Donald Trump's Stealthy Road to Victory

by Graham Allison for The National Interest

As the counting of votes in Arizona, Georgia, and especially Pennsylvania continues, most of the press and punditry have concluded that Vice President Biden has won the 2020 election. Certainly, a substantial majority of the rest of us are suffering from “election fatigue” and eager for this drama to be over. Without disagreeing with the conventional wisdom about the final tally when all the legal votes are counted, I believe the current consensus is missing the fact that Trump has a second, viable stealthy road to victory. I’m reluctantly betting that the debate about who won will continue until at least January 6 when slates of electoral college members are opened in Washington, and most likely beyond that as whatever is decided then is appealed by the loser to the Supreme Court. My conclusion reflects the analysis of my colleague in the Applied History Network at the Belfer Center which is below. 

As he notes, this stealthy road follows in the footsteps of a number of previous contested American elections, especially the 1876 election that pitted Tilden v. Hayes. Then as now, each state must decide on a group of electors to meet with a joint session of Congress on January 6 where the winner of the presidential election is declared. The normal practice in a state where Biden won the popular-vote total would be for state election officials to certify the results and send a slate of electors to Congress. But state legislatures have the constitutional authority to conclude that the popular vote has been corrupted and thus send a competing slate of electors on behalf of their state. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution specifies that the “President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.” That means that in the case of disputes about competing electoral slates, the President of the Senate—Vice President Pence—would appear to have the ultimate authority to decide which to accept and which to reject. Pence would choose Trump. Democrats would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Alternatively, if at that point, no candidate has the required 270 electoral votes, the 12^th Amendment stipulates, “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.” Currently, Republicans have a state delegation majority with 26 of the 50 states and they appear almost certain to keep that majority in the new Congress. A vote of the states would then elect President Trump for a second term. And again, Democrats would appeal that outcome to the Supreme Court.

As the analysis below notes, these issues are even more complex. But to repeat the bottom line: both the words of the 12th Amendment, and historical precedent offer a credible, stealthy, winding road that could lead to Trump’s victory and a second term. Or as the saying goes: the opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

***

A Contested Election Structurally Favors Republicans in 2020.

• I project a 20% chance of a contested election outcome leading to a victory for President Trump.

  • Whereas consensus sees contestation via Constitutional means as a far, remote possibility, a scenario invoking the 12^th amendment is an easier path for Republicans to pursue than currently recognized.

• Trump has consistently during his reelection campaign questioned the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, claiming the election will be “rigged” and “the most corrupt election in the history of our country.” This is most likely part of a strategy to set the stage for a contested outcome.

  - On Nov. 1 in North Carolina, President Trump decried recent Supreme Court rulings allowing states such as Pennsylvania to continue counting ballots after election day, stating, “We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election’s over, we’re going in with our lawyers.”

  • Most significant, President Trump has clearly discussed and been briefed on a strategy to contest the election via Constitutional means, saying at a Sept. 26 rally in—where else—Pennsylvania: “And I don’t want to end up in the Supreme Court and I don’t want to go back to Congress either, even though we have an advantage if we go back to Congress — does everyone understand that? I think it’s 26 to 22 or something because it’s counted one vote per state, so we actually have an advantage. Oh, they’re going to be thrilled to hear that.”

    • Politico reports, “In private, Trump has discussed the possibility of the presidential race being thrown into the House as well, raising the issue with GOP lawmakers, according to Republican sources.”

• Trump is correct: Republicans currently have 26-state delegation majority to Democrats’ 22 state delegations in a scenario in which the election is decided by a House of Representatives vote on the presidency according to state delegations.

• Contested outcome scenario built upon a dispute Pennsylvania result.

  • A conceivable contested election could involve multiple states’ electoral votes, but Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would almost certainly figure into such a scenario.

    • 1876 precedent: Coincidentally, in the contested election of 1876 between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes —the best precedent available for a possible contested 2020 election (not the 2000 election)—20 electoral votes were under dispute, albeit from four different states: all electors from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and one elector from Oregon.

