Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! On a personal note, I was just laid off from my Senior Technical Writer job, so if you have any leads in the department (for either Austin or remote work), drop me a line in the comments.
State-sponsored hackers believed to be from Russia have breached the city network of Austin, Texas, The Intercept has learned. The breach, which appears to date from at least mid-October, adds to the stunning array of intrusions attributed to Russia over the past few months.
The list of reported victims includes the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, State, and the Treasury; the Pentagon; cybersecurity firm FireEye; IT software company SolarWinds; and assorted airports and local government networks across the United States, among others. The breach in Austin is another apparent victory for Russia’s hackers. By compromising the network of America’s 11th-most populous city, they could theoretically access sensitive information on policing, city governance, and elections, and, with additional effort, burrow inside water, energy, and airport networks. The hacking outfit believed to be behind the Austin breach, Berserk Bear, also appears to have used Austin’s network as infrastructure to stage additional attacks.
While the attacks on SolarWinds, FireEye, and U.S. government agencies have been linked to a second Russian group — APT29, also known as Cozy Bear — the Austin breach represents another battlefront in a high-stakes cyber standoff between the United States and Russia. Both Berserk Bear and Cozy Bear are known for quietly lurking in networks, often for months, while they spy on their targets. Berserk Bear — which is also known as Energetic Bear, Dragonfly, TEMP.Isotope, Crouching Yeti, and BROMINE, among other names — is believed to be responsible for a series of breaches of critical U.S. infrastructure over the past year.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) called for new leadership to replace House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), in an interview with The Intercept aired on Wednesday.
The remarks represent Ocasio-Cortez’s most direct challenge to current Democratic congressional leadership, and come a month after Michigan representative Elissa Slotkin vowed not to support Pelosi for another term as House Speaker. Pelosi is the only candidate for the position, but with Democrats projected to win at most 226 House seats, Pelosi can only lose eight Democratic votes to remain Speaker.
I wonder: If enough of the hard left defects to keep Pelosi from one more term as speaker, might there be enough Democrats to vote for a moderate Republican as Speaker rather than being ruled by The Squad?
Another Obama-era crony green energy boondoggle goes bust:
Move over, Solyndra. Another green boondoggle from the Obama era has failed, and taxpayers are out as much as $510 million. Late last week Judge Karen Owens approved a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization by Tonopah Solar Energy. Tonopah operated the Crescent Dunes solar plant in Nevada that received $737 million in guaranteed loans from the Obama Administration.
The plan includes a settlement with the Department of Energy that leaves taxpayers liable for as much as $234.68 million in outstanding debt, but the total public cost is even higher. Crescent Dunes also received an investment-tax credit, and the 2009 stimulus legislation allowed it to receive a cash payment in lieu of credit. In 2017 the plant received more than $275.6 million from Treasury under the Section 1603 program, which it used to service its outstanding liabilities. So taxpayers already gave Crescent Dunes cash to pay off its taxpayer-backed loans.
Snip.
DOE expected Crescent Dunes to produce up to 482,000 megawatt hours every year, but the plant hasn’t produced that much energy in its lifetime. In 2019 Crescent Dunes’s hot salt tanks suffered what partial owner SolarReserve described as “a catastrophic failure” that has left the plant inoperable.
Since molten salt is one of the key elements in many next generation nuclear plant designs, I searched online for pictures of what a catastrophic hot salt tank failure looks like, but I couldn’t find any.
Last week, Portland law enforcers raided a house that had for months been illegally occupied by trespassers affiliated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa. At the barricaded property, officers made arrests and found a stockpile of firearms.
Under normal circumstances, the armed trespassers would be prosecuted, and that would be the end of the story. But in riot-plagued Portland, Oregon, things are very far from normal.
The city’s “progressive” district attorney immediately dropped the charges against the occupiers, and their comrades soon sent in reinforcements to build a sprawling autonomous zone in the middle of a densely populated residential area.
The militants called the place the Red House Autonomous Zone — named after the red-painted house occupied at the heart of the zone. In doing so, they took inspiration from the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, Washington. During the summer, leftist extremists chased police out of a six-block area of the Emerald City and drew their own “borders,” complete with checkpoints manned by armed “security.” The three-week experiment in lawlessness ended in mass vandalism, attempted rape, multiple shootings and two homicides.
Portland’s RHAZ is following in the same footsteps.
The house at the center of the autonomous zone was occupied by members of the Kinney family and their allies. The Kinneys, who haven’t paid their mortgage since 2017, were evicted after a tortuous legal process. The fact that they own a second house nearby didn’t prevent the mixed-race Kinneys and their allies from claiming victimization by — you guessed it — “racism.”
Soon after last week’s raid on the occupied house, some 100 Antifa comrades mobilized through social media to retake the space. “There is an active call for numbers, defensive gear and supplies and change of clothes,” tweeted Antifa group Youth Liberation Front.
Within a few hours, the entire street was blocked off with stolen fencing, wood and junk taken from nearby homes. Some brought in power tools to reinforce the barriers. The militants laid out piles of rocks, metal spikes and glass bottles at strategic points to act as supply points for projectile weapons. They lined the road with impromptu “booby traps” — upward-facing nail strips, caltrops and more.
Portland police officers tried to shut down the RHAZ early on, but they were attacked and chased away. Their police cruisers were smashed up; they didn’t return.
“Those present at the barricades should leave it behind, put down your weapons and allow the neighborhood to return to peace and order,” Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell asked the militants, who ignored his polite request.
Portland residents should file federal civil rights lawsuits against Portland officials for equal protection violations. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
A serial sex offender and Black Lives Matter activist recently released from prison served a titular leadership role at the Antifa autonomous zone in north Portland.
Micah Isaiah Rhodes, 27, was convicted of three counts of second-degree sexual abuse of minors in 2018. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after violating probation by being near children during an Antifa occupation of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
“Former [Andrew] Cuomo Aide Lindsey Boylan Alleges Governor Sexually Harassed Her For Years.” Hey, what do you want to bet that #BelieveAllWomen magically doesn’t apply to powerful Democrat yet again? For Reasons.
Rhode Island’s Democratic governor Gina Raimondo: “Don’t go out and wear a mask.” Four days later: Goes to a wine bar, doesn’t wear a mask. Laws are for the peasants, not the Democratic Party ruling class. (Hat tip: Andrew Malcolm.)
Realize I’m becoming a Paglia stan acct, but in a minute and a half she nails exactly what’s gone wrong w leftism, academia, and the frauds who’ve usurped both. Worth a watch. pic.twitter.com/PkYtNrqkvu
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Democrats dance to China’s tune, the media suddenly discover that Hunter Biden is covered in a thick coat of industrial-grade sleaze, California continues to destroy its economy, and Elon Musk moves to Texas.
The most shocking thing about the recent news story that flatulent Russiagate hoaxer and American-nuking enthusiast Rep. Eric Swalwell was caught intertwined with a Chinese honey pot is…well, actually nothing about it is shocking. This is totally on-brand for the Dems and especially this particular clown. It’s not clear how far he got with this Democrat-diddling doxie, but the best case for Swalwell is that he was a fool who couldn’t see how unlikely it was for a DC 8 (and real world 5) to want anything to do with him other than as a mark. The worst case is that he eagerly betrayed his country for a roll in the rice with this Beijing bimbo.
Either way, he’s a disgrace.
But this singularly unaccomplished punch-line, this aspiring Beto without the hype or substance (Swalwell’s status as a furry is unknown, but I have my suspicions), is all too representative of his garbage party. The fact is that Red China is delighted by the opportunity to get back to business as usual with a Democrat administration – and in the case of a potential President Biden*, that’s literally business as usual. The garbage media didn’t think his crack-huffing, loser spawn being owned by Chinese intel –you think they don’t have tape of him living out his X-rated video of David Bowie’s 80s hit?– was significant enough to tell us about. But then, like the rest of the establishment, the media’s corporate owners are all wrapped up with the Chi-Coms. When’s the last time you saw Hollywood take a stand against the Chinese commies? That would be about the last time you saw Richard Gere on the big screen, since his career died when he did a movie pointing out their oppression of Tibet. Go look on Netflix or wherever – there’s plenty of stupid woke trash about how America sucks, but nobody talks about the big Red Panda in the room. The corporations know who their real boss is.
And, as Tucker pointed out in a great monologue, the Establishment is all-in on catering to the commies. It is bought and paid for, owned and happy, and dedicated to selling you out. And a President Biden*, in the event he is inaugurated, will happily continue the fire sale of American physical, intellectual, and moral assets to the reds.
“If Voters Had Known About 8 Stories Media Ignored, Trump Would Have Won.” Well, that’s why they ignored them…
Speaking of which, our media elites have suddenly discovered that the Hunter Biden corruption story was true. Of course they knew it was true all along, they just suppressed it until they could drag Joe Biden’s ambulatory corpse over the finish line. (And if you somehow missed the Hunter Biden story, here’s the archive.)
Lockdowns, shutdowns, mask mandates, curfews, and other governmental interventions are 1) evidence-free and 2) do not work, folks. https://t.co/G6tsROUH20
2/ Connecticut is the home of Yale and many intellectuals, so surely they followed the science.
Except now they have the highest per capita case count in the country. What about all those masks, lockdowns, and the all mighty #science? pic.twitter.com/BhrknAFShY
6/ Ok ok, but it would be so much worse if they didn't follow the #science, right?
Let's look at Florida, which effectively ended COVID restrictions on Sept 25th. Those crazies with their open schools, open business, and people who get to live their lives. Barbarians! pic.twitter.com/AhlB0bfHrC
8/ Governments call them lockdowns or whatever they want. But restricting freedom of movement, of worship, of a basic livelihood, all while using fear, fines, and intimidation to prevent families from seeing each other… that's not science.
Judge rules Los Angeles County acted arbitrarily with an outdoor dining ban. “By failing to weigh the benefits of an outdoor dining restriction against its costs, the county acted arbitrarily and its decision lacks a rational relationship to a legitimate end,” Superior Court Judge James Chalfant wrote in a tentative ruling.”
When Chirag Bhakta saw a headline recently that said tech workers were fleeing San Francisco, he had a quick reaction: “Good riddance.”
Bhakta, a San Francisco native and tenant organizer for affordable housing nonprofit Mission Housing, is well-versed in the seismic impact that the growth of the tech industry has had on the city. As software companies expanded over the past decade, they drew thousands of well-off newcomers who bid up rents and remade the city’s economy and culture.
He said the sudden departure of many tech workers and executives — often to less expensive, rural areas where they can telecommute during the coronavirus pandemic — reveals that their relationship with San Francisco was “transactional” all along.
“They used their capital to radically shift the makeup of poor, working-class communities,” Bhakta said. “We’re left with ‘for sale’ signs and price points that are still out of reach for most people.”
Many urban centers have seen residents move out in large numbers since the start of stay-at-home orders in March, but the shift has been especially dramatic for San Francisco, a city that was already experiencing rapid change because of the tech industry.
Software engineers, CEOs and venture capitalists have chosen to jump from the Bay Area to places such as Denver, Miami and Austin, Texas, citing housing costs, California’s relatively high income tax and the Bay Area’s general resistance to rapid growth and change.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has moved to Texas. “‘It’s worth noting that Tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in California,’ Musk said. ‘There used to be over a dozen car plants in California, and California used to be the center of aerospace manufacturing. My companies are the last two left.'”
“Immediately After Moving To Texas, Elon Musk Announces Tesla AR-15.
The new firearm will look similar to a standard AR-15 but will in fact be a battery-powered railgun capable of firing 3 million rounds per minute. It will also feature a fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth capability, heat-seeking ammunition, and a chainsaw bayonet, to name a few.
At 3 million rounds a minute, trips to the shooting range would get very expensive…
Virtually unheard of a decade ago, these Chinese players are moving vast sums quickly and quietly, authorities said. Their expertise: routing cartel drug profits from the United States to China then on to Mexico with a few clicks of a burner phone and Chinese banking apps – and without the bulky cash ever crossing borders. The launderers pay small Chinese-owned businesses in the United States and Mexico to help them move the funds. Most contact with the banking system happens in China, a veritable black hole for U.S. and Mexican authorities.
Billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson tries yet again to get Texas to legalize casino gambling. “Adelson’s noteworthy lobbyist crew includes current and former high-ranking government officials, including former chiefs of staff to disgraced Speakers of the Texas House Joe Straus and Dennis Bonnen.” Of course.
OhNoNotThisShitAgain.jpg:
BLM, antifa & other far-left extremists have established a new autonomous zone in north Portland after violently repelling law enforcement. They're trying to protect a squat that was earlier raided by police. Firearms were found on site. Read my report: https://t.co/FTavdjeaCB
Frederick Forsyth says that the reason the Brexit deal was scuttled at the last minute is that the EU was doing France’s bidding.
After years covering France in Paris for the Reuters agency, and bilingual in French, I have a pretty good idea how the French system works. Basically, whoever appears to rule on the basis of elections, it is the graduates of the ENA who are really in charge. So what is it, this ultra-college?
Founded under De Gaulle, it is a college designed to produce the true ruling class of the country, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration or ENA and its graduates are the ENArques. More than all our public schools and Oxbridge put together, the ENA is accessible only by the brightest and the best to start with.
After three years there the graduates are the elite of the elite. They move seamlessly from industry to commerce to banking to civil service to politics, and always in the top slots. They do not oppose each other. President Macron and Michel Barnier are both ENArques.
