'It's going to blow the mind of every citizen in the country'
President
Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk across the South Lawn
of the White House Saturday, Dec. 5, 2020, concluding their trip to
Valdosta, Georgia. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour)
With time running out for President Trump, attorney Sidney Powell is
raising the option for the commander in chief to invoke his 2018
executive order concerning foreign interference in U.S. elections.
The order, signed by Trump on Sept. 12, 2018,
states "not later than 45 days after the conclusion of a United States
election, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with
the heads of any other appropriate executive departments and agencies
(agencies), shall conduct an assessment of any information indicating
that a foreign government, or any person acting as an agent of or on
behalf of a foreign government, has acted with the intent or purpose of
interfering in that election."
Powell told
the Epoch Times the evidence of foreign interference is "more than
sufficient to trigger" the order, providing the president "all kinds of
power ... to do everything from seize assets to freeze things, demand
the impoundment of the [voting] machines."
"Under the emergency powers, he could even appoint a special
prosecutor to look into this, which is exactly what needs to happen,"
Powell continued.
"Every machine, every voting machine in the country should be
impounded right now. There's frankly more than enough criminal probable
cause to justify that, for anybody who's willing to address the law and
the facts purely on the basis of truth and not politics, or corporate
greed, or global wealth."
Since Election Day Nov. 3, there have been numerous allegations of
vote-switching by machines owned by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion
has denied the claims, saying it's impossible to swap votes as it also
denied any ties to foreign governments. Additionally, the company says
it doesn't permit its employees to conduct any vote tabulations.
It remains unclear if Director of National Intelligence John
Ratcliffe will issue any report concerning alleged foreign interference.
But if Ratcliffe does issue one, Powell indicated: "It's going to
blow the mind of every citizen in the country who's willing to look at
the truth and the facts. Because there's never – we've never witnessed
anything like this in the history of this country. And it's got to be
stopped right now or there will never be a free and fair election."
According to the Epoch Times,
the order also states that "within 45 days of receiving the assessment
and information," the heads of the Department of Justice and Homeland
Security and "any other appropriate agencies" shall deliver a report
evaluating the U.S. general election.
That includes "the extent to which any foreign interference that
targeted election infrastructure materially affected the security or
integrity of that infrastructure, the tabulation of votes, or the timely
transmission of election results; and if any foreign interference
involved activities targeting the infrastructure of, or pertaining to, a
political organization, campaign, or candidate, the extent to which
such activities materially affected the security or integrity of that
infrastructure, including by unauthorized access to, disclosure or
threatened disclosure of, or alteration or falsification of, information
or data."
Leaked List of 2 Million Chinese Communist Party Members Shows How Vulnerable the West Is
Sky News
reported a list of nearly two million members of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) who are operating worldwide and in dozens of companies based
in the United States and other Western nations. According to the
report, the list was compiled in 2016 by Chinese dissidents who
extracted the data from a Shanghai server.
In mid-September, the data was leaked to a newly formed international
group called the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). This is a
group of 150 legislators whose mission is stated on their website:
IPAC’s mission is to foster deeper collaboration between
like-minded legislators. Its principal work is to monitor relevant
developments, to assist legislators to construct appropriate and
coordinated responses, and to help craft a proactive and strategic
approach on issues related to the People’s Republic of China.
IPAC provided the data to four independent media outlets for
verification. It is believed to be the first leak of its kind and gives a
detailed look at how the party operates under Chairman Xi Jinping. The
data shows that party members are embedded in some of the world’s
largest companies and inside government agencies.
“Communist party branches have been set up inside western
companies, allowing the infiltration of those companies by CCP members –
who, if called on, are answerable directly to the communist party, to
the Chairman, the president himself,” she said. “Along with the personal
identifying details of 1.95 million communist party members, mostly
from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 communist party
branches, many of them inside companies”.
Loyal members of the Chinese Communist
Party are working in British consulates, universities and for some of
the UK’s leading companies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
An extraordinary leaked database of 1.95
million registered party members reveals how Beijing’s malign influence
now stretches into almost every corner of British life, including
defence firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants.
