Multiple lawsuits over election fraud are preceding through the courts and appeal process. One of the most important is a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton yesterday against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin seeking to have their state legislatures appoint electors due to widespread election fraud in those states:
The filing, first reported by Joel Pollak at Breitbart, is under a procedure where the U.S. Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in suits between states. That means the lawsuit does not need to be filed in District Court, then work its way through the normal appeals process.
The lawsuit is in the form of a Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint. (The Brief in support of the Motion appears starting at page 50 of the pdf. A more complete pdf. with all filings, including the Motion for Preliminary Injunction and a Temporary Restraining Order is available here starting at pg. 111)
The relief sought is a delay of the December 14 statutory deadline for electors to vote, arguing that the Supreme Court has the power to delay that deadline since “[t]he only date that is mandated under the Constitution … is January 20, 2021. U.S. CONST. amend. XX.” The purpose of the delay would be for state legislatures to consider appointing the electors given the unreliability in the way the elections were handled.
This is in line with some commenters here suggesting that January 20 is the only real Constitutional deadline.
I’m not sufficiently familiar with this procedure to opine right now on whether it is proper procedurally…
You and me both!
…but if it works it puts the election squarely in the hands of the Supreme Court. There is no guarantee that if the issue were put to the legislators in these states that they would select Trump electors in the face of certified vote counts showing Biden the winner.
The suit alleges a variety of different constitutional violations in each state, all relating to the loosening of mail-ballot processing rules. Some of the changes were implemented by state and local election officials using the Chinese coronavirus as a pretext; others pre-date the presidential election and COVID.
Texas argues the impact of the rules’ changes was the same in each of these battleground states, saying election officials “flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.”
The requested remedy is the same, as well: toss out all mail-ballot votes and the presidential election results for all four states, which currently show Joe Biden receiving more votes than President Donald Trump.
To safeguard public legitimacy at this unprecedented moment and restore public trust in the presidential election, this Court should extend the December 14, 2020 deadline for Defendant States’ certification of presidential electors to allow these investigations to be completed.
“Trust in the integrity of our election processes is sacrosanct and binds our citizenry and the States in this Union together,” Paxton said in a press statement. “Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin destroyed that trust and compromised the security and integrity of the 2020 election. The states violated statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution. By ignoring both state and federal law, these states have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens’ vote, but of Texas and every other state that held lawful elections.”
“Their failure to abide by the rule of law casts a dark shadow of doubt over the outcome of the entire election,” he added. “We now ask that the Supreme Court step in to correct this egregious error.”
My fear is that the very novelty of this lawsuit will work against it. I’m not sure any state has ever filed to alter election results from other states, or that the Supreme Court would grant standing in the lawsuit. But by making it a state suing another state, it makes it a clear Supreme Court case under Article III of the Constitution.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge is also supporting the lawsuit:
Indeed, seven states have joined the lawsuit: Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, and South Dakota. It’s quite possible that more have joined by the time you read this.
Election Day definitively confirmed the existence of hidden Trump voters. Undetected by polls and long denied by the establishment media, Trump’s surprising surge had to come from somewhere. Either these supporters were hiding from pollsters or pollsters were hiding them. Regardless, their existence raises disturbing questions about the role played by the establishment media and pollsters in influencing this election.
Election Day provided the startling revelation that a contest that supposedly had been over for months, actually would not be decided for days, and perhaps longer. In reality, the “blowout” proved a nail-biter. More unsettling is the fact that the race probably had been this close all along and that the false impression likely influenced the outcome.
As recently as October 12 the RealClearPolitics average of national polling had Biden at 52.3 percent and Trump at 41.7 percent. The average on Election Day was 51.2 percent to 44 percent. As of November 18, the actual popular vote figures are Biden at 51 percent and Trump at 47.2 percent.
From his October 12 level, Trump’s support increased over 13 percent. How could an error of such magnitude occur? Clearly a lot of hidden Trump voters came from somewhere. The question is whether they were hiding or were hidden.
Whether this was a sin of omission or one of commission has enormous implications for America’s elections. After years’ worth of concern about whether there had been Russian interference in our elections, it bears considering whether America has just fallen victim to internal tampering to a far greater degree.
The establishment media’s preferred answer to how the polls failed to detect millions of Trump voters is that the error was stupid, not sinister. “Whoops, we just missed them” — despite this being pollsters’ business, their assurance that they had “fixed” their polls’ problems from 2016, and the mistake being of incredible size. As results show, 2020’s error is greater than 2016’s.
The establishment media has readily blamed the pollsters, essentially exonerating itself by saying that it was just reporting what it was told. Yet neglected is the fact that the polls’ results were confirming the establishment media’s own bias. This bias has been repeatedly cited for decades and has never been clearer than over the last four years. As testament to the miraculous coincidence of pro-Biden polls and establishment media’s pro-Biden bias, consider the reverse: Would the establishment media have so readily regurgitated polling data showing the race as close as it turned out to be?
We say goodbye, then, to journalists elevating as worthy of public notice obvious liars and lunatics, including convicted felon Michael Avenatti, gossip columnist Michael Wolff, mental health quack Bandy Lee, and conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch — all because they oppose the administration.
Goodbye to weekly “bombshells” that land with a “splat!” instead of a “boom!”
Goodbye to near-daily input from presidential historians turned political assassins.
Goodbye to members of the press acting as if the cover artwork of the latest edition of a prestige news magazine is in some way provocative, stunning, or even particularly interesting.
Goodbye to White House correspondents pretending as if they are reporting from an active war zone or claiming they feel safer covering authoritarian regimes.
Goodbye to the Holocaust being invoked against the administration on a near-daily basis.
Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered the Texas Rangers and other officials to help the City of Dallas respond to a spike in murders and other violent crimes that has gripped the city.
Abbott directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to send help to the Dallas Police Department (DPD) which will include special agents, state troopers, two helicopters, and two patrol planes.
“The rise in violent crime in the City of Dallas is unacceptable, and the Texas Department of Public Safety will assist the Dallas Police Department in their efforts to protect the community and reduce this surge in crime.”
Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell fined $1,000 for violating his own stay at home order to visit his grandson’s birthday party. Not quite a lobbyist-funded trip to The French Laundry, but still not a good look…
Austin leftwing journalists go after (checks notes) moms and sex trafficking victims for daring to oppose police budget cuts. Next up: The cishetronormative oppression of apple pie.
