Tag: politics

From Twitter: The greatest trick the political establishment ever played on the American people was convincing us that there are two parties, each with diametrically opposing viewpoints.

I’m not sure I’d even place it in the top ten, myself. Nevertheless, it is good to see that in the bipartisan opposition to President Trump, the average American is now beginning to recognize what was generally regarded as a strange and radical position back in 2004. And you may find the bolded sentence to be interesting in light of current events.

Remember

A failure to remember the lessons of the past is the great weakness of the voting populace and is exploited by the bifactional ruling party every four years. The present election is always the election at which everything is uniquely at stake; the idea that the global jihad was the deadliest threat to ever face America would have been rightly laughed at by those voters worried about an aggressive Soviet Union in 1980. The hysterical Three Monkeys who now warn of the lethal dangers of a Kerry presidency – as if the nation didn’t already recently survive two terms of a soulless ambition seeker with an annoyingly leftist wife – forget how they swore up and down that keeping Gore out of office was the most important vote anyone would ever make.

On the other side of the false divide, the Little Red Book Democrats spit foam-flecked drivel in comparing George Delano unfavorably to Hitler, Caligula and Genghis Khan, somehow managing to skip over the fact that this Republican president has done them the service of expanding the central government further and faster than Kennedy, Carter or Clinton. Like the Three Monkeys, the Little Red Books are mesmerized by the initial in parentheses before the name. Everything in the Party, nothing outside the Party, nothing against the Party.

But the bipolar construct is an old one. It has been a mirage since the elections of 1900, when JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were selecting the candidates for both parties. You may seriously believe that it makes a vital difference to the nation whether George Bush or John Kerry are elected president; it does not.

Both Bush and Kerry will severely disappoint their supporters because the president is not a dictator. He is primarily a symbol, and a largely powerless one at that. Only a candidate completely devoted to dismantling the federal leviathan can hope to wield any real power and that is mostly negative. A president can shut down the government, either by executive order or recalcitrance vis-a-vis Congress, but that is precisely the opposite of what both George Bush and John Kerry plan to do.

There is no party of small government in Washington DC. A vote for either candidate of the major party is a vote for big government now and bigger government in the future. If that suits you, then by all means vote for one of them. If not, it’s far better that you vote for no one at all than betray your principles based on rationalizations of lesser evils and secret plans.

Rudy Giuliani says Team Trump is accelerating the program:

Starting after Christmas,” the challenge to the validity of the Nov. 3 presidential election results “is really going to blow up,” Rudy Giuliani told listeners in a portentous Christmas Day episode of his podcast Common Sense.

“Because the evidence that these crooked television networks, newspapers, Big Tech and the leadership of the Democrat party have been giving you is false — and you’re gonna find it out all at once,” said Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer. “It’s gonna be very shocking to the country.”

Pay no attention to anyone saying “X must be done by Y”. The only date that matters is January 20. 

The President is on fire of late.

I am returning, without my approval, H.R. 6395, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (the “Act”).  My Administration recognizes the importance of the Act to our national security.  Unfortunately, the Act fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military’s history, and contradicts efforts by my Administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions.  It is a “gift” to China and Russia.

No one has worked harder, or approved more money for the military, than I have — over $2 trillion.  During my 4 years, with the support of many others, we have almost entirely rebuilt the United States military, which was totally depleted when I took office.  Your failure to terminate the very dangerous national security risk of Section 230 will make our intelligence virtually impossible to conduct without everyone knowing what we are doing at every step.

The Act fails even to make any meaningful changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, despite bipartisan calls for repealing that provision.  Section 230 facilitates the spread of foreign disinformation online, which is a serious threat to our national security and election integrity.  It must be repealed.

And he’s just getting warmed up….

The House passes an amendment to the omnibus defense bill in an attempt to inhibit the President’s ability to invoke the Insurrection Act:

H. Amdt. 833 (Escobar) to H.R. 6395: To require certification be made to Congress when the President deploys active duty military within the United States during civil unrest by amending the Insurrection Act in Title 10, Chapter 13 of U.S. Code.

Alex Macris delves into the details, which amount to little more than the President will have to tell Congress why he’s doing what he’s doing, which is hardly a problem. And congressmen aren’t the only Swamp creatures getting nervous. So is the neo-trotskian’s chief rabbi, Bill Kristol:

Yesterday Barr suggested there were several things he wouldn’t do that Trump wanted him to do as AG ranging from appointing special counsels for Hunter Biden or election fraud, to giving a legal ok for seizing voting machines or for various types of Insurrection Act-type moves by the president. Can one be confident Barr’s successor as AG, Jeffrey Rosen, will also say no?

