For those of us who have been critical of the growing anti-free speech movement in the Democratic Party, the Biden transition team just took an ominous turn. The New York Post reports that Biden tapped Richard Stengel to take the “team lead” position on the US Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. As I previously addressed in a column, Stengel has been one of the most controversial figures calling for censorship and speech controls. For a president-elect who just called for everyone to “hear each other,” he picked a top aide who wants to silence many. Since it would be difficult to select a more anti-free speech figure to address government media policy, one has to assume that Biden will continue the onslaught against this core freedom as president. This is not the first Biden aide to indicate a crackdown on free speech in the new Administration and Biden himself has called for greater censorship on the Internet.
Last year, Stengel wrote a chilling Washington Post op-ed that denounced free speech as a threat to social and political harmony. Like a number of liberal and Democratic figures, Stengel struggled to convince readers that what they need is less freedom: “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting ‘thought that we hate,’ but not speech that incites hate.”
It is the European view that has destroyed free speech on that continent. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, (here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). It is a trend that seems now to be find support in the media, which celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech.
In January, Biden called for greater speech controls on the Internet and denounced Twitter for allowing others to speak freely. In insisted that tolerating such views in the name of free speech is same as “propagating falsehoods they know to be false.” Biden called for companies to bar Trump views on such things as mail-in voting as an invitation for fraud. He is not alone. Congressional leaders like House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff have called for labeling and removal of material with some members directly threatening a legislative crackdown. This week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for resisting speech monitoring and censorship as a matter of free speech. Pelosi lashed out that those who want to preserve a free speech zone are “all about making money,” ignoring free speech advocates who have no financial interest in these companies. Pelosi said that opposing such monitoring means that social media companies simply want “to make money at the expense of the truth and the facts” and are trying to “hide under the freedom of speech.”
These efforts are drawing upon the work of academics who are pushing for greater censorship and speech controls. The Atlantic published an article by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods calling for Chinese style censorship of the internet. They declared that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong” and “significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with society norms and values.”
Stengel however is one of the most unnerving and outspoken voices against free speech. He wrote how hard it was to explain our views of free speech to Arab countries which of course routinely jail or even execute people for exercising free speech. However, Stengel was raising the point to suggest that they had a valid confusion over our values:
“Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that It’s a fair question. Yes, the First Amendment protects the ‘thought that we hate,’ but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw.”
That design flaw is free speech itself. So in a nation filled with gifted people to lead the effort on government media policy and positions, Biden selected a person who rejects the very essence of free speech. Stengel promises the “unity” of a nation silenced by government speech codes and censorship. If no one has a megaphone, free speech is no longer a problem.
For Arab diplomats:
Can you understand why the Supreme Court allows a gay or straight adult survivor of childhood religious sexual abuse to burn a Bible?
A Palestinian American refugee to burn an Old Testament?
A Jewish American descendant of a Holocaust victim to burn a New Testament?
An Iranian American refugee to burn a Quran?
But perhaps we do need “hate speech” restrictions, especially on the internet, in order to protect world religious and political harmony. I am open to the arguments.
Passages in the Bible and Quran have been used to justify terrible violence. Should these texts be immune from hate speech review and censorship, or doubly liable, insofar as they claim to speak for God?
Anyyhing can be used to justify violence, eben silence has now been called hate speech. This is why freedom of speech should not be messed with period, hate speech is merely another term used for censorship.
Stengel writes: “Let the debate begin. Hate speech has a less violent, but nearly as damaging, impact in another way: It diminishes tolerance. It enables discrimination. Isn’t that, by definition, speech that undermines the values that the First Amendment was designed to protect: fairness, due process, equality before the law? Why shouldn’t the states experiment with their own version of hate speech statutes to penalize speech that deliberately insults people based on religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation?”
We are already far into a long-term debate between Jewish, Christian and Muslim diplomats of the Book.
Perhaps it is time for US states to experiment with hate speech censorship. But what if one state decides it is illegal to burn a Quran, and another state decides that social media recitation of some or all of the Quran deliberately pathologizes, demonizes and condemns to Hell those who differ based on religion and sexual orientation, i.e., that the Quran itself should be censored because it constitutes hate speech against Jews, Christians, non-Muslims and the LGBTQ community?
In each case, censorship may exacerbate intolerance. Censorship of Islam is not the same as instruction, debate and dialogue between faiths and civilizations. Censorship is not a free and fair competition in the marketplace of ideas where the truth is allowed to win. Islam claims to be a religion of peace, tolerance and unity. How else but through a deep commitment to freedom of speech, including the freedom to preach or burn one’s personal copy of a Bible or a Quran, can Islam prove itself tolerant?
Your premise is false.
Tolerance is a value not a principle. It does not in and of itself trump freedom.
Further, the argument is circular. Failure to allow hate speech is itself intolerance.
We do not convert people by silencing them.
We do not end racism by hating racists. We especially do not end racism by diminishing what racism actually is and hating as racists people we merely disagree with.
‘If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.’
Justice Mr. Brandeis Whitney v. California
T
New International Version 1 kings 21:19
Say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Have you not murdered a man and seized his property?’ Then say to him, ‘This is what the LORD says: In the place where dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, dogs will lick up your blood–yes, yours!'”
Saloth Sar says, let the repression proceed.
Then, when we may no longer speak, the last recourse will be to resolve matters in the “old testament” style and manner.
I am open to arguments.
but this debate is ancient, and unless you have an argument that was not dispatched almost 200 years ago by John Stuart Mill in “In Liberty”, or others like him, there is no basis for restricting free expression.
Kyle Griffin (MSNBC): “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected the Trump campaign’s claim that Republicans lacked access to Philadelphia’s vote count proceedings. The ruling was 5-2 against the campaign.”
Mark Joseph Stern (Slate): “The decision was 5–2 because two justices wouldn’t have even decided the case, preferring to rule that it is moot. The principal dissent also explicitly says that throwing out valid ballots would not be an appropriate remedy anyway. This is a total loss for the Trump campaign.”
According to Marc Elias of Democracy Docket, “Trump and his allies have just lost their 25th court case. This time in the PA Supreme Court. They are now 1-25.”
It’s a different PA case than the federal case being heard in PA this afternoon, where Giuliani is representing Trump. Giuliani has apparently claimed “widespread national voter fraud” even though the motion submitted didn’t allege that. He also said that due process claims were mistakenly removed, and he’d seek leave to amend the complaint to restore them. I’ve read comments from a few lawyers who are listening to the case. They think that the judge is likely to dismiss the case for lack of standing. If so, that would bring Trump and allies cases to 1-26.
Today many Democrats are political no matter what position they hold. There are 5 Democrats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and 2 Republicans. Commit likes the decision and Commit, Double Standard, won’t complain that the decision might be politically based on that and other things. I say fine but remember Double Standard that some of the cases being dropped in State Courts are being set up for the Supreme Court. Let’s not hear you complain that there are more conservative Supreme Court Justices than liberal ones.
I do not know what the ultimate response of Republicans will be to the likely inevitable failure of Trump’s legal challenges to a fraudulent election.
But there WILL be a response.
One possibility is that republicans will do as they did with the democrats destruction of the fillibuster – and take advantage.
If democratic cities need not follow the rules for elections – then neither do rural and suburban republican precincts.
One means of getting voter registration rolls cleaned up is for republicans to make a concerted effort to submit a mailin ballot for every illegitimate voter on the rolls.
If democrats are going to continue to accept votes after election day – so can republicans.
If Democrats are going to insist that voter fraud is both impossible and does not exist, then maybe republicans will take them up on that.
I would note that is one of the LEAST DANGEROUS responses that republicans could make.
We have listened to decades of rants that Republicans are all violent racist white supremecists. Yet every act of political violence I can recall in my lifetime was by the left.
During the unconstitutional “lockdowns” armed and non-violent protestors marched to state capitals.
Maybe next time Republicans will take a few pages from Democrats.
Rather than merely petitioning government, these protestors should “Occupy” Statehouses.
Shut government down until it returns to abiding by the rule of law.
The point of the comment you are responding to was to point out a double standard seen in Commit and others that likely will be seen should the Supreme Court permit some of the issues to come before it.
No one knows the Republican response. I’ll bet a good number in Congress will be glad he is gone. I hope they are replaced with the Jim Jordan type.
In another article Turley notes that Politico found that a majority do not want Trump to concede.
Until that significantly erodes the GOP is stick behind him – even the Romney’s.
But they are not sticking their neck out.
Trump need only win only once in each state. Biden has to be perfect.
Mespo, he not only has to win cases in more than one state, but the rulings have to have enough impact to change who won those states. If it only changes the results of a few hundred votes, Biden still wins those states where challenges were filed.
Not sure what you mean by “Biden has to be perfect.” Perfect at what? Biden won.
He’s hasn’t won anything until the votes are certified and the challenges decided. Ask the officials in Wayne County, Michigan?
CTDHD – I am not particularly concerned about whether Trump wins or not.
I am concerned about the integrity of our elections.
Further I have been openly publicly advocating for trustworthy elections since Bush V. Gore.
It is not difficult to run an election where fraud is nearly impossible.
The first requirement is verification of eligability to vote. There are numerous reasons that is important.
The first reason is to make sure that the number of votes cast matches the number of eligable voters that chose to vote.
If the results of an election are 99:98 but only 150 people showed up at the polls – we KNOW there is fraud.
Please tell me how in 2020 that we can tell that the number of votes cast matches the number of people who voted ?
If you can not verify that – you KNOW you have fraud.
The other reason for verifying eligability is that is how we prevent people from voting twice.
In 2020 please tell me how you can tell that the mailin ballot you received was actually cast by a real person who is eligable to vote – and the actual voter that it claims to be from ?
The next requirement is that
voting must not occur until AFTER verification of eligablity
Voting must occur immediately AFTER verification of eligability.
Voting must be completed in secret
Ballots must secured immediately AFTER voting.
Mailin voting can not meet these criteria.
These are the requirements for a secret ballot.
Among other things these preclude coercion or inducement as factors in voting.
So long as the process of actually voting and securing cast ballots is done properly – and for in person and absentee ballots that is not that hard (it is impossible for absentee ballots), the only thing that needs to be addressed regarding actual counting is that there must be a public means to audit the count. It does not matter how votes are counted – so long as raw ballots are retained and they can be independently audited.
The objective is not necescarily to prevent all forms of election fraud. It is to prevent undetectable election fraud.
What we have in 2020 is the possibilty of innumerable forms of undetectable election fraud.
Democrats have broken voting. Like it or not that is a given.
Rick Hasen (UC Irvine law prof. specializing in election law):
“Rudy just botched the “strict scrutiny” question—he is confusing the standard for a motion to dismiss with the level of scrutiny for an equal protection claim. He said no strict scrutiny. This is something that goes against his client’s interest.
“The judge is having to educate Rudy about strict scrutiny applying to fundamental rights. Rudy has no idea what he’s talking about. It is hard to see how a lawyer could do worse than this on this question. If any of my students were as confused as Rudy is, they would fail my election law class, something I’ve almost never done. …
“The judge is having to teach Rudy [Giuliani] basic constitutional law. That’s not hyperbole. This is a description of what is happening at this hearing. I’ve never seen worse lawyering in an election law case in my life.”
Hasen’s Twitter account and election law blog has information about a variety of election-related legal news:
twitter.com/rickhasen, https://electionlawblog.org/
Raffi Melkonian (appellate lawyer):
“Rudy was unable to express a single clear answer to anything the judge asked; he hardly understood the questions; and then desperately sought to amend his complaint again but didn’t know you needed to file a motion for leave.”
His live tweeting from the hearing, if anyone wants more details:
https://twitter.com/RMFifthCircuit/status/1328767248903901185
I have no idea the merits of the argument you are making. You do not provide enough details.
At the same time “We The People” are working to educate judges on the constitution, and the rule of law.
If a substantial portion of the electorate are convinced that the election was not conducted according to the law, and honestly
you have FAILED, and the government does not have the consent of the governed.
While I sometimes make constitutional arguments here.
Most of the time I make arguments from foundational first principles.
The latter is more important, and fortunately the constitution usually conforms.
While it is important in a US court of law to get levels of scrutiny correct, the fact is that the supreme court has gotten them wrong.
All government action is subject to strict scrutiny. The criteria for strict scrutiny are the criteria for infringing on ANY right.
The concept of fundimental rights not only does not exist in the constitution – it was rejected – not merely by the 9th amendment but also by the 14th. All rights are fundimental. All actions of government that infringe on rights must do so such as to meet the requirements of strict scrutiny.
The only purpose our founders identified in the declaration of independence for forming a government was securing our rights.
The only requirement our founders identified for terminating a government was FAILURE to secure our rights.
The declaration of independence identified the “consent of the governed” as the criteria for legitimate government.
Voting is NOT the only means by which government retains its legitimacy, but it is the primary one.
One of the messy problems with Bush V. Gore in 2000 is that voting is SUPRA constitutional. I.E. Legitimate government – even the constitution itself does not exist without the consent of the governed.
The purpose of the constitutional provisions on elections as well as federal and state laws is to acheive “the consent of the governed”.
But ultimately the citizens decide – not the courts, not the legislature, not the president or governor, whether they give their consent to a government. The purpose of the provisions in the law and constitution are to acheive that consent. They are NOT the criterai for consent – we decide that on our own.
What this disingenuous prevaricator and Deep Deep State operative means to say is that the Pennsylvania Supplemental Legislature (i.e. Supreme Court of Pennsylvania) legislated a decision to reject the self-evident supplication of conservatives/republicans, out of an overabundance of biased and subjective communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO) incoherence.
My mommy said so!
And the corrupt U.S. Supreme Court upheld the irrefutably unconstitutional Obamacare and every other aspect of the wholly unconstitutional American welfare state. Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax ONLY for “…general Welfare…,” omitting and, thereby excluding any power to tax for individual welfare, specific welfare, charity or redistribution of wealth. The 5th Amendment absolute right to private property precludes from Congress any power to “…claim or exercise dominion…” over private property.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) don’t hold dominion.
The Constitution does.
Read it sometime.
CTDHD – the PA Supreme court is making a name for itself as the must corrupt in the state.
It has openly admitted in its rulings that it is disregarding the Pensylvania constution.
Regardless, this particular case is ludicrously stupid.
There is only one issue and the facts are not disputed. ‘
Ballot verification and vote counting in Philadelphia and Pittsburg were done without oversite.
This alone is FRAUD.
That is the END of the issue.
You can not trust the outcome of any election where those running the election count the vote outside of public scrutiny.
Which is precisely what occured here.
That decision should be a no brainer.
But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s error is even more egregious.
Pennsylvania LAW requires meaningful observation of ballot verification, and vote counting.
Pennsylvania LAW requires that voters provide ID – which is impossible in mailin voting.
Pennsylvania LAW requires that ballots received after the close of the polls on election day are not valid.
The Pennsylvania Supreme court F’d up BEFORE the election, creating the mess we have in PA now, and they are busy trying to fix the impossible,
One of the reasons that Courts MUST uphold the law – whether they like the results or not BEFORE THE FACT, is because you can not fix things after the fact.
The very fact that you think this decision is wise demonstrates how clueless you are.
What exactly prevents some republican election official in PA right now from claiming they found 50,000 votes for Trump that were not counted ? That would violate PA law. But it would be perfectly OK according to the PA Supreme court.
Right now tens of millions of people in this country beleive that the outcome of this election is the consequence of Fraud.
Decisions like the PA Supreme court decision you cite – only make them more certain of that.
Why do you expect republican election officials througout PA to follow the law – in 2022 or 2024 – when they have the impramatur of the Pennsylvania Supreme court to cheat – and they KNOW that election officials in Pittsburg and Philadelphia are going to ?
You do not seem to grasp that the behavior of democrats is not merely undermining the current election – it is undermining future elections.
Putin and other totalitarians must be absolutely ecstatic.
