Gun Control and Racism: The Laws and Taxes Meant to Limit Minority Gun Ownership in America

“There’s a direct correlation between gun control and black people control.” – Stacy Swimp, President of the Frederick Douglass Society

Every schoolchild knows that the Declaration of Independence declares that the basic equality of man is “self-evident.” The United States Constitution enumerates what the inalienable rights only alluded to by the Declaration. An inalienable right is one that exists regardless of whether or not it is recognized by the state. For example, you have a right to free speech regardless of whether or not the Constitution recognizes it. Thus any restrictions on free speech are curbs of this pre-existing right, not an actual elimination of that right. One of them is the right to keep and bear arms. Another is the right to a speedy and public trial.

However, particularly with the Second Amendment, there’s long been a struggle between the ideals of America and the reality on the ground with regard to race. What’s more, minorities in the United States are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. Both of these things together make it crucial to understand self defense and the Second Amendment from the perspective of race in America.

Part of the problem is that, unlike European nations which grew organically, America is an invention of a handful of Englishmen. They founded the nation on a set of ideas and there has always been a tension between those ideas and the reality. This is, in some sense, unavoidable: reality will always have trouble living up to an ideal. A failure to live up to that ideal in the past according to terms established today doesn’t make the entire project – or any specific part of it – worthless or suspect.

Before we get into the meat of the matter, we should note that the American ideal has expanded the Second Amendment (and the rest of the Constitution for that matter) to de jure include all Americans. One can be skeptical of the notion of “progress” while seeing the moves to repeal race-based restrictions on firearms ownership as big steps in the right direction.

Finally, it is worth noting – and we will do so at length later – that none of the racially-motivated laws on the books in America are uniquely American. Racism, in the sense employed by the average person not the expanded version used by left-wing ideologues, was not a uniquely American institution, but the norm throughout human history. Continue reading “”

A Dark Moment for Democracy Affirms the Need for the Second Amendment

Businesses in major American cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. erected plywood barricades for fear of election day violence. To observers in other countries, the picture of boarded up businesses looked like they came from the third world. To historians, the pictures looked like they were taken from a country descending into tyranny.

We all know who these barriers were built to defend against. They weren’t built to defend against Tea Partiers. They weren’t built to defend against Proud Boys. They were built to defend against Antifa and Black Lives Matter, groups who Joe Biden has repeatedly refused to condemn despite their coordinated violence and property destruction.

Shortly before the election, Biden tweeted that he would ban “assault weapons,” implement “universal background checks,” and enact other allegedly “common sense” gun reform laws.

If he proves the victor, and the Democrats win one run-off race in Georgia, America will see an unprecedented assault on the Second Amendment. A Biden Department of Justice would try to bankrupt gun manufacturers in court. And gun confiscation would be on the table, given that Biden has promised to put Beto O’Rourke, who famously said “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15s,” in charge of his administration’s gun policies.

Fortunately, over the last six months gun sales – especially to first-time gun-buyers – have shattered all historic records. This is because for hundreds of thousands of Americans, 2020 has settled the gun control arguments they hear so often in the media. The question “what could anyone need an AR-15 for?” has been answered by images of store owners standing guard against a mob with that gun as their neighbor’s businesses burned to the ground.

The argument that “people should rely on the police for protection,” has been countered by the reality that in major American cities our elected officials pro-actively refuse to allow the police the enforce the law. This wasn’t a matter of the police getting there moments too late. What we saw was elected officials refusing to allow the police to enforce the law because they agreed with the political aims of the violent mob. Continue reading “”

Glitch my Gluteus Maximus. That’s too rich to simply blow off as a ‘glitch’.

BLUF:
Dominion machines are also being used in numerous Wisconsin counties and in Clark County, Nevada. Considering the numerous problems with these machines and the documented “glitch” in Antrim County, Michigan, every county that uses this type of ballot counting machine – no matter the provider – should have a manual recount to ensure that the totals on precinct-level counting tapes match what is recorded.

(P.S. Remember how terrible the rollout of Los Angeles County’s new voting system was in March 2020? Yep, Dominion.)

Election System Responsible for “Glitch” In Antrim County, MI Used in Every Swing State

Officials from the Michigan Republican Party and the Republican National Committee held a press conference Friday morning to confirm that a glitch tabulating software in Antrim County, Michigan, had “caused a 6,000 vote swing against our candidates” and had been rectified after ballots were recounted by hand. (Our Nick Arama covered the original story, in which officials announced that announced vote totals didn’t match the tabulators.)

