If you missed our livestream Clubland Q&A on Friday afternoon, here's the action replay. Simply click above and settle back for an hour of my answers to questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the planet. Election fraud predominated, but we also got to Covid, Christmas, commercials and risk-averse Republicans.
You don't have to be a Mark Steyn Club member to listen to the show, so please click away and enjoy it. But I do thank Steyn Clubbers for, as always, some excellent questions on this edition of our Q&A, and we'll pick up some of the ones we didn't get to in the days ahead.
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How can they say that on one hand systemic racism and voter suppression that they have yet to prove is real yet systemic voter fraud that has had hundreds of people swearing under the penalty of perjury are not? The left can throw people in jail with one anonymous source and impeach a president with one phone call with Ukraine, yet we need libraries of evidence to prove our case and when we do present it, it's an attack on the integrity on the election.
Brian, you're exactly right but who will publicly make these points? Fox or any of the cable news sources won't. Americans need to hear the unvarnished truth for a change instead of partisan propaganda, and that goes for both sides.
Republicans need to go on the attack and start publicly accusing the Democrats/Biden of being evil and corrupt along with other inflammatory language ("cheaters" sounds too school playground-ish). And, as you suggested, accuse them of systemic electoral fraud. I know that they won't do that, as we've already seen, but that's the only way you can level the playing field. Maybe someone with nothing to lose, like a senator or congressperson who isn't going to run again. They're all such stinking cowards, but I think they'd be surprised at the support they would get which would counterbalance the vitriolic hate from the Left.
If there's any upside, it's the fact that the complicity of Republican pols and "conservative" media in the flagrant attack on the Republic is on display for all to see. Whatever the election outcome, both groups eventually need to come crashing down.
As Mark noted, people need to have guts - and push back against "decorum thugs" like Chris Wallace.
Remember, remember!
The 4th of November.
The election treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why a stolen election
Should ever be forgot!
I invite my fellow MS Club members to add verses.
I was kind of surprised as Rush was in Friday and I don't recall this ever happening before. On my drive home this afternoon, I was just in time to catch the last half-hour of our local affiliate's Sunday Best of Rush show and, lo and behold, it was our very own Last Undocumented Guest Host before the Border!
We need an Emergency Injunction against the Electoral College voting before such time as the serious allegations of Irregular and Illegal voting and vote-counting can be properly investigated. A Citizen's Petition. Any lawyers out there? Can it be done?
"any lawyers out there ?"
Half the Mark Steyn Club seem to be lawyers.
I share Mark's sentiments on this lot.
Cheers.
My last comment may not have been clear. I did not mean there should be only 1 district, that's a version of the national popular vote which I believe would be a bad idea. I mean something between a few hundred to a few thousand districts.
Serious electoral reform: 1 independent district for 1 independent elector
White is the new black.
Fascists, socialists, antifa, national socialists, Bernie Bros and crusties are all wearing black, so I suggest that the uniform du jour for conservatives is white.
That will have the left gibbering about the "white supremacist movement".
Crisp, starched and pressed, please. Add a touch of Red and Blue.
Perhaps I can be of some help to some of you, even Mark. Now some below are arguing about whether this is a legal or political matter. Here's how things work here in the U.S.A. If a political issue is won by the Left, that's the end of it, case closed. If it's won by the Right, then it becomes a legal matter.
Now here's where I help Mark. He says that "you're not going to be able to find legislators or judges willing to overturn what is perceived to be the will of the people." Ouch. I might've let Mark slide if he'd said "the will of some people", but as stated, that's ridiculous. You can find such people everywhere. Roe v. Wade, Gay Marriage, California Prop 187, these were all decisions judges made knowing full well they were voting against the will of the people. Well, some people who happened to be a majority.
However, Mark is nobody's dummy and he did bring up a new group of some people -- the ones who will come to your house and "peacefully protest" at 3:00 AM. The police won't protect you from them and you'd better not try to protect yourself, either. Let's say you're a judge or legislator who has done something that favors the police. When the mob shows up, you'd better not show them that you have a gun or a baseball bat or use hurtful language with them or those same police will show up and be very apologetic when they arrest you. And then you'll go before a judge who doesn't want that mob at his house.
I hope this helps some of you understand the situation here in the good old U.S. of A.
You forgot the part where the people conservatives keep electing don't really care what happens to those who elected them, and if you take up arms against the thugs taking over the country or the the thugs who now enforce the police state, you will get arrested, imprisoned or even murdered by some of the same folks who stand by and allow riots and looting. The next four years are going to seem long and longer without the president distracting the vermin from decent Americans.
Steve, you made some great points. "The will of the people" has been subverted by the Dems for their own gain. If you achieve a victory through fraudulent means then the win is negated if the cheating is discovered. That's how things usually work in a functioning democracy. Heck, it happens in sports all the time as athletes who are found to use illegal substances have their titles, medal or victories stripped from them.
As you said, it's maddening to believe that judges and legislators would be so cowardly as to refuse to rectify wrongs being done to legal voters and the Constitution because they are afraid of the "the mob". If what the mob wants is unconstitutional and illegal then direct action by law enforcement or the military should be permitted.
I think parallels can be made with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's where there was rampant intimidation and threats of violence against officials who dared to undo segregation. It's also a moral question as well as a legal one: do you have the right to protest, intimidate and threaten the law-abiding because you want to maintain a status quo (in this case the Dems systemic voter fraud) that is unlawful and unethical?
Mark replies:
The sporting comparison is a good one, Aly, that objectors to this heist might usefully deploy: Joe Biden is the Lance Armstrong of presidents, etc.
That there will be more "mostly peaceful protests" is a certainty, according to Trevor Loudon (interview: "America's 'Unfolding Socialist Revolution' and Connections to China's Communist Party") - but this will be nothing compared to rule by one party state where all opposition is eliminated. #BidenCheated
PS. Remember - Biden is on the take from a regime that harvests the vital organs of political opponents.
Correction: *political dissidents*. There are no political opponents.
Double that "ouch" -- agree with you completely...Here, deep in blue-land, the mob rules in every way. More and more, though, it seems the mob just rules.
At least Armstrong could ride a bike. Performance enhancement is measured in parts of a percentage while Biden is borderline DNF.
DNF? I wonder if DNS is more appropriate.
Kris,
I agree 100%. I used to think there was hope supporting mainstream Repubs. I have fully and completely given up on that idea.
Ayn Rand, the founder of the philosophy of Objectivism was a survivor of Soviet Communism, so she knew first hand that horror. She hated and feared socialists and their expressions of utterly fake caring and self-serving altruism. (for recent example see "Masks aren't to protect you, they are to protect others," "To protect others you must not go to work, or restaurants, or your relative's home for a holiday" (unless you are Dem Gov of this or Dem Mayor of that, in which case eat, drink, and be merry as we have enslaved the peasants!!!) She many times railed against anti-trust laws as a purely totalitarian concept.
While her philosophy in my mind is much closer to libertarianism that to mainstream conservatism, my point in the previous paragraph was to show she was entirely antithetical to 20th Century Liberalism.
Yet who did Ayn Rand "denounce" in her final lecture? None other than Ronald Regan. She opposed Regan because he felt that he was fake, at least in his commitment to personal freedom. She felt that Regan's promotion of the "Moral Majority" and Pro-Life, at the expense of advocating for basic economic freedoms meant that he was not serious. You might not agree with her concerning Regan, abortion, or the 1980's Moral Majority, but she did have a point then and certainly now about freedom and repubs . Since 1981 the left (the Democrats) have continued to march against individual rights, both economic and societal. In 2021 we now live with anti-democratic, judicially-demanded abortion, gay marriage, and open borders, and are subject to a suite of non-legislative dictatorial healthcare and other edicts from tinpot Governors that have abrogated nearly all of the personal rights set forth in the Bill of Rights. And nearly all Republican officials, both State and Federal, have done absolutely nothing of substance in opposition. Most have joined the bandwagon in support.
And what rationale have the dems given for all of this? Meaningless utterly fake altruism, "we are all in this together..." "If it saves one life ..." "You must mask up for others..." etc etc. All the while the actions of leading Dem Pols like good King Newsom and evil Queen Whitmer have shouted loudly and clearly, "Do As I Say, Not as I do."
The Republicans are dead, Long Live a New Party!!!!!
Mark,
Your comment "Joe Biden is the Lance Armstrong of presidents" made me think about the nature of cheating or fraud.
Lance Armstrong's defense of his actions, and his insistence that he did not cheat, was not frivolous. While finally admitting to blood doping, he explained that since every serious competitor used the drugs, if you didn't you were not playing on a "level playing field" and were not competitive. He was correct in that the use of synthetic oxygen carriers was thought widespread in the 1990s, even after their use in international cycling had been banned.
When everyone playing a game knows that violating unenforced or unenforceable rules is common and necessary to be competitive, is it cheating to violate those rules? In other words, if the governing authority of a sport or competition makes rules they knowingly don't enforce, and looks the other way when violations occur, isn't it a waste of time to compete if you follow those rules? What some might say was cheating, Lance Armstrong said was not. From his point of view he followed perhaps not the "letter of the law," but certainly the traditional customs and practices of how the game was actually played by the players on the field (or race course).
I believe that you have pointed out that election corruption by big city political machines is a longstanding American tradition. Are Republicans so stupid as to not know this? If Republicans knew, why have they tolerated it for so long? From the Democrat's view, rigging elections in big cities in the plain sight of the Republicans, like they have since the late 19th century, must not really be cheating. Don't they have a point, in view of the fact that the Republicans have had opportunity after opportunity, the last being in 2016-2017, to fix the problem, yet did nothing?
The systemic failure doesn't lie with the Democrats. They are evil socialists and like the corrupt system. The failure lies completely and entirely with the Republicans, and the Supreme Court is not going to save them.
You raise good points, but I detest "hashtag" anything however and refuse to participate.
Totally agree, Charles - ever since Michelle O's "#BringBackOurGirls" plea to Nigerian jihadists, I've detested obnoxious, empty "hashtags"... so use them a bit ironically. Sometimes it's useful for formatting Steynisms which would annoy leftists who might happen to read them, such as TooStupidToSurvive. "#BidenCheated" is apparently popular, so I don't object to its widespread use (though I'm not actually on Twitter).
Appreciate all the election commentary, and look forward to more.
PS. Is there reason to be cautiously optimistic in view of the move by Texas?
Sports figures were at one time pretty guarded with their professional reputations and don't like having their carriers being put under a cloud of suspicion or have an asterisk on it. Now it seems that as long as you have a fall guy, you can get away with cheating or if you know the people who do the judging, you can get away with it too. Ask the Houston Astros if they plan on vacating their World Series championship anytime soon and the answer is a big fat "no". The left does this in plan sight because they have allies to cover for them and to justify the result even if it is tainted. They don't care if even a hundred million of us believe the election was a sham because they'll say "What ya gonna do about it?" So, what are we gonna do about it?
Yes, I am cautiously optimistic and hopeful that there might be some truth shed on the election corruption that Democrats have caused in the big cities of the US. That the apparent election result might be overturned? Less so.
As Alan Dershowitz said, "Texas deserves an A+ for creativity." I feel they deserve more than that, Texas deserves a full hearing before the court. A state suing another state has the right to file its case directly in the Supreme Court. The case is not frivolous and should be heard. I have not read the complaint, but I understand that one of Texas' chief allegations is that the "manner" of choosing the electors in the states named in the complaint did not conform to Art II, Sec 1 of the Constitution, and that this failure made the entire election suspect and illegal. Art II Sec 1 empowers the state legislature to determine the manner of choosing the electors named to the Electoral College, and in the defendant states Texas alleges other powers, like Governors and Courts, illegally over ruled the legislature's will expressed in state statues.
The argument seems completely reasonable, but with any lawsuit harm or damage is generally an element. Courts like to conserve their resources, and generally follow a "no harm no foul rule." Hearing cases without a damage or harm element seems an academic exercise and is generally frowned on. So, while it may be that the fact that the Constitution was violated in the manner alleged in the lawsuit seems apparent and proven (or easily proven), does this violation mean that the election was not free and fair? Did Texas suffer any harm? I sure they have alleged harm, but can Texas offer evidence to prove it to the required legal standard? I can't say.
I could not begin to predict how the Supreme Court might react. They may refuse to hear the case or they may not. They may take the case only to dismiss it without ever reaching the merits of the case. They could return the election results to the four states and order the legislature to choose the electors. How would that turn out?I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Brian,
Maybe, but with respect to Lance Armstrong, I believe that his persecution years after the fact was unjust. The French got tired of their cheaters not being able to keep up with Cheater Armstrong. The decision to punish one competitor who conveniently enough was not French but American, and not punish other French violators was overtly political in my judgment. The French Tour de France officials didn't and probably still don't care about blood doping, they just were sick of an filthy American repeatedly winning the Tour de France.
With respect to Democrats, yes, you are right. They didn't just say "What ya gonna do about it?," they knew the repubs were not going to do anything about it. See the reaction of the repub leaders in Georgia. Those Georgian repubs are more afraid of the dems than they are interested in free and fair elections for their own supporters.
