Archive for 2020
November 10, 2020
FORCE MULTIPLIER, OR SKYNET-IN-WAITING? Robot soldiers could soon make up a quarter of the army.
MICHAEL WALSH: Status of High Stakes Election Continues to be Unclear.
14) During one of his few campaign appearances, the bumbling Biden made the following unconditional statement: “We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” Imagine the howling on the left had Trump said something like that. And yet fraud and the Democrat Party have gone hand-in-hand at least since Tammany Hall in the 19th century. Indeed, it has become the punchline of a joke everybody knows, including Democrats. Except they’re proud of it.
15) Some conservative commentators, among them lawyers, have tried to make the point that, yes, there’s fraud but it really doesn’t matter unless it materially affects the outcome of the election. These are the same lawyers, by the way, who employ the doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one detail, false in all) to discredit eyewitness testimony in big trials.
16) But fraud is fraud and therefore its presence should rightfully invalidate the entire election, at least within each state where it provably occurs. It ought not to matter whether it involves outright ballot theft, forged ballots, illegal-alien ballots, fake “early voting” ballots, or obviously manufactured ballots delivered days after the nominal end of Election Day.
17) There was a time, perhaps, when a Richard Nixon—who knew he’d been cheated in Illinois by Chicago’s Mayor Daley out of the 1960 election—could put country before party and refuse to challenge JFK’s hairsbreadth victory. But those days are long gone; the stakes are simply too high.
18) Everybody back then knew the Nixon and Kennedy differed in policy, not in love of country. Today’s critical-theory Democrats don’t love the country as founded, they love it for the kind of socialist utopia into which they’d like to fundamentally transform it. Don’t be fooled by their expressions of “patriotism.”
Read the whole thing.
AT AMAZON, AeroGarden Bounty Basic, Black.
THERE WILL BE NO OPPOSITION FROM A BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: China Works to Expand Influence in Caribbean.
CHANGE: Right-leaning social network Parler tops free app charts. “With Twitter and other mainstream social media apps more strictly enforcing rules against election-related falsehoods, more permissive, often right-leaning platforms have seen a surge of interest.”
It’s Axios, so of course, they have to frame free speech for conservatives as “election-related falsehoods.”
I tried Parler a while back but gave up because after almost two years away from Twitter, I’m over that particular format. However, I am in the process of ditching Facebook for my personal social media fun and moving over to MeWe.
#JOURNALISM: Media Lies About Pfizer Partnership With Trump Administration’s Operation Warp Speed.
Related:
SOMEDAY, SMOD? WHY DO YOU TEASE US THAT WAY? Apophis: the asteroid that may someday hit the Earth.
(And, btw, Behind the Black is running its seasonal fundraiser. Yeah, but… it’s the times we live in.)
MICHAEL BARONE: We’re Still Living in a 49% Nation.
In early 2001, in the wake of the closely contested 2000 presidential election, I wrote an Introduction to The Almanac of American Politics called “The 49 percent nation.” Not only was the popular vote for president 49% to 49%, but in each of the three preceding congressional elections, both parties had received either 48% or 49%, and Bill Clinton had won the preceding presidential election with 49%. We were pretty evenly divided.
As we are these days. In 2016, President Trump won his majority in the Electoral College by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by a total of 77,000 votes out of 137 million cast. Joe Biden won his majority in the Electoral College by — and this is an approximation, subject to change and probably upward adjustment in the final count — by winning Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin (there it is again) by a total of 49,000 votes. Those narrow margins gave each of them their 306 electoral votes in their respective victories. . . .
Why the polls were wrong is an interesting question worthy of exploration in multiple columns to come. But the results speak for themselves and make it plain that even though a large majority of Americans vote straight-party tickets, they are also closely enough divided between the parties that even a few split tickets can, and usually have, given us divided government.
This year’s Senate elections are another example. Like most pundits this fall, I said it was likely the Democrats would win a Senate majority. Polls showed multiple Republican senators trailing their Democratic challenger and only one likely Republican gain. The Senate would go from 53-47 Republican, many predicted, to 54-46 Democratic.
Didn’t happen. Last winter, before COVID-19 and the rush of polls, I predicted that voting in Senate races would resemble the 2016 presidential election and that the new Senate would look much like the old. That’s largely what happened. The one incumbent Democrat in a Trump 2016 state, Alabama, lost. So did one of two incumbent Republicans in a Clinton state, Colorado. The other, Susan Collins in Maine, who has long run ahead of party lines, won solidly, even though every poll showed her behind. But that was offset by the defeat of a Republican incumbent with a history of running behind party lines in Arizona, a narrow Trump 2016 state where Biden currently leads. In Georgia, another narrow Trump 2016 state, there will be two January runoffs in races in which no candidate got 50%.