When the discrepancy was first revealed Wednesday, it was believed that 32 other counties in Michigan used the same software that was used in Antrim County. According to the Michigan GOP chair, a total of 47 counties in Michigan use that same software.

Curious as to what this software was, I investigated and found that Dominion Systems was the provider for Antrim County. According to their website, they actually service 65 of 83 counties in Michigan.

Where else are they?

Interesting. It turns out that Dominion has the contract for the entire state of Georgia – and the statewide rollout was in 2020.

Continue reading “”

There’s a bible verse that I think fits:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”–Matthew 7, 1& 2

Little commie may believe she’s got the power to play games like this? If I were her, I’d think twice about her own words just might come back to haunt her.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Suggests ‘Trump Sycophants’ Should Be Held Accountable ‘In The Future’

You’re not supposed to ask questions like this:

THOUGHTS ON WHERE WE STAND NOW [WITH QUESTION FROM PAUL]

The presidential election seems to be going South and a Joe Biden administration may be in the offing. It is a bitter pill to swallow and I am profoundly depressed. Nevertheless, here are a few mostly-optimistic observations on the current scene.

* My guess is that in a perfect world, where only legal voters vote, and everyone votes only once, President Trump won the election. The problem is that, while there is ample evidence of many instances of voter fraud as well as innocent mistakes, there is no time to investigate them thoroughly and “prove”–as the press keeps demanding–that fraud or error swayed the election in a particular state. This is an inherent problem that can be solved only by better electoral procedures, which the Democrats will fight to the bitter end.

* Investigative journalism no longer exists, so the press outlets demanding that President Trump prove the prevalence of voter fraud will themselves do absolutely nothing to investigate whether the election was honestly decided.

* Trump is right to play his hand to the end. Lawsuits are pending in several states, and it may or may not prove possible to overturn the result in any state. In all likelihood, it won’t. But the Democrats shouldn’t be allowed to get away, unchallenged, with what in some cases was blatant fraud and abuse of the election process. It is outrageous, to cite just one example, that in some jurisdictions, Republican election judges and ballot counters were physically barred from the premises by Democrats. Trump will do a signal service if he shines a light on such abuses.

* Liberals are again indulging their fantasy that President Trump will refuse to acknowledge Biden’s victory and have to be dragged out of the White House. This is just one more sign that progressives are crazy. Of course no such thing will happen. But the Electoral College decides the outcome of the election, the New York Times does not.

* Other than the presidential race, the election went well for Republicans, contrary to most predictions. The GOP gained quite a few seats in the House, the exact number still undetermined. But it is clear that Nancy Pelosi will begin 2021 with one of the smallest House majorities in a long time. At the State level, Republicans did well. The Democrats failed to flip a single state legislative chamber, and Republicans will be in charge of redistricting in most states, including most swing states. Which could be one of the most important long-term consequences of this year’s election.

* Which leaves the Senate. Control will depend on the outcome of two runoff races in Georgia. If Democrats win both, the Senate will be tied 50-50, with Kamala Harris wielding the deciding vote. But I am confident that won’t happen. It is true that Democrats will pour unfathomable amounts of money into Georgia to try to flip those seats, but this year’s results remind us that money, beyond a certain level, is more or less irrelevant, especially when it is spent on television advertising. Witness the fact that Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham won re-election easily. Republicans still represent the largest voting bloc in Georgia, which is why David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler won pluralities in their races. Beyond that is the fact that many Americans prefer divided government. If the question posed to Georgians is whether they want the Democrats to control the presidency, the House and the Senate, the answer will be No.

* For Republicans, the future is bright. 2022 shapes up as a great year. Beyond the advantage that the out-party always enjoys in a new president’s first midterms, the Democrats will have to come to grips with the fact that they nominated and elected a man who is not able, either physically or mentally, to discharge the duties of his office. What will Biden’s White House calendar look like? 8:00 breakfast, 9:00 lid? By November 2022, Biden may not even be president. Republicans should be able to take the House and expand their lead in the Senate, where the landscape will be much more favorable.

