Biden and Harris win election in the wild and crazy year of 2020

 

Prior to this year only nine incumbent presidents had lost re-election bids. Given that record, a win against an incumbent isn’t really unusual. Donald Trump, President 45, may be the tenth one, and if so, this one is unusual.

Highlighting the list of oddities of the November 3rd election is pollster Patrick Basham. He is the founding director of the Democracy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, DC and London, UK.

“First, consider some facts. President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection,” Basham wrote in the American edition of The Spectator. “He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.”

“Trump’s vote increased so much because, according to exit polls, he performed far better with many key demographic groups. Ninety-five percent of Republicans voted for him,” he continued. 

“We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.”

Basham goes on to note that winners in presidential races, particularly if they are challengers, usually have candidates riding their coattails down ballot.

But Biden did not. “The Republicans held the Senate and enjoyed a ‘red wave’ in the House, where they gained a large number of seats while winning all 27 toss-up contests. Trump’s party did not lose a single state legislature and actually made gains at the state level,” he explained.

“Another anomaly is found in the comparison between the polls and non-polling metrics,” Basham wrote. “The latter include: party registrations trends; the candidates’ respective primary votes; candidate enthusiasm; social media followings; broadcast and digital media ratings; online searches; the number of (especially small) donors; and the number of individuals betting on each candidate.”

“Despite poor recent performances, media and academic polls have an impressive 80 percent record predicting the winner during the modern era,” he wrote. “But, when the polls err, non-polling metrics do not; the latter have a 100 percent record.” 

So, in terms of predicting the winner of the presidential election, the non-polling metrics have never been wrong.

“Every non-polling metric forecast Trump’s reelection. For Trump to lose this election, the mainstream polls needed to be correct, which they were not,” he said. “Furthermore, for Trump to lose, not only did one or more of these metrics have to be wrong for the first time ever, but every single one had to be wrong, and at the very same time.”

Basham told Mark Levin on Fox News’ “Life, Liberty and Levin” that such an outcome is "not statistically impossible, but it's statistically implausible."

Quoting from the Spectator article, Basham lists nine peculiarities that lack compelling explanations:

1. Late on election night, with Trump comfortably ahead, many swing states stopped counting ballots. In most cases, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers.

2. Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed. They were unusually large in size (hundreds of thousands) and had an unusually high (90 percent and above) Biden-to-Trump ratio.

3. Late arriving ballots were counted. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions.

4. The failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots. The destruction of mail-in ballot envelopes, which must contain signatures.

5. Historically low absentee ballot rejection rates despite the massive expansion of mail voting. Such is Biden’s narrow margin that, as political analyst Robert Barnes observes, ‘If the states simply imposed the same absentee ballot rejection rate as recent cycles, then Trump wins the election.’

6. Missing votes. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards are missing.

7. Non-resident voters. Matt Braynard’s Voter Integrity Project estimates that 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia. Biden’s margin is 12,670 votes.

8. Serious ‘chain of custody’ breakdowns. Invalid residential addresses. Record numbers of dead people voting. Ballots in pristine condition without creases, that is, they had not been mailed in envelopes as required by law.

9. Statistical anomalies. In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch. It is particularly perplexing that all statistical anomalies and tabulation abnormalities were in Biden’s favor. Whether the cause was simple human error or nefarious activity, or a combination, clearly something peculiar happened.

It is stunning that these many irregularities — some that are crimes — do not bother so many people. The breaches of federal and state constitutional mandates in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — where state officials, not legislatures, changed voting processes — don’t seem to matter.

Will votes cast illegally be allowed to stand? We may never know how many illegal votes there actually were, or what the totals really were.

The 2020 election demonstrates the strong need for election reform

Whether you voted for Joe Biden or Donald Trump for President of the United States, or whether you believe that Trump was defeated by a more popular candidate or by election errors and dishonesty, you should want sensible and secure election systems in place to assure the results reflect the decision of the American people.

Few things are more deserving of absolute security than elections, especially when we are electing the president. And elections are a prime area for problems, as we have seen this year.

The pandemic of 2020 threw everything into chaos, including the election. Efforts to protect people led to a movement to send unrequested ballots — universal ballots — to every voter in several states, some of which had never done this before. That led to more chaos.

As a result of the craziness of the 2000 Bush v Gore controversy, the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform — known informally as the Carter-Baker Commission, named after former Democratic President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker — was formed.

The Daily Signal explained that the commission “was created to address voting and election integrity issues raised by the tumultuous 36-day postelection battle of 2000, which was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court decision that resulted in awarding Florida’s 25 electoral votes and the presidency to Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.” 

