Category: Elections

The Clock Strikes Thirteen
And the Establishment gets washed away by a preference cascade. But it was a damn close-run thing.

What happened? It’s like a spell broke. Since November’s election (re-election?) of President Donald Trump, the woke is going away, and all sorts of problems are resolving themselves. But why?

There are several reasons, but basically, it’s a preference cascade.

In law we talk about the proverbial thirteenth chime of the clock, which is not only wrong in itself, but which calls into question everything that has come before. Most of our institutions have been chiming thirteen for quite a while, and people have noticed.

But it’s not enough to notice. Soviet citizens knew their system was founded on lies, too, but the system kept them isolated, unaware that so many of their fellow citizens felt the same way, and unable to come together to act.

This technique, used by totalitarians of all sorts, is called “preference falsification,” in which people are forced to profess belief in things that they know not to be true. If the powers that be are good at it, virtually every citizen can hate them and want them out, but no one will do anything because every citizen who feels that way thinks they’re the only one, or one of a tiny number.

In his classic book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, economist Timur Kuran notes how governments, and social movements, do their best to enforce this sort of ideological uniformity. People tend to hide unpopular views to avoid ostracism or punishment; they stop hiding them when they feel safe.

This can produce rapid change: In totalitarian societies like the old Soviet Union, the police and propaganda organizations do their best to enforce preference falsification. Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. This works until something breaks the spell and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers — or even to the citizens themselves. Kuran calls this sudden change a “preference cascade,” and I believe that’s what’s happening here.

In America, the left spent years bullying people into accepting “woke” ideas on race, gender, and politics. There’s considerable reason to believe that a majority of Americans never accepted these ideas, but between constant media repetition, and the risk of being mobbed and canceled if you disagreed with them, most people for years were afraid to stand up.

But two things put a stop to that. One was Donald Trump’s election. The other – and the two are related – was Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X, which is now a free-speech platform with roughly equal representation of Democrats and Republicans. Both had the effect of blowing up the lefty bubble and letting people realize that they, not the woke, were the actual majority.

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Gun Owners Made a Difference in the 2024 Election Results.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is today congratulating the nation’s gun owners—especially those in critical “battleground” states—for obviously making a difference in the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election.

“America’s gun owners saw the threat of a Kamala Harris presidency and took action,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Millions of ‘gun voters’ turned out to reverse the nation’s course on firearms rights, and keep Kamala out of the Oval Office. It was gun owners who also made the difference in Montana, re-electing pro-gun Gov. Greg Gianforte and replacing Democrat Sen. Jon Tester with Republican Tim Sheehy, thus shifting the Senate majority to GOP control.

“In this election,” Gottlieb observed, “the Democrats shot blanks and the voters buried their gun ban agenda. 

“But,” he cautioned, “I bet they will double down on gun prohibition because they know that it was gun owners that removed them from power and they are gunning to get even. The fight to defend gun rights is not over and every gun owner who helped win this battle must remember that the war on gun rights is ongoing.”

Gottlieb said Trump’s triumphant return to public office “will become the stuff of legend.” He added that the importance of gun owner participation in this historic achievement cannot be overstated. 

“Here is a man who endured four years of turmoil while he was in office,” Gottlieb noted, “and he suffered from Democrat-engineered ‘lawfare,’ and survived two assassination attempts including one which nearly cost him his life. Yet, despite his wound, he refused to call for more gun control, and encouraged his supporters to fight. And that is exactly what we intend to do, because the right to keep and bear arms is what protects this nation from tyranny, and frustrates the enemies of liberty.”

Now, consider this. The national demoncraps did it to themselves even earlier.
The election numbers anomaly was called out 4 years ago, but there were just too many people, politicians and otherwise, who didn’t want to open that door.

Well, if they had let Trump win, as he likely should have, the election yesterday would have been for who would succeed him, as he would be term limited out.
I think DeSantis would have run and likely won, as Newsom would have been the likely opposition. We sure wouldn’t have seen Harris running.

But, here we are; Trump is ‘back on the menu’ and as SloJoe only got to replace one flaming airhead liberal on the Supreme Court with another, we may see a new batch of younger, and hopefully better on the RKBA than Barrett and Kavanaugh, replacement Justices.

And what will 2028 look like? We’ll likely see Vance run, as well as DeSantis. The only question is which demoncrap will survive that party’s primaries? I think Harris will try again, but Newsom, Whitmer and a bunch more see her like a shark smells blood in the water.

Trump won in Pennsylvania, which made it impossible for Harris to win the election.
Why did he win?
The Amish vote that the Republicans went out for.
Overzealous state bureaucraps, mostly demoncraps, went and did it to themselves.

Amish turn out for Pennsylvania vote in ‘unprecedented numbers’

Republicans could see a boost in Pennsylvania from a demographic rarely seen at the polls: the Amish.

