Thursday, December 03, 2020



An Election Bombshell Gets Buried

It's hard to decide what's more outrageous: a mind-bendingly impossible 570,000-to-3,200 ballot dump in Pennsylvania favoring Joe Biden over Donald Trump, or a mainstream media blackout of this and other election anomalies.

In any case, a collective media yawn is simply not the appropriate response to news such as this — at least not in a healthy republic. Then again, such stories don't happen in a healthy republic.

Nor is "Look, the election is over" an appropriate response. But that's exactly what we got from Kate Bedingfield, whom Biden just tapped to be his White House communications director. "Virtually everyone on Earth has accepted that truth except for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani," Bedingfield falsely asserted. "The Trump campaign has been laughed out of every courtroom, with their meritless and baseless lawsuits meant to undermine the will of the American people."

As for the Pennsylvania ballot-dump bombshell, this news of a massive and decisive "spike anomaly" was provided by Phil Waldren, a retired Army colonel and former combat officer with a background in information and electronic warfare. As Paul Kengor writes, "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 about the spike, and the shocked reaction of those in attendance speaks for itself. And one wonders what kind of judge would, as Bedingfield suggested, laugh such evidence out of a courtroom or, likewise, the eyewitness evidence of Olivia Jane Winters, a registered Democrat and vote inspector who told of being repeatedly cursed at and threatened with bodily harm merely for having tried to enforce the state's election laws. The hearing was chock-full of compelling witnesses like Waldren and Winters, but the media's coverage was nearly nonexistent.

If you're keeping score at home, Joe Biden bagged 99.4% of that enormous chunk of votes. Donald Trump? 0.6%.

As we've said before, it's critical that every fraud charge in this election be investigated thoroughly — for the sake of this election and all future elections. Whether in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin or Georgia or Nevada or Arizona, if we're going to have confidence in our electoral process — more confidence than, say, the people of Venezuela or Cuba have in their electoral process — we need to address both the fraud-friendly nature of mass mail-in balloting as well as the potential for data manipulation in our vote-counting machines.

We're the world's most advanced country. We've been a beacon of freedom and democracy to all other nations. We put a man on the moon more than half a century ago. Is a reliable and tamper-resistant election system too much to ask for? How about a free press that helps safeguard such a system?

Sadly, today, the answer to both questions is Yes.

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New Conservative Coalition Is a Foundational Shift

Democrats are scrambling to explain away the inroads Republicans have made with minorities, as evidenced in the November election results. Instead of listening to the concerns of the Black and Hispanic voters who voted for President Trump — after years of being assured that Trump is one of the “most racist presidents” in history — Democrats are instead blaming them.

“Some Democrats argue that the support for Mr. Trump is an example of machismo culture, venerating traditional gender roles and a kind of hyper-masculinity,” the New York Times reported. But Axios admitted, “The media (and many Democrats) are fairly clueless about the needs, wants and trends of Hispanic voters. Top Latinos warned about overlooking and misreading the fastest-growing population in America — but most didn’t listen.”

The same is true of Black voters (Trump gained 4 more percentage points of the Black vote over his 2016 numbers), yet progressives such as Chauncey DeVega at Salon still insist that white supremacy “now controls the Republican Party.”

Here’s what they’re missing: A new coalition is taking shape. It’s multiethnic, multiracial — and it’s conservative. It rejects the regimentation of identity politics, and even rejects the attendant language (just 3% of Hispanics use the term “Latinx,” for example). It’s working class and it’s growing.

The new coalition rejects the premise of the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” the grand critique of America, which says the U.S. is fundamentally racist and a real-life dystopia. They know better. It’s the country they or their parents or their grandparents came to, and in many cases, fled to. The America they experience is one of opportunity and freedom.

The left tells them the past was unbearable, yet plans to ensure that the future will be worse. Minority-owned small businesses were hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic lockdowns, but the incoming Biden administration hints at more of the same. Working from home is a privilege that Blacks and Hispanics are far less likely to enjoy.

They also reject any Green New Deal. In 2018, California lawyers filed a massive civil rights lawsuit claiming that the Golden State’s climate policies disproportionately punish the poor, especially Blacks and Hispanics. “California’s climate policies guarantee that housing, transportation and electricity prices will continue to rise,” the lawsuit says, “while ‘gateway’ jobs to the middle class for those without college degrees, such as manufacturing and logistics, will continue to locate in other states.”

Democrats pledge to make California a model for the nation.

More than anything, the new coalition has come together over jobs. They see Republican policies as more likely to result in job creation, and Democratic policies as less likely to. They know this because they’ve seen it.

“During each of the [first] three years of Trump/Pence, about 380,000 Blacks climbed their way out of poverty, compared to only 80,000 for the Obama/Biden era,” a University of Colorado study found. “More than a half-million Hispanics moved up the economic ladder past the poverty line in each of the three years of Trump/Pence, compared to only 150,000 for the Obama/Biden era.”

We shouldn’t leave out Asian Americans, who also moved in greater numbers to the R camp. There’s evidence that affirmative action is behind much of that movement; the Trump administration has backed a lawsuit brought by Asian Americans against Harvard’s affirmative action policies. Again, it’s all about opportunity.

Of course, the prevailing narrative is that the GOP of the future is the man-cave of the aging white male in decline. The truth, however, is that Republicans on Nov. 3 lost ground with white men, while gaining greater support from white women and minorities.

For years, the left has divided America along the lines of race and gender, and attempted bring together these camps into a working-class, multiethnic coalition. They have succeeded.

It’s just that the working-class, multiethnic coalition votes Republican.

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Bad News for Progressives: It's Still a Conservative Country

It's not exactly clear how it happened. No one expected it, least of all the media and pollsters. But that promised big blue wave of Democratic victories across the country turned instead into a red tidal wave from coast to coast. Most progressive ballot issues in the states -- from tax increases to racial preferences -- also came crashing down.

A big reason for this turnaround in the election was the massive turnout for President Donald Trump on Election Day. The irony is that Trump's coattails pulled hundreds of Republicans over the goal line -- but as things currently stand, they didn't save him from a razor-tight defeat.

So, how deep were the losses for the Democrats? In the U.S. House, Nancy Pelosi thought her troops would gain 10 to 12 seats. Instead, they lost, at last count, nine.

But the real carnage was in the state houses. Hold on to your hats; here is the latest from our allies at the American Legislative Exchange Council. The GOP gained a total of 192 House and 40 Senate seats. Republicans flipped control of three chambers.

As a result of these big and improbable wins, Republicans now have majority control in both House and Senate chambers in 31 of 50 states. Democrats have control in only 18 states. That's a map of the USA that looks awfully red throughout middle America, with only the rusting Northeast and the West Coast colored blue.

What is truly stunning about this story is that Democrats and liberal/progressive donors (Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, et al.) poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the states to take over legislatures with unprecedented spending in Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania. The American Legislative Exchange Council president, Lisa Nelson, estimates that Democrats outspent Republicans "at least 3-to-1 in the states." And all they got was a lousy T-shirt.

Money just doesn't buy you love with voters.

Speaking of money, voters don't want politicians taking more of it from them. In Illinois, Colorado and California, major tax hikes lost, and tax cuts were approved by voters. Racial preferences, rent control and pro-union measures went down in flames in California -- the cradle of progressive wacko ideas.