The US has just given its impramatur to wide spread election fraud as well as running the process of elections outside of public scrutiny.
And democrats have once again proven they are not trustworthy.
I do not want to predict the precise outcome of this idiocy – but it will be bad.
You are actively increasing distrust and division, and you are actively undermining “the rule of law”.
This does not end well.
“You are actively increasing distrust and division, and you are actively undermining “the rule of law”.”
John, your posts, on the whole, are excellent whether one agrees with them or not. I am looking at how different people approach the events of the day. While the following opinion pertains to several posters, Commit’s hate of Donald Trump is a lot greater than her love for this country.
I am not actually a big Trump fan.
Mostly I find his rhetoric annoying, though I admit that after reading a couple of dozen stupid left wing insults fests, or just turning on the MSM I want him to whip it out and piss all over them all.
Regardless, Trump is objectively the best president in the 21st century. Bush and Obama were increasing disasters.
The one big promise Trump ignored was reigning in Debt. Eventually we will pay for that.
I too think he handled Covid absymally. He should have refused to declare an emergency and refused to dump money on the economy and light it on fire. But the commonly held view is pretty much the opposite.
Looking at what countries accross the world have done – it is predictably obvious that the “experts” are clueless and failed.
Yet the left countinues to sell the same nonsense.
“I am not actually a big Trump fan.”
No big deal.
However, one has to look for what is best. You have already stated that he is better than Bush or Obama. He is better than most of his predecessors.
The big negative is the budget, but one has to look at the environment. Besides attack from the united Democrats he had to face attacks from many on his side of the aisle along with attacks from the deep state, MSM, academia, Hollywood and a virus hyped by the left to the detriment of the American people. (I am not saying that the virus isn’t serious rather the Dems pushed policy in a direction that was harmful.). I think if he were not faced with the virus and the deep state that his policies would have brought the debt ratio, debt:GDP, down. I think a lot of things done were beyond his control.
I am capable of not letting perfection prevent acheiving the good enough.
There is zero doubt that Clinton, Biden, Obama, either Bush would be worse.
Oddly Bill Clinton was better on the economy and far worse on foreign policy.
And Trump is the first president since Carter to avoid starting a new foreign conflict.
CTDHD – I would suggest that you actually read PA SB-421 – this is the Pennsylvania law regarding Elections.
Contra you and the PA SCOTUS – courts do not write our laws. The legislature does, and the PA election law is clear regarding all the processes governing elections. The failure of PA courts to enforce the law is a failure of “the rule of law”, it is “the rule of men”, which ultimately leads to anarchy. But then that is what the left seeks. If you wish to impose an entirely new system of your own design on others from scratch an effective way to do so is to introduce anarchy. 3
This would be the same Marc Elias that paid millions from the Clinton campaign for the Steele Dossier.
The failure of states accross the country such as PA to follow their own voting laws is defacto proof of widespread voting fraud.
The fact that most precincts in those states not only followed the laws but had no difficulty in doing so while others chose not to is evidence of widespread election fraud.
You seem under the delusion that it is not fraud to ignore the rules that are there to establish trust in the results and to prevent cheating if no one can prove beyond any doubt that your cheating changed the outcome.
Neither you nor I nor anyone else can know for certain what the outcome would have been – had YOU been honest.
But YOU aren’t.
“FEC Chair: If Sidney Powell Says There Was Rampant Voter Fraud, “I Believe Her”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/12-reasons-why-trumps-lawyers-are-absolutely-convinced-he-will-win-election
“#1 Powell: “There has been a massive and coordinated effort to steal this election from we the people of the United States of America, to delegitimize and destroy votes for Donald Trump, to manufacture votes for Joe Biden.”
#2 Powell: “First of all, I never say anything I can’t prove… and President Trump won by not just hundreds of thousands of votes, but by millions of votes that were shifted by this software that was designed expressly for that purpose. We have sworn witness testimony of why the software was designed. It was designed to rig elections.”
#3 Powell: “They also used an algorithm to calculate the votes they would need to flip, and they used computers to flip those votes from…Trump to Biden.”
#4 Powell: “They had the algorithms. They had the paper ballots waiting to be inserted if and when needed. And notably, President Trump’s vote in the blue states went up enormously. That’s when they had to stop the vote count. They had to go in and replace votes for Biden and take away Trump votes.”
#5 Powell: “They can watch the voting real time. They can run a computer algorithm on it as needed to either flip votes, take votes out or alter the votes to make a candidate win… It’s massive criminal voter fraud, writ large across at least 29 states… It’s obvious the algorithm and the statistics that our experts are tracking out are batches of votes and when the votes changed. It’s going to blow the mind of everyone in this country when we can get it all together and can explain it with the affidavits and the experts that have come forward.”
#6 Powell: “Even their own manual explains how votes can be wiped away. They can put — it’s like drag-and-drop — Trump votes to a separate folder and then delete that folder.”
#7 Powell: “In fact, we have got math in Michigan and Pennsylvania, I think it is, that, all of a sudden, hundreds of thousands of votes at a 67 percent ratio for Biden, 23 percent for Trump were uploaded multiple times into the system.”
#8 Powell: “They did this on purpose, it was calculated, they’ve done it before. We have evidence from 2016 in California, we have so much evidence I feel like it’s coming in through a firehose.”
#9 Powell: “It’s absolutely brazen how people bought the system, and why they bought the system.”
#10 Powell: “In fact, every state that bought Dominion, for sure, should have a criminal investigation or at least a serious investigation of the federal — of the officers in the states who bought the software. We have even got evidence of some kickbacks, essentially.”
#11 Powell: “…aware of substantial sums of money being given to family members of state officials who bought this software.”
#12 Powell: “We’re getting ready to overturn election results in multiple states.”
Rhodes, Estovir, James, Etc.
Explain why Trump’s legal team has gotten NOWHERE in promoting these lies?? So far they have lost almost every case they filed.
Democrat judges.
Fallacy – affirming the consequent.
Moral error – making a moral accusation without proving it.
At the bare minimum the 2020 elections were not conducted according to the law of their respective states.
That is election fraud.
Contra the left and the courts – the ultimate arbiters of the law are NOT the courts, but the people.
That is one of the reasons that courts may not “interpret” the law, as opposed to applying the law and constitution as written.
The law is not owned by the courts, or lawyers, or government. It is owned by the people.
The social contract is our trade of our right to initiate force against others, for the protection of all our other rights by government.
Government is not arbitrarily free to do as it pleases. It is not even free to do as the majority pleases.
Government is the means by which force is used “lawfully” to restrain those who would use force to violate our rights.
Lawfully requires atleast the grudging consent of nearly all of us – not some temporary majority.
Law does not come from government – it comes from the people. Government is the tool by which we clarify it and then impose it.
YEP!
I tend to beleive it when Sydney Powell says something too.
Further, after what we have seen over the past 4 years, it is possible to beleive malfeasance by the leave and willful blindness on a massive scale.
In the past four years claims Rightwing Nutjobs like Alex Jones and the conspiracy theories they have tried to sell have proven to be closer to the truth than the purported scions of the media.
Who would have beleived that the democratic party as a whole would impeach the president to try to discredit actual evidence of corruption on the part of their candidate ? Is there anyone who thinks that demanding an investigation of the Biden’s conduct in Ukraine was not only the right thing to do, but REQUIRED ?
That said I am highly skeptical of this claim that Dominion flipped millions of Votes.
First many actual experts on election fraud noted that to win a national election by fraud it is important to limit the scale of the fraud to barely sufficient to avoid a recount.
We have a hand recount in GA – and Trump appears to be gaining votes – but not sufficient to change the outcome, and there are no indications of widespread DVS vote flipping.
The primary means of fraud in this election was the counting of hundreds of thousands of illegitimate votes.
While it is not possible to secure a mailin election, there are a few things that must be done to minimize large scale fraud.
Verification of the unopened ballots is at the top of that list. Once you have stripped a ballot of its outer envelope there is no means to correct a problem. In this election in republican districts mailin ballots were rejected when the signatures did not match, when the addresses were not correct, when the voter was not on the voter registration lists, when the voter was dead, when the voter did not exist, when the voter was not a state resident, when the required information was not provided, when the address was incorrect. Election officials did not on their own try to “Cure” defective ballots. There is no means for an election official to know if a defective ballot is an innocent error on the part of a voter or evidence of fraud. Further the process of review in republican precincts was done with oversight from both parties.
In a few large democratic cities NONE of this was done.
Democratic election officials may not have filled out the fraudulent ballots – but they bent over backwards to assure that “Every vote was counted” – especially those most likely to be fraud.
The hardest to believe is that so many *millions* more people were inspired to vote for Biden than Obama in 2008. Joe hardly even campaigned until in the final stretch when polls showed he was losing to Trump. Then Trump pulled in something like 75 million votes and they had to be sure that old Joe got at least a few million more than Trump, and somehow they amazingly ‘found’ all those millions of votes for Joe. Yah there was no fraud. LOL.
There are innumerable red flags.
There have been several claims that there are hundreds of thousands of Biden only ballots.
Then norm is about a 1000 of these per state. There is less than 1000 Trump only ballots per state.
The most reasonable explanation for hundreds of thousands of Biden only ballots is ballot injection fraud.
It is near certain that can be detected – if anyone bothers to, as there will just not be sufficient random variation between ballots if there is fraud. It is near certain that a computerized forensic analysis could determine whether those were hundreds of thousands of unique ballots or filled out by a small number of people. It is also likely that if it can be established that hundreds of thousands of ballots were likely injected, that eventually the culprits could be outed.
But no one is looking.
It can also be determined whether the number of mailin ballots received matches the number counted.
We can not and should not be able to match each individual person to a ballot, but we should have no discrepancies between the number of voters and the number of ballots.
It will take enormous courage for judges and others to call out this brazen fraud. I know what side I’m on when the civil war splits the country in two.
At U.S. Agency For Global Media..
Trump Appointee Has Driven Out Career Professionals (a familiar story).
Michael Pack took office in June and quickly upended the federal broadcasters. Already, he has fired or suspended most of the executive staff and nearly all the heads of his agency’s networks, which include Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia. He has withheld approval of visa extensions that foreign employees need to continue working for those networks. A return home without U.S. protection could leave some employees and their families vulnerable to regimes hostile to the U.S. government.
President Trump first nominated Pack, a filmmaker who has previously collaborated with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, in 2018. The nomination languished in the Senate until this year. It found new life after Trump and the White House attacked the Voice of America in the spring for its coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. In an unusual statement, the White House condemned VOA for failing to blame the Chinese sufficiently for the pandemic’s spread, claiming it had fallen for the regime’s propaganda.
In response, VOA’s director at the time, Amanda Bennett, pointed to numerous stories critical of China. She resigned immediately following Pack’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
By sweeping knowledgeable staffers away and even refusing to approve standard budgets, eight current or former staffers for USAGM and Voice of America said, the agency under Pack had in many ways broken down. Officials say they were unable to fulfill orders for toilet paper for a transmitting facility, or a cleaning contract for a shortwave broadcasting center in Kuwait.
Publicly, Pack accused executives of severe and systemic security failures, though former officials say the agency’s stringent security standards exceed those of most federal divisions that are not part of national security. They say he inflated the severity of problems at the agency.
Journalists at Voice of America and some of Pack’s colleagues at the agency headquarters say he started with a desire to root out what he sees as anti-Trump bias. And they say reporters are now finding themselves far more frequently second-guessed over coverage with political choices. The brief introduction of a piece about Jill Biden, which was broadcast a day after a similar piece on first lady Melania Trump, has prompted a formal review of French-to-Africa service anchor Salwa Jaffari by USAGM’s human resources division.
On Monday morning, a group of journalists at Voice of America signed a letter of protest, saying Pack was harming U.S. strategic interests and imperiling the lives of their colleagues who are foreign citizens by refusing to extend their work visas. That afternoon, the acting director, Biberaj, issued a statement in response to his staffers’ protest saying he valued a free press, the safety of his journalists and the firewall that protects their work.
On Tuesday afternoon, USAGM tweeted out a thread saying that the letter of protest was inappropriate and that it would therefore not respond. Instead, it suggested those who signed could be subject to disciplinary response, calling it an “administrative issue.”
Several executives who left or were suspended by Pack tell NPR that the CEO openly broods over questions of loyalty and sidelined them because they were willing to push back against his instincts. Turner described Pack’s outlook as “paranoid.”
Many of the people who were leading the agency when Pack arrived already held sterling conservative credentials in Washington: Turner first joined the federal government under President George W. Bush. Powers had previously been an aide to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Jamie Fly, the fired chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, had been an adviser to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. And two junior Trump White House aides assigned earlier this year to USAGM to help ease Pack’s transition in office were quickly exiled. They took up shop at cubicles abandoned by Voice of America’s Spanish-language services so they could use a neglected foosball table, according to former USAGM staffers.
Edited from: “At Voice Of America, Trump Appointee Sought Political Influence Over Coverage”
NPR, 9/2/20
Yup, we need less career people in govenment.
Our founders did not think of government as a career. Public service was just that. Something people GAVE to the public without charge.
How many Voters for Biden understood that THIS is exactly what he hinted & more that he would do??! This is BAD! But Biden Supporters ignored what was written right out there to see. This guy may be cognitively diminished but he knew & knows what he’s bringing into being…. And Kamala Harris & all her ilk KNOW what’s going on. I’m not arguing that Trump was innocent of tolerating Gov/State propaganda & censorship – ALL recent presidents have done this & it’s ALL despicable!
Separation/Divorce/Secession – alternative to bloody revolution. It’s the civilized way to proceed… Will calmer heads let it proceed? I truly hope to see movement on this for various sections of what is currently USA.
There’s really no need to be so sensationalist about this. “Biden selected a person who rejects the very essence of free speech.” I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Free speech has never been and never will be absolute, as much as Professor Turley seems to wish it would be. It is perfectly legitimate to question, as Richard Stengel does, what the boundaries of acceptable speech ought to be. If Turley is not open to debating that, then he’s the one who’s refusing to countenance ideas he doesn’t agree with. “Restrictions on free speech = bad” is overly simplistic, and by pointing that out, one is not rejecting “the very essence of free speech.”
“It is perfectly legitimate to question, as Richard Stengel does, what the boundaries of acceptable speech ought to be.”
A purely subjective statement. That isn’t even an argument.
The reason that the Constitution was written to clearly state that, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble”, was to completely eliminate any subjective interpretations.
Look up the definition of “abridge”. The Founders went out of their way to ensure that the government was in no way, shape, or form, allowed to limit or curtail the right of free speech to We the People.
Stengel is a lifer statist and a modern day Goebbels. Apparently you and him have a lot in common.
Rhodes, are you unaware of legal restrictions on speech?
Perjury is illegal.
Defamation is illegal.
Incitement is illegal.
Child pornography is illegal.
There are a small number of other legal exceptions, despite your claim that “the government was in no way, shape, or form, allowed to limit or curtail the right of free speech to We the People.”
Which of those do you think should be legal?
All Americans are free to commit perjury, defamation, incitement, etc.
You just perjured yourself herein through prevarication and deflection, as inane and ineffective as it was.
All you minions and bots sent to the Turley Blog and elsewhere to oppose the facts and the truth by the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) are so frantic.
Fake Joke Buydem won, right?
Why have you all devolved to full panic mode?
Could it be the thumb drive?
CTHD:
Defamation is illegal? Where? In what state? It’s actionable as a civil tort, not illegal. Defame away yet the government is powerless to stop you. More stupid from stupid’s Queen.
“It’s actionable as a civil tort, not illegal”
Thanks for the correction about the right way to describe the fact that the government allows people to sue for defamation.
Government does not “allow people to sue for defamation”, any more than government “allows people to sue for breach of contract”.
You do not seem to understand the social contract.
We all have rights – pretty much unlimited rights. Absent government we are all free to enforce those rights on our own.
And the results are pretty grusome.
We ceeded the right to initiate violence against others in return for government protecting our other rights.
