After a summer of discontent driven in part by protests against racial injustice and in part by the not-altogether-unrelated desire of a great many Americans to be rid of Donald Trump, Joe Biden has responded to his party’s call for sweeping social change by taking a deep dive into the Ivy League trash heap and coming up with the pale desiccated carcass of John Kerry, the man whose chiseled face appears next to the entry for “mediocrity” in the American political dictionary.
Kerry is leading a parade of familiar faces, a hack pack if ever there were one.
Mssr. Kerry of Switzerland’s Institut Montana Zugerberg and Yale will be joined in the administration by Anthony Blinken of the Dalton School and Harvard. Kerry will be a special envoy for climate issues, which will ensure that there is no bipartisan progress on climate issues, while Blinken, a sturdy Democratic time-server, will take over Kerry’s old job at State. Mike Donilon (prep school in Providence, then Georgetown), a ghastly political consultant, will serve Biden as a political consultant, though they’ll call him a “senior adviser.” Jen O’Malley Dillon, who has done almost nothing in her life except staff campaigns — a parade of losers and misfits including Al Gore, John Edwards, and Tom Daschle, before striking gold with Obama I and Obama II — will be deputy chief of staff. Janet Yellen, a Federal Reserve lifer who has served that institution in a number of capacities since the 1970s, will head up Treasury.
Biden, having satisfied his pledge to choose a black woman as his vice president, is settling into the familiar pattern of staffing up his administration mostly with mostly rich, mostly white Democratic functionaries long associated with elite institutions: The international law firm of O’Melveny & Myers can count among its veterans not only Mike Donilon but also incoming Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas, while incoming chief of staff Ron Klain was a Fannie Mae lobbyist who is married to an Obama veteran currently serving as a fellow at the Walton Family Foundation. Big jobs like Treasury and State will be filled by familiar faces, while black lives matter mostly for feel-good portfolios such as Cedric Richmond’s new gig over at the White House Office of Public Engagement.
One wonders if this will satisfy the hunger of black Democrats for more prominent representation.
Or, indeed, whether it will satisfy anybody.
Some conservatives may breathe a little sigh of relief that the Biden administration is apparently committed to doing nothing interesting. Complain if you like about Janet Yellen, she isn’t going to join AOC in waving the red flag with the Socialist International. On the other hand, even as the Democrats’ left wing is disappointed, Republicans looking for bipartisan progress on issues of critical national importance are likely to be disappointed as well by this same-old, same-old approach.
This is Swamp Things 2, the sequel, and the original wasn’t all that great.”
“Biden Cabinet And Transition Picks Already Facing Serious Ethics Questions
Some of Biden’s cabinet picks and transition team members “have done work for undisclosed corporate clients and aided a fund that invests in government contractors,” reported the NY Times.”
“Back in late September, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s transition team was hailed by the mainstream media for releasing an ethics plan that, according to Politico, was “designed to make it harder for lobbyists to work on the transition effort.”
The website also reported at the time that “the rules are broadly similar [to] those put in place by President Barack Obama’s transition team 12 years ago.” For example:
They “bar those who’ve worked as registered lobbyists or foreign agents in the past year from working on the transition unless” Jessica Hertz, the transition team’s general counsel, signs off on the arrangement. “They also forbid transition staffers from working on any ‘specific Transition matter’ that they’ve lobbied on in the past year or plan to lobby on in the coming year without Hertz’s approval.”
An overview of the Biden transition team’s ethics plan document states that “the Plan aims to ensure that Transition team members abide by the highest ethical standards, act solely in furtherance of the public interest, and base all policy and personnel decisions on merit, free from individual conflicts of interest.”
Just two months later, Biden is proceeding with the transition process even as the Trump campaign’s legal challenges are still playing out in the courts. But as the New York Times reported Saturday, some of Biden’s picks “for top posts have done work for undisclosed corporate clients and aided a fund that invests in government contractors,” which is already prompting ethics concerns:
One firm helps companies navigate global risks and the political and procedural ins and outs of Washington. The other is an investment fund with a particular interest in military contractors.
But the consulting firm, WestExec Advisors, and the investment fund, Pine Island Capital Partners, call themselves strategic partners and have featured an overlapping roster of politically connected officials — including some of the most prominent names on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s team and others under consideration for high-ranking posts.
WestExec’s founders include Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Biden’s choice to be his secretary of state, and Michèle A. Flournoy, one of the leading candidates to be his defense secretary. Among others to come out of WestExec are Avril Haines, Mr. Biden’s pick to be director of national intelligence; Christina Killingsworth, who is helping the president-elect organize his White House budget office; Ely Ratner, who is helping organize the Biden transition at the Pentagon; and Jennifer Psaki, an adviser on Mr. Biden’s transition team.
[…]
Another person listed as a member of the Pine Island team is Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired Army general who is also under consideration for defense secretary, according to a person familiar with the selection process.”
“China Is Licking Its Chops at the Thought of President Joe Biden ”
“The formal Electoral College vote is not until December 14, but one country that is delighted by the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency—and, moreover, which has wasted no time in trying to reassert its authority over the world—is China. During the presidential election campaign, I was honored to be asked onto the stage at a Donald Trump re-election rally in Arizona. When I spoke, the strongest point I made to the audience was to ask who else among Western leaders has the courage to stand up to the rapacious Chinese Communist Party if not Donald J. Trump? The crowd roared, knowing full well that Biden would not show such strength in the face of the Chinese threat.
Sadly, they’re already starting to swoop. In the middle of this month, The Guardian newspaper in London had an exclusive story in which Victor Zhang, the vice president of Huawei, stated that in light of Trump’s defeat, Britain should review its decision to ban the telecoms giant from its 5G network. Zhang warned that this decision would have economic repercussions for Britain, adding: “As a global company, we want to work with governments to ensure they have the policies to secure growth. The decision was a political one motivated by U.S. perceptions of Huawei, and not those of the U.K. This is not really motivated by security, but about a trade war between the U.S. and China.”
Or consider the fact that this year, some British politicians have shown a certain amount of moral grit by expressing concerns about new authoritarian security laws in Hong Kong and China’s persecution of its Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. How have the Chinese reacted? This week, Fang Wenjian, chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the U.K. and the Bank of China’s boss, issued another menacing warning. The Sunday Times and City A.M. have both published stories linking him to the threat that any decline in U.K.-China relations could force some Chinese firms out of the U.K. In other words: “Don’t criticize China’s abysmal human rights record, or you risk losing our business.”