Even Democrats admit that their party's embrace of socialism was a major turnoff to voters. Rep. Abigail Spanberger from Virginia won her race, but she isn't a happy camper. "We need to not ever use the words 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again," she says. Democrats, she angrily continued, "lost good members because of that."

Though litigation is ongoing, Republicans appear to have lost by a razor's edge the prize of the White House, which is a stinging defeat for conservatism. But no one in modern times has turned out voters like Donald J. Trump. Even USA Today admits that it was the big "Trump turnout" that swung state and local elections in a conservative direction.

If the Democrats govern as the party of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, they can expect even deeper losses in 2022. They may even suffer their ultimate nightmare, a return to the White House by Trump in 2024. Trumpism and putting America first are still alive and well.

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Wednesday, December 02, 2020

You can't keep a good blogger down


I have mustered enough energy to do some blogging. Below is an article that bears closely on something I have written. It energizes me into putting it up.  It rightly sees a bit of clinical psychology originally published in 2003 as very influential to this day.  

As it happens, the topic concerned was one that I had already extensively researched, so I knew where the skeletons were buried.  It was a totally absurd piece of research. My comments on it published at the time can be found here: http://tongue-tied2.blogspot.com/2007/01/academic-fakers-by-john-j.html

 
How the Left Uses ‘Science’ to Extend Its Bias in Media and Academia

The 2020 election has revealed jaw-dropping levels of “liberal” or progressive bias in the media, from the increasing ascendance of woke language, enforced by the thought police, to deliberately ignored issues and information considered uncongenial to those dominating the agenda. To many, it seems as if the power being exercised against freedom of uncoerced and uncensored expression had metastasized full-blown out of almost nowhere. However, that ignores the fact that the bias extends beyond the media, to think tanks and “research” devoted to creating ammunition for the left/progressive conclusions the media loves to reach, and this bias has been around for a substantial period of time.

An excellent example of the production of the groundwork for the bias infusing media today is “research” published in 2003, in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin. Supported by $1.2 million in federal money, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition” supposedly provided an “elegant and unifying explanation” for political conservatism. If you have been paying attention this year, some of its themes will seem familiar.

The authors found resistance to change and tolerance for inequality at the core of political conservatism. While proclaiming their findings to be nonjudgmental, they also concluded that conservatism was “significantly linked with mental rigidity and close-mindedness, increased dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, decreased cognitive complexity, decreased openness to experience, uncertainty avoidance, personal needs for order and structure, need for cognitive closure, lowered self-esteem; fear, anger, and aggression; pessimism, disgust, and contempt.”

The researchers also equated Hitler and Mussolini with Ronald Reagan as “right-wing conservatives...because they all preached a return to an idealized past and favored or condoned inequality in some form.” And the types of inequality conservatives supposedly favored included the Indian caste system, South African apartheid, and segregation in the US.

Of course, according to the study, that “does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprincipled.” But its authors certainly implied it.

Unfortunately, the hit-piece “research” overlooked crucial distinctions.

“Conservative” and “liberal,” as well as “progressive,” are adjectives that have been converted into nouns. But adjectives modify something else. That means the questions that must be addressed if bias is to be avoided include what it is someone is trying to conserve, in what ways whether we are liberal is to be judged, and what is to be considered progress.

America’s history illustrates these distinctions. Our founding was radical although it sought to conserve what the colonists considered their rights. America was liberal in trying to provide the broadest possible sweep of individual freedom against government coercion. It was tremendously progressive in its recognition of inalienable rights for all (a long way from the “conservative” divine right of kings). And it was brought together under a constitution our founders intended to conserve that vision, which was considered a beacon of hope to the world.

Trying to restore or conserve that vision does not logically categorize one with Hitler, nor does every politician who has sworn “to preserve, protect and defend [i.e., conserve] the Constitution of the United States” belong in that category. America’s past proves the folly of a study that makes no distinction between those desiring to conserve the power of governments to be massively abusive of its citizens and those seeking to conserve the ideal of a government constrained from such abuse, by returning to a prior approach where such abuses were off-limits. When such diametrically opposed positions are both given the same label, it produces misunderstanding, not insight.

In addition to equating political conservatism with some of history’s most egregious abuses of human liberty, which are plainly inconsistent with conservatism’s principles, the study employed sleight of hand to characterize conservatives as condoning inequality while implying that others do not.

Given that all men are not equal in all ways, inequality is unavoidable. Inequality of results is unavoidable if people are treated equally under the law—the form of equality our founders defended. However, efforts to mandate more equal results are inconsistent with treating citizens equally, as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and others committed to liberty have demonstrated. For the government to give to some requires taking from others without their consent, violating their rights to equal treatment. Yet the APA study simply ignored the inequality of treatment inherent in such policies, and so misrepresented conservatives as favoring inequality even when they are, in fact, combating government-imposed unequal treatment.

The study also denigrates conservatives for close-minded resistance to political change, presumably in contrast to more open-minded liberals and progressives. However, rather than closed-mindedness, hesitation to adopt sweeping changes in government originating in someone’s imagination might represent the frequently reinforced recognition of politically imposed changes’ consistent track record of failure. As economist Paul Heyne once put it: “economic theory often treats proposals for reform of the economic system so unkindly...[it] calls attention to the unexamined consequences of proposals for change. It won’t work out that way is the economist’s standard response to many well-intentioned policy proposals. Realism is not necessarily conservatism, but it often looks quite similar.” And when inherited rights and freedoms are the objects being conserved, conservatives and libertarians are fellow travelers.

America was founded to protect the freedoms of every citizen from government coercion. One need not be a genius to recognize the value of conserving that. But this Psychological Bulletin “research,” now almost two decades old, missed that point entirely, by treating all resistance to change as equivalent, regardless of the value of what is being defended, and by misrepresenting American conservatives’ views on inequality, as well as other cheats. Far from being an “elegant and unifying explanation” for political conservatism, it was just one more libel against it.

Unfortunately, in the seventeen years since that article was published, what careful thinking would once have recognized as slander disguised as science has seeped into much of our political culture as all but unchallengeable truths. And freed from the necessity of valid premises, as logic would require, those motivated to shift social cognition “their” direction have changed thinking considerably over time. But that is not the same as better representing the truth.

A more accurate result of such research would have been that many self-proclaimed conservatives have deviated from the principles they espouse. That deserves criticism. But it does not establish that all those principles are in error. However, such a more accurate and limited conclusion would have forced those who constantly work against attempts to defend our freedoms from encroachment to face the fact that they are further, rather than closer, to the ideal of liberty that led to America’s creation. And that wouldn’t move the electoral needle in their desired direction.

The 2020 election results will be a test of earlier liberal/progressive “investments” in modifying how Americans think about things. But at this point, perhaps more important will be whether, after the fact, people recognize how much they have been manipulated, which is the first step to thinking more accurately, which must precede learning to effectively resist that manipulation.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13318

Progress report

While there is no way I will be able to revive my regular schedule of blogging, I find I am able to put up a few bits and pieces here and there. I have just posted to:  

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) and 

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

The time has come


I am 77 and have been blogging since 2002.  But my health and vitality are now so low that  I will have to cut back.  I have put up three blogs so far today and that may be all I can manage.  All I want to do now is sleep.  I hope what I have done has been some help to some people

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The ‘Trump is Hitler’ meme collides with reality

The use and abuse of the word fascism these past four years has done real damage.