Most alarmingly, some of its members – who
swear a solemn oath to ‘guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party,
work hard, fight for communism throughout my life…and never betray the
Party’ – are understood to have secured jobs in British consulates.
They also report on specific companies.
Pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca and Pfizer, who are both involved in
COVID-19 vaccination development, employed 123 CCP loyalists between
them. Two banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered, had 600 party loyalists
across 19 branches in 2016. Corporations with defense applications, such
as Airbus, Boeing, and Rolls Royce also employed hundreds of people on
the list.
The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate
the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily, and
technologically.
I call its approach of economic espionage “rob, replicate and
replace.” China robs US companies of their intellectual property,
replicates the technology and then replaces the US firms in the global
marketplace.
China also steals sensitive US defense technology to fuel President
Xi Jinping’s aggressive plan to make China the world’s foremost military
power.
All of this information should be incorporated into any foreign
policy strategy from an incoming Biden administration. Certainly, in a
second Trump administration, it would have been taken very seriously. It
appears Biden’s Climate Czar, John Kerry, has already been in
conversations with Chinese officials, and it could be a return to
business as usual wrapped in “climate change.”
When he participated in a panel at the World Economic Forum in mid-November, Kerry said the following:
Last night I took part in a call in Governor Brown had a
university of California session. And Shi Jinhua [spelled phonetically]
who many of you know is the Chinese [representative] on climate and he
and I have worked together for years. We got together when I first
became Secretary and got China and the U.S. working together to move
towards Paris which helped us get the Paris agreement done. Last night I
heard words from Shi Jinhua that were more than encouraging about the
potential for the U.S. and China to begin immediately to try and work
again in the same fashion.
Kerry made the comments before he was appointed to his made-up
position. However, he clearly intends to work with China as if they are
still a developing nation instead of one that poses an existential
threat to the West. This perspective in U.S.-China relations is
inconsistent with the view of 73% of Americans post-pandemic.
Disapproval of China is at historic highs across the U.S. and countries
we are allied with, according to Pew Research.
Leftist Propaganda Piece by Lucien K. Truscott IV in Salon
( Alert: 13 months after entering the U.S. Navy Truscott was discharged under "less than honorable conditions")
Psycho secession: Texas' lost-cause lawsuit was the first shot in a new Civil War
Even the right-wing Supreme Court blanched at outright sedition by 126 members of Congress. We must not forget
They didn't bother with writing articles of secession this
time. No, Ken Paxton, the disgraced attorney general of the state of
Texas, did that for them when he filed a lawsuit directly with the
Supreme Court seeking to overturn the presidential election. On
Wednesday, Missouri and 16 other states filed a brief with the court
seeking to join the Texas lawsuit, which alleges that the four decisive
swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia violated
the Constitution by allowing mail-in voting in the November election. On
Thursday, a majority of the Republican caucus in the House, 126 members
of Congress, signed on to the lawsuit along with the instigator in
chief, Donald Trump. Twenty-five states and territories signed a brief
opposing the Texas lawsuit. Friday evening, the Supreme Court rejected
the suit out of hand.
The 18 states and 126 members of Congress, including House
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, are
seceding from democracy. It amounts to nothing less than an act of
sedition by the entire Republican Party, 70 percent of whom believe that
Joe Biden's election was illegitimate, according to a Quinnipiac poll
released on Thursday. In contrast, 98 percent of Democrats think Biden's
victory was legitimate, along with 62 percent of independents.
The last time anything like this happened was in 1860, when the
election of Abraham Lincoln led almost immediately to declarations of
secession by seven states between Dec. 20, 1860 and Feb. 1, 1861. Two
months later, on April 12, the bombardment of Fort Sumter began, and the
Civil War was underway.
It's not a shooting war — yet — but Texas didn't just file a
lawsuit this week, it set a match to the Constitution of the United
States. It isn't just that these Republicans don't recognize Joe Biden
as our next president. They don't want to be part of the democracy that
this country was founded on. They don't respect the votes of their
fellow citizens. They don't want what more than 80 million people wanted
when they cast their votes in this election. They want what Donald
Trump wants.
Thankfully, it's not the whole country. The Quinnipiac poll
found that 60 percent of registered voters think that Biden's victory
was legitimate. But it wasn't the whole country in 1860, either. It was
only after the election of Lincoln that the Southern states seceded from
the Union over the issue of slavery.