Government BTW can only protect negative rights, because protecting positive rights would impose a duty on everyone – a duty that is immoral and often unacheivable. And government is NOT apsirational. Apisrations are the domain of individuals.
As the declaration of independence notes – when government fails to secure our rights we are free to destroy it and build another.
Government does not “allow” us to sue whether for Torts or breach of contract, WE REQUIRE THAT OF GOVERNMENT.
“Perjury is illegal.”
Perjury is a crime.
“Defamation is illegal.”
Defamation is a Tort.
It is not illegal to defame someone.
But there could be financial costs to doing so.
Just as saying stupid things could cost you your job.
“Incitement is illegal.”
Nearly all the time it is not. The standard for an incitement to violence conviction is incredibly high.
“Child pornography is illegal.”
A century ago things that Kids see on TV everyday were crimes.
Our child pornography laws are a mistake.
Only the production of Child pornography should be a crime.
With very very few exceptions in the US there is almost no government censorship of speech.
That does not mean that all speech is without consequences.
As noted above – you are actually free to defame others – but doing so might cost you in terms of your reputation, your credibility, your integrity, and possibly even your wealth.
Free speech does not mean consequence free speech.
I am constantly chiding you CTDHD and others for bad speech. I am exposing your bad logic, your bad facts, and your false accusations.
The consequence of that is damage to your reputation.
But I am not censoring you.
I am annoyed and offended at the idiotic nonsense that Twitter and Youtube add to posts that they do not like, most of the time it is really stupid and wrong. But as anoying as it is – Social Media is damaging its own reputation, and I am happy with that.
That is the appropriate price for being constantly wrong.
It is when they actually block posts that there is a real problem.
The press, the MSM and Social Media have been practically conspiring for years to lie to us and to protect us from the Truth.
There was no Trump/Russia collusion.
The DNC was not likely hacked by Russia, and regardless TFA had nothing to do with it.
The FBI was conducting an illegal investigation – and spying on the Trump campaign – as was atleast one US intelligence agency – likely the CIA.
Any intelligent person grasps that Putin favored Clinton not Trump.
Further any intelligent person grasps that you can not stop foreign countries from expressing views regarding US elections.
That it is always WRONG to preclude others – even those you do not like from persuasion – even lying.
The remedy for bad speech is more speech not less.
The Mueller prosecutions themself were political malfeasance. The Mueller prosecutors have lied to the courts, hidden exculpatory evidence and violated myriads of laws.
Eric Ciamello or whoever the whistlblower was, was obstructing justice. There was an absolutely legitimate basis for Trump to ask for – even demand an investigation of the Biden’s.
This also means that the entire impeachment was an actual obstruction of justice.
Adam Schiff lied when he said he saw evidence of Collusion. As did myriads of other democrats.
The “highly placed authoritative leaks” the press fawned over were lies from end to end.
Put simply over the past 4 years we have heard LOTS of lying – but it was not from Trump – but from the media, the left, and democrats.
You should not be surprised that no respectable person beleives you – about anything.
I here lefties here rant about science. Why should anyone beleive you know what science is ?
Why should we beleive experts who have constantly been wrong about most everything ?
Why should we beleive the press’s politicized science when they can not get anything else right ?
When you $h!t on your credibility – you do so in everything.
When you lie about global warming – why should you be beleived about C19 ?
When you lie about C19 – why should you be beleived about Joe Biden ?
When you Lie about Biden – why should you be beleived about election fraud ?
Why should you be beleived about most anything ?
What issue of significance have you been right about in the past 4 years ?
Free speech is very nearly absolute – and must be.
Stengel may question whatever he wishes.
But no one should be afforded government power who does not accept that government restrictions on free speech are severely limited.
Contra Stengel we are free int he US to insult islam, or catholicism, or evengelicals. or religion generally.
I find it odd, that a political party that bemoans that the rest of us are “clinging to our guns and bibles”, thinks that insulting islam is beyond the pale.
But then consistancy was never a value for the left.
“. . . what the boundaries of acceptable speech ought to be.”
“Acceptable” to whom?
You can disdain whatever speech you wish.
You can not use force to stop the speach of others.
Freedom of speech is not qualified by the Constitution and is, therefore, absolute.
This communist (liberal, progressive, socialist, democrat, RINO) desires and intends to fully abrogate the Constitution.
That is the very nature of a mortal enemy.
_________________________________
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
THIS IS WAR
__________
In 1861, President of the United States Abraham Lincoln took two steps intended to maintain order and public safety in the now-divided country.
In his capacity as commander in chief, Lincoln declared martial law in all states and ordered the suspension of the constitutionally protected right to writs of habeas corpus in the state of Maryland and parts of the Midwestern states.
– Robert Longley
______________
Democrats have criminally engineered, corrupted and commandeered the U.S. election process commencing Civil War II.
President Trump must declare martial law, suspend Habeas Corpus, prosecute the criminal election tampering perpetrators, seize voting apparatus in all 50 states and conduct a complete audit and recount of “legal” votes.
It is illegal to use the First Amendment to yell “fire”, when in fact there isn’t a fire. No rights are absolute, per The Supreme Court. I’m a firearms instructor and 2nd Amendment proponent, so I’ve studied the law about the rights extensively.
Good to know.
General Secretary Joke “The Corrupt” Buydem and Commissar Richard Stengel want to terminate employment of the declarative, “fire.”
Thank you for your eminently dear occasion.
“It is illegal to use the First Amendment to yell “fire”, when in fact there isn’t a fire.”
An oft repeated, yet false claim.
“No rights are absolute, per The Supreme Court.”
And yet rights precede government. As the declaration of independence notes – when government is abusive of our rights we are free tro abolish it.
” I’m a firearms instructor and 2nd Amendment proponent, so I’ve studied the law about the rights extensively.”
Those two things do not follow, nor are they relevant to each other.
I would note that the right to self defense is actually absolute. Without the 2nd amendment you would still be entitled to the necescities to defend yourself from violence initiated by others.
“No rights are absolute, per The Supreme Court.”
_______________________________________
That’s not from the Supreme Court, that’s from a tyrannical despot and dictator.
If the rights and freedoms in the Constitution are not absolute, they do not exist.
The Framers argued for freedom not government – they argued for people not oppression.
The singular American failure is and has been the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
Irrefutably unconstitutional Obamacare is constitutional per the Supreme Court – what’s that tell you? It’s usually wrong.
What kind of fool is going to hear “fire,” not see fire and panic over nonexistent fire?
That is an inane, frivolous and invalid argument.
Those who present this argument are impeached – res ipsa loquitur.
_____________________________________________________
“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Read Ted Cruz’s new book ONE VOTE AWAY for a good overview of “free speech” and the scope of the First Amendment. Also read previous columns by Jonathan Turley on the topic. Cruz’s book is not written in legalize. No doubts, however, about the fact that the Democratic Party today is not grandpa’s party. Today’s Democrats seem to think that they are entitled to a role much like that of the “philosopher kings” in Plato’s Republic.
Biden is an empty suit! His way of thinking is pure mush and is himself a communist thinker. His leadership is as empty as his head. The democrat party as a whole is a sick festering sore. Their desire is total control of the people of America and the schools where they can go on teaching their communism and the muslim religion. Christian’s of America should be calling on the Almighty God for deliverance from this future horror which will end in infamy. President Trump has a legacy that will stand forever as aiding the nation of Israel and standing for making America great again. All the democrat party has EVER DONE is to bring this country down and force it’s communistic views on the people. They have been consistent in their evil in murdering untold millions of unborn and born children to will continue it. But, as a Christian, I know that God is watching and He sees everything this communist party is doing to destroy the American way of life. Capitalism is what has made this country great with God’s leading. Biden and all his ilk is coming to their end. George Soros is a monster and the strongest supporter of the democrats. Just know this, that when you draw your last breath and your soul leaves it’s body, you can’t take anything with you and you are then in the hands of an angry God and your end is eternal hell.
Bottom line folks if Biden takes office his supporters will suffer just as much as patriotic Americans, maybe more when the fizz disappears.
Many patriotic Americans ARE Biden supporters.
Anny-See, you agree “many”, not all! Very good, I hope your one of the “many” so you can see what all the patriotic Americans are going through because of these Marxist.
FY VV. All Americans are assumed patriotic unless they prove otherwise and political disagreements are allowed and encouraged by true patriots.
You don’t own the phrase,
BZZT wrong – no one is entitled to a positive assumption about anything.
The default judgement is neutral, not positive or negative.
“political disagreements are allowed and encouraged by true patriots.”
So Google and social media are not “true patriots” by your argument.
So everyone trying to silence those fighting subjecting this election to scrutiny is not a “true patriot” by your argument.
I neither own stock in, nor am I a member of FB or Twitter and don’t GAFF how they run their companies. I fully support the right of business owners to make decisions about their operations within the laws of their localities, states,and country.As far as I know there is no law requiring these companies to indiscriminately publish anything anyone wants to post to their platforms and hope there never is.
Since people like Sidney Powell, and Don Trump, jr all still have Twitter accounts on which they post regularly, It seems that company is trying to limit the spread of falsehoods and inflammatory information, no political opinions.the owner may object to.
The law regarding FB and Social media is that in return for protection from claims of defamation, they are required to provide a neutral public platform.
They traded protection from publishers defamation claims for limits on their ability to censor.
I would further note that all of Social Media initially enticed people with claims that they would provide platforms for free speech.
Often written into their terms of service. We do not generally allow the parties of a contract to unilaterally rewrite the contract at whim.
Further contract law typically treats the promises that are made to secure a contract as part of the contract – even when they are disclaimed in the contract.
Regardless, I have no problem with Social Media censoring as they please – if they kept the promises that created their business, and if we are all free to in all other ways treat them like every other publisher.
Finally I would note that the law rests on moral foundations.
This should be obvious. The law is not random whimsy. Murder is a crime because it forcefully violates the rights of others, not because we randomly decided to bar murder.
The most rights you have are the least rights you will allow to the least powerful.
Sydney Powell and Donald Trump Jr. are not the test of whether we have free speech.
As the ACLU once grasped – it is those like Der Sturmer, or Richard Spencer that are the test of whether any of us have rights.
Just as many patriotic americans are Trump supporters.
Should those of us who disagree with you jump from noting Biden’s real deficiencies to calling YOU racists, sexist, hateful, hating haters ?
If you are so opposed to hate speech – quit spewing it.
No, you are all Nazis! Fascists! Racists! Joe Biden is a Racist! (he really is, w many troublesome words coming outta Joey’s mouth than anything Trump ever said or did)
How does that feel, huh? Stop calling Trump supporters the N word.
It’s not ‘healing’ or ‘uniting,’ all you Biden supporting fascist racist nazi’s.
From “Foreign Policy” Magazine:
Trump Appointee Seeks to Turn U.S. Media Agency Into a Political Cheerleader
A week before the U.S. presidential election, the Trump administration sought sweeping changes to transform U.S. government broadcasting agencies into cheerleading networks for the president’s foreign-policy agenda. But congressional Democrats vowed to push back on the administration’s efforts to undermine the independence of the government broadcasters.
The head of the U.S. broadcasting agency has eliminated a recent firewall provision established to ensure the independence of news operations at Voice of America (VOA) and other government-sponsored news outlets and to shield their journalists from the interference of political leadership.
In a Monday night memo, Michael Pack, the CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA’s news operations, issued the repeal of a June federal regulation that limited political interference in U.S. government broadcasting.
For VOA staffers, the memo represented the clearest sign yet of Pack’s effort to remake the government news agency into a state propaganda network for Trump.
The administration previously launched an investigation into VOA’s White House reporter, Steve Herman, to determine whether he had shown an alleged bias against Trump. The administration has also issued guidelines prohibiting reporters from reporting on Trump if they had ever retweeted or liked an article or cartoon critical of the president.
The repeal memo claimed that the firewall regulation was in conflict with the agency’s original mandate to promote American interests abroad. VOA and other U.S.-sponsored news agencies, it claimed, “do not function as a traditional news or media agency and were never intended to do so. … By design, their purpose and focus is foreign relations and the promotion of American objectives—not simply presenting news or engaging in journalistic expression. For example, the Networks are to articulate the American perspective while countering international views that undermine American values and freedom, or that might aid our enemies’ messaging.”
Edited From: “Trump Appointee Seeks To Turn U.S. Media Agency Into A Political Cheerleader”
Foreign Policy Magazine, 10/27/20
………………………………………………………….
This article, one must note, was published just 3 weeks ago. Apparently Johnathan Turley presumed none of us saw this coverage.
“Secretary Raffensperger Announces Completion of Voting Machine Audit Using Forensic Techniques: No Sign of Foul Play”
https://twitter.com/NYTnickc/status/1328767654862221319 — copy of Raffensperger’s statement attached to the tweet
Determining whether there are issues with the voting machines does not require “foresnic techniques”.
It merely requires had counting the same ballots the machines counted and verifying the results.
It is my understanding – though I could be wrong that thus far there is no significant discrepancy between DVS reported results and the GA Hand recount.
Regardless, you do not use forensic techniques to disprove fraud – you can’t use forensice techniques to disprove fraud.
But you can use them to find indicia of fraud.
There are numerous indicia of Fraud in this election – they should all be checked out.
The DVS claim is by far the most dangerous to democrats. There is no recovery for democrats from uncovering that voting machines were altering vote counts.
It is also the claim least likely to prove true. The greatest bulwarks against election fraud are the odds of getting caught.
DVS manipulating voting machines in the way alleged has a very high probability of not only being discovered, but when discovered will be fraud attributed to specific people/ companies. It is unlikely that DVS would have bet the farm on electing Biden when the likelyhood of being caught was high and the cost of being caught was the destruction of the company and the arrest of many in it.
While filling out fraudulent ballots and mailing them in, or otherwise injecting them into the vote stream has far lower odds of being detected, and more importantly far lower odds of determining who to punish.
The democrats who successfully thwarted oversight by observers will not face any consequences.
Those who cured defective ballots will not face consequences.
There are innumerable forms of misconduct in this election that likely effected the results, that all ultimately constitute fraud, but will not likely result in consequences.
And that means we will see this again and again.
And the left should be concerned – because if the losers in an election have good reason to beleive that they have lost as a result of fraud, and that they have no means to overcome that fraud, they are legitimately entitled to act outside the law.
I guess the recent revelation of Commit didn’t take into account the following. It seems his news is old and unreliable.
Software Not Properly Updated Gave Biden 1000s of Votes in Michigan
Update: The Michigan Secretary of State’s office has stated that the 6,000 vote mistake in favor of Democrats was due to human error, as the operator of the system did not update the software that’s needed to collect voting data and report results. The headline has been updated to reflect this information.
The election software that “glitched” in both Georgia and Michigan — which in Michigan’s case, incorrectly gave Joe Biden thousands of votes — is being used in 28 states, according to the software company’s website.
continued at: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/11/07/software-not-properly-updated-gave-biden-1000s-of-votes-in-michigan/
Thanks for that news from November 7
Yes, that news has been around a long time and neither you nor Commit seem to recognize it constantly saying no proof. However, to those two articles I added a third that just came in because on Friday the Michigan Secretary of State confirmed the problem Friday.
You are not a trustworthy fellow. I expect in a short while to again hear you saying no evidence. Now you have the confirmation from the Michigan Secretary of State demonstrating your post election statements to be wrong.
Joey ChiCom is pretending that news is not relevant because it was 10 days ago. Lots more has come out since then, Joey.
Try to keep up.
Rhodes the Russian troll continues trolling.
This is a non stop nutcase.
Barb, you don’t know Rhodesy’s history here.
He calls everyone he disagrees with a ChiCom.
I don’t know Rhodes but I have seen Anonymous in action. Sometimes there is a crossover but for the most part I find Anonymous to be a nutcase deservedly so.
I think you’re talking about yourself posting anonymously.
The nutcase has reappeared.