The commission studied the election processes, and in 2005 released a report with 87 recommendations. The Daily Signal reported on this study and noted that “had Congress and state governments adopted many of the panel’s recommendations, the 2020 post-election mess between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden might have been avoided, said Carter-Baker Commission member Kay C. James, now the president of The Heritage Foundation.”

James said that “simple protections against fraud, like voter ID and updated voter registration lists, make perfect sense if we truly believe that every vote must count. Election officials should take another look at the commission’s recommendations and make sure they’re doing everything possible to protect the integrity of our elections.”

While several state legislatures did respond to the commission’s recommendations, Congress was reportedly unenthusiastic about them.

The Commission offered seven recommendations that are relevant to the 2020 election. They include:

* Voter ID - “To ensure that persons presenting themselves at the polling place are the ones on the registration list, the Commission recommends that states require voters to use the REAL ID card, which was mandated in a law signed by the President in May 2005. The card includes a person’s full legal name, date of birth, a signature (captured as a digital image), a photograph, and the person’s Social Security number. 

“This card should be modestly adapted for voting purposes to indicate on the front or back whether the individual is a U.S. citizen. States should provide an [Election Assistance Commission]-template ID with a photo to non-drivers free of charge.”

* Mail-in and Absentee Voting Risks - “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud. State and local jurisdictions should prohibit a person from handling absentee ballots other than the voter, an acknowledged family member, the U.S. Postal Service, or other legitimate shipper, or election officials. The practice in some states of allowing candidates or party workers to pick up and deliver absentee ballots should be eliminated.”

* Election Observers for Integrity - In Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada, Republicans have complained that qualified election observers have been prohibited from watching the counting. The Carter-Baker Commission report stressed the need for election observers to maintain the integrity of the ballots. 

“All legitimate domestic and international election observers should be granted unrestricted access to the election process, provided that they accept election rules, do not interfere with the electoral process, and respect the secrecy of the ballot,” the 2005 report said. 

* Reliable Voting Machines - Voting machines have also been a significant issue in 2020, particularly in Michigan, as one county there flipped from Biden to Trump after a hand recount showed the machine count to be inaccurate. 

The Carter-Baker Commission suggested that machines print out paper receipts for voters to verify their vote was accurately counted. “States should adopt unambiguous procedures to reconcile any disparity between the electronic ballot tally and the paper ballot tally,” the 2005 report says. “The Commission strongly recommends that states determine well in advance of elections which will be the ballot of record.”

* Media Calling Elections - “News organizations should voluntarily refrain from projecting any presidential election results in any state until all of the polls have closed in the 48 contiguous states,” the report states. “News organizations should voluntarily agree to delay the release of any exit-poll data until the election has been decided.”

The other two recommendations were to avoid duplicate registration across state lines, and to prosecute voter fraud. Both, particularly the latter, should be required.

The Carter-Baker recommendations are sensible ones. It’s too bad that Congress and more states did not have the good judgement to implement some or all of them.

Today, the country is paying a high price for their failure to do so.

We may not realize the degree to which free speech is under attack

Free speech is under attack across the country. The censoring of conservatives on Google, Twitter and Facebook is one form, and another form of censorship occurs in the news media when many of the nation’s largest and most read newspapers, and most watched and listened to broadcast media, report only some of the relevant news.

This bias of selecting some news over other news is dishonest and dangerous. It creates a situation where millions of Americans are quietly forced, through their reading, listening and watching habits, to make a wide variety of often significant decisions with only some of the important information they may need.

Free speech is also under attack at many of America’s institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities once were the places where the expression of a variety of ideas was highly regarded and encouraged.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently released the results of what it called “the largest free speech survey of college students ever performed,” consulting roughly 20,000 students at a variety of institutions. 

The 55 colleges involved were chosen “to represent a variety of colleges in the United States, including large public universities, small private colleges, religiously-affiliated colleges such as Brigham Young University, and Ivy League colleges.”

The results are not encouraging.

Sixty percent of students said they could not express an opinion because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond. This position was held by 73 percent of “strong Republicans” and 52 percent of “strong Democrats.”

Black students are most likely to report an instance where they censored themselves, with 63 percent taking this position. Here are three examples from survey participants on self-censoring:

* “I was in a class where the professor pretty much made you feel as if your participation grade was at risk if you disagreed with them.” — Black female at Georgetown University

 

* “Whenever it is obvious that some of my professors are on the left, I felt like I couldn’t express my political opinions due to my grades.” — Asian male at Clemson University

 

* The professors within my college tend to be conservative. I worry with certain professors that my opinion would cause them to unfairly grade my projects. — Hispanic female at the University of Arizona

The survey also found that just 15 percent of students — 11 percent of females and 19 percent of males — felt comfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic.