I’m told not. I’m told the very ambitious Rosen has pushed on earlier occasions for carrying out Trump’s will only to be stopped by Barr. And people who’ve worked with Rosen say they wouldn’t be surprised to see him, as AG, hasten to try to do Trump’s will. In the past, Rosen has been allied with some in the White House counsel’s office and others elsewhere in the White House who’ve been for going whole hog for Trump, as a friend put it. They’ve run up against resistance from Barr but also from WH Counsel Pat Cipollone.

The departure of Cipollone would be a signal, as one person put it, that “all bets are off.” I’m also reliably told senior military officials in the Pentagon are more, not less, alarmed than they were a few weeks ago when Mark Esper was fired. The new crew of Trump loyalists in the most senior civilian positions don’t seem there only to burnish their resumes, as one person put it. They’re trying to figure out, in coordination with people in the White House, “how to make things happen.” The senior military obviously retain considerable clout, to say the least. But the discussions they’re having among themselves are unprecedented–more sober and weighty than those of 1974 in the weeks before Nixon’s resignation. And the difference is that Jim Schlesinger was then Secretary of Defense, committed to checking an unstable and desperate president, not to helping one.

All of these alarms, one hopes and trusts, will come to nothing, or at least to not too much. And the coup, in the end, will fail. But that something more than we’ve seen so far won’t be tried–of that people aren’t so confident.

The first thing to look for is what, if anything, happens on Dec. 24.

Cipollone, by the way, is the lawyer who was identified as Patrick Byrne as being the lead surrender monkey among the President’s advisors. The media, too, appears to be increasingly nervous:

With Trump’s days in office dwindling, QAnon influencers have become increasingly restless and militant, urging him to #crosstherubicon, a reference to Julius Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon river after the Roman Senate explicitly told him not to, effectively kick-starting the Roman civil war and Caesar’s dictatorship… The “Rubicon” hashtag wasn’t new to QAnon followers, who have repeatedly tweeted the phrase in the last week. But the hashtag had minimal success last week until Ron Watkins, who previously ran the message board and QAnon hub 8kun, posted a series of viral tweets Thursday and Friday about Caesar and crossing the Rubicon.

It is amusing to observe how those who think can keep themselves well informed by the mainstream media are always at least a month behind. In any event, the Congressional gambit will fail as long as President Trump refuses to sign it, due to the coming end of the Congressional term.

A pocket veto occurs when Congress adjourns during the 10-day period. The President cannot return the bill to Congress. The President’s decision not to sign the legislation is a pocket veto and Congress does not have the opportunity to override.

The first of the seven disputed sets of state electors may be resolved before January 6:

President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, joined Steve Bannon’s “War Room: Pandemic” podcast this morning. During the interview, Giuliani said the Arizona legislature will attempt to pass a resolution tomorrow (Wednesday) to certify President Trump as the winner.

News spread like wildfire yesterday that Arizona lawmakers would make the attempt to declare Trump the winner today, but Giuliani said Arizona lawmakers did not have the votes today to make that happen. Giuliani said he’s hopeful Arizona lawmakers will be able to close the deal before Christmas.

It appears the state legislators are being provided information that they find sufficiently convincing to put some steel in their spines. And it’s now being reported publicly that President Trump is “preparing to fight back”, which is interesting in that it appears to indicate a change from simply refusing to concede:

Several members of Congress just finished a meeting in the Oval Office with President @realDonaldTrump, preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud. 

It appears that Congress’s behavior in passing the revolting National Defense Authorization Act, which makes streaming a federal offense and hands another $500 million to Israel, $135 million to Burma, $86 million to Cambodia, $130 million to Nepal, another $1,400 million to Asian governments, and a paltry $600 to American citizens suffering from the government-imposed economic lockdowns, may be helping stiffen the resolve of the state officials to do their duty:

I’ve been in talks with state government officials over the past few days. Unlike congress, they have BALLS. There’s a plan in the works, and when it hits, it will be absolutely explosive. Sweeping through red America one state at a time like dominoes. If congress doesn’t do their job on the sixth, expect media and lib panic to hit previously unseen levels by the news cycle beginning Jan. 11 and escalate from there.

This tends to run counter to what I know of state officials, but the closer that the calendar – if not the actual probability – gets to the realization of what a Biden administration would actually mean for them, the more the emotional pressure on the state officials to do the right thing rather than simply accept the media narrative grows. It’s one thing to look at the reported election results and run through the gentlemanly, “well, doggone it, we tried” graceful defeat routine, it’s another to look soberly at how badly things are likely to become in short order if you go along with the fake status quo.

Especially when you can see your Blue State counterparts openly breaking the law.