* If you feel disappointed in this month’s election, check out what the “progressives” are saying. They are in despair over their failure to do better, and as usual they blame their party’s saner wing. (The Democrats are so far gone that their sane wing consists of those who recognize that socialism, rioting, looting and arson, if not necessarily wrong, are politically inconvenient.) The Democratic Party will be in a state of civil war for the next two years, with its bitterly opposed factions vying for influence in an administration ostensibly run by a man who has little idea what is going on.

* By 2024, Biden will be out of the picture and the Republicans will field a stable of formidable presidential candidates. Marco Rubio reminded us what a terrific politician he is with his work on behalf of President Trump, and, speaking Spanish like a native, he should be able to build on Donald Trump’s success in drawing Hispanic voters into the GOP tent. Tom Cotton is one of the smartest people in Washington, respected by all and beloved by the party’s conservative wing. Kristi Noem, almost unknown outside her home state a year ago, was one of the most popular Trump surrogates on the campaign trail and has vaulted into the presidential preference polls. Mike Pence is solidly boring and acceptable to all elements of the party, and his low-maintenance style could be welcome after what promises to be four bizarre years under some combination of Biden and Harris. And others will emerge.

In short, we conservatives should be of good cheer. The battle for freedom is never won. It must always be renewed. We will dust ourselves off and get back into the fight.

PAUL ASKS: What if Trump decides to run in 2024?

Philly election employee: ‘No matter how many times you ask questions’ the ‘orange guy still lost’: Philadelphia County is one of the Pennsylvania counties still in the process of counting votes.

Just remember:

Burglar arrested after confrontation with armed homeowner

WEST VALLEY CITY — A suspected burglar was arrested by police after a neighbor who came outside to investigation the commotion confronted him with a shotgun.

The investigation began about 11:40 p.m. Thursday when police were called to the area of 3200 South and 3600 West. Officers arrived to find Laulej Erakrik, 39, lying in the street with blood coming from his face and a knife on the ground next to him, according to a police affidavit.

Another man who lives in the area told police that he had heard yelling outside and windows breaking, and “due to previous burglaries in the area, he walked outside with his shotgun” to find out what was happening.

The man said he found Erakrik, who charged at him with a knife, the affidavit states.

“(The man) stated he believed (Erakrik) was going to stab him. (He) explained, in order to protect himself, he struck (Erakrik) with his shotgun a couple times,” according to the affidavit.

The man told police that his shotgun was not loaded, which is why he hit Erakrik with the barrel of the gun.

As police continued to investigate, they said they determined that Erakrik had broken into a nearby apartment by shattering a window.

“I was advised that (Erakrik) was yelling and screaming for the victims to open up the door. Both victims advised me once (he) entered through the window, they both fled from the residence to get to a safe location. The victim advised me that he felt his life was in danger,” according to the affidavit.

Another neighbor recorded what was happening on his cellphone.

“In the video you hear what sounds like glass shattering. The individual then makes a statement asking if people want to die,” the affidavit states. “I strongly believe had the victims not taken quick action, (Erakrik) would have caused serious injury or death to the victims.”

Erakrik, of West Valley City, was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on Friday for investigation of aggravated assault and burglary.

17-year-old shot while allegedly trying to break into east central Fresno home
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Fresno County Sheriff’s detectives have recovered surveillance video from an east Central Fresno home – after a resident said he shot at someone who was trying to break in on Wednesday morning.

The 17-year-old suspected burglar was found nearby after being struck.

The homeowner reported a burglary at his home for the second time in two weeks.

“We’re obviously talking with the homeowner to figure out why he might be getting targeted so much, and then there’s a lot to the story that we still don’t know,” said Tony Botti with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators say a Ring camera installed by the front door was working early Wednesday morning and captured video of the attempted burglary. The camera also alerted the homeowner, who deputies say, grabbed a handgun and ran outside. By that time detectives were told, the suspect had jumped a fence and was running.

At some point, the homeowner confronted the attempted burglar, and several shots were fired.

“The homeowner gave us some pretty good details- but we want to know a little bit more as to what caused him to fire at the suspect,” said Botti.

When deputies arrived, they tracked the teen down about half a block away. He was shot several times but is expected to recover.

Right now, there’s no evidence leading investigators to believe the suspect had a weapon.

Deputies say during the prior break-in last Thursday, a person actually made it inside the house before being confronted and running away.

Investigators are now trying to figure out if the suspect is the same in both instances.

“We’re looking into that. We do have video evidence from this morning. We’re trying to see if we can get a better description of the person who broke in last week,” said Botti.

