing President Trump of violating the rule of law are ignoring a major aspect of constitutional law. The Constitution does not give the media the power to pick the president, nor does it give attorneys the power to pick the president. It does not even give the American people the power to pick the president. The supreme law of the land gives the electoral college the power to pick the president. This means every politician, lawyer and soldier who has taken an oath to the Constitution is bound to accept the president chosen on December 14 by the 538 electors of the electoral college.

The recounts and court cases that happen before then are an attempt to inform these electors how their state voted. Electors are not constitutionally required to vote for the candidate who won their state, and six electors did not do so during the 2016 presidential elections. Only 33 states have laws punishing electors for not voting the way their state did.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution also wrote specific provisions on how to solve a contested election. They empowered Congress to be the backup if the electoral college could not decide on a winner. The 12th Amendment specifies that if no candidate receives 270 votes in the electoral college due to disputed ballots, or some other reason, the House of Representatives shall immediately choose between the three leading candidates. In this congressional vote, the representation from each state has one vote.

In regard to the current election crisis, law professor Donald Brand wrote, “If neither candidate gets to 270 electors due to disputed ballots, the House would have to decide the election. Though the House has a Democratic majority, such an outcome would almost certainly benefit Trump. Here’s why: In a concession to small states concerned their voices would be marginalized if the House was called upon to choose the president, the founders gave only one vote to each state. House delegations from each state meet to decide how to cast their single vote. That voting procedure gives equal representation to California—population 40 million—and Wyoming, population 600,000. This arrangement favors Republicans. The gop has dominated the House delegations of 26 states since 2018—exactly the number required to reach a majority under the rules of House presidential selection.”

Many Democrats hate the electoral college and want to replace it with a system where the winner of the popular vote becomes president. But they cannot condemn President Trump for violating the rule of law for refusing to concede an election before the electoral college has even convened. The framers of the U.S. Constitution established provisions on how to decide contested elections, and the only people violating the rule of law are those trying to circumvent those provisions by letting the media pick the president.

In 1999, British historian Paul Johnson wrote an article in the Sunday Telegraph titled “No Law Without Order, No Freedom Without Law.” He wrote: “The rule of law, as distinct from the rule of a person, or class or people, and as opposed to the rule of force, is an abstract, sophisticated concept. It is mighty difficult to achieve. But until it is achieved, and established in the public mind with such vehemence that masses of individuals are prepared to die to uphold it, no other form of progress can be regarded as secure. The Greeks had tried to establish the rule of law but failed. The Romans had succeeded under their republic but Caesar and his successors had destroyed it. The essence of the rule of law is its impersonality, omnipotence, and ubiquity. It is the same law for everyone, everywhere—kings, emperors, high priests, the state itself, are subject to it. If exceptions are made, the rule of law begins to collapse—that was the grand lesson of antiquity.”

Americans today do not understand “the grand lesson of antiquity” as our founders understood it. That is why the nation is on a dangerous path toward lawlessness.

For decades, activists have striven to fundamentally transform America by emphasizing ends over means. If a policy lacks support to be passed by the lawmaking branch of government, radicals call for the president to enact it via executive order, or for the Supreme Court to enact it via judicial activism, or for protesters to take to the streets. They accuse President Trump of violating the rule of law when he investigates lawbreaking, but they attack the supreme law of the land if the electoral college votes in a way they do not like.

The Prophet Isaiah described such lawless thinking 2,700 years ago: “None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands” (Isaiah 59:4-6).

This passage is a prophecy about end-time America (as our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong, proves). Today, corrupt politicians “speak lies,” “conceive mischief,” and “bring forth iniquity.” But God will not allow them to “cover themselves in their works.” He will expose the corruption so people have a chance to repent before a lawless spirit completely destroys America by replacing the rule of law with the horrifying rule of brute force!..

AmPart: Giuliani – Powell News Conference November 19, 2020

American Partisan, among others, made note of the Nov. 19th press conference with “Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and a host of other lawyers who are representing President Trump and the American people who voted for him.”