What real hope and change looks like in the Middle East:
This amazing map shows the transformation @realDonaldTrump fomented in the Mideast with his reality-based foreign policy. If the swamp creatures really return it will be a tragedy. But reality is stronger than their fantasies, which is why their ME policies have always failed. https://t.co/vxJDZlP9NG
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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…
In 2016, Donald Trump got a lower share of the white vote than the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, and white turnout was stagnant as compared to 2012. Trump was able to win nonetheless because he got a higher share of Black and Hispanic voters than his predecessor — up roughly 3 percentage points with African Americans and 2 percentage points with Hispanics — helping tilt pivotal races in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania toward Trump.
That is, it was minorities, not whites, who proved more decisive for Trump’s victory.
Going into Election Day in 2020, Trump seems poised to do even better with minority voters. His gains in the polling have been highly consistent and broad-based among Blacks and Hispanics — with male voters and female voters, the young and the old, educated and uneducated. Overall, Trump is polling about 10 percentage points higher with African Americans than he did in 2016, and 14 percentage points higher with Hispanics.
It may be that many minority voters simply do not view some of his controversial comments and policies as racist. Too often, scholars try to test whether something is racist by looking exclusively at whether the rhetoric or proposals they disagree with resonate with whites. They frequently don’t even bother to test whether they might appeal to minorities, as well.
Yet when they do, the results tend to be surprising. For instance, one recent study presented white, Black and Hispanic voters with messages the researchers considered to be racial “dog whistles,” or coded language that signals commitment to white supremacy. It turned out that the messages resonated just as strongly with Blacks as they did with whites. Hispanics responded even more warmly to the rhetoric about crime and immigration than other racial groups.
It seems that everyone in the country except polling companies expect a big Trump victory today:
🚨 DK Election Pool Alert: With over 350K entries, a majority of people in every state besides Colorado predict that @realdonaldtrump will be the winner of tomorrow’s election. pic.twitter.com/zUF0uZZtwK
In South Carolina, Jaime Harrison is this year’s Beto O’Rourke. “Harrison has raised, and spent, more than any other Senate candidate in U.S. history — ‘as of Oct. 14, Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison had raised more than $108 million and spent more than $105 million in his quest to unseat U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’ with another $13 million in outside spending hitting Graham.” And he’s still behind Graham in the polls.
Also, I intend to be live-blogging/live-tweeting election returns starting about 7 PM tonight. Tune in for what promises to be a host of ridiculous typos.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.)
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.
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.
“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.
"Joe Biden and I are about to work to get rid of that tax cut," Kamala Harris tells Hispanic Americans. pic.twitter.com/BT9sTqsDfK
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) October 30, 2020
“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?
Biden refuses to reveal his position on court-packing, but he still wants to take your guns and hike your taxes until your eyeballs bleed, plus more on the enthusiasm gap, fracking flip-flops, and we’re all going to be millionaires (the Weimer Republic kind). It’s this week’s BidenWatch!
“Hey Joe, are you gonna pack the courts?” “Not telling!”
As the Senate moves forward on the president’s Supreme Court pick, both former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, continue to deflect when asked if they would try to add more justices to the nation’s highest court, a practice known as court packing.
Biden and his party face increasing pressure because of the frustration of many progressives at the Republican effort to rush through a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a longtime liberal icon, with Amy Coney Barrett just before the Nov. 3 election. Because the addition of Barrett is expected to create a conservative majority on the high court some have called for adding more justices.
The question of adding seats to the Supreme Court also hinges on the battle for control of the U.S. Senate, where Republicans currently hold a slim 53 to 47 majority. If Democrats are able to wrest control of the GOP, maintain control of the U.S. House and Biden wins the presidency, the party would need to pass legislation expanding the court beyond its current limit of nine justices.
Lord knows progressive frustration is a just a swell reason to overthrow centuries of tradition.
“According to an analysis from Real Clear Politics, Biden holds a 4.4 percentage point lead over the president in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona,” she explains. “However, Democrat Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump by 4.8 points in these swing states this time in 2016—a slightly greater advantage than the one Biden currently has.”
Biden’s leads in Pennsylvania and Michigan, two states Trump won, are also smaller than Clinton’s leads at this time four years ago. “The Real Clear Politics average shows that Biden is ahead with a 6.3 lead in Pennsylvania and a 6.2 advantage in Michigan. Comparably, Clinton was leading in these two states by 9.2 points and 9.6 points, respectively, this time in 2016.”
Similarly, polls for Wisconsin and North Carolina show Biden with a smaller lead than they did for Hillary Clinton back in 2016.
The only outliers to this trend are Florida and Arizona. Biden’s lead in Florida is at 3.5, compared to Hillary’s 3.2 point lead in 2016. Biden also leads in Arizona by 3.4 points, compared to Trump’s 0.7 point advantage in 2016.
NBC News featured several "undecided" voters at Monday's Biden Town Hall that had previously been featured as Biden supporters on MSNBC:pic.twitter.com/61ZRXmcktT
Asked about President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, which most economists agree are largely responsible for the resurrection of the U.S. economy following the slow-growth Obama-Biden years, Harris said: “On Day 1, Joe Biden will repeal that tax bill.”
Never mind that a President Biden will have no such power to “repeal” anything. That’s Congress’ job, and if Biden isn’t blessed with having both branches of Congress firmly in far-left Democratic hands, “repealing” the tax cuts won’t happen.
But then Harris went on to say Biden wouldn’t raise taxes on those earning less than $400,000. Say what? By “repealing” Trump’s tax cuts, he would be doing just that.
The truth is, Biden has played games with his tax plans all along. But the actual tax plans he has revealed would be nothing short of disastrous for working men and women, and the economy as a whole. Those plans plainly show that 77-year-old Biden, a lifelong politician, understands nothing about the private economy. That is, apart from it being a great source of graft for him and his family.
A report out just this week from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that taxes would rise about $4.3 trillion over the next decade under Biden’s plans, while taxes under Trump would actually decline by $1.7 trillion over that period.
At least, you say, that $4.3 trillion in added taxes under Biden would cut the deficit more than Trump’s plans, right? Wrong.
The CRFB notes that its projections show a 10-year rise in federal deficits of $8.3 trillion for Biden, versus $6.9 trillion for Trump.
Enthusiasm for Trump among his voters “is historically high,” said Richard Baris, the director of Big Data Poll. “We saw that very early in the cycle, in his primary vote totals,” when the president drew unusually large voter turnout in uncontested races.