This time there isn't a single issue, there's a single man:
Donald Trump. In this way, what's happening right now in this country is
eerily similar to what happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s with
Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Trump has identified and used the same
sort of mass hysteria Hitler did — a sense of resentment among his
supporters that somehow they have been left behind and misunderstood and
humiliated, and that only he, Trump, understands them and is willing to
stand up for them and will bring back their rightful way of life.
So far, Trump has only played around with the kind of violence
that Hitler made use of to achieve power and then consolidate it. Trump
used implied violence in the chants of "Lock her up" that energized
supporters at his rallies in 2016 and throughout the campaign of 2020.
By staying silent this year when armed protesters occupied the State
Capitol in Michigan, Trump implied his support, and his exhortations to
"liberate" states that were mandating lockdowns to fight COVID were
taken by many as invitations to violence.
Now armed protesters have gathered outside the home of the
Michigan secretary of state, and Georgia election officials report that
they are receiving death threats and racist voice mails. The Republican
Party of Arizona has retweeted exhortations from those who say, "I'm
willing to give up my life for this fight," suggesting it's time to "die
for something." The New York Times reported this week that the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission has said that
"people on Twitter have posted photographs of my house." Another tweet
mentioned her children and threatened "I've heard you'll have quite a
crowd of patriots showing up at your door."
The conservative website The Bulwark reported this week
that far-right websites have been posting addresses and other personal
information about Republican elected officials in Georgia, superimposing
target crosshairs over images of their faces. Right-wing Republicans
are in full cheerleader mode trying to turn Kyle Rittenhouse, who is
accused of murdering two people and wounding another at a Kenosha,
Wisconsin, protest, into a hero of the Trump cause. A Democratic state
representative in Pennsylvania told the New York Times that "we've been
getting emails all the time, all hours of the day and night," and that"they're getting more angry, and a lot of calls are saying we won't be forgetting."
This kind of stuff is not a joke. The fantastic lie that has
gripped the Republican Party started out with everyone going along with
Trump's fantasy and kind of humoring him. But now it's taken a deadly
turn. Trump has been calling Republican state representatives on the
phone and pressuring them to go along with his demands that they ignore
the votes that have taken place in swing states and appoint electors
that will vote for him. If they step out of line, they're branded as
traitors, cowards, RINOs. He's doing this kind of stuff to his own
people, to loyal Republicans who have voted the party line since they
were in short pants.
When you add in what's been happening in red states with COVID,
it's jaw-dropping. Governors and Republican-controlled state
legislatures are so intimidated that they won't pass mask mandates and
bar closures, not to mention rules against mass gatherings. COVID cases
and hospitalizations in red states are off the charts. They are lining
up refrigerated trucks outside hospitals in states like North and South
Dakota. Republicans are killing their own people in craven attempts to
keep Donald Trump from attacking them on Twitter. God only knows what's
going to happen in those states when the COVID vaccines become widely
available, although we're getting some idea with reports of people
standing up at meetings of county commissioners pledging not only that
they won't wear masks, they'll also refuse to be vaccinated.
The Mason-Dixon line is psychological this time. These people
have lost their minds. They have seceded from sanity and reason. This
Civil War isn't being fought with rifles and pistols. It's a war fought
with lies and delusions. This week it passed the number of Americans
killed in World War II, and its victims are just as dead as the bodies
buried at Anzio and Normandy. Americans are dying every time Mitch
McConnell stands up and blocks a COVID relief bill. They are dying every
time a Republican senator like Ron Johnson presents testimony from an
anti-vaxxer as if it were a sane person instead of an outright idiot.
They're dying by the thousands with their mask-less hubris. They're
dying for Donald Trump, but at least for now, our democracy has not died
with them.
Dick Morris to Newsmax TV: Dems Preemptively 'Intimidated' SCOTUS on Packing
All the campaign talk about packing the Supreme Court, if not term
limits on justices, was by design in the Democrats' election playbook to
"intimidate," according presidential strategist Dick Morris on Newsmax TV.