…To be quite frank, I was mesmerized as I drove around and at one point when my errand list was done, I parked in a shopping center parking lot to listen to the end of the press conference.

Giuliani started out saying that he called the news conference because he was tired of the press saying that the Presidential election was not stolen. “Show us facts” the MSM keeps shouting…

In case Youtube removes the above video, it may alternately be viewed at Breitbart – Trump Campaign Holds Press Conference to Outline ‘Viable Path to Victory’

The Federalist: If Americans Can No Longer Trust Our Elections, We’re In Big Trouble

From Willis Krumholz at The Federalist, If Americans Can No Longer Trust Our Elections, We’re In Big Trouble

The polls from the major networks and universities promised a blue wave. President Trump was down by at least 10 points nationally, and by nearly that much or more in the major swing states. The few pollsters, including Trafalgar, who got 2016 and 2018 right and called 2020 a close race, were widely ridiculed.

Nate Silver, a leftwing poll analyst, was chief among the critics. Silver gave former Vice President Joe Biden a nearly 70 percent chance of winning Florida.

Immediately on Election Day, turnout looked good for the GOP. Trump won Florida decisively and by 8:30 p.m. Central Time, and made huge inroads in urban areas. While Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade County by 30 points in 2016, the 2020 Trump ticket was down only single digits in the county.

That’s because Trump made significant gains among nonwhite Americans, and according to exit polls had the second-highest nonwhite share of the vote of any Republican since 1976. Cuban Americans are a big reason for Trump decisively winning Florida, but Trump’s gains with minority voters are a nationwide trend. The flipside was lower black and Hispanic turnout for Democrats—except for several major Democratic cities in contested swing states.

In other words, a significant margin of minority voters who didn’t defect to Trump decided not to vote. Indeed, a Bloomberg article days before the election cited anonymous Biden officials who said the campaign was worried about black and Hispanic turnout due to a lack of a ground game in these traditionally Democratic strongholds. But the warnings had gone unheeded.

Instead, the campaign hoped to make up these lost minority votes with gains in the suburbs, particularly among white women. In the end, Trump gained among white women compared to 2016, and only appeared to marginally lose votes from white men—many of which may have been upper-class suburban white men.

Back to Election Night

On election night, Trump’s decisive win in Florida was a bellwether to punters in the betting markets. The Trump campaign also seemed to outperform Election Day voting in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, especially given the turnout seen in Florida. A shy Trump vote did exist, especially in the suburbs among women, and the GOP was morphing into a working-class, increasingly multiracial party. Betting odds swung in Trump’s favor, peaking at around 85 percent.

That’s when things went south for the Trump campaign. In a yet unexplained move, states including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin stopped releasing vote counts on election night. Fact-checkers have noted that these states didn’t stop counting—fair enough—but not why they stopped releasing the results of their counting.

Come 4 a.m. the next morning, huge amounts of fresh Biden votes were reported. Trump’s betting odds plummeted, and days later the media declared Biden to be the president-elect.

Except 70 percent of Trump voters, who comprise half the country, are convinced of massive election fraud. Yet corporate media has no intention of investigating claims of fraud. Instead, it has pivoted from saying there is “no evidence” of fraud, to saying that not enough evidence exists to overturn the results.

Contrary to the hope of Trump supporters, the courts will probably be powerless to sort these issues out. This is an incredibly dangerous moment for the country and may be a pivotal point in the future of America’s democratic republic. Did we just cross the Rubicon?

The Morning After

Before all else, we must go to the source of distrust over this election. Whereas Florida finished counting votes on election night, and has a system that knows roughly how many votes are outstanding and will be counted before election night is over, in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin an unknown number of ballots could come in at the last second. And they did.

For that, thank Democrat lawsuits to overturn state voting laws at the last second, using COVID as a pretext. For those who doubt that the suits were nakedly political, note that they looked like a wish list based on a bill Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi authored in 2019 to accomplish nationwide mail-in voting.

