Tag: politics

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

The President losing PA is not one of the Woes being Contemplated by Alexander Macris:

If you’ve been following the mainstream media, you’ve probably read that Trump intends to file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania to “stop counting votes.” Most likely, this has been presented as an outrageous evil, unjustifiable by any standards of common decency, and grossly unconstitutional. Is that really the case? Or is it more complex than that?

There will be a lawsuit, no doubt; and it will involve a lot of votes being thrown out. The plaintiff (Trump and/or the Republicans) will win, because Pennsylvania’s highest court has almost certainly violated the Constitution of the United States. That’s why, in the weeks ahead, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is going to rule in favor of Trump….

In 2019, the PA legislature passed a law called Act 77 that permitted all voters to cast their ballots by mail but (in Justice Alito’s words) “unambiguously required that all mailed ballots be received by 8 p.m. on election day.” The exact text is 2019 Pa. Leg. Serv. Act 2019-77, which stated: “No absentee ballot under this subsection shall be counted which is received in the office of the county board of elections later than eight o’clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.” I agree with Justice Alito: That is unambiguous.

Act 77 also provided that if this portion of the law was invalidated, that much of the rest of Act 77, including its liberalization of mail-in voting, would also be void. The exact text is: “Sections 1, 2, 3, 3.2, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 of this act are nonseverable. If any provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the remaining provisions or applications of this act are void.”

To again put this into common English, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that said mail-in ballots had to arrive by 8PM on election day to be counted, and then said that if the Court over-ruled that law, the entire law that permitted mail-in ballots was invalid.

In the face of this clear text, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, made the following decrees, summarized here by SCOTUS:

1. Mailed ballots don’t need to be received by a election day. Instead, ballots can be accepted if they are postmarked on or before election day and are received within three days thereafter. Note that this is directly contravenes the text above.
2. A mailed ballot with no postmark, or an illegible postmark, must be regarded as timely if it is received by that same date.

In doing so, PAs’ high court expressly acknowledged that “the statutory provision mandating receipt by election day was unambiguous” and conceded the law was “constitutional,” but still re-wrote the law because it thought it needed to do so in the face of a “natural disaster.” It justified its right to do so under the Free and Equal Elections Cause of the PA State Constitution.

It looks like a sound analysis, and furthermore, indicates that the Trump campaign understood and anticipated the shenanigans in Pennsylvania. This, along with the way that the usual shenanigans in Florida were shut down, suggests that the other shenanigans in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin were also anticipated.

Read the whole thing there.

Trust the plan. Carlos Osweda explains why there is no need to freak out over the Democrats’ electoral shenanigans:

1. Trump prepared for this exact fight.
2. Trump LOVES challenges.
3. The law is 100 percent on Trump’s side.
4. Trump has a million legal weapons to fight this.
5. This will lead to greater federal oversight of voting for national office. 

TRUMP WON.

The reason they pulled this amateurish horseshit is that Republicans never fought fraud before.

WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU IS THE FATAL FLAW OF LEFTISM?

Leftists always overreach.

A few thoughts:

1. It really was amateurish. The combination of statistical improbabilities with the obvious nature of the vote production in precisely the counties I highlighted before the election – Milwaukee, Hennepin, and Wayne – made the fraud obvious. The only question is how Trump will prove it.
2. It’s clear that Trump saw this coming. Why else did he cancel his election night party before the voting started?
3. Trump loves to trap his opponents. Given the way this was telegraphed, is it more likely that he walked right into the situtation a) with a plan to use it or b) without a plan to use it?
4. It wasn’t just the states now being contested. The Hennepin County statistics are also historical outliers. There are almost certainly others.
5. Trump has conceded nothing, nor does he appear to be either rattled or upset.
6. Did Trump have negative coattails? How did Republicans hold the Senate and gain seats in the House if Biden actually received the most votes in U.S. history?
7. Never give up until the whistle blows.

We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported! 

– Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

This, and not the election, is the real test of President Trump. In his Discourses, Machiavelli lamented how societies fail because good men refuse to do what needs to be done in order to save them. But it appears that Donald Trump is not going to be a good Republican, sell out his supporters, look the other way, and pretend that a significant part of the vote for his opponent was not fraudulent.

Broward County (M=67)

• Biden = 64.6{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a}

Miami-Dade County (M=67)

• Biden = 53.4{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a}

Philadelphia County (M=83)

• Biden = 73.3{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} 76.2{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a}

Wayne County (M=67)

• Biden = 58.1{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} 67.0{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} 

Hennepin County (M=62)

• Biden = 70.7{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a}

Milwaukee County (M=67)

• Biden = 60.0{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a} 69.1{3aedcb51dac2fbb83a885d32b07950f3050377138d02430f831f0a3ede84357a}

Mecklenburg County (M=64)

CURRENT VERDICT: early returns look VERY solidly pro-Trump. It’s all but over already. Note that we need to see OFFICIAL RETURNS from the counties confirming the statistical trends before anything can be called.

Quote of the Day: You’re not going to learn anything useful about the election outcome on here until 7pm, i.e. when they start counting votes. – Nate Silver, 538

Broward County (M=67)

2016:

• 1,179,189 registered
• 822,837 cast
• 71.8 percent turnout

Mecklenburg County (M=64)