“Meanwhile, Biden’s enthusiasm level is historically low — so low that the Democrats run the risk of replaying 2016,” Baris said.
Just 46 percent of Biden voters in a recent Pew poll said that they strongly support him, compared to 66 percent of Trump’s base.
Rank-and-file Dems are sounding the alarm.
“I look out over my Biden sign in my front yard and I see a sea of Trump flags and yard signs,” Pennsylvania voter Susan Connors told Biden worriedly at a CNN-sponsored town hall Sept. 17.
Experienced political hands have a saying: “Yard signs don’t vote.” And research appears to bear that out — a 2016 study found that political signage increases vote share by a mere 1.7 percentage points, on average.
Biden holds a 10-point lead in the RealClearPolitics national polling average, a commanding position with Election Day less than four weeks away. But the exuberant signs and displays of Trump passion may actually point to a yawning enthusiasm gap that could make a big difference on Election Day — just as they did in 2016.
Four years ago, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found a 13-point enthusiasm gap in Trump’s favor, a result echoed by other surveys, The Hill reported.
Many people . . . said that the sheer volume of Trump signs they saw in 2016 — and the scarcity of Hillary Clinton signs — was their first clue that the polling was wrong and that Trump would have more success than the pundits had predicted,” Daniel Allott writes in “On the Road in Trump’s America: A Journey into the Heart of a Divided Nation” (Republic Books), out Oct. 20.
It’s deja vu all over again… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
A federal appeals court has reinstated a fraud conviction of Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner, Devon Archer, reversing a decision by an Obama-appointed judge (and wife of Mueller special counsel lawyer) to vacate Archer’s conviction and grant him a new trial.
Archer and several of his business partners were indicted on March 26, 2018 in a $60 million bond scheme which defrauded Native Americans. Hunter was not implicated in the fraud, however Archer and the other partners repeatedly name-dropped the former Vice President’s son.
Following a trial which lasted nearly one-month, Archer was found guilty of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud. After requesting that the district court set aside the jury’s verdict, Judge Ronnie Abrams – the wife of Mueller special counsel attorney Greg Andres (who himself was a Deputy Assistant AG in the Obama DOJ, according to RedState) – granted Archer’s wish. What’s more, Abrams was Hunter Biden’s classmate at Yale Law school.
In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel said that Abrams made a mistake by prioritizing her own theory above that of the jury’s, and that her assessment undercut the significance of the proof in its totality.
Mike Pence dominated in that debate. He was calm and cool. Rock-solid. Kamala Harris’s body language and voice reflected her nervousness—a stark contrast to her previous debate performances during the Democratic primary when she was still in the race. But neither her body language, her failure to answer questions, nor her constant reliance on fake stories as lines of attack were the key tell that she lost.
The liberal media conceded Pence’s victory by describing Pence’s debate performance. And their go-to explanation was to attack the vice president by accusing him of “mansplaining.”
“China Censors Mike Pence’s Debate Comments On China But Freely Broadcasts Kamala Harris’s.” “‘China censored Pence’s comments on China,’ Canada’s Globe and Mail Beijing Correspondent Nathan VanderKlippe reported. ‘Signal returned when Harris began talking again.'”
Of all the people they know — including RINOs and squishes and NeverTrumpers who voted against Trump in 2016 — many of the NeverTrumpers are now reluctant Trump voters, and many of 2016’s reluctant Trump voters are now enthusiastic Trump voters.
On the other hand, they don’t know anyone who has moved from voting for Trump in 2016 to voting for Biden.
One friend tells me that the suburban well-to-do Wine Moms and Squish Sisters he knows are now fully on the MAGA train.
Everyone they know who’s moved on The Trump Question (and Trump seems to be the only issue in 2020) has moved in favor of Trump.
They also note that the “Shy Trumper” effect — where Trump supporters won’t admit to pollsters they still support Trump — is still strong, based on their own experience.
One relates that he did not tell his own children that he voted for Trump, due to social pressure and the idea that he didn’t want to “normalize” Trump’s bad behavior to his children.
If you can’t tell your own kids you voted for Trump, you’re not going to tell a pollster.
And this person works in conservative politics, too!
If even people in the conservative movement can’t admit they’re Trump supporters — well good luck getting Wendy Wine Mom to admit that on the phone.
A friend of mine was a hardcore NeverTrumper in 2016 but now is a crawl-over-broken-glass Trump Voter. No, he doesn’t really like Trump, but unlike Jonah Goldberg and Steve Schmidt, he recognizes the profound threat the left poses to what is left of America.
He has kept in touch with his NeverTrump pals. Media types. The types who annoy you on Twitter.
And while he won’t Name Names, he tells me that many of the NeverTrumpers I hate are now “red pilled” Trump voters.
They just won’t admit it publicly.
Snip.
If there were a lot of Trump defectors, the media would be profiling them and lionizing them and promoting them 24-7.
But I haven’t seen a single story about Trump 2016-Biden 2020 defectors.
The media hasn’t found any — despite the fact that by announcing that you’re now a full-on Democrat Liberal, you gain employment opportunities and social prestige.
So if the media can’t find any of these people… do they even exist?
YouTuber Liberal Hivemind says that Biden is losing voters every day:
“Those blacks, always working menial jobs before they hop back on a city bus and head home to their housing projects. Anyway, I’m Joe Biden. Vote for me cause Donald Trump is racist.” https://t.co/MHaxeYNcB7
chronicled many times over the last three years when Democratic senators questioned judicial nominees about their faith, suggesting in various forms that a candidate’s Catholic or Christian beliefs might render them unfit to serve on the bench.
Several of those questions were posed by Harris herself, focusing especially on Catholic candidates. In late 2018, for instance, Harris grilled Brian Buescher, nominated to be a federal district judge in Nebraska, about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization with more than 2 million members worldwide who conduct charitable work. Here’s one of Harris’s written questions to Buescher:
Since 1993, you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men. In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as “a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.” Mr. Anderson went on to say that “abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?
She went on to ask whether Buescher was “aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization” and whether he had “ever, in any way, assisted with or contributed to advocacy against women’s reproductive rights.”
Harris posed these and other similar questions to Paul Matey and Peter Phipps, Catholic nominees who, like Buescher, are members of the Knights. Among the questions she posed to Matey based on his involvement in the Knights were:
* Do you agree with Mr. Anderson’s description of abortion as “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale”?