To answer you question, I will never ever give make another campaign contribution or openly support a repub candidate. I am not going to support a dem, and I may have to support the lesser devil repub at the ballot box, but I do believe the only chance for a resurgence of freedom in the US must begin with the annihilation of the Republican Party and the founding of a pro-freedom, and necessarily anti-corporate new party.
With more lawsuits in the future from Texas and others, if they don't work, I know it's been asked and scoffed at, but the only other path we could take is to secede from the union and form our own nation with the states we won with Trump as our leader and Biden can lead their woketopia. I seriously doubt seventy three or more million supporters are going to accept living in a Biden presidency and even more so that there won't be some who will take more extreme measures to voice their displeasure.
Thanks for responding to my comment, Mark! Pride comes before the fall, but it's fun to tell folks, "Oh, Steyn? Yeah, I was reading him before he was a big shot!"
"I miss life." Amen. I miss talking to my barber like a real person rather than bumbling through a cloth in an empty room. I loathe not being able to take communion. I can't stand walking down the street and not seeing the smiles of other passersby. Hell I just hate having my glasses fog up constantly because of the mask. Is it even effective? Who knows, but it makes our politicians look compassionate. This isn't The Stand - this is just the opposite: a greater than 98% chance of recovery if you're under the age of 60. Is it worth killing most of the country to potentially save a few? When our politicians made the choice to lock us down in perpetuity, I wondered: what do the elderly, the most vulnerable, think of this rush to inaction? Suppose you're a Baby Boomer, dad served in WWII, you came of age during Vietnam, saw the end of the Cold War, 9/11, grandkids, the whole nine yards, you get to the point where you can go anywhere and do anything...and the government says "no you may not." Everyone hypes the death count, but in this eternal quarantine, is anyone really living?
"Is it worth killing most of the country to potentially save a few?" -- No, no, a thousand thousand times no...Walking around among the masked tonight, I could not stop thinking about WWII -- perhaps because it's the eve of 7 December or because I'm reading today a book on Ardennes 1944 (where one of the kindest, gentlest, and most humane men I've ever known fought -- something I did not know until he died two years ago). Conscripted and enlisted men gave their lives, body parts and often minds to push back fascism in WWII. They lived among rats and with lice in desperately cruel conditions. And what have we got today? Grown adults cowering in fear, denying their children an education, subjecting themselves to the whims of government officials, and forfeiting freedom because they have bought into hysteria over a politicized virus. We should not have locked down, acquiesced to a lockdown, for one second. Adults are disgracing themselves. If they do not man up, all really is lost. The masks -- oh, the masks, how they push me to fury. Does no one recall the symbols of submission? That is what the masks are; they will not and cannot protect anyone from the virus.
When over a quarter of the population believes the election was stolen and they are told to just shut up, sooner or later some hothead is going to shoot someone. Maybe it will be an angry restaurateur reacting to an oh-so-regretful cop giving him a $10,000 fine, maybe a patriot clash with BLM/Antifa or maybe during a planned insurrection -- somebody is going to get killed. Will the MSM throw a blanket on the incident or go full wall-to-wall White Supremacy 24/7?
Of course, when China makes a move, a well publicized terror attack kills some innocents or war returns to the Middle East, the neocons can whip up some patriot fervor to unite America once again.
The Imperial City sleeps soundly in their beds tonight.
Taiwan, Walt.
Joe owes Xi.
"Will the MSM throw a blanket on the incident or go full wall-to-wall White Supremacy 24/7?"
It's the mainstream media and social media giants who will have blood on their hands, having acted so irresponsibly to suppress and censor the facts.
There are hundreds of brave citizens presenting evidence under penalty of perjury - and being threatened by the Left - and Jack Dorsey is telling the world that their claims are "disputed"?!!
No doubt you'll be fact checked for not having the right "opinion" on the matter when it comes up and will be lectured as to what the "correct" opinion is based on the "facts".
One look at weirdbeard Jack Dorsey and I shake my head. He's the demon spawn of Tim Berners-Lee and Ted Kaczynski, embracing technology and proving its baleful impact at one and the same time. Pity his grooming follows the Unabomber's Sasquatch chic and not TB-L's spit and polish. One look at Mark Zuckerberg, however, and I can't wait to see @jack's weirdbeard again.
Odds are good that some time within the Harris administration, China will move on Taiwan. Will the world respond? Only with blustering and threats but quite quickly all will settle back down and China will have taken their next step without opposition.
From what I gathered from the responses to the comments I made, this is it, we're gonna lose and we're going to take it. An appropriate quote from Star Wars: Episode III below.
Padmé: So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.
The applause: from the radicals, never Trumpers, big tech, mainstream media, academia, and the global cabal set out to destroy him and our values. Liberty must die for Trump to go down and they're going to get it. I want to believe Trump will win, but now, after all this, what does it matter to keep up hope. Maybe I'll be proven wrong but it's clear that these four years will be a blip on the radar and we will made to remember this as a "dark" time in this nation's history, vowed by our newly "elected" leaders to never happen again.
But Brian - we won the moral case! We won the election!
Mind you - WW1 started with an assassination.
One shot in Concord MA was heard around the world.
Just keep your head and your buttocks down.
It's not the starting, it's being there at the victory parade that counts.
Otherwise, we'll meet in the Halls of Valhalla!
I was raised and live in the deep south. There were guns in my father's house and in his father's house. I own several guns and lots of bullets. I can aim a gun and shoot fairly well. So can my sons. That said, I have never been a soldier, and am not ready to be one. I have way too much to lose and have a comfortable life.
Lets wait and see what ole Uncle Joe does. The democrats have this repeated behavior of selling their own voters out even before they sell out the opposition. My prediction is this: The dems will sell out their voters, overreach in some areas and outrage the opposition. In two years, if not this month in Ga, we will have a divided government and more or less stalemate.
We need a new party to replace the corporatist Repubs. Can this be done in four years? I hope so.
I believe that Joe won't make it one day in office. The radicals will remove him and they will try to get rid of the establishment as well. They are much more able to do so with the mob in their back pocket. Media outlets and big tech can try to stop the mob but they'll buckle to them than to have their headquarters be burnt to the ground. Biden may think he's in control but just as Dr. Cocteau found out in the movie Demolition Man, he doesn't.
I'm not sure if they will go that fast. Like termites, they're having so much fun chewing their way through the building that they don't want it to fall down just yet. Also, they might want to wait awhile to make sure Kamala is ready for prime time. After all, she imploded very early in the Democratic presidential nominating process. In the same way that Hillary reminded a lot of women of the mean, brainy, manipulative girls they didn't like in high school, Kamala is a light-complexioned, privileged, upper-middle-class mixed-race woman - heck, she's not even really American, let alone African-American - who just assumes that her partly African ancestry qualifies her to speak for - and speak down to - people who have actually experienced African-American life and culture. I can't help thinking that a lot of black men in particular - and black women to a lesser extent - pick up on her air of superiority and don't like her. Plus which, there's that grating, inappropriate cackle. So she will probably wait to trigger the 25th Amendment until Old White Joe's mental incapacity becomes obvious.
Oh my, Colin. Wassail!!
Termites keep on chewing even after the structure collapses. Termites don't think about the future.
I've never held a gun in my hand let alone know how to shoot one, but I would be willing to learn if that's what it takes to save my country. You don't have to have military experience to take up arms against an enemy. Those who fought in the Revolutionary War (or were in militias) were mostly farmers, laborers, merchants, tradesman, etc. with little previous military experience until they joined the Continental Army.
You're being honest in your admission of not wanting to engage in activities that would negatively affect your life. However, this is the problem with conservatives in general (myself included) and why we are rarely moved to action on any issue, no matter how passionate they are about it. Our values lie in the everyday aspects of life - family, friends, work, faith (for many). Politics and its by-products are a necessary evil that we only have to confront occasionally. Conservatives push such issues to the back of their minds and usually only address them during an election cycle.
The Left is the polar opposite - they live and breathe political dogma and ideology, and embrace activism as their life's blood. Naturally, they will be the ones to prevail whenever there's a clash of wills or ideas. All this has to change if we are to save what is precious to us about America. If not, one of these days we will wake up to find that our values have been made irrelevant, obsolete, even criminalized. We've seen it happen in China with the Cultural Revolution, in the Soviet Union with the purges, and wherever totalitarianism exists.
Loved your comment and had to reply. Yes, we're afraid of losing what we have but if we lose this time, what we have will never belong to us anymore but will become property of the state or in their words "public goods". The main question should be:
What injustice in this nation would have to happen for you to say you'd be willing to risk it all for?
I don't like conflict as much as the next person, but we shouldn't be bullied by these radicals and experts who have for the most part only thought about themselves and could care less about those who disagree with them. We shouldn't have to go to school each day giving our lunch money to the bully and come home hungry every day.
One last thing. These Republicans that tell us "We'll get them next time in two years." First off, there won't be a next time. Secondly, if god willing there is a next time, it will be someone else and not you. We need to let them know that if they went on record as being a never-Trumper, a RINO, or decide to endorse the left on something that we don't agree with, then the term that we gave them will be their last and they will never be welcomed by us or allowed to represent us ever again. If they buckle to pressure from the left, maybe they should start buckling to seventy plus million Trump supporters that believe they were robbed.
If they can rig the vote as efficiently and effectively as we all seem to believe, then winning at the ballot box is likely no longer possible. They may no longer fear voter reprisal at their overreach. We may be losing the last peaceful option.
By rigging the vote in this matter, they've made voting in person pointless or even voting at all. They'll just delay the results till they get the votes to win regardless as to the increase we get for our side. Like Mark Steyn mentioned of Hungary's 49% in his populism vs post-democracy post, we have been damned the extremist fringe.
If you're a Canadian voting in a UK election, who do you vote for? I thought they elected MPs, but you're not from any member's district, so who do you vote for?
Local elections, Kevin. Not the General. Unlike the 3 yard long ballot paper of the USA, which starts with President and ends with county assistant dog catcher, the UK runs local and general elections separately. Or used to. Hence all that Tower Hamletsistan corruption.
That just makes it more puzzling to me. If it's a local election I wouldn't expect someone from another part of the U.K. to be able to vote, much less from another country. Are you saying someone from Liverpool or Toronto can vote for the mayor of London?
Mark replies:
Just to clear up what was a mere aside of mine, a Liverpudlian or Canadian or Tuvaluan can vote for the Mayor of London if he's resident in London. All three are also welcome to stand as Mayor of London. Bryan Gould is a New Zealander now back in New Zealand (he's the brother of the guy who made Sudoku at hit) - but when he was resident in England thirty years ago he was Member of Parliament for Dagenham and a Labour Party bigshot.
The exception - which Mark has written about - is Australia, as Section 44 of the Constitution disqualifies "Any person who is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power...".
Never mind being on the board of Huawei; the real worry is Au-UK dual citizenship.
Mark replies:
Thank you for reminding me of that, Kate. Who can forget such landmark Aussie jurisprudence as those High Court twits fretting over whether a "British Overseas Citizen" owes allegiance to "HM The Queen in Right of the United Kingdom", which is a big no-no, or merely Her Majesty in a more general, amorphous sense, which is apparently just about acceptable to Their Nitwit Lordships.
That belongs with transgender bathrooms and Confederate statues in the category of things we'll be talking about when the mullahs nuke us or (more likely) Beijing does its EMP attack.
And as you noted, Mark: Tony Abbott (one of many compelled to renounce British citizenship) would have been the perfect replacement for May/ Johnson/ next Tory leader. https://www.steynonline.com/8232/dual-to-the-death
PS. Around the same time as the section 44 malarkey, we had Senator "Shanghai Sam" (Dastyari) doing the CCP's bidding: PRC passport not necessary.
That's why Our Lordships are paid the big bucks.
Though I thought us Aussies stood up to Huawei very well with no help from Yanks, Canucks etc.
Sam needed a CCP passport .
Tony would have liked a Vatican passport
Cheers.
I believe the testimony of the majority of the Republican poll watchers and poll challengers that claim they were restricted from observing the vote counts etc. There is some stunning video evidence to back there claims both in the subpoenaed security film in the Georgia public facility and in the news clips of boarded up windows at various other counting locations in other states with banned GOP poll volunteers watching angrily from the street or at great "impossible to see anything" distances inside. Untold thousands of votes were undoubtedly counted illegally during these many hours.
These well documented lack of chain custody or illegal acts by Democrats are enough to demand a full forensic examination of all of the affected states. (A re-election is not possible due to time limits.) If, you add the insecure Dominion "calculating" machines to the mix, no reasonable person could ever have any confidence that a fair outcome of the election was ensured.
The Democrats are sleazy and eloquent experts at deflecting their criminal responsibility by shaming the squishiest Republicans into not even trying to find the truth. This entire election fiasco was primarily caused by the Democrats incompetence and/or deliberate illegal actions; but they always manage to convince their dopey supplicants otherwise. 2 weak GOP Governors did implement election policies that the Democrats were demanding but these were unconstitutional changes also driven by the Democrats.
But the MSM (and some at FNC) are mainly blaming Trump once again for the chaos and for not surrendering the election to the corrupt Dem machine or falsely admitting his guilt, just like they blamed him for the Russian Collusion turmoil and the ludicrous Impeachment sham.