    • House of Representatives Office of the Historian: “Both Tilden and Hayes electors submitted votes from these three states, each claiming victory in violent and confused elections. The Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-dominated Senate came to a compromise on how to resolve the problem by creating an Electoral Commission: a bipartisan committee of House Members, Senators, and Supreme Court Justices who would determine the final disposition of the yet-unassigned electoral votes…[Beginning on Feb. 1, 1877], Congress met in a Joint Session 15 times in the next month, until—acting on the decision of the commission—it awarded the disputed vote to Hayes, granting him the victory by one vote.”

      • The resolution was decided via a backroom deal in which the Republicans agreed with Democrats to end Reconstruction in return for winning the presidency.

  • In a contested 2020 election, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor and Republican state legislature could send competing electors to be counted at the Jan. 6, 2021 joint session of Congress. 

    • Similar to 1876, the Republican Senate and Democratic House would disagree on which electors to accept. However, in the media environment of 2020, it would be virtually impossible for the two houses of Congress to reach a backroom deal to resolve their dispute as happened in 1876.

  • Democrats would argue that the Electoral Count Act of 1877—passed in order to avoid a repeat of 1876—favors the electors certified by state governors; in this case, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania certifying electors voting for Biden.

  • Republicans, on the other hand, would argue that the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional, as the Constitution clearly allows state legislatures to certify electors; in this case, the Republican state legislature of Pennsylvania certifying electors voting for Trump.

  • Under the Constitution, there exists no mechanism to resolve a dispute in which the two houses of Congress cannot agree upon a certified set of electors, and there is no Constitutional role for the courts, including the Supreme Court.

  • Republicans, supported by legal and historical precedent, would argue that under the language of the 12^th amendment, which reads, “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted,” the President of the Senate—Vice President Mike Pence—has the sole discretion to break a deadlock between the Senate and the House, and to either accept or dismiss disputed electors.

    • As Edward B. Foley explains, in such a scenario, “Some Republicans take the especially aggressive position that Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, has the unilateral authority under the Twelfth Amendment to decide which certificate of electoral votes from Pennsylvania is the authoritative one entitled to be counted in Congress and that he, accordingly, will count the certificate from the electors appointed by the state legislature because the Constitution authorizes the state legislature to choose the method of appointing electors. These Republicans point to the historical pedigree of this position, observing that Republicans made the same argument during the disputed election of 1876 and that at least some recent law journal scholarship has supported this position. Unembarrassed by the apparent conflict of interest caused by Mike Pence simultaneously being a candidate for reelection and arbiter of the electoral dispute, these Republicans observe that Thomas Jefferson was in essentially the same position during the disputed election of 1800 and yet the Twelfth Amendment left this provision in place when Congress rewrote the procedures for the Electoral College afterwards. While it is true that an incumbent Vice President might have a direct personal stake in the electoral dispute to be resolved, the Republicans argue, at least the glare of the spotlight is focused on whatever the vice president does in this situation, and everyone will be able to judge whether the vice president acted honorably or dishonorably in resolving the dispute.”

      • “This interpretation of the Twelfth Amendment is bolstered, moreover, by the further observation that the responsibility to definitively decide which electoral votes from each state are entitled to be counted must be lodged ultimately in some singular authority of the federal government. If one body could decide the question one way, while another body could reach the opposite conclusion, then there inevitably is a stalemate unless and until a single authority is identified with the power to settle the matter once and for all. Given the language of the Twelfth Amendment, whatever its ambiguity and potential policy objections, there is no other possible single authority to identify for this purpose besides the President of the Senate. This role could have been vested in the chief justice of the United States, as is the constitutional authority to preside over the trial of an impeachment of the president. Or disputes of this nature could have been referred directly to the Supreme Court, as a singular corporate body, for definitive resolution there. But the Constitution does neither; nor does it make any other such provision. Thus, according to this argument, the inevitable implication of the Twelfth Amendment’s text is that it vests this ultimate singular authority, for better or worse, in the President of the Senate. Subject only to the joint observational role of the Senate and House of Representatives, the President of the Senate decides authoritatively what ‘certificates’ from the states to ‘open’ and thus what electoral votes are ‘to be counted.’”

  • Vice President Pence would then either accept the electors submitted by the Pennsylvania Republican legislature voting for Trump, or dismiss them as disputed and not have them counted. In this new, reduced total of electors, a remaining majority still delivers Trump a victory.