The state’s famed “Pennsylvania Dutch” registered to vote in “unprecedented numbers” in response to a January federal raid on a local raw milk farm in Bird in Hand, Pa., a source familiar with the situation told The Post.

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture stormed Amos Miller’s farm Jan. 4 after reports of illnesses in children linked to raw dairy products purchased there, according to the local media outlet Lancaster Farming.

The Amish community saw the move as an overzealous reach by the government and was planning to vote for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose party favors less government intervention.

“That was the impetus for them to say, ‘We need to participate,’ ” the source said of local Amish voters. “This is about neighbors helping neighbors.”

The Amish community rallied around Miller, who cited his religious beliefs as a reason for not adhering to Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

“If you think about Amish people and their connection to nature, I mean, some of these people work in the fields barefoot to be closer to the earth,” the source told The Post.

Actual numbers of Amish voters were unclear as of Tuesday night, though horse-and-buggy rigs were seen at polling locations in photographs from the region.

Well, it appears we dodged a commie bullet. Still don’t have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate to get somethings repealed, but I’ll happily take no new gun control legislation.

Polls Are Now Open. The Fate of the 2nd Amendment Rests in Your Vote Today

If you are reading this, and you have not yet voted, stop what you are doing and go vote. And if it isn’t clear to you yet, Harris is not the one to vote for.

Georgia Supreme Court Stops Democrats’ Attempts to Cheat in One County.

One metro Atlanta county enacted an extension that allowed for the counting of absentee ballots after Election Day, but the Georgia Supreme Court issued a ruling on Monday that put a stop to it.

WSB Radio reports:

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled late Monday that the extension granted by Cobb County that could impact thousands of mail-in voters has been reversed.

The ruling from the court reversed a lower judge’s ruling that had granted 3,000 voters an extension of the mail-in-ballot deadline after Cobb County election officials admitted they missed the deadline to ship them out.

The deadline for mail-in ballots to be received in Georgia is election day — but the lower judge had given those voters an extension for them to be postmarked by election day and received by Nov. 8, the same deadline for overseas ballots.

Cobb County, Ga., is just northwest of Atlanta, and it’s a typical suburban county in that it has trended toward the Democrats in recent elections. The Democrat Party had filed a suit to allow the county to grant an extension to the mail-in deadline for 3,000 absentee ballots, which a superior court judge upheld.

The mail-in ballot deadline was Oct. 31, but the county initially extended the deadline because it had received a “surge in absentee ballot requests,” as the Cobb County Courier described the situation:

“We want to maintain voter trust by being transparent about the situation,” said Board of Elections Chairwoman Tori Silas in the news release. “We are taking every possible step to get these ballots to the voters who requested them. Unfortunately, we were unprepared for the surge in requests and lacked the necessary equipment to process the ballots quickly.”

“After our vendor’s final run on Friday, we needed to utilize our in-house equipment for the final shipment of ballots, but the equipment was not working properly,” said Silas. “By the time we got the equipment online, the deadline for mailing the ballots had passed, prompting us to work with the US Postal Service and UPS to take extraordinary measures. Our team has been working around the clock to get the ballots out.”

Judge Robert Flournoy had ruled that “this Court declares that Defendants’ delay in mailing absentee ballots to the Affected Voters violated Georgia law and likely Plaintiffs’ and similarly situated voters’ state constitutional rights.” Claiming “broad discretion,” Flournoy ordered an extension to the deadline for these voters.

“The Georgia Supreme Court ordered the Cobb board to ‘keep separate’ the absentee ballots of those voters that are received after the deadline on election day but before November 8 in a secure, safe, and sealed container separate from other voted ballots,” WSB reported.

“The court also ordered the board to notify the voters by email, text, or public announcement of the change,” the report continues. “At this point, all votes will need to be in by 7 p.m. on Election Day.”

Republican National Committee Co-Chair Michael Whatley quickly celebrated the high court’s decision:

However, the ACLU was apoplectic:

Back in May, during Georgia’s primaries, I wrote about how the Supreme Court contest between Justice Andrew Pinson, a Kemp-appointed, fair-minded young jurist, and John Barrow, a far-left crusader, was a down-ballot race that was too important to ignore. Georgia voters made the right choice, and this decision reflected the wisdom of reelecting Pinson.

Never forget that all elections are important.

Question O’ The Day
So how exactly does a leftist SCOTUS judge dissent & say non-citizens should have the right to vote?

By the way, as I have heard it, the ‘self identification’ of being a non-citizen was when called up for jury duty they said “I cannot serve because I am not a citizen”.

Supreme Court Allows Virginia To Remove Noncitizens From Voter Rolls

The Supreme Court allowed Virginia on Wednesday to remove individuals identified as noncitizens from the voter rolls.