Muscular stuff, D. What would you say to the notion that it was the proliferation of early/mail voting and the sending out to all and sundry, including the deceased, of early/mail ballots which really caused the bulk of the problem in this election, and that the problem arises principally from yet another instance of 'flu epidemic panic?
For my part, I'm deeply suspicious that the left has throughout the West made far better use of the 'flu epidemic panic than the right to execute its policy and pursue its interests, and I don't doubt that some thought went into ways to take advantage of the panic. The Right offered pathetically little resistance, however, and in some cases played right along. Would you ascribe that to innocence or complicity?
These Democrats are criminals. They are the same ones who believe in a 'living constitution,' mostly peacefully protest, riot, burn, destroy, maim and kill. They are not concerned with the niceties of a fair election. They learned that they will not be punished -- not even interfered with. So this is not a conspiracy, it is a vast criminal enterprise with incredibly high stakes.
It's easier to take advantage of something if your side instigates it in the first place, S.
We know this was a *plandemic*: We just don't know exactly who was involved in addition to the CCP and the WEF.
Thanks, W. I take it then that you rule out "pirate" efforts by individual cheats as a significant portion of a vast body of fraudulent votes. Have you any sense of the number of the fraudulent votes and, if such a number is sizeable, how it might be detected?
I must say, I am myself inclined to ascribe criminality to politicians of the populist "Robin Hood" cut - robbing the wicked rich to feed the helpless, downtrodden poor, the intrepid heroes of the starving millions, if ever there were starving millions. Guess you can't eat the looted television set. If a great number of fraudulent ballots are involved, it would make it easier to catch the swine at it, wouldn't it?
Well, we live in hope.
Thanks, K. Cogent as ever. So, schemers, not opportunists? I have myself encountered evidence of quite intelligent, foresightful calculation in left-wing organisations - mostly trades unions, of course. I'd like the Democrats' mastermind to be discovered, because he/she has been well-hidden. It's not Speaker Pelosi, for sure: much of what she does and says strikes me as self-defeating and impulsive. Actually, a little speculation might be fun. The senile codger with personal troubles and his fingers stuck in the till? His lieutenant seems to be possessed of a measure of cunning, for sure, 'though her intellect hardly overwhelms one. The "squad"? Heaven help us! Representative Sanders might be their best and brightest. Or is there an unseen Antifa spectre in the background? Or somebody from Hollywood who moonlights in the BLM brains trust? Anything is possible in these strange times. I hope that the swine can be fingered and arraigned.
I can buy the schemers line. Sufficiently clever schemers, well, I do love surprises, and that would be one. I shall have to give up using the Democrats as the butt of my tiny fund of stoopid jokes, of course. If they planned this whole 'flu thing so that they could manipulate the voting, they outwitted the lot of us, hands down.
Not that I'm in any brains trust, think tank or what have you. They don't even want my body parts. John Brown's body is in better shape than my brain.
The early/mail in voting system and the proliferation of millions of unsolicited ballots certainly provided a great opportunity to cheat but it took human scoundrels to create the problems by breaking the law beginning with the unconstitutional unsolicited mail outs, the illegal ballot harvesting and then the fraudulent counting and Dominion vote calculations. Any Democrat that attempts to blame any act of fraud on the epidemic is a liar.
You wrote---"The Right offered pathetically little resistance, however, and in some cases played right along. Would you ascribe that to innocence or complicity?"
It might have been "innocence" by some in the beginning due to insufficient knowledge about the Chi Com viruses potential but later it had to be complicity as in Ohio Governor DeWine's foolish attempts to surpass or equal the draconian orders of Whitmer and other dictatorial Dem governors.
Walt wrote--"They learned that they will not be punished--not even interfered with."
That is arguably the biggest reason for the mass fraud in this election. During the Michigan Senate Hearing about the election fraud, one of the Trump team witnesses eloquently exposed that fact. I wish I could link you to the hearing and her informative and detailed testimony about the long-term corruption in Detroit. Dr. Tarver is a self-described Republican activist who had worked for the Secretary of State in Detroit for over 2 decades but was "delighted to retire" when Benson became the SoS.
When a Democrat on the Committee arrogantly asked Dr. Tarver if the election corruption in Detroit was as bad as she claimed, why didn't her majority Republican members in the state legislature pass laws to prevent it. I can't replicate her great takedown but she basically stated that there have been sufficient laws for sometime to end the election corruption but the Dem mayors, Attorneys-General and Secretaries of State have never been willing to indict anyone and certainly not in any way that would come close to matching the corruption and election fraud.
Traver is a brave, black woman and said the fear of those in charge of being called a racist is one of the main deterrents in black dominated Detroit. Complicity is another.
Thanks, D. You make a coherent case.
"If they planned this whole 'flu thing so that they could manipulate the voting, they outwitted the lot of us, hands down."
And yet the vice dean/ vice director at Renmin University in Beijing is openly boasting about how the CCP helped get Biden elected (see link/ translation via Stephen McIntyre's twitter feed). Guess we'll have to infer the rest.
Oh, yes, K.: that's certainly consistent with the hypothesis. I can also attest that the left does have international bodies that do the thinking for them. The Third International preceded me, but the job was being done at the ILO when I was in management and the world's trades union movement and its political wing, the world's labour and SD parties, fell into line with the broad policies emanating from that quarter. I was personally acquainted with some of the leading lights: they possessed formidable intellects, and knew their onions.
That said, I can't vouch for the ILO still being at the centre of the unified left policy. You seem to be suggesting that it is the CCP, and you might well be right. It would be difficult to find evidence of that, though, because the CCP is capable of maintaining secrecy in a way that the Third International or the Comintern or the ILO never was. There are however two obvious reasons for treating the hypothesis cautiously, and I'm sure that you're fully aware of them. Firstly, I know for sure that there are many Democrat office-bearers who baulked at marching to the ILO's drum and I suspect that there would be more who would not knowingly take their orders from Peking - or Beijing, as we must now say, even today. There would have to be an intermediary body whose CCP affiliation is kept well sub rosa, and I don't know what it is. nor do you, I think, or it would have come up in our conversations on these wonderful boards.
Secondly, I very much doubt that Western trades unions have any illusions about the implications for their own power and membership (and indeed continued existence) of the CCP's overt agenda and of potential Chinese hegemony. I'm aware that in the United States the unions do not pull the Democrats' strings as they do those of the international labour and social democrat parties, but more would have to emerge to be confident that they would go along with CCP planning, 'though I guess we could both name several trades unionists who are very warm to the People's Republic, and see themselves playing a leading role in an expanded People's Republic, evil and deluded dolts that they are.
So, your hypothesis is one to which I am very warm, 'though it remains to be proven. I'm also warm to W.'s view of the Democrats, on the same terms.
Meanwhile, I'll continue to venture a little fun at the Democrats' stupidity. I'll do no less at the expense of President Trump. One may as well have a laugh as the West falls.
Like the ChiComs, the Democrats think in the long term. To follow up on their successes in ballot harvesting in 2018, the Dems had legal teams preparing the ground in the battle ground states long before Covid-19 arose. The Republican establishment did nothing to counteract this even though it should have been obvious. The pandemic just allowed an acceleration of the ballot harvesting schemes of the Dems. So, as per usual, the Democrats play for keeps while the Republicans play by the rules. If the Democrats don't like the rules, they change the rules, again the Republicans will play by the new rules. Only Trump can break this cycle. I'm still praying but the odds seem long.
I don't know too much about election challenges everywhere, but I do know a little about them here in Louisiana. The bottom line is that there is nearly no chance that an election challenge can succeed in a Louisiana election beyond say, a justice of the peace election with only a small number of votes. The reason is is that the standard for overturning a Louisiana election is that you must prove that the decisive number of votes were cast for your opponent illegally. That is you must win an election challenge vote by vote. This can happen if your opponent was a criminal and bought a number of votes. Get the right number of voters to swear under oath they took a bribe and voted for your opponent and presto change-o the election is decided in your favor. Of course, the voter who so swears is admitting to what I believe may be a felony in open court, so this doesn't happen too often.
All the other shenanigans don't matter with respect to the election result. Failure of the election officials to follow the law may be criminal and malfeasance in office or maybe not. Of course the chief election officers ( the registrar of voters and clerk of court) work closely with the district attorney and may even be buddies. "It was all just a little screwup or you don't understand election law, so go home and shut up."
Over the last few weeks something has occurred to me. It has been a trend in law, promoted by the leftist civil rights bar and not opposed by the corporatist repub bar or repub congress, that civil rights discrimination claims can be proven without proof of actual discrimination. Statistical analysis, so-called disparate impact, and other BS methods, can take the place of proving that you were actually mistreated, if you are of the favored race, age, nationality, etc.
Shouldn't statistical analysis of very unlikely vote totals in various locations, or proof of failure to follow the election integrity laws by partisan election officials be enough to prove the election fraud claims? I don't know the truth of the facts about the election, but if half of what I have read is truth we have a great deal to be concerned about.
Finally, my one reservation about all of the claims of election fraud we have heard so far: It is very difficult to carry out a wide fraud scheme with many players. People like to brag and it is inevitable that someone in the conspiracy will run their mouth and spill details. I haven't heard this, has anyone?
Joe Biden, in an October 24 2020 podcast,boasted that his campaign has assembled the "most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics".
Colin,
Yes he did say that. Good one.
But consider and pity the source. Ole Uncle Joe's mind is nearly gone, poor thing. I suppose his body is nearly gone too. Last week he thought his dog was Donald Trump, tried give him a hard kick, and broke his foot.
Sadly I predict Uncle Joe's gonna be in a home before Spring. At least he'll have a whole bunch of new nurses to let him smell their hair and massage their shoulders.
Wonder what's gonna befall poor Kamala? They an'it never gonna let that woman be President. Oh, well.
- "... civil rights discrimination claims can be proven without proof of actual discrimination."
^^*THIS*^^
- "People like to brag and it is inevitable that someone in the conspiracy will run their mouth and spill details."
I'd characterise the election fraud as being *systemic*, rather than a conspiracy: it's routine, long-standing and baked-in (to use Veronica's allusion). It's so "normal", the other side of politics accepts it - and wears it - rather than confronting it. The history of Dirty Dems and dodgy elections as outlined by Mark in one of his shows was just... wow (at least to non-American listeners), and his observation - about HRC not demanding a recount in 2016, when the election was said to have been "stolen" from her (which it was, from the Dirty Dems' perspective) - is spot-on. The Dems/Deep State conspired to create a conspiracy theory in 2016 because the baseline fraud wasn't enough to overcome the margin of MAGA.
Thankfully, there are many good citizens coming forward to expose the 2020 fraud!
Mark replies:
I agree with you, Kate. As both Charles and someone or other in The Prisoner of Windsor observe, a conspiracy has to be tightly held. So, whatever this is, it is not a conspiracy, but something systemic and routine, if only to one side of this wretched system.
Kate and Marc,
I agree that the problem is systemic and that both the dems and the repubs seem to be fine with the system as it exists today. Both sides, not just the other side, accept the system as normal. How else do you explain the more than a century of toleration of corrupt machine politics in the big cities of the United States? Boss Tweed, Mayor Daly, Marc Morial, Lori Lightfoot, LaToya (the "Destroya") Cantrell, Bill De Blasio, etc etc etc. This is the heart of my argument that before we can have any hope of societal progress in the US, the nominal party of the right, the repubs, must be annihilated and replaced.
If the problem is systemic, and the answer to the problem is reform of the system, then you do not have a legal problem. Your problem is political. President Trump's ultimate problem is that he is stuck with trying to litigate a political issue in a law court. He is not going to win. As we have seen so far, he has struck out at the level of every state supreme court and I predict he will lose in the US Supreme Court, if the court even agrees to hear a case.
Do you really think the US Supreme Court will change the election results because President Trump advocates that there is a systemic problem with voting that everyone with even a very small brain knows exists and has existed for over a century? No, the Justices are not.
Do you really want the Court to decree as a legal matter a political or societal reform necessary to solve a political problem with the US elections system? That is the job of the political branches of government, not the judicial. Using courts to litigate societal issues has been the primary method of the left for many decades (think civil rights, voting rights, Roe v Wade, gay rights, gay marriage, primary school rights and taxes, illegal immigration) In my opinion that way is far more than a slippery slope, it is an express way to totalitarianism. With my partial list, do we need any further judicial activism? I voted for Trump, believe in Trumpism, and wonder if the election was free and fair. But, I don't want the court to intervene on a systemic problem without proof to legal standards, which is impossible I think.
Even if the problem is systemic, in the instant case of Trump vs Dem Machines, it does involve a very large conspiracy. To actually deliver the corrupt votes it takes a conspiracy of many workers working. Somebody's got to operate the machine of "machine politics."
I slightly disagree in that this time it was really over the top. I'm sure there is systemic cheating in every election. But this fraud was massive as evidenced by the numbers of ballots cast. I'm more likely to agree with those MSC members who have commented that for these poll workers and the others involved this was like a religious mission for them. They're rabid ideologues who are convinced that Trump is the New Hitler, as has been often said, and think they are doing something for the greater good.