Alarms bells are also ringing because of Citiking International, a Chinese-backed private equity firm with offices around the world and, it has been reported, possible ties to the Chinese Communist Party. It is trying to buy Eclipse Aerospace, a small firm based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that employs 65 people. According to Defense News, Eclipse Aerospace produces “very light jets” that are used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Defense News states that its planes feature “sophisticated avionics, engines (originally designed for cruise missiles) and a full authority digital engine control system that all contain sensitive national security design information.” Everybody should be deeply worried about the Chinese having access to this sensitive technology, for obvious reasons.”
And carrying water for the terrorist regime, the NY Times….
Iranian officials, who have always maintained that their nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, not weapons, expressed fury and vowed revenge over the assassination, calling it an act of terrorism and warmongering https://t.co/8JdtG2Syqb
“The tweet was quickly ridiculed, and human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky responded, “NY Times, ‘Paper of Record’ for … the #Iran regime.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. — who caused chaos inside the paper earlier this year when he penned an op-ed that offended liberals — slammed the Times as propaganda.”
“What was once the self-styled newspaper of record is now just a well-funded left-wing blog, relentlessly hostile to America and Israel, and always ready to propagandize for their enemies,” Cotton wrote.
Journalist Shiri Moshe added, “Iranian officials also maintain that their regime doesn’t subjugate women or massacre political dissidents — is the NYT going to prominently and uncritically feature those lies in their coverage as well?””
“Charter school advocates may not have an ally in President-elect Joe Biden or his Education Department.
“He has been working closely with us over these last few months to listen and understand what the issues are that we are facing in this moment. We know we have a partner,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, told the Wall Street Journal.
Unlike President Barack Obama, who showed deference to the rise of charter schools and support for school choice, Biden has called for a ban on federal funding for charter schools that are operated by for-profit companies, which account for 12 percent of charter schools, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
He also pledged, as part of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, to “support measures to increase accountability for charter schools.”
“We will call for conditioning federal funding for new, expanded charter schools or for charter school renewals on a district’s review of whether the charter will systematically underserve the neediest students,” the task force’s final platform read.”
The policy position has sparked worry among parents and school choice advocates representing such students.
“The data is consistently clear that nonprofit public charter schools, particularly in our urban communities that serve our African American and Latino students, have performed well. For that reason, there’s also very strong support among African American and Latino parents for charter schools,” Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, told the Journal.
“I absolutely am deeply concerned that a union-controlled Biden Education Department could have a chilling effect on the progress that the states and parents have made in securing educational options and excellence for the kids,” Jeanne Allen, chief executive of the Center for Education Reform, told the paper.”
“The leftist media is furious again, this time because Donald Trump is refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election. Norms! They scream. We need a peaceful transfer of power, an acceptance of the results, they say. Um, wait. Aren’t these the same people who cheered p-ssy hats and the chants of “not my president?” Those of us on the right didn’t forget about all of that.
For four years, not a few months, the Democrats and their media allies insisted first that Trump’s election was not legitimate and then that he was a Russian asset. It was abject nonsense, a lie. It was a hysterical and long-lasting undermining of our democracy. Now these same clowns, these buffoons, are lecturing us about accepting the results.
o embrace Joe Biden for the sake of the country? Why don’t you go — I’m sure you can fill in the blank here.
This glorious rediscovery of high-mindedness is as infuriating as it is pointless. Of course, we aren’t going back to the old days after the left destroyed any semblance of decency and fair play. What are we, stupid? This is not how it works anymore, and you know what? Fine. I like the new rules, the ones the left created under Trump. I am perfectly happy to hold anything and everything Biden does as president as suspect and illegitimate. How’s that? Sound familiar?
Biden is the very lovely and nice man who is bringing the drone team back together from the Obama administration to kill kids in the Middle East. He’ll put our soldiers in harm’s way, but he has that bright Irish smile and says all the right things.”
—
“You guys made these rules. We can play by them. In fact, I can’t wait. I’m gonna drag your little garbage Democratic presidential administration as long and hard as I can. I learned it from watching you, dad. What did you think was going to happen? Did you think a Trump loss would turn us all into The Bulwark, Bill Kristol “conservatives” excited for more foreign wars? No, my friends, no.
Trump announced a new way of thinking about America. In fairness, he didn’t invent it, Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan were talking about it when I was a teenager a long time ago. But it’s here and it’s not going anywhere. It’s the new Republican Party. And I am so here for it I don’t even know how to express my joy. This is the new fight, and you guys are gonna lose.”
“Massive Islamic Terrorist Attack In Africa Results In Deaths Of At Least 110 People”
“A terrorist attack by Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist organization, left at least 110 people dead in Nigeria on Saturday, with most of the victims appearing to be farmers.
“The assailants tied up the agricultural workers and slit their throats in the village of Koshobe,” AFP reported. “The victims were laborers from Sokoto state in northwest Nigeria, roughly 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away, who had traveled to the northeast to find work.”
“The bodies were taken to Zabarmari village, two kilometers away, where they would be kept ahead of burial Sunday, said resident Mala Bunu, who took part in the search-and-rescue operation,” the wire service added. “Last month, Boko Haram militants slaughtered 22 farmers working in their irrigation fields near Maiduguri in two separate incidents. Boko Haram and ISWAP, its IS-linked rival, have increasingly targeted loggers, herders and fishermen in their violent campaign, accusing them of spying and passing information to the military and the local militia fighting them.”
The attack reportedly happened on the same day that residents in the state were able to cast ballots for the first time in 13 years to elect local government officials.”
“There are landslides and then there are landslides. There are lopsided votes and then there are lopsided votes. There are egregious examples of vote manipulation and then there are really egregious examples of vote manipulation. What surfaced during hearings in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 2020, may set the standard for electoral outrageousness. An expert testifying to the Pennsylvania Senate flagged a batch of ballots that recorded some 570,000 votes for Joe Biden and only 3,200 for Donald Trump.
Yes, you read that correctly. That would equate to Joe Biden bagging 99.4 percent of that enormous chunk of votes. That one batch alone would have flipped the state to Biden.
