Posts Tagged ‘Voter Fraud’

LinkSwarm for February 16, 2024

Friday, February 16th, 2024

More Biden corruption evidence, a would-be mass shooter turns out to be a pro-Palestinian Bernie Sis, a parent beats the snot out of a would-be child kidnapper, a top sniper dies, Disney gets sued, and Venus is feeling Zoove. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another “Try to contain your shock” headline: “Joe Biden’s Classified Docs Provide More Evidence Hunter’s Pay-To-Play Was A Family Affair.”

    The special counsel report on Joe Biden’s unauthorized removal and disclosure of classified documents exposed much more than our president’s mental deficits and the breadth of his irresponsible handling of top-secret and classified information. The report revealed a close nexus between Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and his father’s responsibilities and access to intel during the elder’s term as vice president.

    On Thursday, Special Counsel Robert Hur released the results of his investigation into the president stemming from the discovery of top-secret and classified documents at Biden’s D.C.-based Penn Biden Center, his private Delaware home, and the University of Delaware. While the specific details in the recovered documents remain unknown, the nearly 400-page report provided an extensive enough summary of the materials to confirm an overlap in the timing and topics of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and Hunter Biden’s “business” enterprises.
    Ukraine Overlap

    Appendix A of the report provided a table summary of the documents recovered. Many of the top-secret and classified documents concerned Ukraine during the time frame when Hunter Biden acted as an intermediary between Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, and the vice president. Recall that Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, told the House Oversight Committee that in early March 2014, he met Zlochevsky while in Moscow. And soon after, he and Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, receiving $83,000 per month.

    The following month, Hunter Biden sent Archer an email dated April 13, 2014 — one week before Joe Biden would travel to Ukraine and meet then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Referring to “my guys upcoming travels,” Hunter then elaborated on “22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information about the upcoming election and predicting an escalation of Russia’s ‘destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full-scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk,’” according to the New York Post.

    Among the material recovered from President Biden’s unauthorized storage locales were several top-secret and otherwise classified or confidential documents discussing Ukraine. One undated document discussed issues related to Russian aggression toward Ukraine. Another, dated Sept. 17, 2014, consisted of a “Memorandum for the Vice President from staff members, with subject ‘U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine.’” Also dated Sept. 17, 2014, was an “event memo” from a vice-presidential national security staffer, titled, “Lunch with Ukrainian President Poroshenko,” which was scheduled for the following day.

    The overlap between Joe Biden’s Ukraine-related work and Hunter Biden’s Burisma profiteering became more pronounced in 2015. On Dec. 2, 2015, the lobbying firm Blue Star Group, which Hunter Biden had arranged to work with Burisma, wrote to Burisma that it had “participated in a conference call today with senior Obama Administration officials ahead of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine next week.” The memorandum provided a summary of the conference call, telling Burisma that “Michael Carpenter, Vice President Biden’s Special Advisor for Europe and Russia, and Dr. Colin Kahl, the Vice President’s National Security Advisor, presented the agenda for the trip and answered questions about current U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”

    Two days after receiving this memorandum, Burisma executives Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi, on Dec. 4, 2015, pushed Hunter Biden to call his father. The Burisma executives, according to Archer, expressed concern over the pressure they were under from Ukrainian investigators.

    And there’s more, though very little that will be surprising to BattleSwarm readers. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Joe Biden Met with Chinese Energy Firm Chairman around the Time of $3M Payment to Hunter’s Business Partner.” Of course he did.

    Joe Biden met with the chairman of the Chinese energy firm CEFC shortly after Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker received a $3 million payment from the firm as part of a joint venture the pair were then trying to develop, according to a newly released transcript of Walker’s closed-door congressional testimony.

    Walker testified before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees on January 26 about his role in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

    Walker received roughly $3 million from CEFC in March 2017 through its State Energy HK account, bank records show. He recalled a meeting between Joe Biden and CEFC officials in spring 2017, around the time of the State Energy HK payment.

    “Did Joe Biden ever attend any location or meeting or place where CEFC officials were also there?” a staffer asked Walker, according to a transcript of the interview released Tuesday morning.

    “Yes,” Walker replied. He recalled the meeting took place in Washington, D.C., and Joe Biden, who had just left office as vice president, stopped by for lunch.

    “I don’t know the exact — it was 20- probably -17 at some point, but I don’t know exactly when,” Walker said.

    The meeting took place at a Four Seasons hotel in a private room. CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming and other associates were present at the meeting.

    “I don’t know if Zang was there, but I believe that Ye was there. I’m certain of it,” Walker testified.

    He did not know who the other CEFC associates were at the meeting. Walker firmly recalled Jianming and his translator, Hunter Biden, business associate James Gilliar, and Joe Biden attending the meeting.

  • Inflation higher than expected. Unexpectedly!
  • Well, what do you know? “Mail-In Ballot Fraud Study Finds Trump ‘Almost Certainly’ Won In 2020.”

    A new study examining the likely impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots had in the 2020 election concludes that the outcome would “almost certainly” have been different without the massive expansion of voting by mail.

    The Heartland Institute study tried to gauge the probable impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots cast for both then-candidate Joe Biden and his opponent, President Donald Trump, would have had on the overall 2020 election results.

    The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey in December that revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters admitted to potentially fraudulent actions in the presidential election.

    After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the data, they concluded that mail-in ballot fraud “significantly” impacted the 2020 presidential election.

    They also found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, which was often done without legislative approval, President Trump would most likely have won.

    “Had the 2020 election been conducted like every national election has been over the past two centuries, wherein the vast majority of voters cast ballots in-person rather than by mail, Donald Trump would have almost certainly been re-elected,” the report’s authors wrote.

    Not news to those of us who watched returns into the wee hours, only to wake up to The Steal the next morning.

  • House Republicans finally impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas for intentionally failing to secure the border.
  • Is there any doubt that Fani Willis lied her ass off?
  • Ukraine bags another Russian ship. “Ukrainian Magura V5 Marine Drones have sunk the Ropucha-class landing ship Cesar Kunikov near Alupka in Crimea in the Black Sea.”
  • Russia also had 59 planes and helicopters stolen.
  • Putin says he prefers Biden to Trump in the White House because he’s more predictable. I’m sure he does. Notice that both his Ukraine invasions occurred during Democratic presidential administrations.
  • Austin’s commie congressman Greg Casar wants to federalize Texas power grid.
  • Pervert tries to kidnap kid in a CVS, instantly receives beatdown from parent.
  • Another week, another teacher busted for child porn, this one in Klein ISD.
  • The woman who tried to shoot up Lakewood Church in Houston was a Bernie Sis who had “Free Palestine” written on her AR-15. “[Genesse I.] Moreno had a violent, extensive criminal history stretching back to 2005, according to court records reviewed by Townhall. She was previously arrested for assaulting a public servant, assault causing bodily injury, forgery, theft for stealing cosmetics from a store, evading police, and unlawfully carrying a weapon, among a slew of charges on Moreno’s decades-old rap sheet.”
  • “Soros network gave paid fellowship to head of anti-Israel center propping up terrorism.” Try to contain your shock.
  • Man swatted 47 times.

    Alan Winston Filion, 17, is suspected of targeting hundreds of high schools, mosques, historically Black churches, US senators and even the US Supreme Court with swatting attacks that placed thousands of people in the crosshairs of heavily armed police response teams.