As in all politics, election-winning is the key and in elections there are powerful voting blocs which must not be affronted. In France the biggest is the agricultural vote. Hence the EU’s incredibly expensive and burdensome Common Agricultural Policy, a money tree paid for by others, to subsidise France’s mediaeval and uncompetitive farming sector and its attendant sub-professions. Offend them and you lose the election.
Not far behind comes the fishing industry. Emmanuel Macron is facing an election. That is why last week at the very threshold of an agreement with the UK, Michel Barnier got new orders from Paris. No, you have conceded too much to the Anglo Saxons – we want all the fish and free access to all the waters.
It is easy to blame Barnier but he had his orders. That is why a German, Dane or Dutchman would have been better as the EU team leader. Germany, Denmark and Holland fish those waters but their politicians do not lose elections because of their fishing industries and they are not run by an ENA.
In other news, Frederick Forsyth is still alive. (Hat tip: @davidjacksmith.)
Speaking of which: “Facebook’s Fact-Checker ‘Lead Stories’ is Staffed by Exclusively Democrat Party Donors, CNN Staffers, And ‘Defeat Trump’ Activists.”
What could have bought Ed Buck so many layers of protection?
West Hollywood politics has a glimmering rainbow surface, but the authentic underlying powers are real estate interests. The City Council controls the fate of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development projects, a fact reflected in their campaign contributions. “Developers don’t drop tens of thousands of dollars in West Hollywood because they like the City’s position on gay marriage, says former West Hollywood Mayor Steve Martin.
With a huge war chest supporting them, a small handful of politicians reduced the government of West Hollywood to a game of musical chairs. John Duran, John D`Amico, John Heilman, Jeffrey Prang, and Abbe Land would bounce back and forth between the Mayor’s Office and City Council for decades, winning eighteen out of the last twenty-one mayoral elections between them.
Ed Buck played a variety of supporting roles in the political machinery, buoying the chosen few.
D’Amico’s political career was launched on the back of Buck’s support, winning a seat on City Council after marching through West Hollywood with Buck promoting his “Fur Free WeHo” campaign. Buck’s donations and connections to other major donors, including billionaire Gary Michelson, brought tens of thousands of dollars to Buck’s friends on City Council through multiple entities sharing the name ANIMAL PAC.
Buck’s money also bought him a position on the Steering Committee of the Stonewall Democratic Club, the kingmaker of West Hollywood politics. Buck used his position on the Steering Committee to influence Stonewall’s secretive endorsement process, one “designed to protect incumbents and well-financed, well-connected candidates,” says a former Steering Committee member. Stonewall rank and file must have wondered why the LGBTQ group was promoting candidates for County Tax Assessor and Board of Equalization. Buck was so useful, Abbe Land would open City Council meetings by calling him to recite the pledge of allegiance.
Officially retired since his early thirties, Buck would not have had the money to sustain his prolific spending habits relating to drugs, escorts, and politics. His biggest payday was in the 1980s when he flipped his friend’s business, Gopher Courier, to profit just over a million dollars, after which he lost money investing into pay-phones and a restaurant.
After moving to West Hollywood, Buck was suspiciously cash-rich and asset poor, driving a wreck of a car and living in a rent-controlled apartment. Journalists paint Buck as a wealthy social climber, but his finances and lifestyle suggest he was a dirty political operative.
Data from California’s political contribution records is highly truncated, but campaign finance rules create patterns that highlight alliances.
One can skirt contribution limits and obscure contribution origins by breaking up large donations into smaller payments and passing them through family members and political allies, so I looked for donors that matched Buck’s donations.
He donated varying amounts to plenty of politicians and causes, but there were consistent primary beneficiaries such as Jeffrey Prang, John Duran, Scott Svonkin, Honesty PAC, and of course, his ANIMAL PACs. The highly incestuous top donors who also supported Prang, Duran, Svonkin, and Buck’s PACs were real estate interests, chief among them being Excel Property Management Services managed by CEO Arman Gabay. Arman Gabay and his company funded Jeffrey Prang’s successful 2014 Los Angeles County Assessor bid with the help of Ed Buck, Ed Buck’s future attorney Seymour Amster, ANIMAL PAC, John Duran, West Hollywood activists, and various real estate interests. The same donors also funded periphery candidates who endorsed Prang and Svonkin.
As County Assessor, Jeffrey Prang controls property taxes on $1.7 trillion worth of property, explaining why his donors are real estate interests. The Tax Assessor is a notoriously corrupt office, both in Los Angeles and across the country. Jeffrey Prang’s predecessor was arrested by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office on bribery charges after selling tax breaks. Eighteen Tax Assessors in New York City were arrested on bribery charges after real estate developer Donald Trump realized he was paying more in taxes than his competitors.
This is where Scott Svonkin’s role comes in. Funded by Ed Buck, Buck’s attorney Seymour Amster, and a small handful of real estate interests after Gemmel Moore’s death in Buck’s apartment, Honesty PAC was created solely to fund Scott Svonkin’s 2018 for Board of Equalization, an oversight position overseeing the County Tax Assessor Jeffrey Prang. The kicker: Scott Svonkin was an aide to Jeffrey Prang while he served on West Hollywood City Council.
Scott Svonkin’s 2018 bid was unsuccessful, but the setback did not deter Jeffrey Prang. Whistleblowers filed suit against Prang for giving favorable tax treatment to West Hollywood real estate interests by intentionally losing legal cases, reversing property tax decisions, and reimbursing millions of dollars in back taxes for favored companies and individuals. Worse, Arman Gabay was arrested in May 2018 for allegedly soliciting preferable tax treatment from County Officials, soliciting public funds for his development projects, trading political donations in exchange for help on West Hollywood development projects, and other crimes involving political patronage. From a January 2020 prosecutor’s motion: “in another phone call agents intercepted on or about April 22, 2017, defendant made clear why he donates to public officials — he expects things in return.” When asked to contribute to reelect “Public Official 5,” he refused “because the last time he donated, defendant did not get anything from Public Official 5. Referring to Public Official 5, defendant said “f[*]ck him.”
If Arman Gabay had helpful public officials on his payroll, he and others likely had Ed Buck on it, too, which would explain Buck’s mysterious revenue stream. Buck’s choice of Christopher Darden as his defense attorney shows he still has plenty of cash to play with and that investigators aren’t chasing down where it comes from. Prosecutors seem to know Buck’s income is off the books; they requested an order from the court to ensure “no portion of the proffered bail was feloniously obtained.” Even from jail, Buck still has cards to play, especially if his corruption touches politicians or some in the district attorney’s office.
Based on 2019 data, Austin City Government gets an F grade for crime and D- for cost of living. Murders and violent crime are worse in 2020. Homelessness is worse. They ignore mayor's hypocrisy in violating their own covid restrictions. Alter and Flannigan deserve to be fired. pic.twitter.com/wQqL2t4tuN
Austin decommissions shitty art. Of the “artworks,” two are garbage, one is already gone, one is so badly decayed it has to be torn down, and one is literally a circle of rocks. It’s fine as rock circles go, but a yard guy could probably put one together for you for less than 20 bucks.
With Joe Rogan’s show about to shift to Spotify, here’s a couple of other podcasters (Eric Weinstein and Lex Fridman) noting how Rogan’s close friends are attacked whenever he threatens to upset the desired narrative (i.e., “Biden is suffering from dementia”).
I hope we still get excerpts from Rogan shows on YouTube, even if we’re no longer getting the full shows.
(Note: I bet you were expecting another election fraud update today. With getting back to work after my Thanksgiving vacation ended, I didn’t quite have time to put one together for today, but hope to have one up tomorrow.)
Election 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
It’s another election fraud update, full of twists and turns. Some of these reports are from sources I’m not familiar with, so use your own judgment.
Let’s start off with a transcript of the Rudy Giuliani/Sidney Powell conference laying out the case that election fraud occurred:
[Rudy Giuliani:] When we began our representation of the president, we certainly were confronted with a very anomalous set of results. The president way ahead on election night, seven or 800,000 in Pennsylvania, somehow he lost Pennsylvania. We have statisticians willing to testify that that’s almost statistically impossible to have happened in the period of time that it happened. But, of course, that’s just speculation.
As we started investigating, both our investigations and the very patriotic and brave American citizens that have come forward, are extraordinary, extraordinary number of people, extraordinary number of witnesses. And what emerged very quickly is it’s not a single voter fraud in one state. This pattern repeats itself in a number of states. Almost exactly the same pattern, which to any experienced investigator, prosecutor would suggest that there was a plan from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud, specifically focused on big cities and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats, and particularly focused on big cities that have a long history of corruption. The number of voter fraud cases in Philadelphia could fill a library. Just a few weeks ago, there was a conviction for voter fraud and one two weeks before that. And I’ve often said, I guess, sarcastically, but it’s true, the only surprise I would have found in this is that Philadelphia hadn’t cheated in this election, because, for the last 60 years, they’ve cheated in just about every single election. You could say the same thing about Detroit.
Each one of these cities are cities that are controlled by Democrats, which means they can get away with anything they want to do. It means they have a certain degree of control over… certainly control the election board completely. And they control law enforcement. And unfortunately, they have some friendly judges that will issue ridiculously irrational opinions just to come out in their favor.
So, let’s start with the specifics, Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the margin of victory now for Biden, which is not a victory, it’s a fraud, is 69,140 votes. The reality is that we are now at a count of 682,770 ballots for which we have affidavits that there was no inspection of that ballot at the time that it was entered in the vote. It was a mail ballot.
Mail ballots are particularly prone to fraud. We were warned about that by Jimmy Carter, president Jimmy Carter and Secretary Baker in a report about a dozen years ago, in which they said that mail balloting is particularly susceptible of fraud, that we should very carefully consider ever doing it, and that it can be taken advantage of. Justice Souter warned us at the same thing in a comment in an election law case. And even the New York Times wrote articles about how dangerous mail voting, mail-in voting was. And this is the first time we ever did it en masse. And I think we proved that all three are prophets. It’s not only susceptible to fraud, it is easily susceptible to fraud, particularly if you have a plan or scheme, which sounds eerily similar to what Joe Biden told us a few days before the election, that he had the best voter fraud team in the world. But they were good. I don’t know that they were that good because they made significant mistakes, like all crooks do. And we caught them. One of them was pushing out Republican inspectors. Every state… almost every civilized country, even Tanzania and places that you wouldn’t think of, have rules about inspectors, particularly for mail-in ballots. And why particularly for mail-in ballots? Because they can more easily be defrauded and you can’t check on them.
People who have never done a mail-in ballot, I’m going to show you why it’s so easy. Well, you fill out an envelope like this. You put your… usually in New York, it would be your assembly district and the precinct in which you’re voting. You fill out your name and your address, and you sign it. You then use an inner envelope, and you put the ballot inside the inner envelope. You seal it all, and you send it in.
When it’s being counted, almost invariably in the United States, up until the mass cheating that went on in this election, a Republican and a Democrat inspector, as well as others, if there are other parties, is allowed to watch the unsealing of this ballot. It used to go on all over America when we conducted honest elections. Because the only time you can ever find out if it’s a fraudulent ballot, is when it is looked at. The minute you approve this, it’s thrown away, gone for eternity. The only thing left is the vote. That could have been Mickey Mouse. That could have been a dead person. That could have been not filled out properly. That could have been the same person 30 times. And all these things have happened, by the way. That could have been nothing filled out. We never know.
So, for example, the recount being done in Georgia will tell us nothing because these fraudulent ballots will just be counted again because they wouldn’t supply the signatures to match the ballots. So, it means nothing to have counted these ballots, because for example, in Pennsylvania, where we have probably our most precise evidence, 682,770 of these ballots were cast, put in, and they weren’t inspected, which renders them ballots that are null and void, cannot be counted, have to be removed from the vote. Why? For several reasons, not the least of which is, that was basically only one of two places in the state where it was done. So, in the other parts of the state, there was a legitimate inspection of the ballots. So, if you have two different standards in different parts of the state, one favoring one part of the state, the other disfavoring the other part of the state, that’s a classic violation of the equal protection clause of the United States constitution, Bush V Gore being the most recent case that teaches that.
Bit on “ballot correcting” snipped.
To give you another example, we have 17,000 provisional ballots cast in Pittsburgh. Do you know what a provisional ballot is? Provisional ballot usually happens this way, and about 15 of the 17,000 happened this way, you walk in and you say, I’m here to vote today. Oh, Mr. Giuliani, you already voted. I did? I don’t remember voting. Oh, yes. Yes. You cast an absentee ballot. No, I didn’t. Yes, you did. No, I didn’t. Yes, you did.
So, why does that happen 17,000 times in Pittsburgh? People walked in thinking… actually 15,000, to be precise. Why did it happen 15,000 times that people in Pittsburgh walked in to vote and they had already voted, according to the Democrat election machine? Did they forget? That many people with bad memories in Pittsburgh? Or is the following correct, that, as witnesses will testify, they were instructed by the Democrat bosses when they had a ballot in which there was no one registered, just assign it to somebody, just assign it to Rudy Giuliani. So, maybe Rudy Giuliani won’t show up to vote. And, if he does show up to vote, we’ll give him a provisional ballot. That is what we call circumstantial evidence of the fraud.
