A short hiatus

My son is getting married this weekend so am taking a few days off blogging. I should however be back after the weekend

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Trump’s asylum ban blocked by San Francisco judge

So the illegals can apply for asylum.  No harm in applying.  But will their applications be accepted?

An American federal judge blocked President Trump today from denying illegal migrants the chance to apply for asylum in the US.

The US president declared this month that America would ban any foreigner who entered the country without a visa the right to asylum. Under the proclamation, Mr Trump said only people who enter at official checkpoints — as opposed to sneaking across the border — can apply for asylum.

However, Jon Tigar, a district judge in San Francisco, ruled today that the president cannot “rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden”.

His ruling comes into effect immediately and applies nationwide. The declaration lasts until December 19 when the judge has scheduled another hearing to consider a permanent injunction.

The legal row over asylum comes as 3,000 Central American migrants have reached Tijuana, a Mexican town near the border with California. They have pledged that they will try to storm the frontier to enter America. Mr Trump has sent more than 5,000 troops to the border to block their entry.

SOURCE

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Bill Nelson won the Florida recount’s ‘found’ votes 74 percent to 26 percent

Talk about disparate impact.

Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) beat out Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) for the Florida Senate seat, but looking back on the recount totals, 25 percent of Bill Nelson’s gained votes in Florida recount were in Broward County alone, even though Broward County only made up 8 percent of the state’s total vote count. Was it fraud?

Looking at the county data from election night to what happened in the Florida recount for the U.S. Senate seat, and Broward County and a few other counties do stand out as anomalous. That is to say, these few counties chalked up a disproportionate share of recount votes in favor of soon to be former Sen. Nelson compared to their shares of the population: Broward, Orange, Miami-Dade, Alachua, Suwannee, Leon, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Hamilton.

What you might expect would happen is that there would be a certain change in the vote tally between the initial count from election night, which includes early voting, and a manual recount, and that those differences would be roughly distributed evenly throughout the counties based on their overall percentage of the population, accounting for machine error and the like.

Instead, in the recount, 5,325 new votes were recorded, which Nelson won 74 percent to 26 percent statewide, about the same as Broward County. In Orange County, Nelson won the new recount votes 84 percent to 16 percent, 91 percent to 9 percent in Alachua County and an absurd 98 percent to 2 percent in Miami-Dade County.

Overall, Broward County accounted  for 24.8 percent of the entire state’s recount net votes in favor of Nelson even though it only accounted for 8.3 percent of the state’s total vote count, Orange County accounted for 12.3 percent even though statewide it only accounted for 5.8 percent of total votes, Miami-Dade was 11.7 percent versus 9.8 percent, Alachua was 3.2 percent versus 1.4 percent, Suwannee was 0.8 percent versus 0.2 percent, Leon was 2.3 percent versus 1.7 percent, Hillsborough was 6.6 percent versus 6.4 percent and Pinellas was 5.6 percent to 5.3 percent.

Nelson picked up about 2,529 votes in the recount, cutting the victor Gov. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) lead to a little more than 10,000 votes. Of the 2,529 votes Nelson picked up in the recount, 67.3 percent of those were in these 10 counties even though overall they only made up 41.5 percent of votes cast statewide.

Meaning the recount itself for whatever reason is what produced the irregularity. Only two of the 10 counties that produced anomalies in favor of Nelson were ones that Scott won, but being so much smaller they can more or less be discounted as they only produced 29 out of the 2,529 net votes in favor of Nelson, or just 1 percent.

Also interestingly, the recount statewide only resulted in net gains for Scott in eight out of 67 counties. Four had no net gain or loss. 55 counties produced gains for Nelson.

President Donald Trump, before the recounts were underway, noted that recounts always favor Democrats. On Nov. 9, he tweeted, “Rick Scott was up by 50,000+ votes on Election Day, now they ‘found’ many votes and he is only up 15,000 votes. ‘The Broward Effect.’ How come they never find Republican votes?”

Trump has got a point. In some of these counties almost all of the new votes “found” after Election Day favored Democrats, and statewide three-quarters of the new votes favored Democrats.

Now, I’m not saying there was fraud. What I am saying is that the difference between what these particular counties initially reported and what they reported in the recount stand out as anomalies, particularly considering their shares of the state’s population. Where did all these new votes come from? Someone should find out.