    Prosecutors say the 6ft 3in teenager advertised his services under the pseudonym Torswats on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, charging as little as $40 to get someone’s gas shut off, $50 for a “major police response”, and $75 for a “bomb threat/mass shooting threat”.

    Mr Filion would then post chilling audio of the 911 calls on Telegram as a proof of purchase, according to court documents.

    Among the hundreds of “swats” that Torswats allegedly claimed credit for were multiple hoax callouts at the home of Patrick S. Tomlinson, a Milwaukee-based science fiction author who says he has been swatted dozens of times in the past four years as part of a targeted harassment campaign by a group of “sociopathic” stalkers.

    You’d think after five or six times, the guy would put up a sign in his front yard alerting police to the problem. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Ohio cops go full T.J. Hooker.
  • “Court Orders Netherlands To Halt F-35 Parts For Israel As EU Says “Too Many People” Are Dying.” Excuse me? Does the Netherlands let their court interfere in foreign policy decisions and defense contracts based on events beyond their borders?
  • Army cancels FARA helicopter program, makes other cuts in major aviation shakeup.”

    The US Army is cancelling its next generation Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program, service officials announced today, taking a potential multi-billion-dollar contract off the table and throwing the service’s long-term aviation plans into doubt.

    In addition, the Army plans to end production on the UH-60 V Black Hawk in fiscal 2025, due to “significant cost growth,” keep General Electric’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) in the development phase instead of moving it into production, and phase the Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems out of the fleet, the service added.

    All told, it reflects a massive shift in the Army’s aviation strategy and upends years of planning. There is also an ironic sense of history repeating: the decision to end FARA comes two decades to the month after the Army ended its plans to procure the RAH-66 Comanche and nearly 16 years after it terminated work on the ARH-70A Arapaho, both aircraft designed to replace the Kiowa — the same helicopter FARA was supposed to, finally, replace.

    The reason for ending FARA, Army leaders told a small group of reporters ahead of the announcement, is a reflection of what war looks like in the modern era.

    “We absolutely are paying attention [to world events] and adjusting, because we could go to war tonight, this weekend,” head of Army Futures Command Gen. James Rainey told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday.

    “We are learning from the battlefield — especially Ukraine — that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief Gen. Randy George said in a press release. “Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”

    Many commenters here feared the Pentagon wasn’t taking the drone threat seriously. Maybe they are…

  • The Marine Corps’ all-time deadliest sniper, Chuck Mawhinney, has died at age 75.

    From 1968 to 1969, Mawhinney — still only a teenager — was credited with 103 confirmed kills.

    An additional 216 kills were listed as “probable” since the enemies’ bodies were risky to verify in the active war zone.

    Mawhinney had confirmed kills over 1,000 yards, with the average kill shot for snipers during the Vietnam War taken at a distance of 300 to 800 yards.

    He received a Bronze Star with Combat Valor, Navy Achievement Medal, Navy Commendation Medal with Combat Valor, and two Purple Hearts.

    Having more confirmed kills than Carlos Hathcock is pretty impressive. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • “Rockwall County Sues to Undo $833 Million MUD Approved by Lone Voter With Criminal Record.” Perhaps the Texas legislature should create a MUD election review board, as these shenanigans have been going on for a while.
  • Disney sued over illegal, racist casting quotas.
  • The CW Network (which evidently still exists) just launched a 12 channel free streaming platform. Including, evidently, a Mystery Science Theater 3000 channel.
  • Someone misread an astronomy chart. Result? Venus now has a mini-moon named Zoove. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Judge Orders Trump To Pay Whatever Amount It Takes To Bankrupt Campaign.”
  • Donkey + screaming rubber chicken = happy donkey.
  • Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Video Of More Of That Voter Fraud That Doesn’t Exist

    Tuesday, November 21st, 2023

    The folks in Springfield…

    …Massachussetts…

    …don’t need any of that newfangled computerized vote fraud. No sirree! They do things the old fashioned way: By handing out cash to homeless people.

  • “Videotape shows individuals being dropped off in black Suburbans and Expeditions and entering City Hall to vote. When they exit, a man takes out what appears to be a large bundle of cash and peels off a bill for each individual.” Old school!

  • Bonus: The man dropping people off appears to be Springfield Democratic mayoral candidate Justin Hurst himself. It’s not often you get candidates with the pluck, verve and raw stupidity to commit their own hands-on election fraud. Usually they delegate that sort of thing to underlings. (More experienced criminals call that underling “the cutout.”)
  • “According to sworn affidavits from the election workers, many of the people who came in they listed their address as being being a local homeless shelter. Furthermore, the affidavits claim that many of these voters who came inside were noticeably either drunk or under the influence of drugs, and many of them were confused about why they even came to City Hall in the first place.”
  • “One of the election workers wrote in her affidavit that she saw a man hovering over some of the voter shoulders while they were standing at the voting booth. At times he appeared to be pointing at the place on the ballot where the persons should vote.”
  • “Many of these individuals came up to them multiple times throughout the day and asked them where they’re supposed to go in order to get the $10 that they were promised as payment.”
  • “I had seven people ask me directly where they their $10 payment was. One man said in Spanish vote for Hurst and you’ll get $10.”
  • And yes, the exchange of money outside City Hall is on camera.
  • Five poll workers signed sworn affidavits attesting to the voting fraud.
  • Naturally, Hirsch swears up and down not voting fraud occurred.
  • “It is patently illegal to exchange money for votes within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Here’s specifically what the relevant part of the relevant statute: ‘No person shall directly or indirectly pay, give, or promise to a voter any gift or reward to influence his vote, or to induce him to withhold his vote.'” I’m pretty sure every state in the union has similar statutes.
  • At the current time, it does not appear that Mr. Hurst has been indicted…

    LinkSwarm for September 15, 2023

    Friday, September 15th, 2023

    The Biden economy continues to batter ordinary Americans, CIA’s bribing experts to protect China and the deep state, Ukraine makes Russian ships and air defense systems in Crimea go boom, UAW goes on strike, and sanctuary city chickens come home to roost. Plus a personal update at the end. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Joe Biden continues to work his special brand of magic on the economy: “Real household income suffers biggest drop since Great Recession.”

    Nominally, households earned more money in 2022 than they did in 2021. But thanks to inflation caused by Bidenomics, real household income (that is, income adjusted for inflation) not only fell, but fell by an amount not seen since the Great Recession.

    According to Census Bureau numbers released Tuesday, median household income fell from $76,330 in 2021 to $74,580 in 2022, a decline of 2.3%. This is the biggest drop in real household income since 2010, when it fell 2.6%. Even at the height of the pandemic, when millions of people couldn’t work, real income only fell 2.2%.

    The decline in real income was driven entirely by near-record-high inflation. According to the Census Bureau, inflation rose 7.8% between 2021 and 2022, which was the largest inflation increase since 1981.

    Isn’t not being able to feed your family a small price to pay for our elites not having to deal with mean tweets? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • The deep state at work: “CIA Bribed Analysts To Change Lab-Leak Conclusions.”

    A ‘senior-level’ CIA whistleblower has come forward to allege that the agency bribed analysts to change their opinion that Covid-19 most likely originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, according to the NY Post.