  • If a majority is not reached, then under the 12^th amendment, “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.” If Republicans maintain their current 26-state House majority by state delegation, they are thereby able in this scenario to reelect President Trump for a second term.

  • Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi could refuse to attend with House Democrats the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, thereby indefinitely delaying the aforementioned process, and—in a different scenario—assume the presidency as Acting President under the 20^th amendment and under the succession statute enacted by Congress. This sets up a battle of dueling inaugurations on Jan. 20, 2021.

• For a detailed description of these contested scenarios, see Edward B. Foley, “Preparing for a Disputed Presidential Election: An Exercise in Election Risk Assessment and Management,” 8/31/19, 51 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 309 (2019), Ohio State Public Law Working Paper No. 501.

  • For simplified distillations of a contested outcome favoring Trump, see:

    • Fareed Zakaria, “Trump could stay in power even if he doesn’t win the election. The Constitution allows it.,” Washington Post, 9/24/20.

    • Graham Allison, “Trump Might Not Want to Relinquish Power,” The Atlantic, 7/12/2020

France honours six-year-old WW2 Resistance agent

 

The youngest hero of the French Resistance was just six years old - and finally the name Marcel Pinte has been inscribed on a memorial alongside those of other anti-Nazi fighters.

The boy, who carried messages for the Resistance, died tragically in August 1944, when one of the guerrillas' Sten guns went off by accident.

He was honoured on Armistice Day at a ceremony in Aixe-sur-Vienne, near the city of Limoges in central France.

His father was a Resistance leader.

Eugène Pinte, alias Athos, ran a Resistance network from the remote family farmhouse in La Gaubertie, a hamlet in the Aixe-sur-Vienne area.

 

 

The boy was a liaison agent, carrying secret messages and letters to surrounding farms.

"With his school satchel on his back he didn't raise suspicions," said Marc Pinte, grandson of Marcel's father Eugène. 

 

 

Marcel surprised people with his "astonishing" memory and was trusted to deliver messages to Resistance chiefs, which he hid under his shirt. "He understood everything at once," Marc Pinte told the AFP news agency.

He said Marcel was happy to spend time in the woods with Resistance fighters, known as maquisards, learning about their clandestine methods.

Eugène, his wife Paule and their five children hosted clandestine farmhouse meetings with Resistance fighters and even hid a British paratrooper in the loft, so it was a hive of activity at night.

Another relative, Alexandre Brémaud, spent years researching Marcel's story, because the official records focused on the Resistance fighters and sabotage operations, rather than on the many helpers - often women and children - who also took risks to defeat the Nazi occupation.

Mr Brémaud told the BBC: "My grandmother described him as an extremely happy, intelligent and brilliant brother, sparkling with mischief".

 

 

Marcel was eager to play his part in the struggle against Nazi Germany - and he became an agent nicknamed "Quinquin", or "the little kid".

Mr Brémaud described how the boy would laugh as the clandestine radio operator, working from the family dining room, would pretend to swallow the cyanide pill he carried.

The farmhouse was "a hidden place and very difficult to access," and the guerrillas found it "practical and discreet", Mr Brémaud told AFP.

Marcel's role was eventually recognised by the French state. In 1950 he was posthumously awarded the rank of sergeant of the Resistance.

Then in 2013 the National Office of Former Combatants and War Victims issued him a posthumous official card for "volunteer combatants of the Resistance"

 

 

How did Marcel die?

As the Allies pushed down into France from their Normandy beach-head in the summer of 1944 the Resistance stepped up their operations against the Germans.

One night Marcel went with a group of maquisards to a parachute drop of munitions and other supplies. They had received a code message via the BBC: "The forget-me-not is my favourite flower."

The rendezvous was at La Gaubertie and suddenly, as they were waiting, one of the men's Sten guns went off by accident, killing Marcel with several bullets.

His death certificate was faked to keep the unit's existence secret.

Mr Brémaud says the British paid homage to Marcel by using black canvas parachutes in their next supply drop.

It was a note found by Mr Brémaud in the military archives in Vincennes which told Marcel's story, written by a French army officer. The wartime exploits of Marcel's father Eugène were already well known.