This bombshell was dropped last Wednesday at the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg. The November 25 hearings, which began at 12:30 p.m. and ran for nearly four hours, were convened at the request of Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Adams, Cumberland, Franklin, and York counties). It was sponsored by the Senate Majority Policy Committee, chaired by Sen. David Argall (R-Berks/Schuylkill). Mastriano has called what happened “unacceptable,” and has called for the resignation of Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
This particular gem was provided by Ret. Col. Phil Waldren, a former combat officer with a background in Army information and electronic warfare. Waldren, who testified along with Rudy Giuliani’s team, brought to the hearing his considerable expertise in analysis of election-data fraud. After Waldren presented his material, the chair opened the floor for questions. Rudy Giuliani went first, asking Waldren to clarify what his analytics team means when they talk about “spike anomalies” in voting patterns. These, as Waldren defines them, are “events where a numerical amount of votes are processed in a time period that is not feasible or mechanically possible under normal circumstances.” Waldren showed a chart with a shocking example of an apparent massive dump of votes for Joe Biden. Giuliani pressed Waldren for clarification regarding this unbelievable “Biden injection of votes.” Here’s the exchange:
Waldren: At the very beginning of the chart, where there’s a circle that says “On Election Day,” what that indicates is there’s a spike in loaded votes. 337,000-plus-or-minus-some votes that were added in there in one big batch. So that was an anomaly in the reporting. Normally you would expect to see a smooth curve going up, not any big spikes, that’s kind of what Greg was talking about, the anomalies of loading and uploading those votes. So that big spike that occurs there is a prime indicator of fraudulent voting.
Giuliani: And that’s [a total of] 604,000 votes in 90 minutes, is that right?
Waldren: Correct, this is [shows chart] 337,000 votes in that period of time.
Giuliani: And when you look at this entire curve, with all these spikes, can you calculate how much of a vote that accounted for for Biden, and how much for Trump?
Waldren: Close to 600,000. I think our figures were about 570-some-odd-thousand that all those spikes represent overtime.
Giuliani: For Biden?
Waldren: Correct.
Giuliani: And how much for Trump?
Waldren: I think it was a little over 3,200.
That’s roughly 570,000 votes for Biden and 3,200 for Trump. Biden scooped up this enormous batch by 99.4 percent. Incredible. Impossible. Scandalous.”
Here’s Jen Psaki hugging Russia's Foreign Minister and Russia’s chief foreign affairs propagandist while wearing a pink hammer and sickle hat pic.twitter.com/WMJytaxd7J
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
I think we are all finding our own ways that comfort us as we wait for the final outcome. We need to be grace givers because we have all had different experiences leading us to find some things believable and other things not.
I’m not trying to find some kind of comfort in believing certain news accounts over others, I’m using my common sense to weigh what is credible and what just isn’t.
Biden’s cabinet picks are similar to Trump’s — Ivy League and corporate interests. Meet the new boss same as the old boss. I’m amused the blogs you cite accepted Trump’s appointees but question Biden’s — when both have the same credibility concerns.
Nothing wrong with NYT’s tweet; they’re just reporting Iran’s response to the assassination.
Charter schools should be held accountable for the gov’t money they receive. The credibility and quality of charter schools vary widely. If a charter school is well run, they should welcome the accountability as a way to weed out the “bad apples” in their field.
There’s nothing wrong with either Democrats and Republicans protesting and opposing each other in terms of policy. However, there is a problem when the party leadership doesn’t recognize election results and hinders a transfer of power. That’s the difference between 2016 and 2020 — Clinton quickly conceded but the party rank and file protested and opposed. The same should be expected here.
Boko Haram is a terrorist organization but its important to understand the local nature of the attacks. The attacks occurred on local election day and were directed at migrants from other provinces.When people apply their own interpretations based on their international perspective on local terrorism, their response is frequently wrong.
As my friend [MakeItMan] says, “You have to believe a lot of very unlikely things to still think that it was rigged. So many people had to know what was going on that at least a few of them would have squealed just for their few minutes of fame.”
This is long, and the tone is on the sarcastic side, but Erick Erickson makes points worth considering:
“Might as well generate some hate mail and comments with some blunt truths. I say this as a supporter and donor of the President’s re-election effort. A lot of his core supporters, who’ve never contributed a penny to his campaign, will blast me as NeverTrump, but this needs to be said.
According to the Trump World narrative, the President was failed by multiple chiefs of staff, his first attorney general, and now his second.
The Durham investigation that would expose everything is exposing nothing, not even itself. But just you wait and see!
The Trump-controlled Department of Justice and Trump controlled FBI are both in on stealing the election from their boss along with possibly the CIA and now Fox News whose accurate call of Arizona was right but hurt feelings by coming too soon.
The Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona and the Republican legislators of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are in on picking the infrastructure that stole the election and will do nothing to stop it.
The Republican Party in Georgia is unable to get the Republican Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, or Attorney General to act or do the President’s bidding, so they all must be in cahoots with Stacey Abrams who they all dislike.
Dominion Voting Systems handed the vote to Donald Trump in twelve of fourteen counties in which their machines were used in Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, Dominion was in on the act of stealing the election there and elsewhere.
The paper ballot votes in Georgia aligned with the Dominion Voter Systems machine count so that is proof the election was stolen, as were the disproportionate use of absentee ballots by Democrats when Trump said not to use them and Biden said to use them.
The lawsuits being filed by President Trump’s team are all being tossed from court, often by the judges the President himself picked. The lawyers have failed him. So have his judges and courts.
Maybe it is all a grand conspiracy or maybe, just maybe, and this is a wild idea, but maybe the man who said he hired the best people didn’t and that ultimately means that he’s not actually very good at picking the right people. But wait, there’s more.
For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the Attorney General, who previously served as Attorney General for George H. W. Bush, is actually a highly competent individual and John Durham is too.
But both have been unable to deliver results that would expose the deep state conspiracy against the President — the one that also involved the DOJ, FBI, and CIA stealing the election from the President who presides over those organizations with the help of Republican governors and legislators.
Concurrently, there are a bunch of courtiers to the Trump Administration who’ve been assuring us that, just you wait, it is all going to be exposed and people are going to jail and the deep state house of cards is collapsing. The Durham investigation will expose everything, supposedly. Except now the Attorney General who all Trump supporters initially praised is vilified for not doing enough.