    The whistleblower told House committee leaders that his agency ‘ tried to pay off six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans,’ according to a Tuesday letter from the chairmen of two House subcommittees investigating the pandemic response and US intelligence, Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and Mike Turner (R-OH).

    The pair have requested all documents, communications and pay info from the CIA’s Covid-19 Discovery Team by Sept. 26.

    “According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” reads the letter from the House panel chairmen.

    “The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis.

    “The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” the letters continue, adding that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

  • Hunter Biden indicted on federal gun charges. A whole lot of observers think this is just an excuse to avoid indicting him (and his father) on bribery and corruption charges.
  • Ukraine seems to be systemically destroying Russian air defense systems in occupied Crimea and going after all of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
  • Trump supports Paxton.
  • Abbott’s busses won the border battle.

    Washington refused to fully fund construction of a wall along the Mexican border as Congress obeyed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — whom Republicans bow to — and the galaxy of gangs, drug cartels, pedos, Chinese spies, terrorists and Methodists who back Democrats. There are some overlaps. My point is, Democrats cannot destroy the nation without help.

    There seemed to be no stopping the onslaught. What to do? What to do? What to do?

    Well, they were messing with Texas and as Texans say, don’t mess with Texas.

    Its governor’s press office said in June, “In April 2022, Governor Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to charter buses to transport migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. The Governor added New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia as additional drop-off locations last year and most recently added Denver as a busing destination last month. Since beginning the migrant busing strategy last spring, more than 21,600 migrants have been transported to these self-declared sanctuary cities while providing much-needed relief to Texas’ overwhelmed border communities.”

    Battles are usually fought with horses, tanks or aeroplanes. Greg Abbott used buses. As of June, he shipped 500 busloads of illegal aliens to sanctuary cities. The shipments continue.

    You want ’em, you got ’em.

    It turns out, sanctuary cities don’t want them.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
    

  • Virginia Democratic statehouse candidate Susanna Gibson is complaining that there are videos of her having sex with her husband online. Gee, how did they get online? “Gibson had an account on Chaturbate, a legal website where viewers can watch live webcam performances that feature nudity and sexual activity…The videos show Gibson and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and at times looking into the camera and asking viewers for donations in the form of ‘tokens’ or ‘tips’ to watch a private show.” It did not take Columbo to crack this case. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might bolt the party that’s trying to screw him over.

    The Democrat Party has a latent disaster on its hand vis a vis one RFK Jr.

    On the one hand, they are fully dedicated to sabotaging his campaign. Under no circumstances whatsoever will he be permitted to win the nomination.

    Even if he had 80%+ support from the electorate, the sick truth is that party leadership (influenced by the consultant and donor classes) would rather lose with Brandon than win with RFK Jr. because of what he’s liable to do to the Deep State and D.C. largesse were he ever to assume office. It would be a proverbial bloodbath for the administrative state and all of the grifters who feed on it.

    On the other hand, they need to keep RFK Jr. within the Democrat Party fold because if he were to go rogue and run third party — which he, frankly, should have been doing all along — it would be a veritable death knell for the Brandon entity’s prospects in 2024, which are wafer-thin as it is.

    Whatever perceived threat Cornel West poses to Brandon’s re-election with his Green Party run, magnify that threat by 10x, 100x and you’re in the ballpark of what RFK Jr. would do to the party. It’s not outlandish to speculate that a strong third-party run by RFK Jr. might literally break the Democrat Party for years or possibly forever. That’s how sick of the party’s BS its own members, not to mention independents and non-voters (the largest, unserviced voting bloc in the country), are.

    RFK Jr. has already proven himself nearly bulletproof from relentless Democrat Party and corporate state media attacks — arguably on the same level in this regard as “Teflon” Don.

  • “Hays County district clerk files petition to remove DA, citing new Texas law.”

    There’s a petition to have the Hays County district attorney removed from office.

    The person who filed it? The Hays County district clerk.

    The petition was filed by Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson on Tuesday, Sept. 12. I

    It alleged that Hays County DA Kelly Higgins implemented and executed a policy or policies that refused to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense under state law.

    The petition said DA Higgins has made public declarations that he would not prosecute the following:

    • simple drug possession offenses
    • simple cannabis possession offenses
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case that they are treating transgenders
    • procedures committed by a licensed physician in the case they are performing abortions

    According to the court documents filed, there’s been an excessive amount of felony possession of cannabis, methamphetamine and cocaine cases being declined for “random and nonspecific reasons.”

    I know one of the first questions in your mind: Is Higgins a Soros-backed DA? Answer cloudy. She got $2,000 from Chip Shields in Portland, OR. Shields founded Better People, a pro ex-con thing, but I can’t find a direct Soros link to Higgins. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Things that make you go Hmmmm: “A representative of the Harris County attorney’s office told a district court judge that the county would use all legal means to prevent the deposition of the deputy director of election technology Jason Bruce.”
  • UAW goes on strike over wages, pensions…and mandating electric cars.
  • Let the child sex mutilation lawsuits begin.
  • Goodbye, Mittens.
  • National Review looks back at Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t agree with everything here, but they did make some great music Back In The Day…
  • 14-year-old son died after attempting the ‘One Chip Challenge.’ You don’t want to jump into that sort of thing without building up your resistance first. Me, I’m pretty sure I could do it, especially if I could find a way to make money off it. Maybe I could get 100,00 people to pledge a buck for every one I eat, and then then see how many I can eat on a live-stream…
  • Ever wanted to hear The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz do an album of REM covers? Yeah, me neither, but here’s “Shiny Happy People.”
  • Ooopsie! (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Democrats Complain That Illegal Immigrants Are Destroying Their Sanctuary Cities.”
  • “Experts Believe Aaron Rodgers Ankle Injury A Result Of Being Unvaccinated.”
  • Boing! Boing! Boing!

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Also, my most recent job just ended. So here’s the tip jar, if you’re so inclined:





    I don’t usual rattle the jar, because I make good money when employed, and I’m hardly destitute, but every bit helps. If you know of any remote Senior Technical Writer positions, let me know.

    Problem: Some Harris County Voters Dare To Vote Republican. Solution: Deny Them Ballots

    Wednesday, June 7th, 2023

    Independent journalist Wayne Dolcefino alleges that Lina Hidalgo’s hand-picked election coordinator Clifford Tatum deliberately shorted paper ballots to Republican precincts.

  • “If you’re a Democrat, you didn’t like the KHOU investigation that cites more than 120 locations that were under supplied with ballot paper, while millions of ballot sheets were available in a warehouse.”
  • Lots of precinct judges, of both parties, testified that locations ran out.
  • “It’s not just ballot paper problems. Election judges reported 119 polls, nearly 15%, that didn’t open up on time on election morning. Late in the day, a district judge ordered that polls stay open until 8 PM, but a lot of election judges either didn’t get the message, or didn’t care when they did. 64 polls closed at 7 PM even after the judge’s order.”
  • “It should force judge Hidalgo to release all remaining public records.”
  • Of course, she’s waging a lawsuit to prevent just that…

    LinkSwarm for May 5, 2023

    Friday, May 5th, 2023

    A Soros-backed DA is stepping down, a Harvard prof lying about playing footsie with commies sentenced, and another Democratic fundraiser convicted of fraud. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Good news, everyone! Soros-backed St. Louis Democrat DA Kim Gardner has resigned.