"The Supreme Court is after justice, of course, but primarily they
are after making sure the Supreme Court survives – that's their
institution and that's their duty," Morris told Saturday's "The Count."
"I believe the Supreme Court was sent a message by Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris and the Democratic Party during the election.
"And the message was: 'If you overturn this election, we will pack you, and make your Court basically meaningless."
Morris made the bold statement as his explanation for why the SCOTUS
refused to hear an "original jurisdiction" case put forth by Texas
Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas v. Pennsylvania.
The Court rejected the case on "standing," but there is no place to
hear a state versus state case other than SCOTUS, Paxton lamented to
host Tom Basile earlier in the show.
All the campaign talk about packing the Supreme
Court, if not term limits on justices, was by design in the Democrats'
election playbook to "intimidate," according presidential strategist
Dick Morris on Newsmax TV.
"The Supreme Court is after justice, of course, but primarily they
are after making sure the Supreme Court survives – that's their
institution and that's their duty," Morris told Saturday's "The Count."
"I believe the Supreme Court was sent a message by Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris and the Democratic Party during the election.
"And the message was: 'If you overturn this election, we will pack you, and make your Court basically meaningless."
Morris made the bold statement as his explanation for why the SCOTUS
refused to hear an "original jurisdiction" case put forth by Texas
Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas v. Pennsylvania.
The Court rejected the case on "standing," but there is no place to
hear a state versus state case other than SCOTUS, Paxton lamented to
host Tom Basile earlier in the show.
"They knew they were committing this fraud," Morris adding, referring
to the Democrats' mass mail-in ballot election to defeat President
Donald Trump. "They knew what was going around this country."
The SCOTUS talk before the election was effectively a "shot across
the bow," Morris added, saying the SCOTUS justice decided "discretion is
the better part of valor" in deciding to not hear Paxton's case and
"getting out of the way of his bullet."
The Democrat playbook continued after the election, too, Morris said, including the hastily formed Cabinet in "record time."
"All of that was to create momentum so the Court would not overturn
the election," Morris said. "Then confronting this wall of opposition
from everybody, including the media, the justices blinked.
"And just ask yourself: Who raised the issue of Court packing? We
didn't. Why would the Democrats raise an issue that was hurting them? We
would never bring it up; we never thought of packing the Court. They
did."
Morris concluded, "it was a systemic effort, that succeeded, to intimidate the U.S. Supreme Court."
The U.S. debt is close to $27,500,000,000,000.00 Pic above is pallets of $100 bills
Article By Henry Kressel & David Goldman of Real Clear Markets in WND
Other currencies telling America to restore its industrial innovation
'Concerns about redistributing wealth will give way to worries about how to create wealth'
Americans take it for granted that they can continue to enjoy one of
the highest standards of living in the world. And with the Dow at
30,000, why worry?
When asked to list major economic problems, Americans are most likely
to cite income inequality at the top of the list. That issue dominated
this year’s debates among Democrat Party presidential hopefuls. The
perceived problem is unfairness in sharing the national wealth. It is
assumed that somehow the hidden machine that produces national wealth
will continue to function on its own. The golden goose will keep laying
eggs; thus, we need to spread more around for everyone.
The reality that the incoming Biden administration will confront is
that our trajectory is not sustainable. Today’s concerns about
redistributing wealth will give way to worries about how to create
wealth in the first place.
The most telling piece of data published over the last 12 months
appeared last week, without attracting any comment: for the first time
on record, the U.S. dollar no longer was the dominant currency in
international payments, according to the Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). More transactions were conducted
in euros. Eventually, China’s RMB will challenge the dollar as well.
This matters because the dollar’s status as the main global-reserve
currency gives the U.S. trillions of dollars of cheap loans from the
rest of the world. Central banks held $7 trillion in dollar reserves as
of June 30, 2020, mostly invested in U.S. Treasury securities, and
private companies hold many trillions more to pay for trade in goods and
services.
That’s why the U.S. can run a current account deficit of nearly $700
billion a year without economic damage. But markets are warning us that
the dollar’s dominance won’t last forever.
We have been coasting on the momentum of our World War II and Cold War victories. We can’t do it forever.
The foundation for the modern American economy in the late nineteenth
century was our remarkable ability to mass-produce products that most
Americans could afford.