Also, that theory doesn't take into account the curious behavior of Republicans, and not just the NeverTrumpers, but just about everyone in the GOP establishment along with conservative media (I'll never forget Fox turning on him so early on election night.). That part is unusual and reeks of a conspiracy within the party as I can't see them acting this way if this had been done to G.W. Bush or John McCain.
And finally, I think Trump tore down a lot of barriers and upended the status quo with his unorthodox behavior in office and how he communicated (tweets!) etc. I feel it gave the Left the green light to implement a more audacious and extreme agenda on every front, including elections. They saw that nothing of consequence happened to them or their minions during all the riots and violence throughout the summer, nor much push back on their autocratic COVID diktats, and that further emboldened them.
"President Trump's ultimate problem is that he is stuck with trying to litigate a political issue in a law court.[...] That is the job of the political branches of government, not the judicial."
Charles - what is the likelihood that the issue can be addressed and remedied by Congress on January 6th, per your Constitution? (See my reply to Al - below - re Congressman Mo Brooks.)
PS. As someone with no understanding of the complexities of this issue, I really appreciate comments by you and others along these lines.
"But this fraud was massive as evidenced by the numbers of ballots cast."
Totally agree Aly, and I've made the same point many times in recent days/ weeks.
It was the 2016 election in which the "standard" fraud was insufficient to account for Trump/ MAGA margin of victory. Walt Trimmer made the point months ago - to the effect that the Dems wouldn't make that mistake again. And he was right.
"I'd characterise the election fraud as being *systemic*, rather than a conspiracy." Couldn't agree more, K. Even had I not, it's by miles the shrewder position to adopt. Something akin to the Watergate tapes will be needed to prove a conspiracy. Proving systemic failure sufficient to create unacceptable doubt about the result is much, much easier.
Easier. It's still not likely to prove easy. Still, it seems more reasonable to hope that sufficient evidence to make that case will be forthcoming than it is to bet everything on conspiracy...
... which is not to say that there might not have been one. But it won't be proved by tweeting "fraud", even in capital letters, instead of marshalling evidence. And it won't be proved by handing the senate over to the Democrats. The entire country shouldn't become President Trump's funeral pyre.
If a candidate receives a majority of the Electoral Votes on Dec. 14 then Congress has nothing to do but certify the election. The Electors from each State are selected no later than Dec. 8 and cannot be changed thereafter. If things were going to change it would have to be in a hurry.
Well, Kate, with regard to your question concerning January 6, I would say less than zero.
For Congress to act on such a long standing problem as systemic corruption in federal elections will require that control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency be unified in one party. That is the lasting shame of President Trump's term of office. From January 2016 to January 2017 the Republicans had a chance to make changes. but they didn't act. Repub Senators and Representatives were afraid to be called racists and lose their seats in Congress. Remember, according to Democrat race baiters, any change that would increase the integrity of a US election is by definition minority voter suppression and racist.
I have been a broken record on this site, both with regard to comments to this article and others by Mr. Steyn. The problem in my view is not really the Democrats. They are, like the chi comms, evil socialists and must be defeated, to steal a phrase, "by any means necessary." That said Socialist ideas have never worked anywhere they have been implemented, and have never been really implemented without extreme force like in China and Russia. I hope that there are too many guns in the United States. And, while you can never be sure of how the US Military might go, there is still a strong freedom loving component to most US civil police forces and the US Armed Forces. I don't think they would murder their friends and loved ones because leftists told them to do so. My best evidence has been the almost absent use of real force in this coronavirus year. I still believe that there is hope that most people can be convinced that democrats and their ideas are evil given effort and time.
So, what is the "real problem?" The real problem is the Republicans. As I indicated above, when they have a real chance to do something, they don't act. Why? They are and have been under the total control of the Military / Industrial Complex. Sounds crazy right? Its not, unless you can explain Paul Ryan and 2016-17. The institutional Republicans of today are who Dwight Eisenhower warned us about in his last speech to Congress.
As a first step the Republican Party must be completely destroyed and a new party not controlled by corporate interests created. Maybe some individual Republican leaders can be saved and brought over to a new party, but most must become untouchable politically and sent home to live among the common peasants once again.
Charles,
Biden is either running a massive hoax, or he is exhibiting signs of dementia. A symptom of dementia is letting the truth out, as inhibitions are lost.
If Biden puts the boot on the wrong foot, John McCain style, we can assume he is running a hoax.
If Biden has another odd accident, we are at Mark's "happenstance" - again.
If Biden gets a black eye like Harry Reid whilst working out on his home gym, we have Chinese enemy action.
Kate, Segnes, and Aly,
Courts don't generally deal in grand statistical proof. To win a lawsuit, you must plead specific facts, then offer credible evidence that prove, in a civil case, that your evidence shows that your facts are "more likely than not" true.
There are exceptions, an employment discrimination "disparate impact" case. Proof there is completely unjust, in my opinion. That is the point I was trying to make be saying you could prove discrimination without evidence of any maltreatment. That is true. You "sort of" prove a general assertion with stats, and then that proof is taken as actual proof for the employee's mistreatment. Leftists' created this legal theory and leftist courts have implemented it. Do you want to follow this path to Hell?
I know that many if not most cases are proven through circumstantial rather than direct evidence. However, I fail to see how the number of votes cast are evidence of fraud. President Trump has been perhaps the most polarizing President ever, yes? Doesn't high turnout follow? How does high turnout prove vote fraud?
Finally, in most US legal jurisdictions, fraud cases are treated with special rules. It is easy to allege fraud in general but many times hard to explain specifically what the cheater did that was wrong. With regard to an allegation of fraud you must allege the exact acts that were fraudulent, then prove those acts, all with particularity (specificity). General allegations of fraud are not allowed. This rule is greatly magnified when "election fraud" is alleged. Because of the societal need for quick and definitive election results, in most places (in Louisiana where I live for sure) you must prove election fraud vote by vote, a nearly impossible standard.
I do understand the frustration with the current situation. I share it. It appears that there is just so much circumstantial evidence that something nefarious occurred that it just can't be ignored. That just isn't what, historically at least, has been considered of prime importance in US election law. What has always been of prime consideration has been a quick, definitive, and peaceful transition of executive power.
For the such ideals to be workable, there must be trust in the good faith of both parties. That is what I see has happened. I believe that we have lost all belief that the other side is acting in good faith. This is the systemic political, not legal problem that must be faced and solved.
I enjoy your posts Kate. Hard to stay optimistic for me in these recent days. Lost my little bird Pearl a day after Thanksgiving. I didn't know she was dying so Thanksgiving was the last day I spent time with her alive. I took her loss as a sign of things to come. I was hoping to have her looked at the next day but it was too late. I worry that it may be too late to save America as well. I hope I'm wrong. I hope that if things don't go well that I still can have a life but with the radicals in charge, who knows what will happen.
"[...]I fail to see how the number of votes cast are evidence of fraud." Indeed, C. The only possible quibble which I could foresee would apply when the number of votes cast exceeds the number or registered voters - and then the court dealing with a suit to overturn the election result would for that purpose concern itself only with the number by which votes cast exceed the number of registered voters. The criminal court in which instances of fraud are prosecuted would tackle all sound charges but overturning the election would be ultra vires in every instance of which I can conceive. Your observations about fraud cases are also very much to the point. I guess we can all agree that getting the courts to agree that election results must be overturned will call for a veritable ton of useable evidence and not merely instances and arguments. I anticipate that we would also all agree that the law should not be changed or varied in this regard because any change or variance culminating in overturning the result when ballots proving to be fraudulent do not account for the winning margin will remove protections and can too easily be used against one's own side.
This won't be the first time that sound legal principles have made it possible for wicked people to get away with crimes, and I know for sure it won't be the last. Frustrating, as you say, because it does sometimes seem that wicked people are about to benefit by their crimes.
Sure: we all hope that the legal challenge succeeds without establishing untenable precedents. The adult thing would be to prepare ourselves for the probability that, on present evidence, it will not. Even if we are sure that systemic or conspiratorial election fraud has indeed occurred, we need to think of ways other than overturning ther election result to deny the fruits to the Democrats. just in case more, decisive evidence isn't forthcoming.
Well, in my opinion, only in my opinion, but it seems that I keep good company in this matter.
Thank you for your explanation, though it was depressing to hear that all hope might be lost. What about the 66,000 plus votes in GA from underage voters? Isn't that solid evidence of some kind of fraud? That seems like a lot of votes for it to be happenstance (there's that word again!). I don't know what Biden's margin of victory was in GA in the end because I stopped looking, but I know it was close, within maybe 30,000 votes. How can a court ignore verifiable evidence which, if not deliberate fraud, indicates malfeasance on the part of the secretary of state?
They believe that to fix the injustice of voter suppression they had to counter with an even greater injustice. The constitution was nothing more than a suggestion to them, not a mandatory no if ands or buts about it. They know it's wrong but they're telling us "What you gonna do about it"? Listen to Judge Jeanine's opening monologue and she get's into Barr.
Hi Brian, thanks for your response. I'm obviously no legal expert but election tampering, vote rigging, buying votes, etc. is actually illegal. It's a crime, and should be prosecuted from that standpoint. A full investigation is warranted at the very least, especially if the crime appears widespread and part of a coordinated plan by a group (in this case a political party) that stands to gain from it. Voter suppression was never proven, only suspected, so regardless of what the Democrats think, they can't take matters into their own hands to undo one injustice by committing another.
Also, this situation is different from the 2000 election and its aftermath in that the Democrats never accused the Republicans of fraud but insisted there was an uncounted "undervote" in Florida which would have made a difference in the election result. The Equal Protection clause was cited because voters in some FL counties had been denied the right to cast their votes because of improperly functioning voter ballots and methods. I would imagine the same argument could be made here, the criminal aspect aside, as these irregularities occurred only in some states and counties.
Likewise with your posts, Brian. Try to stay positive - and tune in to Steve Bannon's "War Room" in between SteynOnline updates. Episode #556 includes an interview with the author of "Last Stands" (Michael Walsh).
After hearing Rep. Mo Brooks outline the significance of January 6th, I'm certain millions of Americans will be there to support him in the event that legal avenues are unsuccessful. In the meantime, the evidence of cheating is piling up beyond the ability of the MSM to suppress it.
If Matthew McConaughey and Russell Brand are criticising Hollywood hypocrisy - re the election challenge - there's always hope!
PS. Sorry to hear about your little bird.
"[...]I fail to see how the number of votes cast are evidence of fraud."
Under-age voters, illegal immigrant voters, interstate voters, bogus address voters, multiple vote voters, dead voters.
As Joe says... count every vote!
AlyM,
I am on your side.
Regardless of how much it pains me to answer you, no, the fact that there were 66,000 underage voters is not evidence of fraud. Your question "What about the 66,000 plus votes in GA from underage voters?" begs the question: "For whom did these illegal voters vote? If we accept the fact that there were 66,000 plus illegal underage votes, the issue of which candidate benefited is still unanswered. What evidence is there of the number of illegal votes cast for each candidate, or that all or even a majority of these votes were for Biden? So far in the United States, a secret ballot remains an inviolate privilege and protection for every citizen. I hope at least. So unless there is more beyond the inadmissible wish or opinion that only Democrats are bold enough to cheat on this scale (which I generally believe to be true) the mere, even if unexpectedly large, number of illegal voters proves nothing.
Yes, AlyM you are definitely on to something in your comment to Brian made Dec 6 at 11:36.
"Election Tampering, vote rigging, buying votes, etc are actual crimes." Yes, these are serious crimes in each State and the elements of such crimes that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt are laid out in statute. Prosecution of these crimes, including collection of evidence, indictment or filing a bill of information, arraignment of the defendant, and trial take way, way more time that is allowed for an election challenge. Definitive results on a very short time frame is the primary goal of election US election law. So, in general, commission of election crimes and/or incompetence or malfeasance by election officials almost never results in an election result being changed at the time of the election.
Rarely sometimes later the candidate who won is convicted or is so tarnished that they are removed or resign from office. That happened once at the Presidential level, Richard M. Nixon. Other "lesser" Presidents of both parties were damaged by bad acts and might have been convicted of various crimes but weren't, and didn't resign. See Bill Clinton and Warren Harding.
Doesn't all the current controversy and bad feeling on both sides mean that the facts and circumstances concerning the 2020 election should go through fair, full, and complete investigation? Some of those facts likely evidence criminal or civil violations or gross incompetence and others probably seem serious but can be explained. Don't all citizens of the United States deserve to know the full and complete truth of what happened?
If the Republicans hold the Senate, they can do just this. They can stop all action in the Senate and under their constitutional oversight power convene a hearing to examine all aspects of the election. They can continue this for the entire two year term of the Congress and essentially paralyze the US Government if they think it important enough. Do you think the Republicans will do this? I don't. At best they will hold a "show hearing" and make some fake "inspiring" speeches then appoint a special committee for the whole thing to go and die like the Russian dossier and FISA abuse scandals.
