Americans may
have to wait a bit longer for their next round of stimulus checks. The
newest COVID-19 relief package is awaiting President Trump’s signature
in Florida. However, uncertainty surrounds the package as the President
has not said if he will sign it.
This comes as unemployment benefits are set to expire on Saturday if they are not renewed.
Meanwhile,
a government shutdown would begin as soon as next week if the relief
bill does not pass and lawmakers are still debating the amount of aid
Americans should receive.
Reports Thursday said some
representatives are against President Trump’s calls to increase the
“ridiculously low” payments of $600 to $2,000. This is despite support
from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle including Senator Bernie
Sanders (D-Vt.), Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).
“Democrats agree with the President, at least
to the extent that we need to sign this bill now,” Hoyer said. “$600 is
certainly not enough for individuals who have been struggling these
past seven months, and it isn’t enough to provide the boost our economy
needs.”
Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposed bringing the
House back for a rare Christmas Eve session to hold a “recorded vote” on
the bill to increase the payments.
In a statement,
Pelosi said “to vote against this bill is to deny the financial
hardship that families face and to deny them the relief they need.”
Another round of negotiations could delay the bill by several days, while a veto from President Trump could delay it by weeks.
According
to a recent study by TransUnion, six in 10 Americans said they have
“suffered a financial hit due to the pandemic,” and 40 percent of those
households “had been banking on the prospect of another stimulus check
to help them pay their bills.”
Article by Rod Dreher in The American Conservative
A Warning From Outside The Walls
I just received this remarkable letter from a reader, and have to share it with you:
I
have never written to someone I have not met in person, so this email
marks a first for me. I found your writing at TAC this past summer, and
I’ve read your work daily ever since. I’ve subscribed to your Substack newsletter, too, and will become a paid subscriber once that goes into effect.
While reading Live Not By Lies and then The Benedict Option(I
heard of LNBL first but then ordered TBO right away), I found myself
continuously nodding and thinking, “Yep. He gets it. This is so spot
on.”
I was quite surprised, then, to read the reviews by Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and Samuel D. James at Christianity Today (CT)
because I read their blogs regularly and have generally felt them both
to be rather astute cultural observers and solid writers. For the most
part, I have agreed with whatever they write, probably because my
theology closely aligns with theirs. Thus, their take on LNBL was a
curveball of sorts for me.
How could they see your thesis as
alarmist? How could they disbelieve the reality of soft totalitarianism
taking over American life? How could they be so naïve about this when
they are so insightful in their other writing?
I have pondered
this quandary ever since reading each of their reviews, and I can only
come to this conclusion. While we (the two reviewers and I) hold the
same theological beliefs, we live and work and fellowship in very
different cultural contexts. Trevin lives in the Nashville area and
works as a Vice President at LifeWay, the publishing arm of the Southern
Baptist Convention. He writes regularly for TGC and obviously has many
connections with high profile Christian leaders, pastors, and authors.
The same is true for Samuel D. James who lives in the Chicago area
(where Wheaton College is a Christian institutional behemoth and where
CT also happens to be located) and is an editor at Crossway, a
publishing house committed to Reformed Theology. In sum, they live and
work and attend church in key hubs of Christian thinkers in Christian
institutions.
Me? I’m a GenX woman who lives in Los Angeles
County. I don’t run in the inner circles of conservative Christian
publishing. I don’t live and work in a conservative Christian bubble.
Far from it. I have lived in California my entire life, and I have
raised my family here in LA (my kids are now 25, 18, 16), and they all
attend public schools. The churches here, both large and small, should
be a sanctuary from the insanity pressing in around us. Instead, the
churches here do their level best to imitate the Seeker Sensitive model
that came out of Willow Creek. The teaching is weak at best, outright
apostasy at worst. (The adamance of these churches to remain Seeker
Sensitive — given what we now know to be true of Willow Creek’s founding
leadership, and given the fact that it has not resulted in the
much-hoped-for-wooing of Millennials and Gen Zers — remains a mystery to
me, but that is another topic. I realize, of course, that this is a
sweeping generalization. I know of some exceptions, but the Seeker
Sensitive model, along with Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, remains the
overall spiritual tenor of the churches in my area.) Basically, I live
and work and go to church in Babylon.