The direct evidence of the fraud are the people who will testify that, in fact, that’s what happened to them, as well as the 50 to 60 witnesses we have for the way they were treated and not allowed to inspect the ballots. They weren’t just not allowed to do it. They were pushed. A few cases, they were assaulted. In all cases, they were put in a corral so far away. Probably the closest they got is from here to the back of that room. We could do like a… Did you all watch My Cousin Vinny? You know the movie? It’s one of my favorite law movies because he comes from Brooklyn. And when, the nice lady who said she saw, and then he says to her, “How many fingers do I got up?” And she says a three. Well, she was too far away to see it was only two. These people were further away than My Cousin Vinny was from the witness. They couldn’t see a thing.
Now, I don’t know. You’re going to tell me that 60 people are lying? They didn’t just tell me this. They swore under penalty of perjury, which is something no Democrat has ever done. You don’t even ask Biden about this. You don’t put them under penalty of perjury. He doesn’t even get asked questions about it. He doesn’t get asked questions about all the evidence of the crimes that he committed. These people are under penalty of perjury, the names that are on our affidavit. They swear that they weren’t allowed to carry out their function as inspectors.
And it’s not just a technical thing. There’s a reason they did it. Why would you not allow people to carry out the function they’ve been allowed to do for 50 years, 60 years? Why wouldn’t you allow inspections of those ballots? Because you knew you were going to use those ballots to catch Biden up. And you had a big road ahead of you. You had to catch him up for 700,000 to 800,000 votes that he was behind. And the only way you were going to do it were with the mail-in ballots. You couldn’t have a Democrat and Republican inspector around. They don’t even have Democrats watching, because they’d be afraid that they’d be honest Democrats who would say, “You’re cheating.”
So, that takes us to Michigan where there was an honest Democrat who said they were cheating. And we’ll show you her affidavit because I know you keep reporting falsely that we have no evidence, that we have no specific acts of fraud. That’s because the coverage of this has been almost as dishonest as the scheme itself. The American people are entitled to know this. You don’t have a right to keep it from them. You don’t have a right to lie about it. And you are. I mean, you don’t report to them that a citizen of this country, a very fine woman who was willing to allow me to give you her name. I can’t give you all these affidavits. Because, if I do, these people will be harassed. They’ll be threatened. They may lose their job. They will lose their friends. We’ve lost lawyers in this case because they’ve been threatened. We’ve had lawyers that need protection. What’s going on in this country is horrible. And the censorship that you’re imposing is making it worse.
But Jesse Jacob is an adult citizen and a resident of the state of Michigan. She’s been an employee of the City of Detroit for decades. I know her age, but she can tell you her age. She was assigned to voting duties in September, and she was trained by the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan. She was basically trained to cheat. She said that I was instructed by my supervisor to adjust the mailing date of these absentee ballot packages to be dated earlier than when they were actually sent in. The supervisor made that announcement for all workers to engage in that fraudulent practice. That’s not me saying that. That’s this American citizens saying that under oath.
Snip.
Then she was instructed, “By my supervisor not to ask for a driver’s license or any photo ID when a person was trying to vote. Don’t ask for identification. Why would you not ask for identification? Because you knew that a lot of people not entitled to vote were going to come in and early vote. Because you knew that illegal immigrants were going to be allowed to vote. You knew, if you lived in Philadelphia, unless you’re [Italian 00:17:56]. That’s an Italian expression for stupid. Unless you’re stupid, you knew that a lot of people were coming over from Camden to vote. They do every year. It happens all the time in Philly. It’s about as frequent as getting beaten up at a Philadelphia Eagle football game. Happens all the time, all the time.
And as it allowed to happen because it is a Democrat corrupt city and has been for years, many, many years. And they carried it out in places they could get away with it. They didn’t carry it out in neutral places. They didn’t carry it out in Republican places. They didn’t carry it out where the law is respected. They carried it out in a corrupt city where the district attorney releases criminals on mass, which is why it has so much crime.
She also said, “I observed a large number of people who came to the satellite location to vote in person, but they had already applied for and submitted an absentee ballot.” So, she observed a lot of people voting twice. Again, this is Jesse Jacob, not me. “I was instructed not to invalidate any ballots and not to look for any deficiency in the ballots. Why would you do that? Because you’re cheating, on purpose cheating, intentionally cheating. You’re cheating as a institution. This is an instruction from the election commissioner or the employer to the worker. “Don’t look for any deficiencies in the ballot.” “I was instructed not to look at any of the signatures on the absentee ballots. “If she was instructed not to look for any of the signatures on the absentee ballots, why the heck do you sign it in the first place? In order to identify it. She was instructed not to do that because many of the absentee ballots were fraudulent, and they knew that, and they didn’t want to have account of that.
“On November four, 2020, I was in strict structured to improperly predate the absentee ballot when the receipt date was after November 3rd, 2020.” Now, this is really significant because Justice Alito of the Supreme Court instructed Pennsylvania that any ballot that comes in after eight o’clock on November 3rd, 2020 had to be put aside and not opened because there’s a question as to its legality and its constitutionality. What she’s telling you is that they blatantly disregarded that order, that they took ballots that were marked the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, and they marked it down for the third in blatant disregard of the order of the United States Supreme Court.
Snip.
There are many more affidavits here. I’d like to read them all to you, but I don’t have the time. You should have had the time and energy to go look for them. That’s your job, like it’s my job to defend the president and to represent the president. It’s your job to read these things and not falsely report that there’s no evidence. Do you know how many affidavits we have in the Michigan case? 220 affidavits. They’re not all public, but eight of them are. Four affiants here, those are people who give affidavits, report an incident that, under any other circumstances, would have been on the front page of all your newspapers if it didn’t involve the hatred that you have, irrational, pathological hatred that you have for the president. What they swear to is that, at 4:30 in the morning, a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting.
A truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting ballots. The people thought it was food, so they all ran to the truck. Wasn’t food. It was thousands and thousands of ballots and the ballots were in garbage cans, they were in paper bags, they were in cardboard boxes, and they were taken into the center. They were put on a number of tables. At that time, they thought all the Republican inspectors had left, all but two had and an employee of Dominion who we will address a little bit later.
Here’s what they jointly swear to, that every ballot that they could see, everything they could hear, these were ballots for Biden. When they saw a ballot, these were ballots only for Biden, meaning there was no down-ticket. Just Biden. Many of them didn’t have anything on the outer envelope because these ballots were produced very quickly, very swiftly and there are estimated to be a minimum of 50,000, maximum of 100,000. Many of them were triple-counted, which means they were put into the counting machine this way. Once, twice, three times. I didn’t see that. I don’t know that but for the fact that three American citizens are willing to swear to it. We’re not going to let them go to court and do that? We’re going to let this election go by when there are in this case 60 witnesses that can prove what I’m saying to you and other acts of fraud in Michigan? I mean what’s happened to this country if we’re going to let that happen? What happened to this country if we’re going to cover that up? We let Al Gore carry on an election dispute longer than this one has been going on for one state and for chads. This happened in Pennsylvania, it happened in Michigan, Michigan probably right now, if I count up the B, just one case alone, Trump v. Benson, a case that we dismissed today because that case was attempting to get the Wayne County Board of Supervisors to de-certify. Well they did. They de-certified. That case has 100 affidavits and 100 affidavits show essentially what I’ve talked to you about. Counting ballots improperly, counting them three and four times, having people vote three and four times, changing and backdating ballots to the point of at least 300,000 illegitimate ballots that we can specifically identify. The margin in Michigan is 146,121 and these ballots were all cast basically in Detroit that Biden won 80-20. So you see it changes the result of the election in Michigan if you take out Wayne County. So it’s a very significant case. That is being raised in the case of Costantino v. The City of Detroit. Not by us, but by an individual plaintiff. We are helping and assisting in that case however and you can find all the affidavits that you want filed in that case. You can find out they’re not just allegations, they’re allegations supported by sworn testimony which is a lot better than Joe Biden has ever done on anything. He doesn’t answer questions, much less give you sworn affidavits.
On to Wisconsin.
Wisconsin. Wisconsin had a very small margin, 20,544 last time I looked. In Wisconsin, without going into great detail, very similar plan. Republicans shut out in the City of Milwaukee and also in Madison. Republicans almost uniformly shut out from the absentee process. Not allowed to inspect, not allowed to look at the ballots. We have in Milwaukee and in the state of Wisconsin a much stricter law. Wisconsin doesn’t allow mail-in ballots. They didn’t buy into the big mail-in ballot situation. Wisconsin, when you look at their constitution, almost seems to not like absentee ballots. They state it’s not a right, a privilege, and they have very, very strict procedures and the strict procedure says that you can’t be given an absentee ballot, you have to personally apply for it. It’s illegal basically to solicit a vote and they have actually many reasons for it that probably goes back to their progressive days, when I say progressive, I mean late 19th century early 20th century progressive, when that really meant progressive, not retrogressive.
So there are 60,000 ballots in Milwaukee County and 40,000 ballots in Madison that as far as we can tell and this is why we are auditing because we have very good information that numbers are going to come out about here that don’t have applications. Under the law of the State of Wisconsin, already decided, if there’s no application for an absentee ballot, the absentee ballot is thrown away. This all happened in two places in Wisconsin. Didn’t happen in Northern Wisconsin. Didn’t happen in Republican Wisconsin. Didn’t happen in neutral Wisconsin, where there are equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, it happened in a place where the vote was 75, 80% for the Democrat. You take away any number of those and that 20,000 lead disappears. In other words, if you count the lawful votes, Trump won Wisconsin by a good margin. Indeed, if you count the lawful votes in Pennsylvania, he won it by about 300,000 votes.
Also in the lawsuit filed in Wisconsin which is really a petition because of their procedures, there were no inspectors provided for the count of the illegal ballots. There were numerous backdated ballots, we’re just counting them now. Run over into the thousands and there were many precincts in which there was an overvote. Now let me explain to you what an overvote is which is something you should have explained to the American people because it’s about the clearest circumstantial evidence of massive fraud that you can have. An overvote is if 200% of the people who are registered in a district vote. Think about that. 200% of the registered voters in a district vote. What does that mean? That means somebody voted twice, that means somebody who’s not entitled to vote voted, an illegal, a person from another city or state, a person who’s not registered, but what it means is that those are illegitimate votes. You don’t have an overvote of 200% or 300%. You don’t have an overvote of 100%. Most precincts don’t have 100% turnout. In fact, classically it’s considered to be an overvote if you go over 80%. Well in Michigan and Wisconsin, we have overvotes in numerous precincts, of 150%, 200%, and 300%.
One of the reasons why the two Republicans did not certify in Wayne, Michigan, Wayne County, Michigan is because the overvote was so high. Monstrously high in about two-thirds of the precincts in the city of Detroit. Which means magically two and three times the number of registered voters turned out to vote. In fact we have precincts in which two times the number of people who live there, including children, voted. That’s absurd. The frustration of this is, what I’m describing to you is a massive fraud. It isn’t a little teeny one. It isn’t 100 votes switched here or there. Georgia. We’re about to file a major lawsuit in Georgia. That’ll be filed probably tomorrow. I don’t need to go through it. Virtually the same things I’ve told you before. In the City of Atlanta, Republicans were not allowed to watch the absentee mail-in ballot process. Inspections completely cast aside and we have numerous double voters, we have numerous out-of-state voters, and we have specific evidence of intimidation and changes of vote. That will all be in the lawsuit that comes out tomorrow.
He’s also going to look at Arizona. Sidney Powell then makes some extraordinary claims:
Thank you Rudy. What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States. The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here in as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out. We have one very strong witness who has explained how it all works. His affidavit is attached to the pleadings of Lin Wood in the lawsuit he filed in Georgia. It is a stunning, detailed affidavit because he was with Hugo Chavez while … He was being briefed on how it worked, he was with Hugo Chavez when he saw it operate to make sure the election came out his way. That was the express purpose for creating this software. He has seen it operate and as soon as he saw the multiple states shut down the voting on the night of the election, he knew the same thing was happening here, that that was what had gone on.
Now the software itself was created with so many variables and so many back doors that can be hooked up to the internet or a thumbdrive stuck in it or whatever, but one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden which we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke the algorithm that had been plugged into the system and that’s what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in. That’s when they came in the backdoor with all the mail-in ballots, many of which they had actually fabricated, some were on pristine paper with identically matching perfect circle dots for Mr. Biden. Others were shoved in in batches, they’re always put in in a certain number of batches and people would rerun the same batch. This corresponds to our statistical evidence that shows incredible spikes in the vote counts at particular times and that corresponds to eyewitness testimony of numerous people who have come forward and said they saw the ballots come in the backdoor at that time.
Notably the Dominion executives are nowhere to be found now. They are moving their offices overnight to different places. Their office in Toronto was shared with one of the Soros entities, one of the leaders of the Dominion Project overall is Lord Malloch-Brown, Mr. Soros’ number two person in the U.K., and part of his organization. There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country. Just to give you a brief description of how this worked, I’m going to quote from a letter that was written and I will read that to make sure I get the quotes right. This person was objecting to the United States acquisition of Sequoia Voting Systems by Smartmatic, a foreign-owned company. I believe this transaction raises exactly the sort of foreign ownership issues that [Siphius 00:42:10] is best positioned to examine for national security purposes. It’s undisputed that Smartmatic is foreign-owned and it has acquired Sequoia, they keep changing the names as they go along. Different times when a problem comes up, they just create another corporation and call it a different name, but it was a voting machine company doing business in the United States.