Several adults who live in the home will also be questioned as part of the investigation.

The 17-year-old suspect who was shot was taken to the hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries. He was later booked into juvenile hall on one felony count of attempted burglary.

The district attorney’s office will have to decide on that charge.

Can you say: “That’s not a bug, but a feature?”
I thought you could.

The ‘glitch’ was that the demoncraps got caught.

 

Open Source Firearms Introduces The Ghost Gunner Flex

The Ghost Gunner FLEX is a hardware clone of the Defense Distributed Ghost Gunner 2 with several variances designed to make the unit easily reproduced and manufactured by hobbyists. Just like the Ghost Gunner 2 that precedes it, the design of the FLEX is fully Open Source hardware. The FLEX is built from 3D printed parts, aluminum T-slot extrusion, and commonly available motion components all ubiquitous within the RepRap community.

The FLEX features modular and swappable work-holding and accessory mounting methods, making it extremely flexible for a variety of tasks. The machine frame is suitable for use with conventional machining, fused deposition 3D printing, laser engraving, and grinding with straightforward toolhead swaps. The design is scaleable, allowing build envelopes up to 10x22x4 inches (250x550x100 millimeters) by a simple swap of motion and frame components without significant modifications to overall design. Having all square and flat features, the FLEX is also easily enclosed to control dust and temperature variations. Continue reading “”

How would LR-130 change local government’s authority to regulate permitted concealed weapons?

The Montana Code Annotated (MCA) Section 7-1-111 provides that local governments have the power to regulate the carrying of permitted concealed weapons. LR-130 would remove local governments’ power to regulate the carrying of permitted concealed weapons. The ballot measure would continue to allow local governments to regulate unpermitted concealed weapons and unconcealed weapons in public occupied buildings

Montana Votes For Self-Defense by Approving LR-130

Today, November 5th, LR-130 passed to ensure that your free exercise of the right to self-defense is protected equally across the whole state. For too long, local anti-gun bureaucrats have refused to recognize your freedom by instituting concealed carry restrictions beyond state law. Time and again, they usurp your rights in their quest to diminish your freedoms. LR-130 was put to the voters to end these constant obstructions.

The opposition, with backing from out-of-state interests, launched a campaign of misinformation. Montanans saw through their rhetoric and rightfully sided in favor of the Second Amendment when they went to the polls.

Congratulations to all the Montanan voters who want consistency in their gun laws whether they are in Billings, Kalispell, Missoula, or anywhere else.

I normally don’t link to posts with massive amounts of foul language, but this time I will. Larry Correa – of Monster Hunter Nation

I am more offended by how ham fisted, clumsy, and audacious the fraud to elect him is than the idea of Joe Biden being president. I think Joe Biden is a corrupt idiot, however, I think America would survive him like we’ve survived previous idiot administrations. However, what is potentially fatal for America is half the populace believing that their elections are hopelessly rigged Continue reading “”

“The handling of the votes stinks to high heaven this time and there will be no sanitizing this to the satisfaction of Trump’s electorate. Trump will, I think, pursue this to its legal end. So, let’s suppose that Trump is declared the loser. Trump will then leave the White House without assistance: the left will be denied their imagined scene. But, does he show up on January 20 to bless the transition? After all this? Why? For the sake of the Republic…and dignity?

I would argue that he shouldn’t. This will produce an apoplectic fit among his enemies, and sadly among too many Republicans. So what? The transition will still occur. The Republic, such as it is, will still stand. Yet, it should in this event be shamed and the event itself seen to be shameful. It would be that.

Certainly. The very fact that Biden now claims that he will govern as a president of “America” after serial slanders of more 60 million people is hideously laughable. The transition should not take place as if this was anything like the past. Even in the lead up to the Civil War we could at least manage an election with dignity surpassing the present and without the obvious taint of nationwide fraud. What has taken place over the last four years, and more, which has led to this denouement, was allowed to happen: allowed by Democrats and the left surely, but also by many GOP members of Congress and their supporters outside all of whom fled the field too often. They, most of all, should be denied any sense of dignity, and the fiction that the past can now be simply set aside. Too late. Much too late.