Why have Trevin Wax and
Samuel D. James viewed LNBL as alarmist? My only answer is that they
must be too much encased in a conservative Christian bubble. If everyone
they live with and work with and interact with are just like them, then
why would they believe anything different is coming or is, in fact,
already here? It’s not a part of their world. At least not yet.
Here
in LA, though, soft totalitarianism is already everywhere. My kids’
high school teachers tried to fill my kids with ideas of Critical Race
Theory and LGBTQ ideology. You should see the things my kids’ friends
post on social media. They have completely adopted Socialism as the only
viable option for “compassionate and thinking adults.” And if you dare
breathe a word that counters any of this, you are vilified and canceled
and labeled a hater. Facebook and Instagram are already removing posts
that are deemed “hateful,” when in fact they are posts about God and the
Bible. The algorithm-driven life is the foundation upon which this
Brave New World of high tech is already indoctrinating public opinion.
Christians,
churches, and Christian publishers must stop thinking these platforms
will allow them to continue advertising their books and their messages
indefinitely. It is only a matter of time before these algorithms
completely remove all Christian content from their platforms (which is
another reason why everything you say in TBO is so important).
And
the legal precedents that have been established because of COVID-19 are
scarier than the disease itself. For the record, I believe the disease
is real, and I wear my mask whenever I go to the store (which is the
only place I go anymore), but here in California, the extremely
Democratic governor has issued executive orders (EOs) almost daily which
have drastically altered the landscape of how the state can operate.
These EOs continue to give more and more power to the executive branch
of the state government. There is little power left to the people. We’ve
been on lock-down more or less since March. The recent surges in
hospitalizations we’re seeing now is due to the winter season coupled
with extreme quarantine fatigue. If people visited their families during
Thanksgiving, it’s because they hadn’t been allowed to see them all
year.
All this is to say nothing of the anti-business laws that
have been put into effect over the years. The California exodus is for
real. My husband and I and our kids are next. We’ve just sold our house.
The thought of living in a mostly Christian community in another part
of the country actually sounds pretty nice. I don’t fault Trevin Wax or
Samuel D. James for it.
There is so much I could say about the
exodus happening here, but this email has gotten too long already. Just
know that a regular reader of Trevin Wax and Samuel D. James thought
their reviews of Live Not By Lies were way off the mark. Perhaps if they lived in Los Angeles County and raised their kids here they’d realize it too.
Keep writing. What you’re saying is so important.
I am so grateful for this letter. I agree that Trevin and Samuel are good guys, usually on top of things, but their takes on Live Not By Lies
were mystifying to me. Someone else earlier this week said the same
thing to me: that the world looks a lot less alarming from inside a
bubble where you are guaranteed employment even though you might hold
views the world sees as deplorable. But traditional Christians who are
living outside the walls of the city, so to speak, know how vulnerable
they and their kids are.
I
dedicated the book to the memory of Father Tomislav Kolakovic who, over
the objections of some of the Catholic bishops of Slovakia, who called
him alarmist, prepared the Catholic people for the coming persecution.
From Live Not By Lies:
In
1943, a Jesuit priest and anti-fascist activist named Tomislav Poglajen
fled his native Croatia one step ahead of the Gestapo and settled in
Czechoslovakia. To conceal himself from the Nazis, he assumed his Slovak
mother’s name—Kolaković—and took up a teaching position in Bratislava,
the capital of the Slovak region. The priest, thirty-seven years old and
with a thick shock of prematurely white hair, had spent some his
priestly training studying the Soviet Union. He believed that the defeat
of Nazi totalitarianism would occasion a great conflict between Soviet
totalitarianism and the liberal democratic West. Though Father Kolaković
worried about the threats to Christian life and witness from the rich,
materialistic West, he was far more concerned about the dangers of
communism, which he correctly saw as an imperialistic ideology.