Marcel was buried in August 1944, just hours before the liberation of Limoges, "in the presence of numerous battalions - the coffin was covered with the tricolour flag," said Marc Pinte.

Eugène died in 1951, aged 49, and was buried next to his son in Aixe-sur-Vienne.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54919375 

 

 

 

 

The Revenge of Clarence Thomas (coming soon?)

The Revenge of Clarence Thomas -- Bush v. Gore and the Facts Underlying The Pennsylvania Court Cases

Shipwreckedcrew writing at RedState

Keep this in mind as you read what is below it:

In the coming days, we will learn whether the Supreme Court will consider the merits of a Petition filed by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania to overturn a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that extended by three days the time within which mailed-in ballots in Pennsylvania could be received and counted as validly cast, among other things.  The Trump campaign has sought to “intervene” in this case as a “party” by adopting the arguments made by the Petitioners.

On Monday, the Trump Campaign and two Pennsylvania voters filed a new lawsuit alleging that the ballot handling processes by which mailed-in ballots were received, pre-canvassed, and canvassed, violated the constitutional rights of Pennsylvania voters in having a fair and accurate tabulation of votes.

The left-wing pundit class of “experts” on election law have waved off these lawsuits as having no chance of success, which is now a narrative that 99% of the media has run with  But this is all part of the same plan to convince Americans that Trump has lost the election, that a Biden Presidency is inevitable, and that the legal efforts underway are all part of an effort by Trump to remain in office — which is something the media began trying to condition the public to be suspicious of months before the election.

I happened to not be a believer in grand conspiracies.  I have a practical point of view that once an agreement to do something nefarious extends beyond 5-6 people, the chances of the agreement remaining clandestine are practically zero.  Somebody says something they shouldn’t have said, someone is overheard making an incriminating statement, an email gets inadvertently forwarded to someone not involved, a participant changes their mind, etc.  But that is something different than an entire class of individuals sharing a common goal in mind, and repeatedly acting and speaking in ways intended to bring that goal to fruition — especially when there are inconsistent “facts” against them.  “Ignore the inconsistent facts, and keep bleating the mantra of inevitability” is the game plan.  The lawsuits are inconsistent facts so wave them off and don’t let them take root in the public consciousness.

But they are going to take root because the allegations are going to be pursued through a litigation process that will produce courtroom testimony under oath, and legal opinions that include statements of fact.

But those are stories yet to come.  For now, let’s take a look back in cursory fashion at the ACTUAL outcome of Bush v. Gore — as opposed to the media narrative of what happened in Bush v. Gore.  Please Tweet this story to Joy Reid, as I understand she is a bit confused.

Bush v. Gore began as an election challenge in one County in Florida, and it initially began as a question over whether there were uncounted “undervotes” that might change the outcome of the statewide vote in Florida.  Within just a couple weeks of the end of voting, and on a dramatically expedited basis which was necessary when the outcome of an election was in doubt, a trial was held in a Florida Circuit Court the outcome of which was that there were “undervotes” in the “punch-card” ballots used by Florida counties where no vote for President had been recorded by the voter.  The trial produced evidence that some of the ballots recorded by the tabulating machines as “undervotes” did, nevertheless, have indications that the voter “intended” to vote for a particular candidate.  But the voter had not sufficiently “punched-out” the paper “chad” such that the tabulating machine would read the ballot as having a vote.  The Circuit Court judge ordered that there be a recount of the “undervotes” in order to determine whether ballots that had been recorded as “undervotes” did have evidence of intent by the voter to cast a vote for a particular candidate.  The Florida Supreme Court eventually heard the matter and ordered a statewide recount of all “undervotes” to determine if the “intent” of the voter could be discerned from reviewing each such ballot and treating each one accordingly.

The United States Supreme Court halted the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, and there were two opinions written in the case that are of significance.

Seven Justices found that the absence of any “standards” for conducting a statewide recount as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Without consistent standards to guide the recount process, there was no way to assure that individual voters in different counties would have their ballots reviewed, evaluated, and accepted/rejected in a manner that assured their right to equal participation in the election process.