So this is how America’s ‘fascist’ presidency ends — with the peaceful transfer of power.

This is the news that Donald Trump has kind of conceded the US presidential election to Joe Biden. With Trump’s blessing, the official transition process has begun – though he is continuing to claim the election was ‘rigged’.

The Trumpist tantrum over the 2020 election result – the increasingly absurd, evidence-free attempts to prove the Democrats stole the White House via mass electoral fraud – seems finally to be colliding with reality.

But so is another absurd idea, entertained by many supposedly sensible people since before Trump won in 2016. The idea Trump is essentially a fascist intent on keeping his manicured hands on state power forever.

Ever since Trump arrived on the political scene, the Hitler comparisons have flown. ‘Donald Trump is actually a fascist’, ran one not-so-subtle headline in the Washington Post, while Britain’s Independent opted for the more charitable ‘he’s not Mussolini or Hitler just yet – but he’s not far off’.

In the weeks before the 2020 election, the Proud Boys – a pro-Trump group whose boozed-up members show up at protests to brawl with Antifa – were ludicrously elevated into some paramilitary group, waiting in the wings to forcibly keep Trump in power.

Just contrast all that with the takes we’re seeing now. Ever since Joe Biden’s decisive election victory, with some lurid exceptions, the response from the liberal media has been more snarky and triumphalist than anything else.

Even as Trump’s legal team has continued to refuse to concede, concocting ever more absurd stories of the vote being hijacked by George Soros and the late Hugo Chavez, the tone has been one of well-earned derision.

‘Can this get any more pathetic?’, ran one New York Times headline in the wake of that press conference last week, at which Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, sweated out his hair dye as he made his insane claims.

So either Trump’s post-election coup is not nearly as sophisticated as elite journalists were expecting, or they never believed their own bullshit about Trump and fascism in the first place. Neither speaks well of them.

To take issue with the ‘Trump is Hitler’ meme is not to squabble over semantics or overheated partisan rhetoric. It has been immensely damaging to politics over the past four years, for a few reasons.

First, it has made criticising the Trump administration in a clear-eyed way virtually impossible. Rather than attack Trump for the wrongheaded things he was actually doing, pundits constructed fantasies of a new 1930s. Much time was lost arguing the toss over their fever dreams rather than discussing what was actually happening.

Trump’s years spent sowing doubt in the electoral process is a case in point.

His refusal to recognise any election result that doesn’t go his way – he also claims he won the popular vote in 2016 – is genuinely shameful and anti-democratic. But as the past few weeks have shown, these are more egotistical rants than serious threats to American democracy.

Second, it has downplayed the ills of the political elites who preceded Trump. Anyone who joined the anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ was hailed as a hero – even warmongering Republicans responsible for inflicting genuine fire, fury and bloodshed on innocent people around the world.

Similarly, the Trump administration’s detention of migrants at the southern border was time and again held up as uniquely fascistic. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Trump of running ‘concentration camps’.

But while Trump’s family-separation policy was brutal, the detention centres run during Barack Obama’s tenure were hardly pleasant. Indeed, the ‘it’s only bad when Trump does it’ routine reached its embarrassing nadir when leading Democrats unwittingly tweeted an image of caged migrant children dating from 2014.

But more than all that, more than an assault on common sense and rational debate, the Trump-Hitler stuff has been a vile assault on historical memory itself.

As Brendan O’Neill wrote on spiked last week, the tendency among some liberals to liken politicians they dislike to Nazis and policies they dislike to the Holocaust relativises the greatest crime in human history, diluting its unique depravity and historical specificity.

Such talk, in turn, adds weight to the arguments of assorted anti-Semites and Islamists today, who insist the Holocaust was overstated, just one bad historical event among many bad historical events, and that we all go on about it way too much.

Now the ‘Trump is Hitler’ talk has been exposed for what it always was – a mix of elite hysteria and desperation to de-legitimise the election of a president that the liberal establishment loathed.

But as faintly ludicrous as it has all been, it has come at a serious cost.

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The Coming Totalitarianism

If you haven't heard of "The Great Reset," it's time to start paying attention.

Back in August, Apple became the first company on earth to reach a market value of $2 trillion, even as the world remained besieged by the coronavirus. Hot on its heels are Microsoft ($1.6 trillion), Amazon ($1.59 trillion), Google ($1.2 trillion), and Facebook ($789 billion). For perspective’s sake, it should be noted there are only 17 countries in the entire world whose GDPs are larger than these five mega-corporations. Mega-corporations that, along with their globalist-minded allies, have little use for the rules and regulations these “pesky” nation-states can impose on them. Hence, they and their equally corrupt media allies are bent on imposing a new world order called “The Great Reset.” It is nothing less than George Orwell’s 1984 — on steroids.

Columnist James Delingpole sums up this monstrous agenda. “Put simply, it is the blueprint for a complete transformation of the world economy,” he writes. “There will be no money, no private property, no democracy. Instead, every key decision — what you do for a living, how much stuff you consume, whether you can take a vacation — will be decided for you by a remote, unaccountable elite of ‘experts.’”

What experts? Those who will be attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at the end of January in Davos, Switzerland. Forum CEO Klaus Schwab, a German octogenarian, is the driving force behind this elitist power grab. “COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying,” he insists. “There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.”

How do Schwab and his contemptible allies intend to avoid the consequences of the chaos they themselves created? “To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.” He concludes, “In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

What Schwab is proposing has nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism. What he is proposing, also using terms like “Fourth Industrial Revolution” to obscure his agenda, is a globalist oligarchy comprised of billionaire elitists answerable to no one but themselves.

Nothing has been more instrumental in realizing this agenda than COVID-19. Schwab, who also coauthored a book titled COVID-19: The Great Reset, insists that one way of looking at the pandemic is as a “silver lining” because “it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.” In other words, the singularly worst consequence of the globalist order — the one inflicted on the world and purposefully allowed to spread by Chinese communist thugs and their World Health Organization puppet — should be viewed as an opportunity rather than the crime against humanity it truly is.

According to Schwab, The Great Reset requires three main components — all of which require top-down control of every economic sector on the planet. “During the COVID-19 crisis, companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine,” he states. “Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector.”

A chilling video posted on Facebook by the WEF tells you everything you need to know, offering eight predictions the globalists wish to impose on the world by 2030:

“The United States won’t be the world’s leading superpower. A handful of countries will dominate.”

“You won’t die waiting for an organ donor. We won’t transplant organs. We’ll print new ones instead.”

“You’ll eat much less meat. An occasional treat not a staple. For the good of the environment and our health.”

“A billion people will be displaced by climate change. We’ll have to do a better job at welcoming and integrating refugees.”

“Polluters will have to pay to emit carbon dioxide. There will be a global price on carbon. This will help make fossil fuels history.”

“You could be preparing to go to Mars. Scientists will have worked out how to keep you healthy in space. The start of a journey to find alien life?”

Laughingly, the video ends with this statement: “Western values will have been tested to the breaking point. Checks and balances that underpin our democracies must not be forgotten.”

Checks and balances that underpin democracies? One of the bedrocks of all democracies is private property. Another is fair and transparent elections. A third is the reasonable expectation of privacy.