If the Democrats take the Senate, the Repubs are "off da hook." They will make even more strident, inspiring speeches and send out many many fundraising requests about how important it is to take back the Congress, and what tough acts they gonna take. Yeah.
Thanks for your candor and for pointing out something I didn't think of. Couldn't the Secretary of State examine these ballots? I would imagine they have the authority to delve into such matters where lawyers do not. And if by some miracle the courts find a criminal investigation is warranted, not just in Georgia, but elsewhere, then the truth will be discovered. Even if half those votes were for Biden, that's still enough to possibly affect the result of the election.
Just as important as the the sanctity of the ballot box is the assurance of a fair election. Ballot/voter privacy is rendered meaningless if an election is stolen and the corruption is systemic and widespread.
AlyM,
Well, I don't know about the Secretary of State doing anything, since I don't believe voters sign the actual ballot in any state, do they? In Louisiana we use voting machines and there is no way to determine how any particular voter voted, unless you can get the particular voter to testify to how he voted in open court (hence the issue with an election challenge). In any event time is running out. More importantly, again in most states I believe that the Secretary of State doesn't have any significant discretion with respect to certifying the vote. His duty is more or less ministerial.
There actually was a very long shot academic answer, but its chance has passed. Art. II, Section 1 reads in relevant part, "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
Per the cited clause, the Constitution does not require a popular vote for President at all. It is within the power of any state legislature to choose the Presidential electors directly as they once chose the US Senators. Of course no state legislature does this. Pres. Trump tried to get the legislatures in swing states he lost and which have Republican controlled state legislatures (PA and GA at least) to exercise this Art. II power and override the vote of the people. The Republican Legislators in both states refused. As much as I detest repubs these days, I don't know if their refusal was wrong. Pres. Trump didn't force the issue.
I recall there was a sort of side comment (what lawyers call "dicta") in Gore v Bush (2000) that suggested the Florida legislature could have directly chosen electors after the great difficulty the state election officers were having in determining the votes. Interesting but "dicta" more or less means language in a judicial decision that is not controlling authority. But ... the plain text of the Constitutional provision doesn't seem to place any limit on a legislatures power to choose electors. Could it be done after a failed election? it would have been a novel case for the Supreme Court.
The left wing would have gone berserk. They did when President Trump even brought the issue up last month. Their allies in the MSM called the idea "nonsense."
Very sorry to hear about the loss of your Pearl.
All of this is both fascinating and depressing (more of the latter, obviously). In California, voters sign the ballot envelopes but not the ballots themselves. It never occurred to me that you wouldn't be able to trace the votes because there's no ID on the ballots. It's bitter irony that the Dems are able to exploit the privacy and anonymity that voters are afforded, but made short work of similar protections for certain nonprofits during the Obama administration with deleterious effects on those targeted conservative organizations and their donors.
Thanks for the comment on my little one. I feel bad about losing her and feel it's my fault even though they said there was nothing I can do. I want to stay positive but it's hard to these days. The more this is dragged out, the more it is shown that the push to get rid of Trump no matter what is greater than the desire to uphold the constitution.
Great show. Not that surprised that it got torpedoed. When we lived in a Liberal constituency in the teeming metropolis of Adelaide, when Labour was governing the not-much-booming state of South Australia, our little corner suffered regular electricity blackouts, failures in telephone landline services, and various inconvenient little glitches in the sanitation services. Bit of a bugger when you're trying to run a business, and there's no "seems" about it.
Look forward to more torpedoes. Once the cherished and mollycoddled labour get the hang of industrial sabotage, it assumes the nature of a recreational form. Bit like recreational arson that way, really, and now we're talking big-time bugger. It misses the point to blame the problem on the resident socialist party, or big business, or even the Muslim enclave where laundry dries on the patios of buildings. Blaming to left and right eases the pain only briefly. You need to find the person responsible for the sabotage and pull him up, like a weed. Matters not whether he's a trades unionist, a Welsh nationalist, a BLM racist, a mutilated ex-woman or just a common-or-garden damned idiot.
And you have to handle the weeding-out discreetly, otherwise another social parasite will take up the sport.
I get a little heated. Sorry. It really was a great show, and I'd have liked more, but the intrusion of the world beyond the MSC was probably illuminating too. More coming, and it's no novellty.
Really a very good point about finding the party to blame, the individual person responsible and punishing them. I agree that is an essential change that should be made to bring the world back to its senses. I wish it could be. In my career I have handled several cases of very unjust regulatory persecution against people trying to help others, trying to follow the law and wished I could fight back against the government officials personally.
One big problem, at least in the jurisdiction I live in, is that there is a nearly bullet proof set of laws, rules, regulations, procedures, etc that are designed to frustrate, prevent, and eliminate civil claims against officials in their personal capacity. There is really no hope of holding a Secretary of this or that personally responsible. Under the law they just aren't generally personally liable for official acts (and what isn't official?, after all), and if they are they are personally liable it is limited to only to a tiny extent compared to the damage they may have caused.
That's not to say an incompetent or corrupt public official may not have criminal liability for public corruption or malfeasance in office. Not crimes many DA's may want to handle or vigorously prosecute though.
And all this is the law, before politics comes into play. Most politicians know their way around the courthouse and they know the "courthouse gang" way better than the average joe. The District Attorney doesn't have just a little power. That little right called "prosecutorial discretion" goes a long way.
Of course I may just be pessimistic, since I believe that that it is a truth of the universe that "all governments at all times, and in all places, are organized to protect the interests of the rich and powerful (and often corrupt)." Otherwise, how could you explain the other truth of the universe: "All pols are psychopaths?"
The answer is always at all times in all places less government. Less laws, less rules, less health regs, less masks, less fake and illusory rights, less welfare, less caring psychopathic pols, less government economic development and more personal responsibility. More live free or die.
I agree completely. The other "secret" that the left hide is that money and resources are everything. If you defund an entity, it essentially evaporates however this cuts both ways. The best way to remove regulation is to cut off their money supply. This is why the GST in Australia was a huge mistake, the gush of cash to the federal government was initially used as it should be, paying off debt and stashing it away for future liabilities. Then we had a "GFC crisis" and it has been red ink ever since from both parties. The left always showing concern for the debt levels but that is that good cop/bad cop routine rubbish to fool enough people to get their hands on the credit card. We can take a great deal of inspiration from the defund crowd, that is how you get rid of it.
You are right in the abstract, but I have the same answer to you as to Segnes. From your answer I think you know what I am going to say. It seems logical that if one cuts off the funding at the taxpayer source for this or that worthless program society could make progress.
But just like Segnes' idea to punish the responsible person, The pols just don't have it in them to really cut total government spending. Pols who make pledges to "cut spending at the source," "cut taxes forever, (even Trump in this case)" are either misinformed themselves or just lying. Pols on the left and on the right, everywhere, and all times can't bring themselves to cut their own power and wealth. They will just crash the plane of state into the ground at 1,000 miles per hour and kill us and them at the same time. It's all they can do.
I was listening to a "great courses" lecture about the history of the Byzantine Empire last week and something the professor said both resonated and disturbed me. The professor something to the effect that at some point in the history of that empire government spending was the source of almost all economic growth and societal prosperity. So, something like 1,200 years ago they were doing the same thing as the world and particularly the US does today. And while the Byzantine Empire lasted nearly 1,000 years, it had many ups and downs and spent its last centuries in a continuous decline.
In the end the Byzantines just couldn't keep the con going. Over time their power and wealth waned, and the Ottoman Turks took their city and their empire away from them. It seems to me that the United States and the rest of the free world stands at just such a precipice. The more things change....
As a side, my wife loves Mr. Steyn's books about the decline and fall of America. In the last few months she has reminded me over and over about an assertion in one of his books that it can be comfortable to live in a society which declines slowly from a great height, until the very end of it all. Living during that time, you live off the work and accumulated equity of the people who built the society without the effort of maintaining it. Since all new construction and maintenance stops, all those funds can be used for bread and circuses. Did the people living during the end of the of the Roman or Byzantine Empire know the end was near and would be catastrophic? Probably not. She keeps telling me to stop worrying and just enjoy the ride.
That is true however what is money at the end of things? It is essentially a unit of trust between the buyer and seller, when there is no most trust left it collapses. This was a disaster up to say a decade ago, it will not prove to be so going forward. Alternative currencies will rise up and move forward, the old, debt laden ones will evaporate in a cataclysmic farting noise. I am not saying that there will not be some interesting times ahead, however at the end of the day, if you are not in a big city, but are living in a community that can provide the basics for yourself and your loved ones, you will be just fine. Your wife is 100% correct, enjoy the show and have fun. She has the secret as someone articulated years ago to Mark:
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I read Steyn!!!
Yes indeed, C., and thanks for joining in. My view, for what it's worth, is that the law tends to become an ass as the proportion of laws - acts of the legislature, if you will - grows in relation to the corpus of legal principle. Legal principle is generally framed by great jurists. Acts of the legislature - laws - are framed either by politicians or on behalf of politicians. Find me the politician and I'll find the folly, as a wise man should have said. A fairly large part of why I find myself on the political right is that the political right is less enthusiastic than the left about adding to the corpus of laws. The law should be a blessing, not an affliction.
Laws which choose winners - in the case which you cite, by limiting the legal accountability of officials, but there are countless other instances - to my mind are so overtly political in purpose as to move from the domain of folly into the domain of wickedness. To provide a marginal case, I refer you to the forbidden "n-word". It has been made criminal to call somebody something which denotes little beyond his race, but it evidently excites no legal consequence to scream "nazi", with all of what that denotes, to left and right with reference to particular people. Both usages might amount to crimen iniuria, but only one is criminal and its use need not be tested against the user's intention or disposition and the nature and extent of injury caused to the person so described. The effect is to impart discursive advantage, which is by no means a matter of trivial account, to one part of society over another. Why would one do that, if one were not bent on mischief?
As far as I'm concerned, limiting the legal accountability of officials lays the groundwork for wickedness so considerable that I do not think that it was ever even considered by the jurists who framed our legal principles.
"The left always showing concern for the debt levels but that is that good cop/bad cop routine rubbish to fool enough people to get their hands on the credit card." That's the truth, R., right there. The tragedy of our time is that we now have people who pretend to be conservative who do likewise, in some instances on at least as grand a scale as the left. As far as I'm concerned, those are the real RINO's. The irony of our time is that those are the people who go about criticising others as RINO's.
"Living during that time, you live off the work and accumulated equity of the people who built the society without the effort of maintaining it."
We are indeed living on the fumes of our great civilisation, and most people are blissfully ignorant of that reality.
As per a European quoted in "America Alone": " "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."
As for the end of great empires, your wife might enjoy the novel often recommenced by Mark: The Radetzky March, by Joseph Roth.
C., with respect to your reply to R., I hope you won't mind my re-iterating that I was speaking primarily about weeding out the perpetrators of industrial sabotage. That doesn't mean what you shouldn't take the conversation in any direction you like; just clarifying the scope of my own "idea".
Segnes,
Yes, I realized that I misunderstood that you were not speaking about government officials only after I re-read your comments after I posted my comment. In the context you addressed, my lecture was not really applicable. Sorry.
I presume you were advocating vigilantism against industrial saboteurs, yes? In which case I do agree that, against ANTIFA, for instance, taking matters into one's own hand may be the only real recourse since leftist law enforcement has taken a pass in some places. Common people and their property are left open to injury, death, and destruction. And, to add insult to injury, when the attacked try to fight back, the police then intervene to "lower the tension" and protect the rioters.
But, who will be the vigilante who acts? Most people who have been married to the same person and worked their entire lives in the developed parts of the world like Australia and the United States, have accumulated at least some wealth and some security. Maybe not rich, but not destitute either. If you live in New Orleans or Sydney, maybe enough to have a modest home and when you retire to take that trip to Europe.
When a person is in this situation, they are unlikely to be a vigilante. I know that applies to me. I am much more likely to button up my home, make sure my dogs are alert, and that I have enough ammunition, guns, and knowledge to defend against attack. I will shoot if they invade my home, but I am not likely to go out and hunt the bad guys.
While I want to agree with your sentiment fully, I will answer like I did to another commenter about masks. I am too respectable in my own mind, at least for now, to be the vigilante or to even publicly flout the unconstitutional and scientifically ignorant mask requirement. For now I am a conformist keeping my head down and trying to ride the craziness out. Maybe if things get more desperate or in my next life.
Yes!!! Gotta love R.E.M. Just some good ole boys from Georgia. That song has been my goto "mind calming" song for a long time.
S, you should read Tacitus in the original Latin:
The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.
Power corrupts.
I almost forgot to comment on your point. You are indeed right about the end of a great empire or society is not always a catastrophe for everyone.
For instance, my example of the "fall" of the Roman Empire. Many modern historians would disagree there was such a thing for the people who lived much of the Roman world, say what is modern southern France. Those people didn't experience a fall in any sense of the word. Life for them continued in much the same way it always had. Well maybe Roman wine, which everyone liked, was harder then impossible to get, along with good roman trade goods like pottery. But you made do with what you had, and maybe learned to produce your own substitutes. As great bonus, after the fall of Rome, you didn't pay any taxes to Rome and have any Roman officials to boss you around. You always had to protect yourself so you didn't really miss them that much.