    On Thursday, a progressive prosecutor who was notoriously funded by far-left billionaire George Soros announced her resignation, after months of bipartisan pressure to do so.

    Fox News reports that Kim Gardner, the Circuit Attorney for St. Louis, announced that her resignation will be effective June 1st. Gardner was one of the first prosecutors in the country to be bankrolled by Soros, who has since expanded his efforts to other major cities across the country. She was first elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, largely due to Soros’ financial backing. Prior to her resignation announcement, she had declared her intention to run for a third term in 2024.

    After years of criticism for being soft on crime and siding with criminals over victims, Gardner faced a whole new wave of criticism from both parties over an incident in February: Teenage volleyball player Janae Edmonson, who was visiting St. Louis from Tennessee for a tournament, was hit by an out-of-control car while crossing the road; although Edmonson survived, she had to have both of her legs amputated.

    The driver of the car was Daniel Riley, a man who was out on bond while awaiting trial for an armed robbery case. It was later revealed that Riley had violated the terms of bond dozens of times, but was never arrested. When the blame turned to Gardner for failing to keep him off the streets, she falsely claimed that her office had attempted to have Riley jailed once again, only to be denied by a judge; there are no records of her office filing any such motion or otherwise seeking the revocation of Riley’s bond.

    Following the Edmonson incident, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-Mo.) filed a petition quo warranto, the process by which the state attorney general can fire a prosecutor who has been determined to be neglectful of her duties. Bailey claimed that as many as 12,000 criminal cases have been dismissed due to Gardner’s failures, with another 9,000 having been thrown out right before they were set to go to trial, due to Garnder’s office refusing to provide evidence and speedy trials for defendants.

    After Gardner’s announcement, Bailey released a statement demanding that she vacate her office immediately, rather than wait for another month.

  • The Biden Banking Crisis continues to bubble along. First Horizon, PacWest, and Western Alliance are the new banks facing trouble. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Wagner Chief to Pull Mercenaries Out of Bakhmut over Ammunition Dispute with Russian Military.”

    Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said he will pull his mercenaries out of the meat grinder that is the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 10, one day after Russia’s Victory Day Celebrations, which Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected to use to shore up support for the Russian invasion.

    The Wagner Group, a well-known mercenary unit known to be one of Russia’s most competent fighting divisions, is leading the charge on Bakhmut, a city that that has gained outsized symbolic importance.

    “I am withdrawing the Wagner PMC units from Bakhmut, because in the absence of ammunition they are doomed to senseless death,” Prigozhin said in full military fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon. The video he released showed him surrounded by masked Wagner fighters. Prigozhin also released a statement to the same effect.

    His forces had no choice but to withdraw to rear bases to “lick the wounds,” said Prigozhin, as translated by the Washington Post. If Wagner goes through with the withdrawal, it would be viewed as catastrophic in terms of morale. The Russian invasion has ground to a standstill after large-scale Russian and Ukrainian offensives last year. Kyiv, which has been amassing ammunitions including tanks and fighter jets, is expected to launch a fresh counterattack in the very near future.

    Prigozhin also launched a remarkable video tirade overnight on Telegram in which he displayed bodies of dozens of Wagner soldiers killed in Bakhmut. He angrily laid into the Russian Defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, for supplying Wagner with only 30 percent of the ammunition that’s needed.

    The statement released today claimed that number was even lower, standing at 10 percent.

    One caveat is that we’ve heard complaints from Prigozhin about his ammo supply before.

  • Russian soldiers dig trenches in horse graveyard in occupied Ukraine. Now they have anthrax.
  • Biden CIA chief met with Epstein several times after financier convicted of child sex crime. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns had three meetings with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014, when the top spy official was deputy secretary of state and after Epstein was convicted of child sex exploitation.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
    

  • “Harvard chemistry professor sentenced for lying about ties to CCP…Former Harvard University Chemistry Department Chair Charles M. Lieber was sentenced Wednesday to time served and over $80,000 in fines for committing fraud and for failing to disclose his connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Longtime Democratic Campaign Strategist Charged with Election Fraud.” And completely different than the Democratic Party fundraiser convicted of fraud last week.

    New Jersey Democratic campaign strategist James Devine was charged with election fraud for allegedly submitting more than 1,900 fake petitions to help secure a 2021 Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot spot for candidate Lisa McCormick, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced Tuesday.

    Devine was McCormick’s campaign manager and sent the fake voter certifications to the New Jersey Secretary of State’s Division of Elections via email in April 2021, but the New Jersey Democratic State Committee challenged his attempt days later, arguing that all the forms featured same the style of signature and at least one of the named voters was deceased, Platkin said.

    A judge subsequently took McCormick off the primary ballot, and Devine is now charged with third-degree offenses concerning nomination certificates or petitions, tampering with public records or information and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “Kansas Becomes 1st State to Pass Law Defining Gender as a Person’s Sex at Birth.” One down, forty-nine to go…
  • Killer in Satan’s service finds the left’s child sexual mutilation fetish disgusting.
  • Shots of Minneapolis before and after the Antifa/BLM riots of 2020.
  • El Paso Engulfed In ‘Mass Migration Dumpster Fire‘ As State Of Emergency Declared.”
  • Accused serial black widow killer charged with murdering her fifth husband.
  • “You just killed two people tonight.” “Yeah, but when can I go back to school?”
  • California banning diesel effective 2036.
  • Could sexbots and AI end humanity?
  • “Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs.” Funny how you never hear the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd going after the Sundar Pichais of the world.
  • Speaking of Google, I’m hardly an expert on AI, but here’s a piece that claims Google is getting its clocked cleaned by OpenSource AI.

    LoRA updates are very cheap to produce (~$100) for the most popular model sizes. This means that almost anyone with an idea can generate one and distribute it. Training times under a day are the norm. At that pace, it doesn’t take long before the cumulative effect of all of these fine-tunings overcomes starting off at a size disadvantage. Indeed, in terms of engineer-hours, the pace of improvement from these models vastly outstrips what we can do with our largest variants, and the best are already largely indistinguishable from ChatGPT. Focusing on maintaining some of the largest models on the planet actually puts us at a disadvantage.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • The Case of the Disappearing Swiss Cheese Holes.
  • Wes Anderson’s Star Wars.
  • A nice stroke of book collecting luck: I picked up an inscribed presentation copy of H. G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods. Or rather, I picked it up as part of a multibook lot back in February and didn’t realize it was inscribed until last week.
  • “Biden Deploys 1,500 Troops At Border To Help Register New Voters.”
  • “Pro Disc Golfer Disqualified After Testing Negative For Cannabis.”
  • The Democratic Party’s Foreign Sugar Daddies

    Thursday, April 6th, 2023

    The Democratic Party may not be any good at cultivating a healthy economy, governing, or protecting the rights of average Americans, but they excel in all forms of election cheating.

    Case in point: Campaign finance fraud.

    We’ve already covered illegal campaign contributions indictment.

    But don’t think Democrats are content with merely sucking up illegal American contributions. No, Democrats have also mastered the art of illegally sucking up illegal campaign contributions from foreigners abroad.

    First up: “Leonardo DiCaprio Testifies Obama Received Millions in Stolen CCP Cash From Fugees Founder ‘Pras’ Michel.”