Many of the suits were quarterbacked by former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias, who was involved in manufacturing Russiagate’s Christopher Steele “dossier.” Like most things rotten in this country, particular blame should be placed on the courts that decided bureaucrats could unilaterally rewrite state laws to turn absentee voting into mail-in voting.

There was no good reason to remove requirements that absentee ballots arrive before the end of Election Day, nor to allow the fraud-welcoming practice of “ballot-harvesting.” The John Roberts Supreme Court stood idly by and let lower courts rip up longstanding state election law. Democrats and the media complain that the legislatures should have acquiesced and affirmed this judicial tyranny by changing the law to allow ballots to be counted before Election Day. That would have only put the legislature’s seal of approval on a mess that the courts stupidly created.

Mail-In Balloting Is an Easier Fraud Mark

Regardless of the existence or level of fraud in the 2020 election, it is a fact that mail-in balloting opens elections to the likelihood of massive fraud and chaos. First, there’s an easy opportunity for cheating, given the unknown number of ballots that can come in. Because ballots can be accepted after election day, an unscrupulous faction that lags in earlier counting can come up with the votes to make the difference.

Second, there’s less accountability for election officials. In a normal election, it is possible to immediately tell how many votes are cast and from where—once the votes are cast, all that’s left is to count the votes, because officials know by ward and precinct how many votes are in and what type have been cast (are the votes early in-person, absentee, or election day in-person?). Not so for mail-in voting.

One can have a recount, but that will only recount the same bad ballots.

Then, once the counting starts, mail-in voting brings problems of a haphazard chain of custody and reduced controls over voter-eligibility verification. All this is why one can have a recount, but that will only recount the same bad ballots.

The obvious problems with mail-in voting are not a rightwing conspiracy. France banned mail-in voting in the 1970s for these very reasons. In a recent New Jersey mail-in election, about 20 percent of the ballots cast were found to be fraudulent. A local New York election this year saw huge delays in processing ballots. A 2012 article in the New York Times warns that regular old absentee voting could screw up the electoral process, let alone allowing ballots to come in after election day.

Independent left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald writes Georgia had an 80 percent chance to go for Trump on election night, ostensibly because of a good Republican turnout. But so many ballots came in for Biden the next morning that the state ostensibly swung to Biden’s favor, due to major Democratic turnout in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County.

This doesn’t prove fraud, but Greenwald calls this seesaw process in which many areas are counting votes nearly a week after the election a “disgrace.” “Distrust in U.S. outcomes [under such a system] is dangerous but rational,” writes Greenwald.

‘No Evidence’ of Any Fraud?

The media, Democrats, and many establishment Republicans have reflexively repeated that “no evidence” of fraud existed. Yet evidence does exist. The stories coming out of major vote-counting centers are shocking, and only add to the distrust. Dozens upon dozens of witnesses have signed affidavits attesting wrongdoing or highly inappropriate behavior from officials who are supposed to be impartial.

Detroit poll challengers have signed affidavits, under penalty of perjury, that they saw election workers counting ballots for non-eligible voters, and the double counting of voters. These persons say they were harassed constantly, and that election workers and Democratic operatives would get in their faces and start screaming if they raised a concern.

Federal agents threatened one of these whistleblowers, in an effort to get him to recant his story.

Some “election workers” appeared to be AFL-CIO activists. If concerns were raised, GOP poll challengers said, they were ushered from the room by the police and the entire room would cheer. They say election workers’ goal was to get as many GOP poll challengers as possible kicked out of that room.

Poll challengers also allege that they were pushed out of the room when the military ballots came in. Workers were sent to lunch; Democrats ate inside the building and the Republicans ate outside the area where votes were being counted, and the doors were locked so Republicans couldn’t get back in.