We’ve come a very long way from ages past when honor mattered. Affairs of honor are no more, and not solely for being outlawed. Even “fighting words” are now a distant memory. Many think this an improvement. Yet, I wonder whether our society would stand improved if fighting words regained their meaning and more than few, now confident in their slander, instead walked around with loosened teeth and broken noses” —-Stephen Clark

I’m not the only one that that thinks that dueling went out of style too soon.  It made people understand that there can be consequences to their BS

The Disastrous 2020 Election Will Never Be Resolved.

It all began with mail-in voting—that scandal-ready procedure that was the electoral equivalent of flying over American states in B-52s as if they were behind enemy lines and dropping ballots at random.

If one were to design a system by which a democracy could be subverted, even destroyed, universal mail-in voting (not, of course, normal absentee voting that requires the citizen to request a ballot) would be at or near the top of a list.

What could go wrong?

It’s not just the obvious—dead people voting, people who left the state voting, illegal aliens voting, signatures no one could possibly recognize being authenticated, signatures with no record, envelopes being back-dated, ballots found in gullies, ballots dumped in gullies, ballot harvesting, foreign agents voting surreptitiously en masse, deadlines that keep moving like the proverbial goal posts, and who knows what.

It’s an actual guarantee of chaos—and that’s what we had and have.

No one will ever really know what happened.

The pandemic was the excuse, but I strongly suspect it was more than that. I suspect, in fact I’m sure, that the intention of some was to utilize the pandemic to institute mail-in voting because they knew it would create this chaos, almost like an Antifa for the electoral system.

How do we know it was in some ways intentional?

There was plenty of warning. Just this June, 223,000 ballots in Nevada’s Clark County—17 percent of that county’s electorate that includes Las Vegas—were sent willy-nilly to the wrong addresses for their primary, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

No evidence has been forthcoming that this was corrected. PILF president and general legal counsel J. Christian Adams calls mail-in voting “chaos that lends itself to fraud.”

PILF has posted a rather droll video—if it weren’t so depressing—of their investigators going to some of these registration addresses that turn out to be commercial businesses, not homes, where the putative voter may or may not have once been employed (in some cases no one seems to have heard of them). These include an abandoned mine, of all things.

It’s no surprise Nevada GOP lawyers just sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Barr for—as of now but growing—3062 instances of voter fraud.

Outlets from the New York Times—who insisted in a recent tweet that declaring victors in presidential elections is the province of news media—to Fox News—that has been looking more and more of late like a false flag operation—have been complaining there was no evidence of voter fraud…. Well, there you go.

And Nevada is doubtless only the beginning. Continue reading “”

On an acquaintance’s blog

Dead people voting in Michigan

Via daughter Jaime:

1,300 confirmed: https://pastebin.com/XEi5Uy6t
13k being checked https://pastebin.com/zjz6nm6Q

Michigan registration website: https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/Voter/Index

The confirmed list is people who have been supposedly confirmed to be voted and/or registered to vote in this election via the Michigan Voter Information Center website (the third link above).

The second link above is a list of 14,549 names of people who were born 100 or more years ago. Of possible interest is this warning by Paste Bin for this list:

Warning – Potentially offensive content ahead!

Pastebin’s SMART filters have detected potentially offensive or questionable content ahead.

The content you are about to view has been deemed potentially offensive or questionable by our filters, because of this, you’re receiving this warning.

You can continue ahead at your own risk or go back.

Yeah, it’s offensive to the criminals committing fraud.

I sorted the confirmed list by date of birth and selected the oldest people to confirm via the Michigan registration website. Here are my results:

 

TERRY MATHIS  1/1900  48207 Ballot Received: 11/2/2020
JAMES BRADLEY  1/1900  48234 Ballot Received: 11/2/2020
THEODORE WILLIAMS  1/1900  48219 Registered but no absentee ballot was requested.
ROBERT BROCK  1/1900  48203 Ballot sent but not received.
JAMES JENTZ  1/1900  48224 Registered but no absentee ballot was requested.

I find it highly unlikely that people coming up on their 121st birthday actually voted. I claim fraud.

This must stop. The people committing this fraud must be sent to prison and never be allowed to vote again.

Some observations made by Jaime when she called me to discuss:

  • Maybe this is the best possible outcome. It’s so obvious that people are going to insist something be done about it.
  • Trump is not a Republican. A Republican would concede. Trump is a fighter.
  • If the lawsuits can’t be resolved by the time the electoral college votes in December then it goes to the House where a delegation, with each state equally represented, votes on the president. Republicans would have a majority in this scenario.
  • 2020 does not disappoint.