By
the time Father Kolaković reached Bratislava, it was clear that
Czechoslovakia would eventually be liberated by the Red Army. In fact,
in 1944, the Czech government in exile made a formal agreement with
Stalin, guaranteeing that after driving the Nazis out, the Soviets would
give the nation its freedom.
Because he knows how the Soviets
thought, Father Kolaković knew this was a lie. He warned Slovak
Catholics that when the war ended, Czechoslovakia would fall to the rule
of a Soviet puppet government. He dedicated himself to preparing them
for persecution.
Father Kolaković knew that the clericalism and
passivity of traditional Slovak Catholicism would be no match for
communism. For one thing, he correctly foresaw that the communists would
try to control the church by subduing the clergy. For another, he
understood that the spiritual trials awaiting believers under communism
would put them to an extreme test. The charismatic pastor preached that
only a total life commitment to Christ would enable them to withstand
the coming trial.
The passivity and conformity of
contemporary Christianity is no match for what is here, and is coming
even stronger at us. Believing, as Samuel James does, in the fact that
Americans have historically been religious, and in the power of the
First Amendment to defend us, is a dangerous fallacy. Christians (and
other traditional religious believers) had better resist more directly
when we can, and, like Father Kolakovic’s followers, prepare networks of
support now, while we still retain the freedom to do so.
The Pompeii archaeological park has announced that it will open up a recently discovered thermopolium, a sort of ancient 'fast food' counter, with visits set to begin from Easter 2021.
The news follows the discovery of the L-shaped thermopolium, at the corner of Alley of the Balconies and Alley of the Silver Wedding at the Regio V site, in March 2019.
The newly unearthed thermopolium is noted for its well
preserved, colourful frescoes portraying images of geese, a rooster and a
dog, reports Italian news agency ANSA.
Archaeologists have discovered an inlaid floor of polychrome marble,
earthenware pots and have even clues about what was on the menu, with
one paella-type dish including a mixture of "mammals, birds, fish and
snails," reports ANSA.
They also unearthed the skeletons of two men and a dog, buried along
with the rest of Pompeii in volcanic ash and pumice after the eruption
of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Over the years archaeologists have excavated more than 80 thermopolia, an ancient version of Italy's tavole calde, which sold ready-to-eat food and were popular among the working classes and those who could not afford a private kitchen.
When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently said,
“People say around here sometimes, ‘I’m faith-oriented, so I don’t
believe in science,’” she displayed a common habit among pundits and
politicians on both the left and right: producing a caricature of, or
simply trying to redefine, Christian belief and religious practice.
This is a greater assault upon Christianity than arbitrary actions,
orders, and legislation. Much hay has already been made of the fact that
coronavirus-related executive orders have granted more liberty to movie
theaters and casinos than to churches. The greater problem is the
presumption that lies behind most orders pertaining to churches: The
ruling class presumes what religion is and what it should be. More
specifically, they presume what Christianity is and should be.
In the course of recently telling
religious leaders to “set an example,” Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam
explained, “Worship with a mask on is still worship. Worship outside or
worship online is still worship.” Here we find another politician
moonlighting as a theologian. He tells us about the various contexts of
worship, but nothing about worship itself and what contexts it might
require.
Not to be left behind, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services offered this happy little plug
for how we can stay safe during the holiday season: Be safe, avoid
in-person gatherings for worship, and use alternatives. This whole line
of thinking assumes that supposedly neutral government officials have
some level of competency on religious matters when many people would
even question their competency on governmental matters.
This proceeds from our public officials’ gross ignorance of religion
and religious worldviews. They tell Christians what worship is and is
not, as well as what justifies in-person participation. Do they not know
that the sacrament of Communion, also called the Lord’s Supper, is
celebrated by most of the 2.5 billion Christians in the world and that
it is, by its very nature, an in-person proceeding?
