This is an article in the NYT, which I'm reading because what I hope is that the material will show that Trump wasn't involved in planning or promoting breaking into the Capitol or committing any illegal acts. And isn't that what everyone should hope?
So I'm reading this article and setting to the side everything that is about Trump's belief that he really did win the election, his search for a legal path to victory, and his desire for a big, exciting rally showing strong support for this cause.
So, what does the NYT list? I've copied and pasted the whole text into my compose window, and I will now cut out everything I just said I was setting to the side:
Okay. Now that I've done that... feel free to check my work. Maybe you'll say that the talk of seizing voting machines indicated a willingness to pursue a path that wasn't clearly legal, but it was only considered and then not done. Wasn't it part of brainstorming about what could be done if an election actually were being stolen?
Let's consider the question hypothetically: What if an American presidential election were stolen? What could be done? What if it looked about like the 2020 election, but it really was a fraud?
One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface. The true winner of the election should see the profound national interest in moving forward with a new President in office and fully in power — free of any cloud of uncertainty. The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy.
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1 – 200 of 224 Newer› Newest»The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent
how's the saying go?
If you tax something you get less of it; If you do nothing more than offer support you get more?
Its an illegitimate committee operating way beyond any authority
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congresss-16-committee-claims-absolute
>>The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy.
If the presidential election can be stolen, and there is no real recourse, then perhaps your democracy isn't really beautiful.
There is no confidence in the system when they cheat and lie, and then arrest the people protesting and put them in a gulag in DC for trespassing in the sacred grounds of the elites that is the "Peoples House" They don't realize the anger and suspicion that is out here.
Trump isn't good at being outsmarted. The actual rule is that winning by fraud is in fact winning.
It might be nice to reduce the chain of custody on votes to something much more minimal than the current fog of votes arriving at all times and from all places, though. Trump isn't the only one who thinks that the current system can be taken over by a sufficiently motivated player.
Would you feel the same way if someone stole your car, and the judge refused to hear your case that the car is really yours? Watch the thief drive your car around town and buy him some gas for it because you don't think it's right to damage his reputation? Just go buy a new car and shut up about it?
I'm not sure under what scenario it would ever make sense for SecDef to get involved.
What if an American presidential election were stolen? What could be done? What if it looked about like the 2020 election, but it really was a fraud? One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface. The true winner of the election should see the profound national interest in moving forward with a new President in office and fully in power — free of any cloud of uncertainty. The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy.
Bullshit.
We know the election was stolen. Living a lie is not the answer.
We know you are all about lying to yourself Ann.
That is not how we want to live.
Yeah, and if you just give the mugger your wallet maybe he won't stab or shoot you. I prefer to fight back, if at all possible, to avoid letting the bad guys decide what happens.
One answer might be: Let the process our founding fathers gave us regarding election shenanigans play out instead of standing laches moot.
…since that won’t happen with the current actors, second best is a conversation about the perception problem with the current fast and loose elements of the voting process, and substantial changes to ensure confidence in any result. Florida is a good model…
…but that’s not happening with the current actors, either.
…throw out all the current actors.
They already know they will not find any evidence that Trump caused the riot.
They are looking for evidence that, after he was informed about the riot, he willfully delayed speaking out against it.
It's wrong for any Republican to complain that an election was lost because of fraud.
That is the legal principle.
I don't see anything wrong with the loser pursuing remedies that the system itself created for that purpose. (Otherwise, why have them?) Trump's verbiage was over the top at times and it's a shame how he conducted himself, but I have so far seen no evidence that his actual actions went beyond what we should and do allow.
As for the Democrats, all their righteous anger at Trump and January 6 is a pose. They're happy with the outcome and they're not interested in having anybody look too closely at how it was achieved.
Yes, Trump is acting worse than other official losers who thought they had won. It may even be true that this is kind of final or (I guess the lawyers say) dispositive evidence that what he cares about the most is himself. If he cared about the border, or judges, or China, he would be finding ways to do something on those things, including making alliances with people who think he should have conceded gracefully. There is still no evidence that Trump is Mussolini or anything like that.
Republicans are frustrating. They have the opportunity to demand an investigation into the origins of Covid 19, the research projects and procedures of virologists, how to prevent a future pandemic, etc.; they mostly talk about firing Fauci who is incredibly old like a lot of other prominent people these days. There was probably too much lockdown, certainly from the beginning of 2021. The "establishment" kept urging rules that were somewhat evidence free, on the grounds that if we don't conform, the "good" people don't get the full benefit of their compliance. Far too little work was done on cheap treatments that were already available. The slow process of approving fluvoxamine as a re-purposed treatment is now finished, but a number of projects like this could have been speeded up. The noisiest anti-Establishment people want to go on and on about masks and vaccines. Mask mandates were probably more ignorance than dishonesty, and vaccines surely did more good than harm at least until Omicron came along.
Republicans could embrace a debate on whether open borders is a good idea or not; instead they talk about "mismanagement." I guess they are afraid of the diversity lobby, and happy to take donations from global corporations who always want cheap labor.
Except for Trump, Republicans I think are better on election rules. Fraud cannot be proved, except in vary rare cases. The issue is whether new rules in 2020, which were supposed to be temporary for Covid, created too many opportunities for fraud, or voting by people who, according to fair rules, were not entitled to vote.
In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface.
Democracy: too big to fail.
"One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system. . . ."
That's not the right answer, however, because it prioritizes the appearance of fair elections over the reality of fair elections. In fact, the tradeoff is more lopsided than that, because the "true winner's" merely pretending that the election was fair, for the sake of appearances, doesn't actually dispel other people's suspicions that it was fraudulent. Rather than promote confidence in the system, it erodes it.
Let's consider the question hypothetically: What if an American presidential election were stolen? What could be done? What if it looked about like the 2020 election, but it really was a fraud?
The first thing you would do is voice your opposition to a stolen election. Possibly even stage a protest at the Capitol. Probably the last thing you'd do too, as the courts have decided nobody has standing to contest a stolen election, and liberal legal pundits will tell you there is no Constitutional mechanism to remedy.
The reason to seize the voting machines was to do an audit by the way.
And of course the people who stole the election did not want an audit to happen.
Wanting to do an audit of the election is insurrection. Talking about the obvious shenanigans got you censored. Protesting against the obvious got you thrown in jail without representation and without parole.
That tells you all you need to know about an election where Joe Biden got 81 million votes while hiding in a basement and eating pudding cups.
Ann can pretend she is neutral.
But obvious things are obvious.
The person we lie about the most is ourselves.
Re: your "one answer" paragraph suggestion.
Not only should it happen but, having studied American history, I believe it already has more than once. There is credible reason to believe Nixon himself took that path in 1960.
Aren’t these are the same people who told you they had evidence Trump colluded with the Russians to win the prior election?
Just checking.
Ann’s hypothetical wouldn’t be a bad idea in a hypothetical world. You would have the fraud operations from both/multiple parties competing to outmaneuver the other, then after the legal dust settles the winner is declared by a total four billion and one votes to the opponents four billion. (In a nation of 330 million, but no matter…)
Seems fair at first but liberal asymmetry would kill it…
rhhardin said...
The actual rule is that winning by fraud is in fact winning
Touble is the left are okay with this rule so long as conservatives always lose. Once conservatives start winning we’re right back here rewriting the rule book…
Was a mess. Is a mess. Will always be a murky mess of different characters with different motives and expectations,
and varied, incompatible events that don't have a uniform nature or common origin.
Much Biden news, Ukraine and otherwise, today. Need to fortify public and keep them thinking about last year.
One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface.
The type of person who would give that answer is also the type of person who would herd people into boxcars and send them off for processing as a "final solution" to whatever their current problem of the day happened to be.
If you're going to treat a fraudulent winner as the true winner,the next step is to fix how the fraud happened so it doesn't happen again. However, those efforts are currently called "voter supression".
Okay. Now that I've done that... feel free to check my work. Maybe you'll say that the talk of seizing voting machines indicated a willingness to pursue a path that wasn't clearly legal, but it was only considered and then not done. Wasn't it part of brainstorming about what could be done if a election actually were being stolen?
That plan came from outside the Ehite House, was brought into the White House and presented by Sydney Powell and Michael Flynn, was rejected by the Trump team and Powell and Flynn were never asked back to the White House.
Byron York ran this to ground already.
However, because that meeting occurred in the White House, that document by law has to be retained per the Official Records Act and thus is subject to scrutiny.
The democraticals and their Pelosi-pet GOPe-ers hope to go Full Ukraine Phone Call hoax with that document for Sham-peacbment III-Return Of The Son Of Impeachment....in Technicolor.
What if it looked about like the 2020 election, but it really was a fraud?
…and for the record I take umbrage with this statement assuming the hypothetical…
Just accept the ostensible winner?
You mean like Hilary?
Like Gore?
Like Abrams?
To name 3 examples.
The US electoral process is so totally fucked on the local and state levels that it makes us look like El Salvador or the like. (State and local because there are no national elections.)
Do other countries have so many jokes about multiple voting, dead people voting and the like?
Do other countries have a head of state who publicly jokes about "It's not who votes thats important but who counts the votes."? (Well, Stalin but that was a while hack)
Do other countries have huge portions voting absentee and/or early?
Do other countries allow online voting?
Do other countries allow voting without ID?
Do other countries allow non-citizens to vote?
(No to all of those in Puerto Rico, BTW. Or at least until the 2020 election. We may be getting bad habits)
One of the things the 2020 elections did was to peel back the scab and show the pus filled festering sore that we call "The US electoral system"
Maybe it will result in fixes. Not in the abortion that the Demmies are trying to promote. We don't need national elections. We need state elections and we need them fixed at the state and local levels.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Given the predilections of the 1/6 committee, the only documents which will be leaked/released are the damaging ones. Anything which looks exonerating, will be kept under wraps.
The thing which helps, is that the committee is so deep into group-think that they will inevitably release documents which could be read in more than one way. I don't think they will ever let out anything, which in a clear-cut manner, shows that Trump opposed any sort of coup.
"The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy."
This rationale is exactly the same as that being pushed by supporters of black box discrimination in university admissions.
If you are a fair minded person, you should ask yourself whether you would support it if your knew your opponents were abusing it to your detriment.