(To the Good Anon and I don’t mean the other Anon is bad I just don’t agree with much of what he/she offers)-You have been cracking me up all day with NC remark, we need more humor in these times. God Bless you both.
Do you have an argument ?
Can you present an argument without puking thousands of bloviating words across the page?
“Can you present an argument without puking thousands of bloviating words across the page?”
This is an example of a frustrated individual who can only rip things down being incapable creating anything useful whether physical or intellectual.
Do you have an argument ?
5 words.
Anyone with knowledge of computer systems knows that the human error claim is idiocy.
Even if True – it is still a major problem.
Voting software that is capable of a human error that flips 6000 votes in a single county is untrustworthy.
If Human error associated with a DVS system resulted in such a flip – then every tally by DVS software must be handcounted everywhere in the country to make sure there are not other “human errors”
There are several issues that demand inquiry regarding the DVS softare.
The claim of human error in Michigan is problematic.
Elections are a critical function – the error that we know occurred in Michigan should not be possible.
Even if it was not malfeasance – it is clearly something that should be checked everywhere DVS is used.
A 6000 vote swing in 1/4 of the Trump counties in swing states would flip every one of those states.
There is the further possibility of malfeasance – despite what some on the right claim – Malfeasance by DVS is highly unlikely.
The probability of getting caught is incredibly high and the downside is enormous.
But the probability of error is also high. Error is not the same as malfeasance, but the impact on the election can be equally high.
Ultimately I doubt that any issue related to DVS software is likely to be large enough to flip THIS election.
But it is far more than large enough to flip smaller elections – I beleive that a County Commissioner election in NV was flipped by computer miscounts.
We MUST address these issues. We MUST fix the process so these and many other oportunities for Fraud are impossible.
But democrats are vehemently opposed to anything that would make elections more trustworthy.
This is a very bad choice. The failure of democrats to follow the rules in this election, the constant making the rules up as they go along,
the deliberate effort to hide what they were doing are damning.
They make it look like they are engaged in fraud. And that will cost them in the long run.
I am betting that all these swing state governors that are up for election in 2022 will flip.
John, firstly let me say that it is a steep road to climb and I wouldn’t think a win would be possible with any other known politician. Though many do not see it, Trump is an out of the box thinker and has the stamina to climb that road even if he doesn’t make it.
Whenever humans are involved with machines, one can expect problems. From what I have read, these machines are capable of being adjusted so that cheating can occur. DVS would not be the culprit in the present action. My biggest problem is not with the difficulty factor behind the act rather how to keep such an act secret. The “bags of ballots” reported in some news reports and the blackouts tell us things were not conventional.
I and most on the right will accept the final decision even if it goes the wrong way. The same is not able to be said of the left. We have already seen the despicable ways in which they act.
I would highlight to everyone else that you and I are having an actually productive discussion.
We agree on the facts. To the extent we disagree it is on our predictions regarding the future.
I would tend to agree with you that wise people do not bet against Trump.
Regardless, I am not even close to as optomistic as you are.
There is no way in the world Roberts is follow the law or the constitution if it rocks the boat unless there are already 5 votes to do so.
Whatever case comes to SCOTUS they have only essentially a few choices:
Rant and rave and possibly issue orders but effectively decide the issue is moot. In most of these states it is likely not possible for them to go back and fix the fact that they have not conformed the election to their own laws.
Order the states to conform to their own laws, or failing to do so not certify their elections. That throws this into the house of representatives. That is the most constitutional remedy. But the odds of SCOTUS doing so is slim to none. There are not 5 justices with that degree of courage.
There are permutations of the above – there is a pretty good equal protection argument floating arround. But that still fits into one of the frameworks above. It does not matter what the constitutional argument is or how good it is, if SCOTUS is unwilling to invalidate state elections entirely that are not otherwise repairable.
My best hope is that they will do something like order PA to follow its own laws, in the hopes that will somehow be binding in the future and turn a blind eye when PA can’t and the election is decided for Biden.
I would further note that the Antifa clashes with Trump supporters are no accident. If Trump wupporters came out in large numbers that would pressure SCOTUS, States and congress and we might see action.
If Antifa beats up enough Trump supporters and Twitter and FB make it harder for them to organize protests, that makes it easier for everyone to acquiesce to Biden.
“Regardless, I am not even close to as optomistic as you are.”
It’s not a shining optimism that you are reading into, rather my belief that Trump is able to do things others are not. He is a leader, not a politician. He is willing to think out of the box and work.
The road we are traveling is bad for the future and good for only a special few. The left is greedy, stupid and envious willing to do anything to get what they want. A Biden victory means our enemies win and the middle class pays.
We are pessimistic about different things.
I agree with you on trump’s strenghts – but too much of this is out of his control.
But I am far less concerned about a Biden presidency.
It will be a disaster, and short, and in the meantime republicans will take over governorships and more legislatures and senate seats and the house.
I do not want to like through the quivalent of Obama’s third term, but I can survive.
Further Biden is unbeleivably handicapped, Whatever the left thinks – people will not forget what a stronger economy was,
And Biden’s left flank is going to make demands that require a choice between jobs prosperity and the left.
Biden has no good choice.
And who knows in 4 years we may have an uptick in redpilled lefties.
“But I am far less concerned about a Biden presidency.”
“Every government, say the politicians, is perpetually degenerating towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of its original constitution.” __Samuel Johnson (may not be the exact quote)
One can destroy a high rise building in a single day, but to rebuild it might take months.
I thought the same about economies and countries.
But historical experience suggests that is not so true.
Contries and even economies can recover often from Ash -or atleast from opression and stupidity near instantly.
There is some excellent stuff – I think it is the PBS special “The commanding Heights:The battle for the world economy” – absolutely amazing that PBS/BBC produced this
Regardless Jeffrey Sachs isfeatured in part of it. Sachs put together the free market plans that recovered most of the economies in Eastern Europe post the collapse of the USSR. Oddly Sachs did this amazing stuff and now has repudiated it and become and idiot.
Some things I just do not understand.
“But historical experience suggests that is not so true.”
I disagree with your interpretation of history in this specific instance.
The historical data I have observed suggests that economic recovery and political recovery are most rapid the more completely the system fails. What is critical is that whatever the causes that created the problem are sufficiently discredited that they have no entrenched power to hold things back. Sachs orchestrated the conversion from entrenched socialism to very lasseiz Faire free markets in Uraguay as well as in Poland and other Eastern block countries. And many others followed his lead in other countries. The best results occured when the commitment to change was high, and the change was sudden. Many of the same people attempted the same thing in Russia.
But the change in russia failed – because the collapse of the USSR had NOT resulted in a collapse of the political power structure.
While the old power structure was “committed” to “reform” – at the same time they expected to remain in control and profit.
As a result Russia got oligarchs and crony capitalism. While places like Uraguay and poland went from basket cases to thriving free markets in days.
One must be careful – because ‘the price of freedom is eternal vigallance”. Many countries that very successfully transitioned to free markets, over time decayed into crony capitalism. Whether it is the US or EU or Bolivia, or Venezuela or Poland or … the power of government is seductive and no matter what was learned from the past it is always possible to persuade people that with a bit of central planning things would be better, more fair, ….
Regardless, the hardest systems to fix are those that sort of work. Those that have failed are easier to fix.
“The historical data I have observed”
I don’t buy it. Rates as you understand are based on the starting point. Add 1 penny to an economy of 1 penny and you have a boiling economy, but add trillions to a successful economy like ours and it won’t look as good. These points you make are dependent on too many factors and also dependent on the corrections being made. Look throughout history at how many countries tried to do what the US did or have tried to copy. The success rate is terrible. Things got bad in France and the system was discredited. A lot of good ideas led to the guillotine and then dictatorship. Pure libertarianism in a dream world just like pure socialists.
I am not disparaging libertarians as I lean in that direction and agree with most of what you say, but as you recently noted one should not let perfect be the enemy of good or you get the French Revolution rather than the American Constitutional Republic.
One of the problems with “stimulus” particularly the Covid stuff is that Money is the grease for a working economy.
It is NOT the engine.
Standard of living is the human value of what we produce.
No matter how much money – if you do not produce standard of living declines.
This was one of the key observations of Adam Smith.
He noted that England started as a backwater to Spain, and over a relatively short period replaced Spain as the world’s sole super power.
During this same period Spain was rushing all over accumulating gold. And yet the more gold they had the poorer they became.
Money is not wealth, it is a tool to improve the use and creation of wealth.
Has the US been duplicated ? No. Many have tried. There remains no country in the world that is as successful.
That said many have tried and they are all better for it.
Accross the world standards of living have shot up as countries have become more free.
Even China – which is definitely NOT Free, is still much freer than it was under Mao – particularly more economically free.
Taking one of the poorest countries in the world and allowing small but increasing doses of economic freedom at the margins has produced an amazing improvement in the lives of the chinese.
And to varying degrees this has been repeated all over the world.
It is honestly terrifying that young adults wish to contemplate communism and socialism in a positive light and somehow think free markets have failed, when the evidence is gigantic and completely the opposite. We know that under the best of circumstances – such as the “nordic social democracies” – the rate of increase in standard of living is still about 1% below freer markets.
The 20th century history of socialism is a bloody mess. Nothing in all of history has resulted in more blood.
Even if you pretend that Hitler was right wing – which is stupid. Even the blood of the Nazi’s is a drop in the bucket compared to socialism.
Nothing ever has done more harm to more people.
Conversely EVERYWHERE that has tried economic freedom has seen standards of living rise directly proportionate to the increase in freedom.
Many countries have done better than the US – in areas. But none compete overall. But still acrss the world the data is incontrovertable more freedom means more prosperity for everyone.
“Has the US been duplicated ? No. Many have tried. There remains no country in the world that is as successful. ”
There is a reason and that reason dispels the theory that you were promoting.
“That said many have tried and they are all better for it. “
But when it comes to having a significant lifespan, we find a tremendous lack of positive results. You focus in one direction, Adam Smith, but stability has a lot to do with America’s success and the causes for that stability aren’t clearly mentioned by Smith.
“Accross the world standards of living have shot up as countries have become more free. “
Forgotten is that America is responsible for a good part of that increase.
“Even China – which is definitely NOT Free, is still much freer than it was under Mao – particularly more economically free. “
They adopted limited capitalism, but to preserve the CCP (stability of that form of government) this latest group of technocrats is relying on repression. China has gained from our losses so the Chinese technocrats will be quite happy with Biden as President as IP will continue to flow to China along with jobs and resources.
The US is absolutely responsible – as an example to the world.
Just as the UK was both an example and a competitor to us at one time.
I noted that no country has actually matched the US.
But there are some serious competitors.
All are western and all are anglo countries.
While the UK had some socialist light debacles post WWII – it has mostly recovered and it is a similar example to the world as the US.
Diverse and prosperous.
If you wish to know more about China – read Robert Coase’s “How China became Capitalist”.
It is an excellent book, easy to read while at the same time providing a solid basic economics education using the modern history of China as an example.
The book was published in 2013 and Coase died shortly after. But Coase advised what China needed to do to continue. They have not and things are not going nearly as well.
I am not as concerned about the political game playing of either Trump or Biden regarding China.
While Trump’s policies were far better than Biden’s likely will be, China’s future is determined by China – not Trump or Biden.
Xi has returned to authoritairanism.
While Smith did not litterally cover the authoritarian approach of China. He still demonstrated (what Trump has done in practice).
That governments do not create prosperity. freedom does. Governments can favor or disfavor freedom and we will be more or less prosperous as a result.
Trump, Xi Biden it does not matter. They can break things, but only freedom actually fixes things.
“While Trump’s policies were far better than Biden’s likely will be, China’s future is determined by China – not Trump or Biden.”
But America’s future is determined by its leaders. American jobs and incomes are determined by its leaders. America’s future prosperity is determined by its leaders. Biden will be forced to follow some of Trump’s policies but his administration will reduce jobs and incomes along with future prosperity.
Another book recomendation – and oldie but goodie.
“The Ugly American”. Oddly the term Ugly american has come to mean something different than the authors intended.
In the quasi fictional story “the ugly american” is the hero – not the villian.
While our government engaged in all manner of stupidity with foriegn contries ‘the ughly american” built damns and irrigation systems and other things to help these people.
In general the world loves americans – they hate our government – rightfully.
John, though I am suspicious of two much government we would be in a very bad place without it. Our prosperity and part of the prosperity of the world depends on our leadership.Therefore, I am not as unemotional as you when it comes to the leadership of our nation.
I am a libertarian not an anarchist.
Lincoln fought the Civil War with a Federal Government that spent about 5% of GDP.
and total government spending peaked at 8%
Sounds about right to me.
I find little value in the leadership of the rest of the world by our government.
Even Washington warned about our getting too entangled in the affairs of the rest of the world.
That does not preclude the US leading the world – by example and not through government.
That is our most valuable leadership contribution to the world.
“republicans will take over governorships and more legislatures and senate seats and the house.”
Corruption breeds corruption so even should Republicans be made stronger in political numbers they might be moving in the wrong direction
Not republicans, but republicans tend to be less dangerous than democrats.
Leftism is dangerous to begin with based on the ideology. Add to that the demanded uniformity that consolidates its strength making them more dangerous. However, they are prone to sudden fractures and plagued with management failures.
“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”
Adam Smith
There are two big threats to our individual and collective future.
The first is the fixation on equity or equality. Humans are not equal, and they can not be forced to be. You can have freedom or you can have equality. You can not have both. In fact you really can not have equality, that is working against the laws of nature.
The second is the fixation on top down central planning. In actual free markets there is a dynamic balance between order and chaos, between top down and bottom up. This works best, a free market will shift as needed to provide the right levels of chaos and order for the moment. But outside imposed order comes at the expense of prosperity. Government is necescary, but it must be limited to only those tasks that require the use of force.
Leftism has the unfortunate problem of combining both the elements that lead to failure.
That said you can have a non-leftist ideology that still incorporates one of both of these means to failure.
“The first is the fixation on equity or equality. ” “The second is the fixation on top down central planning. ”
The first can lead to the second in our ‘democracy’ because those that vote do not feel equal even when they are equal under the law. They want someone else to slice the pie thinking it would be fairer to them. History tells us otherwise.
What is amazing is that the Democrat Party, that looks towards equality and socialism, is surviving based on the large corporations that create any wealth imbalance there is. They don’t even want to listen to the people and that is why they have impaired the ability to speak freely under the guise of economic liberty. IMO,That was one of the main problems with the Republican Party. That is why the Bush’s feel a brotherhood towards the Clintons and hate Trump. The Lincoln Project represents the worst element of the Republican Party. I hope they never come back. The Republican Party is much improved without them.
Whatever you feel about Trump one thing is amazing.
Trump has turned the GOP into the party of the working class.
And democrats have turned their party into the party of the elites and big business.
It is this very odd thing – though there has not been a significant ideological shift,
The type of people who make up the democratic party are the type of people who would have been republicans in the 50’s
While the people in the GOP would have been democrats in the 50’s.
And this realignment is continuing and likely permanent.
Democrats have presumed that minorties would make them a permanent majority.
But republicans are making slow progress with minorities.
The GOP is increasingly the party of the working class.
And oddly todays working class is increasingly the free market capitalists.
While the afflient whites are the socialists and communists.
“Whatever you feel about Trump one thing is amazing.”
John, unfortunately despite the bright spots you see, these shifts reduce the ‘America’ Tocqueville talked about.
John, we differ substantially in one area, time. That is one problem with the pure libertarian solution. Humans don’t live forever. They live for a relatively short period of time.
Remember when there was hope of democracy after the Soviet Union fell? Why didn’t they suddenly change in a more positive direction than they did? Time. The history time wise was one of a despotic type of leadership where no memory of something different could be passed from the oldest to the youngest. The oldest had no memory of anything different.
That can happen here. As older generations pass away the link to what you desire most can be broken. We see that everywhere. Compare your young professional to the oldest especially in medicine where the desire for entrepreneurship disappeared. Look at how many generations it took to change academia from a place of learning to a place of proselytizing. I don’t think we have as much time as you might believe.