Some information about foreign ownership of Smartmatic snipped. All concerning, but probably not anything that will get a judge to prevent certification, throw out fraudulent votes or order a revote.
We have evidence of different numbers of votes being injected into the system, the same identical unique six digit number multiple times in at least two States that we’ve analyzed so far. I’m talking about like 341,542 votes for Biden and 100,012 for Trump. There’s no explanation, no logical explanation for the same numbers being injected 20 minutes apart into the machine. The software manual itself, you can download it from the internet and I would encourage you all to read it, because it specifically advertises some of these things as features of the system. Why it was ever allowed into this country is beyond my comprehension and why nobody has dealt with it is absolutely appalling.
The machines were easily accessible to hackers. There’s video on the net that will explain to you how a kid with a cell phone can hack one of these voting machines. There’s been no oversight of Dominion or its software. Workers in each county were trained by Dominion, but there’s no evidence of any monitoring otherwise. We have testimony of different workers admitting that they were trained how to dispose of Trump votes and add to Biden votes. The software has a feature pursuant to which you can drag and drop any number of batches of votes to the candidate of your choice, or simply throw them away. So we have mathematical evidence in a number of states of massive quantities of Trump votes being trashed, just simply put in the trash like you would on your computer with any file and Biden votes being injected. That’s addition to the flipping.
I mean, it really happens in two ways. There’s an algorithm that runs that automatically flips all the votes, and then each operator has the ability to go in override settings. They can ignore a signature, they could ignore the top line of the ballot. They can go down ballot and select who they want to change the results for. The gentleman who founded Smartmatic, there’s video of him on the internet, explaining that, yes, in at least one occasion, he admits, they changed a million votes with no problem. Many of the jurisdictions that have had this problem might not have known of the issues, but many did. I think a full-scale criminal investigation needs to be undertaken immediately by the Department of Justice and by every state’s equivalent, Attorney General’s Office or State Investigatory Unit, because there’s evidence of different benefits being provided to the people who spent 100 million dollars of taxpayer money at the last minute for their state to get the Dominion voting systems put in, in time for this election in different ways.
There’s one person that a lawyer told me got, “election insurance”, meaning that he would be able to make sure he was elected. I’m sure they explained that feature in detail to many people who expressed interest in putting this voting system in. Texas denied certification of the Dominion system in 2019, but there are no doubt issues with the software that Texas did use, unbeknownst to Texas, I would imagine, since they went to great trouble to examine the Dominion systems and reject them, but other software, the source code that does the alterations is embedded we have been told in the source code all across the country, in all the voting machines.
(Hat tip: Regular reader Brandon Byers.)
I think what Powell means here is the compiled code, which would be a very concerning and shocking thing, if true. Those identical numerical entries (and any other obvious statistical anomalies) need to be investigate and thrown out if found to be fraudulent. But the remote control flipping of votes charge is going to require some evidence to back it up, if true. (For starters, compile the supposed source code and see if the checksum matches the checksum on the compiled code on the machine.) Absent that sort of verification, it’s understandable why even those (like myself) who thinking election fraud occurred think some of the wilder Dominion theories are a distraction from the real issues. Which explains why…
Tucker Carlson telling Powell to put up or shut up might also have had something to do with it. Powell highlight some real issues, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don’t think she’s produced that.
The media has been claiming since the election ended that President Trump’s claims of voter fraud are ‘baseless’ and ‘without evidence’. That just is not true. The President’s lawyer gave examples of it during today’s press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington DC. But everyone is too busy mocking him to pay attention.
I tried to listen to what Giuliani actually said and not what he looked like or the characterization of him by the rest of the media. The cameras started feverishly clicking the first time he wiped the sweat from his face, all but guaranteeing that would be the focus of the presser.
Giuliani did in fact present evidence of voter fraud today but many people simply didn’t want to hear it. He cited multiple Americans, one by name, who have signed sworn affidavits stating that they witness some type of fraud, whether it was pro-Trump ballots being thrown out without cause, ballots being backdated to before the election, poll workers being told not to ask voters for identification, and more.
As Giuliani helpfully pointed out, affidavits are considered ‘evidence’ in a court case. Whether you agree or disagree with them is a different question. And it’s reasonable that not all of the people who signed their names would be willing to go public. If you want to hear more of the evidence that was presented, just watch the first hour or so of the press conference.
The more difficult — and crucial — question is whether Trump’s legal team has enough witnesses or other evidence to actually overturn the election in court. That is what journalists should be addressing. But it is simply wrong for the media to assert there is NO evidence of fraud.
Things that make you go “Hmmmmm”: “Dominion Voting ‘Lawyers Up‘ Before Abruptly Backing Out Of Pennsylvania Fact-Finding Hearing.”
Pennsylvania lawmakers had scheduled the hearing with the voting machine manufacturer “to help identify and correct any irregularities in the election process,” according to the House Republican Caucus.
“It is vitally important voters have faith in the machines they use to cast their ballots. On the heels of Gov. Tom Wolf unilaterally decertifying every voting machine in the Commonwealth, we need to know whether these new machines met expectations, whether they are reliable and whether they are not subject to interference,” said Rep. Grove (R-York).
Dominion had initially agreed to attend the hearing, before it “abruptly canceled,” Grove said.
“I was impressed at what appeared to be the willingness that Dominion Voting Systems to address accusations and it would have put 1.3. million Pennsylvanians who used their machines at ease—including myself, thinking that Dominion was willing to publicly back up their product which PA taxpayers invested millions to purchase” he noted during the presser.
“Unfortunately, last evening, Dominion Voting Systems lawyered up, and backed out of their commitment to the people of Pennsylvania to provide their input in a public format.”
Grove blasted the company for “retreating into the darkness,” rather than appearing at the hearing with “honesty and integrity.”
The committee chair said he wanted to know why a company with nothing to hide would back out.
Reminder: Texas rejected Dominion: “The examiner reports raise concerns about whether the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system is suitable for its intended purpose; operates efficiently and accurately; and is safe from fraudulent or unauthorized manipulation.”
Notice the similarities in PA and GA? How the right sides of the graph show virtually no movement for Trump; and very predictable vote movements to Biden. How predictable?
Below are excerpts of spreadsheets that show what was happening on the right side of each chart. Vote flips in the same-sized bundles (6,000 in PA and 4,800 in GA) were injected into the system to overcome Trump’s lead in both states. You can click either image above to see all of the data.
The highlighted cells show where the vote counts — stunningly obvious in retrospect — were manipulated to benefit Biden.
That does look might suspicious. Someone with more statistical analysis expertise than I have will have tell me how meaningful this is.
Here’s another data analysis suggesting that Dominion software in Philadelphia regularly transferred votes in exact ratios. The video’s 40 minutes long, I haven’t watched all of it, and, again, someone with more statistical analysis expertise will have to analyze this to tell me how meaningful it is. (Hat tip: Janie Johnson.)
The two Republicans on Michigan’s Wayne County Board of Canvassers claimed in signed affidavits Wednesday that they were bullied into siding with Democrats and have now rescinded their votes to certify.
The two Republicans — Monica Palmer and William C. Hartmann — were involved in a brief deadlock in the county’s election certification process Tuesday before voting to certify.
Wayne County, which includes Detroit, is Michigan’s most populous county, with more than 1.7 million residents.
The Associated Press reported that a person familiar with the matter said Trump himself reached out to the canvassers on Tuesday evening after the revised vote to express gratitude for their support. Then, on Wednesday, Palmer and Hartmann signed affidavits saying they believe the county vote “should not be certified.”
And on Thursday, the Trump campaign said it was withdrawing its lawsuit in the state, citing what happened in Wayne County.
“This morning we are withdrawing our lawsuit in Michigan as a direct result of achieving the relief we sought: to stop the election in Wayne County from being prematurely certified before residents can be assured that every legal vote has been counted and every illegal vote has not been counted,” said Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Both Republicans say they were called racists and subjected to threats for raising concerns about ballots that Democrats said were from predominately Black communities, Jenna Ellis, a lawyer for the Trump 2020 Campaign, told Fox News on Tuesday.
They also said people had threatened members of their family.
Speaking of which, watch a Detroit State Rep candidate dox Wayne County canvasser Monica Palmer…and her children:
For example, in Pennsylvania, they have two very strong legal arguments. One, that the courts changed what the legislature did about counting ballots after the end of Election Day. That’s a winning issue in the Supreme Court. I don’t necessarily support it, but it’s a winning issue in the Supreme Court,” Dershowitz told Fox Business on Sunday. The team, meanwhile, has “a winning issue in the Supreme Court on equal protection, that some counties flawed ballots to be cured while others didn’t. Bush v. Gore suggests that an Equal Protection argument can prevail.”
Dershowitz, who helped defend Trump during the Senate impeachment trial earlier this year, said that due to Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s lead over the president, Trump’s team may not be able to contest enough ballots in Pennsylvania.
“The other legal theory they have, which is a potentially strong one, is that the computers, either fraudulently or by glitches, changed hundreds of thousands of votes. There, there are enough votes to make a difference, but I haven’t seen the evidence to support that,” he elaborated. “So, in one case, they don’t have the numbers. In another case, they don’t seem yet to have the evidence, maybe they do. I haven’t seen it. But the legal theory is there to support them if they have the numbers and they have the evidence.”
Trey Trainor, the Chairman of the federal Election Commission says Trump has a case. “The massive amounts of affidavits that we see in these cases show that there was in fact fraud that took place.”
Trainor said his review of evidence, including numerous affidavits claiming voter fraud and a sworn statement by a prominent mathematician flagging up to 100,000 Pennsylvania ballots, met the first level of legal scrutiny under what’s known as motion to dismiss or “Rule 12(b)(6)” of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which would dismiss less credible claims.
Noting the subsequent legal threshold beyond a “motion to dismiss” is the “summary judgment phase,” Trainor said that under this phase, the credibility of witnesses is presumed to be accurate, especially given the caliber of the testimonies Trainor has observed to date.
Since Monday, we’ve learned GA found more 5k+ missing votes and allegedly, more than 15k people voted in NV and another state. We also learned Detroit had too many discrepancies to certify their results.
I wonder what else “the most secure election in history” has in store?
The news comes after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) certified the election results. Although Kemp certified the results, he called for an additional hand recount, citing major errors in Floyd, Douglas and Walton Counties.
“I would just say I’m formalizing the certification,” Kemp said at the time. “Now that Secretary Raffensperger certified, it triggers the ability of the Trump campaign to ask for the recount. If something were to happen, I’m still part of that process. So my take on all this is: I’m following the law and the rules.”
After 25 years, TODAY I officially retired from the PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT. Part of it was I want to enjoy the rest of my life, but a huge factor was the recent election and widespread fraud that took place in my city. No longer did I want to represent the corruption.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected a Trump lawsuit complaint about counting observers. “It’s inexplicable that five justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would conclude that watchers observing from distances up to 100 feet away is reasonable.”
The WI Elections Commission met last night & there was a push to make changes that would make the recount harder and that would make observing the recount harder.
They should follow the law and let the whole world watch the recount. Transparency is key for legitimate elections.
The pieces are finally coming together, and they reveal a masterpiece of electoral larceny involving Big Tech oligarchs, activists, and government officials who prioritize partisanship over patriotism.
The 2020 election was stolen because leftists were able to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to weaken, alter, and eliminate laws that were put in place over the course of decades to preserve the integrity of the ballot box. But just as importantly, it was stolen because those same leftists had a thoroughly-crafted plan, and because they were rigorous in its implementation and ruthless in its execution.
Let’s not forget that liberals have been consumed by a fixation with removing Donald Trump from office for longer than he’s actually been in office. The sordid story of the 2020 election heist begins all the way back in January 2017, when Barack Obama’s former campaign manager and senior advisor, David Plouffe, took a job leading the policy and advocacy efforts of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a “charitable” organization established by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
Earlier this year, just as it was becoming clear that Joe Biden would be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, Plouffe published a book outlining his vision for the Democrats’ roadmap to victory in 2020, which involved a “block by block” effort to turn out voters in key Democratic strongholds in the swing states that would ultimately decide the election, such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Minneapolis.
The book was titled, A Citizen’s Guide to Defeating Donald Trump, and it turned out that the citizen Plouffe had in mind was none other than his former boss, Mark Zuckerberg. Although Plouffe no longer officially managed Zuckerberg’s policy and advocacy efforts at that point, the political operative’s influence evidently remained a powerful force.
Thanks to the extensive efforts of investigators and attorneys for the Amistad Project of the nonpartisan Thomas More Society, who have been following Zuckerberg’s money for the past 18 months, it is still possible to expose the inner workings of this heist in time to stop it.
Snip.
Under the pretext of assisting election officials conduct “safe and secure” elections in the age of COVID, Zuckerberg donated $400 million — as much money as Congress appropriated for the same general purpose — to nonprofit organizations founded and run by left-wing activists. The primary recipient was the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which received the staggering sum of $350 million. Prior to Zuckerberg’s donations, CTCL’s annual operating expenses averaged less than $1 million per year. How was Zuckerberg even aware of such a small-potatoes operation, and why did he entrust it with ⅞ of the money he was pouring into this election cycle, despite the fact that it had no prior experience handling such a massive amount of money?
