WELL, YES. THE DEMOCRATS’ AND MEDIA’S — BUT I REPEAT MYSELF — EFFORT TO MAKE ELECTION FRAUD CLAIMS SUDDENLY OUT OF BOUNDS IS RISIBLE: Majority agrees: Don’t punish Trump for election theft claims.

Flashback, November 2, 2020: Will your ballot be safe? Computer experts sound warnings on America’s voting machines.

All election systems are for the most part black boxes: proprietary software and hardware jealously guarded by the handful of companies selling them. But state reviews and court cases opening up DRE systems of all makes and models for examination have for years flagged problems.

In New Jersey in 2008, Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel and a five-member team got a rare look under the hood of an AVC Advantage DRE, part of a lawsuit alleging DREs could not reliably count votes.

Among the findings: The system sometimes only seemed to record a vote. It sometimes did record a vote but seemed not to. It would take one screwdriver and seven minutes to insert a vote-stealing program. That kind of hack would probably be invisible, Appel concluded.

More than a decade later, Appel is still talking about DRE vulnerabilities. And although the New Jersey governor, citing COVID-19, has created a nearly all-mail election, 19 New Jersey counties still have their DRE equipment on hand for the next contest, according to state records.

Nationally, if the surge in absentee ballots has not decreased in-person voting, more than 14 million registered voters would be going Tuesday to polls that are equipped with DREs.

“The whole community of computer scientists is mystified why election officials will not listen to experts about technology but will listen to the vendors (selling and maintaining it),” said Duncan Buell, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who examined that state’s system.

Plus: Democrats question election results: ‘We just trust the machines, and we shouldn’t.’

Matt Luceen didn’t vote for former President Donald Trump in 2020, but he came to Washington last week to protest President Biden’s inauguration, saying the election was flawed.

Mr. Luceen, a supporter of Sen. Bernard Sanders, said he toted signs that read “COUNT OUR VOTES BY HAND,” and “End the charade.”

“We don’t ever really put the paper into piles and count them by hand anymore,” the 34-year-old computer programmer said. “We just trust the machines, and we shouldn’t because we have documented proof that these machines are vulnerable.”

While Mr. Trump and his supporters have been explosively vocal about their distrust of the election system, discontent runs through a broad swath of voters from across the political spectrum.

In 2016, it was Democrats complaining that the election had been tainted by Russian interference. Two years later, the party complained that Stacey Abrams had been denied the Georgia governorship because of shenanigans with voting rolls.

Ms. Abrams never conceded, and Democrats — who took control of the U.S. House in those 2018 elections — made her cause a rallying cry, vowing to repair elections.

In 2020, it was Mr. Trump sowing complaints early and often.

And remember this? Democratic senators warned of potential ‘vote switching’ by Dominion voting machines prior to 2020 election.

In a December 2019 letter to Dominion Voting Systems, which has been mired in controversy after a human error involving its machines in Antrim County, Michigan, resulted in incorrect counts, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Amy Klobuchar and congressman Mark Pocan warned about reports of machines “switching votes,” “undisclosed vulnerabilities,” and “improbable” results that “threaten the integrity of our elections.”

“In 2018 alone, ‘voters in South Carolina [were] reporting machines that switched their votes after they’d inputted them, scanners [were] rejecting paper ballots in Missouri, and busted machines [were] causing long lines in Indiana,’” the letter reads. “In addition, researchers recently uncovered previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in “nearly three dozen backend election systems in 10 states.” And, just this year, after the Democratic candidate’s electronic tally showed he received 164 votes out of 55,000 cast in a Pennsylvania state judicial election in 2019, the county’s Republican chairwoman said, “nothing went right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That’s a problem.”

The letter continued: “These problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of election systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack.”

Dominion’s suing Rudy Giuliani, but not these Democrats. But an “unbiased” voting machine company that only sues Republicans has kind of blown its credibility already.

JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND THEIR SILENCE MAKES PERFECT SENSE: Biden Is Still Separating Families at the Border. Where Is the Media Outrage?