It could be that the new votes simply were not delivered in time to make the machine count, but then turned up in the manual count, including provisional ballots. But isn’t that why there are state-imposed deadlines?

Voter suppression does not appear to have been at play as a reason for the votes to have not been initially counted, unless anybody believes Democrats were suppressing their own votes in the initial count in counties they overwhelmingly control.

The fact is, Broward County and other Democrat-heavy counties in Florida produced disproportionate shares of recount votes in favor of Bill Nelson that, on the surface, appear irregular. In order to rule out any potential fraud and to make sure this doesn’t happen again, the state Attorney General and the Justice Department Civil Rights Division should look into it — before 2020.

SOURCE

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Leftists Claim Gillum Lost Florida Because of Racists, Forget Obama Won State Twice

Lose an election? Blame irrational voters.

That was the explanation given by many liberals after Democrats failed to win the White House in 2016 — blind misogyny among Americans made them unable to vote for a woman, even for female voters. Now, racism is being trotted out to explain how Andrew Gillum lost Florida.

Gillum, who is black, ran a tough campaign for governor against Republican Ron DeSantis. After a down-to-the-wire vote recount, the Republican has emerged victorious … but now the inevitable race card is being waved once again.

As the Tampa Bay Times reported, many liberals in Florida, including a state senator, have decided that skin color is the main reason Gillum was handed defeat. “Andrew Gillum would have won if he were white,” declared Judy Beck, one of several Democrat voters the newspaper talked to.

“That sentiment is widely shared among Gillum supporters, who saw poll after poll suggest Gillum was headed for a victory,” the Times reported.

Of course, even that statement is bizarre. If Florida voters are allegedly so racist, why did the candidate poll so well?

As Townhall astutely noticed, however, the “Florida is racist” narrative falls apart under basic scrutiny. Anybody with a memory slightly longer than a goldfish will remember that in two recent presidential elections, those same voters had no problem embracing a black candidate.

“President Barack Obama beat white Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012” in Florida Townhall pointed out. Obama, you may have noticed, is black. (His opponents, in case anyone forgets, were white.)

So the liberal narrative is now that for a period of eight years, Florida voters eagerly supported the first black president. Then, inexplicably, in the last month, millions of them in a state filled with all different ethnicities changed their minds and decided that dark skin is evil.

Again, it simply isn’t possible that they preferred DeSantis’ leadership for their state. No. For Democrats It has to be racism.

This is the problem with the liberal narrative: By twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain election losses, they’re not only insulting huge swaths of voters, they’re also setting themselves up for more failure by refusing to learn anything. (See also: Clinton, Hillary R.)

If liberals would drop the denial for a few minutes and do some honest soul-searching, they might realize that it was Gillum’s position on the far left and not his skin color that put off voters in a fairly moderate state.

But that, of course, would require Democrats to admit that their message has drifted outside of the mainstream. It would require them to be rational.

SOURCE

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Another Leftist attempt to deceive

If you followed the Georgia gubernatorial election, you probably know that the Democrats have placed the onus for Stacey Abrams’ loss on the allegation that Brian Kemp, in his role as Georgia secretary of state, deliberately engaged in voter suppression.

In her preposterous non-concession concession speech on Friday, Abrams said that “democracy failed Georgia” and basically implied Kemp was behind it. At issue were several Georgia laws involving “exact match” voter registration and purging non-active voters from the rolls.

Almost anyone involved should have known this. However, if you’ve been on Twitter recently and have some Democrats on your feed, you probably have seen a few tweets like this:


1.5 million purged by Brian Kemp

53k registrations on hold

4.5 hour lines

214 polling places closed

Dems falsely accused of cyber crimes

Candidate overseeing own election


A Republican won the Georgia governor's race, but it was tainted by voter suppression. As secretary of state, the Republican oversaw his own election, in which a slew of restrictions and missteps prevented people from voting.

Prominent Twitter user @AG_conservative was sick of seeing these sorts of complaints, so he put together a Twitter thread in which he addressed the accusations.

If no one else is going to respond to this, I guess I will have to. This list is intentionally misleading to give readers who don't know the facts a false impression and thus undermine a legitimate election. Thread with the truth about each of these accusations:

The "1.5 million purged" is the total number of voters that have been removed from the rolls since 2012. Many have been removed because they moved, committed felonies, died etc.