In fact, for the several centuries until the rise of Charlemagne and the Franks, and then french feudalism, peasants in Western Europe were freer and had more political control over their lives than they ever had.
Thanks for reminding me about what my grade school teachers called the "Dark Ages." It is without a doubt my favorite period of European history and thinking about it in these days generally makes me feel better.
I think you are wrong about a "new" money springing up. We are spending our grandchildren's money, maybe even our great grandchildren's. If the Dollar crashes it will not only impoverish many people today but suppress economic growth for a long time as fortunes that would have been invested vanish and the trust between people and institutions will take a very long time to repair, if ever. You may be able to barter with your neighbor but you won't be just fine. Electricity and fuel will vanish and we will be back in the Stone Age.
I imagine that they know by now how the broadcast got torpedoed, C. Investigating industrial sabotage isn't usually left to vigilantes. Mind you, I have at times thought that a lynching or two might be nice.
Walt,
I don't know. A "Fiat currency" like the US currency is in fact just paper. Like Robert points out, it is only trust in the good faith of the issuer that makes this work. After the last four (or forty) years, and particularly the last 11 months, can you trust the feds now? The federal government operates in good faith? Really? What if the issuer were a state or city government, or a bank closer to hand. If fact, US banks are already major issuers of a currency of a sort: electronic fund transfers and paper checks. I don't see why local banks can't keep up those relationships without the government interfering. I worked for the Govt Resolution Trust Corp (the RTC) for a short while during the 1980's Savings and Loan crash, and I wasn't impressed by the quality of Federal bank regulation then. Do bank regulators really add value today?
And while I directly and indirectly own financial securities, don't you kinda feel that the stock market is really an elaborate confidence game already? Corporate insiders and officers get giant cash payouts, big stock grants, use of the corporate properties, flights on corporate jets, all-in-all real wealth transfers. Even when total returns to shareholders suck. Shareholders, the putative owners of the corporation, if they want something from the corporation other than accounting gains on paper, something like real cash, they get the right to sell their shares. Gee what a deal!!!! And what do shareholders increasingly have to look forward to? Why sharing their meager paper gains with other "stakeholders" who out will out rank them and offer nothing of value to the enterprize but classic mob "protection" services.
Big corporations will suffer and many will fail, and yes, probably all of my retirement funds will vanish along with them. But as Robert (and more importantly my wife) points out, we will survive. People will still want my M.D. wife's medical services even if the demand for mine dry up (I am a lawyer). I have other skills. If it means the end of corporations I might even think it a good deal.
My buddy told me that I sound like Bernie Sanders with respect to corporations. Maybe, but Bernie and I don't agree on where the proceeds of corporate liquidation should go, or who should recapture all the illegitimate gains of the corporate insiders.
Thanks, W. Yes, plenty of wisdom was first framed in Latin. They said it better than I ever could - and of course so do you.
I do sometimes wonder whether I'm capable of a single fully-formed original thought. Still, I insist on trying - at least to pretend that the thought was my own! Non desistas non exieris.
"We are spending our grandchildren's money, maybe even our great grandchildren's." You said it, W., and as usual you're dead right. There is no surer way to crash any currency than by debasing it.
I agree with everything you write about money, stocks, bonds and cannot believe the system has not already crashed. It is what I call 'no visible means of support.' Nonetheless, the U.S. Dollar is based on the full faith and credit of the United States. That really means something. Contrast it with Bitcoin, who actually backs it? I understand block chain but not Bitcoin. Do you want to hold your wealth in a currency so volatile it doubles overnight and by noon it is worth half? If the U.S. Government fails the paper and all the electronic digits are worthless. Ask all those who held their wealth in Confederate Dollars after The Late Unpleasantness how it worked out. Which bank or institution are you going to place your faith in? People will be wanting to pay your wife's invoices with chickens and they won't be able to get a prescription filled because the Chinese won't be shipping any more pharmaceuticals.
I don't have any constructive advice because I don't know what to do myself, but I can tell you that this is a big worry for me. Major crises are on the immediate horizon and if the system is going to break, it looks like now is about time.
Walt,
I "shared" your worry about the currency and the banking system. At the beginning of the "lockdown" this Spring it occurred to me that my family would have a serious problem if the electronic funds transfer system crapped-out. I was making a purchase with my debit card and the store's EFT system had a 30 second hiccup. That thirty seconds seemed like five minutes, more than enough time for my mind to jump to the worst case scenario. After that, I do what I always do, I stepped back and remembered that the "worst case" almost never happens, and even if it does I am not helpless to deal with it. I haven't even thought about currency or banking collapse since then. Since the Coronavirus mess started, I have (tried) to believe in a new hero: Walter E. Newman of "What, Me Worry?" fame.
Finally, it keeping with that same vein, I can't say "The full faith and credit of the United States" with out, as teenagers in their text messages say, "ROFL." Joe Biden, the Dems, ANTIFA, BLM. What, me worry?
Just a few thoughts on the current state of things: there was indeed a lot of 'widespread' fraud in the recent Presidential election but it came pre-baked into the cake through both newly imagined Covid rules and many years of small time corruption at local level i.e. dead people not removed from the rolls, out of state or non-citizens able to vote, voting twice using the mail in ballots and then voting on the day etc. Once a cake is baked with the incorrect ingredients it's not possible to go back to the beginning and start again, the thing is out of the oven and cooling on the windowsill.
The election fraud no doubt could be proved but it would take a long time and nobody in the ruling class, bar a few notable exceptions, seems remotely interested. Why would they be? They never wanted Trump in the first place and Joe Biden is both a long time insider and someone who has no core beliefs and will therefore do whatever the donors and the Deep State want him to do. He's taking advice from Dick Cheney which means war in Syria within a year. It's all a bleak prospect I know.
On the issue of needing more conservatives, that's true, but first they have to agree on what 'conservatism' actually means. Many of the world's leading alleged conservatives, Boris Johnson and the like, are not remotely conservative and never have been, they just use that tag for reasons of social class, private school education, convenience etc. The few true conservatives out there have to reject those people, stop propping them up, and then decide what their cause is actually about and never cede an inch of ground again ever, on any subject, just like the left has done for the last century.
Therefore, don't vote in the Georgia run-off.
What you said about musicians being out of work and out of money strikes a chord with me. I'm in touch with several of New York's finest, some rated #1 or #2 on their instrument in Down Beat or other music polls, yet some are in danger of being evicted from their apartments due to NO work plus unexpected expenses coming in. There are no recording sessions, no studio work, no Broadway shows, no symphonies, No Metropolitan opera (until at least next October), no jazz festivals, no jazz cruises, no students or classes, etc. "They've got plenty of nothing."
I'm urging them to set up "Go Help Me" pages but some are too proud to do so. This is similar to the "Cabaret Cards" of the 1950s, when police removed their permission to work night clubs if caught with a marijuana fag or heroin, forcing them into deeper poverty.
Meanwhile these fully paid bureaucrats blithely change their tune on re-opening any music events until 2022? "We're killing everyone" as you say, in the names of saving the elderly at risk. The fully employed politicians, media and medical staff can't hold off the starving masses forever.
GA: "We're killing everyone" as you say, in the names of saving the elderly at risk.
As Mark started saying at Easter - well after Trump's good faith "15 Days to Slow the Spread" - the continued policies and policing have nothing to do with a virus.
The Great Reset is a euphemism for The Big Cancel: everything that represents freedom and free enterprise - and fun - has been deliberately targeted. "A new way of living", as some public health official put it, rather ominously. Strangely, it looks a lot like China: a surveillance state run by oligarchs... vs the obedient masses.
Yes indeed, K., and there is something suggestive in the West's uniform adoption of the same folly.
I should be clearer as to what I mean by "folly". I mean that the measures look foolish on the face of it. They might not be so foolish if we could get the lid off the thinking and look in. Then they might look damn' sinister.
One of the things I really like about these discussions is that they present the opportunity to match fact against surmise, or vice versa. Normally we begin with surmise and marshal facts to support or refute it, but that is not always the case. The uniformity of the 'flu folly certainly is a fact which invites surmise. It's illuminating, and a lot of fun. Addictive, even, but then I have an addictive personality. I know: I've been told.
Another fantastic show.
Taking a bit of a chance here.
Preface: There is no one, and I mean NO ONE, whose opinions and thoughts I value more than Mark's. I will continue to pay my dues, regardless of if I'm ever given the boot. :)
Mark, you have chastised many of us Americans for taking what is being done to us, without standing up and fighting. And I'd say that's a well deserved criticism.
But I will also add, you should stand up and do your Christmas show, COVID horse$hit rules notwithstanding. Find the people willing to participate and do the show, wherever you have to do it. I will volunteer my son as a trumpet player, he recently ranked 2nd in the awful state of PA in high school jazz trumpet players. And I will learn whatever you need me to learn on the piano, if you should have to sink that low. Surely Tal can provide you with better alternatives.
Don't let the bastards keep you down.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Mark,
Given the current state of the Republican Party, I don't think we need more conservatives, since that label has been co-opted. Better to say we need more Freedom Fighters. Freedom is more at the core of what we're losing right now rather than conservatism.
"Freedom is more at the core of what we're losing right now rather than conservatism."
Indeed. Freedom - and courage.
Mark discussed "the absence of opposition": That's actually conservatism in a nutshell!
PS. To their credit, there are (left) "liberals" who've pushed back against cancel culture - despite real personal risk - to a greater extent than many conservatives. And there are data experts who happen to be registered Democrats who've called BS on the election "result": the numbers don't add up, however much the Democrat-Media Complex insists they do!
I agree Ron.
President Trump changed the policies of the Republican party in major ways especially with the elevation of the needs of "Main Street" and freedom fighters aka patriots were a major segment of that success. A party name change would have been reasonable.
I suspect a vast majority of the 70 plus million Trump voters were more members of the MAGA party than the Republican party. In anticipation of a Biden win, many pork shop Republicans are reassembling the dreaded Uni-party that allowed the export of millions of jobs while maintaining open borders.
Uni-party policy is always "Me First at the trough" no matter who it hurts and not All of America First where every American is hopefully given a chance.
Uni-Party, I like it. The Wall Street Journal (in the late 80's or 90's before Newt) used to call it the Dempublicans.
Mark, thank you for the explanation for the baffling behavior of the Trump lawyers, it cleared up a number of questions I had. However it did not relieve my sense of helplessness or impending disaster. Thanks again to you, Tucker and Rush for representing us and fighting the good fight. We know how hard you have been fighting, try not to get completely burned-out!
Best regards,
Al Man from CA
Al, it pains me to say that TC does not belong in this list. (I know he's Mark's friend, and I understand Mark's position.) Put it down to the fact that "Tucker Carlson Tonight" is not independent in the way "The Rush Limbaugh Show" and "The Mark Steyn Show" are. The post-election contrast couldn't be more striking, and THAT is a real story: the MSM and Big Tech post-election cover-up. Mark suggested the reality of a stolen presidential election is too shocking for America's "conservative" politicians and commentators to confront - but there's clearly more to it. The media propaganda - including the non-reporting of "baseless" charges - is REAL, as is the social media censorship *and the lack of reporting of said censorship*. An occasional passing reference to a ("possible") election fraud that is the tipping point of the 21st century isn't good enough.
PS. I rely on Steve Bannon's "War Room": awesome team doing compelling interviews and updates, twice per day. (Mark was mentioned by author Michael Walsh in a recent show, re his guest-hosting book promo for "Last Stands".) I'm putting all my faith in ordinary Americans (and a rare Canadian). And among Republican politicians, there are a few good men such as Congressman Mo Brooks (see interview - Ep #559).
Kate, I hear you. Normally I am a cynical realist type of guy, but I am clinging to hope that TC will explode with a spectacular expose, blowing the minds of the establishment left that runs Fox News now. But, you are probably right. Ref Mark's promo for "Last Stands", I also picked up on that and ordered both "Last Stands" and "The Devil's Pleasure Palace", also by Michael Walsh. Both books were delivered and I started "Last Stands" last night prior to turning-in. Out here in California the stupidity of our fearless leaders is amazing, however I read and hear that your pols are high up in the rankings of morons also. Good luck to us all!
Question for those who wish to answer: Do we have the guts to start a civil war if this doesn't go well?
I ask this because we know what happened in nations that waited too long. Russia had the benefit of a western world that saw them as a threat and brought down the Iron Curtain. What about us? Who will save us? Not the west that's for sure. "Trump can run again in four years" they say. They've been planning on putting Trump in prison for four years. The moment he vacates the office, they'll come after him. Grover never had an establishment bent on seeing him taken out of the picture for good as this class is. What will we do?
I'm not sure that it will be possible to "start" a civil war, Brian. It would be snuffed out in an instant.
Stopping the coup will be fraught with personal risk, because it is being run *by* the state. It's not as if there is any part of the apparatus of power that is not aligned.
The DoJ and its FBI are on board. The Intel community too. The media. Silicon Valley. The Armed Forces' leadership is signed up. The Judicial Branch is ok with just enough fraud - however much it takes, in fact.