The justices paused a lower court order preventing officials from removing around 1,600 individuals who the state said “self-identified” as noncitizens.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan would not have granted Virginia’s request, according to the order.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court allows Virginia to remove individuals identified as noncitizens from the voter rolls. pic.twitter.com/OKlMKqdTJl

— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) October 30, 2024

U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Giles, a Biden appointee, ruled Friday that Virginia must stop its efforts to remove noncitizen voters within 90 days of the election and restore registered voters removed under the program. When an appeals court upheld the decision on Sunday, the state quickly filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court.

“The injunction, which prohibits the application of a law that has been on the books since the Justice Department precleared it in 2006, will also irreparably injure Virginia’s sovereignty, confuse her voters, overload her election machinery and administrators, and likely lead noncitizens to think they are permitted to vote, a criminal offence that will cancel the franchise of eligible voters,” the state

We are pleased by the Supreme Court’s order today. This is a victory for commonsense and election fairness. I am grateful for the work of Attorney General @JasonMiyaresVA on this critical fight to protect the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens. Clean voter rolls are one…

— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) October 30, 2024

Republican Virginia Gov. Genn Youngkin wrote on X that the order is “a victory for commonsense and election fairness.”

“Clean voter rolls are one important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections,” he wrote.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) initially sued Virginia on Oct. 12, alleging the state violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by making changes to the voter rolls within 90 days of the election when the “risk of disfranchising eligible voters is greatest.” Youngkin signed an executive order in August requiring election officials to expedite the removal of ineligible noncitizen voters from the voter rolls.

Democrat Kamala Harris Surrenders in North Carolina, Withdraws Nearly $2 Million in Planned Ad Spend from State.

Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is waving the white flag in North Carolina, surrendering the state to former President Donald Trump as her campaign withdraws nearly $2 million in planned ad buys from television stations statewide one week before the election.

The more than $1.7 million in canceled ad buys by Harris’s campaign in North Carolina suggests that her team believes, given polling data and early vote data, that the Tar Heel State is no longer in play for her.

Trump’s senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita jumped at the news on Tuesday morning, celebrating Harris’s team giving up on the state one week before the election:

More than 3 million people have already voted in early voting in North Carolina, which can be done via mail-in absentee ballot or via in-person locations around the state.

Republicans, interestingly, for the first time ever actually lead the early vote–North Carolina provides the partisan breakdown and demographic data on early voters in the state–something they have done now for more than a week.

This remarkably consistent GOP lead has shocked political observers, and comes as demographic data also suggests Democrats face serious issues in competing at the top of the ticket in the state. Black voter turnout is down approximately 3 percent from 2020, and about 1 percent more men than women, as compared with 2020, are voting in the state.

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Ballots that arrive after Election Day are invalid, federal appeals court rules

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that votes in federal elections must be received by state officials by the time polls close, striking down a Mississippi law that allowed ballots to arrive after Election Day.

The ruling could have sweeping implications for the way many states have administered elections for years, but it’s unclear if the decision — made by three Trump-appointed judges on the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — will apply on Nov. 5 or only in future elections. Likely appeals could also slow the impact. Still, the effect could be enormous if other courts uphold its rationale that long-standing federal law requires all ballots to be received by Election Day.

Recognizing the significance of its decision, the panel also left it up to a lower-court judge — who initially sided with Mississippi — to determine when the ruling should take effect. The panel underscored the longstanding legal principle that courts should avoid changing election policies on the eve of the vote.

For now, the circuit court’s ruling only applies to Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi — a list that does not include any core presidential battlegrounds but includes a key Senate race. It also tees the issue up for the Supreme Court, where a similar ruling would have a far more dramatic impact.

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Border Patrol Union Endorses Trump, Chief Says Everything Would ‘Go to Hell’ Under Kamala

In a move that should surprise no one considering that the Biden-Harris regime has treated the Border Patrol like dirt, the National Border Patrol Council announced Sunday at a campaign rally in Prescott, Arizona, that they were throwing their support behind Donald Trump. Union president Paul Perez minced no words as he eviscerated Kamala Harris for her utter failure to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the country:

If we allow Border Czar Harris to win this election, every city, every community in this great country, is going to go to hell. The untold millions of people, unvetted, who she has allowed into this country that are committing murders, rapes, robberies, burglaries, and every other crime will continue to put our country in peril.

Only one man can fix that and that is Donald J. Trump. He has always stood with the men and women who protect this border.

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This is not a coincidence

The Number of Illegal Aliens Dumped Into Swing States Is Jaw-Dropping.

As the 2024 presidential election continues to get closer, new data showing how many illegal aliens have been purposely dumped into crucial swing states by the Biden-Harris administration is raising red flags.

Keen political observers note how the tactic will benefit Democrats.

The numbers come after Democrats on Capitol Hill refused to vote for legislation that would make it against the law for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.

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