* Do you agree with Mr. Anderson that legal abortion in the United States has “resulted in more than 40 million deaths”?
* Do you believe that a fetus is entitled to any protection under the U.S. Constitution?
Race snapshot:
Campaign snapshot for Sunday:
– Trump is fully recovered (it seems)
– None of the 34 allegedly infected at White House seem to be in medical danger, including Chris Christie
The title of this post is a shameless riff on this Michael Quinn Sullivan tweet:
In today’s Grand Pronouncement, your Texas King – Greg the Masked – has announced his Feudal County Lords may in their benevolence chose to allow a bar or nightclub to open, or not to open, based upon their whim.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he’s finally going to let some bars reopen at 50% capacity, as opposed to the total closure they’ve been laboring under since March.
While other states like Florida are lifting the last of their coronavirus restrictions, Abbott is keeping his executive orders in place and continuing to keep some businesses closed.
On Monday, Abbott teased an upcoming announcement on Twitter which implied bars and other similar establishments—which have been barred from reopening alongside restaurants and other businesses—would finally be allowed to open their doors.
Abbott’s announcement on Wednesday, however, was less sweeping than many expected.
Instead, Abbott announced a new order that passes the buck onto county judges, who he has given the authority to determine whether local bars can reopen as soon as October 14 at 50 percent capacity.
For many Texans in populous Democrat-controlled counties, such approval will likely be difficult to obtain.
In fact, shortly after the announcement, Clay Jenkins—the Democrat Dallas County Judge—announced he would “not file to open them at this time.”
Williamson County is evidently opening back up, but I’m betting the Democratic judges overseeing Dallas, Travis, Harris, and Bexar counties are perfectly content to keep the remnants of their lockdown in place until the election, if not longer.
Up until this year, I was reasonably pleased with Abbott’s job as governor of Texas, though his cautious, consensus-driven brand of governance has been extremely frustrating for conservative activists who have seen many issues (such as the ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying) die in the legislature thanks to lack of support from the governor’s mansion. But I believe that Abbott’s overly cautious approach has severely hampered Texas’ recovery from the Wuhan coronavirus, especially when compared to Ron DeSantis in Florida, who has completely opened the state up rather than forcing business owners to play “Mother May I” with hostile county bureaucrats. It seems Abbott is more concerned with avoiding risk than doing the right thing.
Greetings, and welcome to the first LinkSwarm of fall! Strangely enough, we’re already getting some fall in our fall in Texas, as opposed to our usual Ever So Slightly Less Hot Late Summer. This week: Still more riots, Supreme Court pick news, more ugly truths about Crossfire Hurricane, and Lebanon goes boom again. Plus a bit of news that goes to eleven.
Yet another rash of Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots, this one ostensibly over the return of a single non-murder charge in the Breonna Taylor killing case.
Amy represents an opportunity to showcase a generationally brilliant, special intellect — who also is a mom,” says O. Carter Snead, Barrett’s longtime faculty colleague at the Notre Dame law school, where Barrett also received her law degree.
Her rare combination of hyper-intelligence and humility is a matter of bipartisan consensus. “The smartest person in the room and also the most humble” was how Snead and two other sources intimately familiar with Barrett described her, echoing each other almost verbatim.
Harvard Law School prof Noah Feldman — a liberal who testified before Congress in favor of impeaching the president — hailed her as “a truly brilliant lawyer” in a 2018 column. Feldman should know. He and Barrett were members of the same class of Supreme Court clerks in 1998.
“She was one of the two best lawyers” of the 40 clerks “and arguably the single best.” Feldman concluded: “She was legally prepared enough to go on the court 20 years ago.”
When Trump nominated Barrett to the Seventh Circuit, every single one of those 40 fellow clerks endorsed her as a “first-rate” thinker, including such vehemently anti-Trump figures as Neal Katyal, solicitor general under Team Obama. The entire Notre Dame law faculty likewise endorsed her, “and that includes people who identify as liberal,” as Snead was quick to note.
She is recognized as an expert on how judges are supposed to interpret statutes — a crucial role, as demonstrated by Justice Neil Gorsuch’s bizarre recent reading of “gender identity” into a civil rights statute enacted in the 1960s. She has also thought deeply about the relationship among the branches of government, a gnarly and seriously important area of law.
To these achievements Barrett marries a vibrant Christian faith. For the evangelicals and Catholics the president needs to turn out in November, her pro-life bona fides are on display not just in her activities and statements, but also in her own family: She is a mother of seven, including one biological child with intellectual disabilities and two adopted from Haiti.
Yes, Democrats and their media allies will attack and demonize her — viciously. But that’s no reason to nominate other candidates who have no record on life issues. As one conservative activist told me, “the left is going to burn everything down no matter whom we pick, so we might as well get the right person on the court.”
Democrats worry that Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is too old and senile to handle a Supreme Court nomination fight. Of course, they put it in slightly more delicate terms:
Feinstein sometimes gets confused by reporters’ questions, or will offer different answers to the same question depending on where or when she’s asked. Her appearance is frail. And Feinstein’s genteel demeanor, which seems like it belongs to a bygone Senate era, can lead to trouble with an increasingly hard-line Democratic base uninterested in collegiality or bipartisan platitudes.
Just this week, Feinstein infuriated progressives after declaring her opposition to ending the Senate’s legislative filibuster — a top goal of party activists if Democrats win full control of the Congress and White House in November. Some on the left called on her to resign over the comments, although other Democratic moderates have expressed similar views.
It’s hard to pick which is the more interesting angle here: The hard-left planning to push for their suicidal court-packing/filibuster ending agenda, or the old guard of elderly Democrats hanging on to power ghastly Ringwraiths. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Democrats: “We have the following list of demands for this Suprem-” Republicans: “Sorry, we remember your outrageous smear job on Kavanaugh. Suck it!” Also, remember this:
There were electoral consequences, with every “incumbent Senate Democrat in battleground states who opposed the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination” losing his or her re-election bid. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Bill Nelson of Florida were all replaced by their Republican opponents, while Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia saved his seat by backing Kavanaugh. That fall-out handed Republicans the votes they now need to push through a new nominee to the Supreme Court before Nov. 3, 2020.
“The ‘primary sub-source’ for the Steele dossier was suspected of being a possible Russian agent and a ‘threat to national security,’ according to newly declassified FBI documents.”
The goal of the Michael Flynn investigation wasn’t enhancing national security, but to get Flynn fired. “The explosive new documents support Flynn’s latest claims that Obama-era Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials had conspired to set him up from the beginning and that they never had any legitimate basis for investigating him.”
“Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents tasked by fired former Director James Comey to take down Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election were so concerned about the agency’s potentially illegal behavior that they purchased liability insurance to protect themselves less than two weeks before Trump was inaugurated president, previously hidden FBI text messages show.”
More on the same subject. I get the impression that there’s so much information coming out about malfeasance during Crossfire Hurricane/FISAgate that I can’t keep up with it all…
“‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Creators Reach Settlement On Long-Running Court Battle Over Rights And Income.” Good. Studios shouldn’t screw creators out of rightfully owed money, even if it is Meathead.
Today’s market to be hit by crazy high valuations is…(spins wheel)…rare plants? Now if only it would hit science fiction first editions I would be set!
Biden loses Hispanic voters to Trump in Florida (and elsewhere), prompting Bloomberg to promise to airdrop money into the state on his behalf, how Biden has screwed up everything he’s ever tried, and proof positive Slow Joe needs a teleprompter for even the most friendly basement interviews. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!
The sun may be setting on Democrats’ hopes of picking up Florida.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has seemingly lost his advantage over President Trump in the crucial swing state of Florida, an NBC News/Marist poll released Tuesday found. A lot of that shift seemingly stems from Florida’s Latino voters, who have gone from resoundingly supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 to actually tipping in Trump’s favor this time around, the poll showed.
Less than two months before election day, Biden and Trump are tied in Florida with 48 percent support among likely Florida voters. Biden had previously pulled as much as a 13-point lead over Trump in Florida. That dip comes as a majority of Latino respondents say they’re voting for Trump over Biden, 50-46 percent; Latino voters went for Clinton 62-35 in 2016.
A poll from the Miami Herald and Bendixen & Amandi International backed up NBC News’ findings, at least in Miami-Dade County. Biden still has a strong advantage, 55-38 percent, in the heavily Democratic part of the state, the Tuesday poll found. But it’s not the best news considering Clinton won that county by 30 points in 2016 and still lost the state by 1.2 points. In addition, the Miami Herald poll found Trump and Biden are splitting Hispanic voters, 47-46.
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg plans to spend at least $100 million in Florida to help elect Democrat Joe Biden, a massive late-stage infusion of cash that could reshape the presidential contest in a costly toss-up state central to President Trump’s reelection hopes.
Bloomberg made the decision to focus his final election spending on Florida last week, after news reports that Trump had considered spending as much as $100 million of his own money in the final weeks of the campaign, Bloomberg’s advisers said. Presented with several options on how to make good on an earlier promise to help elect Biden, Bloomberg decided that a narrow focus on Florida was the best use of his money.
The president’s campaign has long treated the state, which Trump now calls home, as a top priority, and his advisers remain confident in his chances given strong turnout in 2016 and 2018 that gave Republicans narrow winning margins in statewide contests.
“Voting starts on Sept. 24 in Florida so the need to inject real capital in that state quickly is an urgent need,” said Bloomberg adviser Kevin Sheekey. “Mike believes that by investing in Florida it will allow campaign resources and other Democratic resources to be used in other states, in particular the state of Pennsylvania.”
Further down: “The spending will focus mostly on television and digital ads, in both English and Spanish.”
I question whether you can even spend $100 million in Florida between now and election day. There’s only X amount of TV ad time available between now and the election, and much of it is already paid for. Also, Bloomberg’s spending on his own Presidential campaign was hardly an unqualified success, unless the real goal was to stop Bernie and boost Biden all along. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
The portrait of Joe Biden that emerges from What It Takes (1992), Richard Ben Cramer’s thousand-page New Journalism–style report on the 1988 presidential race, in which Biden ran for a few steps until he stumbled over his own shoelaces, is a familiar one. Biden is the grinning, overconfident oaf, a strutting salesman who keeps selling himself loads of bull manure even as everyone around him becomes alarmed by his obliviousness to facts. Or to cite another figure for comparison: He’s the lord of Swamp Castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp. But I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp . . .” The story of Joe Biden is where staggering incompetence meets irrepressible self-confidence. The more he fails, the more convinced he becomes that he’s right.
Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Biden, managerial visionary. We turn to page 248 of Cramer’s tombstone-sized book. A couple of years into his Senate career, Biden has a dream of living grandly by buying on the cheap a former du Pont manse, together with a huge chunk of land, for $200,000. The house was boarded up and soon, probably, to be torn down. But Biden saw something in it. Sure, it needed some fixing up. Never fear, Joe is here! Joe is a can-do fellow. The first winter he and Jill spent in the house, it used up 3,000 gallons of fuel oil. It turned out the third floor was wide open, to the stars. Squirrels were living up there. Oops. The judgment on display here is not great.
Next year, Biden starting selling off bits of the land for development to pay for improvements such as storm windows. Small problem here: One of the lots he sold off was his own driveway, and the new owner blocked it off so he couldn’t pass through it. So Joe built a second driveway, which turned into a swamp in winter. He sold off another piece of property that, it turned out, included the front of that second driveway, so he couldn’t use that one anymore either. So I built a third. He hated that one for being a dumpy little thing. Eight years went by, and he made a deal to buy back the original driveway, the one he sold off when he first bought the house. Which cost him a fortune in landscaping to reshape.
Meanwhile Biden was struggling with the upkeep of the grounds; he’d let the grass get three feet high, then attack it with a riding mower. Mysteriously, year after year, the mowers kept breaking down. He’d go buy a new one, and wreck that one too. “These damn things aren’t built right,” he’d mutter. The mower was always the problem, you see. And the next one. And the next one.
To pare down costs, Biden figured he’d rearrange the floor plan a bit. At one point he decided to have the entire third story removed; at another he figured he’d have the ballroom and a bunch of other rooms, plus the carved staircase, taken apart and reassembled on a smaller footprint. It turned out this idea was kind of expensive, so he didn’t follow through. Then he got to work on the trees. Privacy was what Joe wanted, a screen of hemlocks and rhododendron bushes to form a green wall around the property. Joe even drove a 40-foot flatbed full of trees an hour and a half from Wilmington, dug himself a 45-foot trench three feet deep. He was out there in hiking boots and shorts doing the work himself. Then he started in with the yews. Glorious. He ringed the swimming pool with them. Finally, he had his privacy!
So how’d all this end? “Two years, of course, they’re all dead.”
In 2016, then-candidate Trump won 28 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to exit polls. Now, recent surveys by Pew and Emerson College show the president nationally at 35 percent and 37 percent, respectively, among Hispanics. Either one would be the highest Hispanic vote total for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.
A similar pattern has emerged in states with large Hispanic populations. In Florida, a survey by Democratic polling firm Equis Research found Biden running 11 points behind Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic vote margin over Trump in a state that she lost. According to a new NBC/Marist poll released this week, among Latino voters, Trump is leading in the Sunshine State with 50 percent compared to Biden’s 46.
A recent Rice University and Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation poll found Biden trailing Clinton’s Hispanic vote margin over Trump by a whopping 18 points. Meanwhile, a new Bendixen & Amandi poll found Trump crushing Biden by 38 points among Cuban Americans, which had been previously trending Democratic.
GOP presidential candidates have averaged 31 percent of the Hispanic vote since 1980, placing Trump’s current public polling levels right above the historical mean. The president’s performance is even more noteworthy in the context of Democrats and Spanish-language media routinely using immigration policy as a cudgel against conservatives.
Once again, Sleepy Joe told the press they could go home at 9 A.M. Meanwhile, your Favorite President, me, will go to Reno, Nevada tonight, three stops in Las Vegas tomorrow, with California and Arizona on schedule Monday. Don’t worry, we won’t be taking off Tuesday, either!
Only 16 days to the first presidential debate, and Dementia Joe Biden is resting up this weekend after a hard week of hitting the road, Jack.
Only one problem for Joe: Whenever he ventures outside his basement, he often loses stuff — his mind, his train of thought or at least his notes.
All dialogue guaranteed verbatim:
“I carry with me — I don’t have it. I gave it, I gave it to my staff. I carry it with me in my pocket a — do I have that around anyone? Where’s my staff? I gave it away anyway …”
He must have found something, because soon he began reading — or trying to read — some statistics. Numbers are not Dementia Joe’s forte, to put it mildly.
This day, he kept repeating the word “military.” But the actual virus numbers were for Michigan, the state he was in, in addition to his perpetual state of confusion.
Perhaps his handlers wrote “MI,” assuming that even someone as simple as Joe Biden could put two and two together. If so, they were misinformed.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Black voters are not excited about Slow Joe. “Do you remember how viral Obama was as a candidate in 2008, particularly among black voters? He was treated like a celebrity everywhere he went, every video of him had hundreds of thousands of views, if not millions. The excitement was electric. There is none of that for Biden.”
For months now, people have been wondering whether all of Biden’s appearances, including the easy ones, are scripted. Now we know the truth.
For the Biden campaign, the Wuhan virus has been a benefit. It’s allowed Biden to conduct his interviews from the safety of his own home. Because there are no public appearances, his campaign can keep secret whether Biden relies on a teleprompter for even friendly, casual interviews. Videos of Biden’s slip-ups suggested that he was using a teleprompter, but the campaign wasn’t talking. Now, though, a sharp-eyed viewer looking at footage of Biden talking to James Corden believes he’s exposed Biden’s secret: Even for friendly, inconsequential interviews, Biden and his interlocutors have a script.
Check out the teleprompter in the reflection. Biden blatantly read from a script for most of the interview with James Corden.
I bet his handlers weren’t too happy with him going off script. He probably got reprimanded. pic.twitter.com/BPK2FGB8cz
Yes, this "Interview" was scripted. Note different colors for teleprompter text. They are two sides to the "conversation". I've worked with TV teleprompters before. This is what they are.
Hey folks, it’s me, your friendly neighborhood antifa ringleader. You may recognize me from such news clips as ‘Small group of troublemakers seen smashing windows’ and ‘ANTIFA dude on fire in Portland’. That’s me in the black hoodie.
I’m enjoying a bit of downtime ahead of another largely peaceful weekend (weather permitting!). Right now I’m changing flights — who knew there were flight changes in business class? — but I figured I’d take a break from my busy schedule of scheming to give you all an important message: vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on November 3.
I know what you’re thinking: isn’t antifa a series of anarchist groups with little to do with center-left mainstream politics? What does a radical collective like that want with a career politician like Joe Biden? And doesn’t Kamala Harris love cracking down on crime?
Questions like those are missing the point. As you know, young people are big policy wonks. And really that’s what all the summer of unrest has been about: policy, particularly those agreed on by Joe, Kamala and the DNC.
When I spark up my joint on the way down to the organized mayhem, I’m dreaming of a day when it’s decriminalized but not fully legalized. When I light a Molotov cocktail and fling it through the window of an AutoZone, that’s my way of saying ‘I want a slightly expanded version of the insubstantial existing Medicare coverage.’ And when I roll my commemorative edition of the 1619 Project up into an improvised club with which to strike a passing policeman, it’s a cheeky gesture that tells the officer: ‘hello old friend — like my chosen candidate Joe Biden, I want to add $300 million to your budget.’ I always make a point to wink knowingly before screaming ‘ACAB’ in their faces — just so they’re in on the bit.
Joe admitted that President Trump’s USMCA trade pact is better than NAFTA. Plus Ann Althouse thinks he’s still sharp in at least one area: “He can evade. He’s very evasive. You’ve got to give him that. He’s old and often seems confused, but when cornered, he’s quick to evade.”
“Biden Says We Need a President Who Tells the Truth? Then Here Are 8 Big Whoppers That Disqualify Him.” The Fine People Hoax doesn’t make the list, but the plagiarism and college lies do.
Dispatches from Planet Cognitive Dissonance: “Joe Biden: Trump ‘Accidentally’ Making Peace Between Israel and Arab States.” It must have been by accident, because tazpayers aren;t paying billions of dollars for Democrats to rake off in graft for the plan to fail…
“And now we’ll just pass the microphone back to Kamala to answers some questions from the pres-” Staffer: “Nowe’regoodseeya!”
DLA Piper, a multinational law firm, boasts nearly 30 years of experience in China and over 140 lawyers dedicated to its “China Investment Services” branch.
Harris’s links to the company are found with her husband, Douglas Emhoff, who has served as a Partner in the firm’s Intellectual Property and Technology practice and its Media, Sport, and Entertainment sector since 2017.
DLA Piper boasts of having “long-established and embedded “China Desks” in both the U.S. and Europe” to assist their China-focused consulting, prompting questions about the firm’s potential proximity to the White House could be leveraged by DLA Piper, exploited by the Chinese Communist Party, or represent a financial conflict of interest for the Vice Presidential candidate.
To facilitate DLA Piper’s China practice – which has received countless prestigious awards from the China Business Law Journal and China Law and Practice – the company employs a host of former Chinese Communist Party officials.
Ernest Yang, who serves as the firm’s Head of Litigation & Regulatory department and Co-Head of International Arbitration, was appointed to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in 2013. The CPPCC serves as the top advisory board for the Chinese Communist Party, and Yang was promoted to the body’s Standing Committee in 2019.
Jessica Zhao, a Senior Advisor, served as the Deputy Secretary General of the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC), a government-owned body established by the Chinese Communist Party in 1956. It was developed under the auspices of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, “a governmental body for the furtherance of Chinese trade promotion.”
Other high-level employees, such as Gloria Liu who serves as Partner, have “represented lead investors” in deals with Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, a controversial app is set to be banned by President Trump for its compromising links to the Chinese Communist Party.
A look at the competing spending by state for the two campaigns reveals some curious choices by Team Biden:
I’d like to look at the source these were pulled from. But the big money Team Trump is spending in Minnesota is a smart play. I know the Trump campaign is spending at least money in Texas, as I’ve seen billboards. And I would think Colorado isn’t yet so deep blue it isn’t worth fighting for.
“Inside Joe’s bubble: How Biden’s campaign is trying to avoid the virus. The former vice president’s team goes to extraordinary lengths to keep him safe.” I assume this is a campaign-planted story and that the “extraordinary lengths” will eventually include not allowing him to debate. “Sure, Joe really wants to debate,” they’ll say, “but the extraordinary lengths we’re going to to protect his health just won’t permit it,” and everyone will nod their head and pretend like it’s not a cowardly cop-out.
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Peace has unexpectedly broken out in the Middle East, the science behind Beirut’s big boom, and more Democrats destroying their own cities.
It’s supposed to hit 105°F in Austin today. Stay frosty…
If Obama had done this, it would be front page news on every paper in America proclaiming what a “historic” peacemaker Obama was. Since no Democrat can take the credit, newspapers that hate Trump and Israel have been downplaying the news as much as possible.
Since people are always talking about “October Surprises,” here’s a possibility: Saudi Arabia and Israel signing their own peace treaty and full diplomatic recognition. Israel and the Saudis have been secretly cooperating against the Iran-Syria axis for quite some time. And now there are public signs of a thaw, including positive depictions of Jews in a new TV drama shown on Saudi TV.
New York’s richest people have fled during the lockdowns. If their kids’ tony public schools don’t offer personal instruction or look likely to maintain the chaos of rolling lockdown brownouts, those wealthy people have better choices. They can stay in their vacation houses or newly bought mansions in states that aren’t locked down. They can hire pod teachers or private schools.
And the longer they stay outside New York City and start to make friends and get used to a new place, the less likely they are to ever return. Cuomo is well aware of this.
“I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house, or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, ‘You got to come back! We’ll go to dinner! I’ll buy you a drink! Come over, I’ll cook!’” Cuomo revealed in a recent news conference. “They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? ‘If I stay there, I’ll pay a lower income tax,’ because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge.”
Reopening means swimming against their anti-Trump base and teachers union donors’ full-court press to amp school funding and slash teacher duties. That means the below-surface financial and political pressure Cuomo, Pelosi, and Schumer are under to make this kind of a reversal must be huge. It’s likely coming from not only internal polling but also early information about just how many people have left New York and New York City, as well as interpersonal intelligence from their influential social circles.
This means three things. First, the pressure to reopen schools is on everywhere now that New York is doing it. Second, Democrats’ hard opposition to school reopenings has been politically devastating. Third, all the push polls and media scaremongering promoting the idea that most parents shouldn’t and wouldn’t send their kids back to school have failed.
However, the people packing their bags are not coming to New York City — they’re fleeing it for good.
Due to increasingly squalid conditions on the Upper West Side, including two new homeless shelters packed with junkies and registered sex offenders, longtime dwellers are departing the Big Apple with no plans to ever return.
One of the Escape from New Yorkers is Elizabeth Carr, one of the area’s most vocal leaders in combating mounting crime in the well-heeled ‘hood. She was an administrator of the Facebook group NYC Moms for Safer Streets, and the face of a public-safety movement that has attracted thousands to demand better policing and city services.
“In the best of times, NYC is a hard place to live,” said Carr. “Now you have all this other stuff. It’s a question for families … to have to see a guy masturbating on the corner or explain to my kids while I’m buying diapers at Duane Reade why this guy wearing no shoes is collapsed on the floor and they’re doing CPR on him.”
She said she started planning to move before the COVID crisis and recent neighborhood developments, but officially put down stakes Sunday in North Carolina with her finance husband and three kids under 7.
“We reached our New York expiration date,” the former nonprofit exec, who’d lived on the UWS since 2007, told The Post from her new home 600 miles away. “Things weren’t heading in the right direction. What we’re seeing now isn’t at all surprising.”
Crimes committed over the past several days would’ve been unheard of a year ago in the quiet neighborhood that’s home to Lincoln Center and restaurants by Daniel Boulud. A 40-year-old woman was randomly stabbed in the 72nd Street subway station at noon Thursday; a 56-year-old man was sucker-punched while dining outdoors with his wife Wednesday night; photos were posted online of a man masturbating on the steps of the New York Historical Society; and onlookers witnessed an apparent overdose in the aisle of a Duane Reade across the street from the Lucerne Hotel.
The Lucerne, at 79th Street and Amsterdam, and the Hotel Belleclaire, at 76th Street and Broadway, were recently converted into homeless shelters, with nearly 300 vagrants between them. Ten of the men are registered sex offenders, including convicted rapists, child molesters and child-porn possessors — all living a block away from a school playground.
“Minneapolis Forcing Riot-Wrecked Businesses To Pay Property Taxes Before Getting Permits To Rebuild.” Pay property taxes for what, since they voted to disband the police. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) (Update: Fortunately, somebody handed the City of Minneapolis a clue-by-four.)
Florida Democrats have a problem: there were supposed to be more of them by now.