Does anyone seriously believe any of these contemptible mandarins will own nothing, or ever again allow their agenda to be challenged at the ballot box? Is there any doubt that Big Tech already engages in unprecedented levels of surveillance — when it and its media allies aren’t actively censoring “misinformation” inimical to that agenda?

The New World Order is the Same Old Communism, replete with the yawing chasm between the “more equal” wannabe totalitarian party insiders and a wholly oppressed proletariat who will ostensibly be “happy” living lives dictated by the whims of their masters.

Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria ViganĂ² isn’t buying the rank propaganda. In a letter to President Donald Trump — one conveniently buried by the same media that thinks it has secured a place at the globalist insider table — he warned about the “transition” the entire world is currently experiencing. “The fundamental rights of citizens and believers are being denied in the name of a health emergency that is revealing itself more and more fully as instrumental to the establishment of an inhuman, faceless tyranny,” he wrote.

Not quite. Plenty of these tyrants have faces. Progressive politicians all over America are tripping over themselves to impose ever more unconstitutional diktats, yet again under the guise of “flattening the curve,” using the very same methods that failed the first time around. Toward that end, they saw Thanksgiving Day as an opportunity to turn in one’s neighbors or one’s own family if they defied the very same edicts the politicians themselves ignored.

Is there anything more indicative of a totalitarian society?

“When the coronavirus hit, Americans did not realize how thoroughly their ruling class had already jelled into an oligarchy with the intention above all to crush them,” writes Angelo Codevilla. “Neither did they comprehend how assuredly it would not waste this opportunity to do so.”

In short, while ordinary Americans yearn for a “return to normal,” our would-be globalist overlords are determined to make sure that never happens. And while they have generated an avalanche of media-trumpeted hysteria and fear surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday in America, more than likely it will pale in comparison to the orchestrated deconstruction of Christmas — all over the world.

The Great Reset and its utterly despicable enablers demand nothing less.

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IN BRIEF

Sidney Powell files lawsuits alleging massive election fraud in Michigan and Georgia (Disrn)

Rudy Giuliani claims Trump team has a "mountain" of evidence (Examiner)

Joe Biden is unlikely to offer Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren jobs (Just the News)

Biden's communications team raises questions over revolving door with leftist networks (Fox News)

Barack Obama takes shot at evangelical Hispanics who voted for Trump despite "racist" rhetoric (Fox News)

After years of calling Trump supporters Nazis and Klan members, Alyssa Milano wants to "extend an olive branch" (Not the Bee)

Facebook used "secret internal ranking" to suppress "right-wing" sources after the election (Daily Wire)

CNN silent after investigation finds nurse's claims dying patients do not believe in coronavirus is a "massive exaggeration" (Disrn)

YouTube snubbed Thanksgiving on its Twitter account, celebrated "Unthanksgiving" instead (Disrn)

Nursing home COVID deaths now eclipse 100,000 in the U.S. (Disrn)

New York City to reopen schools for 200,000 students December 7 (Politico)

5,000 Alabama students haven't shown up for any sort of class (AP)

Coronavirus delays national math and reading tests until 2022 (Fox News)

U.S. sends aircraft carrier to Persian Gulf as Iran vows retaliation for scientist's assassination (Daily Wire)

Thrice-deported illegal immigrant arrested for double homicide after jail ignores ICE detainer (Examiner)

Nike and Coca-Cola lobby against Xinjiang forced-labor bill (NY Times)

"Welcome to the worst in corporate greed and swamp culture. China is persecuting an entire region of its country, but who wants to have to charge more on an iPhone?" —Keith Koffler

Britain expects "very significant" week for Brexit talks as clock ticks down (Reuters)

LANDBACK campaign supporters vandalize statues in "national decolonial day of action" (Disrn)

U.S. women's soccer team dons BLM shirts and kneels for national anthem on foreign soil (Daily Wire)

Star-studded Time's Up charities spent big on salaries, little on helping victims (NY Post)

Denver mayor who told citizens to "avoid travel" gets caught flying for Thanksgiving (Bongino.com)

Antiracism icon Robin DiAngelo paid more than black woman for the same job (Free Beacon)

MSNBC's Chris Hayes haunted by 2016 "fun fact" when he suggested electors abandon POTUS-elect (Fox News)

Fish farts almost caused a diplomatic crisis for Sweden (Not the Bee)

Policy: The Supreme Court got church restrictions right (National Review)

Policy: Jordan Peterson's new book couldn't be more timely (FEE)

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Tuesday, December 01, 2020



Sidney Powell Releases the 'Kraken' in Georgia with Explosive New Lawsuit

Defense Attorneys Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and others have filed a lawsuit in Georgia demanding that the results of the 2020 election be set aside because of “massive election fraud” and foreign influence in the election. The lawsuit claims that 96,600 mail-in ballots “were fraudulently cast” and that “136,098 ballots were illegally counted as a result of improper manipulation of the Dominion software.”

Powell, a high-profile attorney who represents former Trump National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn, asks that the governor be enjoined from certifying the election. The 104-page lawsuit claims that Gov. Brian Kemp, Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, and the chair and members of the Georgia State Elections Board failed to police the alleged fraud, including “multiple violations of Georgia laws, including O.C.G.A. §§ 21-2-30(d), 21-2-31, 21-2- 33.1 and §21-2-522, and multiple Constitutional violations, as shown by fact witnesses to specific incidents, multiple expert witnesses and the sheer mathematical impossibilities found in the Georgia 2020 General Election.”

The lawsuit, co-filed with attorney Lin Wood and an Atlanta attorney, asks a judge to set aside the results of the election in a permanent injunction; enjoin elections officials from certifying the election; demands that all voting machines be subjected to forensic assessment; and asks that election officials produce 36 hours of surveillance video of “all rooms used in the voting process at State Farm Arena in Fulton County, GA from 12:00am to 3:00am until 6:00pm on November.”

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, also alleges that Georgia’s sloppy mail-in balloting was responsible for thousands of shady, illegal votes.

Plaintiff’s expert also finds that voters received tens of thousands of ballots that they never requested. (See Exh. 1, Dr. Briggs’ Report). Specifically, Dr. Briggs found that in the state of Georgia, based on a statistically significant sample, the expected amount of persons that received an absentee ballot that they did not request ranges from 16,938 to 22,771. This range exceeds the margin of loss of President Trump by 12,670 votes by at least 4,268 unlawful requests and by as many as 10,101 unlawful requests.

She alleges that voters were denied their due process because the fraud diluted their votes and treated the mail-in ballots differently in different counties, which is similar to what Trump attorneys have alleged in the Pennsylvania election case.

The lawsuit alleges that “rogue actors” were able to manipulate the voting software.

Russell Ramsland confirms that data breaches in the Dominion software permitted rogue actors to penetrate and manipulate the software during the recent general election. He further concludes that at least 96,600 mail-in ballots were illegally counted as they were not cast by legal voters.

The lawsuit used some of the open-source statistics that Matt Braynard has put out on his Twitter account. Braynard was a 2016 data chief for the Trump campaign. He put out a video outlining his findings on YouTube.