    Actor Leonardo DiCaprio took the stand and testified in the federal trial of Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, founder of the hip hop band Fugees, and his alleged involvement in a money laundering scheme that included a huge — and illegal — donation to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

    DiCaprio recalled a conversation with Malaysian financier Jho Low, who mentioned that he was looking to donate millions of dollars to the Obama campaign by giving the money to Michel and having him pass it to Obama’s people.

    Fast Facts:

  • Low was sentenced — in absentia — to a 10-year sentence in a Kuwaiti court for his role in laundering roughly $1 billion of the almost $4.5 billion worth of Chinese currency he allegedly swindled in what’s known as the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.
  • Low claimed he wanted to donate between $20-$30 million dollars to Obama.
  • It is illegal for American presidential candidates to accept donations from foreigners.
  • The DOJ charged Low for trying to donate money to lobby the Trump administration, hoping to have the charges against him relating to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal dropped.
  • Low is on the lam and is believed to be hiding in China or Macau. China denies harboring him.
  • “It was a significant sum, something to the tune of $20-30 million,” DiCaprio testified in court. “I said, ‘Wow that’s a lot of money!’”

    Additional witnesses testified that they were wired money from Low and asked to forward it to the Obama campaign.

    Michel allegedly took the mad stacks from Low and used them to lobby Obama’s government on behalf of Low and the Chinese Communist Party.

    He distributed $21.6 million to American straw donors who would then donate it to the Obama campaign, concealing the fact that the money came from Low.

    Imagine my shocked face. Of course, it was already known at the time that the Obama campaign accepted foreign campaign donations on its website by disabling the most basic checks.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

    But just because Democrats seem to love sucking up money with people connected to communist China, don’t think that they’re not looking at other foreign Sugar Daddys.

    Such as Hansjörg Wyss.

    The Berger Action Fund is a nondescript name for a group with a rather specific purpose: steering the wealth of Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, into the world of American politics and policy.

    As a foreign national, Wyss is prohibited from donating to candidates or political committees. But his influence is still broadly felt through millions of dollars routed through a network of nonprofit groups that invest heavily in the Democratic ecosystem. Such groups don’t have to disclose the source of their funding — or many details about how they spend it.

    Newly available tax documents show that his giving through the Berger Action Fund, which describes itself as advocating for “solutions to some of our world’s biggest problems,” swelled in 2021 to $72 million, cementing Wyss’ status as a Democratic-aligned megadonor.

    Representatives for Wyss insist they comply with laws governing the giving of foreign nationals and have put in place strict policies limiting the use of donations to “issue advocacy” — not partisan electoral activities. But the fact that the money cannot be publicly traced highlights the difficulty of putting such assertions to the test.

    Those same groups have helped to bankroll efforts to lift President Joe Biden’s agenda and paid for TV ads promoting Democratic congressional candidates ahead of last year’s midterm elections.

    You may remember Wyss from back when he was funneling money to Clinton toady John Podesta.

    Who needs the money of mere Americans when you have transnational European billionaires as your sugar daddy?

    (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

    Election Fraud Update for November 9, 2020

    Monday, November 9th, 2020

    I trust you saw my Benford’s Law post from yesterday. Here’s a roundup of current election fraud news:

  • A state of play thread.

    Read the whole thread.

  • In Detroit, Republican poll watchers were prevented from carrying out their duties.
  • Evidence:

  • Undeniable mathematical evidence of voting fraud:

    In both Michigan and Wisconsin, several vote dumps occurred at approximately 4am on Wednesday morning, which showed that Joe Biden received almost 100 percent of the votes. President Trump was leading by hundreds of thousands of votes in both states as America went to sleep, and turnout in the state of Wisconsin seems to be particularly impossible.

    With absentee ballots, former vice-president Joe Biden was also up 60 points in Pennsylvania and almost 40 points in Michigan According to the New York Times. Comparably, Biden was only up single digits in absentee voting in most other battleground states. Wisconsin has not yet been reported.

    Elections officials in Michigan and Wisconsin could not explain Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s sudden and dramatic vote tally increase that occurred in both states Wednesday morning.

    When asked at a Wednesday press conference how this occurred, Michigan Department of State spokesperson Aneta Kiersnowski told reporters “We cannot speculate as to why the results lean one way or another.”

    This is particularly concerning considering republicans led in mail-in ballots requested and mail-in and in-person ballots returned leading up to and at the start of election day.

    According to NBC News on election day before the polls opened, In Michigan, Republicans led 41% to 39% in Mail-in Ballots requested. Republicans also led 42% to 39% with Mail-in and in-person ballots returned.

    In Wisconsin on election day before the polls opened, Republicans led Mail-in Ballots requested 43% to 35%, and Mail-in and early in-person ballots returned 43% to 35%. Almost ALL of the ballots found, while most in the country were sleeping, after they officials stated they would stop counting, were for Joe Biden.

    
    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Detroit Democrats evidently pulled out all the stops in the fraud machine:

  • Thread on the security deficiencies in the “Dominion” voting software used in so many states:

    Read the whole thread, as there are a lot of attack surfaces there….

  • Rudy Giuliani claims there’s enough evidence to change the outcome, and it will all come out in court. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • A list of the lawsuits the Trump team has filed over election fraud.
  • Even if Democrats make their presidential fraud stick, it came at a high price:

    But even if Trump does lose, it may be a blessing in disguise for Republicans.

    The result has crushed Democratic expectations of a clean sweep. It wasn’t a landslide win against an unpopular president, as we had been told so confidently for months.

    If Biden wins, it will be by the narrowest margin.

    And all the hundreds of millions spent on retaking the Senate came to nothing, with the Republicans looking to hold onto their lead. The top targets, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lindsey ­Graham, survived easily.

    The fatal miscalculations of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in cynically refusing to negotiate on the latest stimulus bill have cost the Democrats dearly in the House, where they have gone backward by at least six seats. They did not manage to get rid of a single Republican. So much for the blue wave.

    The failure means that in 2022, the House is more likely to revert to Republican control, setting up a lame-duck presidency.

    The Democrats won’t be able to pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College or make DC and Puerto Rico states. They will struggle to impose the Green New Deal.

    Unfortunately, nothing can be done to stop a President Biden-Harris repeat of the geopolitical errors of the Obama presidency, such as appeasing China and Iran’s mullahs and signing onto the Paris climate accord.

    But a President Biden in cognitive decline will sooner or later be replaced by his unpopular, untested vice president, Kamala Harris.

    Saddled with a recession and policies that will only exacerbate economic decline, the next four years will hobble Democrats.

  • Sarah Hoyt says not to panic:

    They’re scared.

    Oh, not the sheep on the streets. They fell for it, just like they fell for “two million dead from covid.” But the higher-ups, they’re scared.

    Years ago, during the ’04 election, a friend told me the Democrats always get louder and more triumphalist when they’re losing. I’ve observed this is true, since then.

    So, step down from the ledge. Go take a shower. Have some real food. Eat a vegetable. Ease up on the coffee. Go for a walk.