CHINESE COVERUP: China Refuses to Give WHO Raw Data on Early Covid-19 Cases: Officials withhold personalized information on patients that could help determine pandemic’s origins.

Chinese authorities refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw, personalized data on early Covid-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China, according to WHO investigators who described heated exchanges over the lack of detail.

The Chinese authorities turned down requests to provide such data on 174 cases of Covid-19 that they have identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. The investigators are part of a WHO team that this week completed a monthlong mission in China aimed at determining the origins of the pandemic.

Chinese officials and scientists provided their own extensive summaries and analysis of data on the cases, said the WHO team members. They also supplied aggregated data and analysis on retrospective searches through medical records in the months before the Wuhan outbreak was identified, saying that they had found no evidence of the virus.

But the WHO team wasn’t allowed to view the raw underlying data on those retrospective studies, which could allow them to conduct their own analysis on how early and how extensively the virus began to spread in China, the team members said. Member states typically provide such data—anonymized, but disaggregated so investigators can see all other relevant details on each case—as part of WHO investigations, said team members.

They’re hiding something, and we all have a pretty good idea what it is.

OUT ON A LIMB: Most GOP Voters Still Don’t Think Biden Was Elected Fairly.

That Time magazine article last week certainly didn’t do much to dissuade the cynicism of Trump’s supporters right now.

PANTS ‘EM. Democrats fear getting ‘caught with our pants down’ in 2022.

If you’re looking for a way to make a difference, start working on a 2022 campaign. And don’t let the “elections don’t matter” talk stop you. That’s just Dem propaganda designed to get you to stay home. A very small number of jurisdictions were responsible for all the problems in 2020, and in several of them a GOP legislature is going to change the laws to prevent a repeat. Those problems are very unlikely to affect your state or local elections.

IT BLAMES TRUMP, OF COURSE: “Report: 40% of US COVID deaths could have been avoided.”

What this Fox News article doesn’t point out is that the “experts” involved in this study–Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein–are the authors of a string of outlandish, highly politicized “studies.”

Jeff Jacoby wrote about their rent control study back in 1995. He quotes Woolhandler:

“‘If rent control vanishes, dozens will die,’ said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an internist at Cambridge Hospital and associate professor at Harvard Medical School….

“‘One-third of our heart attack patients at Cambridge Hospital live in rent-controlled apartments. By allowing landlords to force them out, the governor and state Legislature are implementing the death penalty—a social policy sure to kill.’”

Jacoby also quotes Himmelstein:

“As doctors,” pronounces Dr. David Himmelstein, “we don’t have the power to change the law or get a person another apartment. But we do have the power to appeal to the moral consciousness of politicians as well as landlords.”

As Jacoby put it in 1995: “If only conservatives could be as sensitive and morally refined as Drs. Woolhandler and Himmelstein. Then they would realize how massive the death toll can be when liberals don’t get their way.”

Woolhandler and Himmelstein were also the authors (along with then Prof. Elizabeth Warren) of an over-hyped study of bankruptcy that wildly claimed that half of all bankruptcies stem from illness or injury. My response to that one is here.

It’s surprising to me how these folks manage to get so much attention for their work.  But they definitely do.

CUOMO AIDE ADMITS THEY HID NURSING HOME DATA SO FEDS WOULDN’T FIND OUT:

Governor Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 — telling them “we froze” out of fear the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors, The Post has learned.

The stunning admission of a cover-up was made by Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa during a video conference call with state Democratic leaders in which she said the Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the tally in August because “right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” according to an audio recording of the two-hour-plus meeting.

“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said. “He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”

In addition to attacking Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors, DeRosa said, Trump “directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us.”

“And basically, we froze,” she told the lawmakers on the call.

“Gotta hand it to Cuomo, ‘I covered up thousands of deaths to fight fascism’ is bold. But hey, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures right?”, one wag noted on Twitter.

Meanwhile, there is pouncing and seizing spotted by the DNC-MSM:

● Politico: Republicans Pounce! “Nearly every top Republican in the state pounced on the Post’s report, subjecting Cuomo to a barrage of criticism arguably unparalleled at any point during his decade in office.”