The FIRE report notes that “a number of questions focused on a tension between feelings, or emotional reasoning, with logical inference and deduction.” And some faculty members explained that “a number of their students place a ‘supreme importance’ on their own feelings even when what they ‘feel’ is right is contradicted by empirical evidence.” Here are two students’ responses on this:

“Just in general. You have to be very careful of your words in order to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. Sometimes it is very hard to debate on topics because of this.” — Multiracial male at Northwestern University

“Nearly every day I feel like I cannot express my opinion without hurting someone’s feelings.” — White female at Georgetown University

Over the last couple of years there have been several instances of speakers invited to campuses to speak, but were shouted down and sometimes threatened. Many of those speakers were unable to complete their speaking engagement.

FIRE found that Ivy League school students were slightly more in favor of using violence to stop a campus speech. Twenty-one percent — one of every five — expressed some level of acceptance for violence in such situations.

And, on whether it is “always” or “sometimes” acceptable to shout down a speaker in extreme conversations, only 15 percent of extreme conservatives agreed, while more than 60 percent of extreme liberals agreed.

FIRE rated the universities on a numerical scale, and color-coded them for Speech Code, meaning “whether college policies restrict student speech that is protected by the First Amendment.” The codes are: Green = Best; Yellow = Intermediate; Red = Worst; Pink = Warning.

The five institutions with the highest level of free speech are: University of Chicago, Kansas State University, Texas A&M University, University of California, Los Angeles, and Arizona State University, all with Green codes.

The five institutions with the lowest level of free speech are: Syracuse University, Dartmouth College, Yellow codes; and Louisiana State University, University of Texas, and DePauw University, Red codes.

No West Virginia institutions were among the 55 that were ranked, but two Virginia institutions were included. The University of Virginia was ranked 6th on the list with a high level of free speech, and a Green code. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VPI) was ranked a respectable 8th with a mid-level Yellow code.

Censorship is a serious issue, one that is at odds with America’s First Amendment. Free speech is a cornerstone of this nation. 

There really is only one reason why someone or some group would exercise censorship: They are afraid their ideas will not be able to win when competing with different ideas, and therefore they will be unable to inflict their will on others. It’s about control.

Is Election 2020 the most unusual presidential election in history?

If nothing else, the election saga is certainly interesting. It has created great misery and hand-wringing across the political spectrum. 

Based on the projections of news outlets relying on state voting totals, former Vice President Joe Biden, D-Pa., and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Cal., were declared the winners. That, however, does not make them the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect.

The process has not yet reached the stage where any candidates are officially declared to have won.

Every election has problems, like human error and fraud. The question always is, how much of an effect do the errors and fraud really have?

This election was doomed to be controversial from the beginning, with the potential for more problems than usual due to the fear of the coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions it created. More people wanted to vote early or by absentee or mail-in ballot than usual to avoid the crowds at polling places. 

And then there were potential problems from the tens of millions of universal mail-in ballots sent out, many/most from states that were ill-prepared to handle that situation.

The dangers of mail-in voting are well known. We were warned about problems by such important voices as former President Jimmy Carter and The Carter Center, Former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, and The New York Times.

And now that the voting is done, there are claims that confirm those warnings: Lost ballots, ballots found in trash cans, more votes in some precincts than registered voters, vote count observers prevented from observing the process, among them.

The Constitution gives the sole power to establish election procedures to the state legislatures. Yet in several states these procedures were recently changed by judges, secretaries of state and others who do not have that authority. 

Since changes were made by unauthorized persons, how many ballots were counted that were received after the previous -- legal -- deadline, or under previous requirements for signatures and such? Those ballots are not valid!

There are many charges of mistakes and fraud being looked into. President Donald Trump’s lawyers have filed multiple lawsuits challenging various aspects of the election process in several states. 

This has greatly angered Trump’s enemies; lots of people are urging Trump to concede, severely chastising him for not having already done so. This, despite that what he is doing is both legal and not uncommon. In the 2000 race, for example, Democrat candidate Al Gore challenged things for more than a month; Trump has done so for only three weeks, as of today.

And, given the array of false charges and hoaxes Trump was tortured with for the last four years, starting when he first declared himself a candidate, perhaps he has good reason to hold off conceding until challenges are resolved. Note: his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, still has not acknowledged Trump won, and she advised candidate Biden not to concede “under any circumstances.”

Democrats felt confident that a blue wave was coming, expecting that they would win the presidency, expand their House majority and perhaps win control of the Senate.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, Republicans increased their numbers in the House, flipping possibly a dozen seats from blue to red, and leaving the Democrats with a very slim majority. 

While the Democrats gained a seat in the Senate, Republicans may possibly retain their majority, depending upon the run-off elections for two Georgia seats.

Despite the losses in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., claimed victory, touting the popular vote tally showing House Democrats collected more votes than Republicans. Apparently, the number of votes for Democrats is more important than the number of Democrats that will be in the House.