Predictably, given the partisan background of its leading officers, CTCL proceeded to distribute Zuckerberg’s funds to left-leaning counties in battleground states. The vast majority of the money handed out by CTCL — especially in the early days of its largesse — went to counties that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Some of the biggest recipients, in fact, were the very locales Plouffe had identified as the linchpins of the Democrat strategy in 2020.
Zuckerberg and CTCL left nothing to chance, however, writing detailed conditions into their grants that dictated exactly how elections were to be conducted, down to the number of ballot drop boxes and polling places. The Constitution gives state lawmakers sole authority for managing elections, but these grants put private interests firmly in control.
Amistad Project lawyers tried to prevent this unlawful collusion by filing a flurry of lawsuits in eight states prior to Election Day. Unfortunately, judges were forced to put those lawsuits aside without consideration of their merits because the plaintiffs had not yet suffered “concrete harm” in the form of fraudulent election results. The law had no remedy to offer because the left’s lawless schemes had not yet reached fruition.
Trump entered the night a 2 to 1 underdog. As soon as the polls started to close and the picture became clear, Trump’s odds quickly moved to even money. Then Trump became the slight favorite. Then a moderate favorite. Then a 2-to-1 favorite.
Then 3 to 1. 4 to 1. 5 to 1. 6 to 1. 7 to 1. Finally, Trump moved to 8 to 1 favorite.
What does all this mean? Bettors putting their money on the line during Election Night have always proven to be deadly accurate. Smart bettors can clearly see what direction a race is taking. Bettors around the world clearly saw what I saw, when they stared at the electoral map- Trump was headed for an electoral landslide.
But something wasn’t quite right. Fox News wouldn’t call Florida for Trump- even though he was ahead by a mile. They wouldn’t call Ohio- even though Trump was ahead by a mile, They wouldn’t call Texas- even though Trump was ahead by a mile. I sat there screaming at my television.
More strange calls. Fox News had called Virginia for Biden at the start of the night- with Trump well ahead in Virginia. Trump would remain ahead in Virginia for three long hours after Fox awarded the electoral votes to Biden. Why would they do that? What was the rush? It made no sense.
Biden was awarded Virginia with Trump ahead. But Trump was ahead by a mile in Florida, Ohio and Texas, yet Fox News refused to award him the electoral votes. I knew at that moment, something was wrong. Something smelled fishy. Something was rotten in the DC Swamp.
Bettors witnessed Trump dominating. He clearly won not only those key states of Florida, Ohio and Texas, but Trump also enjoyed large leads in the entire Midwest- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. It was all but over. Trump had an electoral landslide. Hence the massive 8 to 1 odds in favor of Trump.
And then it happened. It was the most bizarre call in Election Night history. Fox News called Arizona for Biden. Why? It wasn’t even close to over. There was no reason on earth to make that call. Arizona is STILL not over 8 days later. CNN still hasn’t awarded Arizona. ABC pulled it back from Biden only 24 hours ago.
Why would Fox News be in such a rush to call Arizona for Biden? At that moment, Trump’s odds crashed almost instantly from 8 to 1, back down to 2 to 1. That drop set off alarm bells. My friend who is one of the biggest bookmakers in the country called me to say, “Wayne, something is wrong. I’ve never seen a drop like that, let alone a drop that fast. How can Trump go from 8 to 1, to 2 to 1. Someone knows something. We’ve got a problem.”
It was as if someone had decided in advance to give Arizona to Biden- whether he won it, or not. It was as if the secret code was known to only a few billionaire gamblers, “Fox News awards Arizona to Biden.” Six magic words. Someone was ready for that call. Someone waited until Trump was a prohibitive 8 to 1 favorite, then knew to bet millions of dollars on Biden at the longest odds of the night. Someone knew the fix was in. Someone made a fortune.
There’s more to the story. First, by awarding both Virginia and Arizona to Biden way too early in the evening and also going super slow awarding states to Trump where he led by a mile, Fox News made sure Biden had the electoral lead all night. That’s another big part of the story.
A prominent liberal legal academic who spent the last four years pushing outrageous, discredited, and debunked conspiracy theories about Donald Trump stealing the 2016 election said on Fox News Sunday that refusal to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election threatens the country.
Snip.
No conspiracy theories of recent vintage have damaged the country as much as the ones [Laurence] Tribe (and many other anti-Trump media figures) trafficked in each and every day of the last four years from prominent perches in politics, media, and the academy. If taking claims to court undermines democracy, how to defend Tribe’s vociferous and repeated claims that Trump stole the election in 2016 with the help of Russia?
There have been a number of frustrating things to deal with during the past couple of weeks. In victory or defeat, the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the media are insufferable. We’ve all known that for a very long time but — and we have said this a lot lately — they’re getting even worse.
They are complaining about President Trump’s legal right to make sure that the election to decide the leader of the free world wasn’t compromised in any way. It seems a reasonable thing to do, but we are dealing with liberals here, so reasonable doesn’t factor into the equation much.
The painstaking, necessary scrutiny of ballots in key states continues, much to the chagrin of the Democrats. If they are so certain of victory, this delay shouldn’t mean much to them. They’re acting as if they’re terrified of what may be found out.
Snip.
After what the Democrats put this president and the country through with the Russia collusion hoax, the impeachment charade, and four years of flat-out saying that the 2016 election wasn’t legitimate, I don’t care if the Left has to suffer frustration forever. Put simply: they’ve brought this on themselves.
If they had, for even a moment at any time in the last four years, not been thoroughly awful then maybe we might all be able to search for some common ground.
Now, as I recently said on Facebook, I’ve spent every day since the election looking all over my house and I can’t find the kumbaya anywhere.
Karma has entered the building, and will be staying awhile.
And here are thousands of data points: “Two California men were indicted on 41 counts of voter fraud after allegedly submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications on behalf of homeless people, according to NBC Los Angeles.”
If this election has no fraud, why are the Democrats & media demanding there be no audit, no signature match check, no monitored hand recount, no production of the digitized ballots, no check on whether more votes than voters took place in some areas, and on and on? #Election2020
“Philly Bans All Indoor Gatherings Unless You’re Still Counting Biden Votes.” And for the reader who complained I shouldn’t include Babylon Bee links in these roundups:
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…
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will welcome representatives from major stock exchanges, including Nasdaq, to Austin on Nov. 20 as the state makes a bid to be the top choice if the exchanges make good on threats to move their trading platforms out of New Jersey.
The Dallas Morning News reported last month that the governor’s office was in talks with Nasdaq and other exchanges about moving data centers to Dallas that power billions of dollars in trades each day on Wall Street.
The governor’s office confirmed the meeting, touting the state’s business-friendly environment.
“Texas continues to be the premier economic destination in the country, attracting more leading businesses than any other state,” spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement to The News. “The governor looks forward to meeting with Nasdaq and showcasing Texas’ business-friendly environment, skilled workforce, robust infrastructure, and low taxes, all of which foster greater economic growth in the Lone Star State.”
The downside is that this would make Dallas natives that much more insufferable… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
The hidden Trump vote would appear to have thrown off the polls again — a phenomenon that illuminates the inhibited political ethos a punishing media has fostered in this country, where a significant swath of America quite understandably conceals its real views until it enters the privacy of the polling booth. The hidden Trump vote is a rebuke to the ruling class and its ambitions to control the minds of Americans through skewed and hectoring propaganda.
Pollster Frank Luntz has said that his industry will collapse if Biden loses. No doubt many members of it are trembling over the prospect. Again, a squeaker for Biden, should it happen, doesn’t exonerate them. As things stand at the moment, the betting odds and forecasts are rapidly changing and bear no resemblance to the polling industry’s pre-election picture.
Nor has the predicted demise of the Republican Senate come to pass. Whatever happens, this election can’t be characterized as the Blue Wave the elite had spent weeks expecting. Ironically, a Red Wave, with Hispanic voters riding it, crashed over the Democrats in Florida. That would suggest at least in one major state that the toxic identity politics of the Dems has backfired. How ironic it would be if the president, whom the Democrats have called a racist and xenophobe day in and day out for four years, should end up winning thanks to increased support from minorities unimpressed by that demagoguery. It would be an upending that Biden richly deserves. He has been utterly shameless in his race-based lying about the president, talking about saving the “soul of America” while engaged in the most cynical form of racial arson.
It also appears that the Democrats have paid some price for running so far to the left. Kamala Harris, the most liberal member of the Senate, has been a dead weight on the ticket. It would be wonderful if she ends up costing Biden parts of the Rust Belt. After having spent decades pretending to be a moderate, Biden formed a Faustian bargain with the far Left and adopted many of its radical positions. He could have moved to the middle by selecting a less extreme running mate. Instead, he threw his lot in with Bernie, Kamala, and AOC.
In the expectations game, the Democratic Party whiffed and whiffed badly. The Biden campaign and its allies managed to drive up turnout — but so did Trump. Republicans put up a hell of a fight, and not just, or even mainly, in the battle for the White House. Democrats have almost certainly failed to win a Senate majority, and so far they have lost some ground in the House as well (while still on track to maintain control of the lower chamber of Congress).
That means that Biden is on track to be a weak, ineffectual president governing at the mercy of Mitch McConnell’s Machiavellian machinations.
So much for the Democratic fantasy — the one that seemingly never dies — of unobstructed rule. Democrats didn’t just want to win and govern in the name of a deeply divided nation’s fractured sense of the common good. No, they wanted to lead a moral revolution, to transform the country — not only enacting a long list of new policies, but making a series of institutional changes that would entrench their power far into the future. Pack the Supreme Court. Add left-leaning states. Break up others to give the left huge margins in the Senate. Get rid of the Electoral College. Abolish the police. Rewrite the nation’s history, with white supremacy and racism placed “at the very center.” Ensure “equity” not just in opportunity but in outcomes. Hell, maybe they’d even establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to teach everyone who voted for or supported the 45th president just how evil they really are.
No wonder so many Republicans turned out to vote. Democrats proved to be the most effective GOTV operation for the GOP imaginable.
Yes, Trump and the Republican cheerleading section online and on cable news and talk radio harped on every extreme proposal. But this wasn’t just a function of the fallacy of composition, where one loony activist says something off the wall and the GOP amplifies it far beyond reason in order to tar the opposition unfairly. These were prominent Democrats — progressive politicians, activists, and scholars and prize-winning journalists at leading cultural institutions — talking this way. Joe Biden himself usually did the smart thing and tried to distance himself from the most radical proposals. But in the end it wasn’t enough to mollify fears of an ascendant left hell bent on entrenching itself in power and enacting institutional reforms that would enable it to lead a moral, political, and cultural revolution.
And therein lies a paradox that should be obvious but apparently isn’t: Democrats live in a country with a large, passionate opposition. Arrogant talk of demographic inevitabilities and transformative changes to lock Republicans out of power in the name of “democracy” has the effect of inspiring that opposition to unite against them, rendering political success less assured and more tenuous.
There will be no court packing. No added states. Nothing from the toxic progressive-fantasy wishlist will come anywhere close to passing. Instead, we will have grinding, obstructive gridlock. Some will demand that Biden push through progressive priorities by executive order. But every time he does — like every incident of urban rioting and looting, every effort to placate the left-wing “Squad” in the House, every micro-targeted identity-politics box-checking display of intersectional moral preening and finger-wagging — the country will move closer to witnessing a conservative backlash that results in Republicans taking control of the House and increasing their margin in the Senate in November 2022, rendering the Biden administration even more fully dead in the water.
On a House caucus call today, Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger, reportedly in an agitated state, warned that Democrats “lost races we shouldn’t have lost.” She further claimed that “defund police almost cost me my race because of an attack ad. Don’t say socialism ever again. Need to get back to basics. . . . If we run this race again we will get f***ng torn apart again in 2022.”
Elsewhere, former Missouri senator Claire McCaskill had this to say: “Whether you are talking guns or . . . abortion . . . or gay marriage and rights for ‘transsexuals’ and other people who we as a party ‘look after’ and make sure they are treated fairly. As we circled the issues we left voters behind and Republicans dove in.”
I see other Democrats grousing today that their candidates in Florida and elsewhere were falsely labeled “socialist.” I’m sorry, if that’s not the message you want to send, perhaps Nancy Pelosi shouldn’t pose with a gaggle of Marxists on the cover of Rolling Stone. Perhaps Democrats should treat Bernie Sanders as a fringe crank rather than a comrade who’s just moving a tad too quickly. Maybe arguing “democratic” socialism is the good kind doesn’t quite do it for the folks in Des Moines.
What are voters in Texas supposed to make of every major presidential Democrat presidential candidate, including Joe Biden, giving their blessing to the authoritarian Green New Deal? Boy, fact-checkers had to work overtime to help Biden walk back those endorsements of fracking bans, of defunding the police, and of confiscating guns.
We may well have a president in a few months who says there are “at least three” genders. Which probably seems sane on Twitter, but less so in Jacksonville, Fla. McCaskill has already apologized for her use of the word “transsexuals.” Unlike progressive urban dwellers, one suspects the vast majority of suburban Americans have zero clue what McCaskill is sorry about. They may even believe that letting genetic boys compete with their daughters in track and field is ridiculous. They probably wouldn’t be crazy about being accused of being transphobic for taking this rational position.
Illinois Democrats are even more screwed than usual because voters just rejected a constitutional amendment to create a progressive income tax.