However, it will be hard to *stop* the shooting if it starts, and that might turn into a bigger event.
Brian,
Risk Adverse and afraid of the local popo, the FBI, the state bar, the state board of medical examiners, EPA, DEQ, DHH, EEOC, FEC, etc etc etc.? Dem Pols and their highly dangerous appointed lackies? Hell yes, unfortunately. At least for now.
I believe members of SteynOnline.com have way too much to lose in a shooting civil war to start one. I prefer quiet weak resistance. I am not sure that I can really do much of that either, though.
Today I was sent by my wife to the small supermarket in my town. I duly and weakly put on my mask (but radically kept my nose uncovered so that my glasses are not fogged). I noted that nearly everyone else was wearing a mask as well. I don't want to wear a mask but I consider myself respectable as a local professional. I don't want any clients or my wife's patients to see me without a mask. The only people I saw where young-looking white men and women who didn't care what others thought about them not wearing masks. The non-mask wearers had a few tattoos and definitely tooked tough enough to hold their ground about masks.
In my next life I am coming back as the folks without the mask. I am not going to college or law school and am going to Live Free or Die. With a tat that says "Live Free or Die" or something obscene that means the same thing on both hands. Yeah. And I will never make a political contribution to a sell out pol no matter how much I might need their protection. Never.
The main thing is to not despair Brian, above all else keep that spark of hope alive and well in your heart. I don't think there will be a civil war, rather I think there will be a great paring back of those institutions that no longer serve the interests of the majority of people who just want to look after their loved ones and communities. One of the casualties of this change will be that the old adage "bigger is better" will be left in the dust. Big government, big schools, big cities, etc etc will not survive the turmoil. This sounds bad but fundamentally I believe that this marks of the end of us outsourcing a great deal of the essential parts of our lives to the mythical big government Leviathan that was going to sort everything out and let us just get on with our lives.
"Stopping the coup will be fraught with personal risk, because it is being run *by* the state."
I agree - although I understood that a coup run by the state was the whole point of your Second Amendment. Presumably that's the justification for media suppression and Republican silence: it would be construed as "incitement" against the election theft.
I noticed the obvious editing-out of a section in a recent interview at "American Thought Leaders" on the inability of citizens to stage a comeback against a communist-Czech-style one party state in the event that the US election issue isn't properly resolved... The elimination of opposition due to 1. the weaponisation of government agencies, 2. the propaganda and censorship by media and social media, and 3. (presumably) disarming the people.
And after the police are defunded, Antifa/ BLM will be in charge of law and order.
That's the whole point. Our founders wanted us to be ready if our government would decide to stop serving the people. It's not that I want a war but at some point, someone on either side had enough. We had enough of King George to start a revolution. We had enough to start our first civil war. We had enough to get involved in WWII. Bottom line is that the left had it's revolution already and we sat back and watched it happen. They topple statues, loot businesses and burned them down, they even put up pretty murals where they once stood as reminders as to who the "real victims" are and as a way of telling us that our lives don't matter. They then go after us on social media when our views or opinions with "fact checks" demanding we stay in line. They teach the younger generation to hate America and if they're not a minority to hate themselves. They got to have their way, when will it be our turn?
The most alarming/astonishing dimension of the entire theft is that so many who are complicit are perfectly fine with B "leading" the nation. Mr. B is having serious cognitive issues. They are transparent and geriatricians who dismiss them are not being honest. Doing some tedious handwork early yesterday morning -- and it nearly turned to a complete mess because our local radio (WMAL) began playing excerpts of Biden's talk with Jake Tapper...let us hope for divine intervention, if praying for it is not our thing. Biden's account of the fall was just that: He fell. He tripped on the rug and fell as he was coming out of the shower. Somehow the dog got inserted (and yes, it's a fully grown shepherd). Biden reveals his cognitive impairment in many ways, but the way he mixes fiction he has been coached to recite and fact is one of the biggest. Three instances: 1 -- Dog tale -- B was obviously coached to say he tripped while playing with the dog, but he mixed it up with the truth/shower, so that he was actually trying to grasp the 'tail (and he probably was when he began to fall). 2 -- Best vote fraud operation -- B stated that one as clear as a big, new bell some weeks ago. No doubt he'd heard others talking of the operation and said the truth (very common in dementia patients, who often spill the names of old lovers, too). 3 -- Getting an illness and resigning if there was a 'moral' disagreement -- B has no doubt overheard others talking about him deteriorating to the point of having to resign (and he internalized and repeated it, also very common among cognitively impaired). We are in so much trouble as a nation. It's difficult not to just break down in tears.
Like Dr. Cocteau inevitably losing his life to Simon Phoenix in the movie "The Demolition Man" so will Biden lose his spot to the radicals.
I agree with you completely Diane. The lack of any curiosity from the MSM about the obvious theft of the election is boggling. It is as if a switch has been thrown. Having a (probable) leader who is obviously cognitively impaired
and is being controlled by actual crooks and SJW's is terrifying, add-in control of the house and senate and it makes ones head swim. I am almost at the point of completely ignoring politics and immersing myself in reading fun stuff and ancient history (Victor Davis Hanson) for the next few years, God willing.
I too am on the verge of tears, Diane, but of laughter and of woe. That B, as you call him (Don Surber has taken to calling him, crediting a reader, Xi-den) is barely sentient (as Jeeves once described Bertie) is not a bug but a feature. Every telling B "blunder" is matched by one of K's own. "A Harris administration...with Joe Biden" is the pick of the litter, but how many times has she been referred to as "the next president of the United States"--even once by her own husband! Whether he is a willing fool or a clueless dunce I cannot say for sure; either one serves their purposes, so it hardly matters. But they'll replace him soon enough, and that's how a candidate who dropped out of the race before Iowa will have become the 47th President of the United States. With slim majorities in the House and Senate at her beck and call. How did things turn to excrement? Gradually, then suddenly.
Wow...I found the other guy in America who watched " The Demolition Man"!
So....the next step is...Stallone for president?
"The most alarming/astonishing dimension of the entire theft is that so many who are complicit are perfectly fine with B "leading" the nation.[...] We are in so much trouble as a nation."
Biden's cognitive impairment and China ties - and the efforts of the MSM and Big Tech to make these go away - are in plain sight. The brazenness is part of the Official Lie... and they're forcing you to swallow it. As someone noted in another thread, what we're seeing is not just a distortion of truth - but of reality.
We're well on our way to "every restaurant is Taco Bell."
What's wrong with that? I like Taco Bell.
MS mentioned Van Morrison's anti-lockdown songs. My quick capture from Amazon of 'Stand and Deliver' sung by Eric Clapton and written by Van Morrison ;was made yesterday midday, on same day as release. Shortly after that, apparently, Amazon pulled the offering. Censorship at every single turn. Horrifying.
Wow, Diane! "When they came for Eric Clapton..."
Go to Variety.com and read:
"Van Morrison and Eric Clapton Strike the Wrong Note About COVID-19
"By Claudia Eller"
Even George Orwell couldn't have imagined this.
Thank you for the alert...just read the article. Needless to write, to my mind Clapton is striking the right note. The fear being generated by a lack of understanding about everything virus connected is certainly tied to innumeracy. Life went on in 1918 when the population of the world was less than one-quarter of its current size. Approximately 20 million died in that pandemic. Life went on.//The horror stories being told about lack of capacity in U.S. hospitals lack context. California has been cutting beds, staff and closing hospitals for years, as have states across the nation. Throughput in hospitals became the objective under the ACA. Get everyone in and out as fast as possible. Send people home with IVs. Better still, do out-patient surgery. Etc. Etc. Above all, eliminate extra capacity (the empty beds) in hospitals. Now, surprise, in some places there are too few staff, too few beds and too few hospitals to handle an emergency. (Much of the pressure on staff is coming because hospitals staffed down to such low levels that the number of seriously ill patients requiring intense staffing are physically exhausting the staff.) Shutting down life is not the answer; it just compounds one disaster (ACA and its many tentacles) with another.
Van Morrison is to the music industry what Scott Atlas is to the medical "profession".
Videos vaporised. Attacked by contemporaries. The Great Reset in plain sight, and the elimination of all opposition to it.
(Remember, folks: it's not a conspiracy theory if it's real!)
If the senate runoff elections are stolen in the same egregiously brazen manner the November elections were, it may sufficiently infuriate the up-to-now more or less placid conservative voters to some form of direct action. It won't be pretty.
I'm reminded of the joke about the unarmed English policeman shouting "Stop, or I'll yell 'Stop!' again!" If they ain't sufficiently infuriated already...well, now I'm reminded of the bumper sticker that reads "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."
I fear we were too late: they stole it fair and square.
It's too bad it's the holiday season. It's a big ( and welcome) distraction for most Americans and it takes their mind of the election. Not to mention worrying about COVID surges and if you will even be able to celebrate the holidays because many of us are under lockdown orders now. Gee, you'd think the Dems planned it that way! Why does everything seem to go smoothly for them whilst it's the opposite for the Trump team who can't seem to get out of their own way?
"Stop, or I'll yell 'Stop!' again!"
I'd be laughing if not for the fact that it's depressingly true.
Evidently, massive presidential election fraud isn't the hill to die on.
How about Decamping in DeKalb ( what a great man he was by the way)?
There may be one great reporter out there who satisfies Mark's recommendation for a clean cut argument in an election fraud suit--Tiffany Morgan at the Georgia Star News:
DeKalb County Cannot Find Chain of Custody Records for Absentee Ballots Deposited in Drop Boxes: 'It Has Not Been Determined If Responsive Records to Your Request Exist'
She scoops the New York Times and Washington Post
The irony of Georgia (well, maybe not so ironic) is that Gov. Kemp knows exactly what's going on in his state in regards to voter fraud. In 2017, when he was secretary of state, he purged hundreds of thousands from the voter rolls citing voter fraud. What he was actually doing was clearing a path for himself as the following year he ran for governor. Despite his "clean up" of election corruption he just narrowly beat his Dem challenger which the Dems never forgot and made the most of the defeat (voter suppression became their new watchword).
So why isn't he more proactive and vocal about what happened in Fulton county? If you believe Sidney Powell it's because he has been lucratively "influenced" by Dominion operatives. I just think he's another sociopathic pol, a feckless weasel only concerned with himself and to hell with the people of Georgia or the U.S. for that matter.
Isn't having no Americans who can do the job a rather vicious indictment of their own project, our 'education' system?
It would be except that H1B visa recipients are "tech guys" which we do have in this country, but who are priced out of the market by the H1B folks who work for considerably less and are effectively indentured servants b/c they can't quit w/o putting their visa at risk.
Yes it is. When one lives in 1billion plus population countries where a real education is the only pathway to success and welfare/safe spaces don't exist...then yes ..you get a larger volume of qualified workers to choose from not pre-programmed to SJW mode.
One chilling thought. Everyone is hoping the Supreme Court saves things in the 11th hour prior to some sort of potential CW2. The Court could dish up a squishy pro-Biden equivalent form of the Dred Scott decision. I trust they understand that the "integrity of the judiciary" (???) has as much at stake as Trump's election. But then...
Mark has often made the point that the Chinese have an advantage because we self-sabotage with SJW garbage - whereas they can concentrate on getting things done, including World Domination.
And it's true: the Chinese mock the preoccupations of "Baizuo" - ie. the White Left - but we comply with their Woke nonsense, and use it as the foundation of our institutions and society at large.
If "election reform" is to come about by way of legislation, it will need bipartisan support. Unless, of course, the Democrats win the Senate, as they already have the House and the White House. Then "election reform" (now can you see why I'm using scare quotes?) will pass on a party-line vote, Joe Manchin permitting, and "elections" will be "reformed" out of meaningful existence. Oh, they'll still take place every two years--there's too much money in them not to--but results will be of Baathist predictability. What our side mean by election reform (no scare quotes required) is a non-starter to the Dems, dead in the water, DOA, pining for the fjords. "Legal votes", to them, are as racist and exclusionary as "legal immigration". "Count every vote" is the new "count every MS-13 gangbanger".
But I have to break character for a moment. I have been itching--foaming at the mouth, really--to start mocking Pretend President Biden and the utter absurdity of his addled declaration of victory. I'm jonesing like an addict in detox. But to undertake the monumental but thoroughly enjoyable project of ridicule, I would, however unwillingly, give credibility to his panto-presidency. I can't. I won't. Others, The Babylon Bee notably, may enter this craven new world and lampoon the clownshow that is Keeping Up With the Bidens. (No one, but no one, can keep up with Hunter.) But I decline to join them. This jungle island isn't so bad once you learn how to crack open coconuts and adjust for the refraction of water when spear-fishing. And unlike Tom Hanks in Castaway, I have enough dental floss for a decade at least.
[Resuming character] To win any future elections, we have to win the last one. Again. In the courts and state legislature, this time. I'm not saying we can't, but I'm stocking up on dental floss just in case.