Perhaps the most interesting, or the strangest, issue is the alleged massive fraud by voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems based in Canada. The Dominion machines are alleged to have actually thrown the election to Biden/Harris through manipulative software.

It is a complicated scenario that many people have discounted because of a lack of evidence having been revealed to support it. However, supporters say there is plenty of evidence, adding that evidence is critical and necessary for legal proceedings, but is not needed merely to assuage doubting reporters and Trump opponents. The Trump legal team cites dozens of sworn affidavits, filed under the threat of perjury, alleging vote fraud in some states.

Dominion has denied all charges, and its officials had agreed to testify before a Pennsylvania legislative committee. Then, Dominion strangely cancelled out the night before the hearing. 

These days computers are capable of doing fantastic things. But can they control the votes of tens of millions of voters in hundreds of different voting locations?

Georgia’s experience with Dominion computers used in the state’s primary raised questions and concerns over the company’s voting system. But Georgia stuck with them.

And the head of another computer voting system, Smartmatic, admitted in 2017 that his company’s computers and software created at least one million additional votes in the Venezuelan election.

Most view Trump’s efforts to prove he won as improbable. But with the vast array of problems and potential fraud, taking a few weeks to investigate them is not asking too much.

Is the trashing of Donald Trump becoming the new national pastime?

One of Donald Trump’s most disliked traits is how he responds to criticism, and how he fires back at his critics. You cross Trump, and you become a target.

Whether Trump’s penchant for name-calling is the main cause, or just a complicating factor, the people he has offended directly and indirectly have called him virtually every bad thing that anyone can think of. 

Bigot, racist, clown, bully, Hitler. These are among the insults hurled at President 45. About the only thing he hasn’t been labeled as equal to, so far, is the Devil. This could be due to the fact that many or most of Trump’s critics simply don’t believe in the Devil, and calling him a non-entity, would be silly.

Most recently Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, pushed back the boundaries of good judgement and common sense, comparing Trump’s four years as President to the Nazis' Kristallnacht attacks in Germany and Austria in 1938. 

Referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass,” Kristallnacht saw the Nazis attack Jewish individuals and communities. This time of terror, considered one of the darkest periods in history, reportedly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, and many more being put in concentration camps. Some 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses were attacked, and more than 1,400 synagogues were set on fire during the attacks.

Who remembers such atrocities during the Trump administration? Did Trump actually terrorize Jews? Or any group?

Of course not. In fact, he has supported Israel by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, as some past presidents also promised, but did not do. He also has negotiated an historic peace agreement between Israel and countries in the Middle East. And his daughter is married to a Jewish man.

Amanpour effectively demonstrates the dramatic failure of today’s news and information media, diving head-first into the trash pile to find material she believes is necessary to convince her audience — which expects responsible, thoughtful commentary that will help them understand the world around them — that Trump is evil incarnate.

Is Amanpour saying this idiotic stuff because she actually does not know better? Or is she just playing on the tendency of her viewers to automatically believe her, and not look into her silly accusations to find the truth? Do they — Amanpour and the other main stream media folks that are constantly bad-mouthing Trump — really believe what they are saying and accusing him of? 

Due to Trump haters in the media, academia and elsewhere, and Trump himself, a substantial number of voters did not support his re-election. 

Trump has done some very good things, in addition to moving the embassy in Israel, in his four years. The economy strengthened during his tenure with tax cuts and deregulation, until the China virus came along. 

He has improved employment figures for the nation, and especially for blacks and Hispanics. He has appointed justices and judges who believe in changing laws and the Constitution through existing lawful procedures, not improperly doing so while on the bench.

He has strengthened the military, and opposed the magnificently foolish idea of defunding and reimagining the police. NATO countries have started to pay their fair share of defense costs, thanks to Trump, and some NATO countries have responded by increasing their defense budgets.

New trade deals have been made with Mexico, Canada, and China to the benefit of the United States. And Trump has caused the construction of hundreds of miles of border wall to lessen illegal alien entry into the country, and make trafficking of children and drugs more difficult.

He has taken a much firmer approach to Russia and China than any president in recent memory, or perhaps ever, increasing the U.S. Naval presence in the South China Sea, closing the Chinese consulate in Houston and several Russian consulates in the U.S. He also issued sanctions against several Russian agents who were up to no good.

Trump withdrew the U.S from the Iran nuclear deal that would have allowed Iran to build a nuclear bomb within the next few years.

And then there’s COVID-19, a topic rife with political posturing and point-gathering against Trump’s response to it. This novel coronavirus has even baffled the experts. But Trump quickly imposed restrictions on travel from China, mobilized military solutions due to the fear of too few hospital beds in New York and California, got American industries to fast-track the production of ventilators, as well as developing a vaccine, which is almost ready for distribution well ahead of normal vaccine production schedules. He wisely left decisions on closing down activities to local officials.

