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.

The amount of money in elections these days is a serious problem

Every election year certain problems present themselves. One minor problem is increased emailing. Many of us have more than one email account, thus the problem is magnified. 

There are lots of campaign emails, most seeking political support, some selling campaign materials. The ones asking for contributions pose a different type of problem.

We are often asked to contribute to candidates from all over the country, not just in our state of residence. Some of these candidates may be known to us and liked, and we may want to support them. Others may be unknown, but we disapprove of their opponents and would like to support them.

But why should anyone — literally any person in the country — be able to contribute to any political candidates that they want to? We can only vote for candidates running for offices representing our state and localities and the presidency, so why can we give money to any candidate that asks for it?

There may be some sensible reasons for being able to contribute to candidates for whom you can’t vote, but not many. Perhaps a relative is running for office, or you have some connection to the area in which the candidate is running, like a business connection or owning property there.

And then there is the situation of political action committees (PACs). From Ballotpedia.com: “Political action committees (PACs) are political committees established and administered by corporations, labor unions, membership organizations or trade associations. The general definition is a group that spends money on elections, but is not run by a party or individual candidate. However, PACs can donate money to parties or candidates they support.

“There are two types of political action committees, separate segregated funds and nonconnected PACs. Separate segregated funds are either established or administered by corporations, labor unions, member organizations, or trade associations. They can only raise funds from individuals associated with the connected groups. Conversely, nonconnected PACs are not connected to any of those groups and may solicit funds from the public. Nonconnected PACs are financially independent and pay for themselves via the contributions they raise. Separate segregated funds are funded by the organization they are associated with. 

“In addition, PACs can be broken down into multi-candidate and non-multi-candidate categories.”

And then there is the super PAC, which Ballotpedia also defines: “A super PAC is a political committee that can solicit and spend unlimited sums of money. A super PAC cannot contribute directly to a politician or political party, but it can spend independently to campaign for or against political figures. These committees are also called independent expenditure-only committees. A super PAC is not legally considered a political action committee (PAC) and as such is regulated under separate rules.” 

PACs and super PACs dredge millions or billions of dollars in contributions from people across the country during an election, and pour those dollars into contributions for and against candidates, political and legislative agendas of their choosing. The additional political contributions and political ads they fund makes running for high profile political offices far more expensive than it needs to be, and ought to be.

According to the reference site thoughtco.com, “In a typical election cycle, political action committees raise more than $2 billion and spend nearly $500 million. There are more than 6,000 political action committees, according to the Federal Election Commission.” At least some of the remaining $1.5 billion goes to staff and expenses. PACs are quite the business.

The Campaign Finance Institute reports that the cost of winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018 was $2,092,822, and a U.S. Senate seat cost $14,863,228. 

The projected cost of all Congressional Races and the Presidential Race for 2020 is $10,838,227,655, according to OpenSecrets.org. That total is divided almost equally between all Congressional Races and the Presidential Race at more than $5 billion each.

By comparison, the 2000 election cycle totaled $3,082,340 for both Congressional Races and the Presidential Race. In six Presidential Election Cycles over twenty years, the total costs have more than tripled.

Opinions vary on whether PACs are good or bad. They receive praise for providing a way for people to combine their money and make their voices heard, but also a way for some to make larger donations, which can create the question of exactly who those elected actually work for.

Another evaluation says that these large contributions come from unknown sources, which were described as “forces of darkness” and “forces of light.”

Proponents of super PACs say they provide additional aspects of freedom of speech, whereas opponents list negative advertising as a major factor produced by super PACs.

It seems that the simpler and more straight forward the election system is, the better, and the easier to manage. You can only vote for candidates in your state and localities, for federal offices representing your state, and for the President and Vice President. Therefore, contributions should have those same limitations.

That would put the decision making where it belongs: in the hands of eligible voters. As things stand now, much control is in the hands of large organizations with specific interests that are not always good for all.