After World War II, the U.S. became the world’s factory because its
major competitors were either exhausted (the U.K.) or demolished
(Germany and Japan). Then the invention of the transistor in 1947 at
Bell Labs marked the beginning of the digital age. A combination of
government and private money financed a whole array of digital products
in combination with new software.
Private capital produced many innovations, like color television at
RCA, but government backing also made possible many new technologies
that created huge industries.
During World War II, the first digital computers were developed with
government funding, and IBM led the world in the commercialization of
large computer systems – with the help of government money. The
Burroughs Corporation, once a manufacturer of mechanical calculators,
supplied the highly complex computers for the Atlas intercontinental
missile system in the 1960s. This led to the development of small
commercial computers by new companies like DEC.
The American space program gave impetus for new technologies in
materials, computers, and communications. For example, the need for much
faster, energy-efficient computers led to the development (again, with
government funding) at RCA of the CMOS chip technology architecture
still in use globally. RCA also invented flat panel computer displays to
replace bulky vacuum tubes in space applications.
The government also funded academic research that led to the creation
of commercial products. Stanford University and the University of
California became leading centers in semiconductor research, where
future industrial leaders were trained. This was the genesis of Silicon
Valley. The development of new technologies enabled the founding of many
companies mostly financed with private venture capital. Of these, many
became industry leaders, such as Intel.
The U.S. was the center of the global electronics industry in the
1980s. But Asia learned from us, and Asian governments subsidized new
high-tech companies of their own, such as TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in
South Korea, which licensed American technology and then developed their
own. And for American firms, lower-cost labor made overseas factories
attractive.
By 2000, the U.S. imported more high-technology products than it
exported for the first time. Whole industries such as consumer
electronics and telecommunications equipment have disappeared
domestically, and less than 10 percent of semiconductor fabrication
remains domestic.
The first victim of the high-tech industry exodus is innovation. New
high-growth industries tend to emerge from existing ones. As industries
disappear domestically, innovations by U.S. researchers are translated
into foreign products, adding to the trade deficit.
It isn’t that Americans have stopped innovating – it’s that the most
creative people are focusing their energy on service or software
entrepreneurship, just as they focused on financial engineering during
the 2000s. As a result, the U.S. remains the world leader in service
industries, and Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are among
the world’s most valuable companies, trading in public markets at huge
valuations.
But critical infrastructure industries like telecommunications
equipment and semiconductors are decisive for America’s competitive
position. The ability to manage and secure growing amounts of data
relies on computing and communications systems, which require, in turn,
ever more sophisticated semiconductor chips – as does the power of the
artificial intelligence software that will increasingly determine the
value of many industrial and consumer systems. With chip technology
controlled overseas, we lose a key element in building competitive
systems. We see this already with revolutionary new 5G wireless
technology, now led by Huawei, a Chinese company that has no U.S.
competitors.
As American innovation fades, so will the attractiveness of the
United States as a destination for capital. Our deficits will become
unsustainable.
What should we do? In the past, a complex partnership between
government, industry, and academia powered innovations from concept to
market. This was the engine behind American economic leadership and
national wealth.
To restore that lost momentum, we need a national
technology-investment program focused on key infrastructure industries.
Such a program, akin to the space program in national visibility, should
involve government funding, research resources, and private capital to
build technological leadership in key industries domestically. Private
capital alone won’t do it because international competition is driven by
government investment. We live in an increasingly competitive world,
and the race goes to the swift, smart – and well-funded. If we lose, our
defeat will be reflected in a shrinking national economy and declining
standard of living. The golden goose will relocate.
Trump Confirms Existence Of Aliens, Says They Won't
Reveal Themselves Until Humanity Has Re-elected Him
WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a historic press conference, Trump confirmed to the world that extraterrestrials exist and that they are in contact with the U.S. Government. Unfortunately, they won't reveal themselves until humanity has evolved to the point where they will re-elect Trump as President of the United States.
"I know the aliens, talked with the aliens, negotiated with them, and they are big fans of me," said Trump to stunned reporters. "The aliens have always been nice to me and I appreciate that. Some are bad, but most are fine people. They told me the world isn't ready to meet them since America didn't re-elect me-- well, technically I was re-elected but Sleepy Joe cheated. Aliens don't like cheaters, believe me!"