Meanwhile, the deep state is able to steal the presidential election, but the GOP got gains everywhere else and the deep state could not steal the Senate. The deep state couldn’t even take state legislative seats from the GOP, which will allow them to redistrict Democrats out of power in two years. The idiot deep staters had every major polling firm in America show a Democratic blowout and weren’t smart enough to align their theft of the election with what the polls showed and everyone expected.
Maybe — and I know this might just blow your mind — but maybe what if you’ve been lied to the whole time. There is no conspiracy. There is no theft of the election. The President hired highly competent people, but it is him, not them, who is the problem.
And then maybe, just maybe, because it is him, not them, who is the problem, ultimately it is really you who are the problem because you so willingly got played and even now want to be played because now you’re emotionally invested in a cause and a candidate.
To admit you were played and he lost and there was no deep state conspiracy or theft of the election would actually make you look bad at this point. So it’s better to double down on the lies and blame everyone else from the Trump-appointed Attorney General to the Trump-appointed FBI Director to the Trump-appointed CIA Director to various Trump endorsed Governors to the GOP establishment to corporate America, the Carlyle Group, the Rothschilds, the Russians, and the Chinese, along with Fox News that spent four years letting the President have nearly uninterrupted air time.
Maybe Hillary Clinton was so deeply disliked that Trump could beat her and if he’d not flubbed his first debate, not had so many insane tweets, and not handled the viral situation as he had, he could have beaten Biden. But voters got exhausted and chose to move on.
It really is remarkable how everyone always fails President Trump in the end. From Jeff Sessions to John Kelly to Mick Mulvaney to General Mattis to William Barr to John Durham to Brian Kemp to Doug Ducey and the list goes on and on, all these people just fail or betray the President, allegedly. I just suspect when the failures are so complete and so thorough and so widespread among people he chose, hired, or endorsed, that maybe they are not the ones failing.”
Most accusations of errors and fraud made by Rudy et al have not been presented to a court for the very simple fact, they don’t meet the burden of any proof and lawyers don’t want to embarrass themselves. From outside perspective, the results are entirely logical.
I read and replied to the spectator article a few days ago. The next link you cite, makes similar claims, They all revolve around the idea that massive amount of vote tabulations released at nearly the same time along with a lopsided vote for Biden are too unusual to be realistic. However, in an urban area polls contain large number of votes and polls generally release their votes all at once. On a percentage basis these spikes are similar to smaller spikes in rural areas. Similarly lopsided vote results are not unusual. As I mentioned earlier my brother’s county voted 88% for Trump; outside of the two college towns, the polls would have reported over 95% for Trump to compensate for the Democratic votes in the two small college towns. This occurs in reverse in urban areas. When the results came out of Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that the ration was 80-20 and in some neighborhoods even higher. The increased in black youth votes almost ensured that it would be 90%.
This election set 100 year old records in voter participation — given the record participation, Biden’s vote totals are not surprising.
Finally, the polls were accurate — it was closer than they thought but the electoral college predictions were fairly accurate.
And finally even AG Barr knows when to bow out. He knows there’s no legal case to be made. Rudy on the other hand is being paid 20,000$ a day. Trump and others are fundraising to supposedly chanllenge the vote but Trump is taking a 60-40 split with the RNC of all donations under 8000$. In some instances this is just an other opportunity to grift.
Sorry, DJ, if I insulted you with the comfort comment. I just know of the great transformation of my community since I have lived here all my life and it makes it easier to believe that people will stop at nothing in politics. In my county, in the sheriff’s race a few years back one got shot and killed by the other. We have had an element to move in here from elsewhere and the flow has gotten bigger. It is a takeover attitude. There has been abuse of power at all levels of government. When the news is full of it month after month, year after year, it makes one start to think it must be this way everywhere.
Yep, all those years and the stories of corruption have never stopped. I am thankful to know that some people in our nation have not lived with it for all these years and think the ones running elections are somehow above it all, especially in the large cities.
Government needs to always be watched — and carefully. No matter which “side” is in power. Power itself is corrupting, as history bears out over and over again.
It comforts me to think that at some point maybe some of these corrupt people will be brought to justice so that we can see it with our eyes on earth. But God may have other plans. Above all I have to trust Him. He is the ultimate truth. No matter who reports the news, they only see with earthly vision. There is always more to the story.
Janice
Well, when you live where I live, there is no such thing as my side being in power other than the ultimate of God being sovereign.
On the state level, our former governor made a name for himself for bringing many businesses into Atlanta/Georgia. I think he cut taxes to entice businesses, especially film production. So when the base who voted him in wanted to pass a religious freedom law to match what other states have, he caved to the LGBT folks and did not support those who had supported him. I did not know how it would play out with Kemp because I do not know how he fits into the whole picture. But those who put pressure on folks here have deep pockets and a lot of them are not necessarily Georgia people. There is so much I don’t know, but corruption has been here for years and probably has just gotten more organized over time.
DJ – I would say that we should be even more skeptical of those on “our side”. We are prone to be skeptical and critical of the other side, but give a pass to our side. (This goes for news sources and writers as well.)
Wandering Views 
Swamp Things 2 the Sequel.
https://nypost.com/2020/11/28/joe-biden-cabinet-setting-presidency-up-to-be-swamp-things-2/
“John freakin’ Kerry. Again.
After a summer of discontent driven in part by protests against racial injustice and in part by the not-altogether-unrelated desire of a great many Americans to be rid of Donald Trump, Joe Biden has responded to his party’s call for sweeping social change by taking a deep dive into the Ivy League trash heap and coming up with the pale desiccated carcass of John Kerry, the man whose chiseled face appears next to the entry for “mediocrity” in the American political dictionary.
Kerry is leading a parade of familiar faces, a hack pack if ever there were one.
Mssr. Kerry of Switzerland’s Institut Montana Zugerberg and Yale will be joined in the administration by Anthony Blinken of the Dalton School and Harvard. Kerry will be a special envoy for climate issues, which will ensure that there is no bipartisan progress on climate issues, while Blinken, a sturdy Democratic time-server, will take over Kerry’s old job at State. Mike Donilon (prep school in Providence, then Georgetown), a ghastly political consultant, will serve Biden as a political consultant, though they’ll call him a “senior adviser.” Jen O’Malley Dillon, who has done almost nothing in her life except staff campaigns — a parade of losers and misfits including Al Gore, John Edwards, and Tom Daschle, before striking gold with Obama I and Obama II — will be deputy chief of staff. Janet Yellen, a Federal Reserve lifer who has served that institution in a number of capacities since the 1970s, will head up Treasury.