One of the most surprising results of the 2020 election was the defeat, in Illinois, of a state constitutional amendment to permit a progressive income tax. The Graduated Income Tax Amendment would have eliminated the Illinois constitutional requirement that tax rates remain flat across incomes. Its defeat is likely the most important political event for the state since I moved here 18 years ago. The proposed change in the state constitution was an effort by the dominant Democratic Party to continue its model of high taxes and high spending to support the base of its political muscle—public-sector unions. The party retains control of the legislature and the governor’s office, but it is politically cornered. Legislatively, it faces a choice between a reform agenda that would undermine its political base or a substantial tax increase on every working citizen.
The amendment went down to defeat for two overriding reasons—one analytical, the other more emotional. The first was that the proposed tax increase was not connected to any steps that would address the structural problems in Illinois finances. Illinois has the nation’s worst bond rating, largely because of its enormous unfunded pension liabilities. But Governor J. B. Pritzker, after taking office in 2019, has proposed no serious pension reforms. Nor has he pursued a deregulatory agenda that would lead to higher economic growth rates that might service these liabilities. And worse still, in connection with the referendum, he did not agree to use a substantial portion of the additional revenue flowing from the progressive tax rates to pay down these liabilities. Instead, much of the new revenue would have been spent on new programs or expanding old ones. His promise to use a mere $100 million of the new lucre to pay down pension liabilities was an insult to Illinois taxpayers who would see another $4 billion extracted from their pocketbooks.
The other reason for the amendments’ failure had to do with more stories of corruption coming out of Springfield. When state representatives are being indicted for extortion, citizens instinctively recoil at handing them more money. Even more problematic for the amendment’s prospects, it became clear that Michael Madigan—speaker of the house, chairman of the state Democratic Party, and undisputed power broker for the last three decades—was under investigation for getting ComEd, the state’s major utility, to hire some of his supporters in return for favors.
That investigation underscores the real scandal in Illinois: not merely the illegal trading in favors but the more damaging legal trading. Public-sector unions support the Democratic Party in return for the party giving them sweetheart deals with the state. Unfunded pension liabilities are the consequence because many politicians hope to retire or move on to the federal level before the full bill comes due.
West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin says he won’t pack courts or end the filibuster. Maybe he should switch parties before he gets primaried by the hard left…
Put yourself in the shoes of the average college graduate today. It took you longer than expected to complete your “four-year degree” and you are almost $30,000 in debt. You are desperately searching for a job in your field before your student loan payments run you into the ground, assuming your rent and car payments don’t get you there first. The generations before you had student loan debt too, but not nearly to the same degree of an ever-present threat. How did you end up here, and what do you do now with the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic?
The business model adopted by our academic institutions is increasingly at odds with those seeking higher education and with the broader society as well. It is undesirable to have entire generations unable to participate in the economy, and as of June 2020, contribute a staggering $1.67 trillion to the national debt according to the National Reserve. This is more than auto loan debt and almost twice the amount of credit card debt in the US. It is crucial to understand the various factors that led to this predicament and to recognize where the system went wrong in order to find solutions.
The most obvious cause of this massive amount of debt is the continually rising cost of higher education. The College Board noted that in-state public college tuition from 1984 to 2014 increased by 225 percent. In the same timeframe, data from the US Census Bureau shows that the median family income has only increased by 24 percent, both figures accounting for inflation.
Snip.
So where is all this money going? While much of it goes to the salaries of faculty and the building and maintaining of facilities, a questionable amount goes to administration, another aspect of universities that has rapidly grown in recent decades. According to a 2014 Delta Cost Project report, the number of faculty and staff per administrator declined by roughly 40 percent at most types of colleges and universities between 1990 and 2012, now averaging around 2.5 faculty per administrator. In 2012, the number of faculty at public research institutions was nearly equal to the number of administrators.
“The interesting thing about the administrative bloat in higher education is, literally, nobody knows who all these people are or what they’re doing,” says Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University and the author of a paper entitled: ‘The Changing of the Guard: The Political Economy of Administrative Bloat in American Higher Education.’ Vague titles for administrative positions at institutions of higher education include Health Promotion Specialist, Student Success Manager, Senior Coordinator, and Student Accountability Manager. While some administration positions are surely useful and arguably necessary such as Director of Student Financial Aid, Director of Academic Advising, or those positions added in response to federal and state mandates, the salaries of administrative positions have rapidly increased.
“Azerbaijan Says It Shot Down Russian Helicopter ‘By Mistake.'” Oopsie!
Is the city of Austin trying to secretly stick a homeless shelter in north Austin? They evidently want to convert the Fairfield Inn on 183. The reviews for that place seem to have improved, but once it was infamous for reports of bedbugs…
All the reasons Quibi failed. Including only being available as a smart phone app (not on computers or TV) and “paying $6 million for Reese Witherspoon to do a voice-over for an animal show that nobody watched.” Also: Another failure for Meg Whitman.
Dreamhaven Books attacked (again). Owner Greg Ketter and another employee were attacked and robbed in the Minneapolis science fiction bookstore. This is the second attack on the store this year, as someone broke into the store and tried (unsuccessfully) to burn it down during the Antifa/BlackLivesMatter riots.
We’ve reached the point in the post-election cycle where the mainstream media is so desperate to make Democrats’ election fraud for Joe Biden stick that they’re not just ignore election fraud stories, they’re outright lying about them.
USPS Whistleblower Richard Hopkins: “I DID NOT RECANT”@shawnboburg and @jacobbogage have been played by the same federal agents on the audio ‘coercing,’ ‘scaring’ the whistleblower to water down allegations. As reporters, they are REQUIRED to include Richard’s denial. REQUIRED pic.twitter.com/8Rj5yWSljz
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?
The groupthink among America’s media elite has become so all-encompassing and stifling that lefty journalist Glenn Greenwald resigned from the outlet he co-founded because it refused to publish a piece critical of Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald announced his resignation from The Intercept on Thursday, alleging that the outlet he co-founded was attempting to censor a column in which he criticizes Joe Biden.
Greenwald said he would continue publishing a freelance column, joining a number of journalists such as Matt Taibbi and Andrew Sullivan who have moved their work to the independent publishing platform Substack. Sullivan announced in July that he would leave New York Magazine, writing at the time that editors and writers at the publication were forced to commit to “critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
Greenwald laid out the reasons for his own resignation in a Substack post.
“The final, precipitating cause [of resignation] is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,” Greenwald wrote. Lashing out at “all New-York-based Intercept editors” who “vehemently” support Biden, Greenwald claimed that “modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. ”
Greenwald wrote that the article his editors wanted to censor referred to newly released documents pertaining to Joe Biden’s conduct in Ukraine and China. He criticized his former publication for “a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created The Intercept to oppose, critique and subvert.”
It’s not enough to be on the left. You must embrace precisely those positions of which the Party approves. “For those inside the Party, everything. For those outside the Party, nothing.”
An attempt to assess the importance of the known evidence, and a critique of media lies to protect their favored candidate, could not be published at The Intercept
I am posting here the most recent draft of my article about Joe and Hunter Biden — the last one seen by Intercept editors before telling me that they refuse to publish it absent major structural changes involving the removal of all sections critical of Joe Biden, leaving only a narrow article critiquing media outlets. I will also, in a separate post, publish all communications I had with Intercept editors surrounding this article so you can see the censorship in action and, given the Intercept’s denials, decide for yourselves (this is the kind of transparency responsible journalists provide, and which the Intercept refuses to this day to provide regarding their conduct in the Reality Winner story). This draft obviously would have gone through one more round of proof-reading and editing by me — to shorten it, fix typos, etc — but it’s important for the integrity of the claims to publish the draft in unchanged form that Intercept editors last saw, and announced that they would not “edit” but completely gut as a condition to publication:
TITLE: THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER’S EMAILS
Publication by the New York Post two weeks ago of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, relating to Vice President Joe Biden’s work in Ukraine, and subsequent articles from other outlets concerning the Biden family’s pursuit of business opportunities in China, provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.
One outcome is that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic and relevant questions raised by these materials. Rather than condemn Biden for ignoring these questions — the natural instinct of a healthy press when it comes to a presidential election — journalists have instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.
After the Post’s first article, both that newspaper and other news outlets have published numerous other emails and texts purportedly written to and from Hunter reflecting his efforts to induce his father to take actions as Vice President beneficial to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, on whose board of directors Hunter sat for a monthly payment of $50,000, as well as proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father.
Individuals included in some of the email chains have confirmed the contents’ authenticity. One of Hunter’s former business partners, Tony Bubolinski, has stepped forward on the record to confirm the authenticity of many of the emails and to insist that Hunter along with Joe Biden’s brother Jim were planning on including the former Vice President in at least one deal in China. And GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who appeared in one of the published email chains, appeared to confirm the authenticity as well, though he refused to answer follow-up questions about it.
Thus far, no proof has been offered by Bubolinski that Biden ever consummated his participation in any of those discussed deals. The Wall Street Journal says that it found no corporate records reflecting that a deal was finalized and that “text messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski, mainly from the spring and summer of 2017, don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture.”
But nobody claimed that any such deals had been consummated — so the conclusion that one had not been does not negate the story. Moreover, some texts and emails whose authenticity has not been disputed state that Hunter was adamant that any discussions about the involvement of the Vice President be held only verbally and never put in writing.
Beyond that, the Journal’s columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents and “found correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post,” including ones where Hunter was insisting that it was his connection to his father that was the greatest asset sought by the Chinese conglomerate with whom they were negotiating. The New York Times on Sunday reached a similar conclusion: while no documents prove that such a deal was consummated, “records produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy,” and “make clear that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily citing his ‘family’s brand’ as a reason he is valuable to the proposed venture.”
These documents also demonstrate, reported the Times, “that the countries that Hunter Biden, James Biden and their associates planned to target for deals overlapped with nations where Joe Biden had previously been involved as vice president.” Strassel noted that “a May 2017 ‘expectations’ document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for ‘the big guy’—who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden.” And the independent journalist Matt Taibbi published an article on Sunday with ample documentation suggesting that Biden’s attempt to replace a Ukranian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma.
All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important questions about whether the former Vice President and current front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son’s business associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial story, a union of the nation’s most powerful entities, including its news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these questions rather than try to provide answers to them.
The initial documents, claimed the New York Post, were obtained when the laptops containing them were left at a Delaware repair shop with water damage and never picked up, allowing the owner to access its contents and then turn them over to both the FBI and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani. The repair store owner confirmed this narrative in interviews with news outlets and then (under penalty of prosecution) to a Senate Committee; he also provided the receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden campaign has denied these claims.
Publication of that initial New York Post story provoked a highly unusual censorship campaign by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions. And while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter’s handling of the censorship and reversed the policy that led to the blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the nation’s fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its Twitter account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost two weeks.
After that initial censorship burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs have donated almost entirely to the Biden campaign, it was the nation’s media outlets and former CIA and other intelligence officials who took the lead in constructing reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least treated with scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took center stage to accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about the Kremlin responsibility for the story.
Numerous news outlets, including the Intercept, quickly cited a public letter signed by former CIA officials and other agents of the security state claiming that the documents have the “classic trademarks” of a “Russian disinformation” plot. But, as media outlets and even intelligence agencies are now slowly admitting, no evidence has ever been presented to corroborate this assertion. On Friday, the New York Times reported that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation” and the paper said even the FBI has “acknowledged that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”
The Washington Post on Sunday published an op-ed — by Thomas Rid, one of those centrists establishmentarian professors whom media outlets routinely use to provide the facade of expert approval for deranged conspiracy theories — that contained this extraordinary proclamation: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”
Even the letter from the former intelligence officials cited by The Intercept and other outlets to insinuate that this was all part of some “Russian disinformation” scheme explicitly admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” though many media outlets omitted that crucial acknowledgement when citing the letter in order to disparage the story as a Kremlin plot:
Despite this complete lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase used by intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why the materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer basic questions about them. “I think we need to be very, very clear that what he’s doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation,” said Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility that Trump would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night’s debate. Biden’s senior advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC: “if the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation.”
The few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend all morning along with the derogatory nickname “MAGA Haberman.” CBS News’ Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a “smear.”
That it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor, in an anazing statement representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly justified NPR’s refusal to cover the story on the ground that “we do not want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . . [or] waste the readers’ and listeners’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
By “pure distractions,” of course, what they mean is “Distractions from the Democratic Party gaining power.”
To justify her own show’s failure to cover the story, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl resorted to an entirely different justification. “It can’t be verified,” the CBS reporter claimed when confronted by President Trump in an interview about her program’s failure to cover the Hunter Biden documents. When Trump insisted there were multiple ways to verify the materials on the laptop, Stahl simply repeated the same phrase: “it can’t be verified.”
After the final presidential debate on Thursday night, a CNN panel mocked the story as too complex and obscure for anyone to follow — a self-fulfilling prophecy given that, as the network’s media reporter Brian Stelter noted with pride, the story has barely been mentioned either on CNN or MSNBC. As the New York Times noted on Friday: “most viewers of CNN and MSNBC would not have heard much about the unconfirmed Hunter Biden emails…. CNN’s mentions of “Hunter” peaked at 20 seconds and MSNBC’s at 24 seconds one day last week.”