It's just a coincidence that it's progressives in both cases trying to create systematic discrimination against their political opponents.
The Bullshit (I’m using that word a lot today it seems) is right there in the headline, and highlights the unreadability of the “article”:
“What the Trump documents MIGHT tell …”
Not news. Not facts. All narrative and propaganda.
The blank-space trope was clever.
One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system
This response presupposes that the system is basically sound and that any significant problems are one-offs that we need not worry too much about. If the system is not basically sound, then this response enables election stealing, encouraging us down a path where either the system collapses or at least its problems are too big to fix without wrenching pain.
Okay. Now that I've done that... feel free to check my work. Maybe you'll say that the talk of seizing voting machines indicated a willingness to pursue a path that wasn't clearly legal, but it was only considered and then not done. Wasn't it part of brainstorming about what could be done if a election actually were being stolen?
That plan came from outside the Ehite House, was brought into the White House and presented by Sydney Powell and Michael Flynn, was rejected by the Trump team and Powell and Flynn were never asked back to the White House.
Byron York ran this to ground already.
However, because that meeting occurred in the White House, that document by law has to be retained per the Official Records Act and thus is subject to scrutiny.
The democraticals and their Pelosi-pet GOPe-ers hope to go Full Ukraine Phone Call hoax with that document for Sham-peacbment III-Return Of The Son Of Impeachment....in Technicolor.
The discussion about seizing voting machines is treated as the same as actually seizing the machines.
If I were Trump, I would want to smack Jim Acosta in the chops. That is the same as actually doing it. Ergo, Trump should go to jail for assault.
Russia Russia Russia.....4 years
The Dems are expert at inevitability rhetoric. Recall how Hillary was the inevitable nominee and the inevitable President.
The Dems don't want any investigation as to how the stole the election. Job One for the GOP should be making sure the Dems and Zuckerberg don't steal any more elections. But the GOP appears mostly clueless to me.
Am I the only person who thinks that the good Professor's closing paragraph is blatantly obvious sarcasm?
Sheesh, guys. Give her a little credit.
We do have a Constitutional remedy for stolen elections. It is not specifically in the Constitution but there is no question that it would pass constitutional and legal muster.
1) Harris resigns. It looks more certain every day that she is unlikely to be VP at the end of 2022. Even diehard demmies want her out for ruining the brand. Nobody can fire or punish her, though, other than impeachment and that won't happen.
So a buyout? Give her a lot of money to go away. A Supreme Court seat? Something, anything to get her to vacate the premises.
2) Once she leaves, someone has to replace her. Brandon will nominate whoever he is told to. If the American people truly and overwhelmingly believe that Donald Trump was the real winner in 20, he would be a logical choice.
If it happens after the new House/Senate are seated, he could probably be confirmed as VP.
3) Biden then quits and not only is Bob your uncle, Donald Trump is our president again.
3b) Alternatively, PEDJT could be elected Speaker of the House before Harris quits. Harris quits, then Biden and the Speaker steps back into the Oval.
I am in a minority thinking that it will be Donald Trump. But how many people think we are going to have Biden or Harris in office in another year or so?
And if not, who is going to replace them?
I say Let's Get Brandon To Quit But Not Yet (LGBTQBNY) because he should never have been in there in the first place and he is getting worse by the day. He really needs to go. Tomorrow would be good. Except, currently he would be replaced by Kamala Harris. As bad as Brandon is, I think she would be even worse. Yeah, hard to believe that is even possible.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Calls for Trump to acquiesce to fraud are pure civility bullshit, occurring as they do in the asymmetrical environment we exist in dominated by DNC-Media. How about the next election Democrats graciously concede a free and fair election and really show us deplorables how it’s done?
”We know the election was stolen. Living a lie is not the answer.“
No, you do not know that. You believe it, but there is no proof, so you’re just stamping your feet at this point. All for the utter mediocrity and flim flam man Trump.
You people love a titillating tease.
The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy.
Or.... Or he should apply as much political pressure as possible to prevent the same shenanigans from becoming permanently embedded in our political system condemning us to one party, unaccountable rule, like in Illinois.
@Althouse, what was the flaw in your upbringing that makes you so tolerant of obvious corruption?
"Not only should it happen but, having studied American history, I believe it already has more than once. There is credible reason to believe Nixon himself took that path in 1960."
I agree.
RoseAnn beat me to it, but Nixon did take the approach suggested in this post. BTW, I gave the Nixon speech in my 6th grade class mock election in 1968. One girl asked for my autograph because she knew I would be President some day.
The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent.
Some say that is what happened in 1960.
I'm not saying my "one answer" is correct or always correct, but I do think that if you can't show your evidence pretty well and pretty decisively, it's actually where you ought to go, and it's the same place you need to go when you are actually wrong about your belief that you won. So that's where I would fault Trump. You can contest the election up to a point, but then the interest in having a stable government and preserving faith in democracy becomes more important than actually getting it right.
Trump was banned from Twitter, which was the one platform that could have rapidly disseminated a message of calm to a crowd like that. Just like he was in the middle of being impeached for alluding to Biden's corruption as the pandemic was breaking out.
But that's water over the dam, what I am really worried about is that they are using the same kinds of "mind reading" analysis to get us into a hot war with Russia. You know, the country that they have been whipping up hate against ever since Hillary accused them of getting Trump elected.
The New York Times is the same rag that got us into the Iraq war, and the neocons have all become Democrats now, following the scent of their Borg queen, Hillary. So now its all war drums, all the time, v the Russians, v the Deplorables..
If Nixon had objected to what probably happened In Chicago, rather than merely acquiesced, then maybe we would have better election rules and safeguards now.
"Am I the only person who thinks that the good Professor's closing paragraph is blatantly obvious sarcasm?"
"beauty of democracy" is intended as sarcasm, and the overall paragraph is intended to make you feel very uncomfortable, but it in no way means that I think the opposite of what I'm saying.
Yes, a clever way for someone to acquire things over the presence of the law. FIFY
Now do rape.
Yeah, the way Hillary and the democrats behaved for four years…claiming that that the Russians interference caused Trump to win the 2016 election. They persecuted him the whole time and then managed to impeach him TWICE! Trump or any legitimate winner should just sit down and shut up and let the illegitimate President take over. Hypothetically, stop the crooked election before it can even begin.
Once the Republicans take the House and Senate in November, they must put stronger election laws in place.
The American people must be able to trust the system. And when they don’t, we find ourselves in the position we’re in now. A man in the Oval Office who is inept, demented and corrupt. The media and tech must stop trying to manipulate information to help the Left. When speech is censored and even cancelled, Americans feel that the system has been rigged…both unfair and corrupt to put a person in office that THEY have chosen. I blame these irresponsible people who made it possible for information regarding Biden to go unreported. The media allowed him to run a campaign from his home and protected him. Trump spoke the truth…fake news!
January 6 was a total set up and Pelosi is responsible for not protecting the Capitol. So, hypothetically, if we had an honest media we could find out the truth and stop the bullshit. We should all be alarmed that American citizens have been jailed for over a year. No bail for them… just for murderers, rapists and other assorted criminals. USA as banana republic!
If you think the system is corrupt, there is an obligation to speak up. And the Democrats refused to even consider that, or to take obvious and impartial steps to eliminate potential future problems. Their refusal to do anything other than vilify Republicans removes any obligation on the part of Trump to "go with the flow." And the future of our country demands that he not shut up.
The problem for Republicans is that they control almost no urban areas, and urban areas are where fraud is easiest. In this argument, "urban" is not a synonym for "black," it's a simple matter of arithmetic. I would say that most of the fraud in PA comes from white mobsters. They even put one of their own on the supreme court of that state, and have, according to the Department of Just Us, installed several election judges, and nobody is allowed to notice.
"One answer might be . . . "
Good one, professor! Excellent trolling.
Trump was removed under cover of an election.
That stinks on ice, and Trump allowed it to happen by being asleep at the wheel while Marc Elias and his co-conspirators were changing election laws in key states. The January 6 rally and its sequelae at the Capitol were too much, too late.
Goodbye, Trump. I voted for you twice. But--your're fired.
Written by someone who doesn't have a loved one on standby at Fort Bragg... ever.
So that's where I would fault Trump.
Why stop at Trump?
Where was this argument during Mueller?
"The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy."
You mean like Nixon did in 1960. A lot of good that did him, and the country.
"The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy."
You mean like Nixon did in 1960. A lot of good that did him, and the country.
Brainstorming to rob a bank is called conspiracy, so why isn’t brainstorming to steal the electoral vote count?
The quasi-legal efforts made and considered by Trump and his allies are the proper focus of the January 6 Committee. Congress should pass legislation to close those avenues.
“What if it looked about like the 2020 election, but it really was a fraud?”
In your hypothetical, do the Vice President, Senate Majority Leader, House Minority Leader, several governors, several top state election officials, and several state legislatures of the political party that is alleged to have been defrauded refuse to support the allegation that there was fraud?
One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface.
This is a horrible answer. Problems don't go away just because you pretend that they don't exist. Pretending that your husband isn't having an affair, that your daughter isn't an addict, or that you aren't deeply in debt you cannot pay doesn't mean that your life is somehow fine. The problems continue to fester, while at the same time everyone knows what's going on and their respect for you declines.
Whether or not there was some big steal in 2020, there is certainly more than enough evidence that the elections were seriously mishandled by state and local officials, who ignored election laws, court rulings, and basic procedures. And courts and legislature refused to address these issues out of fear that it might cause some disruption to society. So instead they allowed it to go through, and a dementia-addled old man to be put into office as a figurehead.
The only way you can have elections which people trust is if officials are willing to adopt a thicker skin and actually go after bad behavior. The first time a precinct gets its numbers thrown out because there were more votes than registered voters, the first time elections officials face legal action because they failed to use the proper paper and pens for ballots, the first time a legislature steps in and decides how to award EVs because there were questionable counting practices from big city precincts, this crap will suddenly stop.
"but there is no proof,"
There is no proof that will ever be published in The Nation, or The New Republic, or the New York Times, or The Washington Post, but there is plenty of evidence. But it's banned from Twitter, which assured us incorrectly that there were safeguards in place, such as signature verification and scrutineers at polling places, and therefore any discussion of election irregularities must be wrong, when we know very well that scrutineers were tossed, notably in GA, where, after the scrutineers were sent home, and the cameras were shut off, boxes of ballots came out from underneath the tables and were scanned in. We only know this because the Georgia Dome cameras, unbenknownst to the vote counters, were still on.