Biden, having satisfied his pledge to choose a black woman as his vice president, is settling into the familiar pattern of staffing up his administration mostly with mostly rich, mostly white Democratic functionaries long associated with elite institutions: The international law firm of O’Melveny & Myers can count among its veterans not only Mike Donilon but also incoming Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas, while incoming chief of staff Ron Klain was a Fannie Mae lobbyist who is married to an Obama veteran currently serving as a fellow at the Walton Family Foundation. Big jobs like Treasury and State will be filled by familiar faces, while black lives matter mostly for feel-good portfolios such as Cedric Richmond’s new gig over at the White House Office of Public Engagement.
One wonders if this will satisfy the hunger of black Democrats for more prominent representation.
Or, indeed, whether it will satisfy anybody.
Some conservatives may breathe a little sigh of relief that the Biden administration is apparently committed to doing nothing interesting. Complain if you like about Janet Yellen, she isn’t going to join AOC in waving the red flag with the Socialist International. On the other hand, even as the Democrats’ left wing is disappointed, Republicans looking for bipartisan progress on issues of critical national importance are likely to be disappointed as well by this same-old, same-old approach.
This is Swamp Things 2, the sequel, and the original wasn’t all that great.”
LikeLike
Ethics…..?
Pffffttttt….
Not in this administration…..
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/11/biden-cabinet-and-transition-picks-already-facing-serious-ethics-questions/
“Biden Cabinet And Transition Picks Already Facing Serious Ethics Questions
Some of Biden’s cabinet picks and transition team members “have done work for undisclosed corporate clients and aided a fund that invests in government contractors,” reported the NY Times.”
“Back in late September, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s transition team was hailed by the mainstream media for releasing an ethics plan that, according to Politico, was “designed to make it harder for lobbyists to work on the transition effort.”
The website also reported at the time that “the rules are broadly similar [to] those put in place by President Barack Obama’s transition team 12 years ago.” For example:
They “bar those who’ve worked as registered lobbyists or foreign agents in the past year from working on the transition unless” Jessica Hertz, the transition team’s general counsel, signs off on the arrangement. “They also forbid transition staffers from working on any ‘specific Transition matter’ that they’ve lobbied on in the past year or plan to lobby on in the coming year without Hertz’s approval.”
An overview of the Biden transition team’s ethics plan document states that “the Plan aims to ensure that Transition team members abide by the highest ethical standards, act solely in furtherance of the public interest, and base all policy and personnel decisions on merit, free from individual conflicts of interest.”
Just two months later, Biden is proceeding with the transition process even as the Trump campaign’s legal challenges are still playing out in the courts. But as the New York Times reported Saturday, some of Biden’s picks “for top posts have done work for undisclosed corporate clients and aided a fund that invests in government contractors,” which is already prompting ethics concerns:
One firm helps companies navigate global risks and the political and procedural ins and outs of Washington. The other is an investment fund with a particular interest in military contractors.
But the consulting firm, WestExec Advisors, and the investment fund, Pine Island Capital Partners, call themselves strategic partners and have featured an overlapping roster of politically connected officials — including some of the most prominent names on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s team and others under consideration for high-ranking posts.
WestExec’s founders include Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Biden’s choice to be his secretary of state, and Michèle A. Flournoy, one of the leading candidates to be his defense secretary. Among others to come out of WestExec are Avril Haines, Mr. Biden’s pick to be director of national intelligence; Christina Killingsworth, who is helping the president-elect organize his White House budget office; Ely Ratner, who is helping organize the Biden transition at the Pentagon; and Jennifer Psaki, an adviser on Mr. Biden’s transition team.
[…]
Another person listed as a member of the Pine Island team is Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired Army general who is also under consideration for defense secretary, according to a person familiar with the selection process.”
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Lapdog.
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More tragic than comic.
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Yep.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-is-licking-its-chops-at-the-thought-of-president-joe-biden-opinion/ar-BB1buaSz?li=BBnb7Kz
“China Is Licking Its Chops at the Thought of President Joe Biden ”
“The formal Electoral College vote is not until December 14, but one country that is delighted by the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency—and, moreover, which has wasted no time in trying to reassert its authority over the world—is China. During the presidential election campaign, I was honored to be asked onto the stage at a Donald Trump re-election rally in Arizona. When I spoke, the strongest point I made to the audience was to ask who else among Western leaders has the courage to stand up to the rapacious Chinese Communist Party if not Donald J. Trump? The crowd roared, knowing full well that Biden would not show such strength in the face of the Chinese threat.
Sadly, they’re already starting to swoop. In the middle of this month, The Guardian newspaper in London had an exclusive story in which Victor Zhang, the vice president of Huawei, stated that in light of Trump’s defeat, Britain should review its decision to ban the telecoms giant from its 5G network. Zhang warned that this decision would have economic repercussions for Britain, adding: “As a global company, we want to work with governments to ensure they have the policies to secure growth. The decision was a political one motivated by U.S. perceptions of Huawei, and not those of the U.K. This is not really motivated by security, but about a trade war between the U.S. and China.”
Or consider the fact that this year, some British politicians have shown a certain amount of moral grit by expressing concerns about new authoritarian security laws in Hong Kong and China’s persecution of its Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. How have the Chinese reacted? This week, Fang Wenjian, chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the U.K. and the Bank of China’s boss, issued another menacing warning. The Sunday Times and City A.M. have both published stories linking him to the threat that any decline in U.K.-China relations could force some Chinese firms out of the U.K. In other words: “Don’t criticize China’s abysmal human rights record, or you risk losing our business.”
Alarms bells are also ringing because of Citiking International, a Chinese-backed private equity firm with offices around the world and, it has been reported, possible ties to the Chinese Communist Party. It is trying to buy Eclipse Aerospace, a small firm based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that employs 65 people. According to Defense News, Eclipse Aerospace produces “very light jets” that are used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Defense News states that its planes feature “sophisticated avionics, engines (originally designed for cruise missiles) and a full authority digital engine control system that all contain sensitive national security design information.” Everybody should be deeply worried about the Chinese having access to this sensitive technology, for obvious reasons.”