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If Voters Had Known About 8 Stories Media Ignored, Trump Would Have Won, Says Media Watchdog

Noncitizens likely voted at a high enough rate to alter the 2020 Electoral College tally, potentially flipping the states of Arizona and Georgia in the presidential election, according to an analysis by Just Facts, a research group.

That’s significant, and while it wouldn’t be enough to hand the election to President Donald Trump, it potentially could have made a difference. Only U.S. citizens are legally allowed to vote in federal elections.

The revised estimate, as of Monday, shows that Trump could have won 259 electoral votes if noncitizen votes were not counted. But that would likely still leave former Vice President Joe Biden with 279 electoral votes, nine votes more than the 270 needed to win.

The current electoral vote tally stands at 306 for Biden, 232 for Trump. Arizona has 11 Electoral College votes, while Georgia gets 16.

Just Facts first released an analysis on Nov. 8, five days after the election, that calculated a lower and upper estimate of the extent of noncitizen voting. That analysis determined that Trump could have won as few as 259 electoral votes—or as many as 285. The latter would have secured a second term.

However, as more mail-in votes were counted, Biden’s lead widened in states such Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada.

Several major media outlets have projected Biden as the president-elect, but the Trump campaign is still litigating in several battleground states. The Trump team has not made noncitizen voting a significant part of its allegations of voter fraud.

The revised study estimated the number of noncitizen votes cast in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania—all of which were closely contested on election night.

It estimated that 234,570 noncitizen votes benefited Biden across seven battleground states. That estimate did not change as more votes were counted.

“Based on the latest vote counts and the upper and lower bounds of the study results, Georgia and Arizona would flip to Trump, leaving him with 259 Electoral College votes,” James Agresti, president of Just Facts, told The Daily Signal. “Under the upper bound, Nevada gets really close, with Trump down by 3,858 votes.”

With the exception of Arizona, each of the states in question appeared to be favoring Trump until the early-morning hours of Nov. 4, but began to shift to Biden over several days. North Carolina is the only state of the seven that appears likely to go to Trump.

The Electoral College will cast its vote in 50 states and the District of Columbia on Dec. 14.

The estimate is based on the percentages of noncitizens that voted in previous elections, predicated on a 2014 study by researchers at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, that evaluated rates of noncitizen voting in 2008 and 2010, Agresti said, applied only to the seven battleground states.

The Old Dominion study determined 6.4% of noncitizens voted in the 2008 presidential election and 3% in the 2010 congressional midterm elections, with 81% voting Democrat.

The rate was high enough to change the Electoral College vote count in 2008 (although not enough to swing the presidential election) and actually change the outcome of some congressional races, particularly the Senate race in Minnesota that year.

That race was decided in favor of Democrat Al Franken over Republican Norm Coleman by just 312 votes out of more than 2.86 million votes cast.

Agresti noted that illegal noncitizen voting is just “one type of fraud” that could have occurred in the 2020 election.

Asked about the proliferation of mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, he said, “That could certainly make it easier, with fewer checks and balances,” for a larger number of noncitizens to vote.

Last week, USA Today criticized the initial study claiming in a “fact check” column that rated the study as “missing context,” and arguing that it “relies on unverifiable estimates.”

The USA Today fact check largely relied on rebuttals from left-leaning sources such as the Fair Elections Center and the Brennan Center for Justice. USA Today also referenced a Wired magazine article to question the Old Dominion researchers.

Just Facts issued a rebuttal on Tuesday to what it called a “slanderous ‘fact check'” of its study:

The Just Facts study doesn’t claim to have the precise 2020 numbers, and is clear in its reliance on the Old Dominion study and other sources, such as a 2008 Harvard/YouGov survey, the Government Accountability Office, and the Social Security Administration, to apply data from past elections as the basis for the assumptions of the numbers this year.

Agresti noted that as many as 15% of noncitizens said they were registered to vote, based on survey data cited in the Old Dominion report.

The full extent of noncitizen voting is a problem, as demonstrated in past years in Pennsylvania, said Hans von Spakovsky, the manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation.

“We don’t know the full extent of the problem, but we know it is a problem,” von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, told The Daily Signal. “We need to require proof of citizenship from people registering to vote.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/11/24/illegal-votes-from-noncitizens-likely-affected-the-2020-election-study-says/ ?

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Our Overlords Are Using The ‘Big Lie Technique’ To Convince Us Masks Work

The “big lie” propaganda technique, a phrase coined by Adolf Hitler, purports to tell a lie so "colossal" that people simply wouldn’t believe the teller "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." You’ve doubtless seen the most famous adaptation of this, which may or may not have been said by former Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. It goes as follows:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Now today, we thankfully don’t have an all-powerful “State,” not yet anyway, but we do have what I’ll call the ‘System,’ a toxic mishmash of do-gooder Big Tech overlords, power-hungry ‘public servants,’ liberty-hating ‘health officials,’ and frightened corporations bullied into both submitting and forcing others to submit to this nonsense. And that ‘System,’ as it were, is most certainly busy repressing dissent in order to bolster its very own, albeit new, “Big Lie,” that “face masks work to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

Not a soul could have possibly predicted this eight months ago when established science laughed at the idea that a piece of cloth over people’s faces would somehow abate the spread of a highly contagious respiratory virus. Everyone is aware of the extreme course-reversal our overlords took on forced public masking almost overnight. We’re supposed to believe they simply told us a "noble lie" to preserve masks for healthcare workers, but the problem for them is that back then they gave us solid reasons backed up by decades of science to make their case.

“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask when you’re in the middle of an outbreak,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said back in March. “Wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And often, there are unintended consequences; people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

Obviously, the good doctor eventually took an about-face on that advice, attributing it, apparently, to a national shortage of fabric capable of being turned into face coverings, or something. But what part of his initial rationale was incorrect? Did scientists not know about “droplets” in March? Apparently they did, considering Fauci addressed the issue in his statement. Did the “unintended consequences” he listed suddenly disappear as soon as mask use to “stop the spread” became a literal religious cult? Did people stop fiddling with their masks and touching their faces? Of course not. Given the amount of almost nonstop “fiddling” I see just in my own observations, it’s hard to imagine any real gain in the reduction of droplet transmission not being more than made up for by bacterial and viral surface spread.

With so many high-mask-compliance places now going into lockdown, does it not strike anyone as odd that the bold statements made by our overlords months ago - that 80+% mask compliance would end the pandemic, or at least severely curb it - are now being memory-holed? Remember when CDC Director Robert Redford told us in July (and God knows how many other times), that mask-wearing would end this pandemic. I believe he may have even said that masks were a “vaccine,” although the memory-holing is fogging my own memory a bit.

Remember when Variety wrote in May about a “compelling new study” they claimed provided “fresh evidence for a simple solution to help us emerge from this nightmarish lockdown.” Their ‘solution’? “If 80% of Americans wore masks, COVID-19 infections would plummet.” Well, mask compliance is well, well above 80%. In fact, in the states that fine businesses for people not wearing masks in their facilities, boots on the ground tell me it’s pretty close to 100%. Yet, other than a few New England states where the virus just hasn’t hit yet, high mask compliance states aren’t really doing any better than low mask compliance ones, and are in many cases doing quite worse.