Experts agree that since the masses were too dumb to ensure a Trump victory, mankind is likely not advanced enough to make first contact with the alien species.
According to Trump, the advanced alien race is waiting in an interdimensional rift in space just above Earth's atmosphere, waiting for America to come to its senses.
"I miss my 4D chess matches with the extraterrestrials," said Trump. "Hopefully the Supreme Court will do the right thing so you can all see some cool aliens! If not, too bad!"
Germany
is to go into a hard lockdown over the Christmas period as the number
of deaths and infections from the coronavirus reaches record levels.
Non-essential
shops will close across the country from Wednesday, as will schools,
with children to be cared for at home wherever possible.
Chancellor Angela Merkel blamed Christmas shopping for a "considerable" rise in social contacts.
The latest figures showed 20,200 more infections and a further 321 deaths.
The
new lockdown will run from 16 December to 10 January. Announcing the
move after meeting leaders of the country's 16 states, Mrs Merkel said
there was "an urgent need to take action".
Restaurants,
bars and leisure centres have already been closed since November, and
some areas of the country had imposed their own lockdowns.
Under
the national lockdown, essential shops, such as those selling food,
will stay open, as can banks. Outlets selling Christmas trees can also
continue trading. Hair salons are among the businesses which must close.
Companies are being urged to allow employees to work from home.
Care homes will be mandated to carry out coronavirus tests. New Year
events and the sale of fireworks will be banned. Drinking of alcohol in
public places, such as popular mulled wine stalls, is also forbidden.
A
maximum of five people from no more than two households are allowed to
gather in a home. This will be relaxed from 24 to 26 December - one
household can invite a maximum of four close family members from other
households.
Bavaria
is extending a night curfew from areas with high infection rates to the
whole state - the second most populous in Germany.
Chancellor
Merkel said it was the government's job to "prevent an overload of our
health systems and that's why there is an urgent need to take action."
The
latest official figures showed 20,200 more infections, bringing
Germany's total to date to more than 1.3 million. The death toll has
risen by 321 to 21,787, the Robert Koch Institute says.
Germany
had been seen as relatively successful in controlling the pandemic
compared with European neighbours, thanks in part to testing and
tracing. But there is a growing recognition among political leaders that
what was dubbed "lockdown lite" has not achieved enough.
"If
we're not careful, Germany could quickly become Europe's problem
child," Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder warned. "For that reason,
we had to and we must act." He did not rule out Germany extending
lockdown beyond 10 January.
Article by James V. DeLong in The American Thinker
The Honor of the Legal Profession
Decades
ago, when I went to law school, students were drilled about the
importance of "process values" to the legal system and to
society. Citizens needed to be confident that a cause, win or lose, was
heard with attention by competent and disinterested judges acting
according to those general principles called "the rule of law." Defeat
would still sting, but not fester.
Inter arma enim silent lex is a familiar Latin aphorism meaning "amidst arms, law falls silent."
We
need an aphorism expressing the complementary truth: "If law falls
silent, arms will decide," because if process values are systematically
ignored, then all hell can break loose. In a recent article,
the Serbian-American author said "as someone who (barely) lived through
a civil war, [I know that they] begin when a faction decides it can no
longer pursue its goals through the political, legal or economic means,
as they have all been foreclosed to them."
My
professors, who had seen the rise of the great totalitarian states, the
consequent World War II, and the tensions of the Cold War, were very
aware of the dangers. They regarded reverence for process values as
fundamental to the honor of the legal professional.
Judging
by the current election controversy, the legal curriculum has been
reinvented according to woke principles, because the current legal
establishment is not just indifferent to process values, but
screechingly opposed.
Anyone who reads the complaint filed
by Texas (and rejected by the Supreme Court) must conclude that there
are serious reasons to believe that this election was characterized by
massive fraud in certain swing states and that this fraud was prepared
and executed by partisan party operatives who used litigation to erode
mechanisms of ballot security and control of the counting to consummate
the win.