Irregularities alleged by these challengers aside from counting ineligible voters include ballots being dropped off by random vehicles, including a Mercedes Benz and a Ferrari, or arriving after the cutoff period. A sworn affidavit claims ballots were being “fraudulently and manually entered” when the person had no information and the birthdate was simply put as “1/1/1900.” Another Detroit GOP poll challenger says she witnessed names on ballots not coming up in the system but being counted nonetheless. When she raised concerns, she says she was kicked out.

Sworn affidavits by several U.S. Postal Service employees, in at least Pennsylvania and Michigan, along with a city employee from Detroit, alleged they were asked to backdate ballots (make ballots appear as if they were sent on election day) by their superiors. It was later revealed that federal agents threatened one of these whistleblowers, in an effort to get him to recant his story. A Clark County Nevada elections department employee says that his coworkers fabricated proof of residence data to allow ineligible voters.

In Philadelphia, GOP poll challengers had to sue to be allowed to observe what election workers were doing. Democratic state officials counter-sued to stop the access. While GOP poll challengers were moved forward in the room, the vote counters were moved further away, a mockery of state law that allows oversight of this process.

Photos of Philly vote counters show several women wearing Biden masks. A Trump campaign lawsuit has a sworn affidavit from a person who says he or she saw USB drives being delivered to the back of the room where voting machines were housed, and where observers were restricted.

In Philadelphia, GOP poll challengers had to sue to be allowed to observe what election workers were doing.

Meanwhile, the Georgia GOP state party chair claims Fulton County election officials told his observers to go home on election night because they were closing up, but then continued to count ballots “in secret.” In Wisconsin, election clerks allegedly altered “thousands” of absentee ballots to make them eligible.

Add to this multiple videos of what appears to be poll workers throwing away Trump ballots, and at least a handful of examples of dead persons voting. A conservative pollster, Richard Baris, claims to have found evidence of 10,000 deceased persons voting in Michigan. Others also claimed to have found thousands of dead voters in that state.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania far exceeded its record for 90-year-olds registering to vote. In Nevada, multiple witnesses signed sworn affidavits that they saw a “Biden-Harris” van filling out loads of ballots.

Yes, Republicans have at least anecdotal evidence of fraud, although in one sense the media is right: these anecdotes are not evidence enough to overturn the election. That’s because there’s no way to quantify any of this evidence into an actual number of bad votes, even assuming all these claims are well-founded.

Then There Are the Statistical Anomalies

There’s more than anecdotal evidence, however. Observers and experts pointed out plenty of statistical anomalies. Some may turn out to be innocuous, or easily explainable. Others have been less well-explained.

First, Republicans took issue with the massive vote dumps for Biden that occurred overnight, in which Biden was getting nearly 100 percent of the vote. One of these was attributed to an extra zero and human error.

Michigan added almost 150,000 votes in one instance, all of which were for Biden except for about 6,000.

Silver tweeted that around 27,000 votes out of Philadelphia went “all for Biden.” In the face of obvious wonderment of how Biden could get 100 percent of such a large share of votes, Silver was quick to claim that election officials “unintentionally enter vote updates one candidate at a time, rather than entering all candidates together.” Maybe, but when votes stop getting reported and reporting starts coming in early in the morning with nearly 100 percent of votes coming in for Biden that justifiably raised eyebrows.

On a graph, these vote dumps in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania resulted in Biden quickly jumping above Trump, and the odds of a Trump win plummeting. Michigan added almost 150,000 votes in one instance, all of which were for Biden except for about 6,000.

On election night, Trump led in Pennsylvania by almost 800,000 votes. The next morning, Trump’s lead shrunk to less than 100,000. Later, ballots found, including those apparently lingering with the U.S. Postal Service, supposedly put Biden over the edge.

Biden received an unbelievable amount of the mail-in share in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Biden’s advantage in mail-in voting was to be expected, but the magnitude of the spikes for Biden in these select states is worth scrutiny. According to ballot requests across the country, GOP voters voted by mail too, just not with the same intensity as Democratic voters.