The Michigan Secretary of State directed the county clerks to delete all their electronic voting records. Previous years electric records from 2018 and 2016 are still intact. By law all records are to be preserved for at least 2 years.

CodeMonkeyZ reports that President Trump is giving the 7 States in contention one more chance to clean up their fraud and get their State in order.

Dec 24: Pence is expected to tell state legislatures with dueling electors to immediately address the contention in their states to a resolution. States may: split electors, certify contested electors, conduct forensic studies, etc.

Jan 6: Not resolved? Throw out their electors.

And if a State doesn’t like it, then it can go complain to the Supreme Court. Where it doesn’t have standing anymore. 

 From Twitter:

BREAKING: Both Biden and @realDonaldTrump sent enough electors to give them both 270+ electoral votes. This is the first time since 1887 this has happened. The election will be settled by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. #DuelingElectors

Trust the plans…. 

The Fake News doubles-down again on its false narrative about the fake president-elect:

BREAKING NEWS: Joe Biden IS president-elect as California puts him over the 270 mark – and he will address the nation saying ‘it is time to turn the page’ despite Donald Trump STILL not admitting he lost.

Meanwhile, there are now dual sets of electors for PA, GA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, and NM. The media isn’t covering this, for the most part, and they wouldn’t know how to cover it, what it means, or how it plays out even if they did. But this should assure you that the President has matters well in hand, and that everything is playing out according to his plan.

On a not-necessarily-unrelated note, Bill Barr has resigned as the Attorney General, effective December 23, 2020.

I told you there would be a surprise today, didn’t I? You may recall that just this very situation was addressed yesterday over at the Tree of Woe.

There is a very strong Constitutional theory that the power to open and count the votes of the presidential electors is vested exclusively in the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate is actually the Vice President of the United States – Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence. 

Therefore, if this theory is true, Mike Pence can simply open the Republican certificates and toss the Democrat certificates into the trash. The Democrats could howl and shout and gnash their teeth, but they cannot count votes that Pence doesn’t open.

I have laid out the legal arguments and historical precedent for Pence’s power in my earlier article, so I wont repeat them here. Suffice to say, if opening and counting the votes of the presidential electors is like playing white box D&D, then Mike Pence is the designated dungeonmaster. And nobody gets to argue with the DM.

Don’t forget, the outcome has already been assured by no less than Gen. Michael Flynn himself.

First of all, there’s a whole number of paths that the president has, and like I say, asked on a scale of one to 10 who’ll be the next president, I’d say 10, Donald Trump! I will tell you one more time—because I’ve been asked—on a scale of one to 10, who will be the next president of the United States, and I say Donald Trump. Ten. A 10.

It’s hard to be any more clear than that. The dual electors are just one of the less painful paths to cutting through the fraud. It’s interesting to see that only one governor, the idiot in Michigan, attempted to obstruct this one.

Don’t be surprised if the count of state electors don’t quite go how the media is telling everyone to expect. Alex Macris explains that the process is considerably messier, and far more flexible, than the vast majority of people understand.

In America, presidential electors get their votes counted even when they…

• didn’t even send a certificate of the vote! (GA in 1800)
• represented territories that weren’t even states! (IN in 1817, MO in 1821, MI in 1837)
• weren’t certified as properly appointed by their state governor! (TX and MS in 1873)
• didn’t cast their votes on the prescribed day! (WI in 1857)
• didn’t certify that they voted by ballot! (MS in 1873)
• were officers of the federal government (CN, NH, and NC in 1837)
• were replacements for missing electors arbitrarily appointed by the remaining electors without even a majority vote! (TX in 1873)
• didn’t follow the requirement to vote for one person not resident of their own state! (GA in 1873)

So, with that history of hijinks laid out, let’s imagine a hypothetical.

Imagine that Georgia’s 16 Republican presidential electors decide to gather in Atlanta on December 14th to cast their vote for Trump. However, only half show up, the others backing out due to concerns of safety or refusal to act against the popular vote. The remaining 8 electors just pick 8 more trusty Trump Republicans to replace the missing electors (as happened in Texas in 1873). That takes an extra day, so they end up voting one day late (as happened in Wisconsin in 1857). They don’t have a certificate from their state governor, so they send their vote without it (as happened in Texas and Mississippi in 1873). And off it goes to the President of the Senate.

Let’s assume this happens in some other states, too, such that it’s enough to change the outcome of the election if these votes are counted.

Now what? History, as we have shown, has a clear answer: Ten out of ten times, when electors broke the rules, the votes were still counted no matter how irregular they were. Always, every time. The rules didn’t matter.

It’s long, but definitely read the whole thing. As for tomorrow, well, I think tomorrow is going to be very entertaining.