The left is again showing that it can’t stand anyone who disagrees

This year’s presidential election hasn’t provided the catharsis that many on the left were awaiting. Instead of the hoped-for “Blue Wave,” we have a still-too-close-to-call presidential election, while Republicans picked up House seats and appear to have held on to the Senate.

One response might be self-criticism: to wonder how, after four years of single-mindedly trying to get rid of Trump and marginalize his followers, things didn’t go better. Instead, Democrats’ thinkers seem to be asking themselves variations on “How can I live in a country where half the people supported Donald Trump?”

According to the Campus Reform Web site, professors around America were expressing anger and claiming to feel “genuinely unsafe, given the sheer number of people willing to vote for Trump.” Some canceled classes for the rest of the week, apparently because of the emotional strain.

An article in The New Republic by Andrew Cohen asks: “What do we do with all these Trump supporters?” (Spoiler: “Learn to live with them and respect your differences” isn’t on the agenda.)

Instead, Cohen writes about “one of the most grievous if underappreciated wounds of the Trump era: the sad discovery for so many of us over the past four years that so many of our friends, neighbors, business partners and heroes are not who we thought they were.”

Cohen worries, “No one really has a good solution about how to strongly and honorably respond to the Trump supporter in our lives. Do we forgive and forget? Turn the other cheek after it’s been slapped?”

CNN’s Don Lemon offered one possible answer: He said on air that he “had to get rid” of friends who support Trump, because “they’re too far gone.”

In The Atlantic, meanwhile, Tom Nichols worries that “a large portion of the electorate chose the sociopath.”

“Sadly, the voters who said in 2016 that they chose Trump because they thought he was ‘just like them’ turned out to be right. Now, by picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong. . . . It’s clear now that far too many of Trump’s voters don’t care about policy, decency or saving our democracy. They care about power.”

Well, to be fair, elections are about power. That’s certainly something that Democrats have traditionally understood. But then Nichols turns to racism, arguing that “although Trump appears to have received a small uptick in votes from black men and Latinos, the overwhelming share of his supporters are white.”

Well, to be fair, America is a majority-white country, so pretty much any mass movement — certainly including the progressive movement — is likely to be majority white. (Have you seen a Bernie Sanders rally?) But Nichols’ pivot to racism and talk of “the obsessions of white anxiety” provides a clue to what’s going on.

Moral superiority is an addictive drug, and perhaps the most unfortunate legacy of the Civil Rights era is that it got people on the left dependent on moral superiority for their self-esteem. It was easy to feel superior to the likes of Orval Faubus and Lester Maddox, and it felt good.

But once you become dependent on moral superiority, you need moral inferiors. Thus, every issue must become one of great moral urgency, in which the people who disagree with you are not simply wrong, but actually evil.

It’s even better if you can think of them as being stupid as well, since that lets you think of yourself as smart.

This was nicely encapsulated by photographer (and class-war expert) Chris Arnade. Asked “Why did anyone vote for Trump? Anyone?” Arnade replied: “Cheap answer is, some people are frustrated that a professor of philosophy makes three times what they do for cleaning their house, or making sure they are supplied with electricity, or keeping them safe from muggers, or cooking them Pad Thai, only to then be talked down to” and “scolded.”

People can tolerate differences in wealth and power. Sanctimonious scolding is less tolerable. And treating half the nation as moral lepers is itself a moral failing.

And, as Arnade suggests, bad politics as well.

Stealing Pennsylvania

Regardless of the outcome, Pennsylvania Democrat Governor Tom Wolf, the Pennsylvania state courts and the Democrat State Party have pulled every dirty trick in the books.

They have changed the rules mid-game, using COVID scare as a cover, but their chicanery is so overt, the curtain has been pulled back on their thug tactics.

First, months out, they claimed they would need three extra days to count the votes.  Then, against all extant state laws, they said they would accept illegible or ballots with no security envelope postmark.  Then, incredibly they said a voter’s signature on the mail-in ballot didn’t have to match the voter’s signature in the voter registration books.  Banana Republic, anyone?

But that’s just the everchanging rules of the game.  On the ground, it got worse and worse.

Certified poll watchers were not allowed into many Philadelphia polling stations.  This is an old Philly trick.  Why is it important? Because without a poll watcher from the opposite side, numbers at the poll can be jiggered.  But even that wasn’t enough.