America’s energy picture is very good, and getting even bette

In 2019, for the first time since 1957, America’s energy production exceeded its energy consumption, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports. And energy exports exceeded imports for the first time since 1952.

Fossil fuels — coal, natural gas and petroleum — accounted for 93 percent of U.S. energy production in 1966, and despite the arrival of new fuels for energy production, fossil fuels still accounted for 80 percent of our energy production last year.

Over the last decade coal has been replaced as the leading fuel for energy production, due to both natural and unnatural causes, by natural gas, which has seen a dramatic increase over that same period. Hydraulic fracturing — fracking — has spawned great increases in both oil and natural gas production, making natural gas more affordable, thus favored for electricity production.

Renewable sources — primarily wind and solar — have seen production increases over the last two decades, but are currently responsible for only about 12 percent of electricity production.

The U.S. has maintained the title of number one producer of natural gas since surpassing Russia in 2011, and it became the number two producer of oil, surpassing Saudi Arabia, in the last couple of years. Further, the U.S. now exports more oil than most OPEC countries, and exports liquified natural gas to 38 countries.

One definition of energy independence is when a country produces more energy than it consumes. By this definition, the U.S. is energy independent. However, things are frequently less simple than they seem. Even though the U.S. exports excess energy, it still imports energy, and is therefore is not purely energy independent. Some experts contend that it is important that we continue to do business with other producers, and buying from them as well as selling to them is smart, they say.

There are currently 3 million workers in good-paying U.S. jobs in the natural gas and oil workforce, many of whom work in skilled trades and science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, according to the American Petroleum Institute (API). Among those jobs are construction workers, operating engineers, pipefitters, plumbers and boilermakers, as well as data analysts and computer scientists. Another 5.86 million jobs are in the supply chain for the oil and gas industry.

The API further notes that average annual pay in the industry is near $100,000, and that is almost $50,000 higher than the national average. And, there is the projection of 1.9 million additional jobs by 2035. API also reported that “the energy industry is poised to provide stable livelihoods to an expanding workforce – one increasingly comprised of veterans, women and minorities.”

Globally, NS Energy ranks oil as the most utilized fuel at 39 percent of all fuels; followed by coal at 28 percent; natural gas at 22 percent; hydroelectricity at 6 percent; nuclear at 4.4 percent; geothermal, biomass and waste at 0.4 percent; and solar at 0.03 percent.

Clearly, there is a world-wide need for the fuels America produces, and combined with the country’s needs, the energy sector is a provider of a lot of good-paying jobs. 

Enter, stage left, Joe Biden, Democrat nominee for President of the United States. In the Democrat primary debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said: "I'm talking about stopping fracking as soon as we possibly can. I'm talking about telling the fossil fuel industry that they are going to stop destroying this planet — no ifs, buts and maybes about it." To which opponent and former Vice President Joe Biden said, “So am I.”

Not long after agreeing with Sanders, his campaign issued a retraction. And more recently, Biden told union workers, "I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again. I am not banning fracking.”

He told his Democrat comrades one thing, and wooed his union voters with an opposite message. Which one should we believe? Maybe Biden himself isn’t sure.

A Biden-Harris administration — or a Harris-Biden administration, whichever it is — can only do great harm to the burgeoning oil, gas, and coal industry that has such a bright future providing needed fuels to the world, and jobs to the U.S.

Biden has pledged to the climate change faction that fossil fuel use in the country will end by 2035. Bye-bye 5 to 10 million industry jobs. Including fracking. That should make the folks in fracking states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Texas very unhappy.

But replacing fossil fuels with renewables is not as easy as we are led to believe. Those technologies are not currently up to the job, and producing solar panels and wind turbines is a huge, and not environmentally friendly, challenge.

Producing elemental silicon pure enough for solar PV cells requires an enormous amount of electricity, and turning raw silicon into finished wafers pure enough for solar cells involves several toxic and corrosive materials. 