A bit more of interest with even more in this article and others.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/11/07/software-not-properly-updated-gave-biden-1000s-of-votes-in-michigan/
A Georgia election official said that a technical glitch that halted voting in the state’s Spalding and Morgan counties was caused by a vendor uploading an update to their election machines the night before the election.
“That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election,” said Marcia Ridley, elections supervisor at Spalding County Board of Election.
A third county in Georgia — Gwinnett County — which uses the same software, also experienced a glitch. This glitch, however, had caused the delay of counting thousands of votes in the 2020 presidential election.
There are independent issues here.
There is absolutely zero doubt at this point that there are serious issues with DVS and their conduct during this election.
But SO FAR, there is no proof of actual malfeasance on their part.
Regardless, there are many things that DVS did that need not ever happen, should not happen, and that we can easily prevent and that are frankly highly suspicious.
That is specific to DVS – but the same is true more broadly.
The rules for the process of federal elections should be set by congress – not the states – the constitution allows that.
Because equal protection requires they are the same throughout the country.
It is not hard to determine the rules necescary to conduct elections with minimal error and minimal oportunity for fraud.
Further whatever the rules – they must have teeth. One of those rules is that all counting and ballot handling must be done in the sunlight.
Violating that rule should not be routine, it should have SERIOUS consequences.
The left does not seem to understand that it is more than the outcome of an election that matters – it is the extent to which the results can be trusted. We can not fix the fact that lefties beleive voters are easily deluded by money, by foreign countries, but we can make the results of the election process trustworthy by rules that actually preclude fraud and assure that each voter’s vote is not deluted by illegitimate votes.
Another site provides input as well
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/software-incorrectly-gave-biden-thousands-votes-mi-implicated-ga-glitches
Un-updated software that gave Biden thousands of Michigan votes used in 28 other states
System has been implicated in “glitches” in Michigan, Georgia so far.
Machines are only as good as the people that use them.
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/two-charged-los-angeles-submitting-thousands-fraudulent-voter-registration?utm_source=breaking-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
Two charged in Los Angeles for submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications
The fraudulent applications were allegedly on behalf of homeless people
Two men have been charged with 41 counts for allegedly submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications on behalf of homeless people, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
There are all sorts of ways to commit voter fraud where computers or machines are involved.
From the Senate:
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, ripped Dorsey for repeatedly censoring posts from President Trump, especially those in which Trump alleges voter fraud.
“Does voter fraud exist?” Cruz asked Dorsey.
“I don’t know for certain,” Dorsey replied.
“Why, then, is Twitter right now putting purported warnings on any statement about voter fraud?” Cruz said.
Dorsey said Twitter is “simply linking to a broader conversation so that people have more information.”
“No, you’re not,” Cruz said. “You’ve put up a page that says, quote, ‘Voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare in the United States.’ That’s not linking to a broader conversation. That’s taking a disputed policy position, and you’re a publisher when you’re doing that. You’re entitled to take a policy position, but you don’t get to pretend you’re not a publisher and get a special benefit under Section 230 as a result.”
Whether voter fraud is common or rare is a factual matter, not a policy position.
From what I have seen voter fraud is a policy of the Democratic Party. Just look and listen. They desire very little verification of who votes and who doesn’t. They encourage fraud.
From what I’ve seen, voter suppression is a policy of the Republican Party. Just look and listen. They try to exclude legal voters if those people are likely to vote for Democrats. They engage in suppression.
I don’t know who you are but you must be one of those that find any excuse to prevent voter ID and one vote per citizen. Based on this election, considering the number of voters including blacks and hispanics I don’t see how you can believe significant voter suppression exists.
Do you know who anyone here is?
You only started commenting here two days ago under the name “S. Meyer”, but maybe you’ve been here before using a different name.
Where did you look to find out about voter suppression?
Did you look at the court rulings, like the ones about ex-felon fees in Florida and drop boxes in Texas? Did you look at the news reports about people having to wait in line for hours?
Voter suppression may have been a problem in the past but it is minimal today and far outweighed in the other direction.
No I don’t know who you are and I don’t care.
The voter suppression carried out this year by the Florida legislature involved hundreds of thousands of people.
Not True.
Florida’s election process was fair to all. I think record numbers of minorities voted.
One doesn’t want to suppress the vote or dilute the vote. Florida’s rules permitted people to register and vote or get an absentee ballot.
It is true –
https://www.propublica.org/article/in-florida-the-gutting-of-a-landmark-law-leaves-few-felons-likely-to-vote
That’s voter suppression. The state isn’t even able to tell them how much they owe.
It seems your problem is that you want felons to vote. Maybe some of them don’t want to vote and others have yet to pay off their debt to society. That doesn’t amount to hundreds of thousands of legal votes.
Voting is a privilege.
Wow, the state can’t tell them how much they owe.
Unsurprising. Fines and costs are typically the domain of county courts.
I do not know about FL, but my county can tell every miscreant who has jaywalked to the last cent exactly what it owes.
Do you live in the real world ? Clearly the kiddie reporters you follow do not.
Become an adult, grow up. Figure things out for your self.
Learn critical thinking, and possibly how to read.
Also can you count. The entire FL prison population is under 100K
There are only 150K total people under the supervision of FL probation and Parole.
Most of whom would not be eligable to vote no matter how much Blumberg paid.
Odd that you try to make it about me. The people of Florida voted that they wanted most former felons to be able vote after they completed their probation, and they amended the state constitution to make that the law. Then the Florida legislature prevented most former felons from being able to vote by enacting a new law. That legislate vote to undermine the constitutional amendment affected hundreds of thousands of people. It’s voter suppression, even if you can’t admit it.
Voting is a right. Some people lose their right to vote, just like some people lose their right to own a firearm, but it that doesn’t mean it’s not a right.
Florida doesn’t have the best amendment process. That state passed an amendment to the State Constitution protecting pregnant Pigs. The former felon act was pushed by a lot of Democrats figuring they would get more voters. Democrats like illegal aliens, ballot harvesting and giving felons the right to vote. There wasn’t any significant group in opposition. Those things say a lot about Democrat priorities.
“Odd that you try to make it about me.”
It is about you when you post a leftist journal about the right of felons to vote. I don’t have any particular problem with them voting legally but the requirement that they need to finish off paying their debts to society isn’t a bad idea. Acting criminally should be punished.
In any event that isn’t voter suppression and there weren’t hundreds of thousands as you suggested.
Legal votes with voter ID is what is needed to guarantee a person’s vote doesn’t get diluted. If someone is engaging in true voter suppression I’m right there with you but first you have to show where and how it exists. Voting is a privilege, just like driving a car. If one doesn’t register to vote then they don’t get the privilege. If one doesn’t get a driver’s license they don’t get to legally drive a car.
That is correct. And that is exactly what the FL law you rail about does – it restores the right to vote for most felon’s after they complete probation. That is the same rule used by most of the country. And like in most of the country probation is complete and voting rights are restored occurs when fines and costs are completely paid.
This is not unusual. The law you are criticizing RESTORED the right to vote to many felons.
The only part of this that is “about you” – is that you continue to engage in misrepresentation.
You are claiming that people in FL lost the right to vote – did not happen, thousands GAINED the right to vote.
The people of Florida passed a referendum – the law you are maligning enaged that referendum.
You said voters wanted most felons to have the right to vote restored after they completed probation.
That is exactly what the law does. Just as is true in most of the states in the country.
No one lost anything, thousands gained something. Many thousands more have the prospect of gaining the right to vote – if they wish.
But you painted a significant gain as a loss – that is lying.
Yes, FL did exactly what most every state in the country has done and said that if you have committed a felony you can not vote until all aspects of your sentence are complete – that includes completing parole and probation and that includes paying fines and costs.
Personally this is inconsequential. I do not much care one way or the other whether convicted felons can vote.
Nor do very many other people.
Nor do I care if just like most state legislatures in this country Flordia makes it hard for Felons to vote.
Do you honestly think that there is a nationwide mass movement supporting giving felons the vote unconditionally ?
If you committed a felony – not being able to vote should be low on your priorities.
It is really low on mine.
I noticed that when making your claim – you failed to note what group the state of FL failed to fully grant voting.
Might that be because your argument goes to h3ll once peoplkle know you are talking about Felons.
I assume you know that you can lie by ommission.
If we have a choice between what the left calls “voter suppression” and elections we can trust – the answer is trustworthy elections.
Regardless, most of what the left calls voter supression, is merely the left calling minorities lazy and stupid.
Further the actual historic voter supression in the US was done by DEMOCRATS.
Given the court rulings in Pennsyvania – why would anyone trust the courts ?
5 Justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme court can not read – the PA law says no ballots will be accepted after 8pm Election day.
No mailin ballots, no absentee ballots, no inperson ballots.
I do not need a court to tell me that it is not merely reasonable, but required that a person prove that they are eligable to vote before allowing them to vote.
That is it a requirement that all elections must occur within a fixed, definite, and short time frame – that elections must have an absolute start and an absolute end.
That it is a requirement that those who vote must be real people, that they must be living people, that they must be eligable to vote in the jurisdiction in which they are voting, that they must be allowed to vote only once, that they must be who they say they are.
I would suggest that we use draft cards as voter ID. If you are not registered for the draft, you can not vote.
“From what I’ve seen, voter suppression is a policy of the Republican Party. Just look and listen. They try to exclude legal voters if those people are likely to vote for Democrats. They engage in suppression.”
False and irrelevant.
I do not care what you claim republicans purportedly want.
I am not a republican.
I am entitled to a
Secret ballot – one in which neither I nor anyone else can know how I voted, and no one else can be sure how I voted – even if I tell them.
Fraud prevention is one of the more important of many reasons for that.
Mailin ballots can not be made secret. To be clear secret balloting is not an individual choice – it is a requirement.
I am as a voter and citizen entitled to know that not only is MY ballot secret – but so is yours – whether you chose that or not.
Because voting authorizes the use of force, I am entitled to be sure that you are neither coerced or induced into voting.
Elections where the law is followed and each citizens right to vote is respected equally.
I am entitled to be certain that those who are not citizens did not vote. That those who are not alive did not vote, that those who are not real did not vote, that those who do not live in my jurisdiction did not vote in my jurisdiction.
Whether you like it or not voting rights must be enforced by laws.
Laws that prevent illegitimate votes from occuring.
What you call “voter supression” is also called “the rule of law”
One needs the actual ballot to be cast under the direction and eyes of the public. In that fashion the anonymous ballot gets mixed with all the other ballots and no one can attribute any specific ballot to any specific person.
The only way that can be accomplished is voting in person with voter ID preferably on a ballot that does not use any form of computer to enter the voters choices. That also permits accurate recounts.
The other poster is looking for a way to enhance voting of specific groups political or otherwise. That is not good for this country. We don’t want increased numbers of voters based on any type of pressure. We don’t want voter suppression but today for the most part that is a ruse. Political suppression can be corrected.
You can use computers to count ballots – so long as there is a robust random auditing and verification system.
It is the process from receiving to counting that is fraud prone – especially in mailin elections.
All parts of an election that are not independently verifiable at a leter date and reversable if fraudulent MUST have incredibly scrutiny.
“All parts of an election that are not independently verifiable at a leter date and reversable if fraudulent MUST have incredibly scrutiny.”
That is why I support paper ballots filled out with ink.
Counters rather than computers could be used and crosschecked in a multiplicity of ways while the original ballot remains intact providing a total number for the precinct. The ballot should be able to be continuously observed from the time it is provided to the person with voter ID until it ends up in the counter to be tabulated.
“From what I’ve seen, voter suppression is a policy of the Republican Party. Just look and listen. They try to exclude legal voters if those people are likely to vote for Democrats. They engage in suppression.”
So you are saying that democrats are too lazy to get ID to vote ?
That they are too lazy to walk to a poll and vote – most republicans do not live in dense cities where the poll is a block away, yet they manage to drive to the polls.
That they are too lazy to vote on time ?
That they are too lazy to vote in person ?
Republican, Democrat, Independent Libertarain – I do not care, if you are too lazy to have the ID needed to vote, to get to the polls on your own to vote on time on election day – then I have ZERO problem with “suppressing” your vote.
Countries with very high election turnout tend to be unstable.
Good citizenship is a duty. Maybe we should go with the Starship Troopers model and only soldiers can vote.
Less mentioned in this election is that mailin voting eliminates Secret ballots.
Everyone who votes by mail exposes themselve to coercion and inducement by friends, family and others.
With so many today with ego’s so fragile that being unfreinded on facebook can drive them to suicide, why would we expect that voting would be immune to cancel culture.
If you can risk losing your job for merely noting that the real world does not conform well to leftist ideology, why would we expect that this same cancel culture would not start driving voting ?
Mailin voting can not be fixed.
Much more complex than that.
Elections need not merely to be free of Fraud, they must be trust worthy – i.e. we must BELEIVE they are free of fraud and that is a higher standard.
The scale of actual fraud is important only in the narrowest sense.
Has there been massive fraud in 2020 ?
In the sense of did fraud tip the outcome – likely but probably not proveable.
In the sense that on a grand scale the rules were not followed by democrats ? Absolutely.
The claim that fraud was likely not large enough to tip a close election is a very poor argument even if true, when elections are the means by which government obtains the consent of the governed that is necescary for legitamacy.
Brilliant.
I am an embedded software developer, there is no need for computers in elections. Even to the extent they might be useful, the use of computers increases rather than decreases the need for scrutiny.
There is nothing wrong with the technical aspects of the claims against Dominions Voter System. It is possible – even easy to commit fraud in an election using a computer. It is probably impossible to prevent.
But it is possible to construct voting systems – whether they use computers or not that are nearly fraud free.
There are two key components – Verification, and secret ballots.
We can verify that voters are eligable to vote. And we MUST do so as well as ensure punishment when those not eligable attempt or even worse succeed in voting. Any voting system that does not verify the eligability of voters is inherently fraudulent. It either has massive fraud, or soon enough it will.
So long as we are scrupulous about preserving raw ballots we can verify all aspects of counting – where it is done by men, machines or monkeys. Further we MUST routinely verify counts – it is only the certainty that malfeasance (or error) will be caught that precludes board fraud – whether by machines or people.
Secret Ballots are the only means of assuring that voting is neither induced nor coerced.
Mailin voting can never meet the requirement for a secret ballot.
While there are disturbing allegations regarding the DVS system, so far the GA Recount does not appear to be indicating problems with the DVS System.
The inclusion of ANY Black boxes in elections is a huge mistake and opens the oportunity for Fraud.
One of the huge issues the left can not grasp is that elections must be not merely allegedly fraud free. They must be fraud proof.
Mailin voting can not be protected from Fraud. While many of us beleive there was wide spread mailin voting fraud in this election,
it is CERTAIN that if mailin voting continues there WILL BE wide spread voter fraud in the future.
There is an arrest right now of someone in LA for buying the votes of homeless people.
The wonder is that he was caught.
There are myriads of forms of fraud in mailin voting that are not merely easy but undetectable – especially by the idiots on the left who are willfully blind so long as they get the results they want.
Even Democrat politicians can have involvement in the voting machines under question.
“Dominion confirms Clinton Foundation donation, Pelosi staffer tie
Election tech company Dominion Voting Systems is rebutting assorted claims of partisan bias and voting manipulation in the 2020 election, including rumors of a secret U.S. military raid on purported servers in Germany and ownership interests and other influence in the firm by prominent Democratic families. At the same time, Dominion has confirmed reports it made a donation to the Clinton Foundation and hired a former Nancy Pelosi staffer as a lobbyist. …
Appearing Sunday on Sinclair’s “America This Week with Eric Bolling,” Powell said her team had uncovered “mathematical alterations to the votes.”
“It’s a feature of the system that was designed with a backdoor, so that people could watch, in real time, and calculate with an algorithm how many votes they needed to change to make the result they wanted to create,” Powell told Bolling. “It’s incredibly disturbing, and we will hopefully have evidence of it before the end of the week that we can produce publicly.”
