The foolishness of neutrality

 A reader emails to admit that his past belief in political neutrality was incorrect:

I pray your readers can get some benefit from how wrong I was about being politically neutral. 

See, I was always taught to keep politics out of business conversation and to keep a reasonable face on. So for 20 years, I assumed if the day came when we had to take a stand, friends and family would view us as just that… the ones who would speak out politically only if it was absolutely necessary. Something like the voice of reason.

Then the pandemic happened, and now the election. With these, my eyes have been opened.

When we express an ounce of skepticism, about anything… BLM, Covid, voting, media, global corps… we’ve been immediately denounced as ring-wing Nazis. I wish I could say I was joking or exaggerating. This is true of friends we’ve had for decades. In some cases, they’ve flipped on us in seconds. It’s obvious these people are so beside themselves, they’ll end up turning us in one day, if we let them.

For those of you who believe you can remain neutral, you’re fooling yourself. Whether you know it or not, you’ll always find a reason to excuse yourself from the fight. However, sooner or later you’ll have to stand, and don’t think they’re going to give you a pass for your past neutrality. You cannot reason with evil, and they do not care.

A quote from Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy seems apt here.

It was therefore necessary, if Rome wished to remain free amid the corruption, that just as the city had created new laws in the course of its existence, it should also have created new institutions, because different institutions and ways of life must be established for a subject who is evil rather than good, nor can similar forms exist in completely different substances. But since all these institutions must either be reformed all in a single stroke as soon as it is discovered they are no longer good, or little by little before everyone recognizes they are bad, let me say that both of these two alternatives are almost impossible. 

The wish to reform them little by little requires a prudent man to come forward who sees this problem from some distance and in its initial stages. It is very likely that an individual of this type may never emerge in a city, and even if one were to emerge, he might not be able to persuade others of what he himself has come to understand, because men used to living in one way do not wish to change, and all the more so when they do not see the evil for themselves but must have it demonstrated to them through abstract arguments. 

As for changing these institutions all at once, when everyone realizes they are no longer good, let me say that this ineffectiveness, though easily recognized, is difficult to correct, because to do so ordinary practices are no longer sufficient, once ordinary methods have become wicked.

It’s been fascinating to see how much less radical and how much less insane I am presently perceived to be than I was 15 years ago. And yet, my observations and positions are virtually unchanged.

14th Amendment = The Rubicon

An archived Twitter thread, deleted by Twitter, that clearly illustrates the choice presently facing President Trump. From Infogalactic:

In 50 BC, the Senate, led by Pompey, ordered Caesar to disband his army and return to Rome because his term as governor had finished. Caesar thought he would be prosecuted if he entered Rome without the immunity enjoyed by a magistrate. Pompey accused Caesar of insubordination and treason. In January 49 BC, Caesar crossed the Rubicon river (the frontier boundary of Italy) with only one legion and ignited civil war. Upon crossing the Rubicon, Caesar, according to Plutarch and Suetonius, is supposed to have quoted the Athenian playwright Menander, in Greek, “the die is cast”. Erasmus, however, notes that the more accurate Latin translation of the Greek imperative mood would be “alea iacta esto”, let the die be cast. Pompey and many of the Senate fled to the south, having little confidence in his newly raised troops. Despite greatly outnumbering Caesar, who only had his Thirteenth Legion with him, Pompey did not intend to fight. 

It is now time for President Trump to metaphorically cross the Rubicon by invoking the Constitutional powers invested in him by the 14th Amendment. 

Biden and Pelosi are far less capable leaders than Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, a brilliant military general who was celebrated in no less than three triumphs, and far less popular. The American people are with President Trump. The law is on his side. The Constitution is on his side. And justice is on his side. #CrossTheRubicon.

As I mentioned in last night’s Darkstream, this is the true test of Donald Trump. The question that only he can answer is if the man who wrote The Art of the Deal can master the arts of politics by other means.

The attack on Benford’s Law

Given that Wikipedia is already changing its tune on the reliability of Benford’s Law in detecting fraud, it’s obvious that those utilizing it to analyze the election results are right over the target. This Twitter thread shows how statistical analysis demonstrates that the excessively pro-Biden electoral counts are obviously fraudulent.

Which, of course, is why Infogalactic is a much better source of information on the subject:

Benford’s law, also called the first-digit law, is a phenomenological law about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many (but not all) real-life sets of numerical data. The law states that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers the small digits occur disproportionately often as leading significant digits. For example, in sets which obey the law the number 1 would appear as the most significant digit about 30{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} of the time, while larger digits would occur in that position less frequently: 9 would appear less than 5{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} of the time. If all digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} of the time. Benford’s law also concerns the expected distribution for digits beyond the first, which approach a uniform distribution.