But while Trump received a reasonable share of the mail-in or absentee votes in places like Ohio, Biden received an unbelievable amount of the mail-in share in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Biden’s Pennsylvania mail-in total, excluding about 90,000 mail-in votes from libertarians and those with no party affiliation, equates to winning all the Democratic and Independent mail-in votes, and 9 percent of the GOP mail-in votes.

Said differently, Biden is up 60 points in absentee or mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, and up by almost 40 points in Michigan. That’s not Biden receiving 60 percent of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania. That’s Biden receiving 80 percent of the mail-in vote. Comparably, Biden was only up single digits in absentee voting in most other battleground states. Biden’s mail-in advantage was 15 points in Ohio and 5 points in Minnesota.

There’s no reason to think Pennsylvania and Michigan should be outliers to national mail-in voting trends. Despite several comments by the president, the Trump campaign ground game in these states encouraged mail-in voting. In Michigan and Wisconsin, according to NBC News, Republicans actually led Democrats in mail-in ballots requested and returned. Yet the vast majority of the ballots that were counted after election day in these states were for Biden.

A Weird, Asymmetric Surge in Only Some Cities

No, this Biden surge in cities wasn’t driven by the suburbs abandoning Trump—Trump didn’t lose the suburbs any more than he lost them in 2016, and losses there were more than replaced by gains in working-class areas. These Biden votes were entirely driven by massive turnout in select Democratic strongholds in swing states. As mentioned before, this turnout was not consistent across the country. In parts of these cities, there was more turnout than registered voters.

Biden only had a net gain of 4,000 votes compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016 in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio. Yet Biden had a net gain of almost 70,000 in Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan. In Minneapolis, Democrats bragged of 88 percent turnout—extremely high relative to the rest of the country and the state…(continues)

Strategic Culture Foundation: When Does a ‘Glitch’ Become a Coup? It’s Time to Regulate America’s Fly-by-Night Voting Machine Monopoly

This article comes from Robert Bridge at the Strategic Culture Foundation – When Does a ‘Glitch’ Become a Coup? It’s Time to Regulate America’s Fly-by-Night Voting Machine Monopoly

It’s a frightening thing to consider, but the ultimate success of democracy in the United States largely hinges on the integrity of just three voting machine companies, which conduct their affairs with almost no government oversight and regulation. Unless that changes, the greatest democracy will start looking like a banana republic in the eyes of the world.

In January 2020, the CEOs of the three companies that produce over 80 percent of voting machines in the U.S. – Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic – were grilled by members of Congress over the question of security at the ballot box. Perhaps it would surprise exactly nobody that the 90-minute discussion focused almost entirely on the possibility of foreign actors, specifically China and Russia, interfering in the U.S. election system. Within such a predictably narrow frame of reference – Russia! Russia! Russia! – it becomes much easier to eliminate the possibility that domestic actors may also be tempted to tamper with the vote. At the same time, Russia provides the perfect smokescreen in the event someone gets caught with their hand in the election cookie jar. But already I digress.

Currently, Dominion Voting Systems, the supplier of voting machines in 28 states, is coming under fierce scrutiny after it was reported that thousands of votes in one Michigan country intended for Donald Trump went to his challenger, Joe Biden. Officials were quick to point out that the ‘glitch’ was due to silly “human error,” as opposed to any mechanical flaws with the voting machines.

According to Michigan state government website, “[T]he erroneous reporting of unofficial results … was a result of accidental error on the part of the Antrim County Clerk (who) accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results.”

While I am no computer specialist, it is hard to imagine how a software update would have done anything to prevent one candidate from receiving the votes intended for another unless it was originally programmed to behave that way. But again, I am no expert.

Another state that relies heavily on Dominion Voting Systems is Georgia, which received 30,000 new voting machines last year – “the largest rollout of elections equipment in U.S. history,” according to the Government Technology newsletter. Following the announcement of the $107 million contract, the same newsletter foretold of problems down the road, saying the “new voting system is expected to be quickly challenged in court by voters who say it remains vulnerable to hacking and tampering, despite the addition of paper ballots.”