Even Democrat leaders and nominee for president were worried about the Dominion machines despite the statements by Commit and Dragnet’s Joe Friday in drag.
“Democratic leaders of Congress warned last year in a series of letters that election technology companies such as Dominion Voting Systems were “prone to security problems,” a result of them having purportedly “long skimped on security in favor of convenience.”
The allegations were detailed in a series of letters sent in December 2019 by Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Amy Klobuchar, along with Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan.”
The rest at: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/trump-lawyer-forthcoming-evidence-shows-dominion-vote-count-manipulated.
With great respect for Sydney Powell, the likelyhood of DVS plotting to alter the outcome of the election is near zero.
The giant flaw in that claim is not that the claim is not possible, it is that if the allegation is true there is a near certainty that such malfeasance would be ultimately discovered to disasterous consequences for DVS as well as the entire democratic party.
That does not mean that DVS’s software is not deeply flawed or error prone.
Trustworthy elections do not require preventing every single possible exploit. All that is necescary for a trustworthy election is that all exploits are ultimately detectable and can be punished.
I have no doubt that DVS software is crap, and that it is insecure – whenever a software company starts blaming user error, you can be sure that the quality of the software is poor, good software precludes users from doing bad things.
Regardless, ballot counting and tabulation is NOT a critical part of elections.
So long as ballot counting and tabulating systems can and are frequently audited quality and security problems are an annoyance.
The most consequential issue in this election is the mass introduction of mailin ballots.
Once ballots are stripped of their envelopes there is no means to correct problems even if they can be detected. Once illegitimate ballots enter the stream they can not be removed.
Further Mailin ballots violate the requirement for secret ballots. This means that voters are subject to coercion and inducement in return for their vote. This problem can not be fixed.
“With great respect for Sydney Powell, the likelyhood of DVS plotting to alter the outcome of the election is near zero.”
John, though Powell implicates the DVS systems, I don’t know if she was as direct in doing so as your statement implies. There is so much news on this situation and so many side involvements that one sometimes needs a direct quote. In particular, a quote pertaining to DVS, the company, “plotting to alter the outcome”.
I am pretty sure I have read quotes from Powell.
But if I am wrong – that would make me feel better.
At the same time, I do have a small fear that she may be right.
So much that is bat $hi1t crazy has occured.
I mean honestly the US Intelligence Consensus and the view of near a majority of americans was that Putin favored Trump.
Are there really that many highly placed idiots that honestly beleive that Trump whose promises were daggers aimed right at Russia was Putin’s favorite ?
Really ? Putin is a big fan of US Fracking ? Putin wants the price and demand for Russian oil to tank and all the political leverage that comes with it to disappear.
He is a Big fan of the US demanding that NATO rearm and defend itself.
Russia desperately wants german and polish tanks nearby ?
But then again these are the dingbats who missed the collapse of the USSR. Missed 9/11, and blew the Iraq WMD assessment.
So who knows Maybe DVS really has flipped thousands of votes despite the fact that getting caught is the end of the company and jail for lots of people.
I mean after all who would have guessed that Hunter Biden would have left laptops with incriminating information on them and then REFUSED to pay for them. Someone must have wanted a favor from him so that he could afford his laptop repair bill.
But I am just hard pressed to beleive a corporation would do something that stupid with a good chance of getting caught.
And thus far the GA recount is confirming they did not.
John, the high tech world is full of things people can do without anyone knowing any better.
I was not the one on the phone but the one that was asked the question many different ways and got the same answer. The information is as follows. You are more tech than I. Tell me if it can be true.
When one signs up for the cloud, somewhere buried in the disclosure Apple has the permission, without one’s knowledge, to remove data from one’s personal computer and transfer it to the cloud. That means when one is off line searching for an old file it may no longer exist on one’s computer.
After posting I remembered this video about the cloud. Though it is meant to be funny it is quite a good explanation.
And of course Commit likes to state that Trump claims are being thrown out of court as if the major claims are gone. Of course Democrats to her are perfect. He should be renamed Double Standard Commit.
“Judge rules California Gov. Newsom violated Constitution with election order
“Executive Order N-67-20 issued by the Governor on June 3, 2020 is void as an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power and shall be of no further force or effect,” the ruling states.
He committed the same sin as committed elsewhere. Neither judges nor election officials or governors can change election law as has been done in other states.
This type of illegal activity exists in multiple states and will likely end up in the Supreme Court because that type of activity by Democrats was IMO performed to help their candidate Joe Biden. That means election results might have to be thrown out. That plus a whole bunch of other things Democrats did can cause the election to go to the house. Republicans are likely to win that type of vote because of the rules.
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/judges-ruling-says-california-gov-newsom-executive-order-void
Trump, and your argument faces a huge and possibly insurmountable problem.
Getting the Supreme Court (or any court) to “do the right thing” when that result will be highly disruptive is a fools errand.
I am not sure there is a constitutional basis to reject mailin balloting – though there should be.
Mailin ballots do not and can not be made to meet the requirement of “secret ballots”, and that introduces both coercion and inducement as means of election fraud. Both with near certainty occured in this election. Though neither likely sufficient to alter the outcome.
Regardless, they are problems with mailin voting that can not be corrected. If they were not responsible for large scale fraud this time, they will be in the future with certainty – the incentives are far too high the odds of getting caught too low. We spent over $100/vote in this election.
It was likely several thousand for each swing voter.
Regardless SCOTUS is not going to invalidate mailin voting no matter how corrupt it is.
SCOTUS could easily rule on various issues related to states failure following their own laws – but assuming they find for Trump – what is the remedy ?
There is no means to correct the elimination of oversight from the process of validating ballots before they were opened and counted.
There is no means to correct the failure of states to adhere to deadlines.
SCOTUS is highly unlikely to throw elections to the state legislatures or to congress – despite that is what the constitution requires.
Trump is losing because no court is going to invalidate enough ballots to flip the election – no matter how compelling Trump’s proof of legal error or even malfeasance.
Hard Cases make bad law.
And we are about to see lots of bad election law.
“Trump, and your argument faces a huge and possibly insurmountable problem.”
As has been said, it is an uphill battle for Trump so I am not sure what you are calling a fools errand. I don’t think what was posted above pertains to what you post below. I think the point is that the legislature is responsible for election law. Governors and judges cannot change the legislature’s dictates.
I think most of the things you mention do not pertain to the above comment.
I completely agree with your assessment of the plain language of the constitution regarding elections.
But I would also say that the federal government has no power to dictate what a person grows on their own property for their own use.
In Wickard SCOTUS ignored the plain text of the constitution.
I do not disagree with your assessment of Trump as one not to bet against.
No normal president would have survived the onslaight of the past 4 years.
Yet he survived, thrived and actually seems to have enjoyed himself.
But to prevail Trump needs:
Either a glaring example of huge fraud that even the MSM can not turn away from – and given the way they ran from the Hunter Biden laptop that probably would have to be Joe Biden skywriting I raped Tara Reid.
Or enough legislatures refusing to certify the election.
Or all of Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett growing gigantic balls and being willing to throw the election to the house.
All of these are pretty close to out of Trump’s control.
And if the country was sane the Biden laptop would have been the end of the elction and Biden would have slinked away hoping not to be prosecuted.
The left has gotten more and more brazen so it is difficult to evaluate how brazen they have become which makes assessing the likelihood of a Trump victory that much more difficult. To invest in that result I would need a very high pay off.
Agreed. The one thing that makes the DVS claims plausible is that the left has done so many implausible things.
Bat$h!t crazy seems normal
DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS SHARES FLOOR WITH GEORGE SOROS – SOROS DONATED $9.5 MILLION TO HILLARY
_______________________________________________________________________
“Rebel News Reporter Escorted From Dominion Building After Discovering That They Share Office Floor With Soros-Linked Group”
Rebel News journalist Keean Bexte was escorted from the Dominion Voting office in Toronto after uncovering that they share a building with a George Soros-linked group.
Dominion Voting, who supplies voting machines to multiple swing states, has been under fire since it was revealed that their machines created a 6,000 vote swing in a single Michigan state county.
Bexte visited the Dominion Voting building located at 215 Spadina Avenue in Toronto in an effort to get some answers. He discovered that the vote tabulation company shares an office floor with an organization called Tides, which recently changed its name to Make Way.
Bexte wrote that the organization is “an extreme left eco-radical charity that directs cash supplied by George Soros to smaller groups and organizations to advance the globalist agenda of Soros.”
The close proximity of these organizations has left Bexte with many questions, including whether or not radical employees of George Soros able to access the same desks, filing cabinets, servers, and Wi-Fi of Dominion Voting and if any extra security protocols taken to ensure no voting data or proprietary information is protected.
When he attempted to get those answers, he was escorted from the building.
“Further to the suspect office floor sharing, Dominion Voting also showed their hand when documents surfaced showing they donated between $25,000 and $50,000 to Hillary Clinton’s personal foundation, a charity tied closely to the Tides Foundation. George Soros actually donated over $9.5M to Hillary Clinton’s election campaign,” Bexte reports.
– Cassandra Fairbanks
When Biden appoints people to his administration we will be informed about how wonderful and qualified they are. When Trump appoints qualified people writers here call them stooges. A President on either side has the right to appoint his own stooges. During Obama’s final days he packed the agencies just as Presidents before him did. Now when Trump does it the attributes of the devil himself are placed on his head. Beiing so one sided denotes a lack of serious thought. Some people should grow up and understand how it works. If you expect Tiddlywinks go play with your kids. Either that or stop taking your naive pills twice per day.
The grift doesn’t stop. Today Trump sent out an email soliciting contributions for a “Georgia Recount Fund.” But per the fine print on the donation page, contributions under $8000 go to Trump’s PAC and the RNC. Only above that does a portion go to the recount fund. Grift!
Are contributors unhappy ?
If you contribute to BLM through actBlue – only a tiny portion of that money goes to BLM.
Left of right – read the fine print.
If you do not like it – do not contribute.
That is called being an adult – taking responsibility for your own choices. Not expecting others to protect you from your own choices.
Do you have a contributor to the GA Recount who is unhappy ?
If not – focus on the instances when YOU are actually defrauded.
Quit pretending you control when others should be offended.
John, quit pretending that Joe was pretending to control anything.
Anonymous, you read his entire post?
Wow!
What does this even mean ?
Unless Joe contributed to the GA recount, he has no “skin in the game”, what is done with voluntary contributions is the SOLE business of those who make them.
If Joe wishes to complain about how his BLM contributions are being redirected – we are all ears.
But unless Joe contributed to the GA recall – his views have no weight.
Trump is the king of con artists.
Evidence ?
It is amazing – he sold us a bill of goods, like every other politician ever,
But then he actually delivered most of it.
It is remarkable what Trump and his administration were able to accomplish in spite of all the forces working to thwart, sabotage and destroy him.
This creates another huge problem for Biden and Democrats.
Whether you like what Trump promised or you hate it. He delivered much of what he promised to voters.
Further he delivered an improving standard of living while keeping his promises.
Now democratic voters are going to expect that Biden will deliver on the impossible promises and at the same time not tank the economy.
Turley, you would be easier to respect if you didn’t make things up, like: “the growing anti-free speech movement in the Democratic Party.” There is no anti-free speech “movement” in the Democratic Party, much less one that is growing. There is concern, and not just by Democrats, about the internet being used as a tool to spread misinformation and lies, and using the internet to stir up trouble and violence, based on those lies. Examples: pizza gate, the attempted kidnapping of Gov. Whitmer, the White Supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the anti-mask and anti-public health push backs, including personal attacks on Dr. Fauci. Then, there’s McConnell’s double-face: Obama wasn’t allowed a Supreme Court pick because of the proximity of the election, but Trump was. The choice came from Turley’s Federalist Society, a far right-wing organization whose beliefs do not reflect the values and beliefs of most Americans. Turley has defended this to the hilt.
Your post today is an excellent example of criticism of use of the internet: you are wrong when you say that the Democratic Party endorses an anti-freedom of speech “movement”. You will argue that you have the right to say this, which I don’t disagree with, but I question why you would do this: use your credentials to say something that is not only untrue, but that stirs the divisiveness of which we already have too much in this country. I say it’s another example of your attempts to normalize Donald Trump by downplaying his incompetence and failures, but also to encourage the anti-Democrat and anti-mainstream media meme pushed by Republicans, Fox News and Breitbart. It is well-known that Trump supporters, for the most part, do not have college educations, that their support of him is based on fear of losing ground to educated people, especially educated women and minorities and xenophobia. Trump panders to these fears. Mainstream media rightfully criticizes Trump for his racism, lying, caging migrants, including young children, his failures in international relations, among other things, but instead of responding to these substantive criticisms, Fox, and people like Turley, go after the media and the Democratic Party, so that the disciples are conditioned not to believe the truth and to only believe what Fox, Breitbart and Limbaugh tell them. I see it every day on your blog: whatever lies Trump tells, they believe, including wild claims about the election being stolen, fraud, Biden is senile, on drugs, he and his son are crooks, Hillary is going to jail… the list goes on and on. Just yesterday, Turley tried to normalize Trump’s baseless lawsuits by arguing that just as all votes should be counted, Trump’s lawsuits should be given fair consideration, even though there are no facts or evidence to support the claims.
Some of the pro-Trump crap is dangerous to our overall health and safety: examples include pushing back against public health measures like wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding large crowds, closing bars and restaurants. When Trump stirs up his gun-toting faithful to believe that their votes were stolen, there is a real danger of violence. When someone suggests that social media needs policing because Russians used it in 2016 to help Trump get elected, Turley goes all First Amendment. Is there a First Amendment right to use social media to spread lies and misinformation, or does this fall into the same category as yelling “fire” in a crowded theater and slander and libel?
The era of Trump has ended, and pandering to divisiveness must end. We are Americans, and if we cannot be united because of internal turmoil, we are vulnerable. On his way out, Trump is trying to do the bidding of Putin: drawing down troops in Germany and the Middle East against the advice of our military leaders. That should be condemned in the strongest possible terms, as well as Trump’s refusal to concede and cooperate in the peaceful transfer of power. Joe Biden is our new President, and was fairly elected by a majority of the American people. It is anti-American to try to hamstring the success of his presidency, which is just what Turley’s post today is attempting to do.
Yawn. Long winded liberal BS.
Yawn. Short conservative lie.
What part was a lie ? If you are going to accuse another of moral failure – the burden is yours.
“whatever lies Trump tells, they believe, including wild claims about the election being stolen, fraud, Biden is senile, on drugs, he and his son are crooks…”
The election WAS stolen with rampant fraud.
Biden IS senile.
Biden IS on something to help him stabilize his brain.
Biden, his brothers, his sister, his crack addcit son ARE all self-dealing crooks.
But you go on believing all the lies YOU are being told and that Joe Biden is the ‘great healer’ this country needs. What a crock of you know what.
One of the reasons that Trump supporters beleive Trump is because much of what you claim he lies about – he has told the truth.
He has kept more campaign promises than any president in US history.
He said he was spied on – he was.
He quietly asked for an investigation into Biden’s corruption.
Democrats made that into an impeachable offense,
And yet there is massive and damning evidence of Biden’s corruption – if you would bother to open your eyes.
Hunter Biden is OBVIOUSLY crooked – and Joe Biden likely is too. Regardless he is inarguably unethical and inarguably has lied to everyone.
The Gold standard for elections is Secret Ballots – mailin ballots can not conform to that standard and are universally accepted as the most error prone and fraudulent form of elections. That did not orriginate from Trump. That has been understood for over a century.
The EU banned mail in elections, as have most countries. The US has condemed mail in elections for their propensity for fraud repeatedly accross the world. The New York Times was strongly critical of mail in elections in the past.
WE have just run a national election in the most fraud and error prone way possible – and you are surprised that some are crying foul ?
He has kept more campaign promises than any president in US history.