From Italy to France to Czechia to the United Kingdom to lockdown and mask-loving U.S. states like Illinois, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, and California, the virus is spreading like wildfire regardless of humans turning themselves and their societies into pretzels trying to avoid it. The data is right before the eyes of anyone who bothers to look, as the Mises Institute’s Tom Woods points out in this powerful video that YouTube felt obligated to suppress (you know, to protect the Big Lie). Mask mandates, no matter how strictly imposed and adhered to, are almost always eventually followed by tremendous spikes in the virus. And yet, the response from the powers-that-be is always, always, ALWAYS to MASK HARRDERRR!!! California, which has mandated masks statewide for months, decided to deal with a November spike in cases by extending their outdoor mask mandate, despite the fact that zero science says the virus spreads outdoors to any significant extent. Oh, and they’re also locking down, albeit without admitting that the masking has completely failed to curb the virus. Otherwise, why would they need to lock down? Yep, it’s just another one of those difficult-to-answer questions that only a Big Lie could even begin to answer.

Of course, when infection rates do come down, and they will, they will come down regardless of how high or low mask “compliance” is in an area, because that’s also what viruses do when a certain seroprevalence is reached (yes, there are problems with PCR tests, but the herd immunity threshold admittedly seems higher than what many of us initially thought). Except, the masks will then be given the “credit” in the high compliance areas, while the low compliance areas that also decrease will be ignored.

Whether they mean well or they just want to turn us all into faceless sheeple capable of obeying even the most absurd and destructive commands, the truth is, it takes a lie the size of Mount Everest to continually prop nonsense like this up and to keep people believing it despite what we all see in front of our eyes. It takes a "Big Lie."

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Monday, November 30, 2020



The Definitive Case Proving Donald Trump Won the Election

If Joe Biden taking the lead in Michigan and Wisconsin was the moment the dynamic of the Presidential race changed, this may be the moment the dynamic changes again.

A thorough and damning new analysis just published calls the legitimacy of this critical period into question and shows just how completely ridiculous and far-fetched the core of Joe Biden’s comeback really was in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. It flags four individual vote dumps critical to Joe Biden’s “victory” in these states and shows, convincingly, that their ratios of Biden votes to Trump votes were profoundly anomalous when compared to other dumps in those states and virtually every other vote dump across the country.

The report is written in dry and academic language, filled with graphs, footnotes, and various hedges, but its implications could not be more obvious. Indeed, if the authors were less tepid, they might have fairly titled it:

Joe Biden’s Victory Was Not Legitimate. And Now We Can Prove it.

Because that’s exactly what the report does. It looks at election data and shows what many would expect: the states and cities that had the most suspicious circumstances on election night and into the next day are precisely where the analysis flags extreme anomalies.

Summary and Background of the Report

It starts out with the background on Michigan and Wisconsin — the famous “vote spikes” that were plainly ridiculous and fundamentally changed both the electoral reality and the narrative. The report reminds us of the infamous vote spikes in Michigan and Wisconsin.

The report is based on an analysis of the difference between successive updates in each state, each of which it calls “vote updates.” In online discourse, these are often referred to as “vote dumps” or “vote batches.”

It examines them across states and, controlling for how big a state is and how Democratic it is, does the following:

Defines, mathematically, what a “vote spike” is
Shows just how rare those are

Shows how, during a five-hour period, four particularly extreme vote spikes arrived favoring Joe Biden

Shows how crucial these were to Joe Biden’s election in MI, WI, and GA

Most damningly, shows how Joe Biden likely would have lost these states — and the election — were these only more “spiky” than 99% of all vote dumps

The report describes a measurement for showing the relationship between the number of votes Biden wins by (or loses by) in any given vote dump, and how well he did as a ratio of Trump’s votes in that vote dump, while controlling for size and political lean of a state. It thus normalizes the data across states, allowing for apples to apples comparisons. The key mathematical reason why these vote spikes are anomalous is that for every large vote dump heavily favoring Biden in any given area, you also would expect to have smaller vote dumps in the same area which favor him by similar margins. Quoting from the report:

The believability of these updates relies on the premise that the one or two most Biden-favoring parts of the state (perhaps by ballot type) were counted entirely in these two batches. If it cannot be shown that the ballots counted during these spikes were qualitatively different from all other vote updates in Michigan, then the results are likely too extreme along multiple dimensions to be accepted at face value. [Vote Integrity]

It goes on to describe how the same logic applies for the other updates as well. Large ballot dumps which heavily favor a candidate make sense, if there are also smaller ones which favor the candidate more. The “standardization” process used by the researchers here takes care of that, and shows how points up and to the right of the graph are the more “co-extreme” vote dumps, in the language of the report:

Making Sense of This

The analysis is incredibly dense but contains several key points, which American Patriots must remember in the coming days and weeks. The most important points are:

Four of the seven most extreme vote dumps decided the election for Joe Biden. This alone is bizarre and fundamentally cuts against his narrative of moderate increases in suburban and exurban areas. Moreover, the distribution is “heavy-tailed” and these vote dumps are vastly more “co-extreme” than even the points around the 99.5th percentile (the dotted black line in the graph above).

These four vote dumps were quantifiably far more extreme than virtually every other vote dump, with only a few others as extreme in their aberration from the inverse pattern observed elsewhere.

The odds of these three states (GA, WI, MI) being so well-represented at the top of the distribution is just over 1%. And when you factor in that a vote dump in GA is the 9th most extreme point, the odds that these three states have five of the top ten most extreme vote dumps drop to a mere 0.00337%.

Clearly, there’s something different about these states than others, including other blue states, or even other Midwestern states where a deep-blue urban population offsets the red rest of the state (e.g. Illinois, Minnesota), or states like Colorado, Texas, or Oregon, where the urban areas are also vastly more Democratic than the rest of the state.

These vote spikes all occurred in the same five-hour period. Wisconsin and Michigan both spent around eighteen hours counting votes, and the count took several days in Georgia. We have since learned that the “pipe burst” story in deep-blue Georgia was never in fact true.

This five hour period remains a period of great controversy surrounding how the vote counting was “stopped.” Recently, we learned that the story of a “pipe bursting” in Georgia was in fact not true. Combine that with the results shown in this piece, and an obvious picture comes into view: In all three states, the count was “stopped” to give cover for electoral fraud on the scale of hundreds of thousands of votes which were released in the middle of the night, hoping few would notice.

The burden of proof is now on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the Democratic party, and their various urban machine operatives to defend these results as legitimate. The on-the-ground circumstances in these states had been suspicious for weeks and warranted investigation in their own right. We now have the math to confirm our suspicions. This report, in winding sentences and hedged language, lays it bare for all of us to see: Joe Biden’s election “victory” relied on a fraudulent counting process in the dead of night.

The media has no interest in covering this, and indeed are trying actively to suppress it. An attempt to Google search for “precincts that stopped the count” makes this clear. The steal of this election, perpetrated in the middle of the night in several states, was allowed to happen only because of the extraordinary assistance given to the Democrats by Big Media and Big Tech. Nonetheless, thanks to what appears to be an anonymous group of researchers, we can definitively state what we knew all along:

President Donald J. Trump is the legitimate winner of this election. Republican state legislators in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia must refuse to seat electors for Joe Biden until a complete forensic audit has been conducted.

Never give up. Never back down. And never concede.

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5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms
2020


In all the excitement among objective journalists for Joe Biden’s declared victory, reporters are missing how extraordinary the Democrat’s performance was in the 2020 election. It’s not just that the former vice president is on track to become the oldest president in American history, it’s what he managed to accomplish at the polls this year.

