22 Comments

Governor Stacey - what would she have accommodated with the State’s budget?!

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Hooray for Florida! And Fani Willis needs more than just her hand slapped on this one.

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On the lawsuit for the voting machines.

The article says “ could undermine trust in the election..”

People already don’t trust elections.

It’s funny that the old electronic machines we had before were more secure and reliable. They were dumb terminals not hooked up to the internet. It was slow, but sure and true.

These new systems are bunk.

There’s got to be a better totally offline electronic system. Why can’t I get a receipt with my vote? What is the deal there?

As for Stacey. Well that’s the only thumbs up I’ll give to kemp. He beat Stacey. This is what I’m trying to tell people about Trump. People may not like Haley and yes she plays both sides sometimes. But she would trounce Biden.

As would just about anyone but Trump.

This is another Gary black situation. We had a sure fire win in Gary but went with a guaranteed loss in walker.

Come on people. Think.

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RE election security and counting accuracy in 2024, as well as a harder look at 2020: https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/after-2020-election-efforts-by-well-funded-cabal-a-look-ahead-at-2024-post-5575531

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Indicate that this is a paywall article please.

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Regrettably it's a "premium report". I bought a sub to Epoch for the same reason I bought one to Erickson's Substack. Cannot bypass the paywall other than by sharing the article's link to an individual email address.

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Whats the cliff notes version sounded interesting.

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Here's most of the article....

"Fundamental changes in state election laws, coupled with an alliance of left-wing federal, corporate, financial, and nonprofit entities, have handed the Democratic Party advantages that the GOP may be unable to overcome....

"In a laudatory 2021 article in Time titled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” author Molly Ball detailed a “well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information.” While praising the effort, Ms. Ball said that the actors “were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it" ....

"The DNC and groups allied with them rely on a five-part strategy to ensure that President Trump didn’t then and will not now get a second term. That strategy includes intense legal pressure on state election officials to loosen voter integrity laws, a data nerve center that contains personal profiles of voters to predict how they will vote, an alliance of left-wing foot soldiers to bring out Democratic votes in key swing states, a collection of groups capable of bringing violence and mass unrest to cities and towns if called upon, and a network of financing vehicles to fund it all. The “conspiracy,” as Ms. Ball described it, included DNC operatives, union leaders, tech and social-media companies, Wall Street bankers, and a network of nonprofit donor funds that pooled hundreds of millions of dollars to finance “armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.” While the coalition’s purpose, ostensibly, was “saving democracy,” the overriding goal was to keep President Trump from winning a second term....

"Following the mantra to “never let a crisis go to waste,” a nationwide campaign of DNC-sponsored lawsuits forced many states, even some with Republican governors, to drop what had once been standard voter integrity practices.

And the “well-funded cabal” appears to be gearing up for a repeat performance in 2024, with a few new twists....

“That effort involved voiding basic security protocols on election procedures, including absentee ballots, and pushing for the equivalent of all-mail elections, which would give their activists a free hand in pressuring, coercing, and influencing voters in their homes in ways they are unable to do in polling places,” political analysts John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky wrote in their 2021 book titled “Our Broken Elections”. “There’s a reason that a bipartisan commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter in 2005 called mail-in absentee ballots the ‘largest source of potential voter fraud’ and that most countries in the European Union have banned ‘postal voting’ over the same concerns,” they wrote.....

“Because the tax code allowed nonprofit organizations to run registration and turnout drives as long as they did not push a particular candidate,” Mr. Issenberg wrote, “organizing ‘historically disenfranchised’ communities became a backdoor approach to ginning up Democratic votes outside the campaign finance laws.” One example of what Mr. Fund and Mr. von Spakovsky call the “privatization” of state election systems by wealthy donors, is the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a group that is nominally nonpartisan but led by Democrat activists. CTCL received $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, ostensibly to protect the health of voters and election officials during the pandemic. These “Zuckerbucks,” as they have come to be known, were channeled through CTCL into 2,500 mostly liberal jurisdictions to pay for new polling locations, ballot drop boxes, “voter education” centers, and campaigns to reach non-English-speaking voters, according to the authors.....

“CTCL’s intervention effectively greased the wheels for an unprecedented flood of largely untraceable, potentially fraudulent mail-in ballots submitted via private drop boxes throughout an urban stronghold for the Democratic Party with no official oversight or accountability after the fact,” Mr. Fund and Mr. von Spakovsky stated. Donations from CTCL weren’t spread evenly across the country but rather concentrated in swing states, according to analysts.....

“While Zuckerbucks-receiving counties [in Georgia] won by Donald Trump were granted nearly $2.3 million—at a rate of $1.91 per registered voter—Joe Biden counties that received Zuckerbucks were given nearly $29 million, at a far higher rate of $7.13 per registered voter,” the report reads. “Its targeted voter registration,” Steward Whitson, FGA legal director, told The Epoch Times. “You don’t have to worry about turning out more Republican voters if you focus your efforts in places where the vast majority of voters are going to lean left.” Pennsylvania was a similar case.....

“Compared to pre-2020 elections, [state] laws are still far less secure in terms of election integrity than they were prior to COVID, and the biggest reason for that is that many states have now adopted plans that allow for widespread mail-in balloting,” Mr. Haskins said. “Among the swing states, which is really where the election is going to be decided, very little has been done to improve the security of mail-in balloting. “The reason for this is that in many of those states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, governors are in office who do not support strong election integrity laws, so legislatures have struggled in those states to pass legislation"....