Note
that I do not claim that the evidence is conclusive, though I
personally think it overwhelming. I use the softer "reason to believe",
which means only that it needs investigation.
A
legal establishment dedicated to upholding process values would regard
itself as honor-bound to demand an investigation of these charges. If
true, something must be done. If false, their proponents need to be
convinced and, even more so, the huge number of neutrals who don't know
that to think. Or, even if not convinced, social peace demands that
these groups believe they lost only after fair, competent inquiry.
This
is not the reaction of the real legal establishment, which is demanding
not just that the charges not be investigated, but that any lawyer who
represents the president be damned.
A group called Lawyers Defending American Democracy has collected 1,500 signatures on an open letter
condemning lawyers who work for the president and calling for
disciplinary action by bar authorities. The letter, signed by prominent
members of the legal profession, accuses the Trump team of making "wild
fraud and conspiracy claims" that have been rejected by judges.
The financial base of LDAD is a mystery, but its head is a longtime Democratic operative and onetime D.A. in charge of the Amirault persecution,
perhaps the most horrifying of the phony child abuse cases in the
1980s. Another member of the Steering Committee is a retired partner of
Covington & Burling, the elite D.C. law firm that billed General
Michael Flynn millions of dollars while helping the government bludgeon
him into pleading guilty to a crime that never occurred. And so on —
not exactly a good start for a group that wants to lecture on legal
ethics.
The
list of signers is indeed long, but I would bet that few of them have
any serious knowledge of the controversy, given the blackout imposed by
the MSM. They are, with a high probability, calling for sanctions
against other lawyers in a matter about which they are basically
ignorant. In any case, arguing that a cause is so benighted that no
lawyer can ethically represent it violates a fundamental tenet of the
profession that every cause should be represented, perhaps most
especially those that the mob thinks benighted.
LDAD
is right that several judges have rejected the president's claims, but
the judges have used procedural trumpery to avoid considering the claims
on the merits and have expressed considerable irritation with the Trump
team for raising them.
The
Supreme Court dismissal of the Texas complaint was in the same
vein. The ruling said Texas lacked standing to defend its citizens'
interest in an honest election in other states. But every ragtag,
foundation-funded group had been given standing to persuade judges to
disrupt the election laws of many states. No coherent law of standing
exists, and the doctrine can, without undue cynicism, be seen as a tool
by which politicized judges play favorites. (See, e.g., Virginia House of Delegates v Bethune-Hill.)
LDAD
is not the only entity that wants to suppress efforts to get to the
truth of the allegations about the election, and one could easily
compile a long list of calls for the professional disgrace of any lawyer
who questions the election. Any professor at any leading law school
expressing sympathy for Trump's position, however qualified, could be a
career-ender.
And
all the while, other appalling behavior by goes unnoticed. Threats of
economic harm and personal violence force lawyers for Trump to
withdraw. Witnesses to vote fraud are doxxed and blacklisted; state
legislators are intimidated. Lawyers are involved in all of this
behavior, without censure by the establishment.
The
legal establishment does not seem to grasp the long term consequences
of its failure to uphold the profession's honor and integrity by
supporting process values.
Millions
of people believe, with good reason, that this election was stolen in
the swing states. If the allegations receive an honest and searching
inquiry from disinterested judges, these people will accept defeat, if
that is how it turns out.
Other
cases have been filed, and the courts, including the SCOTUS, may yet
address the merits. If judges are too biased or cowardly to face the
issues, then the law will indeed have fallen silent.
The
consequences, not immediately but over the long term, will be ugly.
Trump supporters will not rise in armed revolt, but the cynical betrayal
of electoral honesty and legal honor will weaken the legitimacy of the
legal and political systems.
For
example, the U.S. electoral system depends on the integrity of
thousands of local officials. My home county in Virginia is 70% red, but
no one doubts that every election is run honestly. But how can this
continue if it appears that the electoral systems of the cities are
corrupt, and will not be fixed? Why should each election not become an
exercise in competitive ballot stuffing? One must be a fool indeed to
persist in being the only honest person in a crooked game.
Even
more darkly, the loss of legitimacy will deprive our polity of the
resilience needed to weather any serious crisis, and crises will indeed
come, from some unexpected economic, foreign policy, or natural
disaster.