The overwhelming majority of the rest were removed because of Georgia's "Use it or lose it" law. And you may be surprised to find out who was responsible for that law. Or not.

This law was passed in 1997 by A Dem legislature and a Dem Governor in Georgia. Similar laws have been upheld by SCOTUS.  It requires the rolls to be updated by removing voters that have not voted for some time and do not respond to contact from the state.

Worth noting that the reason there was a large spike in 2017 was that the legally required maintenance was not done in 2015. 3 state officials oversee this effort to prevent major errors. None of them are Brian Kemp.

As for the 53,000 registrations on hold, he pointed to the “exact match” law — something that was often dismissed or glossed over by the media.

These registrations were labeled pending, but that occurred because there was some discrepancy between their registration and their files. All of these voters could still vote w/ normal ballots as long as they provided ID at the polling place

As for the lines, well, welcome to Election Day. Of course, that’s something voters could have avoided and it had little to do with Kemp:

These registrations were labeled pending, but that occurred because there was some discrepancy between their registration and their files. All of these voters could still vote w/ normal ballots as long as they provided ID at the polling place.

5 Hour lines. Yes, there were long lines at some polling locations. That happens on election day. GA does have early voting options. Local officials manage those place and it has little to do with the Secretary of State.

Ok. Let me further elaborate on this one. Most places had relatively short waiting times (varies by time of day). There was ONE polling location (Anniston Elementary School) in ONE county (Gwinnett) that had machines malfunction, which led to that wait.

"214 polling places closed"

This is the total number of polling places closed across the state since 2012. Those places were consolidated with other locations to save money. Those decisions were made by local County officials to save money, and have 0 to do with Kemp.

"Dems falsely accused of cyber crimes"

This one probably has the most basis for controversy, but the investigation is still pending. Dems hired cybersecurity experts to test a voter info page after a report from a voter about vulnerabilities. This raised red flags

I don't think Kemp's office handled the allegation in #5 well, especially given how close they were to the election, but almost all of the other examples were legitimate activities that had little to do with Kemp. Creation of a myth to suggest otherwise undermines our elections.

Yes, all the evidence and that apparently still doesn’t make it right. The only thing that would have made it right, one guesses, is if Stacey Abrams had won. If not, well, it was definitely voter suppression — and of the racist variety, no less.

This should be treated as a joke, but the media has been covering Abrams’ allegations as if there was a definite ring of truth behind them. There isn’t. All they have to do is look at the facts. We’ve presented them before, but this is the best adumbration of it that we’ve seen thus far.

The pretense that Gov.-elect Kemp did anything wrong is insulting to our intelligence and to the democratic process. It’s time for Democrats to admit that they lost, that it was a fair election and that their baseless, race-baiting innuendoes have poisoned the process.

Nothing less, at this point, will suffice.

SOURCE

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NBC report highlights need to confirm Trump nominee for public housing

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging Senate confirmation of Hunter Kurtz to Assistant Secretary of Public Housing in response to an NBC News report on many multifamily housing units failing their inspections:

“Secretary Carson has made it a priority to push for a complete overhaul of the public assisted housing program, with a goal towards to eliminating all substandard living conditions. Incredibly Senate Democrats have blocked the Trump administration nominee for Assistant Secretary of Public Housing, Hunter Kurtz, who would oversee this critical public safety and health area within HUD. If anything, the NBC report highlights the importance of confirming the President’s nominees to put the Trump agenda into place and enforce housing law. The Democrats think it’s funny when they play politics with Trump’s nominees, when in reality hamstringing attempts to improve the lives of those who need housing assistance is anything but.”

SOURCE

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Election posters

Election posters can be a strong guide to the policy of the party that puts them up.  That was certainly so in prewar Germany.  So I have collected a few Nazi posters over the years.  They often show how Leftist was Hitler's appeal.  A new such poster has come my way.  It is below. It tells the workers how much better is life under the Nazis. The worker orientation is of course traditionally Leftist



The lines at the bottom translate as follows:

Before: Unemployment; Loss of hope
        Neglect, strikes, lockouts
Today:  Work, joy, duty, racial comradeship
Therefore give your voice to the Leader (Hitler)

I am not a native speaker of German so would welcome a possibly better translation from anyone who is

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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