Josh,
In theory at least, election law is in the bailiwick of the states - so Congress cannot pass an election reform bill that applies to every state. Although - like everyone else - I deplore judicial activism and "legislating from the bench" - the Supreme Court could invoke the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, which do place civil and voting rights violations by the states under federal supervision, and issue what would amount to an injunction compelling the states to reform their election procedures. This would require the President's lawyers to make arguments that are less about overturning the results of the 2020 elections and calling for either new elections or forcing state legislatures to appoint different electors - and more about making the case that fraud-prone voting systems that do not guarantee the integrity of voter registration lists and the reliability of the casting and counting of ballots are a violation of the civil and voting rights of legitimate voters whose votes are diluted and negated by election fraud. The Court could then order state legislatures to pass reform laws requiring regular and supervised clean-ups of voter registration rolls, photo ID's and in-person voting, paper ballots tabulated at the precinct level, and all votes to be counted by, say, 6:00 PM the day after the election.
Unfortunately, I think such action by the Court unlikely. Also, since oversight and enforcement of such an injunction would fall under the supervision of the Biden Administration's Justice Department, compliance by individual states would be problematic.
Calvin, it is at least cold comfort that your first sentence is wrong. The ability to regulate federal elections for both President and Congress is not exclusive to the state Legislatures, but under Articles I & II of the Constitution is shared between state legislatures and Congress. See GAO-1-470 ELECTIONS, "The Scope of Congressional Authority in Election Administration" (March, 2001). Further, as in most cases, where jurisdiction is shared, Congress' jurisdiction is supreme under the Supremacy Clause.
This is cold comfort indeed. State and federal Repubs are cowards and slaves to their corporate masters in the Military / Industrial Complex. Remember the warning from General Dwight Eisenhower? In his last speech to Congress he said, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
In December, 2020 we are living with failure of our "rock-ribbed" repubs to stand up to both the socialist dems and their fellow travelers, the accommodationist "Masters of the Universe" on Wall Street and Corporate Board Rooms. The repub pols are slaves to these same corporate masters. Think Paul Ryan etc. Democrats are easy to identify as threats, but us "conservatives" still reflexively think that the repub pols and "bidness" have our back. The last time I looked back, there were only a handful of folks lead by a fellow with orange hair fighting a rear action. And they apparently are losing.
It is past time that the repubs go the way of the Whigs. Conservative doesn't mean GM, IBM, 3M, Dow Chemical, etc. now. The Republicans, Industrial corporations, news media, and Hollywood long ago sold out to the socialist left and abandoned the millions of wage earners who make the country work. We all know in my town that "Dow Chemical supports Black Lives Matter" because Dow has a very large, well-placed billboard that says so. When was the last time a major corporate figure stood up for individual property rights for the common people? When was the last fully patriotic movie made, like those made during WW II? Corporate officers and Paul Ryan repubs figure that they can live in gated communities behind walls manned with armed guards with neighbors like Nancy and DiFi. The rest of us will just have to deal with gun control and #BLM and #Antifa violence and mayhem.
You know, I do have a copy of the Constitution in the house - not an original, sadly - I really should refer to it before I start citing its provisions. Although I can't help wondering if there might be something racist about a document that contains a Supremacy Clause.
"But I decline to join them.... To win any future elections, we have to win the last one. Again."
On fire, JP.
I've been a Mark Steyn Club member a little over a month, and I may well be radicalized!
I can't hear the term "rock ribbed republican" anymore as anything but a pejorative phrase. I also can't get over how much of the "conservative" movement is, in fact, a controlled opposition.
Your comments that the think tanks, i.e., the respectable conservatives aren't interested in breaking up the oligopolies and monopolies that have rapidly captured the country because those think tanks are funded by the same billionaires that bankroll every other high minded idea excreted from our ivory towers hit the nail on the head.
It seems to me that the present "coalition" of the conservative movement cannot go on. The chamber of commerce types, the business wing, the donor class, or whatever you want to call them, have proven to be a faithless coalition partner, advocating a free market fundamentalism where every major corporation has become culturally leftist and aggressive in enforcing a left wing social order.
If you work for them, you would be a fool to publicly dissent from a leftist consensus, lest your job be at risk or if you have a relative or spouse who works for them, their job at risk, or if you're a student hoping to get a piece of that lucre one day, you'd be a fool to publicly say anything that could get them to fire you.
The corporations have broken an unspoken social contract. Free markets make sense for corporations to have the freedom to conduct their business to the best of their abilities. For example, who doesn't want Reebok or Nike or whomever to make the best shoes at the best price? But what about when the shoe companies start to tell the rest of us how to think and how to feel about the issues, and begin using their considerable resources to enforce their cultural preferences?
Do we stick with free market dogma because that's what "Reagan would have done" or do we recognize that the problems confronting us now require a different way of thinking if we conservatives are to have anything left to conserve?
We just had a GOP controlled senate pass by unanimous consent the importation en masse of H1B1 workers. Nevermind our government is deciding to import workers from a part of the world where COVID, swine flu, bird flu, and H1N1 originated, but how long can we support a party that takes our votes on election day but takes direction from the donors once in office? I'd love to hear from the fellow club members? GOP or new party?
Right on, Brother!!!
Radicalized? Do you mean that you have begun to think in an unconstrained way, a way not defined by parameters of a certain political party or dictum? That's liberal (free, L. liberalis) thought -- and we need more of it because it is part of critical thinking. (The other part is learning as much as possible about everything.) We must look at as many facets of issues as we can, ask questions, debate. MS referred to the 'absence of opposition' and by example, the vote of Ted Cruz, which was a tragic symbol of the unwillingness of elected representatives to fight for principle or good or cause. We all understand why people want to come to the United States? Shouldn't we also ask why there are so many countries to which no one wants to go? Algerians gained independence from France, for instance, and now Algerians are desperate -- and understandably so -- to get to France. The world is so cosmopolitan that worries over viruses and such are not really worth the time. But there's another part of your observation that's relevant: Why is the United States manufacturing vaccines for the c-virus in India? Shouldn't those vaccines stay in India, which needs them too. At this point, things are quite far gone in an Orwellian way. Those who want to relive the horror of U.S. slavery turn away from what's going on right now in China. It goes on and on, and it's dispiriting. But in summary, we have to do what we can at the level we interact with people. Allowing others to tamp down our arguments by not allowing us to air them at all must cease. 2+2=4 and we cannot be afraid to say it to our neighbor, our relative, or our representatives in DC.
Thanks for the commentary on the election suits Mark; I then contrasted it with listening to Scott Pelley's interview of the fired Christopher Krebs from last Sunday's Sixty Minutes. Basically, Krebs held up the recount in Georgia to a worshipful Pelley as proof that the election had been "secured " by use of machine generated paper ballots, but was never asked how non-signature ( or any other means of identifying) mail-in ballots were "secured- " very much going to the point of having one's citizenship cancelled in a wee-hours ballot drop. Also not even asked about any of the statistical anomalies ( "bell-weather counties," Biden underperforming Clinton everywhere except the five swing state metros, etc. ,etc). . So this is what the 80% of people who don't access conservative media are being fed. And we are the ones "undermining democracy."
PG: And we are the ones "undermining democracy."
Indeed.
Just want to point out an interesting fact: Ironically for musicians today very few sell CD's (which are increasingly difficult to even find players for) but instead sell vinyl records because of both sound quality and the rise of record collecting as a hobby. The department store I work in actually carries record players but not CD players.
Establishment Republicans are ashamed of representing the party they are in and it's clear. The party that has buckled down to calls of being racists, xenophobes, and what not are still believing that if they get shamed more and apologize for taking such a stance that one day they will stop. Amazing that eight years of Obama's failures can be blamed on a party that cowers easily to the left is somehow smart enough to "oppress" the masses. These Republicans are all to eager to play the role of villain just waiting to be publicly humiliated by the hero. They represent us and when they apologize they are slapping us all in the face. No more voting in those who don't like our values and are just their to not only sabotage our goals but are just there to sit in the same room with the rest of the elites.
Brian,
I drop in from time to time to hear a morsel of truth and read the comments. I find myself agreeing with your comments nearly every time. Having lived my entire life in the very deep Gulf South, I am so, so very happy to hear and know that at least some good and decent thinking people are still alive in the frozen-mind-numbed-robot-land-BLM / ANTIFA-occupied-Biden-supporting wasteland called "Minnesota."
I believe, as you and other commenters here have alluded, the real problem with so many of the mainstream repub pols is that they seem terrified to be called a "Racist." They won't even impose a common sense requirement to present a valid id to vote, as many repub state legislatures and the congress as late as December 2017 failed to do. To require voters to definitively and conclusively identify themselves before casting a vote is purely a racially bigoted, despicable attempt at minority voter suppression, don't ya know!
Getting to first principles, I believe the deeper issue is that most repub pols don't even know any real-life good and decent minority-race people. They just have contact with the race hustler types from these minority groups in Washington and think all minorities are like the extreme minority racists that inhabit the halls of power in state capitals and Washington. And for some reason they are deathly afraid of them.
I am sad that Economist Walter Williams died this week. RIP. His 12/3/20 obit in the WSJ noted, "His pioneering 1982 book, "The State Against Blacks," is an eloquent, data-rich, broadside against [liberal economic regulatory schemes] and other fine-sounding government measures that inflict disproportionate harm on blacks by restricting the employment options and driving up the costs of goods and services." Walter Williams was a extremely intelligent and accomplished black scholar, who the "Squad" and white and black democrats and apparently some repubs view as a filthy race-traitor racist "Uncle Tom." I enjoyed greatly listening to Professor Williams on Rush's show and reading his columns and other articles by him from time to time. I will miss his wit and wisdom. I am so sorry that his understanding and insight concerning race and economics never penetrated into the inner-core of American government where it could have had such a great and positive impact for black, red, yellow, and white Americans. Maybe a new party, after the repubs are completely annihilated, can take up this banner.
Unfortunately, politics on both sides of the aisle is populated with sociopaths. I'm not joking on this, I'm dead serious. It's the "profession" of choice for those who wish to exert power over others and attain importance, wealth, and prestige. It satisfies their greed quotient (being greedy is a trait) because you are awash in money coming at them from all angles, from fundraising which they always successfully siphon off, their perks, per diems and salaries and then there's the illegal stuff from corporations, foreign governments, etc. They are adept at lying and they cheat and defame without compunction. They can inflict great damage on individuals and society as a whole without nary a backward glance because they have no conscience.
Sociopaths are aggressive, determined, ruthless, ambitious, and many are very intelligent and charming. An extremely dangerous combination.I would venture to say that many are also Narcissistic Sociopaths but I don't want to pile on.
Brian,
I disagree strongly with your characterization of all pols as "sociopaths." Pols, like officers of corporations of any size, are most certainly are not sociopaths. Career Pols and CEO are all "psychopaths," pure and simple. As I understand it, sociopaths are made, not born and sometimes, only rarely, exhibit a slight empathy for another human being, usually a close "friend" or family member. Psychopaths, on the other hand, are born, not made and have no conscience whatsoever, never exhibiting true empathy or the least care towards anyone but themselves.
As you note, a personality characteristic of both sociopaths and psychopaths is superficial charm. That is key to how successful pols fool "some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time." I find it interesting that a highly successful pol like Old Uncle Joe Biden, as he grows older and his mental capacity diminishes, is losing much of that charm that has covered up his low intellect and morals for so many years. It seems to me he can't do a spontaneous public meet or greet or press conference without becoming confused and going off on a reporter or a member of the public in some bizarre fashion. May he continue to reveal his true nature to the world as his term in office continues. My hope and prayer is that a majority will awaken and save the world.
Of course, since the effect on society by a sociopath or a psychopath is more or less identical, I am splitting hairs here. Other than this meaningless word choice, I agree fully 100% with your point.
Thank you Dr. Aly. Do those who just care sooo much for everyone (at least in preferred groups) and want to give them generous things from "public" money belong in the sociopath category?
Ha ha, they used to call them "bleeding heart liberals" back in the day. No, they're not sociopaths, who are greedy and acquisitive. Often times they are well-meaning individuals who live in a fantasy world and long for a utopian society. I call them "Imagineers", not after the famed Disney creators, but rather John Lennon's paen to a perfect world. They're often meek and afraid, and look to Big Government to solve all their problems. I see it around me every day in California. It's sad and pathetic because many are young and able-bodied, but look to our "Supreme Leader" for guidance and happily comply with his draconian COVID edicts.
Not surprisingly, the sociopathic pols and other operatives in the Dem/Left machine exploit these fragile souls who can be moved to action when necessary, whether that be through donations to political causes or attending protests and rallies all in the name of "stopping the hate". They're useful idiots for the militant Left, and act as their acceptable face for the media, like those "mostly peaceful" BLM protesters.
Under my Unified Theory of Civilizational Collapse, technology has narrowed our discourse and allowed creation of a number of subculture herds. I saw a young couple the other day in their full non-conformist uniforms from the purple hair to the odd shoes. They are easy to manipulate because they believe they are individuals.
Mark.... just a small point .... for the eleven pm time zone could you please mention Finland, the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania?
Thanks!
Mark: "if you don't know who " the Don" is , shame on you"
Indeed.
The greatest sportsperson in history.
Americans love statistics . Check it out.
Cheers.
Dodge Blue? I'm betting on Dodge Blue! And a ton of brush backs if not solid intentional hits.