At that point, we will also see the wisdom of the great lines from A Man for All Seasons:And
when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where
would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted
thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you
cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds
that would blow then?
Ukraine's capital Kiev, is covered in ice. And this girl in the video
just cannot stop falling on it. But later her brother was able to pick
her up and safely brought her home.
A netizen, named Jane Rees Stebbins said on social media: Our fire
department responded to a call from a woman who slipped on the ice and
broke her elbow. People were walking and slipping around here. We ended
up with three patients!!
Glaze ice covered Ukraine's capital of Kiev yesterday, causing over 100
car accidents according to local police.
In a disappointing majority decision announced shortly before 6:30pm Friday evening, a majority of Supreme Court justices refused to take up a Texas lawsuit challenging four states in the 2020 election.
The court, with two dissenting options by Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, stated that Texas lacked a legal right to sue and did not have a legal interest in how other states carried out their elections.
The court rejected the Texas’ lawsuit without considering the specific merits of the state’s case.
Texas had asked the court to delay the official vote of the Electoral College, scheduled for Monday, Dec. 14, or prevent the four states from casting votes in the Electoral College for Biden. Justice Alito filed a short statement regarding the court’s disposition of the case and was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
The position of the Supreme Court raises an important question that now sits unresolved. If an individual citizen is determined not to have standing to challenge an election result; and if a group of citizens represented by their interest in a state, any state, is also denied standing to challenge an election result; then who can constitutionally challenge an election, any election, that is mired in controversy and demonstrable evidence of fraud?
From the Alliance:
An individual voter does not have standing to sue for election misconduct. (He/she is only one person and everyone cannot sue all the time for all elections.)
An official who may be adversely affected, cannot sue before an election in anticipation of bad conduct because it is speculative (not ripe)
An official who was adversely affected, cannot sue after an election claiming bad conduct because it is too late (latches)
A state does not have standing to sue on behalf of its citizens to remedy other states’ bad election conduct (no standing)
The result appears to be that no lawsuit involving the recent election cycle has been heard on the merits. Insofar as I am aware, the substance of misconduct claims have not been heard in court. (In fairness, there has been no decision on whether a state can sue itself for election misconduct.)
The U.S.S.C has created a constitutional right to abortion from emanations and penumbras. It has told us there is latitude to provide jobs and college admissions based on race or sex. The high court has created a constitutional right to burn the flag.
The Supreme Court, and other courts, have determined limits on constitutional rights to: free speech, bearing arms, freedom of assembly, religious worship, who can use which bathroom, whether the state can hang a murderer; whether men can compete in women’s sports; whether you can operate a restaurant, how hot your coffee can be, etc. ad nauseum.
However, when it comes to the citizen’s right to make sure his or her vote counts and is not nullified by corrupt and dishonest practices, the courts have decided that it is imperative they restrain themselves from taking a position on the merits.
They have thoughtfully informed us of constraints on them that no-one knew existed. The Friday ruling cites only a conclusion, but no reasoning.
If a state sues, is it not representing its citizens? Isn’t that, at the root, the only function of a state government? Are the citizens’ rights to an honest vote not affected if another state runs a bogus election and the first state’s votes become nullified?
Does a state not have standing to sue because the court anticipates it will not succeed on the merits? Why do courts ever bother to write legal opinions when they can save time and tell us the outcome they have in mind right away?
My untutored mind is having difficulty figuring out just who, and under what circumstances, has a legal right to a fair election.
Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city." I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.
First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking?
Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends. I enjoy the exercise and the ride. It kind of gets the soul to come along on the journey. Funny how some things seem never seem to lose their excitement: walking, biking, cooking, drawing and growing plants. It makes perfect sense and reminds us of how our culture emerged out of a close relationship with nature.
In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
Once in a while, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. The materials are flowing more quickly in our economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily. Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods. The air is clean, the water is clean and nobody would dare to touch the protected areas of nature because they constitute such value to our well-being. In the cities we have plenty of green space and plants and trees all over. I still do not understand why in the past we filled all free spots in the city with concrete.
Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.
When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don't really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.
For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for better purposes than just killing time.
My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.
Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.
All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realized that we could do things differently.