Windmills kill thousands of flying creatures annually, and require enormous amounts of concrete. Both solar and wind utilize large amounts of land dedicated to the production of electricity. And worn out enormous turbine blades are not recyclable, meaning they will forever clog up landfills.

Biden and others supporting renewable energy as an easy and non-problematic solution to supposed climate change are deceiving the public.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has passed away: What happens now?

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away last week at the age of 87 from cancer. She is receiving much praise for her life’s work. Ginsberg was the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, being appointed by President Bill Clinton and taking her seat in 1993. The first woman to serve on the Court was Sandra Day O’Connor, starting in 1981.

Among the many praises of Ginsberg’s life and work was this one from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg selflessly pursued truth and justice in a world of division, giving voice to the voiceless and uplifting those who were pushed aside by forces of hate and indifference,” he said. Cuomo said that New York will erect a statue honoring the legacy of Justice Ginsberg in her native Brooklyn. 

Her passing resulted in much sadness and regret, and it has also brought forth a hot political issue: How and when to fill her seat on the Court?

Democrats say President Donald Trump must not nominate anyone. They are horrified at the prospect of the President doing so this close to the election. 

Some Republicans also think an appointment should wait until after the election. However, with millions more mass-mailed ballots in this election, the results may not be known for several days, a few weeks or even months. With this possibility, we need a full, nine-member Supreme Court to address potential issues.

Many people have expressed their opinions about this situation. One of them is Mark Levin, attorney, author and chairman of Landmark Legal Foundation, who had this to say: “I can think of no president who has chosen not to nominate a candidate to the Supreme Court when a vacancy occurs, regardless of when that vacancy occurs. Whether the Senate confirms or not is a wholly separate issue. But for a Republican president not to try to fill a vacancy with a Republican Senate (despite some weakness among certain senators) is irrational. The Democrats have not and would never do such a thing.”

What PJ Media reported may also carry some weight: “When a similar scenario occurred four years ago, following the death of Antonin Scalia, the Republican-controlled Senate blocked Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. It was a controversial move, and Ginsburg had something to say about it.”

“That’s their job,” Ginsberg said in July, 2016. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.” And, a few months later she said, “Eight is not a good number for a collegial body that sometimes disagrees.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was with her at the time, agreed: “I think we hope there will be nine as quickly as possible.”

“The Republican position on filling vacancies arising during a presidential election year has been consistent and follows historical norms,” wrote judicialnetwork.com. The record is as follows:

* “When the same party controls the White House and the Senate (e.g., now), the confirmation process proceeds as usual and the nominee is almost always confirmed. A new justice has been confirmed 8 out of 10 times this has happened.”

* “When different parties control the White House and the Senate (e.g., in 2016) the confirmation process either does not proceed or proceeds and the nomination usually fails. In the handful of instances when such nominations proceeded (excluding one case in which there was a recess appointment), they failed 4 out of 6 times.”

Some accuse the Republicans of trying to rush the process. However, other confirmations have been completed in a short time frame.

“According to Senate records,” The Federalist reports, “Justices Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, and Sandra Day O’Connor were all confirmed in a short period of time. Stevens’s confirmation in 1975 took 19 days, O’Connor’s confirmation in 1981 took 33 days, and Ginsburg’s confirmation in 1993 took 42 days.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Ga., offered additional information. “The two biggest changes regarding the Senate and judicial confirmations that have occurred in the last decade have come from Democrats. Harry Reid changed the rules to allow a simple majority vote for Circuit Court nominees, dealing out the minority. Chuck Schumer and his friends in the liberal media conspired to destroy the life of Brett Kavanaugh and hold that Supreme Court seat open.”

And, each side has produced comments from members of the other side that contradict their current positions. Fox News “Media Buzz” host Howard Kurtz noted that politicians do exhibit “flexibility” from time to time.

However, there are activist justices on federal courts, including the late Justice Ginsburg, who insert their personal or political beliefs into their work. They view the Constitution as a “living” document, the meaning of which changes with the winds of cultural evolution or personal preference, instead of applying the Constitution’s original meaning. That destroys a stable judicial system. Justices and judges must apply the law, not make law.