Accounting fraud detection

In 1972, Hal Varian suggested that the law could be used to detect possible fraud in lists of socio-economic data submitted in support of public planning decisions. Based on the plausible assumption that people who make up figures tend to distribute their digits fairly uniformly, a simple comparison of first-digit frequency distribution from the data with the expected distribution according to Benford’s Law ought to show up any anomalous results. Following this idea, Mark Nigrini showed that Benford’s Law could be used in forensic accounting and auditing as an indicator of accounting and expenses fraud. In practice, applications of Benford’s Law for fraud detection routinely use more than the first digit.

Legal status

In the United States, evidence based on Benford’s law has been admitted in criminal cases at the federal, state, and local levels.

Just a glitch

Never mind, that whole vote thing was just an unfortunate series of software glitches that all happened to randomly go the same way. Whatcha gonna do about it, hey?

Software used to tabulate votes cast in 47 Michigan counties erroneously gave 6,000 votes to Joe Biden in Anterim County, according to state GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox.

“In Antrim County, ballots were counted for Democrats that were meant for Republicans, causing a 6,000 vote swing against our candidates. The county clerk came forward and said ‘tabulating software glitched and caused a miscalculation of the vote.’ Since then, we have now discovered the 47 counties used the same software in the same capacity,” she said, adding “Antrim County had to hand count all of the ballots, and these counties that used the software need to closely examine their results for similar discrepancies.”

Of note, Trump won Antrim County in 2016 with 62{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} of the vote vs. 33{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} for Hillary Clinton.

It was an accident. A glitch. No need to send in the U.S. Marshals…. 

Fake News pleads for surrender

The demoralization campaign has begun in full earnest.

President Donald Trump’s team is struggling to decide who will have to tell him he’s lost the election as Joe Biden appears on the cusp of securing the White House. Biden took the lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia Friday morning as votes were counted overnight. There is no path to victory for President Trump without those states.

But Trump has told allies he won’t concede should the race be called for his Democratic rival.  

So discussions have begun about an intervention with the president – who would go in and tell him he’s lost and it’s time to concede. Names being floated include the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump, both of whom serve as advisers in the White House, CNN reported.

Members of the Republican Party are also worried the president won’t go quietly and are discussing taking action of their own.

Don’t fall for it. Notice how they’re always trying to get you to quit. Because that allows them to claim victory without having to defeat you. Remember that your demoralization is the entire point of the exercise. Liars lie. That’s what they do, so don’t be surprised when they do it, and don’t fall for it.

Facebook is in on The Steal

Facebook’s intervention in U.S. election politics is not exactly a surprise, of course:

Facebook Inc. is tightening its grip on speech across its platforms, invoking some of the emergency measures that executives previously described as their “break glass” options to respond to postelection unrest.

The company announced temporary measures to limit the spread of false and possibly dangerous content late on Thursday, hours after it took down a fast-growing group called “Stop the Steal” that was organizing protests of vote counts around the country.

If you’re still on Facebook, then I really don’t know what to tell you. You’re like an animal that voluntarily straps on its own muzzle. And before the first moron tries to respond “but… but YOU’RE on Blogger”, please feel free to point to the evidence, any evidence at all, that a single one of my millions of words posted here has ever been censored in any way.

Fuckery is afoot

Larry Correia, bestselling novelist and erstwhile auditor, notes the panoply of red flags surrounding the fraudulent 2020 presidential election:

Before I became a novelist I was an accountant. In auditing you look for red flags. That’s weird bits in the data that suggest something shifty is going on. You flag those weird things so you can delve into them further. One flag doesn’t necessarily mean there’s fraud. Weird things happen. A few flags mean stupidity or dishonesty. But a giant pile of red flags means that there’s bad shit going on and people should be in jail.

Except for in politics, where apparently all you have to do to dismiss a bunch of red flag is be a democrat and mumble something about “fascist voter suppression” then you can do all sorts of blatant crime and get off.