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And carrying water for the terrorist regime, the NY Times….
———–
“New York Times mocked for echoing Iranian talking point: ‘Carrying water for Iran’
One critic asked, ‘Did the Ayatollah write this tweet?’”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-mocked-iranian-talking-point
“The tweet was quickly ridiculed, and human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky responded, “NY Times, ‘Paper of Record’ for … the #Iran regime.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. — who caused chaos inside the paper earlier this year when he penned an op-ed that offended liberals — slammed the Times as propaganda.”
“What was once the self-styled newspaper of record is now just a well-funded left-wing blog, relentlessly hostile to America and Israel, and always ready to propagandize for their enemies,” Cotton wrote.
Journalist Shiri Moshe added, “Iranian officials also maintain that their regime doesn’t subjugate women or massacre political dissidents — is the NYT going to prominently and uncritically feature those lies in their coverage as well?””
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How quickly the lapdogs forget.
Historic?
Not really. It’s been done.
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Here comes payback for the teachers unions.
https://nypost.com/2020/11/30/joe-biden-reportedly-to-be-tough-on-charter-schools/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
“Charter school advocates may not have an ally in President-elect Joe Biden or his Education Department.
“He has been working closely with us over these last few months to listen and understand what the issues are that we are facing in this moment. We know we have a partner,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, told the Wall Street Journal.
Unlike President Barack Obama, who showed deference to the rise of charter schools and support for school choice, Biden has called for a ban on federal funding for charter schools that are operated by for-profit companies, which account for 12 percent of charter schools, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
He also pledged, as part of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, to “support measures to increase accountability for charter schools.”
“We will call for conditioning federal funding for new, expanded charter schools or for charter school renewals on a district’s review of whether the charter will systematically underserve the neediest students,” the task force’s final platform read.”
The policy position has sparked worry among parents and school choice advocates representing such students.
“The data is consistently clear that nonprofit public charter schools, particularly in our urban communities that serve our African American and Latino students, have performed well. For that reason, there’s also very strong support among African American and Latino parents for charter schools,” Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, told the Journal.
“I absolutely am deeply concerned that a union-controlled Biden Education Department could have a chilling effect on the progress that the states and parents have made in securing educational options and excellence for the kids,” Jeanne Allen, chief executive of the Center for Education Reform, told the paper.”
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Word.
“The ‘Not My President’ Crowd Needs To Sit Down And Shut Up”
“The left made the rules. I’m ready to play by them.”
https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/30/the-not-my-president-crowd-needs-to-sit-down-and-shut-up/#.X8UctPOBEhg.twitter
“The leftist media is furious again, this time because Donald Trump is refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election. Norms! They scream. We need a peaceful transfer of power, an acceptance of the results, they say. Um, wait. Aren’t these the same people who cheered p-ssy hats and the chants of “not my president?” Those of us on the right didn’t forget about all of that.
For four years, not a few months, the Democrats and their media allies insisted first that Trump’s election was not legitimate and then that he was a Russian asset. It was abject nonsense, a lie. It was a hysterical and long-lasting undermining of our democracy. Now these same clowns, these buffoons, are lecturing us about accepting the results.
o embrace Joe Biden for the sake of the country? Why don’t you go — I’m sure you can fill in the blank here.
This glorious rediscovery of high-mindedness is as infuriating as it is pointless. Of course, we aren’t going back to the old days after the left destroyed any semblance of decency and fair play. What are we, stupid? This is not how it works anymore, and you know what? Fine. I like the new rules, the ones the left created under Trump. I am perfectly happy to hold anything and everything Biden does as president as suspect and illegitimate. How’s that? Sound familiar?
Biden is the very lovely and nice man who is bringing the drone team back together from the Obama administration to kill kids in the Middle East. He’ll put our soldiers in harm’s way, but he has that bright Irish smile and says all the right things.”
—
“You guys made these rules. We can play by them. In fact, I can’t wait. I’m gonna drag your little garbage Democratic presidential administration as long and hard as I can. I learned it from watching you, dad. What did you think was going to happen? Did you think a Trump loss would turn us all into The Bulwark, Bill Kristol “conservatives” excited for more foreign wars? No, my friends, no.
Trump announced a new way of thinking about America. In fairness, he didn’t invent it, Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan were talking about it when I was a teenager a long time ago. But it’s here and it’s not going anywhere. It’s the new Republican Party. And I am so here for it I don’t even know how to express my joy. This is the new fight, and you guys are gonna lose.”
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Scum of the earth.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/massive-islamic-terrorist-attack-in-africa-results-in-deaths-of-at-least-110-people-report
“Massive Islamic Terrorist Attack In Africa Results In Deaths Of At Least 110 People”
“A terrorist attack by Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist organization, left at least 110 people dead in Nigeria on Saturday, with most of the victims appearing to be farmers.
“The assailants tied up the agricultural workers and slit their throats in the village of Koshobe,” AFP reported. “The victims were laborers from Sokoto state in northwest Nigeria, roughly 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away, who had traveled to the northeast to find work.”
“The bodies were taken to Zabarmari village, two kilometers away, where they would be kept ahead of burial Sunday, said resident Mala Bunu, who took part in the search-and-rescue operation,” the wire service added. “Last month, Boko Haram militants slaughtered 22 farmers working in their irrigation fields near Maiduguri in two separate incidents. Boko Haram and ISWAP, its IS-linked rival, have increasingly targeted loggers, herders and fishermen in their violent campaign, accusing them of spying and passing information to the military and the local militia fighting them.”
The attack reportedly happened on the same day that residents in the state were able to cast ballots for the first time in 13 years to elect local government officials.”
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Puzzling?
Indeed.
https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-election-is-deeply-puzzling/
“Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling
If only cranks find the tabulations strange, put me down as a crank”
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Move along, nothing to see here folks….
https://spectator.org/pennsylvania-bombshell-biden-99-4-vs-trump-0-6/
“There are landslides and then there are landslides. There are lopsided votes and then there are lopsided votes. There are egregious examples of vote manipulation and then there are really egregious examples of vote manipulation. What surfaced during hearings in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 2020, may set the standard for electoral outrageousness. An expert testifying to the Pennsylvania Senate flagged a batch of ballots that recorded some 570,000 votes for Joe Biden and only 3,200 for Donald Trump.