Candidate Joe Biden was so effective at animating voters in 2020 that he received a record number of votes, more than 15 million more than Barack Obama received in his re-election of 2012. Amazingly, he managed to secure victory while also losing in almost every bellwether county across the country. No presidential candidate has been capable of such electoral jujitsu until now.

While Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 totals in every urban county in the United States, he outperformed her in the metropolitan areas of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Even more surprising, the former VP put up a record haul of votes, despite Democrats’ general failures in local House and state legislative seats across the nation.

He accomplished all this after receiving a record low share of the primary vote compared to his Republican opponent heading into the general election. Clearly, these are tremendous and unexpected achievements that would normally receive sophisticated analysis from the journalist class but have somehow gone mostly unmentioned during the celebrations at news studios in New York City and Washington, D.C.

The massive national political realignment now taking place may be one source of these surprising upsets. Yet still, to have pulled so many rabbits out of his hat like this, nobody can deny that Biden is a first-rate campaigner and politician, the likes of which America has never before seen. Let’s break down just how unique his political voodoo has been in 2020.

1. 80 Million Votes
Holy moly! A lot of Americans turned out for a Washington politician who’s been in office for nearly 50 years. Consider this: no incumbent president in nearly a century and a half has gained votes in a re-election campaign and still lost.

President Trump gained more than ten million votes since his 2016 victory, but Biden’s appeal was so substantial that it overcame President Trump’s record support among minority voters. Biden also shattered Barack Obama’s own popular vote totals, really calling into question whether it was not perhaps Biden who pulled Obama across the finish lines in 2008 and 2012.

Proving how sharp his political instincts are, the former VP managed to gather a record number of votes while consistently trailing President Trump in measures of voter enthusiasm. Biden was so savvy that he motivated voters unenthusiastic about his campaign to vote for him in record numbers.

2. Winning Despite Losing Most Bellwether Counties
Biden is set to become the first president in 60 years to lose the states of Ohio and Florida on his way to election. For a century, these states have consistently predicted the national outcome, and they have been considered roughly representative of the American melting pot as a whole. Despite national polling giving Biden a lead in both states, he lost Ohio by eight points and Florida by more than three.

For Biden to lose these key bellwethers by notable margins and still win the national election is newsworthy. Not since the Mafia allegedly aided John F. Kennedy in winning Illinois over Richard Nixon in 1960 has an American president pulled off this neat trick.

Even more unbelievably, Biden is on his way to winning the White House after having lost almost every historic bellwether county across the country. The Wall Street Journal and The Epoch Times independently analyzed the results of 19 counties around the United States that have nearly perfect presidential voting records over the last 40 years. President Trump won every single bellwether county, except Clallam County in Washington.

Whereas the former VP picked up Clallam by about three points, President Trump’s margin of victory in the other 18 counties averaged over 16 points. In a larger list of 58 bellwether counties that have correctly picked the president since 2000, Trump won 51 of them by an average of 15 points, while the other seven went to Biden by around four points. Bellwether counties overwhelmingly chose President Trump, but Biden found a path to victory anyway.

3. Biden Trailed Clinton Except in a Select Few Cities
Patrick Basham, a pollster with an accurate track record and the director of the Democracy Institute in D.C., highlighted two observations made by fellow colleagues, polling guru Richard Baris of Big Data Poll and Washington Post election analyst Robert Barnes. Baris noted a statistical oddity from 2020’s election returns: “Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in every major metro area around the country, save for Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia.”

Barnes added that in those “big cities in swing states run by Democrats…the vote even exceeded the number of registered voters.” In the states that mattered most, so many mail-in ballots poured in for Biden from the cities that he put up record-breaking numbers and overturned state totals that looked like comfortable leads for President Trump.

If Democrats succeed in eliminating the Electoral College, Biden’s magic formula for churning out overwhelming vote totals in a handful of cities should make the Democrats unbeatable.

4. Biden Won Despite Democrat Losses Everywhere Else
Randy DeSoto noted in The Western Journal that “Donald Trump was pretty much the only incumbent president in U.S. history to lose his re-election while his own party gained seats in the House of Representatives.” Now that’s a Biden miracle!

In 2020, The Cook Political Report and The New York Times rated 27 House seats as toss-ups going into Election Day. Right now, Republicans appear to have won all 27. Democrats failed to flip a single state house chamber, while Republicans flipped both the House and Senate in New Hampshire and expanded their dominance of state legislatures across the country.

Christina Polizzi, a spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, went so far as to state: “It’s clear that Trump isn’t an anchor for the Republican legislative candidates. He’s a buoy.” Amazingly, Biden beat the guy who lifted all other Republicans to victory. Now that’s historic!

5. Biden Overcame Trump’s Commanding Primary Vote
In the past, primary vote totals have been remarkably accurate in predicting general election winners. Political analyst David Chapman highlighted three historical facts before the election.

First, no incumbent who has received 75 percent of the total primary vote has lost re-election. Second, President Trump received 94 percent of the primary vote, which is the fourth highest of all time (higher than Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon, Clinton, or Obama). In fact, Trump is only one of five incumbents since 1912 to receive more than 90 percent of the primary vote.

Third, Trump set a record for most primary votes received by an incumbent when more than 18 million people turned out for him in 2020 (the previous record, held by Bill Clinton, was half that number). For Biden to prevail in the general election, despite Trump’s historic support in the primaries, turns a century’s worth of prior election data on its head.

Joe Biden achieved the impossible. It’s interesting that many more journalists aren’t pointing that out.

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Sunday, November 29, 2020



Johns Hopkins Study Saying COVID-19 Has 'Relatively No Effect on Deaths' in U.S.

Conventional wisdom is that COVID-19 has caused thousands of deaths in the United States and nearly 1.5 million worldwide. This perception has been directly challenged by a study published by Johns Hopkins University on Sunday, November 22.

Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins University, critically analyzed the impact that COVID-19 had on U.S. deaths. According to her, the impact of COVID-19 on deaths in the United States can be fully understood by comparing it to the number of total deaths in the country.

According to study, “in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

Wait, what? Really?

That’s what it says. And, it should come as no surprise that not long after the study was published it was deleted within days.

Luckily, a back-up copy remains on The Wayback Machine, and we can still read the study.

So, how exactly did the study conclude that COVID-19 has had “relatively no effect on deaths”? Here’s how the study made this determination:

After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September, which includes the period from before COVID-19 was detected in the U.S. to after infection rates soared.

Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.

According to Briand, “The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals.”

Briand’s analysis found that the range of deaths amongst the older population has remained within the range of past years.

So, if COVID-19 has actually had no significant impact on U.S. deaths, why does it not appear that way?

To answer that question, Briand shifted her focus to the deaths per causes ranging from 2014 to 2020. There is a sudden increase in deaths in 2020 due to COVID-19. This is no surprise because COVID-19 emerged in the U.S. in early 2020, and thus COVID-19-related deaths increased drastically afterward.

Analysis of deaths per cause in 2018 revealed that the pattern of seasonal increase in the total number of deaths is a result of the rise in deaths by all causes, with the top three being heart disease, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia.