Of those seven, five Justices agreed that there was no practical way for that defect to be remedied by the time the case was before the Court, and overturned the Florida Supreme Court’s order that a recount take place.

Justices Souter and Breyer were the two who agreed that the manner in which the recount was ordered was unconstitutional, but they would have sent the matter back to the Florida courts to correct the deficiency — if possible within the timeframe available prior to the meeting of the Electoral College.

Only two Justices — Ginsberg and Stevens — would have allowed the recount to proceed in the manner ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.

The “majority” opinion was issued “Per Curiam”, which means “by the Court”.  As such, no individual Justice signed the opinion as the author.  The finding of an equal protection violation, and halting the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court was decided by CJ Rehnquist, and Justices Scalia, Thomas, O’Connor, and Kennedy.

A subject for a subsequent article will be how the decision reflected in the Per Curiam opinion will be used by the Plaintiffs — including the two individual Pennsylvania voters — in the lawsuit filed this past Monday challenging the actions of Secretary of the Commonwealth Boockvar, and seven County Boards of Elections in Counties that voted heavily in favor of Joe Biden.  Contrary to the left-wing pundits, this action has a substantial likelihood of being favorably resolved in favor of the Trump campaign.– and the individual voters who are named Plaintiffs.

The second consequential decision in Bush v. Gore was the concurring opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist, in which he addressed the implications of Art. II, Sec. 1, Cl. 2 of the Constitution on the actions of the Florida Supreme Court.  That provision of the Constitution states that Presidential electors shall be selected in the manner determined by the “legislature” of each state.

The left-wing legal pundits have long treated the Rehnquist concurrence dismissively because only two of the other eight members of the Court joined the Chief Justice in his “textualist” approach to the meaning of “legislature” in Cl.2.  On that same basis, they are treating the Petition to invalidate the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s order that extended the ballot-receipt deadline — which raises the argument made by Chief Justice Rehnquist in concurrence — with similar dismissiveness.  I’ll go into more detail in a subsequent story looking at the legal issues involved in his textualist approach.

But, what is important to know now is that Justice Thomas was one of the two Justices who joined Chief Justice Rehnquist’s concurrence.  Further, the “textualist” view of Constitutional law has gained much ground in the judiciary since 2000.  Justices Gorsuch and Barrett are clearly “textualists” in their approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation, and while not quite as clearly defined, Justice Kavanaugh has already written that he has significant issues with what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did.

If Chief Justice Roberts lines up with the three liberals, and there is a 5-4 vote to overturn the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision, the senior Justice in the majority determines who writes the Court’s Opinion. That would be Justice Thomas, and it is my prediction that in that event he would choose to write the opinion himself.

That is the reason for the headline above — the “Revenge of Clarence Thomas” on Joe Biden.

Cocaine Mitch Delivers Classic Line When Asked About Fraud in His Election

Nick Arama reporting for RedState

There is no doubt that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the Senate Majority Leader affectionately known as “Cocaine Mitch,” is going to go down as a legend for his work at getting a boatload of good Constitutionalist judges on the federal courts, outfoxing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in the impeachment battle and laying waste to Democratic dreams of unseating him.

McConnell is now standing behind President Donald Trump and backing up his call for looking into all the fraud claims surrounding the contested races in the battleground states.

He even laid out the hypocrisy of the Democrats daring to question Trump’s right to question the counts after they’ve spent four years trying to undermine Trump as the duly-elected president.

But when a reporter asked him if he thought there was any fraud in his race or any other Senate race, Cocaine Mitch just dropped a classic line, so well done that it even made all the reporters laugh.

Savage. What finishes it off is the little grin at the end. Can we say Mitch is the GOAT? When you even crack up the reporters who likely wanted the other person, you know you’ve done well.

The media had pitched challengers like Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Sara Gideon in Maine and Jamie Harrison in South Carolina as having real shots against the people Democrats were targeting for take down: McConnell, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). But they were all defeated by big margins. It wasn’t even close. Which should be a lesson to Democrats but probably wouldn’t be. You can’t just pour big out of state money into a race and expect that you’re going to win against senators with a long history and base in their states.

McConnell was also just reelected as the Republican Leader.