Demonstrating that the experts still don’t have all the answers months into the pandemic, comes this from Elon Musk. He took a test four times in one day and got two different results.

“Something extremely bogus is going on,” Musk tweeted. “Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD.”

Is Trump really the “existential threat” that we are repeatedly told that he is? It would be a shame, and somewhat of a national embarrassment if he is not re-elected because so many voted against his personality instead of for his policies.

Election 2020: another crazy event in a year full of crazy events

 

As the end of 2020 blessedly draws nearer, the text of a meme gives hope: “This too shall pass. It might pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.” 

Adding to the suffering was the campaign for president. The election is now over, but the decision is not yet final. When news organizations call a victor in a state, or project the winner of a race, that is not an official decision. It means little. Last weekend votes were still being counted.

The president and vice president will be officially selected when the electors of the Electoral College vote on December 14.

Remember 2000? That’s when Democrat candidate Al Gore was thought to be president-elect for more than a month before the process proved otherwise. 

To make matters worse, sometimes recounts are in order, for various reasons. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Friday that because of the closeness of the vote, there will be a recount. He pledged to maintain election integrity.

And as is common, there are questions about various aspects of the election that need to be looked into. There are issues cited and questions raised in every presidential election, and every candidate has the right to question them. 

And with the fear from the coronavirus pandemic, the issues and questions this year have been multiplied. Some are, in reality, not going to be significant. Some, perhaps most, are merely mistakes, or just “normal” sorts of problems. 

Other things, however, may well be significant. Sometimes things just happen. Other times, things are made to happen.

There are legitimate questions about the way universal/mass mail-in ballots — not absentee ballots, which are fairly secure — have been handled, and about the concept itself. 

Because of the fear of people being exposed to the virus at polling places, both early voting and universal mail-in ballot voting were very popular this year. As a consequence, tens of millions of ballots were mailed out to people on state voter rolls. Not all state voter rolls are up to date, meaning thousands of ballots were sent to people who were deceased or no longer lived at the address on the voter roll.

Every ballot mailed to a person who is not living, or is living elsewhere offers the potential for vote fraud.

After cross-referencing Nevada voter rolls with the National Change of Address database, more than 3,000 mail-in ballots in Nevada were found to have been improperly cast. Attorneys for the state GOP have sent a criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney General, seeking an investigation.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), which focuses on election integrity, filed a lawsuit last week that charges Pennsylvania with failing to maintain voter registration records. This is a violation of both federal and state law, the suit alleges.

There are tens of thousands of deceased people on the state’s voter rolls, PILF alleges, and there is evidence of ballots submitted in the names of deceased persons. The organization further alleges that an October analysis found at least 21,000 apparently deceased citizens on the state’s voter rolls.

There are allegations that local officials in some states arbitrarily changed election laws improperly. There are other allegations of election laws not being followed. 

Former judge and Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr had some strong criticisms of the way Pennsylvania has behaved, post-election. Starr noted that state officials made changes to election rules and regulations that only the legislature can make. He also said that election observers, or poll watchers, who are present by law to help insure the integrity of the election system, were illegally excluded from observing ballot counting.

Starr also noted that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has allowed ballots to be counted that arrived after Election Day, even if they were not postmarked by Nov. 3. The U.S. Supreme Court in October split 4-4 on the question, allowing the state Supreme Court decision to stand, for now.

  

On Friday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ordered that ballots that were received after 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 in Pennsylvania are to be “segregated and secured,” pending potential action by the U.S. Supreme Court.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley thinks questions of irregularities or ballot issues should be investigated to determine whether they are episodic or systemic. “What is the harm in allowing courts to review such claims,” he asked, particularly when witnesses have submitted sworn affidavits concerning such incidents?

Maybe, when all is said and done, and all the errors, technical glitches and any actual election fraud that is found will not change the projected outcome, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will take office on January 20, 2021.

But while the Democrats may have won the White House, the American people have been handed an election process that is horribly in need of repair.

The people need and deserve the most secure election process possible, and making voting easy must not be a prime consideration. If, in order to have a secure system of electing public servants, people have to endure some inconvenience and spend some time going to the polls, it will be an investment well made.

It’s Election Day. And it’s true: elections have consequences

 

The idea that America is dead, or dying, has been on my mind for quite a while. It is a steadily emerging reality.

And recently, that same idea was expressed by none other than Joe Biden. The former vice president and current Democrat presidential nominee announced last Friday in Iowa that the country is dying, at one of his few, and brief, campaign appearances.

“More than 200 [thousand] -- and now I think it’s up to 30,000 -- people have died. America’s dead! Because of COVID-19,” he railed.