On Sunday, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour barely pretended to be interested in any journalism surrounding the story, scoffing during an interview at requests from the RNC’s Elizabeth Harrington to cover the story and verify the documents by telling her: “We’re not going to do your work for you.” Watch how the U.S.’s most mainstream journalists are openly announcing their refusal to even consider what these documents might reflect about the Democratic front-runner:
These journalists are desperate not to know. As Taibbi wrote on Sunday about this tawdry press spectacle: ” The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies.”
All of those excuses and pretexts — emanating largely from a national media that is all but explicit in their eagerness for Biden to win — served for the first week or more after the Post story to create a cone of silence around this story and, to this very day, a protective shield for Biden. As a result, the front-running presidential candidate knows that he does not have to answer even the most basic questions about these documents because most of the national press has already signaled that they will not press him to do so; to the contrary, they will concoct defenses on his behalf to avoid discussing it.
The relevant questions for Biden raised by this new reporting are as glaring as they are important. Yet Biden has had to answer very few of them yet because he has not been asked and, when he has, media outlets have justified his refusal to answer rather than demand that he do so. We submitted nine questions to his campaign about these documents that the public has the absolute right to know, including:
whether he claims any the emails or texts are fabricated (and, if so, which specific ones);
whether he knows if Hunter did indeed drop off laptops at the Delaware repair store;
whether Hunter ever asked him to meet with Burisma executives or whether he in fact did so;
whether Biden ever knew about business proposals in Ukraine or China being pursued by his son and brother in which Biden was a proposed participant and,
how Biden could justify expending so much energy as Vice President demanding that the Ukrainian General Prosecutor be fired, and why the replacement — Yuriy Lutsenko, someone who had no experience in law; was a crony of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko; and himself had a history of corruption allegations — was acceptable if Biden’s goal really was to fight corruption in Ukraine rather than benefit Burisma or control Ukrainian internal affairs for some other objective.
Though the Biden campaign indicated that they would respond to the Intercept’s questions, they have not done so. A statement they released to other outlets contains no answers to any of these questions except to claim that Biden “has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any business overseas.” To date, even as the Biden campaign echoes the baseless claims of media outlets that anyone discussing this story is “amplifying Russian disinformation,” neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign have even said whether they claim the emails and other documents — which they and the press continue to label “Russian disinformation” — are forgeries or whether they are authentic.
The Biden campaign clearly believes it has no need to answer any of these questions by virtue of a panoply of media excuses offered on its behalf that collapse upon the most minimal scrutiny:
First, the claim that the material is of suspect authenticity or cannot be verified — the excuse used on behalf of Biden by Leslie Stahl and Christiane Amanpour, among others — is blatantly false for numerous reasons. As someone who has reported similar large archives in partnership with numerous media outlets around the world (including the Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept’s Brazil Archive over the last year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials), and who also covered the reporting of similar archives by other outlets (the Panama Papers, the WikiLeaks war logs of 2010 and DNC/Podesta emails of 2016), it is clear to me that the trove of documents from Hunter Biden’s emails has been verified in ways quite similar to those.
With an archive of this size, one can never independently authenticate every word in every last document unless the subject of the reporting voluntarily confirms it in advance, which they rarely do. What has been done with similar archives is journalists obtain enough verification to create high levels of journalistic confidence in the materials. Some of the materials provided by the source can be independently confirmed, proving genuine access by the source to a hard drive, a telephone, or a database. Other parties in email chains can confirm the authenticity of the email or text conversations in which they participated. One investigates non-public facts contained in the documents to determine that they conform to what the documents reflect. Technology specialists can examine the materials to ensure no signs of forgeries are detected.
This is the process that enabled the largest and most established media outlets around the world to report similar large archives obtained without authorization. In those other cases, no media outlet was able to verify every word of every document prior to publication. There was no way to prove the negative that the source or someone else had not altered or forged some of the material. That level of verification is both unattainable and unnecessary. What is needed is substantial evidence to create high confidence in the authentication process.
The Hunter Biden documents have at least as much verification as those other archives that were widely reported. There are sources in the email chains who have verified that the published emails are accurate. The archive contains private photos and videos of Hunter whose authenticity is not in doubt. A former business partner of Hunter has stated, unequivocally and on the record, that not only are the emails authentic but they describe events accurately, including proposed participation by the former Vice President in at least one deal Hunter and Jim Biden were pursuing in China. And, most importantly of all, neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign has even suggested, let alone claimed, that a single email or text is fake.
Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting’s authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting.
The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives.
Second, the oft-repeated claim from news outlets and CIA operatives that the published emails and texts were “Russian disinformation” was, from the start, obviously baseless and reckless. No evidence — literally none — has been presented to suggest involvement by any Russians in the dissemination of these materials, let alone that it was part of some official plot by Moscow. As always, anything is possible — when one does not know for certain what the provenance of materials is, nothing can be ruled out — but in journalism, evidence is required before news outlets can validly start blaming some foreign government for the release of information. And none has ever been presented. Yet the claim that this was “Russian disinformation” was published in countless news outlets, television broadcasts, and the social media accounts of journalists, typically by pointing to the evidence-free claims of ex-CIA officials.
Worse is the “disinformation” part of the media’s equation. How can these materials constitute “disinformation” if they are authentic emails and texts actually sent to and from Hunter Biden? The ease with which news outlets that are supposed to be skeptical of evidence-free pronouncements by the intelligence community instead printed their assertions about “Russian disinformation” is alarming in the extreme. But they did it because they instinctively wanted to find a reason to justify ignoring the contents of these emails, so claiming that Russia was behind it, and that the materials were “disinformation,” became their placeholder until they could figure out what else they should say to justify ignoring these documents.
Third, the media rush to exonerate Biden on the question of whether he engaged in corruption vis-a-vis Ukraine and Burisma rested on what are, at best, factually dubious defenses of the former Vice President. Much of this controversy centers on Biden’s aggressive efforts while Vice President in late 2015 to force the Ukrainian government to fire its Chief Prosecutor, Viktor Shokhin, and replace him with someone acceptable to the U.S., which turned out to be Yuriy Lutsenko. These events are undisputed by virtue of a video of Biden boasting in front of an audience of how he flew to Kiev and forced the Ukrainians to fire Shokhin, upon pain of losing $1 billion in aid.
But two towering questions have long been prompted by these events, and the recently published emails make them more urgent than ever: 1) was the firing of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor such a high priority for Biden as Vice President of the U.S. because of his son’s highly lucrative role on the board of Burisma, and 2) if that was not the motive, why was it so important for Biden to dictate who the chief prosecutor of Ukraine was?
The standard answer to the question about Biden’s motive — offered both by Biden and his media defenders — is that he, along with the IMF and EU, wanted Shokhin fired because the U.S. and its allies were eager to clean up Ukraine, and they viewed Shokhin as insufficiently vigilant in fighting corruption.
“Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and jawbone Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as,” wrote the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in what the Post calls a “fact-check.” Kessler also endorsed the key defense of Biden: that the firing of Shokhin was bad for Burima, not good for it. “The United States viewed [Shokhin] as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs. In particular, Shokin had failed to pursue an investigation of the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky,” Kessler claims.
But that claim does not even pass the laugh test. The U.S. and its European allies are not opposed to corruption by their puppet regimes. They are allies with the most corrupt regimes on the planet, from Riyadh to Cairo, and always have been. Since when does the U.S. devote itself to ensuring good government in the nations it is trying to control? If anything, allowing corruption to flourish has been a key tool in enabling the U.S. to exert power in other countries and to open up their markets to U.S. companies.
Beyond that, if increasing prosecutorial independence and strengthening anti-corruption vigilance were really Biden’s goal in working to demand the firing of the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, why would the successor to Shokhin, Yuriy Lutsenko, possibly be acceptable? Lutsenko, after all, had “no legal background as general prosecutor,” was principally known only as a lackey of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, was forced in 2009 to “resign as interior minister after being detained by police at Frankfurt airport for being drunk and disorderly,” and “was subsequently jailed for embezzlement and abuse of office, though his defenders said the sentence was politically motivated.”
Is it remotely convincing to you that Biden would have accepted someone like Lutsenko if his motive really were to fortify anti-corruption prosecutions in Ukraine? Yet that’s exactly what Biden did: he personally told Poroshenko that Lutsenko was an acceptable alternative and promptly released the $1 billion after his appointment was announced. Whatever Biden’s motive was in using his power as U.S. Vice President to change the prosecutor in Ukraine, his acceptance of someone like Lutsenko strongly suggests that combatting Ukrainian corruption was not it.
As for the other claim on which Biden and his media allies have heavily relied — that firing Shokhin was not a favor for Burisma because Shokhin was not pursuing any investigations against Burisma — the evidence does not justify that assertion.
It is true that no evidence, including these new emails, constitute proof that Biden’s motive in demanding Shokhin’s termination was to benefit Burisma. But nothing demonstrates that Shokhin was impeding investigations into Burisma. Indeed, the New York Times in 2019 published one of the most comprehensive investigations to date of the claims made in defense of Biden when it comes to Ukraine and the firing of this prosecutor, and, while noting that “no evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal,” this is what its reporters concluded about Shokhin and Burisma:
[Biden’s] pressure campaign eventually worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was voted out months later by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general.
The Times added: “Mr. Shokhin’s office had oversight of investigations into [Burisma’s billionaire founder] Zlochevsky and his businesses, including Burisma.” By contrast, they said, Lutsenko, the replacement approved by Vice President Biden, “initially continued investigating Mr. Zlochevsky and Burisma, but cleared him of all charges within 10 months of taking office.”
So whether or not it was Biden’s intention to confer benefits on Burisma by demanding Shokhin’s firing, it ended up quite favorable for Burisma given that the utterly inexperienced Lutesenko “cleared [Burisma’s founder] of all charges within 10 months of taking office.”
The new comprehensive report from journalist Taibbi on Sunday also strongly supports the view that there were clear antagonisms between Shokhin and Burisma, such that firing the Ukrainian prosecutor would have been beneficial for Burisma. Taibbi, who reported for many years while based in Russia and remains very well-sourced in the region, detailed:
For all the negative press about Shokhin, there’s no doubt that there were multiple active cases involving Zlochevsky/Burisma during his short tenure. This was even once admitted by American reporters, before it became taboo to describe such cases untethered to words like “dormant.” Here’s how Ken Vogel at the New York Times put it in May of 2019:
“When Mr. Shokhin became prosecutor general in February 2015, he inherited several investigations into the company and Mr. Zlochevsky, including for suspicion of tax evasion and money laundering. Mr. Shokin also opened an investigation into the granting of lucrative gas licenses to companies owned by Mr. Zlochevsky when he was the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.”
Ukrainian officials I reached this week confirmed that multiple cases were active during that time.
“There were different numbers, but from 7 to 14,” says Serhii Horbatiuk, former head of the special investigations department for the Prosecutor General’s Office, when asked how many Burisma cases there were.
“There may have been two to three episodes combined, and some have already been closed, so I don’t know the exact amount.” But, Horbatiuk insists, there were many cases, most of them technically started under Yarema, but at least active under Shokin.
The numbers quoted by Horbatiuk gibe with those offered by more recent General Prosecutor Rulsan Ryaboshapka, who last year said there were at one time or another “13 or 14” cases in existence involving Burisma or Zlochevsky.
Taibbi reviews real-time reporting in both Ukraine and the U.S. to document several other pending investigations against Burisma and Zlochevsky that was overseen by the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded. He notes that Shokhin himself has repeatedly said he was pursuing several investigations against Zlochevsky at the time Biden demanded his firing. In sum, Taibbi concludes, “one can’t say there’s no evidence of active Burisma cases even during the last days of Shokin, who says that it was the February, 2016 seizure order [against Zlochevsky’s assets] that got him fired.”
And, Taibbi notes, “the story looks even odder when one wonders why the United States would exercise so much foreign policy muscle to get Shokin fired, only to allow in a replacement — Yuri Lutsenko — who by all accounts was a spectacularly bigger failure in the battle against corruption in general, and Zlochevsky in particular.” In sum: “it’s unquestionable that the cases against Burisma were all closed by Shokin’s successor, chosen in consultation with Joe Biden, whose son remained on the board of said company for three more years, earning upwards of $50,000 per month.”
The publicly known facts, augmented by the recent emails, texts and on-the-record accounts, suggest serious sleaze by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in trying to peddle his influence with the Vice President for profit. But they also raise real questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son’s business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy press would want answered, not buried — regardless of how many similar or worse scandals the Trump family has.
But the real scandal that has been proven is not the former Vice President’s misconduct but that of his supporters and allies in the U.S. media. As Taibbi’s headline put it: “With the Hunter Biden Exposé, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than the Actual Story.”
The reality is the U.S. press has been planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump get re-elected. One major factor is the undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated.
It takes an enormous amount of gullibility to believe that any humans are capable of separating such an intense partisan preference from their journalistic judgment. Many barely even bother to pretend: critiques of Joe Biden are often attacked first not by Biden campaign operatives but by political reporters at national news outlets who make little secret of their eagerness to help Biden win.
But much of this has to do with the fallout from the 2016 election. During that campaign, news outlets, including The Intercept, did their jobs as journalists by reporting on the contents of newsworthy, authentic documents: namely, the emails published by WikiLeaks from the John Podesta and DNC inboxes which, among other things, revealed corruption so severe that it forced the resignation of the top five officials of the DNC. That the materials were hacked, and that intelligence agencies were suggesting Russia was responsible, not negate the newsworthiness of the documents, which is why media outlets across the country repeatedly reported on their contents.