HT: Twitchy

Dems Urge People To Commit Voter Fraud By Temporarily ‘Moving’ To GA

Democrats are openly urging people to commit a form of voter fraud by temporarily “moving” to Georgia to vote for the two Democrat challengers in the state’s upcoming Senate runoff races.

On Jan. 5, eligible voters will cast their votes for either incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue or his challenger Democrat Jon Ossoff and GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler or the other Democratic candidate, Raphael Warnock. 

Less than a week after the 2020 election and the announcement of the runoff, New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman encouraged leftists to take interest in the race by relocating to the state and voting for the two Democrat candidates.

“I hope everybody moves to Georgia in the next month or two and registers to vote and votes for these two Democratic senators,” Friedman told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on-air Monday night.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang made a similar call to action just days before, saying that “the best thing” to do to help his former political rival would be a Democrat-controlled Senate. Yang encouraged his followers to help accomplish that by going to Georgia and voting for the Democrat candidates.

“There should be a coordination of resources. Everyone who campaigned for Joe should get ready to head to Georgia. I’ll go,” he said. “It’s the only way to sideline Mitch and give Joe a unified government. There isn’t much time. The earliest date for absentee ballots to be mailed for the runoff is Nov. 18. The registration deadline is Dec. 7. The in-person early voting begins Dec. 14.”

Shortly after his first battle cry, Yang announced that he and his wife Evelyn would be moving to the Peach State, asking for assistance from permanent Georgian residents to house volunteers.

“Great news #yanggang – Evelyn and I are moving to Georgia to help @ossoff and @ReverendWarnock win!” he posted. “This is our only chance to clear Mitch out of the way and help Joe and Kamala get things done in the next 4 years. More details to come but let’s go!!!”

While the idea of moving to an entirely new state in the name of the “blue wave” might seem clever, experts have warned that it could be considered a form of voter fraud.

Georgia law declares that anyone who is a “legal resident of the county” and fulfills all other requirements such as being a citizen and being old enough to vote is eligible to register to vote. To register, potential voters are required to provide either a Georgia driver’s license or a Social Security number and fill out a form online or in-person to send to the secretary of state by Dec. 7.

It is, however, the Wall Street Journal noted, a felony to vote in Georgia if you are not a legal resident or only plan to be in the state temporarily for an election.

“These are sensitive issues, and election officials are going to pay attention to what is happening,” Enrijeta Shino, a University of North Florida political science professor, told the WSJ. “People should be very careful about doing that.”

In Georgia, electors have an opportunity to challenge a potential voter’s eligibility for registration due to questions about their residency but must provide specific proof to back up the accusations. The process can also be long and drawn out, with hearings and subpoenas.

Besides the legal issues, there is also the problem that people moving to a state merely to affect national elections show no commitment to the state and its people, which is the whole point of having two U.S. senators from each state in the first place. The senators are to represent their state’s interests, not the interests of out of staters who moved in to influence national politics. Moving to a state to influence national politics is a manipulation of the electoral process.

Democrats, however, appear not to be worried about the ramifications of such potentially fraudulent votes on a local or state level. As Yang noted in his Twitter manifesto, the goal of electing both of the Democrat candidates to the Senate would ensure that leftists can accomplish their political agenda unchecked by Republicans, with potential vice president Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.

This plot by the left was not created or executed in secret. Shortly after the media projected Biden as the winner of the presidency, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proudly proclaimed the Democrats’ intentions to reclaim the Senate.

“Now we take Georgia, then we change America,” Schumer said.

Millions of dollars have also already been poured into the Democrat candidates’ campaigns to challenge the Republican incumbents with the hopes of winning the two Senate seats and full control of Congress and the presidency.

 

Article by Jim Forbes in The American Thinker

 

While we slept, the communists had a plan

On January 10, 1963, as an extension of remarks of Representative A.S. Herlong of Florida, "Current Communist Goals" were entered in the Congressional Record — Appendix, pp. A34–A35.  There were 45 in total.  The author has limited those included to the list that follows.  The full list is readily available on the internet.