"In addition to the tug-of-war over voter integrity laws, a new legal effort has arisen in the past year; namely, removing President Trump from ballots altogether. Legal challenges to President Trump’s candidacy have been filed in more than 30 states thus far. And while the influence of Zuckerbucks and the like may be waning as the 2024 election looms, federal money directed by the Biden administration, called “Bidenbucks,” appears to be taking its place. In place of the hundreds of millions donated by wealthy individuals, the federal initiative includes potentially unlimited taxpayer funds, which the FGA calls “Zuckerbucks on steroids"....

"In 2021, President Biden signed Executive Order 14019, titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” which directed federal agencies to take on the role that “Zuckerbucks” had filled in 2020; namely, registering voters with the assistance of nongovernmental third-party interest groups. According to the U.S. Constitution, election administration falls within the jurisdiction of state legislatures, but the Biden administration is working to federalize elections by executive order, having failed to do so through legislation in Congress, according to Mr. Whitson.....

"Ms. Quinn and other DNC affiliates pressured social media companies to track and remove information that the Democratic Party said was false, Ms. Ball wrote.

This effort likely included the suppression of reports by the New York Post in October 2020 regarding incriminating evidence on the laptop computer of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Although these reports were subsequently confirmed as true, they were immediately blocked by social media companies and didn’t become mainstream news until after the election....

Another component of the DNC strategy was coordinating social unrest, organized by groups such as Protect the Results, the Democracy Defense Coalition, and the Fight Back Table.

"Ms. Ball quoted Angela Peoples, a director of the Democracy Defense Coalition, who said that in preparation for an unfavorable outcome to the 2020 election, “we wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street.” When Mr. Biden was declared the winner, however, Protect the Results announced that it “would not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate if necessary,” Ms. Ball wrote....."

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Voters’ reluctance to support a convicted Trump is one of the few dark spots...

It is unlikely that any case comes to fruition this year. So what happens at the midterms if Trump wins and subsequently gets convicted?

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If he gets elected those cases essentially go away because once he’s president he falls out of the jurisdiction of those entities.

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Jan 31·edited Jan 31

Um, I'm not a lawyer, but no.

The president has immunity from lawsuits, it is untested, for now, as to weather the president is immune from civil or federal criminal prosecution and arrest.

These cases don't just magically go away. TBD as to weather they proceed while he is President or they simply get out in the shelf and wait for his lame duck ass to leave office.

The only punishment associated with impeachment is removal from office, that does not mean a person cannot be prosecuted for the behavior after successful impeachment or leaving office.

It does appear that none of the 11 (of 21) impeachments that resulted in the person leaving office, through either resignation or convection, were prosecuted. In fact no one impeached regardless of outcome was prosecuted.

Now disconnecting impeachment, only one case in DC is related to his second impeachment, inciting a riot.

Only two of the cases, DC and Georgia, have to do with behavior while in office.

The one case he is going to be found guilty in, retention of National Archive documents, occurred after he left office.

Alvin Bragg's case (which should be thrown out) is against candidate Trump, before he was president.

The George case is notable because he potentially violated a State law; while state law cannot contradict the Constitution, because of federalism the States have a separate court system from the federal. I personally think this case could have merit, but Fani Willis over complicated and over prosecuted it, and apparently colluded with the Biden White House

The DC case is related to Jan 6, also while he was president.

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Jan 31·edited Jan 31

More than half of swing-state voters wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump if he were convicted of a crime...

My interpretation is these folks still believe in the system. They are waiting for adjudication and will accept the results. This is a good thing.

Interesting that 2% factor in sentencing.

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Who are the officials claiming that Israel will back off its commitment to total destruction of Hamas? Is that what a temporary ceasefire really means? Not so sure Israel is close to any such cease fire deal.

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Jan 31·edited Jan 31

Stacey Abrams calls it quits:

No more checks for her, or her staff of professional victim-activists... Yes, the grift is gone. It couldn't happen to a nicer person and group of people.

I think a hefty dose of schadenfreude is warranted here...

"The Grift is Gone", sung to the tune of "The Thrill is Gone" (with apologies to B.B. King)

The grift is gone.

The grift is gone away.

The grift is gone, Stacey.

The grift is gone away.

You know you done us wrong, Stacey.

And you'll be sorry someday...

The grift is gone.

It's gone away from me.

The grift is gone, Stacey.

The grift is gone away from me.

With no cash to go on.

And so broke I'll be...

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I agree w/ Erick & with you. What isn't right & continues the grifting for Ms. Abrams is that she is now Chair of Race & Black & Studies at Howard U.

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Jan 31·edited Jan 31

Oh, it was a given that Stacey would be handed some sort of cushy job with a fat salary at a university or a lobbying firm.... I highly doubt that any of her former staff will be so fortunate though...

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Reagan was right when he said that we would lose our democracy in a generation if we didn’t fight for it. Trump wasn’t my first choice in 2016 but even then I saw the handwringing on the wall. Staying home or voting third party would have been a disaster.

He needs to keep his ego in check and rely on advisers not connected to the Deep State. Re organize the alphabet agencies so they serve the people, not the puppet masters.

If Republicans don’t vote for him because of a phony convection, they deserve the disaster that will come.

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Many thanks, Erick, for linking the Carl Trueman article.

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Buh-bye, Stacy. Why not save some cash, and invite Fani to ride into the sunset with you? There's prolly a UHaul big enough for both of you and your egos and loads of baggage.

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So, Seattle is paying $10 million to protesters who tried to blow up the federal building and ten right to life protesters get years in prison? Does no one see this as wrong?

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Some of the online craziness like you discussed in the first monologue just leaves me shaking my head in bewilderment. Social media is - like you said I think - the demons from the New Testament that drowned the pigs but couldn’t actually die.

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Biden traveling to East Palestine now only reminds Ohio voters that he's ignored them for this long. Brilliant.

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