At the same time, these officials are ignorant of their own religious
worldview. For all the talk of government neutrality toward religion,
these are clear instances of our ruling class trying to regulate public
worship. They are offering their own papal-styled encyclicals concerning
matters of supreme religious importance.
If we’ve learned anything from diplomatic blunders in Middle Eastern
wars over the past 20 years, it is that it’s not a best practice to tell
adherents of a particular religion that their thoughts are outdated
because of advances in contemporary Western thought. For some reason,
such overtures come across as particularly arrogant.
This gross ignorance of religion and religious worldview leads to
both paternalism and hypocrisy, and the latter is particularly
concerning. Prejudiced officials tell Christians how to avoid getting
carried away with their prejudices, and it is only with the benevolent
aid of their enlightened superiors that Christians can be kept safe from
themselves. We have public officials at all levels dictating to people
how they should “freely” express their religion.
We tolerate this, not only because we’re experiencing a public health
crisis, but because we tend to detect the religious ambitions of only
those who identify as religious and not those who would prefer to stamp
out such religious sentiment. So we relent.
The vast realm of wisdom and conscience is quickly being invaded by
those who would weaponize morality and dehumanize dissent. We have
insisted on not having anything to do with religion, so we have made a
religion out of most anything.
This draws us back to Pelosi’s comments about religious people and
science. Her assessment is not the view of religious people, however,
and especially not of Christians who value the things we discover
through science as an expression of God’s general revelation. Rather,
this is the speaker’s view of Christians and represents the general
ignorance and contempt that many public officials have for us.
We cannot remedy this situation through a new era of culture wars,
nor political strife. The problem here comes with the pantheistic
spiritualization of our politics. The state must be the state without
trying to coerce the religious conscience of its constituency, and the
church must be the church by prioritizing the gospel to the glory of God
rather than as a means to a political or social end.
The state cannot and should not answer religious questions, so the
church should always be ready to give a reason for the hope that
sustains it.
Mr. Roberts is a writer and a chaplain in the U.S. Army.
So, when will Trump derangement syndrome subside? The 2020 election is over. It should be in its last throes, but not for some people. You have folks like Seth Abramson peddling total nonsense about Trump, pardon powers, and the Constitution. Apparently, presidential pardons can be reviewed by the courts. I’m not a lawyer, but you don’t need to be one to know this is wrong. Just like you don’t need to be a historian to know that World War II happened, and the Nazis were evil.
Abramson is known for his lengthy Twitter threads about Trump and the Russian collusion conspiracy that never happened. So, now that he decided to throw this garbage take on pardons into the air, ‘lawyer Twitter’ have been activated. Attorney Akiva Cohen saw this thread, describing it as “garbage in, garbage out.”
“Oh, for f*ck's sake, Seth. Can't you take like two weeks off from misinforming people about the law? Almost every word of this thread is wrong, starting from its fundamental premise. The Pardon Clause does NOT the PARDON power that way,” he wrote.
As I said, the thread is long, which required an equally long rebuttal from Cohen who appears to have been working in-between reading what appears to be a grossly misinformed screed about presidential pardons. Cohen’s responses came in a couple of parts, he wanted that he needed to do client calls before returning to see that the more he read Abramson’s analysis, the more mentally defective it became. I’ll let the lawyers do all the explaining, but some of the best takedowns here revolve around Cohen just crapping all over Abramson’s unhinged theories about how pardons can be reviewed by the courts.
“I can't even with this, Seth. You've basically descended to kraken levels of incoherence with this one,” he wrote.
At one point, it appears the idiocy from Abramson was just too much to handle.
“Seth, did you hit your head repeatedly as a child? Were you black-out drunk when you typed this? You think a subsequent Justice Department can try to convict Paul Manafort for the crimes he was pardoned for?” tweeted Cohen.
Yet, the best post was the summary of Abramson’s thought process in all of this. His whole apparently wrong thread about pardons can be summarized here: "I really really want to be right about this. It would be much better if I was right about this. Therefore, I must be right about this.”
That’s not how the law works. That’s not how life works. But that is how Trump derangement syndrome works.