We also know that there were over 6,000 fraudulent same day registrations in Wisconsin, and drop boxes deployed in contravention of Wisconsin law, and hundreds of millions of dollars funded illegally partisan workers in Wisconsin who only worked to raise turnout in heavily Democrat precincts, who not only falsely claimed to be non partisan, but worked with election officials, funded by Zuckerbucks, only in Democrat precincts, and who, and I am going to put this in a separate paragraph:
Had 'read-write' access to official Wisconsin election systems.
If you are going to asset a negative like "there is no proof," you would do well to at least pretend to look at the evidence, but then you argument would fall apart immediately, so you simply won't do it.
If the election were actually stolen, that would be the rare instance where political violence seems necessary. And, Trump is Benedict Arnold for making our patriot saviors stand down on January 6 when the very fate of our democracy was in their hands.
"You've got to fight like hell or you won't have a country anymore?"
Fight like hell until, when? Fight like hell until someone tell you to stop?!
If Trump believed in his heart (he didn't) that the election was "stolen," then he was complicit when he ordered his troops out of the capitol. If, as if certainly the case, he knows he lost the election, he is just a pathetic run-of-the-mill conman.
How many FBI agents were there?
Michael E. Lopez said...
Am I the only person who thinks that the good Professor's closing paragraph is blatantly obvious sarcasm?
Sheesh, guys. Give her a little credit.
You are new here.
Ann is all about leftist lies and facades.
And she looks down on the deplorables with "cruel neutrality." That same neutrality never extends to the leftists. She will complain about them and point out their hypocrisy but when push comes to shove she will kneel to them every time because she wants things to be "normal."
Your mistake is that you think everyone else thinks like you do and that your path is what any intelligent person would choose and that Ann is intelligent and should think like you do.
"Written by someone who doesn't have a loved one on standby at Fort Bragg... ever."
Only we deplorables seem to have loved ones in the military.
The problem with your suggestion is that in 2020 the tampering of the election was so obvious to any honest person paying attention, that Trump had to speak out against it or the consequences would have been worse. There would have been riots in November that would have made January 6th look like a picnic.
Trump's bluster gave people hope, which had a calming effect. People's emotions were raw in November. By January most had calmed down and cynically accepted the outcome.
In short, the Dems were so sloppy with their cheating they gave Trump no choice but to speak out against the corruption of the process.
They're all happy with the Supreme Court now but if the Republicans retake the House this fall they may not be so happy. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence the Obama Whitehouse was involved in developing the Russia, Russia hoax against Trump. Just wait until the new Congressional Russigate Investigation Committee demands all the Whitehouse documents from that time. They never think their actions through on the "What if the Republicans Retake the House/Senate/Presidency?" basis.
Mike Sylwester @ 7:58: "...They are looking for evidence that, after he was informed about the riot, he willfully delayed speaking out against it." I tend to agree (although I think they are happy just to keep the process going, because they think it weakens their adversaries).
But the irony is, by definition a "riot" can't be managed. Once it's been lit (by whatever instigator) it will burn until it's done. Eiterh the crowd exhausts itself or is forcibly dissipated. A series of increasingly-frantic tweets or a stentorian speech by Trump (let alone by anyone else, lacking his credibility with the crowd) would do nothing. And I think the Committee knows that. But they want to pretend. They have a wonderfully simple Big Lie with this childish theory of causation. That's all they've got, and they're sticking to it. IMHO.
Mr. Wibble @ 9:05: Bingo. Thanks.
This is just like Trump-Russia Collusion. Trump was the VICTIM of an attempted Coup by Hillary's Campaign-The FBI-and Democrats in Congress. Oh, and McCain was involved too. Now, we've had the MSM/Democrats attacking Trump for inciting violence and "storming" the Captial for over a Year. Proof? Zero.
Like Trump-Russia, the secondary aim is to seize Trump's communications and grill his subordinates in the hope some OTHER illegal behavior can be used to hang him. Trump did have the election stolen, but Republicans are so RETARDED they refused to help him. They will lose again in 2024, and will be happy to do so.
Any election that cannot be fully audited produces unreliable results.
How is it remotely possible that elections in 2020 could not be audited and confirmed?
One supposes that both parties benefit from the ambiguity of the current system.
"Where was this argument during Mueller?"
Well that was different.
" If, as if certainly the case, he knows he lost the election, he is just a pathetic run-of-the-mill conman."
Do they teach mind reading at the college you went to?
Recounts and audits happen all the time in local or state elections in order for the candidates and the constituents to have faith in the outcome. That this can't happen quickly and efficiently in our Presidential election is truly sad in this day and age.
Trump had to highlight this and take steps to correct it - its the right thing to do. His voters did not need him to vocalize this himself, btw. Given the trajectories of the Biden campaign (50+ people attending) and the Trump campaign (10k+ people attending), it was clear that tremendous fraud occurred in a few big cities to adjust the outcome. These areas should have been quickly and thoroughly audited, for the sake of our republic.
And I am on record here in your blog as initially being a critic of Trump's reaction to the election; but I changed my mind upon further reflection.
"Brainstorming to rob a bank is called conspiracy, so why isn’t brainstorming to steal the electoral vote count?"
No matter how hard the argument is slapped down, and Althouse slapped it down pretty hard in the original post, lefties will pretend it isn't so and invent a conspiracy based on counterfactuals and mind reading and believe it whole heartedly.
Democrats remind me of the bowfins that sometimes hang out under my dock. You can catch the same fish as many times in a row as you want, using the same piece of bait, until you get bored of it.
Thinking on Nixon, perhaps he should have objected. Perhaps he should have fought.
Look what his acceptance got us. JFK/LBJ then JFK/HH. two major wars, both of which the US lost and effects of which continue to echo down to this day.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
"The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy."
Just like the J6 Commission is doing.
I join in prof. Althouse’s opinion and write separately only to note that the January 6 committee could do something useful by analyzing each and every claim of election fraud made by Trump or his allies and also whether they in fact believed those claims or were cynically lying to steal the election. I’d start with Trump’s tweet that “millions” of votes were “altered.”
"Where was this argument during Mueller?"
Check the archive. You have access to know the answer to your question, so it's wrong to float an insinuation like that.
Prof A @ 8:48 [echoing "Roseanne" @ 8:08 ]: "'Not only should it happen but, having studied American history, I believe it already has more than once. There is credible reason to believe Nixon himself took that path in 1960.'
I agree."
Ditto. The more I read of JFK and the Kennedy Machine, the more plausible this argument becomes.
One thing our resident contrarians have not done is rise to the challenge that Althouse made, of finding evidence of wrongdoing by Trump that doesn't depend on assuming that he is guilty, or that the other bodies to which he planned to appeal are assumed to be corrupt. The courts simply refused to hear the cases.
In PA, the courts found that illegal procedures were used to count the votes, but claimed that there was no possible remedy. Well, there is a remedy, the legislature decides after taking the evidence into account.
… but it in no way means that I think the opposite of what I'm saying.
@Althouse, and do you think for a moment that you would argue the same way if it was Republicans accused of cheating?
exhelodrvr1 said...
If you think the system is corrupt, there is an obligation to speak up. And the Democrats refused to even consider that, or to take obvious and impartial steps to eliminate potential future problems. Their refusal to do anything other than vilify Republicans removes any obligation on the part of Trump to "go with the flow." And the future of our country demands that he not shut up.
1/25/22, 8:56 AM
But when you do that, be careful...you just may end up uncharged in Nasty Nancy's DC gulag.
This Person said...
"The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy."
Just like the J6 Commission is doing.
1/25/22, 9:22 AM
DING, DING, DING!!!!!!
BUMBLE BEE said...
Written by someone who doesn't have a loved one on standby at Fort Bragg... ever.
This just demonstrates why the banks on the river of history seem so high.
Positions of power in society are magnetic to people who want to abuse that power.
And most people just want to be safe and have their genes survive to the next generation.
99% of the population over the course of history have not had hope or any reason to do anything other than be moral cowards. That is why the United States is such a deviation in history.
The average citizen was given the power to demand that justice be done and sufferance was not afforded the 1% of the population that was driven to dominate everyone else.
It is understandable why Ann and DD Driver and others of that group know that there was injustice but just kneel and let it go. They are just listening to their biology.
It is understandable. It is not laudable.
"Where was this argument during Mueller?"
Check the archive. You have access to know the answer to your question, so it's wrong to float an insinuation like that.
Interesting that the admonition to back down for the sake of democracy is directed in this very post to Trump and not the J6 Commission. Instead, when it comes to the J6 Commission, it's just a hope that they don't find a smoking gun.
If I didn't know better, I would think the response quoted above is a little self-serving and maybe disingenuous.
But I won't make that accusation, so we can preserve good feelz in the comments.
""The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy."
"This rationale is exactly the same as that being pushed by supporters of black box discrimination in university admissions."
Yes. Thanks for noticing.
"the January 6 committee could do something useful by analyzing each and every claim of election fraud made by Trump or his allies and also whether they in fact believed those claims or were cynically lying to steal the election."
Of course the members of the committee were hand picked to ensure the outcome Pelosi desired, which is why she put the daughter of the war mongering neocon, Liz Cheney on the committee to represent the Republicans. The only way to get on that committee was to profess a believe that Trump was guilty before hearing the first piece of evidence.
I have an open mind about Dominion, but I don't understand why state legislatures should be precluded from examining the software that counts the votes when oversight is the legislature's responsibility, under our system, a principle which has been established since soon after the founding, and which is the same justification that Pelosi, daughter of a mob figure, is using on her witch hunt.
Maybe you can explain to me why we can't examine the machines that count the votes, I would love to hear it. I am sure it will be good.
Which is better, to have the illusion of fair elections or to have fair elections?
Which is better, to allow the people to believe that elections were unfair or to do a thorough audit to demonstrate that the election was completely above board?
In 1960, the ability of people to surmise and share conspiracy theories was much less than today. It would have been very easy to quell the masses with a "he won, it's over speech", than it is today. If Trump pulled a Nixon, I don't think it would have changed a lot of minds, and would have actually reduced Trump's legacy as a fighter. It would not have done much to improve perception on the integrity of the system. Only audits and safeguards would do that.