I’ve been trying to keep up with the firehose of information about what’s going on during this clusterfuck of an election. Last night I was on Facebook talking about the crazy high, 3rd world dictatorship level voter turnout levels in the deep blue areas of these swing states was very suspicious. Somebody gas lighted me about how “I’d have to do better than that”, so this was my quick reply, listing off the questionable bullshit I could think of off the top of my head:

  • The massive turn out alone is a red flag.
  • But as for doing better…
  • The late night spikes that were enough to close all the Trump leads are a red flag.
  • The statistically impossible breakdown of the ratios of these vote dumps is a red flag.
  • The ratios of these dumps being far better than the percentages in the bluest of blue cities, even though the historical data does not match, red flag.
  • The ratios of these vote dumps favoring Biden more in these few battlegrounds than the ratio for the rest of the country (even the bluest of the blue) red flag.
  • Biden outperforming Obama among these few urban vote dumps, even though Trump picked up points in every demographic group in the rest of the country, red flag.
  • The poll observers being removed. Red flag.
  • The counters cheering as GOP observers are removed, red flag.
  • The fact that the dem observers outnumber the GOP observers 3 to 1, red flag (and basis of the first lawsuit filed)
  • The electioneering at the polls (on video), red flag.
  • The willful violation of the court order requiring the separation of ballots by type, red flag.
  • USPS whistleblower reporting to the Inspector General that today they were ordered to backdate ballots to yesterday, red flag.
  • The video of 2 AM deliveries of what appear to be boxes of ballots with no chain of custody or other observers right before the late night miracle spikes, red flag.

Any of those things would be enough to trigger an audit in the normal world. This many flags and I’d be giggling in anticipation of catching some thieves. And it isn’t that I have to do better. I’m just an gen pop observer who happens to be a retired auditor with a finely tuned bullshit detector. This is going to the courts.

He goes into more detail on several of the specifics at Monster Hunter Nation. Read the whole thing there. And as to why this unprecedented level of fraud has taken place, the answer is that because there was a Trumpslide. Donald Trump is on track to receive 10 percent more votes than he did to win the Presidency in 2016. Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012 with 5.2 percent fewer votes than he received in 2008. Bill Clinton was reelected in 1996 with 5.5 percent more votes than he received in 1992. 

Donald Trump’s reelection was shaping up to become the biggest landslide since Reagan… which is why millions of fraudulent ballots were produced to try to provide the media with a means of overturning the election results.

A “major announcement”

Donald Trump’s campaign says it will make a “major announcement” later. Former director of national intelligence Ric Grenell, former Nevada attorney general Adam Laxalt, chairman of the American Conservative Union Matt Schlapp and Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald will host a press conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, at 11.30am EST.

I’m going to guess that it isn’t a concession.

UPDATE: Trump campaign plans Philadelphia press conference at 10:15 AM EST.

UPDATE: President Donald Trump announced his campaign will sue in battleground states that Joe Biden won. Trump taking action in Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

It’s a good start. The Democrats were counting on him waving the white flag after being presented with their fait accompli, and that clearly isn’t happening. What we’re witnessing here is the transformation of the useless Republican Party into an action-oriented Trump Party. Donald Trump Jr. is openly mocking them for their defeatism now.

The total lack of action from virtually all of the “2024 GOP hopefuls” is pretty amazing. 

They have a perfect platform to show that they’re willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead. 

Don’t worry 

@realDonaldTrump will fight & they can watch as usual!

Through A Glass Darkly

 

Episode 15 of The Forge of Tolkien, THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, is now live on #UATV.

Tolkien insisted in his letter to Milton Waldman that there was no “Magic” as such in The Lord of the Rings, at least not “magic” associated with the Elves. Elvish “magic” was rather “Art” “delivered from many of its human limitations,” while the devices of the Enemy were better labeled “Machines,” especially in their use for dominating others’ wills. And yet, of the “magical” devices that appear in The Lord of the Rings, the most powerful—with the exception of the One Ring—were made by Elves, most particularly the Palantiri or Seeing Stones through which Sauron projected his Eye. 

In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown explores the tension between “Magic” and “Machines” as a problem for Christians in their use of similar devices from the Renaissance to the present day. Why did Galadriel invite Frodo and Sam to look into her Mirror if she knew what it showed could be dangerous if acted upon? What did Pippin see when he looked into the Palantir of Orthanc—and why did he scream?

New videos from Wranglerstar, The Legend Chuck Dixon, and RAZÖRFIST are also live.

Over the target

The last tweet of Carlos Osweda prior to Twitter banning him.

The national election fraud of 2020 has never happened before.

It being rare has no relevance.

When Trump is done with you bastards, you’ll never do it again.

Trust me on that.

END 

Prophetic indeed…. 

@COsweda

Account suspended

Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules

On a not-unrelated note, please RTFC before you excitedly post your very important breaking news that other readers HAVE ALREADY POSTED in the comments. Meanwhile, Project Veritas has uncovered evidence of the Michigan vote fraud:

A US Postal Service employee from Michigan has reportedly turned whistleblower, telling Project Veritas that his supervisor instructed mail carriers to collect and segregate new ballot envelopes received after the election cutoff so that they could be fraudulently back-dated with a Nov. 3 postmark.