Much
has been made of the Washington, D.C. "swamp" over the last four
years. The vast apparatus of power that is now consecrated in the
federal government is certainly immense and a far cry from what the
Founders envisioned. It contains programs and agencies that work for
both domestic and foreign goals.
The
question of how the swamp came to be has no one particular
answer. Some can be laid at the feet of the 20th-century Progressives
during the Roosevelt-Wilson era. Other expansions of power originated
with the New Deal. Certainly, the last quarter-century has seen its
fair share of new agencies, policies, and expansions of
government. However, one particular moment deserves its own focused
attention if we are to truly understand the vast apparatus that is the
swamp and the rationale for its creation from a national defense
perspective: the National Security Act of 1947.
It
was post-WW2. The United States under President Truman had challenging
questions to deal with: how do we move forward in a postwar world? How
do we deal with the Soviet threat? What should the role of government
and the military be in a rapidly technologically changing world? To
help deal with these troubles, the National Security Act of 1947 thrust
into existence the National Security Council, the CIA, and with the
first secretary of defense (among other positions, departments, etc.) as
various agencies were morphed, merged, and created anew. In thinking
about national security, the CIA itself was divided into two camps — one
led by Richard Helms, who wanted the agency to be a purely
information-gathering service, and the other led by Frank Wisner, who
wanted covert actions to be used to alter political events to our favor
(Weiner, p. 11). Eventually, it would become both. The
information-gathering, in theory, would help the U.S. no longer be blind
to world events or reliant upon the British to gather intel, thus
allowing the NSC to formulate strategic and tactical planning, and the
remodeled Defense Department would be better equipped to implement those
plans.
There
were a few reasons why President Truman would approve of this
design. First, the advent of the Truman Doctrine, and the Marshall Plan
the following year, led America into a much more interventionist
foreign policy. By utilizing economic and military resources to aid
other nations against the Soviets, Truman and his cohort believed they
could contain the Soviet threat. The National Security Act of 1947
would go a long way in providing the framework to implement those
designs. Secondly, the U.S. would have felt itself in an economic
position to fund these programs. A solid internal industry, growing
technology, and being a creditor nation certainly on the surface would
justify that optimism. Finally, especially on the intelligence front,
Americans felt that it was imperative that they be independent. This
proved prescient, as historian M. Stanton Evans revealed in his seminal
work on communist influence and infiltration in U.S. institutions both
before, during, and after the war (Evans 2007). While the National
Security Act did increase the size, scope, and power of the government,
that power was meant to be used as a defense against what was considered
an existential threat.
Fast-forward
over a half-century. While the Soviet threat no longer remains, its
ideology has permeated American universities, news rooms, and even state
and federal legislatures. We are now a nation of debt and bailouts,
with immense welfare liabilities that cannot continue to fund everything
it used to. Yet the cyber-world has opened an entirely new arena for
national defense that requires high levels of training and
investment. The actual apparatus created in 1947 has expanded into
countless competing agencies that requires an ever increasing budget to
keep up with such demands. Still, other concerns have been raised as
unintended consequences continue to emerge. The old adage of "power
corrupts" has been present with the bureaucratic creations of the
National Security Act of 1947, and growing concern over this point has
certainly reached a new peak in 2020. However, it has been present
since the passing of the 1947 Act. For example, in his history of the
CIA, author Tim Weiner notes:
The
CIA Act was rammed through Congress on May 27th, 1949. With its
passage, Congress gave the agency the widest conceivable powers. It
became fashionable a generation later to condemn America's spies for
crimes against the Constitution. But between the twenty five years
between the passage of the CIA Act and the awakening of the watchdog
spirit of Congress, the CIA was barred only from behaving like a secret
police inside the United States. The act gave the agency the ability to
do almost anything it wanted, as long as Congress provided the money in
an annual package. Approval of the secret budget by a small armed
services committee was understood by those in the know to constitute a
legal authorization for all secret operations. (pp. 45-46)
These
words are no doubt concerning to those who fear improper collusion of
elected officials with agencies or councils designed to keep us informed
and safe. Certainly, 20th-century history shows us that domestic
abuses occurred to tragic effect in places like the Soviet Union and
Germany. Yet it cannot be denied that the powers granted in the
National Security Act of 1947 could be invaluable in protecting the
nation if utilized properly and kept within our constitutional
framework.