Yes, you read that correctly. That would equate to Joe Biden bagging 99.4 percent of that enormous chunk of votes. That one batch alone would have flipped the state to Biden.
This bombshell was dropped last Wednesday at the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg. The November 25 hearings, which began at 12:30 p.m. and ran for nearly four hours, were convened at the request of Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Adams, Cumberland, Franklin, and York counties). It was sponsored by the Senate Majority Policy Committee, chaired by Sen. David Argall (R-Berks/Schuylkill). Mastriano has called what happened “unacceptable,” and has called for the resignation of Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
This particular gem was provided by Ret. Col. Phil Waldren, a former combat officer with a background in Army information and electronic warfare. Waldren, who testified along with Rudy Giuliani’s team, brought to the hearing his considerable expertise in analysis of election-data fraud. After Waldren presented his material, the chair opened the floor for questions. Rudy Giuliani went first, asking Waldren to clarify what his analytics team means when they talk about “spike anomalies” in voting patterns. These, as Waldren defines them, are “events where a numerical amount of votes are processed in a time period that is not feasible or mechanically possible under normal circumstances.” Waldren showed a chart with a shocking example of an apparent massive dump of votes for Joe Biden. Giuliani pressed Waldren for clarification regarding this unbelievable “Biden injection of votes.” Here’s the exchange:
Waldren: At the very beginning of the chart, where there’s a circle that says “On Election Day,” what that indicates is there’s a spike in loaded votes. 337,000-plus-or-minus-some votes that were added in there in one big batch. So that was an anomaly in the reporting. Normally you would expect to see a smooth curve going up, not any big spikes, that’s kind of what Greg was talking about, the anomalies of loading and uploading those votes. So that big spike that occurs there is a prime indicator of fraudulent voting.
Giuliani: And that’s [a total of] 604,000 votes in 90 minutes, is that right?
Waldren: Correct, this is [shows chart] 337,000 votes in that period of time.
Giuliani: And when you look at this entire curve, with all these spikes, can you calculate how much of a vote that accounted for for Biden, and how much for Trump?
Waldren: Close to 600,000. I think our figures were about 570-some-odd-thousand that all those spikes represent overtime.
Giuliani: For Biden?
Waldren: Correct.
Giuliani: And how much for Trump?
Waldren: I think it was a little over 3,200.
That’s roughly 570,000 votes for Biden and 3,200 for Trump. Biden scooped up this enormous batch by 99.4 percent. Incredible. Impossible. Scandalous.”
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Same. Old. Hacks.
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Oh my….! 😲
This should be fun.
Hurry up, before Twitter yanks it.
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Perhaps the FBI is actually doing something?
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/fbi-voter-fraud/2020/11/30/id/999369/
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Yep, it gets worse and worse – corruption in all kinds of forms…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/illegal-money-for-votes-raffles-conducted-in-several-states-in-2020-election_3598915.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-01-2
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Interesting to see what God will do.
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Yes, Mumsee.
Waiting.On.God.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
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DJ: Do you actually believe them?
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I think we are all finding our own ways that comfort us as we wait for the final outcome. We need to be grace givers because we have all had different experiences leading us to find some things believable and other things not.
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I’m not trying to find some kind of comfort in believing certain news accounts over others, I’m using my common sense to weigh what is credible and what just isn’t.
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Biden’s cabinet picks are similar to Trump’s — Ivy League and corporate interests. Meet the new boss same as the old boss. I’m amused the blogs you cite accepted Trump’s appointees but question Biden’s — when both have the same credibility concerns.
Nothing wrong with NYT’s tweet; they’re just reporting Iran’s response to the assassination.
Charter schools should be held accountable for the gov’t money they receive. The credibility and quality of charter schools vary widely. If a charter school is well run, they should welcome the accountability as a way to weed out the “bad apples” in their field.
There’s nothing wrong with either Democrats and Republicans protesting and opposing each other in terms of policy. However, there is a problem when the party leadership doesn’t recognize election results and hinders a transfer of power. That’s the difference between 2016 and 2020 — Clinton quickly conceded but the party rank and file protested and opposed. The same should be expected here.
Boko Haram is a terrorist organization but its important to understand the local nature of the attacks. The attacks occurred on local election day and were directed at migrants from other provinces.When people apply their own interpretations based on their international perspective on local terrorism, their response is frequently wrong.
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As my friend [MakeItMan] says, “You have to believe a lot of very unlikely things to still think that it was rigged. So many people had to know what was going on that at least a few of them would have squealed just for their few minutes of fame.”
This is long, and the tone is on the sarcastic side, but Erick Erickson makes points worth considering:
“Might as well generate some hate mail and comments with some blunt truths. I say this as a supporter and donor of the President’s re-election effort. A lot of his core supporters, who’ve never contributed a penny to his campaign, will blast me as NeverTrump, but this needs to be said.
According to the Trump World narrative, the President was failed by multiple chiefs of staff, his first attorney general, and now his second.
The Durham investigation that would expose everything is exposing nothing, not even itself. But just you wait and see!
The Trump-controlled Department of Justice and Trump controlled FBI are both in on stealing the election from their boss along with possibly the CIA and now Fox News whose accurate call of Arizona was right but hurt feelings by coming too soon.
The Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona and the Republican legislators of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are in on picking the infrastructure that stole the election and will do nothing to stop it.
The Republican Party in Georgia is unable to get the Republican Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, or Attorney General to act or do the President’s bidding, so they all must be in cahoots with Stacey Abrams who they all dislike.
Dominion Voting Systems handed the vote to Donald Trump in twelve of fourteen counties in which their machines were used in Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, Dominion was in on the act of stealing the election there and elsewhere.
The paper ballot votes in Georgia aligned with the Dominion Voter Systems machine count so that is proof the election was stolen, as were the disproportionate use of absentee ballots by Democrats when Trump said not to use them and Biden said to use them.
The lawsuits being filed by President Trump’s team are all being tossed from court, often by the judges the President himself picked. The lawyers have failed him. So have his judges and courts.
Maybe it is all a grand conspiracy or maybe, just maybe, and this is a wild idea, but maybe the man who said he hired the best people didn’t and that ultimately means that he’s not actually very good at picking the right people. But wait, there’s more.