If removing President Donald Trump from office was a legitimate effort to protect the country, then stabilizing the judicial system with judges who honor the Constitution and laws as they are written, and not as they wish they were written, certainly is, also.

The United States of America: how things used to be, and are now

Last Friday, the nation recalled the events of that day 19 years ago: September 11, 2001.

It was on that beautiful morning that out of nowhere, an airliner crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in downtown New York at 8:45. What the heck had happened?

Eighteen minutes later, another airliner hit the south tower, and it became clear what was going on: America was under attack. The attack continued, with a third airliner crashing into the
Pentagon in Washington, DC. And a fourth airliner, with an unknown target, had passengers who had become aware of the other attacks, organized and stopped the hijackers, resulting in the plane crashing into an empty field in Pennsylvania, instead of, perhaps, the U.S. Capitol Building or the White House, or some other important target.

That night, then-President George W. Bush addressed the nation. “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America,” he said. “These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” 

In all, these attacks killed 2,996 people in the crashes and their aftermath. It was and is the deadliest day in the nation’s history. And the terrorist attacks triggered major U.S. initiatives to combat terrorism. In that regard, Bush said, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

The 19 militant Islamic al Qaeda members who hijacked the four airliners had destroyed property and killed nearly 3,000 people, but they also rekindled the American national spirit. 

Thus, the attitude of the American people toward the terrorist attacks was voiced, and the will of the people and their ideas of national pride and determination were strengthened.

In annual observances of that fateful day, the names of those lost in the attacks are read, and honor given to all those who died. Many of them died bravely trying to save others trapped in the buildings. Many more died years later from effects of the pollutants from the fires and the collapsed buildings they encountered.

What a difference in spirit we see today, compared to the strong pro-America attitude in the years following 9/11. 

There are tens of thousands or millions of younger Americans whose lack of knowledge of their country and its founding principles is astonishing. America’s ideals are unique in the degree of personal freedom and personal opportunity they provide, but many of these people have little or no idea about that.

Cultural decay has been brought on by the breakdown of the two-parent family, the movement away from attending church and Sunday school where we learned the rules for good living, and schools that ceased teaching about our country’s formation and system of government.

Single-parent households have replaced two-parent families in shocking numbers. “For decades, the share of U.S. children living with a single parent has been rising, accompanied by a decline in marriage rates and a rise in births outside of marriage,” according to the Pew Research Center. Its study of 130 countries and territories “shows that the U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.”

Children generally do better when they have both a responsible father and a responsible mother to help them grow up to be productive, responsible adults. Children who grow up with an engaged father are less likely to drop out of school or wind up in jail. They are more likely to have high-paying jobs and healthy, stable relationships when they grow up, and tend to have fewer psychological problems throughout their lives.

Lacking a more stable home life and the critical background about their country, many people, children and young adults, are not adequately prepared to fully appreciate our country and carry on the American spirit that was revived following 9/11. Since millions were not yet born, or old enough to appreciate what had happened that day, they were unable to grasp and appreciate the spirit of America that was so strong.

As traditional values are being abandoned — including the idea of marriage and family, the sanctity of life of the unborn, self-reliance and personal responsibility, tolerance for ideas different from their own — many Americans, and not just the younger generations, see the nation’s shortcomings to the exclusion of its positive aspects.

Many see America as an evil nation, and are determined to bring it down. Some indulge in riots, destroying property, assaulting people, and chanting “death to America.” 

These riots are not happenstance; there is significant organization and financing behind them. Evidence exists that the funding comes from factions both inside and outside the country that are seeking to weaken it, and turn America into one more failed socialist state.

America definitely faces a serious crisis. And while the nation has seen and dealt with serious crises before and emerged better for the experience, we must ask whether this one will be just one more time of trouble that we survive?  Or will it be the end of America as we know it?