Who benefits from avoiding audits and implementing safeguards?
"If you are a fair minded person, you should ask yourself whether you would support it if your knew your opponents were abusing it to your detriment."
It can't be answered in the abstract. You don't sue over every wrong. You have to weigh all the factors. Can you win? What is the collateral damage in fighting over things particular thing? Can you prove it? Is the burden of proof against you? How important is it? We've all let many wrongs go. We choose our battles.
And lawsuits don't go on forever. There are procedures to be followed, including requirements of evidence, satisfying the burden of proof, and precluding relitigation. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, these things are "a concession to the shortness of life."
Perfectionism is not what runs things.
Brainstorming to rob a bank is called conspiracy, so why isn’t brainstorming to steal the electoral vote count?
Let's say your business was robbed. You tell the police but they say you don't have standing to report the loss, plus you have no evidence and you won't be allowed to get it. You and your employees have a meeting to discuss what options you might have to that you have not already tried. One employee comes in with a "brilliant" idea of going to the thief's lair and confiscating their goods. That employee is disinvited from future meetings.
Does that sound like a conspiracy to commit a crime?
"What is the collateral damage in fighting over things particular thing?" = What is the collateral damage in fighting over this particular thing?
"I'm not saying my "one answer" is correct or always correct, but I do think that if you can't show your evidence pretty well and pretty decisively, it's actually where you ought to go, and it's the same place you need to go when you are actually wrong about your belief that you won."
"We've all let many wrongs go. We choose our battles."
I agree with all of this. Hypothetically.
But it's an incomplete answer, because we are not finished with it. Just ask the J6 Commission and "voting rights" legislation.
As a compliment, “actually”.
In any rules-based contest (a game; an election) each player is both himself (or herself) and a representative of the contest itself, an instantiator of the rules. When I score a goal, it is only a goal if I don't cheat. If I cheat and get away with it, the game in a sense collapses.
If I cheat to win an election, it wasn't an election. Should I expect others not to notice what I did? The right to audit; to have the umpires step in and review the tape (a kind of "control loop" on top of the "control loop" of the election itself; the process by which we inspect, judge and choose those whom we allow to control us) --this right of audit and process-testing is perhaps even more important than the election itself. NO process without a control loop is likely to be stable and useful over time. Especially when the prize for cheating is so very high.
Trump was right to challenge the process but (a) he is his own worst enemy when it comes to playing the political game (b) the lack of an effective audit process was not very well appreciated and there really doesn't seem to be a robust one, that can reliably and quickly "review the tape." We saw how precarious things were with the chad counting circus in 2000, but I suspect it has only gotten worse. Certainly the ability to cheat has grown much greater with mail-in ballots and state/local "rule changes" that violate the Constitutional requirement that state legislatures alone may make election laws.
So here we are. Should we just roll over? How do we push the system toward honest and efficient audit processes? Not, I think, by acquiescing in theft.
GRW3: "Just wait until the new Congressional Russigate Investigation Committee demands all the Whitehouse documents from that time."
There is zero chance the GOPe will ever allow a thorough investigation and due diligence on what the obama/Biden's Earpiece administration did.
Ever.
And there is zero chance Roberts and Kavanaugh would ever allow a republican led committee to gain access to those records after ex-Presidentes obama/Biden challenge it.
This latest ruling/not-a-ruling-just-a-dicta deal Roberts engineered to force the release of Trump admin documents to the Pelosi-coverup-setup "committee" is another one-time only Trump attainder.
And don't think that Lindsay Graham and Mitch and Sen Burr and Paul Ryan want any of that information to come out....because they were explicitly a part of it.
That's why the Gang of 8 briefings by Brennan and Clapper were purposely modified so that only Devin Nunes was given no relevant information at all and had to go digging for it himself over at the White House SCIF. He was the only one of the Gang of 8 that wasn't knee-deep into this ploy.
If you want people to have faith in elections you don't stop the vote count in the important swing states, send the observer's home and then resume the vote counting in the middle of the night. If this is not cheating it certainly gives the appearance of cheating.
If Trump had won under these circumstances cities would have burned and many people would've died.
The January 6 protesters were exercising their constitutional right to protest against what looked to be blatant corruption of our election process. Most of them were not there to destroy; they weren't even armed. It's a crime, and it's un-American for these people to be held so long without trials.
"And lawsuits don't go on forever."
Ask Mark Steyn about that one, or maybe read Bleak House.
Here's a simple truth in democracy (or democratic republics)....
When your election has solid grounds for doubt, when half your electoral population has minor to major doubts about the veracity and integrity of the vote, and when 2/2 major parties both claim major voting issues - i.e. voter fraud or voter disenfranchisement...
...When in elections in 2000, 2016, and 2020 major parties and leaders involved in the election claimed the result was incorrect...
Then your elections are not valid.
And the lack of DEALING with those simple facts is the tell.
Howard said...
“You people love a titillating tease.”
writes an overly-confident Howard the Fluffer
'Maybe you'll say that the talk of seizing voting machines indicated a willingness to pursue a path that wasn't clearly legal, but it was only considered and then not done.'
It means that they were ACTUALLY concerned about a stolen election, not just making it up in an attempt to keep power. This should be obvious.
As far as having plans; we should have plans to invade Canada, whether we use them or not.
One further thought about Nixon:
Assuming he in fact did accept the result in 1960 despite thinking the election was stolen, did it lead to his later actions that led to his own resignation with Watergate?
Thanks for calling out the New York Times for the four flushers that they are.
Four Flusher
From 19th c. poker players - someone who is claiming to have a five card flush, when actuality they only have four cards in the suit.
The "draft E.O." is like throwing a club in with your four spades to claim a winning hand, to make it look like all the cards are black and you have a winning hand, when in fact all you have are circumstances which only weigh against Trump if you assume he is guilty, and for which there are innocent explanations.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/21/donald-trump-voting-machines-draft-executive-order
I’d read a post, cannot remember where!?- that anything presented in the WH has got to be included in the J6 investigation b/c - it’s there? Even if not recognized by the President- or viewed, may be the better word. Every(EVERY) publication is slanted against Trump. Every EVERY time. I don’t get this. Is it b/c a lifelong Dem red-pilled and grew up b/c of it? Recognizing the needs of a country to make her whole and strong again? Independent.
It’s ironic to me that after all the tantrums of the Left- about every word Trump uttered or gesture he made- they now have someone who actually does these things? Lying dog-faced pony soldiers, all.
It’s as if Alec Baldwin could go out and shoot someone dead- and get away w/it!
Or, steal an election…
The political prisoners jailed for J6 and treated horribly, from all we’ve heard: is an injustice that is worth fighting for.
Ann Althouse said...
"What is the collateral damage in fighting over things particular thing?" = What is the collateral damage in fighting over this particular thing?
What line are you ever going to draw? How much moral cowardice is acceptable?
Name one thing the regime has been honest about since Trump started running for president.
One thing.
Name one thing where they have compromised.
One thing.
They will never stop pushing. You can keep kneeling until the cows come home.
But the only thing that stops them is fighting them.
Let the Wookiee win!
Right because John Chisholm went away, no like a viral plague, he set upon an army of locusts to the body politic
Just let me see the late night vote runs of all the 5 states in question and also the other 45.
Just let me look at them. I remember certain states, im talking to you Wisconsin, getting runs of 20,000 votes 100% for Biden. More than 1 entry.
That doesnt happen except in a few places. N. Korea, China and Russia to name a few.
Even Reagan or pick your republican candidate would get some votes in areas you wouldnt think he'd get any. They didnt get many, but they all got some.
Will I ever see those vote runs? Nope.
Kudos on the presentation. Well done.
Trump Warns Putin ‘No Normal Relationship’ With Future U.S. President Possible If Russia Invades Ukraine.
“Graham says Trump told him that ‘Putin is realizing that Biden’s weak, but he doesn’t realize that Biden won’t be around in 2024.'”
Trump will go down in history as a transformational individual.
While he is really just riding a much larger movement it really is interesting to watch this unfold.
He is doing more than just fighting a corrupt venal illegitimate Regime.
You are watching the banks of the River of History being eroded.
“We know the election was stolen. Living a lie is not the answer.“
“No, you do not know that. You believe it, but there is no proof, so you’re just stamping your feet at this point. All for the utter mediocrity and flim flam man Trump.”
Actually, a lot more proof than that there was no fraud in these cities. Which, I know, is asking you to prove a negative. But we have the audit and canvas in AZ, showing that far more illegal ballots were counted than Biden’s (or Kelly’s) margin of victory, Probably over a half million (50x FJB’s margin) ballots that lack full provenance, coming in from people who were dead or long moved, or not mailed out in the first place. Ballots counted with no signatures, unmatched signatures, no DL, etc. Thousands of ballots on the wrong paper, or printed by the wrong printer. All that has been exhaustively documented. Inspection of every ballot video recorded. One state. All admissible evidence. And you can easily see why there hasn’t been more proof around the country - Maricopa County fought that audit tooth and nail, every inch of the way. It took court order after court order to do what they did. We still don’t know if the Dominion machines were legitimate. They very much appear to have been illegally connected to the Internet election night, but maybe scarier, the county claims never to have had root access to the election machines. The election officials cannot prove that their election machines hadn’t been tampered with, that they hadn’t had manipulated, because the only party with the ability to determine that, that has sufficient computer access to determine that, is the same party suspected of fudging vote totals across the country (Dominion). They can’t prove this, because they never had full control over their election machines.
Joe Biden told us that the Democrats were going to cheat. They created ‘The Most Extensive And Inclusive Voter Fraud Organization.’ Why create such an organization if you're not going to use it?
"In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface."
Suppose a woman discovers a lump in her breast. Potential surgery/chemotherapy is certainly a trauma, is it not? Is the solution to ignore the lump and hope for the best?
I believe it already has more than once. There is credible reason to believe Nixon himself took that path in 1960.
It happened in 1876 with Hayes and Tilden. Congress had a commission that agreed to confirm Hayes but end Reconstruction in return for Tilden conceding. That resulted in 80 years of Jim Crow, a great result.