My conclusion, in 2000 and now, is that neither party owns the future, and that, even if you believe (as I do) that both sides this year ran suboptimal campaigns, they do tend to adjust and remain competitive over time. Twenty years later, we’re still living in a 49% nation.
Sadly, we’re doing so with the worst political class in our nation’s history.
THEY SEEM SLOW TO ADAPT … DON’T THEY SEEM SLOW TO YOU? California wine country adapting to annual wildfire threat.
Or, you know, they could have proper forest management, if Emperor Gavin would let them, of course.
IF THE CDC SAYS IT IT MUST BE SO, AMIRIGHT? I WONDER WHEN THEY FIRST BEGAN TO SUSPECT THIS? PERHAPS WHEN THEY FOUND THEY COULD BE PANTS-LESS DURING ZOOM MEETINGS? Teleworking may help us beat COVID-19 , CDC finds.
WELL, IT WILL LEAD TO WAR IF POWER IS GIVEN TO BIDEN. WITH TRUMP…. WHO KNOWS. MAYBE HE CAN BRING THIS THING TO SAFE HARBOR: Leftist election theft must lead to war, if only so freedom can survive.
For Terry Pratchett’s fans: my hope of the Republic surviving and our coming out of this better is at this point pinned on the fact that 4 years ago I identified Trump’s archetype as Moist Von Lipwig. And he has lived up to it, golden head topping and all. (Not that I think Trump was ever a swindler. But I think he’s “reformed” from a lifetime of “working with” the liberal establishment, and in the same way as Lipwig facing ultimate challenge.)
While I’m aware it’s a fairly insane hope, it allows me to sleep more than 3 hours, one night in four.
I THINK THE LEFT HAS BEEN RIGGING ELECTIONS A LONG TIME. AND WHILE I CAN’T PROVE IT, THEIR BEHAVIOR HAS THE HALLMARKS OF PROVIDERS WHO HAVE CUT THEMSELVES FROM FEEDBACK IN THE ECONOMIC SENSE: When the Free Marketplace of Political Ideas Is Thwarted.
(Sorry, yes, it is behind a paywall. Should you wish to subscribe, use the discount code HOYT)
SPEAKING OF PSY-OPS, I’M SOOOOOO TIRED OF THE WINNIE THE FLU ONE: KDHE shows no interest in obtaining cycle threshold data.
YEP. BASICALLY THAT: US Elections 2020: media and Big Social peeing on our legs and telling us it’s raining.
As for Elvis and Little Richard, I’ll only believe it if Facebook “fact checks” it.
TWITTER AND FACEBOOK ARE BANNING MENTIONS OF THIS: Benford’s Law.
Like most normal Americans at this point I view anything facebook “fact checks” as probably true. And anything that facebook and twitter ban as true and also scary for the left.
…. it’s like these people never met Americans.
And no, they don’t seem to be smart enough to manipulate us by banning lies. They are very good at psyops of only of the “big lie” type.
NO FRAUD, MY SORE… FEET: Election 2020: the more fuckery update.
WELL, IT IS A TRUMP-SIZED CHALLENGE: TRUMP VS POSTMODERNISM.
AND MOST ANTI-SEMITISM IS ON THE LEFT. AND IF THE LEFT GETS CONTROL OF THE US, ISRAEL IS IN DEEP TROUBLE: Kristallnacht: Nov. 9-10, 1938; The Night The Holocaust Began.
LIFE IS INDEED PAIN. AND RIGHT NOW VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR REPUBLIC: Political Rumblings.
HOW DO YOU EVEN DEAL WITH MASS INSANITY AT THIS LEVEL? IT WOULD HELP IF SCHOOLS, MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT STOPPED INDOCTRINATING PEOPLE INTO IT, MIND YOU: She Makes Her Own, I Think.
BEHOLD. MY SHOCKED FACE: #FOXEXIT Movement Builds As Network Has Become Anti-Trump.
ROLL LEFT AND DIE! Leaked Fox News Internal Ratings Show “Catastrophic” Loss of Audience.
But, hey, diddle dumpling, they now get invited to those cocktail parties.
Also, hey, we can now taunt the liberals with “Just because you heard it on FauxNews, it doesn’t make it so.” Imagine the disorientation they’ll experience.