The original intent was to comment on each point; however, the progress on the goals has become increasingly clear, and the author defers to the readership to judge to what extent.  There has been much justifiably written about the current fraud and corruption in the presidential and other national elections that blames the so-called Democratic Party.  There is something much more sinister at work on an international level, with the elites and globalists easily blamed.  Indeed, many bear responsibility for the attempts to undermine and control or even destroy the United States.  But the direction of the players, events, and actions was decided long ago.

Although there may be those now who no longer publicly identify themselves as communists and have adopted the softer terminology of socialists, the overall strategies have not changed.  The achievement of the goals that follow appears to have been largely successful.  The United States is on the cusp, or even past the cusp, of no longer being a democratic republic with the protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights.  President Donald Trump has gallantly opposed the subjugation and decline of the United States, but the full weight of the enemies of a free society has come to light during the 2020 election.

If you haven't seen these goals, please carefully read them and contemplate their impact on American culture and society, and judge for yourself the extent of the methodical dismantling and extirpation of all things uniquely American.  The Founders and the generations who followed gave whatever necessary (lives, fortunes, property, and aspirations to name a few) to preserve this nation.  We Baby-Boomers have coasted long enough on the foundations they established.  It's up to us to take personal responsibility now, before it is really too late — to stand in the breach and turn the tide.  Goliath is not invincible.

Here they are.  Read 'em and weep.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/while_we_slept_the_communists_had_a_plan.html

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The Laptop and USB Drives Stolen from the Philly Election Staging Area

Nick Arama reporting for RedState

A lot of attention is now focused on how the voting went down and how the ballots are being counted in the contested states.

But there was an incident in Philadelphia that occurred about a month before the election that is interesting to look back on now and wonder if it had impact on some of what we are trying to unravel now.

USB drives and a laptop were stolen from a Philadelphia city election staging warehouse from an employee of the company that made voting machines.

The city election commission pooh poohed the incident at the time, saying they didn’t think it would compromise anything and the company, Election Systems, said that they immediately cut the laptop off from the vendor’s network.

But a spokesperson for the company wouldn’t go into any questions about the stolen drives including how many were stolen and what was on them. The city election commission spokes refused to answer questions about whether any of the 3,750 ExpressVote XL touchscreen ballot-marking devices used by the city might have been affected.

From AP:

Election security expert Eddie Perez of the nonpartisan OSET Institute said Philadelphia voters’ confidence in the integrity of the election demands on transparency from officials that is so far lacking: “This is supposed to be a secured facility,” he said, “and apparently neither the county nor the election vendor adequately protected these sensitive assets. Why not?” [….]

“It is very, very common that a USB stick has a wealth of information that is related not only to the configuration of the election and its ballot — and the behavior of the voting device — but also internal system data used to validate the election,” said Perez. “In principle, someone possessing the information on one of these USBs could disrupt the opening and closing of the devices in polling places. They could disrupt how ballots are displayed on the screen and they could potentially disrupt counting votes on those ballots.”

An “insider” bent on tampering with the election would only need to alter a subset of ballot-marking devices to compromise voting, Perez said.

Oh. Now you tell us. In the meantime they had no security and a radio reporter was able to walk right into the warehouse’s voting machine storage area after the theft without being stopped. Some security. They did add security after this all went down. But when they fail to answer further questions about concerns, that’s not reassuring, especially in light of the situation now.

USPS Whistleblower Denies Recanting Statement About Ballot Fraud

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Post Office Whistleblower Denies Recanting Statement Witnessing Ballot Fraud – Demands Washington Post Retract False Claims

U.S Postal Worker Richard Hopkins came forward to expose specific irregularities with the back-dating of ballots which he personally witnessed.  Several U.S. Senators demanded AG Bill Barr immediately investigate the claims and sworn affidavit.  However the Washington Post ran a story yesterday (has been re-written several times) claiming Mr. Hopkins recanted his statements.

After reading the Washington Post story, whistleblower Richard Hopkins tells the newspaper their story is false, he did not recant.  However, the Washington Post refuses to remove the story, instead they re-write it several times attempting to retain the falsity.

Hopkins was interviewed by the USPS Inspector General’s office and shares with Project Veritas the pressure federal officers exerted upon him in an effort to force him to recant his statement.