Nixon declined Rogers' offer to investigate fraud in Chicago and Texas because we were in a Cold War with the USSR. He worried that such a dispute would make the US vulnerable to attack. No such crisis existed in 2020.
The Democrats, who have given up on honest elections since at least 2000, tried to make fraud the default standard for elections with HR-1. They find fraud very useful in continuing corruption like that of Biden. Obama has concealed his better than Biden has.
"Where was this argument during Mueller?"
Check the archive. You have access to know the answer to your question, so it's wrong to float an insinuation like that.
You think you wrote a blog post saying even if Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election the Mueller investigation should shut down and the American people should accept the results for the good of the country?
Hmmm.
You'll need to do more than a quick search of your blog to find that one.
It' a simple question.
How many FBI agents were embedded in the crowd?
Why was Ray Epps removed from the FBI's most wanted list? - after he illegally asked people to enter the sacred capitol building. ?
There was NO proof that Trump colluded with Russia to take the presidency from its rightful owner - queen Hillary.
But that did not stop the liars and paid propagandists in the Maddow-press to push that lie for years.
We all saw that the left more than likely cheated with fraud in the 2020 Covid election steal. In targeted precincts. Forgotten by the loyalist left is the fact that any and all inf about Biden and his crook son Hunter should be arrested and jailed for their international pay to play -get-rich off of the washed American tax payer dollars schemes they used in Ukrainian and China.
Obs, the best way to allay any doubts about the election is to fight like a cornered honey badger against all investigations which have any possibility of uncovering the truth, and that is what Democrats are doing, so why are people upset?
"The true winner of the election should see the profound national interest in moving forward with a new President in office and fully in power — free of any cloud of uncertainty."
Never has Richard Nixon (1960 edition) received such flattering praise. It did warp his personality a bit--see Nixon 1962 and 1972 for all the bitterness that the 1960 good loserdom engendered. Al Gore--after having tried all other avenues--was ultimately a gracious loser in 2000. John Kerry, no. McCain and Romney? Yes. Hillary Clinton? Nyet. DJT? Are you kidding me?
Sufficient security for crowd management was denied. There is no evidence of forced entry into the capitol, let alone people wielding scalpels. An unarmed woman was aborted with plausible cause. The riot ("disorder") was forced by capitol and DC police electing to assault men and women present. A probable Whitmer-closet. The democratic/dictatorial duality is a clear and progressive risk to human and civil rights.
I always thought, as a strategy, Trump should have embraced the "interregnum" and continued to pursue with hammer and tong allegations of election fraud, and plan to run in 2024 against the Biden record.
The proof of the election pudding is in the eating of the results.
Maybe even Trump didn't think Biden would be this bad?
"What could be done?"
Nothing. So the Dem gambit is to institutionalize cheating, win forever, and foreclose correction. Of course, that destroys trust and degrades "our democracy." Since that is an obvious outcome, it must be part of the goal.
Dems have lost for now. But they only need to win once.
The problem was, that we discovered that there is no remedy for a stolen election. Those claiming fraud had their lawsuits dismissed, time after time, for standing and procedural reasons. Complaints submitted with stacks of sworn affidavits were dismissed for lack of evidence, without giving the plaintiffs a chance to build a record in a hearing. Catch 22 all the way down. Then it was January 6, and after that, it was all moot. You then get Ann asking “ One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface”.
We see what that got us: A trillion+ dollar COVID-19 bill that is funding schools not to have classes, with billions going overseas to scammers, etc; running out of Afghanistan in the middle of the night, leaving billions in arms and a number of people behind; a senseless pandemic policy that is killing people through forced shots of a novel and barely tested gene therapy masquerading as a vaccine; resulting in massive supply chain issues and failures (while the male Sec of the Treasury takes an extended maternity leave to “nurse” his new kids); runaway inflation, for the first time in 40 years; and a politicized militarization of the DOJ and its FBI against the political enemies of the FJB Administration, resulting in hundreds of 1/6 protesters languishing in dreadful conditions in jail, completely ignoring blatant 4th and 5th Amdt, as well as Speedy Trial provisions.
That is what you get when you go along to get along, and allow voter fraud to install a senile puppet as President.
Robert Cook said...
”We know the election was stolen. Living a lie is not the answer.“
No, you do not know that. You believe it, but there is no proof, so you’re just stamping your feet at this point. All for the utter mediocrity and flim flam man Trump.
I know that the mathematical analysis techniques used to detect fraud all absolutely red line when applied to the election results.
I know that every single mathematical regression with any normal data set predicts Biden got fewer than 70 million votes with 99% confidence intervals and they put the mean around 62 million.
I know that Trump was ahead all through November 3rd.
I know that multiple vote counting stations in heavily democrat areas kicked republican poll observers out simultaneously in 6 states in the middle of the night on November 4th.
I know that Biden got 80% of the votes counted after November 3rd. This is statistically impossible in an election where Trump got 75 million votes.
Absolutely. statistically. impossible. With 12 sigma confidence intervals.
I know that the democrats and their GOPe allies have blocked all attempts at audits.
I know that the corporate oligarchs that bought the election are also censoring discussion of the election.
I know there was fraud.
You know there was fraud.
Everyone knows that the Biden Regime is illegitimate.
At this point we are just separating and identifying the moral cowards.
Trump is not Nixon, for better and for worse. Would you make the swap? Would you want the forebearing Quaker Nixon of 1960, if it meant taking the devious, conspiring Nixon of the early Seventies?
"The true winner of the election should see the profound national interest in moving forward with a new President in office and fully in power — free of any cloud of uncertainty."
Perhaps Richard Nixon did that in 1960, when many suspected that Mayor Daley's Chicago machine had committed fraud to give Kennedy victory in Illinois, and thus in the country?
The problem with "Independents" is they always take the MSM/Democrat side. Gore didn't lay down and die in 2000. Don't remember any "independents" getting upset. Hillary after 2016, said her big mistake was not contesting the election. She said that all the way until Nov 2020.
Yes, Nixon didn't contest the 1960 election and didn't want to "tear the USA apart". So the Democrats repaid the favor by tearing the USA apart over Watergate. Nixon was a just a pathetic loser. He kept thinking that if "took the high road" and kept "Reaching accross the aisle" the New York Times and the Liberal establishment would love him. Instead they never stopped hating him till the day he died.
If Trump had done what the D's and Mitt Romney wanted and gracefully conceded in November 2020, he'd still be under investigation, he'd still have gotten sued, and Establishment would still hate him and want him destroyed. The only difference? It would not have been for Jan 6th. It'd be for something else.
to the Left you're not the enemy because of what you do, its because of who you are. Republcians and Center-right NEVER want to accept that. "Can't we just be friends?" is their pathetic whine.
We’re past that sort of congeniality, where we prioritize the interests of the republic over our own party, because that’s a loser’s game if only one side actually prioritizes the commonwealth. We’re in the era of splitting babies.
May I propose a simple solution for voting integrity?
If anyone casts an illegal ballot, the penalty should be death.
Have a trial, and if found guilty, follow it with a swift, humane execution.
If voting is so fucking sacred to Dems (I agree), then let's take it seriously.
The hypothetical answer seems to be the George W. Bush model. One major difference there is the supposedly stolen/fraudulent part was tested multiple times before and after the Inauguration. 2000 is considered stolen because SCOTUS forced the state to abide by the laws on the books, rather than the State Supreme Court desire to minimize the question to handpick counties after the previous recounts failed to give Gore his desired results. 2020, the counting continued well after election day and when the results came out in Biden's favor, it was verboten to even suggest the results be challenged in any manner.
But yeah, a little comity from Biden and Democrats would have gone a long way. Alas, we got the "Stupid, Son of a Bitch".
“ The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy.”
Sort of like Nixon with JFK, right?
In this era doing nothing would allow the true winner to leave in place the pretext that our banana republic is a country of laws.
See you in court.
The January 6 "commission" was not instantiated in accordance with it's authorizing resolution, therefore it's actions are beyond improper and invalid. It's actions are illegal. Enforcing it's subpoenas by legal authorities and judges are also criminal actions.
As to elections, there were so many unusual actions that the only reasonable conclusion is that they were intended to obscure and defraud. Despite lawsuits, I'm not aware of any that were adjudicated in a court of law with an adversarial process. If the judges weren't liberals completely rejecting things, they were conservatives that were afraid of the consequences of being known as Trump supporters. If the situation were reversed, lawsuits would definitely get a hearings.
The point of the committee is to find a way to bar Trump from holding office again. Everything else is pointing and shouting squirrel!
>> I would say that most of the fraud in PA comes from white mobsters
>> You believe it, but there is no proof, so you’re just stamping your feet at this point.
In Philly, 59 voting districts went 100% to Obama vs Romney. 19,000 votes to ZERO. In a heavily African American part of the city.
You are being told that 19,000+ people all filled out their ballots EXACTLY the same, without a single person 'accidently' voting for Romney. Not one, out of 19,000.
And if you believe that is actually what happened, no amount of proof will convince you.
>>Brainstorming to rob a bank is called conspiracy
No, it is not. It requires a actual act in furtherance of the conspiracy, like actually going into a bank and robbing it.
Try again.
Lefty Bank (9:05): “ Brainstorming to rob a bank is called conspiracy, so why isn’t brainstorming to steal the electoral vote count?”
How about brainstorming to steal an election with numerous overt acts in furtherance? When wil the J6 Committee buffoons get to that one? Never? Oh.
We will probably never know that the election was stolen. Absent the necessary confessions and incontrovertible evidence there will always be a question mark or asterisk with 2020. It is clear that it couldn't have been a Trump landslide. Beyond that it's murky.
Trump as victim though, doesn't quite work. He botched too much before, during, and after the election.
What if the stolen vote count fraud was paid for by the Red Chinese Army? Should patriotic Americans just say thank you Chairman Xi and apply for their share of the loot next time. That is fine, but the entire election industry and News Media reporting it’s drama will be gone forever.
LLR Chuck and Lincoln Pedophile Project Booster: "See you in court."
Let's hope its not for you know what by you know whom...(your allies)
"The point of the committee is to find a way to bar Trump from holding office again."
Yep. They couldn't get enough R Senators to convict Trump in their 2nd Shampeachment. So, this is the substitute. The J6 committee also had two other objectives:
1) To harm the Republicans in the 2022 midterms. This has already failed, even the dumb soccer Moms don't care.