Montgomery County, where this author resides and works as a Republican committeeperson, is the third largest county in Pennsylvania.  Historically solid Republican, over more recent decades, the balance of power has gradually eroded to majority Democrat, with some pockets of resistance.  However, in this election cycle, Republicans outpaced Democrats in new voter registrations significantly.  They didn’t outstrip the Democrats, but the trend was pro-Republican.

So, what happened on the ground in Pennsylvania yesterday?  Dirty tricks, and lots of them.

During the day in Montgomery County, Republican poll workers, and committee people received an alert.  The Democrats had sent an army of spies into Montgomery County, wearing badges reading iterations of ‘Voter Protection.’ They were posing as poll watchers.  In Pennsylvania, certified poll watchers can only work in the county of their residence.  When these spies were asked for credentials, all they could produce were Philadelphia poll watcher certificates.  They were all then barred from the polls.  But they could not be barred from any area outside of the poll.

My poll was visited by one such spy.  He sat outside the poll all day long with a laptop.  It was obvious what he was doing:  counting in-person voters.  Why? To divine how many mail-in ballots would be required to beat the in-person votes for President Trump that would be tallied first.

But even that was not the only ‘quiver’ in their bag of tricks, as Nancy Pelosi loves to warn.  Unsolicited, the Democrat-controlled Board of Elections sent unsolicited mail-in-ballots to many known Republicans, or at least claimed they did.  Imagine my surprise, as a Republican committeeperson, when I went to vote to discover that I was listed as having received a mail-in ballot in the voter registration book.  I had received no such ballot.  Which meant I had no mail-in packet to return.  Which meant under Governor Wolf’s new election rules, my vote had to be cast provisionally, and was thrown into a box, instead of being processed in the voting machine.  Will that vote be counted with all the other provisional ballots?

I wouldn’t bet my life on it. In another part of Montgomery County, another trick was being played.  Republican voters who for years had voted in the same location, were told their names were not in the voter registration book and, consequently, they could not vote.  Not even provisionally.

Pre-election, most pundits agreed President Trump would not likely prevail over the Pennsylvania fraud.  Who knows what’s cooking in the other Democrat-led states who have not yet posted numbers.

This is how voter confidence erodes.

It’s like if they can brush Trump aside, they can get back to the business of feeding at the free lunch counter on the .gov gravy train.

BLUF:
If Biden wins, we should assume that in late January 2021, these same forces will regroup to frame a new post-election narrative.

Expect our Big Brothers to instruct Americans that the COVID-19 pandemic is mutating into little more than a bad flu.

The “Biden vaccine” and miraculous “Biden recovery” will have ended the need for Trump-era lockdowns.

And the rioting, looting, and arson?

They will all have miraculously disappeared because the disuniter and inciter Donald Trump is now gone.

The Disinformationists

A republic is not just a nation of laws. It also relies on its good-faith watchdogs, such as honest pollsters, the media, and bipartisan institutions.

We still didn’t know the final result of Tuesday’s presidential election as of Wednesday night. But there are lots of reasons to worry that something in America has gone terribly wrong.

Many of the mainstream pre-election polls predicted that Donald Trump would lose in a landslide. He did not — to the shock of a host of propagandists.

A CNN poll had Trump down 12 percentage points nationally entering the final week before the election. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in late October claimed Biden was leading in Wisconsin by 17 points. That state’s voting ended up nearly even. YouGov’s election model showed Biden prevailing with a landslide win in the Electoral College. Progressive statistics guru Nate Silver had for weeks issued pseudo-scientific analyses of a Trump wipeout.

Pollsters were widely wrong in 2016. Yet they learned nothing about their flawed methodologies. So how do they remain credible after 2020, when most were wildly off again?

A cynic might answer that polling no longer aims to offer scientific assessments of voter intentions.

Pollsters, the vast majority of them progressives, have become political operatives. They see their task as ginning up political support for their candidates and demoralizing the opposition. Some are profiteering as internal pollsters for political campaigns and special interests.

Never again will Americans believe these “mainstream” pollsters’ predictions because they have been exposed as rank propagandists.

That bleak assessment won’t make much difference to pollsters. They privately understand what their real mission has become and why they are no longer scientific prognosticators.

Big liberal donors sent cash infusions totaling some $500 million into Senate races across the country to destroy Republican incumbents and take back the Senate. In the end, they may have failed to change many of the outcomes.

But did they really fail? Continue reading “”