Where
does this leave us? In Colonel David Hackworth's critique of the
post-WW2 army, he called for major reform that started with an emphasis
on valuing moral courage, practical education that related to the actual
profession of soldiering, and an end to ticket-punching nepotism in
favor of meritorious promotion of actual intellects and warriors
(Hackworth, 1989). A similar framework could undoubtedly do wonders for
the offspring of the National Security Act of 1947, but if that
framework is truly to be successful, it must be enacted by an American
people who have followed it themselves.
It's for Mike Pence to Judge whether a Presidential Election Was Held at All
On
January 6, a joint session of Congress will open with Vice President
Pence presiding as president of the Senate. His power will be plenary
and unappealable. You heard that right. As president of the Senate,
every objection comes directly to him, and he can rule any objection
"out of order" or "denied." His task will be to fulfill his oath of
office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and
to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed. This is a high standard
of performance, and V.P. Pence will have two choices. He can roll over
on "certified" electors, or he can uphold the law.
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives state legislatures "plenary authority" as enunciated in Bush v. Gore. This
is key, since the counting of votes is discussed in Article II, the
12th Amendment, and 3 USC 15. To this we must add the history of
counting and objections recounted by Alexander Macris (here and here). Put
bluntly, it's as clear as mud. Add to that the fact that the contested
states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin have sent dueling slates of electors to D.C. This means
that the V.P. has to decide how he will handle the situation when two
sealed envelopes are handed to him from any of those states.
Macris points out that in 1800, even with constitutional deficiencies in Georgia,
Thomas Jefferson blithely counted defective electoral votes from
Georgia, effectively voting himself into the presidency. This
demonstrates that the president of the Senate is the final authority on
any motions or objections during the vote-counting. There is no
appeal. That doesn't mean there won't be any outrage. Whatever Pence
does, people will be angry. But what does the law demand?
Seven
contested states clearly violated their own laws. Rather than list the
facts, which have been detailed in multiple articles, we must consider
the following:
An election is a process of counting votes for candidates. Only valid, lawful votes may be counted. A valid lawful vote is:
Cast by an eligible, properly registered elector as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
Cast in a timely manner, as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
Cast in a proper form as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
Any process that does not follow these rules is not an election. Anything that proceeds from it cannot be regarded as having any lawful import.
Most
commentators suggest that a process of collecting pieces of paper with
marks on them is an election regardless of errors, omissions, and even
deliberate malfeasance. This is a mistake. Imagine a golf tournament
where every bad shot by one player gets a do-over, but the competing
player has to follow USGA rules in detail. One player gets to drop
freely out of hazards, but the other has to tackle every embedded ball
as it lies. The result is a travesty.
The
same thing applies to elections. If there are a handful of improper
votes, we can suggest that there was in fact an election, perhaps
tainted, but the election wasn't materially harmed. But when the people
charged with managing the election decide to ignore the law, whatever
process they supervise is not the process defined by the
law. Therefore, it is not an election.
This
leaves V.P. Pence with a dilemma. He is a gentleman who regards our
governmental traditions with a degree of reverence, so he will be
reluctant to take any bold action. But as an honorable man, faced with
massive illegality, he must act to protect the law. Consider how things
might go down as the two closed envelopes from Georgia are handed to
the V.P. Rather than opening them, he says:
In
my hand are envelopes purporting to contain electoral votes from
Georgia. They are competing for consideration, so it is essential that I
consider the law that governs this. That law, according to the
Legislature of Georgia and Article II, Section 1 of the U.S.