Hahahahaha!
It will be a cold day in hell when John demonstrates that.
I would suggest reading Dante’s inferno – the 9th circle of Hell is frozen.
The wall is being built – and would have been complete but for democratic intransigience.
Despite resistance from “the generals” we are nearly out of afghanistan, and Iraq.
It is an open question whether we are out of syria – because aparently members of the military and state department were lying to the president.
ISIS has been defeated as a force on the ground.
We have dropped out of the Paris accords,
We have dropped the Iran agreement.
The US Embassy has been moved to Jerusalem.
Trump has removed restrictions on Fracking.
He has cut taxes,
He has boosted the economy – though not as much as he claims.
He has further cut unemployment – specifically for minorities to levels that were long thought impossible.
He has confronted China.
Illegal immigration has been radically curtailed.
NATO countries are paying substantially more of the cost of their defence.
But for their stock of Nuclear weapons Russia is no longer a superpower.
Russia is increasingly less able to threaten her neighbors.
While islamic terrorism throughout the world has risen since 2016 it is much lower int he US.
We have had a V shaped economy recovery from Covid.
Out foreign relations – particularly with Asia/Pacific countries – Taiwan, Japan, Austrailia. Philipines, Vietnam, India are better than ever.
Now you have to assess which campaign promises every other president has kept. So far, you haven’t shown He has kept more campaign promises than any president in US history.
You are a nut job.
You are looking in the mirror.
Can you name a president that has kept as many ?
Can’t prove your case, huh?
…And another from the nut case.
I do not need to prove that the Sun rose today.
I made a fairly absolute and extreme claim – those are trivial to refute if they are wrong.
They do not require proof – because they are either obviously True – like that the Sun rose today, or they are obviously not.
While your finding a single example of a president who kept more of his promises – would NOT refute the more general claim that Trump has kept his campaign promises to an extraordiary degree, it would refute the claim the absolute claim that no president has ever done better.
It should be trivial for you to refute that if it was incorrect.
Further – you can rant – but doing so is stupid. Presuming Biden is inaugurated his supporters WILL now expect the same from him.
Trump kept most of his promises AND he did so while increasing the rise in standard of living by 50%.
That is the impossible bar that Biden will face.
There are dozen’s of critiques of Biden. But the specifics do not matter.
What is important is that regardless reasons, the likelyhood of Biden delivering a fraction as well as Trump are zero. It is not even likely he can deliver as well as Obama. Not on his promises, not on rising standard of living.
I will cite some other absolutes. Increasing the scope of government has NEVER increased the rate of improvement in standard of living.
The ideology of the modern left – as well as myriads of permustions of it has NEVER worked anywhere. Not in the French Revolution, Not in the USSR, not in Venezuela, not even in Sweden in the 70’s.
So you just assume that you’re right and that it’s obvious. Got it. I’m sure that you’re convinced when others do the same thing.
Am I entitled to assume the sun rose today – or do you want a formal proof ?
Can I assume that 2 + 2 = 4 or do you want a formal proof.
We see challenges everyday to even such fundimental axioms as 2 + 2 = 4.
These challenges are not coming from the right.
They are coming from those who claim to be the part of science.
It is noteworthy they are not the party of math – for we are told math is racist.
Regardless, I made a broad general assertion that if false would be easily disproven.
Your response was “prove it” – missing the point entirely.
If I make a claim that would be trivial to disprove if false, I do not need to prove it.
The absence of a rebutal to such a claim is a form of proof that you can not rebut it.
Yes, you are entitled to make the same claims – when you make a claim that should be easily disproven if false.
Regardless, I have repeatedly disproven claims you have made – whether you claimed they were obviously true or not.
I am sorry – I can not say that, you are posting as anonymous – you have no actual history.
Correction – I have disproven claims that someone who smelled like you made.
John left out who was paying for the wall, blames our continued presence in the ME on generals who of course must do what the President tells them to do, ISIS remains active in Africa, yes, Trump did sign executive actions on a myriad things which are about to be undone, he cut taxes but John leaves out the record setting debt which he also promised to erase, nor does he mention the trade imbalance which has grown under Trump, that he will be the first president since Hoover to oversee a net loss of jobs, that China is unbowed, only within the last several days signing a regional trade pact with Pacific Rim countries which Obama had sought to counter with the TPP but Trump opted out of, NATO countries agreed to increase their defense budgets to 2% of GDP under Obama, and illegal immigration has been stagnant for a decade.
Trump has not kept every promise he made.
I am not obligated to cite every failure.
Many of Trump’s successes are partial – we will not be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by Jan 20, 2021.
But we will have mad massive progress towards that.
While Obama mad the same promise and 8 years later we were MORE entrenched not less.
I would note that Mexico today is detaining tens of thousands of illegal immigrants – in mexico – as are other countries in south and central america.
This is how Trump has solved many immigration problems. Illegal immigrants are now most frequently caught BEFORE getting to the US border and detained in Mexico or Guatemala. They are detained under conditions far worse than in the US.
But ones that are harder to blame Trump for.
It will be interesting to see if this continues under Biden.
The Islamic State has been destroyed.
Trump did not promise to end all terrorism.
Al Queda still exists too. In Africa and other places.
If Biden prevails and is inaugurated – then he will get to undo the executive orders of Trump – though I would expect that will not be so easy – as just as democrats went to court to protect Obama’s EO’s so will republicans to protect Trump’s.
Regardless, If Biden wishes to revoke exactive orders such as restrictions on investment in chinese companies building weapons to attack the US – let him.
If Biden wishes to bring back the ludicrously stupid Obama Title 9 nonsense that resulted in mere accusations destroying the lives of college students – let him.
If Biden wants to turn the Department of education into a weapon against single minority women seeking to get a decent education for their kids – let him.
If Biden wants to undo the EO requiring that to impose a new regulation you must get rid of 2 old ones – let him.
Democrats have a choice – they can be obliterated in 2022, or they can leave things much as they are.
Biden faces an impossible task. He has to deliver all the benefits Trump did to the american people while imposing polices that will guarantee that he can not.
Have fun.
“John left out who was paying for the wall”
Don’t care. But you are free to whigg out if you want.
“blames our continued presence in the ME on generals who of course must do what the President tells them to do”
Yes, Trump should have ordered the Generals to get out in 2018. Better late than never.
Regardless, still vastly different from Obama.
“ISIS remains active in Africa”
There is no islamic state in syria. That was the promise.
There remain terrorists in the world.
“Trump did sign executive actions on a myriad things which are about to be undone”
“Go Ahead, Make my day”
“he cut taxes”
Yup.
“but John leaves out the record setting debt which he also promised to erase”
Correct – and I oppose that. Of course every president since Clinton has saddled us with record setting debt.
“nor does he mention the trade imbalance which has grown under Trump”
Do not care even a little about trade imbalance. You are not up to the economics – but trade imbalances are meaningless.
Trump’s fixation on them was stupid.
“that he will be the first president since Hoover to oversee a net loss of jobs”
False. According to BLS statistics there have been more peoplein the US employed every quarter of Trump’s presidency than the last quarter under Obama.
“that China is unbowed”
I have no idea what that means.
I know that on January 19, 2017 China was throwing its weight arround all over asia and the rest of the world. Especially the south china sea.
Today, countries that were uncomfortable allies with China – because Obama was weak and untrustworthy are now actively thwarting China’s ambitions – because they Trusted that Trump had their back.
Much of that may continue – because as Trump has gotten them together they are less in need of the US.
“only within the last several days signing a regional trade pact with Pacific Rim countries which Obama had sought to counter with the TPP but Trump opted out of,”
Please clarify – this makes no sense. Obama did not counter the TPP he supported it.
“NATO countries agreed to increase their defense budgets to 2% of GDP under Obama”
NATO defense spending under Trump has doubled what is was under Obama.
Trump guaranteed NATO countries Natural Gas (which he could do because of Fracking) in return for increased NATO defense spending and less US Troops. The result of this is that NATO is now far more self sufficient. The US will still defend NATO countries. But we are no longer their first line of defense and THEIR Troops are the ones that are facing down threats such as Russia.
If you do not understand how big a deal that is you are clueless.
I would further note that the reduced frontline US involvement in NATO (and the mideast) is what has allowed the US to take a more agressive position regarding China.
“and illegal immigration has been stagnant for a decade.”
Actually it has declined over the past decade
It generally tracks the economy – the US economy was weak under Obama so illegal immigration declined.
It was stronger under Trump so it should have risen, but aside from a spike in 2019 it continued to decline.
It’s amazing how Joe Friday forgets how Obama helped in the payment of state sponsored terrorism all over the world including Hamas and Hezbollah. According to Obama ISIS was the JV team so Obama is responsible for letting it grow and metastasize.
The amount of malfeasance in the obama administration that we have all forgotten is incredible.
That those on the left have forgotten it ALL is even more incredible.
Prove it, right now, or shut up. Everything you said. Prove fraud, and not just “affidavits” someone claims to have seen. What drugs is Biden on–where’s your proof? I want the name, dosage and prescribing health care provider. Where is the proof he is senile? What crimes did any Biden family member commit? Where’s your proof?
“Not just affadavits” ????
So sworn statements by people who witnessed fraud, or who were directed to break the law are not enough for you ?
What is your standard of proof – if you are not prepared to accept statements of people who could go to jail if they are lying ?
I would further ask – why did democrats break the rules all over the place ? If you are not committing fraud – quit behaving as if you are guilty.
The standard is not “count every vote”. It is count every legitimate vote.
Counting the votes of the dead, of people from other states, of fictitious people is itself fraud.
Buying votes is fraud – and you can not prevent that with mailin ballots. And it is incredibly hard to detect.
What of people voting for others ? What did you do to prevent that ?
You have the burden of proof inverted.
Elections establish the legitimacy of government by those elected.
The burden is on government not just to conduct those elections under rules that preclude fraud, but to do so such that voters can trust that there was not fraud.
The say so of those in government is NOT sufficient.
Trust must result from a process – rules that make fraud immpossible, and by publicly verifiable conformance to those rules.
Prove to the rest of us that the rules were followed ?
That no votes were bought ?
That ballots are actually by those they say they are from ?
Thus far there are no claims that republican precincts violated the rules.
That they counted hundreds of thousands of illegitimate or suspect votes, that they hid what they were doing from the public.
That they bought votes.
If you have such claims – bring them forward and we will investigate.
If you can not run an election out in the sunlight – you should not expect to be trusted.
Here is just one report on what appears to be an IV needle mark bruise on Joe Biden’s hand….raising questions…that Joe Biden has never been asked, or had to answer, about his health. We know little about Joe’s current cognitive health, questions that were and still are critical to be asked, given that he is a 78 year old man who has a history of not one, but two brain aneurysms.
Biden family crimes and corruption. Joe lied about what he knows about Hunter’s dealings and he has NEVER been asked a single question by the corrupt press. Joe IS the “big guy” getting a 10% cut of the “family business dealings.”
If he has evidence of a crime, he should contact the FBI and offer to be interviewed about it.
The FBI has an active money laundering investigation into Hunter Biden – and has since Dec 2019.
Devon Archer and two other Hunter associates have already been convicted.
But who trust that after Jan 20, 2021 the FBI will not be ordered to stand down on prosecutions and investigations of Biden and family ?
I would further note that though Hunter Biden’s known conduct is reprehensible, it does not actually appear to be criminal.
The problem is for Joe Biden – taking money from foreign powers in exchange for influence in the US government is legal for private parties.
But acting in an official capacity inside the US government to the benefit of family members is unethical and likely illegal.
As for going senile, it is obvious to anyone paying attention. Particularly concerning are Joey’s angry, inappropriate outbursts and name calling directed at VOTERS on numerous occasions. One sign of decline after another. And the press will not ask a single quesiton about Joey’s current state of health or any recent ‘treatements’…..nothing has been asked or answered.
Americans are supposed to believe that this clown was elected President of the United States of America?
What a ——- joke.
Yep,
Joke Buydem.
Yeah, Trump NEVER has angry, inappropriate outbursts and name calling directed at VOTERS. (sarc)
Directed At Voters ?
Do you have an example of Trump calling a voter a dog faced poney soldier – or anything like that ?
Biden was berating one of his OWN voters.
Voter fraud analysis.
Voter fraud. General McInerney’s analysis of Hammer & Scorecard – November 13 2020.
https://davejanda.com/oann-hammer-scorecard-general-tom-mcinerney/
HAMMER
AND
SCORECARD
YEP!
More troubling Biden family connections to China and Russia. Where’s the media investigating or reporting on any of this Biden family corruption? Joe Biden lies about not knowing anything about his family’s business dealings. He gets away with it because the media is DNC controlled.
‘The Chinese communists paid $6 million to the family of Jill Biden’s former WH personal assistant. This is corroborated by bank records, not Adam Schiff’s imagination.’
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate-investigators-new-records-confirm-troubling-biden-family-links-to-china-and-russia
“These new records confirm the connections between the Biden family and the communist Chinese government, as well as the links between Hunter Biden’s business associates and the Russian government, and further support the Committees’ September 23, 2020 report’s finding that such relationships created counterintelligence and extortion concerns,” the senators wrote in the five-page report, which was followed by 65 pages of evidence.”
“There is no anti-free speech “movement” in the Democratic Party, ”
It is nonsensical statements such as this that destroy your credibility.
There was no “attempt” to kidnap whitmer, there was a bunch of high drunks plotting to kidnap whitmer.
There were not part of any movement or scheme.
Thomas Hodkins actually attempted to kill republican congressmen – and very nearly succeeded.
A Democrat actually assaulted Rand Paul.
Antifa members have actually assaulted numerous people – including killing some.
Wow! Some people you disagree with Marched in Charlottesville – that would be an excercise of free speech.
I guess you forget that once upon a time REAL liberals such as myself and the real ACLU fought for the right of actual nazi’s actual KKK members Actual white subpremicists to march – even through the cities that hollocaust victims lived in.
You claim there is no democratic anti-free speech movement – while providing the actual evidence of it.
Whatever you think of the marchers at Chatlottesville – they had the right to free speech. they also had a permit, and they were pelted for hours by leftist idiots like you – not with words, but with urine, and rocks and flame throwers, and frozen water bottles and baseball bats,
because Democratic governors and mayor’s prevented the police from doing their jobs.
And you want to rant because after hours of being pummelled by thugs like you, one of them lost it ?
Hundreds of counterprotestors should have been arrested at charlotte – and simmilar events all over the country.
Not only are you anti-free speach, but you are violents, lawless and you lie about is.
Trump is not the danger to the country – YOU ARE.
Don’t forget Joe Biden’s favorite line he repeats over and over from the script he never strays from even when confronted with the truth about what Trump said after Charlottesville…”they were all coming out of the field carrying torches, their veins bulging…”
What were there about 20 of them with their tiki torches? Like a scene from a movie, right? Never seen before or since that fateful day? Yah that wasn’t a Dem operative setup, was it….nah. And Joe Biden is a sick, pathological liar.
“There is no anti-free speech “movement” in the Democratic Party, much less one that is growing.”
Open your eyes. Twitter is censoring conservative voices, so is FB. So is the mainstream media. All of it in service of putting -and keeping- Democrats in power.
One party rule. Censorship. Guns taken away. Free everything. Blatant corruption of the vote. Yah, wave bye bye America.
Obama picked Merrit Garland – he was “allowed” a supreme court pick.
He was constitutionally entitled to a pick and he got one.
We has not Entitled to the confirmation of his pick. Myriads of justices have not been confirmed.
Many not even voted on.
Few choices of any president have ever been confirmed in the last year of their term when the senate was controlled by the other party.
Nothing new.
Trump also received his constitutionally granted pick of a supreme court justice – and like every other instance in US history were the senate was controlled by the party of the president that pick was confirmed.
McConnell took a huge political gamble not confirming Garland -it was expected at the time that Clinton would be elected.
Further McConnell made the choice of supreme court justice an election issue – if the majority of americans found his action highly offensive they could have flipped the Senate – but they did not.