Those fears were quickly realized on the morning of Nov. 3, Election Day, when a technological glitch wreaked havoc on voting in two Georgia counties (a side note to this story is that Georgia officials blamed the abrupt pause in vote counting on a burst pipe at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. Thus far, however, officials have not been able to produce any evidence that such an incident took place).

While the source of the ‘glitch’ is still under investigation, one state ballot supervisor, Marcia Ridley, initially told POLITICO on Nov. 3 that Dominion, which prepares the poll books for counties before elections, “uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch.” That reported incident prevented staff from programming the voter smart cards for the voting machines. Ridley continued, “That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election.”

However, Dominion officials, while admitting there was a problem with the poll books, deny there was any last-minute update made to the poll books after Oct. 31 (a press release by Dominion countered this and other allegations, including that the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative has any relationship with the company).

And here is where things get interesting.

Ridley went on to say that Dominion assured her that “no system can be updated remotely without the knowledge of [the company],” indicating that an update could not have been made without detection. In other words, there appears to be a backdoor channel for Dominion Voting Systems to connect to the internet, and, as everybody knows, whatever appears on the internet is fair game for hackers.

In fact, it was exactly that concern that helped dissuade the state of Texas from also purchasing the dodgy Dominion system.

In a letter from Brandon Hurley, a voting systems examiner, addressed to Keith Ingram, Director of Elections in Texas, it was determined that “some of the hardware in the Democracy 5.5-A System can be connected to the internet through Ethernet ports.”

Later in the letter, it was emphasized again that “[W]ithout question, one or more of the components of the 5.5-A System can be connected to an external communication network and this can only be avoided if the end-user takes the proper precautions to prevent such a connection.”

On Wednesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the state would perform a hand-recount of presidential ballots before certifying the results of its election. According to the New York Times, Biden leads the incumbent Trump by 14,000 votes.

Whatever the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which also had to wrangle with the influx of millions of mail-in ballots amid a pandemic, it will certainly go down in the history books as one of the most chaotic, controversial and fraud-prone contests in U.S. history. The tragedy is that this fiasco, which is making America look ridiculous on the global stage, could have been avoided. There have been numerous attempts to sound the alarm on the vulnerability of voting machines to accurately tabulate the results of an election, and not least of all the ongoing Trump-Biden showdown, which will determine the political, cultural and economic trajectory of the United States long into the future.

It is the opinion here that, judging by everything we know and don’t know about how the 2020 presidential election was organized, the only realistic option is to hold a nationwide recount. It is simply impossible to expect millions of American voters from either side of the political aisle to hold any doubts over an election of such tremendous consequence. Yes, a recount would be a massive undertaking, but the future peace and tranquility of the nation, already partisan to the breaking point, depends upon it. Once the recount is accomplished, the next task should be a congressional task force to examine ways of securing U.S. elections in the future, while holding the voting machine companies to severe government control and regulation. The days of monkey-wrenching U.S. elections must end.

 

The Asia Times: First Comes a Rolling Civil War

A Trump supporter argues with counter protesters in St. Paul, Minnesota, November 7, 2020. Photo: Tim Evans/NurPhoto via AFP

Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times writes about the near future in First Comes a Rolling Civil War.

The massive psyop is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.

US intel is very much aware of technology that can abet election fraud. That includes NSA software that can interfere with any network, as detailed by Edward Snowden, and manipulate vote counting; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; and the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000 but still used in 30 states, including every US swing state.

The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. It has weighed the pros and cons of placing as a candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia neocon warmonger and possible extortionist (along with his son) as “leader of the free world,” campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies and seconded by someone with so little support in the Democratic primaries that she was the first to drop out.

The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.

Welcome to the New Resistance

The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.

The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Successionsaga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.

Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.

While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.

Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President.

Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”

So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media. It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.

Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire.

Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.

So what will Deplorables do?

The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.

Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America:

“This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.”

So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.

In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do?

The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.

So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefelller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.

Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure.