Archive for the ‘Media Watch’ Category

LinkSwarm for December 18, 2020

Friday, December 18th, 2020

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! On a personal note, I was just laid off from my Senior Technical Writer job, so if you have any leads in the department (for either Austin or remote work), drop me a line in the comments.

  • Russian hackers penetrated Austin city government:

    State-sponsored hackers believed to be from Russia have breached the city network of Austin, Texas, The Intercept has learned. The breach, which appears to date from at least mid-October, adds to the stunning array of intrusions attributed to Russia over the past few months.

    The list of reported victims includes the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, State, and the Treasury; the Pentagon; cybersecurity firm FireEye; IT software company SolarWinds; and assorted airports and local government networks across the United States, among others. The breach in Austin is another apparent victory for Russia’s hackers. By compromising the network of America’s 11th-most populous city, they could theoretically access sensitive information on policing, city governance, and elections, and, with additional effort, burrow inside water, energy, and airport networks. The hacking outfit believed to be behind the Austin breach, Berserk Bear, also appears to have used Austin’s network as infrastructure to stage additional attacks.

    While the attacks on SolarWinds, FireEye, and U.S. government agencies have been linked to a second Russian group — APT29, also known as Cozy Bear — the Austin breach represents another battlefront in a high-stakes cyber standoff between the United States and Russia. Both Berserk Bear and Cozy Bear are known for quietly lurking in networks, often for months, while they spy on their targets. Berserk Bear — which is also known as Energetic Bear, Dragonfly, TEMP.Isotope, Crouching Yeti, and BROMINE, among other names — is believed to be responsible for a series of breaches of critical U.S. infrastructure over the past year.

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Illegal-immigrant caravans back on the way — and Joe Biden ‘invited’ them.” (Hat tip: TPPF.)
  • Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls for Nancy Pelosi’s ouster as Speaker of the House.

    Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) called for new leadership to replace House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), in an interview with The Intercept aired on Wednesday.

    The remarks represent Ocasio-Cortez’s most direct challenge to current Democratic congressional leadership, and come a month after Michigan representative Elissa Slotkin vowed not to support Pelosi for another term as House Speaker. Pelosi is the only candidate for the position, but with Democrats projected to win at most 226 House seats, Pelosi can only lose eight Democratic votes to remain Speaker.

    I wonder: If enough of the hard left defects to keep Pelosi from one more term as speaker, might there be enough Democrats to vote for a moderate Republican as Speaker rather than being ruled by The Squad?

  • Another Obama-era crony green energy boondoggle goes bust:

    Move over, Solyndra. Another green boondoggle from the Obama era has failed, and taxpayers are out as much as $510 million. Late last week Judge Karen Owens approved a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization by Tonopah Solar Energy. Tonopah operated the Crescent Dunes solar plant in Nevada that received $737 million in guaranteed loans from the Obama Administration.

    The plan includes a settlement with the Department of Energy that leaves taxpayers liable for as much as $234.68 million in outstanding debt, but the total public cost is even higher. Crescent Dunes also received an investment-tax credit, and the 2009 stimulus legislation allowed it to receive a cash payment in lieu of credit. In 2017 the plant received more than $275.6 million from Treasury under the Section 1603 program, which it used to service its outstanding liabilities. So taxpayers already gave Crescent Dunes cash to pay off its taxpayer-backed loans.

    Snip.

    DOE expected Crescent Dunes to produce up to 482,000 megawatt hours every year, but the plant hasn’t produced that much energy in its lifetime. In 2019 Crescent Dunes’s hot salt tanks suffered what partial owner SolarReserve described as “a catastrophic failure” that has left the plant inoperable.

    Since molten salt is one of the key elements in many next generation nuclear plant designs, I searched online for pictures of what a catastrophic hot salt tank failure looks like, but I couldn’t find any.

  • Portland keeps letting Antifa run wild:

    Last week, Portland law ­enforcers raided a house that had for months been ­illegally occupied by trespassers affiliated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa. At the barricaded property, officers made arrests and found a stockpile of firearms.

    Under normal circumstances, the armed trespassers would be prosecuted, and that would be the end of the story. But in riot-plagued Portland, Oregon, things are very far from normal.

    The city’s “progressive” district attorney immediately dropped the charges against the occupiers, and their comrades soon sent in reinforcements to build a sprawling autonomous zone in the middle of a densely populated residential area.

    The militants called the place the Red House Autonomous Zone — named after the red-painted house occupied at the heart of the zone. In doing so, they took inspiration from the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, Washington. During the summer, leftist extremists chased police out of a six-block area of the Emerald City and drew their own “borders,” complete with checkpoints manned by armed “security.” The three-week ­experiment in lawlessness ended in mass vandalism, ­attempted rape, multiple shootings and two homicides.

    Portland’s RHAZ is following in the same footsteps.

    The house at the center of the autonomous zone was occupied by members of the Kinney family and their allies. The Kinneys, who haven’t paid their mortgage since 2017, were evicted after a tortuous legal process. The fact that they own a second house nearby didn’t prevent the mixed-race Kinneys and their allies from claiming victimization by — you guessed it — “racism.”

    Soon after last week’s raid on the occupied house, some 100 Antifa comrades mobilized through social media to retake the space. “There is an active call for numbers, defensive gear and supplies and change of clothes,” tweeted Antifa group Youth Liberation Front.

    Within a few hours, the entire street was blocked off with stolen fencing, wood and junk taken from nearby homes. Some brought in power tools to reinforce the barriers. The militants laid out piles of rocks, metal spikes and glass bottles at strategic points to act as supply points for projectile weapons. They lined the road with impromptu “booby traps” — upward-facing nail strips, caltrops and more.

    Portland police officers tried to shut down the RHAZ early on, but they were attacked and chased away. Their police cruisers were smashed up; they didn’t return.

    “Those present at the barricades should leave it behind, put down your weapons and allow the neighborhood to return to peace and order,” Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell asked the militants, who ignored his polite request.

    Portland residents should file federal civil rights lawsuits against Portland officials for equal protection violations. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Plus Portland antifa are still the same scumbags:

    A serial sex offender and Black Lives Matter activist recently released from prison served a titular leadership role at the Antifa autonomous zone in north Portland.

    Micah Isaiah Rhodes, 27, was convicted of three counts of second-degree sexual abuse of minors in 2018. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after violating probation by being near children during an Antifa occupation of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Former [Andrew] Cuomo Aide Lindsey Boylan Alleges Governor Sexually Harassed Her For Years.” Hey, what do you want to bet that #BelieveAllWomen magically doesn’t apply to powerful Democrat yet again? For Reasons.
  • Rhode Island’s Democratic governor Gina Raimondo: “Don’t go out and wear a mask.” Four days later: Goes to a wine bar, doesn’t wear a mask. Laws are for the peasants, not the Democratic Party ruling class. (Hat tip: Andrew Malcolm.)
  • Dem. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard commits heresy against radical transgenderism, sponsers bill that would ban men from women’s sports.
  • Get woke, go broke. “Dismal NFL Ratings Force Networks To Renegotiate With Advertisers.”
  • Things look bad for movie theaters.
  • “Leader Of German Audit Watchdog Caught Trading In Wirecard Shares Before Collapse.”
  • If the MSM didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all:

  • Camille Paglia unloads on academic leftism:

  • Over at Borepatch, there’s a swell story about Air Force Brigadier General James Maitland Stewart.
  • Eating chili peppers can extend your life. I’m going to live forever…
  • Cyberpunk 2077 sucked so bad on PS4 that Sony pulled it from the store and is offering refunds.
  • Zodiac killer cipher broken. Also consider this a reminder that Zodiac is one f David Fincher’s best films.
  • Speaking of great films: Ann Reinking, RIP. She was awesome in All That Jazz, one of the all-time great American movies.
  • Welcome BadBlue (by the same folks behind Director Blue) to the blogroll.
  • A first edition of The Federalist Papers sold at auction for $226,800.
  • The Flu would like a word:

  • Funny dog video:

  • “Chinese Spy Assigned To Date Eric Swalwell Begs To Be Sent To Labor Camp Instead.”
  • Like BattleSwarm? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Joe Rogan Under Attack?

    Monday, November 30th, 2020

    With Joe Rogan’s show about to shift to Spotify, here’s a couple of other podcasters (Eric Weinstein and Lex Fridman) noting how Rogan’s close friends are attacked whenever he threatens to upset the desired narrative (i.e., “Biden is suffering from dementia”).

    I hope we still get excerpts from Rogan shows on YouTube, even if we’re no longer getting the full shows.

    (Note: I bet you were expecting another election fraud update today. With getting back to work after my Thanksgiving vacation ended, I didn’t quite have time to put one together for today, but hope to have one up tomorrow.)

    Election Fraud Update for November 23, 2020

    Monday, November 23rd, 2020

    It’s another election fraud update, full of twists and turns. Some of these reports are from sources I’m not familiar with, so use your own judgment.

  • Let’s start off with a transcript of the Rudy Giuliani/Sidney Powell conference laying out the case that election fraud occurred:

    [Rudy Giuliani:] When we began our representation of the president, we certainly were confronted with a very anomalous set of results. The president way ahead on election night, seven or 800,000 in Pennsylvania, somehow he lost Pennsylvania. We have statisticians willing to testify that that’s almost statistically impossible to have happened in the period of time that it happened. But, of course, that’s just speculation.

    As we started investigating, both our investigations and the very patriotic and brave American citizens that have come forward, are extraordinary, extraordinary number of people, extraordinary number of witnesses. And what emerged very quickly is it’s not a single voter fraud in one state. This pattern repeats itself in a number of states. Almost exactly the same pattern, which to any experienced investigator, prosecutor would suggest that there was a plan from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud, specifically focused on big cities and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats, and particularly focused on big cities that have a long history of corruption. The number of voter fraud cases in Philadelphia could fill a library. Just a few weeks ago, there was a conviction for voter fraud and one two weeks before that. And I’ve often said, I guess, sarcastically, but it’s true, the only surprise I would have found in this is that Philadelphia hadn’t cheated in this election, because, for the last 60 years, they’ve cheated in just about every single election. You could say the same thing about Detroit.

    Each one of these cities are cities that are controlled by Democrats, which means they can get away with anything they want to do. It means they have a certain degree of control over… certainly control the election board completely. And they control law enforcement. And unfortunately, they have some friendly judges that will issue ridiculously irrational opinions just to come out in their favor.

    So, let’s start with the specifics, Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the margin of victory now for Biden, which is not a victory, it’s a fraud, is 69,140 votes. The reality is that we are now at a count of 682,770 ballots for which we have affidavits that there was no inspection of that ballot at the time that it was entered in the vote. It was a mail ballot.

    Mail ballots are particularly prone to fraud. We were warned about that by Jimmy Carter, president Jimmy Carter and Secretary Baker in a report about a dozen years ago, in which they said that mail balloting is particularly susceptible of fraud, that we should very carefully consider ever doing it, and that it can be taken advantage of. Justice Souter warned us at the same thing in a comment in an election law case. And even the New York Times wrote articles about how dangerous mail voting, mail-in voting was. And this is the first time we ever did it en masse. And I think we proved that all three are prophets. It’s not only susceptible to fraud, it is easily susceptible to fraud, particularly if you have a plan or scheme, which sounds eerily similar to what Joe Biden told us a few days before the election, that he had the best voter fraud team in the world. But they were good. I don’t know that they were that good because they made significant mistakes, like all crooks do. And we caught them. One of them was pushing out Republican inspectors. Every state… almost every civilized country, even Tanzania and places that you wouldn’t think of, have rules about inspectors, particularly for mail-in ballots. And why particularly for mail-in ballots? Because they can more easily be defrauded and you can’t check on them.

    People who have never done a mail-in ballot, I’m going to show you why it’s so easy. Well, you fill out an envelope like this. You put your… usually in New York, it would be your assembly district and the precinct in which you’re voting. You fill out your name and your address, and you sign it. You then use an inner envelope, and you put the ballot inside the inner envelope. You seal it all, and you send it in.

    When it’s being counted, almost invariably in the United States, up until the mass cheating that went on in this election, a Republican and a Democrat inspector, as well as others, if there are other parties, is allowed to watch the unsealing of this ballot. It used to go on all over America when we conducted honest elections. Because the only time you can ever find out if it’s a fraudulent ballot, is when it is looked at. The minute you approve this, it’s thrown away, gone for eternity. The only thing left is the vote. That could have been Mickey Mouse. That could have been a dead person. That could have been not filled out properly. That could have been the same person 30 times. And all these things have happened, by the way. That could have been nothing filled out. We never know.

    So, for example, the recount being done in Georgia will tell us nothing because these fraudulent ballots will just be counted again because they wouldn’t supply the signatures to match the ballots. So, it means nothing to have counted these ballots, because for example, in Pennsylvania, where we have probably our most precise evidence, 682,770 of these ballots were cast, put in, and they weren’t inspected, which renders them ballots that are null and void, cannot be counted, have to be removed from the vote. Why? For several reasons, not the least of which is, that was basically only one of two places in the state where it was done. So, in the other parts of the state, there was a legitimate inspection of the ballots. So, if you have two different standards in different parts of the state, one favoring one part of the state, the other disfavoring the other part of the state, that’s a classic violation of the equal protection clause of the United States constitution, Bush V Gore being the most recent case that teaches that.

    Bit on “ballot correcting” snipped.

    To give you another example, we have 17,000 provisional ballots cast in Pittsburgh. Do you know what a provisional ballot is? Provisional ballot usually happens this way, and about 15 of the 17,000 happened this way, you walk in and you say, I’m here to vote today. Oh, Mr. Giuliani, you already voted. I did? I don’t remember voting. Oh, yes. Yes. You cast an absentee ballot. No, I didn’t. Yes, you did. No, I didn’t. Yes, you did.

    So, why does that happen 17,000 times in Pittsburgh? People walked in thinking… actually 15,000, to be precise. Why did it happen 15,000 times that people in Pittsburgh walked in to vote and they had already voted, according to the Democrat election machine? Did they forget? That many people with bad memories in Pittsburgh? Or is the following correct, that, as witnesses will testify, they were instructed by the Democrat bosses when they had a ballot in which there was no one registered, just assign it to somebody, just assign it to Rudy Giuliani. So, maybe Rudy Giuliani won’t show up to vote. And, if he does show up to vote, we’ll give him a provisional ballot. That is what we call circumstantial evidence of the fraud.

    The direct evidence of the fraud are the people who will testify that, in fact, that’s what happened to them, as well as the 50 to 60 witnesses we have for the way they were treated and not allowed to inspect the ballots. They weren’t just not allowed to do it. They were pushed. A few cases, they were assaulted. In all cases, they were put in a corral so far away. Probably the closest they got is from here to the back of that room. We could do like a… Did you all watch My Cousin Vinny? You know the movie? It’s one of my favorite law movies because he comes from Brooklyn. And when, the nice lady who said she saw, and then he says to her, “How many fingers do I got up?” And she says a three. Well, she was too far away to see it was only two. These people were further away than My Cousin Vinny was from the witness. They couldn’t see a thing.

    Now, I don’t know. You’re going to tell me that 60 people are lying? They didn’t just tell me this. They swore under penalty of perjury, which is something no Democrat has ever done. You don’t even ask Biden about this. You don’t put them under penalty of perjury. He doesn’t even get asked questions about it. He doesn’t get asked questions about all the evidence of the crimes that he committed. These people are under penalty of perjury, the names that are on our affidavit. They swear that they weren’t allowed to carry out their function as inspectors.

    And it’s not just a technical thing. There’s a reason they did it. Why would you not allow people to carry out the function they’ve been allowed to do for 50 years, 60 years? Why wouldn’t you allow inspections of those ballots? Because you knew you were going to use those ballots to catch Biden up. And you had a big road ahead of you. You had to catch him up for 700,000 to 800,000 votes that he was behind. And the only way you were going to do it were with the mail-in ballots. You couldn’t have a Democrat and Republican inspector around. They don’t even have Democrats watching, because they’d be afraid that they’d be honest Democrats who would say, “You’re cheating.”

    So, that takes us to Michigan where there was an honest Democrat who said they were cheating. And we’ll show you her affidavit because I know you keep reporting falsely that we have no evidence, that we have no specific acts of fraud. That’s because the coverage of this has been almost as dishonest as the scheme itself. The American people are entitled to know this. You don’t have a right to keep it from them. You don’t have a right to lie about it. And you are. I mean, you don’t report to them that a citizen of this country, a very fine woman who was willing to allow me to give you her name. I can’t give you all these affidavits. Because, if I do, these people will be harassed. They’ll be threatened. They may lose their job. They will lose their friends. We’ve lost lawyers in this case because they’ve been threatened. We’ve had lawyers that need protection. What’s going on in this country is horrible. And the censorship that you’re imposing is making it worse.

    But Jesse Jacob is an adult citizen and a resident of the state of Michigan. She’s been an employee of the City of Detroit for decades. I know her age, but she can tell you her age. She was assigned to voting duties in September, and she was trained by the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan. She was basically trained to cheat. She said that I was instructed by my supervisor to adjust the mailing date of these absentee ballot packages to be dated earlier than when they were actually sent in. The supervisor made that announcement for all workers to engage in that fraudulent practice. That’s not me saying that. That’s this American citizens saying that under oath.

    Snip.

    Then she was instructed, “By my supervisor not to ask for a driver’s license or any photo ID when a person was trying to vote. Don’t ask for identification. Why would you not ask for identification? Because you knew that a lot of people not entitled to vote were going to come in and early vote. Because you knew that illegal immigrants were going to be allowed to vote. You knew, if you lived in Philadelphia, unless you’re [Italian 00:17:56]. That’s an Italian expression for stupid. Unless you’re stupid, you knew that a lot of people were coming over from Camden to vote. They do every year. It happens all the time in Philly. It’s about as frequent as getting beaten up at a Philadelphia Eagle football game. Happens all the time, all the time.

    And as it allowed to happen because it is a Democrat corrupt city and has been for years, many, many years. And they carried it out in places they could get away with it. They didn’t carry it out in neutral places. They didn’t carry it out in Republican places. They didn’t carry it out where the law is respected. They carried it out in a corrupt city where the district attorney releases criminals on mass, which is why it has so much crime.

    She also said, “I observed a large number of people who came to the satellite location to vote in person, but they had already applied for and submitted an absentee ballot.” So, she observed a lot of people voting twice. Again, this is Jesse Jacob, not me. “I was instructed not to invalidate any ballots and not to look for any deficiency in the ballots. Why would you do that? Because you’re cheating, on purpose cheating, intentionally cheating. You’re cheating as a institution. This is an instruction from the election commissioner or the employer to the worker. “Don’t look for any deficiencies in the ballot.” “I was instructed not to look at any of the signatures on the absentee ballots. “If she was instructed not to look for any of the signatures on the absentee ballots, why the heck do you sign it in the first place? In order to identify it. She was instructed not to do that because many of the absentee ballots were fraudulent, and they knew that, and they didn’t want to have account of that.

    “On November four, 2020, I was in strict structured to improperly predate the absentee ballot when the receipt date was after November 3rd, 2020.” Now, this is really significant because Justice Alito of the Supreme Court instructed Pennsylvania that any ballot that comes in after eight o’clock on November 3rd, 2020 had to be put aside and not opened because there’s a question as to its legality and its constitutionality. What she’s telling you is that they blatantly disregarded that order, that they took ballots that were marked the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, and they marked it down for the third in blatant disregard of the order of the United States Supreme Court.

    Snip.

    There are many more affidavits here. I’d like to read them all to you, but I don’t have the time. You should have had the time and energy to go look for them. That’s your job, like it’s my job to defend the president and to represent the president. It’s your job to read these things and not falsely report that there’s no evidence. Do you know how many affidavits we have in the Michigan case? 220 affidavits. They’re not all public, but eight of them are. Four affiants here, those are people who give affidavits, report an incident that, under any other circumstances, would have been on the front page of all your newspapers if it didn’t involve the hatred that you have, irrational, pathological hatred that you have for the president. What they swear to is that, at 4:30 in the morning, a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting.

    A truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting ballots. The people thought it was food, so they all ran to the truck. Wasn’t food. It was thousands and thousands of ballots and the ballots were in garbage cans, they were in paper bags, they were in cardboard boxes, and they were taken into the center. They were put on a number of tables. At that time, they thought all the Republican inspectors had left, all but two had and an employee of Dominion who we will address a little bit later.

    Here’s what they jointly swear to, that every ballot that they could see, everything they could hear, these were ballots for Biden. When they saw a ballot, these were ballots only for Biden, meaning there was no down-ticket. Just Biden. Many of them didn’t have anything on the outer envelope because these ballots were produced very quickly, very swiftly and there are estimated to be a minimum of 50,000, maximum of 100,000. Many of them were triple-counted, which means they were put into the counting machine this way. Once, twice, three times. I didn’t see that. I don’t know that but for the fact that three American citizens are willing to swear to it. We’re not going to let them go to court and do that? We’re going to let this election go by when there are in this case 60 witnesses that can prove what I’m saying to you and other acts of fraud in Michigan? I mean what’s happened to this country if we’re going to let that happen? What happened to this country if we’re going to cover that up? We let Al Gore carry on an election dispute longer than this one has been going on for one state and for chads. This happened in Pennsylvania, it happened in Michigan, Michigan probably right now, if I count up the B, just one case alone, Trump v. Benson, a case that we dismissed today because that case was attempting to get the Wayne County Board of Supervisors to de-certify. Well they did. They de-certified. That case has 100 affidavits and 100 affidavits show essentially what I’ve talked to you about. Counting ballots improperly, counting them three and four times, having people vote three and four times, changing and backdating ballots to the point of at least 300,000 illegitimate ballots that we can specifically identify. The margin in Michigan is 146,121 and these ballots were all cast basically in Detroit that Biden won 80-20. So you see it changes the result of the election in Michigan if you take out Wayne County. So it’s a very significant case. That is being raised in the case of Costantino v. The City of Detroit. Not by us, but by an individual plaintiff. We are helping and assisting in that case however and you can find all the affidavits that you want filed in that case. You can find out they’re not just allegations, they’re allegations supported by sworn testimony which is a lot better than Joe Biden has ever done on anything. He doesn’t answer questions, much less give you sworn affidavits.

    On to Wisconsin.

    Wisconsin. Wisconsin had a very small margin, 20,544 last time I looked. In Wisconsin, without going into great detail, very similar plan. Republicans shut out in the City of Milwaukee and also in Madison. Republicans almost uniformly shut out from the absentee process. Not allowed to inspect, not allowed to look at the ballots. We have in Milwaukee and in the state of Wisconsin a much stricter law. Wisconsin doesn’t allow mail-in ballots. They didn’t buy into the big mail-in ballot situation. Wisconsin, when you look at their constitution, almost seems to not like absentee ballots. They state it’s not a right, a privilege, and they have very, very strict procedures and the strict procedure says that you can’t be given an absentee ballot, you have to personally apply for it. It’s illegal basically to solicit a vote and they have actually many reasons for it that probably goes back to their progressive days, when I say progressive, I mean late 19th century early 20th century progressive, when that really meant progressive, not retrogressive.

    So there are 60,000 ballots in Milwaukee County and 40,000 ballots in Madison that as far as we can tell and this is why we are auditing because we have very good information that numbers are going to come out about here that don’t have applications. Under the law of the State of Wisconsin, already decided, if there’s no application for an absentee ballot, the absentee ballot is thrown away. This all happened in two places in Wisconsin. Didn’t happen in Northern Wisconsin. Didn’t happen in Republican Wisconsin. Didn’t happen in neutral Wisconsin, where there are equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, it happened in a place where the vote was 75, 80% for the Democrat. You take away any number of those and that 20,000 lead disappears. In other words, if you count the lawful votes, Trump won Wisconsin by a good margin. Indeed, if you count the lawful votes in Pennsylvania, he won it by about 300,000 votes.

    Also in the lawsuit filed in Wisconsin which is really a petition because of their procedures, there were no inspectors provided for the count of the illegal ballots. There were numerous backdated ballots, we’re just counting them now. Run over into the thousands and there were many precincts in which there was an overvote. Now let me explain to you what an overvote is which is something you should have explained to the American people because it’s about the clearest circumstantial evidence of massive fraud that you can have. An overvote is if 200% of the people who are registered in a district vote. Think about that. 200% of the registered voters in a district vote. What does that mean? That means somebody voted twice, that means somebody who’s not entitled to vote voted, an illegal, a person from another city or state, a person who’s not registered, but what it means is that those are illegitimate votes. You don’t have an overvote of 200% or 300%. You don’t have an overvote of 100%. Most precincts don’t have 100% turnout. In fact, classically it’s considered to be an overvote if you go over 80%. Well in Michigan and Wisconsin, we have overvotes in numerous precincts, of 150%, 200%, and 300%.

    One of the reasons why the two Republicans did not certify in Wayne, Michigan, Wayne County, Michigan is because the overvote was so high. Monstrously high in about two-thirds of the precincts in the city of Detroit. Which means magically two and three times the number of registered voters turned out to vote. In fact we have precincts in which two times the number of people who live there, including children, voted. That’s absurd. The frustration of this is, what I’m describing to you is a massive fraud. It isn’t a little teeny one. It isn’t 100 votes switched here or there. Georgia. We’re about to file a major lawsuit in Georgia. That’ll be filed probably tomorrow. I don’t need to go through it. Virtually the same things I’ve told you before. In the City of Atlanta, Republicans were not allowed to watch the absentee mail-in ballot process. Inspections completely cast aside and we have numerous double voters, we have numerous out-of-state voters, and we have specific evidence of intimidation and changes of vote. That will all be in the lawsuit that comes out tomorrow.

    He’s also going to look at Arizona. Sidney Powell then makes some extraordinary claims:

    Thank you Rudy. What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States. The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here in as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out. We have one very strong witness who has explained how it all works. His affidavit is attached to the pleadings of Lin Wood in the lawsuit he filed in Georgia. It is a stunning, detailed affidavit because he was with Hugo Chavez while … He was being briefed on how it worked, he was with Hugo Chavez when he saw it operate to make sure the election came out his way. That was the express purpose for creating this software. He has seen it operate and as soon as he saw the multiple states shut down the voting on the night of the election, he knew the same thing was happening here, that that was what had gone on.

    Now the software itself was created with so many variables and so many back doors that can be hooked up to the internet or a thumbdrive stuck in it or whatever, but one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden which we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke the algorithm that had been plugged into the system and that’s what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in. That’s when they came in the backdoor with all the mail-in ballots, many of which they had actually fabricated, some were on pristine paper with identically matching perfect circle dots for Mr. Biden. Others were shoved in in batches, they’re always put in in a certain number of batches and people would rerun the same batch. This corresponds to our statistical evidence that shows incredible spikes in the vote counts at particular times and that corresponds to eyewitness testimony of numerous people who have come forward and said they saw the ballots come in the backdoor at that time.

    Notably the Dominion executives are nowhere to be found now. They are moving their offices overnight to different places. Their office in Toronto was shared with one of the Soros entities, one of the leaders of the Dominion Project overall is Lord Malloch-Brown, Mr. Soros’ number two person in the U.K., and part of his organization. There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country. Just to give you a brief description of how this worked, I’m going to quote from a letter that was written and I will read that to make sure I get the quotes right. This person was objecting to the United States acquisition of Sequoia Voting Systems by Smartmatic, a foreign-owned company. I believe this transaction raises exactly the sort of foreign ownership issues that [Siphius 00:42:10] is best positioned to examine for national security purposes. It’s undisputed that Smartmatic is foreign-owned and it has acquired Sequoia, they keep changing the names as they go along. Different times when a problem comes up, they just create another corporation and call it a different name, but it was a voting machine company doing business in the United States.

    Some information about foreign ownership of Smartmatic snipped. All concerning, but probably not anything that will get a judge to prevent certification, throw out fraudulent votes or order a revote.

    We have evidence of different numbers of votes being injected into the system, the same identical unique six digit number multiple times in at least two States that we’ve analyzed so far. I’m talking about like 341,542 votes for Biden and 100,012 for Trump. There’s no explanation, no logical explanation for the same numbers being injected 20 minutes apart into the machine. The software manual itself, you can download it from the internet and I would encourage you all to read it, because it specifically advertises some of these things as features of the system. Why it was ever allowed into this country is beyond my comprehension and why nobody has dealt with it is absolutely appalling.

    The machines were easily accessible to hackers. There’s video on the net that will explain to you how a kid with a cell phone can hack one of these voting machines. There’s been no oversight of Dominion or its software. Workers in each county were trained by Dominion, but there’s no evidence of any monitoring otherwise. We have testimony of different workers admitting that they were trained how to dispose of Trump votes and add to Biden votes. The software has a feature pursuant to which you can drag and drop any number of batches of votes to the candidate of your choice, or simply throw them away. So we have mathematical evidence in a number of states of massive quantities of Trump votes being trashed, just simply put in the trash like you would on your computer with any file and Biden votes being injected. That’s addition to the flipping.

    I mean, it really happens in two ways. There’s an algorithm that runs that automatically flips all the votes, and then each operator has the ability to go in override settings. They can ignore a signature, they could ignore the top line of the ballot. They can go down ballot and select who they want to change the results for. The gentleman who founded Smartmatic, there’s video of him on the internet, explaining that, yes, in at least one occasion, he admits, they changed a million votes with no problem. Many of the jurisdictions that have had this problem might not have known of the issues, but many did. I think a full-scale criminal investigation needs to be undertaken immediately by the Department of Justice and by every state’s equivalent, Attorney General’s Office or State Investigatory Unit, because there’s evidence of different benefits being provided to the people who spent 100 million dollars of taxpayer money at the last minute for their state to get the Dominion voting systems put in, in time for this election in different ways.

    There’s one person that a lawyer told me got, “election insurance”, meaning that he would be able to make sure he was elected. I’m sure they explained that feature in detail to many people who expressed interest in putting this voting system in. Texas denied certification of the Dominion system in 2019, but there are no doubt issues with the software that Texas did use, unbeknownst to Texas, I would imagine, since they went to great trouble to examine the Dominion systems and reject them, but other software, the source code that does the alterations is embedded we have been told in the source code all across the country, in all the voting machines.

    (Hat tip: Regular reader Brandon Byers.)

    I think what Powell means here is the compiled code, which would be a very concerning and shocking thing, if true. Those identical numerical entries (and any other obvious statistical anomalies) need to be investigate and thrown out if found to be fraudulent. But the remote control flipping of votes charge is going to require some evidence to back it up, if true. (For starters, compile the supposed source code and see if the checksum matches the checksum on the compiled code on the machine.) Absent that sort of verification, it’s understandable why even those (like myself) who thinking election fraud occurred think some of the wilder Dominion theories are a distraction from the real issues. Which explains why…

  • Why the Trump campaign is now saying that Powell is no longer a member of their legal team.
  • Tucker Carlson telling Powell to put up or shut up might also have had something to do with it. Powell highlight some real issues, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don’t think she’s produced that.
  • But back to Rudy:

    The media has been claiming since the election ended that President Trump’s claims of voter fraud are ‘baseless’ and ‘without evidence’. That just is not true. The President’s lawyer gave examples of it during today’s press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington DC. But everyone is too busy mocking him to pay attention.

    I tried to listen to what Giuliani actually said and not what he looked like or the characterization of him by the rest of the media. The cameras started feverishly clicking the first time he wiped the sweat from his face, all but guaranteeing that would be the focus of the presser.

    Giuliani did in fact present evidence of voter fraud today but many people simply didn’t want to hear it. He cited multiple Americans, one by name, who have signed sworn affidavits stating that they witness some type of fraud, whether it was pro-Trump ballots being thrown out without cause, ballots being backdated to before the election, poll workers being told not to ask voters for identification, and more.

    As Giuliani helpfully pointed out, affidavits are considered ‘evidence’ in a court case. Whether you agree or disagree with them is a different question. And it’s reasonable that not all of the people who signed their names would be willing to go public. If you want to hear more of the evidence that was presented, just watch the first hour or so of the press conference.

    The more difficult — and crucial — question is whether Trump’s legal team has enough witnesses or other evidence to actually overturn the election in court. That is what journalists should be addressing. But it is simply wrong for the media to assert there is NO evidence of fraud.

  • Things that make you go “Hmmmmm”: “Dominion Voting ‘Lawyers Up‘ Before Abruptly Backing Out Of Pennsylvania Fact-Finding Hearing.”

    Pennsylvania lawmakers had scheduled the hearing with the voting machine manufacturer “to help identify and correct any irregularities in the election process,” according to the House Republican Caucus.

    “It is vitally important voters have faith in the machines they use to cast their ballots. On the heels of Gov. Tom Wolf unilaterally decertifying every voting machine in the Commonwealth, we need to know whether these new machines met expectations, whether they are reliable and whether they are not subject to interference,” said Rep. Grove (R-York).

    Dominion had initially agreed to attend the hearing, before it “abruptly canceled,” Grove said.

    “I was impressed at what appeared to be the willingness that Dominion Voting Systems to address accusations and it would have put 1.3. million Pennsylvanians who used their machines at ease—including myself, thinking that Dominion was willing to publicly back up their product which PA taxpayers invested millions to purchase” he noted during the presser.

    “Unfortunately, last evening, Dominion Voting Systems lawyered up, and backed out of their commitment to the people of Pennsylvania to provide their input in a public format.”

    Grove blasted the company for “retreating into the darkness,” rather than appearing at the hearing with “honesty and integrity.”

    The committee chair said he wanted to know why a company with nothing to hide would back out.

  • Reminder: Texas rejected Dominion: “The examiner reports raise concerns about whether the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system is suitable for its intended purpose; operates efficiently and accurately; and is safe from fraudulent or unauthorized manipulation.”
  • Here’s a statistical analysis from Director Blue that suggests election fraud in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

    Notice the similarities in PA and GA? How the right sides of the graph show virtually no movement for Trump; and very predictable vote movements to Biden. How predictable?

    Below are excerpts of spreadsheets that show what was happening on the right side of each chart. Vote flips in the same-sized bundles (6,000 in PA and 4,800 in GA) were injected into the system to overcome Trump’s lead in both states. You can click either image above to see all of the data.

    The highlighted cells show where the vote counts — stunningly obvious in retrospect — were manipulated to benefit Biden.

    That does look might suspicious. Someone with more statistical analysis expertise than I have will have tell me how meaningful this is.

  • Here’s another data analysis suggesting that Dominion software in Philadelphia regularly transferred votes in exact ratios. The video’s 40 minutes long, I haven’t watched all of it, and, again, someone with more statistical analysis expertise will have to analyze this to tell me how meaningful it is. (Hat tip: Janie Johnson.)
  • Remember the Wayne County flip-flop? Well, it flipped again:

    The two Republicans on Michigan’s Wayne County Board of Canvassers claimed in signed affidavits Wednesday that they were bullied into siding with Democrats and have now rescinded their votes to certify.

    The two Republicans — Monica Palmer and William C. Hartmann — were involved in a brief deadlock in the county’s election certification process Tuesday before voting to certify.

    Wayne County, which includes Detroit, is Michigan’s most populous county, with more than 1.7 million residents.

    The Associated Press reported that a person familiar with the matter said Trump himself reached out to the canvassers on Tuesday evening after the revised vote to express gratitude for their support. Then, on Wednesday, Palmer and Hartmann signed affidavits saying they believe the county vote “should not be certified.”

    And on Thursday, the Trump campaign said it was withdrawing its lawsuit in the state, citing what happened in Wayne County.

    “This morning we are withdrawing our lawsuit in Michigan as a direct result of achieving the relief we sought: to stop the election in Wayne County from being prematurely certified before residents can be assured that every legal vote has been counted and every illegal vote has not been counted,” said Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

    Both Republicans say they were called racists and subjected to threats for raising concerns about ballots that Democrats said were from predominately Black communities, Jenna Ellis, a lawyer for the Trump 2020 Campaign, told Fox News on Tuesday.

    They also said people had threatened members of their family.

  • Speaking of which, watch a Detroit State Rep candidate dox Wayne County canvasser Monica Palmer…and her children:

    (Hat Tip: Brandon Bryers)

  • Alan Dershowitz outline’s Trump’s narrow legal path to victory:

    For example, in Pennsylvania, they have two very strong legal arguments. One, that the courts changed what the legislature did about counting ballots after the end of Election Day. That’s a winning issue in the Supreme Court. I don’t necessarily support it, but it’s a winning issue in the Supreme Court,” Dershowitz told Fox Business on Sunday. The team, meanwhile, has “a winning issue in the Supreme Court on equal protection, that some counties flawed ballots to be cured while others didn’t. Bush v. Gore suggests that an Equal Protection argument can prevail.”

    Dershowitz, who helped defend Trump during the Senate impeachment trial earlier this year, said that due to Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s lead over the president, Trump’s team may not be able to contest enough ballots in Pennsylvania.

    “The other legal theory they have, which is a potentially strong one, is that the computers, either fraudulently or by glitches, changed hundreds of thousands of votes. There, there are enough votes to make a difference, but I haven’t seen the evidence to support that,” he elaborated. “So, in one case, they don’t have the numbers. In another case, they don’t seem yet to have the evidence, maybe they do. I haven’t seen it. But the legal theory is there to support them if they have the numbers and they have the evidence.”

  • Trey Trainor, the Chairman of the federal Election Commission says Trump has a case. “The massive amounts of affidavits that we see in these cases show that there was in fact fraud that took place.”

    Trainor said his review of evidence, including numerous affidavits claiming voter fraud and a sworn statement by a prominent mathematician flagging up to 100,000 Pennsylvania ballots, met the first level of legal scrutiny under what’s known as motion to dismiss or “Rule 12(b)(6)” of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which would dismiss less credible claims.

    Noting the subsequent legal threshold beyond a “motion to dismiss” is the “summary judgment phase,” Trainor said that under this phase, the credibility of witnesses is presumed to be accurate, especially given the caliber of the testimonies Trainor has observed to date.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Another “Hmmmm”: “Floyd County [Georgia] terminates election director after state audit uncovers uncounted votes.” Over 2,600 votes not counted.
  • Related:

  • Given those revelations, the Trump campaign asks for another recount in Georgia.

    The news comes after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) certified the election results. Although Kemp certified the results, he called for an additional hand recount, citing major errors in Floyd, Douglas and Walton Counties.

    “I would just say I’m formalizing the certification,” Kemp said at the time. “Now that Secretary Raffensperger certified, it triggers the ability of the Trump campaign to ask for the recount. If something were to happen, I’m still part of that process. So my take on all this is: I’m following the law and the rules.”

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Another data point:

  • Another Dominion “Hmmmm”:

  • And another: “Dominion Engineer Told Antifa He’d ‘Made Sure’ Trump Wouldn’t Win, Report Says.”
  • NotSureIfSerious.jpg:

  • The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected a Trump lawsuit complaint about counting observers. “It’s inexplicable that five justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would conclude that watchers observing from distances up to 100 feet away is reasonable.”
  • Also: “US District Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Matthew Brann, a Barack Obama appointee on Saturday dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit seeking to block Pennsylvania from certifying its election results.” Both of those lawsuits may be headed for the Supreme Court.
  • “The moment when Michigan counted 149,772 votes in 5 seconds and less than 6,000 of them were for Trump.”
  • Screwjob in Wisconsin?

  • “The Greatest Electoral Heist in American History“:

    The pieces are finally coming together, and they reveal a masterpiece of electoral larceny involving Big Tech oligarchs, activists, and government officials who prioritize partisanship over patriotism.

    The 2020 election was stolen because leftists were able to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to weaken, alter, and eliminate laws that were put in place over the course of decades to preserve the integrity of the ballot box. But just as importantly, it was stolen because those same leftists had a thoroughly-crafted plan, and because they were rigorous in its implementation and ruthless in its execution.

    Let’s not forget that liberals have been consumed by a fixation with removing Donald Trump from office for longer than he’s actually been in office. The sordid story of the 2020 election heist begins all the way back in January 2017, when Barack Obama’s former campaign manager and senior advisor, David Plouffe, took a job leading the policy and advocacy efforts of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a “charitable” organization established by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

    Earlier this year, just as it was becoming clear that Joe Biden would be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, Plouffe published a book outlining his vision for the Democrats’ roadmap to victory in 2020, which involved a “block by block” effort to turn out voters in key Democratic strongholds in the swing states that would ultimately decide the election, such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Minneapolis.

    The book was titled, A Citizen’s Guide to Defeating Donald Trump, and it turned out that the citizen Plouffe had in mind was none other than his former boss, Mark Zuckerberg. Although Plouffe no longer officially managed Zuckerberg’s policy and advocacy efforts at that point, the political operative’s influence evidently remained a powerful force.

    Thanks to the extensive efforts of investigators and attorneys for the Amistad Project of the nonpartisan Thomas More Society, who have been following Zuckerberg’s money for the past 18 months, it is still possible to expose the inner workings of this heist in time to stop it.

    Snip.

    Under the pretext of assisting election officials conduct “safe and secure” elections in the age of COVID, Zuckerberg donated $400 million — as much money as Congress appropriated for the same general purpose — to nonprofit organizations founded and run by left-wing activists. The primary recipient was the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which received the staggering sum of $350 million. Prior to Zuckerberg’s donations, CTCL’s annual operating expenses averaged less than $1 million per year. How was Zuckerberg even aware of such a small-potatoes operation, and why did he entrust it with ⅞ of the money he was pouring into this election cycle, despite the fact that it had no prior experience handling such a massive amount of money?

    Predictably, given the partisan background of its leading officers, CTCL proceeded to distribute Zuckerberg’s funds to left-leaning counties in battleground states. The vast majority of the money handed out by CTCL — especially in the early days of its largesse — went to counties that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Some of the biggest recipients, in fact, were the very locales Plouffe had identified as the linchpins of the Democrat strategy in 2020.

    Zuckerberg and CTCL left nothing to chance, however, writing detailed conditions into their grants that dictated exactly how elections were to be conducted, down to the number of ballot drop boxes and polling places. The Constitution gives state lawmakers sole authority for managing elections, but these grants put private interests firmly in control.

    Amistad Project lawyers tried to prevent this unlawful collusion by filing a flurry of lawsuits in eight states prior to Election Day. Unfortunately, judges were forced to put those lawsuits aside without consideration of their merits because the plaintiffs had not yet suffered “concrete harm” in the form of fraudulent election results. The law had no remedy to offer because the left’s lawless schemes had not yet reached fruition.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Vegas Oddsmaker Says, “The Fix Was In, Trump Was Robbed, This Election Was Stolen.”

    Trump entered the night a 2 to 1 underdog. As soon as the polls started to close and the picture became clear, Trump’s odds quickly moved to even money. Then Trump became the slight favorite. Then a moderate favorite. Then a 2-to-1 favorite.

    Then 3 to 1. 4 to 1. 5 to 1. 6 to 1. 7 to 1. Finally, Trump moved to 8 to 1 favorite.

    What does all this mean? Bettors putting their money on the line during Election Night have always proven to be deadly accurate. Smart bettors can clearly see what direction a race is taking. Bettors around the world clearly saw what I saw, when they stared at the electoral map- Trump was headed for an electoral landslide.

    But something wasn’t quite right. Fox News wouldn’t call Florida for Trump- even though he was ahead by a mile. They wouldn’t call Ohio- even though Trump was ahead by a mile, They wouldn’t call Texas- even though Trump was ahead by a mile. I sat there screaming at my television.

    More strange calls. Fox News had called Virginia for Biden at the start of the night- with Trump well ahead in Virginia. Trump would remain ahead in Virginia for three long hours after Fox awarded the electoral votes to Biden. Why would they do that? What was the rush? It made no sense.

    Biden was awarded Virginia with Trump ahead. But Trump was ahead by a mile in Florida, Ohio and Texas, yet Fox News refused to award him the electoral votes. I knew at that moment, something was wrong. Something smelled fishy. Something was rotten in the DC Swamp.

    Bettors witnessed Trump dominating. He clearly won not only those key states of Florida, Ohio and Texas, but Trump also enjoyed large leads in the entire Midwest- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. It was all but over. Trump had an electoral landslide. Hence the massive 8 to 1 odds in favor of Trump.

    And then it happened. It was the most bizarre call in Election Night history. Fox News called Arizona for Biden. Why? It wasn’t even close to over. There was no reason on earth to make that call. Arizona is STILL not over 8 days later. CNN still hasn’t awarded Arizona. ABC pulled it back from Biden only 24 hours ago.

    Why would Fox News be in such a rush to call Arizona for Biden? At that moment, Trump’s odds crashed almost instantly from 8 to 1, back down to 2 to 1. That drop set off alarm bells. My friend who is one of the biggest bookmakers in the country called me to say, “Wayne, something is wrong. I’ve never seen a drop like that, let alone a drop that fast. How can Trump go from 8 to 1, to 2 to 1. Someone knows something. We’ve got a problem.”

    It was as if someone had decided in advance to give Arizona to Biden- whether he won it, or not. It was as if the secret code was known to only a few billionaire gamblers, “Fox News awards Arizona to Biden.” Six magic words. Someone was ready for that call. Someone waited until Trump was a prohibitive 8 to 1 favorite, then knew to bet millions of dollars on Biden at the longest odds of the night. Someone knew the fix was in. Someone made a fortune.

    There’s more to the story. First, by awarding both Virginia and Arizona to Biden way too early in the evening and also going super slow awarding states to Trump where he led by a mile, Fox News made sure Biden had the electoral lead all night. That’s another big part of the story.

    (Hat tip: The Samizdat Herald.)

  • The Democratic Media Complex reaps what it sows:

    A prominent liberal legal academic who spent the last four years pushing outrageous, discredited, and debunked conspiracy theories about Donald Trump stealing the 2016 election said on Fox News Sunday that refusal to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election threatens the country.

    Snip.

    No conspiracy theories of recent vintage have damaged the country as much as the ones [Laurence] Tribe (and many other anti-Trump media figures) trafficked in each and every day of the last four years from prominent perches in politics, media, and the academy. If taking claims to court undermines democracy, how to defend Tribe’s vociferous and repeated claims that Trump stole the election in 2016 with the help of Russia?

  • More on the same theme:

    There have been a number of frustrating things to deal with during the past couple of weeks. In victory or defeat, the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the media are insufferable. We’ve all known that for a very long time but — and we have said this a lot lately — they’re getting even worse.

    They are complaining about President Trump’s legal right to make sure that the election to decide the leader of the free world wasn’t compromised in any way. It seems a reasonable thing to do, but we are dealing with liberals here, so reasonable doesn’t factor into the equation much.

    The painstaking, necessary scrutiny of ballots in key states continues, much to the chagrin of the Democrats. If they are so certain of victory, this delay shouldn’t mean much to them. They’re acting as if they’re terrified of what may be found out.

    Snip.

    After what the Democrats put this president and the country through with the Russia collusion hoax, the impeachment charade, and four years of flat-out saying that the 2016 election wasn’t legitimate, I don’t care if the Left has to suffer frustration forever. Put simply: they’ve brought this on themselves.

    If they had, for even a moment at any time in the last four years, not been thoroughly awful then maybe we might all be able to search for some common ground.

    Now, as I recently said on Facebook, I’ve spent every day since the election looking all over my house and I can’t find the kumbaya anywhere.

    Karma has entered the building, and will be staying awhile.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Another data point in Pennsylvania:

  • And here are thousands of data points: “Two California men were indicted on 41 counts of voter fraud after allegedly submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications on behalf of homeless people, according to NBC Los Angeles.”
  • Is a bombshell lawsuit coming in Georgia?
  • More on Georgia:

  • We need to end mail in vote fraud. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Philly Bans All Indoor Gatherings Unless You’re Still Counting Biden Votes.” And for the reader who complained I shouldn’t include Babylon Bee links in these roundups:

  • Like BattleSwarm? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    A Look At The State-Level Democratic Crash

    Thursday, November 19th, 2020

    With the final results of the presidential race still up in the air, let’s look at the horrible job the Democratic Party did in down-ballot races.

    Let’s start with Florida:

    After suffering crushing losses from the top of the ballot down, the state party now is mired in a civil war that could have profound consequences for future elections.

    High hopes for gains in the state Legislature have given way to recriminations and finger-pointing. Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo is almost certain to lose her job, but no one has stepped up to claim her mantle. Prospective 2022 gubernatorial candidates, including state Rep. Anna Eskamani and state Sen. Jason Pizzo, are slinging blame. And redistricting, which could deliver Democrats into another decade of insignificance, is around the corner.

    Even as Joe Biden heads to the White House [Disputed -LP], state Democrats know that President Donald Trump did more than just win in Florida. He tripled his 2016 margin and all but stripped Florida of its once-vaunted status as a swing state. His win, a landslide by state presidential standards, was built on record turnout and a Democratic implosion in Miami-Dade County, one of the bluest parts of the state.

    “We have turnout problems, messaging problems, coalitions problems, it’s up and down the board,” said Democrat Sean Shaw, a former state representative who lost a bid for attorney general in 2018. “It’s not one thing that went wrong. Everything went wrong.”

    While Democratic losses were particularly devastating in Florida, the party fared poorly across the country at the state level. The timing couldn’t be worse. Political redistricting begins next year and Republicans in control of statehouses across the country will have a chance to draw favorable maps that will help their state and federal candidates for the next decade.

    What happens next in Florida could be an early signal of how the Democratic Party’s current progressive-centrist divide plays out in Washington and elsewhere. In interviews, more than 20 Democratic officials, organizers and party leaders throughout the state said the party schism has grown only deeper since Election Day. Would-be gubernatorial candidates have already begun trading fire as they begin to lay the ground to try and defeat Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    This year, Florida Democrats had one of the worst performances of any state party in the country. They lost five seats in the state House after expecting to make gains. Three state Senate hopefuls were defeated, and incumbent U.S. Reps. Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who represented districts in Miami, were unseated.

    Many of the party’s failures over the years can be traced to unforced errors. When Democrat Andrew Gillum lost the governor’s race in 2018, he had $3.5 million still sitting in the bank. He then pledged to register and reengage 1 million Florida voters this cycle, but that evaporated after he left public life amid scandal.

    That would be the whole gay meth orgy thing.

    Florida Democrats haven’t held the governor’s office for more than two decades, and they’ve been out of power in the Legislature for nearly a quarter-century. Since their last big win, when President Barack Obama won Florida in 2012, Democrats have won just a single statewide race — out of 12.

    This year, the party continued to make mistakes.

    As Trump made the state his official residence and his top political priority for four years, lavishing resources and attention on it, the Democrats again neglected to build an infrastructure for talking to voters outside of campaign season. The Biden campaign chose to forgo voter canvassing in the state because of the coronavirus pandemic. And outside money that the party apparatus couldn’t control sometimes worked against its own candidates.

    Democrats also failed to counter GOP messaging that branded them as anti-cop and pro-socialism, an expected and effective — albeit misleading — message aimed largely at South Florida Hispanic voters.

    “Misleading” here is used as a synonym for “a truth that hurts Democrats.”

    The day after the election, nine state lawmakers who had survived the GOP rout met by phone to air grievances, according to Sen. Jazon Pizzo.

    Among those on the call were Pizzo, who also is considering a run for governor, Annette Taddeo and Rep. Joe Geller — a mix of centrists and liberals.

    The group fumed over pollsters who failed to capture what was happening on the ground, complained about the party’s use of out-of-state consultants and questioned whether they hit back hard enough against Republican falsehoods.

    “I’m not a f—ing socialist,” Pizzo later said in an interview. “My life is a manifestation of the American dream. I believe in free markets.”

    That brings up the question of what he’s doing in the Democratic Party.

    The meeting, which was not previously reported, amplified the fact the politicians can’t answer a simple question: Who is the leader of the Florida Democratic Party?

    Progressives say the Election Day drubbing is proof that centrism and party pandering to corporate donors doesn’t work.

    “Systematic change is what we need,” said Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat and a leading voice on the left who is considering a run for governor. “We can’t win more seats unless we lead with values and fight back and challenge corporate interests. Money was not a real problem this cycle, and we still lost.”

    Centrists, who traditionally have made up the party’s base of power in Florida, say a lurch to the left will decisively doom the party’s chances of taking the governor’s mansion in 2022.

    “We are a center-right state,” said Gwen Graham, another potential contender for governor who once represented a conservative congressional seat.

    Sounds like Texas before the hard left decided they wanted to throw conservatives out of the party.

    Republicans also cleaned up in key states for redistricting:

    Republicans are set to control the redistricting of 188 congressional seats — or 43 percent of the entire House of Representatives. By contrast, Democrats will control the redistricting of, at most, 73 seats, or 17 percent.

    How did Republicans pull that off? By winning almost every 2020 election in which control of redistricting was at stake:

    • The GOP kept control of the redistricting process in Texas by holding the state House. Given that Election Data Services estimates Texas will have 39 congressional seats for the next decade, this was arguably Republicans’ single biggest win of the 2020 election.
    • Republicans successfully defended the Pennsylvania legislature from a Democratic takeover, although they’ll still need to share redistricting power over its projected 17 congressional districts, as Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has veto power.
    • Republicans held the majority in both chambers of the North Carolina legislature, which will enable them to draw an expected 14 congressional districts all by themselves.
    • Amendment 1 passed in Virginia, taking the power to draw the state’s 11 congressional districts out of the hands of the all-Democratic state government and investing it in a bipartisan commission made up of a mix of citizens and legislators.
    • In Missouri (home to eight congressional districts), Gov. Mike Parson was elected to a second term, keeping redistricting control in Republican hands.
    • In an upset, Republicans managed to keep their majority in the Minnesota state Senate, thus ensuring Democrats wouldn’t have the unfettered ability to draw the state’s projected seven congressional districts. The parties will share redistricting responsibilities there.
    • The GOP kept control of the state House in Iowa, with its four congressional districts.
    • Republicans maintained their supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature, enabling them to pass a new congressional map (worth four districts) over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
    • Finally, Republicans surprisingly flipped both the state Senate and state House in New Hampshire (worth two congressional districts), seizing full control of both the state government and the redistricting process.

    Let’s take a closer look at Democrats’ failure to turn Texas blue:

    In a big blow for the party, Texas Democrats were unable to flip nine state House seats they had hoped would give their party the majority this election season.

    It was the biggest shot they’ve had in two decades to gain control of any lever of government in the state. For the past two decades, Republicans have had control of everything – the governorship, the state Senate and the state House.

    Democrats thought things might change this year, mostly because they made serious inroads in Republican-held House districts in suburban counties in 2018. That year, Democrats flipped 12 seats in the Texas House, mostly in districts with changing demographics in the suburbs.

    Democrats set their sights on nine more seats they thought could also go their way.

    But Victoria DeFrancesco Soto with the Center for Politics and Governance at UT’s LBJ School said 2018 was a high-water mark for the party.

    “I think that there was just a ceiling that was reached,” she said.

    More on that theme:

    [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott’s top political strategist, Dave Carney, was blunter in an interview late Tuesday night. He said Democrats were massively underperforming expectations because “they buy their own bullshit.”

    “Here’s the best standard operating procedure for any campaign: Stop bragging, do your work and then you can gloat afterward,” Carney said, contrasting that approach with “bragging about what’s gonna happen in the future and being embarrassed.”

    “Why anybody would believe what these liars would say to them again is beyond belief,” Carney added. “How many cycles in a row” do they claim Texas will turn blue? “It’s crazy.”

    Other evidence of Democratic Party weakness: “‘Experts’ Listed 27 House Races As Toss-Ups. Republicans Won All 27.”

    Republicans also won all 26 races deemed “leaning or likely Republican,” and even picked up 7 of the 36 seats listed as “leaning or likely Democrat.”

    Despite nearly unanimous predictions that Democrats would further cement control of the House, they now hold just a 218-204 advantage, with Republicans poised to pick up more seats, as they lead in 8 of the remaining 13 races.

    Those are some mighty fine anti-coattails Biden has…

    Republican dominance in supposedly 50-50 districts is yet another reminder of just how wrong polls were in 2020, and how wrong they have been for some time. What should embarrass pollsters most, though, is not the fact that they were wrong, but how one-sided they were in the process.

    Across the board, pollsters routinely underrepresented support for Republicans while falsely painting a picture of impending Democrat dominance. Are the American people supposed to think that it’s a coincidence that nearly every time a poll missed the mark in 2020 — which was often — it was in favor of Democrats?

    Everything about this election looks like a Republican wave election, not the “Blue Wave” election so many in breathlessly predicted. Everywhere but for President. I wonder why?

    It seems like Democrats never get tired of getting high on their own supply…

    Every MSM Outlet: Postal Voting Fraud Whistleblower Recants! Whistleblower: No I Didn’t!

    Thursday, November 12th, 2020

    We’ve reached the point in the post-election cycle where the mainstream media is so desperate to make Democrats’ election fraud for Joe Biden stick that they’re not just ignore election fraud stories, they’re outright lying about them.

    Take for example the recent news story of a U.S. postal worker whistleblower Richard Hopkins recanting his accusations of being instructed to backdate ballots.

    Just one tiny little flaw in the story: he did no such thing.

    Here’s an excerpt of a USPS official Russell Strasser trying to browbeat Hopkins into recanting.

    And here’s the full two-hour interrogation audio, which I haven’t listened to all of yet.

    The media will do anything to see trump defeated, even if it means outright lying in an attempt to cover up massive election fraud.

    Updated to add: The plot thickens:

    BidenWatch for November 2, 2020

    Monday, November 2nd, 2020

    Welcome to the very last BidenWatch before tomorrow’s election!

    Before BidenWatch was the Clown Car Update, so I’ve been doing this for almost two years. I’m really ready for a vacation…

  • Here’s links to stories about all the things pulled from Hunter Biden’s hard drive.
  • “Joe Biden’s Texts to Hunter Show Ex-VP Had “No Hesitancy” in Helping Son Get $1M From Chinese Communist-Linked Business Partner.”
  • Here’s one with him bitching about reimbursement expenses for Chinese partner CEFC.
  • Has ABC broke the embargo on the Hunter Biden corruption story?

  • “Feds Obtained FISA Warrant Against Hunter Biden’s Chinese Business Associate“:

    Federal investigators obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against one of Hunter Biden’s Chinese business associates, suggesting that the executive was suspected of acting as a covert agent of a foreign government.

    Prosecutors revealed the existence of at least one FISA warrant against Chi Ping Patrick Ho, known as Patrick Ho, in a Feb. 8, 2018 court filing obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Ho was charged on Dec. 18, 2017 with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and money laundering related to CEFC China Energy contracts in Uganda and Chad. Ho had been an executive at the multi-billion dollar Chinese energy company prior to his arrest.

    Hunter Biden was part of a business consortium that sought a partnership with CEFC in May 2017. A Senate report released last month said that an affiliate of CEFC wired $5 million to Biden’s law firm from August 2017 through August 2018.

    In addition to his partnership with CEFC, Hunter Biden also represented Ho during his legal battle.

    According to a report from The New Yorker last year, CEFC’s chairman, Ye Jianming, raised concerns with Biden in summer 2017 about a possible investigation into Ho.

  • “Hunter Biden’s business group shopped Joe Biden’s influence in Colombia in an investment pitch to Chinese energy firm.” Who had Colombia on their Hunter Biden Corruption Index Bingo card?
  • More on that pitch:

    In 2017, Hunter Biden and a group of business partners seeking a $10 million investment deal with a Chinese energy firm touted Joe Biden’s friendly relations with Colombia’s president in their sales proposal, which suggested a series of oil investments in the South American country, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

    Hunter Biden and four other businessmen, including his uncle James Biden, highlighted the former vice president’s positive relationship with Juan Manuel Santos in a May 15, 2017 investment outline for CEFC China Energy, a Chinese energy conglomerate.

    The Biden consortium, which would be called SinoHawk, sought a $10 million seed investment from CEFC China Energy, with a goal of eventually securing billions of dollars in investments in the U.S. and around the world.

    The report is part of a trove of records held by Tony Bobulinski, a California-based businessman who was part of the consortium with Hunter Biden, James Biden, and two other partners.

    (Hat tip: Tom Fitton.)

  • “Joe Biden: Trashing Fossil Fuel in the US While His Family Seeks to Make Money From It in Ukraine and China“:

    Undisputed is the fact that Hunter and other members of the Biden family have been involved in numerous complex, and sometimes controversial, multi-national, multi-million dollar deals involving Ukraine, Russia, China, Luxembourg, and the UK. Numerous observers have stated they believe the Bidens’ main qualification to conduct such business is simply that they are connected to a powerful political figure who has influence over policies and practices that can impact the businesses: Joe Biden.

    Summary of crooked dealings snipped.

    Still, there’s one nagging point that I haven’t seen considered. It’s the nature of the Biden family business ventures juxtaposed against Joe Biden’s position on oil and fossil fuels.

    Biden has repeatedly taken strong positions against fossil fuels— oil, coal and natural gas. He has made it clear he wants to “transition” away from them in the U.S. But as he’s advanced this position, his family members have been making money on deals that expand fossil fuel companies and ventures in foreign countries.

    For example, While Hunter Biden was getting himself a job on the board of Ukraine’s largest energy company, Burisma; Vice President Joe Biden was coincidentally put in charge of Ukraine policy. The same day the White House announced the vice president would handle Ukraine policy and make a visit there the following week, Hunter allegedly wrote to a business partner, “This could be the break we have been waiting for.” They inked a highly-compensated gig with Burisma in Ukraine.

    During Joe Biden’s first visit to the country in his new position just days later, he spoke of how Ukraine could make the right decisions and become “energy independent”— less reliant on other countries and more secure from a national security standpoint. Energy independence in this context implied good things for Ukrainian fossil fuel companies like Burisma to which Hunter was hitched. There was no bigger oil and gas company in Ukraine than Burisma.

    The point is, while Joe Biden has been pushing to end US the oil industry, his family has been cutting billion dollars in deals, profiting off of the oil industry in competing countries such as Ukraine and China. In fact, eliminating fossil fuel in the US while supporting it in other nations could be seen as putting America at a competitive and national security disadvantage.

  • How badly Biden stepped in it at the debate:

    3. Biden, on the other hand, said a bunch of dumb things. He repeated a plagiarized phrase about there being no blue states or red states, only United States—and then went on to urinate on red states anyway. He admitted under his presidency, a long, dark winter was ahead. His best zinger of the night—linking Trump to the Proud Boys (which we already learned was Iranian disinformation from the start)—was utterly muffed when he called them the Poor Boys. This provoked laughter as many Americans googled to figure out what sandwiches had to do with Trump. We could go on an on, but there were a number of stumbles by Biden that showed why Obama never gave him much to do.

    4. Biden said nothing good. Yeah, he had a pretty good riff on a bonehead question about Black Americans being pulled over, but Trump jujitsued that by twisting the question from sounding like “why are Blacks so often mistaken to be criminals” to “here’s what Black Americans have achieved over the last four years.” Everything else was either rehearsed or repeated talking points and a lot of bluster and blather that, at best, sounded like Trump’s vain boasting. And from what we’re reading today, many voters were put off by his blatant fear mongering about everyone dying from COVID.

    So you might be mistaken into thinking that this was the end of it. And for Trump, it pretty much was. He was wrapping up, for the most part, when the moderator (who wasn’t bad, really—she asked a lot uncomfortable questions of both candidates) asked Trump why so many Black Americans were suffering living near oil fields. Instead of taking the bait, Trump said that these Americans were living there because they were working there, under his economy. A nice answer, and Trump knew it. He pretty much started putting his coat on and turning off the lights when Biden was asked to respond.

    And did Biden respond. He announced that he would seek to end the oil industry. Trump wheeled around and asked him to repeat that. Biden did, and announced he would—as president—end America’s use of fossil fuels. Trump was handed gold, and he made sure Americans recognized this as big news, especially folks living in Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Oklahoma.

    Biden had a definite look of panic on his face as Trump named those states. Even he realized he just gave Trump 83 electoral votes, mumbling something about “on public lands” and “subsidies,” but Trump drowned out his babbling by reminding voters in those states what Biden just announced. There would be no walking that back, even with the media’s certain (and ultimately proven) covering for him on Friday. It was said, and at this point, if polls in other states stay where they are, those 83 votes will put Trump over.

    Bear in mind, this doesn’t affect just four states. Shutting down oil and fossil fuels in this country will put nearly one million Americans out of their current jobs, in the form of drilling, mining, trucking, piping, distribution, distillation, manufacture, plasticization, and more. The Depression here will crush world markets that depend on us. Did Biden mean for all this? Probably not, but he reassured America that Biden, after 47 years in government, has literally no understanding of how the economy works.

    (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

  • Want to view Joe Biden’s entire Pennsylvania speech? Me neither, but here it is. Even includes time markers for the bloopers. But it’s weird to hear a guy both yelling and suffering from a case of mush-mouth at the same time.
  • If Biden doesn’t win Pennsylvania, then he becomes an underdog.
  • Speaking of which: “Trump Takes The Lead In Pennsylvania; +3 Per New Poll.” As usual, take all polls with a grain of salt.
  • Speaking of polls and grains of salt, pollsters learned nothing from 2016:

    Early voting shows Republicans are waiting in line to vote. The pollsters say a far higher percentage of Republicans support President Trump than in 2016. If this is true then how can he be behind by 17 points in Wisconsin as ABC claimed its poll said?

    Republican registrations are up.

    People didn’t register in 2020 to vote against President Trump.

    Thomson was right when he wrote, “In 2020, we have the most stable race in decades.”

    Everyone decided months ago whether they will vote for President Trump. This election is a referendum on him, plain and simple.

    The election is about enthusiasm. The election is about getting your people to vote. President Trump has held huge rallies night after night for weeks.

    Biden draws flies to his rare rallies. But they are socially distanced flies. His rallies are short made-for-TV events designed to let TV outlets pretend to be fair. They show the best of his short presentation, then show the worst moment in an hourlong speech by President Trump.

    The Republican Party has an army of 2 million volunteers to get out the vote.

    Democrats have a phone bank.

    The pollsters should have adjusted to the new reality.

    Whether a person wants President Trump or Biden is nice to know.

    But what counts are the actual votes. A 10-point gap in enthusiasm trumps a 7-point lead in the polls. When the enthusiasm gap became obvious this summer, pollsters should have adjusted. They didn’t.

    And really they learned nothing from 2016. They view it as an anomaly, and cling to the false notion that they got the national vote right.

    (Hat tip: Borepatch.)

  • Still more poll warning signs for Biden: 41% in Iowa:

    I’ve been covering American politics for a long time and I can’t remember a number that so dramatically altered the political community’s perception of a presidential campaign as that number did, last night, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

    The source of the number was The Iowa Poll, which has been the gold standard for statewide polling in the United States for decades. The number itself was the percentage of likely voters in Iowa supporting Joe Biden’s candidacy for president.

    President Trump’s number was 48%, which put him ahead in the “horse race” by 7 percentage points. There was nothing really remarkable about that, in context. Mr. Trump won the state in 2016 by (roughly) nine percentage points.

    What was remarkable was Biden’s 41%. What made it doubly disconcerting was the way The Des Moines Register (accurately) described the poll results:

    “Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden has faded…”

    Faded! Could there be a more terrible word in the last week of a presidential campaign? Off the record, Democratic elected officials and campaign operatives and financial backers have been saying throughout the campaign that their biggest fear regarding the eventual outcome was Biden himself. They saw him as an especially weak candidate and worried that he wasn’t “a closer;” even if he was ahead going into the last week, victory could slip from his grasp.

    Up until last night, Democratic elected officials and political operatives saw the presidential race standing at somewhere between a narrow Biden win and a “blue wave.” In their “blue wave” scenario, the Democrats would win both the presidency and a Senate majority and the Trump-McConnell nightmare would finally come to an end.

    That was the other piece of bad news in last night’s Iowa Poll release. It showed that Republican Sen. Joni Ernst had pulled ahead of her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield. Her lead (46%-to-42%) was within the margin of error, but it wasn’t Ms. Ernst’s lead that Democrats were focused on. It was the “faded” support for Ms. Greenfield, which almost exactly tracked the “faded” support for Joe Biden.

    For Democrats, last night’s Iowa Poll was the worst possible news at the worst possible moment. It foretold close results in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It undermined the Biden campaign’s momentum and morale. And it fracked Democrats’ self-confidence.

    (Hat tip: Christina Hoff Summers.)

  • “Biden Aides See Warning Signs in Black, Latino Turnout So Far.”

    Senior officials on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign are increasingly worried about insufficient Black and Latino voter turnout in key states like Florida and Pennsylvania with only four days until the election, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Despite record early-vote turnout around the country, there are warning signs for Biden. In Arizona, two-thirds of Latino registered voters have not yet cast a ballot. In Florida, half of Latino and Black registered voters have not yet voted but more than half of White voters have cast ballots, according to data from Catalist, a Democratic data firm. In Pennsylvania, nearly 75% of registered Black voters have not yet voted, the data shows.

    The firm’s analysis of early vote numbers also show a surge of non-college educated White voters, who largely back President Donald Trump, compared to voters of color, who overwhelmingly support Biden.

    The situation is particularly stark in Florida where Republicans currently have a 9.4% turnout advantage in Miami-Dade County, a place where analysts say Biden will need a significant margin of victory to carry the state.

  • Jim Geraghty on which states to watch and why. Pennsylvania (especially Bucks County), Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.
  • Twitter, Facebook both admit that there’s no evidence the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
  • Our media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”
  • Biden looked normal in the debates. Why does he look senile otherwise?

    Heaven knows Biden has a long history of making gaffes. And maybe some of his bungling can be attributed to him just being a natural-born blooper machine. But all of it? Unlikely. The volume of slip-ups is too much.

    Just as disturbing as the constant misstatements are his appearances in public and on video outside of the debates. He looks to be in a hard decline. His facial expressions are dull and empty. He seems to drift, get lost in his thoughts. Or simply has no thoughts and blanks out. He forgets where he is. Staffers feed him words when he can’t come up with them.

  • Don’t believe the polls: Trump is winning. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Stephen Green wargames the electoral college again. “Trump has more and wider paths to victory than Biden does.”
  • Now we know why Joe got angry.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • People who have raised at least $100,000 for the Biden campaign. Notable names (excluding Democratic senators, reps and governors) include Lisa Blue Baron, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, megalawyer Christopher Boies, Pete Buttigieg, Vanessa Getty, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and investment guru Andrew Tobias.
  • Instapundit on why a Biden victory wouldn’t return the country to “normal”—or even make Donald Trump go away:

    Trump was big on the national stage long before he was president. Why would he go away after the election is over? He’ll still have tens of millions of (probably angry) followers, deep pockets and a huge megaphone.

    There has already been some talk of Trump starting his own television network to rival Fox News, and/or his own social media platform — the latter made more plausible by the heavy censorious hands of those running Twitter and Facebook — and I suspect that Trump would regard a 2020 loss as a setback, not a defeat. Grover Cleveland came back to win a second term after losing the White House, Trump might reason. Why not me? He’ll probably hold campaign-style rallies around the country starting right after the election.

    And the deep toxicity of national politics, which grew worse after the 2016 election but which has been brewing at least since the turn of the millennium, is not going to go away. In fact, a lot of what we’re hearing from Biden supporters suggests that it will get worse under a Biden administration.

    Democrats are already calling for a Biden administration to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices until Democrats have a majority, to pack the Senate by admitting Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., as states, and even to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” in which Republicans will be dragged in front of the public and forced to confess the error of their ways. And, of course, abolishing the Electoral College. None of that is normal.

  • Man attends Trump rally, is shocked to find happy people:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Kylee Zempel tears apart John Piper’s bad Biden-backing theology:

    It is only “baffling” if one first reduces conservatives to pro-life freedom-lovers and then decides human life and freedom are dispensable. Freedom and life, however, are not abstract, and they are not simply a means to accomplish earthly goals or gain temporal wealth. Freedom and life are part of our Imago Dei. They are gifts from God that we are to steward, and we use them in myriad ways to advance God’s kingdom.

    So is it “baffling” that a Christian would think God-given sex distinctions are important? Is it baffling that a believer would want to protect his family against the racially charged attacks of a violent mob? Is it baffling that a Christian would desire that his children learn truth, rather than government-sanctioned doctrine — not walking in the counsel of the ungodly? It is baffling that a Christian would desire for men to keep the hard-earned fruits of their labor, giving charitably to the poor and needy? Is it baffling that a believer would value the biblical family structure over the state? Of course, it’s not.

    Furthermore, if Piper believes this immoral gangrene that spreads throughout our country is a result of one unregenerate man instead of the result of the wickedness in the hearts of every sinful citizen, he is a fool.

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • Maybe an extended election won’t blow up the country. (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)
  • Trump can still win even if the polls are right.

    (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)

  • Biden goes full tranny pander, demanding religions bow to to Democratic Party’s transgender mandates. “Religion should not be used as a license to discriminate.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Biden tells the blatant lie that Trump wants to send Cuban-Americans back to Cuba.
  • “The Kamala Harris Nervous Laugh is What Gamblers Call a ‘Tell’:

    Kamala Harris has a habit of launching into peals of laughter when she is asked questions, even serious ones. It’s likely a nervous tic, and it’s possible that she doesn’t even realize that she does it.

    In the world of gambling, this is called a tell. An unconscious and often uncontrollable behavior that serves as a clue to others that a player is bluffing or lying.

    Harris was interviewed on 60 Minutes this weekend, and when she was asked if her view on certain issues was progressive or socialist, she launched into a laugh.

  • Can Trump pull off an upset in Minnesota?

    In 2016, Trump lost Minnesota by about 45,000 votes. This year, he is clearly making an attempt to close the gap there and pull off a win that would sting Democrats for years to come.

    The left didn’t do itself any favors by burning down Minneapolis this summer, and Trump was also helped by gaining the endorsements of multiple mayors in the state’s ‘Iron Range’ region

    Snip.

    Trump’s campaign has booked more than $1.2 million in TV advertising in Minnesota in the final week of the campaign—more than it spent there in the preceding three weeks combined, according to Advertising Analytics, which tracks campaigns’ ad spending. Vice President Mike Pence held a rally in northern Minnesota on Monday, the latest in a series of visits to the state by Trump and top surrogates. Overall, the Trump campaign has deployed 60 staffers in Minnesota, a level of Republican intensity surpassing that of any race in memory, both parties say.

  • Speaking of which, I think I missed this earlier: “Trump Lands Major Endorsements From Democrat Mayors in Minnesota.”

    “Like many in our region, we have voted for Democrats over many decades. We have watched as our constituents’ jobs left not only the Iron Range, but our country. By putting tariffs on our products and supporting bad trade deals, politicians like Joe Biden did nothing to help the working class. We lost thousands of jobs, and generations of young people have left the Iron Range in order to provide for their families with good-paying jobs elsewhere. Today, we don’t recognize the Democratic Party. It has been moved so far to the left it can no longer claim to be advocates of the working class. The hard-working Minnesotans that built their lives and supported their families here on the Range have been abandoned by radical Democrats. We didn’t choose to leave the Democratic Party, the party left us,” the letter, signed by Virginia Mayor Larry Cuffe, Chisholm Mayor John Champa, Ely Mayor Chuck Novak, Two Harbors Mayor Chris Swanson, Eveleth Mayor Robert Vlaisavljevich and Babbitt Mayor Andrea Zupancich, states.

    

  • Facebook Removes Black Man’s Anti-Biden Ad. Sorry, comrade, you’re not allowed to express opinions contrary to the wishes of the Party… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More gun-grabbing stupidity:

  • Slow Joe is getting worse:

  • Yep:

  • Boy, Biden and Harris both hate tax cuts:

  • “Ex-husband of Joe Biden’s wife claim two had an affair that split marriage.” He claims both worked on Joe Biden’s campaign in 1972. Really, would it shock anyone to find yet another chapter of Joe Biden’s autobiography was fiction?
  • Black women aren’t sold on Kamala Harris:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Biden supporters can’t even outnumber Trump supporters within 10 feet of their own bus:

  • “Chelsea Handler Patrols Polling Places To Make Sure No Black People Are Voting For Trump.”
  • Democrats Hand Out Extra Ballots To Trick-Or-Treaters.”
  • “Biden Calls A Lid Until Election Day.”
  • Heh:

  • Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    LinkSwarm for October 30, 2020

    Friday, October 30th, 2020

    Welcome to the last LinkSwarm before the election! Halloween is tomorrow, and I will actually be handing out candy in the time-honored traditional manner.

  • The economy grew at a white hot 33.1% rate during the third quarter, which is what happens when you lift the counterproductive economic lockdowns Democrats want to keep in place. We’ve still got recovering to do (something that’s not going to happen under a Harris-Biden Administration’s huge tax hikes), but it looks like we’re enjoying the V-shaped recovery that so many economists assured us was impossible.
  • Kurt Schlichter says not to fall for the Psy-Op:

    The next few days will be a Cat 5 hurricane of mainstream media spin and Democrat bullSchiff designed to make you think that you’ve already lost this election. They want your morale shattered, your spirit broken, and you to put a lid on your participation in saving your country from leftist tyranny.

    It’s all a lie.

    It’s a psychological operation designed to keep you on the sidelines.

    We got this.

    All you need to do is vote.

    People reach out to me all the time looking for hope, and I’ve got plenty, because things are breaking our way. You have structural factors like the fact that incumbents tend to win, particularly when the economy is improving and we’re not in some idiotic new war. You have factors like how the Democrat candidate is a desiccated old weirdo who pretty much called a lid on his campaign back in July and whose corruption is being shown to be more corrupting every single day. You have manifest enthusiasm for our guy and tumbleweeds for theirs. You have people moving from Hillary to Trump, but nobody moving from Trump to Grandpa Badfinger. Trump dominated the debate where Oldfinger doubled down on his deeply unpopular program of destroying millions of oil industry jobs, single payer, and Matlock for All. On the inside, the insiders almost unanimously think Trump will win – that’s the real talk behind the scenes among people whose names you know. Early voting numbers are GOP-friendly, and many polls now show Trump moving up or taking the lead.

    We have the heat, we have the momentum, we have this to lose.

    (Hat tip: Kurt Schlichter.)

  • “Wisconsin Republican Party Says Hackers Stole $2.3 Million from Trump Reelection Account.”
  • Another rapper endorses Trump and slams Biden’s tax plan. I do not believe I’ve heard a single song by “Lil Pump,” but that’s because I’m old in and in the way, and Mr. Pump (real name Gazzy Garcia) evidently has some 17 million followers. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Speaking of rappers endorsing Trump, Lil Wayne (who I have actually heard of) all but did that as well:

  • “5 Charts That Show Sweden’s Strategy Worked. The Lockdowns Failed.”
  • Russian Airstrikes Obliterate Turkish-Backed ‘Rebel’ Camp In Idlib, Killing Over 60.” Remind me why S.E. Cupp thinks we should be over there bombing things, again…
  • AMD buys Xilinx for $35 billion in an all-stock transaction. Xilinx dominates Field Programable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and has fingers into a lot of weird verticals I don’t have any visibility into. Like AMD they’re fabless, and like AMD they use TSMC as their foundry. Assuming all the usual merger hurdles (both regulatory and cultural) can be overcome, this is probably a good move for both sides.
  • Leftwingers are really butt-hurt that Joe Rogan interviewed Alex Jones.
  • The owners of a bunch of famous Austin businesses come out against the tax-hiking rail bond. “‘We are not open, we are not going to be open for a long time so no money coming in paying an extra $3000,’ said Shannon Sedwick with Esther’s Follies.” Also opposing the huge tax hike for the bond: Former Democratic State Senator Gonzalo Barrientos, who will never be mistaken for a fire-breathing conservative.
  • The Texas House Speaker’s race heats up.

    What GOP insiders hoped would be a quiet race for Speaker of the Texas House got suddenly heated on Thursday, with four establishment Republicans officially in the hunt – and at least one other poised to jump in. Most Texans have never heard of none of them.

    Officially filing declaring their candidacy today are Republican State Reps. Chris Paddie of Marshall, Trent Ashby of Lufkin, John Cyrier of Bastrop, and Geanie Morrison of Victoria joining Democrats Senfronia Thompson of Houston and Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio

    Republican Dade Phelan of Beaumont was also reportedly considering jumping into the race as the “Team Bonnen” candidate.

  • Is Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush considering running against Ken Paxton for Attorney General in 2022?
  • Remember how the New York Times hyped an op-ed by “Anonymous” slamming Trump? Honestly, I barely do, because all the fake “anonymous” #JustTrustMeBro “sources” “familiar with” Trump just blur together in my mind. Well, turns out the “Senior Trump Official” was a minor official turned CNN staffer, so they, and most of the liberal media complex that trusted them, just straight lied to us to smear Trump. You know, just like all their other anti-Trump “bombshells.”
  • “Hospitals gave Gov. Andrew Cuomo a campaign booster shot“:

    It’s bad enough that Gov. Cuomo presided over the needless COVID-19 deaths of thousands of vulnerable people in New York nursing homes.

    It’s bad enough that he wrote a shameful book praising himself for his pandemic response and now is doing a victory lap of self-congratulation in the worst-hit state in the nation.

    It’s bad enough that he is mounting a pre-election scare campaign on COVID vaccines to stir up anti-vax sentiment for political purposes.

    But now we discover that Cuomo got campaign funds from the hospital organizations that lobbied for his lethal policy for the elderly and which then bought TV ads whitewashing his culpability.

    An exclusive audit of campaign donations to Cuomo by OpenTheBooks.com shows disturbing links with industry bodies which demanded the disastrous order forcing nursing homes to admit COVID-infected patients hospitals didn’t want.

  • Jeremy Corbyn suspended from Labour Party over response to antisemitism report.” Wow, that’s not closing the barn door after the cows have escaped, that’s closing the barn door after the cows have escaped, run off to a different region, been captured, fattened, slaughtered, made into hamburgers, and consumed at a St. Swithun’s Day feast in Wessex.
  • 46 arrested in massive human trafficking bust in Fort Bend County.
  • Commies vandalize Austin Public Library polling place. Because that’s the sort of garbage commies pull.
  • Some uncomfortable facts for #BlackLivesMatter:

  • “$150 MILLION worth of illegal cannabis, weapons, and 3 kangaroos seized by York Police.” That’s York, Ontario, a locale for which I’m reliably informed kangaroos do not constitute native fauna.
  • Old and Busted: The monster in your daughter’s closet. The New Hotness: The pedophile in your daughter’s closet.
  • More APD officers resigning recently, former officer and Austin Police Association say.” #ThanksMayorAdler
  • Jake Tapper still isn’t over Mucho Grande.
  • Deaderheads. (Hat tip: Ace.)
  • James “The Amazing” Randi, RIP.”
  • “Psychic Already Sick Of Spectral James Randi Ragging On Her From Afterlife.”
  • Huge Trump parade…in Beverly Hills:

  • What. The. Hell.

  • State That Just Voted To Reduce Penalties For Pedophiles Not Sure Why God Keeps Lighting Them On Fire.”
  • “CNN Mourns ACB Confirmation By Flying Chinese Flag At Half-Mast.”
  • Swing, you sinners!
  • I sort of like this one:

  • Hunter Biden, Tony Bobulinski, and the Spy King of China

    Thursday, October 29th, 2020

    So here’s that Tucker Carlson interview with Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski that everyone is talking about. So many Biden corruption revelations are coming down the pike (despite the media’s best efforts at suppressing them) that I can’t wait for Monday’s BidenWatch to post them.

    Bobulinski seems particularly pissed off at the “Russian disinformation” charge. The fact that Biden and Adam Schiff refused to withdraw their “Russian disinformation” accusation against him. “People were accusing my family of treason after I served this country and defended this country.”

    He was shocked that no news organization but Fox wanted to tell his story.

    Countries where Hunter Biden’s business contacts were doing business include Oman, Luxembourg, and Romania.

    Places he went along with Hunter Biden to do business: Bucharest, Romania (with Jim Biden as well) and Monaco (for the Grand Prix, where he waited for two hours without hearing from Hunter, because he was on the phone with Burisma at the time, “fighting for the only income he had” on “the Kazakhstan deal.” )

    And this is interesting:

    (Update: Fox evidently has copies of the docs. (Hat tip: Borepatch.))

    Finally, here’s a phone message where Hunter Biden admits that his business partner is “the spy king of China”:

    Imagine if a phone call linked that Donald Trump Jr. admitted to having a Russian business partner who was the chief of the KGB. It would be all the media talked about for months, and a second set of impeachment proceedings would begin almost immediately. But when it comes to the Biden Crime Family, the Democratic Media Complex refuses to investigate anything.

    BidenWatch for October 26, 2020

    Monday, October 26th, 2020

    Eight days out from election day! The Crooked Joe revelations from Hunter’s laptop are coming so fast and heavy that I’m hard-pressed to corral them all! It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • “The Complete History Of Hunter Biden’s Crony-Connected Jobs.” There are a whole lot of them:

    That the 50-year-old Hunter has been trading on his Democratic father’s political influence his entire adult life raises legal questions about possible influence-peddling, government watchdogs and former federal investigators say. In addition, the more than two-decades-long pattern of nepotism casts fresh doubt on Joe Biden’s recent statements that he “never discussed” business with his son, and that his activities posed “no conflicts of interest.”

    Snip.

    1996-1998: MBNA Corp.

    Fresh out of college, credit-card giant MBNA put him on its payroll as “senior vice president” earning more than $100,000 a year, plus an undisclosed signing bonus. Delaware-based MBNA at the time was Biden’s largest donor and lobbying the Delaware senator for bankruptcy reforms that would make it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy and write off credit-card debt.

    Fresh out of college I was working retail sales jobs while sharing an apartment and writing in my spare time.

    Besides a job for Hunter, bank executives and employees gave generously to Joe Biden’s campaigns – $214,000 total, federal records show – and one top executive even bought Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home for more than $200,000 above the market value, real estate records show. The exec paid top dollar – $1.2 million – for the old house even though it lacked central air conditioning. MBNA also flew Biden and his wife to events and covered their travel costs, disclosure forms show.

    Sen. Biden eventually came through for MBNA by sponsoring and whipping votes in the Senate to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act.

    When NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw asked Biden during the 2008 presidential campaign whether it was wrong “for someone like you in the middle of all this to have your son collecting money from this big credit-card company while you were on the (Senate) floor protecting its interests,” Biden gave an answer he would repeat many times in the future: “Absolutely not,” he snapped, arguing it was completely appropriate and that Hunter deserved the position and generous salary because he graduated from Yale.

    Remember, people who graduated from Yale are automatically better than deplorables who graduated from a non-Ivy college, no matter how much cocaine they snort.

    1998-2001: Commerce Department

    Hunter also capitalized on the family name in 1998 when he joined President Clinton’s agency. In spite of having no experience in the dot-com industry, he was appointed “executive director of e-commerce policy coordination,” pulling down another six-figure salary plus bonuses.

    He landed the job after his father’s longtime campaign manager and lawyer William Oldaker called then-Commerce Secretary William Daley, who’d also worked on Biden’s campaigns, and put in a good word for his son, according to public records.

    2001-2009: Oldaker, Biden & Belair

    After Republican President George W. Bush took over the Commerce Department, Hunter left the government and joined Oldaker to open a lobbying shop in Washington, just blocks from Congress, where he gained access to exclusive business and political deals.

    Federal disclosure forms show Hunter Biden and his firm billed millions of dollars while lobbying on behalf of a host of hospitals and private colleges and universities, among other clients. In a 2006 disclosure statement submitted to the Senate, Hunter said his clients were “seeking federal appropriations dollars.”

    Hunter won the contract to represent St. Joseph’s University from an old Biden family friend who worked in government relations at the university and proposed he solicit earmarks for one of its programs in Philadelphia. The friend, Robert Skomorucha, remarked in a press interview that Hunter had “a very strong last name that really paid off in terms of our lobbying efforts.”

    “A really strong last name.” There’s the problem with the swamp in a nutshell.,

    These clients, like MBNA, also favored bankruptcy reforms to make it harder for patients and students to discharge debt in bankruptcy filings. At the same time Hunter was operating as a Beltway lobbyist, he was receiving “consulting payments” from his old employer MBNA, which was still courting his father over the bankruptcy reforms.

    In 2007, Hunter also dined with a private prison lobbyist who had business before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Joe Biden chaired, according to published reports. Senate rules bar members or their staff from having contact with family members who are lobbyists seeking to influence legislation.

    Hunter’s lawyer-lobbyist firm was embroiled in a conflict-of-interest controversy in 2006 when it was criticized for representing a lobbyist under investigation by the House ethics committee. The lobbyist was still taking payments from his old K street firm while working as a top aide on the House Appropriations Committee. Hunter at the time was lobbying that same committee for earmarks for his clients.

    William Oldaker did not just make Hunter a rich lobbyist. Oldaker also secured a $1 million loan for him through a bank he co-founded, WashingtonFirst, that Hunter sought for an investment scheme, which later went sour.

    Joe Biden deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign and political action committee donations at WashingtonFirst, while funneling hundreds of thousands in campaign and PAC expenditures to Oldaker, Biden & Belair. Joe Biden’s payments to Hunter’s lobbying firm, including more than $143,000 in 2007 alone, were listed as “legal services” in Federal Election Commission filings.

    Oldaker did not respond to a request for comment left at his office.

    But wait! Hunter had three other sinecures while working at Oldaker, Biden & Belair:

    2003-2005: National Group LLP

    While serving as a partner at Oldaker, Biden & Belair, Hunter also registered as a lobbyist for National Group, a lobbying-only subsidiary which shared offices with OB&B and specialized in targeted spending items inserted into legislation known as “earmarks.”

    Hunter represented his father’s alma mater, the University of Delaware, and other Biden constituents and submitted requests to Biden’s office for earmarks benefiting these clients in appropriations bills.

    2006-2007: Paradigm Companies LLC

    In 2005, when Joe Biden was thinking about making another run at the White House, after a 1987 bid that ended in plagiarism charges, his lobbyist son was looking for a new line of work too.

    In early 2006, Wall Street executive and Biden family friend Anthony Lotito said, Biden’s younger brother, Jim, phoned him on behalf of the senator. He said Biden wanted his youngest son – whom he still called “Honey” – to get out of the lobbying business to avoid allegations of conflicts of interest that might dog Biden’s presidential bid.

    “Biden was concerned with the impact that Hunter’s lobbying activities might have on his expected campaign [and asked his brother to] seek Lotito’s assistance in finding employment for Hunter in a non-lobbying capacity,” according to a January 2007 complaint that Lotito filed in New York state court against Hunter over alleged breach of contract in a related venture. (Jim and Hunter Biden denied such a phone call took place as described.)

    Lotito told the court he agreed to help Hunter as a favor to the senator, who had served on the powerful banking committee. He figured “the financial community might be a good starting place in which to seek out employment on Hunter’s behalf,” the court documents state. But he quickly found that Wall Street had “no interest” in hiring Biden.

    So the Bidens hatched a scheme to buy a hedge fund, “whereby Hunter would then assume a senior executive position with the company.” And Lotito helped broker the deal. Despite having no Wall Street experience, Biden was appointed interim CEO and president of the Paradigm investment fund and given a $1.2 million salary, according to SEC filings. Lotito joined the enterprise as a partner, and agreed to shepherd Hunter, still in his mid-thirties, through his new role in high-finance.

    “Given Hunter Biden’s inexperience in the securities industry,” the complaint states, it was agreed that Lotito would maintain an office at the new holding company’s New York headquarters “in order to assist Biden in discharging his duties as president.”

    After the venture failed, Lotito sued the Bidens for fraud. The Bidens countersued and the two parties settled in 2008.

    2006-2009: Amtrak

    During this same period, Hunter was appointed vice chairman of the taxpayer-subsidized rail line, thanks to the sponsorship of powerful Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, a political ally of his father.

    After that Rosemont Seneca Partners shows up, and we start to see the Hunter jobs BattleSwarm readers are already familiar with. Read the whole thing.

  • “Reported Biden Emails: Burisma Exec Said Hunter Biden’s Role Was To Halt Investigations.”
  • “Blockbuster Report Reveals How Biden Family Was Compromised By China“:

    Hunter Biden is partnered with the Chinese state. Entire investment partnership is Chinese state money from social security fund to China Development Bank. It is actually a subsidiary of the Bank of China. This is not remotely anything less than a Chinese state funded play.

    Though the entire size of the fund cannot be reconstructed, the Taiwanese cofounder who is now detained in China, reports it to be NOT $1-1.5 billion but $6.5 billion. This would make Hunters stake worth at a minimum at least $50 million if he was to sell it.

    Disturbingly, everyone on the Chinese side are clearly linked with influence and intelligence organizations. China uses very innocuous sounding organization names to hide PLA, United Front, or Ministry of Foreign Affairs influence/intelligence operations. This report cannot say Hunter was the target of such an operation or that China even targeted him. However, based upon the clear pattern of individuals and organizations surrounding him it is an entirely reasonable conclusion.

    Finally, the believed Godfather in arranging everything is a gentleman named Yang Jiechi. He is currently the CCP Director of Foreign Affairs leading strategist for America, Politburo member one of the most powerful men in China, and Xi confidant. Why does this matter?

    He met regularly with Joe Biden during his stint as Chinese ambassador the US when Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Later he was Minister of Foreign Affairs when the investment partnership was made official in 2013. Importantly, the Taiwanese national listed MOFA institutions as the key clients in helping to arrange everything. Yang would clearly have known the importance of Hunter Biden and undoubtedly would have been informed of any dealings. Given that he is now the point person in China for dealing with the US this raises major concerns about a Biden administration dealing impartially with an individual in this capacity. These are documented facts from Chinese corporate records like IPO prospectuses and media. They raise very valid concerns about Biden linkages to China.

    Snip.

    Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). YANG met frequently with BIDEN during his tenure at the Chinese embassy in Washington.

    Hunter Biden’s 2013 Bohai Harvest Rosemont investment partnership was set-up by Ministry of Foreign Affairs institutions who are tasked with garnering influence with foreign leaders during YANG’s tenure as Foreign Minister.

    HUNTER has a direct line to the Politburo, according to SOURCE A, a senior finance professional in China.

    Michael Lin, a Taiwanese national now detained in China, brokered the BHR partnership and partners with MOFA foreign influence organizations.

    LIN is a POI for his work on behalf of China, as confirmed by SOURCE B and SOURCE C (at two separate national intelligence agencies).

    BHR is a state managed operation. Leading shareholder in BHR is a Bank of China which lists BHR as a subsidiary and BHR’s partners are SOEs that funnel revenue/assets to BHR.

    HUNTER continues to hold 10% in BHR. He visited China in 2010 and met with major Chinese government financial companies that would later back BHR.

    HUNTER’s BHR stake (purchased for $400,000) is now likely be worth approx. $50 million (fees and capital appreciation based on BHR’s $6.5 billion AUM as stated by Michael Lin).
    HUNTER also did business with Chinese tycoons linked with the Chinese military and against the interests of US national security.

    BIDEN’s foreign policy stance towards China (formerly hawkish), turned positive despite China’s country’s rising geopolitical assertiveness.

    Plus this handy chart:

  • And did we mention the $5 million non-secured, forgivable Chinese loan to the Biden family? (Hat tip: Jack Posobiec.)
  • Wonder why elected Democrats are so loyal to the “Biden is as pure as the driven snow” narrative? They’re all in it together. “Report: Hunter Biden, Associates Wanted to Bring in Gov. Cuomo, Sen. Schumer for Chinese Deals.”

    Fox News released an email containing a list of “domestic contacts/projects,” which includes Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, for Hunter Biden and his associates to lure into Chinese deals.

    The New York Post has more details on these contacts with explanations on why they should bring in people like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. Uncle Jim Biden also wanted to know about any foreign friends they could drag into the deals.

    Fox News said the email with the list of contacts is not connected to Hunter’s laptop.

    Jim Biden sent the list of contacts to those in the May 13 email, which was all about a Chinese venture with now-defunct CEFC China Energy Co.

    Biden’s list named “Harris, D-Calif.; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio; former Virginia Gov. Terry McCauliffe.”

    From The New York Post:

    A May 15, 2017, memo naming potential contacts was sent by Joe Biden’s brother Jim to his nephew and three other men who all formed a limited liability company to partner with another firm on “global and/or domestic” projects involving “infrastructure, energy, financial services and other strategic sectors,” the documents show.

    The other company was backed by a since-vanished Chinese energy tycoon and was to “be primarily responsible for arranging financing and execution” of the projects, according to the documents released by Tony Bobulinksi, who was CEO of the joint venture.

    The memo, titled “Key domestic contacts for phase one target projects,” noted that Cuomo “is moving forward with major infrastructure projects such as the long-stalled Tappan Zee Bridge replacement and the much-needed redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport.”

    “His administration has invested nearly $4 billion through the Regional Council and Upstate Revitalization initiatives to jumpstart the economy and support local priorities for development,” it added.

  • Secret Service Travel Logs Match Details in Alleged Hunter Biden Emails.”

    Secret Service logs obtained earlier this year by Senate investigators include dates and locations matching those discussed in the emails allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

    The alignment of the dates in the emails and the Secret Service protective detail logs is significant because the authenticity of the emails, first published by the New York Post last week, is the subject of heated debate. The FBI, which purportedly obtained Hunter Biden’s laptop in December last year, has not yet officially confirmed that it is in possession of the device and whether the emails are genuine.

    In one alleged email, written after midnight on April 13, 2014, Hunter Biden wrote to Devon Archer, his business partner, that he will be traveling to Houston the next day. Secret Service logs obtained by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs show a trip by Biden on April 13-14, 2014.

    In another alleged email, Vadim Pozharskyi, a top executive from Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, wrote to Biden and Archer on May 12, 2014: “Following our talks during the visit to the Como Lake and our further discussions, I would like to bring the following situation to your attention.” While the email doesn’t cite a date for the trip, Secret Service logs include a travel entry for Biden on April 3-6, 2014.

    In another alleged email, Archer wrote on May 12, 2014, that he is with Biden in Doha, Qatar. Secret Service records include a trip by Biden to Doha, Qatar, on May 11-14, 2014.

  • Related: Did the Secret Service hide Hunter Biden documents from congress? “If Hunter Biden was receiving Secret Service protection after the date the Secret Service represented to the senators the detail had ended, it implies the Secret Service may have withheld relevant documents about its travels with Hunter Biden from the senators.”
  • “Hunter biz partner confirms email, details Joe Biden’s push to make millions from China“:

    Now we learn that Biden has secretly been playing footsie with China.

    The statement Wednesday night asserting that the former vice president was a willing and eager participant in a family scheme to make millions of dollars by partnering with a shady Chinese Communist firm is a singular event in a presidential race already overflowing with drama and intrigue.

    The dynamite assertion, believable because it aligns with earlier information we know to be true, came in a statement by Tony Bobulinski, who describes himself as a former partner of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Joe’s brother Jim in the China scheme. Bobulinski unloads his bill of accusations in blunt but precise language and detail.

    He confirms that he was one of the recipients of the May 13, 2017, email published by The Post eight days ago. That email, from another partner in the group, laid out cash and equity positions and mysteriously included a 10 percent set-aside for “the big guy.”

    Sources have said the “big guy” was Joe Biden. In a matter-of-fact manner, Bobulinski states that the “email is genuine” and that the former vice president and the man leading in the 2020 race is indeed “the big guy.”

  • “Long-standing claims of Biden corruption all but confirmed with Hunter’s emails.”

    Thanks to three brave Americans, we now know that Joe Biden has long misled the public about his involvement with his family’s foreign business entanglements while he served as vice president.

    At considerable personal risk, former Biden family business partners Tony Bobulinski and Bevan Cooney, and computer shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, have come forward with tens of thousands of primary-source documents — internal corporate records, emails, and text messages — detailing years of business dealings that centered on trading on the Biden name. This material suggests that, despite Joe Biden’s insistence that he knew nothing about his family’s business deals, he was well aware of his son Hunter Biden’s business ventures in China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere.

    These new troves constitute hard evidence of Biden family corruption, and confirm our reporting dating back to our 2018 book “Secret Empires.”

  • “Photo shows Joe Biden meeting Hunter’s alleged business partner from Kazakhstan.” As long as it didn’t involve snorting or screwing, Joe Biden seemed to be involve in every single one of his son’s crooked deals.

  • The dog that isn’t barking: “‘I don’t think anybody is saying they are inauthentic,’ Biden campaigner Jenna Arnold admitted on Fox News after repeatedly trying to steer the conversation to other topics.”
  • Worth mentioning again: The Bidens even grifted off cancer research:

    A few days before the 2016 presidential election, outgoing Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, announced the formation of the Biden Foundation. “The Biden Foundation is an educational foundation dedicated to exploring the ways that everyone—no matter their income level, race, gender, age, or sexuality—can expect to be treated with dignity and to receive a fair shot at achieving the American Dream,” read the nonprofit’s press release dated November 5, 2016.

    In the span of several weeks, the nonprofit quickly was seeded with millions of dollars in donations. A year-end disclosure report for 2016 showed $3.4 million in contributions; the group spent a few hundred thousand on expenses but awarded no grants that first year.

    The practice of spending most of its money on salaries and expenses while directing little or nothing toward the Biden Foundation’s stated mission followed a pattern. During its brief three-year history, the Biden Foundation raised nearly $10 million but less than ten percent was awarded to other charities—and half of that meager sum was donated to another Biden-run nonprofit.

    Although the Biden Foundation pledged to focus on the couple’s pet projects, a very small portion of the Bidens’ largess directly benefited any of those causes. Instead, the charity appears to have funded the Bidens’ pre-primary campaigning for president—most of the charity’s activities involved public speeches by Joe and Jill—while reaching out to key constituencies such as military families and gay rights activists.

    Snip.

    But despite all the spin, the Biden Foundation only gave two grants totalling a little more than $400,000 to the YMCA that year. It would mark the nonprofit’s only direct donation to the initiative.

    In fact, even though the Biden Foundation raised $3.2 million in 2018, it donated just $55,000 more to three other nonprofits. The Military Child Education Coalition, a charity based in Texas that assists the families of U.S. servicemen, received a paltry $20,000 from the fund.

    Politically connected lawyers, however, fared much better. Perkins Coie, best known for acting as the pass-through between Fusion GPS and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 to produce the infamous Steele dossier, was paid more than $230,000.

    Aside from a handful of minor grants, the Biden Foundation made only one other major contribution in its three-year history; the charity donated $495,323 to the Biden Cancer Initiative, a separate nonprofit created in 2017, two years after Beau Biden died of brain cancer. In 2017 and 2018, the Biden Cancer Initiative raised another $4.8 million in donations; it did not award any grants. Instead, the nonprofit spent $3 million on the salaries and benefits of a four-person staff.

  • Swing voters give debate to Trump.
  • A Bribe Too Far:

    It appears that the Hunter Biden’s hard drive is the real McCoy. Neither Joe nor Hunter Biden deny it. It’s clear from the emails and other files on the drive that Hunter Biden was the family bag man and that Ukrainians were paying him for access to his father while Joe Biden was Vice President. It also appears that individuals—and possibly governments—from other countries were paying for similar access.

    The Democrats impeached Donald Trump for asking the President of the Ukraine to pursue an investigation related to the bribery verified by the evidence on Hunter’s hard drive.

    Let that sink in for a moment.

    The Bidens acted as they did believing that they had an airtight level of protection. As the bribes rolled in, it seems they became increasingly arrogant. Hunter Biden’s arrogance compounded with his addictions and other character defects led him to be careless. He never should have let someone who wasn’t fully vetted to have access to any of his electronic devices, but he did.

    (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)

  • “Joe Biden Debate Pledge To Transition Away From Fossil Fuels Could Cost Him Pennsylvania and Other Energy States.”

    Saying the United States should transition away from fossil fuels is a popular idea on the left. It’s not workable in real life, however. Millions of people depend on fossil fuels not only to heat and light their homes, but for their jobs.

    During the final debate last night, Joe Biden said the United States should transition away from the oil industry. This was red meat for his base and the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, but it won’t play with millions of voters who live in the real world.

    It’s easy to say you support the idea of abandoning fossil fuels, but if you want to know how that works out, look no further than California, where their green energy policy has led to rolling blackouts.

    You can tell Biden’s comments were damaging, because the media has already moved to the ‘conservatives pounce’ stage of the issue.

  • “Biden’s $2 Trillion Clean Energy Plans Could Mark The Beginning Of The End For The Natural Gas Industry.”

    While Joe Biden has been busy speaking out of both sides of his mouth about what his position on fracking would be, if elected, another revelation has come to light: regardless of his position on fracking, his $2 trillion clean energy plan could be devastating to natural gas.

    As Bloomberg points out in a recent article, natural gas is not only a crucial part of the nation’s energy supply, but it directly effects votes in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where Biden is seeking to turn the state that leaned Trump in 2016.

    Biden’s energy plan could speed up natural gas becoming “economically and environmentally untenable within the power sector,” Bloomberg notes. Biden’s plan for a carbon neutral grid would all but assure natural gas is phased out in favor of renewable energy.

    Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, put it bluntly: “Decarbonization isn’t a debate — it’s a fossil-fuel death sentence. It means a resource is going off the grid. That is the inevitable implication.”

  • Here’s a poll that should be keep Democratic strategists up at night: “Donald Trump Down One Point Among Black Voters in Battleground Michigan.”

    The time and resources President Trump’s campaign has been pouring into the battleground state of Michigan appear to be paying off, according to two new polls.

    Zia Poll surveyed “2851 likely voters and newly registered voters who have never voted in an election” and found Trump leading Joe Biden, 49 percent to 45 percent, for a four-point lead.

    The poll found 85 percent of Trump supporters were “very excited” about their candidate, while only 70 percent of Biden supporters are so.

    Regarding the economy, 55 percent of respondents said Trump would provide a “better” one. Forty-five percent of those surveyed said Biden would.

    Respondents “were almost evenly split” about whether Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) or Trump better handled the coronavirus pandemic response.

    The poll also found Biden with a “slight” lead among black and Hispanic voters.

    Painter Communications analyzed the poll and told Breitbart News Biden had the support of 46.8 percent of black respondents, while Trump was at 45.7 percent, a difference of just 1.1 percent.

    To put that in perspective, Trump won Michigan by a mere 11,000 votes in 2016 while Hillary Clinton racked up almost 300,000 more votes in urban Wayne County. Any significant defection of black voters to Trump probably puts Michigan out of reach for Biden.

  • This seems part of a trend: “President Trump’s Approval with Black Voters Soars to 46% After Debate.”
  • Still more on that theme:

  • Chelsea Handler tells ex-boyfriend 50 Cent that black people aren’t allowed to vote for Trump:

  • Trump-hostile Washington Monthly notes that Biden polls worse than than Hillary did and Trump could win even if you do believe the phony baloney polls.

    If Biden blows it in the sunbelt and Iowa, it will come down once again to the rust belt battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Remember: if Biden loses all of the above-mentioned states that he wants to flip from red to blue (which is quite possible) – then he has to sweep the Great Lakes battlegrounds. Not 2 of 3. 3 of 3.

    Right now (as of 10/20), those three states are looking pretty good for Biden, especially Michigan and even Wisconsin, which once seemed like it might be the hardest of the three to get back in the blue column where it resided from 1988 to 2012. Somewhat surprisingly, Pennsylvania is still a dogfight for Biden despite nearly 50 years in politics in neighboring Delaware and multiple visits to the Keystone State this year:

    Pennsylvania — +3.8
    Wisconsin — +6.2
    Michigan — +6.8

    So, remembering that Biden might need to sweep all three of those, my main cautionary note is to look at the Real Clear Politics polling averages for those states way back on October 19, 2016:

    Pennsylvania: Clinton +6.2
    Wisconsin: Clinton +7
    Michigan: Clinton +11.6

    As you can see, Joe Biden is doing worse in those state polls than Hillary was. And she, of course, lost them all.

  • More on that theme:

  • Glenn Greenwald points out the “obvious to anyone who isn’t a Biden partisan”: Biden refuses to say whether the emails are authentic or not, and members of the Democrat-loving press refuse to ask him.

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • How Biden’s tax-and-spend proposals will damage the economy. “Experts project that the policy agenda would, by 2030, lead to 4.9 million fewer jobs and the economy shrinking by $2.6 trillion. So, too, the study projects that consumption would be $1.5 trillion lower in 2030 and families would see a $6,500 drop in median household income compared to a neutral scenario.”
  • Complete with sky-high taxes:

  • Stephen Green is not impressed with Joe Biden’s fathering skills:

    I’ve seen serious addiction up close. The kind of addiction that first leads to absences, then to sudden re-appearances to beg for forgiveness — and money. The kind of addiction that destroys relationships through lies, through theft, through neglect, and worse.

    When addiction reaches that stage, there are usually only two possible outcomes: The addict either hits bottom and cleans up their act, or they die.

    There is no doubt in my mind, having seen such behavior from much too close, that Hunter is on that path.

    The only way to help a fellow human being — in this case, a sole surviving son — is to stop enabling them.

    It isn’t easy, cutting a parent or a child off from everything but your love. But it’s either that or they die.

    Joe Biden, having stood over the graves of two of his children, let — or forced? — his remaining son to become his bagman.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going easy on Hunter: I believe he belongs in prison every bit as much as he belongs in a 12-step program.

    The millions Hunter has raked in on his own and his father’s behalf have made them rich while enabling his addictions.

    A father with any kind of concern for his child’s welfare would have cut Hunter off from “family business,” as they say in The Godfather, and stuck him in rehab.

    Instead, Père Biden seems content to watch Hunter commit slow-motion suicide, so long as the easy money keeps coming in.

  • For those of you who always wanted to see Hunter Biden smoke crack naked while being serviced by a prostitute, the videos are out there.
  • How the media is deluding itself about this election. After “Hunter Biden isn’t a thing” and “Nobody spied on trump,” we get this:

    “AMERICA IS A RACIST COUNTRY AND IT’S TIME FOR A RECKONING!”

    Everything we see on television, right down to the riots and “burning down of our cities,” is staged for the media’s social engineering. Antifa and BLM are nothing but props rolled out by the media and left when and how they choose. They can set their movements ablaze or send them all home to their shame closets with the flip of a social switch. Obviously the damage these mobs do is real. The damage to property and brutality against people — the death — it’s obviously all very, very real. But it’s also anecdotal and not nearly as pervasive as the media wants people to believe. It’s not actually what’s real in America and it’s not what people are thinking about or focused on or worried about in their every day lives. And honest people know that. Honest people know the media are working hard to stoke racial tensions and division, and to make us believe our nation is fraught with division and detriment.

    It’s not. And the vast majority of honest observers, even those who don’t watch politics real closely, know that.

  • Biden falsely claims that the intelligence community has cleared his family of wrongdoing. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Ann Althouse on that “gooiest ever” Sam Elliott ad:

    Yes, whoever made that ad, sure had the “broader audience in mind.” I can picture clever fellows laughing at their own work, comparing it to a “South Park” parody, and joking about how dumb Americans are.

    Watching that ad, a few seconds in, Meade said “Tegridy Farms,” and toward the end, I said, “This is for the dumb people” and “Actually, this is very effective.” I could feel the emotion they were trying to put over. Joe will bring us together — no reason why and don’t you worry your head about what he’ll actually do while you’re in a hypnotic fog of phony-baloney togetherness.

    I’m looking for the right “Tegridy Farms” ad to convey Meade’s point. There’s this, but as Meade said, “It doesn’t have enough of that voice — you know, like that guy… that guy in ‘The Big Lebowski.'” I say: “Sam Elliott! You do realize the voice in the Biden ad isSam Elliott.” Meade thought it was just some guy doing his damnedest to sound like Sam Elliott. No, that’s actually Sam Elliott. You might think Sam Elliott is such an extreme that he’d be reserved for the comic exaggeration of the voice of a narrator…

    And then she links to the South Park Tegridy ad, which gives me an excuse to embed it here (NSFW because, you know, South Park):

  • You know Biden lost the debate when he checked his watch.
  • Our media is refusing to even consider whether laptop emails are genuine or not. “Is there any basis for these claims of fraud and disinformation? None, so far.”
  • “The Media Will Drag Joe Biden Across the Finish Line if It’s the Last Thing They Do.”

    Every four years, I assume that our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press have stooped as low as they can possibly stoop. Then another election rolls around and they prove me wrong. It happens every time. I don’t know what I expected.

    The NY Post‘s story about Hunter Biden’s allegedly abandoned laptop has forced journalists and other Democrats to cast aside their thin veil of impartiality. Wherever the evidence may lead, they can’t allow themselves to follow. Because if they do, it might bring about four more years of Bad Orange Man.

    I already wrote in my candidate and I don’t care who wins on November 3. I’ve resigned myself to the result either way. But these @$$holes sure haven’t. They’re doing everything they can to drag Joe’s decrepit old carcass across the finish line, and they’re shouting down or silencing anybody who doesn’t like it. I’ve had my differences with Trump supporters over the years, but they’re not the ones censoring me, locking me out of my social media accounts, and trying to shut me up.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Here’s a Never Trumper who has come to the reluctant conclusion that she has to vote for Trump after all. “The reason I am feeling pushed towards Trump, and at such a late date, and despite my strong inclinations otherwise, is that I no longer feel this is a Kang v. Kodos scenario. From the right, I continue to see the usual callous indifference to the lives of ordinary people, but it’s just indifference. The message I am getting from the left is that I am a target they mean to destroy.” The last sentence is true, but it was no less true four years ago. She trots out the litany of Social justice Warrior targeting, Democratic hostility to religion, rioting and looting, and gross media bias. All true, but all (save the scale of the looting and changes wrought by the Wuhan coronavirus) were all true four years ago. “I am feeling pushed towards voting for Trump because on so many different levels it seems that my inalienable rights and my personal well-being are actively targeted by the ruling powers among the left.” True. What took you so damn long to realize it? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • What should disqualify Biden: He says that America has never lived up to it’s ideas. Those portions of western Europe not currently speaking German or Russian might disagree…
  • “Biden Campaigns Funneled Over $70,000 To Hunter Biden, Nearly $150,000 To Entire Family.” (Hat tip: The Daily Gator.)
  • You know who else got mentioned in the Biden emails? Frank Luntz.
  • A tale of two campaigns continued:

  • Feel the excitement:

  • Leaked Biden Ukraine phone-call?

    Damning if true.

  • Biden confuses Trump for Bush:

  • Happy Halloween!

  • I laughed:

  • Thread that suggests Biden is sufering from Parkinson’s disease. I would take a diagnosis made from videos like this with several grains of salt, though if you want to research it the website is here.
  • “Why I don’t believe in the polls, and you shouldn’t either.”

    Over the past two months, I took it upon myself to travel flyover country and the north, spanning Kentucky, Ohio, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas and North Dakota. Throughout my journey I spoke with residents and business owners about the election, who they’re voting for and where they see things going in the 2020 election. What came of two conversations in particular will bring a little bit of perspective to those polls.

    The first conversation that stood out to me was at a barbershop in Excelsior, Minnesota — a town with the population of about 2,500 about 30 minutes outside of Minneapolis. While getting my hair cut, I struck up a conversation with the barber and patrons. Of the residents there, three had been polled about the presidential election, and the barber said that both he and his wife had received separate phone calls. All — every one of them — told me that they told the pollster that they were voting for Joe Biden, when they are voting for Mr. Trump. Why would they do this? According to all of them, for the safety of their family.

    Each person in the barbershop stated that they knew the George Floyd riots were caused by the left and each said they were afraid that if they said that they were Trump voters, violence or being canceled could happen to them. The barbershop owner in particular stated that he was, “well aware of cancel culture …” and worried he would be slammed on online ratings, and people would try to destroy his decades-old business based on his support of the president — so he lied to protect his livelihood.

    The second conversation that stood out to me was with my Uber driver just outside of Dallas, Texas. My driver was an immigrant from Nigeria to America nearly 20 years ago and an immigrant from New York City to a suburb of Dallas just last month. I asked the father of four what he thought about the election and he said that, where he once was a Democrat, he would never vote Democratic again because of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s shutting down of the state and city. He used his stimulus money and extra unemployment from the federal government to uproot his family and move across the country for “… half the rent, no state income tax, and the ability to work.”

  • Bring it!

  • Truth:

  • “Don’t mention Joe’s name”:


    

  • Joe Biden repeats the lie of the year, saying no one lost their coverage under ObamaCare. Oh, and he promises the same for BidenCare.
  • “COVER-UP! ABC/CBS/NBC Bury Hunter Biden Scandals (14 Minutes in 51 Hours).”
  • Democratic Governor Gretchen “The Witch” Whitmer: “Votre for biden if you ever want to go to church again.”
  • Zing!

  • Heh:

  • Ouch!

  • Sad trombone:

  • Boom:

  • The Bablyon Bee obtains Joe Biden’s debate notes. “Reminder: you are JOE BIDEN and you are running for PRESIDENT.”
  • “According to sources, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has adopted her 8th child, a troubled local youngster named Hunter.”
  • Biden offers anyone who votes for him a seat in the Supreme Court.
  • Like BidenWatch? Consider hitting the tip jar:





    Twitter/Facebook/MSM Cross the Rubicon

    Sunday, October 25th, 2020

    Matt Taibbi feels that whatever Hunter Biden did with Bursima pales in comparison to what Facebook, Twitter and mainstream media have done to squelch the story:

    The incredible decision by Twitter and Facebook to block access to a New York Post story about a cache of emails reportedly belonging to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter, with Twitter going so far as to lock the 200 year-old newspaper out of its own account for over a week, continues to be a major underreported scandal.

    The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Imagine the reaction if that same set of facts involved the New York Times and any of its multitudinous unverifiable “exposes” from the last half-decade: from the similarly-leaked “black ledger” story implicating Paul Manafort, to its later-debunked “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence” story, to its mountain of articles about the far more dubious Steele dossier. Internet platforms for years have balked at intervening at many other sensational “unverified” stories, including ones called into question in very short order:

    Embedded Jonathan Chait Tweet about Julie Swetnick (remember her?) dooming Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination snipped.

    The flow of information in the United States has become so politicized – bottlenecked by an increasingly brazen union of corporate press and tech platforms – that it’s become impossible for American audiences to see news about certain topics absent thickets of propagandistic contextualizing. Try to look up anything about Burisma, Joe Biden, or Hunter Biden in English, however, and you’re likely to be shown a pile of “fact-checks” and explainers ahead of the raw information…

    Other true information has been scrubbed or de-ranked, either by platforms or by a confederation of press outlets whose loyalty to the Democratic Party far now overshadows its obligations to inform.

    Obviously, Fox is not much better, in terms of its willingness to report negative information about Trump and Republicans, but Fox doesn’t have the reach that this emerging partnership between mass media, law enforcement, and tech platforms does. That group’s reaction to the New York Post story is formalizing a decision to abandon the media’s old true/untrue standard for a different test that involves other, more politicized questions, like provenance and editorial intent.

    Take the example of the taped conversations between Joe Biden and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrei Derkach has been rolling out in press conferences for some time now.

    Derkach is a highly suspicious character to say the least, a man even Rudy Giuliani assessed as having a “50/50” chance of being a Russian agent. He has for some time now been disseminating information that is clearly beneficial to Russian interests.

    Nonetheless, the Biden/Poroshenko recordings he’s released appear to be real.

    Snip.

    If the problem is “American citizens” being cultivated as “assets” trying to put “interference” in the mainstream media, the logical next step is to start asking Internet platforms to shut down accounts belonging to any American journalist with the temerity to report material leaked by foreigners (the wrong foreigners, of course – it will continue to be okay to report things like the “black ledger”). From Fox or the Daily Caller on the right, to left-leaning outlets like Consortium or the World Socialist Web Site, to writers like me even – we’re all now clearly in range of new speech restrictions, even if we stick to long-ago-established factual standards.

    As has been hinted at by several prominent journalists, controversies erupted within newsrooms across New York and Washington in the last week. Editors have been telling charges that any effort to determine whether or not the Biden laptop material is true, or to ask the Biden campaign to confirm or deny the story, will either not be allowed or put through heightened fact-checking procedures.

    On the other hand, if you want to assert without any evidence at all that the New York Post story is Russian interference, you can essentially go straight into print.

    Many people on the liberal side of the political aisle don’t have a problem with this, focused as they are on the upcoming Trump-Biden election. But this same press corps might be weeks away from assuming responsibility for challenging a Biden administration. If they’ve already calculated once that a true story may be buried for political reasons because the other “side” is worse, they will surely make that same calculation again.

    Read the whole thing