2) To rummage around in trump's communications and cross-examine all his subordinates in the hopes of finding some OTHER illegal or unethical behavior.
I'm wondering if Pelosi will put us through a THIRD Shampeachment after the J6 report. It's possible. The D's control the House and can do ANYTHING. The D senate would love to have another Trump trial and cause him problems. More likely is that something, no matter how questionable or absurd, will be given to the DoJ for prosecution.
Sigh, elections are not a lawsuit … Without integrity of the process there is no political peace. Those in power want to stay there and accumulate more money, houses and glam vacations. They have no interest in fair and open elections that are auditable. They are old and don’t care about what they do to the nation. That applies to Republicans as well as the Jan 6 committee. BTW, Nancy did not want any but hand chosen Republicans on the committee because she did not want the leaks Schiff’s impeachment committee experienced. To take any part of what they are doing seriously is to enable them. The committee is a joke, their pronouncements are the words of knaves best ignored.
An interesting statistical study would be to look at how incumbents far in elections were the winner receives 51% or less. Bet the results do not fall inline with probability.
>>The point of the committee is to find a way to bar Trump from holding office again.
For now. As with all government agencies, the scope will gradually expand, and years from now they will still be "investigating" "insurrectionists".
They won't stop until somebody makes them stop. Good luck with that one....
In your hypothetical, do the Vice President, Senate Majority Leader, House Minority Leader, several governors, several top state election officials, and several state legislatures of the political party that is alleged to have been defrauded refuse to support the allegation that there was fraud?
What if they stand to gain by the fraud?
It is inevitable, and you can mark my words, that the Democrats will challenge the results of an election in the future. They will justify their claims on the basis that there really is evidence this time of foul play. Or they will act as if they've always been super concerned about election integrity.
Out the window will go the need to prove "wide spread voter fraud" as a prerequisite of investigating.
No one will be banned from social media for pushing their theories of election abuse.
The legacy media won't describe the claims as being without evidence, baseless, debunked conspiracy theories or lies. At best we will be told we need to wait and see all the evidence.
Auditing will be a no-brain'er. Anyone resisting an investigation will be complicit in "hiding the fraud."
Dozens of "retired election observers" will sign letters published in the NYT criticizing the election.
Mountains will be turned over to find red states that did anything "illegal" in the election administration; the inability to prove the illegality changed the results will be an inconsequential detail.
Ds in Congress or the DOJ will conduct investigations, centering not on the actions of those objecting to the election, but on "finding" the irregularities.
And a smattering of individuals who claim to have been intimidated or otherwise had their vote "stolen" will be paraded around, again without the need to prove that voter intimidation was "wide spread," or even present any objective evidence. We'll be expected to take their word for it.
You can already see it in Biden's undermining of confidence in the midterms and in the Democrats' cries of voter suppression (baseless claims? "Wide spread" suppression? eh, shut up) that supposedly justify putting them in charge of running elections across the country.
"You can contest the election up to a point, but then the interest in having a stable government and preserving faith in democracy becomes more important than actually getting it right."
And what if you have good reason to suspect that the illegitimate winner and the criminals who responsible for the fraud will then use any means necessary to put you and your family behind bars for the rest of your life?
Wouldn't you fight for your children if not yourself?
The point of the committee is to find a way to bar Trump from holding office again. Everything else is pointing and shouting squirrel!
So is the talk of "we'll finally know what's in these documents!" They already know. This is political theater to make it look like they found some smoking gun.
If the SCOTUS has denied releasing, it would have been leaked, and the same "smoking gun" narrative would be used, this time with complicit SCOTUS added.
It's the same thing with the tax returns. Do you think that Trump's political enemies don't know what is exactly in his tax returns already? Of course they do. The IRS isn't some secret Fort Knox for data.
The question really we should be asking is why does Trump engender so much fear. Name any political candidate that stoked this much fear that he would run again after losing. So much fear that they would expend political capital by trying to impeach him after he was already out of office.
Nixon didn't create this much fear, but he's probably the closest.
The lack of answer for this basic question is one of the reasons conspiracy theories like Pizzagate come about.
The true winner should do nothing more than to offer strong support to his erstwhile opponent and to celebrate the beauty of democracy.
mmmm... sounds like the plot of a Franz Kafka story.
What if it looked about like the 2020 election, but it really was a fraud?
Since the 2020 election really was a fraud, it would look just like the current situation.
One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system
That completely destroys confidence in the system. Because the situation was not "Trump accused the Democrats of stealing the election, and so his voters agreed with him", the situation was wet voters looked at Democrat "vote counters" excluding poll watchers, and shutting down on election night while there were still votes to count, only to have miraculous turnarounds in their States' results the next morning, and said "hey, the Democrats are trying to steal the election!"
If the response to fraud is "hey, congratulations!", then you're telling everyone else that they should commit fraud too, and that no election winner is ever legitimate.
I think there's an even odds chance that they were be truck bombs or some other attack happening at the Detroit, Philly, and Milwaukee vote counting sites this year. Just to keep them from stealing the Governor's and Senate races
Because we now all know that Democrat vote fraud won't be stopped. Which means there's no rule of law, and no democracy possible.
And once you've set up that situation, exactly how do you expect people to respond, other than with violence? you expect them to just say "oh, well, I guess I have no right to have a voice"?
NYC JournoList said...
The point of the committee is to find a way to bar Trump from holding office again. Everything else is pointing and shouting squirrel!
They can't.
Elected officials are not "Officers of the US". The Presidency is not listed in teh 14th Amendment as one of the offices that "traitors" can't run for.
To the extent that any Southern State has a legal bar to "traitors" running for office, those bars will all be removed before teh 2024 election if there's any chance they can be used against Trump.
This was all pointed out during the second bogus Trump "impeachment"
"The problem was, that we discovered that there is no remedy for a stolen election. Those claiming fraud had their lawsuits dismissed, time after time, for standing and procedural reasons."
Except that wasn't the problem at all. The problem is that there was never any evidence for his claims and so TRUMP DISMISSED his own lawsuit. There are three reasons litigants voluntarily dismiss lawsuits: (1) can't afford the fight; (2) the stakes are too low; or (3) they have no case. Trump raised a litigation war chest and the stakes couldn't be higher. So, I wonder why he tools his ball and went home?
I always saw Trump's line as Jan. 6th. What most people pretend never happened, but it happened all the time, is Democrats protesting the Congressional certification of the Electoral College. Democrats protested certification in 2017, and that's setting aside all the efforts Hillary's campaign tried in getting electors of the college "to vote their conscience" rather than by state law. Trump was, to the moment he walked off the stage that morning, doing everything Hillary's campaign had done. Everything Gore's campaign had done. Except he gave a speech to his followers to protest peacefully the certification. Hillary's supporters would go on to violently protest and destroy property on Trump's Inauguration Day. But Trump ended Jan. 6th accepting his defeat via the certification of the electoral college vote.
And all that above pretends that Hillary and Obama didn't collude with the FBI and other Intelligence agencies including foreign governments to harass Trump's transition team, have some of them arrested, and plant a fake story that was promulgated for three years as evidence that Trump was a puppet of Putin. After all of that, Trump was supposed to just walk away and throw goodwill to the "Stupid, Son of a Bitch". Yeah, the nonsense that court cases don't go on forever seems like civility bullshit when put against the Russian Collusion Hoax (which is still being "investigated" by Durham despite the public knowing full well the providence of the Steele Dossier).
Left Bank of the Charles said...
Brainstorming to rob a bank is called conspiracy, so why isn’t brainstorming to steal the electoral vote count?
Pure value judgment on your part, Left. If there was a conspiracy, it was brainstorming a way to put stolen money back in the bank, not "steal" it. You and your ilk are the robbers.
Robert Cook said...
”We know the election was stolen. Living a lie is not the answer.“
No, you do not know that. You believe it, but there is no proof, so you’re just stamping your feet at this point. All for the utter mediocrity and flim flam man Trump.
Well, to the extent that I "believe", but do not "know", that all the oxygen molecules in the room I'm in aren't going to suddenly congregate in a far corner, leaving me to suffocate, I also "only believe" that the 2020 election was stolen
But in the real world, when vote counters block poll watchers from observing what they're doing, it's because they're committing vote fraud
When vote counters announce that they're going to stop counting for the night, and they'll get to the rest of these ballots later, and then kick out the poll watchers and press, so that no one can monitor what they're doing with the ballots, it's because they're committing vote fraud.
We all know both these things happened, and they happened in enough States, done by Democrats, so that flipping those States gave Biden the "victory"
You won't address this, because even you know I'm right.
Instead you'll keep on babbling about "no evidence", because you count your refusal to admit its existence to trump its existence
How important is it? We've all let many wrongs go. We choose our battles.
You perfectly articulate the need for moderation. Perfect justice isn't usually attainable. And the cost for it is usually higher than any reward. But I would argue that you aren't considering all the factors. That your cost spreadsheet doesn't have enough columns. To borrow a phrase, the map is not the territory.
Let me ask it this way. Does the calculus of push-back change if you knew it would happen again?
If your answer is they wouldn't do it again, then why the "big lie" pushback? Why the political capital and racial rhetoric around the new voting bill? What's to stop them from doing it again. The exact same way. Do we think, that if it was stolen, it won't be going forward?
If it wasn't stolen, what's to stop it from being stolen going forward? No risk, ultimate reward.
For the next column in your spreadsheet, what's to stop the Republicans from cheating going forward? If stealing is tolerated, then the only way to compete is to steal.
These 2nd and 3rd order effects are important. Where does that leave the country? As with most 3rd world banana republics, it ends in violence. Significant violence.
I'd rather these things get settled in the media (or court), rather than with violence in the streets. But in the interest of holding the middle, of holding the illusion of democracy, of making reality fit the map, the media and the courts have shut their eyes and ears to any discussion of fraud or of improving out election systems going forward. There is significant risk (financial, political, and yes even physical) to the current election landscape.
I'll leave with a final thought. Would Florida have been called for Al Gore without the "Brooks Brothers riot" in 2000? How many Brooks Brothers riots will happen in 2024? Is the treatment of the J6 protesters enough to stop it from happening? Can the establishment in hundreds of precincts across the country handle a J6 in their city on election day? What would stop Antifa from staging similar demonstrations outside the counting offices in Republican counties?