    And don’t fall for the blue smokescreen

  • “In Apparent Glitch, Voting Machines Hunt Down And Murder Trump Supporters.” “This is just a small, routine error, and we are looking into it,” said one official. “There’s nothing to be concerned about. These kinds of small mistakes happen from time to time, and it will be corrected soon.”
  • LinkSwarm for November 6, 2020

    Friday, November 6th, 2020

    All that calm wore off and now I’m just pissed about a variety of things: The stolen election, Amazon being irrational (“No, we can’t split orders just because one item won’t be in stock until February 2021, we don’t have that power. No, there’s nobody you can escalate to.”), and BlueHost refuses to say anything but “You’re not optimized enough” when the blog craters during and Istalanche. And other things I can’t talk about

    So enjoy a (shorter than usual) Friday LinkSwarm dominated by news of Democratic election fraud.

  • Yes, Democrats are trying to steal the election. Mostly what I’ve covered here before.
  • Documented evidence of fraud: “Wagons, Suitcases, and Coolers Roll Into Detroit Voting Center at 4 AM.”
  • “23,277 Ballots ‘Found’ In Pennsylvania, All Mysteriously For Biden.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Brazen:

  • Another lawsuit:

    Pennsylvania’s Democratic election leaders violated state code on Monday when they authorized county election officials to provide information about rejected mail ballots to political party operatives, according to a Republican lawsuit filed in state court and obtained by National Review.

    The lawsuit cites an email sent to county election directors at 8:38 p.m. on Monday by Jonathan Marks, Pennsylvania’s deputy elections secretary.

    In the email, Marks wrote that “county boards of elections should provide information to party and candidate representatives during the pre-canvass that identifies the voters whose ballots have been rejected” so they could be offered a provisional ballot.

    Democrats have been winning mail-in voting handily in Pennsylvania and mail votes are key to Joe Biden’s chances of overtaking President Donald Trump’s dwindling lead in the state.

    Republicans argue the direction from Marks violates the state’s election code, which states “no person observing, attending or participating in a pre-canvass meeting may disclose the results of any portion of any pre-canvass meeting prior to the close of polls.”

  • Larry Correia has thoughts:

    I am more offended by how ham fisted, clumsy, and audacious the fraud to elect him is than the idea of Joe Biden being president. I think Joe Biden is a corrupt idiot, however, I think America would survive him like we’ve survived previous idiot administrations. However, what is potentially fatal for America is half the populace believing that their elections are hopelessly rigged and they’re eternally fucked. And now, however this shakes out in court, that’s exactly what half the country is going to think.

    People are pissed off, and rightfully so.

    Before I became a novelist I was an accountant. In auditing you look for red flags. That’s weird bits in the data that suggest something shifty is going on. You flag those weird things so you can delve into them further. One flag doesn’t necessarily mean there’s fraud. Weird things happen. A few flags mean stupidity or dishonesty. But a giant pile of red flags means that there’s bad shit going on and people should be in jail.

    Except for in politics, where apparently all you have to do to dismiss a bunch of red flag is be a democrat and mumble something about “fascist voter suppression” then you can do all sorts of blatant crime and get off.

    I’ve been trying to keep up with the firehose of information about what’s going on during this clusterfuck of an election. Last night I was on Facebook talking about the crazy high, 3rd world dictatorship level voter turnout levels in the deep blue areas of these swing states was very suspicious. Somebody gas lighted me about how “I’d have to do better than that”, so this was my quick reply, listing off the questionable bullshit I could think of off the top of my head:

    The massive turn out alone is a red flag.

    But as for doing better…

    The late night spikes that were enough to close all the Trump leads are a red flag.

    The statistically impossible breakdown of the ratios of these vote dumps is a red flag.

    The ratios of these dumps being far better than the percentages in the bluest of blue cities, even though the historical data does not match, red flag.

    The ratios of these vote dumps favoring Biden more in these few battlegrounds than the ratio for the rest of the country (even the bluest of the blue) red flag.

    Biden outperforming Obama among these few urban vote dumps, even though Trump picked up points in every demographic group in the rest of the country, red flag.

    The poll observers being removed. Red flag.

    The counters cheering as GOP observers are removed, red flag.

    The fact that the dem observers outnumber the GOP observers 3 to 1, red flag (and basis of the first lawsuit filed)

    The electioneering at the polls (on video), red flag.

    The willful violation of the court order requiring the separation of ballots by type, red flag.

    USPS whistleblower reporting to the Inspector General that today they were ordered to backdate ballots to yesterday, red flag.

    The video of 2 AM deliveries of what appear to be boxes of ballots with no chain of custody or other observers right before the late night miracle spikes, red flag.

    Any of those things would be enough to trigger an audit in the normal world. This many flags and I’d be giggling in anticipation of catching some thieves.

    (Hat tip: Crossover Queen’s Creative Chaos.)

  • “How Senate Republicans averted catastrophe. With a late cash infusion and misses in the polls, the GOP looks likely to hold its majority.” Unfortunately, this was written two days ago, before Democratic Party election fraud manufactured enough votes to steal John James victory in Michigan and force both Georgia senate races into runoffs that Democrats could again try to steal.
  • Pollsters learned nothing from 2016. Or didn’t want to learn anything:

    A CNN poll had Trump down 12 percentage points nationally entering the final week before the election. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in late October claimed Biden was leading in Wisconsin by 17 points. That state’s voting ended up nearly even. YouGov’s election model showed Biden prevailing with a landslide win in the Electoral College. Progressive statistics guru Nate Silver had for weeks issued pseudo-scientific analyses of a Trump wipeout.

    Pollsters were widely wrong in 2016. Yet they learned nothing about their flawed methodologies. So how do they remain credible after 2020, when most were wildly off again?

    A cynic might answer that polling no longer aims to offer scientific assessments of voter intentions.

    Pollsters, the vast majority of them progressives, have become political operatives. They see their task as ginning up political support for their candidates and demoralizing the opposition. Some are profiteering as internal pollsters for political campaigns and special interests.

    Never again will Americans believe these “mainstream” pollsters’ predictions because they have been exposed as rank propagandists.

    That bleak assessment won’t make much difference to pollsters. They privately understand what their real mission has become and why they are no longer scientific prognosticators.

    Big liberal donors sent cash infusions totaling some $500 million into Senate races across the country to destroy Republican incumbents and take back the Senate. In the end, they may have failed to change many of the outcomes.

    But did they really fail?

    Democrats dispelled the fossilized notion that “dark money” is dangerous to politics. They are now the party of the ultra-rich, at war with the middle classes, whom they write off as clingers, deplorables, dregs, and chumps.

    In that context, the staggering amounts of money were a valuable marker. The liberal mega-rich are warning politicians that from now on, they will try to bury populist conservatives with so much oppositional cash that they would be wise to keep a low profile.

    Winning is not the only aim of lavish liberal campaign funding. Deterring future opponents by warning them to be moderate or go bankrupt is another motivation.

    Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey seemed unapologetic that his company was systematically censoring and de-platforming conservative users. In a recent hearing he talked to members of the Senate as if he were a 19th-century railroad baron.

    Google has been accused of massaging its search results to favor progressive agendas. During the final weeks of the campaign, social-media platforms shut down accounts and censored ads and messages, providing an enormously valuable gift to Joe Biden.

    Silicon Valley, like the 19th-century oil, rail, and sugar trusts, sees no reason to hide its partisanship and clout.

    The media coverage of the election was unsavory. Journalists confirmed the findings of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center, which in an assessment of news coverage of Trump’s first 100 days in office found that 80 percent of the coverage was negative.