Constitution is the Georgia statute that includes procedures for
signature-matching on absentee ballots, a requirement that all absentee
ballots be first requested by a legitimate voter, and that election
monitors be meaningfully present at all times while votes were counted.
The
Georgia secretary of state, who is not empowered by the U.S.
Constitution to make changes to election law, entered into a Consent
Decree that gutted these protections enacted by the Georgia
Legislature. The processes that he prescribed and were ultimately
followed were manifestly contrary to that law. Further, the State of
Georgia, in unprecedented concert with other states, suspended counting
of ballots in the middle of the night, covering its conspiracy with a
false claim of a "water main break." We now know from surveillance
video that many thousands of "ballots" were counted unlawfully in the
absence of legally required observers.
Finally,
the State of Georgia, under the authority of secretary of state Brad
Raffensperger, a non-legislative actor, used fatally flawed Dominion
voting machines that have been demonstrated to be unreliable. In
testing, the error rate of Dominion machines has exceeded 60%, far in
excess of legal limits. They are designed to facilitate fraud without
creating the legally required paper trail. This alone is far more than
enough to swing an election.
Since
the state of Georgia has failed to follow the election law established
by its legislature under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, it has not conducted a presidential election. Therefore,
no "presidential electors" were appointed in Georgia. Further,
"electors" "certified" by non-legislative actors pursuant to this
process are in fact not "presidential electors." The competing
slate of "electors" is similarly deficient, having not been elected
through a presidential election.
Therefore,
the chair rules that Georgia has not transmitted the votes of any
presidential electors to this body. Georgia presents zero votes for
Donald Trump and zero votes for Joseph Biden.
The
statement says nothing about who might or might not have "won" the
contested states. Rather, by not following their own laws, as enacted
by their own legislatures, they have violated Article II, Section
1. Thus, they have not conducted an election, and their results are
void.
If
the votes of all seven contested states are registered as zero,
President Trump will have 232 votes, and Joe Biden will have 222. The
12th Amendment says, "[T]he votes shall then be counted[.] ... The
person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the
President[.]"
In
plain language, Donald Trump will be re-elected, since he has a
majority of the actual electoral votes. There will be no need to
involve the House of Representatives to resolve a contingent election.
Richard
Nixon chose not to contest the 1960 election because he felt that
winning that way would lead to an ungovernable country. If V.P. Pence
does this, that same argument might be made. But is the country
governable even now? Blue states such as California, Oregon,
Washington, New York, New Jersey, and Michigan are already operating in
an openly lawless manner with their "emergency" "COVID-related"
restrictions. Their denial of the civil rights of law-abiding citizens
is horrific. Their refusal to do basic policing and law enforcement is a
recipe for open war. How much worse would things be if the V.P. lived
up to his oath and upheld the law?
It
is in every American's best interest to avoid secession and keep our
federation of states together. However, that doesn't mean that the
federal government is the vehicle for exposing and punishing the massive
election fraud that took place in 2020. Instead, this fraud is a local
problem and it may be the homeless on the street who are our best hope
for proving that fraud.
In my last column,
I noted secession of some American states from the Union was the
Communist Chinese goal, preceding a communist take-over. Rejecting
secession, or a hot-shooting civil war, as possible remedies to
America’s current problems, we turn now to ask, "What now?"
President
Lincoln, above all other goals, aspired to preserve the Union. History
has vindicated Lincoln – he did not and would not accept two nations,
shards from the shattering. He fought to preserve the USA altogether,
and it became the world’s unquestioned greatest power. Let’s not forget
what the Union produces – the greatest prosperity, peace, and freedom
the world has ever seen. You don’t get that from the divided, the
conquered.
But
if maintaining Union is required, how shall we answer the evils of 2020
that poured over us like molten metal from an upended forge? The answer
to 2020’s outrages is Constitutionalism. To save the constitution, you must utilize its tremendous powers.
We have a Constitution. It works. Let’s use it.