● The New York Times: “Condemnation was even louder from Republicans, who have seized on Mr. Cuomo’s performance on nursing homes — where more than 10,000 New Yorkers have died during the pandemic, but the state long stalled on releasing full data — as evidence of duplicity or even criminality.”

As Jim Treacher likes to say, “When Republicans screw up, that’s the story. When Democrats screw up, the Republicans’ reaction is the story.”

And speaking of screwing up:

However, Ed Morrissey asks: Are New York Democrats bailing out on Cuomo?

When only Republicans criticize a cover-up in a scandal involving thousands of deaths, the media can slough it off as pouncing. When Democrats join them in slamming Andrew Cuomo for his “betrayal,” suddenly it looks less like pouncing and more like a serious existential crisis. And that might very well be what Cuomo will shortly face:

Faster, please.

Flashback: America’s Newspaper of Record last May: CNN Praises Governor Cuomo For Killing Off The Elderly Since They Probably Would Have Voted For Trump.

高等教育泡沫报告: Professor at distinguished Chinese university claims all of Western civilization, including the pyramids, were faked to “weaken the glory” of China.

WILLIAM JACOBSON:  Exposing Critical Race Training in Higher Education.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. John Stossel: There Are No Socialist Success Stories. “Only capitalist countries create real wealth.”

Yeah, but the opportunities for graft — and even more vital, for self-importance and unchecked power — are so much less.

JIM GERAGHTY: The Icons of the Left Collapse.

What’s the theme that ties together Andrew Cuomo, the Lincoln Project, and California’s governing class? Since 2015 or so, a whole bunch of people who hated Donald Trump — and I am among those who believe the former president earned his animosity and scorn — chose to believe that anyone who stood in opposition to Trump had to be one of the good guys. A huge swath of the media world, elites across American society, and donors large and small, conflated political agreement in opposition to Trump with all other positive virtues. Outspoken opposition to Trump turned into an all-purpose badge of righteousness that many believed would outweigh or outshine any other issues or character flaws.

When a society adopts this kind of mentality, bad people recognize this. They pick up on the fact that certain views or opinions or labels can be used as moral get-out-of-jail-free cards. Why do you think so many self-identified feminist men keep turning out to be creeps when alone with a woman? Why do you think some billionaires describe themselves as socialist? Why do you think self-professed environmentalists keep taking private jets to climate-change conferences? Society has taught them that their viewpoint outweighs their actual behavior, actions, and in some cases, and how they treat other people.

Exit quote: “You made this bed, progressives. We tried to hold these guys accountable, but you wouldn’t listen to us. The only way we get better results is if you guys hold your own guys accountable.”

NEW YORK SUN: Impeaching the Voters:

The fact is that the Democrats are scared of a Trump comeback, and the House made no secret of it.

On the contrary, it warned in open Senate against acquitting Mr. Trump, because that would leave open the possibility that he could rebound and run for president again. That is what the Democrats’ long campaign for impeachment has been about from the start — fear of the voters. It seems that the Democrats are impeaching not so much the former president but the 74 million Americans who voted for him and, they fear, might yet do so again.

Better they should fear what comes in place of Trump, if they continue in this vein. You can declare war against 74 million people, but it may not go as planned.

Flashback:

THAT WAS ALWAYS THE GOAL, THEY JUST USED TO BE LESS OPEN ABOUT IT: Zaid Jilani: The Left Has Replaced Social Liberalism with Social Control.

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE COVID TUNNEL: American Commitment’s Phil Kerpen tells Bill Walton there are multiple reasons to think the worst of the Covid crisis is behind us. For one thing, the decline in the present wave of “new cases” is happening across the country, not just in sections.

BTW, if you appreciate informal, substantive and intelligent conversations about the most important issues of the day, “The Bill Walton Show” will delight you. Like this one with Kerpen, Walton’s conversations are lengthy at just under 50 minutes, but in my experience always well-worth the invested time. And, no, this is not the former NBA star Bill Walton, but the Bill Walton who built Allied Capital.

OPEN THREAD: Start the weekend right!

SPACE: NASA to use commercial launch vehicle for Europa Clipper.