The president – in this case representing the majority of American voters – rightly expected the Senate to perform it’s duty to advise and consent on his appointment. Of course they could advise against and vote against the confirmation and he could then choose another, but nowhere in the constitution does it give them the right to deny their responsibility and effectively rob the President of his constitutional right and duty.to select SC justices.
Let me know if you have other questions on the constitution.
The president – in this case representing the majority of American voters
Nope. The President represents the entire nation. Those elected to the House represent the majority in their districts. The Senate is elected by a majority of voters to represent the state.
The rules of the Senate provide how they will carry out their role to advise and consent. If the voters disapproved of how the Senate rules were followed, they had the opportunity to elect different senators in the 2016 election. Apparently the voters chose to keep Republicans in the majority. Case closed.
Let me know if you have other questions on the constitution.
The president does not get to decide how the senate performs their job. The constitution and voters do.
McConnell was not going to confirm an Obama nominee. If that bothers you – you should not have lost control of the Senate.
Absolutely McConnells actions are constitutional. There is no requirement in the constitution dictating how the Senate must confirm or reject appointments – the constitution explicitly allows the congress to make its own rules.
If Obama wanted McConnell to approve his appointment – he could have nominated someone that McConnell would approve.
Gorsuch was available at the time – as were many others who would follow the plain language of the constitution as Supreme court justices.
The constitution is clear on the Senate’s duty to advise and consent on presidential nominations. Yes, the details of how the Senate shall perform it’s duties are up to them, but ignoring them is not.
Any other questions?
Ignoring Obama’s appointment IS a means the constitution allows.
There are myriads of constitutional means for the senate, house, or president to “act” in conformance with the consitution, that take place by NOT ACTING.
Presidents frequently veto (or pass) legislation, by chosing NOT to sign it – fully constitutional.
SCOTUS frequently ignores appeals,
Throughout the constitution and government doing nothing is nearly always a constitutional option.
Doofus – you don’t mind my affectionate nickname, do you? – the constitution does not require the President to sign legislation. The Constitution does require the Senate to advise and consent on presidential appointments to the court.
Do you follow?
Toss insults all you want
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Using insult instead of argument is the sign of a small mind.
Laurie R. King
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
John Stuart Mill
“How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
John Stuart Mill”
How can a small mind be produced where the test is agreeing to the opinion and made up fact by the smallest of minds, Joe Friday?
You too toss insults, John.
You are a nutcase. Maybe we should forgive you as you are microcephalic.
Absolutely – when a poster refuses to deal with facts, and logic. When they make no valid arguments, the end result is pretty much always an exchange of insults.
How do you suggest dealing with those who do not argue facts ? who do not use valid arguments ?
Who use fallacy and insult ?
Who have no integrity, and no credibility ?
No, John, I’ve seen you toss insults at people who are making valid arguments and drawing on facts and logic, solely because they disagree with you.
You have lots of other options, including ignoring them or responding without insults.
Very very few posters here ever make valid arguments.
That claim is laughable.
Please look up logical fallacies.
I would further note that most logical fallacies transform the argument into a debate about the person, rather than the facts and the issue.
As an example responding to:
“You are a liar”
with
“no you lie”
Would be responsing to a fallacious ad homin with an insult that is also a valid argument.
Because the initial ad hominem transformed the original argument into a new argument about the posters, not about the issue.
I would also note that left wing nuts constantly confuse:
“Your argument is idiotic”
Which is not ad hominem, and may be true, with
“You are an idiot”.
If you have made an error in facts, logic, or reason – you may well FEEL insulted when that is pointed out to you.
But Feelings are not facts.
Being exposed as a fool is your problem, as opposed to merely being called a fool, which is a fallacy.
Then you have examples ?
Please note I will expect examples where
“You’ve seen you toss insults at people who are making valid arguments and drawing on facts and logic, solely because they disagree with you.”
That means i expect valid arguments drawing on facts, and logic, and a response by me that is limited to insults.
I would welcome a “Valid argument drawing on facts and logic” – even from the most hard core lefty here.
Arround here that is a snipe hunt.
The constitution does not require the Senate to hold hearings – in fact Senate hearings never appear in the consitution.
The constitution does not require the Senate to vote on anything.
Not acting is a “not consenting” to the presidents choice. Fully within the power of the senate.
Citations please.
Please cite the text in the constitution that says that the Senate must act ?
The vast majority of govenrment is INACTION.
You are wrong.
You are a liar.
There is no “rightly”.
The president can expect anything, he is only entitled to what the constitution dictates.
The constitution did not require the Senate to do more than they did.
You claim that Obama had a mandate from voters – so do the members of the Senate.
Given that the regained, held and continues to hold the Senate – claims of the will of the majority are dubious.
Yes, the constitution does give them the option of doing nothing.
In fact while the constitution does give the Federal govenrment more power than it ought, it also goes to an enormous amount of effort to make that power difficult to use.
There are few places in the entire constitution where any action is mandated.
The entire constitution is weighted heavily towards government NOT acting.
“(the President) shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court,…”
The Senate cannot lawfully execute a perceived mandate to ignore the constitution.
If they don’t like a President’s nominee to the court they are duty bound to advise him of this so he can appoint another. By their inaction the Senate blocked Obama’s right to appoint a SC justice.
Nowhere in A2S2C2 does it mention having hearings or voting.
In fact the Senate anounced they would NOT have hearings or votes.
They refused to give their consent.
That is FOLLOWING the constitution. You just do not like how they did it.
You are fixated on an inconsequential detail. Not substance.
There is no difference between refusing to consider and voting down an appointment.
BTW the Senate has a long history of refusing to consider appointments – even when they are not in election years.
You are wasting your time.
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs) sent these minions and bots out pervasively, including to the Turley blog, to spin, provoke, incite, deflect and argue the “fake” and criminal “election” of Fake Joke Buydem and his immutably ineligible running mate, the daughter of two foreign citizens, Kama-lie Horris.
Ignore the prevaricators and stay on your game plan; on offense.
Thank You.
There is no moment in time that Obama was not free to withdrawl Garland and appoint someone else.
Further though Obama was unlikely to nominate someone the Senate would approve, it was always possible for him to do so.
Do you think that had Obama nominated Gorsuch that he would not have been confirmed ?
Your fighting a losing battle.
The actions of the Senate were obviously purely political. Guess what – the actions of politicians are often political.
There are many examples of similar blatantly political actions by democrats. Most of which they hopefully came to regret.
You real complaint here seems to be that the bald political acts of Reid and Schumer bit democrats in the ass and benefited republians,
While the political actions of McConnell even though a big gamble worked out for republicans.
Obama was told Garland would not receive hearings – as you note the president was “informed” – though that is NOT a requirement in the constitution.
The federalist society is more libertarian than conservative.
Must I remind you that John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton were the first Federalists ?
I would suggest reading the federalist papers – these were the essays that the first federalists wrote to get the constitution ratified.
I would also suggest reading the works of prominent modern federalists such as Randy Barnett.
These are not “right wingnuts”. They are classical liberals.
You are a gigantic ball of self contradiction. Absolutely Republicans correctly beleive that the MSM and Social Media is out to silence them.
Because they are and they are open about it.
But what are Republicans seeking to do about it ? Repeal a bad law that encourages private censorship.
Private entities are free to censor – but they are not entitled to special govenrment protections enabling them to do so without consequence.
I would further note that once upon a Time the left expected those in business to live up to their promises.
Social Media Promised to be a forum for free speech. They LIED – just as you are lying.
They are not entitled to government protection from the consequences of those lies.
Regardless, I do not know a single republican proposing that the MSM and Social Media be censored.
Only the left advocates for censorship today.
Of course the country is divided – and it will remain so, so long as you insist on slandering and silencing everyone who disaggrees with you.
If you want unity, if you want to end the division – quit seeking to impose your will on others by force.
Quit calling everyone you disagree with a “white supremecist” a Nazi, a hateful, hating hater.
Learn to listen to the views of those who oppose your actions rather than trying to silence them.
In short Grow up, become an adult.
If you can not run your own life – why should anyone let you run theirs ?
China hacked the election to get Joe Biden elected.
Jack Dorsey of Twitter, is good buds with JayZ and Beyonce who are good buds with Michelle and Barack and if you don’t believe Dorsey is using the power he has to censor certain voices and conversations and exert undue influence in a not-so-veiled effort to help his political pals, you are blind.
Mr. Turley, you are in the wrong party. The old Dems and classic liberals of yesteryear are no longer. You are a conservative populist libertarian. Come out of the closet and join the newly restructured populist GOP.
He already has..Where have you been?
If you were capable of paying attention you would know that JT has clearly said he wants to see an end to the 2 Party system.
So, that means he is not a Dem or a Rep. He’s an independent.
I do not think Turley is populist.
Sorry, Natasha, but you are wrong about that. Professor Turley is correct. There is more than anecdotal evidence on this point. The Democrats have introduced legislation on at least two occasions that sought to amend the Constitution (1997 and 2014). Fortunately, those efforts failed. Their more recent efforts have support in both the media and academia. It’s very disconcerting to those of us who value freedom of expression. Professor Turley has covered many of the relevant examples I previous columns.
WHO IS TURLEY KIDDING???
TRUMP-APPOINTED STOOGE HAS POLITICIZED AGENCY IN QUESTION
The new chief of the US federal media agency, a Trump-appointee, has sacked three senior officials, raising fears that networks will be politicised.
Michael Pack, a conservative filmmaker and former associate of ex-White House adviser Steve Bannon, has also begun to install Trump loyalists at the agency.
The firings have been criticised by liberals and some conservatives.
Mr Pack has defended his actions as transitional steps that any new leader of an organisation would take.
The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is a taxpayer funded body that oversees global broadcasters including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting.
The USAGM is tasked with broadcasting independent news to a global audience of more than 280 million people. It was created in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda.
The director of Voice of America, Amanda Bennett, and her deputy Sandy Sugawara resigned on Monday after Mr Pack was confirmed by the Senate.
The heads of Radio Free Europe, Asia, Middle East Broadcasting as well as the Open Technology Fund were ousted on Wednesday.
Mr Pack has not offered public details on why these individuals were fired.
President Donald Trump has recently criticised Voice of America, calling its reporting “disgusting” and accusing it of spreading “propaganda” in favour of China.
The leaders of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Middle East Broadcasting networks – Jamie Fly and Alberto Fernandez – were both appointed during Mr Trump’s presidency.
Mr Fly was a former adviser to Republican Senator Marco Rubio while Mr Fernandez was a former ambassador.
A number of long-time advisory board members have also been removed, and Mr Pack is now the chairman of these outlets’ boards of directors.
Mr Pack has also appointed a number of former Trump administration officials – including from the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Office of Management and Budget – to high level positions in the agency, CNBC reported.
These new appointees also have ties to conservative organisations.
Democrats have been particularly concerned by Jonathan Alexandre’s addition to the board of Radio Free Asia, as he is a policy director for the Liberty Counsel, which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its opposition to LGBT rights.
The sackings followed an internal email to staff from Mr Pack, saying he would maintain “the agency’s independence”.
He later told staff “no actions are to be taken, and no external communications are to be made without explicit approval” from the new leaders.
Edited From: “Fear Over U.S. Media Independence As Trump-Appointed Chief Fires Editors”
BBC, 6/19/20
hello how are you
I get paid more than $120 to $130 per hour for working online. I heard about this job 3 months ago and after joining this i have earned easily $15k from this without having online working skills. This is what I do…
Julia56 is just our usual troll. The big question, though, is whether Turley pays said troll.
Turley never finds fault with the Loser in Chief, no matter how alarming his actions. 2 more months and hopefully the damage is kept in check.
Joe friday never finds anything good about Trump. Two more months and joe friday won’t have anyone to attack. His loved ones should watch for PTSD. His war on Trump might have done that to him.
Thinkit. that’s true. I don’t associate with lying a.sh.les in my private life.
Joe F. When I wrote my comment I anticipated exactly what your response would be. The cane can only tap the ground to help you find your way. The way must still be well trodden so that you will find no danger on the path you have traversed so many thousands of times before. Yet it all is happening in a cage.
I constantly hear that Trump lies.
Yet the meaningful lies I remember are not Trump’s.
We did not get out of Afghanistan or Iraq under Obama/Biden – instead we started new conflicts.
When Obama left office the US was involved in more fighting in the Mideast, not less.
Today the mideast is far more peaceful, and more importantly the US is involved in far less fighting.
We were promissed healthcare reform that would improve healthcare outcomes, reduce costs, and we could keep our doctors or insurance if we wanted.
We got higher costs, less choice, many of us lost our doctors, or insurance we were happy with,
And healthcare outcomes are unchanged.
WE ere told the attack on Benghazi was a spontaneous uprising – instead it was a planned terrorist attack that could easily have been anticipated.
We were told that there was real evidence – more than circumstantial evvidence of Collusion between Trump Campaign and Russia, yet the only evidence found was between Hillary and Russian Agents.
Biden told us he knew nothing of his Sons business dealings – yet even Hunter says he told his father. And it increasingly appears that Vice President Biden benefited personally From Hunter Biden selling his father’s influence.
Biden can not even keep straight his own lies about fracking.
We were expected to beleive vague allegations against Kavanaugh of something that might have occured 35 years ago, but disbelieve specific allegations against Biden that are only 20 years old.
We are out of the Parris occurds for the moment – and the planet has not melted – as it was supposed to in 2013 – or 2000 or ….
We are out of the Iran deal and Iran has been significantly diminished as a mideast power.
I have lost count of the mideast countries that have struck peace deals with Israel.
When Trump leaves office, it will be the opposite of PTSD and more like the excision of a tumor for some of us.
Yep, all right back to normal in the Swamp with a life-long corrupt old politician at the helm. No press access to old Joey. Press clamp down and shut-out will happen again, just like it was all during the ‘good old days’ of the opaque, secretive, hostile-to-the-press Obama administration. Yep, onwards! right back to the way it was before Trump. Y’all gonna miss him when he’s gone. Those in the press sure will.
Your tumor is going to be excised by Doctor Biden? I’d get a second opinion. You may find the cure a great deal worse than the malady.
No, TIT, the voters excised it. You may be a bad judge of what other people consider worse.
‘1st they choose Biden to be their nominee. Then they choose a women who couldn’t even get 3% of her own parties vote to be his running mate. Then, neither even campaign. Then to top it all off, they rig the election & give Biden 75M votes. That’s how stupid they think we are.’
The Deep Deep State “ensconces.”
The woman who couldn’t get 3% won an election for U.S. Senator between TWO DEMOCRATS and no opposition candidate in the anomalous and insane one-party communist state of California where comrades are “ensconced” not elected.
Joe. Turley often states that he does not agree with Trump. You must read the first three lines of his article and immediatly jump to the comment section. Dont you realize that others reading his article know that you present a falshhood in desrcibing Proffesor Turley. WOW! Bias like a spotlight.
Thinkit, yes Turley often prefaces his take downs of Democrats and people who appear on networks other than Fox with weak throw-aways of his supposed disagreements with Trump. Funny thing is he MIGHT write one column every 3 months about Trump, otherwise known as the most powerful man on earth, and one famous for imtemperate quotes and actions – which is less than ones he writes about Joy Reid and certainly less than his twice weekly screeds against Pelosi and Biden.
So, no, that’s just Turley trying to pretend he’s an equal opportunity critic and not a GOP hack. We can see through him.
REGARDING ABOVE:
This controversy regarding Trump’s politicization of the U.S. Agency For Global Media received a huge amount of coverage last spring. Apparently Trump was having one of his many tantrums because said agency hadn’t been ‘loyal’ enough to Trump; an all-too-familar story.
Anon. If you were President would you try to put people who are freindly to your philosophy in administrative position? Would you have a right to do so? All these positions of leadership are political. Eric holder said he was Obama’s wingman. I understand. Your being a good little solder with your marching orders in your little breast pocket.