    As in the fashion of the Russian collusion hoax, the media for weeks on end revved up their engines for a seemingly certain Biden landslide victory. They rarely cross-examined Biden on the issues. And they certainly stayed clear of the Biden family influence-peddling scandal.

    What do all these power players — big polling, big money, big tech, and big media — have in common other than their partisanship and their powerful reach?

    One, they stereotypically represent a virtue-signaling coastal elite that feels its own moral superiority allows it to destroy its own professional standards.

    Two, they worry little about popular pushback because they assume that their money, loaded surveys, and Internet and media cartels create, rather than reflect, public opinion.

    Three, while these elite cadres have enormous resources, they still are relatively unpopular. Despite being outspent 2 to 1, pronounced doomed by pollsters, often censored on social media, and demonized in print and on television, Trump was neck and neck with Biden — a fact that a few days ago was deemed impossible.

  • “Election night showed why Trump voters don’t trust the media“:

    The wall-to-wall promises of a blue wave were delivered with all the certainty of prophecy. Joe Biden and Democrats would sweep the White House and all of Congress from sea to shining sea. Even a large voter survey that Fox News did with the Associated Press suggested as much.

    Some 24 hours after the polls closed, President Trump still has a fighting chance to get 270 electoral votes, the GOP is holding on to a slim majority in the Senate and actually gained five House seats, narrowing the Dems’ majority to 12 seats.

    We all make mistakes, and most of us try to avoid them. The problem with the unholy news-polling-social media-industrial complex is that the mistakes are so numerous and predictable that they begin to feel intentional.

    He’s wrong on that: They’ve felt intentional for a long time now.

  • Facebook Shuts Down Massive ‘Stop the Steal’ Group. The pro-Trump group attracted 300,000 members in just two days.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.”
  • Kurt Schlichter on the other election winners and losers:

    LOSER: The Pollsters

    You know, in the world we normal people dwell in, when you consistently fail, you get fired. But, as in so many of our garbage establishment institutions, when you’re a pollster there is no accountability. You keep failing and failing and failing and your dumb clients and the dumb media keep citing your garbage surveys. It’s really remarkable. You would think they would have a little pride in themselves and not want to look like idiots, but no. Instead, it’s, “Our weighting gives us Biden +15 in Texas. Gee, that sounds right. Let’s go with that!” Except for a few outlets, always the ones that take conservatives seriously enough to reach out to them, it’s been a disaster. But next time, we’ll hear once again about how, “Ackshuuuuuallly, the polls were very accurate in 2020” as if we have the same memory issues as the guy they were trying to help. The nice thing is that even the least woke Republican is woke to the poll scam now.

    WINNER: The Republican Party’s Populist Wing

    The battle for the soul of the Republican Party is over and we won. This is now the party of people who work for a living, people who have little companies, people who want their kids to grow up in a world of regular pronouns and where going to church isn’t a hate crime. It is also a party that cares nothing about where your grandfather came from – we are winning black and Hispanic voters to our cause not by condescending “outreach” but by offering an agenda of good jobs and their kids not being sent off to fight idiotic wars. It is not the party of the Chamber of Commerce – hey geniuses, how’s that pivot to the Dems working out for ya? It is not the party of the bow tie dorks who snicker with their lib buddies over pumpkin-infused IPAs in Georgetown restaurant about those Walmart-shopping, Jesus-liking hicks who make up the base. It is not the party of Wall Street. We are a party that happily includes both the Amish and Lil’ Pump. And the Democrats are the party of hedge funders, college professors, Antifa bums, and people who think “The Handmaid’s Tale” is nonfiction.

  • Tucker Carlson blasts the media for its racist assumptions:

    Elections tell you what the parties actually look like, not what you imagine they look like … so the coalitions become really clear. And in Florida, the population center, of course, Miami-Dade County, the biggest county in the state, Hillary Clinton [got] 334,000 votes there. An hour ago, with 84 percent reporting, Donald Trump had already outstripped that by more than 100,000 votes,” Carlson said on Tuesday evening.

    Miami-Dade is 70 percent Hispanic,” he continued. “That’s not what you would have expected if you’ve been watching for the past six months this attempt to racialize everything to make Trump the greatest racist in the world’s history. Whether you buy that or not, you would expect that to depress the votes for Trump in Miami-Dade County but the opposite happened. He’s doing better there with non-White voters than he did four years ago.”

    Clearly, the media was completely wrong.

  • Why the left is enraged at Amy Coney Barret’s confirmation:

    The fundamental source of this agitation is that the Left was convinced the Court would always be on its side, becoming its personal tool for achieving desired outcomes outside the electoral process.

    A fuller understanding requires looking back at recent history. And it requires looking at it more honestly than do the recent laments that, for example, Republican presidents over the past several decades have disproportionately appointed more justices to the Supreme Court than they deserve. For conservatives of a few decades’ past — and still, even, to some extent now — this is not a sign of success but of a particularly cruel kind of failure, if not even their preferred appointees could be trusted once on the Court. The modern conservative legal movement, animated primarily by a renewed commitment to understanding the Constitution as it was understood by those who drafted it (known as originalism), didn’t just come out of nowhere with the 1982 birth of the Federalist Society or the 1985 originalist stirrings of Reagan attorney general Edwin Meese. These and other stirrings came in response to a recognition on the right that the Left had either welcomed or been actively complicit in the transformation of the Supreme Court into a super-legislature, a way for liberals to achieve judicially what they could not electorally.

    To conservatives, this fact alone comported ill with the Constitution, never mind that many of the decisions achieved by the Court — most notoriously Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973 — proceeded to do further violence to the constitutional order. Their response was not merely to capitulate to this state of affairs, but to work, slowly yet surely, to change it. The Federalist Society helped these efforts greatly, bringing originalist-inclined law students together, connecting them to like-minded professors, helping to seed law schools and courts nationwide with trustworthy exponents of its philosophy, broadly speaking, and more. And this was done despite significant resistance from the left, which treasured the Court and wished to keep it under its control. Liberals aghast at McConnell’s hardball today shouldn’t just look back at the 2018 treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, but also to the infamous Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, the treatment of lower-court nominee Miguel Estrada, and more.

    And yet, for all of the Right’s successes on the Court, it must still witness what it views as fairly spectacular failures. The first Court with majority Republican appointees essentially affirmed Roe; in 2012 a Republican-appointed chief justice rewrote the Affordable Care Act to uphold it as constitutional; in 2015 the Court found a right to same-sex marriage in the 14th Amendment; and just this past summer, Neil Gorsuch, an apparent textualist, divined protection from transgender discrimination in legislation penned within living memory that originally contained no such protections. To be sure, the Right has had its triumphs — often though not always corresponding to defeats for the Left, only inasmuch as the Left was defying or hoping to defy the Constitution — such that it remains interested in the game. And so it is likely to remain, while still wary of the Court’s ability to uphold the Constitution, even with an ostensible 6–3 majority.

    Yet this complicated history, full of the kind of back-and-forth one would expect from the political process, helps to explain the depth of the Left’s anger about the Court’s current status. They are mad that conservatives discovered their thinly veiled attempts at transforming the judiciary and decided to try to recapture it with the help of a philosophy that emphasized a renewed commitment to the Constitution. Now that, after decades of patience and persistence, conservatives have established a beachhead on a Court liberals thought would always be theirs, they are infuriated. Some, such as Sheldon Whitehouse, see evidence of a nefarious conspiracy in what has been accomplished openly yet at great difficulty. But the true root of this remains a frustration that, in at least one area, the Right has refused to go along with the Left’s capture of an institution, that it has not consented to the triumphalist narrative the Left imagines culminates with it forever in charge of everything, never dealing with anything more than token opposition.

  • More on that theme:

    There is also one particular aspect of conservative success in filling the federal courts that contributes to the tone of hysteria that creeps into these reactions. The federal appellate courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, are elite institutions — indeed, the most elite institutions in all of American government and the legal profession. They are populated by highly educated professionals. They work with ideas. They are one of the few institutions of government that actually consumes the work of academics and sometimes translates it into policy. Their output is expected to be scholarly in character and taught in law schools. To see such institutions in the hands of conservatives, particularly social and religious conservatives, is intolerable to people whose worldview depends so heavily on sneering at the inferior intellect of anyone who holds to socially conservative views. That sneering is especially apparent any time a conservative is described as intelligent; the gag reflex you see in response is visceral.

    Elite or wannabe-elite institutions in our culture these days tend to be dominated by social liberals and progressives, who in turn seek to drive out all dissenters. To be a conservative on a university faculty is to be, at a minimum, badly outnumbered. Often there are more-or-less open efforts to stamp out any remaining vestiges of disagreement. We see the same thing with big newspapers, magazines, and other journalistic institutions; with the arts and entertainment; increasingly in large corporations as well. The tribunes of the legal profession itself — the bar associations, the journals covering the legal industry, the people who hand out awards — are dominated by the same groups, and rarely even engage with the possibility that their values might not be the only good ones. But no amount of desire for social ostracism can change the fact that the Supreme Court and the federal appellate courts sit atop the legal food chain, where the bar’s disapproval must remain comparatively muted, if through clenched teeth. To a certain sort of progressive, this itself serves as a kind of standing rebuke, a nagging reminder that gets in the way of simply scorning the idea that conservatives could be capable of doing such a job.

  • “My kid has cancer and ObamaCare is making everything worse.”
  • Governor Abbott welcomes a new resident:

  • Under other circumstances this might be amusing:

  • “Miracle: Ballot Counter Turns 5 Biden Votes Into 5,000.”
  • “Florida Recount Finally Wraps Up, Al Gore Declared President.”
  • Mike the Musicologist sends an emergency puppy:

  • What Can You Do About A Stolen Election?

    Thursday, November 5th, 2020

    “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

    – Matthew 6:27

    It’s Thursday morning and the Presidential race is still up in the air. I would probably worry more about it if I hadn’t been suffering from such sleep deprivation last night. So instead, I achieved the sort of zen calm that comes over you after you’ve depleted all those neurotransmitters and neuroeptides necessary for you to worry. And I have other worries ahead of national elections right now.

    Are Democrats in the process of stealing the 2020 Presidential race by carrying out massive voter fraud in a few key battleground states?

    Some evidence:

    Then there’s the county where Biden and Trump numbers were briefly transposed. It’s entirely possible that was just an error.

    Obviously, this is going to end up in courts. In fact, legal action is already underway:

  • Supreme Court orders Pennsylvania Democrats to respond in ballot dispute.” “President Trump has moved to intervene in a lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania Republicans, arguing the state’s Democratic Party and Secretary of State violated the law by extending the time for counting mail-in ballots to Nov. 6 at 5 p.m., despite the state legislature setting the deadline as Election Day.”
  • Rudy Giuliani filed another lawsuit over voter fraud in Pennsylvania.
  • There’s a Michigan lawsuit over denial of GOP poll watchers access.
  • In addition to that, the campaign has filed a lawsuit in Georgia, and is demanding a recount in Wisconsin.
  • This post was going to have some insightful commentary on possible paths for various Trump/Biden win/lose scenarios, but I don’t have time to get to it right now. And after 9 hours of sleep, I still feel tired…

    Project Veritas Uncovers Texas Ballot Fraud

    Wednesday, October 28th, 2020

    Another voter fraud scandal right here in Texas, uncovered by Project Veritas.

    We keep hearing voter fraud is a myth and anyone who challenges that notion is simply creating hysteria,” said James O’Keefe, the founder and CEO of Project Veritas.

    “I went to Texas to be part of the Project Veritas investigation into election fraud and to be on the ground here with our undercover journalists,” O’Keefe said.

    “Our journalists discovered a voter fraud system positioned to swing Texas in 2020,”
    he said.

    “These so-called ‘ballot chasers’ use a mix of gifts and coercion to work down their list of targeted voters and make sure they vote for their paymasters,” he said. “The actions violate both federal and state law and constitute a direct threat to the integrity of our election-based republic.”

    One of the capos in this ballot racketeering operation is Raquel Rodriguez, nominally a political consultant for GOP House candidate Mauro E. Garza, the owner of the San Antonio’s Pegasus Nightclub, which is located on the Main Avenue Strip, he said.

    Raquel Rodriguez: “I can honestly say I’m bringing at least at least 7,000 votes to the polls.”

    Journalist: “Seven thousand—and that’s for San Antonio for this area too. It’s a lot.”

    Rodriguez: “That’s a lot. It’s a lot, period. Just so you know–have an idea–so this is what I do.”

    Rodriguez pressures voter to change her vote from Cornyn to Hegar

    Rodriguez said she develops personal relationships with senior citizens when she harvests their ballots and then uses different post offices, so that the bundles do not draw suspicion.

    “So, if ya’ll are my seniors, I’m literally picking you up. I’m going to your house, you’re doing your ballot,” she said. “I go throughout the entire city. If I have a bunch of them, what I do if I have a bunch of them, I’ll take 20 [ballots] here, 30 [ballots] here, 40 [ballots] here.”

    At one point during the investigation, one Project Veritas journalist paid $500 to accompany Rodriguez on her rounds to collect ballots.

    In an exchange recorded with a hidden camera by a Project Veritas journalist, Rodriguez literally examined a woman’s ballot and convinced her to change her vote from Cornyn to Hegar.

    Raquel Rodriguez: “You can do, you can vote for whoever you want, but our conversation that we had, you said you were voting for Hegar, ‘cause you were going straight Democrat. You said you’re voting straight Democrat per our conversation, so that when you’re voting for the straight Dem – ‘cause that’s what you want to do, correct?”

    In the video, Rodriguez shows the woman how to correct the ballot so it looks like an accident, by crossing out the line for Cornyn and putting her initials next to the line. “You’re going to, you’re going to dot that in—and the line goes like this, and then your initials are going to be right there, so, that way they know it was done accidentally.”

    Journalist: “So, John Cornyn, she voted for John Cornyn and then you made her—”

    Raquel Rodriguez: “That’s my job.”

    After the voter “corrected” her ballot, Rodriguez presented her with a shawl as a gift.

    Rodriguez said Garza gave her a gift budget of $2,500 for his campaign, and in addition to the shawls, she gives voters rosaries, diabetic socks and wallets.

    Not only is bribing voters to change their votes in a U.S. Senate election illegal, it’s a federal felony, and Uncle Sam don’t play.

    And here’s O’Keefe confronting her:

    Since she also worked for a Republican, does this mean we have a voting fraud case the news media will finally report on?