I would argue that such demonstrations is bad for both sides. It's best for both sides to ensure fair and accurate counting. It's best for your own party to know the true nature of the territory and not the map your election fraud fakes you into believing. It avoids trying to do things like the Green New Deal or BBB for which you don't have true political capital. As an illustration, do you think Senator Mancin has a better feel for the territory of WV voters than Biden does?
"They can't"
No they CAN. Unless someone stops them. What the constitution means on paper is irrelevant. It only matters what the Federal judiciary says. No one thought the Constution meant you couln't outlaw bortion for 180 years.
Then the SCOTUS decided differently. Go read the constitiution and find 'abortion' in it. Its not there. But its now our most cherished "constiutional" right. /sarcasm off/
Whether Trump will be barred under the Consitution from holding office or by an act of Congress will depend entirely on who's sitting on the Federal bench.
Ann Althouse said...
I'm not saying my "one answer" is correct or always correct, but I do think that if you can't show your evidence pretty well and pretty decisively, it's actually where you ought to go
Democrat vote counters in Milwaukee, Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta all shut down vote counting on election night, while there were still votes to count, and kicked out everyone who could monitor their actions and prevent them from modifying ballots and / or adding fake ballots
True or false?
Democrat vote counters in Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta all repeatedly blocked Trump campaign poll watchers from being able to monitor their actions
True or false?
Hint, both those statements are known to be true, with solid video evidence and / or court documents filed establishing these facts
Now: Once people have had the ability to access ballots without supervision, you can not trust any of the ballots. Short of going to every single registered voter in that area, establishing that the person exists and is a legal voter, and asking them under oath whether or not they voted in that election (can't just talk to the people who they claim had voted, that lets people know what lie they should tell), you can not know whether or not the "vote counters" created fake voters, or just grabbed names of registered voters who hadn't voted, and used their names, and then added fake ballots to switch the election results.
The whole reason why we have poll watchers is to prevent fraud that can not be otherwise discovered.
When Democrat vote counters sabotage the pool watchers, they are deliberately making it impossible to validate any Democrat wins.
So, you can either take the position that "vote fraud is perfectly fine", or you can take the position that "whenever someone violates those protections, it's because they're committing fraud, and no victory for there side can be considered legitimate."
The first destroys elections, the rule of law, and democracy.
The second says "the 2020 election was stolen"
Which one are you going with?
>>And all that above pretends that Hillary and Obama didn't collude with the FBI
Don't forget that Hillary was interviewed by the FBI over her mishandling of classified emails.
There was no video recording of the interview.
There was no audio recording of the interview.
There was no transcript of the interview.
Hillary was not interviewed under oath.
Hillary's lawyer was present, even though she was a witness in the case.
The FBI director drafted a memo clearing Hillary before the interview was conducted.
And, to no one's surprise, the FBI did not find any evidence of a crime.
But it was all totally legitimate.
I think that's what Nixon did and they still hated him and plotted against him.
People keep using the word "fraud". That implies a small group of people "made up" fake votes.
What they did was allow people without ID to vote. They refused to check the mail-in votes from Democrat areas for validity, signatures, or residency. We don't know how many of mail in votes in Winsconsin, Penn or GA were invalid or fake because the Democrat election officials refused to check. Plus, you had all kinds of weird computer glitches in Democrat areas, all of which went one way. Some Dominion voting machines were hooked up to the internet, other machines had their access logs destroyed. Dominion instead of ASKING for an audit to PROVE their machines were reliable, starting suing anyone who brought up the problems.
The D election officials and their RINO allies refused to audit the votes. They refused to throw out votes that were invalid. They refused to look into whether the votes were valid. They refused to review the signatures. They just recounted the votes. The math checked. So what?
So, yeah, no one has found a video tape of a Democrat election official making up 100,000 fake ballots. So everything was fair and square. LOL!
Except that wasn't the problem at all. The problem is that there was never any evidence for his claims and so TRUMP DISMISSED his own lawsuit.
Says the man with no evidence. There was never a trial on merits. All were denied on "standing" even suits by states. The Supreme Court allowed Pennsylvania to ignore orders from Alito to segregate "late" absentee ballots. The Supremes did not want riots in front of their homes by left wing lunatics like those that invaded Congress during the Kavanaugh hearings. They chickened out.
"The question really we should be asking is why does Trump engender so much fear."
Two thoughts come to mind. There's the risk that Trump would do something helpful to solve problems incumbent politicians of both parties refuse to address. There's also the risk that Trump would shine a light on the grift and corruption in Mordor on the Potomac, where so many career politicians seem to find a way to become millionaires.
Mel Brooks (as Governor Lepetomane) said it:
"We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen!"
"There is credible reason to believe Nixon himself took that path in 1960."
That high moral ground Nixon stood on is made up of the bodies of the 50,000+ Americans who died fighting Kennedy's and Johnson's unwinnable war in South East Asia. But hey, he was a good loser so let's all clap.
I very much enjoyed the blank space. It corresponds with a little experiment I did with my local Dem-Prog propaganda rag a couple weeks ago. I took a marker and blanked out everything that was related to things people said (whether live or on twitter, etc) and that were speculative. Basically I reduced all of the "news" to reportage of things that had actually happened or facts about the things that had actually happened.
There wasn't much to read after all of that.
I suppose one could argue that reporting what someone says about something that happened could in some ways be considered "news", but that's where news bias really gets rolling - selective quotes, preferred "authorities" and "experts", etc. Much like the article in this post, there is little to be had in the "news" that is actual reportage rather than opinion massage based on hypotheticals and priors.
"What if an American presidential election were stolen? What could be done? What if it looked about like the 2020 election, but it really was a fraud? One answer might be: In the event of such a calamity, it would be best to go forward and treat the ostensible winner as the winner in order to maintain confidence in the system and to avoid the trauma of revealing and delving into the chaos beneath the surface. The true winner of the election should see the profound national interest in moving forward with a new President in office and fully in power — free of any cloud of uncertainty."
Three thoughts leapt into my mind at almost the same instant: 1. Nixon. 2. I can never quite tell if you're serious with this kind of thing or just trolling us, and 3. from that point forward, the only rational behavior for a political party is to cheat first, cheat better, and never ever stop cheating. At which point the losers will justifiably take up arms. It's just an exceptionally stupid idea.
Drago said...
Let's hope its not for you know what by you know whom...(your allies)
1/25/22, 11:57 AM
The pedo tribe has managed to subvert the legal system broadly, never mind in their havens like New York and Los Angeles, so any justice for them is going to come out of a barrel.
Anyways, I'm hardly surprised Althouse takes the "c'mon guys, this isn't the hill to die on" approach. I'm confident she'll maintain her poise when American women broadly lose the right to vote at all, and that in the near future.
One answer might also be: The new President, having seen the potentially mortal wounding suffered by such a flawed and disputed electoral process, would work tirelessly to ensure that faith in the process was restored for the voters, and defended in the most stalwart way possible. The integrity of the Office of the President would depend upon it. The success of the new Presidential Administration would be staked upon it.
How're those efforts working out, by the way?
“Only we deplorables seem to have loved ones in the military.”
Ha, what nonsense.
Two thoughts come to mind. There's the risk that Trump would do something helpful to solve problems incumbent politicians of both parties refuse to address. There's also the risk that Trump would shine a light on the grift and corruption in Mordor on the Potomac, where so many career politicians seem to find a way to become millionaires.
I've thought about that too, but those are too simple. He doesn't have to win office again to shine light on that. And while he tried to do that in office, it wasn't very successful. There were no indictments or similar.
You mean, just like Hillary did and has done?
I'm surprised LLR Chuck has time to post at Althouse blog. It's got to be very busy over at Whitmer election headquarters where LLR Chuck takes particular glee in helping to come up with racist attacks against conservative black candidates along the lines of his attacks on Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson (particularly vicious in that case), Tim Scott, former Republican Gov candidate John James.
And now with James Craig, an african-american running against Whitmer, one can only imagine the spittle-flecked racial attacks being conjured up.
Here's hoping that Mr Craig has a strong backbone and fire in the belly. He'll need it to withstand the LLR Chuck-democratical racial onslaught that is no doubt headed Craig's way.
God speed Mr Craig. God speed.
And no, I don't care if my referencing God freaks LLR Chuck out.
The question really we should be asking is why does Trump engender so much fear. Name any political candidate that stoked this much fear that he would run again after losing. So much fear that they would expend political capital by trying to impeach him after he was already out of office.
Trump was a rejection of the political class and the bureaucratic parasites. Trumpism was a rejection of the commonly held beliefs which dominate this class. Besides the fear that Trump would ultimately be vindicated in his beliefs, you have to remember that the political class and bureaucracy are populated largely by midwits and middle-class overachievers. These are people who have often spent their adult lives in government, non-profits, etc. and who often define themselves by that. They have nothing else. Trump's election was blow to their egos.
It is so fucking funny how all this bullshit gets you Trump splooge stooges so wound up.
The only thing I have to add is that novel methods were used in balloting and counting in the 2020 election and different things were done in different states and this snarled and delayed the response. In Wisconsin we had ZuckBucks hiring people to do the work that was supposed to be done by state, city and county officials and those officials just stepping back and letting it happen. That's known now. The point is that this wasn't known by January 6th and so how could one object to certification? Yet it was known that counting stopped and started in synch with counting in other crucial states and in synch with massive vote dumps for one candidate. So how could one not object to certification? And, it's known now that people who read the main Wisconsin media still don't know what ZuckBucks did here. Their blindness affects what we who know can do or think we should do. The main media readers don't even support reform because they don't know what happened. I mean, win or lose, elections are supposed to be run by elected officials not ZuckBuck worker. But there's no pressure for reform because a very large group of Wisconsin voters doesn't know what happened here in Wisconsin. In that situation should we say:
[We] see the profound national interest in moving forward with a new President in office and fully in power — free of any cloud of uncertainty. [We] should do nothing more than to offer strong support to [whoever is running Biden] and to celebrate the beauty of democracy?"
I mean, we knew Biden was senile, corrupt and incompetent on November 3 20202 and Jan. 6. 2021. Wishing him well wasn't going to prevent disasters and now disasters are happening and we can't stop the rain.