For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the Attorney General, who previously served as Attorney General for George H. W. Bush, is actually a highly competent individual and John Durham is too.
But both have been unable to deliver results that would expose the deep state conspiracy against the President — the one that also involved the DOJ, FBI, and CIA stealing the election from the President who presides over those organizations with the help of Republican governors and legislators.
Concurrently, there are a bunch of courtiers to the Trump Administration who’ve been assuring us that, just you wait, it is all going to be exposed and people are going to jail and the deep state house of cards is collapsing. The Durham investigation will expose everything, supposedly. Except now the Attorney General who all Trump supporters initially praised is vilified for not doing enough.
Meanwhile, the deep state is able to steal the presidential election, but the GOP got gains everywhere else and the deep state could not steal the Senate. The deep state couldn’t even take state legislative seats from the GOP, which will allow them to redistrict Democrats out of power in two years. The idiot deep staters had every major polling firm in America show a Democratic blowout and weren’t smart enough to align their theft of the election with what the polls showed and everyone expected.
Maybe — and I know this might just blow your mind — but maybe what if you’ve been lied to the whole time. There is no conspiracy. There is no theft of the election. The President hired highly competent people, but it is him, not them, who is the problem.
And then maybe, just maybe, because it is him, not them, who is the problem, ultimately it is really you who are the problem because you so willingly got played and even now want to be played because now you’re emotionally invested in a cause and a candidate.
To admit you were played and he lost and there was no deep state conspiracy or theft of the election would actually make you look bad at this point. So it’s better to double down on the lies and blame everyone else from the Trump-appointed Attorney General to the Trump-appointed FBI Director to the Trump-appointed CIA Director to various Trump endorsed Governors to the GOP establishment to corporate America, the Carlyle Group, the Rothschilds, the Russians, and the Chinese, along with Fox News that spent four years letting the President have nearly uninterrupted air time.
Maybe Hillary Clinton was so deeply disliked that Trump could beat her and if he’d not flubbed his first debate, not had so many insane tweets, and not handled the viral situation as he had, he could have beaten Biden. But voters got exhausted and chose to move on.
It really is remarkable how everyone always fails President Trump in the end. From Jeff Sessions to John Kelly to Mick Mulvaney to General Mattis to William Barr to John Durham to Brian Kemp to Doug Ducey and the list goes on and on, all these people just fail or betray the President, allegedly. I just suspect when the failures are so complete and so thorough and so widespread among people he chose, hired, or endorsed, that maybe they are not the ones failing.”
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Most accusations of errors and fraud made by Rudy et al have not been presented to a court for the very simple fact, they don’t meet the burden of any proof and lawyers don’t want to embarrass themselves. From outside perspective, the results are entirely logical.
I read and replied to the spectator article a few days ago. The next link you cite, makes similar claims, They all revolve around the idea that massive amount of vote tabulations released at nearly the same time along with a lopsided vote for Biden are too unusual to be realistic. However, in an urban area polls contain large number of votes and polls generally release their votes all at once. On a percentage basis these spikes are similar to smaller spikes in rural areas. Similarly lopsided vote results are not unusual. As I mentioned earlier my brother’s county voted 88% for Trump; outside of the two college towns, the polls would have reported over 95% for Trump to compensate for the Democratic votes in the two small college towns. This occurs in reverse in urban areas. When the results came out of Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that the ration was 80-20 and in some neighborhoods even higher. The increased in black youth votes almost ensured that it would be 90%.
This election set 100 year old records in voter participation — given the record participation, Biden’s vote totals are not surprising.
Finally, the polls were accurate — it was closer than they thought but the electoral college predictions were fairly accurate.
And finally even AG Barr knows when to bow out. He knows there’s no legal case to be made. Rudy on the other hand is being paid 20,000$ a day. Trump and others are fundraising to supposedly chanllenge the vote but Trump is taking a 60-40 split with the RNC of all donations under 8000$. In some instances this is just an other opportunity to grift.
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Sorry, DJ, if I insulted you with the comfort comment. I just know of the great transformation of my community since I have lived here all my life and it makes it easier to believe that people will stop at nothing in politics. In my county, in the sheriff’s race a few years back one got shot and killed by the other. We have had an element to move in here from elsewhere and the flow has gotten bigger. It is a takeover attitude. There has been abuse of power at all levels of government. When the news is full of it month after month, year after year, it makes one start to think it must be this way everywhere.
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My how time flies when we are having fun . . .
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Yep, all those years and the stories of corruption have never stopped. I am thankful to know that some people in our nation have not lived with it for all these years and think the ones running elections are somehow above it all, especially in the large cities.
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Government needs to always be watched — and carefully. No matter which “side” is in power. Power itself is corrupting, as history bears out over and over again.
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It comforts me to think that at some point maybe some of these corrupt people will be brought to justice so that we can see it with our eyes on earth. But God may have other plans. Above all I have to trust Him. He is the ultimate truth. No matter who reports the news, they only see with earthly vision. There is always more to the story.
Janice
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Yeah. We’ve been watching, and watching and watching. What I see is no accountability. None. Zero.
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Trust Janice to come along and put things in perspective. :–)
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So how careful and watchful (and skeptical) should we also be when “our” side is in power?
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Well, when you live where I live, there is no such thing as my side being in power other than the ultimate of God being sovereign.
On the state level, our former governor made a name for himself for bringing many businesses into Atlanta/Georgia. I think he cut taxes to entice businesses, especially film production. So when the base who voted him in wanted to pass a religious freedom law to match what other states have, he caved to the LGBT folks and did not support those who had supported him. I did not know how it would play out with Kemp because I do not know how he fits into the whole picture. But those who put pressure on folks here have deep pockets and a lot of them are not necessarily Georgia people. There is so much I don’t know, but corruption has been here for years and probably has just gotten more organized over time.
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DJ – I would say that we should be even more skeptical of those on “our side”. We are prone to be skeptical and critical of the other side, but give a pass to our side. (This goes for news sources and writers as well.)
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DJ: So common sense tells you there was no fraud?
The evidence of widespread fraud is overwhelming, yet AG Barr sees no evidence (even though he hasn’t actually done an investigation!).
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What?
No. The point is it was not widespread enough to change the results. Yes there is pretty much always some fraud in elections.
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