No, America isn’t dead because of the virus. It’s just another desperate attempt by Biden to try to build on negative sentiment against President Donald Trump, whose early moves against the virus Biden criticized. And now his “plan” to control the virus is a rehash of what the administration has already done. More plagiarism by Biden.

Yes, millions have been affected by it: millions of positive tests; many getting sick and many dying; others not being able to work or go to school, or to open their businesses in a reasonable way. 

But the virus is just one factor in America’s downfall. The death rattle is mostly from other things. Things that Americans themselves have wrought. 

We have allowed our education system to fail to properly assist the younger generations in learning about their country, and explaining why it was designed as it was. And why it was so much better than other designs.

Those in control of our schools, especially at the college level, have allowed teaching to devolve into indoctrination in many instances, teaching “what you should think” instead of teaching “how to think.” Political correctness is now the reigning philosophy, rather than education.

Likewise, the solemn duty of journalists to report the news -- all the news -- objectively and fairly has been abandoned by many news organizations at the highest levels. 

One political party has some members that want to reverse recent tax cuts to raise trillions of dollars to make government even larger. But Biden says he will increase taxes only on those making $400,000 or more a year. A fairy tale. Everyone’s taxes will have to rise to reach that goal.

They want to do away with fossil fuels in only a few years. These fuels account for 84 percent of the world’s energy, and 80 percent of US energy. And they intend to go ahead with this plan without reliable replacement fuels or storage capabilities that can furnish energy when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. This will affect jobs and the US economy substantially, without making any significant reduction in world-wide CO2 emissions.

They want to open borders to make it easier for illegals to enter the country, and also to give them taxpayer money in welfare payments and for free college.

The list goes on.

And then there are our courts. Our laws and the US Constitution should be interpreted to mean what they meant when they were written. If desired, they can be changed through appropriate legal processes. But this group prefers to make those changes using judges who think they can change these meanings at their whim, and make law from the bench.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del, wants to revamp the court system. “We’ve got to have a wide-open conversation about how do we rebalance our courts,” he said. 

He then made a completely foolish statement: “Yes, the two Supreme Court cases that have been stolen, where these processes that are just wildly hypocritical have been used to jam through partisan nominees.” 

Perhaps a lesson in the US Constitution is in order. Both Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett were confirmed as specified by the Constitution, despite the dreams of Democrats. And neither of them has been shown to be partisan. Both follow the laws and the Constitution, as written.

“But we’ve got to look at our federal courts as a whole,” he continued. “In many cases, [judges are] too young, too unqualified and too far right to be allowed to sit peaceably [emphasis added] without our reexamining the process, the results and the consequences.”

Another lesson is in order: A judge or justice that follows laws and the Constitution as written and understood when they were approved is not a partisan. It is the correct way to interpret the laws and the Constitution.

Some Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court with additional judges who are liberals, transforming the only non-political branch of our government into an un-elected political law-making body. 

They also want to eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote rule, perhaps make DC and Puerto Rico new states, and do away with the Electoral College system.

These acts are both dangerous and irrational.

They would transform the United States from a unique and superior form of government to just one more majority-rule country that tramples on the rights of the minority. The Electoral College and other Constitutional provisions were designed specifically to prevent that. 

If the Democrats sweep the election and control Congress and the administration, and implement the changes to which many of them subscribe, it will kill the United States of America.

Reining in social media censorship, and ending the debate commission

 

There is increasing evidence supporting the idea that certain social media platforms are getting too big for their already huge britches. Two of them, Twitter and Facebook, cannot seem to kick the habit of censoring some of their participants.

As the owners of a platform, Twitter and Facebook have complete control of it, of course. And both of them have millions of users, thereby putting them in a very small class with a lot of weight to sling around.

And because of their huge number of users and the influence that those big numbers carry with them, they should not arbitrarily restrict or block what some users post, while leaving others alone to post as they please. 

We also need to keep in mind that these platforms are under no legal obligation to monitor the postings of their users for accuracy, only for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, as are those sites classified as “publishers.”

In fact, social media are protected from legal action for what their users post by 47 U.S.C. § 230, a Provision of the Communication Decency Act (CDA), unlike media that are considered publishers, such as newspapers and broadcasters.

Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 

This means that online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. Twitter and Facebook are not responsible for the truth/accuracy of any posts made by users, beyond the criminal and intellectual property-based claims mentioned earlier.

Despite the protections the CDA provides to social media, both Twitter and Facebook routinely block user posts/comments that breach their nebulous “rules of the road,” often on the premise of inaccuracy.

So why are Twitter and Facebook so concerned with what their users have to say on their platform, when they are under no legal obligation to be concerned about accuracy and such?

And, as it turns out, most or all of those censored posts/comments are made by … wait for it … conservatives/Republicans.