“This is true every year,” explained Briand. “Every year in the U.S. when we observe the seasonal ups and downs, we have an increase of deaths due to all causes.”

Here’s where things get interesting.

When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.

The study found that “This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years.” In fact, “the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19.”

Briand concludes that the COVID-19 death toll in the United States is misleading and that deaths from other diseases are being categorized as COVID-19 deaths.

There have reports of inflated COVID-19 deaths numbers for months. Patients who never tested positive for the disease had COVID-19 as their cause of death on their death certificates. In May, Jared Polis, the Democrat governor of Colorado, disputed official coronavirus death counts, saying even those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were inflated from including people who tested positive for the coronavirus but died of other causes. In July, a fatal motorcycle accident victim was listed as a COVID-19 death.

On Thursday, Johns Hopkins University explained that they deleted the article on the study because it “was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic.”

They did not, however, challenge the accuracy of the data or its conclusions. In other words, the article was deleted because it didn’t fit the proper narrative.

This determination to put theory before the facts is truly malign -- JR

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This Thanksgiving, I Choose the Safety of Freedom

Let’s have a little fun thinking about serious things. How about this? The public health aristocracy is advocating lockdowns for the holidays. Don’t travel, don’t associate in groups larger than six. And, don’t have fun.

For months leading up to the holiday season, many Americans have been flying. The flights have been fewer, but the planes have been full. The airports have been moderately crowded. Are the public health orthodocs telling us we shouldn’t be flying at all? Have they discovered that loaded planes are 'superspreaders'?

The short answer is, no.

Further, the mask mandators, who don’t want us flying or traveling, must have forgotten that the most compliant mask wearers are the flying public. In the dozens of flights that I have taken over the past months, I have observed that there is almost 100% compliance in the airport and on the planes.

Virtually everyone slaps a mask on their face from the moment they are dropped off on the airport curb, and continues to wear it until they have reached their destination and climbed into their cars heading away from the airport.

The airlines are strict enforcers of mask wearing.

The question then becomes, if mask wearing is so effective, then why would the public health cabalists insist that travel be verboten. Especially since traveling by plane will result in mask wearing by all on the plane. One would suggest that traveling by plane might be super safe.

Riding in an auto for hours with close friends and family may be the target of the autocrats, but aren’t those the same people who would be together at home for hours on end during the holiday lockdown?

And, how does all of this square with the shackles placed on free America by political leaders who believe they are too elite to live by the rules they make for others? All on the same day, New York Gov. Cuomo tearfully told the world that his out-of-state daughter cannot join his family for Thanksgiving. The world thinks, at last a Democrat leader who applies the same rules to himself that he imposes, by force, on others.

Oops. By mid-afternoon, Cuomo let the cat out of the bag: his 89-year-old mother and two of his other daughters are traveling to join in the holiday fete.

Goodness gracious. By early evening, the feckless one canceled the invitation to his mom and daughters. Illinois Governor Pritzker vacillates even more than Cuomo. He announced that he hasn’t decided if he or family and friends will travel while he locks down the state.

The Barrington Manifesto has more than 49,000 signers who are medical doctors, scientists, and professionals. They decry lockdowns. And, yet the pinnacle of public health pushes that we be locked away, against our will, in homes, apartments, etc., to avoid potentially catching the coronavirus. Yet, the studies are pretty determinative that one is more likely to catch the virus while in the closed settings that accompany lockdowns.

And, that’s not even counting the mental and physical health devastation that accompanies lockdowns. A recent report suggested that more than 50 percent of adolescents and young adults are suffering serious mental health issues, with a substantial increase of suicide ideations. And, seniors are also experiencing similar difficulties.

Isolation, which is the remedy most frequently advocated by our public health gurus, has brought to pass incredibly serious ramifications that many experts believe exceeds the real and serious impacts of the virus.

So, the experts insist that we lockdown and miss Thanksgiving. Miss out on our associations; shut down a brief moment of familial and friendly associations that bring some peace and joy in a season that has brought unprecedented discord in our nation.

I do not advocate that we take unnecessary risks. I am simply saying that each American should assess their risks and act as free, American adults. Make your decisions responsibly. We’ve been told for months that masks are the ultimate security. So, if I’m flying, I wear a mask. I’ll make the determination, with my loved ones, what risk we are willing to take.

If you want to stay locked down, isolated, and avoid whatever risks that associations with friends and family may pose, I support your decision. You, too, are free to make your choices.

I wish you all the best, and a Happy Thanksgiving, whatever your choice may be. If you choose the security of your homes and self-imposed lockdowns, I wish you well.

I, however, choose the safety of freedom, the joy of family associations, and the emotional wellbeing of friends, good food, fine conversations, and the peace of expressing gratitude.

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Shocking MRC Study Shows Media Prevented Trump Landslide

A new report from the Media Research Center (MRC) shows the media’s role in thwarting what should have been a landslide win for President Trump in the 2020 Presidential race. The MRC surveyed Biden voters in seven swing states (AZ, GA, MI, WI, PA, NV and NC) and tested their knowledge of popular news topics about Trump’s successes and Biden’s corruption.

MRC found a whopping 82 percent of the voters were completely unaware of Trump’s successes, Biden’s corruption and the far left politics of his running mate, Kamala Harris. One in six, 17 percent, Biden voters said they would NOT have voted for Joe if they had known about one or more of these stories.

Voters were asked if they were aware of Biden’s sexual assault allegations, Hunter Biden scandal, how Harris is the most far-Left Senator, 33.1% economic growth, job creation, Middle East Peace Deals, U.S. Energy Independence, and Operation Warp Speed.

This latest report builds on an earlier post-election poll from MRC and McLaughlin & Associates that found 36 percent of Biden voters were unaware of recent evidence linking the Biden family to corrupt financial deals with China. If they had known these key facts, 4.6% of Biden’s total voters would not have voted for him in the 2020 Presidential race.

In the critical weeks before Election Day, from Oct. 14th – 27th, Media Research Center analysts found out of a total of 113 hours of news programming, ABC, CBS, NBC, these three networks combined spent a grand total of less than 22 minutes talking about the Hunter Biden scandal. God forbid they take a break from insulting President Trump to report the facts and hold a clearly corrupt politician accountable.

The left-wing media will stop at nothing to defend their beloved Biden family. When Biden allegedly interfered in Ukrainian politics last year, they insisted there was “no evidence” and he’d “done nothing wrong.” Then leading up to the election, they claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal was nothing more than a Russian disinformation campaign. I wonder, is the media simply stupid or are they really that slimy to spread such a blatant lie? Someone, let me know.

Twitter of course also helped hide the Hunter Biden scandal. Although Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey eventually admitted they were “wrong” and corrected the issue, their actions are despicable and inexcusable. Too little, too late!

Biden’s B.S. aside, Google manipulated its basic search results to favor the Left. Last night researcher and psychologist, Dr. Robert Epstein was on Tucker Carlson Tonight and explained, “Google’s search results were strongly biased in favor of liberals and Democrats…the bias was being shown to pretty much every demographic group including conservatives. In fact, Conservatives got slightly more liberal bias in their search results than liberals did.”

He further claimed Big Tech’s manipulations, at the bare minimum, “could easily have shifted at least 6 million votes in just one direction.” President Trump tweeted a video of Tucker’s opening monologue and the full interview with Dr. Epstein.

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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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