Following narrow losses in 2018 races for Florida governor and U.S. Senate, Democrats emerged from the midterms with a new resolve to register more voters in the nation’s largest swing state as a path to victory in 2020. Former gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, fresh off a stinging 34,000-vote loss, vowed to “flip Florida blue” by registering or “re-engaging” 1 million voters, including 200,000 new Democrats added by the Florida Democratic Party.
But those initiatives fell well short of their goals. And with seven weeks until mail ballots go out in the Nov. 3 election between presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, Florida Republicans are closer to parity in voter registration than they’ve been in decades — a dynamic that may portend yet another hard-fought, narrowly decided presidential election.
“We won the voter registration war,” Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters said last week.
Voter registration — the grunt work of politics — sets the foundation for campaign season. For Florida Democrats, who historically have had a harder time turning out their voters than Republicans, it’s even more crucial.
When former President Barack Obama first won Florida in 2008, he entered the final months of the campaign with an advantage of more than 500,000 registered Democratic voters. That lead has steadily dwindled, dropping to about 259,000 in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Florida by 112,000 votes.
New data posted online Wednesday by the Florida Division of Elections showed that, as of July 20, when books closed on eligible voters for the upcoming Aug. 18 primary, Democrats led Republicans in the state by 240,423 people — about 5,000 fewer than at the same point in 2018.
The videos also show an unnervingly uniform hemisphere of white propagating outward from the blast site, a dome of vicious vapor that eventually hurtles toward every person filming and announces its arrival in the audio with a crash. This hemisphere is the pressure wave produced by the explosion.
No, it’s not a shock wave. It’s a pressure wave, and that key difference affects the number of casualties expected. A shock wave goes from zero pressure to its absolute maximum pressure in literally zero seconds. The impact of a pressure wave is like hitting the ground after rolling down a steep cliff; the force of a shock wave is like hitting the ground after falling through the air and reaching terminal velocity. High explosives produce shock waves; low explosives, like ammonium nitrate, produce pressure waves, which have a bit of slope to their shape, a period of time over which the pressure increases more gradually.
Shocks, because of their fascinating and complex physics, travel faster than the speed of sound, and they cause far more damage than pressure waves. Thankfully, we know this blast did not produce a shock because the speed of the water-vapor-filled white dome can be measured.
The speed of sound in air is 343 meters per second. Based on the viewing angle and distinctive red chairs pictured in some of the later frames, I traced one of the Beirut videos posted by The Guardian to its filming location on the rooftop terrace of La Mezcaleria Rooftop Bar, and measured it to be 885 meters from the center of the blast. From that vantage, the pressure wave can be seen neatly traveling from the center of the blast first to the point halfway between the end of the pier and the edge of the long, massive gray grain silo building, a distance of 151 meters, then to the end of the pier, 262 meters, then eventually to La Mezcaleria.
By measuring the times at which the pressure wave reaches these landmarks on the video, we know that, as it blazed down the pier, its rampage occurred at a speed of only 312 meters per second. That’s slow for a bomb. Then by the time the audible crash and mayhem reached the formerly peaceful and picturesque outdoor bar, it had slowed to at most 289 meters per second. The pressure wave, slower than the 343 meters per second speed of sound, caused destruction, horror, confusion, shattered glass, torn-apart flat surfaces, and disorientation for onlookers as their ears were subjected to the rapid pressure fluctuations. But a shock wave could have caused them to drop dead from lung trauma as they watched.
Snip.
Thanks to modern technology that charge size can be calculated scientifically too, even while waiting for more complete information to trickle out, using the size of the telltale crater. Analysis of the aerial photographs of the pier shows a crater in the range of 120 to 140 meters in diameter; blast physics mixed with history tell us that to carve a chunk that size from the side of the planet requires a charge equivalent to 1.7 to 5.4 million kilograms of TNT (that’s 3.8 to 11.8 million pounds for any Americans dragging their feet on converting to metric). For reference, the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 used the equivalent of 1.8 thousand kilograms of TNT. So, Beirut was at minimum a thousand times more boom than Oklahoma City.
DC comics decided it wanted to get woke, so it’s no surprise that Warner Media decided they needed massive layoffs.
It’s a “bloodbath” at the WarnerMedia-owned DC Comics, with the Editor in Chief, the Publisher, and one third of the editorial staff sacked.
Included in the sackings is — this is a rumor as of yet, not confirmed — leftwing SJW ideologue Andy Khouri, one of the absolute cancers killing the industry, who brought in GamerGate skel Zoe Quinn to “write” “comics” for DC, despite her having no comic book experience and no writing experience (outside Depression Quest and a failed kickstarter). Khouri filled DC’s Vertigo imprint with angry yet untalented SJW freaks; Vertigo was cancelled within a year.
DC had already laid off people last year, and now has to cut even more. Co-publisher Dan DiDio was fired last year, leaving the other co-publisher, Jim Lee, supposedly in charge; now Jim Lee has been pushed out of that position, though he’ll probably be kept in some other role. (He’s a major comic book artist.)
Why did this happen to DC Comics?
Let’s ask Wonder Woman and see if she can tell us.
Oh yeah, everyone involved in this deserved to lose their job:
America:
As a creative Director, this is one of the best ads I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen and worked on a lot across different industries.@realDonaldTrumppic.twitter.com/KcTje7ESIO
Driving back from a barbecue road trip Saturday, I saw a Trump 2020 billboard, which was simplicity itself:
TRUMP: JOBS
BIDEN: MOBS
This is pretty interesting:
Justice Kavanaugh issued a tactical nuke on George Soros & Globalism.
SCOTUS has ruled Organizations affiliated to the “Open Society” lose the protection of 1A and can be treated as international threats as this impacts supporters in the US and abroad.
— The Red-Headed Libertarian™ (@TRHLofficial) August 13, 2020
Google puts its thumb on the scale yet again:
I assumed this was a joke, but it’s real: if you Google “socialism and racism,” the top result you’re offered will be “capitalism and racism.” Big Tech gets more openly ideological by the day. And weird that one of the world’s most profitable companies hates capitalism so much. pic.twitter.com/vhSqflY74g
“I know just the thing to make him complete: Some bacon! I don’t know if it’s cooked, I don’t want to know if it’s cooked. All I need to know is that I get to give him some creepy bacon fingers!
Wants no part of the goat rodeo:
Good morning, Twitter. When you're just trying to get your drunk friend Steve home again and he wants no part of it. pic.twitter.com/5nQv467UnL