Among users that have been, and perhaps still are, arbitrarily blocked or restricted are President of the United States Donald Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, the satire site The Babylon Bee, and the 219-year-old New York Post, the fourth largest newspaper in the country. The latter had all references to a story it published on the Hunter Biden email situation removed/blocked by Twitter, even when made by other users.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week called it “unacceptable” that his site blocked users from sharing links to the Post story without providing a clear message as to why it was taking the action. But is that all that Twitter did that was improper?

“Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tweeted recently.

Pai recently announced that the FCC plans to “clarify the meaning” of Section 230 that protects these tech giants from being held responsible for content posted by their users.

“The Commission’s General Counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Section 230. Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning,” Pai added.

Perhaps, if social media platforms are going to act like publishers, they will be held to the same legal standards and eligible for the same potential penalties, as are newspapers and broadcasters. Most likely, arbitrarily censoring some users for certain infractions, but not all of them, will carry serious penalties.

These Left-leaning platforms are all too happy to cheat to help push their political agenda. They should not be allowed to use their platforms to affect the beneficial information that users see, and perhaps especially when that information has influence on election choices.

* * *

The Presidential Debate Commission has come under criticism, particularly from President Donald Trump’s campaign and his backers on the political right, for what those critics charge are politically motivated actions.

Without getting into the weeds of those charges, the Commission is the sole agent that organizes the presidential debates, with all details based upon what its members alone decide.

Instead of using an independent commission, that could conceivably be biased, why not allow the campaigns of the two, or perhaps three, candidates who have the most support to work together to establish the details of the debates, including the number of debates, their locations, who the moderators will be, what topics will be included, etc.

With campaign officials agreeing on these details, there would be much less for individual campaigns to disagree with, and it might even produce better debates.

The debate commission system has been around for a long time. Maybe it is time for a new approach to presidential debates.

The “Flight 93 Election” of four years ago is over. Or is it?

 

“In September 2016, I called that year’s presidential election contest ‘The Flight 93 Election.’ My thesis was simple: a Clinton victory would usher in an era of semi-permanent Democratic-leftist rule.” 

So wrote author Michael Anton, in his new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.

“But I asserted and still believe that one-party rule of the USA — blue-state politics from coast to coast — could, once established, last a very long time and might end only with the country itself,” he continued.

Blessedly, Anton’s fear was not fulfilled by the American people; Hillary Clinton did not win, and blue state politics coast-to-coast did not become reality. 

And now we are approaching another election, and concerns are raging. Democrats are afraid that if President Donald Trump loses the election he will not allow a peaceful transfer of power.

In 2016, instead of the blue state take-over Anton feared, we got President Trump. But we also got a group of Congressional Democrats that would not allow the next administration to operate without interference. They spent the next dozens of months and tens of millions of dollars hampering Trump’s efforts to straighten out the eight previous years of Democrat failure with fatally flawed investigations.

Much straightening out was accomplished, despite the Democrats’ efforts, however. For example, taxes and needless regulations were reduced, setting off a long-awaited, but long-delayed recovery from the Great Recession of 2008. Unemployment for every group, especially black and Hispanic Americans, reached record, or near-record lows, as jobs and companies returned from overseas where they had been driven by past foolish economic policies.

Today, despite the good things that have occurred since 2017, we have a country more divided than at any time in decades. Much or most of the division comes from the emotional reaction to Trump’s personality, and some resulting from the successes he has achieved, much to the Left’s chagrin. 

The opposition decries the good that has been done, and proposes to “fix” things with higher taxes, lax immigration policies, killing the fossil fuel industry along with the jobs and economic boost that go with it, and a list of other equally foolish, socialistic concepts.

A major issue this time is the United State Supreme Court, the only one of the three co-equal branches of the federal government that was designed to be non-political. This was done quite purposefully to provide objective, politically neutral legal oversight of the political decisions made in the legislative and administrative branches. The Supreme Court was to be a non-political body to apply the Constitution and the laws, the meanings of which do not change over time, unless change is brought about through established legal and constitutional processes.

Through the years, judges have been confirmed to the federal courts who are not neutral interpreters of legal and constitutional language, but apply their personal, social and political ideals in place of applying Constitutional principles based upon their meaning when ratified, and applying the meaning of laws when enacted. They refer to their activism as providing “life” to the Constitution and laws. The meaning of a “living” Constitution changes with the swirling winds of society.

The encroachment of these activist judges and justices destroys the political independence of the courts, turning them into another political body, the members of which were not elected by anyone. That is not smart, and it is not acceptable.

Which brings us to the confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The Democrats are opposed to her confirmation for one reason: They do not like her because she said, and they believe, that she will not be an activist justice who makes law from the bench, the way Democrats prefer.