Over the next two and four years, there need to be very serious criminal investigations at the state level into
voter fraud (State’s Rights!). It is the State that is the sovereign
entity. I am not proposing federal investigations. While it would be
nice to believe that the federal government would successfully prosecute
vote fraud, I think we have all seen the problems that the apparatchiks
among the federales have in prosecuting even Chinese spies sleeping
with the Intel committee. If they can’t even do that, do you really
think they’ll grasp ballot box stuffing in Detroit?
Many states and a large number of counties, legislatures, municipalities are clearly in the hands of the good people. Do not talk down the country by indulging in the emotionally hyperbolic claim that “It is all corrupt.”
That’s a lie. That may feel self-validating, but it is
counterproductive when it comes to helping the adults fix the problems.
The main problem with state-level authorities is that, as a habit, they
usually look to higher-authorities to do anything significant.
That’s what 2020 requires us to change.
It
is time for the state level, city level, county level prosecutors to
investigate and prosecute election fraud. Let’s not hear any whining
about some federal crime being out of our jurisdiction. The state, in
the USA, is the sovereign entity.
The
entire Republic is at stake here. We know there are multiple
state-level ballot crimes that were committed in this election. There
should be an army of local prosecutors willing to lend a helping hand to
a state-level prosecutor in pursuing vote-fraud charges, according to
state law.
If
we prosecute as many criminals as there were fake ballots and throw
some mid-level-managers in prison, there will be a great awakening among
the criminal class. We don’t need federal authorities to do this. If
one state is corrupt and won’t act, there are 49 more chances. Do you
think they committed fraud in only four places?
At
the county level, the miscreants – say some paid-off drug addict who
put 500 fake ballots in the box – are loyal only to their stomachs. They
did their crime for sugar. Squeeze them, and they will sing. These guys
are not the mob. They are homeless, paid in McDonald’s gift
certificates. They will not only sing for a trip to Denny’s, they will
do it in harmony.
Charles
“Lucky” Luciano, a major mob boss in the 1920s, was taken down when
prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey convinced 68 prostitutes to testify. That
bust took out 80 brothels. Closing eighty brothels looks like an
operation so massive that it’s untouchable. However, that perception
depends on the public, the individual, and the government all believing
that an individual prostitute is nothing.
When someone decides that this individual hooker is a somebody –
a person, a human being – then the entire house of cards collapses.
That hooker at the bottom, who was bribed, beat up, beaten down, taken
for a ride – that person did what he or she did before that person’s
humanity came to be recognized. Within local jurisdictions, the pitch to
these beaten-down people must be a little bit of personhood and a
little bit of charity and provision. With that, suddenly there’s a star
witness for vote fraud against Joe Biden.
And Thomas Dewey? He ended up the governor of New York.
The Republic, my fellow Americans, hangs on a McDonald’s gift certificate in the right hands.
Are you the smart guy or the stupid guy?
The
Democrats, the socialists, and the communists are convinced you are the
stupid guy who will do nothing. They think your country can be taken
from you by paying off legions of homeless to stuff ballot boxes. The
con rests on the belief that federal power is the only redress. They
think the state level prosecutors are not bold enough to stand up.
But
when the feds do nothing, pound the state. When the state does nothing,
go to the county. When the county does nothing, go to the county next
door. There are fifty states and thousands of counties. We know for a
fact that the main fraud focused on just a handful of counties. But was
that all of it?
Of
course not. When you are doing a big fraud operation like this, you’ll
have the places where they hit big. But they still must make it “look
good” elsewhere. They need backup plans. There will be other places
where Trump won, but where Biden’s vote totals were still inflated.
Those areas are currently avoiding scrutiny, so the evil people will
have their guard down. The trick is to find those counties with fraud,
but no infamy.
Then
find that homeless guy at the bottom in that county and treat him like a
human being. Take him to lunch. Listen to his story. Find out what the
payoff was. Get him a change of clothes and a hot meal. Figure out what
he needs and why he took the bribe. He is probably just as willing to
serve you as he was willing to serve the communist who paid him off.
It all comes back to what Jesus told you to do. Go find, “the least of these, my brethren”.