But also another election is coming up - 2022. I am inclined to try to get and hold such of the suburban vote as can be got and held without sacrifice of principle. And that is by understanding how parents feel about rando school closings and maskings and loss of sports and arts which they resent far more than CRT and which is pushing them to us. I am inclined to carve out a safe space - no sacrifice of persons or principles!!!!! - but just to understand that some will vote with us if we aren't too personally demanding all at once, if we agree on schools and talk about schools and talk about how free speech is a liberal/conservative issue. We ought to have a twelve step understanding of how deluded believers of main stream media can come to understand some part of what we say and support us and the man who is our leader, as I think many of them now wish to do, for their children's sake.
It's funny how there are dozens of examples of illegality, and they keep going back to one lawsuit filed in the heat of the moment under hurried deadlines, as if that proves that all of the other claims are false. It reminds me of the story about the lawyer defending the sweater that was made "with 100%" wool. He took out one fiber from the sweater, held it over a match, to prove that the sweater contained 100% wool. Which it did, it had some 100% wool fibers in it.
Do you have any answer for the rest of the shenanigans by Democrats brought up here? And why can't we look at the voting machines? Why is that not allowed?
BTW, Ray Epps lawyer is mobbed up too, and by that I mean that his lawyer worked at the FBI for a decade. Nothing stinks about that.
In a world where a man can enter a female competition as a woman and beat them all quite soundly- and be applauded by the elite: what’s a presidential election? Losing is winning…
>>I'm hardly surprised Althouse takes the "c'mon guys, this isn't the hill to die on" approach.
The rule is: Jam yesterday, and jam tomorrow, but never jam today.
I know that the mathematical analysis techniques used to detect fraud all absolutely red line when applied to the election results.
I know that every single mathematical regression with any normal data set predicts Biden got fewer than 70 million votes with 99% confidence intervals and they put the mean around 62 million.
How do you "know" these things? Such outrageous claims demand a link to where you learned these facts.
To say that almost a third of Biden's votes were fraudulent is just a ridiculous assertion that would require a conspiracy of thousands of people.
Democrat vote counters in Milwaukee, Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta all shut down vote counting on election night, while there were still votes to count, and kicked out everyone who could monitor their actions and prevent them from modifying ballots and / or adding fake ballots
True or false?
Democrat vote counters in Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta all repeatedly blocked Trump campaign poll watchers from being able to monitor their actions
True or false?
Both statements are false. Provide links that prove the truth of these assertions.
If we were willing to perpetrate such a massive fraud (creating 20 million votes out of thin air according to Achilles), why the fuck wouldn't we have also fixed the down ballot races, especially for Senate? It looked like we wouldn't even have a majority in the Senate until Trump fucked up the Georgia run off.
Well, to the extent that I "believe", but do not "know", that all the oxygen molecules in the room I'm in aren't going to suddenly congregate in a far corner, leaving me to suffocate, I also "only believe" that the 2020 election was stolen
This is a ridiculous comparison. We know that air just doesn't act like that.
rcocean said...
"They can't"
No they CAN. Unless someone stops them.
If Trump runs in 2024 and wins the election, anyone who tries to stop him from getting teh EC vote and being inaugurated will very shortly end up dead.
They can't
Brian said...
I'll leave with a final thought. Would Florida have been called for Al Gore without the "Brooks Brothers riot" in 2000? How many Brooks Brothers riots will happen in 2024? Is the treatment of the J6 protesters enough to stop it from happening? Can the establishment in hundreds of precincts across the country handle a J6 in their city on election day? What would stop Antifa from staging similar demonstrations outside the counting offices in Republican counties?
500+ million firearms in private hands. the majority of them in the hands of non-Democrats
The VAST majority of the "trained" hands" being non-Democrats.
What's to stop Antifa? People with sniper rifles shooting them. What's to stop the authorities from shutting down Republican protests?
The fact that post J6, people will be showing up armed
Ashli Babbitt Punched Rioter Seconds Before She Was Shot, New Video Shows
Trump by keeping up the pressure is making it so changes are happening. Lots of Establishment GOP Types want to keep on ignoring the fraud and do nothing about making sure it does not happen again. Due to Trump's Pressure and a lot of Angry Voters, they are being forced at least say the right words. I wish they would do more to reduce the change of fraud.
OT - Congratulations to Wisconsin on 1 in 10 voters being over the age of 124! Obviously Wisconsin has an excellent health care system to keep people alive this long.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/did_over_100000_people_older_than_124_years_vote_in_wisconsin.html
This post is seems willfully blind. I take it from the top.
1. Whatever Trump's stated beliefs, it is clearly relevant both to law making and political decision making, including the 2024 election, if those stated beliefs were false, whether knowingly, recklessly or negligently. The documents clearly bear on those questions.
2. That Trump's actions in challenging the election were lawful is very much in dispute.
Trump brought a number of claims that were formally determined to be frivolous, and others, such as Texas v. Pa., though not formally determined to be so, were widely, if not universally, judged to be frivolous by informed observers. Frivolous claims are by definition not lawful claims.
Trump's lawsuits also featured many falsehoods. Rudy Giuliani faces certain disbarment based on dozens of known falsehoods. Others have been sanctioned for falsehoods. Known false claims are also not lawful challenges to the election.
And then there is the conduct of Mr. Trump's lawyers who sought to pressure Mike Pence to set aside the election altogether or to postpone the electoral count and the lawyers who orchestrated phony slates of electors who were ginned up to justify the unlawful course being urged on Pence.
Pence's own lawyer, a lifelong Republican and no lib, who was on the receiving end of this stuff, said that Trump's lawyers “spun a web of lies and disinformation” and used “their credentials to sell a stream of snake oil to the most powerful office in the world, wrapped in the guise of a lawyer’s advice.” This too, if proven, would be unlawful conduct. And whether Trump orchestrated this conduct or was simply a gullible consumer of it, that too would be relevant.
The documents speak to all those issues.
3. Then there is the question of whether Trump simply wanted to give a strong speech, or instead wished, planned for, or failed to act to stop something unlawful. Clearly the documents are potentially relevant to those questions.
4. Beyond that, your framing of the issues leaves out the question of law reform, and in particular whether it would make sense to revise the Electoral Count Act.
5. You suggest that we all should hope that the documents exonerate Trump. That assumes that no one could responsibly make a judgment, based on what is already known, that he is unfit to be president and dangerous to the country. Clearly, however, that is not a judgment that can be dismissed as unreasonable. And one who has reached that conclusion could quite properly hope for new information that might persuade others to that view.
6. Finally, I wonder what you could mean when you ask what if an election that looks like 2020 was actually stolen. Would an election that looked like 2020 feature a candidate (1) who lost every recount; (2) who lost effectively every legal claim he brought to the election, most on the merits, not on standing grounds, in many cases before judges that he appointed, (3) whose lawyers either refused to bring claims of fraud, or withdrew from representing him because he insisted on their doing so, or suffered sanctions for bringing false and baseless claims, (4) whose claims of fraud were also rejected by his own Justice Department and Homeland Security Department and by Republican governors and election officials, all of them Trump supporters, in the key states, as well as by many leading figures in his own party, including past Presidents and presidential candidates and the current leader of the Senate; (5) whose claims of fraud have not been substantiated by any subsequent audit. If you are including those details, then what election would not qualify as stolen, and hence as justifying potential extralegal responses, based on nothing more than the losing candidate's say so? And if you are leaving them out, what alternative universe do you have in mind?
The Democrats have exhumed McCarthy and think they look stylish dancing with his corpse.
Who’s hill?
https://twitter.com/markfinkelstein/status/1484935137125142534
how does one reach a mental state of holding simultaneously cruel neutral legalism with election fraud is ok?
Brian said...
The question really we should be asking is why does Trump engender so much fear. Name any political candidate that stoked this much fear that he would run again after losing. So much fear that they would expend political capital by trying to impeach him after he was already out of office.
Trump pulled the mask off the Republican traitors.
For the last 30 years since Reagan left office Republicans and Democrats took turns pushing the Aristocracy's agenda.
But Trump gave the Republican voters what they wanted.
He controlled the borders.
Brought Peace to the Middle East.
Raised wages for the working class.
He did that despite McConell and Ryan and McCain fucking him at every opportunity. And now that we have seen someone actually do what we want done we are never going back.
Now that there is a clear alternative to the rule of the Oligarchs the people are not going back.
The fear that you see is the Oligarchs losing their position and their power.
"Both statements are false. Provide links that prove the truth of these assertions."
Links? Lol! We watched it unfold LIVE on TV. Were you asleep?
"And one who has reached that conclusion could quite properly hope for new information that might persuade others to that view."
Still, fishing. for actual evidence, I see. Four flusher.
The rest of your screed rests on the assumption that Trump is guilty, and all we lack is the actual evidence. While some of the claims in the heat of the moment were dismissed on the merits, many were not. Including the finding by the PA supreme court that while the votes were counted unlawfully, it was too late to do anything about it.
We also have all of the irregularities that have turned up in Wisconsin, which I notice that you fail to address. We have the fact that scrutineers were ejected by the vote counters when we were assured by Twitter that any questions of the results were baseless because there were scrutineers from both parties supposedly witnessing the count. We know that a fake plumbing problem caused the scrutineers to be sent home, and the official cameras turned off, and only because there were other cameras running in the Georgia Dome, we know that after all scrutineers had left, boxes of ballots came out and were counted completely without scrutiny.
We know that the signature verification rules were a joke. Here is an example of a signature that was verified in the audit.
The Georgia 'audit' found this to be a valid signature.
I could go on and on, and it is interesting, Stephen, how you simply refuse to address the issues that have been raised and doggedly stick only to those that had been settled to your satisfaction. Illegal drop boxes in Wisconsin? No problem!! Zuckebucks illegally going only to Democrat heavy precincts to "assist" election officials, Zuckerberg's army had read write access to official Wisconsin voter records.
The simple fact is that you have not provided any actual evidence, and are still fishing for it, Evidence that you hope to place in the blank spot on the post.
"Ha, what nonsense."
You must be very excited that Biden is whipping up a war fever. You did your part to whip up the war fever with Russia too, over a bunch of lies. Good thing nobody else wants to go along, and Germany and France aren't even taking his calls right now.
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