Democrats depend upon activists on court benches to create through judicial fiat policies and laws they cannot enact through the legitimate law-making process.

Judges/justices are supposed to apply the law as written, not rule based upon how they might feel about litigants or issues. As Justice George Sutherland, on the Supreme Court from 1922 to 1938, wrote, "If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned." 

We are not electing a Homecoming King next month, or a senior superlative, like Most Popular, Best Looking, Funniest, etc. We are voting for a person to put into effect policies and support laws that move the country forward. This is a person who gets things done, however ill-mannered or offensive he/she may otherwise be.

Donald Trump has filled that role well for four years, and if re-elected he will again; Joe Biden lives in a different universe.

‘Therefore, not only will 2020 be another ‘Flight 93 Election,’ as will every election, until and unless one of two things happens,” Anton continues. “Either the left achieves the final victory it has long sought, and the only national elections that matter are Democratic primaries to determine who goes on to defeat — inevitably — a hopelessly outnumbered and ineffectual ‘opposition.’ Or the Republican Party — or some successor — leads a realignment along nationalist-popular lines that forces the left to moderate and accept the legitimacy of red-state/flyover/’deplorable’ concerns.”

Thoughts on Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden

There is so much ado over President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.

She is a devout Catholic. That seems to send pangs of fear through some Democrats. Well, former President John F. Kennedy was a Catholic. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was a Catholic. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden are also Catholic.

More to the point, Article VI, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution says: "… but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

So, whether she is Catholic or a non-believer is irrelevant to appointment to the Supreme Court, or any federal position.

In nominating her, Trump did what the Constitution provides for the sitting President of the United States. None of the complaints about him making the nomination are mentioned, or even loosely alluded to, in the Constitution. What he did is exactly right, and follows much precedent.

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s dying wish is not part of the Constitutional process, and the American people are getting to have their say on who gets to make the nomination for her seat, as they elected Donald Trump for a full four-year term, which is not yet over.

Opponents are worried that she will overturn Roe v Wade, or the Affordable Care Act. But this concern is misplaced.

As an originalist/textualist, she follows the written intent of the Constitution and the laws, as judges and justices are supposed to do. Barrett will merely rule on the legality/constitutionality of any measures that come before the Court, including those.

Hopefully, in the confirmation hearing just getting underway, the character assassins who eagerly attended the confirmation hearing of the last Trump nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and trashed his character and his honor, and those that provided the “high-tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas years before, will be infected with good conscience, decency and civil respect for Barrett and the Constitutional process being followed.  

* * * * *

So, Kamala Harris ran for the Democrat nomination for president, but was only an also ran, and is now the Democrat nominee for vice president. Before being elected to the U.S. Senate, she was a prosecutor and California attorney general, and prosecuted people in court for violent crimes.

Yet, in the vice presidential debate with current Vice President, Mike Pence, he has been criticized for not treating her appropriately, for — gasp — “mansplaining!” Instead of treating her like a little girl, a delicate flower, Pence spoke to her like an adult.

Not the least of reasons Pence spoke to Harris like she is an adult and not a little girl is her penchant for saying things that were not true. Like the fairytale about President Lincoln foregoing a Court appointment near an election because it was “the right thing to do.”

So, is Harris up to the job? Or not? If she needs to be protected from the kind of opposition a male nominee would — and should — experience, perhaps she’s not ready for the job. Will Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping give her the break a female apparently deserves, should she have to deal with them?

* * * * *

One thing nearly everyone recognizes is that former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign has been riddled with oddities. It now appears that Biden has been involved in collusion. You remember collusion? The long, expensive investigation by Congressional Democrats into Trump’s imagined irregularities with Russia that found nothing?

When the Affordable Care Act was before the House of Representatives in 2010, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the completely absurd comment to the American people that “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, away from the fog of controversy.” Well, fog or no fog, we don’t pass bills in the U.S. Congress so that the people will be able to know what is hidden inside them. That happens before the votes are taken.

Apparently, Biden has colluded with Pelosi and has made the equally absurd decision to refuse to answer whether or not he will attempt to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with activist judges if he is elected, so that it will be easier to control everything the government does or does not do.

A reporter asked Biden, “Well, sir, don’t the voters deserve to know…?” He replied, “No, they don’t.”

He’s wrong, of course, but he’s also walking a narrow plank: don’t offend the radical Democrat left by saying he won’t pack the Court; don’t offend the others by saying he will.

Some Democrats hint that if they win the election and control the White House and Congress, they will pack the Court, abolish the Electoral College, eliminate the filibuster that protects the Senate from the tyranny of the majority, and perhaps add two more states to the Union to increase the number of Senate Democrats.

These measures will transform the nation into a chaotic mess that is the opposite of the ordered republic that our Founders created. That cannot be allowed to occur.