Nonetheless, journalists have spent four years being attacked as Trump enablers in their overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal cultural circles: the cities in which they live are overwhelmingly Democratic, and their demographic — large-city, college-educated professionals — has vanishingly little Trump support. A New York Times survey of campaign data from Monday tells just a part of this story of cultural insularity and homogeniety:
Joe Biden has outraised President Trump on the strength of some of the wealthiest and most educated ZIP codes in the United States, running up the fund-raising score in cities and suburbs so resoundingly that he collected more money than Mr. Trump on all but two days in the last two months….It is not just that much of Mr. Biden’s strongest support comes overwhelmingly from the two coasts, which it does…. [U]nder Mr. Trump, Republicans have hemorrhaged support from white voters with college degrees. In ZIP codes with a median household income of at least $100,000, Mr. Biden smashed Mr. Trump in fund-raising, $486 million to only $167 million — accounting for almost his entire financial edge….One Upper West Side ZIP code — 10024 — accounted for more than $8 million for Mr. Biden, and New York City in total delivered $85.6 million for him — more than he raised in every state other than California….
The median household in the United States was $68,703 in 2019. In ZIP codes above that level, Mr. Biden outraised Mr. Trump by $389.1 million. Below that level, Mr. Trump was actually ahead by $53.4 million.
Wanting to avoid a repeat of feeling scorn and shunning in their own extremely pro-Democratic, anti-Trump circles, national media outlets have spent four years inventing standards for election-year reporting on hacked materials that never previously existed and that are utterly anathema to the core journalistic function. The Washington Post’s Executive Editor Marty Baron, for instance, issued a memo full of cautions about how Post reporters should, or should not, discuss hacked materials even if their authenticity is not in doubt.
That a media outlet should even consider refraining from reporting on materials they know to be authentic and in the public interest because of questions about their provenance is the opposite of how journalism has been practiced. In the days before the 2016 election, for instance, the New York Times received by mail one year of Donald Trump’s tax returns and — despite having no idea who sent it to them or how that person obtained it: was is stolen or hacked by a foreign power? — the Times reported on its contents.
When asked by NPR why they would report on documents when they do not know the source let alone the source’s motives in providing them, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow compellingly explained what had always been the core principle of journalism: namely, a journalist only cares about two questions — (1) are documents authentic and (2) are they in the public interest? — but does not care about what motives a source has in providing the documents or how they were obtained when deciding whether to reporting them:
The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.
A media outlet that renounces its core function — pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people — is one that deserves to lose the public’s faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.
As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: “The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear.” Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: “The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it’s true.”
Here’s the piece on Greenwald’s final communication with his editor that caused him to resign. Back and forth about various things the editor wanted cut from the piece snipped:
Given the obviously significant new developments in this story last night, as well as the benefit of re-reading your memo, I just want to add a few more points to my response:
1) I want to note clearly, because I think it’s so important for obvious reasons, that this is the first time in fifteen years of my writing about politics that I’ve been censored — i.e., told by others that I can’t publish what I believe or think — and it’s happening less than a week before a presidential election, and this censorship is being imposed by editors who eagerly want the candidate I’m writing about critically to win the election. Note that I’m not making claims there about motives: I’m just stating facts that are indisputably true.
I’m not saying your motive or anyone else’s is a desire to suppress critical reporting about the Democratic presidential candidate you support in order to help him win. I obviously can’t know your internal motives. It could be that your intense eagerness for Biden to win — shared by every other TI editor in New York — colors your editorial judgment (just as it’s possible that my view that the Democratic Party is corrupt may be coloring mine: that’s why no journalist has a monopoly on truth sufficient to justify censoring others).
But the glaring irony that I’m being censored for the first time in my career — and that it’s being done by the news outlet that I createdwith the specific and explicit purpose of ensuring that journalists are never censored by their editors — is disturbing to me in the extreme. What a healthy and confident news organization would do — as the New York Times recently did with its own Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project — is air the different views that journalists have about the evidence and let readers decide what they find convincing, not force everyone to adhere to a top-down editorial line and explicitly declare that any story that raises questions about Biden’s conduct is barred from being published now that he’s the Democratic nominee.
2) Last night, Tony Bobulinski gave an hour-long prime time interview detailing very serious allegations about his work not just with the Biden family but Joe Biden himself to pursue the very deals in China that Biden denied any involvement in. Who he is and the details he provided makes the story inherently credible – certainly enough for a news outlet to acknowledge that serious questions about Biden’s conduct have been raised. I’m obviously going to add a discussion of that interview in the draft for wherever I end up publishing it.
A ‘you said I said X, when I clearly said Y’ section snipped.
What’s happening here is obvious: you know that you can’t explicitly say you don’t want to publish the article because it raises questions about the candidate you and all other TI Editors want very much to win the election in 5 days. So you have to cast your censorship as an accusation — an outrageous and inaccurate one — that my article contains factually false claims, all as a pretext for alleging that my article violates The Intercept’s lofty editorial standards and that it’s being rejected on journalistic grounds rather than nakedly political grounds.
But your memo doesn’t identify a single factual inaccuracy, let alone multiple ones. And that’s why you don’t and can’t identify any such false claims. And that, in turn, is why your email repeatedly says that what makes the draft false is that it omits facts which — as I just demonstrated — the draft explicitly includes.
4) Finally, I have to note what I find to be the incredible irony that The Intercept — which has published more articles than I can count that contain factually dubious claims if not outright falsehoods that are designed to undermine Trump’s candidacy or protect Joe Biden — is now telling me, someone who has never had an article retracted or even seriously corrected in 15 years, that my journalism doesn’t meet the editorial requirements to be published at the Intercept.
It was The Intercept that took the lead in falsely claiming that publication by the NY Post was part of a campaign of “Russian disinformation” — and did so by (a) uncritically citing the allegations of ex-CIA officials as truth, and (b) so much worse: omitting the sentence in the letter from the ex-CIA officials admitting they had no evidence for that claim. In other words, the Intercept — in the only article that it bothered to publish that makes passing reference to these documents — did so only by mindlessly repeating what CIA operatives say. And it turned out to be completely false. This — CIA stenography — is what meets the Intercept’s rigorous editorial standards:
“The U.S. intelligence community had previously warned the White House that Giuliani has been the target of a Russian intelligence operation to disseminate disinformation about Biden, and the FBI has been investigating whether the strange story about the Biden laptop is part of a Russian disinformation campaign. This week, a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.”
The Intercept deleted from that quotation of the CIA’s claims this rather significant statement: “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.”
Repeatedly over the past several months, I’ve brought to Betsy’s attention false claims that were published by The Intercept in articles that were designed to protect Biden and malign Trump. Some have been corrected or quietly deleted, while others were just left standing.
This rigorous editorial process emerges only when an article deviates from rather than recites the political preferences of The Intercept and/or the standard liberal view on political controversies. That The Intercept is now reduced to blindly citing the evidence-free accusations about foreign adversaries from John Brennan and James Clapper — and, worse, distorting what they said to make it even more favorable to Biden than these agents of disinformation were willing to do — is both deeply sad and embarrassing to me as one of the people on whose name, credibility and reputations the Intercept has been built and around which it continues to encourage readers to donate money to it.
I’m well aware of the gravity if what I’m saying about The Intercept. This is not the first time I’ve said it to Betsy. But obviously, telling me that I can’t publish a pre-election article about Joe Biden that expresses views that have been ratified by some of the nation’s most accomplished journalists — including but by no means limited to Matt Taibbi — is even more grave.
In response to this he received on of those carefully crafted “We are so disappointed in you, young man” editorial responses:
Response of Betsy Reed yesterday
Our intention in sending the memo was for you to revise the story for publication. However, it’s clear from your response this morning that you are unwilling to engage in a productive editorial process on this article, as we had hoped.
It would be unfortunate and detrimental to The Intercept for this story to be published elsewhere.
I have to add that your comments about The Intercept and your colleagues are offensive and unacceptable.
Betsy
Hence the resignation:
Subject: ResignationDate: Thu, 29 Oct 2020 10:01:59 -0300From: Glenn Greenwald To: Michael Bloom , Betsy Reed
Michael –
I am writing to advise you that I have decided that I will be resigning from First Look Media (FLM) and The Intercept.
The precipitating (but by no means only) cause is that The Intercept is attempting to censor my articles in violation of both my contract and fundamental principles of editorial freedom. The latest and perhaps most egregious example is an opinion column I wrote this week which, five days before the presidential election, is critical of Joe Biden, the candidate who happens to be vigorously supported by all of the Intercept editors in New York who are imposing the censorship and refusing to publish the article unless I agree to remove all of the sections critical of the candidate they want to win. All of that violates the right in my contract with FLM to publish articles without editorial interference except in very narrow circumstances that plainly do not apply here.
Worse, The Intercept editors in New York, not content to censor publication of my article at the Intercept, are also demanding that I not exercise my separate contractual right with FLM regarding articles I have written but which FLM does not want to publish itself. Under my contract, I have the right to publish any articles FLM rejects with another publication But Intercept editors in New York are demanding I not only accept their censorship of my article at The Intercept, but also refrain from publishing it with any other journalistic outlet, and are using thinly disguised lawyer-crafted threats to coerce me not to do so (proclaiming it would it would be “detrimental” to The Intercept if I published it elsewhere).
I have been extremely disenchanted and saddened by the editorial direction of The Intercept under its New York leadership for quite some time. The publication we founded without those editors back in 2014 now bears absolutely no resemblance to what we set out to build — not in content, structure, editorial mission or purpose. I have grown embarrassed to have my name used as a fund-raising tool to support what it is doing and for editors to use me as shield to hide behind to avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes (including, but not only, with the Reality Winner debacle, which I was publicly blamed despite having no role in it, while the editors who actually were responsible for those mistakes stood by silently, allowing me to be blamed for their errors and then covering-up any public accounting of what happened, knowing that such transparency would expose their own culpability).
But all this time, as things worsened, I reasoned that as long as The Intercept remained a place where my own right of journalistic independence was not being infringed, I could live with all of its other flaws. But now, not even that minimal but foundational right is being honored for my own journalism, surpessed by an increasingly authoritarian, fear-driven, repressive editorial team in New York bent on imposing their own ideological and partisan preferences on all writers while ensuring that nothing is published at The Intercept that contradicts their own narrow, homogenous ideological and partisan views: exactly what The Intercept, more than any other goal, was created to prevent.
I have asked my lawyer to get in touch with FLM to discuss how best to terminate my contract. Thank you – Glenn Greenwald
The incredible decision by Twitter and Facebook to block access to a New York Post story about a cache of emails reportedly belonging to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter, with Twitter going so far as to lock the 200 year-old newspaper out of its own account for over a week, continues to be a major underreported scandal.
The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Imagine the reaction if that same set of facts involved the New York Times and any of its multitudinous unverifiable “exposes” from the last half-decade: from the similarly-leaked “black ledger” story implicating Paul Manafort, to its later-debunked “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence” story, to its mountain of articles about the far more dubious Steele dossier. Internet platforms for years have balked at intervening at many other sensational “unverified” stories, including ones called into question in very short order…
The flow of information in the United States has become so politicized – bottlenecked by an increasingly brazen union of corporate press and tech platforms – that it’s become impossible for American audiences to see news about certain topics absent thickets of propagandistic contextualizing. Try to look up anything about Burisma, Joe Biden, or Hunter Biden in English, however, and you’re likely to be shown a pile of “fact-checks” and explainers ahead of the raw information…
Other true information has been scrubbed or de-ranked, either by platforms or by a confederation of press outlets whose loyalty to the Democratic Party far now overshadows its obligations to inform.
Finally, here’s the entirity of the Joe Rogan interview with Greenwald that went up three days ago:
Haven’t watched all of it yet (for onething, it’s three hours), but the first part of it covers Edward Snowden and a leftwing history of South America and Brazil. He said President Trump being willing to get into a pissing contest with the CIA was “kind of cathartic.” A discussion of fake news. Some of the Biden stuff starts show up at 38 minutes in.
The fact that the Biden camapign hasn’t denied the authenticity of the Hunter Biden lap top fils is what Greenwald feels is “the key point” in establishing their authenticity. “There was never any evidence that Russia had the slightest thing to do with it….It’s definately true that these documents are authentic.”
“Everyone knows the reality…The reason is that [the media are] all desperate for Trump lose. That’s the reality. They all want Biden to win. And so they don’t want to report any information, and any stories, that might help Biden lose. In part because they want Biden to win, but also because, in their social circles, everyone essentially is anti-Trump and pro-Biden, and they don’t want to spend four years of being accused of having help Trump won [sic], like they were in 2016 when they reported on those emails that were linked by Wikileaks. And it’s just fear. They don’t want to be yelled at. They don’t want to be scorned in their social circles. And so they’re willing to abdicate their journalistic function, which is reporting on one of the most powerful people in the world in Joe Biden. In part because they want to manipulate and tinker with the election using journalism, but in a much bigger part because they’re scared of being yelled at on Twitter. It’s fucking pathetic. It’s going to ruin people’s faith in journalism for a long time, even more so than it already is ruined. For good reason. I now defend people who say ‘Fake news’…It’s just true”
